The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 4

Blue Smoke

Angels Fall

High Noon

Tribute

Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts

Hot Ice

Sacred Sins

Brazen Virtue

Sweet Revenge

Public Secrets

Genuine Lies

Carnal Innocence

Divine Evil

Honest Illusions

Private Scandals

Hidden Riches

True Betrayals

Montana Sky

Sanctuary

Homeport

The Reef

River’s End

Carolina Moon

The Villa

Midnight Bayou

Three Fates

Birthright

Northern Lights

Blue Smoke

Angels Fall

High Noon

Tribute

Black Hills

The Search

Chasing Fire

Series

IRISH BORN TRILOGY

Born in Fire

Born in Ice

Born in Shame

DREAM TRILOGY

Daring to Dream

Holding the Dream

Finding the Dream

CHESAPEAKE BAY SAGA

Sea Swept

Rising Tides

Inner Harbor

Chesapeake Blue

GALLAGHERS OF ARDMORE TRILOGY

Jewels of the Sun

Tears of the Moon

Heart of the Sea

THREE SISTERS ISLAND TRILOGY

Dance Upon the Air

Heaven and Earth

Face the Fire

KEY TRILOGY

Key of Light

Key of Knowledge

Key of Valor

IN THE GARDEN TRILOGY

Blue Dahlia

Black Rose

Red Lily

CIRCLE TRILOGY

Morrigan’s Cross

Dance of the Gods

Valley of Silence

SIGN OF SEVEN TRILOGY

Blood Brothers

The Hollow

The Pagan Stone

BRIDE QUARTET

Vision in White

Bed of Roses

Savor the Moment

Happy Ever After

Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb

Remember When

J. D. Robb

Naked in Death

Glory in Death

Immortal in Death

Rapture in Death

Ceremony in Death

Vengeance in Death

Holiday in Death

Conspiracy in Death

Loyalty in Death

Witness in Death

Judgment in Death

Betrayal in Death

Seduction in Death

Reunion in Death

Purity in Death

Portrait in Death

Imitation in Death

Divided in Death

Visions in Death

Survivor in Death

Origin in Death

Memory in Death

Born in Death

Innocent in Death

Creation in Death

Strangers in Death

Salvation in Death

Promises in Death

Kindred in Death

Fantasy in Death

Indulgence in Death

Treachery in Death

Anthologies

From the Heart

A Little Magic

A Little Fate

Moon Shadows

(with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)

THE ONCE UPON SERIES

(with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)

Once Upon a Castle

Once Upon a Star

Once Upon a Dream

Once Upon a Rose

Once Upon a Kiss

Once Upon a Midnight

Silent Night

(with Susan Plunkett, Dee Holmes, and Claire Cross)

Out of This World

(with Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Krinard, and Maggie Shayne)

Bump in the Night

(with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

Dead of Night

(with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

Three in Death

Suite 606

(with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

In Death

The Lost

(with Patricia Gaffney, Mary Blayney, and Ruth Ryan Langan)

The Other Side

(with Mary Blaney, Patricia Gaffney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

Also available…

The Official Nora Roberts Companion

(edited by Denise Little and Laura Hayden)

Table of Contents

Blue Smoke

Angels Fall

High Noon

Tribute

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Blue Smoke

A G. P. Putnam’s Sons Book / published by arrangement with the author

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2005 by Nora Roberts

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://us.penguingroup.com

ISBN: 1-101-14677-X

A G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS BOOK®

G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books first published by The G. P. Putnam’s Sons Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS and the “P” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic edition: November, 2005

For my own Carpenter Guy

Contents

POINT OF ORIGIN

PROLOGUE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

CHAIN REACTION

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

FLASHOVER

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

EPILOGUE

POINT OF ORIGIN

The specific location at which a fire was ignited.

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

William Shakespeare

PROLOGUE

Fire became in heat and smoke and light. Like some preternatural beast clawing its way from the womb, it burst to life with a cackle that rose to a roar.

And changed everything in one magnificent instant.

Like that beast, it slithered, snaked its way over wood, and scored what had been clean and bright with its black and powerful fingers.

It had eyes, red and all seeing, and a mind so brilliant, so complete, it memorized everything in its orbit.

He saw it as a kind of entity, a gilded, crimson god that existed only to destroy. And it took what it wanted without remorse, without mercy. With such ardor.

Everything fell before it, kneeling supplicants that worshipped even as they were consumed.

But he had made it, created it. So he was the god of fire. More powerful than the flames, more canny than the heat, more stunning than the smoke.

It hadn’t lived until he gave it breath.

Watching it become, he fell in love.

The light flickered over his face, danced in his fascinated eyes. He took a beer, savored its sharp coolness in his throat as his skin streamed with the heat.

There was excitement in his belly, wonder in his mind. Possibilities flashing through his imagination as the fire streaked up the walls.

It was beautiful. It was strong. It was fun.

Watching it become, he became. And his destiny was scored into him, branding heart and soul.

1

BALTIMORE, 1985

Catarina Hale’s childhood ended on a steamy August night a few hours after the Orioles demolished the Rangers at Memorial Stadium, kicking their Texas butts—as her dad said—nine to one. Her parents had taken a rare night off to haul the whole family to the game, which made the win all the sweeter. Most nights one of them, often both, put in long hours at Sirico’s, the pizzeria they’d taken over from her mother’s father. And the place where, eighteen years before, her parents had met. Her mother, a young, vibrant eighteen—so the story went—when the twenty-year-old Gibson Hale had swaggered in for a slice.

Went in for pizza, he liked to say, and got myself an Italian goddess.

Her father talked weird that way, a lot. But Reena liked to hear it.

Got himself a pizzeria, too, ten years later when Poppi and Nuni decided it was time to put their traveling shoes on. Bianca, the youngest of five and their only daughter, took it over with her Gib as none of her brothers wanted the place.

Sirico’s had stood in the same spot in Baltimore’s Little Italy for over forty-three years. Which was even older than Reena’s father, a fact that amazed her. Now her father—who didn’t have even a single drop of Italian blood in his whole body—ran the place, along with her mother—who was Italian all the way through to the bone.

Sirico’s was almost always busy, and a lot of work, but Reena didn’t mind, even when she had to help. Her older sister, Isabella, complained because sometimes she had to work there on Saturday nights instead of going out on a date, or with her friends. But Bella complained almost all the time anyway.

She especially complained that their oldest sister, Francesca, had her own bedroom on the third floor while she had to share with Reena. Xander got his own room, too, because he was the only boy even though he was the youngest.

Sharing with Bella had been okay, it had even been fun until Bella got to be a teenager and decided she was too old to do anything but talk about boys or read fashion magazines or play with her hair.

Reena was eleven and five-sixths. The five-sixths was an essential addition because it meant she had only fourteen months until she was a teenager. This was currently her most fervent ambition, overtaking previous ambitions such as becoming a nun or marrying Tom Cruise.

On this hot and heavy August night when Reena was eleven and five-sixths, she awoke in the dark with hard, cramping pains in her belly. She curled up, trying to make herself into a ball and biting her lip to hold back a moan. Across the room, as far as could be managed now that Bella was fourteen and more interested in having big hair than in being a big sister, Bella snored gently.

Reena rubbed at the ache and thought of the hot dogs and popcorn and candy she’d gobbled up at the ball game. Her mother told her she’d be sorry.

Couldn’t her mother be wrong, even once?

She tried to offer it up, like the nuns were always saying, so some poor sinner could benefit from her bellyache. But it just hurt!

Maybe it wasn’t from the hot dogs. Maybe it was from when Joey Pastorelli hit her in the stomach. He’d gotten in bad trouble for it. For knocking her down and ripping her shirt and calling her a name she didn’t understand. Mr. Pastorelli and her father had gotten into a fight when her dad went to his house to “discuss the situation.”

She’d heard them yelling at each other. Her father never yelled—well, hardly ever yelled. Her mother was the yeller because she was one hundred percent Italian and had a temper.

But boy had he yelled at Mr. Pastorelli. And he’d hugged her so hard when he got home.

And they’d gone to the ball game.

Maybe she was being punished for being glad Joey Pastorelli was going to get punished. And being a little glad he’d knocked her down and torn her shirt because then they’d gone to the game and watched the O’s stomp all over the Rangers.

Or maybe she had internal injuries.

She knew you could get internal injuries and even die because she’d seen it on Emergency!, one of her and Xander’s favorite shows.

The thought brought on another vicious cramp that had her eyes welling with tears. She started to get out of bed—she wanted her mother—and felt something wet between her thighs.

Sniffling, embarrassed she might have wet her pants like a baby, she crept out of the bedroom, down the hall toward the bathroom. She stepped inside the room with its pink tub and tiles and pulled up her Ghostbusters T-shirt.

Hot waves of fear rolled through her as she stared at the blood on her thighs. She was dying. Her ears began to ring. When the next cramp seized her belly, she opened her mouth to scream.

And understood.

Not dying, she thought. Not suffering from internal injuries. She had her period. She was having her first period.

Her mother had explained it all, about the eggs, and cycles and about becoming a woman. Both her sisters had periods every month, and so did her mother.

There was Kotex in the cabinet under the sink. Mama had shown her how to use it, and she’d locked herself in one day to practice. She cleaned herself up and tried not to be a sissy about it. It wasn’t the blood that bothered her so much, but where it came from was pretty gross.

But she was grown-up now, grown-up enough to take care of what her mama told her was a natural thing, a female thing.

Because she was no longer sleepy, and she was now a woman, she decided to go down to the kitchen and have some ginger ale. It was so hot in the house—dog days, Dad called them. And she had so much to think about now that she’d become. She took her glass outside, to sit and sip and think on the white marble steps.

It was quiet enough that she heard the Pastorellis’ dog bark in that hard, coughing way he had. And the streetlights were glowing. It made her feel like she was the only one in the world who was awake. For right now, she was the only one in the world who knew what had happened inside her body.

She sipped her drink and thought about what it would be like going back to school next month. How many of the girls had gotten their period over the summer.

She would start to get breasts now. She looked down at her chest and wondered what that would be like. What it would feel like. You didn’t feel your hair grow, or your fingernails, but maybe you could feel breasts growing.

Weird, but interesting.

If they’d start to grow now, she’d have them by the time she was finally a teenager.

She sat on the marble steps, a still flat-chested girl with a tender tummy. Her crop of honey-blond hair going frizzy in the humidity, her long-lidded tawny eyes getting heavy. There was a little mole just above the right corner of her top lip, and braces on her teeth.

On that sultry night the present seemed absolutely safe, the future a misty dream.

She yawned once, blinked sleepily. As she rose to go back in, her gaze swept down the street toward Sirico’s, where it had stood since even before her father was born. At first she thought the flickering light she saw in the big front window was some kind of reflection, and she thought, Pretty.

Her lips curved as she continued to study it, then her head cocked in puzzlement. It didn’t really look like a reflection, or like someone had forgotten to turn off all the lights at closing.

Curious, she stepped down to the sidewalk, the glass still in her hand.

Too intrigued to consider just how her mother would skin her for walking out alone in the middle of the night, even on her own block, Reena wandered down the sidewalk.

And her heart began to thud when what she saw began to filter through the dreamy sleepiness. Smoke poured out the front door, a door that wasn’t closed. The lights she saw were flames.

“Fire.” She whispered it first, then screamed it as she ran back to the house and flew through the front door.

She would never forget it, not for all of her life, standing with her family while Sirico’s burned. The roar of the fire as it stabbed through broken windows, shot up in quick gold towers, was a constant thrum in her ears. There were sirens screaming, whooshing gusts of water pumping out of the big hoses, weeping and shouting. But the sound of the fire, the voice of it, overpowered everything else.

She could feel it inside her belly, the fire, like the cramping. The wonder and horror, the awful beauty of it, pulsed there.

What was it like inside the fire, inside where the firemen went? Hot and dark? Thick and bright? Some of the flames looked like big tongues, lapping out, curling back like they could taste what they burned.

Smoke rolled, pluming out, rising. It stung her eyes, her nose, even as the whirling dance of flame dazzled her eyes. Her feet were still bare, and the asphalt felt like heated coals. But she couldn’t step away, couldn’t take her eyes off the spectacle, like some mad and ferocious circus.

Something exploded, and there were more screams in response. Firemen in helmets, faces blackened by the smoke and ash, moved like ghosts in the haze of smoke. Like soldiers, she thought. It sounded like a war movie.

And yet even the water sparkled as it flew through the air.

She wondered what was happening inside. What were the men doing? What was the fire doing? If it was a war, did it hide, then leap out to attack, bright and gold?

Ash floated down like dirty snow. Mesmerized, Reena stepped forward. Her mother caught her wrist, drawing her back, hooking an arm around her to bring Reena close against her.

“Stay here,” Bianca murmured. “We have to stay together.”

She just wanted to see. Her mother’s heart was an excited drumbeat against her ear. She started to turn her head, to look up, to ask if they could get closer. Just a little closer.

But it wasn’t excitement on her mother’s face. It wasn’t wonder that shone in her eyes, but tears.

She was beautiful; everyone said so. But now her face looked like it had been carved out of something very hard, leaving sharp lines dug deep. The tears and the smoke had reddened her eyes. There was gray ash in her hair.

Beside her, Dad stood with his hand on her shoulder. And to Reena’s horror, she saw there were tears in his eyes, too. She could see the fire reflected in the shine of them, as if it had somehow crept inside him.

It wasn’t a movie, it was real. Something of theirs, something that had been theirs all of her life, was burning away right in front of her. She could look beyond the hypnotic light and movement of the fire now, she could see the black smears on the walls of Sirico’s, the grime and wet soot staining the white marble steps, the jagged shards of glass.

Neighbors stood on the street, the sidewalk, most in their nightclothes. Some held children or babies. Some were crying.

She remembered all at once that Pete Tolino and his wife and baby lived in the little apartment above the shop. Something squeezed her heart when she looked up, saw the smoke pouring out of the upper windows.

“Daddy! Daddy! Pete and Theresa.”

“They’re all right.” He lifted her when she pulled away from her mother. Lifted her as he used to when she’d been little. And he pressed his face against her neck. “Everyone’s all right.”

She hid her face against his shoulder, in shame. She hadn’t thought of the people, she hadn’t even thought of all the things—the pictures and the stools, the tablecloths and the big ovens.

She’d only thought of the fire, its brilliance and its roar.

“I’m sorry.” She wept now, with her face buried against her father’s bare shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Ssh. We’ll fix it.” But his voice was raw, as if he’d drunk the smoke. “I can fix it.”

Comforted, she rested her head on his shoulder, scanned the faces and the fire. She saw her sisters holding each other, and her mother holding Xander.

Old Mr. Falco sat on his steps, his gnarled fingers working a rosary. Mrs. DiSalvo from next door came over to put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. With some relief she saw Pete now, sitting on the curb with his head in his hands, his wife huddled beside him clutching the baby.

Then she saw Joey. He stood, his thumbs hooked in his front pockets, his hip cocked as he stared at the fire. His face was full of something like joy, the kind in the faces of the martyrs on her holy cards.

A something that made Reena hold on tighter to her father.

Then Joey turned his head, looked at her. Grinned.

She whispered, “Daddy,” but a man with a microphone strode up and began asking questions.

She tried to cling when he set her down. Joey was still staring, still grinning, and it was more frightening than the fire. But her father nudged her toward her sisters.

“Fran, take your brother and sisters home now.”

“I want to stay with you.” Reena grabbed at his hands. “I have to stay with you.”

“You need to go home.” He crouched until his red-rimmed eyes were level with hers. “It’s almost out now. It’s almost done. I said I’d fix it, and I will.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Go on home. We’ll be there soon.”

“Catarina.” Her mother drew her back. “Help your sisters make coffee, and some food. For the people who’re helping us. It’s what we can do.”

Food was always something they could do. Pots of coffee, pitchers of cold tea, thick sandwiches. For once there was no arguing in the kitchen between the sisters. Bella wept steadily throughout the process, but Fran didn’t slap at her for it. And when Xander said he’d carry one of the pitchers, no one told him he was too small.

There was a stink in the air now, one she would always remember, and the smoke hung like a dirty curtain. But they set up a folding table on the sidewalk for the coffee, the tea, the sandwiches. Passed out cups and bread to grimy hands.

Some of the neighbors had gone back home, out of the smoke and stink, out of the drifting ash that settled on cars and ground in a thin, dirty snow. There was no brilliant light now, and even from a distance Reena could see the blackened brick, the rivers of wet soot, the gaping holes that had been windows.

The pots of flowers she’d helped her mother plant in the spring to sit on the white steps lay broken, trampled, dead.

Her parents stood in the street outside Sirico’s, their hands locked, her father in the jeans he’d grabbed when she woke him, her mother in the bright red robe she’d gotten for her birthday only last month.

Even when the big trucks drove away, they stood together.

One of the men in a fireman’s helmet walked over to speak to them, and they spoke for what seemed a long time. Then her parents turned away, still hand in hand, and walked toward home.

The man walked toward the ruin of Sirico’s. He switched on a flashlight and went into the dark.

Together, they carried the leftover food and drink back inside. Reena thought they all looked like survivors in those war movies, dirty hair, tired faces. When the food was put away, her mother asked if anyone wanted to sleep.

Bella started to sob again. “How can we sleep? What are we going to do?”

“What comes next. If you don’t want to sleep, go clean up. I’ll fix breakfast. Go. We’ll think better when we’re clean and have some food.”

Being third in line in age meant Reena was always third in line for the bathroom. She waited until she heard Fran come out and Bella go in. Then she slipped out of her room to knock on her parents’ bedroom door.

Her father had washed his hair, and it was still wet. He’d changed into clean jeans and a shirt. His face looked the way it did when he got sick with the flu.

“Your sisters hogging the bathroom?” He smiled a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You can use ours this time.”

“Where’s your brother, Reena?” her mother asked.

“He fell asleep on the floor.”

“Oh.” She pulled her damp hair back into a band. “That’s all right. Go, have your shower. I’ll get you clean clothes.”

“Why did the fireman go in when the others went away?”

“He’s an inspector,” her father told her. “He’ll try to find out why it happened. They got here faster than they would have if you hadn’t seen it. Pete and his family are safe, and that’s most important. What were you doing up so late, Reena?”

“I—” She felt the flush heat up the back of her neck as she remembered her period. “I need to just tell Mama.”

“I won’t be mad.”

She stared down at her toes. “Please. It’s private.”

“Can you go start some sausage, Gib?” Bianca said casually. “I’ll be down soon.”

“Fine. Fine.” He pressed his hands to his eyes. Then he dropped them, looked at Reena again. “I won’t be mad,” he repeated, and left them alone.

“What is it you can’t tell your father? Why would you hurt his feelings at a time like this?”

“I didn’t mean . . . I woke up because I—My stomach hurt.”

“Are you sick?” Bianca turned, laid a hand on Reena’s forehead.

“I started my period.”

“Oh. Oh, baby girl.” Bianca drew her in, held her hard. Then began to weep.

“Don’t cry, Mama.”

“Just for a minute. So much, all at once. My little Catarina. So much loss, so much change. My bambina.” She eased back. “You changed tonight, and because you did, you saved lives. We’ll be grateful for what was saved, and we’ll deal with what was lost. I’m very proud of you.”

She kissed Reena on both cheeks. “Does your tummy still hurt?” When Reena nodded, Bianca kissed her again. “You’ll take a shower, then a nice warm bath in my tub. It’ll make you feel better. Do you need to ask me anything?”

“I knew what to do.”

Her mother smiled, but there was something sad in her eyes. “Then you take your shower, and I’ll help you.”

“Mama, I couldn’t say it in front of Dad.”

“Of course not. That’s all right. This is women’s business.”

Women’s business. The phrase made her feel special, and the warm bath eased the achiness. By the time she got downstairs, the family was in the kitchen, and she could tell by the gentle way her father touched her hair he’d been told the news.

There was a somberness around the table, a kind of exhausted quiet. But at least Bella seemed to have used up all her tears—for the moment.

She saw her father reach over, lay his hand over Mama’s, squeeze it before he began to speak. “We have to wait until we’re told it’s safe. Then we’ll start cleaning up. We don’t know yet how bad the damage is, or how much time it’s going to be before we can open again.”

“We’re going to be poor now.” Bella’s lip trembled. “Everything’s ruined, and we won’t have any money.”

“Have you ever not had a roof over your head, food on your table, clothes on your back?” Bianca asked sharply. “Is this how you behave when there’s trouble? Crying and complaining?”

“She cried the whole time,” Xander pointed out as he played with a piece of toast.

“I didn’t ask you what I can see for myself. Your father and I have worked every day for fifteen years to make Sirico’s a good place, an important place in this neighborhood. And my father and mother worked to build all that for more years than you can know. It hurts. But it’s not the family that burned, it’s a place. And we’ll rebuild it.”

“But what will we do?” Bella asked.

“Be quiet, Isabella!” Fran ordered when her sister started to speak.

“I mean, what do we do first?” Bella asked again.

“We have insurance.” Gibson looked down at his plate as if surprised to find food on it. But he picked up his fork, began to eat. “We’ll use it to rebuild or repair or whatever we need to do. We have savings. We won’t be poor,” he added with a stern look at his middle daughter. “But we’ll need to be careful, for as long as it takes. We’re not going to be able to go to the beach like we planned over Labor Day weekend. If the insurance isn’t enough, then we’ll have to go into our savings, or take out a loan.”

“Remember this,” Bianca added. “The people who work for us have no job now, not until we can reopen. Some of them have families. We aren’t the only ones hurt by this.”

“Pete and Theresa and the baby,” Reena said. “They might not have any clothes or furniture or anything. We could give them some.”

“Good, that’s a positive thing. Alexander, eat your eggs,” Bianca added.

“I’d rather have Cocoa Puffs.”

“Well, I’d rather have a mink coat and a diamond tiara. Eat. There’s going to be a lot of work to do. You’ll all do your part.”

“Nobody. Nobody,” Gibson added with a jab of his finger toward Xander, “goes inside until you have permission.”

“Poppi,” Fran murmured. “We have to tell him.”

“It’s too early to call him with news like this.” Bianca pushed food around her plate. “I’ll call him soon, and my brothers.”

“How could it have happened? How can they tell how?” Bella asked.

“I don’t know. It’s their job. Ours is to put it back together.” Gibson lifted his coffee cup. “And we will.”

“The door was open.”

Gibson turned his gaze to Reena. “What?”

“The door, the front door, was open.”

“Are you sure?”

“I saw. I saw the door was open, and the lights—the fire in the window. Maybe Pete forgot to lock it.”

This time it was Bianca’s hand that reached out and covered her husband’s. Before she could speak, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it.” She rose. “I think it’s going to be a very long day. If anyone’s tired, they should try to sleep now.”

“Finish eating,” Gibson ordered. “Take care of the dishes.”

Fran rose as he did, came around the table to put her arms around him. At sixteen she was slim and graceful, with a femininity Reena recognized and envied.

“It’s going to be all right. We’ll make it even better than it was before.”

“That’s my girl. Counting on you. All of you,” he added. “Reena? Come with me a minute.”

As they walked out of the kitchen together, they heard Bella’s irritated, “Saint Francesca.” Gibson merely sighed, then nudged Reena into the TV room. “Um, listen, baby, if you don’t feel well I can spring you from KP.”

A part of her wanted to jump at the chance, but guilt was just a little heavier. “I’m okay.”

“Just say something if you’re . . . not.”

He gave her an absent pat, then wandered off toward the front of the house.

She watched him. He always looked so tall to her, but now his shoulders were bowed. She wanted to do what Fran had done—say the right thing, put her arms around him, but it was too late.

2

She meant to go right back into the kitchen, to be good. Like Fran. But she heard Pete’s voice, and it sounded like he was crying. She heard her father, too, but couldn’t understand the words.

So she moved quietly forward toward the living room.

Pete wasn’t crying, but he looked like he might, any second. His long hair fell over the sides of his face as he stared down at the hands he clenched in his lap.

He was twenty-one years old—they’d given him a little party at Sirico’s, just the family. Because he’d worked there since he was fifteen, he was family. And when he’d gotten Theresa pregnant and had to get married, her parents had let them have the upstairs apartment dirt cheap.

She knew that because she’d heard Uncle Paul talking about it with her mother. Eavesdropping was something she had to do penance for—a lot. But it always seemed worth a couple extra Hail Marys.

Now she could see her mother sitting beside Pete, her hand on his leg. Her father sat on the coffee table—which they were never allowed to do—facing him. She still couldn’t quite hear what her father said, his voice was so low, but Pete kept shaking his head.

Then he lifted it, and his eyes glimmered. “I swear, I didn’t leave anything on. I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my head. Every step. God, Gib, I’d tell you if I screwed up. You have to believe me, I’m not covering. Theresa and the baby—if anything had happened to them—”

“Nothing did.” Bianca closed her hand over his.

“She was so scared. We were so scared. When the phone rang.” He looked at Bianca. “When you called, said there was a fire and to get out, it was like a dream. We just grabbed the baby and ran. I didn’t even smell the smoke until you were there, Gib, running up to help us get out.”

“Pete, I want you to think carefully. Did you lock up?”

“Sure, I—”

“No.” Gib shook his head. “No, don’t just knee-jerk it. Go through the steps. Lots of times routines get so automatic, you can skip something without remembering it later. Just go back. Last customers?”

“Ah. God.” Pete pushed a hand through his hair. “Jamie Silvio and a girl he’s seeing. New one. They split a pepperoni, had a couple of beers. And Carmine, he hung out till closing, trying to talk Toni into going out with him. Um, they left about the same time, about eleven-thirty. Toni and Mike and I finished the cleanup. I did the drawer—oh God, Gib, the bank envelope’s still upstairs. I—”

“Don’t worry about that now. You and Toni and Mike left together?”

“No, Mike left first. Toni hung out while I finished up. It was about midnight, and she likes if one of us watches while she walks home. We went out—and I remember, I remember hauling out my keys, and her saying how cute my key ring is. Theresa had this picture of Rosa made into a key ring. I remember her saying it was sweet while I locked the door. I locked the door, Gib. I swear. You can ask Toni.”

“Okay. None of this is your fault. Where are you staying?”

“With my parents.”

“You need anything?” Bianca asked. “Diapers for the baby?”

“My mom, she keeps some stuff there for her. I just wanted to come, to tell you. I want to know what I can do. I just went by. You can’t get in, they’ve got it blocked off. But it looks bad. I want to know what I can do. There must be something I can do.”

“There’s going to be plenty to do once we’re cleared to get in there and clean up. But right now, you should go be with your wife, your baby.”

“You call me at my mom’s, you need anything. Anytime. You guys have been good to me, to us.” He reached out to hug Gib. “Anything you need.”

Gib walked to the door before turning to Bianca. “I need to go down, take a look.”

Reena dashed into the room. “I want to go with you. I’m going with you.”

Gib opened his mouth, and Reena could see the denial on his face. But Bianca shook her head at him. “Yes, go with your father. When you get back we’ll talk, again, about listening to private conversations. I’ll wait until you get back before I call my parents. Maybe we’ll have more to tell them. Maybe it isn’t as bad as we think.”

It looked worse, at least to Reena’s eye. In the daylight, the black brick, the broken glass, the sodden debris looked horrible, smelled worse. It seemed impossible that fire could have done so much, so fast. She saw the destruction inside through the gaping hole where the big window with its painted pizza had been. The burned mess of what had been the bright orange benches, the old tables, the twisted mess that was once chairs. The sunny yellow paint was gone, as was the big menu sign that had hung in the open kitchen area where her father—and sometimes her mother—tossed dough to entertain customers.

The man with the fireman’s helmet and the flashlight came out carrying a kind of toolbox. He was older than her father; she could tell because there were more lines on his face, and the hair she could see under the helmet was mostly gray.

He’d given them a quick study before stepping out. The man—Gibson Hale—had the long, lanky build that rarely went stocky. A little worse for wear with the night he’d put in. He had a lot of curling hair, sandy with some bleached-out tips. Got out in the sun when he could, didn’t wear a hat.

John Minger didn’t just study the fire, but the people involved in it.

The kid was pretty as a picture, even with the hollow, sleep-starved look in her eyes. Her hair was darker than her father’s but had the curl in it. Looked to John as if she was going to get his height and build along with it.

He’d seen them last night when he arrived on scene. The whole family, grouped together at first like shipwreck survivors. The wife, now she was a looker. The sort of bombshell you didn’t see often outside the movie screen. The oldest daughter favored her the most, he recalled. With the middle one missing that wow factor by a fraction. The boy had been handsome, with the sturdy look of childhood still on him.

This kid looked whippy, and there were some bruises and scrapes on the long legs that made him think she probably spent more time running around with her little brother than playing with dolls.

“Mr. Hale. I’m not going to be able to let you go in yet.”

“I wanted to see. Did you . . . could you find out where it started?”

“Actually, I’d like to talk to you about that. Who’s this?” he asked with a smile for Reena.

“My daughter Catarina. I’m sorry, I know you told me your name, but—”

“Minger, Inspector John Minger. You mentioned one of your daughters saw the fire, woke you.”

“I did,” Reena piped up. She knew it was probably a sin to be proud of her status. But maybe it was just a venial sin. “I saw it first.”

“I’d like to talk about that, too.” He glanced over as a police car pulled up to the curb. “Can you give me a minute?” Without waiting for an answer, he went to the car, spoke quietly to the policemen inside. “Is there someplace you’d be comfortable talking?” he asked when he came back.

“We live just up the block.”

“That’s fine. Just another minute.” He went to another car and stripped off what Reena saw now were like coveralls. Beneath he wore regular clothes. He put them, and his helmet, in the trunk, along with the toolbox and, after locking it, nodded to the policemen.

“What’s in there?” Reena wanted to know. “In the toolbox?”

“All kinds of things. I’ll show you sometime if you want. Mr. Hale? Can I have a second? Could you wait here, Catarina?”

Again, he didn’t wait, simply stepped off a short distance.

“If there’s anything you can tell me,” Gib began.

“We’ll get to that.” He took out a pack of cigarettes, a lighter. He took the first drag as he pushed the lighter back in his pocket. “I need to talk with your daughter. Now your first instinct might be to fill in details for her, prompt her. It’d be better if you didn’t. If you just let the two of us talk it through.”

“Okay. Sure. She’s, ah, observant. Reena.”

“Good.” He stepped back to Reena. Her eyes, he noted, were more amber than brown and, despite the bruises under them, looked sharp. “Did you see the fire from your bedroom window?” Minger asked as they walked.

“No. From the steps. I was sitting on the steps of my house.”

“A little past your bedtime, huh?”

She thought about this, about how to answer it without revealing the embarrassing personal details and avoiding a lie. “It was hot, and I woke up because I didn’t feel very good. I got a drink of ginger ale in the kitchen and came out to sit on the steps and drink it.”

“Okay. Maybe you can show me where you were sitting when you saw it.”

She dashed ahead and obediently sat on the white marble steps as close to her original position as she could remember. She stared down the block as the men approached. “It was cooler than upstairs in my room. Heat rises. We learned that in school.”

“That’s right. So.” Minger sat beside her, looked down the block as she did. “You sat here, with your ginger ale, and you saw the fire.”

“I saw the lights. I saw lights on the glass, and I didn’t know what they were. I thought maybe Pete forgot to turn the lights off inside, but it didn’t look like that. It moved.”

“How?”

She lifted a shoulder, felt a little foolish. “Sort of like dancing. It was pretty. I wondered what it was so I got up and walked a little ways.” She bit her lip, looked over at her father. “I know I’m not supposed to.”

“We can talk about that later.”

“I just wanted to see. I’m too nosy for my own good, Grandma Hale says, but I just wanted to know.”

“How far’d you walk down? Can you show me?”

“Okay.”

He got up with her, strolled along beside her, imagined what it would be like to be a kid walking down a dark street on a hot night. Exciting. Forbidden.

“I took my ginger ale, and I drank some while I walked.” She frowned in concentration, trying to remember every step. “I think maybe I stopped here, close to here, because I saw the door was open.”

“What door?”

“The front door of the shop. It was open. I could see it was open, and I thought, first I thought, Holy cow, Pete forgot to lock the door, and Mama’s going to skin him. She does the skinning in our house. But then I saw there was fire, and I saw smoke. I saw it coming out the door. I was scared. And I yelled as loud as I could and ran back home. I ran upstairs and I think I was still yelling because Dad was already up and pulling on pants, and Mama was grabbing her robe. And everybody was shouting. Fran kept saying, What, what is it? Is it the house? And I said, No, no, it’s the shop. That’s what we call Sirico’s mostly. The shop.”

She’d thought this through, John decided. Gone back over it in her head, layered the details.

“Bella started crying. She cries a lot because teenage girls do, but Fran didn’t cry so much. Anyway, Dad, he looked out the window, then he told Mama to call Pete—he lives above the shop—and tell him to get out, get his family out. Pete married Theresa and they had a baby in June. He said to tell Pete there was a fire in the shop and to get out right away, then to call the fire department. He was running downstairs when he told her. And he said to call nine-one-one, but she already was.”

“That’s a good report.”

“I remember more. We all ran, but Dad ran the fastest. He ran all the way down. There was more fire. I could see it. And the window broke and it jumped out. The fire. Dad didn’t go in the front. I was afraid he would and something would happen to him. He’d get burned up, but he ran to the back steps, up to Pete’s.”

She paused a moment, pressed her lips together.

“To help them get out,” John prompted.

“Because they’re more important than the shop. Pete had the baby, and my dad grabbed Theresa’s arm and they all ran down the stairs. People were starting to come out of their houses. And everybody was shouting and yelling. I think Dad was going to try to run inside, with the fire, but Mama grabbed him hard and said, Don’t, don’t. And he didn’t. He stood with her and he said, Oh Christ, baby. He calls my mother that sometimes. Then I heard the sirens, and the fire trucks came. The firemen jumped out and hooked up hoses. My dad told them everyone was out, that there was nobody inside. But some of them went inside. I don’t know how they could, with the fire and smoke, but they did. They looked like soldiers. Like ghost soldiers.”

“Don’t miss much, do you?”

“I’ve got a memory like an elephant.”

John flicked a glance up at Gib, grinned. “You got a pistol here, Mr. Hale.”

“Gib. It’s Gib, and, yeah, I do.”

“Okay, Reena, can you tell me what else you saw? Just when you were sitting on the stairs, before you saw the fire. Let’s go back and sit and you can try to remember.”

Gib glanced toward the shop, then back at John. “It was vandalism, wasn’t it?”

“Why do you say that?” John asked.

“The door. The open door. I talked to Pete. He closed last night. I took the family to the ball game.”

“Birds trounced the Rangers.”

“Yeah.” Gib managed a small smile. “Pete closed, along with one of my other kids—employees. He locked up, he remembers specifically because he and Toni—Antonia Vargas—had a conversation about his key ring when they locked up. He’s never left a door unlocked. So if it was open, somebody broke in.”

“We’ll talk about that.” He sat with Reena again. “It’s a nice spot. Nice place to have a cold drink on a hot night. Do you know what time it was?”

“Um, it was about ten after three. Because I saw the clock in the kitchen when I got the ginger ale.”

“Guess most everybody in the neighborhood’s asleep that time of night.”

“All the houses were dark. The Castos’ outside light was on, but they mostly forget to turn it off, and I could see a little bit of light in Mindy Young’s bedroom window. She sleeps with a night-light even though she’s ten. I heard a dog bark. I think it was the Pastorellis’ dog, Fabio, because it sounded like him. He sounded excited, then he stopped.”

“Did any cars go by?”

“No. Not even one.”

“That late at night, that quiet, you’d probably hear if a car started up down the block, or a car door closed.”

“It was quiet. Except for the dog barking a couple times. I could hear the air-conditioning humming from next door. I didn’t hear anything else, that I remember. Not even when I was walking down toward the shop.”

“Okay, Reena, good job.”

The door opened, and once again John was struck by beauty.

Bianca smiled. “Gib, you don’t ask the man in? Offer a cold drink? Please, come inside. I have fresh lemonade.”

“Thank you.” John had already gotten to his feet. She was the sort of woman men stood for. “I wouldn’t mind something cold, and a little more of your time.”

The living room was colorful. He thought bold colors would suit a woman like Bianca Hale. It was tidy, the furniture far from new, but polished recently enough that he caught the drift of lemon oil. There were sketches on the walls, pastel chalk portraits of the family, simply framed. Someone had a good eye and a talented hand.

“Who’s the artist?”

“That would be me.” Bianca poured lemonade over ice. “My hobby.”

“They’re great.”

“Mama had drawings in the shop, too,” Reena added. “I liked the one of Dad best. He had a big chef’s hat on and was tossing a pizza. It’s gone now, isn’t it? Burned up.”

“I’ll draw another. Even better.”

“And there was the old dollar. My Poppi framed the first dollar he made when he opened Sirico’s. And the map of Italy, and the cross Nuni had blessed by the Pope and—”

“Catarina.” Bianca held up a hand to stop the flow. “When something’s gone it’s better to think of what you still have, and what you can make from it.”

“Somebody started the fire, on purpose. Somebody didn’t care about your drawings or the cross or anything. Or even that Pete and Theresa and the baby were inside.”

“What?” Bianca braced a hand on the back of a chair. “What’re you saying? Is this true?”

“We’re jumping a little ahead. An arson inspector will—”

“Arson.” Now Bianca lowered herself into the chair. “Oh my God. Oh sweet Jesus.”

“Mrs. Hale, I’ve reported my initial findings to the police department’s arson unit. My job is to inspect the building and determine if the fire should be investigated as incendiary. Someone from the arson unit will inspect the building, conduct an investigation.”

“Why don’t you?” Reena demanded. “You know.”

John looked at her, those tired and intelligent amber eyes. Yeah, he thought. He knew. “If the fire was deliberate, then it’s a crime, and the police take over.”

“But you know.”

No, the kid didn’t miss a trick. “I contacted the police because when I inspected the building I found what appears to be signs of forced entry. The smoke detectors were disabled. I found what appear to be multiple points of origin.”

“What’s a point of origin?” Reena asked.

“That means that the fire started in more than one place, and from the burn patterns, from the way the fire marked certain areas of the floor, the walls, the furnishings, and the residue, it appears that gasoline was used as a starter, along with what we call trailers. Other fuel, like newspaper or waxed paper, books of matches. It looks as though someone broke in, set trailers through the dining areas and back to the kitchen. You had more fuel back there: pressurized cans, wood cabinets. The framing throughout, the tables, chairs. Gasoline, most likely, was poured over the floor, the furnishings, splashed on the walls. The fire was already involved by the time Reena went outside.”

“Who would do that? Deliberately do that?” Gib shook his head. “I could see a couple of stupid kids breaking in, messing around, having an accident, but you’re talking about deliberately trying to burn us out—with a family upstairs. Who would do that?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Is there anyone who has a grudge against you or your family?”

“No. No, God, we’ve lived in this neighborhood for fifteen years. Bianca grew up here. Sirico’s is an institution.”

“A competitor?”

“I know everyone who runs a restaurant in the area. We’re on good terms.”

“A former employee, maybe. Or someone who works for you who you’ve had to reprimand.”

“Absolutely not. I can swear to it.”

“Someone you or one of your family, or one of your employees, argued with? A customer?”

Gib rubbed his hands over his face, then pushed up to walk to the window. “No one. No one I can think of. We’re a family place. We get some complaints now and then, you can’t run a restaurant without them. But nothing that would send off something like this.”

“Could be one of your employees had an altercation, even outside the job. I’ll want a list of their names. They’ll need to be interviewed.”

“Dad.”

“Not now, Reena. We’ve tried to be good neighbors, and to run the place the way Bianca’s parents did. Modernized the system, some, but it’s the same heart, you know?” There was grief in his voice, but smoking through it was anger.

“It’s a solid place. You work at it hard enough, you make a good living. I don’t know anybody who’d do this to us, or to it.”

“We’ve had calls from neighbors all morning,” Bianca put in as the phone rang again. “I have our oldest girl answering the phone for us. People telling us how sorry they are, offering to help. To clean up, to bring food, to help rebuild. I grew up here. I grew up in Sirico’s. People love Gib. Especially Gib. You’d have to hate to do this, wouldn’t you? No one hates us.”

“Joey Pastorelli hates me.”

“Catarina.” Bianca passed a weary hand over her face. “Joey doesn’t hate you. He’s just a bully.”

“Why do you say he hates you?” John wanted to know.

“He knocked me down and hit me, and tore my shirt. He called me a name, but nobody will tell me what it means. Xander and his friends saw, and they came to help, and Joey ran away.”

“He’s a rough kid,” Gib put in. “And it was . . .” He looked into John’s eyes, and something passed between them Reena didn’t understand. “It was upsetting. He should have counseling at the least. But he’s twelve. I don’t think a twelve-year-old broke in and did what you said was done.”

“It’s worth looking into. Reena, you said you thought you heard the Pastorellis’ dog when you were sitting outside.”

“I think it was him. He’s kind of scary, and has a hard bark. Like a cough that hurts your throat.”

“Gib, I’m thinking if some kid roughed up my daughter, I’d have a few words with him, and his parents.”

“I did. I was at work when Reena and Xander and some of the kids came in. Reena was crying. She hardly ever cries, so I knew she was hurt. Her shirt was ripped. When she told me what happened . . . I was pretty steamed. I . . .”

Slowly, he looked over at his wife, a hint of horror in his eyes. “Oh my God, Bianca.”

“What did you do, Gib?” John brought his attention back.

“I went straight over to the Pastorellis’. Pete was hanging out, and he went over with me. Joe Pastorelli answered the door. He’s been out of work for most of the summer. I lit in.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I was so pissed off. So upset. She’s just a little girl, and her shirt was torn, her leg was bleeding. I said I was tired of his kid bullying mine, and it was going to stop. That this time Joey had gone too far, and I was thinking of calling the cops. If he couldn’t teach his kid any better, the cops would. We yelled at each other.”

“He said you were a fucking do-gooder asshole who should mind his own goddamn business.”

“Catarina!” Bianca’s tone was razor sharp. “Don’t you ever use that kind of language in this house.”

“I’m just saying what he said. For the report. He said Dad was raising a bunch of snotty, whining brats who couldn’t fight their own battles. But he said more swears. Dad said some, too.”

“I can’t tell you exactly what I said, or he said.” Gib pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have a tape recorder in my head like Reena. But it was heated, and it was close to getting physical. Might have, but the kids were standing out in front of the shop. I didn’t want to start a fistfight in front of them, especially since I went over there about violence in the first place.”

“He said somebody ought to teach you a lesson, you and your whole family. With swears,” Reena added. “And he made swear signs when Dad and Pete walked away. I saw Joey when we were all out because of the fire. He smiled at me. A nasty smile.”

“Do the Pastorellis have any other children?”

“No. Just Joey.” Gib sat down on the arm of his wife’s chair. “You want to feel sorry for the kid because it looks like Pastorelli’s pretty hard on him, but he’s such a bully.” He looked at Reena again. “Maybe worse.”

“Like father, like son,” Bianca murmured. “He beats his wife, I think. I’ve seen her with bruises. She keeps to herself, so I don’t know her well. They’ve lived here nearly two years, I think, and I’ve rarely had a conversation with her. The police came once, right after he was laid off. Their next-door neighbors heard shouting and crying and called the police. But Laura, Mrs. Pastorelli, told them nothing was wrong, and that she’d walked into a door.”

“He sounds like a charmer. The police will want to talk to him. I’m sorry this happened.”

“When can we get in, start cleaning up?”

“Going to be a little while yet. Arson team’s got to do their job. Structurally, the place held up pretty well, and your fire doors stopped it from spreading to the upper floors. Your insurance company’s going to need to look at it. These things take time, but we’ll do what we can to expedite. I’ll tell you, it would’ve been worse without Eagle Eye here.” He gave Reena a wink as he rose. “Sorry about all this. I’ll make sure you’re kept informed.”

“Will you come back?” Reena asked him. “So you can show me what’s in your toolbox and what you do with it?”

“I’ll make a point of it. You’ve been a really big help.” He held out a hand, and for the first time her eyes went shy. But she put hers in it for a shake.

“Thanks for the lemonade, Mrs. Hale. Gib? You mind walking me back to my car?”

They walked out together.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of Pastorelli. I still have a hard time believing he’d have gone this far. In my world, you’re that pissed off at a guy, you take a swing at him.”

“Direct approach. If he was involved in this, it could be he wanted to hit you where you live. Your foundation, your tradition, your livelihood. He’s out of work, you’re not. Hey, who’s out of work now?”

“Well, God.”

“You and your employee confront him. Your kids are standing out in front of the restaurant watching you confront him. Neighbors, too, I imagine.”

Gib closed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, people came out.”

“Attack and destroy your place of business, it sure teaches you a lesson. You want to point out his house?”

“There, on the right.” Gib nodded. “The one with the drapes drawn. Hot day to close the curtains. Son of a bitch.”

“You’re going to want to steer clear of him. Push down that urge you’re feeling to confront him over this. He got a car?”

“Truck. That old Ford there. The blue one.”

“About what time did the two of you go a round?”

“Ah, sometime after two, I guess. Lunch crowd was about done.”

As they walked, several people stopped, or opened doors, or stuck their head out a window to call out to Gib. At the Pastorelli house, the curtains stayed closed.

There was a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk near the restaurant, so John stopped while they were still out of earshot. “Your neighbors are going to want to talk to you, ask questions. Be best if you didn’t mention what we’ve talked about.”

“I won’t.” He let out a long breath. “Well, I’ve been thinking about doing some redecorating. Guess this would be the time.”

“When the scene’s cleared, you’re going to see a lot of damage, a lot that was done during suppression. But the bones of your place, they held strong. Give us a few days, and when it’s cleared I’ll come back and take you through myself. You’ve got a nice family, Gib.”

“Thanks. You haven’t met all of them, but I do.”

“I saw all of you last night.” John took out his keys, jingled them in his hand. “Saw how your kids set up food and sandwiches for the firefighters. People who think of doing something positive in their hard times, they’ve got good bones, too. There’s Arson now.” He inclined his head as a car pulled up. “I’m going to have a word with them. We’ll be in touch,” he said and offered his hand.

John walked to the car as the detectives got out of either side, and he gave them a steely grin.

“Yo, Minger.”

“Yo back,” he said. “Well, looks like I’ve done about all your work for you.” He took out a cigarette, lit it. “Let me bring you up-to-date.”

3

It didn’t take a few days. The police came the following afternoon and took Mr. Pastorelli away. Reena saw it happen with her own eyes as she walked home with her best friend since second grade, Gina Rivero.

They stopped when they reached the corner where Sirico’s stood. Both the police and the fire department had put up tape and warnings and barricades.

“It looks lonely,” Reena murmured.

Gina put a hand on her shoulder, expressing support. “My mom said we’ll all light candles before Mass on Sunday for you and your family.”

“That’s nice. Father Bastillo came to see us, at the house. He said stuff about strength in adversity and God working in mysterious ways.”

“He does,” Gina said piously, and touched a hand to the crucifix she wore.

“I think it’s okay to light candles and pray and all that, but it’s better to do something. Like investigate, and find out why, and make sure somebody gets punished. If you just sit around praying, nothing gets done.”

“I think that’s blasphemy,” Gina whispered, and looked around quickly in case an Angel of God was about to strike.

Reena just shrugged. She didn’t see how it could be blasphemy to say what you thought about something, but there was a reason Gina’s older brother Frank called her Sister Mary these days.

“Inspector Minger and the two detectives do stuff. They ask questions and look for evidence, then you know. It’s better to know. It’s better to do something. I wish I’d done something when Joey Pastorelli knocked me down and hit me. But I was so scared, I could barely fight.”

“He’s bigger than you.” Gina’s free arm linked around Reena’s waist. “And he’s mean. Frank says he’s nothing but a little punk who needs his a-s-s kicked.”

“You can say ass, Gina. Donkeys are asses, and it’s even in the Bible. Look, it’s the arson detectives.”

She recognized them, and the car. They wore suit coats and ties like businessmen today. But she’d seen them in the coveralls and helmets when they’d worked inside Sirico’s.

They’d come to the house and talked to her just like Inspector Minger. And a spurt of excitement hit her belly when they got out of their car and walked to the Pastorellis’. “They’re going to Joey’s house.”

“They talked to my dad, too. He came down to look at Sirico’s and talked to them.”

“Ssh. Look.” She wrapped her arm around Gina’s waist, too, and eased them both back, just around the corner, when Mrs. Pastorelli opened the door. “She doesn’t want to let them in.”

“Why not?”

It took a mighty strength of will not to tell, but Reena only shook her head. “They’re showing her a paper.”

“She looks scared. They’re going inside.”

“We’re going to wait,” Reena stated. “We’re going to wait and see.” She walked down to sit on the curb between parked cars. “We can wait right here.”

“We were supposed to go straight back to your house.”

“This is different. You can go up, tell my dad.” She looked up at Gina. “You should go tell my dad. I’m going to wait and see.”

While Gina ran up the sidewalk, Reena sat, her eyes trained on the curtains that hadn’t opened again today—and watched.

She got to her feet when her father came back alone.

His first thought when he looked at her eyes was that it was no longer a child looking back at him. There was a chill in them, a ferocity of chill that was completely adult.

“She tried not to let them in, but they showed her a paper. I think it was a warrant, like on Miami Vice. So she had to let them in.”

He took her hand in his. “I should send you home. That’s what I should do because you’re not even twelve, and this is the kind of thing you shouldn’t have to be part of.”

“But you won’t.”

“No, I won’t.” He sighed. “Your mother handles things the way she handles them. She has her faith and her temper, her rock-hard sense and her amazing heart. Fran, she has the faith and the heart. She believes that people are innately good. That means it’s more natural for them to be good than bad.”

“Not for everybody.”

“No, not for everybody. Bella, right now she’s pretty centered on Bella. She’s walking emotion, and whether people are good or bad isn’t as important to her at the moment, unless it affects her. She’ll probably get over most of that, but she’ll always feel before she thinks. And Xander, he’s got the sunniest nature. A happy kid, who doesn’t mind scrapping.”

“He came to help when Joey was hurting me. He scared Joey away, and Xander’s only nine and a half.”

“That’s his nature, too. He wants to help, especially if somebody’s being hurt.”

“Because he’s like you.”

“That’s nice to hear. And you, my treasure.” He bent down, kissed her fingers. “You’re most like your mother. With something extra all your own. Your curious nature. Always taking things apart, not just to see how they work but how they fit. When you were a baby, it wasn’t enough to tell you not to touch something. You had to touch it, to see what it felt like, to see what happened. It’s never been enough for you to be told something. You have to see for yourself.”

She leaned her head against his arm. The heat was thick and drowsy. Somewhere in the distance thunder grumbled. She wished she had a secret, something deep and dark and personal so she could tell him. She knew, in that moment, she could tell him anything.

Then across the street, the door opened. They brought Mr. Pastorelli out, one detective on either side of him. He was wearing jeans and a dingy white T-shirt. He kept his head down, as if he was embarrassed, but she could see the line of his jaw, the set of his mouth, and she thought, Anger.

One of the detectives carried a big red can, and the other a large plastic bag.

Mrs. Pastorelli was crying, loud sobs, as she stood in the doorway. She held a bright yellow dishcloth and buried her face in it.

She wore white sneakers, and the laces of the left shoe had come untied.

People came out of their houses again to watch. Old Mr. Falco sat on his steps in his red shorts, his skinny white legs almost disappearing into the stone. Mrs. DiSalvo stopped on the sidewalk with her little boy Christopher. He was eating a grape Popsicle. It looked so shiny, so purple. Everything seemed so bright, so sharp, in the sunlight.

Everything was so quiet. Quiet enough that Reena could hear the harsh breaths Mrs. Pastorelli took between each sob.

One of the detectives opened the back door of the car, and the other put his hand on Mr. Pastorelli’s head and put him inside. They put the can—gas can, she realized—and the green plastic bag in the trunk.

The one with dark hair and stubble on his face like Sonny Crockett said something to the other, then crossed the street.

“Mr. Hale.”

“Detective Umberio.”

“We’ve arrested Pastorelli on suspicion of arson. We’re taking him and some evidence into custody.”

“Did he admit it?”

Umberio smiled. “Not yet, but with what we’ve got, odds are he will. We’ll let you know.” He glanced back to where Mrs. Pastorelli sat in the doorway, wailing into the yellow dishcloth. “She’s got a black eye coming up, and she’s crying for him. Takes all kinds.”

He tapped two fingers to his forehead in a little salute, then crossed back to the car. As he got in, pulled away from the curb, Joey streaked out of the house.

He was dressed like his father, in jeans and a T-shirt that was gray from too many washings and not enough bleach. He screamed at the police as he ran to the car, screamed horrible words. And he was crying, Reena saw with a little twist in her heart. Crying for his father as he ran after the car, shaking his fists.

“Let’s go home, baby,” Gib murmured.

Reena walked home with her hand in her father’s. She could still hear the terrible screams as Joey ran hopelessly after his.

News spread. It was a fire of its own with hot pockets and trapped heat that exploded when it hit air. Outrage, an incendiary fuse, carried the flames through the neighborhood, into homes and shops, along the sidewalk and into the parks.

The curtains on the Pastorelli house stayed tightly shut, as if the thin material were a shield.

It seemed to Reena her own house was never closed. Neighbors streamed in with their covered dishes, their support and their gossip.

Did you know he couldn’t make bail?

She didn’t even go to Mass on Sunday.

Mike at the Sunoco station sold him the gas!

My cousin the lawyer said they could charge him with attempted murder.

In addition to the gossip and the speculation was the oft repeated statement: I knew that man was trouble.

Poppi and Nuni came back, driving their Winnebago all the way from Bar Harbor, Maine. They parked it in Uncle Sal’s driveway in Bel Air because he was the oldest and had the biggest house.

They all went down to Sirico’s to look, the uncles, some of the cousins and aunts. It looked like a parade, except there were no costumes, no music. Some of the neighbors came out, too, but they stayed back out of respect.

Poppi was old, but he was robust. It was the word Reena had heard most to describe him. His hair was white as a cloud, and so was his thick mustache. He had a big wide belly and big wide shoulders. He liked to wear golf shirts with the alligator on the pocket. Today’s was red.

Beside him, Nuni looked tiny, and hid her eyes behind sunglasses.

There was a lot of talk, in both English and Italian. The Italian was mostly from Uncle Sal. Mama said he liked to think he was more Italian than manicotti.

She saw Uncle Larry—he was only Lorenzo when someone was teasing him—step over to lay his hand on Mama’s shoulder, and how she lifted her hand to his. He was the quiet one, Uncle Larry, and the youngest of the uncles.

Uncle Gio turned and stared holes through the closed curtains of the Pastorelli house. He was the hothead, and she heard him mutter something in Italian that sounded like a swear. Or a threat. But Uncle Paul—Paolo—shook his head. He was the serious one.

For a long time, Poppi said nothing at all. Reena wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering when his hair wasn’t white and his belly not so big, and he and Nuni had made pizza and put the first dollar in a frame for the wall?

Maybe he remembered how they’d lived upstairs before Mama was born, or how once the mayor of Baltimore had come to eat there. Or when Uncle Larry had broken a glass and cut his hand, and Dr. Trivani had stopped eating his eggplant Parmesan to take him to his office down the street and stitch it up.

He and Nuni told lots of stories about the old days. She liked to listen to them, even when she’d heard them before. So he must remember them.

She wiggled through the cousins and aunts to put her hand in his. “I’m sorry, Poppi.”

His fingers squeezed hers, then to her surprise, he pushed one of the barricades aside. Her heart beat fast and quick as he led her up the steps. She could see through the tape, the burned black wood, the puddles of dirty water. The tray of one of the high chairs had melted into a strange shape. There were scorching marks everywhere, and the floor had bubbled up where it hadn’t burned away.

To her amazement she saw a spray can embedded in a wall as if it had been shot out of a cannon. There were no cheerful colors left, no bottles with candle wax dripped down the sides, no pretty pictures on the wall drawn by her mother’s hand.

“I see ghosts here, Catarina. Good ones. Fire doesn’t scare ghosts away. Gibson?” When he turned, her father stepped through the opening in the barricade. “You have your insurance?”

“Yes. They’ve been down to look. There won’t be a problem with it.”

“You want to use the insurance money to rebuild?”

“There’s no question of that. We may be able to get in and get started as soon as tomorrow.”

“How do you want to begin?”

Uncle Sal started to speak—because he always had an opinion—but Poppi lifted a finger. He was the only one who could, according to Reena’s mother, make Uncle Sal swallow words. “Gibson and Bianca own Sirico’s. It’s for them to decide what’s to be done and how. What can the family do to help?”

“Bianca and I own Sirico’s, but you’re the root it grew from. I’d like to hear your advice.”

Poppi smiled. Reena watched the way it moved over his face, lifting his thick, white mustache, and stopped his eyes from being sad. “You’re my favorite son-in-law.”

And with this old family joke, he stepped down to the sidewalk again. “Let’s go back to the house and talk.”

As they walked back, another parade, Reena saw the curtains on the Pastorelli house twitch.

Talk” was a loose word to describe any event that brought the bulk of the family into one place. Massive amounts of food were required, older children were put in charge of younger ones, which resulted in squabbles or outright wars. Behavior was scolded or laughed over, depending on the mood.

The house filled with the scent of garlic and the basil Bianca cut fresh from her kitchen garden. And noise.

When Poppi told Reena she was to come into the dining room with the adults, butterflies batted wings in her belly.

All the leaves had been put in the table and still it wasn’t big enough for everyone. Most of the children were outside using the folding table or blankets, while some of the women ran herd. But Reena was in the dining room with all the men, her mother and Aunt Mag, who was a lawyer and very smart.

Poppi scooped pasta out of one of the big bowls and put it on Reena’s plate himself. “So this boy, this Joey Pastorelli, he hit you.”

“He hit me in the stomach and he knocked me down and hit me again.”

Poppi breathed through his nose—and he had a big one, so the sound reminded her of the one a bull makes before it charges. “We live in an age when men and women are meant to be equal, but it’s never right for a man to hit a woman, for a boy to hit a girl. But . . . did you do something, say something, to this boy so he thought he had to hit you?”

“I stay away from him because he starts fights in school and in the neighborhood. Once he took out his pocketknife and said he was going to stab Johnnie O’Hara with it because he was a stupid mick, and Sister took it away from him and sent him to Mother Superior. He . . . he looks at me sometimes and it makes my stomach hurt.”

“The day he hit you, what were you doing?”

“I was playing with Gina, at the school playground. We were playing kickball, but it was so hot. We wanted ice cream so she ran home to see if her mother would give her some money for it. I had eighty-eight cents, but that’s not enough for two. And he came up and said I should come with him, that he had something to show me. But I didn’t want to and I said no, that I was waiting for Gina. His face was all red, like he’d been running, and he got mad and grabbed my arm and was pulling me. So I pulled away and said I wasn’t going with him. And he hit me in the stomach. He called me a name that means . . .”

She broke off, looked toward her parents sheepishly. “I looked it up in the dictionary.”

“Of course you did,” Bianca murmured, then she waved a hand in the air. “He called her a little cunt. It’s an ugly word, Catarina. We won’t speak it again in this house.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Your brother came to help you,” Poppi continued. “Because he’s your brother and because it’s right to help someone in trouble. Then your father did what was right, and went to speak to this boy’s father. But the man was not a man, he didn’t stand up and do what was right. He struck out to hurt your father in a cowardly way, to hurt all of us. Was this your fault?”

“No, Poppi. But it was my fault I was too scared to fight back. I won’t be next time.”

He gave a half laugh. “Learn to run,” he said. “And if you can’t run, then you fight. Now.” He sat back, picked up his fork. “Here’s my advice. Salvatore your brother-in-law has a construction business. When we know what’s needed, you can get this for us, at a discount. Gio, your wife’s cousin is a plumber, yes?”

“I’ve already talked to him. Whatever you need, Bianca, Gib.”

“Mag, will you talk to the insurance company, see what hoops we can avoid jumping through to get this check?”

“More than happy to. I’d like to look at the policy, see if there might be anything we’d want to change or adjust for the future. Then there’s the matter of the criminal action against this . . .” She lifted her eyebrows at Reena. “This person. If it goes to trial, Reena will most likely be required to testify. I don’t think it will,” she continued. “I’ve put out some feelers. Typically arson cases are very difficult to prove, but they appear to have this one locked.”

She wound pasta around her fork as she spoke, ate economically. “Your investigators were very thorough, and the fire-starter very stupid. The prosecutor feels he’s going to take the plea bargain to avoid the possibility of being tried for attempted murder. They’ve got evidence up the yin-yang, including the fact that he was questioned twice before regarding other fires.”

Mag twirled more pasta as voices erupted around the table.

“He was laid off earlier this summer from his job as a mechanic,” she continued. “There was a suspicious fire in the garage a few nights later. Minimal damage, as another employee had plans to use said garage for a tryst with his girlfriend. They talked to people, including Pastorelli, but couldn’t determine arson. A couple of years ago, he had an altercation with his wife’s brother in D.C. The brother managed an electrical supply house. Somebody pitched a Molotov cocktail through the window. A . . .”

She sent another look down at Reena. “A lady of the evening saw a truck speeding away, even got a partial on the plate. But Pastorelli’s wife swears he was home all night, and they took her word over the other woman’s.”

Mag picked up her wine. “They’ll use this as a pattern and nail him down.”

“If Inspector Minger and our arson detectives had been in charge, they’d have stopped him.”

Mag smiled at Reena. “Maybe. But he’s stopped now.”

“Lorenzo?”

“You’ve got my strong back,” he said. “And I’ve got a friend in the flooring business. I can get you a good price on replacements.”

“Got dump trucks and labor at your disposal,” Paul added. “Got a friend’s brother-in-law in restaurant supplies. Get you a good discount.”

“With all this, and the neighborhood, Bianca, the kids and I can take most of the money and have a vacation in Hawaii.”

Her father was joking, but his voice was a little shaky, so Reena knew he was touched.

When the leftovers had been doled out or put away and the kitchen put to rights, and the last of the uncles, aunts and cousins had trailed out the door, Gib got a beer and took it out on the front steps. He needed to stew, and preferred stewing with a cold beer.

The family had come through, and he’d expected no less. He’d gotten a “Gee, that’s terrible” from his own parents. And had expected no more.

That’s the way it was.

But he was thinking now that for two years he’d been living on the same block with a man who set fires to solve his personal problems. A man who could have chosen to burn his house instead of his business.

A man whose twelve-year-old son had attacked—Christ, had he meant to rape her?—his youngest daughter.

It left him sick, and brought home to him that he was too trusting, too willing to give the benefit. Too soft.

He had a wife and four children to protect, and at the moment felt completely inadequate.

He took a pull on a bottle of Peroni when John Minger parked at the curb.

Minger wore khakis and a T-shirt with canvas high-tops that looked older than dirt. He crossed the sidewalk.

“Gib.”

“John.”

“Got a minute?”

“Got plenty of them. Want a beer?”

“Wouldn’t say no.”

“Have a seat.” Gib tapped the step beside him, then got up and went into the house. He came back with the rest of the six-pack.

“Nice evening.” John tipped back a bottle. “Little cooler.”

“Yeah. I’d say it’s merely approaching the fifth level of hell instead of hitting it square on.”

“Rough day?”

“No. No, not really.” He leaned back, bracing one elbow on the step above. “My wife’s family came today. It was hard watching her mother and father look at that.” He jerked his chin toward Sirico’s. “But they’re handling it. More than. Ready to shove up their sleeves, dig in. Going to have so much help I can pretty much sit here with my thumb up my ass and have the place up and running in a month.”

“So you’re feeling like a failure. That’s what he wants you to feel.”

“Pastorelli?” Gib lifted his bottle in toast. “Mission fucking accomplished. His kid came after mine, laid hands on mine, and I’m thinking about it now, looking at it now, really looking, and I think, Sweet Jesus Christ, I think he was going to try to rape my little girl.”

“He didn’t. She got scrapes and bruises, and it doesn’t help to worry about what might’ve happened.”

“You’ve got to keep them safe. That’s the job. My oldest is out on a date. Nice boy, nothing serious. And I’m terrified.”

John took a long, slow drink. “Gib, one of the things a man like Pastorelli’s after is your fear. It makes him feel important.”

“Never going to forget him, am I? That makes him pretty fucking important. Sorry. Sorry.” Gib straightened, shoved at his hair. “Feeling sorry for myself, that’s all. I’ve got an entire family—with members too numerous to count—ready to help me out. I’ve got the neighborhood ready. Just got to shake this off.”

“You will. Maybe this will help. I came by to tell you you’re cleared to go in, start putting your place back together. Doing that, it’s taking it back from him.”

“It’ll be good, good to actually do something.”

“He’s going away, Gib. I’m going to tell you that a fraction of arson cases result in arrest, and we’ve got him. Son of a bitch had shoes and clothes stuffed in his shed, stinking of gas, gas he bought locally from a kid at the Sunoco who knew him. He had a crowbar wrapped up in the clothes, what we figured he used to break in. He was stupid enough to help himself to beer out of your cooler before he torched the place. Drank one while he was in there. We got his prints off the bottle.”

He held up the Peroni, tipped the bottle to the side to catch the sun on the glass. “People think fire takes everything, but it leaves the unexpected. Like a bottle of Bud. He broke into your cash register, took your petty cash. You had extra ones in a bank envelope and we found it on him. We got his prints inside the drawer, off the cooler in your kitchen. There’s enough his public defender took the deal.”

“There won’t be a trial?”

“Sentencing hearing. I want you to feel good about this, Gib. I want you to feel just. A lot of people see arson as a property crime. Just a crime against a building, but it’s not. You know it’s not. It’s about people who lose their home or their business, who see their hard work and their memories burned away. What he did to you and yours was malicious and it was personal. Now he pays.”

“Yeah.”

“The wife couldn’t scrape the money together for bail, or for a lawyer. She tried. Word’s out on the kid. Last time the cops were in there, he threw a chair at one of them. Mother begged them not to take him away, so they let it go. You’re going to want to keep your eye on him.”

“I will, but I don’t think they’ll stay here. They rent the place, and they’re behind, three months.” Gib shrugged. “Word gets out in the neighborhood, too. Maybe this was my wake-up call, pay more attention to what I’ve got.”

“You’ve got the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life for a wife. You don’t mind me saying.”

“Hard to mind.” Gib opened another beer, leaned back again. “First time I saw her, I was lightning struck. Came in with some pals. We were thinking about doing The Block later, maybe picking up some girls, or going to a bar. And there she was. It was like somebody pushed their fist through my chest, grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed. She was wearing jeans, bell-bottoms, and this white top—peasant top they called them. If anybody had asked me before that moment if I believed in love at first sight, I’d’ve said hell no. But that’s what it was. She turned her head and looked at me, and bang. I saw the rest of my life in her eyes.”

He laughed a little, seemed to relax. “I still do, that’s the amazing thing. Heading toward twenty years, and I still see everything there is when I look at her.”

“You’re a lucky man.”

“Damn right. I’d’ve given up everything, anything, to be with her. Instead I got this life, this family. You got kids, John?”

“I do. A son and two daughters. A grandson and granddaughter, too.”

“Grandkids? No kidding?”

“Lights of my life. I didn’t do all I should’ve done when my kids were coming up. I was nineteen when the first came along. Got my girl pregnant, we got married. Next one came two years later, and the third three years after that. I was fighting fires back then. That life, those hours, can be hard on a family. I didn’t put them first, and that’s my fault. So we got a divorce. Nearly ten years ago now.”

“Sorry.”

“Funny thing is, after, we got along better. We got closer. Maybe the divorce burned away the bad stuff, made room for some good. So.” He tipped back his bottle. “I’m free if your wife’s got an older sister available.”

“Just brothers, but her cousins are legion.”

They were silent for a moment, companionably. “This is a good spot.” John sipped and smoked and studied the neighborhood. “A good spot, Gib. You need another pair of hands putting your place back together, you can have mine.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Upstairs, Reena lay on her bed and listened to their voices carry up to her open window as the sky went soft with summer twilight.

It was full dark when the screams woke her. She tumbled out of bed with thoughts of fire chasing her. He’d come back. He’d come back to burn their house.

It wasn’t fire, and it was Fran who’d screamed. Fran who stood on the sidewalk now with her face buried against the shoulder of the boy who’d taken her to the movies.

The television was on in the living room, with the sound turned down low. Both of her parents were at the doorway already. When she pushed between them, she saw why Fran had screamed, why her mother and father stood so stiffly in the open doorway.

The dog was burning, its fur smoldering, smoking as was the pool of blood that had come from its throat. But she recognized the hard-barking mutt Joey Pastorelli called Fabio.

She watched the police take Joey Pastorelli away, much as they had his father. But he didn’t keep his head lowered, and his eyes had a vicious glee in them.

It was one of the last things she remembered with absolute clarity during those long, hot weeks of August when summer was ending and her childhood was over.

She remembered the glee in Joey’s eyes, the strut in his walk as they took him to the police car. And she remembered the smears of blood, his own dog’s blood, staining his hands.

4

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, 1992

The glossy pink goo of Mariah Carey’s overorchestrated Emotions oozed through the wall of the adjoining room. It was a never-ending stream, like frothy lava. Inescapable and increasingly terrifying.

Reena didn’t mind music when she studied. She didn’t mind partying, small petty wars or the thunder of God’s judgment. After all, she grew up in a house with a big, loud family.

But if her dorm mate spun that track just one more time, she was going in and jabbing a pencil through her eye. When that was done, she was going to make her eat that damned CD, jewel case and all.

She was in the middle of finals, for God’s sake. And the load she was taking this semester was a killer.

Worth it though, she reminded herself. It was going to be worth it.

She pushed back from her computer, rubbed her eyes. Maybe she needed a short break. Or earplugs.

She got up, ignored the flotsam of two college students sharing one small room and opened the little refrigerator for a Diet Pepsi. She found an open pint of low-fat milk, four Slim-Fasts, a Diet Sprite and a bag of carrot sticks.

This was just wrong. Why did everyone steal her stuff? Of course, who the hell was going to pilfer Gina’s I’m-on-an-endless-diet food, but still.

She sat on the floor, Mariah’s voice swimming in her overtaxed brain like evil mermaids, and stared at the piles of books and notes on her desk.

Why did she think she could do this? Why did she think she wanted to do this? She could have followed Fran’s lead, into the family business.

She could be home right now. Or out on a date like a normal person. Once, becoming a teenager had been her life’s ambition. Now she was nearly out the other side of the era, and she was sitting in a crowded dorm room, with no Diet Pepsi, buried under a course load for the insane masochist.

She was eighteen years old and hadn’t had sex yet. She barely had what passed for a boyfriend.

Bella was getting married next month, Fran was practically beating guys off with a stick, and Xander plowed happily through what their mother called his bevy of beauties.

And she was alone on a Saturday night because she was as obsessed with finals as her dorm mate was with Mariah Carey.

Oh no, now it was Celine Dion, she realized.

Just kill me now.

It was her own fault. She was the one who’d studied her brains out in high school, and worked more weekends than dated. Because she’d known what she wanted. She’d known since that long hot week in August.

She wanted the fire.

So she’d studied, with her eye focused on more than learning. On scholarships. She worked, tucking her money away like a squirrel with nuts in case the scholarships didn’t come.

But they had, so she was here, at the University of Maryland, sharing a room with her oldest friend, and already thinking about the grad courses down the road.

When the semester was over she’d go back home, work in the shop, carve away most of her free time down at the fire station. Or talking John Minger into letting her do ride-alongs.

Of course, there was Bella’s wedding. There’d been little on the menu but Bella’s wedding for the last nine months. Which, come to think of it, was a really good reason to be here, alone in her room on a Saturday night.

It could be worse. She could be back at Wedding Central.

If she ever got married—which meant she’d need an actual, official boyfriend first—she was going to keep it simple. Let Bella have the endless fittings of the elaborate dress—though it was gorgeous—and the endless, often weepy debates about shoes and hairstyles and flowers. The plans—more like a major war campaign—for the enormous reception.

She’d rather have a nice family wedding at St. Leo’s, then a party at Sirico’s.

Most likely, she’d just end up being a bridesmaid, perennially. Hell, she was already an expert in the field.

And for God’s sake, how many times could Lydia listen to the theme from Beauty and the Beast without going into a coma?

On a sudden inspiration, Reena sprang up, kicked her way over to the portable CD player and pushed through the masses of jewel cases.

With her teeth set in a fierce grin, she plugged in Nirvana and blasted “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

While the war raged between diva and grunge, the phone rang.

She didn’t turn down the music—it was a matter of principle now—just shouted into the phone.

A third blast of music assaulted her ear as Gina shouted back.

“Party!”

“I told you I have to study.”

“Party! Come on, Reene, it’s just starting to roll. You gotta live.”

“Don’t you have a lit final Monday?”

“Party!”

She had to laugh. Gina could always make her laugh. The religious phase she’d gone through during the summer of the fire had morphed into a poetry phase, into a rock star phase, then a fashion diva phase.

Now it was all party, all the time.

“You’re going to tank it,” Reena warned.

“I’m putting it all in the hands of a higher power and am reviving my brain with cheap wine. Come on, Reena, Josh is here. He’s asking where you are.”

“He is?”

“And looking all sad and broody. You know you’re going to ace every damn thing anyway. You better come save me before I let some guy take advantage of my drunken self. Hey, on second thought . . .”

“Jen and Deb’s place, right?”

“Party!”

“Twenty minutes,” Reena said on another laugh, then hung up.

It took her nearly that long to change out of ancient sweatpants, wiggle into jeans, decide on a top and deal with the hair that was currently an explosion of curls down to her shoulder blades.

She kept the music blasting while she dressed, added blusher to relieve the cramming-for-finals pallor.

Should study, should get a good night’s sleep. Shouldn’t go. She flicked on mascara, lectured herself.

But she was so tired of being the one who always did the sensible thing. She’d just stay for an hour, have a little fun, keep Gina from getting into too much trouble.

And see Josh Bolton.

He was so good-looking with the sun-swept hair, the dazzling blue eyes, that sweet, shy smile. He was twenty, a lit major. He was going to be a writer.

And he was asking where she was.

He was going to be the one. She was ninety-nine percent sure of it. He was going to be her first.

Maybe tonight. She set the mascara down and stared at herself in the mirror. Maybe tonight she’d finally know what it was like. She pressed a hand to her belly as it jittered with anticipation and nerves. This could be the last time she looked at herself as a virgin.

She was ready, and she wanted it to be with someone like Josh. Someone dreamy and sweet, and with some experience so there wasn’t a lot of embarrassing fumbling.

She hated not knowing what to do. She’d studied the basics, of course. The anatomy, the physicality. And she’d absorbed the romance of the act in books and movies. But the doing of it, the getting naked and fitting two bodies together, would be an absolute first.

It wasn’t something you could practice or diagram or experiment with until you worked out the kinks in your technique.

So she wanted an understanding and patient partner who’d guide her over the rough spots until she found her own way.

It didn’t matter so much that she didn’t love him. She liked him a lot, and she wasn’t looking for marriage like Bella.

Not yet, anyway.

She just wanted to know, to feel, to see how it worked. And, maybe it was stupid, but she wanted to shed this last vestige of childhood. Having it all in the back of her mind was probably why she’d been restless and distracted the last few days.

And, of course, she was overthinking it again.

She grabbed her purse, shut off the music and rushed out of the dorm.

It was a beautiful night, warm and star-studded. Ridiculous to waste it buried in chem notes, she told herself as she walked toward the parking lot. She tipped her face up to the sky, started to smile, but a chill tickled down her spine. She glanced over her shoulder, scanned the grass, the paths, the glow of the security lights.

Nobody was watching her, for God’s sake. She gave herself a little shake, but quickened her pace. It was just guilt, that was all. She could live with a little guilt.

She hopped into her secondhand Dodge Shadow and, giving in to paranoia, locked the doors before driving away.

The group house was a five-minute drive off campus, an old three-story brick that was lit up like Christmas. Partiers spilled out onto the lawn, and music spilled out of the open door.

She caught the sweet drift of a burning joint and heard snatches of high-toned debates on the brilliance of Emily Dickinson, the current administration and more comfortable discussions on the Orioles’ infield.

She had to squeeze her way through once she was inside, narrowly avoided having a glass of some alcoholic beverage splashed down her front, and felt some relief that she actually knew some of the people crammed into the living room.

Gina spotted her and wiggled through the bodies to grab her shoulders. “Reene! You’re here! I have such news!”

“Don’t tell me any more until you eat an entire box of Tic Tacs.”

“Oh, shit.” Gina dug into the pocket of jeans so tight they must be causing organ damage. The Slim-Fast hadn’t whittled off all the twelve pounds she’d gained in their first semester.

She pulled out the little plastic box she always carried and tapped several orange Tic Tacs in her mouth. “Been drinking,” she said, chewing.

“Who’d have guessed? Look, you can leave your car and I’ll drive you back. I’ll be the DD.”

“It’s okay, I’m going to throw up soon. I’ll be better then. Anyway, news!” She pulled Reena through an equally jammed kitchen and out the back door.

There were more people in the yard. Did the entire campus at College Park decide to blow off studying for finals?

“Scott Delauter’s totally flunking out,” Gina announced, and did a little butt boogie to accompany the statement.

“Who’s Scott Delauter and why do you boogie on his misfortune?”

“He’s one of the housemates. You met him. Short guy, big teeth. And I dance because his misfortune is our jackpot. They’re going to be one short next semester and another of the group graduates next December. Jen says they can squeeze both of us in next term if we bunk together. Reena, we can get out of the pit.”

“Move in here? Gina, come back to my world. We can’t afford it.”

“We’re talking about splitting the rent and stuff four ways. It’s not that much more. Reena.” Gina gripped her arms, her dark eyes dazed with excitement and cheap wine, her voice reverent. “There’s three bathrooms. Three bathrooms for four people. Not one for six.”

“Three bathrooms.” Reena spoke it like a prayer.

“It’s salvation. When Jen told me, I had a vision. A vision, Reena. I think I saw the Blessed Mother smiling. And she was holding a loofah.”

“Three bathrooms,” Reena repeated. “No, no, I must not be drawn to the dark side by shiny objects. How much is the rent?”

“It’s . . . when you consider the split, and how you won’t need the food allowance on campus because we can cook here, it’s practically free.”

“That much, huh?”

“We’re both working this summer. We can save. Please, please, please, Reena. They have to know pretty quick. Look, look, we’ll have a yard.” She swept her arm out toward it. “We can plant flowers. Hell, we’ll grow our own vegetables and set up a stand. We’ll actually make money living here.”

“Tell me how much, Gina.”

“Let me get you a drink first—”

“Spit it out,” Reena demanded. And winced when Gina blurted out the monthly rent.

“But you have to factor in—”

“Ssh, let me think.” Reena closed her eyes, calculated. It would be tight, she decided. But if they made their own meals, cut out some of the money they blew on movies, CDs, clothes. She could give up new clothes for the wonder of three bathrooms.

“I’m in.”

Gina let out a whoop, caught Reena in a hug that danced them both over the grass. “It’s going to be awesome! I can’t wait. Let’s go get some wine and drink to Scott Delauter’s academic failures.”

“Seems mean, but oddly appropriate.” She swung around with Gina, then stopped dead. “Josh. Hi.”

He closed the back door behind him then gave her that slow, shy smile that curled her toes. “Hi. Heard you were here.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d take a break from studying. My brains were starting to leak out my ears.”

“Got tomorrow for the final push.”

“That’s what I told her.” Gina beamed at both of them. “Listen, you two get cozy. I’m going to go throw up now, in what will shortly be one of my own bathrooms.” She gave Reena a last boozy hug. “I’m so happy.”

Josh watched the door slap shut behind Gina. “Should I ask why Gina’s so happy to puke?”

“She’s happy because we’re going to move in here next semester.”

“Really? That’s great.” He moved in a little, and with his hands still in his pockets dipped his head to kiss her. “Congratulations.”

Nerves sizzled over her skin, a sensation she found fascinating and wonderfully adult. “I thought I’d like living in the dorm. The adventure. Me and Gina from the neighborhood, doing the coed thing. But some of the others on our floor make me crazy. One’s trying to destroy my brain with round-the-clock Mariah Carey.”

“Insidious.”

“I think it was starting to work.”

“You look great. I’m glad you came. I was about to head out when I heard you were here.”

“Oh.” Pleasure fizzled. “You’re leaving.”

He smiled again, and took a hand out of his pocket to take one of hers. “Not anymore.”

Bo Goodnight wasn’t sure what he was doing in a strange house with a bunch of college types he didn’t know. Still, a party was a party, and he’d let Brad rope him into it.

The music was okay, and there were plenty of girls. Tall ones, short ones, round ones, thin ones. It was like a smorgasbord of females.

Including the one Brad was currently crazy about, and the reason they were here.

She was a friend of a friend of one of the girls who lived in the house. And Bo liked her fine—in fact, he might have gone for her himself if Brad hadn’t seen her first.

Rules of friendship meant he had to hang back there.

At least Brad had lost the toss and had to serve as designated driver. Maybe neither of them should’ve been drinking as they were still shy of the legal age. But a party was a party, Bo thought again as he sipped his beer.

Besides, he was earning his own living, paying his own rent, cooking his own meals—such as they were. He was as much, hell more of an adult than a lot of the college boys knocking them back.

Considering his options, he scanned the room. He was a long, lanky boy of twenty with a wavy mop of black hair and eyes that were green and somewhat dreamy. His face was on the narrow side, like his build, but he thought he’d built up some pretty good biceps swinging a hammer and hauling lumber.

He felt a bit out of place with the snippets of conversation he made out—bitching about finals, comments about poli sci and female studies. College hadn’t been for him. He’d never been happier than on the last day of high school. He’d been working summers up until then. First as a laborer, then an apprentice, and now, at twenty, he was a carpenter who made a decent wage.

He loved making things out of wood, and he was good at it. Maybe he was good at it because he loved it. He’d gotten his education on the job, with the smell of sawdust and sweat.

That’s how he liked it.

And he made his own way. He didn’t have Daddy paying the bills like most of the people here.

The kernel of resentment surprised him, even embarrassed him a little. Flicking it aside, he made a deliberate attempt to loosen his shoulders. And taking a long, slow sweep of the room, he homed in on a couple of girls huddled together on a couch, chattering at each other.

The redhead looked very promising and if not, the brunette was a strong backup.

He took a step toward them, and Brad blocked him. “Out of my way, I’m about to brighten a couple of female hearts.”

“Told you you’d have a good time. Listen, I’m about to have a better one. Cammie and I are heading out, to her place. And I believe it’s not presumptuous to say, Score.”

Bo looked at his pal, noted the about-to-get-laid gleam behind the lenses of Brad’s glasses. “You’re ditching me in a houseful of strangers so you can go get naked with a girl?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, that’s reasonable. She kicks your ass out though, don’t call me. Find your own way home.”

“Won’t be a problem. She’s just gone to get her purse, so—”

“Wait.” Bo’s hand curled hard around Brad’s arm as he saw the blonde—just a glimpse at first—through the crowd. A sexy tumble of wild curls the color of good, natural oak. She was laughing, and her skin—it looked like porcelain—was flushed along the high curve of her cheekbones.

He could see the shape of her lips and the little mole above them. It was as if his vision had sharpened, had telescoped, and he could see the details of her through the haze of smoke, the crowd of faces. Long eyes he thought were almost exactly the same shade of her hair, a long, slim nose. And that luscious curve of lips. Gold hoops at her ears. Two in the left, one in the right.

She was tall—maybe she was wearing heels, he couldn’t see her feet. But he could see the chain around her neck holding some sort of stone or crystal, the outline of her breasts against a dark pink top.

For an instant, maybe two, the music stopped for him. The room went silent.

Then someone stepped into his line of vision and it all came roaring back.

“Who is that girl?”

“Which girl?” Absently Brad looked over his shoulder, then shrugged it. “Place is crawling with them. Hey, next time you take a side trip, take me along.”

“What?” Still dazzled, Bo looked down. He could barely remember his friend’s name. “I gotta . . . here.” He pushed the beer into Brad’s hand and started shoving his way through the crowd.

By the time he got to where she’d been, there was no sign of her. A kind of panic bubbled in his throat as he maneuvered his way into the kitchen, a dining room where people sat at, on and under the table.

“Did a girl come through here? Tall blonde, curly hair, pink shirt.”

“Nobody’s come in but you.” A girl with a short wedge of black hair sent him a sultry smile. “But I can be blond.”

“Maybe some other time.”

He searched the house, all the way to the third floor, and all the way down again where he circled both the front and back yards.

He found blondes, he found curls. But he never found the one who’d made the music stop.

She was driving with her heart in her throat. She thought it was good that she was driving herself. It showed that she wasn’t being swept along, that she was making a choice. She was in control of her actions, the consequences.

Making love the first time, every time, should be a choice.

She only wished she had thought ahead enough to have bought some sexy underwear.

Josh lived in an off-campus apartment, and his roommate was pulling an all-nighter with a study group. When he’d told her that—he’d been kissing her when he told her that—she’d been the one to say, Let’s go there.

She was the one who’d made the move. And she was the one beginning a new phase of her life. But it didn’t stop her hands from trembling a little.

She parked a few spaces down from where he pulled in, carefully turned off the engine, picked up her purse. She knew exactly what she was doing, she reminded herself, illustrating it by locking her car, placing her keys in the little inside pocket where she always kept them.

She smiled when she held her hand out to his. They crossed the lot, stepped through the front door of the building when another car pulled in. And parked.

“Place is a little messy,” Josh said as they started up the stairs to the second floor.

“At the moment, ours is about to be condemned by the health department.”

She waited until he’d unlocked the door, then stepped inside. He was right about the mess—clothes, shoes, an empty pizza box, books, magazines. The sofa looked like it had been salvaged from the dump, then haphazardly covered with a Terps blanket.

“Homey,” she said.

“Fairly disgusting, actually. I should’ve told you to give me ten minutes before coming up. I could’ve shoved stuff in closets.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She turned and let herself go into his arms. He smelled like Irish Spring and tasted like cherry Life Savers. His hand skimmed over her hair, down her back.

“You want some music?”

She nodded. “Music’s good.”

He ran his hands down her arms before he stepped back, walked over to a stereo. “I don’t think we have any Mariah Carey.”

“Praise Jesus.” With a laugh, she pressed a hand to her racing heart. “I’m nervous. I’ve never done this before.”

His mouth opened and closed again as his eyes widened. “Never . . .”

“You’re my first.”

“God.” He stared another moment, blue eyes serious. “Now I’m nervous. Are you sure about—?”

“I am. I really am.” She crossed to him, then looked down at the pile of CDs. “How about this?” She picked out Nine Inch Nails.

“Sin?” He gave her that sweet smile. “Is this a Catholic girl thing coming out?”

“Maybe a little. Anyway, I like their cover of Queen’s Get Down, Make Love. And, well, it seems appropriate.”

He put it in the changer, turned back just to look at her. “I’ve been hung up on you since the beginning of the semester.”

Warmth spread in her belly. “You didn’t ask me out until after spring break.”

“Started to, dozens of times. I kept choking. And I thought you were with that guy, that psych major.”

“Kent?” At the moment, she couldn’t even bring Kent’s face into her mind. “We went out a few times. Mostly we just study together now and then. I was never with him.”

“Now you’re with me.”

“Now I’m with you.”

“If you change your mind—”

“I won’t. I never do.” She laid her hands on his face, her lips on his lips. “I want this. I want you.”

He touched her hair, twining his fingers through the mass of it while he kissed her, long, slow. Bodies drew together, magnetized by lust.

Hers felt electric, and alive.

“We can go into the bedroom.”

This is it, she thought. Held her breath; let it go. “Okay.”

He held her hand. She wanted to remember that, remember every little detail. The way he smelled like Irish Spring and tasted like cherry Life Savers, and how his hair curtained over his temples when he dipped his head.

The room, his bedroom, with its messy twin bed—blue-striped sheets and a denim-colored spread, a single pillow that looked flat as a pancake. He had a bulky old metal desk, with a muscular computer and a jumble of books and floppies and papers. A corkboard with more notes, photographs, flyers.

The bottom drawer of his dresser—small enough to make her think it had been his through childhood—was open and crooked. There was a film of dust on it, more books, and a big clear jar half full of change. Mostly pennies.

He turned the lamp by the bed on low.

“Unless you’d rather have it off,” he said.

“No.” How could she see if it was dark? “Um. I don’t have protection.”

“I’ve got that covered. I mean—” He actually flushed, then laughed. “I mean, it’s not covered at the moment. But I have condoms.”

It was easier than she’d thought it would be. The way they turned to each other, into each other. The lips, the hands, the thrill that leapfrogged over nerves.

The kisses went deep and breath came quick as they sat on the bed. As they lay back. She had a moment to wish she’d thought to take her shoes off first—wouldn’t it be awkward?—then there was so much heat and movement.

His mouth on her neck, his hands on her breast. Over her shirt, then under it. She’d been here before, but never with the knowledge that this was only the beginning.

His skin was so warm, so smooth, his body so slight it brought on a flood of tenderness. She’d imagined this, the rising excitement, the sensation of her skin sliding along another’s, the sounds desire pushed out of her. Gasps and moans and hums of pleasure.

His eyes were so vivid and blue, his hair so silky. She loved the way he kissed her, wished he would simply kiss her forever.

When his hand moved between her legs, she tensed. This is where she’d always stopped in the past. This privacy she’d never allowed to be invaded. Then he stopped, this sweet boy, whose heart was hammering against hers, and pressed his lips to the side of her throat.

“It’s okay, we can just—”

She took his hand, brought it back to her center, pressed. “Yes.” She said yes, then closed her eyes.

The shudder ran through her. Oh, this was new! This was beyond what she’d known before, or felt before, or understood. The body was a miracle and hers was quickening with heat and aches. She clutched at him, tried to find her balance. Then again, let it go.

He said her name, and she felt him shudder, too. Then his mouth was on her breast, all wet and hot, pulling racking sensations up from her belly. She reached for him, and he was so hard. Fascinated, she explored. When he sucked in his breath and reared up, she released him as if she’d been burned.

“I’m sorry. Did I do something wrong?”

“No. No.” He gulped in another breath. “I, ah, I need to suit up.”

“Oh. Okay.” Everything in her was quivering, so she must be ready.

He got a condom out of the drawer by the bed. Her first instinct was to look away, but she shook it off. He was going inside her, that part of him would be inside her. It was better to see, to know, to understand.

She braced, but when he’d put it on, he rolled back to her to kiss her once more. To kiss and stroke until the hard ball of nerves dissolved again.

“It’s going to hurt a little. I think it’s going to hurt for a minute. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” It should hurt, a little, she thought. A change so big shouldn’t come without some pain. Or else it didn’t matter.

She felt him pushing at her, into her and struggled not to fight against it. He kept kissing her.

Soft on her lips, hard between her legs.

There was pain, a shock of it that took the dreamy edge off the moment. Then it eased into a kind of ache, and the ache—as he began to move inside her—into a confusing mix of excitement and discomfort.

Then he pressed his face into her hair, his slim, smooth body fused to hers. And it was only sweet.

5

It was strange moving back home for the summer, hauling her things from the dorm, knowing for the next three months she wouldn’t have classes, or Gina moaning every morning when the alarm went off.

Still, once it was done, and she was back in her old room, it was as natural as breathing.

It wasn’t the same. She was different now. She had taken several deliberate steps away from childhood. Maybe the girl who’d packed her things the previous summer was still inside her, but the one who’d come back knew more, had experienced more. And was ready, more ready than ever to see what was next.

Even the house had changed in her absence. She’d be sharing with Fran for the next few weeks. Bella needed her own room for all the wedding paraphernalia, and Fran, in her easygoing way, had turned over her own bedroom for the duration.

“Easier,” Fran said when Reena asked her. “Keeps the peace and it’s only for a couple more weeks. She’s all but moved into the house Vince’s parents bought for them.”

“I can’t believe they bought them a house.” Reena arranged tops in her second drawer the way she liked best. According to color.

The single thing she wouldn’t miss about dorm life was the constant disorder.

“Well, they’re rich. This is a great dress,” Fran added as she hung some of Reena’s clothes in the closet. “Where’d you get it?”

“Hit the mall after finals. Shopping’s a great stress reliever.” And she’d wanted some new things, for her new self. “It’s sort of strange, Bella being the first of us to move out. I thought it would be you or me. She’s always been the most needy.”

“Vince is giving her what she needs.” Fran turned, and though she knew her sister’s face and form as intimately as her own, Reena was struck. In the streams of afternoon light, Fran looked like a painting. Gilded and gorgeous.

“I don’t know him all that well, but he seems nice—steady. And God knows he’s handsome.”

“Crazy about her. Treats her like a princess, which is what she’s always wanted. Rich doesn’t hurt either,” Fran added with a tiny smirk. “Once he finishes law school and passes the bar, he’ll go straight onto the fast track at his father’s firm. Rightfully so, from what I hear. He’s brilliant. Mama and Dad like him a lot.”

“How about you?”

“I do. He’s got style, which Bella likes, but he’s easy around the family, and slips into the rhythm when we’re here, or down at the shop.” Something wistful came into her face as she kept her hands busy unpacking Reena’s things. “He looks at Bella like she’s a work of art. I don’t mean that in a bad way,” she added. “It’s like he’s stunned by his good fortune. Most of all, he rolls with her moods. Which are legion.”

“Then he has the seal of approval.” Reena walked over to the closet herself, drew out the mint green confection of a bridesmaid dress. “Could be uglier.”

“Sure.” Studying it, Fran leaned on the jamb, folded her arms. “She could’ve gone with the puce. We’ll all look a bit sallow and silly next to her elegant radiance. Which is exactly the plan.”

With a grin, Reena let the dress fall back. “Better than the pumpkin orange with the million flounces and puff sleeves cousin Angela decked us out in last year.”

“Don’t remind me. Even Bella’s not that mean.”

“Let’s make a pact. When our turns come around, we pick dresses for each other that don’t make us look like homely runners-up.”

Fran put her arms around Reena, pressed cheek to cheek and swayed. “It’s so good to have you home.”

She walked down to Sirico’s at lunchtime, straight into the familiar scents and sounds.

They’d done more than clean up and repair after the fire. They’d kept traditions—the kitchen area open to the dining area, the bottles of Chianti serving as candleholders, the wide glass display holding the desserts still purchased from the Italian bakery every day.

But they’d made changes, too, as if to say they not only weren’t leveled by adversity, but would use it to thrive.

The walls were a dusky Tuscan yellow now, and her mother had done dozens of new drawings. Not only of the family, but of the neighborhood itself, of Sirico’s as it had been, as it was now. The booths were a defiant red, with the traditional red-and-white-checked cloths covering the tables.

New lighting kept the place cheerful even on gloomy days, or could be dimmed to add atmosphere for the private parties they’d begun booking over the last two years.

Her father was at the big work counter, ladling sauce on dough. There were touches of gray in his hair now that had started weaving in during those weeks after the fire. He also needed reading glasses, which annoyed the hell out of him. Especially if anyone told him they made him look distinguished.

Her mother was back at the stove, minding the sauces and pastas. Fran had already donned her bright red apron and was serving plates of lasagna that were today’s lunch special.

On the way to the kitchen, Reena stopped by tables, greeted neighbors and regulars, laughed each time she was told she needed to eat, get some meat on her bones.

Gib was sliding one pizza into the oven, taking another out by the time she got to him.

“There’s my girl.” He set the pie aside and gathered her in for a rib-crusher. He smelled of flour and sweat. “Fran said you were home, but we were swamped. Couldn’t get away to come up.”

“Came by to pitch in. Bella in the back?”

“You just missed Bella. Wedding emergency.” He picked up the pizza cutter, divided the pie with quick, practiced strokes. “Something about rose petals. Or maybe it was bud vases.”

“Then you’re short-handed. Who gets the sausage and green pepper?”

“Table six. Thanks, baby.”

She delivered the pizza, took two more orders. It was like she’d never been away, she thought.

Except she was different. There was not only a year of college under her belt, but everything she’d learned crowded in her head. Familiar faces, familiar smells, routines and movements that were automatic. Yet she was just a little more than she had been the last time she’d worked here.

She had a boyfriend. It was official now. She and Josh were a couple. A couple who slept together.

She liked sex, which was a relief to know. The first time had been sweet and adventurous, but she’d been so new at it, her mind and body scrambling to understand. She hadn’t reached orgasm.

That was something new and wonderful she’d discovered about the act, and herself, the second time they’d been together.

Now she could barely wait to be with him again, to learn the next new thing.

Not that sex was all they did together, she reminded herself as she grabbed the phone to take an order for delivery. They talked, often for hours. She loved listening to him talk about his writing, how he wanted to tell stories about small towns, like the one where he grew up in Ohio. Stories about people, and what they did to and for each other.

And he listened. He seemed equally interested when she told him that she wanted to study and train, to understand fire and why.

Now she didn’t just have a date for Bella’s wedding. She was bringing her boyfriend.

She was still grinning over the idea when she swung into the prep area for the first time. Her mother was taking vegetables out of one of the big, stainless steel refrigerators. Pete, now the father of three, stood at the prep counter cutting dough from holding bowls to weigh for pizza crust.

“Hey, college girl! Give us a smooch.”

Reena threw her arms around his neck, gave him a noisy kiss dead on the lips.

“When’d you get back?”

“Fifteen minutes ago. Walked in the door, they put me to work.”

“Slave drivers.”

“You don’t get that dough weighed, I’m getting the whip. Now let go of my girl before I tell your wife.” Bianca threw open her arms. Reena went into them.

“How do you stay so beautiful?” Reena asked her.

“It’s the steam in the kitchen. Keeps the pores clean. Oh, baby girl, let me look at you.”

“You saw me two weeks ago at Bella’s Bridal Shower of the Century.”

“Two weeks, two days.” Bianca pulled back. Her smile faltered for a moment, and something came and went in her eyes.

“What? What?”

“Nothing.” But Bianca pressed a kiss to her brow, like a benediction. “I’ve got all my children home again. Pete, go switch with Catarina. She’ll take over for you in here. We want to be girls.”

“More wedding talk. I’m already getting a headache.” Waving his hands, Pete scooted out.

“Am I in trouble?” Only half joking, Reena got a bottle of water out of the cooler. “Did the crack I made about the bridesmaid dress making me look like an anemic scallion get back to Bella?”

“No, and you’ll look beautiful, even if the dress is . . . unfortunate.”

“Oooh, diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy is my last tool of survival in this wedding business. Otherwise, I’d have snapped Bella’s neck like a twig by now.” She lifted a hand, shook her head. “She can’t help it. She’s excited, terrified, wildly in love, and she wants Vince to be proud of her—all while impressing his parents, looking like a movie star and trying to furnish a big new house.”

“Sounds like she’s in her element.”

“True enough. Your dad needs dough for two large and a medium,” she added, and watched as Reena competently cut and weighed. “You don’t forget how.”

“I was born weighing dough.”

She put the extra dough back in the cooler, took out what her father needed. Then joined her mother at the work counter to pitch in with salad.

“Two house for table six. I’ll take the Greek for station three. This wedding is the biggest dream of her life.” Bianca continued as they chopped. “I want her to have exactly what she wants. I want all my children to have exactly what they want.”

She loaded a tray, moved it to the pick-up area. “Order up,” she called out, then moved back to fill another.

“You’ve been with a boy.”

The water felt like a hard little ball when Reena managed to swallow. “What?”

“You think I can’t look at you and see?” Bianca kept her voice low, gauging her husband’s proximity and the noise element that would cover her words. “That I couldn’t see with each of my children? You were the last.”

“Xander’s been with a boy?”

To Reena’s relief, Bianca laughed. “So far he prefers girls. Do I know the boy?”

“No. It just . . . We started seeing each other a while ago, and it just happened. Just last week. I wanted it to happen, Mama. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but—”

“Did I say that? Did I ask you about your conscience, or your choice? You were careful?”

“Yes. Mama.” Reena put the knife down, turned to wrap her arms around her mother’s waist. “We were careful. I like him so much. You will, too.”

“How do I know if I’ll like him when you don’t bring him home to meet your family? When you don’t tell me anything about him.”

“He’s a lit major. He’s going to be a writer. He keeps a sloppy apartment and has the sweetest smile. His name is Josh Bolton, and he grew up in Ohio.”

“What about his family?”

“He doesn’t talk much about them. His parents are divorced, and he’s an only child.”

“He’s not Catholic then?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t ask. He’s gentle, and he’s very smart, and he listens when I talk.”

“All important things.” Bianca turned, took Reena’s face in her hands. “You’ll bring him to meet the family.”

“He’s going to come to Bella’s wedding.”

“Brave, too.” Bianca raised her eyebrows. “Well, if he lives through that, he may be worth keeping awhile.”

When the lunch crowd thinned out, Reena sat—at her father’s insistence—with an enormous plate of spaghetti. With Pete taking over for him, he started making the rounds. She’d seen him do it all her life, and knew her grandfather had done the same before him.

With a glass of wine, a bottle of water, a cup of coffee—depending on the time of day—he would go by each booth or table, have a word, sometimes a full conversation. If it was a regular, he would sometimes sit down for a few minutes. Talk ranged from sports, food, politics to neighborhood news, births, deaths. The subject didn’t matter, she knew.

It was the intimacy.

Today it was water, and when he sat across from her he took a long pull. “It’s good?” He nodded at her plate.

“The best.”

“Then put more of it in your stomach.”

“How’s Mr. Alegrio’s bursitis?”

“Acting up. He says it’s going to rain. His grandson got a promotion, and his roses look good this year.” Gib grinned. “What did he have for his meal?”

“The special, with minestrone and the house salad, a glass of Peroni, a bottle of sparkling water, bread sticks and a cannoli.”

“You always remember. It’s our loss you’re taking those criminal justice courses, the chemistry, instead of restaurant management.”

“I’ll always have time to help out here, Dad. Always.”

“I’m proud of you. Proud you know what you want and you’re working for it.”

“Somebody raised me that way. How’s the father of the bride?”

“I’m not thinking about it yet.” He shook his head, drank more water. “I’m not thinking about the moment when she comes toward me in her dress. When I walk her down the aisle and give her to Vince. Blubber like a baby if I do. It’s easy to tuck that away while we’re dealing with the insanity of preparing for that moment.”

He glanced over, smiled. “Somebody else must’ve heard you were home. Hey, John.”

“Gib.”

With a cry of pleasure, Reena scooted up, flung her arms around John Minger. “I missed you! Haven’t seen you since Christmas. Sit down. Be right back.”

She dashed off, got another setup. When she plopped down again, she scooped up half the spaghetti and put it on the second plate. “You’re eating some of this. Dad thinks I starve myself at college.”

“What can I get you to drink, John?”

“Anything soft’s good. Thanks.”

“I’ll have it brought right out. Gotta get back to work.”

“Tell me everything,” Reena demanded. “How are you, your kids, the grandkids, life in general?”

“Doing good, keeping busy.”

He looked good, Reena thought. A little heavier under the eyes, and his hair was nearly stone gray now. But it suited him. The fire had made him part of the family. No, more than the fire, she corrected. What he had done since. Pitching in to work, answering the endless questions she’d posed.

“Any interesting cases?”

“They’re all interesting. You still up for ride-alongs?”

“You call, I’m there.”

His face softened with a smile. “Had one start in a kid’s bedroom. Eight-year-old boy. Nobody home at the time it engaged. No accelerants, no matches, no lighter. No sign of forced entry or incendiary components.”

“Electrical?”

“Nope.”

She began to eat again as she considered. “Chemistry set? Kids that age often like playing with chemistry sets.”

“Not this one. Told me he’s going to be a detective.”

“What time of day did it start?”

“Around two in the afternoon. Kid’s in school, parents at work. No previous incidents.” He twirled spaghetti, closed his eyes in appreciation of the taste. “Not fair to quiz you when you can’t see the site, or pictures.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m not giving up yet.” Puzzles, she’d always thought, were made to be solved. “Point of origin?”

“Kid’s desk. Plywood desk.”

“Bet he had a lot of fuel on it. Construction paper, glue, the desk itself, school papers and binders maybe, toys. Near the window?”

“Right under it.”

“So he’s got curtains, probably, they catch, keep it going. Two in the afternoon.” Now she closed her eyes, tried to see it. She thought of Xander’s desk when he’d been that age. The careless jumble of boy toys, comic books, school papers.

“What way did the window face?”

“You’re a pistol, Reena. South.”

“Sun should be coming in strong that time of day, unless the curtains were closed. Kid isn’t going to close his curtains. What was the weather that day?”

“Clear, sunny, warm.”

“Kid wants to be a detective, probably has a magnifying glass.”

“Bull’s-eye. Yeah, you’re a pistol. Glass is sitting right on the desk, canted up on a book, over a bunch of papers. Sun beats through, heats the glass, fires the papers. Wood desk, cloth curtains.”

“Poor kid.”

“Could’ve been worse. Delivery guy saw the smoke, called nine-one-one. They were able to contain it in the bedroom.”

“I’ve missed being able to talk shop. I know, I know, I’m just a student, and most of the courses I’m hungry for I can’t take until my junior year when I transfer to the Shady Grove campus. But it feels like talking shop.”

“Something else I need to talk to you about.” He set down his fork, looked in her eyes. “Pastorelli’s out.”

“He—” She drew herself in, glanced around to see if any of her family could overhear. “When?”

“Last week. I just got word.”

“It had to happen,” Reena said dully. “He’d have been out before this if he hadn’t gotten extra time for punching a guard.”

“I don’t think he’s going to give you any trouble, or even come back around here. He’s got no ties to the neighborhood anymore. His wife’s in New York still, with her aunt. I checked. The kid’s already done a stint up there for assault.”

“I remember when they took him away.” She looked out the window, across the street. There were pots of geraniums on the steps of what had been the Pastorelli house, and the curtains were open.

“Which?”

“Both. I remember how they brought Mr. Pastorelli out, in handcuffs, and how his wife buried her face in a yellow dish towel, and one of her shoes was untied. I remember Joey running after the car, screaming. I was standing with my father. I think watching that together strengthened something we already had between us. I think that’s why he let me go with him when they took Joey. After he killed that poor dog.”

“He was closing a chapter for you, one that started when the little bastard attacked you. No reason to think it’s not still closed, but you and your family need to know he’s out.”

“I’ll tell them. Later, John, later, when we’re all at home.”

“Good enough.”

She looked out the window again, and the frown vanished. “It’s Xander. I’ll be right back.” She scooted out of the booth, hurried to the door, then raced across the street and launched herself at her brother.

Being home was like being a child again in so many ways. The scents and sounds of the house were so much what they’d always been. The furniture polish her mother always used, the cooking smells that seemed as much a part of the kitchen as the old butcher-block table. The music that pumped out of Xander’s room, whether he was in there or not. The watery tinkle from the toilet in the powder room that ran unless its handle was jiggled.

It was rare for an hour to go by without the phone ringing, and since the weather was fine, the windows were open to the shoosh of street traffic, and the voices of pedestrians who stopped to chat.

She could’ve been ten again, sitting cross-legged on her sister’s bed while Bella reigned at the little vanity, primping for an evening out.

“There’s just so much to do.” Bella blended tones of eyeshadow with the skill of an artist. “I don’t know how I’ll get everything done before the wedding. Vince says I worry too much, but it has to be perfect.”

“It will be. Your dress is gorgeous.”

“I knew exactly what I wanted.” She shook back glamorous clouds of blond hair. “After all, I’ve been planning for this my whole life. Remember when we used to play bride, with those old lace curtains?”

“And you were always the bride.” But Reena smiled when she said it.

“Now, it’s not make-believe anymore. I know Dad was freaked about how much the dress cost, but the bride’s the showpiece on her wedding day, after all. And I can’t be the showpiece in some knockoff. I want Vince dazzled when he sees me in it. Oh, wait until you see what he gave me for my something old.”

“I thought you were wearing Nuni’s pearls.”

“No. They’re sweet, but they’re old-fashioned. Besides, they’re not real pearls.” She opened the drawer of the vanity, took out a small box. She brought it over, sat on the side of the bed. “He bought them for me at an estate jeweler.”

Inside were earrings, sparkling drops of diamonds and filigree so delicate they might have been spun by magic spiders.

“God, Bella, are those real diamonds?”

“Of course.” The square-cut solitaire on her finger flashed as she gestured. “Vince wouldn’t buy me paste. He’s got class. His whole family has class.”

“And ours doesn’t?”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” But Bella spoke absently as she held up one of the earrings so it could catch the light. “Vince’s mother flies to New York and Milan to shop. They have a household staff of twelve. You should see his parents’ house, Reena. It’s a mansion. They have full-time groundskeepers. His mother’s so sweet to me—I’m calling her Joanne now. She’s taking me to her salon on the morning of the wedding, for the works.”

“I thought we—you and Mama and Fran and I—were going to Maria’s.”

“Catarina.” Bella smiled gently, patted Reena’s hand before she rose to put the earrings back in the drawer. “Maria’s doesn’t make the cut for me now. I’m going to be the wife of an important man. I’m going to have a different lifestyle now, different obligations. To meet them I have to have the right haircut, the right wardrobe, the right everything.”

“Who says what’s right?”

“You just know.” She fluffed at her hair. “Vince has a cousin, he’s really cute. I thought you might like for him to be your escort at the reception. I think you’d hit it off. He’s a junior at Princeton.”

“Thanks, but I have a boyfriend. He’ll be coming to the wedding. I cleared it with Mama.”

“A boyfriend.” Forgetting her primping for the moment, Bella dropped down on the bed. “When, where, how? What’s his name? What does he look like? Tell me everything.”

The seeds of resentment blew away, and they were sisters again, huddling together over the serious priority of boys.

“His name’s Josh. He’s so sweet and he’s a major hottie. He wants to be a writer, and I met him at college. We’ve been seeing each other a couple of months now.”

“Months? And you didn’t tell me?”

“You’ve been a little preoccupied.”

“Still.” Bella pouted a moment. “Is he from around here?”

“No, he grew up in Ohio. But he’s living here now. He’s got a job in a bookstore for the summer. I really like him, Bella. I’ve slept with him. Five times.”

“Jesus!” Bella’s eyes went saucer-wide as she bounced her butt on the bed. “Reena, this is huge. Is he good at it?” She popped up, closed the door. “Vince is amazing in bed. He can go for hours.”

“I think he’s good at it.” Hours? Reena wondered. Was that really possible? “He’s the only one I’ve ever been with.”

“Make sure you always use protection. I stopped.”

“Stopped what?”

“Birth control,” she whispered. “Vince said he wants to have a family right away, so we tossed away my pills. It’s so close to the wedding, it won’t matter if I get pregnant. We threw them away last weekend, so I might already be pregnant.”

“God, Bella.” It gave Reena a jolt, a hard one, to think of her sister going from bride to wife to mother in one big rush. “Don’t you want some time to get used to being married first?”

“I don’t need time.” When she smiled, everything about her went dreamy. Lips, eyes, voice. “I know just how it’s all going to be. And it’s going to be perfect. I have to finish getting ready. Vince will be here any minute, and he hates when I’m late.”

“Have a good time.”

“We always do.” Bella sat down at the vanity again when Reena went to the door. “Vince is taking me to a fabulous restaurant tonight. He says I need to relax and take my mind off the details of the wedding.”

“I’m sure he’s right.” She went out, closing the door just as her brother came up the stairs.

He glanced at the door, back at Reena and grinned. “So how many times did she say ‘Vince thinks’?”

“I lost count. He’s pretty crazy about her.”

“Good thing, otherwise by now he’d have been driven crazy by her. I know one thing, I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

She walked to him. He’d edged over her in height, so she bounced up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “You’ll miss her when she isn’t in the next room.”

“I guess I will.”

“You got plans tonight?”

“On your first night home? What kind of brother am I?”

“My favorite kind.”

She waited until Bella was out to her fancy dinner and the rest of the family was around the dining room table sharing steak Florentine in honor of Reena’s return from college.

“I have some news,” she began. “John told me today, and I asked him to let me tell everyone else. Pastorelli’s out. He was released a week ago.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Not at the table, Xander,” Bianca said automatically. “Do they know where he is, where he went?”

“He served his time, Mama.” She’d had time to reconcile to that, and to sound calm about it. “John doesn’t think we need to worry, and I agree. He doesn’t have any ties to the neighborhood, no reason to come back here. What happened was long ago.”

“And yesterday,” Gib said. “Seems like yesterday. But I think we have to accept this. What else can we do? He was punished for what he did. It’s done, and he’s out of our lives.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t hurt to be a little watchful, at least for a while.” Bianca drew a long breath. “And it’s probably best not to say anything to Bella until after the wedding. She’ll just have hysterics.”

“She can have hysterics over a chipped nail,” Xander put in.

“My point exactly. So we know, and we’ll be a little more careful. But we’ll believe as John does that there’s nothing to worry about. So . . .” Bianca lifted her hands. “Eat, before the food gets cold.”

6

Bo wasn’t a hundred percent regarding the plans for the day, but he was usually willing to go along. His pal Brad was now officially one half of the Brad and Cammie show. And since that show was in its first act, everybody was happy. To spread the joy, the new couple arranged for a double date, and that was fine. The all-day and into the evening term of the date was a little worrying.

A big commitment, to Bo’s way of thinking.

What if he and this friend of Cammie’s took an instant dislike to each other? It happened. She was supposed to be pretty, but that was Cammie’s opinion. And you just couldn’t trust the opinion of a girlfriend.

Even if she looked like Claudia Schiffer, she might talk all the time, or giggle. He really hated gigglers. Or she might be one of those humorless types. He’d rather take the giggling over the super-serious, I’ve-got-to-save-the-world-from-itself-and-so-do-you sort.

On top of that he was still hung up on a girl whose face he’d seen for about ten seconds, and whose name he didn’t know.

Stupid, but what could you do?

This was, he knew, one of Brad’s methods of getting him back to the real world. A pretty girl—at least that was the billing—a day out with a convivial group at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Do the aquarium, hang out, catch some music, eat some seafood. Have a few laughs. He ordered himself to get into the spirit of it as he followed Cammie’s directions.

She and Brad took the backseat of his car, mostly, in his opinion, so they could make out.

He pulled into the lot, waited while his passengers completed their latest lip-lock.

“We’ll all go in.” Cammie unwrapped herself from Brad, grabbed her purse. “This is going to be fun! It’s a totally awesome day.”

She had him there, Bo thought. Blue sky, puffy clouds, steaming sunshine. Better to be out and about than sitting home brooding about some fantasy girl or even fooling around in his foreman’s workshop.

What he was aiming for was a workshop of his own. Once he had enough money to rent a house—or, more fantasy, actually buy one—he was going to have a shop of his own. A nice little shed he’d outfit with worktables and power tools. Maybe get his own side business going.

He walked into the apartment building, which looked exactly like every other off-campus apartment building to him. And was just the sort of place he wanted to say good-bye to. What he needed to do was talk Brad into parting with some of his money, going in with him to buy a place for rehab.

“She’s right here on the first floor.” Cammie walked to a door, knocked. “You’re really going to like Mandy, Bo. She’s a lot of fun.”

Cammie’s big smile reminded Bo why he hated being fixed up. Now if he didn’t like her friend, he’d have to pretend he did. Otherwise, Cammie would poke at Brad until Brad poked at him.

But some of his worry lifted when the little redhead with the big blue eyes and curves nicely packed into jeans and a snug gray T-shirt opened the door.

Packed nicely enough he was going to reserve judgment on the eyebrow ring. Maybe it was sexy.

“Hey, Mandy. You know Brad.”

“Sure. Hi, Brad.”

There was just the slightest hint of a lisp—a sexy one.

“And this is Bo. Bowen Goodnight.”

“Hi, Bo. Just gotta get my bag, and I’m ready to roll. Place is wrecked. Don’t come in.” She laughed as she said it, and shooed them back. “My roommate left yesterday for a wild weekend in OC, and tore the place up looking for a pair of sandals. Which I found after she’d gone. I’m not cleaning it up. That’s her deal.”

She talked nonstop, but in a funny, bouncy way, while she grabbed a shoulder bag and a black O’s fielder’s cap.

Ah, baseball, Bo thought. There was hope.

She scooted out, shut the door behind her, then offered Bo a quick, easy smile. “Got a camera in here.” She patted the bulging shoulder bag. “I’m a pain in the ass with it. Fair warning.”

“Mandy’s an awesome photographer,” Cammie put in. “She’s interning at the Baltimore Sun.”

“Horrible hours, no pay. I love it. Hey, look at you.”

Before Bo could comment, she’d turned completely around to study a guy coming down the stairs. He was wearing a suit and tie, and looked a little flustered.

“Dude,” she said with a chuckle. “Looking hot.”

“Going to a wedding.” He lifted a hand to the knot of his striped tie, tugged. “Is this thing on right?”

“Cammie, Brad, Bo, this is Josh. Upstairs neighbor, fellow student and amateur tie knotter. Let me fix it. Who’s getting married?”

“Girlfriend’s sister. I’ll be meeting her whole family. I feel a little sick.”

“Oooh, the gauntlet.” She straightened his tie, gave his lapel a little pat. “There, you’re perfect. And don’t worry, hon, people are either crying or getting drunk at weddings.”

“They’re mostly Italian.”

“Then they’ll be doing both. Italian weddings are big buckets of fun. Just lift your glass and say—what is it?—salute!”

“Salute. Got it. Nice to meet you guys. See you later.”

“He’s a sweetie,” Mandy said when he went out. “Been hung up on this girl in his lit class most of the term. Looks like it’s finally working out. So.” She adjusted her cap. “Let’s go see some big-ass fish.”

Bella had ordered perfect, and in Reena’s opinion, she’d gotten her wish. The weather was spectacular, the balmy blue and gold of early summer, with the flowers both bright and delicate, and the humidity mercifully low.

She looked like a princess, everyone said so, in her frothy white gown, her hair gleaming gold under her sparkling veil. She carried a spectacular creation of pink roses accented with miniature white lilies.

The church was bedecked with her choice of flowers in white baskets. She’d rejected the more traditional organ in favor of a harp, flutes, cello and violin. Reena had to admit the sound was lovely.

And classy.

No more lace curtains and Kleenex bouquets, Reena thought as her eyes stung and her throat went hot. Isabella Hale swept down the aisle of St. Leo’s on their father’s arm looking like royalty. Her train a sparkling white river behind her, her face glowing, diamonds firing at her ears.

She’d gotten her wish all around, Reena thought, as Vince—elegant and handsome in his formal morning coat—looked dazzled by her.

His eyes, deep and dark, lit on her face and never moved from it. Her father’s were damp as he carefully lifted Bella’s veil, gently kissed her cheek and answered the priest’s question about who gives this woman to this man with a tenderly spoken, “Her mother and I do.”

For once Bella didn’t weep, but stayed dry-eyed and luminous through the Mass and ceremony. Her eyes like stars and her voice clear as a bell.

Because she knows this is exactly what she wants, Reena thought. What she’s always wanted. Just as she knows this is her spotlight, and all eyes are on her.

It no longer mattered that the bridesmaid dress was a little less than flattering. Here was another kind of fire, she realized. It was strong and bright and hot. It was her sister’s joy flaming through the air.

So Reena wept when the vows were exchanged, and the rings given, knowing that this was the end of a part of their lives. And the beginning of the next part of Bella’s.

The reception was held at Vince’s parents’ country club where his father was some sort of officer or board member. Here, too, there were flowers in abundance, and food and wine and music.

Each table was draped with the same shade of pink as Bella’s signature roses, sprinkled with white rose petals and centered with yet more flowers and glossy pillars of pure white candles.

Reena was required to sit at the long head table along with the bridal party. She was grateful her mother had the foresight to seat Josh at the same table as Gina, who could be counted on to keep him entertained. She was nearly as grateful that Fran—as maid of honor—and Vince’s brother, who served as best man, were the ones who would make the traditional toasts.

She ate rare prime rib, talked and laughed with the other members of the wedding party, worried about Josh. And when she took time to gaze around the big ballroom, wondered what kind of world her sister was now a part of.

The two families were mingling, as people do at such events. But even if she didn’t know them, she’d have been able to separate them into groups. The working class, the upper class. City neighborhood, suburban wealth.

The bride wasn’t the only one wearing diamonds, or draped in a dress that cost more than a week’s take at Sirico’s. But she was the only one of her blood who’d managed it.

Probably, Reena admitted, the only one of her blood who could pull it off as if she’d been born wearing Prada.

As if reading her thoughts, Xander leaned close to her ear. “We’re now the poor relations.”

She snickered, then picked up her champagne. “Screw it. Salute.”

It was easier when she could escape the formal duties and find Josh. “You doing okay? I should be clear now, at least for a while.”

“Fine. It was some wedding.”

“Some wedding,” she agreed. “I didn’t know the pictures would take so long. I feel like I deserted you. And I wanted to warn you that—”

“Catarina!” Her aunt Carmela swept up to envelop her in clouds of White Shoulders. “How beautiful you look! Like a bride yourself. But so thin! We’ll fatten you up now you’re home. And who is this handsome young man?”

“Aunt Carmela, this is Josh Bolton. Josh, my aunt, Carmela Sirico.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Sirico.”

“Polite, too. It’s a wedding, today I’m Carmela. My niece.” Carmela wrapped a strong arm around Reena’s shoulders. “She looks so pretty, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, ma’am, she—”

“Francesca’s the beauty, and Isabella, she has the style, the passion. Our Catarina, she’s the smart one. Aren’t you, cara?”

“That’s right. I got the brains.”

“But today, you look beautiful! Maybe your young man will get ideas when you catch the bouquet.” She winked broadly. “Do I know your family?” she asked Josh.

“You don’t,” Reena said quickly. “I know Josh from school. I need to introduce him around.”

“Yes, yes. You save a dance for me,” she told Josh as Reena dragged him away.

“That’s what I was going to warn you about,” Reena began. “You’re going to get a lot of that and some third degree. Who are your family, what do they do, what are you doing, where do you go to church. Everyone in my family thinks it’s their business to know. Don’t take it personally.”

“It’s okay. Gina gave me the heads-up. It’s a little scary, but okay. And you do look beautiful. I’ve never been to a big Catholic wedding. It was something.”

“And really long,” she said with a laugh. “Okay, I’m going to have to show you off to the uncles, and the rest of the aunts. Stay strong.”

And it was okay, she saw as the party went on. Josh might have been peppered with questions, but there was so much talking going on he only had to answer about half of them.

The music kept things lively with something for everyone, from Dean Martin to Madonna. She’d relaxed into the moment when she took her dance with the groom.

“I’ve never seen my sister look happier. The ceremony was beautiful, Vince. Everything’s beautiful.”

“She worried every day. But that’s our Bella.”

He moved so smoothly over the floor, stayed so focused on her face as he did that Reena was sure there’d been lessons along the way. Dance and charm.

“Now we can start our lives, make our home, have our family. We’ll have you over for dinner once we’re back from our honeymoon and settled.”

“I’m there.”

“I’m a lucky man to have such a beautiful wife, such an enchanting woman. And she cooks.” He laughed and kissed Reena’s cheek. “And now I have another sister.”

“I have another brother. Una famiglia.”

“Una famiglia.” He grinned and swept her around the dance floor.

Later, snuggled in bed with Josh, Reena thought of her sister’s long-awaited day. The grandeur of the ceremony, all the solemn words, the elegant flowers. The initial formality of the reception that had, thankfully, broken down into a boisterous party.

“Tell me, did my aunt Rosa actually do the Electric Slide?”

“I can’t remember which one was Rosa, exactly, but yeah, I think. Or maybe it was the Hokey Pokey.”

“No, it was my second cousins Lena and Maria-Theresa who got that one going. Jeez.”

“I liked the dancing, especially the tarenbella.”

“Tarantella,” she corrected, giggling. “You held up, Josh, and it’s not easy. Big points for you.”

“I had fun, serious fun. Your family’s really cool.”

“Also big and loud. I think Vince’s family was a little wigged, maybe especially when my uncle Larry grabbed the mike and started belting out ‘That’s Amore.’ ”

“Sounded good. I like your family better. His are kind of snobby. He’s okay,” Josh said quickly. “And he’s over the moon about your sister. They looked like a movie couple.”

“Yeah, they did.”

“And your mom. Is it okay to say your mom’s really beautiful? She just doesn’t look like a mom. My family never did stuff like this, you know, the big events. I liked it.”

She rolled over, smiled down at him. “Then you’ll come to dinner tomorrow? Mom told me to ask you. You can see what we’re like when we’re not all dressed up.”

“Sure. Maybe you can stay tonight? My roommate’s not getting back until tomorrow night. We can go out if you want, or just stay here.”

“I wish I could.” She bent her head to kiss his chest. It was so smooth and warm. “I really do. But I think an overnight’s a little more than my dad could take tonight. He’s going to be feeling blue. On top of it, people were giving him the business about how soon he’d be doing this again for Fran.”

“You did shove her right at the bouquet when Bella tossed it.”

“Reflex.” She laughed again, and sat up to shake back her hair. “I want to keep Dad busy tonight. Otherwise he’s going to be thinking about Bella’s wedding night, and that’s iffy territory for him.” She touched his cheek. “I’m glad you had fun today.”

He sat up, hugged her in a way that warmed her heart. “I always do when I’m with you.”

She dressed, freshened her makeup. No good going home looking like she’d just rolled out of bed with a guy. At the door she let Josh draw her into several lingering kisses.

“Maybe, next day off, we could go somewhere,” he suggested. “The beach or something.”

“I’d like that. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She stepped out, then turned back and pulled him into the doorway for another kiss. “That’ll have to hold me.”

She all but danced down the stairs and into the warm night.

Bo drove into the lot as she was putting her key into the ignition.

He’d dropped Brad and Cammie off at Cammie’s place. It had been a good day, he thought, the kind that promised more. He liked Mandy. It was impossible not to. She was a pain in the ass with the camera, but in a way that made him laugh, or impressed him.

“I’m going to want to see some of the six million pictures you took today,” he told her as they got out of his car.

“You couldn’t escape it. I’m nearly as annoying with prints as I am with the lens. This was fun. I’m glad Cam nagged me into it. And saying that just proves I forget to engage brain before tongue.”

“It’s okay, I got nagged into it, too. I figured if it turned out to be a nightmare I could hold it over Brad for years. I’ll have to find something else to hold over his head. Okay if I call you?”

“Really okay.” She pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket. “I already wrote down my number. If you hadn’t asked for it, I was going to plant it on you while I was doing this.”

She grabbed his shirt in both hands, gave a quick yank and rose onto her toes at the same time. The kiss was hot and promising.

“Nice.” She rubbed her lips together. “You know, if something works between us, they’re going to hold it over our heads.”

“Life’s full of risks.” He’d decided the eyebrow ring was sexy. “Maybe I could come in.”

“Tempting, very tempting. But I think we’d better hold off on that.” She unlocked her door, backed in. “Call me.”

He put her number in his pocket and was grinning as he walked out to his car.

Since he had the evening free, and no roommate to blare music, Josh sat down to write. He decided it would be fun to try to build a short story around the wedding.

He wanted to get some of it down before the impressions—there were so many of them—got jumbled up or started to fade away.

As much as he would’ve liked having Reena stay the night, he was sort of glad she’d gone home. Having the place to himself meant he could really think. Really work.

He had most of a quick draft roughed out when the knock on the door interrupted him. With his mind still on the story, he went to answer. When he opened the door, he cocked his head in greeting. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m from upstairs. Have you heard—See, there it is again.”

Instinctively Josh glanced over his shoulder in the direction his visitor pointed. Pain exploded in his head, a red bloom over his eyes.

The door was shut before he hit the floor.

Skinny kid. No trouble hauling his stupid ass into the bedroom. The sock full of quarters would leave a mark. Maybe they’d find it later. Leave him on the floor, so it looks like he hit his head falling out of bed.

Keep it simple, keep it quick. Light the cigarette, wipe it clean, put it between the dumb fuck’s lips. Just in case. Get his prints on the pack, on some matches. Just in case. Now lay the burning cigarette on the bed, lay it on the sheets. Smolder good there. Add a little paper—College Joe’s school papers. Leave the pack of smokes, leave some matches.

Go find a beer in the kitchen. Might as well have a drink while it starts.

Nothing like watching a fire being born. Nothing in the world. Power is like a prime drug.

The smoldering fire. The sneaky fire. Sly and cunning. Building, building, quiet and secret, toward that first flash of flame.

Gloves on, take the battery out of the smoke detector. People are so careless. Just forget to replace the batteries. Damn shame.

Kid could come to. Comes to, just smack him again.

Hope he comes to. Come on, you skinny bastard, come around so I can hit you again.

Hold it in, hold it down. Watch the smoke—sexy, silent, deadly. Smoke’s what gets them. Dazes them. Paper’s catching, there’s the flame.

First flame’s the first power. Hear how it speaks, whispers. Watch how it moves, dances.

Now the sheets. Good start, got a start. Drape the sheet down, over the asshole.

Beautiful! Look at the colors of it. Gold and red, orange and yellow.

Here’s how it looks: Lights up in bed, falls asleep. Smoke gets him, he tries to get out of bed, falls, hits his head. Fire takes him while he’s out.

Bed’s going up. Pretty, isn’t that pretty? A little more paper won’t hurt. Get his shirt caught. That’s the way!

Keep going, keep going. It takes so damn long. Drink some beer, keep your cool. Who knew a skinny bastard could burn that way? Carpet’s caught now—what you get for buying cheap!

Toast, that’s what he is. Fucking toast. Smells like roasting pig.

Better go. Hate to leave, miss the show. It’s so interesting to watch people crackle and melt while the fire eats them.

But it’s time to say our good-byes to dumbass College Joe. Take it slow, take it easy. Check the hall. Too damn bad you can’t stay and watch, but gotta go. Stroll away, no hurry. Don’t look back. Nice and easy, got no worries.

Drive away. Keep to the posted limits like any law-abiding son of a bitch.

He’ll be crisp before they get to him.

Now that’s entertainment.

7

Bo woke with a hangover that rang like cathedral bells. He was face-down on a bed that smelled more like gym socks than sheets, and was just miserable enough to consider staying like that, breathing in the rank, for the rest of his natural life.

It wasn’t his fault that his downstairs neighbor’s party had been at full blast when he got home from dropping off Mandy. Stopping in had been polite, and an entertaining way to spend the rest of his Saturday night.

And since he’d only had to walk up the stairs to his own place, he hadn’t seen the harm in drinking a couple of beers.

But it was his fault, and he was willing to admit it once his head stopped screaming, that he’d hung out until after two in the morning and sucked down a six-pack.

But it wasn’t completely his fault, because the beer had been there, along with the nachos. And what were you supposed to do when you were eating nachos but wash them down with beer?

Oceans of beer.

He had aspirin. Probably. Somewhere. Oh, if only there was a merciful God who would remind him where the hell he’d stashed the bottle of Advil. He’d crawl to it himself, if only he knew where to drag his poor, abused body.

And why hadn’t he pulled the shades? Why couldn’t that merciful God turn down the sunlight so it wasn’t blasting like a red furnace against his aching eyes?

Because he’d worshipped the god of beer, that’s why. He’d broken a commandment and worshipped the false and foamy god of beer. And now he was being punished.

He thought the aspirin, which now took on the weight of his salvation, was most likely in the kitchen. He prayed it was as he covered his eyes with one hand, eased himself out of bed. His moan was heartfelt, and turned into something more like a scream when he tripped over his shoes and fell flat on his face.

He barely had the strength to whimper, much less swear.

He made it to his hands and knees, balanced there, prayed there until he got most of his breath back. Never again. He swore it. If he’d had a knife he’d have drawn his own blood and used it to write the vow on the floor. He managed to get to his feet, while his banging head spun and his stomach churned. His last hope was that he wouldn’t puke on his own toes. He’d rather have the pain than the puking.

Fortunately, his apartment was about the size of a minivan, and the kitchen only a few short steps from the pull-out sofa. Something in the kitchen smelled like dead rat, and wasn’t that just perfect? He ignored the sink full of dishes, the counter junked with boxes of takeout he’d yet to throw away, and fumbled through his cabinets.

Crap wood, he thought as he always did. Next thing to plastic. Inside were open boxes of Life, Frosted Mini Wheats, Froot Loops and Cheerios. A bag of sour cream and onion potato chips, four boxes of macaroni and cheese, Ring-Dings, assorted cans of soup and a box of raspberry and cheese coffee cake.

And there, there between Life and Cheerios, was the Advil. Thank you, Jesus.

Since he’d already tossed the cap after his last hangover, all he had to do was dump three little pills in his clammy hand. He shoved them in his mouth, turned on the faucet and, since there was no room for his head among the dishes, scooped running water into his palm and sucked it in to down the pills.

He choked when one stuck in his throat, stumbled to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of Gatorade. He drank, leaning weakly against the counter.

He wove his way through the pile of clothes, the shoes, his stupid keys and whatever else had hit the floor, into the bathroom.

Bracing his hands on the sink, he gathered his courage. And lifted his head to look at himself in the mirror.

His hair looked like the dead rat in his kitchen had danced through it overnight. His face was pasty. His eyes were so full of blood he wondered if there was any left in the rest of him.

“Okay, Goodnight, you stupid son of a bitch, this is it. Your ass is going to straighten up.”

He turned on the shower, stepped under the stingy piss trickle. And casting his eyes to the ceiling, dragged off his boxers and the single sock he still wore. He leaned forward so the water that dribbled out of the showerhead dribbled on his hair.

He was getting out of this dump, first chance. Meanwhile he was going to clean it up. It was one thing to save money living in a piece of shit apartment, and another to let it become a freaking cesspool because he didn’t bother to take care of it.

It was no way to live, and he was tired of himself for settling. Tired of busting his hump all week, then blowing off the steam with too much beer so he suffered on Sunday mornings.

It was time to make a move.

It took him an hour to shower, brush the taste of over-partying out of his mouth, then force something into his stomach he hoped would stay there. He pulled on ripped sweats and started shoveling out his living room.

He made piles of laundry. Who knew he had so many clothes? He stripped the revolting sheets off the bed and considered just burning them. But in the end, his frugal nature had him using them as a sack for the rest of the clothes and towels. From the looks of it, he decided he’d be spending a good chunk of his Sunday in the Laundromat.

But for now, he pulled out the rattiest of his towels, ripped it into pieces and used one to clear the dust off the crate table. He’d made the piece, damn good work, and look how he was treating it.

He dug out his spare sheets and one whiff had them going in the laundry pile.

He hit the kitchen, discovered he actually did have dish detergent and an unopened bottle of Mr. Clean. He loaded bags with trash, found it wasn’t a dead rat stinking up the place but some really ancient sweet-and-sour pork. He dumped detergent in the sink. Dumped more. The dishes looked pretty grungy.

He stood, legs spread like a gunslinger’s, and washed dishes in an ocean of suds.

By the time he’d scrubbed counters off so he had a place to pile the dishes once they were clean, he was feeling almost normal.

Since he was in the groove, he emptied out his refrigerator, scrubbed it down. He opened the stove, found a pizza box containing what might have been, at one time in the dim past, the remains of a Hawaiian pizza.

“God, you’re a pig.”

He wondered where he could rent a Hazmat suit before tackling the bathroom.

Nearly four hours after he’d crawled out of bed, he had two bundles of laundry stuffed in the plastic hamper he’d been using as a catch-all, three Hefty bags of trash and garbage that defied description and a clean apartment.

It was a righteous man who hauled the trash out to the dumpster.

Upstairs, he stripped off the sweats, added them to the laundry, then pulled on his cleanest jeans and least offensive T-shirt.

He gathered the change he’d found in the bed, under the bed, in his single chair and out of various pockets. He put on the sunglasses he thought he’d lost weeks before, grabbed his keys.

Someone knocked just as he was about to haul up the laundry basket.

Brad walked in when he opened the door.

“Hey. I tried to call . . .” He trailed off, gaped. “What the hell! Did I walk into an alternate universe?”

“Did some housekeeping.”

“Some? Dude, a human could actually live here. You have a chair.”

“I’ve always had a chair. It was just buried. I’m heading to the Laundromat if you want to hang out. Sometimes hot chicks do laundry.”

“Maybe. Listen, I tried to call you a couple hours ago, kept getting a busy signal.”

“I must’ve knocked the phone off the hook last night. What’s up?”

“Heavy shit.” Brad walked into the kitchen, stood dazed a moment, then got a Coke out of the fridge. “There was a fire at Mandy’s place last night.”

“Fire? Jesus, what kind of fire? She okay?”

“She’s okay. Really shaken up. She came over to Cammie’s. I just left there. I figured she needed to chill, you know? It’s been on the news.”

“Haven’t turned the TV on. I cleaned to Black Sabbath. It kept me focused. How bad was the fire?”

“Major bad.” Brad dropped down in the chair. “Started in an apartment upstairs. They’re saying it looks like smoking in bed.” He ran a hand over his face, sliding his fingers under his glasses to press them against his eyes.

“Jesus, Bo, a guy died. I mean he burned up, along with most of his place. Lost a lot of the second floor, part of the third. Mandy got out, and they let her in to get some of her stuff, but she’s a wreck. It was the guy in the tie. Ah, Josh. Remember, the guy from upstairs?”

“God, he’s dead?” Bo sank down on the sofa.

“It was bad. Mandy could hardly talk about it. The guy died, and there are a couple others in the hospital with burns or smoke inhalation. She said it must’ve started right after you dropped her off. She was still up, watching some tube when she heard people screaming, and smoke alarms going off.”

“He was going to a wedding,” Bo murmured. “And he couldn’t get his tie right.”

“Now he’s dead.” Brad took a long drink from the can of Coke. “Makes you think, makes you realize how short the trip can be.”

“Yeah.” Bo got a picture of the dead guy in his head, standing in his suit with a sheepish smile on his face. “Yeah, it makes you think.”

Business tended to be slow on Sunday afternoons. There were some who traditionally came in after Mass for a meal, but most went home to make their own Sunday dinners. Reena and Xander took the after-Mass shift with Pete’s young cousin Mia waiting tables and Nick Casto on delivery and dish duty.

They had Tony Bennett on the little stereo because the Sunday regulars liked it, but Xander made the pizzas and calzones at the big worktable with Pearl Jam playing low in his headset.

It was a treat for Reena to man the kitchen when the demand was light, and to wander into the dining area from time to time to work the tables as her father did.

Fran would carry this on—that was understood—but Reena would always put time in here. If they weren’t having company for dinner, she and Xander might wander down after their shift and watch the latest boccie tournament, or hook up with some of their friends for a pickup game of ball.

But since they were having company—and that company happened to be her boyfriend—she’d go home and give her mother a hand with dinner.

In just a couple of hours, she’d walk home and set the table with the company dishes and linens. Her mother was making her special rosemary chicken with prosciutto, and there’d be tiramisu for dessert.

There were flowers from Bella’s wedding.

He’d be shy, she thought as she arranged risotto on a plate. But her family would bring him around. She’d coach Fran, have her ask Josh about his writing.

Fran was great at bringing people out of themselves.

Humming along with Tony, Reena carried the plates out to serve them herself.

“So, your sister’s a married woman.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Giambrisco.”

The woman nodded, sent a look toward her husband, who was already digging into his risotto. “Caught a rich one, I hear. As easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.”

“It might be.” Personally, Reena wondered what it felt like to fall in love with any kind of man. Maybe she was falling in love with Josh and didn’t know it.

“Just you remember.” Mrs. Giambrisco wagged her fork. “Maybe the boys, they do their sniffing around your sisters, but your day will come. This husband of your sister’s, he’s got a brother?”

“Yes. A married one, with a child and another on the way.”

“Maybe a cousin then.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Giambrisco.” Xander called out from his work counter. “Catarina’s got a boyfriend.” He kissed his fingers in her direction. “He’s coming to dinner tonight so Dad can give him a good grilling.”

“As it should be. An Italian boy?”

“No. And he’s coming to dinner to eat chicken,” she called back to Xander. “Not to be grilled. Enjoy your meal.”

She shot Xander a dark look on her way back to the kitchen, but she was secretly pleased she was in a position to be teased about her boyfriend.

She watched the clock, baked penne and was serving spaghetti puttanesca when Gina rushed in.

“Reena.”

“You need anything else?” She grabbed a water pitcher, refilled glasses. “We’ve got some of Mama’s zabaglione today, so save room.”

“Catarina.” Gina grabbed her arm, pulled her away from the table.

“Jeez, what’s the problem? I’m off in a half hour.”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” The intensity of Gina’s grip, the teary eyes got through. “What happened? What’s wrong? Is it your grandmother?”

“No. Oh God, no. It’s Josh. Oh, Reena, it’s Josh.”

“What happened?” Her fingers went numb on the handle of the pitcher. “Did something happen?”

“There was a fire, at his apartment. In his apartment. Reena . . . Let’s go in the back.”

“Tell me.” She jerked away from Gina’s hold, and water slopped over the rim of the pitcher and splashed cold on her hand. “Is he hurt? Is he in the hospital?”

“He . . . Oh, Blessed Mary. Reena, they didn’t get there in time, didn’t get to him in time. He’s dead.”

“No, he’s not.” The room swam in front of her eyes. A slow, sick circle of Tuscan yellow walls, colorful sketches, red-and-white-checked cloths. Dean Martin was singing “Volare” in his creamy baritone.

“No, he’s not. What’s wrong with you, saying that?”

“It was an accident, some kind of horrible accident.” Tears rolled fat down Gina’s cheeks. “Reena. Oh, Reena.”

“You’re wrong. There’s a mistake. I’ll call him and you’ll see. I’ll call him right now.”

But when she turned, Xander was there, smelling of flour, like her father. His arms came hard around her. “Come on, come into the back with me. Mia, call Pete, tell him we need him in here.”

“No, let go. I have to call.”

“You come and sit.” He snatched the water pitcher before she dropped it, shoved it at Mia.

“He’s coming to dinner. He might even have left already. Traffic—” She began to shake as Xander pulled her into the prep room.

“Sit down. Do what I tell you. Gina, are you sure? There’s no mistake?”

“I heard from Jen. A friend of hers lives in the same building. She—her friend lives right down the hall from Josh. They took her to the hospital.” Gina wiped at tears with the back of her hand. “She’s going to be all right, but she had to go to the hospital. Josh . . . It started in his apartment, that’s what they said. They couldn’t get to him before . . . It was on the news, too. My mother heard it on the news.”

She sat down at Reena’s feet, laid her head in Reena’s lap. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“When?” Reena stared straight ahead, saw nothing now. Nothing but gray, like smoke. “When did it happen?”

“I’m not sure. Last night.”

“I need to go home.”

“I’m going to take you in a minute. Here.” Xander handed her a glass of water. “Drink this.”

She took the glass, stared at it. “How? Did they say how it started?”

“They think he must’ve been smoking in bed, fell asleep.”

“That’s not right. He doesn’t smoke. That’s not right.”

“We’ll worry about that later. Gina, call my mother, and can you wait here until Pete gets down? We’re going home, Reena. We’ll go out the back.”

“He doesn’t smoke. Maybe it wasn’t him. They made a mistake.”

“We’ll find out. We’ll call John. When we get home,” Xander said as he drew her to her feet. “We’re going to go home now.”

The sunlight and June heat struck her. Somehow she was walking, putting one foot in front of the other, but she couldn’t feel her legs.

She heard children playing as she turned the corner, calling out to one another the way children do. And car radios, turned up loud, to stream music out as cars drove by. And her brother’s voice murmuring to her.

She’d always remember Xander taking her home, both of them still wearing their aprons. Xander smelling of flour. The sun was bright and hurt her eyes, and his arm stayed strong and firm around her waist. There were some little girls playing jacks on the sidewalk, and another sitting on the white marble steps holding an intense conversation with her Barbie doll.

Opera—Aida—poured out of an open window and sounded like tears. She didn’t cry. Gina’s tears had been so big, so fast, but her own eyes felt painfully dry.

Then there was Mama, rushing out of their house, leaving the door open wide behind her. Mama, running down the sidewalk to her, as she had once when she fell off her bike and sprained her wrist.

And when her mother’s arms came around her, tight, tight, tight, it all became real. Standing on the sidewalk, held by her mother and brother, Reena drowned in tears.

She was put to bed, and her mother stayed with her through the next storm of tears. And was there when she awoke from a thin and headachy sleep.

“Did John call? Did he come?”

“Not yet.” Bianca stroked Reena’s hair. “He said it would take some time.”

“I want to go see. I want to go see for myself.”

“And what did he say about that?” Bianca asked gently.

“That I shouldn’t.” Her own voice sounded thin to her ears, as if she’d been sick a very long time. “That they wouldn’t let me go inside. But—”

“Be patient, cara. I know it’s hard. Try to sleep a little more. I’ll stay with you.”

“I don’t want to sleep. It could be a mistake.”

“We’ll wait. It’s all we can do. Fran went to church to light a candle and pray so I could stay with you.”

“I can’t pray. I can’t think of words.”

“It’s not the words, you know that.”

Reena angled her head, saw the rosary her mother held. “You always have the words.”

“If you need words, you can say them with me. We’ll start a rosary.” She put the dangling crucifix in Reena’s hand. Taking a breath, Reena crossed herself with it, then moved up to the first tiny bead.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”

They prayed the rosary, her mother’s quiet voice blending with hers. But she couldn’t pray for Josh’s soul, or the grace to accept God’s will. She prayed it was a mistake. She prayed she’d somehow wake up and find it all a horrible dream.

When Gib came to the bedroom door, he saw his daughter lying with her head in his wife’s lap. Bianca still held the rosary, but she was singing softly now—one of the cradle songs she’d sung to all the children when they were fretful at night.

Her eyes met his, and he knew she saw what was in his because grief passed over her face.

“John’s here.” He waited, felt the pang when Reena turned her head, looked at him with such naked hope. “Do you want him to come up, baby?”

Reena’s lips trembled. “It’s true?”

He said nothing, just crossed to her, laid his lips on her head.

“I’ll come down. I’ll come down now.”

He was waiting in the living room with Xander and Fran. If she’d read sorrow on her father’s face, it was grim sympathy she saw in John’s. She would stand it, somehow she would stand it, because there was nothing else to be done.

“How?” It came out in a croak, and she shook her head before he could speak. “Thank you. Thank you for doing this, for coming to talk to me. I—”

“Ssh.” He stepped forward to take her hands. “Let’s all sit down.”

“I made coffee.” Fran busied herself pouring. “Reena, I got you a Pepsi. I know you don’t like coffee, so . . .” She stopped, lifted her hands helplessly. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did just fine.” Bianca led Reena to a chair. “Please, sit, John. Reena needs to know whatever you can tell her.”

He pulled his thumb and finger down his nose, sat. “I spoke with the company officer, and the investigator called in, and some of the firefighters, and the police. The fire’s being considered accidental, caused by a cigarette.”

“But he didn’t smoke. Did you tell them I said he didn’t smoke?”

“I went over that with them, Reena. People who don’t smoke habitually might have a cigarette from time to time. Maybe someone left a pack at his place.”

“But he never smoked. I—I never saw him smoke.”

“He was alone in the apartment, with no sign of forced entry. He was . . . It appears he’d been sitting or lying in bed, possibly reading or writing. A dropped cigarette on the mattress. The point of origin and the progress of the fire is pretty clear and straightforward. Started with a smoldering fire, in the mattress, caught the sheets. He must’ve woken up, been dazed and confused by the smoke. He fell, honey. Fell or rolled out of bed, taking the sheets with him. It worked as a trailer. The, ah, medical examiner will be running tests, and the fire examiner will take another look as a professional courtesy, but at this point there’s no reason to suspect it was anything but a tragic accident.”

“They’ll look for drugs. Do a tox screen looking for drugs or alcohol. He didn’t do drugs, and he didn’t drink all that much. And he didn’t smoke. What time did the fire start?”

“Around eleven-thirty last night.”

“I was with him. At his apartment. I was there until nearly ten. I went there with him after the wedding. We—I’m sorry, Daddy—we made love. He asked if I could stay the night because his roommate was out of town, but I thought I should be home. If I’d stayed—”

“You don’t know anything would have happened differently if you’d stayed,” John interrupted. “You don’t smoke.”

“No.”

“Odds are he knew that, and it’s possible he didn’t want to smoke around you.”

“Did you examine the scene? Did you—”

“Reena, it’s out of my jurisdiction. It’s Prince Georges County, and the people in charge are competent. I took a look at the scene pictures, the sketches, the reports—again because they gave me professional courtesy. I’d have come to the same conclusions on this. Honey, you’ve dealt with arson firsthand, and you know about malicious fire-setting. But you’re studying this kind of investigating and you know that sometimes this sort of tragedy is just an accident.”

“Pastorelli—”

“Is in New York. Just to cover bases, I asked the local cops to check. He was in Queens last night. He’s got a job as a night janitor, and it looks like it checks out. He couldn’t have been in Maryland and gotten back to New York to clock in at twelve-oh-six. Which he did.”

“So it just . . . happened? Why does that make it worse?”

“You’re looking for answers, and there aren’t any.”

“No.” She stared down at her hands and felt a little piece of her heart break off and shrivel to dust. “Sometimes the answers aren’t the ones you’re looking for.”

8

BALTIMORE, 1996

How tough could it be? Reena circled the innocuous-looking trailer, dubbed “the maze.” Maybe it had earned an almost mythical rep within the department, but it didn’t strike fear in her heart. Sure, she’d heard the stories, the jokes, the warnings about what a recruit faced inside that box, but really, wasn’t it just a matter of staying focused?

She’d handled the training in burn buildings right here at the Academy. She’d dealt with the physical stress. Climbing ladders, rappelling walls—in full gear. She’d worked shifts—mostly ride-alongs, true—but she’d done stints as a nozzleman in two residential fires.

And manning a live hose wasn’t for the weak or the faint of heart.

She was a cop now, wasn’t she? And proud to wear the uniform. But if she wanted to climb up to arson investigator, to carry a shield for that unit, she wanted to understand fire from the inside out. Until she could do what a firefighter did, until she had done it, she wouldn’t meet her personal goal.

Not just in the lab, not just simulations. She wouldn’t be satisfied with less than hands-on.

She was in good shape, she reminded herself. She’d worked hard to sculpt muscle onto a bony frame. The kind that could carry her in full turnout gear up and down five stories at a jog.

She’d earned this rite of passage, and the respect she’d gain from the men and women on the front line of the battle with fire.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

She turned, looked at John Minger. “Yeah, I do. For me. And it’s more to the point that I can do it.”

“Hell of a way to spend a pretty Saturday morning.”

He had her there. But this was her mission, and in a way she couldn’t explain, her reward.

“Sun’ll still be shining when I get out. Birds’ll still be singing.” But she’d be different. At least she hoped. “I’ll be okay, John.”

“You’re not, your mother’s going to have my head.” He shifted his stance, studied the maze. He was nearing sixty.

The squint lines around his eyes were deep.

He trusted the girl, had a father’s pride in her accomplishments and her dogged pursuit of her goals. But with pride came concern.

“I’ve never seen anyone train as hard as you.”

Surprise flickered over her face, an instant before her smile. “That’s nice to hear.”

“You’ve crammed a lot into these past few years, Reena. The training, the study, the work.” And he wondered if what had lit in her eleven years before had gone active and hot the day the boy she’d cared for died in fire. “You move fast.”

“Any reason I should move slow?”

Hard to explain to a girl of twenty-two how much life there was, not just to live but to savor. “You’re young yet, hon.”

“I can handle the maze, John.”

“I’m not just talking about the maze.”

“I know.” She kissed his cheek. “That was a metaphor for the life I’m heading into. It’s what I want. What I’ve always wanted.”

“Well, you’ve made plenty of sacrifices to get it.”

She didn’t think of it that way. Summers spent working, studying, training were investments in the future. Added to it was the rush, the adrenaline spill she experienced when she put on her uniform, or when she heard someone call her Officer Hale. The heart-hammering, stomach-tightening thrill she knew when she was surrounded by fire, pitched in that battle.

Or the absolute exhaustion that came after the war.

She’d never be Fran, serenely content to run a restaurant, or Bella, juggling salon appointments and luncheons.

“I need this, John.”

“Yeah, I know that, too.” Hands in pockets, he nodded toward the maze. “Okay. It’s rugged in there, Reena. You don’t want to go in cocky.”

“I won’t. I’ll just come out cocky. Here comes a couple of smoke eaters.” She lifted a hand in greeting, and regretted she hadn’t bothered with makeup.

Steve Rossi, dark and wiry with eyes like a cocker spaniel, was Gina’s current hot item. That simmer had been coming to a boil since Reena had introduced them six weeks before. But his companion, the buff, bronzed Adonis in jeans and a BFD T-shirt, had a great many possibilities.

She’d shared a meal with Hugh Fitzgerald—and a kitchen full of other firefighters—at the station. They’d played poker, had a couple of beers. And, after some major league flirting, had done the pizza and a movie routine, followed by several very juicy kisses.

Even so, it seemed to her that more than half the time he thought of her as one of the guys.

Hell, in turnout gear and Fire Line boots, she thought of herself as one of the guys.

“Hey,” she said to Steve, “what did you do with my roommate?”

“She’s sleeping like a baby. Couldn’t budge her to come out for this. You up for it?”

“Ready to go.” She looked at Hugh. “Did you come to watch?”

“Just finished my shift, thought I’d swing by in case you need CPR.”

She laughed, began to don her turnout gear, stepping into the protective pants, adjusting the suspenders. “The two of you got through it, so can I.”

“No doubt about it,” Hugh agreed. “You’re as tough as they come.”

Not exactly the sort of description a woman pined for from a potential lover, Reena thought. But if you were going to work in the boys’ club, you often ended up one of the boys. She tied her long, curly hair back into a tail, donned her hood.

No, she’d never have the innate femininity of her sisters, but, by God, she’d have a firefighter’s certification before the end of summer.

“Maybe we can catch a meal after you’re done,” Hugh suggested.

She fastened her coat, heavy in the heat of August, and lifted her eyes. His were like lake water, she thought, somewhere fascinating between blue and gray. “Sure. You buying?”

“You get through the maze, I spring.” After helping her on with her tank, he gave her shoulder a friendly pat. “You bail, you buy.”

“Deal.” She sent him a smile as sunny as the day, put on her mask and helmet.

“Radio check,” John ordered.

She checked her radio, her gear, gave John a thumbs-up.

“I’ll be guiding you through,” he reminded her. “Remember to regulate your breathing. Panic’s what gets you in trouble.”

She wouldn’t panic. It was a test, just another simulation. She breathed steady and normal, waited for John to click his stopwatch. “Go.”

It was dark as a tomb and hot as the seventh layer of hell. It was fantastic. Thick black smoke smothered the air so she could hear her own breath, wheezing just a little as she drew oxygen from her tank. She oriented herself, put the points of the compass in her head before she felt her way along, hands, feet, instinct. Found a door.

She eased through it. Already, sweat slicked over her face.

There was some sort of blockage. She tried to see it through her gloved fingers, located the low, narrow gap and bellied under.

There could be people trapped inside. That was the purpose of this exercise. She was to search the “building,” find any survivors or victims and work her way out again. Do the job. Save lives. Stay alive.

She heard John’s voice, strange and foreign in this black hole, asking for her status.

“Good. Fine. Five-by-five.”

She felt her way up a wall, then was forced to squeeze through a narrow opening. She was losing her bearings, paused to try to orient herself again.

Slow, steady, she ordered herself. Get in, get through, get out.

But there was nothing but black and smoke and unspeakable heat.

She dead-ended, felt the first trickle of panic in her throat, heard it in her quick, gasping breaths.

John’s voice told her to keep calm, to keep centered. Watch her breathing.

Then the floor dropped away beneath her.

She grunted on impact, lost her breath, felt her control slip another notch.

She was blind, and for a terrifying moment, she was deaf as the blood buzzed in her ears. Sweat was rivers now, pouring off her face, down her body under the smothering turnout suit. Her gear weighed a thousand pounds, and the mask was gagging her.

Buried alive, she thought. She was buried alive in smoke. Survivors? No one could survive this suffocating black hell.

For a moment, she fought a desperate need to rip away the gear, free herself.

“Reena, check your breathing. I want you to slow your breathing and give me your status.”

I can’t. The words were nearly out. She couldn’t do it. How could anyone do it? How could she think when she couldn’t see or breathe, when every muscle in her body was screaming from the strain? She wanted to claw her way out, through the floor, the walls. Just get out into the light, into the air.

Her throat was on fire.

Had it been like this for Josh? Tears burned her eyes now because she could see him. No compass points in her mind now, but that sweet face, that shy smile, that curtain of hair when he dipped his head. Had he been conscious long enough to be blinded and choked by the smoke before the fire took him? Had he panicked like this, struggling, struggling to find enough air to call for help?

Oh God, had he known what was coming?

That, of course, was one reason she was here, in this hideous hole of heat and misery. To know what it was like. To understand. And to survive it.

She got shakily to her hands and knees. She wasn’t dying, she told herself, even if it seemed like she was in her own coffin.

“I’m okay. Hit one of the drop floors. I’m okay. Moving on.”

She pulled herself up, crawled. There was no sense of direction now, just movement. Another door, another dead end.

How could the place be so damn big?

She climbed through a window opening. Every muscle trembled now and poured sweat like water. Time and space clogged. Her eyes strained to see—to see anything. Light, shape, shadow.

Smoke and disorientation, panic and fear. They killed as insidiously as the burn. Fire wasn’t just flame, hadn’t she learned that? It was smoke and vapor, weakened floors, caving ceilings. It was smothering, blinding panic. It was exhaustion.

She hit another drop floor—the same one?—and was too tired to curse.

She felt another wall. What sadist had designed this thing? she wondered. She pushed her body through yet another opening, found yet another door.

And opening it, stumbled out into the light.

Dragging down her mask, she pulled in air, braced her hands on her knees as her head spun.

“Nice job,” John told her, and she managed to lift her head enough to see his face.

“Nearly broke a few times in there.”

“Nearly doesn’t count.”

“Taught me something.”

“What’s that, hon?”

She took the bottle of water he offered, drank like a camel. “Any doubts I had about going into investigation instead of smoke eating have been put to rest. That’s not how I want to spend my time.”

He helped her off with her tank, patted her on the back. “You did good.”

She drank again, then set the bottle on the ground to once again brace hands on knees. A shadow crossed her, bringing her head up again as Hugh joined her. He mimicked her position, grinned into her face.

She grinned back, and though she heard her own breath huffing, felt the laugh bubble out. One as much from relief as triumph.

He laughed with her, and caught her helmet when she shoved it off.

“She’s a bitch, isn’t she?”

“A big one.”

“Looks like I’m out the price of the breakfast special at Denny’s.”

She laughed again, and let her head dangle between her knees.

Then I get inside, into the showers, and see myself in the mirror.” Reena winced, shifted the shopping bag—a score from the personal reward of an afternoon at White Marsh Mall with Gina. “My hair is nothing but frizzy strings smelling of sweat. My face is black from the smoke. And I stink. Seriously stink.”

“He still asked you out,” Gina reminded her.

“More or less.” She paused, distracted by a pair of sexy red shoes in a display window. “Breakfast at Denny’s, and we had some laughs. And we’re going to go hit some balls tomorrow. It’s not that I don’t like an hour in the batting cages, Gina, but I wouldn’t mind a fancy dinner now and then. The kind where I could justify buying those shoes.”

“Oh, they’re fabulous. You have to.”

As was her duty as best friend, Gina dragged Reena into the store.

“They’re eighty-seven dollars,” Reena said as she looked at the price on the sole.

“They’re shoes. They’re sexy, red shoes. They have no price.”

“They do on a rookie cop’s salary. But I want them. They should be mine.” Reena clutched the shoe to her breast. “No one else should have them. But they’re just going to sit in my closet.”

“So?”

“You’re right.” She found a clerk, gave him the shoe and her size, then sat with Gina and their bags. “They’ll be my reward for surviving the maze. And don’t say the outfit I just bought was supposed to be my reward.”

“Why would I?” And the genuine surprise in Gina’s voice had Reena grinning. “That was your reward twenty minutes ago. This is your current reward.”

“I love you.”

She cocked her head to look at her friend. Gina had let her hair grow, and it was now a tumbled mass of ebony waves. “You look all dewy.”

“I feel all dewy.” Gina hunched her shoulders up, wrapped herself in a hug. “Steve is all . . . He’s tough and strong and sweet and smart. Reena, he’s the one.”

“The one?”

“And only. I’m going to marry him.”

“You—Gina! When? We’ve been shopping over an hour, and you just drop this now?”

“He hasn’t asked me yet. But I’ll work him around to it,” she added with an airy wave. “I think we should get married next May. Or maybe wait until September. I’m thinking maybe September because then I could use all those wonderful fall colors. You’d look great in burnt gold. Or russet.”

It was, in Reena’s mind, a big leap from hot guy to choosing bridal colors. But she could see Gina was taking it in stride. “You really want to get married.”

“I really do. I know it might be hard, a firefighter’s wife.” She dug a box of spearmint Tic Tacs out of her bag, shook some out, offered them to Reena. “The hours are so long, and the work’s so dangerous. But he makes me so happy. Oooh, red shoes. Put them on!”

Obediently, Reena slipped on the shoes the clerk brought her. She stood, testing them out, admiring them in the low mirror.

She was trying on red shoes she couldn’t afford and would probably never wear. Gina was planning a future. Even while she preferred the shoes, there was a little clutch of envy in her belly.

“Is Steve thinking about marriage?”

“No, not yet. I wasn’t until this morning when he came in and kissed me good-bye. I thought, Oh my God, I’m in love, and I can see myself waking up every morning with this guy. I never saw that with anyone before. You’re buying those shoes, Reene. I give you no choice.”

“Well, in that case.” She sat, took them off again. And gulped when she took out her beleaguered credit card to pay. “I’m being irresponsible.”

“No, you’re being a girl. It’s okay.”

“I’m compensating.” She sighed at herself. “I know it. My best friend’s in love and I can’t even get a serious date.”

“Oh, you can, too. Look at you! You’re all tanned and toned and beautiful. It takes you under five minutes to slap yourself together in the morning. It takes me an hour, if I’m lucky.”

“I’m putting on a uniform,” Reena reminded her. “No-brainer wardrobe wise.” She shook her head. “I’m stopping this right now. I really like Steve, that’s what I should be saying. And if he doesn’t have the good sense to snap you up quick, he needs a good butt kicking.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Hugh out to a fancy dinner. Except, oh God, I just spent ninety-one dollars and thirty-five cents on shoes.”

“We’ll all go out to dinner. I’ll get Steve to fix it.”

“There’s my best friend in the world.”

“Which means I get to borrow your new shoes.”

“They’re a full size too big for you.”

“Like that matters. You know, you could ask Hugh to Fran’s wedding.”

“It’s not till October.” Reena gathered her bags and ordered herself not to spend another penny in the mall. “I may be done with him by then.”

“Slut.”

“Oh, if only. I freely admit I’m not looking for Mr. Right. I’m not even sure I want Mr. Right Now. It’s just that this one has such a body. And we definitely have a little heat going.”

They strolled out of the store, into the throng of Saturday shoppers. “I’m not dewy,” Reena added.

“You look moist and tasty to me.”

“Oh, I am. I am, but not dewy. Not love dewy.” She stopped by another display window. “Not the way you’re looking today, or the way Fran’s looked every day since she met Jack.”

“He’s such a sweetie.”

“He really is, and perfect for her. They’re going to be ridiculously happy. I don’t think I want to meet the perfect guy yet. What would I do with him?”

“Be ridiculously happy?”

Reena shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve got things I need to do first. The perfect guy and dewy love would just get in the way.”

Dragging his feet didn’t do a damn bit of good, but Bo dragged them anyway.

“I don’t wanna go shopping. I don’t wanna.”

“Oh, quit your whining.” Mandy used her hand on his arm like a shackle as she pulled him along. “Are you, or are you not, my best pal and sometime booty buddy?”

“Why am I being punished? Why would you drag your best pal and sometime booty buddy into the hell of a Saturday mall?”

“Because I need this birthday present today. How was I supposed to know the last couple of weeks would be insanely busy and I’d forget about the surprise party tonight? Oh! Look at that outfit.”

“No! No outfits. You promised.”

“I lied. See, that color green’s made for me and me alone. And look how the jacket’s cut. I’m on staff at The Sun now. I have to dress like a professional. Just going to try it on. Two seconds.”

He mimed a gun to his head, then a rope around his neck as she dashed off to the dressing room.

He could run, he considered. He could just run away. There wasn’t a man in the world who would blame him.

But, of course, he needed a present, too, for their mutual friend’s stupid-ass surprise party. Mandy had stomped on his notion of just picking up a bottle of wine on his way to the celebration.

But she could buy the gift, and he’d go halves. What was wrong with that?

Where the hell was she? What was taking so long?

“It’s perfect.” Mandy all but sang it as she danced back to Bo with her shopping bag. “I’m going to wear it tonight. I just need to find the right shoes.”

“I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“Oh, stop.” She gave his hand a pat with a hand glittering with four rings. The eyebrow ring was history. Bo sort of missed it. “You can sit in the food court while I find shoes. Present first, though. Before my credit card starts smoking.”

She pulled him out of the department store, into the belly of the beast. Everything echoed, everything moved. Bo thought, not fondly, of the House of Horrors he’d paid five bucks to endure at the age of twelve.

“What do you think? Fun or practical?”

“I don’t care. Just buy something and get me out of here.”

Mandy strolled, like a woman who not only knew her ground, but who would be content to hike over it for hours. Possibly days.

“Candles maybe. Some big, fancy candles. That’s sort of fun and practical.”

She started to sound like Charlie Brown’s mother to him. Just a nasal wah-wah-wah. He loved her, he really did, but he imagined Charlie Brown loved his mother, too. It didn’t make her any more comprehensible.

He thought maybe he could try praying, and cast his eyes up.

Sound cut off. Voices, piped music, whining children, giggling girls.

His vision telescoped, as it had once before. He saw her with perfect clarity.

She was standing on the second level, arms loaded with bags, that mass of dark gold curls spilling over her shoulders. His heart did one long, slow roll in his chest.

Maybe some prayers were answered before you thought to ask.

He started to run, trying to keep her in sight.

“Bo! Bowen!” Mandy shouted, sprinting after him. She caught him after he’d narrowly missed plowing into a thicket of teenagers.

“What is wrong with you?”

“It’s her.” He couldn’t quite get his breath, couldn’t quite feel his own feet. “She’s here. Up there. I saw her. Where’s the damn stairs?”

“Who?”

“Her.” He spun a circle, saw stairs and ran for them with Mandy at his heels. “Dream Girl.”

“Here?” Her voice spiked up with surprise and interest. “Really? Where? Where?”

“She was just . . .” He stopped at the top of the steps, panting like a hound on the hunt. “She was there, down there.”

“Blonde, right?” She’d heard the story often enough, and craned her neck, searching through the crowds. “Curly hair. Tallish, slim?”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s wearing a blue shirt. Um . . . without sleeves, with a collar. Damn it, where’d she go? This can’t be happening again.”

“We’ll split up. You go that way, I’ll go this way. Long hair, short?”

“Long, loose, over her shoulders. She had bags. A lot of shopping bags.”

“I like her already.”

But twenty minutes later, they met up at the same spot.

“I’m sorry, Bo. Really.”

Disappointment and frustration fought such a vicious war inside him, he was almost sick from it. “I can’t believe I saw her again and couldn’t get to her.”

“Are you sure it was the same girl? It’s been, what, four years.”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Well, look at it this way. You know she’s still around. You’re going to see her again.” Mandy gave him a little squeeze. “I just know it.”

9

Sexy red shoes aside, Reena could think of little more entertaining on a Sunday afternoon than a turn in the batting cage. Sunshine, baseball and a really cute guy to share them with.

Who could complain?

She adjusted her helmet, moved into her stance, and took a hard cut at the ball that flew toward her. It sailed up and out.

“I gotta say, Hale. You’ve got nice form.”

She smiled, kicked dirt, prepared to bat again. Maybe she’d prefer the form he was admiring was her body rather than her batting prowess, but her competitive streak wouldn’t allow her to bat like a girl.

“Damn right,” she agreed and swung away. “Easy right-field shag on that one.”

“Depends on the fielder.” Hugh took his own swing. Ball cracked against bat. “There’s a double.”

“Depends on the runner.”

“Shit.” But he laughed and slammed the next ball.

“Speaking of form, yours isn’t half bad either. You ever play?”

“High school.” He caught one on a foul tip. “Company’s got a softball team. I ride second.”

“I usually take left field if I pick up a game.”

“You got the legs for it.”

“Ran track in high school.” She’d been advised to learn how to run, so she had.

She took her turn again, cut too soon and took a strike. “I thought about keeping up with it in college, but my course load was too heavy. So I bookwormed it. Gotta keep your eye on the ball,” she said half to herself, and swung away.

“Now that one’s out of here. We ought to take in a game sometime, at Camden Yards.”

She glanced over, smiled. “Absolutely.”

When he mentioned grabbing a beer and some bar food, she nearly suggested they head over to Sirico’s. Not yet, she decided. She wasn’t quite ready to have him eyeballed by family, or the neighborhood.

They settled on a Ruby Tuesday’s, and shared nachos and Coors.

“So, where’d you learn to swing a bat?”

“Mmm.” She licked melted cheese off her thumb. “My father, mostly. He loves the game. We always managed to get to a few a year when we were kids.”

“Yeah, you got a big family, right?”

“Two older sisters, younger brother. Brother-in-law, niece and nephew courtesy of middle sister. Brother-in-law coming up thanks to oldest sister. She’s getting married this fall. Aunts, uncles, cousins too numerous to mention—and that’s just first cousins. How about you?”

“Three older sisters.”

“Really?” Points on the mutual ground scorecard, she decided. He wouldn’t be cowed by a large family. “And you’re the prince.”

“Bet your ass.” He grinned, toasting her. “They’re married. Got five kids between them.”

“What do your sisters do?”

He looked blank for a moment. “About what?”

“Work.”

“They don’t. They’re, you know, housewives.”

She cocked her eyebrows at him as she took another sip of beer. “I hear that’s work.”

“Couldn’t pay me enough to do it, so yeah, guess so. Your family’s got that restaurant, Sirico’s. Great pizza.”

“Best in Baltimore. Starting on the third generation there. My sister Fran’s comanager now. And her Jack—the guy she’s marrying’s tossing dough. You’re second generation on the job, right?”

“Third. My dad’s still on. Making noises about retiring, but I don’t know. Gets in you.”

She thought about the maze, and the fact that she wanted to do it again. Do it faster, do it better. “I know it does.”

“He’s fifty-five though. People—civilians—don’t really understand the physical stress of it.”

“Or the emotional, the psychological.”

“Well, yeah, that, too.” He sat back, giving her a long study. “You handle yourself, physically. The maze isn’t for wimps. And you worked the burn buildings, stuck it out through a couple of tough shifts. You’ve got a good build, like a—what is it?—greyhound.”

She may have hit a dry spell in the dating pool, but she still remembered how to flirt. “Wondered if you’d notice.”

She liked his grin, the quickness of it, the cockiness. The grin said he was a man who knew just who he was, what he was and what he was after.

He flashed it now. “I noticed. Especially when you’re wearing those little shorts running track at the Academy. Anyway, most women can’t manage the physical part of it.”

“A lot of men can’t either.”

“No question. No sexist line.” He held up a hand. “What I’m saying is you’re one of the few women I’ve seen who make the cut. You’ve got the stamina, the instincts, the brains. And you don’t lack guts either. So I wonder why you’re not signing on.”

She picked at another nacho. He wasn’t one to heap on praise, she knew. So she took his observations seriously and gave him a serious answer. “I’ve thought about it, and I get caught up in it sometimes. During training, or when I’m working a shift. But fighting fires isn’t what pulls me. It has to pull you. Knowing how they work, why. Figuring how they start, why, who starts them. That’s my thing. Running into a burning building takes a singular kind of courage and drive.”

“Seen you do it,” he pointed out.

“Yeah. Well, yeah, I needed to do it, to see how it’s done. But it’s not my life’s work. It’s going into that building after, putting it together and finding the why.”

“The department has fire inspectors. Minger’s one of the best.”

“Yeah. I considered going that direction. John’s, well, he’s one of my major heroes. But . . . there’s something else a lot of people, a lot of civilians, don’t understand. Arson. What it does, not just to property. What an incendiary fire can do to people, to a neighborhood, to business, to economy. To a city.”

She lifted a dripping nacho, shrugged to lighten things up. “So that’s my mission in life. You fight them, Fitzgerald. I’ll do the cleanup.”

He wasn’t a hand holder, she noted, but he walked her to her door. And once he had, backed her right up against it for another of those lush, out-of-nowhere kisses.

“It’s early yet,” he said when he lifted his head.

“It is.” And it annoyed her that a couple of casual dates made it too early for her personal gauge. “But . . .”

He winced, but those foggy lake eyes held humor. “I had a feeling you were going to say that. Want to try to catch a game this week?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“I’ll call you, we’ll set it up.” He started to walk away, turned back, kissed her again. “You’ve got great lips.”

“I like yours, too.”

“Listen, do you have any vacation time coming?”

“I can probably squeeze out a day in addition to my off days. Why?”

“We’ve got this place down on the Outer Banks. Old beach cottage. It’s not bad. We could take a couple days down there next time I’m off if you can work it. Hook Steve and Gina into it.”

“A couple days at the beach? When do we leave?”

He flashed that grin again. “We’ll juggle the schedules, get it set up.”

“I’ll start packing.”

She let herself in, did a little victory dance around the tiny living room.

The beach, hot guy, good friends. Life was currently just excellent.

Too good, in fact, to stay in an empty apartment on a summer evening.

She grabbed her keys again and went back out.

She caught the tail of Hugh’s car turning left at the corner, and absently noted the car that turned behind him. She kissed her fingers in his direction, then set off the opposite way to walk to Sirico’s.

It was good to be back in the neighborhood. She’d enjoyed her time in the group house, and she’d liked the broom closet she’d been able to finesse during her training at the Shady Grove campus west of Baltimore. But this was home.

The row houses with their white steps or little porches, pots of flowers on stoops or Italian flags flying from rooftop poles.

There was always someone around to call out a greeting.

She took her time, admired some of the murals painted on window screens and wondered if she should ask her mother to do one for her and Gina. Probably needed to run that one by the landlord, but since it was Gina’s second cousin, she doubted it would be an issue.

She detoured half a block to watch a few minutes of a boccie game between old men in colorful shirts.

Why hadn’t she thought to ask Hugh if he wanted to stroll down, check out some of the local color?

What she should do is ask him, casually, if he wanted to take in the open-air movie on Friday night. It was a neighborhood tradition. Movie night meant live music, too—which could lead to dancing. She might put those red shoes to use, after all.

She’d think about that, maybe make it a double with Gina and Steve. But for now, she might as well enjoy the rest of her evening.

She reminded herself that Sunday nights were busy at Sirico’s. If she wanted a few minutes with some of the family before the chaos, she shouldn’t linger.

Things were already heating up when she walked in the door of the restaurant. Buzzing conversations, the clatter of cutlery, the phone ringing greeted her when she stepped inside.

Pete was at the pizza counter, her mother at the stove. Fran, along with a couple of the waitstaff her father still called his kids, were manning the tables.

Reena saw her immediate future flash in front of her eyes in the form of an apron and an order pad. She started to call out to Fran, then saw Bella sitting at a table nibbling on some antipasto.

“Hey, stranger.” Reena plopped on the other chair at the table. “What are you doing around here?”

“Vince is golfing today. Thought I’d bring the kids by for a while.”

“Where are they?”

“Dad and Jack took them for a walk, over to the harbor. Mama called to let you know I was here, but you weren’t home.”

“Just got back, didn’t even check the machine.” She reached over, nipped one of the olives from Bella’s plate. “Boccie contest is winding down. We’re going to be swamped in about a half hour.”

“Business is good.” Bella gave a little shrug.

She looked amazing, Reena thought. The lifestyle she’d aimed for all of her life suited her. She was polished. Her deep blond hair expertly highlighted and swept silkily around a face of fine, smooth skin. There was gold and glitter at her ears, on her fingers, around her throat. Subtle and expensive to match the pale rose linen shirt.

“How about you?” Reena asked. “Are you as good as you look?”

A smile flickered around Bella’s mouth. “How good do I look?”

“Magazine-cover level.”

“Thanks. I’ve been working on it. It takes time to lose the baby weight, get back in shape. I’ve got a personal trainer who makes Attila the Hun look like a pansy. But it’s worth it.”

She held out her wrist to show off the sapphire-and-diamond tennis bracelet. “My reward from Vince for getting back to my pre-Vinny weight.”

“Nice. Sparkly.”

Bella laughed, gave that little shrug again and toyed with some prosciutto. “Anyway, I came by to try to pigeonhole Fran about the wedding.”

“What about it?”

“I just don’t see why she insists on having the reception in some dinky hall when she can use our club. I’ve even got a list of menus, and florists, musicians. She doesn’t need to settle when I’m willing to help.”

“It’s sweet of you.” And she meant it. “But I think Fran and Jack want something a little simpler and closer to home. They’re simpler, Bella. That’s not a criticism,” she added, reaching out for her sister’s hand when Bella’s eyes flashed. “Honestly. Your wedding was spectacular, and gorgeous and absolutely reflected you. Fran’s should reflect her.”

“I just want to share some of what I’ve got. What’s wrong with that?”

“Absolutely nothing. And you know what? I think you ought to help with the flowers.”

Bella blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“You’re better at that than Fran and Mama. I think they should let you have your head there, especially if you’re willing to help pay for it.”

“I would be, but they won’t—”

“I’ll talk them into it.”

Bella sat back. “You could, too. You always could work them around.”

“One condition. If Fran wants simple flowers, you don’t buy truckloads of exotic orchids or whatever.”

“If she wants simple, I can work simple. But stupendously simple. And I can turn that dinky hall into a garden. A cottage garden,” she added at Reena’s narrowed stare. “Sweet, old-fashioned, romantic.”

“Perfect. When my turn comes, I’m hooking you.”

“Got any potentials?”

“Not looking for potential husbands. But I’ve got a potential guy. Firefighter.”

“Oh. Big surprise.”

“Studly,” Reena said around another olive. “Excellent mattress possibilities.”

Bella gave a choked laugh. “I miss you, Reena.”

“Aw, honey, I miss you, too.”

“I didn’t think I would.”

Now it was time for Reena to laugh.

“Seriously. I didn’t think I’d miss you, or this.” She gestured to encompass the restaurant. “But I do, sometimes.”

“Well, we’re always here.”

She stayed longer than she’d intended, long after Bella took her children home to her sprawling suburban estate. When business was light enough, she maneuvered her mother and Fran to a table.

“Girl powwow.”

“Any excuse to get off my feet.” Bianca sat, poured sparkling water all around.

“It’s about the wedding, and Bella.”

“Oh, don’t start.” Fran clamped her hands on her ears. Her waves of hair tossed as she shook her head. “I don’t want a country club wedding. I don’t want a bunch of waiters in tuxedos serving champagne or a damn ice swan.”

“Don’t blame you. But you do want flowers, right?”

“Well, of course I want flowers.”

“Let Bella do them.”

“I don’t want—”

“Wait. You know the sort of thing you want, you know the colors you want. But Bella knows more. The one thing she has in spades is style.”

“I’d be drowning in pink roses.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Or, Reena thought, she’d personally drown Bella in them directly after the ceremony. “You want a simple wedding, old-fashioned and romantic. She gets that. Okay, she doesn’t get why you want that, but understands this is your line. And your day. She wants to help. She wants to feel part of it.”

“She is part of it.” Fran pulled at her hair now while Bianca sat silently. “She’s matron of honor.”

“She wants to give you something. She loves you.”

“Oh, Reena, don’t.” Fran put her head on the table, banged it lightly. “Don’t guilt me into this.”

“She’s a little bored, feeling a little separate.”

“Mama. Help me.”

“I’m waiting to hear it all first. To see why Reena’s taking your sister’s part in this.”

“For one, because I think—No, I know she can do this. And at her expense.” She jabbed a finger at Fran as Fran’s head whipped up and protest covered her face. “A gift from your sister isn’t an insult, so just choke that back. She wants to give you your wedding flowers, and she’ll want you to be pleased with them, so she won’t screw it up. Quick, name five flowers that aren’t a rose.”

“Um . . . lily, geranium . . . damn it, mums, pansies. This is too much pressure.”

“You remember how she hounded those landscapers when she was putting in those gardens, the shrubberies? She knows more than any of us about this, and about coordinating something like this. She said she could do a kind of cottage garden theme. I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds nice.”

Fran bit her lip. “I’m not sure exactly what it means either. But it sounds right.”

“It would mean a lot to her, and I think when it was done, it would mean a lot to you.”

“I could talk to her. Maybe we could go to a florist, or I could go over and look at her gardens again, and she could show me what she means.”

“Good.” Knowing when to desert the field, Reena slid out of the booth. “I’ve got to head home.” She leaned down, kissed Fran, started to kiss her mother, but Bianca got up.

“I’m going to walk out with you, get some air.”

As they went through the door, Bianca put an arm around Reena’s waist. “That was unexpected. You’re not one to take Bella’s side.”

“I don’t usually agree with her. Plus, my gut tells me there’s no way she’d screw this up. It’s partly for Fran, part for her own ego. It’s a no lose.”

“Smart. You’ve always been my smart one. Why don’t we all go look at flowers? The women of Sirico’s.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Now, call me when you get home.”

“Mama.”

“Just call, so I know you got home safe.”

Four and a half blocks, Reena thought as she strolled away. Through my own neighborhood. A trained police officer.

But she called when she got home.

Being a rookie cop meant Reena was at the bottom of the department food chain. The fact that she’d graduated in the top five percent of her class didn’t hold a lot of water once she was in uniform and on patrol.

That was fine. She’d been taught to earn her way.

And she liked patrolling. She liked being able to talk to people, to try to help solve problems or disputes.

She and her partner, a ten-year man named Samuel Smith, responded to a report of a disturbance on West Pratt in the southwest part of the city the locals called Sowebo.

“Thought we were going to hit Krispy Kreme,” Smithy complained as he turned in the direction of the call.

“How do you eat all those doughnuts and not put on weight?”

“Cop blood.” He winked at her. He was six-four, and a stone-solid two-twenty. His skin was walnut, his eyes sharp and black. Out of uniform he’d have looked intimidating. In it, he looked ferocious.

It was a comfort to someone in her first year on the force to be partnered with someone built like a truck. And as a Baltimore native, he knew the city as well as—or better than—she did.

She could see the crowd on the sidewalk as they turned down the block. This area ran more to art galleries and historic homes than the street brawl she realized was in progress.

Indeed most of the people watching the two men roll around on the asphalt were dressed in style—a lot of bold colors and New York black.

She got out with Smithy, moved with him through the crowd.

“Break it up, break it up.” Smithy’s voice boomed, and people flowed back. But the two men kept pummeling each other. And not very skillfully, Reena noted.

Designer shoes were getting scuffed, and the Italian-cut jackets were going to be trash, but there wasn’t much blood.

She reached down, as Smithy did, to pull them apart. “Police. Cut it out.”

She had her hands on the smaller of the two, and he rolled when she gripped his arm. His other came up, fist clenched. She saw the swing coming, had a moment to think, Shit, and blocked it with her forearm.

Using his momentum, she shoved him over on his face, then yanked his hands behind his back. “You swing at me? You’re going to take a punch at me?” She cuffed him while he rocked his body like an upturned turtle. “That’ll get you popped for assaulting an officer.”

“He started it.”

“What are you, twelve?”

She pulled him upright. His face was a little scraped up, and she judged him to be mid-twenties. His opponent, in basically the same shape, and of approximately the same age, sat on the ground where Smithy put him.

“Did you take a swing at my partner?” Smithy pointed to the second man. “Stay,” he ordered and stepped up into the first man’s face. It was like a redwood towering over a sapling. “Did your dumb ass swing at my partner?”

“I didn’t know she was a cop. I didn’t know it was a she. And he started it. You can ask anybody. He started pushing me inside.”

“I don’t hear an apology.” Smithy tapped his ear. “Officer Hale, do you hear an apology out of this dumbass?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t look sorry, but he did look mortified, and on the verge of tears. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“You didn’t hit me. You punch like a girl. You people go about your business,” she ordered the onlookers. “Now, you can tell me your side of it while he tells my partner his. And I don’t want to hear you say he started it again.”

Awoman,” Smithy said with a sigh when they drove away. “It’s always over a woman.”

“Hey, don’t blame my breed for the stupidity of yours.”

He turned his head, widened his eyes. “You a woman, Hale?”

“Why do I always get the wise guys?”

“You did okay. Handled that fine. You’ve got good reflexes, and you kept it chilled when he tried to pop you.”

“If he’d connected, it might’ve been a different story.” But satisfied with a job well done, she eased back. “You buy the doughnuts.”

The apartment was empty when she got home after her shift. A note in Gina’s large, flowery hand was stuck to the fridge, along with the snapshot of her extra-large aunt Opal. Gina’s deterrent to snacking.

Out with Steve. We’re at Club Dread if you want to hook up. Hugh may swing by, too.

XXXOOO

G

She thought about it, actually stood in the kitchen running through her head what she could wear. Then she shook her head. She wasn’t in the mood for a noisy club.

She wanted to get out of uniform, stretch out and do some studying. John passed her old case files, let her go through them and try to determine accident or incendiary, and the hows and whys.

When she moved to the arson unit, those hours of reconstruction would come in handy.

Instead, she wandered into the bedroom. The reflection in the mirror caught her eye, made her stop, study herself.

Maybe she didn’t look particularly female in the uniform, but she liked the image she projected. Authority and confidence. Though there’d been a moment on the street today when she’d gotten a jolt, actively realized how easy it could be to be hurt. Even just a fist to the face.

But she’d handled herself. Having Smithy say so meant a great deal.

Even if she considered herself more at home with books and files and study, she could handle herself on the street. She was learning to, anyway.

She took off her cap, put it on the dresser. Unclipped her weapon and laid it down. Unbuttoning her uniform shirt she frowned at the serviceable white cotton bra.

She was going on another shopping trip, she decided on the spot. For sexy underwear. Nothing in the regulations about a female officer’s underwear. And knowing she had something pretty and female underneath would be good for her morale.

With that idea in mind, she ran herself a bubble bath, lit candles, poured a glass of wine.

And read about fire while lounging in the tub.

When the phone rang, she let the machine pick it up.

She listened with half an ear to Gina’s bubbly voice inviting the caller to leave a message, then pushed up, sloshing water, as the next voice came on.

“Hello, bitch. All alone? Maybe I’ll come see you. Been a while, bet you missed me.”

She was up, water guttering out candles. Dripping and naked, she dashed for her weapon, pulled it out of the holster. Gripping it, she yanked on a robe as she hurried toward the door to check the locks.

“Probably a prank,” she said aloud to soothe herself with her own voice. “Probably just some asshole.”

But she checked the windows, the street below.

Then she played the message back twice. The voice wasn’t familiar to her. And the phone didn’t ring again.

They didn’t make a ball game, or the Friday movie. Her schedule or Hugh’s threw them off. But they managed a quick burger at a place near the fire station.

“Gina’s packed and unpacked three times,” Reena told him. “It’s like she’s going on safari instead of taking a couple days at the beach.”

“Never knew a woman who didn’t pack twice what she needs.”

“You’re looking at one.”

He grinned at her, bit into his burger. “Yeah, we’ll see about that when you get there. You sure you got the directions okay? I can put off leaving until tomorrow night if you’re worried about getting lost.”

“I think we can manage it. Sorry I can’t leave sooner, but Gina’s stuck until tomorrow afternoon anyway. The three of us will cruise on down. We should be there by midnight.”

“I’ll keep the light on. This works out. Gives me a chance to open the place up. Hasn’t been used much this season. And I can stock in some food. I hear you can cook.”

“I was born with a saucepan in one hand and a bulb of garlic in the other.” Plus she liked cooking, the act and the art. “Why don’t you pick up some shrimp? I’ll make us some scampi.”

“Sounds great. You should make good time. Middle of the week, that late at night. You won’t hit much traffic once you’re into North Carolina.” He glanced at his watch. “I figure I’ll hit Hatteras by two in the morning. If I get going.”

He hitched up his hip, took out his wallet and tossed bills on the table. “There’s no phone at the cottage, but you can call the market in Frisco and they’ll get word to me.”

“You already explained, Daddy. Don’t worry about us.”

“Okay.” He rose, came over to bend down and kiss her. “Drive safe.”

“You, too. See you tomorrow night.”

So easy. Pathetically easy. Nobody up and around in bumfuck.

Take me home, country roads.

Great night, lots of stars but no moon. Just dark enough, just deserted enough. Passed him five miles back, so he’ll come right along. Pick your spot, get started.

Pull off the side of the road, open the hood. Could set up a flare, for good measure, but some other stupid son of a bitch might stop.

Only time for one tonight.

Just one.

And he’ll stop. Oh, that’s a given. Do-gooders always stop, the Good Samaritans. Wouldn’t be the first you’ve taken out this way. Probably won’t be the last.

Got the old rattletrap. Redneck asshole you stole it from will just have to cry in his beer. Got the flashlight. Got the .38.

Lean against the hood, whistle a tune. Might as well have a smoke, pass the time. He’ll be coming along in a minute.

Lights coming, best look helpless. Step out just a little, hold up a hand. If it’s not him, just wave them on by. No thanks, I got it, you say. Just got her going again, thanks for stopping!

But it’s him, all right. Big man in his big blue Bronco. And, predictable as sunrise, pulling over to stop, lend a poor guy a hand.

Walk right on up to the door. It’s better if he doesn’t get out.

“Hey!” Big relieved smile, shine the light in his eyes. “Boy, am I glad to see you.”

Hugh shielded his eyes against the glare of the flashlight. “You got trouble?”

“Not anymore.” And raise the gun, shoot him twice in the face.

Body jerks like a puppet. A mother wouldn’t recognize that face now. Time for the gloves now so you can unbuckle the cocksucker, give him a shove. Now all you have to do is drive this handy four-wheeler into the woods a ways. Not too far. Want him found easy, after all.

Flatten one of the tires. Looks like he ran into trouble, and somebody came along and gave him more.

Hike on back, get the gas can.

Let’s see now, we want the wallet, want the watch.

Oh no! Poor bastard was robbed and murdered on his way to play at the beach! What an awful tragedy!

Gotta laugh. Make it look sloppy, slosh that gas, gouge that upholstery! Pop the hood, light the engine. Get those tires soaked good and proper. Now step back—safety first!

And set that bastard on fire.

Look at him burn. Just look at him go. The human torch, blazing like a son of a bitch. The first minute’s the best, the whoosh and the flash. Amateurs are the ones who have to hang around and watch. It’s only the first minute that flashes in, flashes out.

Now we just walk away, and drive this rattletrap back toward Maryland. Maybe get us some bacon and eggs for breakfast.

It was Steve who brought Reena the news. He came into the precinct, stopped by the desk where she was typing up an incident report. His eyes burned out of a bone-white face.

“Hey, what’s up?” She glanced over, stopped typing. “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve got to pull a double and can’t go down. I was about to go off shift, head home and pack.”

“I . . . Can I have a minute? Private?”

“Sure.” She pushed away from the desk as she took a good look at him. Nerves fluttered in her belly. “Something’s wrong. Gina—”

“No. No, not Gina.”

“Well, what . . . Hugh? Did he have an accident? How bad?”

“No, no accident. It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

She gripped his arm now, pulled him out in the corridor. “What? Say it quick.”

“He’s dead. Jesus, Reena. He’s dead. I just got a call from his mother.”

“His mother? But—”

“He was killed. He was murdered—shot.”

“Murdered?” Her hand went limp on his arm.

“She was pretty incoherent at first.” Steve’s mouth thinned, razored as he stared hard over her head. “But I got what I could out of her. Somebody shot him. He was on his way down, just a couple hours from the island, and somebody must have gotten him to stop his car, or ran him off the road, or he had a flat. I’m not sure. She wasn’t sure.”

He sucked in a breath. “But they shot him, Reena. Jesus, they shot him, then set the car on fire to try to cover it. They took his wallet, his watch. I don’t know what else.”

There was sickness backing up in her throat, but she swallowed it down. “Have they identified him, positively identified him?”

“He had, ah, stuff in the car, stuff that didn’t burn, with his name on it. The registration in the glove box. His parents called me from down there. It’s him, Reena. Hugh’s dead.”

“I’m going to see what I can find out. I’m going to call the locals and see what I can find out.”

“They shot him in the face.” Steve’s voice broke. “His mother told me. They shot him in the fucking face. For a goddamn watch and what was in his wallet.”

“Sit down.” She nudged him down on a bench, sat beside him, held his hand.

Whatever she found out, she thought, a man—a good man—one she’d kissed good-bye less than twenty-four hours before, was dead.

And once again fire haunted her life.

CHAIN REACTION

A series of events so closely related to one another that each one initiates the next.

Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Proverbs 6:27

10

BALTIMORE, 1999

Fire sprang out of an untenanted building in South Baltimore on a bitter night in January. Inside, firefighters worked in a holocaust of raging heat and boiling smoke. Outside, they battled temperatures in the single digits, and a frosty wind that blew water into ice and licked flames into torrents.

It was Reena’s first day as a member of the city arson unit’s task force.

She knew part of the reason she’d bagged the assignment and was working under Captain Brant was because John had pushed a few buttons on her behalf. But it wasn’t all the reason. She’d worked like a dog to earn it, studying, training, putting in countless unpaid hours—and had never taken her eye off the goal.

John’s influence aside, she’d earned her shiny new shield.

When she could manage it, she continued to give time to the neighborhood’s fire department, in the volunteer capacity. She’d eaten her share of smoke.

But it was the cause and effect that continued to drive her. Who or what started the fire? Who was changed by it, grieved by it or benefited from it?

When she and her partner arrived at the scene at dawn, the building was a pit of blackened brick and rubble made fanciful by waterfalls of ice.

She was teamed with Mick O’Donnell, and he had fifteen years on her. He was, Reena knew, old school, but he had what she thought of as a nose.

He smelled out incendiary fires.

He wore a parka and steel-toed boots, with a hard hat over a wool cap. She’d chosen similar garb, and when they arrived on scene at first light, they stood beside the car, one on each side, studying the building.

“Too bad they let buildings like this go to shit.” O’Donnell unwrapped two sticks of gum, rolled both into his mouth. “Yuppies aren’t coming in to beautify ’round this part of Baltimore yet.”

He pronounced it Balmer.

“Circa 1950. Asbestos, plasterboard, ceiling tiles, cheap veneer paneling. Add in the trash heaped around by indigents and junkies, there’s a lot of fuel.”

She got her field kit out of the trunk, stuffed a digital camera, spare gloves, an extra flashlight in her pockets. She glanced over, noted the black-and-white and the morgue wagon.

“Looks like they haven’t transported the body yet.”

O’Donnell chewed contemplatively. “You got trouble looking at a crispy critter?”

“No.” She’d seen them before. “I’m hoping they haven’t moved it yet. I’d like to get my own pictures.”

“Starting a scrapbook, Hale?”

She only smiled as they walked to the building. The cops on duty gave them a nod as they ducked under the crime-scene tape.

The fire and its suppression had turned the first level into a wasteland of charred and soaked wood, scorched ceiling tiles, twisted metal and shattered glass. Her preliminary information included the fact that the old building had been a haven for junkies. She knew they’d find needles under the overburden, and drew on her leather gloves for penetration protection.

“You want me to start a grid down here?”

“I’ll do that.” O’Donnell scanned the scene, took out a notebook to do some sketches. “You’re younger than me. You make the climb.”

She looked at the ladder standing in place of the stairs that had collapsed. Getting a firmer grip on her kit, she picked her way across, then started up.

Plasterboard, she thought again, studying burn patterns, stopping to take digital shots of the walls, then a bird’s-eye view of the first level for the file.

The pattern showed her the fire had traveled up, as it liked best, and washed over the ceiling. Plenty of fuel to feed it, she thought, and enough oxygen to keep it breathing.

A good portion of the second floor had collapsed, and was now part of the overburden O’Donnell would grid. The fire had run along the ceiling here, too, she noted, eating its way through tile, plywood, plasterboard, fueled by it, and the debris left by unofficial tenants.

She saw what was left of an old, overstuffed chair, a metal table. The smooth level of ceiling had allowed the fire to race along, sending the smoke and gases to spread uniformly, in every direction.

And it had taken out the yet to be identified man whose remains were now on the floor, curled, it seemed, inside what had been a closet. A man crouched by him. As it appeared the man had a good yard of leg, it was a long way to crouch.

He was wearing gloves, work boots, a wool cap with ear flaps and a red-checked scarf wrapped multiple times around his neck and chin.

“Hale. Arson unit.” Her breath smoked out as she eased onto the edge of the floor.

“Peterson, ME.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Flash fried.” He gave a ghost of a smile, at least his eyes did. He was early forties, by her gauge, tall and black and appeared to be lean as a snake under the layers of winter gear. “Looks like the idiot son of a bitch thought he could get away from the fire by crawling in the closet. Smoke probably got him first, then he cooked. Tell you more when I get him in.”

She moved forward cautiously, testing the floor as she went.

The probable suffocation from smoke would have been a mercy, she knew. The body was burned through, lying with its fists raised as fire victims’ usually were. The heat contracted the muscles, left them looking as though their last act was to try to box away the flames.

She held up her camera, got his go-ahead nod and took several more shots.

“How come he was the only one in here?” she wondered out loud. “Temps were down to single digits last night. Street people use places like this for shelter, and it had a rep as one for junkies. Preliminary reports said there were blankets, a couple of old chairs, even a little cookstove on the third floor.”

Peterson said nothing when she crouched by the body.

“No visible trauma?”

“Not so far. Could find something when I get him in. You’re thinking somebody started the fire to cover up a homicide?”

“Wouldn’t be the first. But you gotta rule out accident first. Why’s he the only one here?” she repeated. “How long before you get an ID—ballpark?”

“Might get some prints. Dental. Few days.”

Like O’Donnell, she dug out a notepad, began to make some quick sketches to go with her photos. “What do you figure? Male, about what, five-ten, -eleven? Nobody’s been able to reach the owner. Wouldn’t it be interesting?”

She began to set up her grid, sectioning off the room in much the same way archaeologists section a dig. She would layer, and she would sift, document and bag.

On the far wall the burn pattern said accelerant to her, just as it had to the fire department’s investigator. She took samples, storing them in containers, labeling.

The lightbulb over her head was partially melted. She took another picture, another of the ceiling, and the track of the burn.

And she followed it out, moving over the soaked debris, through the ash. Four units, she thought, putting the pre-fire picture into her head. Untenanted, disrepair, under code.

She ran her gloved fingers over charred wood, down a wall, selected more samples. Then closed her eyes and sniffed at them.

“O’Donnell! Got what looks like multiple points of origin up here. Evidence of accelerant. Plenty of cracks and gaps in this old flooring for it to pool.”

She got down on all fours, eased her head over a ragged hole where the floor had crashed down to the level below. O’Donnell had his grid and was working sections.

“I want to check on the owner again, have somebody in the house get us some background.”

“Your call.”

“You want to take a look at the pattern up here?”

“You just want me to haul my old ass up that ladder.”

She grinned down at him. “Want to hear my initial working theory?”

“Evidence, Hale. Evidence first, then theory.” He paused a moment. “Tell me anyway.”

“He started the fire at the wrong end. Should’ve done it at the far side, farthest from the steps, working his way toward them, and his escape route. But he was stupid, and started lighting it nearest the steps, working back. Maybe he was drunk, or on something, or just a dumbass, but he trapped himself. Ends up cooking in the closet.”

“You find a container, something that held the accelerant?”

“No. Maybe it’s under some of these layers. Or maybe it’s down there.” She pointed. “He drops it here, in his panic, fire chasing after him. Fire hits container of accelerant. Boom, and you got your hole in the floor, and you’ve got your first level going up, and the debris from up here raining down.”

“You’re so smart you come on down and work those grids then.”

“On that.” But first she crawled back from the hole and dug out her cell phone.

It was tedious, filthy work. She loved it. She knew why O’Donnell was letting her take the point, and was grateful. He wanted to see if she could deal with the muck and the stink, the monotony and the physical demand.

And he wanted to see if she could think.

When she found the ten-gallon can under a mountain of debris and a sea of ash, she felt the click.

“O’Donnell.”

He turned from his sieving, pursed his lips. “Score one for the new kid.”

“Got punctures on the bottom. He trailed it through, lit it up, trailed, lit. Pattern upstairs indicates trailers. Dead guy can’t be a bystander or a victim. Fire doesn’t map that way. Whoever torched it had to get trapped. Riot bars on the windows first and second floors, so nobody got out that way. I’m betting the body ID’s as the owner.”

“Why not a pyro, a junkie, somebody with a hard-on for the owner?”

“Firefighters who responded reported the doors were all locked. Dead bolts. They had to break them in. The riot bars upstairs? Who puts bars on second-floor windows? And they’re new. They look pretty new. Owner does that. Owner locks the place up tight to keep the riffraff out. Owner’s got the keys.”

“Finish up, write it up. You might do, Hale.”

“Oh yeah, I’ll do. I’ve been waiting for this since I was eleven.”

That night, still revved up, Reena sat across from Fran at Sirico’s and shoveled in angel hair marinara.

“So, we can’t locate the owner of the building, who’s got three separate loans on the place and a boatload of insurance. People we talked to said he’s been complaining about how the homeless and the junkies ruined his investment. How he couldn’t unload the property. Figure the ME’s going to ID our CC as the owner, or the owner’s in the wind, gone under after the torch job went wrong. Still got a lot of work to do on-site, but it’s piecing together. Textbook.”

“Listen to you.” Fran laughed, sipped mineral water. “My little sister, the investigator. Wait until Mama and Dad hear you solved your first case.”

“Closed—and not yet. Still have some reconstructing to do, some interviews to conduct, some background to check. But I was hoping they’d call while I was in here.”

“Reena, it’s after one in the morning in Florence.”

“Right.” Reena shook her head. “Right.”

“They called this afternoon. They’re having the best time. Dad talked Mom into renting one of those little scooters. Can’t you see them, zipping around Florence like a couple of kids?”

“I can.” Reena grabbed her wine, lifted the glass in toast, drank. “They wouldn’t be able to do this without you.”

“Not true.”

“Absolutely true. You’re the one carrying on. The one taking over so much of the responsibility and work here so they can have a little time to travel. Bella, well, she hasn’t picked up so much as a glass in here unless it was to drink out of it on the rare occasions she comes by. I’m not much better.”

“You waited tables last Sunday, and pitched in for more than an hour on Tuesday after working a full day.”

“I live right upstairs, so it’s no big.” Still, she smiled, a bit wickedly. “I notice you didn’t mention Bella.”

“Bella is what Bella is. And she does have three kids to deal with.”

“And a nanny, a housekeeper, a gardener—oh, I forgot, a groundskeeper.” Reena waved at Fran’s frown. “Okay, don’t put the look on me. I’ll ease off. I’m not really mad at her. I guess I feel a little guilty that you take the lion’s share. And Xander’s right behind you, even with the load he carries in med school.”

“Forget the guilt. We’re all doing what’s most important to us.” She glanced over and smiled at the man tossing dough at the work counter.

He had big hands, and a sweet face just this side of homely. His bright red hair fell over his forehead like little licks of flame. And when he looked at his wife, as he did now, his eyes lit with fun.

“Well, who knew you’d fall for an Irishman who likes to cook Italian.” Amused, Reena ate more pasta. “You know, you and Jack still have that glow, even though you’re working on what, three years now.”

“Two last fall. But it might be a little something extra causing the glow.” Fran reached out, gripped both of Reena’s hands. “I can’t wait. I was going to wait until you’d eaten, and Jack and I could tell you together, but I can’t stand it another minute.”

“Oh my God, you’re pregnant!”

“Four weeks.” Her cheeks went rosy. “It’s early, I should shut up, keep it to myself. But I can’t, and—”

She broke off as Reena leaped up, caught her around the neck. “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Wait!” She rushed away, around the worktable and jumped onto Jack’s back. “Daddy!”

His face turned the same color as his hair as she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Champagne for the house! On me.”

“We were going to keep it to the family for now.” Jack grinned foolishly when she bounced down.

Reena looked over, at the applause, at the people who hurried over to congratulate Fran. “Too late. I’ll get the wine.”

Fran’s news and her own solid first day had Reena drinking a little more than was wise. But she enjoyed the buzz as she walked around to the back stairs leading to her apartment.

Gina and Steve were married now, nearly a year into it. There was no reason to keep up a two-bedroom apartment.

She knew her parents thought it was a little silly for her to live there, when her room was still kept at home. And they’d argued with her about paying rent. She’d had to remind them they’d raised her to be responsible, and make her own way.

She considered the apartment a first step. Eventually, she wanted a house of her own. But that was eventually. And there was something cozy and comforting living above the shop, and a stone’s throw from her parents. A block from Fran and Jack.

When she reached the back, she saw the light was on in her living room. Instinctively she opened her coat so her weapon was in easy reach. In all her years on the force, she’d only had to draw it twice in the line. It always felt slightly foreign in her hand.

She started up the steps, going back over her routine. She’d left before dawn, maybe she forgot to turn off the light. But it was a habit, her mother was a bear about wasting electricity, and it had been drummed into her since birth.

One hand stayed on her weapon as she reached for the doorknob to check the lock. The door swung open, her weapon was half out. Then she shot it back into place with a huff of breath.

“Luke! How long have you been here?”

“Couple hours. I told you I might stop by tonight.”

True enough, she thought as her heart rate leveled. She’d forgotten. Pleased to see him, she came in out of the cold, offered her lips.

The kiss was brief, perfunctory and had her raising her brows. Normally he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her. She felt the same. There was a sexy elegance about Luke Chambers, a tailored sensuality she found exciting. As she found his avid and romantic pursuit of her from the moment they’d met.

She’d enjoyed being pursued, being courted with flowers and phone calls, romantic dinners, long walks by the water.

She enjoyed, very much, being seen as completely female, and just a little delicate. A nice change of pace, she’d thought, from being considered sturdy and competent.

It was probably why it hadn’t taken him long to get her into bed. But it had taken three months before she’d given him a key to her door.

“I stopped in downstairs to get some dinner, caught up with Fran.” She unwound her scarf, pulled off her hat, then did a little twirl. “I had the best day, Luke, and the best news when I—”

“Glad somebody did.” He moved away from her, turned off the TV he’d been watching, then slumped in a chair.

Okay, she thought. He was sexy and interesting and often sweetly romantic. But he was also a lot of work. She didn’t mind that. In fact, being in what was largely a man’s world most of her day helped her enjoy little bits of being softer, and more consolatory in a relationship.

“Rough one?” She peeled off her coat, her gloves, put everything away in the narrow closet.

“My assistant gave her two weeks’ notice.”

“Oh?” Reena finger-combed her long curls, thought idly about trying a new style. Then felt guilty for not paying attention. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She bent to unlace her boots. “Why is she leaving?”

“Decided she wants to move back to Oregon, for God’s sake. Just like that. Now I’ve got to set up interviews, get somebody in she can train before she leaves. This on top of three out-of-office meetings today. My head’s killing me.”

“I’ll get you some aspirin.” She walked over, leaned down to kiss the top of his head. He had such nice, silky hair, mink brown like his eyes.

As she straightened, he took her hand, gave her a tired smile. “Thanks. Last meeting ran late, and I just wanted to see you. Decompress.”

“You should’ve stopped in downstairs. Decompression’s always on the menu at Sirico’s.”

“So’s noise,” he said as she moved into the bathroom. “I was hoping for a quiet evening.”

“It’s quiet now.” She brought out the bottle, carried it into the little kitchen with its old workhorse of a stove and cheerful yellow counters. “I’ll join you in a couple of aspirin. I had a lot of champagne down below. Major celebration.”

“Yeah, you looked to be having a hell of a time. I glanced in the window before I came around back.”

“Well, you should’ve at least poked your head in.” She handed him the aspirin, the water.

“I had a headache, Cat. And I didn’t want to sit around in a noisy restaurant waiting for you to finish partying.”

And if you had a headache, she thought, why the hell didn’t you get your own aspirin sooner? Men could be such babies. “I might’ve finished partying earlier if I’d known you were here. Fran’s pregnant.”

“Hmm?”

“My sister Francesca. She and Jack found out they’re going to have a baby. Her face could’ve lit up Baltimore when she told me.”

“Didn’t they just get married?”

“It’s been a couple years, and they’ve been trying almost since the get-go. We tend to head straight for the nursery in my family. Bella’s already had three, and is making noises about having one more.”

“Four kids in this day and age. It’s irresponsible.”

Easing down on the arm of the chair, she gave his shoulder a rub. “That’s what you get with a big Italian Catholic family. And she and Vince can afford it.”

“You’re not thinking about popping one out every couple years, are you?”

“Me?” She laughed, gulped down water. “Kids are way down the road for me. I’m just really getting started on my career. Speaking of which, I had my first major case today. Did you hear about that building on Broadway, untenanted apartment building, single victim?”

“I didn’t have time for the news today. I put in twelve hours. And spent a lot of that tap-dancing for a potential client, a major one.”

“That’s great, about the major account.”

“I don’t have it yet, but I’m working on it.” His hand, long fingers, narrow palm, ran gently over her leg. “I’ve set up a dinner with him and his wife, Thursday night. Wear something special, will you?”

“Thursday? Luke, my parents are coming back from Italy on Thursday. We’re having dinner at the house. I told you.”

“So, you can see them on Friday, or over the weekend. For God’s sake you live right down the street. This is a major account, Cat.”

“Understood. And I’m sorry you won’t be able to make it for the welcome back dinner.”

“Are you hearing me?” The hand on her leg clenched into a fist. “I need you with me. This is the kind of socializing I need to do to land this account. It’s expected. It’s already set up.”

“I’m sorry. My evening’s already set up, and was before you booked Thursday night. If you want to reschedule, I’ll—”

“Why should I reschedule?” He pushed out of the chair, threw out his arms. “This is business. This is a major opportunity for me. It could mean the promotion I’ve been working toward. You all but live with your family as it is. What’s the big freaking deal about eating some damn spaghetti, when you can do the same thing any other time?”

“Actually, we’re having manicotti.” But she pushed down the spurt of irritation as she got to her feet. “My parents have been gone nearly three weeks. I promised I’d be there unless I got called out on a case. They’re going to come home to the news that their oldest daughter is having her first child. This is major in my world, Luke.”

“So what I need doesn’t register?”

“Of course it does. And if you’d asked me before making these plans, I’d have reminded you that I was already committed, and you could have suggested another night.”

“The client wants Thursday, the client gets Thursday.” He snapped it out as temper ruddied his cheeks. “That’s how it works in my world. Do you have any idea, any conception, how competitive financial planning is? How much time and effort it takes to swing a multimillion-dollar account?”

“Not really.” And it was probably her lack that she couldn’t care less. “But I know you work hard, and I know it’s important to you.”

“Yeah, that shows.”

When he turned away, she rolled her eyes behind his back. But she stepped forward, prepared to soothe. “Look, I’m really sorry. If there’s any way you can move it to another night, I’ll—”

“I just told you.” He threw out his arms again as he spun around. And the back of his hand caught her sharply on the cheek.

She jerked back, her eyes going huge as she pressed her fingers to the sting.

“Oh God, oh my God, Cat. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—Did I hurt you? Oh Jesus.” He took her arms, and his face was as stunned as she imagined hers was. “It was an accident. I swear.”

“It’s all right.”

“You just walked right into it. I didn’t expect . . . I’m so fucking clumsy. God, let me see. Is there a bruise?”

“It was barely a tap.” True enough, she thought. More a shock than an actual hit.

“It’s red,” he murmured and touched his fingers gently to her cheek. “I feel terrible. I feel like a monster. Your beautiful face.”

“It’s nothing.” She found herself soothing him after all. “You didn’t mean it, and I’m not fragile.”

“You are to me.” He drew her into his arms. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come by in such a lousy mood in the first place. I just wanted to see you. Then you were partying downstairs. I just wanted to be with you.”

He brushed his lips over her cheek. “Just needed to be with you.”

“I’m here now.” She touched his hair. “And I’m sorry I can’t help you out on Thursday. Really.”

He eased back, smiled. “Maybe you can make it up to me.”

The sex was good. It was always good with Luke. And because of the spat, and the slap, he was particularly tender. Her body warmed under his, the muscles taxed by her own long day loosened. And while her system climbed to peak, her mind emptied.

Satisfied and sleepy, she curled against him.

“You ever going to get a bigger bed?” he asked.

She smiled in the dark. “One of these days.”

“Why don’t you come to my place for the weekend? We can hit a couple of clubs Saturday night, do a late brunch Sunday morning.”

“Mmmm. Maybe. I may have to help out with the lunch shift downstairs on Saturday, but after. Maybe after.”

He was silent a moment, and she thought he’d drifted off to sleep. “You could deal with your parents earlier on Thursday, skip out of the dinner part and meet me at the restaurant at seven.”

“Luke, that’s just not going to work for me.”

“Fine.” There was a sulk in his voice as he rolled away, got out of bed. “We’ll just leave it all your way, as usual.”

“That’s not fair, and you know it.”

“What’s not fair,” he snapped back as he began to dress, “is your unwillingness to compromise on anything. The way you put everything ahead of me.”

The postcoital glow evaporated. “If you really feel that way, I don’t know what you’re doing with me.”

“At the moment, neither do I. You take more than you give, Cat.” He buttoned his shirt with short, sharp movements. “Before much longer, I’m going to be tapped out.”

“I’m giving you the best I’ve got.”

He shoved his feet into his shoes. “That’s really sad for you.”

When he stalked out, she lay back.

Was she that selfish? she wondered. That emotionally stingy? She cared about Luke, but did she take a real interest in his work? Not so much, she admitted, not when she was so wrapped up in her own.

Maybe her best was sad.

She rolled over in the dark and searched a long time for sleep.

When Reena walked into the squad room with O’Donnell after spending most of her shift knocking on doors and interviewing witnesses, getting statements from the owner of the building’s ex-wife, former business partner, current girlfriend, there were three dozen long-stemmed white roses spread over the majority of her desk.

The flowers caused a lot of comments from other members of the unit, but the card made her smile.

Cat,

I’m sorry.

The Idiot.

Still, she didn’t indulge in sniffing at them until she’d carried them into the break room to give her enough room on her desk to work.

She had reports to write. Though the identity of the body had yet to be confirmed, the owner was still among the missing.

With O’Donnell, she walked into their CO’s office to update him.

“Waiting for the lab reports,” O’Donnell began. “Owner—James R. Harrison—was last seen knocking a few back in a place called Fan Dance, a strip club a few blocks from the scene. We got a credit card receipt cashing him out at twelve-forty. Ford truck registered to him’s parked back of the building.”

He glanced at Reena, signaling her to take over.

“We found a toolbox under the debris on the first level, and a screwdriver with a blade that appears to match the punctures on the bottom of the gas can recovered from the scene. Harrison did a turn for fraud five years ago, so his prints are on file. They match ones we lifted from the toolbox, the screwdriver and the gas can. ME wasn’t able to get prints off the body, so they’re working on dental.”

“We should have that tomorrow,” O’Donnell added. “Talked to some of his associates. He had serious money problems. Liked the horses, and they didn’t like him.”

Captain Brant nodded, sat back. His hair was ice white, his eyes a cold blue. There were pictures of his grandchildren on a desk he kept as tidy as her aunt Carmela’s company parlor.

“So, it’s looking like he lit the place up, trying to cash in on the insurance, got trapped inside.”

“Looking that way, Captain. The ME didn’t find any signs of foul play, no wounds or injuries. We’re still waiting for tox,” Reena added, “but nothing’s popping that indicates somebody wanted him dead. He has a small life insurance policy. Five thousand, and it goes to the ex-wife. He never changed the beneficiary. She’s remarried, got full-time employment, so does her husband. She doesn’t look good for it.”

“Wrap it up. Quick work,” he added.

“I’ll write the report,” she offered when she and O’Donnell walked into the squad room.

“Have at it. I’ve got some other paperwork to catch up on.”

He sat. His desk faced hers. “It your birthday or something?”

“No. Why? Oh, the flowers.” She settled in front of her keyboard with her notes. “Guy I’m seeing was a bit of a jerk last night. I get the bennies.”

“Classy.”

“Yeah, he’s got that going for him.”

“This a serious deal?”

“Haven’t decided. Why, you hitting on me?”

He grinned, and the tips of his ears reddened. “My sister’s got this kid who’s done some work for her. Carpenter. Does good work. Nice kid, she tells me. She’s trying to fix him up.”

“And what, you think I’ll go on a blind date with your sister’s carpenter?”

“Said I’d ask.” He lifted his hands. “Nice-looking boy, she says.”

“Then let him find his own girl,” Reena suggested, and began to write her report.

11

Bo scarfed down the last peanut butter cookie, washed it down with cold milk. Then, sitting at the breakfast counter he’d built himself, gave an exaggerated sigh.

“If you’d ditch that husband of yours, Mrs. M., I’d build you the home of your dreams. All I’d ask in return would be your peanut butter cookies.”

She grinned, and flicked her dish towel at him. “Last time it was my apple pie. What you need’s a nice young girl to take care of you.”

“I’ve got one. I’ve got you.”

She laughed. He really liked the way she laughed, with her head thrown back so the big boom of it hit the ceiling. She had a round, comfortable body and so would he if she kept feeding him cookies. Her hair was red as a stoplight and all fuzzy curls.

She was old enough to be his mother, and a hell of a lot more fun than the one nature had given him.

“Need a girl your own age.” She poked a finger at him. “Handsome boy like you.”

“It’s just that there are so many to choose from. And none of them hold my heart like you, Mrs. M.”

“Go on. You’ve got more blarney than my old grandda did. And he was Irish as Paddy’s pig.”

“There was a girl once, but I lost her. Twice.”

“How?”

“Just a vision across a crowded room.” He lifted his hands, flicked his fingers. “Evaporated. You into love at first sight?”

“Of course I am.”

“Maybe this was, and I’m just wandering aimlessly until I find her again. Thought I did once, but she poofed on me that time, too. Now, I’ve got to get going.”

He unfolded himself from the stool, six feet two inches of lean muscle. The years of physical labor had built him up, toughened him.

She might have been twice his age, but she was still female, and Bridgett Malloy appreciated the view.

She had a soft spot for this handsome boy, that was the truth. But she was too practical to have continued to throw work his way over the past six months if he wasn’t skilled and honest.

“I’m going to find you a girl yet. Mark my words.”

“Make sure she knows how to bake.” He bent down, kissed her cheek. “Say hi to Mr. M. for me,” he added as he pulled on his coat. “And just give me a call if you need anything.”

She handed him a bag of cookies. “I’ve got your number, Bowen, in more ways than one.”

He headed out to his truck. Could it get any colder? he wondered, and stuck to the path he’d dug out for her from steps to driveway. The ground was white with snow that had melted to ice, refrozen. And the sky above was a heavy gray that promised more of the white stuff.

He decided he’d stop at the market on his way home. Man didn’t live by peanut butter cookies alone. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded finding a woman who knew her way around the kitchen, but he’d gotten to be a good hand in there himself.

He had his own business now. He patted the wheel of the truck as he got in. Goodnight’s Custom Carpentry. And together, he and Brad had bought, rehabbed and turned over a couple of small houses.

He could still remember talking Brad into that first investment, pitching the sagging wreck of a house as a diamond in the rough. He had to give Brad credit for vision—or utter faith.

He had to give his grandmother credit for trusting him enough to front some of the money. Which reminded him to call her when he got home, see if she needed him to fix anything around her house.

He and Brad had worked like dogs, rehabbing that first house. They’d turned a good profit, repaid his grandmother plus interest. And reinvested the rest.

When he took the time to think about it, to really think back, he had a dead boy to thank for where he was today. Why that event, the death of a virtual stranger, had changed his life he couldn’t be sure. But it had motivated him to stop drifting, to get moving.

Josh, he thought now as he drove away from the Malloy house in Owen’s Mill. Mandy had been really broken up about it. And oddly enough, the fire and the kid’s death had been some of the elements that had cemented their friendship.

Brad and . . . what the hell was her name? The little blonde who’d been the object of his friend’s intense desire back in those days. Carrie? Cathie? Shit, it didn’t matter. That hadn’t gone anywhere.

Right now, Brad’s object was a spicy brunette who liked to salsa dance.

But his own blonde—the one glimpsed at a party a lifetime ago—still cropped up in his mind now and then. He could still see that face, the tumble of curls, the little mole near her mouth.

Gone, long gone, he reminded himself. He’d never known her name, the sound of her voice, her scent. Which was probably what made that memory, that feeling all the sweeter. She was whatever he wanted her to be.

He streamed into traffic, decided everybody in Baltimore had opted to go to the grocery store after work. All it took was dire whispers of snow, and every mother’s son and daughter jammed the aisles. Maybe he could skip it, make due with what he had.

Or just order in a pizza.

He had to go over his drawings for another job, and the supply list for the house he and Brad had just settled on.

His time was better spent . . .

He glanced idly to his left as the traffic in his lane stopped.

At first all he saw was a woman, a really pretty woman driving a dark blue Chevy Blazer. Lots of hair, curling hair the color of light caramel, springing out from under a black watch cap. She was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in a way that told him she was keeping time to something on the radio. His was rocking with Springsteen’s “Growin’ Up.” And from the rhythm of her fingers, he thought she had the same station going.

Funny.

Entertained at the thought, he angled so he could get a better look at her face.

And there she was. Dream Girl. The cheekbones, the curve of lips, the little mole.

His mouth dropped open, and shock had him jerking, stalling his truck. She flicked a glance in his direction, and for a moment—a kind of breathless moment—those long, tawny eyes met his.

And once again, the music stopped.

He thought, Holy shit!, then she frowned, turned her head away. Drove off.

“But, but, but—” His own stutter brought him back. He cursed himself, turned on the engine. But his lane was stuck, and hers was moving right along. Horns blasted irritably as he dragged off his seat belt, shoved open his door.

He actually had the wild idea of running after her car. Just running down the street like a mental patient. But she was too far ahead. Too far, he thought, furious with himself, for him to even read her plate.

“There you go again,” he murmured, and simply stood, horns blaring around him, as the first flakes of snow fell.

Anyway, it was weird.” Reena leaned on the counter in the kitchen at Sirico’s, where her mother was back, manning the stove. “I mean he was really good-looking, if you discount the fact that his mouth was hanging open wide enough to catch a swarm of flies, and his eyes were bugged out like somebody’d just rammed a stick up his butt. I mean I could feel him staring at me, you know? And when I looked over, he’s like this.”

Reena mimed the look.

“Maybe he was having a heart attack.”

“Mama.” With a laugh, Reena leaned over to kiss her cheek. “He was just weird.”

“You keep your doors locked?”

“Mama, I’m a cop. Speaking of which, I caught another case today. Couple of kids broke into their school, set fires in a couple of classrooms. Didn’t do a good job of it, lucky for them.”

“Where are the parents?”

“They’re not all you. Fire-setting like this is a big problem with kids. Nobody was hurt, which was a godsend, and the property damage was minimal. O’Donnell and I rounded them up, but one of them—I’ve got a bad feeling about him. I think the psych eval’s going to back me up. Ten years old, and he’s got that look in his eyes. Remember Joey Pastorelli? That look.”

“Then it’s good you caught him.”

“This time. Well, I’ve got to go spruce myself up for my date.”

“Where are you going tonight?”

“I don’t know. Luke’s being very mysterious about it. I’m ordered to wear something fantastic, which is why I was hitting the mall for a new dress and had my weird-guy sighting.”

“Luke. Is he the one?”

“He’s the one right now.” She rubbed a hand down her mother’s back. He wasn’t the long-haul guy, she knew that already. “You’ve got Bella and Fran tucked in and giving you grandbabies.”

“I don’t say you have to be married and having babies. I just want you happy.”

“Me, too. I am.”

He’d chosen upscale and French, so Reena was glad she’d sprung for the deep blue velvet. And the way his eyes had warmed when he saw her in it took the sting out of the price tag.

But when he ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon and caviar, she stared.

“What is going on. What’s the occasion?”

“I’m having dinner with a beautiful woman. My beautiful woman,” he added, taking her hand, kissing her fingers in a way that softened every muscle in her body. “You look amazing tonight, Cat.”

“Thanks.” She’d certainly worked at it. “But there’s something going on. I can see it.”

“You know me too well. Let’s wait for the champagne. If they ever get it to the table.”

“No hurry. You can pass the time by telling me again how amazing I look.”

“Every inch. I love when you wear your hair that way. All straight and sleek.”

Which took endless time, made her arms ache from fighting the curls away with the round brush and the hair dryer. But since it was the look he favored, she didn’t mind indulging him now and then. He nodded to the waiter who brought the bottle to the table, revealed the label. And tapped his own glass to indicate he’d do the tasting.

When it was approved, poured, Luke lifted his glass. “To my delicious, delectable Cat.”

“I’m willing to be on the menu, when I’m served with this.” She tapped her glass to his, sipped. “Mmmm. Sure beats the hell out of the house sparkling at Sirico’s.”

“The wine cellar there doesn’t exactly run deep. The one here’s extraordinary. An exceptional French like this doesn’t go with pepperoni pizza.”

“I don’t know.” She chose to be amused. “I think it’d be a nice complement to both. Now, we’ve got our wine, had our toast. What’s going on?”

“Nosy, aren’t you?” He tapped his finger to his nose. “I got a promotion. A big one.”

“Luke! That’s great, that’s wonderful! Congratulations. Wow, here’s to you.” She lifted her glass again and drank.

“Thanks.” He beamed at her. “I don’t mind saying I worked for it. The Laurder account was the last card in the deck. When I sewed that up, I had it. Would have been smoother if you’d helped me schmooze them, but . . .”

“You managed it yourself. I’m really proud of you.” She reached over to lay her hand on his. “So, do you get a new title, another office? Let me have all the details.”

“Fat raise in salary.”

“Goes without saying.” She set her glass down, and the waiter appeared like magic to top it off.

“If you’re ready to order—”

Reena’s hand squeezed Luke’s as his tensed. “Why don’t we? I’m starved, and then you can tell me every tiny detail while we eat.”

“If that’s the way you want it.”

She waited until they’d given their choices—and maybe it was a little pretentious for Luke to order in French. But it was cute, and he was entitled to a little leeway tonight.

“When did it happen anyway?” she asked him.

“Day before yesterday. I wanted to set tonight up before I told you. Reservations here can be hard to come by.”

“And what do we call you now? The king of financial planning?”

The pleased grin spread over his face. “That’s next. For now, I’ve settled for a VP slot.”

“Vice president. Wow. We should have a party.”

“Oh, I’ve got some plans. You know, Cat, you might put a bug in your sister’s ear again. Now that I’m in this position, maybe she can convince her husband to throw his account my way.”

“Vince seems satisfied where he is,” she began, and saw his eyes cloud. “But I’ll mention it. I’ll see her on Sunday, for Sophia’s birthday party. You never told me if you were going to be able to make that.”

“Cat, you know how I feel about those big family things, and a kid’s birthday on top of it.” His eyes aimed toward the ceiling. “Spare me.”

“I know, it can be overwhelming. That’s fine. I just wanted you to know you’re welcome.”

“If you think it would help sway your brother-in-law . . .”

This time she tensed, then deliberately relaxed again. “Let’s keep family and business separate, okay? I’ll see if I can talk to Vince about meeting with you, but it’s, well, it’s tacky to try to scoop his account at his daughter’s party.”

“Tacky? Now I’m tacky for trying to do my job and give your brother-in-law good financial advice?”

She let him stew while their first course was served. “No. But I can tell you Vince wouldn’t appreciate you talking business at a family event.”

“I’ve been to some of your family events,” he reminded her. “There’s plenty of business discussion. Pizza business.”

“Sirico’s is family. I’ll do what I can.”

“I’m sorry.” He waved a hand, then patted it on hers. “You know I get wound up when it comes to my work. We’re here to celebrate, not to argue. I know you’ll try a little harder to bring your brother-in-law around.”

Had she said that? she wondered. She didn’t think so, but it was smarter to let it go. Otherwise they’d just go in circles, and she’d lose her appetite.

“So, tell me more, Mr. Vice President. Will you be heading a department?”

He told her more, and while she listened she enjoyed watching the animation on his face. She knew what it was to work toward a goal, then reach it. Exhilarating. The little ripples of tension smoothed away as they ate.

“This fish is fabulous. Want a bite?” As soon as she said it, saw his expression, she laughed. “Sorry, I always forget you don’t like eating off each other’s plates. But you’re missing out, let me tell you. Oh, I didn’t tell you I caught another case today. There—”

“I wasn’t finished. I haven’t gotten to the most important part.”

“Oh. Sorry. There’s more?”

“The big bang. You asked if I’ll be getting a new office. I will be.”

“Big and splashy?” she said, playing in.

“That’s right. Big and splashy. And on Wall Street.”

“Wall Street?” Stunned, she set down her fork. “New York? They’re promoting you to New York?”

“I’ve been busting my ass for this, and now I’ve got it. The Baltimore office is chump change compared to the setup I’ll have in New York.” His face was grim as he drank more champagne. “I earned this.”

“Absolutely. I’m just surprised. I didn’t know you’d hoped to relocate.”

“No point in talking about it until it’s done. And it’s not just relocating, Cat. It’s a major leap for me.”

“Congratulations all around.” She smiled as she tapped her glass to his. “I’m going to miss you. When do you leave?”

“Two weeks.” His eyes warmed, and his lips curved in the smile that had first caught her eye months before. “I’m taking the train up tomorrow to check out some apartments.”

“Fast work.”

“Why waste time? Which brings me to the second part of all this. Cat, I want you to go with me.”

“Oh, Luke, that would be great. I’d love a quick trip to New York, but I can’t take off tomorrow. With a little more notice I could—”

“I don’t mean tomorrow. I’ve got a realtor working with me, and I know what I’m looking for in an apartment. I mean I want you in New York with me. Cat.” Even as she opened her mouth to speak, he took her hand. “You’re exactly what I want. You’re the icing on this cake. Come with me to New York.”

Her heart tripped as he took a small box out of his pocket, thumbed it open. “Marry me.”

“Luke.” It was a staggering solitaire. She didn’t know anything about diamonds, but she knew staggering when it was blinding her. “It’s gorgeous. It’s . . . Well, wow, but—”

“Classic, like you. We’ll have an amazing life together, Cat. Exciting. Rich.” He glanced away from her for an instant, gave a little nod. Then his eyes were back on hers as he slid the ring on her finger.

“Wait—”

But the waiter was there with a fresh bottle of champagne and beaming smiles. “Congratulations! We wish you every happiness.”

Even as he poured there was applause from neighboring tables, and Luke was up and coming around to her to stop any words she might have said with a long, warm kiss.

“To us,” he said as he sat back down. “To the beginning of the rest.”

And when he tapped his glass to hers, she said nothing.

There was a knot of distress in the pit of her stomach. Trapped, she thought. That was how she felt. Trapped into accepting the congratulations and good wishes from the restaurant staff, other diners as Luke led her outside. The ring on her finger sparkled like a mad thing in the streetlights, and weighed like lead on her finger.

“We’ll go to my place.” He caught her in his arms beside his car, bent his head to nuzzle her neck. “And really celebrate.”

“No, I need to go home. I need to be at work early, and . . . Luke, we need to talk.”

“Have it your way.” He kissed her again. “It’s your night.”

Far from it, was all she could think. The knot in her belly was beginning to make her queasy, and the leading edge of a tension headache cut at the base of her neck.

“I’ll take some digitals of the apartments so you’ll have an idea.” He drove with a smile on his face. “Unless you want to ditch work now and run up there with me. Be more fun.” He turned his head, winked at her. “We could go shopping. I can get my assistant to book us a suite at the Plaza, get us some tickets to a show.”

“I can’t. It’s just too—”

“All right, all right.” He shrugged a dismissive shoulder. “But don’t complain when I sign a lease on a place you haven’t seen. I’ve got three places earmarked in Lower Manhattan. The one I’m leaning toward is a three-bedroom loft. Realtor claims it’s a great space for entertaining. Just came on the market, so my timing’s good. Close enough to the office I should be able to walk to work in good weather. Price is stiff, but with my new position, I can afford it. And I’ll be expected to do some entertaining. Traveling, too. Going places, Cat.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all planned out.”

“What I’m best at. Oh, I want to throw a little party before we go. We can make it a combination farewell and engagement deal. If we want to have it at my place, we’ll have to put it together fast. Have to start packing up.”

Again, she said nothing, just let him ramble as they drove to her apartment over Sirico’s.

“Let’s hold off making the big announcement.” He nodded toward the restaurant. “I want you all to myself for tonight. You can show off your ring tomorrow.”

He came around to open her door. It was one of the gestures he always made, gestures she’d always considered sweet and old-fashioned.

When they were inside, he helped her off with her coat. Nuzzled her neck again. She stepped away, taking a breath before she turned to face him. “Let’s sit down.”

“Wedding plans.” He laughed as he spread his arms. “I know women like to dive right in, but let’s just concentrate on being engaged tonight.” He stepped forward to trail his fingers down her cheek. “Let me concentrate on you.”

“Luke, I need you to listen to me. You didn’t give me a chance in the restaurant. One minute you’re showing me a ring, the next the waiter’s pouring champagne and people are clapping. You put me in an impossible position.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t like the ring?”

“Of course I like the ring, but I didn’t accept it. You didn’t let me. You just assumed. And I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, Luke, but you assumed too much.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Luke, we never even mentioned marriage before tonight, now suddenly you have us engaged and moving to New York. I don’t want to move to New York, for starters. My family is here. My work is here.”

“For Christ’s sake, it’s a couple hours on the train. You can see your family every few weeks if you want to. Though it’s past time you cut the cord there, if you ask me.”

“I haven’t asked you,” she said quietly. “Any more than you’ve asked me. I’ve recently gotten promoted myself, which it occurs to me we never bothered to celebrate.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. You can’t really compare—”

“I’m not. I’m just taking stock.” Long past time to take it, she admitted. Her fault. “You couldn’t have been less interested in my work, but you assume I’ll resign from the unit here and happily move off with you to New York.”

“You want to keep playing with fire? I hear they have them in New York, too.”

“Don’t belittle what I do.”

“What do you expect?” He shouted now. “You’re putting your job ahead of me, ahead of us. You think I can afford to turn down this promotion so you can stay here in Baltimore and cook up spaghetti on Sundays? If you can’t see why my career’s more important, then I’ve seriously misjudged you.”

“I can’t, so you have. But even that’s beside the point. I never said I wanted to get married—and I don’t. Not now. I never said I would marry you. You didn’t bother to let me answer.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” His face was ruddy, as it became with temper. And was moving toward red. “You sat right there and accepted. You’ve got the ring on your finger.”

“I didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“Embarrass me?”

“Luke, the waiter was right there.” She lifted her hands to scrub them over her face. “And those people at the next table. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“So, what, you just strung me along?”

“That wasn’t my intention. It’s not my intention to hurt you now. But you’ve made all these plans without consulting me first. Marriage is . . . I’m just not ready for it. I’m sorry.” She pulled the ring off her finger, held it out to him. “I can’t marry you.”

“What the hell is this?” He gripped her shoulders, gave her a quick shake. “You’ve got some sort of hang-up about leaving Baltimore? For God’s sake, grow up.”

“I’m happy here, and I don’t consider that a hang-up.” She pulled away. “My home is here, my family is here, my work’s here. But Luke, if I were ready to get married, if I wanted to get married, and leaving here was part of it, I would. Marriage isn’t on the table for me right now.”

“What about what I need? Why don’t you think about someone else for a change? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing with you these past months?”

“I thought we were enjoying each other. If you were thinking along these lines, I didn’t pick up on it. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry. You’ve humiliated me, and you’re sorry. That makes it all fine, doesn’t it?”

“I went out of my way not to humiliate you. Don’t make this harder than it is.”

“Harder than it is.” He whirled away. “Do you know how much trouble I went to, with everything else I have to deal with, to give you the perfect night? To find the perfect ring? And you’re throwing it back in my face.”

“I’m saying no, Luke. You and I don’t want the same things. There’s nothing else I can do but say no, and I’m sorry.”

“Oh yeah, you’re sorry.” He spun back, and something in his face made her palms go clammy. “You’re sorry you’re putting your stupid job before me, your smothering, middle-class family before me, your fucking blue-collar lifestyle before me. After everything I’ve invested in you—”

“Whoa.” Her temper began to stir, to mix with his. “Invested? I’m not a stock, Luke. I’m not a client. And you’re going to be careful what you say about my family.”

“I’m sick to death of your fucking family.”

“You need to go now.” The stirring was moving toward rapid boil. “You’re angry with me, we’ve both been drinking—”

“Sure. You didn’t have any problem sucking down champagne at two-fifty a bottle while you were planning on kicking me in the face.”

“Okay. Okay.” She stalked into the bedroom, yanked open her desk drawer to pull out her checkbook. “I’ll write you a check—I’ll write you one for both bottles and we’ll call it a day. We’ll just consider we both made a mistake and—”

He jerked her arm, throwing her off balance. Before she could blink, he’d backhanded her. The checkbook flew out of her hand, and her shoulder rammed against the wall as she fell in the same direction.

“You bitch. Write me a check? You fucking ball-busting bitch.”

She saw stars, little red stars that danced in front of her eyes. More than pain, shock had her freezing for a moment when he reached down and dragged her to her feet.

“Take your hands off me.” She heard the tremor in her voice, fought to calm it. Learn to run, her grandfather had told her once. And she had. But there was nowhere to run. “Take them off me, Luke. Right now.”

“I’m done letting you tell me what to do. You’re done running this show. It’s about time you learn what happens when somebody tries to play me.”

She didn’t think. Didn’t think that he was about to hit her again, or how to stop it. She simply reacted, as she’d been trained to react.

She plowed the heel of her hand up, connecting hard with his chin, and rammed her knee viciously between his legs.

The stars were still dancing when he crumbled, and her breath was coming fast and short. But by God, there was no tremor in her voice.

“Now you can call me a ball-busting bitch. Too bad for you that you forgot cop’s part of that, too. Get your sorry ass up and out of my house.” She grabbed a lamp, yanked the cord to pull it out of the wall. And reared it back on her shoulder like a bat. “Or we can go another round, you bastard. Get out, and consider yourself lucky you’re not spending the night in a cell, or the goddamn hospital.”

“I’m not going to forget this.” His face was pale as wax, and he had to crawl before he gained his feet. His eyes were molten as he stared at her. “I’m not going to forget this.”

“Good. Neither am I. Get the hell out. Don’t come near me again.”

She didn’t shake, not when she followed him out into the living room. She didn’t shake while she waited for him to grab his coat, limp to the door. She stayed calm as she bolted the door behind him, and even when she stepped up to the mirror to examine her face.

She got her digital camera, set the timer, took shots full face and profile, then sent them with a brief e-mail explanation to her partner.

Cover your ass, she told herself. Then she got a bag of frozen peas out of her freezer, sat down with them pressed to her bruised cheek.

And shook like a leaf.

12

Sitting in the car, smoking a Camel. Little slut’s come up in the world. Riding around with Fancy Suit in the shiny Mercedes. Ride like that went for thirty grand easy. Ought to have one like it. Maybe just boost that one. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass? Fancy Suit comes back out, swishing in his cashmere coat, and he’s got no car.

Be worth a few laughs.

But first watching was the name of the game.

Get the binoculars. Slut left her shades up most times. Probably liked having guys jack off watching her up there.

No whore like a Catholic whore.

Standing in the living room. Looks intense. Love birds having a love spat maybe. Should’ve gotten a beer. Better watching with a cold one.

Look at her face. Sexy face, little mole, curvy lips. Get a boner instead of a beer.

Into the bedroom. Now we’re talking! Peel it off, baby. Take it off for Daddy.

Whoops! Solid backhand! Somebody’s feeling a little out of sorts. Hope he hits her again. Come on, Fancy Suit, hit the bitch again. Fans in the front row want to see the smackdown.

Jesus, what a pussy. Let some skinny woman take you down?

Get another smoke. Something to think about. Maybe kick his ass when he comes out. Maybe beat him to fucking death. Use a pipe, a bat. Blood all over Fancy Suit. Fingers point to her. Could point right at her.

See how long she stays a frigging cop when she’s a murder suspect.

Could be fun. And she’d always wonder, wouldn’t she?

Fancy Suit comes out, limping like his balls are the size of cantaloupes. Have to laugh. It’s a real knee-slapper.

Still laughing as you pull out to follow the shiny blue Mercedes. Hell of a car.

And smiling, big, shit-eating grin because there’s a better idea in there. Better, and big-time fun with it.

Takes a little time, but good things come. Have to make a detour, get some supplies. Keep it simple. Simple’s always better. Simple is your stock-in-trade.

Get that beer now while you work. Explosives 101. She’d know enough for that. Sure, she would. Arson unit’s kissing cousins to the bomb squad. Nice little device. Simple. Boys and girls, don’t try this trick at home.

Late enough now, plenty late enough now. Little bitch is sleeping by now, all by her lonesome. Not much traffic. Town’s dead at four A.M. Shit-hole of a town. Fucking Charm City never gave him anything but grief.

Fancy Suit’s up in his Fancy Suit apartment, sleeping with his cantaloupe balls. Be fun to take him out. So easy, so juicy. But this is better. Few minutes with the thirty grand and we’re all set. Locked and loaded.

Just stroll away, drive off a little ways. Might as well see some of the show.

Light another smoke and wait for the fireworks.

And five, four, three, two, one.

Ka-boom!

Look at that sucker fly. Look at her burn!

Oh yeah, baby, good job. Ace of a job. Fingers going to point now, because Fancy Suit’s going to point them. Going to hold his bruised balls and point his finger right at her.

Good night’s work.

Too bad about the car, though.

At six A.M., a full thirty minutes before her alarm was set to go off, Reena was wakened by banging on her front door. She dragged herself out of bed, instinctively pressing her fingers to her cheekbone when it began to throb.

Throbbed all the way into her ear, she thought in disgust. Men like Luke knew just where to aim.

She pulled on a robe, avoiding the mirror over her dresser, and walked quietly out of the bedroom.

A peek out the window left her puzzled. Shoving at her hair, she unlocked the door, drew it open. “O’Donnell? Captain? Is there a problem?”

“All right if we come in a minute?” There were storm clouds in O’Donnell’s eyes, only adding to her confusion as she stepped back. “I’m not on till eight.”

“Got a good bruise going there.” O’Donnell nodded at her face. “Working up to a shiner.”

“Walked into something nasty. Is this about the e-mail I sent you last night? There was no need to make a big deal out of it.”

“I haven’t checked my e-mail. We’re here about an incident involving Luke Chambers.”

“Well, God, did he file a complaint because I kicked him out of here?” Reena pushed at her hair, and the flush that worked its way under the bruising was as much from temper now as embarrassment. “I wanted to keep this personal, send you an e-mail on the matter, with a couple of photos as backup in case he pushed it. Guess he did.”

“Detective Hale, we’re going to need to ask you where you were this morning between three-thirty and four A.M.”

“I was here.” She shifted her gaze to Captain Brant. “I was here all night. What happened?”

“Somebody torched Chambers’s car. He insists it was you.”

“Torched his car? Was he hurt? Oh good God.” She let herself drift down into a chair. “How bad is he hurt?”

“He wasn’t in the vehicle at the time it was lit up.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes. “Okay. I don’t understand.”

“You and Mr. Chambers had an altercation last evening.”

She looked at her captain, felt the weight and a fresh flutter of nerves. “Yes. During which he struck me in the face, knocked me down. He then proceeded to drag me to my feet and threatened me with additional bodily harm. I protected myself, applying the heel of my hand in a firm manner to his jaw, and my knee in an equally firm manner to his groin. I then ordered him to leave.”

“Did you at any time threaten Mr. Chambers with a weapon?”

“A lamp.” Reena clutched her hands together in her lap. “My bedroom lamp. I picked it up and informed him if he didn’t get out I’d be going another round with him. I was pissed. He’d just finished clocking me, for God’s sake. He outweighs me by a good fifty pounds.”

Remembering it, that shock, that moment when she knew he’d hurt her had her muscles quivering under her skin. She had to swallow, carefully, as her throat was already starting to burn. “If he’d come at me again, I’d have used any and all measures to protect myself. But it wasn’t necessary as he left. I locked up behind him, took the digitals, e-mailed my partner in case Luke decided to change the story around and file any charges.”

“A man assaulted you, in your home, but you failed to report it?”

“That’s right. I handled it, and I hoped that would be the end of it. I don’t know anything about his car or a fire.”

The captain sat back. “He’s made several allegations. His story is that you assaulted him, being intoxicated and upset by the fact that he is relocating to New York. That in attempting to hold you off, reason with you, he may have inadvertently struck you.”

Nerves turned to insult, with a good dose of self-disgust. She turned her injured cheek. “Take a good look. Does that look inadvertent to you? It happened the way I said it happened. Yes, we had both been drinking. I was not intoxicated. He was angry because I’d refused to relocate with him. I broke up with the son of a bitch, I didn’t torch his car. I haven’t left this apartment since I got in at approximately ten last night.”

“Let’s see if we can verify that,” O’Donnell began.

“I can verify it.” Her hands were no longer clutched in her lap, but gripped the arms of her chair. The only way she could stop them from balling into fists of rage. “I called a friend at about eleven. Because I was feeling sorry for myself and my face hurt and I was supremely pissed off. Just a minute.”

She rose, strode to the bedroom. “Gina, put on a robe and come out here, will you? No, it’s important.”

Reena closed the door, stepped back out. “Gina Rivero—Rossi,” Reena corrected. “Steve Rossi’s wife. She came over. I told her not to because she’s a newlywed, but she came over, with a half gallon of Baskin-Robbins, and we sat around until, I don’t know, after midnight. Eating ice cream, bitching about men. She insisted on staying in case he came back and tried to get in.”

The bedroom door opened and a tousled and irritated Gina came out. “What’s going on? Do you know what time it is?” She focused long enough to stare at the men. “What? Reena?”

“Gina, you know my partner, Detective O’Donnell, and Captain Brant. They just need to ask you a couple questions. I’ll make coffee.”

She walked into the kitchen, then braced her hands on the counter and just breathed. She had to think, and she had to think like a cop whose ass is on the line. But she was struggling to get past the idea of someone setting Luke’s car on fire. How was it done? Why? Who would target Luke? Or was it random?

She pulled back, forced herself to go through the routine of coffee preparation. Beans out of the refrigerator, into the grinder. An extra measure for the pot, a dash of salt.

She didn’t drink the stuff, but she kept it on hand for Luke. Thinking of that brought on another wave of disgust. She’d pandered and pampered the bastard, and what had she gotten for the trouble? A black eye and the strong possibility of an internal investigation.

She stared at the glass carafe as it began to brew and heard Gina’s voice spike up in the other room. Heard the insult and the outrage.

“That bastard probably set it himself. Just to take another shot at her. Did you see her face?”

Reena got down cups, poured half-and-half into a little white pitcher. Crisis didn’t mean a lack of hospitality, she reminded herself. Her mother had drummed such things into her from birth.

O’Donnell came to the doorway. “Hale? You want to come back in?”

She nodded, hefted the tray. Gina’s cheeks were still pink with temper as Reena set the tray on the coffee table. “It’s routine,” Reena said, and touched a hand to Gina’s before she poured coffee. “It’s procedure. They have to ask.”

“Well, I think it’s bullshit. He hit you, Reena. And it’s not the first time.”

“This individual’s assaulted her before last night?”

Reena shoved down the embarrassment. “Slapped. Once before, and I thought it was an accident, as he claimed. I don’t now. It was during an argument—a fairly minor one. It was quick, and there wasn’t much behind it. Last night was different.”

“Ms. Rossi’s verified your statement. If Chambers pushes, it may be necessary to inform IAB.” Brant shook his head before Reena could speak. “I’m going to discourage him from pushing.” Brant took the coffee, added cream. “Do you have any idea who else might want to cause this guy trouble?”

“No.” Her voice wanted to break. Internal Affairs. She’d just gotten her detective’s shield, was just beginning to do the work she’d trained to do, dreamed of doing more than half of her life.

“No,” she said again, struggling to stay calm. “He just got a promotion. I imagine he beat out several other candidates for it. But it’s hard to imagine one of the brokers figuring out how to torch a Mercedes.”

“You can read just how to do the job on the Internet,” O’Donnell reminded her. “What about clients? He ever talk to you about a client who was upset with how he handled business?”

“No. He’d complain about work—being overworked, not being appreciated enough. But mostly he liked to brag.”

“Another woman?”

She sighed now, wished she drank coffee. Holding a cup would give her something to do with her hands. “We’ve been seeing each other about four months. Exclusively, as far as I know. He was involved with someone before me. Ah . . . Jennifer. I don’t know the last name. She was a bitch, of course, according to him. Selfish, demanding, nagging. All the things I’m sure he’d say about me now. I think she was in banking. I’m sorry, I don’t know more.”

Steadier, she straightened her shoulders. “I think you should look around. I think you should search the apartment, and my car. The sooner this is cleared up, the better.”

“You’re entitled to department representation.”

“I’m not requesting any, at this time. He hit me, I hit him back. For me that was the end of it.”

She would make it the end, Reena promised herself. She wouldn’t let this stupidity smear her reputation or slice up her career. She wouldn’t have it. “This other business isn’t connected to me. The sooner we establish that, the sooner I can get back to the job, and the sooner the investigators on this can move in other directions.”

“I’m sorry about this, Hale.”

She shook her head at her partner. “It’s not your fault. It’s not the department’s fault. And it’s not mine.”

She refused to be embarrassed or insulted at having her own colleagues go through her home, her things. The more thorough this unofficial inquiry, the sooner the door on it closed for good.

When they were finished in the bedroom, she went in with Gina to dress. “This is outrageous, Reena. I don’t know why you take it.”

“I want my record clear. There’s nothing to find, so they find nothing. And it moves on.” Because it was Gina, she closed her eyes, pressed a hand to her belly. “I feel a little sick.”

“Oh, hon.” Gina gathered Reena into a strong hug. “This sucks so wide. But you know it’s going to be cleared up. It’s going to be cleared up in, like, five minutes.”

“That’s what I’m telling myself.” But even five minutes of being under suspicion was five minutes too long. “The only thing pointing at me is the fact that Luke and I had a fight last night.” She eased away, pulled on a sweater. “Something like this, you’ve got to look at the ex—especially when she happens to be a cop in the arson unit. Sometimes it’s the ones who fight or investigate fires who set them. You’ve heard the stories.”

Her voice shook a little. “Set a fire so you can play the hero and suppress it, or just to get back at someone.”

“That’s not you. That’s not anyone I know.”

“But it happens, Gina.” She covered her eyes, winced as she set her cheek throbbing once more. “If this were my case, I’d take a good, hard look at the angry ex-girlfriend who knows just how to set a vehicular fire.”

“Okay. And once you took that good, hard look, you’d eliminate her. Not only because she’d never hurt anyone, and never use fire to strike back even at the most deserving asshole. But you’d have to eliminate her when she spent the night in her own apartment, eating ice cream with her best friend.”

“I’d have to ask myself if that best friend would cover for her. Fortunately, she also has a veteran firefighter who knows his wife answered an SOS and went to stay with her friend. That adds to my side. And the fact that Luke lied about this.” She tapped a finger gently to her cheek. “That smears it on his side. Nobody looks at this and thinks it’s accidental. I documented it, and thank God I called you and you didn’t listen to me and came over.”

“Steve insisted as much as me. He’d have come himself, but I didn’t think you wanted a guy around.”

“No, I wouldn’t have.” The roiling in her stomach eased as she thought it through, studied the facts as she would any case. “My record’s clean, Gina, and it’s going to stay that way.”

She started to reach for her makeup, to disguise the bruise. Then thought, Hell with it.

“I’ve got to go down, tell my parents. They’re going to hear about this on the news. I’d rather they hear it all from me first.”

“I’ll go down with you.”

“You’ve got to get home, get yourself ready for work.”

“I’ll call in sick.”

“You will not.” She stepped over, kissed Gina’s cheek. “Thanks, pal.”

“I never liked his sorry ass. And I know how that sounds now.” Gina lifted her chin, and her eyes continued to spark with anger. “But I didn’t, despite the fact that he was great to look at. Every time he opened his mouth it was all about me, me, me. Plus he was patronizing.”

“What can I say? When you’re right, you’re right. I liked him because he was great to look at, good in bed, and he was needy. Let me be girly.” She shrugged. “Shallow—just like him.”

“You’re not shallow. What, he do a mind fuck on you?”

“Maybe. I’ll get over it.” She blew out a breath, studied herself in the mirror. The shiner was coming on strong. “Now I’ve got to go deal with my parents. And won’t that be fun?”

Bianca beat eggs in a bowl with the focused violence of a middleweight champ doing the rope-a-dope on a contender. “Why isn’t he in jail?” she demanded. “No, no, first why isn’t he in the hospital, then in jail? And you!” A string of egg flew as she swung the fork to point at Reena. “You didn’t come to tell your father so he could put this miserable bastard in the hospital before you arrested him?”

“Mama. I took care of it.”

“You took care of it.” Bianca went back to beating eggs that were already down for the count. “You took care of it. Well, let me tell you something, Catarina, there are some things, no matter how old you are, your father takes care of.”

“Dad would hardly have gone tearing after Luke and pounding him into dust. He—”

“You’re wrong.” Gib spoke quietly. He stood with his back to the room, staring out the window. “You’re wrong about that.”

“Dad.” She couldn’t imagine her even-tempered father hunting down Luke, getting into a fistfight. Then she remembered the way he’d faced down Mr. Pastorelli years before.

“Okay.” Reena put her hands to her temples, pushed back her hair. “Okay. But, family honor aside, I wouldn’t want to see Dad arrested for assault.”

“You don’t want to see this bastard arrested for assault either,” Bianca snapped. “You’re very softhearted for a cop.”

“I wasn’t being softhearted. Mama, please.”

“Bianca.” Again Gib’s quiet voice silenced the room. But this time he turned, studied his daughter. “What were you being?”

“Practical, I thought. Private, I hoped. The fact is, I was stunned. I’ve been going out with Luke for months, and I missed all the signs. I can see them now, hindsight. But when he hit me, I was so surprised. If it makes you guys feel any better, I can promise I hurt him more than he hurt me. He’ll be limping for days.”

“Some consolation.” Bianca poured the eggs into a cast-iron pan. “But now he’s making trouble for you.”

“Well, someone did torch his car.”

“I’d like to make them a cake.”

“Mama,” Reena scolded on a half laugh. “This is serious. Someone could have been hurt. I’m not worried, too much, about the investigation. As luck would have it, I have Gina to back me up that I was home all night. And there’s nothing to tie me to something like this except a fight with Luke. I’ll feel better when they find out who did it, but I’m not worried. I’m upset,” she admitted. “And I’m upset that I had to upset both of you like this.”

“We’re your parents,” Bianca pointed out. “You’re supposed to upset us.”

“Did he hit you before last night?”

She started to say no to Gib’s question, then settled for the complicated truth. “Once, but I thought it was an accident,” she said quickly when Bianca cursed. “Honest to God, I thought it was an accident. He was gesturing, I stepped forward, and his hand slapped across my cheek. He acted so shocked and appalled. Hindsight,” she repeated, rising to take her father’s hand because it had balled into a fist. “Believe me. Look at me, and believe me, I’d never stand for anyone abusing me. You raised me to be strong and smart. You did a good job.

“He’s out of my life.” She moved in, wrapped her arms around Gib. “He’s done, he’s over. And it taught me an important lesson. I’ll never try to be something I’m not, even on the little things, to placate someone else. Plus, I know I can stand up and take care of myself.”

Gib rubbed her back, brushed a light kiss on her bruised cheek. “Took him down, did you?”

“Two shots.” She stepped back, demonstrated. “Pow, pow, and he was on the floor, curled up like a steamed shrimp. I don’t want you to worry about this, about me.”

“We decide what to worry about.” Bianca set the pile of eggs on the table. “Eat.”

She ate, and she went in to work. The blue line formed. Every cop in her unit stepped up—with a brisk nod, a pithy comment, a lame joke. Their support followed her into the captain’s office.

“Guy’s sticking that you hit him first. Pushed on the ex-girlfriend angle. He got a little sweaty there, claimed she’s wacked, and how she assaulted him prior to their breakup.”

“Can I pick ’em or can I pick ’em?”

“We’re going to talk to her. We got a few names out of him—people he claims might have a grudge seeing as he’s so successful and handsome. Few clients, few coworkers. His former assistant. Takes the heat off you, Hale. Added to which you’ve got a solid alibi, and cooperated with a search that turned up nothing to tie you. Unless he presses formal charges, which he’s rethinking at this point, you’re cleared for full duty.”

“Thanks. Sincerely.”

“Got a call from John Minger. He got wind of this.”

“Yeah.” She thought of her parents. “I think I know where the wind blew in from. I’m sorry if that complicates matters.”

“I don’t see how it does.” But he sat back and she knew he was measuring her. “John’s a good man, he’s a solid investigator. He wants to poke around on his own time. I’ve got no problem with that. Do you?”

“None. Can you give me any more details?”

“Younger and Trippley are working it. They want to share, it’s up to them.”

“Thanks.”

She stepped out, thought about the best way to approach the men assigned. Before she could decide, Trippley shot a finger toward her desk.

“File on your desk,” he said, then went back to his phone.

She crossed to it, flipped open the file. Inside were photos of Luke’s car, exterior and interior shots, the preliminary reports and statements. She glanced back at Trippley. “Appreciate it.”

He shrugged a shoulder, cupped a hand over the phone. “Guy’s an asshole. You like assholes, you ought to go out with Younger.”

With barely a pause from typing on his keyboard, Younger shot his partner the finger, and sent Reena a sunny smile.

It was hard to stay away from the scene, to restrain herself from taking a direct look at the collected evidence. But there was no point in muddying the waters. Instead, she treated the case like an exercise, studied the file, the updates the investigators passed her way.

It was straightforward, almost simplistically so, in her opinion. Someone had done a quick and nasty job—and had probably done others before targeting Luke.

She mulled it over, sipping a glass of Chianti as she reread the file and ignored the noise of Sirico’s.

She’d taken a table facing the door so she spotted John as soon as he came in. She sent a wave, patted the tabletop, then rose to get him a Peroni herself.

“Thanks for coming by,” she said when she came back to the table.

“Never a hardship. Split a pizza?”

“Sure.” She called out the order to Fran. It wasn’t food she wanted but conversation. “I know you’ve been looking into this mess on your off time. Can you tell me what you think?”

He picked up his beer, sipped at it. “You tell me first.” He nodded toward the file.

“Down and dirty job. Somebody who knows vehicles. Pops the lock, disengages the alarm. If it went off, nobody’s coming forward to say they heard it. But nobody pays much attention to a car alarm—especially if it stops within a couple minutes. Gas as accelerant, poured over interior, on the hood, inside the hood. Used the flares in the trunk as an ignition device there.”

She paused, gathered her thoughts while John remained silent. “That would’ve been enough to do a decent job. The synthetics in the interior are susceptible to flame ignition. Thermoplastics melt as they burn and ignite other surfaces, as they likely did here. Fast fire. The gas was insurance. He didn’t need it. He had ventilation, and could’ve accomplished a pretty damn destructive fire with enough crumpled newspaper lit under the seat or dash.”

“Thorough or sloppy?”

She shook her head. “You almost want to say both. He took the stereo out—most arsonists can’t resist taking valuables they can sell or use, but it doesn’t feel like a random vehicular stripping.”

“Because?”

“Too violent, too thorough. Plus, you’ve got high-end tires, and he didn’t take them. And he knew what he was doing, John. We’ve got soot and pyrolysis product on what’s left of the window glass, which indicate ventilation. Without it, most vehicular fires fizzle out. Cars are fairly airtight when the doors and windows are shut. He wanted a fast fire, and added the accelerant to the already rich fuel load of the vehicle. He probably had flashover in under two minutes.”

“Working theory?”

“Vengeance fire. The guy wanted that car toasted. He puts a soaked rag trailer in the gas tank. What it’s looking like is he floated a plastic cup with a firecracker in it. Simple, efficient. And again thorough. Multiple points of origin—under the driver’s seat, in the trunk. Couple of what the lab’s identified as potato chip bags, probably used as trailers in the interior. They’re a good one. Give off plenty of heat, burn away to nearly unrecognizable carbonaceous ash, and the oils give you a nice, prolonged fire—enough to engage the upholstery, so if something goes wrong with the device in the tank, the vehicle’s still toast. Torch used basic household items to do the job, and knew what he was doing.”

“High-end car, all the trimmings. But you don’t figure somebody wanted a pricey car stereo and a little fire fun?”

“No, I figure it was personal, and the stereo was just a little cake. It was a straight job, not just a little extra fun. The arson was the point.”

