Brrrring went the alarm and Knickers responded with a lively "Woof" She was anxious to get going. "Come on, baby," Ally said. "Time for a treat." She struggled up and made her way into the kitchen and got down a box of small rawhide chews. It would give Knickers something to occupy her mind for the few minutes it took to get ready. Since she lived at the west end of Barrow Street, right across the highway from the new Hudson River Park esplanade that defined that mighty river's New York bank, she had a perfect course for her morning runs. She usually liked to run down to the park at the rejuvenated Battery Park City and then back. She didn't know what the distance was exactly, maybe three-quarters of a mile each way, maybe slightly more, but it fit her endurance nicely. The weather was still cool enough in the mornings that Knickers could accompany her at full trot. In the heat of summer, however, they both had to cut back. She'd put on blue sweats, got her Walkman prepped with a Beethoven quintet, and was just finishing cinching her running shoes when the phone jangled. _Sunday, April 5 7:18 A.M. _ Grant Hampton listened to the ringing and felt the sweat on his palms. For a normal person, this would be an insane time to call, but knowing his nutbag sister, she was probably already up and about to go out for her daily run. And this on a Sunday morning, for chrissake, when rational people were drinking coffee or having sex or doing something sensible like retrieving the Times from the hallway and reading the columns in the Business section. He had left Tanya, his runway model live-in, to get her beauty sleep and had driven downtown at this unthinkable hour on a mission. He was chief financial officer of Bartlett Medical Devices, Inc., which was in imminent danger of going under and taking him with it. Come on, Ally. Pick up the frigging phone. He gazed out the windshield of his blue Porsche, now parked directly across the street from Alexa's lobby, and tried to calm his pulse. He hadn't entirely worked out the pitch, but that was okay because he wanted to sound spontaneous. Who was it said, "Sincerity, if you can just fake that, you've got it made?" That was what-- "Hello." Thank God she's picked up. "Hi, sis, remember the sound of my voice? Long time, right?" Come on, he thought, give me an opening here. There was a pause that Grant Hampton thought lasted an eternity. "You picked a funny time to call." Is that all she has to say? Four and a half frigging years she shuts me out of her life, blaming me, and then ... "Well, Ally, I figured there's gotta be a statute of limitations on being accused of something I didn't do. So I decided to take a flier that maybe four years and change was in the ballpark." "Grant, do you know what time it is? This is Sunday and--"