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for him if there were no neighbors to overhear his searching.
    The lock wasn’t sophisticated and Belias worked the picks with practiced ease. He felt the little odd rush he felt whenever he invaded another’s private space, whether physical or online or mental. He closed the door behind him and drew the gun from his black jacket, listening for sounds of occupancy.
    But there was only darkness and silence, and he risked turning on a small penlight. He drew all the curtains. If Rostov lived alone, this would be so much easier. He searched the apartment quickly.
    An empty vodka bottle on the counter; magazines from the mother country, including a Cyrillic edition of Playboy ; a CD by the Moscow rap group Centr.
    Russians. He frowned. For a moment he thought of Svetlana, the clear purity of her voice ringing in his ears; and then his brain went silent, like he’d slammed a door. Focus. Two bedrooms, one cluttered, one neat.
    That meant a roommate. And the police might arrive at any time; if you ended up on a slab, they tended to come look for family to tell. He might only have minutes to see exactly what Grigori Rostov knew about him.
    Or perhaps the police had already been here. Which meant a grieving roommate, returning from identifying the body, might be back at any moment.
    Two men shared this apartment; he could see photos of both of them on the stereo, toasting the camera with small clear glasses while a tropical sunset gloried the sky behind them. They looked enough alike to be brothers. At the safe house, he’d hacked his way into the California driver’s license database and found a picture of Grigori Rostov. Here on the shelves there were photos of Grigori with a young blonde woman and a smiling lady who might be his mother in the messy room. Lovers and parents were nothing but a way to tie you down, keep you from your potential. Except Svetlana , she’d been his muse. Belias pushed her out of his thoughts again. He could not be distracted.
    There was a laptop on the desk. It wasn’t even passworded. Laziness disappointed Belias but it was a constant among the stupid. Holding the penlight in his mouth, he searched the hard drive for his name.
    And found matches.
    He read the e-mails between Rostov and what he guessed was an anonymous account set up by Glenn. And his face began to burn with horror and shame.
    His name is John Belias—not his real name, but when we’ve got him, we’ll force him to tell us who he truly is…So when we’ve caught the young woman, we’ll bring her to him. He may have a man named Roger with him, and Roger you’ll have to kill immediately. He is highly trained and dangerous. And then you will subdue Belias and take him to the address I gave you…You don’t let him near a weapon or near a computer. He can kill you with either. He doesn’t look like much of a threat, but you don’t ever underestimate him. He must be kept bound. Do not kill him. I need him alive. I need his brain working.
    He can tell us who all the others are.
    Betrayal.
    Betrayal was the darkest poison, the hottest acid.
    After all I’ve done for you , Belias thought. I made you, Glenn Marchbanks. I made you. He deleted the e-mails from the server and wiped Grigori Rostov’s account clean. He turned off the laptop, and he flipped the laptop on its back. He cracked the chassis open with a small tool. He carefully pulled the hard drive free of its moorings, cradling it in his gloved hands, slipping it into his coat pocket. No backup hard drive.
    And heard someone at the door. Not the scrape of a key.
    He tongued off the penlight and drew his suppressor-capped gun, stepping back into the shadows of the bedroom. He waited. A physical confrontation was more Roger’s kind of problem to solve, but Roger had taught him self-defense, both armed and unarmed. And Belias thought he’d been a better pupil than Glenn Marchbanks .
    The door opened and closed.
    Whoever came inside was very still. Listening.
    I hear you ,