McCall read the summary slowly, frowning. "Well," he finally said, putting the sheet down, "they weren't very creative, were they?"

Control scowled. "We've seen worse." He took a long slow drink of brandy.

Robert drank as well. There was nothing in the summary that he hadn't expected - and Control must have expected, too - but it was hard to be right. "How is she? Really?"

"She wouldn't see me," Control answered stonily.

"She what?"

"She wouldn't see me," his friend repeated. "Tillman says she doesn't want to see anybody - but especially not me." He stared moodily at the liqueur in his glass, swirled it absently.

"She's been through a lot," Robert offered.

"Yes, she has."

"Perhaps, in a few days . . . "

"Perhaps," Control answered grimly. "And perhaps she will always hate me."

"I'm sure she doesn't hate you."

"I should have gone after her."

"Control . . . "

"I should have gone after her, Robert. I should have gone that first night, and I should have gone when Kostmayer wanted to. I should have got her out of there. She was counting on me."

"She was counting on you to keep her alive," Robert argued. "And you did that, by maintaining your distance, by not giving away her identity."

Control just shook his head.

"Control, think. Nothing has changed. You did what you had to do. Lily's a professional. She will understand that. She probably does already."

"She wouldn't even see me, Robert!"

They sat in silence. The fire beside their table crackled warmly; a few of the last patrons in the restaurant wandered out. Pete came and refilled their glasses without a word.

When she was out of earshot, Control sighed. "I watched her sleep for a while."

"How did she look?"

"Terrible."

Robert snorted. "Don't you think that might be behind her refusal to see you?"

"She's not vain, Robert."

"She's careful of you. She must have known how seeing her that way would hurt you."

Control eyed him caustically. "You're saying she wouldn't see me because she's trying to protect me?"

McCall shrugged. "She knew it wouldn't be easy for you. She always makes things easy for you."

"That's not what this is."

"We don't know what this is, Control." Robert took another drink. "If there is anything I do know, it's that you and I will never understand what goes on in the mind of any woman. Especially this woman."

"That's very helpful, Robert. Let me make a note of that."

"Oh, come now," Robert demanded, irritated. "Did you really think you were just going to fly down there and sweep her off her feet? That you could say, sorry, I've made a mistake, and she'd come running back to you?"

"Of course not . . . "

"Yes, you did. You did, Control. You thought you only had to crook your finger and she'd land in your lap. Didn't you?"

"Damn it, Robert, you were the one who said she'd forgive me!"

"Yes, but when I said that I assumed she was dead. How was I to know she'd come back and prove me wrong?"

Silence returned.

Finally, Robert added, "I don't know that she won't forgive you, Control. I have no idea why she ever loved you in the first place, so I have no idea if she loves you still. You will have to ask her that, when you see her."

"If I see her."

"If nothing else," McCall answered, "she's still your employee, isn't she? Sooner or later you will see her."

Control sighed. "There is that."

"Don't give up on her now, Control. She was lost for seven weeks and you didn't give up on her, don't give up on her now. Give her time, let her find her feet again. You have time now, Control. You can wait."

"I don't want to wait," Control answered. But he nodded. "I know you're right, Robert, I just . . . when I saw her, she was so . . . broken, and I . . . "

"Wanted to comfort her," Robert supplied gently. "Wanted to hold her."

"Yes. God, yes." Control drank, bitterly. "But I couldn't, because we're not together. She has to get through this alone, at least she thinks she does, because I sent her away. Because she thinks . . . "

"She must know you still love her."

"I told her I didn't."

Robert chuckled. "And we both know she knows you're a liar."

Control sighed. "I just want her to be well."

"She will be, my friend. She will be."

# # #

Two weeks passed, without another word about the woman. Control seemed to be avoiding Robert, but perhaps that was coincidental; he frequently went for longer periods without so much as a phone call, and McCall was usually just as glad. This time, of course, he wished Control *would* call. But he assumed, correctly, that no news was no news.

