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limp hand in his, and he was holding it. For any normal person, it would have been horrible, coming here, holding her warm hand, knowing on some level that it was just a lie her body was telling. I wasn't sure what it was for Eamon. I wasn't even sure why he cared so much. Both his explanations had been lies, David said. So what was the truth?

"You said you had a time limit," I said.

"Her family's turning off the machines," he said. It was barely a whisper. "Tomorrow. Brings new meaning to the term deadline, doesn't it?"

He laughed. It was an awful laugh, something wild and dangerous and mad. Not a good man, Eamon. Not a sane man. But there was something in him, some overwhelming emotion driving all of it.

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"Why would you care?" he asked, and brushed the glossy, oddly healthy hair back from her pale, dry face. It had to be about money, didn't it? Cold, hard cash. Because I didn't want to believe he was capable of love and devotion--it made things far too complicated.

"You did it to her, didn't you?" Imara suddenly asked.

Eamon transferred that feverish stare from the woman to my daughter. "Bugger off."

"Imara's right. She was just another victim, wasn't she? Only this one up and died on you." My voice was shaking, and I could feel the rest of me trembling along with it. "You got carried away, playing your little games."

He laughed, and looked down at the woman. "You hear that, Liz? Funny. Just another victim." He shook his head. "Liz and I--let's just say we had a professional relationship. And she violated some professional rules. Things went wrong."

I was never going to understand him. Nothing he said matched to what his body language said. The slump of his shoulders, the trembling in those long, elegant hands--that all spoke of grief, real and bone-deep grief.

David hadn't said anything. He was watching Eamon with the same intensity, but the incandescent rage had died down a bit.

"You going to kill me now?" Eamon asked. "Give me a colorful end to a bad career?"

"No." David shrugged. "I healed the wound. You'll be fine so long as you don't make any sudden movemerits. Or come after my family again. If you do that again, I will kill you."

My family. That struck me deep.

"You can all go to hell for all I care," Eamon said, and reached across to rest his hand on top of the respirator that breathed for the woman on the bed. "I didn't poison your sister, by the way. She's the one bright thing in my life. I didn't--" He fell silent.

"If you really think that, then let her go," I said. "Just let her go."

"Oh, I already have. I left her a note. I told her I had to go back to England. She'll come crawling back to you any moment now. Now bugger off, all of you!" The last came with a viciousness like a thrown razor.

David looked down at the bloodstained knife he was still holding, and casually broke the blade of it in two with his fingers. He tossed the remains in the trash.

And then the three of us--Imara, David, and I--left the hospital room.

As the door hissed shut behind us, David took me in his arms, and I melted against him. Into him.

I didn't ask, but David knew what I wanted to say. "I really couldn't do anything for her. There are limits."

I kissed the side of his neck. "I know."

"I leave you alone for five minutes--"

"It was more like days."

He growled lightly into my shoulder. "You're impossible. And I have--"

"Responsibilities," I murmured. "I know you do."

He let go.

"What about him? Eamon?" Imara was standing straight and tall, hands folded, watching the two of us. My daughter's face was a mirror of mine, at least in form, and in this instance I suspected she was a mirror of my expression, too. Compassion mixed with wariness. Eamon was a wild animal, and there was no telling what he'd do. Or to whom.

"If that demonstration didn't frighten him off, then the next step is to kill him. Not that I'd mind that."

My thoughts were on other things. "The woman--Liz--was she his victim, or his partner?"

"I don't know," David said. "I only know that Eamon never once told the truth about her."

Imara said, "Yes, he did."

David turned to her, surprised.

"When he called her 'beloved Liz.' He meant that."

At the nurse's station, an alarm began to