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beloved street,” he said slowly, as if working it out as he went.
    “What?” The eagerness in her voice was unmistakable. “Just tell me.”
    “It involves me,” he said, his words coming ever more slowly as he put emphasis on each one. “And it involves you.”
    She saw how he undressed her with his eyes, and the revelation hit home. She had been set up. Bishop never expected her to take the coordinator job; he knew her too well and he was too smart to take her off the streets, where, like today, she made him look good. He had wanted this all along, this bending of her to his will, to lord it over her with both power and sex. Under his thumb.
    “I could file a report.”
    “You could,” he acknowledged, “but who would see it other than me?”
    “Alan.”
    He cocked his head. “You and Fraine are close, I know. D’you really want to drag your friend into this?”
    He was right, she didn’t. Hiring a lawyer would get her nowhere except in a career spiral into the toilet. There was nothing else for her to do.
    “Well,” he said softly, gently. “I’m waiting.”
    “I want to remain on the street,” she said, numb with the ease with which he had turned her world upside down.
    “Of course you do.” Now he rose and came around from behind his desk. He stood so close to her she could feel the heat coming off him. “And things will be as you wish, Nona. Just as you and I wish.”
    *   *   *
    “P LEASE TELL Annika that it’s time,” Dr. Zurov, Dyadya Gourdjiev’s personal physician, said. He had shown up at the hospital twenty minutes ago and since then had been huddling with his patient. He was a tall, thin individual with a spade beard and a patrician’s air.
    Jack nodded, rose, and, opening the door, peered out into the corridor, where Annika and Katya were speaking in low tones. At once, Annika broke off the conversation to look at Jack. He nodded to her and she came inside the hospital room and gave Dr. Zurov a meaningful look. Opening her handbag, she took out a plastic device the size and shape of a woman’s compact. This she affixed to the underside of the bed. Then she poured her grandfather some water from a plastic pitcher on a rolling tray beside the bed. From his black bag, Dr. Zurov produced a tiny red-coated pill.
    “What the hell is that?” Jack said.
    “Don’t be alarmed,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said. He put the pill between his lips and knocked it back with a swallow of water.
    Annika reached under the bed to the plastic compact.
    “Ten seconds,” Dr. Zurov said to his patient. His face looked lined, concentrated, intent.
    Dyadya Gourdjiev’s eyes rolled up in his head. When he stopped breathing Jack lunged toward him, but Dr. Zurov held him back.
    “It’s all right,” Annika whispered at his side.
    A moment later, the steady beeping of the electronic monitors was replaced by a constant shrill sound as all of the old man’s vital signs flatlined. A nurse rushed in, took one look at the monitors, and called for a crash cart. Outside in the corridor, they could hear a doctor being urgently paged.
    “What happened?” the nurse said as she put a stethoscope over Gourdjiev’s heart.
    “He had a seizure,” Dr. Zurov said. “One minute he was talking, the next he had stopped breathing.”
    “He’s still not breathing,” the nurse said as the crash cart was wheeled in.
    “I’ve already pronounced him dead.”
    The doctor on call rushed in. He asked the same question, to which Dr. Zurov gave the same answer.
    “If he’s gone, he’s gone. He did not want to be resuscitated, he was quite clear on that score.” Dr. Zurov produced a signed DNR document, which he handed to the doctor. “Signed and sealed.”
    Katya, coming into the room, said, “Please leave and let the family grieve in peace.”
    The doctor, looking bewildered, studied the document, then handed it back with a curt nod. “As you wish.” Turning on his heel, he and the nurse left.
    Annika was stretched