He sat in Pete's restaurant - she insisted that it was his, as he was a major investor, but Robert gave that no credence: Pete was the one who did all the work - at a table near the front, waiting to meet a potential client. Pete brought her over and introduced her. "Robert, this is my friend, Angela Shirry. Angela, Robert McCall." She brought them both more coffee, and left them alone.

Robert studied the woman casually. She was at least his age, perhaps older, but a foot shorter and fifty pounds heavier, a kindly-looking little dumpling of a woman. In her softly wrinkled face, her eyes sparked with deep intelligence and concern.

What was more, she was studying him at the same time. Evidently she found him acceptable. But she didn't seem to know how to begin. "Pete says," Robert helped her along, "that you're concerned about a young patient of yours. Are you a doctor?"

"No. I'm the executive director of a clinic, Family Place."

Robert felt his back stiffen. He'd heard about Family Place; they'd been quite prominent in the news, a week or so back, something about protestors. "Go on," he said stiffly.

"The clinic provides family health services, and family planning. We've just moved our offices to . . . "

"I've heard," Robert answered shortly. He heard the chill in his own voice, and adjusted it. Whatever his feelings about this woman, and her profession, she was a friend of Pete's and he had said that he would help her. "There were some protests, I believe."

"A lot of protests," the woman answered. "We only moved ten blocks, but the neighborhood is a good deal more upscale . . . "

"Yes, and they did not want an abortion clinic just around the corner from a Catholic girls' school."

He had snapped at her, and should apologize, and knew it. But before he could speak, she had replied, not angrily. "We don't do abortions at the clinic. We do refer some of our patients to abortion providers, but we don't perform them at the clinic."

"You do provide contraceptives to school girls, though."

"Yes." Her answer was unequivocal, and unembarrassed. She had had this argument before, hundred of times, and she was more than willing to have it once more. "Because schoolgirls are having sex."

"Perhaps they wouldn't be if birth control were not so readily available."

Angela gazed at him steadily. "Have you talked to any schoolgirls lately?"

Robert made himself pause. He had not set out to have a philosophical discussion with this woman, and he was in no mood to defend his beliefs to her. "You said you were worried about a patient."

Graciously, she let him change the subject. "During the protests, there was a man who actually broke into the clinic. His name was John Laskey. He was very upset, and he made a lot of threats. Most of them were just standard rhetoric, but one in particular . . . he said that if he ever caught his daughter coming to the clinic, he'd kill her."

"And this daughter is a patient of the clinic."

Angela nodded solemnly.

"You need to call the police."

"I would if I could. But you have to understand our position. Our client's identities are kept strictly confidential. Especially our underage clients. We cannot reveal them to the police. I would not be telling you this, but Pete said that I could rely on your discretion."

McCall stared for a moment at nothing, over the woman's right shoulder. Frowning. Damn Pete, for telling her he was so reliable. He wanted to be unreliable. He wanted to back out of this problem. "Besides the father's threats," he finally said, "is there any indication that this young lady is in danger?"

"She had an appointment yesterday at the clinic. She didn't show up. This morning I called the school and they said that she'd been out all week."

"The school told you that?" Robert asked in surprise.

"I - told them I was her mother."

"Ah."

"I don't know that anything's happened to her. She may just have the flu or something. But her father knows me, he'd recognize me if I went to check on her . . . "

McCall sighed. "What else?"

"What else what?"

"People have a way," Robert said, "of asking for my help, and then not telling me everything that I need to know in order to provide that help. There is obviously more to this situation, or you would have sent someone else from the clinic to drop by her house. You expect there to be trouble, well beyond the rambling threats of an angry father. Please, tell me the rest."

The woman considered for a long moment. "Patient information has to be kept confidential."

"Then I cannot help you." He moved to stand.

"Please . . . " Angela sighed. "Michelle - that's the daughter's name, Michelle - first came to the clinic two weeks ago. She wanted to have a pregnancy test."

McCall grimaced. "Is she pregnant?"

"No. Surprisingly, no. She said that she'd been having unprotected sex for some months. We advised her to obtain some kind of reliable birth control, and tried to explain to her about sexually transmitted diseases . . . "

"How old is she?"

"Fifteen."

"And you're giving her all this information without her parents' knowledge or permission?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

Robert frowned deeply. "Go on."

