Bodily Harm: A Novel

ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

John Kannin did a double take when he walked past Sloane’s office the following morning, then stopped and peered in, as if seeing a ghost.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Working,” Sloane said.

Kannin walked in and closed the door behind him. Though they were roughly the same age, Kannin had become a mentor for Sloane, perhaps because their relationship began with Sloane hiring Kannin as a consultant on military law, or because Kannin had run his own law practice for nearly twenty years before the two men agreed to become law partners.

“You’re not even supposed to be out of the hospital until the end of the week. Get the hell out of here before I carry you out.”

Sloane had no doubt the man could do it. A lineman when he played football for the Air Force Academy, Kannin had traded bulk for muscle. Sloane had lifted weights at the underground, windowless gym Kannin preferred to the swanky health clubs, so he knew Kannin was country strong.

“When’s the last time you slept?” Kannin asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You need rest. You need time.”

“Time is all I have, John.”

Carolyn pushed open the door, nearly hitting Kannin with the edge.

“Good. I’m glad you’re here. Will you please tell him to go home and get some rest,” Kannin said.

Carolyn placed a cup of coffee on a coaster beside Sloane’s computer screen, picked up the cassette tapes from the out-box on his desk, and continued like it was business as usual. Carolyn had never married, and Sloane suspected she knew exactly why he was at work.

As Carolyn departed Pendergrass rapped on the door and poked his head in. Looking from Sloane to Kannin, he asked, “Should I come back?”

“No,” Sloane said. “Come on in.”

Shaking his head, Kannin started to leave.

“John, this involves you too,” Sloane said.

They settled into chairs at the round table near the plate glass windows. Sloane turned first to Pendergrass. “I want you to find out what I need to do to get custody of Jake.”

Both Kannin and Pendergrass gave him perplexed looks.

“I just dictated a memo that Carolyn will give you shortly. Tina’s parents have taken Jake to San Francisco. They want his biological father to raise him.” He stared down Pendergrass. “I want my son back. Do whatever needs to be done to make that happen.”

Pendergrass nodded. “I’ll get right on it.”

Sloane had never had the opportunity to tell Kannin or Pendergrass about his trip to Mossylog or his meetings with Manny Gallegos and Dayron Moore. After filling them in that morning, he handed Pendergrass the Gallegos file. “There isn’t much there. But look into having the settlement agreement set aside for fraud in the inducement, misrepresentation, anything else you can think of.”

He spent the next ten minutes explaining the results of Mateo Gallegos’s autopsy report.

“Magnets?” Kannin asked.

“Apparently they are so powerful they link together through the intestinal walls. When they pinch together they cut off the blood supply to the area and eventually the intestine dies and the magnets corrode through, allowing bacteria to leak into the body cavity. It causes a toxic condition called peritonitis and sepsis.”

“This child in Mossylog suffered similar symptoms?”

“High fevers, vomiting, chills, a lack of appetite, listlessness. Like Austin, eventually he lost consciousness.”

“And his father confirmed the family had one of these Metamorphis dolls?” Kannin asked.

“Robots,” Sloane corrected. “Gallegos works at the Kendall factory in town. They gave him one of the toys as a reward for being a good employee and paid the family fifty dollars to have their son Ricky play with it. Gallegos said his son flipped over it, but also that the plastic cracked, which would have freed the magnets.”

“But we don’t know that for certain.”

“No, we don’t, but it is exactly what Kyle Horgan warned about.”

“And you think that’s what Kendall doesn’t want anyone to know?” Pendergrass asked. “That the plastic is defective?”

“There’s a tremendous amount of money at stake, and based upon what I’ve been reading in the paper, Kendall can’t afford to have anything go wrong.”

Sloane had spent much of the night thinking through possible scenarios and explained his theory that, at Dee Stroud’s suggestion, Kyle Horgan had likely approached Malcolm Fitzgerald with the toy and how, upon seeing it, or at least its design, Fitzgerald must have realized that Horgan was sitting on the next “It” toy.

“Everything would have been fine until Horgan warned about the defective plastic.”

“And then when Mateo Gallegos died, Horgan became a huge problem,” Kannin said.

“Which hit a head when Horgan gave me the file. That’s why the man came. He wanted the file.”

They sat listening to the hum of the computer beneath Sloane’s desk, no one wanting to relive what had happened next.

Kannin’s dark eyes narrowed. “Do the police know about this, David?”

“Without some evidence linking Fitzgerald to Horgan, I can’t link Horgan to the man who killed Tina.”

“You’re that link,” Kannin said. “You have to tell them.”

Sloane shook his head. “If I tell the police they’ll go to Fitzgerald, and he’ll simply deny everything as absurd. Without the file I don’t have anything to prove what relationship, if any, Horgan and Fitzgerald had. Unless Charlie can find Horgan, and I think we have to realistically conclude he never will, we have no way to prove there was one.”

“That’s not for you to decide. You have a man out there that has killed three people,” Kannin said.

Sloane stood. “You don’t think I know that?” He caught himself. “Look, John, this man is not an indiscriminate killer; he kills the people he’s paid to kill. The police are not going to catch him.”

“So what do you propose we do?” Kannin asked.

“We do what we do best. We get Kendall Toys and Malcolm Fitzgerald into a courtroom and put so much financial pressure on the company that it will have to act.”

Kannin shook his head. “How are you going to get them into a courtroom? You don’t even have a plaintiff.” He spoke to Pendergrass. “Unless this guy Moore was in collusion with Kendall, which would be next to impossible to prove, we won’t get the settlement set aside.”

“Did Moore give you any reason for settling so cheap?” Pendergrass asked.

To the contrary, when Sloane had accompanied Moore back to his office to retrieve the Gallegos file, Moore had defended his settlement. “He said the child could have died from the rusted nail, that they had no proof the magnets came from the Metamorphis toy. The family no longer had it, and since it was a prototype he had no ability to get one like it.”

“He didn’t even try?” Kannin asked.

Sloane shook his head. “He wasn’t looking for a fight. I think he was afraid of the law firm.”

“Who is it?” Kannin asked.

“Reid Matheson.”

Kannin smirked. “He probably felt like Custer at Little Big Horn; he’d have been outnumbered five hundred to one.”

“He never even filed a lawsuit,” Pendergrass said, flipping through the file. “To settle that case for fifty thousand dollars without doing any discovery at all was criminal.”

“Not if he couldn’t prove the magnets came from the toy,” Kannin said. “So we’re right back to the same problem, no plaintiff.”

Sloane paused. “Maybe not.”

Kannin leaned forward. “The McFarlands? Come on, David, that case is over; a judgment’s been entered. And other than that not-so-small legal hurdle, we don’t even know whether the McFarlands ever came in contact with the toy. This is all just speculation.”

“But if I can place the toy in both homes, with the boys suffering the same medical symptoms, then you’d agree that I have something, right?”

“Yeah, you’d have something, but again, the case is over. Have you even talked to them about any of this?”

Sloane shook his head. The McFarlands had left town for a vacation after the trial, and he had been in no condition to talk to them since.

Pendergrass stood from his chair and gathered his papers. “I’ll run a search and see if I can find any other articles on any other kids dying or being hospitalized with flulike symptoms during the past four months. Who knows, maybe there’s another one out there. And I’ll see if there are any complaints about Kendall in general or about this particular toy.”

“I don’t mean to be the one always throwing cold water here,” Kannin interjected, “but even if you can place the toy in the McFarland home you still have to prove Austin ingested magnets. Until we know that, we’re just spinning our wheels. And . . .” Kannin hesitated. They all knew there was only one way to find out. “Are you really sure you want to go down that road? Austin is dead, David. Nothing we do will change that. Do you want to run that family back through this?”

Sloane had thought about the implications of pursuing the matter and he didn’t want Pendergrass or Kannin to think he was involving them or the two families in a personal crusade.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you this isn’t personal,” he said. “It is for me, but not for you. For you it’s a legal case. This company may be responsible for the deaths of two young boys, and if this toy gets mass-marketed, it could be a danger to millions of other children. I know we can’t bring back Mateo Gallegos, or Austin McFarland, but don’t we have a responsibility to try to save at least one more family from the grief and agony of having to bury their child? Don’t we have an obligation to go after a company that would do something like this?” Sloane looked to Pendergrass. “And if I’m right, Dr. Douvalidis didn’t deserve this. He wasn’t responsible.”

Pendergrass looked pale.

“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir,” Kannin interjected, breaking the tension. “But we’re not the ones you have to convince. Even if you’re right and you can somehow get the Gallegos settlement thrown out, you already obtained a judgment in the McFarland case. It’s over.”

“I think that could actually help us,” Sloane said, one step ahead after a night mulling through the legal hurdles.

As Sloane explained his plan, Kannin sat back, smiling. When Sloane had finished Kannin said, “I don’t know if it will work, but it’s going to kick up one hell of a lot of dust.”