With a nod, John sat back, picked up his beer. “Not much left for me to tell you then. Got your prints, the owner’s. Valet’s at the restaurant where you ate prior to the incident. The mechanic’s from the owner’s garage.” He eyed her as he sipped his beer. “How’s the face?”

A couple of days—and a lot of ice—had dulled the ache. But she knew her face sported several unattractive colors as it healed. “Looks worse than it is.”

He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Tell me this. Did you call anybody but Gina after he slugged you?”

“No. I gave assent to having my phone records checked.”

“Did she call anyone? Tell anybody?”

“No. Well, Steve. But nobody’s looking at him, John. The guys who caught the case talked to all three of us. We’re keeping this up front all the way. I called Gina because I was pissed off, and because I wanted some sympathy. She came over because she was pissed off, and wanted to give some sympathy.”

She glanced over to make sure none of her family or any neighbors were within earshot. “The fact is, John, getting popped by a guy you’re sleeping with isn’t something a woman likes to spread around. I’d hoped to keep this under the radar, more or less. I don’t know anybody who’d do something like this on my behalf.”

“You weren’t seeing anybody besides this character?”

“No. John, I know the timing points to it being connected to me, or at least to the dustup I had with Luke, but I’ve thought about it, I’ve gone over and over it. I can’t see it’s anything but coincidence. You look at the statements.” She tapped the file. “Luke wasn’t Mr. Popularity among his coworkers, his former relationships. Still, none of them look any better for it than I do, at this point. What it looks like is somebody hired a torch. Hell, I’d say the son of a bitch hired one himself to slap back at me, but the timing’s too tight for that to fly.”

“Pretty tight,” John agreed. “But it’s an angle—the hiring a torch to slap at you. Maybe you ought to think of somebody you might’ve ticked off lately.”

“Cops are always ticking somebody off,” she muttered.

“Ain’t that the truth?” He eased back, smiled when Fran brought their pizza to the table. “How’s it going, sweetie?”

“It’s going good.” But her hand moved over to rub at Reena’s shoulder. “Now, make my baby sister put that work away and eat something.”

“See what I can do. Put it away,” John advised when Fran walked off. “You’ll handle any heat that comes your way on this. Unofficially, nobody’s looking at you. You’ve got a solid record because you earned it, and your alibi holds. Set it aside, let the system work.”

“Yeah. You know, John, I don’t know if I chose my career or it chose me. Fire seems to follow me around. Sirico’s, the first boy I really cared about, Hugh. Now this.”

He slid a slice of pizza onto his plate. “Fate’s a mean bastard.”

13

BALTIMORE, 2005

For better or worse, it was done. Reena’s heart was pounding, her throat bone-dry, and at the base of her belly was a little tickle that could have been panic or excitement.

She’d bought herself a house.

She stood on the white marble steps, the keys in her clammy hand. Settlement was over, the papers were signed. She had a mortgage.

And a bank loan, she thought, that stretched out so long she’d be ready for retirement when it was paid off.

Did the math, didn’t you? she reminded herself. You can make this work. It was time she owned property. Oh God, she was a property owner.

And hadn’t she fallen in love with this house? It was so like home. What that said about her, she wasn’t entirely sure, but it had been love at first sight. Everything about it had called to her.

The location, the familiarity, even the slightly tired interior that just begged her to liven it up, her way. It even had a backyard—maybe it was narrow enough to spit from line to line, but it was an actual yard with actual grass. It even had a tree.

Which meant she’d have to mow grass and rake leaves, which meant buying a lawn mower. And a rake. But for a woman who’d lived in apartments for the last ten years, it was heady stuff.

So, here she was, moving into a three-story row, three short blocks from the house where her parents still lived.

Still in the neighborhood, she thought. And as distant as the moon.

But it was good. It was all good. Hadn’t the uncles, along with her father, inspected the place top to bottom? There’d been no stopping them. Needed a little fixing up, sure. And more furniture than she could currently claim.

But that would all come.

All she had to do was put the key in the lock and walk through the door, and she’d be standing in her own house.

Instead, she turned around, sat on the steps and waited to get her breath back.

She’d taken a big bite of her savings, plus the generous lump of dough her grandparents had given her—and the rest of the grands.

Now look what I’ve done. Gone into debt. And didn’t a house keep siphoning away money? Insurance, taxes, repairs, upkeep. She’d managed to avoid all that up till now. Those pesky details had gone from being her parents’ problem to her landlords’ problem.

Never hers.

Managed to avoid all that, she thought, and most every other kind of commitment. She had the job and her family, friends she’d kept from childhood.

But she was the only unmarried Hale. The only child of Gibson and Bianca Hale yet to go forth and multiply. Not enough time, that’s what she told her family if they teased or pressed the matter. Haven’t found the right man.

True, all true. But how many times had she retreated from—or just sidestepped—a potential relationship in the last few years?

Dating was fine, sex was good, but don’t ask me to form an attachment. Xander said she thought like a man. Maybe it was true.

And maybe she’d bought this house as a kind of compensation, the way some singles or no-children couples bought a puppy.

See! I can make a commitment when I want to. I bought a house.

A house, she admitted, she couldn’t seem to make herself enter now that everything was signed and sealed.

Maybe she could just turn it over. Give it a slap of paint, fix it up here and there, then resell it. There was no law that said she had to keep it for thirty years.

Thirty years. She pressed a hand to her belly. What had she done?

She was thirty-one years old, damn it. She was a cop with a decade on the job. She could walk into a stupid house without having a crisis. Besides, some portion of her family was bound to descend before much longer, and she didn’t want to be caught sitting on the stairs having a neurotic attack.

She stood up, unlocked the door and walked deliberately inside.

Instantly, as if she’d popped a cork on a bottle labeled Stress, the tension drained out.

The hell with mortgages and loans and the terror of picking out paint colors. This is what she’d wanted. This big, old, high-ceilinged place with its carved trim, its hardwood floors.

Of course it was too much room for one person. She didn’t care. She’d use one of the bedrooms for storage, once she had enough to store. She’d make another into an office space, another into a home gym, and keep the last spare for a guest room.

Ignoring the echoes, the emptiness, she strolled into the living room. Maybe she’d take the various offers from various relatives on hand-me-down furniture. At least for now. Put some of Mama’s drawings on the walls. Make this a cozy, comfortable space.

And the smaller parlor, that was going to be her library. Then she’d need a big table for the dining room. Lots of chairs for when she had family over.

The kitchen was good, she thought as she took a tour of the first floor. It was one of the points that had cemented her decision. The previous owners had outfitted it well with glossy black appliances that had a lot of years left in them. Lots of smooth, sand-colored counters and honey-toned cabinets. She might get around to having a few of the doors replaced with glass. Stained glass maybe, or some fancy ripply glass.

She’d enjoy cooking here. Bella was the only one of the lot who’d apparently escaped the love of making food. There were nice, generous windows over the sink and they opened up to a view of the skinny backyard.

The lilacs were blooming. Her lilacs were blooming. She could talk to Uncle Sal about putting in a little postage stamp patio, and pick Bella’s brain about designing a small garden.

Of course it had been years since she’d planted anything other than a geranium in a windowsill pot. Years, she recalled, since she and Gina had planted tomatoes and peppers and cosmos in the yard of the group house they’d shared in college.

But it seemed to her—at least with the sweetened distance of memory—that she’d enjoyed the digging and weeding.

Probably stick with flowers this time, she decided, and keep it low-maintenance. Yes, Bella would be the one to ask what would work best.

For flowers, fashion and the right place to be seen, Bella was your girl.

She thought about heading upstairs, to tour the second floor, to mentally arrange furniture. But decided to finish off the first-level walk-through by stepping out in her backyard.

She wanted to walk on her own grass.

The yard was bordered on both sides by a chain-link fence. Her neighbor to the right had some sort of spreading bushes planted along the line. Nice touch, she mused. She’d think about something like that. It wasn’t just pretty, but added an illusion of privacy.

And to the left . . .

Well, well, well, she thought. She couldn’t say much about the yard, but its occupant was worth the price of a ticket.

Fortunately for her, there were no bushes to obstruct the view.

The man had his back to her, and the rear view was very promising. Mid-May temperatures hadn’t dissuaded him from taking off his shirt. But maybe whatever he was doing with the lumber and the power tools heated him up.

His jeans ran low on the hips, and the tool belt lower yet. But he managed to avoid the butt crack reveal, which racked up points. He wore a ball cap backward, which may or may not deduct points from the total score, and there seemed to be a lot of wavy black hair under the cap.

She might make a pass at him right there as he was working. She caught music from the boom box beside his sawhorses and gave him additional points for keeping it at a reasonable volume. She could barely catch Sugar Ray.

Six-two, she judged. About one-eighty of good, toned muscle. She didn’t want to guess his age until she saw his face. But so far, as next-door neighbors went, he looked like a nice perk.

The realtor had mentioned the carpenter next door, in case she wanted to get any bids on work. But the realtor had failed to mention the carpenter next door had an excellent ass.

His grass was mowed, and he appeared to know what he was doing with the big, sexy tool. No rings on good, strong-looking hands. No visible tattoos or piercings.

Possibilities went up.

His house was similar to hers, though he already had that postage stamp patio in some sort of stone. No flowers—too bad on that as she considered it showed flair and responsibility to pot and tend flowers. Still, the patio looked clean and boasted a muscular barbecue grill.

If the rest of him lived up to the rear view, she might wangle her way to an invite for grilled steak.

He paused, set aside what she was pretty sure was a nail gun. The noise from the compressor shut down, and she heard Sugar Ray more clearly as Carpenter Guy reached for a big bottle of water and aimed it toward his mouth.

He stepped back from his work as he did, and she made out his profile. Good nose, strong mouth—smart enough to wear safety glasses, and cool enough to make them sexy. It looked like the face was going to live up to the rest of the package.

Early thirties, she decided. And wasn’t that handy?

When he turned his head and glanced her way, she lifted a hand in what she considered a friendly, hi-new-neighbor salute.

He seemed to freeze, more like she’d aimed her weapon at him rather than a casual wave. He reached up, slowly, drew off his glasses. She couldn’t make out the color of his eyes, but she felt the intensity of the stare.

The grin seemed to explode on his face. He tossed the glasses on the ground, strode straight to the fence and vaulted over.

Moved well—quick and agile. Green, she noted. His eyes were a misty green—and lit up a little too manically at the moment for comfort.

“There you are,” he said. “Son of a bitch. There you are.”

“Yeah, here I am.” She gave him a cautious smile. He smelled of sawdust and sweat—which would have been appealing if he wasn’t looking at her like he was prepared to gobble her up in one bite. “Catarina Hale.” She offered her hand. “I just bought the house.”

“Catarina Hale.” He took her hand and held it, just held it with his calloused one. “Dream Girl.”

“Uh-huh.” His score plummeted. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve got to get back inside.”

“All this time.” He continued to stare at her. “All these years. You’re better than I remembered. How about that?”

“How about that?” She tugged her hand free, backed up.

“I can’t believe it. You’re just here. Boom. Or maybe I’m having a hallucination.”

He grabbed for her hand again, and she slapped hers on his chest. “Maybe you are. Maybe you’ve had a little too much sun. Better go back to your corner now, Carpenter Boy.”

“No, wait. You don’t get it. You were there, then you weren’t. Then the other time, and then again. And you keep getting away before I can catch up. And now you’re right here, talking to me. I’m talking to you.”

“Not anymore.” Nobody had mentioned the carpenter next door was a lunatic. Shouldn’t there have been full disclosure? “Go home. Lie down. Seek help.”

She turned, started back to the door.

“Wait, wait, wait.” He lunged after her.

In response she spun around, caught his arm, tipped him off balance and jerked his arm behind his back. “Don’t make me arrest you, for God’s sake. I haven’t even moved in yet.”

“The cop. The cop.” He laughed, twisted his head around to grin at her. “I forgot they said a cop was moving in. You’re a cop. That’s so cool.”

“You’re one second away from serious trouble.”

“And you smell really good.”

“That’s it.” She pushed him up against the back wall of her house. “Spread ’em.”

“Okay, okay, hold on.” He was laughing and tapping his forehead against the wall. “If I sound like a crazy person, it’s just the shock. Um, oh, shit. Don’t cuff me—at least until we know each other better. College Park, May 1992. A party—crap, I don’t know whose house it was. Group house, off campus. Jill, Jessie—no Jan. I think Jan somebody lived in the house.”

Reena hesitated, the cuffs still in her hand. “Keep going.”

“I saw you. I didn’t know anybody. Came with a friend, and I saw you across the room. You were wearing this little pink top—your hair was longer, just past your shoulders. I like the way you’re wearing it now. Sort of exploding to the jaw.”

“I’ll tell my hairdresser you approve. I met you at a party in College Park?”

“No. I never got to you. The music stopped. It was a moment for me. Can I turn around?”

He didn’t sound crazy—exactly. And she was intrigued. She stepped back. “Hands to yourself.”

“No problem.” He held them up, palms out, then lowered them to hook his thumbs on his tool belt. “I saw you, and I was . . . Pow.” He punched a fist to his heart. “But by the time I got across the room—place was packed—you were gone. I looked everywhere. Upstairs, outside, everywhere.”

“You saw me over ten years ago, across the room at a college party, and you remember what I was wearing?”

“It was like . . . for a minute, it was just you. Sounds weird, but there it is. Then this other time? A pal dragged me to the stupid mall on a Saturday, and I saw you up a level. Just there, and I went running around looking for the damn stairs. But by the time I got up, you’d Houdini’d again. Wow. Wow.”

He grinned like a mental patient, shoved his hat farther back on his head. “Then winter of ’99? I’m stuck in traffic coming from a client’s place. Got the Boss on the radio. ‘Growin’ Up.’ And I look over, and I see you in the car beside me. You’re tapping out the beat on the wheel. You’re just there. And I—”

“Oh my God. Weird Guy.”

“Sorry.”

“The weird guy who goggle-eyed me on my way to the mall.”

His grin spread again, but this time seemed more amused than manic. “That would be me. Half the time I thought I made you up. But I didn’t. You’re right here.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not still Weird Guy.”

“Not criminally. We could talk. You could ask me in for coffee.”

“I don’t have any coffee. I don’t have anything yet.”

“You could come to my place for coffee—except I don’t have any either. See, it’s right next door. You could come over for a beer, or a Coke. Or the rest of your life.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Why don’t I make you dinner? Take you to dinner. Take you to Aruba.”

Laughter trembled up her throat but she swallowed it back down. “I’ll take Aruba under advisement. As for dinner, it’s one in the afternoon.”

“Lunch.” He laughed, pulled off the ball cap and stuffed it in his back pocket, raked long fingers through his dense black hair. “I can’t believe how completely I’m screwing this up. I didn’t expect to see Dream Girl next door. Let me start over, sort of. Bo. Bowen Goodnight.”

She accepted the hand. She liked the strength of it; she liked the calloused roughness of the palm. “Bo.”

“I’m thirty-three, single, no criminal record. Got thumbs-up my last physical. I run my own business. Goodnight’s Custom Carpentry. And I’ve got this real estate thing with a partner. The pal I came to that party with. I can get you references, medical reports, financial statements. Please don’t disappear again.”

“How do you know I’m not married with three kids?”

His face went blank. It actually paled. “You can’t be. There is no God so cruel.”

Enjoying him now, she angled her head. “I could be a lesbian.”

“I’ve done nothing in my life to earn such a vicious slap by Fate. Catarina, it’s been thirteen years. Give me a break.”

“I’ll think about it. It’s Reena,” she added. “Friends generally call me Reena. I’ve got to go. I’ve got people coming over.”

“Don’t disappear.”

“Not until my mortgage is paid off. It’s been interesting meeting you, Bo.”

She slipped back inside, left him standing there.

They brought food, of course. And wine. And flowers. And most of her furniture.

Since they were moving her in, Reena decided she’d better get in the spirit. She made trips back to the apartment over Sirico’s for boxes, for suitcases packed with clothes. For a last good-bye.

She’d been comfortable here, she thought. Maybe too comfortable. Comfort could become a rut if you didn’t keep an eye out. But she’d miss being able to dash downstairs for a meal, or just to chat. She’d miss the easy routine of strolling up the block and stepping into her parents’ home.

“You’d think I was moving to Montana instead of a few blocks away.” She turned to her mother, saw the tears swimming. “Oh, Mama.”

“It’s silly. I’m so lucky to have all my children close. But I liked having you right here. I’m proud that you bought a house. It’s a good, smart thing to do. But I’ll miss knowing you’re right here.”

“I’m still right here.” She lifted the last box. “Part of me worries that I’ve taken on more than I can handle.”

“There’s nothing my girl can’t handle.”

“Hope you’re right. And remind me of that the first time I have to call the plumber.”

“You call your cousin Frank. And you should talk to your cousin Matthew about the painting.”

“Bases covered.” Reena walked to the door, waited for her mother to open it. “And I’ve got a handyman right next door.”

“You don’t hire somebody to work in your house if you don’t know him.”

“Turns out I do—or he knows me.”

She told Bianca the story as they finished loading the car and started the short drive to the new house.

“He sees you once at a party when you’re in college? And he’s smitten.”

“I don’t know about smitten. He remembered me. And he’s very cute.”

“Hmmm.”

“He took it well when I threatened to cuff him.”

“So, maybe he’s used to it. Maybe he’s a criminal. Or he enjoys bondage.”

“Mama! Maybe he’s just a cute, slightly strange guy with a great butt and power tools. Mama, I’m a big girl. And I carry a gun.”

“Don’t remind me.” Bianca waved it away. “What kind of name is Goodnight?”

“It’s not Italian,” Reena murmured. She pulled up, then watched the door of the house next door open. “Well, it looks like you’re going to get the chance to judge for yourself.”

“That’s him?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Good-looking,” Bianca commented, then stepped out of the car.

He’d cleaned up, Reena noted. His hair was still a bit damp, and he’d put on a fresh shirt—ditched the tool belt.

“Saw you hauling stuff in. Thought maybe you could use a hand. Can I get this out of the way?” he said to Bianca. “Wow, beautiful women run in the family. I’m Bo, from next door.”

“Yes, my daughter told me about you.”

“She thinks I’m crazy—because I gave her pretty good reason. I’m generally less bizarre.”

“So, you’re harmless.”

“God, I hope not.”

It made her smile. “Bianca Hale, Catarina’s mother.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“You’ve lived here long?”

“No, actually, only about five months.”

“Five months. I don’t remember seeing you in Sirico’s.”

“Sirico’s? Best pizza in Baltimore. I get delivery all the time. The spaghetti and meatballs is incredible.”

“My parents own Sirico’s,” Reena said as she popped the trunk.

“Get out. Seriously?”

“Why don’t you come in,” Bianca said, “have a meal?”

“I will. It’s just I’ve been working pretty much round the clock the past couple months, and—Here let me get those.” He nudged Reena aside to pull out boxes while he addressed her mother. “I haven’t been seeing anyone—dating—just recently. I don’t like eating alone in a restaurant.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Bianca asked. “Young, good-looking. Why don’t you date?”

“I do—I mean, did. Will. But I’ve had a lot of work, and I’m working on this place in my spare.”

“Have you been married before?”

“Mama.”

“We’re having a conversation.”

“It’s not a conversation. It’s an inquisition.”

“I don’t mind. No, ma’am, no marriages, no engagements. I’ve been waiting for Reena.”

“Stop it,” Reena ordered.

“We’re having a conversation,” he reminded her. “Do you believe in love at first sight, Mrs. Hale?”

“I’m Italian. Of course I do. And call me Bianca. Come in, meet the family.”

“I’d love to.”

“Slick,” Reena muttered as he stepped aside for Bianca to enter.

“Desperate,” he corrected.

“Just put that down there.”

“I can take it where it goes.”

“For now, it goes there.” She pointed to the base of the steps, closed the door.

“Okay. I like your mother.”

“Why shouldn’t you?” She took off her sunglasses, tapped them against her palm as she studied him. “You might as well come on back—and remember, you asked for it.”

She walked back toward the kitchen, avoiding a couple of her nephews who raced in the opposite direction. In the kitchen, sauce was simmering on the stove, wine was being poured, and several arguments were taking place at once.

“This is Bo,” Bianca announced, and silence fell. “He lives next door. He’s a carpenter and has a crush on Reena.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure she’s the love of my life.”

“Will you stop.” But Reena laughed as she shook her head. “This is my father, Gib, my sister Fran, her husband, Jack, one of the kids running out of here was their son, Anthony. This is my sister Bella—the other one streaking by was her son Dom; her other kids, Vinny, Sophia and Louisa, are around somewhere. My brother Xander, and his wife, An; their baby is Dillon.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Fran offered him a smile. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Fran and Jack manage the restaurant for my parents. Bella’s husband couldn’t make it by today. Xander and An are doctors, and work at the neighborhood clinic.”

“It’s nice to meet everyone.”

She knew what he saw. The tall, handsome man at the stove giving him a careful measure. Lovely, pregnant Fran pouring wine, while redheaded Jack gave their redheaded daughter a piggyback ride. Bella leaning against the counter in her designer shoes and country club hair. Xander sipping wine and standing beside his gorgeous golden-skinned wife as she burped their six-week-old infant.

Of course the questions came popping out from all directions, but he fielded them easily enough. And didn’t seem surprised to see the Italian, Irish, Chinese mix in the kitchen of a nearly empty row house.

He slid into the flow so easily, she was surprised to hear him say he was an only child when asked about his family.

“My parents split when I was a kid. I grew up in PG County. My mother lives in North Carolina now. My father’s out in Arizona. I guess my partner’s like my brother. We’ve known each other forever. Maybe you remember him,” he said to Reena. “He dated a girl who knew Jan, went to Maryland. I think her name was Cammie.”

“No, sorry. I didn’t socialize all that much in college.”

“She spent most of her time studying,” Bella put in, with the slightest smirk. “Then she had her heart broken by tragedy.”

“Bella.” Bianca’s voice was sharp as a whip.

“Oh, for God’s sake, it was years ago. If she’s not over it, she ought to be.”

“When someone dies, they stay dead no matter how many years pass.”

“I’m sorry.” Bo turned to Reena.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” she said with a long look at her sister. “Here, have some antipasto.” She picked up a platter. “Until I get a dining room table, we’ll be eating standing up or sitting on the floor.”

“I could make you one.”

“One what? A table?”

“Yeah. It’s one of the things I do. Actually, my favorite thing. Building furniture. Give me an idea what you want, and I’ll make you a table. Ah, like a housewarming deal.”

“You can’t just make me a table.”

“Hush.” Bianca moved in. “You do good work?”

“I do exceptional work. I offered her references before. Maybe you know Mr. and Mrs. Baccho, over on Fawn Street?”

Bianca’s eyes narrowed. “I know them. Dave and Mary Teresa. You’re the boy who did their china cabinets.”

“The oak and glass built-ins. Yeah, that’s my work.”

“It’s good work.” Her gaze slid toward her husband. “I’d like something like those. Come in here, look at the dining room.”

“Mama.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have him look,” Bianca called back, and drew Bo away.

An passed the baby to Xander. She was a tiny thing, barely five feet with a glossy wedge of coal black hair and deep black eyes. She plucked a stuffed mushroom from the platter Reena held. “He’s hot,” she murmured. “Serious hotness factor.”

“I haven’t moved in yet, and she’s got me dating the boy next door.”

“Hey, worst you can do is get a free table out of it.” She grinned around the mushroom. “And the guy looks like he can swing a hammer to me.”

“I heard that innuendo,” Xander called out.

“I’m going to go separate them.” Reena handed the platter to An and walked quickly to the dining room.

Her mother was gesturing, holding her hands apart, talking about necessary seating.

Bo looked over, patted a hand on his heart. “She just walks into the room and my head spins.”

Reena arched her eyebrows. “You’re going to want to take that down a few levels.”

“It’s my first day, so you need to cut me some slack. We’re thinking drop leaf. That way, you’d have the smaller size, and the extension for dinner parties and family meals without the bother of the leaves.”

“I don’t know what I want yet.” About tables, she thought, about you. About anything but the job. “I can’t just say.”

“I’ll make you up a few designs. Get the ball rolling. It’s the same setup I’ve got next door, so I can use my space for measurements. Lots of potential here.” He smiled at her. “Unlimited potential. I’d better go.”

“You should stay,” Bianca objected. “Eat.”

“Thanks, I’ll take a rain check. You need anything,” he said to Reena, “I’m right next door. I wrote down my number.” He pulled a card out of his pocket. “Cell’s printed on there, home number’s on the back. You need anything, just call.”

“All right. I’ll walk you out.”

He handed her his wineglass. “That’s okay. I know the way. You stay with your family. I’ll be in for that meal, Bianca.”

“See that you are.”

Bianca waited until she was sure he was out of earshot. “He has good manners. He has good eyes. You should give him a chance.”

“I’ve got his number.” Reena stuffed it in her pocket. “I’ll think about it.”

14

The fire started in the attic of a lovely old brownstone on Bolton Hill. The upscale neighborhood had pretty little parks, and leafy trees lining the streets.

The occupants had lost the entire third story, most of the roof and portions of the second floor. As the fire had started mid-morning on a weekday, no one was home.

An alert—or nosy—neighbor had spotted the smoke and flames and called the fire department.

Reena read through the reports as they headed to the scene.

“No signs of forced entry. Owners have a security system. Weekly housekeeper has the code. Fire inspector has the point of origin in the attic. Newspapers, the remains of a matchbook.”

“Nice neighborhood,” O’Donnell commented.

“Yeah. I poked around here a little when I was shopping for a house. Just kept winding back to the old neighborhood.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Heard you’ve got an interesting neighbor.”

Her eyes narrowed on his face. “How’d you hear about that?”

“Maybe your father mentioned it to John, maybe John mentioned it to me.”

“Maybe you all should find more interesting things to talk about than my boy next door.”

“Got no criminal.”

“You did a run on him? For God’s sake.”

“Safety first.” O’Donnell winked at her, then slid into a parking spot at the curb. “Speeding ticket about six months ago.”

“I don’t want to know.” She got out of the car, rounded to the back for her field kit.

“Single, no marriage on record.”

“Shut up, O’Donnell.”

He got his own kit. “Got his business licenses for Baltimore and Prince Georges counties. Lists a PG County address for business. That’s his partner’s place. Your guy moves around a lot. Relocates about every six, eight months.”

“This is so intrusive.”

“Yeah.” O’Donnell had a spring to his step as he walked toward the house. “That’s what makes it fun. See, what he does is he and his partner buy buildings—houses mostly—then do the fixer-upper deal, turn them. Your boy—”

“Not my boy.”

“Your boy moves in, works from inside, gets the place tuned up, sells it, buys another, moves on. Been doing it last ten or twelve years, looks like.”

“Good for him. Now maybe we could focus on the job instead of my life.”

She studied the building first, the scorching on the brown brick, the angles of the roof collapse. She took pictures for the file. “Report says the attic door and window were open.”

“Get some nice cross-ventilation going that way,” O’Donnell commented. “Stored stuff up there, like you do. Off-season clothes, holiday decorations. Good fuel.”

“Neighbor’s coming out,” Reena said quietly as she lowered the camera. “I’ll take her.”

“Get started then.” O’Donnell hefted his kit and started for the door.

“Ma’am.” Reena drew her badge from her waistband. “I’m Detective Hale from the Baltimore City Police, Arson Unit.”

“Arson. Well, well.” The woman was tiny, dark-skinned and neat as pressed linen.

“My partner and I are doing a follow-up on the incident. Are you Mrs. Nichols? Shari Nichols?”

“That’s right.”

“You reported the fire.”

“That I did. I was out in the back. I’ve got a little container garden out there. Smelled it first. The smoke.”

“That was about eleven A.M.?”

“About eleven-fifteen. I know because I was thinking my youngest would be home from kindergarten in about an hour, and that would be the end of the quiet.” She smiled a little. “She’s a hellion.”

“How long had you been outside before you smelled smoke?”

“Oh, an hour maybe, if that. And I went back in about quarter of for a few minutes because I’d forgotten to bring out the phone. The fire inspector, he already asked me if I saw anyone around. I didn’t.”

She looked up at her neighbor’s house. “Damn shame. But thank God nobody was home, nobody was hurt. I can tell you it scared me, scared me good. The idea it could spread to my house.”

She rubbed a hand over her throat as she looked up at the blistered trim, the soot-blackened bricks. “The fire department came quick. Gives you some peace of mind.”

“Yes, ma’am. If you didn’t see anything, maybe you heard something.”

“I heard the smoke alarms from inside the house. Didn’t notice them at first. I had music on. But once I smelled the smoke, looked around and saw it coming out of the window up in the attic, I heard their smoke alarms ringing. I guess it’s an awful mess inside. She won’t care for that.”

“Sorry?”

“I only meant Ella Parker—the woman who lives there—she likes things just so. We have the same housekeeper, though I only use Annie once a month since I’m not working outside the home right now. Ella’s fussy. She’d be as upset about the mess as she would the fire. That doesn’t sound kind,” Shari added after a moment. “I don’t mean to sound callous.”

“Do you and Mrs. Parker get along?”

“Well enough.” Reena heard the reservation in her voice, stayed quiet. “We’re friendly without being friends,” she added after that long silence. “My middle boy plays with her oldest now and then.”

She shifted her feet, looked uncomfortable when Reena only nodded. “Do you really think this was arson, not just an accident?”

“We haven’t made that determination.”

“Oh lord, oh hell. I guess I’d better say Ella and I had some words a few weeks ago. God.” She rubbed a hand at her neck. “I don’t want the police thinking I had anything to do with this.”

“Why would we?”

“Well, we had some strong words, and we have the same housekeeper, and our kids played together. I’m the one who called nine-one-one. I was talking to my husband about this last night, and he says I’m looking for trouble. But I can’t get it off my mind.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you had words about.”

“The boys. Her Trevor and my Malcomb.” She blew out a breath. “I caught them hooking school three weeks back. Idiots. It was a pretty day so I decided to walk to school and pick my youngest up, thought I’d take her to the park, let her run off some of that steam she’s always full of. And there they were, the two of them, running across the street to the park. Well, I can tell you I hauled off after them, put a bug in their ear and marched them both right to school.”

Reena allowed herself a smile. An adult female to adult female expression. “Bet they were surprised to see you.”

“Didn’t have enough sense to keep out of sight. You’re going to play hooky, at least do a good job of it.” She shook her head. “When Ella got home from work, I went over—with my boy—to fill her in. Before I know it, she’s saying it’s my kid’s fault, and how I didn’t have any right to put hands on her boy.”

She spread those hands now. “All I did was take his hand and march him to school, where he belonged. I’d appreciate someone who looked after my kid that way, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I would. But Mrs. Parker was upset.”

“Pissed off is what she was. So I had words right back at her, saying next time I saw him on the street during school hours, I’d just walk right by. We said more, but you get the idea.”

“Can’t blame you for being upset,” Reena prompted. “You were only trying to do the right thing.”

“And got told to mind my own business. Which if I had, her damn house would’ve burned down. Boys haven’t played with each other since, and I’m sorry about it. But I can’t have Malc running around as he pleases. According to him, it wasn’t the first time Trevor had taken a school holiday, and he was scared enough to tell me the truth.”

“He claims Trevor skips school routinely?”

“Oh, hell. I don’t want to get that child in any more trouble.”

“It’d be better for him, for everyone, if we had the facts, Mrs. Nichols. The more you can tell me, the quicker we can get all this put to rest.”

“Well. Oh well. I don’t know about routine, but my boy says Trevor takes off occasionally, and talked him into joining the party this time. Doesn’t excuse what Malc did, and he’s been righteously punished for it. For the last three weeks I’ve been walking him to school every morning, picking him up every afternoon. Not much else humiliates a nine-year-old boy more than having his mama walk him to and from school.”

“My mother did the same with my brother once. He was twelve. I don’t think he’s lived it down yet.”

“Parents ought to be more worried about doing their job instead of being best pals with their kids, you ask me.”

“Is that the way it is next door?”

“Now I’m just gossiping,” Shari replied. “Not that I have anything against gossip. I’ll say I don’t see much discipline. But that’s just my opinion, which my husband tells me I express much too often. Trevor runs a little wild, but he’s a nice enough boy. I just want to say, I might not be on the best terms with Ella right at the moment, but I wouldn’t wish this sort of thing on anybody. I think it must’ve been some freak accident. Spontaneous combustion or something.”

“We’ll be looking into it. I appreciate the time.”

Reena went inside. She stood in the front hall, absorbing the tone and feel of the house. The fire hadn’t come this far, but she could smell the smoke. Fire suppression had caused some minor damage. Soot and dirt on the floor, the stairs.

But she could see what the neighbor meant. Looking beyond the mess of emergency, everything was scrupulous. A gleam under the debris dust, flowers arranged just so in vases, color-coordinating cushions and drapes, all chosen to accent the tones of the walls, the tones in the art.

Upstairs, she found the same. The master bedroom had taken the worst. Blistered paint, scorched ceilings, water and smoke damage.

The duvet on the king-sized bed had caught, as had the coordinating curtains. The natural wood blinds were scorched.

She could see the path the fire had taken, down the attic steps, eating its way across the polished wood floor, gnawing on the antique rug.

She moved down the hall, found two home offices. More antiques, she noted, more careful decorating.

The boy’s room was at the other end of the hall. It was big and airy, done in a soccer theme. Framed posters, lots of black and white with red splashes. Rigorously organized bookshelves. No scatter of toys, no piles of discarded clothes.

She took out the file, checked information. Then took out her phone and made a call.

O’Donnell was working through layers of debris when she picked her way carefully up the damaged steps.

“Nice of you to join me.”

“Had some background to check.” She glanced up, studied the sky. “Most of the fire headed up. They’re lucky. Damage to the second floor’s not that bad. Just smoke and water damage on the main floor.”

“No evidence of an accelerant so far. Point of origin, southeast corner.” He gestured as she took more photos. “Got the plywood, flashed the insulation behind it, traveled up, took the roof.”

She crouched, picked through debris with her gloved hands and pulled out the scorched remains of a snapshot. “Photographs. Pile of photos, probably the starter.”

“Yeah. Little bonfire of photos. Fire travels up, travels out. Storage bags, clothes inside, storage boxes, decorations inside, fueled it, carrying it down the stairs. Ventilated by the open window and the open door.”

“Have you checked for prints? Door handle, around the window frame?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Had a nice chat with the neighbor. Guess who likes to hook school?”

O’Donnell leaned back on his haunches. “Is that so?”

“Young Trevor Parker’s been truant six times in the last three months. On the day of the fire, he was tardy, came in between eleven and eleven-thirty. Had a note,” she added, “claiming he’d had a doctor’s appointment.”

She began to check for prints on the burned wood of the window frame. “The school has the students’ medical information on record and was persuaded to give me the name of Trevor’s pediatrician. He didn’t have an appointment on the day in question.”

“Nothing in the report about that either,” O’Donnell pointed out. “Both adults were at work, until they were notified of the fire.”

“Got a thumbprint here. Small. Looks like a kid’s to me.”

“I guess we’d better go have a talk with the Parkers.”

Ella Parker was a buff and stylish thirty-eight. She was a senior vice president in marketing for a local firm, and came in to the station house carrying a Gucci briefcase. Her husband was her counterpart, heading the procurement department for a research and development organization.

He wore a Rolex and Italian loafers.

They’d brought Trevor with them, as requested. He was a small and wiry nine wearing two-hundred-dollar high-tops and a sullen expression.

“We appreciate you coming in,” O’Donnell began.

“If you have a progress report, we want to hear it.” Ella set her briefcase on the conference table in front of her. “We’re dealing with insurance and estimates. We need to get back in the house as soon as possible so we can start repairs.”

“Understood. While we’ve determined the cause of the fire, there are still questions to be addressed.”

“I assume you’ve spoken with our former housekeeper.”

“Former?” Reena prompted.

“I fired her yesterday. There’s no question she’s responsible. No one else had our security code. I told you that was a mistake,” she said to her husband.

“She came highly recommended,” he reminded her. “And she’s worked for us for six years. What possible reason would Annie have to start a fire in our house?”

“People don’t need a reason to do destructive things. They just do them. Have you spoken with her?” Ella demanded.

“We will be.”

“I don’t understand why she wasn’t first on your list. Why you’ve dragged us down here at a time like this. Do you have any idea how much time and stress and energy are involved after you’ve had a fire in your home?”

“Actually, I do,” Reena said. “I’m sorry you have to deal with it.”

“I had several thousand dollars’ worth of personal items destroyed, not to mention the damage to my home. I’ve had to cancel appointments, completely rearrange my schedule—”

“Ella.” There was a weariness in William Parker’s voice, and it sounded habitual to Reena.

“Don’t Ella me,” she snapped. “I’m the one dealing with all the details. Not that you ever—” She cut herself off, lifted a hand. “I’m sorry. I’m very upset.”

“Understandable. Can you tell us how often you go up to the attic?” O’Donnell asked.

“At least once a month. And I have—had—the housekeeper clean up there regularly.”

“Mr. Parker?”

“Two, three times a year, I guess. Hauling stuff up or down. Christmas decorations, that sort of thing.”

“Trevor?”

“Trevor’s not allowed in the attic,” Ella cut in.

Reena caught the quick glance he shot his mother before he went back to staring at the table.

“I used to like to play in the attic when I was a kid.” Reena spoke casually. “All kinds of interesting stuff up there.”

“I said he isn’t allowed.”

“What a boy isn’t allowed and what he does are often the same things. According to our information, Trevor occasionally hooks school.”

“Once—and he’s not allowed to play with the boy responsible. I don’t see what business that is of yours.”

“Trevor wasn’t in school on the morning of the fire. Were you, Trevor?”

“Of course he was.” Anger and impatience sharpened Ella’s voice to a pinpoint. “My husband picked him up after we learned about the fire.”

“But you weren’t in school until nearly noon, isn’t that right, Trevor? You came in late. With a note that said you had a doctor’s appointment.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Mrs. Parker.” O’Donnell spoke in his slow, patient drawl. “Any reason you can’t let your boy answer for himself?”

“I’m his mother, and I’m not going to allow him to be interrogated or browbeaten by the police. We’ve been victimized, and now you’re making some sort of veiled accusation involving a nine-year-old boy.” She pushed to her feet. “I’ve had enough. Come on, Trevor.”

“Ella, shut up. Just shut the hell up for five damn minutes.” William dismissed her, focused on the boy. “Trevor, did you skip school again?”

The boy jerked a shoulder, stared at the table. But Reena saw the gleam of tears in his eyes.

“Did you go up into the attic that morning, Trevor?” she asked quietly. “Maybe just to play, just to hang out?”

“I don’t want you questioning him,” Ella said.

“I do.” Her husband rose. “If you can’t handle it, step out of the room. But I’m going to hear what Trevor has to say.”

“Like you care. Like you care about either of us. You’re so busy screwing your big-breasted blonde you don’t have time to care.”

“I’m so busy trying to tolerate living in the same house with you, I haven’t cared enough. About Trevor.”

“I didn’t hear you deny cheating on me, you son of a bitch.”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Trevor clamped his hands over his ears. “Stop yelling all the time! I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to see what would happen.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Trevor. What have you done? Don’t say another word. I’m not letting him say another word,” Ella said to Reena. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

“Back off, Ella.” William laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. Then he lowered his head, rested it against the top of his son’s. “I’m sorry, kiddo. Your mom and I have messed things up good. We’re going to stand up to it. You need to stand up, too. Tell what happened.”

“I was mad. I was mad because you were fighting again, and I didn’t want to go to school. So I didn’t.”

Reena handed Trevor a tissue. “You came back home instead?”

“I was just going to play in my room, and watch TV. But . . .”

“You were feeling mad.”

“They’re going to get a divorce.”

“Oh, Trev.” William sat again. “It’s not because of you.”

“You wrecked the house. That’s what Mom said. You’re wrecking it, so I thought if there was a fire, you’d stay home to fix it. But I didn’t mean it. I got matches and lit the pictures and the papers, then I couldn’t put it out. I got scared and I ran away. I had the note ’cause I wrote it on the computer before. And I went to school.”

“This is all your fault,” Ella spat out.

William took Trevor’s hand. “Sure, why not? Enough of it is. We’ll work through this, kiddo. It’s good you told the truth, and we’ll work through it.”

“If the house got burned down, you won’t get divorced.” Trevor buried his face against his father’s chest. “Don’t go away.”

She got home late, and she got home depressed. There wasn’t going to be any perfect, or even easy, ending for Trevor Parker. Counseling would help, but it wouldn’t put his family back together. That, in Reena’s opinion, was doomed.

Too many were as far as she could see.

For every Fran and Jack, every Gib and Bianca, there were failed couples on the other part of the scale. And the failures generally outweighed the successes.

The kid’s home might not have burned down, but it was sure as hell broken.

She pulled up in front of her house, got out of the car, locked it. And saw Bo sitting on his front steps, nursing a bottle of beer.

She nearly ignored him—everything about him said complicated and time-consuming. Simpler, she thought, just to go into her own house, close the door. And close out the hardship of the day.

But she crossed over instead, sat down on the step beside him. She took his beer and had a good long drink.

“If you’re going to tell me you’ve been sitting out here waiting for me, I’m going to get weirded out.”

“Then I won’t tell you. But I can say that I’ve been known to take in a nice evening with a cold one on the front steps. Rough one?”

“Sad one.”

“Somebody die?”

“No.” She passed the beer back to him. “Which is a question that forces me to put today in some perspective. A lot of time someone has. One thing you can’t come back from is death.”

“What, no reincarnation in your world? Where’s the karma?”

She smiled, which surprised her. “I didn’t deal with someone who may come back as a beagle today. Just some little kid who nearly burned his house down trying to keep his parents together.”

“He hurt?”

“Not physically, no.”

“That’s something.”

“Something. You said your parents split when you were a kid.”

“Yeah.” He took a drink from the beer she passed back to him. “It was . . . unpleasant. Okay,” he corrected when she merely looked at him. “It was a nightmare. You don’t want to add to the weight of the day hearing about my childhood traumas.”

“My parents have been married thirty-seven years. Sometimes they’re like one body with two heads. They fight, but it’s never ugly, if you get me.”

“Oh boy, do I.”

“I’d say they’re glued together, but you know what? They are the glue. Somehow the solidity of them is intimidating. Because you never want to settle for less than that.”

“We could start out having dinner. See where it went from there.”

“We could.” She took the bottle again, drank contemplatively. She could smell his soap, and a trace of something else. Maybe linseed oil, she thought. Something he might rub into wood.

“Or we could just go inside and have some wild sex. That’s what you want.”

“Well, rock and a hard place.” He gave a nervous little heh-heh, stretched out his legs. “I can’t say no, because—hey, guy here. So yeah, having wild sex with you would suit me fine. I thought about making love with you for seven-seventeenths of my life.”

A quick, unladylike snort escaped her. “Seven-seventeenths?”

“That’s rounded a little, but I figured it out. So getting to that in reality would be a big moment for me. On the other hand, I’ve thought about making love with you for seven-seventeenths of my life, so waiting a little longer won’t hurt me.”

“You’re a funny guy, Bowen.”

“Yep. I can be a funny guy. I can be a serious guy, or an astute guy, or a casual guy. I am a guy of many facets. We could have dinner, and I could treat you to a few of them.”

“Maybe. My partner ran you.”

“Ran me where?”

This time she laughed, stretched out her legs companionably. “Did a background check on you.”

“No shit?” He looked fascinated rather than insulted. “Wow. Did I pass?”

“Apparently.” Her forehead creased as she studied him. “Why aren’t you annoyed? I was annoyed.”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s sort of interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever been run before.”

“I have a big, noisy, irritating, often interfering, overprotective family. They’re the center of my life, even when I don’t want them to be.”

“I’m the only child of a broken home. Feel my pain.”

“You’re not in pain.”

“Nope. Doesn’t mean I’m scared of your family either. I just want to touch you.” He ran a hand up her arm, over her shoulder, then brought her face around so their eyes met. “You may not be what I’ve got in my head, but it’s been there so long. I just want to find out.”

“Relationships don’t stick to me. Maybe more accurately, I don’t stick to them. Have you considered how irritating it would be to end up living next door to each other if we end up hating each other?”

“One of us would have to move. But in the meantime.” He reached behind him to open the front door, set the empty beer bottle inside. “Want to take a walk? I hear there’s a really good Italian place a few blocks away. We could grab a meal.”

“All right.” She braced her hands on her knees and hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. “All right, let’s take a walk.”

15

Reena walked the baby around Xander and An’s living room in their doll-sized apartment. Their packing-up process had already begun.

She’d moved out of the apartment over Sirico’s, and now her brother and his little family would move in.

The windows—both of them—were wide open so she could hear the traffic, and the shouts of kids playing in a nearby park.

The baby had already burped, but Reena wasn’t ready to put him down yet. “So we’ve had dinner at Sirico’s. Twice. Sat out on his steps a couple of times. He drew up a design for a dining room table for me. It’s great. In fact, it’s perfect. I don’t know what to make of him.”

“More to the point.” An continued to fold baby clothes. “Why haven’t you made him?”

“Nice talk, Mommy.”

“At the moment, due to childbirth, child rearing, work and preparing to move, my sex life is at a low ebb. I’ve got to get my thrills somewhere. How’s he in the kissing department?”

“I don’t know.”

“You haven’t kissed him?” An tossed down a onesie and clutched at her chest. “You moved in, what, three weeks ago? You’re breaking my heart.”

“He works, I work.” Reena shrugged. “Even though we live next door, we don’t see each other every day. Maybe we’re making a point not to see each other every day. He hasn’t made a move. Neither have I. We’re sort of . . .” She twirled a finger in the air. “Circling it. I keep expecting him to. And I think he expects I’m expecting so he lays back, which keeps me just a little off balance. I have to admire that.”

“Okay, you admire him, you’ve spent time with him, so you must enjoy him. You still have a pulse so you find him attractive. But you’re not jumping him.”

“No.” Reena eased Dillon back so she could look into his face. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Scares you a little, doesn’t he?”

“I fear no man.” Could, would, not allow herself to. “Not even this one, who I believe has just filled his diaper admirably. Go to Mama, sweetie pie.”

An took the baby, carried him to the bedroom the three of them currently shared. She laid him on the changing table. “I think he scares you a little,” she continued. “Xander scared me a little at first. He was so cute and funny, and he’s such a damn good doctor. I wanted to bite him in the throat. Then after we started seeing each other, I was really scared to meet your family. I had this image in my head. Sort of Sopranos—without the blood and murder and crime.”

“Good to know.”

“But the big family, the Italian family. How would a nice Chinese girl like me fit in with his family?”

“Like a lotus blossom, elegantly twined in a grapevine.”

“Hey, nice image. I love them, you know. I loved your family even before I loved Xander. I lusted for him, admired him, but boy, was I dazzled by them. Now look what I’ve got to show for it.”

She kissed Dillon on the belly, wrapped an arm around Reena’s waist. “Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Takes the prize.”

“I said no the first time Xander asked me to marry him.”

“What?” Surprised, Reena looked down at her sister-in-law’s gleaming hair. “You said no to Xander?”

“Complete panic. No, no, are you crazy? Let’s just keep everything the way it is. We don’t have to get married. We’re fine, let it alone. Which he did, for nearly an hour. He came back at me and told me to stop being stupid.”

“Romantic devil.”

“Actually he was. He was so revved up and sexy. I love you, you love me, so let’s start building a life together. I said yes, and we did.” She picked up the baby, pressed her cheek to his. “Thank God. And the reason I’m telling you,” she added, “is just to illustrate it’s okay to be a little scared. But it’s better to make a move.”

Maybe she would, she mused on the drive home. What was stopping her? An had a point—as An invariably did. It was better to make a move. And the person who made the move, Reena reminded herself, generally had the upper hand.

She didn’t have to have the upper hand in a relationship, but she didn’t object to having it. And it made sense when she really thought it through. He’d been carrying a fantasy torch for her for . . . what had he said? Seven-seventeenths of his life. And how cute was that? So that meant, logically, he had all manner of ideas and images of her built up. Most of them, undoubtedly, exaggerated and inaccurate.

But if she made the move, they’d have a fresh playing field.

And she did like to play.

Sometimes you just went with the urge, she decided as she parked her car and grabbed her bag. No point in making a big fuss or overanalyzing.

So she walked straight to Bo’s door and knocked. He took so long to answer she wondered if he was out in the back working as he did some evenings. But when he opened the door, she had a flirtatious smile in place.

“Hi. I was in the neighborhood, so I thought . . .” He looked shocky, she realized. Pale and punched. “What’s wrong?”

“I . . . I have to go. Sorry. I need to—” He broke off, looked blankly behind him as if he’d forgotten what he was doing.

“Bo, what happened?”

“What? I have to . . . my grandmother.”

She took his arm, spoke carefully. She knew a victim when she saw one. “What happened to your grandmother?”

“She died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. When?”

“They . . . they just called. Just now called. I have to go to her house. She’s in her house. I have to go take care of things. Something.”

“Okay. I’ll take you.”

“What? Wait, give me a second.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I’m messed up.”

“Of course you are. So I’ll drive you.”

“No. No, that’s okay.” He dropped his hands, shook his head. “It’s way out in Glendale.”

“Come on, we’ll take my car. Got your house keys?”

“My . . .” He stuck a hand in his pocket, pulled them out. “Yeah. Yeah. Listen, Reena, you don’t have to do this. I just need a minute to get my head around it.”

“You shouldn’t drive, trust me. And you shouldn’t go alone. Lock your door,” she told him, then led him to her car. “Where in Glendale?”

He rubbed his face like a man trying to scrub off sleep, then gave her an address and vague directions. She knew the area well enough from her college days.

“Had your grandmother been ill?”

“No. At least nothing major. Nothing I knew about. A lot of little stuff, I guess, that you deal with when you’re eighty-seven. Or -eight. Shit. I can’t remember.”

“Women don’t mind you not remembering their age.” She brushed a hand over the back of his as she drove. “Do you want to tell me what happened? Or would you rather just be quiet?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know exactly. Her neighbor found her. Got worried because she didn’t answer the phone. And she hadn’t been out to get her mail this morning. She’s—my grandmother, she’s habitual, you know?”

“Yes.”

“She has keys. The neighbor. Went over to check on her. She was still in bed. She must’ve died in her sleep. I guess. I don’t know. She was there all day, by herself all day.”

“Bowen, it’s hard to lose someone. But let me ask you, when your time comes, can you think of a better way to leave than to slip away in your own bed, in your own home, while you sleep?”

“Probably not.” He took a long breath. “Probably not. I just talked to her yesterday. Call every couple days. Just hey, how’s it going? She said her kitchen faucet was leaking again, so I was going to go by today or tomorrow, take care of it. I got hung up today and didn’t get over. Oh, shit.”

“You took care of her.”

“No, I just fixed stuff around the house. I went by every couple weeks, maybe. Not enough. I should’ve gone by more. Why do you always think of that after?”

“Because being human we tend to beat ourselves up. Is there any other family around?”

“Not really. My father’s in Arizona. Hell, I didn’t even call him. Uncle in Florida. A cousin in Pennsylvania.” He leaned his head back. “I have to find the numbers.”

The picture was coming clear, and the picture told her he was on his own in this. “Do you know what she wanted? Did she ever talk to you about arrangements?”

“Not really. A Mass, I guess. She’d want a Mass.”

“You’re Catholic?”

“She is—was. I mostly got over it. Last rites. Damn it. It’s too late for that. I feel stupid,” he said with a sigh. “I’ve never done anything like this before. My grandfather died almost twenty years ago. Car accident. My mother’s parents are out in Vegas.”

“Your grandparents live in Vegas?”

“Yeah. They love it. The last time I saw her, a couple weeks ago? We had really lousy iced tea—you know the kind you get out of a jar that’s got fake sugar and lemon flavoring in it.”

“Should be illegal.”

“Right.” He laughed a little. “We had lousy iced tea and Chips Ahoy! cookies out on her patio. She wasn’t the kind who baked and stuff. She liked to play pinochle and watch those World’s Worst whatever on TV. Like World’s Worst Pet Attacks. World’s Worst Vacation Disasters. She really dug on that crap. She smoked three cigarettes a day. Virginia Slims. Three. Not one less, not one more.”

“And you loved her.”

“I did. I never thought much about it, but I really did. Thanks. Thanks for talking me through this.”

“It’s okay.”

Steadier, he guided her in the rest of the way, to a pretty brick house with a meticulous yard.

There were white shutters and a short white porch. She imagined Bo had painted them for her—had probably built the little porch as well.

A woman in her mid-forties stepped out. Her eyes were red from weeping. She wore a powder blue tracksuit and had her light brown hair pulled back in a short tail.

“Bo. Bo. I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around him, and her body shook as she hugged him. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She sniffled, drew back. “Sorry,” she said to Reena. “I’m Judy Dauber, from next door.”

“This is Reena. Catarina Hale. Thanks, Judy, for . . . waiting with her.”

“Of course, sweetie. Of course.”

“I should go in.”

“Go ahead.” Reena took his hand, gave it a squeeze. “I’ll come in a minute.”

Reena waited on the lawn, watched him go to the door, go inside.

“I thought she was sleeping,” Judy began. “For just a second. I thought, well, for heaven’s sake, Marge, what are you doing in bed this time of day? She stayed active. Then I realized, almost immediately, I realized. I talked to her just yesterday. She said Bo was coming by in a day or two, fix her faucet. And she’d have a list of little chores for him to do when he got here. She was awfully proud of him. Didn’t have two good words to say at once about his father, but she prized Bo.”

She fumbled out a tissue, wiped at her eyes. “She really prized Bo. He was the only one who took care, if you understand me. The only one who paid attention.”

“You did.”

Judy glanced over, and the tears rolled again.

“Judy.” Reena draped an arm over the woman’s shoulders as they walked toward the house. “Bo said his grandmother was Catholic. Do you know the name of her church, her pastor?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. I should’ve thought of that.”

“We can call. And maybe we can find numbers for her sons.”

Death might come simply, but its aftermath was invariably complicated. Reena did what she could, contacting the priest while Bo called his father. In a little desk in the spare room, papers were competently organized in a file drawer. Insurance, burial plot, a copy of the will, the deed to the house, the title to the aging Chevy Reena learned Marge Goodnight had driven to church and the grocery store.

The priest arrived so quickly, with a face so solemn Reena deduced Marge had been a prominent member of the parish.

She began to see more of Bo here. The tidiness of the house was certainly Marge. But its upkeep was undoubtedly his doing. There was none of the slapdash repairs, the jury-rigged details she often saw in the homes and apartments of seniors.

As Judy had said, he paid attention. He took care.

He handled the details, made the calls, spoke with the priest, made the decisions. Once, she saw him falter and moved over to take his hand.

“What can I do?”

“They, ah . . . They need to know what she should wear. For the funeral. I have to pick something.”

“Why don’t I do that? Men never know what we want to wear.”

“I’d appreciate it. Her stuff’s in there, in the closet. You could wait on it. They haven’t . . . I mean, she’s still in there.”

“It’s okay. I’ll take care of this.”

Maybe it was surreal, to go into the bedroom of a woman she’d never met, to go through the closet while a body lay in the bed. Out of respect, Reena stepped to the bed first, looked down.

Marge Goodnight had let her hair go slate gray, and had kept it short and straight. No-nonsense then, Reena decided. Her left hand, with its wedding ring set, lay outside the covers.

She imagined Bo had sat there, held her hand while he said his good-byes.

“It’s too much for him,” she said quietly. “Picking a dress for you is just a little out of his scope. I hope you don’t mind if I handle this part.”

She opened the closet, smiled when she saw built-in shelves and cubbies. “He built these, didn’t he?” She glanced over her shoulder at Marge. “You like things organized, and he did the work. It’s a good design. I may have to hire him to do something similar for me. What about this blue suit, Marge? Dignified, but not stuffy. And this blouse, with just a little bit of lace down the placket. Pretty, but not too frilly. I think I’d have liked you.”

She found a garment bag, hung the outfit inside, and though she realized it was unnecessary, selected shoes, then underwear from the bureau.

Before she left the room, she turned to the bed again. “I’ll light a candle for you, and have my mother say a rosary. Nobody says a rosary like my mama. Safe passage, Marge.”

Reena took two hours’ personal time to attend the funeral. He hadn’t asked her to come. In fact, she thought he’d deliberately avoided asking her. She sat in the back, not surprised the Mass was so well attended. Her brief conversation with the pastor had cemented her conclusion that Margaret Goodnight had been a fixture of the church.

They’d brought flowers, as friends and neighbors do, so the church smelled of lilies and incense and candle wax. She stood and knelt, sat and spoke, the rhythm of the Mass as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. When the priest spoke of the dead, he spoke of her in personal and affectionate terms.

She’d mattered, Reena thought. She’d left her mark. And wasn’t that the point?

When Bo walked up to the pulpit to speak, she didn’t think Marge would mind if she admired the way he looked in a dark suit.

“My grandmother,” he began, “was tough. She didn’t suffer fools. She figured you should use the brains God gave you, otherwise you were just taking up space. She did a lot more than take up space. She told me that during the Depression she worked in a dime store, made a dollar a day. Had to walk two miles each way—fair weather or foul. She didn’t think it was that big a deal, she just did what she had to do.

“She told me once she thought she’d become a nun, then decided she’d rather have sex. I hope it’s okay to say that in here,” he added after a ripple of laughter. “She married my grandfather in 1939. They had what she called a two-hour honeymoon before they both had to go back to work. Apparently, they managed to make my uncle Tom in that short window. She lost a daughter at six months, and a son in Vietnam who never saw his twentieth birthday. She lost her husband, but she never lost, well, her faith. Or her independence, which was just as important to her. She taught me how to ride a two-wheeler, and to finish what I start.”

He cleared his throat. “She’s survived by her two sons, my cousin Jim and me. I’m going to miss her.”

Reena waited outside the church while people spoke to Bo before walking to their cars. It was a pretty morning, with strong sun and the smell of freshly mown grass.

She noted the two people who stayed closest to him. A man of about his age, about five-ten, trendy wire-framed glasses, good, dark suit and shoes. And a woman around thirty with short, bright red hair wearing sunglasses and a sleeveless black dress.

From what he’d told her, they couldn’t be blood kin. But she recognized family when she saw it.

He broke away, walked to Reena. “Thanks for coming. I haven’t had much chance to talk to you, to thank you for everything.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry I can’t go to the cemetery. I have to get back. It was a lovely service, Bo. You did just right.”

“Scary.” He put sunglasses over his tired eyes. “I haven’t had to talk in front of so many people since the nightmare of public speaking in high school.”

“Well, you aced it.”

“Glad it’s done.” He looked over, and his jaw tightened. “I’ve got to ride out with my father.” He nodded toward a man in a black suit. His black hair had just a touch of silver at the temples, like gleaming wings. Tanned and fit, she thought. And impatient.

“We don’t seem to have anything to say to each other. How does that happen?”

“I don’t know, but it does.” She touched her lips to each of his cheeks in turn. “Take care.”

At ten on a rainy morning in June that turned the air to steam, Reena stood over the partially destroyed body of a twenty-three-year-old woman. What was left of her was on the nasty carpet in a nasty room in a hotel where “fleabag” would have been a generous adjective.

Her name was De Wanna Johnson, according to the driver’s license in the vinyl purse found under the bed—and the desk clerk’s statement.

As her face and upper torso were all but gone, official identification would come later. She’d been wrapped in a blanket, with stuffing from the mattress strewn over and around her to act as trailers.

Reena took pictures while O’Donnell started the grid.

“So, De Wanna checks in three days ago with some guy. She pays cash for two nights. While it is possible DeWanna decided to sleep on the floor, and set her own face on fire, I scent a whiff of foul play.”

O’Donnell chewed contemplatively on his gum. “Maybe the frying pan over there covered with blood and gray matter gave you the first clue.”

“It didn’t hurt. Jesus, De Wanna, bet he did a number on you first. He had a good combustible source of fuel with the blanket and mattress stuffing, then you’ve got her body fat for the candle effect. But he screwed up. Should’ve opened a window, should have coated this carpet with flammable liquid. Not enough oxygen, not enough flame to finish the job. Hope she was dead before he lit her. Hope the ME and radiologists confirm that.”

She stepped out to go through the rest of the room, the excuse for a kitchenette. Broken dishes on the floor, what she identified as ground beef mixed with Hamburger Helper sloshed over the graying linoleum.

“Looks like she was fixing dinner when they got into it. Remains of that in the skillet along with pieces of her. He probably grabbed the pan right off the stove.”

She turned from it, gripped her hands as if gripping the handle, swung out. “Knocked her back. Blood spatter here looks consistent with that. Comes right back with a backhanded follow-through. Knocks her back again, and down. Maybe pounds on her some more before he thinks, Whoa, shit, look what I did.”

She stepped around the body. “Figures to light her up, cover up the murder. But animal fat doesn’t burn cleanly. Modest flame destroys tissues, takes her face and more, but it doesn’t bring the room temp, not a closed room, up enough to ignite the stuffing, even the bulk of the blanket he wrapped around her.”

“So we’re probably not going to be looking for a chemist.”

“Or somebody who planned ahead. Frenzy of the moment, not premeditated, from the looks of the scene.”

She moved into the bathroom. The back of the toilet was crammed with cosmetics. Hair spray, hair gel, mascara, lipsticks, blusher, eyeshadows.

Crouching down, she began to pick through the trash with her gloved hands. Moments later, she came back in holding a box.

“I think we’ve got a motive.” She held up the home pregnancy test.

The desk clerk’s vague description of the man who’d checked in with the victim was given a boost by the prints Reena lifted from the frying pan.

“Got him,” she told O’Donnell, and swiveled around in her chair to face his desk. “Jamal Earl Gregg, twenty-five. Got a sheet. Assault, possession with intent, malicious wounding. Did a stint in Red Onion in Virginia. Released three months ago. Got a Richmond address listed. De Wanna Johnson’s driver’s license had a Richmond address.”

“So maybe we’ll take a field trip.”

“I’ve got a current MasterCard in her name. It wasn’t in her purse, or on the scene.”

“If he took it, he’ll use it. Asshole. Let’s put out the alert. Maybe we’ll save ourselves a trip down Ninety-five.”

Reena wrote the report, did a search for known associates.

“The only tie I can find to Baltimore is an inmate on his block at Red Onion. Guy’s still inside, doing a nickel for dealing.”

“Jamal got busted for possession with intent. Maybe he came up this way looking to move in with his pal’s connections.”

“There’s no record on De Wanna Johnson. No criminal, no juvie, no arrests. But she and Gregg went to the same high school.”

O’Donnell tipped down the reading glasses he’d been forced to use. “High school sweethearts?”

“Stranger things. He gets out, scoops her up, and they’re off to Baltimore—on her dime, in her car. Must be love. I’m going to call the address listed on her license, see what I can dig out.”

“Let me update the captain,” O’Donnell said. “See if he wants us to go to Richmond on this.”

When O’Donnell came back, Reena held up a finger. “I appreciate that, Mrs. Johnson. If you hear from your daughter, or hear anything about Jamal Gregg’s whereabouts, please contact me. You have my number. Yes. Thank you.”

Reena pushed back in her chair. “High school sweethearts. In fact, so sweet, De Wanna has a five-year-old daughter. Her mother’s got the kid. Jamal and DeWanna left three days ago—over the mother’s objections. Job opportunity. She said her girl didn’t have a brain cell working when it came to that no-account, and she hopes we lock the thieving bastard up good this time, so her girl has a chance to make a decent life. I didn’t tell her the probability is high De Wanna’s already lost her chance.”

“Got one kid by her. He just gets out of prison, ready to get something going, and she tells him she’s got another cooking. He loses it, does her, lights her, takes her credit card, cash, car.”

“Works for me.”

“We’re getting cleared to drive down to Richmond. Hold on.” He picked up his ringing phone. “Arson Unit. O’Donnell. Yeah. Yeah.” He scribbled as he spoke. “Stall the authorization. We’re on our way.”

Reena was already up, grabbing her jacket. “Where?”

“Liquor store on Central.”

Reena grabbed a radio on the run, requested backup.

He was gone when they got there, and frustration had Reena standing in the rain, kicking the rear tire of the car Jamal had left sitting at the curb. She pulled out her cell phone when it sang. “Hale. Okay. Got it.” She clicked off. “Victim was six weeks pregnant. Cause of death, bludgeoning.”

“That’s fast work for the ME.”

“I sweet-talked him. He couldn’t have gone far. Even if he decided to ditch the car, he couldn’t have gone far.”

“So we look for him. Get in out of the rain.” O’Donnell slid behind the wheel again. “Got the APB out. He’s on foot. He’s pissed off he didn’t get his booze.”

“Bar. Where’s the closest bar?”

O’Donnell looked at her and grinned. “Now that’s thinking.” He turned the corner, nodded. “Let’s have a look.”

It was called Hideout. A number of patrons seemed to be doing just that, holed up with a bottle on a rainy afternoon.

Jamal was at the end of the bar, drinking boilermakers.

He was off the stool like lightning, and sprinting toward the back.

Good eye for cops, was Reena’s only thought as she ran after him. She hit the alley door three steps ahead of O’Donnell. She evaded the metal trash can Jamal heaved. O’Donnell didn’t.

“You hurt?” she called back.

“Get him. I’m right behind you.”

Jamal was fast, but so was she. When he scurried up and over the fence backing the alley, she was right behind him. “Police! Freeze!”

He was fast, she thought again, but he didn’t know Baltimore. She was faster—and she did.

The rain-drenched alley he’d run into this time dead-ended. He whirled, eyes wild, and flipped out a knife.

“Come on, bitch.”

Keeping her eyes locked on his, Reena drew her weapon. “What, are you just really stupid? Toss down the knife, Jamal, before I shoot you.”

“Ain’t got the balls.”

Now she grinned, though her palms had gone clammy and her knees wanted badly to shake. “Bet me.”

From behind her, she heard O’Donnell swear and puff, and had never heard sweeter music. “And me,” he said, bracing his weapon on the top of the fence.

“I didn’t do nothing.” Jamal dropped the knife. “I’m just having a drink.”

“Yeah, tell that to DeWanna, and the baby she was carrying.” Her heart pistoned painfully against her ribs as she moved forward. “On the ground, you bastard. Hands behind your head.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He got down, laced his hands behind his head. “You got the wrong person.”

“This next stint you do in a cage, maybe you can study up on the properties of fire. Meanwhile, Jamal Earl Gregg, you’re under arrest for suspicion of murder.” She kicked the knife away, cuffed him.

They were soaked to the skin and dripping when they heard the sirens. O’Donnell shot her a fierce grin. “Fast on your feet, Hale.”

“Yeah.”

And since it was over, she sat on the wet pavement until she got her breath back.

16

Well, it was done, Bo thought as he let himself into his house. At least he hoped to God it was done. Mostly. Lawyers, insurance, accountants, realtors. All those meetings, all that paperwork made his ears ring. Not to mention, he thought, a couple of go-rounds with his father.

Over and done, he decided, and couldn’t figure out if he was relieved or depressed.

He set a packing box beside the one he’d already brought in and dumped at the foot of the stairs. One more in the car, he mused. He could just leave it there, deal with it all later.

And he could’ve sworn he heard his grandmother’s voice, telling him to finish what he started.

“Okay, okay.” He pushed at his already dripping hair and headed back out.

A beer would be good. A beer, a hot shower, maybe some ESPN. Chill out. Decompress. Then, as he pulled the tarp up to get to the last of the boxes, Reena pulled in. He forgot all about an evening in his underwear watching the game.

“Hi.” He thought she looked a little pale and tired, but it might’ve been the rain.

“Hi back.”

She wasn’t wearing a hat either, and her hair was a riot of tawny corkscrews. “Got a minute?” he asked her. “Want to come in?”

She hesitated, then gave a little shrug. “Sure. Need a hand?”

“No, I’ve got it.”

“Haven’t seen you around much this week,” she commented.

“Work squeezed between meetings. Turns out I’m executor of my grandmother’s estate. That sounds like it’s really big and shiny. It’s not like she was rolling in it or anything. Mostly it’s just lawyers and paperwork. Thanks,” he added when she opened the door for him. “Want some wine?”

“About as much as I want to keep breathing.”

“Let me get you a towel.” He dumped the box with the others, walked down the hall and into what she knew was the half bath.

The house was nearly a twin of hers in its setup. But what he’d done set it apart. The trim and floors had been taken down to their natural color and varnished, and the walls were a deep, warm green that set off the honey oak. He’d suspended a mission-style light from the lofty ceiling.

The hall could have used a runner, she thought. Something old and a little threadbare and full of character. And he probably planned to refinish the table near the door where he threw his keys.

He came back with a couple of navy blue towels. “You’ve done some beautiful work in here.”

“Yeah?” He glanced around as he scrubbed his hair with a towel. “Good start anyway.”

“Really good start,” she said as she wandered into the living room. His furniture needed help. Slipcovers, or better yet replacement. And he had perhaps the biggest television she’d ever seen dominating one wall. But the walls were a slightly deeper shade of that green, the woodwork gorgeous. And the little fireplace had been fronted in creamy granite, framed in more of that honey oak with a wide, chunky mantel topping it.

“God, that’s gorgeous, Bo. Seriously.” She crossed to the fireplace, ran her fingers over the mantel. There was dust, but beneath it was silky wood. “Oh, look what you’ve done around the window!”

It was flanked with shelves, mirroring the wood and beaded accents on the trim. “It’s just the sort of detail a room this size needs. Brings it in without losing the sense of space. Makes it cozy.”

“Thanks. I’m thinking about fronting them with glass—pebbled maybe. Haven’t decided. But I’m doing that with the built-ins I’m making for the dining room, so I may just leave these open.”

He was proud of his work, but her enthusiastic response gave him an extra boost. “Kitchen’s done, if you want to see.”

“I do.” She glanced back at the fireplace as she walked out. “Can you do something like that in my place?”

“I can do anything you want.”

She passed him back the towel. “We’ll have to talk about your rates.”

“I’ll give you an infatuation discount.”

“I’d be a fool to say no.” She poked her head in other rooms on the way. “I’m nosy. What’s this going to be? Like a TV room?”

“That’s the plan. Room enough for a good-sized entertainment unit. I’m working on a design.”

“Using the monster in your living room as a measuring tool.”

He smiled easily. “You’re going to watch, why not watch?”

“I’m thinking of using this space in my house for a library. Lots of shelves, warm colors, maybe putting in one of those little gas fireplaces. Big cushy chairs.”

“That wall’d be best for the fireplace.” He gestured with a lift of his chin. “Could do a nice window seat over there.”

“A window seat.” She considered him. “Just how infatuated are you?”

“I was going to have a beer and the ball game. Then I saw you.”

“Pretty infatuated.” She strolled out, glanced into the half bath. New tiles, she noted, new fixtures. Then the dining room, where she found major construction in progress. “It’s a lot of work.”

“I like the work. Even when I have to shoehorn it in between active clients. Business is good, so this place is taking me longer than the last one. But I like it here, so that’s a point. Then there’s you.”

“Hmmm.” She left that without comment and wandered into the kitchen. “Holy crap, Bo. This is amazing. It’s like a magazine.”

“Kitchens are the hub.” He opened the laundry room door, tossed the towels inside. “Major selling point. It’s generally where I start the rehab.”

He’d done the floors in big slate-colored tiles, echoed that on the counters and used white-washed cabinets. Some were fronted with leaded glass. He’d put in a bar for casual seating, added in a box window to bring in the backyard. Wide windowsills were stone and called out for pretty pots of plants or herbs.

“You went high-end on the appliances. I know my appliances. I’d love to have one of these built-in grills.”

“I can get you a good price. Contractor’s rate.”

“I love the lighting. This mission style is perfect.”

He flipped on a switch and made her eyes gleam. Light beamed down from under the top cabinets.

“Nice touch. Now I have kitchen envy. This display cabinet’s great. Why don’t you have anything in it?”

“Didn’t have anything. Guess I do now. Some of my grandmother’s stuff.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of white wine. “She left me everything. Well, she made a bequest to the church, but the rest she left to me. The house. Everything.”

“It makes you sad,” she stated softly.

“Some, I guess. Grateful.” For a moment, he just held the wine bottle, leaned back against the refrigerator. “The house is free and clear, and once I get over the guilt, I’ll sell it.”

“She wouldn’t want you to feel guilty. She didn’t expect you to move in. It’s just a house.”

He got glasses, poured the wine. “I’m coming around to that. Doesn’t need much work. I’ve kept it up for her. I’ve started clearing stuff out. The boxes in the other room.” He handed her a glass. “Mostly photographs, some of her jewelry, and . . .”

“Things that matter.”

“Yeah, things that matter. She had a couple of pictures I drew her when I was a kid. You know, box houses with triangle roofs. Big round yellow sun. W birds flying around.”

“She loved you.”

“I know. My father’s decided to be hurt and insulted because she didn’t leave him anything. He’s seen her maybe twice in the last five, six years, and he’s playing the grieving son.” He stopped himself, shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Families are complicated. I should know. She made her choices, Bo. It was her right.”

“I get that.” But he rubbed his fingers hard over the middle of his forehead. “I could give him a cut when I sell the house, but she wouldn’t like it. So I won’t. She did leave my uncle and my cousin a few odds and ends. I guess she made her statement. Anyway.” He shook it off. “Hungry? Why don’t I fix you dinner?”

“You cook?”

“A little turn of the leaf I made a long time ago—and by happy coincidence, I learned that having a guy cook is like foreplay to a woman.”

“You’re not wrong. What’s on the menu?”

He smiled. “I’ll figure that out. While I am, why don’t you tell me why you look tired?”

“Do I?” She sipped while he opened the freezer. “I guess I am. Or was. Hard day. Want me to bore you with it?”

“I do.” He found a couple of chicken breasts, put them in the microwave to defrost, then opened a vegetable drawer.

“My partner and I worked this case. Flop hotel in south Baltimore. Single victim, female. Her head and most of her torso were . . . and I’ve just realized this is not really pre-dinner conversation.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got a strong stomach.”

“Let’s say she was badly burned, in an attempt to hide the fact that she’d been beaten to death. He didn’t do a good job of it, either. It’s all right there, like flashing lights.”

She ran him through it, watching as he whipped something up in a small stainless steel bowl, dumped it over the chicken.

“It’s hard, what you do. Seeing what you see.”

“You have to walk a line between objectivity and compassion. It gets shaky. I guess it shook a little for me with De Wanna. All her cosmetics piled on the back of the toilet, the meal she was trying to put together. She loved the son of a bitch, and he’s so annoyed she’s pregnant again—like it was all her fault—he smashes her face with a frying pan, then beats her to death with it, panics, sets her on fire. Sets her hair on fire. It takes a special kind of callousness to do that.”

Bo poured her more wine. “But you got him?”

“Wasn’t hard. He’s dumb as a brick. Used her credit card—or tried to. Made us, though. Smelled cop the minute we walked into this sluggy little bar. Ran out the back, tipped my partner over with a garbage can. I’m in pursuit, catching up with him, climbing over a fence, rain’s pouring. I’m not even thinking then, just doing. He doesn’t know the city, traps himself in a blind alley. Turns around and pulls a knife.”

“Jesus, Reena.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got a gun. A gun, for God’s sake. What does he think, I’ll go eek and run away?” But a part of her had wanted to. “I’ve had to draw my weapon before, a few times before, but it was almost an afterthought. This . . . my hands were shaking, and I was so cold. Inside, not from the rain. Because I knew I might have to use it. I’ve never had to fire my weapon. I was cold because I might have to fire. I was cold because I knew I could. Maybe wanted to, because . . . I still had the picture of what he’d done to her in my head. I was scared. It’s the first time I’ve really been scared on the job. I guess it caught me by surprise. So . . .”

She took a breath, and a drink. “Your offer of wine and dinner was well timed. I’m better off with company than alone. And it’s not the sort of thing I like to talk about with my family. It worries them.”

It worried him, too, but that didn’t seem like the right response. Instead he gave her another that came to his mind. “Regular people don’t—can’t—understand what you deal with. Not just the stress, which must be through the roof, not even the personal danger. But the emotion of it, I guess. What you see, what you have to do about it, and how that sits inside you.”

“There are reasons I got into this type of work. What happened to De Wanna Johnson’s one of them. And I feel better, so thanks for letting me go on about it. Writing a report doesn’t have the same cathartic benefit. Want a hand with dinner?”

“No, I got it. It loses the seductive value if I ask you to peel potatoes.”

“You seducing me, Bo?”

“Working up to it.”

“How long does it generally take for you to get through the working-up-to-it stage?”

“Not usually this long. Especially if you count back the full thirteen years.”

“Then I’d say it’s been long enough.” She set her glass down, rose. “You’re going to want that chicken to marinate awhile anyway,” she added as she crossed to him.

“I feel like I should say something clever right now. But my mind’s blank.” He put his hands on her hips, sliding them slowly up her body as he drew her in.

His head dipped, then paused with his lips a whisper from hers, just to catch her quick breath of anticipation. His eyes stayed open, watching hers, as he changed the angle, grazed his teeth over her bottom lip.

Then slowly sank in.

She smelled of the rain, tasted of wine. Her hands gripped his shoulders, then combed up through his hair and fisted there as that tight, angular body fit to his. He moved without thinking, half turning so her back was braced against the counter, locking her there while his mouth did a long, thorough exploration of hers.

Her teeth clamped lightly over his tongue, shooting his blood from hot to fevered. And the sound she made was something between a laugh and a moan.

His vision blurred.

Her hands weren’t quite steady when she tugged his shirt out of his waistband. “You’re good at this,” she managed.

“Right back at you. Reena.” His mouth raced to her throat, branded its way up to her lips again. “I want to . . . let’s go upstairs.”

Everything inside her was open and aching and ready. With her hands under his shirt, she dug her fingers into hard muscle. She wanted that body on hers, the brawn of it, the heat of it, the need of it. “I like your floor. Let’s see how it holds up.”

He thought he heard his heart knocking, hard, insistent bangs. When he pulled back far enough to yank her jacket down her arms, he recognized the knocking on his front door. “Oh, for the sake of the tiny baby Jesus.”

She closed her teeth over his jaw. “Expecting someone?”

“No. Maybe they’ll . . .” But the knocking only increased. “Damn it. Listen, don’t move. Breathe only if you have to, but don’t move.” He gripped her shoulders. “Oh God, look at you. I could just . . . Just wait here, right here because I can just slip right back into position after I go kill whoever’s at the door. It’ll only take a minute for me to murder them.”

“I have a gun,” she offered.

His laugh was a little pained. “Thanks, but I can do it with my bare hands. Don’t disappear, don’t change your mind. Don’t do anything.”

She grinned after him, then patted a hand on her heart. He was good at it, she mused. In fact, he was exceptional. A man who could kiss like that . . . and she already knew he was good with his hands . . . had the potential to be an amazing lover. Still, now that she’d had a minute to clear the fire out of her brain, maybe going upstairs was a better idea.

She shook back her hair, then wandered out of the kitchen to see if he’d sent the interruption on its way.

And found him in the doorway, holding a pretty little redhead. The woman—the redhead Reena had seen at the funeral—had her head on his shoulder, and her own body shook with sobs.

“I feel so bad, Bo. I didn’t think I’d feel this bad. I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay. Come on. Let me close the door.”

“It’s stupid. I’m stupid, but I can’t help it.”

“You’re not stupid. Come on, Mandy, just . . .” He trailed off when he spotted Reena, and she watched his face go through several emotions. Surprise, embarrassment, apology, denial. “Ah . . . ah . . . Well.”

Tears continued to stream down Mandy’s face as she stared at Reena, then pulled back from Bo. Flushed as red as her hair. “Oh Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was here. God, what an idiot. I’m sorry. I’m going.”

“It’s all right. I was just leaving.”

“No. God. I am.” Mandy rubbed both hands over her wet cheeks. “Pretend I wasn’t here. The dignified part of me wasn’t.”

“Don’t worry about it. Really. I was just looking at the house. I live next door. Reena Hale.”

“Mandy—Reena?” she repeated. “I know you.” She sniffled, brushed at more tears. “I mean, not really. I went to Maryland the same time you did. I was Josh Bolton’s downstairs neighbor. I met you once for a minute before he . . .” Her voice cracked, her face melted in misery. “Oh God, I’m a mess.”

“You knew Josh?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” She pressed her hand over her mouth and rocked herself. “Small, horrible world, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes. I really have to go.”

“Mandy, give me a minute,” Bo began, but Reena was already shaking her head and walking out the door.

“No, that’s fine. We’ll catch up later.” She made the quick dash through the incessant drizzle.

“Bo, I’m so sorry. I should’ve called. I should’ve drunk myself into a stupor. Go after her.”

But he knew the mood was shattered. And he’d seen Reena’s face when Josh Bolton’s name was mentioned. More than surprise, he thought, there’d been grief. “It’s okay. Let’s sit down.”

Maybe it was the day or the wine or the rain, but Reena filled the tub, poured yet another glass of wine, then slid into the water. And wept. Her heart, her head, her gut ached with the tears, and when they were done, finally done, she was numb and light-headed.

She dried off, pulled on thin flannel pants and a T-shirt before going downstairs to fix herself a solitary meal.

Her kitchen seemed dull and lifeless. Lonely, she thought—she felt squeezed empty with loneliness.

The wine and the rain, and probably the crying jag, had a headache simmering. Rather than face actual cooking, she pulled out one of her mother’s care packages and heated up some minestrone.

But she left it warming on the stove, and poured more wine.

Funny how pain could reach across the years and still claw right through you. She rarely thought of Josh, and when she did, it was usually with more of a pang than this stabbing shock. Sorrow for the boy who’d never become fully a man, and a kind of bittersweet regret.

Defenses were down, that’s what she told herself as she stared down into the pot of soup. Hard day, and now the loneliness was so acute it was just another knife in the heart.

She glanced over at the knock on her back door and let out a sigh. She knew it would be Bo before she opened the door.

His hair was wet again.

“Listen, can I come in a minute? I just want to explain—”

She turned away, leaving the door open. “You don’t need to explain.”

“Well, yeah, because it looked like . . . And it wasn’t. It’s not. Mandy and I are friends, and we don’t—Well, we used to, but that was a long time ago. Reena . . . could you just look at me?”

She knew he’d see the damage the weeping had left on her face. Tears weren’t something she was ashamed of, but at the moment she was impatient with them, with herself. With him.

“I’ve had a bad day.” But she turned to face him. “Just a lot of things piling up. I can deal. Seems to me your friend’s having a worse day.”

“She is. We are—friends.”

Reena watched him slide his hands into his pockets, the way a man did when he was miserably uncomfortable and didn’t know what else to do with them.

“And she—Mandy—was twisted up because she just found out her ex-husband’s getting married. Fucking jerk. Sorry. The divorce was tough on her, and it was only final, like, two weeks ago. This hit her hard.”

Reena leaned back against the counter, sipped her wine and let him rush through his explanation. And thought, Poor guy, caught between two emotional women on a hot rainy night. “I’m getting a little drunk. Do you want?”

“No, but thanks. Reena—”

“First, I’m a trained observer. I didn’t mistake the scene in your doorway as a lovers’ embrace. I saw her with you at your grandmother’s funeral and recognized what she is to you.”

“We’re just—”

“Family,” she interrupted. “She’s your family. She’s your family, Bo.”

Some of the tension in his face dissolved. “Yeah. Yeah, she is.”

“And what I saw tonight was a woman in serious distress, and imagined she didn’t need, or want, a stranger being part of all that. I wouldn’t have. Second, if we’re keeping score, you get points for not being so self-involved you’d brush off a friend in serious distress so you could roll between the sheets with me. Where is she?”

“Asleep. Cried herself out, and I put her to bed. I saw your light come on out here, so I wanted to . . . I wanted to explain.”

“And you did. I’m not mad.” Not only not mad, she realized, but not lonely any longer either. “I’m not the jealous type, and we haven’t established any ground rules. Or even if we’re going to require them. We were going to have sex, we didn’t.” She lifted her glass. “There’s always another time.”

“You’re not mad,” he said with a nod. “But you’re upset.”

“It’s not you.” To give herself something to do, she picked up a spoon to stir the soup. “Not just you,” she corrected. “It’s the past. It’s a sweet lost boy.”

“Josh. You were involved with him?”

“He was my first in this small, horrible world.” But there weren’t any tears left inside her, not now, to shed for him. “Oddly enough, I was with him the night you saw me at that party. I left with him, went with him. It was my first time.”

“I met him.”

Her spoon clanged against the pot as her head whipped around. “You knew Josh?”

“No. I met him. I met him the day he died. Same day I met Mandy. Blind date—double date with my friend Brad and that girl he was seeing. When we picked her up, Josh was coming down the stairs. Going to a wedding.”

“Oh God, Bella’s wedding.” Maybe she had a few tears left after all. They were pressing hot on the back of her eyes. “My sister’s wedding.”

“Yeah. He couldn’t get his tie right. Mandy fixed it.”

A tear slipped out, plopped in the soup. “He was a sweet boy.”

“He changed my life.”

Reena wiped at the tears, faced Bo again. His eyes weren’t dreamy green now but very intense. “I don’t understand.”

“I partied a lot back then. Well, who didn’t? I was drifting. Making plans for someday. Yeah, I’ll get around to doing that someday. Clean myself up, get my shit together. I woke up that morning, after going out with Mandy—and hitting a party after I dropped her off—with a hangover of biblical proportions. Woke up in the dump of my apartment. I decided to clean it up. I’d do that about every six months when I couldn’t stand myself anymore. Told myself I’d straighten up, but I told myself that every six months or so, too. Then Brad came by, told me about the kid we’d seen in Mandy’s apartment building. What happened to him.”

“But you didn’t know him.”

“No, I didn’t know him. But . . .” He trailed off, then shook his head, obviously struggling to find the right way to make her understand. “But he was my age, and he was dead. I’d just met him—watched Mandy fix his tie, and now he was dead. He’d never have the chance to get his act together, if he needed to. One minute he’s heading out to a wedding in his best suit, and the next . . .”

“He’s gone,” Reena whispered.

“His life was over, out of the blue, and what was I doing with mine? Pissing it away, like my father did his.”

He stopped, blew out a breath. “So, it was epiphany time for me. Instead of thinking about someday, I got my contractor’s license. I talked Brad into buying a house with me. A dump. My grandmother fronted us some of the money. I never worked harder in my life than I did on that place. When I—damn, this sounds stupid and self-involved.”

“No, it doesn’t. Keep going.”

“Well, whenever I got to the point where I was disgusted or discouraged or wondered why the hell I’d gotten into that mess, working ten, twelve hours a day, I’d think of Josh, how he never got the chance. And I found out what I could do, if I stuck. Maybe I’d have done it anyway, I don’t know. But I’ve never forgotten him, or that his dying turned my life around.”

Reena put the wine down, stirred the soup. “Fate’s a kick in the ass, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to lose the chance I have with you, Reena.”

“You haven’t lost anything.” After turning the burner off, she faced him. “It’s no prize standing here in front of you, let me tell you. I have a long line of short-term or messed-up relationships leading from Josh to you. Bad judgment, bad timing or just bad luck.”

“I’ll risk it.” He stepped to her, lowered his head to press his lips to hers. “I can’t leave her over there alone tonight.”

“No, you can’t. That’s one of the reasons you haven’t lost anything. Here, take some soup. If she wakes up, there’s nothing like my mother’s minestrone to chase away the blues.”

“Thanks. Seriously.” Thoughtfully, he brushed his thumb over the little mole above her lip. “Why don’t I fix you dinner tomorrow?”

She got out a container for the soup, and her lips curved. “Why don’t you?”

His living room light was still on when she prepared for bed. Watching his mammoth TV? she wondered. Letting his friend have his bed in her hour of need.

She hoped they’d shared a little minestrone, a little TLC.

She’d never had a male friend, a contemporary, who would have done that for her, she realized. The men in her life who weren’t family were teachers like John, partners and associates. Or lovers.

It was interesting, and different, she decided, to feel like friends with a man before you took him to bed, or allowed yourself to be taken.

She turned off her light, closed her eyes and hoped sleep would smooth out the rougher edges of her day.

It was just before three A.M. when her phone rang. She came alert quickly, switching on the light before grabbing the phone. Even with her job, middle-of-the-night phone calls always rammed her heart in her throat. Thoughts of family, accidents and death to loved ones came first.

“Yes, hello.”

“I got a surprise for you.”

Part of her mind registered the number on the Caller ID as unfamiliar, another focused on the voice. Low, a little harsh, male. “What? What number are you calling?”

“Big surprise for you. Coming soon. When you get it, I’ll be jerking off—and imagining your mouth on my cock.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. If you’re going to wake somebody up with a lame obscene call, don’t call a cop.”

She hung up, took the time to write down the number, the time of the call.

And switching off the light again, went back to sleep and forgot about it.

17

It had been a long time since Reena had reviewed Joshua Bolton’s case file. She didn’t know why she did so now. There was nothing new to see there. The matter had been closed for years, with the investigators, the ME, the lab all signing off on accidental death.

There was no reason to see anything else. No forced entry, head trauma consistent with a fall, no burglary, no vandalism, no motive. Just a young man falling asleep while smoking in bed.

Except she’d never known him to smoke.

Still, the team had recovered a pack of cigarettes, a book of matches—both with his fingerprints. That had weighed against the fact that the girl he’d been sleeping with had insisted the victim didn’t smoke.

She’d have weighed it the same, Reena admitted, as she read over the reports. She probably would have weighed it the same, come to the same conclusions. Closed the file.

But she’d never completely accepted it, and couldn’t now.

She was still reading the reports, with the crime-scene photos spread over her desk, when her phone rang.

“Arson Unit, Detective Hale.”

“Reena? This is Amanda Greenburg. Mandy? We met—in a moment of humiliation last night at Bo’s.”

“Sure. I remember.” She stared at what the fire had done to the boy she’d known.

“How could you forget? Listen, I just wanted to apologize.”

“No need. Really.” She touched her fingers to the photo of Josh. “But I wonder if you’ve got time to meet me. I’d like to talk to you, if you can manage it.”

“Sure. When?”

“How about now?”

Since the day was fine, Reena snagged an outdoor table at a little coffeehouse a five-minute walk from the station house. She’d barely settled in when she saw Mandy jogging up the sidewalk, a large square shoulder bag bumping against her hip.

Her hair was an explosion of screaming red, her face as foxy as a terrier’s. She wore Jackie O–style sunglasses that, inexplicably, suited her.

“Hi.” Mandy dropped into a chair.

“Thanks for meeting me.”

“No problem. Coffee,” she said when the waiter came out. “And keep it coming.”

“Diet Pepsi.”

“Okay, I just want to get this off my chest. I was really messed up last night, and Bo’s not just my best friend, he handles hysterical females pretty well for a guy. We don’t sleep together.”

“Anymore,” Reena finished.

“Anymore. Haven’t been down that road for years. We’re like, you know, Jerry and Elaine. Seinfeld? Except Bo’s not as cynical. My ex . . .”

Mandy paused, waited until their drinks were served. “We lived together for over a year, Mark and me. Eloped to Vegas on a whim. Things got shaky almost from the minute we got back, I don’t know why. It’s easier if you know, don’t you think?”

“Yes. It’s always best to know.”

“I didn’t. Then he comes to me one night, tells me he’s sorry—and he was—he’s sorry but this isn’t working for him, and he’s met somebody. He thinks he’s in love. He’s standing there, looking pitiful and telling me—his wife—that he’s sorry, but he thinks he’s in love with somebody else. Didn’t want to cheat on me, so he figures we need to get a divorce.”

“Hard hit.”

“Yeah, it was.” She picked up her coffee, and the wide silver band she wore on her left thumb winked in the sunlight. “Naturally, I got pissed off. Big scene, big fight. I ended up crying all over Bo then, too. But what am I going to do? Jerk doesn’t want me anymore. Then yesterday I find out he’s marrying her, and it hits all over again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, screw it. And them. But the thing is, I don’t want to mess things up for Bo because I needed a shoulder. I’m an old pal. But you’re Dream Girl.”

Reena winced. “Do you know how hard it is to live up to that title?”

Mandy grinned. “Never been anybody’s Dream Girl, but I can imagine. Still, you’re stuck with it. Brad and I would rag on him about you sometimes.”

“What are friends for?”

“You got it. But it’s wild, isn’t it? You moving in right next door. Now he’s got little hearts in his eyes . . . and I’m making it worse.”

“Just a little.”

“Let me change the subject real quick.” Mandy motioned the waiter for a top off on her cup. “De Wanna Johnson.”

“How do you know about her?”

“I work for The Sun.”

“You’re a reporter?”

“Photographer. You gave a statement on the case yesterday, and I know they’ll want a follow-up. I thought if I could get a photo—”

“Jamal Earl Gregg has been charged with murder in the second in the matter of the death of DeWanna Johnson. If you want a follow-up, you’ll need to talk to the DA’s office.”

“You’re a local girl, strong local ties. And being a girl, whether we like it or not, gives the story a meaty angle.”

“My partner’s not a girl, and we apprehended the suspect together. You’re going to want to go through the press rep, Mandy. It’s cleared, I’ve got no problem with a photo. And actually, I asked you to meet me because I wanted to talk to you about another fire. Josh.”

“Okay.” Mandy looked down at her coffee, which Reena noted she drank black—and like water. “I was pretty wrecked over that. We all were. Reporter came to talk to me after. I was interning for The Sun back then. Went to New York for about six months after I graduated and found out I’m a small-town girl. Came back to Baltimore. I talked to his mother once after he died, when they came to get his stuff. It was dark.”

“The investigators talked to you? The fire investigator, the police?”

“Sure. They talked to everyone in the building as far as I know, some of the kids he had classes with, his friends. They must’ve talked to you, too.”

“Yes, they talked to me. I was probably the last to see him alive. I was with him that evening.”

“Oh.” Sympathy raced over her face as she shoved the sunglasses on top of her head. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’d been out, blind date with Bo—our first. Doubled with Brad and this friend of mine he was stuck on back then.”

“You got home between ten-thirty and eleven.”

Mandy lifted her eyebrows as she drank more coffee. “Did I?”

“That’s what you said in your statement.”

“That’s about right, best I can remember. Bo dropped me off at the door. I thought about asking him in, figured I’d play it cool, see what happened. My roommate was gone for the weekend, so I had the place to myself. I turned on some music, and I had a joint. Something I left out of my statement, and indulged in, occasionally, during my college days. I watched SNL until about midnight, went to bed. Next thing I knew, alarms are going off, people are running in the hall, shouting.”

“You knew most of the kids in the building.”

“Sure. By face if not name.”

“Did Josh have a problem with any of them?”

“No. You know how he was, Reena. Sweet guy.”

“Yeah, but even sweet guys have problems with some people. Maybe a girl.” Bedroom fires, she thought. A more typical female method. More personal, more emotional. I’ll get you where you sleep, you bastard.

As she thought back, Mandy twiddled with one of several silver necklaces she wore. “He dated, he hung out. Off-campus buildings like that were little hives of drama and sex and excessive partying. And abject fear around finals. But there was the changeover. Semester ending in May, a lot of the kids went home for the summer, or graduated. New ones coming in. We weren’t full up yet, that early in June. And Josh was pretty focused on you once you started dating. I honestly don’t remember him having any dramatic breakups, no serious issues with anybody. In the building or on campus. People liked Josh. He was easy to like.”

“Yes, he was. Did you ever see him smoke?”

“He must’ve. I remember drawing blank on that back then. A lot of us smoked socially—or toked recreationally. You had a few smoke nazis—and those I remember. He wasn’t one of them. He got along.”

“And you didn’t hear or see anything off the night of the fire?”

“Nothing. Is the case being reopened?”

“No. No,” Reena repeated with a shake of her head. “It’s personal. Just something that keeps coming back around on me.”

“I know.” In an absent gesture, Mandy pulled her sunglasses back in place. “Still does on me, too. It’s harder when you’re young like we were, and it’s one of us. You’re not supposed to die at twenty. At least that’s what you think when you’re twenty. Life’s forever. Plenty of time out there.”

“DeWanna Johnson was twenty-three. There’s always less time than you think.”

But she put it away, put the file away as she’d done before and concentrated on now.

When DeWanna Johnson’s mother walked into the squad room, Reena rose. “I’ll take her,” she told O’Donnell, and stepped over.

“Mrs. Johnson? I’m Detective Hale. We spoke on the phone.”

“They said I should come up here. They said I couldn’t take DeWanna yet.”

“Why don’t we go back here?” Reena laid a hand on the woman’s arm to lead her into the break room. There was a short counter crammed with a coffeemaker, an ancient microwave, foam cups.

Reena gestured Mrs. Johnson to a chair at the table. “Why don’t you sit down. Can I get you some coffee, some tea?”

“No, nothing. Nothing.” She sat. Her eyes were dark and tired.

She couldn’t have been much past forty, Reena judged, and would soon bury her daughter.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Johnson.”

“Lost her the minute he got out of prison. Should’ve kept him in there. Should’ve kept him locked away. Now he’s killed my girl, and left her baby an orphan.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to De Wanna.” Reena sat across from her. “Jamal’s going to pay for it.”

Grief and rage warred with fatigue in those dark eyes. “How do I tell that baby her daddy killed her mama? How do I do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she . . . the fire. Did she feel it?”

“No.” Reena reached out, closed her hand over Mrs. Johnson’s. “She didn’t feel it. She didn’t suffer.”

“I raised her on my own, and I did my best.” She drew a deep breath. “She was a good girl. Blind when it came to that murdering bastard, but she was a good girl. When can I take her home?”

“I’ll find out for you.”

“You have children, Detective Hale?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t.”

“Sometimes I think we have them just so they can break our hearts.”

Because those words played over and over in her head, Reena stopped by Sirico’s on the way home. She found her mother at the big stove, her father at the work counter.

She was surprised to see her uncle Larry and aunt Carmela sitting in a booth nibbling on stuffed mushrooms.

“Sit, sit,” Larry insisted after she bent to kiss him. “Tell us all about your life.”

“Right now that would take about two minutes, and I don’t even have that. I’m already going to be late.”

“Hot date,” her aunt said with a wink.

“As a matter of fact.”

“What’s his name? What does he do? When are you going to get married and give your mama pretty grandbabies?”

“His name is Bowen, he’s a carpenter. And between Fran, Bella and Xander, my mama has about all the pretty grandbabies she can handle.”

“There’s never too many. Is this the one who lives next door? What’s his last name?”

“It’s not Italian,” Reena said, and with a laugh kissed her aunt again. “Buon appetito.”

She wound her way back, pulled herself a soft drink from the dispenser. Her father’s hands were in dough, so she rose on her toes and kissed his chin. “Hello, handsome.”

“Who is this?” He glanced around to his wife. “Who is this strange girl giving out kisses? She looks a little familiar.”

“It hasn’t been a week,” Reena complained. “And I called two days ago.”

“Oh, now I recognize you.” He lifted his hands, pinched her cheeks with doughy fingers. “It’s our long-lost daughter. What’s your name again?”

“Wisecracks, all I get are wisecracks.” She turned to buss her mother’s cheek. “Something smells good. New perfume, and Bolognese.”

“Sit. I’ll fix you a plate.”

“I can’t. I’ve got a good-looking man cooking me dinner.”

“The carpenter cooks?”

“I didn’t say it was the carpenter. But yes, it is and he does. Apparently. Mama, have your children broken your heart?”

“Countless times. Here, have some mushrooms. What if he burns the dinner?”

“Just one. If we broke your heart, why did you have four of us?”

“Because your father wouldn’t leave me alone and let me sleep.”

He turned his head at that, chuckled.

“Seriously.”

“I am serious. Every time I turn around, the man’s hands get busy.” Bianca tapped her spoon on the edge of the pot, set it down. “I had four because as often as you broke my heart, you filled it. You’re the treasures of my life, and the biggest pains in my ass.” She tugged Reena toward the prep room, lowered her voice. “You’re not pregnant.”

“No. Mama.”

“Just checking.”

“A lot of strange things on my mind the last couple of days, that’s all. Good mushrooms,” she added. “I’ve got to go.”

“Come to dinner Sunday,” Bianca called out. “Bring your carpenter. I’ll show him how to cook.”

“I’ll see how it goes tonight, then maybe I’ll ask him.”

He stuck with chicken because he felt he had a pretty good hand with poultry. He had stopped off for fresh produce, and had intended to swing by the bakery. But he’d built an arbor for Mrs. Mallory that afternoon, and when she learned of his plans for the evening, she’d given him a freshly made lemon meringue pie.

He was still debating the ethics of passing it off as his own when Reena knocked.

He had music on—some jazzy Norah Jones—and had taken a swipe at the dust. His intentions to do a more thorough sprucing job had been waylaid by his time at Mrs. M.’s. And his weakness for her cookies.

But the place looked good, he decided. And he had changed the sheets on his bed. In case.

When he opened the door and looked at her, he was really hoping they’d get to use the fresh sheets.

“Hello, neighbor.” He moved straight in—why waste time?—cupped his hands on her torso and caught her mouth with his.

She softened against him, just a little. Just a tantalizing bit. Then eased back. “Not bad as appetizers go. What’s the main course?” She handed him a bottle cheerfully bagged in a silver sack. “And I hope it goes with Pinot Grigio.”

“We’re still on for chicken, so this is great.” He took her hand to walk her back to the kitchen.

“Flowers.” She turned at the table to admire the Shasta daisies he’d stuck in a blue bottle. “And candles. Aren’t you clever?”

“I have moments. It’s my grandmother’s stuff. I spent some time going through the boxes last night.”

She followed the direction of his gaze, studied the display cabinet. There were more old bottles, interesting shapes, and some dark blue dishes, some wineglasses with etched cups.

“That’s nice. She’d like you putting her things out.”

“I never got much of that sort of thing on my own. Just more to pack up when you move.”

“Which you do, regularly.”

He opened the wine, got two of the etched glasses from the cabinet. “Can’t turn a place if you’re still living in it.”

“Don’t you get attached?”

“A couple of times. But then I’d see this other place and think, Wow, think what we could do with that. Potential and profit versus comfort and familiarity.”

“You’re a house slut.”

“I am.” Laughter warmed his eyes as he tapped his glass to hers. “Have a seat. I’ll get things moving here.”

She slid onto a counter stool. “How about starting from scratch? Have you ever bought a lot and done the whole works?”

“Thought about it. Maybe one day. Dream house deal. But mostly I like seeing what there is, how to make it better or bring it back from the dead.”

When he checked something in the oven, she caught the scent of rosemary. And made a note to pick him up a couple of pots of herbs for his windowsill—if things progressed.

“You said you could do anything with my house I wanted. Was that lust talking, or is that straight scoop?”

“Lust is a factor, but within reason, sure. You can have pretty much what you want.” He dribbled oil in a sauté pan.

“Can I have a fireplace in my bedroom?”

“Wood-burning?”

“Not necessarily. Gas or electric would do. Probably better, actually. I don’t think I want to haul wood up the stairs.”

“We could do that.”

“Really? I always wanted that—like in the movies. A fireplace in the bedroom. One in the library. And what I’d really like is to turn the bedroom into more of a master suite. Incorporating the bath, maybe enlarging it some. And I want a skylight over the tub.”

He glanced back again, considered her. “You want a skylight over the tub.”

“I think that falls into the within-reason category. Of course, all this has to be done in small stages. I’ve got a budget.”

He added minced garlic to the oil. “I’ll take a look, play with some designs, work you up a bid. How’s that?”

She smiled, resting her elbow on the table, sipping wine. “Handy. You may turn out to be too good to be true.”

“That’s what I thought about you.”

“I don’t know what I want, Bo. For this, for myself. Hell, I don’t know what I want tomorrow, much less a year from tomorrow.”

“Me, either.”

“I think you do, or you have a rough design. I think when you do what you do, when you build and project, you’re able to visualize next year.”

“I know I want you tonight. I know I’ve wanted you—or the image of you—for a long time. But I don’t know what we’ll do with, or about, each other tomorrow. Or next year.”

He slid chicken into the pan, turned. “I think there’s a reason you moved in next door. I think there’s a reason I saw you all those years ago, but didn’t meet you until now. I don’t think I was ready for you until now.”

He watched her, sitting at his counter with her she-lion eyes, running her finger along the etched cup of his grandmother’s glass. “Maybe that means things are falling into place. Or it means something else. I don’t have to know right this minute.”

“You talked about potential, when you look at a new place and it pulls at you. You have the potential to make me fall in love with you. That scares me.”

He felt something rush into his heart, burn there. “Because you think I’ll hurt you?”

“Maybe. Or I’ll hurt you. Or it’ll just turn out to be some big, complicated mess.”

“Or it could be something special.”

She shook her head. “When I look at relationships—my relationships—the glass is half empty. And what’s left in it may or may not be potable.”

He picked up the wine, filled her glass to the rim. “You just haven’t had the right guy doing the pouring.”

“Maybe not.” She glanced toward the stove. “Don’t burn the chicken.”

He didn’t, and she had to admit she was impressed that he managed to get a full meal on the table without incident. She nursed the second glass of wine, and sampled the chicken.

“All right,” she said, “this is good. This is really good. That’s a serious compliment coming from someone who grew up in an atmosphere where food isn’t just sustenance, isn’t even merely art, but a way of life.”

“The rosemary chicken gets them every time.”

She laughed, continued to eat. “Tell me about your first love.”

“That would be you. Okay,” he added when she narrowed her eyes at him. “Tina Woolrich. Eighth grade. She had big blue eyes and little apple breasts—which she generously let me touch one sweet summer afternoon in a darkened movie theater. How about you?”

“Michael Grimaldi. I was fourteen, and desperately in love with Michael Grimaldi, who was stuck on my sister Bella. I imagined that the scales would fall from his eyes and he would understand it was me who was his destiny. But that love went unrequited.”

“Foolish Michael.”

“Okay. Who broke your heart the first time?”

“Back to you again. Otherwise . . . nobody.”

“Me, either. I don’t know if that makes us lucky or sad. Bella now, she thrived on getting her heart broken, and breaking hearts. With Fran, I remember her crying in her room because some jerk had asked another girl to the prom. Me, I never cared enough. So I guess that is sad.”

“Ever get close to the M word?”

“Marriage.” Something flickered in her eyes. “Depends on your point of view. I’ll tell you about it sometime. I talked with Mandy today.”

And with that, he assumed, the talk of relationships past was closed. “Yeah?”

“She called to apologize—again—and I asked if she’d meet me. Every now and again I pull Josh’s file out of the closet. I wanted to talk to her about it. Nothing new, of course. But meeting her here struck me as one of those cosmic signs, so I wanted to follow through. In any case, I liked her. Buckets of energy, which may come from the fact that she drank a gallon of coffee in a twenty-minute period.”

“Lives on it,” Bo agreed. “She’s never understood how I live without it.”

“You don’t drink coffee?”

“Never got the taste for it.”

“Me, either. Strange.”

“Just another check on the you’re-meant-for-me balance sheet. Want more chicken?”

“No, but thanks. Bowen?”

“Catarina.”

She laughed a little, took another sip of wine. “Did you sleep with Mandy when she was married?”

“No.”

“Okay. That’s just one of my lines. I don’t have many, but that’s one of them. I’ll do the dishes,” she said as she rose.

“We’ll just pile them up for later,” he began, then, catching her expression, sighed. “You’re one of those. Okay, we’ll do the dishes. Want dessert first?”

“I haven’t decided if I’m sleeping with you yet.”

“Ha ha. There goes my heart. I meant the sort you put on a plate and eat. We’ve got pie.”

She set her plate on the counter, turned. “What kind?”

He opened the refrigerator, took out the dish.

“That’s lemon meringue.” She stepped closer, gave him a serious look. “That’s not from the bakery either.”

“Nope.”

“You baked a pie?”

He tried an innocent, slightly insulted look. “Why is that so surprising?”

She leaned back on the counter, studied him. “If you can name five ingredients in that dish—other than lemon—I’ll sleep with you right now.”

“Flour, sugar . . . oh hell. Busted. Client baked it.”

“She pays you in pie?”

“It’s my bonus. I also have a bag of chocolate chip cookies, but I’m not sharing them unless you sleep with me. We can have them for breakfast.”

“You can do time for attempting to bribe a police officer.”

“What, you’re wired?”

She laughed. And she thought, The hell with the dishes. She leaned her elbows back on the counter, tipped up her chin. “Why don’t you put that pie down, Goodnight, and come over here and find out.”

18

He moved, his eyes on hers. There was a challenge in hers and a sparkle of sexy amusement. He was already hard when he fit his body to hers. What man wouldn’t be?

She kept her arms stretched out, her hands on the counter even as he took her mouth, even as he took in her quick gasp.

“You carrying your gun?” he asked with his mouth on hers.

She stiffened just a little. “In my purse. Why?”

“Because if somebody comes to the door this time, we’re going to use it.”

She had an instant to relax again, an instant to laugh, then he swept her into his arms. “And we’re doing the dishes later.”

“Ummm. Forceful.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” But his knees went weak when she clamped her teeth on his neck. Focus, he ordered himself as he carried her out of the room. Don’t blow it. “And we’re not doing this on the kitchen floor. Not that I’m opposed to it.” He turned his head so he could see her face again. “Just not this time.”

She touched his hair, and her smile went soft. “Not this time. You planning on carrying me all the way upstairs?”

“Tonight, Scarlett, you won’t think of Ashley.”

As he climbed, she wrapped her arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses.

He’d forgotten to leave a light on—so much for preplanning—but he knew the way. And there was just enough twilight left to guide him.

Her arms stayed around his neck as he lowered her to the bed, bringing him with her, keeping their mouths fused. And the thump of his heart was a jungle drum in his ear.

“Wait. It’s too dark.” Still he tasted her throat, the tender spot under her jaw. His hands burned to cover flesh. “I want to see you. Need to see you.”

He peeled away, fumbled in the nightstand drawer for a book of matches to light the candle he’d bought with her in mind.

When he turned back, she was braced on her elbows, her hair a wild halo of melted amber. “You’re a romantic.”

“With you.”

The halo shimmered as she cocked her head. “Generally, I distrust men who say just the right thing at just the right time. But I have to say, it’s working for you. Think you can remember your place?”

He lowered to her, felt her sigh. “Yeah, that’s it.”

The fantasy of her had been with him all of his adult life. In fantasy she could be—had been—whatever he wanted. But the reality of her was more. Skin and lips, scents and sounds. All washed over him in a hot flood that was need and pleasure and bedazzlement.

It wasn’t a dream that moved under him, that met his mouth with eager heat. And the woman she was rose out of that dream to surround him.

He spiked her pulse, had it hammering, had her mind blurring with movement and textures. The scrape of teeth, the glide of tongue, the mix of breath and sighs. His mouth was like a fever, yet somehow patient. As if he was content to let them both burn through kisses alone.

Then, when she thought she could bear it no longer, when her body arched up to him to offer more, he used his hands.

Hard, strong hands, brushing, tantalizing, then clamping, possessing. Breasts, thighs, hips, with the heat still rising so she wondered her skin didn’t catch flame.

He pulled her shirt over her head, and then it was his mouth on her, feasting on the rise of her breasts over cups of lace, sliding his tongue under thin fabric to sample, to tease.

On a gasp she rolled over him to tug at his shirt, to fight with buttons. She flung back her hair, straddled him as she parted the shirt, ran her hands up his chest.

“You’re built, Goodnight.” Her breathing was already thick, already unsteady. “Seriously built. Got yourself a few scars.” She trailed her fingers over one that skated along his rib cage, felt him quiver. Then she lowered her head to skim lips, teeth, tongue over flesh.

He pushed up, shifting her so her legs hooked around his waist. The hands that ran up her back were rough with calluses, and more exciting for it. With one flick of his fingers, he unhooked her bra. She bowed back and moaned when he closed his mouth over her.

He could feel her heart beat under his lips, all but taste it. Her long body was so smooth, so agile. Narrow torso and hips, miles of leg. He wanted to spend hours exploring her—days, possibly years. But tonight, all those years of longing pressed at him to take, just take.

He pushed her back, dragged her pants down, followed them with his hands and mouth. Her body undulated, and when he once more feasted on flesh and lace, it bucked.

Her hands clamped his head, pressing him against her when she came, when she cried out and shuddered. His blood pounded in response as he stripped away the lace and drove her over again.

And she was dragging him up, her words incomprehensible now as they rolled over the bed. Her hands were quick as well, stripping him bare. Body and soul. Her mouth was hot and hungry, her body vibrating.

She stayed clamped around him when he tore open a condom, then pushed him next to madness when she took it from him to do the honors herself.

Once again she straddled him. He stared up at her. Her skin, her hair, her eyes, were all burnished gold in the candlelight.

She took him into the wet wonder of her.

Once again her body bowed back as she absorbed the quakes of pleasure. Shimmering through her, silken heat, velvet aches. She rode, taking him deeper, glorying in the desperate grip of his hands on her hips.

Flash point, she thought dimly when the orgasm ignited inside her. And her body swayed down to his.

Her head was still spinning, barely registered shock when he rolled, pinning her under him. He was deep in her, hard and deep. She heard his labored breath mix with her own.

She reached up, braced her hands on his shoulders. His eyes were so green now, she realized, like crystal, with all those mists burned out by passion.

He plunged into her, stealing even her gasp. Plunged, so that her fingers dug into his shoulders and her stunned system jolted with shock.

She thought she might have screamed. She heard some helpless sound as her blood rushed through her like a storm. Her body gathered for more, took more even when the pleasure became unspeakable.

She felt the muscles she gripped harden like iron, knew even as she imploded he was with her.

And as her hands slid limply off his shoulders, she thought, dazed, Flashover.

She was sprawled like the dead under him. Like someone killed in battle, she imagined. Sweaty and battered. Since he hadn’t moved in the last several minutes, she decided it had been a war that had ended in a tie.

“Is that the phone?” she mumbled.

He stayed as he was, flat out on top of her, his face buried in the mass of her hair. “No. What?”

“Wait.” She took slow breaths, concentrated. “God, it’s my ears. My ears are ringing. Wow.”

“I’m going to stop crushing you as soon as I regain the use of my limbs.”

“No rush. You know, you were right. We weren’t ready for this thirteen years ago. We’d have killed each other.”

“I’m not sure we didn’t. That’s okay. They can bury us just like this.”

“If we’re dead, we can’t make love again.”

“Sure, we can. If heaven doesn’t have lots of good sex, what’s the point?”

Had she ever known a man who made her laugh so easily? she wondered. “I think saying something like that could send you to hell.”

“If God didn’t invent sex, who did?” He managed to brace himself on his elbows to look down at her. “And that was one hell of a religious experience.”

“I did hear singing, but I’m not sure it was angels.”

“That was me.” He lowered his head, kissed her softly.

They ate pie in bed, and made love again with the tang of lemon on their tongues and crumbs on the sheets.

She gave him a slow, lingering kiss before rolling out of bed to find her clothes.

“You’re going?”

“It’s nearly two in the morning. We both work for a living.”

“You could stay, sleep here. It’s not like you have that far to go. And remember, I have cookies for breakfast.”

“Tempting.” She pulled on her pants, shirt, stuffed her underwear in her pockets. She was gloriously tired, the sort of tired, she thought, that only came after good, healthy sex. “But just how much sleep do you figure we’ll manage? We’re too hot for each other.”

“I couldn’t possibly go another round,” he claimed. “I’m tapped.”

She angled her head, studying his face in the candlelight. “Liar.”

He grinned. “Prove it.”

She laughed, shook her head. “Thanks for dinner, dessert, and all the rest.”

“My pleasure. Lots of my pleasure. How about tomorrow night?”

“How about it? You don’t have to get up,” she began when he tossed his legs over the bed and reached for his pants. “I know my way.”

“I’ll walk you over. How about dinner tomorrow? My place, your place, anyplace.”

“Actually, I might have a line on a couple of tickets to the O’s game tomorrow. Behind the dugout at third. If they come through, are you interested?”

“Is rain wet? You like baseball?” He pointed at her as he spoke.

“No.” She raked her hair more or less into place with her fingers. “I love baseball.”

“Seriously. Who won the series in . . . 2002?”

She pursed her lips a moment. “It was California’s year. Angels over the Giants in the full seven. Lackey got the win.”

“Oh my God.” Goggling at her, he thumped a fist on his heart. “You are Dream Girl. Marry me, bear my children. But let’s wait until after the game tomorrow.”

“That’ll give me time to buy a white dress. I’ll let you know if the tickets come through.”

“If they don’t, I’ll start working on some for the next home game.” He took her hand as they walked downstairs.

She picked up her purse. “You don’t have to walk me next door, Bo.”

“Sure I do. There might be muggers. Or aliens. You just never know.”

He grabbed his keys, stuffed them in his pocket as he headed out the door with her.

“See, romantic. And old-fashioned.”

“Yet manly, and with panther-like reflexes.”

“Which will come in handy with the aliens.”

They walked down his steps, then up hers. Where she let him kiss her limp.

“Go home,” she murmured.

“Maybe you should walk me back. You’re the cop.”

“Home.” She gave him a little nudge, then unlocked her door. “Good night, Goodnight,” she said, and shut the door.

Watching her. Know how to wait, know how to plan. Never thought it would take so long, but hey, shit happens. Besides, the waiting makes it bigger. Slut’s banging the guy next door now. Convenient.

Could kill him now. Go up, knock on the door. He’s going to open it. He’s going to think it’s the whore. Slide a knife right into his guts. Surprise!

Better to wait. Wait and watch. Do him later.

While the city burns.

Light’s on. Bedroom light. Her bedroom. Bet she’s naked. Touching herself, where she let him touch her. Whore-bitch.

Have some of that, oh yeah, a good piece of that before you light her up.

Window goes dark. In bed now.

Let her fall asleep. More fun if she’s asleep. Take your time, got nothing but.

Have a cigarette. Relax.

Take out the phone. Got a good picture of her in your head. Naked, in bed.

Wake up, bitch.

The phone rang, shooting her out of sleep. She glanced at the clock first, noted she’d barely been down ten minutes. The Caller ID display made her frown. Local number, unfamiliar.

“Hello?”

“It’s almost time for the surprise.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Hot and bright. You’ll know it’s for you. Are you naked, Catarina? Are you wet?”

When he said her name, a fist hit her heart. “Who—”

She cursed when the phone clicked in her ear. Once again, she wrote down the number, the time.

First thing in the morning, she thought grimly, somebody else was getting a goddamn wake-up call.

She got out of bed, got her weapon. Checked her load. Taking it with her, she checked her doors, her windows. Then stretched out on the couch in the living room, the gun on the table beside her, and tried to get some sleep.

Both cell phones.” With O’Donnell beside her, Reena reported the calls to her captain. “Each is registered to a different party, but they’re both Baltimore city numbers.”

“He called you by name.”

“The second call, yeah.”

“You didn’t recognize the voice?”

“No, sir. He may be disguising it. He’s keeping it soft, a little hoarse. But it didn’t ring any bells. The first time I figured it was just some jerk spinning the dial, getting off. But this was personal.”

“Go check it out.”

“Feel stupid, dragging you along,” Reena said to her partner when they walked to the car. “I could handle something like this on personal.”

“Guy makes threatening calls—”

“He didn’t threaten me.”

“Underlying,” O’Donnell said, and pouted a little when Reena got to the driver’s side before he did. “Threat’s implied, and he makes it to a cop—uses the cop’s name. It’s official business.”

“Lots of people know my name. And it looks like one of them’s a crank-calling pervert.” She backed out of the parking spot. “Closest is number two’s work address. Phone’s registered in the name of Abigail Parsons.”

Abigail Parsons taught fifth grade. She was a generously sized woman of sixty who wore sturdy shoes and a bright blue dress.

In Reena’s judgment she looked a little thrilled to have been called out of class by the police.

“My cell phone?”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you have your cell phone?”

“Of course.” She opened a bag the size of Rhode Island, plucked a little Nokia out of the meticulously ordered interior. “It’s off. I don’t turn it on during class, but I keep it with me. Is there a problem with it? I don’t understand.”

“Could you tell me who else has access to this phone?”

“No one. It’s mine.”

“Do you live alone, Ms. Parsons?” O’Donnell asked.

“Since my husband died two years ago.”

“Do you remember the last time you used it?”

“I used it yesterday. Called my daughter when I left school. I was going over there for dinner, wanted to see if she wanted me to pick up anything. What’s this about?”

The second number took them to a gym where the owner was leading an aerobics class. When she broke, she got the phone out of the bag in her employee’s locker. She was a bubbly twenty-two, and stated she’d come home alone the night before after a girls’ night out. She lived alone.

Neither phone displayed a call to Reena’s number in memory.

“Cloned ’em,” O’Donnell said when they were back outside.

“Yeah, and that’s just weird. Who do I know who’s going to take the time and trouble to clone cell phones so he can wake me up in the middle of the night?”

“Better to ask who knows you. We can go through some old case files, see if anything shakes.”

“Surprise for me,” she murmured. “Big and bright. Sexual overtones.”

“Old boyfriend? New boyfriend?”

“I don’t know.” She pulled open the car door. “But he’s got my attention.”

She set it aside, but she was ill at ease all day. Who would clone two phones just to mess with her head? Wasn’t that hard to clone, if you had the equipment and the know-how. And the know-how was easy to come by.

But it took deliberation and planning. And purpose.

She’d know it was for her. Know what was for her? Reena leaned back in her desk chair, shut her eyes. The big, bright surprise.

A personal surprise or a professional one?

She spent most of the afternoon in court, waiting, then testifying on a revenge fire that had resulted in one death. She scored the baseball tickets from a friend in the DA’s office. And walked back to the station house with an itch between her shoulder blades.

If he knew her name, was he watching her? She felt watched. She felt exposed and vulnerable walking the familiar street.

If he called again—when he called again—she’d keep him on the phone. She’d already set up a recorder. She’d keep him on and she’d work him. She’d draw something out of him that would ring that bell.

Then they’d see who got a surprise.

Drawing out her phone, she called Bo’s cell. He’d passed into the level of serious relationship. His numbers were now programmed.

“Hey, Blondie.”

She strolled, and sang. “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd.”

“I’ll buy the peanuts and Cracker Jacks,” he said. “What time can you head out?”

“If nothing comes up—and let’s both knock on a lot of wood—six-thirty.”

“I’ll be ready. What are you doing now?”

“I’m walking down the street. Great day out here. I just finished testifying in court, and believe I did my part in putting some murdering jerk away for twenty-five.”

“Gee, all I’m doing is hanging trim. Not as exciting.”

“You ever testify in court?”

“I was acquitted.”

She laughed. “It’s tedious. I’m going to be ready for those Cracker Jacks.”

“I’ll provide the surprise inside. Reena?” he said when she didn’t respond.

“Yeah, right here. Sorry.” She rolled the tension out of her shoulders. “See you later, okay?”

She flipped the phone closed, then paused outside the station house, did a deliberate scan of street traffic, pedestrians.

When the phone rang in her hand, she jolted, swore. Then breathed a sigh of relief when she read the display. “Hi, Mama. No, I haven’t asked him about Sunday yet. I will.”

She turned, walked into the station with her mother’s voice in her ear.

Parking at Camden Yards was mayhem. Watching cars jockey along always made her feel smug that she lived close enough to walk to the ballpark.

She loved the crowds, the noise, the jams of cars and the carnival anticipation of the people heading toward that big, beautiful stadium nearly as much as she loved the game.

She wore her most comfortable jeans, a plain white T-shirt tucked into the waistband, and a black fielder’s cap with the bright Oriole bird.

She watched kids riding in strollers, or bouncing along beside their parents. She’d done the same, she remembered. Though it had been the old Memorial Stadium during her childhood.

She could already smell the hot dogs and beer.

After they passed through the turnstile, Bo slung his arm around her shoulders. He was dressed much like she was, but his shirt was faded blue.

“Tell me your views on Boog’s barbecue.”

“As sharp as his fielding back in the day.”

“Excellent. Want to hit that first?”

“Are you kidding? We’re going to load up. I eat like a horse at games.”

They jostled through the crowds, juggled food between them. She fought not to look over her shoulder, not to wonder and worry about every face in the crowd. Easy to blend here, she thought. Easy to tail someone in a baseball stadium. Price of a nosebleed ticket would get you in.

Because thinking she may be watched made her feel watched, she did what she could to bury the sensation. She wasn’t going to let some nuisance spoil the evening.

And when they started up the ramp to their gate, Reena took a breath, held it a moment. “I always like this. The way the field comes into view, all that green, the brown of the baselines, the white of the bags, the stands rising up. And the sounds, the smells.”

“You’re bringing a tear to my eye, Reena.”

She smiled, stopped another moment at the top, to take it in. The noise, so many voices—conversations, vendors hawking, music playing—washed over her. And the idea of trouble, nasty phone calls, hours in court, the stinging Visa bill she’d gotten in that day’s mail, all slid away like fog in sunlight.

“The answer to all the questions in the universe can be found in baseball,” she said.

“God’s truth.”

They found their seats and balanced food on their laps. “First game I remember,” she began and took a hefty bite of her barbecue sandwich. “I think I was six. I don’t remember the game—I mean the stats.” She swallowed, studying the field. “What I remember is the sensory spike. The movement of the game, you know? The sounds so specific to it. It was the start of my love affair.”

“I didn’t make it down to a major league game till I was in high school. Talk about sensory spike. My whole conception was from TV. TV makes it smaller, and less spiritual.”

“Well, that’ll give you something to talk about with my father. They want you to come to dinner on Sunday. If you’re free.”

“Really?” Surprised pleasure ran across his face. “Is this like an initiation? Will there be a quiz?”

“Might be.” She turned her head. “You up for that?”

“I’ve always tested well.”

They ate, watching the stands fill and the light soften in the spring evening. They cheered when the Orioles took the field, rose for the anthem.

They each nursed a beer through the first three innings.

He liked the fact that she shouted, she cheered, she booed and swore. No ladylike applause from Reena. She pulled her hair, punched his shoulder, held a short conversation with the guy on the other side of her on the possible sexual proclivities of the third-base ump when he called their base runner out.

They agreed he was a myopic asshole.

She ate a Dove bar in the seventh—he didn’t know where she put that one—and nearly creamed him with it when she leaped up at the crack of the bat to follow the path of a long ball.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” she shouted, did a celebratory boogie and dropped back down. “Want some of this?”

“Nearly had some.”

She turned, grinned at him. “I love baseball.”

“Oh yeah.”

They lost, by one painful run, and she pinned it on the bad call by the third-base umpire.

He didn’t think he’d win her heart by confessing he’d never enjoyed a loss more, or a game more. He would cheerfully consign his beloved Birds to a losing season if he could watch her rev at every game.

Outside the gate, she pushed him back against a tree, clamped her lips on his. “Know what else I like about baseball?” she whispered.

“I’m sincerely hoping you’ll tell me.”

“Makes me hot.” She nuzzled his ear, breathed into it. “Why don’t I take you to my place.”

She took his hand, headed back to the sidewalk. They walked together through the crowds, taking the shortest route home.

19

He was so worked up by the time she unlocked her front door, he slammed it shut behind them by spinning her around, shoving her against it.

She dropped her shoulder bag, dragged his shirt over his head. Hooked her teeth in his shoulder.

“Right here. Right here.” She was already pulling open the button of his jeans.

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t stop. The sound of her hips slapping against the wood of the door as he pounded into her was viciously arousing.

It was violent and fast and amazing, and when they’d emptied each other out, they slid to the floor like rags.

“Jesus. Jesus Christ.” He stared at her ceiling, breathing like a steam engine. “What happens when they win?”

She laughed so hard she had to grab her own ribs. Somehow she managed to roll over on him. “Damn it, Bo. Damn it. You might just be perfect.”

She pulled her jeans back up when her phone rang. Her head was still buzzing when she picked up the receiver.

“Surprise.”

She cursed herself for being sloppy, not checking the ID, not switching on the recorder. She did both, quickly. “Hi. I’ve been waiting for you to call back.” She held up a hand, signaling Bo to remain silent.

“Brendan Avenue. You’ll see it.”

“Is that where you are? Is that where you live?” She checked the time. Early for him. Not quite midnight.

“You’ll see it. Better hurry.”

“Shit!” She swore softly when he hung up. “I’ve got to go.”

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know.” She hurried to the front closet, got her weapon from the top shelf. “Jerk’s been calling me—cryptic, sexual messages,” she continued as she clipped on her holster. “Cloned cell phone, most likely.”

“Whoa, wait. Where are you going?”

“He said he had something for me on Brendan Avenue. I’m going to check it out.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you won’t.” She grabbed a jacket to cover the gun. And Bo stepped calmly in front of the door.

“You’re not walking out of here to go alone to check out some weird guy. You don’t want me along, fine. Call your partner.”

“I’m not waking O’Donnell up over something like this.”

“Okay.” His tone was absolutely pleasant, and implacable. “Want me to drive?”

“Bo, I want you to get out of my way. I don’t have time for this.”

“Call O’Donnell, call a—what is it?—radio car, or I go with you. Otherwise, make yourself comfortable because you’re not going anywhere.”

Temper pricked at her throat, put her teeth on edge. “This is my job. Just because I’ve slept with you—”

“Don’t go there.” And the edge to his voice, the sudden coldness of his eyes, had her reevaluating him. “I get your job, Catarina. But it doesn’t include going off alone because some creep’s messing with you. So what’s it going to be?”

She opened her jacket. “See this?”

He glanced at the gun. “Hard to miss. What’s it going to be?” he repeated.

“Damn it. Bo, step aside. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“Same goes. And maybe you could put me down. I’m hoping we don’t find out either way. But if you can, I’ll brush off my sorry, humiliated ass and get in my truck and follow you. Either way, you’re not going alone. If this is an ego thing with you, you might want to deal with it later. You’re wasting time.”

She rarely swore in Italian. It was reserved for her most intensely pissed moments. She let out a string of inventive oaths as he stood, placidly now, studying her.

“I’ll drive,” she snapped and stewed when he opened the door. “You don’t get it. None of you ever do.”

“None of you being the male of the species,” he surmised as she swept by him.

“I call my male partner over what’s most likely a trivial matter, it’s because I’m a girl.”

“I don’t think so.” He got in the passenger seat, waited for her to storm around the car. “I mean, you’re a girl—no question—but seems to me it’s just basic common sense not to go haring off alone.”

“I know how to take care of myself.”

“Bet you do. But you’re not showing me that by taking unnecessary chances.”

She shot him one deadly look before she squealed away from the curb. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

“Who does? So how many times has this guy called you? What does he say?”

She tapped her fingers on the wheel, struggled with her temper. “Third call. He’s got a surprise for me. First time I took it for a random obscene. Second, he used my name, so I checked it out. The numbers he’s called from are cells, and it looks like they’re clones.”

“If he knows your name, it’s personal.”

“Potentially.”

“My ass.” And there was nothing placid about him now. “You know it’s personal, which is one of the reasons you’re pissed off.”

“You got in my way.”

“Yeah.”

She waited a beat. “In my family, we yell when we’re fighting.”

“I prefer the digging in, just-try-to-move-me strategy.” He turned to give her a long, cool stare. “Look who won.”

“This time,” she shot back.

When she approached Brendan Avenue, she slowed, eyes tracking. You’ll know it when you see it. She recalled his voice.

And her heart gave one hard skip when she did.

“Shit, shit.” She grabbed her phone, hit 911. “This is Detective Catarina Hale, badge number 45391. I’m reporting a fire in progress, 2800 Brendan Avenue. Shrine of the Little Flower Elementary School. On visual, the fire is fully engaged. Notify the fire and police departments. Possible arson.”

She whipped to the curb. “Stay in the car,” she ordered Bo, then grabbed a flashlight. She jumped out, speed dialing O’Donnell. “We got one burning,” she said without preamble, and called out the address and she dashed to the building. “He called to tell me about it. I’m on scene. I told you to stay in the car,” she snapped at Bo.

“Obviously my answer was no. Are there people in there?”

“No one should be, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty.” She shoved her phone in her pocket, drew her weapon as she moved toward the wide, ground-level doors.

His message was spray painted over them in gleaming, bloody red.

SURPRISE!

“Son of a bitch. Keep behind me, Bo. I mean it. Don’t think with your dick. Remember who’s got the gun.” She reached for the door, pulled, then shoved. “Locked.”

She debated. She could leave him here, exposed, or take him with her while she circled the building. “Stay close,” she commanded. And heard the first sirens as she rounded the building. She found the broken window. Through it, she saw the fire was streaming through a classroom, eating desks, crawling up walls and out into the hallway.

“You’re not going in there.”

She shook her head. No, not without gear. But she could see, the point of origin was right there, and trailers were set—crumpled waxed paper maybe—to lead out into the hall, across to other classrooms. She could smell gasoline, and see rivers of it still gleaming on the floor.

Was he watching?

She stepped back to scan and study the neighboring buildings, and something crunched under her foot. She shone her light down, then crouched.

Her fingers itched, but she didn’t touch what she saw was a box of wooden matches. And her heart thudded into her throat when she shone her light and saw the familiar Sirico’s logo. “Do me a favor. In the trunk of my car there’s a kit, evidence bags inside. I need one.”

“You’re not going in,” he repeated.

“No. I’m not going in.”

She stayed where she was, considering the matches, then raising her eyes to scan the area. Okay, he knew her, wanted to be sure she understood that.

Did he have the need to be close, to watch the burn?

People were starting to come out now, and cars were stopping. Excited voices swept through the air, and the distant scream of sirens pierced it.

When Bo brought her a bag, she scooped the matchbox into it and sealed it.

“We wait.” She hurried back to the front, hooked her badge on her waistband and began to order the gathering crowd to stay back.

“What can I do?” Bo asked her.

“Keep out of the way,” she began, and locked the evidence bag in her car. “I’m going to need to fill in the unit chief when he gets here. You’ve got a good eye. Pay attention to the gawkers. If you see anybody who seems too interested I want to know about it. He’ll be an adult male. He’ll be alone. He’ll be watching me as much as the fire. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.”

He’d never seen a response before, not outside of movies. Everything moved so fast, with so much color and sound and movement. Like some sort of strange sporting event, Bo thought as the trucks rolled up and firefighters leaped into action.

It made him think of the game they’d seen that evening. That same kind of intense and focused teamwork. But instead of bats and balls there were hoses and axes, oxygen tanks and masks.

These were the people who ran toward fire while the rest of the world ran from it. With helmets gleaming in the flashing lights, they walked into the smoke and the heat.

While he watched, firefighters in turnout gear broke down the door and walked inside while teammates soaked the building with great arcs of water from the hoses.

Responding police moved quickly to set up barricades, to keep the gathering crowd behind them. As Reena had asked, he studied faces, tried to find the type she was looking for. He saw flames reflected in wide, stunned eyes, the ripple of red and gold shimmering on skin, and imagined he looked very much the same. There were couples and loners, families with children in their arms, in nightclothes, in bare feet. More fully dressed who poured out of cars that stopped up and down the block.

Admittance free, he thought and glanced back at the building. And it was a hell of a show.

Fire shot out through the roof, quickening towers of it, flaming gold in the dense roll of smoke. The smell of it stung his eyes, and ash began to dance in the air. White water, geysers of it, spewed out, slashing the building with such force he wondered the structure could stand against it.

He heard the sound of breaking glass and looked up to see the jagged shower of it as a window exploded. Someone in the crowd screamed.

Even where he stood he could feel the press of heat. How did they stand it? he wondered. The force of it, the blinding storm and stench of the smoke.

Ladders rose, the men on them like flags, the hoses hefty streamers that gushed more water.

A man cut through the crowd. Bo stepped forward, ready to act—he wasn’t sure how—then saw the flash of a badge, the nods of acknowledgment from cops, from firefighters. Big guy, Bo noticed, broad shoulders, wide belly, grim Irish face. He moved straight to Reena.

O’Donnell, Bo decided, and relaxed fractionally.

He might have stayed that way, but he saw the man helping Reena into gear. He pushed through the crowd, was already shoving at the barricade when uniformed cops held him back.

“Reena. Goddamn it!”

She glanced in his direction as she hefted on tanks. He could see the irritation ripple over her face, but she spoke to her partner. He stepped away, moved over to the barricade. “He’s with us,” he said briefly. “Goodnight? I’m O’Donnell.”

“Yeah, fine. What the hell’s she doing? What the hell are you doing?” he demanded of Reena, his eyes narrowed now against the fog of smoke.

“Going in. I’m trained for this.” She adjusted her helmet.

“Pretty good smoke eater for a cop,” one of the firefighters commented, and she smiled at him.

“Sweet talker. I’ll explain later. I’ve got to move.”

Before Bo could make another protest, O’Donnell slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Knows what she’s doing,” he said, lifting his chin toward Reena as she headed toward the building with two others. “She’s qualified for this.”

“So are the dozen or so of these guys already in there. What’s the point?”

“Arson’s the point.” Smoke rolled over them in a wave, had O’Donnell coughing. He kept his hand on Bo’s shoulder, drew him back to clearer air. “Putting out a fire can screw the evidence all to hell. She goes in now, she’ll be able to see more before the damage is done. Somebody set this one for her. She’s not one to walk away from that. She’s worked with these guys before. Believe me, they wouldn’t let her in unless they knew she could handle herself.”

“Being a cop’s not enough for her?” Bo muttered, and O’Donnell showed his teeth in a grin.

“Being a cop’s plenty, but she’s a fire cop. And she walks the line between. Knows more about the son of a bitch than anyone I’ve ever worked with. The fire,” he explained at Bo’s puzzled look. “That girl knows fire. Now, tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know dick. We went to a ball game, went back to her place. She got a call.”

Bo kept his eyes on the building now—the hell with scouring the crowd—and while his heart drummed in his throat, strained to see her coming back out. “She filled me in some. Some guy’s called her three times, used her name. Cloned cell phones. This time he told her he had something for her here. Fire was already going when we arrived.”

“How’d you manage to come along?”

He flicked his eyes back toward O’Donnell. “She’d’ve had to shoot me otherwise, and I guess she didn’t want to waste that much time.”

This time O’Donnell laughed, and the slap on Bo’s shoulder was friendlier.

“She tell you he wrote surprise on the front door?”

“Yeah, she brought me up to date.” Casually, he took a pack of gum from his pocket, offered Bo a stick. “She’ll be fine,” he assured him and folded two in his mouth. “Why don’t you tell me how long you’ve been going to ball games with my partner?”

Inside, Reena moved through the dense curtain of smoke. She could hear her own breath, the suck of oxygen from her tank, and the crackle of flames not yet suppressed.

The search for victims would still be under way, but so far—thank God—none had been found.

Easy pickings for him, she thought as she pushed through smoke. Plenty of time to plan and set this fire in this place. But what she was seeing was so amateurish, so simple. She might have taken it for kids or an ordinary fire setter.

He wasn’t. She was sure he wasn’t despite the use of basics like gas and waxed paper.

She’d find more.

Fire had gnawed its way down the steps, teased along by the use of gas and the trailers. It might’ve burned like a torch, but for the phone call sending her here.

So he hadn’t cared about destroying the building.

The second floor took a hit. Both the temperature and the density of smoke increased, and she had no doubt she’d find another point of origin. She could see the silhouettes of men moving through the fog of smoke like heroic ghosts.

There were remnants of trailers here. She picked up the charred remains of a book of matches, fumbled it into a bag, marked the spot to document.

“Doing okay, champ?”

She gave the thumbs-up to Steve. “Burn pattern on the east wall? Second point of origin, I think.” His voice and hers sounded tinny and strained. “Fire sucked into the ceiling here.” She gestured up. “Flashed back down there. He was already long gone.”

They moved together, documenting evidence, recording, climbing up into the still living heart of the fire.

It licked the walls, and men beat it back. It danced overhead along the charred ceiling with the guttural roar that always sent a finger of ice up her spine.

It was gorgeous, horribly gorgeous. Seductive with its light and heat, its powerful dance. She had to block out the innate fear, and her own intrinsic fascination, concentrating instead on fuel and method, on the fingerprints of style.

Gas, a stronger stench of it here, under the sharp smell of smoke, the dull odor of wet. The men who fought the leaping spirals of flame had faces blackened from the smoke, eyes blank with concentration. Water spat out of hoses and streamed in the broken windows from outside.

Another portion of the roof collapsed with a kind of shuddering glee, venting the fire, feeding it so that it spurted up in a sudden storm.

She jumped forward to assist with a hose, and thought of lion trainers slapping at a violent cat with a whip and a chair.

The effort sang in her muscles, shook down to her toes.

She saw where part of the wall had been hacked away to studs, and through the blur of water and smoke noted the char, the pattern.

He’d done that, she thought. Initial point of origin.

And knew, as her arms trembled and the fire slowly died, this hadn’t been his first.

The relief was wild, a kind of stupefying release, when he saw her come out. Despite the gear and her height, Bo recognized her the instant she stepped through the dense smoke.

However casual O’Donnell’d been, whatever he’d said before, Bo heard his release of breath when Reena waded out through the smoke and wet and debris.

Her face was black with soot. As she shrugged off her tanks, ash rained off her protective gear.

“There’s our girl,” O’Donnell said lightly. “Why don’t you wait here, pal. I’ll send her over in a minute.”

She took off her helmet—and there was a short spiral of dark gold as she bent from the waist, braced her hands on her knees and spat on the ground.

She stayed there, lifting only her head to acknowledge O’Donnell. Then she straightened, brushed off a paramedic. Unhooking her jacket, she made her way toward Bo.

“I have to stay, then I’m going to need to go in. I’m going to have somebody take you back home.”

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah. It could’ve been a lot worse in there. He could’ve made it a lot worse. No loss of life, building empty, school out for the summer. This was just for show.”

“He left you that matchbox from your family’s place. So the show was for you.”

“I can’t argue with that.” She glanced over where a couple of soaked, soot-covered firefighters were lighting cigarettes. “You notice anybody who seemed off?”

“Not really. I have to admit after you went in, I didn’t pay much attention. Praying takes most of my focus.”

She smiled a little, then lifted her brows when he wiped at the soot on her cheek with his thumb. “I’m not looking my best.”

“I can’t begin to tell you how you look. You scared the hell out of me. We’ll save the buts for when you’ve got more time.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I figure we’ve got a lot to say to each other, and I’d rather do it without the audience.”

She looked over her shoulder. They were doing a surround and drown, and the worst was over. “I’ll get you a ride. Look, I’m sorry how this turned out.”

“Me, too.”

She walked away, arranged for his ride home. And she thought that the fire had done more than hull out a building. If she wasn’t misreading the way Bo had stepped back from her, the fire had also turned a developing relationship into ash.

She went to her car for her field kit, pulled it and a bottle of water she kept there out as Steve wandered to her. “So, is that the guy Gina said you’re seeing?”

“That’s the guy I’ve been seeing. I think he’s just decided the whole cop, arson, fires-in-the-middle-of-the-night routine is more complicated than he likes.”

“His loss, hon.”

“Maybe, or maybe he just had himself a lucky escape. I am hell on men, Steve.”

She slammed her trunk. Her car was coated with ash. And she stank, no question about it. She leaned on her car, opened the bottle to take a long drink of water to clear her throat.

She passed the bottle to Steve, stayed as she was while O’Donnell came to join them.

“They’ll clear us to go back in, just a few minutes. What you got?”

Reena took a small tape recorder out of her kit so she’d only have to say it once. “Phone call from unidentified subject, my home residence, at twenty-three forty-five,” she began, and moved through the events, her observations, the already collected evidence point by point.

She switched off the recorder, put it back in her kit. “My opinion?” she continued. “He made it look half-assed. Made it look simple. But he took the time to open the wall upstairs, set the fire in such a way that it would progress behind the walls as well as into the room. We had a broken window up there when I arrived. Maybe he did it, maybe it was already broken, but that ventilation moved the fire along. He used basic stuff. Gas, trailers of paper and matchbooks. But they’re basic because in the right circumstance, they can work extremely well. It doesn’t look like a pro, but it smells like one.”

“Somebody we’ve met before?”

“I don’t know, O’Donnell.” Tired, she pushed at her hair. “I’ve been through old cases. So have you. Nothing jumps out. Maybe it’s some wack job I met along the line, brushed off, and this is his way of courting me. This is the neighborhood school. My neighborhood school.”

She unlocked the car, took out the bagged matchbox to show him. “From Sirico’s, to tell me he knows me, and he can get close. Left where I’d find it. Not inside, where if things got out of hand it could be destroyed. Outside, where the odds were better I’d find it, outside his point of entry, or what he made look like his point of entry. It’s personal.”

She locked the bag back in the car. “And, okay, it’s fucking spooky. It’s got me wound up.”

“We work the scene, we work the case. And next time he calls,” O’Donnell added, “and you think about going to check out something without calling me first? Don’t.”

She hunched her shoulders. “He ratted me out.” She blew out a breath. “And he was right. You’re right. I figured it was just some creep pushing my buttons—which I can handle. Have handled. But this is more.” She studied the building, hazed through smoke. “He’s more. So no, you don’t have to worry about me hotdogging.”

“Good. Let’s get to work.”

20

It was after six in the morning when Reena left the scene. She split off from O’Donnell, hooking up with Steve to head to the fire station. O’Donnell would log in the evidence, write the initial report. She’d talk to any of the fire department team who’d been on the fire and who were awake.

She could get a shower there—finally. She always kept a change in her trunk. Besides, odds were she’d get a good meal at the firehouse, and nights like the one she’d put in stoked her appetite.

“So this guy Goodnight, what’s the story?” At Reena’s bland stare, Steve shrugged. “Gina’s going to grill me about it. She gets pissy when I don’t have details.”

“She’s going to grill me anyway. Just tell her I said to come straight to the source.”

“Appreciate it.”

“She handles what you do. I mean, it’s never been an issue between the two of you.”

“She worries sometimes, sure. But no, it’s not a deal. When we lost Biggs last year, that was rough. As rough on her as me. We’ve talked about it.” He pulled on his ear. “About how that kind of risk is part of the job. You have to buy the package, you know? Doesn’t always work, but Gina, she’s tough. You know that. We’ve got the kids, another coming. She’s got to be tough.”

“She loves you. Love’s tough.” Reena pulled up at the station. “When you call her this morning, ask if she’ll call my parents. Just let them know I’m on this case and everything’s fine. Can you spare the details, Steve? Just for now?”

“No problem.”

A couple of men were washing down the pumper. Steve loitered to talk. Reena settled for a wave as she carried her fresh clothes inside.

She washed smoke out of her hair until her arms ached, then just closed her eyes and let the water beat on her head, her neck, her back.

Her eyes felt gritty, exhausted, but that would pass. The taste of it would linger, she knew, no matter how much water she drank. The flavor of fire lingered, and even when it passed, it was something she never forgot.

She took her time, soothing her skin—herself—by rubbing in scented cream. She slathered on moisturizer. She’d walk into a burning building, but damn if she’d sacrifice her skin. Or her vanity, she thought as she carefully applied makeup.

When she was dressed, she slung her bag over her shoulder and headed to the kitchen to bum a meal.

Something, it seemed, was always cooking here. Big pots of chili or stew, a huge hunk of meat loaf, a vat of scrambled eggs. The long counters, the stove, would be scrubbed clean after every meal, but the air would always smell of coffee and hot food.

She’d trained out of this station, and volunteered here often in her free time. She’d slept in the bunks, cooked at the stove, played cards at the table or zoned out to the TV in the lounge.

No one was surprised when she walked in. She got sleepy nods, cheerful greetings. And a big plate of bacon and eggs.

She sat next to Gribley, a twelve-year man who sported a neat goatee and burn scars along his clavicle. War wounds.

“Word is the torch from last night gave you a heads-up.”

“Word’s right.” She scooped up eggs, washed them down with the Coke she’d taken from the refrigerator. “Looks like he’s got an issue with me. The structure was fully engaged when I got there. Maybe ten minutes after he called.”

“Poor response time,” Gribley commented.

“He didn’t tell me he’d lit something up or I’d’ve been faster. I will be, next time.”

Across the table one of the other men lifted his head. “You looking for a next time? You’re thinking serial this soon out?”

“I’m prepared for it. You’re going to need to be prepared for it, too. He made this one easy. A little testing move. Like when you stretch your arm up so you can coyly wrap it around a woman’s shoulder. Looking for my reaction, I think. Second floor, eastmost wall first engaged?”

“Yeah.” Gribley nodded. “That section was in full flashover when we got up. Part of the wall hacked out, vent holes in the ceiling.”

“First floor had the same deal,” Reena continued. “He took some time. We found four matchbooks, one of them didn’t go off.”

“Had trailers along the second floor, heading down to the first.” The man across from her, Sands, picked up his coffee mug. “Hadn’t fully caught when we hit them. Slop job, you ask me.”

“Yeah.” But was that carelessness, or craftiness?

It was almost childish.” Reena sat, kicked back in her chair. O’Donnell mirrored her pose. “Gas and paper and matches. The kind of things a kid might play with. If you discount the deliberate venting, it’s kid stuff, or amateur hour. Matchbooks that didn’t have time to catch—so we’d find them. So did he think we wouldn’t see the venting, or did he want us to see it?”

“If you’re trying to psych him, I say he wanted you to see it. The rest of us are background. You’re the spotlight.”

“Thanks for putting my mind at rest.” She sat up, hissed. “Who? Why? Where did our paths cross? Or have they only crossed in his head?”

“We go through old cases, again. And start talking to people involved. Maybe it’s somebody we put away. Maybe it’s somebody we didn’t. Maybe it’s somebody you had a thing with and doesn’t like that you broke it off.”

She shook her head at this. “I haven’t had a serious thing. I haven’t let a thing get serious since . . .” She trailed off, then rubbed the back of her neck when O’Donnell’s eyes stayed steady on hers. “You keep up with current events, O’Donnell. You know I’ve played it loose since that business with Luke.”

“Long time to play it loose.”

“Maybe, but that’s how I like to play it. And any ideas this might be Luke, forget it. He’d never crawl around some grimy building. He’d get his designer suit dirty.”

“Maybe he wore his play clothes. He still in New York?”

“As far as I know. Okay.” She lifted her hands. “I’ll check. I hate that I have to check.”

“You ever think just how bad that guy messed you up?”

“Hell, he gave me a couple of bruises. I’ve had worse playing touch football.”

“I’m not talking about your face, Hale. Messed up your head. Shame you gave him the satisfaction. Gonna get some coffee.” He rose, walked off to give her time to think about it.

Instead, she swore under her breath and turned to her computer to get current data on Luke Chambers.

Her voice was stiff when O’Donnell came back with a mug. “Luke Chambers has a New York address, and is employed by the same brokerage house which took him to Wall Street. He was married in December of 2000 to a Janine Grady. No children. He was widowed when his wife was killed on nine-eleven. She worked on the sixty-fourth floor of Tower One.”

“Tough break. Something like that can twist a man. Wouldn’t’ve happened to him if you’d gone along with his plan back in the day.”

“Jesus, you’re like a dog with a bone. Fine. I’ll reach out to the local cops, ask them to verify he was in New York last night.”

O’Donnell stepped to her desk, then put the can of Diet Pepsi he’d stuck in his pocket in front of her. “Situation was reversed, you’d push me to do the same. If I wouldn’t, you’d do it for me.”

“I’m tired. I’m edgy. The fact that you’re right only makes me want to punch you.”

With a satisfied smile, O’Donnell sat back at his desk.

It was a relief to finally get home—and all Reena wanted now was a major nap.

She went inside, hung her purse over the newel post. Then, when her mother’s disapproving frown flashed into her mind, took it off and put it in the closet.

“There, happy now?”

She ignored the flash of the answering machine, went straight into the kitchen.

She tossed her mail on the table, set the file copy she’d brought home beside it. Nap first, she told herself, but gave in and punched the message retrieval on her answering machine.

As soon as the recording announced message one had been received at two-ten A.M., her heart began to pound.

“Did you like your surprise? I bet you did since you’re still out there. All that fire. Gold and red and hot blue. I bet it made you wet. Bet you wanted to climb inside and let the boy next door fuck you while it burned. I’ll do better than that. Just wait. Just wait.”

Her breathing was too loud, and too fast. She paused the playback, closed her eyes until she could bring it under control.

He had watched. He’d known Bo was with her. Known she’d gone to the window.

He’d been close enough to watch her, but she’d missed him. Had he been one of the people coming out of neighboring buildings? One of the drivers of a passing car? One of the faces in the crowd?

Watching her. Watching her watch the flames.

She shuddered. He wanted to spook her, and she couldn’t stop that. But she could control what she did about it.

She ran through the rest of the messages.

The second came through at seven-thirty.

“Still not home?” He laughed, a kind of indrawn breath. “Busy, busy, busy.”

“Bold, aren’t you, you bastard,” she said aloud. “That’s always a mistake.”

The third recorded at seven forty-five.

“Reena.”

She jolted, then blew out a breath at the sound of Bo’s voice. Yes, indeed, she admitted, she was thoroughly spooked.

“Your car’s not back, so I guess you’re still working. I’ve got a bid to work up today, and a supply run. Sounds pretty tame after the adventures of last night. Anyway, if you’re home later, give me a call.”

The next came in an hour later—Gina wanting to get together so she could get the full scoop on the new guy.

“Pretty sure you’re too late on that.” Reena made a whooshing sound and snapped her fingers. “Here, then gone.”

Then she frowned when her sister Bella’s tearful voice blasted through the machine. “Why aren’t you ever around when I need you?”

As that was the sum and total of the message, Reena reached for the phone. Then stopped herself. Sometimes she had to think like a cop first, then like a sister.

She deleted all the messages after the second call, took the tape out, sealed it in a bag before digging out a fresh tape.

She called O’Donnell to bring him up to speed.

“So he was there.”

“Most likely. Or he was watching my house, saw me leave with Bo. He may have me staked out here, may have followed me over. I didn’t make a tail, and I’ve been looking for one.”

“We’ll start another canvass in the morning,” he told her. “I’ll call in, have a car patrol your place tonight.”

She started to object, caught herself. “Good idea. Somebody from the unit, okay? He spots a patrol car, it might push him back. Unmarked’s better.”

“I’ll fix it. Get some rest.”

She thought of the call from Bella. “Yeah.” And rubbed her tired eyes. “I’ll do that.”

She looked at the phone. She had to call Bella back. Of course she did. The fact that the outburst could have been brought on by something as petty as a broken fingernail wasn’t the point. And that was unkind—and untrue—Reena admitted. Bella wasn’t quite that ridiculous. Close, but not quite.

It might be something about the kids, though it was more likely she’d have half a dozen calls from relatives if that were the case. Her parents would have called on her cell if there was an emergency.

And what did it say about her that she was dawdling this way over a simple return call to her sister?

Reena picked up the phone, hit her sister’s number on memory.

She wasn’t certain if she was relieved or irritated when the housekeeper informed her Bella was at the salon. Which could still mean there was a crisis, Reena thought as she hung up. Her sister shot to the salon the way other people rushed to the ER.

She was about to head upstairs but detoured at the knock on her front door. She felt the tingle along her ribs as she wondered if it was Bo. Instead she opened the door to an exuberant and six-months-pregnant Gina.

“Steve said you should be home. I just had to see how you were.” She threw her arms around Reena for a huge hug. “What a night, huh? You okay? You look tired. You should take a nap.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Reena said as Gina strolled in.

“Well, let’s sit down. My mother’s got the kids for a couple hours. God bless her with eternal youth and beauty.” She plopped, patted a hand on her rounded belly, then grinned around the room at walls the last owners had painted a kind of strange kiwi green.

“Picked out your colors yet? You ought to get on that in this nice weather, so you can leave the windows open, cut back on the painty smell. Steve will give you a hand with the work.”

“Appreciate it. I haven’t really settled on anything. I’m thinking something a little more classic than this.”

“Anything would be. I can help you. I love picking out colors. It’s like toys. Am I cheering you up?”

“Do I look like I need it?”

“Steve tells me things, Reene. Don’t worry, I haven’t said anything to your family, to anyone. I won’t if you don’t want me to. I’ll just worry about you all by myself.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

“Of course not. Just because some fire maniac is obsessed with my best friend, enough to all but burn out our elementary school.”

Reena sighed, then rose to go to the kitchen and pour them both tall glasses of San Pellegrino.

“Got anything to go with that?” Gina asked from behind her. “Something containing large quantities of sugar?”

Reena took out the remains of a coffee cake. “It’s a few days old,” she warned.

“Yeah, that matters.” Laughing, Gina broke off a hunk. “I’d eat tree bark if it had sugar poured on it.” She sat at the old butcher block Reena was using as a kitchen table. “Okay, I’ve been busy, you’ve been busy. Now it’s time for me to get all the deets on this carpenter. My mother got from your mother that you knew him in college. I knew who you knew, and I don’t remember some hunky guy named Goodnight.”

“Because we didn’t know him. Or I didn’t. He saw me when we were in college. When you and I were in college.”

“My mother never gets it straight.” Gina broke off another piece. “Sit and spill.”

She did, and the leading edge of fatigue dulled when Gina punctuated the recitation with gasps and Oh my Gods and dramatic slaps of her hand to her heart.

“He saw you across the room, and he never forgot you. He carried you inside him all—”

“Ick.”

“Oh, shut up. This is so romantic. It’s Heathcliff and Catherine romantic.”

“They were crazy.”

“For God’s sake. Okay, it’s Sleepless in Seattle romantic. You know how I love that movie.”

“Sure, except for the fact we don’t live on opposite coasts, I’m not engaged to someone else, and he’s not a widower with a kid, it’s just exactly the same.”

Gina jabbed a finger. “You’re not going to spoil this for me. I’ve been married six years, I’m on my third kid. I don’t get that much sappy romance these days. So, how good-looking is he?”

“Really. He’s built. Some of it probably comes from the kind of work he does. All that manual labor.”

“Now the grit. How’s the sex?”

“Did I say I’ve had sex with him?”

“How long have I known you?”

“Damn. Got me there. It’s off the scale.”

On a blink, Gina sat back. “You’ve never said that before.”

“Said what?”

“You always say, it’s great, or it’s intense. Sometimes, it’s fun or it’s mediocre. If I were to use a scale, I’d say you’ve peaked at around eight.”

Reena’s forehead furrowed. “I’ve had tens. And you’re entirely too obsessed with my sex life.”

“What are friends for? How is this the best sex of your young, adventurous life?”

“I didn’t say . . . Okay, it is. I don’t know. It’s great and intense and fun, and it is romantic. Even when it’s wild. And after last night, it’s over.”

“Why? What? I just got here.”

Reena poured more fizzy water, then just sat and watched the bubbles. “Dragging a guy to a scene—one in which you’re personally as well as professionally involved—having him see you running around in turnout gear, snapping out orders, some of them at him, with him knowing you’ve got some wack job focused on you? It takes the bloom off, Gina.”

“Then he’s got a really tiny dick.”

With a laugh, Reena shook her head. “He doesn’t. Figuratively or literally. We just started to dance, Gina. The tune changes this abruptly—it gets complicated.”

With a huff, Gina sat back. “Well, if that’s his attitude, I don’t like him after all.”

“You would like him. He’s likeable. I’m not going to blame him for stepping back.”

“Which means he hasn’t stepped back yet.”

“I got a sense of the back step last night. It’s just not official.”

“You know your problem, Reena? You’re a pessimist. When it comes to men, you’re a big pessimist. That’s why—” She broke off, frowned, sipped water.

“Don’t stop now.”

“Okay, I won’t because I love you. It’s why your relationships don’t last, why they don’t move into any real depth. It’s been that way since college. Since poor Josh. And it got worse after Luke. He was an asshole of major proportions,” Gina added as Reena sputtered. “No question. But what happened there messed with your head, if you ask me, and it’s blocked you from making real connections.”

“That’s not true.” But she heard her own voice, and the lack of conviction in it.

Gina reached over, took Reena’s hand. “Hon, I’m hearing you talk about this guy the way I haven’t heard you talk about a guy since we were kids. I’m seeing serious connection potential, and you’re ready to blow it off. Hell, you’re braced to. Why don’t you wait and see how it stands up before you put an X through his name?”

“Because it matters,” Reena said softly, and Gina’s hand squeezed hers. “Because he looks at me and it matters. I’ve never felt that before. Not once, not with anyone. It was all right that I didn’t, or couldn’t. Maybe wouldn’t. It was okay. I’ve got plenty in my life. My family, my work. If I wanted a man, there were plenty out there. But he matters, and it’s so quick, it’s so much, I don’t want to be flattened when he walks away.”

“You’re in love with him?”

“I’m teetering. I’m scared.”

Gina’s smile bloomed as she pushed herself to her feet, walked around to wrap her arms around Reena’s neck. Kissed the top of her head. “Congratulations.”

“I think I blew it last night, Gina.”

“Stop. Wait. See. Remember what a wreck I was when things started getting serious with Steve.”

Reena smiled. “It was cute.”

“It was terrifying.” She straightened, absently massaging Reena’s shoulders. “I was going to go live in Rome for a year, have a mad affair with some struggling artist. How the hell was I going to do that when some damn firefighter had me all twisted up? And he still twists me up, still scares me. Sometimes I look at him and think what would I do if anything happened to him, if I lost him? What if he fell in love with somebody else? Give this one a chance.” She eased around, laid a hand on Reena’s cheek. “I haven’t even met him, and I’m telling you to give this one a chance. Now, I’m going to go pick up my kids and get back to the circus that is my life. Call me tomorrow.”

“I will. Gina? You cheered me up.”

“Then my work is done.”

She slept for three hours, and woke with her heart pounding and the dregs of a nightmare clogging her brain. Fire and smoke, terror and dark—a jumble of elements that wouldn’t coalesce. That was probably best, she thought, curling up to wait for her pulse to level.

She had bad dreams now and then, especially if she was stressed or overtired. Cops were prone to them. Nobody saw what they saw, touched what they touched, smelled what they smelled.

But it would fade, as always. She could live with the images because the job meant she did something about them.

She sat up, switched on the light. She’d eat something, get a little work done. That would ward off the three A.M. spell of wakefulness and worry.

She was still muzzy-headed when she went downstairs. Gina was right, she decided as she trailed her fingers over a wall. She should get serious about paint, go pick up some chips, start making the house more hers.

Commitment phobia? she wondered. She’d dragged her feet about buying a house, even though it had been something she’d wanted for years. Now she was dragging them over putting herself into the house, making it reflect her taste and style.

Well, the first step was recognizing she had a little problem. So she’d buy some damn paint and make a stand.

She’d get through this case, close it down. Then she’d take a week off and do something for herself. Paint and paper, some trips to the antique stores, the thrift shops. She’d plant some flowers.

Without much interest, she poked around the kitchen. She didn’t actually feel like eating. She felt like brooding. It wasn’t her fault she was a cop and sometimes her work was unattractive and urgent. It certainly wasn’t her fault he couldn’t handle that.

Commitment phobic, my ass, she decided. She’d been on the verge of making one to him—her first—and he jumps off the ship at the first rocky wave.

Screw it.

He was the one who came on to her. Dreamy green eyes, sexy mouth. Son of a bitch. She got out garlic, Roma tomatoes, began to chop as she mentally ripped Bo to pieces. Dream Girl? Bullshit. She wasn’t anybody’s dream, and had no intention of filling the slot. She was who she was, and he could take it or leave it.

She heated olive oil in a skillet, got out red wine.

She didn’t need him. Plenty of men out there if and when she wanted one. She wasn’t looking for some charming, sexy, funny carpenter to fill any gaps in her life.

She didn’t have gaps.

She sizzled garlic, then jolted at the knock on her back door. Wound up, she told herself, but she picked up the gun she’d set on the counter.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Bo.”

Breathing out, she put the gun in her junk drawer. Rolled her shoulders, then unlocked the back door.

Her chest was tight, and there was nothing she could do about it. Tight chest, dry throat, and there was a heaviness in her belly. All this was a new and unwelcome kind of dread when it came to a man.

But she opened the door, gave him a small, casual smile. “Need a cup of sugar?”

“Not so much. You get my message?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I didn’t get home until after four, then I had company. I caught a nap. Just got up.”

“Figured. Your bedroom curtains were drawn when I got home, so I guessed you were getting some sleep. Thought I’d chance it when I saw the light back here. Something smells good—besides you.”

“Oh, shit.” She dashed back to the stove, saved the garlic. “I’m just fixing some pasta.” She added the diced tomatoes, a dollop of the wine. Maybe she wasn’t hungry, particularly, but she was glad to have something to do with her hands. She added some basil, ground in some pepper, let it all simmer.

“I guess you being good at that comes naturally. You still look tired.”

“Thanks.” She heard her own voice, sour as lemons. “I love hearing that.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Sorry, comes with the territory.”

“I guess it does.”

“I’m going to have a glass of wine.”

“Thanks.” His eyes stayed on hers. “That’d be good. Anything more you can tell me about what happened last night?”

“Illegal entry, arson with multiple points of origin, messages directed at arson investigator. No loss of life.” She handed him a glass of red.

“Are you feeling bitchy because you’re tired, because this asshole’s complicating your life, or are you pissed at me?”

Her smile was as bitter as her tone. “Pick one.”

“Okay, I get the first two. Why don’t you explain door number three?”

She leaned back on the counter. “I did what I was trained to do, what I’m obliged to do, what I’m paid to do.”

He waited a moment, nodded. “And?”

“And what?”

“That’s what I’m saying, and what? Who’s arguing?”

She could be civilized, she told herself. Civilized and mature. She got out a pot, took it to the sink to fill with water. “I’ve made more than enough if you’re hungry.”

“Sure. Reena, are you chilling me here because I got in your way last night?”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“When somebody I care about starts to do something reckless, something dangerous, I get in the way.”

“I’m not reckless.”

“Not as a rule, I wouldn’t think. But he got under your guard.”

“You don’t know my guard.” She carried the pot to the stove, turned on the burner. “You barely know me at all.” And went very still when he put a hand over hers, when he turned her around to face him.

“I know you’re smart. I know you’re dedicated. I know you’re tight with your family, and when you laugh your whole face gets into it. I know you like baseball, and where you like to be touched. That you like lemon meringue pie and don’t drink coffee. I know you’ll walk into a fire. Tell me something else, then I’ll know that.”

“Why are you here, Bo?”

“To see you, to talk to you. And I’m getting pasta out of the deal.”

She stepped back, picked up her wine. “I assumed after last night you’d be uncomfortable.”

“With what?”

“Don’t be dense.”

He lifted his hands. “Trying not to be. Uncomfortable . . . with you.”

She gave a little shrug, took a small sip.

“And I’d be uncomfortable with you because . . . Okay, no multiple choice,” he decided when she said nothing. “Because we had a fight about you heading out alone? No, that’s not it, because I won. Because I had to stay out of the way? Can’t be because I’m not with the police or fire departments. You’re stumping me here.”

“You didn’t like that I went in.”

“Into a burning building?” He made a sound, a kind of spitting laugh. “Fucking-A right. I’m supposed to like it when you run into fire? Problem there, then, because that’s never going to happen. Adding to that it was my first experience with it, I think I behaved myself. It’s not like I ran after you, tackled you and dragged you away. Which did buzz briefly through my mind as a possibility. Is liking the risks you’ve got to take part of the requirements of us?”

She stared at him. “God. I am a pessimist.”

“What are you talking about? Can you please translate your strange female language into words I can comprehend?”

“Do you want to be with me, Bo?”

He threw up his hands, the image of a frustrated, baffled male. “Standing right here.”

She laughed, shook her head. “Yes, you are. You certainly are. I’m going to apologize.”

“Good. Why?”

“For assuming you were a jerk. For assuming you were breaking things off because you didn’t want to deal with what I do, with what I am. For working myself up so I wouldn’t care if you did. I didn’t get there, but I was putting some effort into it. For being mad at you when I was the one who wasn’t dealing with it. I’m beginning to realize I have issues in this area—the relationship area.”

She stepped to him, put her hands on his cheeks, pressed her lips warmly to his. “So I apologize.”

“Are we over our first fight now?”

“Apparently.”

“Good.” He put his hands on her cheeks, kissed her back. “That one’s always the tricky one. Let’s talk about something completely different while we eat, which I hope is soon because all I had tonight was a peanut butter sandwich.”

She turned away to get the pasta. “This is going to be a lot better.”

“It already is.”

FLASHOVER

The final stage of the process of fire growth.

About, about, in reel and rout

The death-fires danced at night.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21

“I want to know more about this girl you’re seeing.”

Bo continued to hammer out the new garden shed Mrs. Malloy insisted she needed, pausing only to shoot her a wink. “Mrs. M., don’t be jealous. You’re still the love of my life.”

She sniffed, set the fresh lemonade she’d made him on a sawhorse. Her hair remained a brilliant red, and she was wearing trendy amber-lensed sunglasses. And a floral bib apron.

“You got a look in your eye, boy, tells me I’ve been replaced. I want to know about her.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Tell me something I couldn’t figure out for myself.”

He set aside the nail gun, picked up the lemonade. “She’s smart and funny and intense and sweet. Her eyes, they’re like a lioness, and she’s got this little mole, right here.” He tapped above his lip. “She comes from a big family. They run an Italian place in my neighborhood. She grew up there. Hey, maybe your brother knows her. Isn’t your brother a cop?”

“He is, these past twenty-three years. Has he arrested her?”

He laughed. “Doubtful. She’s a cop. Baltimore city. Arson unit.”

“So’s my brother.”

“Get out. I thought he was . . . I don’t know what I thought. They must know each other. What’s his name again? I’ll ask her.”

“It’s O’Donnell. Michael O’Donnell.”

Now he set down the lemonade, pulled off his safety goggles. “Okay, Twilight Zone music. He’s her partner. She’s Catarina Hale.”

“Catarina Hale.” Mrs. Malloy folded her arms. “Catarina Hale. The same one I tried to fix you up with years ago?”

“You did not. Did you?”

“My brother says he has a pretty new partner—and I say, is she single? And he says yes, and I say, I’ve got a nice boy, the boy who does work around the house for me. I tell him he has to ask her if she wants to go out with a nice boy. But she’s seeing someone else. Turns out not to be such a nice boy, but Mick won’t bring it up to her again. So.”

“Wow. It’s this weird circle with us, me and Reena. I mean we circled around each other for years, never quite connecting. Have you ever met her?”

“Once, when she came to a party at Mick’s. Very pretty, good manners.”

“I’m going to dinner tomorrow. Her parents’ house. Family dinner.”

“You take flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“You take her mother some nice flowers, but not in a box.” She shook her finger as she gave Bo instructions. “It’s too formal. Nice colorful flowers you can hand her when you go in the door.”

“Okay.”

“You’re a good boy,” she pronounced, then left him to work so she could go inside, call her brother and get more inside scoop on this Catarina Hale.

Flowers, he could handle flowers. They had them at the grocery store, and he needed to pick up a few things anyway. He stopped by the store near Mrs. Malloy’s house, wheeled a cart in. Milk, he was always running out of milk. Cereal. Why didn’t they stock the cereal near the milk? Didn’t that make sense?

Maybe he should pick up a couple of steaks, have Reena over and grill them. With that in mind, he picked up a few more things, working his way over to the florist.

He stood, thumbs in pockets, studying the selections in the refrigerated displays.

Mrs. M. had said cheerful. The big yellow ones—he thought they were lilies—looked cheerful. But didn’t lilies say funeral? Nothing cheery about that.

“Harder than I thought,” he muttered out loud, then glanced over, slightly embarrassed, when a man stepped up beside him.

“In the doghouse, too?”

“Sorry?”

The man gave Bo a long-suffering smile, then frowned at the flowers. “Thought maybe you were in the doghouse. That’s where I lived last night. Gotta get the wife some flowers, buy my way out.”

“Oh. No, dinner at my girlfriend’s parents’ tomorrow. I think it’s roses for a doghouse pass.”

“Shit. Guess so.” He stepped to the counter and the clerk on duty. “Looks like I need a dozen of those roses. Red ones, I guess. Women,” he said to Bo and scratched his head under his gimme cap.

“Tell me about it. I think I’m going for those.” Bo glanced at the clerk. “Those different-colored things with the big heads?”

“Gerbera daisies,” he was told.

“Daisies are cheerful, right?”

The clerk smiled at him as she took out the roses. “I think so.”

“Cool. A big mess of those daisies then, when you’re done. Just mix them up.”

“Bet wives cost more than mothers,” the man said mournfully.

Bo looked back at the daisies. Was he being cheap? He was going for pretty and cheerful, not cheap. Why was it so complicated? He waited until the roses were wrapped.

“See ya.”

“Yeah.” Bo gave the man an absent nod. “Good luck,” he added, then fell on the mercy of the clerk. “Look, it’s a family dinner thing—my girlfriend’s family. Are the daisies the thing? Is a dozen enough? Help me.”

She moved to the cold box again. “They’re perfect. Major points for casual, happy flowers.”

“Good. Fine. Thanks. I’m exhausted.”

Easy as pie, keeping an eye. Change of pace to follow the boy next door, check him out up close. Asshole working on Saturday.

Could’ve stuck him in the parking lot. Could’ve waited for him to come out with his fistful of posies and jabbed him right then and there.

Hey, buddy, can you give me a hand a minute? His type runs over like a frigging puppy. Have the knife in his gut while the son of a bitch is still grinning.

Toss the roses on the seat of the car. Doghouse my ass. Like you’d ever let a woman rule the day. Whores and bitches. Need to be kept in their place. Keeping them in their place was half the fun.

Wait and watch anyway. Watch him come out, walk to his truck with a couple of bags. Dumb-ass daisies sticking out the top. Probably a fag underneath. Probably thought of butt-fucking some other fag when he was banging her.

Do the world a favor and stick a knife in his gut. One less queer in the world. How would she feel if the queer she’s banging bought it in the supermarket parking lot?

Better ways, better days.

Cruise on out of the lot behind him. Nice truck. There’s a thought. Fun time to burn up that nice truck. More fun if he was in it. Something to think on.

Mrs. Malloy hit the bull’s-eye, Bo decided. Bianca not only smiled when he handed her the flowers at the door on Sunday afternoon, she kissed him on both cheeks.

Some of the family were already there. Xander, the brother, sprawled in a chair in the living room with the baby tucked in the crook of his arm. Jack, the brother-in-law—somebody get him a scorecard—was stretched out on the floor with one of the kids playing with cars.

Fran, the oldest sister, wandered out from the kitchen rubbing circles on her belly the way pregnant women do.

Another kid peeked out from behind Fran’s legs and gave him a long, owlish stare.

Reena moved forward—hugs, kisses—like none of them had seen one another for six months. Then she scooped up the little owl. And the stare became a giggling grin.

He was offered a drink, a chair. Then the females deserted the field.

Xander turned from the game on TV, gave Bo a big, toothy smile. “So, when you marry my sister, you could take out the wall between the two houses. Give you lots of space for five, six kids.”

Bo felt his mouth drop open, heard some response gurgle in his throat. Otherwise, the room was silent but for the play-by-play commentary on the ball game.

Then Xander hooted with laughter and booted his father’s leg with his foot. “Told you it would be funny. He looks like he swallowed a bulb of garlic.”

Gib kept watching the screen. “You got something against kids?”

“What? No.” Somewhat desperately, Bo looked around the room. “Me? No.”

“Good. Have mine.” Xander rose, and to Bo’s frozen shock, deposited the baby in Bo’s lap. “Be right back.”

“Oh. Well.” He looked down at the baby, who stared up at him with long, dark eyes. Since he was afraid to actually move, he shifted his gaze to Gib. He knew there was panic in it, but it couldn’t be helped.

“What, you never held a baby?”

“Not this small.”

The kid on the floor scooted over. “They don’t do much. My mama’s having another baby. And it better be a brother.” He turned, looked darkly at his father.

“Did my best, pal,” Jack said.

“I’ve got a baby sister now,” the boy told Bo. “She likes doll babies.”

Taking his cue, Bo shook his head in pity. “That’s disgusting.”

Obviously sensing a kindred spirit, the boy climbed up on the arm of the chair. “I’m Anthony. I’m five and a half. I have a frog named Nemo, but Nana doesn’t let me bring him to dinner.”

“Girls are funny that way.”

In his lap the baby squirmed and let out a cry. A bellow was more like it, in Bo’s opinion. He jiggled his legs without much hope.

“You can pick him up,” Ryan told him. “You just have to put your hand under his head, ’cause his neck’s all floppy. Then you put him up on your shoulder and pat his back. They like that.”

The baby continued to wail, and since no one came to his rescue—the sadists—Bo gingerly slid a hand under the baby’s head.

“Yeah, like that,” his baby expert said. “And kinda scoop the other under his butt. He’s wiggly, so you gotta be careful.”

Panic sweat dribbled a line down his back. Why did they make babies so damn small? And loud. Surely better arrangements could be made for the propagation of the human race.

Holding his breath, he lifted, angled, fit and let it out again when the bellows simmered down to whimpers.

In the kitchen, Fran whipped eggs in a bowl, Reena chopped vegetables while Bianca basted the chicken. It was, for Reena, one of those comfort moments. Essentially, intimately female and familial.

The back door was open to the breezy warmth, the room was full of cooking smells and perfumes. Bo’s flowers were prettily arranged in a tall, clear vase, and her niece was busily banging a spoon in a big plastic bowl.

Work, and the worries of it, were in another world. Part of her was still a child in this house, and always would be. That was comfort. Part of her was woman, and that was pride.

“An will be here as soon as she’s done at the clinic.” Bianca straightened, shut the oven door. “Bella will be late, as usual. So, look at you.” She put her hands on her hips, studied her youngest daughter. “You look happy.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Love sparkle,” Fran said and, setting the bowl aside, leaned over the island as much as her belly would allow. “How serious is it?”

“Day at a time.”

“He’s hot. What?” With a shrug, Fran eased back. “I can’t think he’s hot? Plus he’s got that puppy look in his eyes, so you’ve got sweet and hot, like melted man candy.”

“Fran!” The name came out on a shocked laugh as Reena goggled at her sister. “Listen to you.”

“It’s not me. It’s the hormones.”

“Everywhere I look, somebody’s pregnant. I just saw Gina a couple of days ago. She ate a quarter of a three-day-old coffee cake.”

“With me it’s olives. I could eat a vat of olives. Just lift up jar after jar and—” Fran mimed shaking them into her mouth.

“With all my babies it was potato chips.” Bianca checked a pot on the stove. “Ruffles, every night. Nine months times four? Holy Mary, how many potatoes is that?” She came around the counter, caught Reena’s face in her hand, shook it gently side to side. “I like that you look happy. I like this Bo. I think he’s the one.”

“Mama—”

“I think he’s the one,” Bianca continued, undaunted, “not only because he gives you a sparkle, not only because he looks at you like you’re the most fascinating of women, but I think he’s the one because your father gets the beady eye when he’s around. That’s his radar. ‘So, this guy thinks he’s going to take my daughter away? We’ll just see about that!’ ”

“Where’s he going to take me? Pluto? He lives in the neighborhood.”

“He’s like your father.” She smiled when Reena frowned at her. “Strong and solid, hot and sweet,” she added with a wink toward Fran. “And that, baby of mine, is what you’ve been waiting for.”

Before Reena could respond, An walked in with Dillon over her shoulder. “Sorry I’m late. What are we gossiping about?”

“Reena’s Bo.”

“Cutie-pie. Dillon was giving him a bit of a hard time. He took it like a champ.” She sat at the table, flipped open her shirt and guided the baby’s seeking mouth to her breast. “Your dad’s grilling him about his business,” she added, then waved Reena back. “No, leave him be. He’s holding his own. Mama Bee? I think you might get that back terrace on the shop you’ve been angling for.”

“Oh really?” Bianca tapped a spoon on a pot. “I like when my kids bring useful people to dinner.”

Xander poked his head in. “Hey. We’re heading down to the shop for a minute.”

“Dinner’s in one hour. If you’re not back, sitting at the table, I’ll beat you all unconscious with a spatula.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Take the baby.” Fran bent to pick up her daughter.

“Sure.” Xander boosted his niece onto his hip where she bounced and babbled. “Reena? This guy’s okay.”

“Gee, thanks,” she replied as her brother disappeared out the door. “We’ve only been dating a few weeks.”

“When it’s right, it’s right.” Bianca gathered up peppers, took them to the sink to wash them.

Down the block, Bo stood with Gib, Xander, Jack and a couple of kids. He gauged the ground in the rear of Sirico’s, noted the stingy seating area that was set up for the summer season, the traffic pattern from tables to the door.

“Bianca wants more of a terrace,” Gib explained. “Italian influence, maybe terra-cotta tiles. I figure pressure-treated wood would be easier, quicker, cheaper, but she keeps pushing for tile, maybe slate.”

“Yeah, you could throw up a platform in lumber pretty easily. Come off the back there, angle it. Do maybe a faux paint treatment—something Italianesque—you know, a mural deal, or just paint it to look like tile or stone. Seal it up.”

“Mural.” Gib pursed his lips, “She might go for that.”

“But.”

“Uh-oh.” Xander grinned, rocked back on his heels. “I hear dollar signs in that but.”

“But,” Bo repeated as he stepped off the rear of his imagined terrace, using his strides as an approximate measuring. “If you were going to go for it, you could add a little more, do the tile, put yourself in a kind of summer kitchen. You got that whole open-kitchen deal going inside, so you’d be mirroring it—smaller, more casual out here.”

“What do you mean, ‘summer kitchen’?”

He glanced back at Gib, saw he had his attention, warily. “You could put another stove out here, another cooktop deal, workstation. You lattice off those two sides, maybe you plant something viny, and do a kind of pergola, carrying the vines up and over the roof—just slats. Keeps it sunny but dappled, so it doesn’t drive your customers away when it’s too hot and bright.”

“That’s more elaborate than I had in mind.”

“Okay, well, you can just extend what you’ve got, resurface or—”

“But keep going on it. Pergola.”

Xander elbowed Jack and spoke under his breath. “Hooked him.”

“Well, see . . .” Patting his pockets, Bo trailed off. “Anybody got something to write on?”

He ended up using a paper napkin, with Jack’s back for a writing surface, and sketched out a rough design.

“Christ, Mama will love it. Dad, you’re so screwed.”

Gib rested his elbow on Xander’s shoulder, leaned in closer. “How much would something like this cost me?”

“For the structure? I can work you up an estimate. I’d want to take true measurements first.”

“You done back there? I want to see it.” Jack turned around, studied the napkin. Then lifted his gaze to his father-in-law. “Screwed. Only way out is to make him eat the napkin, kill him and dispose of the body.”

“I already thought of that, but we’d be late for dinner.” Gib let out a sigh. “Better go back and show it to her.” He gave Bo a slap on the back and a fierce grin. “We’ll see how long he lives after the estimate.”

“He’s kidding, right?” Bo asked Xander as Gib started back.

“You ever watch The Sopranos?”

“He’s not even Italian.” And looked like a nice, ordinary guy, carrying his granddaughter up the sidewalk toward home.

“Don’t tell him that, I think he’s forgotten. Just messing with you. But this place?” He paused out front. “With my father his emotional pecking order is my mother, his kids, their kids, his family, then this place. It’s not just a business. He likes you.”

“How you figure?”

“If he didn’t like somebody Reena brought to Sunday dinner, he’d be a lot more friendly, a lot quicker.”

“And that’s because?”

“If he didn’t like you, you wouldn’t worry him because he’d tell himself Reena wouldn’t get serious about you. You wouldn’t matter. If Dad’s got a favorite of us, it’s Reena. They’ve just got something . . . extra. Ah, Bella’s gang just got here.” He nodded up the street toward the late-model Mercedes SUV.

A willowy girl, early teens, Bo judged, got out first, flipped a shiny crop of gleaming blond hair over her shoulders and sauntered toward the Hales’.

“Princess Sophia,” Xander told him. “Bella’s oldest. She’s going through her I’m-bored-and-beautiful stage. There’s Vinny and Magdalene and Marc. Vince—corporate lawyer, lots of family dough.”

“You don’t like him.”

“He’s okay. He’s given Bella what she wanted, keeps her in the style to which she always insisted she was entitled. He’s a good father. Dotes on those kids. Just not the kind of guy you sit around drinking beer and shooting shit with. Last, but never least, Bella.”

Bo watched Bella step out of the car when her husband opened the door for her. “You’ve got a crop of beautiful women in your family.”

“That we do. Keeps us guys on our toes. Hey, Bella!”

He waved, dashed across the street and lifted his sister off her feet in a hug.

The noise level was huge. It was, Bo thought, like walking into a party that had been at peak for several years, and showed no signs of winding down. The floor was littered with kids of varying ages, with adults stepping over or around them.

Reena slipped up beside him, ran a hand down his arm. “You hanging in?”

“So far. They talked about killing me, but decided against it because, you know, dinner bell.”

“We do have our priorities,” she added. “What did you—?”

She broke off when Bianca stepped back in and shouted, “Dinner!”

It wasn’t quite a stampede, but it was a kind of blur of motion. Apparently, when Bianca Hale spoke, everybody listened. He was directed to a chair between Reena and An, then was served, family style, enough food to hold him for a week.

Wine flowed, as did conversation. No one seemed to mind if they were interrupted, talked over, even ignored. Everyone had something to say, and insisted on saying it whenever they liked.

The usual rules didn’t apply. If it was politics on the table, they talked politics. They talked religion, food, business. And prodded him without mercy regarding Reena.

“So . . .” Bella gestured with her glass. “Just where do you stand with Catarina, Bo?”

“Ah, about four inches taller.”

She gave him a little cat smile across the table. “The last one she brought home—”

“Bella,” Reena admonished.

“The last one she brought home was an actor. We decided he was able to memorize his lines because his head was so empty of anything else.”

“I dated a girl like that once,” Bo said lightly. “She could tell you what everyone wore to, say, the Oscars, but was a little shaky on who was actually president of the United States.”

“Bella can do both,” Xander said. “She’s multitalented. Vince, how’s your mother’s arm?”

“Better, much. She’ll be out of the cast next week. My mother broke her arm,” he explained to Bo. “She fell off her horse.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Barely slowed her down. She’s an amazing woman.”

“The paragon,” Bella said with a sweet, sweet smile. “How about your mother, Bo, will Reena have to compete with her, and pale in comparison?”

Tension slammed in, an angry party crasher. “Actually, I don’t see much of my mother.”

“Lucky Reena. Excuse me.” Bella set down her napkin, strode out of the room.

Reena was up a second later and marching after her.

“Let me show you an idea Bo had for the shop.” Gib took the napkin out of his pocket, smoothed it. “Just remember, I’m the father of your children so you can’t throw me over for this guy just because he’s supposed to be good with a hammer. Pass this down,” he said to Fran.

Bella grabbed her clutch bag and stormed out the back door with Reena on her heels.

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me. I wanted a damn cigarette.” She pulled out a jeweled box, slipped out a cigarette and lit it with a matching lighter. “You can’t smoke in the house, remember?”

“You were needling Bo.”

“No more than anyone else.” She sucked in smoke, blew it out in a quick stream.

“Yes, it was, and you know it. Subtext, Bella.”

“Screw your subtext. What do you care? You’re just going to fuck him for a few weeks, then move on. As usual.”

Temper had Reena shoving her sister back two full steps. “Even if that were true, it would be my business.”

“Then mind your own business, it’s what you’re best at. You’re only out here talking to me because you’re pissed off. Otherwise, you can’t be bothered.”

“This is bullshit. I called you back—twice. I left two messages.”

Bella took another, slower drag, and her fingers trembled. “I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Then why did you call?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you then.” Her voice broke as she whirled away. “I needed to talk to somebody, and you weren’t there.”

“I can’t be there every minute of every day, anticipating one of your crises, Isabella. That one’s not in the Sisters Rule Book.”

“Don’t be mean to me.” She turned back, and there were tears. “Please don’t be mean to me.”

With Bella, there were often tears, Reena thought. But those who knew her understood when they were temper, show or genuine. And these were real. “Honey, what’s the matter?” She moved forward, slipping an arm around Bella’s waist to lead her to a bench at the edge of the patio.

“I don’t know what to do, Reena. Vince is having an affair.”

“Oh, Bella.” Reena leaned over, drew Bella closer. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Are you sure?”

“He’s been having them for years.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Other women. There’ve been other women almost from the beginning. He just used to . . . He used to care enough to keep it from me. To be discreet. To at least pretend he loved me. Now, he doesn’t bother. He goes out two, three nights a week. When I confront him, he tells me to go shopping, to get off his back.”

“You don’t have to tolerate this, Bella.”

“And my choices are?” she asked bitterly.

“If he’s sleeping with other women, if he’s not honoring your marriage, you should leave him.”

“And be the first in this family to divorce?”

“He’s cheating on you.”

“He was cheating on me. When you cheat you at least try to hide it. Now he’s just flaunting it, throwing it in my face. I tried to talk to his mother about it—he listens to her. And do you know what? She just shrugged it off. His father’s had mistresses right along, what’s the big deal? You’re the wife, you have all the benefits. The home, the children, the credit cards, the social standing. The rest is just sex.”

“That’s just stupid. Have you talked to Mama?”

“I can’t. You can’t.” She squeezed Reena’s hand, battled back the tears. “She . . . God, Reena, I feel like such a fool, I feel like such a failure. Everyone else is so happy, and I’m so . . . not. Fran and Jack, Xander and An, and now you. I’ve got thirteen years invested in this marriage. I have four children. And I don’t even love him.”

“Oh God, Bella.”

“I never did. I thought I did. I thought I did, Reena. I was twenty, and he was so handsome and smooth—and rich. I wanted all that. It’s not wrong to want it. I’ve been faithful.”

“What about counseling?”

She sighed, stared beyond the patio, away from the house where she’d grown up. “I’ve been in therapy for three years. There are some secrets I can keep. She says we’re making progress. Funny, I don’t feel like it.”

“Bella.” Reena kissed her hair. “Bella, you have your family. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

“Sometimes you do. Fran’s the sweet one, you’re the smart one. Even though Fran’s prettier, I was the pretty one. Because I worked at it more. That’s what I traded on, and this is what I got.”

“You deserve better.”

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But I don’t know if I can give it up. He’s a good father, Reena. The kids adore him. He’s a good father, and he’s a good provider.”

“Listen to yourself. He’s a cheating sack-of-shit adulterer.”

With a watery laugh, Bella crushed out the cigarette, threw her arms around Reena. “That’s why I called you when I couldn’t call anyone else. Just that, Reene. Because you’d say something like that. Maybe this is partly my fault, but I don’t deserve my husband rolling out of my bed into another woman’s.”

“Damn right you don’t.”

“Okay.” She drew a tissue out of her bag, dried her face. “I’ll talk to him again.” She opened a compact, began to repair her makeup. “I’ll talk to my therapist. And maybe I’ll talk to a lawyer, just to test the ground.”

“You can always talk to me. I might not always be there when you call, but I’ll always call you back. Promise.”

“I know. God, look at this mess I’ve made of myself.” She pulled out a lipstick. “I’m sorry about before. Honestly. I’ll make it up to you. To him. He’s a nice guy, seems like a nice guy. That alone got me started.”

“It’s okay.” Reena kissed her cheek. “We’ll be okay.”

22

“Tell me one thing,” Bo asked as they walked home. “Did I pass the audition?”

“Sorry about that.” She winced. “About the questions, the demands to perform, the request for blood tests.”

“I’m getting one tomorrow.”

She reached out to pat his arm. “You’re a good sport, Goodnight.”

“Yeah, but did I pass?”

She glanced over, decided he was serious. “I’d say your colors are flying. I’m particularly sorry about Bella at dinner.”

“It wasn’t that big.”

“It was rude and uncalled for, but it wasn’t personal. She was upset, about something entirely unrelated. She’s going through a rough patch I didn’t know about until tonight.”

“No harm, no foul.”

“My mother’s not going to rest until she has her pergola.”

“Is your father going to hurt me when he gets the bid?”

“Depends on the bid.” She hooked her arm through his. “You know, when I was a kid, I used to dream about walking home on a warm summer night with a cute guy who claimed to be crazy about me.”

“Since I can’t be the first to make your dreams come true, I’ll try to make this one memorable.”

“You are the first.”

“Get out.”

“No, back when . . .” She stopped herself. “Just how many of my deep, dark secrets do I expose?”

“All of them. Back when?”

“When I was eleven, I was so sure when I got to be a teenager, everything would fall into place. My body, boys, my social skills, boys, boys. Boys. Then I got to be a teenager, and it didn’t all fall into place. Part of it, I think part of it goes back to the night of the fire at Sirico’s.”

“I heard about that. People in the neighborhood still talk about it. Some guy had a grudge against your father and tried to burn you out.”

“That’s the short version. Things changed for me that summer. I studied, I badgered John—John Minger, the fire inspector who handled our case. And I hung around the fire station. By the time I got to high school, I was, well, I was fairly geeky.”

“No possible way.”

“Oh, so possible. I was studious, athletic, obedient, shy around boys. I was a guy’s dream lab partner, his study buddy, his wailing wall, but not the girl he’d think to ask to the prom. I aced my way through high school, graduated third in my class, and could count the number of actual dates I had on one hand. And I yearned.”

She laid a hand on her heart, gave an exaggerated sigh. “I yearned for the boy who plopped down beside me for help with a chem test, or to tell me about the trouble he was having with his girlfriend. I wanted to be one of those girls, the ones who knew how to stand, and talk, and flirt, and juggle four boys at once. I studied them. I was a born observer, a cataloger. I studied, documented, practiced in the privacy of my room. But I never geared up the courage to take my show on the road. Until that night with Josh, the night you saw me. I finally got there.”

“He saw what the others had missed.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.”

“Easy, because I saw it, too.”

By tacit agreement, they turned at his house. “After Josh, something closed off in me, at least for a while.” She stepped inside when he unlocked the door. “I didn’t want a boyfriend anymore. Fire had tried to take my family’s treasure, its heritage, and now it had taken the life of the first boy who’d touched me. I bore down then. For months I didn’t do anything but study and work. When I was in the mood, I scooped up a boy, enjoyed him. Let him enjoy me. Moved on.”

She moved into his living room, no longer sure how her light reminiscence had turned so internal, and so serious. “There weren’t many, and they didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want them to. I wanted the work, the knowledge of how to do the work. Grad school, training, field work, lab work. Because the fire was in me, too, and it wouldn’t let anyone get too close.”

She let out a breath. “There was another guy I felt a little spark with. We were just circling around what we might do about it. And he was killed.”

“That’s a rough knock. You’ve had more than your share of them.”

“It was. And I guess, if I think about it, it soured me. Start to get too close to having someone mean something, and I lose them.”

He sat with her, picked up her hand, played with her fingers. Playing with fire, he thought. “What changed?”

“I’m afraid it was you.”

“Afraid?”

“A little bit, yeah. It’s only fair to tell you that because things have changed, or may be changing, what’s happening between us is going to have to be exclusive. If you want to see other women, it’s not going to work for me.”

He lifted his gaze from her fingers, met her eyes. “The only one I’m looking at is you.”

“If that changes, I expect you to tell me.”

“Okay, but—”

“Okay’s enough.” She swung around so she straddled his lap. “Let’s leave it at okay for right now.”

It looked like a typical kitchen fire. Big mess, smoke damage, minor injuries.

“Wife cooking dinner, frying up some chicken on the stove, leaves the room for a minute, grease flames up, catches the curtains.” Steve nodded toward the scorched counter, the blackened walls, the charred remnants of the curtains at the windows.

“Says she thought she turned it down, but must’ve turned it up, went to go to the bathroom, got a phone call. Didn’t think about it until she heard the alarm go off. Tried to put it out herself, burned her hands, panicked, ran out and called nine-one-one from the neighbor’s.”

“Uh-huh.” Reena walked across the sooty floor to study the burn pattern on the backsplash, the under cabinets. “Nine-one-one came in at about four-thirty?”

“Four thirty-six.”

“Early to be cooking.” She looked at the counter, the nasty trail the grease fire had left on the surface. “So, what? She says she grabbed the pan, and ended up spilling the grease along her counter, dropped it.” She bent closer to the skillet, and the smell of grease-soaked chicken.

“Something like that. She was pretty incoherent. Paramedics were treating her hands. Got her some second-degree burns.”

“Guess she was too panicked to think of grabbing this.” O’Donnell tapped the home fire extinguisher hooked on the inside wall of a broom closet.

“Lot of flame to reach those curtains,” Reena commented. “Chicken’s cooking away here.” She stood by the stove. “That’s some smart fire that leaps out of a pan and engages the curtains over a foot away. Must be a really sloppy cook.” She gestured to the surface of the stove. “You’ve got grease running back across here, taking a turn, hitting the wall. Like it had eyes. Then gosh, oh my goodness, look at what I did! Grab the pan, haul it another foot in the opposite direction, trailing more grease before you drop it and run away.”

O’Donnell smiled at her. “People do the craziest things.”

“Yeah, they sure do. Crappy cabinets,” she commented. “Countertop’s faded, scratched up. Appliances are low-end, old. Vinyl floor’s seen better days, even before our incident.”

She glanced over. “Phone right there on the wall. Portable job. Where’s the bathroom she used?”

“She said she used the one off the living room,” Steve told her.

They walked out, wending their way. “Nice furniture in here,” Reena observed. “On the new side. Everything’s color-schemed and clean and tidy. Another portable phone right there, on that little table.”

She stepped to the powder room door. “Coordinating guest towels, fancy little soaps, smells lemon fresh and looks like a magazine. I bet that kitchen was an eyesore.”

“Pebble in her shoe,” O’Donnell added.

Reena lifted the top of the toilet, saw the blue water. “Woman keeps a house this clean, this fresh and decorated, she doesn’t let her stove get greasy. We on the same page here, Steve?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Guess we’d better have a talk with her.”

They sat in the pretty living room with Sarah Greene’s bandaged hands in her lap. Her face was swollen from crying. She was twenty-eight, with glossy brown hair pulled back in a long tail. Her husband, Sam, sat beside her.

“I don’t understand why we’re talking to the police,” he began. “We’ve talked to the fire department. Sarah’s had a rough time. She really ought to be getting some rest.”

“We just need to ask a few questions, clear up a few things. We work with the fire department. How are your hands, Mrs. Greene?” Reena asked.

“They said they’re not too bad. They gave me something for the pain.”

“When I think of what could’ve happened.” Sam rubbed her shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes went wet and shiny. “I feel so stupid.”

“Fire’s a scary thing. You work for Barnes and Noble, Mrs. Greene?”

“Yes.” She tried to smile at O’Donnell. “I’m a manager there. This is my day off. I thought I’d surprise Sam with a home-cooked meal.” Her smile twisted. “Surprise.”

“Honey, don’t.”

“Got started on it early,” Reena commented.

“I guess. Impulse, really.”

No, not really, Reena thought. Since the package the chicken had come in, the one she’d dug out of the kitchen trash along with the market receipt for it, indicated it had been bought the Saturday before.

Which meant it would have been frozen for a few days, and would have taken some time to defrost. “You have a lovely house.”

“Thanks. We’ve been working on it since we bought it two years ago.”

“I just bought a row house recently. It’s screaming to be updated, fixed up. Takes a lot of time, effort, not to mention the expense.”

“Tell me about it.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Deal with one thing, you’ve got six others. Like dominoes.”

“I hear you. I’m starting to look at paint chips. And when I do, I realize once I do that, I’m going to have to replace curtains, deal with the floors, probably start shopping for new furniture. Then I’m going to have workers underfoot, probably for weeks at a time.”

“Gets old,” Sam agreed.

“But if you’re going to live there, you might as well have what you want.” Reena smiled at Sarah as she said it.

“Well, it’s your home.” Sarah pressed her lips together, avoiding meeting Reena’s gaze.

“Don’t get her started,” Sam said with a laugh, and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

“I’m going to have to get some estimates, I suppose, at least for things I can’t handle myself.” Reena kept her tone casual, conversational. “Like the plumbing, some carpentry. The kitchen. I’m told the kitchen’s usually the biggest chunk in the budget. What kind of bids did you all get for yours?”

“Got one two weeks ago. Twenty-five thousand.” Sam shook his head. “You go custom cabinets, solid surface, and that can double. It’s ridiculous.” He waved a hand. “Don’t get me started.”

“It must be hard, Mrs. Greene, to have most of your house done up just as you want it, and have an old, outdated kitchen. Sore thumb.”

“I guess it’s going to get done now,” Sam put in. He wrapped an arm around Sarah. “Triumph through tragedy. Insurance will cover a lot of it. Not worth Sarah getting hurt.” He lifted her injured hand gently at the wrist, kissed the bandage. And she began to cry again.

“Come on, baby, it’s not so bad. Don’t cry. Does it still hurt?”

“If you don’t make the claim, Sarah,” Reena said gently, “this can go away. We can make this go away, but not if you put in an insurance claim. Then it’s fraud. Then it’s arson. It’s a crime.”

“What are you talking about?” There was anger topping off Sam’s question. “What the hell is this? Fraud? Arson? Is this how you treat people when they’re hurt, when they’re in trouble?”

“We’re trying to make this easy on you,” O’Donnell told him. “On both of you. We have reason to believe the fire didn’t start exactly the way you’ve stated, Mrs. Greene. This goes to the next step, to your insurance company, we’re not going to be able to help you.”

“I want you to leave. My wife was hurt. You’re sitting here trying to say she did this on purpose. You’re out of your mind.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Of course you didn’t, honey.”

“I just wanted a new kitchen.”

Reena took tissues from her purse, passed them over. “So you started the fire.”

“She didn’t—”

“I was mad,” she interrupted, and turned to her husband’s stunned face. “I was just so mad at you, Sam. I hated cooking in there, or having our friends over. I told you, but you kept saying it was too much right now, and we’d have to wait, and you were sick of having the house torn up.”

“Oh my God, Sarah.”

“I didn’t think it would be like this. I’m so sorry. And after I did it, it was so awful, and I was so scared. I really did panic,” she said to Reena. “I thought it would burn the curtains, and some of the counter, but it got so much so fast, and I just panicked. And when I picked up the skillet the second time, after I put it on the counter, it was so hot, and it burned my hands. I was afraid the house would burn down, and I ran out, ran next door. I was so scared. I’m so sorry.”

“Sarah, you could’ve been killed. You could’ve . . . over a kitchen?” He gathered her in when she began to sob, looked at Reena over his wife’s head. “We won’t put a claim in. Please, you don’t have to charge her, do you?”

“It’s your home, Mr. Greene.” O’Donnell got to his feet. “As long as there’s no attempt to defraud, there’s no crime.”

“Sarah, people do stupid things.” Reena touched her shoulder. “But fire’s very unforgiving. You don’t want to test it again.” She took out a card, set it on the coffee table. “You can call me if you have any questions, or need to talk about this. Ah, it’s probably none of my business, but when you’re ready to deal with the repairs, I know somebody who might give you a lower bid.”

People,” O’Donnell said as they walked to the car.

“I felt a little like I was poking at a puppy with a stick.” She glanced back at the house. “They’ll either be able to make a joke out of this—tragedy plus time equals comedy. Oh yeah, we love these countertops. We got them because Sarah torched the old ones. Or they’ll be divorced in two years. What’s your view on divorce, O’Donnell?”

“Never been there.” He settled into the passenger’s seat. “Wife won’t let me.”

Reena snickered and took the wheel. “She’s so strict. We’re pretty strict on it, too, in my family. It’s the Catholic thing, and the family thing. Some of my cousins have been through rocky patches in their marriages, but so far, things have stuck. Makes it a little intimidating to take the step into holy wedlock. ’Cause it can mean serious lock.”

“You thinking about getting hitched? The carpenter?”

“No. Well, yes, it’s the carpenter, but no, not hitched. Just thinking in general.” She hesitated, then thought partners were partners, and the same as family. “My sister Bella told me her husband’s stepping out. Has been for years, apparently, but he’s rubbing her face in it now.”

“Rough.”

“You ever cheat?”

“Nope. Wife won’t let me.”

“That bitch.” Reena sighed. “I don’t know what she’s going to do. First off, it’s a surprise to me that she didn’t blab this to everyone, kept it to herself this long.”

“Touchy area.”

“We thrive on touchy in my family. And she’s been seeing a therapist—another surprise. It just makes me think how marriage is a land mine. A really intimate land mine. Adultery to kitchen fires. Never a dull.”

O’Donnell shifted in his seat to study her profile. “You’re serious about this guy.”

She started to blow it off, then shrugged. “Heading that way, for me. Gives me the wet palms if I think about it too hard. So I’m going to think about something else, like the fact my fire-starter hasn’t called since the night he torched the school.”

“You’re not figuring he’s done.”

“No, no, I’m not. I’m trying to figure how long he’s going to make me wait. Meanwhile, you mind if we take a detour? I’ve got something I want to do.”

“You got the wheel.”

Vince’s law firm was downtown, with a view of the Inner Harbor from his office. She’d been there only once before, but she remembered.

She wondered if the striking brunette who was his administrative assistant was the one he was stepping out with.

The waiting area was plush, neutral tones, very contemporary, with splashes of plum. She wasn’t kept waiting in it long, but was escorted through to Vince’s spacious office with its wide windows and walls of dramatic art.

He kissed both her cheeks in welcome. There was already a soft drink on ice and a tray of cheese and crackers on the coffee table in his seating area.

“Such a surprise. What brings you to my neck of the woods? Need a lawyer?”

“No. And I won’t keep you long. I don’t have time to sit, thanks.”

He smiled, charming, handsome, smooth. “Take a minute. The city can afford it. We never get to talk, just the two of us.”

“I guess we don’t. You skip a lot of the family events.”

His smile was full of regret. “The demands of the job.”

“And of the women you play with. You’re cheating on Bella, Vince, and that’s between the two of you.”

“Excuse me?” The charm drained out of his face.

“The fact that you’ve decided to rub her face in it, humiliate her, makes it my business. You want side dishes? Go ahead. You can break your marriage vows. But you won’t continue to make my sister feel like a failure. She’s the mother of your children, and you’ll respect that.”

He stayed calm. “Catarina, I don’t know what Bella’s told you, but—”

“Vince, you don’t want to call my sister a liar.” It was hard, it took vicious effort, but she stayed calm as well. “She may be a whiner, but she’s not a liar. That would be you. The liar and the cheat.”

There was a flash of fury. She felt it burst out of him, saw it kindle in his eyes. “You have no right to come into my office and speak to me like this, about matters that are none of your concern.”

“Bella’s my concern. You’ve been a member of the family long enough to know how we work. Respect her, or divorce her. That’s your choice. Make it soon, or I’ll make things very hard for you.”

He let out a surprised laugh. “Are you threatening me?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Give the mother of your children the proper respect, Vince, or I’ll see other people know where you’re spending your evenings instead of with your wife. My family will take my word on it,” she added. “But I’ll have it documented. Every time you go out to play, someone will be watching, and documenting. When I’m done, you won’t be welcome in my parents’ home any longer. Your children will wonder why.”

“My children—”

“Deserve better from their father. Why don’t you think about that? Honor your marriage, or dissolve it. Your choice.”

She walked out. Not like poking a puppy with a stick this time, she thought as she strode to the elevator. No, the weight on her shoulders now was pure satisfaction.

Bo walked into Sirico’s carrying the briefcase he used when he wanted to impress potential clients. Or in this case, the parents of the woman he was sleeping with.

It looked to him as if the dinner shift was well under way. He probably should’ve chosen a less chaotic time. Still could, he decided. But since he was here, he might as well order a pizza for takeout.

Before he could turn toward the counter, Fran walked over to him, bussed both his cheeks. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

“Hi, how are you? Let me get you a table.”

“That’s okay, I was just going to—”

“Sit, sit.” She took his arm, steered him toward a booth already occupied by a couple eating plates of pasta. “Bo, this is my aunt Grace and uncle Sal. This is Bo, Reena’s friend. Bo, you sit with the family until we get a table cleared.”

“I don’t want to—”

“Sit, sit,” he was ordered again, this time by Aunt Grace, who studied him with avid eyes. “We’ve been hearing all about you. Here, have some bread. Have some pasta. Fran! Bring Reena’s boyfriend a plate. Bring him a glass.”

“I was just going to—”

“So.” Grace gave his arm two light slaps. “You’re a carpenter.”

“Yes, ma’am. Actually, I just stopped in to drop something off for Mr. Hale.”

“Mr. Hale, so formal!” She batted at him again. “You’re going to design Bianca’s pergola.”

Word did travel, he decided. “I’ve got some sketches for them to look over. In fact.”

“In your case?” Sal spoke for the first time, jabbed his loaded fork toward Bo’s briefcase.

“Yeah, I was going to—”

“Let’s have a look.” Sal stuffed the pasta in his mouth, gave a come-ahead gesture with his free hand.

Fran came back with a salad, set it in front of Bo. “Mama says you’ll eat a nice salad, then you’ll have the baked spaghetti with Italian sausage.” Fran smiled winningly as she set down a red wineglass. “And you’ll like it.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Tell your papa to come over,” Sal ordered Fran as he poured wine from his bottle into Bo’s glass. “We’re looking at the pergola.”

“Soon as he gets a minute. Do you need anything else, Bo?”

“I seem to have it all.”

When Sal cleared the center of the table, Bo took out his sketches. “You’ve got your straight-on, your side and your bird’s-eye views,” he began.

“You’re an artist!” Grace exclaimed, and gestured to the charcoal sketch of Venice on the wall beside her. “Like Bianca.”

“Not even close, but thanks.”

“You got these columns on the ends.” Sal peered over his reading glasses. “Fancy.”

“More Italian.”

“More money.”

Bo lifted a shoulder, decided to eat the salad. “He can always go with treated posts. Either way, I’d paint them. Strong colors. Festive.”

“One thing to draw pictures, another to build. You got any samples of your work?”

“I’ve got a portfolio.”

“In the briefcase?”

Bo nodded, kept eating, and Sal made another come-ahead gesture.

“Gib’s busy, but he’ll be over in a minute.” Bianca slid into the booth beside her brother. “Oh, the sketches. These are wonderful, Bo. You’ve got a lovely hand.”

“An artist,” Grace said with a firm nod. “Sal’s browbeating him.”

“Of course he is,” Bianca agreed, and managed to elbow her brother and pick up a sketch at the same time. “It’s more than I imagined, more than I planned.”

“We can always adjust to—”

“No, no.” She waved Bo’s words aside. “Better than I imagined. Do you see, Sal? You and Grace could be sitting out there tonight, the pretty little lights, the vines, the warm air.”

“Sweating in August.”

“We’ll sell more bottled water that way.”

“A separate kitchen. More help, more expense, more trouble.”

“More business.” There was challenge on her face as she swiveled full-on to her brother. “Who’s run this place for the last thirty-five years? You or me?”

His eyebrows went up and down in a facial shrug.

They argued—or so he assumed, since part of the byplay was in rapid Italian with lots of dramatic gestures. Bo played it safe and concentrated on his salad.

Moments later, it was scooped away, and a plate of baked spaghetti set in its place. Gib dragged over a chair, sat at the end of the booth. “Where’s my daughter?” he asked Bo.

“Ah . . . I don’t know. I haven’t been home yet, but she said she’d probably be working late.”

“Look, Gib. Look at what Bo is building us.”

Gib took the sketches, took a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket. Lips pursed, he studied them. “Columns?”

“You can go with posts.”

“I want the columns,” Bianca said definitely, and jabbed a finger in her brother’s face when he opened his mouth. “Basta!”

“It’s more than I thought.”

“Better,” Bianca said, and her eyes narrowed on Gib’s face. “What, you need new glasses? You can’t see what’s in front of your face?”

“I don’t see a price in front of my face.”

Saying nothing, Bo opened his briefcase again, took out an estimate sheet. And had the pleasure of seeing Gib’s eyes widen.

“This is pretty steep.” He passed the sheet to Sal, who had his hand out.

“This is top-dollar labor rates.”

“I’m worth top dollar,” Bo said easily. “But I’m not opposed to bartering. This is great spaghetti, Bianca.”

“Thank you. Enjoy.”

“Bartering what?” Gib demanded.

“Meals, wine.” He grinned at Bianca. “Will work for cannoli. Word of mouth. I’m just getting established in this neighborhood. I can give you the material at my cost. Plus if you provide some of the grunt work—hauling, painting—that cuts it back.”

Gib breathed through his nose. “How much does that cut it back?”

Bo took a second estimate sheet out of his case, handed it to Gib.

Gib took a long look. “You must really like cannoli.” Once again he passed the sheet toward Sal, but this time Bianca snatched it. “Idiot,” she said in Italian. “What he likes is your daughter.”

Gib sat back, drummed his fingers on the table. “How soon can you start?” he asked. And offered his hand.

23

“Bo, I don’t want you to feel obligated to cut your profit like this, to work for below your going rate just because it’s my family.”

“Hmm.” He kept his eyes closed, continued to stroke his hand along her bare leg. “Did you say something? I’m in a cannoli coma complicated by a sexual haze.”

Understandable, she thought, since he had had three of her mother’s outrageous cannolis before they’d—finally—done justice to his kitchen floor.

“You do good work, and you deserve to get paid for it.”

“I’m getting paid for it. I just ate most of my initial deposit. It’s good business,” he continued, anticipating her. “Sirico’s is a neighborhood landmark. This job will show off my work, get people talking. Your parents are leaders in the word-of-mouth department.”

“Are you saying we’re blabbermouths?”

“You guys sure can talk. My ears have been ringing since dinner. In a good way,” he added, and yawned. “I think I even won your uncle over by the time it was done.”

“Uncle Sal, oldest son, renowned cheapskate. We love him anyway.”

“So, they get a bargain, I get to do a job I’ll enjoy—and reap the advertising. And, oh God, eat your mother’s cooking until I die.”

“You forgot the sexual bonus.”

“That’s personal.” This time he walked his fingers up her thigh, down again. “Doesn’t factor. But since I’ve been fiddling with some plans for your place, you could always take me upstairs and bribe me with continued sexual favors.”

She rolled over on top of him, made him moan. More from excess pastry than desire. “You’ve been working on plans for me?”

“Fiddling. Haven’t had too much time. But your dining room table’s almost finished.”

“I want to see. I want to see everything.”

“Table’ll be done in another couple days. The sketches are rough yet.”

“I have to see.” She rolled off, tugged his hand. “Right now. Right now.”

He groaned, but sat up and reached for his pants. “Half of the plans are still in my head.”

“I want to see the other half.” She dragged on her own pants, grabbed her shirt. Then she grabbed his face, smacked her lips to his. “Thanks in advance.”

“Thank me after.” He pulled open the refrigerator for water, then frowned when the phone rang. “Who the hell’s calling me at one in the morning? Better not be Brad wanting me to bail him out of jail. Though to be fair that only happened once.”

“Don’t answer it yet. Wait.” With her shirt half buttoned, she dashed to the phone, studied the readout. “Do you know this number?”

“Not right off.” It clicked, she could see it on his face. “Shit. Shit. Do you think it’s him?”

“Let me answer it.” She picked it up, said, “Yes?”

“Ready for another surprise? I hate to repeat myself, but you gotta do what you gotta do.”

She nodded at Bo, then gestured for him to get her paper and pen. “I wondered when you’d call again. How’d you know to reach me here?”

“Because I know you’re a whore.”

“Because I slept with you?” she asked, and began to write down the conversation.

“Can you remember everybody you slept with, Reena?”

“I’ve got a pretty good memory for that sort of thing. Why don’t you give me a name, or a place? Then we’ll see how memorable it was.”

“Just think about it, you just think about it, about all the men you let fuck you. Right back to the first.”

Her hand jerked. “A woman never forgets her first. That’s not you.”

“We’re going to party, you and me. But right now, why don’t you take a little walk? See what I left for you.”

The phone clicked. “Bastard,” she muttered, hunting up her cell phone. “He’s done something close, within walking distance. Don’t hang that up,” she added, then picked up her weapon, holstered it on as she dialed from her cell.

“It’s Hale. I need you to triangulate this number.” She read it off. “It’s going to be a cell phone, and he’s probably mobile. I’m giving you the number he called, leaving that line open.” She rattled out Bo’s number as she walked out of the kitchen. “He may have set a fire in the vicinity of my house. I want a couple of patrols. I’m heading outside now to check it out. You can reach me . . . Son of a bitch!”

She heard Bo curse behind her, then take off running back to the kitchen. “I’ve got a vehicle fire, this address. Bastard. Call it in!”

Bo flew by her, armed with a fire extinguisher.

The hood of the truck was up, the engine spitting out fire. Smoke billowed out of the bed, and beneath, pools of gas shimmered with flame. The tires were smoldering and the acrid stench of burning rubber soiled the air. More flames danced over the hood, along the roof of the cab, aided by the pleasant summer breeze.

But fury turned to fear when she spotted the trailer of rags burning toward the open gas tank. Twisting out of the tank with them was a red linen napkin with the Sirico’s logo folded down at the corner.

“Get back!” She leaped at Bo, yanked the extinguisher out of his hands. There was either enough left, or there wasn’t, she thought dully, and aimed at the tank.

Foam spurted out. Smoke blinded her, choked her as the breeze waved it in her face. The flavor of fire filled her mouth again as, along the ground, the streams of burning gas slid closer.

“Forget the truck.” Bo grabbed her on the fly, dragged her with him as he sprinted across the street.

The explosion shot the rear of the truck into the air, slammed it back down as the punch of it knocked them off their feet. There was a firestorm of blazing metal, hot shrapnel that rained onto the street, over other vehicles as he rolled with her under the cover of a parked car.

“Are you hurt? Are you burned?”

He shook his head, stared at the inferno that had been his truck. His ears rang, his eyes stung, and his arm felt flame kissed. When he ran his hand over it, it came away bloody.

“I almost had it. Another few seconds—”

“You almost got yourself blown up for a goddamn Chevy pickup.”

“He played me. He timed it.” Fire danced in her eyes as she slammed her fist on the asphalt. “The engine, the bed, distractions. If I’d seen the fuse sooner . . . Jesus, Bo, you’re bleeding.”

“Scraped up my arm some when we hit.”

“Let me see it. Where’s my phone? Where’s my damn phone?” She crawled out, saw it lying broken on the street. “Here they come.” Sirens wailed, and people poured out of neighboring houses. “Sit down over here, let me look at your arm.”

“It’s okay. Let’s both sit down a minute.”

He wasn’t sure if he was shaking, or if she was. Maybe both of them, so he gave in to his weakened legs and sank to the curb, pulled her down with him.

“You’ve got a gash here.” At the sight of his blood, she forced her mind to go cold. “You’re going to need stitches.”

“Maybe.”

“Take off your shirt. We need to put some pressure on this. I can do a field dressing until the paramedics look at it.”

Instead, he lifted his hip, pulled a bandanna out of his pocket.

“That’ll do. I’m so sorry, Bo.”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize.” He stared at his truck while she bandaged his arm. The pain hadn’t gotten through yet. He imagined it would soon enough. But he had plenty of rage inside him as he stared at what had been his. “That takes it off him and puts it on you.”

The response team leaped off their truck, began to smother the fire.

When she was done with the field dressing, she rested her head against her updrawn knees for a moment, then sucked in a breath. “I have to go talk to these guys. I’ll send a paramedic over. Unless he says different, I’ll drive you to the ER, get that dealt with.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He wasn’t in the mood for hospitals. He was in the mood to kick some ass. He rose, offered a hand. “Let’s go tell them what happened.”

She’d barely finished giving the details when half the people she knew were crowded on the street and sidewalk. Her parents, Jack, Xander, Gina and Steve, Gina’s parents, old classmates, cousins of old classmates.

She heard her father call Fran on his cell, tell her no one was hurt and ask her to relay the news to An.

Bases covered, she thought wearily, and turned when O’Donnell pulled up.

“We get a location?” she asked him.

“Working on it. You hurt?”

“No. Bruises where I hit the pavement. Bo played the hero, broke my fall.” She rubbed her eyes. “He let me keep him talking, gave him time to drive around, get the party started. He’d levered up the hood, doused it, dumped a bunch of mattress wadding in the bed, got that going for the smoke. Pools of gas under and around the truck, got the tires going. Big smoky stink, which distracted me long enough.”

Almost too long, she thought. If Bo hadn’t dragged her off, it might have been more than his truck seriously damaged.

“By the time I spotted the fuse—he’d hung one of Sirico’s dinner napkins out of the tank—we were on borrowed time. I started to deal with it, then Bo grabs me like I’m a football and he’s a tight end running for the goal line. Hard to say if he screwed himself out of a truck, and God knows how much in the tools he had in those lockboxes running along the bed, or if he saved my life.”

“Called you at Goodnight’s. You check your machine yet––see if he tried there first?”

“No, haven’t been back in yet.”

“Why don’t you do that now?”

“Yeah. Give me a minute.”

She moved off, had a word with Xander, then walked toward her house.

“Okay, pal.” Xander stepped over to Bo, gave Bo’s good shoulder a rub. “Let’s you and me walk on down to the clinic. I’ll fix you up.”

“Gee, Doc, it’s only a scratch.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“You go with Xander, don’t argue.” Bianca laid down the law. “I’ll go in, get you a clean shirt.”

Bo glanced toward his house. “Door’s open.”

Bianca tilted her head, her eyes soft with sympathy. “Do you have your keys? I’ll lock up for you.”

“No. I ran out without them.”

“We’ll take care of it.” She cupped his face. “We take care of our own. Now you go with Alexander, like a good boy. And tomorrow, when you feel better, you go see my cousin Sal.”

“I thought Sal was your brother.”

“This one is a cousin, and he’s going to give you a good price on a new truck. A very good price. I’ll write it down for you.”

“Jack, give Bianca a hand, will you?” Gib gave his wife a pat as he joined Xander and Bo. “I’ll walk along, make sure the patient doesn’t try to run for it.”

“He just likes to see me stick needles in people,” Xander said, taking Bo’s good arm.

“That’s heartening.” He looked for an escape route and found himself neatly flanked. “The paramedic said maybe a couple stitches. I can wait till the morning.”

“No time like the present,” Xander said cheerfully. “Hey! You had a tetanus shot lately? I love giving those.”

“Last year. Stay away from me.” He looked dubiously toward Gib. “I don’t need an honor guard.”

“Just keep walking.” Gib waited until they were through the thicket of neighbors. “I caught bits and pieces back there, and it sounds like there’s something going on I should know about. Somebody called Reena at your place.”

“Yeah, the guy from before. The one who’s been hassling her. The one who set fire to the school? And she hasn’t said anything to you about any of this?”

“Now you’re going to.”

Not just flanked, Bo decided. Squeezed. “Better if you asked her.”

“Better if I don’t help Xander hold you down while he does a prostate exam.”

“Now those are fun,” Xander agreed.

“Point taken. She should’ve told you, and now she’s going to be pissed I did. Maybe being the only child of divorced parents isn’t so bad. You guys are work.”

He told them what he knew as they walked the two blocks to the clinic, and inside. Xander’s amusement had turned to stony silence. He gestured toward an exam table.

“When did this start?” Gib demanded.

“From what I gather, right after she moved in.”

“And she says nothing.” Gib spun around, began to pace.

“Steve either,” Xander pointed out, and began to clean the gash.

Bo hissed in his breath at the sting. “Can’t you medical sadists come up with stuff that doesn’t burn down to the frigging bone?”

“You’ve got a nice gash here, Bo. About six stitches’ worth.”

“Six? Well, shit.”

“Going to numb you up.”

He studied the syringe Xander took from a drawer, then decided he preferred looking at Gib’s livid face. “I don’t know any more than that. I don’t know what his game is, but he’s got her on edge. She handles it, but it’s working on her.”

“Someone she put in prison,” Gib murmured. “Someone she put in, who got out. My little girl and I are going to have a talk.”

“Talk is our euphemism for yelling and swearing and occasionally throwing breakables,” Xander explained. “Little prick.”

“I don’t think I deserve to be called a prick just because—ouch. Oh, you meant that kind of prick. Mr. Hale . . . Gib, you’re her father, so you’ve known her longer, you know her better, but I’d say yelling and swearing and throwing breakables isn’t going to change a thing.”

Gib showed his teeth. “Never hurts to try.”

The front door rattled open, and a moment later Jack came in with a shirt and shoes. He glanced at Bo’s arm, gave a wince of sympathy. “Bianca thought you could use these. Stitches, huh?”

“Six, according to Dr. Gloom here.”

“Close your eyes, and think of England,” Xander said to Bo.

It could have been worse, Bo decided. He could have humiliated himself and squeaked like a girl. As it was he walked back home with his dignity fairly intact, sucking on the cherry lollipop Xander had handed him after the ordeal was over.

Most of the crowd had dispersed, with a few lingering in clutches to watch the sort of thing he imagined they only saw on TV.

Reena, O’Donnell and Steve, along with a couple of guys he figured were crime-scene people, were still swarming over the wreckage.

He wondered if his insurance had to cover the damage to the cars caused by the flying parts of his truck. Man, his rates were going to soar like a frigging eagle.

Reena broke away, crossed to him.

“How’s the arm?”

“Apparently I get to keep it. And I got a lollipop.”

“It made him stop crying,” Xander told her. “As for the truck, that looks DOA.”

“It’s bad,” she agreed. “Collateral damage on cars parked front and back—which includes mine. We’re about done with what we can do here. You can sign off on it, Bo, so we can take it into evidence.”

“What about my tools? Any of my tools make it?”

“Once we’re done, I’ll get what we’ve collected back to you. Mama’s inside.” She looked at her father. “She wanted to wait for you, to check on Bo.”

“Fine. I’ll go wait with her.”

“I’m going to be a little while longer here. It’s late, you should go on home.”

“We’ll wait.”

She frowned after Gib as he walked toward her house. “What’s going on?”

“Come on, Jack, I’ll walk you home.” Xander slung an arm around his brother-in-law’s shoulders, looked at Bo. “Keep that dressing dry, use the ointment as prescribed. I’ll check on you tomorrow.” He caught Reena’s chin in his hand, kissed her on the cheek. “Your butt’s cooked. ’Night.”

Jack kissed her forehead. “You take care of yourself. See you, Bo.”

Reena’s gaze ticked back to Bo. “What’s going on?”

“You didn’t tell them.”

She opened her mouth, hissed out a breath. “And you did.”

“You should’ve told them, and you put me in a spot where I had to be the bearer.”

“Great.” Stewing, she stared at her house. “Just great. You couldn’t just keep it zipped, wait for me to deal with this.”

“You know what?” he said after a moment. “It’s been a crappy night, and I don’t feel like going another round. Do what you do. I’m going to bed.”

“Bo—” He held up a hand as he walked away, and she was left with a good mad on, and no place to put it.

By the time she dragged herself through her own front door, it was after four in the morning. She wanted a long, cool shower and her own soft bed.

Her parents were on the sofa, snuggled up like a couple of sleeping kids. Considering that a blessing, she eased back, intending to tiptoe upstairs.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Her father’s voice stopped her, had her closing her eyes. Not once, not once had any of them been able to sneak into the house after curfew. The man had instincts like a snake.

“It’s late. I want to catch a couple hours’ sleep.”

“You’re old enough so your wants won’t hurt you.”

“Oh, I hate when you say that.”

“You should be careful with your tone, Catarina.” Bianca spoke without opening her eyes. “We’re still your parents, and we’ll be your parents a hundred years after you’re dead.”

“Look, I’m really tired. If we can just table this until tomorrow.”

“Someone’s threatening you, and you don’t tell us?”

Okay, no chance for a respite. Reena dragged out the band holding her hair back as her father rose from the couch. “It’s work, Dad. I don’t, can’t, won’t tell you everything about the job.”

“It’s personal. He’s calling you. He knows your name. He knows where you live. And tonight, he tried to kill you.”

“Do I look dead?” she shot back. “Do I look hurt?”

“And what would you be if Bo hadn’t acted quickly?”

“Oh, great.” She threw up her hands, stormed around the room. “So he’s the white knight and I’m the helpless damsel. Do you see this?” She yanked her badge out, shoved it in her father’s face. “They don’t give these out to helpless damsels.”

“But they give them out to stubborn, selfish women who can’t admit when they’re wrong?”

“Selfish?”

They were shouting now, their faces inches apart. “Where do you get that? It’s my job, it’s my business. Do I tell you how to run your business?”

“You’re my child. Your business is always my business. Somebody tried to hurt you, and now he’s going to have to deal with me.”

“This is just what I was trying to avoid. Why didn’t I tell you all this? Play this conversation back. You are not getting into this. You are not getting into my work, into this part of my life.”

“Don’t you tell me what I’m going to do!”

“Back at you.”

“Basta! Basta! Enough!” Bianca sprang off the couch. “Don’t you raise your voice to your father, Catarina. Don’t you yell at your daughter, Gibson. I’ll yell at both of you. Imbeciles. Stupidi! You’re both right, but that won’t stop me from knocking your empty heads together to hear the crack. You—” She jabbed a finger into her husband’s chest. “You go round and round and don’t get to the meat. Our daughter isn’t selfish, and you’ll apologize. And you—” The finger stabbed out at Reena. “You have your work, and we’re proud of what you do, who you are. But this is different, and you know it. This is not about someone else. This is you. Do we ever say, ‘No, no, Catarina’ when you go into a building that may fall on your head? Did we say, ‘No, you can’t become a police officer, and worry us every day, every night’?”

“Mama—”

“I’m not finished. You’ll know when I’m finished. Who stood the tallest, who was the proudest when you became what you always wanted? And you’d stand here and tell us this isn’t our business when someone wants to hurt you?”

“I just . . . I just didn’t see the point in worrying everyone.”

“Hah! That’s our job. We’re family.”

“Okay, I should’ve told you, and I would have after tonight—and if Bo hadn’t—”

“You’re going to blame him now?” Gib broke in.

She hunched her shoulders. “He’s the only one left, and since he’s not here to object, sure. I like hanging this on him. And what, suddenly he’s your new best friend?”

“He got hurt making sure you didn’t.” Gib took her face in his hands. “Xander could have been sewing you up tonight. Or worse.”

“Apologize,” Bianca reminded him, and had Gib casting his eyes to the ceiling.

“I’m sorry I said you were selfish. You’re not. I was mad.”

“It’s okay. I am selfish when it comes to you. I love you. I love you,” she repeated, sliding into his arms, reaching for her mother’s hand. “I don’t know who’s doing this, or why, but I’m afraid now. At both scenes he’s left something from Sirico’s.”

“Sirico’s?” Gib repeated.

“One of the matchboxes at the school, a dinner napkin tonight. He’s telling me he can walk in there, get to you. He’s telling me . . .” Her voice wavered. “I’m afraid that he might try to hurt one of you. I couldn’t stand it.”

“Then you know how we feel about you. Go, get a little sleep. We’ll lock up on our way out.”

“But—”

Bianca squeezed Gib’s hand before he could speak. “Get some rest,” Bianca continued. “Don’t worry any more tonight.”

When they were alone, Gib whispered to his wife, “You’re not thinking about leaving her alone.”

“We’re going to leave her alone. We have to believe in her, and she has to know we believe in her. It’s so hard.” She pressed her lips tight for a moment, steadied her voice. “It never stops being hard to step back from your babies. But you do it. Come on, let’s lock up. We’ll go home and worry about her.”

The phone woke her at five forty-five. Reena clawed her way through the sticky syrup of exhaustion, fumbled on the light, then the recorder.

“What?” she mumbled into the receiver.

“Just weren’t quick enough, were you? Not as smart as you think you are.”

“But you’re smart, aren’t you?” She chained back her temper. “Except, you know, that was a lot of trouble, a lot of bang to take out a truck. Plenty more where that came from.”

“Bet he’s pissed.” There was a low laugh. “Wish I’d seen his face when it blew.”

“You should’ve stuck around. If you had balls, you’d have stuck around for the show.”

“I’ve got balls, bitch. You’ll be licking them before we’re done.”

“If that’s all you want, tell me where and when.”

“My time, my place. You don’t get it, do you? Even after tonight you don’t get it. You’re supposed to be the smart one, but you’re just a dumb whore.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If that’s the case, why don’t you give me a couple hints. The game’s no fun if I’m lagging behind. Come on,” she coaxed, “let’s play.”

“My game, my rules. Next time.”

When he hung up, she sat back. Her mind was working now, cleared of sleep and working fast.

Don’t get it, do you, even after tonight?

What came out of tonight? she asked herself. He uses different methods, different types of targets. He doesn’t stick with the same MO, the same targets as a more typical serial arsonist would.

He leaves something from Sirico’s as a signature. As a message to her.

Someone she’d taken there in the past? O’Donnell was looking at Luke, and Luke hadn’t had any love for the shop. But Luke was in New York. It was possible, of course, that he drove down to Baltimore, but why would he? Why would he harass her after all these years?

And the syntax was wrong, the pattern of it. Luke could do that deliberately, to throw her off. But again, why?

Added to it, he didn’t know anything about fire, about explosives. Other than having his Mercedes torched, he . . .

She sat straight up.

“Oh God!”

It wasn’t the same—not exactly. Bo’s truck hadn’t been broken into, the interior fired, the alarm disengaged. But . . .

Gas poured on the engine, on the tires, under the chassis, the device in the gas tank.

All those years ago. Could this be the same person? Not someone who’d wanted to attack Luke, not someone with a grudge against Luke.

But her. All this time.

But so much damn time, she thought, getting up to pace herself through it. Six years? Had there been incidents between she hadn’t clicked into? Fires she’d investigated that were his work?

She’d have to go through the open files, the cold cases. Anything that had come through the unit and hadn’t been closed.

How far back had it started? How long had he been gearing himself up to make personal contact with her?

A cold chill squeezed her heart, had her stopping. She could feel the blood draining out of her face even before she turned and ran down the stairs.

Her hands shook as she grabbed the notes she’d brought home from Bo’s kitchen. The notes of her conversation with the arsonist.

Just think abt it, she’d written in the bastard shorthand she used during interviews. thk abt all the men you let fk you rgt bk to the 1st.

“The first,” she murmured, and sank slowly to the floor. “Josh. Oh, Mother of God. Josh.”

24

At five minutes to eight, Reena banged on Bo’s front door and kept banging until he answered.

His eyes were heavy, his hair pancaked on one side of his head, spiked on the other. He wore nothing but a pair of blue boxers and a sleepy scowl.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Sure, sure, come on in,” he muttered when she breezed right by him. “Have a seat. Want some breakfast? I’m here to serve.”

“I’m sorry I had to wake you, and I know you had a bad night, but this is important.”

He jerked a shoulder, cursed when his injured arm objected to the movement. Then he turned his back on her and shuffled toward his kitchen.

He got a can of Coke from the fridge, popped it. Guzzled it where he stood.

“I also know you’re irritated with me,” she continued. She heard her tone—prim as her first-grade teacher’s—and wasn’t entirely displeased. “But this isn’t the time to be childish.”

His bleary eyes narrowed over the can. He flicked up his middle finger. “That,” he told her, “was childish.”

“You want to fight, I’ll pencil you in for later. This is official, and I need you to pay attention.”

He dropped into a chair, gave her a careless, get-on-with-it wave.

She could see the resentment, the fatigue and, she noted, some pain lurking in his eyes. But coddling wasn’t on the agenda.

“I have reason to believe the connection I have with the arsonist goes back much further than we initially thought.”

He downed more Coke. “So?”

“I’m pursuing the theory based on some of the conversations I’ve had with him, including the one early this morning.”

His hand tightened on the can enough to leave impressions. “So, he gave you a wake-up call and you decided to spread the wealth and get me out of bed.”

“Bo.”

“Fuck it.” He said it wearily, without heat, as he pushed himself out of the chair and went to a cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of Motrin, poured a few in his palm, tossed them into his mouth like candy.

“It’s hurting.”

He gave her a steely stare as he washed down pills with Coke. “No, I just like Motrin and Classic Coke. Breakfast of frigging champions.”

Something sank in her stomach. “You really are angry with me.”

“I’m angry with you, with men and women, small children and all manner of flora and fauna on the planet Earth, possibly in the universe, where I believe other life exists, because I got about five minutes’ sleep and my entire body hurts like a mother.”

She’d noted the bruises, in addition to the bandaged arm. Bruises, scrapes, nicks—she’d found a number on herself as well. His were worse, no doubt. His were worse because he’d taken the brunt to shield her.

She’d intended to be quick, brisk, give him the gist without going into detail. Now, looking at his sulky eyes, his bed hair, his poor battered body, she changed her mind.

Even her strict first-grade teacher had kissed it better when she scraped her knee on the playground.

“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you something to eat, an ice pack. That knee’s pretty banged up.”

“I’m not hungry. There’s a bag of frozen peas in there.”

Having suffered through her share of sprains and bruises, she understood what the peas were for. Retrieving them from the freezer, she walked over to lay them over his knee herself.

“I’m sorry you were hurt. I’m sorry about your truck. I’m even sorry I swiped at you for telling my father something I wasn’t ready to tell him myself.”

She sat, propped her elbows on the table, pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Bo, I’m so damn sorry.”

“Don’t do that. If you cry you’re going to ruin a perfectly good mad.”

“I’m not going to cry.” But it was a nasty internal war to keep her word. “It’s bad to worse, Bo. And you’re in this because of me.”

“How much worse?”

“I have to make a call.” She drew out her phone. “This is going to take a little longer than I planned. Is it okay if I get one of those?” she asked, nodding toward his Coke.

“Go ahead.”

“O’Donnell?” She rose as she spoke. “I’m going to be another half hour. Running a little behind.” She opened the fridge. There were Diet Pepsis mixed in with his Classic Cokes. Ones she knew Bo had bought for her.

Tears stung again, made her feel ridiculous.

“No, I won’t. See you in thirty.”

She disconnected, sat again. Opening the can, she looked at Bo. “A few years ago, I was seeing someone. We’d been seeing each other, exclusively, for a few months. Closer to four, I guess. He wasn’t my usual type. A little slick, a lot demanding. I wanted a change, and he was it. Status type, drove a Mercedes, wore Italian suits, drank the right wines. We saw a lot of movies with subtitles that I’m dead sure he didn’t enjoy any more than I did. I liked being with him because I got to be a girl.”

“And other times you’re what? A poodle?”

“Girly,” she corrected. “Fussy female, accommodating.” She shrugged a little, and still felt silly about it. “Change of pace for me. I let him pick the restaurants, make the plans. It was a brief relief. In my line you’ve got to be on your toes, and you can’t be girly. You’ve got to see a lot of things, do a lot of things . . . Well. Maybe I wanted the contrast.”

“Can we pause it here? You think this guy’s the one who’s been calling you?”

“No. It’s not impossible, but no, I don’t. He’s a financial planner who got a manicure twice a month. He lives in New York now. In any case, he was beginning to get under my skin some. I let it slide because . . . I’m not entirely sure, and it doesn’t matter. The night I caught my first case as a detective with the unit we had a little argument. He hit me.”

“Whoa.” Bo set his can on the table. “What?”

“Wait.” Get it all out, she told herself. The whole humiliating ball of it. “I thought it was an accident, which is what he claimed. It was one of those dramatic moving around, gesturing, and I moved toward him from behind, his hand came back. It could’ve been an accident, and I accepted it as such. Until the next time.”

There were no sleepy mists in his eyes now. They were pure, hard green. “He hit you again.”

“This was different. He made these elaborate dinner plans, and I was clueless. Fancy French place, champagne, flowers, the works. He tells me he’s been promoted. And transferring to New York. I’m happy for him—it’s kind of a jolt, but what are you going to do? Plus . . .”

She paused, sighed out a breath. “Plus, some part of me was thinking, Boy, this sure makes it easy on me. No dramatic breakup scene.”

“And you say that with guilt because?”

“It seems cold, I guess. Hey, the boyfriend I’m getting a little tired of is moving out of state. Lucky me! But while I’m trying to pretend I’m not a little relieved, he says he wants me to go to New York with him, and even then it takes me a few minutes to get he means move there. That’s not going to happen, and I’m trying to tell him why I can’t. Won’t.”

“Okay, the guy you’ve been seeing a few months wants you to pull up stakes, leave your home, your family, your job because he gets a transfer.” He drank with one hand, jabbed a finger at her with the other. “See, I told you there was life beyond our big blue ball. Obviously this guy was spawned on Planet No Way In Hell.”

It made her laugh a little. “Well, it gets worse. Suddenly he’s flashing this meteor-sized diamond ring, telling me we’re getting married, moving to New York.”

She closed her eyes because the sensations she’d experienced then came right back. “I’m sucker punched, I swear. This came out of nowhere for me, and while I’m trying to tell him thanks but no thanks, the waiter’s bringing champagne over, people are applauding, and the damn ring’s on my finger.”

“Ambush.”

“Yeah.” She blew out a breath, grateful he understood. “I couldn’t get into it there, in front of the whole damn restaurant, so I waited until we got back to my place. Let’s say he didn’t take it well. He blasted me good. I’d humiliated him, lying bitch, stupid and blah blah. I stopped feeling sorry for him and blasted back. And he nailed me. Said he was going to teach me who was in charge, and when he came up for the follow-through, I took him down, bruised his balls and kicked him out.”

“I’m going to say congratulations, and add that from what you’ve just told me, he’s a top contender for what’s going on now.”

He wasn’t going to make her feel guilty, Reena realized. Or stupid or weak. It was an interesting experience to share a nasty and humiliating experience with a man who wouldn’t let her feel soiled or humiliated.

The race going on inside her heart kicked into another gear.

“I don’t think so, but I think he’s connected. The next morning, early, my captain and O’Donnell are at the door. Turns out that somebody torched Luke’s Mercedes, a few hours after he crawled out my door. He was pointing the finger at me for it. It didn’t stick. For one thing Gina had come over, stayed the night, and was still there. For another, they believed me.”

She could see by his face he was keeping pace with her, but she filled in the last details anyway. “The method used wasn’t exactly like last night, Bo, but there are strong similarities. And when the fire-starter called me this morning, he alluded to it.”

“This Luke asshole could have torched his own car to take another jab at you. He could be doing this now for more payback.”

“Possible, except . . . Last night, when he called, he said something else. Didn’t click in, not completely. Everything happened pretty quick after, and it didn’t gel for me until this morning. He said I should think back over the men I’ve been with, right back to the first.”

“And?”

“The first was Josh. Josh was killed in a fire, long before I met Luke.”

“Smoking in bed.”

“I never believed it.” Even now, her voice caught. “I had to accept it, but I never believed it. Three men now, three I’ve been involved with, that I know of, have been connected to serious fires. One of them’s dead. I’m not going to consider it a coincidence. Not now.”

He rose, limped to the fridge, got out another Coke. “Because now you’re thinking Josh was murdered.”

“Yes, I do. And I think the use of fire’s been deliberate all along, because anyone who knew me knew I was studying and working toward becoming an arson investigator. Ever since . . .”

“Ever since the fire at your restaurant,” he finished.

“Jesus. Pastorelli.” It made her stomach cramp. “It all started that day. Everything started that day.” She let out a breath. “All right, I’m going to check this out. Meanwhile, can you take some time off?”

“What for?”

“Bo, Josh is dead. Luke moved to New York, and I broke things off with him in any case. You’re right next door. He could try for your house next, or for you.”

“Or you.”

“Take a couple of weeks, take a vacation, give us time to shut this down.”

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

Her hands balled into fists on the table. “I’m the fuse. I go, he stops, waits for me to come back.”

“The way I see it, we’re both the fuse. Unless you plan on taking up with some other guy while I’m off somewhere water-skiing. I value my skin, Reena, what’s left of it. But I’m not running off and waiting for you to send me an all clear. I don’t work that way.”

“This isn’t the time to be such a damn man.”

“Until I grow breasts, I’m stuck being a man.”

“You’ll distract me. Worrying about you will distract me. If something happened to you—” She broke off as her throat slammed shut.

“If I said that to you, you’d tell me you can take care of yourself, that you’re not stupid or reckless.” He raised his eyebrows when she said nothing. “Why don’t we skip the part where I say it back to you, we both toss around the same arguments.”

The good nature faded from his eyes, turned them that chilly green. “The son of a bitch came at me, Reena. He blew up my goddamn truck. You think I’m walking away?”

“Please. Just a few days then. Three days. Give me three days to . . .” Her voice began to hitch.

“No. Don’t cry. It’s hitting below the belt, and it won’t work.”

“I don’t use tears to get my way, you stupid ass.” She dashed at them with the backs of her hands. “I can put you in protective custody.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t you see, I can’t handle this.” She pushed away from the table, stalked to the window over the sink, stared out.

“I can see you’re not handling something.”

“I don’t know what to do.” She pressed her fist between her breasts as her heart shuddered. “I don’t know how to be. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“No, no! Are you blind, are you stupid?” she demanded as she whirled around to him. “I can handle the case. You work it, you just work it. It’s a puzzle and all the pieces are there. It’s just finding them and putting them in the right place. But this? I can’t . . . I can’t handle this.” She thumped her fist between her breasts. “I’m . . . I’m . . . ”

“Asthmatic?” he said when she just stood there wheezing.

She stunned them both by grabbing a mug off the counter and hurling it against the wall. “You blithering idiot, I’m in love with you.”

He held up a hand as if to ward off another mug, though hers were empty. “Minute, okay. Just a minute.”

“Oh, screw this.” She started to charge out, but he grabbed her hand, locked her down.

“I said wait a damn minute.”

“I hope you have a seizure, and it makes you stumble all around the room so you cut your feet to ribbons on broken glass.”

“Love comes in many forms,” he muttered.

“Don’t make fun of me. You started this. All I did was walk out my own back door one day.”

“I’m not making fun of you. I’m trying to catch my breath.” His hand stayed firm on hers, and he stayed planted in the chair with a bag of frozen peas defrosting over his bruised knee.

“When you say you’re in love with me, is that upper- or lowercase L? Don’t you hit me,” he warned when he saw her other hand fist.

“I have no intention of resorting to physical force.” But it had been a close one. Now she forced her hand, her arm, then her body to relax. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let go of my hand.”

“Fine. Then I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go storming out of here so I have to get up and limp after you, perhaps have a seizure and cut my feet to ribbons on broken glass.”

Her lips twitched. “See? Damn it, that’s got to be why this happened to me. You’re no pushover, Goodnight, but you make yourself so damn affable it’s easy to think you’re pushable. And you’re accommodating, right up to a line you’ve drawn in your head. It would probably take dynamite to blast you over that line once you’ve drawn it. My mother was right. She’s always right.”

On a sigh, she walked to his broom closet, got out the broom and dustpan. “You’re like my father.”

“I am not.”

She smiled and began to sweep up the shards. “I never got really serious about anyone before you because they never made the cut. They never measured up for me to the one man I admire most. My father.”

“You’re right. We’re exactly alike. Separated at birth.”

“It was lowercase, and that was disconcerting enough. Then this morning, you opened the door and it was a big, fat, shiny capital L. And look at you. Your hair’s all stupid.”

He lifted a hand in response, felt it. Grimaced. “Shit.”

“And your underwear’s falling apart.”

He hitched at the ragged waistband. “It’s got plenty of wear in it yet.”

“You’re all bruised up and scowly. And it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry about the mug.”

“Your brother mentioned you guys throw things. I’ve been in love with you since approximately ten-thirty P.M., May ninth, 1992.”

Her smile stayed soft as she dumped the shards in his trash can. “No, you haven’t.”

“Easy for you to say. It was lowercase,” he continued while she replaced the broom. “With a lot of fantasy sparkling over it. Took on a different kind of glow after I actually met you, but it was the lowercase deal.”

“I know. I’m going to be late,” she said when she looked at her watch. “I’m going to have a couple of cops assigned to you until—”

“It grew up.”

She dropped her hand, said nothing.

“It grew up, Reena, so I guess we’re both going to have to figure out how to handle it.”

She stepped to him, laid her cheek on the top of his head. She felt, actually felt her heart settle. “This is the strangest thing,” she told him. “And I can’t stay. I can’t stay any longer.”

“It’s okay. It can wait.”

She bent down until her lips met his. “I’ll call you later.” She kissed him again. “Be careful.” And again. “Be safe.”

Then hurried out, dashing to the front door before he could lever out of the chair.

So he sat where he was, in the morning light coming through the windows, with a can of warm Coke on the table. And thought what a strange, strange ride life was.

He’d barely finished off the Coke when there was more banging on his door. “For God’s sake.”

He got up, decided the pills and the peas had helped, and headed out. He was going to have to give the woman a key, he could see that coming. And that was the next thing to living together, which was cousin to the all-powerful M word. And he just didn’t want to think about that yet.

When he pulled open the door, his arms were immediately filled with female. But it wasn’t Reena.

“Bo. God, Bo!” Mandy squeezed him hard enough to have his bruises weeping. “We came right over, as soon as we heard.”

“Heard what? We who?”

“About the bomb in your truck.” She jerked back and her eyes raced over him. “Oh, you poor baby! They said minor injuries. You’re all banged up. You’ve got a bandage. And what is wrong with your hair?”

“Shut up.” He scrubbed at it.

“Brad’s parking. You have to go on safari for a parking place in this neighborhood. And they’ve got the front of your house blocked still.”

“Brad.”

“I didn’t hear sooner because I turned off my cell by mistake and I wasn’t home, so the paper couldn’t reach me. We didn’t know anything until this morning. Why didn’t you call?”

“Brad?” He wasn’t slow, even if he was working on about five minutes’ sleep. “You and Brad? Together? My Brad?”

“Well, God, it’s not like you were going to sleep with him. And it was completely unplanned. Come on, let me help you sit down.”

He waved his hands like a traffic cop. “Wait, wait, wait. Am I in Bizzaro World?”

“It’s not so bizzaro. We’ve known each other for years. We just hooked up, decided to go get something to eat, maybe see a movie, and one thing, another thing.” She grinned, wide and bright. “It was great.”

“Shut up! Don’t tell me.” He clamped his hands over his ears, made loud noises with his mouth to block her out. “My brain cannot withstand the data. It’ll implode.”

“You’re not going to be one of those jerks who’s like, ‘I used to sleep with her so now none of my friends can be interested,’ are you?”

“What? No.” Was he? “No,” he decided after another minute. “But—”

“Because we really connected. Now, let me help you . . .” Her face went dreamy, and when Bo followed the direction of her gaze, he spotted Brad coming down the street with the male version of dreamy on his face.

Bo turned away, hands clamped to his skull. “My head, my head. You guys, my best friends in this life, are about to finish the job that son of a bitch started last night.”

“Don’t be silly. And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re parading in the doorway in your underwear. Ratty underwear. He’s okay,” she called out to Brad.

“Man, scared ten years off us.” Brad jogged up the steps. “You’re okay? Did you see a doctor? Want us to run you in for X-rays?”

“I saw a doctor.” He grunted when Brad wrapped his arms around him.

“We were worried sick, came right over. What about your truck?”

“Toast.”

“Damn good truck. What can we do? Want me to leave the car for you? Or we can hang, take you anywhere you need to go.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t pulled it together yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mandy told him. “You want to stretch out? I can make you something to eat.”

Despite the fact that he saw their hands sneaking together, Bo realized they were there for him. Just like always. “I’ve got to take a shower, get dressed, clear my head.”

“Okay, I’ll make breakfast while you do. We’ll both take the day off, right, Brad?”

“Sure.”

“And when you come back down,” she added, “we want to know what happened. Everything.”

Reena rubbed her eyes to clear them, then refocused on her computer screen. “Pastorelli Senior’s been swinging in and out of the system most of his life. Assaults, drunk and disorderly, assault with intent, the arson, petty larceny. There are four questioned-and-released in his file on suspicious fires. Two before the one at Sirico’s, two after he was released from prison. Last known address is in the Bronx. But his wife’s in Maryland, just outside D.C.”

“The son’s been working on following in his father’s footsteps,” O’Donnell told her. “A couple stints in juvie before he hit sixteen.”

“I know about those. John kept up for me, when I asked him. They took him away,” she told him. “Like they took his father. The night Joey killed his dog and left it burning on our steps.”

She rose, walked around to sit on the corner of O’Donnell’s desk so their conversation was less hampered by the backchat of the squad room. “He killed his own dog, O’Donnell. They said it was a violent acting out, a result of having his father arrested because of the fire. A troubled child, a confused child from an abusive home life. Because his father used to tune his mother up regularly. And knocked the kid around from time to time, too.”

“But you’re not buying that.”

“No. I saw the way he ran after the car when they arrested Pastorelli. He worshipped his father. A lot of kids in that sort of atmosphere do. His mother was weak, ineffectual. His father ruled. And look at his pattern,” she added, turning so she could see the readout on O’Donnell’s screen. “Arrests for assault, sexual assault, vandalism, grand theft auto, parole violations. Not just following, outdoing his father.”

“There’s no fire on his record.”

“So, maybe he’s more careful, or more lucky, in that area. Maybe he and his father have some sort of tag team going. Maybe he saved his fire-starting for me. But one or both of them is behind this.”

“No argument.”

“One or both of them killed Josh Bolton.”

“It’s a big step up from what’s on their sheets to murder, Hale.”

She shook her head. “There might be others, and they just haven’t been caught. It goes back to me. Straight back to the day Joey assaulted me. Sexual assault, that’s what it was, but I was too young to get that.”

But she could remember it still, and very well, the way he’d grabbed at her chest, her crotch, the names he’d called her. And his face, the wildness on it.

“He jumps me, and my brother, a couple of his friends hear me screaming—run him off. I tell my father, and he goes straight over, gets in Pastorelli Senior’s face. I’ve never seen my father like that. If some of the neighbors, some of the people in Sirico’s, hadn’t come out, broken it up, it would’ve gotten bad. Seriously bad. My father threatened to call the cops, and people who were there, hearing what went down, were behind him.”

“And that night Pastorelli torches Sirico’s.”

“Yeah. Get in my face, you bastard, here’s what you get. Sloppy job. Drunk and sloppy, and no thought to the family who lived upstairs. The place could’ve burned down around them.”

“But you saw the fire.”

“I saw the fire. Back to me. So we had a mess on our hands, but nobody was hurt. Insurance would cover it, and the whole neighborhood ready to lend a hand. You could tip it one way and say the fire actually benefited the family. Built loyalty, gave my parents a chance to expand, renew.”

“That’s a pisser for somebody who wanted to make trouble.”

“And gets caught. His dog barked, O’Donnell. That was one of the things I told John. The dog barked in their backyard, where he kept his shed, where they found the gas can, some of the beer he’d stolen, the shoes he’d worn.”

“Kid kills the dog.”

“Yeah. You could twist it so the dog played a part in the chain. Damn dog helped ruin his father.”

“Dog has to die.”

“Yeah, and more, the dog has to burn. Kid goes away, evaluation, juvie, in the system. He gets out and his mother pulls him up to New York. He gets in trouble up there, but he’s still a kid. Hard for a kid to get from New York to Baltimore to cause me or my family any grief. And see.”

She tapped the screen. “He does a short stint himself. But they were both out when Josh died. Joey’s not a kid anymore. Joe’s mopping floors. Hell of a comedown.”

She could feel it now, feel the truth of it in her belly, in her throat. These were pieces of the puzzle.

“But Sirico’s is doing fine. Our family’s doing fine. And the little bitch who caused all this is in college, screwing some jerk. Joey puts hands on her and she screams, messes everything up. But she lets this guy do her, no problem. Time for payback, some serious payback. I’d been with him that night, with Josh that night, after Bella’s wedding. One of them killed that boy, set him on fire. Because I’d been with him.”

“All right, if we take that angle, why didn’t he, or they, just deal with you? You were there. Why not kill both of you?”

“Because it wasn’t enough. Kill me, it’s over. But make me suffer, hurt me, use fire against me again and make me wonder. Pastorelli Senior had an alibi for that night. John checked it out. But it could’ve been bogus. Joey was supposed to be in New York, and there were people who said he was. But people will. And look, three months after Josh’s death, Joey goes up for the car boost. In Virginia, not New York.”

“I’m not saying people don’t hold on to grudges or obsessions for twenty years. But twenty is a long stretch.”

“There have been shots along the way. There might’ve been things I passed over, didn’t connect. There was an incident right after I came on the job. Firefighter I was seeing casually was killed. He was on his way to North Carolina—long weekend deal. I got hung up, so I couldn’t go with him, but Steve and Gina and I were going to head down the next morning. They found him, in his car, in the woods off a back road. He’d been shot, and his car set on fire. It looked like he’d been carjacked, robbed, killed, and the fire set to cover it. It was eleven years to the day after the fire at Sirico’s.”

O’Donnell eased back. “Hugh Fitzgerald. I knew him some. I remember when he was killed. I didn’t know you were connected.”

“It was casual. We’d gone out a couple times, and he was a pal of Steve’s. Steve and Gina were an item. It looked, seemed, random. And the locals put it down as such.”

So had she, she thought, raking her fingers through her hair. She’d never looked beyond the surface.

“One of his tires was flat, late at night, dark country road. They figured he flagged down the wrong person, or somebody came along, tried to shake him down. Kills him. Pushes the car into the woods, lights it up, hopes the fire covers the tracks. Which, essentially, it did. The case is still open.”

She drew a breath. “I never made any connection, not on the surface. Hell, my uniform buttons were still bright and shiny. Who was I to question seasoned cops just because I had a sick feeling down in the belly? We’d gone out a couple of times, and we were both thinking it might lead to more. But we weren’t a couple. He was killed in North Carolina. Arrows weren’t pointing at somebody who’d fired up my father’s restaurant a dozen years before. I should’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, too bad your crystal ball was on the fritz that day.”

While she appreciated the sarcasm and the sentiment behind it, it didn’t cool her blood. “Fire, O’Donnell. It’s always fire. Josh, Hugh, Luke’s car and now Bo. It’s always fire. There might have been more, things I didn’t focus in on. Case is still open.”

“Difference is, now he wants you to know.”

25

Laura Pastorelli worked the counter at a 7-Eleven near the Maryland/ D.C. line. She was fifty-three, and carried the years poorly on a rickety frame. Lines, dug deeper by worry and sorrow than by years, scored her face. Her salt-and-pepper hair framed it without style. Around her neck was a silver cross. That and her wedding ring were her only jewelry.

She glanced up when O’Donnell and Reena came in, and her gaze passed over Reena without recognition.

“Help you?” She said it without interest, something she said by habit dozens of times a day.

“Laura Pastorelli?” O’Donnell showed his badge, and Reena saw the instinctive flinch before Laura’s lips thinned.

“What do you want? I’m working. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“We need to ask you a few questions regarding your husband and your son.”

“My husband lives in New York. I haven’t seen him for five years.” Her fingers crept up her skinny chest to fondle the silver cross.

“And Joey?” Reena waited until Laura’s gaze shifted to her face. “You don’t remember me, Mrs. Pastorelli? I’m Catarina Hale, from the neighborhood.”

Recognition crept as slowly as her fingers. When it hit, Laura averted her eyes. “I don’t remember you. I haven’t been back to Baltimore in years.”

“You remember me,” Reena said gently. “Maybe there’s somewhere more comfortable where we can talk.”

“I’m working. You’re going to make me lose my job, and I haven’t done anything. Why can’t you people leave us alone?”

O’Donnell walked over to a doughy-faced man in his early twenties, who wasn’t doing much to pretend he wasn’t avidly listening. He was wearing a name tag that said: Dennis.

“Dennis, why don’t you take over at the counter for a few, while Mrs. Pastorelli takes a little break?”

“I gotta do stock.”

“Paid by the hour, aren’t you? Watch the counter.” O’Donnell walked back. “Why don’t we step outside, Mrs. Pastorelli? It’s a nice day.”

“You can’t make me. You can’t.”

“It’ll be more difficult if we have to come back,” Reena said quietly. “We don’t want to have to speak to your supervisor, or make this any more complicated for you.”

Saying nothing, Laura came out from behind the counter, walked outside with her head bowed. “He paid. Joe paid for what happened. It was an accident. He’d been drinking and it was an accident. Your father pushed him. He said lies about Joey and pushed at Joe so he got drunk, that’s all. Nobody got hurt. Insurance covered everything, didn’t it? We had to move away.”

Her head came up now, tears glimmering in her eyes. “We had to move away, and Joe went to jail. Isn’t that enough penance?”

“Joey was awfully upset, wasn’t he?” Reena said.

“They took his father away. In handcuffs. In front of the whole neighborhood. He was just a little boy. He needed his father.”

“It was a difficult time for your family.”

“Difficult? It busted my family to pieces. You—Your father said terrible things about my Joey. People heard what he said. What Joe did wasn’t right. ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,’ but it wasn’t his fault. He’d been drinking.”

“He served additional time. Got himself in some jams when he was in prison,” O’Donnell pointed out.

“Had to protect himself, didn’t he? Prison scarred his soul. He was never the same after.”

“Your family has grievances against mine. Against me.”

Laura frowned at her. “You were a child. You can’t lay blame on a child.”

“Some do. Do you know if either your husband or your son has been back to Baltimore recently?”

“I told you, Joe’s in New York.”

“Not a long trip. Maybe he wanted to see you.”

“He won’t talk to me. He’s fallen away from the Church. I pray for him every night.”

“He must still see Joey.”

She lifted a shoulder, but even that small gesture seemed to take more effort than she had to expend. “Joey doesn’t come around much. He’s busy. He has a lot of work.”

“When’s the last time you heard from Joey?”

“Few months. He’s busy.” Her voice took on an insistent shrill, almost like weeping. Reena thought of how she’d wept into a yellow dishcloth.

