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the hallway was sufficient for Drew to see the monk slumped across his table, the bowl of bread pinned beneath one arm.
    He went on like that, opening and closing each door, proceeding to the next one, and the next. A light was sometimes on and sometimes not. The body was sometimes on the table, sometimes on the floor. Sometimes the monk in dying had brushed against his cup of water, spilling it, so that water and urine were indistinguishable.
    All of them - the nineteen other monks who'd secluded themselves in this refuge - had been poisoned by the bread. Or by the water, Drew thought. It was logical that the water had been poisoned as well. No sense in not being thorough. Professional.
    Too many questions intruded. But the foremost of all was why.
    He now understood his motive when, as dusk had thickened, he hadn't turned on his light. He'd assumed that his grief over Stuart Little had robbed him of even the resolve to cross his workroom and flick on the light switch. But now he knew better, his subconscious having warned him. Whoever had poisoned the food would have posted someone outside, probably in the courtyard, to watch the monastery for signs of life. A light that came on when it shouldn't have would have drawn the assassins to his cell.
    More questions. Why use poison? Why not shoot each monk as the kitchen staff had been shot? Why wait this long to come in and verify the kill?
    Why kill everyone? And where was the death team?
    With each door that he opened, with each corpse that he found, he increasingly reverted to his former state of mind. Six years ago, on the run from Scalpel, he'd have naturally assumed that he was the target. But he'd been careful. Scalpel didn't know he'd entered the monastery. Scalpel thought he was dead.
    Then who else could be hunting him? Possibly he wasn't the target at all. Maybe one of the other monks had been the target. But why? No, it wasn't likely. And why had every monk been killed? The tactic didn't make sense.
    In a moment it did, however, and the back of his neck felt cold. The death team couldn't have known which cell was whose. The monks were all anonymous, the doors unmarked. There wasn't any way to determine who secluded himself in which unit. The team couldn't very well have checked each room - so complicated an operation would have been too risky, leaving too many chances for mistakes. It was one thing to confront the kitchen staff on the lower level where no one was likely to hear a commotion. That risk was acceptable. But on the main floor where the monks lived close together - that was quite another matter. Entering each cell, even with silencers to muffle the shots, the team would still have been concerned about an unpredictable scream from a startled monk, a shout that might have alerted the other monks and - if I'm right, Drew thought - one monk in particular, the man the team had come for.
    Me.
    His forehead knotted in torment. Because of my sins? Is that why everybody had to die? Dear God, what have I done by coming here?
    The logic of using poison was clear to him now. A way of taking out the entire monastery (with the exception of the already executed kitchen staff) at once.
    Equally important, it was death from a distance. By remote control.
    Because the team respected the skills of the man they'd come to assassinate, because they didn't know if six years of seclusion had been enough to blunt his talents, they'd chosen not to come at him directly. An added precaution. To make extra sure.
    But everyone else had to die.
    Drew's throat made a terrible choking sound.
    He suddenly realized that wherever the assassins were hiding, they'd soon come out. When sufficient time had passed for them to feel confident, they'd inspect the monastery. They'd search each cell. They'd want to verify the kill, to guarantee that one man in particular had been killed.
    His shoulders tensed as he glanced in both directions along the corridor.
    The vespers bell began to