Mickey had not gone to the airport. Mickey had gone fishing.

He sat on a large rock at the edge of the river, watching the point where his line entered the water. He could have used a bobber, but it wouldn't have made any difference: he had no bait on the hook. He didn't plan to catch anything. He was just fishing.

McCall was pissed at him. He'd made that very clear. But Mickey didn't care. At least, he told himself he didn't care. McCall didn't understand. McCall hadn't been there, holding her head under the faucet, begging her to open her eyes while she was trying to scream without drowning. Hadn't been there when he was sure she was going to be blind forever, because of him.

Knowing now that she would be able to see helped some. Not much. Because the other was still his fault, the last time, when he'd nearly killed her.

Annie Keller had been a bouncy, pretty girl, a yearbook and school paper photographer in high school, who even then showed a talent that would have opened the whole world to her. And Mickey had turned this innocent girl into a woman, a wife, and a mother-to-be in less than a year. He had done it all deliberately. But he hadn't expected it to end like it had, a tiny baby boy in a tiny white coffin, a woman bled white, too, nearly dead and absolutely broken . . .

He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, trying to make that vision go away. Trying to replace it with her face from last night, when she teased him at the bottom of her steps. Or in the restaurant. Or over that umpteenth cup of coffee, before he left.

It didn't work. Instead he remembered the waiting room. All hospital waiting rooms, for all time, looked and smelled and sounded just alike. This morning in New York, and sixteen years ago, in Houston - just the same.

He'd come out of her room and found them waiting, Anne's father and Nick, in the middle of an argument.

"They are married," Nick was insisting. "Nothing that's happened changes that."

"She's sixteen years old," Keller answered, "and the Church wouldn't marry them, remember?"

"You consented to this marriage," Nick argued.

"Because I wouldn't have my grandson be a bastard ... " he saw Mickey then, and stopped. "Come in, son, sit down, we need to talk."

Mickey went and sat, silent.

"I've talked to the lawyer at the plant, the union guy," Keller began quietly, as gently as he could. "He says that, because of what's happened, he can get the marriage waived."

"Divorce?" Mickey asked softly.

"No, no, son. It's not even that formal. More like an annulment. Like it never happened."

Mickey closed his eyes. Anne mostly dead just down the hall, and her father thought it could all be waived?

"I know you've been through a hell of a lot today, Mickey," the older man said gently. "And I'm not saying this has to be forever. Down the road, once you've both grown up a bit, if you want to have a real marriage, start a family, I'm all for that. I've always liked you, son."

"Then why do you want this divorce?" Nick shrilled.

"I want my daughter to finish high school!" Keller flared back. "She made a mistake, you both did," he gestured to Mickey, "but right now you get another chance. You sign this paper, it all goes away. She can go back to school. She can take that scholarship, she can go anywhere . . . and so can you, Mickey. And like I said, down the road . . . "

"They're married now," Nick insisted. "You can't just . . . "

"What does Annie want?" Mickey asked softly.

The other two fell silent. Finally, Nick said, "She wants your child to be alive, Mickey. Nothing else really matters to her right now."

Mickey stood up and went back to her room without a word. Then he came back, sighed the damned papers even while Nick protested at his elbow, and walked out.

All hospital waiting rooms were the same. But everything else was different. Mickey watched the water, and then rubbed his eyes. He'd wanted to go away, to take some time, to think. But that time was gone. He could run, like he had before, and Anne would forgive him, like she always did. The question was, could he forgive himself? Or would this be added to the box of memories that were just too hard to think about?

And what was up with Control? Mickey had called the office, hoping to just leave a message that he was taking a pass on this mission. Instead he got, "Hold, please," from the receptionist, and then Control himself, terse as always, but unexpectedly saying, "Yes, Kostmayer, fine, stay with the girl. Help McCall. Get this guy." What guy, Mickey tried to ask, but the phone was already dead in his hand.

What guy? What the hell did Control know about any of this? How did he know McCall was involved? What was going on?

He took another long, slow breath, and began to reel in the line. The only way to find out, obviously, was to go back. And let McCall yell at him a little more, maybe a lot more. And Annie - Annie would understand. Annie always did.

"My girl's all right, then?" Sullivan demanded anxiously.

"She'll be fine," McCall repeated. "The bleach was diluted, there's no permanent damage. She's badly frightened, but she'll be fine."

"Well. Well." Sullivan poured the tea into the two cups on the tray. "Here, carry this," he said to Robert and started off down the hall, his leg braces creaking faintly, his crutches silent on the carpet. McCall picked up the tray and followed him.

Jamie Sullivan's study was an amazing room, chaotically stuffed with books and photos, negatives, files, notes stuck everywhere. And yet Robert had the sense that the photographer could lay his hands on any individual item at any time. They settled into the two ancient leather chairs that faced the empty fireplace.

