Dear Santa
by
ALICE ORR

Dear Reader, Merry Christmas!  This month we have three special seasonal
mysteries for you and one very, very special two-in-one with a dark and
shadowy feel.  Let's start with that unique book, Brides of the Night, by
Maggie Shayne and Marilyn Tracy.  These are two very special love stories
with very dark and dangerous heroes .  heroes who are more than men.  t Next,
in The Best-Kept Secret, there's a twin who has to assume his brother's
identity to find out who's trying to kill him, but he needs the help of his
brother's fiancee--the woman he loves.  Dear Santa and All I Want for
Christmas both entwine Christmas, kids, terrible trouble and strong,
protective heroes.  Wonderful books--you'll love them.

Have a thrilling Christmas and, don't forget, we'll have more new novels in
January!

Best, The Editors 

Dear Santa

ALICE ORR

ZSILIIOLIFTTF

DID YOU PURCHASE THIS BOOK WITHOUT A COVER?  ]

If you did, you should be aware it is stolen property as it was reported ]
unsold and destroyed by a retailer.  Neither the author nor the publisher [
has received any payment for this book.  I All the characters in this book
have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation
whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names.  They are not even
distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all
the incidents are pure invention.

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Silhouette and Colophon are registered trademarks of Pa Harlequin Books S.
A.  " used under licence.  1.  The Mailbox 2.  Tooley's Plac First published
in Great Britain 1999 3.  The Centre Silhouette Books, Eton House, 18-24
Paradise Road, 4.  The School Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR 5.  Vic's Place 6.
Katherine's Place The Hotel 8.  The Capitol ][ 9.  The
Cathedra ISBN 0 373 22494 X Printed and bound in Spain by Litografia Rosds
S.A."  Barcelona ,lbany .  f State Plaza 'lace To Jonathan--who will be my
romantic hero forever.  And to my friend Gayle, who helped make Albany
accurate in this book and meaningful in my life.

Chapter One For Christmas this year, Coyote Bellaway wished he would come
awake one of these mornings all grown up.  Maybe then he'd be able to figure
out what to do for his little sister, Sprite, and for himself, too.

He was only ten, but he could pass for eleven or sometimes twelve.

That made him already more adult than kid most of the time.  At least, he had
to act like he was.  Otherwise, somebody might come nosing around and get
wind of the truth, that he and Sprite had a roof over their heads but not
much more.  He wasn't sure how long they'd have the roof, either.  Tooley
Penne-baker was a very nice lady, but even working every overtime shift she
could pull, she was just barely supporting herself.  Besides that, she was
trying to feed and take care of two kids who were no blood relation to
her--though, as far as the school authorities and everybody else knew, she
was their aunt.  When the real story came out, Coyote had to have a backup
plan ready to go or he and Sprite could be out in the cold, and that wouldn't
be smart this time of year in Albany, New York.

Worse yet than the threat of freezing their tails off on North Pearl Street,
at least from the way Coyote saw things, was the possibility of foster care.
He and Sprite would be sure to get split up if that happened, sent off to
separate homes, maybe even different towns.  That was exactly what their mom
made him promise about last time he saw her in the hospital, before they sent
her off upstate to that place that was supposed to be good for her lungs.
She'd been sick so long, Coyote could hardly remember what she'd been like
before or what it was like to be all together--his mom, Sprite and himself.
They'd had last Christmas with each other.  He felt his eyes sting from just
thinking about the little tree on the table with a star on top and how he'd
wished on that star but his wish didn't come true.  A week later, right at
New Year's, his mom was worse instead of better and they'd come for her in
the ambulance to take her away again for this last, longest time.

When they finally let him see her, there in the big hospital on New Scotland
Avenue, she'd grabbed his hand.  "You and your sister stick together," their
mom had whispered because she didn't have enough breath left to talk out loud.

"We'll stick together, Ma," he said.

"I promise."

His eyes were stinging then, too, mostly because he could feel she wasn't
strong enough to hang on to his hand very tight anymore.  He promised also to
do what Tooley Pennebaker said and not to give her a hard time.  Coyote
didn't tell his mom Tooley was so busy working double shifts at the sewing
factory just to pay the rent that she wasn't around to tell them much of
anything.  Coyote was the one in charge.  He had to be mother and father to
Sprite, especially since they had no idea where their real dad might have
gone to when he ran out on them after their mom came down so sick.  Coyote
wasn't afraid to admit, if only to himself, that all of this was getting to
be more than a kid could handle.  He and Sprite needed a Christmas time
miracle super bad about now.  He still believed in such things, though he'd
never tell anybody he did, so the news paper sticking out of a trash can on
the corner of State and Lodge Streets seemed to Coyote like it could be the
answer to his prayers.

"Most Needy Cases Fund Works Miracles," the front page headline of the
Capitol District Chronicle said.

Coyote fished the newspaper out of the trash can and hurried into a nearby
doorway so he'd be out of the straight line of the fierce cold wind howling
up State Street hill from the Hudson River.  The frozen snow cover from last
night's storm crunched under his feet.  The sidewalks hadn't been taken care
of yet this morning, and he was careful not to slip and fall down on one of
the icy patches.  Mostly though, he concentrated on the word he'd seen in the
headline.

"Miracles."  He'd just been thinking about exactly that.  He told himself this
had to be a sign, a good omen like Tooley talked about sometimes.  Maybe
there could be some Christmas time magic for him and Sprite after all.

"You GOTTA LET me do this, Sprite," Coyote said for about the millionth time
that night while he tried to work on his letter to the Most Needy Cases Fund.

"This is real important."

"I'm port ant too."

She knew how to say the word right.  She was almost eight and very smart.
Still, Coyote didn't correct her like he might have done another time.  She
did this more often lately, talked baby talk to get him to pay attention to
her.  Coyote didn't need to be a grown-up to understand there was something
not quite right about her doing that.

Luckily for them, with other people--teachers and even Tooley--Sprite never
talked baby-cute.  Unlucky for them, sometimes she was anything but cute.
She'd pout and refuse to do what she was told.  Sometimes she'd refuse to
talk at all.  She did that more and more often lately, too.  Coyote figured
he should be glad to have her shut up for a while after the way she used to
babble her head off all the time before their mom went away.  Instead, he
wasn't glad at all.  He worded that Sprite acting bad and refusing to give
answers in class could bring on a home visit by somebody from the school.
Then the truth would come out about how the two Bellaway kids were really
living, and they'd be shipped off to foster homes for sure.

"I have to write this letter, Sprite," he said even more strongly than before.

"It could mean everything to us."

 "Is it a letter to Santa Claus?"   she asked.

Coyote was half-surprised to think she still believed in that part of
Christmas.  Part of him wished he did too, though maybe believing in miracles
like the one the newspaper article talked about could be enough.

"It's something like a letter to Santa Claus," he said.  "Can you ask him to
bring me a bicycle?"  she asked.  She was so pretty even her brother could
see it.  She had light brownish curls all around her small, pale face that
was probably a little too small and a little too pale to be really healthy.
She had on a T-shirt and jeans like always.  She'd grown out of all her
dresses since their mom got sick but he couldn't take Sprite shopping.  Now,
there wasn't enough money for new dresses.  There wasn't enough money for new
anything.

"Will you write down that I want a bicycle for Christmas?"  Sprite repeated
in that whiny voice that meant he'd better answer or she'd ask the same
question over and over till he did.

"Yeah.  I can write that down," Coyote said.

But, he knew he wouldn't do that.  He'd read the article in the newspaper
lots of times to figure out just what kind of letter he should send to the
Most Needy Cases Fund.  They were handing out money, what the article called
grants, for the holiday season.  Coyote had to get one of those grants for
Sprite and him, and Tooley too if he could.  They'd be able to make a new
start that way, maybe even pay for a nurse.  Then their mom could come back
from that hospital upstate they called a sanitarium and stay at home again.

So Coyote had read most closely about the woman they were talking to in the
newspaper article.  The one asking the questions was called Mariette Dugan.
The one answering the questions was named Katherine Fairchild.  She headed up
the committee that did the deciding about who got one of those Christmas money
grants and who didn't.  She was the one he had to write just the right things
for.  He read what she'd said all the way through from beginning to end.
Then, he read it through again, and again, till he knew it just about by
heart.

Coyote'd had to make himself good at figuring out adults, especially this
last year.  He'd learned that in order to get what you needed out of grownups
you had to tell them what they wanted to hear.  So far, he'd been real lucky
at doing that with Arbor Hill School, where he and his sister both went.
Otherwise, the school people rriight have checked more closely and found out
it wasn't Coyote and Sprite's mom signing the report cards and permission
slips, no matter how good he'd learned to write her name just like she used
to.  Nobody understood better than Coyote how his luck could run out any time.

Which made it even more port ant as Sprite would say, to write the words in
his letter that this Katherine Fairchild would like to hear.

No matter what he'd said to Sprite just now, the crumpled and stained
newspaper page he'd spread out on Tooley's kitchen table told Coyote he'd
better not write this letter about anything as un serious as a bicycle.

COYOTE HAD HIS HAND on the mailbox, ready to open the hinged door.

He'd waited till Sprite was asleep before he slipped out of the house to
hurry the couple of blocks to this post office on Broadway near the corner of
Livingston Avenue.  He'd been rereading his letter in his mind all the way.
He hesitated now with his hand on the box.  Was the letter good enough?
Everything depended on what he had written.

He pulled the envelope from his pocket and bent forward over it to protect
the inexpensive paper from the wet snow that was turning the shoulders of his
thin jacket more soggy by the minute.  He was crouched that way when the
long, black car came down Broadway toward him and pulled over to the curb
just up the street.  Coyote peeked around the blue-painted metal mailbox to
watch.  Big, fancy cars like this one didn't drive through this neighborhood
very often.  He had never seen one stop before, except maybe down by the
theater at North Pearl Street and Clinton Avenue when rock stars or some
other big shots came to perform there.  The car's engine purred silently, but
he could tell it was still running by the cloud of vapor that lifted from the
hood in the dull, gray light.

The front door opened on the passenger side of the car, and a very large man
stepped onto the wet street.  Coyote was thinking he should stay out of
sight, though he wasn't sure why.  Something in his head told him that was
true.  He'd learned to listen to that voice, which had saved him more than
once from the bad things that can happen to a kid in the street.  He kept
himself behind the mailbox where he couldn't be seen from the car, but he
didn't stop watching as the large man walked to the trunk of the car and
opened it.  The gloomy night hid the man's face.  All Coyote could tell was
that he had on a long, dark coat and some kind of hat.  He leaned over the
open car trunk and looked like he was wrestling with something that must be
pretty bulky in there.

The driver's side of the car opened.  The large man must have seen it, too,
because he shouted out loud enough for Coyote to hear,

"Get back in there.  I'll take care of this."

Just then, the man pulled something long and a couple of feet around out of
the trunk.  He hoisted the long bundle to his shoulder with a grunt.  The
large man stooped a little under the weight.  That meant the bundle had to be
pretty heavy.  The big man started walking up the old driveway next to the
deserted building where the car had stopped.

He continued into the alley between the deserted house and a metal fence.  He
disappeared into the shadows for a minute when he got near the end of the
driveway.  Then he moved into a small pool of light from a bulb above a
doorway almost at the back of the deserted building.  He bent down when he
got to the back of the building and let his bundle slip to the ground.  Coyote
was having bad feelings about what might be in that package.

The large man straightened up and shook himself, maybe to get the snow off
his coat, maybe to loosen his shoulders after carrying the heavy load.
Coyote saw him glance up at the lit bulb above the alleyway door.  The man
put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out.  He reached up in a
swinging movement in the direction of the light-bulb.  He was going to break
it.  That thought came to Coyote in just about the same minute he recognized
what the man had in his hand.  The light from the bulb was glinting on the
barrel of a gun.

Coyote crouched lower behind the mailbox when he saw that.  He'd been
watching the alleyway so hard he didn't really know how tight he had hold of
the handle of the hinged door of the mailbox.  He didn't even know he had
dragged that door partway open.  Before he could think what he was doing,
his fingers let go of the handle so he could clap them over his mouth to
cover up the scared sound that was about to jump out of his throat.  He did
keep that sound from getting out, but the mailbox door slammed shut with a
clang.

Coyote understood how big a mistake he'd made even before the large man's
head snapped around to turn his face full into the pool of light from the
bulb he'd been just about to break.  What Coyote saw there froze him colder
than the snow soaking through his jacket could have ever done.  The large man
had an ugly face, maybe the ugliest Coyote had ever seen, but not from a
deformity or anything like that.

The only way Coyote could describe it, then or later on, was that the man's
face had been pulled out of shape by just plain meanness.  A flash of fear
shot like a really sharp knife point straight to Coyote's stomach.  He was in
bad trouble, and he knew it.

He took Off then, running as fast as his sneakers could carry him, back toward
the corner of Livingston Avenue and around the side of the post office,
across the parking lot where they kept the mail delivery trucks at night and
between two of those trucks to the back of the post office.  He skirted
backyards, climbed over fences and streaked down alleys, through this
neighborhood he knew by heart.  He was glad that, since moving in with Tooley
Pennebaker, he'd done so much poking around.  He knew just where to duck in
and when to climb over.

He could hear the large man in the long coat crashing along hot on his trail.
Coyote told himself he was too street~ smart to let the man catch up.  Coyote
kept himself crouched low as he ran.  His heart pounded as he waited to hear
the crack of a bullet from the gun he'd seen in the light from that bulb in
the alleyway.  He was almost back to Tooley's place when he realized what
he'd done that was not street-smart at all.

He'd dropped the letter--the letter with his address written in extra big
print on the envelope so Katherine Fairchild couldn't possibly miss knowing
exactly where he lived.  He'd dropped the letter by the mailbox, directly in
the path where the large man had been headed the last time Coyote glanced
over his shoulder to see just how hard he was being chased and just how hard
he'd better run to make sure he didn't get caught.

Chapter Two "You didn't plan on any of this happening, did you, Katherine?"

Katherine Fairchild smiled, despite the fact that smiling didn't come very
naturally to her these past several months.  Megan Moran, on the other hand,
could make almost anybody smile.  For one thing, she was about as direct as a
person could be, and Katherine loved her for it.

Still, she wasn't comfortable with being so closely questioned.  Too many
areas remained too sensitive to bear the light of inquiry even after a little
more than a year from the day sorrow had been planted in her heart.  Her
escape halfway across the country from Chicago, Illinois to Albany, New York
hadn't changed that as much as she'd hoped it would.  "I know you don't want
to talk about it," Megan went on.

"But I should," Katherine was surprised to hear herself say.

Megan nodded her cap of sleek, red curls so unlike the thicket of unruly
dark-blond waves Katherine had spent what felt like several lifetimes trying
to tame.

"That's what we've been led to believe," Megan said as she poured milk into
the bottom of her empty teacup in the English-Irish manner, before adding the
tea she'd insisted on having triple-brewed.

"Confession is good for the soul.

Otherwise, all those daytime talk-show hosts would have to take themselves
out into the world and try to find honest work for a change.  "

Katherine laughed.

"Yes, and what would they possibly be qualified to do?"

"My job, probably."

"I doubt that."

Megan was one of the best child psychologists around.  Her accomplishments
were legendary at Arbor Hill Children's Center where she and Katherine had
worked together for eight months now.

"We digress," Megan said with a twinkle in her brown eyes.

"In case you might think I didn't notice."

"When can you ever recall there being anything you didn't notice?"

Megan feigned intense concentration for a moment.

"I know," she said.

"I didn't notice that there were three billion calories on this silver what
sis here before I polished its cute little shelves clean."

She was talking about the three-tiered silver spindle laden with scones,
Devonshire cream and tiny cakes that had accompanied tea.  As usual,
Katherine hadn't touched a thing.  Appetite had been a problem for her ever
since she left Chicago and even before.

"So talk to me, girlfriend."

Megan wasn't to be denied.

Katherine sighed.

"I thought I was working my way out from under, and instead I find myself
burrowing in."

"Out from under what and into what?"  Megan licked the last bit of cream from
her lacquered fingernails.

"I'd say life, but you'd laugh me out of here for being melodramatic."

"I'd be sorely tempted to do exactly that."

"Me too."  Katherine toyed with her teacup.

"It's just that I wanted to keep myself at a distance for a while."

"At a distance from what?"  the relentless Megan chimed in when Katherine
hesitated a moment too long after that last statement.

"Hurtful things.  I wanted to keep myself at a distance from getting attached
in the way that can lead to feeling hurtful things."

There.  She'd said it, and she was only moderately tempted to dissolve into a
puddle of tears.

"How successful have you been at that distance-keeping?"

Somebody else might cut Katherine some slack or commiserate With her, but not
Megan.

"Apparently, not very successful at all.  I seem to have taken on the
hurtful-things department as my personal, professional territory these days.
I'm getting attached to it, too."

"You could have said no."

Not a centimeter of slack, yet again.

"That would have been a violation of the pledge I made to myself when I came
here, to start saying yes to things instead of worrying them to death first."

"Saying yes to life and hiding from it at the same time.  You've got your
work cut out for you."

Katherine laughed.

"I was talking about saying yes to professional possibilities, whatever they
might be.  That's how I turned out to be an administrator of a public agency
when everything I ever worked at up till then had been strictly about making
money.  But the first job that came up for a budget administrator after I
came to town nine months ago happened to be at the Arbor Hill Center.  The
rest, as they say, is history."

"I wondered about that.  We don't get too many job applications from MBAs."

"If you did wonder, I can't understand your not asking."

"I try to respect the privacy of my friends."   Katherine laughed fully out
loud at that.

"I'm glad to hear you've got a laugh like that in you," Megan said.

"I guess I've been something of a sad sack since you met me."

"Not so much a sad sack as a workhorse."

Katherine nodded.

"And the children of Arbor Hill are duly grateful," Megan said.

"That little place of ours has never run so efficiently.  You know how to
make a dollar do double duty, and that's just what we need over there."

"I wish that's what they'd kept me doing," Katherine said ruefully.

"You really don't like this Most Needy Cases Fund selection committee thing,
do you?"

Katherine shrugged.  The last thing she'd wanted when she took the job at the
center was to be working up close and personal with the lives of the kids
they served there--or their families, either.  She'd signed on as a
number-cruncher, no more, no less.  The Most Needy Cases Fund was the
center's annual drive to award cash grants to families at the holiday season.
Unfortunately, there wasn't money enough to cover everybody who applied.  A
selection process was necessary, and that process had sometimes fallen short
in the efficiency department in years past.  As Megan said, Katherine had
attracted a reputation for efficiency in her few months here.

Consequently, when the fund-recipient selection committee was being formed
for this year's campaign, the perfect choice to head up the effort was
apparently obvious to everyone---everyone except Katherine, that is.  She'd
tried to say no, but, with first-class persuaders like Megan lined up against
her, Katherine's protests had barely been heard.

"It's important work," she said now.  She'd had to resign herself to how true
those words were and what that meant for her.

"Somebody has to do it."

"But it's a bummer sometimes."

"Yes."  Megan had a way of saying the right words when they were most needed.

"A definite bummer."

Katherine would have sworn the Christmas lights strung across the tearoom
window dimmed for an instant then, as if they agreed.

"Christmas is only a week away," Megan said.

"After that, the fund campaign will be over till next year."

"You're right.  I can stand almost anything for a week."  Including the
Christmas season itself, she thought, though she was well aware that seven
days could feel like an eternity sometimes.

"Just as long as they don't spring anything else on me."

"Here's to no more surprises."

Katherine and Megan clinked teacups.  Katherine, while managing another smile
for Megan's sake, noticed the holiday window lights blink and sputter and
then click off altogether, as if something in the wiring had gone suddenly
awry.

KATHERINE HADN'T TOLD Megan about going back to the office that evening.
She'd have taken the opportunity to repeat her lecture on overwork for sure.
Much as Megan was one of Katherine's favorite people in the world, she wasn't
in the mood for being lectured tonight, or for going home to her empty
apartment either.  She drove from the teashop to Clinton Avenue instead, then
the few blocks northeast to Arbor Drive.  She parked her car and hurried
across the dark parking lot to the brown cement-block single-stow Arbor Hill
Children's Center building at the edge of a scruffy field.

The baseball diamond and backstop fence were in that field, mostly buried
under sullied urban snow, all made invisible by the evening's overcast sky.
There was a streetlight near the center's entrance way but it was out of
order much of the time.  Tonight was one of those times.  Vandals or
municipal neglect.  The light over the center's entrance way was out, too,
making it necessary for her to watch carefully where she was stepping with
the not-very-practical high-heeled boots she wore to make herself appear
taller than her five foot five.  That concentration on the ground was the
reason she didn't notice someone coming up behind her till it was too late.

"It's not smart for a woman to be out here alone in this neighborhood at
night."

The edge of menace in that voice caused Katherine to spin around too fast on
her precarious footwear.  She felt her slide begin at the same instant she
realized there was nothing she could do to stop it.  She also knew she wasn't
about to be a victim of this hulk of a man towering over her now.  These
boots of hers were good for more than falling down.  This guy could expect a
high heel in the groin as soon as she was on her back and into kicking
position.  She was already mentally prepared for that defensive move when a
startling steel grip halted her fall.

"I've seen those stupid boots you wear.  It's a wonder you haven't taken a
header into the asphalt before this."

Katherine was bracing herself to rake her boot heel down his shin when she
recognized his voice, or thought she did.  "Maltese, from Recreation.  Is
that you?"  she asked.

His short laugh was unmistakably derisive, and somewhat annoyed.  She had
heard from others at the center that Vic Maltese had a way with kids.  He
respected them and earned their respect in return.  But, in her few
encounters with him, she'd noticed that just beneath the surface he always
seemed to be angry about something.  Tonight was no exception.

"You got it right," he said.

"Maltese from Recreation.  That must be how you list me in those account
books you keep."

"I'm not an accountant, and you can let me go now."  His grip was still on
her arm.

"I think I'll hang on to you till you're safely at the door.  We wouldn't
want to lose our top-shelf bean counter to a patch of ice."

He'd started walking toward the building entrance with her arm clamped firmly
in his big hand.  She had little choice but to keep up, cursing with every
skittering step the boots he had rightly called stupid.  Meanwhile, she could
feel her dignity about to slip away on a surface as glassy as this parking
lot.

"I don't know where you came up with the idea that I'm an accountant," she
said, doing her best to remain upright and sound like a serious professional
at the same time.

"My title is Administrative Budget and Program Coordinator."

Another derisive laugh.

"Do you always talk like a corporate report?"

No, Buster, Katherine would have liked to say.  Lunkheads like you just bring
that out in me.

"Look, Mr. Maltese..."

"Victor.  The name is Victor.  Everybody calls me Vic.  You should be calling
me that, too.  We're supposed to be colleagues.  Right?"

He said the word colleagues as if it was a joke.

"Yes, we are colleagues."  She deliberately didn't call him by name, either
first or last.  She had no intention of letting him take charge of what, for
some reason, he insisted on making a debate between them.

"And that means your attitude right now is inappropriate.  If you have some
problem with me, you should come to my office during business hours and we'll
discuss it."

"Then who'd be here to keep you from tumbling onto your behind in the parking
lot?"

Katherine didn't know what made her want to deck him more, his mocking tone
or his mention of her behind.

"Will you let go of me now?"  she all but shouted, her irritation
echoing across the empty parking lot.

They were at the gated door to the children's center building.

High-quality security gates and window gratings were among the first
additions Katherine had to find funds for when she came on staff here.  A
break-in shortly before she arrived had cost the center plenty.  Otherwise,
she might not have been able to convince the board of directors that such a
large short-range expenditure would pay for itself in the long run.  Not that
they were stingy types.  There was simply too much to be done and too little
money to do it with.  Right now, she could think of one cost-cutting measure
that would definitely win her vote---elimination of the current Recreation
Director.

"Consider yourself let go," he said, still unfortunately un eliminated and
dropped her arm.

"Thank you for your assistance," Katherine said, brushing away the creases his
grip had made in her coat sleeve.

"There you go talking like a corporate report again.  You really should try
to do something about that."

"I'll put it on my calendar."

Katherine didn't want any conflicts with center staff, but if this guy
insisted on being rude and sarcastic, he'd get the same from her in return.

"How about putting me on your calendar, too?  Like for right now."

Katherine fished her key ring out of her coat pocket where she kept it,
along with a small money purse pinned to the pocket lining.  She didn't carry
a purse most of the time--one of the concessions she made to working on the
poorer side of town--and her briefcase was inside her office.

"I told you, Mr. Maltese..."

"Vic."

"Whatever.  The point is, I told you to make an appointment during business
hours."

She turned the key in the lock and was about to push aside the
accordion-style gate when Mr. Maltese's fist clamped around the metal with a
belligerent clang.

"You're here to take care of business.  Right?  I don't imagine this is a
social call."

He indicated the dark building and the fact that they were obviously alone.
For the first time, it occurred to Katherine that maybe she should be
concerned about more than just this guy's sarcastic mouth.

He was a big man, after all, and obviously, from his present behavior at
least, something of a brute.  Her instincts told her sexual assault wouldn't
his thing, but she should be cautious anyway.

"Mr.  Maltese," she said in her most authoritative tone.  "I want you to
leave now."

"I've wanted you to leave ever since they hired you."

That brought Katherine up short.  She'd had no idea any-i one felt so
negatively about her.

"Why?"  she couldn't help but ask.

"Don't take it personally.  I feel the same way about you ledger-heads."

"I told you.  I'm not an accountant."

"Paper-pushers are all the same to me.  You've got got, torn lines where your
hearts should be."

She couldn't see him sneer in the darkness, but i hear it in his words.  He
was standing very close to her, looming like a tall, broad wall between her
and escape.  She didn't really know him or what he was capable of.  Most of
what she'd heard about him had come from the center's female support staff,
all of whom thought he was the hottest thing around  Katherine could hardly
agree.  She'd never been a devotee of the angry-young-man type.  Beyond that,
there was something of the wild, restless animal about Victor Maltese.  She
could feel it in him now.  Maybe that turned some women on, but for Katherine
it was something to be guarded against.

"Apparently, you have a problem with the way I do my job," she began, calm
and impersonal to keep things cool.

"You're damned right I do.  You're in charge of decisions here that can make
or break people's lives, and I don't think you've got qualification number
one for doing that."

 "Are you referring to the Most Needy Cases Fund?"

"You guessed it.  I've got a real problem with a bean counter running that
committee.  Who are you to be making the call about which families are in and
which families are out when it comes to passing out money that's needed more
than you ever needed anything in your life?  What do you really know about
these people and their lives?  How close have you ever been to where they
are?  I'd lay down good money that says the only time you've ever spent in
the street is at one of those cute little sidewalk cafes they opened up for
all of you yuppies over in the Pastures."

Katherine had asked herself those same questions about her personal
credentials for the job they'd given her, but she wasn't going to let this
testosterone case know that.

"It's a bit cold for sidewalk cafes this time of year, Mr. Maltese,"

she said.

"Too cold for a lot of things," he shot back and shook the metal gate with
another loud clang before letting go of Katherine fished her key ring out of
her coat pocket where she kept it, along with a small money purse pinned to
the pocket lining.  She didn't carry a purse most of the time--one of the
concessions she made to working on the poorer side of town--and her briefcase
was inside her office.

"I told you, Mr. Maltese..."

"Vic."

"Whatever.  The point is, I told you to make an appointment during business
hours."

She turned the key in the lock and was about to push aside the
accordion-style gate when Mr. Maltese's fist clamped around the metal with a
belligerent clang.

"You're here to take care of business.  Right?  I don't imagine this is a
social call."

He indicated the dark building and the fact that they were obviously alone.
For the first time, it occurred to Katherine that maybe she should be
concerned about more than just this guy's sarcastic mouth.

He was a big man, after all, and obviously, from his present behavior at
least, something of a brute.  Her instincts told her sexual assault wouldn't
be his thing, but she should be cautious anyway.

"Mr.  Maltese," she said in her most authoritative tone.  "I want you to
leave now."

"I've wanted you to leave ever since they hired you."

That brought Katherine up short.  She'd had no idea anyone felt so negatively
about her.

"Why?"  she couldn't help but ask.

"Don't take it personally.  I feel the same way about all you ledger-heads."

"I told you.  I'm not an accountant."

"Paper-pushers are all the same to me.  You've got bottom lines where your
hearts should be."

She couldn't see him sneer in the darkness, but she could hear it in his
words.  He was standing very close to her, looming like a tall, broad wall
between her and escape.  She didn't really know him or what he was capable
of.  Most of what she'd heard about him had come from the center's female
support staff, all of whom thought he was the hottest thing around  Katherine
could hardly agree.  She'd never been a devotee of the angry-young-man type.
Beyond that, there was something of the wild, restless animal about Victor
Maltese.  She could feel it in him now.  Maybe that turned some women on, but
for Katherine it was something to be guarded against.

"Apparently, you have a problem with the way I do my job," she began, calm
and impersonal to keep things cool.

"You're damned right I do.  You're in charge of decisions here that can make
or break people's lives, and I don't think you've got qualification number
one for doing that."

 "Are you referring to the Most Needy Cases Fund?"

"You guessed it.  I've got a real problem with a bean counter running that
committee.  Who are you to be making the call about which families are in and
which families are out when it comes to passing out money that's needed more
than you ever needed anything in your life?  What do you really know about
these people and their lives?  How close have you ever been to where they
are?  I'd lay down good money that says the only time you've ever spent in
the street is at one of those cute little sidewalk cafes they opened up for
all of you yuppies over in the Pastures."

Katherine had asked herself those same questions about her personal
credentials for the job they'd given her, but she wasn't going to let this
testosterone case know that.

"It's a bit cold for sidewalk cafes this time of year, Mr. Maltese,"

she said.

"Too cold for a lot of things," he shot back and shook the metal gate with
another loud clang before letting go of it.

"You'd better put me on that calendar of yours for first thing tomorrow, and
the folks I bring with me, too."

He turned and walked away from her then with just enough arrogant street roll
in his stride to make her want to scream,

"Who do you think you are?"  at his leather-clad back.  But Katherine was a
serious professional so she didn't.

COYOTE WATCHED them from the field where he was crouched down in the brush.
He could tell they were arguing, but he couldn't make out the words except
for Miss Fairchild yelling at Mr. Maltese to let her go.

Coyote had been to this place a few times and knew the recreation-program
guy.  Last spring during baseball games, he had helped Coyote out with
learning how to pitch straight and hard.

Coyote had made a point of trying to steer clear of him, anyway.  Mr. Maltese
was the kind that wanted to be right up in a kid's business too much of the
time.  He did it because he thought he was helping out, but Coyote didn't
need that attention.  Well, maybe he did need it, but he didn't want it.
Grownups who worked in places like this center had a way of getting in your
life, messing around with it, then moving on while you were left with the
mess.  Coyote had seen it happen more than once, and he definitely didn't
need that.

What he did need was this lady's help.  He'd recognized her from the
photograph in the newspaper, and he had to find a way to get to her.

After Mr. Maltese walked away and Katherine Fairchild let herself into the
building, Coyote waited for a light to come on somewhere inside.  Sure
enough, a few minutes later, light appeared at the second set of windows from
the end of the building.  When Coyote got to those windows and peeked very
carefully inside, he could see this was her office.  But that wasn't what
caught his attention and held it like a magnet to the spot.

At the top of a wire basket on the corner of her desk was a pile of unopened
envelopes that must be her mail.  About three pieces down in the pile, one
stuck out from the others enough for Coyote to see it and recognize what was
there--his handwriting, the thin envelope paper from Rite Aid, even a dirt
smudge and some wrinkling where it would have gotten wet when he dropped it
on the ground.

That was two nights ago.  Ever since then, Coyote had been on the run,
steering clear of Tooley's place for fear the large man from the long, black
car would be watching there.  In between concentrating on what it took to
survive out here on his own, Coyote had thought about writing another letter,
but he didn't have an address where somebody could contact him.  He'd decided
maybe coming in person to see this Katherine Fairchild was his only hope.
He'd snuck over here tonight to case out the possibilities of that, thinking
that he'd talk to her the next morning.  All the time, though, he'd been
wishing he'd put his letter into that mailbox in the first place.  Now, here
it was, on her desk like a miracle--or, like something else, Because if
Coyote hadn't mailed the envelope, who did?

Chapter Three Vic knew he'd been hard on Katherine Fairchild last night.  He
tried to tell himself she deserved to be put in her place, brought down a peg
or two, but he knew that wasn't why he'd acted like such a creep.

He'd been on his way to pick up some dinner and head home to his house on
Livingston Avenue after work when he saw her pull into the parking lot of the
center.  Who could miss that big, expensive four-wheeler of hers?  He'd
decided to talk to her then, to tell her he was concerned about the way
candidates for the holiday fund grant program were being picked.  A
reasonable discussion was what he had in mind, maybe even him volunteering to
help her choose who would get the grant money.  He would point out his
background, tell her he came from the same kind of neighborhood as these
families.  At least, he had, before he'd left home at sixteen and started
making it on his own.  He'd planned to explain how that experience made him a
natural to advise on this project.  Then, last night when he was finally
standing right next to her, all of his planning and reasonableness flew
straight out the window.

Vic knew why that was, too.  Something about her got to him, and he didn't
like it.  He didn't like it at all.  She was just about the last woman he
wanted to have pushing his buttons, but she pushed them, all the same.  It
wasn't the way she looked that got to him.  He'd seen her enough times around
the center to know she wasn't hard on the eyes.  Still, she hadn't struck him
as his type.  She was too skinny, like she needed a few months of good meals
to fill her out some.  Her clothes tended to hang a little large on her, as
if she might have lost a load of weight since she first tried them' on

There was also something a little comical about the way she tried to keep that
wild hair of hers under control and neat, probably to go along with the
strictly-business briefcase she always carried.  Some days she'd have it
slicked down.  Other times she'd have it pulled back in a band or clasped
into a big barrette, but none of that did any good.  Puffs of the stuff would
spring loose and be flying behind her as she dashed along.  Still,
endearing as that might be, it didn't turn Vic on.  Then, tonight, he'd seen
her teetering across the ice in those high-heeled boots of hers, and he was a
goner.  But the foolish footwear only made him surer than ever that she was a
duck out of water in this part of town.  What if some street tough came after
her and she had to run?  Those boots would do her in for sure.

That's what he'd had in his mind to tell her last night when he grabbed her
arm to keep her from takin ga nosedive into the ice.

She'd whipped around on him just before he grabbed her, and that's when it
happened.  The way she looked didn't have anything to do with it.  The
parking lot was too dark for him to see much in the way of details.  He was
feeling her more than seeing her, and what he felt took him totally by
surprise.  At that moment, she was no longer a skinny little bird of a thing
who couldn't even make her hair behave.

She was as fierce as a lioness, tensed to do him damage no matter what the
odds might be against her.  Vic had been in enough one-on-one tussles to know
that was where this particular opponent was coming from.  She was no
helpless twit.  She was scrappy as hell, and for some reason that got under
his skin, to a place Vic had no intention of letting this woman go.

Katherine Fairchild was about as far out of his ballpark as she was from
these rundown, mean streets she insisted on walking in her uptown-lady boots
and expensive clothes.  Even her name said,

"Not your sort, Vic."  It sounded like' one she'd picked up off a society
page, but he'd heard it was a hundred percent authentic.  There'd been lots
of talk buzzing around the place when she first came on staff at the center,
when she'd breezed into town from Chicago after she and her husband had
split.  She'd bought herself a fancy apartment, and from the employee address
list at the center, Vic had seen she lived up on Washington Park where lots
of yuppie types were settling these days.  Some sad story went around too,
about a sick kid or something like that, but nobody had any details.
Whatever the specifics of her background might be, Vic knew she was
definitely out of the picture for a guy like him, who tended toward good old
girls from the neighborhood, even though he'd never seemed to care about
sticking with any of them for very long.

All of that had set him off last night somehow, when she spun on him and he
felt the fire of her spirit flash hot in his blood.  He couldn't let her pick
up on that, of course.  He didn't even want to admit it to himself.  That's
why he'd acted like such a jerk, manhandling her the way he did, practically
dragging her across the parking lot and growling at her instead of talking
reasonably like he'd planned.  He'd even threatened to show up here this
morning with his troops in tow ready to do battle with all five feet plus a
few inches of her.

Fortunately, there'd been a long night between then and now.  Vic had used
that time to pull himself and his head together.

He'd reminded himself of what he was supposed to be doing here at the
center--what he was all about.  He wanted the best for these kids and their
families.  They needed desperately for somebody to cut them a break.  The
Most Needy Cases Fund was a chance for that to happen.

Vic could make sure it did, but he'd have to work with Katherine Fairchild to
do it.  And, in order to work with her, he'd have to keep a tight lid on his
nerve endings, and other parts of him too.  He'd have to stay in control,
stop reacting.  Most of all, he'd have to keep his anger in check.  That had
never been an easy thing for him to do, not from the days of his adolescent
brawls with his father till now.  Vic paused for a moment outside Katherine
Fairchild's office door and resolved to stay in control no matter what
happened.  No matter what!

CAROLS WERE PLAYING on the center's intercom.  Katherine had always loved
Christmas music until last year.  Ever since then, it had reminded her of
loss.  She'd read about how the holidays were hard on people with problems.
All those reminders of giddy shopping, families gathered together, wishes for
peace on earth and well-being fell painfully on the ears of those for whom
life was less than festive at the moment.  Katherine had learned the truth of
that firsthand last season.  She'd wished she could shut it all out then,
especially the carols.  She'd done her best to plug her ears against the
tinkling bells and swelling chords meant to make her feel that heavenly
blessings were close at hand.

She was relieved to realize that she didn't feel quite so bleak about the
holiday season this year.  Sadness still plagued her, popping up when she was
least prepared for its onslaught, but the sharpness had grown less keen and
cutting over these twelve months and stabbed her less frequently now.  She
could actually hum snatches of

"O, Little Town of Bethlehem" again, though she wasn't yet ready to sing along
happily with the chorus of

"Adeste Fideles" as she once would have done.  She was congratulating herself
on her progress toward leaving the doldrums behind, or at least beginning to
shove them off to one side, when a knock came at her office door and she
looked up to see who might be there.

She hadn't stayed long at the center the evening before.  Her encounter with
Victor Maltese had left her fuming and too worked up to accomplish much.
Finally, she'd snapped off her computer in exasperation and slammed out of
the place, cursing her sliding boots all the way to her car.  She'd resolved
there and then never to wear the ridiculous things again, though it irked her
no end to appear to be taking that Neanderthal's advice.  Now, here he was
tapping at her office door, no doubt bent upon mining her morning the way he'd
mined her evening.

Katherine took a breath and forced herself to smile before she said, "Come
in."

"I wouldn't blame you if you told me to get lost after the way I acted last
night," he said before he even had time to close the door behind him.

"I wouldn't blame me, either."

"What do you say we start over?"

He was smiling.  Unlike last night in the dark, Katherine could see his
features now.  His eyes were dark and deep, the kind many women find
mysterious and fall for without thinking what the nature of that mystery
might be.  The rest of him looked like he'd just hopped off a Harley
Davidson--black leather jacket over black turtleneck, blue jeans, engineer
boots--just the sort of arrogant, aggressive macho style she'd always been
careful to maintain a safe distance from.

"Start over in what way?"  she asked.

Katherine told herself she should match his conciliatory tone, at least for
the sake of the center.

"Invite me to sit down, and I'll tell you what I hope we can do together."

He smiled even wider with a flash of strong, white teeth.  A dimple she'd
never noticed before dented his left cheek.

"Sit down, then," she said, telling herself she needed to be reasonable here,
despite the danger signals her instincts seemed intent upon telegraphing.

Vic Maltese lowered his tall frame into the vinyl-seated chair across from
her desk.  Blue denim stretched tight along his muscular thighs as he leaned
back in the chair.  Katherine turned her attention for the moment to
straightening the file folders she'd been working on and setting them aside.
She wanted to believe his thighs weren't the reason she was looking so
deliberately away from him.  Meanwhile, the instinct telegraph tapped out its
message even more loudly than before.

"Are these the letters you've been getting for the Most Needy Cases Fund?"
he asked, indicating the wire basket at the corner of her desk.

"That's the latest batch."

She couldn't figure out why he was asking that.  The basket was labelled

"Most Needy Cases Fund Correspondence," and Mr. Maltese didn't strike her as
the obvious-question type.  Maybe this was his attempt at small talk.

"There's lots of people writing in, I see," he commented.

"We've had a big response to the publicity in the newspapers."

"You mean that interview you did a few days ago in the Chronicle.  The one by
Mariette Dugan.  I saw that.  You have to Vatch out for her, from what I
hear.  She's supposed to be a real shark."

"I've heard that too, but she did well by the center this time."

Small talk, all right.  Katherine had a feeling Mr. Maltese couldn't have
cared less about the state of journalistic ethics in the Capitol District.
She was sure he was working UP to something, but she couldn't imagine what
that might be.  She was trying to decide whether or not to ask him right out
what he was after when he reached into the wire basket and scooped up the top
half of the Most Needy Cases Fund letter pile in his large hand.

"I'd like to help you out with these," he said.

"That really isn't necessary," she began.

He was out of his chair and leaning over her desk so abruptly that she was
almost frightened by the move.

