Gage; meanwhile, was bedridden with the flu. Since no one could remember the last time he'd been sick enough to take a day off, we all agreed it must have hit him pretty hard. No one heard from him, and when forty-eight hours had passed and Gage still wasn't answering the phone, Churchill began to fret.

"I'm sure he's just resting," I said.

Churchill replied with a noncommittal grunt.

"Dawnelle's probably taking care of him," I said.

That earned me a glance of sour skepticism.

I was tempted to point out that his brothers should visit him. Then I recalled that Joe had gone to St. Simon's Island with his girlfriend for a couple of days. And Jack's caretaking abilities had been pushed to their limits after helping his father shower two mornings in a row. I was pretty certain he would flat-out refuse to go to any more trouble for ailing family members.

"Do you want me to check on him?" I asked reluctantly. It was my night off, and I had planned to go out to a movie with Angie and some of the girls from Salon One. I hadn't seen them in a while and I was looking forward to catching up with them. "I guess I could stop by Eighteen hundred Main on the way to see my friends—"

"Yes," Churchill said.

I was instantly sorry I had made the offer. "I doubt he'd let me in." "I'll give you a key," Churchill said. "It's not like Gage to hole up like this. I want to know if he's all right."

To reach the residential elevators of 1800 Main, you had to go through a small lobby with marble flooring and a bronze sculpture that looked like a hunched-over pear. There was a doorman clad in black with gold trim, and two people behind the reception desk. I tried to look like I belonged in a building with multimillion-dollar condos. "I've got a key." I said, pausing to show it to them. "I'm visiting Mr. Travis."

"All right." the woman behind the desk said. "You can go on up. Miss..."

"Jones," I said. "His father sent me to check on him."

"That's fine." She motioned me toward a set of automatic sliding doors with etched-glass panels. "The elevators are over there."

I felt like I needed to convince her of something. "Mr. Travis has been sick for a couple of days," I said.

She looked sincerely concerned. "Oh. that's too bad."

"So I'm just going to run up and check on him. I'll only be a few minutes."

"That's fine, Miss Jones."

"Okay, thanks." I held up the key just in case she hadn't seen it the first time.

She responded with a patient smile and nodded toward the elevators again.

I went through the sliding glass doors and into an elevator with wood paneling and a black-and-white tiled floor and a bronze-framed mirror. The elevator whooshed up so swiftly, I barely had time to blink before it reached the eighteenth floor.

The narrow windowless hallways formed a big H. It was unnervingly quiet. My footsteps were muffled by a pale wool carpet, its pile spongy underfoot. I went to the corridor on the right and scrutinized door numbers until I found 18A. I knocked firmly.

No response.

A harder knock produced no results.

Now I was starting to get worried. What if Gage was unconscious? What if he'd gotten dengue fever or mad cow disease or bird flu? What if he was contagious? I wasn't too crazy about the idea of catching some exotic malady. On the other hand, I'd promised Churchill I would check on him.

A rummage through my purse, and I found the key. But just before I inserted it into the lock, the door opened. I was confronted with the sight of Gage Travis a la death-warmed-over. He was barefoot, dressed in a gray T-shirt and plaid flannel pants. His hair hadn't been combed in days. He stared at me through bleary red-rimmed eyes and wrapped his arms around himself. He shook with the tremors of a large animal at slaughter time.

"What do you want?" His voice sounded like the crush of dry leaves.

"Your father sent me to—" I broke off as I saw him tremble again. Against all better judgment I reached up and laid my hand across his forehead. His skin was blazing.

It was a sign of how sick Gage was that he let me touch him. He closed his eyes at the coolness of my fingers. "God, that feels good."

No matter if I might have fantasized about seeing my enemy brought low. I couldn't take pleasure in seeing him reduced to such a pitiful state.

"Why haven't you answered the phone?"

The sound of my voice seemed to recall Gage to himself, and he jerked his head back. "Didn't hear it," he said with a scowl. "I've been sleeping."

"Churchill has been worried half to death." I hunted in my bag again. "I'm going to call him and let him know you're still alive."

"That phone won't work in the hallway." He turned and went back into his condo, leaving the door open.

I followed and closed the door.

The condo was beautifully decorated with hypermodern fixtures and indirect lighting, and a couple of paintings of circles and squares that even my untrained eyes could discern were priceless. There were walls of nothing but windows, revealing wide views of Houston as the sun sank toward a bed of thickening color on the distant flat horizon. The furniture was contemporary, made of precious woods and natural-colored fabrics, no extra ornamentation of any kind. But it was too pristine, too orderly, without a cushion or pillow

or any hint of softness. And there was a plasticky staleness in the air as if no one had lived there for a while.