I hit the call button for the elevator, hit it again, pounded the damn thing. Finally the lights of the floor indicator started to move. They were slow, slow. By the time the doors opened, Ginny ran down the hall to catch up with me.

"Sorry," she muttered under her breath as she hurried into the elevator. She must've thought I was holding it for her. "Had too call my answering service."

I ignored her. I was thinking, Coma. Alathea. In a coma. Bastards bastards bastards.

"They'll get her out of it," Ginny said. "Doctors know more about these things than they used to. She'll be able to tell us everything we want."

"Leave me alone." I looked at her, let her see I meant it. "That isn't what I need."

For a second I feared that she would ask me just what it was I did need. But then the elevator opened into the basement, and we both hustled toward the Olds.

I wasn't driving, I didn't have anything to do, I was helpless. The sun shone cheerfully, the traffic took its own sweet time, and the man who designed the sequencing of the stoplights was a maniac-and there was nothing anyone could do about any of it. I just sat staring through the windshield with my hands clenched on my knees, trying to hold myself together while Ginny wrestled with things she couldn't change. I'd forgotten my sunglasses.

She made good time. She must've because I was still in one piece when she slammed the Olds into a parking space in the University Hospital lot. We hit the asphalt together.

But when I started to run, she caught my arm, held me back so that we walked toward the entrance together.

I let her do it. When Ginny gives orders, I obey.

University Hospital is a tall structure built in two square sections. For five stories the sections have a common wall, then the east wing goes on up for another five stories. They built the place out of red brick, and when the sun catches it at the right time of day, it looks like blood. The emergency entrance is on the ground floor of the west wing, and with all the security guards they have around, it looks more like a top-secret military installation than a place where urgent hurts are treated. At least during the day. At night, with lights in all those windows, it looks a bit more comforting.

We went in, asked a guard for directions, and got ourselves pointed toward the waiting room. That was where we found Lona.

She stood at a window looking out into the parking lot. Sunlight glared into her eyes from the chrome and glass, but it didn't seem to bother her. When Ginny said, "Mrs. Axbrewder," she turned to face us.

I wanted her to take a step toward us, hold out her hands, do something that would give me permission to put my arms around her. But she was too much alone for that. Her pain cut her off from everything. She stood there small and brittle, with her mouth clamped shut because there was nothing she could say or even cry out that would relieve the pressure inside her. It was as clear as daylight that we'd failed her, failed Alathea. When from somewhere she found the strength or maybe the generosity to say, "Thank you for coming," I almost groaned out loud.

"How is she?" Ginny asked softly. She felt as much a failure as I did. I knew that. The difference was that she could keep it from interfering with more important things.

"I don't know," Lona said. Her voice quavered, on the edge of control. "I haven't seen the doctor since he came out to talk to me. Before I called you. He told me what he was going to do. I had to give my permission because she's underage. But I didn't understand it. He wouldn't let me see her.

"He said"-she didn't look at us, never lifted her eyes above my chest-"he said she's an addict. There are needle marks all over her arms."

"It's not her fault, Lona." What else could I say? "Someone did it to her. She was forced into it."

Very carefully, she said, "I know that."

Lona!

"How did they find her?" Ginny asked. "What happened?" She wanted to know if the cops had caught Thea's kidnapper. Hell, I wanted to know. But she was moving slowly, gently.

"I'm not sure. I don't understand it. I got a call. From Lieutenant Acton. He was one of Richard's friends. He said that she'd been found. He said she was wandering around somewhere. Out on Canyon Road, I think. Trying to get a ride back into town. Somebody saw that she looked sick and called the police. I don't know who it was. When they found her, she was already unconscious. In the dirt at the side of the road."

I wanted to throw up. She was only thirteen. Things like that shouldn't happen to children.

"Did he say anything else?"

"He told me she was here. He said I should come down here right away because the doctors needed my permission to treat her."

For a minute, I had an impulse to grab the Olds and head for Canyon Road, out toward the mountains east of the city, where only the richest of the rich people live. I wanted to bang on doors until I found wherever Alathea had come from. It was a crazy idea, of course. Maybe she hadn't been kept in that area at all. Maybe she'd just been dropped off there so that she would get killed by the traffic. But that didn't make sense. There isn't much traffic on Canyon Road. And anyway that part of town held at least a hundred houses.

