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work.
    God. Please make him stop
.
    He did not stop. Horror washed Hallie’s mind clear of words. Her jaw was clenched so tightly it ached. Her stomach churned, and she pulled the wastebasket close.
    There was no blood. Only agony. He kept at it until Emily’s body went limp.
    Tears of grief and rage were running down Hallie’s cheeks, blurring her vision. She brushed them away, blinked her eyes clear.
    I will find you, she vowed. If it takes the rest of my life, I will find you. Wil Bowman will help me. And you will pay.
    The man climbed down off the bunk. She still could not see his face, but the bulge of an erection was unmistakable.
    Emily was unconscious but still breathing. He tapped his gloved fingers against the inside of her right elbow to bring up the vein and, with the smaller syringe, pierced it in several places without injecting anything. Then he took her right hand and pressed her fingertips to the syringe, her thumb to the top of the plunger, and moved to the vein inside her left elbow. He performed a smooth venipuncture and pushed the plunger all the way in, emptying the syringe. He left it attached to her arm.
    He put the spent vial on her bunk and laid several more, still full, beside her body. He moved out of frame for a few moments, and when he came back into view he had the flask. He moistened a paper towel and used it to swab Emily’s lips, neck, other places where his mouth had touched her.
    DNA wipe. He wants people to think she overdosed. Why in God’s name would anybody do this?
    The man disappeared from the frame one last time. Seconds passed, and the wavering light went out.
    He’d snuffed the candle.
    The video played for three more minutes, then stopped.
    She could not remember anything more horrible than what she had just watched. She grabbed the wastebasket and vomited. She tried to look out the window, but it was solid black. She could almost touch both walls with her arms outstretched. It felt as though the room were shrinking.
    Something was trying to claw out of her. She felt sick, disgusted, enraged. If the man had been there, she might have attempted to kill him with anything in the room that would tear flesh and break bone. Including her bare hands.
    A sound, part sob and part howl, erupted from her throat. She buried her face in the pillow, sat on the floor, and wept until her belly hurt. Exhausted, she stood, one hand on the bunk’s edge for support, trying to think rationally. The images of the man and the things hehad done to Emily stayed where they were. Might as well try to push black clouds out of the sky, she told herself.
    Keening wind suddenly hit the station, which jumped and shook like a plane flying through turbulence. The ceiling light blinked several times, and somewhere in the room a fly began to buzz. A final gust, strongest of all, and the room went dark. Dizzy, she lost her balance, flailed at empty air for some firm hold, finally grabbed the bunk.
    The light came back on, flickered, then died and stayed out.
    She thought:
What if that man is still here?

8
    “ DHAKA MAY BE THE ONLY PLACE I KNOW WHERE FEBRUARY IS LIKE July in Washington,” David Gerrin observed cheerily. He was in his late fifties. Dark-haired and with a thin, efficient body, he had been a marathoner until knee injuries had ended the running, a decade earlier. An epidemiologist, not truly famous but with a university laboratory named after him and several books to his credit.
    “Could do with a bit less jollity,” said Ian Kendall. “I mean, it’s a bloody steam bath, isn’t it?”
    Jean-Claude Belleveau said nothing. Out of respect for the conference, he had worn a suit. White linen, but still sweltering. He wiped his face with an already soaked handkerchief.
    It was late afternoon. The three men, walking back to their hotel after the last day of a U.N. global conference on sustainability, were trapped in a mass of bodies on a sidewalk that radiated heat like a giant griddle. Leaving the