The mist hadn't felt cold while they were jumping, but now they were cooling off, and her cheeks and forehead were pink, and her knuckles were raw. A shower, she thought, would be nice, along with a hot sandwich and a cup of soup.

They'd just crossed the fence. She turned in the saddle to watch the gate re-latch behind them, and saw the face in the tree line. There was no question that it was a face – and in a blink, it was gone, dissolving in the trees.

She turned away from it, casually, tried to capture an after-image in her mind. A pale oval, truncated at top and bottom, with a dark trapezoid beneath the oval. The face of a man who'd been watching her through binoculars, she realized. The dark shape, the trapezoid, had been arms, joined at the binoculars, in a camouflage jacket.

A thrill of fear ran up her spine. They might be coming for her.

She suppressed the urge to run the mare, but not the urge to push her into a trot. They came down the fence-line and she took the remote from her pocket, pointed it at the inside gate, and it swung open in front of them. They went through, and she turned and closed the gate, her eyes searching the tree line as she turned. Nothing. They went on to the barn, Chica in a hurry now, anticipating the feed bag.

Lon, the barn man, came over as she led the horse inside to the smell of horseshit and hay and feed, the odors of a comfortable life. She brushed a fly away from Chica's eye as she handed the reins over. "I worked her hard, Lon. She's pretty warm."

Then over the groom's shoulder, in the lighted square of the open barn door, she saw the housekeeper jogging across the barnyard, a folded newspaper over her hair to deflect the rain. Lon, an older, hook-nosed man whose skin was grooved like the bark on an oak tree, turned to look and said, "She's in a hurry."

"Two men are here."

"Two men?"

"Watchmen," Sandi said.

She looked up at the house: "Did you let them in?"

"Um, it's raining..." Sandi was suddenly afraid that she'd done wrong. "I left them in the front hall."

"That's okay. That's fine." She smiled. "Tell them that I'll be a moment."

Sandi fled back across the barnyard into the house. She and Lon talked about the horse for another thirty seconds, then, as she turned toward the house, Lon said, "Be careful, Maddy."

She was afraid of the Watchmen, but more than that: she was also interested in what they'd say and excited by the prospect of conflict. She wasn't exactly a thrill-seeker, but she enjoyed a test, and the more severe, the better. She'd been a rock climber, she drove fast cars. And always the horses: the horses might some day kill her, she thought. Riding was as dangerous as a knife fight.

She knew one of them: Bob Sheenan, who worked behind the parts counter at Canelo's Farm & Garden. He was about fourth or fifth in the local Watchmen ranks. She knew the other man's face, but not his name.

"Been out riding?" Sheenan asked, when she walked into the entry.

She didn't answer. No pleasantries for the Watchmen: "What do you want, Bob?"

"Well now..." Sheenan was a big man, with a bar-brawler's face: pale blue berserker's eyes, one damaged eyelid half-shading his left eye, scar tissue under both of them, a crooked banana nose, large yellow teeth. He smelled of pizza and beer, though it was not yet ten o'clock. "You're telling people that the Watchmen had something to do with your husband."

"You did," she said flatly. "I want to know where he is. If you're not here to tell me, then get out."

He jabbed a finger at her, and stepped closer. "We had nothing to do with your husband. If you keep talking that way, we will take you to court."

She squared off to him. "Or beat me up?"

"We don't do that."

"Bullshit. What about that Mexican kid two weeks ago? You broke his cheekbones."

"He was attempting to escape," the second man said.

"You're not the cops," she snapped. "You're supposed to be old Boy Scouts. What were you doing capturing him, huh?"

Sheenan and the second man looked at each other for a second, confused, then Sheenan pulled himself back. "I don't care about the Mexican. That's got nothing to do with this."

She bared her teeth: "Is this coming from Goodman? Or is this just some moronic crap you made up on your own?"