Sloane stood. “Tom, see if you can find any precedent for it. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“You want me to go with you?” Pendergrass asked.

Sloane shook his head. He would handle it alone.

GALAXY TOYS’ HEADQUARTERS

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

WITH THE AMOUNT of stress in her life she should have had the figure of a freaking model, but Maxine Bolelli had spent all her life battling her weight, which was why she sat in her private dining room atop Two Arizona Center staring at bird-sized portions of grilled chicken, broccoli, and brown rice. Bolelli hadn’t eaten a bite.

She pushed back from the table and walked to the windows, looking south to the duel spires of St. Mary’s Basilica with its red tile roof. In 1987, Pope John Paul II visited the 130-year-old mission-style church and elevated it to a minor basilica. Two blocks over on Fifth were cathedrals of another kind, Chase Field, home to the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, and near it, U.S. Airways Center, where the Phoenix Suns played basketball. Galaxy kept a corporate suite at each facility and had its corporate name plastered inside nearly every civic facility in Phoenix. The expenditure was necessary advertising, but Bolelli wanted to retch each month when she saw the amount spent to keep the Galaxy name front and center in the community.

She turned from the window at the sound of Brandon Craft striding into the dining room. Craft had the smile of a kid bringing home an A on his report card.

“It’s an action figure.”

Bolelli rolled her eyes. “I assumed it was an action figure. Kendall makes action figures.” Her tone conveyed what she did not verbally express: Idiot.

“There’s more,” Craft said, recovering from the initial blow. “It’s an action figure the child builds on his own, using plastic pieces, anything they can imagine.”

“I’m impressed, but not much.”

“The figure can morph into other shapes the child chooses.”

“Been there, done that.”

“Not by remote control.”

“That’s not technically possible.”

“Apparently it is.”

“How?”

“Magnets.” Craft sat, smiling again.

“Tell me.”

“High-powered magnets act in concert after receiving an electrical pulse.” Craft sounded giddy. “Can you imagine the potential? A child can design and create an action figure to his own specifications, whatever he wants, and then program it to change into whatever else he can imagine and build, a boat, plane, tank, helicopter. When he gets bored, he changes it. It transcends age limits. Hell, there are adults out there who would want one. Apparently the focus groups were off the charts.”

Bolelli stepped forward. “Focus groups? How far along are they?”

“Already in production, and”—Craft paused for dramatic effect—“I’m told they’re having the manufacturing done at a factory in China.”

“China? Kendall doesn’t use Chinese manufacturers.”

“Apparently they do now,” Craft said.

“Can we find out which one?”

“I already have somebody working on it.”

“Why would Fitzgerald go to the trouble of using a Chinese manufacturer?”

“They’re in financial trouble. They need to cut manufacturing costs or implement huge layoffs,” Craft suggested.

Bolelli shook her head. “Sebastian Kendall has always been a hard nut to crack. I don’t see him going to China for financial reasons.”

“Maybe not, but Fitzgerald is the new regime.”

“No. Not yet. Not with the old man still alive. This goes against everything Kendall has professed to stand for. Fitzgerald wouldn’t do this unless he was concerned about something.” She paced. “He’s trying to keep this completely under wraps; he sent it overseas so no one would find out.”

“He’s hiding it?”

She stopped, turned. “Wouldn’t you? Think about it. He keeps it completely under wraps and launches it right for Christmas. He’ll create a run at the stores, like when Tickle Me Elmo came out of the blue. It will be the toy of the season.”

“It is amazing,” Craft said.

“Need I remind you, Brandon, that it is not our toy?”

The smile vanished.

“So where did it come from?” Bolelli asked.

“No one knows. No one recalls seeing anything like it in New York or Germany,” Craft said, referring to the two biggest annual toy fairs. “Maybe Kendall’s in-house design team came up with it.”

“If that were the case then why didn’t Santoro tell you about it?”

Bolelli knew Craft and Santoro had been talking since Galaxy first approached Kendall with an offer to buy the company. Not believing she’d get far with Fitzgerald, who had a perverse sense of loyalty to Sebastian Kendall, Bolelli had sought an advocate inside the company and didn’t have to go far. Santoro was disgruntled after Kendall passed him over in favor of Fitzgerald. Since Santoro and Fitzgerald were roughly the same age, Santoro’s prospects of ever running that company were slim at best. That meant he’d be looking for another opportunity, or more money. Not wanting a paper trail leading back to her, Bolelli arranged for Craft to attend a trade industry conference she knew Santoro was attending. Craft came back with his chest puffed, as if he were the next James Bond, advising that “someone” at Kendall was unhappy with his situation, might be looking for greener pastures, and with a little persuasion, might just be willing to provide Galaxy with inside information on a company Bolelli coveted. Bolelli had played along, telling Craft to pursue it. Once she had acquired Kendall she’d fire both Craft and Santoro. She knew from personal experience that if a man cheated once, he’d cheat again, and no one was ever going to cheat on her again. Besides, what could Craft or Santoro do, sue and have the information about their clandestine meetings come out in public? They’d never get another job.

“He said he didn’t know about it until Fitzgerald broke it out at a board meeting. No one on the board had ever seen or heard of such an idea.”

“Which means Fitzgerald must have suspected someone was leaking information and is keeping everything about this toy very close to the vest. That’s why it’s being produced in China.” She thought for a moment. “That board meeting was weeks ago. Why didn’t Santoro tell you about this sooner?”

Craft opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead his face twisted, as if considering a complex mathematics problem.

“He’s getting cold feet,” Bolelli said, starting to pace again. “If this thing is as good as projected, Kendall’s revenues will go through the roof, and so will their stock. Santoro could sell and be worth three to four times what he’d get in salary here. He’s playing you, Brandon.” Before Craft could respond Bolelli changed gears. “Have you discussed the concept with our design people? Can we duplicate it?”

“They say it can’t be done.”

“Well, tell them someone has already done it, damn it.” Bolelli stopped pacing. “Oh shit!”

“What?”

“Titan. If Ian gets wind of this he’ll be on it like stink on shit. Why the hell did we go public with our offer?”

“I tried—”

“Kendall will need help with distribution and getting retailers to agree to prime shelf space right out of the gate. Damn it! Fitzgerald and Ian are probably already working on it together.”

“What do you want to do?” Craft asked.

At the end of the table Bolelli gripped the back of a chair. “Start buying more Kendall stock.”

“It will drive the price up even higher,” Craft said, alarmed. “It’s already inflated. We could create a feeding frenzy.”

“What do you think will happen when this thing hits the store shelves?”

“How high do you want to go? We’ve already depleted most of our cash reserves.”

“I don’t care. Overpay if you have to. I want as much control over Fitzgerald as I can leverage. If he partners with anyone, it will be Galaxy, not Titan, and if he doesn’t, we’ll still stand to make a shitload when this thing hits the stores.”

EMERALD PINES DEVELOPMENT

KENT, WASHINGTON

HIS STOMACH CHURNING, Sloane drove past the rock wall with silver letters identifying the development as Emerald Pines. It seemed every development built since the 1970s identified itself as if it were an exclusive gated community, but there was no gate at the entrance, and the homes were modest and unmemorable—between two and four thousand square feet with wood siding, trim, and wraparound porches. The developer had broken the uniformity by flipping the floor plans, placing the garage of some of the homes to the left of the front door rather than the right.

As Sloane stepped from the car his foot sank into the saturated thick lawn separating the curb from the sidewalk, the moisture seeping through his leather shoe and dampening his sock. A broken sprinkler head bubbled water, flooding the area. He pulled free his shoe and approached the house. The garage door was up, revealing a Toyota Camry beside an empty space for a second car. Michael McFarland had kept his job as a machinist at Boeing, but Eva, who had been employed at a local Costco, had been unable to work since Austin’s death. Bicycles hung from hooks in the ceiling, and sporting equipment and household supplies filled storage racks. To the right the front door was beneath a pitched porch with a skylight that offered natural lighting.

Eva McFarland answered the door looking like she had recently put on makeup and tried to comb her hair before giving up and pulling it back in a clip.

“David,” she said, trying not to sound rushed though he obviously had not given her enough advance warning. “Come on in.”

“I better take off my shoes,” he said. “Looks like you have a broken sprinkler.”

She looked past him to the sidewalk. “The gardener runs over them with the lawn mower. Mike is not going to be happy.”

He slipped off his shoes and left them on the porch. The tile entry was slick in his socks, and he felt a bit like a beginner ice-skater feeling his way, but the rubber stopper on the end of the cane gave him security as Eva led him toward the back of the house.

“I was just starting the wash,” she said, slipping a hard r into the word, as was the case with some native Washingtonians.