“You people are always pointing the finger at him. They took his father away, they took him away. So, he got in some trouble, he did some wrong things. But he’s okay now. He’s got work.”

“What kind of work?”

“He’s a mechanic. He learned about cars when he was in jail. About cars and computers and all sorts of things. He’s got education, and he’s got good, steady work up in New York.”

“At a garage?” O’Donnell prompted. “You know the name of it?”

“Something like Auto Rite. In Brooklyn. Why don’t you leave him alone?”

She didn’t recognize me,” Reena commented when they were back in the car. “But once she did, she wasn’t surprised I was a cop. Somebody’s kept her abreast of the local events from the old neighborhood.”

O’Donnell nodded, acknowledging Reena as he made a call, scribbled a number. “Got an Auto Rite in Brooklyn.” After a brief hesitation, he handed the page from his notebook to Reena. “You take Junior, I’ll take Senior.”

Back at her desk, Reena put a call through to the garage. Over the sound of the Black Crowes, and considerable clanging, she had a brief conversation with the owner.

“Joey did work at the garage,” she told O’Donnell. “For about two months, a year ago. Place was broken into twice during that two months, equipment and tools stolen. Last break-in somebody drove off with a Lexus. One of the other mechanics claimed he heard Joey bragging about the easy pickings. Owner informed the cops, who questioned. Couldn’t pin him, but he got fired over it. Five months later, the place is broken into again in what looks like vandalism. Cars beat to shit, graffiti all over the walls, and a wastebasket fire.”

“And where was our boy when the party was going on?”

“Allegedly in Atlantic City. Had three people verify. His alibis are connected, O’Donnell. The Carbionellis. New Jersey family.”

“Your childhood nemesis got himself connected?”

“It’s going to be worth finding out. I’ll run the three names who backed him up.”

“Meanwhile, Senior’s currently unemployed. Had work cleaning a couple of bars, lost it for helping himself to too much of the booze. Six weeks ago.”

“One or both,” Reena added. “One or both are in Baltimore.”

“Oh yeah. Why don’t we call our friends in New York, ask them to check it out?”

Her stomach was knotted, something she wasn’t ready to share even with her partner. She offset it by concentrating on the routine of the work. Gathering data, drawing the lines, writing it up until she was ready to update both her partner and their captain.

A case. She had to think of it as a case, objectively, with just that sliver of distance. Because she couldn’t actively—officially—investigate the vehicular fire, she signaled Younger and Trippley before she went with O’Donnell in to the captain.

“You two need to hear what we’ve got,” she told them.

Captain Brant gestured them in.

“Working on a theory,” O’Donnell began and nodded for Reena to take the lead.

She ran through it, from the fire at Sirico’s the summer she’d been eleven, to the destruction of Bo’s truck the night before.

“The younger Pastorelli is known to pal around with three members of the Carbionelli family, out of New Jersey. He did some time in Rikers with a Gino Borini—a cousin of Nick Carbionelli. It was Carbionelli, Borini and another low level who alibied Pastorelli for the night the garage was hit.

“It looked like kids,” she continued. “Five months since he’d gotten the ax, and it was set up to look like a bunch of kids, or amateurs. Destruction, petty theft, a half-assed fire to cover it. They didn’t look at him very hard.”

“We’ve got the locals doing some legwork,” O’Donnell added. “It’s not on their priority list, but they’ll send two detectives out to last known addresses.”

“There was a lot of similarity between the car fire several years ago involving Luke Chambers and the one last night.” She looked at Trippley. “Maybe he used the same device in the gas tanks.”

“We’ll look at that.”

“Captain, I want to reopen Joshua Bolton’s case.”

“Younger can take it. Fresh eye, Detective,” he said to Reena. “You’ve been looking at that case regularly for years. Let’s get the tap on your phone. Goodnight’s phone. Take another pass at the wife.”

Laura Pastorelli’s shift had ended, so they headed to her address. It was a small, tidy house on a narrow street. An old Toyota Camry sat in the drive. Reena noted the St. Christopher’s magnet on the dash, and one of the trinkets called a parking angel perched on it.

When they knocked, the door was opened by a woman of about the same age as Laura, but with a lot less wear on her. Her face was round and carefully made up, her dark brown hair styled. She wore navy pants with a white camp shirt tucked neatly in the waistband.

A fluffy orange Pomeranian sat at her legs, yapping its lungs out.

“Be quiet, Missy, you old fool. She’s an ankle nipper,” the woman said. “Fair warning.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Reena held out her badge. “We’d like to speak with Laura Pastorelli.”

“She’s at church this time of day. Goes by every afternoon after work. Was there trouble at the store?”

“No, ma’am. What church would that be?”

“Saint Michael’s, over on Pershing.” Her eyes narrowed. “If there wasn’t trouble at the store, this must be about either her worthless husband or her worthless son.”

“Do you know if she’s been in contact with either Joseph Pastorelli Senior or Junior?”

“Wouldn’t tell me if she had. I’m her sister-in-law. Patricia Azi. Mrs. Frank Azi. You might as well come in.”

O’Donnell looked dubiously at the still yapping ball of fur, and Patricia smiled thinly. “Give me a minute. God sake, Missy, will you put a lid on it!” She scooped up the dog and carried it off. They heard a door slam before she came back.

“My husband’s in love with that idiot dog. We’ve had her eleven years now, and she’s still half crazy. Come on in. You want to talk to Laura, she’ll probably finish wearing her sackcloth and ashes in another half hour.” She sighed heavily, gestured toward a small, cozy living room. “Sounds bitchy, sorry. It’s not easy living with a martyr.”

Reena gauged the ground, offered a sympathetic smile. “My grandmother always said two women can’t share a house comfortably, no matter how fond they might be of each other. It’s got to be one woman’s kitchen.”

“She really doesn’t get in the way much, and she can’t afford her own place. Or barely. We’ve got room. Kids’re grown. And she works hard, insists on paying rent. Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“Her husband and her son may have information regarding a case we’re investigating,” Reena began. “When we spoke with Mrs. Pastorelli earlier today, she indicated it had been some time since she’d had contact with either of them. We’re just doing a follow-up.”

“Like I said, she wouldn’t have told me if she’d seen or talked to either of them. She wouldn’t tell Frank either, not after he laid down the law.”

Part of cop work was simply picking up on someone’s rhythm and going with it. So Reena smiled and said, “Oh?”

“He showed up right before Christmas last year, right out of the blue. Laura cried buckets, her-prayers-had-been-answered sort of thing.” Patricia cast her eyes heavenward.

“I’m sure she was happy to see her son again.”

“When a bad penny gets stuck in your shoe, it’s smart to dig it out before you end up half crippled.”

“You and your nephew don’t get along,” O’Donnell prompted.

“I’ll say it straight out, he scares me. Worse than his father, sneakier, and I guess a lot smarter.”

“Has he ever threatened you, Mrs. Azi?”

“Not directly—just the look in his eye. He’s been in jail a few times, I guess you know. Laura likes to make excuses for him, but the fact is, he’s a bad one. And here he is, on my doorstep. We didn’t like it, Frank and me, but you don’t turn family away. At least you don’t want to. So he shows up . . . Sorry, I didn’t offer you any coffee.”

“We’re fine,” Reena assured her. “Joey came to see his mother for the holidays?”

“Maybe. I know he was full of himself. Driving a fancy car, wearing expensive clothes. Gave her a watch with diamonds around the face, and diamond earrings. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’d stolen them, but I kept quiet about it. Claimed he had a big deal going, some club he and some partners”—she made air quotes around the word—“were going to open in New York and make piles more money. My husband asked him how he was going to open a club, could he get a liquor license because he had a record, and like that. Got under Joey’s skin, I could tell, but he just got that little sneer on his face and said there were ways. Anyway, that’s not important.”

She waved it away. “He stayed for dinner, said he had himself a hotel suite, and spent an hour or so bragging. But every time Frank asked him a direct question about this new business of his, he got evasive and pissy with it. Things got heated, and what does Joey do? He swipes his arm over the table, broke my dishes, threw food all over the walls. Yelling and cursing at Frank, who got right up in his face. Frank’s not one to back down, and you can bet he’s not going to tolerate that kind of thing in his own house.”

She gave a decisive nod. “He’s got a right to ask questions and express opinions in his own home. Laura’s taking up for Joey, grabs at Joey’s arm, and what does he do? He hit her. He hit his own mother in the face!”

Patricia slapped a hand to her breast. “We’ve got some tempers in the family, sure, but I’ve never seen the like of it. Never. A man hitting his own mother? Called her a whiny bitch, or something like that.”

She colored a little. “A few things worse than that, to tell the truth. I was already heading to the phone to call the police. But Laura begged me not to. Standing there with her nose bleeding, begging me not to call the cops on her son. So I didn’t. He was already heading out the door, the coward. My Frank’s bigger than him, and it’s a lot easier to punch a skinny woman than take on a two-hundred-pound man. Marched right out behind him, told him never to come back. Said if he did, he’d kick his worthless ass back to New York.”

She took a breath, as if she had to catch it after the recital. “I was proud of him, I can tell you. Then once Laura stopped being hysterical, Frank sat down with her, told her as long as she lived under his roof, she wasn’t to open the door to Joey. If she did, she was on her own.”

She sighed. “I’ve got children of my own, grandchildren, too, and I know it would break my heart if I couldn’t see them. But Frank did what he had to do. A man who’d hit his own mother is the worst kind of trash.”

“That was the last time you saw him?” Reena asked.

“The last time, and as far as I know that’s the last Laura’s seen of him. Put a cloud over the holidays, but we got through it. Things simmered down, the way things do. The most excitement we’ve had since is when there was a fire in the house my son’s having built up in Frederick County.”

“A fire?” Reena exchanged a glance with O’Donnell. “When was this?”

“Middle of March. Just got in under the roof, too. Some kids broke in, had themselves a party, hauled in some kerosene heaters to take the chill off. One of them got knocked over, somebody dropped a match and half the place burned down before the fire department put it out.”

“Did they catch the kids?” O’Donnell asked her.

“No, and it’s an awful shame. Months of work up in smoke.”

When the front door opened, Patricia glanced at Reena, then got to her feet. “Laura—”

“Why are they here?” Laura’s eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. Reena imagined she’d spent as much time crying in church as praying. “I told you I haven’t seen Joe or Joey.”

“We weren’t able to contact your son, Mrs. Pastorelli. He’s no longer employed at the garage.”

“Then he found something better.”

“Possibly. Mrs. Pastorelli, are you in possession of a watch and a pair of earrings given to you by your son last December?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mrs. Pastorelli.” Reena kept her voice gentle, her eyes level. “You’ve just come from church. Don’t add to your own grief by lying about these items.”

“They were gifts.” Tears, obviously close to the surface, dribbled down her cheeks.

“We’re going to go upstairs and get them now.” Still gentle, Reena put her arm around Laura’s shoulder. “I’m going to give you a receipt for them. And we’re going to clear this all up.”

“You think he stole them. Why does everyone always think the worst of my boy?”

“Better to clear it all up,” Reena continued, leading Laura up the stairs.

“He did steal them,” Patricia grumbled. “I knew it.”

Piaget,” Reena said as she examined the watch. “Forty brilliant-cut diamonds around the bezel. Eighteen-karat gold. This is going to run about six, seven thousand retail.”

“How do you know that shit?”

“I’m a woman who loves to window-shop, especially for stuff I’ll never be able to afford. The earrings, probably two karats each, nice, clean square cuts in a classic setting. Our boy splurged on his mama for Christmas.”

“We’ll check with New York, see if any jewelry stores were hit, or residences that reported items matching these stolen.”

“Yeah.” She held the diamonds up to the light. “I’ve got a feeling some nice woman didn’t get the bling bling she was supposed to from Santa last year.” Idly, she flipped down the vanity mirror, held an earring next to her ear. “Nice.”

“Jeez, you are a girl.”

“Damn right. Came down to show off for his mother, rub some of his own into his uncle’s face. Expensive car, clothes, gifts. I don’t think he hit the frigging lottery. But the uncle gives him some third degree instead of being impressed, and he gets pissed. Big scene, tossed out. He’s not going to let that go.”

“He’s patient. He’s one patient son of a bitch.”

“That’s where he’s got it over his old man. Waits, plans, figures. He knows family, too. How do you get back at the father? You screw with the son.”

“We’ll get the file from Frederick on the fire.”

“It fits the elementary school job, and the garage in New York. Make it look like kids, or an amateur, nothing fancy—not on the surface. He’s good at this, O’Donnell. He’s really good at it.”

Smart, smart. Give the old lady a cell phone, a number to call when and if. Stupid bitch. Have to show her again and again how to work the thing. Just our little secret, Ma, you and me against the fucking world.

Laps it right up, like always.

And it pays off. The little whore from the neighborhood finally gets a clue! Having her remembering, that was sweet, hell of a lot sweeter.

It’ll all turn around now. All the bad luck, all the bad breaks. It’ll all turn around.

It’ll all burn, including the little whore who started it all.

Reena had a head full of data, theories and worries when she walked into Sirico’s. It was usually what she needed to clear out the smears of a hard day. Tonight, she had the bonus of Bo meeting her there.

She didn’t spot him on the first scan of the tables, but did see the redhead—Mandy, she recalled—snuggled in a booth with a man of about thirty with light brown hair. J.Crew for him, retro hippie for her.

They were drinking the house red, and plastered together at the hip.

She also spotted John at one of the two-tops. Wending through the usual waves and greetings, she aimed for his table. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

“Clam sauce is good tonight.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She sat across from him, waved off the waitress who headed their way. “I’ve got something going.”

He forked up more linguini. “So I hear.”

She sat back. “Dad called you.”

“You think he wouldn’t? Why didn’t you?”

“I was going to. I need your ear, I need your brain, but not here and not now. Can we meet in the morning, hook up for breakfast? No, better, can you come to my place? I’ll cook you breakfast.”

“What time?”

“Can you make it early? Seven?”

“Probably work that into my schedule. Want to give me something to chew on meanwhile?”

She started to, but knew once she started he’d need it all. Just as she’d need to say it all. “I’d like to let this cook in my head overnight, organize it some.”

“Seven, then.”

“Thanks.”

“Reena.” He put a hand over hers as she started to rise. “Do I need to tell you to be careful?”

“No.” She got up, bent and kissed his cheek. “No, you don’t.”

She walked to the kitchen, made a kissy sound at Jack as he ladled sauce on a round of dough. “Have you seen Bo? I’m supposed to meet him here.”

“Back in the prep area.”

Curious, she walked around the work counter and into prep. Then just stood in the doorway, watching her father give Bo a lesson in the art of pizza.

“Gotta be elastic, or it won’t stretch right. You don’t want to pull it, see it pop full of holes.”

“Right, so I just . . .” Bo held a ball of dough from one of the oiled holding pans in the cooler. He began to stretch it, drawing it out.

“Now, use your fists like I showed you. Start shaping.”

Focused on the job at hand, Bo worked his fists under the dough, gently punching, turning—not bad for a beginner, Reena thought.

“Can I toss it?”

“You break it, you bought it,” Gib warned him.

“Okay, okay.” Legs spread, eyes narrowed in concentration, like a man, Reena decided, about to juggle flaming torches. Bo gave the dough a toss in the air.

A little higher than was wise, in Reena’s opinion, but he managed to catch it, keep turning, toss it again.

And the grin that popped out on his face had her biting back a laugh. No point in breaking his rhythm, but he looked like a boy who’d just mastered a two-wheeler for the first heady solo.

“This is so cool. But what the hell do I do with it now?”

“Use your eyeballs,” Gib told him. “You got a large going there?”

“Looks like. Looks about right.”

“On the board.”

“God, okay. Here we go.”

He flopped the dough on the board, absently wiping his hands on the short apron he wore. “It’s not what we’d call exactly round.”

“Not bad though, shape it up some. Give me the edges.”

“How many did he drop before he managed that one?” Reena asked as she stepped in.

Bo grinned over his shoulder. “I got this down. Mangled two, but nothing hit the floor.”

“He learns quick enough,” Gib said as he and Reena exchanged kisses.

“Who knew there was so much involved in making a pizza? You got your big-ass dough mixer there.” He nodded toward the stainless-steel machine used to mix massive amounts of flour, yeast, water. “You gotta get a couple of manly men to haul that bowl up on the counter.”

“Excuse me, but I’ve been in on that countless times, and I’m not in the least manly.”

“You can say that again. You divide it up, weigh it, stack the pans in the cooler, then you gotta cut the dough out after it rises. All that before you can start making the thing. I’m never taking pizza for granted again.”

“You can finish this one out front.” Gib picked up the board, carried it out to where Jack made room on the worktable.

“Ah, don’t watch me,” he said to Reena. “You’re making me nervous. I’ll clutch. Go on over and sit with Mandy and Brad.” He gestured.

“Sure.” She grabbed a soda, moved over to join them.

“Hey! You made it. Reena, this is Brad. Brad, Reena. I met Reena during one of my more embarrassing moments.”

“Then I’ll be dignified and counterbalance. Nice to meet you—in the flesh after all these years of hearing about Dream Girl.”

“You, too.” She sipped, smiled at Mandy. “When I was fifteen, I dropped my notebook rushing to class. It fell open and this guy—tall, nice shoulders, streaky blond hair, big blue eyes—named Chuck picked it up for me, before I could dive after it. Inside I’d filled pages with “Reena” and “Chuck,” and hearts with our initials in them, or just his name over and over the way you do.”

“Oh God, he saw it?”

“Hard to miss.”

“That was embarrassing.”

“I think my face went back to its normal color in about a month. So, now we’re even.”

26

She’d been right, Reena decided. The evening at Sirico’s had been exactly what she’d needed. Her mind had calmed down, her stomach had smoothed out.

It had been interesting and educational to spend an hour in the company of Bo’s closest friends.

Family, she thought. Those two were his family as much as her own brother and sisters were hers.

“I like your friends,” she told him as she unlocked her front door.

“Good, because if you didn’t, you and I would’ve been history.” He patted her butt when they walked inside. “No, seriously, I’m glad you all hit it off. They’re important to me.”

“And to each other.”

“Did you get that before or after they started slurping on each other?”

“Before.” She stretched her back. “When I walked in. Lust vibes.”

“I’m having a tough time getting around that.”

“That’s just because you’re used to seeing them as family, or you have since you and Mandy stopped hitting the sheets. But the fact that they’re now hitting them with each other doesn’t make them less yours.”

“I think I need to block the image of the sheets, at least for the time being.” He put his hands on her arms, rubbed them up and down. “Tired?”

“Not as much as I was. Got a fresh charge.” She clamped her hands on his hips. “Got something in mind as to what I should do with the energy?”

“Might. Come on out back. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

“You want to show it to me outside?” She laughed as he pulled her along. “What are you now, Nature Boy?”

“Sex, sex, sex, that’s all the woman thinks of. Thank you, Jesus.” He pulled her out the back door.

There was a nice half-moon shedding sharp white light. Flowers she’d managed to grab and plant on the run were spilling out of her patio pots.

The air was warm, a little close, and heavily scented with the green smell of summer.

And there, under a leafy maple, was a glider.

“A glider! You got me a glider for the yard?”

“Got? Heresy. Guess I should’ve strapped on my tool belt.”

“You made it.” Her eyes misted, and now it was Reena dragging him. “You made me a glider? Oh my God, when? It’s beautiful. Oh, feel how smooth.” She ran her fingers over the wood. “It’s like silk.”

“Finished it up today, kept my mind off things. Want to try it out?”

“Are you kidding?” She sat, stretched her arms over the back and set it in motion. “It’s great, it’s wonderful. Another ten pounds of stress just fell off my shoulders. Bo.” She reached her hand out for his. “You sweetie.”

He sat beside her. “I was hoping it’d be a hit.”

“Major league.” She dropped her head on his shoulder. “This is fabulous. My own house, my own yard on a warm June night. And a sexy guy sitting with me on a glider he made with his own two hands. It makes everything that happened last night seem unreal.”

“I guess we both needed to box that away for a few hours.”

“And you spent yours building me this.”

“If you love what you do, it’s not really work.”

She nodded. “It’s satisfaction.”

“That’s the one. And hell, it looks like I’m going to score a new truck tomorrow.” His fingers toyed with the curling tips of her hair. “Your mom’s coming along. Her cousin’s a Dodge dealer.”

“My advice? Give her her head.” Something she’d planted smelled strong and sweet. Like a splash of vanilla on the warm air. “She’ll cut cousin Sal’s price down to the bone. Pull her back when you see tears leaking out of his eyes, but not before.”

“Check.”

“You’re handling this so well.”

“Not much else I can do.”

“Sure there is. You could rant, rave, put your fist through the wall—”

“Then I’d have to replaster.”

Her laugh came easily. “You’re steady, that’s what you are, Bowen. I know under it you’re enraged, but you’ve got the lid on it. You haven’t asked me if there’s been any progress on the whole mess.”

“I figured you’ll tell me.”

“I will. I need to talk to someone first, but after, I’ll tell you what I can. You make it easy for me.”

“I’ve got this whole love thing going on. Why would I make it hard for you?”

She turned her face into his shoulder for a moment, let the quiet thrill of him pour through her. It was unnerving how much she’d come to love him, how quickly it had lodged in her heart and spread so that there were times, like this, she would’ve sworn she felt that love pulsing in her fingertips.

“Destiny,” she whispered, and grazed her lips along his jaw. “I think you must be mine, Bo. I think you must be.”

She shifted around, straddled his lap, linked her hands behind his neck. “It’s a little bit scary,” she told him. “Just enough to add a nice edge. But mostly it’s sweet and it’s smooth. I feel like . . .” She let her head fall back, looked up at that slice of moon, the scatter of stars. “Not like I was waiting,” she continued, coming back up to look at his face. “Not like you stand and wait for a bus to come pick you up, take you where you want to go. But like I was driving myself, destination in mind, doing what I wanted. Then I thought, Hey, why don’t I take that road? That’s the one I’d like to travel. And there you were.”

He bent forward to press his lips to her collarbone. “Did I have my thumb out?”

“I think you were walking right along, destination in mind, too. We decided to share the wheel.” She cupped his face. “This wouldn’t be working if the only thing you saw when you looked at me was a girl in a pink top, across the room at a party.”

“I do see her, and who she was. And I see who she is now. I’m crazy about who she is now.”

She kept her hands on his face as she lowered her lips to his, as they sank into the kiss together. Into the warmth and the wet.

“You made a pizza,” she murmured dreamily.

“And it was good, despite Brad’s cracks about indigestion or possible ptomaine.”

“You made a pizza,” she repeated, brushing her lips over his cheeks, his temples, his lips, his throat. “And you built me a glider.” She caught his bottom lip between her teeth, tugged, then dipped her tongue into his mouth, focusing the world in that long kiss. “I’m about to express my sincere gratitude.”

“I’m about to accept it.” His voice had gone thick, and his hands were roaming. “Let’s go inside.”

“Mmm-mmm. I want to see how well this glider is built.” She tugged his shirt over his head, let it fly over her shoulder.

“Reena, we can’t—”

Her mouth stopped his. Her hands slid between them to flip open the button of his jeans. “Bet we can.” She bit his shoulder, tugged down his zipper. When she felt him tense, she clamped her hands on the back of the glider to keep him from lifting her up. Her eyes sparkled out of the dark.

“Relax. It’s just you and me.” She nipped at his jaw, seeped herself in the taste of him as she cruised her lips over his face. “We’re the whole world. Let’s glide,” she whispered, bringing his hands to her breasts. “Touch me. Keep touching me.”

He couldn’t stop. His hands slid under her shirt, but it wasn’t enough. Not now. He fought with buttons to find more, and take it. He cupped her, tasted her, while the glider gently rocked.

There was something witchy about it, the heavy air, the motion, the smell of grass and flowers and woman, and the taut ready feel of her under his hands.

They were the world in that moment, in the star-washed dark and the summer-scented air.

Her skin, silvered by moonlight, dappled by leaf shadow, seemed to float over his. And his belly quivered—helpless need, when she rose, when she settled. When she surrounded.

She moaned, long and low. Her eyes were half closed as they watched each other. Watching each other as their mouths met and their sighs mingled. Pleasure and excitement tangled, built, trembled. She used that pleasure and the easy motion to rock them both. Sweet and slow, slow and sweet, so release was like a lazy slide over silk.

They melted together in a contentment as gentle as the sway of the glider.

“You do good work,” she whispered.

“Actually, I think you did most of it.”

She chuckled, nuzzled his neck. “I meant the glider.”

By seven in the morning, Reena had crisp bacon warming in the oven, coffee brewed, bagels sliced and the makings for an omelet set out.

She felt guilty about shoving Bo out the door at six-thirty with nothing but a hastily toasted bagel. But she wanted to talk to John alone.

She was already dressed for work, right down to her holster, where she would dash to as soon as her meeting with John was over.

He was prompt. She could count on him for that, as well as a hundred other things. “Thanks. Really.”

At the door, she kissed his cheek.

“I know it’s early, but I’m on eight-to-fours. O’Donnell’s got it covered if I need to squeeze in a little more time. I’m about to make you a first-class omelet for your trouble.”

“You don’t have to bother with that. We can do this over coffee.”

“Absolutely not.” She led the way to the kitchen. “I let this perk around in my head through the night. What I’d like to do is just pour it out on you.” She filled a coffee cup for him. “Okay?”

“Pour away.”

“It goes back, John, all the way back to the beginning.”

She made the omelet while she spoke. He didn’t interrupt, but let her lay it out as it came to her.

She moved like her mother, he thought. Fluidly, with those graceful gestures to punctuate the words. And thought like a cop—but then he’d seen that in her when she was a child. Logic and observation.

“We’re checking on the jewelry.” She set his plate down, settled in with her own breakfast of half a bagel and a single strip of bacon. “It may not have been from New York, but we’ll find where he lifted it. Getting a warrant out on him for that will help. It was a stupid move, and though he’s not stupid, it was like him. He needs to show off, pump himself up. Fire-starting plays into that,” she added. “A lot of the inner motivation for a fire-starter is the pump, and the showing off. But with him, it’s also a statement. My father did it, and so can I. Only bigger, better.”

“There’s more.”

“Yeah. These are vengeance fires, all of them. If I’m right, and I believe it, John. I believe it’s him. Maybe working with his father, maybe alone. Their revenge against me and mine, because to him we’re responsible for what happened to his father.”

“He’s too good at it to just have done this handful,” John commented. “Too organized, too focused and prepared.”

“Yeah. Maybe the New Jersey family’s used him as a torch, or he might have freelanced. He’s not afraid to wait. Sure, some of the gaps came about because he was inside, but he’s not afraid to wait, to pick his moment. He waited three months after his uncle kicked him out of the house to retaliate by setting his cousin’s house on fire. That had to be him.”

“I can help you with that one. I know some people in Frederick County.”

“I was hoping you did, and would. We’re reopening Josh Bolton’s case.” She sipped some of the Diet Pepsi she’d poured herself. “It’s going to be him there, John. If there’s nothing else that comes out of this, nothing else, I need to nail him for that.” She couldn’t stop the tremor in her voice, or in her heart. “For Josh.”

“You let it get personal, let it crawl in there, Reena, you’re playing into his hands.”

“I know it. I’m working on it. He wants me to know it’s him. No matter how he set the scenes, covered his tracks, he wants me to know. But why now? Why wait all these years, then move on me so directly? Something’s changed, something lit his fuse.”

Nodding, John forked up more eggs. “He’s kept you on his radar all this time, and slipped under yours to take hits at you. Maybe it’s something you’ve changed. Could be as simple as you buying this house. Getting involved with the guy next door.”

“Maybe, maybe.” But she shook her head. “I’ve had big moments in my life before now. Graduating college—he got a GED in prison. Getting my shield, and he’s been drifting, at least on record, from job to job. I’ve been involved with men before, and we can’t find any serious relationships for him. He can’t get into my head and know how I felt about the men I’ve been involved with, if I was serious. From the outside, my relationship with Luke looked serious. And yeah,” she said before John could speak, “he blew up his damn car, but he didn’t contact me. He didn’t start a dialogue.”

“Maybe it’s the timing. The twenty-year thing. Anniversaries are milestones, after all. But finding his motive is going to help you work him. We want to shut him down before he gets tired of playing and comes after you. You know he will, Reena. You know how dangerous he is.”

“I know he’s dangerous. I know he’s a violent sociopath with misogynistic tendencies. He’ll never let any slight—actual or perceived—go unpunished. But he won’t come after me, not for a while. This is too exciting for him, makes him important. He could, however, come after people I love. That scares me boneless, John. I’m afraid for my family, for you, for Bo.”

“Playing into his hands again.”

“I know that, too. I’m a good cop. Am I a good cop, John?”

“You’re a good cop.”

“Most of my time on the job’s been concentrated on arson investigation. The puzzle of it. Working the evidence, details, observation, psychology, physiology. I’m not a street cop.” She drew in a breath. “I can count the times I’ve had to draw my weapon in the line. I’ve never once had to fire it. I’ve subdued suspects, but only once have I ever had to subdue an armed suspect. Last month. And my hands were shaking the whole time. I had a nine millimeter, he had a pissant knife, and for God’s sake, John, my hands were shaking.”

“Did you subdue the suspect?”

“Yes.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “Yes I did.” She closed her eyes. “Okay.”

She spent the day dealing with the myriad and headachy chores of the job. Reading reports, writing them, making calls, waiting for them.

The legwork took her back to her own neighborhood to question one of Joey’s old friends.

Tony Borelli had been a skinny, sulky-faced boy, a year ahead of her in school. His mother, she recalled, had been a screamer. The sort of woman who stood on her steps or the sidewalk, screeching at her kids, the neighbors, her husband. The occasional total stranger.

She’d died from complications due to a stroke at the age of forty-eight.

Tony had had his share of dustups. Shoplifting, joyriding, possession, and had done a short stretch in his early twenties for his involvement in a chop-shop organization in South Baltimore.

He was still skinny, a bag of bones in grease-stained jeans and a faded red T-shirt. His hair was topped by a gray gimme cap with the name Stenson’s Auto Repair scrolled across it.

He had a Honda Accord on a lift, and wiped oil off his hands with a bandanna that might, once, have been blue.

“Joey Pastorelli? Jesus, haven’t seen him since we were kids.”

“You and he were pretty tight back in the day, Tony.”

“Kids.” He shrugged, continued to drain oil from the Honda. “Sure, we ran together awhile. Thought we were badasses.”

“You were.”

Tony flicked a glance over, nearly smiled. “Guess we were. That was a long time ago, Reena.” His eyes tracked over to O’Donnell, who loitered near a workbench as if fascinated by the display of parts and tools. “Gotta grow up sometime.”

“I’m still friends with a lot of the kids I ran with back then. Even the ones who left the neighborhood. We keep in touch.”

“Girls are different, maybe. Joey went off to New York when we were, what, twelve? Long time ago.”

He continued to work, she noted, just as he continued to give O’Donnell nervous looks.

“You had some trouble along the way, Tony.”

“Yeah, I had some trouble. Did some time. Once you do, some people, they never figure you can clean it up. I got a wife now, I got a kid. I got a job here. I’m a good mechanic.”

“A skill that helped you get a job chopping cars.”

“I was twenty, for Chrissake. Paid my debt to society. What do you want from me?”

“I want to know the last time you saw or spoke to Joey Pastorelli. He’s made some trips back to Baltimore, Tony. A guy comes back to the neighborhood, he’s bound to touch base with his old friends. You’re holding back on me, and you keep doing it, I can make trouble for you. I wouldn’t like doing it, but I would.”

“This all goes back to when he knocked you around when we were kids.” He pointed a grease-stained finger. “I didn’t have anything to do with that, that’s not on me. I don’t hit girls—women. You see anything on my sheet about hitting women?”

“No. I don’t see anything on your sheet about violent behavior, period. Just like I see you kept your lip zipped when you got busted for chopping. Didn’t name names. You think this is about loyalty, Tony? We’re looking at Joey in connection to murder. You want a piece of that, accessory after the fact?”

“Whoa, wait. Hold on.” He stepped back, the wrench dangling from his hand. “Murder? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Swear on my life.”

“Tell me about Joey.”

“Okay, maybe he’s breezed through a couple of times. Maybe we had a beer. There’s no law against it.”

“When? Where?”

“Man.” He pulled off his cap, showing Reena his hair was thinning, veeing back from his forehead to form a long, sharp widow’s peak. “First time I heard from him, after the fire, all that crazy shit, was right before I hooked up with the chop shop. He came back around, said he had some business to take care of. Said he knew these guys if I was looking to make some money. He took me over to the shop. That’s how I got into it.”

“You were busted in 1993.”

“Yeah. Chopped for about a year before I got busted.”

She felt the clutch in her gut. “So Joey plugged you in in ’ninety-two?”

“That’d be right.”

“When? Spring, summer, winter?”

“Well, God, how’m I supposed to remember?”

“Give me a weather picture, Tony. Joey comes around, all these years since, you hit a couple of bars maybe. You walk? Was there snow?”

“No, it was nice out. I remember. I was smoking some weed, listening to the ball game. I remember now. Early in the season, but it was nice out. April or May, I guess.”

It was hot in the garage, hot and close, but the sweat that had beaded on Tony’s face was from more than steamy working conditions. “Look, if he killed somebody, he didn’t tell me about it. I’m not saying I’m surprised he did, or could, but he didn’t tell me.” Tony wet his lips. “Talked about you some.”

“Is that so?”

“Just bullshitting. Asked me if I still saw you around . . . if, you know, I’d ever gotten any of that.”

“What else?”

“I was pretty loaded, Reena. I just remember we talked the kind of shit you talk, and he hooked me up with the operation. I did three years for that, and I got clean. Been working here since. He blew through again a few years after I got out.”

“ ’Ninety-nine?”

“Yeah. I had a drink with him for old times’ sake. He tells me he’s got a lot of lines dangling, can help me out. But I wasn’t going back down that road, told him. Pissed him off, and we got into it a little. Took off, left me stranded on The Block ’cause he was driving. Nearly froze my ass off trying to get a cab home.”

“Cold out?”

“Witch’s tit. Slid on some ice, fell on my ass. I met Tracey a few weeks later. That cleaned me up some more. She doesn’t take any bullshit.”

“Good for her.”

“Good for me. And I know it, Reena. Next time I saw Joey I told him flat out I couldn’t do that shit anymore.”

“When was this?”

Tony shifted his weight. “Couple weeks ago. Maybe three. He came by the house. I don’t know how he found out where we’re living. It was close to midnight. Scared Tracey. Woke up the kid. He’d been drinking, wanted me to come out with him. I wouldn’t let him in, and I sent him away. He didn’t like it.”

“Was he on foot?”

“No. Ah, I watched, to make sure he kept going. I saw him get into a Cherokee. Black Jeep Cherokee. Looked like a ’ninety-three.”

“Catch the plates?”

“No, sorry. Never looked.” He kneaded his cap between his hands now, but what she saw wasn’t guilt nerves. It was fear. “He upset my wife and kid. Things are different now. I’ve got a family. If he’s done murder, I don’t want him coming around my family.”

“He contacts you again, I want to know about it. I don’t want you to tell him we’ve had this talk. If you can, find out where he’s staying, but don’t press it.”

“You’re scaring me some, Reena.”

“Good, because he’s a scary guy. If he works up a mad about you, he’ll hurt you. He’ll hurt your family. That’s not bullshit, Tony, that’s straight.”

She walked out with O’Donnell, then turned when Tony came out of the garage, calling her.

“Ah, something else. Private.”

“Sure. Be right with you,” she said to O’Donnell, and walked around the side of the building with Tony.

“He really kill somebody?”

“We’re looking at that.”

“And you think he might try to hurt Tracey or the kid?”

“He deals in payback, Tony. Right now he’s too busy to worry about you. But if we don’t get him, he may find the time. You’re going to want to stay out of his way, and contact me if he gets in touch.”

“Yeah, I got that. I got a break when Tracey took a chance on me. I don’t risk that, not for anything or anyone. Listen.” He took his cap off again, ran his hand through what was left of his hair. “Um, when we were kids, before, well, before all hell broke loose on the block, he used to follow you.”

“Follow me?”

“He used to watch you around school, around the neighborhood. He’d, ah, sneak out at night and look in the windows of your house, maybe climb that tree in the back, try to see into your bedroom. I went with him sometimes.”

“See anything interesting, Tony?”

His gaze lowered to the toes of his boots. “He was going to rape you. He didn’t call it that, and I’m telling you straight, Reena, I didn’t think of it like that, either. I was twelve. He said he was going to do you, wanted me to come along for it. I didn’t want any part of that, and, besides, I thought he was just blowing smoke. Mostly I thought it was gross. But after, well, when everybody heard how he’d knocked you down and . . . I knew what he’d been trying. I didn’t say anything to anybody.”

“You’re saying it now.”

He looked back at her. “I’ve got a little girl. She’s just five. When I think . . . I’m sorry. I want to say I’m sorry I didn’t say anything to anyone before he tried to hurt you. I want you to know, you’ve got my word, if he gets in touch with me again, I won’t tell him you’re looking for him. And I’ll call you first thing.”

“All right, Tony.” To seal it, she took his hand, shook it. “It’s nice you have a family now.”

“Makes a difference.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

We have confirmation Joey P. was in the area at or around the time of Josh’s death, and of the vehicular fire of Luke’s car. We have confirmation he was in Baltimore two to three weeks ago.”

Reena briefed the arson squad, Steve as fire inspector and members of the Crime Scene Unit.

“He was reported to be driving a black Jeep Cherokee, possibly a ’ninety-three, when he left the residence of Tony Borelli. There is no vehicle registered in the name of Joseph Pastorelli, Junior. Or Senior. His mother doesn’t own a car. It’s possible the vehicle was borrowed from an acquaintance, or more likely stolen. We’re in the process of culling through reports of stolen Cherokees. Younger?”

He shifted in his chair. “We’re still piecing things together, but it looks like the device placed in Goodnight’s gas tank was the same type used in the Chambers vehicular fire six years ago. Firecracker floating in a cup, soaked rags for a fuse. We’re looking at like crimes, pulling them in from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. We’re also taking a closer look at the homicide and car torching in North Carolina that took out Hugh Fitzgerald. And the case, deemed accidental death, of Joshua Bolton is now reopened.”

One of the other detectives nodded toward the board where both Pastorellis’ mug shots were pinned, along with various crime-scene photos. “We’re going on the assumption that this guy’s been lighting fires for ten years or more, has killed at least two people, and never got smoke in his eyes before this?”

“That’s right,” Reena said. “He’s careful, he’s good. It’s very possible he had some protection from the Carbionellis, has likely done some torch work for them. And the assumption continues that up until this point he had no motive to make himself known to me. What that motive is? He’s still the only one who knows it. But he keeps coming back here. He’s drawn back to Baltimore.”

“You’re part of the reason why,” Steve pointed out.

“Me,” she agreed, “his father and what happened during that August of ’eighty-five. He holds grudges, and he’s not afraid to hold them for a long time. Before this, as far as we know, he came in, took his shot, backed off. This time, he’s staying, he’s playing it out. He’ll call again. He’ll light something up again.”

She looked back at the mug shot. “This time he means to finish it.”

At the end of shift, Reena gathered up files and notes. She’d work, she decided, but she wanted to work at home, without the background noise. And she wanted to be home the next time he called.

She balanced folders as she grabbed the phone. “Arson Unit, Hale. Yeah, thanks for getting back to me. NYPD,” she told O’Donnell, and set down the files to take notes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting it. You’ve got the name of the fire and arson inspectors? The detective on the burglary case? I’d appreciate that. I’ll be in touch.”

She hung up, looked at O’Donnell. “The watch, the earrings, a lot of other goodies, stolen from an apartment on the Upper East Side, December fifteenth of last year. The building was evacuated due to a fire in a neighboring apartment—empty apartment as the owners were on vacation. When the fire department suppressed, let people back into the building, these people found they’d been hit. Cash, jewelry, coin collection.”

“Small, portable.”

“There’s a doorman on the building, but one of the other tenants had a party that night. Catered. People in and out—guests, wait people, so on. Wouldn’t be hard to slip through that, get into an empty apartment, set a fire.”

“Cause of fire determined?”

“They’re sending copies of the files overnight, but the gist was multiple points of origin. Utility closet full of cleaning supplies, sofa, bed. That place was also burgled. Small objets d’art, some jewelry that wasn’t in the home safe.”

“Somebody inside had a piece of it.”

“No arrests, as yet, no recovery of stolen goods. NYPD’s grateful for the possible lead.”

“Tit for tat,” O’Donnell said.

27

Before she went home, Reena decided she’d swing by and have an overdue sit-down with her mother.

She spotted the shiny new blue truck outside Sirico’s, and put two and two together. She pulled in behind it, did a quick walk-around, and concluded Bo had gotten himself a solid piece of equipment.

Business was light—too early for dinner, too late for lunch—and she found Pete running the show, with his daughter, Rosa—home from college for the summer—waiting tables.

“Out in back,” Pete called to her. “A whole gang.”

“Need help in here?”

“Got it for now.” He poured sauce generously over a meatball sub. “But you can tell my boy we’ve got a delivery, so to get his butt back in here. It’s nearly ready to go.”

“You got it.” She moved into the prep area and out the employees’ exit. Her family, including a couple of cousins, her uncle Larry, along with Gina, her mother and her two kids, were all scattered around the narrow backyard.

The fact that everyone was talking at once didn’t surprise her.

There were some x’s marked on the scrubby grass with orange spray paint.

Even now her father was pointing in one direction, her mother in the opposite. Bo appeared to be caught between them.

Reena stepped out, and up to the little table where Bella sat sipping fizzy water.

“What’s going on?”

“Oh.” Bella waved a hand. “They’re measuring, marking, arguing about this summer kitchen, terrace dining deal Mama’s got a wild hair over.”

“Why a wild hair?”

“Don’t they have enough work to do as it is? They’ve been shackled to this place for thirty years. More.”

Reena sat, looked into Bella’s eyes. Something’s up, she thought. Something. “They love this place.”

“I know that, Reena. But they’re not getting any younger.”

“For God’s sake.”

“They’re not. They should be off enjoying this time of their lives, seizing the damn day or whatever, instead of making more work for themselves.”

“They are enjoying this time of their lives. Not only here, working here, seeing their work rewarded every day, being with family, friends. But they travel, too.”

“What if there’d never been a Sirico’s?” Bella turned in her seat, lowering her voice as if she were blaspheming. “If there hadn’t been, if Mama and Dad hadn’t met each other so young, had this place to lock themselves to, she might have gone on to art school. She might have become a real artist. Experienced things, seen things. Done things before she jumped into marriage and baby making.”

“Let me first state the obvious and say if she had, you wouldn’t be here. And second, she could have chosen art school. She could have chosen Dad and art school. What she did was choose him, this place, this life.”

Reena shifted her gaze now, studied her mother, slim and lovely with her hair slicked back in a shiny tail, laughing as she drilled a finger into her husband’s chest.

“And when I look at her, Bella, I don’t see a woman with regrets, a woman who asks herself what if.”

“Why can’t I be happy like that, Reena? Why can’t I just be happy?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry you’re not.”

“I know you went to talk to Vince. Oh, don’t put the cop face on with me,” she said impatiently. “He was angry. But he was a little shaken up, too. Wouldn’t expect my little sister to get in his face. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. It was impulse. I couldn’t stop myself. I was afraid you might be irritated I waded in.”

“I’m not. Even if it hadn’t changed a thing, I wouldn’t be irritated that you stood up for me. He’s cut things off with his current mistress. At least as far as I can tell. Maybe it’ll last, maybe it won’t.” She shrugged, looking back at her mother. “I’ll never be like Mama, part of that kind of team with a husband who adores everything about me. I’m never going to have that.”

“You have beautiful children, Bella.”

“I do,” she agreed, smiling a little. “I have beautiful children. And I think I’m pregnant again.”

“You think—”

But Bella shook her head quickly, cutting off the conversation as one of the kids ran to the table.

“Mama! Can we have ice cream cones? Just one scoop. Nana said to ask you. Please, can we?”

“Sure. Sure you can.” She brushed her son’s cheek. “Just one scoop. I love them so much,” she told Reena when he ran off to spread the good news. “I can’t talk about this now. Don’t say anything.” She popped to her feet. “Sophie! Come help me make the cones.”

Bella swung into the building, with the younger kids whooping as they raced to follow. Sophia brought up the rear.

Sulking, Reena noted, but obedient. And still young enough to secretly lust after a scoop of ice cream.

“I don’t see why she needs me to help. It’s always me.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Reena demanded. “You get put on the front line, who’s going to notice if you have two scoops instead of just one?”

Sophia’s lips twitched. “Want one?”

“There’s lemon gelato in there. What do you think?” Reena reached over, pinched Sophia’s cheek. “Be kind to your mother. Don’t roll your eyes at me. Just do it. Just twenty-four hours of kindness. I think she could use it.”

She gave the cheek she’d pinched a kiss, then walked to her own mother. Bianca wrapped an arm around Reena’s waist. “You’re just in time. Your father has realized what was obvious. That I was right.”

Reena watched, as her mother did, Bo, Gib, Larry and some of the others as they walked to the corner of the building. Bo gestured with the spray paint, got a shrug from Gib, and began to spray a gently serpentine line on the grass.

“What’s he doing?” Reena asked.

“Laying out the idea for my walkway from the corner. People will be able to stroll around from the sidewalk out front and come right back to my pergola. Maybe they don’t want to walk through the restaurant like they have to now if they want an outside table. Maybe they’re out for a walk, hear the music—”

“Music?”

“I’m putting in speakers. There’ll be music when we have the pergola. And lights along the path. And big pots of flowers.” She slapped her hands on her hips as she circled around, the gesture of a satisfied woman who knows how to take charge. “Ornamental trees. Lemon trees. And in the back corner there. A little play area so the children won’t be bored. And—”

“Mama.” With a laugh, Reena tapped her hands to her own temples. “My head’s spinning.”

“It’s a good plan.”

“Yes, it’s a good plan. A big one.”

“I like big.” She smiled as Bo began to gesture, tick points of some sort off on his fingers while Gib frowned. “I like your Bo. We had fun today. I brought tears to cousin Sal’s eyes, so that was fun, and Bo bought me a hydrangea.”

“He . . . he bought you a bush?”

“And planted it for me. Either you marry him or I adopt him, because I’m not letting him get away.”

The kids came running out with ice-cream cones, Gina and her mother wandered over, and Bo caught Reena’s eye and grinned at her.

It wasn’t the time to talk about serial arson and murder.

She couldn’t stay, though her excuses to go home were met with protests.

“I just want to lay as much of this out as I can for your parents,” Bo told her. “So they can hash it out overnight, be sure this is what they want. If you can wait a half hour, I’ll go with you.”

“You’ve got your own ride. Big burly one, too. I’ve got files I need to read over. An hour of quiet and thinking time’s just what I want.”

“Want me to bring you dinner?”

“That’d be great. Anything. Just surprise me.”

Xander caught up with her as she followed, for curiosity’s sake, the path between the curvy orange lines. “I’ll walk you around.” He tugged her hair, an old habit.

She poked an elbow in his ribs in the same spirit.

“Why don’t I go home with you,” he began, “hang out awhile? We never get to—”

“No. I’m working, and I don’t need my little brother playing guard.”

“I’m taller than you.”

“Barely.”

“Which means I can be the younger brother, but not the little brother. Either way. Catarina, he could come to your house.”

“Yes, he could. He knows where I live. I’m prepared for that, Xand. I can’t have someone with me twenty-four hours a day. I want you to be careful.” She turned to him, laid her hands on his shoulders. “Joey Pastorelli. If I’m right, he wants payback. You—nearly three years younger—took him on, beat him back. I can promise you he hasn’t forgotten that. I want you to be careful, to take care of your wife and baby. Don’t worry about me, and I won’t have to worry about you. Deal?”

“The son of a bitch comes anywhere near An or Dillon—”

“That’s right.” Her eyes held his in perfect understanding. “That’s exactly right. Keep them close for now. You and Jack, you look out for Fran and Bella, the kids. Mama and Dad. I’ve got some extra patrols, but nobody knows the neighborhood, the feel of it, like we do. Anything, anything seems off, you call me. Promise me.”

“You don’t even have to ask.”

“It’s hot,” she said after a moment. “It’s going to be a hot night. Summer’s starting to kick.”

She got in her car and drove home. But when she got there, she sat, studying the house, the street, the block. She knew several people who lived on this row, had known them all or most of her life.

She knew this place, had chosen to live here. She could walk in any direction and pass half a dozen people who knew her name.

Now neither she nor they were safe.

Gathering her files, she got out, locked her car. She studied the dents and scars pocking it, little reminders of how much worse the explosion on Bo’s truck could have been.

How long would it take him to light up her car? she wondered. Two minutes, three? He could do it while she slept, while she showered, fixed a meal.

But that would just be a poke in the ribs. She thought he’d go up a level now.

She walked to her door, waved to Mary Kate Leoni, who was washing the white marble steps three doors down. Housekeeping, she thought. Life went on with simple things like housekeeping, waiting tables, eating ice cream cones.

She unlocked her door, set the files aside. And unholstered her weapon. Whatever she’d said, or told herself, about handling things, wanting an hour of quiet and solitude, she was jittery enough to do a full walk-through of her own house. With her gun in her hand.

Satisfied, if not settled, she went downstairs for the files and a cold drink. It was time she made good use of the office she’d only begun to set up on the third floor. Time she did what she did best: organize, study and dissect.

She booted up her computer, then turned to the board and easel she’d hauled up shortly after she moved in. From the files she selected photographs, newspaper clippings, copies of reports. She brought up and printed out copies of photos and reports from her own computer.

When they were arranged, she stepped back, looked at the board as a whole. Then she sat at the keyboard and wrote out the sequence of events beginning with that day in August when she’d been eleven.

It took longer than the hour, but she barely noticed the passing of time. When the phone rang she swore, and was so deep in what had been she nearly forgot what was. Her fingers were an inch away from snatching up the phone when she stopped herself. Looked at the readout.

She let it ring a second time as she drew herself in. Though she knew the phone was tapped, and there was a cop somewhere with recording and tracking equipment, she engaged her own recorder before she answered.

“Hello, Joey.”

“Hey, Reena. Took you long enough.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think I did pretty well considering I haven’t given you a thought in twenty years.”

“Thinking of me now, aren’t you?”

“Sure. I’m remembering what a little asshole you were when you lived on the row. Looks like you’re a big asshole these days.”

“Always had a mouth on you. I’m going to make use of that mouth, real soon.”

“What’s the matter, Joey? Can’t you get a woman? Is your method still knock them around and rape them?”

“You’ll find out. We’ve got a lot to settle, you and me. Got another surprise coming. It’s all picked out for you.”

“Why don’t we ditch the crap, Joey? Why don’t we hook up? Give me the when, give me the where, and we’ll get down to business.”

“You always thought I was stupid, always thought I was less than you, and your holy family. Who’s still living in the neighborhood, slinging greasy pizzas?”

“Oh now, Joey, there’s nothing greasy about a Sirico’s. Come on, meet me there—I’ll buy you a large.”

“Too bad the guy banging you now wasn’t in that truck when it blew.” His breath came quicker now, puffing out the words.

Getting under his skin, Reena thought. Poking at a cobra with a stick.

“Maybe next time. Or maybe he’ll have an accident at home, in bed. Shit happens, right? He smelled like pig cooking. The first one. Remember him, Reena? I could smell you where you’d come on the sheets I used to fire him up.”

“You son of a bitch.” She doubled over when the pain hit her belly. “You son of a bitch.”

He laughed, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Someone’s going to burn tonight.”

It took Bo closer to two hours than one to pull away from Sirico’s. The job was going to be an interesting one, to say the least. In addition, he’d fielded a half dozen other inquiries about repair, remodeling, cabinetry from people who’d wandered out while he was measuring the site. He’d given out twice that many cards before he’d gotten the takeout chicken Parmesan.

If even a third of those turned into actual work, he was going to have to seriously consider hiring a full-time laborer.

Big step, he decided. Big, giant step from taking on a part-time helper, or just shanghaiing Brad when a job was too big for one man or he was in a time crunch.

This would be commitment time for a man who’d been perfectly content to work alone. He’d be cutting someone a regular paycheck—someone who’d depend on him for that paycheck. Every week.

Definitely needed to think about it.

He ran a hand over the hood of the truck as he skirted it. A nice piece of machinery, he admitted. And he’d gotten it for a better price than anyone could expect. Bianca had all but stolen it for him.

But damn, he was going to miss his old horse.

He reached for his keys, glanced across the street, up the block a little when he heard a quick, signaling whistle.

He saw the man standing with his thumbs in his front pockets. Ball cap, jeans, sunglasses, hard grin. Something about him was familiar enough to have Bo lifting his hand, keys in it.

Then it clicked. Flower guy, buying supermarket roses to get out of the doghouse.

“Hey,” he called out, opening the door of the truck. “How’s it going?”

With that tooth-baring grin still in place, the man walked to a car, got in. He rolled down the window, leaned out. He mimed shooting a gun with his index finger. Bo heard him say bang as he drove by.

“Weird.” With a shake of his head, Bo slid the takeout bag onto the seat, climbed in behind the wheel. He glanced up the street, down, then pulled out, making a quick U-turn to drive to Reena’s.

He let himself in, called out to let her know he was back, then took the bag into the kitchen. Because he caught a whiff of something other than the chicken, he decided a nice, cool shower was the first thing on his agenda.

So he’d bop home and get one, and grab the sketches and designs he’d drawn up for Reena. Going over those would keep both their minds off more serious matters for a few hours.

He headed back out of the kitchen, up the stairs, calling out again. “Hey, I hunted and gathered. Just going next door to grab a shower, and apparently I’m talking to myself,” he decided when he saw no sign of her in the bedroom.

He heard a door open overhead and climbed to the third floor.

“Hey, Reene, why do people like you and me buy houses where you have to climb . . . Hey, what’s the matter?”

She was standing just outside of what he knew was a small bathroom. Her face was pale as glass.

“You need to sit down.” Even as she shook her head, he was taking her arm, taking her weight and guiding her back into her office. “He called again.”

This time she nodded. “I need a minute.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“No, I had some. I’m okay. Yeah, he called again, and he got to me. I had control, I was pushing the buttons, then he got to me, and I lost it.”

She’d barely been able to get through the follow-up call to O’Donnell before she’d been sick. Horribly sick.

“I saw you pull up.” She’d had her head out the window, just trying to breathe.

“What did he say?”

Rather than repeat it, she gestured to the tape recorder. “Play it back. You should hear it for yourself.”

While he did, she rose to go to the window. She opened that one, too, though the air outside was hot and weighty.

“Not exactly what you signed on for,” she commented and kept her back to him.

“No, I guess it’s not.”

“Nobody’s going to think less of you if you decide to back off from all this, Bo. He’ll hurt you if he can. He’s already hurt you.”

“So, it’s okay with you if I take off for a couple weeks. Maybe go visit some national parks, or do some snorkeling in Jamaica.”

“Yes.”

“Good Catholic girl like you’s going to have to go to confession with that big, fat lie.”

“It’s not a lie.”

“Then you’ve got pretty low standards in men.”

“It has nothing to do with standards.” She pulled the window back down with an impatient snap. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. I’m scared.”

“Me, too.”

She turned around, looked him dead in the eye. “I want to marry you.”

His mouth opened and closed twice, and definitely lost a few shades of color. “Well. Wow. Wow, there’s a lot of stuff flying around in this room. I’m just going to sit down before a piece of it crashes into my skull.”

“What do you think, Goodnight? I am a good Catholic girl at the core. Look at my family. Look at me. What do you think I’d want when I finally found someone I love and respect and enjoy?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. The whole, let’s say ‘institution’ isn’t something—”

“It’s a sacrament to me. Marriage is sacred, and you’re the only man I’ve ever wanted to take vows with.”

“I . . . I—I—I. Shit, now I’m stuttering. I think something did crash into my skull.”

“I didn’t care if I ever got married and had kids because there was no one I wanted to marry and have kids with. You changed that, and now you have to deal with the consequences.”

“Are you trying to scare me so I’ll go visit those national parks?”

She walked to him, bent down, gripped his face hard in her hands and kissed him, firmly. “I love you.”

“Oh, boy. Oh, boy.”

“Say ‘I love you, too, Reena.’ If you mean it.”

“I do mean it. I do love you.”

His eyes stayed on hers, and the fact that there was a trace of fear in them made her smile.

“It’s just . . . I never completed this part of the plan in my head. You know, there’s the whole we’re-having-a-really-good-time-with-each-other part—despite fear and mayhem. Then there’s the maybe-we-should-move-in-together part. After a while there’s the where-should-we-go-from-here? part.”

“That doesn’t work for me. I’m thirty-one. I want children, your children. I want to make a life, our life. You told me once you knew because the music stopped. I’m telling you I know, because the music started. Take some time.” She kissed him again. “Think about it. There’s enough going on right now.”

“A lot going on.”

“I’d still marry you if you went away for a while, somewhere out of all this.”

“I’m not going anywhere. And I don’t know how you could . . .” He couldn’t quite form the word marry. “How you could be with someone who’d leave you to save his own skin.”

“Your skin’s pretty important to me.” She let out a breath. “Well, all this detouring has settled me down a little. So there’s that. We’ll get him, maybe not in time to stop whatever he has planned for tonight or tomorrow. But we’ll get him.”

“Confidence is good.”

“I believe good overcomes evil, especially if good works its ass off. Just like I believe in the sacrament of marriage, and the poetry of baseball. These are constants for me, Bo. Unassailable.”

She looked away, felt steadier. “He knows me better than I know him, and that’s his advantage. He’s had years to study me, to explore my weaknesses. But I’m learning. I want to know why now, why he feels he can or must show me who he is, what he’s done. He’s got cops up and down the eastern seaboard on his tail. He could have taken me out, or tried, without anyone knowing who or why.”

“It wouldn’t be as important? He wouldn’t be as important?”

“Yes, that’s part of it. This is the big bang, what he’s been building up to for twenty years. God, what kind of person obsesses over a woman for twenty years? I can’t understand it.”

“I can.” He stayed where he was when she turned back to him. “It’s not the same, but I know what it is to have someone get inside you, against all reason, and just get stuck in there. For me, it was magic. For him it’s a sickness. But in a way, for both of us it was a kind of fantasy. It just grew in different directions.”

She considered, studied the board. “His was rooted in childhood. His and mine. Rape isn’t sexual, it’s violence. It’s power and control. The fact that he earmarked me, focused on me, tried to rape me wasn’t so much about me but about who I was. The youngest daughter—and likely pretty pampered—of the Hale family.”

She walked around the board as if to study it from different angles. “Holy family, that’s what he said. We were happy, respected, crowded with friends. His family was violent, isolated, and he was the only child. There were others like ours in the neighborhood, but we were more in the forefront because of Sirico’s. Everyone knew us. No one really knew them. And I was the closest to his age. His father abused his mother—he in turn learns abuse, directed at women. But his attempt to take power over me, to do violence to me, wasn’t just thwarted—and by my younger brother, at that—but its consequences affected the rest of his life. My fault, as he sees it.”

She circled the board once more. “But it still doesn’t speak to why now, and what next. He’s a sociopath. No conscience, no remorse, but he’s also self-serving. When something kicks him, he doesn’t just kick back, he burns. Something kicked him. Something triggered this. Something pushed him into coming back here and letting me know who he is.”

He’d stopped listening. Bo had risen, stepped to the board, and her last few words were just buzzes in his head. “This is him? This is Pastorelli?”

“Junior, yeah.”

“I saw him. Twice. I’ve seen him twice. The first time he was as close as you are.”

“When?” she snapped. “Where?”

“The first time it was the Saturday before I had the family dinner deal. I went into the grocery store near a client’s to pick up the flowers for your mother. He stood right beside me. Goddamn, I’m stupid!”

“No. Stop. Just tell me what happened. Did he talk to you?”

“Yeah.” His hands had balled into fists, but he released them now, went back in his head and told her about the incident as best he remembered.

“Son of a bitch bought red roses.”

“He’s followed you. Taking the time to surveil. Client’s house, grocery store. He’d have gotten a thrill out of talking to you. Made him feel superior, powerful. I need a chalkboard in here. Why didn’t I think to buy a chalkboard?”

Instead she dug out a map, pinned it to the back of her corkboard. “Show me the client’s house, the store.”

She grabbed pushpins, stuck red ones in the two locations he pointed out. “Good. Let me mark where else we know he’s been seen.” She stuck another red pin into the map on Tony Borelli’s street. “Where did you see him the second time?”

“About twenty minutes ago,” Bo told her. “Diagonal from Sirico’s.”

She nearly fumbled the box of pins. “Was he going there?”

“No.” He clamped a hand on her shoulder. “He drove off. He was across the street, few houses up the block. When he saw I’d seen him, recognized him from before, he got in his car.”

“Make, model.”

“Ah . . .” He had to close his eyes, work to bring it back. “Toyota. One of the 4Runners, I think. Dark blue, maybe black. It impinges my masculinity, but I don’t actually know every make and model of every available car out there. I made this one because I dated someone who had one. So anyway, I’d sort of half-waved, like you do if you see someone familiar. He drove by, gave me one of these out the window.” He made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger. “Said bang, and drove off.”

“Ballsy bastard.” Her throat was hot and dry at the thought there might have been a gun. “He must’ve been standing out in front of his own house, watching the shop. He said he’s got another surprise planned for me tonight. He’s plank stupid if he thinks I’ll give him a chance to hit Sirico’s.”

She stabbed a pin into the map. Temper steadied her nerves. “I need to make some calls.”

28

There were cops posted at Sirico’s, in position to watch the restaurant and the apartment above. There were two more who’d be enjoying her parents’ hospitality, and yet others keeping watch on Fran’s home. And though Vince had objected, and pointed out his home was protected by state-of-the-art security systems, Reena had men patrolling their grounds.

“He could try for any one of them. Or none of them.” She paced the living room. She stopped, stared at her map. “He’s going to light a match somewhere tonight.”

Bo had hauled her board downstairs at her request. So much for keeping the job and her life separate, she thought, even symbolically. Right now, the job was her life.

Her cell rang in her pocket. She yanked it out. “Hale. Wait.” She grabbed a notebook. “Go.” And scribbled. “Yeah, yeah, okay. We need to send a unit out to BWI, check long term there. Most logical place for him to ditch one, grab another. Good. Thanks.”

She flipped the phone back in her pocket, moved back to the map and used a yellow pin to mark the airport. “Family just got back from a big vacation in Europe. Shuttle out to long-term parking at Kennedy, and their Jeep Cherokee’s gone. Boost that to make the trip south, go see an old pal and get the bum’s rush. Maybe you keep it awhile. Going to take a while for them to track it all the way to Maryland. Then you drive it to BWI—maybe Dulles, maybe National, but probably BWI, pick another, do the switch, drive away. You like SUVs. Plenty of room to hold your toys.”

“I’m going to go next door and shower, it was hot out there today.”

Distracted, she frowned over at Bo. “What?”

“I said I need to go clean up.”

“Would you mind cleaning up here? Don’t you watch movies? The bad guy always breaks into the house when you’re in the shower. Look what happened to Janet Leigh in Psycho.”

“Janet Leigh’s a woman.”

“Regardless. I’d appreciate it if you’d grab that shower here. You’ve got a clean shirt in the laundry room.”

“I do?”

“You left one here. It got washed. So, do me a favor, okay?”

“Sure.” He put his hands on her shoulders and understood what people meant when they talked of someone coiled like a spring. “Any point in telling you to try to relax?”

“Not one.”

“Then I’ll go clean up. Look, if some guy dressed in his mother’s clothes breaks in, fight him off until I get my pants back on.”

“There’s a deal.”

Alone, she went into the kitchen to get another bottle of water to offset her intake of caffeine. She saw the bag of takeout he’d set on the counter. No, she couldn’t relax, she thought, but she could be grateful. Grateful to have someone who fit so truly into her life.

She was definitely going to marry him, she decided as she took out the plastic containers. He could wriggle on the hook for a while—he was entitled—but she was reeling him in.

It made her laugh to remember buying red shoes with Gina at the mall, and having Gina tell her she was marrying Steve. He just didn’t know it yet.

All these years later, she finally understood.

She put the chicken in the oven on warm. A meal would keep her energy up more productively than nerves.

She took the water back into the living room to study the map. “Where are you, Joey?” she asked aloud. “Where are you now?”

They look over there, you work over here. It wasn’t just timing that counted. It was planning.

Rattled now, sure she was. Thinks I’ll come after her mommy and daddy.

Not yet.

Nice little spot, Fells Point. Be nicer yet when it starts to burn.

Cops were so stupid. How many times had he proven that? Maybe they’d tripped him up a couple of times, but he’d been younger then. Besides, he’d learned from it. Lots of time to learn in the joint. Time to plan and imagine, read, study.

He’d honed his computer skills inside. Nothing handier in today’s world than strong computer skills. Hacking, searching, cloning phones.

Or finding out where a certain cop’s widow lived.

Too bad the other one moved to Florida. He’d deal with that one of these days, but it would’ve been nice to take out both of the bastards who hauled his father away. Who pulled the man out of his own home, humiliated him.

Humiliated both of them.

It didn’t matter that the other cop bastard had already bought it. His widow would do just fine.

He left the car—another Cherokee this time—a block south and walked briskly up the sidewalk like a man with things to do.

He was still wearing jeans, but he’d changed into a blue button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up. He wore Nikes and a black O’s fielder’s cap. He carried a small backpack and a glossy white florist’s box.

She lived alone, Mrs. Thomas bastard Umberio. Deb to her friends. Her daughter lived in Seattle, so was out of the zone for game time. Her son lived in Rockville. He’d been closer to Baltimore, Joey thought, he’d have taken the son instead of the widow. But this was a hometown show, after all.

He knew Deb was fifty-six, taught high school math, drove a 1997 Honda Civic, went to some cunt-gym three times a week after school and closed her bedroom curtains most nights at ten.

Probably so she could masturbate, he thought and strolled into the apartment building, chose the stairs rather than the elevator to take him to the third floor.

There were four apartments to a floor. He’d already done his scope. Not much to worry about, and the old coots directly across the hall went out to dinner early every Wednesday night.

Pays to do your homework, right, teacher? he thought, and knocked cheerfully on Deborah Umberio’s door.

She opened the door, keeping the security chain in place so he caught only a slice of her. Brown hair, pointy face, careful eyes.

“Deborah Umberio?”

“That’s right.”

“Got flowers for you.”

“Flowers?” Pink came into her cheeks. Women were so predictable. “Who’s sending me flowers?”

“Ah . . .” He turned the box as if reading a label on the side. “Sharon McMasters. Seattle?”

“That’s my daughter. Well, what a surprise. Wait just a minute.” She shut the door, rattled the chain off, pulled it back open. “What a nice surprise,” she repeated, reaching for the box.

He rammed his right fist into her face. As she fell backward, he nipped inside, closed the door, flipped the lock, set the chain.

“It is, isn’t it?” he said.

He had plenty to do. Hauling her into the bedroom, stripping her down, tying her up, gagging her. She was out cold, but he punched her again, just to keep her that way for a while longer.

The bedroom curtains were closed a little early tonight, but he didn’t think anyone would notice. Or give a rat’s ass.

He left her TV going. She’d had the Discovery Channel on—for God’s sake—while she worked in the kitchen.

Looked like she’d been making herself a salad. Too lazy to cook, he decided as he poked inside her refrigerator. Well, something would be cooking soon.

He found a bottle of white wine. Cheap shit, but sometimes you had to make do.

He’d learned to like finer wines while working for the Carbionellis. He’d learned a hell of a lot working for the Carbionellis.

He drank the wine with the hard-boiled eggs she’d set out for the salad. Though he had surgical gloves in his backpack, he wasn’t worried about fingerprints any longer.

They’d moved past that part of the game.

He riffled through her cupboards, in her freezer. He found several frozen dinners. His initial reaction was disgust, but the picture on the box of the meat loaf and mashed potatoes didn’t look half bad.

He popped it in the oven, dumped some Italian dressing on the salad.

While he waited, he surfed channels. Couldn’t the stupid bitch spring for more than basic cable? He kept the sound low in case some nosy neighbor came to the door and settled on Jeopardy!

Jeopardy! ended, Wheel of Fortune began while he ate the meat loaf and potatoes.

There was a lot to do, but plenty of time to do it. He caught the low, muffled moaning from the bedroom.

Ignoring it, Joey drank some wine with Wheel. “Buy a vowel, you asshole.”

He got a sudden, vivid image of his father, kicked back in the living room recliner, drinking a beer and telling some stranger on the game show to buy a vowel, you asshole.

It pushed him up, pushed the fury through him, fresh and bright.

He wanted to punch his fist through the TV, slam his foot into it. Nearly did as his brain screamed with the rage.

Buy a vowel, you asshole, his father had said, and sometimes, sometimes had shot his son a wide grin.

“When are you gonna get on the show, Joey? When you gonna get on and win us some money? You got more brains in half your head than these cocksuckers.”

He murmured the words, remembered the words as he paced the tiny living area, calming himself again.

They’d’ve been all right, he thought. They’d’ve come out of the slump and been all right. They’d just needed a little more time. Why didn’t they get the time?

Because that little bitch had gone crying to her old man and ruined everything.

It shook his body for a moment. The fury and the grief stormed through him so that his body vibrated and hummed until he got it under control once more.

He picked up the wine, took another long sip.

“All right. Time for work.”

A man who loved his work was a prince among men, Joey thought as he flashed on the lights in the darkened bedroom. He smiled at the woman in the bed whose eyes blinked, then widened with terror.

His pal Nick mouthed off about never taking it personally, about remembering it was just business, but he didn’t buy that crap. He always took it personally. Otherwise, what was the damn point?

He strolled up to the bed while her eyes wheeled toward him. “Hiya, Deb. How’s it going? Just want to say that for a woman pushing toward sixty, you’re not in bad shape. That’s going to make this more pleasant for me.”

She was shaking, her body jerking with shudders as if with small electric shocks. Her arms and legs pulled and twisted against the clothesline he’d used to bind her. He was tempted to rip off the duct tape from her mouth, pull the wadding out, just to hear that first bubbling scream.

But there was no point in disturbing the neighbors.

“Well, why don’t we get started?” He put his hands on the button of his jeans, watched her head shake frantically, her eyes fill with tears.

God, he loved this part.

“Oh, wait, where are my manners? Let me introduce myself. Joseph Francis Pastorelli Junior. You can call me Joey. Your cocksucking husband dragged my father out of our home, put handcuffs on him and pulled him out in front of all the neighbors. Put him in jail for five to seven.”

He unbuttoned his jeans now. She was rubbing her wrists raw with the struggles. There’d be some blood in a minute, and that was always satisfying.

“That was twenty years ago. Now, some people might say that’s a long time to hold a grudge, but you know something, Deb, some people are assholes. The longer you hold it, the better it feels when you make the fuckers pay.”

He unzipped, released himself. Stroked. The sounds she made now were tinny, high-pitched shrieks held in by the wadding and the tape. “The cocksucker you married? He’s got to bear part of the blame for all this. Since he’s dead—oh, condolences, by the way—you’re going to get what was coming to him.”

He sat on the side of the bed, making her leg jerk and twist when he patted it. He removed his shoes. “I’m going to rape you, Deb. But you’ve figured that out already. I’m going to hurt you when I do.” He boosted up his hips, pulled down his jeans. “That really adds to it for me, and I’m the one in charge here.”

She struggled and wept and bled. He watched her face as long as he could, the bruises and bleeding he’d caused. He saw Reena’s face. He always did.

He came hard, with that tinny shriek in his ear.

She was down to mewling whimpers when he rolled away. He used her bathroom, emptied his bladder, cleaned himself up. He didn’t care for the smell of sex, that whore smell women coated on a man.

He went out, drank a little more wine, surfed around, found the ball game and watched an inning while he snacked on some Wheat Thins.

Goddamn O’s, he thought as they went down in order. Couldn’t find the ball if you rammed it up their ass.

When he went back into the bedroom, she was struggling weakly against the bonds. “Okay, Deb, I’m refreshed. Time for round two.”

This time he sodomized her.

Her eyes were dull and distant when he was finished. She’d stopped fighting and lay limp. He could probably perk her up for another go, but a man had a schedule to keep, after all.

He showered, humming to himself and using her lime-scented body gel. Dressed, he lined up what he could use from her own kitchen.

Cleaning fluid, rags, candles, waxed paper. No need to make it look like an accident, but no point in being sloppy. A man should take pride in his work.

He snapped on the surgical gloves from his backpack. While he was soaking rags, the phone rang. He paused, waiting, listened to the bright, female voice that came on after the answering machine picked up.

“Hi, Mom. It’s just me, checking in. I guess you’re out on a hot date.” There was a tinkle of laughter. “Give me a call if you don’t get home too late. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Love you. Bye.”

“Isn’t that sweet?” Joey whined as he continued to work. “Yeah, your mom’s got a hot one tonight.”

He chipped up some of the vinyl tile to expose the subflooring, used the electric screwdriver out of his pack to remove some of the cupboard doors to tent into funnels for flame. He cracked the window for ventilation, set his trailers of rags and loosely crumpled waxed paper.

Satisfied, he carried candles and rags into the bedroom.

She was only half conscious now, but he saw what was left of her go on alert, the fear that leaped into her eyes.

“Sorry, Deb, just don’t have time for a third round, so we’re going to move straight to the grand finale. Your cocksucking husband ever bring his work home?” he asked, and pulled out a knife.

She went wild—still some life in the old girl yet—when he turned the blade in the light.

“You ever have discussions about how he spent his workday? He ever bring pictures home so you could see what happens to people who burn in bed?”

He brought the knife down, viciously, an inch from her hip. Those hips reared up, and she began to struggle madly, gurgling, air wheezing out her nose, her eyes so wide he wondered they didn’t just pop out of her skull like a couple of olives.

He scored the mattress, pulling stuffing free. After replacing his knife, he took a container out of his pack. “I used some of your kitchen supplies in the other room. Hope you don’t mind. But in here, I brought my own. A little methyl alcohol. Goes a long way.”

He soaked the scattered stuffing, rags, the sheets she’d soiled in terror, drawing them onto the floor, using them and the rags, the rest of the waxed paper as a trailer to her curtains.

He set her lamp on the floor, and whistled between his teeth as he dismantled her bedside table. “Just like making a campfire,” he told her as he arranged tepees of wood over the trailers. “See the methyl alcohol, it’s got a flash point below a hundred degrees. The pine oil I used in the kitchen, it’ll take a lot more heat, closer to two hundred—that’s Fahrenheit. But you set it all up right, it’ll burn pretty good once it gets going. Out there, that’s what we’re calling my second wave. What they call a point of origin. In here’s the main show, and, Deb, you’re the star. Just a couple more details, first.”

He picked up her little desk chair and stood on it to open the casing of the bedroom smoke alarm. Unhooked the battery.

Since it was handy, he broke the chair apart, used it to arrange another tent on the mattress.

He stepped back, nodded. “Not bad, not bad at all, if I do say so myself. Damn, getting another woody here.” He rubbed his crotch. “Wish I could give you one more taste of it, honey, but I’ve got places to go.”

He arranged books of matches along the trailers, inside the tents, smiled—coolly now—while she twisted, beat her heels against the mattress, strained to scream through the gag.

“Sometimes the smoke gets you first. Sometimes it doesn’t. The way I’ve set this up, you’re going to hear your own skin crackling. You’re going to smell yourself roasting.”

His eyes went flat as a shark’s, and just as cold. “They won’t get to you in time, Deb. No point in false hope, right? And when you see that cocksucking husband of yours in hell, tell him Joseph Francis Pastorelli Junior sends his best.”

He used a long, slim butane lighter—let her see the flame spurt out of it before he set mattress wadding, matchbooks, rags on fire.

He watched it start to smolder and leap, watched it slyly sneak its way along the path he’d provided for it.

He gathered his pack, strolled out and lit his stage in the kitchen. Then he turned on the gas stove, extinguished the pilot and left the door open.

The fire was edging toward her, crawling over the bed like a lover. Smoke rose in sluggish plumes. He stepped around it, opened the window two inches.

For a moment he stood there, watching it circle him, daring him.

He’d loved nothing in his life the way he loved the dance of flame. It tempted him to stay, to watch, to admire, just another minute. Just one more minute.

But he stepped back. The fire was already starting to sing.

“Hear it, Deb? She’s alive now. Excited and hungry. Feel her heat? I almost envy you. Almost envy you what you’re about to experience. Almost,” he said.

And hitching his pack, he picked up the florist’s box and slipped out the door.

It was dark now, and fires burned brighter in the dark. This one would. He took a Sirico’s takeout menu, dropped it at the front edge of the building.

When he reached his car, he stowed his backpack, the empty florist’s box in the cargo area. He checked his watch, calculated the time, then took a leisurely drive around the block.

He could see the whiffs of smoke finding their escape from the window he’d opened, and the sparkle of flame just rising up, seeking the air he’d provided.

He dialed Reena’s number. He kept it short this time, simply rattled off the address. He tossed the phone out the window and drove toward home.

He had work to do.

The war was being fought when Reena arrived. Arcs of water hurled against the building, battled the bright flames that shot out of windows. Firefighters carried people out of the building while still others dragged hoses in.

She grabbed a helmet out of her trunk and shouted at Bo over the sounds of battle. “Stay back. Stay way back until I get a handle on the situation.”

“There are people in there this time.”

“They’ll get them out. That’s what they do.” She raced over, around barricades that were still being set up. Through the haze of smoke, she spotted the company commander barking into a two-way.

“Detective Hale, arson unit. I called it in. Give me the status.”

“Third floor, southeast corner. Evacuation and suppression. Black smoke, active flames on arrival. Three of my men just went in the door of the involved unit. We’ve got—”

The explosion blasted out, punching through the wall of noise. Glass and brick rained down, lethal missiles battering cars, the street, people.

She threw up an arm to shield her face and saw the sword of fire stab through the roof.

Men rushed the building, charging into the holocaust.

“I’m certified,” Reena shouted. “I’m going in.”

The commander shook his head. “One more civilian reported inside. Nobody else goes in until I know the status of my men.” He held her off, snapping orders, questions into his two-way.

The voice that crackled on reported two men down.

The night was full of the fire, the power of it, the terrible beauty. She stood, as mesmerized as she was horrified as it danced out of wood and brick, toward the sky.

She knew how it capered inside that wood and brick, flying, consuming, lashing back at those who tried to kill it. It roared and it whispered, it slithered and it flashed.

How much would it destroy? Flesh and bone as well as wood and brick, before it was tamed. This time.

The third floor collapsed with a sound like thunder and opened the gateway for the fire to soar.

Men stumbled out of the building with their fallen comrades on their backs. And paramedics dashed forward.

She moved forward with the commander toward one of the men taking long hits of oxygen through a mask. The man shook his head.

“Bitch was in flashover. We got in. Victim on the bed. Gone. Already gone. We laid down a line of suppression, and it blew. Carter took the worst. He took the worst. Jesus, I think he’s dead. Brittle’s bad, but I think Carter’s dead.”

Reena looked up at the sound of more thunder. More of the roof going, she thought dully. And most of the floor under the apartment he’d chosen.

Who had he killed tonight? Who had he burned to death?

She crouched down, touched a hand to the shoulder of the firefighter who dropped his head to his knees. “I’m Reena,” she said. “Reena Hale. Arson unit. What’s your name?”

“Bleen. Jerry Bleen.”

“Jerry, I need you to tell me what you saw in there while it’s fresh in your mind. Give me everything you can.”

“I can tell you somebody set that bitch.” He lifted his head. “Somebody set her.”

“Okay. You went in the southeastern apartment, third floor.”

“Through the door. Brittle, Carter, me.”

“Was the door closed?”

He nodded. “Unlocked, hot to the touch.”

“Could you tell if there’d been forced entry?”

“No sign, none I saw. We hit the room with a stream. Bedroom on the . . . the left, fully engaged, kitchen straight back, thick black smoke. He’d set chimneys.”

“Where?”

“I saw one in the kitchen, maybe two. Window was open. Me and Brittle, we swung toward the bedroom. The whole room was going. I could see the body on the bed. Crisped. Then it blew. From the kitchen. I smelled the gas, and it blew. And Carter . . .”

She closed a hand over his. And, sitting with him, watched the men surround and drown the lethal beauty of the fire.

Her shoes crunched broken glass when she rose, walked over to meet O’Donnell. “He killed two this time. One civilian inside the apartment he used as point of origin, and a firefighter who was killed in the explosion, probably gas from the stove. He timed it, timed it to call me so by the time the fire department arrived on scene, it would already be fully involved.”

“Reena.” He waited until she turned away from the belching smoke, the stubborn tongues of flame. “Deb Umberio lives at this address.”

“Who?” She rubbed the back of her neck, struggled to place the name. When it hit, her heart slammed her ribs. “Umberio? Relation to Detective Umberio?”

“His widow. Tom died a couple years ago. Car wreck. That was Deb’s apartment.”

“God. Oh God.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Alistar? What about his partner, Detective Alistar?”

“In Florida. Retired, moved there six months ago. I’ve put a call in to him, gave him a heads-up.”

“Good, okay, good, then we . . . Oh sweet Jesus. John.”

She was already fumbling out her phone when O’Donnell clamped her arm. “He’s okay. I got him on his cell. Some lucky bug crawled up his butt and told him to drive to New York tonight, check up on Pastorelli in person. He’s okay, Hale, and since he’s already on the turnpike, he’s going to follow this through. We’ve got a unit going by his place, just in case. Check it out.”

“We’ll want to put a net over his social worker from back then, the court psychologist, hell, the family court judge. Anybody who had a piece of this. But I think he’ll be concentrating on those who had any part in taking his father down. I need my family protected.”

“We’ve got that. We’ll stay on that until we’ve got him.”

“I’m going to call home—I mean my parents and the rest—just clear that out of my head first.”

“You do that. I’ll talk to some of the tenants, see who saw what.”

Once she’d made her calls, she walked back to where Bo waited. “He killed two people tonight.”

“I saw them take that firefighter away.” In a body bag, he thought. “I’m sorry.”

“The woman he killed was the widow of one of the detectives who arrested his father for the fire at Sirico’s. He’s made his big move now, he’s opened the field. It doesn’t matter that we know who’s done this. It doesn’t matter to him that we know why. It just matters that he can do it. I’m going to ask you to do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Don’t go home. Call Brad, stay with him tonight. Or Mandy. Or my parents.”

“How about a compromise? I won’t go home. I’ll wait for you.”

“This is going to take hours, and you can’t help me here. You can take my car. I’ll ride with O’Donnell. Do me a favor, okay?”

“One condition. When you’re done, you don’t go home either. Not without calling me first so I can meet you there.”

“All right, that’s fair.”

She leaned against him for a moment, let herself be held.

An ambulance whizzed by, sirens screaming. On its way to take someone toward help, maybe comfort. She walked back through the smoke and into the weeping.

29

The heat hung, a curtain soaked in sweat, when John threaded through the unfamiliar streets of the Bronx. The call from O’Donnell had changed his plans to find a motel off the turnpike, get some sleep and track down Joe Pastorelli in the morning.

Even with the map he’d printed off the Internet, he’d made a couple of wrong turns. His own fault, he admitted, shifting to find comfort behind the wheel after four hours in the car.

Getting old, he mused. Old and creaky. His eyes weren’t as good for driving at night—and when the hell had that happened?

Used to be he could work forty-eight hours straight on a couple of catnaps and coffee. Used to be he had work that could keep him going two days straight, he reminded himself. Those days were gone.

Retirement wasn’t a reward at the end of a well-run career, not in his mind. In his mind it was a void surrounded by endless dull hours, haunted by memories of the work.

It was probably foolish to have driven all this way, but Reena had come to him, asked for help. That was a hell of a lot more to him than a gold watch and a pension.

Still, his eyes were gritty from the strain by the time he found the right street, and his head was aching when he searched out a parking lot.

The walk from the lot to the address he had on Pastorelli worked out the kinks in his legs, but did nothing for the dull pain in his lower back. Sweat clung to him like a second skin. He stopped at a Korean grocer’s, bought a bottle of water and a pack of Excedrin. He downed two on the sidewalk, watched a hooker on the corner come to terms with a john and slide into his car. Wanting to avoid the others still hawking their wares, he cut across the street.

Pastorelli’s building was a low-rise, its bricks scarred and smoked from time and generations of exhaust. His name was printed beside a first-floor apartment. John pushed buttons for third- and fourth-floor apartments, then opened the door when some cooperative soul buzzed him in.

If the air outside had been a steam bath, inside was a closed box baked in a high oven. The headache traveled from the back of his eyes up into his skull.

He could hear the TV through Pastorelli’s door clearly enough to make out some dialogue. He recognized Law & Order, and had the sudden, uncomfortable flash that if he hadn’t taken this impulsive trip north, he’d be sitting alone in a darkened room watching the same damn thing.

If it was Pastorelli watching justice climb the slippery rope of the law, he sure as hell hadn’t been in Maryland playing with fire ninety minutes before.

He balled his fist, thumped the side of it on the door.

He’d thumped a second, then a third time before the door creaked open on the chain.

Wouldn’t have recognized you, Joe, he thought. Would’ve passed you on the street without a glance. The tough, handsome face had devolved into a hollow-eyed, jaundiced skull with skin bagging at the jowls as if it had melted off the bone and pooled there.

He smelled cigarettes and beer, with something soft, like rotted fruit, underlying it.

“What the hell you want?”

“Want to talk to you, Joe. I’m John Minger, from Baltimore.”

“Baltimore.” A dim light bloomed in those sunken eyes. “Joey sent you?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

The door shut, the chain rattled. “He send money?” Pastorelli asked when he opened the door. “He’s supposed to send some money.”

“Not this time.”

A couple of fans stirred the stale heat and spread the smell of smoke and beer, and that underlying stench.

John recognized it now. Not just old man, not just old, sick man. It was old, dying man.

A black leather recliner sat like a man in a tuxedo at a homeless shelter. The rickety TV tray beside it held a can of Miller, an overflowing ashtray, the remote for the TV that looked as shiny and out of place as the recliner. With them were bottles of medication.

A sofa held together by dust and duct tape was pushed against the wall. The counters in the kitchenette were spotted with grease and layered with boxes from various takeout and deliveries. John could see the menu for the last few days had included Chinese, pizza, Subway.

A roach strolled across the pizza box, obviously at home.

“How do you know Joey?” Pastorelli demanded.

“You don’t remember me, Joe? Why don’t we sit down?”

The man looked like he needed to, John thought. He wasn’t sure how he managed to move the bag of bones he’d become without rattling. John took the single chair—a metal folding type—and pulled it opposite the recliner.

“Joey’s supposed to send money. I gotta have money, pay the rent.” He sat, picked up a pack of cigarettes. John watched the bony fingers fish one out, fight to light a match.

“When did you see him last?”

“Couple months maybe. Bought me a new TV. That’s a thirty-six-inch, flat screen. Fucking Sony. He don’t buy cheap.”

“Nice.”

“Got me this chair last Christmas. Son of a bitch vibrates, you want it to.” Those dead eyes latched onto John’s face. “He’s supposed to send money.”

“I haven’t seen him, Joe. Fact is, I’m looking for him. Talk to him lately?”

“What’s this about? You a cop?” He shook his head slowly. “You ain’t no cop.”

“No, I’m not a cop. It’s about fire, Joe. Joey’s got himself in a real fix down in Baltimore. That keeps up, he won’t be sending you any money.”

“You looking to get my boy in trouble?”

“Your boy’s in trouble. He’s been lighting fires back home, back in the neighborhood. He killed somebody tonight, Joe. He killed the widow of one of the arson investigators who helped put you away for the Sirico fire.”

“Bastards dragged me out of my own house.” He blew out smoke, hacked until his sunken eyes watered. “Out of my own house.” He picked up the beer, sipped and hacked some more.

“How long did they give you, Joe? How long do you have left?”

When he grinned, he looked like a nightmare. “Asshole doctors said I’d be dead already. Here I am, so what the fuck do they know? I beat ’em.”

“Joey know you’re sick?”

“Took me to the doctor a couple times. They wanted to put poison in me. Screw that. Cancer, pancreas. Said the cancer’s eating up my liver and shit now, too, and how I can’t drink, can’t smoke.” Still grinning with that death’s head, he sucked on the cigarette. “Fuck them, fuck them all.”

“Joey went back to clean things up, finish things off for you.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Take care of the people who screwed with you. Especially Catarina Hale.”

“Little slut. Sashaying around the neighborhood like she’s better than anybody else. Teasing my boy. So he tried to get a piece, so what? That asshole Hale thinks he can mess with me and mine? Showed him.”

“You paid for it.”

“Ruined my life.” The grin melted away. “That asshole Hale ruined my life. Couldn’t get a decent job after. Mopping up other people’s puke, for chrissake. Took my dignity’s what he did. Took my life away. I got sick ’cause of being in prison, no matter what the fuckhead doctors say. Probably pass this on to Joey, good chance of it. All because of that little whore.”

John decided not to point out you couldn’t catch pancreatic cancer in prison. And if you could, you couldn’t pass it on to your son.

“Pisser, all right. I guess Joey felt that way, too.”

“He’s my son, isn’t he? He respects his father. Knows it’s not my fault he maybe got the cancer genes offa me. He’s got brains. Joey’s always had brains. He didn’t get them from his stupid bitch of a mother. He’s going to send me some money, maybe take me on a trip so I can get out of this godforsaken heat.”

He closed his eyes a moment as he turned his face toward one of the fans. His wispy hair stirred in the stale breeze. “Going to Italy, up north, in the mountains where it’s cool. He’s got something going, the cops’ll never take him for it. He’s too smart.”

“He burned a woman to death in her own bed tonight.”

“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.” But the sudden light in those eyes showed a father’s horrible pride. “If he did, she must’ve had it coming.”

“If he gets in touch with you, Joe, do yourself a favor.” John took out a notebook, wrote down his name and number. “Give me a call. You help me find him, it’ll be better for him. Cops do, I can’t promise what’ll happen. He killed a cop’s wife. You call me, Joe, and maybe I can fix it so you get a little money.”

“How much money?”

“Couple hundred,” John said as his gut roiled with disgust. “Maybe more.”

He rose, put the number on the tray table. “He’s pushing his luck, I promise you.”

“You got brains, you don’t need luck.”

While John was driving out of the Bronx, Joey picked the lock on the rear door of his row house. A couple of stops along the way, and he was right on schedule.

He imagined the cop’s wife roasting like a suckling pig, and the image made him smile as he finessed the locks.

Places to go, he’d told her. Yeah, he had places to go. And people to burn. Big-nosed John Minger was on his short list.

He slipped in the back, took the snub-nosed .22 out of his pack. He’d shoot him first. Kneecap him. Then they’d have a little talk while he set the fire.

Going to keep the city’s heroes busy tonight, he thought and worked his way carefully through the darkened house.

Old man was probably in bed already. Already sawing them off this time of night.

He’d rather be dead than old.

Age wouldn’t be a problem for Minger much longer. He’d be dead, the whole fucking slew of them would be dead before his father bought it. That was justice.

They’d killed his father sure as if they’d carved him open with a knife. Every mother’s son of them was going to pay for it.

He made his way upstairs, excitement and pleasure building. In the knees, he thought again. Pop, pop! See how he liked it.

See how he liked watching the fire claw across the bed toward him. See how he liked having it eat at him the way the cancer was eating at his father.

He wasn’t going down that way. No fucking way. Joseph Pastorelli’s boy, Joey, wasn’t going by cancer.

Things to do, he thought again, a lot of things to do before he walked into the fire and ended it.

When Minger was done, it’d be time to move on to the main attractions. The night was young yet.

But he slipped into and searched every room, and didn’t find his prey.

His finger vibrated on the trigger, his hand shook with the effort of resisting the urge to fire into the empty bed.

Went out to watch the cop’s bitch burn, that’s what he did. People like to watch. Reena probably called crying to him, so he went to hold her hand.

Probably banged her plenty over the years.

He could wait a little bit. Yeah, the night was young so he could spare a little time. Get him when he got home. Just wait like a cat at the rat hole.

He’d just put the wait time to good use and set things up.

Smoke still curtained the room, and her boots squished in the wet of the bedroom carpet as Reena looked down on the remains of Deborah Umberio.

The sodden remains of the charred mattress told the tale.

“She burned where she lay,” O’Donnell said. “Right into the padding.”

Peterson, the ME in a short-sleeved shirt and khakis, waited while Reena took digitals. “Could have been dead before he lit the room. Or unconscious. I’ll let you know what we find. We’ll move on this right away.”

“She wouldn’t have been dead, or unconscious.” Reena lowered the camera. “He’d have wanted her alive and aware. He’d want her to know what was coming. To feel it. That would feed him. He’d have tortured her first, he’d need to. He’d have made her suffer first.”

She drew a breath. “Because she was a woman, he’d have taken his time with her. It makes him feel more important, more virile. With his history of sexual assault, he probably raped her.”

“Traces of what looks like cloth inside her mouth.” Peterson leaned over the body, close. “Indicate she was gagged.”

“She opened the door to him.” Like Josh, she thought. “Why? She was a cop’s wife for what, thirty years, and she opens the door to a strange man? He had a pass—delivery, maintenance. Someone had to see him come into the building. Canvass has to turn up something, someone.”

“We’ll start working through the layers here,” O’Donnell told her, and she nodded.

“You can see what he did. Used a flammable, focused on the bed, then set trailers around the room, built his chimneys to punch it all up. He didn’t need the other point of origin in the kitchen to kill her. That was for us. That was for the firefighters who responded. Why not take out a couple of them, too? More bang for the buck.”

She stepped carefully through and around debris, looked toward the kitchen. A pot lid protruded from a wall. Wet dripped down it, and from the jags of ceiling that remained. The street-facing wall was all but gone. Some of the charred remains of cupboards were missing doors. Moving in, crouching down, she used a light and magnifying glass.

“These doors didn’t burn, or blow, O’Donnell. He unscrewed them, used them for his chimneys, for fuel. He’s inventive.” Frowning, she looked back at her partner. “But would he come in empty-handed, trust that she had everything he’d need for the job? He’d need rope, an inflammable of his choice, matches, maybe a weapon. Means a bag, a briefcase, a duffel. Something.”

She straightened, pulled out her ringing phone.

“It’s John,” she told O’Donnell.

“Go ahead. I’ll get the team started in here.”

They started the grids and the photographs.

“Pastorelli’s dying.” Reena pinched the bridge of her nose. “Pancreatic cancer. He told John he hasn’t seen Joey for a couple of months, that he’s supposed to send money. Something about them taking a trip soon, to Italy.”

“That’s why he’s escalated.”

“His father’s dying. He can’t let that go unsung. And from what John got out of the interview, Senior may have convinced his boy that he’s going to face the same fate. Joey wants me to know who’s doing this, who’s coming for me because it’s a tribute to his father—and Jesus, maybe a kind of suicide mission. He’s still the boy running after the police car, after his father.”

“So he figures if they live, he can get them both out of the country after he’s done here? Take his revenge, pay his tribute, whatever he wants to call it, then hide out in Italy?”

“Not hide out. He wouldn’t think of it as hiding out. That would make him weak.” She rubbed at her stinging eyes. “Getting away with it, that’s different. Enjoying the high life somewhere—for the time he thinks they have left—thumbing his nose at what he’s left behind. He had money last December. He could have used some of that for fake passports, for transportation, for a place overseas. He might have friends or a connection there. Pastorelli said northern Italy, up in the mountains. We can start working that. But he’s not going to get that far.”

She looked around at the steam and the rubble, the ruin. “I’m not going to let him get that far.”

“Is John looking to stay on Pastorelli in New York?”

“No, he doesn’t think he can get more there. He’s heading home. I nagged at him to get a room for the night instead of trying to drive all the way back. He sounded beat.”

He waited until midnight, then thought, What the fuck. He could come back for the old bastard another time. He could leave him a nice surprise, then take him out some other time.

He’d seen the cops come to the front and back doors, and he’d seen them drive away. Doing a check, getting a lay of the land. So maybe it was best to do a little work, and move on to the next.

He’d already primed the bedroom, the one where he’d found clothes in the closet. He used some of them to make trailers. Mattress stuffing—something he thought of as a trademark now. Waxed paper, methyl alcohol. Might as well sign the portrait, he thought.

Though it would be fun to spread things out through the house, it was quicker—and just as effective—to concentrate on the one room.

He’d found family photographs. These he broke out of their frames and scattered. Maybe he’d move on the real thing one of these days. You take my family, I take yours.

But for now, he struck flame, watched it come to life.

On the way out, he laid a paper takeout napkin with Sirico’s cheerful logo on the kitchen counter.

Reena worked in the bedroom, teasing out liquid that had pooled in the cracks of the floor, settled under the remains of the baseboard. She bagged traces of trailers that hadn’t burned to ash, took samples of the ash itself.

Trippley came and crouched beside her. “We found some hair in the shower drain. Might be his.”

“Good. Good. We get his DNA on scene, it’ll wrap him like a bow.”

“We’ve got glass fragments from a wine bottle in the living area. Might get prints.”

There was something else, Reena thought as she paused. Something in his tone. “What is it?”

“They found a Sirico’s takeout menu outside.”

Her fingers curled, then released. “I wondered where he’d put it.” Eyes grim, she got back to work. “Delivery. Could’ve posed as a delivery guy. Not food. She wouldn’t let him in. Package? She’d have to have ordered something. What would . . .” Flowers, she decided, remembering Bo’s brush with him at the supermarket. “Maybe flowers.”

She tilted her head back. “Why does a veteran cop’s wife open the door to a stranger? Because he’s delivering flowers. We need to ask the neighbors, the people in neighboring buildings if they saw a guy carrying a florist’s box in addition to the duffel or briefcase idea.”

“I’ll get that going.”

They both looked as O’Donnell moved into the room. “He hit again. Engines are responding to a fire at John Minger’s.”

“He’s not there.” Reena got shakily to her feet. “He can’t be there yet, even if he drove straight back.”

“Go,” Trippley told her. “We’ll stay with this.”

She moved quickly, stripping off her protective gloves on the way out. “If he’s trying to push this through tonight, he may go for my parents, my brother or sisters.”

“They’re covered, Hale.”

“Yeah.” But she made a rapid series of calls anyway.

“Don’t leave the house,” she told her father. “Nobody leaves the house. I’m on my way to John’s now. I don’t want anyone stepping foot out of the house until I say different. I’m going to get back to you as soon as I can.”

She hung up before he could argue. “He isn’t staying around here. Maybe in the county, but not in the city. Maybe down in D.C.”

“We’ve got cops flashing his picture at hotels, motels. It’s a lot to cover.”

“He’d go for high end. He’s not tapped out, and he thinks ahead. He’s got ID, he’s got a credit card to match it. Playing the traveling exec, maybe. A few days at one location, move to another.”

She popped out of the car when O’Donnell braked behind the engine. There was a clenched fist in place of her heart, though she could see the fire was contained, nearly suppressed.

She moved quickly toward Steve. “Gas lines?”

“No leaks. Word is the fire was contained in the bedroom. Smoke alarm deactivated. Woman out walking her dog saw the smoke, called it in.”

“Where is she?”

“Right over there. Nancy Long.”

“Nancy? Gina and I went to school with her.” Finding her in the crowd, Reena walked over. Nancy held her excited terrier on a leash with one hand and her husband’s arm with the other.

“Nancy.”

“Reena. God this is awful! But they said Mr. Minger wasn’t home. Nobody was inside. I saw smoke. Susie was making such a fuss I gave up and took her for a walk. She was just peeing when I looked up. Maybe I smelled it, I don’t know, but I looked up and I saw smoke coming out of the window. I didn’t know what to do, I guess I panicked. I ran over and beat on Mr. Minger’s door, shouted for him. Then I ran home. I couldn’t even dial nine-one-one my hands were shaking so hard. I had to yell for Ed to do it.”

“You might have saved John’s house. And if he had been inside, you might have saved his life.”

“I don’t know. I’m just sick about it.”

“Did you see anyone else? Someone out walking, someone driving away?”

“No. I didn’t see anyone, not then.”

“Not then?”

“I mean, there was nobody out walking around except me.”

“Maybe you saw someone earlier?”

“Housetraining a new puppy means you’re outside a lot. Before we went to bed I took Susie for what I thought was our last walk of the night. I was just opening the door to go in, and I saw this guy walk by. But that was earlier, near to midnight, I think.”

“You didn’t recognize him?”

“No. I wouldn’t have paid any attention, except he glanced over when I spoke to Susie, and he kind of waved. And I thought, I wonder who’s getting lucky tonight?”

“Lucky?”

“He had one of those long white flower boxes, and I thought how Ed never brings me flowers anymore.”

“This was around midnight?”

“Right around.”

“I’m going to show you a picture, Nancy.”

Reena stood in John’s kitchen, stared at the Sirico’s takeout napkin on the counter. She put the evidence marker in its place, then bagged it.

“John’s on his way back.” O’Donnell closed his phone. “It’ll take him two, three hours. You want to get started on this or wait until he gets here?”

“Can you handle this for now? I want to check on my family, then get the samples we’ve got so far in.”

“Take a uniform.”

“That’s my plan. He could’ve waited on this. Given it another day or two, made sure John was home. Having us scramble tonight was more important. He was just waiting for me to click to who he is.”

“There’s a unit sitting on your house now, men front and back.”

She managed a smile. “That’s going to piss him off.” Her belly tightened when her phone rang. “Hale.”

“Too bad he wasn’t home. He’d be frying now.”

She signaled O’Donnell. “That must’ve been a disappointment to you, Joey.”

“Hell, the cop’s bitch was enough for tonight. I thought of you when I was doing her, Reena. Every time I raped her, I was thinking of you. You get your messages?”

“Yeah, I got them.”

“That’s your dad’s face in the lame chef’s hat, isn’t it? Your sexy old lady drew it.” He laughed when she said nothing. “There’s another one waiting for you. At your brother’s clinic. Better hurry.”

“God. Goddamn it.” She cleared the call, hit 911. “The clinic where my brother and his wife work. Two blocks away.”

“I’ll drive.” O’Donnell rushed out the door with her.

The Sirico’s wine list was in the gutter, and the building up in flames.

“I’m suiting up.” She popped the trunk, pulled out her gear. “Help with suppression.”

“Reena.”

The surprise of hearing him use her first name stopped her. “You’ve been going what, closing on eighteen hours? Let the engine company handle it.”

“He’s running us in circles, spreading us thin.” She slammed the trunk. “He can’t hit Sirico’s or me or my family directly, so he does this. Just pissing on me.”

She stood, the helmet dangling from her fingers and the fire dancing in front of her. “He’s caught now,” she stated firmly. “He’s caught in it. He can’t stop, how can he stop? It’s hypnotizing. It’s so compelling.”

“What else is there for him to hit? Everything left is under guard.”

Smoke brought tears to her eyes. “The school, then Bo—but Bo was just, I think, a moment of opportunity. Giving me a little tune-up. Umberio’s wife, then John. Now Xander.”

“Working his way to you.”

“I’m the finish line. It’s all payback, but it’s not in order. Xander should’ve come after the school. Xander was the next step, then my father, then the restaurant, and so on. So he’s bouncing, but it’s still a pattern.”

“His old house. It plays,” O’Donnell added when Reena turned to stare at him. “They come to get his father there, he never comes back. He gets pulled out of the house himself by his mother.”

She tossed the helmet into the car. “This time I’ll drive.”

30

Flames licked out of the windows on the second and third floors of the house that had once been the Pastorellis’. There were no alarms, no screams, no crowds. There was only the fire, torching in the dark.

“Call it in!” she shouted to O’Donnell, and grabbed her helmet, raced to the trunk for gear. “There are people in there. Two—probably second-floor bedroom. I’m going in.”

“Wait for the squad.”

She pulled on turnout gear. “I’ve got to try. They could be alive, restrained. I’m not going to let someone else burn to death tonight.”

She grabbed a fire extinguisher, heard in some part of her brain O’Donnell’s voice clipping out the situation and address. He was right behind her as she raced up the steps.

“He could be in there.” O’Donnell’s weapon was in his hand. “I’ve got your back.”

“Take the first floor,” she snapped back. “I’m going up.”

He’d left the door off the latch, she saw. Like an invitation to come on in, make yourself at home. She locked eyes with O’Donnell, nodded, then shoved through the door.

There was light, the backwash from the street, silver slivers of moon. Shadows and silhouettes that were furniture and doorways, all swept with eyes and weapons while her heart galloped at the base of her throat.

And there was ice in her belly as she raced up the steps where smoke bloomed along the ceiling.

It gathered, that smoke, thickened and boiled in a filthy brew as she climbed. The sound of the fire was like a roll of raging surf that she knew could become a tidal wave. She tested a closed door for heat, found it cool. After a quick sweep, she continued down the hall.

Fire danced on the ceiling over her head, surrounded the door like a golden frame. It licked slyly at her boots.

She heard her own muffled cry of fear as she swept foam over flame. There were screams now, but of sirens. No one answered her shouts. She gathered her courage, her breath, and ran through the wall of fire.

The room was blazing, a small mouth of hell. Fire plumed from the floor, clawed up the dresser where a vase of flowers was already engulfed. For a heartbeat she stood surrounded by it, its brilliance and fantastic heat, the colors and movement and power.

Her weapons were so small, pathetic she knew, against the sheer passion of it. And she was already, pitifully, too late.

He hadn’t lit the bed. He’d saved that for her, had wanted her to see.

He’d arranged them, of course. After he’d shot them, he propped them both up so they seemed to be watching. A captive audience to the fire’s majesty.

She moved. Part of her mind stayed rooted to the spot, appalled and fascinated. But she moved, rushing the bed, risking the burn. She had to be sure. Had to be sure she was too late.

“Get back! Get clear!”

She turned at O’Donnell’s shout. Part of her mind registered him standing in the doorway, framed by the violent dance of flames. His face was stained with sweat and smoke, but his eyes were clear and hard.

He’d holstered his gun and held instead a home fire extinguisher.

“They’re dead.” She shouted it over the roar and spit of flame, but heard the dullness in her own voice. “He killed them in their own bed.”

His eyes held hers another moment, that flash of understanding that was rage and disgust. “We save what we can.” He lifted the tank. “That’s the job.” And pulled the pin.

The explosion knocked her off her feet, kicked her onto the bed so she lay across the dead. For an instant her mind was stunned, unable to comprehend.

Then she was screaming her partner’s name, dragging the bloody sheet from the bed and rolling through the fire, through the door.

She knew he was gone, knew it, even as she threw the sheet and her own body over the fire that buried him.

Water gushed behind her, drowning fire, as others ran into her personal hell.

He knew I’d go up first.” Reena sat on the curb. She’d shoved aside the oxygen mask Xander had pushed on her. “Those people up there, they were nothing to him. That’s why he shot them instead of giving them to the fire. They meant nothing. But he knew I’d go up first.”

“There was nothing you could do, Reena. Nothing you could change.”

“He killed my partner.” She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her face to her knees. She would always, always, see him burning, his torn body engulfed.

That’s the job. The last words he’d spoken. Now she wondered if she had it in her to do the work that had killed him. Grief and guilt filled her belly.

“The bastard knew I’d go up first, to the fire. He rigged that home extinguisher, figuring O’Donnell—or someone—would grab it, use it. In the kitchen, probably in the kitchen. Plain sight. You go with instinct. You grab it, you use it. If I’d waited to go in—”

“You know better than that.” Xander gripped her shoulders, lifted until their eyes met. “You know better than if, Catarina. You did what you had to do, and so did O’Donnell. There’s only one person to blame here.”

She looked back toward the house. The war still raged, but she was just one more casualty. She’d lost her partner up in that room. She’d lost her heart, and she was afraid she’d lost her nerve there as well.

“He only killed them to show me he could. He only killed them so I would see. O’Donnell, he was just icing. Fucking bastard.”

“You need rest, Reena. You need sleep. I’m going to take you to Mama’s, give you a sedative.”

“No, you’re not.” She rested her forehead on her knees again, struggled with tears she was afraid would never stop if she shed the first of them. She wanted her anger, wanted to feel it burn through her blood, but could only struggle with an awful, demoralizing grief.

They were young, she thought. Younger than she. He’d killed them cold and quick in their own bed, then posed them like dolls.

The image of it would haunt her for the rest of her life. Just as the image of a good man, a good cop, a good friend, covered with flames would haunt her.

She lifted her head again, looked into her brother’s eyes. “I told you to stay inside. I told you it was important you stay inside.”

It could’ve been her brother, she thought. Her mother, sister, father. That was Joey’s message to her with O’Donnell’s death. He could have chosen anyone, and still could.

“I’m the least of your worries.” Xander cupped her cheek. “One of the cops took An and the baby to Mama’s. We’ve got our own personal police force at this point.”

He’d touched her face then, too, she remembered. Twenty years before, when she’d lain stunned and crying after Joey’s attack. Her brother had touched her face. He’d smelled of grape Popsicle.

The grief in her heart poured out into her throat, her eyes. “Xander. He burned your clinic.”

He lowered his brow to hers now, and her arms went around him. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“Oh God, Xander. He burned you out. He’ll come after you, after all of you if we don’t stop him. O’Donnell was the next thing to family. He knew that. He had no part in what happened twenty years ago. His connection to me, not revenge, is why he’s dead. I don’t know how to stop this. I’m scared to death.”

The shaking started in her toes, worked its way up so she gripped his hands as if to keep herself from shaking to pieces. “I don’t know what to do. Xander, I don’t know what to do next.”

“We need to go home. We just need—”

He broke off, and both of them looked over as Bo pushed and shoved his way through people and barricades, shouting for her. She gained her feet, teetered a bit until Xander steadied her.

“Wait here. I’ll get him.”

“No.” Reena trained her eyes on Bo. “I can’t just sit anymore.”

She moved as quickly as she could, but it was like swimming through syrup as Bo struggled with two uniformed cops who restrained him.

“He’s with me. It’s okay. He’s with—”

Bo broke free, smothering the rest of her words as he grabbed her up. “They said you went in.” His arms locked around her, stole her air. “They said you went inside. They said a cop went down. Are you hurt?” He yanked her back, his hands running over her. “Are you hurt?”

“No. O’Donnell.” Her vision blurred with tears. “He . . . he’s dead. He’s dead. Joey rigged an extinguisher, it blew up in his hands. It blew up, and the fire . . . I couldn’t save him.”

“O’Donnell?” She saw the fear in his eyes go to grief. “Oh Jesus. Jesus, Reena.” He dragged her close, held hard. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh God, Mrs. M.”

“What?”

“His sister.” He rocked her as they stood there, in the street, with death and smoke everywhere. “Reena, I’m sorry. I’m sick and I’m sorry.” And so glad it wasn’t you. Relief tangled with grief had him clutching her tighter. “What can I do?”

“There’s nothing.” The dullness was creeping back. The empty sorrow. “He’s gone.”

“You’re not.” He drew her back to look at her face. “You’re alive. You’re here.”

“I can’t think. I don’t even know if I can feel. I’m just—”

He cut her off again, this time blocking words with his mouth on hers. “Yes, you can. You’ll think and you’ll feel, and you’ll do what you have to do.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “That’s all there is.”

We save what we can, she thought. And with that, she found her balance.

“You level me out, Goodnight,” she murmured.

“What?”

She shook her head. “What are you doing out here? Running down the street like a crazy person. Doesn’t anyone listen to me?”

He kept touching her, her hair, her face, her hands. “I’m younger and faster than your father. I got by the cops at the house. He didn’t.”

“Hell.” She turned, studied the scene.

The fire would take the top two floors. It would nibble at the neighboring houses, scar lives. But it wouldn’t take any more tonight, not here. And it was done with her, for now.

That’s the job, O’Donnell had said. It was her job to do something. To study, observe, dissect. To find the why and the who, not to sit on the curb and shake with shock and grief.

“Give me a minute.” She squeezed Bo’s arm, walked back to Younger, who’d come when the news of O’Donnell’s death had hit. “I’m going to go reassure my family, check in there. If he calls again, I’ll let you know.”

“Took one of ours now.” His face was cold as winter. “Took a cop. A good cop.” He looked up at the sky. “He’s walking dead now.”

“Yeah. But he may not be done with us. We’ve covered everything. I want to clean up.” She unfastened her jacket. “Clean up, clear my head. If you want to do the same, stay close, you can use the facilities at my parents’.”

“I may take you up on it. Captain’s on his way. I’ll update him, post guards.”

“Appreciate it.”

He put a hand on her arm as she turned. “He was a step ahead of us, Hale. He, by God, won’t stay that way.”

Couldn’t he? Reena thought. He was a fucking cobra, just as patient, just as lethal. He could go under, go into the wind for years and slither back out whenever he wanted.

She took a last look at the house as she walked away. No, that was wrong thinking, that was exhaustion and discouragement thinking. He’d gone too far to stop now, to wait now. He was too close to the goal for a frigging time-out.

She locked her things in the trunk.

“Detective Younger may come up when he’s finished here. John’s on his way back from New York.”

“What was he doing in New York?” Bo reached for her hand, linked fingers.

“Looking up Joe Pastorelli. He’s got pancreatic cancer. He’s terminal.”

“Hard way to go.” Xander flanked her other side. “Is he in treatment?”

“Didn’t sound like it, and it may be Joey figures he’s got tumors ticking away like little time bombs inside himself.”

“Is it genetic?” Bo asked.

“I don’t know.” Fatigue weighed on her like a cairn. “I don’t know. Xander?”

“Under ten percent of the cases are hereditary. Smoking’s the leading cause.”

“There’s some irony for you. Smoke, fire, death. In any case, I’ll get the details when John gets back. What it tells us is this is most likely what set Joey off, pushed him to finish things up. Look, I’m going to run home, get some fresh clothes.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“There are cops on the house, Bo.”

“I’ll go with you,” he repeated and walked around to get in her car.

She rolled her eyes. “Get in,” she ordered her brother. “I’ll drop you at Mama’s. Nobody walks around alone tonight. Tell them I’m fine,” she added as she started the car. “That I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

The lights were on, she saw, all over the house. She got out for a moment to speak to the two cops parked at the curb. Head cocked, she walked back to Xander.

“Fran, Jack, the kids, Bella, her kids. You didn’t mention everyone congregated over here.”

“It’s what we do.”

She kissed both his cheeks. “Go in, smooth everyone’s nerves. Ask . . . ask Mama to say a rosary for O’Donnell. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

She got back in the car before someone inside spotted her. She’d never get home for clothes if they started streaming outside.

“They hold together,” Bo said when she pulled away. “You’ve got granite for a base there, Catarina. They’re scared, they’re sick with worry, but they don’t come apart.”

“He wants to hurt them. I’m afraid knowing that will make me come apart.”

“It won’t. I guess if I’m going to do the married thing—hey, I said ‘married’ right out loud. If I’m going to do the married-and-kids thing, I’d want to build that on a good, solid base.”

“Well, the timing’s odd, but if that’s a proposal—”

“Uh-uh. You proposed, I’m just giving you an answer.”

“I see.”

“Don’t see a ring though. It’s not official until you buy me a ring.”

She stopped, just braked in the middle of the street, laid her head on the steering wheel. And wept.

“Oh hey, oh God, don’t cry.” He yanked at his seat belt, swiveled over to try to take her in his arms.

“I have to, just for a minute. I thought I would lose it in the house, first in that bedroom. Seeing what he did to them. He shot them, then sat them up in bed like puppets.”

“What?”

“Carla and Don Dimarco. I didn’t know them well. They only bought the house a few months ago. Young couple, first house. Her mother and Gina’s mom went to school together.” She sat up, wiped at tears. “He didn’t fire the bed. I could see them. I could see the pillows he used to muffle the shots. I was standing there, the fire’s all around and I could see how he came in while they slept, put the pillows over their faces . . . low caliber. Little hole. Just a little hole.”

Bo said nothing, only took her hand.

“It’s all around. The fire. The heat, the smoke, the light. It talks. You can hear it mutter, sing, roar. It has speech. It fascinates me. It pulls at me. It always has, since the night I stood on the sidewalk with a glass of ginger ale and watched it dance behind the glass at Sirico’s. I understand his . . . attachment to it,” she said and turned to look at Bo.

“I understand why he chooses it, or it chooses him. I can see the steps that brought us here, all of us. But now, after O’Donnell, I feel as though I’m standing on the edge of them. I lost my balance up in that room, looking at people who did nothing except buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Looking at them and feeling the fire, I lost it, then my partner’s standing in the doorway, pulling me back from that edge, reminding me we had a job to do. And dying for it.”

She shuddered out a breath. “I can see what he’s doing, why. More, why he has to do it. The fire fascinates him, too.”

“Have you got some screwy idea that you and this crazy bastard have something in common?”

“We do, more than one thing in common. But I’ve got that granite base, and thank God for it. And now I have you. I said you level me out, Bo. If I lose my balance, you’re going to steady me again. Why else would you sit here on this hellish night and talk about marriage and children?”

“You want to know?” He hitched up a hip, pulled out a bandanna and used it to mop at her wet cheeks himself. “I’ve spent a good part of tonight sitting, standing, pacing in your parents’ house. Watching your family sit, stand, pace. And I realized if you love someone, when it’s the most real, the most important thing in your life, it’s not enough to coast. You need to dig in those footers, start building on that base. You want something to last, you put your back into it.” He kissed her hand. “I’ve got a strong back.”

“Me, too.” She kissed his hand in turn, then, pushing back her hair, started the car again. “What kind of ring do you want?”

“Something gaudy that I can show off to my friends to their envy and avarice.”

Her laugh felt rusty in her throat.

She pulled up behind the police unit in front of her house. “I’m going to talk to these guys a minute, then run in and get some things. Why don’t you wait here and start planning your dream wedding? You’re going to look amazing in a long white dress.”

“That may be going a little too far. It’s not really appropriate for me to wear white.”

She had her badge out, then recognized the officer who stepped out of the radio car. “Officer Derrick.”

“Detective. Bastard killed O’Donnell.”

“Yeah.” She steadied herself again. “How long have you been on?”

“Since two. Another unit was doing circular patrols, but since it looked like he might be working his way here, we pulled off the clinic fire to do the sit and watch. Two officers are covering the back. Check-in’s every fifteen.”

“Status?”

“Quiet. Some people came out when they heard sirens. Had some milling on the sidewalk. We dispersed.”

“I’m going in to get some fresh clothes. My—” She started to say “friend,” then gave herself a lift. “My fiancé’s in the car. Appreciate the duty, Officer.”

“No problem. Want me to walk you in, stand by?”

“It’s okay. I’ll be quick. Alert the rear team that I’m entering the premises.”

“Will do.”

Jingling her keys, she crossed the sidewalk, started up the steps.

Four fires set in under six hours, she thought. Was he going for the record book, looking for fame as well as revenge?

He knew the neighborhood, so that was to his advantage, but still it was fast work. Damn fast.

She unlocked the door, flipped on the lights as she stepped in. She set her keys down as she brought the map back into her head.

From Fells Point, entering around six-thirty. Exiting between nine-fifteen and nine-thirty. Plenty of time to get to John’s, set the fire. Had to leave that location after midnight. Cutting it close there, barely enough time to get to the other locations. Fire was hot, fully involved when they’d arrived at the clinic, minutes after he’d called her.

Minutes, she thought on her way upstairs. And only minutes after that—five?—she and O’Donnell had raced to the old Pastorelli house.

Not just one step ahead. Nobody was that good, nobody was that fast. An accomplice? Didn’t fit, just didn’t fit. This was his mission, his obsession. He wouldn’t share.

But he’d fired the clinic, gone two blocks, broken into his old house, shot two people, planted the rigged extinguisher and set another fire. One that had been fully involved before she’d gotten there.

Because he’d killed Carla and Don first. Before the clinic. Because he’d set both fires, used timers. Very likely set the clinic to burn before he’d gone to John’s. That’s the pattern, she thought. Xander then John.

She’d missed it. Missed it because she’d been running around, just as he’d wanted. Because he’d had everyone scrambling to put out blazes that were as much distraction as they were points on his scoreboard.

Missed more, she realized, because she’d been grieving.

Since two. That’s what Derrick had said. They’d been on since two.

Her palms went damp. She spun, reaching for her weapon, poised to run down and out.

He stepped out of the doorway in front of her, wearing a Sirico’s T-shirt. And holding a .22.

“Time for the big surprise. You’re going to want to take that gun out slow, Reena. Drop it on the floor.”

She raised both hands. Don’t surrender your weapon, she thought. Never give up your weapon. “There are cops all around the house, Joey.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them. Two front, two back. Got here about ten minutes after me. Had a busy night, haven’t you? You got soot on your face. You went into my house, didn’t you? I knew you would. I’ve done quite a study on you. Did you get to them before the fire did?”

“Yeah.”

He grinned hugely. “Hey, where’s your partner?”

Gleeful, that’s what he was. And she would see him in hell for it, whatever the cost. “You’ve killed a cop now, Joey. You’re done. Every cop in Baltimore will come after you. You’re not going to get out of this.”

“I think I will. But if I don’t, I’ll have finished what the hell I started. The gun, Reena.”

“You use yours, the cops’ll be in here before I drop. That’s not the way you want to finish this. That’s not the point, is it? Fire’s the point. There’s no satisfaction unless I burn.”

“And you will. Bet your partner burned good.”

The image flash backed, and she suppressed it. But it left a sparking wire in her blood.

Oh, she could feel, and she could think. And he’d misjudged her. “I know about your father, the cancer.”

Fury flamed into his face. “You don’t talk about my father. You don’t say his name.”

“Maybe you think you have it, too. That it came into you from him. But that’s a small chance, Joey. Single digits.”

“What the fuck do you know about it? It’s eating him from the inside. You can watch it eating him, smell it. I’m not going that way, and neither’s he. I’m going to take care of him before it finishes him. Fire purifies.”

Fresh horror struck her. He meant to burn his own father to death. “You can’t help him, can’t purify him if you die here.”

“Maybe not. But he taught me to look out for number one. And I think I’ll get out. You’ll burn, they’ll come running, and I’ll slip out. Like smoke.”

He stepped forward; she stepped back. “Belly shot probably won’t kill you—at least not right away. But it’ll hurt like hell. They might hear it. Little gun like this doesn’t make much of a bang, so maybe not. Either way, I’ll have just enough time. I got everything set up for you.”

He shoved her back, into the bedroom, hit the lights.

Trailers and chimneys were set over the floor, over the bed.

He grabbed her hair, yanked her down to her knees with the gun pressed to her temple. “One sound, one move, I put it in your brain, then burn what’s left of you.”

Stay alive, she ordered herself. She couldn’t shut him down if she was dead. “You’ll burn, too.”

“That happens, I can’t think of a better way to go out. I’ve been waiting to find out what it’s like since I was twelve.” He wrenched her police issue out of her holster, tossed it aside. “Too big a bang,” he told her. “You’ve wondered what it was like, too. To go into it, to let the fire take you. You’re going to find out. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to call your old man, tell him to come on down. You want to talk to him, in private.”

Doesn’t know I just came in for clothes. Doesn’t know they’re waiting for me. “Why?”

“He burns, you burn, and that ends it. Circle closes.”

“Do you think I’d bring my father to you?”

“He killed mine. He’s got a price to pay. You got a choice. You call him, you sacrifice him, or I take them all. Your whole family.” He wrapped her hair around his fist, yanked until stars exploded in front of her eyes. “Mother, brother, sisters. All those little brats. Every single one. So you choose. Your father, or all of them.”

“All he did was defend me, the way fathers are supposed to.”

“He humiliated mine. He had him dragged off, locked in a cell.”

“Your father did that to himself the minute he lit the match inside Sirico’s.”

“He didn’t do it alone. Didn’t know that, did you?” His grin spread until his whole face was alight with it. “He took me with him that night. He showed me the fire, how to create it. He showed me what you do to people who get in your face!” He backhanded her, straddled her.

“You’re shaking.” His voice trembled with laughter now. “You’re shaking, just like you did that day. When your father gets here, I’m going to do you in front of him. I’m going to show him what a whore his precious daughter is.” He tore her shirt open, pressed the gun under her jaw.

She heard herself whimper, fought the need to struggle.

“Remember when I did that on the playground? You got tits now though.” He squeezed her breast with his hand, pursed his lips in mock approval. “Nice ones. You don’t cooperate, I’m going to do the same to your mother, to your sisters, even that Asian tramp your brother married. Then there’s that slutty little niece of yours. The young ones are the tastiest.”

“I’ll kill you.” She was cold and hard as stone inside. She hadn’t had to find her anger. It had been there, waiting, all along. “I’ll kill you first.”

“Who’s holding the gun, Reena?” He traced the barrel down her throat. “Who’s got the power?” Rammed the barrel hard under her jaw. “Who’s in fucking charge?”

“You are.” She kept her eyes on his, built her courage on that rock of anger. Do the job. “You are, Joey.”

“Goddamn right. Your father for mine, bitch. Lose him, I let the rest of them live.”

“I’ll call him.” She let the tears come, let herself shake—let him see what he expected to see. Weakness and fear. “He’d rather die than have you touch any of them.”

“Good for him.”

He shifted his weight. She counted her own breaths. Slowly sat up, keeping her teary eyes on his, hoping he saw only pleas and defeat.

With tears dripping, she lifted a hand as if to draw her ripped shirt together. She swung out with her forearm, slapping away his gun hand, punched out with her other fist toward his face. She heard the gun clatter on the floor, then saw more stars as he fell on her.

In the car, Bo drummed his fingers. What the hell was taking her so long? He rechecked her bedroom window, saw the light burning. Checked his watch—again.

She took much longer, he thought, the relief, the inactivity, the fact that it was four in the morning was going to put him to sleep.

He got out, walked over to the cop on the passenger side. “I’m going to go in, okay? She must be packing a trunk instead of grabbing a clean shirt.”

“Women.”

“Whatcha gonna do?”

He fished out his keys. They were going to have to think about the houses, he thought, studying the look of them as he walked to the steps. Sell one—which? Keep both and combine them? Might be an interesting job, but they’d end up with some big-ass house.

He stifled a yawn, unlocked the door. “Hey, Reene, did you decide we should elope so you’re packing a trousseau? What exactly is a trousseau anyway?”

He’d shut the door behind him, had gotten to the base of the stairs, when he heard her shout his name.

Her nose was bleeding. She could taste blood in her mouth as she fought viciously. He’d kicked her—she thought he’d kicked her—but she couldn’t feel anything but rage and terror. She’d raked his face, gone for his eyes.

She wasn’t the only one bleeding.

But he was stronger, and he was winning.

The sound of Bo’s voice wrenched a scream from her.

“Bo! Get out. Get the cops!”

Joey dived away from her. After the gun, oh God, the gun.

Her vision was blurred, her lungs all but shut down. Tears spilled through the blood on her face as she crawled toward the doorway and her own weapon.

Feet pounded. Or was it her heart? She rolled, the weapon gripped in both hands. And saw with dull horror that he hadn’t dived for the gun.

“Don’t. For God’s sake. Can’t you smell it? You’ll go up like a torch.”

“You, too.” He held the flaming match in the air. “Let’s see what it’s like.”

He dropped the match into the pool on the floor. Fire burst, a quick roar of freedom. He flew onto the flames.

She rolled as it leaped toward her. Screamed as it snatched at her legs. Bo was dragging her away from it, smothering flames with his hands, his body.

“Linen closet, blankets.” Panting, she dragged off her smoldering pants. “Don’t touch the extinguisher, he might have rigged it. Go. Hurry!”

She crab-walked back, teeth chattering.

He was screaming now—horrible, inhuman sounds as he spun around the room. Fire embraced him.

She saw, thought she saw, and would always see, his eyes locked on hers through the flames that consumed his face.

Somehow he walked toward her. One step, then two, toward the doorway.

Then he fell, with fire rolling over him like a molten sea.

They were coming. Cops battering down the door. Sirens would be close behind. The trucks, the hoses, the heroes in turnout suits.

She braced her back against the wall and watched the burn.

“Put him out,” she murmured when Bo rushed back. “For God’s pity, put him out.”

EPILOGUE

She sat at her mother’s kitchen table, sipping chilled wine with a blanket over her shoulders. She didn’t need her brother the doctor to tell her she was shocky. She didn’t want the ER, or sedatives.

She needed to be here, to just be.

The salve An dabbed on the burns was like heaven.

“Ribs are bruised, nothing broken that I can tell.” Xander frowned at her battered face. “You need X-rays, damn it, Reena.”

“Later, Doc.”

“Second degree.” An gently bandaged her ankles. “You’re lucky.”

“I know.” She reached behind her for Bo’s hand, smiled at her father. “I know it.”

“She’s going to eat, and she’s going to rest. She’s not going to do cop work right now.” Bianca spoke straight to Younger.

“No, ma’am. We’ll deal with it in the morning,” he said to Reena.

“When we go through the layers, we’ll find the timers. I don’t think he meant to die, not until the end. He just . . . he couldn’t be humiliated. Beaten, like his father. He couldn’t face it, or the idea of a slow death. So he chose.”

“You’re going to eat. I’m going to fix eggs, and everyone’s going to eat.” Bianca yanked open the refrigerator, then just covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

Gib moved to her, but Reena patted his arm, shook her head. “Let me.”

Her breath caught on a shock of pain as she got to her feet, but she went to her mother, slid her arms around her. “Mama. It’s okay. We’re all okay.”

“My baby. My baby girl. Bella bambina.”

“Ti amo, Mama. And I’m fine. But I’m hungry.”

“Va bene. Okay.” She mopped at her cheeks with her hands, then kissed Reena’s. “Sit down. I’ll cook.”

“I’ll help you, Mama.” Bella blinked at her own tears when Bianca raised eyebrows at her. “I still remember how to make breakfast.”

Yes, this is what she needed, Reena thought. The noise, the movement, the sounds and scents of her mother’s kitchen. She ate what was put in front of her with an appetite that surprised and pleased her.

Later, she found her father and John sitting on the front steps, sipping coffee. Dawn broke over the neighborhood, a pearly haze that promised another day of drenching heat.

She was sure she’d never seen anything more beautiful.

“Been a long time since we first sat out here,” John said.

“It was beer then.”

“Will be again sometime.”

“I was having myself a sulk. I’m not sure what I’m having this morning. You told me what a lucky man I was. Beautiful wife and kids. You were right. You said what a bright one I had in Reena. You were right about that, too. I almost lost her, John. I almost lost my little girl last night.”

“You didn’t. And you’re still a lucky man.”

“Room for one more out here?” Reena stepped out. “Going to be a hot one. I used to love hot summer days when I was a kid. They lasted forever, all the way into the night. I could lie in bed and listen to them. Fran coming in from a date, old Mr. Franco out walking his dog. Johnnie Russo driving by with those glasspack mufflers. You used to give him such a hard time about that, Dad.”

She bent down, kissed the top of his head. “Mornings like this, people’ll start coming out early, before the heat hits. Walk down to the park or the market, gab over the fence in the back, or across the front steps. Head off to work. Water their flowers, catch up on the news, if they have the day off. We’re all pretty lucky, if you ask me.”

They sat for a while in silence, watching the light come into the morning, then John patted her gently on the knee. “Going to get on home, see what needs to be done.”

“I’m sorry about your house, John.”

“Sorry about yours, honey.”

“We’ve got a lot of hands to help you put it back together,” she told him. “And I know a good carpenter.”

Then he bent, kissed the top of her head. “Your partner would be proud of you. I’ll be in touch. You take care, Gib.”

“Thanks, John. For everything.”

Reena watched him drive away. “He helped make me what I am. I hope you’re okay with that.”

“Seeing what you are, I’m fine with that.” There were tears in his eyes. She could see the glimmer of them as he stared out across the row. “Your mom and I may be shaky for a day or two, but we’ll settle down.”

“I know you will.” She leaned against him a moment, just sitting on the front steps, watching the light grow. “You helped make me what I am, too,” she told him. “You and Mama. Vi amo. Molto.” She leaned just a little harder against him. “Molto.”

He slid an arm around her. Then his lips brushed her hair. “Are you going to marry that carpenter?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Good choice.”

“I think so. Now, I’m going to go in, say good-bye to everyone and see if I can push them along. You and Mama should get some sleep, too.”

“I could use it.”

She found Bella alone in the kitchen. “Cooking and cleaning up?”

“Fran’s having some contractions. Mama took her upstairs.”

“She’s in labor?”

“Maybe. Maybe just some Braxton-Hicks. She’s got two doctors, her mother and her husband hovering. She’s fine.” Bella lifted a hand, shook her head. “I don’t mean to sound like that.” She tossed down a dish towel. “I can’t seem to help myself.”

“We’re all tired, Bella. You’re entitled.”

“I envy her. Not just that serenity she wears like a custom-made suit, but the way Jack looks at her. You could just melt. I don’t not want her to have it. I just wish I had a little of it myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No point. I made this bed.” She laid a hand on her belly.

“You’re sure?”

“You can find out so soon, practically before you are. I’m pregnant. I got pregnant on purpose. Stupid, maybe selfish, but it’s done. I’m not sorry about the baby.”

“Have you told Vince?”

“He’s thrilled. He does love children, even if he doesn’t love me the way I want. He’ll be sweet and attentive for a bit, and he’ll take a little more care to hide his next affair—if he dares to have one after you blasted him.”

“Will you be happy, Bella?”

“Working on it. I’m not going to divorce him. I’m not going to give up what I’ve got, so I’ll make what I can of what I have. Don’t tell the family yet. Fran ought to have this baby without another one in progress taking any shine off it.”

Reena smiled. “You’re okay, Isabella. You always were.”

She studied the neighborhood as Bo drove them home. As she’d predicted, people were out early. Heading to the park to walk or jog, strolling with pets and kids. Hurrying off to work. She could smell fresh baked bread wafting from the bakery.

Even when she smelled the lingering traces of smoke and wet, it didn’t dampen her.

She nodded to the cops left on duty.

“I need a little sleep, then I want to go to church, light a candle for O’Donnell,” she told Bo. “You’re going to want to go see your Mrs. M., O’Donnell’s sister.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand down her arm. “Later today.”

“I’ll go with you, and I’d like you to go with me when I visit his wife. But first, I need to go in.”

“I’ll tuck you into my bed, and later we’ll go to church, we’ll light a candle, we’ll go see his family. But you should go to the hospital, get checked out.”

“Nothing broken, second degree. Not that I don’t intend to hit Xander up for some lovely drugs, but what I want most after this is a bed, and yours is just fine. But I have to go in first. I have to see it.”

She unlocked the door. She smelled the smoke, studied where it had stained the walls. In silence, she walked up the stairs. Her belly clenched.

Fire had charred her bedroom door frame, flashed over the floor. Her dresser was scorched, the wood buckled, the burn pattern on the walls showing the fire’s greedy reach up.

And she saw where Joey’s body had fallen, and smothered the flames under it.

“He wasn’t crazy when this started, not the way he was when it ended. It ate at him, at his mind, maybe his soul. Like fire eats fuel. Like cancer’s eating his father. So it consumed him.”

“You weren’t the reason, and never were. You were an excuse.”

Surprised, she turned her head, looked at Bo. “You’re right. My God, you’re right. And that feels like, well, absolution.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m lucky, and I know it. A few bumps, bruises and burns. But I feel sad when I look at this room. It wasn’t perfect, I know. But it was mine.”

“It still is.” He slipped an arm gently around her waist. “I can fix it.”

She laughed a little, and her body relaxed against his. “Yes. Yes, you can.”

She turned away from it, and went home with the boy next door.

ANGELS

FALL

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2006 by Nora Roberts

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

ISBN: 1-101-14683-4

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

FOR MOM

Contents

SIGNPOSTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

DETOURS

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

HOME

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

SIGNPOSTS

Everywhere is nowhere.

—SENECA

1

REECE GILMORE smoked through the tough knuckles of Angel’s Fist in an overheating Chevy Cavalier. She had two hundred forty-three dollars and change in her pocket, which might be enough to cure the Chevy, fuel it and herself. If luck was on her side, and the car wasn’t seriously ill, she’d have enough to pay for a room for the night.

Then, even by the most optimistic calculations, she’d be broke.

She took the plumes of steam puffing out of the hood as a sign it was time to stop traveling for a while and find a job.

No worries, no problem, she told herself. The little Wyoming town huddled around the cold blue waters of a lake was as good as anywhere else. Maybe better. It had the openness she needed—all that sky with the snow-dipped peaks of the Tetons rising into it like sober, and somehow aloof, gods.

She’d been meandering her way toward them, through the Ansel Adams photograph of peaks and plains for hours. She hadn’t had a clue where she’d end up when she started out that day before dawn, but she’d bypassed Cody, zipped through Dubois, and though she’d toyed with veering into Jackson, she dipped south instead.

So something must have been pulling her to this spot.

Over the past eight months, she’d developed a strong belief in following signs and impulses. Dangerous Curves, Slippery When Wet. It was nice that someone took the time and effort to post those kinds of warnings. Other signs might be a peculiar slant of sunlight aimed down a back road, or a weather vane pointing south.

If she liked the look of the light or the weather vane, she’d follow, until she found what seemed like the right place at the right time. She might settle in for a few weeks, or, like she had in South Dakota, a few months. Pick up some work, scout the area, then move on when those signs, those impulses, pointed in a new direction.

There was a freedom in the system she’d developed, and often—more often now—a lessening of the constant hum of anxiety in the back of her mind. These past months of living with herself, essentially by herself, had done more to smooth her out than the full year of therapy.

To be fair, she supposed the therapy had given her the base to face herself every single day. Every night. And all the hours between.

And here was another fresh start, another blank slate in the bunched fingers of Angel’s Fist.

If nothing else, she’d take a few days to enjoy the lake, the mountains, and pick up enough money to get back on the road again. A place like this—the signpost had said the population was 623—probably ran to tourism, exploiting the scenery and the proximity to the national park.

There’d be at least one hotel, likely a couple of B and B’s, maybe a dude ranch within a few miles. It might be fun to work at a dude ranch. All those places would need someone to fetch and carry and clean, especially now that the spring thaw was dulling the sharpest edge of winter.

But since her car was now sending out thicker, more desperate smoke signals, the first priority was a mechanic.

She eased her way along the road that ribboned around the long, wide lake. Patches of snow made dull white pools in the shade. The trees were still their wintering brown, but there were a few boats on the water. She could see a couple guys in windbreakers and caps in a white canoe, rowing right through the reflection of the mountains.

Across from the lake was what she decided was the business district. Gift shop, a little gallery. Bank, post office, she noted. Sheriff’s office.

She angled away from the lake to pull the laboring car up to what looked like a big barn of a general store. There were a couple men in flannel shirts sitting out front in stout chairs that gave them a good view of the lake.

They nodded to her as she cut the engine and stepped out, then the one on the right tapped the brim of his blue cap that bore the name of the store—Mac’s Mercantile and Grocery—across the crown.

“Looks like you got some trouble there, young lady.”

“Sure does. Do you know anyone who can give me a hand with it?”

He laid his hands on his thighs and pushed out of the chair. He was burly in build, ruddy in face, with lines fanning out from the corners of friendly brown eyes. When he spoke, his voice was a slow, meandering drawl.

“Why don’t we just pop the hood and take a look-see?”

“Appreciate it.” When she released the latch, he tossed the hood up and stepped back from the clouds of smoke. For reasons she couldn’t name, the plumes and the fuss caused Reece more embarrassment than anxiety. “It started up on me about ten miles east, I guess. I wasn’t paying enough attention. Got caught up in the scenery.”

“Easy to do. You heading into the park?”

“I was. More or less.” Not sure, never sure, she thought and tried to concentrate on the moment rather than the before or after. “I think the car had other ideas.”

His companion came over to join them, and both men looked under the hood the way Reece knew men did. With sober eyes and knowing frowns. She looked with them, though she accepted that she was as much of a cliché. The female to whom what lurked under the hood of a car was as foreign as the terrain of Pluto.

“Got yourself a split radiator hose,” he told her. “Gonna need to replace that.”

Didn’t sound so bad, not too bad. Not too expensive. “Anywhere in town I can make that happen?”

“Lynt’s Garage’ll fix you up. Why don’t I give him a call for you?”

“Lifesaver.” She offered a smile and her hand, a gesture that had come to be much easier for her with strangers. “I’m Reece, Reece Gilmore.”

“Mac Drubber. This here’s Carl Sampson.”

“Back East, aren’t you?” Carl asked. He looked a fit fifty-something to Reece, and with some Native American blood mixed in once upon a time.

“Yeah. Way back. Boston area. I really appreciate the help.”

“Nothing but a phone call,” Mac said. “You can come on in out of the breeze if you want, or take a walk around. Might take Lynt a few to get here.”

“I wouldn’t mind a walk, if that’s okay. Maybe you could tell me a good place to stay in town. Nothing fancy.”

“Got the Lakeview Hotel just down a ways. The Teton House, other side of the lake’s some homier. More a B and B. Some cabins along the lake, and others outside of town rent by the week or the month.”

She didn’t think in months any longer. A day was enough of a challenge. Andhomier sounded too intimate. “Maybe I’ll walk down and take a look at the hotel.”

“It’s a long walk. Could give you a ride on down.”

“I’ve been driving all day. I could use the stretch. But thanks, Mr. Drubber.”

“No problem.” He stood another moment as she wandered down the wooden sidewalk. “Pretty thing,” he commented.

“No meat on her.” Carl shook his head. “Women today starve off all the curves.”

She hadn’t starved them off, and was, in fact, making a concerted effort to gain back the weight that had fallen off in the past couple of years. She’d gone from health club fit to scrawny and had worked her way back to what she thought of as gawky. Too many angles and points, too many bones. Every time she undressed, her body was like that of a stranger to her.

She wouldn’t have agreed with Mac’spretty thing. Not anymore. Once she’d thought of herself that way, as a pretty woman—stylish, sexy when she wanted to be. But her face seemed too hard now, the cheekbones too prominent, the hollows too deep. The restless nights were fewer, but when they came, they left her dark eyes heavily shadowed, and cast a pallor, pasty and gray, over her skin.

She wanted to recognize herself again.

She let herself stroll, her worn-out Keds nearly soundless on the sidewalk. She’d learned not to hurry—had taught herself not to push, not to rush, but to take things as they came. And in a very real way to embrace every single moment.

The cool breeze blew across her face, wound through the long brown hair she’d tied back in a tail. She liked the feel of it, the smell of it, clean and fresh, and the hard light that poured over the Tetons and sparked on the water.

She could see some of the cabins Mac had spoken of, through the bare branches of the willows and the cottonwoods. They squatted behind the trees, log and glass, wide porches—and, she assumed, stunning views.

It might be nice to sit on one of those porches and study the lake or the mountains, to watch whatever visited the marsh where cattails speared up out of the bog. To have that room around, and the quiet.

One day maybe, she thought. But not today.

She spotted green spears of daffodils in a half whiskey barrel next to the entrance to a restaurant. They might have trembled a bit in the chilly breeze, but they made her think spring. Everything was new in spring. Maybe this spring, she’d be new, too.

She stopped to admire the tender sprouts. It was comforting to see spring making its way back after the long winter. There would be other signs of it soon. Her guidebook boasted of miles of wildflowers on the sage flats, and more along the area’s lakes and ponds.

She was ready for flowering, Reece thought. Ready for blooming.

Then she shifted her eyes up to the wide front window of the restaurant. More diner than restaurant, she corrected. Counter service, two- and four-tops, booths, all in faded red and white. Pies and cakes on display, and the kitchen open to the counter. A couple waitresses bustled around with trays and coffeepots.

Lunch crowd, she realized. She’d forgotten lunch. As soon as she’d taken a look at the hotel, she’d…

Then she saw it in the window, the sign, hand-lettered.

COOK WANTED

INQUIRE WITHIN

Signs, she thought again, though she’d taken a step back before she caught herself. She stood where she was, making a careful study of the setup from outside the glass. Open kitchen, she reminded herself, that was key. Diner food, she could handle that in her sleep. Or would have been able to, once.

Maybe it was time to find out, time to take another step forward. If she couldn’t handle it, she’d know, and wouldn’t be any worse off than she was now.

The hotel was probably hiring, in anticipation of the summer season. Or Mr. Drubber might need another clerk at his store.

But the sign was right there, and her car had aimed toward this town, and her steps had brought her to this spot, where daffodil shoots pushed out of the dirt into the first hesitant breaths of spring.

She backtracked to the door, took a long, long breath in, then opened it.

Fried onions, grilling meat—on the gamey side—strong coffee, a jukebox on country and a buzz of table chatter.

Clean red floors, she noted, scrubbed white counter. The few empty tables had their lunch setups. There were photographs on the walls—good ones to her eye. Black-and-whites of the lake, of white water, of the mountains in every season.

She was still getting her bearings, gathering her courage, when one of the waitresses swung by her. “Afternoon. You’re looking for lunch you’ve got your choice of a table or the counter.”

“Actually, I’m looking for the manager. Or owner. Ah, about the sign in the window. The position of cook.”

The waitress stopped, still balancing a tray. “You’re a cook?”

There’d been a time Reece would have sniffed at the term good-naturedly, but she’d have sniffed nonetheless. “Yes.”

“That’s handy, ’cause Joanie fired one a couple of days ago.” The waitress curled her free hand, brought it up to her lips in the mime for drinking.

“Oh.”

“Gave him the job in February when he came through town looking for work. Said he’d found Jesus and was spreading his word across the land.”

She cocked her head and her hip and gave Reece a sunny smile out of a pretty face. “He preached the Word, all right, like a disciple on crack, so you wanted to stuff a rag in his mouth. Then I guess he found the bottle, and that was that. So. Why don’t you go right on and sit up at the counter. I’ll see if Joanie can get out of the kitchen for a minute. How about some coffee?”

“Tea, if you don’t mind.”

“Coming up.”

Didn’t have to take the job, Reece reminded herself as she slid onto a chrome-and-leather stool and rubbed her damp palms dry on the thighs of her jeans. Even if it was offered, she didn’t have to take it. She could stick with cleaning hotel rooms, or head out and find that dude ranch.

The juke switched numbers, and Shania Twain announced joyfully she felt like a woman.

The waitress walked back to the grill and tapped a short sturdy woman on the shoulder, leaned in. After a moment, the woman shot a glance over her shoulder, met Reece’s eyes, then nodded. The waitress came back to the counter with a white cup of hot water, with a Lipton tea bag in the saucer.

“Joanie’ll be right along. You want to order some lunch? Meatloaf’s house special today. Comes with mashed potatoes and green beans and a biscuit.”

“No, thanks, no, tea’s fine.” She’d never be able to hold anything more down, not with the nerves bouncing around in her belly. The panic wanted to come with it, that smothering wet weight in the chest.

She should just go, Reece thought. Go right now and walk back to her car. Get the hose fixed and head out. Signs be damned.

Joanie had a fluff of blond hair on her head, a white butcher’s apron splattered with grease stains tied around her middle and high-topped red Converse sneakers on her feet. She walked out from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishcloth.

And she measured Reece out of steely eyes that were more gray than blue.

“You cook?” A smoker’s rasp made the brisk question oddly sensual.

“Yes.”

“For a living, or just to put something in your mouth?”

“It’s what I did back in Boston—for a living.” Fighting nerves, Reece ripped open the cover on the tea bag.

Joanie had a soft mouth, almost a Cupid’s bow, in contrast to those hard eyes. And an old, faded scar, Reece noted, that ran along her jawline from her left ear nearly to her chin.

“Boston.” In an absent move, Joanie tucked the dishrag in the belt of her apron. “Long ways.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know as I want some East Coast cook who can’t keep her mouth shut for five minutes.”

Reece’s opened in surprise, then closed again on the barest curve of a smile. “I’m an awful chatterbox when I’m nervous.”

“What’re you doing around here?”

“Traveling. My car broke down. I need a job.”

“Got references?”

Her heart tightened, a sweaty fist of silent pain. “I can get them.”

Joanie sniffed, frowned back toward the kitchen. “Go on back, put on an apron. Next order up’s a steak sandwich, med-well, onion roll, fried onions and mushrooms, fries and slaw. Dick don’t drop dead after eating what you cook, you probably got the job.”

“All right.” Reece pushed off the stool and, keeping her breath slow and even, went through the swinging door at the far end of the counter.

She didn’t notice, but Joanie did, that she’d torn the tea bag cover into tiny pieces.

It was a simple setup, she decided, and efficient enough. Large grill, restaurant-style stove, refrigerator, freezer. Holding bins, sinks, work counters, double fryer, heat suppression system. As she tied on an apron, Joanie set out the ingredients she’d need.

“Thanks.” Reece scrubbed her hands, then got to work.

Don’t think, she told herself. Just let it come. She set the steak sizzling on the grill while she chopped onions and mushrooms. She put the precut potatoes in the fry basket, set the timer.

Her hands didn’t shake, and though her chest stayed tight, she didn’t allow herself to dart glances over her shoulder to make sure a wall hadn’t appeared to close her in.

She listened to the music, from the juke, from the grill, from the fryer.

Joanie tugged the next order from the clip on the round and slapped it down. “Bowl of three-bean soup—that kettle there—goes with crackers.”

Reece simply nodded, tossed the mushrooms and onions on the grill, then filled the second order while they fried.

“Order up!” Joanie called out, and yanked another ticket. “Reuben, club san, two side salads.”

Reece moved from order to order, and just let it happen. The atmosphere, the orders might be different, but the rhythm was the same. Keep working, keep moving.

She plated the original order, turned to hand it to Joanie for inspection.

“Put it in line,” she was told. “Start the next ticket. We don’t call the doctor in the next thirty minutes, you’re hired. We’ll talk money and hours later.”

“I need to—”

“Get that next ticket,” Joanie finished. “I’m going to go have a smoke.”

She worked another ninety minutes before it slowed enough for Reece to step back from the heat and guzzle down a bottle of water. When she turned, Joanie was sitting at the counter, drinking coffee.

“Nobody died,” she said.

“Whew. Is it always that busy?”

“Saturday lunch crowd. We do okay. You get eight dollars an hour to start. You still look good in two weeks, I bump in another buck an hour. That’s you and me and a part-timer on the grill, seven days a week. You get two days, or the best part of two off during that week. I do the schedule a week in advance. We open at six-thirty, so that means first shift is here at six. You can order breakfast all day, lunch menu from eleven to closing, dinner, five to ten. You want forty hours a week, I can work you that. I don’t pay any overtime, so you get stuck behind the grill and go over, we’ll take it off your next week’s hours. Any problem with that?”

“No.”

“You drink on the job, you’re fired on the spot.”

“Understood.”

“You get all the coffee, water or tea you want. You hit the soft drinks, you pay for them. Same with the food. Around here, there ain’t no free lunch. Not that it looks like you’ll be packing it away while my back’s turned. You’re skinny as a stick.”

“I guess I am.”

“Last shift cook cleans the grill, the stove, does the lock down.”

“I can’t do that,” Reece interrupted. “I can’t close for you. I can open, I can work any shift you want me to work. I’ll work doubles when you need it, split shifts. I can flex time when you need me over forty. But I can’t close for you. I’m sorry.”

Joanie raised her eyebrows, sipped down the last of her coffee. “Afraid of the dark, little girl?”

“Yes, I am. If closing’s part of the job description, I’ll have to find another job.”

“We’ll work that out. We’ve got forms to fill out for the government. It can wait. Your car’s fixed, sitting up at Mac’s.” Joanie smiled. “Word travels, and I’ve got my ear to the ground. You’re looking for a place, there’s a room over the diner I can rent you. Not much, but it’s got a good view and it’s clean.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to try the hotel for now. We’ll both give it a couple of weeks, see how it goes.”

“Itchy feet.”

“Itchy something.”

“Your choice.” With a shrug, Joanie got up, headed to the swinging door with her coffee cup. “You go on, get your car, get settled. Be back at four.”

A little dazed, Reece walked out. She was back in a kitchen, and it had been all right. She’d been okay. Now that she’d gotten through it, she felt a little light-headed, but that was normal, wasn’t it? A normal reaction to snagging a job, straight off the mark, doing what she was trained to do again. Doing what she hadn’t been able to do for nearly two years.

She took her time walking back to her car, letting it all sink in.

When she walked into the mercantile, Mac was ringing up a sale at a short counter opposite the door. The place was what she’d expected: a little bit of everything—coolers for produce and meat, shelves of dry goods, a section for hardware, for housewares, fishing gear, ammo.

Need a gallon of milk and a box of bullets? This was the spot.

When Mac finished the transaction, she approached the counter.

“Car should run for you now,” Mac told her.

“So I hear, and thanks. How do I pay?”

“Lynt left a bill here for you. You can run on by the garage if you’re going to charge it. Paying cash, you can just leave it here. I’ll be seeing him later.”

“Cash is good.” She took the bill, noted with relief it was less than she’d expected. She could hear someone chatting in the rear of the store, and the beep of another cash register. “I got a job.”

He cocked his head as she pulled out her wallet. “That so? Quick work.”

“At the diner. I don’t even know the name of it,” she realized.

“That’d be Angel Food. Locals just call it Joanie’s.”

“Joanie’s then. I hope you come in sometime. I’m a good cook.”

“I bet you are. Here’s your change.”

“Thanks. Thanks for everything. I guess I’ll go get myself a room, then go back to work.”

“If you’re still looking at the hotel, you tell Brenda on the desk you want the monthly rate. You tell her you’re working at Joanie’s.”

“I will. I’ll tell her.” She wanted to take out an ad announcing it in the local paper. “Thanks, Mr. Drubber.”

The hotel was five stories of pale yellow stucco that boasted views of the lake. It harbored a minute sundry shop, a tiny coffee and muffin stand and an intimate linen tablecloth dining room.

There was, she was told, high-speed Internet connection for a small daily fee, room service from sevenA.M. to elevenP.M. and a self-service laundry in the basement.

Reece negotiated a weekly rate on a single—a week was long enough—on the third floor. Anything below the third was too accessible for her peace of mind, and anything above the third made her feel trapped.

With her wallet now effectively empty, she carted her duffel and laptop up three flights rather than use the elevator.

The view lived up to its billing, and she immediately opened the windows, then just stood looking at the sparkle of the water, the glide of boats, and the rise of the mountains that cupped this little section of valley.

This was her place today, she thought. She’d find out if it was her place tomorrow. Turning back to the room, she noted the door that adjoined the neighboring guest room. She checked the locks, then pushed, shoved, dragged the single dresser in front of it.

That was better.

She wouldn’t unpack, not exactly, but take the essentials and set them out. The travel candle, some toiletries, the cell phone charger. Since the bathroom was hardly bigger than the closet, she left the door open while she took a quick shower. While the water ran, she did the multiplication tables out loud to keep herself steady. She changed into fresh clothes, moving quickly.

New job, she reminded herself and took the time and effort to dry her hair, to put on a little makeup. Not so pale today, she decided, not so hollow-eyed.

After checking her watch, she set up her laptop, opened her daily journal and wrote a quick entry.

Angel’s Fist, Wyoming

April 15

I cooked today. I took a job as a cook in a little diner-style restaurant in this pretty valley town with its big, blue lake. I’m popping champagne in my mind, and there are streamers and balloons.

I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain, like I’ve been scaling the tough peaks that ring this place. I’m not at the top yet; I’m still on a ledge. But it’s sturdy and wide, and I can rest here a little while before I start to climb again.

I’m working for a woman named Joanie. She’s short, sturdy and oddly pretty. She’s tough, too, and that’s good. I don’t want to be coddled. I think I’d smother to death that way, just run out of air the way I feel when I wake up from one of the dreams. I can breathe here, and I can be here until it’s time to move on.

I’ve got less than ten dollars left, but whose fault is that? It’s okay. I’ve got a room for a week with a view of the lake and the Tetons, a job and a new radiator hose.

I missed lunch, and that’s a step back there. That’s okay, too. I was too busy cooking to eat, and I’ll make up for it.

It’s a good day, April fifteenth. I’m going to work.

She shut down, then tucked her phone, her keys, driver’s license and three dollars of what she had left in her pockets. Grabbing a jacket, she headed for the door.

Before she opened it, Reece checked the peep, scanned the empty hall. She checked her locks twice, cursed herself and checked a third time before she went back to her kit to tear a piece of Scotch tape off her roll. She pressed it over the door, well below eye level, before she walked to the door for the stairs.

She jogged down, counting as she went. After a quick debate, she left her car parked. Walking would save her gas money, even though it would be dark when she finished her shift.

Couple of blocks, that was all. Still, she fingered her key chain, and the panic button on it.

Maybe she should go back and get the car, just in case. Stupid, she told herself. She was nearly there. Think about now, not about later. When nerves began to bubble, she pictured herself at the grill. Good strong kitchen light, music from the jukebox, voices from the tables. Familiar sounds, smells, motion.

Maybe her palm was clammy when she reached for the door of Joanie’s, but she opened it. And she went inside.

The same waitress she’d spoken to during the lunch shift spotted her, wiggled her fingers in a come-over motion. Reece stopped by the booth where the woman was refilling the condiment caddy.

“Joanie’s back in the storeroom. She said I should give you a quick orientation when you came in. We got a lull, then the early birds will start coming in soon. I’m Linda-gail.”

“Reece.”

“First warning. Joanie doesn’t tolerate idle hands. She catches you loitering, she’ll jump straight down your back and bite your ass.” She grinned when she said it in a way that made her bright blue eyes twinkle, deepened dimples in her cheeks. She had doll-baby blond hair to go with it, worn in smooth French braids.

She had on jeans, a red shirt with white piping. Silver and turquoise earrings dangled from her ears. She looked, Reece thought, like a western milkmaid.

“I like to work.”

“You will, believe me. This being Saturday night, we’ll be busy. You’ll have two other wait staff working—Bebe and Juanita. Matt’ll bus, and Pete’s the dishwasher. You and Joanie’ll be manning the kitchen, and she’ll have a hawk eye on you. You need a break, you tell her, and you take it. There’s a place in the back for your coat and purse. No purse?”

“No, I didn’t bring it.”

“God, I can’t step a foot outside the house without mine. Come on then, I’ll show you around. She’s got the forms you need to fill out in the back. I guess you’ve done this kind of work before, the way you jumped in with both feet today.”

“Yeah, I have.”

“Restrooms. We clean the bathrooms on rotation. You’ve got a couple of weeks before you have that pleasure.”

“Can’t wait.”

Linda-gail grinned. “You got family around here?”

“No. I’m from back East.” Didn’t want to talk about that, didn’t want to think about that. “Who handles the fountain drinks?”

“Wait staff. We get crunched, you can fill drink orders. We serve wine and beer, too. But mostly people want to drink, they do it over at Clancy’s. That’s about it. Anything else you want to know, just give me a holler. I’ve got to finish the setups or Joanie’ll squawk. Welcome aboard.”

“Thanks.”

Reece moved into the kitchen, took an apron.

A good, wide solid ledge, she told herself. A good place to stand until it was time to move again.

2

LINDA-GAIL was right, they were busy. Locals, tourists, hikers, a scatter of people from a nearby campground who wanted an indoor meal. She and Joanie worked with little conversation while the fryers pumped out steam and the grill spewed heat.

At some point, Joanie stuck a bowl under Reece’s nose. “Eat.”

“Oh, thanks, but—”

“You got something against my soup?”

“No.”

“Sit down at the counter and eat. It’s slowed down some and you’ve got a break coming. I’ll put it on your tab.”

“Okay, thanks.” The fact was, now that she thought about eating food instead of just preparing it, she realized she was starving. A good sign, Reece decided as she took a seat at the end of the counter.

It gave her a view of the diner, and the door.

Linda-gail slid a plate over to her with a sourdough roll and two pats of butter on it. “Joanie said you need the carbs. Want some tea with that?”

“Perfect. I can get it.”

“I’m in the mode. You’re quick,” she added as she brought over a cup. After a glance over her shoulder, she leaned closer and grinned. “Quicker than Joanie. And you plate food pretty. Some of the customers commented on it.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t looking for comments or attention. Just a paycheck. “I didn’t mean to change anything.”

“Nobody’s complaining.” Linda-gail tilted her head with a smile that showed off her dimples. “Kind of jumpy, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am.” Reece sampled the soup, pleased that the broth had a subtle bite. “No wonder this place stays busy. This soup’s as good as anything you’d get in a five-star.”

Linda-gail glanced back toward the kitchen, assured herself Joanie was occupied. “Some of us have a bet going. Bebe thinks you’re in trouble with the law. She watches a lot of TV, that one. Juanita thinks you’re running from an abusive husband. Matthew, being seventeen, just thinks about sex. Me, I think you just got your heart broken back East. Any of us hit?”

“No, sorry.” There was a little twinge of anxiety at the idea the others were speculating, but she reminded herself that restaurants were full of little dramas and a lot of gossip. “I’m just at loose ends, just traveling.”

“Something in there,” Linda-gail said with a shake of her head. “To my eye you got heartbreak written all over you. And speaking of heartbreakers, here comes Long, Dark and Handsome now.”

He was long, Reece thought as she followed the direction of Linda-gail’s gaze. A couple inches or so over six feet. She’d give him dark, too, with the shaggy jet hair and olive complexion. But she wasn’t sold on handsome.

It was a word that meant slick and classy to her mind, and this man was neither. Instead, there was a rough, rugged look about him with a scruff of beard over rawboned features. Something rougher yet, to her mind, about the hard line of his mouth and the way his eyes tracked around the room. There was nothing slick about the battered leather jacket, faded jeans or worn-down boots.

Not the cowboy type, she decided, but one who looked like he could handle himself outdoors. He looked strong, and maybe just a little mean.

“Name’s Brody,” Linda-gail said in undertones. “He’s a writer.”

“Oh?” She relaxed a little. Something in his stance, his absolute awareness of the room, had said cop to her. Writer was better. Easier. “What kind?”

“He does magazine articles and like that, and he’s hadthree books published. Mysteries. Fits, too, because that’s what he is. A mystery.”

She flipped her hair back, shifted her angle so she could watch out of the corner of her eye as Brody strode to an empty booth. “Word is he used to work for a big newspaper in Chicago and got fired. He rents a cabin on the other side of the lake, keeps to himself, mostly. But he comes in here three times a week for dinner. Tips twenty percent.”

She turned back to Reece as Brody sat. “How do I look?”

“Terrific.”

“One of these days I’m going to figure out how to get him to hit on me, just to satisfy my curiosity. But for now, I’ll take the twenty percent.”

Linda-gail wandered toward the booth, drawing her pad out of her pocket. From where she sat, Reece could hear her cheerful greeting.

“How you doing, Brody? What do you have in mind for tonight?”

While she ate, Reece watched the waitress flirt, and the man Brody order without consulting the menu. When she turned away, Linda-gail shot Reece an exaggeratedly dreamy look. Even as Reece’s lips quivered in response, Brody shifted his gaze, locked in on her face.

The full-on stare made her stomach jump. Even when she quickly averted her eyes she could feel his on her, rudely, deliberately probing. For the first time since she’d begun her shift, she felt exposed and vulnerable.

She pushed off the stool, stacked her dishes. Fighting the urge to look over her shoulder, she carried them back into the kitchen.

HE ORDERED the elk chops and whiled away the wait-time with a bottle of Coors and a paperback. Someone had paid for Emmylou Harris on the jukebox, and Brody let the music hum in the back of his mind.

He wondered about the brunette and that look in her eye. Richard Adams had coined the wordtharn inWatership Down. Good word, he thought, and one that suited the new cook with her sudden, frozen stillness.

From what he knew of Joanie Parks, the brunette wouldn’t have a job if she wasn’t competent. He suspected Joanie had a soft heart under the shell, but that shell was thick and prickly, and didn’t suffer fools.

Of course, he had only to ask the little blonde and he’d get chapter and verse on the newcomer. But then it would circle around that he’d asked, then others would ask him what he thought, what he knew. He knew how places like Angel’s Fist worked, and the fuel of talk they ran on.

It would take a little longer to find out about her without asking, but there would be murmurs and comments, rumors and speculation. He had a good ear for that sort of thing when he was in the mood for it.

She had a fragile look about her, the sort that could turn on a dime to brittle. He wondered why.

Still, from his vantage point he could see he’d been right about competency. She worked steadily, in that professional cook’s way that made it seem to him she had an extra pair of hands tucked away somewhere.

It might have been her first day on the job here, but he’d lay odds it wasn’t her first in a restaurant kitchen. Since—at least for now—she was more interesting than his book, he continued to watch her work while he nursed his beer.

Not attached to anyone from town, he decided. He’d lived there the best part of a year and if anyone’s long-lost daughter, sister, niece, third cousin twice removed was due to breeze in, he’d have gotten wind. She didn’t look like a drifter to him. More like a runner, he mused. That was what he’d seen in her eyes, the wariness, the readiness to leap and dash at a moment’s notice.

And when she moved to set a finished order in line, those eyes flicked in his direction—just a flick, then away again. Before she turned back to the grill, the door opened, and her gaze shifted there. The smile flashed onto her face so quickly, so unexpectedly, Brody actually blinked. Everything about her changed, went lighter, softer, so that he saw there was more—at least the potential for more—than fragile beauty tucked away in there.

When he looked over to see what had caused that mile-wide smile, he saw Mac Drubber shooting her a grin and a wave.

Maybe he’d been wrong about that local connection.

Mac slid into the booth across from him. “How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Got a hankering to eat something I don’t have to fry up myself. What looks good tonight?” He waited a beat, wiggled his eyebrows. “Besides the new cook?”

“I ordered the chops. Don’t see you in here on Saturday nights, Mac. You’re a creature of habit, and that’s Wednesdays, spaghetti special.”

“Didn’t feel like opening a can, and I wanted to see how the girl was doing. Limped into town today with a broken radiator hose.”

All you had to do was wait five minutes or so, Brody thought, and information fell into your lap. “Is that so?”

“Next thing you know, she’s working here. You’d’ve thought she’d won the lottery by the look on her face. Comes from back East. Boston. Got herself a room at the hotel. Name’s Reece Gilmore.”

He stopped when Linda-gail brought Brody’s plate to the table.

“Hi there, Mr. Drubber, how’s it going? What can I get you tonight?”

Mac leaned over to take a closer look at Brody’s plate. “That looks pretty damn good.”

“The new cook’s a real hand. You let me know how you like those chops, Brody. Get you anything else?”

“Take another beer.”

“Coming right up. Mr. Drubber?”

“I’ll take a Coke, honey, and the same thing my friend here’s having. Those chops look good enough to eat.”

They did, Brody thought, and were presented with a generous portion of scalloped potatoes and lima beans. The food was artistically arranged on the plain white plate, unlike the haphazard mounds Joanie normally served up.

“Saw you out in the boat the other day,” Mac commented. “Catch anything?”

“Wasn’t fishing.” He cut into one of the chops, sampled.

“That’s one of the things about you, Brody. You go on out on the lake now and then but you don’t fish. Go out in the woods now and then but you don’t hunt.”

“If I caught anything or shot anything, I’d have to cook it.”

“There’s that. Well?”

“It’s good.” Brody cut another bite. “Pretty damn good.”

Since Mac Drubber was one of the few people Brody would voluntarily spend an evening with, he loitered over his coffee while Mac finished plowing through his own meal. “Beans taste different. Fancier. Got to say better, too, but you repeat that where Joanie gets wind, I’ll call you a stinking liar.”

“She’s putting up at the hotel, she may not be planning on staying long.”

“Booked a week.” Mac liked knowing what went on, and who it went on about, in his town. He not only ran the mercantile, he was mayor. Gossip, he liked to think, was part of his duties. “Truth is, Brody, I don’t think the girl has much money.” He wagged his fork at Brody before stabbing the last of the beans. “Paid cash for the radiator hose, and the hotel, I hear.”

No credit cards, Brody mused, and wondered if the mystery woman was running under the radar. “Could be she doesn’t want to leave a trail for someone, or something, to follow.”

“You got a suspicious mind.” Mac worked off the last sliver of elk from the bone. “And if she doesn’t, she’ll have a reason for it. She’s got an honest face.”

“And you have a romantic bent. Speaking of romance.” Brody cocked his head toward the door.

The man who came in wore Levi’s and a chambray shirt under a black barn coat. He accented it with snakeskin boots, a Sam Brown belt and a stone-gray Stetson in a way that screamed cowboy.

Sandy, sun-streaked hair curled under his hat. He had a smooth, even-featured face set off by a shallowly clefted chin and light blue eyes that, everyone knew, he used as often as possible to charm the ladies.

He swaggered—there was no other way to describe the deliberate, rolling gait—to the counter and perched on a stool.

“Lo’s coming ’round to see if the new girl’s worth his time.” Mac shook his head, scooped up the last of his potatoes. “You can’t help but like Lo. He’s an affable sort, but I hope she’s got more sense.”

Part of the entertainment Brody had enjoyed in and around the Fist the past year was watching Lo knock over women like tenpins. “Ten bucks says he sweet-talks her, and she adds a notch to his bedpost before the end of the week.”

Mac’s brows knit in disapproval. “That’s no way to talk about a nice girl like that.”

“You haven’t known her long enough to be so sure she’s a nice girl.”

“I say she is. So I’m going to take that bet, just so it costs you.”

Brody gave a half laugh. Mac didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and if he chased women he didn’t do it where anyone noticed. And Brody found his slightly puritanical bent part of his charm. “It’s just sex, Mac.” Then he let out a full grin when the tips of Mac’s ears went red. “You remember sex, don’t you?”

“I got a vague recollection of the process.”

In the kitchen, Joanie set a piece of apple pie on the work counter. “Take a break,” she ordered Reece. “Eat the pie.”

“I’m not really hungry, and I need to—”

“Didn’t ask if you were hungry, did I? Eat the pie. No charge on it. It’s the last of the dish, and it won’t be any good tomorrow anyway. You see the one just sat down at the counter?”

“The one who looks like he just rode in off the trail?”

“That would be William Butler. Goes by Lo. That’s short for Lothario, which he got labeled with when he was a teenager and proceeded in making it his life’s work to bed every female within a hundred miles.”

“Okay.”

“Now on most Saturday nights, Lo would have himself a hot date, or he’d be hanging out down at Clancy’s with his pals, trying to decide which heifer to cut out of that particular herd. He’s come in here to get a look at you.”

Because she didn’t see she had any real choice, Reece began to eat the pie. “I don’t imagine there’s much to see at this point.”

“Regardless, you’re new, you’re female, young and, as far as it goes, unattached. To give him his due, Lo doesn’t poach on married women. You see he’s flirting with Juanita now, who he was banging like a drum over a few weeks last winter, until he shifted his sights to some snow bunnies who came around to ski.”

Joanie grabbed the huge mug of coffee that was always close at hand. “Boy’s got charm to spare. I’ve never known any woman he’s rolled off of to hold it against him when he buttons his jeans and strolls off.”

“And you’re telling me this because you assume he’ll be rolling off me some night?”

“Just letting you know how it is.”

“Got it. And don’t worry, I’m not looking for a man—temporarily or permanently. Especially one who uses his penis as a divining rod.”

Joanie let out a bark of laughter. “How’s the pie?”

“It’s good. Really good. I never asked about the baking. Is that done on the premises, or do you buy from a local bakery?”

“I do the baking.”

“Really?”

“Now you’re thinking I’m better at that than the grill. And you’d be right. How about you?”

“Not my strong suit, but I can give you a hand when you need it.”

“I’ll let you know.” She flipped a pair of burgers, then dumped fries and beans on the plates with them. Joanie was tossing the pickles and tomatoes on the plates when Lo sauntered back into the kitchen.

“William.”

“Ma.” He bent, kissed the top of her head while Reece’s stomach sank.

Ma, she thought, and she’d made a crack about his penis.

“Heard you were classing up the place.” He sent Reece a slow, easy smile before he tipped back the beer he’d carried back with him. “Friends call me Lo.”

“Reece. Nice to meet you. I’ll take those, Joanie.” Reece grabbed the plates, took them to the line. And noted with annoyance that for the first time all night, there were no tickets waiting to be filled.

“Shutting down the kitchen shortly,” Joanie told her. “You go ahead and clock out, head out. I got you on first shift tomorrow, so you be here by six, sharp.”

“All right. Sure.” She started to untie her apron.

“I’ll drive you down to the hotel.” Lo set his half-full beer aside. “Make sure you get there safe.”

“Oh, no, don’t bother.” Reece glanced toward his mother, hoping for some help in that quarter, but Joanie had already turned away to shut down the fryers. “It’s not far. I’m fine, and I’d like a walk anyway.”

“Fine, I’ll walk you. Got a coat?”

Argue, she decided, and it was rude. Don’t argue, and tread on thin ice. She’d have to tread. Without a word, she got her jean jacket. “I’ll be here at six.”

She mumbled her goodbyes, started toward the door. She could feel the writer—Brody—staring holes in her back. Why was he still here anyway?

Lo opened the door for her, then stepped out after her.

“Cool tonight. Sure you’re going to be warm enough?”

“I’m fine. It feels good after the heat in the kitchen.”

“I bet it does. You’re not letting my ma work you too hard now, are you?”

“I like to work.”

“I bet you were busy tonight. Why don’t I buy you a drink so you can unwind a little. And you can tell me the story of your life.”

“Thanks, but the story’s not worth the price of a drink, and I’ve got the early shift tomorrow.”

“Supposed to be a pretty day.” His voice was as lazy as his gait. “Why don’t I pick you up when you get off? I’ll show you around. No better guide in Angel’s Fist, I can promise you. And I can bring references documenting I’m a gentleman.”

He had a great smile, she had to admit it, and a look in his eyes that was as seductive as a hand stroking along the skin.

And he was the boss’s son.

“That’s awfully nice of you, but since I only know a handful of people—and those less than a day—you could forge those references. I’d better pass, and take tomorrow to settle in a little.”

“Rain check, then.”

When he took her arm, she jumped, and his voice lowered to soothe as if she were a spooked horse. “Easy now, I’m just slowing you down. Can tell by the way you walk like you’re late for an appointment you’re from back East. Take a minute, look up there. That’s a sight, isn’t it?”

Her heart was still beating too fast for comfort, but she looked up. And there, above the ragged shadows of the mountains, hung a full, white moon.

Stars exploded around it, as if someone had loaded a shotgun with diamonds and blasted away. Their light turned the icing of snow on the peaks an eerie blue, and dashed the crevices and gullies into deep, rich shadow.

This, she thought, was what she missed when she allowed nerves to hunch her over, to force her gaze to the ground. And though she might have wished she’d had this moment alone, she had to give credit to Lo for making her stop, making her look.

“It’s beautiful. The guidebook I bought called the mountains majestic, and I thought no. When I saw them before, I thought not majestic but tough and rugged. But that’s how they look now. Majestic.”

“There are spots up there that you have to see to believe, and they change, even while you’re looking. This time of year, if you go up, stand by the river, you can hear the rocks clack in the spring runoff. Take you on a ride up. Nothing better than seeing the Tetons on horseback.”

“I don’t ride.”

“I can teach you.”

She began to walk again. “Scenic guide, riding instructor.”

“That’s what I do, mostly, out of the Circle K. Guest ranch about twenty miles out. I can get the cook there to pack up a nice picnic, get you a gentle mount. Can promise you a day you’ll write home about.”

“I’m sure you would.” She’d like to hear the rocks clack, and see the moraines and meadows. And right now, with that spectacular moonlight, it was almost tempting to let him show her. “I’ll think about it. Here’s my stop.”

“I’ll walk you up.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m—”

“My mother taught me to walk a lady right to her door.”

He took her arm again, casually, and opened the door to the hotel. He smelled, she noticed, appealingly of leather and pine.

“Evening, Tom,” he called out to the clerk on night duty.

“Lo. Ma’am.”

And Reece saw the ghost of a smirk in the clerk’s eyes.

When Lo turned toward the elevator, Reece pulled back. “I’m just on the third floor. I’m going to walk up.”

“One of those exercise nuts, are you? Must be why you stay so slim.” But he changed direction smoothly, then pulled open the door to the stairs.

“I appreciate you going to all this trouble.” She ordered herself not to panic because the stairwell seemed so much smaller with him beside her. “I certainly dropped into a friendly town.”

“Wyoming’s a friendly state. May not be many of us here, but we’re congenial. I heard you were from Boston.”

“Yes.”

“First time out this way?”

“That’s right.” One more flight, then the door would open.

“Taking some time off to see the country?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s exactly right.”

“Brave thing to do, all by yourself.”

“Is it?”

“Shows a sense of adventure.”

She would have laughed, but she was too relieved when he held the door open for her and she stepped out into the hall on three. “I’m right here.” She dug out her key card, automatically glancing down to make sure the tape across the door was secured.

Before she could slide the key card into the slot, he took it from her, did the small chore himself. He opened the door, then handed the key back to her. “Left all your lights on,” he commented. “TV running.”

“Oh, I guess I did. Overanxious to start work. Thanks, Lo, for the escort.”

“My pleasure. We’re going to get you up on a horse right soon. You’ll see.”

She managed a smile. “I’ll think about it. Thanks again. Good night.”

She eased through the doorway, shut the door. Flipped the dead bolt, then hooked the safety chain. Moving to the far side of the bed, she sat where she could look out the window, at all that open space, until she no longer had to work to keep her breath even.

Steadier, she went back to check the peep to make sure the hallway was clear before she pushed a chair against the door. Once she’d checked the locks again, and the sturdiness of the dresser blocking the door to the adjoining room, she got ready for bed. She set the alarm on the clock radio for five, then used her own travel alarm as a backup.

She updated her journal, then bargained with herself over how many lights she could leave burning through the night. It was her first night in a new place; she was entitled to leave the light on the desk burning, and the one in the bathroom. The bathroom didn’t really count anyway. That was just for safety and convenience. She might have to get up in the middle of the night to pee.

She took her flashlight out of her knapsack, set it by the bed. There could be a power failure, caused by a fire. She wasn’t the only one in the hotel, after all. Someone could fall asleep smoking in bed, or some kid could be playing with matches.

God knew.

The whole building could go up in flames at threeA.M. for all she knew. Then she’d have to get out quickly. Having the flashlight close was just being prepared.

The little tickle in her chest made her think longingly of the sleeping pills in her bathroom kit. Those and the antidepressants, the antianxiety medications were just a security blanket, she reminded herself. It had been months since she’d taken a sleeping pill, and she was tired enough tonight to sleep without help. Besides, if therewas a fire and power failure, she’d be groggy and slow. End up burning to death or dying of smoke inhalation.

And the idea of that had her sitting on the side of the bed with her head in her hands cursing herself for having an overactive and foolish imagination.

“Just stop it, Reece. Stop it now and go to bed. You’ve got to get up early and perform basic functions like a normal human being.”

She made one more round with the locks before getting into bed. She lay very still, listening to her heart thud, listening for sounds from the next room, from the hallway, from outside the window.

Safe, she told herself. She was perfectly safe. There wasn’t going to be a fire. A bomb wasn’t going to explode. No one was going to break into her room to murder her in her sleep.

The sky was not going to fall.

But she kept the TV on low and used the old black-and-white melodrama to lull her to sleep.

THE PAIN WAS so shocking, so vicious, she couldn’t scream over it. The black, the anvil of black plummeted onto her chest to trap her. It crushed her lungs so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. The hammer beat on that anvil, pounding her head, her chest, slamming, slamming down on her. She tried to gasp for air, but the pain was too much, and the fear was beyond even the pain.

They were out there, outside in the dark. She could hear them, hear the glass shattering, the explosions. And worse, the screaming.

Worse than the screaming, the laughing.

Ginny? Ginny?

No, no, don’t cry out, don’t make a sound. Better to die here in the dark than for them to find her. But they were coming, they were coming for her, and she couldn’t hold back the whimpers, couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.

The sudden light was blinding, and the wild screams that burst in her head came out as feral growls.

“We’ve got a live one.”

And she slapped and kicked weakly at hands that reached for her.

Woke in a sweat, with those growls in her throat as she grabbed for the flashlight and gripped it like a weapon.

Was someone there? Someone at the door? At the window?

She sat shivering, shaking, ears straining for any sound.

An hour later, when her alarms beeped, she was sitting up in bed, the flashlight still in her hand, and every light in the room burning.

3

AFTER THE GUT-SHOT of panic, it was hard to face the kitchen, the people, the pretense of being normal. But not only was she essentially broke, she’d given her word. Six o’clock sharp.

Her only other choice was to go back, retreat, and all the months she’d been inching forward would be wiped away. One phone call, she knew, and she’d be rescued.

And she’d be done.

She took it a step at a time. Getting dressed was a victory, leaving the room another. Stepping outside and aiming her feet toward the diner was a small personal triumph. The air was cold—winter still had a few bites left—so her breath puffed out visibly in the shimmer of predawn. The mountains were dark and sturdy silhouettes against the sky now that the night’s fat moon had sunk below the peaks. And she could see a long, low blanket of fog spread out at their feet. Fingers of mist rose from the lake and whisked around the leafless trees, thin as fairy wings.

In the chilly dark, it all looked so fanciful, so still, so perfectly balanced. Her heart jumped once as something slid out of those mists. Then settled again as she saw it was just an animal.

Moose, elk, deer, she couldn’t be sure at this distance. But whatever it was seemed to glide, and the mists tattered around it as it moved closer to the lake.

As it bent its head to drink, Reece heard the first chorus of birdsong. Part of her wanted to just sit down, right on the sidewalk, and be quietly alone to watch the sun rise.

Soothed, she began to walk again. She’d have to face the kitchen, the people, the questions that always circled around the new face in any job. She couldn’t afford to be late, to be nervous, and God knew she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself than absolutely necessary.

Stay calm, she ordered herself. Stay focused. To help her do just that she recited snatches of poetry in her head, concentrating on the rhythm of the words until she realized she was murmuring them out loud, and cringed. No one around to hear, she reminded herself, and the distraction got her to the door of Angel Food.

The lights burned bright inside, easing some of the tension in her shoulders. She could see movement inside—Joanie, already in the kitchen. Did the woman ever sleep?

She had to knock on the door, Reece told herself. Knock, put a smile on her face, wave. Once she took this next step, once she pushed herself inside, she’d drown this anxiety in the work.

But her arm felt like lead and refused to move. Her fingers were too stiff, too cold to curl themselves into a fist. She stood where she was, feeling stupid, useless, helpless.

“Problem with the door?”

She jolted, swung around. And there was Linda-gail slamming the driver’s door of a sturdy little compact.

“No. No. I was just—”

“Zoning? You don’t look as if you got much sleep last night.”

“I guess I was. I guess I didn’t.”

The already cold air chilled with every step Linda-gail took toward her. The bright blue eyes, so friendly the day before, were aloof, dismissive. “Am I late?”

“Surprised you showed up at all with the night you must’ve put in.”

Reece thought of huddling in bed, gripping the flashlight, listening. Listening. “How do you—”

“Lo’s got a reputation for endurance.”

“Lo? I don’t—Oh!” Surprise laced with amusement jumped right over the nerves. “No, we didn’t—Ididn’t. God, Linda-gail, I met him for like ten minutes. I have to know a guy at least an hour before I test his endurance.”

Linda-gail lowered the hand she’d lifted to the door, narrowed her eyes at Reece. “You didn’t go to bed with Lo?”

“No.” This, at least, she could handle. “Did I break some secret town tradition? Am I going to be fired? Arrested? If being a skank is part of the job requirement, it should’ve been made clear up front and I should be making more than eight an hour.”

“That clause is voluntary. Sorry.” Through a flush, the dimples winked. “Really sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed and jumped on you just because you left together.”

“He walked me back to the hotel, suggested a drink, which I didn’t want, and shifted to showing me the area, which I can see for myself, then maybe a trail ride. I don’t ride, but I may give that part a try. He gets a ten on the cute-factor scale, and another ten on behavior and manners. I didn’t realize you two had a thing.”

“A thing? Me and Lo?” Linda-gail made a dismissive blowing sound. “We don’t. I’m probably the only single female under fifty in a hundred miles who hasn’t slept with him. A slut’s a slut in my book, whether they’re a man or a woman.”

She shrugged, then once again studied Reece’s face. “Anyway, you really do look worn out.”

“Didn’t sleep well, that’s all. First night in a new place, new job. Nerves.”

“Put them away,” Linda-gail ordered as she opened the door, and the warmth was back in her eyes. “We’re not scary around here.”

“Wondered if you two were going to stand out there and gab all day. I’m not paying you to gossip.”

“It’s five after six, for God’s sake, Joanie. Dock me. Oh, speaking of pay, here’s your share of last night’s tips, Reece.”

“My share? I didn’t wait any tables.”

Linda-gail pushed the envelope into Reece’s hands. “Shop policy, the cook gets ten percent of the tips. We get tipped for service, but if the food’s crap, we’re not going to make as much.”

“Thanks.” Not completely broke, Reece thought as she stuffed the envelope in her pocket.

“Don’t spend it all in one place.”

“If you’re finished passing the time now?” Joanie folded her arms at the counter. “Get those breakfast setups going, Linda-gail. Reece, you think you’re ready to get your skinny ass back here and work?”

“Yes, ma’am. Oh, and just to clear the air,” she added as she rounded the counter for an apron, “your son’s very charming, but I slept alone last night.”

“Boy must be slipping.”

“I couldn’t say. I intend to continue to sleep alone while I’m in Angel’s Fist.”

Joanie set aside a bowl of pancake batter. “Don’t like sex?”

“I like it fine.” Reece moved to the sink to wash her hands. “It’s just not on my to-do list at the moment.”

“Must be a pretty sad, short list then. Can you make huevos rancheros?”

“I can.”

“They’re popular on Sundays. So are flapjacks. You go on, start frying up bacon and sausage. Early crowd’ll be right along.”

Shortly before noon, Joanie pushed a plate holding a short stack, a scoop of scrambled eggs and a side of bacon into Reece’s hand. “Go on, take this into the back room. Sit down and eat.”

“There’s enough for two people here.”

“Yeah, if both of them are anorexic.”

“I’m not.” She forked up a bite of the eggs as if to prove it.

“Go take it back in my office and sit. You got twenty.”

She’d seen the office, androom was a very generous term. “Listen, I’ve got a problem with small spaces.”

“Afraid of the dark, and claustrophobic. You’re a bundle of phobias. Sit out at the counter, then. You’ve still got twenty.”

She did what she was told, sitting at the end of the counter. A moment later, Linda-gail put a cup of tea beside her, gave her a wink.

“Hey, Doc.” Linda-gail gave the counter a swipe, sent a good-morning smile to the man who slid onto the stool beside Reece. “Usual?”

“Sunday cholesterol special, Linda-gail. My day to walk on the wild side.”

“You got it. Joanie,” she called back without bothering with a ticket. “Doc’s here. Doc, this is Reece, our new cook. Reece, meet Doc Wallace. He’ll treat anything that ails you. But don’t let him pull you into a poker game. He’s a slick one.”

“Now, now, how am I going to fleece the newcomers if you talk like that?” He shifted on his stool, gave Reece a nod. “Heard Joanie got herself somebody knew what they were doing in the kitchen. How’s it going for you?”

“So far, so good.” She had to make an effort and remind herself it wasn’t as if he was wearing a lab coat and coming at her with needles. “I like the work.”

“Best Sunday breakfast in Wyoming at Joanie’s. Now the hotel, they put on a big buffet for the tourists, but the smart money’s right here.” He settled back with the coffee Linda-gail put in front of him. “You go right on and eat that while it’s hot.”

Instead of looking at it, he thought, like the food on the plate was a puzzle to be solved. He’d been the town doctor for nearly thirty years, and so he told her. He’d come as a young man, answering an ad the town council had placed in the Laramie paper. And so he told Reece as she played with her food.

“Looking for adventure,” he said in a voice with the barest hint of rural western twang. “Fell in love with the place, and a pretty brown-eyed girl named Susan. Raised three kids here. Oldest is a doctor himself—first-year intern—in Cheyenne. Middle one, our Annie, married a fella takes pictures for theNational Geographic magazine. They moved all the way out to Washington, D.C. Got a grandson there, too. Youngest is in California, working on a degree in philosophy. Don’t know what the hell he’s going to philosophize about, but there you go. Lost my Susan two years back to breast cancer.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s a hard, hard thing.” He glanced down at his wedding ring. “Still look for her beside me when I wake up in the morning. Expect I always will.”

“Here you go, Doc.” Linda-gail set a plate in front of him, and both of them laughed when Reece goggled at it. “He’ll eat every bite, too,” Linda-gail said before she headed off.

There was a stack of pancakes, an omelet, a thick slice of ham, a generous portion of home fries and a trio of link sausages.

“You really can’t eat all that.”

“Watch and learn, little girl. Watch and learn.”

He looked fit, Reece thought, in his plaid shirt and sensible cardigan. Like someone who ate healthy meals and got a reasonable amount of exercise. His face was ruddy and lean, with a pair of clear hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

Yet he tucked into the enormous breakfast like a long-haul trucker.

“You got family back East?” he asked her.

“Yes, my grandmother in Boston.”

“That where you learned to cook?”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the way the food was disappearing. “Yes, where I started. I went to the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, then a year in Paris at the Cordon Bleu.”

“Culinary Institute.” Doc wiggled his eyebrows. “And Paris. Fancy.”

“Sorry?” She realized abruptly she had said more about her background in two minutes than she normally did to anyone in two weeks. “More intense, actually. I’d better get back to work. It was nice meeting you.”

Reece worked through the lunch shift, and with the rest of the afternoon and evening stretched out in front of her decided to take a long walk. She could circle the lake, maybe explore some of the forests and streams. She could take pictures and e-mail them to her grandmother and, between the fresh air, the exercise, tire herself out.

She changed into her hiking boots, outfitted her backpack precisely as her guidebook recommended for hikes under ten miles. Outside again, she found a spot near the lake to sit and read over the handout brochures she’d gotten from the hotel.

She’d take time every day she could manage it, she decided, fanning out from the town, into the park, maybe dip just a little into the backcountry. She was better outdoors, always better in the open.

When she had her first full day off, she’d take one of the easier trails and hike up to see the river. But for now she’d better get started doing what her guide suggested and break in the hiking boots.

She set out at an easy pace. That, at least, was one of the advantages of her life now. There was rarely any hurry. She could do what she chose to do in her own time, at her own speed. She’d never really given herself this in the time before. In the past eight months, she’d seen and done more than she had in the previous twenty-eight years. Maybe she was a little bit crazy, and she was certainly neurotic, phobic and slightly paranoid, but there were pockets of herself she’d managed to fill again, and pieces of herself she’d worked back into place.

She’d never be again what she’d once been—the bustling, ambitious urbanite. But she’d discovered she liked whatever she was forming into. Now, she paid more attention to details that had once blurred by. The play of light and shadows, the lap of water, the sensation of the spongy, thawing ground under her feet.

She could stop where she was, right now, and watch a heron rise, silent as a cloud, from the lake. She could watch the ripples fan out over the surface, wider, wider, until they reached the tip of the paddles plied by a young boy in a red kayak.

She remembered her camera too late to capture the heron, but she captured the boy and his red boat, and the blue water, and the dazzling reflection of the mountains that spanned its surface.

She’d attach little notes to each photo, she thought as she started to walk again. In that way, her grandmother would feel part of the journey. Reece knew she’d left worry behind in Boston, but all she could do was send chatty e-mails, make a phone call now and then to let her grandmother know where and how she was.

Though she wasn’t always perfectly truthful on the how.

There were houses and cabins scattered around the lake, and someone, she noted, was having a Sunday barbecue. It was a good day for it—grilled chicken, potato salad, skewers of marinated vegetables, gallons of iced tea, cold beer.

A dog paddled out into the water after a blue ball, while a girl stood on the banks laughing and calling encouragement. When he retrieved it and paddled back to shore, he shook like a mad thing, showering the girl with water that caught the sunlight and fired like diamonds.

His bark was full of insane joy when she threw the ball again, and he leaped back into the water to repeat the cycle.

Reece took out her bottle of water, sipping as she veered away from the lakefront and strolled into the evergreens.

She might see deer, or a moose, even elk—maybe the same one she’d spied that morning—if she was quiet enough. She could do without the bear the brochures and guides said lived in the forests of the area, even if the guidebook claimed most bears would leave if they sensed a human nearby.

For all she knew the bear would be in a pissy mood that day and decide to take it out on her.

So she’d be careful, she wouldn’t go far, and though she had her compass, she’d stick to the trail.

Cooler here, she thought. The sun couldn’t get to the pools and pockets of snow, and the water of the little stream she came across had to force itself through and over the chunks of ice.

She followed the stream, listening to the hiss and plop of the ice as it slowly thawed. When she found tracks and scat, she was thrilled. What sort of tracks? What sort of poop? she wondered. Wanting to know, she started to dig her guidebook out of her pack.

The rustle had her freezing, cautiously looking over. It was a toss-up who was more taken by surprise, Reece or the mule deer, but they stood staring at each other in mutual shock for one breathless moment.

I must be upwind, she thought. Or was it downwind? As she reached slowly for her camera, she made a mental note to look that up again. She managed a full-on shot, then made the mistake of laughing in delight. The sound had the deer bounding away.

“I know what that’s like,” she murmured as she watched it race away from human contact. “The world’s just full of scary stuff.”

She tucked the little camera back in her pocket, realizing she couldn’t hear the dog barking any longer, or any rumble from cars driving on the main road of town. Just the breeze moving through the trees like a quiet surf, and that hissing bubble and plop from the stream.

“Maybe I should live in a forest. Find myself a little isolated cabin, grow some vegetables. I could be a vegetarian,” she considered as she took a running leap across the narrow stream. “Okay, probably not. I could probably learn to fish. I’d buy a pickup and go into town once a month for supplies.”

She began to imagine it, painting the image in her head. Not too far from the water, not too deep in the mountains. Lots and lots of windows so it would be almost like living outside.

“I could start my own business. Little cottage industry. Cook all day, sell the products. Do it all over the Internet, maybe. Never leave the house. And end up adding agoraphobia to my list.”

No, she’d live in the forest—that part was good—but she’d work in town. It could even be here, and she’d keep working for Joanie.

“Give it a few weeks, that’s the best thing. See how it goes. Get out of that hotel, that’s for damn sure. That’s not going to work for very long. Where else though, that’s a problem. Maybe I’ll see about—”

She let out a yelp, stumbled back and nearly landed on her ass.

It was one thing to run into a mule deer and another entirely to come across a man lying in a hammock with a paperback splayed over his chest.

He’d heard her coming—hard not to, he thought, when she was holding a verbal debate with herself. He’d assumed she’d turn off toward the lake, but instead she veered straight toward his hammock, eyes on the toes of her barely scuffed hiking boots. So he set his book down to watch her.

Urban female picking her way through the wilderness, he mused. L.L. Bean backpack and boots, Levi’s that at least showed some wear, water bottle.

Was that her cell phone sticking out of her pocket? Who the hell was she going to call?

She’d scooped her hair back, looping the tail of it through the back opening in the black cap she wore. Her face was pale, the eyes huge and startled, and a deep, rich Spanish brown.

“Lost?”

“No. Yes. No.” She looked around as if she’d just dropped in from another planet. “I was just taking a walk, I didn’t realize. I must be trespassing.”

“You must be. You want to wait here a minute, while I go get my gun?”

“Not really. Um. That’s your cabin, I guess.”

“That gives you two for two.”

“It’s nice.” She studied it for a moment, the simple log structure, the long sweep of the covered porch with its single chair, single table. It was a lovely thing, she decided. A single chair, a single table.

“Private,” she added. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I like it private.”

“I meant…well, you know what I meant.” She took a deep breath, twisting and untwisting the cap on her bottle of water. It was easier for her with strangers. It had come to be the pitying, the concerned glances of those she knew she’d been unable to bear.

“You’re doing it again. Staring at me. It’s rude.”

He lifted an eyebrow. She’d always admired people who could do that, as if that single brow had an independent set of muscles. Then he reached down, unerringly hooked a bottle of beer. “Who decides that kind of thing? What’s rude in any given culture?”

“The PRS.”

It only took him a moment. “The Prevention of Rudeness Society? I thought they disbanded.”

“No, they continue their good work, in secret locations.”

“My great-grandfather was a member of the PRS, but we don’t talk about it much seeing as he was a complete asshole.”

“Well, you’ll have this in any family or group. I’ll let you get back to your reading.”

She took a step back, and he debated whether to ask her if she wanted a beer. Since it would have been an almost unprecedented gesture, he’d already decided against it when a sharp sound blasted the air.

She hit the dirt, throwing her arms up to cover her head like a soldier in a trench.

His first reaction was amusement.City girl. But he saw, when she neither moved nor made a sound, it was more than that. He swung his legs off the hammock, then crouched down.

“Backfire,” he said easily. “Carl Sampson’s truck. It’s a wreck on wheels.”

“Backfire.”

He could hear her murmur it over and over as she trembled.

“Yeah, that’s right.” He put a hand on her arm to steady her, and she tightened up.

“Don’t. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t. I just need a minute.”

“Okay.” He got up to retrieve the water bottle that had gone flying when she dropped to the ground. “You want this? Your water?”

“Yes. Thanks.” She took the bottle, but her shaking fingers couldn’t manage the cap. Saying nothing, Brody took it from her, unscrewed the cap, handed it back.

“I’m fine. Just startled me.”

Startled, my ass, he thought.

“I thought it was a gunshot.”

“You’ll hear that kind of thing, too. Nothing in season—hunting, that is—but people around here target shoot. It’s the wild, wild West, Slim.”

“Of course. Of course they do; it is. I’ll get used to it.”

“You go walking in the woods, the hills, you’re going to want to wear something bright. Red, orange.”

“That’s right. Of course, that’s right. I’ll make sure I do next time.”

Some color had come back into her face, but in Brody’s judgment, it was pure embarrassment. Even when she pushed herself to her feet, her breath remained choppy. She made a halfhearted attempt to brush herself off.

“That completes the entertainment portion of our program. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

“Plan to.” A nicer guy, he thought, would probably insist she sit down, or offer to walk her back to town. He just wasn’t a nicer guy.

She kept walking, then slowed to glance over her shoulder. “I’m Reece, by the way.”

“I know.”

“Oh. Well. See you around.”

Hard to avoid it, Brody thought, even when she walked fast and with her eyes on the ground. Spooky woman with those big, doe-in-the-thicket eyes. Pretty though, and she’d probably edge up to sexy with another ten pounds on her.

But it was the spooky that intrigued him. He could never resist trying to figure out what made people tick. And in Reece Gilmore’s case, he figured whatever ticked inside her had a lot of very short fuses.

Reece kept her eyes on the lake—the ripples, the swans, the boats. It would be a long walk around the curve of it, but that would give her time to settle down again, and for the burn of embarrassment to cool. It was already transforming into a migraine, but that was all right, that was okay. If it didn’t ease back, she’d take something for it when she got back to the hotel.

Maybe her stomach was twisted up, but it wasn’t that bad. She hadn’t gotten sick and completely capped off the mortification.

Why couldn’t she have been alone in the woods when the stupid truck backfired? Of course, if she had been, she might still be curled up there, whimpering.

At least Brody had been matter-of-fact about it. Here’s your water, pull yourself together. It was so much easier to handle that than the strokes and pats and there-theres.

Because the sun hurt her eyes now, she dug into her backpack for her sunglasses. Ordered herself to keep her head up, to walk at a normal pace. She even managed to smile at a couple who strolled along the lake as she did, and lift her hand in a wave in answer to the salute from a driver in a passing car when she finally,finally reached the main road.

The girl—Reece couldn’t pull her name out of her pounding head—was on the desk again at the hotel. She shot Reece a smile, asked how she was, how she had enjoyed her hike. Reece knew she answered, but all the words seemed tinny and false.

She wanted her room.

She got up the stairs, found her key, then just leaned back against the door when she was inside.

Once she’d checked the locks—twice—taken her medication, she curled on the bed, fully dressed, still wearing her boots and sunglasses.

And closing her eyes, she gave in to the exhaustion of pretending to be normal.

4

ASPRING STORM dropped eight inches of wet, heavy snow, and turned the lake into a frothy gray disk. Some of the locals plowed through it on snowmobiles while kids, bundled into shapeless stumps in their winter gear, entertained themselves building snow people around the verge of the lake.

Lynt, with his wide shoulders and weather-scored face, took breaks from his snowplowing duties to refill his thermos with Joanie’s coffee and complain about the wind.

Reece had experienced it herself on her walk to work that morning. It blew like wrath down the canyon, across the lake, sparking fresh snow as it burned ice through the bone.

It beat at the windows, howled like a man bent on murder. When the power died, Joanie herself yanked on coat and boots to trudge outside and fire up her generator.

The roar of it competed with the scream of the wind and the thunder of Lynt’s snowplow, until Reece wondered why every mother’s son and daughter didn’t go raving mad from the unrelenting noise.

It didn’t stop people from coming in. Lynt turned off his plow to settle in with an enormous bowl of buffalo stew. Carl Sampson, with his cheeks red from the wind, puffed in to sit with Lynt and chow down on meatloaf, and stayed to eat two pieces of huckleberry pie.

Others came and went. Others came and lingered. They all wanted food and company, she understood. Human contact and something warm in the belly to remind them they weren’t alone. While she grilled, fried, boiled and chopped, she, too, felt steadier for the hum of voices.

But there wouldn’t be voices and contact once she finished her shift. Thinking of her hotel room, she fought her way down to the mercantile on her break for spare batteries for her flashlight. Just in case.

“Winter’s got to take her last slap,” Mac told her as he rang up her batteries. “Going to have to reorder these. Had a run on them. Close to running out of bread, eggs and milk, too. Why is it people always load up on bread, eggs and milk in a storm?”

“I guess they want to be able to make French toast.”

He gave a quick, wheezing laugh. “Might be they do. How you doing down at Joanie’s? Haven’t made it down there since this hit. I like to get by all the businesses that’re open when we get socked. Being mayor, it just seems the thing to do.”

“Generator’s going, so we’re still in business. You, too.”

“Yeah, don’t like to close the doors. Lynt’s got the roads clear enough, and the power should be back up in a couple hours. I checked on that. And she’s already passing. The storm.”

Reece glanced toward the windows. “It is?”

“Time the power’s back, she’ll be done. You’ll see. Only real trouble we’ve had from this is the roof of Clancy’s storage shed caving in. His own fault anyway. It was due for repair, and he didn’t get it shoveled off. Tell Joanie I’ll be down to check on things first chance.”

IN JUST OVER an hour, Mac’s predictions proved on target. The wind tapered down to an irritable mutter. Before another hour had passed, the juke—which Joanie refused to run on her generator—whined back on, hiccuped, then offered up Dolly Parton.

And long after the heavy fall of snow and brutal wind left town, Reece could see it raging in bruised clouds in the mountains. It added, she thought, to their fierceness, gave them a cold, aloof power.

It made her grateful she could stand in the warmth of her hotel room and look out at them.

She mixed up vats of stew according to Joanie’s recipes, grilled pounds and pounds of meat and poultry and fish. At the end of every shift, she counted up her tip money, then tucked it in an envelope she kept zipped in her duffel bag.

Sometime during the day or evening, Joanie would stick a plate of food under Reece’s nose. She’d eat in a corner of the kitchen while meat smoked on the grill, the jukebox played and people sat at the counter and gossiped.

Three days after the storm, she was ladling up stew when Lo strolled back. He made a small production out of sniffing the air. “Something sure smells good.”

“Tortilla soup.” She had finally convinced Joanie to let her prepare one of her own recipes. “And it is good. Do you want a bowl?”

“I was talking about you, but I wouldn’t turn down a bowl of that.”

She handed him the one she’d just prepared, then reached up for another bowl. He slid up behind her, reaching up as she did. A classic move, Reece thought, as was her easy side step. “I’ve got it. Your mother’s back in her office if you want to see her.”

“I’ll catch her before I head out. Came in to see you.”

“Oh?” She filled the next bowl, sprinkled on the cheese she’d grated for it, the tortilla strips she’d fried. She thought wistfully how much better it would have been with fresh cilantro as she set it on a plate with a hard roll and two pats of butter. Shifting around, she put it in line. “Order up,” she called out, then took the next ticket.

Maybe she could talk Joanie into adding cilantro, and a few other fresh herbs, to the produce order. Some sun-dried tomatoes and arugula. If she could just—

“Hey, where’d you go?” Lo demanded. “Can I come, too?”

“What? Sorry, did you say something?”

He looked a little put out, and surprised with it. She imagined he wasn’t used to having a woman forget he was there. Boss’s son, she reminded herself, and offered a quick smile. “I get caught up when I’m cooking.”

“Guess you do. Still, business is pretty light today.”

“Steady though.” She got out the makings for a bacon cheeseburger and a chicken sandwich, kept moving to set up the two orders of fries.

“Damn! Thisis good.” He spooned up more of the soup.

“Thanks. Make sure to tell the boss.”

“I’ll do that. So, Reece, I checked the schedule. You’re off tonight.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She nodded at Pete when the bantamweight dishwasher came in from his break.

“Thought you might want to take in a movie.”

“I didn’t know there was a movie theater in town.”

“There isn’t. I’ve got the best DVD collection in western Wyoming. Make a hell of a bowl of popcorn, too.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Boss’s son, Reece reminded herself again. Tread carefully between friendly and dismissive. “That’s a nice offer, Lo, but I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on tonight. You want a roll with that soup?”

“Maybe.” He edged a little closer, not quite crowding her at the grill. “You know, honey, you’re going to break my heart if you keep turning me down.”

“I doubt that.” She kept it light as she flipped the grill orders, then got him a roll and a plate. “You don’t want to get too close to the grill,” she warned. “You may get splattered.”

Instead of taking the soup out to the restaurant as she’d hoped, he just leaned back against the work counter. “I’ve got an awful tender heart.”

“Then you want to steer clear of me,” she told him. “I stomp all over them. I left a trail of bleeding and bruised hearts all the way from Boston. It’s a sickness.”

“I might be the cure.”

She glanced at him then. Too good-looking, too full of charm. Once upon a time she might have enjoyed being pursued by him, even caught for a while. But she just didn’t have the energy for games. “You want the truth?”

“Is it going to hurt?”

It made her laugh. “I like you. I’d prefer to keep liking you. You’re my boss’s son, and that makes you the next thing to the boss in my lineup. I don’t sleep with the boss, so I’m not going to sleep with you. But I appreciate the offer.”

“Didn’t ask you to sleep with me yet,” he pointed out.

“Just saving us both time.”

He spooned up soup, ate in a slow and thoughtful way. His smile was the same—slow and thoughtful. “Bet I could change your mind, you give me half a chance.”

“That’s why you’re not getting one.”

“Maybe you’ll get fired, or my ma’ll disown me.”

When the fryer buzzed, she let the potatoes drain in the baskets while she finished the sandwiches. “I can’t afford to get fired, and your mother loves you.”

She finished the orders, put them up. “Now go on out, sit at the counter and finish your soup. You’re in the way.”

He grinned at her. “Bossy women are a weakness of mine.”

But he strolled out when she started on the next ticket.

“He’ll try again,” Pete told her from the sink in a voice that still said Bronx even after eight years in Wyoming. “He can’t help himself.”

She felt a little harried, a little hot. “Maybe I should’ve told him I was married, or a lesbian.”

“Too late for that now. Better tell him you’ve fallen wild in love with me.” Pete sent her a grin, showing the wide gap between his two front teeth.

She chuckled again. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Nobody does. That’s why it’d work.”

Joanie came in, stuck a check in the pocket of Pete’s apron, handed another to Reece. “Payday.”

“Thanks.” And Reece made a decision on the spot. “I wonder if when you have a chance you could show me the apartment upstairs. If it’s still available.”

“Haven’t seen anybody move in, have you? In my office.”

“I need to—”

“Do what you’re told,” Joanie finished and headed out.

Left without a choice, Reece followed. Inside, Joanie opened a shallow wall cabinet emblazoned with a cowboy riding a bucking horse. There was an army of labeled keys on hooks. She took one out, passed it to Reece. “Go on up, take a look.”

“It’s not time for my break.”

Joanie cocked a hip, fisted a hand on it. “Girl, it’s time if I say it’s time. Go on. Stairs out the back.”

“All right. I’ll be back in ten.”

It was cold enough even with the snow rapidly going to slush that she needed her coat. She was grateful for it once she’d climbed the rickety open stairs and unlocked the door. Joanie was obviously frugal enough to keep the heat off upstairs.

She saw it was essentially one room with an alcove where an iron daybed was nestled, and a short counter on the street side that separated a little kitchen. The floors were random-length oak that showed some scars, while the walls were an industrial pasty-flesh beige.

There was a bath that was actually slightly larger than the one in her hotel room with a white pedestal sink and an old cast-iron claw-foot tub. Rust stains bloomed around their drains. The mirror over the sink was spotted, the tiles a stark white with black borders.

The main room held a sagging plaid sofa, a single faded blue armchair and a couple tables holding lamps that had obviously been flea market bargains.

She was smiling even before she turned to walk to the windows. A trio of them faced the mountains, and seemed to open up the world. She could see the sky where the blue streaks were fighting to overtake the dull white, and the lake where that blue was shimmering against the gray.

The snow people were melting into deformed hobbits that spread low over the winter-brown grasses. The willows were shabby bent sticks, and the cottonwoods shivered. Shadows shifted over the snow-laced peaks as the clouds gathered and parted, and she thought she saw a faint glimmer that might have been an alpine lake.

The town with its slushy streets, its cheerful white gazebo, its rustic cabins spread out below her. Standing where she was she felt a part of it, yet still safe and separate.

“I could be happy here,” she murmured. “I could be okay here.”

She’d have to buy some things. Towels, sheets, kitchen supplies, cleaning supplies. She thought of the paycheck in her pocket, the tip money squirreled away. She could manage the essentials. And it could be fun. The first time she’d bought her own things in nearly a year.

Big step, she thought, then immediately began to second-guess herself. Was it too big a step, too soon? Renting an apartment, buying sheets. What if she had to leave? What if she got fired? What if—

“God, I annoy myself,” she muttered. “What-ifs are for tomorrow. The moment’s what matters. And at this moment, I want to live here.”

As she thought it, clouds parted and a beam of fragile sunlight arrowed through them.

That, she decided, was enough of a sign. She’d make a try here, for as long as it lasted.

She heard footsteps on the stairs outside, and the bubble of fear opened in her chest. Groping in her pocket, she closed her hand around her panic button, gripped one of the tacky table lamps with the other.

When Joanie opened the door, Reece set the lamp down as if she’d been examining it.

“Ugly, but it gives decent light,” Joanie said, and left it at that.

“Sorry, I took longer than I meant to. I’ll go right down.”

“No rush. We’re slow, and Beck’s on the grill. Long as it’s nothing too complicated, he can handle things. You want the place or not?”

“Yes, if I can manage the rent. You never said what—”

In shirtsleeves, her stained apron and her thick-soled shoes, Joanie took a quick pass around the room. Then she named a monthly figure that was slightly less than the hotel rate.

“That’s including your heat and lights, unless I find you’ve gone crazy there. You want a phone, that’s on you. Same thing if you get it into your head you want to paint the walls. I don’t want a bunch of noise up here during business hours.”

“I’m pretty quiet. I’d rather we do it by the week. I like to pay as I go.”

“Doesn’t matter to me as long as the rent’s on time. You can move in today if you want.”

“Tomorrow. I need to get some things.”

“Suits me. Pretty sparse in here.” Joanie’s eagle eyes tracked around the room. “I probably have a few things sitting around I can bring up. You need help moving your stuff, Pete and Beck’ll give you a hand with it.”

“I appreciate it. All of it.”

“You’re paying your way. You got that raise coming.”

“Thanks.”

“No need for gratitude on something that was agreed on from the get-go. You do the job and you don’t cause trouble. Don’t ask questions, either. Now I figure that’s either because you were absent the day they handed out your portion of curiosity, or you don’t want questions asked back.”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“But you’re not stupid.” Joanie’s hand patted her apron pocket where Reece knew she kept a pack of cigarettes. “Let’s get this said. You got trouble. Anybody with two licks of sense can see it just by looking at you. I guess you’ve got what they like to callissues. ”

“Is that what they call them?” Reece murmured.

“The way I see it, if you’re working through them or just standing still, it’s your business. But you don’t let it get in the way of your job, so that’s mine. You’re a good worker, and you’re a better cook than I ever had behind the grill. I figure on making use of that, especially if I figure you’re not going to go rabbiting off some night and leave me flat. I don’t like to depend on anybody. You just get disappointed that way. But I’m going to make use of you, and you’ll get your pay on time, and a reasonable rent on this place. You’ll get your time off, and if you’re still here in another couple months, you’ll get another raise.”

“I won’t leave you flat. If I need to go, I’ll tell you beforehand.”

“Fair enough. Now I’m going to ask you straight out, and I’ll know if you’re lying. You got the law after you?”

“No.” Reece combed her fingers through her hair and let out a weak laugh. “God, no.”

“Didn’t figure you did, but you might as well know some folks around here are speculating on that. People in the Fist like to speculate, passes the time.” She waited a beat. “You don’t want to say what it is behind you, that’s your business, too. But it might help if someone comes looking for you, you tell me whether you want them to find you, or be pointed in another direction.”

“No one’s going to come looking for me. There’s only my grandmother, and she knows where I am. I’m not running from anyone.” Except maybe herself, she thought.

“All right, then. You’ve got the key. I got a duplicate in my office. You don’t have to worry about me coming up and poking around once you move in. But you’re late with the rent, I’ll take it out of your pay. No excuses. I’ve already heard them all.”

“If you can cash my paycheck, I’ll give you the first week now.”

“I guess we can work it that way. Another thing, I could use some help with the baking now and again. May tap you for that, have you give me a hand. I use my own kitchen for the baked goods.”

“I can do that.”

“I’ll work it into the schedule. Well, let’s get back before Beck poisons somebody.”

WITH THE REST of her pay and a portion of her tip money, Reece headed to the mercantile. Basics, she reminded herself. Essentials and no more. This wasn’t Newberry Street and she couldn’t afford indulgences.

But God, it was a kick to be going shopping for more than new socks or a pair of jeans. The idea of it lightened her steps until she could actuallyfeel good, healthy color in her cheeks.

She breezed in with a quick jingle of the bell that hung over the door. There were other shoppers, and some she recognized from the diner. Steak san, extra onions for the man in the plaid jacket in the hardware section. The woman and the little boy browsing in dry goods—fried chicken for him, Cobb salad for her.

She made a group of four as campers, loading up on supplies they had stacked in one of the rolling grocery carts.

She lifted a hand at Mac Drubber, and found a comfort in his acknowledging nod. It was nice to recognize and be recognized. All so casual and normal. And here she was looking at packaged sheet sets. She rejected the plain white immediately. Too reminiscent of hospitals. Maybe the pale blue, with its pattern of tiny violets, and the dark blue blanket. And for towels the buttery yellow for some sunshine in the bath.

She took the first haul to the counter.

“Got yourself a place, did you?”

“Yes. The apartment over Joanie’s,” she told Mac.

“That’s fine. You want me to start an account for you?”

In her current mood it was tempting. She could get everything she needed, and a few things she only wanted, and pay for it later. But that would be breaking the hard-and-fast rule she’d lived by for more than eight months.

“That’s all right. It’s payday. I just need to get a few things for the kitchen, and I’m set for now.”

She did the math in her head as she scanned, debated, deleted or selected what was absolutely necessary over what could be done without. A good cast-iron skillet, a decent pot. She couldn’t afford the kind of cookware she’d once owned, or good knives, but she could make do.

Even as she calculated, adjusted her list, she glanced up and over each time the little bell jingled.

So she saw Brody come in. Same battered leather jacket, she noted, same down-at-the-heels boots. He looked like he might have shaved in the last couple of days. But that look in his eyes, something that said he’d seen it all already and didn’t miss it, was still there as his gaze passed over her before he headed to the grocery section.

Thankfully, she’d already hit that area for what she considered pantry and refrigerator staples.

She pushed her cart to the counter. “That should do it, Mr. Drubber.”

“I’ll ring you up. No charge on the teakettle. It’s a housewarming gift.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

“My store, my rules.” He wagged a finger at her. “Be a minute here, Brody.”

“No problem.” Brody set a quart of milk, a box of cornflakes and a pound of coffee on the counter. Nodded to Reece. “How’s it going?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Reece is moving into the apartment over Joanie’s.”

“That so?”

“I get this rung and boxed, you give her a hand hauling it over there, Brody.”

“Oh, no. No, that’s okay. I can manage.”

“You can’t cart all this stuff on your own,” Mac insisted. “Got your car outside, don’t you, Brody?”

There was a ghost of a smile around his mouth as if he found the whole situation amusing. “Sure.”

“Heading on down to Joanie’s for dinner anyway, right?”

“That’s the plan.”

“See that, no trouble at all. This cash or charge, honey?”

“Cash. It’s cash.” And, deducting the teakettle, nearly to the dollar of what she’d brought with her.

“Just put my stuff on my account, Mac.” Brody stacked his purchases on top of one of the boxes Mac had already packed, hefted it. Before the rest was finished, Brody was back for box number two.

Trapped, Reece lifted the last one. “Thanks, Mr. Drubber.”

“You enjoy your new place,” he called out as she followed Brody to the door.

“You don’t have to do this. Seriously,” she began the minute they were outside. “He put you on the spot.”

“Yeah, he did.” Brody loaded the second box into the bed of a black Yukon, then turned and reached for the one Reece carried. She wrapped her arms more tightly around it.

“I said you didn’t have to do this. I can do it myself.”

“No, I don’t, and no, you can’t. So let’s do ourselves a favor and get it done while we’re young.” He simply yanked the box out of her arms, loaded it. “Get in.”

“I don’t want—”

“You’re being an idiot. I’ve got your stuff,” he continued as he rounded the hood. “You can get in and ride with it, or you can walk.”

She’d have preferred the second option, but that would make her a moron as well as an idiot. She got in, gave the door an irritated slam shut. And not caring, particularly, about his comfort, opened the window so she didn’t feel closed in.

He said nothing, and since the radio was blasting out Red Hot Chili Peppers, she didn’t have to pretend to make polite conversation on the short drive.

He parked on the street, then got out to drag a box out one side of the car while she pulled one from the other. “The entrance is around back.” Her voice was clipped, surprising her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been seriously annoyed with anyone other than herself.

She had to lengthen her stride so she didn’t trail behind him, and though she breezed by him on the stairs, she fumbled when she had to prop the box against the wall in order to deal with the key.

Brody simply shifted the box he held to one arm, took the key, unlocked the door.

A fresh wave of resentment washed through her. This washer place now. She should be able to invite in whom she liked, and keep out whom she didn’t. And here he was striding across the floor to dump her box of precious new possessions on the counter.

Then he was striding out again, without one comment. On a huff of breath, Reece set her box down. She dashed to the door and out, hoping to catch him and take the last load herself.

But he was already starting back.

“I’ll take it from here.” The breeze blew her hair across her face. She gave it an annoyed swipe back. “Thanks.”

“I’ve got it. What the hell’s in here? Bricks?”

“It’s probably the cast-iron skillet, and the cleaning supplies. I can get it, really.”

He simply ignored her and climbed the steps. “Why the hell did you lock the door when we were coming right back?”

“Habit.” She turned the key, but before she could shift to reach for the box, he’d pushed by to take it in himself.

“Well, thanks.” She stood beside the open door, knowing it was not only rude, but that she was letting in cold air. “Sorry for the imposition.”

“Uh-huh.” He turned a circle, hands in his pockets now. Small, depressing space, he thought, until you took in the view. It was all about the view. And it was clean, that would be Joanie’s doing. Empty or not, she’d have banished any dust or cobwebs regularly.

“Could use some fresh paint,” he commented.

“I suppose.”

“And some frigging heat. You’ll freeze those bird bones of yours in here.”

“No point in turning up the heat until I move in tomorrow. I don’t want to hold you up.”

He turned back, aimed those eyes at her. “You’re not worried about holding me up, you just want me out.”

“Okay. Bye.”

For the first time, he gave her a quick, genuine smile. “You’re more interesting when you’ve got a little bite to you. What’s the special tonight?”

“Fried chicken, parsley potatoes, peas and carrots.”

“Sounds good.” He strolled to the door, stopped directly in front of her. He swore he could almost hear her body brace. “See you around.”

The door closed quietly behind him, and the lock snicked before he’d gone down the first step. He circled the building and, to satisfy his curiosity, looked up when he reached the front.

She was standing at the center window, staring out at the lake. Slim as a willow stem, he thought, with windblown hair and deep, secret eyes. He thought she looked more like a portrait in a frame than flesh and blood. And he wondered just where she’d left the rest of herself. And why.

SPRING THAW meant mud. Trails and paths went soft and thick with it, and caked boots left it streaked over the streets and sidewalks. At Joanie’s, the locals who knew her wrath scraped off the worst of it before coming in. Tourists, who would flock to the parks and campgrounds and cabins in another month, were in short supply. But there were those who came for the lake, and for the river, paddling their canoes and kayaks over the cold water, and through the echoing canyons.

Angel’s Fist settled down to the quiet interlude between its winter and summer booms.

At just past sunrise, when the sky was blooming with pinks, Reece navigated one of the narrow, bumpy roads on the other side of the lake. More a trail than a road, she thought as she twisted the wheel and slowed to avoid a dip in the hard-packed dirt.

When a moose wandered across the track, she not only gasped out loud in surprised delight, but sent up a little prayer of gratitude that she’d been going about ten miles an hour.

Now, she’d sing hosannas if she wasn’t lost.

Joanie wanted her there at seven, and though she’d given herself twice the time needed, she feared she’d be late. Or end up driving to Utah.

Since she’d been looking forward to spending the morning baking, she didn’t want to end up in Utah.

She passed the stand of red willows, as advertised. At least she thought they were red willows. Then caught the glimmer of a light.

“Round the willows, bear left and then…Yes!”

She saw Joanie’s ancient Ford pickup, mentally pumped her fist in the air. And then just stopped the car.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. A rustic little cabin, maybe. A small western bungalow. Either would have suited her image of where her sharp-tongued, impatient boss might live.

But she hadn’t been expecting the style and space she saw in the log-and-glass house, the long sweep of porches, of decks that butted out to rise over marsh and into glade.

Nor had she expected a small flood of winter pansies, all cheery and purple, spilling out of window boxes. She thought: Gingerbread house, though it had straight, practical lines rather than curlicues. But there was something about the way it was tucked into the woods, like a secret, that made it fanciful.

Charmed, she followed the orders she’d been given and parked, then climbed out to walk around to the back.

Windows in every direction, Reece noted. Generous ones that would offer views of mountain, of marsh, of lake and of the town. More pots of pansies, others that held spears that would bloom with daffodils and tulips and hyacinths once the weather warmed.

Light beamed against the glass. She could see Joanie through one of the kitchen windows, wearing a sweatshirt with its sleeves shoved up to her elbows, already mixing something in a bowl.

Reece made her way around to a door, knocked.

“It’s open!”

The fact that it wasn’t locked made Reece wince. What if she were a madman with a club? Shouldn’t a woman, especially one living alone, consider such possibilities and take basic precautions? But she stepped into a tidy mud/laundry room where an old flannel jacket and a shapeless brown hat hung on hooks, and a pair of ancient work boots stood handily by the door.

“You got any mud on your shoes, you take them off before you come into my kitchen.”

Reece checked, hunched her shoulders guiltily, then took off her shoes.

If the exterior of the house had been a revelation, the kitchen was the answer to every prayer.

Spacious, well lit, with an acre of solid-surface counter in gorgeous tones of bronzes and coppers. Double ovens—oh God, she thought, a convection oven. Sub-Zero fridge, she noted, almost quivering with pleasure as a woman would before sex with an Adonis. She nearly salivated at the sight of a Vulcan range, and oh sweet Jesus, a Berkel mixer.

She literally felt tears burn the back of her eyes.

And with the high-end efficiency was charm. Forced spring bulbs bloomed in little glass bottles in the windowsill, interesting twigs and grasses lanced out of a burl-wood vase. There was a little hearth with a fire simmering. And the air was redolent with the perfumes of fresh bread and cinnamon.

“Well?” Joanie set the bowl she held on a counter. “Are you just going to stand there gawking, or are you going to get an apron and get to work?”

“I want to genuflect first.”

Joanie’s pretty mouth twitched. She obviously gave up, and she grinned. “Kicks ass, doesn’t it?”

“It’s fabulous. My heart sings. I figured we’d be…” She broke off, cleared her throat.

“Baking in some broken-down oven and working at a spit length of counter?” Joanie snorted, walked over to a stainless steel coffeemaker. “This is where I live, and where I live I like some comfort, and a little style.”

“I’ll say. Will you be my mommy?”

Joanie snorted again. “And I like my privacy. I’m the last place on this side of town. There’s a good quarter mile between here and the Mardson place. Rick and Debbie, their kids. You see their youngest girl out with her dog by the lake every chance she gets.”

“Yes.” Reece thought of the little girl, throwing the ball in the water for the dog to fetch. “I’ve seen her a few times.”

“Nice kids. Other side of them—with space between—is Dick’s place. The one I let you practice on when you first came in. Old coot,” she said with some affection. “Likes to pretend he’s a mountain man, when what he is, is gay as the daisies in May. In case you haven’t noticed.”

“I guess I did.”

“Then just beyond that is the cabin Boyd’s using. Couple others planted here and there, but most of them’re rentals. So it’s a nice quiet spot.”

“It’s a beautiful spot. I ran into a moose. I mean, I saw one. We didn’t make actual contact.”

“Get so they’ll come up and all but knock on my door. I don’t mind them, or any of the other wildlife comes around. Except when they start in on my flowers.”

Studying Reece, Joanie picked up a dishcloth, wiped her hands. “I’m going to have coffee and a smoke. Water’s on simmer there in the kettle. Go ahead, make yourself some tea. We’re going to be working for the next three hours or so, and once we get down to it, I don’t like idle conversation. We’re going to get that out of the way first.”

“Sure.”

Joanie took out a cigarette, lit it. Leaning back against the counter, she blew out a stream. “You’re wondering what I’m doing, living in a place like this.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Had it nearly twenty years now. Over those two decades, I’ve added on, fiddled and fooled when I had a mind to.” She paused to sip her coffee, crossed ankles covered in gray, woolly socks. “It’s about what I had in mind now.”

Reece took the kettle off the burner. “Your mind has really good taste.”

“And you’re wondering, since it does and I do, why my place isn’t spiffier. I’ll tell you,” she said before Reece could comment. “People come into Angel Food because they want to be comfortable. They want good food, and they want it fast and at a good value. I had that in mind when I opened it, almost twenty years ago.”

“You do a good business.”

“Bet your skinny ass, I do. I came here because I wanted my own, and I wanted to give my boy a good, solid life. Made a mistake once upon a time and married a man who wasn’t good for anything at all except looking handsome. While he was damn good at that, he sure wasn’t good for me or my boy.”

Cautious now, Reece picked up the tea she’d made. “You’ve done well without him.”

“If I’d stayed with him, one of us would be dead.” Joanie shrugged, took another drag. “Better all around that I kicked his ass out, pulled up stakes. Had some money, a nice nest egg.” Her lips quirked into something between a smile and a sneer. “I may have been stupid enough to marry him, but I was smart enough to keep my own bank account and not tell him about it. I worked my butt off from the time I was sixteen. Waitressing, doing short-order work, fry cook. Went to night school and studied restaurant management.”

“Smart. All around.”

“When I got rid of that weight around my neck, I decided if I was going to work my butt off, I’d work it off for me and my boy. Nobody else. So I landed here. Got a job as cook in what was, back then, The Chuckwagon.”

“Your place? Joanie’s was The Chuckwagon?”

“Greasy burgers and overfried steak. But I made it mine within four months. Owner was an idiot, and was losing his shirt. He sold me the place for a song, seeing as he was about to go under. And when I was done wheedling him down, it was a damn short song at that.” Satisfaction over the memory showed on her face. “I lived up above, me and William, we lived up above where you do now, for the first year.”

Reece tried to imagine a woman and a small boy sharing that space. “Hard,” she murmured, with her eyes on Joanie. “Very hard for you to start a business, raise a son, make a life on your own.”

“Hard isn’t hard if you’ve got a strong back and a purpose. I had both. I bought this land, had a little house put up. Two-bedroom, single bath, kitchen about half the size this one is now. And it was like a palace after being cooped up with an eight-year-old in that apartment. I got what I wanted because I’m a stubborn bitch when I need to be. That’s most of the time, to my way of thinking. But I remember, I damn well remember what it was like to pick up and go, leave what I knew—no matter how bad it was—and try to find my place.”

Joanie gave a half shrug as she drank more coffee. “I see what I remember when I look at you.”

Maybe she did, Reece thought. Maybe she saw something of what it was that made a woman wake at three in the morning and worry, second-guess. Pray. “How did you know it was yours? Your place.”

“I didn’t.” With quick jabs, Joanie stubbed out her cigarette, then drank the last swallow of her coffee. “It was just someplace else, and better than where I’d been. Then, I woke up one morning and it was mine. That’s when I stopped looking behind me.”

Reece set her mug down again. “You’re wondering why someone with my training is on your grill. Wondering why I picked up stakes and landed here.”

“I’ve given it more than a passing thought.”

This was the woman who’d given her a job, Reece thought. Who’d helped her with a place to live. Who was offering her, in Joanie’s no-nonsense way, a sounding board. “I don’t mean to make a mystery of it, it’s just that I can’t talk about the details. They’re still painful. But it wasn’t a person—not like a husband—that had me pulling up stakes. It was…an event. I had an experience, and it damaged me, physically, emotionally. You could say it damaged me in every way there is.”

She looked into Joanie’s eyes. Strong eyes, steely. Not eyes full of pity. It was impossible to explain, even to herself, how much easier that made it to go on.

“And when I realized I wasn’t going to heal, not really, if I stayed where I was, I left. My grandmother had already put her life on hold to take care of me. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got in my car one day, and I drove off. I called her, my grandmother, and tried to convince her I was fine. I was better, and I wanted some time alone.”

“Did you? Convince her.”

“Not really, but she couldn’t stop me. Over the last few months, she’s relaxed with it. She’s started to think of it as Reece’s Adventure. It’s easy for me to color it that way when it’s e-mail and phone calls. And sometimes it’s true. It’s an adventure.”

She turned to take an apron off the hook by the mudroom. “Anyway, I’m better than I was. I like where I am now, for now. That’s enough for me.”

“Then we’ll leave it at that. For now. I want you to make up some piecrusts. If I see you’ve got a decent hand with that, we’ll move on from there.”

5

WITH ONLY a scattering of customers, Linda-gail took counter duty. She dumped a piece of apple pie in front of Lo, topped off his coffee. “We’ve sure been seeing a lot of you in here the last couple of weeks.”

“Coffee’s good, pie’s better.” He forked up a huge bite, then grinned. “View’s not bad.”

Linda-gail glanced over her shoulder to where Reece worked the grill. “Heard you struck out there, slugger.”

“Early innings yet.” He sampled the pie. Nobody baked a pie like his ma. “Got any more of the story on her?”

“Her story, I figure. Her business.”

He snorted over his pie. “Come on, Linda-gail.”

She struggled to stay aloof, but damn it, she and Lo had loved talking the talk since they were kids. When it came down to it, there was no one she liked dishing with more than Lo.

“Keeps to herself, doesn’t shirk the work, comes in on time, and stays till it’s done or Joanie shoos her along.” With a shrug Linda-gail leaned on the counter. “Doesn’t get any mail, from what I’m told. But she did get a phone for upstairs. And…”

He leaned in so their faces were close. “Keep going.”

“Well, Brenda over at the hotel told me while Reece was staying there she moved the dresser over in front of the door to the next room. If you ask me, she’s afraid of something, or someone. Hasn’t used a credit card, not one time, and she never used the phone in the hotel except for the dial-up, once a day for her computer. Room had high-speed access, but that cost ten dollars per day, so dial-up’s cheaper. That’s it.”

“Sounds like she could use a distraction.”

“That’s some euphemism, Lo,” Linda-gail said in disgust. She pulled back, annoyed with herself that she’d gotten drawn back into an old habit. “I tell you what she doesn’t need. She doesn’t need some horny guy sniffing at her heels hoping to score. What she could use is a friend.”

“I can be a friend. You and me, we’re friends.”

“Is that what we are?”

Something shifted in his eyes, over his face. He slid his hand over the counter toward hers. “Linda-gail—”

But she looked away from him, drew back and put on her waitress smile. “Hey, Sheriff.”

“Linda-gail. Lo.” Sheriff Richard Mardson slid onto a stool. He was a big man with a long reach, who walked with an easy gait and kept the peace by reason and compromise when he could, by steely-eyed force when he couldn’t.

He liked his coffee sweet and light, and was already reaching for the sugar when Linda-gail poured him out a cup. “You two wrangling again?”

“Just talking,” Lo told him. “About Ma’s newest cook.”

“She sure can work that grill. Linda-gail, why don’t you have her do me a chicken-fried steak.” He dumped half-and-half in his coffee. He had clear blue eyes to go with blond hair he wore in a brush cut. His strong jaw was clean-shaven since his wife of fourteen years had nagged him brainless to get rid of the beard he’d let grow over the winter.

“You after that skinny girl, Lo?”

“Made a few tentative moves in that direction.”

Rick shook his head. “You need to settle down with the love of a good woman.”

“I do. Every chance I get. The new cook’s got an air of mystery.” He swiveled around, settled in for a talk. “Some people think maybe she’s on the run.”

“If she is, it isn’t from the law. I do my job,” Rick said when Lo raised his eyebrows. “No criminal on her, no outstanding warrants. And she cooks a hell of a steak.”

“I guess you know she’s living upstairs now. Linda-gail just told me she heard from Brenda at the hotel Reece kept the dresser pulled across the door to the next room while she stayed there. Sounds to me like the woman’s spooked.”

“Maybe she’s got reason.” His level blue gaze shifted toward the kitchen. “Most likely took off from her husband, boyfriend, who tuned her up regular.”

“I don’t get that kind of thing, never did. A man who hits a woman isn’t a man.”

Rick drank his coffee. “There are all kinds of men in the world.”

ONCE SHE FINISHED her shift, Reece settled in upstairs with her journal. She had the heat set at a conservative sixty-five and wore a sweater and two pairs of socks. She calculated the savings there would offset the fact that she left lights burning day and night.

She was tired, but it was a pleasant sensation. The apartment felt good to her, safe and spare and tidy. Safer yet as she braced one of the two stools Joanie had given her for the counter under the doorknob whenever she was in the room.

Slow again today. Nearly everyone who came in was a local. It’s too late to ski or snowboard, though I hear some of the mountain passes won’t be open for another few weeks. It’s strange to think there must be feet of snow above us, while down here it’s all mud and brown grass.

People are so odd. I wonder if they really don’t know I can tell when they’re talking about me, or if they think it’s just natural. I suppose it is natural, especially in such a small town. I can stand at the grill or the stove and feel the words pressing against the back of my neck.

They’re all so curious, but they don’t come right out and ask. I guess that wouldn’t be polite, so they hedge around.

I have tomorrow off. A full day off. I was so busy cleaning in here, setting things up on my last day off, I barely noticed. But this time when I first saw the schedule I nearly panicked. What would I do, how would I get through a full day and night without a job to do?

Then I decided I’d hike up the canyon as I’d planned when I first got here. I’ll take one of the easy trails, go as far as I can, watch the river. Maybe the rocks are still clacking, the way Lo said they did. I want to see the white water, the moraines, the meadows and marshes. Maybe someone will be rafting on the river. I’ll pack a little lunch and take my time.

It’s a long way from the Back Bay to the Snake River.

THE KITCHEN WAS brightly lit, and Reece hummed along with Sheryl Crow as she scrubbed down the stove. The kitchen, she thought, was officially closed.

It was her last night at Maneo’s—the end of an era for her—so she intended to leave her work space sparkling.

She had the entire week off, and then—then—she’d start Dream Job as head chef for Oasis. Head chef, she thought, doing a little dance as she worked, for one of the hottest, trendiest restaurants in Boston. She’d supervise a staff of fifteen, design her own signature dishes, and put her work up against the very best in the business.

The hours would be vicious, the pressure insane.

She couldn’t wait.

She’d helped train Marco herself, and between him and Tony Maneo, they’d do fine. She knew Tony and his wife, Lisa, were happy for her. In fact, she had good reason to know—since her prep cook, Donna, couldn’t keep a secret—that there was a party being set up right now to celebrate her new position, and to say goodbye.

She imagined Tony had waved the last customers away by now, except for a handful of regulars who’d have been invited to her goodbye party.

She was going to miss this place, miss the people, but it was time for this next step. She’d worked for it, studied for it, planned for it, and now it was about to happen.

Stepping back from the stove, she nodded in approval, then carried the cleaning supplies to the little utility closet to put them away.

The crash from outside the kitchen had her rolling her eyes. But the screams that followed it spun her around. When gunfire exploded, she froze. Even as she fumbled her cell phone out of her pocket, the swinging door slammed open. There was a blur of movement, and an instant of fear. She saw the gun, saw nothing but the gun. So black, so big.

Then she was flung backward into the closet, punched by a hot, unspeakable pain in her chest.

THE SCREAM she’d never loosed ripped out of Reece now as she lurched up in bed, pressing a hand high on her chest. She could feel it, that pain, where the bullet had struck. The fire of it, the shock of it. But when she looked at her hand, there was no blood; when she rubbed her skin, there was only the scar.

“It’s all right. I’m all right. Just a dream. Dreaming, that’s all.” But she trembled all over as she grabbed her flashlight and got up to check the door, the windows.

No one was there, not a soul moved on the street below, on the lake. The cabins and houses were dark. No one was coming to finish what they’d begun two years before. They didn’t care that she lived, didn’t know where she was if they did.

She was alive—just an accident of fate, just the luck of the draw, she thought as she rubbed her fingertips over the scar the bullet had left behind.

She was alive, and it was almost dawn of another day. And look, look there, it’s…it’s a moose coming down to the lake to drink.

“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” she said aloud. “Not in Boston. Not if you spend every minute pushing to move up, move forward. You don’t see the light softening in the east and a knobby-kneed moose clopping out of the woods to drink.”

Mists flowed along the ground, she noted, thin as tissue paper, and the lake still as glass. And there, the light came on in Brody’s cabin. Maybe he can’t sleep, either. Maybe he gets up early to write so he can lie in the hammock in the afternoon and read.

Seeing the light, knowing someone was awake as she was, was oddly comforting.

She’d had the dream—or most of it—but she hadn’t fallen apart. That was progress, wasn’t it? And someone turned a light on across the lake. Maybe he’d look out his window as she was looking out hers, and see the glow in her window, too. In that strange way, they’d share the dawn.

She stood, watching the light in the east streak the sky with pink and gold, then spread over the glass of the lake until the water glowed like a quiet fire.

By the time she’d stocked her backpack according to the recommended list for a trail hike, it felt like it weighed fifty pounds. It was only about eight miles, up and back, but she thought it was better to be cautious and use the list for hikes over ten miles.

She might decide to go farther, or she might take a detour. Or…whatever, she’d packed it now and wasn’t unpacking it again. She reminded herself she could stop whenever she wanted, as often as she wanted, set the pack down and rest. It was a good, clear day—a free day—and she was going to take every advantage of it.

She’d barely gotten ten feet when she was hailed.

“Doing a little exploring this morning?” Mac asked her. He wore one of his favored flannel shirts tucked into jeans, and a watch cap pulled over his head.

“I thought I’d hike a little bit of Little Angel Trail.”

His brows came together. “Going on your own?”

“It’s an easy trail, according to the guidebook. It’s a nice day, and I want to see the river. I’ve got a map,” she continued. “A compass, water, everything I need, according to the guide,” she repeated with a smile. “Really, more than I could possibly need.”

“Trail’s going to be muddy yet. And I bet that guide tells you it’s better to hike in pairs—better yet, in groups.”

It did, true enough, but she wasn’t good in groups. Alone was always better. “I’m not going very far. I’ve hiked a little bit in the Smokies, in the Black Hills. Don’t worry about me, Mr. Drubber.”

“I’m taking some time off myself today—got young Leon at the mercantile counter, and the grocery’s covered, too. I could hike with you for an hour.”

“I’m fine, and that’s not what you wanted to do with your day off. Really, don’t worry. I won’t be going far.”

“You’re not back by six, I’m sending out a search party.”

“By six, I’ll not only be back, I’ll be soaking my tired feet. That’s a promise.”

She shifted her pack, then set out to skirt the lake and take the trail through the woods toward the wall of the canyon.

She kept her stride slow and easy, and enjoyed the dappled light through the canopy of trees. With the cool air on her face, the scent of pine and awakening earth, the dregs of the dream faded away.

She’d do this more often, she promised herself. Choose a different trail and explore on her day off—or at least every other day off. At some point, she’d drive into the park and do the same, before the summer people flooded in and crowded it all. Good, healthy exercise would hone her appetite, and she’d get in shape again.

And for mental health, she’d learn to identify the wildflowers the guide spoke of that would blanket forest and trailside, the sage flats and alpine meadows in the summer. It would be a good incentive to stay put, to see the blooming.

When the trail forked, she rolled her shoulders to adjust her pack, and took the fork marked for Little Angel Canyon. The incline was slow, but it was steady through the damp air sheltered by the conifers where she saw nests high up in the trees. Huge boulders sat among the pools of melting snow and rivers of mud where her guidebook claimed an abundance of wildflowers would thrive in a few more weeks.

But for now, Reece thought it was almost like another planet, all faded green and brown and silent.

The trail rose, gently at first, up the moraine, tracking the slope through a stand of firs and dropping over the side to a deep, unexpected gulch. The mountains speared up, snow-breasted pinnacles shining in the strong sunlight, and as the trail angled up, more steeply now, she remembered to try to use the lock step, and briefly locked her knee with each step. Small steps, she remembered.

No rush, no hurry.

When she’d hiked the first mile, she stopped to rest, to drink and to absorb.

She could still see the glint of Angel Lake to the southeast. There were no mists now as the strong sun in a clear sky had burned it away. The breakfast shift would be peaking now, she thought, with the diner full of clatter and conversation, the kitchen ripe with the smell of bacon and coffee. But here it was quiet and stunningly open with the air stinging with pine.

And she was alone, completely, with no sound but the light wind swimming through the trees, carving through the grasses of a marsh where ducks minded their own business. And that, the distant and insistent drumming of a woodpecker having his own breakfast in the woods.

She continued on, with the climb steep enough to have her quads complaining. Before she’d been hurt, Reece thought in disgust, she could have taken this trail at a jog.

Not that she’d ever hiked, but how different was it from setting the elliptical at the health club to a five-mile hill climb?

“Worlds,” she muttered. “Worlds different. But I can do this.”

The trail cut through the still sleeping meadows, switchbacked over the steeps. Along the sun-drenched slope where she paused again to catch her breath, she could see a small, marshy pond where out of the cattails a heron rose with a flopping fish in its beak.

Though she cursed herself for reaching for her camera too late, she continued to huff her way along the switchback until she heard the first rumble that was the river. When the muddy trail forked again, she looked wistfully at the little signpost for Big Angel Trail. It would wind high up the canyon, and require not only endurance but some basic climbing skills.

She didn’t have either, and had to admit her leg muscles were in shock, and her feet were annoyed. She had to stop again, drink again, and debated whether she should simply content herself with the views of marshes and meadows on this first outing. She could sit on a rock here, soak in the sun, perhaps be lucky enough to see some wildlife. But that rumble called to her. She’d set out to hike Little Angel, and hiking it was what she would do.

Her shoulders ached. Okay, she’d probably gone seriously overboard with the supplies in her backpack. But she reminded herself she’d made it halfway, and even at her meandering pace, she could make her goal before noon.

She cut through the meadow, then up the muddy slope. When she made it up and around the next switchback, she had her first look at the long, brilliant ribbon of the river.

It carved through the canyon with a steady murmur of power. Here and there huddles of rock and boulders were stacked on its verge as if the river had simply flung them out. Still it was nearly placid here, almost dreamy curling through the steep, sheer walls on its way west.

She got out her camera, already knowing a snapshot wouldn’t capture the scope. A picture couldn’t give her the sounds, the feel of the air, the staggering drops and wild rises of the rock.

Then she saw a pair of bright blue kayaks, and delighted, framed them in to use for scale. She watched the kayakers paddle, circle, heard the dim sound of voices that must have been raised to shouts.

Someone was getting a lesson, she decided, then pulled out her binoculars to get a closer look. A man and a boy—young teens, she decided. The boy’s face was a study in concentration and excitement. She saw him grin, nod, and his mouth moved as he called out something to his companion. Teacher?

They continued to paddle, moving side by side, heading west down the river.

On the trail above, Reece hung her binoculars around her neck and followed.

The height was enthralling. As her body pushed itself forward she felt the burn of muscles, the giddiness of adventure, and no tingle of worry or anxiety. What she felt, she realized, was utterly human. Small and mortal and full of wonder. She had only to tip back her head, and the whole of the sky belonged to her. To her, she thought, and those mountains that shone blue in the sunlight.

Even with the chill on her face, the sweat of effort dampened her back. Next stop, she told herself, she was taking off her jacket and drinking a pint of water.

She trudged up and up, panting.

And stopped short, skidding a little, when she saw Brody perched on a wide, rocky ledge.

He barely spared her a glance. “Should’ve known it was you. You make enough noise to start an avalanche.” When she glanced up, warily, he shook his head. “Maybe not quite that much. Still, making noise on the trail usually wards off the predators. The four-legged ones, anyway.”

If she’d forgotten about the possibility of bear—and she had—she sure as hell had forgotten the possibility of human. “What are you doing up here?”

“Minding my own business.” He took a slug out of his water bottle. “You? Other than tromping along singing ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’”

“I was not.” Oh, please, she was not.

“Okay, you weren’t singing it. It was more gasping it.”

“I’m hiking the trail. It’s my day off.”

“Yippee.” He picked up the notebook sitting on his lap.

Since she’d stopped, she needed a minute to catch her breath before she started climbing again. She could cover the fact that she needed a minute or two to rest with conversation. “You’re writing? Up here?”

“Researching. I’m killing someone up here later. Fictionally,” he added with some relish when the color the exertion had put in her cheeks drained away. “Good spot for it, especially this time of year. Nobody on the trails this early in the spring—or nearly nobody. He lures her up, shoves her over.”

Brody leaned out a little, looking down. He’d already taken off his jacket, as she longed to do. “Long, nasty drop. Terrible accident, terrible tragedy.”

Despite herself, she was intrigued. “Why does he do it?”

He only shrugged, broad shoulders in a denim shirt. “Mostly because he can.”

“There were kayakers on the river. They might see.”

“That’s why they call it fiction. Kayakers,” he mumbled and scribbled something on his pad. “Maybe. Maybe better if there were. What would they see? Body dropping. Scream echoes. Splat.”

“Oh, well. I’ll leave you to it.”

Since his response was nothing but an absent grunt, she continued on. It was a little irritating, really, she thought. He had a good spot to rest and to take in the view. Which would’ve beenher spot if he hadn’t been there. But she’d find another, she’d find her own. Just a little higher up.

Still, she kept well away from the edge as she hiked, and tried to erase the image of a body flying off the end of the world, down to the rocks and water below.

She knew she was hitting the wall of her endurance when she heard the thunder again. Stopping, she braced her hands on her thighs and caught her breath. Before she could decide if this was the spot, she heard the long, fiercesome cry of a hawk. Looking up, she saw it sweep west.

She wanted to follow the hawk, like a sign. One more switchback, she decided, just one more, then she’d sit in splendid solitude, unpack her lunch and enjoy an hour with the river.

She was rewarded for that last struggle of effort with a view of white water. It churned and slapped at the fists and knuckles of rock, spewed up against towers of them, then spilled down on itself in a short, foaming waterfall. The roar of it filled the canyon, and rolled over her own laugh of delight.

She’d made it after all.

With relief she unshouldered her pack before sinking down to sit on a pocked boulder. She unpacked her lunch, and pleased herself by eating ravenously.

Top of the world, that’s how she felt. Calm and energized at once, and absolutely happy. She bit into an apple so crisp it shocked her senses as the hawk cried out again and soared overhead.

It was perfect, she thought. Absolutely perfect.

She lifted her binoculars to follow the hawk’s flight, then skimmed them down to track the powerful surge of the river. With hope, she began to scout the rocks, the stands of willow and cottonwood, back into the pines for wildlife. A bear might come fishing, or she might spot another moose, an elk who came to drink.

She wanted to see beaver and watch otters play. She wanted to simply be exactly where she was, with the peaks rising up, the sun shining and the water a constant rumble below.

If she hadn’t been searching the rough shoreline, she would have missed them.

They stood between the trees and the rocks. The man—at least she thought it was a man—had his back to her, with the woman facing the river, hands on her hips.

Even with her binoculars, the height and the distance made it impossible to see them clearly, but she saw the spill of dark hair over a red jacket, under a red cap.

Reece wondered what they were doing. Debating a camping spot, she mused, or a place to put into the river. But she skimmed the glasses along and didn’t see a sign of a canoe or kayak. Camping, then, though she couldn’t spot any gear.

With a shrug, she went back to watching them. It seemed intrusive, but she had to admit there was a little thrill in that. They couldn’t know she was there, high up on the other side of the river, studying them as she might have a couple of bear cubs or a herd of deer.

“Having an argument,” she mumbled. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

There was something aggressive and angry in the woman’s stance, and when she jabbed her finger at the man, Reece let out a low whistle.

“Oh yeah, you’re pissed off. Bet you wanted to stay at a nice hotel with indoor plumbing and room service, and he dragged you out to pitch a tent.”

The man made a gesture like an umpire calling a batter safe at the plate, and this time the woman slapped him. “Ouch.” Reece winced, and ordered herself to lower the binoculars. It wasn’t right to spy on them. But she couldn’t resist the private little drama, and kept her glasses trained.

The woman shoved both hands against the man’s chest, then slapped him again. Reece started to lower the glasses now as the nasty violence made her a little sick.

But her hand froze, and her heart jolted when she saw the man’s arm rear back. She couldn’t tell if it was a punch, a slap or a backhand, but the woman went sprawling.

“No, no, don’t,” she murmured. “Don’t. You both have to stop now. Just stop it.”

Instead, the woman leaped up, charged. Before she could land whatever blow she’d intended, she was thrust back again, slipping on the muddy ground and landing hard.

The man walked over, stood over her while Reece’s heart thumped against her ribs. He seemed to reach down as if to offer her a hand up, and the woman braced herself on her elbows. Her mouth was bleeding, maybe her nose, but her lips were working fast. Screaming at him, Reece thought. Stop screaming at him, you’ll only make it worse.

It got worse, horribly worse when he straddled the woman, when he jerked her head up by the hair and slammed it to the ground. Not aware that she’d leaped to her own feet, that her lungs were burning with her own screams, Reece stared through the glasses when the man’s hands closed over the woman’s throat.

Boots beat against the ground; the body bucked and arched. And when it went still, there was the roar of the river and the harsh sobs ripping out of Reece’s chest.

She turned, stumbling, slipping and going down hard on both knees. Then she shoved herself to her feet, and she ran.

It was a blur with her boots slithering on the path as she took the downhill slope at a crazed speed. Her heart rammed into her throat, a spiny ball of terror while she stumbled and slid around the sharp switch-backs. The face of the woman in the red coat became another face, one with staring, baby-doll blue eyes.

Ginny. It wasn’t Ginny. It wasn’t Boston. It wasn’t a dream.

Still it all mixed and merged in her mind until she heard the screams and the laughter, the gunshots. Until her chest began to throb, and the world began to spin.

She slammed hard into Brody, struggled wildly against his hold.

“Stop it. What are you, crazy? Suicidal?” Voice sharp, he shoved her back against the rock face, bracing her when her knees gave way. “Shut it down, now! Hysteria doesn’t help. What was it? Bear?”

“He killed her, he killed her. I saw, I saw it.” Because he was there, she threw herself against him, buried her face against his shoulder. “I saw it. It wasn’t Ginny. It wasn’t a dream. He killed her, across the river.”

“Breathe.” He drew back, gripped her shoulders. He angled his head down until her eyes met his. “I said breathe. Okay, again. One more time.”

“Okay, okay. I’m okay.” She sucked air in, pushed it out. “Please help me. Please. They were across the river, and I saw them, with these.” She lifted her binoculars with a hand that simply wouldn’t steady. “He killed her, and I saw it.”

“Show me.”

She closed her eyes. Not alone this time, she thought. Someone was here, someone could help. “Up the trail. I don’t know how far I ran back, but it’s up the trail.”

She didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to see it again, but he had her arm and was leading her.

“I stopped to eat,” she said more calmly. “To watch the water, and the little falls. There was a hawk.”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“It was beautiful. I got my binoculars. I thought I might see a bear or a moose. I saw a moose this morning at the lake. I thought…” She knew she was babbling, tried to draw it back inside. “I was scanning the trees, the rocks, and I saw two people.”

“What did they look like?”

“I…I couldn’t see very well.” She folded her arms over her chest. She’d taken off her jacket, spread it on the rock where she’d had lunch. To soak up the sun.

Now she was so cold. Into-the-bone cold.

“But she had long hair. Dark hair, and she had a red coat and cap. She had sunglasses on. His back was to me.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Um. A dark jacket, and an orange cap. Like hunters wear. He…I think…Yes, I think he had sunglasses, too. I didn’t see his face. There, there’s my pack. I left everything and ran. Over there, it was over there.” She pointed, and quickened her pace. “They were over there, in front of the trees. They’re gone now, but they were there, down there. I saw them. I have to sit down.”

When she lowered herself to the rock, he said nothing, but took the binoculars from around her neck. He trained them below. He saw no one, no sign of anyone.

“What exactly did you see?”

“They were arguing. I could tell she was pissed off by the way she was standing. Hands on her hips. Aggressive.” She had to swallow, focus, because her stomach was starting to roil. And shivering, she picked up her jacket and put it on. Wrapped it tight around her. “She slapped him, then she shoved him back and slapped him again. He hit her, knocked her down, but she got up and went after him. That’s when he hit her again. I saw blood on her face. I think I saw blood on her face. Oh God, oh God.”

Brody did no more than flick a glance in Reece’s direction. “You’re not going to get hysterical again. You’re going to finish telling me what you saw.”

“He got down, and he grabbed her by the hair and he slammed her head down, I think. It looked like…he strangled her.” Replaying it, Reece rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth, prayed she wouldn’t be sick. “He strangled her, and her feet were beating the ground, and then they weren’t. I ran. I screamed, I think, but it’s so loud with the rapids, it’s loud.”

“It’s a long distance, even with the glasses. You’re sure about this?”

She looked up then, her eyes swollen and exhausted. “Have you ever seen someone killed?”

“No.”

She pushed herself up, reached for her pack. “I have. He took her somewhere, carried her body away. Dragged her away. I don’t know. But he killed her and he’s getting away. We have to get help.”

“Give me your pack.”

“I can carry my own pack.”

He pulled it away from her, sent her a pitying look. “Carry mine, it’s lighter.” He shrugged out of it, held it out to her. “We can stand here and argue about it. I’ll still win, but we’ll waste time.”

She put on his pack, and of course he was right. It was considerably lighter. She’d brought too much, but she’d just wanted to be sure…

“Cell phone! I’m an idiot.”

“That may be,” he said as she dug into her pocket. “But the cell phone won’t do you any good here. No signal.”

Though she kept walking, she tried it anyway. “Maybe we’ll hit a spot where it’ll get through. It’s going to take so long to get back. You’d make it faster alone. You should go ahead.”

“No.”

“But—”

“Who’d you see killed before?”

“I can’t talk about it. How long will it take to get back?”

“Until we get there. And don’t start that are-we-there-yet crap.”

She nearly smiled. He was so brusque, so brisk, he pushed her fear away. He was right. They’d get there when they got there. And they’d do what they needed to do when they did.

And the way his stride ate up the ground, they’d be there in half the time it had taken her to do the trail in the first place. If she managed to keep up with him.

“Talk to me, will you? About something else? Anything else. About your book.”

“No. I don’t talk about works in progress.”

“Artistic temperament.”

“No, it’s boring.”

“I wouldn’t be bored.”

He shot her a look. “For me.”

“Oh.” She wanted words, his, her own. Any words at all. “Okay, why Angel’s Fist?”

“Probably for the same reason as you. I wanted a change of scene.”

“Because you got fired in Chicago.”

“I didn’t get fired.”

“You didn’t punch your boss and get fired from theTribune ? That’s what I heard.”

“I punched what could loosely be called a colleague for cribbing my notes on a story, and since the editor—who happened to be the asshole’s uncle—took his word over mine, I quit.”

“To write books. Is it fun?”

“I guess it is.”

“I bet you killed the asshole in the first one you wrote.”

He glanced at her again, and there was a hint of amusement in his eyes. Eyes of such an interesting green. “You’d be right. Beat him to death with a shovel. Very satisfying.”

“I used to like to read thrillers and mysteries. I haven’t been able to…for a while.” She ignored the protesting muscles in her legs as they continued the descent.

She was supposed to walk differently now, going down inclines. Keeping the weight forward, stepping onto her toes rather than her heels. As Brody was.

“Maybe I’ll try one of yours.”

He gave that disinterested shrug again. “You could do worse.”

6

THEY WALKED AWHILE in silence, across the meadow, around the marshy pond. She’d seen ducks, she remembered, and the heron. And the poor, doomed fish. Her body felt numb, her mind hazed.

“Brody?”

“Still right here.”

“Will you go with me to the police?”

He stopped to drink, then offered her the water bottle. His eyes were cool and calm on hers. Green eyes. Dark, like the leaves in late summer.

“We’ll call from my place. It’s closer than going all the way around the lake into town.”

“Thanks.”

Relieved, grateful, Reece continued to put one foot in front of the other in the direction of Angel’s Fist.

To keep centered, she ran through recipes in her head, visualizing herself measuring, preparing.

“Sounds pretty good,” Brody commented, and jerked her out of the visual.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re making in there.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “Grilled shrimp?”

No point, she decided, absolutely no point in being embarrassed. She was way beyond that. “Brined grilled shrimp. I didn’t know I was talking to myself.” She kept her gaze straight ahead. “It’s a problem I have.”

“I don’t see a problem, except now I’m hungry, and shrimp’s not in big supply around here.”

“I just need to think about something else. About anything else. I just need—oh boy, oh crap.” Her chest went tight and her breath short. The anxiety attack simply whipped out a hand to squeeze her throat. As her head went light with it, she bent from the waist, gasping. “Can’t breathe. Can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You are. But if you keep breathing like that you’re going to hyperventilate and pass out on me. No way I’m carrying you back, so cut it out.” His tone was flat and matter-of-fact as he hauled her up straight. Their eyes locked. “Cut it out.”

“Okay.” There were gold rims around his pupils, around the outer verge of his irises. It must be what made his eyes so intense.

“Finish cooking the shrimp.”

“The what?”

“Finish cooking the shrimp.”

“Ah, um. Add half the garlic oil to the bowl of grilled shrimp, toss. Transfer to a platter, garnish with lemon wedges and divided bay leaves, and serve with grilled ciabatta bread and the rest of the garlic oil.”

“If I get my hands on some shrimp, you can pay me back for this and make me a plate of that.”

“Sure.”

“What the hell is ciabatta bread?”

She couldn’t have said why that made her laugh, but her head cleared while they walked. “Also called Italian slipper bread. It’s good. You’ll like it.”

“Probably. You planning on fancying up Joanie’s?”

“No. It’s not my place.”

“Did you have one? Your own place? Restaurant? The way you handle the kitchen, it’s obvious you’ve handled one before,” he added when she said nothing.

“I worked in one. I never had my own. I never wanted my own.”

“Because? Isn’t that the American dream? Having your own?”

“Cooking’s art. Owning the place adds business. I just wanted to…” She’d nearly said create, but decided it sounded too pompous. “To cook.”

“Wanted?”

“Want. Maybe. I don’t know what I want.” But she did, and as they walked through the cool forest, she decided just to say it. “I want to be normal again, to stop being afraid. I want to be who I was two years ago, and I never will be. So I’m trying to find out who I’m going to be for the rest of my life.”

“The rest is a long time. Maybe you should figure out who you’re going to be for the next couple weeks.”

She glanced up at him, then away. “I might have to start with the next couple of hours.”

He only shrugged as he dug for his cell phone. The woman was a bundle of mystery wrapped in nerves. It might be interesting to peel off some of the layers and get to the center of it. He didn’t think she was as fragile as she believed herself to be. A lot of people wouldn’t have managed the long hike back without breaking down after seeing what she’d seen.

“Should get a signal from here,” he said and punched in some numbers. “It’s Brody. I need the sheriff. No. Now.”

She wouldn’t have argued with him, Reece decided. There was steely authority in his tone simply because it held no urgency or desperation. She wondered if she’d ever regain even a portion of that kind of control and confidence.

“Rick, I’m with Reece Gilmore, just about a quarter mile from my place on Little Angel Trail. I need you to meet us at my cabin. Yeah, there’s trouble. She witnessed a murder. That’s what I said. She can fill you in on that. We’re nearly there.”