"This is not crap, missus." His eyes widened and his shoulders tensed, as if he were about to strike at her. "You are tearing down our good name. I don't know what your husband is up to, or where he's gone, but we will find out. In the meantime, you shut your fuckin' mouth."

"I'm not going to shut my mouth," she snarled at him. "I'll tell you something, Bob: you better be here on Goodman's orders, because you're going to need as much backup as you can get. If you came here on your own hook, I'll have your balls by midnight. Now: are you going to get out, or do I call the sheriff?"

Sheenan shuffled a half-step forward, looming, not worried at the threat. The security cameras were on. All of this was on tape. She refused to move back, but slipped her right hand into the pocket of the jean jacket, touched the cold steel of the .380.

"Something's going on here," Sheenan hissed, jabbing the finger again, but not touching her. "We're going to find out what it is. In the meantime, you stick close to the house, missus. We don't want something to happen to you, too."

Then he laughed, and turned, and walked out. The other man held the door, and before pulling it closed behind him, said, "We're watching."

She could hear the local news anchor: "...and then she vanished, into the same darkness that took her husband." She'd worked as a reporter for a television station in Richmond, and used to write that stuff; that's how she'd do it.

"I'm going into town. Did you pick up the dry-cleaning?"

"Yes, I did. I've still got them in the kitchen."

"I'll need the red blouse and the grey slacks. Bring them up, and put them on the bed. I'll be in the shower."

"What about the schnitzel? Will you be back for lunch?"

"I'll get a bite in town. You and Lon and Carl could have sandwiches...and leave one for me in the refrigerator. I'll eat it cold, this afternoon."

"Yes, ma'am."

In town, she stopped at the bank, took out five thousand in cash, returned two books to the library, filled the truck's gas tank, went to the feed store and picked up four bags of supplement for the horses. At the Post Office, she turned off the mail, and had it forwarded to Washington. The window clerk was a Watchman, but he was whistling as he put together the temporary change of address, and smiled at her when she said good-bye.

With the chores done, she stopped at Pat's Tea House for a scone and a cup of tea. Pat was a friend, a fellow horsewoman, and came over to chat, as she always did: "How's everything?"

"Delicious," she said. "Listen, can I borrow your phone to call Washington? I left my cell at home."

"Absolutely. Stop in the office when you're done."

She made the call, thinking all the time that she was being paranoid. They wouldn't be watching the phones. Would they?

"With the controversy about Lincoln and with the Watchmen visiting this morning, I think I'd better move into town for a while. So you three will be running this place. Deborah Benson will deliver your paychecks on Fridays. If you need to buy anything big, call me, we'll talk, and I'll have Deborah issue a check. I'm going to leave three thousand in cash with Lon. If you need to buy small stuff, use that, and put the receipts in the Ball jar on the kitchen counter. I'll leave the keys for the truck and the car with Lon."

They had questions, but they'd done this before.

"Any idea when you'll be back?" Lon asked.

"I'll check back every once in a while, just to ride, if nothing else. But it could be a while before I'm back full-time – probably not until we find Linc," she said.

She spent another hour on Rochambeau – Rocky – an aging gelding that had always been one of her favorites, then cleaned up, put on her traveling clothes, and wandered around the house at loose ends, until four o'clock, when she heard the gate-buzzer chirp. She looked out the front window down the lawn where the driveway snaked up from the road. Two cars were coming up the hill, a gun-metal grey Mercedes Benz sedan and a black Lincoln Towncar.

She went out on the porch when the cars stopped in the driveway circle. A chauffeur got out of the Benz, and waited. Another chauffeur got out of the Towncar, and held the back door. A young woman got out, followed by a slightly older man, both carrying briefcases. Madison met them at the top of the porch stairs.

"Hello," the woman said. "I'm Janice Rogers, this is Lane Parks, Johnnie said to say hello for him. He will see you tonight."

"Two cars?" she asked.

"Johnnie thought a convoy would be better," Rogers said. "If you're really worried...it would make it more complicated for anyone to interfere with us."