As with her own appearance, the rooms showed signs that someone had tried to tidy quickly: a single tennis shoe stranded in the hall, dishes in the sink, bread crumbs on the tile counter. Eva tossed a brown stuffed rabbit onto a pile of toys overflowing from a toy box in a corner of the family room off the kitchen.

“The dog likes to use it as a chew toy,” she said.

As if on cue, a small dog barked and scratched at the sliding glass door leading to a fenced-in backyard. More toys lay strewn on a rounded cement patio and lawn, along with a baseball contraption of some sort, a ball hanging at the end of a tethered string staked in the ground. Though the sun was out, the room faced north and was well shaded.

Eva turned off CNN. “I was tracking that storm in the Gulf. Mike has relatives in Texas. They say they’re going to lose everything.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She crossed her arms, as if cold. “You don’t really lose it if you can rebuild it or replace it. I look around the house now at all these things that were once so important, and, well, now I just see a bunch of stuff.” She seemed to catch herself. “I’m so sorry about your wife, David. When we heard about it we just couldn’t believe it. How horrible. I don’t know what to say.” And as if to emphasize the point they stood in an awkward silence. “We sent a card.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “Thank you.” Carolyn had placed the card on his chair that morning so he would have time to read it in case the subject came up.

“Can I get you anything, coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Another awkward pause.

“Please, sit down,” she said.

Sloane sat on a leather sofa as Eva retrieved the newspaper from a matching chair and set it on a wood coffee table next to a People magazine, US, and Sports Illustrated. The room held the burnt smell of a recent fire in the fireplace. Eva continued to ask him the perfunctory questions, whether the police had arrested anyone and how he was doing recovering from his injuries. Sloane answered her questions patiently until, with nothing left to discuss, she got to the reason for his visit.

“You said on the phone you wanted to talk about something about the case.” Sloane heard the hesitation in her voice. “They’re not going to appeal, are they?”

“No, they can’t do that,” Sloane said. “They’ve already paid the judgment.”

“Thank God.” She exhaled in relief.

Sloane hadn’t known Eva McFarland before the death of her son, but he had seen photographs. Whereas at one time she would have been considered perhaps ten pounds overweight, she was now rail thin, though she did not have the healthy, toned appearance of someone who had exercised and dieted to lose the weight. Despite the family’s recent vacation Eva continued to look gaunt and pale and had dark circles beneath her eyes. Sloane wondered how many hours a night she slept, and how often her nightmares woke her.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about something that has come up.”

Her brow furrowed.

“It’s actually about Mathew,” he said, referring to their older son.

“Mathew? I don’t understand.”

“Was he ever part of a group of kids chosen to evaluate a toy made by Kendall Toys?”

“What?”

“Was he ever asked to play with a Kendall toy and tell them what he thought of it?”

Eva folded her hands in her lap and looked to the darkened television. “I’m sorry. Things are still a bit hazy. What is this about?”

Sloane took out a crude sketch he had made from memory and showed it to her. “The toy was an action figure called Metamorphis.”

Eva considered the diagram and, after a moment, displayed the beginnings of a smile. “You know, I think I do remember this.”

Sloane’s pulse quickened.

Her smile widened. “Yeah. I do remember this. Mathew would take that thing all through the house yelling, ‘Metamorphis,’ and make it change. I think it became a boat, or an airplane or something. I can’t remember.”

Sloane tried not to sound impatient. “How did he get the toy, do you recall?”

Her nose scrunched. “I think it was through a friend of a friend type of thing. Mathew’s best friend’s father has a relative . . . someone who works at Kendall. I don’t know, but they were looking for a few boys. I remember because Mathew couldn’t tell his friends at school anything about the toy, or let them see it. And I seem to recall that we had to sign a document that said we wouldn’t divulge anything about it—as if I were about to run out and talk to all my friends about a toy.”

“You didn’t keep a copy of that document, did you?”

“If I did, I’ve long since thrown it out. There’s enough clutter around here without adding to it.” Her head tilted. “How do you know about this?”

Sloane had debated whether it was best to tell Eva about the Gallegos family or let her read the articles. He decided that the articles would be too painful.

“How long did Mathew play with it?”

“A few days, maybe a week. Like I said, I don’t really recall all the details.”

“Did he have to go anywhere and be observed playing with it, or to answer any questions?”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I have a vague memory of something like that, a Saturday—I remember because Mike had to take him pretty early in the morning. He said it was a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. You’ll have to ask Mike. Mathew was happy, though. I remember they paid him something.”

“Was it by check?”

“I assume, but I really don’t know.”

“What did Mathew think of the toy?”

“He loved it,” she said without hesitation. Then she leaned forward, hands on knees, eyes narrowing. “But how do you know about this?” she asked again. “Why is this important?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cryptic. I had someone come and talk to me about the toy. He designed it.”

“Okay.”

“He gave me a file with some drawings and an article . . . an article about another boy in Southern Washington.”

Eva’s eyebrows knitted closer together.

“The boy died a few days before Austin.”

She pulled back.

“He lived in a town with a Kendall manufacturing plant and his brother was also given one of the same toys to play with. The boy came down with flulike symptoms: high fever, vomiting, listless.”

Eva covered her mouth with her hand.

“The parents didn’t take him to the doctor right away because they’re here in the country illegally. By the time they did the boy had slipped into a coma.”

Tears pooled then overflowed the corners of her eyes, running down her cheeks. “What are you saying?”

“Did you ever notice any pieces of the toy around the house, anything at all?”

“You think Austin choked?”

Sloane shook his head. “No. Small black pieces, tiny rectangles.”

She shook her head.

“The toy operates through the use of dozens of tiny, powerful magnets.”

“No, nothing like that,” she said.

“If the plastic cracks the magnets can become free, and if a child swallows more than one, the magnets will attract each other inside the intestines. With time the intestine starts to die in that area, and it can perforate. If that happens, bacteria can get in and poison the bloodstream and organs.”

“No. Nothing like that,” she said again. Then, “This other boy, he had . . . they found magnets in his body?”

“They did an autopsy; the medical examiner found six magnets.”

Eva rubbed her face with both hands, mumbling. “Oh my God. Oh my God. This is a nightmare. This is such a nightmare.” She looked at Sloane, wringing her hands. “You think the same thing happened to Austin, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

“The symptoms are remarkably similar. If the same toy was in the house . . .”

She raised her voice, upset. “Why haven’t we heard anything about this before? Why wasn’t it on the news?”

“The father works for Kendall. He was afraid of losing his job. The attorney they hired settled the matter out of court, without litigation.”

“Can he do that? Isn’t there some obligation to let someone know about it?”

“Only a moral one, I’m afraid.”

She stood abruptly, turning away, one hand at the small of her back, the other alternately rubbing her forehead and the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry, Eva. I know this is hard.”

“I thought this was over. I thought maybe we could . . .” She choked back tears. “At least try to have some semblance of a normal life, if not for Mike and me, then for the kids.”

“If I’m right, Eva, Dr. Douvalidis is not responsible for Austin’s death.”

She closed her eyes, softly uttering, “God damn it. God damn it!”

Sloane couldn’t think of any easy way to say what had to be said. “There’s really only one way to find out for cert—”

“No!” She opened her eyes and put up her hands a foot apart, just below her chin, staring him down, emphasizing each word. “No. Do not even suggest it.”

“Eva, it’s not just about Dr. Douvalidis. The other children in that focus group had the same reaction to the toy as Mathew. They loved it. It’s already in production. Millions will be in stores . . .”

She shook her head as Sloane spoke. “No. No, no, no.”

“ . . . for the holiday season, and those toys will be brought home to houses with children as young or younger than Austin—”

“No!” she yelled, cutting him off. Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving a black trail of mascara. Her hands, clenched claws, looked as if she were strangling someone. “You can’t ask me to do this. You can’t ask me to dig up my son and have someone cut him open. I won’t do that. I won’t do that to him.”

“I know it’s difficult—”

“Don’t you dare sit there and presume to know how I feel. Don’t you do it! Do you know how many people have presumed to know how I feel? How many have offered their condolences and then left my house and gone right back to their lives? They don’t know how I feel. They don’t have a clue. They get to go home every day and see their babies sit across from them at the dinner table instead of an empty chair. They help them with their homework, see their naked little bodies get into their pajamas at night, kiss them, hear their soft little voices, angels.” She wiped the moisture from her cheeks on her jeans. “Get out.”

Sloane gathered his things. “I’m sorry,” he said.

He got to the doorway leading to the hall before she spoke again.

“Could you?”

The question stopped him, but Sloane did not look back.

“Could you do what you’re asking me to do?”

GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

THE BROWN SIGN with white lettering hidden amid the tree branches and foliage indicated he was nearing the George Bush Center for Intelligence. That sign had not existed the last time Charles Jenkins had been to the facility, George Bush Sr. having not yet been president. Jenkins suspected that more than one late-night comedian had recently used the words on that sign as the punch line to a joke.

