"Stolen?"

"No! I think he's swallowed something. I think he's trying to kill himself!"

My stomach lurched. "Did you call his parents?"

"No answer. His family are evangelicals, though. They spend most of Sunday at church. Tony didn't go today. Told them he was sick."

"What makes you think he took something?"

"I called him to talk about what we were going to do, with Caffeine and all, and he was, like, calm-well, no longer freaking out. When I talked to him earlier, he was practically sobbing." Grant exhaled sharply. "And then he said it didn't matter what anybody did. Not anymore." And then Grant said in a rush, "And he hung up on me and he's not answering his cell and not answering the landline!"

"When did you last talk to him?"

"Uh, I've been trying the phones over and over. I guess twenty minutes?"

"Why didn't you call 911?"

I could hear his mouth working but he didn't manage words. "I'll check on him," I said.

Tony's house was in the residential section of Fourth Street, south of downtown. I'd followed him and Dakota there after the incident in the alley. I jumped to the corner and, despite the snow, spotted the huge blue spruce that marked the house. I rang the doorbell and banged on the door, but no one answered.

Right.

I tried the doorknob but the door was locked. The drapes were drawn over the front windows, but a side window gave me a glimpse of the kitchen, and I jumped inside.

"Tony!" I yelled.

I tore through the house. I found his parents' room and two other bedrooms that clearly belonged to sisters, then came to what should've been another bedroom door.

It was locked.

I went outside and located the room's windows. They were blocked by drawn blinds. I jumped back to the hallway and tried to kick the door open. Nearly sprained my ankle.

Fine.

I stood across the hall from the door, tucked my chin, and jumped in place, adding ten miles an hour toward the door.

The door splintered at the lock and I tumbled into the room, the breath leaving my lungs in a huge gasp, but the armor I wore did its job, spreading the force. I scrambled back to my feet.

Tony was across the bed, face up, mouth open. I shook him. He didn't respond. He was breathing shallowly. I slapped him across the face and his head flopped over. His eyelids fluttered but he was still out. I ground my knuckle across his sternum through his T-shirt. His eyes opened very briefly and then closed again.

His pupils were tiny dots.

I looked around. What did he take?

There wasn't anything on the bed or the floor, but a half-open door led to a bathroom. In the sink was a prescription bottle, empty, lid lying on the floor. I snatched it up: Vicodin ES, 60 tablets 7.5 mg of hydrocodone bitartrate, 750 mg of acetaminophen. It was his mom's prescription, apparently, for back pain.

I stuffed the bottle in my jacket pocket and, back in the bedroom, pulled Tony into a sitting position, then over my shoulders in a fireman's carry. He was no lightweight. It took everything I had to struggle upright.

I'd seen the hospital a few times. It was on 87, between downtown and the municipal administration complex, but I really couldn't recall it well enough, so I jumped to the alley behind Main, where it crossed 87. I jumped down the sidewalk to the hospital in fifty-yard chunks, about as far as I could see through the falling snow. Hopefully the snow would confuse anybody who glimpsed my progress. I staggered up the last ten yards of the ER driveway and through the automatic doors.

A man's voice said, "We need a gurney!" and then two figures in scrubs were beside me, taking Tony's weight off my shoulders and lowering him to the ground.

One of them, a woman, said, "What happened?"

I kept my head down as I pulled the bottle out of my jacket. I used my deep, hoarse voice. "Suicide attempt. This is what he took. I don't know how many were still in the bottle. He was talking on the phone twenty minutes ago, so it was recent."

There were security cameras. I kept my face averted. My hair was completely under the balaclava and the helmet, and while I didn't have the goggles over my eyes, they were up on the edge of the helmet, obscuring my face from above like a visor. The balaclava wasn't over my mouth, but it was up over my chin. The weather justified it.

The woman read the label and then yelled toward the back of the room. "Drug overdose. Get the gastric kit!" She checked Tony's eyes. To the man beside her, she said, "Better get the Narcan and the Acetadote out, too."

Two more people arrived with a gurney, which they collapsed to floor level. Three of them picked Tony up and eased him onto it, then raised it. They began rolling it back toward the treatment room even before it locked in the upright position. The woman turned to me and said, "Anything else? He didn't fall or anything?"

"Found him on his bed. The bottle was in his bathroom sink."

She looked out through the doors, then gestured at my helmet. "You bring him on a motorcycle?"

"Of course not."

She looked down at the bottle again. "Well, I'm guessing his name isn't Gladys."

"It's Tony. I think those are his mother's. The address is right."

"Not your brother then?"

"No. A friend of his called and asked me to check on him, worried. Because I was close. He was the one who talked to him in the last half hour."

"Where are his parents?"