"Good. Let me get my things," she said.

She got out, the chauffeur popped the trunk to get her luggage, and she walked up the sidewalk and Black kissed her on the cheek and said, "Quite an adventure."

"The kind I don't need."

"Randall James is coming over tonight, if you don't mind. He wants to talk about those tapes – he wants you on his show tomorrow."

She was fumbling for the keys to the front door, found them. "You think that'd be the thing to do?"

"Well, I'll have to look at the tapes, but so far, the press is acting like we're just bullshitting about Linc and Goodman. This could change things. Depends on the tapes..."

James showed up at nine o'clock, an unctuous man with careful black hair, a sharp nose and a dimple on his chin. He would, she thought, lie for the pure pleasure of it; but he had the demographics.

He sat in the chair, watching the tapes, checking her profile from time to time. When they were done, he said, "I'll put you on right at the top, at noon. Live. This is great shit, Mrs. Bowe." He picked up a remote and ran back to the point where Sheenan had shuffled toward her. The threat seemed more explicit on the tape than it had in person. James froze the scene, said, "Look at the face on that fucker..."

Her name was Madison Bowe. Her husband was an ex-U.S. Senator from Virginia, who, two weeks earlier, had vanished after a speech in Charlottesville. Vanished like a wisp of smoke.

The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia stood in the living room of the private quarters on the second floor of the governor's mansion, watching the television. He was flushed, angry, but silent.

His brother was not. His brother screamed at the television: "Look at the bitch, Arlo. Look at that bitch. She's ruinin' you, and she knows it. Goddamn her eyes..."

"She's good at it," Arlo Goodman said after a moment, a small smile on his face. "That silly-ass Randall James is wearing a toupee, huh? He looks like a circumcised cock being attacked by a rat."

Darrell Goodman wasn't amused. He sat on the couch behind the governor, wearing a tan raincoat, his hands in the pockets, a tennis hat shading his eyes, making them invisible in the already dimly lit room. His body was canted toward the TV, trembling with tension. "You want me to..."

The governor turned and pointed a finger at him: "Nothing. Nobody goes near her, not for any reason. I'll make a statement, sweetness and light, apologize, kick the Watchman's ass. What's his name? Sheenan. We kick his ass. But if anything happened to her, I'd be cooked. Done. Finished. Stay the fuck away from her."

"What about Sheenan? Maybe he's working with her. Maybe it was a setup."

The governor grunted: "If that was a setup, he oughta get the Oscar. But it wasn't a setup, Darrell. That was a real, honest-to-God bare-faced threat. He thought he was doing the right thing."

"Dumb fuck, getting on tape."

"Let it go. I'll have Patricia deal with him. But I'll tell you what, this is no way to get to be president."

Darrell Goodman watched his brother, his calm face, the smile as he watched the televised assassination. Sooner or later, the governor would realize that they were in a war. Then he'd do more than rave. Then he'd get angry, then he'd move. Darrell looked forward to the day.

The rain had come every night for the past three, courtesy of a low-pressure system stalled over the Appalachians. The night before, the rain began just after 3 a.m. He'd woken in his guest room, upstairs in the cabin, snug under the slanting tin roof. He'd listened for a few moments, the water whispering down a drainpipe, the cotton smell of the quilt around him, and then he'd rolled over and slept soundly until four-thirty.

He woke at four-thirty every morning. When he opened his eyes, he lay quietly for a moment, surfacing, then looked at the bedside clock, stretched, and got out of bed. He did fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups on the colonial-style hooked rug from China, then a series of stretches, working hard on his bad leg. As he was finishing his routine, he heard an alarm go off down the hall.

He grabbed his jeans and a pair of fresh underpants from his bag, and padded barefoot down the hall to the bathroom. Better first than at the end of the line...