"I know you don't have reason number one to believe this, but all I want to
do is what's best for the kids we work with here.  And for other kids and
families just like them."

His dark eyes had turned very intense as they honed in on her.  8he had to
will herself not to back away from their impact.

"I have no doubt your intentions are most admirable," she began again, trying
to impose some formality on what appeare0 to be in danger of turning into an
emotional exchange.

"The let me work with you on this."

He held up the fistful of letters.

"I appreciate your offer, Mr. Maltese, but we already have a committee in
place."

"I knw you have a committee, but none of them have the neighborhood
experience I do."

So, that was it.  He didn't think the rest of them were equal to the job,
probably especially not her.  He'd said just about the same thing last night
in the parking lot.

"I believe we are capable of handling the project on our own," she said, her
tone more formal than ever and turning frostier by the second.

"I'm not suggesting that you aren't capable."  He leaned closer still.

"I'm only saying we could do an even better job together."

His face was inches from hers, well into what Katherine pretty much
unconsciously took for granted as her intimate space.  She was entirely
conscious of it now.

"Mr.  Maltese..."

Whatever she had been about to say--and the exact words hadn't yet quite
formed themselves in her mind--was interrupted by a sharp knock on her door,
which opened before she could respond.

"Katherine..."

Megan Moran stood in the doorway.  Her mouth was open but silenced in
mid-sentence as her stare moved from Katherine to Vic Maltese looming so
closely over her.  She recognized instantly what Megan had to be thinking.
Maltese straightened to his usual towering height.  If he felt any of
Katherine's sudden awkwardness, he certainly wasn't letting it show.

"Megan," he said.

"How's everybody's favorite head-shrinker this morning?"

"Like I always tell you, Vic, I may be good but I'm not ready to take on a
cranium as thick as yours."

He laughed.  Their easy camaraderie surprised Katherine.  She hadn't realized
that Megan and Vic Maltese were friends.  Katherine found herself wondering
if they'd ever been more than that.

"Actually, Vic, you're the one I barged in here looking for," Megan said.

"The boy who takes care of your equipment came to my office a few minutes
ago.  There's a kid asleep in your equipment room.  He may have been there
all night."

THE MINUTE Coyote woke up he knew he'd made a terrible mistake, and not by
falling asleep in a strange place so he couldn't remember quite where he was
this morning.  He'd been doing exactly that for three nights now.  His
terrible mistake was back before that.  He'd taken a step that put him on the
path toward trouble, and he hadn't been able to get his feet off that road
ever since.  Except he still couldn't figure out what that wrong step had
been, unless it was asking for help in the first place.  He'd written that
letter he thought would save Sprite and him, but all it had done so far was
put him in the way of danger.  He had to get that letter back.

As he peered up at the faces circling him above the pile of tumbling mats
where he'd fallen asleep, he could hardly believe what he saw.

There the letter was again, sticking out of the gym teacher's hand.

He was hold ing a bunch of other letters, too, but Coyote had no problem
spotting his own.  He'd come to see that blotched, crumpled envelope even in
his dreams last night.  He couldn't quite remember why, but the letter had
been chasing him up and down North Pearl Street.  Now, here he was, waking up
to find it had caught him.

Chapter Four The boy appeared to be about eleven, maybe a little older,
though with the way he was rubbing his eyes and yawning at the moment, he
might also have passed for nine.  A dusting of freckles crossed his cheeks.
His hair was dark, and there was no telling whether straight or curly because
he'd cut it short in what used to be called a brush cut and was now known as
a buzz.  He was a good-looking boy, wiry but not overly thin.  Except for
some wrinkles in his jeans and T-shirt, he looked clean enough too.

"I know this kid," Vic said, staring down at the sleepy-eyed boy on the pile
of mats in the gymnasium equipment room.

"His name is Coyote Bellaway."

"I've heard that name before," Katherine said.

"I think I may have read it somewhere.  Megan, could that have been in one of
your reports?"

"I've never seen the little guy.  I'm sure I'd remember a name like Coyote."

The gentleness of Megan's tone made Vic aware that they were gaping at the boy
as if he were a bug in a jar.

"Let's give him a chance to wake up before we start grilling him,"

Vic said, backing off a little so the others would follow.

"In fact, why don't I handle this?"

An instant of relief flashed in Coyote's eyes, then disappeared.  Vic
couldn't remember when he'd ever seen a kid who more obviously wanted to get
up and run away.

"Okay, everybody.  It's time for you to get back to business," Vic said.

"Coyote and I need to have a talk, just the two of us."

"I think you're right about that," Megan agreed.

"Come on, Katherine.

Let's go.  "

Katherine hesitated.  Vic recognized concern in her eyes.  " For the first
time, he wondered if he could have been wrong about her having an account book
where her heart ought to be.  She turned to follow Megan out of the equipment
room.

"Let me know what you find out," she said before shutting the door behind her.

"Well, sport, do you want to talk here or in my office?"

Vic asked Coyote once Megan and Katherine were gone.  "I don't care."

Vic could tell from the belligerence with which those words were spoken that
this wasn't going to be an easy interview.  He knew everything there was to
know about belligerence.  He'd carded around a snootful of it himself since
he was not much older than this kid here.  One thing Vic was certain of,
applying pressure wouldn't get him anywhere in this situation.

I'll tell you what.  I didn't have time for breakfast this morning,"

he said.

"How's about we go to the kitchen and see what we can scrounge up to eat."

Another flash of relief relaxed the set of Coyote's jaw for a moment before
he clamped it down tight again.

"I don't care," he repeated.

Vic didn't believe that for an instant.  He had a suspicion food was one
thing this boy really did care about.  From the look of him, he might have
missed a few meals lately.  Unfortunately, Vic had seen that look before.

"Well, I care," Vic said, taking Coyote's arm and helping him up off the
matting.

"Pretty soon my stomach's going to be rumbling so loud I won't be able to
hear myself think.  We can't have that happening, can we?"

Vic didn't expect an answer.  He'd had enough experience with kids who'd shut
themselves down like this one to know this was going to be a one-sided
conversation for a while.  With that in mind, Vic kept up a casual line of
gab all the way to the center's kitchen.  He also kept his hand on Coyote's
shoulder in case he should try to bolt like he so obviously wanted to do.
This was just as obviously a boy in some kind of trouble, and Vic was
determined to discover what that trouble might be.

The center ran a breakfast program for neighborhood children.  Those kids had
already eaten and left for school.  Sandra Thomas, who ran the breakfast
program, was finishing the morning cleanup.  She waved Vic toward the
oversized refrigerator when he told her what he was there for.

"You'll find whatever you need in there," she said, "or in the pantry.  But
you'll have to fix it for yourself, and you'll have to wash up after, too.
I'm way past the end of my shift, and I have to be moving on out of here
right this minute."

"We can take care of ourselves, Sandra.  Thanks," Vic said.

"You're very welcome," she said.

Her legendary dictatorial tone warmed as she glanced at Coyote.  She might
run this kitchen like a captain runs a ship, but Vic knew her to have a heart
as big as the ocean.  She even smiled at the boy as she pulled off her apron
and dropped it into a hamper under the long, stainless-steel counter.

"You help yourselves to whatever you can find in here,"

she said.

"And don't forget to leave my kitchen just exactly the way you found it,
spotless as an angel's wing."

 "We'll be sure to do that, won't we, sport?"

Vic was only slightly surprised to hear the previously close-mouthed Coyote
answer,

"Yes, ma'am."  Sandra Thomas was hard to resist and almost impossible to
defy.  She smiled one more time before pushing through the double, swinging
doors from the kitchen into the multipurpose room.

"Come on, Coyote.  Let's see what we can scare up in the way of breakfast.
I'm about to starve," Vic said, though he knew he wasn't truly the hungry one.

Their encounter with Sandra had taken some of the edge off Coyote's
belligerence.  He actually helped Vic pour cereal into two bowls and slice
bananas on top while whole wheat bread heated to golden crispness in the
industrial-sized toaster.  They sat down together on stools at the long
counter after that, where Vic watched Coyote dig into his raisin bran with
undisguised eagerness.  However closed off he might be capable of making
himself appear, he was still only a boy who couldn't hide the fact that he
was very hungry.  Vic saved his questions till Coyote had eaten his fill.

"Did you sleep here all night?"  Vic asked then.  "Nah," Coyote denied.

"I came in early this morning."

Vic was pretty sure that was a lie, but he went along with it for now.

"What were you doing here so early?  Did you come for breakfast?"

"Yeah.  That's right.  Breakfast."

"Then why'd you go into the gym instead of coming in here where breakfast is
served?"

Vic could see the curtain of caution and distrust lower over Coyote's eyes.
He didn't respond for a moment, probably while he came up with an answer.

"I was looking for you," he said at last.

For some reason, Vic had the feeling that might be the truth.

"What did you want to see me about?"

Coyote hesitated again, a little longer this time.

"I wanted to ask you about signing up for basketball."  Vic had an even
stronger feeling that this was not the truth.  He was considering what might
be most productive to ask next when one of the swinging doors pushed open and
Katherine Fairchild leaned her head through the opening.  Her hair had
already begun to escape the band she'd had it pulled back into when he first
saw her earlier in her office.

"Vic, could I speak to you out here for a minute, please?"  she said.

She'd called him by his first name at last.  He could hardly believe how much
like a breakthrough that felt or how good it sounded to him.

"I'll be right back," he said to Coyote.

"Why don't you take these dishes to the sink and get.  started washing them
like Mrs. Thomas said?"

Coyote nodded, and Vic headed for the door.

The ceiling of the multipurpose room was draped with handmade paper chains.
They reminded Vic that, sometimes in some places, simple, real holiday things
still happened.  Life for children wasn't all problems, even though that too
often seemed to be the case here at the center.  He'd walked through this
room the day the kids were making these chains, connecting red and green
construction paper in circle after circle till they heaped on the floor
around the metal legs of the folding chairs.  The kids were laughing and
chattering.

Occasionally, they pretended to menace one another with the staplers they
were using to fasten the circles.

Vic remembered when he had made chains in elementary school back in Troy, New
York.  They'd used paste for the fastening then, the kind that tasted pretty
good but didn't keep things stuck together for very long.  The paper colors
were brighter now.  The construction paper he remembered always looked like
it had been left out in the sun to fade before they used it.  Other than
those couple of changes, however, the process looked about the same, even
after the quarter of a century or so that had passed since he was ten.
Noticing that had made Vic smile.

Vic tended not to get into the jolly part of the holiday season, at least not
as much as some people might think he should in his position here at the
center.  In fact, he sometimes felt his usual undercurrent of anger move even
closer to the surface.  It had something to do with the way so many kids in
the world didn't have a good sock to put on their feet much less one for
Santa to fill up with presents.  That wasn't all of it, though.

He hadn't been so fresh out of the Christmas spirit when he was a kid.  The
difference was that, in those days, he didn't have a clue as to what was
really what where some of the members of his own family, the Malteses and
their numerous kin, were concerned.  He'd actually believed that the houseful
of boisterous relatives, the mountains of food and the piles of presents were
all about love and celebrating a holy occasion.  He'd jumped wholeheartedly
into that celebration with the rest of them until he found out the truth that
lurked underneath the hugging and backslapping and claims of deep affection.
After that, remembering the hypocrisy of those scenes made him almost
physically sick.

Vic turned away from the paper chains.

"What's up?"  he asked Katherine.

They had pushed through the heavy door and were out of earshot of the
kitchen now.

"I remembered where I saw the name Coyote Bellaway before this morning.  It
was in the return address on one of the letters that came in for the Fund
yesterday.  I looked through them, like I always do, when they first arrived.
I remember his letter in particular because it was pretty banged up.  In
fact, it looked like it had been run over by a truck."

"Where's the letter now?"

"It wasn't on my desk, so it must be one of the ones you took with you."

Vic had all but forgotten the pile of mail he'd stuffed in his jacket pocket
earlier when he first started talking to Coyote.

"Then it has to be in the kitchen."

Vic had taken off his jacket and left it on the counter while he and Coyote
made breakfast.  Something told Vic he'd better get back in there and
retrieve it straight off.  He turned and shoved through the door without
saying another word.  Katherine was right behind him, but they were both too
late.  Coyote was gone.  The breakfast dishes were still on the counter, but
Vic's jacket was on the floor with the Most Needy Cases Fund letters
scattered around it.  Coyote's letter wasn't among them, and the fire exit
door, which Vic hadn't taken into consideration when he left the boy alone
here, was ajar.

"Damn."

Vic poured all of his frustration into that one word.  Once again, he'd
misjudged the true motives of the person he was dealing with, just like he
used to do with his family when he was a kid.  Only he wasn't a kid anymore.
Now, he could make up for his mistake, and that was just what he intended to
do.

"I WANT TO COME along," Katherine had said when Vic announced he was going
to the neighborhood elementary school where he seemed certain Coyote had to
be enrolled.

"Maybe this is something I should do on my own.  Dealing with more than one
person at a time seems to Spock him."

"Please."  She put her hand on his arm to emphasize what she was saying.

"This means a lot to me."

Vic looked down at her hand gripping his leather sleeve.  She pulled away.
Some people didn't like to be touched without permission.  Maybe he was one
of those.

"Sorry.  I didn't mean to presume."

"That's okay," he said.

"You surprised me is all.  You can touch me any time you want."

He looked into her eyes when he said that.  The words alone would have made
her uneasy or worse.  The intensity of his gaze set her nerves jangling as
well till she was afraid her teeth might start chattering even though they
hadn't yet stepped out into the cold.

"It really does mean a lot to me to tag along on this one," she repeated
hastily to fill the sudden silence that she had begun to imagine
vibrating around her.

"Why is this boy so important?"  Vic asked.

She'd caught up with him at the main door out of the center, the same
entrance way where they'd had their misunderstanding last night.

Katherine wished they could go to a more neutral and private place if she was
going to discuss this subject, which was so difficult for her.

"Coyote reminds me of someone," she said sounding almost as unsettled as she
felt.

Vic continued to watch her, probably expecting more in the way of an
explanation.  He was right.  This kind of hands-on case work was not her
designated territory.  Her job here at the center was strictly
administrative.  Yet, ever since the moment she saw that little boy sleeping
on those mats, she'd wanted to be more than what Vic called a pa-per-pusher,
at least in this one instance.  She'd have to justify such
out-of-the-ordinary involvement, of course.  She was about to ask him to come
into her office for a moment.  This was too sensitive for her to go into out
here in the hallway.  Before she could make that suggestion, however, Vic
reached out and touched her arm this time.

She'd had her hand on leather with no real physical contact made.  She was
wear ing a sweater over a long, gray wool skirt which she'd put on today, for
some reason, instead of her usual suit.  She could feel the pressure of his
fingers through the pale gray cashmere.  She was surprised, maybe even thrown
off balance, by how natural it seemed to have him touch her.

"We'll talk about it in my car," he said almost gently.  "Get your coat, and
I'll meet you out there.  It's the black Trans Am."

He was out the door then, and whatever sensation she'd been obsessing about
just a moment ago was gone.  As she hurried to her office for her coat, she
told herself that Coyote and the connection with difficult memories-he caused
in her must have sent her emotions haywire for a while.  Still, she was glad
to swathe herself in a heavy navy camel-hair coat and a scarf wound twice
around her neck.  If Vic Maltese should touch her again, she wouldn't feel
his hand any more than he could have been aware of hers through his leather.
She resecured the covered elastic band at the nape of her neck then pulled
her knit hat down over her still rambunctious hair.  Unless Vic decided to
touch the tip of her nose, she'd be safe from inappropriate responses now.
Or would she?  Katherine was on her way back to the building exit, chiding
herself that this should even be a question, when Megan popped out into the
hallway from her office.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?"  she asked.

"We're going to Arbor Hill School to check on Coyote Bellaway," Katherine
answered without slowing her pace.  "Who's we?"

"Myself and Victor Maltese."

"I approve."

Megan had been bustling along to keep up with Katherine's dash toward the
door.  Katherine stopped abruptly now while Megan's momentum carded her on a
few more steps.

"What do you mean by that?"  Katherine asked rather sharply of Megan's still
advancing back.

Megan stopped and turned around.  Katherine expected to see a mischievous
twinkle in Megan's eyes, but her expression was quite serious.

"I'm glad to see you out of your office for a change and actually spending
some time with an attractive man."

 "This is business," Katherine protested.   "It's a start."

"Oh, Megan," Katherine said as she resumed her hurried trek to the door.

"Psychologists aren't supposed to be romantics."

"Who says?"  Megan called after her.

When Katherine looked back she saw that a wide grin had replaced the somber
look on her friend's face.  She shook her head and waved in response before
pushing through the door.  Vic had pulled up to the edge of the parking lot
just outside.  Exhaust billowed from the rear of his rumbling vehicle in
white clouds even thicker than those created by Katherine's breath.  Vic
reached across the seat and pushed open the passenger door of the low vehicle.

Katherine hesitated a moment.  She'd always associated cars like this one
with street punks.

"Get in," he said.

"I want to get there before early lunch hour.  The place is a zoo then."

She smiled and crouched down to keep from banging her head as she climbed
into the low-slung car.

"Buckle up," he added as she slammed the door.

"The roads may be icy, and this thing fishtails sometimes."

She pulled the belt across her body and fastened it into the latch at the
side of the bucket seat as he'd suggested.

"Maybe you should try driving more slowly," she said.  "I drive slow enough."

Vic hit the gas pedal as if in deliberate contradiction of his words, and
they were across the parking lot in what felt like an instant.

Katherine gasped.

Vic laughed.

"Don't be scared," he said.

"I'm just teasing you.  Trust me.  I don't take any chances on slippery
pavement.  You're safe with me at the wheel."

He did take it easy then as they drove out of the parking lot and up the
first rise of the slope that was called Arbor Hill.  Fortunately, road crews
had been out that morning and the incline was well coated with salt and sand.
The sun was out and sparkling on the otherwise dingy snow on either side of
the street.  Maybe it would warm up enough later in the day to melt some of
this packed stuff from the roadbed.  Katherine hoped, probably in vain, that
would happen before they drove back down this way.  She still hadn't quite
shaken the street punk association and half expected Vic to take off with a
squeal of his mag-wheeled tires at any moment.

"If you feel like talking," he began instead,

"I'm a good listener."

"Talking about what?"

"That thing you said back at the center.  About Coyote reminding you of
somebody."

Katherine glanced at Vic.  He'd put on black leather gloves, which held the
steering wheel now in an easy grip.  His eyes were on the road ahead, his
expression neutral.  She didn't get the impression he was pumping her out of
idle curiosity.  Something in his manner made her believe he was offering
just what he claimed, a listening ear.  Katherine sighed.

"Yes.  That," she said.

She'd known she would have to talk about this eventually.  She'd never
guessed till this very minute that she would ever dream of doing so with
Victor Maltese in his hot-rod car.

"Coyote reminds me of a boy named Daniel," she said.  She was surprised by
how steadily she could speak the words and by the relief she felt at having
them spoken.  "He was my stepson.  He died."

Chapter Five Vic felt rather than heard the grief beneath her attempt at a
matter-of-fact tone.  His first instinct was to pull the car over to the side
of the road and take her in his arms.  He kept on driving.  He sensed that
she needed him to maintain an even keel here and not do anything while she
got out what she had to say.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod once.  "Daniel was
nine-and-a-half," she said.

"He had leukemia.  They couldn't find a blood match for a bone marrow
transplant.  Eventually, his body just gave out."

"You said he was your stepson.  Were the two of you close?"

"Yes.  I loved him very much."

She turned to took out the window on her side of the car.  Vic let the
silence between them play out as long as she needed it to.  He could feel her
sadness as if it was his own, but she didn't cry, at least not so he could
notice.  Several moments passed before she turned back from the window again.

"This is the first time I've told anyone here in Albany about Daniel," she
said.  She'd managed to put her matter-of-fact tone back together again.

"I haven't even talked to Megan about him.  I hope you don't mind my dumping
such a heavy load on you when we hardly know each other."

"I don't mind at all.  Sometimes it's easier to say hard things to somebody
you don't know so well."

"Hard, hurtful things."

Vic nodded but didn't reply.  There was no answer to real sadness, especially
the sadness of los ing a child.  He would have liked to ask about Daniel's
father.  He knew he probably should be talking to her about something
else--the fact that she was identifying too personally with the Coyote
Bellaway case.  But Vic generally let the shrinks and social workers worry
about things like that.  He saw even less reason than usual for changing that
policy now.  They drove in silence the rest of the way to the school.

"COYOTE BELL AWAY has been absent for the past three days."

Vic had suspected something like that even before he and Katherine were
escorted to the vice principal's office.

"Ordinarily, we wouldn't pay much attention to that short an absence," Stefan
Piatka was saying.

"But Coyote has had perfect attendance up till now, and his grades have been
exemplary."

Vic had worked with Stefan consulting about other students who hung out at the
center.  Not very often were their school records anywhere near as favorable
as what Stefan was describing now.

"Are you saying Coyote's a good student and he's never been in trouble before
this that you know of?"  Vic asked.  "Not that I know of."

To Vic, that meant, if Coyote was takin ga wrong direction for some reason, he
was definitely worth turning around

"Of course, his sister is another story," Stefan went on.

"Coyote has a sister?"  Katherine asked.

"Yes, he does," Stefan said.

"She's two grades behind him.  They call her Sprite."

"Has she been out of school for the past three days, too?"  Katherine asked.

"No, she hasn't.  That's another reason we've been concerned about Coyote.
He and his sister are usually inseparable.  They come to school together.
They go home together.  Coyote even asked to have the same lunch hour as his
sister so he could keep an eye on her.

Unfortunately, she does need that kind of extra supervision.  "

"The sister's a behavior problem?"  Vic asked.

"She has been this semester."

"Have you asked Sprite why her brother has been out of school?"

Katherine asked.

"She says she doesn't know, but Sprite tends to be uncooperative."

"Do you think we might ask her again?"

"Maybe we're jumping the gun here," Vic broke in.  He had the feeling that
Katherine was running away with this interview and he shouldn't be letting
that happen.

"I agree with Ms. Fairchild," Stefan said.

"I sense something wrong here.  Maybe Sprite can help us find out what that
is.  I'm going to bring her here to my office.  She might have an easier time
talking in a neutral space out of sight of the classroom."

"Thank you, Mr. Piatka," Katherine said.

Her smile couldn't help but light up Vic's heart.  The rest of her did the
same in a curious way he didn't quite understand.  When she'd pulled her
winter cap off earlier, her hair had sprung free into tendrils around her
face.  A spot of rosy color bloomed at the center of each of her cheeks,
maybe from the school's overheated rooms, maybe from the-high tension of this
visit.  One thing Vic knew with absolute certainty--right at this minute,
she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.  As the principal left the
office, Katherine turned to face Vic, and that beauty hit him full force,
straight out of the brightness in her blue-gray eyes.

"What I'm going to tell you may seem odd," she said, "but ever since Daniel
was so sick and died, I seem to have tuned in to danger where children are
concerned.  And I feel that Coyote Bellaway's in serious trouble."

Her eyes weren't only bright.  They were glittering.  Vic's captivation with
her beauty gave way to something closer to uneasiness.

"Are you telling me that you think you have a sense the rest of us don't
have?"  he asked.

"It's a kind of psychic sense.  But I think anyone who has gone through what
I went through with Daniel could have the same strong intuitive ness

Vic only nodded.  He was suddenly very aware of how little he knew about
Katherine Fairchild.  She'd been a real whiz at organizing the Arbor Hill
Children's Center, but those were administrative issues.

They didn't have anything to do with the kids at the center and their
problems in real life.  Now that Katherine was entering that much more
emotional territory, she was acting like she might be out of control.  She'd
already told him about the death of her stepson.  Vic could tell how deeply
she'd been affected by that tragedy.  Maybe she'd been more than just
affected.  Maybe she wasn't quite right mentally as a result.  He'd known
people who were derailed by less powerful losses than the one Katherine had
obviously experienced.

"Why don't you let me take the lead when Stefan brings the little girl back
here?"  Vic suggested.  He was careful to speak gently.

"Don't worry," Katherine said.

"I do know what I'm doing.  I've taken courses in social work.  I'm
thinking about going back to get my master's degree."

Vic nodded again but didn't say anything.  He'd always believed that the kind
of work he and others at the center did, and especially the knack for that
work, had to be learned somewhere other than in the classroom.  He stared out
the window, which was all but covered by paper cutout decorations for
Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza.  Vic couldn't help but wonder if he might
have made a big mistake by bringing Katherine here.

KATHERINE COULD TELL that Vic thought she might be a little bit out of her
mind.  She probably shouldn't have mentioned the psychic connection with
children she'd found herself experiencing for more than the last two years,
ever since the doctors told them how sick Daniel really was.  Psychic
connection wasn't the correct thing to call it, anyway.  That sounded a
little too loony even to her.  She'd simply attuned herself so closely to
Daniel in those long months of his steady decline that she could almost feel
his pain and anticipate his needs.  That attunement extended beyond Daniel
eventually, till she could look at t child and tell almost immediately if
that child was in distress.  That was what had actually drawn her to the job
at the children's center, more than what she had told Megan about saying yes
to new opportunities.  Katherine had wanted to be of help.

Still, what she'd said to Megan about keeping at arm's length, at least from
the hurtful things, was true.  That had been Katherine's most deliberate
intention up to and including most of yesterday.  Now, here she was, about to
wade knee-deep into the trauma of two children's lives.  Katherine was not a
person to let such uncharacteristic behavior on her part go unexamined.
Oddly enough, she couldn't get over the feeling that all of this had a lot
to do with Victor Maltese.  It was as if last night when he grabbed her arm
in the icy parking lot at the center, he had jolted her back to life somehow.

Starting with the anger his arrogance had stirred in her then, she had
experienced more emotion in the past several hours thaa she'd allowed herself
to feel in all the months since the day of Daniel's death.  She'd deadened
herself along with him, in a way, in order to be able to stand the pain of
his loss.  That shadow was lifting now.

She could almost feel the weight of it rising from her shoulders.  For
reasons she couldn't yet entirely explain, she had Vic to thank for
that---or, perhaps, to blame.

As the office door opened and Stefan Piatka led Sprite Bellaway by the hand
into the room, Katherine could hardly have been more aware of her own newly
opened heart.  The little girl's eyes were large and blue.  Her hair was
curly and almost blonde, much like Katherine's, though Sprite's curls were
more relaxed.  With her fair skin and small bones, the child could have been
Katherine's own.  Maybe that was part of the reason she found herself
responding so strongly.  She had to ball her hands into fists and press them
against her sides.

Otherwise, she would have wrapped her arms around the little girl and rocked
her gently till the worried expression left those wide, blue eyes and they
shone clear again.  But that might startle the child, and it would certainly
shock Vic Maltese.

Meanwhile, Sprite was obviously doing her best to look belligerent.

Her lips pouted and her chin thrust out, but all Katherine saw was the worry
in Sprite's eyes.  Katherine could tell that much of what should be carefree
about childhood had already been stolen from this child.  She was thinner
than she should be, and Katherine guessed that wasn't from neglect.  Sprite's
clothes were simple and not new, but they were clean, as was the rest of
her.  Her thinness had to be yet another sign of the burden she carried.
That burden was obviously far heavier than her child's shoulders were meant
to bear, no matter how tightly she shrugged them together beneath the faded
cotton of her T-shirt.

Vic stepped forward at almost the same moment the little girl shrank away.
He would want to comfort Sprite just as Katherine did.  She'd heard how much
he cared for the children at the center.  That morning, she'd seen proof of
that caring in his gentle firmness with Coyote and had heard it in the voice
Vic used then.  But his size could be imposing.  She had felt that herself
last night in the parking lot.

His impact would be all the more intimidating for a little girl as fragile as
Sprite.  Fragile but fierce was the thought that flashed in Katherine's mind.
Like herself again.  She was also too thin from tension and worrying.  She
also, once in a while, felt like a heavily burdened little girl.

Katherine touched Vic's arm gently and without making any quick movements.
When he halted, she lowered herself, just as slowly and carefully, till her
eyes were level with Sprite's.  The little girl's hand had travelled to her
mouth.  She pressed her thumb knuckle there, maybe in memory of the comfort
that thumb had once given her.  Her eyes were wide open above her fist, and
Katherine could hear breathing that had speeded up from fear.

"Hello, Sprite," Katherine said in an even voice.  She spoke almost as slowly
as she had moved.

"My name is Katherine.  I've been wanting to meet you."

The little girl had tensed visibly, ready to pull her small chest back even
more tightly between her rigid shoulders.  She didn't exactly relax at the
sound of Katherine's soothing words, but she did stop shrinking away long
enough for Katherine to sense the change and recognize it as a signal to
proceed, though very cautiously, still.

kC, "I met your brother this morning.  You look a lot like him,"
Katherine continued at the same slow, calming pace.  "He's taller than me,"
Sprite said from behind her fist.  "Yes, but you'll catch up before long."

"I don't want to catch up.  I want to stay small."  Sprite's quick comeback
was as belligerent as the set of her chin, but Katherine could hear the
tremble in her voice.  She avoided the temptation to press for a reason for
Sprite's statement.  The little girl needed relief now, not close
questioning.  She needed to be put at ease.

"I used to feel like that," Katherine said.

"When?"

Skepticism way beyond her years added even more of an edge to Sprite's
belligerence, but Katherine's voice and manner remained unaltered in their
placidity.

"It was the year I got my first two-wheel bicycle.  I didn't want to grow too
big to ride it.  I was seven years old then."

 "That's how old I am."

"When's your birthday?"  Katherine asked.

"June 14th."

"Flag Day," Katherine said.

"Your birthday's the same time as the Flag Day Parade."

"I never saw a parade on my birthday."

The skepticism was still there, but it came in a somewhat lighter tone, as if
she thought Katherine might be making a joke and Sprite was acknowledging she
knew that.

"I swear," Katherine said, putting her hand over her heart.

"June 14th is Flag Day, and I'll bet if we looked around we could find a
parade.  Right on your birthday.  Would you like to do that?"

Sprite didn't say anything right away.  She studied Katherine, who understood
that seek ing a response so soon after they'd met could be tricky.  If Sprite
chose to answer, that would mean she'd chosen to participate in a
conversation with Katherine which would, in turn, be a major step toward the
beginnings of trust.

"Can Coyote come?"  Sprite asked at last.

"Sure."

Katherine was careful to keep her voice from showing her excitement at
Sprite's response.  Keeping the emotional level of their exchange on an even
keel was crucial, especially for what Katherine was going to ask next.

"Would you like to go and tell Coyote about it, you and me?"

Sprite tensed a little, and Katherine hoped she hadn't moved too fast.  Then
Sprite sighed, and her shoulders dropped some of their hunch.

"I don't really know where he is," She said.

"I asked him, but he said he couldn't tell me."

Katherine almost sighed herself, from grateful relief at hearing SPrite's
confession.  The code had been broken.  A small door had opened in the wall
that was Sprite Bella-way's defense against the world that made her at least
as frightened as she'd just revealed her brother to be.  There would be more
revelations now, until she had told whatever she happened to know.

"Is he playing hide-and-seek?"  Katherine asked.  "He's not playing.

He's scared.  "

Katherine remained crouched on the floor of the vice principal's office,
probing gently for the information she and Vic needed.  For the moment, she
tried not to think about Coyote and where he might be right now, out there in
the world that frightened his little sister so much.

Chapter Six Katherine did have the knack, after all.  She was wonderful with
kids.

Vic felt his heart swell with pride for her, and he didn't like that.

He'd better not let himself get hung up on her.  He didn't need another
dead-end relationship.  He'd been through too many of those already, scenes
that went nowhere from the start, and he hated the whole messy business.
Relationships like that just about always ended up not worth the hassle and
hard feelings.  Still, as she knelt beside the chair talking softly and
smiling so he could almost see her heart shining through, all for the sake of
an unhappy little girl, Vic wondered if Katherine Fairchild might be worth
just about anything.

When Stefan Piatka leaned forward to speak quietly to Katherine, Vic realized
he'd almost forgotten the vice principal was in the room.

"Maybe Sprite could tell us what she thinks Coyote is afraid of,"

Stefan suggested.

Sprite lowered her brows and pouted.  She couldn't have made it more clear
how little she wanted to talk directly to Stefan if she'd shouted the words
out loud.

"I'd like to know what Coyote's afraid of," Katherine said gently.

"Would you mind telling me about that, Sprite?"

"The man in the car," Sprite said at once.

"He's afraid of the big man in the black car."

"What car would that be?"  Katherine asked.

"I saw it by our house the day after Coyote went away, and yesterday too.
The man didn't get out.  He sat inside the car and looked over at Tooley's
place.  He did that for a long time."

Sprite heaved a sigh as if the long speech had ended up to be more than she
started out to say and she was glad to have it over.

Katherine patted the child's arm approvingly while Vic and Stefan exchanged
worded glances.  Men in parked cars watching children were a concern of
everybody who worked with kids.

"Did you get a look at the man?"  Vic asked.

Sprite drew back a little, and her small hand darted to her mouth again.

"This is Mr. Maltese," Katherine said in the mesmerizing tone that already
had Vic as well as Sprite, and maybe even Stefan, under its spell.

"He's a good friend of mine."

Vic felt a ridiculously irrational surge of warmth to hear himself described
that way by her.  Sprite's fist unclenched and moved slowly away from her
fnouth as she looked at Vic with a nervous gaze that went straight to his
heart.  No child this young should have to be so suspicious and scared.  Vic
saw way too much of that in his line of work, and he never stopped being
upset by it.

"Vic--Mr.  Maltese--wants to know if you saw what the man in the car looked
like," Katherine said.  She caught Sprite's self-protecting hand where it
wavered between her mouth and her lap and held it gently.

"You can talk to Mr. Maltese.  He knows Coyote.  And he's a good man."

She said those last words so sincerely that Vic's heart couldn't help but
swell once more.

"I just saw the top of his face," Sprite said.

"The car had windows you can't see through, but his window was rolled down a
little."

Vic was careful to speak in a non-startling way, as Katherine had been doing.

"Do you remember what the part of him you could see looked like?"

Sprite put her other hand on top of Katherine's.  The little girl looked as
if she was hanging on for dear life, as fear opened her wide eyes ever wider.
Vic wished he could be asking her to forget, rather than to remember.

"He had shiny black hair," she said in little more than a whisper.

"What made his hair shiny?"  Katherine asked.

Sprite thought for a minute.

"He looked like he just came out of a swimming pool.  Like his hair was wet."
"You mean it was slicked back?"  Vic asked.

Sprite nodded.  Vic didn't want to press her further, but he had to.

"Did you see anything else about the man in the black car?"  he asked.

The knuckles of Sprite's small hand were white from clutching on to
Katherine's.

"His eyes," Sprite said barely loud enough to be heard.  "He had very scary
eyes."

TEN BROECK STREET, where Tooley Pennebaker and the Bellaway children lived,
had known better days.  In the mid-nineteenth century wealthy families of
powerful men had made their homes here.  Back then, the street was referred
to as Millionaires' Row.  Vic enjoyed reading the history of this town he'd
grown to care about.  He didn't enjoy looking at how far some parts of that
town had fallen.  Here on Ten Broeck Street, the facade of beautiful old St.
Joseph's Church was off-limits now behind scaffolding that warned of falling
debris.  The row houses in this last block before Clinton Avenue were too
sad and dingy these days to be called anything like Millionaire's Row.  Just
Barely Making It Row is more like it, was the thought that crossed Vic's mind
as he looked around.

Vic hadn't wanted to bring Katherine along on this chase after a
scary-looking man in a black car.  All of that might be more the creation of
a little girl's imagination, or the waking memory of a nightmare, than
anything having to do with real life.  Still, there was the possibility of
danger.  And definitely there was a boy in some kind of trouble.  Katherine's
confession in the car earlier told him she'd already had trouble enough in
her life, and Vic didn't' want to expose her to more of the same.
Unfortunately, when he tried to drop her off at the center, she'd refused to
get out of the car.  So here they were.

"What we're suspecting is a child molester," she was saying.

"Isn't that right?"

"It's one of the possibilities," he answered in a grim tone.

There was nothing he hated more than the kind of animal who preys on
children.  Vic could feel his rage heat up just thinking about it.

"But, if that's the case, why would Coyote run of Why wouldn't he just tell
somebody at the center?  We make a big point of letting kids know they can do
that and that they should.  I'm sure they do the same thing at the school.
Why wouldn't he just talk to someone, you for example?"

"Unless the creep is a member of Coyote's family.  Kids are more reluctant to
talk when that's the case."

Katherine shook her head, and coils of fair hair tumbled around her face from
beneath her knit cap.  Vic did his best to concentrate on what she was saying
instead of on how the chill of the afternoon had brought a bloom to her
cheeks, or the way the car heater was now turning her skin dewy.

"I don't think it's a family member," she said.

"Otherwise, Sprite would probably have recognized him or at least made an
association with the car."

Vic would have liked to ask her how anybody could be so smart and so
beautiful at the same time, but the still-sensible part of his mind told him
how corny that would sound.  He nodded instead and turned the car heater down
a little.  Maybe the rising temperature was starting to addle his brain and
that was why all he could think about was the way Katherine's mouth naturally
curved up slightly at the corners.

When he started wondering what it would be like to place the tip of his
tongue there, he knew he had to say something to distract himself.

"Maybe the kid was too afraid or too ashamed to tell someone," Vic said off
the top of his head.

Katherine shook her head again.

"That doesn't sound right to me either.  If the man in the black car was a
child molester, that would make him a threat to Sprite, too.  From what
Stefan Piatka said, Coyote is very protective of his little sister.  I
believe that if he thought she was in danger he'd go to somebody for help, no
matter how frightened or embarrassed he might be.  I have a feeling we've got
something other than the usual garden-variety child predator here."

"Do you have any ideas about specifically what that other something might be?"

The reminder of the reality of how much danger Coyote could be in was
bringing Vic's head out of its fog of lust or infatuation--or whatever--fast.

Katherine sighed.

"I don't have a clue, really.  Except that I don't like the sound of a shiny
new car in a neighborhood this marginal."

"I agree with you there," Vic said.

"Those kind of characters usually come into a neighborhood like this because
they're up to no good."

"I'd like to take a closer look."

Her hand was on the door handle and pulling it backward before he could
react.  She had the door open and was about to get out of the car by the time
he could grab her arm.  "I'm not sure you should do that," he said.

She turned slowly to look down at his grip on her arm.

"You have a habit of latching on to women, don't you," she said in a tone
that made him let go of her immediately.

"Sorry," he said.

"But I thought we already decided that with Sprite back at the school and
Coyote on the run and Tooley Pennebaker at work this time of day, according
to the school records, their apartment must be deserted."

 "I want to take a loOk at it anyway."

She put one foot out of the car, and Vic had to restrain himself from
grabbing her again.  That was obviously a no-no with her, especially after
the way he'd behaved last night.

"What if the bogeyman in the big car is around?"  he said.

"Don't you think he'd have figured out the same things we did about the place
being deserted this time of day?  If he really is watching for Coyote, then
we can assume he wouldn't waste his time here right now."

She slid the rest of the way out of the car then and shut the door behind her
with a resolute slam.  Vic had no choice but to follow.

KATHERINE HAD MORE than one reason for getting out of the car.  The rising
tension in there was about to make her jump in her skin.  It wasn't just
Vic's blasting car heater that warmed her face to the flush she could feel
creeping downward to other parts of her.  As she sat there talking to him,
she'd been unable to ignore the charges of challenge leaping back and forth
between them, and that challenge had everything to do with the fact that he
was a very sexy man.  She'd known many men she thought of as attractive, but
very few struck her as sexy.  Maybe none had ever struck her this hard.
Certainly, something had changed between them in the time they'd spent
together.  Something had altered the way she viewed Vic Maltese.  She could
actually feel her temperature mount when she was around him no matter how
cold the weather might be.  She stepped onto the frigid sidewalk and could
see her breath steam in front of her.  Still, her cheeks and the back of her
neck flamed.

He'd wanted to leave her behind earlier.  Now she wished she could do the
same with him.  These new feelings about Vic came to her entirely unbidden
and weren't particularly welcome.  She'd been a long time without a man in
her life, even longer without a man in her bed.

She'd been taken entirely by surprise when she turned toward him just moments
ago in the car, and experienced the unmistakable impact of a spark darting
straight from his eyes into hers and, from there, along her nerve endings and
through her blood.  She knew instantly, of course, what it was.  She simply
hadn't known it was going to happen.

Meanwhile, he was at the moment following her out of the car, and there was
nothing she could do to stop him.

Katherine hurried into the crunch of snow just off the curb.  She started to
congratulate herself for wearing more sensible boots today.  Then she
remembered Vic practically carrying her across the parking lot last night and
how that had embarrassed her into wearing the flat, rubber-soled footwear she
had on today.  Which in turn reminded her that she had been on close terms,
if you could call it that, with Vic for less than twenty-four hours now.  He
shouldn't be igniting passions in her, or whatever it was he did, anywhere
near so soon.  As a matter of fact, she didn't want him, or anyone else,
igniting anything in her at all.  She had her share of burn scars already.

"Do you know which apartment is theirs?"  Vic asked from the other side of
the car.

He seemed to want to keep his distance from her as well.  She hoped that was
what he would do.