He closed the phone, shoved it back in his pocket. “I’m going to give you some advice. I fucking hate advice—giving or getting.”

“But.”

“But. You’re going to need to stay calm. You want to get hysterical again, cry, scream, faint, wait until after he’s finished taking your statement. Better, wait till you’re out of my cabin altogether because I don’t want to handle it. Be thorough, be clear and get it done.”

“If I start to lose it, will you stop me?” She actually felt his scowl before she glanced up to see it. “I mean interrupt me, or knock over a lamp. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it. Anything to give me a minute to pull myself back?”

“Maybe.”

“I can smell the lake. You can just see it through the trees. I feel better when I see water. Maybe I should live on an island, except I think that might be too much water. I have to babble for a minute. You don’t have to listen.”

“I’ve got ears,” he reminded her, then veered off to take the easiest route to his cabin.

He approached it from the rear where it was tucked in the trees and sagebrush. She imagined he could see the ring of mountains from any window.

“It’s a nice spot. You have a nice spot.” But her mouth went dry as he opened the back door. He hadn’t locked it. Anyone could come in through an unlocked door.

When she didn’t follow him in, he turned. “You want to stand outside and talk to Rick? The sheriff?”

“No.” Screwing up her courage, she stepped through the doorway behind him.

Into the kitchen. It was small, she noted, but laid out well enough. He cleaned like a man. A terrible generalization, she thought, but most of the men she knew who weren’t in the business cleaned kitchen surfaces only. Do the dishes—maybe—swipe the counters and you’re done.

There were a couple apples and an overripe banana in a white mixing bowl on the stone gray counter, a coffeemaker, a toaster that looked older than she was and a notepad.

Brody went immediately to the coffeemaker, filling the tank, measuring the grounds before he’d taken off his jacket. Reece continued to stand just inside the door as he flipped it onto brew, then reached in a cupboard for a trio of white stoneware mugs.

“Um, do you have any tea?”

He shot a drily amused glance over his shoulder. “Oh sure. Let me just find my tea cozy.”

“I’ll take that as a no. I don’t drink coffee; it makes me jittery. More jittery,” she amended when he cocked a brow at her. “Water. Water’d be fine. Do you leave the front door unlocked, too?”

“No point in locks out here. If somebody wanted in, they’d just kick the door down or break a window.” When she actually paled, he angled his head. “What? You want me to go check the closet, look under the bed?”

She simply turned away from him to unshoulder his backpack. “I bet you’ve never been afraid a day in your life.”

Got a rise out of her, he thought, and preferred the edge of insult and anger in her tone to the shakes and quivers. “Michael Myers.”

Confused, she turned back. “Who? Shrek?”

“Jesus, Slim, that’s Mike Myers. Michael Myers. The creepy guy in the mask.Halloween? I saw it on tape when I was about ten. Scared the living shit out of me. Michael Myers lived in my bedroom closet for years after that.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little as she pulled off her jacket. “How’d you get rid of him? Didn’t he keep coming back in the movies?”

“I snuck a girl into my room when I was sixteen. Jennifer Ridgeway. Pretty little redhead with a lot of…energy. After a couple hours in the dark with her, I never gave Michael Myers another thought.”

“Sex as exorcism?”

“Worked for me.” He moved to the refrigerator, got her out a bottle of water. “Let me know if you want to try it.”

“I’ll do that.” Sheer reflex had her catching the bottle he lobbed lightly to her. But she nearly bobbled it, and her shoulders went to stone again with the brisk knock on the front door.

“That’ll be the sheriff. Michael Myers doesn’t knock. Want to do this in here?”

She looked at the manhole cover–sized kitchen table. “Here’s good.”

“Hang on a minute.”

When he went to answer, she twisted the top off the bottle and gulped down cold, cold water. She heard the low murmurs, the heavy tread of men’s boots. Calm, she reminded herself. Calm, concise and clear.

Rick came in, nodded at her with his eyes level and unreadable. “Reece. Got some trouble, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s sit down here, so you can tell me about it.”

She sat, and she began, struggling to relay the details without bogging it down, without skimming over anything relevant. In silence, Brody poured coffee, set a mug in front of Rick.

As she spoke she ran a hand up and down the bottle of water, up and down, while the sheriff took notes, watched her. And Brody leaned back against the gray counter, drinking coffee, saying nothing.

“Okay, tell me, you think you could identify either one of them?”

“Her, maybe. Maybe. But I didn’t see him. His face, I mean. His back was to me, and he had a hat. I think they both had on sunglasses. She did, at first. She had brown hair, or black. But brown, I think. Long brown hair. Wavy. And she had on a red jacket and a hat. Cap.”

Rick swiveled to look back at Brody. “What did you see?”

“Reece.” Brody moved back to the pot, topped off his mug. “She was about a quarter mile up the trail from me when she stopped. Couldn’t have seen the spot where this happened from where I was sitting if I’d been looking that way.”

Mardson pulled on his lower lip. “You weren’t together.”

“No. Like Reece said, she went by where I was working, we had a couple of words, and she kept going. I headed up maybe close to an hour after, ran into her running back. She told me what happened, and I hiked back up to where she’d been.”

“You see anything then?”

“No. You want to know the spot, I’ll get a map, show you where.”

“Appreciate that, Brody. Reece,” Rick continued when Brody walked out, “did you see any boat, car, truck? Anything like that?”

“I didn’t. I guess I looked for a boat, sort of, but I didn’t see one. I thought they must’ve been camping, but I didn’t see any equipment or a tent. I just saw them. I just saw him choking her.”

“Tell me everything you can about him. Just whatever comes to your mind,” he prompted. “You never know what you’re going to pick up, what you’re going to remember.”

“I wasn’t paying attention, not really. He was white—I’m pretty sure. I saw his hands, but he had gloves on. Black or brown. But his profile…I’m sure he was white. I suppose he might’ve been Hispanic, or Native American. It was so far away, even with the binoculars, and at first I was just passing the time. Then she slapped him. Slapped him twice. The second time she did, he shoved her, or hit her. She went down. It all happened so fast. He had a black jacket. A dark jacket and one of those orange, reddish-orangeish hunting caps.”

“Okay, that’s a good start. How about his hair?”

“I don’t think I noticed.” She wanted to shiver. It had been like this before. The questions she simply couldn’t answer. “The hat would’ve covered it, I guess, and his coat. I don’t think it was long. I yelled, screamed maybe. But they couldn’t hear. I had my camera, right in my pack, but I never thought of it. I just froze, then I just ran.”

“I guess you could’ve jumped into the river, tried to swim across it, then dragged him off to the authorities with the power of your will.” Brody’s comment was careless as he came back in with a map of the area. Brody laid the map on the table, pointed with his finger. “Here.”

“You sure about that?”

“I am.”

“Okay, then.” Rick nodded, pushed to his feet. “I’m going out there right now, see what there is to see. Don’t you worry, Reece, we’re going to take care of this. I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, I want you to think back through it. Anything comes to you, anything at all, even if it doesn’t seem important, I want to hear about it. Okay now?”

“Yes. Yes, okay. Thanks.”

After nodding to Brody, Rick picked up his hat and headed out.

“Well.” Reece let out a long sigh. “Do you think he can…Is he capable?”

“I haven’t seen anything to make me think otherwise. It’s mostly drunk and disorderlies around here, a few domestic disputes, kids shoplifting, scuffles. But he handles them. And there’s lost or injured hikers or boaters, rock climbers, traffic crap and so on when the tourists come in. He seems to do the job. He’s…dedicated, would be the term.”

“But murder. Murder’s different.”

“Maybe, but he’s the guy in charge here. And since it happened outside town limits, he’ll have to call in the county or state. You saw what you saw, you reported it, gave your statement. Nothing else for you to do.”

“No, nothing else.” Like before, she thought, nothing else to do. “I guess I’ll go. Thanks for…all of it,” she said as she got up from the table.

“Nothing else for me to do, either. I’ll drive you home.”

“You don’t have to bother. I can walk.”

“Don’t be stupid.” He hauled up her backpack and headed out of the kitchen toward the front.

Because she felt stupid, Reece dragged on her jacket and followed. He strode straight out, not giving her the time she might have liked to study and gauge his home. She had a quick impression of simplicity, casual disorder and what she thought of as the habitat of the single male.

No flowers, tchotchkes, throw pillows or softening touches in the living area she passed through. A couch, a single chair, a couple tables and what she saw was a cozy stone-faced fireplace dominating the far wall.

There was an impression of earthy tones, straight lines and no nonsense before she was out the door.

“I’ve put you to a lot of trouble today,” she began.

“Damn right you have. Get in.”

She stopped, and gratitude warred with insult, outrage and exhaustion. Gratitude lost. “You’re a rude, insensitive, insulting son of a bitch.”

He leaned back on his car. “And your point is?”

“A woman was murdered today. Strangled to death. Do youget that? She was alive, now she’s dead, and no one could help her. I couldn’t help her. I just had to stand there and watch. Do nothing, just like before. I watched him kill her, and you were the only one I could tell. Instead of being outraged and upset and sympathetic, you’ve been short and snippy and dismissive. So go to hell. I’d rather walk back up that trail for six miles than ride two miles with you in your stupid, macho SUV. Give me my goddamn backpack.”

He stayed just as he was, but he no longer looked bored. “About time. I wondered if you had anything approaching a normal temper in there. Feel better?”

She hated that she did. Was infuriated that his carelessness had revved her up until she’d spewed out a great deal of her anxiety and dread. “You can still go to hell.”

“I’m hoping for a reserved seat. But meanwhile, get in. You’ve had a crappy day.” He pulled the door open. “And, just FYI. Guys can’t be snippy. We’re physiologically incapable of snippiness. Next time usecallous. That works.”

“You’re an irritating, confusing man.” But she climbed into the car.

“That works, too.”

He slammed the door, then strode around to the driver’s side. After tossing her pack in the backseat, he got behind the wheel. “Did you have any friends in Chicago?” she asked him. “Or just people who found you irritating, confusing and callous?”

“Some of both, I guess.”

“Aren’t reporters supposed to be sort of personable, so they can get people to tell them things?”

“Couldn’t say, but then I’m not a reporter anymore.”

“And fiction writers are allowed to be surly and solitary and eccentric.”

“Maybe. Suits me anyway.”

“To the ground,” she replied, and made him laugh.

The sound surprised her enough to have her look over. He was still grinning as they rounded the lake. “There you go, Slim. Already know you’ve got spine. Nice to know you’ve got teeth to go with it.”

But when he pulled up in front of Angel Food, and she glanced up at her own window, she felt her spine loosen, and her teeth wanted to chatter. Still, she got out, and would have reached for her backpack if he hadn’t pulled it out from his side first.

So she stood on the sidewalk wavering between pride and panic.

“Problem?”

“No. Yes. Goddamn it. Look, you’ve come this far. Could you just walk up with me, for a minute?”

“To make sure Michael Myers isn’t waiting for you?”

“Close enough. Feel free to take back the compliment—if that’s what it was—about me having a spine.”

He only tossed the backpack over his shoulder and started around the building to her steps. Once she’d dug out her key and unlocked the door, he opened it himself to walk in ahead of her.

She lowered his insensitivity quotient. He hadn’t sneered, he hadn’t spoken, he’d just gone in first.

“What the hell do you do in here?”

“What? Excuse me?”

“No TV,” he pointed out, “no stereo.”

“I just moved in, really. I don’t spend a lot of time here.”

He poked around, and she didn’t stop him. There wasn’t that much to see.

The neatly made daybed, the couch, the bar stools. But it smelled, female, he noticed. But he didn’t see any sign of the nest building he expected from a woman. No pretty and useless things sitting around, no mementos from home or from her travels.

“Nice laptop.” He tapped a finger on it.

“You said you were hungry.”

He glanced up from her computer, and it struck him how the nearly empty room made her seem so alone. “Did I?”

“Before. If you are, I could make you a meal. Payback. We could call it payback for today, and be even.”

She said it lightly, but he was good at reading people and this one wasn’t ready to be alone. Anyway, he was hungry, and had firsthand knowledge she could cook.

“What kind of meal?”

“Ah.” She pushed a hand through her hair, glanced toward the kitchen. He could almost see her doing a mental inventory of her stock. “I could do some chicken and rice quickly. Twenty minutes?”

“Fine. Got beer?”

“No. Sorry. I have wine.” She turned toward the kitchen. “A nice white. It’s chilled.”

“Good enough. Are you cold?”

“Cold?”

“If you’re not, take off your coat.”

She got out the wine first, and a corkscrew. Then took a pack of two skinless chicken breasts out of the tiny freezer. She’d have to thaw them, at least partially, in the equally tiny microwave, but it couldn’t be helped.

While she took her coat, and the one he’d tossed over a stool, to lay on the daybed, Brody opened the wine.

“I only have regular tumblers.” She crossed back to open a cupboard. “Actually, the wine was mostly for cooking.”

“You’re serving me cooking wine. Well,sláinte. ”

“It’s a good wine,” she said with some aggravation. “I wouldn’t cook with anything I wouldn’t drink. It’s a very nice Pinot Grigio. Sosalute is more appropriate.”

He poured some into the tumbler he gave her, then reached over her head for a second one and added wine to it. He sampled, nodded. “Okay, we’ll add you know wine to your résumé. Where’d you study cooking?”

She turned away and got to work. “A couple of places.”

“One being Paris.”

She took out garlic, green onion. “Why ask if Doc Wallace already told you?”

“Actually, it was Mac, who got it from Doc. You haven’t picked up the small-town rhythm yet.”

“I guess not.” She took out a pot to boil water for the rice.

Brody took his wine, settled on a stool and watched her.

Competence, he thought. Control with a dash of poetry. The nerves that seemed to hum around her otherwise didn’t sound or show when she was in this element.

What she needed was to eat more of what she prepared until she put on a solid ten pounds, minimum. Pounds he was speculating she lost after whatever had sent her running from Boston.

Again, he wondered who she’d seen killed. And why. And how.

She did something, quick and easy, with some crackers, cream cheese and olives, and a sprinkle of what he thought might be paprika. Then arranged them on a saucer in front of him.

“First course.” She offered him a hint of a smile before she started slicing chicken, mincing garlic.

He’d polished off half the crackers—nice bite to them—by the time she had the rice going. The air was pungent with garlic.

While he sat, quiet, she handled three pans—the chicken deal, the rice and another in which she stir-fried slices of peppers and mushrooms, small trees of broccoli.

“How do you know how to cook it all and have it ready at the same time?”

She glanced back, and her face was relaxed, a little rosy from the heat. “How do you know when to end a chapter and go on to the next?”

“Good point. You look good when you cook.”

“I cook better than I look.” She gave the vegetables a toss, shook the skillet holding the chicken.

As if to prove it, she shut down the heat, then began to plate the meal. She set his in front of him, had him lifting a brow. “Twenty minutes. And it smells a hell of a lot better than the can of soup I’d figured to open tonight.”

“You earned it.” She fixed her own plate—with considerably smaller portions than his—before she came around the counter to sit beside him. And for the first time, picked up her wine.

She half toasted him, sipped. “Well? How is it?”

He took his first bite, sat back as if to consider. “You’ve got a face on you,” he began. “Fascinating in its way, and a lot of it’s about those big, dark eyes. Suck a man right in and drown him if he isn’t careful. But,” he continued as she seemed to draw back from him, just a little, “maybe you do cook better than you look.”

The way her grin flashed in appreciation made him think otherwise, but he continued to eat and to enjoy the meal, and her company more than he’d expected.

“So, you know what’s buzzing around downstairs about now?” he asked her.

“In Joanie’s?”

“That’s right. People see my car out front, don’t see me in there. Somebody says something, somebody else says, ‘I saw him go up with Reece’—or Joanie’s new cook. ‘Been up there some time now.’”

“Oh.” She blew out a breath. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter.” Then she sat up a little straighter. “Does it? Does it matter to you what they say?”

“Couldn’t care less. You don’t care what people think or say about you?”

“Sometimes I do, too much. Sometimes I don’t care at all. I sure as hell don’t care that you lost a bet with Mac Drubber over me diving into bed with Lo.”

His eyes lit with amusement as he continued to eat. “Overestimated Lo, underestimated you.”

“Apparently. And maybe if people think we’re having something going for a while, Lo will stop trying to charm me into going out with him.”

“He hassling you?”

“No, not like that. And it’s been better since I made myself clear. But this won’t hurt. So I guess I owe you another one.”

“I guess you do. Do I get another dinner out of it?”

“I…well, I suppose.” Her brows drew together in confusion. “If you want.”

“When’s your next night off?”

“Ah…” God, how’d she managed to box herself in so neatly? “Tuesday. I have the early shift, off at three.”

“Great. I’ll come by at seven. That work for you?”

“Seven. Sure. Sure. Well, is there anything you don’t eat, don’t like, have an allergy to?”

“Don’t fix up internal organs and expect me to chow down.”

“Nix the sweetbreads, got it.”

Now what? she wondered. She just couldn’t think of any small talk, conversational gambits. Once she’d been good at this, she thought. She’d enjoyed dating, liked sitting with a man over a meal talking, laughing. But her brain just wouldn’t walk down that road.

“He’ll be here when he gets here.”

She met Brody’s eyes. “If I’m that transparent, I’m going to have to install some shades.”

“It’s only natural to have it stuck in your head. You let it go some while you were cooking.”

“He must’ve found her by now. Whoever did it couldn’t have taken her far, and if he buried her…”

“Easier to weigh her down with rocks, throw her in the river.”

“Oh God! Thanks very much for that image, sure to dance in my head later.”

“Of course, the body probably wouldn’t stay down, not with the current. It’d end up surfacing downriver somewhere. Some guy going down to fish is going to stumble over her, or some hiker, paddler, tourist from Omaha, whatever you like. Someone’s going to get a big surprise when they find her.”

“Would youstop that.” But she frowned. “Even if he did something like that, there’d be some sign, some evidence of what happened. Blood. He rapped her head pretty hard, or where the brush got trampled, or…footprints. Wouldn’t there?”

“Probably. He didn’t know anyone saw him, so why bother to cover tracks at that spot? Seems to me he’d be most concerned about getting rid of the body and getting away.”

“Yes. So the sheriff will find something.”

She jumped at the sound of footsteps outside.

“Probably him now,” Brody said easily and slid off the stool to answer the door himself.

7

BRODY.” Rick removed his hat as he stepped inside. “Reece.” His gaze skimmed over the counter. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner.”

“We’re finished. It’s not important.” Though her knees shook, Reece slid off the stool to stand. “Did you find her?”

“Mind if we have a seat?”

How could she have forgotten the ritual when cops came to call? Ask them to come in, to sit down, offer them coffee. She’d stocked coffee in those days, for friends. For police.

“Sorry.” Reece gestured to the sofa. “Please. Can I get you something?”

“I’m just fine, thanks.” After settling on the sofa, Rick set his hat on his lap and waited for Reece to sit. As he had earlier in his own cabin, Brody remained leaning against the counter.

She knew before he spoke, saw it in his face. She’d learned to read the carefully neutral expression police wore.

“I didn’t find anything.”

And still, she shook her head. “But—”

“Let’s just take it slow,” Rick interrupted. “Why don’t you go over what you saw for me again?”

“Oh God.” Reece rubbed her hands hard over her face, pressed her fingers to her eyes, then dropped her hands in her lap. Yes, of course. Go over it again. Another part of the ritual. “All right.”

She recited it all, everything she remembered. “He must have thrown the body in the river, or buried it, or—”

“We’ll look into that. Are you sure about the location?” He glanced at Brody as he asked.

“I showed you the place on the map where Reece told me she saw it happen. Right near the little rapids.”

“Other side of the river,” Rick said to Reece, with his tone as neutral as his face. “That kind of distance, you could’ve been off. Considerably off.”

“No. The trees, the rocks, the white water. I wasn’t off.”

“There wasn’t any sign of struggle in that area. There wasn’t any I could find when I branched out from there.”

“He must’ve covered it up.”

“Could be.” But she heard the doubt in his tone, a slight slip out of neutral. “I’m going back in the morning, once we’ve got some light. Brody? Maybe you want to go on out there with me, make sure I’ve got the right area. Meanwhile, I’m going to make some calls, see if any female tourists or residents are missing.”

“There are some cabins scattered around that area.” Brody picked up the wine he’d left on the counter.

“I went by a couple of the closest ones. Got my own, Joanie’s got a couple. Rental places out there, and this time of year, they don’t get much business. Didn’t see anyone, or any sign they were being used. I’m checking on that, too. We’ll get to the bottom of this, Reece. I don’t want you to worry. Brody? You want to take a ride out there with me in the morning?”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“I can go downstairs now, ask Joanie for the morning off and go with you,” Reece began.

“Brody was right there. I think one of you’s enough. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about this to anyone else. For the time being. Let’s get this checked out before the word spreads.” Rick pushed to his feet, nodded at Brody. “How about I come by your place and pick you up about seven-thirty?”

“I’ll be there.”

“You try to enjoy the rest of your evening. Reece, put this out of your mind for a while. Nothing more you can do.”

“No. No, nothing I can do.” Reece stayed seated as Rick settled his hat on his head and went out.

“He doesn’t believe me.”

“I didn’t hear him say that.”

“Yes, you did.” Helpless anger bubbled up. “We both did, under it.”

Brody set his wine down again, crossed to her. “Why wouldn’t he believe you?”

“Because he didn’t find anything. Because no one else saw it. Because I’ve only been in town a couple of weeks. Because, because.”

“I’ve got all that same information and I believe you.”

Her eyes stung. The urge to pop up, press her face to his chest and just let the tears roll was overwhelming. Instead, she stayed seated, gripping her hands together hard in her lap. “Thanks.”

“I’m going to head home. You might try to take the sheriff’s advice and put this out of your head for a while. Take a pill, go to bed.”

“How do you know I have any pills to take?”

His lips curved, just a little. “Take an Ambien and tune out. I’ll tell you what’s what—one way or another—tomorrow.”

“Fine. Thanks.” She got up to walk over and open the door herself. “Good night.”

Satisfied he’d left her annoyed rather than depressed, he strolled out without another word.

She locked the door, checked it, checked the windows. Habit made her start toward the kitchen first to clean up the dishes and pots, but she turned instead and booted up her laptop.

She would write it all out, everything, in her journal.

As Reece sat down at her keyboard, Rick let himself into the sheriff’s office, switched on the lights. He hung up his hat, his coat, then went back to the small break room to brew a short pot of coffee.

While it brewed, he called home. As he expected, his oldest girl answered on the first ring. “Hey, Daddy! Can I wear mascara to the Spring Fling? Just a little,everybody else does. Please?”

He pressed his fingers to his eyes. Not yet thirteen and already it was mascara and school dances. “What did your mother say?”

“She said she’d think about it. Daddy—”

“Then I’ll think about it, too. Put your mama on, baby.”

“Can’t you come home? We coulddiscuss this.”

God save him. “I have to work late tonight, but we’ll discuss it tomorrow. Put your mama on now.”

“Mom!Daddy’s on the phone. He has to work late, and we’re going to talk about me wearing mascara like anormal person tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the bulletin.” Sounding more amused than harassed—how did she manage it? Rick wondered—Debbie Mardson chuckled into the receiver. “I was hoping you were on your way home.”

“Stuck here at the office for a while. Can’t say how long. Why the hell does that girl have to wear mascara? She’s got your eyes, longest lashes in Wyoming.” He could see them, that long sweep, the bluebonnet eyes under it.

“Same reasons I do—light lashes. And it’s a basic female tool.”

“You’re going to let her?”

“I’m considering.”

Now he rubbed the back of his neck. He was a man woefully outnumbered by females. “First it was lipstick.”

“Gloss,” Debbie corrected. “Lip gloss.”

“Whatever the hell. Now it’s mascara. Next thing she’ll be wanting a tattoo. It’s the end of the world.”

“I think we can hold back the tattoo awhile yet. You want to call before you leave? I could have your dinner warmed up.”

“May be late. I picked up a meatloaf sandwich at Joanie’s. Don’t worry about it. Kiss the girls for me.”

“I will. Don’t wear yourself out, so you can come home and kiss me.”

“I’ll be sure to do that. Deb? Love you.”

“Love you back. Bye.”

He sat for a time in the quiet, drinking his coffee, eating his sandwich, thinking of his wife and three daughters. He didn’t want his baby wearing makeup. But she’d wear him down on it, he already knew. His oldest had his mother’s tenacity.

With a sigh, he stuffed the paper napkin in the take-out bag, tossed it away. And pouring a second cup of coffee, he went over Reece’s statement in his head, winding his way—again—through the details, the timing. With a shake of his head, he added powdered creamer to his coffee, carried it back to his office.

He, too, booted up his computer. It was time to find out more about Reece Gilmore than she had no criminal record and came from Boston.

He spent several hours searching, reading, making calls and taking notes. When it was done, he had a file and, after some internal debate, stored it in the bottom drawer of his desk.

It was late when he left the office for home, wondering if his wife had waited up.

And when he drove by Angel Food, he noted that the light still burned in the apartment upstairs.

AT SEVEN-THIRTY in the morning while Reece was struggling to concentrate on buttermilk pancakes and eggs over easy, Brody armed himself with a thermos of coffee and climbed into Rick’s car.

“Morning. Appreciate you going out with me, Brody.”

“No problem. I’ll think of it as research.”

Rick’s smile came and went. “Guess you could say we’ve got a mystery on our hands. How long again did you say it was from the time Reece said she saw this happen until you got back there with her?”

“I don’t know how long it took her to get down to me. She was running, and I was already heading up the trail. No more than ten minutes, at a guess. Five minutes, I’d say, before we headed back, maybe another ten, fifteen to get to where she’d stopped.”

“And her state of mind when you saw her?”

Irritation crackled. “Like you’d expect it to be when a woman sees another woman strangled to death.”

“All right now, Brody, don’t go thinking I don’t understand the situation. The thing is, I have to look at this differently. I want to know if she was coherent, if she was clear.”

“After the first couple minutes, yeah. You take into consideration that she was miles from help, from any way to get help—other than me—that it was her first time on that particular trail. That she was alone, shocked, scared and helpless while she watched it happen.”

“Through binoculars, across the Snake River.” Rick held up a hand. “Might’ve happened just the way she said, but I have to factor in the circumstances, and the lack of evidence. Can you tell me you’re sure, without a doubt, she wasn’t mistaken? Maybe saw a couple of people having an argument, even saw this man she says she saw hit this woman.”

He’d given it a lot of thought the night before. Gone over the details himself, point by point. And he remembered her face—clammy and pale, her eyes huge, glassy and deep.

A woman didn’t wear abject terror when she witnessed an argument between strangers. “I believe she saw exactly what she said she did. What she told me on the trail, and what she’s told you three times in her statements. She hasn’t veered off the details, not once.”

Rick puffed out his cheeks. “You’re right about that. Are you two involved?”

“In what?”

Rick snorted out a laugh. “I gotta like you, Brody. You’re a smart son of a bitch. Are you two personally involved with each other?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Information always makes a difference in an investigation.”

“Then why don’t you just ask me if I’m sleeping with her?”

“Well now, that was an attempt to be sensitive and subtle,” Rick said with the faintest of smirks. “But all right, then. Are you sleeping with her?”

“No.”

“All right, then,” he repeated.

“What if I said yes?”

“Then I’d factor that information in, like a good law-enforcement official. Your business is your business, Brody. Except, of course, that sort of business gets around town quick as a cat pouncing on a mouse. Nothing so interesting as sex, whether you’re having it, or talking about someone else doing it.”

“I’d rather have sex than talk about it.”

“That’d be you.” The smile came and went once more. “And me, come to that.”

They drove awhile in silence until Rick pulled off the road.

“Easiest spot to cut through and reach the place by the river you showed me on the map.”

Brody slung a small pack over his shoulder. Even for such a short hike, it wasn’t wise to set out without the essentials. They moved through sagebrush and forest, where the soft dirt held tracks Brody recognized as deer, bear—and, he assumed, Rick’s boots from the day before.

“No human tracks leading to the river,” Rick pointed out. “Mine from yesterday. ’Course they could’ve come in from another angle, but I took a good look around. You got a body to deal with, you have to get rid of it. Throw it into the river, might be first instinct, first panic reaction.”

He kept his gait slow, kept his gaze tracking ground and trees. “Or you’d bury it. There’d damn well be signs of that, Brody. No point dragging a dead body far, and it’s a hell of a lot harder to dig a grave than you might think.”

He set his hands on his hips, the heel of one hand resting idly on the butt of his service weapon. “It’d show, and the wildlife around here would find it pretty quick. You can see for yourself now, there’s no sign anybody came in or out of this area yesterday. I’m going to ask you again, could you have given me the wrong location?”

“No.”

Through the lodgepole pines, the huckleberry, the elderberry bushes, they hiked northwest toward the river. The ground was moist from the thaw, Brody noted. And should’ve held human tracks as well as it did the tracks of deer and moose. Though he saw signs animals had passed this way, there were no human tracks. They skirted a thicket, and as Brody paused to look, crouched down to look for any signs it had been disturbed, Rick waited.

“I guess you did this yesterday.”

“Did,” Rick agreed. “Get some nice berries around here in season,” he said conversationally. “Got your huckleberries, your bearberries.” He paused, then looked toward where he could scent the river now. “Brody, if a man tried to hide a body in there, there’d be signs of it. And by this time, I expect, animals would have caught the scent and come exploring.”

“Yeah.” Brody pushed back to his feet. “Yeah, you’re right. Even a city slicker like me knows that much.”

Despite the circumstances, Rick flashed a grin. “You handle yourself pretty well in the backcountry for a slicker.”

“How long do I have to live around here before I lose the slicker label?”

“Might wear off some after you’ve been dead ten, fifteen years.”

“That’s what I figured,” Brody said as they began to walk again. “You weren’t born here, either,” he remembered. “Army brat.”

“Being as my mother settled in Cheyenne before my twelfth birthday, I got a big leg up on you. Local-wise. Hear the rapids now.”

The low rumble came through the quaking aspens, the cottonwoods and red willows. The sunlight grew stronger until Brody could see it reflected off the water. Beyond was the canyon, and the spot high up on the other side where he’d stood with Reece.

“That’s where she was sitting when she saw it happen.” Shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, Brody pointed out and over to the rocks.

Cooler here, Brody thought, cooler beside the water, with the wind sighing through the trees. But it was bright enough that he pulled his sunglasses out of his pack.

“I’ve got to say, Brody, that’s a fucking long way.” Rick took out his field glasses and followed the direction Brody had indicated. “A fucking long way,” he repeated. “Get some glare, too, that time of day. Bouncing off the water.”

“Rick, we’ve had a friendly relationship the past year.”

“We have.”

“So I’m going to ask you straight out. Why don’t you believe her?”

“Let’s just take it a step at a time, first. She’s up there, sees this happening down here, runs back down the trail, where she runs into you. Meanwhile, what’s this guy doing with the dead woman? Throws her in, she’s going to wash up. And she’d have been spotted by now, more than likely. Not much right around here to weigh the body down, and by your timing, only about a half an hour to do it. That was the plan, it would’ve taken time—more, in my opinion, than it took the pair of you to get back within sight of this spot.”

“He could’ve dragged her behind those rocks there, or into the trees. We wouldn’t have seen her from across the river. Maybe he went to get a shovel, or rope. Christ knows.”

Rick bit off a sigh. “You seen any signs anyone’s been tromping in and out of here, dragging off a body, burying one?”

“No, I haven’t. Not yet.”

“Now you and me, we’ll take a walk around, like I already did yesterday. There’s not one sign of a fresh grave. That leaves dragging or carrying her out of here, to a car, to a cabin. Long way hauling dead weight, long way not to leave a single sign either one of us could see.”

He turned back to Brody. “You’re telling me you’re sure this is where she saw it, and I’m telling you I can’t see anything to indicate there was anyone here passing the time of day, much less knocking a woman to the ground and strangling her.”

The logic of it was indisputable. And still. “He covered his tracks.”

“Maybe, maybe. But when the hell did he do that? He carted her off, dragged her out of sight, came back, covered up his tracks here—and that’s not knowing anyone saw him kill anyone.”

“Or assuming he didn’t see Reece up there.”

Now Rick took out his own sunglasses and through them looked over the water, up to the trail. “All right then, change that around and say he did. He still managed to clear out in the thirty minutes you say passed. Give it forty, and it still doesn’t hold for me.”

“You think she’s lying? Made it up? What’s the point?”

“I don’t think she’s lying.” Rick shoved back his hat, gave his brow a troubled rub. “There’s more to this, Brody. Seeing you two together yesterday—first at your place, then at hers—I figured you had something going. That maybe you knew more about her.”

“More of what?”

“Let’s do that walk around, and I’m going to tell you. I expect you can keep what I tell you to yourself. I figure you’re one of the few people in the Fist who can do that.”

As they walked, Brody kept his eyes on the ground, or studied the brush. He wanted, more than he’d realized, to find something to prove Rick wrong.

Which meant, he realized, he was trying harder to prove some woman was dead instead of another woman was mistaken.

But he remembered how she’d looked, how she’d struggled to keep herself from dissolving on the long hike back. And how alone she’d looked standing in her nearly empty apartment.

“I did some checking up on her.” When Brody stopped, narrowed his eyes, Rick shook his head. “I consider that part of my job. Somebody new comes around, settles in, I want to know they’re clean. Did the same with you.”

“And did I pass the audition?”

“You and I haven’t had any words otherwise, have we?” He paused, lifted his chin to the left. “That’s the back of one of Joanie’s cabins. That one’s the closest, and it took us about ten minutes to walk it. Setting a good pace, and not carrying dead weight. Couldn’t’ve gotten any sort of vehicle closer than this. Either way, there’d be tire tracks.”

“Did you go inside? The cabin?”

“Having a badge doesn’t mean I can go inside somebody’s property. But I looked around, looked in the windows. Doors are locked. Went to the two others that are closest, which includes my own. And there I did go in. Nothing there.”

Still they continued on, reaching the cabin, circling it.

“Reece is clean, if you’re interested,” Rick continued when Brody peered through the cabin windows. “But she was involved with something a few years ago.”

Brody stepped back, spoke carefully. “Involved with what?”

“Spree killing at the restaurant where she worked in Boston. She was the only survivor. She was shot twice.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah. Left for dead in some kind of closet, storage closet. I got details from a Boston cop who worked the case. She was in the kitchen, everyone else was in the dining room—after hours. She heard screams, gunshots, remembers, or thinks she remembers, grabbing for her cell phone. One of the men came in, shot her. She doesn’t remember much more—or didn’t. Didn’t get a good look at him. Got knocked back in the closet and left there until the cops found her a couple hours later. Cop I talked to said she damn near didn’t make it. Coma after surgery for best part of a week, and her memory was patchy after. And her mental state wasn’t much better than her physical.”

Nothing, nothing he’d imagined came close. “How could it have been?”

“What I’m saying is she had a breakdown. Did some months in a psychiatric hospital. She was never able to give the cops enough details or description. They never caught who killed all those people, then she dropped off the map. The lead investigator got in touch with her off and on during that first year or so. Last time he tried, she’d moved, left no forwarding. She got family—a grandmother—but all she could tell him was Reece was gone, and wasn’t planning to come back.”

Rick stopped, gave a long, slow scan, then changed directions and backtracked. A warbler began to call out in its quick, high-pitched song. “I recollect bits of it myself. The killing made the national news. I thought, as I remember, thank God we live out here, not in the city.”

“Yeah, no guns out here.”

Rick’s jaw firmed. “People around here value their constitutional right to bear arms. And they respect it. City slicker.”

“You forgot the pinko liberal part.”

“I was being polite.”

“Sure you were,” Brody said mildly. “You right-wing lunatic.”

Rick let out a rumble of laughter. “Don’t know how I got to be friends with some urban elitist.” He angled his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about this business, Brody. Being a big-city reporter.”

Brody calculated the timing. If it happened right after he quit the paper, he would have been baking out his bitterness in the sun and surf of Aruba. He hadn’t read a paper for nearly eight weeks, and had boycotted CNN. Just on principle.

“I took what we’ll call a moratorium from the news for a couple of months after I left theTrib .”

“Well, I guess the media business of it would have petered out in that length of time. Always something else to bombard the public with.”

“Constitutionally, the First Amendment comes before the Second.”

“And it’s a damn shame about that. But to get back to it, I gotta say, what happened to Reece? That’s a goddamn hell of a thing for anyone to come back from, and it could be she’s not all the way back.”

“So she, what, hallucinated a murder? Screw that, Rick.”

“Might’ve fallen asleep, just nodded off for a few minutes and had a bad dream. Cop who worked the case told me she was prone to them. It’s a long way up that trail for a novice, and she’d have been tired by the time she got all the way up to where she stopped. Could’ve been light-headed on top of it. Joanie says the girl hardly eats unless she shoves a plate at her. Got some nerves, too. Dragged the dresser in front of the door of the adjoining room in her hotel, kept it like that the whole time she was there. Never unpacked.”

“Overly cautious isn’t crazy.”

“Now, Brody, I never saidcrazy. But I think it’s likely she’s still emotionally disturbed.” He shot up both hands immediately. “Let me take backdisturbed and sayfragile. That’s how I’m seeing it because, when it comes down to it, that’s all I have to see. Not that I’m not going to keep looking into this, but I’m not calling in State at this point. Nothing for them to do here. I’ll make inquiries into missing persons, see if I find anyone matches what description she could give me of the woman she saw. Can’t do more than that.”

“Is that what you’re going to tell her? You can’t do any more?”

Rick took off his hat, raked fingers through his hair. “You seeing what I’m seeing here? Which is nothing? If you’ve got the time I’d like you to go with me while I check out the other cabins in the vicinity.”

“I’ve got the time. But why me instead of one of the deputies?”

“You were with her.” Face set, Rick settled his hat back on his head. “We’ll call you a secondary witness.”

“Covering your ass, Rick?”

“You want to call it that,” Rick said without rancor. “Look here, I believe she thinks she saw something. But there’s no evidence to support it. What I think is she fell asleep, had a bad dream, and you’ve got to at least entertain the possibility that’s just what happened. I don’t want to add to her troubles, whatever they may be, and I’ve got to work with facts. The fact is, there’s no sign of foul play here. No sign anyone’s been here at all, come to that, certainly not in the last twenty-four hours. We’ll do another sweep on the way back and check out the cabins in this section. We find anything—hell, we come across a ball of fucking lint—I’ll call up State and pursue this. Otherwise all I can do is check with Missing Persons off and on.”

“You just don’t believe her.”

“At this point, Brody?” Rick looked across the river, up to the rocks. “No, I surely don’t.”

WHEN THE BREAKFAST rush was over, Reece dove straight into the prep for the soup of the day. She simmered beans, cubed leftover ham, diced onions. Joanie’s didn’t run to fresh herbs, so she made do with dried.

Better with fresh basil and rosemary. And coarsely ground black pepper would be an improvement over the damn gray powder in a can on the shelf. And for Christ’s sake, how was she supposed to cook with garlic powder? She wished she had some sea salt. And wasn’t there anywhere around here that had tomatoes this time of year with sometaste ?

“Sure are full of complaints.” Joanie walked over to the pot, sniffed. “Looks good enough to me.”

Talking to myself again, Reece realized. “Sorry. It’s fine; it’ll be fine. I’m just in a mood.”

“I could see that for myself all morning. Hearing it now, too. This ain’t no cordon bleu establishment. You want fancy, you should’ve aimed your car toward Jackson Hole.”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t ask for the first apology, and the second’s just annoying. Haven’t you got any backbone in there?”

“I used to. It’s still in the shop for repair.”

Whatever had caused the mood, the look in Reece’s eye and the jerky way she’d been moving, was worrying. “Told you to make up what you liked for today’s soup, didn’t I?” Joanie kept her voice brisk. “You want something we don’t have in here, you make a list. I’ll think about ordering it. Maybe. If you don’t have enough gumption to ask, don’t stand around muttering and bitching about it later.”

“Okay.”

“Sea salt.” With a derisive snort, Joanie strode over to pour herself a cup of coffee. From that angle, she could give Reece a good study without being obvious about it. The girl was on the pale side, she noted, with shadows under her eyes. “Doesn’t look to me as if a day off did you much good.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Mac said you hiked up Little Angel Trail.”

“Yes.”

“Saw you come back with Brody.”

“We…we ran into each other on the trail.”

Joanie took a slow sip of coffee. “The way your hands are shaking you’re going to end up slicing your hand instead of those carrots.”

Reece set the knife down, turned. “Joanie, I saw—” She broke off when Brody came into the diner. “Can I take my break?”

Something’s up, Joanie thought, as she watched the way Brody paused and waited. Something’s off. “Go ahead.”

Reece didn’t run around the counter but she moved fast, and she kept her eyes locked on Brody’s face. Her heart slammed against her ribs. And her hand reached out for his while she was still two paces away.

“Did you find—”

“Let’s go outside.”

She only nodded, which was just as well since he was already pulling her to the door. “Did you find her?” Reece repeated. “Tell me. Do we know who she is?”

He kept walking, his hand firm on her arm, until they were around the side of the building at the base of the steps to Reece’s apartment.

“We didn’t find anything.”

“But…He must have thrown her into the river.” She’d visualized that countless times through the night. “Oh God, he threw her body in the river.”

“I didn’t say anyone, Reece. I said anything.”

“He must have…” She caught herself, sucked in a hard breath. Then she spoke very carefully. “I don’t understand.”

“We went to the place where you said you’d seen them. We covered the ground from there to the road and back from different directions. We went to the five cabins closest to the area. They’re empty, and there’s no sign they’ve been otherwise.”

The sick dread started in the center of her belly. “They didn’t have to be staying in a cabin.”

“No. But they had to get where you saw them from somewhere. There weren’t any tracks, there weren’t any signs.”

“You went to the wrong place.”

“No. We didn’t.”

She hugged her arms now, but it wasn’t the sharp spring breeze that chilled her. “That’s just not possible. They were there. They argued, they fought, he killed her. Isaw it.”

“Didn’t say otherwise. I’m telling you there’s nothing out there to support that.”

“He’ll get away with it. He’ll just walk away and live his life.” Reece sat down heavily on the steps. “Because I’m the only one who saw, and I didn’t see enough, couldn’t do anything.”

“Does the world always revolve around you?”

She looked up then, torn between shock and misery. “And how the hell would you feel? I guess you’d just shrug it off. Gee, I did what I could, better go have a beer and stretch out in the hammock.”

“Little early yet for a beer. Sheriff’s going to check on missing persons. He’s going out to the guest ranch, the B and B’s, hitting some of the outlying places and campgrounds. Have you got a better way to handle it?”

“It’s not myjob to handle it.”

“Mine either.”

She shoved to her feet. “Why didn’t he come back to talk to me? Because he doesn’t think I saw anything,” she said before he could answer. “He thinks I made it up.”

“If you want to know what he thinks, ask him. I’m telling you what I know.”

“I want to go out there, see for myself.”

“Up to you.”

“I don’t know how to get there. And maybe you’re the last person I want to ask for a goddamn favor, but you know what? You’re also the only person I’m absolutely sure didn’t kill that woman. Unless, among your other talents, you can sprout wings and fly. I’m off at three. You can pick me up here.”

“Can I?”

“Yeah, you can. And you will. Because you wonder about this just as much as I do.” She dug into her pocket, pulled out a faded and wrinkled ten-dollar bill. Slapped it into his hand. “There. That should cover the gas.”

She strode off, leaving him staring at the ten with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.

8

REECE TURNED THE soup to simmer, and since her blood was up, started a list of what she considered essential items for any kitchen.

Five-star restaurant, small-town diner, personal kitchen. What the hell did it matter? Food was food, and why the hell shouldn’t it be perfectly prepared?

She handled a few orders for people who, for reasons that escaped her, wanted a buffalo burger before noon. Between orders, she set to work scrubbing down the kitchen, from the inside of the cabinets out.

She was on her knees washing out the area under the sink when Linda-gail crouched beside her. “Are you trying to make the rest of us look bad?”

“No. I’m keeping busy.”

“When you’re done keeping busy here, you can go over to my house and keep busy there. Are you mad at Joanie?”

“No. I’m mad at the world. The whole stinking, fucked-up world.”

Linda-gail glanced over her shoulder, lowered her voice. “Got your period?”

“No.”

“It’s just that one or two days a month, I usually get mad at the whole stinking, fucked-up world. Anything I can do?”

“Can you wipe out the last twenty-four hours with the power of your mind?”

“Probably not.” She laid a hand on the small of Reece’s back, gave it a rub. “But I’ve got chocolate in my purse.”

Reece let out a sigh, dropped her rag back in the bucket of soapy water. “What kind of chocolate?”

“The little pads in the gold foil the hotel puts on pillows at night. Maria in housekeeping’s my pusher.”

The smile felt so foreign on Reece’s face it almost hurt. “They’re not bad. Thanks, maybe—”

“Reece.” Joanie’s voice, clipped and cool, brought Reece’s head out from under the sink. “My office a minute.”

Reece and Linda-gail exchanged a look—and Linda-gail’s was ripe with pity—before Reece got up and followed Joanie into the little office.

“Close that door. I just got a call from my boy. Seems the sheriff’s been out to the ranch asking questions. Appears he’s looking for some people, most especially a woman who might’ve gone missing. Lo didn’t get much out of him, but I didn’t raise any fools, so he got enough.”

Turning to her tiny office window, she shoved it open before yanking her cigarettes out of her pocket. “Rick says maybe somebody saw something happen to this woman, maybe that person was up on Little Angel and thought something happened across the river. Not being a fool, either, I figure somebody who maybe saw something would be you.”

“The sheriff asked me not to say anything until he’d investigated, but since he’s not finding anything…I saw a man kill a woman. I saw him strangle her, and I was too far away to help. I was too far away to do anything. And now they can’t find anything. It’s like it never happened.”

Joanie blew out a quick stream of smoke. “What woman?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize her; I didn’t see her that well. Her face. Or his. But I saw…I saw…”

“Don’t you go hysterical on me.” Joanie kept her voice cool and firm. “You sit down if you need to, but you don’t get hysterical.”

“Okay. All right.” Reece didn’t sit, but rubbed away the tears with the heels of her hands. “I saw them. I saw what he did to her. I was the only one who saw anything.”

Her boots drumming into the ground.

High-topped black Nikes with silver swatches outside the storeroom door.

His black jacket and orange hunter’s cap.

Dark gray hoodie, big, black gun.

“I was the only one who saw anything,” she repeated. “And I didn’t see enough.”

“You said you and Brody were on the trail.”

“He was farther down. He didn’t see. He went back up with me, but there was nothing to see.” Because she couldn’t get enough air in the room, the tiny box of a room, Reece moved to the window. “I didn’t imagine it.”

“Why would I think you had? If you were upset about this, you could’ve had today off.”

“I had yesterday off, and look what happened. Did Lo say…was there a woman staying at the ranch?”

“Everyone booked there, working there, is accounted for.”

“Of course.” Unsure if she should be relieved or terrified, Reece closed her eyes. “Of course they are.”

After a brief knock, Linda-gail stuck her head in. “Sorry. But we’re starting to back up out here.”

“Tell them to hold their water,” Joanie ordered, then waited for the door to close again. “You okay to finish out your shift?”

“Yes. I’d rather have something to do.”

“Then go cook. Meanwhile, if you’ve got something eating at your belly, screw what Rick Mardson tells you. You can come to me.”

“Thanks. My insides feel like they’ve been wrung out like a dishrag.”

“I’m not surprised. It should feel better, spitting it out.”

“It does. If I were to ask you—I asked Brody, but he and Sheriff Mardson are friends—so if I asked you, would you tell me what you think of him? As the sheriff.”

“Highly enough to have voted for him both times he’s run. I’ve known him and Debbie a dozen years, since they moved here from Cheyenne.”

“Yes, but…” Reece moistened her lips. “As far as police work.”

“As far as that, he does what needs doing, and doesn’t make a fuss about it. You may not think there’s much needs doing in a town this size. But I guarantee you, every mother’s son, and daughter, in Angel’s Fist has a gun. Most more than one. Rick makes sure people use them for hunting and target practice. He keeps things as peaceable as you can expect when this town bulges at the seams with tourists. He does his job.”

It didn’t take a hawk eye to see Reece wasn’t convinced. “Let me ask you this,” Joanie continued. “Anything else you can do about this business but what you did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then leave it to Rick, and go on back in the kitchen and do your job.”

“All right. I guess you’re right. Um, Joanie? I’m making that list, and I just wanted to mention that buying bulbs of garlic would be cheaper and more practical in the long run than buying garlic powder.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The soup was a hit, so there was no point thinking it would’ve been better if she’d had everything she wanted at hand.

That was past—that constant striving for better, for best, for perfection. Hadn’t she learned by now it was fine to get by? Nobody here cared if the oregano was fresh or had been sitting in plastic jars for six months.

Why should she?

She only had to cook, serve and pick up her check.

She had no investment here. In fact, she’d probably made a mistake taking the apartment upstairs. It was too close to settling in. She should move back to the hotel.

Better, she should just toss her things into her car and move on.

Nothing to keep her here. Nothing to keep her anywhere.

“Brody’s here,” Linda-gail called out. “Ticket up, he and the doc are going for the soup.”

“Brody and the doctor,” Reece mumbled. “Isn’t that perfect?”

She’d fix them soup, all right. No problem at all.

With rage just beginning to bubble, she ladled up two bowls, plated them with rolls and butter. And as the bubbling went to steam, she personally carried them out to the booth where the men sat.

“Here’s your soup. And for a side dish, let me make this clear. I don’t need or want a medical examination. I’m not sick. There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. I didn’t fall asleep on the trail and dream I saw a woman being strangled to death.”

She spoke clearly enough, and with the outrage of her words stinging the air, conversations stopped at the tables near the booth. For a moment, the only sound was Garth Brooks on the juke.

“Enjoy your lunch,” Reece finished and strode back to the kitchen.

She yanked off her apron, grabbed her jacket. “My shift’s over. I’m going upstairs.”

“Go right ahead.” Joanie placidly flipped a burger on the grill. “You’re on eleven to eight tomorrow.”

“I know my schedule.” She walked out the back, round the side, and stomped up the steps.

Inside the apartment, she went directly to her maps and guides and took out the ones that applied. She’d find her way to the spot by herself. She didn’t need an escort; she didn’t need some man tagging along to placate and patronize her.

She pulled open the map, then watched it flutter to the floor from her limp fingers.

It was covered with jagged red lines and loops and splotches. The area across from the trail where she’d stood the day before was heavily circled, dozens of times.

She hadn’t done that, she hadn’t. Still, she looked at her fingers as if expecting to see red smears on the tips. The map had been pristine only the day before, and now it looked as if it had been folded and refolded again and again, drawn and scribbled on in some crazy code.

She hadn’t done it. She couldn’t have done it.

Breath wheezing, she dashed to the kitchen drawer, dragged it open. There, just where she’d put it, was her red marker. With trembling fingers, she pulled off the top, and saw the tip was dull and flattened.

But it hadn’t been. She’d bought it only a few days before from Mr. Drubber.

With great care she replaced the top, laid the marker back in the drawer. Closed the drawer. Then she turned, keeping her back to the wall, and scanned the apartment.

There was nothing out of place. She’d know. She’d know if a book had been moved an inch out of position. But everything was precisely how she’d left it that morning. When she’d locked the door behind her.

Checked the lock twice. Maybe three times.

She looked down at the map on the floor again. Had she done that? Sometime during the night, between the bad dreams and the shakes, had she gotten up and taken the marker out of the drawer?

Then why couldn’t she remember?

It didn’t matter, she told herself, and walked back to pick up the map. She’d been upset, that was natural. She’d been very upset and she’d gotten the marker to be certain she didn’t forget the exact spot where she’d seen the murder.

It didn’t make her crazy.

She refolded the map. She’d buy a new one, she decided. She’d throw this one away—bury it in Joanie’s trash—and buy a new one. It was only a map. Nothing to worry about.

But when she heard footsteps on the stairs, she stuffed it hastily—guiltily—in her back pocket.

The knock was brisk and, if she could interpret the sound of knuckles on wood—irritated. It made her certain it was Brody on the other side of the door.

She took a moment to be sure she was calm enough, then walked to the door to unlock and open it.

“You ready?”

“I changed my mind. I’ll go by myself.”

“Fine. Do that.” But he nudged her back a step, then slammed the door behind him. “I don’t know why I bother. I didn’t drag Doc downstairs to take a look at you. Why the hell would I? It happens he comes in for lunch a few times a week—which, unless you’re blind and stupid, you’ve seen for yourself by now. It also happens that if we happen to be in there at the same time, we sometimes sit down together. It’s called being sociable. Happy now?”

“No. Not especially.”

“Good because this is bound to get you going again anyway. Rick’s made some inquiries—which would be his job, by my description of it—so word’s getting around. Doc asked me if I knew anything about it. Whether I’d have told him or not was up for debate until you served the soup. Damn good soup, by the way. You maniac.”

“I was in a psych ward for three months. Being called a maniac doesn’t hurt my feelings.”

“Maybe you should’ve given it a few more weeks.”

She opened her mouth, shut it. Then walked to the daybed, sat. And laughed. Kept laughing as she pulled the tie out of her hair so it fell free down her back. “Why is that comforting? Why the hell is that sort of rude, inappropriate response easier to hear than all the ‘you poor things,’ the ‘there, there, it’s all right nows.’ Maybe I am a maniac. Maybe I am just out of my mind.”

“Maybe you should stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I thought I had. I guess not. Well-meaning people, people who care about me, lined up doctors or therapists every time I blinked.”

“I’m not well meaning. I don’t love you.”

“I’ll remember that next time.” She set the tie on the little table by the daybed. “Are you still willing to take me out there?”

“My day’s shot to hell anyway.”

“Okay then.” She rose to retrieve her pack.

He stood by the door and watched her check the contents. Zip the pack. Unzip it, check inside again. Unless he missed his guess, when she zipped it shut a second time, she struggled for a moment not to open it yet again.

When he opened the door, she went out, locked it. Then simply stood for a moment staring at the door.

“Go ahead. Check the lock. No point worrying and obsessing over it after we leave.”

“Thanks.” She checked it, sent him a brief, apologetic look, then checked it again before she made herself start down the stairs.

“It’s an improvement,” she told him. “It used to take me twenty minutes to get out of a room. And that was with a Xanax to take the edge off.”

“Better living through chemistry.”

“Not so much. Pills make me…off. More off than I might seem to be to you.” Before she got into his car, she checked the backseat. “I didn’t care about feeling off for a while, but I’d rather just take the time to make sure about things than take a pill and not care about them.”

She secured her seat belt, tested it. “Don’t you care why I was in a psych ward?”

“Are you going to tell me your life story now?”

“No. But I figure since I’ve pulled you in this far, you should know part of it.”

He pulled away from the curve to start the drive around the lake and out of town. “I already know part of it. The sheriff did a background check on you.”

“He—” She broke off, made herself think it through. “I guess that would be a logical step. Nobody knows me, and suddenly I’m yelling murder.”

“Did they ever catch the guy who shot you?”

“No.” Automatically her hand came up to rub absently on her chest. “At least, they think they identified one of them, but he OD’d before they could bring him in and question him. There was more than one. I don’t know how many, but more than one. There had to be.”

“Okay.”

“Twelve people. People I worked with or cooked for and cared about. All dead. I should’ve been dead, too. It’s one of the things I think about. Why I lived and they didn’t. What’s the meaning of that?”

“Luck of the draw.”

“Maybe. Maybe it’s just that cold.” Was there comfort in the cold? she wondered. “They didn’t get but a couple thousand. Most people use credit cards when they go out to dinner. A couple thousand, and whatever was in wallets, purses. Some jewelry—nothing special. Wine and beer. We kept a good wine cellar. But that wasn’t why they died. Nobody would have stopped them, nobody would have put up a fight. Not over some money, some wine, some watches.”

“Why did they die?”

She stared at the mountains, so powerful, so wild against the milky blue of the sky. “Because the people who came in wanted it that way. For the fun of it. Thrill kills. I heard the cops say that. I’d worked there since I was sixteen. I grew up in Maneo’s.”

“You worked at sixteen. You must’ve been a wild child.”

“I had my moments. But I wanted to work. I wanted restaurant work. I bused tables, did food prep on weekends, during the summer and holidays. I loved it. I loved them.”

She could see it now, as it had been then. The bustle in the kitchen, the clatter outside the swinging door, the voices, the smells.

“It was my last night. They were giving me a little going-away party. It was supposed to be a surprise, so I was fooling around in the kitchen to give them time to set it up. There was screaming and gunfire and crashing. I think I went blank, just for a minute. You didn’t hear screaming and gunfire in Maneo’s. Not in a nice family restaurant. Sheryl Crow.”

“What?”

“On the kitchen radio. It was Sheryl Crow. I grabbed for my cell phone—that’s how I remember it, anyway. And the door swung open. I started to turn—or maybe I started to run. In my head, when I think about it, or dream about it, I see the gun, and the dark gray hooded sweatshirt. That’s all. I see that and I’m falling, then the pain erupts. Twice, they said. Once in the chest, and the other bullet grazed my head. But I didn’t die.”

When she paused, he glanced toward her. “Keep going.”

“I fell back into the closet. Cleaning supplies. I’d been putting away cleaning supplies in the closet, and I fell back inside. The cops told me that later. I didn’t know where I was. I came out of it, a little. Felt numb and cold and confused.”

She rubbed her hand between her breasts again. “I couldn’t get my breath. This weight on my chest. This awful pain, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air. The door was still open, not all the way, just a few inches. I heard voices, and at first I tried to call out for help. But I couldn’t. Lucky I couldn’t. There was crying and screaming, and laughing.”

She lowered her hand, very deliberately, into her lap. “Then I didn’t think about calling for help. I only thought about being quiet, very quiet, so they wouldn’t come and check. They wouldn’t come kill me.

“Something crashed. My friend, my line cook, fell on the other side of the door. Ginny. Ginny Shanks. She was twenty-four. She’d just gotten engaged the month before. Valentine’s Day. They were getting married in October. I was going to be her maid of honor.”

When Brody didn’t speak, Reece closed her eyes and let the rest come. “Ginny fell; I could see her face through the crack of the door. Bruised and bloody where they must have hit her. She was crying, and she was begging. And our eyes met, just for a second. I think they did. Then I heard the gunshot, and she jerked. Just once, like a puppet on a string. Her eyes changed. A fingersnap, and the life was just gone. One of them must have kicked the door, because it shut. Everything was black. Ginny was just on the other side of the door, and there was nothing I could do for her. For any of them. I couldn’t get out. I was in my coffin, buried alive, and we were all dead. That’s what I thought.

“The police found me. And I lived.”

“How long were you in the hospital?”

“Six weeks, but I don’t remember the first two at all, and only patches of the next. But I didn’t handle it very well.”

“Handle what very well?”

“The incident, surviving it, being a victim.”

“What would be the definition of handling well being shot, left for dead and seeing a friend killed?”

“Responding to therapy, accepting there was nothing I could have done to avoid or prevent any of it, eventually being grateful to have been spared. Finding Jesus or throwing myself into life’s pleasures until I wrung them dry,” she said impatiently. “I don’t know. But I couldn’t cope with it, or didn’t cope with it. Flashbacks and night terrors. Sleepwalking, bouts of hysteria, then bouts of lethargy. I’d think I’d hear them coming for me, see that gray sweatshirt on strangers on the street. I had a breakdown, hence the psych ward.”

“They put you in Psych?”

“I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital when I realized I wasn’t getting better. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t anything.” She rubbed her temple. “But I had to leave because I realized how easy it would be to stay in that controlled environment. I had to stop taking the pills because with them I pretty much stayed blank, and I’d been blank for large chunks of time too long already.”

“So now you’re just neurotic and anal.”

“That would be about right. Claustrophobic, obsessive/compulsive, with some occasional paranoia and frequent panic attacks. Crappy dreams, and I do sometimes wake up thinking it’s all happening again, or could happen again. But I saw those two people. I didn’t project, I didn’t imagine. I saw them.”

“Okay.” He veered off to the side of the road. “We’ll walk from here.”

She got out first and, bracing herself, pulled the map out of her pocket. “I went to get this when I was pissed, thinking you’d sicced the doctor on me. I went upstairs, got this out because I was going to come out here on my own.”

She opened the map, handed it to him.

“I don’t remember doing that, marking it up. I don’t remember, but that doesn’t mean I imagined what happened yesterday. I must’ve had a panic attack during the night, and I’m blocking it out.”

“Then why are you showing it to me?”

“You ought to know what you’re dealing with.”

He studied the map briefly, then refolded it. “I saw your face yesterday when you came running down the trail. If you imagined seeing that woman killed, you’re wasting your time in the kitchen. Anybody with that vivid an imagination should be in my line of work. You’d outsell J. K. Rowling.”

“You really do believe me.”

“Jesus. Listen up.” He shoved the map back into her hands. “If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here. I’ve got my own life, my own work, my own time. You saw what you saw, and it’s not fucking right. A woman’s dead, and somebody ought to give a shit about it.”

She closed her eyes a minute. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?” So saying, she stepped up to him, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her lips lightly to his.

“What would be the wrong way to take that?”

“As anything other than sincere gratitude.” She swung her pack over her shoulder. “Do you know the way?”

“Yeah, I know the way.”

As they stepped off the road, she gave him a quick glance. “That’s the first time I’ve kissed a man in two years.”

“No wonder you’re crazy. How was it?”

“Comforting.”

He snorted. “Some other time, Slim, maybe we’ll go for something a little more interesting than comforting.”

“Maybe we will.” Now think of something else, she ordered herself. “I ran down to the mercantile on one of my breaks this morning and bought your book, Jamison P. Brody.”

“Which one?”

“Down Low.Mac said it was your first, so I wanted to start with that. And he said he really liked it.”

“So did I.”

She laughed. “I’ll let you know if I do. Does anyone call you by your first name?”

“No.”

“What’s theP stand for?”

“Perverse.”

“Fits.” Now she wet her lips. “They could have hiked through from any direction.”

“You said you didn’t see any packs, any gear.”

“I didn’t, but they could have left it farther back, out of my line of vision.”

“There weren’t any tracks, Reece, in any direction, but for Rick’s going in and out. Look.” He crouched. “See here? I’m no Natty Bumppo, but I can handle the basics. My tracks from this morning, and Rick’s. Ground’s pretty soft.”

“Well, they didn’t fly in on the wings of a damn dove.”

“No. But if he knew anything about tracking, about hiking, he could’ve covered his tracks.”

“Why? Who’d look here for a dead woman no one saw him kill?”

“You saw him. And maybe he saw you right back.”

“He never looked around, never looked across.”

“Not while you were looking across. You ran, didn’t you? And left your stuff sitting on the rock. Maybe he caught a glimpse of you taking off, or just saw your pack on the rock. Two and two make four pretty quick. He covered up. It took us two hours to get back to my cabin. Another thirty minutes easy before Rick would’ve gotten out here. More like another hour because he talked to you first. Three hours? Hell, you could cover up an elephant march through here if you knew your ass from your elbow.”

“He saw me.” And her throat slapped shut on the idea of it.

“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Either way, he was careful. Smart and careful enough to take his time, cover up any sign he’d been here, or she had.”

“He saw me. Why didn’t I think of that before?” She passed a hand over her face. “He’d already dragged or carried her away, or weighed her down and tossed her in the water, by the time I got to you.”

“I’d go for the first option. Takes time to weigh down a body.”

“So he carried her away.”

Reece stopped, because there was the river rushing by ahead of the line of trees, the tumble of rocks. The blade of it cut through the canyon so the walls seemed to fly straight up. As if we were in a box, she thought, with the lid off to the spread of sky.

“From here,” she murmured. “It’s all so…alone here. The river, the presence of it, cuts you off from everything. And it’s all so beautiful, why would you care?”

“A good place to die.”

“No place is. Once you’ve been close enough, you know no place is a good place to die. But this is so stunning—the trees, the rocks, the walls, the water. It would’ve been the last thing she saw, and she didn’t see it at all. She was so angry. I think she didn’t see anything but him and her own rage. Then there would’ve been the fear, and the pain.”

“Can you see where you were from here?”

She walked out, closer to the river. Cooler today, she thought, and not as bright. The sun wasn’t as strong and the clouds were thicker—streams and rolls of white over the blue.

“There.” She pointed up, over. “I stopped there, sat there and ate a sandwich, drank some water. The sun felt good, and I liked hearing the water. I saw the hawk. Then I saw them, standing here.”

She turned to Brody. “Like we are. She was facing him, like this, and he had his back to the water. I said before I didn’t think she saw anything but him. I guess he was only seeing her, too. I watched her more, because she was more animated. A lot of movement.”

Reece threw her arms out, demonstrating. “Drama. You could feel the heat of her across the river. She was steaming. But he seemed very controlled. Or his body language was. Am I making this up?” She pressed her fingers over her eyes. “Am I remembering what happened, or projecting?”

“You know what you saw.”

The absolute calm in his tone had her dropping her hands, and quieted the flutters in her belly. “Yes. Yes, I do. She was winging her arms around, jabbing her finger at him.I’m warning you. It seemed like that. And she shoved him.”

Reece planted her hands on Brody’s chest, pushed. “I think he fell back a step,” she said drily. “If you wouldn’t mind getting into character.”

“Okay.” He obliged.

“He went like this.” Reece crossed her hands, flung them out. “I thought, Safe! Like the umpire’s signal.”

“Baseball?” He felt a trickle of amusement. “You thought baseball?”

“For a second. But it wasThat’s it. I’ve had enough. Then she slapped him.”

When Reece swung her hand, Brody caught her wrist. “I get the picture.”

“I wasn’t going to hit you. He took it, the first time, then she hauled off and hit him again. That’s when he pushed her down. Go ahead.”

“Sure.” Brody gave her a shove, and though it pushed her back a little, it didn’t take her down.

“It must’ve been a lot harder than that. No.” She lifted her hands when he smiled and feinted another shove. “I’ll just go with it.” She glanced back to gauge the distance to the rocks. Reenacting the crime didn’t mean she had to knock herself silly. “Wait. She didn’t have a pack on.” Reece shrugged hers off, tossed it aside, then dropped to the ground.

“She must’ve fallen harder, and I think she hit her head—bumped it, anyway—on the ground, or maybe on the rocks here. She stayed down a minute. Her hat fell off. I forgot that. Her hat fell off, and when she shook her head—like she was a little dazed—there was a glint. Earrings. She must have been wearing earrings. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

“I’d say you’re wrong about that. What did he do? Move toward her?”

“No. No. She got up, fast, lunged at him. She wasn’t afraid, she was pissed. Seriously pissed. She was screaming at him—I couldn’t hear, but I could see. He tossed her down. Not a shove this time. And when she fell, he straddled her.”

Reece got down, looked up at Brody. “Would you mind?”

“Sure. No problem.” He planted a foot on either side of Reece.

“He held out a hand, I think, but she wouldn’t let up. She propped up on her elbows and kept at him. Her mouth was moving, and I—in my head—heard her screaming and bitching. Then he got down.

“He more than sat on her, put his weight down to hold her,” she said when Brody crouched. “Oh.” She wheezed out a breath when Brody followed directions. “Yeah, like that. Nothing playful, nothing sexual—at least from my view. She was slapping out at him, and he held her arms down. No, don’t!” Panic spurted into her when Brody clamped his hands over her wrists. “I can’t. Don’t.”

“Take it easy.” He kept his eyes on hers as he loosened his grip, shifted his weight. “I’m not going to hurt you. Tell me what happened next.”

“She was struggling, twisting under him. But he was stronger. He yanked her head up by the hair, rapped it down hard. Then he…then he put his hands around her throat. She bucked, tried to throw him off, she grabbed his wrists, but I don’t think she had much left in her. Wait…he pinned her arms down with his knees, to stop her from hitting out. I forgot that, too, damn it.”

“You remembered it now.”

“She kicked out, trying to get some leverage, I guess. Her feet hammered against the ground, and her fingers dug into the ground. Then they stopped. Everything stopped, but he kept his hands around her throat. He kept them there, and I ran. Get up, okay? Get up.”

He merely shifted so he sat on the ground beside her. “Any chance she was still alive?”

“He kept his hands around her throat.” Reece sat up, brought up her knees and pressed her face to them.

He said nothing for a few minutes, just let the river run beside them while clouds shifted shadows over rock and water. “I figure you’re the glass-half-empty type.”

“What?”

“Glass is probably more than half empty because it’s cracked and what’s in it’s leaking out. So you see this happen and you think, Oh God, guilt, guilt, despair. I saw a woman murdered and couldn’t do anything to stop it. Poor her, poor me,” he continued. “Instead of thinking, I saw a woman murdered, and if I hadn’t been where I was when I was, no one would have known what happened to her.”

She’d propped her chin on her knees to study him while he spoke, and now cocked her head. “You’re right. I know you’re right, and I’m trying to look at it that way. Still, you don’t strike me as the glass-is-half-full type.”

“Half full, half empty, what the hell difference does it make? If there’s something in the damn glass, drink it.”

She laughed. Sitting where a woman had died only the day before, Reece felt the laugh rise in her chest and break free. “Good policy. Right now, I wish to God it held a nice chilly Pinot Grigio.”

After pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, she pushed to her feet. “Reenacting it left signs. Footprints,” she said as he rose. “Dents in the ground from the heels of my boots, flattened dirt, handprints. You don’t have to be Natty Bumppo to see a couple of people were here, fought here.”

Brody walked off a few feet to break off a fanning branch of willow and began sweeping it over the disturbed ground. “He’s smart,” he said as he cleared off the tracks. “He drags or carries her off, out of sight of the river, the canyon, then he gets a branch like this from another area, comes back, makes sure neither of them dropped anything. Have to keep your cool.”

He straightened, studied the ground. “Pretty clean. Natty might be able to see something, but I’m an amateur. Could be, maybe, you bring in a team of crime-scene experts, they’d find a stray hair, but what’s that going to prove?”

He tossed the branch aside. “Nothing. All he has to do is cover the tracks leading out. Plenty of places to bury a body around here. Or, if it were me and I had a car, I’d toss it in the trunk and drive somewhere else. Somewhere I could take my time digging a hole deep enough the animals wouldn’t uncover her.”

“That’s not cool. It’s cold.”

“Killing somebody takes ice or heat, depending. Getting away with it? Yeah, that takes cold blood. Seen enough?”

She nodded. “More than.”

9

AS THEY WALKED BACK, Reece uncapped her water bottle and drank. When Brody held out a hand, she passed it to him.

“They always say there’s no such thing as a perfect murder.”

He drank deep, handed her the bottle. “They say a lot of things, and they’re wrong a good part of the time.”

“They really are. But still, whoever she was, she belonged somewhere. She came from somewhere. Odds are she had a job, a home. She might have had a family.”

“Might have, could have.”

Annoyed, Reece jammed her hands in her pockets. “Well, she was connected to at least one person. And he killed her. They had something between them.”

“Back to might have, could have. They could have met the day they ended up here, or been together for a decade. They could have come from anywhere. Traveling in from California, up from Texas, out from back East. Hell, they could’ve been French.”

“French?”

“People kill in every language. The point is, the odds of them passing through are just as good as they are for them being from the area. Probably better. Fewer people live in Wyoming than live in Alaska.”

“Is that why you moved here?”

“Part of it. Probably. You work for a newspaper, a big-city paper, you’re in people up to your eyeballs. The point is, the odds are better that whoever these people were, they came from somewhere else.”

“And they got into a fight to the death because they got lost and he wouldn’t stop to ask for directions? It’s a male plague worthy of some serious ass-kicking, I grant you. But I don’t think so. They met there or went there because they had something to talk about. Or argue about.”

He liked the way she talked, Brody decided. Rarely in a straight line. Like when she cooked, juggling any number of dishes at the same time. “Supposition, not fact.”

“Fine, I’m supposing. And I’m supposing they weren’t French.”

“Possibly Italian. Lithuanian isn’t out of the question.”

“Fine, a Lithuanian couple gets lost because, like men across the globe, he values his penis—among other things—as a compass. So he’s incapable of asking for directions and thereby disparaging the power of his penis.”

He frowned at her. “This is a closely guarded male secret. How did you crack the code?”

“More of us know of this than you could possibly guess. In any case, they get out of their car, tromp through the trees toward the river, because sure, that’s the way to figure out where they are. They argue, fight, he kills her. Then, being a Lithuanian mountain man, he expertly covers all tracks and takes the body back to their rented Taurus so he can bury her in their homeland.”

“You ought to write that down.”

“If that’s the sort of ridiculous nonsenseyou write, I’m amazed you’ve been published.”

“I might’ve stuck with the French, just for that international scope. But it goes back, Slim, to they could have been anyone from anywhere.”

It helped to think of it as a puzzle. It gave it more distance somehow. “If he covered his trail the way he did, he knows something about hiking and tracking.”

“A lot of people do. On the ‘could be’ side, they may have been here before.”

Brody glanced around. He knew this type of terrain because he’d hiked in areas like it, and used areas like it in his work. There’d be columbine and money flowers spurting up before much longer. Honeysuckle blooming as it twined wherever it could reach. Shady spots, pretty spots.

It would show off better toward June.

“A little early in the season for tourists,” he calculated, “but people come this time of year because they want to avoid the summer and winter crowds. Or they’re heading somewhere else and stop for a short hike. Or the ones you saw live in the Fist and sampled your cooking.”

“That’s a really happy thought. Thanks.”

“You saw what he was wearing. Would you recognize it again?”

“Orange hunter’s cap, black all-weather jacket. Coat. No, jacket, I guess. I see that kind of thing every day. I just didn’t get a good enough look at him. I could hand-feed him the soup du jour and not know the difference. I don’t see how I’ll ever…Oh my God.”

He saw it, too. In fact, he saw the bear a good ten seconds before she noticed it lumbering along. “He’s not interested in you.”

“And you know that because you’re a bear psychic?” It seemed so unreal she wasn’t really scared. At least not actively. “God, he’s really big.”

“I’ve seen bigger.”

“Good for you. Um, we’re not supposed to run.”

“No. That would just entertain him until he caught up. Just keep talking, keep moving, just a little detour. Okay, he sees us.”

All right, she thought, starting to get really scared. Hello, bear. “And that’s good?”

She remembered the illustration in her guidebook of the suggested position for playing dead during a bear charge. It looked something like the child’s pose in yoga.

She could do that, no problem. She could easily fall right down on the ground, because if it charged, her legs were going to buckle anyway.

Before she could test the guidebook’s veracity, the bear gave them a long look, turned its tail and walked away.

“Mostly they’re shy,” Brody commented.

“Mostly. Excellent. I think I need to sit down.”

“Just keep moving. Your first bear sighting?”

“That close up and personal, yeah. I forgot to think about them.” She rubbed a hand between her breasts to make certain her abruptly drumming heart stayed where it belonged. “To be bear-aware, like it says in my guide. Kind a breathless,” she said and tapped her fingers to her chest again. “I guess he was beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way.”

“One thing. If there was a dead body nearby that he could scent, he’d have been more aggressive. So that means it’s either not around here, or buried deep enough.”

Now she had to swallow, hard and deep. “More pleasant images for me. I’m definitely having that wine. A really big glass of wine.”

SHE FELT SAFER when she was back in the car. Safer, and ridiculously tired. She wanted a nap as much as she wanted the wine. A dim, quiet room, a soft blanket, locked doors. And oblivion.

When he started the car she closed her gritty eyes for just a moment. And slid off the edge of fatigue into sleep.

SHE SLEPT QUIETLY, Brody thought, not a sound, not a movement. Her head rested in that nook between the seat and the window, and her hands lay limp in her lap.

What the hell was he supposed to do with her now?

Since he wasn’t entirely sure, he drove idly, taking impulsive detours to extend the trip back to town.

She handled herself better than she gave herself credit for. At least that was his opinion. A lot of people wouldn’t have gone back through what she had. He figured most would consider their duty done and over by reporting the crime.

She didn’t.

Maybe because of what she’d lived through before. Or maybe it was just the way she was built.

Checked herself into a psych hospital, he mused. And from the tone of her voice, he understood she thought of that as a kind of surrender.

He saw it as courage.

He also figured she considered her travels since Boston a kind of flight. He thought of it more as a voyage. Just as he considered his time since leaving Chicago. A flight was just fear and escape. A voyage? It was a passage, wasn’t it? He’d needed that passage to dig in and do what he wanted, to live by his own terms, his own clock and calendar.

From his point of view, Reece Gilmore was doing pretty much the same thing. She just carried a lot more baggage with her on the trip.

He’d never been in fear for his life, but he could imagine it. Imagining was what he did. Just as he could imagine the panic of lying in pain and confusion in a hospital bed. The despair of doubting your own sanity. Add it all up, it was a lot for one person to handle.

And she’d roped him in, which wasn’t easy to do. He wasn’t the type to try to mend the broken wing of a baby bird. Nature took its course, and the less people interfered with it, the better.

But he was sucked in now, and not just because he was a degree of separation away from witnessing a murder. Though that would have been enough.

She pulled at him. Not her weaknesses, but the strength she struggled to find and use to fight them back. He had to respect that. Just as he had to acknowledge the low simmer of attraction.

He never would’ve said she was his type. The mending steel of spine under the fragile shell. It made her needy yet, and he had no patience for needy women. Usually.

He liked them smart and steady, and busy with their own lives. So they didn’t take too much time out of his.

She’d probably been all of that before she was hurt, he decided. She might be that way again, but never exactly the same way. He thought it would be interesting to watch her finish putting herself back together, and get a good look at the results.

So he drove while she slept, across the yellow grasses and washed-out green of the ubiquitous sage. And he watched the Tetons spring up out of the plate of land. No gentle rise, no softening foothills to detract from that sudden and awesome power.

Snow still swirled on the peaks, and the slashes of white against the blue, the gray, added another layer of might as they knocked against the sky.

He could still remember his first sight of them, and how he, who’d never call himself a spiritual man, had been struck with their rough and terrible magic. The Rockies were grander, he supposed, and the mountains of the East more elegant. But these, the mountains that ringed what was, for now, his home, were primal.

Maybe he had come here because he didn’t have to jam his elbows into people everywhere he went to get a little space. But those mountains were a hell of a bonus feature.

He drove fast along the empty road across the sage flats where a small herd of bison grazed. Lumbering along, he noted, coats shaggy, big heads lowered. A couple of calves, probably brand-new, stayed close to their mothers.

Though he imagined Reece would enjoy seeing them, he let her sleep.

He knew the flats would erupt into bloom under the summer sun, blaze with impossible color among the sage. And he imagined that with all those acres of open, a grave could go unnoticed by man or beast. If the man had the patience to dig, long and deep.

He wound toward Angel’s Fist, and the stands of cottonwood and pine that bordered it. Reece moaned quietly in sleep. When Brody glanced at her, he saw she’d begun to quiver.

He stopped in the middle of the road, then turned to give her arm a quick shake. “Wake up.”

“No!” She came out of sleep like a runner off the starting block. When her fist shot out, he blocked it with the flat of his hand.

“Hit me,” he said mildly, “I’ll hit back.”

“What? What?” She stared blearily at her fist cupped firmly in his hand. “I fell asleep. Did I fall asleep?”

“If you didn’t, you gave a good imitation of it for the past hour.”

“Did I hit you?”

“You gave it a shot. Don’t try it again.”

“Check.” She willed her heartbeat to steady. “Can I have my hand back?”

He opened his fingers so that she drew her fist back and let it fall into her lap. “You always wake up like you just heard the bell for Round Two?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a long time—I can’t remember how long—since I slept when anyone’s been around. I guess I feel comfortable around you.”

“Comforting, comfortable.” That eyebrow winged up. “You keep using words like that, I’m going to feel honor-bound to change your mind.”

She smiled a little. “Your kind doesn’t hurt women.”

“Is that so?”

“Physically, I mean. You’ve probably shattered your share of hearts, but you don’t rough the owner up first. You’d just stab her ego to death with words, which is—now that I think about it—just as bad as a pop on the jaw. Anyway, I appreciate you letting me sleep. I must’ve…Oh! Oh, just look at them.”

She’d shifted away, and the view that filled the windshield blew everything else out of her mind. Struck, she unhooked her seat belt, pushed open her door. The wind streamed over her as she stepped out of the car.

“It’s all soraw, so stunning and scary. All this open, and there they are, the—I don’t know—fortress of them taking over everything. It’s like they just shoved their way up, straight out of the ground. I love the suddenness of them.”

She walked to the front of the car, to lean back against the hood. “I look at them every day, out my window, or when I’m walking to or from work. But it’s not the same as being out here without buildings, without people.”

“I’m people.”

“You know what I mean. Out here, faced with them, you feel so utterly human.”

She looked over, pleased he’d come around to join her. “I thought I’d pass through, pick up a little work, move on. And every morning I look out my window at the lake, and I see them mirrored in it, and I can’t think of any reason to leave.”

“Gotta land somewhere, eventually.”

“That wasn’t the plan. Well, I didn’t really have a plan, so to speak. But I thought I’d end up winding my way back East sooner or later. Probably not Boston. Maybe Vermont. I went to school there, so it’s familiar. I was sure I’d miss the green. That East Coast green.”

“The meadows get green, and the flats bloom, the marshes. It’s a picture.”

“I bet it is, but so is this. Better than that glass of wine.” She tipped her head back, closed her eyes and just breathed.

“You look like that sometimes when you’re cooking.”

She opened her eyes again, the deep Spanish brown. “I do? Like what?”

“Relaxed and calm. Happy.”

“I guess that’s where I’m confident, and being confident makes me relaxed and happy. And I’ve missed it. I couldn’t make myself go into a kitchen after what happened. It stole that from me, or I let it be stolen from me. Whatever, I’m getting it back. Listen to the birds. I wonder what they are.”

He hadn’t noticed the birdsong until she mentioned it. Now she turned to look around, and her eyes went wide. She gripped his arm, pointed. “Look. Wow.”

When he did, he saw the small herd of bison, munching their way over the sage flats. “First sighting there, too?”

“Like the bear, I’ve seen them. But I’ve never been standing out with them. It’s more exciting. Oh look! Babies.”

She’d softened on the word, drawing it out like it was melting.

“Why do women always saybabies in just that tone?”

She merely batted the back of her hand at his arm. “They’re so sweet, and then they get so big.”

“Then you fry them up on the grill.”

“Please, I’m having a really nice nature moment here. Seeing them makes me wish I was riding a horse instead of riding in an SUV. More, you know, home on the range on a horse. I want to see an antelope,” she decided. “Well, first I’d have to know how to ride one.”

“You want to ride an antelope?”

“No.” She laughed again, low and easy. “Crossed my thoughts. I want to see an antelope while I’m riding a horse. But I don’t know how to ride.”

“Didn’t Lo offer to teach you?”

She slid her hands into her pockets, still watching the herd. “That’s not what he wanted me to ride. But I may take him up on it—the horseback riding lesson—when I’m sure he’ll behave.”

“You like your men to behave?”

“Not necessarily,” she said absently. “But in his case.”

The alarm bells didn’t go off until after he’d turned, planted his hands on the hood on either side of her and caged her in.

“Brody.”

“You’re not stupid, and you’re not slow. Jittery’s different. Do you want to tell me you didn’t figure this was coming?”

Her heart kicked, and maybe some of it was fear. But not all of it. “My mind hasn’t been focused in this area for a long time. I guess it slipped by me. Mostly slipped by me,” she corrected.

“If you’re not interested, you’d better make it clear.”

“Of course I’m interested, it’s just—whoa.”

The last word all but squeaked out as he took her arms, lifted her right up to her toes. “You’d better get your breath,” he warned. “We’re going for a dive.”

She couldn’t get her breath, or her brains, or her balance. The dive was steep and sudden so that the air that had been so fresh and cool went pumping hot. His mouth wasn’t patient or kind, didn’t persuade or seduce. It just took what it wanted. The sensation of being swept up, swept away, swept apart left her giddy and loose.

Hot, she thought. Hard, she thought. Hungry. She’d nearly forgotten what it was like to have a man hunger for the taste of her, then take his fill.

Even as she wondered if there’d be anything left of her when he was done, her arms locked around his neck. His hands gripped her hips and yanked her roughly against him.

Her heart pounded against his—beat after hard, fast beat. And she trembled. But her mouth was as avid as his; her arms twined firm around his neck. It wasn’t fear he tasted as he ravaged her lips, but shock spearing through a sultry blast of need.

Because he wanted more, he simply hitched her up by the hips until she sat on the hood of his car. Then he moved in, and took more.

Maybe she lost her mind, and she’d worry about it later. But for now she gave in to the demands of her body and hooked her legs around his waist.

“Touch me.” She nipped his bottom lip, his tongue. “Touch me somewhere. Anywhere.”

His hands streaked under the soft cotton of her sweater, closed over her breasts. The moan broke from her as her body strained for more. More contact, more sensation, more everything. His hands were rough and hard, like the rest of him, rough and hard and direct. Strong, so that everywhere he touched she felt wonderfully swollen, tenderly bruised.

Her response, her demands, had the control he hadn’t expected to need thinning to its last taut wire. He could see himself taking her right on the hood of the car, just ripping off whatever clothes were in the way and driving into her until this raw, ripe tension was released.

“Easy.” His hands weren’t completely steady this time as he took her arms. “Let’s ease back a little.”

She could barely hear him over the roaring in her head, so she let that head fall limply to his shoulder. “Okay. Okay. Wow. We can’t—we shouldn’t—”

“We did. We damn sure will again, but since we’re not sixteen, it won’t be in the middle of the road on the hood of a car.”

“No. Right.” Is that where they were? She managed to lift her head, focus. “Jesus. We’re in the middle of the road. Move. You have to move.”

She leaped down, dragged her hands through her disordered hair, tugged at her sweater, her jacket.

“You look fine.”

She didn’t feel fine. She felt used—but not nearly used enough. “We can’t…I’m not ready to…This isn’t a good idea.”

“I’m not asking you to marry me and bear my children, Slim. It was a kiss, and a damn good idea. Sleeping together’s an even better one.”

She pressed her hands to her temples. “I can’t think. My head’s going to explode.”

“A few minutes ago, it felt like another part of you was going to explode.”

“Stop. Would you just stop? Look at us, groping each other, talking about sex. A woman’s dead.”

“She’s going to be dead whether or not we go to bed. If you need a little time to get your head around that, fine. Take a couple days. But if you think, after that, we’re not going to have each other, then I was wrong. You are stupid.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“See. I was right.” He turned to stroll around the car.

“Brody. Will you just wait a goddamn minute.”

“For what?”

She stared at him, big and male and rugged, backed by the towering spread of the dramatic Tetons. “I don’t know. I absolutely don’t know.”

“Then let’s get back. I want a beer.”

“I don’t sleep with every man I’m attracted to.”

Now he leaned on the open car door. “According to you, you haven’t slept with anybody in two years.”

“That’s right. If you think you’re going to take advantage of my…dry spell—”

“Bet your skinny ass I am.” And he grinned as he slid into the car.

She marched her skinny ass to the passenger door and huffed her way inside. “This is a ridiculous conversation.”

“So shut up.”

“I don’t even know why I like you,” she muttered. “Maybe I don’t. I may have responded to you the way I did because it’s been a long time since I had any…intimate personal contact.”

“Why don’t you just say you haven’t gotten laid?”

“Obviously, I don’t have your elegance with words. But my point is, just because I responded doesn’t mean I’m going to let you dump me into bed.”

“I don’t plan to knock you on the head with my club and drag you off by the hair into my cave.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.” She fumbled out the shield of her sunglasses. “And while I’m grateful to you for believing me, for supporting me, I—”

He braked so hard she jerked against the seat belt. “One has nothing to do with the other.” His voice was dangerously cold. “Don’t go there.”

“I…” She closed her mouth, took a breath when he began to drive again. “That was insulting, you’re right. It was insulting to both of us. I told you I couldn’t think. My body’s all churned up, and my brain’s inside out. I’m pissed off, I’m scared, and I’m horny. And I’m getting a headache.”

“Take a couple of aspirin, lie down. And let me know when horny leads the pack.”

Reece stared at the mountains. “This has been the strangest couple of days.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I want to talk to the sheriff. You could just drop me off there.”

“Go home, take the aspirin, call him.”

“I need to talk to him face-to-face. Drop me off,” she repeated as they crossed the line into Angel’s Fist. “Go have your beer.” When Brody didn’t respond, she shifted in her seat to face him. “I’m not asking you to go with me. I don’t want you to. If Sheriff Mardson doesn’t think I can stand up for myself, he has less reason to believe me.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’m trying to.”

When he pulled over in front of the sheriff’s office, he sent her a curious look. “What’s for dinner tomorrow?”

“What?”

“You’re feeding me.”

“Oh. I forgot. I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

“That sounds delicious. Go on, get this done. Then get some sleep. You look ready to drop.”

“Please, no more flattery. You’ll turn my head.” She waited one beat, two, then grabbed her pack from the floor and fumbled for the door.

“Problem?”

“No. Well, I thought you’d kiss me goodbye.”

His lips twitched as he cocked an eyebrow. “Gee, Slim, are we going steady?”

“You’re such an asshole.” But a laugh tickled her throat as she shoved open the door. “And when you ask me to go steady, make sure to bring a ring.” She stuck her head in the door. “And tulips—they’re my favorite.” Then slammed it.

The baffled amusement carried her to the sheriff’s door. Nerves didn’t start to bump until she’d opened it, stepped inside.

It smelled of stale coffee and wet dog. She noted the location of the first on a short counter on the left side of the room where a nearly empty pot of what looked like black mud steamed away. And the source of the second lay snoring on the floor beside the two face-to-face metal desks where, she assumed, the deputies worked.

Only one was occupied. Mop of dark hair, little goatee, cheerful hazel eyes, slight, youthful build. Denny Darwin, Reece remembered, who liked his eggs over hard and his bacon next to burnt.

He glanced up as the door opened, flushed a little. The way his fingers hurriedly tapped keys on the computer led her to believe whatever he’d been doing on it wasn’t official business.

“Hey, Ms. Gilmore.”

“Reece.” He wasn’t that much younger than she was, she thought. Twenty-five, maybe, and with a fresh open face despite the goatee. “I was hoping to speak to the sheriff if he’s in.”

“Sure, he’s back in his office. Just go ahead.”

“Thanks. Nice dog.” She paused, took a closer look. “I’ve seen that dog. It’s the one who likes to swim in the lake.”

“That’d be Moses. Abby Mardson’s dog. Sheriff’s middle girl?”

“Yes, of course. She tosses a ball in the lake for him so he can dive in and get it.”

“He likes to keep us company when the kids’re in school. Stayed over some today.”

Moses rolled one eye open, gave Reece the once-over out of a brown furry face and stirred enough to thump his huge, hairy tail.

“We’ve usually got some soup bones over at Joanie’s. Just let me know if Moses wants one.”

“Appreciate that.”

“Nice meeting you, Moses.”

She walked through the outer office in the direction Denny had gestured. There was another desk for Dispatch, empty and quiet now, just before the hallway.

Down one end of the hall were two open cells, currently unoccupied, and down the other a door markedSTORAGE, another markedLAVATORY. Across from the storeroom, Rick Mardson’s office door stood open.

He sat behind an oak desk that looked as if it had been through several wars. He faced the door, with the window behind him high enough so that it gave him privacy while it let inlight. Besides the expected computer and phone system, the desk held a couple of picture frames, file folders and a bright red mug as a nesting pot for various pens and pencils.

On the old coatrack in the corner hung his hat and a faded brown barn jacket. Movie posters cheered up the industrial beige walls with images of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman in their cowboy best.

He rose as she hesitated at the doorway. “Come on in, Reece. I just called your place again.”

“I should get an answering machine. Have you got a minute?”

“Sure. Have a seat. Want some of the nastiest coffee in Wyoming?”

“I’ll skip it, but thanks. I wondered if you had any news.”

“Well, on the good-news front, everyone in Angel’s Fist’s accounted for. Same for any visitors we’ve had in and around last few days. No missing persons in the area matching the description of the woman you reported.”

“No one’s realized she’s gone yet. It’s only been a day.”

“That may be, and I’ll check on that periodically.”

“You think I imagined it.”

He walked over to the door, shut it, then came back to sit on the edge of his desk. There was nothing in his face but kindness and patience. “I can only tell you what I know. Right now, I know every female in my town is accounted for, and the visitors who’re here, or were here as of yesterday, are alive and well. And I know, because part of my job is to check these things out, that you had a bad time a couple years back.”

“That doesn’t have any bearing on this.”

“Maybe it does. Now I want you to take some time and think it all through. It could be you saw a couple of people, just as you said, having an argument. Maybe things even got physical. But you were some ways off, Reece, even with the field glasses. I want you to think if it’s possible both those people walked away.”

“She was dead.”

“Now, seeing as you were across the river, up on the trail, you couldn’t take her pulse, could you?”

“No, but—”

“I went over your statement a couple of times. You took off running, got Brody, went back. Got about thirty minutes there. Isn’t it possible that woman got up and walked off? Maybe still mad, maybe with a few bruises, but alive and healthy?”

The glass wasn’t half empty or half full, Reece thought. It was just a damn glass, and she’d seen it for herself. “She was dead. If she walked off, how do you explain the fact there were no tracks? No sign anyone had been there?”

He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did that same endless patience was in his tone. It was beginning to crawl up her spine like spiders. “You’re not from around here, and it was your first time on the trail. You were shocked and upset. It’s a long river, Reece. Easy for you to mistake the spot when you got back with Brody. Hell, it could’ve been a half a mile on up.”

“I couldn’t have been that far off.”

“Well, I’ve looked the best I can, but it’s a lot of ground to cover. I went ahead and contacted the closest hospitals. No woman was admitted or treated who matched your description with trauma to the neck or the head. I’ll follow up on that again tomorrow.”

She got to her feet. “You don’t think I saw a thing.”

“You’re wrong. I think you saw something that scared and upset you. But I can’t find a single thing to support you witnessed a homicide. My advice is to let me follow through on this, and you’ve got my word I will. And you put it aside for now. I’m about to head on home, see my wife and kids. I’ll give you a lift.”

“I’d rather walk, clear my head.” She stepped to the door, turned. “That woman was dead, Sheriff. That’s not something I can just put aside.”

When she left, Mardson blew out a breath, shook his head. He’d do all he could do, he thought, and that was all that could be asked of a man.

Now he was going to take his dog and go home, and have dinner with his wife and kids.

10

BRODY GOT HIS beer and tossed a frozen pizza in the oven. When he punched the button on his answering machine, it spit out a message from his agent. The book scheduled for early fall had snagged a very decent book-club deal. Which might call for a second beer with dinner.

Maybe, with a part of his take from it, he’d splurge on a new TV. Plasma. He could hang it over the fireplace. Could you hang plasma screens over a fireplace? Or would the heat screw it up?

Well, he’d find out, because it would be very sweet to stretch out on the couch and watch ESPN on one of those big-ass screens.

But for now, he stood in the open doorway of his kitchen, drinking the beer in his hand while he watched the light soften and the shadows deepen toward evening.

The quiet went down just as smoothly as that first cold beer.

He had work to make up—can’t afford a big-ass plasma TV if you didn’t put in the time at the keyboard. Which meant he’d likely put in a couple hours on his current work-in-progress before he called it a night. Besides, he was looking forward to digging into it.

He had a woman to kill.

Still, over a beer, waiting for his pizza, he could spare the time to think about another woman.

She didn’t go down smooth. Reece Gilmore had too many jagged edges to slide easy into a man. Maybe that’s what made her so intriguing when he hadn’t had any intention of being intrigued. He liked the opposition of her—gutsy and fragile, cautious and rash. People who walked straight down one road got tedious after a while.

Added to it, he couldn’t help but feel they were in thissituation together.

Until they found their way through that situation, it would pay to find out more about her.

He glanced around. His laptop was on the table.

“No time like the present,” he decided, and with another sip of his beer, closed the door.

He booted up, then got the pizza out of the oven. The cutting wheel was, like his coffeemaker, one of his few kitchen essentials. He put the entire pie, cut into four slices, onto a plate, grabbed a couple paper towels and, popping the top on a second beer, considered it dinner.

He doubted it took him any longer than it had taken the sheriff to access background data on Reece. Googling her, he got enough hits to keep him busy, and interested.

He dug up an old article on up-and-coming Boston chefs that featured the then twenty-four-year-old Reece. He was right, he noted as he scanned the photo. She looked better carrying another ten pounds or so. In fact, she looked pretty damn amazing.

Young, vibrant,essential, somehow, grinning into the camera while holding a big blue bowl and a shining silver whisk. The article gave her educational background—a year in Paris added a lot of polish—personalized it with an anecdote about how she’d prepared five-course dinners for her dolls when she was a child.

It quoted both Tony and Terry Maneo, the owners of the restaurant where she’d worked—a couple who’d be dead in a few years. They stated she was not only the jewel of their business but one of the family.

There were other bits and pieces in the article, and a smattering of others. He learned she was orphaned at fifteen, raised from that point by her maternal grandmother. She’d remained single, spoke fluent French and enjoyed entertaining friends, among whom she was apparently renowned for her Sunday brunches.

Adjectives used to describe her wereenergetic, creative, adventurous and, his own previous choice,vibrant.

How would he describe her now? Brody asked himself as he sat back, chewed on pizza. Anal, nervous, determined.

Hot.

There was a splashyBoston Globe feature about her taking the position as head chef for a “wildly popular hot spot known for its American fusion cuisine and convivial atmosphere.”

The standard background/color data was included along with a photo of a more sophisticated-looking Reece wearing her hair up and back—nice neck—and posed in what he assumed would have been the stainless steel glory of her new kitchen in a sexy black suit and mile-high seductress-red heels.

“I’ll always treasure my years at Maneo’s, and everyone I’ve worked with or cooked for there. Tony and Terry Maneo not only gave me my first professional opportunities, but gave me an extended family. While I’ll miss the comfort and familiarity of Maneo’s, I’m thrilled and excited to join the creative team of Oasis. I intend to uphold the restaurant’s high standards—and add a few surprises.”

“Look good enough to eat yourself there, Slim,” he said aloud, scanning back from her quote to her photo.

He checked the date of the article, noted it had been published just about the time he told his editor at theTrib to kiss his ass. When he brought up the first report of the killings at Maneo’s, he saw it was three days after theGlobe feature.

Goddamn lousy deal, all around. Reece was listed as the only survivor, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and in critical condition. Police were investigating and so on. It spoke of the owners, and the restaurant they’d run for more than a quarter of a century. There were quotes from family and friends—the shock, the tears, the outrage. The reporter used terms likebloodbath, carnage, brutality.

Subsequent articles reported the progress of the investigation—little to none—and Brody could read the frustration of the investigators in every clipped quote.

Funerals and memorial services were reported on for those who’d died. Reece’s condition was moved up to serious. She was reported to be under police protection.

Then it petered out, little by little, the stories moving from front page, above the fold, to page three, and back. There was a small mention, almost an afterthought, when Reece was released from the hospital. There was no quote from her, no photo.

That’s the way it went, Brody mused. News was only news until something else came along. It took juice to get the print, the airtime, and the juice had been wrung out of the Maneo Massacre, as the papers had dubbed it, in under three weeks.

The dead were buried, the killers unidentified, and the single survivor left to pick up what pieces she could from a shattered life.

WHILE BRODY FINISHED his pizza and read about her, Reece filled her little bathtub with hot water and an indulgent squirt of drugstore bath foam. She’d taken the aspirin, forced herself to eat some cheese and crackers, with a sprig of grapes to balance it out.

Now she was going to soak, drink her wine and start Brody’s book in the tub. She didn’t want to think about reality, at least not for the next hour. She debated whether or not to close and lock the bathroom door. She’d have preferred to lock it, but the room was so small she’d never be able to handle being closed in that way.

She’d tried it locked a couple of times already and had ended up scrambling out of the tub, dripping and panting, to reopen the door.

The front door was locked, she reminded herself, and the back of a chair under the handle. She was perfectly safe. But after she slid into the tub she had to sit up twice, to strain her body to see around the doorway into the living area. In case. To cock her ears for any sounds.

Impatient with herself, she took two long, slow sips of wine.

“Just stop it. Just relax. You used to love to do this, remember? Sit and soak in a bubble bath with a glass of wine and a book. It’s time to stop scrubbing yourself down in three minutes flat and scrambling out of the shower as if Norman Bates were waiting to hack you to death.

“And oh, forGod’s sake, shut up!”

She closed her eyes, took another sip of wine. Then opened the book.

The first line read:

Some said that Jack Brewster had been digging his own grave for years, but as the shovel bit through the hard winter earth he was a little pissed off to have that comment taken literally.

It made her smile, and hope that Jack wasn’t going to end up in the ground anytime soon.

She read for fifteen minutes before nerves had her scooting up to peer into the living area again. And Reece marked it as a new record. Pleased with herself, she managed another ten before the growing jitters told her she’d had enough.

Next time, she promised herself as she pulled the plug, she’d try for longer.

She liked the book, and that was a relief, she decided. She set it down so she could slather the body cream that matched the bath foam on her skin. She’d get into bed with it, that’s what she’d do. She’d use Brody’s Jack Brewster to close out all the places her mind wanted to go.

She wouldn’t write in her journal, not tonight.

Maybe she’d been upset with Sheriff Mardson when she left his office, but now that she was calmer she had to admit he was doing all he could possibly do.

Whether he believed her or not, he hadn’t been dismissive. Exactly.

So, she was going to do her best to take at least one piece of his advice. She was going to put it aside, just for a few hours.

She pulled on the flannel pants and T-shirt she wanted to sleep in, yanked the pins out of her hair. A small pot of tea, she thought, and an evening with a book.

After putting the kettle on, she tried to drum up some enthusiasm for making a sandwich. Instead she toyed with a menu for the next night.

Red meat, naturally. Maybe a little pot roast with a red wine sauce. She’d have to zip to the market as soon as she could manage a break, slap some marinade together. Easy enough, she thought as she started a list. New potatoes and carrots, fresh green beans if she could find them. A manly meal. Fat buttermilk biscuits.

She could do some stuffed button mushrooms, if time allowed, for an appetizer. And polish it off with berries and cream. No, too girlie. Apple brown betty, maybe. Simple, traditional food.

Would she end up in bed with him after? It wasn’t a good idea; in fact it was a terrible idea. But, damn it, he’d definitely gotten her juices flowing. There was relief in knowing theycould flow, and frustration in not being sure what she should or could do about it.

She should wash her sheets, just in case. She only had the one set, so she wroteLaundry with a question mark on her list. She’d need to get a good red wine. Maybe brandy, too. And damn it, she not only didn’t have any coffee, she had nothing to brew it in.

She stepped back, pressed fingers to the center of her forehead where the headache was sneaking back. She should cancel. Obviously she was going to make herself crazy trying to create the perfect meal when Brody would probably be fine with a couple of buffalo burgers and steak fries.

Smarter, better, she should cancel, pack her things, leave Joanie a note and get out of Angel’s Fist. What reason was there to stay?

A woman had been murdered, which was a good reason to leave the area. By now, or certainly soon, everyone in town would know she claimed to have seen murder done, and there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support that claim.

She didn’t want people looking at her out of the corner of their eyes again. Like she was a bomb ticking toward the blast. Besides, she’d made progress here, and could leave without shame. She was back to cooking, she’d set up an apartment—such as it was. She’d lasted twenty-five minutes in the bathtub.

She could feel her sexuality starting to simmer.

Another session with Brody, she thought, that sexuality was going to boil over. Nothing wrong with that, not a thing wrong with it. They were both unattached adults. Sex was healthy; contemplating having sex with an attractive man was a normal female activity.

It was progress.

So she could take all that progress, all those steps, and use them in the next town.

She set her pencil down when the kettle began to sputter. It was whistling shrilly when she reached up for a cup and saucer. No teapot, she remembered. Maybe in the next place she stopped she’d treat herself to one.

She turned off the burner, moved the kettle to a cool one. As the whistle died, someone banged on the door.

She’d have shrieked if she’d had the breath left in her for it. As it was, she jerked back hard enough to rap her hip on the counter. Even as her hand closed around the handle of her chef’s knife, Joanie’s voice barked through the locked door.

“Open up, for chrissake. I haven’t got all night.”

On jellied knees Reece hurried across the room and, as quietly as she could manage, drew the chair away. “Sorry, just a second!”

She unlocked the door, unlatched the security chain. “I was in the kitchen,” Reece said.

“Yeah, and this place is so spacious I’m surprised you heard me.” Joanie trooped in smelling of spices and smoke. “Scraped together the last bowl of that soup—have to make more next time. You eat?”

“Well, I—”

“Never mind.” Joanie set the covered hot take-away cup on the counter. “Eat now. Go on.” She waved impatiently when Reece hesitated. “It’s still hot. I’m taking my break.”

So saying, she walked to the front window, opened it a few inches. Then she took out a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Lights. “You gonna piss me off and say I can’t smoke in here?”

“No.” Having nothing else suitable, Reece carried over the tea saucer to serve as an ashtray. “How’s the crowd tonight?”

“Not bad. That soup was popular. You can do tomorrow’s if you’ve got an idea for it.”

“Sure, that’s no problem.”

“Sit down and eat.”

“You don’t have to stand by the window.”

“Used to it.” But Joanie planted a butt cheek on the sill. “Smells good in here.”

“I just had a bath. Tropical Mango.”

“Nice.” Joanie took a contemplative drag. “You got company coming?”

“What? No, no, not tonight.”

“Lo’s downstairs.” Absently, Joanie tapped ashes out the open window. “He wanted to bring that soup up. I don’t think it was to hit on you, especially as he said he thought Linda-gail should come up with him. Still, give him an inch.”

“That was nice of him.”

“He’s worried about you, figures you must be scared and upset.”

“Used to it,” Reece said with a half smile as she sat down to eat the soup. “But I’m doing all right.”

“He’s not the only one worried. Word’s got around, as word does, about what you saw on the trail yesterday.”

“Saw, or thought I saw?”

“Well, which is it?”

“I saw.”

“Okay then. Linda-gail wanted me to tell you she’d come up and stay the night if you didn’t want to be alone, or you could go to her place.”

Reece paused with the spoon partway to her lips. “She did?”

“No, I just made that up so you could gawk at me.”

“That’s so sweet of her. But I’m all right.”

“You look better than you did, I’ll say that.” Bracing her back against the window jamb, Joanie flicked more ashes. “Seeing as I’m your boss and your landlord, it’s been my task today to field inquiries as to how you’re doing, and to promise to give you people’s good thoughts. Mac, Carl, Doc, Bebe, Pete, Beck and so on. I won’t say some of them didn’t come by hoping to get a look at you, or a nugget of information from me, but most everyone was sincere in their concern. Thought you should know.”

“I appreciate the inquiries, the good thoughts, the concern. Joanie, the sheriff can’t find anything.”

“Some things take longer to find than others. Rick’ll keep looking.”

“Yes, I suppose he will. But he doesn’t really believe I saw what I said I saw. Why should he, really? Why should anyone? Or if they do now, they’ll think about it differently once word gets around—as word does—about what happened back in Boston. And…” She trailed off, narrowing her eyes. “I guess it already has.”

“Somebody murmured to somebody who murmured to somebody else. So, yeah, there’s been some talk about what happened back there, and how you were hurt.”

“Had to happen.” She tried to shrug it off. “Now there will be more murmurs, more talk. Then it’ll be, ‘Oh, that poor thing, she had such a bad time and can’t get past it. Imagining things.’”

“Damn, and me without my violin.” With her habitual quick jabs, Joanie stubbed out the cigarette. “I’ll make sure I have it next time you have a pity party.”

“You’re so mean.” Reece spooned up soup. “Why is it the two people who give me little to no sympathy in any area are the ones who help the most?”

“I figure you had a gutful of sympathy in Boston, and don’t want a refill.”

“Direct hit. Before you came up, I was talking myself into leaving. Now I’m sitting here eating soup—and itwould be better with fresh herbs—and talking to you, and I know I’m not going anywhere. It feels better knowing that. Even though when you leave I’m going to check the lock on the windows, lock the door, check to make sure the phone’s got a dial tone.”

“You gonna put the chair under the doorknob again, too?”

“Nothing gets by you.”

“Not a hell of a lot.” Joanie carried the makeshift ashtray over to set down by the sink. “I’ve got sixty years under my belt, so—”

“You’re sixty? Get out.”

Unable to prevent a quick smile at Reece’s obvious disbelief, Joanie shrugged. “I’ll be sixty a year from next January, so I’m practicing. That way it won’t be such a shock to my system. Now I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“I’d’ve put you ten years under sixty.”

Joanie gave her a long, cool look, but her lips twitched at a smile again. “You bucking for a raise before it’s time for one?”

“If I can get it.”

“I know good stock when I see it, that’s what I was going to say. You’re good stock, and you’ll hold up. You held up to worse.”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t,” Joanie snapped back. “I’m standing here looking at you, aren’t I? You just remember, there may be big noses and big ears in the Fist, but there are good people in this town, else I’d’ve taken myself out of here long ago. Bad things happen everywhere; you’ve got cause to know that. People around here take care of themselves and each other when it’s needed. You need a hand, you ask for it.”

“I will.”

“I have to get back down.” As she stepped back, Joanie glanced around. “You want a TV up here? I’ve got an extra one I can spare for now.”

Reece started to say no, don’t bother, too much trouble. Tune those violins, she thought. “I’d really like to have one, if you’ve got one you can lend me.”

“You can haul it up tomorrow.” At the door, Joanie stopped, sniffed. “Rain’s coming in again. Expect to see you at six, sharp.”

Alone, Reece got up to close the windows, lock the door, but she deliberately took her time. Like any woman, she told herself, locking up for the night. And if she braced the chair under the knob, it didn’t hurt anyone.

THE RAIN CAME just after twoA.M. and woke her. She’d fallen asleep with the lights on and Brody’s book in her hand. There was a muffled roll of thunder under the slap of rain on the roof, against the windows. She liked the sound of it, the windy power of it that made her feel all the more cozy and snug in her little bed.

She snuggled down, rubbing the kink out of her neck. Yawned, tugged the covers up to her chin. And in her habitual scan of the room before closing her eyes again, she froze.

The front door was open. Just a crack.

Shuddering, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, then gripped the flashlight beside the bed like a club. She had to get up, she had to make her legs work. Her breath wheezed in and out as she quivered her way out of bed, then ran to the door.

She slammed it, locked it, turned the handle hard to be sure it didn’t give. Her pulse continued to race as she dashed to the windows, assuring herself each one was securely locked as she took quick peeks through the glass.

There was no one out in the rain. The lake was a black pool, the street slick and empty.

She tried to tell herself she’d left the door unlocked by mistake, or had managed to unlock it when she checked it that last time before she got into bed. The wind had blown it open a bit. The storm had come in, the wind had blown.

But she got down on her hands and knees by the door and saw the faint scratches where the chair had scraped.

The wind hadn’t pushed the door open hard enough to shove the chair that inch.

She sat with her back to the wall by the door, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

SHE MANAGED to doze, then managed to get dressed, to work. As soon as the mercantile opened for the day, she took her break and walked down to buy a dead bolt.

“You know how to install this thing?” Mac asked her.

“I thought I could figure it out.”

He gave her a pat on the hand. “Why don’t I do that for you? I thought I’d head up there for lunch today anyhow. Won’t take me long.”

Ask for help when you need it, Reece remembered. “I’d really appreciate that, Mr. Drubber.”

“Next to done already. I don’t blame you for being a little bit nervous. A good strong lock’ll make you feel better.”

“I know it will.” She looked around when the door opened. “Morning, Mr. Sampson,” she said when Carl came in.

“Morning. How you doing?”

“I’m okay. Um, I guess the sheriff’s already talked to you, but I just wonder if either of you has seen a woman with long dark hair and a red coat in town in the last few days.”

“Had some hikers,” Mac told her. “All of them male, though two of them wore earrings. One of ’em in his nose.”

“Get lots of that in the winter with the snowboarders,” Carl commented. “The boys got more hardware stuck to them than the girls. Had that retired couple from Minnesota come through here in an RV couple days ago,” he reminded Mac.

“The woman’s hair was stone gray, Carl, and he was carrying three hundred pounds if he was carrying an ounce. That’s not the sort the sheriff asked about.”

“Just saying.” Carl glanced over at Reece. “Could be the people you saw were just wrestling. Playing around, like. People do the damnedest things.”

“Yes, they do.” Reece reached for her wallet. “Should I just leave the lock with you, Mr. Drubber?”

“That’ll be fine, and put your money away. I’ll put this on Joanie’s tab.”

“Oh no, it’s for me, so—”

“You planning on drilling it out of the door and taking it with you somewhere?”

“No, but—”

“I’ll settle it up with Joanie. You got a soup special today?”

“Old-fashioned chicken noodle.”

“That’ll hit the spot. Anything else you need today?”

“Actually, I do, but I’ll have to get it later. Break’s over.”

“Give me the list.” He picked up a pencil, licked the tip. “I’ll bring it up when I come for lunch.”

“Some service. Ah, I need a small rump roast, a pound of new potatoes, a pound of carrots,” she began.

When she’d run through it, Mac wiggled his eyebrows. “That sounds like company dinner.”

“I guess it is.” Where was the harm? “I’m cooking for Brody. He’s helped me out with a few things recently.”

“Bet he’s getting the best end of that deal.”

“Any leftovers, they’re yours. For putting in the lock.”

“There’s a deal.”

She headed back, drawing in air fresh and cool from the night’s storm. She’d handled it. Done the sensible thing.

And when she went to bed that night—alone or otherwise—she’d have a strong new lock on the door.

LO CRUISED INTO Angel’s Fist in his Ford pickup with a Waylon Jennings CD wailing on the stereo. Outside of town he’d been listening to Faith Hill, whom he considered extreme on the hot-o-meter. But even with that, and her superior pipes, a guy just couldn’t be riding around in town with a girl singing in his pickup.

Unless she was alive and kicking, anyway.

He had his mind on a girl now. Actually on a couple, but he had plenty of room in his mind for females. He saw one of them in skinny jeans and a red sweatshirt standing on a stepladder painting the shutters on the little dollhouse she rented a bright, sunny yellow.

He gunned the motor, waiting for her to turn and admire the way he looked in the muscular black truck. When she didn’t, he rolled his eyes, pulled over.

God knew he’d always had to work harder with this female for crumbs than he ever did with others for the whole damn cake.

“Hey, Linda-gail!”

“Hey, yourself.” She kept right on painting.

“What are you doing?”

“Having myself a facial and a pedicure. What does it look like I’m doing?”

He gave another eye roll and got out of the truck to saunter over. “Got the day off?” He’d already snuck a look at the schedule and knew she did.

“That’s right. You?”

“Got some people in, but they’re going on a paddling tour today. You seen Reece?”

“No.” She slapped paint on wood hard enough to splatter it and make him jump out of range.

“Watch it.”

“Move it.”

Ornery woman, he thought. He didn’t know why he kept coming back for more abuse. “Listen, I just wondered how she was, that’s all.”

“Your ma said to give her room, so I’m giving her room.” Still she sighed, lowered the brush. “I wish I knew, though. It’s an awful thing.”

“Awful,” he repeated and waited a moment. “Kind of exciting, though.”

“Itis !” She twisted around to look down at him. “We’re sick, sick people, but God, murder and all. Bebe thinks it was a couple of people who robbed a bank or something, then had a falling-out, so he killed her and now he’s got all the money.”

“Good a theory as any.”

Lowering her brush, she leaned on the ladder. “ButI think they were having this adulterous fling and ran away together. Then she changed her mind and wanted to go back to her husband and kids, so he killed her in the heat of passion.”

“Sounds good, too. Weighed the body down, then crammed it into an old beaver lodge.”

“Oh, that’s justawful, Lo. Worse than burying her out there.”

“Probably didn’t do that anyway.” He leaned on the ladder as well. He could smell the paint, but standing this close, he could smell whatever she rubbed on her skin right along with it. “Have to know where to find an old beaver lodge, wouldn’t he? And they couldn’t have been from around here. Any way you slice it, he’s long gone by now.”

“I guess. Doesn’t make it any better for Reece.” She went back to painting, and the way he was standing, her cute butt was right at eye level.

A man only had to lean in a couple of inches to—

“I guess you’re going to go by, see her.”

“Who?” He blinked himself clear. “Oh, Reece. I don’t know. I thought I might, if you wanted to go with me.”

“Your ma told me not to pester Reece today. Besides, I’ve got this started. I need to finish it.”

“Take you half the day the way you’re going.”

She looked over her shoulder. “I’ve got another brush, smart guy. You could do something useful instead of standing around posing.”

“It’s my day off.”

“Mine, too.”

“Shit.” Damned if he wanted to paint stupid shutters. But he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, anything else to do. “Guess I could give you a hand.” He reached down for a brush that still had the mercantile’s price sticker on the handle. “Maybe, if we get this done before next Tuesday, we could drive out to the ranch. I could saddle us up a couple of horses. Nice day for a ride.”

Linda-gail smiled to herself as she painted. “Maybe. It is a pretty nice day.”

DETOURS

Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it begun, or if there were

A day when it was not—

—EMILY DICKINSON

11

REECE HAD TO DASH upstairs on her next break. Using the key Mac had dropped off at Joanie’s, she unlocked the new, sturdy dead bolt.

Just hearing the sharp click made her feel better. She tested it a couple of times, then let out a sigh of relief.

But she had to hurry, she reminded herself, get the marinade made and the roast in it so she could zip back downstairs and finish her shift.

She found a note on her counter from Mac, written in his clear and careful hand, and held in place by the corner of the new roasting pan she’d had on her list.

Went ahead and put the groceries away for you, didn’t want to leave the perishables out. Started a tab for you, so you can settle up with me at the end of the month. You enjoy your dinner. Me, I’m looking forward to those leftovers. M.D.

What a sweetie, she thought, and wondered idly why some smart woman hadn’t snapped him up.

She got what she needed from the refrigerator, from the cupboard, then opened the cabinet below the counter for the mixing bowl.

It wasn’t there. None of her bowls were there. In their place were her hiking boots and backpack.

She went down, slowly, to her knees.

She hadn’t put them there, she hadn’t. Her boots and the pack belonged in the little closet. Carefully, as if defusing a bomb, she drew them out, studied them. She unzipped the pack, found her spare water bottle, her compass, her penknife, the moleskin, the sunscreen. Everything just where it belonged.

Trembling a little, she carried them to the closet. And there were the mixing bowls, sitting on the shelf above the hangers.

It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. A moment of absentmindedness, that was all. Anyone might make such a silly mistake. Anyone at all.

She set the boots on the floor, hung the pack on the hook she used for it. And could see herself doing exactly what she’d done when she returned from going out to the river with Brody: Even before she took the aspirin, before she ran her bath, she took off her boots, put them and her pack in the closet.

She would swear she did.

And the bowls. Why would she have moved them in the first place?

But she must have. The way she must have marked up the map. Just blanking it out. Lost time, she thought, resting her forehead on the closet door. She didn’t want to believe she was losing time again, as she had during her breakdown. But the bowls were in the closet, weren’t they?

Mac Drubber had hardly moved them around as a little joke. So that left her.

It was just stress, she assured herself. She’d had a trauma, and it plagued her mind, so she’d put a couple of things in the wrong place. It wasn’t a problem, didn’t have to be a problem if she recognized it for what it was.

She simply carried the bowls back, put the one she needed on the counter, set the rest where they belonged.

Refusing to think about it any further, she minced, measured and whisked.

WHEN HER SHIFT was over, she unlocked the door again. This time she checked all her things. Cupboards, closet, medicine cabinet, dresser.

Everything was just where it should be. So she put the little incident aside, washed the new roasting pan Mac had delivered. And got down to doing what she loved.

It had been a long time since Reece had prepared a serious, intimate meal. And for her, it was like love rediscovered. The textures, the shapes, the scents, the selections were physical, emotional, even spiritual.

While the vegetables bubbled and browned in the roast’s juices, she opened a bottle of Cabernet to let it breathe. It had probably been silly to buy the cloth napkins in their bright, paisley print, she thought as she arranged the place settings on the counter. But she couldn’t bring herself to use paper for a company meal.

And they looked so pretty and festive tented on the simple white plates. And the candles were as practical as they were attractive. The power might go out sometime, and her flashlight batteries might die. Plus the little blue glass holders hadn’t cost very much.

She’d decided to stay awhile, hadn’t she? It didn’t hurt to buy a few things to make the room more homey. More hers. It wasn’t as if she was tearing through her paycheck on some spree buying rugs and curtains and artwork.

Though a bright colorful rug would look nice over the old, scarred floorboards. She could always sell it before she moved on. Something to think about anyway, she thought as she checked the time.

She caught herself humming as she chopped and mixed the filling for the mushrooms. A good sign, she realized. A strong sign proving she was fine. Nothing to worry about here.

She’d always had music when she worked in the kitchen—rock, opera, New Age—whatever fit her mood and the meal.

Maybe she’d buy a little CD player for the counter, just for company. She glanced over at the reassuring glint of the new dead bolt against the faded paint of the door. She was safe here, so why not be happy and comfortable, as well?

She was going to hike again, too. And she might see about renting or borrowing a boat to take out on the lake. How hard could it be to row a boat? She’d like to find out.

That would be another step toward being normal instead of just pretending to be.

She had a date, didn’t she? Sort of. And that was pretty damn normal. Just as Brody being ten minutes late was probably normal.

Unless he wasn’t coming at all. Unless he’d rethought what had happened—or almost happened—between them and was opting out before things got complicated. Why would a man choose to get tangled up with someone who was emotionally screwed up? Someone who checked the door three times and still managed to leave it unlocked. Who couldn’t remember writing all over a map with red marker. Who put her hiking boots in a kitchen cabinet.

Must be sleepwalking, Reece thought with a sigh. Regressing. Next thing she’d be wandering the street naked.

She stopped, closed her eyes and drew in a breath. She smelled the mushrooms, the peppers and onions, the roasting meat.

She was not only safe, and fairly sane, she was productive. She had nothing to worry about tonight but preparing a good meal. Even if she ended up eating it by herself. Even as she thought it, she heard footsteps on the stairs.

She let the initial panic come, let it go. By the time the knock sounded she was steady again. Wiping her hands on the dish towel hooked in her waistband, she crossed over to unlock the door.

Steady, she thought, but not stupid. “Brody?”

“You expecting someone else? What’s for dinner?”

So she was smiling when she unlocked and opened the door. “Salmon croquettes and steamed asparagus with a side of polenta.”

His eyes narrowed as he stepped in. Then he took a good sniff of the air and gave a teeth-baring grin. “Meat. Looks like you might want to put this away for another time.”

She took the wine he offered, noted it was a nice Pinot Grigio. He paid attention, she realized, even when he didn’t seem to be.

“Thanks. I’ve got some Cabernet open, if you’d like a glass.”

“Wouldn’t turn it down.” He took off his jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair. “New lock?”

Paid attention, she noted again.

“Mr. Drubber put it in for me. I guess it’s overkill, but I’ll sleep better.”

“TV. You’re coming up in the world.”

“I decided to embrace technology.” She poured him a glass of wine. Turning, she took the roast out of the oven, set it on the stovetop.

“Ah, just like Mom used to make.”

“Really?”

“No. My mother could burn takeout.”

Amused, Reece finished stuffing the mushrooms. “What does she do?”

“She’s a psychiatrist. Private practice.”

Trying to ignore the automatic bump in her belly, Reece concentrated on the mushroom caps. “Oh.”

“And she macramés.”

“She what?”

“Makes things by tying rope into knots. I think she once macraméd a small studio apartment. Furnished. It’s an obsession.”

Reece slid the mushrooms into the oven, set the timer. “And your father?”

“My father likes to cook out on the grill, even in the winter. He’s a college professor. Romance languages. Some people think they’re an odd combo. She’s intense and sociable, he’s on the shy and dreamy side. But it works for them. You having any of this wine?”

“In a minute.” She set out a dish of olives. “Any siblings?”

“Two, one of each.”

“I always wanted a brother or sister. Someone to fight with, or to bond with against authority. I’m an only child, and both my parents were only children.”

“More turkey at Thanksgiving that way.”

“Always a bright side. One of the reasons I loved working at Maneo’s was that it was so noisy and full and dramatic. We weren’t noisy and dramatic at home. My grandmother’s wonderful. Steady and loving and fair. So good to me.” She raised her glass in a half toast, drank. “I’ve given her a lot to worry about the last couple of years.”

“Does she know where you are?”

“Oh, sure. I call back home every couple weeks, e-mail regularly. My grandmother especially loves e-mail. She’s a busy, modern woman, with a very full life of her own.” She turned to check the mushrooms, flipped the gauge to broil. “She divorced my grandfather before I was born. I’ve never met him. She started her own decorating business.”

Absently, Reece glanced around the tiny apartment. “She’d shudder to see what I haven’t done with this place. Anyway, she loves to travel. Had to put a lot of that on hold when my parents were killed—car accident when I was fifteen, and Gram raised me from there. She didn’t want me to leave Boston. And I couldn’t stay.”

“Steady and loving and fair. She probably wants you happy more than she wants you in Boston.”

She mulled that over as she got out a plate. “You’re right, but I’ve so enjoyed all my servings of guilt the last months. Anyway, I’ve got her mostly convinced I’m fine. So she’s in Barcelona right now, on a buying trip.”

She pulled out the mushrooms, sprinkled them with Parmesan. Set them under the broiler. “These would be better with fresh, but I couldn’t find any.”

“I’ll probably be able to choke one or two down.”

Once they were done to her specification, were arranged on a plate, she set them on the counter between them. “This is the first meal I’ve cooked for anyone in two years.”

“You cook every day downstairs.”

She shook her head. “That’s work. I mean it’s the first meal I’ve cooked for pleasure. The other night doesn’t count. That was a throw-it-together deal. I’ve missed doing this, and didn’t realize just how much until tonight.”

“Glad to help.” He picked up a mushroom, popped it in his mouth. “Good.”

She took one herself, bit in. Smiled. “Yes, they are.”

IT WASN’T so hard. Easier for her than going out, finding or going along with some activity designed to pass the time or create conversational gambits. She could relax here, enjoy making the final preparations for the meal. And oddly, she could relax with and enjoy him.

“It’ll be easier with this setup if I plate the food. Is that all right with you?”

“Go ahead.” He gestured toward his plate with his wineglass. “Don’t be stingy.”

While she served, he poured them both more wine. He’d noted the candles, the fancy napkins, the sturdy pepper grinder. All new, he thought, since his last visit.

And he’d noticed his book sitting on the tiny table by her daybed.

The woman was settling in, he decided, and fully expected to see a vase of flowers and a couple pictures on the wall before too much longer.

“I started your book.” She lifted her gaze to his as she spoke, and his heart took one, quick lurch.

The woman had a pair of eyes on her.

“How’s that going for you?”

“I like it.” She came around the counter to sit beside him, spread her napkin on her lap. “It’s scary, and that’s good. It takes my mind off my own nerves. I like Jack—he’s such a screwup. Hope he doesn’t end up in that grave. Plus, I think Leah can straighten him out.”

“Is that what women are supposed to do? Straighten men out?”

“People are supposed to straighten people out, when they can, and if they care enough. She cares for him. So I hope they end up together.”

“Happily ever after?”

“If justice doesn’t triumph and love doesn’t make the circle in entertainment fiction, what’s the point? Real life sucks too often.”

“Happily ever after doesn’t win Pulitzers.”

She pursed her lips as she studied him. “Is that what you’re after?”

“If it was, I’d still be working for theTrib . Cooking pot roast over a diner in Wyoming, or flipping buffalo burgers in that diner, isn’t going to win you whatever the epicurean equivalent of the Pulitzer might be.”

“I thought I wanted that once, too. Important awards, acknowledgment. I’d rather cook pot roast.” She paused a minute. “How’s that going for you?”

“I’d give you an award.” He cut another piece, then followed it up with part of the biscuit he’d generously buttered. “Where’d you get the biscuits?”

“I made them.”

“Get out.” His disbelief was instant and sincere. “Like with flour?”

“That would be one ingredient.” She passed him the bowl so he could take another.

“A lot of happy steps up from the Doughboy and Hamburger Helper that ruled in my house.”

“I should hope so. I’m a food snob,” she said when he grinned at her. “Sue me. Let me guess what’s in your larder. Frozen pizza, cans of soup and chili, cereal boxes, maybe some Eggos. Hot dogs, a couple of those Hungry-Man dinners.”

“You forgot the mac and cheese.”

“Ah yes, the single man’s staple. Dried elbow pasta and cheese powder. Yum.”

“Keeps body and soul together.”

“Yes, like paste.”

He speared one of the tiny roasted potatoes on his plate. “Going to straighten me out, Slim?”

“Well, I’ll feed you now and then, which works for both of us. I can—” She broke off, dropping her fork when the quick blast sounded outside.

“Carl’s truck,” Brody said calmly.

“Carl’s truck.” She picked up her wine with both hands. “Gets me every time. I wish he’d get that damn thing fixed.”

“You and everyone else in the Fist. Do you ever write any of this stuff down?”

“What stuff?”

“Recipes.”

“Oh.” She ordered herself to pick up her fork, to eat despite the fact that a fist was still kneading her stomach like a ball of dough. “Sure. I was organized and a little anal even before I went crazy. I’ve got recipes filed on my laptop with two thumb drive backups. Why? Are you planning on trying your hand at buttermilk biscuits?”

“No. I just wondered why you haven’t done a cookbook.”

“I used to think I might, eventually, when I got a prime slot on the Food Channel,” she added with a quick smile. “Something hip and fun and skewed toward the young, urban dinner party and Sunday brunch crowd.”

“Eventually’s a myth. You want to do something, you do it.”

“No Food Channel slot on my horizon. It’s just not something I could handle.”

“I meant the cookbook.”

“Oh. I haven’t given that any thought in…hmmm.” Why couldn’t she write a cookbook? She had hundreds of recipes in her files and had tested all of them.

“Maybe I’ll play with it a little. Sometime or other.”

“If you put a proposal together, I can send it to my agent if you want.”

“Why would you do that?”

He ate the last bite of meat on his plate. “Damn good pot roast. Now if you’d written a manuscript for a novel, the only way I’d read it would be if you held a gun to my head or slept with me. Under those conditions, if it didn’t completely suck, I might offer to have my agent give it a look. But since I’ve personally sampled your cooking, I can make the offer without the gun or the sex. Up to you.”

“Seems reasonable,” she replied. “Under those conditions, how many manuscripts have you sent to your agent?”

“That would be none. The subject’s come up a few times, but I’ve managed to slip through loopholes.”

“Do I have to sleep with you if I put a proposal together and your agent decides to represent me?”

“Well, yeah.” He shook his head as if the question were ridiculous. “Obviously.”

“Of course. I’ll think about it.” Relaxed again, she sat back with her wine. “I’d offer you seconds, but, one, I promised Mr. Drubber some leftovers; two, there wouldn’t be enough for me to send some of the roast home with you so you could make sandwiches; and three, you’ll need to save room for dessert.”

Brody latched on to point one. “How come Mac rates leftovers?”

“For installing my dead bolt. He wouldn’t let me pay for it, either.”

“He’s a little sweet on you.”

“I’m a little sweet on him. Why isn’t he married?”

Brody gave a sad, sad sigh. “Typical female question. I had higher hopes for you.”

“You’re right, it is typical. But I wish he had someone making him pot roast and working with him in the store.”

“He’s got you making him pot roast, apparently. And he’s got Leon and Old Frank working with him in the store. Beck fills in part-time when Mac wants him.”

“Still, it’s not like having someone who works with you and cares that you get a nice hot meal at the end of the day.”

“Word is he had his heart broken about a quarter century ago. Was engaged, and she jilted him—if not at the altar, steps from it. Took off with his best friend.”

“Not really. Really?”

“That’s the word, which is probably duded up to make it more important. Some root of truth in it, I imagine.”

“That bitch. She didn’t deserve him.”

“He probably doesn’t even remember her name.”

“Of course he does. I bet she’s on her fourth husband by now, and has a raging prescription drug habit brought on by complications from her third face-lift.”

“You’re a little mean. I like it.”

“When it comes down to someone hurting someone I care about, I’m vicious. So. Why don’t you retire to the salon, enjoy your wine. I’m going to clear this up.”

“Defineclear .”

“Watch and learn.”

“Fine, but the view’s better from here. I saw a picture of you from a few years back. Articles on the Internet, from papers, magazines,” he explained when she only stared at him.

“Why were you looking at articles on the Internet?”

“About you specifically? Curiosity. Your hair was shorter.”

Reece picked up the plates, took them to the sink. “Yes. I used to go to this upscale salon on Newberry. Pricey, but worth every penny. Or it was to me then. I haven’t been able to handle a salon since…” She turned on the water, squirted in dish soap. “So I’ve let it grow.”

“It’s nice hair.”

“I used to love going to the salon, having someone so focused on me, my appearance. Sitting there sipping the wine or tea or fizzy water they’d serve me, walking out feeling fresh and new. It was one of those areas of life where I loved being female.”

She turned away from the sink to divide the leftovers into the two take-away boxes she’d gotten from Joanie’s. “After I got out of the hospital, my grandmother treated me to a spa day at my salon. Booked hair, nails, a facial, a massage. Everyone was so solicitous, so gentle. I panicked in the dressing room. I couldn’t even unbutton my shirt to put on the robe. Just had to get out.”

She took the boxes to store in the refrigerator. “My stylist—I’d gone to him for years. He’s a sweetheart. He offered to come to the house for me. But I just couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Mortification played a big role.”

“That’s just stupid.”

“Maybe, but it was real. And it was easier to be embarrassed than afraid. In the big scheme, beauty-salon phobia isn’t such a hardship. But they stack up.”

“Maybe you should try it again.”

From the sink, she shot him a look over her shoulder. “Do I look that bad?”

“You look good. You’ve got lucky genes. But it’s stupid not to try to get back something you enjoy.”

Lucky genes, she thought as she set dishes in the drainer. Not exactly a poetic compliment. Still, it made her feel better about her appearance than she had in a very long time.

“I’ll put it on my list.”

She turned, drying her hands on the cloth just as he pushed off the stool. She didn’t take a step back—though she thought of it. Retreat wouldn’t work with him. More to the point, she supposed, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to step back or step toward him.

He took the cloth out of her hands, tossed it aside in a way that made her wince. It needed to be laid flat to dry so it wouldn’t—

He laid his hands on the lip of the sink on either side of her, much as he’d done on the hood of his car. “What’s for dessert?”

“Apple brown betty with vanilla bean ice cream. It’s been warming in the oven while we…”

His mouth captured hers, firm and strong. She tasted the wine on his tongue, heady and tempting, and felt the testing graze of his teeth. Her blood flashed as it might with a lightning strike.

“Oh boy,” she managed. “It’s like having the circuits in my brain crossed. All sizzle and smoke.”

“Maybe you need to lie down.”

“I’d like to. Let me say first, I’d like that. I even washed the sheets, incase.”

His lips quirked. “You washed the sheets.”

“Seemed like the thing to do. But…Would you just take a step back? I can’t breathe right.”

He eased back. “Better?”

“Yes and no.” He was so compelling, she thought. She stood by her initial impression of him. Not handsome, but so compellingly attractive. So absolutely male. Big hands, big feet, hard mouth, hard body.

“I want to go to bed with you; I want to have all those feelings again. But I think I need to wait until I’m a little more sure of myself.”

“And of me.”

“It’s one of the things I like about you. You get the point of things. It would be normal for you—good, possibly great—but normal. For me, being intimate again would be—will be—monumental. I guess we’d both better be sure, because that’s a big weight on you.”

“Okay. You’re not sleeping with me for my sake.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Damn considerate of you.” He gave her a quick jerk, took her mouth again. This time his hands ran down her sides, shaping her breasts, waist, hips. And once more, he stepped back. “What the hell is apple brown betty?”

“Who? Oh. Wait.” She took a moment, eyes closed, until her brain settled back down between her ears. “It’s delicious, that’s what the hell it is. Go sit down, give me a minute and I’ll prove it. You want coffee?”

“You don’t have coffee.”

“Actually…” She sidestepped to avoid contact with him again, and picked up a thermos she had on the counter. “I got some from downstairs.”

“You got coffee?”

She saw—for once—she’d surprised him. “Light, one sugar, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She fixed the dessert, served it in the living area. “It’s not sex,” she said, “but it’s a nice end to a meal.”

He took the first spoonful. “Where has this been all my life?”

“I learned to make it for my father. It was a favorite of his.”

“A man of good taste.”

She smiled, toyed with her own. “You haven’t said anything at all about…I’m not sure what to call it.”

“I think the term’smurder .”

“Yeah, the term’smurder . One of the sheriff’s theories is that I mistook the spot, and she wasn’t dead. Maybe I saw a couple of people in an altercation, but it wasn’t murder. Which is why no one’s reported anyone like her missing.”

“And you disagree.”

“On every point. I know what I saw and where I saw it. Maybe she hasn’t been reported missing because she’s not important to anyone. Or was, well, from France.”

This time Brody smiled. “Wherever she was from, odds are someone saw her. Getting gas, buying supplies, in a campground, in a motel. How well can you describe her?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“No, I mean, could you describe her to an artist?”

“Like a police artist?”

“Angel’s Fist doesn’t run to that, but we’ve got a couple of artists. I was thinking of Doc.”

“Doc?”

“He does charcoal sketches. Sort of a hobby, but he’s not bad.”

“And I’d be describing a murder victim, not getting a medical evaluation?”

Brody shrugged. “If you don’t trust Doc, we can get someone else.”

“I trust you.” She nodded when Brody frowned. “See? I told you about the weight. I trust you,” she repeated, “so I’m willing to try this with Dr. Wallace. If you come with me.”

He’d already planned to go with her. There was no possible way he’d miss out on any angle of the situation. But he continued to frown as he spooned up more dessert. “You want me to go with you, what have you got to trade for my time? I’m thinking along the lines of something that goes with the bottle of white in your fridge.”

“I’ve got Sunday off. I’ll take care of the menu.”

He polished off the last bite in his bowl. “I trust you. I’ll talk to Doc.”

12

SO HOW’D IT GO?” Linda-gail set the tub of cleared dishes on the counter for Pete, then gave Reece an elbow bump.

“How’d what go?”

“Your date with Brody last night.”

Reece flipped the burgers she was grilling for a table of after-school teenagers. “I just fixed him dinner. A payback for a favor.”

“Just dinner.” Linda-gail rolled her eyes over at Pete. “And you’re going to tell me you didn’t make a move on that?”

“She’s in love with me.” Pete slid dishes into the sink. “She can’t help herself.”

“It’s true. It’s a constant battle of control back here, every shift.”

“You bought candles,” Linda-gail pointed out. “And cloth napkins. And fancy wine.”

“Jesus.” Reece didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe. “Are there no secrets in the Fist?”

“None I can’t unearth. Come on, give me some dish. My own love life’s been as sparse as Pete’s hairline lately.”

“Hey! My hair’s just taking a little rest between growing seasons.” Pete slicked a hand over what hair he had left. “And I can feel my scalp starting to tingle in anticipation of a new crop.”

“Need some more fertilizer. Is he a good kisser?” Linda-gail demanded.

“Pete? Amazing. I’m a puddle at his feet. Order up,” Reece said when she’d finished plating the burgers, fries, and the little tubs of coleslaw she already knew would go to waste on the high-school crowd.

“I’ll get it out of you sooner or later.” After gathering up the plates, Linda-gail sashayed out.

“I am an amazing kisser,” Pete announced. “Just FYI.”

“I never doubted it.”

“Guys like me—you know,compact guys—pack a hell of a punch. We…fuck me.”

“I really don’t think I can take the time for that right at the moment.” Amused, Reece glanced over.

Then everything inside her went woozy and sick. Blood dripped from the hands Pete gripped together and splattered on the floor at his feet.

“Teach me to pay attention to what’s in the water, goddamn it. Sliced it good. Hey. Hey. Hey!”

She heard Pete shout as if he stood on a mountaintop and she in the valley below. Then the shouts went to buzzing, and the buzzing to silence.

The quick taps on her cheek brought her around. When Joanie’s face swam into her vision, nausea rolled in Reece’s belly. “There’s blood.”

“Is she all right? Christ, Joanie, she went down hard. I couldn’t get to her. Is she all right?”

“Stop breathing down my throat, Pete. She’s fine.” But Joanie was already running a hand over the back of Reece’s head, checking for bumps. “Go on down to Doc’s. Get that hand stitched up.”

“I just want to make sure she’s okay. She might be concussed or something.”

“How many fingers?” Joanie demanded of Reece.

“Two.”

“There, she’s fine. Now go get that hand tended to. Can you sit up, girl?”

“Yes. Pete.” Fighting nausea and the shakes, Reece sat up on the kitchen floor. “Is it bad? Your hand.”

“Aw, Doc’ll sew it right up.”

He had a cloth wrapped around it, but Reece could see the blood seeping through. “I’m sorry.”

“My own fault. You just take it easy now.” He patted Reece’s shoulder with his good hand before he straightened up.

“Got a knot coming up on the back of your head here. I’ll get you some ice.”

“It’s okay.” Reece gripped Joanie’s fingers. “I just need to get my breath back. Someone should go with Pete. That’s a bad gash.”

“Sit still a minute.” Joanie got up. “You there, Tod! You drive Pete down to the doc’s. Your burger’ll wait five minutes, and it’ll be free.” She turned back. “Satisfied?”

“There’s blood.”

“I can see that. A man’s bound to bleed when he slashes his hand with a knife. That’s all there is to it. Accidents happen in kitchens all the time.”

“I’ll clean it up, Joanie.” Linda-gail stepped in. “Juanita’s covering my tables.”

Saying nothing, Joanie got a small ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in a thin cloth. “Hold that on the knot,” she ordered Reece. “Once you get your feet back under you, you can go on upstairs. I’ll take over here.”

“No, I’m okay. I can work. I’d rather work.”

“Fine. Get up then, and let’s see how steady you are on your feet. Dead pale,” Joanie pronounced when Reece gripped the counter to haul herself up. “Take a break, get some air. Drink some water.” She pushed a bottle into Reece’s hand. You get some color back, you can go on back to work.”

“Air would be good. Thanks.”

When Joanie jerked her head, Linda-gail nodded and followed Reece out the back.

“You want to sit down?” she asked Reece.

“No, I’ll just lean here for a minute. You don’t have to watch me. I’m just feeling a little queasy and a lot stupid.”

And shaky, Linda-gail thought as she took the bottle of water from Reece’s unsteady hands and uncapped it herself. “Spiders do that to me. Not just the big fat ones—you know the ones that look like they could carry off a good-sized cat if they put their mind to it? But even the little bitty ones give me the serious creeps. I once ran straight into a door and knocked myself silly trying to get out of the room where I saw a spider.

“Put that ice pack on your head, like Joanie said to. Bet you’ve got yourself a big fat spider-sized headache.”

“I guess I do. But Pete—”

“You fainting like that scared Pete so bad he forgot how bad his hand must’ve hurt. So that’s something.”

“A good deed.”

“And Joanie’s worried enough about both of you she hasn’t gotten pissed yet that she’s going to have to find somebody to fill in for him until the stitches are out. Two good deeds.”

“I’m loaded with them.”

“You want to go out for a beer later to toast your good deeds?”

Reece took another cool sip of water. “You know what, I would.”

THE BAR FOOD at Clancy’s wasn’t bad, at least not washed down with beer. But more important to Reece was she’d taken another step on her journey back.

She was sitting in a bar with a friend.

A very strange bar, to her East Coast sensibilities.

There were trophies hanging from the wall. Mounted heads of bear, elk, moose and mule deer adorned the knotty pine paneling, along with what Linda-gail identified for her as a couple of whopping cutthroat trout. They all stared out into the bar with what Reece thought of as a little shock, a little annoyance.

The paneling, with its lower section of logs, looked as if it had soaked up a generation of smoke and beer fumes.

The floors were scuffed and scarred and had probably been hit with kegs of spilled beer over time. Part of the area, just in front of a low stage, was sectioned off for dancing.

The bar itself was big and black, and lorded over by Michael Clancy, who’d come to Wyoming straight from County Cork some twelve years before. He’d married a woman who claimed to be a quarter Cherokee and called herself Rainy. Clancy looked like what he was, a big, bluff Irishman who ran a bar. Rainy tossed nachos and potato skins, and whatever else she might be in the mood for, in the kitchen.

The bar stools were worn down on the seat and shiny from a dozen years of asses. There was Bud and Guinness on draft, and in long-necks a few local brews including something called Buttface Amber, which Reece had declined. Other options were Harp by the bottle, or if you were female—or a pansy in Clancy’s opinion—Bud Light. The crowded display of liquor behind the bar leaned heavily to whiskeys.

The wine Clancy poured from a box, Linda-gail had warned Reece, was cheap and tasted like warm piss.

There were a couple of pool tables in another section, and the sound of balls clacking carried through the music piped through speakers.

“How’s the head?” Linda-gail asked her.

“Still on my shoulders, and probably feeling a lot better than Pete’s hand.”

“Seven stitches. Ouchie. But he loved how you fussed over him when he came back in. Making him sit down, serving him that fried trout yourself.”

“He’s a sweet guy.”

“Yeah, he is. And speaking of guys, now that I’m plying you with alcohol, spill. Just how hot is Brody?”

If she was going to have a girlfriend, Reece decided, she was going to act like one herself. She leaned in. “Combustible.”

“Iknew it!” Linda-gail banged a fist on the table. “You can just tell. The eyes, the mouth. I mean, there’s the build and the rest of him, but the mouth especially. Biteable.”

“It is, I must admit, it is.”

“What other parts of him have you bitten?”

“That’s it. I’m thinking about the rest.”

Mouth open, eyes wide, Linda-gail sat back. “You have superhuman control. Is it learned or inherited?”

“It’s what you call a by-product of abject fear. You’ve got the story on me by now.”

To give them both a minute, Linda-gail sipped at her beer. “Does that bother you?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it’s a relief.”

“I didn’t know whether to say anything about it or not. Especially after Joanie…” She trailed off and took a sudden, keen interest in her beer.

“Joanie what?”

“I wasn’t supposed to say she’d said. But since I already have, sort of, she gave the bunch of us the what-for when Juanita started chattering about it. Juanita doesn’t mean anything by it; she just can’t keep her mouth shut. Or her skirt down, come to that.”

Linda-gail took another sip of beer. “Anyway, Joanie pinned her ears back good about it. And she made it plain and clear that none of us were to poke at you about it. But since you kind of brought it up…”

“It’s all right.” And wasn’t it, well, amazing, to have the inimitable Joanie Parks standing as her champion? “It’s just not something I like to talk about.”

“I don’t blame you.” Linda-gail reached out, squeezed a hand over Reece’s. “Not one bit. If I’d been through something like that, I’d still be curled up in the corner crying for my mama.”

“No, you wouldn’t, but thanks.”

“So, we’ll just talk about men and sex and food and shoes. The usual.”

“Works for me.” Reece reached for another nacho. “As for food, you know what’s gunked on here has absolutely no relationship with actual cheese.”

“It’s orange.” Linda-gail dug in, scooped the loaded chip through something pretending to be guacamole. “Close enough. Just so we’ll be on level ground, men-wise, I’m going to marry Lo.”

“Oh, oh, my God!” Reece dropped the loaded chip on her plate with a plop. “This is great. I had no idea.”

“Neither does he.” Linda-gail crunched into her nacho. “And I figure it’s going to take some more time and effort to refine him into anything worth marrying. But I’m really good at projects.”

“Ah. Um, so you’re in love with him.”

Her pretty face softened, and the dimple deepened. “I’ve loved him all my life. Well, since I was ten, and that’s a long time. He loves me, too, but his way of dealing with that is to run in the opposite direction and bang every female within reach so he won’t think about me. I’m letting him get it out of his system—time’s about up.”

“Well, huh. That’s a unique and broad-minded system you have there, Linda-gail.”

“It’s getting a little more narrow-minded these days.”

“He and I never…in case you wonder.”

“I know. I wouldn’t hold it against you if you had. Or I wouldn’t very much. Juanita and I get on fine, and he was lighting her up like Christmas awhile back. Then again, who hasn’t?” She chortled out a laugh. “But I probably wouldn’t buy you a beer if he’d nailed you. We were together, Lo and me, when we were sixteen, but we weren’t ready. Who is at sixteen?”

“Now you are.”

“Yeah, now I am. He’s just got to catch up. Brody hasn’t dated anyone in the Fist, in case you wonder. Word was he was seeing some lawyer type in Jackson on and off for a while, and there’s been a couple of suspected oners with tourist types, but nobody right local.”

“I guess that’s good to know. I’m not sure what’s between us, really. Except some heat.”

“Heat’s a good place to start. Being a cook and all, you should know that.”

“It’s been a while.” Idly Reece toyed with the ends of her hair as she studied Linda-gail’s do. “Where do you get your hair done?”

“When I’m in a hurry or when I want to splurge?”

“I’m mulling the splurge.”

“Reece, Reece, you can’t mull the splurge. You just, by definition, take the splurge. I know just the place. We can finagle Joanie into giving us both the same day off next week and go for it.”

“Okay, but I should tell you that the last time I tried to keep a salon date, I ran like a rabbit.”

“No problem.” Linda-gail sucked orange goo off her thumb and grinned. “I’ll bring some rope.”

As Reece broke into a grin, one of the local cowboys sauntered up toward the little stage. He was a lean six feet in cowhide boots, faded jeans. The white circle worn into the back pocket came, Reece had learned, from carrying a can of snuff.

“Live entertainment?” Reece asked as he picked up a microphone.

“Depends on how you measure entertainment. Karaoke.” Linda-gail lifted her drink toward the stage. “Every night in Clancy’s. That’s Reuben Gates, works out at the Circle K with Lo.”

“Coffee black, eggs up on toast, bacon and home fries, Sunday morning regular.”

“You got it. He’s pretty good.”

He had a deep, strong baritone, and was an obvious favorite with the crowd that whistled and clapped as he broke into his rendition of “Ruby.”

As she listened to him sing about a faithless woman, she tried to imagine him standing by the banks of the Snake River in a black jacket and orange hunter’s cap.

It could be him, she thought. His hands would be strong, and there was a stillness about him now as he stood, as he sang.

It could be this one, a man she’d fried eggs and potatoes for on Sunday mornings. Or it could be any of the men hunched at the bar or scattered at the tables. Any one of them could be a killer. Any one, she thought again as panic tickled slyly at her throat.

Music tinkled out, and the deep baritone cruised through it. Conversations continued, muted now out of respect for the performance. Glasses clinked on wood, chairs scraped the floor.

And the tickling panic began to close into a fist to block her air.

She saw Linda-gail’s face, saw her friend’s mouth moving, but anxiety had stuffed cotton in her ears. She forced a breath out, forced another in. “What? Sorry, I didn’t hear…”

“You okay? You’ve gone pretty pale. Does your head hurt?”

“No. No, I’m all right.” Reece made herself look back at the stage. “I still have some trouble in crowds, I guess.”

“You want to get out? We don’t have to stay.”

And every time she ran, it was a step back. Just one more retreat. “No, no, I’m okay. Um. Do you ever do that?”

Linda-gail skipped a glance toward the stage as Reuben ended to enthusiastic applause. “Sure. You want to?”

“Not for a million dollars. Well, a half a million.” Another man headed for the stage, and since this one carried about two-sixty on a five-eight frame, Reece decided she could eliminate him from her list.

He surprised her with a sweet, if thready, tenor on a ballad. “I don’t recognize him,” Reece commented.

“T. B. Unger. Teaches in the high school. T.B. for Teddy Bear. And that’s his wife, Arlene, sitting there—the brunette in the white shirt? They don’t come into Joanie’s much, homebodies with two kids. But they come into Clancy’s so he can sing, once a week. Arlene works at the school, too, in the cafeteria. They’re sweethearts.”

Literally, Reece thought as she watched the teddy bear sing his love song straight into his wife’s eyes.

There was sweetness in the world, she reminded herself. And love, and kindness. It was good to be part of that again, to feel that again.

And to laugh when the next performer, a blonde with a tin ear and a lot of self-deprecating humor, butchered a Dolly Parton classic.

She made it a full hour, and considered the evening an enormous success.

Walking back to her apartment through the quiet streets, she felt almost safe, almost easy. As close to both, she concluded, as she had felt in a very long time.

And when she let herself in the door, she felt almost home.

After locking the door, checking the knob, bracing the back of a chair under it, she went to wash.

In the doorway of her little bathroom, she froze. None of her toiletries were on the narrow shelf by the sink. She squeezed her eyes shut, but when she reopened them, the shelf was still empty. She yanked open the mirrored medicine cabinet where she stored her medication, her toothpaste. It, too, was empty.

With a whimper of distress she spun around to scan the room. Her bed was neatly made, as she’d left it that morning. The kettle sat shining on the stove. But the hooded sweatshirt sheknew she’d left hanging on the coatrack was missing.

And at the foot of the bed, rather than under it, sat her duffel.

Her legs trembled as she crossed to it, and the whimper became a muffled cry as she yanked the zipper and found her clothes neatly packed inside.

Everything she’d come with, she saw as she pawed through the bag. All her things, carefully folded and stored. Ready to go.

Who would do such a thing?

Giving in to her unsteady legs, she lowered herself to the side of the bed. And faced the truth. No one could. No one could, not with the new lock.

She’d done it herself. She must have done it. Some internal instinct, some remnants from the worst of her breakdown kicking in. Telling her to run, to go, to move on.

Why couldn’t she remember?

Not the first time, she reminded herself, and dropped her head in her hands. Not nearly the first time she’d lost time, or couldn’t quite recall doing something.

But it had been months since she’d had these kinds of episodes.

Almost home, she thought, fighting despair. She’d actually let herself believe she was almost home. When some deep-seated part of her knew she wasn’t even close.

Maybe she should take a hint. Pick up the duffel and go down, toss it in her car and drive. To anywhere.

And if she did,anywhere would just be another place where she’d cease to be. She had a place here, if she dug in. She’d had a date, she’d had a beer with a friend. She had a job and an apartment. She had, if she held on to it, an identity here.

She put all her stuff away—the clothes, the toothbrush, the bottles, the shoes. Though her stomach was raw, she set up her laptop again. Wrapped in a blanket to try to battle a cold that came from inside, she sat down to write.

I didn’t run. I cooked today, and earned my pay. Pete gashed his hand while washing dishes, and the blood shook me. I fainted, but I didn’t run. After work, I went to Clancy’s for a beer with Linda-gail. We talked about men, about hair, about normal things women talk about. There’s karaoke at Clancy’s, and the walls are crowded with the heads of dead animals. Elk and moose and deer, even bear. People sing, mostly country, with varying degrees of talent. There was the onset of a panic attack, but I didn’t run, and it got better. I have a friend in the Fist. More than one, really, but there’s nothing quite like a girlfriend.

Sometime today I must have packed my things, but I don’t remember doing it. Maybe I did it on my break after Pete hurt himself. Maybe. The blood, seeing the blood shot me right back to Maneo’s. So it was, for a minute, Ginny’s blood, not Pete’s.

But I’ve unpacked it all, and put everything away. Tomorrow I’m going to see Doc Wallace to describe, as best I can, the man and woman I saw along the river. Because I did see them. I saw what he did to her.

I didn’t run today. And I’m not going to run tomorrow.

13

DOC WALLACE set out tea and coffee, each in lovely old stoneware pots, and sugar cookies on a pale green Depression glass plate. He served it all among the framed family photographs and fussy throw pillows of his pretty parlor with the finesse of an elderly aunt entertaining her weekly book club.

If he’d troubled with the fussy touches to relax Reece, he’d succeeded. She found herself charmed instead of anxious while they sat in front of the low glow of the fire with the scent of gardenia potpourri scenting the air.

Her first impression was of comfort and ease, and her second: This was a man who’d been well trained.

No wall of animal heads here, she thought, no wagon wheel lights or thick, Indian-style blankets. Though she knew he fished, there was no stuffed trout over the mantel, but a lovely oval mirror in a cherry-wood frame.

Her grandmother would have very much approved.

In fact, she thought the room could easily have been found in a home on Boston’s Beacon Hill, and said so.

“It was my Susan’s favorite room in the house.” Doc passed her the tea he’d poured himself. “She used to love to sit and read in here. She was a great reader. I’ve kept it as she liked it.”

He smiled a little, handed Brody a cup of tea. “Figure she’d haunt me otherwise. And fact is…” He paused a moment, and behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes were kind and shrewd. “I can sit down here after a long day and talk things over with her. Now, some people might think that’s a little crazy, a man talking to his dead wife. I think it’s just human. A lot of things some might think are a little crazy are just human.”

“Being a little crazy’s just human,” Brody commented as he helped himself to a cookie.

“I’d be human then. And look,” Reece began, “I appreciate you trying to put me at ease. I do, and you have. But I know I’m a simmering stew of neuroses with chunky bits of phobias, seasoned heavily with paranoia.”

“It’s good to know yourself.” Brody bit into the cookie. “Most people don’t know they’re nuts, which is annoying to the rest of us.”

She spared him a glance, then focused on Doc Wallace. “But I also know what I saw by the river was real. Not a dream, not a hallucination. Not figments of my fractured mind and hyper imagination. Whatever the sheriff thinks, whateveranybody thinks, I know what I saw.”

“Don’t get too worked up at Rick,” Doc said mildly. “He’s doing his job, best he can. And he does a good one for the Fist.”

“So everybody says,” Reece muttered.

“Still, it may be that we can help him along with it.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Doesn’t matter if I believe you or not. But I’ve got no reason not to take you at your word. Seems to me you’ve been doing everything you can to keep a low profile around here.”

Doc doused his own coffee liberally with what Reece knew was half-and-half from the little glass creamer. After stretching out his legs, he crossed the ankles of feet clad in snazzy running shoes.

“I’m forced to report my attempts in this area have been a miserable failure.”

“Well, reporting a murder tends to turn the spotlight on the messenger. Doesn’t make much sense you’d make up a story like this and pull everybody’s attention onto you.” He nudged up his glasses, peered at her through sparkling clean lenses. “Besides, Brody appears to believe you, and I know him to be a tough sell. So…”

Doc set his coffee aside, picked up his sketch pad and a pencil. “I’ve got to admit, this is exciting for me. It’s like being onLaw and Order .”

“Which version?”

Doc grinned. “I like the original myself. Now, Brody’s told you I do a little sketching. Even got a couple of charcoals in The Gallery.”

“I keep meaning to get in there.”

“Ought to. They’ve got some nice work by local artists. Still and all, I’ve never done anything like this before, so I did a little research on the procedure. I’m going to ask you to think in shapes first, if you can. Think of the shape of her face to begin with. Square, round, triangular. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, I think I can.”

“Close your eyes a minute, get the picture in your mind.”

She did, and saw the woman. “Oval, I guess. But a long, narrow oval. Ellipse?”

“That’s good. On the thin side, then?”

“Yes. She wore her hair long, and the cap—the red cap—was pulled down low on her forehead. But I got the sense of a long, narrow face. I couldn’t see her eyes at first,” Reece continued. “She wore sunglasses. Wraparounds, I think.”

“How about her nose?”

“Her nose?” She drew a complete blank. “God, I don’t think I’m going to be very good at this.”

“Do the best you can.”

“I think…I think long and narrow, like her face. Not prominent. I noticed her mouth more because it was moving. She was talking—yelling I thought—a lot of the time. Her mouth seemed hard to me. She seemed hard to me. I don’t know how to explain.”

“Thin mouth?”

“I don’t know, maybe. It was…mobile. What I mean is she seemed to have a lot to say. And when she wasn’t talking—that I could tell—she was scowling, sneering. Her mouth kept moving. She wore earrings—hoops, I’m nearly sure, I caught the glint of them. Her hair was past her shoulders, wavy, very dark. Her sunglasses fell off when he knocked her down, but it all happened so fast. She was so angry. I had the impression of big eyes, but she was so angry, and then so shocked, and then…”

“How about distinguishing features,” Doc continued in the same easy tone. “Scars, moles, freckles?”

“I don’t remember any. Makeup,” she said suddenly. “I think she wore a lot of makeup. Red lipstick. Yes! Very red, and…it could just have been temper, but I think too much blusher. There was a vividness to her that seemed overdone, now that I think of it. Maybe temper, maybe, or too heavy a hand with the blusher. It was so far away, even with the binoculars.”

“That’s all right. If you had to guess her age?”

“Oh boy. Ah, late thirties maybe. Give or take a decade,” Reece added and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Hell.”

“Just go with your first impression. Is this close?”

Reece edged forward in her chair when Doc turned the pad around.

He was better than she’d assumed. It wasn’t the woman she’d seen looking out at her from the pad, but the potential of her was there. “Okay. Okay,” she muttered as one of the knots in her stomach unraveled. “I think her chin was a little more pointed. Just a little. And, um, her eyes not that round, a little longer maybe. Maybe.”

Reece picked up her tea again, used it to soothe while Doc made adjustments. “I couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but I think they were dark. I don’t think her mouth was that wide. And her eyebrows—God I hope I’m not making this up—her eyebrows were thinner, really arched. Like she’d plucked them to death. When he yanked her head off the ground by the hair, her cap came off. Did I forget that before? Her cap came off. She had a wide forehead.”

“Take a breath,” Brody suggested.

“What?”

“Take a breath.”

“Right.” When she stopped to take one, she realized how hard her heart was pounding, that her hands were starting to tremble enough to slosh the tea in her cup. “Her nails were painted. Maybe red. I forgot that, too. I can see the way they dug into the dirt while he strangled her.”

“Did she scratch him?” Brody asked her.

“No. She couldn’t. I don’t think…He straddled her, and he had his knees down on her arms. She couldn’t lift them to scratch at him. She didn’t have a chance. Once she was down, she didn’t have a chance.”

“How’s this?”

Reece studied the sketch. Things were missing, she thought. Things she wasn’t sure she had the skill to convey or the artist the skill to invoke. The fury, the passion, the fear. But it was closer.

“Yes. Yes, it’s good. I can see her in it. That’s what counts, isn’t it?”

“I’d say so. Let’s see if we can refine it a bit. You eat one of those cookies, Reece, before Brody scarfs them all down. Dick made them. Man makes a hell of a sugar cookie.”

She nibbled on a cookie while Doc asked more questions. She drank another cup of tea while she watched as he changed or finessed the shape of the woman’s mouth and eyes. Thinned out the eyebrows a bit more.

“That’s it.” Reece set her cup down with a little rattle. “That’s her. It’s good, it’s really close. It’s what I remember she looked like. What it seemed she did. I—”

“Stop second-guessing yourself,” Brody ordered. “If that’s your impression of her, it’s good enough.”

“Not from the Fist.” Doc looked up at Brody. “Doesn’t look like anyone I know, not offhand.”

“No. But if she passed through, someone saw her. Getting gas, supplies. We’ll show it around.”

“Rick can fax copies to other town authorities.” Doc pursed his lips as he studied his own sketch. “Maybe Park Service, too. She doesn’t look familiar to me. I’ve treated just about everyone in the Fist and the local vicinity over the years. Including tourists and transients, one time or another. Hell, anyone born hereabouts in the last twenty years, I’m likely the one who gave their butt its first slap. She’s not one of ours.”

“And if they never came through here,” Reece said quietly, “we may never know who she was.”

“That’s what I like about you, Slim. Always thinking positive.” Brody caged another cookie. “You want to take a shot at describing him for the doc?”

“I didn’tsee him. Not really. Flashes of profile. His back, his hands, but he was wearing gloves. It seemed like he had big hands, but that really could be just me projecting. Cap, sunglasses, coat.”

“Any hair below the cap?” Doc asked.

“No. I don’t think so. I didn’t notice. She was…in the spotlight, you could say. She had center stage, and then when he knocked her down, I was so stunned. And still, I guess I watched her more. I couldn’t stop watching her, what was happening to her.”

“How about his jawline?”

“All I can think is hard. He seemed hard. But I said that about her, didn’t I?” She rubbed at her eyes, tried to think. “He was very still most of the time, and I had the impression of control. She was livid and ranting, and he just stood there, hardly moved. Economical? She was all over the place, gesturing, pacing, pointing. He pushed her, but it was almost like swatting a fly. I’m projecting.”

“Maybe you are, maybe you’re not.” Doc sketched idly. “What about build?”

“Everything about him seems big now, but I can’t be sure. Taller and broader than she was, certainly. In the end, when I see him straddle her, I think he must have known exactly what he was doing. Restraining her arms that way. He could’ve held her down like that, worn her out until he could reason with her, then walked away. Maybe it was because of the distance, but it seemed so deliberate, so cold.”

Doc turned his sketch pad around again, held it up. And Reece shuddered.

This was a full-length image, back turned, face in one-quarter profile. Because it could have been so many men, fear balled ice in Reece’s belly.

“Anonymous,” she commented.

“Still, you can eliminate some people right from the Fist,” Doc said. “Pete, let’s say. Little guy, scrawny. Or Little Joe Pierce, who’s carrying around an extra hundred pounds and hypertension.”

“Or Carl. He’s shaped like a barrel. Wrong build.” Another knot unraveled. “You’re right. And I don’t think he was young. I mean, say, teens or very early twenties. His carriage, his, um, body language was more mature than that. Thanks. It clears my head a little.”

“Wasn’t me.” Brody lifted a shoulder. “Unless I channeled Superman and flew over the Snake and back.”

“No.” For the first time since they’d begun, Reece smiled. “It wasn’t you.”

“I’ll make copies, post one in my office. Most everybody’s through there.” Doc picked up the sketch of the woman again. “I’ll take copies down to the sheriff’s office.”

“Thanks. A lot.”

“Like I said, it’s a little like playing detective. Interesting change of pace for me. Brody, why don’t you take this tray on back to the kitchen for me.”

And the look Doc sent Brody told Reece the doctor was in again, and she was the patient. She struggled not to resent it, not after the favor he’d just done for her. But her back stiffened as Brody left the room.

“I didn’t come here for a medical consult,” she began.

“Maybe you should. But the fact is, I’m an old country doctor, and you’re sitting in my parlor. Your eyes are tired. How are you sleeping?”

“Spotty. Some nights are better than others.”

“Appetite?”

“Comes and goes. Comes more than it used to. I know my physical health is tied to my mental health. I’m not ignoring either.”

“Headaches?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Not as often as before, certainly not as intense. And yes, I still have anxiety attacks, but not as often or as intense either. I used to have night terrors, but they’ve throttled down to nightmares. I still have flashbacks, phantom pain sometimes. But I’m better. I had a beer at Clancy’s with Linda-gail. I haven’t been able to sit in a bar and have a drink with a friend in two years. I’m thinking about sleeping with Brody. I haven’t been with a man in two years.

“Every time I think about just driving out of town, I don’t. I even unpacked last night, put everything away again.”

Behind his glasses, his eyes sharpened. “You packed your things?”

“I…” She faltered a moment. “Yes. I don’t remember packing, and I know that’s a big X on the minus side of my mental health board, but I offset it with a big check mark byunpacking , and added another check mark by coming here. I’m coping. I’m functional.”

“And defensive,” Doc pointed out. “You don’t remember packing your things?”

“No, I don’t, and yes, it scared me. I put things in the wrong place once, too, and just don’t remember. But I handled it. I couldn’t have handled it a year ago.”

“What medications are you taking?”

“Nothing.”

“On doctor’s recommendation?”

“Not really. I tapered off of this, tapered off of that, then stopped taking all of them over six months ago. They helped when I needed them most. I know medications helped me find some sense of balance again. But I can’t live my life when there are meds suppressing this or coating over that. They helped me get through the worst of it, and now I want to get through the rest myself. I want to be myself.”

“Will you come to me if you decide you want medical help?”

“All right.”

“Will you let me do an exam?”

“I don’t—”

“A checkup, Reece. When did you last have a physical?”

Now she sighed. “A year or so ago.”

“Why don’t you come into my office tomorrow morning?”

“I have the breakfast shift.”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock. It’d be a favor to me.”

“That’s a lousy way to put it,” she replied. “All right. I like your house. I like that you’ve kept this room the way your wife liked it. I’d like to think that one day I’ll have a room and someone who’d care enough to keep it for me. I’m trying to get there.” She got to her feet. “I have to go to work.”

He rose as well. “Tomorrow, three o’clock.” And held out a hand as if sealing a deal.

“I’ll be there.”

He walked her to the door as Brody strolled out from the kitchen. When they were outside, Brody headed for his car.

“I’m just going to walk,” Reece told him. “I want the air, and I’ve got a little time before my shift.”

“Fine. I’ll walk up with you, and you can fix me lunch.”

“You just ate two cookies.”

“Your point?”

She just shook her head. “You’ll have to walk back again to get your car.”

“I’ll walk off lunch. You do blackened chicken?”

“Can I do it, yes. But it’s not on the menu.”

“So charge me extra. I feel like a blackened chicken sandwich on a kaiser, with onion rings. Feeling better?”

“I guess I am. Dr. Wallace has a way of smoothing out the edges.” She dipped her hands into the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt she wore against the stubborn spring chill. “He pressured me, very avuncularly, to go in for a physical tomorrow. But you probably knew he was going to do that.”

“He mentioned it. He’s the sort that pokes his nose in. Avuncularly. He asked me if I was sleeping with you.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It’s his way. You’re in the Fist, you’re his business. So I can tell you, if that woman had spent any time here, he’d know it. Sheriff’s dog’s in the lake again. Rather swim than walk.”

They both stopped to watch the dog paddle enthusiastically through the water, sending back a little wake that rippled through the reflection of the mountains.

“If I stay, I’m going to get a dog, and teach him to fetch a ball out of the lake like—what’s her name?—Abby did with Moses there. I’ll get a cabin so he can be outside when I work. My grandmother has a teacup poodle named Marceau. He travels everywhere with her.”

“A teacup anything named Marceau isn’t a dog.”

“He certainly is, and he’s sweet and adorable.”

“It’s a wind-up toy with a pussy name.”

She snorted back a laugh. “Marceau is very smart, and very loyal.”

“Does he wear cute little sweaters?”

“No. They’re dapper little sweaters. And though I have great love for Marceau, I’m thinking of getting a big, sloppy dog like Moses, one that would rather swim than walk.”

“If you stay.”

“Yes. If I stay.” And as she imagined Moses did, Reece took a running leap and dove in. “I’d like to come over to your place tomorrow night, fix you dinner and stay the night.”

He walked a little farther with her, strolling by a house where a woman had planted pansies in a small circular bed in the middle of her lawn that was guarded by gnomes in pointy hats.

He wondered about people who dotted their lawns with plaster people and animals.

“Would staying the night be a euphemism for sex?”

“God, I hope so. I can’t promise anything, but I hope so.”

“Okay.” He reached out to open the door of Joanie’s. “I’ll wash the sheets.”

SHE KEPT HER doctor’s appointment and considered it another major step. She hated,hated the exposed sensation she had when wearing nothing but the little cotton gown.

And if she couldn’t comfortably be naked in front of a doctor, how did she expect to manage it later with Brody?

In the dark, she thought as she sat on the examination table while Doc’s nurse took her blood pressure. All the lights off and her eyes closed. Hopefully, his closed, too.

Drunk would also be a good thing. Lots of wine, lots of dark.

“A little high, sweetie.” Willow, the nurse, was Shoshone. Her blood showed in the dense black hair she wore in one thick braid, and her deep, liquid brown eyes.

“I’m nervous. Doctors make me nervous.”

Willow patted Reece’s hand. “Don’t you worry. Doc’s a cream puff. I need to take some blood. Make a fist, and think about your happy place.”

Reece barely felt the needle, and gave Willow top marks. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been stuck after the shooting. Some of the nurses had hands like angels, others like lumberjacks.

“Doc’s going to be with you in just a minute.”

Reece nodded, and was stunned when Willow’s statement proved to be the literal truth.

Doc looked different with the white lab coat over his plaid shirt, with the stethoscope around his neck, those blinding white running shoes on his feet. Still, he gave her a wink before picking up her chart. “I’ll tell you right now you need ten pounds.”

“I know, but I needed fifteen a few weeks ago.”

“No surgeries other than the ones for the injuries you sustained in the shooting?”

She moistened her lips. “No. I was always healthy.”

“No allergies. Blood pressure could be lower, sleep pattern smoother. Your cycle’s regular.”

“Yes. It wasn’t, after. Birth control pills helped regulate it again. I haven’t had any need for them otherwise.” That might be changing tonight, she thought, and wondered if her blood pressure had just spiked.

“No history of heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes in your family. You don’t smoke, alcohol consumption light to moderate.”

He continued to scan, then set the chart aside with a nod. “Got a good foundation.”

He checked her lungs, her reflexes, had her stand to check her coordination and balance. Shone lights in her eyes, in her ears, checked her lymph glands, her tonsils.

All the while he kept up a careless conversation heavy on town gossip. “Did you hear Bebe’s oldest boy and two of his cohorts got caught shoplifting candy bars from the mercantile?”

“He’s under house arrest,” Reece said. “Sixty days, no chance of parole. School, home, Joanie’s, and two hours every afternoon doing whatever chores Mr. Drubber can find for him.”

“Good for Bebe. I heard Maisy Nabb threw all Bill’s clothes out the window again. Plus his MVP trophy from when he quarterbacked the high school football team.”

It wasn’t so bad, she realized, not really so bad to go through all this with conversation. Real conversation about people they both knew.

“Rumor is he lost the money he was supposed to be saving to buy her an engagement ring playing poker,” she told him. “He claims he was only trying to win enough to get her a ring worthy of her, but she’s not buying it.”

“She tosses his stuff out three, four times a year. He’s been saving to buy her a ring for about five years now, so that’s about fifteen, twenty times his clothes have ended up on the sidewalk. Carl’s grandson in Laramie won a scholarship to U of W.”

“Really? I haven’t heard that.”

“Fast-breaking.” Doc’s eyes twinkled with the scoop. “Carl just heard this afternoon. He’s busting buttons over it. I’m going to call Willow in, do a pap and breast exam.”

Resigned, Reece put her feet in the stirrups. She stared at the ceiling, and the mobile of butterflies that circled from it, while Doc rolled his stool between her legs and Willow assisted him.

“Looks healthy,” Doc commented.

“Good, because it hasn’t been getting any exercise in quite a while.” When she heard Willow smother a laugh, Reece just closed her eyes. She had to remember some old saying about being careful of thoughts. They become words.

When he was done, Doc patted her ankle, then stood to come to the side of the table for the breast exam. “You do your monthly self-exams?”

“Yes. No. When I remember, I do.”

“In the shower, first day of your period. Make it a habit and you won’t forget.” His thumb brushed gently over her scar. “You had a lot of pain.”

“Yes.” She kept watching the butterflies, the cheerful, colorful mobile. “A lot of pain.”

“You mentioned phantom pain.”

“I feel it sometimes, during a nightmare or just after one. During a panic attack. I know it’s not real.”

“But it feels real.”

“Very real.”

“How often do you experience the phantom pain?”

“It’s hard to say. Couple times a week, I guess. That’s way down from a couple times a day.”

“You can sit up now.” He went back to his stool as Willow slipped quietly out. “You’re not interested in continuing with therapy?”

“No.”

“Or in chemical aids.”

“No. I’ve used both, and as I told you, they helped. I need to finish this my way.”

“All right. I’m going to tell you that you’re a little run-down, and I don’t think that comes as a surprise to you. I also suspect your blood test’s going to come back borderline anemic. I want you to beef up your diet, literally. Iron-rich foods. If you don’t know which foods are rich in iron, I’ll have Willow print you out a list.”

“I’m a chef. I know food.”

“Then eat it.” He wagged a finger at her for emphasis. “I also have some herbs you can use to help you sleep. In a tea you drink before bed.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Holistic medicine?”

“Herbs have been used to aid in healing for centuries. I used to play chess with Willow’s grandfather. He was a Shoshone shaman, and a hell of a chess player. He taught me quite a bit about natural medicine. He died last fall, at the age of ninety-eight, in his sleep.”

“Pretty good recommendation.”

“I’ll mix the herbs for you and drop them by, with instructions, tomorrow at Joanie’s.”

“Not to be, ah, fussy, but I’d like a list of the herbs, too.”

“Sensible. I want you back here for a follow-up in four to six weeks.”

“But—”

“To check your weight, your blood, and your general well-being. If there’s improvement, we’ll go to three months for the next. If there’s not”—he rose from his stool, put his hands on her shoulders, looked hard into her eyes—“I’m going to get tough.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. I hear you make a hell of a pot roast with all the trimmings. That’s my fee for today, seeing as I browbeat you into the exam.”

“That isn’t right.”

“If I don’t like the pot roast, I’ll bill you. Go on and get dressed.”

But she sat for several minutes when he’d gone out and closed the door behind him.

14

BRODY REMEMBERED to wash the sheets, but as his work-in-progress sucked him in for a straight six-hour stint, he nearly forgot to dry them.

When he surfaced from the driving rain and spring mud he’d tossed his characters into, he had a vague and nagging jones for a cigarette. He hadn’t taken a long, deep drag on a Winston for three years, five months and…twelve days, he calculated as he caught himself reaching for the pack that wasn’t there.

But a good writing session, like good sex, often teased the urge back.

So he just sat and imagined it for a while—that simple, that seductive, that deadly pleasure of sliding one of those slim white cylinders out of the red-and-white pack, digging up one of the dozens of disposable lighters he would have scattered around. Sparking the flame, taking that first easy draw.

And damn if he couldn’t taste it—a little harsh, a little sweet. That, he supposed, was the blessing and the curse of a good imagination.

Nothing stopping him from going into town right now and buying a pack. Not a damn thing. But it was a point of pride, wasn’t it? He’d quit, so that was that. Same deal with theTrib , he reminded himself.

Once he closed the door, he didn’t crack it open again.

And that, he supposed, was the blessing and the curse of being a stubborn son of a bitch.

Maybe he’d go downstairs and get some oral satisfaction from a bag of chips. Probably should make a sandwich.

It was the thought of food that reminded him Reece was due in a few hours. That made him remember the sheets in the washing machine.

“Shit.”

He shoved away from the desk, headed downstairs to the utility room and the elf-sized washer and dryer. Once he had the sheets tumbling, he turned back to survey the kitchen.

The breakfast dishes were in the sink. Okay, so were last night’s dinner dishes. The local paper, and the pages of his daily copy of theChicago Tribune he subscribed to—old habits die hard—were spread out on the table, along with a couple of his notebooks, assorted pens and pencils, a pile of mail.

He accepted the fact he’d have to clean it up, which was only a minor pain in the ass. And since that was offset by the guarantee of a good, hot meal and the distinct possibility of sex, it was a reasonable use of his time.

Besides, he wasn’t a pig.

He pushed up the sleeves of his ratty, and favorite, sweatshirt, then took the piled dishes out of the sink. “Why do you put them in there in the first place?” he asked himself as he squirted in soap, ran hot water. “Every single damn time you do this, you have to pull them back out again.”

He washed, he rinsed, he wished the cabin had a goddamn dishwasher. And he thought of Reece.

He wondered if she’d kept her appointment with Doc Wallace. He wondered what he’d see in those big dark eyes of hers when she walked in his door that evening. Ease, nerves, amusement, sorrow.

How would she look working in his kitchen, putting food together the way an artist creates. Using shapes and colors and textures and balance.

Then there would be the scents, the tastes—of what she prepared and of her. He was getting uncharacteristically wrapped up in the scents and tastes of her.

He set the dishes to drain and got to work on the table. It occurred to him he’d never really shared a meal with anyone in the cabin. Beer and pretzels maybe, if Doc or Mac or Rick dropped over.

He’d hosted a poker game a time or two when he’d been in the mood. More beer again, chips, cigars.

There’d been wine and scrambled eggs at twoA.M. with the delightful Gwen from L.A. who’d come to ski and had ended up in his bed one memorable night in January.

But those casual interludes didn’t have quite the same resonance as having a woman cook you a meal and share it with you in your place.

He took the papers into the utility room, to stack on the pile he hauled out for recycling weekly. Though he frowned at the bucket and mop, he gathered them up.

“See, not a pig,” he muttered as he mopped the kitchen floor.

He should straighten up the bedroom, probably, in case things went that way. If they didn’t go that way, at least he wouldn’t have to look at the mess while he suffered through a restless night alone.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, reminding himself to shave. He hadn’t bothered with it that morning.

She’d probably want candles, so he’d dig some out. Pretty sure he had something that would do, and he had to admit it was nice to sit down to dinner with a pretty woman in candlelight.

But when he caught himself wondering if it was the right time of year for tulips, he stopped short.

Absolutely not. That was crazy thinking. When a guy went out and bought a woman flowers—especially her favorite flowers—he was just asking for her to pick up serious signals. Dangerous and complicated signals.

No damn tulips.

Besides, if he bought flowers he’d have to buy something to stick them in. He just wasn’t going there.

A clean kitchen would have to do it, and if she didn’t like it…

“Wine. Damn it.”

He knew without looking all he had was beer and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Grumbling, he prepared to leave the housekeeping for a drive to town when inspiration struck.

He dug out the notepad that held phone numbers and called the liquor store.

“Hey, has Reece Gilmore been in there for wine today? Yeah? What did she—Oh, okay. Thanks. I’m good, thanks. How you doing? Uh-huh.” Brody leaned a hip into the counter, knowing payment for the information that he and Reece would be dining on something that went with Chenin Blanc was a few minutes of conversation and gossip.

But he straightened back up when his informant mentioned the sheriff had been in earlier that day with a copy of Doc Wallace’s sketch.

“Did you recognize the woman? No. Yeah, I saw it. No, I can’t say I thought she looked anything like Penélope Cruz. No, Jeff, I really don’t think Penélope Cruz was in the area and got herself murdered. Sure, if I hear anything, I’ll let you know. See you later.”

Brody hung up, shaking his head. People, he thought, were as much a source of entertainment as they were a source of irritation. It kept things balanced.

“Penélope Cruz,” he muttered, and dumped the water from the bucket into the sink.

He remembered the sheets after he’d done a scouting expedition for candles and had come up with a couple of white tapers earmarked for power outages and a jar candle someone had given him over the holidays that he’d never used. It was called Mom’s Apple Pie.

Not particularly sexy, he thought, but better than nothing.

He took it and the dry sheets upstairs to the bedroom, fully intending to straighten up. His mistake was in looking out the window for a few minutes.

A couple of sailboats skimmed along the lake with their white sails fat with wind. He recognized Carl’s canoe near the north end. Probably out fishing, Brody decided. The man lived to fish and to gossip with Mac.

And there was Rick’s kid with Moses. School must be done for the day. The dog took a flying leap after the ball and flushed an egret. The bird speared up, arrowed into the marsh.

Nice picture, Brody thought absently. Pretty and placid and…

Something in the quality of the light and shadows on the lake sucked his mind back into the book. He narrowed his eyes as Moses paddled back to shore, the ball gripped in his teeth.

But what if it wasn’t a ball…

He left the tangle of sheets on the bed and strode back into his office. He’d just get this one partial scene down, he told himself. Thirty minutes tops, then he’d deal with the bedroom, shower, shave and put on something that didn’t necessarily look as if he’d slept in it.

TWO HOURS LATER, Reece set one big box of supplies on the porch of Brody’s cabin, knocked briskly, then walked back to her car for a second box.

She knocked again, louder this time. The lack of response had her frowning, and gingerly trying the door.

She knew her instinctive worry that he’d drowned in the tub, fallen down the stairs or been murdered in a home invasion was ridiculous. But that didn’t make it less real.

And the house was so quiet, seemed so empty. It wasn’t a place she really knew. She couldn’t quite make herself step over the threshold, not until the image of him bleeding on the floor somewhere inside lodged itself with ugly clarity in her mind.

She forced herself inside, called out his name.

And when she heard the creak of floorboards overhead, she grabbed her chef’s knife out of a box, gripped its handle with both hands.

He came scowling—alive and in one piece—to the top of the stairs.

“What? What time is it?”

Relief nearly sent her to her knees, but she managed to lean against the doorjamb and stay upright. “About six. I knocked, but—”

“Six? Damn it. I, ah, got hung up.”

“It’s okay, no problem.” The pain in her chest was shifting into another kind of pressure. He looked so annoyed, so disheveled, so big and male. If she’d trusted her legs right at that moment, she might’ve used them to bolt up the steps and jump him.

“You want a rain check?”

“No.” His frown only deepened. “How the hell do I know when it’s going to rain again? I need to…clean up.” Goddamn sheets. “You need any help first?”

“No. No. No, I’m fine. I’ll just get started on dinner, if that’s all right with you. It’ll take about two hours, maybe a little less. So, you know, take your time.”

“Good.” He paused long enough to hook his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “What were you going to do with the knife?”

She’d forgotten it was in her hands, and now looked down at it with a combination of puzzlement and embarrassment. “I don’t really know.”

“Maybe you could put it down so I don’t get in the shower with the image of Norman Bates in my head.”

“Sure.”

She turned to set it back in the box, and when she turned again, he was gone.

She hauled in both boxes. She wanted to lock the front door—badly wanted to lock it. It wasn’t her place, but didn’t he realize how easily anyone could just walk in? She had, after all. How could he be upstairs, oblivious to unlocked doors? Taking a shower.

And God,God , she wished she had that kind of confidence, or faith, or even plain stupidity.

Since she didn’t, she locked the door. And after she’d carried her supplies to the kitchen, she locked the back door as well.

Wasn’t her place, true, but she was in it. How could she concentrate on fixing a meal with unlocked doors everywhere?

Satisfied, she took out the casserole she’d prepared, measured out milk and set it on the stove to scald. She got out her brand-new knife block—she was spending too much of her paycheck on kitchen equipment. It was insane, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Waiting inside the roaster she pulled out next was a pork loin soaking inside a sealed bag of marinade she’d mixed up the night before.

Setting it aside, she put the wine in the refrigerator to keep it chilled, then did a quick inspection of the contents.

Worse even than she’d imagined. And a good thing she’d brought absolutely everything she’d need with her. He did have a couple of eggs, a stick of butter and some slices of American cheese. Pickles, milk that was already past its recommended expiration date and eight bottles of Harp. Two rapidly shriveling oranges sat like dour wallflowers on the bottom shelf. There wasn’t a single leafy vegetable insight.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Still, as she poured the hot milk over the scalloped potatoes, she caught the scent of pine cleaner. She had to appreciate he’d troubled enough to clean up before she got there.

She slid the casserole into the oven, set the timer.

When Brody walked in thirty minutes later, she was sliding the roast in beside the casserole. The table was set with his plates and candles she’d brought with her, along with dark blue napkins, wineglasses, and a little clear bowl that held what he thought were miniature roses in sunny yellow.

There were the scents, as he’d imagined. Something succulent from the oven, something fresh from the pile of vegetables on the counter. And a combination of both the succulent and the fresh that was Reece.

When she turned, he didn’t see the nerves and the sorrow in her eyes. They were deep, they were dark, they were warm.

“I thought I’d…Oh.”

She took a step back as he strode to her, and a flicker of those nerves skipped across her face as he took her arms, lifted her to her toes.

But it was the warmth he tasted when he took her mouth, the warmth flavored very subtly by the nerves. It was, for him, irresistible.

Her arms were pinned between them, then her hands curled on his chest, gripped their way up to his shoulders. He swore he felt her melt.

He released her, stepped back and said, “Hi.”

“Yeah, hi. Ah, where am I again?”

He grinned. “Where do you want to be?”

“I guess I want to be right here. I was about to do something. Oh yeah, I was going to make martinis.”

“No shit?”

“Absolutely none. She moved to his refrigerator for ice to chill the two glasses she’d brought along. Then stopped. “You don’t like martinis?”

“What’s not to like? Jeff didn’t say you’d picked up any vodka.”

“Jeff?”

“Liquor Store Jeff.”

“Liquor Store Jeff,” she repeated with a nod. Then sighed a little as she dumped ice in the martini glasses. “What, do they post a list of my alcoholic purchases somewhere? Am I heading the line as town drunk?”

“No, Wes Pritt’s undefeated in that category. I called in because I figured you’d want wine. And if you’d already picked it up, I’d save myself the trip to town.”

“Well, that was efficient. I didn’t think of martinis until I was putting everything together to come by. I borrowed the glasses and shaker from Linda-gail. She got them to make Cosmos a couple years ago.”

He stood back, watched her measure and shake, toss the ice, pour, add olives on long blue picks to the drinks. Then he studied the results in the glass she handed him.

“I haven’t had a martini in…I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing you order in Clancy’s.”

“Well then, to a touch of urban sophistication in the Fist.” She touched her glass to his, waited until he’d sipped.

“Damn good martini.” He sipped again, studying her over the rim. “You’re something.”

“Or other,” she agreed. “Try this.”

She lifted a small dish in which what looked like stuffed celery was arranged in some intricate geometric pattern. “What’s in it?”

“State secret, but primarily smoked Gouda and sun-dried tomatoes.”

He wasn’t a big fan of raw celery, but figuring the vodka would kill the taste, he gave it a shot. And changed his position. “Whatever the state secret might be, it does a hell of a lot more for celery than the peanut butter my mother used to dump on it.”

“I should hope so. You can sit down, enjoy.” She picked up her glass for another tiny sip. “I’m going to make the salad.”

He didn’t sit, but he did enjoy watching her roast pine nuts. Imagine that, she was roasting pine nuts. Then he saw her putting leafy stuff in the skillet.

He had an innate suspicion of leafy stuff in the first place, much less when you put that leafy stuff in a pan on the stove. “You’re cooking a salad?”

“I’m preparing a spinach and red cabbage salad, with pine nuts and a little Gorgonzola. I couldn’t believe Mac ordered Gorgonzola when I just mentioned last week I wish I could get my hands on some.”

“Sweet on you, remember.”

“I feel very lucky to have the man who can get me Gorgonzola sweet on me. Anyway, Dr. Wallace said I need more iron. Spinach is loaded with it.” She caught his expression out of the corner of her eye and swallowed a laugh. “You’re a big boy. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to finish it.”

“There’s a deal. How’d it go with Doc?”

“He’s thorough and he’s gentle, and he’s impossible to argue with.” As she spoke she adjusted the heat under the skillet. “He thinks I’m a little run-down, and probably a little anemic, but otherwise pretty good. I’ve had my fill of doctors, probably for a lifetime, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. When I went back to the liquor store, Jeff mentioned that the sheriff had been in with the sketch.”

“Yeah, I heard that, too. He mention Penélope Cruz?”

She smiled a little. “Yeah. He—the sheriff—sent a copy to Joanie’s, too. No bells rang.”

“Did you expect them to?”

“I don’t know what I thought. I guess part of me hoped someone would look at it and say, ‘Gee, that looks like Sally Jones, who lives just east of town. She’s been having a rough time of it with her no-good husband.’ Then we’d know, and the sheriff would go arrest the no-good husband. And it would be over.”

“Neat and tidy.”

“In a way.” She took another minute sip of her martini. “Anyway. I finished your book. I’m glad you didn’t bury Jack alive.”

“He is, too.”

She laughed. “I bet. I like that you didn’t totally redeem him, either. He’s still so flawed and funny, and poised to screw up, but I think Leah may nudge him into being the best man he can be. You let her save the day, too.” She glanced back at him. “From this female reader’s perspective, that was great. And it worked.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“Enough that I picked up another one this afternoon.Blood Ties .” She saw the frown come into his eyes. “What?”

“It’s…violent. Pretty graphic in a couple of scenes. It may not be something you’d enjoy.”

“Because I’ve experienced graphic violence firsthand?”

“It might echo a little more than you’d be comfortable with.”

“If it does, I’ll put it down. Just like you can put down the spinach salad.” She checked the oven, the skillet, picked up her martini. “We’re right on schedule here. Why don’t you light those candles, open the wine?”

“Sure.”

“So, what hung you up today?”

“Hung me up?”

“You said, when I got here, you’d gotten hung up.”

“Right.” He lit the candles she’d set on the tiny table—dark blue tapers to match the napkins. “Work.”

He was, she thought, so often a man not of few words but of none. At least verbally. “Do I assume in that context it means your book’s going well?”

“Yeah.” He found the wine in the refrigerator. Chenin Blanc, as advertised. “It was a good day.”

“You’re not going to talk about it.”

He started to search the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew, but she handed him one she’d brought with her. “About what?”

“The book.”

He considered as he opened the wine, as she added more spinach to the pan. “I was going to kill her. Maybe you remember I mentioned it, that day we were on the trail.”

“Yes, I do. You said the villain was going to kill her there, push her off and into the water.”

“Yeah, and he tried. He hurt her, he tormented her, he terrorized her, but he didn’t manage to push her off the ridge the way he’d planned.”

“She got away.”

“She jumped.”

Reece looked over as she began lifting the wilted greens from the pan. “She jumped.”

He never talked about his work with anyone. It generally irritated him even to be asked about it. But he found he wanted to tell her, to see her reaction.

“The rain’s driving, the trail’s thick and heavy with mud. She’s bruised and battered, her leg’s bleeding. She’s alone up there with him. There’s no one to help her. She can’t outrun him. He’s stronger, he’s faster. He’s fucking crazy. So she jumps. I still figured she’d die. Never planned for her to make it past chapter eight. But she proved me wrong.”

Saying nothing, Reece tossed the salad with the vinaigrette she’d made at home.

“She’s stronger than I realized when I first met her. She has a deep and innate will to survive. She went into the water because she knew it was her only chance, and she’d rather have died trying to live than just to lie down and let him kill her. And she fought her way out of the river, even though it tried to suck her down, even though it tossed her around. She fought her way out.”

“Yes,” Reece agreed, “she sounds strong.”

“She didn’t think of it that way. She didn’t think at all, she just acted. She clawed her way out. She’s lost and she’s hurt, she’s cold, and she’s still alone. But she’s alive.”

“Will she stay that way?”

“That’ll be up to her.”

Reece nodded. She arranged the salads on plates, drizzled them with cheese. “She’ll want to give up. I hope she doesn’t. I hope she wins. Do you…care about her?”

“I wouldn’t spend time with her otherwise.”

She set the plates on the table, then a small basket with a round of olive bread. She poured the wine herself. “You spent time with the killer, too.”

“And I care about him. Just in a different way. Sit down. I’ve gotten so I like the way your eyes look in candlelight.”

Surprise came into them first, then that gold light as she sat. “Try the salad. You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t like it.”

He obliged, then frowned at her. “It’s annoying. I don’t like celery, particularly. I’ve never liked spinach. Who would? I’m not a big fan of change, either.”

She smiled. “But you like my celery. You like my spinach.”

“Apparently. Maybe I just like whatever you put in front of me.”

“Which makes it rewarding to cook for you.” She forked up some salad. “To iron in the blood.”

“Have you given any more thought to putting a cookbook proposal together?”

“Actually I spent some time on that last night after my shift.”

“Is that why you look tired?”

“That’s not an appropriate question after you’ve said you like the way I look in candlelight.”

“Your eyes, specifically. Doesn’t mean I can’t see you look tired.”

He would, she supposed, always be brutally honest with her. Tough as it might be on the ego, it was better than platitudes and soft lies.

“I couldn’t sleep, so fiddling with the proposal gave me something to do. I was thinking ofThe Simple Gourmet as a title.”

“It’s okay.”

“You have better?”

He continued to eat, mildly amused by the annoyance in her voice. “Let me think about it. Why couldn’t you sleep?”

“How do I know? The doctor’s got some sort of holistic tea he wants me to try.”

“Sex is a good sedative.”

“Maybe. Especially, for instance, if your partner’s on the inadequate side. You can catch a quick nap during the act.”

“I can promise you won’t sleep through it.”

She only smiled, and ate her salad.

SHE WOULDN’T trust him to carve the pork roast, which was vaguely insulting, but did so herself as she steamed asparagus. Brody decided not to complain, as the meat smelled incredible and he noted there was a serving of scalloped potatoes in his immediate future.

She drizzled hollandaise over the tender shoots, fragrant au jus over the slices of pork.

“We ought to be able to work a deal, you and me,” Brody began when he cut into the pork.

“A deal?”

“Yeah, just a minute.” He sampled. “Just as I figured. So, a deal. We’ll barter. Sex for food.”

She lifted her brows, pursed her lips as if considering. “Interesting. However, I really think you’re reaping the benefits on both sides of that deal.”

“You, too. But if the sex thing doesn’t work out, we can try odd jobs. Manly stuff. Painting that apartment of yours, minor plumbing, whatever. For this, you provide hot meals.”

“Might work.”

He tried the potatoes. “My God, you should be canonized.The Casual Gourmet .”

“Saint Reece, the casual gourmet?”

“No, that’s your cookbook title.The Casual Gourmet. It’s not simple, which can be construed as ordinary. It’s spectacular. But you don’t need to spend all day sweating over the stove to make it, or your heirloom china and sterling to eat it. Gourmet, the way people live, not just the way they entertain to impress.”

She sat back. “That’s a better title, and a better summary of the idea than mine. Damn it.”

“I’m a professional.”

“Eat your asparagus,” she ordered.

“Yes, Mom. By the way? Don’t even think about packing up any leftovers.”

“Duly noted.”

He ate, he drank, he watched her. And at some point, he simply lost the thread of the casual conversation.

“Reece?”

“Hmm.”

“It’s the eyes, mostly, it’s the eyes. They grab me by the throat. But the rest of you? It looks really good in candlelight, too.”

Unexpected, she thought. He could say the most unexpected things. So she smiled at him, and let the glow of it warm her while they ate.

15

SHE INSISTED on clearing up. He’d expected that, as she was a woman who liked to put, and to keep, things in their place. He’d have laid odds she had that tendency before the violence in Boston—where she’d probably kept a tidy house, and a tidy kitchen personally and professionally. She’d always know where the midsized mixing bowl was, and her favorite blue shirt, her car keys. Her checkbook would always be balanced.

What had happened to her had, in all likelihood, spotlighted and enhanced her organizational bent. At this point in her life, she not only wanted butneeded things in their place. It would give her a sense of security.

For himself, most days he figured he was doing pretty well if he could find matching socks on the first pass.

Because he could see she wouldn’t be satisfied otherwise, he dried off dishes, put them back in the cupboard. But he largely stayed out of her way while she stored leftovers, boxed up her equipment, scrubbed off his stove.

Nerves were coming back, and she’d gone very quiet with them. He could practically see them popping out on her skin like hives as she rinsed out the dishcloth, twisted the water out of it, laid it over the middle lip of the double sink to dry.

He supposed now that the meal was over, and the cleanup nearly done, sex had stumbled back into the room like an interesting and awkward guest.

He considered just grabbing her, hauling her upstairs and into bed before she thought about it. There was an advantage to the technique, and he could probably have her naked before she changed her mind. But he rejected it, at least for the moment, in favor of a more subtle approach.

“Want to take a walk? Down to the lake, maybe?”

And he saw the combination of surprise and relief on her face. “That’d be nice. I haven’t done that yet, not on this side anyway.”

“It’s a clear night, so there’s light enough. But you’ll need your jacket.”

“Right.” She stepped into the utility room to take hers off the peg.

He moved in behind her, deliberately reaching over her for his. She stiffened at the light brush of bodies, sidestepped and reached for the door.

Her nerves pumped once, like a pulse, then seemed to evaporate into the cool air.

“It’s gorgeous out.” She breathed it in, soaked it in, earth and pine. “I haven’t been able to talk myself into a solo walk at night. I think about it though.” She pulled her jacket on as she walked. “But it’s either too quiet or not quiet enough, and I come up with a dozen reasons why I should head straight up to my apartment after a dinner shift.”

“Mostly towners around this time of year at night. Not much to worry about there.”

“Obviously you don’t know about the crazed psychopath hiding in the marsh, the serial rapist just passing through town or the kindly math teacher who, in actuality, is an ax murderer.”

“I guess I missed them.”

She glanced up at him as if considering, then shrugged. “One night last week I was restless and wanted a walk. I actually thought about taking my serving fork with me, in case I had to defend myself against any or all of my imaginary homicidal maniacs.”

“A serving fork.”

“Yeah. A knife seemed a little too over the top. But you could do some damage if you had to with a decent serving fork. But I decided against it and watched an old movie on TV instead. It’s ludicrous. I’m ludicrous. Why do you want to hang around with me, Brody?”

“Maybe I find neurotic women hot.”

“No, you don’t.” But she laughed, shook back her hair to take a look up at the sky. “My God, it’s so big, so clear. I can see the Milky Way. I think that’s the Milky Way. And both Dippers, which is about it for my constellation knowledge.”

“Don’t look at me. I just see a bunch of stars, and a white, waning moon.”

“So?” Because he hadn’t taken her hand, and she doubted he was the type for a lot of hand-holding, she slid her own into her jacket pockets. “Make one up. You’re in the business of making things up.”

Hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets, he studied the pattern of stars. “There’s the Lonely Herman—or the Fat Man Standing on One Leg. Over to the west, there’s the Goddess Sally, who guards over all fry cooks.”

“Sally? And here, all this time, I didn’t know I had a patron goddess.”

“You’re no fry cook.”

“Right now, I am. Besides, I want Sally for my own. Look how she shines in the water.”

Stars swam in the lake, a thousand lights sparkling on the dark plate of it. And the moonlight cut a dreamy white swath over the gleam. The air was full of scent, the pine, the water, the earth and grass.

“Sometimes I miss Boston so much it’s an ache right down in the bones,” she told him. “And I think I need to go back, I want to be back and find what I had there. My busy life, my busy friends. My apartment with the Chinese-red walls and sleek black dining room table.”

“Chinese red?”

“I liked bold once.” She’d been bold once. “Then I stand at a spot like this, and I think, even if I could bury what happened, I don’t know if I could find anything there that I want or I need anymore. I’m not Chinese red anymore.”

“What does it matter? You make your place where you are, and if it doesn’t suit, you make it somewhere else. You use whatever colors you damn well please.”

“That’s exactly what I told myself when I left. I sold all my things. My sleek black dining room table, and all the rest. I told myself it had to be done. I wasn’t working, and there were bills. Lots and lots of bills. But that was only part of it. I didn’t want them anymore.”

“Yours to sell,” he pointed out. But he thought how wrenching it must have been for someone like her to push everything she had away. How painful and sad.

“Yeah. Yeah, mine to sell. And the bills got paid. And now I’m here.”

She moved closer to the water’s edge. “The woman in your book—the one you didn’t kill after all? What’s her name?”

“Madeline Bright. Maddy.”

“Maddy Bright.” Reece tested the name out. “I like it—friendly but strong. I hope she makes it through.”

“So does she.”

They stood for a moment, side by side, looking over the lake, through the night, toward the deep silhouette of the mountains.

“When we were up on the trail that day, and you were figuring out how she’d die—or how you thought she would—and I went on by, did you stay up there to make sure I got back safely?”

He kept right on looking at the Tetons. “It was a nice day. I didn’t have anything else to do.”

“You were heading in my direction even before you heard me running back.”

“I didn’t have anything else to do,” he repeated, and she turned to face him.

“You were being a nice guy.”

She took a chance, a big step for her. Like jumping off a cliff into a river. She lifted her hands to lay them on his face, rose up to her toes. And touched her lips to his.

“I’m afraid I’m going to screw this up. You should know that before we go back. But I’d like to go back anyway. I’d like to go back in, and go to bed with you.”

“That’s an excellent idea.”

“I get them occasionally. Maybe you should hold my hand in case I lose my nerve and try to run.”

“Sure.”

She didn’t lose it all, and she didn’t try to run, but with every step back toward his cabin the doubts crept closer.

“Maybe we should have another glass of wine first.”

“Had enough, thanks.” He kept her hand in his, kept walking.

“It might be best if we talked about where this is leading.”

“Right now it’s leading up to my bedroom.”

“Yes, but…” It was no use balking when he was already pulling her inside. “Um, you need to lock the door.”

He turned the lock. “There.”

“I really think we need to—”

She broke off, completely stunned, when he simply plucked her up and laid her over his shoulder.

“Oh, well.” There were too many conflicting currents running inside her to let her decide whether being carried through the house was romantic or mortifying. “I’m not sure this is the right approach. I think if we took a few minutes to discuss…I’d just like to ask if you’d keep your expectations on the low side because I’m really out of practice and—”

“You’re talking too much.”

“It’s going to get worse.” She squeezed her eyes shut as he started up the stairs. “I can actually feel the babbling rising in my throat. Listen, listen, when we were outside, I could breathe, and I thought I could handle it. It’s not that I don’t want this, it’s just I’m not sure. I don’t know. God. Does the bedroom door have a lock?”

He booted it shut, then turned and locked the door. “Better?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I know I’m being an idiot, but I’m just not—”

“Knowing you’re an idiot’s the first step to recovery.” He dropped her on her feet by the bed. “Now be quiet.”

“I just think if we—”

Thoughts fizzled because he made that move on her again. Jerking her up, toward him, closing her mouth with his, with heat, with hunger. All she could do was hold on while fears and needs and reason warred inside her.

Part of her was falling apart. And part of her was falling away.

“I think I—”

“Need to be quiet,” he finished and kissed her again.

“I know. Maybe you could talk. But would you turn out the lights?”

“I never turned them on.”

“Oh. Oh.” Now the silver moonglow and the starshine that had been so lovely and appealing outside seemed too bright.

“Pretend I’m still holding your hand so you don’t run away.”

But she felt his hands run up her body, thumbs skimming not so gently over her breasts. Lovely little thrills. “How many hands do you have?”

“Enough to get the job done. You ought to look at me. Look at me, Reece. That’s the way. You know the first time I saw you?”

“In the…in the diner.” The moonlight darkened his eyes, as if the green had been swallowed up by the night. “In Joanie’s.”

“Yeah.” He unbuttoned her shirt, lowered his head to close his teeth over her jaw until she trembled. “First time I saw you, I got that little snap in the blood. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yes. Yes. Brody, just—”

“Sometimes you act on it.” He nipped his way down her throat. “Sometimes you don’t, but you know when you feel it.”

“If it was dark…It’d be better if it was dark.”

He took the hand she’d lifted to cover the scar on her chest, drew it away again. “We’ll test that theory sometime. You got some sexy skin here, Slim.” He let his hands run up to her shoulders, sliding the shirt away as they traveled down her arms. “All smooth and soft. A guy just wants to lap it up. No, you don’t.” He wrapped her hair around his hand to keep her face lifted to his. “Keep looking at me.”

Cat’s eyes, she thought. She was so close to them now the color seemed to have leaped back into them. A mix of green and amber, and so watchful. She didn’t feel safe staring into them, not at all safe. But the fear was somehow thrilling.

Then the fingers of his free hand snapped open the hook of her bra, and her own eyes rounded.

Even as the nervous laugh tickled her throat he was devouring her again, mouth to mouth, body to body. Everything about him was hard and strong and just a little rough. Everything about him was exactly what she wanted.

Hands along her skin, learning secrets she’d forgotten she had, teeth grazing, causing delicious little lines of heat. She felt him loosen her belt before his hands slid erotically under denim to stroke flesh.

Her response came in spurts. Shy and hesitant, avid and eager. But whatever roller coaster she was on, she was dragging him right along with her, the breathless climb up, the windy flight down, and all the dangerous curves between.

She was slight and tight with that smooth, soft skin seductive in its fragility. She fumbled at his shirt, and her breath caught, caught again and again, whenever he touched her. Wherever he touched her.

So he savored and sampled and savaged while his control teetered on a slippery edge.

Her arms tightened around him when he scooped her up, all but tossed her on the bed. Her gasp of excited shock was muffled against his mouth. In a kind of frenzy she fought to toe off her shoes, bucking her hips so he could yank the jeans down.

His mouth tore from hers to feast at her throat while her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, his shoulders. Everything in her was rising toward that heat, the threat and the promise of it.

When his mouth closed greedily over her breast, her heartbeat went to thunder. Her pulse exploded to a gallop.

His weight pinned her, his mouth claimed her. Even through the silver haze of lust, panic began to crawl. She fought it, willing her mind to shut off, to let her body rule. But in the end they both betrayed her as her lungs simply shut down.

“I can’t breathe. I can’t. Wait, stop.”

It took him a moment to understand it was panic, not passion. He rolled aside, then gripped her shoulders to yank her up to sitting.

“You are breathing.” He gave her a little shake. “Stop gasping for air. You’ll just hyperventilate.”

“Okay. Okay.” She knew the routine. She had to concentrate on each breath, on the physical act of inhaling slow and steady.

Mortified, she crossed her arms over her breasts as she sat in a slant of moonlight. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Goddamn it, I’m sick of being a freak.”

“Then stop.”

“You think it’s so fucking easy? Oh, I’ll just be normal now. You think I like sitting here naked and humiliated?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“There you go, sweet-talking me again.” There was heat in her eyes, which he appreciated. But the shine came into them, warning of a jag. “You start crying, you’re going to piss me off.”

“I’m not going to cry. You asshole.” She knuckled a tear away.

“Now you’ve done it. I’m turned on again.” He pushed her hair off her shoulders. “Did I hurt you?”

“What?”

“Was I hurting you?”

“No. Jesus.” She kept one arm over her breasts, covered her face with her other hand. “No. I just…I couldn’t get my breath. I felt, I don’t know, trapped under you, I guess. Just a flare of claustrophobia, performance anxiety and so on and so fucking forth.”

“Oh, if that’s all, I can fix it.” He took her shoulders again, pulling her down to him as he lay on his back. “You can be on top.”

“Brody—”

“Just look at me.” He cupped a hand on the back of her head, drew her lips to his. “Take it easy,” he murmured against her mouth. “Or take it any way that suits you.”

“I feel clumsy.”

“No, you don’t.” He let his hands wander, watched the flush come back into her cheeks. “You feel smooth, a little on the slight side. But not clumsy. Kiss me again.”

She laid her lips on his and let go of the panic. His heart beat strong and steady against hers; his lips demanded that hers yield. The taste of him, once again, awakened all those long-denied appetites.

Still when he lifted her hips, she started to protest, to pull away. But he held her, and his eyes trapped her, until he slid inside her.

A shudder that was relief, pleasure, lust shook her. Then he began to move, and her body began to hum.

She cried out as she stumbled over the first peak, a shock to the system, a sudden surge of sheer delight.

She moaned as she reared back. As she gave herself to it, and to him. And at last, as she took and took.

She climbed the next peak, dragging herself over as the orgasm seemed to rip right through her. She could feel him racing with her, beat for beat.

God, thank God, she thought on a sobbing breath.

When he pushed up to her, arms banding, teeth clamped on her shoulder, it was she who sent them both soaring over the last rise.

SHE LAY REPLETE and dazzled, and grateful. And without a clue what to say or do next. But her body felt loose. Hell, she corrected, it was limp even if her heart was still banging like a drum in a marching band. If she could muster the energy, she’d go back on her word and cry.

Tears of sheer delight.

She’d touched and been touched; she’d given and she’d taken. She’d had an orgasm—at long, long last—so hard and bright it had been like a fat fist of diamonds.

And she knew damn well she wasn’t alone on that score.

“I want to say thanks. Is that stupid?”

Brody stirred himself enough to stroke a hand down her back. “Most women send me tasteful yet expensive gifts after. But I can settle for thanks, just this once.”

She snorted out a laugh as she pushed herself up to look down at him. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed. The expression of pure male satisfaction on it made her want to leap out of bed and do a victory dance.

Oh yeah, she’d given as good as she got.

“I cooked dinner,” she reminded him.

“Right. That counts.” He opened his eyes, lazily. “How you doing, Slim?”

“Truth? I’d stopped believing I would ever feel this way again. Just something else lost, and in the big scheme…Hell, in the big scheme, it’s a damn big loss. So really, thanks for sticking it out, and that came out completely wrong,” she said when he choked with laughter. “I’ll just shut up now.”

“That’ll be the day.”

She toyed with his hair, and wanted nothing more than to nuzzle in and sleep. “I guess I should get dressed and go home.”

“Why?”

“It’s getting late.”

“You have a curfew?”

“No, but…do you want me to stay?”

“I figure if you stay the night, you’ll feel obliged to cook me breakfast in the morning.”

A little glow spread just under her heart. “I could probably be persuaded to cook your breakfast.”

“I’m very persuasive in the morning.” He tugged the spread and sheet down, then rolled her over. “Besides, it’s not that late, and I’m not done with you.”

“In that case, I guess I’m staying.”

Later, when he slept, she lay restless and uneasy. She argued with herself, but in the end she surrendered and eased out of the bed.

She’d just check—once, just once, she told herself, and found his shirt for cover before she tiptoed out of the room. Each creak of the board underfoot had her wincing as she crept down the stairs.

She checked the front door first. See, locked, she told herself. Hadn’t she locked it herself? Still, what harm did it do to check? The back door was locked, too. Of course it was. But…

She eased her way to the back of the house, checked the locks. For a moment she studied his kitchen chairs. She wanted to prop one under the doorknob, and had to argue with herself against it.

It wasn’t as if she was alone in the house. She was with a big, strong man. No one was going to try to break in anyway, but if someone did, Brody could handle it.

She made herself turn away from the door, from the chairs, and leave the room.

“Problem?”

She didn’t shriek, but it was a close call. She did stumble back, slam a hip painfully against the doorjamb. Brody came the rest of the way toward her. “Maybe you are clumsy.”

“Ha. Maybe. I was just…” She trailed off, shrugged.

He’d heard her leave the bedroom and figured she had to pee. But the steps had creaked under her feet. Curiosity had him dragging on his jeans and going down to see what she was up to.

“All locked up?” he said casually.

“Yes. I just wanted to…I need to check that kind of thing before I can sleep. It’s no big deal.”

“Who said it was? Is that my shirt?”

“Well, yeah. I can’t go walking around naked.”

“Don’t see why not. But since you didn’t ask if you could borrow it, which is pretty damn rude, I think you’d better get your ass back upstairs and give it back to me.”

“You’re absolutely right.” Everything inside her relaxed again. “I’m so ashamed.”

“Ought to be.” He took her hand, walked her back up the steps. “How would you like it if I paraded around in your clothes without permission?”

“I don’t think I would. Although, it might be strangely fascinating.”

“Yeah, like anything you’ve got would fit me. How do you want the door?”

She just stared at him, and wondered he didn’t hear her heart go thud at his feet. “Closed and locked, if that’s all right.”

“Doesn’t matter to me.” He closed it, locked it. “Now give me back my damn shirt.”

DREAMING WOKE HER, a jumble of images, a quick pain. Her eyes flashed open. She wasn’t in the storeroom; she wasn’t bleeding. But the shadows and silhouettes of this room were unfamiliar, and had her heart skipping until she remembered.

Brody’s bedroom. Brody’s bed. And Brody’s elbow digging like a pickax into her ribs was oddly comforting.

She was not only safe, she was damn near spectacular.

He was a stomach sleeper, she noted as she turned her head to study him. And a sprawler. During the night he’d worked her over to the edge of the bed, leaving her a stingy triangle of mattress. But that was fine. She’d gotten several solid hours of real sleep in that miserly space.

And before that, she’d gotten good use of every inch of that bed.

She eased out of what bed she had and was vaguely disappointed that he didn’t reach for her. Just as well, she told herself as she gathered up her clothes. She had things to do, including fixing breakfast with the limited supplies in Brody’s kitchen.

She crept out of the room and into the bath across the hall. When she pushed the lock button on the doorknob, it popped back out. After several tries she stood there, clothes bundled to her breast, staring at the knob.

How could it not lock? There was a lock on the bedroom door, but not the bathroom? That was ridiculous, that was just wrong. Ithad to lock. But no matter how she pushed or twisted, it didn’t stick.

“I don’t have to lock the door. Nobody broke in and murdered me last night, no one’s going to break in this morning. Brody’s sleeping right across the hall. Three minutes in the shower, that’s all. In and out. It’s all fine.”

His bath was twice the size of hers, with a standard white tub and shower. Dark blue towels that didn’t really go with the mottled green pattern of the countertop. But still, nothing fancy, nothing strange. She stared at the door as she backed up to turn on the taps.

She liked the smooth, sealed log walls, the floor tiles made to look like slate. He should have gone for gray towels, she thought, or tried to match the green in the countertop.

She tried to concentrate on that idea, and the simplicity of the room while she backed into the shower.

She grabbed the soap and raced her way through the multiplication tables. The soap squirted out of her jerking hand when the knock sounded on the door.

Psychos don’t knock, she told herself. “Brody?”

“You expecting someone else?” He opened the door, and a moment later, tugged the shower curtain back an inch. He was buck naked. “Why do you care what eight times eight is when you’re taking a shower?”

“Because singing in the shower is too ordinary for me.” She tried to figure out what to do with her hands without making it obvious she was covering herself. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I think I saw all there was to see of you last night—or does water make you shy?”

“No.” She made herself drop one of her arms, then push a hand at her dripping hair. But she kept her free hand lightly fisted at her chest.

Ignoring the wet and steam, Brody reached in, tugged her hand down. And when she brought it up again, he lifted his brows and tugged it down more firmly.

He gave the scar she’d tried to hide a glance. “Close call.”

“You could say that.” She tried to angle her body away, but he made that impossible by tightening his grip on her hand and stepping into the tub with her.

“Are you worried about the scar because you think it makes you imperfect?”

“No. Maybe. It’s just not—”

“Because you got other flaws, you know. Bony hips for one.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, and with your hair wet I can get a good look. I don’t think your ears are quite level on your head.”

“Of course they are.” Instinct and insult had her reaching up to check. He moved right in, wrapping his arms around her.

“But, other than that, you’re not half bad. I might as well make use of you.”

He backed her up against the shower wall, and did just that.

16

RATHER THAN a merry month, May plagued Angel’s Fist with a series of wicked storms that thundered over the mountains and blew wild over the lake. But the days stretched longer with the light pulling farther and farther over the dark. Reece could all but see the snow melting along the lower ridges, while in her little valley the cottonwoods and willows began to haze with green.

Daffodils popped in cheerful yellow even when the wind and rain pelted them. She felt nearly the same. She’d been blown around and she’d been drenched. But she, too, was starting to bloom again.

And on this monumental day, she was going to venture beyond the Fist.

For most women getting a cut and style was a simple part of life. For Reece, it held all the excitement and terror of a parachute jump. And like a novice jumper, she clutched at the door.

“I can easily reschedule,” she told Joanie. “If you’re pressed today—”

“I didn’t say I was pressed.” Joanie poured pancake batter on the griddle.

“Yes, but with the weather breaking, you’ll probably be swamped at lunch. I don’t mind pitching in.”

“I handled this kitchen before you came along.”

“Sure, sure, you did. But if you need an extra hand today—”

“I’ve got two of my own. And isn’t Beck standing right here?”

Beck, sturdy as an oak, homely as a pot of overcooked rice, shot a grin over and kept shredding cabbage for coleslaw. “She’ll work me to the bone, Reece, with you not around to stop her.”

“You don’t have that slaw ready by eleven sharp, she won’t stop me from booting your ass, either.”

“Aw now, Joanie,” he said, as he always did.

“You want to be useful?” she said to Reece. “Top off Mac’s coffee on your way out the door.”

“All right. I’ll have my cell phone if you change your mind. I’m not leaving for an hour.”

She dragged her feet a little, but she grabbed the pot, moved to the counter where Mac sat waiting for his pancakes.

“You and Joanie having a round?”

“Hmm? Oh no, nothing like that.” She poured the coffee. “I just stopped by. Day off.”

“That so? Big plans?”

“Yes. Sort of. Linda-gail and I are going into Jackson.”

“Shopping spree, huh?”

“Probably some of that.” Linda-gail had certainly threatened it. “I’m getting my hair cut.”

“Going all the way to Jackson for a haircut?” Fist loyalty had him frowning. “We’ve got the Curry Comb right here in town.”

The Curry Comb was a two-chair establishment that ran to buzz cuts and poodle perms. But Reece smiled a little as she passed him the sugar bowl. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Linda-gail says we’re going to have a splurge. I really don’t need to.”

“Get out.” Joanie delivered the pancakes with the side of elk sausage herself.

“I’m leaving.” Reece picked up her purse, and the file folder she’d brought along. “I thought I’d show the sketch Doc made while I’m there. You still haven’t come across anyone who recognizes her?”

As was her habit, Reece took one of the copies out, showed it to Mac again.

“Nope. Got it posted right there at the front counter at the store, incase.”

“I appreciate that. Well, Jackson’s a big place.” Reece slipped the sketch back in the folder. “Maybe I’ll have better luck there.”

“Don’t come whining back here if they scalp you over there,” Joanie called out. Then barked with laughter when Reece paled. “Serve you right if they did, not spending your pay here in the Fist. You be here at six sharp tomorrow morning, whatever you look like.”

“Could always wear a hat,” Mac suggested.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot. I’m leaving.”

She sailed out, and made sure she was out of sight of the big front window before she raked a hand through her hair. She’d make Linda-gail go first, hang back, get the lay of the land. She didn’thave to get her hair cut. It was a choice, an option.

A possibility.

But going into Jackson was a good idea, and gave her the opportunity to pass out copies of the sketch. There hadn’t been a single hit on it in the Fist. Excluding Liquor Store Jeff’s claim that it looked like Penélope Cruz.

If the woman had been traveling through the area, the odds were better she’d swung into a bigger, flashier place like Jackson Hole than the small, scraped knuckles of Angel’s Fist.

Now, since she had a little time to spare and didn’t want to spend it obsessing about her hair, she walked down to the sheriff’s office.

It had been nearly a week since she’d asked Sheriff Mardson if he’d learned anything new. Of course, she’d been spending a lot of that week working, or in Brody’s bed. But thanks to the distractions, Mardson couldn’t accuse her of nagging him.

When she walked in, Hank O’Brian was at Dispatch. He had a full black beard, a fondness for chicken-fried steak and a Shoshone grandmother who was a local legend for her pottery.

At the moment, Hank was drinking coffee with one hand and pecking at his keyboard with the other. He glanced over. “How you doing there, Reece?”

“Good, thanks. How’s your grandmother?”

“Got herself a boyfriend. Tribal elder lost his wife a year or so back. Guy’s ninety-three and sniffing around, bringing her flowers and candy. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“That’s sweet.” But since he looked pained, she added, “And she’s got you to look out for her. I wonder if the sheriff’s busy? I just wanted to—”

Even as she spoke, she heard the trill of laughter. Mardson walked out hand in hand with his wife.

That was sweet, too, Reece thought. The way people looked together when theywere together. Mardson had an easy smile on his face, and Debbie was still laughing, swinging their joined hands a little as they walked.

She was a pretty, athletic-looking blonde with short tousled hair and emerald green eyes. She wore snug jeans, chestnut brown cowboy boots and a red shirt under a faded denim jacket. A pendant at the end of a sparkling gold chain hung around her neck. A shining sun, Reece noted. Pretty.

Debbie ran the outfitters On the Trail, next door to the hotel, helped arrange hiking tours with the hotel, sold fishing and hunting licenses. And was tight with Brenda. Sunday afternoons, she brought her two girls into Joanie’s for ice cream.

She sent Reece a quick, friendly smile. “Hi! I thought you were heading into Jackson Hole today.”

“Um, well, yeah. Later.”

“I ran into Linda-gail yesterday. Big plans. Getting your hair cut? It’s so pretty—but it gets in the way, I bet when you’re at the grill. Still, men like long hair on a woman, don’t they? Poor Rick,” she said with another laugh. “I’m always having mine chopped off.”

“I like it just fine.” He leaned down to peck her cheek, flicked a finger at the ends of her hair. “You’re my sunlight.”

“Listen to him.” Smiling, Debbie bumped Rick, arm against arm. “Sweet-talking. And after I came in to try to talk him into taking an hour off and taking a ride with me. Turned me down flat.”

“Not all of us can play hooky. This woman gets on a horse, and an hour lasts half the day. Something I can do for you, Reece?” Rick asked her.

“I thought I’d stop by before I left, just to see if you found out anything new.” She waited a beat, then pulled out one of the sketches. “On her.”

“Wish I could say I had. No reports in this area of a missing person matching her description. And nobody recognizes her. Not much more I can do.”

“No. Well, I know you’ve done what you could. Maybe I’ll have some luck in Jackson. I’m going to show the sketch around while I’m there.”

“I’m not going to tell you not to,” Rick said slowly. “But you need to understand—and nothing against Doc—but that’s a pretty rough sketch. Without more details, you’re liable to run into a lot of people who’ll think maybe they’ve seen somebody like her. You’ll end up chasing a lot of wild geese.”

“You’re probably right.” Reece put the sketch away and didn’t miss the look on Debbie’s face. If there was one thing Reece recognized, it was quiet pity. “I feel like I have to try at least. I’d better go. Thanks, Sheriff. It was nice seeing you, Debbie. Bye, Hank.”

She felt the heat rising up the back of her neck as she walked out. Because in addition to the pity aimed her way, she knew there was speculation mixed in with it.

Just how crazy was Reece Gilmore?

Screw it. Just screw it, she told herself as she walked back to Joanie’s to get her car. She wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t see what she’d seen, wasn’t going to stuff the sketches in some drawer and forget about it.

And she wasn’t going to let it drag her down, not today.

Today she was going to town and getting her hair done.

God help her.

THE SAGE FLATS were waiting to bloom. Reece thought she could almost hear them take that deep, long inhale that would burst into color on the exhale.

A trio of pelicans soared in military formation over the marsh, but it was her first sight of a coyote on its slinking lope over the flats that had her telling Linda-gail to stop the car.

Though Linda-gail called it an oversized rat, she indulged Reece.

“He looks so predatory.”

“Sneaky bastards” was Linda-gail’s opinion.

“Maybe, but I’d like to hear one howl like in the movies.”

“I nearly forgot you’re a city girl. Weather warms enough to keep the windows open at night, you can hear them sometimes.”

“I’ll put that on my list. Thanks for stopping for the city girl.”

“No problem.” Then they were zooming down the road toward Jackson Hole, with Martina McBride’s powerhouse voice aptly claiming this one for the girls.

IF REECE CONSIDERED Angel’s Fist a rough and interesting little diamond, Jackson was big and polished and faceted with its fashionable western flair and colorful neon. Shops and restaurants and galleries spread with wooden boardwalks and busy streets. And people were busy on them, heading somewhere, Reece supposed. Maybe a stop in town before visiting one of the great parks now that summer was nearly here.

Some of the people would be in town for supplies, a lunch date, a business meeting.

Thriving, she thought, alive and active it was. But beyond the structures and speed of civilization planted here, white-frosted mountains stood in dazzling splendor. They dwarfed what man had made, and shone brighter than jewels in the blaze of the sun.

It took Reece less than two minutes to understand that though the views were breath-stealing, she’d made a better choice with Angel’s Fist.

Too many people here, she decided. Too much going on at once. Hotels, motels, recreation centers, winter sports, summer sports, real estate offices.

She was barely inside the town limits when she wanted out again.

“This is going to be fun!” Linda-gail swung through traffic as if it were a carnival ride. “If you’re feeling a little anxious or whatever, just close your eyes.”

“And miss seeing the crash?”

“I’m a terrific driver.” Linda-gail proved it by threading between an SUV and a motorcycle, waving cheerily at the drivers, then zipping around a corner on a yellow light. “I think I might go red.”

“I think I’ve already gone green. Linda—”

“Nearly there. We should do a serious splurge sometime, book the full enchilada at one of the day spas. They haveamazing spas here. I want someone to slather me with mud and rub me with herbs and—holy shit, a parking place!”

She zoomed toward it, a heat-seeking missile in a Ford Bronco. Reece’s anxiety over the crowd, the traffic, her hair, all vanished, swallowed up by the terror of certain death.

Before she could babble out a prayer, they were parked at the curb. “It’s a couple more blocks, but you never know. Besides, you’ll see a little of the place if we walk.”

“I think I’ve lost all use of my lower body.”

On a giggle, Linda-gail gave Reece a poke. “Come on. Let’s go get us some new do’s.”

Reece’s legs might have trembled, but they got her to the sidewalk. “How many tickets do you rack up a year? No, how many vehicles do you wrack up annually?”

On a cluck of her tongue, Linda-gail hooked her arm through Reece’s. “Don’t be such an old lady. Oh my God, look! Just look at that jacket!” She dragged Reece to a shop window to stare avariciously at a leather jacket in rich melted chocolate brown. “It looks so soft. Probably costs a zillion dollars. Let’s go try it on. No, we’ll be late. We’ll try it on with our new hair.”

“I don’t have a zillion dollars.”

“Neither do I, but it doesn’t cost a thing to play with it. Snug cut like that, it’ll look better on you than me, which is a pisser. Still, if I had a zillion, it’d be mine.”

“I think I need to go lie down.”

“You’ll be fine. And if you get shaky, I’ve got a flask in my purse.”

“You—” Reece stuttered a bit as Linda-gail pulled her along. “A flask of what?”

“Apple martinis, in case you need something to take the edge off. Or even for the hell of it. Mmmm, giddyup. Check it out.”

With her head spinning, Reece turned it in the direction Linda-gail indicated and spotted the tall, lanky cowboy in boots, Levi’s and Stetson.

“Slurp” was Linda-gail’s opinion.

“I thought you were in love with Lo.”

“Have been, am, will be. But it’s like the jacket, honey. Don’t cost a nickel to look. I take it you’ve been more than looking with Brody. Is the sex amazing?”

“I may actually need that martini if this keeps up.”

“Just tell me one thing. Does his ass look as good naked as it does in jeans?”

“Yes, yes, I can tell you that it does.”

“I knew it. Here we are.” She got a firmer hold of Reece’s arm and pulled her inside.

She didn’t reach for the flask, though it was tempting, and in the time they waited for their stylists, Reece nearly balked a half a dozen times.

But she learned something.

It wasn’t as bad as it had been the last time she tried. The walls didn’t seem so close together, or the sounds so harsh they made her heart palpitate. And when her stylist introduced himself as Serge, she didn’t burst into tears and sprint for the door.

He had the slightest Slavic accent, and a winning smile that faded into concern when he took her hand. “Baby doll, your hands are like ice. Let’s get you a nice cup of herbal tea. Nan! We need a cup of chamomile. And you just come with me.”

She went along like a puppy.

He had her seated at his station, swathed in a mint green cape—and his hands in her hair before her brain engaged again.

“I’m not sure I—”

“Gorgeous texture, and so thick! Very healthy. You take care of it.”

“I guess I do.”

“But where’s the style? The flair? Look at this face, and all this hair like a curtain blocking it. What would you like today?”

“I…Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

“Tell me about yourself. No rings? Single?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Fancy free. And from back East somewhere.”

“Boston.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He continued to lift her hair, let it fall, study it. “And what is it you do, my angel?”

“I cook. I’m a cook.” Something inside her started to purr as his hands massaged her scalp, played with her hair. “I work with Linda-gail. Is she going to be nearby?”

“She’s fine. We don’t see nearly enough of her in here.” And with that winning smile, he met Reece’s eyes in the mirror. “Trust me?”

“I…Oh God. Okay. But do you have any Valium to put in that tea?”

SHE’D FORGOTTEN THIS, the indulgence of it. Hands in her hair, soothing tea, glossy magazines, the chatter of primarily female voices.

She was getting highlights, because Serge wanted her to. She probably couldn’t afford highlights, but she was getting them. At some point in the process, Linda-gail trotted up, her hair slathered in product and covered with plastic.

“Vixen Red,” she announced. “I’m going for it. I’m squeezing in a manicure. Want one?”

“No. No, I can’t take any more.”

But she actually drowsed over her copy ofVogue until it was time for the shampoo. And the cut.

“So now, tell me about the man in your life.” Serge began to clip and snip. “You must have one.”

“I guess I do.” My God, she had a man in her life. “He’s a writer. We’re just really starting to be together.”

“Lust. Excitement. Discovery.”

A smile flickered over her face. “Exactly. He’s smart, self-reliant and likes my cooking. He…well, he masks this incredible patience under pithy comments. He doesn’t treat me like I’m breakable, and people were, for too long. And because he doesn’t, I don’t think of myself that way as much. As breakable. Oh, I forgot this.”

Serge lifted the scissors when she leaned forward for the file. “I wonder if you recognize this woman.”

He pocketed the scissors long enough to take the sketch and study it. “I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think she’s been in my chair. I’d have talked her into shortening that hair—it draws down her face. Does she belong to you?”

“In a way. Maybe I could show it around, even leave a copy of it here? Someone might recognize her.”

“Absolutely. Nan!”

The ever-efficient Nan zipped by, took the sketch. Reece refocused on herself long enough to blink. “Wow. That’s, ah, that’s a lot of hair falling off my head.”

“Not to worry. Look at you! Gorgeous!” He stopped again to turn and admire the newly redheaded Linda-gail.

“Ilove it!” She spun a circle, showing off the bold red in her sassy new cut. “I’m reinvented. What do you think? What do you think?” she demanded of Reece.

“It’s wonderful. It’s really fabulous.” The bold red turned her from pretty little blonde to hot, hip and happening. “Linda-gail, you look seriously amazing.”

“I hit up the makeup samplers.” She peered around Reece to admire herself in the mirror. “And I do look amazing. When we get back, I’m going to track down Lo and make him suffer.” She turned, angled her head. “I love the highlights, subtle but effective. And I think I see where Serge is going here. Your eyes look bigger—as if they needed to—and your face is more out there. Kudos on the bangs, Serge. Sexy.”

“Damn right, frame those gorgeous eyes. All that weight’s off your shoulders, your neck. Still, nice, long layers. You’ll find it easy to style yourself, I think.”

Reece stared at the picture emerging in the mirror.I almost recognize that woman , she thought.I almost see meagain .

When her eyes filled, Serge lowered the scissors, glanced at Linda-gail with alarm. “She doesn’t like it. You’re upset. You don’t like it.”

“No, no, I do like it. I do. It’s been a long time since I looked in the mirror and saw something I did like.”

Linda-gail sniffled. “You need makeup samples.”

Serge patted Reece’s shoulder. “You’re going to make me cry in a minute. At least let me blow it out first.”

SHE WANTED TO show off. She’d had the most fantastic day, and looked the part. Of course she shouldn’t have let Linda-gail talk her into buying that shirt, even if it was the most delicious shade of yellow. Still, she’d given the salesclerk a copy of the sketch—as she had done in every store Linda-gail had dragged her into.

And she’d been right, the leather jacket looked better on Reece. Though it wasn’t quite a zillion dollars, it might as well have been. It was just as far out of her reach.

A great haircut and a great new shirt were enough reward.

She intended to go straight home, admire herself, put the new shirt on, spruce up. Then she’d call Brody and see if he was interested in coming over for dinner.

She’d found some lovely field greens in a market in Jackson, and some nice diver-harvested scallops. And saffron, which she couldn’t really afford either, but it would be nice to make a saffron and basil puree for the scallops. Then the Brie and porcini for wild rice.

While Linda-gail might have drooled over the boutiques, Reece had quivered with pleasure in the markets.

She all but danced up the steps as she carted the bags to her apartment. Humming, she unlocked the door, and was so carefree she told herself she could wait until she’d put the bags on the counter to lock it again.

“Gee, Reece, you’re going to be a real girl again before you know it.” She waltzed to the door, locked it. Then decided everything else could just wait until she’d taken another look at her happy self.

She did pirouettes toward the bathroom just for the pleasure of feeling her shorter, lighter hair swing.

And all the blood in her face drained, all the muscles in her body went saggy with shock as she stared at the mirror.

The sketch was taped to it so that she stared at the face of a dead woman instead of her own. On the walls, the floor, the little vanity, written over and over again with red marker, bright as blood, was the single question.

IS THIS ME?

Shivering, she sank down in the doorway and curled into a ball.

HAD TO BE home by now, Brody thought as he drove around the lake. How long did it take to have somebody whack at her hair anyway? She didn’t answer the phone, and he felt ridiculous as he’d called four times in the last hour.

Goddamn it, he’d missed her. And that was even more ridiculous. He never missed anyone. Besides that, she’d only been gone a few hours. Eight and a half hours. Plenty of days went by without him seeing her for longer than that.

But on those days, he knew she was right across the lake, that he could wander over and see her if he wanted.

He hadn’t yet lowered himself to trying her cell phone, like some pussy-whipped idiot who couldn’t be away from a woman for a day without dialing her number. Without hearing her voice.

He’d just go to Joanie’s for a while, hang out, maybe have a beer. And keep an eye out for her car. Casually.

Nobody had to know about it.

He spotted her car in its habitual place, and figured his luck was in. He’d just go on up, tell her he’d had to run into town for…what? For bread.

Did he have bread at home? He couldn’t remember. Bread would be his story, and he’d stick to it.

He wanted to see her, to smell her. He wanted his hands on her. But she didn’t have to know he’d been pacing around his cabin like a lost puppy for the last hour.

He was playing games, he realized as he parked. Making up excuses to come into town and see her.

Andthat made him feel like that pussy-whipped idiot.

Best way to offset that, in his opinion, was to be annoyed with her. Because it felt better, he had a scowl on his face as he went up her steps and banged with some impatience on her door.

“It’s Brody,” he called out. “Open up.”

It took her so long to answer, the scowl had turned into knitted brow concern.

“Brody, sorry, I was lying down. I have a headache.”

He tried the knob, found it still locked. “Open the door.”

“Really, it’s moving into migraine territory. I’m just going to sleep it off. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He didn’t like the sound of her voice. “Open the door, Reece.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” The lock turned, and she yanked open the door. “Do you have trouble understanding the language we speak here? I have a headache; I don’t want company. I certainly don’t feel like heating up the sheets.”

He let it roll off him because she was pale as wax. “You’re not one of those women who get weirded out if they get a bad haircut?”

“Of course I am. I, however, have a great haircut. An outstanding haircut. To get it involved a very long day and some considerable stress. Now I’m tired, and I want you to go away so I can lie down.”

His gaze tracked over, passed over the bags sitting on the counter. “How long have you been back?”

“I don’t know. Jesus. Maybe an hour.”

Headache, his ass. He knew her well enough by now to be sure she could have severed a limb and she’d still have put her groceries away the minute she walked in the door.

“What happened?”

“God, would you backoff ? I fucked you, okay, and it was great. The angels cried buckets. We’ll do it again real soon. But that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to some goddamn privacy.”

“All true,” he said in mild tones to contrast to her furious ones. “And I’ll give you plenty of privacy as soon as you tell me what the hell’s going on. What the hell did you do to your hands?”

He grabbed one, terrified for a moment it was blood smearing her fingers and palms. “What the hell? Is this ink?”

She started to weep, silently. He’d never seen anything more wrenching than the tears simply raining down her cheeks while she made no sound at all.

“For Christ’s sake, Reece, what is it?”

“I can’t get it off. I can’t get it off, and I don’t remember doing it. I don’t remember, and it won’t come off.”

She covered her face with her smeared hands. She didn’t resist when he picked her up and carried her to the bed to rock her in his arms.

17

PORTIONS OF the walls and the floor were smeared where she’d gone at them, Brody could see, with the wet towel now heaped in the tub. He imagined the towel was toast, which would upset her when she was calm enough to think about it.

She’d torn the sketch off the mirror, leaving ragged triangles of paper and tape behind, and had balled it up, tossed it in the wastebasket beside the sink.

He could visualize how it must have been for her, frantically grabbing the towel off the rod, dumping it into the sink to soak. Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing while the water dripped and sloshed and her breath came out in gasps and sobs.

And still the message was clear a dozen times over.

IS THIS ME?

“I don’t remember doing it.”

He didn’t turn to where she stood behind him, but continued to study the walls. “Where’s the red marker?”

“I…I don’t know. I must have put it back.” Fogged from the headache and tears, she crossed back into the kitchen, opened a drawer.

“It’s not here.” On another spurt of desperation, she pawed through the drawer, then yanked open another, another.

“Stop it.”

“It’s not here. I must have taken it with me, thrown it away. I don’t remember. Just like the other times.”

His eyes sharpened, but his voice stayed exactly the same. Calm and very firm. “What other times?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“No, you’re not.”

She slammed the drawer, and her eyes, red-rimmed from weeping, burned fury. “Don’t tell me what I am, what I’m not.”

“You’re not going to be sick,” he repeated as he walked over and took her by the arm, “because you haven’t told me about the other times. Let’s sit down.”

“I can’t.”

“Fine, we’ll stand up. Got any brandy?”

“I don’t want any brandy.”

“I didn’t ask you what you wanted.” He began opening cupboards himself until he found a small bottle.

Under other circumstances, he’d have offended her sense of aesthetics by pouring brandy into a juice glass.

“Knock it back, Slim.”

She might have been angry, might have been in the grip of despair, but Reece knew when it was pointless to argue. She took the glass, swallowed the two fingers of brandy in one gulp. And shuddered.

“The sketch. It could be me.”

“How do you figure?”

“If I imagined it…I’ve been through violence.”

“Ever been strangled?”

“So it took another form.” She set the glass down with a snap. “Someone tried to kill me once, and I’ve spent the last two years waiting for someone to try again. There’s a resemblance between me and the sketch.”

“In that you’re both female and you both have long, dark hair. Or you did.” Frowning a little, he reached out to touch the tips of her hair that fell several inches above her shoulders now. “It’s not your face.”

“But I didn’t see her very well.”

“But you did see her.”

“I don’tknow .”

“I do.” Since he knew she wouldn’t have coffee, he opened her refrigerator and was pleasantly surprised to see she’d stocked his brand of beer. He took one out, popped the top. “You saw those two people by the river.”

“How can you be sure? You didn’t see them.”

“I saw you,” he said simply. “But let’s get back to that. What other things don’t you remember?”

“I don’t remember marking up my trail map, or unlocking my door and dragging it open in the middle of the night, putting the damn mixing bowls in the closet and my hiking boots and pack in the kitchen cupboard. Or packing my clothes in my duffel. And there are other things, little things. I need to go back.”

“Back where?”

She scrubbed her hands over her face, left them there. “I’m not getting better. I need to go back in the hospital.”

“Bullshit. What’s this about packing your clothes?”

“I came home one night—the night I went out to Clancy’s with Linda-gail, and all my things were packed up. Everything packed in my duffel. I must’ve done it that morning, or on one of my breaks. I don’t remember. And once the flashlight I keep by the bed was in the refrigerator.”

“I found my wallet there once. Weird.”

She let out a sigh. “It’s not the same. I don’t put things in the wrong place. Ever. At least…not when I’m aware, not when I’m healthy. It’s certainly not normal for me to take bowls out of the kitchen and move them to the shelf in the clothes closet. I don’t misplace things because I can’t function if I don’t know exactly where everything is. And, the point is, I’m not functioning.”

“More bullshit.” Idly, he poked in the grocery bag. “What’re all these leaves and grasses?”

“They’re field greens.” She rubbed at the headache drilling into her temple. “I need to go. It’s what I was telling myself when I packed. I must have been telling myself that all along, back on the trail, pretending everything was on its way back to normal.”

“You saw a woman murdered while you were on the trail. Not so normal. I had doubts about that at the time, but now—”

“You did?”

“Not that you saw her—them. But that she was dead. It was possible she got up, walked out of there. Marginally possible. But she’s dead as Elvis.”

“Are you listening to me? Did you see what I did in there?” She flung a hand toward the bathroom.

“What if you didn’t?”

“Who the hell else?” she exploded. “I’m unstable, Brody, for Christ’s sake. I’m hallucinating murders and writing on walls.”

“What if you’re not?” he repeated in the same implacable tone. “Listen, I make a pretty decent living on what-ifs. What if you saw exactly what you said you saw?”

“And what if I did? It doesn’t change the rest of it.”

“Changes everything. Ever seeGaslight ?”

She stared at him. “Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to you. You’re as crazy as I am. What the hell doesGaslight have to do with me regressing to fugue states and writing all over my bathroom?”

“What if you’re not the one who wrote all over the bathroom?”

Her head hurt; her stomach was raw from churning. Since she was too tired to walk to a chair, she just sat on the floor and leaned back against the refrigerator. “If you think someone is doing a Charles Boyer on me, youare as crazy as I am.”

“Which scares you more, Reece?” He crouched down so their faces were level. “Believing you’re having another breakdown, or that someone wants you to believe it?”

Everything inside her trembled. “I don’t know.”

“Since it’s a toss-up, play along with me. What if you saw a woman murdered, an act no one else witnessed. You reported it, and word got around. What if the killer got that word—or, as we considered before, he saw you. He didn’t get away clean, after all. Covered his tracks, sure, but he didn’t get away clean.”

“Because there was a witness,” she whispered.

“Yeah. But the only witness has a history of psychological problems with their roots in violence. He can use that. Not everyone believes her anyway—new in town, a little shaky on her pins. But since she’s persistent, why not give her a little push on those shaky pins.”

“Well, God. Why not just shoot me in the head and get it over with?”

“Another murder, people are going to start taking you seriously.”

“Posthumously.”

“Sure.” Still got some of that steel in there, he thought. Maybe it had a couple of dents in it, but it would hold. “But give her some of those subtle little nudges and chances are she does one of two things. She breaks down, runs naked in the street singing show tunes, or she runs and has her breakdown somewhere else. Either way, her claims as a murder witness are likely to be dismissed.”

“But that’s…”

“Crazy? No, it’s not. It’s very smart, and very coolheaded.”

“So, instead of believing I’m a complete emotional and mental disaster area, you want me to believe a killer is stalking me, breaking into my apartment and trying to gaslight me.”

He took another pull of beer again. “It’s a theory.”

Sometime in the last minute, as what he was saying sank in, her throat had gone desert dry. “The first option is easier. Been there, after all, done that.”

“I bet it is. But you don’t take the easy way.”

“That’s a strange thing to say to someone who’s been running away from everything, including herself, for the better part of a year.”

“If that’s how you see it, maybe you are a little whacked.”

He rose and, almost as an afterthought, held out a hand to help her to her feet. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it. And she faced him.

“How do you see it?”

“I’m looking at a woman who survived. Her friends, who were next thing to family, all killed—one of them right in front of her, while she’s shot and left for dead. Trapped in the dark, bleeding. Everything she knew and cherished was taken, for no rhyme, no reason, so she was left with a shattered sense of security and an endangered sense of what some would call sanity. She’s standing here two years later because she’s been fighting her way back, step by step, at her own time, her own pace.

“I think she’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

Her breath hitched in and out. “I guess you don’t get out much.”

“There you are.” He smiled a little, tapped his finger on her forehead. “Right in there. Get some things together; you better stay at my place tonight.”

“I can’t take this in.”

“You will.” He poked into the grocery bag. “Would this be dinner?”

“Ohshit ! The scallops!”

He knew she was all the way back when she leaped toward the bag and dug down. “Thank God I had them bagged with an ice pack. They’re still cold. Something to be said for keeping the thermostat low.”

“I like scallops.”

“You haven’t seen food you don’t like.” Then she braced her hands on the counter and just closed her eyes. “You won’t let me fall apart. You just won’t let me.”

“I told you once before, hysterical women annoy me.”

“You told me once before you were hot for neurotics.”

“Yeah, I did. Not only is there a difference between hysteria and neurosis, I’ve decided you’re not neurotic enough for me. So I’m just going to use you until something better comes along.”

She rubbed her gritty eyes. “That’s fair.”

“When it does? You can still cook for me.”

“Thanks.” She dropped her hands and looked at him. “You held me while I cried. Annoying for you.”

“You weren’t hysterical. You were hurting. Just don’t make a habit of it.”

“I love you. I’m in love with you.”

She heard absolutely nothing for ten full seconds. And when he did speak, she caught the faintest trace of fear mixed in with the annoyance.

“Hell. No good deed goes unpunished.”

She laughed, rich and full and long. And the warmth of it soothed her raw throat, her raw nerves. “And that’s why. I must be out of my mind. Don’t worry about it, Brody.”

She turned now, noted he was staring at her with the cautious respect a man shows a ticking bomb. “Underneath all the neuroses, I’m a sensible, contemporary woman. You’re not responsible for my feelings or under obligation to reciprocate. But when you’ve gone through what I’ve been through, you learn not to take things for granted. Time, people, feelings. My therapist is the one who started me keeping a journal,” she continued as she packed what she’d need. “To get my feelings, my emotions—ones I just couldn’t articulate—out on paper. It’s helped me do just that, and made it easier to articulate them. Like now, for instance.”

“You’re mixing up trust, and a misplaced sense of gratitude, and the fact we’ve got heat.”

“My head may be screwed up, but my heart’s fine. But if it scares you, I can call Linda-gail and stay with her until I figure out what to do next.”

“Just get what you need,” he said abruptly. “Including whatever it takes to cook this stuff.”

SHE WASN’T in love with him. But having herthink she was worried him. Here he was, trying to help her out—which was probably his first mistake—and now she was complicating everything. Just like a woman, he thought, wrapping ribbons around everything.

They were choking him.

At least she wasn’t talking about it now. Or making herself sick over what had happened in her apartment.

As he’d known it would, the act of preparing a meal settled her down. Writing could do that for him, so he understood how it worked. You got sucked into the work, and sucked out of what was bothering you.

But she was going to have to go back onto the boggy ground of what was happening. If his theory held any weight, she was in trouble.

“You want some wine?” he asked her.

“No. No, thanks. I’ll stick with water.” She arranged the dressed field greens, tossed with raw carrot curls, on small plates. “The rest will take a few more minutes, so we can start with this.”

He figured he’d eaten more salad in a couple of weeks with her than he normally did in six months on his own.

“Joanie’s going to have a fit when she sees that bathroom.”

“So paint it.”

Reece stabbed at her salad. “I can’t paint the tiles, the floor.”

“Mac’s probably got some solvent or something that’ll deal with it. The place isn’t a frigging penthouse, Slim. Needed work anyway.”

“There’s a silver lining. Brody, I had lost time before. And memory lapses. Not in more than a year—or, ha ha, not that I can remember—but I experienced both.”

“Doesn’t mean you are now, does it? I’ve been around you a lot the last couple weeks. I haven’t seen you go into a fugue state or sleepwalk, or redecorate the cabin walls with messages from your subconscious. I haven’t seen you do anything stranger than reorganize my kitchen drawers.”

“Organize,” she corrected. “In order to be reorganized, they’d have had to have something at least resembling organization in the first place.”

“I could find stuff. Sooner or later.” Since it was there, and hell, it was pretty damn good, he ate more salad. “Has anyone at Joanie’s mentioned you did anything weird?”

“Joanie thought it was weird I insisted I needed okra to make minestrone.”

“Okra is the weird boy of vegetables, after all. When you had this sort of thing happen before, in Boston, were you always alone?”

She rose to put the finishing touches on the rest of the meal. “No. I always felt worse about it because it might happen anywhere, anytime. After I got out of the hospital—the first time—I stayed at my grandmother’s. She took me shopping. Later, I found this hideous brown sweater in my drawer, and I asked her where it came from. I could see something was wrong by the way she looked at me, and when I pressed, she told me I’d bought it. That we’d had a conversation about it because she knew it wasn’t my style. I told her, and the salesclerk, I had to have it because it was bulletproof.”

She flipped the scallops with a deft flick of the wrist. “Another time, she came into my room in the middle of the night because she heard all this racket. I was nailing my windows shut. I don’t remember getting the hammer or the nails. I came out of it with her holding me and crying.”

“Both incidents sound like defensive measures to me. You were scared.”

“Scared doesn’t cover it. And there were other incidents. I had night terrors where I could hear the crashing, and the gunshots, the screaming. I’d try to break down doors. I climbed out of the window—the same one I tried to nail shut—one night during one of them. A neighbor found me standing out on the sidewalk in a nightshirt. I didn’t know where I was, how I got there.”

She laid a plate in front of Brody. “That’s when I checked myself into the hospital. This could be a relapse.”

“Which handily happens only when you’re alone? I’m not buying. You work at Joanie’s a good eight hours, five to six days a week. You spend time with me, with Linda-gail, around town. But you haven’t had—what would you call it?—an episode except in your own apartment when no one’s around.Gaslight .”

“Are you Joseph Cotten?”

“I like a woman who knows her classic movies.” He touched her hand, just a brush of fingers. “There’s another in here.Rear Window .”

“Jimmy Stewart sees a murder across the courtyard in another apartment while he’s laid up with a broken leg.” Thoughtfully now, she sat down with her own plate. “No one else sees, no one believes him. Not even Grace Kelly. Not his pal the cop, shoot, shoot, give me a minute—”

“Wendell Corey.”

“Damn it. Or the always delightful Thelma Ritter. Nobody believes that Raymond Burr’s killed his wife.”

“There’s no evidence to support our hero’s claim. No body, no sign of struggle, no blood. And Jimmy’s been acting a little strange.”

“So, in your world, I’m caught up in a mix ofGaslight andRear Window .”

“Watch out for guys who look like Perry Mason and/or have a French accent.”

“You’re making me feel better. A couple hours ago…” She had to stop, press her fingers to her eyes. “I was curled up on the floor whimpering. I was all but sucking my thumb. I was back at the bottom.”

“No, just slipped a few rungs. And you got up again. That’s courage.”

She dropped her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Right now you should eat your scallops. They’re pretty fucking terrific.”

“Okay.” She took a deliberate bite, and of course he was right. They were pretty fucking terrific. “I’ve gained three pounds.”

“Three whole pounds. Where’d I put that confetti?”

“It’s because I’m doing more cooking. Not just at Joanie’s, but here. Like this.”

“Whatever I can do.”

“I’m having sex on a regular basis.”

“I repeat, whatever I can do.”

“I had my hair cut and styled.”

“So noted.”

She cocked her head. If she had to pull teeth, she’d get out the pliers. “Well, do you like it or not?”

“It’s okay.”

“Oh, please stop.” She waved a hand. “Must you be so effusive with your compliments?”

“I’m an effusive kind of guy.”

She flipped her fingers through it. “I like it. If you don’t, you should just say so.”

“If I didn’t like it, I’d say I didn’t. Or I’d say it was your business if you want to have crappy-looking hair all over your head.”

“That’s exactly what you’d say,” she replied. “Being with you has been really good for me. I like being with you, talking to you. I like cooking for you and sleeping with you. I’ve felt more like…I won’t saywho I was , because you can never go back.”

“Maybe you’re not supposed to.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve felt more like who I hoped I could be since I’ve been with you. But we both know it would be smarter, saner, all around, for you and I to take a step back from each other.”

He frowned across the table, cutting into a scallop. “Look, if this is about you thinking you’re in love with me, and that’s getting everything sticky—”

“It’s not.” She took another, very deliberate bite of scallop. “You should consider yourself lucky I’m in love with you, even if my mental health is questionable. A lot of women may find you sexually attractive, but they’d be put off by your cranky nature.”

“Three-year-olds are cranky.”

“Exactly. It’s not about my feelings for you, it’s about the situation. If I’m backsliding, I’m not a good bet for even the most casual of relationships. If you’re right and it’s, well, outside forces, I’m a lousier bet.”

He picked up his beer, took a contemplative sip. “If you’re just a wack job and I back off, it says I can’t handle the rough spots. If someone’s trying to make you out to be a wack job, same goes. And I miss out on figuring it all out. Plus, I’m not giving up the food and sex.”

“Fair enough. But if you change your mind later on, I won’t hold it against you.” She reached for the water pitcher she’d brought over, the one she used for spring water and thin slices of lemon.

He took her hand across the table, waited until her gaze shifted to his. “It’s not just about food and sex. I have…” What, feelings? he asked himself. Feelings could mean any damn thing. “I care about what happens to you.”

“I know you do.”

“Good. Then we don’t have to analyze and dissect it all for the next hour and a half.” Her hand felt soft in his, and delicate. He laid it down, but kept his over it on the table. “We’ll figure it out, Reece.”

And right at that moment, with his hand warm on hers, she believed him.

WHEN THEY’D EATEN and put the kitchen to rights, when she was sitting with the tea she liked, he tried the next step.

“Will you be okay here alone for an hour?”

“Why?”

“I thought I’d go get Rick, and we’d take a look at your place.”

“Don’t.” She shook her head, stared into the flames of the fire he’d built in the living room. “He doesn’t believe me about what I saw on the trail. He’s done what his job says he has to do, and by all accounts he’s done it well. But he doesn’t believe me. I went by his office this morning. I saw him, and Debbie and Hank. And when I brought out the sketch, talked about showing it around Jackson Hole, all I saw on their faces was pity.”

“If someone’s been breaking into your place—”

“If they have, we’d never prove it. And how would they? I had a dead bolt installed.”

“Locks get picked. Or keys get copied. Where do you keep your keys?”

“In the inside pocket of my purse.”

“When you’re working?”

“In the inside pocket of my purse, or if I don’t carry one, in my jacket pocket. Right jacket pocket because I’m right-handed, if you want specifics.”

“Where are the purse, the jacket when you’re working?”

“In Joanie’s office. She’s got a copy of the keys in her key cupboard thing on the wall in there. I don’t think we’re going to leap to the conclusion that I mistook Joanie for a man, she killed her lesbian lover, and is sneaking into my apartment to torment me.”

“Wouldn’t be hard for anyone to slip into the office, make an impression of the key, have one made.”

The cup shook in her hand before she set it down. “You think it’s someone from the Fist?”

“Possible. Possible it’s someone who was staying in the area when this happened. And who stayed on when it got out—which it did fast—that you saw something.”

“But no one’s recognized the woman.”

“I didn’t say she was from here, or around here.”

Reece sat back. “No. No, you didn’t. I guess I just assumed that if she wasn’t, he wasn’t.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Could be someone from the Fist, or who comes in with some regularity. Or someone who was camping, hunting, paddling in the area. Someone who knows how to cover his tracks, which rules out city slicker for me. Who knew you were going to be gone most of the day today?”

“Who didn’t?”

“Yeah, that’s how it goes. Should make a time line,” he considered. “You said you keep a journal.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll have a look through it.”

“Not in this lifetime, or any other.”

He started to scowl, then grinned instead. “Am I in there?”

“Of course not. Whoever heard of a woman writing about a man she’s attracted to and/or their sexual exploits in her journal? That’s preposterous.”

“Maybe I could just read about the sexual exploits, to make sure you got all the details.”

“I got them. I’ll look through it, write down dates and times, if I noted them, that things happened.”

“Good, but not tonight. You look wiped. Go to bed.”

“I could just stretch out here for a few minutes.”

“Then I’d have to cart you up when you conked out. I’m going to head up to my office, do a little work.”

“Oh.” Her gaze slid over to the front door. “All right, maybe…”

“After I check the locks. Go on up to bed, Slim.”

It was silly to pretend she wasn’t exhausted, so she got to her feet. “I have the breakfast shift tomorrow. I’ll try not to wake you when I get up.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Thanks for the shoulder, Brody.”

“You didn’t use my shoulder.”

She leaned down, laid her lips on his. “Yes, I did. A couple dozen times just tonight.”

SHE KNEW he’d check the locks because he’d said he would. And even while she readied for bed, she heard his feet on the stairs. When she peeked out, the light was on in his office, and she heard the lightclick-clack of his keyboard.

Knowing he was there made it possible for her to get into bed with the bedroom door open and unlocked.

Knowing he was there made it possible for her to close her eyes and sleep.

18

BRODY CROUCHED in front of Reece’s apartment door with a penlight and a magnifying glass.

He felt a little ridiculous.

Though he considered being able to sleep in mornings one of the big perks of writing fiction, he’d gotten up when she had. And had ignored her claims that she could easily walk from the cabin to the diner.

Sure, he thought now, no problem at all for a woman who may or may not have a homicidal stalker focused on her strolling along by herself in the dark for a couple of miles like some idiot character in a bad slasher movie.

Besides, he’d not only gotten the first two cups of a fresh pot of coffee when he delivered her to Joanie’s, he scored bacon, eggs and home fries before the place had even opened for business.

Not a bad trade-off.

Now he was squatted down, playing detective. Since he didn’t have any personal experience with breaking and entering, he couldn’t be absolutely certain the lock hadn’t been picked or tampered with, but he couldn’t see any signs of it.

He considered, again, overriding her and bringing in the sheriff. Still, he didn’t think Rick could do any more than he was doing himself at this point.

Then there was the matter of trust, he thought as he sat back on his heels. She trusted him, and if he went around her on this, he’d be breaking that trust.

Claims she’s in love with him—but no pressure. Women. She was just mixing up heat and…companionability with theL word. Then she was vulnerable on top of it with what she’d been through. Was still going through.

He straightened, took out the key she’d given him. Then stared at it in the palm of his hand.

Trust. What were you supposed to do?

He unlocked the door, stepped inside.

There was a scent to the air—light and subtle. Reece. He’d have recognized it anywhere now. And he found himself unreasonably angry that whoever had come into her home had walked through that same personal scent.

Light spilled through the windows now to fall on the bare floors, the saggy, second- or thirdhand furniture, the bright blue spread she’d bought for the narrow daybed.

He could only think she deserved better. He could probably help her out, slip her a few extra bucks so she could buy a rug, for God’s sake, some paint.

“Sliding down a slippery rope there, Brody,” he reminded himself. “Buy a woman a stupid rug, the next thing she wants is a ring.”

Besides, she had the view that no amount of money could buy. Who needed rugs or a couple of decent pictures on the wall when you had the mountains painted on the sky outside your window, and the lake all but pooled at your door?

He unhooked her laptop, put it and her thumb drive into its case to take back with him. She’d need another night, at least, away from this place. She might as well have her stuff.

