"What on earth are you talking about?" she asked. "Young man, it's ill manners to start asking a body silly questions, no matter how nice you might be otherwise. I've never heard of this, whatever you called it, corporation." Click. She sure didn't sound like a patient. Or maybe she was too far gone to even know if she was a patient or not. In any case, this was not a promising lead. Okay, he thought, go with the one you should have in the first place. Blast. He wanted this to be the one, but he just didn't want it to be Ally. Or maybe he did. He took a deep breath and punched in the last number, which had a Manhattan area code, 212. The phone at the other end rang five times and then an answering machine came on. At this hour, she would most likely be at work. "Hello, this is Alexa Hampton. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone now, but if you'll leave your name and number, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. If you're calling about design work, the number of CitiSpace is 212-555-8597." He felt his heart flip, then sink. It was Ally. It was a voice he had heard for years in his reveries--or were they the nightmares of roads not taken? She still might not be the new patient in the clinical trials, but at least he knew he could reach her. The sound of her voice. After all this time he didn't realize it would still affect him the way it did. So, he thought, clearing his head, she's running a design business now. He wondered how that had happened. The last time he saw her, she was a single-minded student of architecture. Intensely focused. No message. Don't leave a message. It probably would freak her out. Actually, it might freak them both out. Assuming she was the new patient, how the hell did Ally get involved with Winston Bartlett? It probably would have something to do with that heart condition she didn't like to talk about. He clicked off the phone and settled it onto the desk. Then he glanced again at the computer screen and decided to go back to the NIH files. The other woman, Nina, he would look up later. Ally's Brit mum must be getting on by now, but still it was hard to imagine anything being wrong with her; as he remembered Nina, the woman was well nigh indestructible When he got back to the NIH Web site and went to the "sunshine" page, it was again blank. The two new names, Nina Hampton and Alexa Hampton, were not there anymore. They must have been entered immediately into the clinical trials. But why now? If Van de Vliet kept to the original schedule, the trials would be over in a matter of days. Maybe, he thought, this was a momentary screw-up. I just happened to be at the right place at the right fleeting moment, when somebody, somewhere, was entering those names. Maybe some NIH bureaucrat hit the wrong key on a keyboard someplace in Maryland. But it was the break he'd been waiting for.