"The file at the center listed the apartment only as B,"

she said, ducking her head against a sharp blast of cold she couldn't help
but feel even in her present, rather overwrought state.

Katherine continued across the two-lane road.  There wasn't much in the way
of traffic.  The workday activity of State Street and Capitol Hill was many
long blocks from here.  The house where the Bellaway children lived with
their aunt was no worse for wear than the rest of the block but no better off
either.

There was a stoop outside the house.  Katherine climbed the seven cement
steps to the door and checked out the smudged nameplates beneath the
doorbells.  The Penne-baker plate had "1F" in parentheses after the B.
"According to this, I'd guess they're on the first floor in the front, but I
can't tell which side of the building that is," she said.

Vic had stopped at the foot of the steps to the stoop.  He didn't look like
he was about to move closer.  Katherine suspected he might have felt the
electrical thing between them as well.  Maybe he didn't care to be zapped by
it again any more than she did.  He only nodded in response to her comment.

"I'm going to ring the bell," she added.

She pressed the flat button that appeared as if it might  t once have had
the luster of mother-of-pearl.  Nothing happened

She pressed the bell once more, harder this time, :;4 and a sharp buzz was
audible then from what sounded like the right side of the first floor.
Katherine waited a long moment but heard nothing more from inside the
building.  She buzzed again and listened again.

"Like I told you before," Vic said.

"I don't think anybody's at home this time of day, unless Coyote came back
here and he's hiding inside."

"And, if he's hiding, he won't answer the bell."

"That would be my guess."

From the stoop, Katherine tried the handle of the door to the entryway of the
building, but the door was locked.  She cupped her hands around her face and
peered through the glass in the door.

She couldn't see much of anything through the curtain that covered the pane.

"I think I'll take a peek through those windows," she said, indicating the
pair that abutted the edge of the stoop.

"Be careful," Vic said.

"You don't want anybody to see you."

He was right.  Anyone inside observing her surveillance could be alerted in
time to run off, if they hadn't been so alerted already.

Or, a neighbor might notice Katherine snooping around and call the police.
She gazed up and down the street but saw no one, not even a face behind a
frosty window.  She proceeded cautiously to the edge of the stoop and leaned
just far enough over the rail to peek around the frame of the first window.
What she saw made her pull back and flatten her body against the wall.

"Vic," she said in the loudest whisper she could manage without guaranteeing
she'd be heard by anyone who happened to be inside.

"Come here."

She made a quick, beckoning arm motion she hoped would communicate her urgency.

"What?"  he asked.

She pressed her gloved finger to her lips.

"Shh."

He apparently took her seriously because he said no more and stepped as
noiselessly as was probably possible for a man his size onto the steps.

"What's wrong?"  he whispered when he got to her side.  "It looks like the
place has been trashed."

 ii!  Chapter Seven '!  i Once they had called the police, Katherine
retreated across : Ten Broeck Street to lean against Vic's car.  Her coat was
smudged with winter road soot from its dusty metal surface, but she didn't
care.

She breathed deep and drew in air as needle-sharp as Chicago's notorious
frigid wind had ever I : been.

She wished she could will her heart to freeze as solid as the ice at the
corner of Vic's windshield.  In the instant it took for that thought to form
and fade away, Katherine understood she should will her heart to freeze
against him as well.

Her gaze darted to Tooley Pennebaker's stoop, where Vic stood on the sidewalk
with one booted foot on the bottom step as he leaned to listen to the much
shorter policeman at his side.  A dark lock of Vic's hair fell forward as he
leaned down.  He shoved the lock back with an impatient swipe of his hand,
and she felt the movement like a touch.

She turned quickly away.  No matter how confused she might have been
emotionally during these past difficult months, there was one thing of which
she was absolutely sure.  She must not set herself up for loss and
devastation again.  She was still too vulnerable to risk that.

After Daniel's death, she'd pushed her feelings as far down beneath the
surface of herself as she could get them to go.

She'd run away and ended up here in Albany, where she'd kept herself
furiously busy with work ever since.  That combination of running, hiding and
hard work had assured her safety, at least from additional heartache--till
today.

Despite the progress she had made on her emotional front, still sometimes she
could be assaulted by an almost overwhelming sense of loss.  When that
happened, she'd become acquainted yet again with what she thought of as her
soft center, a place like a pool filled with sadness.  She never knew in
advance which experiences or associations might send her plummeting back to
the sorrow of Daniel's death.

Otherwise, she would have avoided those circumstances as surely as a gun-shy
soldier avoids battle.  Otherwise, she would have run from Ten Broeck Street
and never set foot on Tooley Pennebaker's stoop that afternoon.

If forced to guess at the cause of her sadness today, she'd have to choose
one of two things.  The sight of the police car was one possibility.  A
police car with its dome light flashing an eerie, rotating glow, first red
then white, had accompanied her last ambulance ride with Daniel to the
hospital.  He was beyond the help of hospitals by then, or sirens or flashing
lights.

Another possible trigger for today's flashback to devastation could be the
similar devastation she'd seen through Tooley Pennebaker's window.  The
living room and its contents had obviously been threadbare even before
someone went in there and started tossing furniture around.  Many of those
poor pieces were broken now, and Katherine couldn't help but imagine what
hardship that might cause for Coyote, Sprite and their aunt.  Katherine had
never known much material want in her life, but she was no stranger to
bleakness.  What she'd glimpsed through that window this afternoon was bleak
almost beyond her capacity to bear.

Katherine shook her head and sighed.  A couple of kids with pleading eyes
living one rundown tenement apartment away from homelessness, and a man who
drove hot cars and wore black leather.  She couldn't have come up with three
people more likely to put her already wrung-out heart through a wringer again
if she'd ordered them from central casting.

Katherine pulled herself out of the hunch she'd slid into against the dusty
car.  She adjusted her scarf and pushed the escaped bits of hair back under
her cap.  She resolved that from now on she'd be wise as well as smart and
keep her heart to herself, where it belonged.  The husky voice at her elbow
interrupted her second repetition of that resolution.  "What's going On over
there?  Do you know?"

The woman at Katherine's side was only about five feet tall, but she was very
solidly built.  She was scowling as if she wanted to punch somebody.
Katherine hoped that somebody wouldn't be her.

"You with them?"  the woman asked, gesturing toward Vic and the policeman on
the opposite side of the street.  "Yes."

Katherine resisted the impulse to clarify that she was with the Arbor Hill
Center contingent of the official gathering across the way, not the police.
She understood that the police weren't likely to be very popular in this
neighborhood.

"What's your business here?"  the woman asked.

"I'd have to know who you are before I answer that."  The woman looked
Katherine up and down.  She wished she couldn't feel against her cheek the
corkscrews of hair that had popped out yet again from beneath her cap in a
way that she knew made her look about fourteen years old.

"Who are you to be asking who I am?"  was the woman's response.

"My name is Katherine Fairchild.  I'm from the Arbor Hill Children's Center."

Katherine wished she could back away.  Though she was several inches taller,
she couldn't help feeling that the force of this woman's personality towered
over her.  Until, suddenly, her entire demeanor appeared to change.  A wide
smile broke across her face, and the angry flatness in her eyes came suddenly
alive.

"That's the place my Coyote hangs out in sometimes," she said.

"He's told me there's good people works over there."

"You're talking about Coyote Bellaway?"

"Could there be more than one kid with a name like Coyote?"

Katherine was bewildered.

"Are you Tooley Penne-baker?"  she blurted.

"That's my name.  Call me Tooley."  She extended a mittened hand toward
Katherine's gloved one.

Katherine accepted the handshake and found herself caught in a grip as
commanding as she might have known it would be.

"You're Coyote and Sprite's aunt?  Their mother's sister?"

The woman hesitated, then finally admitted,

"Not so's you could tell it by looking at me."  Her skin was the color of
deep, rich chocolate, as dark as Coyote and Sprite were pale.  She sighed.

"I expect Coyote's been telling that one about me being his blood kin."

"That's exactly the one he's been telling," she said.  Tooley gave Katherine
a penetrating look.

"I care about those poor children as strong as if they were my blood, that's
for sure.  And their ailing mama, too.  She and me go way back."

She shook her head.  The expression on her broad face made clear how sad she
considered the story of the Bella-way children and their mother.

"Are you going to let him keep on telling it?"  she asked.

"Do you mean, am I going to report that you're not a blood relative of Coyote
and Sprite?"

"Mmm-hmm.  That's just what I mean?"

Katherine hesitated.

"You know what the welfare will do when they find out; don't you?"

Ms.  Pennebaker asked.

"They'll clamp those two sweet children into foster care faster than you can
sa), Jackie Robinson.  They most likely won't keep them together, either.
Coyote could handle that okay.  He probably could handle about anything.  How
Sprite would take it though, I don't know, and that precious girl's already
missing her mama so bad it ought to make you cry your heart out."

Katherine would have preferred another answer to the one she must eventually
and inevitably give.

"I won't be the only' one making that decision," she said.

"That's what they call passing the buck, honey."  Katherine didn't deny that.
She didn't say anything.  Instead, she started across the street with Tooley
Pennebaker bustling right behind her.

Vic SAW the two women approaching and swore silently.  Under most
circumstances, he'd have been pleased by the prospect of Katherine Fairchild
joining him, standing by his side, maybe gazing up at him with those eyes
that reminded him of a blue-gray mist just before sunrise.  Even now, he felt
a rumble in his chest at the sight of her.

He hadn't experienced that particular sensation, at least not so he
remembered it, since high school.  He wished that realization came happily to
him.  Instead, he found himself suddenly more disgruntled than ever.

"I still want to know what you've really got to do with this scene,"

the young cop was saying.

Vic's sigh stretched out long enough to make his exasperation unmistakable.

"I've been through that with you twice already," he said.

"How many times do you have to hear it?"

"Till my gut stops warning me you're not telling everything you know."

I couldn't give a damn less about your gut, Vic would have liked to shout.
He could feel his face redden from the strain of repressing that outburst.
The kid flatfoot was tight, of course, but he'd have been guessing all the
same.  He looked as if he might have been on the force about a week and a
half, or not anywhere near long enough anyway to have acquired the instincts
he was crediting himself with.

He'd heard Vic's name before around the station house, his last name in
particular.  That was the only special insight this rookie had going for him.
Anybody on the local force, or in the police departments from any number of
area towns and counties for that matter, could have come-to the same
conclusion just by heating Maltese.  What Vic had happening to him here was a
roust, plain and simple.  He'd been through this same routine, or some
variation of it, so many times he scarcely paid attention anymore.  Except
that, on those other occasions when one of Albany's finest--or Schenectady's
or Troy's or whoever's--decided to get his jollies from giving Vic a hard
time, Katherine hadn't been on hand to witness it.

"Why don't you just come clean, Maltese?"  the cop was asking.

"Why don't you just cut me some slack?"  Vic hissed back at him from between
gritted teeth, once again restraining himself from adding "jerk" or "squirt"
or any of the many slurs he would have thought suited this rookie to aT.

"Vic, is something wrong here?"

Katherine was at his elbow now, and she sounded sincerely concerned.

He turned quickly toward her.

"Nothing," he said, more sharply than he'd meant to do.

She backed off a step.  He could tell from the way she was studying his face
that it must still wear the scowl he'd intended for the pain-in-the-neck
policeman.  Vic did his best to relax.

"Everything's under control here," he lied.

"Why don't you go back to the car and wait for me?"

The breath from those words was still white on the frigid air when he
realized he shouldn't have said them.

"I don't think so," she answered in a tone that rivalled the weather for
coldness.

"I just meant that you'd be warmer in the car, and nothing much is going on
here."

So much for Vic's lame attempt to cover the mistake of suggesting that
Katherine, a professional at least as fully accredited as himself, shouldn't
be as much involved in this case as he was.

Arrogance might have seemed like the right attitude to use with her last
night, but he'd changed his mind--or maybe some other part of himself--about
her since then.

"There's someone you need to meet," she said, still with enough chill in her
voice to frost his heart.

Vic glanced at the short, hefty black woman at Katherine's side.  He thought
about mentioning that this might not be the best time for introductions.  He
decided it had to be an even worse time to question Katherine's judgment.
Her facial expression was now about as dark as he'd imagined his own to be a
couple of minutes ago.

"This is Tooley Pennebaker," she said indicating the woman next to her.

Vic understood that Katherine had his mind running haywire at the moment.
Plus, he was rattled by the very upsetting fact of how strong an effect she
had on him.  Still, something even beyond that confusion made him aware that
her last statement wasn't right somehow.

"You know," Katherine went on.

"The Bellamy children' s aunt."

The still-wet-behind-the-ears police officer had been watching this exchange
with obvious interest.

"What children would those be, miss?"  he chimed in now.

"A boy and girl we work with at the Arbor Hill Children's Center, Officer,"
Katherine said, and favored him with a smile so dazzling and sweet that Vic
could see the rookie blush straight through the peach fuzz he probably called
five-o'clock shadow.

"Do either of those kids have a record of vandalism?"  the rookie managed to
ask without his voice-cracking as Vic half expected it to do.

"Oh, no," Katherine said, even more sweetly.

"These are very young children."  She held out her gloved hand to illustrate
a height much shorter than Coyote's, or Sprite's either, for that matter.

"Way too young to be involved in anything like that."

Vic had to bite back a smile of his own, though not quite what you'd call a
sweet one.  The woman was smooth as silk.  She could lie like a trooper and
get away with it, too.  That angel face of hers, complete with a halo of
blond mist around it, did the trick for her.  He couldn't help wondering  i
i if he'd be as susceptible himself as the rookie was sure to ; be.

"Good.  Then they probably had nothing to do with toss- i ing the apartment
in this building," the young policeman said in a tone as cooperative as it
had been the opposite when he was talking to Vic.

Katherine had charmed the rookie into submission just the way Vic had figured
she would.  In the meantime, Too- ley Pennebaker didn't look to Vic like she
was in the least bit charmed.  "What're you talkin' about?"  she cried out,
grabbing a hunk of the rookie's coat sleeve.

"Which apartment you sayin' got tossed around here?"  "That one on the
front right, ma'am."  The rookie pointed.  II, "No.t" Tooley wailed.

"That's my place."  This woman, who up till now had appeared to be very
substantial, even formidable, all but crumpled on the spot.  Katherine
wrapped her arm around the much broader woman.

"It's not so bad," Katherine said.

"Just things tossed around, as far as I could see."

 "You saw this happen?"   the police officer asked.

"No, no.  Nothing like that," Katherine assured him.  "Tll explain in a
minute."  The cop would never have taken that kind of delaying tactic from
Vic.  Katherine was apparently a different story as far as this officer was
concerned.  The rookie nodded and waited, just as she'd requested him to do.
Meanwhile, her companion was pulling away in the direction of the apartment
she'd said was hers.  Katherine held fast to the larger woman's waist and
moved along with her up onto-the stoop.  Tooley fumbled in her coat pocket
and pulled out a set of keys.  She rattled through them a couple of times,
visibly confused and shaken, then finally selected one and opened the front
door to the building.  Vic watched as Katherine followed Ms. Pennebaker into
the entryway hall.

"Is it really that woman's place that got ransacked?"  the rookie asked.  A
shriek from inside the building answered the young cop's question for him.

"Yeah," Vic replied anyway.

"I'd say it's her place, all right."

"The kids she was talking about they live here too?"

 "The kids live here too," Vic affirmed.

He knew, for Coyote and Sprite's sake, he had to keep this cop from nosing
too deep into what was going on here.  "Where are those kids?"  the rookie
asked.

Vic was listening to the cop with new attentiveness now.  Vic took note
especially of how curiously the rookie was watching the door to Tooley
Pennebaker's building.  The less he figured out about what was actually
happening to the Bellaway family, whatever that might be, the better the
children were likely to end up.  That's how Vic saw it, anyway.  He'd learned
a long time ago, when he was still not much more than a child himself, that
it paid to keep family business in the family.

"They're over at the center working on setting up for the Christmas pageant,"
Vic said, lying yet again and takin ga chance that the rookie wouldn't check
the story.  "They didn't have anything to do with this."

"Who do you think did have something to do with this?"

The rookie sounded like he was thinking Vic was mixed up in the break-in
somehow.

Vic shrugged.

"A street punk looking for goods to sell would be my guess."

"In this dump?"

Vic shrugged again to hide how much he agreed with the cop's assessment.
The likelihood of this rundown building, or the even more rundown Pennebaker
apartment, holding anything very salable was slim to none.

"Desperate people don't always think too clearly," Vic said.

The rookie nodded.

"I'll write up an incident report."  "You do that,"

Vic said.

He knew how little official action would actually be taken as a result of
this guy's investigation and report.  Vic might be disgusted by that, but he
was also relieved.  He didn't want this cop or any of his buddies in blue'
poking around any further.  Vic especially didn't want them nosing into the
relationship between Tooley Pennebaker and the two children who were supposed
to be her niece and nephew.

Vic had already figured out that Katherine had been trying to get a message
across to him before about the racial improbability of that aunt-offspring
pairing.  Of course, there were a number of possible explanations,
intermarriage or adoption to name two.  Katherine's raised eyebrows when she
mentioned Tooley and the kids suggested to Vic that the story might be
different than either of those.  He also had the feeling that this issue, as
well as a couple of others, made it all the more crucial that they find
Coyote Bellaway, and find him fast.

COYOTE WATCHED the whole scene from the top of the building across the street
from Tooley's apartment.  He'd even been up there, crouched down behind the
short wall that bordered the roof, long enough to see the big man from the
alleyway the other night--the one who'd chased Coyote with a gun--drive up in
a black car and go inside Tooley's building.  A half hour or so later, the
man came out and drove away.  Coyote snuck down to the street after that,
crept across Ten Broeck and let himself into the apartment.  He'd had his own
key ever since he and Sprite started calling the place home almost a year
ago.  It looked more like a junk heap than anybody's home now.  Coyote tried
to keep the tears from sliding down his face.  They slid down anyway.  This
was all his fault.  All Tooley's stuff had been tossed around because of him.

Coyote was sniffling so loud by then that he nearly didn't hear Miss
Fairchild and Mr. Maltese outside in time to make it out of the room before
she was at the window looking in.  Luckily, he'd locked the door behind him
after he came in.  Coyote knew that they couldn't get into Too-ley's place
without forcing the lock, which gave him the few minutes he needed to run out
the back way and sneak over to his rooftop watching post without being seen.
He watched as the policeman came, then as Tooley showed up a little later on
and started into the building.  After that, he couldn't get himself to watch
anymore.

Instead, he busied himself gathering up the things he'd collected in his
makeshift lean-to of double-layered cardboard shipping cartons.

Some boosted blankets, and a stack of newspapers from the recycle pile
outside one of the stores on North Pearl Street had kept him pretty warm
these past nights.  He couldn't drag those boxes and papers away with him
now.  He'd attract too much attention if he tried to do that.  But he did
have to get out of here.  The police showing up let Coyote know that was how
things had to be, no question about it.

He'd need to come up with some other way of keeping warm tonight.  At the
moment, he didn't have a clue what that way would be.

Chapter Eight On their way back to the center in Vic's car, Katherine shook
her head and chuckled at herself.  She often felt like shaking him in
exasperation when they were alone together.  ; Yet, as soon as she sensed
that he was under attack from the police officer, she'd leapt to champion him
like a she-bear at a threat to her clan.

"What's so funny?"  Vic asked in response to her chuckle.

"Oh, nothing," she replied.

She was correct about that, of course.  There wasn't any- ] thing the least
bit funny about withholding information

                                      I

from the police or about what could happen to her, and maybe to the center as
well, if she were to be caught in the act of doing so.  Equally lacking in
humor was the question that had been niggling at the corner of her brain ever
since she'd started across Ten Broeck Street toward Vic with Tooley
Pennebaker at her side.  Why had that young policeman been treating Vic so
rudely?

The officer had been sneering at Vic in the most disrespectful manner she
could imagine.  She'd been on the defensive on Vic's behalf from the instant
she saw the expression on the young policeman's face as he and Vic talked
together, or snarled at each other, to be more exact.

The officer behaved quite politely to Katherine once she'd introduced
herself.  He'd been gracious, even gentle, with Tooley, doing his best to
comfort her in her distress over what had happened to her home and
belongings.  He'd even assured her that the police department would do its
level best to find the person who committed the break-in.

Katherine suspected that was an empty promise on the policeman's part.
Vandalism cases like this one more often than not remain unsolved, but he was
trying to make Too-ley feel better, anyway.

Still, when he turned to talk to Vic, the sneer reappeared on the officer's
face, and the challenge was back in his voice.  Katherine had to assume some
previous history there.  So, what was Vic's relationship with the police?
And, how did it come to-be so antagonistic?  She might have put it down to
something personal between him and this particular officer if it hadn't been
for what happened as she and Vic were walking back to his car.

"Cops," he growledl

"They're all alike.  I can't stand any of them."

She might have asked her questions about Vic and the police right then,
except that a dark frown had descended across his brow.  She couldn't
remember ever having seen a person look quite so fierce before.  She'd
decided that wasn't the moment to begin an interrogation, or to talk to him
at all for that matter.  They drove the few blocks from Tooley Pennebaker's
place to the center in silence, other than for that brief exchange over
Katherine's chuckle.

She was back in her office pondering the possible reasons for that silence
when a knock sounded at her door.  For an instant, she thought it might be
Vic.  Her heart made a little flip, as disconcerting as it was unexpected.
Just as unsettling was the stab of disappointment when she glanced up to
discover someone definitely not Vic outside her office waiting to be invited
in.

The woman at the door was tall, what one might refer to as statuesque.  She
was also beautiful.  She was, at first sight at least, all but perfect, the
kind of woman other women look at and say,

"Why can't I put myself together like " I that?  "j Katherine realized she
was staring and hurried out from behind her desk to open the door.  " May I
help you?  " she asked.  do hope so," the woman replied, in the closest thing
to a purr Katherine could ever recall hearing in real life.

I "Please, come in and sit down."  Katherine stepped aside and motioned
toward the chair facing her desk.  "I'm Lacey Harbison."  i "Katherine
Fairchild."  She extended her hand.  Ms. Harbison took hold of only
Katherine's fingers and gave them : a restrained, ladylike shake.

*"I know," she said.

"I've been following the accounts of your good work in the Chronicle.  I am
most favorably impressed."

"Thank you."

Katherine had the definite impression she was being charmed, and wondered why.

"It's that work I've come to talk to you about," Ms. Harbison said.  :i "What
aspect of what we do interests you in particular?"

Katherine wished she could stop sounding like an oral report.

"Your Most Needy Cases Fund has struck my husband's fancy, and mine also.  We
would both like to become involved with the program."

"We welcome community support," Katherine said.

Maybe the Harbisons wanted to make a contribution.  Katherine estimated that
Mrs. Harbison was wearing the equivalent of several holiday dinners with all
the trimmings and some presents besides, and that was without counting the
fur coat she had draped over her arm.  Katherine widened her own smile to
match her visitor's.

"We would like to take two children into our home for the Christmas holiday,"
Mrs. Harbison said.

Katherine hesitated a moment.

"That's a rather unusual request," she said.

"It's for my husband more than myself."  Lacey Harbi-son's voice had gone
even softer, as if she were sharing an intimate secret straight from her heart.

"He was raised in an orphanage without a true family of his own.  Now, as it
turns out, I can't have children."

She cast her gaze downward.  Her posture, suddenly not so statuesque,
suggested the grief caused by her childless state.  Katherine wanted to
sympathize, but she held back.  "What, specifically, did you have in mind?"
she asked.  "We would love to have a boy and girl with us for the holidays,
the boy about ten, the girl about eight.  Those are the ages the two babies I
lost would be if they had lived."

She looked up again, and Katherine could see the pleading in the woman's
face.  Still, Katherine's heart didn't respond.  She was surprised by that.
When she heard the sad stories of the families applying for Most Needy Cases
Fund grants, she'd been close to tears with each one.  Maybe she was
prejudiced against Mrs. Harbison because of her expensive clothes.  Katherine
hoped that wasn't true.  She knew from her own experience that material
comforts were no protection against pain.  Yet she continued to watch Mrs.
Harbison from a cool distance.

"Do you have two children who fit that description?  A brother and sister
would be perfect, if that's possible."

"Tell me again exactly what you and your husband are proposing."

"Well, we have a large home, which we plan to fill with gifts and
decorations and maybe even a party for your other children."

As Mrs. Harbison went on, Katherine nodded, but she was only partly
listening.  Her instincts kept telling her not to believe a word this woman
said.

"This is a very interesting idea," she responded finally, just as Mrs.
Harbison was launching into a description of the party she and her wealthy
husband would throw for their holiday charges and their friends.

"Let me go and get the files for our program applicants and see if we have
two children who match what you're looking for."

Lacey Harbison paused, her deep red, only slightly glossed lips parted.  She
was putting together some pieces of her own.  Katherine could almost hear her
doing it.  I'll only be a moment," Katherine said.

She was out from behind her desk and through the office door in seconds,
smiling widely all the way.  She waited till she was just out of sight before
she began sprinting down the hallway toward the gym.

Vic had changed into gray athletic shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers.

She registered the tense, long muscles of his upper thighs and the round
curve of his biceps somewhere in her consciousness, but she didn't let
herself think about them.  Instead, she grabbed his arm and was towing him
back toward her office before she could even begin her breathless explanation.

He followed her more readily than she would have thought.  They hurried along
so fast she barely had time to blurt out her suspicions regarding the
too-coincidental similarity between Coyote and Sprite Bellaway and the plan
that had been described to her by the woman sitting beside Katherine's desk.
Unfortunately, when Katherine and Vic got to her office, it was as empty as
she had feared it would be.  They made a quick search of the rooms at that
end of the building and a dash to the parking lot.  But the woman was gone,
along with any trace of who she was or why she might be trying to get to the
Bellaway children.

"SHE KNOWS who you are and that you're connected with the Bellaway kids."

Vic had been trying to make a point to Katherine for nearly half an hour, but
she'd made it clear she wasn't paying much attention.

"I think you should listen to him, Katherine," Megan Moran said.

Vic didn't usually look for support from anyone.  Still, he was glad to have
it now, especially since he could feel the leash he tried to keep on his
temper wearing thinner by the second.  Obviously, Katherine Fairchild
possessed the ability to aggravate him as much as she did the ability to
attract him.

"I've listened to both of you," Katherine said, "and I don't agree.

I'm not the target, the children are.  Notfeven both of them, either, just
Coyote?  "

"I've got a bad feeling about this whole deal," Vic said.  "Tooley seemed to
think Coyote could handle himself out on the street, even though she had no
idea where he might be.  But I think there's a lot more to what's going on
than any of us can even guess at.  We could be up against some very bad
people here."

"What makes you think so, Vic?"  Megan asked.

He shrugged.  He didn't like to be an alarmist.  He especially didn't like to
be seen as one.  He knew his statements were reinforcing that image, but
Katherine's safety was more important than what anybody might think about him
right now.

"Call it a sixth sense," he said, and he could tell Katherine picked up on
his reference to their earlier conversation.

"I've been out here long enough to sense dangerous situations, too."

"I didn't claim to have a monopoly on the ability."  Katherine sounded pretty
aggravated herself.  "Something besides just instinct is bothering me here,"
he went on.

"I got a closer look at Tooley's place than you did, Katherine, and I didn't
like it."

"What exactly did you see?"  Megan asked.

He searched for the right word.  The one that came to mind struck him as too
far out, but he decided to pass it on anyway.

"Rage," he said, "and I didn't only see it.  I felt it.  Whoever tore that
place up was angry enough to..."

He hesitated.  Once again, he didn't want to cause alarm, except what he was
thinking had him most alarmed of all.  "Angry enough to do what, Vic?"  Megan
pressed.  "Angry enough to kill."

The word echoed in the silence that followed his saying it, as if that one
syllable had the power to strike everybody dumb.

"Well, nobody's going to kill me," Katherine said finally, breaking the spell.

"In fact, if you want to know what I think, we're all more likely to drown in
this flood of melodrama that you've both got gushing over us than at the hand
of some evil villain."

Vic opened his mouth to fire back an answer in a tone at least as sarcastic
as hers.  He clamped his lips together instead.  Nothing he really wanted to
say to her was either sharp or sarcastic.  Only tender words of concern and
protection came to mind when he thought about Katherine.  He : knew she
wouldn't care to hear those things from him now, maybe not ever.  So he said
nothing at all.

KATHERINE COULD HAVE kicked herself for the ludicrous statement she'd thrown
at Vic in her office.  She disliked deceit above all things, but she'd had a
good reason for violating that rule.  If he had found out about the
arrangement she'd made with Tooley Pennebaker--that she was going to pick
Sprite up at school and take her home with her--he'd have tried to stop her.
Katherine was certain of that.  Yet, her apartment was a much safer place
than Too-ley's for the little girl right now.  Besides, the vandals, whoever
they might be, had broken Sprite's bed and sliced her mattress open.  Tooley,
who had her hands full just figuring out what to do about the mess that had
been made of her life, was very happy to have Katherine take over where
Sprite was concerned.

Katherine tried not to think about hoTM the stuffing from the child's
mattress had been ripped out in huge chunks or about the amount of physical
force and determination it must have taken to do that.  Most of all, she
didn't think about those chunks of stuffing as POssible confirmation of Vic's
theory of an enraged and lethal, maybe desperate, attacker.  Yet, it was
precisely that scenario which made Katherine so intent upon actin gas Sprite's
protector.  Katherine had been compelled to watch helplessly while Daniel
suffered and struggled and was eventually taken away from her.  There'd been
nothing at all she could do to stop that.  "Make him as comfortable as you
can" was all the doctors could say.  She'd never felt so totally without
personal power in her life.

She wasn't going to let that happen again.  She wasn't going to sit idly by
while another innocent child suffered.  Instead, she had offered her
apartment as refuge for Sprite instead of a public facility.  Tooley was
offered the same alternative for herself but chose to stay at her home and
keep watch over the few belongings the intruder had left intact.

Sprite and Katherine would be on their own for the night.  Katherine had
been on her way to Arbor Hill School to meet Sprite when Vic burst in with
Megan in tow, both of them insisting that she should stay at Megan's for a
few days, or however long it would take to find out who was after the
Bellaway children.  If she went along with that arrangement, she'd have to
tell them she had volunteered to take Sprite home for the night.  Katherine
was fairly certain Vic would object to that, and insist on the children's
shelter alternative, and that Megan would agree with him.  They would have
the law on their side as well.

Social Services Department statutes and child-custody codes were clear.
Sprite's natural mother was incapacitated.  Tooley had no legal guardianship
status and, therefore, no legal authority to assign Katherine to take care of
the child.  Sprite would be considered a temporary ward of the state until a
judge could rule on the case.

Katherine could petition for guardianship and, with Mrs. Bellaway's approval,
might even be awarded custody, at least for a while.

Unfortunately, that was a time-consuming process.  Katherine wasn't about to
wait for the wheels of family-court justice to grind slowly toward a
conclusion.  She'd done enough waiting with Daniel.  Now, she intended to act.

Consequently, she had extricated herself from Vic and Megan's overprotective
clutches as soon as that was possible and headed for the Arbor Hill School.
Tooley had called to inform the school that Katherine would meet Sprite at
the end of the day.  The little girl waited in the vice principal's office,
her eyes wide and fearful above the small fist with its thumb shoved into her
mouth.  Katherine understood immediately that being abandoned had to be one of
this child's greatest fears.  Abandonment had been a recurring experience of
her young life.  First her father had left, then her mother, now Coyote.
Whatever their reasons for going, they had all deserted little Sprite at one
time or another.  Katherine didn't want her to feel that Tooley was
abandoning her as well.  Katherine dropped to her knees next to the couch
where Sprite was huddled, her frail body almost hidden among the cushions.

"Hello, Sprite.  Do you remember me?"

She spoke slowly and kept her voice soft as she smiled with what she hoped
the child would recognize as reassurance.  Sprite sucked audibly at her
thumb, her eyes more round and huge than ever.

"I came here this morning to talk to you and you told me all about your
brother, Coyote," Katherine went on.

Sprite stopped sucking and pulled her thumb partway out of her mouth.

"Did Coyote come home yet?"  she asked.

"He'll be back soon," Katherine said, not exactly answering.

The thumb shoved in again, and the sucking sound resumed as Sprite heaved a
small but deep sigh.

"I have a surprise for you," Katherine said gently.  She had to steer the
conversation away from Coyote and the other distressing elements of Sprite's
situation.

"Do you like surprises?"

Sprite hesitated a moment before nodding her head once only.

"I was thinking we could go to my house and have a party, just the two of us.
Do you like parties?"

The nod came a little more readily this time.

"What do you like best for a party?  Cake or ice cream?"  The thumb came out
almost all the way.  "Cake and ice cream," Sprite said.

"Cake and ice cream it will be."

Katherine held out her hand.  Sprite stared at it for a moment without
moving, but the sucking had been suspended, at least temporarily.

"We'd better hurry up before the cake-an dice-cream store closes,"

Katherine said.

Sprite pulled her thumb all the way out of her mouth and slid to the edge of
the couch cushion.

"You have a cake-and-ice-cream store?"  she asked, sound ing a little
incredulous and almost happy.

"Yes, I do."

Their conversation continued out of the schoolyard, up and down the aisles of
Price Chopper Supermarket, and all the way to Katherine's apartment building
on State Street across from Washington Park.

"You've got a snowman place right in front of your house," Sprite exclaimed,
indicating the expanse of snow-covered park on the opposite side of State
Street from Katherine's wrought-iron railed stoop.

"Can we make a snowman tomorrow?"

"After school, we could do just that," Katherine said smiling.

Sprite had already wheedled one agreement out of Katherine to return to Price
Chopper, for apple pie this time.  Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.
Katherine felt her heart bubble with laughter at the thought, in the special
way her heart hadn't done since before Daniel got sick.  She reminded herself
that somewhere between those excursions tomorrow she would have to fit in
some shopping for Christmas decorations.  She was entertaining herself with
the fantasy of teaching Sprite to frost windows with finger paint and
spray-on sparkles when Katherine opened her apartment door and snapped on the
light.

The scene in her living room was nowhere near as blatant in its carnage as
what had been done to Tooley's house.  There were no broken furniture pieces
or jagged windows, no pile of ravaged belongings on the floor.  Yet, what
Katherine saw now was as devastating to her as if the entire building had
been set on fire and burned to the ground.  The damage was slight and subtle,
but she noticed it immediately, probably because it had been done to the
object her eyes automatically sought out whenever she entered this room.

A small portrait of Daniel, painted in the days before they'd learned of his
illness, sat on Katherine's mantelpiece in a stand that matched the portrait
frame.  The portrait had been slashed, just once diagonally, from corner to
corner.  Katherine hurried to the fireplace with tears already in her eyes.
She loved this portrait.  How could anyone have known how much she loved this
portrait?  She picked up the mined likeness and pressed it to her heart.  She
felt the urge to rock and keen just as she had done so many times in the
months after Daniel's death.

"What's wrong?"  the small voice asked from the doorway.  "Did you break your
picture?"

Katherine turned quickly.  She'd forgotten Sprite for a moment.  She hung
back now from entering the room, her large eyes frightened again.  If her
thumb hadn't been encased in a mitten, it without doubt would have been in
her mouth.

"Nothing's wrong, Sprite," Katherine said forcing cheer and her former
reassurance back into her voice.

She laid the small portrait facedown on the mantelpiece.  That was when she
saw the note that had been left there.  It was typewritten and read: We know
you are holding out on us about the boy.  We will find him anyway.  If you
want to keep the little girl alive, you'd better not try to stop us.

Katherine grabbed the note and crumpled it in her fist.  "Nothing's wrong at
all, Sprite," Katherine fibbed yet again.

"But I almost forgot that Mr. Maltese likes cake and ice cream, too.  Let's
have our party at his house."

Katherine was careful not to latch onto Sprite's hand too hard or too quickly
while hustling her back out the door as fast as was possible without
startling her.

"Does he have a Christmas tree?"  Sprite asked as Katherine glanced furtively
up and down State Street before hurrying them down her front steps to the
sidewalk.  "What was that, Sprite?"

"Does Mr. Mowtese have a Christmas tree?"

"I don't know," Katherine said, her mind far away from thoughts of the
holiday decorations.  She was too concerned with keeping Sprite safe.

Chapter Nine Vic was startled by the flurry of knocks at the door of his
restored, nineteenth-century row house on Livingston Avenue.  Several sharp,
persistent raps in quick succession were followed by just as insistent
pressure on the doorbell.  Someone really wanted to get in.

His immediate impression was of a person in trouble, maybe a kid from the
center.  This wouldn't be the only time one of them had shown up here with a
crisis on his hands.  That thought set Vic moving fast into the front
entryway.  His next thought stopped him in his tracks.

Most of all, this assault on his door sounded desperate, and desperate people
can be dangerous7 Vic had learned that lesson long ago.

He hurried to the small, three-drawer stand in the hallway.  He pulled out
the bottom drawer and snapped open a compartment at the back.  No one but Vic
knew it was there.  This hidden niche, a practical departure from the
original design, was an example of his talent with tools and wood.

The object he pulled out of that secret space cast off a reflection of the
light from the living room.  He moved cautiously along his entryway wall,
carrying the cold gleam of steel in his hand.  A gun was a necessity for
someone with his history.  Still, he had never liked guns and couldn't
imagine that he ever would.

He thought he could hear his name being called from the other side of the
door, but he couldn't be sure.  He'd bought that sturdy door at the
demolition sale of an eighteenth-century farmhouse near Coeymans, and had
planed it down to fit his doorjamb like a hand in a glove.

Not much seeped through that tight framing.  Besides, a storm had blown up in
the past hour, gusting snow in front of a howling wind.

He usually liked that sound.  Right now, though, he would have liked this
storm to quiet down enough to let him listen for clues to the identity of his
visitor---or visitors.

Vic settled the grip of the gun firmly into the palm of his hand.  The
barrage at his door began again.  He reached for the doorknob.  On a silent
count of three, he took a deep breath, tripped the latch on the door and
pulled it open.  He kept the door in front of him like a shield and his
pistol poised.  Still, he was all but knocked over as the door was shoved
open and someone--or something--rushed through into the hallway with a gust
of wind-swirled snow in its wake.

"Stop where you are," Vic commanded.

"Put your hands above your head right now, or I'll shoot."

Everything in him prayed shooting wouldn't be necessary.  Everything in him
had also been expecting for years that a moment like this would come someday.
Then he heard what sounded like a child's small whimper.  "Please, mister,
don't shoot us," it said.  "Vic, it's Katherine."

Her voice was so shaky he barely recognized it.  His left hand had been
halfway to the light switch when she spoke.  He flipped that switch now.  The
soft light from an overhead globe fell on the snow-covered bulk of Katherine
in her long, dark coat.  A small child peered out from behind her.  The
large, terrified eyes told him at once that the child was Sprite Bellaway.
Those eyes were staring straight at the firearm Vic still held suspended in
midair.  He dropped the gun instantly to his side, snapping the safety on as
he did.

"Katherine, what are you doing here?"  was all he could think of to say.

"Sprite and I thought we'd come over and see if you've put up your Christmas
tree yet."

She followed that bewildering statement by glancing pointedly down at the
little girl then back toward Vic.  It was then that he realized Katherine's
eyes were almost as big as the child's and that they were filled with the
same fear.  That realization brought his fuzzy thoughts into perfect focus in
a flash, and he recognized the Christmas-tree story as a cover-up to keep
Sprite from guessing what was really going on.  Vic wanted more than anything
in the world to find that out himself, but he knew he had to go along with
the cover story, at least for now.

"I put it up last weekend," he said.

If it hadn't been for the fact that he was pretty sure something very unfunny
was happening here, he would have laughed at the expression on Katherine's
face, momentarily changing from terror to amazement.

Obviously, she hadn't expected to hear he had a Christmas tree.

HerJook told him she wouldn't have been any more amazed if he'd said this was
the three bears' cottage and they were all eating oatmeal in the kitchen.

"Let's go in the living room and take a look," he said, stepping toward the
woman and child.

"Don't kill us," Sprite wailed and ducked behind Katherine.

"I wouldn't hurt you.  I promise."

Vic took a step forward, but Sprite did not emerge.  Katherine nodded in the
direction of Vic's right hand.  He was still holding the gun.

"This old thing?"  he said, making his voice sound light and cheerful even
though he was feeling like the biggest jerk in the universe.

"I was just play ing a joke with Katherine.  This old thing couldn't hurt a
fly."

Vic hated lying to kids, especially since that was what had been done to him
the whole time he was growing up.  He'd kissed his family goodbye because of
it, and other things.  Consequently, there was hardly anything he disliked
doing more.  Katherine's disapproving expression gave him no other choice
right now.  There was little he wouldn't do to erase that veil of disapproval
from her usually bright, blue-gray eyes.

Vic moved toward the hallway stand where he kept the gun.  He was vaguely
aware that his own face must be wear ing a fairly goofy expression as he tried
to portray himself as harmless to Sprite, who was now peeking out with one
eye from behind Katherine.  He was reaching for the drawer with the hidden
niche when he hesitated.

Nobody in the world other than himself knew about that compartment.