Jenkins turned off the main road and soon thereafter approached a guard booth with a yellow metal gate extended across the road. In case a visitor still missed the point, a sign warned that he was entering a restricted government facility and overhead bubbles recorded every car coming and going. He slowed and lowered the window to speak into a box.

“Can I help you?” a male voice asked.

“I’m here to see Curley Wade?” Jenkins was about to correct himself; Wade’s real name was Edward, but Jenkins had never known anyone to use it. Neither, apparently, did the faceless voice.

“Your name?”

“Charles Jenkins.”

“Stand by for a second.”

After a minute the voice directed Jenkins to drive through strategically placed barricades designed to prevent a vehicle from getting up a head of steam as it approached the entrance. He parked next to a white concrete barrier, and proceeded to a nearby building to obtain a visitor’s pass.

Inside the building, uniformed guards sat behind what Jenkins assumed to be bulletproof glass. Jenkins provided his name and the nature of his business. One of the guards instructed that no photographs were to be taken on the property and directed Jenkins to lock his cell phone in a small locker in the lobby. That was also not a requirement the last time he had been at the facility, since cell phones were still only seen on the Star Trek television series. He clipped a visitor’s pass to the lapel of his navy blue sport coat, and the guard advised him to take a seat in the waiting area for Wade’s assistant to escort him onto the facility. At least that hadn’t changed. Employees parked in lots a safe distance from the building and were shuttled to the campus.

Jenkins listened to the hum of vending machines while considering the assortment of magazines on the coffee table, and it struck him that he could have been waiting in any dentist’s office in America instead of one of the government’s most highly classified facilities. It served as a further reminder that much had changed in the thirty years he had been away.

AFTER RETURNING HOME from his tour in Nam, Jenkins had spent much of the next couple of months sleeping late, drinking beer with neighborhood friends, and ignoring his mother’s inquiries about when he might find a job. When he got bored he put on his green army jacket and walked the streets or frequented questionable bars, hoping someone would say something derogatory. No one did. The military had transformed his body from soft body fat to ropelike muscle. At six five and 250 pounds with a scowl and an attitude, no one with a brain even looked in his direction.

One afternoon a knock on the front door awoke him from a nap on the couch, and Jenkins found two men in dark suits with crew cuts standing on the porch.

“Wasting your time, fellas, I don’t believe in God.”

The men shot each other a sideways glance. The shorter of the two did the talking. “We’d like to talk to you about being of further service to your country.”

Military recruiters.

Jenkins started to laugh. “I was stupid enough to enlist once. I’m not stupid enough to do it again.”

But they had not come to ask him to reenlist. They had another proposition for him, and it was quickly apparent they had already combed through his background.

“I don’t think so,” Jenkins said.

“Is that because you have so many other job offers rolling in?”

Jenkins stepped out onto the porch, sat in one of the wicker chairs, and lit up a cigarette, another bad habit he picked up in Nam. He blew smoke in the air and considered the Ford parked at the curb. “I’m on sabbatical.”

“How long have you been home?”

“Not long enough.”

“So are you going to just keep going out looking for fights in bars the rest of your life until someone puts a knife or bullet in you?”

Jenkins shrugged. “Just spent thirteen months in the jungle asking myself that same question. How come you weren’t interested then?”

The stocky man nudged his partner. “Forget it. Davidson was wrong.” The two men started from the porch.

Jenkins stood. “Major Davidson?”

Major Davidson had shown up in the jungle with Jenkins’s Special Forces outfit. Everyone knew Davidson was CIA, though he never admitted it, and in between killing time and mosquitoes, Davidson and Jenkins had talked about things like what Jenkins intended to do when he left the jungle. Jenkins hadn’t given it much thought, seeing no point, since he didn’t believe he would leave, not alive anyway. Davidson had seemed particularly interested in the fact that Jenkins spoke fluent Spanish, but then he disappeared.

“I thought he was dead.”

The stockier man handed Jenkins a business card, just a name and a phone number. “When you’re ready to stop doing the poor veteran act and feeling sorry for yourself, call that number.”

Jenkins threw the card in the waste can and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, but later he retrieved it and taped it to the mirror in his bathroom. For a solid week he considered it each day and night. He figured they wanted him for Cuba. With his dark complexion, wiry hair, and a little work on the dialect, he could pass as a native.

“MR. JENKINS?”

Curley Wade’s assistant was an attractive brunette. She took him by shuttle to the front of the building, which, with its cement overhang and absolutely no redeeming architectural qualities, had also not changed.

Like it or not, Jenkins was back.

KENDALL TOYS’ CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS

RENTON, WASHINGTON

DURING THE WEEKS since leaving the hospital, Sloane had forced himself to keep busy. He moved from one task to the next, trying his best to keep his mind occupied, and had been seeing a physical therapist to strengthen his leg and shoulder. The woman damn near killed him in the first visits, but he had worked hard to rebuild his strength and stamina. He’d need both when the time came.

Back inside the car, he turned his focus from reality to perception; what people perceived to be true was often more important than the truth. Malcolm Fitzgerald and Kendall Toys would not know that the McFarlands had refused Sloane’s request, and like Sloane, they could not guarantee what a court would do with the Gallegos settlement. If Sloane was going to bluff and try to get Kendall to react, there was no time like the present.

As anticipated, Malcolm Fitzgerald’s assistant was curt and protective on the phone. “What is this about?” she had asked.

“Tell Mr. Fitzgerald it’s about Metamorphis,” Sloane said and, after leaving his cell phone number, hung up.

The woman had called him back within minutes to advise that Fitzgerald would meet with him immediately.

Sloane had expected a high-rise facade of glass and steel, but Kendall’s corporate headquarters resembled an industrial complex. As with the factory in Mossylog, the first thing Sloane encountered was a gated entrance with a guard shack. Because the guard did not find Sloane’s name on an approved list of visitors he had to make a telephone call to confirm the appointment. Hanging up the phone, he asked to see Sloane’s driver’s license, wrote down the license plate of the car, provided Sloane a parking pass for the windshield, and directed him where to park. As Sloane drove through he saw a white placard attached to the fence in his rearview mirror urging departing employees to

KEEP KENDALL SECRETS SECRET

AND KENDALL’S TOYS

WILL REMAIN KENDALL’S

Inside a marbled lobby, near the bank of elevators, another guard sat behind a console and again requested Sloane’s driver’s license. Though he was tempted to say something like “I’m here to kidnap Sergeant Smash,” Sloane had the impression it would provoke the same result as yelling “I have a gun in my bag” when passing through airport security.

The guard typed Sloane’s name into a computer and handed him a visitor’s badge, which Sloane peeled and stuck to his shirt pocket as the guard made a call. Hanging up, the guard advised that someone would be down to escort him into the building.

The wait would do Sloane good. He could feel the adrenaline pulsing through his body from the anticipated encounter with Malcolm Fitzgerald and he told himself that he could not lose his temper. Any chance of success depended upon Fitzgerald buying into Sloane’s bluff. He walked about the lobby, a museum depicting the history of the company and its more famous toys. Inside a thick Plexiglas case stood an original eleven-inch-tall Captain Courageous action figure. The accompanying placard explained that Kendall first introduced Captain Courageous in 1934, well before Sloane’s time, but since he recognized the name, it was likely one of the “It” toys Dee Stroud had talked about. Other versions of the doll, taller, more muscular, some dressed in camouflage, others in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, documented Captain Courageous’s evolution through the years. In the glass case beside the toy, a similar display documented the evolution of Sergeant Smash from his introduction in 1966 during the height of the Vietnam War, to the present day.

Moving along, Sloane read placards mounted on the wall next to blown-up photographs of Constantine and Aristotle Kendall. The placards told the story of how the two brothers had immigrated to the United States with less than fifty cents, but with a love of toys. A grainy black-and-white photograph showed them at work in their toy booth in downtown Seattle, and others documented the subsequent moves to new buildings as well as the ascension of the son, Sebastian Kendall Senior, and grandson, Sebastian Junior. Junior had reigned the longest as chairman of the board and CEO. The date of the end of his reign had not even been engraved on his placard, but next to his picture hung the smiling portrait of his successor, Malcolm Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had boyish features and sandy blond hair, but his sideburns, two blocks of gray, indicated he was in his midforties.

Though Sloane had seen pictures of the man while researching the company, something about the portrait, hung in the lobby of a heavily guarded building, made Sloane’s hands clench in fists. In a dark blue jacket, white shirt, and light blue tie, Fitzgerald looked like a cocky and arrogant executive, someone who believed himself to be omnipotent, bulletproof.

That was about to change.

Sloane took a deep breath and again told himself that he had to play this out, that he couldn’t allow his anger to cloud his judgment. If he did, Tina would have died in vain. He wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Mr. Sloane?”