"Church. I don't know which one."

"Okay." She pointed toward a double set of glass doors. "Go in there and tell the reception clerk as much as you know." She walked back to treatment.

I passed through the first set of doors, and jumped away.

TWENTY-NINE.

Davy: Grainy Image The image on the computer screen was grainy. Millie had shown it to him without context or preamble.

He studied it. There was a palm tree visible on the corner and California plates on the Mercedes and BMWs parked against the sidewalk. The stores across the way looked like ritzy boutiques. There was a time/date stamp which put it at the previous Thursday afternoon.

He focused on the two figures walking on the sidewalk, then swore.

Millie nodded. "Yeah. This is from a bank lobby in LA-the Venice Beach area. Last Friday."

"Get this from Becca?"

Millie nodded. "Right." She tapped the screen with her finger. "Recognize him?"

Davy shook his head. "Who is he?"

She shook hers in response. "Don't know. The FBI hasn't ID'd him, either. Not yet. Just wondered if you'd seen him at that building in LA"

"The Rhiarti building? No." The image, taken by a camera pointed diagonally across the sidewalk, showed both Hyacinth and the man in three-quarter profile. The man had wide shoulders and a narrow waist and his posture was balanced. "Looks like one of the guys I'd be more likely to see at Stroller and Associates, down in Costa Rica."

"Hyacinth hasn't changed much," said Millie. "She certainly kept her figure."

Davy shuddered and looked away from the screen. "I'm going to have that dream again, I bet."

Millie shut the laptop. "Should I let Becca know about the Rhiarti building? Or Costa Rica?"

Davy frowned. "Well, I'm already blown in LA. Might as well let the feds know about the Daarkon Group. It could lead to something. Maybe they can find out where this Retreat is. Let's reserve Costa Rica for now."

Millie nodded.

"I'll send her an e-mail."

THIRTY.

"Serious"

I called Grant from my house.

Mom and Dad were off doing something, which was a relief. If Mom had appeared right then, I would've spilled the entire story.

"You were right," I told Grant. "He took a bunch of his Mom's Vicodin."

"Is he all right?"

"He's in the ER. They're going to pump his stomach."

"You got him to the hospital? Oh, thank you!"

"Next time, call 911."

"I didn't even know you drove!"

"I don't. As far as you're concerned, you don't know anything about how he got to the hospital, okay? You want to talk to people about the video, about the drugs, about Caffeine and the rest of those assholes? Feel free. Or not. Just leave me out of it!

"I made sure he got there and made sure they had the information they needed to treat him. They don't have my name and you're not going to give it to them. You owe me that."

He sounded cowed. "Uh, okay. If that's what you want."

"It is." I thought about threatening him if he did, violence or spilling everything I knew, but that was too much like Caffeine. Besides, I wanted him to rat out Caffeine. What would it take? For Tony to die?

"Okay. I do owe you. Tony definitely owes you. We all owe you."

And then he told me what was on the videos.

Grant sat with Tony's family at the hospital and heard the family briefings. He gave me regular phone reports.

An overdose of Vicodin can kill you two ways. The opiate part, the hydrocodone, can stop your breathing. The other part, the acetaminophen, can kill you through liver failure.

So, the first thing the ER staff did was try to get rid of it.

If Tony had been conscious they would have induced vomiting, since the drug wasn't corrosive. Instead they did gastric lavage-pumped his stomach-but they got both. When the nasogastric tube hit the back of his throat during insertion, he did throw up, and they had a nasty stretch where they were using suction to make sure he didn't inhale any of the vomit.

They went ahead and completed the gastric lavage and gave him a dose of Acetadote, to protect his liver from the acetaminophen. His respiration improved after emptying his stomach, so they held off on using Narcan, to counteract the opiate effects of hydrocodone. Narcan has nasty side effects of its own.

By late afternoon they were confident, barring other suicide attempts, that he would recover completely, with no liver damage.

When Grant told me this, my eyes teared up and I had to sit down suddenly.

The family wanted to know who had brought their son to the ER.

The ER staff reported "he" was a stocky young man who was clearly very strong, wearing a motorcycle helmet, bundled up for the weather. The security camera confirmed that much, but there wasn't a good shot of the person's face.

The family was distraught, irritated, and grateful, especially when their son woke up and confirmed that, yes, he'd taken the pills. Some mysterious stranger hadn't forced them down his throat. And he was as mystified as anybody about who had brought him to the ER.

When asked why he had taken the pills, he was less forthcoming.

"Don't know why they confused you for a guy," Grant said.

"What makes you think it was me?"

"Uh, you said you did ... didn't you?"

"Did I? How? I don't drive. Have I ever been to Tony's house? That you know of?"