"She asked for birth control pills. We told her that she had to have a physical examination before they would be prescribed for her, and set up an appointment for yesterday."

"But she broke the appointment."

"Yes."

"Surely that's not entirely unheard of in these sorts of cases."

"No, of course not," Angela answered. She was beginning to be annoyed. "It happens all the time. But this young lady, in her initial visit, said some things that suggested . . . that suggested that she was being abused in her home."

"Sexually abused?"

"Yes."

Robert kept his face carefully neutral. "And the physical exam would have confirmed this?"

"Maybe. We also ask that our patients meet with a counselor. Michelle seemed as if she wanted to talk with someone. If she had kept the appointment - she might have revealed a great deal more about her home situation." The woman shifted in her chair; the arms were just a little too close together for her ample figure. "Her father was so vehement at the protest. I didn't think about it at the time, but after I'd met the girl . . . "

"You think he has something to hide."

"I think that someone needs to go see if he does. If the girl's alive and well, fine. She'll come to the clinic or she won't. But if she's not . . . "

"Yes," Robert answered slowly. He was already mulling over possible approaches. Somehow banging down the door and asking if the girl were being molested didn't seem like the best choice.

"Will you help me?"

McCall thought about it for a long moment, twisting his ring quite unconsciously. "I will help you, yes. At least this far, I will go and look in on the young lady." He pondered further. "I must say, though, that I do not entirely approve of your organization."

Angela laughed. "Really? I never would have known." She looked him up and down. "Let me ask you something, Mr. McCall. Have you ever been a party to an unintended pregnancy?"

"No," Robert answered at once.

"You have children?"

"A son and a daughter." And just as quickly as he had answered, he realized that he'd lied. For what was Yvette, if not the consequence of an unintended pregnancy? He did not bother to correct himself aloud.

"They're out of their teens?"

"Yes."

"And they're sexually responsible?"

"I . . . of course they are." Were they? Scott was, or else he was damn lucky; for all the wild oats Robert was aware of him sowing, none had germinated. Yvette? He hadn't a clue in the world. "This is not a discussion about me and my family."

"But it is," Angela insisted. "It's all about you and your family, and me and my family, and . . . " she pointed to the next table, "her and her family. It's all about people and their families. You've been lucky, and you know it, you and your children. But not all families are lucky. Every schoolgirl that comes to our clinic is having sex with someone's son, if not yours then mine or hers or his. And they're not going to stop, no matter how much we lecture and disapprove. Now we can either protect them as best we can, with the right equipment and the right information, or we can look the other way and pretend it isn't happening - as long as we're lucky. But those are the only choices."

Robert's eyes narrowed. Because everything she was saying was true - and he didn't like it.

"I'm guessing, " she continued, "that you don't approve of abortion."

"In certain cases," Robert conceded, "but certainly not as a form of birth control."

"And yet you don't approve of my providing alternative birth control, either."

"I approve of abstinence."

"And do you abstain?"

McCall bristled. "I'm not a schoolgirl."

She nodded slowly. Then she dug in her purse and brought out a piece of paper. "This is the address we have for the Laskey family. And my telephone number."

Robert took them, glad to have this discussion at an end. "I'll speak to you after we've been there."

She stood up. "Thank you for your help, Mr. McCall."

He nodded graciously. He hadn't the first idea what to say.

# # #

"Hey, McCall," Kostmayer said as he climbed into the Jaguar. "Guess who's back in town."

"Lily Romanov," Robert promptly guessed.

Mickey made a face. "You're no fun."

"How does she look?" Robert eased the car away from the curb.

"Not good. 'Course, it's hard to tell from a hundred yards away."

"So you didn't talk."

"Yeah, McCall, we yelled sweet nothings across the parking lot."

Robert frowned at him. "Why didn't you get closer?"

"Ah, these bastards from Washington have her. They brought her up from Miami this morning, marched her in the back door for interrogation - sorry, for debriefing - marched her right back out when they were done. They put out this memo, they don't want anyone from the office talking to her." The expression on his face made his feelings about the out-of-town agents abundantly clear.