He kept it secret for safety reasons, other people's safety and his own.  He
glanced at Katherine, whose eyes held questions now as well as disapproval.
He told himself he'd be a fool not to trust those eyes, that hid so little of
what she was thinking and feeling.

Still.  "Let's go into the living room and see that Christmas tree," he said.

Vic slipped the gun into the back waistband of his jeans and pulled his
sweater down to cover the weapon.  He knew Katherine was watching his
movements with suspicion, but the caution he'd learned from years of be
ing a
Maltese told him he had to remain secretive.  Meanwhile, Katherine and Sprite
had begun to look overly warm in their snow-soggy clothes.

"Let me help you," he said and stepped toward the two of them where they
still stood in his hallway.

Katherine backed hastily away, and the obvious rejection of that stung his
heart as surely as if she had struck him across the face.

"I don't think she's ready for that," Katherine said, looking down at Sprite.

Vic had a feeling Katherine was also talking about herself.

"Okay," he said.

"Let's go into the living room, then.  The two of you should get out of those
wet things."

That apparently grabbed Katherine's attention because she began walking
toward the archway into Vic's living room.  She moved awkwardly with Sprite
still attached to her coattail, but Vic didn't try to help this time.  The
memory of Katherine's rejection kept him at a distance as much as any
practical consideration of encouraging Sprite's cooperation could ever have
done.

"You do have a Christmas tree?"  Sprite exclaimed.  An instant later, she was
darting toward the tall, green hemlock in the bay window of Vic's living room.

"She seems to have gotten over her fear," he said.

He always marvelled at the way kids could jump from one moment to the next
sometimes, as if what came before had never happened at all.

"Yes, she's apparently forgotten all about it."  Katherine's tone made it
clear that she hadn't done the same.  She stared at him as if she might be
able to see straight through his body to the gun in his waistband.  He
guessed she might have more questions about that gun than he cared to answer.

"I'll take your coat and hang it up to dry," he said, reaching out a hand
without stepping any closer to her.  He didn't want to cause her to back off
from him again.

"Give me Sprite's coat, too."

Katherine hesitated a moment before unbuttoning her coat and handing it over
to him, all without coming any closer to him.  Instead, she went to Sprite,
who was touching one of the metallic glass balls Vic had hung on the tree and
staring at the distorted image of herself in its shiny gold surface with
obvious delight.

"I'm going to take your coat off now," Katherine said in a calm, careful
voice as if she might be afraid of startling Sprite with anything more loud
or sudden.

"Okay," Sprite answered and unzipped her jacket without taking her eyes off
the ornament.

"I think she likes the tree," Vic said.

Katherine turned and handed him the damp garment.  "Children react so
strongly to new experiences."

She didn't have to speak sharply for Vic to hear the pointedness of her
comment.  He decided not to respond.  He was in a no-win position here and he
knew it.  Anything he said was just as likely to dig him deeper in as it was
to help him out.  He draped Sprite's jacket over his arm on top of
Katherine's coat and turned to leave the room.

"Are you going away  Sprite asked, diverting her attention from the tree.

A little of the whine that he'd heard before had crept back into her voice
and some of the fear was returning to her eyes.  She might have forgotten the
gun he'd held a few moments ago, but Vic would guess she hadn't forgotten how
scared she was in general, scared enough to want as many protective adults
around her at all times as she could get.

"I'll be right back, sweetheart," he said.

"I'm just going to hang your coats up where they can dry."

"Good," Sprite said, apparently reassured, and returned her attention to the
tree.

The gentleness of his words to the child had inspired a similar softening in
the way Katherine was looking at him.

His heart lightened at the sight.  He hurried out of the room before she
could pick up on the relief he was feeling.  His reactions to her were way
too extreme, considering the brief time they'd known each other.  He knew,
from long-ago sad experience, that wearing your heart on your sleeve is a
good way to get shot down.

He took the coats to the small first-floor bathroom, picking up two hangers
from the hall closet on the way.  He hung the coats on the shower bar and
smoothed out the damp material of both.  Sprite's jacket was too lightweight
for winter wear.  Vic remembered noticing the same thing about Coyote's
clothing that morning.  Now, he was out in the storm somewhere.  Vic would
have liked to quiz Sprite for any information she might have on her brother's
whereabouts, but she probably didn't trust Vic enough for that kind of
questioning just yet.  The incident with the gun had set him back several
paces in the trustworthiness department, which reminded him of his intention
to get that particular item back into its hiding place ASAP.  He was on his
way to the hallway stand when Katherine stepped through the archway from the
living room.

"Did you find a warm place to hang our things?"  she asked.

"Yes, I did."  He examined her face and saw the flicker of fear that remained
in her eyes.  He lowered his voice and asked,

"What's going on?  What brought you and Sprite here at this time of night?"

From what he had figured out about Katherine so far, she didn't come across
as the kind of person who would show up at somebody's door like this without
calling first.  What was going on with her?  That question resonated in Vic's
mind as she glanced furtively back toward Sprite before answering.

 a "Somebody broke into my apartment," she said in a near whisper.

"Broke in?"

Katherine raised her finger quickly to her lips and shushed him.  She glanced
back again at Sprite who had sat herself down in front of the tree and was
playing with Vic's miniature train set, one of the few mementos he'd been
able to bear to keep from his childhood.

"She's not paying any attention to us," he said.  His own voice dropped to a
whisper now.

"Tell me what happened at your apartment."

"I don't know," she said, just a little tremulously.  She'd managed to get
rid of that tremor by the time she spoke again.

"All I know is that somebody came into my home and damaged something I value
very much."

"What was that?"

Vic longed to cross the space between them in a single, eager stride and take
her in his arms, but he needed to know what she was talking about even more.

"They slashed a small portrait I keep on my mantelpiece."  ' She paused.  Vic
could see on her face the effort she was making to calm and control herself.
He almost did take her in his arms then.

"It was a portrait of Daniel," she whispered before he could move toward her.

Vic stayed where he was.  The slope of her shoulders and the angle of her
neck as she clutched her hands in front of her and stared down at them told
him she didn't want to be touched right now.  She needed to be
self-contained, at least for the moment, inside the grief he could feel
emanating from her.  He respected that need while his own heart ached for her
pain.  He waited for her to lift her head slowly to look at him again before
he spoke.

"Do you have any idea who might have done such a thing?"

Vic asked that so gently he wondered, when she didn't respond right away, if
maybe she hadn't heard him.  Then, she reached into the pocket of the skirt
he recognized to be the same one she'd had on all day.

"They left this."

She handed him a piece of paper that had been crumpled into a ball.

He smoothed it out and read the typewritten warning.

"This is about the kids," he said.

"Coyote and Sprite."  They both glanced over at Sprite this time.  She was
lifting the toy-train cars one by one from the red felt skirt beneath Vic's
tree and setting them up again, one after the other, in a line on the carpet.
She was obviously way too engrossed to have noticed the mention of her name
or her brother' s.

"I think it has something to do with the woman who came to my office today,"
Katherine whispered after she'd turned her attention back to Vic.

"Lacey Harbison."

Vic nodded agreement.

"So, you're finally tying her into the melodrama."

To his surprise, Katherine flushed at this reminder of the statement she'd
made in her office.

"Well," he continued,

"I agree with you.  I think she and whoever she's mixed up with are after
Coyote and Sprite for some reason.  We have to find out what that reason is."

Vic stepped forward, but Katherine took his arm.  "What we have to do first
is get some food into Sprite," Katherine said.

"She hasn't eaten since lunchtime at school.  She needs nourishment."

Vic looked at the small, pale child in his living room and then back at
Katherine, who was almost as thin.

"I'd guess you could use a good meal yourself."

Katherine shrugged.

"Maybe we could send out for pizza or Chinese food."

Vic raised his hand in protest.

"We don't do takeout in this house,"

he said.

He took Katherine by the arm before she could answer and led her back into
the living room.

"Come with me, ladies," he said, extending his free.  hand to Sprite.

"You have a very special treat in store."

Chapter Ten This had been a day of shocks and bewilderment for Katherine.
She might have thought there was nothing left in the world to surprise her at
the moment.  At least, she might have considered herself way too exhausted by
it all to master so much as a show of mild curiosity.  Yet, when she burst
through Vic Maltese's front door and then had a moment to calm down a bit,
what she found there could hardly have been less expected.

She'd seen Vic's hot car and his wardrobe.  She'd listened to his wisecracks
and observed his edge of street savvy and impatience.  None of that had
prepared her for the hearth crackling in his living room or the Middle
Eastern wool-weave carpets on polished fir flooring as warm in its luster as
the milk-glass sconces on his walls.  Cut-velvet drapes in pale olive were
tied back by braided cords to reveal a veil of snow outside as it swirled in
the illumination of the two carriage lamps on wrought-iron posts, one at each
side of the half dozen steps leading up to Vic's door.

She hadn't really registered those lamps on her way up the steps except to
say a quick prayer of thanks for the light that made his house number visible
through the storm and darkness.  She'd been in a state of barely controlled
panic at the time, unable to shake the fear that whoever had invaded her
apartment might have been lying in wait for her outside and could have
followed her here.  She'd had to force her foot to lighten on the gas pedal,
no matter how much she wanted to propel her Cherokee across town like a
rocket to what she hoped would be safe refuge with Vic.  Even four-wheel
drive might not have been equal to avoid ing a disastrous skid if she
accelerated too fast in this weather.

So, she had endured the cautious but maddeningly slow journey from State
Street to Livingston Avenue.  About halfway between the two, it occurred to
her that he might not be at home.  Consequently, his carriage lamps had shone
like rays of hope for her.  Then she'd knocked on the door--and knocked and
knocked and knocked.  She told herself he had to be inside, because she had
no idea what to do if he wasn't.  So she'd knocked until the door flew open
at last.

Now here she was in the most unanticipated circumstances she could imagine.
Vic had sat her down in a cushioned spindle rocker with an afghan tucked
under her chin.  They were in his kitchen on the basement level of his house.
A green-painted cast-iron woodstove gave off a cozy heat.  Vic had settled
Sprite beneath a quilt among the pillows of a window seat with heavy
hemp-cloth curtains drawn behind her to shut out even the hint of a draft.
The child's eyelids were already almost closed despite her obvious struggles
to keep them open.  With a pang of too-sharp memory, Katherine could see
Daniel doing the same thing, fighting against sleep for fear of missing so
much as five minutes of whatever might happen next.

"Are you all right?"  Vic asked.

He'd stopped stirring the pot on the restaurant-sized range.

"I'm fine," she said, but she could tell by the look on his face that he
didn't believe her.  She needed to throw him off this track before he asked
her more questions she couldn't bear to answer right now.

"I'm just feel ing a little overwhelmed by..."

"By what."

There was his impatience again.  She lifted her arm from the folds of the
afghan and made a sweeping gesture to indicate the room.

"All of this," she said, amazed by how light her hand felt at the end of her
arm, as if it might fly straight off if she were to swing it too hard.

Vic laughed and turned back to his stirring.

"What did you think?  That I'd live in a flophouse?"

Katherine didn't answer.  She couldn't tell him she'd been thinking something
very much along those lines.  "I didn't expect you to have a Christmas tree."

"Oh, that."  He chuckled.

"I have an open house for the kids from the center a couple of days before
Christmas.  I put up the tree for that."

"You wouldn't do it otherwise?"  Something in his tone made her ask that.

"Probably not."

"I see."  This time something in his tone made her say no more, at least not
on that subject.

"What are you cooking?"

"Sauce and pasta," he said and chuckled again.

"I know what a clich that is.  The guy whose one dish is spaghetti."

 "Some clichfis are nice."

Katherine heard the wooziness in her voice.  She was beginning to feel like
Sprite, as if she had to struggle to stay awake.

"For your information, I cook lots of things," Vic said.

Katherine managed a sleepy smile.

"For your information, I'll bet you do," she whispered before her voice
trailed off.

The comfort of the rocker and the warmth of the wood-stove had already
transported her too far down the road toward dreams for her to be surprised
by much of anything any longer.

VIc CARRIED SPRITE upstairs first.  He'd turned the burner off under the
sauce pot and set the drained pasta aside before making the climb.  He
settled Sprite on the bed in the guest room on his second floor and covered
her carefully.  She hardly stirred through all of that, or when he tucked his
long-saved teddy bear into the curve of her arm.  He left the door ajar and a
light on in the hallway outside the guest room.  He was a veteran of enough
haunted nights to be aware of the need to keep the darkness at bay.

He went back down the two flights of stairs at the rear of the house to the
kitchen.  What he saw there caused him to come to a dead stop, and not just
because he didn't want to disturb Katherine's sleep.

Light from the fading flames of the woodstove threw shadows across her face,
across the pale skin of her brow and the long lashes against her cheek.  Her
full lips were parted just slightly.  The urge to kiss them thrilled through
Vic like an earthquake tremoring straight to his loins.  God, she was
beautiful.  And so still that, before he could think how nonsensical it was,
he leaned closer to hear above the anxious beating of his own heart if she
might have stopped breathing.  He noticed the flush of her cheeks then, too
high, too red even for her.

This had been the kind of overwrought day that might put anybody under the
weather.  Speaking of weather, she'd been out running around in a snowstorm,
too.  Working at a place like the center meant being exposed to the virus
germs kids carry with them, especially during the winter, as readily as they
carry a basketball.  Being adolescents and resilient, they most likely
wouldn't come down with anything more serious than a twenty-four-hour bug.
An adult, on the other hand, could be more susceptible, particularly one who
pushed herself as hard as Katherine did and looked so much like she needed a
good, hearty meal.

He touched her forehead with the back of his hand.  Her skin was moist and
warm but not hot enough to be feverish.  Vic sighed with relief.

He didn't want her to be sick.  He was amazed at how strongly he didn't want
anything bad, or even a little uncomfortable, to happen to her.  He was
resisting the temptation, which felt more like a deep need than an impulse,
to caress her cheek, when her hand crept out from beneath the afghan and she
clasped his wrist.  The movement was unhurried and delicate, like the flicker
of firelight on her cheek.

Still, he couldn't have been more startled if she'd struck him in the face.

Her lips moved.  Vic couldn't understand her murmur.  He leaned closer.

"What did you say?"  he asked.

This time, when she spoke, he could make out the words but couldn't believe
what he heard.

"Take me to bed," she whispered.

Her voice was dreamy, and her face remained soft with slumber.  Her eyes
didn't open, and her lips had barely moved.  Surely she was talking in her
sleep, maybe referring to an almost subconscious desire to rest somewhere
more comfortable than a rocking chair.

Nonetheless, her words seared Vic's nerves all the way to the white-hot
center of himself that had lain all but dormant for quite some time.  In
fact, at the moment, he wouldn't have been able to remember when he was last
stirred so powerfully if his life depended on it.  All he knew was that
taking her to bed was exactly what he longed to do.

Vic bent down and slipped his arms beneath Katherine's body, one arm under
the crook of her knees, the other across her back just below her shoulders.
He lifted her out of the chair with the afghan still tucked around her.  She
was as light as he'd expected her to be.  The scent of her hair and skin,
heightened by the warmth of the fire, filled his head with such sweetness
that for a moment he thought he would have to sit down himself until the
intensity of that first wave of fragrance had passed.

"Get a grip on yourself," Vic told himself forcefully.  He stiffened his
spine along with his resolve and concentrated on taking even, gradual steps
toward the front of the house.  With what was left of his sensible mind, he
figured he'd carry Katherine up the front stairs.  This way, he could avoid
passing Sprite's room and maybe waking her.  He didn't like to think that he
had ulterior motives for not want ing a conscious child in the vicinity.
Still, he was a man, and the most male parts of him were very aware of that
right now.

His bedroom was the only other one on this floor.  Vic carried Katherine
through the doorway he'd ripped off and replaced again with his own hands.
This was his place, and he'd imagined more than once what it would be like to
brin ga woman here who was equally his.  That wasn't the case now, and he knew
it.  He had no claims on Katherine Fairchild.  She was only here because
she'd been scared out of her wits by what she found in her apartment.

The memory of that ruthless vandalism and the heartbreak over it he'd seen in
Katherine's eyes brought Vic at least partway back to himself and what was
really going on here tonight.  He carded Katherine to the bed and put her
down there gently, just as he'd done with Sprite in the room down the hall at
the other side of the master bathroom.  He pulled his arms free from beneath
Katherine's body and straightened up to reach for the extra blanket folded
across the foot of the bed.  He draped the blanket over Katherine and was
tucking the satin-trimmed edge under her chin when she took him by surprise
yet again, as she'd done downstairs in the kitchen.

Now, her arms were suddenly around his neck, disengaged from the blanket and
the afghan before his disbelieving mind could grasp what was happening.  She
pulled him toward her, and it never occurred to him to resist.  She lifted
her face toward his with her eyes still closed.  Their mouths found each
other instinctively, even in the dim light.

Her lips were soft and warm and still gently parted, as they had been in
sleep downstairs by the stove.  Was she sleeping now?  Vic couldn't think
clearly enough to figure that out, and he didn't really care.

He wrapped his arms around the bundle of her, blankets and all, and lowered
himself over her.  She clung to him, and they pressed as closely together as
the layers of wool between them would allow.

He could taste her lips and feel them, full and willing, beneath his, but he
hesitated.  He didn't crush he: mouth as his most basic urges were commanding
him to do.  He didn't thrust his tongue between her lips though he ached to
take possession of first her mouth then all of her.  Something held him back,
like a No Trespassing sign or an invisible bar at the door.  Then, she parted
her lips and tightened her arms around his neck.

Vic's senses received her message even before his mind could register its
meaning.  He groaned deep in his throat and let his tongue be welcomed by
hers.  They tasted each other and breathed each other in.

Her hunger was as great as his.  He could feel it.  He wanted to cry out with
a bellow from the bottom of his lungs.  Instead, he covered Katherine mouth
ever more devouringly with his and marvelled at how she responded with an
eagerness as primal as his own.  She was definitely awake now.

Vic tore at the tangle of blanket and afghan between them.  He felt her hand
grappling as well, helping him clear away the barriers separating them from
each other.  The blanket fell to the floor, but the afghan was more difficult
to unwind from her body.  Still, he had just begun to allow himself the
fantasy of her silken skin beneath his fingers when a scream split the night
and sliced through their passion with as brutal a cut as any cleaver could
have made.

KATHERINE RUSHED down the hall behind Vic.  The aura of what had just
happened between them back there on the bed clung to her as tenaciously as
the afghan, which had trailed with her all the way to the door till she
kicked it aside before dashing into the hall.  She pushed away the image of
herself in Vic's arms as well.  She'd have to deal with that later.  Sprite
was screaming.  For the moment, nothing else could matter more than getting
to her side.  Katherine squeezed past Vic through the doorway at the end of
the hall.  The room was suddenly flooded with light.  Vic had flipped the
wall switch.

Sprite's scream rose to a thin, high shriek in response to the startling
brightness.  "Turn that off," Katherine snapped.

She'd have to apologize for her tone later on.  The light dimmed again, but
Sprite's screams didn't diminish either in pitch or intensity.  Katherine had
reached the bedside, but she didn't take hold of Sprite right away.  Instead,
she began making soft sounds of comfort and reassurance.

"We're here, Sprite.  Everything will be all right now."  Katherine repeated
variations on that theme in a cooing monotone she hoped wouldn't surprise or
frighten the obviously terrified little girl.

She understood that the words were less important than the calming tone in
which they were spoken.

She sat down slowly and carefully on the edge of the bed.  Sprite was lying
in a tumble of the same quilt she'd been covered by downstairs.

Her face was shadowed in the dimly lit room.  She sucked in gasps of air
between screams as her small hands flailed in front of her face.

Katherine made the first physical contact by touching those hands gently.
She continued her murmur of reassurance and hushing sounds.

Sprite kept on flailing but just enough less vehemently for Katherine to
detect the change.  She let her own hands move with Sprite's while, at the
same time, encouraging them toward quiet.  The child's screams had begun to
subside.  Katherine thought about turning on the bedside lamp but decided
against it.  Any sudden change wouldn't be wise just yet.  Meanwhile,
Sprite's screaming had started to shape itself into words.  Katherine
strained to understand, but the child was still too tightly in the grip of
hysteria to do anything other than gasp out incomprehensible syllables.
Katherine continued her gentle monologue a few moments longer before pressing
for more.

"Try to take a deep breath, Sprite," she said, just above a whisper.

"Breathe with me.  Then we'll talk."

Katherine took slow, deliberate, exaggerated breaths and moved one hand to
Sprite's back and stroked up and down there.  Katherine kept those strokes
even and circling in a hypnotic rhythm.  Sprite responded slowly, but her
sobs were quieter now.  They grew more so by the minute under Katherine's
patient ministrations.  At last she thought it might be all right to attempt
a more complicated communication.

"You can tell me whatever you want to," she said.

Sprite sniffled and shuddered.  Her large eyes were wide open, catching the
faint glimmer of light from the hallway.

She said something but shoved her thumb into her mouth at the same time so
the words were lost.  Katherine took hold of Sprite's hand and eased it away
from her mouth.

"I

couldn't understand you," Katherine said.

"Could you please tell me that again?"

The shadow deepened across Sprite's face so her eyes were no longer visible.
Katherine realized that Vic had stepped closer, into the path of light from
the door.  He was probably trying to hear what Sprite had to say.  Katherine
thought about asking him to back off in case the child might be intimidated
by his size.  She would have done just that if Sprite hadn't breathed a small
sigh right then and started to talk.

"My brother," she said.

"What about Coyote?"  Katherine asked, being very careful not to let her
eagerness to know the answer creep into her soothing voice.

"He's up on his roof," Sprite said.  As her gasping slowed, her words took on
a plaintive, pleading tone.

"He's on a roof?"  Katherine encouraged.

"What's he doing there?"

Sprite shuddered.

"He's freezed into a snowman.  I have to help him get down."

She collapsed against Katherine and began to sob.  Katherine embraced the
little girl's thin shoulders.  They swayed together in a rocking motion.
Katherine could feel Vic hovering nearby.  She could almost hear the
questions he must be dying to ask, and Vic wasn't known to be a patient man.
However, he would have to be patient now, for as long as it took this
precious, frightened child to feel safe enough to speak again.

Chapter Eleven Vic still had the gun tucked in the back of his waistband.

Ordinarily, he would have hated walking heavy, like the tough kids at the
center called it, but not tonight.  Tonight the pressure of metal against the
small of his back felt as if he'd brought a friend along.

Vic was grateful for the presence of that friend, because this wasn't a night
to be out on your own, even for him, especially not where he was going.

The snow danced and blew, fine snow that silted into his face like wet sand
and made him blink his eyes to see.  He'd parked the Trans Am near Clinton
venue at what he hoped would be an inconspicuous end of the block.  This
weather would probably keep the car heisters at bay, and he did have a
steering-wheel bar lock and a guard on the column.

Still, it would be just his luck to end up on the victim list of the one
really dedicated auto thief in the neighborhood.

He was back on Tooley Pennebaker's street again, across from her building
where Sprite's terrified revelations had sent him.  She claimed that her
brother, Coyote, had a hiding place on the roof of one of the buildings on
the other side of the street from Tooley's.

Sprite had described where it was, but in a blizzard at night with only
streetlamp light to go by, Vic wasn't exactly sure which building was which.

One positive thing could be said about this weather.  It made Ten Broeck
Street, this block anyway, look better than its usual shabby self.  The pale
snow brushed everything clean, like a cityscape Christmas card, with pools of
soft light here and there from the pole lamps that were still in working
order.  The blowing snow played other tricks on the eyes, too, creating the
illusion of dark, moving shapes, almost visible in the whirling cloud of
flakes.  He skirted around those shapes more than once before telling himself
they were about as real as the phantoms in Sprite's nightmares.

That thought didn't play well with his more sensible side.  Even as he walked
toward the alley of what he figured had to be the right building, Vic
considered exactly what he was doing.  He'd come out here to wander through
what was basically a very dangerous part of town, even for him, in the middle
of a snowstorm.  He'd done that on the strength of the word of a sleepy
little girl who suffered from night terrors.  This could be the wildest of
all wild-goose chases, and Vic had begun to feel like the goose.

Sprite said Coyote told her he got into the building through an unlocked
window off the alleyway.  Front doors would be kept bolted tight at night in
this neighborhood if anybody in the building had any sense.  A kid who'd
clocked as many hours of street time as Coyote would know that.  He probably
managed to sneak in that front way once during the daytime then rigged the
basement window so nobody could tell it was no longer locked.  Vic understood
about such tactics.  He'd used them more than once himself when he was
younger.  He hadn't been as young as Coyote then, but still too much of a kid
to be on his own.  One of the things Vic had learned back in those days was
to keep his behind out of alleyways after sundown.  He peered down this one
now.  All he could see was a dark tunnel between two dark buildings.  Every
breath of city smarts Vic had in him said he shouldn't go in there.
But--what if Sprite knew what she was talking about?  What if Coyote was
huddled up on top of one of these roofs?  He could be frozen by now, even in
the makeshift shelter she seemed to think he'd put up for himself.  Vic
pulled the yellow, hard-rubber flashlight from his jacket pocket and stepped
into the alley.

The flashlight was even less use than he'd expected, hitting the snow that
fell from the space of sky between the buildings and turning it to gray fog.
He aimed the beam at the ground ahead of him in the hope he would be lucky
enough to pick out any obstacles before he tripped over them.  He switched
the light toward the building wall on his right every now and then to check
the location of the windows.  He tried each one as he came to it, rattling
the frame and checking the ledge for shims Coyote might have stuck in to keep
the bottom of the window ajar.

Vic kept an eye on the alleyway in both directions, too.  He didn't care to
be snuck up on, and this flashlight he was holding made him more visible than
he was comfortable with.  His rattling had produced no movement at all from
the first three windows.  He was beginning to think his doubts about Sprite's
claims were right.  Why would a boy Coyote's age tell his kid sister about
his secret hiding place, anyway?  This was a jerk's journey Vic was on, and
he knew it.  He flicked off the flashlight.  He'd pretty much decided to get
out of here before trouble found him.  He gave the next to the last window a
halfhearted shove all the same, and nearly fell over when it angled inward a
few inches.  A harder push and the opening was wide enough for a skinny kid
to get through.  Vic wasn't quite so neat a fit.  He had to crouch down and
go in feet first, which put him in a much more vulnerable position than he
liked.  He had to ease his shoulders through one at a time.  He told himself
that when he left this place he was going out the front door.

A short drop and he was on the basement floor with the flashlight snapped
instantly on and beaming around into every nook and cranny among the boxes and
other odd stuff that gets left in the cellar of an apartment building.  Vic
was fully aware that somebody besides Sprite could know about the open window
and be using this place to flop in.  Folks that desperate tended not to like
being stumbled upon and generally carded some kind of weapon to use against
intruders.

Vic reached behind him for the handle of his own weapon as the light beam
made its sweep.  Fortunately, he didn't see anybody.  He was alone down here.

He exhaled harshly.  He didn't mind admitting that this scene had his nerves
on the edge for sure.  The light found the exit door, and he hurried toward
it.  He was going to get this over with and be on his way back home as fast
as he could manage it.  The thought of home reminded him of Katherine waiting
there, and little Sprite with her eyes huge and round from fear for her
brother.  Vic pushed the exit door open onto the stairwell from the basement.
Nothing on the stairs but a couple of crumpled candy wrappers.  This was the
kind of private corner kids sought out as an escape from apartments crowded
with family, but there was nobody here now.  Vic pressed on.  The image in
his head of Sprite's eyes gave him no other choice.

He climbed all five flights of stairs from the basement to the top floor
without incident.  If anybody in any of the apartments along the way heard
him passing or saw the flicker of his flashlight in the dim halls, they gave
no sign.  A stealthy presence outside the door late at night in a
neighborhood like this one wasn't likely to invite open curiosity.  More
often than not, anyone who knew Vic was out here would keep quiet till he
passed by, then slip another chain or bolt or police lock into place with a
prayer that, like the dark angel, he'd just keep on moving.  Nobody'd call
the cops, either.  That kind of thing could bring reprisals, and all most
people in this neighborhood wanted was to be left alone.

Vic was wishing for the same thing, and wasn't disappointed all the way up
those five flights of stairs and through the heavy fire door at the top of
the additional flight to the roof.  He found a brick in the corner just
inside that door and propped it open.  He figured somebody had left the brick
for just that purpose.  This could be Coyote's secret place after all.  He
could be up here right now.  Vic hurried out onto the roof, almost forgetting
to flash the light in front of him before he did.

The cold was much more biting up here than it had been at ground level.  The
wind was stronger, too, whipping wet snow into his eyes and down his collar.
The flashlight beam was all but useless against this wall of snow.  Vic kept
it trained downward anyway.  The last thing he needed was to come upon the
edge of the roof by surprise.

The walls atop these buildings tended to be short enough to fall over,
especially for a guy his height on a night like this.

Vic kept as close as he could to what he guessed was the center of the roof,
but he knew how easy it could be to get disoriented and miscalculate his
location under these conditions.  He swept the light beam back and forth
across what he could make out of the roof floor, which wasn't much.  He might
have missed the white-covered topple of cardboard slabs altogether if his
boot hadn't hit the slick surface of one of them beneath the snow and almost
sent him sprawling.  He trained the light more closely on the mound of
cardboard pieces.  It was high enough for someone to be hiding under,
especially a pint-sized kid.

"Coyote, are you in there?"  Vic called out.

The sound of his voice was carried away so quickly by the wind that he barely
heard his own words.  He dropped to one knee and began scraping snow away,
pulling lengths of cardboard clear and tossing them aside.  All the while he
searched, he was praying silently.  Much as he wanted to find Coyote, he
didn't care to have that discovery happen here and now.  This rooftop was way
too cold for a kid in a flimsy jacket, even under all this cardboard.  Vic
flashed the light over each layer as he uncovered it, all the way down to the
floor of the roof, which had been kept surprisingly dry by the heap of
dismantled cartons on top of it.

Coyote wasn't here.  Vic searched on all the same, scanning the floor and the
crevices between the remaining pieces of cardboard for any evidence that
Coyote had in fact been here at all.  Vic found what he was looking for in a
corner of the tumbled structure, not far from the roof wall.  The envelope
was crumpled and much the worse for wear, and the paper inside was too.
Still, Vic knew right off that it was Coyote's letter to Katherine and the
Most Needy Cases Fund.  Coyote had been here, all right.  Now he was gone,
God only knew where.  As Vic made his way cautiously back across the rooftop
in the wild winter night, he was saying yet another small prayer and speaking
it aloud this time.

KATHERINE WOKE UP, as always, at quarter to six.  She could feel in every
muscle of her body how much she needed to rest longer.  She'd never been able
to lie around in bed in the morning, except once in a while on Saturday.  She
was fairly sure this wasn't Saturday, so she threw off the covers and sat
up.  She hadn't fully opened her eyes till her fingers touched the satin hem
of the blanket.  Her duvet cover was made of cotton, not satin.  She stared
down at the fabric in her hand by the light of the small lamp on the bedside
table.  Instead of blue flowers on an off-white background, the blanket she
held was a deep-burgundy-colored wool.  She gripped the satin trim for an
instant then let it go.  Where was she?

In an uncomfortable moment of confusion she looked around at a room she'd
never seen before--a tall cherry-wood dresser, the wall behind it papered in
wide vertical stripes of yellow with white bands edged in burgundy-red
between the yellow panels.  A pleasant room--a man's room!  A flat brash on
top of the dresser.  A pair of black boots under the stool next to the
dresser.  The boots brought it all back to her.

Vic.  Vic Maltese.  She was in his house.  She'd run here last night, after.
Memory of the mined painting of Daniel stabbed Katherine's heart with a slash
as sharp as the one that had slit the canvas.  It felt like having that sweet
little boy cut out of her life all over again.  How could they do that?  she
asked herself, just as she had last night.  No answer came this morning
either, only the thought of yet another child.  Sprite Bellaway.  Sprite had
been with her last night.  Sprite was the reason Katherine ran here for
safety and protection.

Otherwise, she would have stood her ground, dared the intruder to come at her
one more time, the way she would have liked to dare Daniel's disease to try
taking her on instead of a frail boy.  But she had to get little Sprite out
of there, so they ran.

Katherine recalled the screams that had woken her the night before.

She had spent a long time with Sprite in an attempt to settle her down.
Finally, the child had fallen asleep again.  Exhausted, Katherine had
stumbled back to Vic's bedroom and the warmth of his double bed.  Vaguely,
:!  she recalled an image of Vic in that bed with her, but she shoved the
thought away.  It must have been a dream.

Katherine stood up.  She had on the same sweater and long skirt she'd worn
all day yesterday.  The skirt was a mass of creases.  She'd have to go home
and change.  Sprite would need a change of clothes, too.  It was a school
day.  Katherine had reoriented herself enough to the waking .  world to be
certain of that.  She headed for the bedroom door.  She and Sprite had never
made it to the apartment on Ten Broeck Street the evening before as Katherine
had a planned.

She'd have to take the little girl to Tooley Pen- ne baker for some clean
clothes.  An image of the chaos of Tooley's ransacked living room flashed
across Katherine mind.  She hoped she'd be able to find what was needed in
that mess.  She'd have to speak to Tooley about finding another place for
Sprite to stay.  Obviously, after the destruction of Daniel's photo and the
note that had been left beside it, Katherine's apartment was no longer safe
for the little girl.

She located Sprite just down the hall in the room past the bathroom.

A low-wattage lamp had been left on there as well, and Sprite was sleeping
peacefully under a patch work quilt with a teddy bear clasped in her arms.
Katherine was sure they hadn't brought the bear here with them.  She eased
the toy from Sprite's grip.  The small, brown animal had definitely seen
years of wear.  One black button eye was missing, and the belly stuffing had
been pressed flat by what Katherine guessed to be lots of hugging.  Suddenly,
she knew this was Vic's bear.  The thought of tall, tough, leather-clad Vic
as a child young and vulnerable enough to cuddle a bear washed over her in a
wave so tender she had to hug the stuffed animal to herself for a moment
before resting it gently on the pillow next to Sprite's tousled head.

"Come on, sweetheart," Katherine said softly.

"Time to get up."

She found their coats and boots in the hallway closet downstairs.

Their scarves, hats and mittens had been draped to dry along the banister.
Vic must have done that.  She'd done almost nothing last night after arriving
here except fall asleep.  She retrieved their outdoor things from the
bathroom and put a hand on Sprite's shoulder to move her into the quiet
hallway.  Vic must be sleeping in some other room Katherine hadn't yet come
upon.  Something made her want to get out of here without waking him up, some
uneasiness she couldn't quite explain--until she saw him.

They had paused in the hallway to don their coats, and there he was.

He'd fallen asleep half sitting, half lying on the couch next to his
Christmas tree, which was still lit up with steadily glowing colored bulbs
and slow, white flashers that flickered off and on across his face.
Katherine remembered that same face very close to hers.  The image brought
with it a flash of feeling so startling she almost dropped Sprite's hand.
Had it not been a dream, as she'd told herself?  Had the kiss really
happened?  Katherine couldn't lie to herself.  The memory of Vic's arms
around her and how much she'd loved having them there was too intense to be a
fantasy.  And, with a tiny pang of guilt, she acknowledged that she had
initiated the kiss.

Had anything more than that happened between them last night?  She couldn't
remember, and she was suddenly confused again, just as she'd been when she
woke up this morning.  This time the feeling frightened her.  She recalled
Sprite's scream, their mad dash to the bedroom, and what it had interrupted.
If the sensation of Vic's kiss came back to her this powerfully, then surely
anything beyond that would be even more indelibly imprinted on her senses.
Still, she couldn't be absolutely positive.  Her clothes had all been on
when she woke up, but they were in total disarray.  Had Vic used the kiss as
an invitation to take things further?  He didn't strike her as the type of
man who would take advantage of a half-conscious woman.  On the other hand,
what did she actually know about what type of man he was?  Katherine was
tempted to dash into his living room, shake him awake and conduct a thorough
interrogation on that subject right here and now.

"Are we going to get breakfast?"

Katherine had almost forgotten the child at her side till she heard Sprite's
voice, still misty with sleep.  She knelt next to Sprite and began buttoning
her coat.

"Yes, Sprite, we're going to get breakfast."

The mention of food made Katherine remember dropping the plastic grocery bag
on the floor of her living room when she first spotted Daniel's ravaged
portrait.  She could imagine the mess of melted ice cream there still.  There
was so much mess around her to clean up now, and melted iced cream was the
least of it.

As she adjusted Sprite's scarf more closely around her face, Katherine
sighed.  She'd figure out something.  She always had, except for Daniel.  She
hadn't been able to figure out a way to make things right for Daniel.  She
was determined to do better by this child next to her now.  Katherine hugged
Sprite as tenderly as she'd hugged the teddy bear upstairs.  That brought Vic
back to mind, and Katherine's questions about what might have happened last
night.  Just because a guy had a teddy bear in his house, that didn't mean he
couldn't be a brute when the opportunity arose.  She had no doubt how much
she must have looked like an opportunity last night.  Had he given her
anything to drink?  Could she have been dragged as well as sleepy?

That kind of thing happened these days.

Katherine helped Sprite with her mittens, knowing she wasn't helping herself
by letting her imagination run away with her.

She couldn't help it.  She was out of her depth here, far away from the safe,
familiar, passionless territory she'd inhabited with Daniel's father.  She
wasn't accustomed to running off to men's houses in the middle of the night,
much less to sleeping there.  In fact, running off was what she needed to do
right now.  She gripped Sprite's hand and was about to make a beeline for the
door.  She glanced one last time at Vic on the couch to be sure he was still
asleep and she would actually be making a clean escape.

That was when she noticed the crumpled sheet of paper on the floor.

It lay near the curled fingers of Vic's hand where his arm hung off the couch
onto the richly patterned carpet.  A moment ago, her eyes hadn't yet adjusted
themselves to the dim light from the hall sconces and the flickering bulbs on
the tree.  She hadn't seen the paper then, or felt the probably nonsensical
urge to know what it was.  Nothing made sense about this morning, anyway.

"Wait here a minute, Sprite," Katherine whispered.  She really didn't want to
wake Vic up now.  I'll be right back.  "

She tiptoed carefully across the carpet to just within reach of the piece of
paper.  She bent down slowly, without a sound, and picked it up, all the time
expecting Vic's eyes to pop open and catch her sneaking around his living
room.  Fortunately, he kept right on sleeping, his breathing soft and even
and unnervingly near as Katherine squinted to examine the paper in her hand.
The signature at the bottom of the page had been printed out larger and more
boldly than the rest.  Coyote Bellaway.

Katherine took Coyote's letter with her as she tiptoed out of Vic Maltese's
house with Sprite at her side.

Chapter Twelve "Dressing down and it isn't even Friday?"

Megan looked Katherine over with a wide smile.  "Right," Katherine said.

Down was certainly the word to describe this morning for Katherine.

She didn't know whether she was angry or depressed.  She did know she was
nearly miserable.  She couldn't keep Vic Maltese and their kiss--and whatever
else they might or might not have shared--from her thoughts.

"I'd like to think this new look means you're lightening up on that serious
side of yours."

Megan was talking about the jeans and dark green chenille turtleneck sweater
Katherine had on with her ragged-soled hiking boots.

"I was in a hurry this morning.  This was the fastest thing I could find to
put on."

Katherine was speaking the truth about the hurrying.  Rushing Sprite to
Tooley's for fresh clothes, making alternate arrangements for Sprite for that
evening, then racing to the school in time for the first bell had been a
challenge and a half.  Still, that wasn't the whole reason Katherine didn't
bother putting together her usual professional look for work today.  She
simply hadn't cared enough to make the effort.

"Did you oversleep?"

Katherine saw that Megan was watching her carefully.  "Not exactly."

"Don't mind me.  I'm only prying."

Megan sat down in the chair opposite Katherine's desk.  "Don't mind me.  I'm
only clamming up."

Katherine was surprised at herself for managing even that much wit.

She definitely didn't feel either amused or amusing right now.

"Listen, Katherine."  Megan leaned forward and rested her elbows on the
desktop.  The customary twinkle in her brown eyes had turned almost solemn.

"I know you've been through a lot this past year, and the holidays don't make
that any easier.  Maybe you ought to try to talk about what you're feeling."

"Are you trying to say I need a therapist?"

Megan' s face showed no reaction to the sharpness of that question.

"I'm trying to say you might need a friend," she said.  Katherine sighed.

"I'm sorry.  I must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,
and I seem to be taking it out on you."

"Maybe you might try getting up on the right, or even the wrong side, of a
different bed for a change."

Katherine nearly smiled.  Megan teased her about her solitary life-style
sometimes.  It was a continuing theme of their friendly banter.

"How do you know I didn't?"  was not Katherine's usual answer.

Megan drew back into her chair again and stared at her.  "Maybe I should keep
on prying, after all."

Katherine shrugged.

"It's not that interesting really."  She hoped that was true.

"Let me be the judge."

Katherine wanted to talk to somebody.  She just wasn't sure what she would
say.

"Maybe later," she said.

"Right now I'd like you to take a look at this."

She opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out' Coyote Bellaway's
rumpled, smeared letter to the Most Needy Cases Fund.  She handed it across
the desk to Megan.

"This was written by the boy we found sleeping in the mat room yesterday.
Now he's missing," Katherine said.  Megan looked the battered letter over,
front and back.