Somehow I fought the impulse down.

"Is there anything we can do?" Ginny asked.

"No, thank you." Lona's eyes didn't leave the buttons of my shirt. "I'm all right." If she'd been any more all right, she would've been hysterical. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

Ginny's eyes were full of tears, but she didn't let them fall. "That's OK. We'll stick around."

If that meant anything to Lona, she didn't show it. She turned away from us, went back to staring out the window.

Then we waited. Just waited. Which is what makes the famous Chinese water torture so unbearable. It isn't the dripping of the water-after a while, your forehead just gets numb. No, it's the waiting between drops that does it. Drives you completely bananas. Other people came into the waiting room, left again. Two angry and anxious mothers told each other what their kids had done this time. A man fumigated the room with a cigar the size of a Clock while his aged father had an ankle X-rayed. A guy and girl who'd been in a minor car wreck came in and took turns sitting around while they were checked out for whiplash. Compared to waiting, sobriety is easy.

It was almost four o'clock when a doctor finally showed up, asking for Mrs. Axbrewder.

Lona whirled as if she'd been stung. Her face was so full of questions that she couldn't get them out. She just stared at the doctor and ached, dumbly begging him to take pity on her.

"She's stable physically," he said. "She needs care, but she should be all right. I'm having her taken up to a room. You can visit her there in a few minutes."

Relief blurred Lona's face. She looked like she was about to give way when the doctor's tone sharpened. "But I have to tell you, Mrs. Axbrewder. We haven't been able to rouse her. She's still in a coma, and we can't reach her."

Ginny was standing beside Lona, had an arm around her shoulders. "How do you treat that?"

"We take care of her body and wait. Maybe she'll pull out of it tonight. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Maybe-I have to say this, Mrs. Axbrewder. Maybe she'll never pull out. It depends on what kind of damage has been done to her brain.

"Permanent coma is rare, but it does happen. Every body is different. An overdose can be like an eraser on a blackboard. It can wipe out the conscious mind. But more often only a small part of the brain is damaged, and after a while the person recovers.

"Of course, her situation is complicated by the fact that she'll be going through withdrawal. All we can do at this point is keep her body nourished and pray."

Lona had her hands in her hair, pulling it away from her face. A woman in danger of going over the edge. Ginny gripped her hard.

"Have you ever had a case like this before, Doctor?" Ginny asked.

"Personally, no. But I've read about them. Studies say that these conditions are more likely to develop when the addict resists the drug for some reason. The mind fights the body as hard as it can for as long as it can, and then there's a backlash."

That meant something. It was trying to tell me something. But I couldn't hear it. Pressure filled my ears. My heart. The doctor told us what room Alathea would be in. When Ginny and Lona left the waiting room, I followed them toward the elevator.

Then another question occurred to me. I turned, ran after the doctor, caught up with him at the nurses' station. "Did you do a complete physical on her?"

He looked at me sourly. "I don't know who you are. What's your interest?"

"My name is Axbrewder. Alathea is my niece."

He considered for a moment, then nodded. "I examined her. What do you want to know?"

It stuck in my throat for a second. Then I got it out. "Is she a virgin?"

He grimaced. Disgusted at me. Or at the question. Or at the answer. "Not by a long shot."

I tried to swallow the acid in my mouth, but it wouldn't go down. Clenching my fists, I went to catch up with Ginny and Lona.

Ginny was holding the elevator for me. She had the same question in her eyes. I said, "Goddamn it to hell. Yes." When she let the door close and punched the floor button, she looked mad enough to chew steel.

Alathea's room was on the eighth floor of the east wing. We found it without any trouble. The halls are laid out square and the doors all have nice big numbers on them. But when we got to her room, another doctor stopped us from going in.

He was about as tall as Ginny, with longish red hair curling around his ears, more paunch than he needed, and bloodshot little eyes. He had freckles so bad that they looked like smallpox. His white coat was buttoned up to his neck. There was a stethoscope in one of his pockets, and his right hand gripped the handle of a black medical bag.