"Why didn't they take her to Washington, then?"

Mickey shook his head. "They don't want her anywhere near anybody that looks like a Congressman."

"Why?"

"McCall, aren't you paying attention? They're running an illegal war in Nicaragua."

Robert shrugged. "They've done that before."

"Yeah, but usually the White House isn't directly involved. Their fat's in the fire on this one, big time."

"Surely they don't think Lily Romanov can pull it out for them."

"I don't know what the hell they think. I just know they're paranoid creeps and I don't like them."

"I might have gathered you didn't like them, Mickey." He drove for a bit in silence. "She spoke to Control, at least."

"Not that I know of. I get the feeling she doesn't have much to say to him."

McCall frowned. "Well," he mused aloud, "maybe when the interrogation is over."

"Debriefing," Mickey corrected sarcastically.

"Yes. Quite."

"Quite." Kostmayer snorted. "I just wanted to talk to her, McCall. I don't care about this Contra crap, I just wanted to see how she was, you know?"

"I know, Mickey," Robert answered gently. "You'll get your chance. They can't keep her secluded forever."

"They can't?"

"No, they can't. Not that one."

"I guess." Mickey rapped his knuckles absently against the side window. "I should have gone to get her."

"Oh, for God's sake, Kostmayer, let it go!" Robert exploded. "We have been over this a hundred times. Even if you could have found her, you couldn't have gotten her out safely. "

Mickey sighed. "Maybe."

Robert drove in silence for a time. He wasn't really angry with Kostmayer; on the contrary, he was highly sympathetic. The agent had come up with a clean and simple plan for the rescue of Lily Romanov, thirty days after her disappearance. It had lacked only precise intelligence on her whereabouts and her situation. Mickey had intended to lead a five-man team over the Honduran border west of the village, stick to the forests, locate the girl, get her out by going east back to Honduras. He'd had transportation lined up at each end, the team picked, the weapons they'd need, the supplies. It might have worked. They might have found her, they might have spared her at least some of the time in captivity, at least some of the torture . . .

"No," he said aloud.

Mickey glanced over at him. "No what?"

"It wouldn't have worked. Your plan. It relied on her being held somewhere separate, not with a group. There were twenty-three other women being held with her. You couldn't have rescued them quietly. You would have had to take on the entire Sandinista force. You would all have been killed."

Kostmayer glared. "I could have got just her."

"Do you think she would have left the others?"

"Maybe." Mickey stared out the window, sullen. It didn't help his mood any that McCall was right - and that Control had been right, weeks ago, when he canceled the rescue. "We should have done something."

"We did something," McCall reminded him. "We kept our silence, and we let her keep hers."

"And look what it cost her."

"Look what it didn't cost her, Mickey. She's alive, isn't she?"

"We should have done something," Kostmayer repeated stubbornly. Then he lapsed into brooding silence.

When he finally spoke again, it was to change the subject. "Where we going, McCall?"

Robert smiled sardonically. "To talk to a man who's probably molesting his daughter."

"At least I'm in the mood."

# # #

Kostmayer leaned against car, his arms folded. McCall stood beside him in the same posture. "Okay," Mickey finally said, "what are we waiting for?"

"Pizza."

"Pizza?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

They waited. In five minutes, a battered old Mustang pulled into the parking space behind them. The driver was covered with acne, skinny and lanky, wearing a Domino's shirt and hat, and carrying a pizza expertly on one hand. He came over to them, grinning broadly. "Hey, Mr. McCall."

"Hello, Donny. Thank you for coming."

Kostmayer reached for the pizza. "Thanks for lunch."

"Oh, it's not for you, Kostmayer," McCall said. "It's for Michelle."

"Who's Michelle?"

"You'll see, I hope. All right, Donny, on your way."

They waited together while the young man crossed the street to a tiny little house and rang the doorbell.

A teenage girl answered the door. McCall breathed a sigh of relief.

"That's Michelle," Mickey guessed.

"Yes. Good."

"So . . . exactly what am I doing here?"

McCall glanced over at him. "I miss your company, Mickey."

Kostmayer smirked. "Can we go home now?"

