"A hotel is fine.".

"A goddamn hotel is not fine! You are a marked man!"

"But-"

"Unless you believe yourself to be in imminent danger of discovery, you will stay put until I can get something arranged. Do you hear me?"

Joe said nothing. He was on a landline telephone that prevented him from wandering back to the bathroom and peeking out the window, so he just stared at the closed blind, his breathing shallow, thinking of her.

"You still there, Bellacera?"

"Can you send that family's background file to me? Give me an hour to get on the network-my computer stuff is still in boxes. They live in the house immediately to the"-Joe craned his neck to judge the angle of the sun-"immediately to the southwest of this address on Hayden Circle. I don't have a street number. Yellow two-story. Kids, probably."

Roger sighed again. "Yeah. Sure."

'Thanks."

"One thing before I go." Roger's voice was strained. "The nastiest Mexican drug cartel I've seen in twenty years in law enforcement killed your partner and has a million-dollar reward out for your head. I just want to make sure you understand those little details."

Joe closed his eyes.

"Just hang tight until I tell you otherwise."

As Joe disconnected, he told himself he?d be hanging all right-hanging upside down from the doorjamb by a string tied around his nuts at this rate.

How could this have happened? There she was, right next door! After all the years he'd searched for her, she was an arm's length away and he couldn't go to her! He couldn't talk to her! He couldn't get to know her!

Joe methodically sliced open the boxes one-by-one with his pocketknife, aware that the violent slashing motions might be on the verge of overkill. But it felt good. And as soon as the computer was up and running, he'd find where the movers had stashed his punching bags. Then he'd fight himself into a state of oblivion.