The words ceased as if she’d suddenly run out of air. She’d never seen Connie look like that before-eyes cold and hard as stone. She felt cold herself, just from their touch, as if something evil had brushed against her.

This is it, she thought. And then, Oh, God…it’s true.

Outside on the square, in a panel truck with city engineer’s markings, Hawk stared at the bluish gray images on the video monitor screen and felt himself go cold.

“My God,” he whispered, “that’s it.”

Campbell turned from the monitor long enough to throw him a glance over his shoulder. “That’s what?”

“That’s the one-Jarek Singh’s painting.” He broke off, swearing softly. “If only I hadn’t been late to that damn auction… if I’d seen it, I’d have known.”

“What the hell are you talking about? How could you? None of us had ever seen the damn thing.”

“Seascapes-damn.” He turned angrily, looking for pacing room in the confined space and finding none. “I should have known that’s what it would be. They were all over Singh’s place in Cairo. You live in the middle of a desert, you put pictures of water on your walls, right?” He jerked back to the monitor. “What’s she doing now?”

Campbell handed him a set of headphones. “Here-listen for yourself.”

Hawk grabbed them and pressed one side against his ear, never taking his eyes from the tiny, blue-gray figures on the screen…

“I’m so sorry, dear, I’m afraid I already have a buyer for that one.” Connie’s voice was as polite and impersonal as a shop clerk’s.

“A b-buyer?” Jane’s mind seemed to have short-cimuited; she couldn’t think what to do next, could only stand there with the painting clutched in her hands, foolishly stammering.

The air in the antiques shop seemed to have thickened, become a tangible substance that clogged her breathing and wrapped itself around her like spider’s silk. It seemed to shimmer as she watched Connie move through it, slowly, like someone wading through waist-deep water…to the front of the shop…watched her take a leisurely look through the front window.

“My, what a lot of people there are in town this morning,” Connie commented as she swam slowly back toward Jane. “Have you noticed, dear? Court must be in session.”

Dazedly, she shook her head, then nodded. She couldn’t seem to hear properly; there was a ringing in her ears, like the keen of a high-tension power line.

Hawk wondered why the tension wasn’t blowing the top of his head off. “Why the hell didn’t your people take her?” he yelled. “Someone must have had a clear shot.”

Campbell turned on him like a desert dervish. “We can’t take her out until we know what she’s done with the disk, dammit! What if she’s already gotten rid of it? What if she’s stashed it? We kill her, and we’re never gonna find out where it is, or who’s got it. It’s like a freakin’ time bomb, is that what you want?”

For a long moment Hawk stared at the FBI agent, while helpless fury darkened his vision and the pounding of his blood drowned sound and thought. “She’s going to kill her,” he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. “You know that, don’t you?”

And it could happen at any minute…any second. Right before his eyes. He would see it playing out like a television show on the monitor screen…see the gun in the woman’s hand, see the neat black hole appear in Jane’s forehead…the third eye, robbing the others of all light and joy and life…and there would be nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing…

As he’d watched that lovely April afternoon, watched through the eye of his camera lens… watched his wife and son whirl past on the merry-go-round, laughing and waving…watched it all disappear in an instant. a single instant of fire and thunder and blood that would live in his memory forever…

“I don’t see any sign of a gun,” Campbell said. He was back at the monitor, staring intently at the screen. “Don’t think she’s got one on her. In the desk, maybe?”

“Maybe…” Hawk leaned over the agent’s shoulder so he could see better. “What’s that she’s got in her hand? She keeps playing with it.”

“That?” The FBI man pointed. “Looks like a pen.”

“A pen?” Hawk frowned. Campbell turned around to look at him. He was absently rubbing his thigh…

“Now then, Jane,” Connie said almost gaily, “give us the painting…there’s a good girl.” She advanced, hands outstretched.

Jane took an involuntary step backward. And instantly saw something flare, something smoky and dark, like a guttering candle flame, behind Connie’s eyes.

“She’s not helpless,” Campbell muttered, watching the monitor as if hypnotized. “She could probably take her. Jeez, you saw what she did to me.”

