She quietly made for shore, even as she and Knickers were being swept downstream by the current When they finally reached the bank, it was somewhere around Morton Street. Oddly enough, she wasn't cold and she wasn't tired when she drew herself up onto the rocks, Knickers at her side. She just lay panting for a moment. "Come here, baby," she said drawing Knickers to her. The dog was shivering and she knew she had to get her home soon. "Thank God you can't talk. I think something very evil just passed from the world." Epilogue _Thursday, June 25 10:49 P.M. _ "You're really something," Stone declared, falling back onto the rumpled sheets. "What's come over you lately? Don't you ever get tired?" "Maybe I'm just happy to be alive," Ally said, smiling as she ran a finger down his chest. "I'm catching up on all the living I've been missing out on." Her heart was definitely on the mend, in several ways. She was beginning to think she was in love. After Steve went missing, she thought that love would never happen again, but maybe it had. "Know what," he said, rising up, "I've really worked up an appetite. How about you? Think I'll make an omelet. Got any eggs left in the fridge?" "Should be some," she said. "But I'll pass. Anything I eat after ten goes straight to places on my body that don't need further reinforcement." It was so nice just to have someone to be near again. Her nervous system was still recovering from the harrowing experience down on the pier. In fact, she wasn't really sure _what _actually had happened. The crashed McDonnell Douglas was retrieved from the water the next day, but there were no bodies aboard. Had Winston Bartlett drowned and his body been swept out to sea by the tide? Also, there must have been a third person, a pilot. And what about Kenji Noda, who also was missing? Did he make it to shore? In any case, they all had disappeared. The case was closed. And since nobody had found a will, New York State was currently the executor of his fortune. Eileen Bartlett was sole heir. Her waiting game had paid off superbly. The price of her Gerex shares was doubling every two weeks. She was about to become a very rich woman indeed. But had Winston Bartlett really gone to a watery grave? Ally somehow doubted it. He had too much invested in life to cash in so easily. As she watched Stone get up and swathe himself in a huge white towel before heading for the kitchen, she found herself replaying that harrowing scene at the pier. She kept trying to remember something Bartlett had said about forming some kind of society. Was she fantasizing or had he said he was going to do that and then offer the Beta procedure to its members? What was he going to call it? Try as she might, she couldn't remember. She had developed a mental block that her mind was using to shield her psyche from the horror of that evening.