Idly, he opened the drawer on the little desk Joanie must have had hauled up for Reece. In it he found two sharpened pencils snapped in half, a black Magic Marker and a slim leather-bound book he recognized as the sort some people use to carry around pictures of their kids or pets. Curious, he flipped it open.

The photo of a sharp-looking older woman sitting on a bench in what looked like a nicely tended garden had thick black X’s over the face. There were others. The same woman in a white shirt, black pants, holding a poodle the size of a postage stamp. A couple in long bib aprons, a group holding glasses of champagne. A man with his arms spread wide in front of a big wall oven.

Everyone had X’s over their faces.

In the last, Reece was standing in a large group of people. The restaurant, Brody concluded. Maneo’s. Hers was the only face in the group shot that was unmarked, and it was beaming with smiles.

Under each person, in small, neat print, was the single word:DEAD. And under Reece was written:INSANE.

Had she found this yet? he wondered. He hoped not, and slipped the book into the outside pocket of the laptop case. He’d take it out later, decide how to handle it, when he got home.

Though he hadn’t intended to invade her privacy quite so deeply, Brody began to search the drawers of the squat ugly dresser.

He buried the discomfort of pawing through her underwear, reminding himself he’d already taken it off her a few times. If he could touch it when she was wearing it, it wasn’t weird to touch it when it was folded in a drawer.

Okay, he admitted, it was weird.

But it didn’t take long to go through the dresser; she didn’t have much. The woman traveled light, he decided.

The kitchen drawers were another matter. This was where she put the weight. It was all ruthlessly organized. No jumble. Obviously the woman didn’t know the meaning ofjunk drawer. He found measuring cups, spoons, whisks—why would anyone need more than one?—and sundry kitchen tools and gadgets.

There were several whose purpose eluded him, but they, like her pots and pans in the cupboard below, were tidily stored.

He found a nested stack of bowls, casserole dishes in a couple of sizes.

Again, would anyone need more than one?

In the next cupboard he found what he recognized as a mortar and pestle, with the bowl filled to the brim with pills.

He pulled it out, set it aside.

Brody went into the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet all the bottles he’d seen before were there, lined up on the shelf. And empty.

Little booby traps, Brody thought, with another simmering surge of anger. Clever bastard.

Because they wanted to ball into fists, he shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the walls.

Neat block printing again, he noted, nothing scrawled. But with some of the words overlapping there was a sense of frantic. Certainly of madness. The detail of having some of the words travel up from the floor onto the wall, or back down again, was a good one.

Whoever did it was very deliberate, very careful, very smart.

Brody got the digital camera he’d brought along. He took pictures from every angle he could manage in the tiny room, took close-ups of the entire question, then of individual words, then of separate letters.

When he’d documented the room every way he could think of, he leaned against the jamb.

No way she could come back in here with this. He’d just go down to Mac’s, see if there was something he could use to get the marker off the floor, the tub and tiles. No big deal.

He could pick up some paint while he was there. Room that size wasn’t going to take more than a quart, probably. A couple of hours, tops, and that would be that.

It wasn’t like he was buying her a rug or anything.

Mac asked questions, of course. Brody figured you could probably buy toilet paper in the Fist without eliciting questions, but that was about it. Anything else was going to come with a: So what’re you up to?

He didn’t say anything about painting at Reece’s. People were bound to get the wrong idea if they found out a guy was doing household chores for a woman he was sleeping with.

In short order he—a man who considered anything domestic above brewing coffee a form of hell on earth—was back in the bathroom, on his hands and knees, scrubbing.

REECE TURNED the door handle gingerly. She hated that it wasn’t locked. She hated the throat-closing fear that Brody was lying inside hurt, or worse.

Why was he still here? She’d expected him to drop back in downstairs with her key long before her break. But he hadn’t, and his car was still outside.

And the apartment door wasn’t locked.

She eased it open. “Brody?”

“Yeah. Back here.”

“You’re okay? I saw your car and didn’t…” She stopped a couple of paces into the room, sniffed. “What is that? Paint?”

He stepped out of the bath with a roller in his hand, paint specks on his hands and in his hair. “It ain’t the perfumes of Araby.”

“You’re painting the bathroom?”

“It’s no big deal. You’ve probably got two feet of wall space all told.”

“A bit more than that.” Her voice was full of emotion. “Thank you.” She walked over to take a look.

He’d already done the ceiling, and all the cutting in around the tiles, had primed the walls. The color was a pale, pale blue, as if a cloud had dipped, very briefly, into the lake and absorbed a hint of its color.

None of the red letters or smears remained anywhere.

Reece just leaned against him. “I like the color.”

“Not a lot to choose from if you want a quick cash-and-carry at the mercantile. Though they had a nice Pepto-Bismol pink that caught my eye.”

Now she smiled, and kept leaning. “I appreciate your restraint and your illustration of good taste. I’ll have to pay you back in food.”

“Works for me. But if you want the rest of this place painted, you’re on your own. I forgot I hate to paint.”

Now she turned to him, nuzzled. “I can finish it up after my shift.”

“I started, I finish.” He caught himself pressing his lips to the top of her head. But it was too late to stop the gesture. Too late, he realized, for a lot of things when she tipped her head back, used those eyes on him.

“I’d rather have this done than diamonds. Just so you know.”

“Good thing. I’m fresh out of diamonds.” When she laid her head on his chest, sighed, he was sunk. “I didn’t want you to have to see it again.”

“I know. But I wonder if I could bunk at your place tonight anyway?” She nuzzled a little more. “You know how the smell of paint takes a while to fade.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want you breathing in the fumes.”

She tipped her head back again, and this time lifted her mouth to his. Long and slow, and impossibly warm, almost unbearably sweet. His free hand slid up her back, curled to take a fistful of her shirt.

With a laugh she stepped back. Glowing, he thought. All the stress, the strain he’d seen in her the night before, gone.

“I’ll just need a few things from here to…What, were you going to grind up something?”

He was still riding on the kiss, on the look on her face and only managed, “Huh?”

“You got out my mortar and pestle.”

And he cursed himself for leaving it out. “Reece—”

“What’ve you got in here? It looks like…” That glow that had beamed straight out of her eyes and into him faded.

“I don’t take them.” Now, when she faced him, those eyes were desolate. “I just keep them, in case, and to remind me of what I’m working to get away from. I don’t want you to think I—”

“I didn’t put them there.”

“Then…Oh.”

“They’re booby traps, Reece.” He set the roller in the tray, moved to her. “He’s setting traps for you, and you can’t step into them.”

“What do you think he’s saying with this?” She dipped her fingers into the bowl, let pills sift through them. “‘Why don’t you grind these up into a nice paste, spread it on toast points and send yourself into oblivion’?”

“It doesn’t matter what he’s saying if you don’t listen.”

“It does matter.” She whirled around, and instead of desolation, those gypsy eyes flashed with temper. “I can’t answer if I don’t listen. I can’t let him know he’s not going to send me back, not to the pills, not to the doctors. I’m not going back into the dark because he’s a killer and a coward and a son of a bitch.”

She grabbed the bowl, and even as Brody braced for her to hurl it, she upended it in the sink, then wrenched the water on. “I don’t need them, I don’t want them. And fuck him.”

“Should’ve known you weren’t the type to throw crockery.” He laid his hands on her shoulders and, with her, watched the pills melt. “He doesn’t know what he’s up against with you.”

“I’ll probably panic later when I don’t have them. My security blanket.”

“I imagine Doc would write you a prescription if you need the blanket.”

“Yeah, I imagine he would.” She blew out a breath. Down the drain, she thought. She’d sent them down the drain to prove something. “I’ll just hold that in reserve, and see how I do without the blanket.”

He thought of the photo book he’d tucked away, thinking to protect her. It wasn’t protection she needed, he realized. It was faith. She needed someone to believe she was steady.

“There’s something else. It’s going to hit you a little harder than this.”

“What?”

Even as she glanced around, looking for the trap, he crossed to the laptop, took out the slim little book. “He did it to upset you. Don’t let him win.”

She opened the book. Her hands didn’t tremble this time, but her heart did. “How could he do this to them? All they went through, all they lost, and he crosses them out like they were nothing.”

“They’re not, to him.”

“I would never have done this,” she said. “No matter how far I fell, I’d never have done this. He made a mistake doing this, because I know this wasn’t me.” She ran a finger over the blacked-out faces of those who’d died. “I loved them, and I’d never have tried to erase them.”

She went through every page, as Brody had done, then closed the book. “Bastard. Fucking bastard. No, he won’t win.” She went back to the desk, laid the book down. “He won’t.”

He went to her, and because he did, she could turn. She could lean into him. “I can replace most of the pictures—my grandmother has copies of some of them. But the group shot was the only one I had of all of us.”

“The families might have copies.”

“Of course. They would.” She eased back, pushed at her hair. “I can get in touch, ask for a copy. I can do that. I’ve got to get back down, finish my shift.”

“I’ll come in when I’m done.” He stroked her hair. “Maybe we’ll do something later. Take a drive. Or I can borrow a boat. Something.”

“Something sounds good. I’m all right. I’ll be fine.”

PETE WAS BACK at work, and sent her a wink when she walked into the kitchen. “That teriyaki chicken san of yours is the hit of the early lunch crowd. Lots going out, and not much of it coming back on the plates.”

“Good.”

“Went some over on your break,” Joanie said from the grill.

“Sorry. I’ll stay some over after my shift.”

“Brody painting upstairs?”

Reece paused in the act of washing her hands. “How do you know these things?”

“Carl came in for a cup of coffee, told Linda-gail Brody was down to the mercantile and bought paint and supplies. Brody’s car’s still out front here. Two and two.”

“Yes, he’s doing me a favor.”

“Better not be some crazy color.”

“It’s a very pale blue. It’s just the bathroom. It…needed it.”

“Likely it did.” Joanie piled steak on a long bun, flipped on eggs and began to build a hoagie. “Nice having a man take on some of the chores.”

“It is.” After drying her hands, Reece snagged the next ticket inline.

“Don’t recall Brody ever doing the same for any other woman around here. You recall him doing the same, Pete?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

Pete was right about the teriyaki. She had orders for two, one with onion rings, one with the black bean soup. Reece got to work.

“You both know I’m sleeping with him,” she said mildly. “Men often do a few chores for women who sleep with them.”

“You wouldn’t be the first one he’s slept with around here,” Joanie put in. “But he didn’t paint anyone’s bathroom for the privilege.”

“Maybe I’m just better in bed.”

Joanie let out a hoot of laughter, dumped an order of fries on the plate with the hoagie and added a scoop of slaw. “Order up! Denny, how you doing?”

“Doing fine, Joanie.” Instead of sitting, the deputy stood at the counter. “Sheriff sent me down. Wanted to see if Reece could come in for a few minutes, you could spare her.”

“Hell, Denny, she’s just back from break and the lunch rush is starting.”

“Well.” Denny pushed a hand under his uniform hat to scratch his head. “It’s just…Can I come back there a minute?”

Looking aggrieved, Joanie waved him back.

“What’s going on?” Linda-gail whispered, working her way down the counter.

“Nothing that concerns you like taking that order to a paying customer does.” Joanie turned back into the kitchen. “Now why does Rick want to short me my cook at goddamn noon when I’m up to my ass here?”

“The sheriff wants me?” Reece looked over from sizzling chicken.

“He’d like it if you could come down for a couple minutes. Thing is…I didn’t want to say much about it out there, where people are eating and all that,” Denny said to Joanie. “Thing is, they found a woman’s body in the marshes in Moose Ponds.” His eyes looked sorrowfully into Reece’s now. “Sheriff’s got, um, a couple of pictures he thought you should look at. See if she’s the one you said…I mean the one you saw up over the river.”

“You go on,” Joanie said briskly.

“Yes.” Her voice was dull. “Yes, I should go up and…I’ll just finish this order.”

“I can finish the damn order. Pete, run on upstairs and get Brody.”

“No. No. Don’t bother him.” Absently, Reece untied her apron. “I’ll be fine. We’ll just go now.”

Pete waited until Reece was out of earshot. “Want me to go up and get Brody?”

“She said no. Reece knows her own mind.” But there was worry on Joanie’s face as she turned back to the grill.

He’d brought the radio car, so the trip was quick. It didn’t give her time to settle the idea, or to obsess about it. It would all be over in a few minutes, Reece thought. She could put all this behind her—or try to.

“I’m going to take you right back to Rick’s office.” Denny gave her shoulder a hesitant pat when they were out of the car. “You want some coffee? Some water?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” And she didn’t think she could swallow. “Do you know how she was…how she died?”

“You’d better talk to the sheriff.” Denny opened the door for her.

Hank looked over from Dispatch, put his hand over the mike. “Bunch of crazy tourists chasing down buffalo with an SUV, trying to get action pictures. Got a wrecked SUV now, and a pissed-off bull. Reece.” He mustered up a smile for her. “Doing okay?”

“Yes.”

“Denny, I’m going to need you to go on out with Lynt, haul this bunch in, tow the vehicle. Bunch of fuckheads. Beg your pardon, Reece.”

“I’ll just go back to Sheriff Mardson’s office.”

“Where are they?” she heard Denny ask as she walked away.

The door was open, and Mardson was already coming around the desk to meet her. “Thanks for coming in.”

“They found someone. A woman. A body.”

“Sit down now.” He took her arm, gently, led her to a chair. “Kids came across her. She matches your description. I got some pictures. I’m going to tell you they’re not easy pictures, but if you can look at them, tell me if you think she’s the woman you saw, that would be a big help.”

“Was she strangled?”

“There’s some indication she might’ve been throttled some. You think you can look at the pictures?”

“I can look at them.” She gripped her hands together in her lap to anchor herself, while he took a file off his desk.

“Take your time now.”

He sat in the other visitor’s chair, then held out a photo. She didn’t take it; she couldn’t unknot her fingers. But she looked.

Then looked away as her breath wheezed out. “She’s—Oh God.”

“I know it’s hard. She was in the marsh for a time. Maybe a day or two. Coroner’s got to determine time of death and so on.”

“A day or two? But it’s been weeks.”

“If she walked away with him that day, was hurt but not dead, this could’ve happened later.”

When she started to shake her head, Rick held up a hand. “Can you say, without a shadow of a doubt, she couldn’t have still been alive?”

She wanted to say she could, absolutely. But how could she?

“There isn’t much of a shadow in my mind.”

“That’s enough for now. Is this the woman you saw, Reece?”

She gripped her own fingers until they hurt, then used the pain to brace herself to look again.

The face was so bruised, so swollen, with bloodless cuts all over it, down the throat, which was raw and red. Whatever lived in the marsh had sampled her as well. She’d heard once that fish and birds often go for the eyes first. Now she knew it was true.

Her hair was dark, long. Her shoulders seemed slight.

Reece tried to superimpose her memory of the woman she’d seen over the ruined face of this one.

“I don’t…She seems younger, and her hair…her hair seems shorter. I don’t know.”

“You were a good distance away that day, I know.”

“He didn’t beat her. Her face—this face—someone beat her. He only pushed her down before…He didn’t beat her face like this.”

Rick said nothing for a moment, then when Reece looked away again, he turned the photo facedown.

“It could be she wasn’t dead when you ran for help. That he dragged her off, covered his trail. Might be she came around, and they patched up for a while. Traveling around the area, maybe. Had another fight a couple weeks later, and that’s when the rest of it happened. A man puts his hands around a woman’s throat once, he could do it again.”

“The rest.”

“We’ve got to wait for the autopsy and other evidence to be processed. I’m saying that the odds are pretty good this is the woman you saw. But if you could take another look, clearing your mind out first, it would help. She didn’t have any identification with her. They’ve run her prints, but there’s no record of them. They’ll use dental, and they’re running Missing Persons. But knowing if she was where you saw those two people, knowing if she was with the man you saw, that might help some, too.”

Reece kept her eyes on his, level, steady. “You didn’t believe me before. You didn’t believe I saw what I said I did, or that anyone was even there.”

“I had my doubts, I won’t lie to you. That doesn’t mean I didn’t look into it, or that I’m not still doing just that.”

“All right.” And this time she held out her hand for the photograph. The shock had waned, so now there was pity as she studied the face. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I wish I could say this is the woman I saw, but I can’t. I think she was older than this, and that her hair was longer, her face narrower, but I’m not sure. If they, when they identify her, if I could see a picture of her before this was done to her, I think I could say yes or no with a lot more certainty.”

“Okay.” He took the photo, then laid a hand over hers and squeezed. Hers felt as if she’d stuck it into a freezer. “I know this was hard for you. You want some water?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Once they get her identified, we’ll have you look. I appreciate you coming down this way. I’m going to have Denny drive you back home.”

“I think he had to go on a call.”

“I’ll take you back myself.”

“I can walk.” But when she got to her feet, her legs wobbled. “Or maybe not.”

“I’ll take you on back. You want to sit a few more minutes first?”

Reece shook her head. “If you’re right. Say you’re right and she was still alive that day. Why would she stay with him? Voluntarily stay with him after he tried to kill her?”

“There’s no telling what people will do. Hank, I’m running Reece back home. And maybe I’m wrong,” Rick added as he took his hat off the hook, opened the door. “Maybe this has nothing to do with what you saw last month. But from your description, there’s a good chance of it.”

“She hasn’t been reported missing because she was with him, and he wouldn’t report it. Or he hasn’t.”

“Could be.”

She got in the car, let her head lean back. “I wish I knew it was the same woman. It would be a lot easier to just say yes, that’s the one. Then it would be over for me; it would be finished.”

“You ought to put it out of your mind now, at least for now. Let the police do their job.”

“I wish I could.”

When he pulled up at Joanie’s, Reece glanced up and saw Brody just coming out her door.

When he saw her in the radio car, he bolted down the steps.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

He looked so worried, and she wasn’t used to seeing worry on his face. Her insides wanted to shiver. “They found a woman’s body, and I went to look at the photos from…I don’t know if it was her. Her face was too ravaged. I don’t think it was the woman I saw, but—”

“She was found in the marsh, near Moose Ponds,” Rick said as he got out the driver’s side.

“I’m just going to sit on the steps for a minute before I go back in. A little more air.” Reece walked to the steps, sat down heavily.

“Female victim,” Rick said under his breath to Brody, “Long, dark hair. Evidence she was choked. Beaten, raped. Maybe drowned. Coroner’s doing the autopsy about now. Kids found her. Naked, no ID, no clothes in the area.”

“Just found her?”

“Yesterday. I got word today, got the crime scene photos.”

“Jesus Christ, Rick, how the hell did you expect Reece to ID a woman who’s been soaking in the marsh for almost a goddamn month?”

“Day or two,” Rick corrected. “If Reece saw someone that day last month, and that woman walked or was carried away from the river still breathing, this could be her. I needed to see if Reece could identify her. She handled it pretty well. She’s got some guts.”

“You should’ve called me first, let me bring her down.” Brody frowned over at Reece. “You know damn well we’re hooked up.”

“She wanted you with her, she could’ve called you. What the hell’s in your hair?”

“Shit.” Brody raked his hands through it. “Paint. Did a little painting upstairs.”

“That so?” Rick lifted his eyebrows. “I guess you’re more hooked up than I figured.”

“It’s just fucking paint.”

Rick offered a toothy smile. “Nice, pretty blue. Back when Debbie and Ihooked up , she had me fixing her porch, then picking up this or that at the market. Before I knew it, I was renting a tux and saying ‘I do.’”

“Screw you, Rick. It’s paint.”

“Gotta start somewhere.” He walked over to Reece, crouched so she didn’t have to crane her neck to look up at him. “Are you going to be all right now?”

“Yeah. I’ll be all right. Thanks for bringing me back.”

“Just part of the service.”

“Sheriff?” she called as he headed back to the car. “You’ll let me know as soon as she’s identified?”

“I will. You count on it. Take care of yourself now. You watch out if she tries to put an apron on you,” he added to Brody.

“Kiss my—” But Rick was already sliding into the car and shutting the door.

As Reece pushed off the steps, Brody went back to her. “Come on, we’ll get whatever else you need and take it to my place. Go for that drive or whatever.”

“No, I have to go back to work.”

“Joanie’s not going to fire you, for Christ’s sake.”

“I need the work. I need the money. And I owe her an extra hour. I’ll do better if I’m busy anyway. Rain check on the drive or whatever?”

“Fine.” He pulled her key out of his pocket, handed it to her. “You’re locked up. I’ll be at home if…I’ll be at home.”

“Okay.” Since he made no move, she did, and leaned in to kiss him. “Consider that a small down payment on the painting fee.”

“I thought I was being paid in food.”

“To start.”

19

JOANIE ASKED no questions, and had given the stern word that she didn’t want to hear any aimed in Reece’s direction that didn’t have to do with food.

When the lunch crowd slowed, she watched Reece chop onions and celery. The girl might have had the speed and precision with a knife that a champion barrel racer had with a horse, but her mind wasn’t on her work.

“Your shift’s over,” Joanie told her.

“I owe you time. And we’re low on potato salad.”

“You owed me ten minutes, already paid.”

Reece shook her head, kept chopping. “I was a good thirty minutes with the sheriff.”

Mortally insulted, Joanie fisted her hands on her hips. “Did I say anything about docking you for that? Christ.”

“I owe you thirty minutes.” Reece dumped the onions and celery into the potatoes she’d already boiled, cubed and cooled. “This would have more zing with fresh dill.”

“Well, I’d have more zing with George Clooney and Harrison Ford in a threesome, but neither of us are going to get that wish. I don’t hear the customers complaining, and I said your shift is over. I don’t pay overtime.”

“I don’t want your damn overtime. I want fresh dill, and some goddamn curry and cheese that doesn’t look like plastic. And if the customers don’t complain, it’s because their taste buds are atrophied.”

“That being the case,” Joanie said evenly while Pete slunk away from the sink toward the back door, “they don’t give a rat’s flea-bitten ass about fresh dill.”

“Well, theyshould .” Reece slammed the jar of dressing on the work counter. “You should. Why should everyone just make do? I’m tired of just making do.”

“Then get out of my kitchen.”

“Fine.” Reece yanked off her apron. “Fine. I’m out.” Fueled with righteous fury, she sailed into Joanie’s office, grabbed her purse and headed for the door. She stopped by a booth where a trio of hikers were finishing up their lunch and pretending not to listen. “Cumin.” She jabbed a finger toward a bowl of chili. “It needs cumin.” And stormed out.

“Cumin, my ass,” Joanie muttered, then rounded on Pete. “Get back to work. I’m not paying you to stand around looking sorrowful.”

“I could go after her.”

“You could be out of a job, too.” Cumin, Joanie thought with a sniff, and stalked over to finish the potato salad.

Reece slammed into her car. What she should do is drive and keep on driving, she told herself. She didn’t need this town, these people, this ridiculous job that made a mockery out of real cuisine. She should head out to L.A., that’s what she should do. Go to L.A. and take over a kitchen in a real restaurant where people understood food was more than something you stuffed into your face.

She slammed out of the car again in front of the mercantile. She owed Joanie time, but the bitch didn’t want it. She owed Brody a meal for painting, and by God, she was paying her debt.

She shoved through the door, then scowled over at the counter where Mac was ringing up a sale for Debbie Mardson.

“I need hazelnuts,” she snapped out.

“Ah, can’t say we have any in stock.”

How the hell was she supposed to make her chicken Frangelico without hazelnuts? “Why not?”

“Don’t have much call for them. Sure can order you some though.”

“A lot of good that does me now.” She arrowed away to the grocery section to haunt the shelves, the bins, searching for inspiration and ingredients. Ridiculous, absurd, she thought, to try to find inspiration in this backcountry nowhere.

“Oh look, a miracle,” she muttered. “Sun-dried tomatoes.” She tossed them into the basket, picked through the fresh tomatoes. Hothouse, she thought in disgust. Wrapped in cellophane, for God’s sake. Tasteless, colorless.

Making do, that’s all. And barely.

No portobellos, big surprise. No eggplant, no artichokes. No fucking fresh dill.

“Hey there, Reece.”

Tossing a few obviously substandard peppers in her basket, she frowned up at Lo. “If your mother sent you down, you can go right back and tell her I’m done.”

“Ma? Haven’t been down there yet. Saw your car out front. Here, let me carry that for you.”

“I’ve got it.” She tugged the basket out of reach. “Or maybe you forgot I said I wouldn’t sleep with you.”

His mouth opened, then closed and he cleared his throat. “No, that sticks in my mind. Listen, I just came in when I saw your car because I figured you might be upset.”

“Why would I be upset? Red-skinned potatoes, another miracle.”

“I heard about the woman they found up near Moose Ponds. News like that doesn’t stay under the lid,” he added when she only stared at him. “Has to be rough on you.”

“A lot rougher on her, I’d say.” She headed over to pick through the packaged chicken breasts.

“I guess that’s true. Can’t be easy for you though. Seeing her again, even a picture of her. Having to go back in your head to the day you saw her when you were on the trail.” He shifted his feet when she made no response. “But at least you know they found her.”

“I don’t know if it was the same woman I saw.”

“Sure it was. Had to be.”

“Why?”

“Just makes sense it was.” He trailed her over to the counter. “Everybody’s saying so.”

“Everybody doesn’t know jack, and I can’t say the woman they found is the woman I saw just to make everyone happy.”

“Well, Jesus, Reece, that’s not what I—”

“Funny how it takes some kids finding a dead body to make people around here decide I wasn’t making the whole thing up after all. Gee, maybe Reece isn’t completely crazy, after all.”

With more care than usual, Mac boxed her purchases. “Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Reece.”

“Sure they do. Once a nutcase, always a nutcase. That’s how it goes.” She pulled out her wallet and noted with resignation that with the total on the cash register, she was going to be down to her last ten dollars and change. Again.

“You shouldn’t talk like that.” Mac took her money, gave her back thirty-six cents. “It’s insulting to yourself and the rest of us.”

“Maybe. It’s insulting to walk down the street, or into a room, and have people point me out as that poor woman from back East, or look at me out of the sides of their eyes as if I might start gibbering any second. Try being on the receiving end of that for a while,” she suggested as she hefted the box. “See if it doesn’t start pissing you off. And you can tell your mother,” she said to Lo, “that she owes me for twenty-eight hours.”

Reece started for the door. “Tell her I’ll be in to pick up my check tomorrow.”

THE SOUND OF the front door slamming shot Brody out of a tense scene between his central character and the man she has no choice but to trust.

He cursed, reached for his coffee only to discover he’d already finished the oversized mug of it. His first thought was to go down for a refill, but he heard further slamming—cupboard doors?—and decided he’d rather stay out of the war zone and do without the caffeine.

He rubbed the stiffness out of the back of his neck, which he attributed to craning it in order to paint the bathroom ceiling. Then he closed his eyes, pushed himself back into the scene.

At some point he thought he heard either the front or back door open, but he was in the zone and continued to write until it closed on him.

Satisfied, he pushed away from his keyboard. He and Maddy had taken a hell of a ride that day, and while she still had a ways to go, right now he deserved a cold beer and a hot shower.

But the beer came first. As he headed down to get one, he rubbed a hand over his face and heard the rasp. Should probably shave, he thought idly. Letting that little bit of business go two or three days running was fine and good for a man on his own. When a woman came into the equation, it was time for regular sessions with the damn razor.

He’d shave in the shower.

Better, he’d talk Reece into the shower with him. Shave, shower, sex—then a cold beer and a hot meal.

It was, he decided, a most excellent plan.

The fact that nothing was simmering on the stove was a bit of a shock. He’d gotten used to strolling into the kitchen and finding something cooking. It was another shock to realize it irritated him.

Nothing cooking, no colorful arrangement of plates and candles on the table, and the back door wide open. He forgot about shaving and stepped over to the door.

Reece was sitting on the squat back porch with a bottle of wine. From the level in the bottle, he deduced she’d been sitting there for some time.

He stepped out, sat down beside her. “Having a party?”

“Sure.” She lifted her glass. “Big party. You can buy yourself a very decent bottle of wine around here, but you just try to get a goddamn sprig of fresh dill or some lousy hazelnuts.”

“I complained to the mayor about that just last week.”

“You wouldn’t know fresh dill if I shoved it up your nose.” She gulped wine, gestured sloppily toward him with the glass. “And you’re from Chicago. You oughta have some standards.”

“I’m so ashamed.” And she was so drunk.

“I was gonna make chicken Frangelico, but hazelnuts are not to be had. So I figured I’d do pollo arrosto. Tomatoes are crap, and the idea of finding Parmesan that’s not dried powder in a can is a laugh.”

“That’s a tragedy.”

“Itmatters .”

“Apparently. Come on, Slim, you’re toasted. Let’s go on up so you can sleep it off.”

“I’m not finished being toasted.”

“Your choice, your hangover.” He considered it a kindness to pick up the bottle, take a slug straight from it, and save her system from dealing with at least that much of it.

“She wants to make potato salad with bottled dressing and no dill, let her. I quit.”

And around to Joanie, Brody deduced. “That’ll teach her.”

“Go along, make do, don’t make waves, just so nobody notices. No attention here, please, go about your business.”

She waved her hands a little wildly, so he laid his own on the bowl of her glass to keep wine from sloshing onto him.

“I’m tired of it. I’m tired of it all. Take a job I’m so overqualified for I could do it blindfolded and one-handed, live in a dinky apartment over a diner. Wasting my time, that’s all. Just wasting it.”

He considered, took another slug of wine. Not just toasted, he thought. Wallowing. “You plan on bitching and moaning much longer? Because if that’s all that’s on the slate, I can leave you to it and get a couple more hours of work in.”

“Typical. Typical man. If it’s not about you, it’s not worth listening to. What the hell am I doing with you, anyway?”

“Right now? You’re getting drunk on my back porch, wallowing in it and annoying me.”

Her eyes might have been glassy, but they still had punch when they aimed at him. “You’re selfish, self-absorbed and rude. The only thing you’ll miss about me when I go is having a hot meal put in front of you. So, screw you, Brody. Just screw you sideways. I’ll go wallow elsewhere.”

She got to her feet, swaying a little as the wine sloshed in her head as unsteadily as it did in her glass. “I should’ve kept driving right through this excuse for a town. I should’ve told you to go to hell the first time you made a move on me. I should’ve told Mardson that was the woman I saw. I should’ve just said it was and forgotten about it. So that’s just what I’m going to do.”

She took a few unsteady steps back toward the kitchen. “But not in that order. You first. Go to hell.”

She made it into the kitchen, reached for her purse. But he was quicker. “Hey.” She made a grab for it. “That’s mine.”

“You can have it back. Except for these.” He took out her keys from the inside zipper, exactly where she’d said she kept them. Mad, sick or otherwise, he noted, she kept her tidy ways.

He pulled the car key off the ring, dropped the ring with the apartment keys on the table, then stuck the car key in his pocket. “Go wherever the hell you want, but you’re not driving. You’re going to have to walk.”

“Fine. I’ll walk to Sheriff Does-His-Job Mardson, tell him what he wants to hear, then wash my hands of it. And you, and this place.”

She was halfway to the door when her stomach twisted like a wet rag between two opposing fists. Clutching it, she dashed to the bathroom.

He went in behind her. He wasn’t surprised she was dog-sick. In fact he thought it was for the best, the body’s way of defending itself against the overindulgent idiocy of its owner.

So he held her head, then shoved a wet cloth into her hand when it was over.

“Ready to sleep it off now?”

She stayed where she was, the cloth pressed to her face. “Could you just leave me alone?”

“Nothing I’d like better. I’ll get to that in a minute.” For now, he pulled her up. She managed a weak groan when he lifted her. “If you’re going to puke again, tell me.”

She shook her head, closed her eyes so that her dark, damp lashes lay against her sheet-white skin. He carried her upstairs to put her on the bed. He tossed a blanket over her and, as a precaution, moved the bedroom wastebasket to the side of the bed.

“Go to sleep” was all he said before he walked out.

Alone, she curled on her side and, shivering, pulled the blanket up to her chin. She’d just wait until she was warm and steady, she promised herself, then she’d go.

But the bottom dropped out, and she fell through it into sleep.

She dreamed of riding a Ferris wheel. Color and movement, and that quick, gut-dropping circle. At first, her screams were of laughter and delight.

Whee!

But it spun faster, faster, with the music blaring louder, louder. Delight became unease.

Slow down. Please? Can you slow it down?

Faster still, faster until the screams she heard were sharp with terror. As the wheel rocked madly side to side, panic gripped her throat.

It’s not safe. I want to get off. Stop the wheel! Stop it and let me off!

But the speed only picked up to a blur, and the music crashed around her. Then the wheel flew off, plunging her out of the lights and into the dark.

HER EYES flashed open. Her fingers dug into the sheets and her own breathless screams echoed in her head.

She wasn’t flying through the air, she assured herself. She wasn’t spinning toward certain death. Just a dream, just a panic dream. Regulating her breathing, she lay very still and tried to reorient herself.

A lamp was on beside the bed, and the light shone from the hallway. For a moment, she remembered none of it. When it flooded back, Reece wanted nothing more than to pull the blankets over her head and dive back to oblivion.

Even the flying Ferris wheel would be easier to ride out.

How could she face him? Face anyone? She wanted to find her keys, then slink out of town like a thief.

She propped herself up on an elbow, waited to see if her stomach would hold, then sat up. There was a silver insulated cup on the nightstand. Baffled, she picked it up, slid back the tab and sniffed.

Her tea. He’d made her tea, and left it so it would be close and warm when she woke.

If he’d recited Keats while showering her with white roses, she couldn’t have been more touched. She’d said horrible things to him, had behaved abominably. And he’d made her tea.

She sipped it, let it slide down and soothe her abused stomach. Because she could hear his keyboard now, she squeezed her eyes shut to help gather courage. A little unsteady on her feet, she got up to face the music.

He glanced up when she stepped into the doorway of his office, and only lifted that single eyebrow.

Funny, she thought, how many expressions that one move could transmit. Interest, amusement, irritation. And just now? Absolute boredom.

She’d have preferred a good, hard slap.

“Thanks for the tea.” He stayed silent, waiting, and she realized she didn’t have quite enough courage yet to begin. “Is it all right if I take a bath?”

“You know where the tub is.”

He started to type again, though the gibberish he put on the screen would need to be deleted. She looked like a dark-eyed ghost, sounded like a penitent child. He didn’t like it.

He sensed when she’d slipped away, waited until he heard the water begin to run into the tub. Then he deleted, shut down. And went down to make her soup.

He wasn’t taking care of her; he was still too pissed off to consider it. It was just what you did when someone was sick. Some soup, maybe some toast. Just bare minimum stuff.

He wondered how much of whatever poisons she’d had bottled up inside her she’d managed to reject along with the wine.

If she started spewing at him again, he was going to…

Nothing, he thought. It wasn’t just Reece he was pissed at, he realized. He was pissed at himself. He should’ve expected her to blow at some point. She’d been handling herself pretty well, rocking back from each separate sucker punch. But she’d been swallowing down the fear, the rage, the hurts. Sooner or later, they’d have to spill out.

Today had been the day.

The nasty psychological warfare someone was waging against her, being asked to look at pictures of a dead woman. He didn’t know dick about fresh dill, but obviously that had been one of the last straws for her.

Now she’d apologize, and he didn’t want her damn apology. Now she’d very likely tell him she had to go, had to find some other shelter from her personal storm, and he didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want to lose her.

And that was lowering.

When she came in, her hair was damp and she smelled of his soap. He could see she’d done her best to camouflage the fact she’d been crying, and knowing she’d been up there, sitting in his tub weeping, was another punch to the heart.

“Brody, I’m so—”

“Got soup,” he interrupted. “It’s no pollo arrosto—whatever the hell that is—but you’ll have to live with it.”

“You made soup.”

“My mother’s recipe. Open a can, pour contents into bowl, zap in nuclear oven. It’s world famous.”

“It sounds delicious. Brody, I’m sorry, I’m embarrassed, I’m ashamed.”

“But are you hungry?”

She pressed her fingers to her eyes while her lips trembled.

“Don’t.” There was the barest trace of desperation under the hard edge of his tone. “I’m at my limit on that kind of thing. You want the soup or not?”

“Yes.” She dropped her hands. “Yes, I want the soup. Aren’t you having any?”

“I had a sandwich while you were lying upstairs in a drunken stupor.”

The sound she made was trapped between a laugh and a sob. “I didn’t mean what I said to you.”

“Just shut up and eat.”

“Please, let me say this.”

With a shrug, he put the bowl of soup on the table, saw her blink in surprise when he put a plate of buttered toast beside it.

“I didn’t mean it. You are rude, but it works for me. You’re not selfish, or what selfishness you have seems awfully healthy from where I stand. I don’t want you to go to hell.”

“That one may not be your choice.”

“I can’t remember if I said anything else I should apologize for, being drunk at the time. If you want me out, I’ll go.”

“If I was going to kick you out, why did I spend all this time and trouble making you my mother’s famous soup?”

She stepped to him, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face into his chest. “I fell apart.”

“No, you didn’t.” He couldn’t help himself, just couldn’t stop himself from lowering his head and pressing his lips to the top of her head. “You had a drunken tantrum.”

“Several tantrums, and only the last one was alcohol-driven.”

“Sounds like interesting dinner conversation.” He steered her to a chair, then poured himself coffee before sitting down across from her.

She spooned up soup and confessed all.

“I blasted everyone. Fortunately, it’s a small population so there weren’t many who came in range. But my spree’s left me without a job, very likely without an apartment. If he wasn’t so thick-skinned, I’d guess it would have left me without a lover.”

“Do you want them back? The job, the apartment?”

“I don’t know.” She broke off a corner of a piece of toast, crumbled it onto the plate. “I could take today as a sign—which I’m big on—that it’s time to go.”

“Where?”

“Yeah, that’s a question. I could prostrate myself in front of Joanie and swear a blood oath never to mention fresh herbs again.”

“Or you could go back into work tomorrow and fire up the grill, or whatever it is you do back there.”

She looked up, confusion in her tired eyes. “Just like that?”

“It wouldn’t be the first shouting match to play out in Joanie’s. What do you want, Reece?”

“To push rewind, I guess. But since I can’t, to deal with the consequences.” This time when she broke off a corner of toast, she ate it. “I’ll talk to Joanie tomorrow, see where I go from there.”

“That’s not to the point. Do you want to go or do you want to stay?”

She stood, took her bowl to the sink to rinse it out. “I like what I see everywhere I look when I walk around town. I like having people wave as they drive by, or stop to talk when I’m walking. I like hearing Linda-gail laugh when she’s taking orders, and the way Pete sings when he washes dishes.”

She turned, leaned back against the sink. “The air feels good on my skin, and any day the flats are going to bloom. But there are other places with beautiful views and friendly people. The trouble with them is they’re not here. The trouble with them is you’re not in them. So I want to stay.”

He rose and went to her, and in a gesture more tender than she’d ever expected from him, brushed the hair back from her face. “That’s what I want, too. I want you to stay.”

When he kissed her, gently, very gently, her arms slid up to wind around his neck. “If you wouldn’t mind—I know you’ve already gone to a lot of trouble on my behalf today—but if you wouldn’t mind, maybe you could show me what you want.”

Now she rubbed her lips against his. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

Together, they circled their way out of the room, lips brushing, bodies warming.

“Indulge me,” she told him.

“That was my plan.”

“No.” She chuckled against his throat. “Indulge me and say it again. Just say you want me to stay.”

“Women always want a man to grovel.” He found her mouth again, turned her toward the living room. “I want you to stay.”

Oh yes, she thought, better than Keats. And held him close when he lowered her to the couch.

The fire he’d lit as he did most nights had gone to simmering red embers. That’s what she felt inside her, felt from him, the warmth and the simmer instead of the flash of leaping flames.

She could bask in it, stroking his hair, his skin, letting her mouth surrender to his. Tonight she could be soothed by his hands and know the quiet glow of contentment. He’d made her tea and soup, and he wanted her to stay.

Love washed over her in slow, swamping waves.

As she reached for him, as she offered, he wanted more than to take. He wanted most to comfort her, to smooth out all her troubles. Then to lift her from them. No one else had ever reached that tenderness inside him, no one else had ever coaxed it out until it drenched him.

He could give her that, that tenderness. And every soft sigh she offered back only enhanced his own pleasure.

As he undressed her, his fingers, his lips, brushed and stroked over newly exposed skin. The scent of his soap on her aroused a possessiveness in him. His. To touch, to taste, to hold. Her fingers feathered over his face, into his hair as her body arched to give. And give.

The strength of him, the muscles, the big hands, the tough build now so gentle thrilled her. That he could touch her with such care and patience, that his lips could meet hers, again and again, with such sweetness left her dazzled.

Everything inside her went loose and liquid, and still he gave her more.

The blood began to pulse under her skin; the first beats of urgency. As if he heard it, he took her up, let that coiled need spring loose. And as she drifted down again, she made a sound like a woman who’d just tasted something rich and honeyed.

Her heavy eyes opened, dreamed into his.

He fell into them, into the dark magic of them. His heart fell with him, tumbling, tumbling free. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t catch it, or himself.

He slipped into her, watched her start the rise again.

“Don’t close your eyes.” He covered her mouth with his, still watching while they moved together.

Rhythm quickened; breath shortened. His body began its final rush while she raced with him. He gripped her hands and saw those eyes he couldn’t resist blur as she fisted tight around him. As she said his name.

His own vision dimmed as she pulled him with her.

They lay together, wrapped together, as the night ticked away and the embers died. When he felt her begin to drift off, he simply reached up to pull the throw on the back of the couch over them.

She cuddled in, murmured something. Then slept.

Beside her he closed his eyes and smiled into the dark. She hadn’t asked him to check the locks, he thought, but had slipped into sleep without fear.

LO HAD HIS hand up Linda-gail’s shirt and a condom in his pocket. The part of his brain that still remained above his belt buckle flashed back to when they’d been sixteen and the situation had been remarkably similar.

Only this time they were in her little house instead of the old Ford pickup his mother had helped him buy. There was a bedroom close by, though the couch would do just fine.

Her pretty breast—which he hadn’t gotten a look at since that summer so long ago—was soft and warm in his hand. Her mouth, and he’d never forgotten her mouth, was just as hot and sweet as spiced candy.

And God, she smelled good.

She was so miraculously curvy. Fuller than she’d been at sixteen, but in all the right places. And if at first he’d been baffled, even a little annoyed that she’d gone off and dyed her hair, he was currently finding it damn sexy. Almost like having his hands on a stranger.

But when that hand slid down to the button of her jeans, hers clamped over it. She said, as she’d said at sixteen, “Uh-uh.”

“Oh now, honey.” He spread his fingers up over her belly, felt it tremble as he nibbled his way down her throat. “I just want—”

“Can’t always get what you want, Lo.” Her voice wasn’t steady, but she kept her hand firm over his. “And you’re not getting it tonight.”

“You know I want you. God almighty, I always have. You want me, too.” His lips made a lazy journey back to hers. “Why do you want to tease me this way, sweetheart?”

“Don’t call me sweetheart unless you mean it. And this isn’t a tease.” It took a lot of willpower to push away from him, but she did just that. When she did, she could see the surprise on his face, and the first hints of anger. “It’s not going to be like that between you and me.”

“Like what?”

“You won’t be banging me, then moving on.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, Linda-gail.” Sincere confusion rippled over his face. “You’re the one who said I should come over.”

“To talk about Reece.”

“Now that’s bull and you know it. You didn’t scream for help when I kissed you.”

“I liked when you kissed me. I like it just fine. I always did, Lo.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“We’re not kids anymore, and I’m not looking for a couple of nights of wrestling. If you are, you might as well go find one of the women you know who’re happy with just that.” Fussily, she smoothed her half-buttoned shirt. “I’ve got higher standards.”

“Higher standards?” The hints of anger coalesced. “That’s a hell of a thing to say to me. You got me over here just to stir me up, then flick me off. Got names for women like that.”

Her chin lifted, very slowly, until their eyes met. Hers shot hot bullets. “You think that, you’d better get out. Right now.”

“I’m going.” He shoved to his feet. “What the hell do you want?”

“When you figure it out, you can come back.” She got up, picked up his hat, tossed it to him. “But you leave here and go hunt up one of those women and I hear about it, you won’t get in the door again.”

“So I can’t have you, or anybody else until you say different?”

“No, Lo, you can’t have me or anybody else until you know the difference. One thing you do know is the way out.”

Twisted with unreleased lust and frustration, Linda-gail strolled back to her bedroom and shut the door. With a bang.

For a moment Lo only stared after her. What in the damn depths of hell had just happened? He could still taste her, his palm was still warm from her breast. And she walked off, slammed the damn door?

Furious, he stormed out. Women like her, he thought, women who used a man, ordered a man around, played games, should be made to pay a price for it.

He slammed into his truck, sent one dark look back toward the house with the yellow shutters. She thought she knew him, thought she had him pegged.

She was dead wrong.

20

IT WASN’T HARD to walk into Joanie’s. What did she have to lose? In any case, she’d learned in therapy how important it was to face and resolve problems, and to take responsibility.

Embarrassment was a small price to pay for mental health, Reece told herself. And accepting the embarrassment might get her job back.

Groveling wasn’t out of the question.

Added to it, her daily horoscope had advised her to shoulder burdens. If she did so, she would find they didn’t weigh as much as expected.

That was a good sign.

Still, she went in the back way, and ten minutes before opening. There was no point in spreading her embarrassment around to customers chowing down on steak and eggs if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

Joanie, feet planted in their practical shoes, was mixing up an enormous bowl of batter. The air smelled of coffee and warm biscuits.

“You’re late,” Joanie snapped. “Unless you got a note from Doc, don’t think I won’t dock you for it.”

“But—”

“I don’t want excuses, I want reliability—and I want onions, chili peppers and tomatoes prepped for huevos rancheros. Stow your things and get to work.”

“All right.” More chastened than she would have been had Joanie showed her the door, Reece scooted into the office, left her purse and jacket. Back in the kitchen, she grabbed an apron. “I want to apologize for yesterday.”

“Apologize while you work. I don’t pay you to talk.”

Reece set herself up at the work counter. “I’m sorry I was such a bitchy pain in the ass yesterday. I had no right to insult you, even though the addition of fresh herbs and other basic ingredients would improve the breadth of your menu.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Reece saw Joanie’s brows shoot up, and her lips twitch. “That covers it.”

“All right.”

“Wasn’t any damn dill set you off.”

“No. It was something handy to throw at you, metaphorically speaking.”

“I had to deal with a dead body once.”

“What? I’m sorry?”

“Rented one of my cabins to this fella from Atlanta, Georgia. Rented to him the year before, and the one before that. Used to come for two weeks in the summer with his family. That’d be, oh, ten years back. But this time, he came by himself. Seems the wife was divorcing him. Go on, get some sausage started. Lynt’ll be in first thing this morning, and he likes sausage with his eggs.”

Obediently, Reece got the tub of loose sausage from the refrigerator and began to make patties.

“So, when this Georgia boy doesn’t come back into town to turn in the cabin keys, I have to haul my ass out there. Anyway, I used to do the cleaning of the rental places myself back then. I went out there with my cleaning kit. His car’s still there, so I banged on the door. Irritated, because he was supposed to be out by ten sharp. I had another tenant coming in that day at three. He doesn’t answer, so…”

She paused to pick up her mug of coffee, took a drink. “In I go. I expect I’m going to find him sleeping off a toot in bed. Guy who worked the liquor store back in those days, name of Frank, told me how the good old boy from Georgia bought himself two fifths of Wild Turkey the one time he came into town.

“Instead I found what was left of him on the floor in front of the fire. I guess he drove from Georgia to Wyoming with a shotgun in his trunk for a reason. The reason being to blow his own head off.”

“Oh my God.”

“Did a good job of it. Blood and brains every damn where. Blew himself right out of the chair he’d been sitting in.”

“That’s horrible. It must’ve been horrible for you to find him.”

“It wasn’t a stroll on an island beach. After the cops did what cops do in such cases, I went back in. Had to clean the place, didn’t I?”

“Yourself?”

“Damn right myself. I scrubbed and I scrubbed, and I bitched and I cursed. Look what that son of a bitch did to my place. Bastard drove thousands of miles to shoot his stupid head off in my place. I poured out buckets stained with blood and God knows and I threw out what had been a perfectly good rug that’d cost me fifty dollars. And I chewed the head off anybody who offered to help me. I skinned the hide of my William when he came out to try.”

“I see,” Reece replied. And she did.

“Had to be mad, didn’t I? Had to rant and rage and slap at my boy for wanting to help me out. Because if I didn’t, I’d never be able to stand it.”

Joanie walked over to the sink, dumped out the coffee that had gone cold. “Don’t rent that particular cabin to outsiders anymore. Just to locals who want to use it for a hunting or fishing trip or the like.”

She poured herself more coffee. “So I’ve got some understanding of what was in your gut yesterday. True enough you didn’t know that, but you damn sure should know me better by this time.”

“Joanie—”

“If you needed to take off after going down to Rick’s office—if you needed togo off—it’s stupid, and it’s goddamn insulting for you to think I’d’ve given you any grief over it. Or I’d give you any about it now.”

“You’re absolutely right. I should’ve known better.” She slid her gaze to where Joanie popped breakfast biscuits out of the oven. “I slapped at you and Brody the hardest, because you’re the closest. The two people I trust most.”

“That’s some compliment.”

“Did Lo come in, after I saw him at the mercantile?”

“He did. Linda-gail, open her up! But since I don’t take orders from you, you’ll get your check on payday like everyone else.”

“I, ah, swiped at him, too, and at Mr. Drubber.”

“Grown men ought to be able to handle a woman’s temper from time to time.”

A snort from Linda-gail had Joanie looking over her shoulder.

“Some men never grow up. They’re spoiled little boys all their lives. Only way you’d’ve hurt Lo’s feelings, Reece, is if you’d swiped at his balls. That’s what runs the show for him.”

“He may be an ass, Linda-gail,” Joanie said mildly, “but he’s still mine.”

Though she colored up a little, Linda-gail shrugged. “Can’t help how I feel about it. But if you’re worried, Reece, he told me he could see you were awful upset. He didn’t hold anything you said against you.”

The door opened with a jingle. “Hey, Doc, hey, Mr. D.” Linda-gail grabbed the coffeepot. “You’re bright and early this morning.”

Reece hunched her shoulders, but she got out the eggs and bacon she expected to be cooking up shortly.

“I don’t reckon Mac’ll hold anything against you, either.” In a move that took Reece completely by surprise, Joanie gave her a couple of light pats on the back. “You want to use your break later, you can use my office, call my produce supplier. I’ll give you a fifty-dollar budget—not a cent more—to order some of the damn fancy-pants herbs and such you’re always whining for.”

“I can do a lot with fifty.” To start, Reece thought, and in her head she was pumping her fist in the air.

“Better damn sight,” Joanie muttered.

IN THE BOOTH, Doc cut into his short stack. Wasn’t his day for pancakes, but it was hard to deny himself after Mac had asked for this little breakfast meeting. And if he had a second cup of real coffee instead of switching to decaf, it wasn’t such a big deal in the larger scheme.

“Now, Mac, you know I can’t discuss Reece’s medical business. It’s privileged.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking what you think. I’m telling you, that girl’s in trouble. You didn’t see her yesterday.” Mac gestured with his fork before scooping into his huevos rancheros. “I did.”

“Heard enough about it.”

“I wasn’t sure she’d still be here.” Mac angled his head so he could see back into the kitchen. “In fact, I figured she’d be long gone by now.”

“I guess she has more reason to stay than go.”

“I don’t know, Doc.” Concern deepened the creases in Mac’s brow, tightened his voice. “The way she was storming around my place. Mad, sure, but she just didn’t look well. I told you I was worried enough I went on down to check on her after I closed up. And her place was locked up tight as a vault, her car gone. Figured she’d lit out.”

He dug for more eggs. “Wanted to talk to you about it. You could’ve bowled me over when I saw her back there in the kitchen this morning. Some relieved by it, I guess. I hated thinking she was out driving off somewhere in the state she was in.”

“People get in states, Mac.” Doc waved a hand at Mac’s stubborn frown. “Some more than others. Plain to see she had a rough time yesterday.”

“That’s the other thing.” Mac glanced over to make sure Linda-gail wasn’t on her way back to top off their coffee. Though the juke was silent—no music until ten o’clock was Joanie’s hard-and-fast rule—there was enough buzz of conversation and clatter to cover his voice.

“First off, seems to me Rick should’ve known better than to have her come in alone to look at those pictures. Chrissake, Doc, most women couldn’t have handled that sort of thing, much less one who’s had the kind of time Reece has. He should’ve had you there.”

“Well now, Mac, I don’t know why Rick would’ve thought to call me. I’m a family doctor, not a psychiatrist.”

“Should’ve had you there,” Mac said, setting his jaw. “And second, from what she said in my place, she’s saying it wasn’t the woman she saw. Now, Doc, it damn near has to be, doesn’t it? This isn’t New York City or whatnot. We don’t get people murdered right and left in these parts.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I’m wondering if, in the circumstances of all this, she just doesn’t want it to be the same woman. Maybe she’s hanging on to it too hard.”

Doc smiled thinly. “Who’s playing shrink now?”

“Working behind the counter for a couple decades is as good as being a shrink. Not everybody believed that girl when she said she’d seen that woman attacked,” Mac added with another wag of his fork. “I did. Just like I believe that same poor woman ended up dead in that marsh. Reece can’t handle it, that’s what I think.”

“May be.”

“Well, you’re the doctor. Help her out.”

“Don’t you two look all serious and secretive.” Linda-gail tipped coffee from the pot into their mugs. “Sitting here with your heads together.”

“Man talk,” Doc said with a wink.

“Sex, sports or horses?”

Doc only grinned and forked up more pancakes.

“How’s Reece doing today?” Mac asked Linda-gail.

“Better than yesterday, I’d say.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Either of you hear if the sheriff’s got word on that woman’s identity?”

“Haven’t heard anything today, but it’s early yet. Terrible thing,” Doc added.

“Scary, too, thinking we might have somebody around here killing women. Moose Ponds’s a good way from the Fist, but still.”

“Women?” Mac frowned.

“If it’s not the one Reece saw, then it’s two different women. And okay, sure, Moose Ponds is all the way up by Jenny Lake, but maybe the same person did both of them. Like a serial killer or something.”

“Oh now, Linda-gail.” Mac shook his head. “You’re watching too much TV.”

“They wouldn’t make so many TV shows about killing if people didn’t go around killing, would they? And you know what else?” She lowered her voice now. “If Reece hadn’t been up on the trail, just at the right time, nobody’d know anything about that woman. Could be this killer’s done it before. I can tell you, I’ll be sticking close to home until they catch him.”

“Now hell, that’s another problem.” Mac scratched at his head as Linda-gail walked away. “Before you know it, people in the Fist’ll be looking cross-eyed at each other, wondering if we got some psycho serial killer in our midst. Or some damn reporter’ll write about it that way, and the tourists’ll bypass us, and we’ll lose the summer season. Some hothead will have one too many down at Clancy’s and start a fight over it.”

Doc frowned thoughtfully. “On that one, at least, you may have a point.”

SINCE HE STILL had an hour before office hours, Doc went up to the sheriff’s office before heading home. Denny sent him a sunny smile. “How you doing, Doc?”

“Can’t complain. Your ma have any trouble with that ankle?”

“No. She’s up and around just fine.”

“You tell her I don’t want her doing any jigs just yet. That was a nasty sprain. Your boss around?”

“Not yet. He’s got till ten, unless something hits. Sheriff’s been putting in a lot of late hours lately. Guess you heard about the body they found.”

“I did. Any word on who she is?”

“Nothing’s come in this morning yet. Sure is a hell of a thing. Son of a bitch must’ve kept her alive a couple weeks. God knows what he did to her all that time.”

“That’s assuming she’s the same one Reece saw.”

“Well, sure.” Denny looked perplexed. “Who else could it be? Sheriff thinks it is.”

“Mind if I take a look at the photos?”

“I dunno, Doc. The sheriff—”

“I’ve seen dead bodies in my time, Denny. Could be I’d recognize her. Maybe I treated her at some time or another. And it’s my sketch Rick’s using to determine she’s one and the same.”

“Yeah, I guess. Hank,” he added as the dispatcher walked in.

“Anything brewing but bad coffee around here? Hiya, Doc.”

“Hank. How’re the knees?”

“Ah, not too bad.”

“They’d be better if you took off twenty-five pounds. Not going to do that eating those doughnuts you’ve got in that sack.”

“Man’s got to keep his energy up in a job like this.”

“Sugar high’s not energy.” Doc adjusted his glasses as Denny came out of Rick’s office with the file.

Opening it, Doc pursed his lips in what looked like a combination of interest and pity. “Looks like man and nature were both unkind to this girl.”

“Got the shit beat out of her, that’s for sure. Was raped,” Denny added with a grim nod toward the photos. “Sheriff didn’t show Reece all the crime-scene pictures. Didn’t want to upset her more than he had to. See there? How her wrists and ankles are all raw and bruised? Had her tied up.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“Hauled her away from the river. Truck, camper, RV, something. Kept her tied up and did what he wanted with her until he was finished. Dumped her in the marsh after. You recognize her, Doc?”

“No. I can’t say I do. Sorry, Denny, wish I could be more help. I’d better go see to my patients. Hank, you go easy on those damn doughnuts.”

“Aw, Doc.”

HE DID SOME thinking on his walk home. About his conversation with Mac, about the photographs he’d studied. He thought about the town, and how long it had been his. How he liked to think he kept his finger on the pulse of it and his ear tuned to its heartbeat.

He let himself in the front door he hadn’t locked in two decades. Instead of going back to his office, he walked to the living room phone. Willow would deal with any early patients or walk-ins, he thought.

He made his call, then popped a cherry Life Savers to take the coffee off his breath before he saw his first patient of the day.

A LITTLE after twelve, Brody was pacing around Doc’s living room. Doc’s instructions had been to come by at noon and make himself at home. Interrupting the middle of his day, Brody thought, when the book was not just moving but actually racing.

If he’d wanted a break in the middle of the day—which he damn well didn’t—he’d have preferred to take that time at Joanie’s. Have some lunch, see Reece.

At least he assumed he’d see Reece. She hadn’t called to say she was still out of a job, and her car was parked in its usual place. Still, he’d like to see for himself.

Not that he was looking after her, he assured himself. Just checking, that’s all.

If the doc hadn’t been so damn cryptic on the phone, Brody figured his curiosity wouldn’t have been piqued. And he’d be at his keyboard.

His female lead was pushing him through the story. Almost dragging him through it, snapping at him to keep up, for God’s sake. And to think he’d originally conceived her as a victim. A couple scenes onstage, a terrible death, then gone.

Well, she hadn’t taken that lying down.

He wanted to get back to her. But since he was across the lake anyway, he’d get back to Maddy after he stopped off to grab a bite and see Reece. He probably should suggest to Reece that she stay at his place again tonight.

He should probably let that alone, he corrected. Let her go back to her own apartment before things got messy and she was, unofficially, living with him.

He’d been careful to avoid that stepping-stone to lifetime commitment with other women. No need to stumble over it now.

He wandered to the window, wandered away again. Wandered to a bookshelf, scanned titles. As always, he was a little jolted to see one of his own books, his own name emblazoned on the spine.

After skimming a finger down that spine, he wandered some more.

The photographs scattered around the room caught his attention. Idly he picked one up, one of Doc and the woman who’d been his wife for aeons, it seemed to Brody. Outdoorsy shot, camping gear, Doc holding up a string of fish while the wife grinned.

They looked nice together, Brody decided. Happy. Though if his gauge of the ages was on, they’d been married a couple decades when the picture was snapped.

He picked up another, family shot. The whole brood. Then a young Mr. and Mrs. Doc holding a toddler. Various graduation pictures, wedding pictures, grandparent pictures.

The life and times, Brody thought, of a man and his family.

What was that like?

He didn’t have anything against marriage, Brody mused as he kept pacing. It worked for some people. Obviously it had worked for Doc Wallace. It had worked, and was still working, for Brody’s own parents.

It was just so…absolute, he decided. This is it, for the rest of your natural life. Just this one person unless you want to go through the hellish combat of divorce.

What if you changed your mind, or things just went wrong? Which they did, half the time.

Even if you didn’t, and they didn’t, there was all that adjusting and making room and compromising. A man couldn’t just do what he wanted when he wanted.

What if he wanted to move back to Chicago, for instance? Or hell, Madagascar? Not that he did, but what if? There was no pulling up stakes on a whim when you were married.

You weren’t just a man anymore, you were a couple. Then maybe you were a father, and now—wham—you’re a family. And there was no turning back. No editing it out and going in a different direction in the storyline.

He probably wasn’t in love with her anyway, any more than she was with him. It was just…involvement. Involvement was different, and the levels and intensity of it came and went.

He turned when Doc came in.

“Sorry, ran over on the last couple of patients. Appreciate you coming, Brody.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“Come on back to the kitchen. I’ll rustle us up a little lunch while we talk. Won’t be what you’re used to lately,” he added as they started back. “But it’ll fill the hole.”

“I’m not fussy.”

“I heard about what went on with Reece yesterday.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“Not today.” Doc got out some turkey, one of the hothouse tomatoes Reece disparaged, a half head of iceberg and a jar of sweet pickles. “I did talk with Mac. He’s worried about her.” He took a partial loaf of whole wheat out of his bread bin. “I wondered if you were.”

“Why?”

“Trying to get the full picture. I can’t tell you anything she told me as a patient. You may feel you can’t tell me anything she discussed with you as a…friend. But if you feel otherwise, I wanted to ask if she’s told you anything you find troubling.”

“She told you she came back to her apartment one night and found all her clothes packed up?” Brody nodded when Doc glanced over from slicing the tomato. “That she didn’t remember packing. I don’t think she did the packing.”

“Who else could have?”

“The same person who wrote all over her bathroom with a red marker and dumped out all her pills, moved her stuff around. And other similar tricks.”

Doc set down the knife. “Brody, if Reece is having memory lapses and episodes, she needs to be treated.”

“I don’t think she is. I think someone’s screwing around with her.”

“And you perpetuating her delusions only deepens them.”

“They’re not delusions if they’re real. Why does she only have these memory lapses and episodes when she’s alone?”

“I’m not qualified to—”

“Why did they startafter she saw a woman murdered?”

Doc blew air out of his nose, then went back to building the sandwiches. “We can’t know, absolutely, there weren’t other episodes before that. But if they began at that time, there could be a couple of reasons. One, what she saw triggered the symptoms.”

Doc put the sandwiches on plates, added two pickles and a small handful of potato chips each. Then poured two glasses of milk.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time with her. I haven’t seen any symptoms. Not like you mean.”

“But you have seen something.”

“I don’t like the position you’re putting me in.”

“I don’t like the position she may be in,” Doc countered.

“Okay, here’s what I’ve seen. I’ve seen a woman fighting her way back from the abyss. Who trembles in her sleep most nights, but who gets up every day and does whatever needs to be done next. I see a survivor who gets through on spine, on heart and humor, who’s trying to rebuild a life someone else shattered.”

“Sit down and eat,” Doc suggested. “Does she know you’re in love with her?”

Brody’s stomach jerked but he sat. And, picking up the sandwich, bit in. “I didn’t say I was in love with her.”

“Subtext, Brody. Being a writer you’d know about subtext.”

“I care about her and what happens to her.” He could hear the defensiveness—and was that a little fear?—in his voice. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“All right. If I’m reading you correctly, you’re thinking, or at least considering, that these things happening to Reece are being done by someone who wants to hurt her.” With a thoughtful frown Doc picked up his milk. “The only individual who could, as far as we know, be motivated to hurt her would be the man she claims to have seen strangle the woman she claims to have seen.”

“Did see.”

“I agree, but it’s still unproven.” With that same frown in his eyes, Doc drank. “But if she did, and if you’re right…Have you gone to the sheriff with this?”

“Rick’s just going to conclude she’s a nutcase. Whatever credibility she has about what she witnessed will go right down the tubes.”

“Without all the facts, he can’t do his job.”

“For now, I can look out for her. He can concentrate on finding out who was dumped in Moose Ponds, and who was killed by the Snake. I told you this in confidence.”

“All right, all right.” Doc held up a hand for peace. “Don’t upset your digestion. I went by the sheriff’s office, had Denny show me the pictures.”

“And?”

“I can only go by the description Reece gave me, and the sketch she approved. I can’t be sure one way or the other. Is it possible it’s the woman she saw? It is.”

“What about the time lag? It’s been weeks since Reece saw it happen.”

“That troubled me, as I imagine it troubled the authorities. There were ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. She may very well have been held all this time. But it doesn’t explain to me, and this is very troubling, why there was no sign these people were there, where Reece saw them. Why did this man throttle a woman violently enough for Reece to believe she was dead, then take that woman away, erasing his trail so that Rick, a man who knows tracking, found nothing?”

“Because he saw her.”

“Saw her?”

“Maybe not enough to recognize her, but he saw someone up on the ridge. Or he saw the things she left up there when she ran back and found me. He knew someone saw what went on.”

“Is that possible?” Doc asked. “From that distance?”

“Reece had field glasses. Who’s to say he didn’t? That after he killed the woman, he scoped out the area. Just another way of covering tracks, isn’t it?”

“I can’t argue. But it’s a lot of supposition, Brody.”

“Suppose this. Whether or not this body they found is the same woman, the man Reece saw had to know someone witnessed what happened there. There’s just no reason to erase the tracks otherwise. Take the body, sure. Can’t leave it there where a floater or paddler, a hiker may spot it. Take it away, wait for dark, bury it or dispose of it by other means. But cover all tracks? Not unless he knew he’d been seen.”

“Yes, of course,” Doc agreed. “And if he knew he’d been seen, he’d only have to wait a short time, keep his ear to the ground, to find out who.”

“And since, someone’s been screwing with her, trying to make her think she’s losing her grip. I’m not going to let them get away with it.”

“I’d like to talk with her some more. I made a point of telling Mac this morning that I wasn’t a shrink. But I do have some training, some experience.”

“That’d be up to her.”

Doc nodded. “A lot of this is. That’s a lot of weight for someone with her background to carry. She trusts you?”

“Yeah, she does.”

“Weight for you, too. Tell her we spoke,” Doc decided after a moment. “Don’t breach the trust. But I’d like you to keep me in the loop. How’s the sandwich?”

“It’s pretty good. But you’re no cordon bleu chef.”

HE WENT BACK to the river. There was no sign of what had happened there, and he was sure of that. He’d been careful. He was a careful man.

It should never have happened, of course. Would never have happened if he’d had a choice. Everything that he’d done since was because she’dleft him no choice.

He could still hear her voice if he let himself. Screaming at him, threatening him.

Threatening him,as if she’d had the right.

Her death had been her own doing. He understood that, and felt no guilt over it. Others wouldn’t understand, so he did what needed to be done to protect himself.

None of that would have been necessary if it hadn’t been for the caprice of time and place.

How could he have known someone would be on the trail, would have looked in that direction at that time, with field glasses? Even a careful man couldn’t anticipate every quirk of fate.

Reece Gilmore.

She should have been easy to handle, too. So easy to discredit, even to herself. But she wouldn’t let it go, wouldn’t crack and turn it loose.

Still, there was a way to fix it all. There was always a way to put things right. There was too much at stake to allow some refugee from a padded room to ruin things for him. If he had to turn the pressure up, he’d turn it up.

Look at this place, he thought, drinking in the river, the hills, the trees. All so perfect, so pristine and private. It was his place, all he wanted. Everything he had was bound to it, rooted in its soul, fed by its waters, guarded by its mountains.

Whatever needed to be done to protect and preserve what he had, he’d do.

It was Reece Gilmore who would have to go.

One way or the other.

HOME

I was well; I would be better; I am here.

—ANONYMOUS

21

SINCE SHE DIDN’T have to be at work until two, Reece considered just futzing around Brody’s cabin, doing some light housekeeping, maybe some laundry. She could easily keep out of his way while he wrote, and put together tomorrow’s soup of the day for Joanie.

She was already dressed and making the bed when he got out of the shower. “Anything special you want for breakfast? I don’t have to be in until this afternoon, so your wish can be my command. Gastronomically.”

“No. I’m just going to have some cereal.”

“Oh. All right.” She smoothed the spread and thought idly that a few throw pillows in primary colors would liven it up. “I’m going to put together some Italian wedding soup for Joanie. You can have some at lunch, see if it passes the test. I can make a casserole or something easy to heat up for your supper since I’m working the dinner shift. Oh, and I thought I might toss in some laundry while I’m at it. Is there anything you want washed?”

Weddingsoup? Was that some subliminal message? And now she was, what, going to wash his shorts? Christ.

“Let’s just back up.”

She gave him a puzzled smile. “Okay.”

“I don’t need you to start planning breakfast, lunch, dinner or a damn midnight snack every damn morning.”

The smile dropped into a blink of surprise. “Well…”

“And you’re not here to do laundry and make beds and casseroles.”

“No,” she said slowly, “but since I am here, I’d like to be useful.”

“I don’t want you fussing around the place.” There it was again, that same defensive tone he’d heard in his voice at the doc’s the day before. It irritated him. “I can handle my own chores. I’ve been handling them for years.”

“I’m sure you have, and exactly as you please. Obviously I’ve misunderstood something. I thought you wanted me to cook.”

“That’s different.”

“Different than, say, tossing our laundry in together. That being somehow symbolic of a level of relationship you don’t want. That’s completely stupid.”

Maybe. “I don’t need you to do the laundry or leave me a damn casserole or any of this stuff. You’re not my mother.”

“Absolutely not.” She stepped back to the bed, yanked the spread down, tugged out the sheets. “There, all better.”

“Now who’s stupid?”

“Oh, trust me, you still win the prize. Do you really think because I’m in love with you I’m trying to trap you into something by washing your damn dirty socks and making chicken and dumplings? You’re an idiot, Brody, and you think entirely too much of your own worth. I’ll just leave you to bask in the delusion of your own reflected glory.”

She strode toward the doorway. “Not your mother, my ass! She doesn’t evencook !”

He frowned at the bed, rubbed irritably at the tension lodged in the base of his neck. “Sure, that went well,” he muttered. And winced as the door downstairs slammed hard enough to rattle his teeth.

Reece grabbed only what was closest at hand, then shoved it into her car. She’d worry about the rest of her things—not that there was much—later.

She’d get the ingredients she needed for the soup from Joanie’s and from her own pantry. She’d get some change and haul her laundry—andonly her laundry—to the crappy machines in the hotel’s basement. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done it before.

Or maybe she’d just say screw it all and take a drive, see if the flats were blooming.

She aimed the car toward town, frowning at the way it handled. “What now, what now?” she muttered as the steering dragged. She gave the wheel one bad-tempered smack. Then, resigned, she detoured to Lynt’s.

The garage doors were up with an aging compact up on the lift. Lynt came out from under it, a rangy forty in a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose tough sinews. There was an oil-stained rag sticking out of his back pocket, a similarly stained gimme cap on his head and a chaw tucked into his cheek.

He pursed his lips, tipped back the bill of his cap as Reece stepped out of the car.

“Got yourself some trouble?”

“Seems like it.” When she realized her teeth were clenched, she deliberately relaxed them. “The steering’s funny, dragging.”

“Not surprised, seeing as you got your two back tires next to flat.”

“Flat?” She turned to look. “Damn it. They were fine yesterday.”

“Could be you drove over something.” He crouched down to take a look at the right rear tire. “Probably got a slow leak. See what I can do.”

“I have a spare in the trunk.” God, was she going to have to replace two tires?

“I’ll get to it as soon as I finish these brake pads. You need a lift somewhere?”

“No. No. I could use the walk.” She got her laptop out of the backseat, then took her house keys off the keychain and stuffed them in her pocket. “If I have to get new tires, how much do you think?”

“Let’s just worry about that when we have to worry about it.” He took her car key. “I’ll give you a call.”

“Thanks.” She hitched her purse on one shoulder, her laptop on the other.

It was a nice day for a walk, and she reminded herself of that in an attempt to chase depression away. She had a job and she had a roof over her head. And if she was in love with a jackass, she’d just have to start working on getting over it.

If she needed new tires, she’d walk until she could afford the damn rubber.

She didn’thave to have a car right this minute. She didn’thave to have a lover. She didn’t have to have anything but herself. That had been the whole point of leaving Boston, leaving everything. She’d proved she could function, she could heal, she could build a new life.

And if Brody thought she was trying to drag him into that life with her, he was not only a jackass, he was a conceited one.

She needed some time by herself anyway to catch up on her journal. To get serious about writing that cookbook. Not that she was going to pass that through Brody now. Insulting son of a bitch. But she wanted to organize the recipes, take a more focused stab at writing an introduction to them.

Something like…You don’t have to be an expert chef to cook gourmet meals. Not when you have an expert guiding you.

“And that sounds pompous and patronizing.”Tired of trying to come up with a new answer to “What’s for dinner?” Desperate to find something exciting and fresh for that Sunday brunch? Panicked that the chair of that fund-raiser assigned you to make the canapés?

“A little lame,” Reece said aloud, “but you have to start somewhere.”

“Hey! Hey!”

Reece jerked to a stop and saw Linda-gail kneeling in her tiny front yard with marigolds and pansies tucked into a black plastic flat beside her.

“Too busy talking to yourself to talk to me?”

“Was I? I was going over something in my head. Too often it runs out of my mouth. They’re so pretty. Your flowers.”

“Should’ve put the pansies in before.” She tipped the straw cowboy hat back on her head. “They don’t mind the cold. But with one thing and another. What are you doing over this way?”

“Flat tire, or tires. I had to take the car to Lynt.”

“Bummer. You’re out early. I figured you’d be hanging at Brody’s today.”

“Clearly, he didn’t. All I did was make the bed and offer to toss some of his laundry in with mine. You’d think I pulled a shotgun out of one pocket and a minister out of the other.”

“Men suck. I booted Lo out the other night. He got surly when I wouldn’t let him into my pants.”

“Men suck.”

“So, the hell with them. Want to plant some pansies and curse Y chromosomes?”

“I really would, but I have things I need to do this morning.”

“Then we’ll go to Clancy’s after work tonight, drink a few beers and karaoke all the down-with-men songs on the menu.”

Who needed a jackass when you had a girlfriend? “I can get behind that. I’ll see you at work.”

There, Reece thought as she walked toward home, she could add something else to her list of haves. She had Linda-gail Case.

Then there was the lake, she thought as her direction angled toward it. So blue and beautiful with the greening willows dipping down like dancers, the tender buds of cottonwood leaves unfurling.

On impulse she crossed to the water instead of continuing home. She set her bags down, pulled off her shoes and socks. She rolled up her pant legs. Sitting on the bank, she dangled her feet in the water.

Freezing! But she didn’t give a damn. She was sitting with her feet in the blue waters of Angel Lake and her eyes on the towering rise of the Tetons. In a little while she’d be making soup, writing a cookbook, sorting laundry. And what could be more normal? She’d have to scramble around to get everything done so she wouldn’t be late for work. And that was normal, too.

So for now, she’d just soak it all up.

She lay back so her eyes were on the sky now, blue as the lake with harmless white clouds drifting. The sun beamed down, but instead of digging her sunglasses out of her purse, she flung her arm over her eyes. And just listened.

To the lap of the water, the happy splash of it as she kicked her feet. Birdsong sounded so cheerful, so carefree. She heard a dog bark, the rumble of a car passing. Everything in her relaxed.

The sudden boom had her choking back most of a scream, jerking up so fast she nearly slid into the water. She managed to catch herself, crawl free, but only after she’d soaked one pant leg to the knee.

“Carl’s truck. It’s Carl’s truck,” she reminded herself as she huddled on the grass. She could see it, rumbling and rattling its way toward the mercantile. Pushing to her hands and knees, she stayed where she was, catching her breath.

And flushed when she saw Debbie Mardson standing outside On the Trail, watching her. “Yeah, it’s the crazy woman,” Reece said between her teeth as she forced herself to smile and wave. “Just taking a dip in a freezing lake with all her clothes on. No big deal.”

Now that the moment was spoiled, she grabbed her bags, her shoes, and walked, wet and barefoot, home.

Didn’t matter what the damn near-perfect-in-every-way Debbie Mardson thought, Reece assured herself. Or what anyone thought. She was entitled to sit and dangle her feet in the lake. She was entitled to jump like a rabbit at that damn shotgun blast of Carl’s truck.

She stripped off her wet pants, put on dry ones. Just like she was entitled to do her laundry. She gathered it up, along with her detergent and some of the thin supply of singles she had left.

Start the wash, she thought, come back and start the soup. Go back and switch the wash to the dryer. Come back and work on the cookbook. She carried her little laundry basket out, started the walk to the hotel.

Because she had to pass On the Trail, she kept her eyes trained forward and prayed, just this once, Debbie wouldn’t spot her. She didn’t run past the window, but she did significantly increase her pace, slowing only when she reached the hotel.

“Hi, Brenda. Wash day. Can I get some change?”

“Sure, no problem.” Brenda smiled widely and lifted her eyebrows. “Need some shoes while you’re at it?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re not wearing your shoes, Reece.”

“Oh. OhGod. ” Reece looked down at her bare feet. She flushed, but when she looked back up at Brenda there was just enough of a smirk on the desk clerk’s face to turn embarrassment to temper. “I guess they slipped my mind. You know how slippery my mind is. Quarters, please.” She slapped the bills on the counter.

Brenda counted them out. “Watch where you step now.”

“I’ll do that.” Because the elevator wasn’t an option for her, Reece took the stairs down. She hated the damn hotel basement. Hated it. If Brody hadn’t been such a dick, she could’ve used his machines, could’ve avoided all this stupidity and bother.

“Seven times one is seven,” she began as she wound her way past the maintenance area. “Seven times two is fourteen.”

She made it through the sevens, into the eights, then rushed out of the laundry area as the machine hummed.

She slowed to a normal pace as she stepped back into the lobby, sent Brenda an easy wave. She wasn’t quite as lucky on her way back by the outfitter store.

“Reece.” Debbie slipped out the door. “You okay?”

“Sure, fine. How are you?”

“It’s a little cool yet for bare feet.”

“You think? I’m just toughening mine up. I hope to be the first woman to walk barefoot along the Continental Divide. Lifelong dream of mine. See you.”

Go ahead, spread that one around, Reece thought as she hiked back home.

She put it all out of her mind by starting her stock, making meat-balls for the soup. She actually debated leaving her shoes off, to give the gossips more to talk about, but decided it was too silly and self-defeating. She zipped back to the hotel, braved Brenda and the basement again to transfer her clothes from washer to dryer.

Only one more trip, she reminded herself, dashing back home again. And plenty of time to draft the introduction to the cookbook while her clothes tumbled dry.

After setting up her laptop, she warmed up her writing muscles with an update to her journal.

Pissed at Brody. Make up a bed and he thinks I’m shopping for wedding rings. Is that the way the male mind really works? If so, they need serious therapy as a species.

I suppose, when it comes down to it, I’ve just worn out my welcome there. He’s done more than anyone could expect where I’m concerned. So I’ll try to be grateful as well as pissed, and stay out of his way.

The dick.

Meanwhile, I’ve cemented my status as the town loony by having a perfectly justified absentminded moment and going shoeless to the hotel to do laundry. I’m trying not to care about it. I’m making soup, and I only checked the locks on the door once.

Damn it, twice.

I may have to buy two new tires. God, that’s so depressing. What would once have been a minor irritation is a huge problem under my current circumstances. I don’t have the money. It’s as simple as that. I guess I’ll be walking for the next few weeks.

Maybe a miracle will happen and I’ll actually write and sell this cookbook. I could use an infusion of cash, just as a buffer against whatever wolf might show up at the door.

Linda-gail’s planting pansies. We’re going to Clancy’s after work tonight to trash men. I think it’s just what I need.

Satisfied, Reece opened a fresh document and began to toy with different styles and approaches for an introduction.

When her kitchen timer went off, signaling her clothes were finished, she backed up, shut down and headed out one more time.

She’d just dump everything in the basket and get the hell out of that spooky basement, she decided. Fold them at home. She could leave the soup on low simmer while she worked at Joanie’s, and run up on her breaks to check on it.

She hoped they were busy tonight. Busy was just what she needed.

She zipped through the lobby, spared any conversation since Brenda wasn’t at the front desk. Reece could just hear the murmur of her voice from the back.

Small favors, she thought. Something else to be grateful for.

Reece tried the twelve times tables this time—a tough one—as she hurried downstairs and through to the laundry area.

She pulled open the dryer door and found nothing.

“Well, that’s…” She opened the other dryer, thinking she’d mixed up which one she used. But it was empty.

“That’s ridiculous. No one would come down here and steal my clothes.”

And why was her basket on top of the washer instead of on the little folding table where she knew, sheknew she’d left it? Gingerly, she picked it up, then slowly opened the washer’s lid.

Her clothes were there, wet and spun.

“I put them in the dryer.” She dug an unsteady hand in her pocket, found only the single coin she had left after plugging change into the machines. “I put them in the dryer. This is my third trip. My third. I didn’t leave them in the washer.”

She tugged them out, furiously pulling wet clothes free to heave them into the basket. A Magic Marker fell with a rattle to the floor.

A red marker. Her red marker. Shaking now, Reece tossed it in the basket, with the clothes she now saw were spotted and stained with the red.

Someone had done this to her, someone who wanted her to think she was losing it.

Someone who could be down there, watching her.

Her breath wheezed out as her head swiveled right and left. She bit off a moan, grabbed the basket and ran. The sudden clang of a pipe had her jumping, choking out a half scream. The slap and echo of her own shoes on the cement floor sent her heart shoving up to the base of her throat.

This time she didn’t stop running when she reached the lobby but sprinted to the desk. Back at her post, a surprised Brenda gaped at her.

“Somebody’s down there. Somebody went down there.”

“What? Who? Are you okay?”

“My clothes. They put my clothes in the washing machine.”

“But…Reece, you put them in the machine.” Brenda spoke slowly, as to a slow-witted child. “Remember? You went down to wash clothes.”

“After! I put them in the dryer, but they were back in the washer. You saw me come back to put them in the dryer.”

“Well…sure, I saw you come back, go down. Maybe you forgot to put them in. You know, like you forgot your shoes before. I’m always doing things like that,” Brenda added, without the smirk now. “Just, you know, getting distracted and forgetting—”

“I didn’t forget. I put them in. Look.” She dug out the single quarter. “That’s all I have left because I used the rest to washand dry my damn clothes. Who went down there?”

“Look, just calm down. I didn’t see anyone go down but you.”

“Maybe you went down.”

“Jesus, Reece.” Genuine shock blew across Brenda’s face. “Why would I do something like that? You need to get ahold of yourself. If you need more quarters, I can—”

“I don’t need anything.”

Rage and panic pounded through her, shortened her breath as she rushed out and jogged down the street with her basket of wet clothes.

Get home, was all she could think. Get inside. Lock the door.

At the beep of a horn, she stumbled, and whirled around, lifting the basket like a shield. She watched her own car slide into its habitual place near her steps. Lynt got out.

“Didn’t mean to startle you.”

She managed a nod. Why was he watching her that way, like she was some alien species? Why did people look at her that way?

“Ah, tires look fine. They were just low. Real low. I put air in them for you.”

“Oh. Thanks. Thank you.”

“And, ah, since I was at it, I was going to check your spare for you. But…”

She moistened her stiff lips. “Is there something wrong with the spare?”

“The thing is…” He pulled on the brim of his hat, shifted his feet. “It’s kind of buried in there.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She made herself set the basket on the steps, cross over. “I don’t have anything but emergency gear in there.”

When he hesitated, she took the key from him, popped the trunk.

The smell came first. Garbage just going over. The trunk was full of it—eggshells, coffee grounds, wet, stained papers, empty cans. As if someone had dumped a full can of waste into it.

“I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do.”

“I didn’t do this.” She took a step back, then another. “I didn’t do this. Did you?”

That same sudden shock that had run across Brenda’s face ran across Lynt’s. “’Course not, Reece. I found it like this.”

“Somebodydid this. I didn’t do this. Someone’s doing this to me. Someone—”

“I don’t like shouting outside my place.” Joanie came out the back, down the side of the building. “What’s going on here? Well, for chrissake, what’s all this?” She wrinkled her nose as she peered into the trunk.

“I didn’t do this,” Reece began.

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t. Went to get her spare,” Lynt said. “Found this. She’s got some crazy idea I dumped all this garbage in here.”

“She’s just upset. Shit, Lynt, wouldn’t you be if you had this happen? Kids,” Joanie said mildly. “Bunch of asinine kids most likely. Lynt, I got some cans around back, some rubber gloves in the backroom. Give me a hand cleaning this out.”

“I’ll do it.” The words jerked out of Reece’s raw throat. “I’m sorry, Lynt. I just don’t understand—”

“Go upstairs,” Joanie ordered Reece. “Go on. Lynt and Pete can deal with this. I’ll be up in a minute. Don’t argue with me,” she added when Reece started to protest.

“I’m sorry.” Tired now, Reece dragged up the basket. “I’m sorry. I’ll get your money.”

“No charge.” Lynt waved it away. “It was nothing but air.”

Joanie gave Lynt’s arm a pat as Reece went up the steps. “Go on back, will you, tell Pete to give you a hand with this. Got your next meal on the house.”

“How’d kids get the trunk open, Joanie? I can tell you it hasn’t been forced.”

“God knows how kids do anything. Or why,” she said before Lynt could voice the question. “But the fact is that trunk’s full of stink and garbage. You and Pete take care of that.”

When Joanie went inside the apartment, Reece was sitting on the side of the daybed, the basket of wet laundry at her feet.

“Soup smells good.” Joanie stepped over, frowned at the basket. “Those clothes’ll mildew you don’t at least hang them up. Why didn’t you use the dryer?”

“I thought I did. I know I did. But they were in the washer.”

“What the hell’s all over them?”

“Ink. Red ink. Someone put my red marker in the machine with them.”

Joanie puffed up her cheeks. She went over, got a saucer out of Reece’s cupboard. She lit up a cigarette when she came back, sat on the bed beside Reece.

“I’m going to have a cigarette, and you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. But I know I put those clothes in the dryer, I put in the money, I pressed the button. But they were in the washer, wet, when I went back for them. I know I didn’t put that garbage in the trunk of my car, but it’s there. I didn’t write all over the bathroom.”

“My bathroom?” Joanie popped up, went to have a look. “I don’t see anything written in here.”

“Brody painted over it. I didn’t put my hiking boots in the kitchen cupboard or my flashlight in the refrigerator. I didn’t do those things, but they happened all the same.”

“Look at me. Look me in the face here.” When Reece did, Joanie studied her face, her eyes. “Have you been taking drugs? Doctor-prescribed or otherwise?”

“No, nothing but the herb tea Doc made up for me. And Tylenol. But all my security blanket meds ended up poured into my mortar.”

“Why would anyone do that? Or any of the rest?”

“To make me think I’m crazy. To make me crazy, which doesn’t take much of a push. Because I saw what I saw, but it’s easy to dismiss a crazy woman.”

“They found a body—”

“Wasn’t her,” Reece interrupted, and her voice began to rise and pitch. “Wasn’t the same. It wasn’t her, and—”

“Stop that.” Joanie’s voice snapped out like a slap. “I’m not talking to you unless you calm down.”

“You try it, you try to be calm when someone’s doing things to you. You stay rational when you just don’t know what might happen next. Or when. My clothes are ruined. I barely had enough left till payday to wash them; now they’re ruined.”

“You can run a tab at Mac’s, or I’ll give you an advance if you need to replace some things.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Nope. But it’s better than a stick in the eye. How long has this been going on?”

“Little things since…almost since I got back from seeing that woman killed. I don’t know what to do.”

“You ought to be talking to the sheriff.”

“Why?” Reece dragged her hands through her hair, just fisted them in it. “You think that pile of garbage in my trunk has fingerprints on it?”

“All the same, Reece.”

“Yes.” On a sigh, she lowered her hands to scrub them over her face. “Yes, I’ll tell the sheriff.”

“Fine. For right now, you’d better go through those clothes, see what you can salvage and hang them up to dry. You need a new shirt or underwear, you can get it at Mac’s on your break. You’ve got about five minutes before your shift.”

Joanie stubbed out the cigarette. She rose and dug a twenty out of her pocket. “For painting the bathroom.”

“I didn’t. Brody did.”

“Then give it to Brody, you want to be a dumbass.”

Pride warred with practicality, and practicality had more muscle. “Thanks.”

“Brody knows about all this?”

“Yes, except for what happened today, yes.”

“Do you want to call him before you come down to work?”

“No. I seem to be getting in his way.”

Joanie snorted. “Men have their uses, but unless you’re under one having an orgasm, it’s hard to see what else they’ve got to offer. Pull yourself together and come on down. Prime rib’s the special tonight.”

Reece stirred herself, poked at the basket with her foot. “Prime rib of what?”

“Buffalo,” Joanie said with a thin smile. “Maybe you got a way to fancy that up.”

“As a matter of fact…”

“Then get your ass down there and do it. I’ve only got two hands.”

BRODY CONSIDERED tossing a frozen pizza in the oven and thought of chicken and dumplings.

She’d done that on purpose, he decided. Thrown that at him so he wouldn’t be able to think of anything but her—of it, he corrected.

He’d just wanted her to back up. Isn’t that exactly what he’d said? But she overreacted, as women always did.

A man was entitled to a little breathing room in his own house, wasn’t he? A little solitude without a woman fussing all around him.

He was entitled to frozen pizza if he wanted it. It just so happened he didn’t. He wanted a good, hot meal. And he knew where to get one.

He’d eaten at Angel Food before she came along, Brody thought as he went out to his car. He wasn’t headed there because she was there. That was just circumstance. And if she wanted to keep her nose up in the air, that was her business. All he wanted was a decent meal at a reasonable price.

But when he pulled up at Joanie’s, Joanie herself came out.

“I was just coming over to see you,” she said.

“About what? Reece is—”

“Yeah, Reece is.” And in that instant concern, she saw what she’d expected. The guy was gone. “Take a walk with me. I got ten minutes.”

She told him quickly, overriding his interruptions, rolling over his temper. “Said she’d call the sheriff, but she hasn’t. Not yet. Handles herself once she gets her balance back. That was a nasty bit of business, that garbage in her trunk. I don’t like nasty.”

“It’s all been nasty. I need to talk to her now.”

“She can have ten, if she wants to take it. Go around to the back. I don’t want the two of you spitting at each other over my counter.”

He did as Joanie suggested, then brushed right by Pete and took Reece’s arm. “Outside.”

“I’m busy.”

“It’ll wait.” He hauled her straight out the door.

“Just a damn minute. I’m working. Nobody comes in and pulls on you whenyou’re working. If you have something to say to me, you can say it when I’ve finished.”

“Why the hell didn’t you call me when all this crap happened today?”

“As usual, word travels,” she said sourly. “And I didn’t feel like calling you. If you’re here to ride to the rescue, keep right on riding. I don’t need a hero. I need to do my job.”

“I’ll wait until you’re finished and drive you back. We’ll go see Rick in the morning.”

“I don’t want anyone waiting for me, and when I’m finished I have plans.”

“What plans?”

“Ones that don’t concern you. I don’t need you to go to the sheriff with me. I don’t need a babysitter or a white knight or pity any more than you need me to make your bed and do your laundry. And it’s not time for my break.”

When she turned toward the door, he took her arm, pulled her around again. “Goddamn it, Reece.” He sighed, gave up. “Goddamn it,” he said quietly now. “Come home.”

She stared at him, then she shut her eyes. “That was a sneaky punch.” And it took her breath away. “I think we both better take a little time thinking about that. I think we’d both better be sure just what that means, and if it’s what we both want. Maybe we’ll talk tomorrow.”

“I’ll sleep in my office, or down on the couch.”

“I’m not coming to your place so you can protect me. If it turns out it’s more than that, we’ll see what happens. You’d better figure it out before we talk again.”

She left him, baffled and edgy, to go back to the grill.

22

ONE BEER, Reece thought. If a woman couldn’t afford to buy herself one beer, what was the point of holding down a job, and working at it so that the small of her back quietly wept at the end of a long day?

Clancy’s was hopping with locals mixing and mingling with the tourists who’d sprinkled into the area to fish or float, to hike or horseback ride. The long, tall Reuben had the mike and was doing a soulful version of Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me.” A group of cowboys had flirted a couple of town girls into a game of pool, so the balls cracked amid a thin sexual haze. Two couples from back East were hoisting drinks and snapping pictures of themselves against the backdrop of elk and sheep’s heads.

At the bar, his boot propped on the rail, Lo brooded into his bottle of Big Horn.

“He looks like he’s suffering.”

At Reece’s comment, Linda-gail shrugged. “Not enough. This time around, he’s going to have to come my way, hat in hand. I can wait.” She popped one of the pretzels out of the black plastic bowl on the table, crunched down hard. “I’ve been hung up on that stupid cowboy most of my life, and I’ve given him enough time, enough space to finish riding the damn range.”

“Nice metaphor,” Reece told her.

But Linda-gail wasn’t in the mood to take a compliment. “I figured Lo carried around more wild oats than most, so fine, let him sow them, get all that business out of his system. Man like him, women are always going to jump when he crooks a finger.”

Reece raised a hand. “I didn’t.”

“Yeah, but you’re crazy.”

“True. I guess that explains it.”

“But I’m ready to start building the rest of my life now.” With her eyes narrowed at Lo’s back, Linda-gail crunched another pretzel. “He either catches up, or he doesn’t.”

Reece considered it. “Men are assholes.”

“Oh well, ’course they are. But I just don’t like women in the same way. So I’m going to need one to get things going.”

“What sort of things?”

Propping her elbow on the table, Linda-gail rested her chin in her palm. “I want to buy my house from Joanie. She’d sell it to me if I asked her to. And when she’s ready to take a step back, I want to manage Angel Food.”

Unsurprised, Reece nodded. “You’d be good at it.”

“You’re damn right I would. And I want a pair of silver candlesticks to put on the dining room table. Nice ones that I can pass down to a daughter. I want a daughter, especially, but I’d like it best if I could have one of each. A boy and a girl. I want a man who’ll work beside me for that, and who looks at me like I’m the reason. I want to hear him scrape his boots outside the door at night when supper’s cooking. And every once in a while, just now and then, I want him to bring me flowers when he comes home.”

“That’s nice.”

“And I want him to be a damn conquistador in bed, and make me deaf, dumb and blind on a fairly regular basis.”

“Excellent goals, every one. Lo’s up for that?”

“The sex part, I’m pretty sure of, though I’ve only had the previews and not the whole show.” She grinned, a little fiercely, as she popped another pretzel. “The rest? He’s got the potential. But if he wants to waste it, I can’t stop him. Want another beer?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Linda-gail signaled for one as the two women from back East took over the stage with an energetic version of “I Feel Like a Woman.” “What about you? What are your excellent goals?”

“They used to be to run the best kitchen in the best restaurant in Boston. To be listed as one of the top ten—better, in the top five—chefs in the country. I had the idea for marriage and children somewhere in the back of my mind. I thought there would be plenty of time for that. Eventually. Then after I was hurt, I just wanted to get through the moment. Then the next hour, then the next day.”

“Nobody knows what that’s like unless they’ve been there,” Linda-gail said after a moment. “But I think it’s the smartest thing to do. You have to get through to go on.”

“Now I want my place. To do a good day’s work, and be able to have a drink with a friend.”

“And Brody?”

“I can’t imagine not wanting him. He came back into the kitchen tonight, dragged me out the back.”

“What? What?” Linda-gail set down her fresh beer so quickly, foam sloshed over the rim to dribble down the sides. “How did I miss this? What happened?”

“He wanted me to go back home with him.”

“And you’re here nursing a beer and listening to bad—and I do mean bad right at this particular moment—karaoke because?”

Reece’s jaw set. “I’m not going back until I know he wants me. Not that he wants to protect me. I’m going to get a dog,” she said with a scowl.

“I’m lost.”

“If I only want protection, I’ll get a damn dog. I want a lover on equal terms. And if I’m going to be in that cabin with him, I don’t want to feel like a guest. He’s never even offered to give me a drawer in his dresser.”

Pouting now, Linda-gail propped her chin back on her hand. “Men suck.”

“They do, entirely. I’m so pissed off that I’m in love with him.”

With a mournful look, Linda-gail tapped her glass to Reece’s. “Right there with you.”

Then she glanced toward the bar and noted that Lo was telling his troubles to one of the waitresses. One of the women sheknew he’d bounced on at one time or another.

“Let’s dance.”

Reece blinked. “What?”

“Let’s go over, see if a couple of those fly-fishing types want to take a turn on the dance floor.”

The dance floor consisted of a stingy strip of wood in front of the stage. And the fly-fishing types were rowdy and half-lit. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’m going over and pick me one out of the pack.” She shoved back. She dug in her purse first, pulled out a tube of lipstick. She painted her lips perfectly—a bold, kick-ass red—without the benefit of a mirror. “How do I look.”

“A little dangerous just now. You ought to—”

“That’s perfect.” Shaking her hair back, Linda-gail glided over, making sure she moved into Lo’s line of sight. Then she braced her palms on the table where the three men sat, leaned over.

Reece couldn’t hear what was being said. She didn’t have to. The men were grinning; Lo looked murderous.

Just a bad idea, Reece thought. Those kind of games were always a bad idea. But Linda-gail was sauntering hand in hand with one of the men while his companions whistled and cheered. She led him to the strip of floor, put her hands on his shoulders. And led with her hips.

At the table, the two left behind whooped. One of them shouted: “Go for it, Chuck!”

And Chuck planted his hands on Linda-gail’s ass.

Even with the distance, even through the blue haze of smoke, Reece saw Lo’s knuckles go white on the long neck of his beer.

Seriously bad idea, Reece decided. Her conclusion was confirmed when Lo slapped the bottle back on the bar and strode onto the dance floor.

She could hear bits. “It’s my ass, you jerk,” from Linda-gail. “Mind your own business, buddy,” from Chuck.

The two women who’d moved from Shania Twain to a slurred version of “Stand by Your Man” stopped singing and watched in bleary fascination.

Chuck shoved Lo; Lo shoved Chuck. Linda-gail put her full hundred and twenty pounds into it and shoved them both.

Any hopes that would be the end of it shattered when Reece saw Chuck’s friends push up from the table.

The small herd of cowboys playing pool stepped forward. Lo was, after all, one of their own.

She was going to be in the middle of a bar fight, Reece thought with full amazement. About to be caught in a melee in a karaoke bar in Wyoming.

Unless she managed to grab Linda-gail and run.

She glanced around quickly to check the direction and distance to the exit.

And saw, moving through the noisy, surged-to-its-feet crowd, a man wearing an orange hunter’s cap.

Her breath hitched and tore. She lurched up, knocking her half-full beer to the floor, where the glass shattered with a sound like a gunshot. She stumbled, shoving into one of the cowboys as she tried to get clear, and sent him bumping hard into one of the fishermen.

Fists flew. Onstage, the women screamed and clutched at each other. Bodies thudded against, or in some cases actually leaped onto, table and bar. Glassware, bottles crashed and shattered, wood splintered. She swore she heard someone yell “Yee haw!” before an elbow caught her along the cheekbone and sent her sprawling onto the floor and into spilled beer.

REEKING OF BEER and smoke, holding an ice pack to her throbbing cheek, Reece sat in the sheriff’s office. If she’d been more humiliated in her life, her brain wouldn’t allow the previous incident to surface.

“Last thing I expected from you was to pull you in here out of a bar fight.”

“It wasn’t in my plans for the evening. It just happened. And I wasn’t fighting.”

“You pushed Jud Horst into one Robert Gavin, inciting the incident. You threw your beer.”

“No, I didn’t! I knocked my beer over when I tried to get up from the table, and I slipped into Jud. It was an accident.”

“You were drinking,” Rick continued.

“A half a beer. For God’s sake. I was in a bar, of course I was drinking. So was everyone else. And I wasn’t drunk. I panicked, okay. Fine. I panicked. I saw…”

“You saw?”

“I saw a man in an orange hat in the back of the crowd.”

Rick’s weary, annoyed expression sharpened. “You saw the man you previously saw by the river?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see that well. It all happened so fast. I got up. I wanted to get away. I wanted to see him better.”

“Which was it?”

“Both,” she snapped. “I was scared. I knocked the beer over. I slipped. That’s all.”

He let out a windy sigh. He’d been pulled out of bed by a screaming call from one of Clancy’s waitresses. He’d barely closed his eyes when he had to get up and dressed again, and go down to clean up the mess in the bar.

Now he had property damage, bodily injuries, possible civil and criminal charges to wade through.

“Min Hobalt claims you struck her. I got another statement here that says you shoved over a table, causing a beer mug to land on the foot of a Ms. Lee Shanks from San Diego. I’ve got a tourist with a broken toe.”

“I didn’t hit anyone.” Had she? “Not on purpose. I was trying to get clear. I got jabbed in the face, I was seeing stars. I was scared. Ifell into a table, which is a hell of a lot different than shoving one over.I got hit in the face,” she continued. “I’vegot bruises over most of my body.”

He puffed out a breath. “Who swung first?”

“I don’t know. The guy they called Chuck gave Lo a little shove; Lo gave him one back. Then I saw…I saw the hat.”

“You saw the hat.”

“I know how ridiculous that sounds. And yes, yes, I know a lot of men around here wear those damn hats. But I was jumpy because I could see a fight coming, then I saw the hat, and I freaked out a little. Big surprise.”

“Clancy said he was moving in to break it up when that glass hit the floor. Says it was like the bell going off in the boxing ring. And when that cowboy bumped the tourist, that’s all it took.”

“So it’s my fault,” Reece said evenly. “Fine. Charge me with inciting a riot, or whatever you want. Just give me some goddamn aspirin before you lock the cell.”

“Nobody’s going to lock you up. Chrissake.” Rick rubbed his face, pinched the bridge of his nose. “The thing is, you’ve got a habit of stirring things up. You had some trouble down at the hotel laundry today?”

“I…” Of course he knew about it. Brenda was tight as spandex with Debbie, the sheriff’s wife. Reece imagined she’d been the hot topic of conversation around the Mardson dinner table that night.

“That was different. Someone played a joke on me. I didn’t think it was funny.” While he waited, brows lifted, for her to explain, Reece contemplated the wisdom of telling him the truth.

And the truth, she decided, would sound, at the moment, like nonsense. “It was nothing. It doesn’t matter. Do you interrogate everyone who has words with the hotel’s desk clerk, or is it just me?”

His face hardened. “I’ve got a job to do, Reece. You don’t have to like how I do it. Now I’ve got to sort through this mess. I may need to talk to you again tomorrow.”

“Then I’m free to go?”

“You are. You want Doc to look at that cheek?”

“No.” She got to her feet. “I didn’t start what happened tonight, and I didn’t finish it. I just got caught in it.” She turned for the door.

“You’ve got a habit of getting caught in things. And, Reece, if you jump and swing every time you see orange, we’re going to have a problem.”

She just kept going. She wanted to go home where she could burn off her anger and humiliation in private.

But first, she noted, she’d have to get through Brody.

Since he was sitting in one of the visitors’ chairs in the outer office, legs stretched out, eyes half closed, she tried to simply go around him.

“Hold on there, Slim.” He got lazily to his feet. “Let’s have a look at that face.”

“Nothing to see.”

He got to the door first, closed his hand around the handle, then just leaned on it. “You smell like the barroom floor.”

“I spent some time on it tonight. Will you excuse me?”

He opened the door, then curled his fingers around her arm the minute they were outside. “Let’s not go through the ridiculous routine about you walking home alone. It’s late, I’m driving.”

Since most of her body ached, including the knee she must have fallen on during the scuffle, she didn’t bother to argue. “Fine. What are you doing here?”

“Linda-gail called me in case you needed somebody to post bail.” He pulled open the passenger-side door. “You sure keep life interesting.”

“I didn’tdo anything.”

“You stick with that.”

She stewed until he’d skirted the hood and climbed behind the wheel. “You think this is funny?”

“It has several of the classic elements necessary for farce. Yeah, I think it’s funny. The only other woman I’ve ever had to spring from the cops was a stripper I knew back in Chicago who beaned a guy with a beer bottle when he got a little overenthusiastic during a lap dance at a bachelor’s party. She was a lot more grateful than you.”

“Linda-gail’s the one who called you, not me.” Reece folded her arms, and wished desperately for ice and aspirin. “And it’s her fault anyway. None of this would’ve happened if she hadn’t gotten a wild hair to make Lo jealous.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“Because she’s in love with him.”

“She’s in love with Lo, so she incited a bar fight. Makes perfect sense.” In the Bizarro World women lived in. “Okay, Slim, your place or mine?”

“Mine. You can drop me off and consider your Good Samaritan duties at an end.”

He started to drive, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. “Do you want to know why I got out of bed and came to get you when Linda-gail called?”

Reece closed her eyes. “Because you have a need to play savior for strippers and lunatics.”

“Maybe. Maybe I care about you.”

“Maybe you do. Let me know when you decide.”

“Damn it, you know I care about you. Why else would I have been lying awake in bed cursing you when your partner in crime called?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“I think about you. It gets in my way.” Resentment rippled in his voice. “You get in my way.”

“As this is the second time you’ve popped up in front of me tonight, I’d say you’re getting in my way.” She stirred enough to shift in her seat when he pulled up behind her car. “You wanted me out of your house. I left. You wanted me to back up, back off, I did. Your whim changes, Brody, that’s not my problem.”

“Hard-ass,” he retaliated. “I felt squeezed this morning. You start off with Italian wedding soup, for God’s sake.”

“What’s wrong with Italian wedding soup? It was one of my specialties when…Oh, you idiot. Wedding? You shudder in fear of the word?”

He very nearly squirmed. “Nobody’s shuddering.”

“I’m going to make soup and you get it into your pinhead that I’m picking out the china? Jerk.”

She started to yank the door handle, but he leaned over her, clamped his hand on hers. He preferred being pissed off to squirming. “Making the bed, offering to do my laundry. What do I want for breakfast.”

She put her free hand on his chest, shoved. “I slept in the bed, so I made it. You let me stay at your place when I needed a sanctuary, and I was doing laundry anyway. I thought I could pay you back a little by doing some of the housework. I like to cook for you. I like to cook period. That’s all it was.”

“You said you loved me.”

“I did. I didn’t ask you to love me back. I didn’t write off for my subscription toBrides magazine. I never even asked you to clean out a drawer so I had somewhere to put my things. I never asked you for anything but companionship.”

It was hell being absolutely wrong. “Okay, so I overreacted—”

“So you said before. I’m tired, Brody. If you want to hash this through, it’ll have to be some other time. I want to go to bed.”

“Wait. Damn it.” He sat back, raking his fingers through his hair, his expression both pained and frustrated. “I was out of line this morning. I’m sorry.”

She said nothing for a moment. “Ow. I bet that hurt you as much as my face hurts me.”

“Maybe more. Don’t make me repeat it.”

“Once does the job.” She touched his arm, then reached for the door again.

“Will you wait? Jesus. Listen.”

At the ensuing silence, she studied his face. “I’m listening.”

“Okay. Before you said you didn’t want me to take care of you. That’s fine. The thought of wanting to take care of you is scaring the hell out of me. But I want to be with you. There’s no one else I want to be with. Can we get back to that?”

She pushed open her door, then stopped. Looked at him. Life was so terrifyingly short. Who knew that better than she did? “That’s all I was looking for. Do you want to come up?”

“Yeah.” He waited while she walked around the car, then held his hand out for hers. “Come here a minute.” Leaning down, he brushed his lips gently over her bruised cheek. “Ouch.”

“You can say that again. You ought to know I’m not going to be very good company. All I want is a hot bath, a bottle of aspirin and a soft bed.”

“You don’t have a soft bed.”

“I’ll compensate.” She unlocked the door. “I feel like I’ve been in a soccer match. As the ball.”

As she opened the door, he pulled her back, shifted his body in front of hers.

“What’s that sound?” she demanded. “Do you hear? It sounds like water running.”

“Stay right here.”

Of course she couldn’t, and eased in behind him when he stepped in, started across the room. “In the bathroom,” she whispered. “The door’s closed. I never close the door because I need to be able to see inside the room when I come in. There’s water running. Oh God, it’s flooded; it’s coming under the door.”

He shoved the door open so more water sloshed out. Inside, the tub overflowed as the water running from the faucet poured into it. The few things she’d deemed usable after the incident in the laundry floated like flotsam.

“I didn’t leave it on. I didn’t even turn it on. I just ran up here…”

Saying nothing, he sloshed through the floor to wrench the faucet off. Shoving up a sleeve, Brody reached down and pulled the plug.

“I hung those things over the shower rod before I went down to work. After work, I ran up here to change my shoes. That’s all I did before I went out with Linda-gail.”

“I’m not saying different.”

“The floor’s going to be ruined. I have to get something to…Oh God, Joanie’s. Downstairs. It’ll have leaked through the floor and down into the diner.”

“Go call her. Tell her she needs to come over here, bring the keys for the diner.”

SHE CAME WITH the keys, and a Shop-Vac. Her eyes grim, she pushed the vac at Reece. “Go up, suck up that water. When you’re done, bring it down here.”

“Joanie, I’m so sorry—”

“Just be quiet and do what I told you.”

Joanie unlocked the door, stepped in, flipped on the lights.

Water dripped and streamed through the ceiling of the north corner. The drywall had buckled under the weight and split like bad fruit. Below it two booths were soaked.

“Son of a bitching bastard.”

“She’s not responsible,” Brody began, but Joanie only jabbed a finger toward him, her eyes on the damage.

“I’m going to need some fans in here, dry things out. Some plastic to put up over that fucking hole in the fucking ceiling before the fucking health inspector shuts me down because of it. You want to be helpful, go back there and drag out that big standing fan I’ve got in the storeroom. Then you can go back to my place. I got a roll of plastic out in my shed. A staple gun.”

Brody glanced at the ceiling. “Stepladder.”

“That, too. Son of a bitching bastard.”

REECE WEPT AS she worked. It wasn’t only herself being hurt now, but the woman whose only crimes had been giving her a job, renting her an apartment, standing up for her.

Now it was all a mess. Ruined floor, ruined ceiling and God only knew what else was ruined.

She emptied the tank of the vacuum, started it again.

She glanced up miserably when Joanie came through the door.

“All crying’s going to do is make more water to suck up.”

Reece knuckled tears away. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough. Fixable.”

“I’ll pay—”

“I got insurance, don’t I? Sons of bitches ought to shell out a claim after they skin me for premiums every blessed month.”

Reece stared at the floor as she worked. “I know how this looks, and you couldn’t possibly be in the mood for excuses. But I didn’t leave the water on in the tub. I didn’t even—”

“I know damn well you didn’t.”

Reece jerked her head up. “You do?”

“You never forget a goddamn thing. Didn’t I just have to use my key to open that stupid door? You said somebody’s been screwing with you. Now they’re screwing with me. And I ampissed. But the point is now we fix what has to be fixed, then we figure out the rest.” She planted her hands on her hips. “That floor’s going to have to come up. You got a problem staying over at Brody’s?”

“No.”

“Then finish up in here, pack up your things. I’m going to get a couple of boys working on this first thing in the morning.” She kicked the desk, then took her first good look at Reece’s face. “Where’d you get that cheek?”

“There was a sort of fight at Clancy’s.”

“Oh, Christ on a crutch. If it’s not one thing, it’s two. Get a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer below before you leave.”

“IT’S JUST UNTIL I can move back in over the diner.”

It was after three when Reece stowed the last of her things in the back of Brody’s car.

“Uh–huh.”

“Just a few days.” Burned out, sick at seeing the damage down at Joanie’s, Reece climbed into the car. “I won’t offer to do your laundry. I’m not having a lot of luck in that area anyway.”

“Okay.”

“She believed me. I didn’t even have to try to explain.”

“Joanie’s a smart woman. She sees through most bullshit.”

“Whoever this is, he didn’t have to do this to her. He didn’t have to bring her into it.” She looked out the window as he drove, at the dark surface of the lake. Her life felt like that tonight. Too dark to see what lay under it.

“If she blamed you for it, she’d have fired you, kicked you out. Odds were you’d leave town. Knocking your paycheck and living quarters out from under you. It’s a smart move.”

“I’m glad I’m not being stalked by a dummy. Following that logic, which I agree with, you’d be the next on his list. I’m not exactly anyone’s good luck charm, Brody.”

“I don’t believe in luck.” He pulled up at his cabin.

From the back of the car he took the hefty box of her kitchen tools, slid the strap of her laptop case over his shoulder. He left the second box and the duffel for her.

Inside, he set the box on the floor. “I’m not putting this stuff away.” He took the other box from her, set it down. “Go on up and take a shower.”

“I think a bath.” She managed a smile, sniffed the back of her own hand. “Pretty bad.”

“Not if you like stale beer and smoke.” He took the frozen peas out of the lighter box, tossed them to her. “Use this.”

She went up, ran the tub hot. Sinking into it, she pressed the cold bag on her throbbing cheek. Then scooted straight up when Brody walked in.

“Aspirin,” he said. He set the bottle, a glass of water on the lip of the tub, then walked out.

When she came out wearing a baggy gray T-shirt with red stains and a pair of loose flannel pants, he was standing by the window. He turned, cocked his head.

“Nice outfit.”

“I don’t have a lot left.”

“Well. You can put what you do have left in there.” He jerked a thumb at his dresser. “I cleaned out a couple drawers.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not a marriage proposal.”

“Check. I’ll, ah, do it tomorrow. I’m really tired. I’m sorry, Brody, but did you—”

“Yes. The doors are locked.”

“Okay.” She slipped into bed and sighed at the sheer relief it gave her.

Moments later, the lights switched off, the mattress dipped. Then his body was warm against hers, and his arm draped around her waist.

She took his hand. She fell asleep with her fingers linked with his, too exhausted to dream.

23

BRODY DROVE REECE to Joanie’s at six sharp. The lights were on in the diner, a hard shine against the dark. A pickup truck sat at the curb along with a vile green dumpster, top up, already half loaded with drywall and debris.

The sight of it had Reece’s shoulders going tight as she walked by. “How much do you think this is going to cost?”

“I haven’t got a clue.” Brody shrugged. “My manliness doesn’t extend into this area.”

Insurance was all well and good, Reece thought. But what about the deductible? She walked inside to see Joanie, hands on hips, frowning up at a curtain of plastic. She wore the work boots Reece had seen in the mudroom the first time they baked together, rough brown trousers and a tan western-style shirt with one of the breast pockets bulging a bit with what was, surely, her always handy pack of Marlboro Lights.

Behind the plastic, Reece could see a couple of men on stepladders.

The place smelled of coffee and wet. The big fan continued to whirl, chilling the air.

“You’re not on until eleven today,” Joanie said without looking around.

“I’m working off my part of this. Argue,” Reece added, “and I’ll just quit, move to Jackson Hole and get a job there. You’ll not only be shy a couple of booths but a cook.”

Joanie stayed just as she was. “These boys’ve been at this an hour already. Go on back and rustle them up a couple of cattleman’s breakfasts.”

“How do they want their eggs?”

“Fry ’em. Sunny side.”

Brody stepped up to Joanie as Reece headed back. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I can sleep when I’m dead. Are you just here to chauffeur her around and send her smoldering looks, or are you apt to be useful?”

“I can multitask.”

“Then go on in there, see what Reuben and Joe can use you for. We’ll have customers coming in before long. Reece, make that three cattleman’s.”

REECE SERVED THEM herself, at the counter, as Joanie had Bebe hauling in tables to make up for lost seating. The regular early birds were already dribbling in, and the always sleepy morning guy shuffled in the back door to wash dishes.

No one complained about the inconvenience or the mess, but it held as top topic of conversation throughout the morning. When speculative looks were sent her way, Reece told herself it was no less than she could expect. But they ate her food, clattered dishes, and at ten sharp someone had the juke going over the noise of hammer and saw.

She had the day’s soup in the kettle and was making salsa when Linda-gail slipped back. “What an awful mess. You must be so mad at me.”

“I was.” Reece chopped and considered trying out a little bruschetta on the lunch crowd. “Then I looked at the big picture and decided it wasn’t your fault. Well, not completely your fault.”

“Really? I feel like such an ass.”

“You were an ass.” She paused long enough to grab a bottle of water. “But that was only one element that contributed to the general mayhem.”

“Oh, Reece honey. Your poor face.”

“Don’t remind me.” But since she had, Reece held the cold bottle against her bruised cheek for a moment. “Does it look terrible?”

“Of course it doesn’t. You couldn’t.”

“That bad, huh? Between the riot at Clancy’s and the mess here, people are going to have something to talk about for a week.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No.” Apparently her days of wallowing in guilt were over. Cheers. “It’s really not.”

“Does anybody know how it happened? I mean, who’d do something so stupid and mean?” Linda-gail looked around, watched Brody and Reuben carrying in some drywall. “The bright side is, I heard Joanie say she might as well paint the whole damn place as slap some just on the ceiling. We could use some freshening up.”

“Crappy way to redecorate.”

Linda-gail rubbed a hand up and down Reece’s back. “I’m just so sorry about everything.”

“It’s okay.”

“Lo isn’t speaking to me.”

“He will. But maybe you should do the talking first. When there’s something you want, something you need, life’s too short to play games with it.”

“Maybe. Reece, I want you to know that if you need to, you can stay at my place as long as you want.”

“Thanks.” She glanced over her shoulder. “He gave me two drawers.”

Linda-gail’s eyes went wide and bright. “Oh, Reece!” She wrapped her arms around Reece’s waist and rocked side to side. “That is just awesome.”

“It’s drawers, Linda-gail. But yeah, it’s a nice step.”

“Linda-gail Case, I don’t believe I’m paying you to dance.” Joanie walked in, gave the soup a stir. “Rick’s out front, Reece, wants to talk to you soon as you can. You can use my office if you want privacy.”

“I guess that’s best.” But then she turned, saw the people lingering over coffee at the counter, at tables. “No, I think we’ll have this conversation out front. People’ll just talk about me more if we go behind closed doors.”

With a light of approval in her eyes, Joanie nodded. “Good for you.”

Reece left her apron on, took the water with her. Rick was loitering by the counter, and straightened when she came out. “Reece. Why don’t we go sit in the back?”

“Out here’s fine. Table five’s empty. Linda-gail,” Reece called without taking her eyes from Rick’s. “Would you bring the sheriff some coffee? Table five.”

She led the way, sat. “Is Min pressing charges?”

“No.” He took out his notebook. “Talked to her again this morning, and she allows as you didn’t so much hit her as get pushed into her. And on some rethinking, witnesses agree you didn’t push over a table, but fell on one when other people scrambled to get away or join in the brawl. Before we move on from that, the consensus, you could say, is that the business at Clancy’s was a result of a series of lamebrain actions by a number of people.”

“Me included.”

“Well.” He smiled, just a little around the edges. “You do seem to draw…responses. Now.” He paused, looked toward the plastic and the noise of drywall being hammered in place. “Why don’t you tell me about this one?”

“After I left your office, Brody drove me back here. We went upstairs. I heard water running, and when we went in, the bathroom door was closed. Water leaking under it. Someone had turned the water on in the tub, plugged it up. It flooded.”

“Someone?”

She’d prepared for this, and kept her gaze level. Kept her voice clear and firm. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. You know I wasn’t there because you know I was at Clancy’s, then at your office.”

“I know you were at Clancy’s a couple hours, at my office a couple hours. From what I’ve been told, what I can see, the water was running for some time. Hard to pin down just how long.”

“I didn’t turn the water on. After my shift, I went upstairs to change my shoes and…”

“And?”

Check the locks, the windows. “Nothing. I changed my shoes, and I went back down to meet Linda-gail. I couldn’t have been upstairs for more than three minutes.”

“Did you go in the bathroom?”

“Yes, I used the bathroom, and I checked the clothes I had hanging on the shower rod to see how well they were drying. That’s it. I had no reason to turn the water on.”

“The clothes you took to the laundry at the hotel earlier?”

Okay, she thought. All right. “Yes. And, yes, someone took the clothes I’d washed and put in the dryerout of the dryer and put them back in the washer. I’d taken them down there, put them in to wash, went home, came back, put them in the dryer, came home again. And when I went back to get them, they were in the washer.”

He glanced up as Linda-gail brought his coffee, and a poached egg on toast for Reece. “Joanie says you’re to eat that, Reece. Can I get you something else, Sheriff?”

“No, just the coffee, thanks.”

“Linda-gail can tell you I wasn’t upstairs more than a couple minutes before we went to Clancy’s.”

“Sure.” The confirmation came after only a whisper of hesitation. “She was up and down, two shakes.”

“You didn’t go up with her?” Rick asked.

“Well, no. I just went in the bathroom here, fixed up my makeup and fiddled with my hair a little. Reece was right here waiting for me when I came out. Couldn’t have been but a few minutes. Somebody played a stupid trick, a mean one. That’s what happened.”

“Why would I turn the water on?” Reece demanded. “I was going out.”

“I’m not saying you did. And I’m not saying if you did you turned it on to cause any of this.” He pulled at his ear. “Sometimes, when you’ve got a lot on your mind, you forget. Pot on the stove, phone off the hook. It’s natural enough.”

“It wouldn’t be natural to run a bath when you had no intention of taking one, then walk out and leave the water on. And that’s not what I did.”

“’Course you didn’t.” Linda-gail laid a hand on Reece’s shoulder, rubbed. And Reece wondered if there was a hint of doubt along with the comfort of the gesture.

“Someone’s been in my apartment,” Reece said. “This isn’t the first time.”

Rick leveled his gaze at Reece. “First I’m hearing about it. Thanks, Linda-gail. I’ll let you know if we need anything else.”

“All right. Reece, you eat now. You haven’t had anything all day, and if that plate comes back untouched, Joanie’s going to be mad.”

“It started right after I saw the murder,” Reece began. She told him: the guidebook, the door, the bathroom, finding her things packed, the boots and the bowls. The pills, the photograph album. She forced herself to eat a little, hoping the action would somehow give her statements more validity.

He took notes, asked questions. His voice was flat and cool.

“Why didn’t you report these incidents before?”

“Because I knew you’d think just what you’re thinking now. That I either did them or I imagined them.”

“You don’t have a window into my head, Reece.” There was a quality in his voice that warned her his patience was at a low ebb. “Have you noticed anyone loitering around?”

“Half the town loiters here at some point.”

“Who has access to your key?”

“I keep it with me. There’s a spare in Joanie’s office.”

“Brody have one?”

“No, no, Brody doesn’t have one.”

“You had trouble, had words with anyone in town?”

“Not until I clocked Min at Clancy’s last night.”

He gave her that faint smile again. “I think we can rule her out.”

“He must have seen me.”

“Who?”

“The man, by the river. The one I saw strangle that woman.”

Rick drew a breath, sat back. “Saw you, at that distance? The distance you gave in your statement?”

“Not me. I mean he must have seen there was someone on the trail. It wouldn’t take any effort to find out it was me, not after the whole town knew about it. So he’s trying to discredit me as a witness.”

Rick closed his book.

“What are you going to do?” Reece demanded.

“I’m going to do my job. I’m going to look into it. Next time something happens, you need to tell me about it. I can’t help you if I don’t know you’ve got trouble.”

“All right. Have they identified the woman? The body?”

“Haven’t matched dental records yet. She’s still a Jane Doe. Have you thought about it? Can you confirm she’s the woman you saw?”

“I can’t. She’s not.”

“Well then.” He pushed to his feet. “You got a place to stay while these repairs are going on?”

“I’m at Brody’s.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Reece rose, cleared the table herself. Back in the kitchen Joanie scowled at the half-eaten egg. “Something wrong with my cooking?”

“No. He doesn’t believe me.”

“Doesn’t matter if he does or he doesn’t, he’ll do what he’s paid to do. I want some of those cluckers barbecued for the lunch special. You’re behind.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

“And make up some potato salad. You got your famous fresh dill in the cooler. Use it.”

REECE WAS ENDING the first of a double shift when Rick tracked down Doc Wallace. In strong, even strokes, Doc rowed his boat to its mooring on the lake. Rick grabbed the line, secured it. “You got a fishing license?”

“You see any damn fish? You hear the one about the game warden come across this woman in a boat, reading a book. Asks her if she has a fishing license. She says she’s not fishing, she’s reading a book.” Doc climbed nimbly out of his boat. “Game warden says ‘You got the equipment for fishing in there, so I’m going to have to write you a citation.’ She says, ‘You do that, I’m going to have to bring sexual molestation charges against you.’”

Rick waited patiently while Doc took off his prescription sunglasses, polished them on the tail of his shirt. “Well, the warden says with some outrage, ‘Lady, I never sexually molested you.’ And she says, ‘But you got the equipment for it.’”

Rick’s laugh was quick and easy. “Pretty good. Nothing biting today?”

“Not a damn thing on my line.” Doc laid his rod over his shoulder. “Pretty day not to catch fish though.”

“It is that. You got a few minutes?”

“Got more than a few. It’s my day off. Could use a walk after sitting in that boat the last couple hours.”

They fell into step, slowly following the curve of the lake. “Reece Gilmore’s been to see you, I hear. Medically.”

“You know I can’t talk about that kind of thing, Rick.”

“Not asking you to. We’re going to be talking in the hypothetical area of things.”

“That’s a shaky line.”

“It shakes too much, you can step off.”

“Fair enough.”

“You heard about what happened at Joanie’s place.”

“Water damage.”

“I got a statement from Reece. Says she never turned the water on in the tub. Says someone’s been getting into her apartment, doing things in there. Says someone took her laundry out of the dryer and put it back into the washer down in the hotel basement while she wasn’t there. Now maybe somebody around here’s taking a dislike to her. Though she’s a likeable enough woman, if you ask me.”

“There are some people who take a dislike to the likeable.”

“True enough. Yesterday she all but falls in the lake. Then she’s running down the street in her bare feet. She’s climbing down Brenda’s throat about somebody going down to the laundry, messing with her clothes. Last night she’s in a brawl at Clancy’s.”

“Oh now, Rick, I heard all about that foolishness. Linda-gail flaunting some tourist in Lo’s face to get his goat. And she got it.”

“My point is, Reece was involved.” The sun glinted off Rick’s dark glasses as he turned his head to look at Doc. Behind them, boats sailed across the water, through the mirrored mountains. “We haven’t had this much trouble in town all at once, not before she came around.”

“You think she’s causing all this. Why would she?”

Rick held up a hand as they walked. “I’m asking, hypothetically, if you had a patient with a history of emotional and mental problems, if that patient could likely function well enough for the most part. And have, well, what you might call delusions, or hell, just plain forgetfulness.”

“Hell, Rick, you could have just plain forgetfulness, and you could toss in a few delusions now and then.”

“This is more than forgetting where you left your keys. Could this be in her head, Doc?”

“Hypothetically, it could. But could’s not is, Rick. There’s no crime if she’s been forgetful. But there’s a crime if someone’s doing this to that girl.”

“I’m going to keep an eye on it. On her.”

Doc nodded, and they walked a little more in companionable silence.

“Well, I guess I’ll go on up to the hotel, take a look down in the laundry,” Rick said.

He detoured by Reece’s apartment first. The door was wide open, and rock pumped out along with the sound of hammer on chisel.

Inside, Brody was on his knees in the bathroom, painfully from the looks of it, chipping up the ancient linoleum.

“Not your usual line of work,” Rick called out.

“Change of pace.” Brody sat back on his heels. “An ugly, sweaty, knuckle-scraping change of pace. It got dumped on me when it was discovered I have no latent carpentry talents.”

Rick hunkered down. “Subflooring’s trashed.”

“So I’m told.”

“You should’ve come to me with these incidents with Reece before this, Brody.”

“Her choice. Understandable. I can look at your face and see you’re not leaning toward believing her.”

“I’m not leaning any particular way. Hard to investigate if I don’t know, don’t see for myself. You painted over what was done in here before.”

“Took pictures first. I’ll get you copies.”

“That’s a start. None of these incidents happened at your place, or while you were with her?”

“Not so far.” He went back to chipping. “Listen, even objectively it’s hard for me to buy her leaving the water on in here. She checks the stove every time she leaves the kitchen. Checks the lights, the locks. A person with a mile-wide anal streak doesn’t forget she’s running a bath. And she doesn’t run one when she’s got someone waiting for her downstairs.”

“I can’t see any signs of that lock being tampered with, or forced entry.”

“He’s got a key. I’m going to see the locks’re changed.”

“You do that. I’m going to head down to the hotel, take a look in the laundry area. You want to come along?”

“And leave this fascinating hobby?” Brody dropped the tools. “Bet your ass.”

BRODY COULD IMAGINE how Reece felt as she carted her basket through the basement. There was light, harsh light that cast shadows in corners. The furnace hummed, the water heaters clanged, all hollow, echoing sounds as you walked over the raw cement floor to the worn vinyl of the cramped laundry.

Two washers, two dryers, commercial grade. A dispenser that sold laundry soap and fabric softener in miniature packages at inflated prices.

There was a narrow jalousie window high above the machines, rolled closed, that let fitful light through frosted glass.

“Guest elevators don’t come down to this level,” Rick began. “Got an outside entrance, too, back by the maintenance room. Couple windows. Not hard for somebody to get down here without anyone noticing. Still. How’d they know she was down here doing wash?”

“She walked back and forth on the street. Easy to know if you’re keeping tabs on her.”

Rick studied the lay. “Let me ask you something, Brody. If someone wishes harm on her, why haven’t they harmed her? She’s got it in her head the man she says she saw by the river’s doing this.”

“I put it in her head.”

As if suddenly tired, Rick leaned back against a washing machine. “Now why the hell did you go and do that?”

“It makes sense to me. Play on her weaknesses, scare her, make her doubt herself. Make sure everyone else doubts her, too. It’s smart, and in its way, it’s clean. Doesn’t mean he won’t harm her.”

And that, Brody thought, was why she wasn’t going anywhere alone. “It seems to me it’s escalating,” he continued. “She wasn’t isolated this time. Joanie got hit, too. Because it’s not working. Reece is sticking.”

“Brody, did you ever forget you left laundry wet in the washing machine?”

“Sure. But I’m not Reece.”

Rick shook his head. “I’ll go up, talk to Brenda.”

Brenda was at the desk using her professional welcome voice on the phone. “We’ll be expecting you on July tenth. I’ll make those reservations for you, and send you a confirmation. It’s absolutely my pleasure. Bye, Mr. Franklin.”

She hung up. “Just booked the second of our two suites for a week in July. We’re going to be full up for the summer if this keeps up. How you doing?”

“Well enough,” Rick told her. “You saw Reece in and out of here yesterday?”

“I sure did. I told Deb—”

“You can tell me now. She came in to do laundry.”

“Had her basket. No shoes.” Brenda rolled her eyes. “Got change for the machines. Zipped right down. Was out again in, I don’t know, ten minutes at most. Had her shoes on when she came back, about a half hour later. Down and up, same as before. I didn’t see her come in the last time. Must’ve been in the back, but she came up like a wild woman, let me tell you. Spitting mad. Claimed somebody was down there.”

“Did you see anyone else go down?”

“Not a soul. She said somebody’d put her dry clothes back in the wash. Now who’d do that?”

“But you weren’t at the desk the whole time?” Brody said, then glanced at Rick. “Sorry.”

“Not necessary. You said you were in the back last time she came in. Were you back there long?”

“Well, I can’t say how long, exactly. Ten, fifteen minutes maybe. But most times when I’m back there I hear the door.”

“Most times,” Brody pressed.

“If I get caught on the phone back there or whatnot, I might not hear unless somebody hits the bell on the desk.” Her tone turned defensive. “That’s what it’s for.”

“Anyone been in here asking about Reece?”

“Well no, Rick, why would they? Listen, I like her. She’s a nice woman. But she was acting damn strange yesterday. Never seen anybody so het up about some wet clothes. And I didn’t tell you how she told Debbie she was training for some sort of marathon or whatever, and that’s why she was running down here barefooted? Now, that’s just crazy.”

“All right, Brenda. Appreciate the time.”

When they walked back outside, Brody turned to Rick. “Did Brenda get her sense of humor surgically removed recently?”

“Oh now, Brody, she’s all right, you know that. With all the hoopla’s been going on, and Reece at the center of a lot of it, you can’t expect everybody to understand how it is.”

“Do you understand how it is?”

“Trying to. Why don’t you drop those pictures you took of the bathroom off to me when you get the chance? And since you’re a writer, maybe you could write me up your version of the events and incidents. Get me dates and times best as you can.”

Brody’s jaw relaxed again. “Yeah, I can do that. It’s a little more my line than hanging drywall.”

“Be specific,” Rick added as they walked. “If it’s something Reece just told you happened, make sure that’s how you put it. Something you saw yourself, put that.”

“Okay.”

Outside On the Trail, Rick paused for a moment. He could see Debbie inside, but she had customers. As was his habit, he tapped his knuckles on the glass, sent her a quick salute when she glanced over.

“Starting to busy up around here,” Rick commented as they continued down the sidewalk. “Ah…You got a serious thing happening? You two?”

“We’ve got a thing happening.”

“Be best if you try not to let that color your statement. When you’ve got feelings for a woman, it tends to shade things some.”

“She’s not crazy, Rick. Hell, she doesn’t even hit eccentric in some areas.”

“And in others?”

“Sure, she rings the bell. Who doesn’t? People around here used to think I was strange because I write about murder, I don’t fish, don’t shoot mammals and I can’t name the top ten songs on the country music chart.”

Rick smiled his little smile. “Brody, people still think you’re strange.”

24

LINDA-GAIL wasn’t quite sure what to do. As far as she could remember, she’d never screwed up so completely with a man before—and there’d never been a man who’d mattered as much as Lo.

Which was probably why she’d screwed up.

He wasn’t answering her calls. She wanted to be pissed off at him for it, but instead just felt a little scared, a little sad. And a whole lot confused.

She’d planned it all out, spent hours and days and nights calculating just how to bring Lo to heel, when the time was right. When it suited her, she admitted. But damn it, if a man had ever needed to be brought to heel, it was Lo.

She’d given him plenty of time, plenty of room. It was time for both of them to settle down. Together.

As she drove out toward the ranch, with the sage flats ripening to bloom around her, she was determined to tell him just that. Fish or cut bait.

And if he opted to cut bait, she didn’t know what the hell she was going to do.

She wished she could have talked to Reece before taking this step. Reece had experience, city smarts and style. But Reece had plenty of problems of her own, and was probably a little bit irritated since she’d gotten sucked into a bar fight.

She had to brake for a moment as a bull buffalo stood in the middle of the road as if he owned it. With a sharp blast of her horn, she got him moving over to the flats through the grasses.

God, what had she been thinking, sashaying up with that stupid guy right in front of Lo’s face? Make him a little jealous, make him see what he was missing. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. The problem was it had worked too well.

How could she have known they’d start swinging?

Men. She sniffed on the thought, scowling at the wildflowers, the herd of pronghorns that snacked on them, and working up a new head of mad.

She’d only been dancing, for heaven’s sake.

She tapped her fingers on the wheel in time with Kenny Chesney. What she ought to do was turn right around, go back to town and let Lo stew in his own bile for a few more days. Possibly forever. What she ought to do was keep on going, track that brainless cowboy down and give him a piece of her mind for causing a ruckus over nothing.

So she drove, pushing her little car up to eighty on the flats, letting the wind fly through her open windows while Chesney wondered who you’d be today.

She slowed as she approached the big open gate with its wrought-ironK wrapped in a circle. No point in mowing down some tourist who wanted a taste of western life just because her love life was in the dumpster.

She passed a corral where a foal nursed from his mama, the bunkhouse with its faded logs and wide front porch built to look as if it had stood, frozen in time, for a couple of centuries. She happened to know that, among other things, the kitchen inside boasted a microwave and a Mr. Coffee.

The main house was log as well, and sprawled in every direction. Guests could stay in one of the second-floor rooms and one suite, or bunk in one of the one- or two-bedroom cabins tucked into the pretty pines. They could ride, rope, take overnight campouts, hike with a guide, float, fish, do a white-water trip.

They could pretend to be cowboys for a few days, and take home the bumps and blisters that went with the fantasy. Or they could just sit in a rocker on one of the big porches and contemplate the view.

At night they might belly up to the bar in the lodge and talk about their adventures before they slid into a feather bed, under a cozy duvet no cowboy had ever found at the end of the trail.

She turned at the fork of the dirt road toward the stables. Her contact, Marian, who worked in the kitchen there, had given her the intel that Lo would be on grooming detail that evening.

She parked, flipped down the vanity mirror to check, then finger-fluffed her windblown hair. As she got out of the car, the cowboy giving a riding lesson tapped a finger on the brim of his hat in salute.

“Hey there, Harley.” She fixed a bright smile on her face. Nothing wrong here, she thought. Just dropping by to pass the time.

And kick Lo’s stupid ass.

She swung into the stable, into the strong smell of horses and hay, the sweet scent of grain and leather. She shot a smile toward LaDonna, one of the women who guided trail rides.

“Linda-gail, how ya doing?” LaDonna raised an eyebrow. News traveled, especially when it involved fists and fury. She nodded toward the rear of the stables. “Lo’s back in the tack room. Pretty pissy, too.”

“Good. I’m feeling the same.”

Linda-gail marched back, turned the quick corner and, stiffening her spine, walked into the tack room.

He had Toby Keith on the CD player and his hat tipped back on his head as he worked saddle soap into leather. His jeans were faded and snug, riding low on his hips. His denim shirt was rolled up to the elbows. The toe of his scuffed left boot tapped the time.

His handsome face looked sulky and ridiculously handsome despite, maybe because of, the puffy bottom lip and the bruising around his eye.

The sight of him made Linda-gail’s heart melt, drowning the leading edge of her temper.

“Lo.”

His head came up. Sulky went to scowl. “What do you want? I’m working.”

“I can see that. I’m not stopping you.” She’d be big about it, Linda-gail decided, take the high road. “I’m sorry about your eye.”

He kept his gaze on hers for one long, humming moment, then shifted it back to the saddle, got back to work.

“I am sorry,” she said. “Still, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve ever had a fist in the eye. I was just dancing.”

He rubbed leather, kept his silence. And Linda-gail felt a tickle of anxiety bubble under her melted heart. “That’s it? You’re not even going to speak to me? You’re the one who got all het up just because I was dancing with somebody. How many times have I been in Clancy’s when you’ve been dancing with somebody?”

“That’s different.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. What’s different about it?”

“Just is.”

“Just is,” she repeated, scathingly. “I dance with somebody and it’s okay for you to start a brawl. But you can dance and whatever with anyone you like and I’m not supposed to think anything of it.”

“Doesn’t mean anything.”

“So you say.” She poked a finger in the air at him. “And I say I can dance with whoever I want and you’ve got no right to cause trouble.”

“Fine. You can bet I won’t from here on. So if that’s it—”

“Don’t you dismiss me, William Butler. Why’d you start that fight?”

“I didn’t. He did.”

“You got in his face.”

“He had his hands on your ass!” Lo threw down his rag and surged to his feet. “You let him paw you, in public.”

“He was not pawing me. And I wouldn’t have let him put his hands on my ass if you weren’t being such a dick.”

“Me?”

“Damn right.” This time, she jabbed her finger into his chest. “You’ve always been a dick because that’s what you use for a brain. I’ve waited long enough for you to grow the hell up and be a man.”

Danger shot into his eyes. “I am a man.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her forward. “And I’m the only man who’s going to put his hands on you. Got that?”

“What gives you the right?” Tears started in her eyes even as her pulse bumped. “What gives you the right?”

“I’m taking the right. Next time you let some other guy handle you, he’s going to have more than a bloody nose.”

“What do you care who handles me?” she shouted. “What do you care? If you can’t say it, say it to my face and mean it, right here and now, I’m walking away. I’m walking, Lo.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Then say it.” Tears tracked down her cheeks. “Look at me and say it, and I’ll know if you mean it.”

“I’m so damn mad at you, Linda-gail.”

“I know you mean that.”

“I love you. Is that what you need to hear? I love you. Probably always have.”

“Yeah, that’s what I need to hear. Hurt a little, didn’t it?”

“Some.”

“Scares you a little, too.”

His hands had gentled on her, stroked up and down her arms. “Maybe more than a little.”

“That’s how I know you mean it. That’s how I know,” she murmured, laying a hand over his bruised cheek. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear it from you.”

“I never could get over you.” He pulled her close, sent his abused lip throbbing by pressing it to hers. “I wanted to. I tried to. A lot.”

“A hell of a lot. Here.” She took his hands, pushed them around until they cupped her ass. “No other guy puts his hands where yours are, and you don’t put them on any other woman. Is that a deal?”

“That’s a deal.”

“You think you can get the rest of the night off?”

His smile spread, slow. “I reckon I can arrange it.”

“And come on home with me?”

“I could do that.”

“And get me all stirred up, and naked, make love with me till sunrise?”

“Only till sunrise?”

“This time,” she said and kissed him again.

HE WAS GOOD. Linda-gail imagined he would be—and she’d been imagining since she was old enough to understand what men and women did together in the dark. But he was better than even her active imagination had reached. Strong hands that found all the right places, a hot mouth with an endless appetite. A long, lean, tireless body.

He had her twice before her fevered brain could cool long enough to think, Hallelujah.

Naked, loose, skin slick with sweat, she sprawled crossways on the bed. “Where in God’s name did you learn all that?”

“I’ve been studying on it for some time.” He spoke lazily, eyes closed, his head resting on her belly. “So I could perfect the matter before I got to you.”

“Good job.” She reached down to toy with his hair. “You have to marry me now, Lo.”

“I have to…” His head came up. “What?”

She stayed as she was, the same cat-drenched-in-cream look on her face. “Had to make absolutely sure we got on good in bed. You don’t have good sex, you’re not going to have a good marriage, to my way of thinking anyway. So now that we know, we’re going to get married.”

She shifted her gaze to his. Shock, she thought, but that she’d expected. “I’m not another one of your women, Lo. I’m the only woman from here on out. If all you want is what we just had, you say so. No hard feelings. But I can promise you, you won’t get me here again.”

He pushed up until he was sitting, and she could hear him taking several long, steadying breaths. “You want to get married?”

“I do. I’m a traditional woman, Lo, at the bottom of it. I want a home and a family, a man who loves me. I’ve loved you as long as I can remember. And I waited. I’m done with the waiting. If you don’t want me enough, don’t love me enough to start a life with me, I need to know it.”

For a time he said nothing, only stared over her head. She wondered if he saw the door and himself on his hasty way out of it.

“I’m twenty-eight years old,” he began.

“You think that makes you too young to settle down and—”

“Just be quiet, will you, and let someone else talk for a change.”

“Fine.” She’d be calm, she told herself as she sat up, tugged at the sheets to cover herself. She wouldn’t make a scene.

“I’m twenty-eight years old,” he repeated. “I got a good job, and I’m good at the job I do. I got money put by. Not a lot, but my pockets aren’t empty. I’ve got a strong back and I’m pretty good with my hands. You could do worse.”

He looked back at her now. “Why don’t you marry me, Linda-gail?”

She caught her breath, let it out again. “Why don’t I?”

LATER, SHE RUSTLED UP some scrambled eggs they could wolf down in bed.

“My ma’s going to faint dead away.”

Linda-gail shook her head. “You underestimate her. She loves you so much.”

“I guess I know she does.”

“She loves me, too.” Linda-gail scooped up some eggs from the plate they shared. “How come you didn’t come in, help out with the repairs?”

“She said she didn’t need me. Had enough people crowding in. She didn’t even want to talk about it. You know how she is.”

“She was shook, more than she let on. Who’d do that to her, Lo?”

He paused. “I heard it was an accident. Reece flooded the bathroom upstairs.”

“No such thing. Somebody broke into Reece’s, turned the water on. She wasn’t even there.”

“But…Well, for Christ’s sake, how come that didn’t get back to me?”

“Maybe because you were sulking in the tack room.” Her lips curved as she slipped the fork between them. “Somebody’s been playing tricks, nasty ones, on Reece.”

“What are you talking about?”

She told him, at least what she knew, what she’d heard, and what she concluded from it.

“It’s a little scary when you think about it. Somebody’s poking at her, and she doesn’t know who. And if it’s the guy she saw kill that woman—”

“How can it be?” Lo interrupted. “That was weeks ago. He’s long gone by now.”

“Not if he’s from around here.”

“Well, goddamn, Linda-gail.” He raked his free hand though his disheveled, sun-streaked hair. “It can’t be anyone from the Fist. We know everybody. Don’t you think we’d know if we had some killer standing at the counter of the mercantile with us, or having coffee at my ma’s place?”

“People don’t always know. What do they always say when they find out their next-door neighbor is a psycho or something? ‘Oh, he was so quiet, so nice. Kept to himself and never bothered anyone.’”

“Nobody keeps to themselves so much around here,” Lo pointed out.

“Same difference. You never know until you know. I just wish there was something I could do to help her.”

“Seems to me you have. You gave her a friend.”

Linda-gail’s smile bloomed again, warm this time, and full. “You’re smarter than some people think.”

“Yeah, well, I like to keep a low profile.”

TIM MCGRAW was crooning on the juke, with one of the carpenters Joanie had dragooned in an off-key duet while Reece juggled orders in the lunch rush. She could block out the music—the best way to stay sane—and most of the background clatter: a baby crying, a couple men arguing baseball.

It was almost normal, as long as she didn’t think beyond the moment. Elk burger, rare, white bean soup, meatloaf sandwich, chicken sub. Slice, dice, scoop, man the grill.

She could do it in her sleep. Maybe she was, and maybe that was a good way to block out the fact that Brenda’s brother Dean was massacring McGraw while he hammered behind the plastic curtain.

It was all routine, the heat, the sizzle, the smoke. Routine was good. There was nothing wrong with clinging to routine between crises.

She plated the meatloaf san, the burger, their sides, and turned. “Orders up.”

And saw Debbie Mardson sliding onto a stool at the counter.

Debbie pursed her lips, touched her own glowing cheek and said, “You poor thing.”

“Probably looks worse than it is.”

“I hope so. I saw Min Hobalt. She said you pack a hell of a punch.”

“I didn’t—”

“She was joking.” Debbie held up both hands for peace. “She’s taking it okay, now that she’s calmed down. She told me her fifteen-year-old boy thinks she’s pretty cool now that she’s been in a bar fight.”

“Glad I could help raise her status.”

“Soup smells good. Maybe I could get a cup of that and a side salad.” She glanced around, conspiratorially. “Your dressing,” she said in a stage whisper.

“Sure.” It was, Reece supposed, a kind of olive branch. She could be gracious enough to accept it. “Coming right up.”

She made out the ticket herself, put it inline.

Twenty minutes later when the rush had settled, Debbie was still there.

“Boy, I thought getting dinner on the table most nights was a challenge. How do you keep it all straight?”

“It gets to be routine.”

“Feeding three kids and a man is more routine than I can handle some days. Can you take a break? Buy you a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t drink coffee.” Which sounded petty and rude, Reece decided. “But I can take a break.”

She grabbed a bottle of water before she came out to sit at the counter. If nothing else, it felt good to get off her feet. Maybe she felt wilted and sweaty beside Debbie’s white linen shirt and pretty pink cardigan, but she was off her feet.

“The soup was amazing. I don’t suppose you’d part with the recipe?”

“I’m thinking about parting with a lot of them.”

“Really?”

“Maybe doing a cookbook.”

“Really?”Debbie angled on her stool, swinging it a bit so her rose quartz bangles danced. “That’s so interesting. We’d have two famous writers in the Fist. We just won’t know how to act around here. Seems like you and Brody have an awful lot in common.”

Reece sipped her water. “You think?”

“Well, you’re both from back East, and creative. No wonder you two hooked up so fast.”

“Did we?”

“A lot of women around here had their eye on him, but he didn’t do a lot of eyeing back. Until you. Men outnumber the women in this part of the world, so a woman can afford to be picky.” Debbie beamed a smile. “Nice pick.”

“I wasn’t looking for a man.”

“Isn’t that always the way? Go out hunting for a buck, and you don’t see so much as a track. Take an easy morning walk, and one jumps right out at you.”

“Hmmm. You hunt?”

“Sure. I like being outdoors as much as I can. Anyway, you look good together—you and Brody. It seemed, at first, you were just passing through. We get a lot of that. The way things are now, I guess you’re settling in.”

“I like it here. Bar fights notwithstanding.”

“It’s a good town. A little sparse on culture maybe, but it’s a nice solid base. If you know what I mean. People look after each other.” She inclined her head toward the plastic tarp. “Like that. You have trouble, you can count on your neighbors lending a hand.” She added a wry smile. “’Course, everybody mostly knows your business, but it’s a trade-off. Something like that happened in the city, Joanie’d probably have to shut down for a week.”

“Lucky break.”

“I’m sorry.” She patted a hand on Reece’s arm. “You probably don’t want to think about it. I just meant you shouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s all getting fixed right up. Be the better for it, too, when it’s done.”

“I didn’t turn the water on upstairs,” Reece said flatly. “Still, I do feel bad that whoever’s messing with me took it out on Joanie. She’s been good to me, from the minute I walked in the door.”

“She’s got a bigger heart than she lets on. Listen, I didn’t mean to make it sound like you did something to cause her trouble. I was just saying it’s all going to work out fine. And the other day, I hope you don’t think I thought anything about you heading out to do your laundry without your shoes on. Sometimes I’ve got so much on my mind I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached. God knows you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

She gave Reece’s arm another friendly pat. “You should try aromatherapy. When I’m stressed, nothing smooths me out like lavender oil.”

“I’ll put that on the list. The next time a murderer breaks into my apartment and floods it, I’ll smooth myself out with lavender oil. Good tip.”

“Well, for God’s sake—”

“No offense.” Reece pushed off the stool. “I appreciate the attempt. I’ve got to get back to work.” She hesitated, then decided to finish it out. “Debbie, you’re a nice woman, and you’ve got really nice kids. Sticking with the theme, it was nice of you to take the time to be friendly. But you don’t know, you really can’t know, what’s on my mind. You’ve never been there.”

She stewed about it for the rest of her shift, and was still stewing when she left the diner. Since Brody had insisted on driving her in that morning—and that was going to stop—she didn’t have her car.

Didn’t matter, she thought. She could use the walk to cool herself down. It was warm enough to leave her jacket unbuttoned, breezy enough to smell the water, the woods and the grass that was beginning to green.

She missed the green, the lushness of it on lawns and in parks. The stately old trees, the zipping traffic. The anonymity of a busy, thriving city.

What was she doing here, flipping elk burgers, defending herself to Wyoming’s version of a soccer mom, worrying about the death of a woman she didn’t even know?

She had twelve dead people, ones she’d known and loved, on her heart already. Wasn’t that enough?

She couldn’t change it. She couldn’t help. Living her life was her only responsibility now. And it was more than enough to handle.

She walked with her head down, her hands stuffed in her pockets. And wished she knew where the hell she was going.

When the car slowed beside her, Reece didn’t register it. The light tap of the horn made her jump.

“Want a ride, little girl? I’ve got candy.”

Reece scowled at Brody through the open window. “What are you doing?”

“Driving around looking for hot women to pick up. You’re close enough. Get in.”

“I don’t want you breaking up your day to drive me back and forth to work.”

“Good, because I didn’t. Break up my day.” He unhooked his seat belt to lean over and open the passenger door himself. “Get in. You can snarl just as well in here as out there.”

“I’m not snarling.” But she got in. “I’m serious, Brody, you have your own work, your own routine.”

“I like changing my routine. In fact, getting my ass out of bed early enough to drive you in had me at the keyboard earlier than usual. I had a damn good day there, and now I feel like driving. Buckle up, Slim.”

“Had a good day? Kudos. Mine sucked.”

“No, really? I never would have guessed, not with that black cloud rumbling over your head.”

“I’ve been bombarded with country music all day; the sheriff thinks I’m a scatterbrain at best, but he’ll look into all my strange and wild allegations; his wife came in to pry into my personal life in the guise of a friendly pep talk. My feet hurt, and it’ll be a miracle if I don’t catch Pete’s cold. I’m the town cuckoo who’s been advised by the seriously pretty, annoyingly perfect Debbie Mardson to lower my stress with lavender oil. Oh, and I snatched you away from all the female hopefuls in the Fist because we’re both from big cities and creative.”

“I thought it was my sexual endurance.”

In an irritable move, she yanked her sunglasses out of her bag, shoved them on. “We didn’t get into that area, but it could be next up for discussion.”

“Well, when it’s on the table, don’t forget to mention you’ve never had better. No, not just better, more inventive.”

She shifted on her seat. “You really did have a good day.”

“A fucking excellent day. And it ain’t over yet.”

He drove out of the Fist. He wanted the flats, the bloom of them. The quiet and the space. He figured it was a major shift in place that he didn’t want all that alone. He wanted her with him.

He was surprised by his own sentiment when he stopped where they’d had their first kiss.

She stared out the window, saying nothing. Still silent, she reached out, touched her hand to his before climbing out.

She stood where the world was a carpet of color guarded by the silver and blue peaks of the Tetons, gilded by the sun that sat low in the west.

Pinks and blues, vibrant reds and purples, sunny yellows spiked and spread among the soft green of sage. And where the flats blurred into marsh was a dreamy green ribbon of cottonwood and willow.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Worth seeing?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. Is that larkspur?”

“Yeah, and stonecrop, harebells, a lot of Indian paintbrush. Ah…” He began to gesture. “You got your pussytoes, bitterbrush. The intense red trumpet is scarlet gilia.”

“How do you know the names of the wildflowers?” She angled her head toward him. “A man with your sexual endurance isn’t usually into flowers.”

“Research. I killed a man in that marsh today.”

“Handy.”

“See that bird? Green-tailed towhee.”

She felt a giggle tickling her throat. “Are you making that up?”

“Nope. Pretty sure that’s a meadowlark you hear singing.” He took a blanket out of the back of the car, tossed it to her. “Why don’t you spread that out.”

“Why do we need a blanket, if I may ask?”

“That tone indicates your mind’s in the gutter. I like it. However, the blanket’s to sit on, while we drink the wine I’ve got in the cooler. Got about an hour before the sun sets. It’s a good spot to drink wine and watch the sun set.”

“Brody?”

He hefted out the cooler, glanced her way. “Yeah?”

“We need to go over your fucking excellent day point by point, so you can have more of them.”

She spread out the blanket, sat on it, then lifted her brows when she saw he had not only wine but cheese and bread and fat purple grapes.

Every irritation, every annoyance, every worry that had dogged her heels slipped away, one by one. “Well, just let me say: Wow. I didn’t expect to end my day with a picnic.”

“You won’t. You’re going to end it having sweaty sex with me. This is a prelude.”

“So far, I like it.” She took the wine, stared out over the sea of color, the tender leaves, to the majesty of mountain. “How could I have thought I missed the green?”

“The green what?”

She only laughed, and popped a grape into her mouth. “I was so pissed off. She was only trying to be nice—for the most part. Debbie Mardson. I’d been trying to squeeze myself into routine, ignore the hammering, the reminder of what happened. Then she pulled me out of it—come on, sit down, take a break, have a conversation. She thinks we look good together.”

“That’s a given. You’re beautiful, without being traditionally so. And I’m a damn good-looking bastard.”

She slanted her gaze at him. “What’s this about not traditionally beautiful?”

“Not milkmaid creamy, not sultry and exotic, not all-American. You mix it up. It’s fairly compelling.”

They ate bread and cheese, drank wine, and watched the sun slide behind the mountains until their edges went from silver to fire red.

“This is better than lavender oil,” she told him. She leaned forward until she found his lips with hers, then let herself slide into the kiss as silkily as the sun was sliding behind the mountain. “Thanks.”

He cupped a hand behind her neck, pulled her a little closer, took the kiss a little deeper. “You’re welcome.”

25

SHE HAD THREE glasses of wine, which may have accounted for her feeling giddy. Giddy enough that the moment they got out of the car in front of Brody’s cabin, she boosted herself onto his back and began gnawing on his ear.

He’d had only one glass of wine, so it was probably the sudden attack on his senses that had him dropping his keys.

She laughed when he bent down, with her still wrapped around him, to scoop them up again.

“Mmm. Strong man.”

“Skinny woman.”

“Used to be skinnier.” Her hands got busy, had his shirt nearly unbuttoned before he managed to open the front door.

“Take me to bed.” She got her fingers on the button of his jeans.

He nearly stumbled on the steps when she clamped her teeth on the back of his neck.

“You’re going to have to cut that out,” he said breathlessly, “in two or three hours.”

He made it to the bed, then flipped her over his shoulder. She flew with a squeal, landed with the whooshing laugh. Then he was on her, popping buttons as he pulled her shirt open. Trapping her arms as he yanked the shirt down so that it stretched behind her back, over her wrists like a rope. Even as she gasped, his mouth was taking hers with a hot, heady possession that flooded her with helpless excitement.

“Oh God. I can’t—”

“You started it.” He pulled the straps of her bra down her shoulders, tugging until he’d freed her breasts and could feast on them.

Senses careening, she writhed under him, shuddered. Then moaned when he released her jeans to slide his hand under the denim. On her first choked cry he caught her nipple between his teeth, nibbling there until her hips began to pump against his hand. Until he felt her gather, until he felt her give.

“Scream all you want,” he whispered, clamping his hands on hers, imprisoning her as his tongue and teeth grazed down her. “Nobody’s going to hear but me.”

She did scream as he did things to her with that tongue, those teeth, those lips. And the sound of it shocked her, the wildness of it.

She couldn’t stop him. The fingers of her trapped hands dug into the bed as if to keep them both anchored to it. Her breath caught in her throat, burst out on another cry that sobbed out utter pleasure. For the first time in more than two years, being completely helpless brought thrills instead of fear.

If this was a Ferris wheel gone mad, this time she was eager for the ride. Faster. Spinning. Breaking free to fly.

Sensations racked her, soft then sharp, tantalizing then torturous. He dragged her up, yanked the shirt away. Then she was rolling with him over the bed, crazed to touch, to taste, to have.

She groaned when he pulled her arms over her head, arched to press heat to heat. And he wrapped her fingers around the rungs of the headboard. “Better hold on,” he told her.

Then plunged.

It was an earthquake, a dangerous tumult of exhilaration and power and speed. Battered by the force, she held on, half afraid she’d fly into pieces even as she matched him stroke for desperate stroke.

Then she let go, wrapped her arms around him so they could fly together.

Everything went limp, her mind, her body. Her arms slid weakly away. His weight was on her but felt insubstantial, as if they’d somehow melted together. The only thing real was the pounding of his heart against hers.

She drifted there, with his thundering heart the center of her world.

When he shifted, she tried to reach out and stop him. But he rolled onto his back, then linked his fingers with hers. And she let her spinning head fall to his shoulder.

FROM THE SHADOWS of the trees, he watched the house. Watched the bedroom window where the light from the three-quarter moon was just strong enough to give him silhouettes, shadows, the sense of movement behind the glass.

It was too early for sleep, he knew. Never too early for sex. He could wait them out. Patience was an essential tool of success, and survival.

He had several options, several plans. Plans and options were other important tools. He would adjust them to suit whatever opportunity presented itself.

She hadn’t spooked as easily as he’d assumed she would. In truth, as he’d hoped she would. So he’d adjusted. Instead of running, she appeared to be heeling in. He could work with that, too.

He might have preferred it otherwise, but his life was full of preferences, and many only half realized. But the ones he had realized he damn well meant to keep intact.

When the bedroom light came on, he continued to watch.

He saw Reece through the window. Naked, she gave a long stretch that transmitted sexual satisfaction.

His blood didn’t warm at the sight, nor did his loins tighten. After all, he wasn’t a Peeping Tom. In any case, she wasn’t the type that appealed to him as a man. Too skinny, too complicated. He barely saw her as a woman.

She was an obstacle. Even a kind of project. He enjoyed projects.

He saw her laugh, watched her mouth move as she shrugged into a shirt. Obviously Brody’s, as it was miles too big for her.

He watched her cross to the door, stop and say something over her shoulder.

So he adjusted his plans to opportunity.

“WATER FIRST,” Reece repeated. “I’m about to die of thirst.”

“The shower has water, so I’m told.”

“I’m not getting into the shower with you—that’s another path to perdition, and I need to hydrate. I can throw something simple together while you get yours.”

“As in food?”

“I didn’t figure bread and cheese would hold you, even with sweaty sex tossed in. I’ll do a quick stir-fry.”

His satisfied expression shifted instantly to scowl. “You said food, not vegetables.”

“You’ll like it.”

Loose and limber from sex, Reece all but floated out of the room. An easy meal, she thought—slice up a couple of the chicken breasts she’d frozen in marinade. Sautéed with garlic, onion, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower. Served over rice with some of her ginger sauce.

Couldn’t miss.

She wished she had some water chestnuts, but what could you do.

She rubbed her throat, imagined she could drink a gallon of water. Hardly a wonder since they’d gone at each other like animals. Fabulous.

Most likely she’d find bruises in some very interesting places—but then, so would he. The idea made her stop and do a little happy dance. Then rolling up the sleeves of Brody’s shirt, she walked toward the kitchen.

She switched on the light and went for the water first. Standing with one hand braced on the refrigerator, she gulped it down straight from the bottle like a camel refueling at a desert oasis.

When she lowered it, a faint tapping had her glancing toward the window over the sink.

She saw the shape of him. Shoulders covered in a black coat, head covered with an orange cap. Sunglasses black as the night hiding most of his face.

On a hitching gasp, she stumbled back as the bottle dropped out of her hand. The plastic thudded on the floor, and water glugged out on the tiles, over her bare feet.

There was a scream in her, trapped by shock and terror and disbelief, clawing madly at her throat.

Then the image was gone. She stood frozen in place, trying to gather her breath, her senses.

And saw the doorknob move right, move left.

Now she screamed, leaping forward to grab the chef’s knife from the block on the counter. She kept screaming, gripping the knife with both hands even as she backed up.

When the door flew open, she ran.

Brody had his head under the spray when he heard the door slam open. Idly, he pulled back the curtain, then stared at Reece. She held a big knife in her hands and had her back pressed to the door.

“What the hell?”

“He’s in the house. He’s in the house. In the back door, in the kitchen.”

Moving fast, Brody shut off the water, grabbed a towel. “Stay here.”

“He’s in the house.”

With one snap, Brody wrapped the towel around his waist. “Give me the knife, Reece.”

“I saw him.”

“Okay. Give me the knife.” He had to pry it out of her hands. “Get behind me,” he said, already rethinking having her lock herself in the bathroom. “We’re going to the bedroom first, where there’s a phone. When I’m sure it’s clear, you’re going to lock yourself in. You’re going to call nine-one-one. Understand me?”

“Yes. Don’t go.” Gripping his arm, she darted glances at the door. “Stay in there with me. Don’t go down there. Don’t go down.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“You. You.”

He shook his head, nudged her behind him. He shifted the knife to combat grip, shoved the door open quickly. He saw nothing to the right, nothing to the left. Heard nothing but Reece’s labored breathing.

“Did he come after you?” Brody demanded.

“No. I don’t know. No. He was just there, and I grabbed the knife and ran.”

“Stay close.”

He moved to the bedroom, calculated the odds, then shut and locked the door first.

He searched under the bed, in the closet—the only two places he deemed conceivable for anyone to hide. Satisfied, he set down the knife to grab his jeans, yanked them on. “Call the cops, Reece.”

“Please don’t go out there. He could have a gun. He could…Please don’t leave me behind.”

He turned to her briefly, stifling his own need to move. “I’m not leaving you behind. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He left the knife where it was, took his baseball bat out of the closet. “Lock the door behind me. Make the call.”

He didn’t like leaving her, not when she was afraid, when he couldn’t be sure she’d keep her head. But a man had to defend what was his.

Probably long gone by now, Brody thought as he checked his office. Probably. Still, it was his job to make certain, to secure the house, to make it safe.

To keep her safe.

He moved to the bathroom next. An intruder could have slipped in to hide when they went into the bedroom. Keeping the bat cocked on his shoulder, he took a quick scan. He felt foolish even as his stomach jittered.

Assured the second level was clear, he started down the stairs.

ALONE, Reece stared at the door. She leaped onto the bed, crawling over it to the phone.

“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?”

“Help. We need help. He’s here.”

“What kind of—Reece? Is this Reece Gilmore? It’s Hank. What’s going on? Are you hurt?”

“Brody’s. Brody’s cabin. He killed her. He’s here. Hurry.”

“Stay on the line. I want you to stay on the line. I’m sending someone. Just hang on.”

A crash from downstairs had her choking out a scream, dropping the phone. Gunfire? Was that gunfire? Was it real or in her head?

Breath sobbing, she clawed across the bed and picked up the knife.

She hadn’t locked the door. But if she locked it, Brody would be trapped on one side, she on the other. He could be hurt. He could die while she did nothing.

Ginny had died while she did nothing.

She got to her feet. It was like standing in syrup. Like pushing through that thick goo that clogged the ears, the nose, the eyes. And as she approached the door, through the dull buzzing in her head, she heard footsteps on the stairs.

They’d find her this time, and this time they’d know she wasn’t dead. They’d know, and they’d finish it.

“Reece. It’s okay. It’s Brody. Unlock the door.”

“Brody.” She said his name first as if testing the sound of it. Then on a gasp of relief that was like pain, she yanked open the door and stared at him. Swayed.

“It’s okay,” he repeated, and reached down to take the knife out of her hand. “He’s gone.”

Dots flashed in front of her eyes, black and white. Even as the edges went red, he propelled her into a chair, shoved her head between her knees.

“Cut it out. You cut it out and breathe. Now.”

His voice sliced through the dizziness, the queasiness, chipped away at the pressing weight on her chest. “I thought…I heard…”

“I slipped. There was water on the kitchen floor. Knocked over a chair. Keep breathing.”

“You’re not shot. Not shot.”

“Do I look like I’m shot?”

Slowly, she lifted her head. “I wasn’t sure what was real, where I was.”

“You’re right here and so am I. He’s gone.”

“Did you see him?”

“No. Cowardly bastard took off. That’s what you need to remember.” He took her face firmly in his hands. “He’s a coward.”

He heard the sirens but kept his eyes on hers. “There’s the cavalry. Get some clothes on.”

Dressed, she came down to find the back door open, with the floodlights on. She could hear the mutter of voices. Seeking solace in order, she started coffee, then mopped up the wet floor.

She brewed tea for herself, and had cups, milk and sugar on the table when Brody came in with Denny.

“Coffee, Deputy?”

“Wouldn’t mind it. You up to giving a statement, Reece?”

“Yes. It’s coffee regular, isn’t it?”

“Sorry?”

“Milk, two sugars.”

“Yeah.” Denny pulled on his earlobe. “You got a mind for details. Okay if we sit?” He took a seat at the table, took out his pad. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I came downstairs. I was thirsty, and I was going to make dinner. Brody was in the shower.”

She poured the coffee, glanced at Denny’s face. From the light flush on it, she assumed Brody had told him what they’d been doing beforehand, or he’d certainly inferred it.

“I got a bottle of water from the fridge,” she continued, set his coffee and Brody’s on the table before turning for her tea. “I heard something, like a tapping, at the window. When I looked over, I saw him.”

“What did you see, exactly?”

“A man. Black coat, orange hat, sunglasses.” She sat, stared into her tea.

“Can you describe him?”

“It was dark,” she said carefully. “And the kitchen light reflected on the glass. I didn’t see him clearly. Then he was gone. I saw the knob on the back door move. I heard it turn. I grabbed a knife from the block by the stove. The door opened, and he was standing there. Just standing there. I ran upstairs.”

“Height? Weight? Coloring?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. He’d seemed huge to her, impossibly huge. How could she see through the haze of her own fear? “White, clean-shaven. I’m not sure. It was quick, it was dark, and I was so scared.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No.” She jumped at the sound of a car pulling up.

“That’s probably the sheriff,” Denny said. “Hank contacted him after me. I’ll just go on out, fill him in.”

She sat with her hands in her lap when Denny went out. “It’s pitiful, isn’t it? He was standing right there, but I can’t tell you what he looked like. Not really.”

“It was dark,” Brody said. “I imagine he stood back far enough to be in the shadows. You had the glare of the light in your eyes. And you were scared. What did I tell you he was, Reece?”

“A coward.” She lifted her head. “And he knows just how to play me. They won’t believe me, Brody. I’m an hysterical woman, with delusions. You and Denny, you didn’t find anything outside. No handy clue.”

“No. He’s careful.”

“But you believe me.” She took a breath. “When I was upstairs alone, I thought I heard gunshots. I got everything tangled up.”

“Give yourself a fucking break, Reece. You snapped back.”

“He had to have watched us. Standing somewhere outside, watching the house, watching us.” She saw Brody’s face tighten. “You didn’t think I’d click onto that?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t.”

“I’m not going to freak because he’s seen me naked or knows we had sex. That’s small change.”

“Okay then.” He glanced over, signaled at the knock on the back door. Rick came in, removed his hat.

“Evening. Heard you had some trouble.”

“A little breaking and entering and harassment,” Brody told him.

“Maybe I could get a cup of that coffee. I asked Denny to take another look around.” He paused while Reece poured another cup. “Reece, why don’t you show me where you were standing when you saw someone—at the window, is that right?”

“At first. I was here.” She moved to the refrigerator, placed a hand on the door. “I heard a sound and looked over. He was outside the window.”

“Kitchen light glares some on the window glass, doesn’t it? You go any closer?”

“I…no. Not then. I saw the doorknob turn. He stepped back from the window, then I saw the doorknob turn. I grabbed a knife.” She moved forward, mimed taking one from the block. “And I…I think I stepped back, I think I kept stepping back. I was scared.”

“Bet you were.”

“Then the door opened, and he was standing just outside.”

“You were about where you are now?”

“I…I’m not sure. No closer. Maybe back another step or two. I just turned and ran.”

“Uh-huh. Best thing you could’ve done. You were in the shower?” he asked Brody.

“That’s right.”

“How about the door there? Locked? Unlocked?”

“It was locked. I locked up before I went out to pick up Reece.”

“Okay.” Rick opened the back door again, squatted to examine the lock, the jamb. “Was he wearing gloves?”

“He—” Reece forced her mind back. “Yes. I think so. Black gloves, like he wore when he strangled that woman.”

“Any other details about him?”

“I’m sorry.”

Rick straightened. “Well, let’s take it back some. You were home here, Brody, until what time?”

“I left about six-thirty, quarter to seven, I’d say.”

“Went and picked Reece up at Joanie’s, came back here.”

“No, we drove out to the flats.” Brody had a sudden, unexpected yen for a cigarette. Quashed it.

“Blooming out there. Nice night for it. So you took a drive.”

“Few miles out,” Brody confirmed. “Had some wine and cheese, watched the sunset. Got back here about eight-thirty, maybe. Might’ve been more like nine. We went straight up to the bedroom. After, Reece came down here for some water and I went to shower.”

“About what time?”

“Wasn’t watching the clock. But I wasn’t in the shower more than a couple minutes when she came running in. I took her back into the bedroom, got my pants, my ball bat, told her to call nine-one-one.”

Rick glanced over when Denny came in, shook his head. “Okay then. I’d say you’ve had all the excitement you’re going to have for tonight. I can swing by tomorrow, see what I see in the light of day. You go on back, Denny, file the report. Brody, why don’t you walk me out?”

“All right.” He looked at Reece. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

They went out the front. Rick took a look up at the star-flooded sky, hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Hell of a night. The kind you only get standing in the Fist. Going to be summer before we know it. We’re already getting crowded with tourists, summer people. Won’t have that sky all to ourselves much longer.”

“You didn’t ask me to walk you out so we could stargaze.”

“No. I’m going to lay this out for you, Brody.” He shifted so they were facing. “First, there’s no sign that door was forced. You said, for certain, it was locked.”

“He picked the lock, had a dupe key. He’s done it before.”

“Christ.” With obvious frustration, Rick rubbed his hand over his face. “And he managed that at just the narrow window when she’s downstairs alone and you’re in the shower? This guy have super-powers, too?”

“He had to be watching the house.”

“For what? To play bogeyman? If he was going to do anything, he’d have done it when he had her alone. If he existed.”

“Just wait one damn minute.”

“No, you wait one damn minute. I’m a tolerant man, Brody. A man wears a badge and a gun, he better have a store of tolerance. I’m open-minded, but I’m not stupid. You’ve got a woman with a history of emotional disorder, who’s been drinking, who just rolls out of bed and claims she sees the same man she claimed to see kill some unknown woman—thatonly she’s seen. And this happens at the exact moment there’s no one to verify it.

“There’s no sign anyone’s been at that cabin, or lurking around it. Just like there was no sign anyone was killed by the river, no sign anyone broke into her apartment over Joanie’s, or messed with her laundry at the hotel. You’re sleeping with her, so you want to believe her. Nothing’s so alluring as a damsel in distress.”

Temper leaped. “What bullshit. Fucking bullshit. Since you’ve got that badge, you’ve got a responsibility to protect and serve.”

“I’ve got a responsibility to protect and serve this town, these people. You go ahead and be as pissed as you want,” he said with a nod. “You go right on, but I’ve done about all I can for Reece Gilmore. Those tourists and summer people are coming in, and I can’t waste time and manpower I need to keep order around here chasing her demons. I’m sorry for her, God knows. She’s a nice woman who caught a big, bad break. She’s going to have to get over it and settle down. Do yourself a favor, talk her into getting some treatment.”

“I thought better of you, Rick.”

“At this point, Brody,” Rick said wearily as he pulled open the door of his truck, “I can say right back at you.” He climbed in, slammed the door. “You care about that woman, get her some help.” He started the engine. “She needs it.”

When Brody stomped back in Reece was at the stove. Rice in a covered pot, chicken and garlic sautéing in a skillet.

“Fuck him,” Brody muttered and pulled a beer out of the refrigerator.

“Thanks. Thanks for taking my side.” She shook the pan, flipping chunks of chicken. “I didn’t have to hear the conversation to know his part of it. He doesn’t believe me, and this last incident colors all the rest. I’ve wasted his time, disturbed the routine, moved up from town cuckoo to town nuisance. And when you come right down to it, you can’t blame him.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Everything points to me making it up, or just being crazy.” She added the vegetables she’d already chopped and sliced to the pan, dashed in some white wine, gave the skillet another shake. “Just as it points to you sticking with me because we’re sleeping together.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I know you believe me, and knowing that is a lifeline.”

He took a long, slow sip of beer. “Want to pack it up? Try New Mexico maybe? The thing about both of our professions is we can do them anywhere we damn well please.”

Her eyes stung, but she kept stirring and shaking. “You know what? You could have fallen on your knees, holding an eye-gouging diamond, a puppy and a fifty-pound box of Belgian chocolate, professed your undying love and devotion, then recited Shelley. It wouldn’t have meant more.”

“Good, because I don’t know any Shelley offhand.”

“And it’s tempting,” she continued. “But I know better than anyone that you can run away, even walk away, and it doesn’t change the bottom line. I liked seeing the flowers bloom out there, liked knowing they can. If they can root out here, so can I.”

She took the bowl in which she’d whisked up her sauce, poured it over the contents of the pan. “This’ll be ready in a couple minutes. Why don’t you get the plates?”

26

REECE SAT in Doc Wallace’s examination room, grateful she didn’t have to strip down for the follow-up. She felt sluggish, the way she did when she’d overindulged at a party.

Sleeping pill, she thought. Just an over-the-counter deal Brody had urged on her. Not that he’d had to do much urging, she recalled.

Though it kept the curtain closed on the nightmares, she felt heavy-headed and dull this morning. It was worth the trade-off—this one time. She didn’t want to go back to them, to the sleeping pills, the antidepressants, antianxiety.

She wasn’t depressed. She was being stalked.

The door opened. Doc strolled in, carrying a chart, wearing a smile.

“Congratulations. You’ve gained six pounds. That’s real progress, young lady. Four more, and I’ll stop hounding you.”

His smile faded as he came around the table and got a look at her face. “Or maybe not. Last time I had you in here you looked pale and worn out. You still do.”

“I had a bad night. A horrible night. I ended up taking a sleeping pill—nonprescription type. Even that left me washed out.”

“Anxiety?” He took her chin, turning her head to study the yellowing bruise on her cheek. “Nightmares?”

“I took the pill to avoid anxiety and nightmares. I saw the killer last night.”

Doc pursed his lips, and his eyes were sharp on her face when he slid onto his stool. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

She ran it through, every detail. “You don’t have to believe me, or say you do,” she finished. “It’s been a crappy few days, so I look pale and worn out.”

“This tender?” he asked as he gently pressed the bruise.

“A little. It doesn’t bother me.”

“How long have you been taking the sleeping pills?”

“Last night was the first one in nearly a year.”

“Have you started back taking anything else since you were here last?”

“No.”

“Any other symptoms?”

“Like forgetfulness, seeing things that aren’t there? No.”

“Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Is it possible that this man you saw could represent your fear? You didn’t see the face of the man who shot you. Not clearly. Or the trauma you experienced wiped that face out of your memory.”

“I don’t think I saw him,” she said quietly. “It was like snapping a finger. The door slamming open, me starting to turn. I saw the gun…and then…well, then he used it.”

“I understand.” Briefly, gently, he laid a hand on hers. “You never, from what I understand, saw the other men who killed your friends?”

“No, I never saw any of them.” Only heard them, she thought. Only heard them laughing.

“Have you considered that the figure at the window last night, potentially the man you saw by the river, is a manifestation of the fear and helplessness you experienced during the attack and after it?”

Inside her belly something twisted. Disappointment, she realized. Simple disappointment that he didn’t believe her after all. “You’ve been reading psych books.”

“I admit I have. Giving your fear mass and shape doesn’t make you crazy, Reece. It could be a way of bringing it out so you can see it, experience it, resolve it.”

“I wish it were. But I know a woman died by his hands. I know he’s watching me and doing what he can to break my nerve and undermine my credibility.” She smiled a little. “It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.”

Doc sighed.

“I know what paranoia feels like. How it tastes in the throat. I’m not paranoid. I’m not manifesting my fear. I’m living it.”

“Another possibility. Just hear me out. The first time you saw this man, and the violence, you’d just encountered Brody on the trail. The other incidents increased as your relationship with Brody developed. The more serious you’ve become, the more serious, or personal, the incidents. Is it possible your sense of survivor’s guilt is putting up obstacles to your happiness?”

“So I’m making myself crazy to sabotage my relationship with Brody? No. Damn it, I’vebeen crazy. I know what it feels like, and this isn’t it.”

“All right then, all right.” He patted her hand. “We—how was it said?—eliminate the probable and whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the truth. We’re going to draw a little blood, see how you’re doing.”

REECE WENT BACK to Joanie’s for the second half of a split shift. Mac Drubber and Carl were plowing through pork barbecue subs. Mac held up a hand to stop her as he chewed and swallowed. “Ah, I got in some fresh Parmesan. Kind comes in a chunk.”

“You did?”

“Thought you might want it. It’s a little dear.”

“I’ll come by later and get it. Thank you, Mr. Drubber.” On impulse, she leaned down, kissed the top of his head. “Thanks. I don’t deserve it.”

“Oh, now.” A little pink rode along his cheekbones. “You got a mind for something we don’t stock as a rule, you just let me know what it might be. No problem getting it in for you.”

“I will. Thanks.”

And first chance she got, Reece decided, she was going to make something special, something superb, and invite him over to Brody’s for dinner.

She walked into the kitchen in time to see Linda-gail slam a tub of dirty dishes next to Pete.

“Uh-oh.”

“Trouble in paradise,” Pete said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t you mutter around me,” Linda-gail snapped, whirling so her hair swirled out like a short red cape. “I’m not deaf.”

“Going to be unemployed you keep slamming things around.”

Linda-gail rounded on Joanie. “I wouldn’t be slamming things around if your son wasn’t a liar and a cheat.”

Her expression remained placid as Joanie continued to grill steak and onions. “My boy may be a lot of things not so complimentary, but I’ve never known him to be either of those. Mind yourself, Linda-gail.”

“Did he or did he not tell me he had to stay at the ranch last night helping out with a colicky mare? And was that or was that not a big, fat lie as Reuben was in here fifteen minutes ago asking me how I enjoyed the movie Lo took me to last night?”

“Could be Reuben was mistaken. Could be a lot of things.”

Linda-gail lifted her chin. “You’re his ma, and you’ve got to stand by him. But I won’t tolerate being lied to or cheated on.”

“Can’t blame you for that, and you take it up with him whenever you like. As long as it’s not when I’m paying you to wait tables.”

“He said he loved me, Joanie.” This time her voice cracked, just a little—and had Joanie’s lips going tight. “He said he was ready to build a life with me.”

“Then I expect you’ll have to have a conversation with him right soon. But now, you’re going to get out there and do your job. You’ve got customers.”

“You’re right, and I’ve wasted enough of my time on him. Men are no damn good for anything.” She stalked out, leaving Joanie sighing.

“If that boy’s messed this up, he’s a bigger jackass than I ever gave him credit for.”

While Joanie looked worried, Reece felt a tightly clenched fist knead in her belly. Where had Lo been last night and why had he lied about it?

“And are you going to stand there daydreaming,” Joanie demanded, “or take over this grill? I’ve got office work waiting, and I’ve got to pay for all this damn paint.”

“Sorry.” Reece grabbed an apron, headed to the sink to wash her hands. “The new paint looks good. Cheerful.”

“New and cheerful costs.”

There’d been a three-man crew painting after closing, Reece recalled, and the daffodil yellow with red trim perked up the diner considerably. But what had those men been doing at nine the night before?

“So, when did the painting start, exactly?”

“Eleven. And you’d think that Reuben would be too tired to flap his lips in here today after working till three in the morning.”

Casually now, Reece warned herself. Very casual. Just making conversation. “Is that when they came in, eleven?”

“Didn’t I just say so? Reuben and Joe and Brenda.”

“Brenda? Hotel Brenda? I thought her brother was on the crew.”

“Dean had something else to do, so she said. She’s better at the cutting in anyhow.”

Reece began to cook, and as she cooked she tried to imagine Reuben or Lo, Dean or Joe behind sunglasses and an orange hat, outside Brody’s kitchen window.

AFTER WORK, Reece snagged a ride home with Pete.

“I appreciate you taking me to Brody’s.”

“Not far, no problem.”

“Pete, what do you suppose Lo was up to last night?”

“Some woman’s skirt. Never can think without thinking with his dick—beg pardon.”

“I guess if that’s so, he must’ve had more than his share of trouble with women.”

“Usually sweet-talks them out of kicking his balls into his throat—beg pardon again. But he won’t have an easy time sweet-talking our Linda-gail. She’s a tough nut.”

“You’re right about that. Now take Reuben, for instance.” Casually again, Reece reminded herself. “You don’t see him with women, at least not right and left.”

“He gets around. He’s just got the sense to be discreet.” Pete slanted his gaze over to Reece, gave a quick, gap-toothed grin. “Had himself a red-hot fling last winter with a snow bunny. A married one.”

“Really?”

“Kept it pretty quiet, but it ain’t easy slipping in and out of a woman’s hotel room without somebody noticing. That Brenda’s got a nose for that sort of thing. Even if, as I heard, he came in through the basement entrance.”

“The hotel basement,” she murmured.

“Then word got out altogether when they had a hell of a row one night. Her yelling and throwing things. Beaned him with some sort of perfume bottle, it seems. He ended up hightailing it out of there, face all scratched up, boots in his hand.”

“What did she look like?”

“What?”

“The snow bunny, the woman. I guess I’m just curious.”

“Good-looking brunette, as I recall. About ten years older than Reuben’s what I heard, too. Called him up at the ranch off and on for weeks after, crying, yelling, spitting. Reuben, he confessed to me one night over a few beers how the experience put him clean off married women.”

“That would do it.” They were already turning toward Brody’s. “I guess Brenda’s brother, Dean, had a hot date last night.”

“Or a poker game.” Pete clucked his tongue. “I tell you a fact, that boy’s got ten dollars in his pocket, he’s going to stake himself to Texas Hold ’Em with it. That’s why he’s broke more often than not, and shining up Brenda for a loan. Gambling’s bad as heroin you don’t know how to handle it.”

He stopped his truck in front of the cabin. “Heard you had some doings out here last night.”

“I guess everyone’s heard by now.”

“Don’t you let it get you down, Reece.”

Curious, she turned to him. “How come you don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Hell, who says you’re not?” He smiled. “Everybody is, to some extent or other. But you say somebody was prowling around out here, I figure there was.”

“Thanks.” She opened the door, shifted to smile at him as she got out. “Thanks, Pete.”

“Nothing to it.”

There was to her. Maybe the cops didn’t believe her, but Pete did. And Brody, Linda-gail, Joanie. Doc Wallace suspected she was manifesting, but he was trying to look out for her. Mac Drubber probably thought she needed a few screws tightened, but he’d bought Parmesan because she wanted it.

She had a lot of people on her side. And another angle to pursue.

She found Brody on the back porch, drinking a Coke and reading a paperback.

He glanced up, and as he was obviously pleased with what he saw, a smile flitted at the corners of his mouth. “How’d it go today?”

“From bad to better. Doc’s happy I’ve gained some weight, and proposed the possibility that my orange-hatted man is a manifestation of my fears and survivor’s guilt—but is willing to be open-minded, if I am. Mr. Drubber ordered me some fresh Parm, and Pete gave me a thumbnail run-down on the romantic lives of a couple of guys in town.”

“Been busy.”

“And then some. Lo lied to Linda-gail about his whereabouts last night.”

“He’s been known to play it pretty loose with the ladies.” Brody laid the book aside. “You think Lo’s a killer?”

“He’d be the last I’d have picked. Damn it, I like him, and my friend’s in love with him. But isn’t it, traditionally, the least likely who’s the one? Isn’t that how it works?”

“In fiction, and only in good fiction if it makes sense. Lo bangs the ladies, Slim, but he doesn’t choke them to death.”

“And if one threatened him in some way, pushed him until he snapped?” She crouched by Brody’s chair. “Reuben had a hot affair with a violent ending with a married woman last winter.”

“From Lothario to the Singing Cowboy?”

“It should be possible to find out where he was last night. He didn’t start painting at Joanie’s until eleven. And Brenda’s brother didn’t show at all.”

“So you’ve decided on your suspect list because you’re not sure where these three guys were last night—at the time in question.”

“I have to start somewhere. Fighting back. Substantiate where they were, take them off the list. Can’t substantiate, keep them on.”

“And, what, work your way through every man in the Fist?”

“If necessary. I can cross some off. Hank—the bushy beard and his build is huge. I’d never have missed that. Pete, because he’s too little. We talked about this before, right after, but never really focused on it.”

“No, I guess we didn’t.”

“So, anyone over, say, sixty-five, under twenty. This wasn’t an old man orakid. Anyone with a beard or mustache, considerably over or under average height and weight. I know he might not be in the Fist—”

“Yeah, I think he is.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t hear a car last night. How’d he get away from the cabin without one?”

“Walked?”

“Maybe had a car far enough away not to be noticed. But, if this is someone from outside, he’d have to be in and around enough to get your routine, to know when you’re out of your place, at work, here. Somebody would notice and, however innocently, comment. Comments get around.”

“They do,” Reece agreed. “They really do.”

“And nobody’s stayed at the hotel for more than a week since April. No single men for more than two. Some of the cabins have rented, but again not for long and all to families or groups. Could be a family man or part of a group, but it doesn’t play as well for me.”

“You’ve done some research.”

“One of my things. Could be camping,” Brody continued, “but he’d have to come in for supplies. Even if he went somewhere else for them, he’d have to come in to get a handle on your routine, to do what he’s done. If he came in more than once, he gets noticed. So, going with that reasoning, he’s one of us.”

“Brody, I don’t want to call the police in again unless it’s…let’s be dramatic. Unless it’s life or death.”

“Just you and me, Slim.”

“I like you and me.”

“Funny. So do I.”

SHE DECIDED TO offset the stir-fry of the night before with a manly meal of pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans and biscuits. While the potatoes cooked and the chops marinated, she sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop.

The list came first, every male in Angel’s Fist she could think of who fit her very wide profile.

Along with the names, she keyed in the basics she knew of them.

William (Lo) Butler, late twenties. Lived in Angel’s Fist most of his life. Knows the area well, understands tracking, hiking, camping, etc.

(Could the couple by the river have come there on horseback?) Cowboy type, womanizer. Drives a pickup. Easy access to Joanie’s office—and keys. Violent streak when riled, as demonstrated at Clancy’s.

It seemed so cold, she thought as she read. And unfair perhaps not to note that he seemed so sweet-natured, loved his mother and had considerable charm.

She continued with Reuben.

Early to mid-thirties,she supposed.Employed at Circle K Guest Ranch. Knows area well, as above. Good with his hands. Pickup—with gun rack. Is in town at least once a week. Likes to sing at Clancy’s. Previous affair with married woman (possibly victim).

She blew out a breath. She knew he liked his meat rare, his potatoes fried and his pie à la mode. That didn’t say much for her purposes.

She continued on, listing names, information, then stopped with a twinge of guilt as she thought of Doc Wallace. He was hitting toward the top of her age barrier. But he was healthy, even robust. He hiked, fished and was welcome everywhere. And wouldn’t a man who healed know how to kill?

Then there was Mac Drubber, Dean, Liquor Store Jeff, the stalwart sheriff, accommodating Lynt. And more besides. The idea of listing them all, men she knew, some she considered friends, made her feel a little ill.

She made herself finish, copied to a thumb drive. When she had put the laptop away, she soothed her nerves and guilt with cooking.

ACROSS THE LAKE, Lo knocked on Linda-gail’s door. He had a single pink rose in his hand and lust in his belly.

When the door opened, he held out the rose and said, “Hey, baby.”

Linda-gail ignored the rose and fisted a hand on her hip. “What do you want?”

“You.” He made a grab for her with his free hand, but she stepped back and gave the door a boot that nearly slammed it into his face.

He caught it on the shoulder, butted it open again. “What’s the problem. Jesus, Linda-gail.”

“I don’t take flowers from liars. So you can just turn around and get your boots walking.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” This time he kicked the door when she swung it. “Cut that out. I put in fourteen hours today so I could get tonight off and see you.”

“Is that so? Seems unfair when you had to work extra last night, too. With a colicky horse.” She saw his wince, and her eyes narrowed. “You lying son of a bitch. You may have been rolling in the hay, but it wasn’t with any damn horse.”

“It wasn’t like that. Just hold on.”

“How could you lie to me like that?” She swung on her heel, stomped away. “I told you I wouldn’t be one of the herd for you, Lo.”

“You’re not. You couldn’t be. Hell, you never were. Let’s just sit down a minute.”

“I don’t want you sitting down in my house. I gave you what you wanted. Now it’s done.”

“Don’t say that. Linda-gail. Honey. It’s not anything like what you think.”

“Then what is it, Lo? You didn’t lie to me?”

He shoved back his hat. “Well, yeah, I did, but—”

“Get out.”

He tossed the rose, then his hat, aside. “I’m not leaving like this. Yeah, I lied to you about last night, but I had a good reason to.”

“Oh? And what’s her name?”

The frustration, the hint of embarrassment hardened on his face into cold anger. “I don’t cheat. Never have, not with women, not with cards, not with anything. If I’m ready to move on, then I break it off first. I don’t two-time anyone. Why would I start with you when you’re the one who matters?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes filled. “I wish I did.”

“I wasn’t with another woman, Linda-gail. I swear it.”

“And I’m just supposed to take your word on that, when you’ve already lied to me?”

“You got a point. But I’ve got one, too. If you love me, you need to trust me on this one thing.”

“Trust gets earned, William.” Furious with them, she dashed the tears away. “Tell me where you were.”

“I can’t. Not yet. Don’t turn away. Don’t, honey. I had something I needed to do. It wasn’t another woman.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

“I will, if you just wait till Saturday night.”

“What’s Saturday night got to do with it?”

“I can’t tell you that, either, or not all of it. But it’s all part of the whole thing. Give me until Saturday night. I want a Saturday night date with you.”

She finally gave up, sat down. “You want a date with me after you lied and won’t tell me why?”

“That’s right. Trust me on this one thing. I’m banking it’ll be worth it to you.” He crouched down now, brushed a tear from her cheek. “I swear on my life, Linda-gail, it wasn’t another woman.”

She sniffled. “You rob a bank?”

And he smiled, slow and utterly charming. “No, not exactly. Do you love me?”

“It seems I do, though it’s awfully inconvenient and annoying right this minute.”

“I love you, too. It’s getting so I like saying it.”

She took his face so she could study it closely. “You’ve got till Saturday night, and God help me, Lo, I believe you when you say it wasn’t another woman. I don’t see how you’d hurt me that way. So don’t make a fool out of me.”

“I couldn’t if I tried.” He took her wrists, then leaned in to touch his lips to hers. “I wouldn’t if I could.”

“I was going to make a pizza,” she announced. “I like pizza when I’m feeling sad and mad. I guess I like it however I’m feeling. You can share my pizza, Lo, but you’re not sharing my bed. If I have to wait for Saturday night for the truth, you’ll have to wait until then for sex.”

“I guess that’s fair. Painful, but fair.” He got to his feet, reached out a hand for hers. “You got a beer to go with the pie?”

HE WAS COMING, through the dark, through the wind. Her boots rang on the hard-packed trail. Could he hear them? She heard nothing but the wind and the river, but she knew he was coming, moving steadily behind her like a shadow, slipping closer and closer. Soon his breath would be on the back of her neck; soon his hand would curl around her throat.

She’d lost all sense of direction. How had she gotten here? Her only choice was ahead, up and up so that her legs wept with the effort.

The slice of moon showed her the curve of the trail, the rock face, the dangerous and hypnotic gleam of the river below. It showed her the way, but the way held no escape. And it would guide him to her.

She chanced a look behind her, saw nothing but sky and canyon. Relief came with a choked sob. She’d gotten away, somehow. If she could just keep going, keep running, she’d find her way back. She’d be safe again.

But when she turned, stumbling forward, he was there. In front of her now, impossible. Blocking her path. Still she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t know him.

“Who are you?” She screamed it out in a voice that blew across the wind. “Who the hell are you?”

As he came toward her, the fingers of his gloved hands curling, uncurling, she made her choice. She jumped.

The wind slapped her. Back into the kitchen at Maneo’s. A spin to the door, another faceless man, this one in a hooded jacket. The blast of a gun. Pain exploded—the impact of the bullet, the impact of the water.

The river closed over her, the pantry door shut.

And there was no light, there was no air. No life.

SHE WOKE WITH Brody gripping her arms.

“Snap out of it,” he ordered. “Right now.”

“I jumped.”

“What you did was fall out of bed.”

“I died.”

Her skin was slicked with sweat, and his own heart was still skipping several beats. “You look pretty lively to me. Bad dream, that’s all. You were putting up a hell of a fight.”

“I…what?”

“Kicking, clawing. Come on. Up.”

“Wait. Just wait.” She needed to orient herself. The dream was brutally clear, every detail. Until she hit the water, or fell into the pantry. “I was running,” she said slowly. “And he was there. I jumped. Into the river. But then, it got mixed up. Or it blended. I was falling into the river, I was falling into the pantry at Maneo’s. But I didn’t just sink.” She pressed a hand to his chest, felt the warmth against her cold skin. “I didn’t just give up.”

“No. I’d say you were fighting your way to the surface. You were trying to swim.”

“Okay. Okay. Good for me. About damn time.”

27

GETTING UP EARLY every day changed Brody’s perspective.

He saw more sunrises, and some of them were worth the trouble of prying his eyes open. He got more work done, which was going to make his agent and his editor happy. It gave him more time to poke around his cabin, and consider the possibility of change.

The location was good, and while he’d toyed on and off with the possibility of buying instead of renting, maybe he should get more serious about becoming a home owner.

Investment value, equity.

Mortgage, maintenance.

Well, you had to take the bad with the good.

And if he owned the place, he could expand his office, maybe add on a deck. Better view of the lake from up there, especially in the summer when the leaves thickened up. In summer, he could barely catch a glint of the water from the first-floor windows.

A deck would be a nice place, he mused, to sit in the morning and have coffee, gear up for the day.

He stood at the window of his office now, with coffee, picturing the change. It could be good.

One chair or two? he asked himself as he imagined the deck. If keeping the cabin was a big step, keeping the woman was a giant leap over a chasm.

He’d always enjoyed women, for their brains as well as their bodies. But if anyone had told him he’d one day want a very specific woman around all the time, he’d have reeled off a long list of reasons why such a possibility wasn’t for him.

Now, with Reece, he couldn’t think of one item for the list.

Having her around started his day early, that was true. And he’d gotten into the habit, once he’d quit theTrib , of rolling out of bed whenever he damn well felt like it. But there was always coffee, really good coffee he didn’t have to make himself. And food. Hard to overstate the advantages of getting up to food and coffee every morning.

And her voice. The smell of her. The way shearranged things. Ingredients for a meal, her clothes, the pillows on the bed. He’d found himself ridiculously charmed by the way she folded the bathroom towels over the rung.

That was a little sick. Probably.

But what man could resist the way those amazing eyes of her stayed a little blurry for the first half hour in the morning?

She was a more compelling reason to get out of bed every morning than the most spectacular sunrise.

She was troubled, complicated and would probably never shake off all her phobias and neuroses. But that’s what made her Reece, made her interesting. What sucked him in. There was nothing, absolutely nothing run-of-the-mill about Reece Gilmore.

“Two chairs,” he decided. “It’s going to have to be two chairs.”

Turning away from the window, he went to his desk. He picked up the thumb drive she’d given him. When he booted up, he saw there were two documents on the drive. One headedCB, the otherLIST .

“Cookbook thing,” he mumbled, and wondered if she meant for him to have it, or had slipped up. Well, either way, he had it now.

He opened that first, started reading the text she had headed asINTRO.

The in-laws are coming into town unexpectedly—tomorrow…It’s the third date, and you’re making her dinner. And hoping to follow it up with breakfast in bed…It’s your turn to host your book club…Your perfect sister invited herself and her fiancé—the doctor—to dinner…Your son volunteered you to make cupcakes for the entire class…

Don’t panic.

No matter how busy you are, how overwhelmed, how inexperienced you might be in the kitchen, it’s going to be fine. In fact, it’s going to be spectacular. I’m going to walk you through it, every step.

From the sumptuous to the casual, from tailgate parties to elegant dining and everything in between, you’re the chef.

All right, I’m the chef. But you’re about to become a Casual Gourmet.

“Not bad,” he decided, reading on. She’d woven in little bits about time, equipment, lifestyles. Kept it all light, a little frothy. Accessible.

After the introduction, she’d included a basic summary of the tone of the book she was proposing, then half a dozen recipes. The instructions—with bits of pep talk—were clear enough that he thought it might not be completely impossible for him to follow one through himself.

Topping each were stars, running from one to four. Degree of difficulty, he noted. Smart. In parentheses, she’d made a note suggesting the asterisks might be chefs’ hats.

“Clever girl, aren’t you, Slim?”

He considered for a moment, then composed a quick e-mail to his agent. And attached Reece’s file.

He closed it, opened her list.

Oh yeah, she was clever, he thought again. Her little sketches of the men were insightful and on target. Maybe it surprised him to find names like Mac Drubber and Doc Wallace, but she was thorough. And he enjoyed reading comments about Mac such asmildly flirtatious ,likes to gossip.

He’d have to ask Reece what she’d have put after his name if she’d included him on her list.

He edited in some of his own comments, observations. She couldn’t have known, for instance, that Deputy Denny had gotten his heart broken by a girl who’d worked as a maid at the hotel, had strung him along for six months, then blown out of town with a biker the previous autumn.

He saved the updated file, copied both it and the cookbook data to his machine.

When he’d finished, it was still shy of eight in the morning.

Nothing left to do but go to work.

He broke at eleven, went down to the kitchen to switch coffee for Coke and added a handful of pretzels. He was munching down on the first of them when his phone rang. He scowled, as he always did when the phone rang, then lightened up when the caller ID readout showed his agent.

“Hi, Lyd. It’s going good,” he told her when she asked about the book. He looked at the cursor on his screen. Today it was his friend. Other days, it might be the enemy. Then he smiled when she asked if he had time to talk about the proposal from his friend. “Yeah, I got a few minutes. What did you think?”

WHEN HE HUNG UP, he scratched around through his piles of notes for the copy he’d made of Reece’s schedule. He found it between a gun magazine—research—and a printout on the plasma TV he was thinking of buying.

He looked at the clock, back at the cursor. And decided he wasn’t going to feel guilty for knocking off early.

HE WANDERED INTO Joanie’s just as Reece was stripping off her apron. He leaned on the counter. She had her hair bundled up, and the heat from the grill had her face flushed. She looked soft, he thought.

“You eat anything you cooked today?” he asked her.

“Not exactly.”

“Pack something up.”

“Pack something up? What’s this? Another picnic?”

“No. It’s lunch. Hey, Bebe, how’s it going?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Ah…congratulations?”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have morning sickness. The fun never ends.” But she smiled, eased her feet by leaning on the counter across from him. “Jim’s hoping for a girl this time. I wouldn’t mind. How come you never ask me to pack something up, Brody?”

“Because Jim would kick my ass. Am I supposed to ask when you’re due and stuff like that?”

“You’re a guy. You’re supposed to look flustered and a little afraid. And you’re doing a good job. In November, around Thanksgiving. By then, I’ll look like I’ve swallowed an entire Butterball anyway. When’s your next book coming out?”

“A couple months sooner, and much less painfully.”

At the call of order up, Bebe rolled her eyes. “Well, back to the thrill and excitement of food service.”

“Lunch.” Reece held up a large bag as she came out of the kitchen. “You can be among the first to sample our new and experimental paninis.”

“Paninis. At Joanie’s.”

“Et tu, Brody? You’d think I was cooking snails and calf brains—which I can do, and deliciously.”

“I’ll take the panini.” He led her outside, taking her elbow and steering her across the street as she glanced around for his car.

“Where are we going?”

“To the lake.”

“Oh. Nice idea. It’s a pretty day for lunch by the lake.”

“We’re not having lunch by the lake. We’re having lunch on the lake.” He nodded toward a canoe. “In that.”

She stood where she was and eyed the boat, a little dubiously. “We’re going to sit in a canoe and eat paninis?”

“I picked the spot, you picked the food. It’s Doc’s boat. He said we could borrow it for a few hours today. We’re going to do a little paddling.”

“Hmmm.”

She liked boats. That is, she liked boats with motors, or boats with sails. But Reece had no idea how she felt about boats with paddles. “I bet that water’s still pretty cold.”

“You bet right, so let’s stay on it, not in it. Get in the boat, Reece.”

“Getting in the boat.” She stepped aboard, balanced herself and walked to the rear bench.

“Turn around the other way,” Brody told her.

“Oh.”

He got in, handed her a paddle, then took the front bench. Using his paddle, he launched them from shore. “Just do what I do, only on the opposite side of the canoe.”

“You’ve done this before, right? What I mean to say is this wouldn’t be the maiden voyage for both of us, would it?”

“I’ve done it before. I haven’t bought a boat yet because I waver between a canoe and a kayak, and it feels stupid to have both. Besides, there’s always one to borrow without storage and maintenance hassles. You just buy the owner a six-pack or a bottle, and you’re good.”

“Always an angle.” She had to put her shoulder into the paddle. “Water’s harder than it looks.”

Her muscles were already warming, and as she watched Brody paddle like a hawk watches a rabbit, she thought she had his rhythm. She could admit she liked the sensation of gliding; the boat just seemed to skim over the water. But gliding took work, and she could already feel it in her shoulders, her biceps.

Time to start weight resistance again, she told herself.

“Where are we going?” she called out to him.

“Nowhere.”

“There again?” She laughed, shook back the hair that had blown loose in the breeze.

And the mountains caught her like a fist.

“Oh God. Oh my God.”

In the front of the boat, Brody smiled. He heard the awe, the reverence in her voice. “A kick in the head, aren’t they?” He secured his paddle, turned to face her, then took her paddle from her still hands, secured it.

“It’s different from here. It’s all different somehow. They look…”

“They look?”

“Like gods. Silver and shining with thin crowns of white, dark belts of green. Bigger somehow, and more powerful.”

They rose, rose and spread, silver blue against the purer blue of the sky. The snow that clung to the higher peaks was as white as the clouds that drifted over them. And on the water, they mirrored. On the water, she felt as if she were inside them.

An egret soared up, skimmed the lake, glided like a ghost into the marsh on its north end.

There were other boats. A little Sunfish with a yellow sail fluttered in the center of the lake; a kayaker worked on his skills. She recognized Carl fishing out of a canoe, and a couple who must have been tourists streamed out of one of the braided channels and slid onto the plate of the lake.

She felt weightless and small, and punch-drunk.

“Why don’t you do this every day?” she wondered.

“I usually do it more once June hits, but I’ve been busy. Last summer, Mac talked me into going on a three-day trip on the river. Him, me, Carl, Rick. I went along because I figured it would be good research. Floated along the Snake, camped, fried fish Carl caught like they were eager to jump in the boat for him. Drank cowboy coffee. Told a lot of lies about women.”

“You had fun.”

“Had a hell of a time. We could do that, take a couple of days once you get the hang of paddling and try one of the easy channels.”

“Easy might have to be the key word, but I think I’d like that.”

“Good. I read your list.”

“Oh.” It was like a cloud over the sun. Still, it had to be discussed, she thought, explored. She opened the bag of sandwiches. “What did you think?”

“Pretty thorough. I added some bits. A little discreet poking around, we should be able to eliminate some. I already found out Reuben, Joe, Lynt and Dean were in a poker game in Clancy’s back room. Seven to after ten for Reuben and Joe, when they knocked off to head to Joanie’s. Dean, Lynt, Stan Urick, who’s not on your list since he’s seventy and built like a twig, and Harley—who’s not due to the thicket he calls a beard—were in it until after one in the morning. Nobody left for more than the time it takes to piss. Dean lost eighty bucks.”

“Well, three down.”

“My agent liked your cookbook proposal.”

“What?What? ”

Brody took a bite of the panini. “Damn good sandwich,” he said with his mouth full of it. Then swallowed. “Needs to talk to you directly though.”

“But it’s not ready.”

“Then why’d you give it to me?”

“I just…I thought, if you felt like it, had the time, you could glance over it. That’s all. Give me an opinion, or I don’t know. Pointers.”

“I thought it was good, so I asked my agent for her opinion. Being a bright individual, she agrees with me.”

“Because you’re her client or because it’s good?”

“First, she’s got bigger clients than me, a lot bigger. I’m a little fish in her pond. But ask her yourself. Anyway, she liked the way you structured it, but it needs to be formalized into a proposal. She called the intro ‘fun and breezy.’ Claimed she was going to try out one of the recipes tonight to see how it translates. She actually cooks, but she’s also going to give one of the simpler ones to her assistant, who doesn’t.”

“Like an audition.”

“She’s a busy woman, and wouldn’t take on a client unless she believes she can sell. You probably want to talk to her tomorrow, after the audition.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Sure. Lydia won’t bullshit you.” He pulled out the take-away fountain Coke she’d packed with the sandwiches. “She copped to who you were.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She’s smart, savvy, and she keeps up with current events.” Brody eschewed even the idea of a straw and simply pulled off the plastic cap and drank. “Has a memory like a herd of elephants. She asked me if you were the Reece Gilmore from Boston who survived the Maneo Massacre a couple years ago. I didn’t lie to her.”

Her appetite took a steep dive. “No, of course you didn’t. What difference does it make to her?”

“It may make one to you. If you sell, if you publish, she won’t be the only one to put it together. You’ve been flying under the radar for a while now, Slim. You’ll be back on it if you try for this. Reporters, questions. You’ll have to decide if you’re up for it.”

“‘Mass-murder survivor, former mental patient writes gourmet cookbook.’ I get it. Shit.”

“Something to think about.”

“I guess it is.” She looked around, the water, the mountains, the marsh. Willows dipped their feathery green leaves into the water. Across the lake, a silver fish wiggled madly on the end of Carl’s line.

It was so beautiful, so peaceful—and there was no place to hide. “She may not represent it anyway. And even if she does,” Reece considered, “she may not be able to sell it.” She looked back at Brody. “It’s a lot of big steps.”

“Smaller ones get you to the same place, but they take a hell of a lot longer. So figure out where you want to go, and how long you want to take to get there.” He took another bite of his sandwich. “Why’d you put paninis on Joanie’s menu today?”

“Because they’re good, fun, fast. Add a little variety.”

“Another reason”—he gestured with the sandwich—“you’re creative. You can’t stifle it. You like to feed people, but you like to do it your own way, or at least add a dash of yourself to the process. If you keep working there, you’re going to be compelled to put yourself into it, little by little.”

She shifted on the bench, uncomfortable because she knew he was right. Knew she was already doing just that. “I’m not trying to take over.”

“No. But you’re not just trying to fit in anymore. The Fist’s never going to be Jackson Hole.”

Confused now, Reece shook her head. “Okay.”

“But it’s going to grow. Look again,” he suggested, and gestured to the mountains. “People want that. The view, the air, the lake, the trees. Some want it for a weekend, or a couple of weeks on vacation. Some want it for good, or for a second home where they can boat or ski or ride horses. The more crowded the cities and the burbs get, the more people want a place that isn’t for their alternative time. The thing about people is, they always need to eat.”

She uncapped the bottle of water she’d brought along for herself. “Is this a convoluted way of suggesting I open a restaurant here?”

“No. First, you’d seriously piss Joanie off. Second, you don’t want to run a restaurant. You want to run a kitchen. Do you know who happens to be the biggest entrepreneur in Angel’s Fist?”

“Not offhand, no.”

“Joanie Parks.”

“Come on. I know she owns a couple of places.”

“Angel Food, half the hotel, my cabin and three others, four houses, just in the Fist, and a chunk of acreage in and outside it. She owns the building that holds Teton Gallery and Just Gifts.”

“You’re kidding. She squawks if I want to spend a few cents extra on arugula.”

“Which is why she owns a big handful of the town. She’s frugal.”

“I’ve come to love and admire her, but come on. She’s cheap.”

He grinned as he lifted his take-away cup again. “Is that any way to talk about your business partner?”

“How does she go from my boss to my partner?”

“When you propose to her that she open a Casual Gourmet on the opposite side of town from the diner. A small, intimate restaurant, with upscale yet accessible dining.”

“She’d never…She might. Small, intimate for that special night out or that fancy ladies’ lunch. Hmmm. Hmmm. Lunch and dinner service only. Revolving menu. Hmmm.”

The thirdhmmm had Brody fighting back a smile. Her brain was already caught up in the idea. Her nerve, he imagined, would catch up quickly enough.

“Of course, it depends on where you want to go.”

“And how long I want to take to get there. You’re a sneaky bastard, Brody, putting that seed in my head. I won’t be able to get it out.”

“Gives you a lot to think about. Are you going to eat the other half of that sandwich?”

Grinning, she passed it over, and the cell phone in her pocket rang. “Nobody calls me,” Reece began as she dug it out. “I wonder why I carry it most of the time. Hello?”

“Reece Gilmore?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Serge. I made you beautiful in Jackson.”

“Oh, yes. Serge. Um, how are you?”

“Absolutely fine, and hoping you and Linda-gail will come back to visit me.”

Instinctively, Reece lifted a hand to her breeze-tousled hair. She could use a trim, no question. But she also needed to pay her car insurance. “I’ll have to talk to her about that.”

“Meanwhile, I called about the picture you left with me. The flyer?”

“The sketch? You recognized her?”

“I didn’t, no. But I just hired a new shampoo girl who thinks she does. Do you want me to give her your number?”

“Wait.” Her eyes rounded as she stared at Brody. “Is she there now? The new girl?”

“Not at the moment. She’s not starting until Monday. But I have her information. You want it?”

“Yes. Wait!” She dug into her purse for a pad, a pen. “Okay.”

“Marlie Matthews,” Serge began.

She wrote it down, name, address, phone number, while the canoe drifted lazily on the lake. “Thank you, Serge, thanks so much. As soon as I can possibly manage it, Linda-gail and I are coming in for the works.”

“Looking forward to it.”

She clicked the phone closed. “Someone recognized the sketch.”

“I got that much. Better get your paddle. We’ll have to secure the boat before we go to Jackson Hole.”

28

MARLIE MATTHEWS lived on the ground floor of a two-level wood box of furnished apartments off Highway 89. There’d been an attempt to give it a bit of style, with fake stucco walls forming a little cement courtyard gated with wrought iron. Inside it, there were a few faded mesh chairs, a couple metal tables that still had the white gleam of fresh paint. It looked clean and, though the tiny parking lot was still pocked with potholes from the winter, decently maintained.

In the courtyard, a towheaded boy of about four was riding a red tricycle in wide, determined circles. Through an open window on the second floor came a baby’s long, furious wails.

The minute they started across the courtyard, a woman stepped through the sliding glass doors of a lower unit. “Help you?”

She was small, wiry, with a short, sleek cap of dark hair liberally streaked with bronze. She gripped a rag mop, eyeing them as though she was prepared to beat them off with it if she didn’t like their response.

“I hope so.” Because she knew what it was like to be wary of strangers, Reece tried an easy, open smile. “We’re looking for Marlie Matthews.”

The woman signaled to the little boy. All it took was a crook of her finger to have him aiming his little bike in her direction. “What for?”

“She may know someone we’re looking for. Serge from the Hair Corral called me. I’m Reece, Reece Gilmore. This is Brody.”

Apparently the mention of her new boss was password enough. “Oh, well, I’m Marlie.”

Upstairs, the baby stopped crying, and someone began to sing in crooning Spanish. “My neighbor just had a baby,” Marlie added when Reece automatically glanced up toward the singing. “I guess you can come in for a minute. Rory, you stay where I can see you.”

“Mom, can I have a juice box? Can I?”

“Sure, you go get one. But if you go back outside, you stay right where I can see you.”

The boy dashed inside, with the adults following. He went directly to the refrigerator in the kitchen, sectioned off from the living room by a counter. “You all want something?” Marlie asked. “A cold drink maybe?”

“Thanks. We’re fine.”

The place was whistle clean and smelled of the lemony cleaner in Marlie’s mop pail. Though it was on the sparse side with its two-seater sofa and single chair, there had been attempts to make it homey with a red glass vase of yellow fabric daisies on the counter, a potted peace plant on a table situated so it could bask in some light through the sliders.

A corner of the living room had been fashioned into a play area with a little white table and red chair. On the wall, a corkboard was covered with a child’s drawings; on the floor, a clear plastic tub held toys.

Obviously more interested in the strangers than his trike, Rory carried his juice box up to Brody.

“I have a race car and a fire engine,” he announced.

“Is that so? Which is faster?”

With a grin, Rory went to retrieve them.

“You can go ahead and sit down,” Marlie told them.

“Mind if I sit over here?” Brody wandered over to the toy box, sat on the floor with the boy. Together, in male unity, they investigated the contents.

“I left a sketch at the salon a few weeks ago,” Reece began while Marlie kept an eye on her son. “Serge said you thought you might have recognized her.”

“Maybe. I can’t say for certain sure. It’s just that when I saw the drawing sitting on the counter, I thought—guess I said—‘What’s Deena’s picture doing in here?’”

“Deena?”

“Deena Black.”

“A friend of yours?” Brody said it casually while he ran the fire truck along the floor with Rory’s race car.

“Not exactly. She used to live upstairs where Lupe does now. The new baby?”

“Used to?” Brody repeated.

“Yeah, she left. A month or so ago.”

“Moved out?” Reece asked.

“Sort of.” As if satisfied Brody wasn’t going to grab Rory and run off with him, Marlie perched on the edge of the couch. “She left some stuff, took her clothes and like that, but left some kitchen stuff, magazines, that kind of thing. Said she didn’t want it, just junk anyhow.”

“She told you that?”

“Me? No.” Marlie thinned her lips. “We weren’t actually on what you’d call speaking terms by that time. But she left a note for the super. He lives next door. Said she was moving on to better. She always said she would. So she took her clothes, got on her bike and blew.”

“Bike?” Brody repeated.

“She drove a Harley. Fit her, I guess, ’cause she brought a lot of biker types home while she lived here.” She glanced over to make sure Rory wasn’t paying attention. “Worked in a titty bar,” she said under her breath. “Place called the Rendezvous. Deena used to tell me, when we were still talking, that I’d make more money there than at Smiling Jack’s Grill. I waitress there. But I didn’t want to work at that kind of place, and I can’t be out until God knows serving beer, half naked, when I’ve got Rory.”

“She lived alone?” Reece prodded.

“Yeah, but she’d bring company home pretty regular. Sorry if she’s a friend of yours, but that’s the way it was. She hadcompany most every night up until about six, eight months ago.”

“What changed?”

“Pretty sure there was a man—a particular one. I heard them up there once a week or so. Then she’d light out for a day, sometimes two. Told me she had a fish on the line—that’s how she talks. He bought her stuff, she said. New leather jacket, a necklace, lingerie. Then, I don’t know, I guess they had a falling-out.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, she came roaring in here early one morning. I was getting Rory in the car to take him to preschool. She was steaming. Cursing a streak. I told her to take it down, that my boy was in the car. She said how he was going to grow up to be a bastard like the rest of them.

“Can you beat that?” Marlie demanded, obviously still insulted by it. “Saying that about that sweet boy and right to my face?”

“No, I can’t. She must have been angry about something.”

“I don’t care what she was mad about, she had no cause to talk about my Rory that way. Set me off. We had a round right out there in the parking lot, but I backed off first. I had my kid, plus I heard she once smashed a guy in the face with a beer bottle at the bar. She isn’t the type I want to mess with.”

“Can’t blame you.” Reece thought of how Deena had slapped her killer, how she’d leaped at him.

“Shedidn’t back off,” Marlie continued. “Got right up in my face. She said how nobody pushes her around. Nobody screws with her. And he—must’ve been the guy she was seeing—was going to pay. When she was done with him, she’d be moving on to better.”

Marlie shrugged. “That’s the gist of it anyway. She stomped away, and I got in the car. I was pretty steamed.”

“Is that the last time you saw her?” Brody asked.

“No, I guess I saw her around a couple more times. Avoided her, to tell the truth. Heard her bike a few times.”

“Would you remember the last time you heard it?” Reece asked her.

“I sure would because last time it was the middle of the damn night. Woke me up. It would’ve been the next day the super told me she lit out. Put the keys in an envelope and split. He said he was putting the rest of her things in storage for a while.” She shrugged again. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. None of my business. I’m glad she’s gone. Lupe and her husband are a lot better neighbors. Serge said I can schedule working at the salon when Rory’s in preschool, but Lupe’s watching Rory evenings when I work at the grill. I’d never have trusted Deena with my kid.”

Suddenly Marlie frowned. “Are you cops or something? She in trouble?”

“We’re not cops,” Reece replied and glanced at Brody. “But I think there may have been trouble. Do you know if the super’s home?”

“He mostly is.”

He was. Jacob Mecklanburg was a tall, lean seventy with a dapper white mustache. His apartment, a mirror image of Marlie’s in design, was crammed with books.

“Deena Black. High maintenance,” he said with a shake of his head. “Always complaining. Paid the rent on time—or nearly. Not a happy woman, the sort that likes to blame everything and everyone else for the fact her life isn’t what she imagined it would be.”

“Is this Deena?”

Reece took a copy of the sketch from her purse.

Mecklanburg changed his glasses for a pair in his pocket, pursed his lips as he studied the sketch. “Strong resemblance. I’d say it was her, or a close relation. Why are you looking for her?”

“She’s missing,” Brody said before Reece could speak. “Would you still have the note she left you?”

Mecklanburg considered a moment, studying Brody’s face, then Reece’s. “I like to keep everything in a file. Wouldn’t want her coming back to me, saying I’d rented the place out from under her. I don’t see any harm in letting you look at it.”

He moved over to the far end of one of his bookshelves, pulled up a rolling stool and sat to go through a lateral file cabinet.

“Nice collection,” Brody said easily. “The books.”

“I can imagine living without food. I cannot imagine living without books. I taught high school English for thirty-five years. When I retired, I wanted a job where I’d have plenty of time to read, but not enough I’d turn into a hermit. This provides that balance. I’m fairly handy with small repairs, and once you’ve dealt with teenagers for a few decades, handling tenants is no strain. Deena was one of the more difficult. She didn’t want to be here.”

“Here?”

“In a small, inexpensive apartment on the edge of the action. And while she paid the rent, she didn’t want to. She offered me, at various times, quite an expansive menu of sexual favors in lieu of rent.” He smiled a little as he pulled out a folder. “We’ll just say she wasn’t quite my type.”

He took the top sheet out of the folder, handed it to Brody.

Screw all of you and this dump. I’m moving on to better. Keep the junk upstairs or burn it. I don’t give a flying fuck. DB

“Succinct,” Brody commented. “This looks like it was written on a computer. Did she have one?”

Mecklanburg frowned. “Now that you mention it, I don’t believe she did. But there are any number of Internet cafés and accesses in town.”

“Seems odd,” Reece put in, “that she’d take the bother to tell you to get screwed. Why not just leave?”

“Well, she did like to bitch and to brag.”

“She was seeing someone the last several months.”

“I believe so. But she stopped…entertaining here, oh, sometime before the holidays last year.”

“Did you ever see him, the man she was involved with?”

“I may have. Once. Most of her ‘companions’ didn’t bother to be discreet. We have laundry facilities downstairs. One of the tenants had reported the washer was acting up. I went down to take a look, see if I could fiddle with it or needed to call a repairman. I was just coming up when he—her friend—was leaving. It was a Monday afternoon. I know as, at that time, all the tenants worked on Mondays.”

“A Monday,” Reece prompted. “Around the holidays.”

“Yes, just after New Year’s, I believe. I remember we’d gotten several inches of snow overnight, and I had to go out and shovel first thing. Generally I do any maintenance necessary in the morning or between four and six, barring emergencies. I like to read during lunch, then take a nap. But I’d forgotten about the machine that morning and needed to get to it.”

Brushing a finger over his mustache, Mecklanburg paused a moment, pursed his lips in thought. “I’d have to say he was surprised to see me—or be seen. He turned, angled himself away and quickened his pace. And he wasn’t parked in the lot. I was curious enough to hurry into my apartment and look out the window. He turned away from the lot.”

“Maybe he lives in town,” Reece supposed.

“Or parked elsewhere. But I do know that from that point on, Deena went out to meet him. If indeed that’s who she was meeting. As far as I know, he never came around here again.”

“HE DIDN’T WANT to be seen. Wouldn’t you say that?”

“Seems that way,” Brody agreed. “Which says married, or in a sensitive position.”

“Like a politician? A minister?”

“That’d be two.”

At his car, she turned around to study the building again. “It’s not a dump. It’s basic, but it’s clean and tended. But not good enough for Deena Black. She wanted more. Bigger, better, shinier.”

“And thought she’d hooked one who’d give it to her. Fish on the line,” Brody repeated when Reece frowned at him.

“So either he wasn’t providing her as she wanted him to, or he broke it off. I’d say he broke it off—this maybe married, maybe public figure. But, Brody, if he was afraid to be recognized here, what does that do to the theory that he’s from Angel’s Fist? That he’s been stalking me on the home ground.”

“Doesn’t change it.” He pulled open her door, walked around to the driver’s side. “Someone who does business in Jackson Hole, for instance. Or could be recognized by someone here who does business in the Fist. Or it was just a guilt reaction.”

Like Reece, he stood and leaned on the open door for a moment. “But he didn’t kill her because she objected to being dumped. That happens it’s annoying, potentially inconvenient, but it’s still basically: ‘Too bad, sister. We’re done. Deal.’”

“Men really are bastards.”

“Your breed gets to call it off, too.”

“Yeah, but we’re usually: ‘I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.’”

He made a dismissive noise as they climbed in. “Rather be stabbed in the eye with a fork than hear that one. But the point is, she had something. She threatened something. He’ll pay, that’s what she told Marlie. I’d say he didn’t want to pay.”

“So he killed her, disposed of the body, covered his tracks. Came back here in the middle of the night, on her bike. He’d already written the note.”

“He’s the one with a computer or with access to one,” Brody agreed. “Which narrows it down not a single bit.”

Still, as a puzzle she could see it coming together. They had a name, a lifestyle and, unless they were forcing in the wrong pieces, a motive.

“Took her clothes,” Reece added. “A woman doesn’t leave her clothes, her personal things behind. So he took them. Easy enough to get rid of. Left the dishes and so forth—too cumbersome. Did the note to cover his ass, too. Just to tie up the ends. Nobody would look for her because everyone would think she’d just pulled stakes.”

“He didn’t count on you. Not only seeing what you did, but caring enough to stick with it until you found her.”

“Deena Black.” Reece closed her eyes a moment. “I guess we’ve got a name now. What’s next?”

“Next? We go to a titty bar.”

REECE DIDN’T KNOW what she was expecting. A lot of leather and chains, hard looks, hard music.

In reality, there was as much denim as leather, and the looks were disinterested. Still, the music was harsh, gritty rock that pumped out over the stage, where a woman with an explosion of purple hair wore nothing but a red G-string and platform heels.

Smoke curled blue in the light over a stage-side table where a couple of hefty guys with generously tattooed arms watched the show and sucked down bottled beer.

There were a lot of tables—small, one- and two-seaters—most of them facing the stage. Only a few were occupied.

Since it seemed the thing to do, Reece sat at the bar and said nothing while Brody ordered them Coors on draft.

The bartender had a russet-colored mustache that hung to either side of his chin. And a head as bald as a peeled melon.

Brody shifted back to the bar to pick up his beer. “Seen Deena lately?” he asked the bartender.

The man swiped at spilled foam with his rag. “Nope.”

“Quit?”

“Musta. Stopped showing up.”

“When?”

“While back. What sit to ya?”

“She’s my sister.” Reece sent out a big smile. “Well, half sister. Same mother, different fathers. We’re on our way to Vegas, and I thought we could hook up with Deena for a day or two.”

She glanced briefly at Brody and noted he’d simply lifted that single eyebrow in an expression she recognized as surprised amusement.

“We went by her place,” Reece continued, “and they said she moved out last month, but this is where she worked. Haven’t heard from her in a while. Just wanted to say hey, you know?”

“Can’t help you.”

“Oh well.” Reece picked up the beer, frowned at it. “It’s not like we’re tight or anything. I just figured since we were so close and all we’d touch base with her. Maybe somebody knows where she went.”

“Didn’t tell me. Left me short a dancer.”

“Typical.” Reece shrugged, set down her beer without drinking. She wasn’t at all convinced it was the sort of place that worried about health inspections. “I guess we wasted our time,” she said to Brody. “Maybe she took off with that guy she said she was seeing.”

There was a snort from the waitress as she dumped a tray of glasses, bottles and ashtrays. “Not likely.”

“Sorry?”

“Had a bust-up. Big, bad one. Pissed her off. You remember, Coon?”

The bartender only shrugged. “Pissed off half the time, you ask me.”

“I guess that’s typical, too.” Reece rolled her eyes for effect. “But she made out like this one was serious. What the hell was his name?”

“Never told me,” the waitress replied. “Just called him Trout. He was her fish on the line, get it?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Two beers and bumps, Coon. Bud and the house whiskey.”

Reece bided her time as the waitress gathered the order, clipped over to the table nearest the stage. When she came back with another tray of empties, Reece tried a smile.

“Couldn’t have been that serious then.”

“Huh?”

“Deena and this guy, this Trout. Guess it wasn’t much of anything.”

“Got to be, you ask me. Her side, anyway.”

“Really?” Reece shrugged, took a very small sip of beer. “That’s not typical. Deena liked to bag ’em, but she wasn’t into tagging ’em.”

With a grin, the waitress leaned over the bar, pulled a pack of Virginia Slims from behind it. “Good one. Coon, I’m taking a break.”

“I’m Reece.” She offered a smile again. “Maybe Deena mentioned me.”

“No, not that I remember. Didn’t even know she had a sister. I’m Jade.”

“Nice to meet you. So, Deena was hooked on some guy, huh?”

“Well, she stopped picking marks to take back home with her.” She pulled a matchbook out of the pocket of her abbreviated shorts, struck flame. “Sorry, her being your sister, but that’s how she was.”

“That’s not news. I guess that’s why I was surprised she talked differently about this guy.”

“Said he had some class.” Jade tipped her head back as she blew out smoke. “Don’t see how, since she met him in here.”

“Oh.” Now Reece struggled to keep her voice casual. “You saw him then.”

“Might’ve. Can’t say. Wasn’t a regular, ’cause she’da pointed him out when he came back. Did buy her stuff though. Showed off this necklace he coughed up. Said it was eighteen-karat gold. Probably bullshit, but it was nice. Had a moon on it. Like a little white plate, I guess. Said it was like mother-of-pearl, and that the sparkles in the chain were real diamonds.”

“Diamonds? No shit.”

“Probably was shit, but she said how they were. She took to wearing it all the time, even during her act. Said there was more where that came from. Trout called her his dark side of the moon, she said. Whatever that means.”

“Maybe this Trout knows where she is.” Reece glanced at Brody as if for agreement.

He decided to keep drinking his beer and act like a man who couldn’t care less either way.

“Do you think someone else who works here might know him? Maybe one of the other dancers?”

“Deena wasn’t one to share, if you get me. Brag, sure, but she was keeping this one close. Wasn’t a biker.”

“Oh?”

“She said it was time she got one who had a straight job and knew more about life than what he saw on the back of a Hog. Anyway, they busted up, like I said. Then she took off. Greener pastures, I expect.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Brody didn’t speak until they were back in his car. “Here’s a whole new side to you, Slim. You can sit in a titty bar and lie with absolute believability.”

“It just seemed the most direct route. Saying something like ‘I saw Deena Black murdered a few weeks ago, but hardly anyone believes me,’ just didn’t ring. I don’t know if it did any good though.”

“Sure it did. All information points to her disappearance, which coordinates with what you saw by the river. She was involved with a man who obviously didn’t want her tossing his name around, and didn’t want to be seen with her. Regardless, he was in deep enough to spend money on her. Jewelry’s major points with your species, right?”

“It certainly is.”

“So he sprang for a bauble, which tells me she was more than a lay, at least for a while. They broke up, and she didn’t want to leave it that way. She pushed, he pushed back—and pushed back too hard.”

“She may have been serious about him, but she didn’t love him.”

“You thought she did?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Reece said, “but now I know. A woman doesn’t talk about a man the way she did him, doesn’t call him Trout if she has any real feelings. She was just after what she was after.”

He waited a moment. “Does that change your stand on going on with this?”

“No. Bitch or not, she didn’t deserve to die that way. I think…” Abruptly she pulled up short, grabbed his arm. “Is that Lo? Is that Lo’s truck, Brody?”

He looked around as she gestured, just in time to see the back of a black pickup turn a corner. “I don’t know. Didn’t see enough of it.”

“I think it was Lo.” Had he seen them? she wondered. If he had, why hadn’t he beeped, waved? Stopped. “Why would he be in Jackson?”

“A lot of people come to Jackson for a lot of reasons. It doesn’t mean he followed us, Slim. It’d be a hell of a trick tailing us on the stretch of road from the Fist.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“No. Not absolutely.” And there was nothing she could do about it, either way. “So, what now?”

“Once we get back to the Fist I use my innate reporter’s skills to find out more about Deena Black. First, we’ll browse around some of the local jewelry stores. We may find out where he bought the necklace.”

“Oh, that’s a good one. A little mother-of-pearl moon on a gold chain, possibly with diamonds. How many jewelry stores are in Jackson?”

“I’m afraid we’re going to find out.”

TOO MANY, was Brody’s opinion after the first hour, especially when you added in the craft and specialty stores that carried jewelry. He’d never understood the need for people to hang metal and stone all over their bodies, but since they’d been doing so since the dawn of time, he didn’t expect the activity to go out of fashion.

He was, however, relieved that the back-of-his-mind fear that Reece would surrender to the need tobrowse wasn’t realized. She didn’t succumb to the temptation that he believed plagued her breed tojust try this on. A woman who could stay focused on a task when having her senses blasted with glitter and shine was, in his opinion, a hell of a woman.

Now and then he’d see her gaze track offerings, but she stayed on point. He respected that. Particularly when he noticed other men suffering in silence while their women cooed and drooled and hummed over baubles and bits.

His respect and pleasure was such that he stopped along their walking route, pulled her up against him and kissed her enthusiastically.

“Nice. Why?”

“Because you’re a sensible, straightforward woman.”

“Okay. Why?”

“This business would take twice as long, at least, if you were the type who had to stop and make girl noises at every shop window or display. Taking long enough anyway, but this way we’re moving along.”

“True.” She slipped her hand into his as they headed for the next shop. “I also try to be an honest woman, so I should tell you the only reason I’m not stopping and making what you condescendingly term ‘girl noises’ is because I can’t afford to buy anything. And I’m out of the habit. But it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t if I could, or that I haven’t noticed particularly appealing items. Like the black two-and-a-half-inch ankle boots—I think they were crocodile—two shops back, and the tourmaline earrings on white gold hoops in the last shop. Or—”

“Youwere browsing.”

“In my limited fashion.”

“My illusions are shattered.”

“Better to know the truth now.” She gave his hand a friendly squeeze. “Anyway, at this point I’d rather have a set of Sitram than tourmaline.”

“Sitram?”

“Cookware.”

“You’ve got pots.”

“Yeah, that’s just what I’ve got. What I don’t have is heavy-gauge stainless with a thermic copper core base. If I actually sell the cookbook, Sitram’s first on my list. Did you buy anything wonderful when you sold your first book?”

“New laptop, loaded.”

“There you are. Tools are tools. This place looks like a good possibility. Upscale,” Reece continued, scanning the window display. “The real deal. If Deena was telling it straight about the eighteen karats and the diamonds, this could be the place.”

It was, Brody noted on entering, a bit more rarefied than most of the shops they’d visited. A woman with luxuriant auburn hair and a smart leather jacket sat at a table studying some sparklers on black velvet while she sipped from a thimble-sized cup. The man who sat across from her spoke in hushed, somewhat reverent tones.

Another woman in stylish red came out from behind a counter with a winning smile. “Good afternoon, and welcome to Delvechio’s. Is there anything you’d like me to show you?”

“Actually, we’re looking for a specific piece,” Reece began. “A necklace. A moon symbol pendant in mother-of-pearl. Diamonds spaced along the chain.”

“We had something along those lines a few months ago. Lovely piece. While we don’t have anything quite like that now, it may be possible to design something similar for you.”

“You sold it?”

“I don’t believe I sold it personally, but it was sold.”

“You’d have a record of the purchase?”

The winning smile shifted down several notches. “Perhaps you’d like to speak with Mr. Delvechio personally. He’s with a client now.” She gestured toward the customer. “If you’d like to wait and speak with him about a design, you’re welcome to do so. Would you like some coffee, tea, espresso?”

Before they could answer, the redhead rose. With a light laugh she leaned over and gave Delvechio—a distinguished type with pewter hair and horn-rims—a peck on both cheeks.

“They’re perfect, as always, Marco. You knew I couldn’t resist.”

“I only had to see them to think of you. Would you like them sent?”

“Absolutely not. I have to take them with me.”

“Melony will take care of it for you. Enjoy.”

“I certainly will.”

The clerk in red hurried over to scoop up the sparkles on black velvet. Delvechio turned to Reece and Brody. “A mother-of-pearl moon pendant on a gold chain, with diamond accents?”

“Yes,” Reece said, impressed he’d followed their conversation as well as his own. “Exactly.”

“Very specific.”

“A woman named Deena Black had one. She’s missing. Since she said it was a gift, we’d like to find the person who bought it for her. He may have information.”

“I see,” he said in the same polite tone. “Are you with the police?”

“No, we’re interested parties. All we want to know is who bought that necklace.”

“We had several pieces last year designed with moons, stars, suns, planets. Our Universe of Gems theme. They sold quite well for the holidays. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to give you client information, not unless you’re with the police and in possession of a warrant. Even if you were and did, it would take time as all of those pieces were sold in the previous inventory year. And some certainly sold for cash, and there would be no client information in any case.”

“How about when it was sold, and for how much?”

Delvechio raised his eyebrows at Brody’s question. “I couldn’t say when, with absolute certainty.”

“Best guess? Don’t need a warrant for a guess on when and how much.”

“No. We ran that theme, with those pieces, from October of last year through January. A piece as you describe would have been priced at around three thousand.”

“Whoever gave it to her knows what happened to her,” Reece insisted.

“If that’s so, you should contact the police. I can’t tell you any more under the circumstances. If you’ll excuse me.”

He left them to go into the back and closed the door firmly. After a moment’s pause, he went to his computer, called up data. He nodded at the name and the transaction.

His memory was excellent, and no less honed than his client loyalty.

Picking up the phone, he made a call.

29

THREE THOUSAND isn’t chump change,” Brody commented on the drive back.

Reece continued to frown out the window. The shadows were long as the sun eased toward the far west with the mountains holding on to every drop of that fading light. “A man even goes into a store like that, he’s decided on an important gift. And as you said, a man doesn’t buy an important gift for someone when it’s just sex.”

“So, they were serious.”

Reece shifted around to him. “He wouldn’t be seen with her, snuck around. How serious is that? I thinkobsessed orinfatuated are better words. She was using him, he was using her.”

“Okay.”

“From what we know about Deena, she was a topless dancer at a dive, dissatisfied, bitchy. She brought a variety of men home, drove a motorcycle and wasn’t above exchanging sexual favors for rent. And maybe not for cash, either.”

“Figuring she charged some of those men.”

“Seems likely. But this guy’s different. He wants an exclusive, and she gives it to him. Maybe she wanted it, too, or maybe she saw it as an investment. If Delvechio was telling it straight—as much as hewould tell—this was probably a Christmas gift. A man doesn’t buy an important piece of jewelry as a Christmas present for someone he’s just banging. Especially one who’d have probably been impressed with a fifty-dollar pair of earrings.”

“You women are hard on each other,” Brody commented after a minute.

“She wasn’t an innocent, nor by any accounts so far a particularly nice woman. She didn’t deserve to be strangled for it, but she wasn’t a passive participant, either. I’m just saying this man was involved. He was infatuated. He was seeing her on the side, or certainly the sly, but she mattered. At least for a while.”

She turned back. “So who on the list could spend three thousand dollars on a secret sex partner without it being noticed?”

“I’d say any one of them. Some live alone, and their bank balance is their own concern. Guys who don’t live alone often have a nice stash tucked away, just like women do.”

“Even a nice stash trickles away after a while. Maybe that was part of the problem.”

“She wanted more.”

“Isn’t it likely? ‘Why don’t you take me anywhere nice? I’m tired of living in this dump. When can we go on a trip’ and variations of the same. They’d been seeing each other for months. She’d want more.”

“And infatuation trickles away,” Brody decided, “just like cash.”

“Dark side of the moon,” Reece murmured. “It wants to click in my head with something. Did I see the necklace when he strangled her? I can’t remember, not quite. But there’s something.”

“In fiction land we could go to the cops with all this and they’d get a warrant, get the name. Unfortunately, in this world there’s the pesky problem of probable cause.”

“There’s positive cause,” Reece argued. “Deena’s dead, and whoever bought her that necklace is the killer.”

“No proof she’s dead. Or even missing. Just gone and considerate enough to turn in the keys to her apartment. Even if we got lucky and nailed down who bought the necklace, it’s still no proof. No absolute proof he gave it to her. Certainly none that he killed her.”

Logically, he was right, but Reece was growing weary of logic. “Then what the hell are we doing, Brody?”

“Gathering information. And we have more today than we did yesterday.”

“It’s not enough. For weeks, months, after the murders in Boston, the investigators would tell me they were looking, they were compiling information. But there was never an arrest, never a trial, never a conviction. I had to walk away. I had to. But how many times can you walk away?”

“No one’s walking, Reece. We’ll figure out a way to get the name from the jeweler. Or we’ll find somebody else who knows something else. But no one’s walking.”

She said nothing for the next mile. “I could have used you in Boston. I could’ve used that bullheadedness.”

“It’s called tenacity.”

“A rose by any other name.” She laid a hand over his. “Listen, if your infatuation trickles out, let me down easy, will you?”

“Sure. No problem.”

It made her smile as they zoomed across the blooming flats toward Angel’s Fist.

HIS HAND SHOOK as he closed his cell phone. How had they gotten so close? An inch away from him. How could he have covered his trail so carefully, and still they followed it to Deena?

They knew her name.

He’d done everything—everything—that could be done to protect himself, to shield that part of himself.

A temporary madness, that’s all Deena had been. And when he’d regained his senses, he’d done his best to act honorably.

When honor hadn’t worked, he’d done what was necessary.

All a man could do was what was necessary.

He would do so now. For the good of the whole. To preserve what deserved preserving.

They weren’t part of the Fist. Strangers really, changing what should remain constant. They’d have to be removed, as Deena had been.

He had to restore the balance.

THE SATURDAY CROWD kept Reece busy while she left what she knew, didn’t know, wanted to know simmering in the back of her mind.

She imagined, even now, Brody was picking his way through the Internet, gathering information on Deena Black. But knowing where and when she was born, where she went to school, if she had a criminal record wouldn’t point the way to her killer. Not in Reece’s mind.

Met him at the bar, most likely, she decided. He picked her up, or she picked him. Either way, they started an affair. Or a business arrangement.

A man didn’t want his friends and neighbors to know he was paying a woman to have sex with him—it was embarrassing.

First, he traveled out of his own sphere to frequent topless bars and engage hookers. Basic preservation of reputation.

But he’d gotten involved, maybe even believed himself in love for the short term. Enough so that he bought her expensive gifts. Made promises? Reece wondered.

Older men often fell for younger, inappropriate women. She tried to imagine Doc Wallace or Mac Drubber with a woman like Deena Black. Reece wondered what it said about her, about them, that it was all too easy to do so.

Just as someone young, still impressionable like Denny, might fall—or someone used to getting his own way with women, like Lo.

Maybe they should bypass Sheriff Mardson—as for all she knew, really, he could be a stone killer—and dump all they knew or suspected in the lap of the Jackson police.

It couldn’t be any less productive than doing nothing. And she couldn’t keep living with these people, cooking for them and wondering if one was a killer.

“Talking to yourself again.”

She jumped a little, then glanced over at Linda-gail. “Probably.”

“Well, when you finish your conversation and it’s time for your break, can you take a look at something?”

“Sure, what?”

“This dress I ordered online. It just came in. I ran and picked it up at the post office on my break. God, I hope it fits. I just want your opinion.”

“All right, as soon as I—”

“If the two of you are going to stand in my kitchen talking fashion, you might as well take your break now.” Joanie moved in, took over the grill. “Make it quick.”

“Thanks, Joanie.” Linda-gail grabbed Reece’s arm and pulled her out of the kitchen, into Joanie’s office.

“I paid more than I should have,” she said as she hustled Reece inside. “But I just loved it.” She snagged it from where she’d hung it on the back of Joanie’s office door, then held it up against her. “What do you think?”

It was short and strapless in a tender, spring leaf green. Reece imagined when Linda-gail filled it, it would be a knockout.

“It’s great. Sexy and still fresh. Should be fabulous with your hair, too.”

“Really? Thank God. Now if it doesn’t fit, I’ll kill myself.”

“Or try something radical like exchanging it for the right size.”

“No time. I need it for tonight. Special Saturday night date with Lo. His term—and he said to wear something wow.” She turned and angled in front of the mirror again. “This is pretty wow.”

There was a quick jump in Reece’s belly. “Where are you going?”

“He won’t say. Really secretive about it. I wish I could’ve gotten back to Jackson for a touch-up, but I had to color my hair myself. It’s not too bad, is it?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s good. Linda-gail—”

“It’s an ultimatum night.” She fluffed one hand at her hair as she did a three-quarters pose for the mirror. “He’s got to explain—and make it good—about why he lied to me the other night about where he was. He knows it’s on the line.”

“Linda-gail, don’t go.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Just wait. Don’t go off with him anywhere until you know what’s going on.”

“I’m going off with him to find out what’s going on.” With care, she hung the dress on the door again, smoothed its skirt. “He swore it wasn’t another woman, and I believe him. If I want this to work I have to give him a chance to explain things.”

“What if…what if he was involved with someone? Before. Seriously involved.”

“Lo? Serious?” She huffed out a laugh. “Not a chance.”

“How could you know, really? How could you be sure?”

“Because Lo’s been on my radar since we were fifteen. He hasn’t been serious about anyone ever.” Her pretty face went tight with determination. “Not the way he is with me, and the way he’s going to stay. What’s gotten into you? I thought you liked him.”

“I do. But he wasn’t honest with you.”

“That’s right, and now he’s going to be. I’m either going to like what he has to say tonight, or I won’t. I’ll either take him or leave him. But I’m damn well going to look fantastic either way.”

“Just…call me. On my cell. Call me when you get where you’re going, and after he explains.”

“Jesus, Reece.”

“Just do me that favor. I’ll be wondering and worrying if you don’t. Just do me that favor, Linda-gail. Please.”

“Okay, fine. But I’m going to feel pretty stupid.”

Better stupid, Reece thought, then hurt and alone.

AT HIS COMPUTER, Brody was making some progress. He knew Deena Black was born in Oklahoma in August 1974, had a high school diploma and some slaps for soliciting, one for disturbing the peace, two for assault. The second assault had earned her three months in county.

Her credit rating was in the toilet. Not that this would be a major concern to her now, if it ever had been.

He’d managed to backtrack her to her last two places of employment and residences. She didn’t receive glowing references from her employers—a strip club in Albuquerque and a biker bar in Oklahoma City—and her last landlord was still bitter about the two months’ rent she’d skipped on.

He found one marriage and divorce—both involving one Titus, Paul J., currently doing the second side of a dime in Folsom for assault with a deadly. A quick search on Titus showed Brody this was not the man’s first trip courtesy of the state.

“Weren’t what we’d call a sterling citizen, were you, Deena?”

Still, she’d been a looker in her way. He had an ID photo of her now, on screen, and could admit there was something compellingly sexy about her.

“The bad girl,” he said aloud. “Who knows it, and likes it that way. And lets you know you’ll like it, too.”

According to the data he found, she still had family in Oklahoma. A mother, a scant seventeen years older than Deena. There was always the possibility Deena had kept in touch, and that she’d told her mother what she hadn’t—apparently—told anyone else. The name of the man she was involved with.

So how to play it? An old friend of Deena’s trying to catch up? Chatty, friendly. A Wyoming cop trying to track down information on known associates? Tough, brisk.

Odds were he wasn’t going to find out a damn thing anyway.

He decided it was time to take a short break and let his head clear before he tried contacting Deena’s mother.

Before he could get up, his phone rang.

The familiar voice had him relaxing back again. The unusual but interesting request had him considering.

Ten minutes later, Brody was walking out of the house, then driving out of town.

He glanced at Angel Food as he passed. If this panned out, he hoped to have a resolution for Reece in a couple hours.

EVERYTHING STARTED NOW. And now there would be no going back—no regrets, no mistakes. It was risky, and the timing would have to be perfect. But it could be done. Had to be done.

The cabin was the right place for this first step. Quiet and secluded, with the cover of the woods, the marsh. No one would come there looking for them. Just as no one had ever come there looking for Deena.

When it was done, he’d have hours to make certain it was all done properly. He’d cover all the tracks, as always. And he’d put things right again. Back again. The way they should be.

“ALL RIGHT, LO, I want to know where we’re going.”

“That’s for me to know.”

Linda-gail folded her arms and tried a narrow stare, but he didn’t crack.

It wasn’t the way to Jackson Hole. She’d secretly hoped he was taking her to a fancy dinner somewhere especially nice. Where she could show off her new dress.

But he hadn’t gone that way. In fact—

“If you think for one minute I’m going to sit around some campfire in this dress, you’re crazier than I ever gave you credit for.”

“We’re not going camping. And that dress sure is a killer.” He shot her a quick, heated look. “I hope whatever you got on under it’s just as lethal.”

“You’re not going to see what’s under it, this keeps up.”

“Wanna bet?” He gave her a smug grin, made the next turn.

She saw where he was going now, and went to silent fume. “You might as well turn this truck around and take me right back home.”

“If you still feel that way in ten minutes, I will.”

He pulled up at the cabin with all the plans and preparations circling in his head. Nerves threatened, but he steeled himself against them.

He’d come too far to back down now.

Since Linda-gail didn’t budge, he got out, came around and opened her door. It was probably the way it should have been anyway, he decided, since she was wearing that sexy dress and he was duded up in his best suit.

“Just come on inside, honey, don’t be stubborn.” He eased and cajoled her as he might a fractious mare. “Otherwise, I’m just going to cart you in anyway.”

“Fine. I’m going to call Reece and ask her to come out and get me as soon as she can.”

“I don’t think you’re going to be calling anybody,” Lo muttered, and pulled her toward the cabin. “We weren’t supposed to get here this soon, but you were all fired up to leave. I wanted it to be heading toward dusk when we got here.”

“Well, it’s not.”

She stalked inside, fully intending to pull out her phone and call Reece. Then she was too stunned to do anything but stare.

FOR THE THIRD time in ten minutes, Reece checked her watch. Why didn’t Linda-gail call? Why hadn’t she been able to convince her not to go with Lo tonight?

Five more minutes, she vowed. And she was calling Linda-gail. No matter how crazy it sounded, Reece was going to demand to know her whereabouts. And she’d make sure Lo understood she knew.

“Looking at the time isn’t going to make it go any faster. You’re on till ten regardless.” Joanie ladled up stew from the pot. “And don’t even think about asking to leave early. I’m already a waitress short.”

“I’m not leaving early. It’s just Linda-gail said she’d call me, and she hasn’t.”

“I expect she’s too busy to think about calling you. She wheedled the night off, didn’t she? Saturday night, too. Her and my boy ganging up on me. Couple of lamebrains, that’s what. Everything’s sunshine, roses and moonbeams from where they’re standing. Well, in here, it’s burgers, stew and fried steak, so get that order up.”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said get that order up.”

“Sunshine and moonbeams. I remember. Oh, oh, God! I remember. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Arms akimbo, jaw up, Joanie planted her feet. “Girl, you’re not leaving that grill until I say.”

“Two minutes.”

“In two minutes that burger’s going to be burnt. Get that order up.”

“Goddamn it.” But Reece rushed to get the order up.

THERE WAS A TABLE in front of the fireplace in the cabin. On the table was a white cloth, on the cloth a blue vase filled with pink roses. There were candles and pretty dishes. Most astonishing, beside the table was a stand holding a silver bucket. In the bucket rested a bottle of champagne.

And when Lo picked up a remote and pressed play, Wynonna Judd sang a ballad, very softly.

“What is all this?” a confused Linda-gail asked.

“It’s a Saturday night date.” Eager now to play his part, Lo slipped off the shawl she wore around her shoulders. Laying it aside, he hurried around the room lighting candles. “I thought it would be a little darker, but that’s okay.”

“That’s okay,” she repeated, dazed. “Lo, it’s just so pretty.”

The mounted head of a bighorn sheep didn’t detract. The lamp with a bear climbing a tree forming its pole only made it all sweeter somehow.

And though it was heading toward June and warm enough, Lo crouched in front of the fire to light kindling already laid.

“Does your ma know about this?”

“Sure. She doesn’t rent this one out much since…you know that guy shot himself here.” He stopped, winced. “That doesn’t put you off, does it?”

“What? No. No.”

“Good. Still, I had to ask her if we could use the place—and to fix up something I could just heat up for dinner. She wasn’t too happy about it; in fact, she’s a little pissed off at both of us. But I figure that’ll change when we tell her the reason why.”

“The reason why what?”

He rose from the hearth, turned and grinned at her. “Gonna get to that. Right now, what do you think about me opening that champagne?”

And my, didn’t he look handsome? she thought. All that pretty sun-streaked hair, that nice, lean body all done up in a gray suit. “I think that’d be just fine.”

She wandered over to the table, brushed her fingertips over the velvety petals of a rosebud. “You bought me pink rosebuds once before.”

“For your sixteenth birthday. Been some time between deliveries, I guess.”

“I guess. I guess we needed it. You set this all up?”

“Wasn’t that much. The trick was to do it on the QT.” He gave her a wink as he started on the champagne. “I wanted it special, and if you try to do anything special around here and it gets out, everybody knows. Had to go clean into Jackson for those roses. Figured if I had Mac order them in, he’d just have to know why and be speculating with everybody who came into the mercantile on it. One person I know in the Fist can keep a secret, it’s Ma. So she’s the only one who knows we’re here. I nearly told her the rest, but…”

“The rest?”

When the cork popped, he let out a little whoop of delight. “Sounds good, doesn’t it? Fancy.”

“What rest?”

“She, ah…You got a few things back in the bedroom. In case you wanted to stay over.”

“You went into my house, into mythings ?”

“No. Ma did. Don’t get riled already. Here.” He handed her a glass. “It’s for just in case. Should we have a toast or something? How about to surprises, and lots of them?”

Her eyes were narrowed, but she tapped her glass to his. She wasn’t going to miss out on having a glass of champagne. “This is all beautiful, Lo, that’s the truth, and it’s sweet as can be. But we have issues to deal with, you and me, and I’m not going to be distracted by flowers and champagne.”

“Didn’t figure you would, but maybe we could relax, have some dinner, then—”

“Lo, I need to know why you lied to me. I gave you till tonight, and I’ll be honest first and say I really want to sit at that pretty table, drinking champagne and having you serve me dinner. I want to be here with you and think about how nice it is to have someone go to all this trouble for me. But I can’t. Not till I know.”

“I had this planned out different, but okay.” In truth, he didn’t think his nerves would stay in check all through dinner. “You have to come in the bedroom.”

“I’m not going in that bedroom with you.”

“I’m not going to try to get you naked. Christ’s sake, Linda-gail, give me some credit, will you? Just come on in for a minute.”

“This better be good,” she grumbled, and set the champagne down before she walked to the bedroom door with him.

There were more candles he’d yet to light, and more flowers on the dresser. A single rose lay on the pillow. She’d never in her life been on the receiving end of anything so romantic. The center of her heart yearned so that she had to harden its rim to keep it from spilling right out at his feet.

“It’s pretty and it’s romantic. And it won’t work, Lo.”

“That’s your special rose. You need to take your rose there. The one on the bed. Please,” he said when she didn’t move. “Do that one thing.”

On a windy sigh, she crossed over, snatched up the rose. “There, are you…” As she turned, the ribbon tied to the stem swung, and what was looped through it banged gently into her forearm. It shot sparks and light.

“Oh my God.”

“Now maybe you’ll be quiet for a minute.” Smug, he drew the ring off the ribbon. “I went out to buy this the evening I said I was working. I wanted to keep it to myself, that’s all. I go telling any of the boys I’m hunting up an engagement ring, they’re going to rib me about it until I have to punch somebody in the face. So I lied to you because I didn’t want you to know what I was up to. I wanted to give it to you, to ask you when it was special. Like this.”

Her heart was actually fluttering. This, she realized, was what they meant when they said it was like your heart grew wings. “You lied so you could go out and buy this?”

“That’s right.”

“And when I found out you lied, you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want us yelling at each other when I gave it to you. Before, after, that’s fine, but not during.”

“You did this, all this, for me.”

“About time I got started. You like it? The ring?”

She hadn’t really looked at it. Theidea of it, of all of it, was so huge. But she looked now at the sparkle of the diamond in a gold band. As simple, she thought, as traditional as a plate of warm apple pie. And absolutely perfect.

“I like it. I love it, I do. But there’s a problem.”

“What? What now?”

She looked up, smiled. “You haven’t asked me yet. Not officially.”

“You’re going to have to marry me, Linda-gail, and save me from wasting my life on wild women. You do that,” he continued when she choked out a laugh, “I’ll work hard to make you happy.”

“I’ll do that.” She held out her hand for the ring, “and I’ll make you happy right back.”

The minute the ring was on her finger, she jumped into his arms. “This is the best Saturday night date in recorded history.”

When his mouth met hers, she thought she heard a car on the road outside. But she was too busy to care.

BACK IN TOWN, Reece flew down the street. She still wore her apron, and it flapped around her legs as she ran. People stopped strolling to stare at her or to scramble back before she could plow through them. She burst through the door of On the Trail.

“The necklace.”

Debbie turned from showing a couple of customers a selection of backpacks. “Reece.” Her gaze registered surprise, followed by faintly amused annoyance. “I’ll be right with you.”

“You have a necklace.”

“Excuse me,” Debbie said to the customers, “just one minute.”

With her business smile in place, Debbie crossed over, took Reece’s arm in a firm grip. “I’m busy here, Reece.”

“A symbol of the sun on a gold chain.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Debbie demanded in a whisper.

“I’m crazy, remember. Indulge me or I’ll probably make a scene. I saw you wearing that necklace.”

“And so what?”

“A sun,” Reece repeated. “It came from Delvechio’s in Jackson.”

“Very good, you win today’s trivia contest. Now go away.”

Instead, Reece turned into Debbie, all but nose to nose. “Who gave it to you?”

“Rick did, of course. Last Christmas. What iswrong with you?”

“You’re his sunlight,” Reece murmured. “I heard him say that. That’s the opposite of the dark side of the moon.”

Debbie backed up a step. “You really are crazy. I want you out.”

“Where is he? Where’s the sheriff?”

“Let go of my arm.”

“Where?”

“In Moose, he has a meeting tonight. But in about two seconds I’m calling the office and having Denny come down here and haul you out.”

“Call whoever you want. Where was he the night we had the break-in at Brody’s cabin?”

“What break-in?” Debbie said with a sneer. “Or do you mean the night you imagined, again, somebody was there?”

“Where was he, Debbie?”

“At home.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve lost about all patience with you. I’m telling you he was home, right out in his workshop. And he’d have more time to relax out there if it wasn’t for people like you dragging him away on false alarms and stupidity. I had to go out there myself and get him when Hank called.”

“Oh? No phone in the workshop?”

“He had the music on, and the saw…” Debbie drew herself up. “I’ve had about enough of this nonsense. I have customers, and I want to finish my work and get home to my kids for popcorn and movie night. Some of us have normal lives.”

And some of us just believe we do, Reece thought. Sympathy welled up inside her. Debbie was going to have that belief shattered very soon. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“You will be,” Debbie replied as Reece turned for the door.

Reece pulled her cell phone out of her pocket as she hurried back toward the diner. Then cursed when Brody’s answering machine picked up on the fourth ring. “Damn it. Call me back, soon as you can. I’m going to try your cell.”

But that, too, switched to voice mail.

Frustrated as she knew he could walk ten feet in any direction from his cabin and lose his service, she jammed the phone back in her pocket.

It was all right, she told herself. Rick was in Moose, and even if Debbie called him when she got home to complain about crazy Reece Gilmore, he couldn’t be back for a couple hours. Probably more.

It would give her time to sort it all out in her head. So when she dumped it all on Brody, it would be with organized thinking.

That was best. It was going to be difficult enough to tell him his friend was a killer.

BRODY SPOTTED Lo’s truck when he passed Joanie’s cabin. Had Reece seen it in Jackson when they were there? He hated the fact that his first thought was that he knew the location of one of the suspects. All he could hope was in the next hour, he’d know who Reece had seen by the river. And it would be over for her.

He wanted it over for her.

He thought about buying her some tulips. Probably something he should do. Maybe take her away for a couple days until the bulk of the dust settled. She’d have to give statements, answer questions. Be the center of attention, at least for a while.

Rough on her, but she’d get through it.

And once she had, they’d have to get started on some pretty serious business of their own. He was buying that damn cabin from Joanie, and building on that new office, that deck.

And Reece Gilmore was staying put. With him.

He could bribe her with a set of those fancy pots. The Sitram.

These stay in my kitchen, Slim, and so do you. The idea of it made him smile. She’d appreciate that. She’d get that.

He turned onto the quiet, secluded drive, winding among the pines, and parked in front of the cabin.

Rick came out on the porch, his face sober, his eyes grave. He walked down the steps as Brody got out of the car. “Thanks for coming, Brody. Let’s go on inside.”

30

ABOUT THE TIME Reece was trying Brody’s cell, he was walking into the kitchen at the Mardson cabin.

“Got coffee fresh,” Rick told him, and poured out a mug for Brody.

“Thanks. State cops aren’t here yet?”

“On their way. Might as well go in and sit down.”

“You said you didn’t want to get into details over the phone.”

“Complicated business. Touchy business.” Rick stirred in the sugar and cream Brody took in his coffee, then rubbed the back of his neck. “I hardly know where to start, what to think.”

He led the way to the living room, sat in the wingback chair as Brody settled on the rusty red-and-gray checks of the sofa. “I appreciate you coming out here like this, so we can keep this quiet for now.”

“No problem. I should tell you that we’re pretty confident we’ve identified the victim. Deena Black, out of Jackson.”

Leaning forward in his chair, Rick narrowed his eyes. “How’d you come by that?”

“So,” Brody murmured as he drank his coffee, “we were right. We followed a tip, on the sketch, tracked her name down in Jackson.”

“Lowering to have to admit a couple of civilians got there about the same time I did.” Rick shook his head, laid his hands on his knees. “First off, I’m going to say I owe Reece a big apology. I never did believe her, not really. Not in the gut where it counts. Maybe I didn’t follow through as much as I should have because I didn’t. I’ve got to take the weight of that.”