"Yes, I think we can."

"Hey!" a male voice bellowed from across the street. "You get away from her!"

Donny the pizza boy took a big step back and fell off the porch. He landed on his butt on the lawn, scrambling backward on his hands and feet like frightened crab.

The man - blocky, short - burst out of the house, sailed off the porch, and grabbed the boy by the collar.

"Oh, that's why I'm here," Mickey observed. He sprinted across the street and spun the man away.

McCall followed. He lifted Donny by the shoulders and steadied him on his feet. A glance told him that Kostmayer had the father well in hand, with his arm wedged firmly between his shoulder blades. But arm twisting didn't stop the man's mouth.

"You're the one, aren't you?" the man yelled. "You're the one who's been sleeping with my daughter!"

"I never even met her!" Donny spluttered.

"It's all right," Robert told him. "It's all right, Donny. It's just a . . . a misunderstanding. It's all right. Go on now." He slipped the boy a twenty-dollar bill. "It's all right. I appreciate your help, Donny. Now go on."

"No! Let me go! He's the one! He's the one!"

The girl, helpfully, screamed from the porch, "Daddy, shut up! Just shut up!"

"You shut up, you whore! That was him, wasn't it! That was your boyfriend! Traipsing up to the door in broad daylight like that! What the hell does he think we're running, a whorehouse? Just stop on by any time he wants to?"

Kostmayer pushed the arm a little higher. "Shut up."

"Who the hell are you?" the man demanded, turning his anger on Mickey. "Let me go, you son of a bitch! Who are you?"

McCall waited until Donny's little Mustang had roared out of sight. Then he gestured to Mickey. "Let him go."

"Yeah, let me go!"

Grudgingly, Kostmayer released him. The man turned, his arm cocked back. "Oh, please do," Mickey said dryly.

The man reconsidered. He spun on McCall. "Just who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my yard?"

"Well, it appears that I'm preventing an assault," Robert answered calmly. "My name is Robert McCall. I have been sent here by a friend to check on the welfare of your daughter."

"My daughter?" the man spluttered. "You're checking up on my daughter? On my family? How dare you! How dare you!"

"She has been out of school all week, has she not?"

"She was at her aunt's house. And it's none of your business! You get out of my yard. Get off my property. Right damn now!" He stood practically on McCall's toes, his chest puffed out, like a rooster standing down a challenge.

McCall was utterly unimpressed. "When I know that your daughter is safe, I will go."

"You'll go now!" the man shrieked.

A small, dark woman pushed passed the girl and came down to the men. "John, what's going on?" she asked quietly.

"This guy, this guy here, he thinks he can check up on Michelle. He thinks he can just stick his big nose into our family, into our business. Go call the cops, Dora."

The woman looked between them, confused and clearly frightened. "But John . . . "

"Go call the cops!" he shouted.

"Dora," Robert said smoothly, "is your daughter safe here? Are you safe here? Or do you need help? Because if you need help, I am here to provide it."

"I said get out!"

"Dora, you can tell me. If you need help, I will help you."

"You bastard! You lousy bastard! Get off my property!"

"Daddy, shut up!" Michelle shrieked.

But Dora looked squarely at Robert, and she thought about it. "We're all right," she finally said.

"Damn straight we're all right! We're just fine, we don't need anybody poking around . . . "

"Robert McCall," Robert repeated firmly. "You will remember that name, won't you? In case things change?"

"We're fine," she repeated.

Robert turned and strode off the lawn.

"You, too, you bastard," the man shrieked at Mickey. "Almost broke my arm, you son of a bitch! I ought to call the cops."

"One more word," Mickey answered, "and you're gonna need to call the coroner."

The square man glared at him, thought about it, then turned and stormed into his house.

McCall reached the car and turned. "Coming, Mickey?"

The younger man was still staring at the house, watching while the daughter and the mother went back inside. He walked slowly across the street. "He needs his ass kicked, McCall."

Robert nodded. "I would guess, Mickey, that Mr. Laskey has already has his ass kicked, any number of times."

"Then once more wouldn't hurt."

"Get in the car, Mickey. You may yet get your chance."