The young woman who escorted him to the elevator bank either had very little personality or had been instructed not to say much. Either way her reluctance to speak made for a silent elevator ride. Stepping from the car, the woman used an electronic card to access closed and locked doors as she led Sloane through several hallways. On their journey Sloane noticed two large vaults with television cameras mounted overhead. Glancing into open offices, he noted the same dark tinted glass as in the lobby, and shredders atop garbage cans. The precautions made him recall Dee Stroud’s admonition about the prevalent threat of ideas being stolen. Kendall obviously took that threat very seriously.

The woman led Sloane into a conference room where Malcolm Fitzgerald stood near the windows. Sloane felt his entire body tense. The knuckles of his hand atop his cane turned white. When Fitzgerald extended his hand it was all Sloane could do not to drop his cane and grab the man around the throat. But that day of reckoning would come soon enough.

They migrated to chairs at a long table: the polished top of which reflected overhead recessed lights. Windows afforded a view of the south end of Lake Washington, shaped like a horseshoe with Mercer Island in the center and spotted by tiny sails and the wakes of speedboats.

The pleasantries did not last long.

“You indicated you wished to discuss a Kendall toy in production,” Fitzgerald said, not naming the toy.

“Is it in production?” Sloane asked.

Fitzgerald slid a piece of paper across the table along with a pen. “If that is the case, I will need you to execute an agreement that anything discussed today is confidential.”

Sloane left the document and the pen on the table and maintained eye contact with Fitzgerald. “Given that I already know about Metamorphis, that it is in production, and that it has been the subject of at least two focus groups, I don’t think it’s very confidential.”

Fitzgerald too kept a poker face. “Nevertheless, we won’t have this meeting without a signed agreement.”

Fitzgerald was posing as the alpha dog, pissing on trees; Sloane wasn’t about to cede him the campground. “Then I guess we’ll both read about it in the newspapers.”

“And you should know that we will treat the dissemination of any proprietary information very seriously.”

“You might, but I don’t think a court will,” Sloane said. “So let’s stop with the threats and try to make this a productive meeting. I’m willing to agree that nothing you say in this room today is an admission of liability in any case I may file against Kendall.”

Though Fitzgerald expressed no outward concern at the mention of a lawsuit, Sloane knew that the mere possibility of litigation, especially on the eve of what all signs indicated would be the biggest toy launch in Kendall history, was making him uncomfortable. Fitzgerald folded his hands on the table but looked like a man fighting the urge to scratch an itch.

“Do I have your word?” Fitzgerald asked.

“I just gave it.”

Fitzgerald sat back. “Then I’m here to listen.”

Beneath the table Sloane’s hand continued to squeeze the cane handle. Fitzgerald was as arrogant as his picture depicted. “I know Kendall recently used focus groups to test a toy called Metamorphis.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Pay attention. It will become apparent. I also know that Kyle Horgan, the designer of that toy, advised your company that he was concerned about the integrity of the plastic being manufactured in China, that it did not meet ASTM standards, that it was cheap, and that it had the potential to crack. He was concerned that if that occurred, it could release powerful magnets inside the plastic.”

Fitzgerald did not react.

“Two families from Kendall focus groups, the Gallegos and McFarlands, had young boys in their homes. Both suffered high fevers, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and dehydration. Both died after slipping into comas. The medical examiner found six magnets inside Mateo Gallegos that perforated his intestines and allowed toxic bacteria to poison his body and ultimately caused his death.”

Fitzgerald continued to play poker. “And you can prove these magnets came from some Kendall toy.”

“I’ll do one better, Mr. Fitzgerald. I’ll prove they came from a specific Kendall toy, Metamorphis.”

Fitzgerald unfolded his hands. “Your evidence, if it were accurate, would be circumstantial, at best.”

“I’m not sure a jury would see it that way. I’ve been known to convince juries of many things.”

“Would the McFarlands be the parents of the young boy on whose behalf you recently prosecuted a medical malpractice action against the boy’s pediatrician?”

It was a good blow. Sloane struggled to deflect it. “They would.”

“So we can conclude you weren’t convinced by this circumstantial evidence.”

“I obtained the evidence after the trial.”

“And what evidence would that be?”

“A letter written by the toy’s designer advising Kendall of the problems with the plastic.”

Fitzgerald’s eyebrows arched. “Do you have a copy of this letter?”

“Not with me.”

“But you’d be willing to provide it?”

Sloane shrugged. “It would certainly be subject to a document request in litigation.”

“Anything else?” Fitzgerald asked.

“I don’t think I need more, but if you’d like me to depose you and your officers and directors I can arrange for that.”

“I’ve been deposed, Mr. Sloane,” Fitzgerald said with a shrug intended to convey that he was not concerned. “I’ll tell you now what I would tell you under oath and save us both the time. I have no idea what you are talking about. Metamorphis was designed in-house here at Kendall. There was no independent toy designer, and I’m unfamiliar with any memorandum or letter such as the one you’re describing.”

Now it was Sloane’s turn to shrug. “A court can sort that out as well, I guess,” he said, inferring from Fitzgerald’s explanation what he had suspected: Fitzgerald had likely stolen Horgan’s design, which was why it became imperative that the man retrieve Horgan’s file and prevent anyone from using it to prove Horgan had designed the toy.

“I’m sure it can. And we will prove that the toy in question has been product tested and meets all applicable government and industry regulations. Kendall has been in the toy business for more than a hundred years—”

“—I took the tour downstairs after I crossed the moat,” Sloane said.

Fitzgerald gave Sloane a patronizing smile. “Then you know that Kendall has not stayed in business for more than a hundred years by putting dangerous products into the marketplace or ignoring legitimate concerns regarding one of our toys. Kendall complies with all federal regulations, and the toy of which you speak has received approval from the Product Safety Agency.”

“But not from the man who designed it.”

“The man who designed it works in Kendall’s product development department.”

“Then he stole the design.”

“Can you prove that?” Fitzgerald asked.

“As I said, ask around. I’ve been known to prove a lot of things. Can you afford the bad publicity when I do?”

“Kendall’s reputation is impeccable. The safety of children has always been Kendall’s primary concern, which is why Kendall has never had a toy recalled, and why no toy has ever left the Kendall warehouse, and none ever will, that has not been tested and found to be completely safe for children.”

“Yet you settled the Gallegos matter for fifty thousand dollars.”

In their game of chicken, Fitzgerald blinked first. “That is a confidential settlement,” he said, before catching himself and taking a moment to recover. The muscles of his jaw undulated and his nostrils flared.

“Nevertheless . . .” Sloane returned the patronizing smile.

Regaining his composure, Fitzgerald said, “The situation to which you refer was tragic. Despite the lack of evidence of liability, we made the decision that it was prudent to avoid the publicity that, as you have said, so often accompanies litigation. The settlement was against our attorney’s advice, I might add.”

Sloane wasn’t buying that Kendall settled out of concern for bad publicity. He couldn’t imagine Dayron Moore putting fear in anyone, let alone Kendall’s attorney, Barclay Reid. It was clear that Reid had intimidated Moore so badly he wouldn’t even file a complaint.

Fitzgerald sat back. “What is it you want, Mr. Sloane?”

“I want a prototype independently tested before Metamorphis is placed in the market. I would agree to keep any results of those tests confidential pursuant to ER 408 and would agree not to divulge the information to the media.” He referenced the evidence code section that made any discussions of information obtained while engaged in settlement talks inadmissible in court. Without a plaintiff, that wouldn’t be an issue. Sloane could not even file a complaint, let alone get to a trial, and without a complaint he couldn’t initiate discovery to try to get one of the robots in production. But Fitzgerald did not know that. Perception. Sloane was bluffing and hoping Fitzgerald wouldn’t call him on it.

Fitzgerald shook his head. “You’re asking us to do your work for you.”

“Not if I can’t use the information, and not if the results of those tests, as you proclaimed earlier, will show that the product is completely safe.”

“I’ve been sued enough to know that whatever the test results, you’ll find some expert to spin it so that it warrants litigation against Kendall. As you said, Mr. Sloane, your reputation precedes you. As a compromise, I’d be willing to provide the results of the test by the PSA.”

“And I’d be happy to receive those results, but not as a substitute for having one of the robots currently in production independently tested. The other option is I file the complaint and obtain one through discovery.”

Fitzgerald sat forward. “Mr. Sloane, do you think I would commit this company’s resources to design, market, and advertise a product if I had a concern it would be deemed unsafe and subject to a recall, not to mention the damage that would do to Kendall’s reputation? Would that make sense from a business standpoint?”