“But you believe her now.”

Rick sat back. “I do. I did think she might’ve seen something when I got that wire alert on the Jane Doe. But she wouldn’t identify her, and…”

“Was it Deena Black?”

“No, turns out it was a runaway from Tucson. They got the two men who picked her up, hitching for Christ’s sake. Did that to her. That’s something anyway.”

“So, Reece was right about that, too.”

“I’d say she was right about a lot of things. Took me out at the knees when the state boys got in touch with me. I talked to them about what Reece said she saw, Brody. I did that. Checked with Missing Persons. But…well, I didn’t push through like I should have.”

“And now?”

“Well…” Rick looked off. “Lot I should’ve done, could’ve done, would’ve done. I asked you to come out here and talk about this, Brody, because I felt you should know first. You stuck by Reece through this. A lot of us didn’t.”

“She knew what she saw.” His vision blurred briefly.

“Yeah, she did.” Rick rose, walked to the window. “Couldn’t shake her off it. Damn shame.”

“She ought to be here, too.” Brody took another swallow of coffee to reach for the buzz. Fatigue was falling over him like a fog.

“She will be.”

“Give me some details before…” Was that his voice, slurred like a drunk’s? When the room spun, he tried to push to his feet. A quick spurt of knowledge had him stumbling toward Rick. “Son of a bitch.”

“Nothing else I can do.” When Brody fell, Rick looked down at him with sincere regret. “Not a damn thing I can do but this.”

REECE CALLED BRODY’S home phone and his cell half a dozen times each. It was getting dark now. She wanted to hear his voice, wanted to tell him what she knew.

She knew.

And knowing, she just couldn’t slice more baked chicken or make another mountain of mashed potatoes.

“I have to go, Joanie.”

“This here’s what we call the dinner rush. You’re what we call the cook.”

“I can’t reach Brody. It’s important.”

“And I’ve had about enough of romance inconveniencing me.”

“This isn’t about romance.” This time she took off her apron. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I have to find him.”

“This place doesn’t have a revolving door. You go out it, you keep going.”

“I have to.” She bolted out with Joanie’s curses racing behind her. The sun was already behind the peaks; the lake had gone gray with twilight.

She cursed herself because Brody’s insistence she not drive herself to and from work alone now meant she had to hike to the cabin. She did the first mile at a steady jog, searching through the gloom for the light he should switch on at dusk.

He went out for some beer, she told herself. Or for a drive to clear his head. Or he was in the shower, or taking a walk.

He was fine, wherever he was. Just fine.

She was panicking over nothing.

But who did you call when you knew the top cop in town was a killer?

She’d call the state police, that’s what she’d do. As soon as she’d talked to Brody.

Sunshine and the dark side of the moon. Rick Mardson had bought both those necklaces, one for his wife, one for his lover. He’d been the one having an affair with Deena Black, sneaking around, taking precautions so no one would see him with her.

And he killed her. It had to be.

He could have slipped in and out of the apartment over Joanie’s easier than anyone else. Wasn’t everyone used to seeing the sheriff strolling around town? He’d know how to get keys, get duplicates. Or to hide the fact that he’d broken in.

To cover his trail.

She slowed, catching her breath, struggling against another spurt of panic. Something plopped in the waters of the lake, rustled in the long grass beside it. And she ran again with her heart stumbling in her chest.

She had to get inside, lock the doors.

Find Brody.

Her breath snagged when she saw the shadows by the lake, then she forced back the scream when she saw the trio of elk taking their evening drink.

She veered away from them, raced by the willows, the cottonwoods and finally hit the hard pack of Brody’s short drive.

His car wasn’t parked beside hers. And the cabin was dark.

She fumbled out the key he’d given her, then had to stand with her head pressed against the door. It was harder, so much harder, to enter the dark than to leave it behind.

“Six times one is six,” she began, fighting the key into the lock. “Six times two is twelve.” Stepped in, slapped her hand on the wall for the switch.

“Six times three is eighteen.” Breathe in, breathe out. “Six times four is twenty-four.”

She locked the door behind her, then leaned back against it until the worse weight of anxiety eased.

“Not here. But he’ll be back in just a minute. Maybe he left a note. Except he never leaves notes. It’s not his way. But maybe this time.”

The kitchen first, she decided. She’d check the kitchen first. She turned on lights as she went, chasing the dark away. There were dregs of coffee in the pot, an open bag of pretzels on the counter.

She checked the pot; found it cold. She looked in the refrigerator, saw he had a supply of beer, of Cokes.

“So he went out for something else, that’s all. And he’s probably going to swing by and pick me up on the way back. I’m stupid. Just stupid.”

She grabbed the kitchen phone to try his cell again.

And heard a car pull up.

“Oh God, thank God.” After slamming down the phone, she ran out of the kitchen to the front door. “Brody.” She yanked the door open, and there was his big, burly SUV. “Brody?” she called again, nearly moaned in frustration. “Where the hell did you go that fast? I need to talk to you.”

At the sound behind her, she whirled in relief. She saw the blur of a fist, felt a burst of pain, then was back in the dark.

When she came to, her jaw ached like a bad tooth. On a moan, she tried to lift a hand to it and found her arms pinned behind her.

“Only tapped you,” Rick said. “Didn’t give me any pleasure to hit you. Quickest way, that’s all.”

She struggled, a mad moment of wild panic and denial.

“You’re cuffed,” he said calmly, and continued to look straight ahead as he drove. “Padded your wrists good. Shouldn’t hurt, and it’ll keep any marks off your skin, most likely. That’d be best. You’ll have a bruise on your jaw there, but, well, there’d have been a struggle so that’s all right.”

“Where’s Brody? Where are you taking me?”

“You wanted to talk to Brody. I’m taking you to Brody.”

“Is he…”

“He’s all right. I kept a supply of those sleeping pills of yours. Gave him enough of them to put him out for a couple hours. Maybe three. Plenty of time. He’s a friend of mine, Reece. It didn’t have to be this way.”

“People think I’m crazy.” Even knowing it was useless, she strained her wrists against the handcuffs. “Butyou have to be if you think you can just cuff me, kidnap me and drive me out of town this way.”

“In Brody’s car. In the dark. Anybody saw us go by, they’d see a couple of people in Brody’s car. You and Brody. That’s what they’d see, ’cause that’s what they’d expect to. That’s the way it’ll work. I’m going to make this simple as I can, quick as I can. It’s the best I can do.”

“You killed Deena Black.”

“Did what I had to, not what I wanted. Same as now.” He looked over, met her eyes. “I tried other ways. Tried everything I knew. She wouldn’t back off. Neither would you.”

He trained his gaze straight ahead again, and made the turn toward his cabin. “I want you to be quiet, and to do what I tell you. You want to yell and scream and kick, you go ahead. It won’t make any difference. But the more you do, the more I’ll hurt Brody. Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Then you do what I say, and it’ll be easier all around.” He stopped the car, got out and came around for her. “I can hurt you, too, if I have to,” he warned her. “It’s your choice.”

“I want to see Brody.”

“All right then.” Rick took her arm, quick-stepped her to the cabin.

He gave her a light shove inside before locking the door, turning on the light.

Brody was tied to a kitchen chair, his chin slumped on his chest. On a muffled cry, Reece stumbled toward him to fall on her knees beside the chair. “Brody. Oh God, Brody.”

“He’s not dead. A little drugged is all.” Rick checked his watch. “Should be coming out of it soon enough. When he does, we’re taking a hike, and we’re getting this done.”

“Done?” She shoved herself around, and hated that she was on her knees in front of him. “Do you think because you got away with killing once, you can kill both of us and no one will know? It won’t work, not this time.”

“Murder/suicide’s what it’ll be. That’s how it’s going to look. You talked him into driving out this way, hiking down to where you said you saw the killing. You drugged him. Got his thermos right over there.” He nodded to the end table by the couch. “Coffee in it’s spiked with pills from one of your bottles. Bottle’s going to be in your pocket when we find you.”

“Why would I hurt Brody? Why would anyone believe I’d hurt Brody?”

“You snapped, that’s what you did. You snapped, drugged him so he wouldn’t see it coming. You shot him, then you shot yourself. You took the gun Joanie keeps in her desk drawer to do it. Your prints’ll be on the gun, gunshot residue on your hand when it’s done. That’s the physical evidence, and your behavior gives it plausibility.”

“That’s bullshit. It’s just bullshit. I’ve already called the state police and told them about Deena Black.”

“No, you didn’t. I’m going to take those cuffs off you. If you try to run, I’ll hurt you. And I’ll put a bullet in Brody where he sits. You want that?”

“No. I won’t run. Do you think I’d just leave him?”

He rose, a patient, cautious man. Taking out his key, he uncuffed her. “You sit right there.” He touched the gun in his holster as warning. “I don’t want any trouble. And I don’t want any bruises or signs on your wrists showing some M.E. you’ve been restrained. Rub the circulation back into them. Do it now.”

Her arms ached like a fever, and trembled with it as she rubbed her wrists. “I said we called and reported to the state police.”

“You’d’ve done that, Brody would’ve said so when he came out here. Told him I found out information on the killing from the state police myself. Asked him to come out here and meet me, and them, to get the details before we made an arrest.”

Going to the table, he picked up the plastic cup of water and the pill he’d set out. “Want you to take this.”

“No.”

“It’s one of yours, said it was for anxiety. Might help a little, and I want them to find drugs in your system. You’re going to take it, Reece, or I’m going to force it down your throat.”

She took the glass, the pill.

Satisfied, he sat, rested his hands on his knees. “We’ll give that a few minutes to work for you, then we’ll get started. I’m sorry it’s come to this, that’s the truth. Brody’s been a friend of mine, and I’ve got nothing against you. But I’ve got to protect my family.”

“Were you protecting them when you screwed Deena Black?”

His face tightened, but he nodded. “I made a mistake. A human mistake. I love my wife, my kids. Nothing’s more important. But there are needs, that’s all. Two, three times a year I took care of those needs. None of it ever touched my family. I’d say I was a better husband, better daddy, better man for taking care of them.”

He believed it, Reece realized. How many people deluded themselves into believing cheating was somehow honorable?

“You took care of them with Deena.”

“One night. It was supposed to be just one night. What difference could it make to anyone but me? Just sex, that’s all. Things a man needs but doesn’t want his wife doing. One night out of so many others. But I couldn’t stop. Something about her got into me. Like a sickness. I couldn’t leave her alone, and for a while I thought, I guess I thought it was love. And that I could have them both.”

“The dark and the light,” Reece said.

“That’s right.” He smiled with terrible sadness. “I gave Deena all I could. She kept wanting more. The kind of more I couldn’t give. She wanted me to leave Debbie, leave my kids behind. I was never going to do that, never going to lose my wife and kids. We had a fight, terrible fight, and I woke up. You could say I woke up from a long, dark dream. I broke it off then and there.”

“But she wouldn’t let it stay broken off.” Wake up, Brody, she thought desperately. Wake up and tell me what to do.

“She kept calling me. She wanted money, ten thousand or she’d tell my wife. I didn’t have that kind of money, and I told her. She said I’d better find it if I wanted to keep my happy home. How you feeling? Calmer?”

“I saw you, by the river. I saw you kill her.”

“I was just going to reason with her. I told her to come here. I used to bring her here, here to the cabin when I was in that long, dark dream. But when she came, I couldn’t talk to her here, not here, not again. Maybe you should have two of those pills.”

“You took her down to the river.”

“Wanted to walk, that’s all. Never planned it. We just walked, we kept walking until we came to the river. I told her maybe I could scrape together a couple thousand, stake her, if she left Wyoming. Even when I said it I knew it wouldn’t work. Once you pay, you never stop. Said she wasn’t settling for crumbs. Wanted the whole cake. I could take it out of the money we had for the kids. I don’t know why I told her we’ve put by money for our kids, for their college. She wanted it. Not ten now, she said, but twenty-five. Twenty-five or I’d end up with nothing. No wife, no kids, no reputation.

“I called her a whore, because that’s what she was, what she’d always been. And she came at me. And when I pushed her down and told her it was done, she came at me again, screaming.

“You saw how it was.”

“Yes, I saw how it was.”

“She was going to ruin me, she swore it. No matter what I paid now, she was taking it all. She was going to tell Debbie every dirty little thing we’d ever done together. I couldn’t even hear her anymore. It was like wasps buzzing in my head. But she was on the ground, under me, and my hands were around her throat. I kept squeezing, squeezing, until the buzzing stopped.”

“You didn’t have any choice.” Reece’s voice was absolutely calm. “She pushed you to it. She attacked you, threatened you. You had to protect yourself, your family.”

“I did. Yes, I did. She wasn’t even real. She was only a dream.”

“I understand. My God, she was literally holding a gun to your head. You haven’t done anything wrong yet, Rick. You haven’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, done anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. If I’d understood all this before, I’d have let it go.”

“But you didn’t let it go. No matter what I did. All I wanted was for you to leave town. Just go away and get on with your life so I could get on with mine.”

“I know that now. I’m on your side now. You can just let me and Brody go, and this all disappears.”

“I wish I could, Reece. That’s the God’s truth. But you can’t change what is. You’ve just got to work with it, and protect what you have. Guess one of those pills was enough, after all. Now, I want you to move away from him. It’s time I woke him up.”

“If you do this, you don’t deserve your wife and your children.”

“Once it’s done, they’ll never have to know.” He crossed to her, grabbed her by the back of the shirt and dragged her away from Brody.

As he turned back, Brody pumped his legs, rising up, chair and all. He swung his body hard into Rick’s and sent them both sprawling.

“Run!” Brody shouted. “Run now.”

She ran, terrified and blind with it, following the order as if a switch had been flicked inside her. Spitting out the pill she’d cheeked, she yanked open the front door. She heard the crash, the curses, the crack of wood as she flew outside.

And she ran with a scream shrieking in her head when she heard the gunshot.

“DID YOU HEAR THAT?” Linda-gail pushed up on her elbow in bed. “I heard a shot.”

“I heard the angels sing.”

She laughed and poked Lo in the side. “That, too. But I heard somebody shooting.”

“Now who’d think you’d ever hear somebody shooting in the backwoods of Wyoming?” He pulled her back down, digging his hands into her ribs to make her laugh.

“No tickling or I’ll…Did you hearthat ? Is that someone shouting?”

“I don’t hear anything but my own heart begging yours for a little more sugar. Now come on, honey, let’s—”

This time it was Lo who broke off at the crash outside the cabin. “Stay right here.”

He leaped up and, buck naked, strode out of the bedroom.

When Reece burst in, he could only cross his hands over his privates and say, “Well, Jesus Christ!”

“He’s got Brody. He’s got Brody. He’s going to kill him.”

“What, what? What?”

“Help. You have to help.”

“Reece?” Linda-gail fought to wrap a sheet around herself as she came out. “What in the world’s going on?”

No time, Reece thought. Brody could already be bleeding, dying. As she’d been once. She spotted the rifle in a display case. “Is that loaded?”

“That’s my granddaddy’s Henry rifle. Just a damn minute,” Lo began, but Reece rushed to the case. She gave the lid a jerk, found it locked. She spun, grabbed the bear pole lamp and shattered the glass.

“Chrissake, chrissake, my ma’s going to kill us both.” Even as Lo made a dash for her, Reece yanked the rifle out, whirled around with it.

Lo stopped dead in his tracks. “Honey? You want to be careful where you point that thing.”

“Call for help. Call the state police!”

Leaving them both gaping behind her, Reece streaked for the door.

Reece prayed Lo’s reaction meant the rifle was loaded. That if it was, she could figure out how to work it. She prayed harder still that she wouldn’t have to.

But it wasn’t fear, that familiar burn in her throat; it wasn’t panic, with its sharp, fluttering wings in her belly. It was rage she felt, the hot, bubbling gush of it pumping through her blood.

She wouldn’t lie helpless this time, not this time, while someone she loved was taken from her. Not this time, not ever again.

She heard Rick shouting her name, and forced back the tears that wanted to blur her eyes. Brody hadn’t stopped him.

So she stopped, closed her eyes and ordered herself to think. She couldn’t go running back to the cabin. He’d hear her, see her. And he would end it. He might very well end up killing Lo and Linda-gail as well.

Circle around, she decided. She could do that. He’d think she was still running, or just hiding. He wouldn’t expect her to come back to fight.

“No place for you to go, Reece,” Rick shouted. “No place I can’t find you. This is my land here, my world. I can track you as easy as I can walk down the street in the Fist. You want me to finish Brody here and now? Is that what you want? Want me to put a bullet in his head while you’re hiding like you did back in Boston? Think you can live through that one again?”

In front of the cabin, Rick dragged a bleeding Brody to his knees. And pressed the gun to his temple. “Call her back here.”

“No.” Brody’s heart squeezed as the barrel pressed hard against his temple. “Think about it, Rick. Is that what you’d do if it was your woman’s life on the line? You killed to protect someone you love. Wouldn’t you die for her?”

“You’ve known her a couple of months, and you want to tell me you’d die here for her?”

“It only takes a minute. When you know, you know. She’s it for me. So pull the trigger if that’s what you have to do. But it’s ruined for you now. That’s your service revolver you’re holding, not Joanie’s gun. How are you going to explain Reece shooting me with your service weapon?”

“Adjust. I’ll adjust. I’ll make it work. You call her back. Now.”

“You hear me, Reece?” Brody shouted. “If you hear me you keep running.”

When Rick kicked him down, he landed on the arm where a bullet was lodged. It screamed.

“I’ve got no choice,” he said to Brody, but now his face was pale and ran with sweat. “I’m sorry.”

He lifted the gun.

Struggling not to shake, Reece brought the rifle to her shoulder. She sucked in a breath, held it. And pulled the trigger.

It sounded like a bomb. It felt like one had exploded in her hands as the recoil slammed into her. She fell back, fell down. And because she landed flat on her back, the shot from Mardson’s revolver flew over her head.

Still she scrambled up. When she did, she saw Brody and Rick struggling on the ground, the gun gripped in each of their hands.

“Stop it.” She rushed forward. “Stop it. Stop it.” Pressed the barrel of the rifle to Rick’s head. “Stop it.”

“Hold on, Slim,” Brody panted out. He shifted to get a better grip on the gun. Rick rolled into Reece, knocking her down as he yanked it clear. As he turned it toward his own temple, Brody plowed his fist into Rick’s face.

“It won’t be that easy,” he told him, and crawled over to retrieve the gun that had fallen out of Rick’s hands. “Point that thing somewhere else,” Brody told her.

She sat where she was a moment, the rifle still clutched in her hands. “I ran.”

“Yeah, you did. Smart.”

“But I didn’t run away.”

Because he was tired, hurt and queasy, Brody simply sat beside her. “No, you didn’t run away.”

Lo and Linda-gail, the first in only jeans, the other in a trailing sheet, rushed over. “What in the name of Christ is going on?” Lo demanded. “Jesus, Brody. Jesus! You shot?”

“Yeah.” Brody pressed a hand to his arm, studied the palm that came away wet and red before he looked up at Reece. “Something else we’ve got in common now.”

Between them, Rick lay as he was, and he covered his face with his hands and wept.

AT DAWN, Reece helped Brody out of the car. “You could’ve stayed in the hospital for the day. A couple of days.”

“I could’ve spent a couple hours banging a bedpan over my head. I didn’t relish either experience. Plus, did you see that nurse they sicced on me? She had a face like a bulldog. Scary.”

“Then you’re going to do what you’re told. You can have the bed or the sofa.”

“Where will you be?”

“In the kitchen. You’re not having coffee.”

“Slim, I may just be off coffee for life.”

Her lips trembled, but she firmed them against a sob. “I’m making you some tea, and some soft scrambled eggs. Bed or couch?”

“I want to sit in the kitchen and watch you cook for me. It’ll take my mind off my pain.”

“You wouldn’t have pain if you’d take the drugs.”

“I think I’m off drugs for life, too. Felt like swimming through glue back there at Rick’s cabin. I could hear the two of you talking, but couldn’t compute the words, not at first. All I could do was play possum and hope for a chance to take him down.”

“While you were tied to a chair and dopey with pills, he might’ve killed you.”

“He might’ve killed both of us. Would have,” Brody corrected, “but you didn’t run like a rabbit when you had the chance.” He let out a long breath when she eased him into a chair at the kitchen table. “Hell of a night. Reece?” he said when she kept her back turned and said nothing.

“At first,” she began, “when I first ran out, that’s all it was. Fight or flight, and boy, it was flight all the way. Run and hide. But…it changed. I don’t even know when. And it became run and find something so you can fight. I guess I scared a couple of decades off Lo and Linda-gail.”

“Something to tell their grandchildren about.”

“Yeah.” She put on water for tea, got out a skillet.

“You figured it out before I did. I’m the mystery writer but the cook figured it out first. I walked right into it.”

He’d never forget, never, swimming through the drugs and hearing her voice. He’d never forget that marrow-deep terror. “My walking into it might’ve gotten you killed.”

“No, he might have gotten me killed. You walked into it, Brody, because he was your friend.”

“He was.”

She got out the butter, sliced off a hunk for the skillet. “I don’t know what’ll happen to Debbie and those kids. How will they get through this? Nothing will ever be the same for them.”

“Nothing was the way they thought it was before this. Better to know, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. That’s a thought for another day.” She broke eggs, began to whisk them with a little fresh dill and pepper. “He really believed all he was saying. That he was protecting them, doing what he had to do. That Deena left him no choice. He thinks he’s a good man.”

“Part of him is. And part of him split off, took what he should never have touched. It cost him, Slim. It cost Deena Black.”

“He killed her. Buried her body, covered his tracks, hid the motorcycle until he could use it to go back to her apartment and get her things—cover those tracks, too. He did all that, kept absolutely calm, even when we called him and reported what I saw happen.”

“If he’d managed to scare you off, or make you doubt yourself, he’d have gotten away with it.”

“If you hadn’t believed me, that’s probably what would have happened. I think, getting through this, it’s pulled me back from an edge I kept sliding toward.” She scooped his eggs onto a plate, set it in front of him. Then touched his face.

“I’d have gone over it without you, Brody. I’d have gone over it if he’d killed you. So”—she bent down, touched her lips to his—“thanks for staying alive. Eat your eggs.”

She turned to finish making his tea.

“There was an edge for me, too. Do you get that?”

“Yes.”

“One question. Why don’t you push?”

“Push what?”

“Me. You’re in love with me—do I still have that right?”

“You do.”

“We’ve just been through a near-death experience together; you probably heard me say something about being ready to die for you. But you don’t push.”

“I don’t want what I have to push out of you, so this is fine.” She set his tea on the table, then frowned at the knock on the front door. “Already,” she stated. “I imagine we’re going to have a lot of visitors, a lot of questions, a lot of people wanting to know exactly what went on.”

“No big deal. No, I need to get that,” he said and grabbed her hand before she could turn from the table. “I’m expecting something.”

“You’re supposed to rest.”

“I can walk to my own damn door. And drink that prissy tea yourself. I’ll wash down the eggs with a Coke.”

She shook her head as he walked out, but decided to indulge him. Taking down a glass, she filled it with ice, took out a Coke. After pouring it out, she picked up the tea he didn’t want.

She paused with it halfway to her lips as he came back into the kitchen. Carrying a load of tulips in the cradle of his good arm.

“You never said what color, so I got all of them.”

“Wow.”

“Favorite flower, right?”

“It is. Where’d they come from?”

“I called Joanie. If you really need something, Joanie’s your girl. You want them or not?”

“I certainly do.” Her smile was luminous as she took them, as she buried her face in them. “They’re so pretty and simple and sweet. Like a rainbow after a really bad storm.”

“Hell of a storm, Slim. I’d say you deserve a rainbow.”

“We both do.” She lifted her head to grin at him. “So, are you asking me to go steady?”

When he said nothing, nothing at all, her heart began a slow, steady thud.

“I’m going to be buying the cabin,” he told her.

“You are?”

“As soon as I talk Joanie into it. But I can be very persuasive. I’m going to add on to it some. Bigger office, deck. I see two chairs on that deck. I see tulips outside—spring, right?”

“They would be.”

“You can cook at the diner, go into business and run your own kitchen. You can write cookbooks. Whatever suits you. But you’re going to have to stay, and sooner or later, we’re going to make it legal.”

“Are we?”

“You love me or not?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“I love you right back. How about that?”

With two quick whooshes, her breath came in and out. “How about that?”

He curled a hand around the back of her neck, bringing her toward him, taking her lips with his as the tulips glowed between them. “I’m where I want to be. Are you?”

“Exactly where.” Everything inside her settled when she tipped her head back, looked into his eyes. “Exactly where I want to be.”

“So. Want to sit on the deck with me one of these days,” he asked her, “look out at the lake, see the mountains swimming in it?”

“I really do, Brody.” She pressed her cheek to his. “I really do.”

“We’re going to make that happen, you and me.” Now he drew back. “For right now, why don’t you do something about those flowers? Then get another fork. We ought to share these eggs.”

So the morning bloomed bright with hints of summer that would stretch through to fall. And they sat at the kitchen table, a vase of rainbow tulips on the counter, eating scrambled eggs that had gone cold.

HIGH NOON

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England •Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2007 by Nora Roberts

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, Nora.

High noon / Nora Roberts.

p.           cm.

ISBN: 1-101-14719-9

1. Hostage negotiations—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3568.0243H54           2007           2007001054

813'.54—dc22

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Amy Berkower,

the negotiator

Contents

Initial Phase

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Negotiation Phase

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Termination Phase

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

INITIAL PHASE

Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’.

—“HIGH NOON”

1

Jumping to your death was a crappy way to spend St. Patrick’s Day. Being called in on your day off to talk someone out of jumping to his death on St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t exactly green beer and bagpipes.

Phoebe weaved and dodged her way through the crowds of Savannahians and tourists thronging streets and sidewalks in celebration. Captain David Mc Vee thought ahead, she noted. Even with a badge, it would’ve taken precious time and miserable effort to get through the barricades and mobs of people in her car. But a couple blocks east of Jones, the revelry thinned, and the booming music was only a throb and echo.

The uniformed officer waited as ordered. His gaze skimmed over her face, down to the badge she’d hooked on the pocket of her khakis. Cropped pants, sandals, shamrock-green T-shirt under a linen jacket, Phoebe thought. Not the professional look she worked to foster on the job.

But what could you do? She was supposed to be standing on the terrace of Mac Namara House, with her family, drinking lemonade and watching the parade.

“Lieutenant Mac Namara?”

“That’s right. Let’s move.” She slid in, flipping out her phone with one hand, dragging the seat belt on with the other. “Captain, I’m en route. Fill me in.”

The siren screamed as the driver punched the gas. Phoebe yanked out her notebook, taking cursory notes.

Joseph (Joe) Ryder, suicidal. Jumper with gun. Twenty-seven, white, married/ separated. Bartender/fired. No known religious affiliation. No family on scene.

WHY? Wife left, fired from job (sports bar), gambling debts.

No criminal, no previous suicide attempt on record.

Subject alternately weepy/belligerent. No shots fired.

“Okay.” Phoebe let out a breath. She’d get to know Joe much better very soon. “Who’s talking to him?”

“He’s got his cell phone on him. The first on scene wasn’t able to engage. Guy just kept clicking off. We’ve got his employer here—former employer, who’s also his landlord. The subject’s been talking to him off and on, but there’s no progress.”

“You?”

“I’d barely gotten here when I pulled you in. I didn’t want to throw too many people at him.”

“All right. My ETA’s five minutes.” She glanced at the driver, got a nod of affirmation. “Keep him alive for me.”

Inside Joe Ryder’s fourth-floor apartment, sweat rolled down Duncan Swift’s back. A guy he knew, a guy he’d had beers with, joked with, had pissed with, for God’s sake, in adjoining urinals, was sitting on the ledge of the roof overhead with a gun in his hand.

Because I fired him, Duncan thought. Because I gave him thirty days to get out of the apartment. Because I didn’t pay attention.

Now, it was a very strong possibility that Joe was going to put a bullet in his own ear or take a header off the roof. Maybe both.

Not exactly the kind of entertainment the crowds expected on St. Patrick’s Day. Not that it was keeping them away. The cops had barricaded the block, but from the window Duncan could see people pressed against the barriers, faces turned up.

He wondered if Joe was wearing green.

“Come on, Joe, we’ll work it out.” How manytimes, Duncan asked himself, would he have to repeat that same phrase the cop kept circling in his notebook. “Just put the gun down and come inside.”

“You fucking fired me!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m sorry, Joe, I was pissed off.” You stole from me, you stupid dick, Duncan thought. You screwed up, stole from me. You took a damn swing at me. “I didn’t realize how upset you were, or what was going on. You come inside and we’ll work it out.”

“You know Lori left me.”

“I…” No, not I, Duncan remembered. His head was pulsing with the mother of all headaches, but he struggled to remember the instructions Captain Mc Vee had given him. “You must’ve been feeling upset.”

Joe’s answer was to start sobbing again.

“Just keep him talking,” Dave murmured.

Duncan listened to Joe’s sobbing complaints, tried to repeat key phrases as he’d been directed.

The redhead shot into the room like a sleek bullet. She shrugged out of a light jacket while she talked to the captain, then shrugged into a bulletproof vest. All her movements lightning quick.

Duncan couldn’t hear what they were saying. And he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Purpose was the first term that came to his mind. Then energy. Then sexy, though the third was mixed into the first two in equal portions. She shook her head, looked toward Duncan—long, cool stare with cat-green eyes.

“It’s got to be face-to-face, Captain. You knew that when you pulled me in.”

“You can try to bring him in via the phone first.”

“Been tried.” She studied the man currently making soothing noises over the subject’s weeping. Former employer and landlord, she deduced.

Young for it, she mused. Very cute guy who looked as if he was trying hard not to panic.

“He needs a face. He needs personal contact. Is that the employer?”

“Duncan Swift, owns the bar street level of the building. He called the nine-one-one after the subject contacted him and said he was going off the roof. He’s—Swift’s—been on scene since.”

“All right. You’re the commander on this one, but I’m the negotiator. I need to go up. Let’s see how the subject feels about that.”

She walked over to Duncan, gestured for him to pass her the phone. “Joe? This is Phoebe. I’m with the police department. How you doing out there, Joe?”

“Why?”

“I want to make sure you’re okay. You hot out there, Joe? Sun’s pretty strong today. I’m going to ask Duncan to get us a couple bottles of cold water. I’d like to bring them up, talk to you up there.”

“I’ve got a gun!”

“I hear that. If I come up with a cold drink for you, are you going to shoot me, Joe?”

“No,” he said after a long moment. “No, shit. Why would I do that? I don’t even know you.”

“I’ll bring you out a bottle of water. Just me, Joe. I want you to promise you won’t jump or fire that gun now. Will you promise to let me come on out, bring you a bottle of water?”

“Rather have a beer.”

The wistful tone in his voice gave her a little edge. “What kind of beer would you like?”

“Got Harp in the bottle in the fridge.”

“One cold beer coming up.” She walked to the refrigerator, found there was little else but beer. Even as she took one out, Duncan moved beside her to open it. She nodded, pulled out the single Coke, popped the top. “I’m coming on up with the beer, all right?”

“Yeah, a beer’d be good.”

“Joe?” Her voice was as cool as the bottles in her hand as one of the cops fitted her with a wire, removed her weapon. “Are you going to commit suicide?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Well now, if that’s your plan, I don’t know as it’s a good one.”

She followed one of the uniforms out of the apartment, then up the stairs to the roof.

“Got nothing better to do.”

“Nothing better? You sound like you’re feeling pretty low. I’m at the roof door now, Joe. Is it all right if I come on out?”

“Yeah, yeah, I said so, didn’t I?”

She’d been right about the sun. It was strong enough to bounce off the roof like a hot red ball. She looked to her immediate left, and saw him.

He was wearing nothing but what looked like black boxers. Sandy-haired guy with fair skin—and that skin had already turned a painfully bright pink. He squinted at her out of eyes swollen from crying.

“I guess I should’ve brought out some sunscreen along with the beer.” She held the bottle up so he could see it. “You’re getting toasted out here, Joe.”

“Don’t matter.”

“I’d sure appreciate it if you’d put that gun down, Joe, so I could bring you your beer.”

He shook his head. “You might try something.”

“I promise not to try anything if you put the gun down while I bring you the beer. All I want to do is talk, Joe, you and me. Talking’s thirsty work out here in the sun.”

With his feet dangling over the roof ledge, he lowered the gun, laid it in his lap. “Just put it down there, then step back.”

“All right.” She kept her eyes on his as she walked over. She could smell him, sweat and despair; she could see the misery in his bloodshot brown eyes. She set the bottle down carefully on the ledge, stepped back. “Okay?”

“You try anything, I’m going off.”

“I understand. What happened to make you feel so low?”

He picked up the beer and, closing his hand over the gun again, took a long pull. “Why’d they send you out here?”

“They didn’t send me, I came. It’s what I do.”

“What? You a shrink or something?” He snorted on the idea, drank again.

“Not exactly. I talk to people, especially people in trouble, or who think they are. What happened to make you think you’re in trouble, Joe?”

“I’m a fuck-up, that’s all.”

“What makes you think you’re a fuck-up?”

“Wife walked out on me. We hadn’t even been married six months and she walks. She told me she would, over and over. If I started betting again, she was out the door. I didn’t listen; I didn’t believe her.”

“It sounds like that makes you feel awful sad.”

“Best thing in my life, and I screw it up. I thought I could score—just a couple of good scores and that would be it. Didn’t work out.” He shrugged. “Never does.”

“It’s not enough to die for, Joe. It’s hard, and it’s painful when someone you love walks away. But dying means you can’t ever make it right. What’s your wife’s name?”

“Lori,” he mumbled as tears filled his eyes again.

“I don’t think you want to hurt Lori. How do you think she’ll feel if you do this?”

“Why should she care?”

“She cared enough to marry you. Do you mind if I sit here?” She tapped the ledge a few feet away from him. When he shrugged, she eased a hip onto it, sipped her drink. “I think we can figure this out, Joe. Figure out how to get you help, how to get you and Lori help. You sound like you want to find a way to fix things.”

“Lost my job.”

“That’s hard. What kind of work did you do?”

“Tending bar. Sports bar down below. Lori, she didn’t want me to work in a sports bar, but I told her I could handle it. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Started making bets on the side. And when I started losing, I shorted the till so Lori wouldn’t find out. Bet more, lose more, steal more. Got caught, got fired. Behind on the rent, too.”

He picked up the gun, turned it in his hand. Phoebe braced, and fought back the instinct to duck and cover. “What’s the point? I got nothing.”

“I understand how you might feel that way right now. But the fact is, Joe, there are plenty of chances left. Everybody deserves more than one of them. If you kill yourself, it’s just done. It’s just over all the way. No coming back, no making it up to Lori, or to yourself. How would you make it up to her if you got the chance?”

“I don’t know.” He looked out over the city. “I can hear music. Must be from the parade.”

“There’s something to live for. What kind of music do you like?”

Inside the apartment, Duncan turned to Dave. “Music? What kind of music does he like? What the hell is she doing?”

“Keeping him talking. She’s talking him down. He’s telling her.” Dave nodded toward the speaker. “As long as he’s talking about Cold-play he’s not going off the roof.”

Duncan listened as they talked music for the next ten minutes, a conversation he might’ve heard in any bar or restaurant in the city. When he pictured Joe on the roof, it seemed surreal. When he pictured the redhead with her cat eyes and tight little body holding what smacked of small talk with a mostly naked, armed, suicidal bartender, it seemed impossible.

“Do you think I should call Lori?” Joe asked wistfully.

“Is that what you want to do?” She already knew they’d tried to reach Joe’s estranged wife, without success.

“I want to tell her I’m sorry.”

“That’s good, telling her you’re sorry. But you know what works better with women—and I know as I am one. Showing her. We believe it when you show us. You can show me right now if you give me the gun.”

“I figured on shooting myself before I jumped. Or maybe on the way down.”

“Look at me, Joe.” When he turned his head, she kept her eyes straight on his. “Is that how you’re going to show her you’re sorry? By making it so she has to bury you, so she has to grieve? Are you punishing her?”

“No!” His face, his voice, registered shock at the idea. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“All your fault? I never believe anything is all one person’s fault. But let’s fix it. Let’s find the way you can make it up to her.”

“Phoebe, I owe almost five thousand gambling.”

“Five thousand’s hard. It sounds like it scares you to owe that much. I understand what it is to have money problems hanging over your head. Do you want Lori to have to pay your debt?”

“No. If I’m dead, nobody pays.”

“Nobody? But she’s your wife. She’s your legal wife.” Phoebe doubted there was any legal liability, but she could see the idea of it strike Joe. “She could be responsible for your debts.”

“God. Oh God.”

“I think I know how to help you with this, Joe. Joe? You know your boss is inside. He’s inside there because he’s worried about you.”

“He’s okay. Dunc’s a good guy. I screwed him. Stole from him. I don’t blame him for firing me.”

“I hear you say that, and know you understand you’re responsible for your mistakes. You’re a responsible person, and you want to fix those mistakes. Dunc’s a good guy, you tell me, then I’m going to believe he understands that, too. I’ll talk to him for you if you want. I’m good at talking. If he’ll give you an extension on paying back the money, that would help, wouldn’t it?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“I’ll talk to him for you.”

“He’s a nice guy. I stole from him.”

“You were feeling desperate and scared, and you made a mistake. I sense you’re sorry for that.”

“I am sorry.”

“I’ll talk to him for you,” she repeated. “You need to give me the gun, and come back off the ledge. You don’t want to hurt Lori.”

“I don’t, but—”

“If you could talk to Lori right now, what would you say?”

“I…I guess that I don’t know how it got this far, and I’m sorry. I love her. I don’t want to lose her.”

“If you don’t want to lose her, if you love her, you have to give me the gun and come back off the ledge. Otherwise, Joe, all you’re leaving her with is grief and blame.”

“It’s not her fault.”

Phoebe eased off the ledge, held out a hand. “You’re right, Joe. You’re absolutely right. Now, show her.”

He stared at the gun, stared as Phoebe slowly reached out to take it. It was slippery with his sweat as she flipped on the safety, secured it in her belt. “Come on off the ledge, Joe.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“Come on off the ledge and I’ll explain it. I won’t lie to you.” Once again, she offered her hand. Shouldn’t, she knew. Negotiators could be pulled off by a jumper. But she kept her eyes on his, then clasped her fingers tight on his hand.

When his feet touched the roof, he simply slid down to the floor to sob again. She went with him, draped her arm around him, and shook her head fiercely at the cops who came through the door.

“It’s going to be all right. Joe, you’re going to have to go with the police. You’re going to need to have an evaluation. But it’s going to be all right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. Now you come on with me. Come on with me now.” She helped him up, took his weight as they walked to the door. “Let’s get you some clothes on. No cuffs,” she snapped. “Joe, one of the officers is going to go get you a shirt, some pants, shoes. Is that all right?” When he nodded, she gestured one of the officers toward the bedroom.

“Am I going to jail?”

“For a little while. But we’re going to get started on that help right away.”

“Will you call Lori? If she’d come I could…I could show her I’m sorry.”

“I sure will. I want that sunburn treated, and he needs some water in him.”

Joe kept his eyes downcast as he pulled on jeans. “Sorry, man,” he mumbled to Duncan.

“Don’t worry about it. Listen, I’ll get you a lawyer.” Duncan looked blankly at Phoebe. “Should I?”

“That would be between you and Joe. You hang in there.” She gave Joe’s arm a light squeeze.

He was led out, a cop on either arm.

“Nice job, Lieutenant.”

Phoebe pulled out the gun, opened it. “One bullet. He was never going to shoot anyone but himself, and the odds are fifty-fifty he’d have done that.” She handed the gun to her captain. “You figured he needed to talk to a woman.”

“It leaned that way for me,” Dave agreed.

“All in all, looks like you were right. Somebody needs to track down his wife. I’ll talk to her if she balks at seeing him.” She swiped at her sweaty brow. “Is there any water in this place?”

Duncan held out a bottle. “I had some brought up.”

“Appreciate it.” She drank deep as she studied him. Rich, dense brown hair, tousled around an angular face with a good, strong mouth and soft blue eyes that were currently pinched with worry. “Are you pressing charges?”

“For what?”

“For what he nipped out of the till.”

“No.” Duncan lowered himself to the arm of a chair. Closed his eyes. “Christ, no.”

“How much was it?”

“A couple thousand, a little more, I guess. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. He needs to pay it back, for his own self-respect. If you want to help him, you’ll work that out.”

“Sure. Fine.”

“You’re the landlord, too?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

Phoebe lifted her brows. “Aren’t you the busy one? Can you manage to float the rent another month?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Good.”

“Look…all I got was Phoebe.”

“Mac Namara. Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“I like Joe. I don’t want him to go to jail.”

A good guy, Joe had said. He’d likely been right on that one. “I appreciate that, but there are consequences. Paying them will help him. He was crying for help, and now he’ll get it. If you know where he owes the five thousand, he needs to make that right, too.”

“I didn’t know he was gambling.”

This time she let out a short laugh. “You own a sports bar, but don’t know there’s gambling going on in it?”

His back went up. His gut was already in knots, and now his back went up. “Hey, listen, Slam Dunc’s a friendly place, not a mob den. I didn’t know he had a problem, or he wouldn’t have been working the stick there. Some of this was my fault, but—”

“No. No.” She held up a hand, rubbed the cold bottle over her damp forehead. “I’m hot, I’m irritable. And none of this was your fault. I apologize. Circumstances put him out there on that ledge, and he’s responsible for those circumstances and the choices he made. Do you know where to find his wife?”

“I expect she’s at the parade like everyone else in Savannah, except us.”

“Do you know where she’s living?”

“Not exactly, but I gave your captain a couple numbers. Friends of theirs.”

“We’ll find her. Are you going to be all right now?”

“Well, I’m not going to go up on the roof and jump.” He let out a long sigh, shook his head. “Can I buy you a drink, Phoebe?”

She held up the bottle of water. “You already did.”

“I could do better.”

Hmm, a quick flicker of charm now, she noted. “This’ll be fine. You should go on home, Mr. Swift.”

“Duncan.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She gave him a fleeting smile, then picked up her discarded jacket.

“Hey, Phoebe.” He made a bead for the door when she walked out. “Can I call you if I feel suicidal?”

“Try the hotline,” she called back without looking around. “Odds are they’ll talk you down.”

He moved to the rail to look down at her. Purpose, he thought again. He could acquire a strong taste for a woman with purpose.

Then he sat on the step, pulled out his phone. He called his closest friend—who was also his lawyer—to sweet-talk him into representing a suicidal bartender with a gambling addiction.

From the second-floor balcony, Phoebe watched the green sheepdog prance. He seemed pretty damn proud of himself, matching his steps to the fife and drum played by a trio of leprechauns.

Joe was alive, and while she’d missed the curtain, she was right where she wanted to be for the second act.

Not such a crappy way to spend St. Patrick’s Day after all.

Beside her, Phoebe’s seven-year-old daughter bounced in her bright green sneakers. Carly had campaigned long and hard for those shoes, Phoebe recalled, whittling away at any and all resistance to the price or impracticality.

She wore them with green cropped pants with tiny dark pink dots, and a green shirt with pink piping—also a long and arduous campaign by the pint-sized fashion diva. But Phoebe had to admit, the kid looked unbelievably sweet.

Carly’s sunset red hair came down from her grandmother, through her mother. The curls came from her grandmother, too—skipping a generation there, as Phoebe’s was straight as a stick. The brilliant and bright blue eyes were from Essie as well. The middle generation, as Phoebe often thought of herself, settled for green.

All three had the pale, pale redhead’s complexion, but Carly had inherited the dimples Phoebe had longed for as a child, and the pretty mouth with its dip deep in the top lip.

There were times Phoebe looked at her mother and her daughter, and through the impossible waves of love wondered how she could be the bridge between two such perfectly matched points.

Phoebe brushed a hand over Carly’s shoulder, then bent to press a kiss on those wild red curls. In answer to the gesture, Carly shot out a mile-wide grin that showed the gap of two missing front teeth.

“Best seat in the house.” From behind them, one short stride outside the door, Essie beamed.

“Did you see the dog, Gran?”

“I sure did.”

Phoebe’s brother turned to their mother. “You want a seat, Mama?”

“No, sweetie.” Essie waved Carter off. “I’m just fine.”

“You can come up to the rail again, Gran. I’ll hold your hand the whole time. It’s just like the courtyard.”

“That’s right. That’s right.” But Essie’s smile was strained as she crossed the short distance to the rail.

“You can see better from here,” Carly began. “Here comes another marching band! Isn’t it great, Gran? Look how high they’re stepping.”

See how she soothes her Gran, Phoebe thought. How her little hand holds tight to give support. And Carter, look at him, moving to Mama’s other side, running a hand down her back even as he points to the crowd.

Phoebe knew what her mother saw when she looked at Carter. Having a child of her own, she understood exactly that hard and stunning love. But it would be doubled for her, Phoebe thought. Mama had only to look at Carter, at the rich brown hair, those warm hazel eyes, the shape of his chin, his nose, his mouth, and she would see the husband she’d lost so young. And all the might-have-beens that died with him.

“Fresh lemonade!” Ava wheeled a cart to the doorway. “With plenty of mint so we’ve got the green.”

“Ava, you didn’t have to go to all that trouble.”

“I certainly did.” Ava laughed at Phoebe and flipped back her sassy swing of blond hair. At forty-three, Ava Vestry Dover remained the most beautiful woman of Phoebe’s acquaintance. And perhaps the kindest.

When Ava lifted the pitcher, Phoebe hurried over. “No, I’ll pour and serve. You go on and watch awhile. Mama’ll feel better with you standing with her,” Phoebe added quietly.

With a nod, Ava walked over, touched Essie on the shoulder, then moved to stand on Carly’s other side.

There was her family, Phoebe thought. True, Ava’s son was off in New York in college, and Carter’s pretty wife was working, but this was the foundation, the bedrock. Without them, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t just float off like a dust mote.

She poured lemonade, passed around the glasses, then stood beside Carter. Leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry Josie can’t be here.”

“Me, too. She’ll be here for dinner if she can.”

Her baby brother, she thought, a married man. “You two ought to stay the night, avoid the holiday traffic and the insanity of revelry.”

“We like the insanity of revelry, but I’ll see if she’d rather. Remember the first time we stood up here and watched the parade? That first spring after Reuben.”

“I remember.”

“Everything was so bright and loud and foolish. Everyone was so happy. I believe even Cousin Bess cracked a smile or two.”

Probably just indigestion, Phoebe thought, with lingering bitterness.

“I felt, really felt, maybe everything would be all right. That he wasn’t going to break out and come for us, wasn’t going to kill us in our sleep. Christmas didn’t do that for me, not that first year, or my birthday. But standing here all those years ago, I thought maybe everything was going to be all right after all.”

“And it was.”

She took his hand so they were linked, right down the line of the rail.

2

Cleaned up and hung over, Duncan sat at his kitchen counter brooding over his laptop and a cup of black coffee. He’d meant to keep it to a couple of beers, hanging with some of the regulars at Slam Dunc before heading off to catch the music, another beer or two at Swifty’s, his Irish pub.

When you owned bars, he’d learned, you were smart to stay sober. He might bend that rule of thumb a little on St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve. But he knew how to coast through a long night with a couple of beers.

It hadn’t been celebration that put the Jameson’s with a bump of Harp back into his hand too many times. It had been sheer relief. Joe wasn’t a smear on the sidewalk outside the bar.

I’ll drink to that.

And it was better to be hung over due to good news than hung over due to bad. You still felt like shit, Duncan admitted as the horns and pipes throbbed in his abused head, but you knew it would wear off.

What he needed to do was get out of the house. Take a walk. Or a nap in the hammock. Then figure out what to do next. He’d been figuring out what to do next for the past seven years. And he liked it.

He frowned at the laptop another moment, then shook his head. If he tried to work now, even pretend to work, his head would probably explode.

Instead, he carried his coffee out to the back veranda. The mourning doves were cooing, bobbing heads as they pecked along the ground under the bird feeder. Too fat and lazy, Duncan thought, to bother to fly up into it. Rather take leavings.

A lot of people were the same.

His gardens were thriving, and he liked knowing he’d put a little of his own sweat and effort into them. He considered walking through them now, winding his way under the live oaks and the thick spider-webs of moss to the dock. Take a sail maybe, cruise the river.

Damn pretty morning for it, if you paid attention. One of those sparkling clear, hint-of-a-breeze mornings you’d wish you’d prized come July.

Or he could just go down and sit on the dock, look out toward the salt flats and watch the sun play on them. Take the coffee down and just sit and do nothing on a pretty spring morning—a damn good deal.

And what was Joe doing this fine morning? Sitting in a cell? A padded room? What was the redhead up to?

It was no use pretending it was just an ordinary day in the life when he couldn’t get yesterday out of his head. No point thinking he wanted to sit on the pier nursing a hangover and pretending everything was just fine and dandy.

So he went up the back steps to his bedroom, hunted out clean jeans and a shirt that didn’t look like it had been slept in. Then he pulled his wallet, keys and other pocket paraphernalia out of the jeans hehad slept in after he’d dragged his half-drunken ass to bed.

At least he’d been smart enough to take a cab, he reminded himself as he scooped his fingers through his shaggy mass of brown hair.

Maybe he should wear a suit. Should he wear a suit?

Shit.

He decided a suit was a kind of showing off when worn to visit a former employee in Joe’s current situation. Besides, he didn’t feel like wearing a damn suit.

Still, the redhead might like suits, and since he had every intention of tracking her down, a suit could play to his advantage.

Hell with it.

He started out, jogged down the sweeping curve of the main staircase, across the polished sea of white tiles of the grand foyer. When he opened one of the arching double doors, he saw the little red Jag zip down the last curve of his drive.

The man who folded himself out of it was wearing a suit, and it was sure to be Italian—as would be the shoes. Phineas T. Hector could manage to look perfectly groomed after mud wrestling in a hurricane.

Duncan hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and watched Phin stroll. He never looked to be in any particular hurry, Duncan mused, but that mind of his was always running on high speed.

He looked like a lawyer, Duncan supposed, and a high-dollar one. Which was exactly what he was now. When they’d first met—had it been ten years now?—Phin had barely been able to afford the cab fare to court, much less an Armani suit.

Now he wore it like he’d been born to, the pale gray an excellent choice against his dark skin, his gym-hammered body. Sun flashed off his dark glasses as he paused at the base of the white steps to study Duncan.

“You look a little rough there, friend of mine.”

“Feeling the same.”

“Imagine so after the amount of adult beverages you poured into your sorry self last night.”

“Felt good at the time. What’re you doing out here?”

“Keeping our appointment.”

“We had one of those?”

Phin only shook his head as he climbed the stairs. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t remember. You were too busy drinking Irish and singing ‘Danny Boy.’”

“I did not sing ‘Danny Boy.’” Please, God.

“Can’t say for sure. All those Irish tunes sound the same to me. You heading out?”

“I was. I guess we should go inside.”

“Out here’s fine.” Phin settled down on the long white glider, laid his arms out over its back. “You still thinking of selling this place?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Duncan looked around—gardens, trees, pits of shade, green, green grass. He could never decide how he felt about the place from one day to the next. “Probably. Eventually.”

“Sure is a spot. Away from the action, though.”

“I’ve had enough action. Did I ask you to come out here, Phin? I’m blurry.”

“You asked if I’d check in with Suicide Joe this morning, then come out to report to you. After I agreed, you embraced me and gave me a sloppy kiss. I believe there’s now a rumor going around that my wife is our beard.”

Duncan considered a moment. “Did I at least kiss her, too?”

“You did. You want to hear about Joe?”

Duncan jingled the keys in his pocket. “I was about to drive into the city, check in on him.”

“I can save you the trip. He’s doing better than I expected considering the shape he was in yesterday when I first saw him.”

“Was his wife—”

“She was there,” Phin interrupted. “She was pretty damn pissed, but she was there. He’s got a violent sunburn, which they’re treating, and I’ve approved, as his attorney, the court-appointed psychiatrist. As you’re not pressing any charges, he’s not going to do any serious time. He’ll get help, which is what you wanted.”

“Yeah.” So why did he feel so guilty?

“If you hire him again, Dunc, I’ll kick your ass.”

“You can’t kick my ass.” Duncan gave him a slow and crooked grin. “You don’t fight dirty enough, black boy.”

“I’ll make an exception. He’ll get help. His wife will take him back or she won’t. But you’ve already gone beyond what most would, and you hired him the best counsel in Savannah.”

“Better be, for what you charge,” Duncan mumbled.

Phin only grinned. “Got yourself to blame for that. Well, I’m going to head back and overcharge a few other clients.”

“What about the redhead?”

“What redhead?” Tipping down his sunglasses, Phin frowned at Duncan over them. “There were a couple of blondes and one delicious brunette trying to move on you last night, but you were too busy brooding into your beer to intercept the passes.”

“No, not last night. The redhead. Phoebe Mac Namara. Lieutenant Phoebe Mac Namara. God.” On a long, exaggerated sigh, Duncan patted his heart. “Just saying that gets my juices up, so I believe I’ll repeat myself. Lieutenant Phoebe Mac Namara.”

Phin rolled his eyes up to the white ceiling of the covered veranda. “You’re a case, Swift, God knows. What are you going to do with a cop?”

“I can think of all kinds of things. She’s got green eyes, and that snug little body. And she went out on that roof. Guy’s sitting out on the ledge with a gun, a guy she’s never met in her life, but she goes out.”

“And you find that attractive?”

“I find it fascinating. And hot. You met her, right? What did you think?”

“I found her brisk and to the point, well bred and canny. And in possession of an excellent ass.”

“I got her stuck in my head. Well, I think I ought to go see her, try to figure out why. You can give me a ride in, I need to pick up my car anyway.”

After running a two-hour training session, Phoebe sat down at her desk. Her hair was pulled back, rolled at the nape of her neck, mostly to keep it out of her way. In addition, she thought—hoped—the style lent her some authority. A lot of the cops she trained—the male ones—didn’t start out taking a woman very seriously.

They all took her seriously by the end, or they were out on their ass.

She might have had an inside man in Dave to help crack the door open for her in the department. But she’d shoved the door wide, and earned her rank, her position.

Now, due to that rank and position, she had a pile of paperwork to push through. And she had to spend the afternoon in court, testifying on the circumstances of a domestic dispute that had gone south into a hostage situation.

After that, she needed to come back and finish up what she could. And afterthat, she needed to go by the market.

And after things settled down at home, she needed to hit the books, to prep for a lecture she was due to give on crisis negotiation.

Somewhere in there she needed to squeeze out time to balance her checkbook—long overdue—and see if there was any way she could afford a new car without robbing a bank.

She opened the first file, and got down to managing her little corner of the Savannah-Chatham PD.

“LT?”

“Mmm?” She acknowledged Sykes, one of the negotiators in her unit, without looking up.

“Guy out here wants to see you. Duncan Swift.”

“Hmm?” This time she looked up with a frown. She looked through the window of her office, saw Duncan studying the squad room as if it were a foreign planet.

She thought of her workload, of the time crunch, and nearly passed him off. Then his gaze shifted, met hers. And he smiled.

“Ah well.” She pushed up from her desk, stepped out to the doorway of her office. “Mr. Swift?”

He had a damn effective smile, she decided. Something about it said it was easy and often used. And his eyes, soft and dusky blue, looked right at you. In her experience a lot of people weren’t comfortable making that solid eye contact. But this man let you know he wasn’t just looking at you, he was thinking about you while he did.

“You’re busy. You look busy,” he said when he reached her. “You want me to come back when you’re not?”

“If what you came by for can wait about a decade, that’s fine.”

“I’d rather it didn’t.”

“Then come on in.”

“Wow. It’s sort of like on TV, but not exactly. Do you get weirded out sitting here where everybody can see what you’re doing all day?”

“If I do, I can always pull the blinds.”

He hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of worn jeans. There were long legs in those jeans, she noted.

“Bet you hardly ever do.”

“I spoke with the attorney you hired on Joe’s behalf. He seems very competent.”

“And then some. So…I wanted to ask you if I should visit Suicide Joe—”

“Excuse me? Suicide Joe?”

“Sorry, we got to calling him that last night. It stuck in my head. Should I visit him, or is it better for him if I step back?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like we were pals or anything. But yesterday’s loop keeps running through my head.”

“It’s more to the point what’s running through his.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I had this dream.”

“Did you?”

“I was the one sitting out on the ledge in my underwear.”

“Boxers or briefs?”

It made him laugh. “Boxers. Anyway, I was sitting on the ledge and you were sitting there with me.”

“Are you feeling suicidal?”

“Not a bit.”

“It’s called transference. You’re putting yourself in his place. It was a traumatic experience, for you as well as Joe, even though it ended well.”

“Have you ever had one that didn’t?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, and didn’t ask for details. “What do you call me having you stuck in my mind? Wishful thinking?”

“That would depend on what you’re wishing for.”

“I started to Google you.”

She sat back now, raised her eyebrows.

“I thought, sure it’s a shortcut, a curiosity-satisfying one. But sometimes you want to go the long way around. You get to find out about somebody from the source, maybe over some type of food or drink. And if you’re wondering, yes, I’m hitting on you.”

“I’m a trained observer. I don’t have to wonder when I know. I appreciate the honesty, and the interest, but—”

“Don’t say ‘but,’ not right off the bat.” He bent down, picked up a hairpin that must have fallen out of her hair earlier, handed it to her. “You could consider it a public service. I’m the public. We could exchange life stories over that some sort of food and drink. You could name the time and the place. We don’t like what we hear, what’s the harm?”

She dropped the hairpin in with her paper clips. “Now you’re negotiating.”

“I’m pretty good at it. I could just buy you a drink. That’s what—thirty minutes? A lot of people spend more time than that picking out a pair of shoes. Half an hour after you’re finished work, or off-duty, whatever you call it.”

“I can’t tonight. I have plans.”

“Any night in the foreseeable future you don’t have plans?”

“Plenty of them.” She swiveled gently back and forth in her chair, studying him. Why did he have to be so cute, and so appealing? She really didn’t have time for any of this. “Tomorrow night, nine to nine-thirty. I’ll meet you at your bar.”

“Perfect. Which bar?”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t want to go to Dunc’s—weird after yesterday, and it’s loud and full of guys arguing over sports. Swifty’s.”

“You own Swifty’s?”

“Sort of. You’ve been there?”

“Once.”

His brows drew together. “You didn’t like it.”

“Actually, I did. I didn’t like my companion.”

“If you want to pick somewhere else—”

“Swifty’s is fine. Nine o’clock. You can spend part of the thirty minutes explaining how you ‘sort of’ own a couple of bars and an apartment building.”

He used the smile again when she rose to signal his time was up. “Don’t change your mind.”

“I rarely do.”

“Good to know. See you tomorrow, Phoebe.”

A mistake, she told herself when she watched him walk away. It was probably a mistake to make any sort of a date with a lanky, charming man with soft blue eyes, especially one who had those little tugs going on in her belly when he smiled at her.

Still, it was only half an hour, only a drink.

And it had been a long time since she’d carved out half an hour to make a mistake with a man.

Phoebe dragged into the house just after seven with a bag of groceries, a loaded briefcase and a serious case of frazzled nerves. The car she wasn’t at all sure she could replace had limped to a shuddering halt a block from the station house.

The cost of having it towed would eat a greedy chunk of the monthly budget. The cost of having it repaired made the possibility of bank robbery more palatable.

She dumped her briefcase just inside the door, then stood staring around the elegant and beautiful foyer. The house, for all its grandeur, cost her nothing. And though nothing was a relative term, she knew even if it were possible to move, she couldn’t afford it, on any terms. It was ridiculous to live in a damn mansion and not know how to manage to pay to repair an eight-year-old Ford Taurus.

Surrounded by antiques, by art, by silver and crystal, by beauty and grace—none of which she could sell, hock or trade. To live in what could be construed as luxury, and have a tension headache over a goddamn car.

Leaning back against the door, she shut her eyes long enough to remind herself to be grateful. There was a roof over her head, over her family’s head. There always would be.

As long as she followed the rules laid down by a dead woman.

She straightened, buried the anxiety deep enough so it wouldn’t show on her face. Then she carried the grocery bag through the house to the kitchen.

There they were. Her girls. Carly at the kitchen table, tongue caught in her teeth as she struggled over homework. Mama and Ava at the stove putting finishing touches on dinner. Phoebe knew the rule of thumb was that two women couldn’t share a kitchen, but these two managed just that.

And the room smelled of herbs and greens and females.

“I told y’all not to hold dinner for me.”

As Phoebe stepped in, all three heads turned. “Mama! I’m almost done with my spelling.”

“There’s my girl.” Setting the bag on the counter as she went, Phoebe walked over to give Carly a smacking kiss. “Bet you’re hungry.”

“We wanted to wait for you.”

“’Course we waited.” Essie moved close to rub a hand down Phoebe’s arm. “You all right, baby girl? You must be so tired, having the car go out like that.”

“I wanted to take out my gun and shoot it, but I’m over it now.”

“How’d you get home?”

“I took the CAT, which is what I’ll be doing until the car’s fixed.”

“You can use mine,” Ava told her, but Phoebe shook her head.

“I’d feel better knowing there’s a car available here at home. Don’t worry. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

“You go on and wash up.” Essie waved her away. “Then sit right down at the table. Everything’s ready, so you go on.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” She winked at Carly before slipping out to the powder room off the parlor.

More to be grateful for, she reminded herself. There were dozens of tasks and chores she didn’t have to heap on her plate because her mother was there, because Ava was there. A thousand little worries she could brush aside. She wasn’t going to let herself get twisted inside out over something as annoying as transportation.

She studied her face in the mirror as she dried her hands. She looked tired, and tight, she admitted. There would surely be lines on her face in the morning that hadn’t been there yesterday if she didn’t relax a little.

And at thirty-three, there would be lines sneaking in anyway. Just a fact of life.

But she was having a big glass of wine with dinner regardless.

It did relax her, as did the pretty food prepared by hands other than her own, the soft light, the easy music of female voices.

She listened to Carly talk about her school day, and her mother talk about the book she was reading.

“You’re so quiet, Phoebe. Are you just tired out?”

“A little,” she said to Ava. “Mostly I’m just listening.”

“Because we can’t keep quiet for five minutes. Tell us something good that happened today.”

It was an old game, one her mother had played with them as long as Phoebe could remember. Whenever something hard or sad or irritating happened, Essie would ask them to tell her something good.

“Well, let’s see. The training session went well.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Then I guess satisfying the prosecutor with my testimony in court this afternoon doesn’t count either.”

“Something good that happened to you,” Essie reminded her. “That’s the rule.”

“All right. She’s so strict,” Phoebe said to make Carly grin. “I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s different. I had a good-looking man come into my office.”

“It only counts if he asked you out to dinner,” Ava began, then gaped at Phoebe’s expression. “You have adate ?”

“Well, for God’s sake, don’t say it as if we’ve just discovered a new species.”

“It’s practically as rare. Who—”

“And it’s not a date. Not really. The suicide I talked down yesterday? This is the man who he used to work for. He just wants to have a drink.”

“Ava said it had to be dinner to count,” Carly reminded her.

“He brought up dinner, we negotiated it to drinks. Just half an hour tomorrow.” She tapped Carly’s nose. “After your bedtime.”

“Is he cute?” Ava demanded.

The wine and the company had done its job. Phoebe flashed a grin. “Really cute. But I’m just meeting him for one drink. Over and out.”

“Dating isn’t a terminal disease.”

“Listen to who’s talking.” Phoebe forked up a bite of chicken and looked at her mother. “And listen to who’s not. Mama?”

“I was just thinking how nice it would be if you had somebody to go out to dinner with, to the movies, to take walks with.” She laid a hand over Phoebe’s. “Only time there’s a man’s voice in this house is when Carter’s over, or a repairman comes in. What’s this really cute man do?”

“I’m not entirely sure, not altogether sure.” She sipped more wine. “I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.”

Whenever she was home and could manage it, Phoebe liked to tuck Carly into bed. With her little girl at seven and counting, Phoebe knew the tucking-in stage wouldn’t last much longer. So she prized it.

“Past your bedtime, my cutie.” Phoebe bent to kiss the tip of Carly’s nose.

“Just a little bit past. Can I stay up until any-o’clock on Friday night?”

“Hmm.” Phoebe brushed her hand over Carly’s curls. “Any-o’clock could be arranged. Let’s see how you do on your Friday spelling test.”

Bright-eyed with the idea, Carly pushed to sitting, gave a butt bounce. “If I get a hundred, can we rent a DVD, have popcornand stay up till any-o’clock?”

“That’s a lot of reward.” Gently, firmly, Phoebe put the heel of her hand to Carly’s forehead and nudged her back down. “You have an arithmetic test on Friday, too, don’t you?”

Carly’s gaze went to her Barbie sheets. “Maybe. It’s harder than spelling.”

“I always thought so, too. But if you do well on both your tests, we have a deal on the DVD, the popcorn and the any-o’clock. You get some sleep now, so your brain’s ready to study tomorrow.”

“Mama?” Carly said when Phoebe turned off the bedside lamp.

“Yes, baby.”

“Do you miss Roy?”

Not Daddy, Phoebe thought. Not Dad, not even—very often—my father. It was a pitiful commentary. Phoebe sat on the side of the bed, stroked her fingers over Carly’s cheek. “Do you?”

“I askedyou. ”

“So you did.” And honesty was a linchpin of her relationship with her little girl. “No, sweetie, I don’t.”

“Good.”

“Carly—”

“It’s okay. I don’t miss him either, and it’s okay. I was just wondering because of what Gran said at dinner about having somebody to take walks with and stuff.”

“I can take walks with you.”

Carly’s pretty mouth curved. “We could take a walk on Saturday. A long walk. Down to River Street.”

On to the ploy, Phoebe narrowed her eyes. “We arenot going shopping.”

“Looking isn’t shopping. We can just look and not buy anything.”

“That’s what you always say. And River Street’ll be jammed with tourists on Saturday.”

“Maybe we should just go to the mall then.”

“You’re tricky, kid, but you can’t win this one. No shopping this weekend. And no talking your grandmama into buying you something online either.”

Now Carly rolled her eyes. “Okay.”

With a laugh, Phoebe snuggled down for a major hug. “Boy, oh boy, I sure do love you into little, bitty pieces.”

“I sure do love you. Mama, if I get A’s on my nextthree spelling tests, can I—”

“Negotiations are closed for the night, and so, Carly Anne Mac Namara, are you.”

She tapped a finger to her lips as she rose. And when she went out, she left the door open a couple of inches so the hallway light slanted in, the way her baby liked it.

She needed to get her work started. There was a good two hours of it waiting for her. But instead of angling toward her home office, Phoebe veered off toward her mother’s sitting room.

Essie was there, as she was most evenings, crocheting.

“Got an order for a christening gown,” Essie said, looking up with a smile as her fingers continued to ply thread and hook.

Phoebe moved over, sat in the pretty little tapestry chair that matched the one her mother used. “You do such beautiful work.”

“I enjoy it. Satisfying. I know it doesn’t bring in a lot of money, Phoebe, but—”

“Satisfying’s most important. The people who buy your work, why, they’re buying heirlooms. They’re lucky. Mama, Carly asked about Roy.”

“Oh?” Essie’s hands stilled now. “Is she upset?”

“No. Not at all. She wanted to know if I miss him. I told her the truth, that I don’t, and I have to hope that was the right thing.”

“I think it was, if you’re asking me.” Concern filled Essie’s eyes. “We’ve had us some lousy luck with men, haven’t we, baby girl?”

“Oh yeah.” Leaning back, Phoebe let her gaze wander to the ceiling, the beautiful plaster work of an old, grand home. “I’m wondering if I shouldn’t cancel this sort-of date I’ve got tomorrow.”

“Why would you do that?”

“We’re doing all right, aren’t we? Carly’s happy. You’ve got your satisfying work, I’ve got mine. Ava’s content—though I do wish she and Dave would stop pretending, now that they’re both single, that they’re not attracted to each other. So, why mix anything else in with having drinks in some pub with a man I don’t even know?”

“Because you’re a lovely young woman, with so much of her life ahead of her. You’ve got to step out of this henhouse sometimes. Which may sound silly, coming from me, but it’s true.” Essie’s hands started moving again. “The last thing I want is for you to start boxing yourself in, holing up in this place we’ve made here. You have that drink and that conversation tomorrow with this good-looking man. That’s an order.”

Amused, Phoebe angled her head. “So it’s do what you say, not what you do?”

“Exactly. Mother’s privilege.”

“I guess I will, then.” She rose, walked to the door, turned back. “Mama? No online shopping for Carly this weekend.”

“Oh?” The single syllable resounded disappointment.

“Mother’s privilege,” Phoebe echoed, then headed off to work.

3

Phoebe took her place at the front of the room. She had twenty-five cops in this training session, a mix of uniforms and plainclothes of varying ranks.

A good portion of them, she knew, didn’t want to be there.

“Today, I’m going to talk about the tactical role of the negotiator in a crisis or hostage situation. First, are there any questions regarding yesterday’s session?”

A hand shot up. Phoebe swallowed her instinctive annoyance. Officer Arnold Meeks, third-generation cop. Bullheaded, belligerent and bigoted, in Phoebe’s opinion, with a thick layer of macho over it.

“Officer Meeks?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His smile usually started out as a smirk, and often stayed there. “You talked down a jumper the other day, St. Patrick’s Day?”

“That’s correct.”

“Well, ma’am, I was interested in some of the particulars, seeing as we’re in this training session with you. Now, I was curious, as it appears you broke some of the rules of negotiation during this incident. Unless being FBI-trained, as you are, things are different for you. Is that the case?”

Her early federal training would always rub some of the rank and file the wrong way. They’d just have to live with it. “Which rules did I break, Officer Meeks?”

“Well, ma’am—”

“You can use my rank, Officer, as I do yours.”

She watched annoyance flicker over his face. “The subject was armed, but you engaged him face-to-face, without cover.”

“That’s correct. It’s also correct that a negotiator should avoid, if possible, any face-to-face with an armed subject. However, circumstances may call for it, and we’ll be covering that area of crisis situation in the role-playing sessions in the second half of this course.”

“Why—”

“I’m getting to that. In my opinion, the incident on St. Patrick’s Day called for a face-to-face. In point of fact, most jumpers respond better to this method. The subject had no history of violent behavior, and had not fired the weapon. In a situation such as the one on St. Patrick’s Day, I, as negotiator, had to assess and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of going face-to-face. In my opinion, the advantages far outweighed the risks. As we’ve already covered the other considerations regarding face-to-face in a previous session—”

“Ma’am—Lieutenant,” Arnie corrected, with just enough hesitation to make sure she knew it was deliberate. “Is it also correct you provided the subject with alcohol?”

I bet you have a really little dick, Phoebe thought, but nodded. “I provided the subject, at his request, with a beer. Providing alcohol to a subject during negotiations is not encouraged, but neither is it forbidden. This tack would be up to the negotiator, his or her sense of the situation and evaluation of the subject.”

“Get him drunk enough, maybe he’d just fall off the roof.” Arnie’s comment got a few snickers. Phoebe inclined her head, let them die off.

“Next time you’re on a ledge, Officer, I’ll remember you get drunk off one beer and bring you a nice Coca-Cola instead.”

That got more than snickers, and noting the angry red wash over Arnie’s face, Phoebe cut through them. “As I’ve said, repeatedly, while there are guidelines for negotiations, the negotiator must be flexible, be able to evaluate, to think on his or her feet.”

“But you agree providing alcohol or drugs is risky?”

“Certainly. My gauge in this case was it was low risk. The subject did not demand alcohol; he very politely asked if he might have a beer. Bringing him one gave him something he wanted, and allowed him some control, allowed him to exchange that beer for his word not to use his weapon on me, to allow me to come out and speak with him. Just you wait,” she ordered Arnie before he could open his smirking mouth again.

Then she paused to make certain her tone would be calm and cool. “The preservation of life is and always will be the primary goal of negotiation. Everything, absolutely everything else, is secondary to that. Therefore, in this instance—as every single instance is different—I elected a face-to-face, elected to provide the subject with a single beer because I believed those choices would assist me in talking him down. As he’s alive, as there were no injuries, as the weapon he held was never discharged but given to me by him, I believe—in this instance—my choices were the correct ones.”

“You also used a third-party intermediary.”

Now Phoebe smiled, sweet Southern sugar. “Officer Meeks, it appears you have several questions and problems with this particular incident and my handling of it. I wonder if you’d be more satisfied if the subject had just jumped.”

“Seeing as he was only sitting up four stories, he’d only have a couple broken bones if he had. Unless he shot you and himself beforehand.”

“There’s an interesting train of thought. Disbelieving a subject is serious about suicide, or could indeed cause his own death.”

Casually, she reached up to secure a stray wisp of hair that had escaped from its pins. And kept her voice just as casual. “I was acquainted with a negotiator who had this train of thought over a jumper who was about twelve feet off the ground, unarmed. Mostly being a nuisance, from my acquaintance’s point of view, one that was keeping him from doing more important things with his valuable time. And he allowed that opinion to show. The subject jumped, headfirst, crushing his skull on the sidewalk. He was very dead, Officer Meeks.

“Anybody know why this nuisance ended up with a toe tag?”

“Negotiator screwed it up,” someone called out.

“That’s right. The negotiator screwed it up by forgetting the prime directive: Preserve human life.

“If you have any more questions or comments about the incident, please feel free to write them up for me. But for right now? We’re moving on.”

“I’d like to—”

“Officer.” The temper Phoebe rarely set free strained on the leash. “You may be mistaken about who is running this session. I am. You may also be confused about the order of rank here. I am your superior.”

“It seems to me,ma’am, that you don’t want to address your questionable decisions during a crisis negotiation.”

“It seems to me,boy, that you are unable to take no for an answer, by a woman who happens to outrank you, and that you’re both rigid in your thinking and argumentative in attitude. These are very, very poor qualities in a negotiator. I’ll so note to your captain, and hope that we’ll be relieved of each other before much longer. Now, I want you to close your mouth and open your ears. That’s an order, Officer Meeks. If you choose to ignore it, I’ll write you up for insubordination here and now. Clear?”

His face had gone an angry red, and his eyes spoke furious volumes. But he nodded curtly.

“That’s fine. Now, tactics, teamwork and the negotiator’s role.”

The minute the session was over, Phoebe headed straight for the women’s room. She didn’t beat her head against the wall, though she considered it. Instead, she turned to the mirror, gripped the sink below it.

“Arnold Meeks has a dick the size and width of a baby carrot, and his smirky,insulting, juvenile behavior is a pathetic attempt to compensate for his pinkie-sized weenie.”

She nodded, relaxed her shoulders. Then dropped her head when she heard a toilet flush. How stupid could she be to mouth off to the mirror without checking the stalls first?

Phoebe knew the woman who stepped out, but that didn’t negate the mortification. Detective Liz Alberta was a solid cop, a strong-willed brunette who worked in sex crimes.

“Lieutenant.”

“Detective.”

Liz ran water in the sink, turned her own face right and left as if checking her reflection. “Arnie Meeks is a fuckhead,” she said casually.

“Oh.” Phoebe sighed. “Well.”

“He tells tits-and-ass jokes in the break room. I like a good joke same as the rest, and boys will be boys and all that. But I took some exception, and made my exception known after he told me the majority of rapes are bogus, pulling out the old chestnut about how a woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down.”

“The fuckhead said that?”

“Oh yes, he did. And I filed a complaint on him. He isn’t a fan of mine.” Liz fluffed at her short, dark hair. “And I dislike him right down to the tip of that teeny weenie of his.” She offered a sunny smile as she dried her hands. “Lieutenant.”

“Detective,” Phoebe returned as Liz tossed the paper towel into the bin and strolled out.

She didn’t like it, but she went to Dave. As was her habit, she jogged up the two flights of stairs from the lecture area to her own section. He was striding out of his office, swinging on his jacket as she popped out the stairway door.

“Oh, you’re heading out.”

“I’ve got a meeting. Problem?”

“Maybe. I’ll come back.”

He glanced at his watch. “I can give you two minutes.” He jerked a thumb, stepped back into his office. And said nothing when Phoebe closed the door behind her.

He was still so much the same as the day she’d first met him. A little gray dashed his temples, and those lines people called character in a man and age in a woman fanned out from his eyes. But those eyes were still clear and blue and, for her, drenched in quiet wisdom.

“I don’t like having to do this, because for one thing, it means I’ve failed. But I’m asking you to consider removing Officer Arnold Meeks from my training sessions.”

“Because?”

“I can’t teach him anything. And, in fact, may be prejudicing him against any of the basic tactics and guidelines in the field.”

Dave leaned back against his desk, a gesture that told her she’d get more than the two minutes now if she needed them. “Is he stupid?”

“No, sir, but he is small-minded. In my opinion.”

“His father’s still on the job. He’s a son of a bitch.”

Phoebe relaxed fractionally. “I’m shocked and amazed to hear that.”

“I want all officers assigned to the sessions to complete them. You can relate your opinions of Officer Meeks, in this area, in your evaluation. I want all of them to get through it, Phoebe. You know as well as I do that at least some of what you teach them will work its way in, even into small minds.”

“I dressed him down in the session.”

“Did he deserve it?”

“And then some. But he’s only going to be pissed off at me now, and even less likely to listen.”

“Minimize the damage and move on.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I’m going to be late.”

“Minimize the damage,” Phoebe muttered, but reached up to straighten Dave’s tie.

He smiled at her. “You’re the best I’ve ever worked with. You remember that, and handle small-minded Meeks.”

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

She walked out with him, and when she peeled off, spotted Arnie loitering with a couple other cops outside her squad room. Her belly might have clenched, but her face was serene as she walked up to him. “Officer Meeks, the captain wishes all assigned officers to complete the negotiator training. I’ll expect to see you Monday morning, as scheduled. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now I’m sure the three of you have more important things to do than stand around here. Go on and do it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated, in a tone that had her hackles rising. Minimize the damage, she reminded herself. “I expect we can both learn something from these sessions.”

She couldn’t hear what he said when she walked away; the words were low and indistinguishable. But she heard the snickers clearly enough.

She let it go. A woman who’d pushed through Quantico, who’d slogged through police training, through negotiation training, sexually outnumbered ten to one, had heard snickers before.

She also knew when eyes were trained on her ass, and while it might infuriate her, Phoebe reminded herself to pick her battles. And that she had a damn fine ass.

When she entered her office, saw the message from the mechanic, she understood she had bigger problems than a smart-mouthed cop and ass ogling.

Her car was going to cost seven hundred and fifty-nine nonnegotiable dollars.

“Ah, hell.”

Giving up, Phoebe laid her head down on her desk for a moment of pure self-pity.

She caught the bus home, and the moment she was inside deeply regretted the prospect of going out again. Even the idea of going out again—the bus ride, sitting in a bar making small talk, only to ride yet another bus only to get back to square one—seemed overwhelmingly stupid.

She should dig up Duncan’s number, cancel. Agreeing to the thirty-minute drink had been a moment of weakness anyway—that damn dimple. Hadn’t she thought of a dozen other things she could do with thirty minutes on the ride home?

A bubble bath. Yoga. Give herself a facial. Clean out the junk drawer in her desk.

All were a better use of her time. But a deal was a deal.

Carly sprinted into the foyer to take a flying leap into Phoebe’s arms. No outside irritations could stand up against a Carly hug.

“You’ve been in Gran’s perfume.” To make Carly giggle she sniffed elaborately at her daughter’s neck.

“She let me have a spritz. Dinner’s all ready, and I finished my homework.” Leaning back, Carly beamed into her mother’s face. “You get to be excused from doing the dishes tonight.”

“Wow. How come I rate?”

“So you can get ready for your date. Come on!” Wiggling down, Carly took Phoebe’s hand to drag her toward the dining room. “Gran thinks you should wear your blue sweater, and Ava thinks the white blouse that ties in the back. ButI think you should wear your green dress.”

“The green dress isn’t really the thing for a quick evening meeting.”

“But you look so pretty in it.”

“She should save it,” Ava commented as Carly dragged Phoebe in. “For when he takes her out to dinner. Sit right down, it’s all ready. We wanted to give you plenty of time to primp.”

“It’s a drink. It’s only a drink in an Irish pub.”

Ava set her hands on her hips. “Excuse me? Tonight you represent every dateless woman in this city, every woman who’s about to sit down to a lonely meal of Weight Watchers pasta primavera she’s just nuked in the microwave. Every woman who’ll get into bed tonight with a book or reruns ofSex and the City as her only companion. You,” she said, pointing her finger at Phoebe, “are our shining hope.”

“Oh God.”

Essie patted Phoebe’s shoulder before she sat down. “But no pressure.”

She didn’t want to be a shining hope. But she got on the bus. She had to refuse Ava’s offer of her car three times, and disappoint Carly by choosing a black sweater and jeans over the green dress. But she put on the earrings her daughter picked out, and redid her makeup.

Life, Phoebe knew, was full of compromises.

She got a wolf whistle from Johnnie Porter—all of fifteen and full of sass—as he circled her on his bike.

“You sure look pretty tonight, Miz Mac Namara. Got a hot date?”

Now she worried she looked as if she were expecting a hot date. “Why, thank you, Johnnie, but no. I’m off to catch a CAT.”

“You going somewhere, you can just hop on here with me.” He popped a little show-off wheelie. “I’ll give you a ride.”

“That’s neighborly of you, but I believe I’ll stick with the bus. How’s your mama?”

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s got Aunt Susie over.” Johnnie rolled his eyes elaborately on his next circle. “Talking about my cousin Juliet’s wedding. So I lit out. Sure you don’t want to boost on up on my handlebars?”

How a fifteen-year-old boy could turn that into a sexual innuendo was puzzling. “I’m sure.”

“See you later, then.”

Off to find some trouble, Phoebe thought with a shake of her head as he zipped down the wide sidewalk. God help the neighborhood when he was old enough to drive.

It was just cool enough she was grateful for the sweater as she walked from the bus stop along East River Street. Plenty of others enjoyed the evening and the stroll, wandering in or out of restaurants and clubs, pausing to window-shop or just gaze out over the water.

So many couples, she thought, hand in hand, taking in that balmy air. Mama had a point, she supposed. It was nice—could be nice—to have someone to hold hands with on a pretty spring evening.

And it was better, given her personal situation, not to think about that sort of thing. Especially when she was about to have a drink with a very cute man.

She had plenty of hands to hold. So many, in fact, that a solitary walk along the river was a rare indulgence. Take the moment, she advised herself and, because she had a few minutes, slowed her pace, turned toward the water, and enjoyed the indulgence.

And see, she mused, she wasn’t the only one on her own. She saw a man, solitary as she, standing spread-legged in a pool of shadow and watching the water. The bill of his ball cap angled low over his face while a pair of cameras were strapped bandolier style over his dark windbreaker.

Not everyone was a couple.

Maybe she would bring Carly down for a long walk on Saturday, she thought as she tipped her head back, let the breeze take her hair. The kid got such a charge out of wandering around down here, looking at everything, at everyone.

They’d have to set the rules first. Lunch, yes. Fabulous prizes, no. Not with her car currently hostage at the mechanic’s.

Probably a smarter idea to make that a nice walk through one of the parks away from retail outlets.

They’d work it out.

Gauging the time, she turned away from the water and didn’t notice the solitary man lift and aim one of the cameras in her direction.

At Swifty’s a shamrock dotted thei in the name on the sign. The stained glass panel in the door was a rather beautiful Celtic knot design. The doorknob was brass, and the outside walls were done in a dull stucco yellow, a shade she remembered seeing in postcards of Irish villages. Hanging pots dripped with airy flowers and green, green vines.

Little details, she thought. The man paid attention to little details.

When she stepped inside, it was as she remembered from her single previous visit. A big, burly bar set the tone. This was not the venue for airy ferns and apple martinis. But if you wanted a pint, or a glass of Irish, conversation and music, belly right up.

Leather booths were deep and cushy, the tables dark, polished wood. Shadow and sparkle played from the colored glass shades of hanging lamps, while a red-eyed turf fire simmered in a quaint little stone hearth.

The mood was warm welcome.

At one of the booths, its table loaded with drinks, sat the musicians. A girl with a shock of red-tipped black hair sawed a bow over the fiddle strings with a speed and energy that made the movement as blurry as the music was clear. A man old enough to be her grandfather pumped out rhythm on a small accordion. A young man with hair so pale it reminded Phoebe of angels’ wings piped out the tune, while yet another set down his pint glass, picked up his fiddle, and slid seamlessly into the song.

Happy, Phoebe thought. Happy music, happy chatter under it. Cheery lights and color, with clever little touches sprinkled through. Old tankards, a bowen drum, bits of pottery she imagined came from Ireland, an Irish harp, old Guinness signs.

“There you are, and right on time.”

Even as she turned toward him, Duncan had her hand in his. That smile of his, she realized, it had a way of making her forget she didn’t really want to be there.

“I like your place,” she told him. “I like the music.”

“Sessions nightly. I’ve got us a table.” He led her to the one in front of the quiet fire where she could sink down on the cozy little love seat.

Take the moment, Phoebe thought again. “Best seat in the house.”

“What can I get you?”

“Glass of Harp, thanks.”

“Give me a minute.” He moved over to the bar, spoke to the girl running the near end. A moment later he came back with a glass of golden beer.

“Nothing for you?”

“I’ve got a Guinness in the works.” Those soft blue eyes zeroed straight in on hers. “So how are you?”

“Well enough. How about you?”

“Let me answer that by asking if you’ve got a stopwatch on me.”

“Sorry, left it in my other purse.”

“Then I’m good. I just want to get this out of the way, so it doesn’t keep distracting me. I really like the way you look.”

“Thanks. I’m okay with it myself most of the time.”

“See, I’ve had you stuck.” He tapped a finger to his temple, then paused to flash a smile at the waitress who brought over his pint of Guinness. “Thanks, P.J.”

“You bet.” The waitress set a bowl of pretzels on the table, gave Duncan a wink, Phoebe a quick once-over, then carted her tray off to another table.

“Well,sláinte. ” He tapped his glass to Phoebe’s, sipped. “So, I kept asking myself were you stuck in there just because of Suicide Joe or because I thought you were hot. Which was my second thought when I saw you, and was probably inappropriate given the circumstances.”

She sipped more slowly, watching him. That tiny dimple that flickered at the corner of his mouth when he grinned just drew the eye like a magnet. “Your second thought.”

“Yeah, the first was sort of: Thank God she’s going to fix this.”

“Do you always have that kind of confidence in total strangers?”

“No. Maybe. I’ll think about it.” He angled so their knees bumped companionably with a little whoosh of denim against denim. “It’s just I looked at you and it struck me you were someone who knew what to do, knew what you were doing—a really hot woman who knew what to do. So I wanted to see you again, maybe figure out how come you’re stuck. I know you’re smart—also a plus—not only because of what you do, but hey, Lieutenant, and you seem young for that.”

“I’m thirty-three. Not so young.”

“Thirty-three? Me, too. When’s your birthday?”

“August.”

“November. Older woman.” He shook his head. “Now I’m sunk. Older women are so sexy.”

It made her laugh as she tucked up her legs, shifted a little toward him. “You’re a funny guy.”

“Sometimes. But with serious and sensitive sides, if you’re counting points.”

“Points?”

“There’s always a point system in this kind of situation. He’s clean. She has breasts. Points added. He has a stupid laugh, she hates sports, points subtracted.”

“How’m I doing?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to add that high without my calculator.”

“Clever, too. Points for you.” She sipped at her beer, studied him. He had a little scar, a thin, diagonal slash through his left eyebrow. “Still, it’s risky to assume I’m smart and competent—if those are included in the final total—with so little actual data.”

“I’m a good judge of people. On-the-job training.”

“Owning bars?”

“Before that. I tended bar and drove a cab. Two professions where you’re guaranteed to see all types of people, and where you get to peg them pretty quick.”

“A cab-driving bartender.”

“Or bartending cabdriver, depending.” He reached over, tucked her hair behind her ear, gave the dangling silver at her lobe a little tap. The gesture was so casual and smooth, she wondered at her own quick jolt of intimacy.

“Easy to juggle hours on both sides,” he continued, “and I figured I’d sock away enough to open myself a sport’s bar.”

“And so you did, fulfilling the American dream.”

“Not even close—well, the American dream part—but I didn’t earn the ready to open Slam Dunc riding the stick or driving a hack.”

“How then? Robbing banks, dealing drugs, selling your body?”

“All viable options, but no. I won the lottery.”

“Get out. Really?” Delighted, fascinated, she lifted her glass in toast before stretching out a hand for a pretzel.

“Yeah, just a fluke. Or, you know, destiny, again depending. I picked up a ticket now and then. Actually, hardly ever. Then one day I went in for a six-pack of Corona, sprang for a ticket.”

“Did you pick the numbers or go with the computer?”

“My pick. Age, cab number—which was depressing since I hadn’t planned to still be hacking—six for the six-pack. Just that random, and…jackpot. You know how you hear people say if they ever win, or even when they do, how they’re going to keep right on working, living pretty much like they have been?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

She laughed again, snagged another pretzel. “Obviously, you retired as a cab-driving bartender.”

“Bet your ass. Got my sports bar. Very cool. Only funny thing, and I may lose man points here, but I figured out after a few months I actually didn’t want to be in a bar every night of my life.”

She glanced around Swifty’s, where the music had gone slow and dreamy. “Yet you have two. And here you are.”

“Yet. I sold half interest in Dunc’s to this guy I know. Well, almost half. Figured, hey, Irish pub.”

“Hence Swifty’s.”

“Hence.”

“No travel, no flashy car?”

“Some travel, some flash. Anyway, how did you—”

“Oh no, the question begs to be asked.” She wagged a finger at him. “It’s rude, but it has to be asked. How much?”

“A hundred and thirty-eight million.”

She choked on her pretzel, holding up a hand when he tapped her on the back. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. You want another beer?”

She shook her head, gaped at him. “You won a hundred and thirty-eightmillion dollars on a lottery ticket?”

“Yeah, go figure. Best six-pack I ever bought. It got a lot of play at the time. You didn’t hear about it?”

“I…” She was still struggling to absorb. “I don’t know. When?”

“Seven years ago last February.”

“Well.” She puffed out a breath, pushed a hand through her hair.Million replayed through her mind. “Seven years ago last February I was busy giving birth.”

“Hard to keep up with current events. You got a kid? What variety?”

“A girl. Carly.” She saw his gaze shift down to her left hand. “Divorced.”

“Okay. Lot of juggling, single parent, high-octane career. I bet you’ve got excellent hand-eye coordination.”

“It takes practice.” Millions, she thought. Millions stacked on top of millions, yet here he was, nursing a Guinness in a nice little pub in Savannah, looking like an average guy. Well, an average guy with a really cute dimple and a sexy little scar, a killer smile. But still.

“Why aren’t you living on an island in the South Pacific?”

“I like Savannah. No point in being really rich if you can’t live where you like. How long have you been a cop?”

“Um.” She felt blindsided. The cute, funny guy was now a cute, funny multimillionaire. “I, ah, started with the FBI right out of college, then—”

“You were with the FBI? Like Clarice Starling? LikeSilence of the Lambs ? Or Dana Scully—another hot redhead, by the way. Special Agent Mac Namara?” He let out a long, exaggerated breath. “You really are hot.”

“Due to this, that and the other thing, I decided to shift to the Savannah-Chatham PD. Hostage and crisis negotiator.”

“Hostage?” Those dreamy eyes of his sharpened. “Like if a guy barricades himself in some office building with innocent bystanders and wants ten mil, or the release of all prisoners with brown eyes, you’re the one he’s talking to?”

“If it’s in Savannah, chances are good.”

“How do you know what to say? What not to say?”

“Negotiators are trained, and have experience in law enforcement. What?” she said when he shook his head.

“No. You have toknow. Training, sure, experience, sure, but you have to know.”

Odd, she thought, that he’d understand that when there were cops—Arnie Meeks sprang to mind—who didn’t. And never would. “You hope you know. And you have to listen, not just hear. And listening to you, here’s what I know. You live in Savannah because there wouldn’t be enough to do on that island in the South Pacific, or enough people to do it with. You don’t discount the sheer luck of buying a winning ticket along with a six-pack, but neither do you discount that sometimes things are simply meant. Telling me about the money wasn’t bragging, it was just fact—and fun. Now, the way I reacted to it mattered, in as much as if I’d suddenly put moves on you, we’d end this evening having sex, which would also be fun. But I’d no longer be stuck in your mind.”

“Something else I really like,” he commented. “A woman who does what she’s good at, and is good at what she does. If Suicide Joe was still working for me, I’d give the son of a bitch a raise.”

She had to smile, and by God, she was charmed right down to the balls of her feet. But…“That’s quite a bit for one drink,” she decided. “Now I’ve got to get on home.”

“You love your kid—that’s first and last. Your eyes lit up when you said her name. The divorce still bothers you on some level. I don’t know which, not yet. Your work isn’t a career, it’s a vocation. Cab-driving bartender,” he said. “I know how to listen, too.”

“Yes, indeed. That’s quite a bit, on both sides, for one drink.”

He rose when she did. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“It’ll be a hike. It’s in the shop. I’m catching a CAT.”

“Jeez. I’ll drive you. Don’t be stupid, ’cause you’re not.” He took her arm with one hand, signaled a goodbye to the bar with the other on the way to the door.

“You’re the second man who’s offered me a ride tonight.”

“Oh yeah?”

“The first involved hopping onto the handlebars of his bike. As I told him, I don’t mind the bus.”

“Take you just as long to walk to the bus stop as it will for us to walk to the lot down here. And I can promise you a smoother ride home.” He glanced down at her. “Nice night for a drive.”

“I’m only up on Jones.”

“One of my favorite streets in the city.” He strolled now, sliding his hand down her arm to link it with hers. “So’s this one.”

And here she was after all, Phoebe thought, half of a couple wandering on River Street, hand in hand. His was warm, the palm hard and wide. The sort of hand, she imagined, that could wrench the top off a pickle jar, catch a fly ball or cup a woman’s breast with equal ease.

His legs were long, his stride loose and lazy. A man, Phoebe judged, who knew how to take his time when he wanted to.

“Nice night for a walk, too, especially along the river,” he commented.

“I have to get home.”

“So you said. Not cold, are you?”

“No.”

He walked into the lot, hailing the attendant. “How you doing there, Lester?”

“Doing what comes, boss. Evening, ma’am.”

A bill passed from hand to hand so smoothly Phoebe nearly missed it. Then she was standing, staring at a gleaming white Porsche.

“No handlebars.” Duncan shrugged, grinned, then opened the door for her.

“I’m forced to admit this will be better than the bus—or Johnnie Porter’s Schwinn.”

“You like cars?”

“If you’d asked me that a couple hours ago, I’d have given you several reasons why cars and I are on nonspeaking terms currently.” She brushed a hand over the side of the buttery leather seat. “But I like this one just fine.”

“Me, too.”

He didn’t drive like a maniac, which she’d half-expected, and had to admit had half-hoped. He did drive, however, like a man who knew the city the way she knew her own bedroom—every nook and cranny.

She gave him the address and let herself enjoy the sort of ride she’d never imagined experiencing. When he pulled up in front of her house, she let out a long sigh. “Very nice. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” He got out, skirting the hood to take her hand again on the sidewalk. “Great house.”

“It is, yes.” There it was, she thought, rosy brick, white trim, tall windows, graceful terraces.

Hers, whether she liked it or not.

“Family home, family duty. Long story.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it over dinner tomorrow night?”

Something in her actively yearned when she turned toward him. “Oh, Duncan, you’re awfully cute, and you’re rich, and you’ve got a very sexy car. I’m just not in a position to start a relationship.”

“Are you in a position to eat dinner?”

She laughed, shook her head as he walked with her up to the parlor level. “Several nights a week, depending.”

“You’re a public servant. I’m the public. Have dinner with me tomorrow night. Or pick another activity, another day. I’ll work around it.”

“I have a date with my daughter tomorrow night. Saturday, dinner, as long as it’s understood this can’t go anywhere.”

“Saturday.”

He leaned in. It was smooth, but she saw the move. Still, it felt fussy and foolish to stop it. So she let his lips brush over hers. Sweet, she thought.

Then his hands ran down from her shoulders to her wrists, his mouth moved on hers. And she couldn’t think at all. Deep, penetrating warmth, quick, hard flutters, a leap and gallop of pulse.

She felt it, all of it, as her body seemed to let out a breath too long held.

Her head actually spun before he eased back, and she was left staring, staring into his eyes. She said, “Oh, well, damn it.”

He flashed that grin at her. “I’ll pick you up at seven. ’Night, Phoebe.”

“Yeah, ’night.” She managed to unlock the door, and when she glanced back, he was standing on the sidewalk, still grinning at her. “Good night,” she said again.

Inside, she locked up, turned off the porch light. And wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself into.

4

She’d no more than reached the top of the stairs when her mother and Ava slipped out of the TV room with big, expectant smiles.

“So?” Essie began. “How was it?”

“It was fine. It was a drink.” If she’d been wearing socks, Phoebe thought as she aimed for her bedroom, they’d have blown clear across Jones Street during that good-night kiss.

Behind her back, Essie and Ava exchanged a look, then headed off in pursuit.

“Well, what’s he like? What did you talk about? Come on, Phoebs.” Ava clasped her hands together as if in prayer. “Give us dateless wonders the scoop.”

“We had a beer in his very nice pub. I enjoyed it. I’m going to work out.”

Another look was exchanged when Phoebe went to her dresser to pull out yoga pants and a sports bra.

“What’d you talk about?”

Phoebe glanced at her mother in the mirror, shrugged. She began to strip and change. She’d lived among women too long to worry about nudity. “This and that. He used to tend bar and drive a cab.”

“Hmm. So he’s enterprising, isn’t he?”

“You could say.”

“Where does he live?” Ava pressed. “In the city?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Well, for goodness sake.” Essie cast her eyes to the ceiling. “Why not?”

“It didn’t come up.” Phoebe reached in the little silver trinket box on her dresser for a tie, whipped her hair back into a tail.

“What about his people?” Essie demanded. “Who are his family, his—”

“That didn’t come up either. I sort of got distracted.”

“Because he was charming,” Essie decided.

“He was—is—very charming. But I was distracted, considerably, when he told me he won the lottery several years ago, to the tune of a hundred and thirty-eight million.”

She sailed out on that, automatically peeking in to check on Carly before moving to the stairs and up to the third floor.

She’d commandeered what had once been a maid’s room for a little home gym. An indulgence on her part, Phoebe knew, but it also saved a health club fee and meant she could get an hour in early in the morning or at night, after Carly was in bed.

Work kept her away from home enough without adding gym time to it.

She’d sprung for an elliptical machine, a few free weights, and even a small TV to play exercise tapes. Carly often practiced her gymnastics while she worked out, so that was the big benefit of more mother-daughter time. Her mother and Ava used the equipment, so it paid for itself.

In the end it wasn’t only more convenient but more economical. At least that’s how she’d justified the expense.

Phoebe smiled to herself as she set the machine and climbed on. Her mother and Ava were already at the doorway, gaping.

“Did you saymillion ?” Essie demanded.

“I did.”

“I remember that, I remember something about that.” Ava laid a hand on her heart. “Millionaire cabdriver. That’s what they called him. Local boy. Single ticket. Oh my God! That’shim ?”

“In the flesh.”

“Well. God. I think I’m going to sit down.” Essie did so, right on the floor. “That’s not just rich, not even just wealthy. I don’t know what it is.”

“Lucky?” Phoebe suggested.

“And then some.” Ava joined Essie on the floor. “He bought you a beer.”

Amused, Phoebe kicked her warm-up to the next level. “Yeah. And pretzels. Then he drove me home in his Porsche.”

“Is he slick?” Essie’s brows drew together, and the frown line Phoebe had inherited instead of dimples creased between them. “That much money, he’s likely slick.”

“He’s not. Smooth,” Phoebe decided after a moment. “He’s pretty damn smooth, but I have a feeling that’s innate. He talked me into having dinner with him Saturday night.”

“You’re dating a millionaire.” Ava nudged Essie with her elbow. “Our little girl’s dating a millionaire.”

Because the idea made her nervous, Phoebe bumped the resistance up another notch—on the machine, and in her. “I don’t know about dating. I’m not interested in dating anybody. It’s too damn much trouble. What are you going to wear, what are you going to talk about? Is he going to want to have sex—and there I say: Duh. Are you going to want to have sex, which actually does require some thought and consideration.”

“Dinner,” Ava reminded her. “Saturday night.”

“Yeah, well, he’s smooth,” Phoebe muttered. “He’s pretty damn smooth.”

The scene was a little storefront operation. Jasper C. Hughes, Attorney at Law. The intelligence Phoebe had indicated that Hughes, one Tracey Percell and an armed individual named William Gradey were barricaded inside.

The tactical team continued setting up outer and inner perimeters. Phoebe grabbed her ready box and headed for the first on scene. She was already unhappy knowing it was Arnie Meeks.

“Situation.”

Arnie wore dark glasses, but she could feel the derision in his eyes as he stared down at her. “Guy’s got two hostages. Witnesses heard gunfire. When I arrived, the subject yelled out that if anybody tried to come in, he’d kill them both.”

Phoebe waited a beat. “That’s it?”

Arnie shrugged. “Subject claims the lawyer cheated him out of six thousand dollars and he wants it back.”

“Where’s the log, Officer?”

The way his lips curled, Phoebe wondered if he practiced the sarcastic look in the mirror.

“I’ve been trying to keep this asshole from killing two people. I haven’t had time for a log.”

“At what time was gunfire heard?”

“Approximately ninea.m. ”

“Nine?” She could feel both temper and fear knot up inside her. “Nearly two hours ago, and you’ve just decided to send for a negotiator?”

“I have the situation under control.”

“You’re relieved. You—” She pointed to another uniformed cop as she pulled a log sheet out of her ready kit. “Everything gets written down. Time, activity, who says what and when.” She took out a notebook.

Arnie grabbed her arm. “You can’t just walk in here and take over.”

“Yes, I can.” She wrenched free. “The captain’s on his way, and Commander Harrison is in charge of Tactical. Meanwhile, I’m in charge here, as negotiator. Get the hostage-taker on the phone,” she ordered the cop she’d drafted as second negotiator.

“I’m the one keeping this from blowing up.”

“Is that so?” She whipped around to Arnie. “Have you spoken to either hostage? Have you ascertained that they’re still alive? If they’ve been harmed? If anyone requires medical attention? Where is your situation board? Your log? What progress have you made toward ending this situation without loss of life in the damn near two hours before you deigned to call this in?”

She grabbed the phone, checked her notebook where she’d already written down names.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” The voice that answered screamed with emotion and fury. “I said I’m through talking to you.”

“Mr. Gradey? This is Phoebe Mac Namara. I’m a negotiator with the police department. You’ll be talking to me now. You sound upset. Is everyone all right in there, Mr. Gradey? Does anyone have medical problems I should know about?”

“Everything’s gone to hell. It’s all gone to hell.”

“Let’s try to work all this out. Is it all right if I call you William? Is that what people call you?”

“I’m through talking!”

“I’m here to help.” She heard it in his voice, he was through talking and poised to act. “Does anyone need anything in there? Medical attention? Water? Maybe something to eat.”

“I needed my money.”

“You need your money. Why don’t you tell me about that, Mr. Gradey? Let me see if I can help you with that.” She wrote downused past tense.

“I said it all already. Nobody listened.”

“Nobody listened to you. You sound angry about that. I understand, and I apologize if you feel your problem wasn’t given attention. But I’m listening, Mr. Gradey, I’m listening to you now. I want to help you resolve all this.”

“It’s too late. It’s over.”

She heard the gunshot in her head a second before it blasted the air. She’d heard it in his voice.

The lawyer had a mild concussion, some bumps and bruises. The secretary was hysterical but unharmed. William Gradey was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

“Nice negotiating,” Arnie said from behind her.

She turned, very slowly, until her eyes burned into his. “You arrogant son of a bitch.”

“He took himself out while you were on the line. Not me.” With his trademark smirk in place, Arnie swaggered off.

She forced herself not to go after him, not now, not now when her rage was so full and sharp and deep she could—would—do something she’d regret later.

It would wait for later. She promised herself that later she would deal with Officer Arnold Meeks. For now, Phoebe stood and watched Crime Scene walk in and out of the building. A hand dropped on her shoulder.

“Nothing more for you to do here,” Dave said to her.

“I never had a chance with him. A minute, maybe two. It was over before I got here. I couldn’t bring it back.”

“Phoebe.”

She shook her head. “Not now, please. I want to debrief the hostages, and take statements from any witnesses.” She turned around. “I want all debriefing and statements recorded, and I want you to witness them.”

“You and I both know sometimes things go south.”

“What I don’t know is if this one had to.” The rage wanted to make her tremble. She refused. “I’m going to find out. The hostages are en route to the hospital, but the woman didn’t seem to be hurt. She can talk. I’d like you to go with me, now, talk to her.”

“All right. You may want to talk to the counselor. When you lose one—”

“I didn’t lose him, and that I know.” She bit off the words, so they both knew how close she was to snapping. “I never had him.”

She didn’t speak on the way to the hospital, and Dave didn’t push. In the silence, she stared out the window and outlined the questions she’d ask, the tone she would take, to build the foundation for what she needed to prove.

Tracey Percell rested on a gurney in the ER’s exam room. She was young, Phoebe noted, barely old enough to drink. A well-endowed young blonde who needed her roots done.

Red-rimmed, swollen eyes were weepy yet as she gnawed on her thumbnail.

“He shot himself. He shot himself right in front of us.”

“You had a horrible experience. It may help you to talk about it, and it would certainly help us. Do you think you could do that, Tracey?”

“Okay. I hyperventilated, they said. Passed out. They said I should lie down awhile, but he didn’t hurt me. I’m really lucky he didn’t hurt me. He punched Jasper, and he stuck the gun right in his face. And—”

“You must’ve been scared.” Phoebe sat beside the bed, patted Tracey’s hand before she took out her tape recorder. “Is it all right if I record what we talk about?”

“Sure. They said they were going to call my boyfriend. Brad? My boyfriend Brad’s going to come.”

“That’s good. If he doesn’t come before we leave, I’ll check on Brad myself. How’s that?”

“Thanks. Thanks.” Tracey stopped biting her thumbnail as if the mere thought of having her boyfriend come was enough to settle her. “I feel so weird. Like I watched a scary movie, but I was in it.”

“I know. But it’s over now. You work for Mr. Hughes?”

“Uh-huh. I’m a legal secretary. It’s not much, but it’s okay.”

“And you went to work today, just like usual.”

“I go in to open the office at, like, ten to nine. Jasper got in at the same time today. Lots of times he’s later, but we got there right before nine today. We’d barely opened when he came in. Mr. Gradey. He pushed right in the door and punched Jasper in the face. Knocked him down. I screamed because he had the gun. He looked crazy.”

Tracey’s eyes watered again as she snatched out two tissues from the box nested on her lap. “He looked just crazy.”

“What happened then?”

“He said for me to get up and lock the door. He said he’d shoot Jasper dead if I tried to run. He had the gun right to his head, and I was scared; I just did what he said. He said for us to push the desk in front of the door, and when we didn’t move fast enough, I guess, he shot the gun.”

“He shot at you?”

“No. He shot it into the floor, put a hole in the carpet. I guess I screamed again, and I was crying. He said to shut the hell up and do what he said. So we did. Then he hit Jasper again and started yelling that he wanted his money. His six thousand five hundred twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents. Every penny.” She started on her thumbnail again. “Um, I guess you could say Jasper sort of talked him out of the money, for, you know, expenses and costs for this suit. And, um, the suit didn’t really go anywhere.”

“He was a client?”

“Well, I guess Jasper didn’t really put him on the books. So to speak.” Her gaze skidded away. “I don’t know all the particulars, really.”

“We’ll get to that later.”

“Okay. It’d be better if you asked Jasper about all that anyway. Jasper told him he didn’t have the money, and he said Jasper better get it or else. They were talking about going to the bank, then the cop came.”

“The first officer arrived on scene at that time.”

“Well, yeah. Sort of. You could hear the sirens, and Mr. Gradey made me go with him to the window and peek through the blinds. Mr. Gradey yelled out something like: ‘Get the hell away. You try to come in and I’ll kill everybody.’ How he had two people in there and a gun, and he’d use it. Gradey told me to yell out, too, so I did, like, please, he means it.”

She knuckled her eyes. “Gosh.”

“You must’ve been scared.”

“Oh my God, ma’am, I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”

“Did Mr. Gradey hurt you then?”

“No. No. He made me lie down on the floor, on my stomach. Jasper, too. Then the cop, I guess he had one of those what-do-you-call-it? Bullhorns? He called out how he was Officer Arnold Meeks, and how Mr. Gradey was to put down his weapon and come out with his hands up. Right quick, too, he said, like he meant business. And Mr. Gradey, he just yelled back he was William Gradey and we could all go to hell unless he got his six thousand five hundred twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents back.

“Then they just yelled at each other awhile.”

“Yelled at each other?”

“Yelled and cursed at each other for I don’t know how long. Mr. Gradey wanted to know where the cop was, where the law was when Jasper stole his money. And the cop’s like, ‘I’m not concerned with your money, and you better get your ass out here, boy, with your hands up.’”

Phoebe glanced at Dave. “How did Mr. Gradey react to that?”

“He got really pissed, you know, ’specially when the policeman said how Mr. Gradey didn’t have the balls to shoot us. Honest to God, I thought he’d do it then and there just to prove the cop wrong. I couldn’t stop crying.”

“You heard the policeman say that?”

“Yes, ma’am. Only he didn’t say Mr. Gradey didn’t have the balls, he said ‘you asshole.’”

Phoebe looked at Dave as Tracey began to shred one of her tissues into bits of fluff. “And so Mr. Gradey, he told the cop to come on in and get him, and he’d shoot him, and us, too. How he needed his money. He had to sell his car, and he didn’t have anywhere to live, and the cop’s saying he’ll be living in a cell and won’t need a car. After a while, it seemed like a long while, more cops came.

“Do you think Brad’s here yet?”

“I’ll go find out in just a minute. What happened next, Tracey?”

“Well, Mr. Gradey, he got more upset. I thought, I really thought he was just going to shoot us and get it over with. I started crying again, loud I guess. He told me not to worry, it wasn’t my fault. Cops and lawyers, he said. It was cops and lawyers, and they always fucked over regular people. I think…”

“What do you think?” Phoebe prompted.

“I think he was going to let me go on out. I just got the feeling. Me, not Jasper. ’Cause he asked if he let me go out, would I tell the cops about the money, and I said I would. Sure I would. Then the phone rang. That cop Meeks yelled for Jasper to answer. ‘Pick up the phone, you son of a bitch.’”

Tracey let out a sigh. “I know it sounds stupid, but that policeman scared me about as much as Mr. Gradey and the gun.” She swiped at her eyes. “I wish he’d just shut up. I wish he had because I think Mr. Gradey was going to let me go, and maybe he wouldn’t’ve shot himself in the head right in front of me. I don’t know.”

“Okay, Tracey. All right now,” Phoebe soothed as Tracey began to sob.

“It was soawful to see. He said how I could sit up when he was asking me if I’d tell the police about the money. So I was sitting there on the floor when the phone rang and all. I couldn’t hear what the other guy said, but I was watching Mr. Gradey. I was watching and thinking if he lets me go, I’m never coming back to this office. I’ll go back, take some more business courses, get me a better job. Mr. Gradey didn’t say much, but he looked sad. Scared. Sad and scared like I was, and he hung up the phone. Next time it rang, I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he looked at me and said how he was going to put it on speaker so I could see how y’all treated people like us. So I could see how we didn’t have a chance. There was a woman on this time. It was you,” Tracey said after a moment. “Sure, it was you. So you know what happened next.”

“Yes. I know what happened next.”

Phoebe waited until they were outside, away from people, in the balm of spring air. “He incited the suicide. He risked the lives of two hostages with his posturing. He ignored procedure, trampled over every guideline of negotiation. And for what?”

“Not every police officer has negotiation skills, or understands how to handle a hostage situation from that standpoint.”

She rounded on it, couldn’t stop herself. “Goddamn it, Dave. Are you defending him? Are you, for one second, defending what he did?”

“No.” Dave held up a hand. “And I’m not going to argue with you, Phoebe. Not when you’re right. Officer Meeks will be debriefed.”

“I’ll be debriefing him. It’s my purview,” she said before Dave could deny.

“And you and Arnie Meeks already have considerable friction. You were on the line with the subject when he terminated.”

“If I don’t debrief Meeks, it undermines my authority. He didn’t call it in for nearly two hours. Right there, he’s earned a rip. This isn’t a matter of him having a problem with me. It’s a matter of him being a problem, with a badge.”

“You be careful it doesn’t smell like payback.”

“A man’s dead. There’s no paying it back.”

Phoebe took her time, in fact took the rest of the long day, to gather statements, information, to write up her notes and complete the incident report.

Then she called Arnie into her office.

“I’m going off shift,” he told her.

“Close the door. Sit down.”

“I’m on eight-to-fours. I go past four, I put in the OT.” But he swaggered over, took a seat. Lifted his jaw at the recorder on her desk. “What’s this?”

“This conversation is being recorded for your protection, and mine.”

“Maybe I need my delegate.”

“If you want your delegate present, you’re free to call him.” Deliberately, she nudged the phone across the desk toward him. “Be my guest.”

Arnie shrugged. “You got five minutes before I start clocking OT.”

“At oh-nine-eleven this morning you responded to reports of gunfire at the offices of Jasper C. Hughes, Attorney at Law. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“You responded to this location, running hot, approached the building in question. At that time, an individual inside the premises informed you he was armed, with two hostages. Is this correct?”

“If you’re going to go through the whole report, we’re wasting time.”

“Did you call for backup or for a negotiation team at that time?”

“No. I had it handled. Until you got there.”

“You identified yourself as a police officer, via bullhorn.”

“I took cover, as procedure, and ID’d myself, sure. I told the guy to put down the gun, to come out. He refused.”

Phoebe sat back. “You’re right. We’re wasting time. The reports are here, including witness statements, statements from both hostages, statements from the officers who arrived on scene subsequently. Which include the fact that you did not follow procedure, did not call for a negotiation team, did not follow any of the guidelines in hostage negotiation and instead threatened and berated the hostage-taker into an agitated state.”

“Guy shoots up an office, he’s already in an agitated state.”

“And there, you’re correct. You never tried to talk him down.” Though her eyes flashed fury, her voice stayed flat, cold, utterly calm. “You told him you didn’t care, you told him he was going to jail.”

He sent her that tight, smirking smile. “Not supposed to lie in negotiations.”

“You’re going to want to wipe that smirk off your face, Officer. You pushed and you pushed.” She snatched up a page from a report. “‘Officer Meeks then engaged the subject via telephone and advised the subject he’d be better off just putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger.’”

“Reverse psychology. It was under control until you got on the line. Hostages made it out, didn’t they? No loss of life.”

“There were three people in that office. Only two walked out.”

“Only two mattered.”

“In your opinion, yes, which I assume is why you felt entitled to call the hostage-taker a worthless fuck. Although I see nothing in the report that indicates the hostages mattered to you. You never asked for or ascertained their condition, and took actions that endangered their well-being—including telling the armed hostage-taker he didn’t have theballs to shoot the hostages.”

“You want to blame somebody for your screwup,ma’am —”

“My actions will hold up, Officer, I promise you. Yours, on the other hand, don’t. You’re suspended for thirty days.”

He came up out of the chair. “Bullshit.”

“The incident will be investigated, as will your actions during it. Meanwhile, you are ordered to report to the departmental psychiatrist for an evaluation within the next seventy-two hours.”

The ugly red spread over his face, as it had in the lecture room. “You’re not running over me this way.”

“You’re free to protest the suspension, but I can tell you you’ll find Captain Mc Vee, who has copies of all statements, in agreement with my decision.”

“He’d agree to flap his wings like a chicken seeing as you’re blowing him.”

She got slowly to her feet. “What did you say to me?”

“You think it’s some secret you’re sitting here because you let Mc Vee bang you? We’ll see who’s fucking suspended when I’m done with you. Bitch.”

“You’re suspended, thirty days, and the tag for insubordination is going in your jacket. You’re going to want to get out of here, Officer, before you make it worse.”

He stepped to her desk, planted his hands on it, leaned forward. “It’s going to get worse, for you. That’s a promise.”

She felt the clutch in her throat. “You’re dismissed. Badge and weapon, Officer.”

His hand moved to his sidearm, his fingers danced over it, and Phoebe saw something in his eyes that told her he was more than just an arrogant son of a bitch.

The quick rap on the door had her fighting not to jolt. Sykes poked his head in. “Sorry to interrupt. I need a minute, Lieutenant, when you’ve got one.”

“I’ve got one. Officer Meeks? I gave you an order.”

He unclipped his weapon, tossed it and his badge onto her desk. When he turned and stalked out, Phoebe allowed herself one shuddering breath.

“You okay, LT?”

“Yes. Yes. What do you need?”

“Nothing. Things looked a little heated in here, that’s all.”

“Okay. Yeah. Thanks.” She wanted to sink down in her chair, made herself stand. “Detective? You’ve been around here a long time.”

“Twelve years.”

“Hear a lot of the gossip, the buzz?”

“Sure.”

“Detective, is it common belief that Captain Mc Vee and I have a sexual relationship?”

He looked so stunned that her stomach instantly smoothed. “Jesus, Lieutenant, no.” Sykes closed the door behind him. “Did that asshole say that?”

“Yeah. Let’s leave it inside here, please. Let’s leave the whole thing inside this office.”

“If that’s what you want.” Sykes nodded down at Arnie’s badge and gun. “I’ll say one more thing I’d like to stay in this office. It doesn’t break my heart to see that. You interested in my opinion, between you and me?”

“I am. Yeah, I’m interested.”

“He’d never have had those in the first place without family connections. Guy’s a loose cannon, boss. You watch your back.”

“I’ll be doing just that. Thank you. Thanks, Bull.”

Sykes twinkled a little at her use of his nickname. He started for the door, stopped with his hand on the knob. “I guess some of us think of you as the captain’s favorite niece. There were grumbles when you came in from the feds and took over here. Some of them were mine. Grumbling stopped pretty quick, from most. You’re a good boss, Lieutenant. That’s what counts around here.”

“Thanks.”

When he went out, she let herself sit. Let herself shake.

5

What didn’t suck, Phoebe decided, was to come home after a viciously bad day and find two dozen stargazer lilies waiting for her. Essie had arranged them into quite a show in Cousin Bess’s big Waterford vase, culling out a trio from the field for Phoebe’s bedroom.

“You can have the whole lot up in your room, of course, but I thought—”

“No, this is fine. This is lovely.” Phoebe leaned over for a sniff of them where they stood elegant and splashy on the piecrust table in the family parlor. “We can all enjoy them here.”

“I didn’t read the note.” Essie handed it over. “And I have to admit, it was a bitter war of conscience and curiosity. Even though I know who sent them.”

“I suppose he did. Well.” Phoebe tapped the little envelope on her palm.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Phoebe, read it!” Ava stood behind Carly, rubbing the girl’s shoulders. “We’re dying here. I considered wrestling your mama to the ground for that note.”

Phoebe supposed when a man sent flowers to a house with four females, he sent them to all. She opened the envelope, and read.

“‘See you Saturday. Duncan.’”

“That’s it?” Disappointment dragged through Ava’s voice. “Not much of a poet, is he?”

“I’d say he’s letting the flowers speak for themselves,” Essie corrected. “That’s poetical enough.”

“Mama, is he your boyfriend?”

“He’s just someone I’m going to have dinner with tomorrow,” Phoebe told Carly.

“’Cause Sherrilynn’s big sister has a boyfriend, and he makes her cry all the time. She lays across the bed in her room and criesall the time, Sherrilynn says.”

“And I bet Sherrilynn’s big sister enjoys every minute of it.” Phoebe reached down to cup Carly’s face. “I’m not much of a crier myself.”

“You cried when you called Roy last time.”

A mother could never hide tears from a child, and a mother who thought she could was delusional. “Not so very much. I’m going to go up and change. I heard a rumor it’s pizza night around here.”

“And DVD and popcorn night!”

“I heard that, too. I want to go take off my work, and put on my play.”

Upstairs, Phoebe sat on the side of the bed. Could a mother ever really protect her child from her mistakes, or the ripples from them that spread all through a life?

Weren’t they in this house now because of a single event from more than twenty years before? Weren’t they all who they were, with their lives tangled together under this roof, because of that steamy summer night when she was twelve? Decisions she made, actions she took, even words she spoke would affect her daughter forever. Just as her mother’s had affected her.

Mama had done her best, Phoebe thought. But trusting a man with herself, with her children, had changed the course of their world.

And she remembered it all, every movement, every moment, as if it were yesterday.

The room was a box of heat, stained with the grease of his sweat. He’d begun to swig whiskey straight from the bottle of Wild Turkey Mama kept up high in the kitchen cupboard, so the stench of whiskey added another smear to the trapped air.

Phoebe hoped he’d drink enough to pass out before he used the .45 clutched in his free hand that he’d taken to waving around like a mean little boy with a pointy stick.

Put your eye out, you’re not careful.

He’d already fired off a few rounds, but just to kill lamps or bric-a-brac and put holes in the walls. He’d held it to Mama’s head, too, screaming and cursing as he’d dragged her across the floor by her long red hair.

But he hadn’t shot Mama, not yet, or made good on his threats to put a bullet in Phoebe’s little brother Carter, or Phoebe herself.

But he could, he could, and he made sure they knew he would ifthey gave him any goddamn lip. So fear lived in the box, too, a terrible, helpless fear that hung in the trapped air like blackflies.

Though all the shades were drawn or the curtains pulled tight over the windows, she knew the police were outside. He talked to them on the phone, Reuben did. She wished she knew what they were saying to him because he mostly calmed down afterward.

If she knew, for sure, what they said to calm him, maybe she could say it, too, in the in-between times he got tired of talking to them and hung up the phone and before he stirred himself up hot again and they had to try to cool him off, one more time.

He called the person on the other end of the phone Dave, as if they were friends, and once he’d gone on a long ramble about fishing.

Now, he’d gone back to pacing and drinking and cursing. The terrible in-between time. Phoebe no longer flinched when he swung the barrel of the gun toward the sofa where she and Carter huddled.

She was too tired to flinch.

He’d broken in just after supper, when the sun had still been up. It had been down a long time now. So long, she thought maybe it would be coming up again before long.

Reuben had shot the pretty little clock with the mother-of-pearl face that had been a wedding present to Mama and Daddy, where it sat on the dropleaf table, so Phoebe couldn’t be sure how many hours had passed since its death at five minutes past seven.

Mama loved that clock. Phoebe knew that’s why Reuben had killed it, because Mama set such store by that sweet little clock.

When the phone rang again, he slammed the bottle on the little table and snatched it up.

“Dave, you son of a bitch, I said I want the electric turned backon. Don’t you fucking tell me you’re working on it.”

He waved the gun, and Phoebe heard Carter suck in his breath. She rubbed a hand over the point of his knee to keep him still, to keep him quiet.

As much store as Mama set by the little clock, she set a lot more by Carter. Reuben knew that, too. So hurting Carter was bound to be somewhere on Reuben’s list of things to do.

“Don’t you fucking tell me we’re going to work this out. You’re not in here sweating like a goddamn pig, using goddamn oil lamps. You get the air back on in here, and right quick, and the lights, or I’m going to hurt one of these kids. Essie, get your skinny, worthless ass over here and tell him I mean what I say.Now! ”

Phoebe watched as her mother pushed out of the chair he’d ordered her to sit in. Her face looked haggard in the lamplight, her eyes stunned as a trapped rabbit. When she was close enough to take the phone, he hooked an arm around her throat, pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple.

Beside Phoebe, Carter braced to leap. Phoebe gripped his hand, hard, shook her head, to keep him on the couch. “Don’t.” She barely breathed the word. “He’ll hurt her if you try.”

“Tell him I mean what I say!”

Essie kept her eyes straight ahead. “He means what he says.”

“Tell him what I’m doing now.”

Tears slid down her cheeks, bumping into the dried blood from the cut his fist had ripped there earlier. “He’s holding a gun to my head. My children are sitting together on the sofa. They’re frightened. Please, do what he wants.”

“You should’ve done what I wanted, Essie.” He closed his hand over her breast, squeezed. “You should’ve kept doing what I wanted, then none of this would be happening. I told you you’d be sorry, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Reuben, you told me.”

“You hear that, Dave? It’s her fault. Whatever happens in here, it’s her fault. I was to put a bullet in her useless brain right now, it’s her own damn fault.”

“Mr. Reuben?” Phoebe heard her own voice, calm as a spring morning. It felt like it came from someone else, someone whose heart wasn’t punching like fists into her throat. But Reuben’s hard eyes tracked over and latched onto her.

“I ask you to talk, little bitch?”

“No, sir. I just thought maybe you were getting hungry. Maybe you want me to make you a sandwich. We’ve got some nice ham.”

Phoebe didn’t—couldn’t—allow herself to look at her mother. She felt her mama’s fear rising like a flood, and if she looked at it head-on she might drown in it.

“You figure if you fix me a sandwich, I won’t shoot your whore of a mother in the head?”

“I don’t know. But we got some nice ham, and some potato salad.” She wasn’t going to cry, Phoebe realized. It surprised her there weren’t any tears pushing against that hammering heart. But there was fury in there, bubbling with the nerves in her belly. “I made the potato salad myself. It’s good.”

“Go on then, take that lamp with you. Don’t think I can’t see you in there. You try anything stupid, I’m going to shoot your baby brother in the balls.”

“Yes, sir.” She rose, lifted the little oil lamp. “Mr. Reuben? Can I use the bathroom first, please? I really have to go.”

“Jesus Christ. Cross your legs and hold it.”

“I’ve been holding it, Mr. Reuben. If I could just use the bathroom, real quick, I’d make you a nice plate of food.” She cast her eyes down. “I could leave the door open. Please?”

“You better piss fast. I don’t like how long you take, I’ll start breaking your mama’s fingers.”

“I’ll be fast.” She hurried toward the bathroom right off the living room.

She put the lamp on the back of the toilet, then, yanking down her pants, prayed that nerves and simple embarrassment wouldn’t clamp her bladder shut. She shot a quick glance at the window over the tub. Too small, she knew, for her to wiggle out of. Carter could probably make it. If she could convince Reuben to let Carter use the bathroom, she’d tell Carter to try to get out.

She hopped up, flushing with one hand, reaching up to ease open the medicine cabinet with the other. “Yes, sir!” she called back when Reuben shouted at her to hurry the hell up.

She grabbed the little bottle of her mother’s Valium from the top shelf, stuffed it into her pocket.

When Phoebe came out, Reuben shoved her mother so that Essie went sprawling toward the sofa. “You there, Dave? I’m going to have me a little bite to eat. If the electric isn’t on by the time I finish, I’m going to play eenie meenie miny mo and kill one of these kids. You go make that sandwich, Phoebe. And don’t be stingy with the potato salad.”

It was a shotgun house, and small with it. Phoebe made sure she stayed in his line of sight as she took the ham and the salad out of the refrigerator.

She could hear him talking to Dave, and struggled to keep her hands steady while she got out a plate and a saucer. A million dollars? Now he wanted a million dollars and a Cadillac, along with a free pass over the state line. Stupid as he was mean, Phoebe decided. Using the big blue bowl of potato salad as cover, she dumped pills on the saucer. Using her mother’s pestle, she crushed them as best she could. She dumped a generous scoop of potato salad on the pills, mixed them together.

She slathered mustard on two pieces of bread, slapped some ham and slices of American cheese between them. Maybe if she could get a knife out of the drawer, maybe—

“What’s taking so fucking long?”

Phoebe’s head jerked up. He’d put down the phone—she hadn’t been paying close enough attention—and with the gun jammed under Carter’s chin, was halfway to the kitchen doorway.

“I’m sorry. I just have to get you a fork for the potato salad.” Palming the pill bottle, she turned, yanked open the flatware drawer. She let the bottle drop in as she reached down for a fork. “You want some lemonade, Mr. Reuben? Mama made it fresh just—”

“Get that food out here, girl, and quick.”

She snatched up the plate. It was easy to let the fear show, to let it mask everything else. Seeing the gun under Carter’s jaw overwhelmed even her rage. Her hands shook so the plate bobbed up and down. When he smiled, she understood their fear was part of what he wanted. Giving it to him cost her nothing.

“Put that plate by the phone there, and go sit your skinny ass down on the sofa.”

She did exactly as she was told, but before Phoebe could sit, Reuben lifted his leg to give Carter a solid boot on the ass that sent the boy pitching forward. Essie leaped up, stopping only when Phoebe blocked her way, shot her a fierce look.

Phoebe walked over to pull Carter up herself. “Hush, Carter! Mr. Reuben doesn’t want to hear all that crying while he’s trying to eat.”

“Got some sense.” With a nod, Reuben sat, laid the gun across his lap. He picked up the fork with one hand, the phone with the other. “Don’t know where you came by it with that worthless whore who raised you. Where’s that electric, Dave?” he said into the phone, and took a forkful of potato salad.

While Carter sniffled in their mother’s arms, Phoebe watched Reuben eat. Had she put enough pills in? Enough to make him pass out? The liquor he washed down the food with would help, wouldn’t it?

Maybe it would kill him. She’d read about things like that, pills and liquor. Maybe the son of a bitch would just die.

She leaned down, whispered into Carter’s ear. Her brother shook his head, so she pinched him, hard. “You do just what I say, or I’ll slap you stupid.”

“Shut the hell up over there! Did I tell you to talk?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Reuben. I was just telling him not to cry. He’s gotta pee, too. Can he just go use the bathroom, Mr. Reuben? I’m sorry, Mr. Reuben, but it’ll be an awful mess if he wets his pants. It’ll only take him a minute.”

“Christ’s sake! G’wan, then.”

Phoebe closed her hand over Carter’s, squeezed viciously. “Go on, Carter. Do what you’re told.”

Knuckling his eyes, Carter pushed off the sofa and dragged his heels into the bathroom.

“Mr. Reuben?”

Mama hissed at her to stay quiet, but Phoebe ignored her. Carter could get out. If Reuben didn’t think about him for a few minutes, Carter could get out.

“Do you think if I asked that man to turn on the electric, he would? It’s so hot. Maybe if I asked him, if I told him we’re all so hot, he’d turn it on?”

“Hear that, Dave?” Reuben kicked back in his chair and grinned. His glassy eyes drooped. “Got a kid wants to negotiate with you. Sure, what the fuck. Come on over here.”

When Phoebe stood in front of him, Reuben passed her the phone. And pressed the gun to her belly. “Tell him what I’m doing first.”

Sweat snaked a slow, fat line down her back. Why didn’t the pillswork ? Had Carter wriggled out the window?

“Mister? He’s got the gun at my stomach, and I’m awful scared. We’re so hot. No, we’re not hurt, but we’re so hot it’s going to make ussick . If we could just have the air-conditioning back on, maybe we couldsleep, ’cept we’re so scared I guess we’d need a bunch of sleeping pills or something. Please, mister, would you please turn on the electricity?

“And, sir?” She gripped the phone tighter when Reuben reached for it. When he shrugged, leaned back, the wave of relief was like giddiness. “Could you please give him the money and the car he wants? He’s been real nice to us since I gave him the potato salad I made myself. He even let me go to the bathroom first. We’re all just so tired we might just pass out any minute, you know?”

Reuben held out a hand for the phone, then gave her a nasty little poke with the gun to move her back. “Hear that, Dave? This girl here, she wants the electric back on. Wants me to have the money and that Caddy. Hell no, I didn’t let them get anything to eat, and I won’t till that electric’s back on. Fact, I’m gonna go eenie meenie right now and…Where’s that boy? Where is that little shit?”

“Mr. Reuben, he’s right…” Phoebe shot out her arm as if to point and knocked over the bottle of Wild Turkey. “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I’ll clean it right up. I’ll—”

She went down, pain searing over her face as the back of his hand slammed against her cheek. “Stupid bitch!” He lurched up, staggered. Phoebe looked straight into the barrel of the gun.

Like the wrath of God, Essie leaped off the couch and onto his back.

He bucked; she bit. Her nails scraped like razors down his face as they both screamed, both cursed. Phoebe scrambled back in a crab walk, barely avoiding a bullet as Reuben went down to his knees under Essie’s assault.

“Help us! Help us now!” Phoebe shouted until her lungs burned. She grabbed the bottle, prepared to whale in, but Reuben went down, flat on his face. Weeping, screaming, Essie continued to pound him with her fists, even when the door burst open. Even when men rushed in with guns.

“Don’t shoot us. Don’t shoot us.” Weeping, Phoebe crawled to her mother.

Things slowed down to a dream, it seemed like. And in the dream people walked her through water where voices echoed and the lights hurt her eyes. Once, she fell asleep, and did dream. But the dream was so scary she pushed herself awake again.

Mama had to have X-rays of her face to make sure her cheekbone wasn’t broken, and stitches to close the gash. Phoebe sat in the little room in the hospital. She didn’t want to lie down, didn’t want to sleep again and fall back into the dream where the gun exploded, and the bullet—like a live thing—hunted her down and killed her.

Carter slept curled up in a ball on the narrow bed. His fists were clenched, and off and on his body twitched like a horse’s did when flies landed on it.

Doctors and nurses and police came in and out, and asked questions. When they did, she wanted them to go away. When they went away, she wished they’d come back so she wasn’t alone.

But there’d been water to drink, to wash the grit that had coated her throat. And then icy Coca-Cola, straight from the bottle.

She wanted her mother. She wanted Mama so bad it hurt worse than Reuben’s hand across her face.

When a man came in with a big McDonald’s takeout bag, the smell of burgers and fries had her stomach jittering with sudden and acute hunger.

He smiled at her, glanced at Carter, then came over to sit beside Phoebe on the bed. “Thought you might be hungry. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather skip the hospital food. I’m Dave.”

She knew she stared, knew it was rude. But she’d expected Dave to be old—older anyway. He looked barely older than the high school boys Phoebe liked to sigh over in secret. His hair was a light brown with a lot of curl to it, his eyes shades lighter and blue. He wore a dark blue shirt, open at the collar. And he smelled just a little sweaty.

He held out his hand, but when Phoebe offered hers, he didn’t shake it. He held it, firm, just the way his eyes held hers. “I’m really happy to meet you, Phoebe. Really happy to see you.”

“I’m glad to meet you, too.”

Then she did what she hadn’t done in all the hours inside the hot little house, in all the time she’d waited while her brother slept.

She cried.

Dave sat, held her hand. He didn’t say a thing. At one point he got up, dug up a box of tissues and put them in her lap. When her tears slowed, he pulled the Quarter Pounders and fries out of the bag.

“My mama,” Phoebe began.

“She’s going to be fine. I checked on her, and I asked if I could have a little time with you before they took you and your brother to her, or brought her to you. Looks like he could use some sleep anyway.”

“I guess.”

“I know you were scared, but you were smart, too, and you were brave.”

“I wasn’t brave. I was mad.” She picked up the burger, bit in. Her stomach clenched as if deciding whether or not it would accept the food. Then it relaxed again. “Carter was brave for climbing out the window.”

“He said you told him to, that you said you’d slap him stupid if he didn’t do it.”

She flushed a little because she was forbidden to hit her brother. Even though there were occasions she judged he’d earned it enough for her to break the rule.

“I guess I did.”

“Why?”

“Reuben would’ve hurt him. He’d’ve hurt him bad before he hurt me, or even Mama again. Because he’s the baby, and Reuben knows Mama loves him more than anything.”

“You’d already put the pills in the food before you told Carter to climb out the window.”

“I should’ve put more in. I wasn’t sure how many. You knew what I was trying to tell you, right away.” She picked up a fry. “I felt better when I was talking to you.”

“It was smart of you to find a way to tell me you put something in his food. It bought me just a little more time.”

“How come you didn’t turn the electric back on? He got so mad about that.”

“Well, you know how you talked him into letting you go to the bathroom before you fixed his food? It’s kind of like that. You try to get something back, like an exchange. Fact was, I was about to when we spotted Carter climbing out the window. I wanted to keep Reuben talking—or let you talk—while we got Carter to safety and figured out the new situation. Did you knock over the bottle to distract him, so he’d be mad at you and forget about Carter?”

“I figured he’d hit me, but I didn’t know he’d get that mad. I think he’d have shot me if Mama hadn’t jumped on him. I should’ve given him more pills, is what. Then it wouldn’t have taken so long for him to pass out. Mama wouldn’t’ve had the pills if it wasn’t for him. That’s irony.” She smiled a little when Dave laughed. “I learned about irony in English class. She got the pills because he made her so upset and nervous. He pretended to be nice when he met her, when they started going out. But he started picking on her, and us, and pushing his weight around. He slapped her once, right across the face.”

“She had a restraining order on him.”

Phoebe nodded. “She told him she wouldn’t see him anymore and to go away. But he kept coming around, or going to her work. Following her in his car. I think more than that, but she wouldn’t tell me. He came to the house one night, too, drunk, and she called the police. They made him go away, but that’s all they did.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t do more.”

“They told her she could get that restraining order, so she did. I don’t see how it helped her any.”

“No. I’m sorry about that, too. It seems to me, Phoebe, your mother did everything right, everything she could do to protect herself and her family.”

Phoebe stared down at the paper napkin balled in her fist. “Why didn’t he just go away when she said she didn’t want him?”

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t the answer she wanted, Phoebe decided. Worse, it was kin to a lie. She hated when grown-ups lied because they didn’t think you could understand.

Phoebe ate more fries and shook her head. “Maybe you don’t know exactly, but you sort of do. You just think I won’t understand ’cause I’m only twelve—almost twelve. But I understand lots of things.”

He studied her another moment, as if he could read something on her face like the words in a book. “Okay, I do sort of know, or I have an opinion. I think he’s mean, he’s a bully, and he didn’t like the idea of anyone telling him what to do, or what he could have, especially a woman like your mother. So he tried to scare her and intimidate her, and he got madder and madder because it wasn’t working the way he wanted. I think he wanted to hurt her, to show her he was the boss, and it got out of hand, even for him.”

Phoebe ate another fry. “I think he’s a son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, that, too. Now he’s going to be a son of a bitch in jail, for a long time.”

She thought about this as she sucked on the Coke he’d brought her. “On TV, they usually shoot the bad guy. The SWAT team shoots him.”

“I like it better when nobody gets shot. What you did in there? It helped it work out so nobody died. Dying’s a short end, Phoebe. I know you’re tired, and you want to see your mother.” He stood, then pulled a card out of his pocket. “I want you to know you can call me anytime. You need to talk about all this again, or ask questions, or you need help with anything, you just call me.”

She took the card and read: Detective David Mc Vee. “Carter, too? And Mama?”

“Absolutely. Anything, Phoebe, anytime.”

“Okay, thanks. Thanks for the burger and fries.”

“My pleasure, that’s a fact.” This time when he offered his hand, he shook hers. “You take care of yourself, and your family.”

“I will.”

When he left, Phoebe put his card in her pocket. She rolled up the takeout bag to help keep the food Dave had brought for Carter warm, shoved the trash in the waste bin.

She crossed to the window to look out. The sun had come up. She didn’t know when dawn had broken or how long it had been light. But she knew the dark hours were over.

When the door opened and her mother stood there, her arms open wide, Phoebe all but flew into them.

“Mama, Mama, Mama.”

“My sweet girl. My baby girl.”

“Your face. Mama—”

“It’s all right. I’m all right.”

How could it be all right with that line of stitches running down her mother’s lovely cheek, marring her soft, soft skin? When her sparkling blue eyes were dull and the bruising crawled out around them?

But Essie put her hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. “It’s nothing. We’re safe, we’re all safe. That’s everything. Oh God, Phoebe, I’m so sorry.”

“Not you. Not you.” Tears spilled again as Essie brushed kisses over the bruise on Phoebe’s jaw. “Mama, it wasn’t your fault. Dave even said so.”

“I let Reuben into our lives. I opened the door to him. That much, at least, is my fault.” She stepped away to walk over, to lean over Carter and rest her cheek on his head. “God, God, if anything had happened to you, to either of you, I don’t know what I’d do. You got him out,” she murmured. “You got Carter out of the house. It’s more than I did.”

“No, Mama—”

“I’ll never look at you quite the same way again, Phoebe.” Essie straightened. “I’ll always look at you and see my little girl, my own baby girl, but now, every time I look at you, I’ll see a hero.”

“You beat him down to the floor,” Phoebe reminded her. “I guess you’re a hero, too.”

“Maybe at the end of it. Well, I hate to wake him up, but I don’t want to stay in this hospital anymore.”

“Can we go home now?”

Essie brushed a hand over Carter’s hair, faced her daughter again. “We’re never going back there. I never want to go inside that place again. I’m sorry. I’d never feel safe.”

“But where can we go?”

“We’re going to stay with Cousin Bess. I called her, and she said we’re to come.”

“To the big house?” The idea of it had Phoebe’s eyes opening wide. “But you and Cousin Bess don’t hardly speak. You don’t even like her.”

“This morning, she’s my favorite person in the world, save you and Carter. And we’re going to be grateful to her, Phoebe, for opening her home to us when we need it.”

“She didn’t open it to us when Daddy died, or when—”

“Now she is.” Essie snapped out the words. “And we’re grateful to her. It’s what we have to do.”

“For now?”

“It’s what we have to do,” Essie repeated.

They rode to Cousin Bess’s in a police car while Carter wolfed down the cold burger and fries, gulped down the Coke. They circled the park with the fountain sparkling in the air. The grand old house was rosy brick and soft white trim; it was lush with green lawn and tended flowers and draping trees.

It was a world away from the tiny shotgun house where Phoebe had lived for more than eight of her twelve years.

She noted her mother’s back was poker straight as they climbed up the stone steps to the front door, so she stiffened hers as well.

Mama rang the bell like company would, rather than family. The woman who answered the door was young and bright and beautiful. She made Phoebe think of a movie star with her golden fall of hair and slender build.

There was sympathy on her face as she held out her hands to Essie. “Mrs. Mac Namara, I’m Ava Vestry, Ms. Mac Namara’s personal assistant. Come in, come in. Your rooms are all ready for you. You must be exhausted, so I’ll take you right up. Or if you’d rather have some breakfast, or some tea?”

“They don’t need anyone fussing over them.”

Cousin Bess made the announcement from the curve of the grand stairs. She stood, dressed in a crow-black dress, her thin face pinched with disapproval. Her hair was as gray as a Brillo pad with odd wings of black at either temple.

Now, as always, the first glimpse of her father’s cousin made Phoebe think of the mean Almira Gulch, come to stuff Toto in her basket.

Wicked old witch.

“Thank you for taking us in, Cousin Bess,” Mama said in the same quiet voice she’d used when Reuben had a gun to her head.

“Doesn’t surprise me you got yourself into a mess. The three of you are to wash, thoroughly, before you sit at my table or lie on my sheets.”

“I’ll see to it, Ms. Mac Namara.” Ava turned her beautiful, compassionate smile onto Phoebe, then Carter. “Maybe the children are hungry. Maybe after their bath, I could ask the cook to make pancakes or—”

Apparently the idea of more food after the horrors of the night, the burger, the fries, the ride in a police car, was too much for Carter’s stomach. It tossed up the Quarter Pounder right there on Cousin Bess’s antique Aubusson carpet.

Mortified, exhausted, Phoebe just closed her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t been shot and killed, but she was sure her life was over.

Mama had tended Cousin Bess’s house for twenty years now, scrubbing, polishing, arranging. She’d served that demanding old woman until the day she died.

Through those two decades, the house had become Essie’s world—not just her home, or even her sanctuary. Her entire world. And what was outside it, her fears. It had been nearly a decade since Essie had gone beyond its terraces, its courtyard.

Reuben’s death in prison hadn’t broken those locks for her, Phoebe thought as she rose to put her gun in the lockbox on the top shelf of her closet. The bitter end to Cousin Bess’s bitter life hadn’t thrown the doors open for her.

In fact, it seemed to Phoebe those events had simply added more and stronger locks.

If Cousin Bess had done the right thing, the kind thing and—fat chance—passed the house to her mother instead of shackling Phoebe to it, would things have been different? Better? Would her mother be able to walk out of the house, stroll over to the park, pop in and visit a neighbor?

They’d never know.

Where would she herself be now if not for that night? Would she have married Roy? Would she have found a way to keep her marriage together, to give her daughter the father she deserved?

She’d never know that either.

So they’d have the lilies in the parlor, order pizza, and settle in together for a Friday night at home.

And Phoebe would go out to dinner Saturday—just this once. There was too much in her life already that needed tending without adding a man to it.

She’d cried when she spoke to Roy last, yes, she had. But those tears had mostly been anger. She’d shed most of the sorrow and disappointment long before, when Carly had been only a baby.

Too much that needed tending, Phoebe thought again as she changed.

She glanced at the blush pink lilies in the cobalt-blue vase on her dresser. Flowers were lovely. But blooms faded and died.

6

Still, flowers and an evening of girl movies smoothed out a lot of edges. At the end of the marathon, Phoebe carried her sleeping daughter to bed. Any-o’clock made it to just past midnight this time.

Twenty minutes later, Phoebe was as deeply asleep as her daughter.

The sound of the doorbell had her bolting straight up in bed. She rolled out, glancing at the bedside clock—three-fifteen—before snatching up her robe. She was already at the steps and starting down when Essie and Ava came out of their rooms.

“Was that the doorbell?” Essie clutched her robe closed at the neck, and her knuckles were white. “At this hour?”

“Probably just kids fooling around. You stay up here with Carly, okay? In case it woke her.”

“Don’t open the door. Don’t—”

“Don’t worry, Mama.”

That twenty-year-old fear, Phoebe knew, was always waiting to push off from the bottom of the dark pool toward the surface.

“I’ll go with you. Probably just a couple half-drunk teenagers playing pranks,” Ava said before Phoebe could object.

No point in making it bigger than it was, Phoebe decided, and let Ava walk down with her. “She’ll be upset the rest of the night,” Phoebe murmured.

“I’ll see she takes a sleeping pill if she needs it. Stupid kids.”

Phoebe peered through the pattern of textured glass on the panel of the front door and saw nothing. They’d run off, she thought, likely laughing hysterically as kids would over waking up a household.

But when she rose to her toes to study the veranda more carefully, she saw it.

“Go on up, Ava, tell Mama it was nothing. Just kids being a nuisance.”

“What is it?” Ava clutched at Phoebe’s arm. “Is there something out there?”

“Go on up and tell Mama. I don’t want her scared. Tell her I’m just getting a glass of water while I’m down here.”

“What is it? I’ll go up and get Steven’s baseball bat. Don’t you open that door until—”

“Ava, nobody’s out there, but I need to open this door, and I can’t until you go up and tell Mama everything’s fine. She’s working herself up into a state by now. You know she is.”

“Damn it.” Loyalty to Essie overrode the rest. “I’m coming right back.”

Phoebe waited until Ava was up the stairs before she unlocked the door. She scanned the street—right, left, across—but her gut told her whoever had rung the bell was gone. She had only to crouch down to pick up what lay on the doorstep. Then she shut the door and relocked it before carrying it into the kitchen to set it on the table.

The doll had bright red hair. It had probably been long hair once but had been crudely hacked off. Whoever had done it had stripped it, bound its hands with clothesline, affixed a square of duct tape across its mouth. Red paint was splattered and smeared over the doll to simulate blood.

“Oh my God, Phoebe!”

Phoebe held up a hand, continued to study the doll. “Carly? Mama?”

“Carly slept through it. I told Essie it was nothing, and you were staying down just a little while in case those kids came back so you could give them a scare and a piece of your mind.”

“Good.”

“That horrible thing.” Ava laid the ball bat she’d snatched out of her son’s closet on the table beside it.

“Honey, why don’t you get me the camera from the server drawer? I want to take some pictures for my files.”

“But shouldn’t you call the police?”

“Ava, you’re always forgetting Iam the police.”

“But—”

“I’ll be taking it in, but I want my own pictures. Don’t worry, whoever did this isn’t coming back tonight. He delivered the message. And don’t tell Mama about this,” Phoebe added as she went into the tool drawer for a measuring tape. “Not yet.”

“Of course I won’t tell her. Phoebe, I wish you’d call Dave. I wish you’d call Dave right now and tell him someone put thisthing that’s meant to be you right on the doorstep.”

“I’m not going to wake Dave at this hour. There’s nothing he can do.” Phoebe rubbed a hand on Ava’s arm as she walked back to the table. “But I’ll talk to him about it, I promise. Get me that camera now, all right?”

She measured, took pictures, then double bagged the doll in plastic, tucked it into a shopping bag and stowed it in the foyer closet.

Essie called out softly as Phoebe passed her bedroom door. “Honey? Everything all right?”

“It’s fine.” Phoebe stopped in Essie’s doorway. Her mother looked so young and vulnerable in the big old bed. “Excitement’s over for the night. You going to be able to get back to sleep?”

“I think so. Kids pulling pranks. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t let them know it bothered you. ’Night, Mama.”

In her bedroom, Phoebe set the alarm for six. She’d take the doll into the precinct, file a report, be home again before anyone knew she’d gone out. She’d ask Sykes to look into it. He was solid and smart. If the doll could be traced, he’d trace it.

Nobody, nobody was going to upset her family.

As she lay sleepless in the dark, already knowing she wouldn’t need the alarm, she wondered where Arnie Meeks had been at three-fifteen.

It had been enough to see the lights come on in her fancy house. Flash, flash, flash. Enough to see that before he’d bolted into the park, into the trees. Into the dark.

But it had been even better—a nice bonus—to see her open the door and pick up her little present. Worth the time, worth the trouble, yeah, to see her come out for his gift.

Just some foreplay, bitch, he thought as he drove home. Just a little tickle before the main event.

He wasn’t nearly finished with Phoebe Mac Namara.

She’d have canceled the date if it wouldn’t have made the incident the night before too important. And if canceling wouldn’t have meant answering a dozen questions from her mother, and even from Carly.

She’d already answered her share that morning as it had taken her longer than she’d hoped to deliver the evidence, make a report, get home again on the damn CAT. At least she’d had the foresight to wear sweats so she could use the excuse—simply lie, Phoebe admitted—and say she’d gone for an early run in the park.

Then, of course, Carly had walked her feet off during the afternoon. The battle of wills over the purchase of the “cutest” outfit had tried her patience so that she and her daughter werenot on the best of terms when they’d returned home—Carly to sulk in her room and Phoebe to escape to the courtyard chaise with a broad-brimmed hat on her head.

Now she had to go out to dinner, she thought, as, after refusing all opinions, she pulled out her all-purpose black dress. If it was good enough for weddings, funerals and the occasional cocktail party, it was good enough for a dinner date.

The fashionista gene had skipped a generation, she decided with some irritation, along with the curls and dimples.

She started to put her hair up, but fiddling with it made her think of the rudely shorn hair on the doll. She left it down. And while she knew her family would have preferred a little time to grill her date—and for Phoebe to make an entrance down the stairs—she made sure she was in the parlor well before seven.

And at the door first when the bell rang.

“Hello, Duncan.”

“First let me say: Wow. Then, hello, Phoebe.”

She stepped back, raised her eyebrows at the nosegay of pink rosebuds he carried. “You already sent me flowers, which are gorgeous, by the way.”

“Glad you liked them. This isn’t for you.” He glanced around the foyer. “I like your house.”

“We do, too.”

“Phoebe, aren’t you going to invite the man past the foyer, introduce him?” Essie stepped out of the parlor, aimed a smile at Duncan. “I’m Essie Mac Namara, Phoebe’s mother.”

“Ma’am.” He took the hand she offered. “It sounds like a line, but has to be said anyway. I can see where Phoebe gets her impressive looks.”

“Thank you. I’m pleased it had to be said. Come on into the parlor. My son and his wife aren’t here, but I’ll introduce you to the rest of the family. Ava, this is Phoebe’s friend Duncan.”

“I’m so pleased to meet you.”

“Phoebe didn’t mention so many beauties in the family. She did mention you.” He smiled over at Carly. “I went for pink.” He held out the flowers.

“Isn’t that sweet!” Essie had already melted. “Carly, this is Mr. Swift. And I believe those are your first roses from a gentleman caller.”

The sulky child tumbled into a coy female. “They’re mine?”

“Unless you hate pink.”

“I like pink.” She flushed nearly the color of the buds she took from him. “Thank you. Gran, can I pick a vase for them myself? Can I?”

“Of course you can. Mr. Swift, can I offer you something to drink?”

“Duncan. I—”

“We should go,” Phoebe interrupted. “The dazzle in here’s getting blinding.” She picked up a jacket from the back of a chair. “I won’t be late.”

“Ouch,” Duncan said.

Ignoring him, Phoebe bent to kiss Carly’s cheek. “Behave.”

“You enjoy yourselves,” Essie said. “And Duncan, you be sure to come back.”

“Thanks. Next time I’ll have to bring a meadow. Nice to meet you all.”

Phoebe knew very well there were three faces plastered to the parlor window when Duncan opened the car door for her. She sent him a thoughtful look, then slipped inside.

She sent him the same look when he got behind the wheel. “Are you trying to clear the path by charming my daughter?”

“Absolutely. Now that I know about your mother and Ava, I’ll work on them.”

“Now I have to decide whether to appreciate your honesty or be insulted by it.”

“Let me know when you make up your mind. Meanwhile, do you hate boats?”

“Why?”

“Because if you hate boats I need to make an adjustment. So, do you?”

“No, I don’t hate boats.”

“Good.” He flipped out a cell phone, punched a number. “Duncan. We’re on the way. Good. Great. Thanks.” He clicked it closed. “Your daughter looks like your mother. The dimples missed you.”

“To my great sadness.”

“How’s Ava related?”

“Not by blood, but she’s still family.”

He nodded in a way that told her he understood completely. “And you have an older brother.”

“Younger. Carter’s younger.”

“Okay. Do he and his wife live in that great house with you, too?”

“No, they have their own place. What made you think to bring Carly roses?”

“Ah…Well, I don’t know much about seven-year-old girls, and didn’t know if this specific one went for dolls or footballs. There was also the possibility you’re one of those sugar Nazis, so that eliminated the candy route. Figured I sent you flowers, and she’d probably get a kick out of getting some, too. Is there a problem?”

“No. No. I’m complicating it, and it was a sweet gesture. She’ll never forget it. A girl doesn’t forget the first time a man gives her flowers.”

“I don’t have to marry her or anything, do I?”

“Not for another twenty years.”

After he’d parked, Phoebe assumed they were going to one of the restaurants along River Street. Something with a view, she supposed, even alfresco dining, which made her glad for the jacket.

Instead he led her to the pier, past a few boats, and to a graceful, gleaming white sailboat. There was a table on deck under a white cloth. Tea lights under a little dome in the center.

“This would be yours.”

“If you hated boats, we were going for pizza, and this relationship would probably have ended with the last pepperoni.”

“Fortunately for me I like boats. I had pizza last night.”

She let him help her on board, adjusted to the sway. As first dates went, though she supposed technically this was their second, it had a lot of potential.

“Do you do a lot of sailing?”

“I live over on Whitfield Island.”

“Ah.” That answered that. She walked to the rail, looked across the river. “Did you always live on Whitfield?”

“No. Didn’t plan to.” He took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, began to work out the cork. “It just sort of happened and I got to like it.”

“Like winning the lottery.”

“More or less.”

She turned at the sound of the cork popping.

“So this part?” he began. “It’s the showing-off part. The boat, champagne, fancy food—which is under the table in a warming bin. But it’s also because I thought it would be nice to eat out on the water, just you and me.”

“The showing-off part’s a bull’s-eye. The just-you-and-me part is problematic. Not for dinner, but as a concept.”

He poured the wine. “Because?”

She leaned back against the rail, wallowing in the breeze and the sway. “I have layers of complications.”

“Single parent, complex career.”

“Yes.” She took the wine. “And more.”

“Such as?”

“Long stories.”

“So you said before. I’m not in any hurry.”

“All right, let’s just start this way. I loved my ex-husband when I married him.”

He leaned back with her. “Always a good plan.”

“I thought so. I loved him very much, even though I knew, I understood going in, we weren’t on equal terms.”

“I don’t get it.”

“He didn’t love me very much. He couldn’t. He just isn’t built for it.”

“Sounds like excuses.”

“No. No. Easier if they were. He was never abusive, never—to my knowledge—unfaithful. But he couldn’t put his whole self into the marriage. I was sure I could fix that, I could work with that. Then I got pregnant. He wasn’t upset or angry. After Carly was born…There was just nothing,” she said after a moment. “No connection, no bond, no curiosity. He coasted, we coasted for nearly a year that way. Then he told me he wanted out. He was sorry, but it just wasn’t what he was looking for. He decided he wanted to travel. Roy’s like that. Impulsive. He married me on impulse, agreed to start a family on one. Neither really satisfied him, so, on to the next.”

He tucked her hair behind her ear again, just that casual swirl of finger around the curve. “Does Carly ever see him?”

“No. Really no. And actually handles the situation better than I do. That’s only one complication.”

“Okay, give me another.”

“My mother’s agoraphobic. She hasn’t been out of that house in ten years. She can’t.”

“She didn’t seem—”

“Crazy?” Phoebe interrupted. “She’s not.”

“I wasn’t going to say crazy, hair-trigger. I was going to say nervous around strangers. Such as me.”

“It’s not the same thing. In the house, she’s fine. She understands and feels safe inside the house.”

“It must be rough on her.” He ran the back of his hand down Phoebe’s arm. “And you.”

“We deal with it. She fought it a long time, about as long as she hasn’t been able to fight it. She fought it for me and my brother. So now Carter and I—and Ava and Carly—deal with it.”

“You’ve got some rough stuff.” He turned, shifted so he was facing her, so his free hand rested on the rail by her elbow.

So she could feel him, the pull of him as their eyes met and held. “But I don’t understand what it has to do with you and me as a concept.”

Right that minute, she was trying to understand it herself. “My family and my work take nearly all my time, all my energy.”

“You may be laboring under the mistaken impression I’m high-maintenance.” He took her glass, moved back to the bottle. He topped hers off, then his own. When he went back to her, he leaned in first, laid his lips on hers. “Got a zing going there.”

Oh, God, yeah. “Zings are easy.”

“Have to start somewhere. I like here. Sexy redhead, beautiful night, bubbles in the wine. Hungry?”

“More than I like.”

He smiled. “Why don’t you sit down? There’s supposed to be some sort of cold lobster deal in the cold box inside. I’ll go get it. You can tell me some more long stories while we eat.”

She wasn’t going to tell him anything else about her life, her family. Keep it light, she decided. All on the surface. But he had a way, and somehow between the lobster salad and the medallions of beef, she let him in.

“I wonder how a girl from Savannah aims for the FBI and trains to talk people off ledges, for instance, then circles back to the local police. Did you play cops with your Barbies?”

“I didn’t much like Barbies, really. All that blond hair, those big breasts.”

“Which is why I loved them.” He laughed when she only blinked at him. “What? You figure Malibu Barbie isn’t going to start a ten-year-old boy thinking?”

“I do now. Unfortunately.”

“So if it wasn’t Barbies, what started you on the road? G.I. Joe?”

“Joe’s a soldier. It was Dave Mc Vee.”

“Dave Mc Vee? I must’ve missed him during my action-figure stage.”

“He’s a person and, though he’s a hero, has never been a toy—that I’m aware of.”

“Ah.” He refilled their glasses and enjoyed the way the lights played over that porcelain skin, those clever cat’s eyes. “High-school crush? First love?”

“Neither. Hero, first and last. He saved us.”

When she said nothing more, Duncan shook his head. “You know you can’t leave it there.”

“No, I suppose I can’t. My father was killed when my mother was pregnant with Carter. My younger brother.”

“That’s rough.” He laid his hand over hers. “Seriously rough. How old were you?”

“Four, nearly five. I remember him, a little. But I remember more it broke something in Mama that took a long time to heal, and it never healed all the way. I know now, being a trained observer who’s educated in psychology, that his death likely laid the groundwork for her agoraphobia. She had to go out to work, had to haul us around. No choice at all. But for years she kept mostly to herself.”

“She had a choice,” Duncan disagreed. “She chose to do what needed to be done to take care of her family.”

“Yes, you’re right. And she did take care. Then she met this man. She met Reuben. He’d come by, fix things for her. Little household things. I could see, being a girl of almost twelve, the flirt was on between them. It was odd, but my father’d been gone a long time, and it was nice, too, to see her get all flushed and foolish.”

“You wanted her to be happy.”

“I did. He was nice to us, at first Reuben was awful nice to us. Playing catch with Carter out in the yard, bringing us candy, taking Mama out to the movies and such.”

“But he didn’t stay nice. I can hear it,” Duncan said when she looked at him. “I can hear it in your voice.”

“No, he didn’t stay nice. They’d slept together. I’m not sure how I knew it, even then. But she opened herself up enough, after all those years, to be with him that way.”

“And that’s when it changed?”

“Yeah. He got possessive, proprietary, critical. He’d pick on us, all three of us really, but make it like a joke. Carter, especially Carter got the digs. Boy couldn’t find his ass with both hands, ha ha ha. A man never grew balls reading books. And so on. He started coming over every night, expecting Mama to have dinner hot on the table, shoo us off so he could grope her. She wouldn’t, and he’d get pissy. Started drinking a lot. I expect he always did, but he drank more at the house than he had at first.

“And this is terrible dinner conversation.”

“I’d like to hear the rest. My father drank more than his share, so I know what it’s like. Finish it off.”

“All right. One day he came by when Mama was still at work. It was just Carter and me. He’d been drinking, and he popped open another beer, then a second one and pushed it at Carter. Told him it was time he learned to drink like a man. Carter didn’t want it. God, he was only seven. Carter told him to go away, leave him alone, and Reuben smacked him, right in the face, for sass. Well, I sassed him then, you can believe it.”

The old rage bubbled straight up. “I told him to get the hell out of our house, to keep his fat hands off my brother. Well, he smacked me, too. And that’s when Mama came in. I’ll tell you something, Duncan, up to that point I loved her. She worked so hard, she did her best. But I never thought she had any backbone. Not until she walked in and saw me and Carter on the floor and that son of a bitch standing over us taking off his belt.”

She paused a moment, took a sip of wine. “He was going to use it on us, going to teach us a lesson. Mama lit into him like ball lightning. Of course, he was twice her size, and drunk, so he knocked her clear across the room. She was screaming at him to get out, to stay away from her babies, and I told Carter to run, to run to the neighbor’s, call the police. When I was sure he’d gotten far enough away, I started screaming, too, saying the police were coming. Reuben called me and Mama names I wasn’t yet acquainted with, but he went.”

“You kept your head.” His hand gripped hers on the table now, a solid link. “You were smart.”

“I was scared. I wanted the police because the police are supposed to help. They came, and they talked to my mother. I don’t want to say they talked her out of filing charges, but they didn’t encourage it. They took his name, said they’d go talk to him. They probably did. I don’t know all that happened, just some. I know he went by her work, apologized to her. I know he came by the house with flowers, but she wouldn’t let him in. I’d see him sitting outside in his car, just sitting there watching the house. And once, at least once that I saw, he grabbed her when she was outside, tried to pull her into his car. I called the police again then, and some of the neighbors came out, so he took off again. And Mama, she took out a restraining order. That’s what they told her she should do.”

“They didn’t arrest him.”

“I think they may have put him in holding for a few hours, and they gave him a stern talking-to. So a few nights later, he got liquored up, got his gun, and he broke into the house. He hit Mama so hard she still has a little scar here.” Phoebe traced her fingers over her cheek. “He held the gun to her head, and he told me and Carter to go around, lock all the doors, the windows, close the curtains. We were all going to sit ourselves down, have a long talk.

“He kept us in there almost twelve hours. The police came, after a couple hours, I think. Reuben shot a few holes in the wall for sport, and the neighbors called the police. He yelled out he’d kill us all if they tried coming in. The brats first. Pretty soon, the police shut off the power. It was August, it was hot. Then Dave got him on the phone and kept him talking.”

“He talked him into letting you go?”

“He kept him talking. That’s the first rule. As long as Reuben was talking to Dave, he wasn’t killing us. He would have; I could see it. Carter and me. Maybe not Mama because he’d gotten it into his head she belonged to him. But Dave got him talking about fishing. A long conversation about fishing, and kept us alive. But after a while, Reuben got himself worked up again. He was going to hurt Carter, I could feel it. So I distracted him, the way Dave had with the fishing. Between one thing and another, I got into the bathroom, unlocked the window in there, and I told Carter—bullied Carter—into going in first chance, getting out that way.”

“You got your brother out,” Duncan murmured.

“Reuben had a serious hard-on for Carter. He was going to hurt him.”

She told him then about fixing the meal, the sleeping pills. And of sitting in the hospital while they stitched up her mother’s face, talking to Dave.

“He kept my family alive.”

“And you got them out. Twelve years old.”

“I wouldn’t have had a family to get out if it hadn’t been for Dave. We moved into Cousin Bess’s house after that, the house on Jones Street. Dave kept in touch. Lots of longer stories in all of that, but Dave talked to me about hostage and crisis negotiation. He thought I’d have a knack for it, and the perspective of what it’s like on the other side. I wanted to please him, and it sounded exciting. So I trained, and I found out he was right. I have a knack for it.”

She lifted her glass, half toast. “It’s no lottery ticket, but it put me where I am.”

“What happened to Reuben?”

“He died in prison. Pissed someone off enough for that someone to shove a shiv into him multiple times. As a moral woman, as an officer of the law, I’m obliged to deplore that sort of thing. I went out and bought a bottle of champagne, not quite up to these standards, but a very decent bottle. I enjoyed every drop of it.”

“Glad to hear it.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You’ve had an interesting life, Phoebe.”

“Interesting?”

“Well, you can’t claim to have lived in the rut of routine.”

She laughed. “No, I don’t suppose I can.”

“I’ve got some insight now on why I saw that purpose in you when you walked into Suicide Joe’s apartment. And you have the sexiest green eyes.”

She watched him with them as she sipped her champagne. “If you think because I’ve bared my soul, more or less, and have had several glasses of this lovely champagne, I’m going to slide down into the cabin and have wild sex with you, you’re mistaken.”

“Can we negotiate? Any other kind of sex a possibility?”

“I don’t think so, but thanks all the same.”

“How about a walk along the river where I can kiss you in the moonlight?”

“We can start with the walk.”

He rose, took her hand. And as she came to her feet, he simply cupped the back of her neck to draw her mouth to his.

Warm lips and cool air, a hard body and a gentle touch. She gave in, gave up to the moment. Her fingers twined with his and curled tight as she leaned in for more.

He could feel the strength of her under the soft, soft skin. It was that, he knew, that had pulled at him from the first moment. Those contrasts, those complexities. There was nothing simple, nothing ordinary about her.

Yet he thought this could be simple—this one thing—this slowly building heat between them.

So the long, long kiss spun out, hinting of a spark that might flash at any moment, while the deck swayed gently under their feet, and the air blew soft over the water.

She brought her hand to his chest, kept it there a moment as his heart thumped beneath her palm. Then she used it to ease him back.

“Someone else has quite a knack,” she commented.

“I’ve been practicing religiously since I was twelve.” He brought the hand on his chest up, to rub his lips over the knuckles. “I’ve developed a few variations, if you’d like me to demonstrate.”

“I think that was enough of a demonstration for right now. We discussed a walk.”

“Probably best to save the variations. I’m not sure you’re ready.”

“Oh really? Don’t think you can use that kind of maneuver on me. I’m a cop.”

He stepped off, onto the pier, held out a hand for hers. “Variation Seven’s been known to cause temporary unconsciousness.”

“That’s a straight dare.” She stepped from boat to dock. “And I haven’t taken a dare since I was seven. We’re walking, Mr. Swift.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

As they walked, she angled her head to study his face. “Variation Seven?”

“I’m required by law to give the previous warning before use. Now that you’ve been warned, I’m in the clear.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Her laugh floated over the water. And her face, bright with it, filled the field glasses.

He dug into the takeout bag for his fries as he watched her, watched them. And he considered how quick and easy it would be if he had that face of hers in the crosshairs of a rifle scope.

Bang!

Too quick, too easy.

But before much longer, she wouldn’t be laughing.

7

At her desk Monday morning, Phoebe attacked paperwork, returned calls, then squeezed out time to go over her plans for the upcoming training session.

It might have been kicking Arnie Meeks when he was down—and absent—but she wanted to lay out the protocol, procedure and psychology of the first responder’s actions.

Sets the tone, she thought. Arnie had sure as hell set the tone for the Gradey incident. What happened, why it happened, would be strong points made in training, and would illustrate, she hoped, why there were guidelines.

She added a copy of her own report to the day’s packet, added it along with logs and tapes and transcripts from other incidents.

She got to her feet when Dave came into her office. “Captain.”

“Need a minute.”

“Sure, I’ve got a few before a training session. Want coffee?”

“No, thanks.” When he shut the door behind him, the muscles between her shoulder blades tightened.

“Problem?”

“Could be. I got a call from Sergeant Meeks, Arnold Meeks’s father. He’s making noises about filing a complaint against you.”

“For?”

“The unwarranted suspension of his son. Also there was some mention of a legal suit for slander, defamation. He wants a sit-down with you, me and his son’s rep.”

“I’m available for that, at any time. I instructed Arnie he was free to contact his delegate at the time of his suspension. And,” she added, “that’s on the record.”

“You’re going to stand by the thirty-day rip?”

“I am. He violated every guideline. He goaded Gradey, a hostage-taker, into suicide, and he’s lucky Gradey didn’t kill the hostages, too. You read the report, Captain, including the witness statements—civilian and law enforcement.”

“Yeah, I did.” Wearily, Dave rubbed the back of his neck. “He couldn’t have screwed it up more if he’d set out to.”

“I’m not sure he didn’t. That’s not colored by personal dislike,” she continued when Dave frowned. “He’s a power-tripper, and he’s bigoted, sexist and rash. He shouldn’t be a cop.”

“Phoebe, that kind of stand, the bias in it, isn’t going to help hold up your end of this.”

“It’s not bias, it’s fact. And, I believe, the psych eval will bear me out. Dave, he put that mutilated doll outside my house.”

Dave shoved his hands into his pockets, and inside the pockets they curled into fists. “I’m not going to contradict you on that, but you’re going to want to be careful about making that accusation to anyone but me. You’re going to need more to—”

“He called me a bitch to my face, that’s not counting the number of times he’s called me one behind my back. He stood just about where you’re standing now and threatened me. He has no respect for my authority, and, in fact, only contempt for me.”

“Do you think I don’t want him out?” Dave tossed back, and for the first time he let some of the anger, some of the frustration show. “Out of this squad, out of the department? I’ve got no cause to put him off the job, not at this point. And, Phoebe, sitting behind that desk means you have to demand respect for your authority.”

“And so I have,” she said evenly. “Thirty days may give him time to consider that. Captain, he stood in this office and accused me of being behind this desk because I’ve performed sexual acts with you.”

Dave stared at her a moment. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.” He sucked in a breath. “Were there any witnesses to those accusations?”

“No, and I’d turned off the recorder before he made them. But he made them. Very specifically. Which indicates he has as much contempt for you as for me. Moreover, I believe he was about to make a move on me—physically. Detective Sykes interrupted. I don’t like playing it this way. I don’t like spreading this kind of crap around, but the fact is, I think Arnold Meeks is dangerous. So ask Sykes about it.”

“I’ll do that. I’m going to schedule that sit-down for this afternoon. Make sure you’re clear for it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you want to file sexual harassment charges?”

“Not at this time. I’ll stand with the insubordination.”

He nodded, turned toward the door. “You may want to contact your own rep.” He glanced back. “The Meekses have some muscle in the department, connections, history. Keep your ass covered, Phoebe, because even if we’re able to take this asshole down, he could do some damage.”

“I will. Dave? I’m sorry I had to pull you into it this way, this personal way.”

“You didn’t,” Dave said shortly. “He did.”

Trouble, she thought when she was alone again. Trouble was coming. Well, she’d dealt with trouble before. When the morning session was finished, she’d make some time to review Meeks’s jacket, the statements from the Gradey incident and her own personal report of her altercation with Meeks in her office.

Through the glass wall of her office, she saw Dave was already gesturing Sykes toward the break room. A private talk. Her captain’s protective instincts were up, and she was sorry, damn sorry, she’d had to incite them.

But she was damned if Meeks was going to endanger lives, threaten her, upset her family, then pull out his departmental pedigree as a shield.

She didn’t care who his father was.

And right now, she reminded herself, she needed to put this aside and get downstairs. She swung by the PAA on the way through the squad room. “I’m in the conference room for the next ninety minutes.”

“Oh, okay. Lieutenant?” Annie Utz, the squad’s public administrative assistant, sent Phoebe a quick, nervous smile. “I, ah, may have to take a day off later in the week for some, um, personal business.”

“All right. If you can let me know ahead of time, that’d be good. We’ll see the desk is covered.”

“Um…um…Lieutenant?” The smile wavered around the edges. “I know I’m still new and all. But I like working here. I hope I’m doing a good job.”

“You’re doing fine.” Wouldn’t hurt to tone down the makeup and buy the next size up in your shirt, Phoebe thought, but the work itself wasn’t a problem.

“Um…I brought in pralines today. Homemade.” She held up a covered paper plate. “Maybe you’d like one.”

“After the session.”

“You’re taking the stairs, right? The way you run up and down those stairs instead of taking the elevator, sugar sure won’t hurt you.”

“My fondness for sugar is why I run up and down the stairs.”

She hurried out before Annie could make her any later. With the opening of her lecture winding through her mind, she pushed through the door, started the jog down the stairway.

Her carhad to be ready today, she remembered. Had to. She’d call the mechanic during the break and—

She barely saw the flash of movement, had no time to react much less reach her weapon as the attack slammed her against the stairwell wall. Pain burst along with an explosion of fear when her head rammed hard against the concrete. And her vision hazed with red.

Seconds, it took only the few seconds when her instincts were screamingfight and the stun from the blow buckled her knees for tape to slap over her mouth, for her arms to be wrenched back.

Struggling, dizzy from the blow, she tried to bring her heel down, missed the mark. Then she was blind from the hood yanked over her head. Her scream muffled to nothing against the tape as she pitched forward from a violent shove. Shock and pain radiated as her body hit the landing, rolled. She tasted blood, and through the thunder of her own gasps, heard her attacker laugh. Praying for a miracle, she kicked out. And when hands closed around her throat, she thrashed.

Not this way, she couldn’t die this way. Unable to look into the eyes of who killed her. Who took her away from her baby.

Her body bucked, her legs pushed and kicked while her lungs wept for air. When the pressure released, she gasped and gulped it in only to fight to scream it out again when she felt a knife, the point of a knife, cutting through her clothes, and the quick, horrible sting of that point slicking carelessly into her flesh. Hands—gloved hands, part of her mind registered—squeezed her breasts.

It couldn’t be happening. Attack and rape a cop in her own precinct? It was madness. But her kicks and struggles didn’t stop his hands from tearing, from touching, from pushing roughly between her legs.

And she hated herself from the sobs and pleas that babbled behind the tape. Hated that they made him laugh, that they gave him power.

“Don’t worry.” He whispered it, the first words he’d spoken. “I don’t fuck your kind.”

Fresh pain erupted from the blow to her face. She teetered toward unconsciousness, almost welcomed it. Dimly she heard, thought she heard, footsteps.

Someone coming. Please, God. But no, no, leaving. He was leaving. Leaving her alive. She moaned. Everything wept, everything wept with pain. But survival, that primal need to survive, was stronger. She was afraid to roll, to try to get to her knees, to her feet. How close was she to the stairs, how close to a nasty, perhaps fatal, fall?

The cuffs he’d snapped on her bit brutally into her flesh, weighed down by her own body. The need to see—escape, survive—was greater than the need for relief. She hunched her shoulders, turned her head right and left, inching tortuously forward as she tested the ground with her feet. Slowly, keeping a vicious grip on panic, she worked the hood up her face until her chin was clear, her mouth, her nose. Then blessedly her eyes.

And those eyes wheeled around. She could see spots and smears of her own blood on the wall of the stairwell where her head had hit, just as she could taste it in her throat.

But she could see the door below. She had to reach that door, get down the short flight of steps to that door. To survival.

Now she rolled, and her gasp went to a keening as she pushed to her knees. Tattered strips of her shirt and skirt hung on her. The rags of the rest were scattered on the stairs.

He’d left her naked, humiliated, bound. But he’d left her alive.

She used the wall to brace herself, used her trembling legs to push, push, until she could stand, leaning back on the wall. Giddiness and nausea rolled through her, and she prayed she could hold off both until she reached help.

Even as the voice inside her head screamed tohurry, hurry, he could come back, she made herself step carefully down, back to the wall for safety. At the bottom, with her body quivering with fear and exhaustion, she had to find the strength to turn, to grip the door handle with her clammy hands and pull.

She fell through the doorway, into the corridor. Shuddering, she began to crawl.

Someone shouted. She heard it like some dim bell through a fog. And, spent, she collapsed.

She wasn’t out long, the pain wouldn’t allow it, but when she groped back, she was on her side and the rawness around her mouth told her someone had ripped the tape away.

“Get a blanket. Give me your damn jacket, and somebody get a key that’ll open these cuffs. You’re all right, Lieutenant. It’s Liz Alberta. Do you hear me? You’re going to be all right.”

Liz? Phoebe stared into grim brown eyes. Detective Elizabeth Alberta. Yes, yes, she knew that name, she knew those eyes. “The stairwell.” Her voice was a raw wheeze. “He got me in the stairwell.”

“A couple of guys are already in there, checking it out. Don’t worry. Paramedics are coming. Lieutenant.” Liz leaned closer. “Were you raped?”

“No. No, he just…” Phoebe closed her eyes. “No. How bad am I hurt?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“My weapon.” Phoebe’s eyes flew open. “God, my weapon. I couldn’t get to it in time. Did he get my piece?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Hold on, Lieutenant. I’m going to get these cuffs off.”

Phoebe didn’t know who spoke from behind her, kept her eyes trained on Liz. “I need you to take my statement. I want you to take it.”

“That’s what I’m going to do.”

Phoebe couldn’t stop the sharp indrawn breath as the cuffs slipped off, or bite back the whimper when she moved her arms. “I don’t think they’re broken. I don’t think anything’s broken.” She clutched the jacket to her breasts even as someone wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “Can you help me sit up?”

“Maybe you should stay down until—”

There was a rush of footsteps, and a shout. Then Dave was kneeling beside her. “What happened? Who did this?”

“I didn’t see him. He caught me in the stairwell. He put something over my head.” Tears slid down her cheeks to sting the abraded skin. “I think he got my weapon.”

“I’m going to get her statement, Captain, if that’s clear with you. I’ll go with the lieutenant to the hospital and get her statement.”

“Yes.” But he gripped Phoebe’s hand as if he couldn’t bear to let go.

“Don’t call my family. Captain, please don’t call them.”

He gave her hand a squeeze, pushed to his feet. “I want this building searched, floor by floor. This is red status. Nobody comes in or out without a search. I want the whereabouts of every cop and civilian in this building accounted for.”

“It wasn’t a civilian, Captain.” Phoebe spoke quietly as his furious face turned toward her. “It was one of us.”

It all blurred, but Phoebe counted that as a blessing. The paramedics, the ambulance, the ER. There were a lot of voices, a lot of movement, more pain. Then less, blessedly less. She let herself drift while people poked and prodded, lifted. While cuts and scrapes were treated, she kept her eyes closed. When pieces of her were X-rayed, she shut down her mind.

There would be tears, she knew. There would probably be floods of them, but they could wait.

Liz stepped into the exam room. “They said you wanted to talk to me now.”

“Yeah.” Phoebe sat on the exam table. Her ribs ached, that rotted-tooth throb she already knew would give her trouble for days if not weeks. But the sling around her arm eased the pain in her shoulder.

“Mild concussion, bruised ribs, sprained shoulder.”

Liz stepped closer. “Nasty cut on your forehead and a shiner coming on. Split lip. Your jaw’s swollen. Son of a bitch did some work on you.”

“He didn’t kill me, there’s that.”

“Always a plus. Your captain was in. He left after the docs gave him your status. I’m to tell you he’ll come back to take you home when you’re ready.”

“It’s better if he stays at the house, finds…I don’t know what there’ll be to find. I was coming down from my office to the conference room for my training session. That’s habitual. I use the stairs habitually.”

“Claustrophobia?”

“No, vanity. I don’t always have time to work out, so I go for the stairs instead of the elevator. He was waiting for me.”

“You said you didn’t see him.”

“No.” Cautiously, Phoebe touched her fingers to her face, just under her eye. She’d never had a black eye before, never appreciated how much it hurt. “I was going down pretty fast, and I caught just a blur of movement out of the corner of my eye—on the right. Thanks.”

She took the ice bag Liz offered, laid it gently on the side of her face. “He had me before I could even turn my head, before I could reach for my weapon. He knew what he was doing. Disabled me immediately with the blow to the head. Rapped me face-first into the wall, stunned me. Taped my mouth and cuffed me quick. He’s used cuffs before. Anticipated my defensive moves, such as they were, and had the hood on me, or whatever it was.”

“Laundry bag. It’s in evidence. You’re thinking you should have been quicker, fought harder. Don’t.”

“I didn’t get a single lick in. I realize, intellectually, that I was stunned, physically outmatched, and still…My weapon?”

“It hasn’t been recovered.”

The look between them held for a long moment. It was a hard blow when a cop was disarmed. It was a harder one when the cop was female.

“No one’s going to blame you for that, Lieutenant. Not under these circumstances.”

“Some will. You know it, I know it. He knows it. That’s why he took it.”

“Some are idiots. Did you get an idea of height? Build?”

“Not of height. He shoved me and I went down. But he was strong. He choked me at first…” Her fingers traced over the bruises on her throat, and she remembered the feel of those hands cutting off her air. “Choked me when I was down, put his hands around my throat and choked me. He had big hands. Big, strong hands. He wore gloves. I felt…I felt gloves—thin, probably latex—when he groped me. And a knife, maybe scissors, but I think a knife to cut through my clothes.”

“He touched you.”

“He…” Facts, Phoebe ordered herself. Think of them as facts. “He squeezed my breasts. He pulled my nipples, hard. He laughed. Just kind of a wheezing laugh, like he was real tickled and trying to hold it back. He pushed his hand—Shit. Oh shit.”

Anticipating, Liz grabbed a bedpan, shoved it under Phoebe’s face. Held it steady while Phoebe was sick.

Sheet white under the bruises, Phoebe leaned back. “God. God. Sorry.”

“Just take a breath, take your time. Here.” Picking up the plastic cup and straw on the table, Liz offered it. “Drink some water.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’m okay. He put his fingers inside me. Rammed them in. It wasn’t sexual. He just wanted to hurt me, humiliate me. Then, I think he leaned down because his voice was close to my ear. He whispered. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t fuck your kind.’ Then he hit me in the face. And he left me there.”

“Do you have a gauge how long the attack went on?”

“It seemed like forever, but probably two, maybe three minutes. No more than that. He had his plan in place, and he executed it efficiently. It probably took me longer to get the hood off and get down to the door. Altogether, it was probably six or seven minutes.”

“Okay. Did he say anything else? Anything at all?”

“No, he only spoke that one time.”

“Did you notice anything else about him. A scent?”

“No. Wait.” Phoebe closed her eyes again. “Baby powder. I smelled baby powder.”

“How about his voice? Would you recognize it again?”

“I don’t know. We’re trained to pay attention to details, but I was so scared, and the blood was pounding in my head, and the hood. He was local,” she said suddenly. “There was enough of an accent that he sounded like a local.”

“Have you had trouble with anyone? Anyone you think would want to hurt you?”

“You know I have. We may not work the same division, but we work in the same house. You know I have.”

“Do you think it was him? You think it was Arnie Meeks who attacked you?”

“Yes, I do. I can’t prove it, but yes, I think it was. I reported an incident on Saturday morning.”

“What incident?”

She told Liz about the doll.

“I’ll touch base with Detective Sykes on that. And I’ll make some discreet inquiries as to Meeks’s whereabouts this morning.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You weren’t raped, Lieutenant, but you were violated sexually. If you want to talk to a rape counselor, I know a good one.”

“No, but thanks. You’re good at what you do, Detective. I appreciate you being the one to take my statement, to be here.”

“I’ll be following up. I promise you.”

“For now, can you steal me some scrubs so I can get out of here?”

“Why don’t I call someone for you. If you don’t want the captain, someone else. Have them bring you some clothes, take you home?”

Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t want to go home until after I’ve had my breakdown, which is going to come along pretty soon now.”

“Anyone else I can call for you?”

“Actually…” Phoebe touched her fingertips to the trio of butterfly bandages that closed the wound on her forehead. “There’s a friend, if he’s around.”

The old building had potential. Of course its current owner was giving the deal what Duncan thought of as the pitch-and-wish. He let that play in one side of his brain while the other side played with the possibilities.

The warehouse was currently a dump, and no question about it. But it could be transformed into very decent apartments—close enough to the plants and the docks to fill up with blue-collar families. Reasonable space for a reasonable rent. Well off the tourist track, of course, well apart from the green elegance of the historic district. But toss maybe a bakery or a coffee shop on the first floor, a deli or a small family restaurant, and you’d get a return on your investment. Eventually.

Good thing he wasn’t in a hurry for it.

The rank and file of the city needed good, safe housing as well as the rest. He should know. He’d been one of them most of his life.

Phin stood with the owner, shaking his head as Duncan wandered. That was Phin’s fine skill, in Duncan’s opinion. Just putting on that dour, disapproving look could lasso the pitch-and-wish and yank it back toward reality.

The guy wanted the moon for the dilapidation, figuring he had a bright gold fish on the line. Duncan didn’t mind being thought of as a fish, especially since he’d already set his maximum offer at a couple of asteroids.

When his cell phone rang, he was studying a trio of broken windows. He kept studying them while he pulled it out. “Yeah, this is Duncan. What? When? How?”

He turned when Phin, obviously hearing the alarm in his tone, crossed the pocked concrete floor to him. “Where? Okay, all right,” he said a moment later. “I’m on my way. I have to go.” Already heading for the doors, Duncan shoved the phone into his pocket.

“Mr. Swift,” the owner began.

“Personal emergency. Do what you do,” he said to Phin and rushed outside to his car.

A dozen horrific images flashed and burned into his mind as he set the car racing toward the hospital. The woman who’d identified herself as Detective Alberta said Phoebe was being released, he reminded himself. She couldn’t be that badly hurt if they were releasing her from the hospital.

Then again, the detective had been very brief. Coplike, Duncan thought in annoyance as he was forced to brake for a red light.

She hadn’t said how; she hadn’t said how bad. And when was this fucking light going to turn green?

Maybe she’d been shot. Jesus, Jesus.

He peeled out when the light changed. He threaded his way through traffic, then chewed his way through more. Years of hacking had taught him how to get from point to point fast—or how to get there round about and pad the fare.

He swung into the parking lot, cursing bitterly as he searched for a space. By the time he found one and was running for the ER doors, he’d worked himself up into a frantic mix of nerves and temper.

He’d have run right by her if not for the hair. The beacon of red caught his eye, had him stopping, spinning back around.

She sat with the other wounded and the sick in the waiting area. She wore pale blue scrubs. Her arm was in a sling, and her face—her fascinating face—was bruised and battered.

“Oh, Jesus, Phoebe.” He crouched down in front of her, took her hand in both of his. “How bad are you hurt?”

“Ambulatory.” She nearly managed to smile. “Not so bad. You just popped into my head as someone to call. I shouldn’t have.”

“Don’t be stupid. What happened?”

“Duncan…Since I did call, and you did come, I need to go somewhere for a couple hours, so I can fall apart and put myself back together again before I go home. Can you just take me somewhere quiet for a couple of hours? Big favor, I know, but—”

“Sure I can. Are you sure you can walk?”

“Yeah.” When she started to rise, he slid an arm around her waist, drew her up with the care of a man lifting a fragile work of art.

“Lean on me.”

“I already did, calling you out here.” And God, it was a relief to put a little weight on someone else. “I didn’t even think you might be busy with something.”

“Me? Idle rich.” He dug out his sunglasses as she winced and turned her face away from the glare. “Put these on. That’s a hell of a shiner you got coming up. What’s the other guy look like?”

This time she couldn’t manage the smile. “I wish I knew.”

It could wait, he told himself. The questions could wait until he got her inside, got her settled. Got her tea or something. He helped her into the car, hooked her seat belt himself. “Let’s put you back a little.” He eased the seat back. “How’s that?”

“It’s good. It’s fine.”

“Did they give you anything for the pain?” he asked when he got behind the wheel, and she tapped the purse Liz had brought to the hospital with her.

“Good drugs. Got some in me right now. I’m just going to close my eyes if you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead. Try to relax, rest.”

She didn’t sleep. He could see her hand fist. It might relax for a moment or two, but then it would fist again as if she was determined to hold something tight inside it.

Bandages bound her wrists, and baffled him. If she’d been in an accident, why hadn’t she contacted her family? And what sort of accident injured both wrists, bruised up the face and caused enough injury otherwise to have a woman walk as though her bones were brittle glass?

So it hadn’t been an accident.

As other options began to circle in his mind, he shut them down. No point in speculating, not when speculation—where were her clothes?—sent him into a minefield of possibilities.

He gave her silence. He’d hauled enough passengers in his time to know what people wanted. Chat, debate, information, quiet.

Phoebe wanted silence.

She barely moved but for that restless hand-into-fist over that span of bridge from mainland to island, as he passed the marshes and creeks and drove through the green tunnels of arching trees.

Only when he slowed for the last turn, eased to a stop, did she stir and open her eyes.

He’d gone for grand with the house, leaning on traditional elegance and adding bits of quirk with the widow’s walk that topped it like a crown. Oaks draped with moss fanned around it, strong accents for the soft blue with its delicate white trim. Gardens—azaleas just ready to pop and burst—flowed out and about in a casual way that turned the grand into charming.

Pots and baskets of mixed flowers decked veranda and terrace along with gliders and generous chairs that invited visitors to sit awhile, relax, have a cool drink.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it’s growing on me.” He got out, came around to her. “Let me give you a hand.”

“Thanks.” She leaned into him. “Really. Thank you, Duncan.”

“No problem.” He led her to the steps, up to the veranda to the door with its Celtic knot in stained glass.

“How long have you lived here?”

“I guess about five years now. Mostly. I figured I’d sell it, but…long story.” He gave her a quick smile as he unlocked and opened the door.

Golden light basked over rich colors, a wealth of space sweetened by curves from the elegant staircase, the wide archways. She moved beside him, stiffly, across the foyer into the parlor. There the atrium doors opened to a terrace, and beyond that more gardens danced, centered by an arbor where wisteria climbed and twined in a riot of beauty.

A piano angled to face the front windows, while chairs and divans in soft grays to offset the strong burgundy of the walls sat in groups. There was art on the walls, and she had an impression of marsh and river, Georgia dreamscapes along with a mix of antiques and the odd touch of a fat ceramic pig.

When he would have led her to a seat, she stepped away, crossed to the glass doors.

“I like your gardens.”

“Me, too. I got into that kind of thing when I moved out here.”

“I imagine so. It seems a lot of house for one man.”

“Yeah. That’s why I figured to sell it. But I actually use most of the place.”

“Did you…” She rested her forehead against the glass, closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We’re coming to the falling-apart portion of the program.”

“It’s all right.” He laid a hand on her back and, feeling her shake, knew they’d hit the eye of the storm. “You go right ahead.”

He gathered her in when she turned to him, gathered her up when she began to sob. He carried her to the divan, then sat with her cradled in his arms. And he held her there while the storm raged through.

8

Tears didn’t shame her, not tears that needed to be shed. She was grateful as they poured out, as they washed the worst of the fear and sickness away, that he wasn’t the kind of man who offered awkward pats and told a woman not to cry.

He only offered shelter and let her weep.

When the shaking eased and the tears slowed, he brushed a light kiss over her bruised temple. “Any better?”

“Yes.” She drew a long breath, and when she let it out, felt her system steady. “God, yes.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go fix you something to drink, then you’re going to tell me what happened.” He lifted her face until their eyes met. “Then we’ll figure out what comes next.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t have a thing…a handkerchief.”

“I’ve got tissues in my bag.”

“Good, then…” He shifted her, sat her down beside him. “If you need, you know, the bathroom? There’s one that way and to the right.”

“Good idea.”

When he left her, she sat for a moment, drawing back the reserves. She got achingly to her feet, picked up the purse he’d left on the coffee table, then made her way under graceful arches, over polished floors to the powder room.

The first glimpse of her face in the long oval mirror had her moaning as much in vanity as distress. Her eyes were puffy and red, with the right one sporting an ugly mottle of bruises, accented by the hard black smear of gathering blood under it.

Her jaw was another swollen cloudburst, her bottom lip about double in size and split. The butterfly bandages on her forehead closed the jagged gash, and stood out starkly against the raw, scraped skin.

“This isn’t a beauty contest, Phoebe, so get over yourself. But God,God, could you look any worse?”

And when she took this face home, she was going to scare everyone half stupid.

Nothing to be done about that, nothing, she reminded herself, and carefully dabbed cold water over her face.

In short order, she discovered that even the elemental task of peeing with a bruised hip and an arm in a sling was an exercise in discomfort and frustration. That tidying herself up brought everything to a dull throb under the layer of medication.

And vanity or no vanity, she was already sick and tired of looking as if she’d run headlong into a brick wall.

Plus, shehated hobbling. As she hobbled her way back into the parlor, Duncan set a tray on the coffee table.

“I don’t know what they gave you in the ER, so I figured alcohol was off the menu. You got tea—and my personal remedy for a black eye, and so on, a bag of frozen peas.”

She stopped. “You made tea.”

“You don’t like tea?”

“Of course I do. You made tea, and in a pretty teapot, on a tray. And brought me frozen peas.” She held up her good hand. “My emotions are all over the board yet. I’m getting weepy because somebody made me tea in a pot, and thought to offer me frozen peas.”

“Good thing I didn’t bake cookies.”

She picked up the bag of peas, held it to the side of her face that suffered the most damage. “Can you?”

“I have no idea. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to chew anything yet. How’s that jaw?”

She walked, slowly, to the divan, sat again. “You want me stoic, or you want the truth?”

“I’ll take the truth.”

“It fucking hurts, that’s how it is. I think there might be one square inch of my body that doesn’t fucking hurt. And that makes you smile?”

He kept smiling. “That you’re hurting, no. That you’re pissed off about it, yes. Good to see your temper’s in working order.” He sat beside her, poured out the tea. “Tell me what happened, Phoebe.”

“I got jumped in the stairwell at work.”

“Jumped? Who?”

“I didn’t see him, so I can’t say for sure. He was waiting for me,” she began, and told him.

He didn’t interrupt, but when she spoke of her assailant tearing her clothes, Duncan pushed off the couch. As she had when she’d first entered the room, he walked to the doors, stared out.

And she stopped speaking.

“Go on,” he said with his back to her. “I just can’t sit right now.”

He listened, and he stared through the glass. He didn’t see the wild wisteria or the winding trails of the side garden. He saw a dim stairwell, he saw Phoebe hurt and helpless, struggling while some faceless bastard tore at her, pawed at her, terrorized her.

There had to be payment, Duncan thought. He believed strongly in payment.

“You know who it was,” he said when she’d finished.

“I didn’t see him.”

Duncan turned now. His face was cool and blank so that the blue of his eyes burned all the stronger against it. “You know who it was.”

“I have a strong suspicion. Suspicion isn’t proof.”

“That’s the cop talking. What about the person?”

“I know who did it, and I’m going to find a way to prove it. Do you think I wouldtake this? Do you think that’s who I am?” She held up a hand as if stopping herself.

“No, go on. A good pissing rage is as healing as a good cry.”

“Hehurt me. That fucking bastard. He hurt and humiliated me. He made me think he’d kill me and leave my baby an orphan and my mother, my family grieving. He left me to crawl away naked, to crawl with most of my clothes torn away where Iwork, where I have to go every day and face the people who saw what he could do to me. And do you know why?”

“No. Why?”

“Because he couldn’t stand taking orders from me. He couldn’t stand having authority, female authority especially, disciplining him and setting out the consequences for his actions.”

“Are you telling me another cop did this to you?”

Shocked that so much had spewed out of her, she pulled herself back. “I have strong suspicions.”

“What’s his name?”

The woman inside, the one who had been hurt and humiliated, warmed just a little at the tone. The tone that said, very clearly, I’ll handle this. But she shook her head. “Don’t get out the white charger, Duncan. This’ll be dealt with. He’ll be dealt with. It’s now my mission in life to make sure of it. And having this time, this place to…well, to be, it’s helped more than I can tell you.”

“Well, that’s fine and good for you, and glad to be of assistance. But that’s not much help for me when I’m in the mood to pound somebody’s face in like it was rotten wood, then twist his useless dick off and feed it to the dog I keep thinking about getting.”

“No,” Phoebe said after a long moment. “No, I don’t guess it is. I’m going to confess that I find myself surprisingly comforted, and just a little aroused, by the sentiment.”

“I don’t know what this is yet, this you-and-me thing. I didn’t figure I had to think about it all that much as yet. So putting that aside—whatever this is or isn’t here, you should know my natural inclination, and you go right ahead and consider it sexist or outdated or whatever the hell you like—my natural inclination when some cowardly son of a bitch beats on a woman is to get out that goddamn white charger and kick some ass.”

He could, she realized. She’d let that one slip by her. But looking at him now, with that hot rage burning straight through the cold fury, she understood there was a great deal more to him than charm and luck.

“Okay. I hear your natural inclination is to defend and to act, and you sound—”

“Don’t pull that negotiator crap out on me.”

“That would be my natural inclination,” she returned. “My next is to say I don’t need protection, but given the circumstances, that would be a stupid thing to say. Most of my life I’ve been the one protecting and defending, and that goes back long before I had a badge. I’m not quite sure how to react when someone wants to protect and defend me.”

He walked over to her, hesitated, then leaned down. “I’m going to be careful about this, but you let me know if it hurts.” And he laid his lips, very gently, on hers.

“It doesn’t.”

He kissed her again before straightening. “You’ve got a week.”

“Sorry?”

“You got a week to complete your current mission in life. Then I get a name, and I help myself.”

“If that’s some sort of ultimatum—”

“It’s not, not at all. It’s just fact.” Sitting on the coffee table across from her, he took the peas she’d lowered, turned the bag over, and put the cooler side against her swollen jaw. “I already know it was a cop, and one you had to slap back for something. I expect I could have a name inside an hour. But you have a week to do it your way.”

“You think because you have money—”

“No, Phoebe, Iknow because I have money.” Gently, he lifted her hands, in turn, touched his lips to her bandaged wrists, comforting even as he laid down the law. “It oils the wheels, and that’s just another fact. You’re smart, and you’ve got that purpose that just sets me off. I’m betting you’ll have this bastard frying inside that week. If not, well, my turn.”

“Your turn? This is a police matter, and it has nothing to do with turns. That’s grade school.”

He smiled at her, just enough to have the dimple flickering. “You know, you look like hell right now.”

“Excuse me?”

“What I’m saying is, you look pretty damn awful, your face all banged up that way. Even with theGrey’s Anatomy thing going with the scrubs, you look like hell. So, why it should be I can look at you right now and still be attracted right down to the soles of my feet is a goddamn puzzle. But I am.”

Torn in a dozen directions, she dumped the frozen peas on the tea tray. “What the hell does that have to do with this?”

“Nothing. It just popped into my head. Want some more tea? And yeah,” he added when she just stared at him, “that’s a change of subject. Your mind’s made up; mine is, too. So what’s the point of arguing about it when neither of us is going to budge on the issue? And you can’t be feeling your best, so I don’t feel right fighting with you.”

“No, I don’t want any more tea, thanks. And you’re right, I’m not feeling my best, but it’s important that you understand there’s a wide difference between retribution and the law.”

“We’ll have to debate that some other time, when you’re back at full power. You want to take a whirlpool? Hot water, jets? It might help with some of the aches.”

Another thing she’d let slip by, she thought, was the man had a head like a rock. “That’s a nice offer, but no. I’m going to need to get home.” And the thought of that had her looking down at herself. “God.”

“Do you want to call them first? Prepare them?”

“No. No, then they’d just worry until I got there. I’m putting you out again, Duncan, having you drive me all the way back.”

“So, you’ll owe me.”

He helped her out to the car. Even the short walk wore her out, so she just sat, out of breath, while he strapped her in.

Carly would be coming in from school any minute, she thought as he drove toward home. Mama would be finishing up taking her Internet orders for the day, or boxing up completed pieces to go out in the mail in the morning. Ava, likely home from errands, would be fussing around in the kitchen.

Just an easy Monday afternoon. And she was about to shatter it.

“Who plays the piano?”

“Nobody. I sort of do. Just by ear. I always thought a piano added class to a room.”

“Cousin Bess insisted Carter and I take lessons. I got the mechanics of it; Carter got the heart.” She let her head fall back. “I wish this part was over. The shocking them, the explaining it all again part. I wish it was over.”

“I can explain what happened for you, if you want.”

“I have to do it. Where’s your family, Duncan?” It occurred to her that nowhere in the rooms she’d been in in the grand house had she seen any photos of family.

“Here and there.”

“Long story?”

“Epic. We’ll save it for another time.”

Her cell phone rang, and with some effort she reached for her purse and pulled it out. “This is Phoebe. Yes, Dave, I’m all right, I’m better. No, I’m on my way home now. I’ve been with a friend. Could be worse.”

She listened awhile. “I understand. I’ll be in tomorrow to—Sir. Captain. Dave.” She let out a frustrated breath. “Two days then. Three. Yes, sir, thank you. And I’d like the sit-down rescheduled for Thursday, if possible. I appreciate that. I will. Yes, I will. Bye.”

“Okay?” Duncan asked.

“Not entirely, but better than it could’ve been. He was going to order me to take medical leave for two weeks.”

“The bastard.”

She let out a laugh, then sucked air as it pinged her ribs. “I’d go crazy sitting home having Mama and Ava fuss over me for two weeks. He knows that. I’ll heal better if I’m working, and it makes a statement where a statement needs to be made. He knows that, too. He was probably after the three or four days all along. He’s a sneaky son of a bitch.”

“Sounds like somebody I’d like.”

“Probably. He got away with my weapon.”

“What? Captain Dave?”

“No. No, not the captain. Sorry, this whole thing’s scrambled my brain so I can’t seem to think in a straight line.”

The cop who’d hurt her, Duncan realized. And since she was busy brooding over it, he gave her room.

Just as he gave her room to be agitated as they approached Jones Street. “Want a bourbon and a cigarette first?”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t. I’m about to take on multiple hysterical females.” She prepared herself with deep breaths as he drove down the brick-paved street. “Oh God. That just caps it.”

“What?” Duncan shot her a glance, saw her fit on a stoic smile. Then saw the man who’d been strolling along in the dappled sunlight break into a run.

“Phoebe! Phoebe, what happened?” The man wrenched the door open, reached down. “My God, what happened to you? Who are you?” He threw the words at Duncan like stones. “What the hell did you do to my sister?”

“Carter, stop! Stop. He didn’t do a thing but help me.”

“Who hurt you? Where is he?”

People strolled along Jones—residents and tourists—and now, Phoebe noted, any number of those strollers had stopped to stare at the beat-up woman and the two men on either side of a flashy white Porsche.

“You can stop shouting on a public street like a lunatic. Let’s go inside.”

“They’re good questions.” Duncan came around to the passenger seat. “I’d like the answers, too. I’m Duncan. She’s got a lot of tender spots. We’ll need to be careful—”

“I can take care of her.”

“Carter, stop it. Do you want to add to the extremely crappy day I’ve had by being rude to a friend? I apologize for my ill-mannered brother, Duncan.”

“No problem.”

“Oh God, there’s Miz Tiffany and that ridiculous dog heading over from the park. I can’t deal with that. Carter, for the love of God, don’t make me deal with that. Help me get inside.”

“Easy does it,” Duncan advised, and caught a glimpse of a woman, well past a certain age, with a blond bubble of hair, being led by a tiny, apparently hairless dog wearing a polka-dot tie. “She hasn’t seen you yet. I’d be ill mannered, too, by the way, in your place,” he told Carter as they got Phoebe to the sidewalk. “Still, under any circumstances, when I bring a woman home, I take her to the door.”

Resigned to it, Phoebe allowed herself to be flanked, then all but carried up the steps. And with the overture complete, she thought, Here comes the show.

When the door opened, Essie was already on her way down the hall. “I thought I heard you shouting, Carter. I…Phoebe! Oh my God.”

She went white as paste, swayed.

“Let me go,” Phoebe murmured, then hurried forward. “Mama. I’m all right, Mama. Breathe for me. I’m all right, I’m home. Carter, go get her some water.”

“No, no.” Still ghostly pale, Essie lifted a hand to Phoebe’s cheek. “Baby girl.”

“I’m all right.”

“Your face. Reuben—”

“Is dead, Mama. You know that.”

“Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, Phoebe. What happened? Your face, your arm. Ava!”

She’d snapped back, Phoebe noted. Still white as a sheet, but she’d snapped back.

Ava rushed out from the back of the house. And there was, for the next several minutes, a mass of confusion, voices, movement, tears. Duncan closed the front door, stood back. He’d always figured if you can’t help, stay out of the way.

“All right, stop now.”

He could hear Phoebe’s voice, very calm, very firm, through the melee. She repeated the same order, once, then twice. And on the third, the words snapped out—a kind of verbal slap to the face—and shocked her family into silence.

“I’ll explain everything, but right now I want everybody to juststop talking at once. I’ve been banged up, which is obvious, and all this badgering isn’t helping. Now—”

“Mama.”

As the verbal slap had shut down the hysteria, so did the single, quivering word stop what Duncan assumed might have been an irritated rant. Phoebe turned toward the little girl who stood holding a bright red ball.

“I’m all right, Carly. I know I don’t look it, but I am. I will be. I got hurt, but I’m okay.”

“Mama.” The ball went bouncing away as Carly ran forward to grab Phoebe, to press her face against her mother’s waist. From his vantage point, Duncan saw the ripple of pain, and the way it leached all color out of Phoebe’s cheeks.

“Hey, sorry. I know this is a bad time, but, you know, I think Phoebe needs to lie down.” He moved forward as he spoke and simply lifted Phoebe off her feet. “Carly, maybe you could show me where your mama’s bedroom is.”

“It’s upstairs.”

“I can walk. Duncan, I can walk.”

“Sure, but hey, I already got you. Miz Mac Namara? They gave Phoebe some medication. I think it might be time for her to take it, if she had some water.”

“Of course, of course.”

“I’ll get it.” Ava touched Essie’s arm. “You go up with Phoebe. I’ll get the water, and some ice. Carter, help me get some ice for Phoebe.”

“I’m going up to fix the bed. I’m going right up to get it ready.” Essie dashed up the stairs.

“Did you fall?” Carly’s voice still shook as she walked up beside Duncan, with her fingers closed over the hem of the scrubs.

“That was part of it. I had a bad fall, and I had to go to the hospital. They fixed me up and let me come home. You know they don’t let you go home if you’re not fixed enough. Right?”

“Is your arm broken?”

“No. It’s just hurt, so it’s in this sling for a while so I don’t bump it around.”

“How come you didn’t catch her when she fell?” Carly demanded of Duncan.

“I wish I could have. I wasn’t there when she fell.”

He carried Phoebe into the bedroom where Essie had already turned down the spread, fluffed the pillows. “Just lay her right on down. Thank you so much, Duncan. Phoebe, I’m sorry, I just lost my head.”

“It’s all right, Mama. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Of course it is.” Though her lips quivered visibly, Essie sent Carly a big smile. “We’re going to take good care of your mama, aren’t we? She needs some medicine now.”

“It’s in my purse. I—”

“Right here.” Duncan set it on the bed.

“You’re good with details,” Phoebe commented.

“Wouldn’t you like to go down and sit in the parlor, Duncan?” Essie began. “Carter, he’ll fix you a drink. And…” She rubbed her fingers on her temple. “And you’ll stay for dinner. You’ll stay for dinner, of course.”

“That’s nice of you, but I’ll leave y’all to tend to Phoebe. I hope I can have a rain check.”

“You’re welcome anytime. Anytime at all. I’ll walk you down.”

“You stay right here.” He gave Essie’s shoulder a pat before he looked down at Phoebe. “That goes for you, too.”

“I think I’m going to do just that. Duncan—”

“We’ll talk later.”

As he left, Carter bounded up the stairs. Carter stopped, gripping a pair of ice bags. “Sorry about jumping on you out there.”

“Forget it. Natural.”

“Do you know who punched my sister in the face? I took enough fists in the face to know what the results look like,” he said when Duncan lifted his brows.

“I don’t know who hurt her, but I’m going to find out.”

“When you do—if it’s before I do—I want to know.”

“Sure.”

“Carter Mac Namara.” Carter shifted ice bags, held out a hand.

“Duncan Swift. See you around.”

Duncan let himself out, glanced up toward the bedroom window as he walked to his car. Gorgeous house, he thought, and just full of problems. He had enough experience with problems to know they came in all flavors and varieties.

Just as he knew, without question, that whatever the problems, Phoebe was the glue that held the family together.

Gift or burden? he wondered. And decided it was probably a good chunk of both.

A smart man would drive away from the gorgeous house with its variety of problems. Drive away and keep on going. That’s what a smart man would do.

Then again, Duncan thought, there were times it was more interesting, and certainly more rewarding, just to be dumb.

He ended up at a bar. The after-work crowd wouldn’t flood into Slam Dunc for nearly an hour, so despite the multiple flat screens rolling out ESPN, and the scatter of customers playing pool or air hockey, Duncan figured it was quiet enough for a meeting.

Anyway, he wanted a beer, and felt after the afternoon he’d put in, he’d earned it. He kept an eye out for Phin, and when he saw his friend come in, Duncan signaled the bar.

“Already ordered you a Corona, and some nachos.”

Phin slid into the booth. “Left me hanging today.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Couldn’t be helped. What do you figure?”

Phin puffed out his cheeks. “Jake, who you also left hanging as he got there two minutes after you split, did a walk-through. He’s going to work up a detailed estimate of what it’ll cost you to do what you want with the building. But his eyeball opinion? You’re going to have to sink minimum of one-point-five into it, over and above the cost.”

“Okay.”

Phin leaned back as the nachos slid between them and the waiter set the Corona with its slice of lime on the table. “You ever look back, wonder how we got to be sitting here talking about a million and a half dollars like it was pocket change?”

“How much did that suit cost?”

Phin grinned, picked up his beer. “Fine-looking suit, isn’t it?”

“Dude, you’re my fashion god. Figure two for the overhaul; let’s not be pikers. Add in what I’ll pay that squirrel for the property.”

“Does look like a squirrel,” Phin commented.

“Maybe he’ll take some of the buy money and spring for a decent toupee. Anyhow…Got a pen?”

Phin took a Mont Blanc out of his inside jacket pocket. “Why don’t you ever have a damn pen?”

“Where am I going to put it? And you always have one.” Duncan scribbled figures on a napkin.

And that said it all, Phin thought. The man might look like your average guy—the worn jeans, the untucked, rolled-up-at-the-sleeves shirt, the hair begging for a trim. He might come across to most as an extraordinarily lucky guy who happened to pick the right numbers at the right time. Appearances didn’t mean dick when it came to Duncan Swift.

He’d use that borrowed pen and a napkin to figure out cost runs, overlay, buffer, outlay and potential income. He’d do it while eating nachos and drinking a beer, and by the time he was done, he’d have his projected cost and future returns figured as close to the mark as any fleet of accountants.

The man had a knack, Phin decided as he—with care—transferred some loaded nachos from platter to plate. “Where’d you take off to?”

“That’s something I want to talk to you about. Or more specifically, with your lovely wife.”

“Loo’s in court.”

Duncan glanced up, over, and smiled. “Not now, she’s not.”

She wore a conservative blue suit that managed to showcase her mile-long legs. Her sexy curls were tamed back into a clip so that her sharp cheekbones, deep brown eyes, wide mouth were subtly framed. Her skin was the color of rich caramel.

Duncan always wondered how any judge or jury could look at that face and not give her whatever she wanted.

Duncan slid out of the booth, wrapped his arms around her and spoke into her ear just loud enough for Phin to hear. “Dump him. I’ll buy you Fiji.”

She had a big, strong laugh, and let it rip. “Can I just keep him to play with when you’re busy?”

“Give me back my wife.”

“Not done with her.” Taking his time with it, Duncan gave her a long, dramatic kiss. “That’ll hold me. Thanks for coming, Loo.”

“Thought you were in court.”

“I was.” She sat next to Phin, nuzzled her lips to his. “Prosecution asked for a recess. I’ve got them on the ropes. Now, which of you handsome men is going to buy me a martini?”

“Being shaken even as we speak. One minute. Here’s what we’ll offer the squirrel and here’s where we top off.” Duncan pushed the napkin over to Phin. “Okay?”

Phin glanced at the figures, shrugged. “It’s your money.”

“Yeah. Isn’t that a kick in the ass?” Duncan picked up his beer. He knew Phin and Loo would be holding hands under the table. They had the thing, theit , whatever thatit was that locked people together and kept them damn happy about it.

“Y’all want something more than nachos?” Duncan asked them.

“Just that martini. As our gorgeous and brilliant offspring is spending the night with her cousin, I’m going to have this fine-looking man take me out to dinner.”

“Are you?”

“I am, but not until I’ve had that drink and am finished playing footsie with my lover here.” Loo winked at Duncan. “So, baby doll, what can I do for you?”

Duncan said nothing for a moment, then grinned. “Sorry, my mind went in all sorts of interesting directions.” He listened to that terrific laugh of hers again. “It’s about something that happened to a friend of mine today, and my curiosity over what gets done to the guy who did it when he gets caught.”

“Criminal or civil?”

“It’s pretty fucking criminal.”

Loo raised her eyebrows at the tone, then accepted the martini she was served. She took the first, slow sip. “Should this individual be charged and indicted, I take it you’d object if I or my firm represent him.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, but I figured you’d know the ins and outs of what he might try to pull, legally, when they get him.”

“Not if, but when.” She broke off a minute corner of a chip. “Okay, tell me what this man allegedly did.”

“Before I tell you what he did, I’d better tell you, he’s a cop.”

“Oh. Well. Shit.” Loo blew out a breath, drank again. “Tell me.”

Interesting. From his seat at the bar, he nursed a beer, ate some cheese fries and pretended to be interested in the reports on March Madness that dominated the near screen.

He had a perfect view of the booth where Phoebe’s screw-buddy sat with the duded-up black couple. Interesting, damn interesting—and fortunate that he himself had been watching the house on Jones when the fancy car pulled up.

Phoebe hadn’t been looking so good.

He had to smother a laugh he knew might draw attention his way. No sir, the redheaded bitch hadn’t been looking her best.

She was going to be looking worse before it was over. But for now, he’d take a little time, a little trouble, to find who Mr. Fancy Car and his friends were.

You never knew who might be useful.

9

With one ear cocked toward Phoebe’s room, Essie carefully folded the white-on-white bedspread with its stylized pattern of lovebirds. The intricate stitching had kept her mind calm, as it tended to. She often thought that being productive—and creative with it, if she could brag a bit—held a firm rein on her mind and refused to allow it to wander into those places where panic waited.

It was good work, she could think that, and the bride who received it as a wedding gift would have something unique and special, something that could be passed on for generations.

She arranged the dark silver tissue. Even that, the fussing with the finished product, the meticulous packaging of it, helped keep her hands busy and her mind steady.

Because she didn’t want to be afraid every time Phoebe went out of the house, didn’t want to whittle her family’s world down to walls, as she’d whittled her own. She couldn’t allow herself to let that fear in, to let it take over. It snuck up, she knew, inch by inch, stealing little spaces, little movements.

First it might set your heart thumping, it might shut your lungs down in the grocery store, right there in Produce while you’re surrounded by tomatoes and snap beans and romaine lettuce with Muzak playing “Moon River” until you want to scream.

Until you had to run, just leave your cart there, half full of groceries, and run.

It might be the dry cleaner’s next, or the bank where the teller knew you by name and always asked about your children. It might sneak up then, dropping rock after rock after rock on your chest until you were buried alive.

Your ears ringing, the sweat pouring.

You let it win all those little spaces, all those little movements, until it had them all. Until it owned everything outside the walls.

She could still go out on the terraces, into the courtyard, but that was getting harder and harder. If it wasn’t for Carly, Essie didn’t think she could push herself even that far. The day was coming, she could feel it sliding closer, when she wouldn’t be able to sit on the veranda and read a book with her precious little girl.

And who was to say she was wrong? Essie thought as she put the pretty oval sticker with her initials on the folded tissue to close it in place.

Terrible things happened in the world outside the walls. Hard, frightening and terrible things happened every minute of every day, on the streets and the sidewalks, at the market and the dry cleaner’s.

Part of her wanted to pull her family inside those walls, lock the doors, bar the windows. Inside, she wished she could keep them inside, where everyone would be safe, where nothing terrible could happen to any of them, ever.

And she knew that was her illness whispering, trying to sneak in a little closer.

She lay the card that detailed instructions for the care of the lovebird spread, then closed the bright silver box.

While she gift-wrapped the box as the customer had ordered, she was calmer. Her gaze strayed to the windows now and then, but that was just a check, just a peek at what might be out there. She was pleased it was raining. She loved rainy days when it seemed so cozy and snug andright to be inside the house, all tucked in like the lovebirds in the silver box.

By the time she had the gift cushioned in its shipping box, sealed and labeled, she was humming.

She carried it out, pausing to peek into Phoebe’s room, and smiling when she saw her baby girl sleeping. Sleep and rest and quiet, that’s what her baby needed to heal. When she woke from her nap, Essie decided she’d bring Phoebe up a tea tray, a nice little snack, and sit with her the way she had so many years ago when her daughter had been down with a cold or a touch of flu.

She was halfway down the steps with the big box when the doorbell rang. The jolt shot through her like a bullet, driving her right down, legs folding, heart slamming, to sit on the steps with her arms wrapped around the box as if it would shield her.

And she could have wept, could have dropped her head down on the box and wept at the instant and uncontrollable terror.

The door was locked, and could stay locked if she needed it to. No one in, no one out. All the pretty birds inside the silver box.

How could she explain to anyone,anyone, the grip of the sudden, strangling fear, the way it set the little white scar on her cheek throbbing like a fresh wound? But the bell would ring again if she didn’t answer—hear that, it’s ringing again. It would wake Phoebe, and she needed to sleep.

Who was going to protect her baby if she ran away and hid?

So she was not going to cower on the steps; she was not going to allow herself to fear opening the front door, even if she was unable to walk out of it.

She got up, made herself walk to the door, though she did continue to clutch the box in front of her. And the relief made her feel foolish, and a little ashamed, when she saw Duncan on the other side.

Such a nice boy, Essie thought as she took a moment, just one moment more, to get her breath back. A solid, well-mannered young man who’d carried her hurt baby girl up to bed.

There was nothing to be afraid of.

Shifting the box, Essie unlocked the door and beamed a smile. “Duncan! How nice of you to come by. Look at you, all that rain and no umbrella! Come in the house.”

“Let me take that for you.”

“No, that’s all right. I’m just going to set it down here.” She turned as she did, hoped he couldn’t see her hands still shaking. “I’ve got a pickup scheduled for it. How about some coffee?”

“Don’t trouble. Hey.” He took her hands, so she knew he had seen. “Are you all right?”

“I’m a little on edge, that’s all. Foolish.”

“Not foolish at all, not after what happened. I’ve been jumpy myself.”

No, Essie thought, no, he hadn’t. He wasn’t the type to jolt at sounds and shadows. But it was sweet of him to say otherwise. “Don’t tell Phoebe I said so, but it calms my nerves having a big, strong man in the house.”

“Someone else here?” he said and made her laugh. “Secret’s safe. I just stopped by to see how the patient’s doing.”

“She had a restless night.” Essie took his arm, steered him into the parlor. “But she’s sleeping now. Sit down and keep me company, won’t you? Ava’s at the flower shop. She works there a couple, three days a week when they can use her. My daughter-in-law’s going to come by later. Josie’s a nurse, a private-duty nurse. She took a look at Phoebe yesterday, and she’s going to stop in later, with Carter, after his classes. And you know why I’m talking so much?”

“Are you?”

“Duncan, I’m so embarrassed by the way I acted yesterday.”

“You shouldn’t be. You had a shock.”

“And I didn’t handle it well.”

“Essie, you ought to give yourself a break.” He saw surprise cross over her face, as if she’d never thought of any such thing. “What’ve you been up to today?”

“Keeping busy, pestering Phoebe with food on trays until I imagine she wants to knock me over the head with them. I finished a project and made half a dozen lists I don’t need.”

Little tickled his interest more than the wordproject. Duncan stretched out his legs, prepared for a cozy chat. “What’s the project?”

“Oh, I do needlework.” Essie waved a hand toward the foyer, where the shipping box waited for pickup. “Finished up a bedspread—wedding gift—last night.”

“Who’s getting married?”

“Oh, a sometime customer of mine’s goddaughter. I sell some of my pieces locally and over the Internet here and there.”

“No kidding?” Enterprising projects doubled the interest. “You’ve got a cottage industry?”

“More like a sitting-room interest,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just a way to pay for my hobby, earn a little pin money.”

While he sat, at ease, his mind calculated: handmade. Customized. One of a kind. “What kind of needlework?”

“I crochet. My mother taught me, her mother taught her. It was a keen disappointment I could never get Phoebe to sit still long enough to teach her. But Carly’s getting a hand at it.”

He scanned the room, homed in on the deep blue throw with its pattern of showy pink cabbage roses. Rising, he moved over to pick up an edge, study it.

Oh yeah, add in intricate and unique.

“Is this your work?”

“It is.”

“It’s nice. It’s really nice. Looks like something maybe your grandma made over lots of quiet nights, then passed down to you.”

Pleasure shone like sunshine on Essie’s face. “Why, isn’t that the best of compliments?”

“So, what, do you make specific pieces from, like, what, patterns, or tailor to clients?”

“Oh, it depends. Why don’t I get you that coffee?”

“I’ve got to head out in a minute. Have you ever thought of…Hey.”

It was the way his face lit up that had Essie pursing her lips, even before she turned and saw Phoebe in the parlor doorway.

“Now, what are you doing up and coming downstairs by yourself?” In full scold, Essie hurried over to her daughter’s side. “Didn’t I put that bell right on your nightstand so you could ring if you wanted anything?”

“I needed to get out of that bed. I’m not going to lie there Cousin Bessing it all damn day.”

Duncan saw the look, the quick flash of maternal disapproval before Essie turned back to him. “You’ll have to excuse her, Duncan. Feeling poorly brings out the sass in her. I’ll go make us that coffee.”

“Mama.” Phoebe brushed a hand over Essie’s arm. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“You get a pass on that, due to being hurt. Talk to Duncan awhile. He’s come out on this rainy day just to see how you’re feeling.”

Phoebe only frowned at him as her mother left the room. “Yes, I know I look worse than I did yesterday.”

“Then I don’t have to mention it. Do you feel worse?”

“Some parts of me do. Including my temper.” She glanced back toward the foyer, sighed. “Being fussed over makes me irritable.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself, then. And I should probably take these back.” He picked up the shopping bag he’d brought in. “As it hits on two points—not wanting to lie around, and being fussed over. I assume bringing by a gift is fussing.”

“Depends on the gift. Oh, sit down, Duncan. I’m irritating myself with my bad mood.”

“I really have to go. I have a couple of things.” He held up the bag, shook it lightly. “You want?”

“How do I know when I don’t know what’s in it?” She limped her way over, peered into the bag. “DVDs? God, there must be two dozen.”

“I like to read or watch movies when I’m laid up. And I thought reading might be tough with the bum wing, so I went for movies. Chick flicks. I lean toward the oeuvre ofThe Three Stooges, but figured it would be wasted around here.”

“You figured correctly.”

“I don’t know if you go for that type or if you like slasher films or watching stuff blow up, but I figured in a household of four women, this was the best bet.”

“I like chick flicks, and slasher films and watching things blow up.” Intrigued, she poked in the bag. “Since when isThe Blues Brothers a chick flick?”

“It’s not, I just happen to like it. It’s the only one I picked out, actually. Marcie at the video store handled the rest. She assured me that they’re all appropriate for a kid Carly’s age, unless her mother’s a real tight-ass. She didn’t say tight-ass,” he added, when Phoebe narrowed her eyes at him. “I inferred.”

“It’s very thoughtful of you. And Marcie. And when these help stave off screaming boredom, I’ll think of you.”

“That’s the plan. I have to go. Tell your mother I said goodbye.” He touched his lips to her forehead beside the bandages. “Take a dose of Jake and Elwood and call me in the morning.”

“If I don’t walk you to the door, I’ll have to lie to my mother and say I did.” She set the bag down to lead him out. “I appreciate the movies, and everything else you did—and didn’t do. Such as comment on my bed hair and foul disposition.”

“Good. Then when you’re feeling up to it, you can pay me back and have dinner with me again.”

“Are you bribing me with DVDs?”

“Sure. But I think my discretion over hair and mood earns even more points.” Since it pleased him to see her lips curve up in a quick smile, he lowered his for a little taste. “I’ll see you later.”

He opened the door just as a woman jogged up the steps. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey back. Lieutenant.”

“Detective. Detective Liz Alberta, Duncan Swift.”

“Oh yeah, we spoke on the phone.” He held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, and I’ll get out of your way. Talk to you later, Phoebe.”

Liz turned, studied Duncan as he dashed out and through the rain. As she lowered her umbrella she raised her eyebrows at Phoebe. “Nice.”

The tone, the look, told Phoebe that Liz referred to the exit view. “Oh yeah, it certainly is. Come in out of the wet.”

“Thanks. I didn’t think I’d find you up and around today.”

“If I don’t get back to work soon, I’m going to go straight out of my mind.” She took Liz’s umbrella, slid it into the porcelain umbrella stand.

“Bad patient?”

“The worst. Are you here for a follow-up?”

“If you can handle it.”

“I can.” Phoebe gestured toward the parlor. “Anything I should know?”

“Your weapon hasn’t been recovered, but I did bring you this.” She pulled an evidence bag out of her satchel. Inside was Phoebe’s badge. “It was found at the base of the stairs, where we assume your attacker tossed it. No prints but yours.”

“He wore gloves,” Phoebe murmured.

“Yes, so you said.”

Her badge would have been hooked to the waistband of her skirt, Phoebe thought. He’d cut her skirt to pieces, shoved his hand up under what he’d left of it to…She shook her head. No point, none, in putting herself back there. “Sorry. Please, sit down.”

“How’s the shoulder?”

“I tell myself it could be worse. It could. It could all be worse.”

“Lieutenant—”

“Just make it Phoebe. This may be an official follow-up, but we’re not in the house.”

“Okay, Phoebe. You and I both know that sometimes the emotional injuries take a lot longer to heal than the physical ones.”

Knowing and experiencing were two different things. “I’m working on that.”

“All right.”

“He set me up. Arnie Meeks set me up and he took me down.”

Before Liz could respond, Essie wheeled in a cart. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had other company. Duncan?”

“He had to go. Mama, this is Detective Alberta. My mother, Essie Mac Namara.”

“You took care of my daughter when she was hurt yesterday. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Mac Namara.”

“I hope you’ll have coffee, and some of this cake.” Essie set cups, saucers, plates on the coffee table as she spoke. “I just have a few things to see to in the kitchen.” She lifted the tray holding the pot, the creamer, the sugar. “Y’all just let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

“Detective Alberta, you don’t mind pouring, do you?”

“No, ma’am.” Falling in, Liz picked up the coffeepot, poured out the cups. She shot a glance over as Essie slipped out of the room. “I thought carts like that were just for movies and fancy hotels.”

“Sometimes this house feels like a little of both. You’re going to tell me that you’re actively investigating, but don’t have any solid evidence implicating Officer Arnold Meeks at this time.”

“I am, and I don’t. I spoke with him. He was in the building and was smart enough not to deny it. He claims he was getting a few items out of his locker at the time of the attack.”

“This was payback, Liz.”

She looked out the window as her mother had earlier, but instead of being comforted by the rain, felt trapped by it. Trapped inside when there were things todo.

“I’ve bumped up against a few other cops, that’s just the way it is. But no one recently, and never anyone to the extent Meeks and I rammed heads. I slapped him back, I suspended him, I recommended a psych eval. He wanted to kick my ass then and there, and in fact considered drawing on me. I saw it in his eyes, in his body language. As did Sykes, who interrupted for that reason.”

“Yeah, I spoke with Detective Sykes, and he concurs that he sensed trouble from Meeks that day in your office. ‘Sensed’ isn’t going to be enough. I’ve got nothing that places him in that stairway. In the building, yes, with a grudge against you, yes. He’s called in his delegate, and he’s got his father’s considerable weight behind him. If you can give me more, if you remember anything, any detail.”

“I gave you everything.”

“Let’s go over it again. Not just from the attack, but from when you left the house that morning.”

Phoebe knew how it worked. Every repetition of the story could add another detail, and another detail might turn the investigation.

She went through it. Heading out to catch the bus as her car was in for repairs. She’d borrowed the MP3 player Ava liked to use when she gardened, and had tried to convince herself the bus was more relaxing, maybe more efficient than driving herself.

She detoured for coffee before taking the to-go cup into work.

“Did you notice anything? Anyone? Get the sense you were followed?”

“No. I can’t say I wasn’t. I wasn’t tuned for that, but I didn’t have any sense of it either. I went straight up to my office, started paperwork.”

She went through it, the officers and detectives she’d spoken with, the movements. Routine, routine, routine, she thought. Just another Monday morning.

“After my conversation with the captain, I started down.”

“You always take the stairs.”

“Yes. It’s habitual.”

“Did you stop, talk to anyone?”

“No…Yes. I stopped by my PAA’s desk to tell her I was going down to the session. Wait.” Phoebe set down her coffee, sat back, closed her eyes. She pulled it back into her head, the running image of herself striding out of her office, across the squad room.

“She held me up there for a minute, asked me some questions, nothing necessary—especially since she’d know I was running close to the clock. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, except for being a little annoyed because I was cutting it close, and because she already knew—or should have—that I had the session waiting on me.”

“Who’s your PAA?” Liz asked as she pulled out her notebook.

“Annie Utz. I’ve only had her a few months. She stalled me.” As she thought back, tried to bring it into focus, Phoebe closed her eyes. “I think she was stalling me, just a minute or two. Then she said something about how I’d be taking the stairs down, like always.”

Phoebe opened her eyes, and now they were fierce with fury. “She was signaling him, by radio or phone. Son of a bitch, she was letting him know I was on my way.”

“Do you know if Arnie Meeks and your PAA have a personal relationship?”

“No. She’s new, like I said, only a couple of months on the desk. Sharp-looking, single, friendly. Maybe a little on the flirty side, but nothing over the line. She was nervous, a little nervous yesterday. I was in a hurry so I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t think of her, of that quick conversation again until now.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“No. No, we will. I’m going in with you.”

“Lieutenant. Phoebe—”

“Put yourself in my place.”

Liz drew a deep breath. “Do you need any help getting dressed?”

Phoebe was struggling, sweating and cursing her way into a shirt when Essie steamed into the room. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to get into this goddamn shirt. I have to go with Detective Alberta.”

“You’re not to go anywhere but back to bed, Phoebe Katherine Mac Namara.”

“I should be back within an hour.”

“Don’t make me drag your stubborn self into that bed, Phoebe.”

“Mama, for God’s sake.” Frustrated and starting to ache again, Phoebe dropped her arm. “Will you help me button this stupid shirt?”

“No. I said you’re not going anywhere.”

“And I said I am. There’s a lead on my case, and I—”

“You arenot a case. You’re my child.”

Out of breath, Phoebe cradled her bad arm. And through her own anger and annoyance saw the warning glints of panic in her mother’s eyes. “Mama…All right, let’s both calm down.”

“I’ll calm down when you get your beat-up self back into bed where you belong.” Marching over, Essie flung back the bedclothes. “Right this minute! I’m not—”

“Mama, listen to me. My arm will heal, the rest of me will heal on the outside. We know how it is on the inside though, you and me. We know. So you understand when I tell you I’m not going to heal until the person who did this to me is held accountable.”

“There are other people who can see that he’s held accountable.”

“I know you feel that way. I know you have to. Understand that I feelthis way. That I have to. I can’t live afraid, Mama, I just can’t.”

“That’s not what I want, that’s not what I’m asking you.”

“But I am afraid. And I close my eyes and I’m back in that stairwell.”

“Oh, baby.” Tears swam as Essie hurried over to stroke her daughter’s face.

“Part of me’s going to stay afraid, and I’m going to keep finding myself trapped in that stairwell, until I do this. Help me with this shirt. Please.”

Though her eyes were damp, Essie studied Phoebe’s face and saw clearly enough. “I don’t want you to live the way I do. I don’t want you to be afraid.”

“I know that.”

Slowly, her eyes on Phoebe’s, Essie buttoned the shirt. “Do you have to go so far the other way?”

“I guess I do. I’m sorry.”

“Phoebe.” Gently, Essie eased Phoebe’s arm back into the sling. Then she brushed at Phoebe’s hair with her fingertips. “When you get back, you’re going straight to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’re going to eat all the dinner I bring up to you.”

“Every bite.” Phoebe kissed Essie’s cheek where the little white scar rode under carefully applied makeup. “Thank you.”

When Phoebe came back into the parlor with Essie at her side, Liz looked from one to the other. “Ah…your PAA called in sick this morning. I have her home address.”

“We’ll try her there.”

“Detective? I don’t care if she does outrank you, you take good care of my baby girl—and see she gets home.”

“I’ll do that, Mrs. Mac Namara. Thank you for the coffee.” Liz waited until they were outside to open her umbrella, and to speak again. “I don’t care if you do outrank me, I take the lead on this.”

“No argument. Friendly, flirty and efficient, that’s how I’d describe her. Mid-twenties. I think she likes being around cops—likes the buzz. Thanks,” she added when Liz opened the car door for her. “How bad do I look?” Phoebe asked when Liz got behind the wheel.

“Not quite bad enough to scare small children.”

“Let her see me first. My gut says he didn’t tell her he was going to hurt me. Scare me, maybe, or just plead his case.” Despite the rainy day, Phoebe slipped on her sunglasses. “But I don’t think she’d have gone along if she knew he intended to hurt me. She calls in sick the day after. She’s probably scared, guilty, wondering what happened. The way cop shops work, she’s heard a few variations. She sees me first, she’s already going to start cracking.”

Annie looked sick when she opened the door to her apartment. Against the cotton-candy pink of her pajamas, her face was white and drawn. Her eyes popped wide when she saw Phoebe. Stumbling back, she stuttered out Phoebe’s name.

“Annie Utz? I’m Detective Alberta. Can we come in?”

“I—I—”

“Thanks.” Liz pushed the door all the way open so Phoebe could walk in ahead of her. In the background a couple of soap opera actors argued bitterly over someone named Jasmine.

“Lieutenant Mac Namara needs to sit down. She’s hurt pretty bad.”

“I…I have a head cold. I’m probably contagious.”

“We’ll risk it. You heard about what happened to Lieutenant Mac Namara, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I mean, I guess I did. I’m so sorry, Lieutenant. You should be home, resting.”

“Annie…Mind if we turn this off?” Without waiting for permission, Liz picked up the remote and ended the threatening tirade of a shirtless blond hunk. “I’m looking into what happened to the lieutenant. You were the last one to speak to her before she was attacked.”

“I…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know that she stopped by your desk on her way out, on her way downstairs?”

“I mean, yes, sure. You said you were going downstairs for the training session.” When she addressed Phoebe, Annie’s gaze trained several inches over Phoebe’s good shoulder.

“What time was that?”

“Just before ten. Just a few minutes before ten.”

“You were aware the lieutenant intended to take the stairs down?”

“Everyone knows Lieutenant Mac Namara uses the stairs.” Annie tugged on a heart-shaped button on her pajamas. “I really don’t feel well. I’m sorry.”

“Lieutenant Mac Namara doesn’t feel very well either. Do you, Lieutenant?”

“No.” Her sunglasses were back in her bag, where she’d tucked them on entering the building. Phoebe knew the bruised eyes, the scrapes, the bandages were a shocking and painful sight. Just as she knew how to wait, how to use the silence as a lever to pry Annie’s eyes to hers. “He pushed me down, after he’d cuffed my hands behind me so I couldn’t break my own fall.”

Her gaze steady on Annie’s tearful one, Phoebe lifted her hands to show her bandaged wrists. “After he’d taped my mouth, put a hood over my head.” She brushed the hair back from her forehead so the livid bruises showed more clearly. “After he’d smashed my face into the wall.”

Tears spilled, plump drops on pale cheeks. “I…I heard it was really just a bad accident. I heard that you fell. That you fell down the stairs.”

“Was it an accident his fist rammed into her face?” Liz demanded. “That the cuffs snapped over her wrists?” She pulled up Phoebe’s arm, gestured to the wrists. “Did her clothes accidentally rip off her body so she had to crawl, half naked, for help?”

“Things get exaggerated. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t feel well. Can you go? Can you just go?”

“Did he tell you he just wanted to talk to me, Annie?” Phoebe kept her voice low, the tone even. “Just talk to me in private? Maybe scare me just a little, or push his point just a little, since I was being so unfair? I was being unfair to him, wasn’t I? Did he tell you that when he asked you to signal him I was heading down?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t do anything. If you fell—”

“I didn’t fall. Look at me, Annie!” Phoebe snapped the words out so that Annie jumped, then hunched her shoulders. “You know I didn’t fall. That’s why you’re sitting here, sick, scared, trying to convince yourself it was an accident. He told you that. He told you it was an accident and I—what?—lied to save face? I made up the attack so I wouldn’t be embarrassed about falling?”

“How long have you been sleeping with Officer Arnold Meeks, Annie?” Liz demanded.

“I didn’t! We didn’t. Not really. I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t do anything.” As the dam broke, Annie snatched up tissues from a flowered box of Kleenex and buried her face in them. “He said it was an accident, that you were going to make things up, maybe to try to get him in trouble. He told me how you came on to him, and then—”

“Officer Meeks told you Lieutenant Mac Namara approached him sexually?”

“He turned her down, and she’s been trying to ruin his reputation ever since.” Lowering the tissues, Annie turned a pleading face toward Liz. “He’d file sexual harassment charges, but he’s embarrassed to, and his wife’s not giving him any support at home. Plus she’s sleeping with Captain Mc Vee, so what good would it do?”

“He told you all this, and you swallowed it?” Liz shook her head from side to side. “Maybe that’s excusable, maybe not. Maybe you thought, really thought, you were just doing Arnie a favor. Maybe you didn’t want to believe he was lying to you, again and again and again, leading you on. But you know he lied to you now, don’t you, Annie? You can’t look at Lieutenant Mac Namara and believe what he told you.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“How about some pictures?” Liz pulled some out of her satchel. “There’s the lieutenant’s blood in the stairwell. Oh, here, here’s her clothes thataccidentally tore off her body. How about the laundry bag he pulled over her head? Here’s a good one, of her blood on the cuffs he snapped on her. That’s some accident.”

“Oh God.” The tissue shield went up again. “Oh God.”

“What kind of person does this, Annie? Maybe the kind of person who’s thinking about doing it to you, or doing worse. Because you’re the one who can tie him to it.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Annie sobbed, yanked more tissues from the box. “I didn’t do anything wrong. He just needed a few minutes to talk to her, to show he wasn’t going to be intimidated. That’sall. I only called his number, let the phone ring twice. That was the signal. It’s all I did. I didn’t know.”

“But you know now. You’re going to have to get dressed and come with me.”

“Are you arresting me? Oh God, am I under arrest?”

“Not yet. If you get dressed and come in now, give a true statement—tell the truth, Annie—I’ll talk to the DA for you. He lied to you. I believe you when you said he lied.”

“So do I.” Phoebe kept her fury banked and spoke soothingly. “I believe you, Annie.”

“I’m so sorry, Lieutenant. I’m really sorry.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are.”

Liz looked over at Phoebe. “I’ll drop you back home and take it from here.”

10

“I want to be there. I need to be there.”

Dave leaned back in his desk chair, continued to scan Phoebe’s face. “First, it’s not my call. Second, this is Liz Alberta’s case. You’re the victim. If you have trouble remembering that, I can have a mirror brought in.”

She knew how she looked. A couple of days meant some of the bruising was turning from black to sickly yellow and storm-cloud purple. Her jaw and eye were angry watercolors. Still, the worst of it was decently hidden under her clothes.

“The victim needs it. I need to sit in that room, look Arnold Meeks in the eye so he knows I’m not afraid of him.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Enough that I need to show him, and myself, that I’m not going to be. You and I know how the pathology works. How it is for someone who’s held against their will, threatened or injured in a situation beyond their control.”

“This isn’t identifying an attacker in a lineup, Phoebe. Or facing the attacker in court.”

“It’s just more proactive. My mother faced Reuben in court. She got up on the stand to testify while he was only feet away from her, and I know that was nearly as terrifying for her as being trapped in that house with him all those hours. But she did it, and still she’s trapped.”

All the affection and understanding he felt was there to read on his face. “You’re not your mother.”

“No, but…” Phoebe fisted a hand on her heart. “I feel her fear, and I don’t want it living inside me. How can I do what I need to do if it finds a place to live in me? So this victim needs it.”

“Observation,” he began, though they both knew he was losing ground.

“Isn’t enough.” She shook her head. “Face-to-face, and this time I know he won’t be controlling the situation. The cop wants to be in that room with him because I may be able to help Liz get a confession out of him. I was there. Victim, witness, police officer. Makes me a triple threat.”

“And still doesn’t make it my call. It’s up to Detective Alberta, her captain and the DA. The DA,” Dave continued before she could speak, “who fishes with Arnie’s daddy.”

“Whoever he fishes with, Parnell’s always struck me as solid. Do you really think he’ll ease off an investigation of an attack on a police officer because he’s buddied up with the father of a suspect?”

“It’s a lot of who-you-know in Savannah, Phoebe, just like anywhere else. But I’ll agree, Parnell’s solid. Meeks is bringing his delegate and a lawyer in with him. Annie Utz is lawyered, too.”

“All the more reason for me to give Liz—Detective Alberta—some backup—someone well invested who doesn’t give a damn who Arnie’s daddy drowns worms with. And I’ll tell you something else. Having two women question him, put pressure on him?”

She wandered the office as she spoke now, because she could feel it, she could see it. She could all but taste it. “Oh, Arnie’s not going to like that one little bit. He’ll make a mistake. He’ll end up leading with his ego, especially if I’m in there. Not your call, Captain, but you could make one. You could reach out to Detective Alberta’s captain or her lieutenant, ask that I get a seat.”

“I’ll make a call, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Any worthwhile negotiator’s careful with his promises.” She touched a hand to his shoulder. “The call’s enough. Thank you.”

“If you buy a ticket into the interrogation, have to deal with him that way, I might not have done you any favor. How’s your family handling this?”

“It shook them up. My mother…you know how it is.”

“I do. Would me coming by help things or add to them?”

“Mama always feels better after a visit from you. We all do. Why don’t you come to Sunday dinner?”

He kicked back in his chair. “Would that mean sugar-glazed ham?”

“It could be arranged. Thanks for this.”

“Phoebe…” Straightening again, he cleared his throat. “I want to say I regret there’s been any speculation or gossip inside the department regarding an inappropriate relationship between us.”

“Such as me giving you bj’s in your office.”

“Oh, Jesus.” The tips of his ears went pink, as she knew they did when he was mortally embarrassed. “I’m old enough to be your father.”

“First, you’d have been a very precocious fifteen to have pulled that one off. Second, since when does age factor into inappropriate sexual behavior? Neither of us is responsible for the speculation of small, ugly minds.”

He picked up a ballpoint pen, clicked it a few times. “I opened you up for this when I asked you to take the desk in this department.”

“You gave me an opportunity—which I grabbed—to do the work I’m good at. Am I qualified for the desk?”

“You know you are.”

“There you are, then.”

“Meeks, junior and/or senior, may push this into IAB.”

“And we can both stand up to that, should that happen. Don’t worry about me in this.”

But he did. Even as he lifted the phone to put in the call she’d asked for, he worried.

Phoebe had a moment alone in Observation, studying Arnie Meeks through the two-way mirror. He looked careless, she decided. Carelessly confident. A kind of screw-you posture of a man who believes whatever he’s done isn’t going to stick to him.

He’d know he was being watched, or could be watched at any time. He didn’t give a damn, Phoebe concluded.

And when she imagined his hands on her, his fingers inside her, her stomach rolled.

She gave too much of a damn.

“Lieutenant.” Liz stepped in with a tall, reed-thin brunette. “ADA Monica Witt, Lieutenant Phoebe Mac Namara.”

“Lieutenant.” Monica shook hands with Phoebe. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, thanks. I take it you’ll be prosecuting the case.”

“If you can make one. We have Annie Utz’s statement, and her phone, which shows an outgoing call at nine fifty-eight. We can’t tie that to Arnold Meeks. The number called was to a toss-away phone, untraceable. We don’t have any physical evidence linking Meeks to the attack.”

“You have motive. You have opportunity, and a pattern of insubordinate and threatening behavior.”

“My boss wants more than that to charge a police officer with assault and battery, with sexual assault on a fellow officer. Get me more, and I’ll charge him.”

Two men stepped in. Phoebe recognized Liz’s lieutenant, nodded in acknowledgment. Just as she recognized, through the strong family resemblance, Arnie Meeks’s father.

He was thicker than his son through the chest, stronger along the jawline, harder in the eyes. But there was no mistaking the relationship. Just as there was no mistaking the insulted anger that pumped off him despite his ramrod posture.

“Lieutenant Anthony and Sergeant Meeks will also be observing.”

“We’ll get started.” Liz walked to the door, held it open as Phoebe followed.

“When my boy’s clear of this,” Sergeant Meeks said as he shifted to block Phoebe’s path, “and his suspension lifted, this won’t be over for you, Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“Sergeant, you’re here as a courtesy.” Anthony laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t abuse that courtesy.”

Phoebe moved around him to the door of the interrogation room. “Like father,” she said under her breath.

“Shake it off,” Liz advised. “I take the lead on this.”

“We’ve been this round before.”

“Just a friendly reminder.” Opening the door, she walked in.

He didn’t spare Liz so much as a look, Phoebe noted. His eyes aimed straight for her, held.

“Boys.” Liz smiled easily, with a nod toward the trio at the table. She set the recorder, fed in the data, read Arnie his rights. “You understand all that, Officer Meeks?”

“I’ve given the Miranda enough times, I better.”

“That’s a yes?”

“Yeah, I understand myrights. Shouldn’t you be in bed somewhere with an ice pack and some Darvon?” he asked Phoebe.

“Arnie.”

Arnie shrugged off the quiet warning from his attorney.

“I’m surprised by your concern, Arnie,” Liz began. “The way I hear it, you’re not Lieutenant Mac Namara’s biggest fan.”

“I don’t think much of her as a cop. Then again, she’s not much of one seeing as all she does is talk.”

“We’ll save your definition of ‘much of a cop’ for later, if it’s all the same to you.” Smooth as top cream, Liz kept an easy smile on her face. “The two of you—meaning you and Lieutenant Mac Namara—have had a couple of set-tos recently. Is that true?”

“My client stipulates that he and Lieutenant Mac Namara hold opposing viewpoints and professional styles. Those are hardly motives for a physical attack on her person. The lack of evidence—”

“We’re talking here,” Liz said. “Just getting things out on the table. Arnie, you don’t much like Lieutenant Mac Namara. Is that fair to say?”

Arnie kept his smirk aimed at Phoebe. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Did you have occasion to call Lieutenant Mac Namara a bitch?”

“I call them as I see them.”

“So, she’s a bitch?” At Arnie’s shrug, Liz nodded. “And you have no particular problem calling a superior officer a bitch? No problem threatening her when she took disciplinary action?”

“There’s only Lieutenant Mac Namara’s word on this alleged threat,” the lawyer interrupted.

“That, and…” Liz flipped through her file. “The statements of two detectives who observed your client in the lieutenant’s office behaving in what they believed was a threatening manner.”

“Their beliefs aren’t fact.”

“Arnie, do you remember why you were in Lieutenant Mac Namara’s office on Thursday last?”

“Sure I do. She was covering her ass after she screwed up a hostage negotiation by suspending me.”

“Really?” Liz turned round eyes on Phoebe. “My goodness, if that was the case, who could blame you for calling her a bitch? Why don’t we pull out a few statements and reports on that negotiation—at which you were the first responder—just to get the overview? Hmmm. FR did not call for backup. FR did not begin a log…Ah, here’s a good one. FR antagonized the HT with threats. I like this one, too: Officer Meeks hampered and attempted to block Lieutenant Mac Namara’s contact with the HT.”

Arnie rocked back in his chair, balanced on its back legs, rocked up again. “She can write anything she wants. Doesn’t mean that’s how it went down.”

“Actually, all those examples are from witnesses—civilian and law enforcement. Well now, reading all this, it looks like you screwed things up there, Arnie.”

“I had the situation under control until she pushed into it.”

“So, you just needed a little more time to resolve the matter, and she didn’t give it to you.” Lips pursed, Liz nodded. “The guy blows his brains out, and you get the rap. Then, the bitch suspends you. I’d be pissed, too. Hard to blame you for wanting to pay her back.”

Arnie smiled, shoved his hand at his lawyer before the lawyer could speak. “Just shut up. She’s insulting me thinking she can bait me into saying something stupid. What about you?” he said to Phoebe. “Nothing to say for a change?”

“I was just sitting here wondering how your wife feels about all this. How she feels about you diddling with Annie Utz, for instance.”

The smirk twisted his lips. “Annie’s cute, and thick as a brick. I flirted, I admit it. Every guy in the squad did. But when she came on to me, when she wanted to take it past a wink, I set her straight. Got her feelings hurt, so I guess she figured to pay me back with this wild story. Or you pushed her to lie.”

Phoebe looked over at Liz. “The man’s surrounded by liars and bitches. It’s a wonder he gets through the day.”

“I don’t know how he gets out of bed in the morning. So Annie’s lying when she states you and she had a sexual relationship?”

He grinned widely, shook his finger. “I never had sex with that woman.”

“Cute,” Liz acknowledged. “And really adorable when you consider Annie states that relationship was limited to oral sex. A blurry line, I grant you. She ‘came on’ to you, that’s what you said, and that’s funny, too. In her statement she uses that same phrase. You told her Lieutenant Mac Namara came on to you. And when you, being the moral, upstanding type, turned her down, she got her feelings hurt and looked for payback. My God, man, the women just make your life a living hell. I have to tell you, I’m actively restraining myself from coming on to you right now.”

“Keep it up, Detective,” the lawyer warned, “and this interview is over.”

“Just going with what seems to be a pattern. You were in the building Monday morning between nine and tena.m. , Officer?”

“That’s right. I had some things I wanted out of my locker.”

“It took you an hour to get some things out of your locker?”

“I hung around. I’m a cop,” he said with some irritation. “This is my house. I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be doing the job. And I would be if it wasn’t for her and the stick up her ass.”

“Now she’s a bitch with a stick up her ass who came on to you.”

“I call them like I see them, remember?”

“But it was Annie who said Lieutenant Mac Namara came on to you.” Liz smiled pleasantly when annoyance crossed Arnie’s face. “I think you’re getting your excuses and lies mixed up here. But it’s easy to see why. It’s hard to tell one bitch from the other, isn’t it? We’re all pretty much the same. You didn’t need to see Phoebe’s face when you punched your fist into it. You didn’t need to hear her scream or cry or curse you when you shoved her down, ripped her clothes to shreds. Of course, it didn’t take anyballs to do that, not when her hands were cuffed. I guess one man’s payback is another man’s cowardice.”

“I’m man enough.”

“Man enough to use one woman to ambush another.” The sugary tone was a thing of the past now as Liz whipped out the words. “Man enough to lie in wait like a snake in the grass. And the only way you could put your hands on her was to cuff her, to knock her down. That’s the only way you could get her naked and put hands on her.”

“I was never in that stairway,” Arnie shot back. “I never touched her. I got better things to do with my time. I sure got better things to do with my fingers.” He flipped the middle one at Phoebe.

“She never said anything about fingers,” Phoebe said quietly. “She said hands.”

He sat back. “Hands, fingers. Same thing.”

“It’s really not.” There was a hot ball jammed between her belly and her heart, hard and hot. She needed it to break apart and dissolve.

The victim needed it, she thought, to kill the fear.

“You rammed them inside me. You son of a bitch.” She surged to her feet, ignoring the lawyer’s objections as she leaned across the table. “You smelled like baby powder, just like you do now. Under the sweat. Because you’re starting to sweat, Arnie. Do you remember what you said to me?”

“Can’t remember something I didn’t say. I wasn’t there.”

“You said you didn’t fuck my kind. I figure you didn’t use your dick because it’s too small to make an impression. Your kind can’t get it up half the time anyway.”

“Too bad you didn’t break your neck in the fall.”

“This interview’s over,” the lawyer announced.

“You should’ve pushed me harder. Maybe if I’d broken something, you’d have gotten a decent boner.”

“I should’ve kicked you down the damn stairs.”

She eased back, nodded as that hard, hot ball began to dissolve. “Your mistake.”

“I said, this interview is over.”

“That’s fine.” Liz rose. “We’ll just move right along, then. Officer Meeks, you’re under arrest.”

Phoebe went straight to her office, closed herself in, and did something she rarely did. She lowered and closed her blinds. Carefully, she sat behind her desk.

Everything seemed to be throbbing at once. Emotional upheaval, stress, she told herself. All of it pushing the physical discomfort up several notches. She couldn’t take a pill, not here. They made her sleepy and fuzzy-headed, so she settled for four Motrin. And watched her hands shake on the bottle.

Yeah, the ball was dissolving, she thought, and there was a price to pay for it.

She didn’t answer the knock on her door, and thought only, Go away. Give me five damn minutes.

But the door opened, and Liz stepped in. “Sorry. How you holding up?”

“Got the shakes.”

“You didn’t have them in there, when it counted.”

“He looked at me, he looked me right in the eye. He was glad he hurt me. He only wished he’d hurt me more.”

“And that’s what did him,” Liz pointed out. “I don’t care how coached he is by his lawyer, it’s going to show. He can’t resist, he can’t control it. When this goes to trial—”

“It’s not going to trial, Liz. We both know that.”

Liz walked around the desk, sat on the edge. “Okay, yeah. They’ll make a deal. The department, the DA, nobody’s going to want a public trial, and the publicity that goes with it. And even with what happened in interrogation, the case is a little shaky. Strong enough so Arnie’s lawyer knows to take a deal when it’s offered. He’s going to lose his badge, Phoebe, and he’s going to be disgraced. Is that going to be enough for you?”

“It’ll have to be. I appreciate all you did.”

“You pulled plenty of the weight.”

“Hey,” Phoebe said when Liz got up. “I know this nice bar—Irish pub on River Street. I’d like to buy you a drink. I need a few days’ grace on it, until my vanity lets me go out in public.”

“Sure, just let me know. Take care, Phoebe.”

Down in Holding, Arnie paced his cell. They’d arrested him, booked him. Goddamn useless lawyer.

Goddamn bitches screwed it all up. Assault, battery, sexual molestation. Railroading him, that’s what they were doing, all because thatcunt couldn’t handle a few bruises she’d damn well earned.

It wouldn’t stick. No possible way they could make it stick.

He whipped around when the door slid open, and bit back the words that wanted to spew out only because his father shook his head when he came in.

So Arnie held them in until the guard stepped away.

“They can’t make this bullshit stick,” Arnie began. “She’s not going to get away with locking me up like this, with embarrassing me in front of my fellow officers. That bitch—”

“Sit down. Shut up.”

Arnie sat, but he couldn’t shut up. “You see how they put a girl ADA on it? Circle the fucking wagons. What’s Chuck thinking, for God’s sake?” Arnie demanded, speaking of the DA. “Why didn’t he just kick this in the first place?”

“He’s getting the arraignment pushed up, and he’s going to recommend ROR.”

“Well, Jesus, that’s just great.” In disgust Arnie threw his hands up. “I get charged for this bullshit, but released on my own recognizance, and that makes it okay? Fuck that, Pa. I could lose my badge. You need to reach out to IAB, get an investigation on Mac Namara. Youknow Mc Vee’s dipping his wick in that. You know that’s why I’m in here.”

Mouth tight, Sergeant Meeks stared down at his son. “You’re in here because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut, just like now. I’m going to ask you one time. Just you and me. I’m going to ask this one time, and I want the truth. You lie, I’ll see it. I see it, and I walk out of here, and that’s the last I’ll do for you.”

Anger faded away into shock, and the first trickle of fear. “Christ, Pa.”

“Did you do this thing? You look at me, Arnie. Did you do this?”

“I—”

“Don’t you fucking lie.”

“She suspended me. She used me as a goat. You taught me to stand up for myself, not to take shit off anyone. If you got to kick an ass, you kick it.”

Meeks stared. “Did I teach you to use your fists on a woman, boy? Did I teach you that?”

“She wouldn’t get off my back. She—” He broke off, eyes watering, burning, when his father’s hand slapped across his face.

“Did I teach you to jump a superior officer from behind, like a coward? I taught you to be aman, goddamn it, not to hide in some stairwell and beat on a woman. You’re a disgrace to me, to the family name, to the job.”

“They come at you, you come back harder. That’s what you taught me. That’s what I did.”

“You don’t see the difference, there’s nothing I can say.” Wearily, Meeks got to his feet. “I’ll use what I’ve got to fix this for you, the best I can. You’re my son, so I’ll do it for you, for your mother, for my grandson. But you’re done on the job, Arnie. If I could fix that, I wouldn’t. You’re done.”

“Then how are you going to hold your head up, if you don’t have your son following you on the job?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get you out of this, the best I can. After that, I don’t know.”

“I only did what I thought you’d do.”

“If I believed that, I’d feel sicker than I do now.” Meeks walked over to the cell door, set his jaw. “On the gate!” he called, then left his son.

By Sunday, Phoebe decided to ditch the sling. She was tired of it, tired of the meds, tired of the bruises.

And she had to admit she was tired of having to fight back the need to whine and complain so that she could ease her family back into routine.

Still, she felt better when she stepped out of the shower, especially if she avoided any glimpse of herself in the mirror. She managed to get her robe on without too much of a struggle, and decided she’d probably not only last through Sunday dinner, but maybe even make it until the crazy hour of ten o’clock that night before her energy just drained out like water from a sieve.

She walked into her bedroom just as her sister-in-law walked through the door. “Knock, knock,” Josie said with a big smile. “How’s the patient today?”

“I’ve crossed myself off the disabled list, thanks.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Let her drop.”

“Come on, Josie.”

Josie’s smile only widened. She was barely five-two, weighed in at maybe one-ten fully dressed, and behind that angelic smile was a hardass that would make Nurse Ratched tremble.

“Drop the robe, sweets, or I’ll tell your mother.”

“That’s mean.”

“I am mean.”

“Don’t I know. I’m going to run away to Atlanta, get myself an apartment and leave no forwarding address.” But Phoebe dropped the robe.

Sympathy shone in Josie’s big brown eyes, but her voice was brisk. “Bruising’s fading. The hip looks a lot better. That shoulder has to be painful yet.”

“It’s coming along.”

“How’s the range of motion?”

“I’m still grateful I’ve got some front-hook bras, but it’s improving.”

Josie took Phoebe’s hands, turned them over. If truth be told, those injuries hurt her heart more than the rest. “Wrist lacerations look pretty good.”

“Bitching sore if you want the truth. Can I regain my modesty now?”

Josie picked up the robe, helped Phoebe into it. “Any trouble with your vision in that eye?”

“No, it’s clear. And before you ask, the headaches are fewer and less intense. I can poke at my jaw without feeling like I’ve drilled a spike through it and into my brain. All in all, not too bad.”

“You’re healing well. Helps that you’re young and in excellent physical shape.”

“I knew those damn Pilates were good for something. You didn’t have to come by to check on me, Jo.”

“You get the bonus round because I came early so Ava can teach me to bake lemon meringue pie. Which you know she’s making because it’s Dave’s favorite. Why doesn’t she just jump that man and get the ball rolling?”

“I wish I knew.” Phoebe moved to her dresser for underwear. “In all these years it’s the first time they’ve both been free at the same time. His divorce has been final for almost two years now. But they’re both still playing just friends.”

“We could set them up on a blind date. You know, you tell him you’ve got somebody, and I tell her, and we don’t tell either the some-bodies are each other. And then—”

“We both get our butts burned for meddling.”

Josie pouted. “That’s what Carter said when I tried the idea out on him. Well, I’m giving them six months more, then I’m risking my butt. Want me to help you get dressed?”

