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rain pounded against the roof with sudden strength, as though to cover the sound. Shields twisted and flopped onto his back and his screams became piercing, his agony all-consuming. And then he was covered in flames.
    The horses smelled the smoke and panicked, kicking their stalls with greater strength. Rupert Comfort backed away from the burning, shrieking Nathan Shields and the others, their eyes on the dying man, followed him.
    Outside in the rain, the four formed a single line with Rupert Comfort in front. After looking over his shoulder to make sure each person was directly behind him, the white-haired man turned up his jacket collar and walked over to a fence which was at right angles to the barn and stepped down into a shallow water-filled ditch running parallel to the fence. The water and mud came up to his calves; it would hide all footprints.
    After following the ditch to the end of the fence, the procession continued walking parallel to the dirt road for almost fifty feet; only when the road hardened did Rupert Comfort leave the ditch. Not far away dogs barked and Rupert Comfort turned quickly toward the sound, but didn’t stop walking.
    A Volkswagen belonging to the mother and her fat son was parked in woods a mile away. Nathan Shields had no immediate neighbors except a farmer who owned a small piece of land on the edge of Shields’ farm and who hadn’t been home in three days. The farmer lived alone. That information had come from the mother and her son, who had also arranged for the man who delivered Nathan Shields’ palomino mares to be lured away from the antique dealer’s farm.
    Twenty minutes later the Comforts and both outsiders reached the hidden car. On the return ride to Manhattan the English couple sat in the back seat and spoke softly in Shelta Thari of the four remaining people in the photograph and of the one they would next kill. In the front seat the fat boy, exhausted by the grueling walk through the hard rain and mud and fighting the fear he felt at what he’d seen in the barn, closed his eyes and breathed loudly through his open mouth. He suddenly frowned, remembering the smell and feel of the severed hand given him by the tall woman, who had ordered him to leave the barn and …
    The fat boy decided that if he threw up he’d blame it on car sickness.
    His mother drove and listened to the rhythm of the windshield wipers and each time she slowed down for a toll booth, she rubbed her thighs together in sensual memory of what she’d felt as she watched the antique dealer burn alive.

FOUR
    A PROFESSIONAL ACTRESS WHO ’D signed a contract was, of course, bound by it and Marisa Heggen’s contract for the soap opera World and Forever stipulated that for the next two years she appear on three shows a week, salary $2,000 per show. The contract contained the standard clause allowing her to be written out of the show six weeks each year to do a play, film, or television commercial. However, there was no clause allowing her time off for personal grief; the hideous ache within her over the death of Nat Shields was something she’d simply have to live and work with.
    Marisa, thirty-one, was fashion-model thin, with dark brown curly hair and a face described by one critic as “consisting of two imperfectly fitted halves, resulting in something more sexy and interesting than the customary bland beauty clogging the tube.” Her eyes and her mouth were her best features. The eyes were violet, deep set and surrounded by long, natural lashes. Her mouth was full, perfect.
    Despite a fiery talent which made her the soap opera’s biggest fan-mail draw, it was her eyes and mouth which had prevented Marisa Heggen from becoming a major film star. She photographed poorly. On a movie screen her eyes appeared sunken, dark, hollow and a corner of her mouth seemed lifted slightly in a mild permanent sneer. She’d made two movies in Hollywood, bizarre, bitchy roles far below her ability. In California, the name