them. Most of them were of Mort, usually on his own or with a tall, beautiful woman with
dark hair and a melancholy ex-pression. Her smile was never quite a smile, reminding Jazz of the Mona
Lisa. Some of the settings she recognized be-cause they were famous —Pompeii, Paris, New York, other
places in America, Edinburgh. Still listening for any sign of the other person, she walked along the corridor,
mindful of the closed doors. If one starts to open, I'll be back around to the landing, she thought. And
if they see me and call out, I'm out the front door, and fuck the alarm.
Then she saw a picture of a group of people lined up in front of a building she did not recognize. It
was London, she was sure of that, but there was no way to say where. Still, she recognized them. The
Uncles. Mort was standing on the left, the others strung out to his right, with Josephine Blackwood among
them, her face stern yet powerful, and if Jazz had ever had any doubt about who was in control, it now
vanished.
Next to her, at the center of the group, stood...
Stood...
Jazz looked closer. For a mad moment she couldn't quite place the face, not because she didn't know
it —she knew it well, so well, not from life but from a hundred other photo-graphs—but because there was
no way he could be there. No way!
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck..."
Her father. He looked sad and vulnerable, as though he knew he should not be there, but other than
the Uncles and the Blackwood woman, he was the only other person in the photo.
"Dad," Jazz whispered. "Fuck," she said again. She shouldn't be talking, should be moving, but she
didn't under-stand any of this.
Carefully, she lifted the picture from the wall, slipped the rucksack from her shoulder, and dropped it
inside. On im-pulse she walked down the corridor and took another framed photograph of the Uncles. This
one did not contain her fa-ther.
She began to doubt, thinking maybe she'd been mis-taken. She was tense and wired, and perhaps
she'd seen something dredged from her subconscious. But no. She did not have to look again, because she
knew what she had seen. Her mother had made Jazz a strong girl, certain of herself, and she had never
been one to check the keys in her pocket a dozen times or wonder whether she'd actually locked a door.
Jazz was in control.
"I know what I saw," she whispered, and the door at the far end of the corridor opened.
Jazz didn't think. The instinct for survival was pro-grammed into her. She turned across the corridor,
grabbed the handle of the door next to the stained-glass window, turned it quietly, and pushed the door open
with her body. There was no time for caution or stealth, she simply had to hide. Once inside, she swung
around and pushed the door until it was almost closed. She squatted down and pressed her face to the
crack, waiting to see who would emerge from the far room.
The pictures! Their absence on the opposite wall was obvious to her, but then, she had taken them.
Thankfully, there were no lighter patches of wallpaper where they had been, but the hooks were prominent
and cast shadows both ways from the two windows. If the intruder was observant enough —had looked
around the corridor before entering the far door—he or she would notice.
Jazz breathed lightly through her mouth, trying not to pant.
She heard the door along the corridor close, but she could not yet see whoever had emerged.
She watched. A shadow shifted toward her along the car-pet, and then a man stepped into view,
silently, gracefully, al-most floating. He stood at the junction of the two corridors for a second, head tilted to
one side as if listening. She could see him only in profile: tall, thin, long-limbed. He wore a suit and tie, and
over his right shoulder he carried a small bag.
Don't look this way, Jazz thought. Don't see me.
Even when he was standing still, she could sense the strength in him, and when he moved away he
was nimble and elegant.
He walked along the corridor and back toward the land-ing. Jazz opened the door another inch and
listened for other doors opening, but there was nothing. She guessed he was heading for the next floor. His
bag had looked empty, so whatever he'd come here for, perhaps he had yet to find it.
She cast a quick glance at the room behind her. Not a bedroom, as she had suspected. The large
room contained a long, expensive-looking table surrounded by a dozen chairs. The walls were
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