“I can handle it.”

“Just between us now?” Josie watched Phoebe’s range of motion as Phoebe eased into a shirt, and judged it improved. “How are you doing otherwise?”

“Okay. I know the symptoms of posttraumatic stress. I’ve had some unpleasant dreams. It’s natural.”

“It’s also natural for stress to bottle up when you feel obligated to keep it inside and not upset the family.”

“If I need to spew, I have my ways. Don’t worry. I’m back on the job full-time next week. That helps me.”

“Okay. Call if you need me.”

To prove to herself as well as her family that things were approaching normal, Phoebe dressed with some care. The bold blue color of the shirt cheered her up enough to nudge her into taking some time with makeup. Then more time as she realized if she just kept blending, the bruises went from a shout to a murmur.

By the time she got downstairs, the kitchen was full of women cooking. It didn’t hurt her feelings at all to be banished out to the courtyard and the sunshine with Carter and Carly.

“Mama!” Carly flew across the bricks. “I kicked Uncle Carter’sbutt at jacks.”

“That’s my girl.”

“It’s a sissy game.”

“He says that when he loses,” Carly announced. “Do you want to play the champ?”

“I don’t think I’m up to sitting on the ground yet, baby. Give me another week, and we’ll see whose butt gets kicked. You better practice.”

“I’m going in for a drink, okay? Whipping Uncle Carter was thirsty work.”

“Smart-mouth.”

Carly grinned at her uncle and ran for the door. With a sigh, Phoebe sat on the circular bench around the courtyard’s little fountain.

Here, she could not only see Ava’s roses but smell them. She could hear the birds sing, and admire the tenacity of the thyme and chamomile that spread between the cracks of the pavers, the sweet faces of the violas that danced around a copper birdbath.

Here, with the brick walls and wrought-iron gates, Ava had created a personal sanctuary where shade dappled through moss onto benches and tea olives perfumed the air.

“God! It feels good to sit outside.”

“Josie give you the thumbs-up?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He sat, slipped an arm around Phoebe’s shoulders. “We get to worry about you. It’s part of the package.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “We all had a scare. It’s over now.”

“I remember how long it took me to get over being scared.”

“Carter, you were just a little guy.”

“That doesn’t matter, and you know it. You looked after me. And you stood between me and Cousin Bess for years after.”

“Old bitch. Which is mean and ungrateful, however true, when we’re sitting here in her pretty courtyard while other people are baking pies and ham in the kitchen.”

“It’s Ava’s courtyard,” Carter said, and made Phoebe smile.

“Yes, it is. And really, even during the tyrant’s reign, it was Ava’s. Do you ever think how she was younger than we are now when she started working here? Barely twenty-two, wasn’t she? And to have the spine to stick it out, to stand up to Cousin Bess.”

“You had it at twelve,” Carter reminded her. “And you’re still looking after us. She knew you’d stay because Mama has to. She could’ve left Mama the house, after all Mama did for her, but she put it on you, with strings. Locked you in here.”

There was no point in denying the truth, every word of truth. And still, it was too lovely a day for bitter old memories. “Locked me in this beautiful house, where my daughter thrives. It’s not what we can call a sacrifice.”

“It is. It always was. You let me walk away.”

She took a firm grip on his hand. “Not very far. I don’t think I could stand it if you went very far away.”

He smiled, pressed his lips to her hair. “I’d miss you too much. But I’ll tell you one thing, Phoebs, I never knew how much I needed to move out of this house until I did it. You never really had a chance.”

“I had my time away.” College, Quantico, my disaster of a marriage. “I’m happy to be back. I especially like being able to sit out here while three other women put Sunday dinner together.”

“That’s only because you’re a lousy cook.”

“Lousy’s an exaggeration. I’m an unreliable cook.”

“No, you’re reliably lousy.”

She laughed and poked him in the ribs. “You burn even the thought of food, so you’re one to talk.”

“That’s why they invented takeout and delivery. You won’t need to cook if you play your cards right with the rich guy. He’s probably got a couple of chefs on staff.”

“Listen to you.” She gave him another, zestier poke. “Playing my cards. Plus, I don’t think he actually has a staff.” She frowned over that a moment. She didn’t think he had one, but really, how would she know?

“I see he sent more flowers. Looked like a few thousand of them in the parlor.”

“A couple dozen lilacs.” That smelled so, so lovely. “He seems to be a man who likes to make gestures.”

“I got thelook from Josie when she saw them.” Hissing out a breath, Carter narrowed his eyes at the kitchen windows. “Guys who make gestures make other guys make gestures, and now I’m going to have to remember to bring home flowers next week like I thought of it myself.”

“You ought to think of it yourself. I have no sympathy for you.”

“I brought her home her favorite panini and a cheap bottle of wine just a few days ago, and I ought to get credit for it. But I’m outdone by some forest of lilacs.”

“You used the cheap wine to get lucky.”

He grinned. “’Course I did. Well, megabucks aside, and having only met him once, I already like him more than I did Roy.”

“You never liked Roy at all, so that’s not saying much.”

He shifted, pointed in that smug, brotherly way. “And who was right?”

She rolled her eyes. “You were. Shut up. Besides, I got the grand prize out of the bastard.” She looked over as the door slammed open and Carly raced out.

“Mama! Uncle Dave’s here!”

The minute he stepped out, the instant Phoebe saw his face, she knew. She kept her own blank as she pushed to her feet. “Carter, I want to talk to Dave just a minute. Can you take Carly in, keep her occupied?”

“Sure. Hey, Dave.”

They didn’t shake as many men did, or do the one-armed, backslapping man hug as others did. Theyhugged, Phoebe thought; as always it made her smile. It was a good, strong embrace; it was father to son. “You’ll have to excuse me and Carly. I have to reestablish my dominance and whoop her at WWE SmackDown.”

“As if!” Hooting with challenge, Carly raced back inside the house.

“You look better,” Dave began.

“So I’m told. Over and over. What happened?”

“They made a deal. I wanted to tell you in person. Phoebe, there was a lot of pressure from the brass on this, from the DA’s office—”

“It doesn’t matter.” She sat again, needed to sit again. “What did they give him?”

“He’s off the job, immediately. No benefits. He pleads guilty to simple assault—”

“Simple assault,” she repeated. She’d prepared herself, and still she was stunned.

“It carries one-to-three, suspended. He’ll get probation. He’ll be required to take anger management and serve twenty hours’ community service.”

“Does he have to write on the blackboard a hundred times: ‘I promise to be a good boy’?”

“I’m sorry, Phoebe.” He crouched in front of her, laid a hand on her knee. “It’s a bad deal. They want to put it away. You don’t have to put it away. If you decide to file civil charges against him, I’ll stand behind you on it. And I won’t be the only one in the department who does.”

“I can’t put my family through that. Honestly, I don’t know if I could put myself through it.” She closed her eyes and reminded herself that not all deals were fair, not all deals settled the score. “He did what he did. Everyone who counts knows it.” She let out a long breath before looking Dave in the eye again. “He can’t be a cop anymore. The rest, it’s not important. He’s off the job, and that’s what’s right. That’s what’s needed. I’m okay with it.”

“Then you’re a better man than I, kid.”

“No. I’m pissed. I’m seriously pissed, but I can live with it. We’re going to eat sugar-glazed ham and lemon meringue pie. And Arnie Meeks? He’s going to be eating disgrace for a very long time.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I can live with that.”

NEGOTIATION PHASE

Oh, to be torn ’twixt love an’ duty.

—“HIGH NOON”

11

Even after a handful of years, Duncan found meetings weird. The whole business-suited, proposal/pitch/report, Danish-and-coffee and thanks-for-your-time elements of them. Then there were the politics, and the pecking orders.

Maybe that was why he didn’t have an actual office. There was no escapingthe meeting to his mind if a man had an office. Plus an office meant you had to staff it with people who had to be given particular assignments on a regular basis. If you happened to be the boss, that meant you had to come up with those assignments, and probably read reams of reports on the assignments before, during and afterward. And you’d damn well have to have more meetings regarding the assignments.

Vicious cycle.

An office involved desks, and giving people titles. Who actually decided on titles? What made, say, an executive assistant different from an administrative assistant? And should it be the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, or the Vice President of Sales and Marketing?

Things like that would keep him up at night.

Phineas nagged him off and on about the office thing, but so far he’d been able to slip and slide around it.

He liked meeting with people in one of the bars, or a restaurant. Or if it was absolutely necessary, in Phin’s office, which was, in Duncan’s opinion, meeting central. Going somewhere that wasn’t essentially or absolutely his own place not only kept things looser, but he’d found those he met with tended to be more up-front and outspoken over a beer in a pub than they might be over glasses of spring water in a boardroom.

He’d found, too, that it was often more interesting, certainly more telling, to go to the prospective meeter. Sitting in their homes, their place of business, their studio, whatever, generally made them more comfortable. It gave him a leg up on getting what he wanted or needed or hoped for if the other party was comfortable in their own space.

Following that philosophy, he’d buzzed from a breakfast meeting at a café downtown to a funky little theater in Southside, then wound his way to a sadly neglected house in the Victorian section.

In each case, he felt he’d gotten more accomplished, and had a better time of it, than if he’d summoned all the parties involved in all the prospective projects into some stuffy office where he’d be stuck behind a desk wanting to pull a Suicide Joe and jump out the window anyway.

As he made the turn onto Jones, he hoped the same would hold true for what he’d deemed his last meeting of the day.

He’d considered timing it differently, doing a kind of drop-by when Phoebe would be home. But that seemed just a little underhanded. Which was a valid strategy, true, but he figured she’d cop to it.

He parked, began the pretty stroll under arching trees.

He wanted to see her—and not just for the quick just-dropping-into-see-how-you’re-doing visits he’d limited himself to for the last two weeks. Biding time, he mused. And maybe there was a little game-playing in there, too. She didn’t know what to make of him, and he didn’t mind that.

He didn’t always know what to make of himself, and didn’t mind that either.

One thing he did know was that she’d had a major trauma, and she was working her way through it. There wasn’t any point in pushing her into a date, or rushing her into bed at a time when she was shaky on her pins.

He had plans. He liked to make plans, nearly as much as he liked adjusting, shifting and altogether changing them from conception to completion.

He had plans for Phoebe.

But right now, he had plans for something else altogether.

Before he turned up the walk to Mac Namara House he spotted the woman with the strange little dog across the brick road. Today’s doggy bow tie was red-and-white-striped, to match the wide-brimmed hat the lady had perched on her head. It set off, he supposed, her blindingly white suit and red sneakers.

The little dog currently sniffed happily, by all appearances, at the butt of a puffy pink poodle held on the end of a gold leash by an enormously fat black man in a blue seersucker suit.

The scrawny lady and the huge man chatted away under the shade of a live oak even as the hairless dog struggled mightily to hump the pink poodle.

God, Duncan thought, he loved Savannah.

He rang the bell, admired the pots and baskets of flowers on the veranda while he waited. It was Ava, he remembered, who had the gardening talent. He wondered if he could talk her into…

“Hey.” He offered Essie a smile when she opened the door. “Got time for a bad penny?”

“You’re no bad penny, and I’ve always got time for young handsome men.”

They’d progressed over his occasional visits to cheek-kissing. He bussed hers now, caught the subtle scent of her perfume.

What was it like, he wondered, to get up every day, dress and groom, knowing you’d never go out the door?

“How’d you know I was baking cookies?” she asked him, so his smile spread to a grin.

“What kind?”

“Chocolate chip.”

“Come on, really? All the way from scratch? Good thing I came by so you’d have a taste tester.”

“Let’s get you started on that. Phoebe won’t be home for a couple hours yet,” she added as she led the way back. “Ava, she’s running errands. She’ll be swinging by school to pick Carly up after play practice. Our Carly’s one of the wicked stepsisters inCinderella . Sheloves getting to be mean and bossy.”

“I was a frog once. Not the turn-into-a-prince kind. Just a frog. I had to belch on cue. It was a shining moment in my life.”

She laughed, shooed him toward the kitchen table. “I bet your mama was so proud.”

He said nothing to that. What could he say? Instead he sniffed the air. “Smells like heaven in here.”

“I got some still warm from the oven. You want coffee or milk with them?”

“Cookies and milk? I’d suffer through school again if I could come home after to you and cookies and milk.”

Pleased, she pinked up. “You’re a charmer, aren’t you? What’ve you been out and about doing today?”

“Talking to people, mostly. And actually, I was hoping to finish up that part of the day talking to you. There’s this property I was looking at. It’s in the Victorian District, not far from a piece of the campus. Savannah College of Art and Design?”

“You don’t say.” She could barely remember what was outside the house and where it was set. All of that, the streets and buildings and open spaces, were a jumbled maze of squares and lines in her mind. “What kind of property?”

“Kind of a mess, actually. Like one of those Victorian ladies who fell on extremely hard times. You can still see the elegance under the neglect.” He picked up a cookie, bit in. Then forgot everything in pure sensory pleasure.

“Oh God. Marry me.”

She didn’t laugh this time. She giggled. “If a woman can have you for a cookie, I’m surprised the bakeries all over the state of Georgia aren’t working overtime.” She reached across him, picked up one herself. And her eyes twinkled. “But they are damned good cookies.”

“If I beg, will you give me some to take home? How can I settle for Chips Ahoy! now?”

“I believe we can spare some for you.”

She moved to the stove to take out a tray, slide in the one she’d prepared.

“I lost my train of thought in cookie nirvana. This sad house off campus.”

“Mmm-hmm. You’re thinking of buying it and fixing it up.”

He followed warm cookie with cold milk, and figured that was the sum total of heaven on earth. “That kind of depends on you.”

Puzzlement lifted her eyebrows as she turned away from the stove. “On me?”

“I’m thinking of buying it and fixing it up, yeah. What I’ve got in mind is a shop. Now…” He gestured with the last bite of the first cookie before popping it into his mouth. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You couldn’t possibly. I’m too confused to be thinking anything.”

“Okay, what some might think is, hell, Savannah’s got a million shops already. It does, no doubt about it. But people love to shop. No doubt about that either. Right?”

“I…I do. I love browsing the Internet shops.”

“Sure.” He picked up another cookie. “So I’m thinking, location being near the campus, Art and Design. Why not art, crafts. Okay,” he said before she could speak. “We’ve already got plenty of shops and galleries. Artsy, crafty.”

“I…suppose.”

“Even the style I’m thinking, which would be upscale, isn’t new, particularly. Boutiquey. Boutiquesque? You know what I’m saying?”

“Almost.” She shook her head, laughed again. “Duncan, if you’re using me for a sounding board here, I’m flattered. But I don’t know anything about real estate and location and boutiquey shops out there. I don’t go out there.”

“You know about art and craft.” Okay, he was having a third cookie, even if it made him sick. “About creating it. About selling it.”

“You mean my crocheting.” She waved a hand at him. “That’s just a paying hobby. It’s just something I stumbled into.”

“Okay. How about stumbling my way? I’ve got this idea. Don’t you love getting ideas? I always got ideas, but I couldn’t do anything with most of them. Now I can. It’s a rush, let me tell you.”

“So I can see.”

“The idea is arts and crafts by Savannahians. Products created only in Savannah. Only Savannah,” he repeated, narrowing his eyes. “Might be a good name for it. I should write that down. Savannah arts and crafts,” he continued as he dug out his cell phone, cued up his memo function. “Created by Savannahians, displayed and sold in a gorgeous two-story wooden house that symbolizes Savannah. It’s got this great porch, or it will be great. I know this guy who does amazing furniture. Tongue and groove. And this woman who does amazing things with wrought iron. So we could…getting ahead of myself,” he said when he noted she was just staring at him.

“You want to carry some of my crocheting in your shop?”

“Essie, I want to carry buckets of it, trunkloads of it. I want to have it spread all through the place. What do you call them—doilies?—on tables, throws on the sofas. You said you did bedspreads, right? How about tablecloths, like that? And clothes. Sweaters, scarves.”

“Well, yes, but…”

“See, we’d have rooms set up. Just like a home. Bedrooms, dining room, parlors. So we’d display your work that way. For sale, sure, but also part of the ambience, you know? Baby stuff in the nursery, scarves, sweaters in the wardrobes. You could keep doing your own Internet sales if you want. But we could take care of that for you, expand it.”

“My head is actually spinning.” She laid her hand on one side of it as if to keep it centered. “Why do you think I could do all that?”

“You are doing it. You’d just keep doing it—except for the boxing and shipping, depending on how you want to handle it. Here, come with me a minute.” He grabbed her hand as he pushed back from the table, pulled her into the dining room.

“What do you call that?”

She frowned at the long runner she’d designed in soft pastels for the dining room table. “A runner.”

“A runner. Got it. So, if you were to make one just like that and sell it, what would you charge?”

“Oh, well.” She had to calculate. She’d made one very similar for a client once, and several shorter ones for others over the years. She gauged the price as best she could without a calculator.

Duncan nodded, did some rapid calculations of his own. “I could give you fifteen percent more than that, and still make a decent profit.”

Her cheeks went white, then flushed warm pink. “Fifteen percent more?” She grabbed an end of the runner. “You want it now? I’ll box it right up for you.”

He grinned. “You keep that one, and start thinking about making more. And whatever else you’ve a mind to make. I’m going to need some time to get this up and running, but I guarantee we’ll be rocking by the Christmas shopping season.” He held out a hand. “Partner?”

Duncan considered it a really good day if by seven, regardless of what had come before, there was pizza and beer on the veranda.

He’d lit candles, as much to discourage the bugs as to add some light. His bare feet were propped on the padded wicker hassock. He’d left the TV on in the living room, angling himself so he could watch some basketball action through the window if he wanted. Or just listen to the play-by-play and stare off into the soft dark.

He’d had enough of people for the day. As sociable as he was, he hoarded his alone time. And he liked to listen to the sounds of the game, but he just simply loved the sounds of the night.

The quiet swooshing of air through the trees, the hum of insects, the incessant music of peepers entertained him. It was a good spot—veranda, chair and hassock—and the best time of day to figure things out. Or to let them go.

He’d been tempted to hang out in Essie’s kitchen until Phoebe came in from work. So why hadn’t he? Hang around too much, he decided, and become a fixture. Or an annoyance. It was all a matter of balance, to his way of thinking. And intriguing the woman in question so maybe she was just a little off hers.

Besides, every time he saw her, he wanted to grab her. Considering what she’d been through, he didn’t think she was at the grabbing stage yet.

He finished off a slice of pizza, contemplated another. Then glanced over at the sound of a car. His brows lifted when he realized the car wasn’t passing by but heading in.

He didn’t recognize it, but he recognized the woman who stepped out of it. And this, he thought, was a better way to end the day than pizza and beer.

“Hey, Phoebe.”

“Duncan.” She pushed at her hair as she walked to the veranda. “I was at the bridge before it occurred to me you probably weren’t here, and then it was too late not to keep going. But here you are anyway.”

“I’m here a lot. I mostly live here.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Want some pizza? A beer?”

“No, and no. Thank you.”

The formal tone had him lifting his eyebrows again. “How about a chair?”

“I’m fine, thanks. I want to ask what you’re doing with my mother.”

Okay. “Well, I asked her to marry me, but she avoided giving me an answer. I don’t think she took me seriously so I settled for the cookies.”

“I’m wondering how seriously you take her, or yourself.”

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re pissed at me, and we’ll go from there?”

“I’m not pissed. I’m concerned.”

Bullshit, he thought. He knew a pissed-off woman when she was standing on his veranda ready to chew holes in him. “About?”

“My mother’s bursting with excitement over this business you talked to her about.”

“You don’t want her to be excited?”

“I don’t want her to be disappointed, or disillusioned or hurt.”

His voice was as cool as his neglected beer. “Which would be the natural consequence of excitement over the project we discussed. Which, as I recall,” he added, “doesn’t involve you.”

“My mother’s state of mind very much involves me. You can’t come in there talking about some store you’re thinking of opening in some house you’re thinking of buying, and how she’s going to be a part of it. It’s your business how you do business—”

“Thank you very much.”

“But,” Phoebe ground out. “You got her all worked up, making plans, making designs, talking about how she’ll be able to help more with the expenses. What happens to all that if you change your mind, or it doesn’t come through, or you just find something more interesting to play with?”

“Why would I change my mind?”

“Aren’t you the one who opened a sports bar, then sold it?”

“Sold a piece of it,” he corrected.

“Then a pub. And I don’t know what else.” Which was the crux of it. She didn’tknow, and he was taking her mother into territory she hadn’t mapped out. “You bounce, and that’s fine for you, Duncan, that’s just fine. It’s not fine for my mother. She doesn’t bounce.”

“Let me sort this out. In your opinion, I’m irresponsible and unreliable.”

“No. No.” She let out a sigh as the leading edge of her temper dulled down to the core of worry. “You’re casual, Duncan, and it’s part of your appeal. You can afford to be casual, and not just because of the money. No one depends on you, so you can do what you like, come and go as you please.”

“Is that casual or careless?”

“I say what I mean, and I said casual. I don’t think you’re careless. But my mother’s fragile, and—”

“Your mother’s amazing. You know, I told her once she ought to give herself a break, but the fact is, you ought to give her one. Do you think because she can’t go out of that house, she’s less than amazing?”

“No. Damn it, no.” Because the conversation, such as it was, had gotten out of her hands, Phoebe dragged them through her hair and tried to get back to center. “But she does. She’s been hurt and pushed and shoved into the corner so many times.”

“I’m not going to do any of those things to Essie.”

“Not on purpose. I don’t mean that. But what if, for whatever reason, you don’t buy that house, then—”

“I bought it today.”

That stopped her. That put a hitch in her stride, Duncan thought. He said nothing more, just picked up his beer, watched her as he tipped back the bottle.

“All right, you bought the house. But what if you find it isn’t cost effective to fix it up? Or what if—”

“Jesus. What if the voices tell me to put on fairy wings and fly to Cuba? You can ‘what if’ till next Tuesday; it doesn’t mean a damn. I finish what I start, goddamn it. I’m not stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. I never said or meant you were.” But someone had, someone that mattered. “It’s just that this all came out of the blue, and for my mother it’shuge. I’m trying to point out the variables, and I’m trying to understand why you’d involve her in this. I can’t understand what you’re doing. I can’t understand what you want. From her. From me.”

“Tied those two together,” he muttered, and pushed to his feet. “Must want something from you, so I use her. Let’s answer this first. You want to know what I want from you?”

“Yes. Let’s start there.”

He grabbed her before the last word was all the way out. The hell with biding time. He was too pissed off to bide anything. He had his mouth on hers, showing her what he wanted, taking what he wanted with an impatient anger he rarely let free.

Hunger pushed and shoved at temper until his mouth ravaged hers.

Her back pressed back against the porch column, and her hands were trapped between his body and hers. Every muscle in her body quivered. But not in protest, not in fear. There was a difference between fear and thrill, and she understood it now.

When he broke off, there was suchheat in his eyes.

“You got that now?” he demanded. “We’re clear on that point?”

“Yes.”

“Then—”

It was her move now. All hers. Her hands were free so she hooked one arm around his neck, yanked his mouth back to hers. She would have chained her arms around him if her injured shoulder had allowed. When he pressed her against the column again, she nipped at his lip, rocked her hips against his.

She let the pleasure flood her after months and months of sexual drought. The feel of his hands on her breasts, the feel of the night air on her skin when his busy fingers undid her shirt, unhooked her bra. The glorious sensation that rolled through her and escaped on a purring moan.

She went wet and needy, arching to his hands and his mouth, quivering, quivering when he tugged at the button of her waistband.

Here, standing right here, she wanted to be taken without thought, without care, without boundaries. Desperate, she reached for him. And the shock of pain in her shoulder had her crying out.

He jerked back as if she’d punched him. “Christ. Christ.”

“It’s all right. I moved wrong, that’s all. Don’t—”

But he held up a hand, turned away. He paced up, he paced down. Stopped and took a long, long gulp of his warming beer.

“You’re hurt. You’re still hurt. Jesus.” And, setting the beer down again, he scrubbed his hands over his face.

“It’s not that bad. Really.”

“You’re still hurt. And I’m not going to bang you against the post like…Okay, okay, another minute here.”

He paced up and down again. “You pissed me off. No real excuse but I’m taking it.”

“No excuses necessary as it was obviously mutual.”

“Regardless. Anyway, that should answer the question, which I’m still trying to exactly remember as all the blood’s drained out of my head. The second had to do with…” He’d turned to face her again, and just stared.

She stood, leaning back against the post, shirt open, hair tumbled, cheeks flushed.

“Wow. Seriously. Hold on,” he said when she glanced down, then began to button up. “Would you not do that for just another minute. Maybe two? Since I’m not allowed to touch, it seems only fair I be able to look. You’ve got this really terrific body. It’s all just…just exactly right. And the way you’re standing there, and this light, and…Okay, yeah, you better close up shop there. That’s about all I can handle.”

“You’re a strange man, Duncan.”

“I’ve heard that. I want you, and it’s keeping me up at night. I don’t mind that so much, even though I like to sleep. But some things rate insomnia. You’re one of them.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“But to get back to the rest. I think the point’s just been made that I don’t need to use Essie to get to you. And you know what? You should think more of her than that. More of me, too, and more of yourself.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right, and I’m absolutely wrong. I hate that. My excuse, since we’re using them, is I love her so much.”

“I get that. You’re lucky to have her.”

Phoebe raked a hand through her hair. He meant that, exactly that, she realized. He saw her mother, and saw the value of the woman she was.

“I know it. People, a lot of people, look at the situation and think she’s some sort of burden. You don’t. And I’m sorry for the way I handled this.”

“I would be, too, except I got my hands on your breasts.” She laughed. “Want that beer now?”

“Better not, I’m driving. Duncan, please don’t take this the wrong way. I see the bars—you tended bar. And I could see if you bought a cab company, or a car service or some such thing. Maybe you have, I don’t know, and that’s part of it. I don’t know how you do this sort of thing. And I don’t know what you could possibly know about running a retail craft boutique.”

“We’ll find out, plus I wouldn’t actually be running it. I’ve got somebody in mind for that. And you’re thinking, hell, he can afford to lose a couple hundred thousand here or there.”

“No, actually, I was thinking you’ll probably find a way to make it work. I’m thinking I was scared because I came home to find my mother happy, bubbling with it.”

“She was happy when she started with Reuben.”

Now Phoebe pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Obviously I didn’t connect those dots for myself before I came haring out here and laid into you.”

“Hair trigger,” he said, without heat.

“About some things, obviously. Now that I’ve connected those dots—or you have for me—I’m thinking if you hadn’t had this idea I can’t understand, exactly, my mother wouldn’t have a chance to try something exciting.”

“I wouldn’t have made the offer if I didn’t believe I could sell the sheer hell out of her work.”

“Which, if I hadn’t flown off, I’d have come around to on my own rather than driving out here to jump all over you. Which I don’t regret because you got to get your hands on my breasts.”

He smiled slowly. “How long before they think you’ll be a hundred percent?”

She reached up with her good arm to touch his hair. She liked how it always looked as if he’d just taken a wild ride in that fancy car of his. “I’ll get a note from my private duty nurse clearing me for physical activity.”

“Works for me. Meanwhile, how about going out with me Sunday? Sunday-afternoon barbecue at a friend’s. It’d be a chance to get to know each other, dynamics with others, before we lose ourselves in wild, sweaty sex.”

“All right. Why not?”

“I’ll pick you up about two.”

“Two. I need to get home.” She rose to her toes, kissed him, softly, slowly, on either cheek. “I hope I keep you up tonight.”

He watched her walk away, flick a killer smile over her shoulder. And decided the odds were heavily in favor of insomnia.

As her car drove away, he went back to sit, to prop his feet on the padded hassock. Eating cold pizza, drinking warm beer, he thought it had been a hell of an interesting day.

12

The call came through at seven fifty-eight. The kid was smart, very smart. He hadn’t panicked, hadn’t tried to play the hero. He’d used his head, and his legs, dashing away from the bungalow in Gordonston, hopping fences between the pretty backyards back to his own house, to the phone. And to nine-one-one.

He’d given names, the address, the situation. En route to Savannah’s east side, Phoebe listened to the replay of the emergency call and thought the boy had the makings of a good cop.

He’s got them sitting around the kitchen table. Mr. Brinker does. Mrs. Brinker, Jessie, Aaron, even the baby. Um, Penny, in her high chair. He’s got a gun. I think he’s got two guns. Jessie’s crying. Jesus, you gotta do something.

She had more information. It came rolling in as she and Sykes sped toward the pretty neighborhood. Stuart Brinker, age forty-three, associate professor. Father of three—Jessica, sixteen, Aaron, twelve, and Penelope, two. Recently separated from his wife of eighteen years, Katherine, thirty-nine, art teacher.

Twenty minutes after the nine-one-one, Phoebe walked through the barricade forming the outer perimeter. The media was already doing stand-ups outside the barricades. There were some shouts in her direction from reporters. Phoebe ignored them, signaled to one of the uniforms.

“Lieutenant Mac Namara and Detective Sykes, negotiators. What’s the situation?”

“Four hostages, three minor children. HT’s got them in the living room now.” He gestured toward the tidy white bungalow with azaleas blooming pink and white in the front yard. “Curtains closed on all the windows there. We can’t get a visual. HT’s got a couple of handguns. No shots fired. First responder’s been talking to him off and on. The word I get is the guy’s really polite, but isn’t doing a lot of communicating at this point. Kid who called it in’s over there with his mother.”

Phoebe glanced over, saw the gangly teenage boy sitting on the ground, head in his hands. A woman sat beside him, her arm hooked firmly over his shoulder, her face pale as wax.

“Sykes?”

“Yeah, I’ve got him.”

Phoebe moved on toward communications, and the edge of the inner perimeter, as Sykes walked to the boy. “Lieutenant Mac Namara, negotiator.”

Information came fast now. Tactical had the house surrounded, the near neighbors evacuated. Sharpshooters were moving into positions.

“He won’t talk much,” the first responder told her. “I’ve been trying to keep the line open with him. He sounds tired. Sad, not angry. He and the wife are separated—her idea, he says. Last time I got him to talk, he thanked me for calling before hanging up.”

“Okay, stand by.” She studied the log, the situation board, then pulled out her notebook as she picked up the phone. “Let’s get him back on.”

He answered on the third ring, and his voice was brutally weary. “Please, is this necessary? I want some time with my family. Some quiet, uninterrupted time.”

“Mr. Brinker? This is Phoebe Mac Namara. I’m a negotiator with the Savannah-Chatham Police Department. I’d like to help. How is everyone in there? Everybody okay?”

“We’re fine, thank you. Now please, leave us alone.”

“Mr. Brinker, I understand you want to be with your family. You sound as if you love them very much.”

“Of course I do. I love my family. Families need to be together.”

“You want your family to be together, I understand. Why don’t you bring them out now? All of you together. I’d like you to put your weapons down now, Mr. Brinker, and come out with your family.”

“I can’t do that. I’m very sorry.”

“Can you tell me why not?”

“This is my house. This is the only way we can be together. I thought about this carefully.”

Planned out, not impulse, she thought as she made notes. Not anger but sorrow. “You sound tired.”

“I am. I’m very tired. I’ve done my best, but it’s never quite good enough. It’s exhausting to never be quite good enough.”

“I’m sure you’ve done your best. It’s hard, don’t you think, to make important decisions when you’re tired and upset? You sound tired and upset. I’d like to help you, Mr. Brinker. I’d like to help you work this all out so you can make the right decision for your family.”

“I painted this living room. Kate picked the color. I didn’t like it—too yellow—and we argued. Remember, Kate? We fought over the yellow paint right there in the Home Depot, and she won. So I painted it. And she was right. It’s sunny in here. She was right.”

Living Room,Phoebe wrote on her pad, circling it. “You did the painting. I’m terrible at painting. Can’t get the cutting-in part. Have you and your family lived here long?”

“Ten years. It’s a good place to raise children. That’s what we thought. Good neighborhood, good schools. We need a bigger house, but…”

“Your family’s grown.” Family, family, family, Phoebe told herself. Focus on family. “How many children do you have?”

“Three. We have three. We didn’t plan on Penny. We couldn’t really afford…”

“Penny’s your youngest, then? How old is Penny?”

“Two, Penny’s two.”

Phoebe heard an excited child’s voice call: “Daddy!”

“Is that her I hear?” Now she heard a choked sob from Brinker and kept talking. “She sounds very sweet. I have a little girl. She’s seven, and I just wonder where the years went. I love her more than anything. She sure keeps me busy, though. I imagine your family keeps you very busy.”

“I’ve done my best. I don’t know why it’s not enough. If I’d gotten the full professorship, we could afford a bigger house.”

“You sound discouraged. It must be hard. You have an older daughter, is that right? Jessie, and then a boy in the middle, Aaron. Your wife, Kate, and you must be very proud. Still, it’s a lot of work. I understand that. A lot of worry.”

“I needed that professorship. I needed tenure. I needed Kate to understand.”

The use of past tense, and the despair, set off alarms. “Tell me what you need Kate to understand, Mr. Brinker.”

“That I can’t do any more than I can do, or be more than I can be. But it’s not enough. I’m the husband, I’m the father. I’m supposed to make it work. But things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

“That’s Yeats, isn’t it?” She closed her eyes, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake.

There was a beat of silence. “Yes. You know Yeats?”

“Some. And I think sometimes that’s true, things do fall apart, or seem to. The center can’t always hold it all. But I also think things can be rebuilt, or reformed, and the center shored up again to hold it all differently. What do you think?”

“Once it falls, it’s not the same.”

“Not the same, but still there.”

“My family’s fallen apart.”

“But they’re still there, Mr. Brinker, and I hear how much you love them, every one of them. I don’t believe you want to hurt them. Or that you want to hurt them by hurting yourself. You’re the father.”

“Weekend father. Perish instead of publish.”

“I hear you’re discouraged, and you’re sad. But you’re not ready to stop trying. You and Kate, eighteen years together, and those beautiful children you’ve made together. You don’t want to stop trying. You love them too much.”

“She doesn’t want me anymore. What’s the point? We made it all together. I thought we should end it all together. Here, in our home. The five of us, going together.”

Thought we should.This time his use of past tense told her they might be turning a corner. “The five of you need to come out together, Mr. Brinker. Your children sound frightened. I can hear them crying now. You and your wife are their parents, you and your wife are responsible for keeping them safe and well.”

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Look at your children, Mr. Brinker, look at your wife. I don’t believe anything’s more precious to you. You don’t want to hurt them. You can make the center hold. Look at the yellow walls. You gave them that sunny room, even when you weren’t sure it would work. Put the guns down now, Mr. Brinker. Put them down, and bring your family out. You said you’d done your best. I believe you. Now, I believe you’ll do your best again, and put the guns down. Bring your wife and your babies out.”

“What’s going to happen? I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“We’re going to help you. You and your family. Will you come out with your family now? It’s the right thing to do for them.”

“I don’t want to go into the black without them.”

“You don’t need to go into the black at all. Will you put the guns down, please?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I know. Can you listen to me now, Mr. Brinker?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Put the guns down. Please put them down and step away from them. Will you do that?”

“Yes. All right. I’m sorry.”

She wroteComing out. Surrendering. Signaled that message to Tactical command. “It’s going to be all right. Did you put the guns down?”

“Yes. I put them on the shelf. High, where Penny can’t reach them.”

“That was the right thing to do. I want you to come to the front door. You and your family. Don’t be afraid. No one’s going to hurt you. I need you to keep your hands up, just so everyone can see you did the right thing and put the guns down. There’ll be police outside, but no one’s going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

“I can’t think.”

“It’s all right. Will you bring your family out, please?”

“I…I can’t keep my hands up and talk on the phone.”

Phoebe closed her eyes, took a breath. “That’s fine. Why don’t you give the phone to Kate now? And you can all come outside together.”

“All right. Kate? You need to take this call.”

“God. God.” The woman’s voice wrenched out the words. “We’re coming out. He doesn’t have a gun. Please, please, don’t shoot. Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him.”

“No one’s going to hurt him. No one’s going to get hurt today.”

When they came out, what struck Phoebe right to the bone was the sound of the little girl crying for her daddy.

In what had become his workroom, he drank cold, sweet tea with a small sprig of fresh mint and watched the media coverage of the crisis in Gordonston.

He hoped they’d all die.

He didn’t care about the Brinkers—they meant nothing to him one way or the other. But if that whining college guy put bullets in his family, then himself, Phoebe would take a hell of a hit.

That would be worth the airtime.

Then again, if she took too hard a hit, he might not get the chance to pay her back, his way.

Bitch would probably slide out of it anyway, even if she fucked up and the idiot put a bullet in the brain of the fat-cheeked toddler whose picture they’d shown on screen half a dozen times already.

She wouldn’t take the blame for it, no matter how much she’d earned it.

With the tea, he sat down at his workbench. He’d heard the call come through on his police scanner while he was finishing up breakfast. It had given him a hell of a lift. Guy, wife, three kids. A bloodbath like that would get lots of attention.

He’d been right, and on his workroom TV, he watched while the local station preempted theToday show with live at-the-scene coverage.

And he’d seen Phoebe stride by the cameras, ignoring reporters in that superior, I’m-so-fucking-importantway of hers.

He’d thought about putting a bullet inher brain. Oh, he’d thought about it, even dreamed about it, just the way he figured Mr. College Professor was thinking about putting one into his whole stupid family.

But that was too easy. That was too quick. Bang! And it’s over.

He had a much better plan.

He kept the TV on while he worked. Usually, he had the spare scanner on down here, and maybe the radio. Television was too distracting when he was working. But he considered this an exception.

His lips thinned as the reporter on screen announced the Brinker family had come out, safe and sound, that the asshole surrendered peacefully.

“Pulled that one off, didn’t you?” he muttered to himself as he turned screws. “Yeah, that one was easy. Didn’t have to break a sweat, did you? Nice family, nice neighborhood. Just some stupid shit looking for some attention. You got them out just fine, didn’t you?Phoebe. ”

He had to stop, put his tools down, because the anger, therage, made his hands shake. He wanted a cigarette. Actually yearned for one. But he’d made himself quit. It was a matter of willpower, and practicality.

He didn’t need crutches. He couldn’t afford to need crutches. He couldn’t even afford the rage. Cold blood, he reminded himself. Cool head. When payback came, he’d need those, and a strong body, a clear purpose.

So he closed his eyes and willed everything inside him to slow, to still.

It was her voice that had his eyes opening again, had them burning toward the TV.

“Stuart Brinker surrendered peacefully. His wife and their children weren’t harmed.”

“Lieutenant Mac Namara, as hostage negotiator, how did you convince Professor Brinker to surrender to the police?”

“I listened.”

The glass flew across the room, shattered against the set before he realized it had left his hand. Amber rain dripped down over Phoebe’s face.

Have to work on that, he told himself. Have to work on that control. Won’t get the job done flying off the handle. No sir. But he smiled as the rivulets of tea slid down Phoebe’s face. He imagined them red, long thin rivers of blood.

Because it pleased him, he was able to pick up his tools again with a steady hand.

He went back to work on the timer.

“It got to me. Some of them do, more than others.”

After shift, Phoebe sat with Liz over a couple of glasses of wine in Swifty’s. It was too early for music, so the booth was a quiet corner, an island to sink into and unwind.

“How so?”

Phoebe started to speak, then shook her head. “I didn’t mean to talk shop. We should talk shoes or something.”

“I bought this pair a couple weeks ago? Pumps, leopard-skin design. I don’t know what I was thinking. Where am I going to wear leopard-skin pumps? Anyway, we’ll get to that. Tell me about the incident. I know how it is,” Liz went on. “I talk to a lot of rape victims, to a lot of kids who’ve been sexually abused. And sometimes it gets to you more than others. You get it out, or it roots. So?”

“The kids. You have to try not to think about them as kids. Just hostages. But…”

“They’re kids.”

“Yeah. And in this case, part of the key to talking him down. He loved them. You could hear it.”

“And the question is, how do you hold what you love at gunpoint?”

“Because you’re broken. Something was broken inside him. He wasn’t mad, there wasn’t any rage in him. It wasn’t payback or punishment. It can be more volatile when it’s not about payback. Maybe that’s part of what got to me, too. I hear this guy, I hear him standing on the edge of an abyss. And he doesn’t believe he can come back from it—that he deserves to.”

“Why take the family, too?”

“He’s nothing without them. They’re essential to who he is. He doesn’t want to die without them. So…” She lifted her wine. “Altogether now.” She drank, blew out a breath. “He’s been depressed for more than a year, and things have been slipping away from him. Career, marriage, both on pretty shaky ground. Wife wants a bigger house, oldest daughter wants a car of her own, he gets thumbs-down on the full professorship. Stuff you handle or fight about. But he just sank down, and kept sinking. The wife’s so busy taking care of the kids and the house because he’s barely able to get out of bed. She gets fed up, kicks him out. ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.’ He couldn’t hold it.”

“You gave them a chance to try again.”

“Yeah. Well. Nobody died. You listen good.”

“Part of what we both do is listen.” Liz tapped her glass to Phoebe’s. “And we’d better be good.”

“Did you always want to be a cop?”

“I wanted to be a rock-and-roll star.”

“Who didn’t?”

Liz laughed. “I was actually in a band for a couple of years when I was in college.”

“No kidding? What did you do?”

“I got pipes, sister.” Liz wagged her thumb at her throat. “And I was crazy in love with the lead guitar. We had plans. The kind you make at twenty and aren’t ever going anywhere. Big, splashy plans. Which we made when we weren’t screwing like bunnies.”

“College.” Phoebe sighed. “Those were the days. What happened to Lead Guitar?”

“He dumped me. No, that’s not fair, or accurate. He backed away, rapidly. I got raped.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My turn to make the beer run. There was a place just a couple blocks from where we were living. Party time, all the time. You know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I was in the parking lot when they jumped me. Two of them, laughing like loons. Seriously high. They dragged me into the back of a van, took turns with me while a third one drove. Then they switched off so he could have a go. I don’t know how many times, because I zoned out after the first round. Then they just tossed me out on the side of the road. Cruiser picked me up. I was just stumbling along, clothes torn and bloody, in shock, hysterical. The whole ball. And the cops spotted me.”

She drank to wet her throat. “Well. They got them, all three of them. I paid attention, until I had to go under. I paid attention. I had descriptions, and I made all three of those motherfuckers in lineup. Hardest thing I ever did, to stand there and look at them through that glass. And Lead Guitar? He couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t look at me, couldn’t touch me, couldn’t be with me. Too much for his head, he said. I didn’t want to be a rock-and-roll star anymore.”

“How long they get? The motherfuckers?”

“They’re still in.” Liz smiled for the first time. “Stupid bastards took me across the state line into South Carolina. Raped me in two states, had coke in the van, all three had sheets, two were on parole. Anyway, I gave up the band and turned to the glamorous world of law enforcement.”

“Music’s loss, our gain.”

“Okay, shop’s closed. Tell me about the guy with the great ass. You two an item?”

“We seem to be something, but I’m not sure what.” Thoughtfully, Phoebe propped an elbow on the table, nested her chin in her palm. “I’m out of practice. Kid, job, raw spots from failed marriage. He’s so damn cute.”

“I noticed. How’s the sex?”

Phoebe snorted out a surprised laugh. “You get right to it.”

“Healthy sex is one of life’s great entertainments. Take it from somebody who sees too much of the other kind. But if you don’t want to share—”

“Actually.” She hadn’t made time for a female friend of her own age in too long. Now, Phoebe leaned forward, lowered her voice. “The other night…”

She gave a condensed version of her visit to Duncan’s house.

“He stopped? You’re about to go for the gold right out on the veranda—which, let me insert, is very sexy—and he stops?”

“Thirty seconds more, that’s all it would’ve taken.” Phoebe did a test roll of her bad shoulder. “If I hadn’t moved the wrong way…what?”

“Romanticand sexy. I mean, God, how many guys are going to shut it down at that point?”

“I’m going to need a note from my sister-in-law to close the deal. Private duty nurse.”

“Can I have him when you’re done? No, seriously, Phoebe, when you two get that next thirty seconds, it’s going to be memorable.”

“I’m thinking. Listen, I’ve got to get home. My kid. But the next time, we’ll explore your sex life.”

“At the moment, we could do that over a bag of peanuts in the break room. Maybe Cute Guy has a friend.”

“I’ll ask.”

“I’m available.”

Phoebe got out of the car just as Lorelei Tiffany clipped up with her incredibly silly dog. Tonight’s leash was candy pink, to coordinate with Mrs. Tiffany’s ensemble—heels, pillbox hat, waist-cinching jacket and thigh-gripping capris.

“Evening, Miz Tiffany. How are you and Maximillian Dufree?”

“We’re going to have ourselves a nice stroll in the park.” Mrs. Tiffany tipped down her rhinestone-studded glasses to peer at Phoebe. “You just getting home?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m running a little later than usual today.”

“Got your car back, I see.”

“I did. For now. I’m afraid I’m going to have to give it a decent burial soon.”

“My uncle Lucius once buried an entire Cadillac DeVille, complete with passengers, in a soybean field outside of Macon. So they say.”

“Hmmm, that must’ve been some job.”

“That was Uncle Lucius for you. He never quibbled about getting his hands dirty. I saw you on TV today.”

“Oh? There was some trouble over in Gordonston.”

“Crazy man going to murder his whole family in a three-bedroom bungalow. I saw it. You’re going to be on TV, honey, you need to dress for it. Bright colors do the trick, and more blusher. You don’t want to look all washed-out and dull on the TV, now do you?”

Oddly, Phoebe felt washed-out and dull standing there on the wide sidewalk while Maximillian Dufree peed lavishly on the trunk of the near live oak. “I guess not, but I wasn’t expecting to be on TV.”

“Expect the unexpected.” Mrs. Tiffany wagged her elaborately ringed index finger. “You remember that, and always carry your blusher, you’ll do fine. You get yourself on TV like that, you might just catch yourself a husband. A man likes a woman with pink in her cheeks. And a nice, soft bosom.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. You and Maximillian Dufree have a nice walk now.”

As Phoebe started up the walk to what she considered the relative sanity of home, she heard Mrs. Tiffany trill out with a “And good evening toyou! ”

She glanced back, saw the man strolling by. He tapped the brim of his ball cap toward Mrs. Tiffany. He wore a camera strapped crossways over his dark windbreaker and resting at his hip. A tourist, Phoebe thought idly, though there was something vaguely familiar about him.

Since he was a man, Mrs. Tiffany had to put her flirt on.

Amused, Phoebe continued up the steps. She didn’t see him pivot, raise the camera, frame her in. When something tickled at the base of her spine, she glanced back. But he was strolling casually away. She could hear him whistle as he walked, something slow and sad and as vaguely familiar as he’d been himself.

She couldn’t say why the sound of it gave her a chill.

13

She would not feel guilty because she was doing something outside the house and family on a Sunday evening. She would not feel guilty. It was a litany Phoebe repeated off and on through the day, starting when Carly bounced into her bed for Sunday Morning Snuggles.

Snuggle they did so Phoebe snuck kisses and sniffs of her daughter’s soft curly hair, deliciously shampooed the night before. Cuddled up, she got the lowdown on Sherrilynn’s brother Tear—so named because he always seemed to be on one—sawing off the heads of two of Sherrilynn’s Barbies with his daddy’s penknife before he was caught and suitably punished.

Heads on the same pillow, nose to nose, they expressed their mutual horror over the crime.

What had she ever done to earn such a perfect, precious child? Phoebe wondered. How could she not spend every free moment of every day with this incredible little girl?

Of course, later that morning when she and Carly bumped heads over Carly’s desperate need for the purple butterfly sandals she’d seen in one of her grandmother’s catalogues, Phoebe wondered how she could dare risk letting this pint-sized shoe hog out of her sight for ten minutes.

She would not feel guilty.

And wasn’t Carly going off to a backyard picnic birthday party at her current best friend in the entire world Poppy’s house? And wasn’t Ava already set to drop her off, then pick her up, bookending her own trip to a flower show?

And Mama? Well, Mama was so busy designing new patterns, organizing her threads and yarns, she’d barely notice if Phoebe jetted off for a weekend trip to Antigua.

There was nothing to feel guilty about.

But she suffered twinges of it nonetheless as she brushed Carly’s lovely bright hair, helped pick out the absolutely perfect hair clips. She fought against those twinges while she approved Carly’s choice—after numerous rejections—of just the right outfit.

They tugged again while she stood on the front veranda, waving to Ava and her fashionable little girl as they drove off for their Sunday outings.

Inside, she hunted up her mother, only to find Essie on her sitting-room computer, laughing away as she clattered on the keyboard.

Chat room, Phoebe thought. The agoraphobic’s constant friend. Still, Phoebe leaned against the doorjamb, watching as her mother’s fingers flew and her eyes sparkled with humor.

This was one of her safe conduits to the outside world, after all. Neighbors still dropped by, or old friends paid calls. Now and then Essie would have a group of women over for tea, and God knew she always enjoyed it if she or Ava planned a cocktail or dinner party.

People came. Of course they came. The South loved their eccentrics, and to many in Savannah who knew the Mac Namaras, Essie’s condition was no more than a charming little eccentricity.

Essie Mac Namara?they might say.She was Essie Carter before she married Benedict Mac Namara. Married up, too, and only to be widowed before she was thirty. Just a tragedy! She hasn’t stepped one foot outside of Mac Namara House on Jones in ten years or more, bless her heart. She comes out on the veranda sometimes, and she’s still as pretty as a picture. And so slim.

Of course, they’d never weathered one of Mama’s panic attacks, or watched her struggle just to find the courage to step out on that veranda. They hadn’t seen her weep with gratitude when her future daughter-in-law asked if she and Carter could have the wedding at the house.

God bless Josie, Phoebe thought. And hell, God bless the Internet while she was at it. If her mother couldn’t go out into the world, at least the world could come to her through her computer.

“Hey, sweetie pie.” Essie’s fingers stilled as she spotted Phoebe. “You need something?”

“No. No, I was just poking in to let you know I’m going up to work out, then I’m going to get ready to go out.”

Essie’s dimples deepened with her smile. “With Duncan.”

“To a barbecue at one of his friend’s.”

“You have a good time, and don’t forget the flowers you put in the spare fridge now.”

“I won’t.”

“And wear the green sundress,” Essie called out as Phoebe turned. “Show off those nice shoulders. God knows you work hard enough on them.”

Phoebe glanced back. “Should I wear more blush, too, so I can catch me a husband?”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. I’ll check back with you before I go.”

She escaped to her little gym, and a solid sweaty hour.

Later in the shower, she wondered if she’d been using exercise over the past months as a substitute for sex. She’d definitely kicked it up a few notches in the past six months.

Eight months, she corrected, rinsing shampoo out of her hair. Or was it ten?

Well,Jesus, had it actually been a year since she’d had sex? Shoving at her dripping hair, she began to obsessively backtrack and count.

Ava’s son’s friend’s neighbor Wilson—Ava had arranged the date, pushed for it until Phoebe caved. He’d turned out to be very nice, Phoebe remembered. Kind of sweet with his shy smile and little goatee. He liked country music and football, and had been on the tail end of a divorce.

They’d enjoyed each other’s company enough to date a few times, and she’d slept with him twice. It had been, she recalled, nice. The same way he’d been nice.

And then he’d reconciled with his wife. That was nice, too, really. She’d heard they’d had a baby since…

Wait a minute, wait one damn minute. She snapped off the shower, grabbed a towel. Wrapping it around her, she put the congenial, wish-you-all-the-best breakup with the very nice Wilson into the context of time, of season, of date.

Shortly after New Year’s, she remembered. She’d slept with him on New Year’s Eve, then again a few nights later. New Year’s oflast year, she realized with a jolt.

“My God! I haven’t had sex in fifteen months.” She stepped over to the mirror, wiped the fog away so she could stare at her own face. “I’m thirty-three years old and I haven’t had sex in fifteen months. What’s wrong with me?”

She pressed a hand on her belly. What if everything was rusted in there? It didn’t matter if she knew better, intellectually, it was still a horrible and scary thought.

And what if she had sex with Duncan, and it was so good she started skipping the workouts (which surely were a substitute for sex)? She’d get out of shape, become flabby and lazy.

Then he probably wouldn’t be attracted to her anymore. Hadn’t he commented on her body? Hadn’t he? So when her body went soft and flabby, he wouldn’t want to have sex with her, which would send her back to Pilates with a vengeance.

It would cycle over and over, until she died with rusted plumbing and six-pack abs.

Jesus, she needed therapy.

Amused at herself, she wrapped her hair in a towel before she deliberately reached for her best, special-occasion-only body cream. Cycle or not, it was time to break the fifteen-month deadlock.

Not just with anyone, she reminded herself. She wasn’t a slut—all too obviously. She avoided giving or receiving any signals from other cops, from criminalists, from prosecutors. Date or sleep with someone associated with the job, everyone on the job knew about it. That severely limited the field of play for her.

And it was true she’d been the one to make the first move toward bed with nice Wilson. But she’d liked him, enjoyed going out with him. Besides, before that New Year’s Eve she hadn’t been with a manfor…

No, no, no. She wasn’t going to count back again and make herself crazy.

She was picky, that’s all—and good for her, right? She was picky about whom she dated, and a whole lot pickier about whom she slept with. She had pride, she had her values, and most important, she had a daughter to consider.

Yet here she was obsessing about sex while getting ready for a simple Sunday barbecue. Pitiful.

She took another long, searching look at herself in the mirror. Pitiful or not, she was going to use a little extra blush. And wear the damn green dress.

She took longer than usual to put herself together. Not as long as it took Carly, the Fashion Princess, to primp for a backyard picnic, but longer than her usual routine. Her first reward for the effort was the beaming smile her mother sent her when Phoebe stopped by Essie’s sitting room.

Essie had switched from chat room to sketching, but stopped when Phoebe did a flourishing turn in the doorway. “Well?”

“Oh, Phoebe, you look a picture!”

“Not too much?”

“Honey, it’s a simple dress, and just perfect for a Sunday barbecue. It’s how it looks on you that snaps. You look all fresh and sexy at the same time.”

“Exactly the combination I was shooting for. Duncan’s going to be here in a few minutes, I expect. I’m going down to get those flowers. Anything you need before I leave?”

“Not a thing. You have a good time, now.”

“I will. I’ll be back before Carly’s bedtime, but—”

“If you’re not, I think Ava and I know how to tuck her up. I don’t want you watching the clock.”

She wouldn’t, Phoebe promised herself. She’d just let it all unfold at its own time and pace. She’d enjoy herself, and enjoy knowing she looked fresh and sexy in a green sundress that showed off her arms and back. She’d worked hard enough on them.

She went down, and out to the summer kitchen. In Cousin Bess’s day it had been used routinely. For the lavish parties she enjoyed throwing, for canning, for preparation of simple meals on hot nights. They used it more sporadically now, but the second refrigerator was handy for storing extra cold drinks. Phoebe took out the butter-yellow daisies she’d picked up as a hostess gift.

It was going to be a pretty evening, she decided, and turned to admire the flowers of the courtyard Ava had labored over.

“Well, my God!” She stared, openmouthed, at the dead rat at the bottom of the steps.

She had to bury revulsion to step down for a closer look. No doubt it was dead, but it didn’t look mauled, as she’d expected. As she imagined it would if some cat had caught it, then gotten bored enough to dump it in the courtyard like some nasty neighbor’s gift.

If she’d had to guess at cause of death, she’d have voted for the sharp spring of a trap, right across the neck. The idea made her shudder as she stepped back again.

Some kids, she thought, playing a particularly unpleasant prank, tossing a dead rat over the wall.

She went back inside, dug up a shoe box, got the broom. And, stomach rolling with disgust, managed to sweep and nudge the corpse inside. She wasn’t ashamed to look away with her eyes half-closed as she put on the lid, or to hold the box at arm’s length to carry it to the trash can.

Shuddering, shuddering, she backpedaled from the trash can, then turned to dash inside. She scrubbed her hands like a surgeon before an operation, all the while telling herself not to be an idiot. She hadn’t touched the awful thing.

She had herself nearly settled down when the doorbell rang. The quick, appreciative grin on Duncan’s face did the rest of the job.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

“Hello back.”

“Those for me?”

She tucked the flowers in the crook of her arm as she closed the door behind her. “They certainly are not. They’re for our hostess. Or host. You never said which it was.”

“Hostess. How’s that shoulder?”

“It’s coming right along, thank you.” She sent him a knowing look. “I’m about ready to start arm wrestling again.”

“I knew this guy when I was tending bar. Russian guy, arms looked like toothpicks. Nobody could take him down. I don’t think he ever paid for a drink.” He opened the car door for her. “You smell great, by the way.”

“I really do.” She laughed, slid in. When he got in, she shifted toward him. “Now tell me about this friend of yours who’s going to be feeding me.”

“Best person I know. She’s great. You’ll like her. Actually, she’s the mother of my best friend, who also happens to be my lawyer.”

“You’re best friends with your lawyer? That’s refreshing.”

“I met Phin when I was driving a cab. Nobody hails a cab in Savannah, which you’d know since you live here. It was just one of those things. I was heading back to the line at the Hilton, just dropped off a fare. Raining cats that day. He spotted me, I spotted him. He waved me down. Heading to the courthouse, big hurry. Later, I found out he was this struggling young associate, and they’d called him to bring some papers down. Anyway, I get him there, and he pulls out his wallet. Which is empty.”

“Uh-oh.”

“He’s mortified. Sometimes fares try to scam you that way, pull some sob story, whatever. But I’ve got a good gauge and this guy is seriously embarrassed. He’s apologizing all over himself, scribbling down my name and the cab number from the license, swearing on his mother’s life he’s going to come down to the cab company with the fare and a big tip. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“A likely story,” Phoebe commented, enjoying herself.

“I spring him, figure I’ll never see him again. No way is this guy going to haul down to the cab company over an eight-dollar fare.”

“But?”

“Yeah, but. I’m clocking out that night, and he comes in. Gives me twenty. First, I’m floored he’d bother to come in, and second, twenty for an eight-dollar run’s over the top. And I tell him, dude, ten’s enough, thanks. But he won’t back off the twenty. So I say fine, let’s go have a couple of beers on the other ten. And we did.”

“And you’ve been friends ever since.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d say that story shows a bit of what you’re both made of.” She glanced around as he began to drive through the pretty, residential streets of Midtown. “I grew up down this way—well, started growing up down this way. We had a nice little house on the other side of Columbus Drive.”

“Good memories or bad?”

“Oh, both. But I’ve always liked the area, the mix of styles in the houses, kids everywhere.”

He pulled into the already crowded drive of a lovely craftsman-style home, with its big front yard tidily mowed and edged with flower beds. “Me, too,” he said.

He came around the car to take her hand. She heard the shouts and shrieks of children, the motorized thunder of a lawn mower. She smelled peonies, and meat cooking on someone’s backyard grill.

She’d grown up like this, she thought, for the first little while. Then everything, everything had changed.

The screen door opened with a happy slam. The woman who stepped out onto the big front porch was hugely pregnant, with skin the color of semisweet chocolate and hair in a glossy profusion of dreads.

A boy dashed out behind her, scabs riding both knees. “Dunc, Dunc, Dunc!” He shouted it as he streaked like a little bullet down the walk. “Catch!” And flew.

Obviously an old hand at the game, Duncan caught the boy in midair, then flipped him upside down. “The strange creature you see below is Ellis.”

“How do you do, Ellis?”

“Hi! Do it again, Dunc.”

“Ellis Tyler, you let Duncan get in the house before you start jumping all over him.”

The boy might’ve been upside down, but he managed a dramatic eye-roll. “Yes’m.” When Duncan flipped him to his feet, he grinned. “We got cherry pie. Come on in, Dunc. Come on! You can come, too, ma’am.” With that he made his dash back into the house.

“My son likes to be the welcoming committee. You must be Phoebe. I’m Celia. I hope you came hungry.” She tipped her face up for Duncan’s kiss. “I know you did.”

“How many cherry pies?” Duncan asked.

“Just you wait. Duncan’s here!” she shouted as she scooted them inside.

There was an army of them, Phoebe realized, in all shapes and sizes. Babies, toddlers, gangly teens, and an ancient old man they called Uncle Walter, men, women, and all the noise that went with them.

Most were congregated in the backyard, sprawled in chairs, on the grass, chasing kids, pushing them on the bright red swing set. A couple of men stood by the grill, watching it smoke with all the pleasure and delight they might have shown were it a centerfold.

By Phoebe’s estimate five generations were represented here, but the center of power, the magnetic north, was obviously the woman who stood supervising as younger family members hauled two picnic tables together to form one long space.

She was comfortably round in the way that made Phoebe imagine every child would want to crawl into her lap, would want to rest their head on her breast for comfort. Her handsome face with its deep-set eyes, strong nose and mouth, was capped off by a puffball of ebony curls.

Both hands fisted on her generous hips, and when a big yellow dog streaked by after the blur of a gray-striped cat, she threw back her head and laughed so her whole body shook with it.

Then she turned toward the ancient old man, her hands moving. It took Phoebe a moment to realize she wasn’t merely gesturing but signing. The old man wheezed out a laugh, signed back.

Duncan’s arm draped around Phoebe’s shoulder, and when she glanced up to smile at him, she saw he was looking over at the laughing woman. On his face, deep in those soft blue eyes of his, was absolute and unconditional love.

It struck her suddenly, and with a little curl of terror, that this was amoment. Not just a backyard barbecue.

She had to fight the urge to streak away like the cat when Duncan led her forward. “Ma Bee.”

Bee took hold of him first, her big arms going around him, pulling him into a hard, full hug. When she pulled him back, she patted his face with both hands. “You’re still skinny, and you’re still white.”

“You’re still the love of my life.”

She gave that full-body laugh, but her eyes were tender on his face. Then they shifted, turning speculative, to Phoebe.

“Ma Bee, this is Phoebe Mac Namara. Phoebe, Beatrice Hector.”

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Mrs. Hector. Thank you for having me today.”

“Somebody’s ma raised her right.” She winked at Duncan. “You’re welcome here,” she told Phoebe. “You brought me daisies? I’ve got a fondness for daisies, thank you.” She took them, cradled them. “They’ve got such happy faces. Tisha? You take these daisies in for me, and get that blue glass vase Arnette gave me last Mother’s Day. It’s in the right-side cupboard under the big server. That blue vase is just what these daisies want.”

Bee made introductions as one of the teenage girls came over for the flowers. Phoebe got a polite if measuring look—Duncan a wistful one.

“Uncle Walter here’s been deaf since he got hurt in the Korean War,” Bee explained, and signed Phoebe’s name for him. And snickered when he signed back. “Says you’re prettier than the last one this skinny white boy brought by.”

With a smile, Phoebe gave the sign for thanks. “It’s one of the few I know,” she said as Bee pursed her lips. “Hello, goodbye, thanks.”

“You decide you need to converse with him, he can read lips if you talk straight to him, and slow. Mostly, he’s going to sleep anyway. And this here’s my daughter-in-law, my second boy Phin’s wife. Loo—”

“I know you,” Phoebe and Loo said together.

“Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“Louise Hector, for the defense. Small world.”

“Seems like, and previously we’ve been on opposite sides of it. Welcome to Ma’s.”

“Since you’re acquainted, you get Phoebe what she drinks, and introduce her ’round the rest of the way.” Bee lifted her chin toward the picnic tables. “We’ve got to get food out on the tables here.”

Excellent, Phoebe thought, busywork. Just the thing to ease herself into the social. “Is there something I can do to help?”

“Guests don’t haul out the dishes. That’s for family. Duncan, we need some more chairs.”

“Yes, ma’am. Get you ladies a drink first?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Loo told him, and led Phoebe away. “What do you drink?”

All right, alcohol, another way to ease into the social. “What’s handy?”

Phoebe ended up with a plastic cup of chilled chardonnay, and so many names in her head she tried to alphabetize them to keep them straight.

“I didn’t put the Phoebe Duncan talked about together with the lieutenant from the Hostage and Crisis Unit.” Loo glanced over as they crossed the lawn edged with cheery flower beds and chunky shrubs. “I’m sorry to hear you were hurt a couple weeks ago.”

“I’m doing fine now.”

“Well, you look fine. Love the dress. Let me introduce you to the grill masters. Phoebe Mac Namara, my brother-in-law Zachary, and my husband, Phineas. Phoebe’s a cop, so watch yourselves.”

“Off duty.” Phoebe lifted the wine cup as she shifted to avoid the smoke billowing from the grill.

“Can you fix speeding tickets?” Zachary asked, and had Phin punching him in the arm.

“Pay him no mind.”

“I’m not kidding. Tisha’s had two since the first of the year.” Zachary sent Phoebe a wide grin. “After you eat my chicken, we’ll talk about it. You’ll be softened up.”

“Your chicken?”

“Boy, you couldn’t boil the egg this chicken started out as. That right, Loo?”

“I take the Fifth.”

“Couple a city lawyers,” Zachary said to Phoebe, wagging his thumb between them.

“The lawyer with the empty wallet,” Phoebe said.

“You willnever live that down.” Loo belted out a laugh, did a shoulder and hip wiggle as she wagged a finger at her husband. “Deadbeat.”

“I thought the story illustrated his innate sense of honor,” Phoebe put in, and had Phin flashing his teeth.

“I like her. Leave her here. You”—he pointed at his wife—“can go.”

“Mom!” A girl sprinted over. Curly tails sprung out over both ears. “Hero won’t come down out of the tree! Make him come down.”

“He’ll come down when he’s ready. Say how do you do to Miz Mac Namara, Livvy.”

“How do you do.”

“Just fine, and how about you?”

“The cat won’t come down.”

“They like being up high,” Phoebe told her.

“Why?”

“So they can feel superior to the rest of us.”

“But Willy said he was going to fall and break his neck.”

“Oh now, Livvy, you know he just said that to get a rise out of you.” Loo gave her daughter’s pigtail a tug. “You wait till this chicken’s on the table. That cat’ll come down quick enough. You go on and wash up, ’cause it’s almost time to eat.”

“Are you sure he likes it up there?” the child asked Phoebe.

“Absolutely.” She watched Livvy run off. “How old is she?”

“She’ll be seven next June.”

“I have a little girl, just seven.”

“Boy!” Ma Bee’s voice boomed over the yard. “You going to finish up that chicken anytime today?”

“It’s coming, Ma,” the men called back together, and began to heap it onto a platter.

There was potato salad and black-eyed peas, collards and red beans, corn bread and cole slaw. She lost track of the platters and bowls, and how many were passed to her. Arguments—mostly good-natured—and jokes jumped and jostled around the table as frequently as the food. Many went over her head—family history, which appeared in several cases to include Duncan. Kids whined or complained, mostly about one another. Babies were passed like the bowls and platters, from hand to hand.

Nothing like her family, Phoebe thought, the tidy number of them, the overwhelming female tone of even the most casual meal in Mac Namara House. Poor Carter, she thought, forever unnumbered.

There’d never been an old man at one of their courtyard picnics to be fussed over until he dozed in his chair, or a couple of sparking-eyed little boys dueling with ears of corn.

A bit out of her depth, Phoebe chatted with Celia about her children—she already had two—and the one yet to come. She shared a smile with Livvy as the high-climbing feline inched his way down the tree to come beg at the table.

At one point Duncan and Phin debated heatedly about basketball, the sort that involved the jabbing of forks for emphasis and the slinging around of uncomplimentary names. As they insulted each other’s brains, manhood, everyone else ignored them.

Not just friends, Phoebe realized as the insults reached the point of absurd. Brothers. Whatever their backgrounds, upbringings, skin color, they were brothers. Nobody ragged on each other that way unless they were siblings—of the blood, or of the heart.

She was having a Sunday barbecue with Duncan’s family.

Not just a moment, Phoebe realized. A monumental moment.

“Are you kin to Miss Elizabeth Mac Namara, lived on Jones Street?”

Phoebe jolted out of her thoughts to meet Bee’s steady eyes. “Yes. She was my father’s cousin. Did you know her?”

“I knew who she was.”

Because the tone translated Bee’s unfavorable opinion of Bess Mac Namara, Phoebe’s shoulders tensed. There were any number of people in Savannah who enjoyed painting all family members with the same sticky brush.

“I used to clean for Miz Tidebar on Jones,” Bee continued, “until she passed, about, oh, a dozen years ago now.”

“I didn’t know Mrs. Tidebar, except by name.”

“I wouldn’t think. She and Miz Mac Namara Did Not Speak.” The phrase came out in capital letters.

“Yes, I recall a feud. Something about a garden club committee.” Which was an old rift before she’d come to Mac Namara House. As age had only ripened it, no one who lived under Cousin Bess’s roof was permitted to speak or associate with the Tidebars.

“Miz Tiffany? She had her own people to clean, but I did for her now and then when she had a party or just needed another hand. She still living?”

“She is.” And Phoebe relaxed again. The odd and delightful Mrs. Tiffany was much safer ground. “And as colorfully as ever.”

“Was on her fourth husband when I did for her.”

“She’s had one more since, and I believe is currently on the prowl for number six.”

“She always kept her name, didn’t she? Tiffany, no matter how many she hooked down the aisle.”

“Her second husband’s name,” Phoebe explained. “She stuck with that, however many came after, as she likes the sparkle of it. Or so she says.”

Bee’s lips twitched. “Your cousin, as I recall, didn’t have much truck with Miz Tiffany.”

“Cousin Bess didn’t have much truck with anyone. She was a…difficult woman.”

“We are what we are. I’d see your mama now and again, enough to say how do you do, when I did for Miz Tidebar. You favor her.”

“Some. My daughter more. Carly’s the image of her grandmother.”

“She must be a pretty girl. You tell your mama Bee Hector sends her best.”

“I will. I think she’ll enjoy the connection. She’s very fond of Duncan.”

“We’re fond of him around here, too.” Bee leaned in a little while the men continued to argue. “What’re you going to do with that boy?”

“Duncan?” Maybe it was the wine, the steady beam from Bee’s eyes, but Phoebe said what first came to mind. “I’m still deciding what I’m going to let him do with me.”

Bee’s laugh was an explosion of mirth. Her thick finger tapped Phoebe’s shoulder. “He’s brought other pretty girls around here.”

“I expect he has.”

“But he hasn’t brought any of them around for my approval before today.”

“Oh.” Phoebe decided she could use another sip of wine. “Did I pass the audition?”

Bee smiled easily, then she thumped her hands on the table. “Y’all want pie and ice cream, we have to clear this table.” Under the general scramble, Bee looked back at Phoebe. “Why don’t you grab some of these dishes, haul them into the kitchen.”

And that, Phoebe decided, made her by way of family.

She ended the evening necking with Duncan at her own front door. “I can’t ask you in.” More brain cells fried when he changed the angle of the kiss, spun it out. “Which, mmm, is a euphemism for not being able to go up to my room and get each other naked.”

“When?” His hands glided up her, torturing them both. “Where?”

“I…I don’t know. I’m not being difficult or coy. I hate that word. Carly. My mother.” She waved a hand toward the house. “It’s all so complicated.”

“Have dinner with me. My place.”

Her bones turned to mush as his lips trailed down her neck. Dinner at his place, now that was definitely code for sex.

Thank God.

“You’re going to cook?”

“No, I want you to live. I’m going to order pizza.”

“I like pizza fine.”

“When?”

“I…I can’t tomorrow. I have to—” She should think it through, of course. Be practical, be cautious. “Tuesday. Tuesday night. I’ll drive over after shift. As long as—”

“There isn’t somebody on a ledge, or holding hostages. I get it. Tuesday.” He leaned back. “What do you like on your pizza?”

“Surprise me.”

“Planning to. Night, Phoebe.”

“Okay. Wait.” She threw her arms around his neck again, dove headlong into the kiss until the need inside her edged toward actual pain. “Okay.”

She went straight inside before she did something insane like pull his clothes off, then almost dreamily wound her way upstairs. The man could kiss her into a steamy puddle of lust. And, she had to admit, though she was eager for Tuesday night, this anticipation, this not-quite-yet bumped up the pulse and warmed the belly.

If she’d felt this damn near giddy before over a man, she couldn’t remember it—or him. That was saying something.

She heard the TV in the family room, and Carly’s laughter. Not quite bedtime, she thought. And she wanted a moment, just a moment or two by herself before she took what must have been a dopey smile into the family room.

Because it was a pretty night, she opened her window. Soon enough, she thought, every window and door would be shut tight to hold in the air-conditioning and block out the steamy heat of Savannah in summer.

She decided to change out of the sundress into her sleep clothes before joining her girls.

She was stripped down to her underwear when she heard the whistling. It drifted through the open window, brought a quick chill to her skin.

That tune. That same tune. The man with the camera.

It came to her, the memory, the image of the man standing alone on River Street. But it couldn’t be the same man, could it? Compelled, she grabbed her robe, pulled it on. By the time she got to the terrace doors, wrenched them open to go out to look, the whistling had stopped.

No one strolled down the wide white sidewalk of Jones Street.

14

Female voices—they always reminded Phoebe of happy birds—chirped and trilled out of the kitchen as she headed in for coffee. Since she could hear Carly’s voice, a kind of quick piping, she marveled a bit. That wasn’t the usual Monday morning routine.

The kid liked school, she really did, but she rarely liked it on Monday morning.

But when she stepped into the fashion show, Phoebe understood why her little girl was in the happiest of moods. Nothing like a new sweater—or a new article ofany kind of clothing—to put a smile on Carly’s face.

The one she was currently modeling like a finalist on Project Runway was a pale, almost fragile blue. It looked like it was made from clouds, Phoebe thought, the way it simply wisped over shoulders and arms, swirled at the waist.

Doing a practiced pivot, Carly spotted her mother.

“Look, Mama! Look what Gran made me!”

“It’s gorgeous.” Phoebe trailed a fingertip down one sleeve. Itfelt like a cloud. “You spoil her, Mama.”

“My job to. But it’s a sample. It’s what I call market advertising. I’m going to do a few in adult sizes, but thought I’d start out small.”

“Gran said she could make me a purse to match.”

“Might as well surrender,” Ava said under her breath as she handed Phoebe coffee. “You can’t beat the two of them. How about a hot breakfast?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just grab some toast.”

“How about one of these instead?” Ava held out a basket filled with muffins. “I just made them this morning.”

Phoebe took one, bit in. “And I talk about Carly getting spoiled. Carly, let’s get some breakfast into you now. I’ll drop you off at school on my way to work.”

“We’re supposed to drive Poppy and Sherrilynn today, too.”

“Right. I knew that.” Somewhere, in the back of her mind.

“I can haul them if it’d be easier for you,” Ava offered.

“No, it’s fine. Ah, listen, I was thinking about going out to dinner with Duncan tomorrow night, if that’s not a problem.”

Phoebe watched Ava and Essie exchange smug looks behind Carly’s back as the girl dumped Frosted Flakes into a bowl.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Essie offered the most innocent of smiles. “Of course it’s not a problem. Not at all. Ava, I believe you owe me five dollars.”

“You bet on…” Phoebe made herself zip it up because Carly’s eyes were on her, and full of speculation.

“Is he your boyfriend now?”

“I’m too old for boyfriends.”

“My third best friend Celene’s mother hastwo boyfriends. Celene heard her say how she juggles them so the left hand isn’t sure what the right hand’s doing.”

“Sooner or later your two hands get together and you end up with bruised knuckles. And that isnot to be repeated,” Phoebe added. “I’m just going out to dinner with a friend.” And having sex, she thought. Probably a lot of really great sex.

Should she buy condoms? Surely he’d have condoms.

God, something else to worry about.

“I miss going out to dinner,” Ava commented. “Just someone to sit across from for a couple hours, making conversation. You going fancy?”

“Ah, no.” Should she buy new underwear? “Just pizza or something.”

“That’s nice. It’s friendly.”

“I like pizza.” Carly piped up, with a look of anticipation.

Guilt, guilt, guilt. Great. Just let me get this horniness out of my system first and I’ll make it up to you, baby. “Well…”

“We have our regularly scheduled pizza night,” Essie reminded her. That smug smile stayed in place as Essie picked up the pitcher of juice, poured a little more into Carly’s glass.

And just when Phoebe was thinking, Nice save, Mama, Essie threw a curve ball. “You ought to ask Duncan over to dinner one night soon, Phoebe.”

“Oh…I—”

“A nice family dinner. From what you said when you got home last night, he took you to his family. Now, you should reciprocate. Why don’t you ask him what night’s good for him?”

“I guess I could.” Complicated, complicated. Why did it have to be complicated? Couldn’t a grown woman just have a simple affair?

The answer, of course, was no. Not with a daughter, a mother and an honorary older sister living in the same house.

“Finish that up now, Carly, we don’t want to be late. Oh, I meant to ask. Does anyone know if someone new’s moved into the neighborhood?”

“Lissette and Morgan Frye’s daughter Mirri’s come for a visit—which rumor has is a euphemism for leaving her no-good husband after she found out he was learning more from his mixed doubles partner at the club than a strong backhand.” Ava topped off Phoebe’s coffee. “Oh, and Delly Porter’s hired herself a French au pair to run herd on those twins of hers. God help the mademoiselle.”

“What’s Delly going to do?” Essie wondered. “Is she going back to work?”

“Shesays having the au pair will give her children a cultural influence, and giveher more time for her volunteer work. What she volunteers for, as everyone knows, is shopping five days out of six.”

“No, I meant a man. Is there a new man in the neighborhood?”

“Looking to juggle after all?” Ava said with a laugh.

“I am not.” Amused, Phoebe shook her head. “I thought I saw a new face around, that’s all.” But she hadn’t really seen his face, Phoebe thought now. “A whistler—not wolf whistler, tune whistler. Whatis that tune? It keeps sticking in my head but I can’t quite place it.”

As soon as she started to hum, Essie broke in. “High Noon.You know how I love my old movies. That’s the theme fromHigh Noon with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. God, what a beauty she was. And him—now that was some handsome man. ‘Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’,’” she sang in her light, pretty voice.

“Right, right. That’s the one. Funny sort of song to whistle. Well.” With at least that mystery solved, she shelved the rest. “Carly, get a move on now.”

The minute they were in the car, Phoebe turned to Carly. “Does it bother you that I’m going out with Duncan? With anyone, really?”

“No. But if you’re too old for boyfriends, why are you?”

That one bit you on the ass, didn’t it? “I just mean boyfriend’s kind of a silly term for a grown woman.” A divorced woman with a child, Phoebe thought. “Just friend’s more sensible, I guess.”

“Celene’s mother sort of brags about her boyfriends. She used to have three, but—”

“I’m not Celene’s mother. And I don’t know as I approve of her talking about herboyfriends so much around you.”

“She mostly talks about them to her girlfriends, and Celene hears her. Then we talk about it.”

“Oh.” Phoebe blew out a breath as she began to drive. “Does it upset Celene that her mother goes out like that?”

“She likes the babysitter. Terri’s fifteen and they do makeovers and watch TV. And the boyfriends sometimes bring Celene presents, and sometimes they take her places. Like one took her to Six Flags.”

“I canhear your thinking,” Phoebe said with a laugh. “You’re such a little mercenary.”

It wasn’t the first time Carly had heard the word, so she grinned, too. “But if you don’t ask for a present, and don’t say would you please, please, take me to Six Flags, it’s not mercenary. Is it? I mean, Gran always says when somebody gives you something, you should thank them and make them pleased they gave it. Even if you don’t like it. That’s manners.”

“You’re a tricky one, Carly Anne. Slippery as an eel. You make me proud.”

Phoebe returned from a suicide threat that had amounted to a sad and pathetic bid for attention to find Sykes waving her away from the squad room.

“Just a heads-up, LT. You got the rat squad in your office.”

“IAB’s in my office?”

“One of them. Got here about five minutes ago.”

“Thanks.” She should have known it was coming. Had known, she corrected. But it didn’t make it any less distasteful.

Lieutenant Blackman from IAB was a salt-and-pepper-headed fifty. He had a sloping belly, a ruddy complexion and thin, dry hands.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, to keep you waiting. Did we have an appointment for this afternoon?”

“You didn’t keep me waiting. I thought we could have a conversation here rather than a formal interview, at this point. If you’d rather the latter, we can arrange that.”

Like a fashionable suit, the Southern-woman polite slipped onto Phoebe. It generally served her well. “I don’t know if I’d rather the latter until I have a better idea what conversation you’d like to have.”

“Regarding statements and accusations made against you by Officer Arnold Meeks.”

“Arnold Meeks is no longer a police officer, as you well know.”

“He was when he made the statements and accusations, as you well know. I hope you’re recovering from your injuries.”

“I am, thank you. Lieutenant Blackman, if we’re going to be having this informal conversation, would you like some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. Prior to the attack on your person, you suspended Officer Arnold Meeks?”

“I did.”

“And your reasons for taking this step?”

“Are outlined, perfectly clearly, in the file.” She plastered a cooperative smile on her face. “Do you need a copy?”

“I have one.”

Hard-ass, Phoebe thought, but kept the smile as she tipped her head. “Well then.”

“Officer Meeks disputed your reasons for his suspension.”

Phoebe leaned back, dropped the smile, sharpened her tone. “We both know he attacked me, that he lay in wait and assaulted me. We both know a deal was cut. And I suspect we both know Arnold Meeks has some significant problems with authority—particularly when it’s female authority—anger management and control. Why are you pushing this?”

Blackman’s dark eyes stayed pinned on hers. “He made serious accusations against you and the captain of this division.”

Her temper wanted to leap and bite. And that, Phoebe knew, would only add fuel to a fire that needed to be stamped out quickly. “Yes, he did. He made some of them right here in this office, to my face.”

“You have a personal relationship with Captain David Mc Vee, do you not?”

“I certainly do. I have a personal and platonic relationship with the captain, whom I’ve known and respected for more than twenty years. If you’ve looked into this matter, into me, then you know the circumstances of how I came to know Captain Mc Vee.”

“You left the FBI to work in his division.”

“I did, for a variety of reasons. None of which are unseemly or against departmental regulations. I’ve worked in this division for nearly seven years, without a single mark on my record. I believe my reputation and certainly the captain’s are above reproach. Certainly from accusations made by a disgraced police officer whose answer to being disciplined was to beat the hell out of me.”

Blackman puffed out his cheeks, the first sign Phoebe had seen that he felt anything at all. “I understand you’d find this conversation, the need for it, distasteful, Lieutenant.”

“Distasteful? Lieutenant Blackman, as a police officer and as a woman, I find theneed for this conversation deplorable.”

“So noted. The officer in question also contends that you made inappropriate sexual advances to him, and used your authority over him to intimidate in a sexual context.”

“So I’ve heard.” And enough, Phoebe thought, was damn well enough. “I never made sexual advances ofany kind toward Arnold Meeks. You can take his word or you can take mine. I wonder how much pressure the ‘officer in question’s’ father and/or grandfather might be putting on IAB to pursue this matter.”

“Complaints were filed against you, and Captain Mc Vee.”

“You ought to consider the source of those complaints. You ought to consider the fact that Captain Mc Vee has served this department and this city for more than twenty-five years, and doesn’t deserve even the hint of a smear on his record by the pointing finger of a son of a bitch like Arnold Meeks.”

“Lieutenant—”

“I’m not finished. I want you to put that in your report of this conversation. I want you to put in your report that in my professional and personal opinion, Arnold Meeks is a lying son of a bitch who’s trying to cover his disgraceful and criminal behavior by damaging the reputation of a good man, and a good cop.”

She shoved to her feet. “Now I want you out of my office. I have work to do. If you want another conversation with me, it will be a formal one, and my delegate will be present.”

“Up to you.”

“Yes, it certainly is. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Blackman.”

It took Phoebe only about forty-five seconds to admit she was just too pissed, too insulted to sit there doing paperwork. Even the pretense of doing paperwork wasn’t possible.

She grabbed her purse, strode out of the office, through the speculative, and sympathetic, glances of the squad. “Lost time,” she said to the new PAA. “I’ll be an hour.”

She had to walk. She knew herself and understood air and exercise were two vital components to cooling herself off. She walked fast, before she said or did anything she’d regret later, straight out of the building. Out of the cop, she thought to herself.

She could have chosen an easier career. Psychology, psychiatry. Hadn’t she considered both? But no, through all the years, all the schooling, all the choices, she’d kept circling back to this.

She knew it had given her mother more than anyone’s share of sleepless nights. God knew it wasn’t the best choice for a single mother with a child who needed her. It hadn’t been the smart choice, really. She had a family to support, and could have done so with more style charging for fifty-minute hours instead of putting in countless nights on the job.

And for what? Forwhat? To be accused by a man who brutalized her? To be questioned by her own over those accusations before the last bruises had completely faded?

She’d swallowed what in her heart was no more than a slap on the wrist of the man who’d used his fists on her. She’d accepted the politics of it, the face-saving, and to be honest had some small seed of relief inside her that she wouldn’t be called on to sit in court and replay what he had done to her.

But this? She didn’t know if she could swallow this.

And where were her choices now? Phoebe asked herself as she turned into the relative cool of Chippewa Square. She could give the department the finger, walk away. And toss away a dozen years of training and work—good work, she reminded herself.

She could demand a full and formal investigation, and blast the ugliness into the air for those who enjoyed such things to snatch at like ribbons on balloons. Or she could remember that sometimes pride was less important than doing what had to be done.

She dropped down on a bench—the one Forrest Gump had sat on, waiting for a bus.

“Box of chocolates, my ass,” she muttered.

But she was calmer. It was good, she decided, that she’d said what she wanted to say to that rat-bastard Blackman when she hadn’t been calm. Good that she’d stood up, showed him she wouldn’t let herself be walked over by IAB, by politics, by any old-boy network or variation thereof.

Let him poke and prod around. She had nothing to hide.

She’d go back to work, because that’s what she did. And really, it wasn’t just the only choice she had. It was what she wanted.

But for the next five minutes, she was going to sit here—just like Forrest—and watch the world go by. As screwed up as it was, it was still her world.

Phoebe glanced over as a woman sat on the bench beside her, then did a quick double take. A sassy white sun hat shaded the gorgeous curling auburn hair. Delicate, just ripened peach tinted the wide, expressive mouth. The long legs were set off in a filmy white sundress and given some jazz with the strappy high-heeled sandals.

Hollywood often came to Savannah, and still it wasn’t a usual thing to have Julia Roberts cozy up on a park bench alongside you. Especially when Julia had a prominent Adam’s apple and really big hands.

“I hope you don’t mind me joining you.” The voice was lazy, liquid Savannah, and on the contralto end of the scale. “These shoes are just killing me.”

“Not at all. Fabulous shoes, by the way.”

“Why, thank you so much!” The four-inch heels lifted, turned side to side, and showed off peach-tipped toes. “Saw them at Jezebel’s, and I couldn’t resist them. I know better than to go in that place, as I have such a weakness. But there they were, right in the window, and I couldn’t live without them.”

Phoebe had to smile, and think of Carly. Her daughter would understand the sentiment perfectly.

“But they arenot made for walking more than five steps. I’m not her.” Phoebe’s companion tipped down fashionable sunglasses. “Lots of people mistake us, as Julia and I share certain qualities.”

“You certainly do.”

“And she is a married lady with those adorable children. While I am still on the market.” With a wink, the woman extended her hand. “Marvella Starr.”

“Phoebe Mac Namara.”

“I do believe I’ve seen you around here, Phoebe—that gorgeous hair of yours. I take a turn around the park most every day. It’s near the police station, you know.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I do love a man in uniform. And the mounted unit, they patrol the park. A man in uniform on a horse.” On a lusty sigh, Marvella leaned back, waved a hand over her heart. “I am helpless. I work at Chez Vous. You ever been to Chez Vous, honey?”

“I haven’t.”

“Oh, you should come on by some night, catch the show. Being in the theater, I do tend to sleep in most days, but I like to stroll on through the park in the afternoon, get my policeman fix.” She dug into her peach-toned hobo bag, took out a lemon drop. “Candy?”

“Thanks.”

Companionably, they sucked on lemon drops, and Phoebe felt better than she had all day.

“You live around here, too?” Marvella asked.

“No, actually, I work around here. At the police station. I’m a cop.”

“Now you shut up!” Marvella poked her in the arm. “Is that the truth? I want to see your gun.”

Amused, Phoebe folded back her jacket to expose the weapon and badge on her hip. And had Marvella whistling in delight.

“Pretty thing like you, I’d never have guessed it. But I guess we both know how appearances are deceiving—and it’s what’s inside the cover that counts.”

“Yes, we both know that.”

“You know any men in uniform who might be interested in a date with a woman of my particular style?”

“If they aren’t it’s their loss.”

“Aren’t you the sweet one!”

“If I come across any, I’ll send them over to Chez Vous. I bet you can take it from there.”

“Oh, that’s a solid truth, Phoebe. That’s a solid truth.”

While she sat, he took pictures. It was such a bonus! He’d never expected to see her walking along, into the square, out again. But here she was, eyes shaded by sunglasses. He wished he could see them. But it was still a bonus. He’d only been scouting around, and lo and behold, here came Phoebe.

Walking fast—fast as a Yankee—legs striding, hips swinging. Hot under the collar, he was sure of it. And the idea of her anger, her upset, gave him a nice little thrill.

He wondered if she’d liked the little present he’d left for her. It was too bad, really too bad, he hadn’t been able to stick around, to wait, to position himself to see how she reacted when she found the dead rat.

Still, they were going to have time, plenty of time to get to know each other again. To see each other. Eye to eye.

He didn’t know what the hell she and the queer were blabbing on about, but the interlude gave him time for more pictures. And with her running her mouth, she wasn’t going to make him.

When she rose, walked away, he blew a kiss at her back.

“See you soon, sweetheart.”

Dave waited until it was nearly the end of shift to summon her. He was on the phone when she stepped into his office, and he held up a finger. “That was my take, yes. I appreciate it. I’ll get back to you.”

He hung up, swiveled a little right, a little left as he studied Phoebe’s face. “This’ll only take a minute. You probably want to get home.”

“Monday night’s homework session is often a study of temper and despair. By Friday, we have the hang of it again, only to fall victim to the tradition of two days of vacation. Is there a problem, Captain?”

“I know IAB’s spoken with you.”

“Yes.”

“And I know you’re pissed off.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not going to go anywhere, Phoebe. It’s got nowhere to go. But the Meekses have friends in the department, and at City Hall. It’s important to them to save face to some extent.”

“While your face and mine take the punch,” she tossed back.

“I’m sorry that insult’s been added to injury. I expect you’ll handle it.”

“I considered flipping them the bird and going into business as a therapist. Maybe marriage counseling.” She watched his lips quirk. “But considering my own track record in that area, I rejected it and mused on the more entertaining notion of going to a voodoo practitioner and buying a curse. I’m still weighing the pros and cons of that.”

“Let me know which way you decide. It’s smoke, Phoebe. You know that.”

“Smoke can leave stains and smears. And it kills. Haven’t you been paying attention to the surgeon general?”

“Sergeant Meeks pulled some strings. He’s got his son a job as a security guard. That’s a hard comedown for a man like Arnie. It’s a hard comedown for his father to see what I have no doubt he considered his legacy broken into very ugly bits. He’s getting some of his own back.”

He swiveled again when she said nothing. “As long as you hold your line, he won’t even get that. Go on home, put this away. It’s bad enough you’re about to face the multiplication tables or the hell of long division.”

No point in argument or debate, she thought, especially since he was right. All she had to do was hold the line. “Monday is, invariably, vocabulary. Carly has such a damn good one it annoys her to be told what words to learn. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to finish up here, go home and have a beer with my Hungry-Man dinner.”

“Come on to dinner. You—” She stopped, felt both temper and grief rise up when she saw the expression on his face. “Is that how it has to be? Because of this insulting stupidity? We can’t be friends now?”

“Of course we’re friends. Nothing changes that, and nothing ever could. But it’s best, for the moment, that I stick with my Hungry-Man. Let the smoke clear, Phoebe. When it does, I promise you it’s not going to leave a stain on either of us.”

“I’m thinking more seriously about finding that voodoo queen.”

He smiled at her, in that calm, patient way she loved, she depended on. “We do good work here. We’re going to keep right on doing it. And speaking of that, you did good work at the college today.”

“It was bogus. Report was the coed had barricaded herself in the dorm with a knife, a rifle and a bottle of pills. When I talked her out, what she had was manicure scissors, an unloaded twenty-two and a bottle of goddamn Tums.”

“It could have been a loaded gun, a bowie knife and a bottle of barbs. You know that. You talked her out, that’s what counts. Go on home.”

Some days, she thought as she walked out to her car, it felt like it counted more than others.

It was odd, wasn’t it, Ava decided, for the man her friend was seeing—was in fact having dinner with that very night—to ask to see her?

She wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to meet him. Maybe it was curiosity, or manners, or that easy charm of his. Likely all of that, she admitted as she walked to Whitaker Street.

She’d decided not to drive. Parking could be such a nightmare, and besides, you couldn’t window-shop in a car, could you? Or not safely in any case.

And she did love to window-shop. Between her and Essie, she supposed they’d completely corrupted Carly.

Anyway, it wasn’t all that far. And Savannah was just gorgeous in April.

She loved Savannah. She loved Mac Namara House—and deep in the core, it had been home more than anywhere else. Of course, she’d loved her pretty little house in West Chatham. Picture-perfect life, or so she’d thought. With a successful husband, a delightful little boy. Even the requisite golden retriever.

But there’d been nothing perfect about it, and what a hard blow that had been. Serial adultery wasn’t pretty—especially for the blind wife who’d missed all the signals, all the signs until they slapped hard into her face.

So it had been back to Mac Namara House. Minus the husband and the dog. She did miss the dog, she thought with some amusement. And she was grateful she’d had a place to go, a place where her son could thrive, where she could be useful.

And if she still wished, occasionally, that the cheating bastard would die in some fiery car wreck, she’d mellowed considerably from the days she’d actively prayed for him to be decapitated by a runaway train.

That was progress.

She was lost in her own thoughts and nearly walked right by the house.

“Hey! Ava!”

She stopped, glanced over, and there was Duncan coming down the steps of some poor old house left to ruin.

Talk about window-shopping, she thought with pure female appreciation. It was hardly a wonder Phoebe was taking a lot of looks at this particular piece of merchandise. Rangy build, tousled hair, killer smile.

Though she hadn’t proven herself the best judge of men, she was betting this one lived up to his packaging.

“Sorry. I was daydreaming. Oh my. Is this the place you bought? The place you told Essie about?”

“Yeah.” He looked back at it as a man might a beloved old aunt. “She needs some help.”

“Yes, she certainly does.”

Boards blinded half the windows while the front veranda sagged like an old pair of jowls. The paint—what was left of it—curled off the wood in a sickly yellow.

“You have your work cut out for you,” she commented.

“That’s half the fun. And I kind of wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About what?”

“Come on up a little. The steps are fine.” He took her hand, drew her up. “Structurally it’s in pretty good shape. Some this, some that. But mostly it’s cosmetic.”

“It’s going to take a lot of Max Factor, Duncan.”

“Max…right, right. Got it. Yeah, it needs a lot of makeup, but I’ve got ideas about that. One of them’s about curb appeal, you could say. Your place—Mac Namara House?—it’s got excellent curb appeal. I hear you do all the gardening around there.”

“Most of it.” She pulled a bottle of water out of her purse, offered it.

“You carry water in your purse?”

“I could open a small sundry shop with what I carry in my purse. I have no idea how you men get along with just pockets. Would you like it? I have two.”

“No. Thanks. I’m good. Ah…gardening. Your gardening.”

“Mmm.” Taking a sip of water, Ava noted the tangled mess of the front lawn, and the viciously healthy bindweed that dominated. “Essie putters a little. Phoebe barely has time to do more than yank a few weeds now and then. I enjoy it most, so I do the most.”

“I like to garden.”

“Do you?” Now she looked at him with a smile.

“Found it out when I started fooling around with the house I—the house I live in. I’m not too bad. You’re a whole lot better. So I thought maybe you might be able to help me out here.”

“Here?”

“I’m thinking we’ll have to start pretty much from scratch. Mostly what’s here has gone woody, or it’s dead, except for the weeds, of course. They need a good killing. We’d want some new foundation plants for sure and something splashy. Maybe a dwarf blooming something—little weeper maybe—on the side there. A trailing vine up the trellis.”

Baffled, Ava studied the sorrowful house. “What trellis?”

“The one I think we should put up. Or an arbor. I got a fondness for arbors.” Imagining, he jiggled the change in his pockets. “Then there’s pots and window boxes. A lot of big—and let’s go splashy again—pots and window boxes. And there’s a space around the back? It’s small, and I’m thinking a little patio with a pretty little table and chairs, that kind of thing. Needs a couple of beds to frame it in. Potted trees, so on so on. So, think you can help me out?”

“I’m confused. You want me to help you landscape this place?”

“I’m looking to hire you to landscape this place.”

Because the breath stuck in her throat, Ava took a long drink to clear it. “Duncan…Why would you think I could take on a project like this? I’m not a landscaper. I just do some gardening.”

He did a little gardening, Duncan thought. What Ava did was what Essie did with hook and yarn. She created art. “I don’t want a landscaper here, exactly. Nothing against them, not a thing. I want something homey, but a little dramatic. Individual. I like what you’ve done to the Jones Street place. That’s what I’m looking for here. I’ve got pictures.”

He pulled a folder from a briefcase on the steps, pushed them at her. “Of the house, the grounds—such as they are, the verandas, so on. And I worked up some of the basic ideas I have in mind. Not set in stone, but ideas. And the budget I was thinking of.”

Curiosity got the best of her, so she opened the folder, paged through until she got to the budget. “I’m going to sit down here on these steps.”

“Okay.” He sat down with her. He did love sitting on a step or a stoop in the city and just watching life go by. So he was content enough to do just that as she was silent for several moments.

“Duncan, I think you must be an awfully sweet man, but you may have a mental problem.” When he laughed, she shook her head. “You don’t offer a major project like this to someone who isn’t proven.”

“Well, major’s relative. I have a major project elsewhere, which maybe we’ll talk about some other time. I want this to look like a home.” He wanted the life that went by to see it as one. “That’s how I see what you’ve done. I know something about gardening, and—”

She snorted, jabbed a finger. “Tell me half a dozen of the plants you’ve seen at Mac Namara house.”

“Well, you’ve got that one urn thing on the veranda with heliotrope and that dark red phlox, with the lobelia and the sweet alyssum.” He moved on to another pot, on to the shrubs and beds in the front.

She studied him now, her eyes narrowed behind shaded lenses. “Did you write all that down?”

“I notice things, especially if they interest me. You could think about it. I’ve got a couple weeks before I have to lock this in. Maybe you’ll come up with some ideas, and we can kick them around. I could…” He glanced at his watch, winced. “But I’ve gotta get on. Phoebe’s coming for dinner in a couple hours so I’ve got to…”

“Get on,” Ava murmured. “I think I’ll just sit here a bit longer, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure, poke around.” He rose, turned and studied the house again. “I’d really like to bring her back. Just give it some thought, all right?”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

She sat, after he’d gotten into his car and pulled away. She sat, thinking he must be a crazy man. Then she stood, studied the house, walked carefully around the sagging veranda.

She thought of the yard she’d had in that tidy subdivision in West Chatham. How she’d loved turning it into a showpiece. How she’d hauled soil, fertilizer, peat moss. How she’d dug, and planted, and sweated and weeded. Making her home, she remembered. Making it picture perfect, without a clue that there was a snake in her garden. Not a clue that she’d have to walk away from the dreamscape she’d imagined and worked so hard to create.

Wouldn’t it be something if she could do this? If she could scrape away all the dead, all the ugly, and make something beautiful here? For no reason other than the beauty.

Yes, she decided. It was something to think about.

15

She’d nearly talked herself out of going to Duncan’s. Which, of course, would be insane. She wanted to go. She really,really wanted to finish what they’d started on his veranda a few nights before.

But Sensible Phoebe elected to debate with Needy Phoebe—and damn her, had made some very valid points on the way home from work, during the change-for-date process and even now on the drive to the island portion of the evening.

They should get to know each other better. He was, no question, an appealing, interesting man. But what was the rush? Wouldn’t it be more rational—read: safer—to have a few more dates in public venues before haring off to his house when and where the end result was inevitable?

She could argue with that, and did. She liked him, she enjoyed him, she was strongly attracted to him physically. She was thirty-three.

But really, what did she know about him—under the surface of things? For all she knew he might be the type who used that affability of his like a weapon and knocked susceptible females over on a weekly basis. He could be the male version of Celene’s mother, busily juggling. Did she want to be one of his balls in the air?

What the hell difference did it make? Couldn’t she date a man—couldn’t she sleep with a man—without demanding or expecting absolute exclusivity? She deserved some fun and some companionship—and some goddamn sex—in her personal life.

So shut the hell up.

He meddled. At least it could be construed as meddling by someone with her twin antennae of cynicism and suspicion humming. An outlet for her mother’s needlework, a gardening job for Ava. What was next? Would he offer to buy a shoe store for Carly?

Of course that was ridiculous. It was overreacting. It was overprotective. Certainly neither her mother nor Ava considered the opportunities offered meddling. And it wasn’t as if they weren’t particularly skilled at the arts and crafts he’d provided a channel for.

The problem was she could twist his actions, this relationship, the entire mass of it all into any of several forms. If she were going to be obsessive and picky about it. Instead of just taking a chance, enjoying the moment.

Besides, she was too close to his house now to turn back like some nervous idiot and bolt for home.

They’d talk, they’d simply talk about what was going on, about what this business with Ava was really about. They’d eat some pizza, maybe drink some wine, and have a mature, adult conversation about where—if anywhere—they might be going.

If Sensible Phoebe wasn’t satisfied with that, she could get the hell out of the car and walk home.

It occurred to her as she turned into Duncan’s drive that the first time she’d seen his house she’d been traumatized. The second time it had been after dusk. Seeing it now, in full light, with all her wits about her, was a different experience.

It was gorgeous, all those tall windows with the carved white trim against the pale, beachy blue of the wood. The sweep of terraces and verandas. And, of course, the sturdy elegance of the portico with its white columns. Where they’d very nearly taken an action that would have turned her recent debate to dust.

The charm of that widow’s walk where she could easily imagine standing to look out at marsh and salt flat, at garden, at river.

And, of course, the gardens. The heaps and flows, the spikes and trails. She had to concede the man knew gardens, or hired a fleet of people who did. Which was one and the same, really. A man didn’t have to dig and plant, to prune and weed, to appreciate the power of a lovely landscape.

The result was a gorgeous little slice of island living, sun and shade, bloom and fragrance, green and color all swirling around a house that managed to be grand and homey at the same time.

It took vision, she supposed, to pull that off.

She strolled along the walk, enjoying the dreamy, romantic sensation, and hoped they’d have that wine, that pizza and conversation, out on the veranda with the warm, moist air and those heady fragrances stirred up by the breeze.

He opened the door before she reached it, stood framed by that white trim, watching her walk toward him.

“I feel like I should be wearing a flowing white gown,” she called out, “and a wide-brimmed hat—like this dead-ringer-for-Julia-Roberts transvestite I had a nice chat with yesterday. Only my hat should be trimmed with violets, I think—tucked into the band, and ribbons trailing.”

“You look pretty perfect just the way you are, even if you aren’t—far as I know—a transvestite.”

“She might’ve been a transsexual. I didn’t like to ask on so short an acquaintance.”

“Either way. I like the dress.”

“Thanks.” It might have been something she often hauled out for PTA meetings, but at the moment the simple cotton felt pretty perfect. “You’ve had a busy day.”

“It’s all relative.” He held out a hand to take hers, to bring her inside.

She didn’t see it coming. So much, she’d think later, for instincts—cop or woman. But right at that moment, with her back up against the door and his mouth hot on hers, thinking wasn’t part of the equation.

She might’ve put her hands on his shoulders in a gesture of whoa there, wait a minute pal, but they slid right up until her arms were locked around his neck.

And waiting was done.

His hands dove into her hair, skimmed over her shoulders, molded down her body with such purpose and skill that any idea ofwhoa went straight out the window, and kept on flying.

Sensible Phoebe didn’t have a prayer.

Hesmelled so good, and felt even better—hard and tough and male. With her mouth under assault and her blood flashing from comfortably warm to desperately hot, her body ruled the moment.

He might have stopped—if she’d pulled out a gun and held it to his head, he might’ve stopped. But he heard, in some dim part of his brain, her purse hit the floor with a single hard thump.

Then she locked around him, those strong bare arms, and her teeth nipped and gnawed on his bottom lip. She moaned; she quivered. And her scent seemed to rise from light, teasing invitation to will-snapping opiate.

He slid her dress up, up, up those gorgeous legs, ran his hand over warm flesh, over the thin lacy bit that covered her. Under it.

Not warm here, but hot. Hot and wet and open. Her hips pumped, pressed, and she came on a low, feral groan that shot straight to his belly. Her fingers dug in, a hard bite on his shoulders.

Then they were pushing between their bodies, tugging at the button of his fly.

Now, now, now. Right this minute. Oh God! She didn’t know if she said it out loud or just thought it. The sensations careening inside her flew too fast, too high for any kind of resistance, any hope of sanity. She wasn’t entirely sure she could survive another ten seconds if he wasn’t inside her.

And when he was, when he drove into her, she didn’t give a damn about survival.

Fast, right on the edge of violent, thrust after thrust. It filled up places she’d forgotten had been empty, fired up places she’d forgotten had gone cool. It was an onslaught, and thank God for it.

Nothing strapped down now, nothing sensible. He had her arms over her head, wrists cuffed with his hand, her skirt hiked to her waist. He battered her against the front door until the orgasm simply shredded her to pieces.

And with his own release his breath was ragged in her ear. He braced her against the door. She realized when her head cleared a little it was as much to keep his own balance as to hold her up.

“Thanks,” she managed.

“It was at least fifty percent my pleasure.”

When she wheezed out a laugh, he eased back, studying her face as he brushed her hair aside. “I had a different order of business in mind. Initially.”

She could nearly focus again, and oh God, she loved the color of his eyes. “Order of business.”

“You know, a couple of adult beverages on the veranda, or walking around the gardens. Some dinner with conversation. Then I realized I’d just be thinking about sex through all that, which would spoil my appetite.”

He ran a hand up her leg as he spoke, had her quivering once more. And gently smoothed her skirts back into place. “That’s one thing,” he continued, “but I believed you might very well be in the same frame of mind. Here I’d be having you over for dinner and spoiling your appetite. That’s no way to treat a guest.”

“I see. So am I to understand we just had at each other against your front door because you didn’t want to be rude?”

He grinned at her. “Absolutely. Only reason. Steady yet?”

“I think so.”

He stepped back, glanced down. Bending he picked up her ripped panties. He said, “Oops.”

She laughed. “I don’t know why I bothered to put on good underwear.”

“They were momentarily appreciated. I could lend you a pair of boxers.”

“I’ll pass on that, thanks all the same. I’ll just use the bathroom for a minute.”

“Yeah, sure. Listen, Phoebe…” Absently he stuffed the torn panties in his back pocket. “Included in that original order of business was my intention to suit up a bit more formally.”

She stared at him, a quizzical smile on her face. Then it sank in, the smile dropped away to a look of stunned realization. “Oh. Oh, God.”

“I stopped thinking,” he began. “I’m—”

“It was mutual, as much me as you.” Stunned, she rubbed the space between her breasts where her heart gave a couple of hard knocks. “I take the pill, but—”

“But,” he said with a nod. “I can only tell you I’m habitually a hell of a lot more careful. We can exchange blood tests if you’re worried. I can tell you, too, that’s the first time that front door’s been used in such an interesting manner. I may have it bronzed, but meanwhile, I’m sorry, and I’m willing to sacrifice a vial of blood if it gives you peace of mind.”

“Let’s just say we’ll be more careful from this point.”

“Okay.”

She picked up the purse she’d dropped. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

She got a good look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Flushed, the sleepy cat-that-gulped-a pint-of-cream eyes, hair tumbled. All well and good, she thought. And God knew ithad been good. But she wasn’t allowed to be that reckless, and couldn’t be again. Next date, she promised herself, there would be condoms in her purse.

When she came out he wasn’t in the foyer, or the front parlor. She called out his name as she started to wander, then followed the answer to a room off the kitchen. Party room, she decided. A grand old bar, lots of cushy seating, framed posters of what she saw were reproductions of old magazine ads. All deco and stylized.

There was a card table that looked to be an antique like the bar, and display cabinets filled with this and that. Some of the this, she noted with amusement, were Pez dispensers.

“The gentlemen’s club,” she said.

“Sort of.” He came around the bar with two glasses of wine. “Hungry?”

“I think you already took care of that.”

His grin was quick and pleased. “That’s good because I called in for the pizza, but I told them to bring it around in about an hour. Thought you might like to have a drink outside, maybe in the garden. Watch the sun go down.”

“That’s exactly what I’d like.”

She went with him through a set of French doors onto the back veranda. And there, scanning, she took a sip of wine. “Nice—the wine,” she qualified. “The rest? It’s like a little piece of fairyland, isn’t it?”

“Lots of secret places. I got carried away with it once I really started.”

“So…” She stepped down, crossed the patio. “Why aren’t you hiring whoever designed and created this to design and create the gardens you want at this shop you’re planning?”

“You talked to Ava.”

“She’s terrified and thrilled in equal measure.”

“Well, here’s the thing. This? I sort of designed some of it. Not really designed, but fiddled around. I had help, and it’s kind of evolved and shifted and changed its original layout.”

“Whatever the original, this suits you.” Phoebe turned a slow circle. “Fanciful, as I said, and its lack of formality enhances the charm.”

He was looking at her now, only at her. “You standing in it enhances the charm.”

She made a mock curtsy. “Aren’t you gallant?”

“If I were, I’d have come up with something romantic about blooms or blossoms.”

“You did fine. As to Ava?”

“Yeah, Ava, and the place. I don’t think I’m going to have time to fiddle so much with that project, and I didn’t really want the team sensibility. I wanted a woman’s, a woman who understands a house like that one, an area like that one, and knows how to, well, lay the landscape, to put in the flourishes and the color so people walking or driving by will say, ‘That’s Savannah right there.’ I like what she’s done with the house on Jones.”

He pushed through an ornate iron gate. Phoebe saw instantly what he’d meant about secrets. It was a little island on the island, one of tranquillity and whispers, with its little pool with floating lilies, its fanciful statue of a winged fairy.

She walked over to a small curved bench of white marble, sat. “Not just a good deed?”

“I don’t mind good deeds or suspicious minds, as yours tends to be. But I don’t mind profiting by being a good judge and picking people for projects they’re suited for.”

“Ever pick the wrong person?”

“A few times. I don’t think Ava’s one of them.”

“She won’t be. She had this house in West Chatham when she was married, and she created the most amazing gardens. She even got written up inSouthern Homes …You knew that, didn’t you?”

His dimple flicked on. “I might’ve come across something.”

“Smarter than you look, and that’s a pure compliment.”

“You, too.” He leaned over, kissed her breezily. “Want to walk around a bit, maybe down to the pier?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

Bricked paths, arbors and trellises, copper urns going soft and green, and pretty music as the evening breeze stirred hanging glass and wind chimes.

The sun was sinking, turning the marsh into shimmering colors. From the pier she could see other homes, other gardens, and what she thought was a young boy sitting on the edge of a pier with his line in the water.

“Do you ever do that? Fish off here?”

“I’m a crappy fisherman. Rather just sit here with a beer and let someone else drown the worms.”

She turned around, noted how far they’d walked. “The grounds are more extensive than I realized.” And there, she noted, were the sparkling waters of a swimming pool. “A lot to maintain. I’m still having a hard time seeing you as the country gentleman. How about that long story on how you ended up here?”

“It’s not all that interesting.”

“Not all that interesting to you, or potentially to me?”

“Probably either.”

“Now, of course, my curiosity is piqued and, unquenched, will depend on imagination to satisfy. Such as you built it for a woman—unrequited love, heartbreak—who left you for another man.”

“Not that far off.”

She sobered instantly. “I’m sorry, bad joke. We should start back to the house, don’t you think? I’d hate to miss the pizza boy. I’d love to eat on the veranda, or in the garden,” she continued as they walked up the pier. “Wouldn’t—”

“I built it for my mother.”

“Oh.” She heard the echoes of deep unhappiness in his voice, but said nothing else.

“I guess that’s not the beginning of the story. My mother was seventeen when she had me. What we could call a very big oops. My father was barely older. For whatever reason they—or she—decided to go through with the pregnancy, get married. I’m grateful, obviously, about the first part of that decision, but the married part probably wasn’t the smartest move on either of their parts. They fought all the time—the time they were together. He was lazy, she was a bitch, he drank too much, she kept a crappy house. Fun and games at the Swifts’.”

“It’s difficult for a child to grow up with that kind of friction.”

“Yeah, well, the thing is they were both right. He was lazy and drank too much. She was a bitch and kept a crappy house. I was ten when he took off. He’d taken off a few times before—so had she. But this time he didn’t come back.”

“Are you saying you never saw him again?”

“Not for a lot of years. Man, she was pissed. Paid him back by going out a lot, doing what she wanted for a change. More than half the time I wondered if she even knew I was there. So to remind her I was, I got into as much trouble as possible. Fighting mostly. I was the neighborhood badass for five years running.”

Saying nothing, she lifted her hand, traced a fingertip down the scar through his eyebrow.

“Yeah, battle scar. No big.”

“It intrigued me when I first saw you. Scar here, little dimple right here.” She tapped the corner of his mouth. “Opposite ends. You’ve got some opposite ends in you, Duncan. What happened in year six? How did you lose your title as neighborhood badass?”

“You’re a smart one. I targeted this kid who was a lot tougher than he looked. He didn’t kick my ass, but boy, did we kick each other’s.”

“And ended up the best of friends,” Phoebe concluded. “Isn’t that the manly cliché?”

“I hate being predictable, but close enough. While we’re pounding each other bloody, and I’m wondering if my badass title is about to be stripped away, the kid’s father comes along. Big guy, yanked us apart. We’re going to do that shit, we’re going to put the gloves on and do it like men. Kid’s father used to box for a living. No wonder Jake almost kicked my ass.”

“And who won the title in the ring?”

“Neither. We never got around to the gloves. Jake’s father dragged me to their place, cleaned us both up at the kitchen sink while his wife fixed me an ice bag and a glass of lemonade. Bored yet? I told you it was long.”

“Not even close to bored.”

“Well, you’re going to need another glass of wine for the rest.” He took her glass. Phoebe leaned back against the rail and waited until he came back with refills.

“Where was I?”

“At Jake’s kitchen table drinking lemonade.”

“And getting a whale of a talking-to. First time anybody—not including teachers, who didn’t count in those days for me—ever gave me one. It occurred to me at this time that being the neighborhood badass was getting me punched in the face on a regular basis. And what was the point? She never said a damn thing about it when I came home bloody anyway. So I gave up the belt of my championship reign.”

“You were what, about fifteen?”

“Thereabouts.”

“Young for an epiphany, but I understand youthful epiphanies.”

He shifted to look into her eyes. “Guess you would.”

“So we have the common ground of that. I moved into Mac Namara House after mine, which is another story for another day. What did you do after you retired from badassing?”

“I got a job, thinking that might be the way to please her—my mother—and it would be less painful than bare knuckles.”

“A wise choice.” But he’d never pleased her, Phoebe thought, she could hear it in his voice. “What kind of job?”

“I bused tables, gave her half of what I made every week. That was fine. Didn’t change anything between us, but it was fine. I started to think that’s just the way things were for people like us. Single parent, scraping by. She just didn’t have time to pay attention.”

He was quiet for a few moments while a whip-poor-will began its twilight call. “Of course, being a single parent, you know that’s not the case.”

“I know it shouldn’t be.”

“When I was eighteen she told me I had to get my own place, so I did. Time passed, and one day I picked up a fare whose wallet was empty. One thing led to another and I met his family. No father—he died when Phin was a kid—but the result was the same. There was no father there, but the mother, oh, you best believe she paid attention.”

Phoebe thought of Ma Bee—big hands, steady eyes. “Even when you wished she didn’t.”

“Even. She had a brood of kids, but she paid attention. To me, too. So I saw it wasn’t just the way it is. It was easier to believe that, or want to. But it was not the way it is.

“That’d be the pizza.” He pushed off the rail. “I’ll be a minute. If it’s Teto, he likes to talk.”

“All right.”

She sipped her wine, looked out at the gardens now that the first stars were popping out. He’d thought the house, the gardens, the beauty here would make his mother, at last, pay attention. Phoebe already saw that, and that it hadn’t worked.

Why did he stay? she wondered. Wasn’t it painful?

He came back with a pizza box, a pair of plates riding the top, napkins tucked between.

“I’ll set it up. Will you finish telling me?”

“I guess we can fast-forward to hitting the jackpot.”

He lit candles as she set the plates and napkins on a wicker table. “Local boy makes way good, just because he bought a six-pack and a lottery ticket. Had a hell of a celebration. I think I was solid drunk for two days. First sober thing I did was go over to Ma Bee’s. I bought this funny little brass bottle, like a genie bottle. I told her to rub it, to make three wishes. I was going to grant all three.”

“Aren’t you the cutest thing?” Phoebe said softly, then sat at the table.

“I thought I was pretty damn clever. She said that was all right, she’d make three wishes. The first was that I wouldn’t piss this money away being an idiot and forgetting I had some brains. The second was that I take this opportunity, this gift, and make something of myself. I guess I looked like a balloon that had its air pricked out, because she laughed and laughed, and she gave me a slap on the arm. She told me if I needed to give her something, if I needed to do that to be happy, she’d like a pair of red shoes with heels and open toes. Size nine. Wouldn’t she be some sight going to church Sundays in those red shoes?”

“You must love her beyond measure.”

“I do. And mostly I tried to keep my word, too, all the wishes. The red shoes were easy. Not being an idiot’s more problematic. People come out of the woodwork. That’s the way it is, and passing out money, it can make you feel important. Until—like getting fists punched into your face—you start to realize it’s just fucking stupid.”

“And you’re not. You’re not the least bit stupid.”

“I had my moments.” He slid pizza onto her plate, then onto his. “I bought this land for my mother, had the house built. I used to hear her say, if she could just get out of the goddamn city. I could do that for her, and wouldn’t that make me important to her? I gave her money in the meantime, of course. Got her out of that apartment and into a pretty little house while this one was being built. My old man turned up, as bad pennies do. I wasn’t quite as gullible there. I gave him twenty-five thousand, all he was smart enough to ask for. But I had Phin draw up an agreement. He couldn’t come at me for more. He wouldn’t get it, and if he tried I could sue him for harassment, and other legal mumbo. It probably wouldn’t hold up, but my father wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, so he took the twenty-five and went away again.”

“It must have hurt you.”

“Should have,” Duncan said after a moment. “It really didn’t.” He ate pizza, drank wine. “I brought my mother out here when the house was nearly finished, when it was easy to see what it was going to be. I told her it was for her. I’d furnish it any way she liked. She’d never have to work again.

“She walked around the empty rooms. She asked me why the hell I thought she’d ever live out here, in a house big as a barn. I said she just didn’t see how it would be yet. I was going to get her a housekeeper, a cook, whatever she wanted. She turned around, looked at me. ‘You want to give me what I want? Buy me a house in Vegas, and give me a stake of fifty thousand. That’s what I want.’

“I didn’t do it, not then. I kept thinking she’d change her mind, once she saw the house finished. I brought her out here again when it was—badgered her into it. The gardens were in, and I’d furnished a few of the rooms, so she’d get a real sense of it.”

Gently, Phoebe touched his hand. “But it wasn’t what she wanted.”

“No, it wasn’t. She wanted the house in Vegas and fifty K. I bargained. Live here for six months, and if you don’t change your mind, I’ll buy you a house wherever you want and give you a hundred thousand. She took the deal, and six months later called me out here. She was already packed. She had the number of a realtor she’d been working with, and had the house already picked out. I could take care of buying the house, and send her a check at Caesars in the meantime. I decided it was time to stop, metaphorically, taking that fist in the face. I had Phin draw up another agreement, then I went out to Vegas, did the deal, gave her the papers, which she signed without a blink. She took the check, and that was that.”

“How long ago?”

“Going on five years now. She got a job serving drinks, ended up catching the eye of some high roller. He paid to track down the old man, get a legal divorce. They got married two years ago.”

“And you live here.”

“Seemed a shame to waste this place. Figured I’d sell it, but it kind of grew on me. And it was a point, too. Point being sometimes you don’t get what you want, and it doesn’t matter if it’s fair or not. So you better find something else.”

It was amazing, really, she realized. One evening had satisfied her sensible and her lustful parts. She’d not only had stupendous sex, not only gotten to know him better, but had come to understand him.

“I don’t have to tell you she didn’t deserve you.”

“No. She might’ve deserved the badass in training, but she didn’t deserve who I figured out to be—with a little help from my friends.”

“Did you buy that house for Ma Bee, the one where we were on Sunday?”

“All the kids—which includes me—went together on that three years ago. She’d take it, you see, from all of us, from the family, but she wouldn’t have taken it from any single one of us. If you see the difference.”

“Yes, I do. And what about Jake? What happened to him?”

“He does the contracting, when I pick up a place. His father went into construction after he got out of the ring, a few years before my own fateful day with them. Jake went into the business. He’s good at it.”

“I bet he is.” Obligingly, she plopped another slice of pizza on his plate. “You have a way of picking them.”

“I do.” He laid a hand over hers. “With a few disappointing exceptions, I have a hell of a way of picking them.”

16

The air was full of sounds, the peeps, the clicks, the whirls of night, when Duncan walked her to her car. “So…what do you think about taking a sail some evening?”

“I think that would be very nice—some evening. It’s a little hard for me to miss too many evenings at home. Added to that, you’ve been lucky so far that I haven’t gotten called in before or during one of the evenings.”

She turned, leaned back against the car. “You’re complicating things for yourself, dating not only a cop but a single parent.”

“Complications are interesting, especially when you figure out how to work them around the simple.” He leaned down to kiss her. “Some evening.”

“All right.” She reached for the car door, turned back to follow impulse. “Why don’t you come over for dinner this week? It wouldn’t be without its complications, but my mother’s already fallen for you.”

“Yeah? Well, if I didn’t get anywhere with you, I figured to hit on her next.” He tucked Phoebe’s hair behind her ear, gave the little gold hoop she wore a tap. “She makes a hell of a cookie.”

“She certainly does. Thursday work? It would give them enough time to fuss appropriately for company, and not give them quite enough time to drive me crazy with the details of it.”

“I can do Thursday.”

She angled her head. “You don’t have a book to check? Appointments to consider?”

“I can do Thursday,” he repeated, and this time when he kissed her, he turned up the dial until heat balled in her belly.

“Well.” She rubbed her lips together. “Well, I’d better go before I decide staying’s an option. Because it isn’t,” she said, nudging him back when he started to speak. “Thursday. Six o’clock.” She laughed as she slid into the car. “It’s a school night.”

“As long as I don’t have to do any homework. You drive safe, Phoebe. And you should wait until you’re home before you think about me. Otherwise you’ll get all stirred up, maybe drive off the road.”

She drove away laughing—just, she imagined—as he’d intended. Still, she’d just have to risk getting herself stirred up, because he’d given her plenty to think about.

He was fun, interesting and easy on the eyes. He was good in bed—or against the door. It occurred to her that while she couldn’t claim a wide swath of sexual experience, hers wasn’t narrow either. And she’d been married for a few years in there.

But she’d never had an experience to match the one Duncan had greeted her with that night.

He had an easygoing way, but he wasn’t careless. Roy had been her experience with careless, and it was one she was determined never to repeat.

He hadn’t flipped off his friends when he made his fortune. Phin was his lawyer, Jake his contractor. He remembered his friends. Loyalty was a vital element to her.

Easygoing and loyal he might be, but he wasn’t what she thought of as a golden retriever kind of man. Too many layers, too much direction.

One of the layers was old hurts. How had he managed to bury that? She knew a lot about old hurts, and just how hard they were to keep down in the cellar of things. He didn’t wear his wounds as a point of pride, and many did. He might brood over them from time to time, and she appreciated a good brood herself. But he didn’t appear to let those old wounds, those old scars run his life.

On that score, he was probably doing better than she was.

Did the money help? Of course it did. Let’s be serious. But she had a feeling he’d have gotten on well enough without it. She suspected the money had opened him to ambition. Or at least had made him realize hehad ambitions and could start to act on them.

She’d always had ambitions, many of them very specific. And had made good on most. She doubted she could stay interested in a man for very long, regardless of how good he was against the door, if he didn’t have goals and purposes.

But really, how much did she know about Duncan’s goals and purposes? Bars, a shop in the planning stages. Considering the depth of the well, those were fairly small drops. What else did he do? What else did he want? Where else was he going?

And there she was, she thought with a sigh, picking things apart. Pinching folds of the cloth and trying to make it form into a shape she liked or could work with.

It was a quality that made her a good negotiator, she admitted, and one that probably had a lot to do with her crappy—until recently—love life.

So why not just go with it? Just let it flow instead of trying to direct the stream? Not the easiest thing for her to do, but she could work on it.

He’d come to dinner on Thursday. Maybe they’d take that evening sail sometime soon. They’d see each other, enjoy each other and, please, God, have more really good sex. And just see.

Just see.

When she pulled up in front of the house, she doubted she could feel much better. She’d peek in on Carly, who hadbetter be fast asleep, then maybe she’d take a pitcher of tea upstairs and see if she could have a little girl time with her mother and Ava.

Humming, she locked the car, started across the sidewalk.

And nearly jumped out of her shoes. She barely managed to muffle her own squeal—and squeal was the only word for it. Cop or not, she was still a damn girl. Any girl might squeal when she saw a two-foot snake draped across her front steps.

Probably rubber, she told herself as she thumped a hand on her heart to get it going again. Probably one of the neighborhood boys playing a nasty boy prank on the houseful of females.

That smart-aleck Johnnie Porter around the corner on Abercorn—this was right up his alley. They were going to have words, she and Johnnie were. Some very stern words the first thing in…

Not rubber, she realized as she edged closer. Not some play snake from the toy shop. It was real, nearly as thick as her wrist, and though she wasn’t in a position to take its pulse or call the coroner, it appeared to be very dead.

Maybe it was just sleeping.

Standing a foot back now, she dragged a hand through her hair, kept her eyes on the snake in case it moved. Dead or alive, she couldn’t just leave it there. Dead it was, well, unsightly and just plain awful. Alive, it might wake up and slither off, anywhere. Even inside the house.

The very idea of that had her dashing back to her car. Her head swiveled back and forth between the snake and the trunk she popped. She actively wished she was wearing her weapon, though she wasn’t entirely sure, should it make a slither for it, she was keen-eyed or steady-handed enough to hit it.

“Going to the firing range,” she muttered as she grabbed her umbrella out of the trunk. “Going to the range, get some practice in. I’ve neglected that. Oh God, oh hell. I so seriously don’t want to do this.”

And what choice was there? Run to a neighbor, yank out her cell phone and call Carter. Come get the dead or sleeping snake off the front steps, would you? Thanks so much. God. God.

She kept swallowing as she inched forward, then with eyes squeezed half shut, poked at the snake with the tip of her umbrella.

The squeal almost got the better of her this time. She jumped back, heart cartwheeling. It lay still, the ugly black thing. After two more pokes, she officially pronounced it dead.

“All right, all right now. Just do it. Don’t think about it. Just…Oh, oh, oh!”

She slipped the end of the umbrella under the body, fighting to keep her arms steady enough to balance the limp droop of it. She dropped it twice, cursing each time and dancing back as if she’d stepped on hot coals. Fireplace tongs would be better, she realized, but if she went into the house to get them, she might just stay there.

She managed to get it around to the side gate and through to the courtyard. By now she was queazy, and little bubbles of hysterical laughter kept rising in her throat. She dumped it all, snake and the nearly brand-new umbrella, into the trash. Slammed down the lid.

There was probably an ordinance against putting a dead reptile, uncovered, unsecured, in a trash can. But just screw that, she decided. She’d done all she was doing.

She’d call the waste management company. She’d bribe the trashman. She’d offer him sexual favors.

She backed away from the trash can. Her legs carried her as far as the steps of the back veranda, where she just let herself drop. Damn cat. She was going to find out whose damn cat was running loose, killing things and leaving their corpses on her property.

Though where some cat had flushed out a snake that size in the city of Savannah, she couldn’t say. No, it was some idiot kid, that’s what it was. Johnnie Porter or his ilk.

No longer in the mood for iced tea or girl talk, she rose, intending to go up and straight to bed.

She heard the whistling when she reached the door, and this time the chill arrowed straight to her belly.

He about busted a gut! He couldn’t think of the last time anything had struck him so funny, until actual tears were streaming from his eyes. He’d had to wipe them more than once to keep his vision clear through the long night-vision lens of the camera.

Goddamn, the way she’d jumped! Had to damn near piss herself. His ribs ached from keeping the laughter down to a snickering, body-shaking snort instead of a belly-busting guffaw.

He’d expected her to take a wild leap over it, but hell, had to say she was made of sterner stuff. It only made it funnier and more interesting.

It had been a piece of good luck to come across that black snake, and to realize after giving its head a good solid smash with a shovel that he could use it. But, he could admit now, he hadn’t known it wouldtickle him so to watch her deal with it.

He bet she didn’t sleep half the night, and when she did, she’d dream of snakes.

Him? He was going home to print out the pictures, have himself another laugh. Then he was going to sleep like a baby.

She didn’t sleep well. And there were enough scenarios and possibilities running around in her head that she gave it up shortly after dawn and called Carter.

When Josie answered, Phoebe launched into apologies, got a grunt in return. Then Carter’s sleepy voice came on the line.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should’ve waited until a decent hour to call.”

“Too late.”

“Well, I’msorry, but I need you to come over here and look at something for me.”

“What is it? A mermaid? A three-headed fish? The new Jaguar you bought me out of sisterly love and devotion? Because otherwise? Zzzzzzz.”

“Don’t you make snoring noises at me, Carter. I need you to get your ass out of that bed, put on some clothes and come over here. Right now. I don’t want to wake up anyone else in the house, so you come around by the courtyard, you hear?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bossy and bitchy. There better be coffee.”

He’d come. He’d grumble about it but he’d come. So she dressed quickly then tiptoed down to make coffee. She had two mugs in hand when she slipped outside to wait for him.

There’d been two thunderstorms in the night—she’d heard them both. The stones in the courtyard were still wet from the rain that had pounded down in those quick and violent intervals. There was a haze in the air, the pretty kind that would burn off within an hour or two and leave everything sparkling.

She sipped her coffee and watched drops of water drip, drip from the burgundy leaves of the little weeping peach Ava had planted the year before.

She heard Carter’s feet on the path to the gate, and was opening the heavy cast iron before he reached it.

His hair was sleep-tossed, his eyes still heavy. He wore sweats and a Savannah U T-shirt with a pair of ancient running shoes. A knight in the shiniest of armor couldn’t have looked better to her.

He scowled, grabbed the coffee. “Where’s the damn body?” he demanded.

“In the trash can.”

He choked on his first swallow of coffee. “What?”

“That one there.” She pointed, keeping her distance.

“You kill somebody, Phoebs? Want me to help you bury him out here in Ava’s garden?”

She just pointed again. With a shrug, he yanked off the lid. The coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug as he jolted, and that gave her some satisfaction. But then he just reached right in, even as she gargled out a sound of disgust, and pulled the dead snake out.

“Cool.”

“Oh please, do you have to—” She yelped, pinwheeled back as he turned, grinning, to wag the snake at her. “Stop that! Damn it, Carter.”

“Irresistible. Damn big guy to come sliding down Jones Street and into Ava’s garden.”

“I didn’t find it in the garden. Would you stopplaying with that thing? I found it on the front steps, already dead.”

“Huh.” He turned the snake’s head around as if to converse with it. “What were doing there, big guy?”

“I thought maybe a cat killed it. There was a dead rat in the courtyard not long ago. A cat…But it’s so damn big, I started thinking that it might be hard for a cat to take on a snake that big. Or maybe not. But why the hell would this damn cat be leaving dead things around the house? So then I thought—”

“Only way a cat killed this big boy is if the cat could swing a two-by-four.” He wiggled the head of the snake at Phoebe. “Cat might chew it up some, but it sure couldn’t crush the head flat as a pancake.”

“Yeah.” She let out a breath. “Yeah, I thought it might be more something like that.” She kicked at the box she’d brought out. “Would you please put that ugly dead thing in there, then back in the can? And don’t you touch me or anything until you wash your hands.”

He dumped it into the box. “You said you found it on the steps out front?”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t grinning now. A little more satisfaction, she decided. “I got home about eleven last night, and—”

“From where?”

“I was on a date, if you have to know everything.”

“With the lottery guy.”

“His name is Duncan, and yes. Inany case, that thing was draped right over the steps. Which means someone put it there.”

“Some dumbass kid.”

“Johnnie, you know Johnnie Porter around the corner? He’s top of my list for that.”

“You want me to talk to him?”

“No, I’ll do that. I couldn’t bring myself to go into that can and look at the damn thing again up close.”

“That’s what brothers are for.” He dumped the box, closed the lid, then turned to her with evil in his smile. “Poor little Phoebe.”

“Don’t you dare touch me with your dead-snake hands. I mean it.”

“I just want to pat my sister, to give her comfort in her time of—”

“You put one finger on me, your balls’ll be tickling your tonsils.” Defensively, she put up her dukes. “You know I can take you.”

“Haven’t put that to the test for a while. I’ve been working out.”

“Oh, come in and wash up. You get points for riding to the rescue, and at this hour.”

She led the way in, then leaned on the counter while he washed his hands at the sink. “Carter, there’s this other possibility running in my brain. The one where it wasn’t some dumbass kid like Johnnie Porter around the corner.”

He glanced at her. “You’re thinking asshole instead of dumbass.”

“That’s right. Just nasty pranks, nothing life-threatening, but still…And there was this other nasty business,” she said, thinking of the doll. “I’ll be talking to Johnnie, but I’ve got this…uncomfortable sensation, we’ll call it. So I was wondering if you’d mind walking by the house, maybe after classes, just for a while. You don’t have to come in, I know how that is. You stop by, that’s it for a couple hours. But if you could just detour by here when I’m not around, I’d be easier.”

“You know I will. Honey, if you’re really worried—”

“Uncomfortable sensation,” she corrected. “Not yet up to really worried. I guess I’m remembering…”

“The things Reuben used to do.” Mouth tight now, Carter dried his hands. “Letting the air out of the tires on the car, spraying that poison on the flowers Mama planted outside the house.”

Phoebe rubbed his arm. The remembering was always harder on Carter. “Yeah. Mean little things. If it is Arnie Meeks doing this, I expect he’ll get tired of it soon enough.”

“Or he’ll escalate.” He touched her now, a skim of fingertips under her eyes where the bruises had faded away. “He could come after you again, Phoebe.”

“He’s not the type for the direct approach, and believe me, Carter, he won’t take me by surprise again. I’m not defenseless like Mama was.”

“No, you made sure not to be, and still, this guy put you in the hospital.”

“He won’t do it again.” Now she gave his arm a squeeze. “That’s pure promise.” She shook her head before he could say anything else. “Mama’s coming. You went out for a run, all right? Just stopped by for coffee. If she hears about this she loses the courtyard.”

Knowing she was right, he nodded, and made the effort to clear the grim from his face as his mother came into the kitchen.

“Well, look at this! Both my babies!”

The doll had been a dead end. The make and model had been discontinued three years earlier, and no shop in Savannah or the outlying malls carried it still. There was eBay, of course, flea markets, yard sales, all manner of other venues. And as it was hardly a matter of life and death, it didn’t rate the time, effort and budget of the police department to try to track it down.

Johnnie Porter was unduly suspected as it turned out he was spending the entire week, along with the rest of his class, at outdoor school.

There were other young troublesome boys, certainly, but none sprang to mind. And she couldn’t think of any reason one—including Johnnie—would target her house twice. Only her house, from what she gathered by making casual inquiries among her neighbors.

So she made it a point to take a long walk around the square and into the park after shift, to keep her ears pricked for anyone whistling a mournful tune. That night she set up her own surveillance post inside her terrace doors, in case anyone decided to drop off another gift.

She sat and rocked, field glasses in her lap, and felt a little like old Mrs. Sampson on Gaston Street, who sat and rocked and watched everything and everyone from her front parlor window.

If the uncomfortable sensation bumped up a notch, she’d request a radio car do a couple of drive-bys at night, maybe once or twice during the day. The house had a good alarm system, something Cousin Bess had insisted on. She was the one who usually armed it at night, making that last round of the house when everyone was in bed.

Another thing Cousin Bess had insisted on.

People are no damn good, not a one of them.That had been Cousin Bess’s opinion.But you’re blood, so you’ll have to do.

Mama hadn’t been good enough, of course, Phoebe remembered. Except to fetch and carry and clean and slave in exchange for the roof over her head, and the heads of her children.

Carter had been almost beneath Cousin Bess’s contempt—almost. His nightmares and night terrors in the months following Reuben was a sign to Cousin Bess of weak and diluted blood—from Mama’s side, naturally. A true Mac Namara would never blubber in his sleep, even at the age of seven.

But Phoebe herself had been another matter. If she’d defended Carter or hadn’t been able to keep the sass from ripping off her tongue, Cousin Bess had approved.At least this one has a spine.

So there’d been piano lessons she hadn’t wanted and was a miserable failure at, dance lessons she’d actually enjoyed. Art and music appreciation, trips to the right shops, the right salons, even an odd and dazzling week in Paris. Culminating in the dreaded and stupefyingly boring debutante ball.

She’d agreed to that only by bargaining with Cousin Bess over the guaranteed payment of Carter’s college education when the time came. It had been worth one night of her life to secure four years of his.

Of course Cousin Bess had disapproved, vehemently, of Phoebe joining the FBI. Hadn’t cared to have Phoebe train up north, so far out of her grip. But strangely enough had thoroughly approved of Roy.

And still, there’d been no mistaking that smirk of satisfaction when Phoebe came back to Mac Namara House, with a baby and no husband.

“No surprise you couldn’t hold onto a man like that when you’re running after some career. A woman’s got two choices: husband or career.”

“That’s nonsense. And my job had nothing to do with why my marriage is over.”

She was dying. Phoebe could see it; she could smell it. In the weeks since she’d last visited, Cousin Bess had shrunk down to bone thinly covered by loose flesh. Only her eyes remained alive, and bitter.

“Married you for this house. Can’t blame him for that. Marrying for property makes good sense.”

“I don’t want this house.”

“You have it, or will. That’s the way it’s going to be. I put this house around you years ago. I put it around your crybaby brother and your weak-spirited mother.”

“Be careful.” Phoebe stepped closer to the bed. “Very careful how you speak about my family.”

“Yours.” Even poking a finger seemed to weaken her. “Not mine. You’re my only blood at this point, and this house stays with my blood. I’ve made the arrangements.”

“Fine.”

Cousin Bess’s dry lips twisted into a smile. It seemed to Phoebe her flesh was simply melting off the bone. That’s how the Wicked Witch had met her end. Melting. Melting.

“You’re thinking you can make yours, too. After I’m in the ground. You’re thinking that won’t be long. You’re right about the second part. I haven’t got long.”

“I’m sorry.” Whatever their differences, Phoebe felt a pang. “I know you have pain. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Still have that soft spot yet. Give it time and it’ll harden up. The house comes to you. Don’t think you can give it to your mother or your brother. I’ve fixed it so you can’t. I’ve got the money put away for maintaining it. You’ll get that from the lawyers. Held in trust, so don’t think you can just be grabbing it with both hands. It’s only for the house. That’s made clear.”

“I don’t want your money either.”

“Lucky for you then, because you won’t get a dime. None of you. The house gets it all. On your death, it passes to your issue. If, only if, you abide by the terms. You’ll live here now, miss, if you want your mother under this roof. You’ll be in residence. There’s no turning it into one of those bed-and-breakfasts or retail spaces or museums. It’s a house, and it’s where you’ll live from here out.”

Not a gun to her head, Phoebe thought, not a knife to her throat. No, no, Cousin Bess was too wily for those obvious weapons. Instead, she held those whom Phoebe loved over her heart.

“I don’t need your house, your money or your approval. Understand me. I can and will support and house my child as I see fit. Not as you decree it.”

“You will, or your mother goes today. Out of this house. Out of the house she hasn’t been able to get the guts up to leave in years now. You think I don’tknow ? I’ll have her out within the hour, kicking, screaming. Imagine she’ll need a padded room for a while, don’t you?”

“Why would you do this to her? She’s done nothing but tend to you. She’s washed and bathed and emptied your slop for months now. Never once, in all of her life, has she caused you or anyone any harm.”

“Might have been more respected if she had. I wouldn’t be doing it. You would. The only way she stays in this house is if you do. You walk out of it, she’s carried out of it. I took her in, took all of you in. I can put you out.”

“So you always said.”

“This time,” Cousin Bess said with a thin smile, “it’s permanent.”

Phoebe woke with a quick jolt. Had she heard whistling? Had she heard it or imagined it?

She trained the field glasses on the street, toward the park, and saw nothing.

She rubbed her eyes, rubbed her neck.

Cousin Bess. How long had she lasted after that deathbed visit? Weeks more. Hard, miserable weeks, most of which she’d been delusional or drugged into sleep.

But long enough for Phoebe to learn—from the lawyers, from the trusts and wills and documents—that some things aren’t negotiable.

She hadn’t been able to have another lucid conversation with the old woman.

And here she was, years later, sitting in the house, looking out.

As it appeared she always would be.

17

Razz Johnson had something to prove. And he was gonna prove it today. The Lords figured they could come on his turf? Screw with his boys? They figured their way into the ground. They gonna come over to the west side, paint their shit right on hisdoorstep ?

Uh-uh. They were gonna learn some respect.

Right now his brother was in the hospital, and maybe he’d die. They got the bullets out of his guts those motherfuckers put in him when his man led the force to Lords’ turf for some goddamn retribution.

But T-Bone had ordered Razz to stay back, ’cause he hadn’t reached the high level for warfare. Maybe, maybe if he’d been there, his brother wouldn’t be lying in that hospital, maybe dying.

Razz knew what he had to do. Eye for an eye.

He drove along Hitch Street, enemy territory. He’d stolen the car, and he had his blue ball cap, part of his gang uniform, on the seat. If any of the Lords were hanging on the street, he didn’t want them making him as Posse. Not yet. Not until he was ready.

He was fucking going covert.

He’d beaten his way into the gang. Even though his brother was high-ranking, he’d had to prove himself. He was a demon in a fight, fists and feet. He just didn’t give up.

He had a talent for boosting cars, could be trusted on drug deals as he didn’t care to use the shit. But so far he’d gotten shaky at the idea of guns and knives.

T-Bone said he couldn’t shoot worth dick, and that was another why on leaving him back last night.

But there was a .45 semiautomatic, with the first round already racked, under the cap on the seat. And Razz wasn’t shaking now.

He was going to put that round right between the eyes of the one who shot his brother. Anybody got in his way, well, he’d put a bullet in them, too. What they called collateral damage.

He was going in, in the daylight, and he was going in wearing his colors. And if he didn’t come back out again, well, that’s the way it was.

He was sixteen.

He pulled up across from the liquor store. He knew Clip used its back room for his “office.” He hung out there, did some deals, talked his trash, got bj’s from bitches trying to get raped into the gang.

He’d go ’round the back, that’s what he’d do. Take out any guards if there were guards to take. Then through the door. Bullet between the bastard’s eyeballs.

T-Bone was going to be proud. T-Bone was going to have the will to live when he heard he’d been avenged.

He put on his cap, proudly tipping it to the right. Under the long tail of his blue jersey he hitched the .45 in the waistband of his pants. It weighed like a cannon as he climbed out of the stolen car.

His high-tops were blue with yellow stripes. The bandanna hanging out of his back pocket was bright, bold yellow. The colors announced him as west side, as Posse, and such was his rage, his grief, hisrighteousness, he strutted in them across Hitch.

He was ready. He was so goddamn ready to do some damage. To do some death.

Maybe it showed on his face. He tried to make it show. His lips peeled back in a snarling grin, a surge of power, as he saw a group of women on a stoop glance his way, then rush inside.

Yeah, bitches. Better run. Better hide.

As he swaggered down the short alleyway around the liquor store, he drew the gun from his waistband. And he told himself the tremor in his hand was thrill, not fear. He put T-Bone’s face, the way it had looked in the hospital, in his mind.

Already dead even if the machine was breathing for him. And their mama, sitting by the bed, holding her Bible and crying. Not saying nothing, not moving, just sitting with tears running down.

Those images pushed him around the corner, ripped a cry out of his throat as his finger quivered on the trigger.

But the back door was unguarded.

His heart thumped in his ears. It was all he could hear as he crossed the heat-softened tar and scrabbling weeds. He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth where sweat had beaded. For T-Bone, he thought, then kicked viciously at the door until it fell open.

The gun went off like a live thing jumping in his hand. He didn’t feel his finger make the pull. It just seemed to explode on its own, blasting a hole in the wall a foot above the dented metal desk. There was no one behind it, no one to take that bullet between the eyes.

His arm shook as he lowered the gun, as he stared at the empty space, the empty room. They’d call him a fool now, and laugh. That would make T-Bone a fool, and that couldn’t be.

He had to do something. Something big.

When the inner door opened and the man stepped up, he knew what it was he had to do.

“HT’s name is Charles Johnson, street name Razz.” Detective Ricks from the Gang Unit filled Phoebe in. “Shots were fired, no reported injuries. He’s got four people in there.”

“What does he want?”

“Blood. There was a gun battle last night—west side Posse—the HT’s gang, and east side Lords. HT’s older brother took three bullets. He’s critical. This Razz wants us to find the guy he claims did it. One Jerome Clip Sagget. We send Sagget in, he’ll send the hostages out.”

“How old is he?”

“Sixteen. No violent knocks on his record. Petty shit up till now. Older brother’s a different matter. Serious badass.”

“Okay.” Phoebe studied the board, the log. At the table of the diner set up for communications, she opened her kit. “He’s been talking to you?”

“Playing the same tune, but yeah. He’s in the first stage. Give me what I want or there’ll be hell to pay. He set a deadline, it’s coming up in twenty.”

“All right.” She picked up the phone. He answered on the first ring.

“You got that motherfucker?”

“Razz, this is Phoebe Mac Namara. I’m a negotiator with the police.”

“Fuck you, bitch.”

There was fury in the voice, but there was fear under it. “You sound angry. I understand that. I have a brother, too.”

“You think I give rat shit about your brother? You best be bringing in the motherfucker shot him, or I’m doing one of these assholes in here.”

“We’re trying to work on that, Razz. For right now, can you tell me, is everyone all right in there? Does anyone need medical attention?”

“Gonna need it. Gonna need a goddamn body bag, is what.” His voice pitched up and down with terror and rage.

“You haven’t hurt anyone yet, Razz, is that right? So far we’re trying to find a way to make this right for everyone.”

“Not gonna be right until I put a bullet in that Clip’s brain. When that’s done, it’s all done.”

“I hear that you want to punish the person you believe hurt your brother.”

“I know what he did. My family told me. You think my family’s liars?”

“Are you saying your family saw what happened to T-Bone?”

“Fucking right. Two more of ’em shot up, but T-Bone, he’s next to dead. And the fucker did it to him’s gonna face me. You bring him here, you hear what I’m saying? You bring him here or somebody dies.”

Family=Gang, she wrote on her pad.Pride & revenge. “You want us to find this man and bring him to you, so you can punish him yourself.”

“How many times I got to say it?”

“I don’t want to misunderstand you, Razz. I’m trying to understand what those people in there have to do with your brother being hurt. Do you think they were involved?”

“Don’t mean a thing.”

“They don’t mean anything?”

“Collateral damage. I’ll put a bullet in one right now, you don’t think I mean what I say.”

“I know you mean what you say, Razz. I need you to understand, Razz, that if you hurt anyone in there, we’re not going to be able to work this out, not going to be able to try to get you what you want. I’m trying to contact the hospital, too. To contact the doctors who’re taking care of your brother. I thought you might want to know how he’s doing. Have you seen him today?”

She guided him into talking about his brother, through the first deadline.Hero worship. Absolute loyalty. When he spoke of his mother crying by his brother’s bed, she nudged more out of him.No other sibs, no father in the picture.

Find the mother now!she scribbled on a piece of paper, and pushed it into Ricks’s hand.

“Y’all getting hungry in there, Razz? I can send in some sandwiches.”

“I got plenty of beer and chips. You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t watch TV? Nobody comes in here, nobody but Clip.”

“No one’s coming in unless you okay it.”

“Maybe I won’t kill these assholes. Maybe I will. But they gonna be lying facedown in their own piss before long. I’m tired of talking to you. You got something else to say, you call back and tell me you’ve got that motherfucker.”

When he broke the connection, Phoebe eased back. “Any progress locating this Clip?”

“He’s gone under. We’ve got people on it.”

“If we can tell the HT that Sagget’s in custody, that he’s being held, that may open a door. I want to know the minute he’s found.”

She glanced at the white-faced clock on the wall. Four forty-five.

Odds were she was going to be late for dinner.

Duncan was pretty pleased with himself when he rang the bell on Jones Street. He was even more pleased when Essie answered it and the big smile broke across her face.

“Oh my goodness! Who’s back there?”

He spoke from behind an enormous basket of red poppies. “Three guesses. Any place special you want these?”

“Just set them down right here until we figure that out. Aren’t theybeautiful! Come right into the parlor. You’re right on time. Wine, too?”

“I don’t often get invited to have dinner with four beautiful women. It’s an occasion for me.”

“For us, too.” She took the wine, gestured. “You haven’t met my daughter-in-law, have you? Josie, this is Duncan Swift.”

“Make that five beautiful women. Nice to meet you.”

“Fifth one’s spoken for,” Carter said as he carried in a tray of canapés. Carly was right behind him with a second, smaller tray. “How’s it going, Duncan?”

“Going good. Hey, Carly.”

“Mama’s going to be late. She’s working.”

“I guess that happens. Looks like enough food in here to hold me awhile. Oh, I got you something.”

Her gaze arrowed straight to the little pink gift bag he held. “A present?”

“A token for one of my hostesses.”

“Thank you very much,” she said with formal politeness under her grandmother’s eagle eye. Then squealed with delight when she pulled out the hair tie. It looked like a bouquet—purple and white violets with a filmy trail of white ribbons.

“It’s beautiful! I love it. Thank you!” Formality forgotten, Carly threw her arms around Duncan’s waist, then danced back. “Can I go put it on? Gran,please, can I go put it on right now?”

“Run on then.”

Carly made the dash, stopping once to toss Duncan a big smile over her shoulder.

“Aren’t you the clever one?” Essie commented.

“So they say.”

By six-fifteen, Phoebe called home again and told Ava not to hold dinner on her account. Even if things resolved in the best possible way, there was no point in holding everyone else up while she dealt with the paperwork and debriefings.

She downed iced coffee, grateful someone had the foresight to make use of the diner’s kitchen. Across from her sat Opal Johnson, Razz’s mother. It had taken some time to track her down as she’d left her older son’s bedside to sit on a bench outside the hospital and pray for his life.

Now she was here, in a diner filled with cops, struggling for her other child.

Progress had been made. Though he still refused to come out or release any hostages, Phoebe heard the changes in his voice, in his words. His resolve was weakening.

“He’s going to jail, isn’t he?”

“He’ll be alive,” Phoebe said. “He hasn’t hurt anyone yet.”

Opal stared blindly out the diner’s window. She was stick thin, her dark face splotched from hours of weeping, her eyes exhausted from worry. “I did my best. I did all I knew. Work two jobs, made those boys go to school, to church. But my Franklin, he just goes his own way. And he took Charlie right along with him. Posse.” She spat the word out. “I couldn’t hold off against that.”

“Mrs. Johnson, we’re going to do everything we can to get your son out safe. To get everyone out safe, so he has another chance.”

“They think it makes them men.” Her hopeless eyes met Phoebe’s. “The gangs, the drugs, the killing. They think it makes them men.”

“I’m going to talk to him again now.” Phoebe reached across the four-top, laid a hand briefly on Opal’s. “All right?”

“You got any kids, miss?”

“Phoebe, and yes. I have a daughter. She’s seven.”

“Children rip the heart right out of you. And it lies there all bruised and battered, still beating for them. No matter what.”

“Let’s get him out safe.” Phoebe started to make contact again, paused when Ricks rushed in.

“We’ve got Sagget in custody. Charges of possession—drugs and firearms. Took a gun from the apartment where he was hiding, matches the caliber of the weapon that shot Franklin Johnson. We’ll run ballistics.”

“Okay. This is good.” Phoebe looked back into Opal’s eyes. “This is very good. I’ll need you to help me with this, Mrs. Johnson. The person who shot your son, who shot Charlie’s brother, is under arrest. He’s going to be punished. We need to convince Charlie that it’s enough, for now it’s enough, and he should come out. All right, now.”

She called the liquor store. There was more fatigue than defiance in his voice now. Another good sign. “Razz, I have some good news.”

“My brother wake up?”

“Your bother’s condition hasn’t changed and that means he hasn’t gotten worse. He’s strong, isn’t he?”

“Nobody stronger.”

“So that’s good. I want to tell you that Clip’s been taken into custody.”

“You got that rat bastard motherfucker?”

“Don’t you use that language to this lady!” Opal snapped the words. “Don’t you speak that filth, you hear me.”

“He put bullets in T-Bone. I’ll call him what he is, to anybody.”

Phoebe held up a hand, easing it downward before Opal could speak again. “Your mother’s very upset, Razz. She’s worried about youand T-Bone now. But I think we have a way to make this all right, for everyone. The police have charged Clip, and he’s in jail right now. He—”

“You bring that sumbitch tome! ”

“I know you want to see him. I can arrange that. If you put the gun down and come out, I’m going to arrange to have you taken to where he’s being held. So you can see him behind bars.”

“I want to see him in the ground. Gonna put him there.”

“You sound tired, Razz. It’s been a long day, for everyone. I want to tell you that they found a gun with Clip, the same kind of gun that shot your brother. They’re running tests right now. If the tests show it was the one used to hurt your brother, they’ll be charging him with attempted murder. Do you know how long he could be behind those bars? For years and years. Maybe the rest of his life. If my brother’d been hurt like this, I’d want the person responsible to pay for a long time. A very long time.”

“He’ll burn in hell.”

“I think Georgia State’s a kind of hell, too. Razz, they told me he was hiding. Hiding. I wonder what his gang will think when they find out he was hiding away.”

“You fucking with me?”

“I told you not to use that language! She’s telling you the pure truth. I was right here, wasn’t I right here when they came in and told her? That boy who shot your brother’s in jail. Now come out of there, you hear?” Opal began to weep again. “Come out of there because I can’t watch another boy of mine bleeding.”

“Don’t cry, Mama. I want to make him bleed, like T-Bone’s bleeding.”

“Prison’s worse than bleeding,” Phoebe said. “For a man like Clip? And now he’s got no face left, no rep. Proved himself a coward. A coward who’ll spend years paying for what he did. Your mother needs you, Razz. She needs you to put down the gun and come out. To show you’re not a coward. You’ve got the balls to walk out of there.”

“You’ll take me to see that bastard? See him in the cage? That’s a solid?”

“It is. My word on it.”

“I’m going to jail, same as him. That’s not right.”

“Not the same as him, not the same at all. You haven’t hurt anyone yet, Razz. Not a single soul. That makes all the difference. If you come out, just the way I tell you, that’s going to make a difference, too.”

“How do I come out?”

“You put the gun down.” Phoebe gave the signal, making certain the surrender was relayed to Tactical. “You don’t want to have a gun on you when you come out. All right?”

“You got guns out there?”

“Yeah, there are going to be guns out here. I don’t want you to worry. You’ll put your hands up, where everyone can see, and you walk straight out the front door. You come out by yourself, you’re no coward, right? You come straight out the front, with your hands high in the air. Will you do that?”

“All right. I’m coming out. I’m hanging up.”

“I’ll see you outside, Razz.”

Phoebe cut off the phone, stood. “Let’s go get your boy.” She took Opal’s arm and led her toward the door of the diner. “Listen now, they’re going to have guns on him when he comes out. They’re going to move on him, get him on the ground and cuff him. That has to be.”

Phoebe scanned some of the windows and rooftops, spotted Tactical. Until Razz was out and in custody, she couldn’t risk taking his mother too close to the inner perimeter. “I need you to wait here with this officer for just a few minutes. I’m going to come back and get you, and I’m going to see that you’re taken to where Charlie will be.”

“Thank you, for everything you did. Thank you.”

Phoebe moved quickly, angling so she’d have a view of the front of the liquor store. When she saw the door open, saw the boy step forward, hands high, she let out a long breath of relief.

The gunfire was a stunning blast. For an instant she simply froze, simply stared as Charlie’s body jerked, danced, fell. She heard herself screaming as she rushed forward, as dozens of cops dove for cover.

Someone shoved her down. With the breath knocked out of her she heard the screams from inside the store, and the shouts of: “Shots fired! Shots fired!” zinging around her.

It wasbeautiful! And so pathetically easy. All you had to do was slip and slide and know how to look like you belonged. Not so hard to find a good position, hold up, wait things out.

All that time she’d spent talking that asshole out. Wasted, wasn’t it, bitch?

Stupid fucker deserved to die. Gangs were a blight on the city.

He could have put some bullets in her, too. Easy-peasy. But this was better. Thisaccomplished something and kept it all rolling.

He hadn’t known, really hadn’t guessed, how much fun this would all be. Why end it too soon?

He’d left the gun, done some more slipping and sliding. Easy-peasy again, tucking the ID away, melting into the panicked crowd, then easing away in the confusion.

But not before he watched Phoebe scramble up, run toward the others at the door of the crap-shit liquor store and drop down beside the dead kid.

’Cause that kid was stone dead, and don’t you mistake it.

Press was going to love this, he thought as he made his way west to where he’d left his car. Going to eat it up like Cheez Whiz on a cracker.

Lieutenant Bitch Mac Namara had talked the asshole out all right. And straight into a hail of bullets.

He was going to pick himself up a six-pack and some takeout, go home. And watch the news.

When Phoebe got home she heard the voices in the parlor. Dinner long over, she thought. Dishes done and put away.

Coffee and brandy served in the parlor—the Wedgwood pot, the Baccarat decanter and snifters.

All on loan from the tight-fisted estate of Elizabeth Mac Namara.

She wanted to go straight up the stairs, crawl into bed. Or under it. But it couldn’t be done. Just one more thing that couldn’t be done. So she walked to the doorway.

Carter was telling some story—she could tell by the way his hands were moving. He had such good stories. She knew he hoped to become a writer, and that he worked at it when he could. But teaching ate up most of his time.

Beside him Josie rolled her eyes, but she was laughing while she did. It was so sweet, the way they loved each other. Still so fresh and sweet.

There was Mama, looking so happy. Just peaceful and happy, her world full of people who made her so. And Ava perched on the arm of Mama’s chair, sipping coffee from one of those lovely Wedgwood cups.

Her little girl, sitting on the sofa beside Duncan. And oh my goodness, what was that look on Carly’s face when she smiled up at him? Her baby was having her first crush by the looks of things.

And didn’t he seem just right at home, Mr. Duncan Swift, sprawled back, all relaxed and easy, sending her little girl winks like the two of them were in on a big secret.

How many blocks from here was Hitch Street?

How could that distance have an entire world between them?

It was Duncan who saw her first. A quick light in his eyes, then an equally quick fade into concern. Was she so transparent?

He rose, came to her. “Are you all right?”

“No. I’m not hurt, but I’m not all right. I’m sorry I missed dinner,” she said in a voice that carried into the room.

“Mama, we had the best time! And Duncan said…” Carly’s words faded away as she dashed over. Phoebe saw her bright blue eyes latch on to the blood on her pants.

She’d had a spare shirt in her locker, but she’d had to come home with the blood—Charles Johnson’s blood—on her pants.

“It’s not mine. I’m not hurt, not at all. But I need such a hug from you right now. I need such a big, enormous Carly hug right this minute.” She crouched and squeezed tight as Carly wrapped around her.

She stayed crouched. She had her child tonight, right here, safe and sweet in her arms. Others didn’t.

She leaned back, kissed both of Carly’s cheeks. Then, straightening, she looked at her mother. Essie stood, face pale, hands linked tight.

“Nothing happened to me, that’s first. Look at me, Mama. Nothing happened to me. Nothing. All right?”

“All right.”

“Carter, pour Mama some of that lemonade there. You sit down, Mama. I’m going to say I know you think I share too much of what I do, what there is, with Carly. I’m sorry we don’t agree on the boundaries of that. Well. I think I could use something stronger than lemonade right off.”

“I’m going to get you some wine, and some food.” Ava walked to her, squeezed her arm. “You ought to sit down, too.”

“I ought to. I will. I want to change these pants first. I’m going to be right back,” she said to Carly.

Duncan glanced over at Essie as Phoebe went out. “Essie, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to go up with her.”

He didn’t wait for permission, but caught up to Phoebe on the steps.

“I’m just going to change my pants.”

“I’m not looking to grab a quickie while you do. You look exhausted.”

“It was a bad day. Very bad. I can’t talk about it yet. I only want to talk about it once.”

“I’m just going to be here, you don’t have to talk.”

In her room, she pulled out a pair of cotton pants. She stripped off the blood-smeared trousers, tossed them in the hamper. “Mama will likely perform some miracle of science and get that poor boy’s blood out of those.” She pressed her hand between her eyes as the grief swamped her. But before Duncan could take her into his arms, she stepped back, shook her head.

“No, no comforting hugs just yet. And no tears. If I have to cry, it’ll wait until later. My mother’s worried. She’ll stay worried until I get back down.”

“Let’s go back, then.”

He went down with her. Ava had already set a plate on a tray, had a glass of wine waiting.

“It’ll be on the news,” she began. “Probably has been. There was a situation over on Hitch Street. Gang-related. Hostages. The boy was sixteen. Just sixteen, grieving, so angry, so misguided. It took time to talk him down, but I did, I talked him down, and told him it would be all right. So he came out, just the way I told him. Unarmed, hands up high. And someone shot him. They shot him while he stood with his hands up, when he was surrendering. His mother was there, close enough I think she must have seen it happen.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Carly asked.

“No, honey. He died.” Before I got to him, Phoebe thought.

“But why did they shoot him?”

“I don’t know.” She stroked Carly’s hair, then bent down to kiss it. “I just don’t. We don’t know why or who. Not yet. There’ll be talk, on the TV about it. I wanted you—all of you—to know what happened.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“Oh, baby, so do I.”

Carly snuggled up. “You’ll feel better if you eat. That’s what you say.”

“It is what I say.” Deliberately she speared something on her plate. It didn’t matter what, she couldn’t taste it. But she ate it with a little flourish. “And as usual, I’m right. Now, everybody should stop worrying and tell me what you did for fun tonight.”

“Uncle Carter and Duncan played a duelette.”

“A duelette?”

“That’s what Uncle Carter called it. On the piano. That was fun. And Aunt Josie told the joke about the chicken.”

“Notthat again.”

“I liked it.” Duncan worked up a smile. He saw what she was doing, needed to do. Get everyone back to normal.

“And Duncan said you and me could go on his sailboat on Saturday if you said we could. So can we? Please? I’ve never been on a sailboat before. Ever.”

“You’re obviously a neglected and abused child. I suppose we probably could do that.”

“Yes!”

“But right now it seems to be somewhat past someone’s bedtime.”

“But we have company.”

“And a polite, self-sacrificing child, too. How’d I get so lucky? Now, say good night, and I’ll be up in a couple minutes.”

Carly dragged her feet all around the room, stalled, looked beseechingly toward the other adults for intervention. She circled her way around to Duncan, sighed heavily. “I wish I didn’t have to go to bed, but thank you for coming to dinner.”

“Thank you for having me. We’ve got a date on Saturday, right?”

The sulks flew away. “Okay. ’Night.”

The minute she was gone, Phoebe set down her fork.

“I’d better get on.” Duncan rose.

There were polite protests, mutual thanks, cheek kisses and handshakes.

“I’ll walk you out.”

It felt so good to step outside, into the air. To take a breath of it. “I’m sorry I brought home something that tainted the evening.”

“Don’t think of it like that.” He draped an arm around her shoulders as they walked down to his car. “Hard for you.”

“It was awful.” She indulged herself a moment, turning into him, holding on. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get it all the way out of my head. Maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know how it could’ve happened. Some people are already saying it was us who did it. We’re saying we suspect it was one of the members of the rival gang. We found the gun. AK-47. It wasn’t one of ours. Theyriddled that boy. In seconds. One of the hostages inside was hit. He’ll be okay, but…” She sucked in a breath, drew back. “That’s not for here.”

“It’s for wherever you need it to be.”

“I need to keep as much as I can away from here.” She glanced back toward the house. “Whenever I can. So…about Saturday.”

“I’ll pick you and Carly up about ten. How’s that?”

“It’s nice of you to offer her such a treat. I don’t want you to feel obliged to—”

“Don’t.” He tapped a finger to her lips. “Don’t do that. And the fact is, you might as well know, if things don’t work out with you and me, and Essie turns me down, I figure I can wait about, what, fifteen years, for the kid.”

“Twenty. Minimum.”

“Hard-ass.” He tipped her face back. “Still, that oughta be some motivation for you, seeing I’ve got multiple choices here.” He kissed her, long, very long, very soft.

“I’ll see you Saturday.”

“Saturday. I’ll pack a few gallons of sunscreen for us redheads.”

She waved him off, stood there a while. And after a while walked over and sat on the front steps. She needed to go in, of course, needed to go tuck Carly into bed, keep an eye on Mama, just in case. But she sat awhile longer.

Carter came out. Saying nothing, he sat beside her, took her hand.

Together, they sat awhile longer yet.

18

Phoebe wasn’t wrong about the media storm. It raged across the television screens, the newspaper headlines, the Internet. In death, Charlie Johnson became a symbol of gang violence, racism, police corruption and incompetence—depending on which side you were on at any given time.

She fielded dozens of calls from reporters, and for the first time in her career received death threats.

And she once again found herself interviewed by IAB.

“How you holding up?” Dave studied her as she drew lines down the condensation of her glass of iced tea. He’d pulled her out for a quick lunch.

“I keep seeing him coming out, hands up. Just that one second when I thought: Good job, Phoebe. High five. Then the sound of the gun, the way his body jerked like a puppet. Just one more second, really, for it all to go to hell.”

“You did a good job.” He shook his head at her expression. “You did. Let’s just get that on the table.”

“Crisis negotiators are part of a team, Dave. Who taught me that? The team failed that boy, and the hostages. It failed everyone.”

“Something broke down; we’re still not sure what. Your end of it didn’t. Regardless,” he continued, “a boy died, a hostage was injured. No member of the tactical team fired their weapon. The weapon fired and discovered wasn’t ours. And regardless,” he repeated, “the failure’s on us. Someone got through, or was overlooked, during the evac of the area.”

“There was more violence on both the east and west sides last night,” she pointed out. “More shootings. They’re using that boy to justify killing. The media and the mouthpieces are using him, whittling it down or blowing it up—I’m not sure which applies—to race. To white against black. And I don’t know that you can say race has nothing to do with it, because it’s certainly one of the elements that play into gangs. But I don’t believe Charles Johnson was shot because of his skin color. And I don’t believe he deserves to have his death pushed into that.”

She said nothing while the sandwiches they’d ordered were served. “Franklin Johnson died this morning.”

“I know.”

“Opal Johnson’s lost both her sons. Her children are dead. The first, that’s not on us, at least not on the surface. We found and arrested the man who killed him. Would we have done so as quickly, even at all, if Charlie hadn’t gone into that liquor store yesterday? I don’t know the answer. That troubles me.”

“I don’t know it either, but I do the best job I can. So do you. We save who we can, Phoebe, one crisis at a time.”

“Maybe.” She picked up one of the chips that came with her sandwich, broke it into pieces. “I told him it was going to be all right. If he came out, it would be all right.”

“You didn’t make a mistake. Itshould have been all right. He should be in custody now, with his public defender working to cut a deal with the prosecutor. The mistake was in Tactical, and we’ll find it. Every minute of the incident is going to be investigated. Every move, every order. Meanwhile, there’s the anger of the community, the public relations nightmare and the very real problem of keeping this from boiling over into riots and burning. You’ll be giving a press conference this afternoon, along with the tactical commander. You’ll each read a brief statement and answer questions. It’ll be short, and it’s necessary.”

“And it provides a visual. I’m a white woman, the commander’s a black man.” She lifted a hand before he could speak. “I’m not discounting the fact that the visual doesn’t matter nearly as much as the statements. I’ll do my part. What time?”

“Three.”

She nodded. “All right. That’ll give me time to go over to Hitch. I want to see the crime scenes. Both of them.”

She stood at the window where the shots had been fired, verified now by the crime-scene investigative team. It was a narrow window, casement style, on the second floor of a building diagonal from the liquor store.

According to the reports, the fifteen-unit apartment building had been evacuated, and SWAT team members stationed on the roof and on the third floor. As it was within the inner perimeter, no civilians should have been in or around the building.

But it wouldn’t be the first time a perimeter had been compromised.

The sniper would have had a decent view and angle from there, Phoebe judged. Better on the roof, better on the third floor, but decent from here.

Especially if the intent was to take down an unarmed man who would step into clear view. Oh yeah, not so hard to hit the target when the target was standing still, hands in the air. All that body mass just open and waiting to be riddled.

“Tenant’s a Reeanna Curtis, single.” Detective Sykes spoke from behind her. “Two kids, boy age five, girl age three. No criminal. They were outside the barricade at the time of the shooting. Witnesses verify. Her boyfriend was at work at the time. Also verified.”

Phoebe nodded. “I read her statement. She said a cop came to the door, ordered her out, hustled them along. Cops swarming through the building, according to her, and all over the place outside. She got out with her kids, straight to her sister’s place a few blocks over.

“She doesn’t remember if she locked the door. Can’t clearly remember if she evenclosed the door. Said it all happened so fast, and she was scared.”

“Somebody else is getting hustled out,” Sykes speculated, “but doesn’t want to miss the show. Dips in here.”

“Armed?” Phoebe turned back. “Whoever came in, unless we suspect the single mother with two preschoolers kept an AK-47 in the broom closet, he came in loaded. And if it wasn’t target specific, why not take out a big bunch of cops?”

“There are Lords members in the building, plenty more in this block. They’ll all get a close look.”

Didn’t make Charlie any less dead, Phoebe thought. Then pulled herself in. It wasn’t about that any longer, that was done. Now it was about fixing what had gone wrong.

“How did the shooter know Charles Johnson, specifically, was inside?” Phoebe wandered the cramped, cluttered apartment.

“Maybe not specific. Just a Posse was inside.”

“All right, how did he know that? Did he see Charlie go in—he was wearing his colors. Timeline puts him inside for nearly ten minutes before the first response. And that came quick because one of the tenants in the building next door to the liquor store called in gunfire. She states she saw him crossing the street a few minutes before the first shot.”

“Shooter sees him, or the word flies around. Gets the weapon, then gets lucky and finds a solid sniper spot.”

“Let’s find out if they’ve pulled the LUDs from this apartment—this building. See if any calls were made out of here after it was supposed to be cleared. Cell phones are more likely, but you never know.”

She stepped to the window in a small bedroom obviously shared by the children. From that angle she could see the diner where she’d sat at a four-top, talking Charlie down, and out. “I wonder how many gang members could resist taking out cops. Resist until the specific target’s out—or taken out, yeah, I can see that. But why not try to take a few cops out, too, once you open up? More blood, more confusion, more goddamn points, come to that. But the only other hit is a stray that injured one of the hostages inside. That’s just odd, isn’t it?”

He pursed his lips. “That’s a puzzle. Any reason to think it wasn’t gang retribution?”

“I’ll let you know.”

She did her own runs on the tenants of the building, and filled her briefcase with files for the trip home. She made certain she was home before dark.

Phoebe wanted all her family tucked inside before sundown, in case the rumblings in the city turned to a roar. In case those blocks between Jones and Hitch weren’t enough to hold back the flood if it came.

She broke her own hard-and-fast rule, and though she put her weapon up on the high shelf in her closet, she kept it unlocked and loaded.

Once Carly was settled for the night, Phoebe checked the locks, the alarms, then settled at her own desk. She kept the TV on low, in case of a bulletin, and began reading through the logs, the reports, the witness statements.

When her cell phone rang, she answered it absently, her mind on the diagram of the apartment building on Hitch. “Phoebe Mac Namara.”

“Duncan Swift. Hiya, cutie.”

The idea of being called “cutie” when she was surrounded by ballistics, diagrams and various crime-scene reports made her smile. “Hello, Duncan.”

“Just checking to make sure I still have a crew for tomorrow.”

“I think you’d best use the term ‘crew’ loosely, but yes, we’re on for that. Carly would give me the silent treatment until her eighteenth birthday if I pulled out of this.”

“Silent treatment’s a formidable weapon. It makes me beg every time.”

“Good to know.”

“And stupid to admit. Anyway, I was meeting with Phin earlier today, and ended up asking his gang to come along tomorrow. That all right with you?”

“Absolutely. Carly’ll be thrilled to have someone her age around. She loves me, but I will bore her after a bit.” She leaned back from the work, rising to walk to the terrace windows. “It sounds more like a party. I could use a party, I think.”

“Figured you had a rough one. I caught you on TV this afternoon. Is it shallow of me to say you looked hot?”

She laughed. “Yes, and thank you. It’s a god-awful mess, Duncan. God-awful.”

“Why don’t I come over for a bit? I’ll be shallow again, sneak up to your room and distract you with heroic sex.”

She had one silly and delightful fantasy image of him scaling the wall to her terrace. “Oh God, that sounds amazing. But no. Are you home? On the island?”

“Yeah, I had some stuff, so I’m here. But I’ve dealt with a good chunk of the stuff, and the rest can wait. If heroic sex is out, we can just neck like teenagers in the parlor, or watch a bad movie.”

“I’d love to do any of that. Possibly all of that. But I don’t want you coming into the city, not tonight. Things are bubbling tonight. You’re good where you are, should they boil over.” She disengaged the alarm on her zone so she could step out onto her terrace. “It’s warm tonight. Not hot but warm, and that’s good. Heat can set these things off.”

“How about if I tell you besides looking hot, you handled yourself really well in that press conference? Anybody looking at you during it who didn’t see you cared had to be blind.”

“A lot of this kind of thing is about blindness. And could I be any more depressing?”

“What are you wearing?” he asked after a beat.

“What?”

“I’m cheering you up with phone sex. What are you wearing?”

“Oh. Hmmm.” She looked down at her cotton pants and tank. That would never do. “Oh, nothing much, just this little black slip I picked up in a vintage shop.”

“Nice. Anything under it?”

“Just a few dabs of perfume…here and there.”

“Very nice.”

“How about you? What are you wearing?”

“Guess.”

“Jeans. Just jeans, those washed-a-few-hundred-times Levi’s. Riding low on the hips with the waistband button carelessly open.”

“My God. You must be psychic.”

With a sound of amusement, she sat down. For the first time in twenty-four hours her stomach wasn’t knotted. “Oh my, these straps just keep falling off my shoulders. Those would be my delicately scented creamy white shoulders. I probably shouldn’t be out here dressed like this, leaning over the railing. Why, my soft yet firm breasts might—oops—spill right out. What would the neighbors think?”

“You’re a killer, Phoebe.”

“Honey, I’m just getting started.”

In the morning, it was easy to put the work away, to tuck it into a corner of her mind. Death and sadness, Phoebe supposed, had a way of making those who brushed up against them appreciate a blue-skied, sunny day, and the excited chatter of a child.

And Carly’s first sight of the boat said it all.

“It’s big! And it’s pretty! This is going to be the best time ever.”

“Then we better get started,” Duncan decided.

“But where are the sails? You said it was a sailboat.”

“They’re rolled up right now. We’ll hoist ’em once we’re clear.” He clambered on, then held out a hand for the girl. “Here you go. Welcome aboard.”

“Can I look at stuff?”

“Sure.”

“But don’t touch,” Phoebe called out as she came aboard. “It is big, and it is pretty. And I realized I should have asked if you really know how to handle this thing.”

“I’ve only capsized her four times. Kidding. I always wanted to sail. Used to come down here and watch the boats. So when I decided to get a boat, I took lessons—and a course—as I didn’t want to drown after achieving a lifelong dream. Still, the kids need to wear PFDs. Personal flotation devices. So will Biff.”

“Who’s Biff?”

“That would be Biff.” Duncan pointed.

Phoebe spotted Phin, his wife and his little girl coming down the dock. Lumbering on a leash ahead of them was a stubby-legged, homely faced bulldog.

“Phin’s dog. He figured a bulldog would lend an air of dignity. Which, you could say, he does if you discount the drool.”

Obviously an old sea hand, Biff jumped aboard, then wiggled his butt until Duncan hunkered down to rub him all over.

“What a perfect day for this. I’m going to do as much of absolutely nothing as possible.” Loo stretched. “Hi, Phoebe. I hope you’ll be joining me.”

“I’ll be glad to. Hi, Phin. Hi, Livvy.”

“Puppy!” Carly scrambled on deck from the cabin below and all but tackled Biff. “Oh, he’s so cute! What’s his name? Mama, can’t we get a puppy?”

“She’s painfully shy,” Phoebe announced. “I hope you’ll pardon her.”

“He’s Biff.” Not quite as outgoing as Carly, Livvy clung to her mother’s hand. “He likes his belly rubbed.”

Carly beamed and obliged the now ecstatic Biff. “There’re beds downstairs and tables, and a kitchen and a bathroom and everything. Do you want to see?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“Let’s go see it again. With Biff.”

Livvy looked up at her mother. “I guess so.”

“Those are pretty shoes,” Carly said as they started down. “Maybe I can try them on. You can try mine on, too.

It was an experience, Phoebe thought, to motor away from the dock, steam and slip through the water with the little girls fused together at the stern, and the not-so-dignified dog sitting on the starboard bench with his funny face lifted to the air.

But it was nothing to the moment when the white sails rose and filled with wind. Like the dog, Phoebe lifted her face.

“Mimosas,” Loo announced, and offered a glass as she sat beside Phoebe.

“Oh God. This must be heaven. Are we going to have to jib or hoist or some other salty term?”

“Only if the spirit moves. Phin doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing unless Duncan tells him, but he likes to pretend he does.” She smiled over at the men. “But he’s game. Me, I tried to talk Dunc into a motorboat—cabin cruiser. But he just had to have sails.” She drew in a long breath, stretched out incredibly long legs. “Hard to argue at times like this.”

“You’ve known him a long time.”

“Known him, been crazy about him. So if you screw with him, I’ll find a way to hurt you. Other than that, we’ll be fine.”

“Do people often screw with him?”

“Not many, not often. He’s got excellent radar. There was a woman a few years back cruised under that radar. Butter wouldn’t melt.” Loo sipped her mimosa. “I couldn’t stand her. But Dunc, he was fond, and she was clever with her hard-luck stories. She got a few thousand out of him before she blipped for him.”

“What did he do about her?”

Loo flicked her middle finger against her thumb. “He’s an easygoing sort, but he has a low tolerance for lies.”

“Are you warning me, Loo?”

“Irritated. Good. Makes me like you more, which I already do. And I like your little girl. I saw your press conference yesterday.” Loo lifted her eyebrows as Phoebe’s face went cool and blank. “Let me start off saying things aren’t black and white for me. First, I’m a lawyer, so I live in the gray. Second, that man up there with mine is family—and I do believe he’s white. And last, I thought you handled yourself very well in what’s a very difficult, even delicate situation. That’s all I wanted to say about that. Those are pretty shoes,” Loo commented with a nod toward Phoebe’s sandals. “Maybe I could try them on.”

With a laugh, Phoebe relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

They had lunch on the lake, and splashed and swam in it. Carly was given the thrill of her life with a turn at the tiller.

“Having fun?” Duncan asked when Phoebe joined him at the bow.

“It’s going down as the best day of my life in recent memory.”

“We can extend it. Cruise over to my place. We can wear Carly out, tuck her up somewhere, tuck ourselves up somewhere else.”

“What about Biff and company?”

“I’ll just toss them all overboard.” He leaned down to kiss her laughing mouth. “Say the word.”

“The word is I like your friends too much to toss them.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“But I will be inviting you in for drinks in the courtyard when you escort us home.”

“I’ll be accepting. Listen…” He cupped his hand at the back of her neck and let his kiss shimmer out.

“What?” Phoebe managed.

“Not a thing.”

“Why do people close their eyes when they kiss?” Carly demanded, and Phoebe turned to see her daughter studying her with considerable interest.

“I don’t know.” Duncan frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s try it the other way.” Eyes open and amused, he pulled Phoebe back for another kiss. “It’s good that way, too.”

“Mama says she’s too old for boyfriends.”

“Carly—”

“What do you think?” Duncan asked, interrupting Phoebe’s protest.

“I think if you’re going to be taking her on dates and kissing her all the time, you should be her boyfriend. And Ava told Grandma it’s good Mama’s getting some romance because—”

“Carly go get yourself one of those cookies, or something else to put in your mouth.”

“You said I had enough cookies.”

“I changed my mind.”

“That’s about enough snickering over there,” Phoebe said, waving a hand toward Phin and Loo. And over here, too,” she added to Duncan.

“Are we having some romance?” he asked her. He grabbed her, dropped her into a romance-novel dip. “Let’s have some more.”

Phin’s wolf whistle joined the buzzing in her ears before she could struggle her way up again. “I think that’s about all the romance I can handle in a public forum. I’m going to go have another cookie.”

Romance, she thought after she’d given Duncan a final kiss good night. That was more complicated than an affair, no question about it. But it was foolish to pretend a romance wasn’t what she was having. And enjoying.

So she wasn’t going to pick it apart or second-guess it. She was just going to keep enjoying it for as long as it lasted.

She undressed, thinking how wonderful a shower would feel after a day on the water. When her phone rang, she half-expected it would be Duncan, calling her minutes after he left to tell her something to make her laugh.

The display on the Caller ID had her stomach sinking. “Hello, Roy.”

Less than ten minutes later she was stalking downstairs and grabbing a half gallon of cookie dough ice cream from the freezer.

Essie walked in as Phoebe scooped it straight out of the carton and into her mouth. “Oh! You had a fight with Duncan.”

“I didn’t have a fight with Duncan. I didn’t have a fight with anyone. I wanted some damn ice cream.”

“Mind that tone,” Essie warned with steel in her voice. “You only eat ice cream that way when you’re upset. Duncan’s barely out the door, so—”

“I said I didn’t have a fight with Duncan. Duncan’s not the center of my universe. I don’t make men the center of my universe and I’m not about to…” She heard herself, could nearly see the nasty edge to the words slicing out like little shards of broken glass.

“I’m sorry. I am upset.” She dropped down at the table, dug out more ice cream. “I haven’t got enough of this in me yet to calm down or get good and sick, and not take it out on someone else.”

Essie walked to the drawer, got out another spoon. She sat, spooned some ice cream out of the carton for herself. “What happened?”

“Roy called. He’s getting married again.”

“Oh.” Essie took a second, bigger spoonful. “To anyone we know? So we know where to send our condolences?”

“Thanks, Mama. He’s getting married to someone named Mizzy. Can you believe that? She’s twenty-four.”

“A bimbo, no doubt about it. Poor thing.”

“The bimbo comes from money, and they’re moving to Cannes, or maybe it was Marseilles. My ears started ringing by that point. Her family hasinterests there he’s going to help run. And he tells me all this as he doesn’t want my panties in a twist if the next couple child support checks are a bit late. Due to changing his location and banking and so on.”

“He’s always been timely with that anyway.”

“Yes, because it’s an automatic withdrawal from his account, so he doesn’t even have to think of it. Of her.” It wasn’t rage anymore in her voice, on her face. It was grief. “He never even asked about her, Mama. He never asked how she was, never thought to suggest he might tell his daughter himself, or invite her to the wedding.”

“She wouldn’t go. And, baby girl, you wouldn’t like it if she did.”

“That’s beside the point. Itis. And I know I’m getting upset over something that isn’t any different than it was, really. Except the son of a bitch is marrying someone almost ten years younger than me, named Mizzy, and his daughter isn’t even an afterthought.”

“What was it my grandmother used to say? A skunk doesn’t change its stink. It’s a little crude, but it fits. His life’s about as deep as a puddle of spit—and that’s crude, too. She won’t care, Phoebe. Roy isn’t so much as a bump against Carly’s heart. You shouldn’t let him be one against yours.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. She never had enough of him to miss any of it.”

“But you did.”

“I had the illusion.” Phoebe scraped more ice cream from carton to spoon, studied it. Ate it. “Maybe that’s worse. He can’t help being what he is. Even if what he is is a goddamn skunk. Thanks.”

Roy wasn’t worth even her anger, Phoebe told herself as she went upstairs to shower. But the phone call had reminded her why romance was a slippery slope. Better, much better, to keep it all up front, keep it all simple. So no one got hurt.

It might be time to slow things down just a little with Duncan. She’d already made another date with him while the dream of the day had been on her. But that was fine. She’d just explain to him that she wasn’t looking for anything more than friendship, companionship and sex.

What man could argue with that?

19

By her request, Phoebe received notification when Charles Johnson’s body was cleared for release. Noting the information, she contacted the funeral home regarding viewings.

Controversy and public debate aside, she needed to pay her respects. She could do so discreetly, and briefly. It meant canceling her date with Duncan, but that might be for the best.

A little cooling-off time there, she decided. A little stop-and-think-it-through.

She made the call, and though it was cowardly, felt a trickle of relief when she got his voice mail.

“Duncan, it’s Phoebe. I have to cancel tonight, sorry. Something came…” Not fair, she reminded herself. He’d done nothing to deserve the “something came up” brush-off. “Actually, they’re holding a viewing for Charlie Johnson tonight, and I need to go. So I’ll need a rain check. We’ll talk later, all right? I’m just about on my way to a meeting.”

Ass-covering was de rigueur, and Phoebe couldn’t fault the department for going into circle-the-wagon mode. Or, she supposed, for looking for a reasonable scapegoat. She was fully prepared to defend her own actions and methods, if and when. She sat through the meeting with the crisis team, the chief and the representatives from IAB.

Questions were asked and answered. Her log was displayed, the situation tape replayed. She listened to her voice, to Commander Harrison’s, to Charlie’s and Opal’s, to the relays between her or the second negotiator and command, from command to members of the tactical team.

“Lieutenant Mac Namara clearly related the information that the HT agreed to surrender, was coming out unarmed. That information was received and acknowledged.” The chief lifted his hands. “There was no breakdown in communications. The tactical commander did not give the go, and the shots were not fired by any authorized member of the department.”

He paused. “The shots were fired from a weapon—recovered—not issued to any member of the crisis team, from a position where no member of said team was posted. Known members of the rival gang live in the building from where the shots issued, other known or suspected members reside inside the perimeter set during the crisis. These are facts. But there’s another. The perimeter was breached. And from that fact come more questions. Who and how and when? The breech opens the department up to criticism and speculation, and potentially to civil suits.”

“The who is being investigated,” Harrison began. He was a tough-looking man of considerable presence, with a deep basso designed for giving orders. “Every known gang member of the Lords and the Posse is being interrogated. It’s a long process, sir.”

“The how?” The chief looked directly at the tactical commander.

“The building was cleared in a floor-by-floor sweep.” Harrison got to his feet, stepped over to the diagram. “A three-man team entered the building here. Civilians were evacuated and moved outside the barricades. While this location wasn’t optimum for coverage of the hostage scene, members were posted on the roof and at this third-floor post. Other members were posted in the building directly south, as this location afforded the best visual of the liquor store from the front. Others were posted here, to cover the back. Here, the sides.

“Each building was cleared, or thought to be cleared, and the perimeters set and posted. There were disturbances here and here during the negotiations. Heckling and threats from some onlookers. And here, a physical altercation between local residents.”

He straightened stiffly as he turned. “It’s possible that someone slipped through during the incendiary first stage. More likely, in my opinion, someone already inside the building slipped into the vacated apartment and set up his sniper’s nest. The team’s objective was to get civilians to safety quickly. It’s not possible in these circumstances to spread the team thin enough to check every closet, under every bed. If someone was determined to evade detection, they could and would.”

“Someone armed with an AK-47?”

Harrison’s mouth tightened. “Yes, sir, as was the case.”

“Chief.” Phoebe caught Dave’s frown when she interrupted. “You said the questions were how, who, when. Respectfully, I think a vital question is why. We can speculate, given the gang violence, the weapon used, the fact that its serial number was filed off, a member—or sympathizer—of the east side Lords is responsible. But I’ve been back to the scene, and I stood in the window where those shots were fired. I’ve looked at the diagrams, read the reports, replayed the coms.”

“As have I,” the chief reminded her.

“Then you’re aware, sir, there were dozens of police officers and personnel outside at any given time during those hours. Officers and personnel in the open from the angle of the sniper’s nest. Yet none of them was fired on. When Johnson was shot, not a single police officer was hit. Nearly every bullet went into Charles Johnson. I believe any of our tactical team would agree that’s some damn fine shooting.”

“Knew what he was doing,” Harrison agreed, meeting Phoebe’s questioning glance.

“As a negotiator, as someone who studies and deals with human behavior, I have to say it’s also some superior control.

“Why kill Charles Johnson?” she continued. “He was low rung in the Posse.”

“He’d made a stink on their turf,” the chief pointed out. “He was demanding their captain be brought to him. It’s disrespect.”

“Agreed. Agreed. So maybe one or more of them would try to take him down, try to make an example of him. But if one of them was already in the building, or otherwise breached it—armed—it also strikes as solid forethought. Planning, sir, not just a lucky opportunity.”

“A conspiracy theory, Lieutenant?”

She could hear the weariness in the chief’s voice. He was more politician than cop, Phoebe knew—and politicians don’t care for conspiracies. “Just speculation that there are other possibilities. Johnson may have been set up, goaded into going there. Someone outside either gang may have seen this incident as an opportunity to create chaos and dissent. Or—”

She broke off when the chief raised a hand. “Lieutenant, we’re trying to defuse a powder keg, not add fuel. There are a lot of questions to be answered. For now, the most important apply to our own responsibility. The logs, transcripts, statements and coms show that you upheld yours. Now.” He turned back to the crisis commander. “When the gunfire occurred…”

After the meeting, Phoebe went down to the firing range to work off some frustration. She set the target, put on her ear protectors and fired a clip.

Then could only sigh at her scores. She set again, fired again.

“You’ve always been a crappy shot.”

Reviewing her grouping on the target, ear protectors lowered, Phoebe shrugged at Dave. “Extremely crappy. I don’t practice enough.”

“A good negotiator’s rarely going to have to draw, much less discharge, a weapon. Not when she listens and talks as well as you do. Which is why—since you do—I wonder what you were doing up there in that meeting.”

“Asking questions like someone taught me. Trying to make sure the focus isn’t so narrow we miss what may be outside the blinders. I don’t understand what happened out there, and I can’t just swallow the easy solution.”

“Has it occurred to you that you don’t understand, and you can’t swallow, because you did what you were supposed to do? You talked him down, talked him out. And you still lost him. You’ve been doing this long enough to know what an impact losing one has.”

As he spoke, he set himself up with a fresh target. Once he’d fired his clip, he and Phoebe studied his results together. “You’re a crappy shot, too.”

“Yeah, but you’re still crappier. How have you been sleeping?”

“Spotty. I know the signs, Dave. And yes, I have some of the classics—I feel let down, stressed, restless, irritable. But Iknow it, and I know why. What I don’t know is why that boy’s dead. That’s the reason I spoke up in the meeting.”

“Phoebe, the chief isn’t what we’d call a creative thinker. He’s more politician than cop—”

“I thought the same thing when we were up there. I guess we share more than crappy shooting.”

He let out a half laugh, rubbed her shoulder. “Well, believe me, he’s more concerned now with public relations and the possibility of civil liability than why a sixteen-year-old gangbanger’s dead.”

“You have ambitions for me.” She loaded another clip. “I know that, too, Dave. I appreciate it.”

“If I’ve got a legacy, it’s you and Carter.” Someone fired down the line, and the sound was harsh in contrast to his quiet voice. “When I’m ready to turn in my papers, I want to know you’re taking my desk.”

He’d wanted children; his wife hadn’t. Though he’d never told her, Phoebe knew it because she knew him. So she and Carter were his. “You’re worried if I speak up too often and don’t say what the brass wants to hear, I’m shooting myself in the foot. Which is something I believe I could manage in the literal sense as it’s fairly close range.”

“The chief wants this put to bed. If he has to sacrifice Harrison in the public arena, he will. He’d sacrifice you, but there’re no grounds. The simple fact is, Phoebe, logic and circumstances strongly support the idea that this was gang-related. A crime of opportunity and turf. That’s the drum that’s going to be beat.”

“Maybe someone should listen to what’s under the drum.” She lifted her weapon again and fired.

Stupid, Phoebe thought later. Stupid to push and prod where the only result was going to be annoyance to all parties. Politics and public relations were going to play this out, she reminded herself as she changed into a gray suit—black seemed too presumptuous somehow.

She had nothing to add to the mix that wasn’t already on record. Except for a few minutes before she’d taken over negotiations, and that horrible aftermath, she’d been inside the diner.

Nobody liked a Monday-morning quarterback, she told herself.

She would go to Charles Johnson’s viewing, then she would have to put it away. No comment, she promised herself, unless the department directed otherwise. What more did she have to say, in any case?

She pinned her hair back. Nothing would sober the color, she mused, but the style seemed more respectful than loose.

She stepped into the family parlor. Her mother was crocheting in front of the TV, and Carly was sprawled on the floor paging through a picture book. Puppies, Phoebe realized with a little sink in the belly.

“I’m heading out now. I shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

“Mama! Wait, Mama, look! Aren’t they cute?”

Carly scrambled up to hold out the book. The page was full of irresistible balls of fur and adorability. “They are, sweetie. They couldn’t be cuter. But they also need to be fed and watered and walked, and cleaned up after, and trained, and—”

“But you said someday we could get a puppy.”

“I saidmaybe someday.” And only after she’d been worn down to a nub by pleading glances from those big blue eyes. “And I’m just not sure it’s someday yet. I can’t talk about it now because I have to go. And this isn’t going to be just my decision. I’m at work all day and you’re in school, so I need to discuss this with Gran and Ava before we get close to thinking about it. Where is Ava?”

“Book club.” Essie gave Phoebe a puzzled look. “She mentioned it at dinner.”

“Oh, of course she did. Slipped my mind.” No, Phoebe admitted. She hadn’t heard a word anyone had said at dinner. Apparently she hadn’t just stopped active listening but listening at all. Time to pull it back together. “You be good for Gran.” Phoebe bent to kiss the top of Carly’s head. “I’ll be back before long.”

As she walked out she heard Carly using her slyest, most sugarcoated tone. “Gran, you like puppies, don’t you?”

It should’ve been funny. She wished she could see it as funny. But all she could think about as she headed downstairs was that Carly was going to manipulate the other two adults in the house until they ended up with some shoe-chewing, puddle-making, middle-of-the-night-whimpering canine.

Sheliked dogs, damn it. But she just wasn’t ready to take on another responsibility.

She knew Ava planned to take her son on a trip out West this summer. She deserved it, absolutely. And it meant ten days where there was no one around to run to the store, the bank, the dry cleaner’s, to haul Carly, todo all the endless errands.

She already had an active seven-year-old and an agoraphobic to tend to. Phoebe didn’t think it made her a heartless monster not to want to add a puppy to the mix.

But, of course, she felt like one, so when she opened the front door to go out, her scowl was already full-blown.

Duncan came up the last step to the portico. “That’s timing.”

“What are you doing here? You didn’t get my message? I’m sorry, but—”

“No, I got it. I’m going with you.”

“To the funeral home?” Shaking her head, she closed the door firmly behind her. “No, you’re not. Why should you? You didn’t know him.”

“I know you, and you shouldn’t go alone. Why should you?”

“I’m perfectly capable.”

“A reason you could, but not why you should. If it irritates you so much to have me along, you’ll just have to pretend I’m not there. You don’t go into something like this by yourself. That’s stupid, and you’re not.”

Phoebe yanked out her sunglasses, shoved them on. “Simple competence and responsibility aren’t stupidity, thank you very much.”

“Okay.” Hair trigger, he thought again. Why did he like that about her? “Do you want to stand out here debating the issue, or do you want to go do this thing?”

“I’m not going to drive up to this poor boy’s viewing in a Porsche and walk in with some rich guy in Armani.”

“First.” He stepped aside, gestured. There was a black sedan of some sort at the curb. “Second, this is Hugo Boss, or maybe Calvin Klein. I can’t keep that sort of thing straight—so now that I think about it, it may be Armani. And I may be rich but I grew up not two spits from where that kid spent his short sixteen years. Not in a mansion on Jones. So don’t call the pot, honey.”

She stared a moment, then shook her head. “A few minutes ago something that should’ve made me laugh just couldn’t. Now this just strikes me as funny. Or maybe it’s just ridiculous.”

She reached forward, flipped back the side of his jacket to find the label. “I was right about the designer. Never test the mother of a mini-fashionista.”

“Points for you.”

“No, for you.” Irritable and let down, she thought. Yes, she knew the signs. “Thanks for coming to go with me. I was keeping the mad on the front burner so I wouldn’t feel too much of the sad. And I neglected to remember one thing.”

“Which one thing?”

“This isn’t about me.” She stepped down. “So, you’ve got a shiny black sedan. Sort of dignified.”

“I thought about bringing the pickup, but that seemed wrong. And the SUV’s just too big.” He shrugged as he opened the car door. “I’m a guy. I have cars. It’s what we do.”

“As I have a car that is well on its way to becoming a heap, I appreciate being able to go in one of your manly fleet.” She put a hand on his over the door handle. “I’m used to going alone, and I suppose that leads me to think I should. But I don’t always want to, and I also appreciate you figuring that out before I did.”

Because she looked as if she needed it, Duncan leaned down to touch his lips to hers. “I’m making a study of figuring you out.”

The funeral home was small, the parking lot already crowded with cars and people. Phoebe saw reporters on the edge of the property. Some were doing interviews, others trying to hunt them up.

“Probably another way in,” Duncan commented.

Avoiding the press was priority one, so she’d already prepared for it. “There’s a side door, I checked. I thought I’d slip in and out that way. Five minutes. There’ll be representatives from the department here. That’s SOP on a homicide—and in this case, it’s image, too. I’m not officially here.”

“Got it.” He found a place on the street, then glanced down at her heels. “Can you hike a block in those?”

“I’m a girl. It’s whatwe do.”

When they were on the sidewalk and he took her hand, she looked up at him. And for the second time since she’d met him, Phoebe thought,Oh, well. Damn.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” She looked away again.

Hell of a time for her heart to start thumping, she decided, hell of a time for it to trip and fall. They were on their way to pay their respects to the mother of a dead boy. And she stumbled face-first into love.

It made no sense at all.

“Sure you want to do this?”

She knew she didn’t. If she couldn’t face the idea of training a puppy, how the hell was she supposed to deal with falling in love? But, of course, since he couldn’t read her mind, he wasn’t speaking of the big, long drop she’d just taken.

“I want to do it, for Charlie and his mother. And I guess part is about me. I need the ritual of it. I don’t do well when I’m mad and sad, and I’m having a hard time putting either, or both, of those feelings away for very long.”

Slipping into the side door was simple enough. But before Phoebe could congratulate herself on avoiding the gauntlet out front, she found herself faced with another inside.

A group of people clustered in and around a small parlor to the side of the main viewing room. The squeak of the door had heads turning. Conversations stopped instantly.

They weren’t the only white faces, Phoebe noted. A few were scattered in. But her face had been on television. She saw recognition in some of the stares aimed her way, and resentment in others.

The crowd parted for a tall man, or maybe it parted for the anger pumping off him. “You got no place here. You get the hell out before—”

“You don’t speak for me.” Opal pushed forward. She looked a decade older than she had in the diner, with her eyes sunken dark in her face as if they’d never find light again. “You don’t speak for my boy or for me.”

“This here’s for family. It’s for neighborhood.”

“You going to speak to me of family now, my brother? Where was my family when I needed them? You were up in Charlotte. You weren’t here in theneighborhood. You don’t speak for me.” She drew herself up. “Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“Mrs. Johnson, I’m sorry to intrude. I wanted to pay my respects to you and Charlie. I won’t stay.”

“Lieutenant Mac Namara.” Opal stepped forward and embraced Phoebe. “Thank you for coming here,” she said quietly. “Thank you for not forgetting.”

Emotion flooded Phoebe’s throat, stung her eyes, ached in her heart. “I won’t ever forget.”

“Would you come with me, please?” Clutching Phoebe’s hand, Opal turned. The man who’d spoken stood barring the way. “Don’t you shame me. Don’t you shame me so that this is the last time I look at your face.”

“Your sons are dead, Opal.”

“My sons are dead. And I have something to say.” She walked through the crowd of mourners to the front door.

Her fingers twined in Phoebe’s trembling ones. “Opal—”

“I’ve been afraid of so many things,” Opal said. “Most all my life. Maybe, I’d been braver things’d be different. I don’t know, and it’s hard not to question God’s will. But I’m going to do this one thing, this one thing. And maybe, maybe, I won’t be so afraid.”

When she stepped out the front door with Phoebe, reporters shouted out, cameras whirled. Priority one, she thought, had been thoroughly breached. But there was a woman who’d lost her sons, who was clinging to her, who didn’t give a damn about protocol.

“I got something to say.” Opal’s voice cracked, and her hand tightened like a vise on Phoebe’s.

“Y’all been calling my home, and my mother’s home. Calling where I work. I told you I wanted my privacy, but you won’t give it. I got such sorrow in me, and I asked you to respect my grief. But you come ’round my house, my mama’s, you call on the telephone. Say you want me to tell you what I got inside me, what I think, what I feel. And some of you? You offer me money to talk to you.”

Questions boomed out.Did you…Have you…How did you… Opal’s arm shook as if with a spasm as she turned those dark, sunken eyes on Phoebe. “Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“Let’s go back inside, Opal,” Phoebe murmured. “I’ll take you back inside, to your family.”

“Stand here with me, please. Would you stand here with me so I can do this?”

Opal closed her eyes, then lifted her voice over the storm. “I’ve got something to say here, something to say for free, and you’ll justhush if you want to hear it. My sons are dead.”

In the silence that followed, Phoebe heard Opal’s indrawn sob. “My boys are dead. Both killed. Guns and bullets took their bodies, but it was something else took ’em before that. They had no hope. They had a fever of anger and hate and blame, but no hope to cool it. I wish I could’ve given them that, but I couldn’t get it into them.

“You want me to blame somebody. You want to see me point my finger, to scream and cry and curse. You won’t. You want me to blame the gangs? They got part of it. The police? They got part. Then so do I got part, and my own dead babies, they got part. There’s plenty of blame to spread around. I don’t care for that. Doesn’t matter about that.”

She pulled a tissue from her pocket to mop her tears. “I know this woman standing beside me talked to my boy, and listened to my boy. For hours. And when that terrible thing happened that took my boy away so I can’t ever have him again? She ran toward him. Didn’t matter to her who was toblame. She ran to him to try to help. And when I could see again, when I could see, what I saw was her holding my son. And that’s what matters.

“Now I got nothing more to say.”

Ignoring the hurled questions, Opal turned for the door. Her body shook lightly as Phoebe put a protective arm around her shoulders.

“I’m going to take you to see my Charlie now.”

“Okay, Opal.” Taking Opal’s weight, Phoebe walked toward the viewing room. “Let’s go see Charlie.”

Phoebe’s knees felt a little weak by the time she returned to the car. It was funny, she thought, how joints often took the brunt of emotional upheavals.

Duncan merely ran a hand down her arm, then started the ignition.

“I need to make a call,” she said, and pulled out her phone. Impulse again, she reminded herself. She seemed to be doing a lot on impulse these days. “Mama? I’m going to be going out awhile if you don’t need me back. Yes, all right. Tell Carly I’ll come in and kiss her good night when I get home. I will. Bye.”

She drew in a deep breath. “All right?”

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“I think your place would be just fine. Then you can fix me a nice cold drink of an alcoholic nature. And after we’ve had a nice cold drink, you can take me up to bed.”

“That fits pretty well into my schedule.”

“That’s good, because it seems to be just the thing that was missing in mine.” She leaned back, flipped through issues that were on her mind. “Duncan, what do you think of a man who decides to marry a woman named Mizzy who’s a dozen years younger than he is?”

“How big are her breasts?”

Phoebe’s lips twitched as she stared up through the sunroof. “I don’t have that information.”

“It’s pretty relevant. Who’s marrying Mizzy?”

“Carly’s father.”

“Oh.”

Sympathy and speculation, Phoebe thought, in a single syllable. “I know I shouldn’t care, but of course I do. I know I’ll get over that—which is comforting. He’s moving with her to Europe, which infuriates me, and which I won’t get over even though I know it’s stupid. It doesn’t matter if he’s around the corner or thousands of miles away, he’s not going to love that sweet child, or pretend he does.”

“But if he’s around the corner, so to speak, you can keep hoping he might eventually.”

“That’s right.” That, she realized, was exactly, perfectly right. “Opal Johnson couldn’t push hope into her sons, and they needed it. I can’t—or haven’t—let go of mine when it’s a useless weight.”

“How does Carly feel?”

“Carly doesn’t care.” They soared over the water, where boats skimmed below the span of bridge. “She’s healthier about it than I am.”

“She has you. A kid knows she’s loved, absolutely, she’s got a healthy base.”

He hadn’t had that absolute love, she remembered, but had built his own base. “I haven’t told her about the wedding yet. I will, when I’m not so mad. I don’t think he’d have bothered to tell me about all this except the child support checks will be delayed while he changes banks. Changes his damn dollars to Euros and back again. Whatever.”

“So you’re pissed he’s moving to Europe.”

“Oh, I’m just pissed altogether.” And suddenly just a little amused at the entire business. “I don’t care who she is, no woman likes being traded in on the Mizzy model. Especially when the trade-in has a lot higher mileage.”

“I bet the Mizzy model is high maintenance and can’t handle the curves nearly as well.”

“Hopeful thought. I’m telling you all this because it factors into my overall mood, which is restless and conflicted, and a little aggressive.” The faintest smile curved her lips as she tilted her head to study his profile. “I’m wondering how you feel about aggressive women.”

“Am I going to find out?”

“I believe you are.”

“Oh boy.”

When they were inside his house, she decided the cold drink could wait. They’d both probably need a gallon of cold liquid after they were done. Since he’d been considerate enough to wear a tie, she grabbed it and, strolling toward the stairs, pulled him behind her.

“Bedroom’s up here, I assume? We didn’t get that far last time.”

“To the right, all the way down. Last on the left.”

When she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes sparked on his. “I bet the view’s lovely. We won’t be paying much mind to that for a while, but I bet it’s lovely.”

She tugged him inside. She got the impression of space, of strong colors, tall windows. And best of all, a big iron bed.

“Now.” She turned, tugged the knot on his tie loose. “This may hurt a little.”

“My tolerance for pain is rising as we speak.”

Laughing, she yanked his jacket off, flung it aside. Then backed him toward the bed, where she gave him a little shove until he sat. With slow, deliberate movements, she straddled him so the skirt of the sober business suit hiked high on her thighs.

“Now, gimme that mouth.”

She used her teeth on it, her tongue, and all those wildly veering emotions coalesced into one hard, hot ball of lust. Her fingers got busy with his shirt, flipping open button after button until she could run her hands over flesh, scrape her nails over him. The quickening of his breath, the urgent way his hands streaked over her, made her feel invincible.

She let him peel her jacket off, tug the tank over her head. And, arching back, invited his lips and hands to feast and to take. The way he took, the way he feasted, electrified.

She was clamped around him, arms and legs. The most seductive of traps. A careless rake of his fingers and her hair came spilling down, fragrant red rain. A quick flick and her breasts, white satin, filled his hands.

Energized silk, he thought. Everything about her was smooth, soft, everything inside her so avid with purpose.

She let out a gasping laugh when he flipped her onto her back. Then a low purr of pleasure as his hands, his lips began to roam over her. Slowly now, he slid the skirt down her hips, her legs, following the movement with his mouth. The inside of her thigh, so firm and warm. The back of her knee, sensitive enough to cause quivers.

And when he retraced the route, and found her center, she went from quiver to quake.

Pleasure, dark and deep, swamped her. Sensation powered into sensation in a roaring, raging river. She tumbled into it, drowned in it until he dragged her gasping to the surface only to plunge her down again.

She rolled with him, hands slipping, sliding over flesh damp with sweat; her mouth, frantic, greedy, seeking his. Until at last, at last, she straddled him again, took him in. Deep, deep as hearts thundered. Their bodies locked.

She rode him hard and long. His hands gripped her hips as she bowed forward or back. The sheer beauty of that shape, that silhouette, shimmered in his mind while the stunning drive of need ruled his body.

And all of it was her. There was nothing but her when he shot blindly over that last jagged edge.

When she collapsed on him, simply fell limb by limb, he managed one final groan.

“I forgot—” She had to stop to wheeze in another breath.

“I didn’t—I remembered that time. One suit off, another suit on.”

She let out a weak laugh. “No, not that—good memory, by the way. I was going to say I forgot how much I like sex.”

He rested his forehead on her shoulder and hoped that, eventually, his brain would find its way back home. “Happy to remind you, as often as possible.”

“Oh God, Duncan, I’d give almost anything for a glass of water. A half glass. One swallow.”

“Okay, okay, don’t beg. It’s embarrassing.” He rolled her over, and she kept going until she was splayed on her belly.

“You’re my hero,” she mumbled into the pillow, and drifted off. A faint smile curved her lips as she heard him walking back into the bedroom.

Then she leaped in shock as the ice water hit the center of her back.“Duncan!”

“What?” He stood, an innocent smile on his face, the glass in his hand. “You said you wanted water. You didn’t say where you wanted it.”

Eyes narrowed, she got to her knees, held out a hand. She took a long sip. Then, with a half laugh, reached out to tug his hair. “Very funny.” She tugged him again until his lips met hers.

Then poured the rest of the water over his head.

20

Phoebe leaned over after Duncan stopped the car. “Thank you for going with me.” She kissed him lightly. “Thank you for the sex. And thank you for the ride home.”

“You’re welcome. And on the second part? Pretty much anytime.”

“An additional thank-you.” She brushed his lips one more time. “For understanding I have to get myself home earlier than Cinderella most of the time.”

He trailed a finger around her ear. “If I buy you some glass slippers, do you think we could arrange a sleepover?”

With a laugh, she got out of the car. “You know, I was talking myself into backing off this—whatever this is—with you.”

“Oh?” He got out so they stood for a moment, studying each other on opposite sides of the car. “Why is that?”

“I’m trying to remember. I had my reasons. Duncan, I’m resistant to being swept away.”

“I’ll leave the broom in the closet.”

Too late, she thought. Much too late. “You’re better at this than I am.”

“At what?”

“At whatever this is.”

Lights sparkled over in Forsythe Park, and there were soft pools of shadows along the street. Ava’s flowers perfumed the air that threatened to turn sultry. Through the open windows of a passing car Delta Blues throbbed like a broken heart.

Here she stood, Phoebe thought, looking over at a man who excited her so she noticed those small details she often overlooked. So that those details were like colorful backdrops in Act Three of her personal play.

And she was fretting over it because she wasn’t absolutely certain how the play would end.

“Did you ever get your heart broken? No, don’t answer that now,” she said quickly. “That may be one of those long stories, and I have to get inside.”

“Go out with me tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you all about the many shattered pieces of my abused heart.”

“How much of it will you be making up?”

“You’ll have to go out with me to find out.”

“You’re just a little too appealing for my own good.” She let out a sigh, glanced back at the house. “I can’t tomorrow—shouldn’t. I don’t like to spend too many evenings away.”

“Pick a night.”

“Don’t you know about playing hard to get?”

He walked around to her. “I’m not playing.”

Her heart took a hard bump. “No, you’re not. I…well.” Flustered, she glanced back at the house again. “This week is a little difficult. Carly’s school play is Thursday night, and there’s a school holiday on Friday, so—”

“Can I go?” He eased a little closer and touched her. Just fingertips sliding down her arms until she wanted to shiver and sigh. “To the play.”

She managed a laugh. “Oh, trust me, you don’t want to sacrifice yourself on the altar of an elementary school play.”

“Sounds like fun.” Sensing nerves, he smiled. Wasn’t she the mostinteresting, contradictory woman? “Cinderella,right? Wicked stepsister.”

“How do you know that?”

“Essie told me. Thursday night. What time?”

“Seven, but—”

“Seven’s curtain? Should I meet you there, or come by and pick y’all up? Plenty of room for you and Carly, Ava and…Essie can’t go,” he realized, and his easy humor faded. “That must be hard, must be hard for her.”

“Yes, it is. Very hard. We’re getting it videotaped, but it’s not the same. Duncan, if you really want to go—and that’s very sweet—you should just meet us. I have to get Carly there an hour ahead, for costumes and such. I’ll get you a ticket, leave it out front for you. But you don’t have to feel obligated.”

Don’t feel obligated, he thought, intrigued when she backed up a step. He decided on the spot that wild horses wouldn’t keep him from a Thursday night date with Cinderella. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a kiddie school play.”

“You must’ve been in one.”

“I was once a belching frog. And I have a vague recollection of being a turnip once, or maybe it was a radish. But it was so traumatic, I’ve blocked it out. Y’all got any plans for the weekend?”

“Ah, we’re working out a Saturday playdate with Carly’s current best friend. Details are not finalized.”

“Great. Maybe they can do me a favor. Family fun center. Play-world? Heard of it?”

“Been there, yes.”

“Did Carly like it? Hate it? See I’m thinking about investing, but I haven’t decided whether to go into an established place like that or maybe do something new. Fresh. We could go on Saturday. Kid-test it.”

She stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “You want to spend your Saturday in an amusement center with a couple of little girls?”

“You make that sound just a little perverted. Actually, more than a couple of little girls would be better. I’ve been tugging on Phin to bring Livvy into it, and maybe some of the others. You up for that?”

“I imagine Carly would be delighted. Why an amusement center?” she asked as she turned toward the house.

“Ah, well, fun would be the primary factor. If you’re going to—Hold it.” He grabbed her arm, pulled her back.

Over the top step in the wash of the house light, the carcass of a dead rabbit drooped. The ruff around its neck was matted with dried blood that shone black against the brown fur.

“Oh, God, not again. I need to—Don’t justtouch it,” Phoebe snapped out, “with your hands.”

“I use my hands instead of my feet for touching. Just a quirk.” He lifted it by its hind legs. “What do you mean, not again?”

Because her stomach pitched, Phoebe gave herself permission to look away. “Let me get something. A bag, a box. Jesus. Take it around to the courtyard, would you? I’ll be right there.”

She dashed into the house while Duncan frowned at the rabbit. Wasn’t mauled, he mused as he studied it. It sure as hell didn’t strike him as roadkill. He’d given up hunting after his first and only foray into that area on a trip with a couple of friends as a teenager.

He’d liked the gun—the feel, the sound, even the jolt—but he hadn’t much cared for what it could do when the target was flesh and blood.

If he had to guess, the rabbit had been shot, small caliber. But why anyone would shoot a rabbit and toss it on Phoebe’s steps was a mystery.

He carried it through the courtyard gate just as she rushed out with a plastic grocery bag. “We need to put it in here.”

“You want to tell me why Bugs ended up dead on your steps?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to have to build a damn graveyard if this keeps up. This is joining the rat I found out here a couple weeks ago, and the snake on the steps a few days ago.”

“You had any altercations with any of the neighborhood boys?”

“No. I ran that one down already. I don’t think the local hellions are responsible. Put that thing down, will you?”

As he heard distress as well as disgust, Duncan eased the corpse into the bag. “I think you’re going to want to take this one in—to forensics or whatever. I’m pretty sure it’s got a bullet in it.”

She let out a long breath. “I’ll deal with it in the morning. Come inside, wash your hands.”

He’d go inside, Duncan thought, but washing a little dead rabbit off his fingers wasn’t primary.

He followed her in, stepped to the kitchen sink. “Got any beer?” he asked.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

After drying his hands, he simply walked to the refrigerator, opened it. Mostly girl food, as he thought of it. Lots of fruit, fresh vegetables, cartons of yogurt, skim milk. Why did anyone want to skim milk? A question for another time.

He didn’t find any beer, but pulled out an open bottle of California chardonnay. “Glasses?”

“Oh.” She pushed at her hair as she turned to a cabinet. It was manners that had her reaching for glasses, he thought. She’d have been happier if he’d dried his hands and said good night. So she could think, and so she could handle whatever was going on herself.

Tough for her, he decided. He wasn’t built that way.

He poured the wine himself, sat at the little table. Which, he knew, left her trapped by those manners into sitting down with him.

“I appreciate you dealing with that,” she began. “I hate knowing I’m squeamish enough to balk at doing it myself.”

“Who dealt with the rat?”

“Well, I did—with a lot of embarrassing squealing and shuddering. I called Carter about the snake. That, apparently, went over my level.”

“Have you reported this?”

She puffed out her cheeks. “I assumed that some cat dumped the rodent out in the courtyard. I didn’t think about it. I initially thought the same about the snake, until Carter said its head was crushed, which is when I had a talk with the mother of the leader of the neighborhood hellions. But it wasn’t him. Neither was this. So, yes, I’ll take that thing in tomorrow, and I’ll report it and have it checked out.”

“Anyone got any reason to hassle you other than Meeks?”

She took a sip of wine. “You’re quick.”

“Not a big leap, Phoebe. Sounds like this Arnie needs a talking-to.”

Not just quick, she realized. Furious. Quietly, coldly and absolutely furious. “A talking-to isn’t what you mean, and it isn’t for you. It isn’t,” she said firmly. “I find the sentiment…Well, to be honest, I don’t quite know how I find the sentiment, but we’ll come back to that sometime. The point is, if indeed Arnie Meeks needs a talking-to, it’s best done in an unofficially official way. If you go getting in his face asmy…”

“We’re going to have to come up with a term,” Duncan said dryly, “as you object to ‘boyfriend.’”

“Anyway, it’d put his back up and it makes me look weak. If he’s doing this, I can’t afford to look weak, I can’t give him the satisfaction of believing it’s given me any particular bad moments.”

“But it has.”

“I wish I could say otherwise. I think…”

“Think what?”

She drank again. She wasn’t used to talking to anyone about her own business. Not difficult business. The priority was to keep the house a safe zone. “I think there might’ve been someone watching the house. I caught a glimpse a couple of times, or more heard. He whistles.”

“Sorry? He whistles?”

“I know, it sounds odd and off. But I think someone’s been around the neighborhood a few times, walking by the house, whistling this same tune. If it’s Meeks—and I didn’t get a close enough look to say, either way—he’s taking a huge chance for more payback. He might’ve put a friend up to it, or paid someone. But it’s a big and foolish risk.”

“He got a big kick in the ass. Could be worth it to him. These things can escalate, can’t they?”

“They can, of course.” She glanced up, seeing in her mind’s eye her family tucked safe away for the night. “I’m not discounting the possibility. I’ll talk to the people I need to, first thing in the morning.”

“I can bunk here. Spare room, spare couch.”

“That’s a nice offer. But if you do, I’d have to explain it in the morning. At this point, I don’t want to give anyone, especially my mother, something more to worry about. She’s holding. My getting hurt, and then the shooting, those were hard knocks for her. I don’t think she’s been out in the courtyard for the last few days. I can’t stand to think she’ll lose that, too.”

Duncan studied his glass, had another long sip of wine. “I believe I’ve had too much to drink. I don’t think I should drive. As a duly authorized officer of the law, and as my current hostess, you should discourage me from doing so.”

Those soft blue eyes, those clear and sober eyes, met hers. “It’s as simple as that, Phoebe, if you let it be.”

“I don’t know why men think women can’t defend themselves or their home.”

He only smiled. “Do I need to explain the power of the penis to you—so soon after you’ve experienced its wonder?”

She tapped her fingers on the table. “You can have Steve’s—Ava’s son’s—room for the night. But if it’s all the same to you, we won’t use your drunken behavior as the reason. It just got late, and seemed easier for you to stay than to drive all the way back to the island.”

“Fine. We’ll save my drunken behavior for another occasion. Can I ask something that’s none of my business?”

“As long as the answer can be that’s none of your business, sure you can.”

“Is Essie getting any therapy?”

“She was,” Phoebe said on a long sigh. “As it’s difficult, even with agoraphobia, to get a therapist who’ll make house calls, most of it was by phone. There were regular weekly phone sessions for a while, and she tried medications. We thought she was making progress.”

“But?”

“Her therapist encouraged her to go out. Just ten minutes, outside the house, to somewhere familiar. They picked Forsythe Park. She’d just walk over to the fountain and back home. She made it over, she got over, and then had a major panic attack. One of the fears is being caught in public, or embarrassed in public, or trapped. She couldn’t get her breath, couldn’t find her way back. I’d gone after her. I watched her walk over, and went out behind her when she was nearly out of sight. So it took me a while to get to her once she panicked.”

She could see it, still see it perfectly. Her mother terrified and disoriented, and her own heart banging in her chest as she sprinted over pavement and grass, pushed aside stunned tourists to reach her.

“She was gasping for air, and running. She fell. It was terrible for her. People were trying to help her, but it scared her so much, humiliated her so much.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I got her back. Held on tight, had her close her eyes, and I walked her back. She hasn’t been beyond the courtyard since. That was four years ago. She wouldn’t go back into therapy afterward. Gets testy about it,” Phoebe added with a little smile. “She’s fine in the house. She’s happy in the house. Why can’t we leave her alone? So we do. I don’t know if it’s the right thing, but we do.”

“It’s right enough. Sometimes the right thing changes, so you have to do what’s right for now.”

She thought about that after she showed him where he could sleep, after digging up a spare toothbrush and making sure the towels were fresh and plentiful.

The right thing changed, that was true. And sometimes what you thought was right ended up being a wrong turn but a necessary one. She wasn’t sure if Duncan was the right thing or a wrong turn, but she’d fallen in love with him.

Had probably stubbed her toe on that the first time she’d seen him, then tripped a little when she’d sat in the pub, laughing with him and enjoying the music. Another little stumble here, a loss of balance there, and the fall was inevitable.

Now, she supposed, she had to figure out what the right thing was, and how to do it. For now.

A big perk to waking up the lone guy in a household of women, Duncan decided, was the big, home-cooked breakfast. It didn’t suck to be fussed over, either, like the newly crowned prince of Femaleland while he enjoyed coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice.

Ava managed the morning stove, and by his gauge that was the general routine. But due to manly company, Essie set out what he figured were the good dishes, with coordinating linen napkins.

Essie fussed, filling a fancy sugar bowl and creamer, pouring freshly squeezed juice into a sparkling pitcher, rounding up a little squat bottle of zinnias. He could only assume, as the tasks had her all but bouncing around the kitchen, she was having as good a time as he was.

“Now don’t pester Duncan, Carly. He hasn’t even finished his first cup of coffee yet.”

“Great coffee,” Duncan said.

“How come I’m not having cereal?” Carly wanted to know.

“Because Ava’s making omelets. But you can have cereal if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t care.”

Duncan gave Carly a poke in the ribs. Despite the pout, she looked pretty as a picture in a ruffly yellow shirt and blue pants. “Hard day at the office coming up?”

She rolled her eyes in his direction. “I go toschool. And we have to take an arithmetic test today. I don’t see why we have to multiply and divide all the time. It’s just numbers. They don’tdo anything.”

“You don’t like numbers? I love numbers. Numbers are a thing of beauty.”

Carly sniffed. “I don’t need numbers. I’m going to be an actress. Or a personal shopper.”

“Well, if you’re an actress how are you going to count your lines?”

Duncan considered earning a second eye roll a badge of honor.

“Anybody can count.”

“Only with the beauty of numbers. Then you have to figure out how much you’re going to make—so you can buy that house in Malibu—after you pay your agent her percentage, and pay your bodyguards so the paparazzi don’t hound you. You got to have yourself an entourage, kid, and do the math so you can call up that personal shopper when it’s time for the Oscars.”

Carly considered. “Maybe I’ll justbe the personal shopper. Then I only have to know about clothes. Iknow about clothes already.”

“What’s your commission?”

This time he got a frown instead of an eye roll. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s how much you make when you sell Jennifer Aniston that vintage Chanel gown. You get a cut of what it costs. So say it costs five thousand, and you get ten percent. Plus, she needs shoes, and a purse thing. So what’s your commission? Gotta do the math.”

Her eyes narrowed now. “I get something every time they buy something? I get money, every time?”

“Pretty sure that’s how it works.”

Interest lit her face and banished the pout. “I don’t know how to do percent.”

“I do. Got paper?”

When Phoebe walked in, her family was circled around the table. Creamy omelets, fancy strips of Ava’s masterful French toast, crisp bacon invited healthy appetites to tuck right in.

Duncan ate with his left hand while Carly, her chair scooted up beside his, leaned over his rapidly scribbling right.

“She needs earrings! She has to have earrings, too.”

“Okay. How much for the ear dangles?”

“A million dollars!”

“You’re the Satan of personal shoppers.” He flicked a glance up, smiled. “Morning.”

“Mama! We’re doing percent, so I can figure out how much I’ll make when I’m a personal shopper. I already made six thousand dollars on commission.”

“Jennifer Aniston’s up for an Oscar,” Ava explained. “She needs to be outfitted, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And needs ensembles for various appearances.”

Phoebe walked around to read the list Duncan had going. “Jen’s on quite the spree.”

“Numbers are fun.”

Phoebe gaped at her daughter. “I think I’ve walked into a parallel universe, one where numbers are fun and there’s omelets on Tuesday mornings.”

“Sit right down,” Essie told her. “We’ve kept yours warm in the oven.”

Phoebe checked her watch. “I guess I’ve got time to force down a few bites. Numbers are fun,” she repeated as she sat on the other side of her daughter. “How come they weren’t fun when I made little bunnies and kittens out of them to show you how they multiplied?”

“Numbers are more fun when they’re money.”

Phoebe picked up her coffee, shook her head. “Mind yourself with this one, Duncan. She’s a gold digger.”

“She picks up a couple more clients like Jen here, she’s going to be supporting me. Look how pretty you are in the morning. Even prettier than Ava’s omelets—which is going some. I expect there isn’t a man in Savannah with a better view than I’ve got here in this kitchen.”

Phoebe’s brows winged up. “What did you put in his omelet, Ava?”

“Whatever it was, I’ll make sure it goes in every time.”

He ate cold cereal straight out of the box and washed it down with bitter black coffee. He hadn’t shaved that morning. He hadn’t showered. He knew he was standing on the slippery edge of a bout of depression.

He wanted the anger back. The anger and the purpose. They could get lost in that blue pit of depression, he knew. He’d lost them before.

There was medication, duly prescribed. But he preferred the speed he’d bought from a friend of a friend. Still, he knew the uppers were a bad choice. He could do the rash and the reckless with that heady juice rushing through him.

He’d already done the reckless, hadn’t he? Plugging that idiot rabbit was one thing. But he should’ve saved it—a few days in the freezer, then he could’ve dumped it on Phoebe anytime in the dead of night.

He’d nearly gotten caught by rushing it. But he’d been so pissed off!

She wasn’t taking the heat for Johnson. Not from the department, not from the press, not from the public. The stupid fucker’s mother had made Phoebe her new best friend. And that maudlin, thatpitiful statement outside the funeral home played over and over on the news, on the talk shows.

Made that fumbling bitch look like Mother fucking Teresa instead of the ambitious, grasping, stumbling cunt she was.

He’d let the anger take over—always a mistake. He’d let it rule so he’d driven straight to her house, tossed the corpse up. He’d meant it to land on the veranda but his hand had been shaking with rage, and his aim was short.

He’d nearly gone after it, had started to, when light spilled out of the house next door.

He could see himself—humiliated even now—hiding in the bushes while that crazy bitch walked out with her ugly excuse for a dog.

And he knew, heknew she walked that dog right at dusk, every single night. He knew, but he hadn’t used the knowledge. He’d only used the anger.

And what if that crazy woman or her ugly excuse for a dog had seen him? It wasn’t time for that yet.

He’d actually imagined killing them both. Snapping necks like celery stalks and leavingthem on Phoebe’s front steps.

But it wasn’t the time.

He had a plan. A plan and a purpose. Anagenda.

Now the rage was gone, and the purpose was blurred with a damning sense of failure. He’d wasted his time on that Posse asshole. Taken a stupid risk and wasted bullets.

It meant nothing.

He looked around his workshop and nearly wept with despair. None of it meant anything. He’d lost what mattered, and she’d lost nothing.

Now he was reduced to leaving dead animals on her doorstep.

He should’ve killed the crazy old woman and her dog, he decided. Coulda, shoulda. That would’ve made a statement.

He took out one of the little black pills, studied it. Just one, he thought. Just one to give him back some juice.

Because it was time to make a statement. Time to stop screwing around and kick it all up a notch.

Johnson hadn’t put a hitch in her step. Something else—or somebody else—would.

“Twenty-two caliber.” The criminalist, a skinny guy named Ottis, held the slug up with gloved fingers. “You gonna kill da wabbit, this is plenty hot enough.”

“Single shot?”

“Yeah.” Ottis frowned at Phoebe. “Do you want me to run it through ballistics? Ah, do any trace on the…vic?”

“Actually, I would. If someone’s playing a prank, I’m not laughing. And I think it’s more than that. So anything you can tell me about the bunny or the bullet would be helpful.”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll get back to you.”

She went back to her office and wrote up an official incident report. Then she took a copy out to Sykes’s desk, filled him in.

“Do you want me to go have a conversation with Arnie?”

“No, at least not yet. I’d like you to pull a few lines, if you can. Find out how he’s handling the security job, get a sense of his routine. See if you can find out if he’s been spending any time in my neighborhood. He’s got a mouth,” Phoebe added. “If he’s messing with me, he’s probably bragged about it to someone. Someone he drinks with or works with.”

“I’ll poke around.”

“Thanks. Thank you, Bull.”

Best she could do, Phoebe decided. But not all she could do.

Back in her office, she wrote up a log, listing the times and dates, the incidents she believed were connected. To these she added her own speculations.

Rat—symbol—snitch, turncoat, deserting sinking ship.

Snake—symbol—evil, sneaky, bringer of ruin to Paradise.

Rabbit—symbol—cowardly, running away.

Might be taking it all too far, psychologically, she mused, but it was better to err on the side of caution than to just err.

Whistling keeps the voice disguised, anonymous. What does the song mean? Do not forsake me. Who was forsaken? Who did or might do the forsaking?

High Noon.One man standing up against corruption and cowardice (rabbit as cowardice?). Rat as desertion of townspeople. Snake as corruption. Cooper as sheriff (wasn’t he? Rent the damn movie), standing alone in the final showdown.

Was it about the movie or just the song? she wondered. She did a search, found the lyrics and printed them out for the file she would make.

High noon was a kind of deadline, wasn’t it? Do this by this time or pay the price.

She sat back. And if it was Arnie Meeks harassing her, he wouldn’t be thinking about symbols and hidden meanings. It just wasn’t his style.

Still, she’d make up the file. And on the way home, she’d hunt up a copy ofHigh Noon.

TERMINATION PHASE

I do not know what fate awaits me.

—“HIGH NOON”

21

Screaming kids and the lightning-flash mood swings of little girls didn’t appear to ruffle Duncan’s feathers. In fact, his easy slide through kid world had Phoebe wondering if the man had any feathers to ruffle.

What he did, she noted, was play like a maniac. Whatever it was—video arcade, miniature golf, whack-a-mole, he wasinto it. She liked games as much as the next person, and God knew she’d done her stints at fun centers. But she’d never come out of one, in her memory, without a vague headache, a stomach uneasy from strange combinations of food, and feet that ached like a tooth headed for a root canal.

She had a touch of all three results, and sat herself down on a bench while Duncan took on all challengers in what he called the Champion Round of mini-golf.

Carly was having the time of her life, and the other kids who’d packed along were flocked around him like he was the Pied Piper. And how, Phoebe wondered, did spending hours racing virtual cars or hitting a red ball through the rotating fans of a plastic windmill equal researching an investment possibility?

Loo dropped down beside her. “I should’ve gotten a manicure. These places wear me out and Iknew that man would talk me into coming.”

“Phin’s looking a little worn himself.”

“Not Phin.” Loo sucked diet soda through a straw. “I know all his tricks by now. Duncan. I know all his, too, but damn that man always gets around me.”

From her vantage point, Phoebe studied him. He’d sat through an elementary school production ofCinderella with every appearance of being thoroughly entertained. And had capped that off by insisting on buying the redheaded stepsister an ice cream cone.

Naturally, Carly was crazy about him.

And now he was giving every appearance of being thoroughly entertained by playing mini-golf with a platoon of overexcited children.

“Duncan doesn’t look worn at all,” Phoebe observed.

“Probably live here if he could.” Loo slipped her own aching feet out of her sandals. “Look at him, crouched down on that old green carpet eyeballing the hole like he’s Tiger Woods in the Playland Open. Kids eating it right up like ice cream sundaes, which I warn you, he’ll insist on after this is over.”

Phoebe pressed a hand to her stomach. “Oh God.”

“Won’t play real golf. Phin’s dragged him out several times, and tells me Duncan says stuff like: ‘Where’s the windmill?’ or ‘When do we get to the troll bridge?’” She let out her big laugh. “Bruises our Phin’s dignity, which is exactly Dunc’s purpose.”

Because she could hear Duncan say it, Phoebe smiled. “So he just wanted to come out and play. This investment business is a ruse.”

“Oh no, he’s given it serious thought. He’ll be working out the pros and cons now.”

Lips pursed, Phoebe studied Duncan as he argued the count of strokes on a hole with Phin. “Yes, I can see that.”

“I mean it.” Loo gave Phoebe a poke. “He’s going to have a good ballpark idea how many kids and adults came through the turnstiles today, which areas got the most play, which didn’t. You can bet he’s asked the kids we brought, and those of complete strangers, what they like. He’ll have himself a baseline before we’re sick off ice cream sundaes, then he’ll go—or won’t go—from there.”

“I can’t quite fit him into the businessman mold.”

Loo’s smile was lit with affection. “He’s his own mold.”

“Apparently.”

“Got a nice ass on him, too.”

“Unquestionably.”

“He’s got what my mother calls the calf’s eyes for you.”

“Does he? It’s hard for me to see clearly with all these hearts circling in front of mine. I just wanted a hot affair.” She shifted toward Loo, kept her voice low. “I figured, hell, I deserve one.”

“Who doesn’t?” Loo shifted in turn. “How about some salient details?”

“Maybe some other time. The thing is, I don’t know if I can manage what’s going on in here.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I don’t know if I have the tools or the room or—”

“Why? You’re—”

“Wait.” Phoebe turned her hand palm out now. “You’re married, and happily by every sign. You have a pretty little girl and an ugly dog. You have a big family, dual careers that complement each other and exceptional taste in shoes.”

“I do.” Loo pursed her lips at the stacked-heel, copper-toned sandals. “The shoes are the kicker.”

“I’m divorced with a career that pulls me in conflicting directions constantly, and a family I love, but that does the same. My foundation is shaky at best, and what I’ve built on it takes a lot of time and effort to tend. It’s never been just me for a lot of reasons. It can never be just me.”

“You’re thinking Duncan can’t handle the complications of your life?”

“I’m not sure he’d want to, or why he would. Right now, he’s infatuated and intrigued. And the sex, like the shoes, is quite the kicker. But I’m a lot to deal with on a daily basis. And there are things I can’t change or adjust. I’m just not in a position to.”

Loo sucked through her straw, considered. “Do you always analyze everything into tiny pieces, and pick out the harder points?”

“Yes. Occupational hazard, I guess. Tough fit, I’d think, for a man who appears to take in the big picture quickly and find the shiny nuggets. I keep trying to…I’d say talk myself down from all this. Step back from the ledge, Phoebe. Your life’s good enough, full enough as it is, so accept that. Take that last step, there’s no coming back from it, not without a world of hurt.”

“Love as suicide?”

“Maybe it is. Or it’s walking out with your hands up in surrender, to take the consequences.”

“Or it’s coming out free, instead of staying a hostage.”

“That’s a point. I know what I’m doing, have to know what I’m doing just about all the time. It’s annoying, and damn disconcerting, not to know what I’m doing with him.”

“Can’t tell you. But I think it’d be fun finding out.”

Fun was exhausting. Carly gave in to it and sprawled sleeping in the back of Duncan’s car on the way home.

“In case she’s too zonked to thank you, I can tell you she had a big, bright, red-letter day.”

“Me, too.”

“I noticed. Boys and toys. She’s got a whopping crush on you.”

“It’s mutual.”

“I noticed that, too. Duncan, I have one favor to ask, and I hope you’ll understand why I need to.”

“Sure. You had too many hot dogs and want me to stop for Pepto.”

“I hadone hot dog, and I have Tums at home. Duncan, seriously. I’m saying—asking, really—that if things between us take a slide, or we get pissed off and each decide the other is the spawn of Satan, if you’ll ease away from Carly. Give her time to adjust. This is a crappy thing to bring up after you’ve given us such a good day, but—”

“You’ve got—what’s his name?—Ralph stuck in your head.”

“Roy,” she corrected. “And, yes, that’s part of it. I can’t think of anyone less like him than you are.”

“If that’s true, you should already know it’s a favor you don’t have to ask. I know what it’s like to be shut out and shut down.”

“You do.” She touched a hand to his arm. “I’m a worrying, overprotective mother.”

“She’s lucky to have one.” He aimed a look at her. “Even if you turn out to be the spawn of Satan.”

She wiggled her tired toes as he turned toward the house. “How about coming in, having a cool glass of wine in the courtyard?”

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

A week later, Phoebe sat in Duncan’s garden. Carly was having a sleepover at her new second best friend Livvy’s house, which meant her mama could have the adult version of a sleepover.

They’d had a swim, and made love. They’d had dinner, and made love. Now it was nearly midnight—and it didn’t matter!—with her sitting out in a lush garden smelling night-blooming jasmine, a glass of wine in her hand. She wore a flimsy excuse for a robe she’d paid entirely too much money for.

But if a woman couldn’t splurge for such an occasion, when could she?

The night hummed, the breeze just balmy enough to cut back the heat while a fat old moon sailed over a sky dashed with stars and smeared with filmy clouds. He’d turned music on so that Bonnie Raitt’s Delta-rich voice oozed out of the garden speakers.

Phoebe sipped wine and gave some lazy thought to making love again.

“I feel like I’m on vacation,” she told Duncan.

“I should’ve put little umbrellas in the drinks.” His voice was as lazy as she felt. “Something with steel drums on the stereo. Except I don’t have little umbrellas or any steel-drum CD. No, Jimmy Buffett. It should’ve been Jimmy Buffett and margaritas.”

“This is fine. This is perfect. I may never move from this exact spot.” She turned her head to smile at him. “You’ll have to start charging me rent.”

“I’ll take it out in trade.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t want to go anywhere tonight. Clubs, bars, movies. It’s so nice to just be.”

“Clubs, bars, movies, they’re not going anywhere. It’s nice to just kick back.”

“You had a busy week.”

“Ava’s a slave driver. Beneath that pretty face is the heart of Simon Legree. I think I looked at every tree and shrub for sale in greater Savannah yesterday. And all those drawings and layouts. Sod. Fountains. Statuary. Birdbaths, feeders, houses. What-all. She doesn’t care for the concept of ‘do whatever you like.’”

“She mentioned you took her by an old warehouse the other day. That you’re converting it into apartments and shops.”

“Yeah. Thought she’d get some ideas going on that and be too busy to drag me to another nursery. How about we take a sail in the morning? In fact, we can sail over to Savannah.”

“That sounds perfect. Everything’s just about perfect.”

“Give me a couple minutes.” He shifted toward her on the wide chaise, then slid a finger down to open the thin robe. “And I’ll make it absolutely perfect.”

She didn’t have a doubt in the world, not when his mouth found hers, when his hands began to cruise. She reached out blindly until her glass clinked against the table. With her hands free, she tangled her fingers in his hair.

The breeze played along her skin; the music thrummed just under it. When her head fell back so he could run his lips down her throat, there was the white ball of moon overhead.

She moved under him, opened for him so when their mouths met again he slipped inside her. Slow and easy now, loose and lazy. Her eyes stayed open so that she could see herself in his. She felt herself rising and falling, rising and falling, in long, liquid waves of arousal and pleasure. When she spilled over the crest, she was still there, trapped in the blue of his eyes.

Why, she wondered, would she want to be anywhere else?

“One more.” He murmured it, then captured her mouth again, sumptuously. Her heartbeat thickened, her bones softened.

I love you.The words rose in her throat, ached to be said.

They were good words, Phoebe told herself. Good, strong words that deserved to be said. But perhaps saying them for the first time when still coupled with the man on his garden chaise wasn’t the best choice of time and place.

Instead, she framed his face with her hands. “You were right. You made it perfect.”

“Being with you…” He turned his head so his mouth pressed to her palm.

The gesture had her heart taking another stumble. Something fluttered inside her belly. “Being with me?”

His gaze leveled on hers. “Phoebe—”

Her cell phone rang.

“I jinxed it!” She struggled up. “I shouldnever have said perfect.” She thought of Carly, her mother, her brother. Snatched up the phone. “Phoebe Mac Namara.” The sound of Dave’s voice didn’t loosen the knots in her gut until she was certain it wasn’t her family.

“Bonaventure? Where?” Without pen, paper or much of anything else, Phoebe took mental notes. “Yes. For me, specifically? I’m on Whitfield Island, at a friend’s. I’ll be there as soon as I can. All right. Yes, all right. I’ll be headed out in five minutes.”

In fact she was already up and hurrying toward the house as she spoke. “Tell him I’m en route. No, no, don’t.” She glanced at Duncan as he pushed the door open for her. “I have access to a very fast car, but I’ll need a kit. I’ll call you back when I’m on the road.”

She clicked off.

“I need to borrow your Porsche.”

“No problem, but it comes with me at the wheel.”

“I can’t take you where I’m going.”

“Yes, you can,” he corrected as they ran up the stairs.

“Duncan.” She tossed off her robe as she rushed into his bedroom. “There’s a man chained to a grave at Bonaventure Cemetery.” She grabbed clothes. “All he’s wearing, apparently, is a vest of explosives.”

“If he’s going to blow himself up, I hope he’s already got a reservation. Bonaventure’s pretty full up.”

“He’s the hostage,” she snapped back as she pulled on clothes. “He’s claiming to be, and he claims whoever strapped the bomb on him ordered him to call nine-one-one at a specific time, and ask for me by name. If I’m not there by one, whoever’s holding the trigger pushes it, and he goes up.”

“Only another reason I’ll be driving. You don’t know the car, I do—and I know the roads better. I’ll get you where you need to be. When’s the last time you drove a six-speed?” he demanded when he saw the argument in her eyes.

Phoebe dragged on her shoes, nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

It made more sense to have him driving the Porsche like a hellhound over the island roads toward the bridge. She had her hands and mind free to contact Dave, to take notes.

“He claims he can’t give his name, not until you get here,” Dave told her. “He’s saying he’s wired for sound as well as the bomb, and the person behind it can hear everything. He’s wearing an ear bud and a mike.”

“Is he lying?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll be there inside five minutes myself, but from the sound of it, my professional assessment would be he’s scared shitless. On-scene reports there are a lot of fresh bruises on his face, his torso, arms and legs. So far, he hasn’t told us who did it, how, when, why. He can’t, he says. He can only tell you.”

“The way we’re moving, I’ll be there inside fifteen. What grave is he chained to?”

“Jocelyn Ambuceau, 1898 to 1916.”

“Unlikely that’s random. It or she means something.”

“Having it run.”

“Tell me more about the unidentified man.”

“White, mid-thirties, brown and brown. Solid build. Accent sounds local. No jewelry, no tats. Arms and legs in shackles, shackles hammered into the ground with posts. He’s in his boxers, barefoot. He’s broken down twice since officers arrived. Just cried like a baby. He’s begging us not to let him die. Begging us to get you here. Get Phoebe.”

“My first name? He calls me by my first name, like he knows me?”

“That’s my take, yeah.”

“Tell him I’m nearly there.” As they roared around a turn, she braced a hand against the dash. “Make sure if anyone is listening, they can hear I’m nearly there.” She looked at her watch. “I know it’s nearly deadline, but we’ll make it. Make sure they know I’m coming in. Ten minutes, Captain.”

“I’m turning in now. I’ll hold things until you get here.”

She clicked off, looked at Duncan.

“You’ll make it.” His eyes stayed on the road as he took the car down the little two-lane road at a hundred and ten. “Have you ever dealt with something like this before?”

“No. Not like this.” She spotted the lights up ahead, got Dave back on the phone. “I see the radio cars. Let them know we’re not stopping at the gate. Have one lead us in.”

The Porsche fishtailed on the turn, grabbed road and lunged forward again. It was a blur of moss-draped trees, ornate statuary that gleamed under the moon. Heat put a shimmer on the air, on the thin spit of ground fog. Then there were lights up ahead, through dripping arches of trees. The Porsche slammed to a halt behind the radio car, and Phoebe jumped out.

“You have to stay back,” she shouted at Duncan as she dashed through gravestones and winged angels.

Dave moved toward her quickly, gripped her arm. “The bomb squad’s marked off the minimum safe distance. Nobody goes beyond it. Not negotiable.”

“All right, okay. Situation changes?”

“I just got here two minutes ago.”

“Let me get started.”

She went forward slowly now. Even with the lights there were pockets of dark. Someone handed her a vest, and she shrugged it on as she studied the weeping man sitting on the grave.

An angel looked out over him, her face serene, her wings spread wide. There was a lute clutched against her breasts.

Below, the man hunched with his face pressed to his updrawn knees, the sound of his weeping raw and harsh against the insect buzz. Pink roses—fresh to her eye—were scattered around him. “I’m Phoebe Mac Namara,” she began, and his head jerked up.

She froze, stopped in her tracks well before reaching the tape strung out by the bomb detail. Everything in her turned to ice, then thawed again in a sudden gush of hot panic.

“Roy.”

“Jesus.” Beside her Dave clamped a hand on her wrist. “I didn’t see his face. I didn’t recognize him.” Wasn’t entirely sure he would have. “Phoebe, you can’t approach,” Dave said over Roy’s wild shouts. “You cannot approach.”

“Understood. Understood.” But panic sweat sprang onto her skin. “Roy, be quiet now. You have to calm down. Take a breath and calm down. I’m here now.” While she spoke, she wrote quickly on her pad.Check on my family! Cop on the door. Carly here. She dashed down Phin’s address. “We’re going to be all right.”

“He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Oh God, I don’t know. Why is this happening?”

“Can he hear us, Roy?”

“He says he can hear. Yes, he can hear. You…you fucking bitch. I have to say what he tells me or he’ll blow it up.”

“It’s all right. If he can hear me, can he tell you what he wants?”

“I…I want you to shove some of this C-4 up your twat, you useless cunt.”

“Do we know each other?”

“You cost me,” Roy said with tears running down his cheeks. “Now I cost you.”

“What did I cost you?”

“You’re going to remember. Phoebe, help me, for God’s sake, help me.”

“All right, Roy. All right. Let me keep talking to him. You must be angry with me. Will you tell me why?”

“Not…not time yet.”

“You called me out here, and I came. There must be something you want from me, something you want to tell me. If you’ll explain to me why—”

“Fuck you,” Roy said on a hitching sob.

“I feel as though you don’t want to talk to me yet. Is it all right if I talk to Roy? Can I ask Roy questions?”

“He’s laughing. He’s laughing. He…Go ahead, have a nice chat. I need a beer.”

“Roy, how did you get here?”

“He…drove.” Eyes swollen from weeping and blows darted around the graveyard. “I think. In my car.”

“What kind of car do you have?”

“M-Mercedes. E55. I just got it a few weeks ago. I just…”

“All right.” She scribbled down the make of the car.Find, she wrote. “He drove your car from Hilton Head?”

“I was in the trunk of my car. I couldn’t see. Blindfold, gag. Coming home, driving into the garage. In the garage. Gun to the back of my head.” He pressed his battered face to his knees again. “Came up behind me. Then, I don’t remember. I don’t know until I woke up and I couldn’t see or talk. Hard to breathe. In the trunk, tape over my mouth. Couldn’t find air.”

She took one relieved breath when Dave stepped back and wroteAll safe. Cop on doors. “How long ago?”

“I don’tknow. ”

“Okay, it’s okay. How did you get here, where you are now?”

“Heard the trunk open.” He lifted his head again, shivering. Phoebe could see the insects feasting on him. “Something over my face—got dizzy, tried to fight. Hit me, hit me in the face. I woke up, and I was here, like this. He was talking in my head. In my head. I screamed and I shouted, but nobody came. He talked in my head, told me what to do. My phone, he left me my phone, told me to call nine-one-one, what to say. Only that one call, he said, only say what he told me to say, or he’d push the button.”

“You never saw him,” Phoebe said as she scribbled down Roy’s full name, address, telephone number, and wroteHow long missing? under it, circled it twice before passing it to Dave.

“Roy…”

But he was sobbing now. “I didn’t do anything. Why is this happening?”

“That’s not helping, Roy. Roy!” She sharpened her voice enough to get through. “You need to try to stay calm. The important thing is for us to work together so we can resolve this. I’d like to talk to him again, if he’s ready. I wonder if he could give me a name—it doesn’t have to be his name, just any name he’s comfortable with. So I’d have a way to address him.”

“I feel sick. I feel…No! No! Don’t! Please, don’t!” Roy’s eyes wheeled as he strained against the shackles. “Please, God…Okay…Okay. I…I’m—I’m tired of listening to you whine, you worthless piece of shit. Keep it up and—and I’ll blow you to hell and be done with it.”

“If you do that, I won’t know why you wanted me out here tonight. Why you’re angry. Will you give me a name to call you?”

“He—” Roy’s teeth chattered. “S-sure, Phoebe. You can call me Cooper.”

Though her throat tightened, she wrote the name clearly on the pad, followed it up withHigh Noon. “All right, Cooper. Since I can’t talk to you directly, I can’t hear how you feel. Can you tell me how you feel?”

“Powerful. In fucking charge.”

“Is being in charge important to you?”

“Damn right.”

“Wouldn’t it be more direct, more in charge, if you and I talked face-to-face?”

“Not time.”

She stared into Roy’s flooded eyes, listened to Roy’s tortured voice, and fought to get inside the head of a man she couldn’t see, couldn’t hear.

“Can you tell me how we know each other, Cooper? Where we know each other from?”

“You tell me something.”

“All right. What do you want me to tell you?”

“Do you care about this…worthless son of a bitch?”

Tricky, she thought. Care too much or care too little, either could incite. “Do you mean Roy?”

“You know I mean fucking Roy asshole Squire.”

“He’s my ex-husband. I don’t want to see him or anyone else hurt. You haven’t really hurt anyone yet, Cooper. We can resolve this without—”

“Tell that to Charles Johnson. You see—you see—God, okay—Did you see how surprised he looked when those bullets hit him?”

“Are you telling me you’re responsible for the death of Charles Johnson?”

“Can’t you fucking understand fucking English, bitch? I put him in the ground. Not the first time you helped somebody into the ground, is it? Is it? Won’t be the last, and that’s a promise. Please,” Roy wheezed. “Please, please, please.” And he shuddered under the spreading wings of the angel.

“Did you know Charles Johnson?”

“Just another worthless gangbanger. But you got him to come out, didn’t you? Got him to come out without doing any hostages. Nobody inside that place worth crap, but you saved them, didn’t you?”

“Who didn’t I save, Cooper? Are the roses for her? Who is it you cared about I didn’t save?”

“Figure that out, Phoebe, figure it out and beg for forgiveness. Maybe you’ll save yourself.”

“I’ll beg for forgiveness now. If I wasn’t good enough or smart enough to save someone, I’ll beg for forgiveness now. Tell me what you want me to say, and I will.”

“Better get started. Say…what? No, no, no!” Roy tried to stand, could only kneel. “Please. Okay, okay. Say time’s up. Goodbye, Phoebe.”

“Cooper, if you—”

The blast lifted her off her feet, shot her back through a hot burst of air. She landed in a heap, across a stranger’s grave.

She knew what was whizzing overhead, thudding into the ground. Pieces of an angel, pieces of dirt. Pieces of Roy.

Images flashed through her mind, fast, disjointed. The first time she’d met him, at a party, and the big megawatt smile he dazzled her with. Making love with him on the big bed in the hotel suite where he’d surprised her with a weekend, and roses, and champagne. The instant before their lips met the first time as husband and wife. Dancing. Lights.

Then blank dark.

Someone was shouting for her.

Phoebe pushed up to her elbows. She caught a blur of movement as Duncan dove. And he was over her, holding her down. Through a tunnel she heard more shouts, pounding feet, the crackle of radio static.

She didn’t struggle; there was nothing to struggle for.

“What have I done?” she whispered. “Oh my God, what have I done?”

22

She’d told him to go home. It pissed him off. What the hell did she take him for?

Duncan paced the area outside her squad room. He couldn’t sit; he couldn’t settle, and he wished to God he couldn’t think. Unfortunately, he could, and his mind kept sneaking back to that moment, that ohmyjesusgod moment when what had been a man had become…nothing.

Bits and pieces of meat and bone, and something like a horrible red fog.

He couldn’t remember, not exactly, moving. He remembered feeling something—like a quick punch of air, and the sounds, whizzing and shouting, thunks—thunks of statuary and earth and God knew hitting trees and ground, other stones and statuary.

He knew he’d seen a piece of what had been Roy hanging in the lacy webs of Spanish moss. He thought he’d seen the stone angel’s disembodied head fly, her face splattered with red, her smile peaceful and serene. But he might’ve imagined it.

He didn’t remember running, walking, jumping toward Phoebe. Just being there, he remembered just being there on top of her while the chaos boomed around them. He remembered hearing her say:What have I done? She said it over and over until someone—Dave, he thought, the captain—had pushed at him, pulled at them.

Are you hurt? Are you hit? That’s what he’d asked first, Duncan was nearly sure of that. His face had been as white as the flying angel’s.

It blurred some after that. Lots of movement, lots of sound, more sirens.

And she’d told him to go. She’d stood in the middle of that nightmare and told him to go. Fuck that.

She was in with the captain, that’s what they’d told him. In with Captain Mc Vee and some others. So he’d wait. He’d goddamn wait.

He wanted a drink. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to touch her just to assure himself one more time they’d both come through it whole.

But all he could do was wait.

“Dunc.”

He turned, and his stomach did one hard shudder when he saw Phin striding from the elevator. For reasons he couldn’t explain, seeing his friend had his legs going weak enough to have him sinking down onto a bench.

“Jesus. Oh Christ.”

“You’re okay?” Phin took a hard grip on Duncan’s arm as he sat beside him. “You’re bleeding. Are you okay?”

Dully, Duncan looked down at his shirt. “It’s not my blood.” Just a little souvenir from Bonaventure, a little memento of Roy. “But I think I’ve got a ways to go before I get within shouting distance of okay. Jesus, Phin. Fucking Christ Jesus.”

“What the hell happened? Do they know what the hell happened?”

“He blew up. He just…It’s not like the movies. Man, it’s not like that.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Loo? The kids?”

“Fine. Kids are sleeping. We got cops around the house. This was Carly’s father?”

“Roy. Roy Squire. Had him chained to the ground on a grave, strapped with explosives. Poor son of a bitch. Something about being grabbed out of his own garage, beaten up some, maybe drugged. Phoebe was talking to the guy who did it through Roy—the ex. He had, ah…” Duncan made a helpless gesture at his ear.

“Okay, I get it.” Studying his friend’s face, Phin pulled a flask out of his hip pocket. “Take a slug, brother.”

“I’d kiss you for this, but I’m not feeling romantic.” Grateful, Duncan took the flask and swallowed straight whiskey. “He was—Roy—he was crying, begging. The guy…Cooper,” Duncan remembered. “He told Phoebe to call him Cooper. He wouldn’t say what he wanted, he wouldn’t say why. Then he must’ve told Roy to say goodbye. And he pushed the button, he set off the bomb. He blew apart, Phin. Fuck, he just blew apart.”

“Duncan, did you set the security before you left your house?”

“What? No.” Had he? No. “We were out of there too fast.”

“Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make some calls, get some people over there to do a sweep and to secure the place.”

Duncan let his head fall back. “Because he went after Phoebe’s ex, he may come after me.”

“No point in being sloppy, is there?”

“No, no point.”

In the office, Phoebe sat ramrod straight. Her family was safe, and their homes under guard. She could put that worry out of her mind. Roy was dead; she couldn’t change that. She had to block that guilt out of her mind, her heart, her belly.

“Hilton Head PD is investigating. They’ve got a crime-scene unit going over the house and garage. We’re looking for the victim’s car.”

“The grave has to be symbolic of something or someone.”

“We’re getting the information.”

“I need my family protected, not just for tonight—”

“Phoebe.” Dave spoke quietly. “They will be.”

“All right. He was engaged. I only know her first name—Mizzy. I don’t know if they were living together or—”

“It’ll be taken care of.”

Of course, yes, of course it would. “A personal attack of this nature has to stem from a personal grudge. Who have I pissed off, hurt, threatened?”

“We’ll need to speak to Arnold Meeks.”

“Yes.” She drew a deep breath. “He needs to be interviewed and his whereabouts confirmed. But this wasn’t his doing. He was a bad cop, he’s no doubt a violent man, and a complete asshole. But he’s not a killer. If what this Cooper told me tonight is fact, he’s killed at least twice now. In cold blood. Meeks acts in rage, short-term planning, without factoring in the consequences.”

“Someone acting on his behest. With or without his knowledge.”

“Maybe. But I think it’s more personal yet. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you, and a whole lot worse. Something I did or didn’t do. Someone I didn’t save.”

When she closed her eyes, pressed her fingers against her lids, all she could see was Roy. She dropped her hands into her lap. “A failure, a professional failure that was personal to him. Who did I lose, Dave? When? How? I need to go back over my case files, all the way back. Any hostage or hostage-takers, any cop or bystander, anyone who was injured or killed during an incident where I was negotiator.

“I think it’s going to be a woman,” she added.

“Why?”

“Because he’s Gary Cooper. Because Roy was chained to a woman’s grave. We can’t discount anyone, but I think it’s going to be a woman. He knows, or he’s learned how to handle, weapons and explosives. Maybe he was trained in the military or law enforcement. Or maybe he trained himself. Because he planned this. Roy wasn’t impulse, not spur of the moment.”

She pounded her fisted hand on her thigh. “I couldn’thear. How could I listen and know how to respond, know how to bring him down when I couldn’t hear his voice, the inflection, the emotion?”

“Phoebe, you’re not responsible for this.”

“Then why did he set it off? Did I ask the wrong question, choose the wrong tack? All the time, trouble, the risk he took to get Roy where he wanted him, to get me there, then he ends it? I have to listen to the tape, I have to figure out what I said—or didn’t say—what pushed him to end it.”

He swiveled his chair until they were knee-to-knee, face-to-face. “You know better than that.”

“Under normal circumstances, we all try to know better than that. But this wasn’t normal circumstances. It was about me this time.”

“What you said or didn’t may not be the answer.”

“No. He’s killed two people, because of their connection to me. I have to know why. We have to find the answer, Dave, because he has no reason to stop at two. He’s been outside my house.” She closed her eyes again. “He may try for someone I love next.”

“He won’t get near them.”

“He can’t once we identify him, find him, stop him. I…I need to contact Roy’s fiancée. And I have to tell Carly. I have to find a way to tell Carly.”

“What you have to do right now is go home, get some sleep. Take a little time, Phoebe. It might be a good idea for you to talk to the counselor about this.”

“The best cure for guilt and misplaced responsibility in the negotiator is work, study and training.” She managed a ghost of a smile. “Someone wise has been known to say that, often.”

“Maybe I have, but in this case, you need sleep first. We’ll talk about the rest of it later.”

When she walked out of Dave’s office, she went straight into the women’s room and finally let herself be sick. Viciously, violently sick.

Emptied out, skin clammy, eyes running, she sat back against the stall door until she got her breath back. She didn’t weep. This had gone far beyond anything as simple and cleansing as tears. She simply sat on the floor, back braced, until she was sure she wouldn’t be sick again.

Then, after rising, she walked to the sink to wash her face, to rinse out her mouth with cupped handfuls of cold water. He’d been looking into her eyes, she thought as she lifted her head to look into her own now. He’d been looking straight into her eyes, his full of fear and pleas, this man she’d once loved. This man she’d made a child with.

Then he was gone. Gone, she thought, because she once loved him and made a child with him. Not for his own sins, but because she met him one night at a party, and let herself love.

So she’d find the answers. She’d search until she found them.

After drying her face, shoving her dampened hair away from it, she started toward her office. She’d go home—Dave was right about that. But she’d take some files with her. The odds of getting any real sleep were slim, so she could work off the hours, and maybe find some answers.

