"You mean against Jilly and Paul?"

"Believe me, I don't give a damn about Molinas or Tarcher or this Del Cabrizo character."

"Again, Mac, I'm sorry, but the truth is that Jilly lied to me from the beginning, told me she was here because she wanted to get pregnant. She told me she was the uneducated one in the family. I don't know if she did this to protect herself or me.

"I like Jilly. When you told me she was in a coma, it really hit me hard because I do like her so much. She's funny, lights up a room when she swings in, her skirts swishing, her hair bouncing. We did get close, but not close enough that she ever really let me in."

"Bottom line, Laura, you didn't have squat on either Jilly or Paul, and that's because there isn't anything to get. I don't believe my sister would be involved with drug dealers, for God's sake. Both she and Paul are scientists, not criminals. They're moral people, not people who'd develop a drug to feed to kids. You're wrong about them, Laura. At least you're dead wrong about Jilly."

I was being a brother, defensive and angry, but I didn't care. I didn't want to accept it, couldn't accept it. I looked at Laura, felt mean as a snake, and said, "Did you sleep with Paul? As a sort of quid pro quo?"

"No," she said matter-of-factly, but I felt her surprise and hurt at my question. She dropped the french fry she was holding back onto her plate. "Jilly never mentioned anything like that to me. Actually, she's very fond of Paul."

I said slowly, "Jilly said you'd betrayed her. I assumed it meant you'd slept with Paul, but that isn't it at all. She found out you're a DEA agent, didn't she?"

"She must have but I don't know how. Maybe I gave myself away somehow, I don't know. But she must have found out that very night. Both she and Paul must have known since then. One of them may have made a phone call to Molinas. He's perfectly capable of everything that's happened since."

"So now you're saying that my sister conspired to commit murder. I'll never believe that. Probably Molinas found out about you. Jilly wouldn't blow the whistle on you."

She took my hand and held it between hers. "She came out of the coma, Mac, and disappeared just as soon as she was able. She knew we were getting close. She went into hiding."

"Then why didn't Paul leave with her?"

"I don't know. There's still no direct evidence against either of them. I thought about that, a lot. Something else I wanted to tell you. Over the past couple of months, Jilly didn't seem quite right. She talked about sex a lot, how much more she liked it than before. Not just one conversation, she went on and on about it. And she seemed somehow off, the way she spoke of other things, mixing in non sequiturs, like she wasn't really with me."

"You think she was experimenting with her own drug?"

"I don't know what I'm saying, but she was different, Mac."

I let it go. It was just too close to my own memories of Jilly's visit the previous February. "Where is Molinas? Has he met with Jilly and Paul? Has he showed up at their house or at the Tardier house?"

"No. But there's just no getting around the fact that it was Alyssum Tarcher who got Paul and Jilly back to Edgerton. He bought Jilly the Porsche, gave Paul and Jilly the house. I'm sorry, Mac, but you just don't do that for no reason.

"Our assumption is that Paul and Jilly are working on this drug, that they're trying to make it less toxic or more addictive, and then it'll be mass-produced and sold on the street."

"For argument's sake, let's say you're right about all of it. To get people hooked, a drug has to produce a high that will knock the user's socks off. Does this drug do that?"

"We don't know, but we think it has to do with sex."

No, I thought. Jilly and all her talk about sex to both Laura and me. No.

"You mean the user shoots up and just lies there in a semi-stupor having orgasms?"

"Maybe. We don't know. Some of the VioTech data showed some very significant changes in lab animals' sexual drive. It went off the charts and frequently showed itself by intense sexual aggression. There's got to be more to it than that, of course. Jilly and Paul probably took some of their records with them.

"My boss told me to lie low, but I just can't do that. I don't know how close they are to perfecting the drug. If I can help it, that drug isn't going to make it to the streets. I just don't know how to go about that anymore."