Los Angeles . Thursday, July 2, 9:00 p.m.

The voice on the answering machine had resonated with fear.

''Harry, it's your brother, Danny… I… don't mean to call you like this… after so much time… But… there's… no one else I can talk to… I'm scared, Harry… I don't know what to do… or… what will happen next. God help me. If you 're there, please pick up – Harry, are you there? - I guess not… I'll try to call you back.'

'Dammit.'

Harry Addison hung up the car phone, kept his hand on it, then picked it up again and pushed redial. He heard the digital tones as the numbers redialed automatically. Then there was silence, and then the measured 'buzz, buzz', 'buzz, buzz' of the Italian phone system as the call rang through.

'Come on, Danny, answer…'

After the twelfth ring Harry set the receiver back in its cradle and looked off, the lights of oncoming traffic dancing hypnotically over his face, making him lose track of where he was – in a limousine with his driver on a race to the airport to make the ten o'clock red-eye to New York.

It was nine at night in L.A., six in the morning in Rome. Where would a priest be at six in the morning? An early mass? Maybe that's where he was and why he wasn't answering.

'Harry, it's your brother, Danny… I'm scared… I don't know what to do… God help me.'

'Jesus Christ.' Harry felt helplessness and panic at the same time. Not a word or a note between them in years, and then there was Danny's voice on Harry's answering machine, jumping out suddenly among a string of others. And not just a voice, but someone in grave trouble.