"I hope he hasn't been going through whatever happened to this piece of
paper," she said.

"I think he could be in some serious trouble.  This letter is the only clue
we have to his possible whereabouts."

"Where did you get this, anyway?  Weren't you looking for it yesterday after
Coyote took off?"

Katherine hesitated.  She didn't actually know the details of how the letter
had resurfaced.  She'd have to talk to Vic to find that out, and she wasn't
ready to do that just yet.  "I got it from Vic Maltese" was all she said.
"When did he give it to you?"

"This morning."

If Megan had taken that in as ammunition for her natural tendency toward
matchmaking, she didn't let it show.  She was dealing with the case of a
little boy in trouble now.  Megan always turned very focused, all teasing and
jokes set aside, when a serious situation like this one came up.

The door behind Megan opened and Vic stepped through it.  The sight of him
took her so much by surprise that her knees felt weak, and she was grateful
that she was sitting in her office chair.  That kept her from making a fool
of herself, and the wide desk before her helped her to maintain a
professional attitude.

"I was just showing this to Megan," she said, gesturing to Coyote's letter.

"I'm hoping there's a clue in there somewhere."  She turned to Megan.

"Do you see anything?"

"Well, he's obviously a bright boy.  He's pretty articulate for--how old does
he say he is?"  She scanned the page, then looked from Vic to Katherine, who
could see her friend's sharp, brown eyes taking in everything.  Megan
wouldn't be likely to miss the atmosphere of tension that had invaded the
tiny office all of a sudden.

"Eleven," Vic said.

Katherine kept her gaze on Megan to avoid looking into his eyes.

"He claims to be eleven, but I'm not sure we can trust the details of what he
says."

"Why do you think that?"

"He's straining to be the perfect candidate for fund money in there.

I can almost feel him trying as hard as he can to say just the right thing.  "

"Don't all the applicants do that?"  Vic asked.

She was forced to drag her gaze to his.

"Not quite as smoothly as Coyote does it."

"Hmm," Megan said.

"Now that I read this through again, I see what you mean.  So, we're dealing
with a boy with what we call in my profession, well-developed manipulative
skills."

"Exactly."

That meant he'd be harder to second-guess and harder to find before he got
into deeper trouble, or before someone made that trouble for him.  She
thought about Lacey Harbison and what she was more certain than ever could
have been a thinly veiled maneuver to get at the Bellaway children She was
also thinking about whoever had been in her apartment last night and the
sinister tone of the note they left there.  She shuddered.

"We have to figure out where Coyote might be," she said, feeling even more
strongly how critical that was.  "He's out in the street on his own, and
there was a blizzard last night."

"I don't know where he was last night, but I found where he'd been holing
up," Vic said.  He described Coyote's rooftop hideaway.

Megan tapped the letter in her hand.

"This tells us he has good survival instincts.  He's smart enough to know he
has to plan a strategy in order to get what he needs.  That's a positive.  I
think we may be safe in assuming that this boy didn't sleep in a drift
somewhere," Megan said.

"My guess is that he worked out something more practical than that."

"But we have no way of knowing what he worked out or where he is."

Katherine didn't even try to hide her frustration.

"He may be smooth and good at saying the right thing, but he's still a kid,"
Megan said.

"He may have left some tracks here to follow, after all.  We just have to get
close enough to find them."

Katherine sighed again.  That sounded like wishful thinking.

"Look at this," Megan said, her red curls bouncing as she sprang forward in
her chair again, more enthusiastically this time, and stabbed her finger at
the paper.

"It could be a clue."

"What is it?"  Vic asked.

"The and my little sister, Sprite, are real close," " Megan read.  " "I do my
best to take good care of her.  I keep an eye on her all the time."

 "

" What clue do you get from that?    "

Vic sounded skeptical, and Katherine had to admit she felt the same.

"He probably wrote that partly to show what a great kid he is so we'd think
he deserved the grant money.  But," Megan added,

"I think he could be telling us the truth about himself, too."

"What truth is that?"

Katherine didn't quite grasp what Megan was getting at

"I think he may still be watching his younger sister.  If he can manage it,
anyway.  Where is she now?"

"At Arbor Hill School.  I dropped her off there myself this morning."

"I'm going to call Stefan Piatka and tell him to be on the alert about this.
Coyote may come lurking around there to make sure Sprite's all right."  Megan
got up from the chair.

"I'll make a couple of photocopies of this letter, too.  I assume we're going
to give one to the police."

"We're keeping the police out of this for the time being," Vic said.

"You haven't notified the authorities that this boy is missing?"

"The children's guardian has asked us to handle this privately for now," Vic
said.

"There are special circumstances."  ' He was speaking to Megan but staring at
Katherine as he said that.

Megan continued to watch them both with obvious curiosity.

"What circumstances?"  she asked.

"Why don't you go make those copies, Megan," Katherine cut in.

"And call Stefan Piatka.  Mr. Maltese and I need to talk privately for a
moment."

"Yes, we do," Vic said in a tone that made Katherine's knees threaten to
buckle again.

She told herself she had to stay strong and resolved.

Megan, meanwhile, glanced from Katherine to Vic once more, then walked out
the door.  She'd be back, of course, with lots more questions to ask.
Katherine was sure of that.

"I SEE YOU were the one who took Coyote's letter from my place this morning,"
Vic said.

All Vic had found when he finally came to earlier in his living room was the
envelope crushed underneath him where he'd collapsed on the couch in the
middle of the night.

"I woke up and you were gone.  I had no idea what might have happened to you,
or to Sprite either.  Whoever got into your apartment yesterday could have
come after you again at my house."

"Well, they didn't."

She sounded almost belligerent, probably because he was putting her on the
defensive, but he didn't care.  She'd given him a scare, and he wanted her to
know that.

"I went over to your place, and nobody was there either.  I stopped by
Tooley's.  She was the one who told me you and Sprite were okay."  He looked
steadily at her and tried to keep his voice just as steady.

"You could at least have left me a note."

"I probably should have done that."

She sounded less belligerent and more apologetic.  She was looking down at
the desk, so he couldn't see her face to read her expression.

Still, he wasn't quite ready to let her off the hook.

"After I'd gone out looking for Coyote, I came back to my place and fell
asleep.  I'd been on my way upstairs to check on you, but I sat down on the
couch and" -- Katherine's head shot up.

"Check on me?"  Her eyes were smoky with anger.

"Was that all you were going to do when you came upstairs?"

Vic could feel the heat of her indignation steaming across the desk at him.
He would never have guessed that someone who was usually so cool and reserved
could also be this angry.

"I don't know what you mean," he said.

"I mean that you shouldn't have been on your way up there at all.  I came to
your house last night because I thought Sprite might be in danger, not
because I wanted you wandering in and out of my bedroom all night."

That had Vic more confused than ever.  What the hell was going on here?  He
didn't like being yelled at like this, especially when he didn't understand
the reason for it.

"

" First of all, that s my bedroom you were in," he began.

"Then you should have had me sleep on the couch.  Either way, I was
practically unconscious, and you had no right to take liberties."

Vic stared at her for an instant while what she'd said sank in.  When it did,
his temper raged at least as hot as hers appeared to be.

"Take liberties?"  he demanded.

"What are you talking about

"Lower your voice," she said.

Her own volume was suddenly under control.  He hated it when a woman turned
the tables on a guy so fast his head felt like it was spinning off.  He
especially hated that she was right about not shouting here at the center,
where anybody who happened to be passing by might hear.

"What are you talking about  he repeated in a quieter voice.  The effort
made him seethe inside.  He told himself he had to calm down.

"What's this bull about taking liberties?"

"I remember" -- she hesitated, looking flustered all of a sudden "--things.
I just don't remember how far it went between us."

Vic stared into her blue-gray eyes.  He could hardly believe what he was
heating.  He could feel the leash he tried to keep on his temper running out
to its end.

"You think I..."  He searched for less corny words but couldn't think of any,
so he spluttered out the corny ones.

"You think I took advantage of you?"

"Did you?"

At the moment, he couldn't remember when or why he'd seen softness and warmth
in her eyes.  They were as cold and hard as flint now.  Vic heaved a sigh so
explosive he half expected the file folders to fly off her desk in the blast.
He told himself to turn and march out of there without favoring her insult
with the answer it didn't deserve, but he was too angry to listen to what was
probably very good advice.

"Let me tell you something, lady.  You asked me for that kiss--not that I
wasn't happy to oblige.  I don't know what you've dreamed up about what
supposedly happened between you and me in my bedroom after that, but I'll
tell you something else, and you can take it to the bank."  He put his hands
flat on her desk, crush ing a couple of those file folders he'd been
thinking about a moment ago.  He leaned forward, looking straight into her
face.

"You've got me a thousand percent wrong."

He turned abruptly and stormed out of Katherine's office.  Too bad having the
last word didn't feel anywhere near as satisfying as he'd hoped it would.

KATHERINE WAS STILL stating at the door when Megan appeared on the other side
of it.  Vic hadn't actually slammed the door behind him, but he hadn't
exactly shut it gently, either.  Besides, they'd both been talking loudly in
here before that, and it was well past midmorning so the full center staff
would be on board.  Katherine could guess what the gossip around the coffee
machine would be about for the rest of the day.  Thank heaven the kids were
in school.  She wouldn't have wanted them to hear her and Vic carrying on
like a couple of hotheads instead of two professionals who should know
better.  She motioned for Megan to come in.

"Let the interrogation begin," Katherine said with what she wished sounded
more like good humor.  She tried to forget the niggling sense of guilt she
felt about Vic.  Had she completely misjudged him?

Megan flopped down into the chair in front of Katherine's desk.

"Why do you think I would want to interrogate you?"  she asked.

"Because that's what you head-shrinkers do."

"I'm not a psychiatrist.  I'm a psychologist.  Nor am I a member of a remote
Amazonian tribe that specializes in skulls.  Therefore, I don't think the
head-shrinker label really fits."

Katherine sighed.

"Don't mind me.  I'm a little off my stride this morning."

"Good.  You're properly humbled.  Now the interrogation can begin."

Katherine laughed.

"So, did you get what you wanted out of him?"  Megan asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You had to be pushing his buttons like mad to inspire that kind of reaction,
even out of Mr. Maltese.  When we push somebody's buttons it's usually
because we're looking for something in particular."

"Good old Megan.  Straight for the jugular."

Megan didn't answer.

Katherine sighed again.

"I suppose there's not going to be any more work done by either of us till I
satisfy your not entirely professional curiosity."

"You could be right about that."

Katherine settled back in her desk chair.  Megan was doing some
button-pushing herself right now, and Katherine knew it.  She also knew she
needed to talk about the confusing things that were going on in her life.

"I had to find out something from Vic about last night," she said.

"Does this have anything to do with your earlier remark about getting up on
the wrong side of the bed?"

Katherine nodded.  Megan had a therapist's memory.  She almost never forgot
what was said to her.

"Did he tell you what you had to know?"  she asked.  Katherine thought about
that for a moment.  "Yes, I suppose he did," she said.  "Was it what you
wanted to hear?"

Katherine thought again.  Unbelievably, she felt both happy and upset about
her confrontation with Vic.  Happy, because he had not taken advantage of
her.  Upset, because that fact made her wonder whether he found himself at
all attracted to her.  She decided to give Megan an honest answer instead of
a cautious, non-revealing one.

"Was it what I wanted to hear?"  she repeated.

"Yes and no."

"Ah, ambivalence," Megan said with a twinkle in her eye.

"One of my personal favorite emotions."

"Not one of mine."

"Sometimes life is more interesting when one's ducks aren't entirely in a
row."

Katherine knew that sounded right.  She wasn't so sure it felt right, at
least not for her.  She'd always preferred to keep her ducks, and her life,
pretty much in line.

"I'll have to think about that," she said.

"For now, let's change the subject."

"Balmy weather we're having," Megan quipped with a glance toward the
frost-edged window.

The sun might be out, but the temperatures were still frigid enough to keep
frost from melting.

"Did you call Stefan Piatka about keeping an eye out for Coyote in case he
should show up to check on Sprite?"  Katherine asked.

"Not yet.  I'll get on that right now."  Megan was halfway out of the chair
when she plopped back down again.

"I have an idea."

"What could that be?"

Katherine wasn't sure she was up to one of Megan's brainstorms right now.

"Why don't we try to smoke Coyote out from wherever he' s hiding?"

"How do we manage that?"

"Give him what he's after, and see if he comes to get it."

Megan's voice had lost its mischievous tone.  Whatever she had in mind, she
was totally serious aboutJt.

"What are you suggesting?"  Katherine asked, though she was beginning to
recognize the track Megan was on.

"The grant.  Give him a Most Needy Cases Fund grant.  Announce it in the
paper and say he has to come and collect it.  Then, all we have to do is wait
and see if he does."  Katherine didn't say anything.  She was thinking.

"The Bellaway children certainly fit the requirements for the program," Megan
went on.

"Their situation is pretty desperate."

"That's true," Katherine said slowly.

"And, there's that reporter over at the Chronicle.  What's her name?"

"Mariette Dugan."

Katherine's mind was on the same track as Megan's now.

"Right.  Mariette Dugan," Megan said.

"She'd be happy to drag this series out one more day, especially if there's a
sob-sister angle to it.  I'm sure we could come up with one of those.  A real
three-hanky story."

Katherine didn't answer.  She was already reaching for the phone.

Chapter Thirteen Vic was more angry with himself than he was with Katherine.
He should have known better than to get tied up with her from the start.
He'd told himself he was going to steer clear of her.  He should have
listened to that advice.  They were from opposite ends of the universe.
She'd made it crystal clear she saw that, too.  After what had happened in
her office this morning, there was no longer a doubt in his mind on the
subject of how she felt about him.  As far as she was concerned, Vic Maltese
was some kind of scum, a lowlife who would put moves on a woman when she was
passed out and even do it in his own house, where she'd gone to stay safe.

Vic could feel the bitterness of his thoughts like a harsh echo inside his
head.  He didn't like the feeling, especially because he understood all too
well where the bitterness came from.  He was no dummy, after all.  Katherine
Fairchild might have him pegged as a bottom-feeder, but-- Vic chopped that
thought off at the knees.  He was doing it again, popping off into the ozone
as if somebody had pushed his hot button.

That was just what Katherine had done, and he knew it.  She'd pushed his hot
button, the one he'd been carrying around since he was fifteen years old, when
he'd found out who he really was, what he'd really come from.  Ever since,
down deep inside he'd known that at least part of him was just what
Katherine's accusation this morning made him out to be.  Part of him was
something a straight-arrow person like Katherine ought to scrape right off
her shoe.

That was his hot button, no doubt about it.  He hadn't spent all those hours
in staff consultation meetings with psychologists for nothing.

The Bellaway boy hadn't come up in any of those discussions because, till
now, he'd never appeared to have any special problems.  Just being poor
wasn't special all by itself around here.  Being poor was the usual thing.
Plenty of other kids had problems though, and listening to what the
professionals had to say had taught Vic probably as much as a degree at the
university could have done.

Everything came out of the family.  What happened to a kid growing up had an
effect on all the years of his life from then on.

So, he'd worked on himself and his temper.  He'd been proud of his progress,
too.  Too bad he'd let that temper get the best of him in Katherine's office
this morning.  He understood why, too.  He'd let himself care too much what
she thought about him.

Vic had kept himself very busy since this morning, and he had also kept
himself away from Katherine's end of the building.  He'd even gone out
through the rear fire exit off the gym to grab some lunch at the diner
instead of making himself something in the center's kitchen like he usually
did.  Too much chance of running into Katherine there.

Unfortunately, he couldn't reenter the building through the fire exit, as it
automatically locked behind him.

He hadn't seen Katherine on his return, but he did spot Megan as he was
hustling toward his office.  She had a look on her face as if she wanted to
talk about something.  He had the definite feeling that something might be
Katherine.

She and Megan were pretty close friends.  His guess was that Megan had
matchmaking, or maybe match-mending, on her mind.

Vic, on the other hand, could hardly have been less in the mood to be either
matched or mended right then.  He'd headed, like a hunted man searching for
refuge, straight to his office and locked the door behind him.  He'd spent
the rest of the time since then catching up on the part of his job he enjoyed
the least--paperwork.  Eventually, he'd had about all he could take of
shuffling reports and filling out insurance forms.  Still, the kids wouldn't
be out of school and pouring in here for another hour or so.  He suddenly
found himself feeling so restless he had to get out of his office, whether he
ran into Katherine or Megan or not.

Vic was on his way down the hall to the vending machine when he heard a
woman's voice calling his name.  He considered the possibility of making
a run
for it, but that was too undignified.  He blew out a heavy sigh as he stopped
in his tracks and steeled himself for whatever would come next.  Mariette
Dugan, that pesky reporter from the Chronicle, was in his face almost the
seconal he turned around.

He took a step backward, but he'd seen enough of her before this afternoon
not to be surprised.  She was the in-your-face type.

"So, what's the story on this kid you guys want me to headline?"  she asked.

She was like that, too.  She didn't lead into a thing.  She just blasted it
right at you without a greeting in front of it.  "What kid would that be?"

"This kid with the sister and a mother in the hospital.  What's his name?"

Mariette thumbed through the small pad she'd pulled out of the pocket of her
down coat.  He could feel a sneaking suspicion coming on that he wasn't at
all happy with the subject she had on her nosey reporter's mind.

"Here it is," she said.

"Coyote Bellaway, and his sister's name is Sprite.  Didn't they tell you
about this?  Giving this kid one of your Most Needy Cases Grants, then
making a big deal out of it with a spotlight article in the paper and all?
Why him, anyway?"

Vic didn't like what he was hearing, but the last thing he should do was let
Ms. Dugan know that.  She was a reporter, and she'd like nothing better than
to catch a whiff of conflict.  If that happened, she'd be back over at the
Chronicle before you could say Lois Lane, cranking out a story about all
kinds of controversy over here at the center.  Some folks might think any
publicity was good publicity, but Vic definitely wasn't one of those folks.

If there was going to be public attention focused on the center, he wanted it
to be all about what they did here and how much it meant to the community.
Stories of squabbles or even features about individual personalities weren't
his idea of what needed to be said about this place.  He and a lot of other
people put their heart and soul into it every day.  All the same, he knew
he'd better not get all heated up over protecting it, at least not so this
press person with her notepad could see it.  She was staring at him a little
too closely for comfort already.

"Coyote and Sprite are very deserving of one of our grants," he said.

"More deserving than any of the other people you're giving the money to?"

"No, not more deserving.  Just appropriate to benefit from the program."

A knot of tension made Vic's teeth grind together.  In a second or two, his
cheek would start twitching.  He had to get away from her before she noticed
he was ready to explode.  She wasn't the one he wanted to pop off at, anyway.
Whoever had this harebrained idea about putting the Bel-la way kids in the
paper, that was the one Vic had the itch to get his hfinds on.

"Who told you about Coyote and Sprite?"  he asked, trying to sound casual.
"That new gal you've got here.  The one from Chicago."

"Katherine Fairchild?"

"Right.  I did an interview with her a week or so ago.  She called up the
office this morning, with this thing about wanting me to do a feature on these
two kids.  I've got a small piece going in tonight's edition.  I'm over here
now to see if there's enough to it to do a follow-up.  Fairchild seems to
think there is.  What do you think?"

Mariette Dugan had her pen poised over her pad.  She was looking at Vic so
hard she almost could have bored a hole through his head with her eyes.  He
had to give her some kind of answer and stay cool about it.  The trouble was
that she'd asked him what he thought about putting the Bellaway kids in the
paper.  What he really thought was that this was the most stupid idea he'd
heard in he didn't know how long.  Coyote was trying to lie low right now,
and that was the best thing for him to do.  If Vic didn't agree with that and
if he wasn't sure Coyote knew how to take care of himself out there and keep
out of sight, Vic would have called the cops into it by now himself, much as
he didn't like cops.  A low profile was what Coyote needed now, not
headlines.  How could Katherine not know that?  Meanwhile, Dugan was still
stating.

"I think that any publicity that helps the Most Needy Cases Program is good,"
Vic said, picking his words like he was tiptoeing through a minefield.

"There are lots of families to write an article on if that's what you want to
do."

"Fairchild thinks these Bellaway kids are special.  Do you agree with her?"

"All the kids who come here to the center are special."  Vic knew that wasn't
what she wanted to hear and that she wasn't likely to let it go at that.  He
turned away from her all the same and started walking down the hall again
toward the administrative area of the building.

"Why don't we go over to Fairchild's office and talk about this some more,"
Dugan was saying as she hurried to keep up with him.

"I'd like to hear that cfialogue between you two."

I bet you would, Vic thought.

"I need an angle for the story if I'm going to do a focus piece like this,"
she went on.

"The two of you kicking this back and forth could be the hook I'm looking
for."

That's not all I'd like to kick back and forth, was what popped into Vic's
head.

I He didn't say anything and he didn't look down at Dugan, though he could
feel her still scurrying along next to him.  He didn't dare look at her.  What
felt like a fireball of anger was building up inside him the way a head of
steam does in a boiler.  He had to get out of this situation or there was
going to be the devil to pay.  He was trying to make himself scarce, but the
reporter wouldn't stop dogging him.

"This is Katherine Fairchild's department," he managed to say more calmly
than he would have thought himself capable of at the moment.

"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to horn in."

"That's kind of a new tack for you, isn't it?"  Dugan asked.

"Every other time I've talked to you, I could hardly write fast enough to get
all your opinions down on paper."

That was true, all right.  He'd spent time shooting his mouth off.

Now, that fact was back here to haunt him.  He could hear the curiosity in
Dugan's voice.  She'd caught a whiff of something going on.  He had to get
her off the trail somehow.

He was racking his brain to figure out how to do that when Megan Moran dashed
out of the main reception office and nearly knocked him down.  Vic grabbed
her by the shoulders to keep her from toppling over him, and maybe also to
give himself something to do till he came up with an answer for Dugan.

"You'll never guess in a million years what's happened," Megan gashed.

"Or maybe I should say half a million."

She giggled then.  Her brown eyes were uncommonly bright, and her red curls
corkscrewed up from her head as if she'd been running her fingers through
them over and over again.

"What's this all about?"  Dugan asked as she flipped her notebook to a fresh
page.

"Yeah, Megan.  What's going on?"

Vic let go of Megan's shoulders even though he felt like hugging her for
getting Dugan off his back, at least for now.

"I guess this is for publication," Megan said.

"There hasn't been any official word on that yet, but I can't see that it
would do anything but good for the center.  I'll tell you, but we'll have to
get an okay from the director before you can print it.  Otherwise, I can't
tell you."

"Okay, okay," Dugan said.

"I'll wait for authorization before I take it to press, if it's even a story,
that is."

"It's a story all right," Megan said.  She was gushing again.

"The biggest one that's ever happened around here."

"What gives?"  Vic asked.

"What gives is absolutely right, or maybe 'what's been given," would be more
to the point," Megan said.

"Who's giving it's another story.

We don't know that yet.  Maybe we never will.  "

She had to be really excited.  Megan usually made more sense than this.

"What are you talking about  Vic asked.

She turned the full beam of her smile on him.

"I'm talking about the answer to all of our holiday prayers.  I'm talking about
being able to help out just about everybody who wrote in to the Most Needy
Cases Fund."

"How're we going to manage that?"

He knew that the money they had for grants was nowhere near enough to do what
Megan was saying.  Meanwhile, Mariette Dugan was scribbling like mad on her
notepad.

"We're going to manage that," Megan said, "because some wonderfully generous
soul has donated half a million dollars to make it happen."

Vic was glad Dugan hadn't brought a photographer along.  One of the last
things Vic Maltese wanted to see in this world was a picture of himself on
the front page of the Chronicle with his mouth hanging open.

Chapter Fourteen Katherine couldn't understand what had Megan so excited.
She had rushed into the office, grabbed her by the arms and pulled her out
from behind the desk.

"What are you doing?"  Katherine asked.

She was already feeling as tired as if it were nine o'clock at night rather
than four in the afternoon.  A dose of Megan's exuberance might be more than
she could handle just now.

"I'm telling you that our wishes have come true, our prayers have been
answered," Megan gushed.

"Now, there's only one thing left to do.  We have to jump up and down."

Megan began doing precisely that, springing straight up from the gray tile
floor in front of the desk.  Katherine made an awkward half hop and thumped
back down in response to being dragged along by Megan.

But she resisted the next leap, anchoring both of them to the ground.

"Have you taken complete leave of your senses?"  she asked.

"What are you jumping about

"Didn't they call you from the office?  They were supposed to give you the
message.  I can't believe you're the only one who doesn't know.

You of all people should have been told before anybody else.  "

Megan was gushing again, even more effervescently, and Katherine was
beginning to experience some excitement of her own despite the downbeat tone
of the day so far.  "Tell me what's happening," she said.

"Half a million bucks, that's what's happening," Megan chirped.

"Half a million smackeroos.  Somebody's donated half a million to your
project.  Somebody's giving the center a half a million dollars to use for
holiday grants."

"I don't believe it," Katherine said.  That was the truth, but the wonder of
Megan's words was beginning to dawn.  "Believe it.  I saw the bank-draft
check myself."

 "For a half million dollars?"

Megan nodded vigorously.

"A half million dollars."

"Five hundred thousand?"  Katherine was so dazed she'd barely been able to
make that calculation.

"The same."

Katherine was about to repeat that she didn't believe it when another
question occurred to her.

"Who's the contributor?"

Megan shook her head.

"Nobody has a clue.  The donation was anonymous."

"Somebody gave us that much money and doesn't want credit for it?"

This was becoming more fantastic by the second.

"And you're sure it's real?  This couldn't be some kind of joke?"  Katherine
heard how bizarre that possibility sounded, too, but she'd witnessed some
bizarre things lately.

"They already called the bank from the office.  The check is real and
negotiable.  All we have to do is deposit it in the Most Needy Cases Fund
account and we can start writing grant awards against it immediately."

Katherine shook her head slowly.

"This is a miracle," she said, even though her mind hadn't yet entirely come
to understand that what Megan was saying was true.

"We'll call him the Secret Santa," a new voice chimed in from the doorway to
Katherine's office.

She looked up to see Mariette Dugan, holding the notepad she carded around
with her so perpetually it might have been growing out of the ends of her
fingers.  She looked very pleased.

"The guy who sent the check," she was saying in response to what Katherine
had no doubt was the dazed expression on her face.

"I'm going to call him Secret Santa.  For the article I'm writing."

"Wait a minute.  I'm not sure we want this in the paper just yet,"

Katherine said.  She was trying to think what the best approach would be, but
her thoughts were still moving at bewildered post-shock speed.

"Sorry about that, honey," Mariette said.

"You can't sit on this one.

It's front-page stuff, and I've got the exclusive.  " ' She looked around at
the small crowd gathered outside the office door, as if spying out any other
reporters who might have shown up in the past few minutes.  Katherine
followed that gaze.  Vic was standing at the back of the gathering and a couple
of feet away from it.

Unlike the rest of the ecstatic crowd, Vic looked anything but elated.  In
fact, she couldn't imagine him looking more displeased.

Before she had time to form an opinion about why he might be playing the
killjoy at such a moment, Megan tightened her grip on Katherine's arms again.

"As I said, there's only one thing to do," Megan chirped in a happy singsong.

Katherine tore her gaze away from Vic's face.

"You're absolutely right," she said.

"Only one thing left to do."  "Jump up and down,"

she and Megan chimed together.  They resumed their leaps into the air.

The crowd at the doorway followed suit almost instantly, jumping up and down
and hugging one another to the accompaniment of such glee as only a pealing
chorus of holiday bells might have matched for merriment.

Only Vic Maltese did not join in.

VIc HAD BEEN what his mother used to call "stewing in his own juice" ever
since this afternoon.  He winced at the thought of his mother now.  She was
the only thing that' ever bothered him much about having walked away from his
family and his past.

She used to make a big deal out of Christmas when he was a kid back home.
He'd put serious money on a bet that she still did that.  She was probably
over there in that big tomb of a house right now, engineer ing a yuletide
extravaganza with mountains of food and presents and the place decorated
beautifully as always.

Vic knew that, however many times he might do his bah-humbug number on the
outside, in his heart he missed his mother' s version of the holiday season.
The truth was, back in those days, he'd loved every bit of it.  He still
remembered, sharp as yesterday, the smell of pine boughs and baking.  Most of
all, he missed his mother.  He'd thrown out the baby with the bathwater, as
they say, tossed out the best part of his life in order to get rid of the
worst, and she was the best part.

Even so, that wasn't what bothered him most about the damned holidays.  He
knew how sad it must make her not to have him around anymore, and that
sadness would be sadder still at Christmas.  No length of time would dull the
pain of this particular loss for her.

She was that kind of mother, and he would feel guilty forever because his
decision hurt her.

A second truth was that Vic also thought about his mother when his present
life was giving him a hard time for one reason or another.  He could have
used her advice in times like those.  He could use her advice tonight.
She'd know how to untangle this mess real fast.  She'd see straight through
to the heart of the situation, no matter how messed up and confusing things
appeared on the surface.  She wouldn't walk away from her emotions, either,
the way he had a talent for doing.  He could almost hear her telling him not
to do that-now.  This was the down side of advice.  As many times as not, it
turned out to be exactly what he didn't feel like being told.

He had managed to avoid listening to his mother's imagined words, right up
till the end of this long workday.  Even after that, he almost convinced
himself the only thing he cared about was getting to the diner to pick up a
burger for the supper he wasn't really interested in eating, much less
cooking.  There was a pot of pasta sauce in his refrigerator, but even
thinking about that reminded him of last night.  Reminders of last night made
his mother's voice echo louder than ever, letting him know that he had to
face up to what was happening inside him.  He made it all the way to the
diner parking lot before he gave in and turned around with a spin of wheels
that fish tailed the Trans Am dangerously close to a telephone pole.

It was a safe guess that Katherine would still be in her office.  She worked
late most nights.  He pulled into the center's parking lot and spotted the
light from her window.  He angled his car in next to her four-wheeler and
killed the engine.  Wind buffeted the car windows in the silence that
followed.  On his way here, he'd seen shoppers hurrying along the streets,
juggling packages.  Three days till Christmas.  He wished he didn't want so
much for that to mean more to him than it did.  Instead, he felt as desolate
right now as the film of dry snow skittering along the asphalt pavement.
There might be lots of holiday activity not very far away, but this place was
deserted.

Vic registered the significance of that.  Katherine was alone here.

She might have worked late at her office many other nights, but this night
felt different to him, more dangerous.  He'd been experiencing an annoying
itch of his instincts ever since that anonymous donation had come in that
afternoon.  Something about it didn't set right with him.

Vic knew he was the suspicious type.  He had to keep that from coloring the
way he saw things until he'd come up with strong proof that his suspicions
could be real.  He had no such proof now.  Still, he couldn't help
wondering about a possible connection between what was going on with Coyote
and this out-of-the-blue answer to everybody's prayers for the holiday grant
program, the same program Coyote was applying for when this whole mess got
started.  Sure, there were folks who got so turned on with holiday spirit now
and then that they'd fork over half a mil to help out other folks.  What
bothered Vic was that this particular burst of goodwill happened to occur at
the same time Coyote was missing and maybe on the run from a bad guy in a
black car.  This guy, and whatever cronies he might have, were obviously hot
to track Coyote down.

Besides Coyote himself, there was another common link to both
situations--Katherine.  That thought sent Vic running across the parking lot
toward the door 'into the center.

He fumbled for his key to the night lock on the gate, then took a maddeningly
long time finding the keyhole in the shadows from the overhanging roof of the
one-story building.  Once he was inside, the silence of the corridors
bothered him even more than the eerie howling of the wind outside had done.
He raced down the hallway toward Katherine's office and skidded on snow-damp
boot soles around the corner that led to her door.  Though the lights were
on, her office was empty.  Where was she?

Vic listened.  The building continued to be as silent as the grave, and he
wished that comparison hadn't come to mind.  He considered calling out her
name, then decided against it.  If she was in trouble, he might be of more
help to her with the element of surprise on his side.  He was about to return
to the main hallway and check the rooms on either side of it when he heard
footsteps at what sounded like the opposite end of the long corridor he'd
been about to enter.  Whoever belonged to those feet was definitely in a big
hurry, and headed in Vic's direction.  He backed up and flattened himself
against the wall on the far side of Katherine's doorway from the hall
corridor.  The shadows were deeper here, so he might not be seen right off.
That was about the only advantage he'd have.  His gun was back in the secret
compartment of the lamp stand at home.  He' wished he had the weapon on him
now.

Maybe he could pretend he did.  Vic reached into his jacket and pulled out
the equipment-locker key, which he'd stuck in his pocket this afternoon on
his way out the rear door of the gym for lunch.

Afterward, he'd been waylaid by Mariette Dugan.  Otherwise, he would have
gone back to his office to hang this up, the way he usually did, by the
oblong of wood attached to the key That piece of wood was what he had in mind
at the moment and the possible instant of shock and surprise he might be able
to create with it.  He held the wood oblong out in front of him but not far
enough to extend beyond the shadows from the corner .

"Stop, or I'll shoot," he shouted in his most commanding voice as the
footsteps reached the opening into the corridor directly across from him.

"Vic, it's me."

He recognized Katherine's voice.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot me," she said, peeking around the
corner from the hallway.

"Do you think you could manage that?"

Vic felt like all kinds of a fool as he dropped his hand to his side.

"Sorry," he said.

"I thought you might be an intruder."

"You have a habit of meeting me with a gun in your hand."

"Except that it's not really a gun this time."

He walked out of the shadows and held out the block of wood with the key
hanging from it where she could see them.  Katherine had emerged from the
corridor with obvious caution.  She stared at the piece of wood for a moment
before the smile began to crease her face.  Then she started to laugh.

"If you'd turned out to be a really bad guy, I could have locked you up with
the old volleyballs and gym mats," Vic said.

"If you ever smelled those mats, you'd know what a tough punishment that
might be."

Katherine was still laughing, choking a little as if to stop herself.

She leaned against the wall with one arm and clutched herself across the
stomach with the other.  Her laughter subsided some but didn't stop.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded as he reached out to steady her by taking her arm.  She didn't
resist when he led her inside her office.

"I'm sorry," she managed to splutter just before she sank into her chair
behind the desk.

"I can't seem to stop laughing."

"You probably need some rest.  What;s been going on here lately is enough to
make anybody a little hysterical."

She'd looked as if she was about to set off into another wave of giggles
before Vic said that.  Now, the merriment was fading fast from her eyes.

"I'm not hysterical," she said, "and I don't appreciate your saying I am."

"Look," Vic said.

"I don't want to fight with you.  It seems like we've been doing that all
day."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration."

She appeared to have composed herself.

"Not an exaggeration by much," he said.

"This morning you were accusing me of being the kind of creep who would take
advantage of an unconscious woman."

She didn't respond to that.  Instead, she looked away from his gaze and moved
a stack of file folders from one side of her desktop to the other.

"Do you really think I could do that?"  he asked.

"I don't know what to think," She continued to fuss with the papers on her
desk.

Vic stepped across her narrow office from the doorway to the desk in one
stride and leaned his palms on the edge of the desk with his face not far
from hers.  Wasn't this what he'd done this morning, too?  He couldn't
remember, and he didn't care.

"Look me in the face and tell me you believe I'd do something like that to
you or anybody else," he.  said

"Tell me that's what you think about me and I'll walk out of here and never
bother you again."

She raised her gaze gradually to meet his, but she didn't say anything right
away.  He suddenly wondered if maybe he shouldn't have given her such an easy
out.  What if she told him that was exactly what she wanted, for him to walk
out of here right now and leave her alone for good?  The thought sent a chill
through him as cold as the winter wind outside the darkness of her office
window.

"I don't," she said quietly.

"What?"  he asked, still a little shaken by how terrible the idea of losing
her altogether made him feel.

"I don't really believe you would do something like that."

He gazed back into her blue-gray eyes.  They told him she was speaking the
truth.  What flashed through him then was as different from the cold chill of
a moment ago as it could be.  What flashed through him was a hot rush of
desire.  He stepped away from the desk and settled into the chair next to the
doorway.  He didn't dare stay close to her.

He was afraid she might be able to detect the intensity of the heat he was
feeling or at least see it burning in his eyes.

"Good" was all he said.

"What are you doing back in this place, anyway?"  she asked.  She'd started
fiddling with those file folders again.  This time she looked as if she was
actually about to do some work on them.

"I thought we were alone here."  "We?  Is somebody else here?"

"Sprite's in the playroom.  I was just down there checking on her before you
accosted me with that deadly weapon of yours."

Vic managed a smile at his own foolishness.

"What were you in such a hurry about, anyway?"  he asked.

"I didn't want to miss Tooley Pennebaker when she shows up.  She should be
here soon.  She's taking Sprite to a friend's house for the night."

"Do you think that's safe for Sprite?"

Katherine shrugged her shoulders and sighed.

"It's about as safe as being with me.  Whoever is after Coyote may have
broken into Tooley's, but they didn't leave a threatening message like they
did at my place.  I think Sprite will be safer away from my apartment and
from Tooley's.  The friend's mother has agreed to take Sprite overnight and
to bring her to the Christmas party."  At her last words, Katherine's voice
and her eyebrows rose questioningly.

"The open house I throw every year," Vic confirmed.  "I told you that's why
I put up the tree.  It's for the kids from the center and their parents and
anyone from the center who wants to attend.  But that's not important now."
He took a deep breath before adding,

"We need to get through tonight first, and I think you should stay with me
again."

Katherine looked up quickly from her file folders.  He could see in her eyes
that he shouldn't have said anything about staying together.

Maybe she thought that was just about as dangerous as being out there with a
stalker after her.  He wished he hadn't suggested it.  He wouldn't make that
particular error again.

"At least let me drive behind you after you leave here," he said.

"Just to make sure these jokers don't follow you home."

He didn't think he was anywhere near as dangerous as whoever had torn up
Tooley's place and broken into Katherine's apartment.  At least, not
dangerous where personal harm to Katherine or her property was concerned.
Being alone with her would create another kind of danger.

There was no mistaking the resistance in Katherine's expression.  She opened
her mouth, probably to give him an argument about following her.  The knock
at the window came before she could say what she had on her mind.  She and
Vic both turned to find Tooley Pennebaker gesturing at them through the glass.
Katherine motioned in the direction of the main door to the center.

"I'll let you in," she said.

Tooley nodded her understanding and headed in the direction of the entrance.
Katherine moved from behind the desk.

"We'll be back in a minute," she said as she left the office.

I'll be waiting.  "

Vic intended to keep his word about that.  He also intended to follow
Katherine home tonight whether she wanted him to or not.

Chapter Fifteen Katherine didn't want Vic to follow her.  She'd told him she
would be all right on her own, even though she wasn't at all certain that was
true.  She had to weigh what could be more dangerous to her, the chance that
she'd be revisited by the animals who slashed Daniel's portrait or the
possibility of ending up somewhere alone with Vic Maltese.  In her office
earlier she'd felt drawn to him.  He'd leaned over her desk again, just as
he'd done in the morning, but this second time there'd been no shield of
anger to protect her.  This time there was only Vic, inches away, and that
irresistible urge she felt to move even closer.  A magnetic attraction,
that's what it was, as if she were being drawn inevitably to him by a power
she was helpless to resist.

She'd been more vulnerable than usual this evening to start with.  She
couldn't remember the last time she was unstrung enough to give way to a fit
of giggles.  Of course, he had looked wonderfully ridiculous at the time,
brandish ing a scrap of wood and calling out,

"Halt or I'll shoot," like the hero in a bad western movie.  She couldn't
help but chuckle to herself even now as she angled into the parking place she
was so pleased to find at this hour near the edge of Washington Park and not
far from her building.  What a sight he'd been, that broad-shouldered,
intimidating man with his dark good looks and leather jacket, reduced to
holding the villains at bay with a locker-room key.  The remembered image
brought with it a flush of affection so tender she was all but overwhelmed.

Katherine grasped the handle and pushed the car door open, hop ing a blast of
cold air would snap her back to her senses before she had to deal with Vic in
person again.  She stepped onto the running board and down from 'the tall
vehicle.  The almost incessant sharp wind was deflected to some extent by the
old, broad trees that lined this access road to the park.  The trees were
bare of leaves so they didn't block entirely the light from the pole lamps
that lined the road.  Still, it was far more gloomy than bright here, and
there were moving shadows everywhere.  She locked the car as hastily as she
could manage with fingers that trembled, probably not just from the cold.

She looked around for Vic.  She'd last noted his low, distinctive headlights
behind her just before turning into the parking lot.  She could make out no
sign of either him or his car now.  Maybe he'd meant it literally when he
said he would follow her home.  He'd shadowed her safely to her block, and
then he'd driven on.  Maybe he felt the same trepidation about being alone
with her as she did with him.  She'd recognized a confused play of emotions
in his eyes more than once when he looked at her.  Suddenly, Katherine wished
she had asked him to accompany her to her front door.  She would feel a lot
more secure right now with Vic by her side.

She thought about calling his name, but instinct kept her from doing so.
Instead, she hurried back along the access road toward the turnoff she'd
taken in the Cherokee from State Street into the park.

