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fingers tightened around it.

And he could feel the terror in her soul as she began to realize she was going to die.

But he could do nothing except stand where he was, helplessly watching, for as he endured the pain Mrs. Lewis was feeling, he was also enduring the pain of the thought that kept repeating itself in his brain.

It’s me. The boy who is killing her is me.

And now, fully awake, the thought stayed with him, as did the memory of the feelings he’d had during the killing he’d watched.

Feelings. Emotions.

Pity for Mrs. Lewis, anger toward the boy, fear of what might happen after the murder was done.

Then, just as Mrs. Lewis died and Alex woke up, the emotions werfe gone. But the memory of them remained. The memory, and the image of the killing, and the words the boy had spoken as he killed.

Alex got out of bed and went downstairs. In the back of the third volume of the dictionary, he found the translation of the words the boy had repeated over and over again.

Venganza … vengeance.

Ladrones … thieves.

Asesinos … murderers.

But vengeance for what?

Who were the thieves and murderers?

None of it made any sense to him, and even though he’d recognized her in his dream, Alex still couldn’t remember ever meeting Martha Lewis.

Nor did he know Spanish.

Then the boy in the dream couldn’t have been him.

It was just a dream.

He put the dictionary back on the shelf, then took himself back to bed.

But the next morning, when he opened up the La Paloma Herald, he stared at the picture of Martha Lewis for a long time.

It was, without any question, the woman he had seen in his dream.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On the morning of Martha Lewis’s funeral, Ellen Lonsdale woke early. She lay in bed staring out the window at the cloudless California sky. It was not, she decided, the right kind of day for a funeral. On this, of all mornings, the coastal fog should have been hanging over the hills above La Paloma, reaching with damp fingers down into the village below. Beside her, Marsh stirred, then opened one eye.

“You don’t have to get up yet,” Ellen told him. “It’s still early, but I couldn’t sleep.”

Marsh came fully awake, and propped himself up on one elbow. He reached out a tentative finger to touch the flesh of Ellen’s arm, but she shrank away from him, threw back the covers, and got out of bed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, though he knew full well that she didn’t. If she wanted to talk to anybody, it would be Raymond Torres. Increasingly he was feeling more and more cut off from both his wife and his son.

As Marsh had expected, Ellen shook her head. “I’m just not sure how much more I can cope with,” she said, then forced a smile. “But I will,” she went on.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Marsh suggested. “Maybe you and I should just take off for a while, and see if we can find each other again.”

Ellen stopped dressing to face Marsh with incredulous eyes. “Go away? How on earth can we do that? What about Alex? What about Kate Lewis? Who’s going to take care of them?”

Marsh shrugged; then he, too, got out of bed. “Valerie Benson’s been taking care of Kate, and she can go right on doing it. Hell, at least it gives her something better to do than whine about how she never should have gotten a divorce.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say—”

“It’s not cruel, honey,” Marsh interrupted. “It’s true, and you know it. As for Alex, he’s quite capable of taking care of himself, even if he isn’t like he used to be. But you and I are having a problem, whether we want to face it or not.” For a split second Marsh wondered why it was all going to come out now, and if he should try to hold his feelings in. But he knew he couldn’t. “Did you know you don’t talk to me anymore? For three days now, you’ve barely said a word, and before that, all you were doing was telling me what Raymond Torres had to say about how we should run our lives. Not just Alex’s life, but ours too.”

“There’s no difference,” Ellen said. “Right now, Alex’s life is our life, and Raymond knows what’s best.”

“Raymond Torres is a brain surgeon, and a damned fine one. But he’s not a shrink or a minister—or even God Almighty—even though he’s trying to