Hawk growled, “That was different. She was prepared for you.” He could feel the FBI man turn to look at him, but didn’t take his eyes from the monitor screen as he grimly added, “She’s never met evil before…”

Like a bird mesmerized by a cobra. Jane watched Connie’s hand reach toward her, moving slowly through that strangely viscous, thrumming space. And all the while, screened from the other woman’s view by the painting she held in her left hand, clutched against her chest, her right hand was moving too, reaching behind her, under her jacket, to grasp something hard that nestled there, tucked in the waistband of her slacks, snug against the small of her back…

With a final lunge, Connie grabbed the painting and wrested it from her grasp. But not before Jane had managed to slip her fingers under the loosened edge of the brown-paper backing. It tore away with barely a sound. Connie glanced down at it, then back at Jane, her lips curving in a regretful little smile.

“Dear Jane,” she said with a sigh, “I really do wish you hadn’t done that.”

“There,” Hawk said, straightening on an explosive breath. “What’d I tell you? There’s the damn disk. What are you waiting for? Get in there-now.”

Campbell’s breath gusted angrily as he straightened, staring down at the screen. “We go in there now, we put Carlysle at risk. She won’t hesitate to use her as a hostage-you know that as well as I do.” Campbell was rubbing unconsciously at the back of his neck. Hawk could see his own tension in the rigid set of the FBI man’s shoulders, his own frustration reflected in the angry black eyes.

“What about your snipers? Hasn’t anybody got a clear shot?” He watched the screen as if he were drowning and it held his only hope of survival. Through the headphone pressed against his ear he could hear Connie-Gatina. Emma-telling Jane in that cultured, upper-crust British voice of hers how sorry she was…

Campbell, meanwhile, was holding a low-voiced conversation with one of the other agents monitoring field communications. The agent spoke into a radio mike, listened, spoke again, then looked at Campbell and shook his head. Campbell swore under his breath.

“Can’t get a clear shot-they’re too far back. The damn place is so full of stuff…” Like Hawk, he didn’t say “stuff.” He exhaled bleakly. “I’m afraid that, for the moment, at least, Mrs. Carlysle is on her own.”

“Like hell she is.” Hawk snapped. Before anyone could stop him, he threw down the earphones, dived out of the van and hit the brick pavement running.

“I don’t understand,” Jane mumbled. Her lips felt numb. So did all the rest of her.

“It won’t do, you know,” Connie cocked her head, reminding Jane of nothing so much as a little gray hen as she turned the doomed ship in its garish green sea toward the floor and peered at the torn paper backing, and at the flat square of black plastic that was taped to the canvas beneath it. “I had hoped you’d just gotten a rather peculiar bee in your bonnet, and were being silly and stubborn about it. But I can see that wasn’t it at all, was it? You do know what this is all about, don’t you? Well…” Her sigh overrode Jane’s futile denial.

“One of the others got to you, I suppose. Who was it, that Middle Eastem-looking fellow from the auction? No doubt it was a mistake not to kill him, but you know, there would have been such a fuss…

“Or was it someone etse-the FBI, perhaps? Now that I think about it, that circus outside does seem to have their stamp on it. They have an unfortunate tendency toward overkill. The CIA would have been much more discreet.”

Connie’s eyes were bright with that combative gleam Jane had seen before. She’s enjoying this, she thought. And for some reason, she suddenly felt very calm. Not angry, not even frightened, just a strange sort of quietness inside.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

Connie’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Oh my-well, I shouldn’t like to, you know. You are a dear girl, and you’ve been quite a good friend, haven’t you? We shall have to see.”

As she talked, she was ripping the disk from the back of the painting, setting the painting aside, tucking the disk into a manila envelope and then into a large handbag that had been lying on the desktop. That completed, she looked once more at Jane. Jane wondered why she’d never noticed before that Connie’s eyes were as hard and flat as polished stones.

“I have an idea you are going to be of some use to me yet, dear. For example, right now you are going to tell me who it is you’ve brought with you, exactly where they are out there and how many.” She picked up her little jewel-encrusted pen and studied it thoughtfully. “Then we shall see how helpful you can be in getting us out of here.”

Jane gave her head a confused shake. “What are you talking about? Who is out where?”

And suddenly she thought of Tom, and what he’d said about waiting until Connie’s shop opened so he could look at the paintings she’d bought. She remembered, too, that she’d thought he must be lying. And that he must be up to something.