Ordinarily, she would have mushed over the snow mounded lawn space in a
shortcut between where she'd parked on the access road and the sidewalk that
bordered the park.  She was taking this longer way around because there were
fewer deep shadows here.  She wished that made her feel more secure.

Katherine hurried out onto State Street, still scanning the road behind her
in vain for a glimpse of Vic.  He was nowhere to be seen.

In fact, there was no one to be seen.  She was alone on the street.

There wasn't much nightlife in this part of Albany, not even so close to
Christmas Day.  She was reminded of that fast-approaching event by colored
lights in a number of windows of the buildings across the way.

Though this side of State Street was populated only by trees and their
inhabitants, the opposite sidewalk was lined with buildings dating mostly
from the last century.  Brick fronts and Gothic stone graced tall, narrow
structures attached to one another all the way down the block.  Katherine
loved the decorative detail painstakingly wrought by craftsman of another,
less rushed era than her own.  She especially enjoyed looking at the way so
much of the wrought-iron entry rails, window gratings and even fire escapes
had been twined with greenery and red bows in keeping with the season, as
Dickens would say.  However, she didn't slow her pace to appreciate any of
that tonight as she targeted her building, across the road and halfway down
the block, and hurried directly toward it.

Katherine unlocked the street door with caution.  She would have liked to
think this lock afforded some protection from intruders, but she was all too
aware how untrue that was.  Admittance would be easy to manage for just about
anyone.  Hitting two or three of the several apartment buttons outside almost
always resulted in a responding long buzz, which opened the front door to the
building.  At this time of year that was more likely than ever.  The
frequency of gift-package deliveries, house and party guests running in and
out, not to mention the general spirit of the goodwill season, had
everybody's guard down.  She won red if that was how the intruder or
intruders had gouen into her apartment the night before.  While she picked
her way up the one flight of stairs to the second floor, being careful to
keep to the carpeted center where her steps would make little sound, she
wished she could feel half as carefree as her neighbors.

She had made the turn around the banister on the first floor when she saw it.
Her front door was ajar, just a crack but enough for her to notice.  She
ventured closer to the entrance way even as she tracked backward in her mind
till that morning, trying to remember if there could be a chance she'd
forgotten to lock up before leaving for the center.  She was so regular in
her habits she couldn't imagine such a lapse.  Yet, her extra errands with
Sprite had made that morning so much less than regular, she couldn't be sure
what she'd done.

She'd worked late tonight on the thick file of applications for the Most
Needy Cases Fund in preparation for distributing the huge donation that had
come in that afternoon.  She might be bone-tired from those long hours, but
she wasn't stupid.  She wasn't going to walk into what could be trouble again.

She had approached to within a couple of feet of the partly open door.  She
began to back away from it now, without moving her eyes from the crack
between the bottom of the door and the jamb.  She was listening, too, for
anything that might signal danger.  Still, at first she wasn't sure she had
really heard the sound, faint as it was from behind the door.  Then, she
heard it again and froze where she stood, barely breathing, as her memory
raced back to her stepson Daniel in his narrow bed before the doctors came to
take away his discomfort.  What she was listening to tonight was what she
had listened to with such torment then, the sound of someone moaning in pain.

Her first thought was of Vic.  Could he have parked closer to the building
than she was able to manage and had himself buzzed in here to run unaware
into a violent intruder?  The possibility brought a thin cry to her throat.
She clamped her lips tight to keep from breaking the silence of the corridor.
A third moan, slightly louder, shattered her caution and sent her bolting
through the door into the dimly lit entryway to her living room.  Even in the
gloom, she immediately made out the body slumped on the floor in front of the
fireplace where she'd found Daniel's slashed portrait on the mantelpiece the
night before.

Katherine ran to the form on the floor.  Her rational mind told her this
wasn't Vic.  The shape was far too small.  Still, she knelt down with an
unexpectedly fervent prayer for his safety in her heart.

She'd been blocking the light from the open door into the hallway before she
knelt down.  Now, that light fell upon the head of the person on the floor.
Katherine gasped at the unmistakable tumble of red curls and the matting of
darker red close to the scalp.

"Megan" was Katherine's anguished whisper barely audible to her own ears
beneath the sudden, insistent blare of the door buzzer being rung over and
over again by someone in the building entryway below.

VIc HAD BARRELED into Katherine's apartment and found her kneeling over Megan
on the floor.

"Where am I?"  Megan asked after she'd come to, to find Katherine and Vic on
either side of her.

Megan's voice was so soft and shaky Vic could hardly hear what she was
saying.  He thought maybe they shouldn't let her talk, but there were things
he had to know.  His naturally suspicious nature had been working overtime
ever since he saw the scene in Katherine's apartment.  He was on his way
toward putting together a picture of what was going on here.  Megan might be
able to fill in some of the blank spots.  Vic had the feeling that, if he
didn't finish painting that picture real soon, more people than just Megan
could be attacked, or possibly even worse.

"You're in Katherine's apartment," he said.

"Try not to move around.

We don't know how badly you may be' hurt.  "

"My head," she whispered.

"Somebody hit me on the head."

"Did you see who it was?"

Megan tried to shake her head, but Vic wouldn't let her.  "Lie still,"

he said.

"An ambulance is on the way."

"Okay," she murmured, sounding like she might be ready to pass out again.

He didn't like to see Megan so weak.  Most of the time, she was about as
lively as anybody he'd ever known.  He had to make sure she got back to being
that way again.  Now that she was awake, he'd do whatever was needed to keep
her that way.  He knew how important it was that a person with a head injury
stay awake.

"Whoever hit you," Vic said, "was he inside or outside Katherine's apartment
when you got here?"

Megan sighed, as if she might be barely up to staying awake much less
answering questions.  Vic felt like a heel for doing it, but he wasn't going
to let her off the hook.

"Think hard, Megan.  Was the guy inside or outside?"

"It may not have been a guy," she said.

"I don't know about that.  I do know he, or she, was inside the apartment."

She closed her eyes, looking like she might have tired herself out.

"Don't fade on me now, Megan.  How did you get into Katherine's place?  Did
the person who hit you open the door for you?"

"Key," Megan murmured.

"Had a key."  "Who had a key?"  "me."

"I'd given her a set of keys," Katherine told him.

"She took care of my plants when I went to Chicago a few months ago."

Megan sighed again, more deeply this time, and closed her eyes.

Moments later, the ambulance arrived.  The technicians transferred Megan to a
stretcher, and Vic and Katherine followed in Katherine's Cherokee.

She pulled to a stop at the entrance of the emergency wing of Albany Medical
Center on New Scotland Avenue and jumped from her side of the car.  He
followed her inside to the admissions desk, where she gave information to the
on-duty nurse.

Down the long corridor off the admissions area, Vic noticed the technicians
from the ambulance.  The last thing he saw before they disappeared through
two, large swinging doors was Megan's blood-matted red hair in stark contrast
with the whiteness around her.

KATHERINE HADN'T BEEN inside a hospital since the day Daniel died.

She stood at the desk now answering questions, but her mind was far away in
Chicago a year ago or more.  The details were different--this was a larger
place and more public than the specialized facility where Daniel spent his
last hours.  But too much of the rest was similar, especially the swarm of
medical professionals bustling up and down hallWays, always with blank or
sober expressions on their faces.  Even the sight of the woman at this
counter, with her manner that was more efficient than friendly, chilled
Katherine to the bone.  She forced herself to answer what she could, but she
was having a hard time with it.

Then, thank heaven, Vic appeared at her side and took over.  She listened
distractedly as he reported that Megan had been attacked after she let
herself into Katherine's place.  She'd forgotten Megan had keys to both the
street door and the apartment itself since the time a few months ago when
she'd had to go back to Chicago to clear up some' legal details regarding her
divorce.  Her marriage had been in trouble even before Daniel's illness, and
by the time of his death, what was left of her relationship with her husband
had long since died.

Katherine turned away from the admission desk and the woman with the frosty
expression.  She tried to turn away from her painful thoughts, as well.  As
much as possible, she kept her mind away from the past and the hard,
heartbreaking scenes that had happened in places like this.  Now, she could
feel all of those memories threatening to surge up inside her with the force
of a flood powerful enough to drown her in its depths.  That was why she
didn't object at first when Vic, who had finished with the interrogation at
the hospital desk, took her by the arm and steered her back through the
automatic sliding doors, out of the emergency room and toward the parking lot.

"Where are we going?"  she had the presence of mind to ask at last, as the
chilly night air snapped her back to some semblance of sensibility.

"We have to get out of here."

She tried to stop her forward movement by planting her feet solidly beneath
her, but Vic kept on pulling her along.  He was too strong to resist.  Even
the deep-treaded, hard-rubber soles of her hiking boots couldn't sustain a
foothold against his obvious determination.

"I have to stay with Megan," she protested, continuing to resist despite the
futility of her efforts.

"There's nothing you can do for her now.  I've given them as much information
as she gave me.  I don't think she knows any more than that.  I told the
admitting nurse to call the center in the morning for the health-insurance
details.  She said they would do that.  Now, it's up to the doctors."

"I can't jUst leave Megan here," Katherine said, her voice loud enough that a
couple on their way out of the lot turned to look.

Vic stopped and turned to Katherine, putting an arm around her shoulders,
acting every inch the concerned husband trying to calm a distressed wife.
For a moment, Katherine let her thoughts linger on that fantasy.

"You have to listen to me," he said in a tone so serious, even desperate,
that she couldn't help but do what he asked.  "I'm listening," she said.

"I told that nurse exactly what Megan told me, that she was attacked, hit on
the head, by somebody waiting in the dark inside your apartment.  What do you
think is going to happen next?"

Katherine stared up at him as he leaned down toward her with fierce intensity
in his dark eyes.  She wasn't quite sure what he was asking.

The hospital was still having its effect on her senses.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"I mean that in very quick time this place is going to be knee-deep in cops.
I just reported a case of criminal assault.  The law says the hospital has to
call in the police.

We shouldn't be here when they come.  "

"Why not?"

Katherine was suddenly aware of questions about Vic crowding through the haze
of her confused thoughts and troubled emotions.  What was there about
contact with the police that upset him so much that he seemed willing to do
just about anything to avoid it?

He leaned closer.

"I've been putt ing a lot of things together about what's been happening to you
and to the Bel-la way kids these past few days.  I've got a strong suspicion
we could be up against some very bad guys here."

He'd lowered his voice, as if to prevent anyone else listening in.

She could hear the urgency in his words, but she didn't exactly understand
what he was saying.

"What kind of very bad guys?"  she asked.

"The kind that don't like to leave loose ends around when it comes to the
police being involved."

"Are you talking about street gangs?"

The center had its share of problems with gang activity, and the situation
had been escalating over the past year.  Still, she couldn't think what gangs
might have to do with all of this.

"Not the kind of gangs you're talking about Vic said.  Why was he being so
mysterious?

"What other kind of gangs are there?"  she asked with mounting exasperation.
"Are you talking about mobsters or something like that?"

She'd meant that as sarcasm, but the way Vic was stating down at her now
suggested she'd accidentally hit upon close to what he considered the truth.

"You've got to be joking," she said.

"I've never been more serious in my life."

Katherine was about to laugh and scoff some more, but something in his eyes
kept her from doing that.

"Mobsters may not be exactly the right way to put it," he said.

"Let's just say I've got reason to believe these are some extremely dangerous
people who will do whatever they have to do to get what they want."

"Vic, what is going on here?"

"What is going on is that we have to get in your car and leave this place
before the cops arrive.  Otherwise, there could be real trouble, and it just
may end up getting those two kids hurt even worse than has happened to them
already."

Katherine stared back at him.  She had no doubt he believed the things he was
saying.  She could feel the strength of that belief in his grip on her arms,
but it all sounded so fantastic to her.  She didn't know what to think.

"You have to trust me," he said, leaning so close she could feel the warmth
of his breath on her cheek.

"I know this may come across to you as crazy talk, but it isn't.  Believe me,
there's a lot more to it than that."

She sighed and stopped resisting his hold on her.

"All right.  I'll believe you," she said, "but only this one time, and you'll
have to prove' to me that what you're saying is true."

"Sure, sure," he said.

"Now we've got to get out of here while we still can."

He was already pulling her along again toward her car, and, no matter how
skeptical she might be about what he had just told her, she was following.

Chapter Sixteen Katherine didn't even pay lip service to a protest against
Vic coming along with her this time.  She didn't know what to think about his
claims of arch villains being involved in the frightening events of this
week.  Whatever level villains they might be, she now understood without
question how stupid it would be to risk running into them on her own.  She
let Vic drive her car back to her place.  No matter how stubborn she might be
about self-reliance, even she had to admit that the hospital experience had
her too unsettled to be safe on the road right now.  Besides, she was deeply
tired.  Still, she didn't intend to sleep at her apartment.  She was only
stopping there to pick up some things.  She'd decided that even before Vic
found the note.  She was on the phone to the hospital at the time.

"The emergency room nurse says Megan is conscious.  She has a mild
concussion, so they're keeping her there a couple of days for observation and
to do some tests, but they think she'll be okay after she gets some rest."

Katherine had called out most of that from the bedroom where she'd used the
telephone to contact the hospital and was now pack ing a suit bag.  When Vic
didn't answer, she walked back into the living room.

She guessed what he was holding in his hands as soon as she saw it.

The note looked a lot like the one she'd found on her mantelpiece the night
before.

What he had on his hands was something more of a mystery to her.  He was
wearing black leather gloves.  She'd seen him bare-handed more than once
outdoors in these past, very cold days.  Yet here he was in her overheated
living room with gloves on.

He must have noticed the direction of her stare because he said,

"I

don't want to contaminate the crime scene.  "

Katherine didn't like to think of her living room in such terms, but the dark
stain that didn't fit the pattern of her carpet made the truth of his words
all too unavoidable.  She also didn't like to think about how readily Vic's
mind appeared to work like a criminal's, or maybe a lawman's.  She grabbed at
that straw.

"Were you ever in law enforcement?"  she asked.

He was examining the note when she said that.  He looked up at her with a
look in his eyes that she wasn't sure how to interpret.  Then he flung his
head back and laughed.  The sound was a relief after the tension of the
evening.  Too bad the moment didn't last.

"Me, a cop?"  he said when he had finished laughing.  "Not hardly."

There it was again, his utter disdain for the police.  What was that all
about?  She wished she was more certain she really wanted to know the answer
to that question.

"Speaking of cops, they should be here soon," Vic said.  "If Megan's
conscious, they're probably talking to her right now, or maybe they're
already on their way to check out where she got attacked.  We need to make
ourselves scarce.  ' " I don't know if that's the right thing to do.  "
Actually, she was certain it was not.

"Katherine, it's like I said back at the hospital.  You have to trust me on
this one."

Vic was stating at her as earnestly as he had back in the hospital parking
lot.  She could feel his eyes working their influence over her.  She wondered
how hard she should resist.  Part of her didn't want to resist at all.  She
knew from the way his gaze made her insides quiver that the part of her
advising nonresistance didn't necessarily include her brain.

"Do you have a place to stay?"  he asked.

She wished his question didn't arouse in her a sudden pang of disappointment
that he hadn't immediately suggested she sleep at his place again.  Of
course, after what she'd as much as accused him of this morning, she
shouldn't be surprised.

"I called a hotel after I called the hospital," she said.  She didn't have
any close friends in Albany other than Megan.  Katherine's time here had been
spent mostly working.  That was the way she'd chosen to heal the wounds left
by Daniel's death.  There'd been little time or inclination on her part for
making friends.  Perhaps Vic understood that because he didn't comment
further.

"Which hotel did you call?"  was all he asked.  "The Omi," she said.

"It's the only one I know."

She'd stayed there when she'd come from Chicago to interview for the job at
the Arbor Hill Center.

"Sounds good," Vic said with a nod.

"Let's get going.  I'll follow you down there in my car."

Once more, she didn't object to his offer.  She also didn't object to his
urging that they hurry their departure.  This place where she had once felt
so comfortable and at home was not either of those things for her right now.
She couldn't keep her eyes from straying to the stain on the carpet or a
chill from shivering up her spine when she did.

"Just one thing before we go," she said.

"I want to read the note."

"Sure," Vic said.

"I found it up here over the fireplace."

He gestured toward the mantelpiece as she reached for the paper in his hand.

"Don't touch it.  I don't think the cops will find any prints, but you don't
want yours messing the thing up anyway."

Again, he was talking like a person who knew a lot about crime.

Katherine would have liked to tell herself that was probably because he
watched a lot of detective shows on television, but somehow she couldn't
imagine such an action-oriented man spending much time in front of a TV set.
She moved close enough to him to read the note he was holding by its edges in
his gloved fingers.  She couldn't mistake the way her throat tightened just
from standing next to him.  Maybe some of that was because of what she'd been
thinking about his troubling attitude toward the police.  Nonetheless, she was
honest enough with herself to admit that the anxiety Vic made her feel didn't
all have to do with his obvious knowledge of things criminal.

She forced herself to focus on the paper he held in his hand.

"We warned you once.  You should have listened," it said.

"What do they mean?"  she sucked in a scared breath.  This note struck her as
being as sinister as the last one.  She was grateful she hadn't brought Sprite
home with her, and glad she'd decided not to stay here herself.

"I don't know for sure, but we have to get out of here," Vic said, as if he
might have been tuned into her doubts.  "This note is exactly what I'd expect
from the kind of guys I've been telling you about, and they've got friends
everywhere.  You don't want your name on some police blotter right now.  It's
bad enough that they have your address and maybe know you took Megan to the
hospital.  We need to stall them for a while to keep them from getting any
closer.  That'll give us enough time to figure out how much we should tell
them."

"Vic, I don't like the sound of any of this."

"I don't like it either," he said, and she could tell he meant it.

"But it's not just us we have to think about.  We need to sit down and figure
out what's best for those two Bellaway kids.  We've got to try to find
Coyote, too.  We may end up telling the cops everything, maybe not.  If we
stick around here much longer, we won't have a choice."

One thing he was saying struck Katherine as definitely true.  She had to give
herself some time to think.

"My bag is in the bedroom," she said, then hurried to get it.

Minutes later they were out of the apartment and on their way down the stairs
to the street.  They'd left the note on the mantel and the door slightly
ajar, just as it had all been when Katherine first arrived home earlier this
evening.  Vic assured her the police would find the marks a lock pick had
made on her door latch, just as he had in his brief inspection.  She wished
it would be that easy for someone, including herself, to detect and analyze
the markings all of this was making on her heart.

IT OCCURRED TO VIC that he was too tall a guy to be spending so much time on
tiptoe, but that was what he had to do if he was going to stay around
Katherine for any length of time.  Five minutes into any conversation with
her, he was bound to find himself up on' his toes, picking through every
sentence he said as if it were made of rusty nails and broken glass.  One
false step, and he could end up with gaping wounds, or at least in need of a
tetanus shot, from tromping down too hard on the wrong spot.  He wasn't used
to such delicate dancing.  He wondered how long it would take for him to get
so tired of the trouble it took that he wouldn't care to bother anymore.  He
knew he wasn't there yet.  He only had to look at her and, all of a sudden,
he was ready and willing to put up with almost anything as long as she'd let
him stick around.

So, when she told him she intended to spend the night in a hotel, he didn't
make much comment in response.  He knew exactly what he'd like to say, of
course.  His usual bulldozer self would have come right out with it, too,
telling her how there was nothing in the world he'd rather do right now than
join her in that hotel room for tonight and any other night she'd let him be
there.  Then, she'd take off at a run down Capitol Hill as fast as her hiking
boots could carry her.  In this weather, he'd be left with snowflakes on his
face instead of egg, but it amounted to the same thing.  That's why he was
keeping his mouth shut for this duration anyway.

He had managed to ask if he could follow her down here to the Omni in his
car, making a point not to be pushy in the way he said it.  Maybe that's the
reason she'd agreed without any fuss, or maybe the events of this evening had
her so upset she didn't want to be on her owmjust yet.  He'd seen the way she
looked in the hospital, with her eyes round and scared, darting from one end
of the place to the other.  He had put two and two together then, with what
she'd told him about her stepson dying after a long illness.  Hospitals must
have pretty bad memories for her.  He'd rushed her out of there partly
because of that.  He'd only talked about avoiding the cops because he didn't
want to make her even more uncomfortable by bringing up those bad memories of
hers.  Besides, what he'd said about the police was true.

However it had come about, he was happy to be here now, standing in the lobby
of the hotel while the automatic door slid open and shut behind him at
regular intervals, letting guests in and out on gusts of frigid night air.
Katherine was at the registration desk.  It would be more discreet of him not
to go up there with her while she checked in.  Discretion was something else
he didn't usually give much thought to, but she seemed to have him in
unfamiliar territory in general.  Like the fact that, despite all of what had
been happening at the center to both of them and to people they cared about,
the only thing Vic found himself able to focus on right now was the way wisps
of Katherine's hair fell forward across her cheek as she looked down to sign
the hotel registration form.

"Can I carry this up for you?"  he asked, when she'd walked back over to him
with the small folder containing her room key card in her hand.

He was referring to the bag she'd left on the lobby floor next to him while
she went to register.  He'd seen her shake her head no to the bellman when he
approached at the desk.

Vic expected she'd respond to his offer in the same way.  "I'd appreciate
that," she said.

He was so stunned, that she had already walked away to the right, toward the
elevators, before he grabbed her bag from the floor and hurried to catch up.
He followed her past two lobby restaurants and the hotel gift shop into an
open elevator car and watched as she pushed the button marked fourteen.  They
didn't speak as the car rose or when the doors opened at the fourteenth floor
and she checked the wall signs to find the direction of her room.  He waited
awkwardly behind her as she unlocked the door to her room.  Awkwardness was
another territory where he had spent very little time.

Vic hefted the suit carder bag over the threshold into a long living room
with a window the width of the wall at the opposite end.  The curtains and
drapes had been pulled aside to show the state capitol building on the crest
of the hill across the way.  Lights illuminated the steeply pitched roof
peaks topped by metal spire points that had always made Vic think of
something more native to Asia than this massive, gray granite building above
the Hudson.  The view was impressive all the same.

"This is quite a layout," he said as he put the bag down inside the door,
which had swung shut on its tight hinge springs when he let go of it.

A spiral staircase near the window wall led upward to what he assumed must be
the bedroom.  The bag should probably go up there, but he wasn't about to
suggest that.

"It's really more than I need," Katherine was saying in response to his
comment about the room.

"This is where they put me when I came to Albany to interview for the job at
the center.  There was some kind of convention in the hotel then, and this
was all they had available.  I imagine they have lots of empty rooms tonight,
with the legislature out of session for the holidays and all.  I just thought
I'd feel better in some place where I'd been before."

She had her back to Vic.  He could tell from how fast she was talking and the
way she went on and on that she must be nervous, probably because he was
still here.

I'll go now," he said, backing toward the door, and it was the most difficult
thing he'd ever done in his life.  He didn't want to go.  He didn't want to
leave Katherine.  But he knew in her vulnerable state, he couldn't insist
that she let him stay.

"My phone number's in the book if you need me."

She turned to face him then, more abruptly than he would have expected.

"Don't go," she said.

"I need you now."

Her face was as wide open to him as the space of window glass behind her.
Her eyes were clear and looking directly into his.  He saw all her fear and
her yearning, too, and he recognized the feelings because they matched his
own.

Vic walked toward her, stepping carefully and slowly for fear of shattering
the fragile moment that hovered in the air above the rose-colored carpet
between them.

KATHERINE TURNED and walked away before Vic reached her.  She heard him halt,
or maybe she felt him do it, behind her.  He must be wondering why she had
asked him so pleadingly to stay but now walked away from him.  She was
wondering herself.  She wasn't sure.  She stopped at the wide window and
looked out at the Gothic stone of the City Hall building, St.  Peter's Church
to the left and the Capitol Building beyond, all solidly planted as if they
could stand forever.

She wished she felt the same.  She knew what she wanted, but she still had
doubts about whether what she had said to Vic right now was really true.  Did
she, in fact, need him?  Was he the trouble she suspected he might be?  She
definitely didn't need any more trouble.

She took three steps to her right and found the long cord to the curtain's
traveller rod high above at the top of the window, which rose from this lower
level to the upper one.  She pulled the cord and drew the gauzy curtain
closed across the scene outside.  The determination she carded with her at
all times, to always think her actions thoroughly through in order to protect
herself against the kind of hurt she'd suffered in Chicago, was suddenly as
obscured as the view of Capitol Hill beyond this curtain.  Maybe, if she
stood here a while longer weighing the pros and cons of what she had in mind
to do, all would become clear to her.  On the other hand, if she turned
around, she would be lost.

A voice inside her, unfamiliar but compelling, cried out.  i!  That is
exactly what you want, it said, and what you need--to be lost.

Katherine turned around.

Where she stood was mostly shadow.  The light from the one lamp she had
turned on as she came through the door didn't reach this far.  She wondered
what Vic could see of her.  She could certainly see all of him, and the sight
actually took her breath away.  He had stopped, just as she had felt him do,
several feet from where she was now.  The pool of light from the lamp touched
the thick darkness of his hair and caught almost blue accents there.  She
couldn't exactly see his deep-set eyes, but she could guess how they were
looking at her all the same.  The glint in Vic's eyes had been a constant
image in her own mind's eye for what had begun to seem like forever.

His trademark close-fitting jeans stretched tight along his right thigh as he
cocked his hip in that direction in a posture also typical of him and not
lacking in arrogance.  In any other man, that attitude would have left her
cold.  Vic left her anything but cold.

The challenge of his stance was received, fast as a telegraph message, direct
to her belly, and she tightened there, that tightness clenching farther down
her body with every shallow breath she took.

He, of course, had on his leather jacket as well.  He reached upward in a
movement she hadn't expected, grabbed the zipper loop and pulled it down in a
single, rapid gesture.  A gasp escaped her throat, as if it had been her own
clothing he was zipping off.

On trembling legs, she stepped out of the shadow cast by the spiral staircase
and into the area of semi-brightness where Vic stood.  He remained a few feet
away from her and made no attempt to approach.

Still, his presence so dominated her senses that he might as well have been
filling up the entire room and pressing hard against her from all sides.  She
was also keenly aware of herself as not quite herself.  That engulfing
presence had entered into her, perhaps through her parted lips.  She felt
herself surrender to a will more deeply her own than the surface
determination that had held every part of her in check for so very long.  !
The relief which accompanied that release was profound, and experienced
in her body as a rush of warmth.  : She had unbuttoned her long coat in the
lobby downstairs.  She shrugged it off her shoulders now, and it fell in
folds of heavy wool around her feet.  She barely heard Vic's gasp as the coat
descended to the floor.  She recognized that gasp as the mate to her own, an
instant ago.  She parted her lips further, as if to speak, but understood
then that no words were needed, at least not about what they were both
feeling.  The two of them, though they might not think alike about a lot of
things, were at this moment sharing exactly the same emotions, the same
powerful awareness of each other in every fiber of their bodies.  The silence
was taut and filled with the promise of what was sure to happen between them.

In silence, she moved to the staircase and put her foot on the first step,
then the next and the next.  He didn't rush to her or make any other abrupt
movement, which might have shattered the charmed hush between them.  She
continued up the spiral.  She didn't need to see him there, any more than she
had needed to see him before she'd turned around to face him in front of the
window below.  His image was a bright picture in her mind as he followed her
up the staircase to the bedroom of this suite she must have meant all along
to be reserved for two rather than just one.

He was suddenly behind her then, where she had stopped next to the bed.  His
strong hands gripped her shoulders, but gently.  Without a word, she turned
to face him and lifted her face toward his.  She had pulled her hat off in
the lobby below.  His fingers twined into the mass of her hair, and his mouth
met hers.  The kiss that followed was long and deep, and Katherine was not
aware of herself breathing through any of it.  She leaned against him,
absorbing his warmth and his strength.  At last, he lifted his lips from hers
and stared down into her eyes.

"I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life," he said.

His voice was husky and even deeper than usual.  Before she could answer, or
even know if she had thoughts enough left in her head to put words together,
he had swept her up in his arms and was carrying her the short distance
remaining to the bed.  Katherine had never been lifted off the ground in that
way, so swiftly or with such command.

She tensed for a moment at the newness of being so totally taken charge of.
Then, in the next instant, she gave herself up to all of it--the strength of
his arms, the scent of his jacket against her cheek, the softness of the bed
beneath her as he laid her down on it.

He stood above her and stripped off his jacket first, then his sweater.
There was only one low-level ceiling light lit near the doorway that led to
the fifteenth-floor corridor.  She could see him all the same, not in her
mind's vision now, but real and entirely beautiful, standing over her.  The
poWer of his torso enthralled her, and the tightness inside her became even
more intense as she anticipated touching him across the broadness of his
chest and down the muscles of his arms, which hardened now as he clasped his
belt and pulled the buckle loose.  He would be disrobing her with just as
much urgency very soon now.  She could hardly wait for that moment to come.

Chapter Seventeen Vic woke up and knew immediately where he was.  The feel
of the place and what had happened in it had followed him into his dreams and
surrounded him now as bright morning sun streamed through the filmy curtains
over the tall, wide window of the duplex suite.  On another morning, he might
have flung his arm up to shut out the light or groaned and pulled the pillow
over his head.  Facing the dawn of a new day hadn't always been his favorite
thing.  Now, Vic faced the brightness and smiled to himself.  Today would be
different from those other mornings.  Except that.  He had turned slowly from
the window.  He was still at least Partly caught up in the dream of last
night, a dream that was almost too wonderful to be true.  He had stretched
his arm across the pillow, as if to take hold of that dream once more in the
morning light.  Except that Katherine was gone.

Vic sprang fully awake and upright in the same instant.  He was alone in the
bed, and for a moment he wondered if he could have imagined last night after
all.  Maybe he'd fantasized about Katherine so much and pictured so vividly
how she would look beneath him with her halo of hair spread out against the
pillow that he'd finally convinced himself the vision had to be real.

Not a chance, he told himself with relief as he drew in his next breath.
Katherine had been in this bed, all right.  He could smell her still
everywhere around him.  He'd heard how scents can remain in the memory, but
this was more than that.  Her sweetness rose from the sheet as he tossed it
away from his naked body.  Too bad she wasn't actually in those sheets
herself.

He leapt out of bed, propelled by disappointment and something more.

He'd have to call that other feeling exasperation.  She'd run out on him.
She'd made love to him through most of the night.  Then, she'd crept out of
bed while he was still asleep and left him without so much as a goodbye.  He
knew exactly what it meant when a guy did that to a woman.  He figured it
meant just the same when the situation was reversed.  He'd been the one-night
stand this time.  He should probably be glad she didn't wake him up on her
way out of here.  He didn't know if he'd have been able to stand hearing her
say the most obvious brush off line of all,

"I'll call you sometime."

In the old days, his temper would have carried him straight over the top as
soon as he realized Katherine was gone.  Lucky for him, and for whoever might
be in the room next door, he'd worked on that explosive side of himself.
Otherwise, he'd be kicking the bedside table right now instead of just
standing here, clenching and unclenching the fists he'd clamped resolutely to
the sides of his thighs.  Besides, kicking furniture wouldn't be a very good
idea, at least not as long as his feet were as bare as the rest of him.  All
the same, he'd like to vent his frustration somehow.  Vic considered punching
the pillow, but he couldn't do that either, not as long as he still
remembered Katherine lying there.

He tore his gaze away from the memory of that sight and sensed a similar
tearing in his heart.  He could hardly believe how deserted he felt.  He
picked up the hotel bath- ii robe at the bottom of the bed and pushed his arm
into one , of the terry-cloth sleeves.  It occurred to him that this robe
hadn't been there the night before.  He and Katherine had inhabited every
inch of this king-size bed from top to bottom and side to side before they
finally fell asleep.  He" would have noticed a bathrobe placed so neatly on
top of the also neatly folded quilted spread.  Katherine must have left the
robe here for him.

"How considerate of her," he said aloud.

"She thinks to leave me something to put on but doesn't care enough to stick
around till I wake up."

Unless.  He shoved his other arm through the remaining empty sleeve of the
bathrobe.  Maybe Katherine had only gone downstairs.  He'd temporarily
forgotten that this fancy hotel room of hers had two floors.  He hadn't heard
so much as a whisper of sound from below.  Still, she could be down on the
lower level.  Maybe she'd used the bathroom down there so she wouldn't wake
him up.  She'd thought to leave him the bathrobe.  Maybe she was being just
as thoughtful about letting him sleep undisturbed.  If she had the bathroom
door closed, he might not be able to hear her from way up here.

Vic hoped almost desperately that scenario would be true as he hurried
halfway down the spiral stairway.  One glance told him he was more likely
than not thinking like a fool.  The living room of the suite was as empty as
the hollow that had begun to echo inside him.  He continued to move down the
staircase all the same, but more slowly now.  He'd check the bathroom just in
case, but he'd already resigned to what he would probably find.  he : didn't
manage to resign himself enough to prevent another stab of disappointment
when the bathroom turned out to be as empty as the rest of the place.

"I suppose I'll be checking the closets next," he said to himself, feeling
exactly like the jerk she'd set him up to be.

He was trying not to let it register too deep just how much he hated being in
this situation when the buzzer rang at the door a few feet from the bathroom.
The sound set his heart dancing in his chest.

Katherine was at the door.  She'd only gone down to the lobby for a
newspaper, or to the health club for a morning swim, or whatever.  He didn't
care where she'd been.  He only cared that she was back.  He had his wits
about him just enough to pull his robe closed and tie the cloth belt across
the front on his way to open the door.

"We're looking for Katherine Fairchild.  Is this her room?"

The question came in the few seconds it took for Vic to absorb the
disappointment of not finding Katherine at the door.  Meanwhile, his mind was
doing its best to click through the changes it had to make before reacting to
the man and woman in uniform standing on opposite sides of the hotel suite's
doorway.

"Is Ms. Fairchild on the premises, sirS: the female officer asked.

Vic didn't feel much like talking, but what was left of his common sense told
him he'd better come up with something to say to the policewoman's question.

"Mrs.  Fairchild isn't here," he said.

The words were already out of his mouth before he realized he had called
Katherine by her previously married title.  Too late to take it back, even
though he could feel this situation getting harder to explain by the second.
He'd il guess the lady cop might be thinking the same thing because, while
he was speaking, she'd been checking out what he had on--or maybe what he
didn't have on.  He didn't kid himself for a minute that she was sizing up
his masculine charms.  He'd bet a year's salary she was busy taking notes.
He could almost see them written down in her pocket pad even now.

Unidentified male wearing bathrobe with hotel monogram and clutching front of
same, on alleged premises of subject said male refers to as Mrs. Fairchild.
Said male possibly of suspicious character.  Risk of concealed weapon
negligible in his present attire.

"Do you know-Ms.  Fairchild's current whereabouts?"  the policewoman was
asking.

Her partner had positiOned himself opposite her and at an angle from the
other side of the doorway.  He peered into the room behind Vic, who thought
about stepping to his left to obstruct the shorter man's view, but decided
against it.  He was very much aware of how vulnerable he had to look standing
here in this damned robe.  He was also very aware of how dumb it would be to
provoke these officers into taking advantage of that vulnerability.  They had
the drop on him in more ways than one.

"No, I don't know where Ms. Fairchild is right now," he said.

He didn't add that she'd taken a powder before he even woke up, though that
infuriating fact was still on his mind.

"Could we step inside for a moment, sir?"  the policewoman asked.

She said that in a completely noncommittal tone, with no sign of emotion or
even curiosity.  She might have been asking him if he would please step aside
in an elevator or on a crowded street, as if they were nothing more than two
strangers who just happened to be in the same place at the same time.  Only,
this situation was anything but that simple.

"How did you find out Ms. Fairchild was staying in this hotel?"  Vic asked.

He was finally getting his head together enough to realize he had to be
careful how he handled this unexpected visit from the law.

"She called Albany Hospital this morning to inquire about the condition of
her friend."  The policewoman checked her pad which she had, by now, taken
from the pocket of her down-filled police jacket.

"Ms.  Moran told us that Ms. Fairchild was staying in this hotel temporarily."

Her partner gave her a quick look then, as if he thought she was telling more
than she should.  Vic's mind started clicking again in the meantime.
Katherine had called the hospital this morning, maybe from right here in this
room while he was upstairs asleep.  That made him more infuriated with her
than ever, though he wasn't exactly sure why.

"Could we step inside, sir?"  the policewoman asked again.

"Do you have a warrant?"

Vic asked the question almost automatically, just the way he would have done
if the cops had shown up on his doorstep at home.  He still didn't want to
give these two an excuse to roust him.  He didn't intend to give them access
to anything more than they could see from this doorway, either.  Not if he
could help it, anyway.

"No, we don't have a warrant, sir," the female officer said.

"Then you'd better go and get one."

Vic started easing the door shut while he was saying that.  The policewoman
had been stand ing a foot or so back from [ the doorway, obviously giving
herself a margin of safety from the suspicious character in the bathrobe.
She took a step forward now and placed her left hand with the pad in it
against the door to keep it from closing all the way.  Vic could see the
firearm she carried in a snap-top holster at her right side.  Her right elbow
was close to her body, between him and the weapon.  Still, he could see that
the holster snap was undone.

"Could you give me your name, please, sir?"  she asked in a tone that was
more demand than question.

He continued pressing the door shut against the resistance of her hand.

"I'm just a friend of Ms. Fairchild's.  You don't need to know my name," he
said.

"I have to go now."

Vic pushed the door shut the rest of the way then and was relieved to hear
the automatic lock engage: He listened what felt like a long time, but the
officers didn't knock again.  If they talked the situation over between them
after Vic closed the door, they must have walked off some distance to do it
because he didn't hear even the sound of muffled voices from the hallway.  He
kept listening until he was sure the cops had to be gone.  He wished he also
felt sure they wouldn't be popping up in his face some time again soon.

COYOTE BELL AWAY was worried about the police, too.  They didn't know where
he was.  Nobody knew that, but they could find out if he wasn't really
careful.  That's why he'd kept himself on the move.  He'd thought a long time
about where would be the best place to hide.  Miss Fairchild's house was what
he came up with first, except he didn't know her address.  He had gone to Mr.
Maltese's last year for his Christmas party.  Coyote never forgot a place
he'd been to already, or how to get back there either, but he didn't think
he wanted to stay at Mr. Maltese's.  He still wasn't too sure if he could
trust the man.  So, he'd been spending time in a build ing a few blocks away
from Too-ley's apartment.  It felt good to him to have a roof over his head
and a place to sleep indoors instead of out in the snow.

He'd been worried at first that he wouldn't be able to get inside.

There was one place, though, that people tended to get careless about when it
came to closing up their houses.  The basement windows, especially in the
back of the building, could get forgotten.  Maybe one would be cracked open
to keep the basement from going musty.

Then, since nobody was down there at the bottom of the house much, that
window might stay unlatched.  Sure enough, Coyote had found one he could push
in and climb through.

He didn't have much in the way of furniture or other stuff, and he'd never
been out of Albany in his whole life, but he pretended he was camping out.
He let himself daydream for a while about a cabin in the woods, where he and
Sprite and their mother and maybe Tooley could all live together.  Then he
stopped.  Daydreams about things that weren't going to happen could make a
guy sad.  Being sad just slowed him down, and he didn't have time for that.

He'd come here in the middle of the night when the snow got heavy and the
wind was too cold for the cardboard boxes on the roof across from Tooley's to
keep him even sort of warm anymore.  He'd already decided to get out of there
anyway when he saw the police all over the place in the afternoon.  Then he'd
started figuring out where he should go and ended up coming here.

He'd shimmied through the basement window and looked around, using the
penlight he always kept in his pocket.  He kept a jackknife in there, too,
but the most important blade was broken.  He'd tried three or four times to
save up for a Swiss Army knife, but the money always got spent on something
else.  The penlight was what he'd ,J needed when he came here, though.  He'd
found an old, dusty couch and sat down on it and next thing he knew he was
waking up there with the light coming through the basement windows.  He felt
bad about sleeping so late when he should have been on the alert.  He felt
bad about spending a whole day stuck in this basement.

He also felt bad about losing track of Sprite.  He knew Miss Fairchild had
taken an interest in his sister, and he had a feeling she'd make sure Sprite
was okay.  Still, she was his sister and he was supposed to take care of her,
but how could he do that when he didn't know where she might be?  Coyote had
been worrying about that off and on ever since he got here.  But he knew he
had to stay inside, where he'd be safe, until he could figure out a plan.

He wished he had a father around to help him outsmart the bad guys.

But his father had taken off what seemed like so long ago.  Thinking about
that reminded Coyote of how his mom had told him he was the man of the family
now.  He didn't feel like he was old enough for that, but he knew he had to
do it anyway.  Which meant he had to find Sprite and make sure she was all
right.  She'd be getting out of school for Christmas vacation today.  She
might be out of there already.  She'd go to the Arbor Hill Center, then on to
the party Mr. Maltese was having.

He didn't like to think about it being almost Christmas.  Thinking about it
might start him daydreaming again, and he couldn't do that now.  He had to get
over to the center and see if he could catch a look at Sprite.  The man of
the family couldn't waste his time on daydreams.

