Your Heart Belongs to Me

them.
    “More important than the roots,” she said, “is the taproot.”
    She opened the driver’s door of the Honda and turned to stare solemnly at him.
    “The taproot,” she said, “is always the killer’s ultimate and truest motivation.”
    Among the numerous strange moments of the past four days, this conversation had begun to seem the strangest.
    “And what is the taproot of violence?” Ryan asked.
    “The hatred of truth.”
    The coasting car behind them proved to be the Mercedes sedan. George Zane brought it to a stop in the street, parallel to but slightly forward of the Honda, leaving Ryan and the woman in moon haze and shadows.
    She said, “In case you ever need to talk, I’m…Cathy Sienna.” She spelled the surname.
    “Just this morning, you said you’d never tell me your true name.”
    “I was wrong. One more thing, Mr. Perry…”
    He waited.
    “The hatred of truth is a vice,” she said. “From it comes pride and an enthusiasm for disorder.”
    The moonlight made silver coins of her gray eyes.
    She said, “Moments ago, we were in the house of a man who has a fierce enthusiasm for disorder. Be careful. It can be contagious.”
    Although Cathy reached for his hand, she did not shake it, but pressed it in both of her hands, more the affectionate gesture of a friend than the good-bye of a business associate.
    Before he could think of anything to say, she got into her car, closed the door, and started the engine.
    Ryan stood in the street, watching her drive away. Then he got into the backseat of the Mercedes.
    “Return to the hotel, sir?” Zane asked.
    “Yes, please.”
    In Ryan’s hands was the manila envelope that contained the photo of Teresa Reach, which he suspected might hold a clue that would save him.
    To further study the photo, he needed to have it scanned at high resolution and examine it with the best image-enhancement software. He could do nothing more with it this night.
    During the ride, Ryan’s thoughts repeatedly returned to Cathy Sienna, to the question of whether her concern was genuine.
    In light of recent events, he wondered if her advice and further counsel would have been offered if he had not been a wealthy man.
     

 
    NINETEEN

    I n the Mercedes, Ryan made a few phone calls. By the time he reached his hotel, he felt comfortable about trusting the manila envelope to George Zane.
    Although Wilson Mott’s primary offices were in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, he had relationships with security firms in other cities, including Las Vegas. He had been able to arrange for the digital processing of Teresa’s photograph by reliable locals and for the acquisition of the software and hardware that would allow Ryan to study it better.
    By 6:30 in the morning, when the corporate Learjet flew Ryan out of Vegas, Mott’s people would have delivered the Teresa package to his hotel suite in Denver.
    Having told Samantha that he had been called to Denver on business, he now intended to go there. He did not know why.
    This trip would not atone for the lie that he had told her or even make it less of a lie. And at this point, he had no intention of revealing his investigation of her mother and of Spencer Barghest, which was an omission—a calculated concealment—that counted as a far greater betrayal than the lie about his destination.
    Returning to his home in Newport Coast well in advance of his appointment with Dr. Samar Gupta on Tuesday was not an option. Following Lee and Kay Ting’s whispering in the kitchen, he had felt—and still would feel—under surveillance in his own house.
    Las Vegas offered him nothing more than games of chance. Already he was in a game with the highest possible stakes, and neither craps nor blackjack, nor baccarat, could distract him from the knowledge that his life was on the line.
    So Denver in the early morning.
    As he had taken lunch in his hotel room, so he took dinner. He had no appetite, but he ate.
    Not surprisingly, that night he dreamed. He might have expected cadavers, preserved or not, in his dreams, but they did not appear.
    His nightmares were not of people or other bogeymen, but of landscapes and architecture, including but not limited to that city in the sea.
    He walked a valley road toward a palace on a slope. The valley had once been green. Now seared grass, withered flowers, and blighted trees flanked a river in which flowed a turgid mass of black water, ashes, and debris. Palace windows once filled with golden