He brushed his teeth, skipped shaving, showered quickly. Out of the shower, he dried himself with his designated towel, pulled on the shorts and jeans, and opened the door. Peyson Carter was leaning against the opposite wall, green eyes, sleepy, wrapped in a bathrobe, holding a hair dryer.

"Morning, Jake," she said, not looking at his bare chest. His name was Jake Winter. "Billy's just getting up."

"Yeah, let me get out of your way."

He slid past her in the hallway, careful not to brush against her. Peyson was his best friend's wife. Since Billy Carter first brought her around, fifteen years ago in college, he'd been a little in love with her. Some of the feeling, he suspected, was returned. They were always careful not to touch, because there might be a question of exactly when the touching would stop. And she loved Billy...

The guys downstairs were slower getting up, but by the time he'd gotten dressed and into his boots, and gathered his coveralls and gear, they were moving around. He could hear the downstairs shower going, and the plop-gurgle of the coffee-maker, the smell of hot coffee on a cool, rainy morning.

As he left the room, Peyson came out of the bathroom, steamy and pink, wrapped in the robe, and he said, "Scrambled?" and she said, "Yes," and shouted "Billy, get up," and he followed her down the hall, watching her ass, and god help him, if Billy his best friend ever died in a car wreck, he would be knocking on this woman's door the next week.

He needed help; the kind you get from a woman.

Peyson went on to the other bedroom and he turned down the stairs.

"Mist."

"Gonna make the woods quiet, anyway. Hope the birds don't hunker down."

Sam Barger walked sleepy-eyed from the bedroom and asked Wilson, "You all done in the shower?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

"Rainin'," Barger said. "TV says it should be outa here by noon."

They took a little time over breakfast: the smell of muffins rising in the oven, bacon and eggs, coffee, the pine-wood walls of the cabin. Peyson Carter across from him, curly blond hair, catching his eyes. Did all attractive women keep a spare tire?

All that brought him to the rubber tarp, where he knelt in the gloom, waiting for his bird to move. A little hungry now, trying to ignore it. The four-foot-square mat made it possible to shift his weight silently; he had to shift frequently because of his lame leg. The tangle of brush around him made it possible to draw the bow without the motion being seen.

He had a Semiweiss Lighting compound bow, the draw weight adjusted down to provide for a very long hold. He was shooting carbon-fiber arrows, one-inch broadheads with stoppers. A good-sized tom hung out in the oaks behind him. And the tom would be coming out to this cornfield, and with luck, following a track along a shallow ravine below him. He knew the bird sometimes did that, because he'd seen the scat and the tracks on scouting trips.

Whether the tom would do it this day, he didn't know.

He waited, listening, straining to see in through the brush, the problems of the bureaucracy falling away from him. He'd hunted most of his life, since his grandfather had first taken him out when he was six years old. He hunted deer and turkeys in Virginia, elk and antelope out west. He hunted turkeys with a bow because it was so hard. Their group took an average of two turkeys a year. He was the killer in the group, and he usually took one of them.

When he was hunting, he stepped into a zen-space and became part of the landscape. Time didn't pass, nor did it stop; it simply wasn't. He faded away from himself and his day-to-day problems.

He'd been in place since dawn. The sun came up, rose higher, broke briefly out of the clouds, disappeared again. A breeze sprang up, played with the oak leaves, died again; squirrels ran across the ground, noisy beasts; a chickadee stopped on a branch a foot from his nose.

He saw it all, but didn't look at it. He was waiting...

When the cell phone went off.

The sound was stunning, like being hit in the face by a snowball. He rushed back to the present, out of the zen-space to the here-and-now. He unzipped a panel on his camo, pushed his hand through to a shirt pocket underneath, and took the phone out.

"Yes." The only people who had the number for that phone were people who he needed to talk with.

A woman's voice, quiet, cultivated: "Jake, this is Gina Press. I'm sorry to bother you, I understand you're on vacation. The guy needs to see you."

"When?"

"Today. Where are you?"