Again Sloane pushed down the anger boiling inside. Both men knew they were already beyond that point; Fitzgerald had demonstrated, very clearly, that he would do anything for the prospects of Kendall making hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, including sending a killer to retrieve Horgan’s file. Besides, Sloane also knew from the newspaper articles that, given Kendall’s precarious financial situation, if Metamorphis failed, the company would likely no longer need to protect its reputation. But Sloane bit back those potential comments because it was not the bluff he was playing. Instead, he said, “Would it make sense from a business standpoint to protect the design and development of a toy only to have that information become public just months before its release? I don’t know a lot about the toy business, but I can’t imagine that would be a good thing.”

That pushed a button, as Sloane had intended it would. “Let me caution you, Mr. Sloane, that the release of any information pertaining to the design or development of Metamorphis is proprietary. To the extent you possess any such information it would have to have been illegally obtained.”

“I agree,” Sloane said, baiting him further, “by Kendall.”

Fitzgerald’s jaw clenched. “Consider this a demand that any such information be returned immediately, or the company will take legal action. You’re not the only one with a winning record, Mr. Sloane. We’ve won on this issue in the past, and we will win again. Look that up.”

Sloane pushed back his chair. He’d bluffed. The next play belonged to Kendall, and only time would reveal whether Fitzgerald would actually call him on it.

“I guess that’s why they run the races,” he said, “to see which horse actually wins.”

GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

JENKINS’S ESCORT LEAD him through the glass doors beneath the concrete overhang into the drab marble foyer with the circular emblem of the CIA embedded in the floor. The entrance to the Old Headquarters Building, apparently so named because there was now a New Headquarters Building, hadn’t changed, though there were more gold stars on the north wall, one for each CIA officer killed in the line of duty. Jenkins counted eighty-nine. As in the past, not all of the officers’ names were revealed, since doing so might still jeopardize the lives of others. Inscribed on the south wall above the bronze bust of Major General William J. Donovan, the first director of the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor to the CIA, was a passage from scripture, John 8:32.

AND YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH,

AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE.

Curley Wade’s assistant scanned Jenkins’s visitor’s badge through a computer and Jenkins was allowed entry through turnstiles like those found at a subway station. He walked down a hall bustling with people. Halfway down the hall his escort pushed open a glass door to the courtyard patio between the old and new buildings. No longer having security clearance, Jenkins could not meet Wade in his office, but the man was not difficult to find. He was one of only two black men in the courtyard, Jenkins being the other, the sun shining atop Wade’s bald head. “Curley” was a nickname that had apparently been passed down multiple generations, regardless of the amount of hair atop that particular generation’s head.

Wade stood from a red metal picnic table and removed his sunglasses, considering Jenkins with an uncertain stare. “Charles fucking Jenkins. I wouldn’t believe it was actually you until I saw you in the flesh.”

Jenkins smiled, shaking the man’s hand. “Yeah, I guess it’s been a while.”

“‘Been a while’? I thought you were dead. After Mexico City you dropped off the face of the earth.”

Jenkins had first met Wade during his orientation to the Agency, studying its organization, and its history. It was likely that the Agency had paired the two men together, given they were both African American and racism and intolerance remained prevalent. After ten weeks Jenkins was sent to a remote training center in the West Virginia hills, where for six months he learned, in essence, how to become a “spook.” The culmination was a six-week probationary period running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in which he was to showcase what he had learned. When it concluded, a “murder board” gave Jenkins high marks. From there most of the case officers were sent for additional paramilitary training, but because Jenkins had received that training in the Special Forces, the Agency sent him to Mexico City.

“I needed to get away and deal with some of my demons.”

“Well, you haven’t changed much. Still built like a friggin’ tank.”

Jenkins patted his stomach. “I got a little bit more fuel in the tank I’m afraid.”

“Don’t we all? You want to get some chow? We got everything you could want, even a Starbucks.”

“I get enough of that in Seattle. I’m good.”

The operations officer at the Mexico City Station, Wade became Jenkins’s case officer. It had been Wade who assigned Jenkins to work with Joe Branick to infiltrate the village in the mountains of Oaxaca, where a young boy was giving sermons so riveting the peasants had begun to rally around him and call him Mexico’s “savior.” At a time when the Saudis were threatening to cut off the flow of oil to the United States, or raise the price to be prohibitively expensive, Mexico, with its billions of barrels of oil offshore, had become a valuable alternative. The United States government could not risk any potential disruption to its relationship with the Mexican government in power, or to its ability to again gain access to Mexico’s oil. The boy was deemed a threat to the stability of the government and an order was given to eliminate that threat. That boy turned out to be Ephraim Ybaron, who managed to survive and whom Joe Branick would hide in California’s foster care system as David Sloane. Wade had sworn that he had no knowledge of the subsequent operation that had led to the massacre of the residents of that village, including Sloane’s mother. At the time Jenkins wanted to believe him, but whether Wade knew or didn’t know became irrelevant. Jenkins was done, finished with the whole business.

They sat across from each other. A breeze blew through the courtyard, rustling the leaves of an oak tree and giving a short reprieve from the humidity. Behind Wade water trickled down a stone sculpture that Jenkins had never seen before but looked like four encoded panels. Wade saw him considering the panels.

“Someone’s figured out three of the four,” he said. “But don’t bother with the fourth. Someone else determined there’s an error.”

“That must have been fun.”

“We had people pulling their hair out for weeks. Not me of course.” He turned back to Jenkins, “So, what happened to you? Where’d you go?”

“Seattle,” he said, as if he had just moved to a different city. “A little island about an hour to the north. A farm.”

“You? The boy from New Jersey?”

Wade was no longer the young man with the unblemished skin and chiseled features that had been a thirty-year snapshot unchanged in Jenkins’s memory. The years and twenty pounds had reshaped his features. His face was rounder, his nose more prominent. A scar remained partially hidden beneath his right eyebrow.

“I see you’re still in recruiting,” Jenkins said. Wade’s office was in the Office of Personnel, which was under the auspices of the deputy director of operations.

“Not the kind of recruiting that you’re thinking of. I’m a desk jockey now. I hire secretaries, though we can’t call them that anymore. I’m a lot more familiar with ADA and the Department of Labor and Industry than I am with the shit you and I used to deal with.”

Again, Jenkins didn’t know if Wade was telling the truth, but again it didn’t matter. “You still have connections in that world?” he asked.

Wade put his elbows on the table. His eyebrows inched together. “You interested in jumping back in?”

Jenkins laughed. “No. Nothing like that.” He got serious. “I have a favor to ask. I might not have any right to ask it, given how I left, but I need to ask it anyway.” The fact that Jenkins had just disappeared, rather than have his cover “rolled back,” had probably caused Wade some headaches. But Jenkins had never breached his lifetime secrecy agreement.

“If I can help, I will. You know that.”

Jenkins handed him a copy of the photograph Sloane had taken from the envelope when the two detectives came to the hospital.

“This is a bad guy, a sociopath. I need to know his name and how to find him.”

“Why not the police?”

Jenkins had anticipated the question. “It’s personal,” he said. “And the police won’t have the resources to find this guy.”

“Mercenary?”

“Maybe. He’s a professional, well trained, I have a hunch he served.” Jenkins knew that no one kept records quite like the United States military and hoped his hunch was accurate.

Wade sat for a few moments, saying nothing. Then he asked, “How personal?”

“He killed a pregnant woman in cold blood.”

“Not your wife . . .”

“No, but someone who meant a lot to me.”

Wade nodded. “How long are you in town?

“As long as it takes, Curley.”

ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

SLOANE CLOSED HIS office door and threw the cane across the room, clenching and unclenching his fists as he paced the carpeting. The door pushed open, nearly hitting him. Carolyn entered, holding a mug of coffee. Sloane stopped his pacing but apparently not soon enough.

“Well, caffeine is definitely out of the question,” she said. “You want something stronger.”

Sloane made his way to his chair, falling into it. His leg throbbed.

“You okay?” she asked.

“My leg hurts,” he said.

“I’ll bring you some ibuprofen.” She pulled the stack of documents from the out-box on his desk and left him alone, shutting the door behind her.

Sloane took out the prescription bottle from his top desk drawer, nearly pulled off the cap, then reconsidered. The pills would ease his pain but not his frustration; Fitzgerald had remained arrogant, and Sloane knew that without a plaintiff it was unlikely Kendall would react to his threats. If Barclay Reid was as competent as her reputation suggested, she would advise Fitzgerald that a barking dog was not to be feared until it actually bit someone. Without the McFarlands, Sloane was barking, but he had no bite.

Could you?

Eva McFarland’s final question haunted him. That was always the issue when it came to doing the right thing. People often asked more of others than they asked of themselves, and in this instance Sloane had asked Eva McFarland a hell of a lot. He had not lost a child, but he understood what it meant to love someone so much you would rather die than lose them.

THE WAVE HIT the boat so fast Sloane never even saw it coming.

