"Kate, I don't know how to say this, but, but listen, we're in trouble," Greg stammered.

She lolled on the sofa in their fashionable West Side apartment, and clicked the remote to turn down the volume on the TV. Kate found her new husband's frequent little melodramas childish and quite boring, so she yawned indifferently into the phone, "Yes darling, what is it this time?"

"I just got a call from Doug Saulsbury at CNN, he wanted to give me a heads up, it's going to hit the news in a few minutes, Steven is alive."

She was speechless, rising panic washed over her entire body.

"Hello? Kate, are you there?"

"Of course, I'm here, you idiot. But Steven's dead, damn it, you said he was dead."

"I know what I said," he hissed, "but he's in a Brazilian hospital and he's talking."

"But how...?"

"I don't know how, or why, or what, or...shit babe, he had to be dead, I watched him fall, he fell two hundred feet. No one could survive that"

Kate forced herself to remain calm, "But it seems Steven survived it. You incompetent fool. You had to tell him all about us before you cut that rope, didn't you?"

"How was I to know he would live through that fall?"

"All right, all right. Get a grip on yourself, god damn it." She paused for a moment, and then, "Listen; don't say one thing about this to anyone. Keep your mouth shut. It will be our word against his. When the time comes, we'll deny everything, and express our profound relief and joy that he is alive and safe."

"But think of the scandal, don't you understand this is going to be the headline story on the national news just as it was when he disappeared? Every channel and newspaper will cover it all day, every day just as they did when I led the fruitless search for him. When Steven gives his story to the media, they are going to discover that he didn't simply fall from the cliff as I reported, and they will drag both of us through the dirt. We're ruined; my career and yours are ruined. We'll be laughingstocks; my god, we may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, we might even go to prison."

He was right. She was trapped in marriage to two men, a ridiculous situation in and of itself. Proof of Steven's revelations about their plot to kill him wouldn't be necessary to destroy her stage career. She could already imagine the vicious gossip that would soon be flying among her friends and supporters in the industry. Maintaining her Broadway Star image within New York's wealthy, glittering nightlife meant as much to her as her career; no, it meant more.

Again the panic began to rise, it lodged in her throat and arrested her breathing, "My god, they are going to find out, everyone will know. And then prison? No, that's impossible. This can't be happening to me, no, it's not possible."

* * *

The floor-to-ceiling window provided a spectacular panoramic view of Central Park. His wheelchair was pushed up against the glass, and a blanket, thoughtfully arranged across his slumped shoulders, chased away the air-conditioned chill within this luxury suite at the Trump International Hotel. He erased his intricately choreographed plans for the coming evening from his mind, and tried to concentrate on the scene before him. Yet, it wasn't Central Park that Steven was seeing; it was the vast verdant wilderness of Brazil's inland rainforest. The sheer, gleaming facades of nearby buildings stood transformed into the mottled, splintered faces of vertical cliffs, whose dizzying heights plunged down the sides of tree-mantled mountains. It was an inescapable vision, a confounding unification of Paradise and Hell that had become indelibly etched within his consciousness, day by agonizing day, for nine pain-wracked months.

* * *

The co-conspirators were isolated within a city of 8 million people, Steven and the media had seen to that. Offers of Broadway roles had been abruptly withdrawn, friends and business associates vanished, doors shut, phone and email messages went unanswered, and Greg's production company was on the verge of collapse.

They dined alone in the chic ambiance of 'Le Bernardin Restaurant' on West 51st Street. The stress they had been under for the past month was plainly visible in the crow's feet around Kate's eyes.

"Well!" she said exasperated. "Our greeting by the Maitre d' was less than cordial, wouldn't you say? And as for the wait staff, they are workmanlike, and most unfriendly. Imagine being snubbed by wait staff!"

"I hadn't noticed, but enjoy your dinner," Greg grumbled. "This will quite likely be our last taste of haute cuisine for a very long time."

"It wouldn't be necessary if you hadn't spent all of your money on extravagant toys," Kate responded testily.

"Me? Money runs through your fingers like water."

"Humph. It's Steven's fault. Everything was always his fault. Now his lawyers have frozen my accounts, I'm left with nothing. Nothing. You should have seen this coming. You should have planned for something like this."

"I should have seen it coming? I should have seen Steven coming back to life after all those months? We were in this together, dear heart, from the very first. In fact, I recall that killing him was your idea, you didn't want Steven, but you wanted his money. Now you've lost them both."

"I'll fight back, you watch me. I'll take the son of a bitch to court."

"You'll lose darling, take it from me, your beauty and star-power image won't help you in court. I've heard that Steven was badly maimed from the fall. Once he gets on the witness stand in front of a jury, you'll be exposed as the greedy bitch you are. Get over it, Kate; you'll be beaten before you get started."

"Bitch? If I'm a bitch, then what does that make you? Listen, you ..."

She hesitated as a sudden hush fell over the subdued murmurings within the restaurant; a dark, virtually naked savage entered the room, pushing a wheelchair before him. When he stopped at the "Reserved" table beside her, Kate was inclined to laugh, assuming the exhibition was someone's grotesque idea of a publicity stunt. That was before a sense of revulsion swept over her when she got a clear view of the misshapen monster in the wheelchair. A raw, dreadful scar was all that remained of the left eye, a large portion of the scalp had been gouged away from the skull, fingers were absent on both claw-like hands. The twisted form sagged, the grotesque head too large for the emaciated body.

"Good Lord," she thought, "how could such a wretched person dare to appear in public, and how could 'Le Bernardin's' permit entrance to such a repulsive troll?"

She attempted to ignore the macabre scene, strived to focus on the richness of the room, her hands twitched nervously in her lap, moved to the table, to touch her cheek, her hair. Yet her eyes were inexorably drawn to the table beside her, and she froze, spellbound, when the seamed, tattooed face of the savage turned towards her. Accusing black eyes pinned her against the back of her chair and regarded her as though she were a vulgar object d'art. Then, an electric motor whirred softly as the contorted being in the wheelchair swung to confront her. The single, red watery eye found her, the hideously scarred skull-face broke apart into a ghastly grin, and the withered creature whispered, "Hellooo...Kate."