"Down in the valley. It'll be a while."

"It's pretty urgent. Can I put you on the log for 4:45?"

He looked at his watch: One o'clock. "Okay – but give me a hint."

"Madison Bowe."

"I'll be there."

He was moving Lincoln Bowe. Bowe was pale, naked, unconscious, a sack of meat, for all practical purposes. The killer had him slung in a blue plastic tarp, purchased at a Wal-Mart, and wrestled him down the narrow stairs, under the single bare basement bulb.

He was a big man, straining with the load, trying for a kind of tenderness while moving two hundred pounds of inert human being. He wore blue coveralls from Wal-Mart, purchased for the murder, and a hooded sweatshirt, with the hood pulled over his head, and plastic gloves. He knew all about DNA, and it worried him. A hair, a little spit, and he could wind up strapped to the death gurney, a needle in the arm...

He got the load down, puffing and heaving all the way, then looked back up the stairs: two minutes and he'd have to take the body back up. But he couldn't do the killing upstairs, the neighborhood was too tight, somebody might hear the shot.

He moved Bowe under the light, spread the tarp, exposed him. He was lying on his back, soft and helpless. His body was dead white, touched here and there with blemishes, pimples, the rashes and scrapes of an out-of-shape man in his fifth decade. He looked at Bowe for a few seconds, then said aloud, "Here we are. Christ Almighty."

No response. Bowe had taken an overdose of Rinolat.

The killer took the .45 out of his pocket, an old, worn gun, made in the first half of the 20th century, bought at a weekend sale, inaccurate at any distance further than arm's length. Which was enough for the task.

He cocked it with a gloved hand, then thought: "The phone book. Damnit." He ran up the short flight of stairs, got the phone book off the kitchen table, and went back down, closing the door behind him. The phone book already had two bullet holes in it: tests he'd done out in the Virginia countryside. He placed it on the naked man's chest.

He slipped the safety, and said, "Linc..." and thought: "Ears...damnit."

He put the safety back on, ran back up the stairs, and got the ear plugs. They were two bullet-sized bits of compressible yellow foam, made for target shooters. He twisted each one, fitted them into his ears, waited for them to re-expand. If he'd fired the gun in the confines of the basement, without the ear protection, he wouldn't have been able to hear for a week.

He slipped the safety again, teared up, wiped the tears away, pointed the pistol at the point where the phone book covered the naked man's heart, said, "Lincoln," and pulled the trigger.

Without the ear plugs, the blast would have been shattering; it was bad enough as it was. The naked man bucked upward, his eyes opening in reflex, the pupils milky with sleep. He stared at the killer for a second, then two, then dropped back flat on the floor.

"Holy mother," the killer said, appalled. He stood staring for a second, shocked by the milky eyes, by a possible gleam of intelligence, the hair rising on the back of his neck. Then, after a moment, he stooped and picked up the phone book. The slug had gone through, and blood bubbled from a purple hole in the naked man's chest. The hole was directly over his heart. He engaged the safety on the .45, slipped the gun back in his pocket, and squatted.

The naked man wasn't breathing. His eyes, when the lids were withdrawn, had rolled up, showing only the whites. He pressed a plastic-covered fingered against he naked man's neck, waiting for any sign of a pulse. Didn't find one. Lincoln Bowe was dead.

He rolled Bowe up, enough to look at his back. No exit wound. The phone book had worked like a charm: the slug was buried inside the dead man.

The killer was silent, kneeling, looking at the face of the man on the floor. So many years. Who would have thought it'd come to this? Then he sighed, stood up, pulled the magazine on the pistol, jacked the shell out of the chamber, replaced it in the magazine. Looked at the stairs.

This would be the dangerous part, moving the body. If the cops stopped him for anything, he was done.

But they'd made their plans, and he was running with them. He had a lot to do. He stood, still looking at the dead man's face, then said, "Let's move, Linc. Let's go."