Blood Debt

was and walked over to the front door.
    The security system hadn't been tampered with, but that meant only that they might have used another entrance. There were four
    — No, five, he amended remembering the trench doors Rebecca had insisted on having in the dining room. He hadn't used them since she'd died.
    Lights switched off and on automatically as he inspected the first floor. The lights had been Rebecca's idea as well and only her memory kept him from dismantling them. They always made him feel as though he were being followed around by ghosts.
    Upstairs, Rebecca's jewel case lay where she'd left it on that last day. Swanson knew the order of the contents the way he knew the order of his desk, and they hadn't been touched.
    Not thieves, then.

    Who?
    He turned to face the window that looked out over the lawns, the gardens, and, ultimately, the two guest cottages tucked a discreet distance down the wooded slope. Although their locations had been chosen so that they were as private as possible, there seemed to be rather a lot of illumination filtering up through the trees surrounding the farther building.
    Dr. Mui had a donor in one of the cottages.
    Perhaps the three in the car were colleagues of hers.
    His fingers closed around the curtain edge, crushing the fabric. He hadn't wanted the donor here. Dr. Mui had no business turning Rebecca's home into an extension of the clinic; she'd had enough of hospitals and clinics during that last horrible year before she died.
    Whether it had been a good business decision or not, he should never have agreed to the use of the cottage. It was one thing to allow the buyer to convalesce in peace and quiet for a few days and quite another thing to open his home to the sort of people who provided the merchandise.
    "I'm going down there to find out exactly what is going on. If the doctor thinks it a good idea I maintain my distance from the donors, then she shouldn't have left one on my doorstep."
    As he turned from the window, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and wondered if maybe he shouldn't take a moment to change his clothes before he went to the cottage. Twitching a jacket sleeve down over a heavy gold cufflink, he decided not to bother. "If anyone complains," he told his reflection, "I'll explain that I'm making a formal investigation."
    Had Rebecca still been alive, she'd have laughed and maybe thrown something at him. He'd loved making her laugh. But Rebecca was dead. His shoulders slumped and after caressing the cameo he'd had made for her in Florence, he left the bedroom.
    At the back door, it suddenly occurred to him that the car could be connected with Patricia Chou. The reporter had accosted him as he arrived at the fundraiser, demanding to know how a room full of rich people sitting down to an expensive meal was going to help anyone but the caterers. So far, she'd been careful to confront him only on public property, but he had no doubt she'd consider a trespassing charge a small price to pay to get a story. She was becoming a distinct irritant, and sometime soon he'd have to do something about her.
    He checked the perimeters of the security lights for a camera crew and only when he was certain he was unobserved did he step out the door.
    As he drew closer to the lit cottage, he began to feel more and more uneasy. When he rounded a corner and saw the open door, he knew something was wrong. "Every light in the place is on," he muttered, stepping over the threshold. "Don't these people realize hydro costs money?"
    The cottage was empty. Both the donor and the orderly that Dr.
    Mui had promised to leave in attendance were gone. Swanson frowned down at the restraints on the bed and tried to work out what had happened. Perhaps the people in the BMW were the donor's colleagues, not Dr. Mui's. Perhaps this donor hadn't come off the street but was one of the young turks who'd crashed and burned in the recent recession and now needed money from any source to maintain his lifestyle.
    It explained why Dr. Mui had felt he couldn't be kept at the clinic.
    Perhaps at the last moment he'd changed his mind and his friends had come for him.
    But where was the orderly?
    And more importantly, what was he supposed to tell the client coming into Vancouver on the 2:17 from Dallas?
    Lips pressed into a thin, angry line, Swanson started back to the house after having carefully turned off all the lights and closed and locked the door. He'd missed the mess in the