He smiled blandly at us. "I'm Dr. Stevens. Now that she's out of Emergency, I'm responsible for her. You can see her as soon as I'm finished. It'll just take a minute."

Ginny nodded for Lona. We stood around in the hall while Stevens went into Alathea's room and closed the door.

He didn't take a minute, he took three. It felt like thirty, but we were in no position to complain. When he came out, he gave us his smile again. "Don't worry," he said. "She'll be fine."

With his hands in his pockets, he went down the hall away from the nurses' station.

There was something about him I didn't like. He had the look of a man who'd just told a dirty joke. But my opinion of him didn't matter. As long as he helped Thea.

We went into Alathea's room.

It was a semiprivate room. Alathea lay in the bed near the door. A curtain drawn halfway across the room between the beds kept us from seeing who else was there. Past the second bed was the window. The afternoon sun slanted in through it across a long section of the floor.

Alathea looked like death. A sickly paraffin color filled her face, and the scrubbed white of the hospital gown only made it worse. The sheets were tucked up to her armpits. From her bare arms, IV tubes ran up to bottles hanging from poles at the head of the bed. Around the slashes of adhesive tape that held the IV needles in place clustered other red marks like insect stings-tracks of them mapping the veins inside her elbows. Violation as bad as any rape.

Lona went close to her, gripped her hand, and started to cry. After that I couldn't see anymore. I was blind with fury and loss.

Trying to control myself, I shambled over to the window. For a bad minute or two, I couldn't do it. But slowly my eyes started to clear. I hit my knuckles on the windowsill until I could see straight again. Then I looked around.

The room was on the west side of the building. The window hung right over the roof of the west wing, three stories below me. That roof had been fixed up as a recreation area, with stubby trees growing out of little plots of earth, big umbrellas for shade, and plenty of wrought-iron tables and chairs. The place was full of people-nurses, patients, children, visitors. Men and women in hospital gowns walked jerkily around or sat in wheelchairs. They looked like they belonged there, catching a little sun to warm their bones.

Only Alathea didn't belong. And me. She didn't deserve it, and I hadn't earned it.

A faint breeze came in through the window. The window was double glass, insulated for the sake of the AC. But today the hospital was saving money. The air-conditioning wasn't on. Instead the window had been cranked open a crack at the top.

I turned my back on it, glanced at Alathea's neighbor. An old woman, as shriveled as a mummy, asleep and snoring. It surprised me to find that I had pity left to spare for her. She looked like she'd outlived herself long ago.

I wiped my face with my hands and went back to Alathea's half of the room.

Lona wasn't crying anymore. She sat in a chair beside the bed and held Alathea's hand as if both their lives depended on it. Ginny remained with her, standing behind her and gripping her shoulders with both hands-trying to squeeze some kind of strength into her exhausted body. I watched them for a minute or two, hunting for a way to tell them I was leaving.

I didn't get a chance. The door swung open.

Looking like a campaign poster, Stretto strode into the room.

"I came as soon as I heard." Maybe my ears were tricking me. I could've sworn his voice echoed in the room. Somehow he got past Ginny without actually pushing her aside. "Mrs. Axbrewder, I'm terribly sorry. All of us at the board are just heartsick."

He took her hands away from Alathea, held both of them himself. From where I stood, he looked like he was asking her to vote for him.

"In a way, I feel responsible. If Ms. Fistoulari hadn't alerted us, we would never have known this could happen. We should have realized it ourselves months ago and taken steps to prevent it. I promise you, Mrs. Axbrewder, I will use every resource at my command as chairman to make sure this kind of thing stops."

God save me from politicians. I wanted to slug him. But Ginny was in better control of the situation. "I'm glad to hear it, Mr. Stretto." The lash of her voice cut all his blather to pieces. "Now I'd like to hear how you knew she was here."

Which was a very good question.

But he was innocent the way only a politician can be. "The police called me. Since you and I spoke yesterday, I've been doing my best to prod them into action. I even spoke to the commissioner." He was still campaigning. "In no uncertain terms, I told him my opinion of the way this case has been handled. Now it appears that he made my feelings clear to the officer in charge, a Detective Acton. This Acton called me earlier, no doubt trying to compensate for his former inadequacy by keeping me informed."