He and Jake had taken the boat out early that morning after Jake had read about a run on king salmon in the Sound, although farther out beyond Vashon Island, which had been the limit of Sloane’s comfort zone driving the boat. He relented because he did not want to disappoint Jake, and only after checking the weather forecast, which called for overcast skies and a chance of light rain. At the time, Sloane was not yet educated on Northwest weather and did not know that, as with so many forecasts in the Pacific Northwest, the weatherman would be wrong. It seemed that with Seattle being located so far north, it was susceptible to the rapidly changing weather patterns coming down from Alaska, making forecasts often no better than a dart throw.

The weather began to change for the worse just after three in the afternoon. Dark clouds rolled in quickly, and the temperature dropped. Light rain became a steady downpour that turned to hail and strong winds, agitating the Sound into a froth of whitecaps and foam. As Sloane struggled to control the twenty-one-foot boat against the wind, the choppy waters, and the current, he never saw the large wave until too late. Though he tried to correct into its impact, he could not steer the boat quickly enough. The wave hit the bow of the boat at an angle and lifted it from the water. Sloane had remained upright only because he managed to hang on to the steering wheel. With trepidation, he turned his head to make sure Jake was okay but instead realized his worst fear. Jake was not in the boat.

His heart leapt in his throat, and he let go of the steering wheel, spinning around.

“Jake! Jake!”

An orange bob in the water was rapidly becoming smaller when another wave hit the boat and knocked Sloane off balance to the floor between the seats. By the time he got back to his feet the orange bob had become a speck.

His heart hammering in his chest, he turned the boat around quickly and hit the throttle, but with the surging waves tossing the propeller in and out of the water, steering the boat was nearly impossible. Jake had his hands raised over his head, waving frantically, the life vest pushed up under his chin. As Sloane approached he slowed, realizing another problem—getting the boy back into the boat would be no easy task. Sloane could not cut the engine entirely because he would lose all power and be at the mercy of not only the waves crashing against the boat but also the wind.

He pulled the boat alongside Jake and ripped off the seat cushions in search of rope. The wind caught one cushion and hurled it fifteen feet into the air before it fell and tumbled across the waves out of sight. Sloane pulled out a purple nylon ski rope and quickly untangled it while trying to keep the nose of the boat into the wind and the waves and not get pushed too far from Jake. He fastened one end of the rope around a cleat, then went back to the wheel and pressed down the throttle, making a horseshoe around Jake. He tossed the line, but the wind took it and pushed it well out of Jake’s reach. Sloane left it in the water and this time made another pass so that the rope would come to Jake, as if he were a downed water-skier. But with the wind, rain, and whitecaps the rope was hard to distinguish. Sloane could see Jake frantically looking for it, slapping at the water.

“Get it, Jake. Grab it.”

But the boy missed it.

Sloane had no choice but to circle again, all the while knowing that Jake was freezing in the forty-five-degree water. He could tell from the expression on Jake’s face as he drove away that the boy was now panicked. He brought the boat around again, the waves tossing it up and down like a cork. This time he brought the rope closer and Jake snatched it. Sloane centered the throttle to neutral.

Afraid that Jake would not be able to hold on to the rope as Sloane pulled him through the water to the boat, Sloane shouted out to him, “Tie it around you,” but the wind and the rain swallowed his voice.

Sloane mimicked the action of tying the rope around his waist while trying to remain upright with the waves jostling the boat.

“Tie it around you.”

Jake tied the rope around his body and Sloane tested it with a yank. The rope held. He pulled hand over hand, Jake swimming for the boat as he did, but it was still like pulling a tire through mud. Making things worse, the waves continued to rock the boat, knocking Sloane off balance and dousing him with foam. He could get little traction, and the boat was taking on more and more water.

His arms ached by the time he pulled Jake to the side of the boat, reached down, and yanked him out of the water by his life vest. The boy was shivering from the cold and shock, but Sloane had little time to console him. The waves were growing ever bigger. He put him in the passenger seat and throttled forward, turning the boat back on course, praying they’d make it back to Three Tree Point.

When they got within site of their beach Sloane saw a tiny, solitary figure standing on the bulkhead. Tina looked out from under the hood of her blue Gore-Tex jacket, leaning into the wind and rain. She would later tell him that she had stood there for almost an hour, cell phone in hand, hoping to see them or the Coast Guard, whom she had called.

Sloane didn’t bother to tie up at the buoy. He threw Tina the rope and beached the boat on the gravel, unconcerned about the damage that might cause. As Tina tied the rope to a ring cemented in the bulkhead, Sloane helped Jake to the shore. Tina rushed to them, hugging them both, crying, unable to speak, not having to do so. Clutching Tina and Jake tight, Sloane knew what he had almost lost and now realized what he could not live without. And with that knowledge he came to understand, for the first time, what it truly meant to love and to be loved.

THE FIRST NIGHT in the hospital after Charles Jenkins had told him Tina was dead had been the longest of his life. The succeeding nights did not get any shorter. People who said time heals all wounds were wrong. The days became a week, and the week an emotion-deadening month, but he still felt the pain as fresh as that first night, and every morning bore the same reality—there was nothing he could do to change it. For all his skill and talent, he had no control over the one thing that could bring color back into his world and make him feel again. He could not bring back Tina. Now he feared he was about to let her down all over again, unable to bring those responsible to justice, and the frustration that wrought was almost paralyzing.

Carolyn knocked and opened the door, looking perturbed. “Did you schedule an appointment you didn’t tell me about?”

Sloane shook his head. He had no appointments, not today, not tomorrow, not for the rest of the month. He was focused on just two tasks, taking down Kendall Toys and exacting revenge on the man who had killed his wife.

“Well, Michael and Eva McFarland are in the lobby and they asked to speak to you.”

Sloane sighed. Michael had probably come to give Sloane the remaining piece of mind that Eva had not unleashed on him. He deserved it. “Ask them to wait in the conference room,” he said.

THE MCFARLANDS STOOD near the windows with their backs to the door. The two cups of coffee Carolyn had set on the conference table remained untouched, and the strap of Eva’s purse remained around her forearm. They didn’t intend to stay long, probably just long enough for Michael to ask Sloane where he got the nerve.

Sloane knocked to get their attention as he walked in. Michael stepped forward, though not with the assertiveness Sloane had anticipated. Eva hesitated, but her husband wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She looked as she had many days in court, eyes puffy red, skin pale. “We wanted to talk with you about the check.”

It would have been standard procedure upon receiving the $3.2 million judgment from Dr. Douvalidis’s insurance carrier for Carolyn to deposit the check in Sloane’s trust account and cut the McFarlands a check, less Sloane’s fee and costs. “Did Carolyn not send it?”

“No, we got it.” Michael had trimmed his goatee since Sloane last saw him. It was a shade darker than his brown hair with strands of gray at the chin. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”

Sloane gestured for them to take seats at the conference room table. Eva opened her purse and pulled out a white envelope Sloane recognized to be his firm’s stationery. Then she slid it across the polished surface.

Sloane considered it before looking back up at them. “I don’t understand. Is there something wrong? Is it the wrong amount?”

Eva’s voice cracked. She paused to clear her throat and let her emotions pass. Tears pooled again. “I’m so sorry, David. I’m so sorry for those things that I said to you about not having lost someone you love.”

He put up a hand. “No. You have nothing to apologize for. I never should have put you in that position. It was wrong of me. You asked me if I could do it, and now . . . well, I know my answer.”

“But that’s really the point, isn’t it,” Michael said. He gestured to his wife. “I mean, that’s what we talked about when I got home. Eva told me you came to the house and what you told her, about that other family. No one should have to make that decision. No one should have to go through what we’ve gone through. Austin never had a chance. I mean, no one knew there could be a danger. You don’t go to the store and buy your child a toy and think that it could kill him. You think that if it’s there, if it’s on the shelf, then it has to be safe, right? I mean there are agencies that are supposed to check those things, aren’t there? So no one could have prevented what happened to Austin because no one knew.” McFarland paused, as if to catch his breath. “But now it’s different. Now we know that toy is dangerous. And, well, we couldn’t live with ourselves if something happened to another child and we knew that we could have, maybe, prevented it.”

Eva’s chest shuddered. “I thought about what you said, about the other families; I don’t want another mother to go through what I’ve gone through. I also thought of Dr. Douvalidis. Oh my God, David.”

Sloane had no answer for her. He had no answer for himself. Douvalidis might still have been found negligent, but the doctor was not responsible for Austin’s death. Kendall Toys was.

“We were thinking,” Eva said. “Maybe, you know, in some way this could at least give some meaning to Austin’s death.”

Michael agreed. “That maybe Austin died so that other kids won’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe he wouldn’t have died for no reason, you know.”

“Do you know what we mean?” Eva asked.

Sloane nodded. “My wife was pregnant,” he said, fighting back his own emotions. “I know what you mean.”

Eva reached out and covered Sloane’s hand with her own.