Chapter Eighteen Katherine didn't realize she was humming along with the
carols until she actually began singing the words to

"O Come All Ye Faithful."  The sound system had been playing Christmas music
since shortly after she arrived at the center.  Maybe that was why she'd been
close to giddy in her meeting with the Board of Directors this morning.  At
least, she could blame the carols if anyone happened to notice how unusually
exuberant she was today.

It turned out that nobody did notice, after all.  They were too preoccupied
with speculating about who the generous person with the big donation to the
Most Needy Cases Fund might be.  The story had been in last night's newspaper
under Mariette Dugan's byline, just as she'd said it would be.  And, just as
she'd also said, Mariette had dubbed the center's benefactor Secret Santa.
Curiosity about the contributor's identity was running rampant from the
center's kitchen to the conference room where Katherine had barely managed to
arrive on time for the special board meeting called to discuss allocation of
the half-million-dollar gift.

With everyone's attention directed elsewhere, she'd allowed herself a few
precious moments to relive the details of her night with Vic.  She hadn't
wanted to leave him asleep in the hotel room that morning, and she'd had to
drag herself from the cozy warmth of the bed they'd shared.  She wondered
what it would have been like to wake up together, to continue where they'd
left off the night before.  Still, she'd given a grateful sigh of relief that
she'd checked her answering machine for messages that morning.  She'd never
have been able to explain her absence at the emergency board meeting.
Instead, she'd left a note explaining her absence to Vic.

She tuned back in to the conversations at the meeting, where everyone still
speculated about who the Secret Santa could be.  That question didn't matter
anywhere nearly as much to Katherine.  The answer she cared about was the one
to her prayers for the children and families she wanted to help, and that
answer had arrived in the form of this amazing gift.  As far as she was
concerned, the check came from heaven, or a piece of heaven in somebody's
heart, anyway.  Now, all she wanted to do was hand out a holiday grant to
every single person who'd applied for one.  The directors were,
unfortunately, in a more sensible mood than Katherine this morning.  They had
insisted on sticking to the customary practice of verifying the financial
circumstances of each applicant.  She supposed they were right about this,
except she suspected that anyone who put themselves through the embarrassment
of asking for charity probably truly needed it.  She was thinking
particularly of the Bellaway children and Tooley Pennebaker and how hard they
struggled just to get by.  Maybe that's why Katherine said what she did when
the police arrived.

"Yes, I'm Katherine Fairchild" was her answer to their first question.

"What can I do for you?"

Of course, she knew what they were here about, but she hadn't yet decided how
much she'd tell them.

"We're investigating the assault on your colleague Megan Moran," the female
officer said.

"We understand that } attack took place at your residence at..."  She
checked the small notepad she'd taken from the pocket of her blue shirt.

                                      I

"Four-forty-one State Street, apartment 2A."

"That's my address," Katherine said.

"Do you think the assailant could have been after you?"  The other police
officer, a man older than his partner, had asked that question from behind
her, where he'd been standing, keeping the area outside Katherine's office in
view and periodically glancing toward the adjoining corridor as if he might
be expect ing a criminal to approach from that direction.

"The possibility has occurred to me," Katherine said.

She and Vic had talked about that.  Still, hearing it said out loud again
sent a shiver trembling through her.

"Do you have any idea who might want to harm you?"  the male officer asked.

"Maybe a boyfriend you broke up with?"

The female officer looked pained for a moment.

"My partner means we're wondering if you've had any disagreements with anyone
lately who might be angry enough to attack you."

"No old boyfriends I can assure you of that," Katherine i said.  She'd
understood instantly why the other female officer appeared uncomfortable with
having her partner assume that any trouble a woman ran into, especially
violent troui ble, would most likely have something to do with her love life.
"Your friend, the one who got hit on the head, could have interrupted a
thief in the midst of going about his business," the male officer chimed in
again.

"Except this doesn't look like robbery to me.  I was at your place, and the
usual goods a robber takes are all still there."  He'd turned his attention
from the adjoining corridor and was staring at Katherine now.  She could
tell by the unflinching expression in his eyes that he wasn't going to move
away from his spumed-lover theory without a lot of convincing.  She
considered encouraging them to go on thinking that.  The problem there would
be the possibility of Vic's name becoming inVolved.  Whatever else she told
these two police officers, Katherine knew she had no intention of mentioning
Vic.  But Coyote had never turned up again, and she was worried about the
child's safety.  It was time to involve the police.

She took a deep breath before speaking.

"We've been having some problems here at the center involving two children
named Coyote and Sprite Bella-way," she began.

"Maybe you'd like to sit down.  This is a rather long story."

The female officer took the chair across from Katherine's desk.  Her partner
stayed in the doorway, again dividing his attention between the corridor and
what Katherine had to say.  By the time she'd finished, she'd told them about
Coyote's grant application, his night on the mats in the equipment room, his
sister Sprite's claims about a man in a black car who was after Coyote, the
break-in at Tooley Penne-baker's, the slashing of Daniel's portrait in
Katherine's apartment, and the fact that Coyote was still missing.  She'd
told them almost everything.  The parts she left out had to do with any
mention of Vic Maltese.

"Are you anticipating another break-in, Ms. Fairchild?"  the female officer
asked just when Katherine had hoped the interview was at an end.

"Is that why you're staying at the Omni Hotel?"

Katherine was taken more than a little by surprise.  "How do you know that?"
"Ms.  Moran told us."

Katherine came close to breathing an audible sigh of relief but stopped
herself.

"We went there looking for you before we came here," the male officer added.

Katherine's relief was short-lived.

"You went to the hotel?"  she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"We spoke to your friend."

He was staring at Katherine again.  She had to force herself not to look away
from his gaze.

"What was your friend's name?"  he asked.

Katherine took a moment to steel herself before replying, so she wouldn't
give in to her usual strictly law-abiding instincts.

"He's just a friend," she said and stood up from her desk.

"Now, if you're finished asking questions, I have to get back to my work."

She was fairly certain they couldn't force her to give them Vic's name.  She
hoped they wouldn't ask her too many times because she wasn't sure she could
keep on holding out.  She thought about telling them she had to call her
lawyer.  The problem was the only lawyer she'd ever had was the one she'd
hired in Chicago to handle her divorce.  Fortunately, the police appeared to
be giving up on her.

The female officer rose from the chair and tucked the pad down into her shirt
pocket while her partner continued to watch Katherine but took a step
backward out of her office.

"We may be in touch with you again," the policewoman said.  She pulled a
business-card case from her coat pocket, took out a card and put it down on
the edge of Katherine's desk.

"If you think of something further you'd like to tell us, you can call me at
the number on this card."

I'll do that," Katherine said without either picking up the card or looking
at it.

She really didn't intend to cooperate, not if cooperation involved
jeopardizing Vic.  After the police left her office, she watched the parking
lot from her window, Waiting for them to emerge from the building and drive
away.  All the while, she was praying they wouldn't come across Vic on their
way out.  She hadn't seen him yet.  In fact, she'd been wondering earlier why
he hadn't called her or stopped in to see her if he'd come into the center.
In that note she'd left on her side of the bed this morning, she'd asked him
to call her here at the center when he got up.

She was relieved to see the two police officers striding across the parking
lot toward their car.  Katherine ducked back from her window so they wouldn't
catch her in the act of spying on them.  She headed out from behind her desk
and through the doorway that led to the center's main corridor.  She was past
the reception office when she saw Vic come out of the gymnasium farther down
the hall.  A thrill shot through her at the sight of him, and she had to stop
herself from calling his name.  He had his back to her, and he wasn't alone.

Vic and the man he was with had : their heads together in conversation and
didn't appear to notice Katherine.  His companion turned, and she saw him
more clearly for a moment before he leaned toward Vic again.

In that instant, she dropped her hand and closed her mouth.  She also grabbed
the doorknob of the office she'd been about to pass, turned the knob and
stepped inside.

She held the door open a crack and peered through the opening to watch Vic
and his companion.  They Jstill stood in what looked like an intimate
conversation down the hall.  Vic was doing most of the talking, actually,
while the other man nodded and seemed to be listening very carefully.  That
man's appearance was what had made Katherine want to disappear from view.  He
was as tall as Vic and almost as broad.  He also had similar thick, black
hair, but that was where the similarity ended.  Vic was handsome and
strong-featured.  This man had strong features as well, but the impression
they left was not an attractive one.  From her first glimpse of him,
Katherine was certain she was looking at a dangerous man.

She watched from behind the office door and wished she could hear what this
man and Vic were saying to each other.  She didn't like to think that Vic had
such friends.  She was telling herself that they could be less than that,
maybe only acquaintances, when Vic reached up and patted the other man on the
back.  In response, he gripped Vic around the shoulders in a friendly bear
hug.  Katherine sighed.  She was about to close the door quietly and wait out
of sight till the two had left the corridor.  Before she could do that, she
saw the large man with Vic look quickly down the corridor just as she eased
the door shut.

Katherine pressed her back against the closed door.  She was breathing hard
all of a sudden, as if she'd run the length of the corridor outside at least
a couple of times.  She didn't question why she was so winded.  She
recognized her reaction as fear and shock at what else she'd seen when Vic's
companion glanced down the hallway.  She'd seen his hand move reflexively
inside the front of the long, dark coat he was wearing and onto the hand grip
of the gun in a holster he wore underneath his arm.

KATHERINE FELT GUILTY about laying her personal problems on Megan when she
was flat on her back in the hospital, but their telephone conversation seemed
to gravitate that way without much help from Katherine.

"If they don't let me out of here soon, I'm going to start using bedpans for
frisbees," Megan said, sounding every bit her usual, irrepressible self.

"You'd be surprised how close I can get one of those things to somebody's
head without actually making contact.  There's a floor supervisor here who'd
make a perfect target."

Katherine laughed, despite the tension that had her sitting so stiff in her
chair the cold outside might have frozen her there.

"I can tell you're definitely on the mend," she said.

"My doctor will be in here this afternoon for one more check before they'll
release me."

"I feel just terrible that this happened to you at my place."

That was the absolute truth, too.  Katherine hadn't stopped feeling guilty
since the moment she found Megan on the floor.  It didn't help to know that
Megan had stopped by to visit her when she'd happened upon Katherine's
in-trader.  The attacker had struck too quickly for Megan to get a look at
whoever it might have been.

"I feel just terrible that this was probably meant to happen to you instead
of me," said Megan in a much more serious tone this time.

Katherine didn't want to dwell on that.

"Do you think the doctor will let you leave when he sees you this afternoon?"
she asked.

"He'd better do just that, or I intend to cut a swath through this place wide
as Santa's sleigh with all his reindeer attached, including that changeling
Rudolf."

Katherine laughed again.

"So tell me what's bugging you," Megan said.

"That laugh of yours sounds about as tinny as me singing

"Jingle Bells."

" Katherine hadn't intended to go into detail.   She'd counted on Megan's
wonderful humor to ease the anxiety all by itself.   Now, she found herself
pouring out the whole story, including the night at the hotel, though she
didn't go into detail there.   Megan, who was maybe the most outspoken
person Katherine had ever known, remained discreetly without comment on the
hotel part of the story.

"What do you mean when you say the guy Vic was talking to looked dangerous?"
Megan asked instead.

"It's hard to answer that in concrete terms.  When I saw his face, I got this
feeling."  She paused to remember that moment.

"His eyes.  The feeling I had about him came from seeing his eyes."

"What about his eyes?"

She thought for another moment.

"They had no compassion in them," she said.

"I hear you."  Megan didn't respond with the skepticism Katherine had half
expected.

"You say that this guy and Vic looked like they were buddies?"

"They hugged each other."

"I see.  Though I actually don't know that I can see Vic Maltese hugging
another man.  I wouldn't have guessed that was on his macho agenda, if you
know what I mean."

 "I know what you mean," Katherine replied.

She'd hoped Megan would make the worrisome aspect of Vic's behavior go away.
Instead, she was taking the incident in the center corridor as seriously as
Katherine had.

"The most effective way to deal with this situation would be to come right
out and ask Vic about it," Megan said.

"I don't think that's a very good idea."

Especially not after last night, Katherine added silently.  "I figured you'd
say that."

Katherine didn't respond.  She was wondering what she actually would consider
a good idea.  As she pondered the answer to that, her gaze wandered to her
office window and her view of the parking lot.

"Megan, I'll call you back later," she said hastily.

Megan was asking,

"What's going on?"  as the telephone receiver dropped back into its cradle
and Katherine grabbed her coat and ran for the door.

KATHERINE HAD NEVER tailed anybody through traffic.  She was only half
convinced she should be doing it now.  She'd seen Vic headed for his car and
taken out after him more from instinctive impulse than because she'd made a
reasoned decision to do so.  He'd had his head bent down, almost hunched
between his broad shoulders, in a posture she'd never seen on him before.
What she knew about him told her he wasn't on his way to pick up a cup of
coffee and a doughnut.  He had a goal he was after and, in light of what had
been going on here lately, Katherine wanted to find out what that goal might
be.

They'd spent the night together, and it had seemed wonderful and right and
even necessary at the time.  But how much did she, in fact, know about Vic?

He dedicated his life to helping kids, especially boys in trouble.

That was certainly admirable, she admitted, keeping the black Trans Am in
sight as it turned left from Livingston Avenue onto North Pearl Street.  She
was also keeping in mind what Megan said about the charitable impulse and how
it could sometimes come from a dark place in the psyche.  Katherine was well
aware that her own similar inclination had a lot to do with her need to heal.
She wondered what Vic might have to heal, or to hide.

She glanced to the right toward the brick facade of Hope House.  Those words
above the door inspired a silent prayer in her heart, except that she wasn't
quite sure what she should be praying for.  That Vic wouldn't turn out to be
a criminal?  That she and Vic would.  What?

She definitely had no idea how that particular prayer should end.

She'd settle for the catchall plea that everything would come out all right
for everybody when all of this was finally finished.  She didn't care to
think about how real the possibility was that this prayer would not be
answered.

She was driving through a street of deserted-looking industrial buildings and
vacant lots where the crabgrass was hidden by snow.  She watched the Trans Am
but kept a safe distance back, with a car and a plumber's van in between.
She was glad for the presence of so many four-wheelers like hers on the road.
She'd also not taken time to wash the Cherokee lately, so it was covered
with a coating of dried mud splashes and road salt.  The more nondescript the
vehicle, the better.  She didn't want Vic seeing her back here.  It didn't
seem likely he would with the other vehicles between them, especially not on
this late morning, which had suddenly turned very gray, but she told herself
she needed to have some kind of story fabricated to explain the coincidence
if he did spot her.

The Trans Am turned left on Loudonville Road, and Katherine followed.

Where was he going?  They were headed out of the city.  The wind blew harder
as the Cherokee mounted an overpass, and the tall vehicle shuddered against
the blast.  She pushed the dashboard heater indicator closer to maximum
output and wished she hadn't decided to wear a dress today.  She'd done that
because she wanted to look more attractive than might have been the case in
slacks or a skirt and sweater.  She'd done that because of Vic, of course.
Even before they went to the hotel, she'd packed this outfit, including her
impractical knee-high black suede boots with the too-precarious heels, with
Vic in mind.  How foolish that seemed now.  Something longer, with enough
material in it to fall in folds around her ankles and keep her from turning
frigid altogether, would have been a much wiser choice.

Vic veered right off Loudonville Road onto the bypass at the rear of Albany
Memorial Hospital.  Katherine stayed on his tail, but she was thinking about
Megan lying in another hospital on the opposite side of the city.  She was
going to be all right, but that might not have been the outcome.  A blow
struck just a little more forcefully and to a slightly different spot could
have left her brain damaged, her life drastically changed, the important work
she did perhaps ended forever.  Could Vic have had anything to do with that
attack?  Big black cars with scary men in them, professional break-ins, a
small boy on the run from what Vic had hinted could be gangsters.  And what
was his connection to all of that?  How much did he know that he wasn't
willing to tell anyone, especially not the police he so obviously preferred
to avoid?  Why had he been behaving so cozily with a man who looked like an
outlaw and carried a gun?

Katherine hit the power button on the car radio in the hope of distracting
herself from the troubling questions that had grown to inescapable prominence
in her mind.  She sighed when Christmas music poured out of the speakers and
pushed the button to turn the radio off again.  She couldn't help remembering
how she'd been singing along to a Christmas carol at the center such a short
time ago.  That thought filled her with the sadness of loss, the same kind of
loss and sadness she'd vowed to shield herself from, no matter what.  She
didn't feel strong enough to face an experience that echoed with the
suffering she'd gone through when Daniel died, even if those echoes were only
a fraction as powerful.  Grief was grief, and she'd already dealt with about
as much of that as she could stand.  Yet, here she was putting herself in the
way of more.

Speaking of where she was, what were they doing on their way into
Loudonville?  She'd followed the Trans Am beyond the Albany city limits
toward one of the most exclusive communities in the Capitol District.  Large,
impressive homes lined the road on either side.  She'd assumed Vic would
drive straight on through, toward some less imposing neighborhood beyond this
very privileged one.  Then, he turned left onto a lane marked Crumitie Road
and left again after a few blocks.  He wasn't on his way through Loudonville
as a shortcut to somewhere else.  He was driving into the residential heart
of the township.

There was no traffic here, and Katherine had to be more careful than ever to
remain undiscovered.  She wished her interest in Vic's destination, and his
behavior in general, didn't come from such a close and personal place in
herself.  She wished she didn't care so much about him.  Meanwhile, she kept
on praying everything would turn out all right, though she wasn't exactly
certain what all right might be.

Chapter Nineteen Coyote wasn't sure exactly what made him crawl into the
back of Miss Fairchild's car in the first place.  The parking lot at the
Arbor Hill Center Was cold, and too open to be safe for hiding.  He had the
idea of waiting near the center till nobody was around, then sneaking inside
to look for Sprite.  School was out today for Christmas.  He couldn't find
her at Tooley's place, so he thought Sprite might turn up here.  He knew he
was grabbing at straws, like they say, but he couldn't think what else to do.
While he was waiting, he'd ducked down behind Miss Fairchild's car to get
out of the wind.  That's when he saw a big guy coming out of the center.  He
wasn't the man Coyote'd been running away from, but in a way this guy
reminded Coyote of that man in the black car who'd dumped what could have
been a body in the alleyway on Broadway.

They both were big men across the chest and shoulders and looked like they
could knock a boy down by just thinking about it.  They walked very straight
and didn't bend their necks when they turned their heads.  They made Coyote
think of two blocks of wood.  They made him afraid, too.  Being scared was
probably the real reason he slipped around Miss Fairchild's car right then
and tried the back door.  He should have guessed she'd leave it open.  She'd
be the type to trust everybody.  He could almost remember when he'd been
that type himself.

He could even remember when he wasn't scared of hardly anything.

These days he was afraid pretty much all the time.  So he climbed into the
back of Miss Fairchild's car and held on to the door without closing it all
the way shut because that might make too much noise.

He peeked up and saw the man who looked like a block of wood get into a big,
dark car of his own that made Coyote shiver from more than being cold.  He
ducked his head down then and didn't peek over the bottom of the window of
Miss Fairchild's car again till what seemed like a long time later when he
heard an engine rumbling.

He saw Mr. Maltese's black sports car back out of his parking place very fast
and spin around to leave the parking lot with a squeal of tires.  A huge puff
of exhaust smoke almost hid the car inside as Mr. Maltese speeded out onto
the street.  Coyote was so busy watching that he almost didn't notice Miss
Fairchild herself on the way to the car where he was hiding.  He ducked down
onto the floor and dragged the blanket from the seat over him just in time.
Good thing he'd pulled the car door shut already, or she might have gotten
suspicious and checked the back seat.  She didn't do that, though, as far as
he could tell.  She got in the car and took off out of the parking lot almost
as fast as Mr. Maltese had done.

Now, here Coyote was, still under the blanket on the floor between the front
and back seats of Miss Fairchild's car.  She'd driven a pretty long time over
roads that were bumpy sometimes.  She'd turned a few corners, and he'd lost
track of what direction they must be going after a while.  Finally, she
pulled over to the side of the road and turned the car off.  Coyote waited a
couple of minutes after she got out of the car before poking his head up very
slowly and carefully from behind the seat.  What he saw made him slip back
onto the floor again while he tried to figure out where they were.

Coyote was sure he'd never been in this place.  He didn't even know where it
could be.  He didn't think they'd driven far enough to be all the way to
another city like Troy, but what he'd seen just now--big houses with wide
lawns and very tall trees--sure didn't look like the Albany he was used to.
He'd heard about where rich people lived.  He hadn't been to any of those
places in person, till now.  He wasn't going to get out of this car here,
that was for sure.  He'd be spotted straight off for not belonging.  He was
in enough trouble already without asking for more.

He did peek up over the bottom of the window again.  The car was parked next
to a high wall with bare vines all over it.  Branches from big trees reached
over the wall.  Then he saw Miss Fairchild.  She was at the far end of the
wall from where she'd parked the car.  What she was doing made Coyote's eyes
open extra wide.

She'd taken hold of one of the tree branches hanging over the wall and was
trying to hoist herself up on it by walking her feet from stone to stone.
She didn't make it very far before she slipped and bumped into the wall.
Coyote couldn't see her face, but he'd bet it hurt when she hit the stones.
He'd just about decided he had to get out of the car and try to help her when
he saw somebody come around the corner of the wall.

The man walked up behind Miss Fairchild and grabbed her arm.  They talked for
a minute, and Coyote saw her try to pull away, but the man didn't let go.  He
led her away after that, back around the far corner of the wall and out of
sight.  From the way Miss Fairchild was being pulled along, Coyote could tell
she was in trouble.  No matter how much he wanted to stay here hiding in the
car, he knew he had to do his best to find out where they were and what was
happening to this nice lady who did so much to help so many people.

VIc HADN'T BEEN here in a long time.  Still, the minute he stepped through
the door, he was straight back in the middle of it all again, just as if he'd
never left, and wondering if his reason for coming was really important
enough to put himself through this.  Nothing had changed much, at least not
in terms of his feelings about this place and what it stood for as far as he
was concerned.  Those feelings were as uncomfortable and agitated as ever,
especially when the woman he saw in his thoughts every day came hurrying
through the double doors from the living room with her arms open wide to
embrace him.

"Victor, I am so glad to see you," she said.

The wideness of her smile shone with the truth of her words, and her eyes
were bright with tears.  Vic kept his gaze level and over her head so he
wouldn't have to see the joy in her face as she ran into his arms.

"I'm glad to see you, too, Ma."

He felt tears of his own fill his throat.  He hugged his mother until she
pushed herself out of his arms and gazed up at him.  As he looked at her, he
noted with surprise that her blue-gray eyes were almost the same shade as
Katherine's.

His thoughts drifted to the evening before and to the sight of Katherine,
eyes wide and shining and hair spread out on his pillow.

He smiled to himself, remembering his hurt when he thought she'd left the
hotel without a word to him, and then his overwhelming happiness when he'd
found her note, which had slipped beneath the edge of the bed.  He'd called
the center, only to learn she was already in the board meeting, and by the
time he'd arrived, she was busy in her office.  He'd had the pleasure of
watching her unnoticed for a moment, then had headed down the hallway with
more energy than usual as he went to work.

He hoped his mother, who was still gazing at him, couldn't read his mind.

"You are so very handsome, my son," she was saying with such obvious pride
Vic was afraid she'd have him blushing soon.

"I've missed you."

She said that simply, without any accusation in her voice.

He felt a pang of guilt all the same.

"I've missed you, too, Ma."

She could have jumped on that with both feet just by asking why, if he missed
her so much, he didn't ever come to see her.  She didn't do that.  She wasn't
the kind of mother who tried to make her children feel bad.  She also wasn't
the kind of woman who whined or complained.

Katherine was like his mother in that way, too.

"Your father also misses you."

Whatever softness and sentiment Vic had begun to feel cut off sharply when
his mother said that.

"I don't miss him," he said.

His mother closed her eyes for a moment, probably because his words had hurt
her.  He'd had to say them anyway.

"Still, you've come here to ask him for something," his mother said.

Her manner was more subdued now than when she first came hurrying toward Vic.

"What makes you think that?"  he asked.

"You always hold your head a certain way when you are going to ask your
father for something.  You have a defiant expression on your face.  It has
always been the same."

"I've hardly ever asked him for anything."

Vic heard himself sounding like every belligerent, rebellious kid there ever
was.  He wanted her to understand he was more than that, but he didn't know
quite how to do it.

"I know all too well that you have come to your father for very little in
your life, which makes those occasions all the more vivid to me," she said.

"As I say, I can tell that this is one of those few times."

She'd been like this for as long as Vic could remember, able to read him with
almost scary ease.

"Why don't you come inside and sit down," she said.  He hesitated.

"Victor, your father isn't here now," she added with a shake of her head.

She turned and walked away from him, back to the double doors, which she
pulled open.  Vic had no choice but to shrug and follow his mother.

The foyer was pretty much unchanged from what he remembered, except for a
fresh coat of paint on the woodwork and a lighter shade of wallpaper in what
he figured was probably silk brocade.  After all, Gabriel Maltese never
settled for anything but the best.  The living room, on the other hand, had
undergone a complete transformation.  The original mahogany panelling had
been replaced by light-colored surfaces.  The heavy drapes were off the
windows.  Even the furniture, formerly large antique pieces, was all
different and much less old-fashioned and imposing.  The only object in the
room that wasn't white or pale-toned was the tall, floor-to-ceiling live
evergreen tree in the bay window that looked out onto the vast lawn.  Its
boughs were hung with the glass angels he remembered from his childhood.

"What's this, Ma?"  he asked, referring to the decor.  "Your California
period?"

She laughed, and he was suddenly aware of how much he'd missed heating her do
that.

"Your father," she said.

"One day he decided we needed to brighten things up around here.  You know
how he is."

"I know how he is."

His mother must have chosen to ignore the sharp way he said that because she
kept on talking.

"He gets an idea in his head, and immediately we have a project on our hands.
He's even more that way these days, since he retired."

Vic stifled an exasperated groan.  She talked about his father as if he'd
been a regular businessman going off to the office every day, instead of what
he really was.

"Besides, it isn't true that you know how your father is," she was saying.

"You don't know much about him at all, especially not now."

"I don't want to get into that," he said, unable to hide his impatience.

"I know you don't," his mother answered with a smile that couldn't help but
soften him some.

"Sit down with me and we'll talk about what you did come here for."

She'd taken a seat on a long, off-white sofa upholstered in fabric with a
pattern of small flowers.  Vic couldn't imagine his father picking out
furniture, or anything else, with flowers on it.  His mother patted the
cushion next to her and smiled up at him.  She'd always been beautiful, and
in the bright daylight of this room he could see that she was beautiful
still.  She probably colored her hair to cover up the gray, but she never
would have talked about such a thing.  Her skin was as smooth as it had ever
been, and she didn't wear much makeup.  She was dressed as he always
remembered her, in simple, well-made clothes that came from the best stores,
but were never flashy or deliberately expensive-looking.  It had occurred to
him many times that she was way too elegant to be called

"Ma," but she seemed to love him doing it all the same.

"Sit with me," she repeated.  "I don't know..."  he began.  "Sit."

Vic shrugged once again and sat down on the long sofa.  "Now, what is it you
need your father to do for you?"

"Ma, I think that's something I have to talk about with him, not you."

"Why is that?"

Her eyes were completely clear, as if she'd never had a secret or could never
tell a lie.  He'd felt that about Katherine's eyes, too, though he hadn't
really known it till this minute.

"Why is it you don't think you can talk about the same things with me that
you could discuss with your father?"

 "Ma, this is business."

She laughed again.

"You act as though you think this is some kind of Hollywood movie where the
wife keeps herself deliberately ignorant of her husband's professional
involvements."

Vic stared at his mother.  He always had thought something just like that.

"I know you don't approve of some of the people your father has associated
himself with over the years," she said.  "Maybe I didn't entirely approve
myself, but I love your father and I support whatever he does or whatever he
may have done."

"Ma, he's a..."  He didn't want to say the word.

"You think your father is a gangster."  She supplied the word for him.

"He is not.  He simply knows people who know things."

He breathed a heavy sigh.  This was why he didn't come here.  He was ashamed
of what his father had done with his life, how he had made the money that
bought this house, and the one in Colorado, and the one in Barbados.  Vic was
ashamed, and nobody else would even admit there was anything to be ashamed
of.  He made a move to stand up and leave, but his mother took his arm to
stop him.

"I sense that you want to know things yourself now.  Why don't you tell me
what they are, and I will speak to your father."

Vic usually knew exactly what he had to do.  He wasn't so sure about that now.

"I would guess that your question must be of great importance to you," his
mother added.

"Otherwise, you would not have come here."

Once again, she had read him accurately.  There was more at stake here than
his differences with his family, even his feelings about his father.  By the
time the knock sounded at the double doors, he had told his mother most of
the details of the situation with Coyote and his suspicion that professional
criminals of the organized variety might be involved.  He needed to find out
specifically who those criminals might be and what they were up to.  As his
mother had said, his father knew people who knew things.  If anybody could
dig up the information Vic was so desperate to find out, that somebody was
Gabriel Maltese.

"Come in," Vic's mother said in response to the knock.  Vic might have been
disgusted by the palooka who came through the door and how typical he was of
the kind of guy Vic's father had to keep around him for protection, but Vic
wasn't thinking about that now.  He was too startled by who the palooka had
in tow.

"Katherine!"  Vic exclaimed.

"What are you doing here?"

THAT WAS MORE QUESTION than Katherine was prepared to answer at the moment.
Before she answered anything, she had some questions of her own.

"What are you doing here?"  she said, not bothering to be polite about it,
despite the presence of the very distinguished-looking woman sitting next to
Vic.

"I used to live here," he said.

"I suppose you must have had his job then."

Katherine indicated the brawny grounds keeper or whatever he was, who had
escorted her in here.

"I was a little closer to the family than that," Vic said in a slightly
amused tone that made Katherine want to punch him right in the nose.

"In fact, I'd like you to meet my mother."

The woman on the long sofa stood up, as Vic had done when Katherine first
came in.

Katherine smiled and said,

"How do you do," because she was too stunned to respond any other way than
with the automatic courtesy she'd been taught from childhood on.

"Mother, this is Katherine Fairchild.  We work together."

Vic still sounded amused.

"I'm so pleased to meet yoU," the elegant woman said with a radiant smile as
she came around the sofa with her hand outstretched to greet Katherine.

"Won't you come in and sit down?"

Katherine was searching for signs of resemblance between the two faces in
front of her.  She supposed there could be a few, mostly around the mouth and
in the way they were both smiling now, though Vic was wearing more what she'd
call an irritating grin.

"Come, Miss Fairchild.  Sit down," Vic's mother said again and took
Katherine's arm to lead her into the room.

When she moved to follow, her right leg smarted and she flinched from the
pain.

"Are you all right, my dear?"  Vic's mother asked sounding truly concerned.

"Are you hurt?"

"She was trying to climb over the back wall and she skinned her knee,"
Katherine's brawny escort explained.

Vic's mother gazed down at Katherine's torn stocking and the bloody scrape
underneath, then looked up with a' confused expression.

Katherine was feeling the same, and embarrassed as well.  She couldn't help
being grateful when Vic stepped forward to what she hoped would be her rescue.

"I told Katherine about the gardens at the back of the house, Mother," he
said.

"She couldn't wait to see for herself."

Katherine smiled in what she meant to look like agreement.

"If you'll excuse us for a moment," he went on before she could babble some
kind of response about her alleged interest in the gardens,

"I'm going to take a look at her injuries."

"Yes, you must do that," his mother said.  I'll send in a pair of stockings
to replace those torn ones.  The downstairs bathroom is beyond the staircase.
"

"I remember how to get around this place," Vic said with an edge in his voice
that made Katherine all the more curious about what might be going on here.

However, after he had supported her by the arm while she hobbled across the
marble floor of the foyer of this very grand house and they were out of
earshot inside the equally grand bathroom, he was the one to begin the
questioning.

"How did you get here?"  he asked.

"I followed you."

"You trailed me all the way from the center?"  "Yes, I did."  "Why?"

He'd seated her on a chair in front of a dressing table with three mirrors,
each offer ing a separate view of her flushed face.

"I wanted to find out more about you," she said.

He laughed.

"Well, I guess you're doing that.  Aren't you?"

She didn't know what to say.  The mirrors had already told her she looked as
bewildered as she was feeling.

"I'll bet this place comes as a real shock to you," he said.

"Not what you expected from me.  Right?"  "Right."

She knew it might be more diplomatic to tell less than the whole truth, but
she didn't feel like being diplomatic just now.

"You probably had me pegged as coming from the wrong side of the tracks."

Katherine only sighed in response to that one.  Then, she gasped.  Vic had
lifted the leg she'd hit against the stone wall onto his lap as he knelt on
the floor in front of her.  His touch seared through the thin material of her
torn stocking.  That was what caused her to gasp.

Fortunately, the sound was covered by his next remark.

"I see you have these silly boots on again," he said.  She felt the blush
begin in her already red cheeks.  He'd reminded her of why she'd dressed this
way that morning, because she wanted to look sexy for him.  Now, all of that
and her foot in his lap struck her as very out of place.  She pulled her leg
away.

"I have to leave now," she said, standing up and doing her best to ignore the
sting in her scraped leg.

Vic stood up next to her.

"We need to talk," he said.  "I don't think so."  He backed against the door
as she was moving toward it.

"You came all the way here to find out more about me.

That's what you just said.  Right?  "

"That's right.  Now, I wish I hadn't done that."

"I think it was a good idea," he said.

Something had changed in his voice, softened in a way that made her stop
trying to get past him to the door, at least for the moment.

"Why do you think that?"

"I want to tell you about myself.  You deserve to know the truth."

Katherine suspected she should resist the temptation to agree with him.  She
wished she was that strong.

"We'll talk on the way back to town," he said, reaching behind him to open
the door.

"We can take my car."  "But I drove here," she said.

"Gus will bring your car to my place."

"Gus?"

"The guy who caught you climbing the wall."

Vic had opened the door.  He took Katherine's arm to lead her out into the
foyer, but she stood her ground.

"If this Gus drives my car into town, how will he get back here?"  she asked.

"Don't worry about that," Vic said.

"Guys like Gus are very resourceful."

And what about guys like you ?  She would have liked to ask, but the maid had
arrived with a pair of new stockings, still in their package.

"Why don't we take these with us," he said, relieving the maid of the package.

"We'll say our goodbyes now."

Despite her questions and misgivings, Katherine followed Vic toward the
living room to take their deceptively polite leave of this bewildering place.
She was too eager to hear Vic's story to do otherwise.

Chapter Twenty What Vic hadn't understood till this very minute was one of
the reasons he'd never told this story to anyone.  He didn't really know how.
He'd wanted to grab Katherine in his arms and kiss her when they were alone
in his parents' mansion.  He didn't follow through on his instincts, and not
because he was afraid she would push him away.  She might do that, but he'd
try again till she melted against him and returned his kiss with the passion
he knew well from last night.  He hadn't put his arms around her because he
was holding himself back from that closeness, the closeness that would bring
him to this minute, when he'd have to tell his story.

The time had come anyway.  Maybe it was bound to happen.  Maybe all these
years of being alone at least as an adult, had been about knowing this minute
would come and putting it off as long as he could.  So, why stop putting it
off now?  Katherine was the answer to that one.  He cared about her more than
he cared about keeping himself safe from hard-to-handle feelings.  He cared
about her, and he didn't want to lose her and go back to being alone again.
He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white.  When he began
to talk, his voice was husky with emotion.

"We didn't always live in that house," he said, not sure why he'd chosen to
lead off with this statement.  He could feel Katherine's quiet attention as
he talked.

"We were in Troy till I was almost twelve."

He took the turn off Crumitie onto Route 9 more slowly than was usual for him.

"I was told later that my father got out of the businesses he was into when
we left Troy."

"What businesses were those?"  she asked softly.  "Not-so-legal businesses,"
he said.

Vic saw her nod out of the corner of his eye as he kept his gaze deliberately
on the road ahead.

"After Troy, my father supposedly went strictly legit, as the saying goes.
Mostly, investing and real estate.  He did very well, as you can see from the
way they live, but what got him his start was the money he made in the
rackets."

 "What kind of rackets?"

"Gambling, for the most part," he said.

"That's what I was told anyway when I got old enough to put two and two
together, around eleven or so.  Hints of things I didn't really want to
believe.  By the time I was sixteen, I had a pretty clear idea what was going
on."

"You said your father had..."  Katherine hesitated.  He could imagine how
hard she was trying to pick just the right words.

"You said he'd changed his line of work by then," she began again.

"What made you think he'd been doing something illegal before that?"

"He still had a lot of the same friends.  They'd come around the new house,
especially at this time of year.  My mother puts on a big Christmas Eve party
every year.  It would be wall-to-wall mobster city in there.  Even a kid like
me could figure that out, especially with the way they had their palookas
lined up outside the house supposedly to guard the limos but really to keep
an eye out for cops or reporters."

' "Are you sure that's what was going on?  Maybe they were only wealthy
businessmen with bodyguards."

Vic glanced out the side window.  They were driving past some very expensive
real estate right now, high-class houses lived in by high-class people.  He
could understand why Katherine might have a hard time putting this kind of'
neighborhood together with the idea of career criminals.  What he was saying
had to come across to her as way too far-fetched to be true.

He shrugged as he turned his attention back to the road in front of them.

"I know what those guys were about no matter how crazy it may sound," he said.

"They were hoods in high-priced suits, nothing more, nothing less."

 "How can you be so certain of that?"

He could tell she was trying to help him out, doing her level best to give
him a way off the hook.  Her caring and concern for him struck him in a place
very close to his heart.

"I know you want to make all of this easier on me," he said, "and that's very
nice of you.  But, the truth is, I can be sure I'm right about my father
because he proved to me that I was."

"How did he do that?"

"By what he didn't say the day I confronted him with what I suspected about
his history."

Vic had stopped taking advantage a long time ago of opportunities to crawl
off the hook of the truth about his family.  Still, he would have preferred
to find at least a little of the escape artist in himself right now.  The
thought of this classy woman hearing the real scoop about the down-and-dirty
background he came from was almost more than he could stand.

"What was it that your father didn't say to you?"  she asked.

He sighed.

"First of all, he didn't say I was wrong about the things I was accusing him
of.  He also didn't say I was right.  That's my dad straight down to the
ground.  Don't explain, don't complain.  He used to say that a lot.  He has
some very strong principles.."  for a crook.  "

He could hear the bitterness in his voice, and how fresh that bitterness
sounded, even after all these years.

"Was your father ever convicted of any of these crimes you suspect him of
committing?"

"Not convicted.  In fact, he was never even formally charged.  He had
big-time connections in high places all over Rensselaer County.  The cops
didn't dare lean on him too hard.  Still, they had their eye on him.  They'd
have loved to catch him at something, I'm sure, but he was too smart to get
caught.  That's also my dad straight down to the ground.  He's a smart guy
through and through, and he knows how to take care of business."

That was why Vic had gone to Loudonville today, though he didn't like
admitting it even to himself.  Today he needed the help of somebody who could
take care of business.

"Do you know these things for absolute fact?"

"I found out for an absolute fact when I got a little older and was stupid
enough to start asking around about joining the police force myself.  Lucky
for me, I guess, a cop I knew clued me in before I could make a total fool of
myself by actually putting in an application to the police academy.  He told
me that, as long as I had the last name Maltese, I had about a snowball's
chance in hell of getting into a station house for anything except maybe to
stand in a lineup."

"Maybe you should have put in that application anyway.  That policeman
friend of yours could have been wrong."

Vic kept his eyes trained on the road ahead.  The last thing he needed right
now was to look over and see the sympathy on Katherine's face.

He was having a hard enough time listening to it in her voice.

"I'm better off where I ended up.  Working at the center, I mean," he said.

"I don't have to be proving myself to' everybody all the time."

"Except maybe to yourself."

"Why do you say that?"  he asked as they headed onto North Pearl Street.

"Because I can hear you doing it right now.  I can hear you being ashamed, as
if you were the one who did something you should be punished for.  I think
you ought to let up on yourself a little."

"The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.  Or maybe it's the acorn.
Isn't that what they always say?"

"They say a lot of things.  More often than not, they aren't worth listening
to.  I say you are a good man."

Vic had pulled up at the stop sign where North Pearl Street meets Livingston
Avenue.  They were back in the city of Albany now, only a few blocks from the
Arbor Hill Center.  Maybe that was why he'd suddenly become aware of the
tightness of his throat and of his fingers on the steering wheel.  He was
back in his own territory.

Loudonville might be only a few miles down the road, but it was really a
universe away as far as Vic was concerned.

He'd been right about how much it would bother him to tell this story.  The
words had left him in a rush, leaving a dark place of hurt behind.  What he
hadn't anticipated was that, along with the hurt, came release and relief.

More than that though, he knew it was what Katherine had just said that made
him feel freer inside himself than he had since he couldn't remember when.
He turned to look at her and saw proof of her belief in him shining out of
her beautiful eyes.  He wondered what he'd done to get so lucky.

He didn't want to return to the center just yet, didn't want to be separated
from Katherine at all.  And, in spite of his tangled emotions where his
family was concerned, he had the troubles of another family to worry about,
too.  Katherine readily agreed to a detour to Tooley's neighborhood to look
for Coyote.  Though they spent the better part of an hour cruising the
streets, they found no sign of the boy.  Obviously, Coyote was too
street-smart and too scared to come out of hiding.  When Katherine said she'd
informed the police about the situation, Vic told her she'd made the right
decision.