Acton, huh? That name cropped up too often. I wondered just how many people he'd told about Alathea.

First things first. "Mr. Stretto," I said, "how many people did you tell that Alathea is here?"

He started to answer, but a knock at the door interrupted him.

I went over to it, yanked it open.

Ted Hangst stood outside.

I started to say, What the hell is this? Open house? But he caught my arm, jerked me out of the room. Or tried to anyway. People as short as he is can't actually move me around by brute force. I let him get me into the hall. After I'd closed the door behind me, I took a good look at him.

If he'd had any sleep-not to mention food-since I last saw him, it didn't show. There was fever in his eyes, and his hand on my arm trembled no matter how hard he held on to me.

"Ted," I asked, "what the hell's wrong?"

"Her answering service told me where you were. I've been looking for you all afternoon."

"Looking for us? Why?"

"Why the fuck do you think?" He was more than just feverish. He was hostile and excited. "Because you hotshots have been wrong about this thing from the beginning. That's why I gave up on you. Instead I've been talking to people."

"So have I. I didn't get anywhere."

"Hotshot!" he spat. He was also desperate. "You were talking to the wrong people. You and Fistoulari never figured out why Mittie was kidnapped." I was in no mood to play games with him, but I didn't let it show. He was stretched to the breaking point, and I didn't want to tighten him any more. He had something to tell me, something he was going to say as soon as he found a way. I gritted my teeth and didn't touch him. "That's true."

"You've got drugs on the brain. You're so hung up on heroin you can't see what's going on."

"Tell me, Ted." Softly, softly. "What's going on?"

"Prostitution!" The word made him so mad that he turned purple. "She wasn't kidnapped by a pusher. She was kidnapped by a pimp! He just uses drugs to control girls, make them do what he wants. What his customers want. They're all sick!"

He fell into a fit of coughing-or maybe it was sobbing- and for a long minute he couldn't go on. It wracked him pretty hard. When he got his breath back, a lot of the hostility was gone.

"It's killing me, Brew." He sounded faint. "There are actually men in this city who want to screw thirteen-year-old girls. They want to screw my daughter. Or worse."

I couldn't stand it any longer. I caught hold of the front of his coat, yanked him off the ground until his face was level with mine. Through my teeth, I hissed, "What did you find out?"

I didn't scare him. He was past being scared. And he didn't get mad, either. He was too tired. "I'm sorry, Brew. I keep forgetting about your niece. I didn't get much. Just a description of the pimp. Or his front man. The guy who lines up the customers. He's the one you talk to if you want-want to-"

I put him down, straightened his coat. "Tell me what he looks like, Ted."

Dully he said, "Tall guy. Red hair, curly. Freckles. His name's supposed to be Sven Last."

I didn't listen to the name. Instead I concentrated on the description.

For a second it paralyzed me. I stood frozen while images of a man with red hair and freckles played inside my head.

He went into Alathea's room. Dr. Stevens-

Then I saw him come out of the room, walk away down the hall. There was something wrong with that picture, something I should've noticed before.

His hands-

They were in his pockets. Both of them.

Then I moved. Snatched open the door, charged into Alathea's room.

"Ginny!" I barked, "he left his bag!"

Lona and Stretto stared at me as if I were a lunatic. I ignored them, focused on Ginny. "That doctor was a fake. Stevens. He left his bag in here."

It took one more second to reach her. Then she whirled, started hunting.

In an instant, she dived under Alathea's bed and came up with a black medical bag in both hands. Carefully she put it on the edge of the bed, snapped it open.

We all watched her-me, Ted, Stretto, Lona. We all saw what was in the bag.

Three sticks of dynamite and some kind of detonating mechanism. The mechanism was ticking.

Lona fainted. Stretto caught hold of the bars at the end of the bed as if he were about to join her. I ignored them both, concentrated on Ginny. The detonator didn't look familiar. In any case, I didn't know much about detonators. Neither did she.

The one thing I did know is that you don't try to disarm a bomb if you have no idea what you're doing.

The whole scene didn't, seem real to me. I couldn't believe it. Things like this don't happen right in the middle of the afternoon.

