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slid on the smaller headphones and fiddled with a dial.
    He heard the dead bolt slide home next door, followed by shoes scraping across a wooden floor. Every sound was magnified by the powerful system he’d just installed in the wall adjoining the two apartments.
    Dishes scraped in the kitchen. Water ran briefly. A refrigerator door opened, then closed.
    Broussard considered her explanation about the bandage on her leg. A bolt that pulled free at ninety feet? The woman was damned lucky she wasn’t bloody hamburger in a ravine somewhere. He had to hand her points for courage, if not for intelligence. Rock climbing wasn’t like chalking up fifteen minutes on a StairMaster twice a week.
    Amateurs never understood that you had to train for danger full time or the training didn’t stick. But
was
she an amateur?
    He considered the question as he pulled a cell phone from a nearby drawer and punched in a set of numbers that would appear in no phone directory anywhere.
    The phone clicked once and the call was relayed to a new location.
    Jack entered his password. Silence fell, followed by a pleasant female voice telling him he had reached a nonworking number. He knew the drill so well that he didn’t skip a beat. Jack gave his name, asked two short questions, then listened intently.
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    The envelope was still waiting on the edge of her desk. Taylor didn’t have to look to see the neatly typed label and the expensive gray paper.
    She put the lasagna she had taken on the counter and went in search of silverware. Next came spring water with a wedge of lemon. An Irish linen napkin. Her knee ached as she raised the blind, giving a brilliant view of hilly San Francisco streets and a distant glint of water.
    She turned.
    The envelope was still there on her desk, mocking her, making something turn over in her chest. She didn’t have to see the papers inside to know what they said.
    You are encouraged to keep the department or this agency informed of your current address in order to permit a response to any inquiry concerning medical or social history made by or on behalf of the child who was the subject to the court action terminating parental rights.
    (a) Section 9203 of the Family Code authorizes a person who has been adopted and who attains the age of 21 years to make a request to the State Department of Social Services, or the licensed adoption agency that joined in the adoption petition, for the name and address of the adoptee’s birth parents. Indicate by checking one of the boxes below whether or not you wish your name and address to be disclosed in such a case:
    Below were three simple lines.
    â€¢Â Â 
Yes
    â€¢Â Â 
No
    â€¢Â Â 
Uncertain at this time; will notify agency at later date
    The last line was checked.
    Taylor closed her eyes. Someone had conceived her—whether in lust, boredom, or dread, she didn’t know. Nine months later she had been pulled shriveled, red-faced, and terrified from a stranger’s body and she probably would never know the reasons why. Taylor felt an explosion of fury at the woman who had turned her head, ignored her cries, and handed her over to a stranger. She hated whoever her mother was, wherever she was, whatever her reasons. She hated—and yet her heart was a ragged, seeping wound, torn in two by regret and a vast longing.
    With shaking hands she reached for the legal document, which had been shoved unnoticed and misfiled inside a collection of forms returned after the death of her family’s longtime lawyer. One call and she could initiate the search that would strip away thirty-five years of lies. One call that would open yet more wounds.
    Her fingers shook. She strained, trying to touch the envelope, her heart pounding.
    On her desk, the phone rang. Taylor froze, her hand still outstretched. She took a breath in and out, slowly, as if her life, her whole future, hung in the balance. Then her eyes flickered to the small digital