As they made their final trip past Tooley's apartment building, he looked at
his watch and swore.  He'd completely forgotten what day it was.

"I have a favor to ask of you," he said when Katherine looked at him in
concern.

"What would that be?"

"I told you about the open house I have every holiday season.  The party's
this afternoon, and I could use some help putting it on."

"This afternoon!  Aren't you cutting last-minute planning a little close to
the last second?"

Vic laughed and was relieved to hear he still could.  "I'm not quite as bad
as all that.  The food's taken care of.  Sandra Thomas, from the center,
caters for me every year.  The part that isn't quite nailed down yet is the
decorating.  I need a hand with that before people start showing up."

Katherine reached across the seat and touched his arm.  "My hand is yours,"
she said.

His heart leapt so hard, and so unexpectedly, in his chest that he had to
brace himself against the impact.  He might have sat there grinning goofily
at her all day if a horn blast from behind hadn't reminded him he had to make
a right turn and take them both home.

THE PROBLEM of Coyote and Sprite Bellaway stayed in Katherine's mind even as
she helped Vic decorate for the party.  It was still with her as they greeted
his guests at the door.

She would never have guessed she'd end up hostes sing Vic's holiday open
house, but here she was doing exactly that.  She was glad she'd worn a dress
and high-heeled boots today, after all.  A few minutes in the bathroom, some
Mercurochrome, a bandage and Mrs. Maltese's donated stockings took care of
the damage she'd done to her knee during her ill-fated attempt at wall
climbing.  Remembering that awkward scene, and how much she'd been frightened
at first by the huge and fierce-looking man who apprehended her behind the
Maltese mansion, also made her think about what Vic had revealed to her while
they were driving back to Albany.  The man who had gripped her by the arm and
all but carried her into the grand, spacious house that turned out to be
Vic's family home certainly did fit the stereotype of a mobster muscle man So
had the old family friend who had come to the center to say hello to Vic.

Vic's mother, however, had been another story entirely.  She didn't fit any
of those stereotypes at all.  She was, in fact, the kind of gracious and
elegant woman Katherine had always hoped she herself would grow into someday.
Mrs. Maltese also very obviously adored her son.  It was difficult to
imagine her ever doing anything that might jeopardize his well-being in any
way.  Still, Katherine knew that Vic could be correct in his suspicions about
his father's back ground.  From what she understood about Vic already, she
could tell--or at least she believed she could tell--he wasn't the kind of
man who would have tormented himself for half his life over a delusion.

The thought of that torment, and the imprint of it she had seen earlier in
his eyes, made Katherine all the more determined that this should be the most
joyful holiday party he had ever given.  She rose to that challenge with a
sparkle she hadn't realized she still possessed.  She'd believed that the
capacity for high social spirits had been burned out of her by the sadness of
losing Daniel.  Instead, today she found herself greeting each newcomer with
a bright smile and a heartfelt happy-holiday wish.  Each time she went to the
door, too, she hoped to see tiny Sprite Bellaway standing outside.  The
family friend she was staying with had planned to bring the little girl to
Vic's party.

Katherine and Vic didn't have much time at all to talk, though she saw plenty
of him as he mingled With his guests and often sent her a devastating smile.
She poured punch and chattered while she made certain every guest was
stuffing himself or herself from the trays and bowls and chafing dishes of
good food, which Sandra Thomas kept full to brimming.  That went on all
through the late afternoon, till at dusk, Santa Claus appeared carry ing
a
bulging bag over one stooped shoulder.

Katherine hadn't known there would be a Santa at the party.

Apparently, the kids from the center hadn't, either.  Their surprise and
delight were wonderful to see as a cheer went up, followed by cries of,

"What's in the bag, Santa?"  Katherine had no idea who Santa might actually
be.  He brought to mind the Secret Santa of the newspaper articles along with
a rather wild thought.  What if this was the same person?  She was telling
herself how absurd that had to be when Santa looked up from his
gift-distributing to favor her personally with a particularly hearty,

"Ho, ho, ho."  She knew instantly then that Santa was none other than Vic
Maltese himself.

She'd have recognized those eyes under any disguise.  There wasn't a hint of
torment in them now.  Suddenly, Katherine realized, with a pang of warmth,
Which travelled directly to her heart, that the joy in Vic's eyes was the
best present Santa Claus could possibly have given her.

Even Mariette Dugan showed up for some eggnog.  She had a photographer in
tow, of course.  Mariette didn't strike Katherine as a woman who was ever
one-hundred-percent off the job.  The photographer set about at once snapping
shots of Vic in the Santa suit.  Katherine didn't believe for a minute that
Mariette's motives were either sentimental or charitable.  She would use
these photographs to promote her Secret Santa story and squeeze just a little
more play out of the series before the day after Christmas made it old news.

Katherine actually hoped the big contributor's identity wouldn't be revealed.
There was more magic to the generous gesture while it remained anonymous, as
if the spirit of the season had been the real benefactor who brought so much
relief and happiness to so many people who truly needed those unexpected
gifts.  She'd heard several reports of how just about every staff person at
the center had been happily busy all day making phone calls, handing out
money orders, delivering food baskets and wrapping presents.  Part of
Katherine regretted missing out on the fun of spreading so much joy and
goodwill, but she reveled in the new knowledge she had of Vic and in the
closeness she'd felt between them as they'd silently scoured the neighbor,
hoods earlier.  Besides, she knew that being at Vic's side today was the most
important, and the happiest, holiday duty she could possibly perform.  She
was thinking about how special that experience had turned out to be when the
phone began to ring.  Vic, as Santa, was still being mobbed by children under
the tree so Katherine answered the call.

"Could I please talk to Mr. Maltese?"  a young boy asked at the other end of
the telephone line.

Katherine recognized the voice at once.  The child had never been far from
her thoughts all day.

"Coyote, is that you?  This is Katherine Fairchild.  Where are you?"

There was silence from Coyote for a long moment, and Katherine was afraid he
might be about to hang up the phone.

"Mr.  Maltese is right here," she said.  She gestured at Vic, but he didn't
appear to notice her over the clamoring of the children who surrounded him.

"We both want to help you.  Please, tell me where you are.  We'll be happy to
come for you if you need us to."

The silence continued, but for only a moment this time.

"I'm at the cathedral next to the Plaza," Coyote said.  He sounded like he
might be shivering from the cold.

"You mean the cathedral near Empire State Plaza?"  The expanse of marble
concourse and tall state office towers across State Street from the Capitol
Building was referred to by just about everybody locally as the Plaza.  The
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception wasn't far from there.  Katherine had
gone inside once just to sit for a while and feel the peace of the place.

"That's where I mean.  Next to the Plaza, just down the street from there,"
Coyote said.

"I hitchhiked here from that huge house you drove to this morning.  I was
hiding in the back of your car.  I saw that big guy drag you away, but I
never did find out where he took you.  When I went to get back in the car,
the same guy was driving it away so I hid till he was gone.  Then I got out
of there as fast as I could."

Katherine could hardly believe what she was hearing.  Coyote Bellaway had
stowed himself away in the back of her car?  She'd had no idea he was there.
She would have liked to question him further about why he'd done that, but
finding that out wasn't what really mattered now.

She could hear Coyote's fear in his voice, and his exhaustion, too.

"Go to the front of the Cathedral, by the steps," she said.

"Mr.  Maltese and I will be there very soon."

 "Come as fast as you can, please."

"We'll be right there," Katherine said, and hung up the phone.

She signalled to Sandra Thomas, who was just passing by with a tray heaped
high with cookies.

"We need you to take over here, Sandra," Katherine said.

"Vic and I have to attend to an emergency situation involving one of the
children."

Sandra nodded and immediately launched herself into the swarm of children
surrounding Vic.

"Santa has to go now," she boomed.

"His sleigh is double-parked.  But, Mrs. Santa sent these just for you guys."

The tray of cookies distracted the children long enough for Katherine to drag
Vic away and tell him quickly why the party had to be over for him for now.
He followed her immediately, without even so much as a parting,

"Ho, ho, ho."

Chapter Twenty-One They made it across town to the Cathedral in record time,
even with Vic taking the time to change out of the Santa Claus suit.

"My guess would be that Coyote is trying to be as inconspicuous as possible,"
Katherine had said.

"Being met by a man in a red suit stuffed with pillows might defeat that
purpose."

Vic had to agree with that logic.  But he definitely didn't agree that there
was any logic at all to having Katherine come along on this little adventure.
He had no idea what might turn out to be waiting at the other end.  What if
somebody had intimidated Coyote into making that phone call to Vic's house?
What if this was a setup?  With those possibilities in mind, and maybe some
worse ones too, Vic had stopped by the hallway cabinet on the way out of his
house and retrieved his gun from the hidden compartment there.  "What's that
for?"  Katherine asked.

Naturally, she'd refused to credit his objections to her coming along to meet
Coyote.  Naturally, she was also watching every move Vic made.

He wouldn't have put it past her to follow him upstairs so she could make
sure he didn't sneak out the bedroom window when he was supposed to be
changing his clothes.  They were better off that she hadn't, of course.  The
thought of getting Katherine into his bedroom and keeping her there was very
tempting even for a man on a mission of mercy.  Maybe too tempting to resist.

"Why are you takin ga gun?"  Katherine repeated, not allowing him to avoid the
question as he would have preferred to do.

"Just in case," he said, figuring she'd give him an argument for sure about
carry ing a firearm.  He was more than a little surprised when she didn't.

The cathedral stood at the top of a steep hill.  Two roads bordered a
triangular park across the street from the church and converged at the bottom
of that park to form a single road down the hill all the way to the Hudson
River.  Two Gothic spires thrust high into the night sky above the sandstone
face of the old building which had commanded these heights for almost a
century and a half.  Vic could see why the boy might choose a place like the
cathedral to hide.  This holy fortress looked like it could stand against any
enemy, especially the ungodly ones.  He look Katherine's arm as they crossed
the street.

Vic looked around in every direction.  He knew he couldn't depend on the
powers of the church alone for protection.  He had to keep a sharp eye out
for more earthly demons.  Down Eagle Street across Madison Place and on the
same side of Eagle as the cathedral the Executive Mansion loomed.  This was
the residence of the governor of New York State, and this area was called the
Mansion Neighborhood because of that huge old house.  The governor's
residence was lit up now with spotlights set all around the grounds, as if to
shield it from the residents of some of the much smaller and less impressive
buildings advancing toward the mansion up the hill.  By comparison, the
cathedral struck Vic as much more vulnerable and exposed the way it jutted
right out onto the street with nothing but a cast-iron fence to hold back the
dangers of the world.

"Where do you think he could be?"  Katherine asked.  "He said he'd wait by
the front steps."

Coyote was nowhere to be seen.  In fact, the streets were deserted.

Last-minute holiday shoppers would have no business in this neighborhood.
They'd be crowding the malls on the outskirts of the city tonight.

"He probably decided he should keep out of sight," Vic said.

"Maybe he's inside."

He climbed the few stone steps to the wide doors.  A wreath of evergreen
boughs tied with a wide red ribbon had been hung above each of the three
entrances.  Vic tried the handles to each of the sets of double doors, but
all of them were locked.  He turned and shook his head at Katherine as he
walked back down the steps.

"Not here," he said, gazing around again.  "Maybe he got scared and ran
away."

 "Maybe."

Vic scanned the front of the cathedral again.  Large pots containing even
larger pine trees had been set at each side of the stone steps.

Coyote could have hidden behind one of them, but he wasn't there.

"Let's check the park across the street," Vic said.

He hooked his hand around Katherine's arm as he made his way to the curb.

"I wish you hadn't insisted on coming along he said.  " I don't like the feel
of any of this.  "

"I care just as much about Coyote as you do," she said with a tug at his hand
as if to pull away from him.

Vic tightened his grip on her.

"That has nothing to do with it," he said.

"I don't know what we might be walking into here."

The stark truth of that sent his free right hand darting into his jacket
pocket, where it encountered nothing but his car keys.  He had told himself
that guns weren't always the answer to a problem, though some of his father's
former associates believed they were.  The thought had been enough to make
Vic decide to leave the gun in the car until he could scope out the
situation.  His fingers closed around the car keys as he stopped walking and
turned to face Katherine.  He could see the resistance in her eyes even
before he began to speak again.

"There could be trouble here tonight," he said trying to make his voice
convey the truth of that.

"I don't want to take the chance that you might get hurt.  I think you should
wait for me in the car."

"Absolutely not," she said, pulling harder against his grasp on her arm.

Vic dropped the car keys back into his pocket and took hold of her other arm
as well.  He pulled her so close she could hardly avoid looking up at him.

"All I'm asking is for you to sit in the car while I scout things out and
make sure there's no real danger."

She stopped pulling away from him and stared up into his face.  In the light
of the bright streetlamp he could see the sadness come into her eyes.  He
would have taken her into his arms if she hadn't raised her gloved hands and
placed them both flat against his chest.

"I was forced to sit and wait and do nothing while Daniel died," she said.

"Please, don't ask me to sit and wait and do nothing again."

The tremor in her voice resonated in Vic's heart.  For an instant, he could
see her sitting in a hospital corridor, anguish shadowing her lovely face,
her hands clutching each other in her lap.  He could imagine how helpless
that would feel, and how unbearable.  He dropped his hands from her arms and
reached up to brush a stray curl away from her cheek.  The thought of
anything happening to her out here made his fingers tremble, and he had to
take a deep breath before he could speak.

"If you're coming along you have to be very careful," he said.

She nodded.

"I will be."

"And let me take the lead."

He was ready for an objection to that when a sound behind them made him put
that last request into action and shove her protectively behind his wake.  He
spun just in time to see one of the wide church doors slowly opening.

"It's me," a boy's voice called from behind the opening cathedral door.

Coyote's head emerged a second later.  Vic breathed a sigh of relief.

Before he could think whether or not he should stop her, Katherine had darted
out onto the curb and across the sidewalk.  She reached Coyote just as he was
letting the door to the church close behind him.  She crouched down to his
height on the top of the stone steps and wrapped him in an embrace.

"Thank heaven you're safe," she said.

"We've been so worded about you."

Vic half expected Coyote to pull himself out of her arms.  Boys his age had a
way of doing that when it came to physical gestures of affection or concern,
but Coyote didn't pull away.  Instead, he did quite the opposite.  He wrapped
his own arms in their pitifully thin jacket as far around Katherine as he
could reach.  In that one movement, Vic could see, plain as day, the ordeal
this little boy had been through and how glad he felt that he was no longer
on his own.

Vic walked up the steps and put his arm around Coyote, too.

"Everything's going to be fine now, son," Vic said.  He glanced up at the
cathedral doors and said a little prayer that he would turn out to be right.
He also found himself wishing he really could be a father to Coyote, and to
Sprite as well.

He was sure he'd be able to do a better job of protecting them than anybody
else had managed so far.  Tooley Pennebaker tried her best, and the mother
was too sick to do anything.  The children's father had disappeared long ago
and most likely wasn't coming back.  Vic had been a kid on his own at too
young an age himself.  He still remembered how lonely, and how scary, that
was.  He said another small prayer that Coyote and Sprite might be spared
that loneliness and fear.  His second glance at the cathedral brought another
thought suddenly to mind.

"How did you get inside?"  he asked Coyote.

"The place was locked up tight when I tried the doors."

"I found another way in."

Something in Coyote's voice, a hint of guilt, told Vic the boy had broken
into the church.  He probably knew a lot about how to break into places.  Vic
couldn't help but wonder what other talents for deception Coyote might have
developed.  A kid had to master a lot of not-so-nice skills when it came to
surviving on his own out in the world.  Vic also couldn't help but wonder how
much of what Coyote had done and led them to believe so far might be a
product of those deceiving ways.  Vic would have liked to push that grim
thought out of his head, but he had to be realistic about what might or might
not really be going on here.

"Let's get going," he said as he stifled a sigh and straightened up.

He left his hand resting on Coyote's shoulder, but it felt more tentative
there now.  Katherine stood up too.  She'd pulled off her gloves and was
smoothing Coyote's cropped hair away from his dirt-smudged face with her
fingers, but she was looking at Vic.  He caught a glimpse of the question in
her eyes before he turned away.

She must have heard the note of suspicion in his voice.  He'd heard it there
himself.

"Why don't we take a little walk and talk a bit?"  she said.

Her suggestion let Vic know his guess had been right.

KATHERINE FELT GUILTY about keeping Coyote out in the cold, but she had
detected the doubt and distance that came over Vic all of a sudden and knew
those doubts needed to be cleared up.  Her instincts told her there was no
better time than right now for that clearing up to begin.  The police would
be involved soon.  They would certainly have to be called in, the minute she
and Vic got Coyote back to Vic's place.  In fact, they should probably take
the boy directly to the police station now.  She didn't want to do that, at
least not just yet.  There was no telling what would happen to Coyote's story
once he had to tell it to a policeman.  The best chance they had of finding
out the unvarnished troth was to go after it right now.

Coyote shrugged in answer to her suggestion that they take a walk, but he
didn't say anything.  She hoped that wasn't a sign that he intended to clam
up nowjn the face of questioning.  As if to confirm that fear, he slipped
away from her touch and headed down the church steps onto the sidewalk.  He
turned left toward Madison Avenue.  His bouncy stride had carded him halfway
to the corner before Vic called out with some urgency in his voice.

"Hey, wait up, kid.  Let's stick together here."  Katherine saw Vic glance
furtively around as he hurried on ahead to catch up with Coyote.  She glanced
around, too, but saw nothing that looked even remotely like danger.  Vic and
Coyote were at the corner by then.  Vic unzipped his jacket and took it off
then slipped it over Coyote's shoulders.  Katherine was as warmed by that
gesture as Coyote must have been.  Vic might have his doubts and suspicions,
but he still cared about the boy.  She was relieved to see that because she
cared so very much herself, about both Coyote and Sprite.  Suddenly, she
realized, in something of a flash, how important it was to her that she and
Vic feel the same way, especially about this one thing.

She hurried to catch up with them as they rounded the corner.

"I thought we might walk the other way, back down the hill," she said as she
joined them.

"We might find a coffee shop or a restaurant to go into where it's warm."

She didn't know of any place like that in the direction they were headed.

"I like the Plaza," Coyote said.

"I spend a lot of time over here."  ' Katherine had grown wise enough in the
ways of street kids since she came to the Arbor Hill Center to understand
that Coyote might actually mean he'd have lots of places to run away from
them and hide again once he was on familiar ground.  On the other hand, he
might also mean he'd feel safer where he knew his surroundings.  He had
certainly experienced precious little safety lately.

"All right," she said.

"We'll walk this way, but let's stop for a minute first and sit down."

She headed toward a low wall just beyond the fenced-in cathedral grounds
where a driveway led to a parking lot for Empire State Plaza visitors.  The
much-acclaimed architectural marvel was a popular tourist attraction in the
daylight hours.  By this time of night, and two days before Christmas, the
buildings were closed and the streets were deserted.  Katherine sat down on
the low wall.  The much higher wall of the State Museum, a tiered building
that always reminded her of an Egyptian tomb, loomed to her back and shut out
some of the wind.

"Coyote, we need for you to tell us what exactly you've been running away
from," she began as soon as they had joined her.

She drew Coyote down to sit next to her on the wall, but Vic remained
standing.  She understood he would want to be in a position to watch both
them and the street.

"I been running away because of something I saw that I'd be better off if I
hadn't," Coyote said very fast, as if letting go of a burden he'd been
carrying too long.

Katherine had been concerned that he might not be willing to talk and they
would have to pry the story out of him.  She could tell now that wasn't going
to be the case.  She felt her own relief as he hurried on.

"I saw a guy dump a bundle in an alleyway off Broadway.  I went there to mail
my letter to you about the fund money.  I was in front of the post office
near the corner of Livingston when the car pulled up down the street and this
big guy got out."

"Is that the black car Sprite told us about?"  she asked.

"Yeah.  That's the kind of car it was," Coyote said nodding.

There was something in the quality of Vic's silence that let Katherine know
how skeptically he was listening to what Coyote had to say.  She hoped Coyote
wouldn't read that skepticism and stop talking.

"What happened then?"  she asked.

"The man opened the trunk and took out a long bundle.  I think it was wrapped
in a rug, but the paper didn't say anything about a rug, so the big guy must
have taken that away with him."

"What paper are you talking about

"The Chronicle," Coyote said matter-of-factly, as if she should have been
expecting him to follow the local news while he was on the run.

"I been looking for copies in wastebaskets ever since that night, just so I
could see if they wrote about what happened.  It was in there the second
day, how they found the guy right in that same alley where I saw the black
car pull up."

"What guy did they find?"  Vic asked.

Katherine could see that Coyote had Vic's full attention now.  She wished the
expression on his face didn't reveal quite so obviously how little he
believed of what he was heating.

"They found a guy named Gilford Vogel.  The paper said he worked for a place
in Troy that did import stuff.  I don't know what that means, but it said he
was a bookkeeper there."

Katherine guessed that Coyote was providing as many details as he could
because he wanted them to think he was telling the truth.

"They had the whole story right there," Coyote went on.

"The paper said the cops think it was a robbery, but I know it wasn't.  I saw
who put the guy there.  I even saw his face.  That's why he's been after me
ever since."

"What else did the Chronicle say?"  Vic asked, his disbelief more apparent
than ever.

"They told about the guy.  Mr. Vogel," Coyote said.  "How when they found him
he was stone-cold dead."

Chapter Twenty- Two What Coyote was saying had to be too fantastic to be
true.  Yet, Katherine found herself believing him.  Then, he yelled out,

"The man from the black car.  There he is."

Those words shattered Katherine's belief.  The child had now obviously
brought his fantasy to life in an attempt to convince the adults he wasn't
making things up.  She found that so sad and touching she would have taken
Coyote into her arms again, the way she did back on the cathedral steps, to
reassure him everything would be all right now.

Except that Coyote was already running away He'd shoved his sleeves into
Vic's jacket as they were walking up the hill.  That jacket flapped around
the small boy's legs as he dashed off the low wall and straight across the
four-lane road toward the other side.

Fortunately, there were no cars coming at the moment.  Unfortunately,
Katherine could now see that Coyote had concocted his fantasy to create a
distraction and allow him to run away yet again.

She could tell Vic was just as discouraged by Coyote's deception as she was.
She'd heard Vic sigh loudly when the boy first claimed to see the notorious
and maybe imagined man.  She'd glanced upward for an instant at Vic then.
He'd been stating off toward the looming marble towers of the Plaza with a
resigned expression on his face as he shook his head.  Then, Coyote ran off
and Katherine cried after him, "Coyote, wait," with her hand upraised.  But
he didn't wait.  He didn't even turn around.  A figure appeared from the
parking lot.

"Vic," she cried out, but he had already joined the chase in pursuit of the
large man in the black coat who was obviously after Coyote.

Two cars drove by in quick succession then, and Vic had to wait for them.
Katherine gasped as he stumbled to a halt at the very last minute to keep
from running in front of the second car.  The driver hit his horn with a loud
blast.  Vic charged off again when the car had passed, but the man in the
black coat was far ahead by now.

Coyote was farther ahead still and had disappeared over the barricade that
blocked the steps to the Plaza mall.  The mall area was kept closed to the
public at night, but only low, metal guardrails blocked access.  Coyote
scrambled over them easily and was out of sight.

Katherine's suede boots with their high, narrow heels, which had been so
perfect for hostes sing Vic's open house, were nothing but an impediment now.
She hurried as fast as she could manage after the parade already in Coyote's
wake.  She stumbled several times in her haste but managed not to fall.  She
thought about calling the police, but decided they might not arrive in time
to give Vic the help he needed.  She'd have to do her best to provide some of
that herself.

She ran to the Plaza Mall and struggled over first the guardrails at the
bottom of the steps and then a second set of rails at the top.  By that time,
Vic had caught up to the bigger man somehow, and the two of them were
grappling along the marble walkway that bordered the mall.  Skyscrapers
towered overhead.  Maple trees stripped bare of leaves by winter lined the
walkway.  To the left, the long reflecting pool had been pumped dry to
prevent freezing and cracking in the frigid months.  Vic and his opponent
veered dangerously close to the edge of that pool, locked in a battle grip
from which lunging arms and fists emerged to land blows whenever and wherever
they could.  Coyote was nowhere in sight.

"Vic, watch out for the edge," Katherine screamed as she ran toward the
struggling men.

She was too late with her warning.  They were already toppling over the rim
and rolling into the snowy pool bed a few feet below the level of the mall.
Vic landed at least two solid punches, the second to the jaw of the big man,
who staggered backward with a grunt.

Katherine was about to pull off her coat and jump down onto the pool bed
herself when Vic glanced her way.

"Stay back, Katherine," he yelled.

She was startled by the strangled sound of his voice.  He was out of breath.
She wasn't surprised that fighting a man so much superior in bulk would have
Vic combatting exhaustion as well.  What happened next did surprise her, and
not happily.  The big man took advantage of Vic's moment of inattention by
wrapping huge arms around Vic's chest from behind and squeezing visibly hard.
Katherine knew she mustn't listen to Vic's insistence that she stay out of
this fight.  She was unbuttoning her coat and dragging at the sleeves when a
boy's voice rang out behind her.  "Let go of him!"

A well-aimed chunk of ice hurtled through the air past Katherine.  She turned
to find Coyote a few feet behind her, armed with several chunks of ice and
snowballs.  She heard a grunt of pain and looked back at the two in the
reflecting pool.  Coyote's ice missile had hit its mark.  The big man
stumbled backwards a step, holding the side of his face.  A second chunk
struck him on the top of his head, and he winced again.  Katherine
remembered Vic mentioning his work with Coyote on his pitching skills.  Those
efforts were definitely paying off now.  Vic didn't waste the opening
Coyote's attack created.  He was after the bigger man in a shot, pounding and
pummelling him till he went down on one knee in the pool bed.  Still, the man
was a powerfully built opponent.  Vic would need help.  Unfortunately,
another glance back at Coyote revealed that he now had on only his own thin
jacket.

"Where is Vic's jacket?"  Katherine cried out.

Coyote looked at her for a moment as if he didn't understand what she was
asking.

"Where did you leave Vic's jacket?"  she repeated.

"I have to find it."

"Back there."

Coyote gestured toward the stand of barren trees at the edge of the walkway.
Katherine hurried in that direction with her half-unbuttoned coat flying
behind her.  Overhead, lights illuminated the mall, but the tree-lined area
was still very much in shadow.  She strained to see into the darkness.  She
thought she might have spotted a clump that could be the jacket.  She prayed
she was right and that Vic's gun would still be in the pocket.  She feared
that Coyote's snowball barrage and Vic's pummelling would hold this mountain
of a man at bay only temporarily.  She was headed toward what she hoped would
be a more decisively effective weapon when a woman's voice rang out, echoing
in the emptiness of the long mall and against the marble buildings.

"Let him up right now, or I kill the kid."

Katherine spun around and looked immediately at Coyote, expecting him to be
in the clutches of whoever had shouted those cold, impassioned words.  Coyote
was poised with his arm raised to throw another snowball, but there was no
one with him.  Katherine followed his transfixed gaze down the marble walkway
in the direction of the opposite end of the Plaza.  The mall lights reflected
in the pale blond hair of the tall woman walking toward them.

"Lacey Harbison," Katherine breathed, recognizing the woman who'd visited her
office two days before.

Even more shocking than this woman's unexpected arrival was the presence of
the child she was gripping by one arm and pushing along in front of her.
Sprite's small face was white against the night.  Her eyes were huge and
terrified.  Katherine leapt forward, ready to drag the child away from the
woman.  Then she saw the gun pointed at Sprite's head and backed off.

"Let him up out of there like I told you," the Harbison woman shouted.

Back in the pool bed the two men had stopped struggling to stare at the
blonde with the child.  Vic had apparently managed to overpower the bigger
man after all.  He was lying flat in the pool bed with Vic on top, clutching
the other man's throat.  Katherine watched with a sinking heart as Vic
released his grip and rose slowly to his feet.

The big man labored to his knees.  She could hear him gasping for breath.

She could also hear Sprite sobbing softly and longed to run to her.

"You all right, Cuda?"  Lacey Harbison asked.  The big man nodded in reply.
Maybe he was so winded he couldn't speak yet.  Nonetheless, when he finally
rose to his feet, looming even larger and broader than Katherine had
previously registered, he'd regained enough strength to lunge at Vic, who
stepped quickly out of reach.

"We've got no time for that now.  Get up out of there," Lacey Harbison said,
gesturing with the gun still frighteningly close to Sprite's bare head.

"Where's the other kid?"

Katherine's glance darted to the spot where Coyote had been standing only a
moment ago.  He was gone.  She scanned the walkway and back among the trees,
but he was nowhere in sight.  Once again, he'd managed to slip away.  This
time Katherine was grateful for the street-learned craftiness that allowed
him to disappear so skillfully.

"He's gone," the big man Harbison had called Cuda growled as he hauled
himself out of the pool bed.  I'll find him.  "

"No time for that now," Harbison barked in a tone that left no doubt who was
truly in charge.

"We've still got this one."  She yanked hard enough at Sprite's arm to make
her cry out.

"I think we'll be able to make a deal for the other brat.  Either that or
this sweet little girl ends up good and dead."

The cultured tone and charming smile Lacey Harbison had put on in Katherine's
office had vanished now.  Even in this imperfect light she could detect a
glint of viciousness in Harbison's eyes.  She looked as if she would be
entirely capable of following through on the threat she'd just made.
Katherine clenched her fists at her sides and willed herself to stay very
still.  Vic remained standing in the reflecting pool.  He wasn't moving
either.  She guessed he had also recognized the potential for heartlessness
in Lacey Harbi- son.

"We'll be in touch with you tomorrow," she said, glaring at Vic.

"You be sure to be home when we contact you."

The big man named Cuda had joined her by now.  He grabbed Sprite away from
his accomplice.  Katherine saw Vic flinch at that, but he stood his ground.
He obviously knew as well as Katherine did that they'd better not make any
kind of move while Harbison and Cuda sauntered away with little Sprite, still
terrified and at gunpoint.

Katherine barely noticed when Coyote materialized beside her out of the
shadows cast by the trees.  Vic's jacket was draped over Coyote's arm, but
there was no use going for the gun in the pocket now.  All the three of them
could do was watch helplessly as the three others disappeared from view
beyond the massive Christmas tree at the State Street end of the mall.  The
multicolored lights twinkling from the branches of the tall hemlock mocked
the sudden hollowness in Katherine's heart and the holiday joy she could no
longer feel.

Chapter Twenty- Three Sandra Thomas and her crew had cleaned up so well Vic
could hardly tell there'd been a party here yesterday.  He could find no
trace of anything like a good time inside himself either.  He walked from one
room of his house to another as if he were shuffling in and out of a
nightmare where everybody looked perfectly normal but nothing, in fact, was.
Worst of all was the sadness in Katherine's eyes and how bravely she tried to
hide it, especially when Coyote was around.  She didn't fool Vic for a
second.  She'd already had one child torn away from her in her life.  Vic had
grown so close to her in these past few intense days that he could feel the
depth of her sorrow.

Tooley Pennebaker had been with them since shortly after he, Katherine and
Coyote got back from Empire State Plaza.  He had sent a cab to pick her up
and bring her here to join in the long wait with the rest of them, as he knew
she would want to do.  As it turned out, she'd already known that something
had happened to Sprite, though she had no idea the child had been abducted.
According to her friend, Sprite had been fretting about looking for Coyote,
and when Sprite had vanished from in front of their home where she was
staying, the friend's mother thought the little girl had left to search for
her brother.

Tooley stayed the night in one of his guest rooms.  Katherine and Vic agreed
that Tooley shouldn't be alone during this ordeal.  No one had slept much.
They wandered up and down stairs and drank cups of coffee, which was the last
thing any of them needed.  They all looked pretty worn out this morning, as
Megan Moran had been quick to point out with her usual bluntness when she
arrived an hour ago, head bandage and all.

And, of course, there were the cops.  They'd been here all night too, asking
questions, taking down statements, setting up electronic connections to Vic's
phone line.  He had to hand it to all of them for trying as hard as they did
to stay out of the way and be as inconspicuous as possible.  Still, nobody,
particularly not Vic, could forget for a minute that his house was under
constant surveillance, his telephone was tapped and there was a makeshift
police command post set up in his dining room.  For someone who'd tried to
avoid cops most of his life, Vic certainly had brought a carload of them down
on himself today.  Strangely enough, he was glad to have them here.

Anything that would help get Sprite back was okay with him.  He only wished
he could do more to help.

"It's driving me crazy, sitting here not knowing what to do," Tooley said,
echoing Vic's thoughts and shaking her head slowly.

Megan sat down next to Tooley and put her arm around the woman's shoulder.

"It's up to the police now," Megan said.

"We have to let them do their jobs.  They'll get Sprite back.  I know they
will."

"I don't know what I'm going to do then, either," Too-ley said, sounding very
close to tears.

"I thought I could take care of these kids and do my job plus overtime hours,
too, but I know now that I can't.  I promised their poor mama I wouldn't let
them go into foster care, but I talked to her doctors just last week and it
looks like she's going to be in the sanitarium for a long time.  Even when
she gets out, she won't be strong enough to take care of those children.
Lord knows I want to keep my promise to her.  I just don't know how."

Almost before he realized he was going to say anything, Vic stepped forward
and put his hand on Tooley's shoulder.

"You don't have to worry about any of that," Vic said.  "I'm going to help
you."

Tooley and Megan both looked up at him expectantly.  All of a sudden, Vic
knew exactly what he wanted to say.  He'd never been so sure of anything in
his life before, except maybe how much he had come to care about Katherine.

"I'd like Coyote and Sprite to come here and live with me," he said.

Tooley shook her head again.

"How're you going to manage that on your own?  You'll have most of the same
problems I did."

Before Vic could respond, the phone rang.  The room went suddenly still
except for the echo of that first ring, while they all waited for the next.
He had his instructions from the police.  He was to let the phone ring three
times, then pick it up.  He was at the phone with his hand poised over the
receiver before the second ring could sound, and Katherine was at his side.

"Hello, this is Victor Maltese," he said when it was finally okay to answer.

"Vic, it's your mother."

Her voice on the other end of the line was almost the last one he would have
expected to hear.

"I can't really talk right now, Ma," he said.

"There's a lot going on here."

"I know exactly what is going on, son," she said.

Vic wasn't surprised to hear that.  His father had friends who kept him
informed, from both sides of the law.  As soon as the Maltese name appeared
on the police blotter last night, somebody from downtown would have called
Gabriel to tell him exactly what was what.

"I'll be there soon myself," his mother went on.

"I wanted to call you first to let you know your father is already on his
way."

Vic began to count to ten.  He felt Katherine's hand on his arm, as if she'd
seen the way his jaw had tightened.  He stopped counting.  Her touch soothed
him more than a row of numbers ever could.

"Look, Ma.  This isn't the time..."  he began, more calmly than he would have
thought possible right now.

"This is precisely the time," she said.

"You must take my word for that.  It is time for us all to be together as a
family."

There was a sternness in her voice that Vic had heard very seldom in his
life.  He understood how futile it would be to disagree.  He'd save that for
his father.

"All right, Ma.  I'll expect him.  Thanks for calling."  Vic hung up the
phone and stood stock-still as a heavy weight of dread settled over him.
This was on its way to becoming the worst Christmas Eve Day on record.  At
the same time, it could very possibly be the best day of his life.  He felt
the warmth and closeness of Katherine next to him.

He had no right to the joy her nearness gave him, but he couldn't help what
he felt in his heart.  Suddenly, he realized that no one could ever help that.

KATHERINE'S PULSE had quickened when Vic offered to have Coyote and Sprite
live with him.  She had known how much she cared about the Bellaway children
for some time now--the same way she knew now how much she'd come to care
about Vic.

She would have staked her life on the certainty of all of that.  Now, she
knew how he felt about Coyote and Sprite, too.  She wished she could be
equally sure what he felt about her.  She exasperated him sometimes, she
realized, till he looked like he was ready to start tearing out his gorgeous,
black hair.  Maybe they could get past that now, and the children would bring
them closer together still.

Katherine was praying so hard for this to be true and to get Sprite back
unharmed, that she jumped when the phone rang.

They'd all been waiting for a call from the man called Cuda or from Lacey
Harbison.  The policemen seemed surprised that call hadn't yet come.  When
the phone finally rang, Katherine had seen the officer with the headset in
the dining room signal thumbs down and shake his head after listening for a
moment.  The call wasn't about Sprite, after all.  Still, Vic sounded upset
as soon as he started listening to the voice on the other end of the line.
Then Katherine had realized he was talking to his mother and understood his
agitation.

He had ended the conversation, but still stood with his hand on the receiver.
She could tell by the way his dark brows knitted together in a scowl that he
was unhappy about something.  She could feel tension in the muscles of the
arm he had around her.

"What was the call about?"  she asked quietly.

"Almost the last thing in the world I want to hear right now."  ' Her breath
caught in her throat.  Could this be bad news about Sprite after all?

"My father is on his way here," he added.

Her relief was profound, but she understood that Vic wouldn't share that
feeling.

"He probably wants to be here to support you through this bad time,"

she said, choosing her words carefully.  "How did he know what was going on?"

There'd been no reports in the papers or on the broadcast news.

Mariette Dugan had been here earlier, but the police had sent her away.  She
was probably hanging around somewhere close by.  Still, she'd been given
nothing definite to report as yet.

Vic shrugged.

"My father knows what's happening to me almost before I do.  I didn't move
far enough away to stop that.  Maybe I should have done what you did, put
half the country between myself and my past."

He glanced at her quickly.

"I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have said that."

"You should say exactly that because it's true.  I don't mind hearing it now,
either, because all of that is changing for me."

"In what way?"  he asked.

She could feel him gazing down at her.

"I'm starting to put the past behind me and think about living for the
present and the future," she said.

She looked up into the warmth of his dark eyes, and he touched her cheek with
his fingers.

"Could be it's time for me to do the same thing."  "Could be," she said.

Katherine was thinking very much in the present, about how she would like to
kiss Vic now, a gentle kiss to give comfort to them both, if only there
weren't so many people in the room.  Before she could decide whether she
might forget about audience and act on that thought anyway, the doorbell
rang.  Megan went to answer it, and her squeal a moment later could not have
been mistaken for anything but joy.

"It's a miracle," Megan trilled from the foyer.

A tall, very distinguished-looking man appeared in the archway to the living
room.  His hand was firmly in the clutch of none other than little Sprite
Bellaway.

"I brought her back to you, son," the tall man said to Vic.

"It is the very least I could do."

THE HOUR that followed was as miraculous as the sweet child's return had been.

Gabriel Maltese revealed his role in Sprite's rescue.  The kidnapper was a
man named Barricuda Tail, sometimes referred to as Cuda.  He and Leta
Hatcher, alias Lacey Harbison, had siphoned off a considerable amount of
gambling-operations money from some people even more dangerous than
themselves then tried to cover up the theft by killing the bookkeeper,
Gilford Vogel, who found the discrepancy.  Mr. Maltese's contacts from his
former life had tracked Cuda down during the night.  Gabriel himself had
persuaded the pair to turn themselves in, rather than face the much harsher
judgment of their criminal colleagues.

An even more startling revelation came when Vic's mother arrived and told
everyone, over her husband's protests, that the Secret Santa who'd made the
huge donation to the Most Needy Cases Fund had been none other than Gabriel
Maltese.  As Vic had said earlier, Mr. Maltese kept close tabs on everything
his son was doing, including this program at the Arbor Hill Center.  That,
and how deeply Gabriel's heart had been touched by Katherine's interviews in
the Chronicle, had moved him to make the generous gift.  At that news, Vic
reached out to embrace his father.

Katherine was at Vic's side all the while, tears coming to her eyes, joy
filling her heart.  She knew it would take more than money for Mr. Maltese to
earn his way back into Vic's life.  She also knew the journey had begun.

They would be a real family some day, and soon.  She could feel it.

The people in the room were a family already--Katherine, Vic, his mother and
father, Coyote and Sprite, their mother, Megan and Tooley, too.

Katherine and Vic stood watching the excited crowd in his living room.  He
wrapped an arm around her to move her a few steps to the archway into the
hall.

"Were you serious when you told Tooley you wanted Coyote and Sprite to come
live here?"  she asked.

"More serious than I've ever been, with one exception," he told her, looking
deep into her eyes.

"But I won't do it alone," he added in a voice so calm and certain, she knew
what his words implied.

"No, you won't do it alone," she echoed, answering his unspoken question.

He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her closer to him, They moved
back into the living room as Vic's father lifted Sprite up to hang a
sparkling glass angel, which Mrs. Maltese had brought from another tree in
Loudonville, on one of the highest branches.

Coyote reached for Katherine's hand.

"Way to go, Sprite," he cried out more happily than Katherine had ever heard
him sound.

Just for an instant, as the angel came to rest against the fragrant bough,
Katherine imagined she heard Daniel's precious voice.  Her heart soared at
the joy in his tone as he said,

"Cherish the love you find in one another at this blessed time of year, and
forevermore."