"Ginny," I said. Even to myself, I sounded like I was strangling. "Tell me what to do."

She stood up straight, closed the bag, snapped it shut. Carrying it by the handle, she walked out into the middle of the room.

"Ted," she ordered evenly, "go to the nurses' station. Tell them we've got a bomb in here. They have to call the cops. I'll keep in this room. Tell them to get everybody out. Start next door on either side and work away from here. I don't know how much damage this thing can do.

"Go!"

He went.

"Stretto!" She had his number now. Her voice cut into him and brought out the decisive man who'd let us see the files. "Take Lona. As far away as you can, the opposite side of the building."

He didn't hesitate. He scooped Lona up in his arms, started for the door. By the time he reached the hall, he was running.

"Brew, get the window open."

The window. Great idea. Toss the bomb outside where it couldn't get Alathea. I practically threw myself at the glass.

It was built into a heavy frame, opened and closed with a crank. But the crank wasn't there.

The window was open a crack at the top. I reached up and hooked my fingers over the edge of the frame. Next I braced my feet against the sill.

Then I ripped the damn thing out of the wall.

After that I remembered the sun roof.

I turned to Ginny, panted, "You can't. There are people down there,"

She didn't flinch. "I don't know when this thing is going off."

I whirled back to the opening, leaned out, and yelled loud enough to tear my lungs, "Get away! Go inside! Get off the roof!"

A couple of people looked up at me. The rest didn't seem to hear a thing.

"Brew!" Ginny snapped. "Get Alathea out of here. Then this woman. Tell the nurses to clear out those people."

I jumped at Alathea's bed, tried to move it. It had wheels, but they were locked. I spent precious seconds kicking off the latches. Then the bed rolled. The IV stands were built into the frame, and the bottles clinked against the poles, but the needles in her arms were safe. Heaving my weight against the bed, I guided it through the doorway and out into the hall.

A moment later Ted and Stretto came toward me. "Take her!" I shouted at them. "Tell the nurses to clear that goddamned sun roof!"

They caught the bed by its corners, and I turned and rushed back into the room.

Ginny knelt at the window, bent over below the level of the sill. Her right arm was hooked over the sill. Using the wall to protect herself, she held the bag out the window.

"You'll kill yourself!" I shouted.

"What do you want me to do?" Her voice was flat and fatal. "Drop it? I'll kill everybody down there."

I didn't argue. I went to the old woman's bed, snapped off the latches.

By the time I got her out the door, a nurse appeared beside me. She was pale with fear, but she didn't let that stop her. "I'll take her," she said, voice shaking. "She's an old woman. If she wakes up with all this going on and doesn't see a familiar face, she'll be terrified."

I gave the bed a shove for momentum and let the nurse have it. Scrambling on all fours to keep my head below the sill, I went back to Ginny.

When I reached her, I said, "Let me do it. You're too important to waste."

She fixed her eyes straight at me. "Get the hell out of here. I don't want to lose you like this."

For a moment I didn't obey. I couldn't-couldn't leave her like that. But I didn't have any choice. If we both got killed, who would nail the bastard who caused all this?

"For God's sake, Ginny," I said. "Use your other hand."

I watched while she carefully shifted positions, moved the bag into her left hand. Then I started to crawl away.

I was halfway across the room when the dynamite went off.

The concussion knocked me flat. I thought my eardrums had ruptured-I couldn't hear a thing. All of a sudden the air was full of dust and sunshine and silence. Hunks of plaster dropped from the ceiling. Cracks marked the wall above and below the window. More cracks ran along the ceiling. Nevertheless everything held. I couldn't tell whether any brick had been blasted off the wall outside onto the sun roof, but I didn't hear any screaming.

Ginny lay beside me. White plaster dust covered her like a shroud. At first her eyes were open. Her lips said, "Brew," without making any sound. Then her head rolled to the side.

Her left hand was gone. Nothing remained of her forearm except mangled meat. But her heart went on beating. Blood pumped out of her stump onto the floor. It looked like all the blood in the world.

I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I clamped my hand around her arm just below the elbow and squeezed with all my strength until the bleeding stopped.

Hung onto her like that until help arrived.