"You know about the letters?" Sullivan began before McCall could speak. "I told her they were nothing to worry about, but now . . . "

"I told her the same thing," Robert answered. "I do think the letters and the attack are related. And I think they all originate at the same source - a man named Dennis Daly. Do you know him?"

Sullivan shook his head. "I've never met him, but I've heard a good deal about him. Our Annie doesn't trust him, and her instincts are quite good. But I also hear of him from friends back home."

"In Ireland?"

"Yes. That surprises you, that I still have friends there? Ireland is my home."

"I had read that you said you would never set foot there again."

"And I won't." Sullivan shifted his damaged legs slightly. "Not because I hate them, but because I won't be used by them."

McCall didn't know exactly what to make of that. "Daly held an impromptu press conference at the hospital this morning. He blames the attack on the IRA."

"Of course he does."

"I cannot understand his motive. I thought he was trying to gain acceptance by these people."

Sullivan shook his head. "You think of the IRA as one group. They're not. There are over a dozen separate groups, always jockeying for position, for power, for respect. Think of them in terms of gangs, like in the city here. Each has its own turf, its own rules, its own leaders. Sometimes they work together against a common enemy. But usually they have their own goals and they consider each other enemies."

Robert nodded his understanding. "But what does this mean to Daly?"

"They all rejected Daly after the Schoolboy Incident, every single group. So he wants to destroy them all, to discredit their leadership."

"And put himself in charge." McCall straightened. "How do you know about the Incident?"

Sullivan gazed at him steadily. "How do you know about it, Mr. McCall? I would guess that we have at times served the same masters."

Robert nodded slowly. "Well. That explains a great deal." He didn't know why he wasn't more surprised. "But why is Daly starting here, in New York? Surely these demonstrations would be more effective in Belfast . . . "

"He's cutting them off at the knees." Sullivan grinned a bit. "You should pardon the expression. But the IRA finds very little money in the Nine Counties any more. Their funds come from Irishmen who have done well elsewhere. If Daly can discredit them as barbarians and divert those funds to a more peaceful expression of freedom, like his Peace Camps. You do see now, don't you?"

"So it's nothing about Anne Keller really, or her photographs."

"No," Sullivan agreed. "Except that she's well-liked in Ireland and just as identifiably Irish as an American girl can be. She is his tool and he will make her his martyr if he can."

"He can't," Robert said firmly. "This stops now. I have carte blanche from our 'masters' to stop him."

"If you kill him, what becomes of the boys?"

"The boys? They'll be free of his influence, they can go back to being boys again."

Sullivan shook his heard. "Right now Daly is their hero. If they think that he died in the name of his Cause he will become their martyr. God only knows what you may unleash."

McCall saw the sense of this immediately. "What do you recommend?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. Because there's this, too - he might have been happy to blind her, to make her merely a cripple. But the bleach was diluted. If the burns are only temporary . . . "

"He'll need to make another attack. To do something more permanent."

"Yes."

Robert nodded grimly. "I'm going back to the hospital. Thank you for your help."

Sullivan rattled to his feet with agonizing slowness, though Robert tried to tell him he didn't have to. "I still have some friends, here and there. I'll see if I can learn anything else that will help you."

"I appreciate that. Unfortunately, the thing I most need to know only Anne Keller can tell me, and she refuses."

"The identity of her attacker."

Robert nodded, impressed by Sullivan's grasp of the situation. He wished he'd known the man when he was an active agent, that he'd had a chance to work with him then. They might have been great friends. Well, they might yet, he considered.

"Tell her everything," Sullivan suggested. "She's stubborn, but she's not stupid. Tell her about the schoolboys, tell her everything you know or suspect about Daly. Make her see that she's protecting the child by giving you his name. She'll tell you."

Taking this advice much to heart, Robert headed out.

She was asleep when Mickey got there, and slept for nearly an hour more while he sat silent by her side. But finally she stirred, her hands coming up to touch the bandages as soon as she was fully awake. She hadn't remembered.

"Hey," Mickey said softly. She jumped about a foot. "Sorry."

She smiled, catching her breath. "You miss your plane or what?"

"Called in sick."

The smile broadened into a grin. "Well then, get over here, boy. We can't be wasting these sick days sleeping."

Chuckling, Mickey went to the side of the bed and gathered her in his arms. "There's no lock on the door," he said, kissing her lightly.

"What's your point?"

"They'll kick us out."

She leaned back in his arms. "I been kicked out of better places than this."

"Yeah, me, too." He kissed her again, but not comfortably. "How're you doing?"

"I'm okay."

"I'm sorry about before. I just . . . "

Anne waved him off. "Yeah, yeah. You, me and hospitals, I know. You freaked."

"I want you to know, I don't freak for just anybody."

"Well, I should hope not. Are you okay?"

Mickey thought about it. "Yeah, I'm okay," he answered without conviction.

He moved his chair around to the far side of the bed, so his back wasn't to the door any more, and he took her hand. He wasn't okay, but he was doing a lot better than he had been.