“When I found out, I was so happy,” he said. “But then I felt something I never expected.”

“Fear,” Eva said, knowing.

He nodded. “I realized that this was going to be a very big responsibility for a lot of years, and I had no way of really knowing if I would be up to it. It killed me to think of anything happening to my child like what had happened to Austin.”

For a moment no one spoke. Then Michael broke the silence. “So we’ll sign whatever papers you need, you know, to find out for sure. But we don’t want to be there. We can’t be there.”

“I understand,” Sloane said, knowing Michael referred to the exhumation and autopsy. “I’ll be there for you, and I’ll make sure Austin is taken care of.”

The McFarlands looked at each other with expressions of resigned relief, Eva exhaling, as if she had been holding her breath. They walked around the edge of the table to where Sloane stood, balanced on his cane. Their movements seemed lighter. Michael McFarland shook Sloane’s hand but said nothing further, perhaps concerned that one further word would unleash the tears pooled in his eyes. He stepped to the side to compose himself as Eva hugged Sloane.

“Maybe she’s up there with Austin,” she said. “Maybe she’s taking care of my baby for me. I’ll bet she would have been a good mother.”

“She was,” Sloane said. “She was a very good mother.”

LAURELHURST

WASHINGTON

FITZGERALD LEANED CLOSER, peering at the splotches on the peasant woman’s face, admiring the individual strokes of the paint brush. Kneeling in what appeared to be a field of wheat, the woman wore a blue dress with red spots and a beige apron about her waist. A yellow sun hat covered her head, the underside of the brim nearly orange, to indicate shade. The painting was worth twice as much as everything Fitzgerald owned, and that included his stock in Kendall.

“Van Gogh.” Sebastian Kendall spoke as his nurse wheeled him into the room. He looked to be sitting more upright than he had during Fitzgerald’s prior visit.

“I remember when you bought it,” Fitzgerald said.

“You mean when I overpaid for it,” Kendall said, admiring the piece, “and yet it is worth twice as much today as the day I bought it.”

“You were always a good judge of a wise investment.”

“Hah!” Kendall barked. “I wanted it, and I let my personal desire cloud my business judgment. I was lucky.”

“We should all be so lucky.”

“Perhaps.” Kendall wheeled closer. “He has always fascinated me, Van Gogh, so brilliant and yet so fragile. Did you know that his paintings are a public exhibition of his descent into madness?”

Fitzgerald nodded. “Erin and I attended a lecture at the UW that chronicled his illness through his paintings. It was quite fascinating. They say the line between genius and madness is razor thin.”

Kendall’s nurse wheeled him closer to a fire in the river rock fireplace, then left them.

“You look well today,” Fitzgerald said, “stronger.”

Kendall responded with a small shrug. “Today has been a good day, but to infer anything from it would be no less mad than Van Gogh. I have acknowledged the inevitable, Malcolm, and I do not fear it. Tell me, what brings you here late at night when you should be home with your family? No toys on this occasion?”

Fitzgerald sat in a leather chair, elbows on his knees, hands pressed together at an apex just beneath his nose, like an altar boy praying. He had debated bringing up the subject with Kendall. God knew the man had enough on his plate, and if Fitzgerald truly was to assume the mantle of control, he would have to make these decisions on his own soon enough. But Kendall had been Fitzgerald’s safety net for many years and remained his mentor during the transition of power. With so much riding on the success of Metamorphis, Fitzgerald was not yet ready to fly without the net secure below him.

“I’m sorry to trouble you with this, Sebastian. I had intended on handling it myself . . .”

“Please, if it allows me to remain of some use . . .”

“We have a mole in the company. I’ve known of it for sometime, but I thought I could keep it under control by keeping the production of Metamorphis confidential, as we discussed. I’m afraid that is no longer the case.”

“Who do you suspect?”

“Santoro.”

Kendall tilted his head backward, and it looked as if it might roll completely off before it listed forward again. “He remains upset.”

Fitzgerald rubbed his hands, as if to warm them. “He’s been meeting with Brandon Craft.”

“Then you can assume it is with Maxine Bolelli’s blessing. Craft isn’t savvy enough to do something like this on his own.”

“It began shortly after Maxine and I met in Scottsdale to discuss Galaxy’s proposal. I never should have included Santoro in the discussions, but I was hoping it would make him feel less insecure about his future at the company. Initially I believed he was only testing the waters, and I couldn’t really blame him, nor would I have stopped him. I’m sure he sees his position now as a dead end, and I would prefer to be rid of him as we move forward.”

“And something has made you now suspect there is more to his overtures?”

“I believe he’s been playing Kendall and Galaxy against each other and I believe he’s using Metamorphis to do it.”

“How?”

“He knows that if Metamorphis succeeds, it eliminates any chance of Galaxy acquiring Kendall. If it fails, the chances of Kendall surviving the economic downturn or a hostile bid by Galaxy are equally as slim. If that happens, Bolelli does not need Santoro to get what she wants; she could just absorb Kendall’s action figure department for pennies on the dollar. Why bother hiring Santoro?”

“It makes sense.”

“So it is in Santoro’s interest for Kendall to fail outright but for Metamorphis to succeed.”

“He uses Metamorphis to entice Bolelli to hire him.”

Fitzgerald nodded. “He takes a position as head of Galaxy’s new action figure department, and he just so happens to bring with him the design of a toy that could very well be the toy of the decade. It’s a win-win.”

“How is he going to accomplish this?”

“He has apparently paid a low-level toy designer to take credit for the design of Metamorphis, and to allege that he placed Kendall on notice of a flaw in the design.”

“We’ll simply expose this man as an imposter.”

Fitzgerald stood. “I wish it were that simple. It seems Santoro has sent this man to an attorney, and not just any attorney, but to David Sloane.”

Kendall shook his head to indicate the name meant nothing to him.

“He’s the attorney who brought suit against the government last year on behalf of that national guardsman’s family. The attorney who never loses.”

“Wasn’t he just in the news?”

“His wife was murdered by an intruder in their home. Sloane was shot twice but lived and seems no worse for wear. I had a meeting with him this afternoon. He knows about Metamorphis and he’s convinced that this Kyle Horgan designed it. He says he has a file with the design drawings to prove it, as well as a letter from Horgan warning of a flaw in the plastic. Only Santoro could have provided the design drawings. As careful as we’ve been, we can’t deny that Santoro still has a lot of support at the company. Who knows what he’s promised certain individuals if he takes a position at Galaxy, or what he’s told them about Kendall’s future. But our immediate problem is Sloane. We cannot let him disclose this design, and we cannot let him stand up in court and argue that Kendall has knowledge of a flaw but intends to put the toy to market.”

“You indicated on your last visit that the toy has met all regulations and received PSA approval.”

“It has, but there was that matter in Mossylog.”

“An aberration, likely misuse of the product. Besides, there was insufficient evidence to confirm that the death was caused by the toy.”

“Legal arguments, Sebastian, which are persuasive to other lawyers but not necessarily to the general public. You know that. Sloane would spin the child’s death as evidence the toy design is flawed. He wants us to pull the plug until Metamorphis can be independently tested.”

“Out of the question.”

“He says he’ll file suit and make this a very public matter.”

“Did you talk to Barclay?”

“Not a minute after Sloane left my office. She says we can fight any attempt to set aside the Gallegos settlement, that the family was represented by counsel and signed an agreement, but that isn’t my primary concern. My primary concern is Sloane making the design public during litigation.”

“And what did Ms. Reid say?”

“She said that if Sloane has a plaintiff, and if he files suit, we can seek a court order preventing him from disclosing any information about the design. But that still does not prevent Santoro from taking the design to Galaxy and exploiting any delay caused by this litigation.”

“A knockoff.”

“And when Kendall goes under, Santoro shows up at Galaxy.”

“Can we expose this imposter, Kyle Horgan?”

“We can’t even locate him. I think Santoro has him hidden.”

“Have you confronted Santoro?”

Fitzgerald shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t have anything concrete to confront him with, and he would only deny it and become more guarded. I was hoping that he’d make a mistake and hang himself.”

“You may be running out of time for that,” Kendall said.

“That’s why I’m here.”

Kendall nodded. “Put a tap on his office and cell phone and monitor his e-mails. Use the people we’ve used in the past. Arian is smart. He’ll be discreet. So see about putting something in his car as well and put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. All you need is one phone call or e-mail or photograph to expose him.”

Fitzgerald nodded.

“Santoro lost any expectation of privacy when he talked with Galaxy.”

“What about Sloane?”

“Pay him what he wants and get rid of this before it gets in the media. You must fiercely protect the Kendall name. This toy could be to you what Sergeant Smash and Captain Courageous were to my father and my grandfather, a solid foundation upon which to build Kendall’s, and your, future. Do not let anyone take that away from you.”