The Timer Game. Susan Smith Arnout

company had grown to over three thousand employees worldwide, with manufacturing plants scattered across the globe.

      But it was the hospital side that had attracted her. The chance to work with pediatric heart transplant patients and pursue new methods of controlling transplant rejection. When she’d been offered a residency, she’d jumped at it.

      Warren had immediately singled her out, something that stunned her and made her uneasy at the same time. She had no interest in following Warren Pendrell into hospital administration, but she soon learned his interest was more complicated.

      He’d lost a daughter about her age, he confided finally. Warren’s pain at losing his daughter Sara, and Grace’s need to have a dad, melded during her work at the Center. That and a mutual passion for research and healing. He’d personally recommended her for a position at Cedars-Sinai after her residency, and had helped set up the two months she’d spent in Guatemala working in a remote mountain clinic.

      And then she’d come back from Guatemala and dropped out of medicine and taken a job at the crime lab.

      She’d never told him why and Warren never let it drop, how her place was back at the Center leading the assault on transplant rejection and doing heart surgery on kids, instead of wasting her talent in some two-bit job with the police, barely scraping by.

      She’d delivered Katie at the Center when the time came, and later Katie had ear surgery as a baby there, but the relationship between Warren and Grace had grown increasingly strained until it had erupted in a frightening outburst of pyrotechnics, Warren insisting she tell him why she’d given up medicine, Grace holding to silence. He’d apologized but she sensed lurking beneath the surface a fierce need to control, a need he was barely able to keep in check. Now their contact was relegated to stray lunches and occasional phone calls.

      ‘Do you know how many people I’ve mentored here in all these years? Exactly two.’

      ‘Warren.’ It was the opening volley of a familiar war and she didn’t have the taste for it.

      ‘Fine, fine, I’ll stop.’

      She followed him into his private library and waited as he scooped up an open reference book from a leather sofa. The room was large, airy, painted Italian custard.

      A plaster fireplace vaulted in sweeping simplicity, surrounded by chairs in a rich palette of gold and red, accenting his favorite painting, a Degas that hung near his Italian rosewood writing desk. Two walls held floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. It was here he kept his collection of science journals, books on philosophy and religion and first-edition nineteenth-century European novels.

      ‘Sit anyplace.’ He turned his back on her and went to the window. ‘I’m relieved you’re all right, by the way,’ he said gruffly. ‘More relieved than you’ll know.’

      She sank into the leather sofa. Soft sunlight floated through raw silk panels, spilling wide bands of light across the tiled floor.

      He turned and she saw how tired he looked under the tan. ‘I don’t mean to be short. I’m under more pressure than usual this week, that’s all, and then when I heard how close you’d come to dying – well, it seems to have unhinged me. What do you need?’

      ‘Answers. You knew him personally, didn’t you? Eddie Loud.’

      He gave her a long, measured look. ‘I think I’ll have a drink. May I get you something? Perhaps fresh papaya juice?’

      ‘Sounds wonderful.’

      He went to the sideboard, glancing at the photograph of his daughter he kept in a small gilt frame. Taken years ago, it revealed a young woman with a strong jaw and merry eyes. She was lost in a corn maze, laughing, not sure which way led to the exit. It had been shot from above looking down, and the exit was within reach. She just couldn’t find it.

      Losing her way seemed to have been a chronic problem. Sara had been a sophomore at Brandeis when she’d fallen in love with a foreign exchange student who police discovered was traveling with false papers and had a criminal record. He was deported and six weeks later, she’d dropped out of school and followed him to Central America. Warren sent a former Green Beret to capture her and drag her home, but she’d run away again, and this time he’d left her alone.

      Warren’s gaze left the photo and settled on Grace. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘What do you need to know?’

      She told him what Eddie Loud had said right before she killed him.

      The color drained from his face. ‘Good God. You’re sure he said “He’s coming for you”? Those exact words?’

      ‘Yes. I’ll never forget it.’

      Warren fixed their drinks, his face troubled. He handed Grace her glass and sat down, taking a long drink of scotch and rolling the heavy glass between his palms, studying the amber liquid. ‘“Run. He’s coming for you. The Spikeman.” Any ideas?’

      She shook her head. ‘I was hoping it made sense to you.’ She took a sip of juice. It was sweet and wonderfully pulpy.

      He was silent, mulling something over. He looked up.

      ‘He’s dead. Under the circumstances, I guess I can tell you some things.’

      Warren drank some more and the ice clinked. He studied the glass.

      ‘Eddie Loud was schizophrenic. You know on the research side of the Center, we specialize in immunological disorders and treatment. We do the usual – arthritis, lupus, MS, transplant compatibility, but the last few years, since you left, we’ve added schizophrenia to the list. That’s what we do behind those wire windows on two.’

      ‘How can schizophrenia be an immunological disorder?’

      ‘Might not be, jury’s still out, but there’s a possibility that a simple virus in the fourth month in utero could contribute to a wiring problem significant enough to create it. We used magnetic resonance imaging and found structural defects in the temporal lobes, some cell changes. Anyway, we’re exploring whether we can reverse that damage on chromosome six – not just throwing drugs at the problem after the fact. It’s delicate and difficult.’

      ‘You were experimenting on Eddie Loud?’ It sounded colder than she’d intended, and Warren flinched and drained his glass.

      ‘Yes, he was enrolled in our experimental program and yes, the combination of gene therapy, drugs, and behavior modification seemed to be helping. I’ve known his dad four years or so. Eddie’s bounced around other treatment centers and Bert – that’s his dad, Senator Loud – heard about the work we were doing here and pleaded with me to take him. Big mistake. Clearly.’

      Grace’s glass was empty and she put it down and slid her hands under her legs to warm them. ‘I don’t understand why he fixated on me.’

      ‘I don’t either.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s a chance he could have made it up. Eddie had a peculiar fascination for video. When he fell off his meds, he believed himself to be a hotshot reporter, going after the big story. In his room at the halfway house, they’d find equipment he’d ordered over the Internet and squirreled away, and once even props from a Hollywood set he’d managed to buy off eBay.’

      She could see the headline: ALCOHOLIC CRIME LAB FORENSIC BIOLOGIST KILLS ALMOST DEFENSELESS MENTALLY ILL SON OF SENATOR.

      ‘That still doesn’t explain how he got my name and matched it to my face. And knew I was going to be at that particular meth house.’

      Warren scrubbed his jaw with his knuckles. ‘God, what a mess.’

      He put his glass down and moved to a wall of books. Long thin windows had been built into the shelves, revealing sudden views, as surprising as if the views themselves were a work of art. Soft clouds filtered across the narrow stamp of blue sky.

      The shelf held a wooden toy of Sara’s that always reminded Grace of a parking garage, a series of small wooden ramps and painted wooden penguins. Warren absently