She didn’t see Duncan until he was pushing to his feet and walking toward her.

“You should’ve gone home.”

“Don’t even start that crap with me, okay?”

“What?”

“Goddamn it, Phoebe.” He took her arms. Then he just jerked her against him. “Okay, fight later. Let’s just do this for a minute.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Yeah, me, too, and back at you.” He eased her back to take a good study of her face. Her eyes were reddened, shadowed, exhausted. “I’ll take you on home now.”

No car, she remembered. She didn’t have her car. “I have to get a few things out of my office first.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Duncan—” She broke off when she saw Phin coming toward them, clicking his cell phone closed.

“Carly.”

“She’s fine. She’s fine.” Phin kept walking, opened his arms and took Phoebe in. “She’s sound asleep. Got a patrol car out in front of the house, another couple cops out the back, and my fierce wife and lovely dog inside.”

It surprised a muffled laugh out of her. “Thank you. I should go by and get her, bring her home.”

“Honey, it’s four in the morning. Since it was damn near midnight before the giggling stopped, I bet those girls are going to be sleeping a few hours yet. Why don’t Loo and I bring her home after she’s up and around? We’ll call you first, then bring her home. How’s that?”

“Good. That’s good. No point in waking her up to…No point. I’m grateful, Phin, grateful to you and Loo, and I’m sorry.”

“No need to be either about this.”

“I need to get a few things. I’ll only be a minute.”

Phin watched her go. “She holds up pretty good.”

“She’s got that strong spine. Something that appealed to me right off. Everything okay on the home front?”

“Taken care of. I’m going to go on. You get some sleep, you hear. We’ll talk about all this later.”

Duncan gave him a bump on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

When Phoebe came back, Duncan stepped over to take her overloaded briefcase. “Good idea. You’re going to work from home for a while.”

“Not instead of, in addition to.”

“Only so many hours in the day, Phoebe.”

“So I need to make good use of as many as I can. This is police business, Duncan.”

“Oh, don’t pull that crap on me either.”

She remained silent a moment, ordered herself not to respond. But her willpower snapped when they stepped off the elevator. “I seem to be pulling quite a bit of crap on you tonight.”

“Yeah, and I can’t say I care for it.”

“Then you ought to just go on. I can get my own way home.”

“In about one more minute, I’m going to take this shovel I’m using to pitch away this crap and hit you over the head with it. I’ve had a bad night, too, Phoebe, so watch where you push.”

“I told you to go home, didn’t I? I said—”

She didn’t say a thing more as the breath whooshed right out of her when he whipped her around and pushed her back against his car. She’d seen him irked a time or two, even seen him on the edge of nasty temper. But this was the first time she saw the full-blown affair.

His eyes had the hard, hot look of a man who could and would kick any number of asses, then gesture for more to come on.

“We found out I like aggressive women—thanks for that. I like strong women, and smart women. I like women who can handle themselves. I like, apparently, a woman who knows where the hell she’s going and how she wants to get there. You getting this?”

“You’re hurting my arms, Duncan.”

He eased his hold a fraction. “What I don’t like is being told what to do, or how I should feel or what I should think. I don’t like being fucking dismissed when—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Shut up, Phoebe. I’m not finished. I don’t like being dismissed when a smart, strong, knows-how-to-handle-herself woman figures she doesn’t need me anymore. I don’t like, and I won’t tolerate, being told it’s none of my non–police ass’s business when I stood out there tonight and saw that poor bastard blown to pieces. So go ahead, Phoebe, tell me one more time to go on home.”

Her breath shuddered out once before she controlled it. “I didn’t think I could face you again tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“I wasn’t sure…I thought I might break down if I did, or worse, that you’d look at me differently. I don’t know. It’s not rational, it’s emotional, all right? I’ve got plenty of goddamn emotions.”

“I’ll say. Phoebe, first, if you’d broken down—”

“I said it wasn’t logical.” The shove she gave him to push him back had a little heat along with it. “Don’t stand there trying to make it logical.”

“Good point.” He considered a minute, then reached into his back pocket for the flask Phin had given him.

“Oh God. Thank you.” She took a short sip, then a long drink. “Oh Jesus.” She leaned back against the car. “Oh Jesus, Duncan.”

“I never…” He took back the flask for another quick pull. “It’s not like I ever imagined. What happens to a person.”

“The bomb guys call it pink mist.”

He capped the flask, opened the car door for her. “You’ve been through it before?”

“Not like this.” She waited until he was behind the wheel. “I’ve been on teams, a few times, when we weren’t there soon enough, or something went wrong. I’ve never seen…nothing like this. I was so mad at him, I was soangry. About him getting married again and moving to Europe without giving Carly a thought.” She rubbed the heels of her hands on her eyes. “I think it’s worse, it’s worse having those feelings in me for him than if we’d managed to be friends, or at least friendly. But that’s what I had in me for him.”

“That’s not what I saw out there at Bonaventure. You weren’t thinking about how mad you were. You were thinking about saving his life.”

“Didn’t think hard enough. And that’s destructive,” she said before he could speak. “I know it. It’s indulgent and egotistical. Duncan, are you going to consider it more crap if I tell you it’s best if we don’t see each other for a while? If I tell you because the man who killed Roy may decide it’s more fun to go after someone current in my life, it’s best if there’s some distance between us.”

“Plenty of distance between you and Roy.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’d consider it crap. And if I give you the respect of admiring the fact you can handle yourself, I’d appreciate the quid pro quo.”

She said nothing, just pulled out her badge as they approached her house. “Let me ID us to the radio car first.” She stepped out, crossed over.

He waited by the car while she had a brief conversation. She’d have noticed, he assumed, that there were lights on inside the house. No one, it seemed, was getting a good night’s sleep.

“I’m not telling you to go home,” she began, “because I don’t want to get beaned with that shovel. I’m just going to tell you that you don’t have to stay.”

In answer he simply took her hand. Ava opened the door as they stepped onto the veranda. “I’m so glad you’re home!” She dashed out barefoot to wrap her arms around Phoebe. “They said you weren’t hurt.”

“I’m not. Mama?”

“I’m here.” Her face gray, Essie stood a foot back from the open door. “Phoebe. Phoebe.”

So the veranda was lost to her, for now, Phoebe thought, and moved into the house quickly to take her mother into her arms. “I’m fine. I promise.”

“They said there was trouble, something bad. Carly—”

“Is fine. You know she’s fine. She’s sleeping.”

“And…and Carter and—”

“Mama. Mama. You need to breathe. You need to keep breathing. Look at me now, and you listen. Everyone is fine. Carter and Josie and Carly. You and Ava. I’m right here, too. Duncan’s here. He brought me home.”

Even as she spoke, Phoebe could see her mother was falling into a panic attack. Her breath was short and choppy—quick, strained indrawn gasps. The shakes had started. Sweat beaded on Essie’s face.

“Ava.”

Together, Phoebe and Ava eased Essie down to the floor before her legs buckled.

“Mama. I’m right here, Mama. Feel my hand?” She glanced up as Duncan draped the throw from the back of the parlor sofa over Essie’s shaking shoulders. “Feel my hands, Mama? Rubbing your arms? Hear my voice? Take a nice breath now.”

It eased, bit by stingy bit, minute by endless minute.

“All right now, all right.” Phoebe drew Essie close, stroking her hair. “Nice deep breaths now. There you are.”

“I couldn’t stop it. I’m so sorry, Phoebe.”

“Ssh. Ssh. It’s all over now.”

“Here, Essie, why don’t you drink a little water?”

Essie looked over as Duncan crouched to offer a glass. “Oh, Duncan. I’m so embarrassed.”

“Sip a little water. I’m going to go make y’all some tea.”

“Oh, but—”

“You’re not going to make me feel like company, are you, Essie?”

A tear dripped down her cheek as she shook her head. “Phoebe, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to come home and worry like this about me. You look so tired.”

“We’re all tired. Come on now, Ava and I are going to get you up and get you to the sofa.”

“Ava, you should go in and make that tea. That poor man. What must he think of this household?”

“Don’t worry about Duncan.” Ava helped Essie to the sofa. “Are you cold?”

“No, I’m fine now. I—” She passed a hand over her face and grimaced at the sweat. “Look at me! Like I had the mother of all hot flashes.”

“I’m going to get you a cool cloth.”

“I couldn’t stop it,” Essie told Phoebe when they were alone.

“I know.”

“You wish I’d take the medicine, but most of the time I’m fine the way things are. I was just so worried. We were both so worried. Then wouldn’t you know when you’re home and I know you’re safe, I have a spell like that.”

She reached out, touched Phoebe’s face. “Something very bad happened.”

“Yes, something very bad. Mama, I’ve got some of the pills. You could take one. I don’t want you upset.”

“I’m all right now. You said Carly and Carter and Josie weren’t hurt. Or Dave?”

“Dave’s fine.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll be all right with anything else.”

Ava came back with a small white basin and a damp cloth.

“You better sit down, Ava.”

She told them about Roy. Though Essie’s face went sheet white again, she didn’t have another attack. She and Ava sat together on the couch, gripping hands. Duncan said nothing when he came in, just passed around the tea, then sat while Phoebe finished.

It was Essie who rose to sit on the arm of Phoebe’s chair. She put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, eased Phoebe’s head against her and stroked.

“Oh, Mama.”

“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing. Poor Roy. Poor Roy. The man was useless as tits on a bull, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“Mama!”

“People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it to the bank they’re thinking ill.”

Essie looked over, saw Duncan struggling against a grin. “And look at you, just worn out, too, aren’t you? But the house is all locked up. Locked up tight and we’re safe inside it. You need to rest awhile.”

“Yes, we all need to rest.” Phoebe took Essie’s hand. “I’d never let anyone hurt you.”

“We’ll all go rest. Duncan, you’re going to stay. It’s safe in the house, so you’ll stay. Come on, baby girl. Duncan’s going to stay in with you so you’re not alone. You’ll sleep better.”

When Phoebe lifted her eyebrows, Essie just shook her head and continued to walk her out of the parlor. “As if I had no idea the two of you haven’t found your way into bed together already. Sun’s going to be up before long. We’ll all get some rest. We’ll have a late breakfast.”

Ava nodded at Phoebe over Essie’s head, then slid an arm around Essie’s waist. “Eggs Benedict? Won’t that be fine, Essie? And fresh berries.”

Phoebe sighed as Ava walked her mother down the hall to Essie’s bedroom. “She’s closed the worst of it out of her mind for a while. It’s too big right off, so she keeps it out.”

“Sounds like a healthy idea to me.”

Phoebe turned into her bedroom. “If she can keep her mind on something else like eggs Benedict, she won’t panic. But eventually, it’ll claw its way in.”

“Phoebe.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking up wearily as she pulled off her shoes.

“I’d say what happened tonight, and the overall threat of what could happen? That earns a good dose of panic.”

“Hard to argue. God. I’m too tired to get undressed.” She simply lay down on top of the spread, curled on her side.

Duncan slid in behind her, spooned her. “Didn’t expect our first overnight would end up with us both fully dressed.”

“Duncan? I want to say that I appreciate the fact that you shovel away the crap when I get into one of those get-away-and-let-me-do-this-all-by-myself spells.”

He smiled into her hair. “I’m going to buy a couple of spare shovels tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” She took his hand in hers, pressed it between her breasts.

And within moments, Essie proved right. Phoebe did sleep better with him there.

23

With Carly curled in her lap, Phoebe rocked and stroked as she used to when Carly was a baby. She knew what it was like to lose a father, to be told he was gone and never coming back. The hitch and jolt of it, the impossibility of the concept of death and forever to a child.

But she didn’t know, couldn’t know, what it was to lose a father she’d never really had. Or to lose anyone to such sudden and stunning violence.

No matter how she’d softened or edited the details, it was still horrible. And those details would eke through, like fetid water through a crack in a wall—widening little by little from the whispers of neighbors, the blasts on television, the questions from other children at school.

There was no shoring it all up, blocking it all out. So it was best, always best, to be as honest as possible.

“Did it hurt?” Carly asked her.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I hope not.”

“How come he had to die here when he didn’t live here?”

“I’m not sure. I’m going to try to find out.”

Carly nestled in closer. “Is it bad I didn’t love him?”

“No, baby.” Phoebe could only hold tighter. “No.”

“I didn’t love him, but I didn’t wish he would die.”

“I know. Me, too. I know.”

“Poppy’s granddad died, and she went to the funeral, where he was dead in a big box. Do I have to go to the funeral?”

“No. I don’t know if there’s going to be one, or where or when. We weren’t…it’s not up to us. If I find out and you want to go—”

“I don’t. Is that okay? Please, I don’t want to.”

“That’s fine.” The quick fear in Carly’s voice had Phoebe rocking again. “You’re not to worry about that, sweetie.”

“What if he hurts you? The man who hurt Roy, what if—”

“I’m not going to let that happen. Carly—”

“The other man hurt you. He hurt your face and your arm.” Tears trembled now as Carly rubbed her hands on Phoebe’s cheeks. “What if he comes back and hurts you again, or he kills you like Roy got killed? Mama.”

“He’s not going to come back and hurt me. The police are going to make sure he doesn’t. Isn’t that what I do, Carly? You have to trust me to take care of you and Gran and Ava, and myself. Even Carter and Josie. We’re going to be careful. Don’t cry now, listen to me. Listen, okay? We’re going to be so careful,” Phoebe said gently. “We’re going to have police right outside the house for a while, even inside if it makes you feel safer.”

“If he comes into the house, will they shoot him with their guns? Will you?”

Oh, well, God. “He won’t get into the house. But if he did, we’d do whatever we had to do to be safe. I promise you. We’re all going to be careful, right? So you’ll remember everything I told you about talking to strangers, and getting into someone’s car—even going near the car. No matter what they say to you, no matter what they tell you. What do you do instead of going near the car?”

“I yellno as loud as I can and I run away.”

“That’s exactly right. We’re all going to be fine, baby, because I’m going to find out who did this to Roy. Then he’s going to go to prison. And he’ll never get out again.”

“Will you find out soon?”

“I’m going to try. And Uncle Dave’s going to try. All the police I work with? They’re all going to try.”

Satisfied, comforted, Carly laid her head back on Phoebe’s breast. “Are you sad, Mama?”

“I am. I am sad.”

“Are you scared?”

Truth, Phoebe thought—but simple truth. “I’m scared enough to be careful, and to work really hard to find out why this happened. You know what happens when I work really hard?”

The smallest hint of a smile curved Carly’s lips. “You get the job done.”

“That’s exactly right.” She gathered Carly close, spoke almost to herself. “That’s exactly right.”

She got the call, and had to go. It was difficult, more difficult than she’d prepared herself for to leave her family. Cops on the door, she reminded herself. But none of those cops was her. She’d consider the control issue some other time, Phoebe told herself. But right at the moment, she wished that she could split herself into two parts, and that one of them could stand watch over the house and everyone in it.

She hated, too, that she’d had to ask Carter and Josie to move in temporarily. It was safer, and more efficient to have the people she considered most at risk under one roof.

But it was still a hell of a thing to ask a couple who were basically still on their honeymoon.

Yet they’d come. There was little, she knew, Carter wouldn’t do for her. And less yet, Phoebe thought, he wouldn’t do to make sure his wife was safe and sound.

And still, come morning, they’d all have to go on—to some extent—with their lives. To work, to the market, to the bank. She’d keep Carly home from school—just a day or two of indulgence there—until she was confident her daughter could be protected outside the house.

For now, she went downstairs to tell her family she had to leave. And was surprised to see Duncan huddled in the parlor with Carter and Josie. She’d assumed he went home after she took Carly upstairs to tell her about her father.

They stopped talking when she stepped in, and every eye turned to her.

“Plots, plans?” she said, in a halfhearted attempt to keep it light. “Duncan, I didn’t realize you were still here.”

“Thought I’d hang around awhile. How’s the kid?”

“She’s a tough little bird. She’ll be okay. She went down the back way to see my mother in the kitchen. Carter, Jo…Lousy situation, that’s about all I can say. I have a number I’d like both of you to log into your cell phones. Direct line to the precinct, and a situation room set up for your protection. Anything, anything at all strikes you as off, you call it. Duncan, I’d appreciate it if you’d log in the number, too.”

“Do you really think this lunatic would try to hurt one of us?” Josie asked her.

“I’m not going to take the chance.” Stress, Phoebe noted, around Josie’s usually cheerful eyes. Death threats weren’t the norm for a hospice nurse who marries a schoolteacher. “You’re on a case now, right?”

“Yeah. I’m taking the seven-to-four shift, cancer patient. Private home on Bull Street.”

“Good, close to my cop shop. If you could write down all the particulars, all the names—the other nurses, the people in the house, your routine, it’ll be helpful. Same for you, Carter—your class schedule, meetings, everything. Duncan—”

“I’m probably a little less structured, schedule-wise.”

“Have you considered private security? Just temporarily.”

“I’m not having some hulk walking two steps behind me. My house is covered; I’ve taken care of it. You’ve got enough to worry about. I’ll worry about me.”

“I’m not egotistic enough to say this is happening because of me. It’s not. But I’m pissed enough—and I’m good enough—to say I’m going to find out who’s trying to get to me through the people in my life. And doing that is one of the reasons I have to go.”

“You’re going out?” Carter moved forward immediately to take her arm. “Phoebe, the point is he’s trying to get toyou. Herding us up eliminates his being able to hurt any of us. And gives him more reason to go straight at you.”

“If and when, I’ll be ready. Carter, I’ve got a child who needs me. I don’t intend to be careless or stupid. Dave’s coming by to pick me up, and I’m going into the station house, where I’ll be surrounded by other cops.”

“Being surrounded by cops didn’t stop one of them from sending you to the hospital,” Josie pointed out.

“No, and I won’t be that easy a mark again. Arnie Meeks is the reason I need to go in. He’s being brought in for questioning. I need to be there. I need you to stay here, to keep everything as calm and normal as possible.” She touched Carter’s cheek. “Roy wasn’t prepared. Why should he have been? But we are. And we’re going to get through this. It’s what we do, isn’t it? Get through.”

“Mama’s scared to death.”

“I know.” Nothing could be done about it. “I’m counting on you. And I’m resting easier on that count having a nurse in residence. You’re taking a lot of weight off me, Josie.”

“We’ll be fine,” Josie assured her. “We were just talking about what we could do to keep things as normal as possible. Food, games, music. Business,” she added with a quick smile at Duncan.

“I thought Essie and I could come up with a business plan.”

“Good. That’s good. Keep them busy, will you? And when they ask, tell them I’m with Dave. I’ll be back soon. Duncan, maybe you could walk me out.”

“Sure.”

She waited until they were on the veranda. “It has to be said,” she began. “You’d be smarter, safer and certainly saner if you went home, kept your distance. Not only from me, but from my family.”

He nodded as he studied the lovely tree-lined street. “Didn’t help Roy much, did it?”

“No.” Blunt help, she discovered. Straight to the point. “You have the resources to go anywhere, and for any length of time. You could get out of Savannah for a while, and those resources would also ensure no one outside your inner circle had to know where you are.”

“Cut and run.”

“It’s not running, and you’ll still have your balls in Tahiti or wherever.”

“Easy to say when you don’t have any balls—so to speak—in the first place. I’m not going to Tahiti. Savannah’s my home, and I have projects in the works I’m not prepared—okay, not willing—to put on hold. And I’m not ditching the redheads to go drink mai tais. But you knew that.”

“Deduced that,” she corrected. “Still, it had to be said. I also have every confidence you’ll take care of yourself, but that doesn’t mean I won’t worry—and you knew that. So I need to ask you to check in, every two hours. A quick call, a text message, I don’t care how you check in, but I need you to do it.”

“I can agree to that, if it’s reciprocal.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “You want me to check in with you?” Brows still lifted, she flipped back her jacket where her badge was clipped to her waistband.

“Yeah, real pretty. I call you, two hours later you call me, two hours later, back to me. That’s how it works.”

She tapped her fingers on her badge as she studied him. “You might be good in my line of work. That’s agreed. Here.” She handed him a piece of paper. “Emergency number’s on there. If you could make sure everyone inside has it on both cells and the house line, I’d appreciate it.”

She turned, scanned the street, the trees, the cars, over to the park. “He could be watching the house. He could be anywhere.”

“Let’s give him something to look at.” He pulled her close, covered her mouth with his.

As he started to ease her back, she wrapped her arms tight for one hard embrace. “Don’t take any chances. Zero chances. If it even seems like it might somehow be related to taking a chance, don’t.”

“Yoo-hoo!”

Phoebe’s nerves were stretched tightly enough that even recognizing Lorelei Tiffany’s voice, she laid a hand on the butt of her weapon. But her tone was easy when she turned and waved. “Hey there, Miz Tiffany.”

“Don’t you two make a picture! That’s a handsome man you got there, Phoebe. Few years ago, I’d’ve stolen him right out from under you.”

Decked in daffodil yellow, with little Maximillian Dufree coordinating with leash, collar and bow tie, Mrs. Tiffany sent Duncan a flirtatious smile.

“Ma’am. When the woman’s as delicious as you, I’d be the one doing the stealing.”

Mrs. Tiffany let loose a girlish giggle. “Oh, you! Better keep a hold of that one, Phoebe. Maximillian Dufree and I are about to take a turn in the park, if y’all like to join us.”

“I wish we could.”

“Don’t blame you. I’d find something more energetic than dog-walking to do if I had a handsome man like that around. Bye now.”

“Normal,” Phoebe murmured when the pair clipped off. “There’s still a lot of normal in the world.”

“Savannah’s a world where a dog in a yellow bow tie’s pretty normal. I saw that hairless dog humping a pink toy poodle across the way a while back. I guess that’s normal, too.”

“For Maximillian Dufree, it is. The pink poodle would be Lady De-lovely, who carelessly seduces Maximillian Dufree—despite his lack of essential equipment—and all the other dogs—including several females of her acquaintance—with wanton regularity.”

She watched Mrs. Tiffany, in bright yellow glory, breeze into the park. “I wish we could do something as nice and normal as walk in the park and watch a couple of silly-looking dogs.”

Duncan ran a hand down Phoebe’s arm when Dave’s car pulled in. “You take care, Phoebe. We’ll get down to some normal of our own real soon.”

“Counting on it.” She took one last look at him, one last look at the house, and walked down to Dave’s car.

“Everybody okay?” Dave asked her.

“Holding.”

“Mr. Lucky appears to be sticking.”

She glanced back, saw Duncan still standing on the veranda. “He does. I think that’s one of the things he’s good at. He’s good at sticking. So are you,” she added. “You stuck by my whole family, all these years. Which makes you a target, Dave. You’re as close to me as any of my family, a hell of a lot closer to me than Roy was.”

“I’m taking precautions.” He took one hand off the wheel to pat hers.

“Be sure.” She shifted toward him. “You’ve been my father since I was twelve. The one I looked up to, depended on and, in a lot of ways, the one I’ve tried to emulate. If he knows me, and he must, he knows that.”

This time his hand squeezed hers. “I’ve been proud of you since before I ever met you face-to-face. Fact is, I love you like my own. I’m not going to let him use me to hurt you. All right?”

“Yes. Yes. All right.” She took in a breath, let it go. “Why did they bring Arnie in? I thought they were going to question him informally at home.”

“They did, or attempted to, then hauled him in when he took a swing at one of the detectives. Little bastard put his own ass in the sling.”

“Short fuse,” Phoebe replied. “The man who killed Roy has a long one. Long and cold. Arnie Meeks doesn’t fit the profile, Dave.”

“Maybe not. Could be he has a friend or family member who does. Let’s put it through the process, Phoebe. One step, then the next.”

He hadn’t asked for a lawyer. That was to prove he was a hard-ass, Phoebe concluded as she studied Arnie through the one-way glass. It was also monumentally stupid. He’d been a cop long enough to know better, but he wanted to show that he could tough it out, this was no big deal.

He wore a gray T-shirt and jeans, scuffed Nike low-tops and a surly expression. He hadn’t shaved, so there was a rough stubble on his face that suited the look in his eye. The screw-you-all look.

He’d hurt and humiliated her, laid in wait for her and violated her. She understood the knot squeezed in her sternum was a normal, natural reaction to that, to standing here looking at the man who’d bound and beaten and stripped her.

But she couldn’t loosen it.

“You don’t have to do this.” Dave put a hand on her shoulder, gave it a quick squeeze.

“Yes, I do.”

“You’ve already faced him down once, Phoebe. There’s nothing to prove.”

“I have to do this. I have to see him while they question him.”Look in his eyes, listen to his voice. “It’s the only way I’ll know, that I can be sure, if he’s the one who killed Roy. Or if he knows who did.”

“I’m going to say what has to be said. You don’t owe Roy anything.”

“Maybe not. But I owe it to Carly. I’ll be fine.”

Fine might have been an exaggeration, but she got through and that was good enough. She watched Sykes and Liz double-team him, work him around, and poke and prod at Arnie’s non-answers. All three knew how to play the game, she thought. But Arnie was outnumbered, outmatched.

“Can’t deny you’ve got it in for Lieutenant Mac Namara,” Sykes said casually.

“Old news.”

“A man pounds on a woman that way, it never gets old. The kind of man who does that?” Sykes stopped, shook his head. “On my gauge he’s low enough to do anything.”

“Oughta have your gauge checked.”

“Tell you what mine says,Arnie. ” Liz circled around to speak from behind him. “It says you’re a fucking coward. The kind of sick son-of-a-bitching coward who’d blow some helpless bastard to pieces. Did it make you feel big? Make you feelimportant to take him out?”

“I didn’t even know the asshole. I told you. I never touched the bastard. Why would I? Seems to me he had the good sense to dump that know-it-all bitch. I’da bought him a drink if I’d met him.”

“He was nothing to you, right?” Liz leaned in. “Nothing but a tool you could use to fuck with the lieutenant.”

“I don’t need to fuck with her. Like I said, old news.”

“How do you like playing rent-a-cop for a bunch of yuppies in Calvin Klein suits, tourists in flip-flops, Arnie? Bet that never gets old.”

Arnie’s face darkened—anger, Phoebe thought, and more. Embarrassment.

“It’s temporary.”

“Oh yeah? You think your daddy’s going to get you back on the job?” Drumming the flats of his hands on his own belly, Sykes let out a hoot. “Pig’s eye, Arnie, and you know it. You’re done, broke the family chain. Some bitch cost me my badge, I’d sure as hell want payback. Why don’t you tell us where you were last night, Arnie? Where you were from ten to three in the morning?”

“Itold you. I was home, with my wife.”

“Stupid to lie, don’t you think? Doesn’t show a bright light.” Sykes tapped his temple. “Especially when the wife’s not too happy with you to begin with.” Sykes pushed through the file in front of him. “Her statement says she doesn’t know when you got home, but you weren’t there when she went to bed at eleven.”

“She’s wrong.” After a shrug, Arnie tipped his head back to study the ceiling. “I was down in the den, fell asleep watching TV.”

“She locked up, Arnie. She did the walk-through before she went up to bed. If you were there, snoozing in front of the tube, where was your car?”

“She didn’t see it. She’s pissed at me, sure. Just giving me a hard time.”

“He’s lying,” Phoebe stated. “He’s lying about being home. And he’s nervous.”

“She can’t place you on the day of the Johnson shooting either. Too bad.”

“It was my day off, goddamn it.” Anger punched through the shaky nonchalance. “I was running errands. I had things to do.”

“Yeah, things to do,” Liz agreed. “Like set yourself up in an apartment window and shoot an unarmed man, a surrendering teenager.”

“Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck you. I’m not getting screwed on this because that bitch Mac Namara wants more blood. She’s got you bowing and scraping and doing whatever she wants. I wanted to kill anybody, you can bet your ass it’d be her.”

“Killing her ex in front of her, that’s a handy way to shove it in her face. Killing Johnson after she’d spent hours talking him down, that’s rubbing it in.” Sykes shot out his index finger like the barrel of a gun. “You’ve got a twenty-two pistol, Arnie. You shouldn’t have left the slug in that dumb rabbit.”

“What? What rabbit? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“He’s not lying about that.” Phoebe shook her head. “He doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Once we match the bullet and the gun, we’ll have ourselves stalking and harassment charges. Breaks your probation. You’ll do time. You’ll go inside. No way your daddy’s going to be able to dig you out this time.”

“Leave my father out of this.”

“You won’t,” Liz tossed back. “You’ll be calling Daddy for help any minute. We’ll match the bullets from the rabbit. Then there’s the dead snake, the dead rat. Upped it from the doll you mutilated and left for her. I’m betting you upped it from wildlife to Roy Squire.”

“I don’t know anything about any damn dead rabbit.”

“The doll,” Phoebe said quietly, even as Sykes narrowed his eyes.

“You know something about the doll, don’t you? You got sweatier over the doll.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Messed up the doll like you’d planned to mess up the lieutenant,” Sykes continued. “Rang her bell one night and left it outside her door. Then the dead rat, then right up to Roy Squire. Yeah, smells like pattern to me.”

“That’s bullshit. Maybe I tossed a doll by her house, so what? That was weeks ago, and I haven’t gone near her place since. I haven’t gone near Mac Namara since…”

“Since you beat her in the stairwell?” Sykes finished. “Since you put a fucking bag over her head and stripped her down? You don’t have any friends here, Arnie. Nobody wants to help you, so you keep lying. Makes me warm inside. You keep right on lying your way into a cage, and this time there’s going to be a hotshot on the other side. There’s a needle waiting for you, you sack of shit.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind.” Arnie was sheet white now, and running sweat. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t shoot any damn rabbit either.”

“We got motive, means, opportunity. Yeah, keep lying, fuckhead. You know how the DA loves it when a coward killer whines and lies. He’ll go for the needle, no question.”

“I didn’tknow the son of a bitch. I haven’t been to Hilton Head where you said he lives. You can’t put me there.”

“Give us time. I was never happy, were you, Liz, with the way this asshole skated after messing with the lieutenant?”

“Me, I wanted to see him get some serious tuning on that. This time…”

“She’s behind it.” Arnie swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “You know damn well. Trying to set me up, that’s what she’s doing. I saw the damn doll at a yard sale, just used it to give her something to think about. I didn’t kill anyone, I haven’t been to goddamn Hilton Head. She’s trying to fuck me over. She can go to hell. I wasn’t anywhere near Bonaventure last night.”

“Where were you, Arnie? Prove it, and make this go away.”

“I got me a girlfriend, okay? My wife’s not giving me any support, or any sex, or anything else. So I’ve got someone who will. I was with her last night at her place. And I was banging her until after two in the morning.”

“Name.” Liz shoved a notebook across the table. “Address. We’ll ask her how much she got banged.”

“She’s got a husband, okay? He was up at Myrtle Beach playing golf for a few days, so we used her place. You’ve got to let me talk to her first, tell her this is serious shit so she won’t blow it off. Her husband finds out, he’ll knock her around. She has to know you’re not going to use her name.”

“Let you talk to her first, prime her?” Sykes snorted out derision. “Not going to happen, Arnie. You’re telling the truth, we’ll keep her out of it. Sounds like you deserve each other.”

“My wife’s already talking divorce, and all because Mac Namara—”

“Oh yeah, all this is Mac Namara’s fault. Sure. She tricked you into busting her up just so you’d get tossed off the job. Write the name down, Arnie.”

“She’s an exec at Terrance, Inc. You go see her there, not at her place. You go talk to her at her office. You have to give me the courtesy of being discreet.”

Sykes’s eyes were hard as stone. “You lost the right to courtesy from anyone here when you jumped Lieutenant Mac Namara in that stairwell. You remember that, asshole. Ain’t nobody on your side. You want to save yourself, you write down the name. Otherwise, you’re going in on assaulting an officer and you’re staying in until we put all these ducks in a row.”

As he wrote, Phoebe turned to Dave.

“It wasn’t him. He’s a pig, and he’s stupid with it. He didn’t kill Charles Johnson or Roy. He hasn’t got the stones or the smarts.” She turned back to the glass. “He’d really like to hurt me. He’d still like to make me pay. But he wouldn’t understand that killing that boy, that killing Roy, hurts me, that it makes me pay. He doesn’t understand me at all. Whoever did those things does.”

“We’ll check out the woman, see if the alibi holds.”

“Yeah. I’m going home. I’ll start going through the files. He’ll be in there. He’s in there somewhere.”

As Phoebe stepped out of observation, Liz slipped out of the interview room. “I was just coming back to talk to you. Got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s, ah…” Liz glanced over, gestured toward the women’s room. “Take it in here.”

When they were inside, Liz leaned back on a sink. “Hard for you, watching that. Watching him. The glass isn’t much of a barrier.”

“Yeah, it was, and no, it’s not. But it had to be done.”

“He’s not the guy, Phoebe.”

“No, he’s not the guy. You and Bull did good in there. His alibi’s going to check out, and we’ll be able to eliminate that avenue.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Truth? I have no idea.” Phoebe ran her hands over her face, back into her hair. “I’ve got my family holed up inside the house like a group of hostages. No choice. Whoever did this to Roy has made us all hostages, and I don’t know the terms. I don’t know what he wants or why. I can’t negotiate their safety if I don’t know the terms.”

“You want to go grab some coffee?” As she asked, Liz tipped back her watch to check the time. “I can take thirty while Bull wraps up.”

“I look that bad?”

“You look like you could use a cup of coffee and a friend.”

“I could, but I need to get home. Pull out the linchpin, the wheel slips off. Right now, for my family, I’d be the linchpin. Could you let me know if and when his alibi’s confirmed?”

“No problem.”

Phoebe opened the door, shut it again. “I wish it was him. Wish it was that son of a bitch. Roy’s dead, can’t change that. Part of me wishes it was Meeks so it would be over and done, and I’d know my family’s safe. But there’s another part, Liz, just as active, just as sharp, that wishes it was him so he’d go down. All the way down. And not for Roy, not in the guts, you know? So he’d go down for every minute inside that stairwell. I thought I’d come to terms with the way all that shook out, with the payment made. But standing in there, looking at him? I haven’t come to terms with it.”

“Understandable.”

“Is it?”

“Scales are only balanced when your gut tells you they are. You may have to accept the payment. You don’t have to like it.”

“I don’t.” Something loosened in her chest because she’d been able to say it, to spew it out to someone who understood. “I don’t like it one damn bit. He should do a little time helpless and terrified, then maybe…” Phoebe shook her head. “Problem for another day. I think I have enough others to fill the plate for now.”

“You should give some thought to talking to the counselor.”

“I will. Really. I need to get through this first.” She managed a smile. “That was better than coffee. Thanks for the ear, Liz.”

“I got two when you need another.”

24

She put it away, locked up the turmoil that seeing, hearing, watching Arnie Meeks had made swirl inside her. No time, no place for it now. It would come back, she knew, spurting up to twist her belly into knots. When it did, she’d just have to find a way to uncoil them until there was time, until there was a place.

She had a whole checklist of priorities ahead of that one.

On Jones, she parked, got out of the car. Why, she wondered, did the house seem toloom sometimes? She could go weeks, even months, without thinking of it as anything but home—a beautiful, graceful place to raise her child, to house her mother, her friend. A place to eat, sleep, live, even entertain occasionally.

What did it matter that she hadn’t chosen to live there, tobe there? In the end, it was only a house. Only brick and glass. Cousin Bess’s ghost had long since moved on.

Lack of choice, she thought. It was all about choice, and not having options.

Despite the fact she was needed inside, Phoebe walked around to the courtyard gate. Away from the police car, away from that looming face of brick and glass.

Here, at least, there’d been choices, even if she’d left them almost entirely up to Ava. Gardens and paths and shady nooks, graceful tables, whimsical statuary.

She sat on the steps of the veranda, looked out, and imagined that lovely courtyard somewhere else. New Orleans maybe, or just another street in Savannah. Could be Atlanta or Charlotte.

And what difference, really, at the base of things?

All the difference, she admitted. All the difference in the world.

She heard the door open but didn’t turn. So much, she thought, for solo brooding time.

Carter sat beside her, put a glass of wine in her hand. And said nothing at all.

She took the first sip in silence, with only the elegant music of the fountain trickling through. “I’m having a sulk.”

“Hence the wine. Want me to go back in?”

“No. I decided to pick at an old scab. Cousin Bess, this house and the locks she put on the door I can’t open. Nothing to do about it, so it’s a good one to sulk about as I don’t have to find the solution.”

“Which in every other instance you do.”

She looked at him. “It’s what I do, isn’t it?”

“It’s what you’ve taken on, almost as long as I can remember. Reuben was the big demarcation, but there was stuff before that. In the blurry before time.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder a moment. “Everything changed when Daddy died. For me, beforethat’s the blurry time. She could’ve helped us then, you know. Cousin Bitch. There might not’ve been a Reuben if she’d done the right thing by Mama then. But she didn’t, and there’s no point speculating on what might’ve been.”

She sat silent awhile, drinking wine, studying the fountain. “Mama came through for us, every day.”

“I know it.”

“It must’ve been so hard. When I think about it, I can’t fully imagine what it was like for her. The worry, the work, the grief. The fear. But she always came through for us. Then, she takes a chance on someone who makes her think she’s special, and who starts off treating her so well. And it nearly kills her and her children. Hardly a wonder she started closing doors.”

“I never blamed her for that.”

“No, no, you never have, and sometimes I do. God, it shames me that sometimes I do. It doesn’t matter what I know, sometimes it just pisses me off she won’t walk outside, go down to the market, go to the damn movies. Anything. It doesn’t matter I know she can’t. Sometimes…”

She shook her head, took another sip of wine. “I think about now, this situation, and how I can’t send her and Carly away somewhere. I wouldn’t have to worry so much if I could put them on a plane to anywhere else until this is over.”

“We need to talk to her about therapy again. Not now,” he said before Phoebe could answer. “Not when she’s already tied up. But later, when…like you said, this is over. Josie and I could move in. Not just temporarily.”

“You wouldn’t be happy.”

“Phoebe—”

“You wouldn’t. And I am happy here, most of the time. I’m just having a champion pissy spell. I got all these wires crossed in me right now. Arnold Meeks is clear on Roy. I knew that before I went down there to observe. But observing got me twisted up and mad and scared all over again. I’d rather be pissed than scared, so I’m out here concentrating on that part.”

“Doing a good job.”

“That’s the important thing.”

Across the courtyard a hummingbird, bright as a jewel, flirted with the riot of morning glories climbing the iron trellis against the wall. Free to choose any blossom, Phoebe thought, free to fly on.

People weren’t birds.

“How’s Mama?”

“Crocheting. Before he left, Duncan had her working on ideas for stock and cost analysis. God knows. Just the right thing to keep her mind off all this. He’s good at that. Working people.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Compliment or complaint?”

“I like him. He got Carly in on the discussion about stock. Fashion consultant. She was completely into it.”

“As a future personal shopper should be.”

“Knowing what buttons to push, well, that’s a talent, and he’s got it in spades. How and when and where you push them shows what you’re made of, to my way of thinking. So yeah, Phoebs, I like him just fine.”

“I more than like him fine.”

“Oh. Really?” Eyes narrowed now, Carter took a long look at her face. “And that worries you because?”

“I didn’t say I was worried.”

He rolled his eyes, then tapped a finger on the faint line dug in between her brows. “Right there says you are.”

She shrugged, then rubbed the line away. “Come on, Carter. Crappy track record.”

“Roy was a jerk. Everyone’s entitled to screw up with a jerk once. And I’m sorry I said that, sort of, because I just remembered he’s dead. Still.”

“A jerk, dead or alive. True. Crappy track record,” she repeated. “Demanding career that often messes up personal plans.”

“A guy’s dating a cop, he’s got to figure on that already. I don’t buy either worry. Sorry. Try again.”

“A seven-year-old daughter. I’m not saying she’s a problem or a worry. She happens to be the love of my life. But she’s a factor. Her happiness is first. And forging a serious, lasting relationship with someone when they have to accept someone else’s child as part of the package is tricky.”

Carter flicked that away with his fingers. “People do it every day. Several times a day. I could do a Google search and get you stats.”

“They do, but those people aren’t me, or Carly, or Duncan for that matter. Add in this house. He has this fabulous place out on Whitfield Island. He built it. I couldn’t—say if things went to a much higher level—ever live there. I can’t move. And there’s Mama. Take me on, take her on, too.

“Now, maybe one of those factors isn’t such a deal, just one thin string. But add them all up, that’s a big, messy ball of sticky twine. And tying it all up? I don’t know if he more than likes me fine.”

“Could ask him.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say. You man you.” She blew out a breath. “Well, I’ve succeeded in depressing myself on that score, which has nicely distracted me from my brood, which distracted me from this horrible situation. Now it’s time to leapfrog back to horrible situation.” She got to her feet. “I need to work awhile.” She leaned down, kissed Carter’s cheek. “Thanks for the wine, and the rest.”

“It was your wine but the rest is always available.”

It could have been worse, Phoebe thought. With Ava and Josie huddled in the kitchen and her mother and her daughter closeted with designs and yarns, Phoebe had a solid chunk of time to work undisturbed.

For a house under siege, she decided, theirs was clicking along at a remarkably normal pace.

In the morning, she thought, she’d contact the FBI, relay the situation and request copies of files where she was a part of a crisis team.

Long time gone, she mused as she opened more current files. But she’d take no chances.

Every case file she read took her flying back. Amazing, she realized, how every detail popped clear. Four years, five, it didn’t matter how long ago. Once the log was in front of her, she remembered.

Suicides, domestic disputes, robberies gone wrong, custody battles, embittered employees, revenge, financial gain, grief, mental or emotional instability. Any and all could and did arrow toward hostages.

And sometimes, no matter what was done, negotiations failed. She failed.

She organized by year, and started with the first year she joined the Savannah police.

By the end of that year she’d lost three. One suicide, one hostage and one hostage-taker. It didn’t matter that there’d been dozens more she’d talked down, or talked out. She’d lost three, and now each was fresh in her mind.

So fresh she began second-guessing the steps she’d taken, the words she’d spoken, the tone used. Too long a pause—not enough of one.

Fruitless to do so, she knew. Even dangerous.

Still, three lives had slipped out of her hands. Was Roy dead because of one of them?

She started a fresh file with the names of the dead, the year, the place, the nature of the crisis. Then began to chart the names of those connected to them personally, professionally. And added the names of team members.

She was halfway through the second year when Ava gave her doorjamb a knuckle rap. “You’ve got to come up for air. And a meal.”

“I’m fine, Ava. Promise.”

“You’re not. None of us are. But we need to breathe and eat and sleep.” She crossed to the desk. “Your mother and your daughter need to see you doing those things, even if it’s only for a bit here and there.”

“All right, I’ll come down. Ava, I know you’re planning to take a couple weeks with Steven out West later in the summer. I was thinking you ought to bump that up. The semester’s over in just a few days anyway. You could head on out, hook up with him early, then—”

“Be out of harm’s way, if by any chance I’m in it? Seeing as we’re all stuck in this house for however long that might be, it’s pretty shortsighted of you to make me mad on day one.”

“I’m not trying to make you mad, Ava. I’m trying to give myself one less person—two, actually, as Steven’ll be coming home—to worry about. You’d be doing me a favor if you and Steven take your vacation now.”

Ava tilted her head. “I’m not doing you any favors, Phoebe. I’m not leaving Essie or Carly, and that’s all there is to it. If it was just you, I’d go, because a more self-sufficient woman I’ve never known. To the point of being annoying at times. Such as now.”

Phoebe shifted in her chair. “You shouldn’t make me mad on day one either.”

“Then I’ll hope to avoid that and tell you I’ve already talked to Steven and told him he should go on up to Bar Harbor with the family of his college roommate as they’ve hit it off so well. He won’t be coming home until June. And if we’re not back to normal by then…” Ava scooped a hand through her swing of hair. “I’ll think of another way to keep him from coming home.”

“Which tells me you didn’t tellhim why you’re so easy about him going to Maine.”

“He’s my baby same as Carly’s yours, no matter how old he is. I’m not letting him come into this. Essie needs me, and while Carly has some of your self-sufficiency, she’s just a little girl, and she needs me, too. And so, damn it, Phoebe, do you. So you can just forget tossing me off like I was more weight than value.”

“If I didn’t value you, I wouldn’t want you to go. You could take Carly and…” Phoebe dropped her head in her hands. “I know that won’t work. Iknow it, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting it. If I sent Carly away, she’d be upset and scared, probably more than she is now. Mama’d be frantic. Iknow it, Ava. Just as I know I can’t leave Mama on her own day after day after day in the house. I need you here, but I love you, and I wish you could go.”

“There, I’m not mad at you anymore.” She skirted the desk and chair to wrap her arms around Phoebe from behind, press cheek to cheek. “We’re all on edge.”

“It’s what he wants,” Phoebe said quietly. “Whoever he is, that’s what he wants first.”

“Then sitting down to a nice meal is like flipping him the bird, if you ask me. We got us a nice roasted chicken, and I taught Josie how to make scalloped potatoes.”

“Which means I’ll give him the finger a second time when I have to go up and work out to make up for eating two helpings of those damn potatoes.”

“Better keep it to one and save room for strawberry shortcake.”

“Oh God, why do you torture me?”

“When I’m upset, I cook.” Ava eased back. “I cooked a hell of a lot today.”

It had been beautiful. He couldn’t believe how perfect and powerful it had been. Every minute, every breath, from the moment he’d tossed that worthless fuck Roy into the trunk of his overpriced status car until the instant he’d blown him to hell had been an e-ticket ride.

Better, by far, than shooting the gangbanger. That had been so quick, and so much less dramatic.

Still, he wished he could have seen Phoebe’s face when Roy went boom. That would’ve been the icing.

He looked at it now, the face tacked to the wall of his workshop. A face among many faces. All hers. Phoebe Mac Namara. Coming home from a hard day of screwing with other people’s lives. Standing around talking to one of her idiot neighbors. Walking her spoiled brat to the park, or along River Street. Swapping spit with that rich bastard she was screwing now.

Since he was still celebrating his recent success, he popped the top on another beer and toasted the many faces of Phoebe.

“Sweating now, aren’t you, bitch? Oh yeah, you’re sweating now. And you’ll shed buckets before I’m done.”

Trying to figure it out, he thought. She’d be racking her brains on this one. Who would kill poor Roy? Who’d do such a cruel thing? Boo hoo!

Hearing her voice in his head, he laughed so hard he had to sit down.

Too bad she hadn’t started fucking the rich bastard a couple months sooner. With more time, more research, more legwork, he might’ve been able to target the new playmate instead of the ex-husband.

Still, might be able to work something out. Just needed to think, to plan, to consider. Maybe take an opportunity, or make one.

“See what we see when we see it there,” he muttered. “Got us a timetable, Phoebe.” He lifted the beer again. “Counting down now. Tick, tick, tick. The last tick, and it all goes up in blood and smoke.”

Like she had, he thought, as another face swam into his mind. And with that image burning behind his eyes, he wept.

After dinner, after her daughter was safely tucked into bed, after the last call from her captain, Phoebe sat staring at the files.

There was a hollow place in the center of her now, as if something vital had just been carelessly scooped out.

She needed to work through it, or around it. If she could get her focus back, she could concentrate on the names, on the cases, on the reason. But that hollow place sat there, and threatened to pull the rest of her inside it.

She picked up the phone and called Duncan’s number without asking herself why she reached for him. Or why when he answered the rim around that hollow place began to shake.

“I…Duncan.”

“Phoebe. I was just talking to myself about you. Whether I should call you, or leave you alone for a while. Are you home?”

“Yes.” The hand holding her cell phone wanted to shake, too. “I’m home. Are you?”

“Yeah. Checking up on me?”

“I didn’t mean to…” To what? “To hover.”

“Let’s back up. I’d ask what’s wrong, but answer’s obvious. Is there something else?”

“I just talked to Dave. Everyone here’s as settled as they can be, considering. I didn’t want to say anything, to tell them now when…Jesus. So, I call you and babble. Sorry. I should…something else.”

“What did Dave tell you that you don’t want to tell them?”

“Quick trigger on the brain. I like that about you. I’ll probably find it annoying eventually. If it comes to eventually. He called to tell me—I needed to know—that they found…one minute.” She lowered the phone, got her breathing back in order. “There was a timer on the explosives. Roy. There was a timer set. The remote, that was backup, I guess. Or in case he wanted to go early. There was a timer, Duncan, set for one thirty-five. He was never going to let Roy live. No matter what I did or said, no matter what was done, it was always going to end the way it ended.”

There was a pause, and she could hear Duncan let out a long breath. “He gave it enough time to make sure you’d get there. Built in some time so he could play with you. He wanted you to see it. He wanted you on the spot. You know that, Phoebe.”

“He wanted me to bargain and wheedle and beg. And he wanted me to know, after it was done, that none of it mattered. Nothing I do will matter, because everything’s already set. Clock’s ticking down.”

“He’s got the last part wrong, because what you do will matter.”

“He’s got me scared to death. Just where he wants me.”

“You called the wrong guy if you expect me to tell you not to be scared. What are you going to do about it?”

“What am I going to do about being scared?”

“No, what are you going to do about finding him so you don’t have to be scared anymore.”

“I’m reading files and looking for any…You’re not going to tell me to be strong and brave?”

“I’ve seen you in action, I know you’re both. But there are limits. Why don’t I come over? I can read files.”

She swiveled from her desk so she could look at the dark pressing on the windows. “You’re offering to come over so I don’t have to feel strong and brave.” The empty spot inside her began to close. “That’s done the job.”

“Give me half an hour and—”

“No, no, I don’t need you to come. I guess I just needed you to say you would. I just needed to hear that…that I had an option,” she realized. “Let me ask you one question, and remember, I’m an active listener, so I’ll know if you’re lying. Considering the situation, are you sorry you asked me out for that drink?”

“Considering any situation, I figure it was the best move I ever made.”

She could smile. “Maybe second best, after deciding to buy a six-pack and a lottery ticket.”

“Might be running neck and neck. Phoebe, why don’t you pack it in for the night? Get some sleep.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.”

“I don’t know if I’m an active listener, but I know a lie when I hear one.”

“Maybe I’ll do that in a couple hours. Thanks for saying what I needed to hear.”

“I’ll be around if you need to hear something else.”

“Good night, Duncan.”

After a short, restless night, Phoebe considered working from home. Which would mean, she knew, little work at all, as she’d decided to keep Carly out of school for at least a few days.

Even if she could convince Carly to occupy herself elsewhere, Phoebe knew she’d be distracted—and she’d feel guilty being at home and barricading herself from her daughter. And her mother.

Better to go in, stay busy, be productive. There were cops on the house, no need to worry. Unless he got past the cops, she thought as she tried to work a miracle with makeup. Which he wouldn’t, but if he did, there was the security alarm.

And someone who could rig a bomb with remote and timer could probably bypass an alarm.

But he wouldn’t, she told herself.

He wouldn’t.

She gave up on any attempt to style her hair and simply yanked it back in a tail.

All her efforts were going to focus on identifying Roy’s killer, finding him and arresting him. Until then paperwork would wait, the scheduled training sessions would be postponed.

Lack of sleep meant she had a solid list of names. She’d start knocking on doors that morning, asking questions, gauging ground. It could be over by end of shift, she told herself as she gathered her files. And if it wasn’t, she’d keep right on until it was over.

As she started out of her room, she calculated it was early enough for her to slip downstairs, make coffee, leave a note and be out before anyone stirred.

She stopped by Carly’s door, peeked in.

Her daughter was sprawled across the bed, covers kicked off. The worn-eared bear Carly chose most often for a sleeping companion dozed at the tips of her fingers.

Satisfied, Phoebe backed away. If she caved and crept in to cover Carly, give her a quick kiss, that would be that. The kid was a light morning sleeper. Blue eyes would pop right open, and the questions would begin.

Instead, Phoebe continued downstairs. Coffee, she thought again, and maybe a quick carton of the low-fat yogurt she constantly tried to convince herself she actually liked. Leave a note on the fridge, check with the cop on duty, and she’d be gone.

As she stepped into the kitchen, Essie turned from the stove. Both women gasped and stumbled back.

“I thought you were upstairs asleep,” Phoebe said.

“I thought you were.” Essie gave her heart two quick pats. “Though you might as well shoot me as scare me to death, I’d as soon you didn’t. Shoot me,” she said with a nod toward the hand Phoebe had on the butt of her weapon.

“Sorry.” Phoebe let her hand slide away. “It’s barely six in the morning, Mama. Why aren’t you upstairs sleeping?” And at her mother’s quiet stare, Phoebe shook her head, then moved over. “Mama.” With her arms around Essie, she rocked. “What a goddamn mess.”

“You’re dressed for work.”

Phoebe kept holding, kept rocking, but the eyes she’d closed opened again. “I need to go in.”

“I wish you didn’t. I wish you wouldn’t. I wish…No, don’t pull back to pat and placate me.” Essie’s voice sharpened as she tightened her hold on Phoebe. “You’re still my little girl, and I wish I could keep you safe in this house. My whole family’s under this roof now, and I wish—I know it’s sick and it’s selfish but, my God, I wish I could keep all of you here.”

It was Essie who stepped back. “And I know I can’t. I’ll get your coffee.”

Phoebe started to say she’d get it herself, then stopped. Busy hands, she knew, helped her mother’s worried mind. “I know you’re scared, Mama.”

“’Course I’m scared. I’d be stupid not to be. Roy’s worthless ass is blown to hell.” She glanced back as she got out a mug. “I keep thinking I should feel bad saying that kind of thing, but I don’t. You never blamed him nearly enough, to my way of thinking. Didn’t matter, because I blamed him plenty for both of us. But I’m scared for you, baby. For all of us.”

She poured coffee, added the cream and sugar exactly as Phoebe preferred. “I know you’re worried I’ve gotten worse.”

“I worry,” Phoebe agreed. “I’m still your little girl, right? Well, you’ll always be my mama.”

“Sit down, baby. I’m going to fix you some breakfast.”

“I don’t have time. I’m just going to grab a carton of yogurt.”

“You hate that stuff.”

“I know. But I’m trying to acquire a taste.” Determined, Phoebe opened the fridge, grabbed a carton at random. Once she’d opened it, gotten a spoon, she leaned back against the counter. “I know that with what happened, with being smart enough to be scared, you’d be cautious about going out in the courtyard, or onto the front veranda, but—”

“I’ve been having trouble with that for a while now.” Idly, Essie picked up a dishcloth to wipe the already spotless counter. “The veranda, the bedroom terrace especially. Palpitations,” she said. “Knowing it’s in my head doesn’t make my heart beat any easier. But what you’ve never really understood is, I’m content inside this house. I don’t need what’s out there.”

Phoebe ate some yogurt. It tasted sour, just like her thoughts. “The world?”

“I’ve got a nice world inside this house most days, and if I need to know anything more about the outside one, I’ve got my computer. Honey, let me fix you some eggs.”

“This is fine.” She picked up her coffee to wash the taste away. “Have you been having panic attacks when I’m not here?”

“Not full-blown ones. Tickles now and then. Phoebe, there’s only one reason I wish I could walk out that door. That’s so you could, if that’s what you wanted. So you could walk away from this house. If I could, is that what you’d do?”

“Mama, I don’t have time to talk about this now.”

“It’s not yet six-thirty in the morning, and if you’re in a hurry, then you can answer quick and be done with it.”

Phoebe opened a cabinet, tossed the half-eaten yogurt in the trash. “I don’t know. Some days, I’d say yes. I’d walk away from this house just to spite Cousin Bess. She had no right, noright to work you like a dog and give you nothing.”

“She gave me a place to take my children when I was desperate.”

“And made you pay and pay and pay, every single day.”

“Do you think that mattered?” The little white scar stood out sharply when Essie’s cheeks flushed with emotion. “Do you think that ever mattered to me?”

“It should have.”

“That’s you, Phoebe. You’ve got a tough mind in there, and you tend to draw hard lines with it.”

“Mama—”

“Maybe you’ve had to have one, and maybe you need those lines. And still, my darling girl, what wouldn’t you do to be sure your Carly is safe and well? Did you leave Roy, when God knows you hate to give up on anything, hate to lose? Did you walk away from the FBI for yourself, or because you believed it was better for her if you took the position with the local police? For her, and for me—and don’t think I haven’t always known that. Did you count the cost?”

“It’s not the same, Mama. She treated you like dirt, and Carter little better.”

“And I’ve always felt there was a special place in hell with her name on it for the times she pinched and poked at that poor little boy. But he had a home, and food, and he had you and me. He had Ava, God love her, for good measure.”

“The house should’ve been yours, free and clear.”

“It’s mine close enough, not free and clear, but mine all the same. Do you hate it so, Phoebe?”

“No.” She sighed. “No. Some days I hate the idea of it, I hate the strings she pulls even from that reserved table in hell. She knew I would, and it burns my ass, Mama, to prove her right. But the fact is, Carly loves this house. She loves the courtyard and her room, she loves the neighborhood and the park. So, no, I don’t count the cost. Or only when I’m feeling pissy. So I don’t know, Mama, if you could walk out the door, if I would, too.”

She drained her coffee. “I have to get to work.”

“I know you do.”

Essie stayed where she was, listening to Phoebe walk down the hall, across the foyer. She heard the door open, close. And she moved to the window, to look out at the courtyard with its lovely flowers and shrubs, its elegant fountain and pretty pockets of shade.

And she saw a bottomless black pit.

25

She got in early enough to push through more files, to add to her list. The feds could’ve made her jump through hoops, but Phoebe knew enough people in the local bureau to slip through several tangles of red tape.

More than ten years, she thought, between her time with the Bureau and with the SCPD. Almost a third of her life. More than a third of her life if she counted the time in college, in the academy.

But a decade at the work, on the job.

She’d lost fourteen people.

Her mother was right, Phoebe admitted. She hated to lose, and she’d lost fourteen in a bit under eleven years.

It didn’t matter that three of those had died of injuries sustained before she’d been called on scene. And if it didn’t matter to her, she was damn sure it didn’t matter to Roy’s killer.

So, all those losses would have to be reexamined.

She pushed back from her desk, prepared to go into the field, and Sykes tapped on her doorjamb. “Lieutenant?”

“Come on in. Ah, Arnie Meeks. His alibi hold?”

“Yeah. Story matches.” Sykes’s face twisted into a sour expression, as if he’d swallowed something that didn’t sit quite right. “More, the woman he’s cheating with has one of those nosy neighbors. She saw Arnie go in the alibi’s house just before ten Sunday night. Knows his car, too, as she’s seen him there before. He’d parked up the block, but she spotted it when she took her dog Lulu out for a walk around midnight.”

“Right.”

“Had to take the pooch out again right before sunrise. You ever wonder why people have a dog if they’re going to have to drag their butt out of bed before dawn so it can water the petunias?”

“Yes, actually. I’ve been giving that specific arrangement a good deal of thought lately.”

Amusement glimmered. “Kid wants a puppy?”

“You’re an ace detective, Bull. Yes, she does.”

“Well. This particular dog’s doing what she needs to do, and that’s when Lulu’s mommy reports she saw Arnie…” Sykes flipped open his book, thumbed pages. “‘Strutting out of Mayleen Hathaway’s front door like the top rooster on the dunghill.’”

“Well, that clears him on this.”

“Too damn bad. But I could tell you he’s going to deserve this Mayleen, who has the breasts of a goddess, the brains of a peanut and the wrath of a wounded pitbull.” His smile was hard and brief. “I do believe she’s going to make his life a living hell for some time. Add his wife making it the same at home, and he’s not in a cozy spot right at the moment.”

“I’m feeling small enough, between you and me, to tell you that’s nice to hear.”

“I’m going to check with CS, see if they’ve got anything more on the victim’s car. Bastard shed a hair, they’re going to find it, Lieutenant.”

“Maybe you can do that on the way. I’ve got some avenues I’d like to explore. I could use you. Legwork first, then we’ll deal with the rest of the interviews and follow-ups by phone from here. I’ll explain on the way to the first.”

She picked up her bag, then set it back down when she spotted Sergeant Meeks striding into the squad room. “Give me a few minutes here first, will you, Detective?”

He glanced around, and his face hardened. “I’m happy to stand right here, wait till you’re ready to go.”

“No need. Just give me a minute.”

The look on his face said he’d do that, and he’d be watching the office while he did. Sykes and Meeks faced each other in the doorway like, Phoebe thought, a couple of tough mongrel dogs. Not so different in build, she noted, or in sensibility, she supposed, when it came to protecting their territories.

But so much different in approach.

Sykes spoke without taking his eyes off Meeks. “I’ll be right out at my desk, Lieutenant, when you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Detective. Sergeant?”

“Lieutenant.”

She kept the neutral expression on her face as Sergeant Meeks firmly shut her office door.

“Something I can do for you this morning?”

“You got hurt,” he began, “and my son lost his badge over it. His wife and his own son are upset and embarrassed.”

“I regret your daughter-in-law and grandson are troubled by the fact that your son put me in the hospital, Sergeant Meeks.” Her voice was Southern cream over cold steel. “My own family was, and is, considerably troubled by that event, too. Particularly my seven-year-old daughter.”

“The circumstances of your injuries aside, when you take on the badge, you take on the risks. A woman with a young child should consider that before going into law enforcement.”

“I see. And I see where your son picked up his opinion of women on the job. Was there something else, Sergeant, because regardless of your opinion of my choice of career, I have work to do.”

Nothing, not a flicker of the rage she knew had to be burning inside him, crossed his face. And there, Phoebe thought, was the control his son sadly lacked.

“You’re going to want to watch how you play this.”

“Is that another opinion, or is that a threat?”

“I don’t make threats,” Meeks said evenly. “You got some bruises, and they look healed up to me. But my son doesn’t have his badge or his reputation.”

“He’s not in jail either.”

“Is that what you want? Is that why you sent a man to his workplace to question him? You sent men to take him out of his house and haul him in for questioning in front of his family, his neighbors. You questioned his wife.”

“What I want is not relevant. His prior actions earned him the questioning, and he wouldn’t have been hauled out of his home in front of his family and his neighbors if he hadn’t taken a swing at Detective Sykes. Or didn’t you receive that portion of the report?” She angled her head. “Should I have a copy sent to you?”

“If he was provoked—”

“You make excuses for him all you like, as his father. But when you come into this office in uniform, you also represent this department. That’s somethingyou better remember. I notice you’re not complaining that I also sent a man to question your son’s married lover in order to verify his alibi for the time in question. Or wasn’t she on your list?”

She saw it hit, that one instant of surprise and disappointment. Then his eyes went flat. “The deal was struck, Lieutenant Mac Namara. If you keep harassing my son, I’ll take my complaints to the DA, to the chief of police and to the mayor.”

“You’re free to take your complaints to whomever you like, Sergeant.” The edge of her anger was a hot blade carving up her spine. “Before you do, I’m going to point out that rather than answer questions in his own home, or requesting that said questioning be done elsewhere, your son verbally harassed and threatened two of my officers, and assaulted one of them. I could see that his probation is rescinded and he do the time at Georgia State.”

She let that hang, let it steep. Then, placing the palms of her hands on her desk, leaned forward.

“And, oh yes, Sergeant Meeks, we’ll be honest. I can’t think of many things I’d like more. But for now? I’m going to suggest that instead of you coming in here and throwing your weight around my office, or trying to make me shiver with tossing around your fishing and golf buddies, you consider getting your son some professional help. Because you know what? That anger management? It doesn’t seem to be doing him much good.”

“If you think you’re going to lay this murder charge on him—”

“I do not think any such thing. He’s cleared of that. And by clearing him—a person known, without question, to have an unhealthy dislike of me—we can now focus on other leads and avenues in the matter of the murder of Roy Squire. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way to do just that.”

“You didn’t have to drag him out of his own home in cuffs.”

He sounded tired now, she noted. She felt the same damn way. Anger was energizing, but when it started to drip away with fatigue, it could easily form into bitterness.

“No, and he wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t called Detective Alberta a fucking cunt among other pleasantries, and taken a swing at Detective Sykes while threatening to beat him bloody. He swung at Alberta, too, and those officers were forced to subdue him.

“I believe your son is twenty-seven years old? I hope to God in twenty years’ time my daughter’s woman enough to stand up for herself, and doesn’t need her mama to do it for her.”

Phoebe wrenched open the door. “Don’t you come around here anymore to rattle your saber at me. You go right on to IAB, or the chief, the mayor or the damn governor of Georgia. But don’t you come here again to push your face into mine over your pathetic offspring.”

She swung out into the squad room. “Detective Sykes? Would you come with me now?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sykes pushed back from his desk, didn’t bother to disguise the snarky grin as he looked over at Sergeant Meeks. Then he strolled out in Phoebe’s wake.

She started with the oldest case first. She’d been Special Agent Mac Namara then. Still fresh from Quantico. She wouldn’t meet Roy for another few weeks, she remembered.

A pretty day, late fall, a breeze stirring the air.

Her hair had been longer then, hadn’t it? Yes, past her shoulders in those days, and she’d habitually pulled it back into a twist or knot because she’d thought it looked more official. More professional.

And because it made her feel sexy at the end of the day to pull out the pins and let it fall free.

Ava was still in the suburbs. Carter in high school and gangly with a growth spurt. And Mama’s world shrunk down to a square of about six blocks, but no one talked about it then.

“Botched kidnapping. Woman walked out of a hospital nursery down in Biloxi with a newborn baby girl. Posed as a nurse. She brought the baby here, to Savannah, to pass it off as her own. This was a surprise to her husband, who believed she’d gone south to visit her sister for a few days. She told him that she’d found the baby, abandoned, that it was a sign from God, as she hadn’t been able to conceive in their eight years of marriage, despite spending several thousand dollars on fertility treatments.”

“He buy that?”

“He did not. But he loved her.”

She sat at a light. Over the hum of the car’s AC, she heard the clip-clop as a mounted cop turned into the park.

“He’d also seen the news reports on this stolen baby girl, and put it together. He tried to talk to his wife—Brenda Anne Falk, age thirty-four. She wouldn’t listen. Couldn’t he see how that baby had her eyes? He called her sister, whom she had never seen on that trip south, and her parents, who were frightened and concerned. Then, not knowing what else to do, he tried to take the baby away from her.”

Phoebe stopped in front of a tidy office building. And continued when Sykes joined her on the sidewalk. “She got her husband’s thirty-two revolver, pointed it at his head and told him to put her baby down, that it was time for her nap.”

“Off the tracks.”

“Well off.” Inside the building, Phoebe pushed the button on the elevator. “He was afraid the baby could be hurt, so he put her down, tried to reason with his wife, who proceeded to shoot him.”

“Off the tracks and over the cliff.”

“Yes. Fortunately, she hit the meat of his bicep for a through-and-through. She locked herself in with the baby, shoved the dresser in front of the door. He called the hotline number he’d seen on the TV bulletins. And shortly thereafter, I came on as negotiator.”

“The baby make it through?”

“Yes, the baby came out fine. Screaming—hungry by that time—but right as rain.” She could hear it, Phoebe realized, she could hear that baby crying in her head. “Brenda Anne Falk, however, did not make it through. After over two hours of negotiations, of believing I was getting through to her, she told me that she thought it was time she gave up after all. And by giving up, she meant putting that thirty-two to her temple and pulling the trigger.”

She stepped off the elevator, checked the names on the doors along the corridor, then opened the one markedcompass travel .

It was a small operation with two desks on opposite sides of the room and a long counter at the back. Stands held a bounty of brochures, while the walls were decorated with large posters of exotic locales.

She recognized Falk immediately, though his hair had thinned some, and there were glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He tapped keys on a computer, but Phoebe shook her head at the woman at the counter and stepped over to Falk’s desk.

“Excuse me, Mr. Falk?”

“That’s right. I’m happy to help you if you don’t mind waiting. Or Charlotte can help you now.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Falk, but I need to speak with you.” Phoebe palmed her badge so he could see it.

“Oh. Well, what…”

She saw it come, carving slowly through the puzzlement, that recognition, and the shock. And the shadow of old grief.

“I know you,” he said. “You were…you were talking to Brenda when she—”

“Yes, I was. I was with the FBI at that time. I’m Phoebe Mac Namara, Mr. Falk. I’m with the Savannah-Chatham Police Department. This is Detective Sykes.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Falk, is there somewhere private we can talk?”

He took his glasses off, set them on the desk. “Charlotte? Would you put the ‘Closed’ sign up and lock the door? Charlotte and I are engaged. I don’t need to be private from her. She knows everything about what happened with Brenda.”

Charlotte locked up, came immediately to Falk’s side. She was a pretty, sturdy-looking woman, and Phoebe judged her to be in her early forties. Her hand, with its simple, round-cut diamond ring, lay supportively on Falk’s shoulder.

“What’s this about?” she demanded.

“You’re getting married?”

“Two weeks from Friday.”

“Congratulations. Mr. Falk, I know you went through a very, very difficult time. You did the right thing, and I wasn’t able to help you.”

“I did the right thing?” His hand came up to squeeze Charlotte’s. “No, I didn’t.”

“Pete—”

“No, I didn’t,” he repeated. “I didn’t get help for Brenda. I knew how much she wanted a baby…I thought I knew,” he corrected. “But I didn’t get help for her. I didn’t see, didn’t want to see, didn’t look. We had a good life, didn’t we? That’s what I kept telling her. I bought her a kitten, like that was a substitute.”

“Oh, Pete, don’t—”

But he shook his head. “We were married eight years, and together nearly two before that, and I didn’t know what was inside her. That awful need. I didn’t see that what was inside her snapped. Going to her sister’s for a few days, well, hallelujah. That’s what I thought. She’d stop moping around one minute and rushing around the next. Shouldn’t I have seen something was broken in her?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Falk.”

“Something was broken in her, and I never tried to fix it. She couldn’t live that way, couldn’t live with what was broken, knowing you were going to take the baby away.”

“Rough,” Sykes commented when they stepped out into the thick air.

“It’s a crappy thing to do, taking him back through that.”

“It’s a crappy thing to do, blowing some poor bastard to juice.” Sykes winced. “Sorry, Lieutenant, I forgot for a minute.”

“It’s all right. What’s your take on Falk?”

“He didn’t make you when you walked up to him, and our guy would. Maybe he’s a good actor, but it didn’t play for me. He’s got a nice woman, a decent business, what I’d say was a decent life. I don’t see him screwing it all for revenge.”

“Agreed.” She dug out her sunglasses. “Next on my list, geographically, is a casualty from a bank robbery. A spree—three men hit a couple of banks heading down from Atlanta, then tried for one here, where they ran into trouble. Radio car made their plates from an APB, called it in. There was gunplay in the initial phase, and a woman was hit. A few hours into negotiations I managed to talk them into letting us take her out. But it was too late. She was DOA before she made it to the hospital.”

“How’s that on you?”

“She died, and that’s enough.” She dug into her bag again when her phone rang. And frowned at the Unknown Caller display. “Phoebe Mac Namara.”

“Hi there, Phoebe.”

She signaled Sykes, who quickly stepped off to use his own phone to call in for a triangulation. “Who is this?”

“Your secret admirer, sweetheart. It sure was nice of Roy to have your cell phone logged into his. I wanted to check in, see how you were feeling. You looked upset when you left the station house this morning.”

Cupping the phone between her ear and shoulder, she dug in her bag for her notebook. “Aren’t you the bold one, coming around all those cops.”

Georgia cadence. Sounds satisfied, sarcastic.

“That doesn’t worry me. You know, Roy said you were a hell of a good lay.”

“You call me just to talk dirty, or do you have something to say?”

Sweetheart. Good lay. Intimidating the female.

“Just passing the time. Oh, you don’t want to waste yours trying to trace this. Isn’t it something, this age we live in, when you can walk into a place and buy some toss-away phone already loaded up with minutes? Didn’t see that pretty little girl of yours go into school this morning. Hope she’s not sick.”

Her pad shook in her hand, dropped onto the sidewalk. She had to bite back the rage, the absolutely blinding red flash of it. “Spying on little girls? That seems low for a clever man like you.”

Fighting to keep her voice cool, she squatted to pick up her book, and crouched there, continued writing notes.

Watching the house, the family. Wants me to know.

“Why don’t you and I get together and have a real conversation? Get down to the nitty.”

“We will, I promise you. We’ll have us a nice, long talk. You won’t know when or how or why until it happens.”

“Who was she? Did you love her? How’d she die?”

“We’ll talk about all that. You know, I could’ve taken out your boyfriend that night you had your romantic dinner on his boat. I had the shot. Maybe I’ll take it next time. Maybe I’ll give myself the green light on that. Bye, Phoebe.”

“He’s off,” Phoebe said to Sykes.

“Keep yours open, they’re going to try to triangulate off your signal.”

“Unregistered cell. He’ll have been moving while he was on with me. I could hear traffic. And he’ll have tossed the phone. He’s too smart not to ditch it.”

She looked around, down the street, across at a little strip of shops. He could be anywhere. He could’ve been driving right by while she was talking to him. How would she know?

Slowly, she straightened, then skimmed her notes. “I think he’s a cop.”

“What?”

“He’s smart, but he’s puffed up, too.”

“Smart and puffed up equals cop?”

“He needs to show he’s smarter and better.” She tapped her pen on her notebook. “He said he could’ve killed Duncan, taken him out, was how he put it, when we were having dinner on Duncan’s boat. I could’ve taken the shot, he said. And that he might give himself the green light next time.”

“How does that—Hold on.” Sykes angled away, listening to his own phone. “They had him on River Street,” he told Phoebe. “Moving west on River, and lost him.”

“He threw it in the water, that’s what he did. Small investment in a phone, big results. But he had to give me that one last needle. He didn’t say I could’ve shot your boyfriend, but I could’ve taken the shot. That’s cop speak, or military.”

She held up a hand before Sykes could answer, walked a few paces down the sidewalk and back while she thought it through. “And yeah, anyone who watches TV could pick up the jargon, but it was natural. I don’t think he planned to say it, he just had to push my buttons a little harder, so it came out. Green-light the shot. It’s not the usual term for a civilian to use. He’s a cop or military, or he was.”

“Arnie’s clear.”

“It goes back further than Arnie Meeks. And it goes deeper than just being a misogynistic asshole. It’s in those files. He’s in there, somewhere. I need to contact Duncan, make sure he’s covered. Then, goddamn son of a bitch, we’re going to find this bastard.”

Sykes watched her stride back to the car, punching viciously at her phone. It was tough not to appreciate a redheaded woman in full temper, he thought, so he only said, “Yes, ma’am.” And followed her.

Duncan walked into Ma Bee’s house without knocking. He’d never had to knock on that particular door. He called out for her, but since neither the TV nor the radio was on, he kept going through the house.

If she was inside, she’d have what she called her company on. She wasn’t much for silence. He moved through the house as casually as he would his own, and spotted her out the kitchen window.

She knelt in front of one of her flower beds, a big straw hat with a band of wildly colored flowers on her head and neon-pink gardening gloves on her wide and generous hands.

Love was a quick, warm spurt right through the heart.

She’d given him a mother when he’d already been a man, a family he’d never hoped to be a part of, and a home he’d never found anywhere else.

He knew there’d be a pitcher of tea in the refrigerator, and cookies in the grinning-cow cookie jar. He got out a couple of glasses, filled them with ice, a plate for the cookies. He carted everything out to the little table shaded by a red umbrella before crossing the yard to her.

She sang in her tumbled gravel voice. He recognized “The Dock of the Bay” and, spying the MP3 player clipped to her shirt, figured she was dueting with Otis.

He started to reach down, touch her shoulder, hoping not to startle her. Then he jumped when she spoke.

“Boy, why aren’t you working at something?”

“Didn’t think you heard me.”

“Didn’t.” She switched off the music as he squatted down. “But you still cast a shadow.” She gave him what he thought of as the hairy eyeball. “You a man of leisure today, Duncan?”

“I had a meeting on the warehouse project this morning, and I’ve got some things going on later. But if a man can’t take a little time out of the day to flirt with the love of his life, what’s living for?”

She flashed him a grin, gave him a poke. “Fancy talk. Well, flirt while you yank some of these cursed weeds.”

The hat might have shaded her face, but there were beads of sweat along her temples. Enough gardening in this heat for now, Duncan thought. “I’ll weed for you after we flirt over a couple glasses of tea and some cookies.”

Lips pursed, she looked over in the direction of the table. “That looks appealing. Help me up, then.”

When they were settled at the table, Ma’s pink gloves tucked into her gardening apron, she took a long drink of tea. “Close today,” she commented. “Going to be heavy by afternoon. Hope those couple of things you got going are inside.”

“Some are, some aren’t. Why don’t you let me send you on that cruise this summer, Ma Bee? Or anywhere else you’d like to go.”

“I like where I’m sitting well enough. What’s on your mind? You’re not here just to flirt with me. Worried about your redheaded girl? Phineas told me what happened to her ex-husband. Said you were right there when it did.”

“It was…I don’t have a word for what it was.” He drank deep.

“It’s evil’s what it is. People toss that word off so it loses the darkness of it. But that’s what it is. Are you having trouble sleeping? I can make you up some herb tea would help some.”

“No, I’m all right. It’s bad business, Ma. This guy, he says he killed that kid. The one over on the east side who had those people in the liquor store. Shot him after Phoebe talked him into surrendering. So yeah, I’m worried about her. She knows what she’s doing, but…”

“When somebody matters, you’ve got to worry.”

“She’s got her family pretty much locked up in her house on Jones while she’s out there knowing what she’s doing. Her mother…Well, she’s had some hard knocks.”

He began to tell her, found himself going through all of it. What he knew, what he’d deduced, what he’d observed.

“Girl’s got a lot on her plate. ’Course any woman raising a child without its father’s got an extra serving right there. And her mother having that condition.” Thoughtful, Ma looked out over her yard. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t go where I wanted when I wanted. Walk down to the neighbor’s, or drive to the market. Fear’s a hard burden to carry. Responsibility’s a heavy one. That’s a complicated business, Duncan, even without this awful, ugly business heaped on it.”

“They seem to have a system, and it mostly works for them. But Phoebe—she’s the glue, you know? She knows what to do. That’s what I saw in her the minute she walked into Suicide Joe’s apartment that day. It’s…magnetic.”

“You got the moon on for her, do you?”

He smiled a little as he lifted his glass. “I guess I do. Bad timing, as it turns out. Hard to romance a woman under these particular circumstances.” He shrugged. “That can wait. Finding the son of a bitch who’s after her, that can’t.”

“It’s her job to find him.” Fanning her face with her hat, she studied him. “Hard for you to sit back and let her do her job.”

“Yeah. Okay, yeah. In this particular situation anyway. I mean Jesus—sorry—jeez,” he corrected when she narrowed her eyes. “This guy wants her dead. More, he wants her to suffer first. If somebody matters, are you supposed to sit back while somebody else wants to hurt them?”

Ma broke a cookie in half, passed a share to him. “Is that what you’re here for? You want me to tell you what to do?”

“No. Not exactly. She’s a lot like you. She does what has to be done, she takes care of her family. And she sure as hell doesn’t like to be told what to do—or what she can’t do. I guess I’m trying to work out a way to help her without putting her back up—got a temper on her—so she gives me the boot out of pride or mad.”

“Mmm-hmm. Like you coming here, and thinking: Ma Bee’s probably been out in the sun long enough for now. She should sit down and have a cold drink. So you fix that all up so you don’t have to tell me to stop and sit, and don’t get an argument.”

He grinned as he bit into his cookie. “Something like that.”

“You’ve got a sly mind in there, boy. I always admired it. You’ll figure it out. Now, go yank those weeds while I have another glass of tea.”

“Yes’m.”

His phone signaled as he rose. “It’s Phoebe,” he said as he read the display. “Hey. I was just…”

As she poured more tea, Ma watched Duncan’s face. She knew her boy and saw the flash of irritation in his eyes. Phoebe, she thought, wasn’t the only one with a temper.

“I’ve got a couple things going today. No, I’m not rescheduling. For…Phoebe, stop. Hold it. Let’s remember, first off, you don’t outrank me because I don’t work for you. No,you be quiet for a damn minute. I’m not rescheduling because some psychomight try to track me down somewhere in the city of Savannah and then decidemaybe to try to do me some harm, and I’m sure as hell not running home to lock myself in like some hysterical girl. In case you failed to notice, I’ve got a pair.”

Ma lowered her head, shook it and sighed.

“Sexist, my ass. Protective custody?Your ass. You go ahead and try it and yeah, you’re right. We’ll see who’s got the biggest pair. You want to talk about this, we damn well will. Face-to-face. Later. Right now, Lieutenant Mac Namara, I’m busy. I’ll see you later.”

He shut the phone, shoved it into his pocket. “Wants me to shut everything down, go home and hide like some dickless coward. Threatens to sic cops on me to haul me in, for my own safety. Screw that.”

“Who’re you calling?” Ma demanded when he yanked the phone out again.

“Your son, my lawyer. We’ll just see how she likes—”

“Hang that up, you fool. Just close that up. You go yank those weeds till you cool off a little.”

“I’m not having—”

“You’re not having, she’s not having. Fine, fine, fine. Talk about it later, in person, like you said. Meanwhile, there’s no use stinking up the pot by calling lawyers. You find cops on your doorstep, that’s the time to call Phineas. Right now, that bed needs weeding.”

Children, Ma thought as Duncan strode grumbling over to do what he was told. People in love were like squabbling children half the time.

She sure missed that part of having a man.

26

In the squad room, Phoebe used a large whiteboard to create a chart. As she built the diagrams, added names, she struggled to keep her conversation with Duncan from playing back in her head.

Stubborn, macho idiot. Going off on a tangent about his precious balls because she expected him to take proper and reasonable precautions.

She’d never have thought it of him. It just went to show how wrong you could be about someone.

If he got his head, or his damn balls, blown off, it was his own fault.

She had to stop, shut her eyes and order herself to calm down.

That wasn’t going to happen. If she didn’t know just where to find Duncan, how the hell would Roy’s killer? And why would he waste his time and energy cruising around the city looking for Duncan, and then risk exposure by trying something stupid?

He was too smart for that.

He had a plan, of that she was certain. And he wouldn’t have tipped his hand to her if Duncan was his primary and immediate target. Duncan might very well be one, but there was time.

She’d let herself panic, and she knew better.

Calm, rational thinking was the way to find the answers.

She’d pulled another detective and an experienced uniformed officer into the case.

“We believe,” she began as she continued to write on the board, “that the UNSUB is connected to one of the female victims of a previous hostage situation, suicide or crisis in which I sat as negotiator. What we know is he targeted, abducted and killed Roy Squire, specifically because of the victim’s connection to me. We know he has knowledge of explosives. We know he traveled to Hilton Head, and returned to Savannah with Roy in Roy’s car, which was found abandoned and wiped clean in the long-term lot at the airport, where we can assume he had his own car parked or took a cab. We do not know, yet, how he got to Hilton Head.”

She turned around. “Detective Peters, I need you to check on one-way car rentals that were picked up in Savannah, dropped off in Hilton Head. One-way railway and bus tickets, air tickets. Or any round-trips purchased that were used only one way. He may have chartered private. We don’t know how deep his pockets are. Find out what you can from private planes, destination Hilton Head, within the last week.”

“Why didn’t he use his own car, coming and going?” Sykes wondered. “If he has one. Drive’s not that far from here to there. Why use the victim’s to transport?”

“We don’t know that either. It’s possible he doesn’t own a car.”

“Or,” the new team member, Nably, began, “the one he owns, or has access to, isn’t geared for hauling a full-grown man, bound and gagged, forty, fifty miles.”

“Too small,” Phoebe mused.

“Or a hatchback SUV with no trunk, no place to conceal the abductee.” Nably pulled on his prominent bottom lip. “Or maybe he just likes the idea of having us puzzle on it, and spend the time finding out.”

“Very possible.” She paused to drink from her bottle of water. “It’s also possible, and I believe probable, that the subject has had police or military training. He knows how we work, so yes, he might have done things this way to add to the legwork. He’s had training. He was able to slip through the perimeter on the Johnson situation, dispatch his target and slip back out without a ripple.”

“Maybe he was in uniform,” Sykes suggested. “Or had ID.”

“Yes. He got through the posts, into the building and into Reeanna Curtis’s apartment. It had been cleared, and she rushed out with her children—doesn’t remember if she locked the door or not. Either way, he got in. He chose that apartment, that window. Why?”

“Because he knew enough to know it wasn’t optimum angle, and SWAT wouldn’t use it.”

“I agree.” She turned back. “The pink roses on the grave—which we have not been able to trace—indicate the UNSUB’s attachment to a woman, most likely a dead woman. These are the names of all female casualties in any negotiations in which I took part, both for this department and previously for the FBI.

“Brenda Anne Falk, suicide. Her husband is clear on this. She had a brother and a father, both of whom have been verified as in Mississippi during the time frame of Roy’s abduction and murder. At this time, we have no leads on anyone else connected to her who has either motive or opportunity. Linked here are the other law enforcement personnel who are listed in the file on that incident. There is no known personal connection between any of them and Brenda Falk.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have connections to any of them,” Sykes put in. “Maybe it’s a cop or a fed who just went south. Picked up on any of those,” he continued with a nod toward the board. “And/or you, Lieutenant, because the voices said so.”

“Then it’ll be a lot harder to find him. Victim two, chronologically, is Vendi, Christina. She was part of an organization called Sundown, a small, extreme fringe terrorist group. Poorly organized, poorly funded, and still they managed to invade the home of Gulfstream Aerospace’s CEO during a dinner party, taking fifteen people hostage.”

“I remember that.” Nably pointed a finger. “You were on that.”

“I was. The demands were as radical and extreme as the group, and as poorly thought out. After twelve hours of negotiation, during which time it was known that at least one of the hostages was seriously injured if not dead, it was determined by tactical command to move in.”

“You talked them into letting the kids out, and a pregnant woman. I remember this.”

“They did agree to release the CEO’s two minor children and a female guest who was seven months pregnant, taking the hostages down to twelve. Two members of Tactical were able to gain entry through a second-story window, and took out two of the hostage-takers. Vendi opened fire on law enforcement and was terminated. The single remaining terrorist was taken into custody. He’s still inside.”

She could remember how horrible it was. The screams, the gunfire.

“Vendi’s father was career army until his recent retirement. He has, always, disavowed her actions, and cannot be placed in Savannah nor in Hilton Head during the time frame. However, there would be any number of military connections there, and further connections to Vendi from any remaining members of the disbanded Sundown organization.”

She pushed at her hair. “I’ve asked the FBI to look into this angle. I know,” she said, reading the expressions. “This is our case. But the Bureau’s resources for this kind of investigation are wider and deeper than ours.”

“Next is Delray, Phillipa, who was killed during a carjacking. Her five-year-old daughter was in the car, and was then taken by the two carjackers as hostage. They were pursued to a garage on the west side, managed to get inside. Negotiations were successful, the child released and the two men surrendered. Delray’s brother was in the army, serving in Germany at the time of his sister’s death. He now lives in Savannah, as does Delray’s husband. Delray’s brother, Ricardo Sanchez, is with the mounted patrol.”

“I know him.” The uniformed officer held up a hand. “I know Rick Sanchez. He’s a good guy.”

“I hope you’re right, but he’ll have to be interviewed.”

Didn’t sit well, she could see that, just didn’t sit well for cops to poke at another cop. “I’ll be speaking to him myself,” she decided on the spot. “We then have Brentine, Angela, killed during an attempted bank robbery. Her injuries were received during the initial phase, and initial attempts to secure medical attention for her were refused. She succumbed on the way to the hospital during hour four of negotiations, when we were able to secure her release. Her husband, Brentine, Joshua, was in New York on business. He remarried nineteen months after his first wife’s death, since divorced. He has never served in the military or in any law enforcement capacity. Angela Brentine has no living male relations.”

“There was a lot of press on that one,” Sykes remembered. “Not only the bank-robbing spree that ended here, but Brentine’s wife. He’s old Savannah, money and status. Rumors floated around, as I recall, that her dying saved him a messy divorce.”

“I’ll be talking to Brentine very soon. Officer Landow? I’d like you to re-interview Reeanna Curtis, from the Hitch Street incident. Any details she remembers before, during, after she was evacuated. Talk to neighboring apartments as well. Take another officer of your choosing. I’ll authorize it. Detective Sykes, I’d like you to reach out to members of the tactical team on that same incident. I believe they’ll be more…relaxed with you than with me. I’m not looking to cause trouble for any of them. I want to know if anyone caught so much as a glimpse of another officer—uniformed or just badged—that they might not have recognized right off. If anyone is reluctant to speak about this, I’d suggest you show them a couple of the crime-scene photos of Bonaventure. After Roy Squire was blown to pieces.”

“I’ll take care of it, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you.” She nodded because she saw Dave step in. “Let’s get started.”

When Dave gestured to her office, she walked into it ahead of him.

“You’ve got a lot laid out in a short time, Phoebe. Get any sleep in there?”

“Some. Truth? It kept coming back when I drifted off. Roy chained on that grave, the explosion. I was better off awake and doing. I’m not so scared when I’m doing as I am when I stop.”

“Your family?”

“I don’t know. How long can I keep them shut up in that house? Fine for my mother,” she said with a tired laugh that wanted to turn bitter. “But the rest? I just don’t know. I’m going to go out, start talking to witnesses, connections to those four female victims. Something’s going to break out of it. I know it will.”

“Take one of the men with you.”

“I don’t have anyone to spare. We’re already spread thin with the details on my house, the ones taking Josie and Carter to work and sitting on them.”

It made her sick to think of it, sick in mind, in heart, in the belly. “And I know that can’t go on much longer either. I know we don’t have the manpower or the budget for unlimited babysitting.”

“They’re there today, so we think about today. How’s Ava…everyone handling it?”

“Everyone, including Ava, is handling it as best they can. You might call her, or go by. It might ease her mind.”

“Well. Hmm.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “About the interviews, I’d go with you myself, but I’ve got a meeting at City Hall. If you could pick someone out of the hat, not just the squad, who would it be?”

Maybe,maybe either he or Ava would make a move before they were both collecting Social Security, but she wasn’t putting money on it. “Sykes is solid, and that’s why I want him tugging on the tactical team. Liz Alberta. She’s SV, I know, but she’s got a good ear. But I don’t know what her case load is, or—”

“I’ll find out, see if it can be worked. Take ten minutes, call home. You’ll feel better, clearer in your mind.”

“You’re right. You take five, call yourself, it would do the same for you.”

They met Sanchez in Forsythe Park, and stood in the shade with his wise-eyed horse. The thick air of the morning had turned oppressive, so the rich brown hide of the horse gleamed damp.

Close to Mac Namara House, Phoebe thought. Close enough that in uniform, mounted on his pretty horse, he could watch her home without anyone noticing.

Sanchez stood about five-feet-eight by Phoebe’s gauge, with a tough, scrapper’s build. There was a little hook-shaped scar under the corner of his left eye, and a hard, stubborn line to his jaw.

Was the man in the ball cap, the whistler, taller? She thought by an inch or two. But had she paid enough attention to be certain?

“She didn’t care about the car,” Sanchez said, speaking of his sister. “She just wanted to get Marissa out. She fought them because she wouldn’t leave her baby, so they put a knife in her and left her bleeding to death on the street.”

“You were in Germany when it happened?”

He nodded at Liz. “They gave me hardship leave, let me come home for her funeral. My mother, I thought it would kill her, too. And my brother-in-law, he was like a dead man for days.”

“You were only nineteen when it happened. You were training as a weapons specialist.”

“I thought I’d make the army a career. See the world, fight the fight. But after Philli…I finished my tour and came home.”

“And joined the mounted unit about two years after.”

“That’s right.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s this about, Lieutenant Mac Namara? The one who put that knife in her, he’s still in. Have you come to tell me he’s getting out?”

“No. Can you tell me where you were last night, Officer Sanchez? Between eleven and three?”

“I could,” he said evenly. “I’d want to know why. I’d want to know why you’re asking me where I was around the time a man was blown up in Bonaventure.”

“I’m asking you because a man was blown up in Bonaventure.”

“What does it have to do with me?”

“Let me ask you this first. You didn’t say how your niece was spared that day while your sister was killed.”

“I told you, the bastards killed Philli because she fought them. Cops caught up with them at a garage; they’d locked themselves in with Marissa. Cops surrounded the place, got them to let the baby go and surrender.”

“Who got them to surrender?” Phoebe asked him.

“The cops.” His horse tossed its head at the impatience in Sanchez’s voice, and automatically he stroked a hand over its cheek to soothe. “The cops saved her life. Men like that? Men who’d kill a mother trying to protect her baby? What’s to stop them from doing the same to a little girl? Cops saved Marissa. It’s why I’m a cop.”

No possible way this is the guy, Phoebe thought, and when she exchanged a look with Liz, saw they were in agreement. “I was the hostage negotiator in the crisis situation with your niece.”

“You?” Some of his color drained, then poured back again, deeper, darker. “I didn’t know there was a negotiation.” His voice had thickened.

“You didn’t ask for details?”

“I…when I got here…everyone was in shock, in mourning. It was like a blur. Then I had to go back, finish my tour. When I was discharged and came home, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to look back at that. I wanted—I wanted—”

“To be one of the ones who saved lives, who helped people in trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he managed after a moment, and nodded to Liz. “You asked where I was last night. I stayed the night at my girlfriend’s apartment. Here.” He took out his pad, his pencil. “Here’s her name, her number, the address. Is there anything else you need to know?”

“This is fine. Thank you, Officer Sanchez.”

When she took the paper, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet. “Marissa’s ten now. She’s ten years old now. Here’s her picture.”

He flipped it open, and Phoebe looked down at a dark-haired, dark-eyed little beauty. “She’s gorgeous.”

“She looks like her mother.” He put the wallet away, held out a hand. “Thank you, from my sister.”

“Life’s a strange ride, isn’t it?” Liz commented as they walked the wide path back to Phoebe’s car. “You changed the direction of his life. Never met him, never spoke to him before today, but he’s doing what he’s doing, maybe is what he is, at least partially, because of what you did one day five years ago.”

“Maybe. It’s just as true that due to someone’s perception of what I did some other day, two people are dead.”

Liz followed the direction of Phoebe’s gaze toward the house on Jones. “Do you want to go in, check on them?”

“No. Let’s go talk to the husband, just to tie this one up. Then we’ll try Brentine.”

Delray was a quiet, gentle-eyed man. After five minutes, Phoebe decided he’d have a hard time squashing a spider much less killing a man in cold blood.

She had a much different impression of Joshua Brentine.

He kept them waiting twenty minutes in the reception area of his river-view offices. Clouds the color of angry bruises roiled in from the northeast, Phoebe noted. A wicked storm was just waiting to happen.

They were ushered in by Brentine’s glossy, narrow-hipped assistant to an office with a wide view of the river that had been furnished more as an elegant parlor than a place of big business.

The mix of elegance and power reflected the man, to Phoebe’s mind, who looked as if he’d been born wearing a perfectly cut suit. The burnished hair waved back from a high, aristocratic forehead; the hawk-sharp brown eyes didn’t mirror the smile his mouth offered.

“Ladies. I apologize for keeping you waiting.” He rose from behind an antique desk, gestured to a seating area with curved settee and wing-backed chairs. “My schedule is well packed today.”

“We appreciate the time, Mr. Brentine. I’m Lieutenant Mac Namara, this is Detective Alberta.”

“Please, sit. I’m forced to admit I have no idea why I’ve warranted a visit from two of our city’s most attractive public servants.”

“The bank robbery which resulted in the tragic death of your wife has come up in a current investigation.”

“Is that so?” Settling back in his chair, he looked politely puzzled. “How so?”

“I’m not able to divulge the details of an ongoing investigation. According to the information in the file, you weren’t in Savannah at the time of your wife’s death.”

“That’s correct. I was away on business. In New York.”

Phoebe glanced around the office. “You must travel extensively, given the nature of your business.”

“Yes, I do.”

“And the bank where your wife was killed. Am I correct in saying that wasn’t the bank you used, at that time, for your professional or personal businesses?”

“No, it wasn’t. I don’t understand why this has anything to do with something current, Lieutenant.”

“We’re just confirming details, and I certainly apologize for the necessity of bringing up a tragic event that caused you such grief.”

But you don’t appear to be touched by that, Phoebe thought. Not like poor Falk, reliving the death of Brenda.

“Witness statements agree that Mrs. Brentine did have an account in the bank. That, in fact, she came in that day to withdraw all her funds and close that account. Maybe you could tell us about that, Mr. Brentine, as it was over three years ago. We haven’t yet been able to access the bank records on that transaction.”

“Tell you what?” He rolled his shoulders. “Angela had a small, personal account of her own. Mad money, you could say. A few thousand dollars. Some terrible twist of fate had her deciding to bank that day, at the very time of the robbery.”

“You didn’t know about the account?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know about it. I said it was her little piggy bank, so to speak.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just wondering why the wife of someone in your enviable financial position would need a separate little piggy bank.”

“I imagine she enjoyed the independence.”

“But, according to the file, she wasn’t employed during your marriage.”

“No, she wasn’t.” He lifted a hand from the arm of his chair, a palm-up gesture she recognized as impatience. “She was very busy taking care of our home, being a hostess, working with charitable organizations. I’m afraid I can’t help you any more with this, so if you’ll excuse me—”

“But to withdraw all of it, at one time,” Phoebe persisted. “That’s what stood out for me when I read the case file in conjunction with this other investigation. That’s just puzzling.”

“Unfortunately, neither you nor I can ask her.”

“That is unfortunate. I expect she was going to buy you a present, or splurge on something foolish. I’m always splurging on something foolish if I get enough money in my hands. I bet she had a couple of close girlfriends. We women do, and we tend to tell them these silly details we don’t tell our husbands.”

“I fail to see what that detail has to do with anything.”

“You’re probably right. I’m just going off on a tangent. It just niggles me, I suppose. I hate not to know. Well, if you could tell us where you were last night, that would be helpful, and we’d be right out of your way. After eleven last night?”

He said nothing for an icy ten seconds. “I don’t like the implications of that.”

“Oh, there’s no implication at all. I apologize if it seemed otherwise. It’d be helpful if you’d verify your whereabouts. Otherwise…” Phoebe looked toward Liz.

“That would niggle both of us,” Liz said with a big smile. “Then we’d be taking up a lot more of your valuable time.”

“I was at the theater with a friend until after eleven, then we had drinks. I got home about one this morning. Now if there’s anything else—”

“Just one little thing. The name of your friend. Just to tie this up so we won’t have to bother you again.”

“Catherine Nordic.” He rose. “I have to ask you to leave. If you have any other questions, I’ll contact my lawyer.”

“That’s not necessary. Again, I apologize for bringing up difficult memories. Thank you so much for your time.”

As they walked back through reception, Liz glanced toward Phoebe. “Didn’t like him.”

“Why, neither did I! Self-important putz. And wasn’t it interesting he didn’t want to tell us anything about his dead wife’s friends or that bank account? Tell me, Liz, if you were married to a very wealthy man, why would you be socking money away in your own account?”

“Security, should said wealthy husband decide to dump me or vice versa.”

“And if the marriage was in trouble?”

“A girlfriend would know. I get a whiff of something else here. Cold-fish husband, and a controlling one you bet your ass—so you’ve got to sneak money into a separate account—a husband who’s out of town a lot while you’re kicking around arranging flowers and taking lady lunches.”

“Affair.”

“We are not only attractive public servants, but cynical ones.”

“Hmm.” Phoebe ran it through her head as they rode the elevator down. “I don’t see the dead wife as the love of his life. Strikes me as he’s more or less x’d her out like he might a canceled meeting. But if she had a lover…maybe one she was planning on running off with. Broke open that piggy bank.”

“Wrong time, wrong place. Her shooter and his cohorts are doing life, but that might not be enough for a brokenhearted lover. Have to blame somebody.”

“And everyone got out alive but her. I didn’t get a medical team in, not in time.”

“Couldn’t,” Liz corrected. “I read the file, too, Phoebe.”

“If someone was in love with her, if someone was eaten up by guilt that she went to the bank because of him, ‘couldn’t’ wouldn’t mean squat. Let’s track down Angela Brentine’s friends, her hairdresser, her personal trainer. The kind of people an unhappy woman talks to. If she had a lover, one of them knows.”

“I can get the best friend.” Liz took out her phone as they crossed the lobby and stepped outside. “I’ve got a friend with the paper. I’ll ask him to pull up the report on the Brentine wedding. Best friend was probably maid of honor, or certainly in the wedding party.”

“Aren’t you handy to have around?”

“The guy I used to live with thought so, until I showed him the door.”

Glynis Colby was a long beanpole of a blonde in jeans and a linen shirt. Her photographer’s studio claimed a corner of the third floor of a rehabbed house near Greene Square. Various props, including an enormous teacup and an army of stuffed animals, were stacked around the walls.

She called her assistant—a little guy with a streaked ponytail and a cherubic smile—Dub when she asked him to get everyone a cold drink.

“I still miss her. It’s been three years and counting, and I’ll see something and think, I’ve got to call Angie. But she’s not here.”

Here was the emotion Joshua Brentine had lacked. “You were friends a long time?” Phoebe asked her.

“Since we were fourteen. Glyn, Angie and Dub—the unholy trinity. We were going to be famous together.”

“I know your work,” Liz put in. “You took pregnancy photos of a cousin of mine. They were gorgeous. Then she came back with her little boy. You’ve got a good reputation—deservedly.”

“We do pretty well, right, Dub?”

He gave her hand a squeeze after he’d set down glasses. “Angie? She was the sweet part of the heart.”

“We had this concept,” Glynis continued. “Angie specialized in wedding photography, I’d do pregnancy and children. A fun way, we thought, to generate repeat business. Plus, she just loved doing weddings, had such an eye for them. And Dub…”

“I’d run the business.”

“I was under the impression that Angela wasn’t working at the time of her death.”

“No. Joshua didn’t like it. Or us.” Glynis slanted her gaze toward Dub, wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Bad influences.”

“He hated me more,” Dub put in. “Homophobe.”

Glynis poked him in the arm. “Oh, you just like to be number one. He hated me just as much. I was the slut.”

“I was the gay man slut. That trumps. He met her at a wedding she was working,” Dub continued. “Big society deal and a huge coup for us.”

“We’d only been in business for about eight months.”

“She was beautiful. Really beautiful, and I meant it about the sweet.”

“And she had enormous charm. Joshua swept her right off her feet.” Using both hands, Glynis made a broad, swooping gesture. “Acres of flowers—heavy on the pink roses she liked best. Candlelight dinners, romantic getaways. Six weeks later, she was engaged. Three months after that she was Mrs. Joshua Brentine.”

“Then it started.” Dub’s mouth tightened as he picked up the story. “He pressured her into quitting her work. How could she snap pictures—as he put it—at weddings when, if the wedding was important enough, she’d be a guest?”

“And she had a duty to blah, blah, blah,” Glynis said with a shrug. “She gave it up, gave it all up for him. She adored him. He didn’t like her socializing with us, so he made it difficult. Manipulating’s a Brentine specialty. So we’d grab lunch now and then, and she wouldn’t tell him, or we’d have dinner when he was out of town.”

“Dangerous liaisons,” Dub added.

“When did she start the affair?”

Glynis’s eyes widened at Phoebe’s question. “How do you know about that?”

“Why don’t you tell us about it?”

“It wasn’t sleazy. It wasn’t like that,she wasn’t like that. Joshua had to have everything his way. He wouldn’t let her be, and she got more and more unhappy. He expected her to be available round the clock for him, but he could do whatever he damn well pleased.”

“Easy tiger,” Dub said as he rubbed Glynis’s shoulder.

“All right.” Glynis took a long breath. “All right. She was miserable, and he wouldn’t give way on anything. He wouldn’t consider counseling, and nixed therapy for her when she got depressed. She didn’t have any money of her own by that time. Everything was in his name. When she came to realize divorce was going to be the only way, she’d come in here a couple times a week, more if she could manage it. She’d do setup, darkroom work, digital manipulation, anything we needed, and we paid her in cash.”

“She met someone. She wouldn’t say how or where or who, but she was happy.” Dub pulled out a blue handkerchief, handed it to Glynis so she could wipe her eyes. “The light came back into her.”

“When did the light come back?”

“About six months before she died. She called him Lancelot, her pet name for him.”

“How’d they contact each other?”

“She bought a preloaded cell phone. His idea, right, Dub?”

“Yeah, she said that he knew how to do what had to be done. Listen, the men responsible for what happened to her are in prison. What’s the point of dragging this out now?”

“It’s going to help us on another case. Anything you can tell us about the man she was involved with could help.”

“Well, I think he had a place on the west side where they’d hook up.” Glynis glanced at Dub, got a nod. “I saw her the day before it happened. She was flying. She said she’d decided to move out, to get a divorce. As soon as that was done, she and Lancelot were going to get married. She was going to take what money she had and move to Reno, establish the residency requirements for the divorce. She wanted it fast. She always wanted fast.”

“Anything else that you know about him, anything she said about him? However minor a detail.”

“I think he worked out—seriously. She talked about how he was really built, and worked at it. He was giving her tips on getting stronger physically.”

“Blue eyes,” Dub remembered. “She bought him a shirt one day, said it matched his eyes. Blue rugby style. Nice. And he cooked.”

“That’s right, that’s right. She said how sexy it was to watch him cooking dinner. I remember it surprised me, because he didn’t seem the type.”

“Why not?”

“Everything else she said, or the impressions I got, said ultra machismo. To be honest, I was worried about her. We both were. He seemed like the polar opposite of Joshua, and we wondered if she didn’t fall into all this as a kind of reaction. Hot-blooded, tough, physical. Blue collar.”

“Why do you say blue collar?”

“Sometimes she called him her blue knight. Maybe it was the eyes, though. But I got the impression he was a working stiff, you know.”

Or maybe the blue was the uniform, Phoebe thought.

“He was really pushing her to leave Joshua. He didn’t like the idea of her sleeping with another man, even though sex had become a non-issue between Angie and Joshua. She said it made Lancelot crazy to imagine it, and I think she liked that part. It made her feel sexy and vital again. But it felt like another kind of manipulation to me.”

“She needed a breather,” Dub said. “Some time to get Angie back. But this guy, he made her feel like a goddess, like she was indispensable and indestructible. Nothing bad would ever happen to her when he was with her. He’d promised.”

“But it did,” Glynis said softly. “The worst happened.”

“He never contacted you after her death?”

“No.”

“Where are her cameras?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t know. She kept them at the mystery man’s. She had two, and for a while I checked eBay, the pawnshops, the secondhand stores. Just in case he sold them. It’d be nice to have them back, those pieces of her.”

“You’d recognize them?”

“Yeah, at least if I had my hands on one of them I would. She painted this little pink rosebud on the bottom of her equipment. Like a signature. Pink roses were her favorite.”

“Pink roses like on the grave where Roy was chained.” It was energizing, Phoebe thought, to have that much confirmed. “Lancelot’s our guy.”

“Yeah. Now we just have to find a blue-eyed hard-body who can cook and lives on the west side. Or did three years ago.”

“Add in cop. How does the cop from the west side meet the sad princess from Gaston Street?” Closing her eyes, Phoebe tried to think it through. “She did charity work, attended snazzy events. A lot of cops moonlight as private security. And let’s see who’s turned in their papers in the last three years—cops between thirty and forty because he’s going to be young, and he’s not going to have time to pull tours while he’s planning his revenge.”

“If we’re walking down the right road, she would’ve had that second cell phone on her when she went into the bank. Her personal effects would’ve gone to the husband.”

“Yeah.” Missed that step, Phoebe realized, and nodded appreciatively at Liz. “You’re right, and if so, he’d have checked the incoming and the outgoing. He’d know. Better let him simmer first, take this other angle. Then we’ll go back on him.”

Phoebe glanced toward the eastern sky as she got into the car. The storm wasn’t going to wait much longer.

27

“It could be other law enforcement, it could be military, even paramilitary,” Phoebe said. “But everything points to cop to me. Gary Cooper—sheriff. He doesn’t lose, not Grace Kelly or his honor. That’s the way it was supposed to be. But on what could symbolize a wedding day, the day Angela Brentine was reclaiming her independence, taking the next step toward becoming her lover’s wife, she’s killed in a gun battle. Killed by the bad guys, sure, but also—in the subject’s mind—because I stood by—the townspeople—and didn’t take action, or didn’t allow action to be taken. Guilt by cowardice is part of the theme of the movie.”

“You were neither guilty nor cowardly,” Dave said.

“To him, I’m both. And he’s obsessed about this for three years. Plenty of time to work it all out. Lancelot not only cuckolded the all-powerful king, but was Guinevere’s champion. He saved her when Arthur could or would not. This guy sees himself as the hero, more importantly, Angela’s hero. And he can’t accept the failure, or the fate. There has to be blame. I’m to blame.

“Next, the grave where he killed Roy. Jocelyn Ambucean was a young bride-to-be. She died days before her wedding, drowned in the river during a storm. She was, it’s said, running away to Tybee Island and her lover rather than go through with the marriage arranged by her father. He likes the symbols—angel watching the grave—Angela—the grave of a woman running toward true love, the pink roses. He likes giving me clues. He wants, at the end of it, for me to know why. I have to know why for it to matter enough.”

“I’ll get the names for you.”

“Joshua Brentine. He’s not going to want to admit his wife was cheating on him. It’s insulting and demeaning. His pride is worth a lot more to him than the lives of two strangers, or anyone else who might be a target.”

“Admitting isn’t the same as confirming.” Dave cocked his head. “If he believes you already know.”

She smiled. “No, it’s not, thank you for reminding me. I believe I can make him think I have more than I do.”

“I’ll call down, see how long it’ll take to get the information you need.”

“Thank you. I’m just going to call home while you do that, let them know I might be late.”

She stepped out, had barely pulled out her phone when Dave stuck his head out of his office door. “Computers are down in Human Resources. New system, apparently. Could take a few hours.”

“Well, Jesus, aren’t there paper files?”

“And going through those doing a search like this would probably take longer than waiting for technology to flip back on. Go on home, see your family, get some dinner. They’re going to let me know as soon as they’re back up.”

“All right, all right. Why don’t you come on with me? Have some of that dinner, too?”

It was tempting, but she looked exhausted. “Rain check. I’m going to grab a little time at home myself with a beer and the ball game. If you’re right on this, it’s going to break for us, and break quick. Go recharge a little.”

The minute he stepped outside, Dave cursed himself for not tapping Phoebe for a ride home. Even with only three blocks to go, he’d be lucky to get home on foot before the storm hit.

Hell, while he was at it, he might as well curse himself for not taking her up on the dinner invitation. He wanted to see how Ava was holding up for himself. Wanted to see…

Lousy timing, again, he reminded himself. She, all of them, were in the middle of a crisis.

She’d been engaged the first time he met her. He’d had absolutely no business falling in love with her. None. But he had. Hadn’t done anything about it, he reminded himself as he hunched his shoulders against the wind. Stayed the family friend. Good old Dave.

Talked himself out of believing he was in love with her, after she’d been married a few years, had a baby. Yeah, he’d talked himself out of it, and gotten married himself.

And Ava got divorced.

Lousy timing, right down the line. With a healthy portion of guilt on his part. Because no matter how much he told himself he’d wanted to make his marriage work, no matter now much he told himself he’d tried his best, he knew there’d always been Ava.

Now, just when he was beginning to think, to hope, maybe, just maybe, she and everyone in Mac Namara House were in crisis.

What choice did he have but to stay the family friend? Good old Dave, who was heading home to his empty house to nuke a Hungry-Man.

Cue violins.

The wind whipped along, sending tree limbs bending and swaying as he clipped down the sidewalk, annoyed with his own self-pity. If he’d bothered to pay attention, he could have changed out of his suit into his sweats at least. Then he could’ve jogged the distance home while he was wallowing.

Lightning slashed through the sky before he’d crossed the first block, and thunder rolled threateningly in its wake.

He quickened his pace at the next pitchfork of lightning, and decided he might make it home after all without getting electrocuted or drenched.

And at least the wind was cooling things off. The entire day had been oppressive with that heavy, waiting heat.

He could see his house now, imagined shedding the suit, popping the top on that cold beer.

He swung onto his little walkway, bounded toward his door. He heard the quick toot-toot, glanced back. He fixed a smile on his face when he spotted the spiffy red sports car zip toward the curb.

Maggie Grant, twice divorced, wanting to flirt. She embarrassed him a bit at the best of times, but just now, he wanted to get in, shut down and take an hour for himself.

He sent her a cheery wave and kept going.

She tooted again—beep-beep-beep, more insistently. Dave stuck the key in his lock, turned it as he gave her another wave.

“Yoo-hoo! David! I’m so glad to see you. I need the help of a big, strong man.”

Ten more seconds, Dave thought. Ten more and he’d have been inside, out of her reach.

“Ah, my phone’s ringing, Maggie. Let me—”

“It’ll only take a minute or two. I’ve got all these bags. I don’tknow what I was thinking. The rain’s going to start pelting any second. Would you be a hero and give me a hand getting all this inside?” She popped the trunk, sent him a melting smile. “Please?”

“Sure.” Sap, sucker, stoop, he berated himself. “No problem.”

“It’s going to be a wild one.” She shook back her hair. “Kind of night you want to be cozied up with a friend and a nice glass of wine.”

Now he was going to have to avoid the wine, and the friendship, Dave thought as he stepped back down to the walk. The first fat drops of rain pelted down. The wind slapped, shoved, and he cursed as he heard his unlocked door slam open. For one second he hesitated: finish the damn good deed, dash back and shut the door. Even as he pivoted to do the latter, he spotted the man standing across the street.

Blue ball cap, sunglasses, windbreaker.

Then the world exploded.

Phoebe didn’t know how to feel when she saw Duncan’s car outside her house. One part of her was relieved—now she knew where he was, and that he was safe. The other part was just plain pissed that he’d been so uncooperative that morning.

Then she stepped inside, out of the fury of the storm, and heard her daughter’s delighted laughter. It was hard to keep a good mad on when she heard her daughter happy.

Then she walked to the parlor and saw Carly, Carter and Duncan sprawled on the floor playing Monopoly. It looked like Carly was slaughtering both men.

“I can’t have landed on you again,” Duncan complained. “These dice are loaded. This is bull…malarkey.”

“You were going to say thes word.”

He smiled thinly at Carly. “Whats word?”

“Bullsh—”

“Carly Anne Mac Namara!”

Carly stifled a giggle, then looked over innocently. “Hi, Mama. I’m beating the pants off Uncle Carter and Duncan.”

“So I see. Where’s everyone else?”

“The women are in the kitchen, where they belong.” Carter sent her a toothy smile. “Get on back there, woman, and make us a snack.”

“Oh, what kind of snack would you like?” She walked over, set down her bag. “Just let me”—she rapped her hand at the side of Carter’s head—“see if that knocked any sense into you. And nobody’s going to be snacking on anything this close to dinner. For which, I assume, you plan to stay,” she said to Duncan.

“An invitation has been issued and accepted. Going to smack me upside the head, too?”

The glint in those dusky eyes warned her he still had a bit of a mad on himself. Well, fine. “We’ll see how the evening goes. I assume, too, you got all those oh-so-important things done on your schedule today.”

“I did. How about you?”

“Inroads.”

“Why are you mad at Duncan, Mama?”

“That may involve quite a list. So for now, I’m going to run upstairs and change. Carly, after you’re finished trouncing these two, why don’t you see if you can help set the table? That means the men will be clearing and seeing to the dishes.”

“What part of KP does she get?” Duncan asked Carly.

“I’ll be…answering my phone,” Phoebe said as it rang in her bag. She pulled it out. “Phoebe Mac Namara.”

Her color simply vanished, as if a light had been switched off in her face. Duncan was already getting to his feet when she got out the next shaky words.

“What happened? How…” She turned to walk out of the parlor. “How bad is he? No. No. Where? I’m on my way.”

She had her game face on, Duncan noted, when she turned back. But there was fear lurking in her eyes. “I have to go.”

“But you just got home.”

“I know. I’m sorry, baby.” She leaned down to give Carly a hard hug. “I’m sorry. Would you run on back and tell Gran not to wait dinner for me? I’ll be back soon as I can.”

“Did somebody get hurt?”

“Uncle Dave had an accident, so I need to go check on him. Right away.”

Tears swam into Carly’s wide eyes. “Is he hurt really bad?”

“I hope not, and they got him right to the doctors so they can take good care of him. But I have to go, baby. I’ll call as soon as I can. Run tell Gran I’ll call soon as I can. Carter,” she said as Carly dashed off.

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about us. Car accident?”

“No.” She gripped his arms. “Stay inside. Please. Make sure everyone stays inside. I’ll call.”

“I’ll take you.”

She didn’t argue with Duncan, simply ran to the front door and through. “They took him to Memorial. He rigged Dave’s front door. The son of a bitch rigged the front door on Dave’s house. That’s what they think. They don’t know…”

“We’ll find out.”

“He’s alive.” Phoebe closed her eyes as Duncan whipped the Porsche into the street. “He’s alive.” She turned her phone over and over in her hands as if she were afraid it would ring and tell her otherwise. “He had to get inside the house if the door was rigged. He had to get inside Dave’s house.”

“He’s not going to get inside Mac Namara House, Phoebe.”

“He doesn’t want to.” Fear, grief, guilt stirred an uneasy mix inside her. “It’s not going to be like that. If he’d wanted to get in there, he wouldn’t have put me on alert. He’s got something else in mind. But he wants me wounded. He wants me hurting when it comes down to what he’s got in mind. And oh God, Duncan, I am.”

She burst through the emergency room doors, her badge already in her hand. She held it up to the first nurse she saw. “David Mc Vee.”

“You need to check with—”

“No.You check. Now.”

“Lieutenant.”

She spun around and bulleted toward Sykes. “Where is he? What’s his status?”

“They’re working on him. Can’t get much out of them, but I talked to the paramedics who brought him in. Broken arm, some burns, lacerations. Head trauma—there’re some worries there. And there could be internal injuries. I was still in the house when the call came in. I followed the ambulance in.”

“I want two guards here in the ER. Two guards wherever they take him.”

“Already done.” Sykes nodded when Duncan came up behind Phoebe. “Lieutenant, there was a witness. A neighbor. She was shaken up some, got a few cuts. They’re stitching her up.”

“I want to see her the minute she’s out. Detective…Bull, I need someone I can trust over at Dave’s, talking to the bomb team, the CS people. I know you don’t want to leave him.” She reached out, squeezed his hand. “I promise I’ll contact you the minute there’s anything to do. But I need someone I can trust on that scene.”

“Okay. Okay.” Sykes scrubbed his hands over his worried face. “You let him know I’m around. Cops all over the place in here, so you let him know we’re all around.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Duncan said when Sykes headed out.

“I don’t think I can. I’m good at waiting, but I need to know…something. I just need to know.” Her hand vised on Duncan’s arm when she saw the gurney and the medical team.

She lunged forward. There were cuts and burns on his face, a gash at his left temple. And blood on the sheet that covered him.

“How is he? Where are you taking him?”

“You family?”

“Yes.”

The young doctor continued to move at double time toward the elevators. “He’s going into surgery. He’s bleeding inside. Somebody’ll let you know as soon as he’s out.”

Phoebe signaled the two uniformed officers. “They go where he goes. You wait outside the OR. I’ll be there as soon as I talk to the witness.”

She stood back and watched them push the man who’d been her father most of her life into the elevator.

“It’s the best trauma center in the city.” Duncan laid his hands on her shoulders. “One of the best in the state. He couldn’t do better.”

“No. I wish I could fall apart. I wish I could just fall apart until they come to tell me…We should’ve put cops on his house. Anyone who knows me knows what Dave is for me, what he is to me.”

“Take a minute.” Gently, Duncan turned her into his arms. “You can fall apart for a minute.”

She let herself cling, let herself shake. He was holding her, good, solid arms around her. “I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do I’m so scared.”

“Just hold onto me until you figure it out.”

“Don’t go anywhere, okay?” She gripped him tighter. “Will you stay with me?”

“Of course I will. Phoebe.” He put a hand under her chin to lift her face to his. “I’ll be right here.”

She sighed, and laid her head on his shoulder. It was such a comfort, she realized, to have someone else be strong. To have someone else be the one who was right there.

“I thought I forgot how to need somebody to stay.” She eased back. “Lucky for me I remembered when the somebody can be counted on.”

She spotted Maggie coming out of a treatment room. “That’s Dave’s neighbor.” Phoebe blew out a long breath. “All right. Here we go.” She took two steps forward. “Maggie?”

At the sound of her name, Maggie jolted, looked over. Then, bursting into tears, all but fell into Phoebe’s arms. “All right now. Hush now.” Even as Phoebe looked around for somewhere marginally private, Duncan had a hand on her shoulder to steer her and her charge toward some chairs.

“Y’all sit right here,” he told Phoebe. “I’ll go hunt up some coffee.”

“Good, that’d be good. Maggie, I need you to stop crying. I need you to stop.” Firmly, Phoebe pulled back to take Maggie by both shoulders. “I need you to stop and talk to me.”

“David. I think he must be dead. Oh God!”

“Well, he’s not. They took him up to surgery. They’re taking care of him. Don’t you start going hysterical on me again. I mean it. I need you to take some good, deep breaths. In and out. Youdo what I say, you hear? In and out. That’s right. That’s better. Now, you tell me what happened. Right from the beginning.”

“I don’tknow. ” Tears still streamed as Maggie fluttered her hands. “I swear I don’t know.”

“You tell me what you do know. You were with Dave, at his house?”

“No. Yes. I mean to say I’d been out with a friend—you met my friend Delly when David had that barbecue last summer? We went out for lunch, and a little shopping spree. I’d just pulled up at home, right before the storm, and I saw David.”

She covered her face with her hands, but Phoebe yanked them ruthlessly away. “I know you’re upset, but you’re going to keep talking, keep telling me. Where was Dave when you saw him?”

“Going up the walk to his front door. I beeped the horn, and he waved. I thought how he could help me carry my shopping bags in, so I beeped again, and got out right quick to hail him. It was thundering, and he was already unlocking his front door. But he turned around. He’s such a sweetheart.”

Fighting for patience, Phoebe stuffed a wad of tissues in Maggie’s hands. “He didn’t go in the house?”

“He…He was coming back to help me. His door blew open. That’s right, I remember how his door blew open. That wind came up so strong, and I guess he’d started to open the door before he turned back to help me. Then, oh my God, Phoebe, the door just exploded.”

After mopping her face with them, Maggie twisted the damp tissues into ropes. “I don’t know exactly, I swear to God, I just don’t. I fell—it was like being shoved. I fell down. My knees got all scraped up, and my arm—” She held out her arm to show the bandage. “Five stitches. But David…David.”

“Here you go, Phoebe.” Duncan came back with coffee. “Ma’am? I thought you might like some coffee.”

“Oh, isn’t that nice.” Instinctively Maggie pushed at her hair. “Thank you so much. My goodness, I must look a fright.”

“You look just fine,” Duncan assured her as he set little tubs of cream and some sugar packets on the table between the chairs. “I didn’t know how you like your coffee.”

“Plenty sweet,” Maggie said. “Oh, and you got the pink kind, too. Are you with the police?”

“No, ma’am. I’m just a friend. I’ll leave you to talk to Phoebe.”

“Oh. Oh, could you stay? I can’t help myself, I just feel more secure in times of crisis when there’s a man around.”

“Maggie, this is Duncan. Duncan, why don’t you sit down? Now, Maggie, how long was it from the time the door blew open until the explosion?”

“Oh goodness, I’m not sure. A few seconds. Maybe five? Ah, he stopped. Yes, that’s right, David stopped and looked back when the door slammed open, and I think he started to go back and close it. I think he’d just started to take a step or two back toward the house when…Oh my God, Phoebe. If he’d gotten back—”

“He didn’t. You calling him out to your car to help you saved his life. You think about that, Maggie. You called him away from that door, so he’s upstairs getting fixed up.”

“Oh my.” Her face ran the gamut. Shock, horror, relief, pride. “I didn’t even think of that. I’ve been so mixed up and scared.”

“You said you were out this afternoon. Did you notice anything, anyone, before you left?”

“No. I meant to leave at noon, but I was running a little late, so I didn’t leave till about quarter after. And that Delly, she gives me such grief for being late, so I was in a rush. I can’t say I was paying attention, so I don’t think I’d have noticed anything.”

“How about during the morning?”

“I was inside all morning. I was on the phone with my mama awhile, which is why I was running late. That woman can talk. Then I dashed out and drove on out to the mall. I was barely late, but Delly gave me grief nonetheless.”

With a long-suffering sigh over that, Maggie sipped her coffee.

“Maybe you looked out the window while you were talking to your mother,” Phoebe suggested, “or saw an unfamiliar car or someone you didn’t recognize when you dashed out to go to lunch.”

“I don’t guess I saw a soul around the neighborhood this morning—one of those hot, oppressive days where nobody likes to walk around much. Oh, except for the UPS man.”

Reaching out, Phoebe clamped her hand on Maggie’s wrist. “Where did you see the UPS man, Maggie?”

“Just coming down the street.”

“In his truck?”

“Ah, no. Did I see his truck? I just don’t remember. I was in such a rush. I barely took a minute to wave at him and call out to ask if he had a package for me.”

“I imagine you see the UPS man several times a week around the neighborhood.”

“I suppose I do. This wasn’t the usual one, though; this one was younger and cuter, so I yelled out my name, too, when I asked if he had something for me. He said no, ma’am. Not today. Then I just jumped in my car and lit out.”

“What did he look like, Maggie?”

“Well, he had dark hair and one of those scruffy little beards. Good legs. Strong-looking. I do tend to notice attractive young men,” she added with a smile for Duncan.

“How tall?”

“Hmm. I’m not sure. Maybe five-ten? Not as tall as Duncan here. Had a build on him. The regular UPS man, and he’s a sweetheart, but he’s on the plump side. This one looked like muscle.”

“How old?”

“Goodness, I didn’t get a good, close look.” Maggie patted her hair as if it might help her think. “Thirty-five? Maybe a little more.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I’m not sure. He was wearing sunglasses. Well, my God, Phoebe, do you think he had anything to do with what happened to David?” Her hand slapped to her heart. “Why, he could’ve killed me on the street! I was only a dozen feet away.”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to want you to work with a police artist. I’m going to have an officer take you into the station house, and the police artist will meet you there. You sit here with Duncan while I take care of this.”

Maggie sat blinking while Phoebe sprang up and hurried away. “Well, sweet baby Jesus. I sure wish you had some bourbon to go with this coffee.”

“Next time,” Duncan promised, “I’ll bring a flask.”

Once she’d arranged for the police artist and Maggie’s transportation, Phoebe rode up to the surgical waiting area with Duncan. “There were no new carriers on that route today,” she told him. “And no deliveries on that block until after two this afternoon. She saw him, she spoke to him. But he wasn’t worried about that.”

“A guy can grow a beard or shave it off.” Thoughtfully, Duncan rubbed his own chin. “Changes his look.”

“We’ve got a good artist. He’ll reconstruct both ways. He had to know we’d get a witness. If not Maggie, someone else on the block could easily have seen him. He’s smart enough to know that, but he’s not that worried about it.”

She walked straight to the nurses’ station when she got off the elevator. She showed her badge. “I need to know if there’s any word on Captain David Mc Vee.”

“He’s still in surgery.”

“I need someone to go in and check, to give me his status. Please.”

“I’ll see what I can do. If you’d go into the waiting area, we’ll let you know.”

There were half a dozen cops she recognized already in the waiting area. She made the rounds quickly, then positioned herself in a corner where she could see the door. “I need to make calls,” she told Duncan.

“You want coffee? You didn’t drink any downstairs. I’d ask you if you want some food, but you’re going to say no, so I won’t.”

“I could use a cold drink. Apparently being scared makes everything hot inside me. I could use something cold. And, Duncan,” she said before he stepped away. “When I can think straight again, there are a whole bunch of things I have to say to you.”

“Would that include any comments or complaints about me not falling in line when so ordered?”

She worked up a smile, widened her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Good.” He touched her lips with his. “Then I’d like to hear them. Be right back.”

She had to call Sykes first and arrange for the canvass of Dave’s neighborhood to add in the fake UPS deliveryman. She wanted, badly, to talk with the bomb squad and crime-scene supervisors herself, and had to remind herself she’d sent Sykes for a reason.

And since she couldn’t will a nurse or doctor to come in and tell her everything was going to be just fine, she steadied herself, pulled out every ounce of optimism and made the next call.

“Ava.”

“God. Phoebe. Is he—”

“Dave’s in surgery, and from everything I know it’s going well.”

“Surgery! Oh my God, what happened? How did it happen?”

“I can’t get into that now, but I want you to know, and to tell everyone, he’s being taken care of.”

“I want to come down there. I want to see for myself. Carter, we had an awful fight about it. Phoebe, you can’t expect me to stay here while Dave’s hurt.”

“I have to expect it. I’m sorry. He’d expect it, too. He’d insist on it. Ava, I promise you, Ipromise you, you’re the first person I’ll call when he’s out of surgery. I need you to take care of Mama. I need you to take care of everyone there. I’m depending on you.”

“That’s an awful thing to say to me.” Tears drenched Ava’s voice. “You know I will. But…please, tell him, tell him when you can that I’m—we’re—praying for him.”

“I will. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything more.”

Nearly another hour passed before they were given the stingy report that the surgery was going well.

An hour later, Sykes came in to give her a more inclusive one. “Trip wire on the door. Five-second delay.”

“He wanted Dave to get inside. Better chance of killing him if he was all the way in.” In a futile attempt to relieve the pressure in her head, Phoebe massaged the bridge of her nose. “What did he use?”

“Same as with Roy. Blew out the door, the front windows, part of the damn roof. Turned the living room into the third circle of hell. He’d been three feet closer, we’d be waking him, Lieutenant.”

“He’s going to have to buy Maggie a truckload of flowers, then deal with her trying to get him naked. How about the canvass?”

“Most of the people on that block work during the day. Got one witness, guy who’d taken off to meet his plumber. He was watching out for him and saw the suspect walking up the street. Description’s vague. He didn’t really see anything but the UPS uniform. But the time matches Maggie’s statement.”

He puffed out his cheeks. “Firefighters responded fast, and I’d guess they saved the house. But, well, Jesus, LT, it’s a hell of a mess.”

“He loves that house,” Phoebe added.

“I know a guy,” Duncan put in. “He does good work. I could ask him to take a look at it, if that would help.”

“It might. One less thing for Dave to worry about.” She glanced toward the doorway again. “Yeah, it might help. Do we know how he got in?”

“How it looks is the back side window was forced open. He gained entry that way. Back door was unlocked, so he likely left through that, and didn’t bother to lock it on the way out. That—”

He got to his feet an instant after Phoebe. It had to be one of the doctors, she thought. He had that weighty look about him.

She stepped forward. It wouldn’t be rank that had her taking the lead. Every cop in the room knew it was personal.

“Dave Mc Vee,” she said. “I’m Phoebe Mac Namara.”

They’d stopped the bleeding, and saved his spleen. He’d suffered a bruised kidney, a broken arm, two cracked ribs and a concussion as well as lacerations and burns.

But his heart was strong. The doctor had told her his heart was strong, but she already knew that.

She sat in the chair beside his bed, waiting. And remembered how he’d sat with her, so long ago, while she’d waited for her mother.

“They tried to kick me out,” she told him while he slept. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with. I’m not leaving until you wake up and say my name. Once you do, I’ll know for sure you’re okay. Got a lot of cop blood being drawn downstairs. They’re lining up to give a pint since you got greedy and took so many transfusions. Maggie got a look at him—you’re sunk there, darling. You owe her so big.”

She picked up his hand, pressed her lips to his fingers. “We all owe her so big. I’m having them fax me over the composites. And we’re going to hunt this son of a bitch down like a sick dog. I swear it.” She took a hitching breath. “That’s nonnegotiable. I need you to wake up, Dave.” She pressed his fingers to her cheek. “I need you to wake up and say my name.”

It was another half hour before she felt him stir, those fingers moving in hers. She popped up to touch his face.

“Dave. Can you open your eyes? It’s Phoebe. Wake up now and open your eyes.” When his lids fluttered she told herself to push the call button for a nurse. But she wanted a moment. “Dave, there you are. It’s Phoebe.”

“I know.” His voice was thin and slurred, like an old drunk’s. “I heard you. What the hell?”

“You’re all right.” She brushed at his hair, watching his eyes slowly focus. “You were hurt, but you’re all right. In the hospital. Got some bumps and bruises, so you lie still. I’m going to call the nurse.”

“Wait. What…it was raining. Was it raining?”

“Hell of a storm.”

“What happened?”

“He rigged your front door. He got in your house, Dave. I’m so sorry.”

“Door blew open.” He closed his eyes a moment, a line of pain and concentration digging between his brows. “I remember, the door blew open.”

“You were being the good neighbor, going down to help Maggie with some bags. So you’re okay. Not every good deed gets punished after all. You’re going to be fine.”

“I saw him.”

“You…what?”

“I saw him.” His fingers tried to tighten on hers. “Across the street. Door blew open, and I stopped, and I saw him across the street.”

“Maggie saw him earlier, so we’ve got a couple of composites. We’ll—”

“I know him. You were right. Smart girl. Always were a smart girl.”

“Dave, Dave.” She sharpened her voice to keep him with her. “He’s a cop? You’re saying he’s a cop?”

“SWAT. Was SWAT. Burned out? Transferred? Don’t know. Can’t think back. Walker? No, no, Walken. Had a beer with him once, retirement party. Beer at the bar, talked about the ball game. Walken. Walken,” he said again, and looked into Phoebe’s eyes. “Go.”

She dashed to the door, called for a nurse. “He’s awake, and he’s starting to hurt. You.” She jabbed a finger at the guard on the door. “You don’t move from this spot, you hear? I don’t care if there’s an earthquake, a rain of frogs or the Second Coming, you don’t budge until your relief arrives. And nobody gets inside that room you don’t check their ID and go in with them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Duncan.” My God, she thought, it was something to have a man who didn’t leave. “I bet that Porsche can really move.”

“Damn right.”

“You’re about to put that to the test. I’ve got a name,” she said, and rushed for the elevator with Duncan beside her.

28

Walken, Jerald Dennis. Phoebe had the full name after a five-second conversation with Commander Harrison. And with Harrison pushing the buttons, she had Walken’s last known address within three minutes.

“He won’t be there.” She snapped her phone closed. “He’s too smart for that. He won’t be there, but they’ll send a team in to make sure of it. He’ll have another place by now. Another place where he’s dug in deep. Go here,” she told Duncan and rattled off an address.

“What’s there?”

“He was tight with Michael Vince, trained with him, Harrison told me. I want to talk with Michael Vince. Well, God!” She blew out a breath when he whipped around a corner. “You know how to drive, don’t you?”

“Make a hell of a martini, too.”

“You can mix me up a whole batch when we finish this.”

“Gin or vodka?”

She laughed, just put her hands over her face and laughed. “Dealer’s choice. Duncan, when we get there, get to Michael Vince’s, would you wait for me? Would you call my house and tell them that Dave woke up and I talked to him? Would you tell them he’s all right?”

“I’ll tell them. I’ll wait for you.”

Tears stung her eyes. “Oh yeah, a whole bunch of things to say to you later.”

Vince lived in a trim little house on the near edge of the south suburbs. He opened the door wearing a pair of blue-checked pajama pants and an irritated expression. The expression went neutral when she held up her badge and gave her name.

“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”

“I need to talk to you about Jerald Walken.”

“Jerry? I haven’t seen him in years. He moved to Montana. What’s this about?”

“I’d like to come in a minute.”

“Sure, but we just got the baby down—again. I need to keep it quiet. I swear, the kid hears me scratch my ass two rooms away.”

“How old’s the baby?”

“Six months. He’s teething, which means me and my wife aren’t getting any sleep. I’ve been on with you on some crisis situations. That Johnson deal, that was a hell of a thing.”

“It was. Do you know how to get in touch with Walken?”

“No. I never heard from him after he left.”

“I heard you were friends.”

“We were. I thought we were.” With a shrug, Vince sprawled onto one of the living room chairs, yawned hugely. “Sorry. Have a seat. Jerry was supposed to be best man at my wedding, but he took off two weeks before. Didn’t even tell me he was turning in his papers till it was done. Sent me a fucking e-mail—’scuze me—an e-mail a couple days later, said he was going to find his soul or some such crap. Two weeks before my wedding, he’s going off to find his soul. I’da figured he was just drunk if I hadn’t heard he’d left the unit.”

It was apparent that the guy was dopey with sleep deprivation. Phoebe remembered those days—nights, endless nights with a fussy baby. “Did Jerry drink a lot?”

“He could tie one on. You do the work we do, you need a little release.”

“What about the married woman he was involved with?”

Vince pokered up. “What’s this about?”

“You were on the Johnson situation. It was Walken who fired that shot.”

The sleepy eyes sharpened as he came to attention in the chair. “No fucking way.”

“You heard, I’m sure, about the incident in Bonaventure. It was Walken who chained Roy to that grave and killed him. Captain Mc Vee was seriously injured today.”

“Mc Vee? How? What happened?”

“An explosive was rigged to the front door of his house. Circumstances swung in our favor, and Captain Mc Vee not only survived, he saw and identified Walken. Now if you know how to contact Walken, you need to tell me so we can bring him in before anyone else is hurt.”

“I don’t. Christ almighty. Jerry?” Vince slumped back in the chair. “Captain Mc Vee said it was Jerry?”

“He did.”

“Jesus. Jesus. He’d been on the edge the last few months on the job. Sometimes the edge works for you, but…”

“You had some concerns?” Phoebe prompted.

“Yeah, I guess I did. But, you know, I had a lot going on myself, the whole wedding thing. We didn’t hang out as much after a tour. But he was a good cop. Jerry had a cool head on the job. Could be hot off it, but on? He was solid.”

“There was a woman.”

“Yeah.” He blew out the word. “He got tangled up with her, and it was like all he could think about. Had this idea they were going to head off together out West—where men were men, and all that. Get themselves a ranch in Montana. I figured that’s what they did. He and the woman took off to Montana.”

“What was her name?”

“He called her Gwen, or Guinevere. He kept her to himself. I worried…”

“What did you worry about?”

“This doesn’t feel right, Lieutenant. I gotta say, it doesn’t feel right. He was a cop, a teammate, a friend.”

“Captain Mc Vee was in surgery more than three hours.”

“Okay.” Vince scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Okay, okay. Listen, it was just when he’d had a couple too many or he wasn’t able to see her for a while that he got jumpy. And maybe sometimes he went off on a tangent.”

“Such as?”

“He talked about how it’d be easier to just put a bullet in the guy—her husband. He didn’t mean it, and he’d get right off it again, talking about how they were just going to wait until they had enough money put by for the ranch. Already had a name for it.”

“Camelot?”

“Yeah, yeah, ’cause she was Guinevere. He was crazy about her. She was probably stringing him along, and that’s what sent him off.”

“No, I don’t think she was stringing him along. Other friends, family?”

“He got along with everybody in the unit. Thought of them like brothers. He’d even say brothers-in-arms, you know?”

And not a single police officer had been hit when Charlie Johnson’s body was riddled with bullets.

“Family outside the job?”

“He had—has, I don’t know which—a mother and stepfather, but they weren’t close. I think he said they’d moved out to California when he was in his twenties, and he stayed here. He got along,” Vince repeated, “but I’d say, except for me, he was kind of a loner. I think he was put out some when I hooked up with Marijay. My wife. Then he got tangled with this woman, and that was it for him.”

Phoebe got to her feet. “If he contacts you or if you see him, you need to contact me immediately. You understand that?”

“Lieutenant, if he did what you’re saying, he’s got to be out of his mind. I’ve got a wife and a baby. You can believe me when I say, I hear from Jerry, you’ll hear from me. I won’t take chances with my family.”

Phoebe pulled out her phone as she walked out of the house. She saw Duncan leaning against his car, hands in his pockets, looking up at a sky where stars were trying to light through the thinning clouds.

She leaned back against the car with him while she spoke to the team commander, then to the hospital to check on Dave’s condition, and finally to Sykes to bring him up to date.

When she was finished, she pocketed her phone and stayed where she was another moment, looking up at those persistent stars.

“You’re an awfully patient man, Duncan.”

“Most things are worth waiting for.”

“In an awful way, that’s what Walken thinks, too, and he’s been waiting a long time for this. The man in there? That was his closest friend. In fact, reading between the lines, I’d say he was Walken’s only friend. A loner who got along, hot-tempered off the job, liked to drink, didn’t much care for it when his friend got engaged. But he hasn’t once gotten in touch with his only friend in going on three years. He has no friends now. That’s the way it is for him. That’s the way he wants it now.

“We have to dig him out, because he’s somewhere in this city. This isn’t what I do, not what I know how to do best.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “So I have to be the patient one, and wait for others to do the real digging.”

“I liked to play baseball when I was a kid.”

Confused, she looked over. “Sorry?”

“I liked to play, and I could wing a ball out of far right and pinpoint it to the cutoff man, even right into second. And I could run like the wind. But I had a bat as green and limp as old celery. So I had to depend on somebody else to hit in the runs. We do what we do, Phoebe.”

“I love him more than I did my own father.” She rubbed damp and tired eyes. “I hardly remember my daddy. Horsie-back rides and tickling and how he smelled of Dial soap. But I can’t hear his voice in my head, and I have to look at his picture now and again to keep his face in there. When I think of fathers, I think of Dave first.”

“Come on, baby.” He took her hand. “Let’s get you home.”

“There’s nothing more I can do tonight. Just nothing.”

“You’ll get some sleep, then you’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.”

“You’re going to stay with me.” She got in the car, looked up at him. “You said you would.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

He expected to bunk in Ava’s son’s room again, so Duncan was surprised when after peeking in on Carly, Phoebe took him by the hand and drew him into her bedroom.

She pressed a finger to her lips as she closed and locked the door behind them. “You’re going to have to be very quiet while you make love with me.”

“You’re the noisy one.” He backed her toward the bed. “But if you get too carried away, I’ll just gag you.”

“Try this instead.” She rose on her toes, found his mouth with hers. “God.” She let out the word on a sigh. “God, God, I want you all over me. Inside me, around me, on me and under me. I want to be surrounded, Duncan. Surrounded so I can’t think of anything else.”

He eased her down on the bed, brushed the hair back from her face. His lips brushed her brow, her cheeks, her jaw. Then they sank into hers.

He could feel her relax, inch by inch. A little tremor in the shoulders, then a melting. Her arms lifted so he could slip her shirt off and away. And his hands ran down her sides. Bumped into her gun.

“Ah, I think you’re armed and dangerous.”

“Crap. I forgot.” She tapped him back so she could roll, unhook her weapon. She set it, in its holster, on the nightstand.

“You don’t just leave it out like that, with Carly around?”

One more little flutter to the heart, she thought, and cupped his face. “No. I have a lockbox, top shelf of my closet. But I think, as the door’s locked, it’ll be fine there for a little while.”

“Okay. Let’s see, I think I was just about…” He pulled her back. “Here,” he said before his lips took hers again.

They spoke in whispers as they undressed each other. Then didn’t speak at all.

He surrounded her, just as she’d asked, with touch and taste, with heat and motion. In the dark, her hands and lips slid over his skin, and she found what she needed.

Little thrills rising to gnawing aches, aches soothed back to silky pleasures. Time ticked away, and maybe those stars were burning now—but she didn’t need their light. All the terror and tension of the endless day drained.

She lifted to him, and he could hear her sigh and sigh as he filled her. Then it was she who surrounded him, took him in, trapping him in that glorious heat until he was swamped.

He could see her eyes gleaming in the dark, watching him watching her through that exquisite merging of bodies. The thrill of skin to skin, though the rhythm stayed slow and easy, rise and fall. And lips met with a quick and fresh hunger to muffle moans, to swallow gasps.

When the rising peaked and the fall was a dive in the dark, he pressed his face into her hair, to draw in its scent like breath.

She should get up, stow her weapon so she could unlock the door. But, God, it felt so good to just lie there naked, body to body with her mind all fuzzy and her heart still thudding.

How had she done without this for so long? The intimacy and pleasure, thecontact? How had she done without him? The conversation and support, the humor and understanding. Wasn’t it amazing that at this point in her life she would find someone who fit? Just fit—body, mind, heart.

Maybe she was feeling sentimental and shaky, under siege and out of control. But she’d found someone who helped keep the ground steady under her feet. Someone else who could answer the questions or point the way—because, oh Jesus, she hadn’t realized how tired she’d been of carrying the whole load alone.

“You make me feel sturdier, Duncan.”

“Good. I think.”

“It’s very good, for me.” She ran her hands down his back all the way to his ass and back again. “Very good. Maybe it’s just postcoital euphoria, but right now I feel like I can handle what’s happening, and what has to happen. It’s going to be all right because it has to be.”

He said nothing for a moment, then trailed a finger over her shoulder. “I rehired Suicide Joe.”

“You…Hmm.”

“Phin’s going to be pissed, but it’s just part-time. A few hours a week. He’s not so crazy, and he’s getting therapy.” Duncan lifted his head, looked down at her. “You save lives, Phoebe—you saved his. That’s what you do. How many people can say that? That saving lives is what they do. Yeah, it’s going to be all right.”

“I don’t know if I want to save his. Walken’s. I’ve never felt that way before, as if—even for a moment—I wouldn’t regret someone’s death. All these years, I’ve never drawn my weapon on anyone. I’ve never discharged it outside the range. But I know I could, I know I wouldn’t hesitate, if I walked out the door and he was there. It doesn’t even weigh on me, Duncan, the knowing that.”

“Why should it?”

“Because it’s not what I do. All those years ago, when Reuben had us, I thought if I could get a knife from the kitchen, or somehow get the gun away, I’d hurt him. Kill him if I could, for what he was doing to us. Keeping us scared and trapped, that blood on Mama’s face, and the fear on Carter’s. That’s the only other time in my life I felt like this. But when it was over, when it was done, I was so relieved he wasn’t dead. He’d go to prison, and that was good, that was just fine, but he wasn’t dead. No one died in that house. I don’t know, when this is over, if I’ll feel the same.”

“I haven’t picked a fight in…well, that little scuffle with Jake’s stupid cousin doesn’t count, so in fifteen years or so. Haven’t cracked my fist into anyone’s face or gotten that rush of whipping someone good and proper. But if I had the chance, if I could get my hands on Walken, I’d beat him bloody. And when he was done, his eyes rolling back, I’d beat him some more.

“It’s not what I do, Phoebe, but knowing I would doesn’t weigh on me, either.”

She stared at him because however calm and easy his tone, she knew he meant it. He had that in him. “Well. Well. We’re just a couple of violent individuals, aren’t we?”

“Somewhere in there. The difference is we don’t set out to be. Tell you what, if you get the chance, you draw on him, and you hold the gun on him till I get there. I’ll beat hell out of him, and when he’s down, you can give him a couple of good kicks.”

She snorted out a laugh before she could stop it. “God, that shouldn’t be funny, and it sure as hell shouldn’t make me feel better. But it is, and it does. And with this current mood, I’m going to put that gun in the lockbox where it belongs.”

She wiggled out from under him, picked up the gun from the nightstand. Then blinked against the sudden light when he switched on the bedside lamp.

“Had to see.” He tracked his gaze over her, a lazy sweep of dusky blue. “Naked redhead with a gun. I believe that’s stirred me up enough I could go another round.”

She only shook her head, walked to the closet. “A few hours ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could end the day here, like this. Life is a strange ride, as someone commented recently.”

“I like the ups and downs of it. Which reminds me of something I was going to ask you. When this is done, how about taking a few days off, taking a little trip with me?”

It was hopeful and human to project, to plan, Phoebe knew as she took down the lockbox. She smiled a little as she imagined Paris or Rome, Tahiti or Belize. “I might be able to swing that. Where’d you have in mind?”

“Disney World.” She dropped the gun into the box with a little thud, then simply stood in the closet, staring at nothing.

“You want to go to Disney World?”

“Big dream of mine when I was a kid. I used to sit in bed and think about it. It all seemed so happy there. Color and music and fun, life-sized cartoon characters walking around. Never got there, not when I was a kid. Been a couple times since, just to say I did.”

Carefully, she set the box back on the shelf. “And was it happy? All you wanted it to be?”

“Yeah, I guess it was. If you come out of the Country Bear Jamboree with a frown on your face, you’re hopeless. I figured Carly’d get a charge out of it, wouldn’t she? It’s got to be about the best place in the world when you’re seven. At least I thought so when I was.”

She stepped back out of the closet to study him. He was sitting on the bed, buck naked, his hair all tousled, a dreamy half smile on his face as he thought, not about the City of Lights or Roman holidays, but magic mountains and flying elephants.

“You want to take Carly to Disney World?”

He turned his head, shrugged. “You can come, too. I’ll buy you some mouse ears.”

There was a threat hanging over them, she thought. It was very real, and it was very close. His connection to her put him every bit as much in the crosshairs as it did her. But he thought of taking her little girl to Disney World.

She walked to the bed, sat beside him. Taking his hand, she looked into his eyes. “Duncan.” And love moved through her like a sigh. “Duncan.”

His dimple winked. “Phoebe.”

“Would you marry me?”

“Would I…what was that?”

His hand jerked, just a little, in hers, and she saw the coordinating shock on his face. She didn’t mind either. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known, and that’s going some since I have Carter and Dave in my life, and they’re such good men. You make me laugh, and you make me think. You’re generous and you’re smart—which is an important combination since one without the other is almost always annoying. And your innate loyalty is something I respect and admire.”

“You forgot the sex.”

Now she smiled. “No, I didn’t, not for one quick minute. Since I’m being so complimentary, I’ll tell you I’ve never had better, and it does, of course, factor into this proposal. My life is complicated, and it’s heavy with responsibilities. You’re the only one I trust enough to ask to share that. The only one I love enough. And I love you, Duncan. I love you so much.

“Wait, wait,” she said quickly when she saw the change in his eyes. “I need to finish. I love all the things about you I’ve just said, and all that was the bunch of things I was going to tell you tonight. The proposal, that wasn’t on the map. But then, well, I got lost in Disney World.”

“Disney World was the kicker?”

“Oh yes, yes, it was. I know we haven’t known each other for very long. Just since—”

“St. Patrick’s Day.”

“St. Patrick’s Day. So you’ll probably need to think about it, and God knows things need to settle down, but—”

“Where’s the ring?”

“The ring?”

“What kind of half-assed proposal is this?” he demanded. “You didn’t get me a ring?”

Her breath came out in a whoosh. “I’ve been a little busy.”

His sigh was patient, long-suffering, and quite a bit exaggerated. “I don’t know as I can take this very seriously without a ring. But I guess I can make an exception, this once.” He leaned down, met her smiling lips with his. “I was going to ask you in Disney World.”

“You…Really?”

“I figured on getting you dizzy on the teacups, or weak-kneed on Space Mountain, hit you while your defenses were down some. Of course, I’d’ve had a ring.”

She shoved him back on the bed, rolled on top of him. “I like things clear. Is that a yes?”

“You had me when you walked into Suicide Joe’s apartment.”

Her eyes narrowed. “As far as you knew at that point, I could’ve been married with six children, or a lesbian.”

“Then I’d’ve pined for you the rest of my days. But I’m a lucky man. Been on a streak for a while now, and it’s been heading straight toward you. You had me, Phoebe, the minute you walked in, and from that minute I’ve been sliding into love without even looking for a handhold.”

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t mind complications, and responsibilities are just part of living if you’re doing it right. We’ll do it right, you and me. So yes, I accept your ringless proposal.”

She laid her lips on his, then rested, cheek to cheek. “I haven’t even started on the complications. I have to live in this house. I can’t—”

“I like this house. That’s not a complication, it’s a great old house on Jones Street.”

“My mother—”

“Is great. If I couldn’t get you, I was going to go for her. She likes me.” He trailed a finger down Phoebe’s spine. “Women tend to.”

Phoebe shifted to look down at him. “I’d expect…I’d need you to be a father to Carly.”

“Piss me off if you didn’t. Relax, Phoebe.” He drew her down until her head rested on his chest. “You don’t have to negotiate this. It’s a done deal.”

“I’m so happy. It seems strange to be so happy when so much is wrong.”

“Whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix. That’s something we’re both pretty good at.”

“It’s nearly morning,” she murmured with her eyes on the window. “It’s nearly time to start again.”

“Close your eyes awhile. Close your eyes while you’re happy, and get a little sleep.”

The next thing she knew, the sun was beaming into her eyes, and her daughter was banging on the door. Thank God she’d left it locked.

Phoebe gave Duncan a good, hard shake, got a grunt in response, before she sprang out of bed. “Just a minute, honey.”

“Mama, why is the door locked? Mama, are you okay?”

“Fine, fine.” In a flurry of motion, Phoebe rushed to the closet and yanked out her robe. “Just fine, Carly. Why don’t you go on downstairs? I’ll be right down.”

“Your door’s locked, Mama. I’ll go tell Gran.”

“No!” Sweet baby Jesus. “No, no, just a minute.” Moving like the wind, Phoebe dragged on the robe as she bolted out of the closet. Yawning hugely, Duncan stood beside the rumpled bed lazily pulling on jeans. At a loss, Phoebe put her finger to her lips, then, unlocking her door, cracked it open an inch.

“I was sleeping, honey. I got home very late. I’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”

“But your door was locked.”

“Yes, I guess it was. I’ll be—”

“Duncan’s car’s outside. But he’s not downstairs, and he’s not in Steven’s room either.”

“Oh. Well. Why don’t you go see if Ava wants to make waffles for breakfast?”

“Is Duncan in there?” Carly shifted right and left to try to see through the narrow opening. Phoebe shifted left and right to block her. “Did he sleep with you last night?”

The child was a dog with a bone, Phoebe thought. Before she could speak, Duncan said, “Busted,” and eased the door open. “Hey, Carly.”

“Hi. Mama’s door was locked so I couldn’t come in.”

“We got home very late,” Phoebe repeated.

“How come you slept in Mama’s room?” Carly asked Duncan.

“And aren’t you full of questions this morning, before I’ve even had my coffee.”

“You said you have to ask questions,” Carly reminded her mother. “Did you have a bad dream, Duncan? I sleep in Mama’s bed sometimes when I do.”

“Actually.” He gave Phoebe a poke in the arm to shift her aside. “Let me ask you a question. How do you feel about your mama and me getting married?”

Carly’s eyes narrowed on Duncan’s face, then tracked to her mother’s and back. “Because you’re in love and want to sleep in bed together?”

“That’s right.”

“You’d be my stepdaddy?”

“I would.”

“Can I have a new dress for when you get married?”

“That would be a priority.”

She smiled, and Phoebe recognized the slyness. “My friend Dee got a stepdaddy, then she got a new baby brother named William. Can I have one of those, too?”

“Could be a sister, but we can name her William.”

With a giggle, Carly shook her head. “Girls aren’t William. We could get a puppy first, and namehim William, then—”

“You’re pushing your luck, kid,” Phoebe warned.

“We’re having a conversation here,” Duncan said to Phoebe, then hunkered down so his face was level with Carly’s. “I’ll see what I can do about that. If I pull it off, what’re you going to give me?”

Carly’s face went pink, then she touched her lips, very primly, to Duncan’s cheek.

“Little peck like that, for a baby and a dog? You Mac Namara women are tough.”

She giggled again, and the pink deepened as she hooked her arms around Duncan for a hug, and gave his cheek a noisy, smacking kiss.

Not once, Phoebe thought as she stared down at them, not once had she seen Carly and Roy hold each other. Not once had she ever seen her little girl grinning in her father’s arms.

“Now that’s more like it. I’m going to grab a shirt, so I don’t make the women in the house swoon when I come downstairs.” He set Carly back on her feet. “We’ll be right along.”

“Okay.” She dashed off, shooting him a dazzling smile as she ran for the stairs.

“Guess she approves. Now we’ll see what Essie has…What?” Panic streaked across his face as he turned and saw the tears sliding down Phoebe’s. “What’d I do wrong?”

Her throat was so thick she could only shake her head as she wrapped herself around him, held tight. Tighter. “We got along without you, you know,” she managed. “We got right along. But, God, oh God, things are so much better with you.”

“Happy crying.” He let out a little breath of relief. “I get that.”

“Very happy.”

“That’s good. So…how about that puppy?”

29

The timing was perfect, and the location—that had come about largely due to luck. Or maybe, he thought, it was fate. It was Angie looking down, guiding hands.

It would be today.

A pity, a goddamn pity, pieces of Mc Vee hadn’t flown all over Barnard Street. His slut of a neighbor had intervened there. Bastard had flown some though, he thought with some satisfaction. Oh yeah, the bastard had done a little fucked-up Superman.

It had taken all the willpower he’d had not to yank out his nine from under the windbreaker and put bullets in the son of a bitch and the neighborhood slut where they lay bleeding on the side of the road.

But as satisfying as that would’ve been, asright as it would’ve been, it could have cost the rest. And the endgame was in sight.

Better if Mc Vee died, and there was always the chance of that. Better yet if there was time and opportunity to take out the boyfriend, just for good measure. And it was a damn shame he had to abort the plans to stake out the pansy-assed brother in front of the house where they grew up—with a vestload of explosives.

Cowards, a couple of dickless cowards is what they were, hiding out in that house, behind the women’s skirts. Not worth his time, Walken told himself, not worth his trouble.

He continued to load his gear with careful hands.

They’d be looking for him now. Let them look. In a couple of hours, they’d know just where to find him. And he’d be where he wanted to be, doing what he’d planned to do.

Before he was done, everyone would know Phoebe Mac Namara had killed an angel, just as sure as the bullet. And when it was over, it would be fucking over.

“He turned in his papers and moved out of his apartment. He had two months left on his lease, left a check to cover it.” At Dave’s bedside, Phoebe went through the checklist. “He had two credit cards at that time. Neither have shown any activity in these three years. He’s contacted no one, not his best friend, nor his former commanding officer. He had a checking account, and a savings account totaling six thousand and change, and a safety deposit box. He cleaned everything out on the same day he quit the department. There was an oh-one Chevy pickup registered to him. He sold it, for eight thousand cash, to a Derrick Means, in the same apartment building. We’re checking that out, but don’t expect it to go anywhere. Also registered to him were a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson and a thirty-two Remington semi. His friend knew him to own a hunting rifle, with scope, a thirty-thirty, and a twenty-two pistol which had been his father’s.”

“Likes guns.”

“Yes, he does. He’s a trained sniper, and had training in explosives during his time in the army. He also worked with our own bomb squad before he requested and received the transfer to SWAT. He’s somewhere in or around Savannah, but as far as we know, you’re the only one who’s seen him.”

She lifted her hands. “I don’t know what to do. I negotiate, I don’t investigate.”

“A puzzle’s a puzzle, Phoebe. It’s all pieces.”

“I have some of them. He blames me for Angela Brentine’s death, maybe because there isn’t anyone else to blame. He was on the team that day, Dave. He was on the incident where she died. His scope trained on the bank, waiting for the go. We didn’t know the names of the hostages, or the injured. He didn’t know she was in there, dead or dying, while he waited outside, while all those hours passed.”

“Ineffective. Impotent.” Dave nodded, then closed his eyes as the slight movement stirred pain in the base of his skull. “Lancelot didn’t rescue Guinevere.”

“That’s what he can’t live with. That he was there, waiting while she bled out. While I had them wait, while I talked her killers down so they walked out with their hands in the air. They lived, she died, because of decisions I made. That’s what he believes. That’s what he has to believe. But it doesn’t help us find him.”

“Why’d he go after Roy?”

Think it through, Phoebe reminded herself. Empathize. “The connection to me—we had a child together, we were married. Husband—a symbol. Harder, much harder, to get to Brentine than to Roy. And Roy was mine. He wants to destroy what’s mine, as I destroyed what was his.”

“Not just the woman.” Dave reached for the water glass, then settled back to sip through the straw as Phoebe picked it up, held it to his lips. “Thanks. Not just the woman,” he repeated. “His self-image was destroyed. Didn’t save the day. Followed orders, hung back with the rest instead of walking solo out into the street for the showdown.”

“But this time, he is, he will. Moving up the line,” she mused. “Roy, then you. Everyone knows we’re close. And that I’m a negotiator because of you. Therefore, I was at the bank because of you.

“Do you want me to call the nurse?” she said when he shifted, when she saw pain tighten his face. “You should rest, you should—”

“No. Keep going. It keeps my mind busy. You call the nurse, she’s going to come in here with a needle and take more blood. I swear, being in a hospital’s like being in a den of vampires. They never get enough of your blood. Keep going.”

Wishing she could do more, Phoebe tucked and smoothed his sheets as she spoke. “All right. The dead animals, to defile my house, to undermine my sense of security. Snake, rabbit, rat. He’s probably based outside the city. Somebody’s going to notice if you shoot a rabbit otherwise. Smarter to have a place outside the city, quiet, secluded. Nobody’s going to bother you or notice you overmuch, not if you keep to yourself. Get along,” she said. “Like he got along with his teammates. A house, a bungalow. He’d need transportation. They’re still checking on how he got to Hilton Head.”

She turned to the window. Urban sprawl, she thought, so roads led to suburbs, and suburbs gave way to swamps and woods. Bridges ribboned their way to islands.

So many places to hide.

“Every cop in the city, every cop on the islands, has his picture. He has to know that. He has to know you lived, that you saw him, and that we’re looking for him now. I see he’s got two choices—to cut and run, or to finish. He won’t cut and run.”

“You need to be ready when he comes at you.”

She nodded. “I’m trying to be.” She turned back. “I never asked how you felt this morning.”

“Glad to be alive.”

“I’ve had to tie the rest of the family down to keep them from coming to see you. And I’m under orders to putyou under orders to come to the house when they spring you from here so Mama and Ava can spoil you while you recuperate.”

“Would that include peach pie?”

“I can guarantee it. When are you going to ask Ava out on a date?”

“Excuse me?”

“When are the two of you going to stop sending wistful glances at each other’s backs? You’re both grown-up, divorced people. I don’t think she got any sleep last night.”

“Well, I…”

“I don’t know how many times this morning she asked me about you, or argued with me about coming to see you herself, or told me to tell you she was thinking of you.”

“She’s a friend, she’s been a friend a long time.”

“Dave, my mama is your friend.” Exasperation eked through enough to have her fisting her hands on her hips. “Are you going to lie there on what might have been your deathbed and tell me you feel the same about Ava you do about my mama?”

“I don’t think—”

“What do you want?” She approached the bed again. “I know how to find out what people want in emotional and stressful situations. If you’re too flustered to tell me—and it’s awful cute to see you blush—I’ll tell you. You want to ask Ava out for a romantic, candlelight dinner when you’re back on your feet.”

He stirred again, but this time Phoebe could see it wasn’t about pain. “It happens I was thinking about her—about that—when I was walking home yesterday. Before. I was thinking the timing for doing that was lousy.”

“Timing’s lousy on most everything half the time.” Smiling down at him, she brushed at his hair. “I asked Duncan to marry me. He said yes.”

Dave’s mouth opened and closed. “You’re full of surprises this morning.”

“I surprise myself. I love him like I’ve been waiting to find him my whole life, just waiting for the rest of my life to start. You’ll give me away again, won’t you? I’m betting this one sticks.”

“I’m betting it will, too.” Reaching up, he gripped her hand. “I’m happy for you.”

“So am I. You’ve been waiting, Dave, an awfully long time. Ask Ava out to dinner, so the rest of your life starts.”

When Phoebe walked out of Dave’s room, Liz pushed off the wall.

“Thanks for giving me some alone time with him.”

“No problem. How’s he doing?”

“Well enough to settle my nerves on that score. I want to thank you again for pairing up with me today.”

“Another no problem. This Walken tried to kill one of our own. There isn’t anyone in the department who isn’t invested in this. He can’t hide for long.”

“And he’s not going to run.” She stepped outside into the swampy heat. “That storm didn’t cool it off any. Just made it wetter.”

“Summer in Savannah. Love it or go away. Go ahead and take it,” she said when Phoebe’s phone rang. “I’ll drive.”

“I think it’s him.” She held out the phone so Liz could read the display. With a nod, Liz stepped away, drew her own phone. “Phoebe Mac Namara.”

“How’s Dave doing?”

“He’s doing well, thanks. You screwed up there.”

“No. Variables, Phoebe. You know about variables. Shit happens. I know you’re looking for me.”

“You don’t sound upset by that, Jerry.”

“Not. You won’t find me until I’m ready. You wearing a vest, Phoebe?”

As her heart jumped, she shoved Liz down behind the cover of the car. “It’s too damned hot for a vest, Jerry. How about you?”

“I think I could’ve put one in the back of your head, and the brunette’s. But I’ve got other plans. We’ll be talking.”

“He was here,” Phoebe said. “Watched us go in or watched us come out. I don’t think he’s here now.” Could’ve, not could, she thought. She looked down, saw her weapon was in her hand. The hand was shaking, but it held. “Back of the head. Going in. He’s not here now.”

When her phone rang a second time, her heart stuck in her throat. “It’s Sykes,” she told Liz. “What have you got?” she asked him.

“Airport Budget rented a Toyota to a Grimes, Samuel, last Thursday. It was dropped off in Hilton Head Saturday afternoon. I’m looking at a copy of the driver’s license. It’s Walken. Darker hair, glasses, but it’s him. Used a Visa. The license lists an address in Montana, but the credit card’s got billing going to one on Tybee.”

“That’s the one. Relay the situation and the address to Commander Harrison. Liz and I’ll join the team there.” She climbed into the car. “What’s the address?”

Ma Bee smiled a smug smile as she shifted the kitchen phone to her right ear. “Does this mean I’m finally going to get me some white grandbabies?”

“Technically, you’ll start off with one who’s already seven. Then we’ll see what we can do. How about helping me out on the sparkler?”

“I do love shiny things, and my taste is world-renowned. I guess I could give you the benefit of my renowned taste in shiny things.”

“Today? I’ve got a couple of things, then I could swing out and pick you up, then we’ll swing back in and—”

“Don’t I have myself a fine car sitting right out in the driveway? I can get myself where I’m going. So where am I going?”

“I figured if I didn’t find it at Mark D’s on Abercorn, I’m not going to find it anywhere.”

“Mark D’s?” She let out a long whistle. “That’s the high-dollar mark.”

“I got high dollars. And it happens I made a call, and Mr. D himself would be pleased to meet us and show us some of his more exclusive designs.”

Now she hooted. “Aren’t you the one?”

“She is. I was thinking maybe I could find something for Carly. And there I’m out of my depth. Something that’d suit a little girl, but would maybe move on up with her. I figured it being a package deal, I could…you know, make it a package.”

“You’re going to be a fine daddy. What time do you want me to meet you?”

“I think I can get there around noon. Buy you lunch after if you do a good job.”

“I’ll be there. You bring those high dollars, boy, ’cause I’m itching to spend them for you.”

She hung up, literally rubbed her hands together. A glance at the clock told her she had time to spread the word before fixing herself up for a trip to Mark D’s.

The tactical team was already in place and moving in when Phoebe arrived. It was a good location, she thought with a look around. Well off the beach, older house, a little run-down.

For the second time that day, she drew her weapon as the team broke in the front door with a small battering ram.

“No car,” Harrison commented. “No bike, no scooter.”

“No Walken. He’s not here, but now he’s got no place to come back to.” She waited, blood pumping, for the all clear.

“Lieutenant.” Sykes jogged over. “DMV came through. He’s got an oh-six Escalade. Got the tag number. APB’s going out.”

“You do good work, Detective.”

“We’re clear,” Harrison announced.

He’d likely rented it furnished, Phoebe decided. The furniture was old, cheap but serviceable. He kept it tidy, she noted. No clutter, no fuss. The bed was made with military precision, and on the table beside it stood a framed photo of Angela Brentine and a single pink rose.

Thought of himself as a soldier and a romantic, she concluded as she took notes.

“Second bedroom’s locked,” Harrison told her. “Window’s covered. They’re checking for booby traps before they take it down.”

“Spartan, wouldn’t you say? Military neatness. The bare bones of a field HQ. We should talk to the landlord, anyone in the houses and cottages round about.” She moved to the closet. “His clothes are still here, neatly hung.”

“Toothbrush, shaving cream, basic toiletries in the bath,” Harrison told her. His face was hard, his eyes somber as they met hers. “He isn’t running.”

“No.” She heard the crash of the second door going down. “But that doesn’t mean he’s coming back.”

“Lieutenant?” A member of the tactical team came to the doorway. “I think you’ll want to see this. Found his nest.”

When she walked across the hall, her blood went cold. Photographs papered an entire wall. Her face, over and over, in every possible expression. Photos of her standing in front of her house, talking with Mrs. Tiffany, walking with Carly in the park, standing with her mother on the veranda.

The whole family on what had to have been St. Patrick’s Day. One of her moving into Duncan’s arms the night they’d had dinner on his boat. Her sitting on the bench, like Forrest Gump, in Chippewa Park, alone, then with Marvella. Of her shopping, eating, driving.

A shudder ran through her before she looked away.

Across the room was a large head-and-shoulders shot of Angela, with candles and bud vases of pink roses crowded on the table below it.

She studied the workbench, a long table, shelves. On them, meticulously arranged, were a laptop computer, a police scanner, chemicals, wires, what she thought must be timing mechanisms, tape, rope and tools. She spotted the shotgun, the rifle.

“He took his handguns.”

“He’s got a couple of wigs, glasses, false beards, makeup, face putty,” Liz said as she crossed over. “No journal. Maybe on that,” she said with a nod toward the laptop.

“Why didn’t he take it? Why didn’t he take what was important to him?” Because it shook her down to the bone, Phoebe kept her back to the wall of photos. “Switch locations at least. He knows we have his name, his photo, and someone’s going to point us here.”

“He couldn’t have been sure we’d ID’d him until he talked to you,” Liz pointed out.

“He stays a step ahead. Why is he suddenly a step behind? Expensive equipment, easily portable, just left here.”

She picked up a camera, turned it over, saw the painted pink rosebud. Angela’s camera.

“He planned to come back for it.”

Carefully, Phoebe set the camera back down. “I don’t think so. I think he’s done here, and that we’re exactly where he wants us to be. But where is he?”

She stepped to another wall, covered with photos of Savannah. Banks, shops, restaurants, museums, exterior, interior.

“He doesn’t waste anything. Everything has a purpose, even if it’s thumbing his nose. So why does he take these?”

“And where are the others?” Liz wondered. “He’s taken some down—you can see where he had other shots up.”

“If he took them with him, he needed them. He takes pictures of places because the places have a purpose, or the potential of one. Targets. These are digital shots, aren’t they?”

She turned back to the laptop. “We have to get in there, find the files, find the ones he took with him. That’s the target.” As it churned, she pressed a hand to her stomach. “I think he gave himself the go, the green light. Today. I think it has to be today.”

She looked at her watch and felt the chill as she noted it was ten fifty-five. “High Noon. We’ve got an hour to find him.”

Duncan shoved his hands in his pockets, jiggled loose change while the structural engineers, the architect and Jake swarmed over the warehouse. “We have to move this along, Phin.”

“You set the meeting, the inspection.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that was before.”

“If you think Ma’s going to mind poking around a jewelry store on her own awhile if you’re running late, you’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with.”

Duncan pulled his hand out of his pocket to check his watch. Eleven-ten. “Maybe I should call her, tell her to make it twelve-thirty.”

“She’s probably on her way, especially since she’s meeting Loo.” Phin grinned at Duncan’s blank look. “If you don’t think Ma got on the horn and starting blowing the news the minute she hung up with you, you’re not thinking, boy. Then again, I guess a man about to buy an engagement ring’s not thinking.”

“You did it.”

“Yeah. Working out pretty well for me, too.” He gave Duncan a slap on the back. “Business, Dunc. Ma and Loo can entertain each other just fine if you’re late. Loo said she was taking a full hour lunch, and was prepared to make it two if need be. So God help you.”

Phoebe paced outside the computer lab. One step ahead, she thought. He was still one step ahead. “Somewhere that means something to him, in association with her. It’s more personal than something associated with me.”

Her family was safe, she reminded herself. Inside, guarded and safe. Hadn’t she checked twenty minutes ago? Hadn’t she talked to Carly, to her mother, even contacted the cops on duty?

“The bank where she was killed is under heavy surveillance. If he tries to get in, we’ll have him.”

She glanced over at Liz, nodded. “And he’d know that. Still, if that was his target, that wouldn’t stop him. He’d assume he’s far enough ahead of us to hit it before we’re in place. But it’s the obvious target, and that concerns me. I think it’s somewhere else. A restaurant where they met, a hotel, motel, even one of the parks. It needs to be a statement, Liz.”

Pacing, she tried to find the pieces. “Blowing up a man in Bonaventure,that’s a statement. Attempting to do the same to a police captain mere blocks from the station, that’s another.”

“Big, splashy. I get that. And this is the biggest, the splashiest.” Like Phoebe, Liz stared through the glass walls of the lab. “I get that, too.”

“City Hall, courthouse, the station itself?”

“All on alert. But if it’s personal, the way you’re thinking, those don’t fit.”

“You’re right. You’re right. He can’t get to Brentine, and Brentine isn’t his issue, either. She was leaving him, Brentine’s superfluous.”

“Security’s stepped up at his home and office in any case.”

“How long is it going to take them to find those files? Even with him deleting them the way he did, they’re still there somewhere. That’s what they always say. Damn it, we’ve only got twenty minutes till noon.”

At ten to twelve, Ma Bee and Loo strolled into Mark D’s, anticipating an afternoon of shopping and a celebration lunch. Ma had donned her shopping shoes and a breezy purple dress. She had put on her going-out-special lipstick, and had spritzed on some of her favorite French perfume.

“I could’ve handled this expedition, you know.”

Loo gave a snort. “You think I’m letting you have all the fun? You’ve done this before with all your boys. But it’s my first chance to have some input on an engagement ring. Don’t you love this place?” She gave Ma a little elbow bump as they stopped to look around. “All these glitters, and everything all hushed and reverent.”

“So they can charge more.”

“Sure, but that little black-and-silver box from Mark D’s? Thatsays something. When Phineas gave me that bracelet from here last Christmas, I squealed like a girl. And he got awfully lucky that night.”

It was Ma’s turn to snort. “I don’t see a new grandchild for me coming out of it.”

“We’re thinking about it.”

“Think faster. I’m not getting any younger.” She looked up at the trio of crystal chandeliers. “But you’re right, it sure is fine in here. Let’s have a little look-see before Duncan gets here.”

Arnie Meeks was bored out of his mind. He was, in his opinion, nothing more than a glorified doorman, standing around while tourists and rich Savannahians came breezing inside. The tourists were a pain in the ass, mostly, just coming in to gawk. And the rich—bitches mostly—had their noses in the air.

Like they didn’t squat to pee like the rest of their kind.

The old man could fix this. Resentment bubbled up inside his throat at the thought of it. Push the buttons, pull the strings, grease the palms, he’d be back on the job instead of standing around waiting to roust shoplifters.

And in the weeks since he’d been stuck on this humiliating duty, he’d had only a little action in that area twice.

What he needed was for some asshole to come in and try to rob the place. Now that would be a fucking dream come true. He’d take the bastard down, you could bet your ass on it. Take him down, be a hero. Get on TV.

Get back on the job where he goddamn belonged.

He saw the two black women come in and curled his lip. As if that old lady in her thick-soled shoes could afford so much as a cuff link from this place. The young one was hot—if you went for the Halle Berry type—and had a slick look about her. So maybe she could dig out a platinum card.

Probably just more lookie-loos, Arnie decided as he watched them gawk around. The way he saw it, more than half the people who came in the doors were lookie-loos.

He did his own scan.

A dozen people wandered around the store, drooling over the displays. Three clerks—who made more than he did with their fucking commissions by kissing ass and talking people into buying what they didn’t need—manned counters or unlocked cabinets to take something out.

The place was manned with security cameras, with alarms. Even the back room, where he knew the man himself was planted today, in anticipation of some deep-pocketed client. Arnie had heard the buzz on that.

Deep Pockets would be escorted into the back, so the hoi polloi couldn’t watch him playing with the sparklers. Or if hewanted to be seen—and some of them got off on that—they’d set him up at the special table in the corner.

Patsy, the blonde with the rack, had told him that Julia Roberts had shopped there in the back room. And Tom Hanks had, too. At the special table.

Maybe he’d move on Patsy, get a little action there. His marriage was in the toilet, and the way things were going with Mayleen—thanks to that bitch Mac Namara—he wasn’t getting anything there either.

Time to scout the field again, pick himself a new heifer out of the herd. He knew by the way she looked at him—the way she made sure her ass wiggled when she walked away—that Patsy was up for it. Maybe he’d take her for a little spin some night after work. See how she handled in the sack.

He looked over as the front door gave its little ding as it opened. He saw the brown uniform and cursed under his breath. A pain-in-the-ass delivery.

He stepped toward the door.

Loo pulled out her cell phone when it played “Jailhouse Rock.” She winked at Ma when she read the display. “Hey there, lover-boy.”

“Hello, gorgeous. You there with Ma?”

“We’re here admiring a whole buncha diamond rings. Where are you?”

“Running behind. On my way, though, with this leech on me I can’t pull off. He insists on coming along.”

“That leech about six feet tall with eyes like melted dark chocolate?”

“He’s about that tall, anyway. We’re just heading cross town. Probably take a good fifteen minutes yet.”

“Take your time, and tell that brown-eyed man I’ve got my own eyes on a pair of ruby earrings that are going to set him back a bit. Another fifteen, twenty minutes, I bet I find something else to set him back even more.”

“Then I’ll take my time. Why should I be the only one spending money today?”

The time was clicking down toward noon when Phoebe was able to see the photos. She hung over the shoulder of the computer technician.

“Some of these were on the wall. Prints were left on the wall. Some of them weren’t. This motel.”

“Over by Oglethorpe Mall,” the technician told her. “You see he’s got shots of the outside, the lobby and this room.”

“They used that room for trysts when it wasn’t convenient to use his apartment. And this restaurant—I know this place, little Italian place. That’s out by the mall, too. Not in the heart of things, not places they’d likely run into anyone in her husband’s circle. But they don’t feel like the sort of places he’d target. They’re not what you’d call important, like Bonaventure. Not a statement like—Wait.”

She gripped the tech’s shoulder as he panned through the file. “Wait, that’s Mark D’s.”

“Inside and out, back and front. I don’t think they allow photographs inside Mark D’s.”

“No, security, insurance. No, they wouldn’t want photographs. Pictures of the back door, the front door from inside and out.” In her belly, muscles tightened. “I want cars over there now. Right now. Liz, get ahold of Property, find out what jewelry was listed in her personal effects. And, Jesus, let’s get his credit card records for three months back from Angela’s death. Good work,” she said to the technician. “Let’s get the hell over there.”

Six minutes, she noted as she rushed out. Six minutes until noon. Maybe they weren’t too late.

“Hey, buddy, when are you guys going to get the word that deliveries are supposed to come in first thing in the morning, before the customers?”

“Just following orders.” He rolled in the dolly with its three large boxes. He turned deliberately into Arnie. “Just like you’re going to do, unless you want to take a bullet in the belly. Lock the door, asshole,” he ordered as he clamped a hand over Arnie’s weapon. “I’ve got an S-and-W nine shoved right into your navel. The bullet’s going to make a hell of a hole out the other side of you, if you don’t do now and think later.”

“What the fuck do you…I know you.”

“Yeah, I used to be a cop, too. Let’s do it this way.” Lifting the gun, he whipped it across Arnie’s face and sent him down. Even before the first scream, he was turning, both weapons in his hands. And he smiled as, right on schedule, right according to plan, some good employee hit the alarms that set them shrilling. And locked the place down.

“Everybody on the floor. Now! Now!” He put a series of rounds in the ceiling, shattering crystal. There was plenty of screaming as people dove for cover or simply dropped to huddle together on the floor. “Except you, Blondie.”

He aimed the nine at Patsy. “Over here.”

“Please. Please.”

“Die there or come here. Five seconds.”

With tears already streaming out of her eyes, she stumbled toward him. He hooked one arm around her neck, put the gun to her temple. “Want to live?”

“Yes. God. Oh God.”

“Anyone in the back? Lie to me, and I’ll know, and I’ll kill you.”

“I…Mr. D.” She sobbed it out. “Mr. D’s in the back.”

“He’s got monitors back there, right? He can see us right now. You’d better call out, Blondie. Because if he isn’t out here in ten seconds, he’s going to lose his first employee.”

“There’s no need.” Mark stepped out of the back room, hands high. He was a small-framed man in his early sixties, with a dapper white mustache and a head of waving white hair. “There’s no need to hurt her. No need to hurt anyone.”

“That’ll be up to you, for a start. Over here, cuff your boy, hands behind his back.”

“He’s hurt.”

“He’ll be dead, you don’t get it done. I want everyone to empty their pockets—one at a time—starting with you.” He kicked the shoulder of a man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. “Everything out, turn the pockets inside out. Anyone reaches for a cell phone, a weapon, a fucking stick of gum, I shoot. What’s your name, honey?”

“Patsy. It’s Patsy.”

“Cute. I shoot cute Patsy in the ear. Pockets, now,” he snapped.

“He needs medical attention,” Mark said as he knelt beside Arnie. “I’ll unlock the cases. You can take whatever you want. The police are on the way. The alarm.”

“Yeah, it’s handy.” He heard the sirens already, cutting through the high ring of the store alarm. Quicker than he’d thought, but that was fine. “You’re going to turn off the alarm, Mark, but you’re not going to abort the lockdown. You got that? Screw it up, and Patsy’s brains are going to be all over your nice, shiny floor. You.” He kicked the first man again. “Up. Roll that dolly to the northeast corner.”

“I…I don’t know which is the northeast.”

Walken rolled his eyes. “Right rear, fuckhead. Move! You, you, drag that worthless dick back there with it.” He back-walked with Patsy, then shoved her to her knees. “Get some shopping bags, Patsy. You’re going to pick up all this junk people carried in here, put it in shopping bags and put the bags on this counter. Everybody else, facedown. Oh, not you, Mark, sorry. Northeast corner. I’m watching you, Patsy. You be good, now. Pick up the phone, Mark.” He nodded toward the one on the desk. “Call nine-one-one. You’re going to say exactly what I tell you to say. Nothing more, nothing less. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Walken tucked Arnie’s weapon in his belt, ripped open the top box on the dolly. “You see what’s in here, Mark?”

Mark’s white face went gray as he looked in the box. “Yes.”

“Plenty more where that came from. Make the call.”

30

Phoebe was minutes from the jewelry store when the alarm went off. She stood within sight of it, with the crisis team already moving men and equipment into positions when the nine-one-one call was relayed to her.

This is Mark D, and I have an emergency. There is an armed man holding me and sixteen other hostages inside my store. He has guns and explosives. He says if he doesn’t receive a call from Lieutenant Phoebe Mac Namara within five minutes from the end of this call, he will shoot one of the hostages. For every minute beyond that five-minute deadline, he will shoot another. If anyone other than Lieutenant Mac Namara attempts to contact him on this phone, or any other, he will shoot a hostage. If there is any attempt to enter this building, he will detonate the explosives. Lieutenant Mac Namara has exactly five minutes from now.

She reached for her cell phone. “Give me the number inside.”

“Communications is nearly set up,” Harrison told her.

“I don’t want him to know that, or that I’m already here. The less he thinks we know, the longer we can stall.” She punched in the number passed to her, sucked in a breath, then punched to call.

“This better be Phoebe.”

Answered first ring, she noted, and scribbled downeager/anxious to get started. “It’s Phoebe, Jerry. I’m told you want to talk to me.”

“You and nobody else. Anyone else calls in here, somebody dies. That’s the first term.”

“No one else calls you, talks to you, but me. I understand. Will you tell me how everyone’s doing in there?”

“Sure. Scared spitless. Got us some criers. One guy’s going to have a hell of a headache when he comes to. If he comes to. Hey, I think you know him, Phoebe. Arnie Meeks? You’ve danced with him before, right?”

Her rapidly scribbling hand jumped. “Are you saying that Arnold Meeks is one of the hostages, and that he’s injured?”

“That’s what I’m saying. He’s also wearing an accessory. Just like the one I made for Roy. You remember Roy.”

Not someone she loved this time, she thought, but someone she detested. And a damn clever, vicious way to up the stakes. “Are you telling me that you’ve rigged explosives on Arnold Meeks’s person?”

“Oh yeah. A whole shitload of them. Any move on the building, and I blow him and a hell of a lot of others to hell. I don’t figure you’ll mind much about old Arnie, right? Guy messed you up, didn’t he? Coward’s way. How about if I pay him back for you?”

“You don’t sound as if you want to do me any favors, Jerry. Can we talk about you and me, and what you do want?”

“We’re just getting started. You’d better get things set up fast, Phoebe. I’ve got a little work to do in here. You call me back in ten.”

“Get the com up,” Phoebe snapped. “Commander, I need Mike Vince here, right here.”

“Done.” He ordered it. “We’ve got a partial visual, a count of ten hostages on the floor. We can’t confirm if there are seven more. Internal security has locked down the building. There’s a device rigged to the rear door with trip wires.”

“Don’t try to defuse, please. He’d know. It would give him the excuse to kill a hostage, or set off the rig he has on Meeks. What he wants most is to play me, to pay me back. We need to let him do that, as long as we can.”

He’d left a tidy house, she thought, and roses for Angela.

“Commander, he’s not planning on coming out of there alive. It’s a suicide mission for him, his sacrifice. And his way of paying me back. The loss of seventeen hostages, including a man who injured me. I know what he’s doing. I need time to wind this out.”

“Com’s set—negotiation control’s in that ladies’ boutique up there.” Sykes gestured.

“Okay, I need everything, every scrap we have on him, everything we know or think we know. I need Mike Vince sent up as soon as possible. I need you with me, Sykes. I talk. Nobody talks to him but me,” she continued as they hurried toward the boutique. “I need you to feed me information, to let me know if I go off on the wrong angle. He wants to play this out, too, so he won’t rush it if we don’t rush him. You help me interpret, help me listen, help me with every goddamn thing. Because he knows how this works, and he’s waiting for me to make a mistake. He’s salivating for just that.”

“He’s got nothing to lose, Lieutenant.”

“No, he’s already lost. What he wants is for me to sweat, then blow the whole thing—including himself—to pieces. This isn’t a negotiation. But the longer he believes I think it is, the longer we have to get everyone out alive.”

“You think he knew Arnie was security there?”

“Yes.” She stepped into the boutique where her base had been set up amid thin summer dresses, pretty accessories, high-end handbags and fashionable sandals.

“I think it must have thrilled him to find out Arnie was on the door there. I think he saw it as a sign that he’d chosen his last stand perfectly.” She stripped off her blazer, tossed it aside. “We already know why he’s in there, what he wants. But we play it out. Start the checklist.”

She sat at a table cleared of stock, pressed her fingers to her eyes. “He’s cold, rational, committed. He’s suicidal. He wants to die. This is another kind of suicide by cop—but a specific cop. Me. I fail, everyone dies. My failure’s his motive, but that doesn’t go for him unless we establish negotiations, unless we talk, play the game.”

She checked her watch. Ten minutes exactly, she told herself. If she called a minute before, a minute after, he could use it as an excuse.

She ordered herself to clear her head, to find the calm. When Liz came through the door, Phoebe was counting down the last two minutes. “Your guy Duncan’s just outside the perimeter, with his lawyer, Phineas Hector. He says he has to talk to you, right now. It’s urgent.”

“I can’t—”

“Phoebe, he says he’s got two people inside. He says he knows two of the hostages.”

“Pull him in, fast.”

One minute, fifteen seconds, she noted when Duncan and Phin came in.

“He’s got my mother in there,” Phin blurted out. “He’s got my wife and mother in there.”

It was like a bare-fisted blow to the throat. “Are you sure?”

“They were going to meet me there.” The fight for control was obvious on his face as Duncan stood shoulder to shoulder with Phin. “I talked to Loo on her cell a few minutes before twelve because I was running late. They were inside. They were waiting for me. Jesus, Phoebe—”

“They’re not hurt. He hasn’t hurt anyone but the security guard.” But her hands had gone clammy. “They’re smart, sensible women, and they won’t do anything to get themselves hurt.”

“If he knows who they are…” Duncan began.

“He doesn’t. He couldn’t know they’d be in there. He isn’t looking at them. It isn’t about them. I need you both to go stand back there. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything. He doesn’t know who they are, my connection to them, and that’s vital to keeping them safe. I have to call him back. He can’t hear anything but me now.”

She signaled as Mike Vince came in. “I’m not asking you to go outside. I’m trusting you to let me do my job. You trust me to do it. Sykes, ADA Louise Hector and her mother-in-law, Beatrice Hector, are inside. I’m calling him back,” she said to Vince. “I want you to listen. You have anything, anything at all to add, to help, any question, you write it down. Don’t speak. I don’t want him to hear your voice.”

“Christ, Lieutenant, Christ, I can’t believe Jerry would do something like this.”

“Believe it.” She shoved a pad and pencil at him, then made the call.

“Right on time.”

“What can I do for you now, Jerry?”

“How about a car, and a plane waiting for me at the airport.”

“Is that what you want, Jerry?” She read the note Sykes put in front of her. “A car, a plane?”

Fifteen hostages, cuffed together in a circle. Explosive device in the center of the circle.

“And if I did?”

“You know I’d try to get it for you. Might be able to swing the car. What kind of car would you like, Jerry?”

“I’ve been looking at those Chrysler Crossfires. Gotta love the name, and I buy American.”

“You’d like a Chrysler Crossfire.”

“Might. Loaded.”

“I’ll try to get that for you, Jerry. But you know that you’d have to give me something for it. We both know the way this works.”

“Fuck the way it works. What do you want for the car?”

“I’d have to ask if you’d release some hostages. Anyone with a medical condition to start, or children. Jerry, will you tell me if there are any children in there?”

“I don’t do kids. If I were going to do a kid, I’d’ve done yours. Had plenty of opportunities the last couple years.”

“Thank you for not hurting my daughter,” she said as her blood ran cold. “Jerry, are you willing to release some hostages if I can get you the car you want?”

“Hell no.” He laughed himself breathless.

“What are you willing to give if I can get you the car you want?”

“Not a fucking thing. I don’t want any goddamn car.”

She curled her hand around a bottle of water someone had set in front of her, but didn’t drink. “You’re saying you don’t want a car, at this time?”

“Could’ve put a pipe bomb in yours. Thought about it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Then we wouldn’t be talking right now, would we, you stupid bitch.”

Mood swings. Conversational tone, then adversarial. Drug use?

“I understand you want to talk to me. So tell me, Jerry, what can I do to help resolve this situation?”

“You can pull out your piece, stick the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger. How about doing that? I’ll let all the female hostages go if you blow the back of your head off while I’m on the line. I want to hear it.”

“If I did that, we couldn’t talk anymore. You told me you wouldn’t talk to anyone but me. If anyone else tried to talk to you, you’d kill someone. Do you want to talk to someone else, Jerry, or to me?”

“You think you’re going to build arapport with me?”

“I think you have things to say to me. I’m here to listen to you.”

“You don’t give a fuck about me. You didn’t give a fuck about her.”

“I understand that you blame me for what happened to Angela.”

“You let her die, same thing as killing her. She bled to death while you fucked around with the men who put the bullet in her. I had the shot. In the first hour I had the kill shot, but didn’t get the green.”

Lies. Probably believes he had the shot now. Needs to believe he could’ve saved her.

“None of us knew she’d been so seriously hurt, Jerry. They lied to us, to all of us. None of us knew Angela was hurt at all in that first hour.”

“You should’ve known!”

Fury. Grief.“You’re right, Jerry, I should’ve known. I should’ve known they were lying.” She read the next communique that came in with a runner. “I understand you loved her, and she loved you.”

“You understandnothing. ”

Agree with him,Mike Vince scribbled on his pad.Don’t say you understand or you know. Only make him madder.

“How could I, really? You’re right. How could I understand that sort of bond? Most people only dream of having that. But I do understand that you were going to be together. You should’ve been together, Jerry. You should’ve been able to run away together and be happy.”

“The fuck you care.”

His voice was calmer, and she nodded at Vince. “I guess, well, I guess I’ve dreamed of having what you and Angela had. You know things weren’t good for me and Roy. He never loved me the way I think you loved Angela.”

“She was my goddamn life. If I’d taken that shot, we’d both still have a life. You saved the men who murdered her, but you didn’t save her.”

“I failed her. I failed you. You want to hurt me, I understand that, I understand why. But how does what you’re doing now balance the scales?”

“They can’t bebalanced, you fucking cunt. Maybe I’ll shoot this asshole Arnie between the eyes. Does that balance the scales for you?”

She picked up the water now, but only to rub the cold bottle over her forehead. “Killing him isn’t going to hurt me, Jerry.”

“I want you to beg me not to, like you did with Roy. Hear that! Hear that?” he shouted as someone screamed. “I’ve got my gun pressed dead center of his forehead. You beg me not to pull the trigger.”

“Why would I, Jerry, after what he did to me? After I thought about doing it myself if I could.”

“You know what they’ll say about you if I do it?”

“Yeah. They’ll say maybe I didn’t try hard enough, maybe I didn’t put myself into this because, underneath, I wanted him to die. I wanted him to die hard. But you know, Jerry, I don’t care what they say about me. You pull the trigger, he’s gone, and it changes the situation out here. It takes a lot of the weight off me. You know how it works. You do a hostage, Tactical steps it up. So you want to pull the trigger? I don’t lose a thing. Is that what you want, Jerry?”

“Wait and see.”

He cut off the line, and Phoebe dropped her head in her hands.

“Jesus, Lieutenant,” Vince managed. “You gave him permission to kill a hostage.”

“Which is why he won’t.” Please God, don’t let her be wrong. “If I’d asked him, begged him, not to do it, he’d have done it. And he’d strap the rig on one of the others.”

She pushed to her feet when Sergeant Meeks burst in. “You think I didn’t hear that? You think I didn’t hear you invite him to kill my boy?”

He lunged at her. It took Sykes, Vince and Duncan to put him down, hold him down while he cursed at her. “My boy’s in there because of you. If he dies it’s because of you.”

“He’s not in there because of me, but if he dies, yes, that’s mine. Get him out. Get him out of here.”

“When are you going to talk to him about the hostages?” Phin grabbed her arm. “Why don’t you give him something, give him something so he’ll let the women go.”

“I can’t—”

“My wife, my mother are in there. For God’s sake, for God’s sake, you need to get them the hell out.”

“I’m going to get them out.” She couldn’t allow herself to see them—Ma Bee’s dark, steady eyes, Loo’s slow, sultry smile. “I’m going to call him back, and we’re going to work at this until everyone’s out. Phin, you have to stay calm. If you can’t, I’ll have to have you removed. I’m sorry.” She looked from him to Duncan now. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ll get them out.” Duncan reached out so their fingertips touched. “You’ll get them out. Phin, your sister’s out there now, and the rest of your family’s coming. You should go out, be with them.”

“I have to know what’s happening.” Crumbling, Phin covered his face with his hands. “I have to know something.”

“I’ll come out and tell you,” Duncan assured him, then turned to Phoebe.

“Yes, that’s fine. Go out with your family, Phin, let them know your mother and Loo aren’t hurt. We’ll keep you informed.” She signaled to an officer. “Escort Mr. Hector to his family. If he needs to come back in, he should be escorted back in. All right?” She rubbed her hands up and down Phin’s arms, felt the muscles quivering. “You go, help your family. I’m going to help your mother and Loo.”

“I can’t lose them, Phoebe.”

“We won’t lose them. Go on now.”

“How am I supposed to feel?” Duncan said as Phin went out. “They were meeting me in there.”

“He’s responsible. And I’m responsible for getting them out.”

And that’s what he’d wanted all along, she knew. Everything else had been building to this.

Showdown.

“Can I get some coffee in here?” Phoebe called out as she rubbed at the tension at the back of her neck. “And more water? Duncan, I have to ask you not to tell Phin anything I don’t clear you to tell him.”

“I got that. What can I do to help?”

“Listen. You’re good at listening.” She looked up at the board Sykes had posted. “His emotions are all over the scale. That’s typical for this first stage. He wants the negotiation, that’s our advantage. He doesn’t want to come out of it, so that’s his. I’m not calling him back.” She turned toward Vince. “He knows how to reach me, he knows how it works. Action, right? He likes to take action, make the moves?”

“Yeah.”

“It gives him more of a sense of control, of authority, if he makes the next contact. Let’s give him that. Let’s wait.”

“Got the credit card report,” Liz strode up quickly. “Five-thousand-dollar charge, Mark D, two weeks before the bank robbery. He made the minimum payments on it until he went south.”

“Bought her a ring in there, that’s what he did.” Phoebe pushed through her notes. “Got the property list, the personal effects. She had diamond—yellow-gold band—ring on her person. White-gold diamond-crusted wedding band in her purse. Not on her finger. She was wearing Walken’s ring when she died. Bastard Brentine. He knew it. Maybe not before her death, but he damn well knew what had been going on when he got her effects. And he stonewalls us.”

She scribbled, highlighted, circled. How could she use it? Should she? Time would tell.

“He thinks he knows me, but he doesn’t. I know him. And you know him,” she said to Vince. “A lot of the men out there with guns pointed at that building know him. He wants to work me, but we’ll be working him. He won’t allow himself to relate to any of the hostages. They have to remain meaningless to him so he can do what he means to do.”

“What does he mean to do?” Duncan asked.

“Kill them all. Kill himself and all of them.”

“Oh Jesus God.”

“To strike at me, personally and professionally. How can I ever do this again if I fail to save those people? How can I live with it? That’s what he thinks.”

Pacing in front of the situation board, she stared at the phone, willing it to ring. “The press and public opinion will rip me to pieces. That’s what he knows. The connection between him and me will be made known, and the bank incident will be picked over again. I’ll be disgraced, and useless as a negotiator, and I’ll pay, finally pay, for causing his lover’s death. That’s what he thinks. And he’ll die, in a spectacular and symbolic way. I’ll have killed him, just like I killed her. That’s what he wants most of all.”

She turned to look at the clock. “We’re not going to give him what he wants.”

“Offer him a trade. He knows about us. Offer to trade me for two of the women. For Ma and Loo. I’m a bigger win for him, and then—”

“He wouldn’t take it. And neither I nor the commander could allow it, Duncan.”

But he would give it, she thought. He would risk himself for love.

“Duncan.” She spoke softly, so he could hear her heart under the words. “I know what they mean to you. I know what you’re feeling.” And it was killing her.

She turned as the phone rang. “All right. Here we go. Hello, Jerry.”

Inside the bank, Ma patted the hand of the woman beside her. “Stop crying now.”

“He’s going to kill us. He’s—”

“Crying doesn’t help.”

“We should pray.” A man across the circle rocked gently back and forth. “We should put our faith in the Lord.”

“Can’t hurt.” But Ma was putting a good chunk of her faith in the men outside with guns. “Hush now,” she repeated. “Patsy, isn’t it? Hush up now, Patsy. That woman he’s talking to? She’s smart.”

“How do you know?”

“I—”

Loo squeezed her mother-in-law’s hand fiercely, gave a quick shake of her head. “She sounds smart. She’ll find out what he wants, and everything’s going to be fine.”

They circled each other for more than an hour before he broke communications again. “He’s stalling. He wants to string this out, make it last. There’s something he wants to make me do, but he’s not ready yet. It’s under there, I can hear it under there.”

“He’s enjoying it,” Duncan told her. “He likes telling you no. No food, no water, no medical supplies. He’s cruising on it.”

“Agreed, for now.”

“He’s not going to let any of them out.” Sykes sat down beside Phoebe. “He doesn’t want anything in exchange, and if he did, he knows that releasing any of the hostages is our advantage. They can give us inside intel, make it simpler to shut this down.”

“They can’t get a shot.” Vince walked over to the situation board, gestured to the sketch of the interior of the store. “He’s in this corner, northeast corner, and there’s no shot. That’s why he’s there.”

“He’s been on the other side,” Phoebe concurred. “He’s familiarized himself with the layout, with the angles.”

“They need to go in. Back door’s the only way. A frontal assault gives him too much time. They need to deal with the explosives on the rear door.”

“And if they make a mistake, if he’s got an alarm on it, and it goes or blows, he’ll end it.”

“You have to get him out of the corner,” Duncan said, and Phoebe turned to him.

“Yes, I do.”

“If they can’t get an angle on him, he doesn’t have one on them.”

“That’s right.” Phoebe closed her hand briefly over Duncan’s. “That’s exactly right. I need to talk to the commander. I need to know where to move him, if possible.” She signaled to Sykes to make the call. “They have to let me know when they’re going to take him. I know that’s not how it’s usually done, but they can trust me not to let him know it’s coming. I have to move him; they have to know that’s coming.”

“Got it.” Sykes turned with his radio to signal the command post.

Shoving her hair off her damp neck, Phoebe paced, tried to put herself inside the shop. “He’s going to have to let them use the bathroom at some point, unless he wants a big mess on his hands. And he doesn’t. One bathroom, employees’, right in the back room.” She narrowed her eyes at the sketch. “How does he plan to work this? He’d have thought it through already, have a system ready. That’s why he doesn’t have all the hostages in the circle. Holding one back to release another. He doesn’t have to move or interact with them to handle the basic function. But it’s going to be distracting, and he’ll have to be alert. He won’t want to talk to me while that’s going on.”

She nodded. “And we’re not giving him what he wants.”

Time, she thought, to start playing him. She picked up the phone, called.

“Better be you, bitch.”

“It’s always going to be me, Jerry. You know how this goes. No lying to a hostage-taker, it puts the hostages at risk. No saying no to a hostage-taker, it pisses them off, and puts the hostages at risk. I’m supposed to empathize with you, be supportive of your feelings, listen to your demands and complaints.”

“Yeah, you were damn sympathetic with the bastards who shot Angie.”

“Angela was a beautiful woman. She loved you.”

“Fuck you. You don’t care about her.”

“You’ve made me care, Jerry. I’m in love with someone, maybe you don’t feel I deserve to be, but I’m in love. So I understand how Angela felt about you. I understand something of what you’re feeling, because if anything happened to him, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“You don’t know what we had.”

“You had something special, something once in a lifetime. She was wearing your ring, Jerry. She was wearing it when she died.”

“What?”

“The ring you bought her in the store where you are now. She must’ve treasured it. She must have been thrilled to wear it. I wanted you to know that, Jerry. I called to tell you because it proves to everyone she was yours.”

“Everyone can go to hell.”

“If something like this had happened to me, I’d want everyone to know what we meant to each other. How much we loved each other. I think you want that, too, Jerry. I want to tell you that I do know it.” There was a long beat of silence where she could only hear him breathing. “Roy never loved me, did you know that? He never loved me or the child we made together. Can you imagine? Now that I have someone who does…”

She looked over at Duncan, met his eyes, so she’d feel it only stronger, so it would come into her voice. “Now that I do, everything in the world is different. It’s stronger and brighter and clearer. Was it like that for you?”

“She made it beautiful. And bright. Now it’s black.”

Grief,she wrote.Tears. Careful, careful, she thought. If she tipped him too deeply into grief, he could end it all now. “She wouldn’t want the black for you, Jerry. Someone who loved you the way Angela loved you wouldn’t want you in the black.”

“You put her there. I’m not leaving her there alone.”

“She—”

“You shutup ! You shut up about her.”

“Okay, Jerry. I hear that I’ve upset you. I’m sorry. You know it’s not my purpose here to upset you.”

“No, it’s your fucking purpose to talk to me like I’m an idiot until I come out crying with my hands in the air. You think you can play me? You think I’m going out that way after I’ve come this far?”

“I think you’re preparing to commit suicide, and take those people with you.”

“Is that what you think?” he said, and she noted the smug satisfaction in his tone.

“That’s a big statement, Jerry. And a big black mark on my record. But we could spin it, you know how it goes. It’s overkill. Seventeen’s our count. A lot of people for you to deal with, and a lot to take down. Now, if you were to let the women out—”

“Come on, Phoebe. That’s a lame pass.”

“It might seem like a lame pass to you, but I’ve got to do my job here. I guess we both know it’s time for me to ask how everyone’s doing in there.”

She rubbed the back of her neck as they took each other through the dance—requests and refusals for food, water, medical attention.

And the clock ticked off another hour.

31

Duncan stood outside with Phin, a few feet away from the rest of the family. “They’re okay. Nobody’s been hurt. She keeps him talking, keeps working him around. I swear to God, I don’t know how she does it.”

“It’s been nearly four hours now.”

“I know.” He could see the snipers from where he stood, see them on rooftops, in windows, doorways. What if they opened up? What if Ma or Loo got in the way of a bullet?

The idea of it had him lowering to a crouch on legs that had gone to water. “If it was money—God, why isn’t it about money? I’d—”

“I know.” Phin hunkered down beside him. “I know, Dunc.”

“Phoebe, she…She keeps bringing him back to the hostages. Asking how they’re doing, talking to him about letting some of them go. She asked if we could have their names, but he doesn’t know, doesn’t care. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I just don’t know.”

“It’s taking too long.”

“I don’t know that either.” He laid a hand over Phin’s, linked their fingers. “Take care of the family. You take care of the family, and I’ll go back in, see if there’s anything else I can find out, anything I can do.”

Despite the air-conditioning, the air in the boutique hung hot and thick. The door opened and closed countless times as cops pushed in and out, so the steamy heat crawled in and set up shop. Sweat gleamed on Phoebe’s skin as she studied the situation board, read over her own notes, made more. In a desperate attempt to keep some part of her cool, she’d snagged a tortoiseshell clip from a display to yank her hair up.

She chugged down water as she stared at the red X’s marked on the layout of the jewelry store. Kill marks, she thought. Move him to any of those locations, and Tactical had the green light.

“We’ve had experts move in at the rear door,” Harrison told her. “Examine the rig there. They think they can defuse it and circumvent the alarm.”

“But they don’t know.”

“They’re pretty damn sure.”

“Because they’re getting impatient. You know as well as I do everyone’s wanting to move, to act. That’s the danger of long negotiations. I need more time. He’s going to have to move those people soon. Bladders only hold so long, and that’s our best option.”

“Sergeant Meeks wants to know how his boy’s doing. You can’t blame him.”

“He won’t tell me.” Phoebe swiped one of the baby wipes Liz had passed her over her face to mop up the sweat. “Tell him I’ll try to find out next round.”

“If you don’t move him within the next hour, I’m going to let the bomb squad take that rig. He’s not coming out alive, you know that. Bringing him down’s the only way to minimize casualties.”

“I’ll move him, damn it. It may take a little longer, but I’ll move him.”

“It takes much longer, you’ll make a mistake. That’s why you work in teams, Phoebe. As long as it’s only you and him, you’re going to tire out and make a mistake.”

“He wants me to make a mistake. And the theme of this party is he doesn’t get what he wants. He’s not ready to end it yet, because he wants something from me first. And until he is ready, those people are as safe as we can make them. I’ll know when he’s ready.”

Harrison walked out as Duncan walked in. Phoebe lifted her eyebrows as she spotted the bags of takeout.

“Figured food would come in handy.”

Even the thought of eating made her nauseous, but eating was necessary, and might keep her from making that mistake. “You’re my hero.”

He set the bags down, where they were attacked by cops, then moved to her. “Whose turn is it to call?”

“I’m letting him make the move.”

“Okay.” He rubbed her shoulders. “I talked to your mom. Everyone’s all right there, some worried about you. This, ah, siege is all over the news.”

“That’s one of the things he wants I couldn’t stop.” She let her head rest on his shoulder, rested her mind there. “I haven’t had anyone take care of me in a long time. I could get used to it.”

“You’d better.”

“How’s Phin—and the rest of them?”

“They’re terrified. I’m not.” They both knew it was a lie, but it was a comforting one. “I know you’ll get them out safe.”

“What do you hear when he talks?”

“He goes up and down, right and left, but…”

“But?”

“Under it all? I guess what I hear is satisfaction.”

“Yes, you listen well.”

Ma Bee’s back ached, her head throbbed. Pretty, blond Patsy had given up crying and was now curled up on the floor with her head in Ma’s soft lap. There were murmurs and whispers among the hostages—something the man in charge didn’t seem to mind, or maybe didn’t tune his ears to hear.

Some of them dozed, as if they might open their eyes again and find this had all been a strange, awful dream.

“Phin must be so scared,” Loo said quietly. “Livvy. He wouldn’t tell Livvy. I don’t want her to be scared. Oh, Ma, my baby.”

“She’s fine. You know she’s fine.”

“Why doesn’t hedo something? When the hell is he going to do something?”

“I don’t know, honey. But I gotta do something. I gotta pee.”

There were murmured agreements, even a few weak laughs.

“I’ll ask,” Loo said.

“No, let me. Motherly type might have better luck. Mister!” Ma called out before Loo could object. “Hey, mister! Some of us here need to use the facilities.”

They’d called out to him before and been ignored. But this time he turned, the phone in his hand, and looked at Ma with dead eyes.

“Been hours now,” she reminded him. “Unless you want a big puddle down here, you’re going to have to let us use the bathroom.”

“You’ll have to hold it awhile longer.”

“But—”

He raised the gun. “If I put a bullet in you, you won’t be worried about pissing. Now shut up.”

He’d had a schedule, and he’d slipped up. Hour three break was when he’d meant to shuffle the hostages, one by one, into the toilet. Whether they wanted to go or not. But he’d forgotten, and now it was time to make the call, goddamn it. So they’d hold it until the next break, or they’d piss themselves.

Fuck them.

“What if I want ten million dollars?” he said to Phoebe.

“Do you want ten million dollars, Jerry?”

Listen to her, he thought, butter wouldn’t fucking melt. “Let’s toss it out there, kick it around.”

“All right. What do I get for the ten million if I can get that for you?”

“I don’t shoot a hostage in the head.”

“Well now, that’s a negative response, Jerry. You know if I could, and I can’t promise I can, but if I could convince my superiors to approve that ten million, there’d have to be a more positive quid pro quo.”

“What if I said for ten million, I’d think about releasing the female hostages.”

“You’d consider releasing the women if I can offer ten million? That’s worth talking about.”

“I bet it is.”

“The thing is, Jerry, you’ve got an injured man in there, too. You did tell me Arnold Meeks was injured.”

He looked down where Arnie slumped, dried blood on his face, tape slapped over his mouth. And explosives strapped on his body. “He’s had better days.”

“Before I can approach anyone about the money, I have to be assured that Arnold Meeks is alive, and his injuries aren’t life-threatening. You know who his daddy is, Jerry. I’ve got some pressure on me here.”

“Cocksucker’s alive.”

“I appreciate you assuring me he’s alive, but I’d have more muscle if I could hear him tell me himself. If I can pass along I’ve heard his voice, they’ll get off my back and you and I can concentrate on the important business.”

“Fine.”

He set down the phone, stepped over, leaned down and ripped the tape from Arnie’s mouth. Arnie’s blackened, bloodshot eyes rolled up. “Say hi to Phoebe, asshole.” Walken snatched the phone, held it to Arnie’s ear. And jammed the barrel of the gun under Arnie’s jaw. “Say this: Hi, Phoebe, I’m the cowardly asshole who kicked your murdering ass down the stairs.”

Arnie’s eyes, full of rage and terror, stayed on Walken’s as he repeated the statement.

“What are your injuries?” Phoebe demanded. “How bad are you hurt?”

Arnie moistened his lips. “She wants to know about my injuries.”

“You go on and tell her, fuckhead.”

“He pistol-whipped me across the face. I think my cheekbone’s busted. I’m cuffed, and he’s got a goddamn bomb strapped to me.”

“Is it on a timer? Is it—”

“That’ll be enough,” Walken told her. “Now about that ten million.”

“You want ten million dollars to release the hostages.”

“Ten million to release the female hostages.”

“Ten million to release the women. How many women are there, Jerry?”

“Eleven. That’s less than a million a head. Hell of a deal.”

“Eleven women, who you’d release if I can offer you ten million dollars?”

“Stop fucking echoing. I know the drill.”

“Then you know that I’d have a stronger chance of getting you what you want after a show of faith. If you’d release some of the hostages now, including any of those injured or with medical conditions, I’d try damn hard to get you that ten million.”

“Ah, screw ten million. Let’s make it twenty.”

“You’re yanking my chain, Jerry.”

He let out a laugh. “I thought about killing you, Phoebe. A thousand times.”

“If you thought about it, why didn’t you do it?”

“A thousand ways. A bullet in the brain. Much too clean. Grabbing you like I did Roy, doing you like I did him. But I don’t like repeating myself. Beating you to death, or keeping you alive for days, just putting holes in you. But then it’d be over for you, like it is for Angie. You don’t deserve what she got. How about this, you come on in here. Just you, and I let them all go. Every one of them.”

“You know they won’t let me do that.”

“You come in, seventeen people live.”

“You’d trade all the hostages for me. Is that a real offer, Jerry, or are you yanking me again?”

“You won’t do it. You’re nothing but talk.”

“But if I would?”

“They wouldn’t let you. You think I’m stupid? You think I’ve forgotten how it works?”

“I don’t, but have you forgotten that you’ve got Sergeant Meeks’s son in there, injured. He’s got pull. Is it a real offer, Jerry? Me for all seventeen?”

“I’ll think about it. But you’re going to do something else first.”

“What else would you like me to do?”

“You’re going to go out there, in front of all the cameras. You’re going to give a statement on how you killed Angela Brentine. How you’re responsible for her death. How you cared more about running your mouth and playing big shot than saving her life.”

“You want me to speak to the press, Jerry, give a statement about the death of Angela Brentine?”

“You’re going to say exactly what I tell you to say, exactly when I tell you to say it. Then we’ll see about the money and the hostages.”

He hung up.

Before she could rise, Duncan pulled her right out of her chair. “If you even think about trading yourself, I’ll knock you out, lock you up until you get your senses back.”

“You thought about it when it was you.”

“It’s my mother in there, the only one I’ve ever really had. And screw this, I’m not debating or arguing, or anything else. You’re not going near that building.”

“Chill out,” Sykes ordered. “She’s not trading herself. We don’t work that way.” He looked hard at Phoebe. “Not ever. This isn’t Hollywood.”

“You bought it.” She jabbed a finger at Duncan, then at Sykes. “You know better, but you bought it. I promise you he did. He wasn’t expecting me to consider it. He was screwing with me again, and I threw him off by giving the demand any credence. He bought it, he’s thinking about it. What he wanted, expected, was to get me to agree to make the statement. Or to refuse. I do either, it’s over. That’s what he’s waiting for, my public confession. But now he’s thinking what it would be like if I came inside. If he had me in there. So how do we use it?”

“Show of faith,” Sykes said.

“That’s first. Get him to release some of the hostages—and before there’s any agreement or refusal on the statement. Because that was his green light. We stall. Put us on the same side on this issue. I want to go make the statement, but they’re dicking around on it. I want to go in, but they’re stonewalling. I’m trying to work it so he gets what he wants. I’m frustrated because it’s taking so long to get the go on it. He’s used to following a plan, an outline.” She looked at Vince.

“I guess, yeah. Ah, it’s training. You have to adjust, sure, to think on your feet, but it’s all within the outline. You train for variables. But he likes…order? I guess that’s the word I want. He’s not real impulsive. He’d rather figure it through.”

“He’s doing that now. Does he want to go through with his original plan—blow it all up, himself included, while I live, disgraced but breathing? Or, if he gets the opportunity, wouldn’t he rather take it down to the two of us? The hostages aren’t anything to him, but they’re everything to me. That was the idea. But to be able to look me in the eyes when he sets off that bomb, that’s going to be tempting.”

“He’s tired,” Duncan added. “You can hear it in his voice. So are you. He probably hears it in yours. He’s getting closer to ending it.”

“Yes, he’s closer, bringing up the press statement, that’s his lead into the final stage. Now this has given him something else to chew on.”

“Activity inside.” Sykes held up his hand for silence as he listened to his radio. “No visual on the subject, but the hostage identified as the owner is untying two of the women. Got a clear view. One hostage, female, black, middle age, walking toward the rear.”

“It’s Ma Bee,” Duncan murmured while fear closed a vise on his heart. “It’s got to be.”

Ma walked back to the bathroom as directed. She moved slower than she needed to, even hobbled a bit though it hurt her pride.

He made her leave the door open, which seriously offended her sense of propriety. Still, she peed like a racehorse and looked around for a weapon of any kind while her grateful bladder emptied.

She wasn’t a fool. He was going to kill them all. If she could hurt him, even a little, she’d have some satisfaction on the way to Jesus.

But there was nothing to grab. A bottle of liquid soap, a little dish of potpourri that wasn’t worth the throwing at the man’s head. In any case, he had that damn gun in that security guard’s ear.

She shuffled out again, kept her eyes downcast as if cowed. “I’m Beatrice. They call me Ma Bee.”

“Shut up, get back in the circle.”

“I just wanted to thank you for letting me go first, before I embarrassed myself.”

“You don’t shut up and go sit back down like I tell you, you’re the last one who goes.”

She did as she was told, but she’d seen he had another gun, and more ammunition, in one of the boxes he’d wheeled in. More important, she’d seen what she thought had to be the detonator.

“Has to be the bathroom break,” Sykes told her. “The way they’re moving from the circle to the rear, one at a time. First hostage is back. She’s…Tactical says she’s signaling. Signing. Three handguns, one rifle, ammo, detonator, rear right corner with bad guy, injured guard.”

“Count on Ma,” Duncan whispered.

“Get us the hell out of here,” Sykes finished and pulled out a smile.

“I’m calling him back while he’s moving them back and forth, while he’s got to divide his attention. Let’s push him on the deal.”

The phone rang, three times, four. Just as she was worried he wouldn’t pick up, his voice snapped on. “I don’t want to talk to you now.”

“But, Jerry, I wanted to tell you about the deal. I can’t promise yet, but…If you can’t talk to me now, I’ll wait and tell you later.”

“What? You’re not going to snow me, tell me you’re going to make the statement, make the trade, just like that.”

“I’m not trying to snow you, just keep you in the loop. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. The chief doesn’t like the statement—politics, you know how it is. But I’m working on it.”

“Politicians like their scapegoats. You tell the chief if he doesn’t give the go on it, if you’re not in front of those cameras inside the hour, we’re down to sixteen hostages.”

“I’m going to tell him, Jerry. I’m going to tell him that all you want is for me to make a statement about my responsibility for Angela’s death, and you’ll let everyone go. Is that right, Jerry?”

“I got a change of plans. You come in. We’ll use one of these camera phones for the statement, transmit it. That’s how we’re going to do it.”

“You’ll trade me for the hostages, is that what you’re telling me?”

“You come in.”

Still not going to let them go.“Arnie’s daddy’s pushing for it, like I expected he would. I haven’t even had a chance to think it through myself and he’s banging his fist. Jesus, he’s a hard case.”

“You burn, his asshole son doesn’t. No-brainer.”

“For him, maybe. I just want to talk to you, Jerry, I just want to find a way out of this. If talking to me face-to-face can help…But you know they want something up front. How many would you give us?”

There was a brief hesitation, and in it Phoebe read the lie.

“You in, they’re out. That’s the deal—if I decide to make it. Keep your eyes on the ground like I told you!”

“Sorry, what?”

“Not talking to you.”

“I was just…hold on, hang on, they’re bringing me something.” She clicked the phone to mute it, and prayed she was right in going with her gut.

“He’s not going to let any of them out, even if you could make the deal. You’re tired,” Sykes continued, “maybe you can’t hear—”

“No, I can. I can hear it. Tell them to move on the rear, but not until I signal. To move in, front and back, but not until I give the go. You’re right,” she told Sykes. “He’s not going to let any of them out for this. But if I can move him far enough away from the detonator, they can take him—maybe take him alive. Go in, front and back, they can take him. On my say.”

“What are you doing?” Duncan demanded.

“Taking a chance. Jerry? Sorry, Jerry, you know how it gets. Jerry, I’ve got her diary. I have Angela’s diary.”

“You lying bitch, she didn’t have a diary.”

“I’m not lying, Jerry. You know I have to be able to back up what I say. She was a woman in love, and she couldn’t tell anyone who you were, or the way things really were between you. So she wrote it down. That bastard Brentine didn’t tell us about it, just like he didn’t tell us she was wearing your ring when she died. Had to save his pride and reputation. They got a warrant, and they found it. She called you Lancelot.”

She heard his choked breath. “Read it to me. Read it, so I know you’re not lying.”

Phoebe flipped through her notes so it sounded like flipping pages, and pulled out the information she had on Angela. “You gave her pink roses—they were her favorite. She’s got a pink rose pressed in the pages here. She loved when you cooked for her, loved to watch you.”

“Read it. I want her words.”

“Tit for tat, Jerry. I want to give you her words, but you have to give me something.”

“Read a page, and if I know it’s her words, I’ll let a hostage go.”

There, she heard truth. “Let five hostages go, I’ll read a page. She wanted to build Camelot with you. Let five go and I’ll read it. Let them all go, and I’ll find a way to bring it in with me and you can read it yourself.”

“You bring it out where I can see it. Nobody goes out until I know you’ve got it.”

“You want me to bring it out? I can try to work that. If I bring it where you can see it, what will you give me?”

“Three of them. Bring it.”

“Three hostages go out if I bring her diary where you can see it? Is that right?”

“Now!”

“Let me clear it. I’m going to start down there with it, and try to clear it on the way. I’ll have to call you back on my cell. Is that all right?”

“Do it now.”

“I’m on my way.”

She shoved up, grabbed her cell phone. “Somebody get me something that looks like a diary, a journal. Nothing too big. I want you patched in,” she told Sykes. “When I say:It’s all I can do, Jerry, that’s the go. Exactly those words, Bull. I won’t say them if there’s another way, if I believe we can talk him down or take him alive.”

“This do?” Duncan offered her a fancy address book with an embossed red leather cover he’d grabbed off a display.

“Perfect, unless she hated red.”

“How did you know he’d go for this?” Duncan asked her.

“It’s personal, intimate. Something that was hers. Her speaking to him, and something he hadn’t factored in. He’ll trade for it, there’s a good chance he’ll trade for it. I need to coordinate with the commander.”

“I’m going with you as far as I can go,” Duncan added. “What’s to stop him from just shooting you the minute you’re in view?”

“He wants the book. More, if he gets a bead on me, they’ll have one on him. He shows a weapon, they’ll end it. He’s distracted, people are moving around. He hasn’t stopped the bathroom break. He’s off his stride now, churned up, and he’s made a mistake. We have to capitalize on it. Commander, I can move him away from the detonator.”

She explained her plan, shrugged into the vest someone passed her. “Once he’s away, I’ll keep him there, or, if I’m lucky, bring him closer to the display window. When the rear door’s clear—”

“We’ll take it from there. You move any closer than I’ve cleared, it’s over, we sweep you out.”

“Understood.” She turned to Duncan. “You can’t come with me.”

“You’d better damn right come back to me.” He gripped her hand. “Not negotiable.”

“Deal.” Her fingers tightened on his, and in his eyes she saw both his fear and his faith. “I love you,” she said, then walked away.

He might take the shot, she knew, if he was quick enough, smart enough. Odds were against it, but she hadn’t been completely truthful. She ordered herself not to look back, because Duncan might see the lie in her eyes, and the fear with it.

His mother, she thought, his sister. His lover. What happened in the next few minutes would determine if any, or all, of them came back to him.

She pulled out her cell, called Jerry.

“I’m heading down now. You need to get the hostages ready. Three hostages, Jerry, that was the deal.”

“I know what the damn deal was. I see you, I see it, before anybody gets out.”

“You see me, but you won’t see Angela’s diary until three people are out. You have to work with me, Jerry. You’ll still have fourteen. You didn’t know how many people would be in there when you planned this. There might only have been fourteen to begin with. You’re not losing anything, and you’re proving to me you keep a deal. I show it to you for three, and I’ll read you a page for three more. Then we’ll talk about the trade. That’s a fair deal, Jerry.”

Lies, she thought, she was full of lies now. Did he hear them?

If she failed, could she live with it? Could Duncan?

She heard the chatter through her earpiece. The rear rig was booby-trapped and set with an alarm. It would take time she wasn’t sure she had to bypass and defuse.

Work with what you’ve got, she reminded herself.

“Tactical needs to see the three hostages, Jerry. They’ve got me blocked; they won’t let me through until they seem them.”

Movement. Three females…moving toward the front.

She got the nod, stepped out from cover. In the swampy heat, her flesh goosebumped with ice. “I’m here, Jerry. First part of the deal. Now your part. Let them go.”

“I don’t see you.”

“If I come any closer, Tactical’s going to swarm me and push me back. I’m at the southwest of the building. I can see the display window, and make out one—no, two people standing just to the right of it.”

“Stupid to wear a vest, Phoebe, when I’d put one in your head.”

The awful amusement in his voice stripped all the moisture from her throat. “I know, but rules are rules. Let them out, Jerry.”

“I want to see the diary.”

She kept her hand behind her back. “I kept my word, time to keep yours. Then it’ll be my turn again.”

The locks clicked, the door flew open. People ran or stumbled out, weeping, shouting, “Don’t shoot!” Cops in body armor rushed to pull and drag them to cover.

Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw Ma Bee, and sent up a quick prayer of thanks.

Duncan’s mother was safe.

“My girl’s still in there,” Ma shouted. “He’s hiding behind her, hiding behind the others. He’s got the detonators. He’s got two of them.”

The prayer died in her throat. She watched a wild-eyed woman come forward and shut the door again.

“That’s three. Show me the book.”

“All right, Jerry. Tactical needs to clear the civilians out of the inner perimeter. That’s a clear.” She brought the book from behind her back. “I have Angela’s diary.”

“Open it. Open it and read. That could be any damn thing.”

“I need three more hostages.” And though it went against her heart, she followed training. “I need the injured man with this group, Jerry.”

“Fuck him. He stays, just like the rest. Want to see him, Phoebe?”

She saw the movement, and Arnie stumbling forward as if he’d been shoved. His face was gray, the blood on it dried to black. As Roy’s had been, his torso was imprisoned with the bomb.

Through the barred glass, his bruised eyes met Phoebe’s.

“You read, or I blow him. Going to take a few other people out and bring serious hurt to the others. But what the hell, I’ll blow the big one, too, and that takes it all. You readnow or it’s done. No more negotiating.”

She opened the book, stared at the blank pages. Women in love, she thought, spoke the same language. So she read from her own heart.

“I know what love is now. How could I have thought I knew before him? Everything before is pale and soft and foolish. Now, now that I know love, the world’s bright and strong and real. He makes me real.” She closed the book. “Send three people out, Jerry, and I’ll read more.”

“No more out! No more. You read what she wrote. I want the cameras on you while you read what she wrote.”

“Jerry—”

“Fuck you!” He screamed it out so all his rage seemed to fill Phoebe’s head. “You read what she wrote, then you’re going to give the statement. You do it now, you start it now, or I pick one and take her out.”

Phoebe stepped a little closer, got the sharp order through her earpiece to stop. Looking past Arnie, she could see part of the line of hostages. And she saw Loo. So tall, Phoebe thought. All that gorgeous hair. Such a good shield.

“I’ll read it, Jerry.”

“I want to see the rose, the rose she put in it.” He was weeping. He was lost. “Ask for a goddamn hostage, I do one. You understand me? Ask for another, I pick one and put one in the back of their head. You show it, you read it, you tell the goddamn world how you killed my angel. Then it’s done. Then this is done.”

Death, his longing for it as much as his lover, vibrated in his voice. And he would take, she knew, fourteen people with him.

With her gaze steady, she turned the book, flipped pages. “She saved your rose.”

“I can’t see it.”

“I’m holding it up. I’m doing what you want. I can’t come closer, they’re holding me back.”

“Two steps forward. Everybody, two steps! Hold it up! Goddamn it.”

She shifted, turned the book only a fraction. In her mind she saw the red X’s on the sketch. She saw him shove Loo’s head to the left so he could get a better view. And meeting his eyes, just for an instant, she said,“It’s all I can do, Jerry.”

Go!

The sound of the shot cut straight through her. She barely heard the screams, the shouts, the running feet that followed it.

She watched Loo run out, on her own, and straight for her. The force of the embrace knocked Phoebe back two steps. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. I thought I was going to die. I thought he’d kill us all.”

“You have to get clear now, Loo. You have to move out of this area.”

“You saved my life.” She drew back, gripped Phoebe’s face in her hands. “You saved us all.”

“Ma Bee’s over that way. You need to get clear, go to Ma Bee.”

“You saved us all,” Loo repeated as cops hustled up to pull her away.

Phoebe dropped the book, turned. And there was Duncan pushing his way toward her. “How did you get through?”

He held up a laminated ID. “I stole it.” His arms came around her. “I love you. Still a bomb in there, right? Let’s get the hell out of here, let’s go home, let’s go to Acapulco.”

“Yeah, but for now, let’s just move far away from the building with the bomb inside.”

“Your hand’s shaking.”

“Yours, too.”

“Not just my hand.”

“I have to sit down, Duncan. I have to find a quiet—quieter—place to sit down for a minute.”

She moved through the aftermath with him, nodding, acknowledging those who congratulated her. Good job, nice work. Then she stopped short when Sergeant Meeks stepped into her path.

He said nothing, simply looked at her. Then he inclined his head and strode away.

“He ought to be on his knees to you,” Duncan muttered.

“Not his style, and I don’t give a damn anyway.”

Duncan led her back to the boutique, nudged her into a chair.

She breathed out. “Can you give me five here?” she asked the rest of the team still inside. “Five to clear my head, then we’ll finish this up.”

“No problem, LT.” Sykes jerked a thumb toward the door, paused on his way out. “Hell of a job.”

“Yeah.” And in the relative quiet, she breathed in again as Duncan crouched in front of her.

“Honey, you look like you could use a drink.”

“I could use several.”

“I happen to know an excellent pub.” He lifted her hands, kissed them, then just buried his face in them. “Phoebe.”

“I was never in any real danger. Not me.”

“Tell that to my guts.”

It was so cold in here, she thought. How had it gotten so cold? Only her hands were warm, where he’d kissed them. “Duncan, I’ve never discharged my weapon. I told you that. But I killed a man today.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I did. I gave the go on the kill shot. Not officially. But everyone involved knows I maneuvered him into position and gave the go. No choice. He was going to—”

“I know.” He kept her hands gripped in his. “I know.”

“I couldn’t find another way, so I’ll live with it. I used the love he had for Angela to manipulate him. And I’ll live with that.”

He picked her up out of the chair, then sat with her cradled in his lap. “It wasn’t love. It was too selfish, too self-serving for that. And you know it. You were smarter than he was, that’s what it comes down to. And you were braver at the heart of it. You stood out there, and he hid inside, behind innocent people.”

He turned his face into her hair, pressed his lips to her temple. “Don’t you sit here and feel sorry for him, or sorry for your damn self either.”

“That’s telling me.”

“I got a hell of a woman here.” He sat, wrapped around her, stroking the cold from her arms. “When Mark D’s back in business, we’re going in there and picking out a ring.”

“I can’t afford Mark D.” But she managed a smile. “I never thought about why they were in there, Ma Bee and Loo. I never thought about the why—I couldn’t let it in. Oh Duncan, you were meeting them so they’d help you pick out a ring for me. If you’d gotten there before—”

“Not thinking about that. I didn’t, and everyone’s out. Safe. That’s the priority, isn’t it, in your line of work?”

“It is. And I have to do the rest of my job now.”

“I’ll wait. After you do that job, make sure you tell whoever you need to tell that you’re taking the next three or four days off.”

“Why?”

“My woman just saved the lives of seventeen people, so what are we going to do next? We’re going to Disney World.”

She didn’t smile. She let out a quick, shocked sound that became a rolling laugh. “Oh God, thankGod I found you.”

“I found you,” he corrected. “I’m a lucky guy.”

She put her arms around him, put her head on his shoulder. He gave her peace, and solid ground, and that shoulder to lean on.

She was damn lucky herself.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author presents her latest blockbuster novel, the story of a big-screen legend, a small-town scandal and a young woman caught up in the secrets and shadows of both.

Cilla McGowan, a former child star, has found a more satisfying life restoring homes. So she comes to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to save the dilapidated farmhouse that once belonged to her grandmother—a legendary actress who died of an overdose more than thirty years ago.

Plunging into the project with gusto, Cilla’s almost too busy and exhausted to notice her neighbor, graphic novelist Ford Sawyer. Determined not to carry on the family tradition of ill-fated romances, Cilla steels herself against Ford’s quirky charm, though she can’t help indulging in a little fantasy.

But it’s reality that holds its share of dangers for Cilla. A cache of unsigned letters found in the attic points to a mysterious romance in her grandmother’s life—and may be the catalyst for a frightening, violent assault. And if Cilla and Ford are unable to sort out who is targeting her and why, she may, like her world-famous grandmother, be cut down in the prime of her life.

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

TRIBUTE

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2008 by Nora Roberts.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

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For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

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eISBN : 978-1-440-63891-6

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For Jason and Kat, As you start your life together.

May the garden you plant root strong,

blossom with the colors And shapes each of you brings,

And both of you tend, so the blooms flourish.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Part One - DEMO

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

Part Two - REHAB

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

Part Three - FINISH TRIM

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

Part One

DEMO

The past cannot be presented;

we cannot know what we are not.

But one veil hangs over the past,

present, and future.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU

ONE

According to legend, Steve McQueen once swam buck-naked among the cattails and lily pads in the pond at the Little Farm. If true, and Cilla liked to think it was, the King of Cool had stripped off and dived in post The Magnificent Seven and prior to The Great Escape.

In some versions of the legend, Steve had done more than cool off on that muggy summer night in Virginia—and he’d done the more with Cilla’s grandmother. Though they’d both been married to other people at the time, the legend carried more cheer than disdain. And since both parties were long dead, neither could confirm or deny.

Then again, Cilla thought as she studied the murky water of the lily-choked pond, neither had bothered—as far as she could ascertain—to confirm or deny while they’d had the chance.

True or false, she imagined Janet Hardy, the glamorous, the tragic, the brilliant, the troubled, had enjoyed the buzz. Even icons had to get their kicks somewhere.

Standing in the yellow glare of sun with the dulling bite of March chilling her face, Cilla could see it perfectly. The steamy summer night, the blue wash from the spotlight moon. The gardens would’ve been at their magnificent peak and stunning the air with fragrance. The water would’ve been so cool and silky on the skin, and the color of chamomile tea with pink and white blossoms strung over it like glossy pearls.

Janet would have been at her stunning peak as well, Cilla mused. The spun-gold of her hair tumbling free, spilling over white shoulders . . . No, those would have been spun-gold, too, from her summer tan. Gilded shoulders in the tea-colored water, and her Arctic-blue eyes bright with laughter—and most likely a heroic consumption of liquor.

Music darting and sparkling through the dark, like the fireflies that flashed over the fertile fields, the velvet lawns, Cilla imagined. The voices from the weekend guests who wandered over the lawns, the porches and patios as bright as the music. Stars as luminous as the ones that gleamed overhead like little jewels scattered away from that spotlight moon.

Dark pockets of shadows, streaming colored lights from lanterns.

Yes, it would’ve been like that. Janet’s world had been one of brilliant light and utter dark. Always.

Cilla hoped she dove into that pond unapologetically naked, drunk and foolish and happy. And utterly unaware her crowded, desperate, glorious life would end barely a decade later.

Before turning away from the pond, Cilla listed it in her thick notebook. It would need to be cleaned, tested and ecologically balanced. She made another note to read up on pond management and maintenance before she attempted to do so, or hired an expert.

Then the gardens. Or what was left of them, she thought as she crossed through the high, lumpy grass. Weeds, literal blankets of vines, overgrown shrubs with branches poking through the blankets like brown bones, marred what had once been simply stupendous. Another metaphor, she supposed, for the bright and beautiful choked off and buried in the grasping.

She’d need help with this part, she decided. Considerable help. However much she wanted to put her back into this project, get her hands into it, she couldn’t possibly clear and hack, slash and burn, and redesign on her own.

The budget would have to include a landscaping crew. She noted down the need to study old photographs of the gardens, to buy some books on landscaping to educate herself, and to contact local landscapers for bids.

Standing, she scanned the ruined lawns, the sagging fences, the sad old barn that stood soot gray and scarred from weather. There had been chickens once—or so she’d been told—a couple of pretty horses, tidy fields of crops, a small, thriving grove of fruit trees. She wanted to believe—maybe needed to believe—she could bring all that back. That by the next spring, and all the springs after, she could stand here and look at all the budding, the blooming, the business of what had been her grandmother’s.

Of what was now hers.

She saw how it was, and how it once had been through her own Arctic-blue eyes shaded by the bill of a Rock the House ball cap. Her hair, more honey than gold dust, threaded through the back of the cap in a long, messy tail. She wore a thick hooded sweatshirt over strong shoulders and a long torso, faded jeans over long legs, and boots she’d bought years before for a hiking trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The same mountains that rolled up against the sky now.

Years ago, she thought. The last time she’d come east, come here. And when, she supposed, the seeds for what she would do now had been planted.

Didn’t that make the last four—or was it five—years of neglect at least partially her doing? She could’ve pushed sooner, could have demanded. She could have done something.

“Doing it now,” she reminded herself. She wouldn’t regret the delay any more than she would regret the manipulation and bitter arguments she’d used to force her mother to sign over the property.

“Yours now, Cilla,” she told herself. “Don’t screw it up.”

She turned, braced herself, then made her way through the high grass and brambles to the old farmhouse where Janet Hardy had hosted sparkling parties, or had escaped to between roles. And where, in 1973, on another steamy summer night, she took her own life.

So claimed the legend.

THERE WERE GHOSTS. Sensing them was nearly as exhausting as evaluating the ramshackle three stories, facing the grime, the dust, the disheartening disrepair. Ghosts, Cilla supposed, had kept the vandalism and squatting to a minimum. Legends, she thought, had their uses.

She’d had the electricity turned back on, and had brought plenty of lightbulbs along with what she hoped would be enough cleaning supplies to get her started. She’d applied for her permits and researched local contractors.

Now, it was time to start something.

Lining up her priorities, she tackled the first of the four bathrooms that hadn’t seen a scrub brush in the last six years.

And she suspected the last tenants hadn’t bothered overmuch with such niceties during their stint.

“Could be more disgusting,” she muttered as she scraped and scrubbed. “Could be snakes and rats. And God, shut up. You’re asking for them.”

After two sweaty hours and emptying countless buckets of filthy water, she thought she could risk using the facilities without being inoculated first. Chugging bottled water, she headed down the back stairs to have a whack at the big farmhouse kitchen next. And eyeing the baby-blue-on-white laminate on the stubby counters, she wondered whose idea that update had been, and why they’d assumed it would suit the marvelous old O’Keefe & Merritt range and Coldspot refrigerator.

Aesthetically, the room was over the line of hideous, but sanitary had to take precedence.

She braced the back door open for ventilation, tugged rubber gloves back on and very gingerly opened the oven door.

“Oh, crap.”

While the best part of a can of oven cleaner went to work, she tackled the oven racks, the burners, the stove top and hood. A photograph flitted through her memory. Janet, a frilly apron over a wasp-waisted dress, sunlight hair pulled back in a sassy tail, stirring something in a big pot on the stove. Smiling at the camera while her two children looked on adoringly.

Publicity shoot, Cilla remembered. For one of the women’s magazines. Redbook or McCAll’s. The old farmhouse stove, with its center grill, had sparkled like new hope. It would again, she vowed. One day, she’d stir a pot on that same stove with probably as much faked competence as her grandmother.

She started to squat down to check the oven cleaner, then yipped in surprise when she heard her name.

He stood in the open doorway, with sunlight haloing his silvered blond hair. His smile deepened the creases in his face, still so handsome, and warmed those quiet hazel eyes.

Her heart took a bound from surprise to pleasure, and another into embarrassment.

“Dad.”

When he stepped forward, arms opening for a hug, she tossed up her hands, wheeled back. “No, don’t. I’m absolutely disgusting. Covered with . . . I don’t even want to know.” She swiped the back of her wrist over her forehead, then fumbled off the protective gloves. “Dad,” she repeated.

“I see a clean spot.” He lifted her chin with his hand, kissed her cheek. “Look at you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.” But she laughed as most of the initial awkwardness passed. “What are you doing here?”

“Somebody recognized you in town when you stopped for supplies and said something to Patty. And Patty,” he continued, referring to his wife, “called me. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I was going to. I mean I was going to call you.” At some point. Eventually. When I figured out what to say. “I just wanted to get here first, then I . . .” She glanced back at the oven. “I got caught up.”

“So I see. When did you get in?”

Guilt pricked her conscience. “Listen, let’s go out on the front porch. It’s not too bad out front, and I have a cooler sitting out there holding a cold-cut sub with our names on it. Just let me wash up, then we’ll catch up.”

It wasn’t as bad in front, Cilla thought when she settled on the sagging steps with her father, but it was bad enough. The overgrown, weedy lawn and gardens, the trio of misshaped Bradford pears, a wild tangle of what she thought might be wisteria could all be dealt with. Would be. But the wonderful old magnolia rose, dense with its deep, glossy leaves, and stubborn daffodils shoved up through the thorny armor of climbing roses along the stone walls.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Cilla began as she handed her father a bottle of iced tea to go with half the sub. “I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

He patted her knee, opened her bottle, then his own.

It was so like him, she thought. Gavin McGowan took things as they came—the good, the bad, the mediocre. How he’d ever fallen for the emotional morass that was her mother eluded her. But that was long ago, Cilla mused, and far away.

She bit into her portion of the sub. “I’m a bad daughter.”

“The worst,” he said, and made her laugh.

“Lizzie Borden.”

“Second worst. How’s your mother?”

Cilla bit into her sub, rolled her eyes. “Lizzy’s definitely running behind me on Mom’s scale at the moment. Otherwise, she’s okay. Number Five’s putting together a cabaret act for her.” At her father’s quiet look, Cilla shrugged. “I think when your marriages average a three-year life span, assigning numbers to husbands is practical and efficient. He’s okay. Better than Numbers Four and Two, and considerably smarter than Number Three. And he’s the reason I’m sitting here sharing a sub with the never-to-be-matched Number One.”

“How’s that?”

“Putting the song and dance together requires money. I had some money.”

“Cilla.”

“Wait, wait. I had some money, and she had something I wanted. I wanted this place, Dad. I’ve wanted it for a while now.”

“You—”

“Yeah, I bought the farm.” Cilla tossed back her head and laughed. “And she’s so pissed at me. She didn’t want it, God knows. I mean, look at it. She hasn’t been out here in years, in decades, and she fired every manager, every overseer, every custodian. She wouldn’t give it to me, and it was my mistake to ask her for it a couple years ago. She wouldn’t sell it to me then, either.”

She took another bite of the sub, enjoying it now. “I got the tragedy face, the spiel about Janet. But now she needed seed money and wanted me to invest. Big no on that followed by big fight, much drama. I told her, and Number Five, I’d buy this place, named an amount and made it clear that was firm.”

“She sold it to you. She sold you the Little Farm.”

“After much gnashing of teeth, much weeping, various sorrowful opinions on my daughterly behavior since the day I was born. And so on. It doesn’t matter.” Or hardly mattered, Cilla thought. “She didn’t want it; I did. She’d have sold it long before this if it hadn’t been tied up in trusts. It could only be sold and transferred to family until, what, 2012? Anyway, Number Five calmed her down, and everyone got what they wanted.”

“What are you going to do with it, Cilla?”

Live, she thought. Breathe. “Do you remember it, Dad? I’ve only seen the pictures and old home movies, but you were here when it was in its prime. When the grounds were gorgeous and the porches gleaming. When it had character and grace. That’s what I’m going to do with it. I’m going to bring it back.”

“Why?”

She heard the unspoken How? and told herself it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what she could do. Or hardly mattered.

“Because it deserves better than this. Because I think Janet Hardy deserves better than this. And because I can. I’ve been flipping houses for almost five years now. Two years pretty much on my own. I know none of them was on the scale of this, but I have a knack for it. I’ve made a solid profit on my projects.”

“Are you doing this for profit?”

“I may change my mind in the next four years, but for now? No. I never knew Janet, but she’s influenced almost every area of my life. Something about this place pulled her here, even at the end. Something about it pulls me.”

“It’s a long way from what you’ve known,” Gavin said. “Not just the miles, but the atmosphere. The culture. The Shenandoah Valley, this part of it, is still fairly rural. Skyline Village boasts a few thousand people, and even in the larger cities like Front Royal and Culpepper, it’s far and away from L.A.”

“I guess I want to explore that, and I want to spend more time with my East Coast roots.” She wished he’d be pleased instead of concerned that she’d fail or give up. Again.

“I’m tired of California, I’m tired of all of it, Dad. I never wanted what Mom wanted, for me or for herself.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“So I’ll live here for a while.”

“Here?” Shock covered his face. “Live here? At the Little Farm?”

“I know, crazy. But I’ve done plenty of camping, which is what this’ll be for a few days anyway. Then I can rough it inside for a while longer. It’ll take about nine, ten months, maybe a year to do the rehab, to do it right. At the end of that, I’ll know if I want to stay or move on. If it’s moving on, I’ll figure out what to do about it then. But right now, Dad, I’m tired of moving on.”

Gavin said nothing for a moment, then draped his arm around Cilla’s shoulders. Did he have any idea, she wondered, what that casual show of support meant to her? How could he?

“It was beautiful here, beautiful and hopeful and happy,” he told her. “Horses grazing, her dog napping in the sun. The flowers were lovely. Janet did some of the gardening herself when she was here, I think. She came here to relax, she said. And she would, for short stretches. But then she needed people—that’s my take on it. She needed the noise and the laughter, the light. But now and again, she came out alone. No friends, no family, no press. I always wondered what she did during those solo visits.”

“You met Mom here.”

“I did. We were just children, and Janet had a party for Dilly and Johnnie. She invited a lot of local children. Janet took to me, so I was invited back whenever they were here. Johnnie and I played together, and stayed friends when we hit our teens, though he began to run with a different sort of crowd. Then Johnnie died. He died, and everything went dark. Janet came here alone more often after that. I’d climb the wall to see if she was here, if Dilly was with her, when I was home from college. I’d see her walking alone, or see the lights on. I spoke to her a few times, three or four times, after Johnnie died. Then she was gone. Nothing here’s been the same since.

“It does deserve better,” he said with a sigh. “And so does she. You’re the one who should try to give it to them. You may be the only one who can.”

“Thanks.”

“Patty and I will help. You should come stay with us until this place is habitable.”

“I’ll take you up on the help, but I want to stay here. Get a feel for the place. I’ve done some research on it, but I could use some recommendations for local labor—skilled and not. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, landscapers. And just people with strong backs who can follow directions.”

“Get your notebook.”

She pushed to her feet, started inside, then turned back. “Dad, if things had worked out between you and Mom, would you have stayed in the business? Stayed in L.A.?”

“Maybe. But I was never happy there. Or I wasn’t happy there for long. And I wasn’t a comfortable actor.”

“You were good.”

“Good enough,” he said with a smile. “But I didn’t want what Dilly wanted, for herself or for me. So I understand what you meant when you said the same. It’s not her fault, Cilla, that we wanted something else.”

“You found what you wanted here.”

“Yes, but—”

“That doesn’t mean I will, too,” she said. “I know. But I just might.”

FIRST, CILLA SUPPOSED, she had to figure out what it was she did want. For more than half her life she’d done what she was told, and accepted what she had as what she should want. And most of the remainder, she admitted, she’d spent escaping from or ignoring all of that, or sectioning it off as if it had happened to someone else.

She’d been an actor before she could talk because it was what her mother wanted. She’d spent her childhood playing another child—one who was so much cuter, smarter, sweeter than she was herself. When that went away, she’d struggled through what the agents and producers considered the awkward years, where the work was lean. She’d cut a disastrous mother-daughter album with Dilly, and done a handful of teen slasher films in which she considered herself lucky to have been gruesomely murdered.

She’d been washed up before her eighteenth birthday, Cilla thought as she flopped down on the bed in her motel room. A has-been, a what-ever-happened-to, who copped a scattering of guest roles on TV and voice-overs for commercials.

But the long-running TV series and a few forgettable B movies provided a nest egg. She’d been clever about feathering that nest, and using those eggs to allow her to poke her fingers into various pies to see if she liked the flavor.

Her mother called it wasting her God-given, and her therapist termed it avoidance.

Cilla called it a learning curve.

Whatever you called it, it brought her here to a fairly crappy hotel in Virginia, with the prospect of hard, sweaty and expensive work over the next several months. She couldn’t wait to get started.

She flipped on the TV, intending to use it as background noise while she sat on the lumpy bed to make another pass through her notes. She heard a couple of cans thud out of the vending machine a few feet outside her door. Behind her head, the ghost sounds of the TV in the next room wafted through the wall.

While the local news droned on her set, she made her priority list for the next day. Working bathroom, number one. Camping out wasn’t a problem for her, but moving out of the motel meant she required the basic facilities. Sweaty work necessitated a working shower. Plumbing, first priority.

Halfway through her list her eyes began to droop. Reminding herself she wanted to be checked out and on site by eight, she switched off the TV, then the light.

As she dropped into sleep, the ghosts from the next room drifted through the wall. She heard Janet Hardy’s glorious voice lift into a song designed to break hearts.

“Perfect,” Cilla murmured as the song followed her into sleep.

SHE SAT on the lovely patio with the view full of the pretty pond and the green hills that rolled back to the blue mountains. Roses and lilies stunned the air with perfume that had the bees buzzing drunkenly and a hummingbird, bold as an emerald, darting for nectar. The sun poured strong and bright out of cloudless skies to wash everything in the golden light of fairy tales. Birds sang their hearts out in Disneyesque harmony.

“I expect to see Bambi frolicking with Thumper any minute,” Cilla commented.

“It’s how I saw it. In the good times.” Young, beautiful in a delicate white sundress, Janet sipped sparkling lemonade. “Perfect as a stage set, and ready for me to make my entrance.”

“And in the bad times?”

“An escape, a prison, a mistake, a lie.” Janet shrugged her lovely shoulders. “But always a world away.”

“You brought that world with you. Why?”

“I needed it. I couldn’t be alone. There’s too much space when you’re alone. How do you fill it? Friends, men, sex, drugs, parties, music. Still, I could be calm here for a while. I could pretend here, pretend I was Gertrude Hamilton again. Though she died when I was six and Janet Hardy was born.”

“Did you want to be Gertrude again?”

“Of course not.” A laugh, bright and bold as the day, danced through the air. “But I liked to pretend I did. Gertrude would have been a better mother, a better wife, probably a better woman. But Gertrude wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting as Janet. Who’d remember her? And Janet? No one will ever forget her.” With her head tilted, Janet gave her signature smile—humor and knowledge with sex shimmering at the edges. “Aren’t you proof of that?”

“Maybe I am. But I see what happened to you, and what’s happened to this place, as a terrible waste. I can’t bring you back, or even know you. But I can do this.”

“Are you doing this for you or for me?”

“Both, I think.” She saw the grove, all pink and white blossoms, all fragrance and potential. And the horses grazing in green fields, gold and white etched against hills. “I don’t see it as a perfect set. I don’t need perfect. I see it as your legacy to me and, if I can bring it back, as my tribute to you. I come from you, and through my father, from this place. I want to know that, and feel it.”

“Dilly hated it here.”

“I don’t know if she did, always. But she does now.”

“She wanted Hollywood—in big, shiny letters. She was born wanting it, and lacking the talent or the grit to get it and hold it. You’re not like her, or me. Maybe . . .” Janet smiled as she sipped again. “Maybe you’re more like Gertrude. More like Trudy.”

“Who did you kill that night? Janet or Gertrude?”

“That’s a question.” With a smile, Janet tipped back her head and closed her eyes.

BUT WHAT WAS THE ANSWER? Cilla wondered about that as she drove back to the farm in the morning. And why did it matter? Why ask questions of a dream anyway?

Dead was dead, after all. The project wasn’t about death, but about life. About making something for herself out of what had been left to ruin.

As she stopped to unlock the old iron gates that blocked the drive she debated having them removed. Would that be a symbol to throwing open again what had been closed off, or would it be a monumentally stupid move that left her, and the property, vulnerable? They protested when she walked them open, and left rust on her hands.

Screw symbols and stupidity, she decided. They should come down because they were a pain in the ass. After the project, she could put them back up.

Once she’d parked in front of the house, she strode up to unlock the front door, and left it wide to the morning air. She drew on her work gloves. She’d finish tackling the kitchen, she thought. And hope the plumber her father had recommended showed up.

Either way, she’d be staying. Even if she had to pitch a damn tent in the front yard.

She’d worked up her first sweat of the day when the plumber, a grizzle-cheeked man named Buddy, showed up. He made the rounds with her, listened to her plans, scratched his chin a lot. When he gave her what she thought of as a pull-it-out-of-his-ass estimate for the projected work, she countered with a bland stare.

He grinned at that, scratched some more. “I could work up something a little more formal for you. It’d be considerable less if you’re buying the fixtures and such.”

“I will be.”

“Okay then. I’ll work up an estimate for you, and we’ll see what’s what.”

“That’s fine. Meanwhile, how much to snake out the tub in the first bath upstairs? It’s not draining right.”

“Why don’t I take a look-see? Estimate’s free, and I’m here for that anyway.”

She hovered, not so much because she didn’t trust him but because you could never be sure what you might learn. She learned he didn’t dawdle, and that his fee for the small task—and a quick check of the sink and john—meant he wanted the job enough that his estimate would probably come into line.

By the time Buddy climbed back into his truck, she hoped the carpenter and electrician she’d lined up for estimates worked out as well.

She dug out her notebook to tick her meeting with Buddy off her day’s to-do list. Then she hefted her sledgehammer. She was in the mood for some demo, and the rotted boards on the front porch were just the place to start.

TWO

With her hammer weighted on her shoulder and her safety goggles in place, Cilla took a good look at the man strolling down her driveway. A cartoonishly ugly black-and-white dog with an enormous box of a head on a small, stocky body trotted beside him.

She liked dogs, and hoped to have one eventually. But this was one odd-looking creature, with bulbous eyes bulging out of, and little pointed devil ears stuck on top of, that oversized head. A short, skinny whip of a tail ticked at his behind.

As for the man, he was a big improvement over the dog. The faded, frayed-at-the-hem jeans and baggy gray sweatshirt covered what she judged to be about six feet, four inches of lanky, long-legged male. He wore wire-framed sunglasses, and the jeans had a horizontal tear in one knee. A day or two’s worth of stubble prickled over his cheeks and jaw in a look she’d always found too studied to be hip. Still, it fit with the abundance of brown streaky hair that curled messily over his ears.

She distrusted a man who had his hair streaked, and imagined he’d paid for the golden boy tan in a flash parlor. Hadn’t she left this type out in L.A.? While those elements added up to mostly harmless to her, and a casual how-ya-doing smile curved on a nicely defined mouth, she tightened her grip on the hammer.

She could use it for more than bashing out rotted boards, if necessary.

She didn’t have to see his eyes to know they were taking a good look, too.

He stopped at the base of the porch steps while the dog climbed right up to sniff—though the sound was more of a pig snuffle—at her boots. “Hey,” he said, and the smile ratcheted up another notch. “Can I help you?”

She cocked her head. “With what?”

“With whatever you’ve got in mind. I’m wondering what that might be, seeing as you’re holding a pretty big hammer there, and this is private property.” He hooked his thumbs in his front pockets as he continued in that same easy Virginia drawl. “You don’t look much like a vandal.”

“Are you a cop?”

The smile made the lightning strike to grin. “I don’t look any more like a cop than you do a vandal. Listen, I hate getting in your way, but if you’re thinking about bashing out some pieces of the house here, putting them up on eBay, I have to ask you to reconsider.”

Because it was heavy, she lifted the hammer off her shoulder. He didn’t move as she brought it down, then rested the head on the porch. But she sensed him brace. “EBay?”

“More trouble than it’s worth. Who’s going to believe you’re selling a genuine hunk of Janet Hardy’s house anyway? So, why don’t you load it up? I’ll close up behind you, and no harm, no foul.”

“Are you the custodian?”

“No. Somebody keeps firing them. I know it looks like nobody gives a half a damn about the place, but you can’t just come around and beat on it.”

Fascinated, Cilla shoved her safety goggles to the top of her head. “If nobody gives a half a damn, why do you?”

“Can’t seem to help myself. And maybe I admire the balls it takes to pick locks and wield sledgehammers in broad daylight, but, seriously, you need to load it up now. Janet Hardy’s family may not care if this place falls over in the next good wind, but—” He broke off, sliding his sunglasses down his nose, peering over them before he took them off to swing them idly by one earpiece.

“I’m slow this morning,” he said. “Chalk it up to only getting a swallow of coffee in before I noticed your truck here, and the open gate and such. Cilla . . . McGowan. Took me a minute. You’ve got your grandmother’s eyes.”

His were green, she noted, with the sun bringing out the rims and flecks of gold. “Right on both. Who are you?”

“Ford. Ford Sawyer. And the dog licking your boots is Spock. We live across the road.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, drawing her gaze up and over to the rambling old Victorian on a pretty knoll across the way. “You aren’t going to try to brain me with that if I come up on the porch?”

“Probably not. If you tell me why you showed up this morning, and didn’t happen to see me here all day yesterday, or notice Buddy the plumber and assorted subcontractors leaving a half hour ago.”

“I was still in the Caymans yesterday. Had myself a little vacation. I expect I missed assorted subcontractors as I was just rolling out of bed a half hour ago. Took my first cup of coffee out on the front veranda. That’s when I saw the truck, the gate. Okay?”

Seemed reasonable, Cilla decided. And maybe he’d come by the tan and sun streaks naturally. She leaned the hammer against the porch rail. “As one of the people who gives a half a damn and more about this place, I appreciate you looking out for it.”

“No problem.” He walked up until he stood on the step just below her. As they were eye level, and she hit five-nine, she decided her estimate of six-four was on the mark. “What’re you planning to do with the hammer?”

“Rotten boards. The porch needs to be rebuilt. Can’t rebuild until you demo.”

“New porch, Buddy the plumber—who seems to know his stuff, by the way—assorted subcontractors. Sounds like you’re planning to fix the place up.”

“I am. You look like you’ve got a strong back. Want a job?”

“Got one, and I haven’t found tools to be my friend. But thanks. Spock, say hello.”

The dog sat, cocked his big box of a head and held up a paw.

“Cute.” Cilla obliged by leaning down, giving the paw a shake while Spock’s bulging eyes gleamed at her. “What kind of dog is this?”

“The four-legged kind. It’ll be nice to look over here and see this place the way I imagine it used to be. You fixing to sell?”

“No. I’m fixing to live. For now.”

“Well, it’s a pretty spot. Or could be. Your daddy’s Gavin McGowan, right?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“He was my English teacher, senior year of high school. I aced it in the end, but not without a lot of sweat and pain. Mr. McGowan made you work your ass straight off. Well, I’ll let you get on bashing your boards. I work at home, so I’m there most of the time. If you need anything, give a holler.”

“Thanks,” she said without any intention of following through. She fit her goggles back in place, picked up the hammer as he started back down the drive with the dog once again trotting beside him. Then gave in to impulse. “Hey! Who names their kid after a car?”

He turned, walked backward. “My mama has a considerable and somewhat unusual sense of humor. She claims my daddy planted me in her while they were steaming up the windows of his Ford Mustang one chilly spring night. It may be true.”

“If not, it should be. See you around.”

“More than likely.”

FASCINATING DEVELOPMENTS, Ford mused as he took a fresh cup of coffee onto the veranda for his postponed morning ritual. There she was, the long drink of water with the ice blue eyes, beating the living crap out of the old veranda.

That hammer was probably damn heavy. Girl had some muscle on her.

“Cilla McGowan,” he said to Spock as the dog raced after invisible cats in the yard, “moved in right across the road.” Wasn’t that a kick in the ass? Ford recalled his own sister had all but worshipped Katie Lawrence, the kid Cilla had played for five? six? seven years? Who the hell knew? He remembered Alice carting around an Our Family lunch box, playing with her Katie doll and wearing her Katie backpack proudly.

As Alice tended to hoard everything, he suspected she still had the Our Family and Katie memorabilia somewhere up in Ohio, where she lived now. He was going to make a point of e-mailing her and rubbing her face in who he’d just copped as a neighbor.

The long-running show had been too tame for him back in the day. He’d preferred the action of The Transformers, and the fantasy of Knight Rider. He remembered after a bitter battle with Alice over God knew what, he’d exacted his revenge by stripping Katie naked, gagging her with duct tape and tying her to a tree, guarded by his army of Storm Troopers.

He’d caught hell for it, but it had been worth it.

It seemed a bit twisted to stand here now, watching the adult, live-action version of Katie switch sledgehammer for some sort of pry bar. And imagining her naked.

He had a damn good imagination.

Four years, Ford thought, since he’d moved in across the road. He’d seen two caretakers come and go, the second in just under six months. And not once had he seen any of Janet Hardy’s family before today. Subtracting the almost two years he’d lived in New York, he’d lived in the area the whole of his life, and seen none of them before today. Heard of Mr. McGowan’s girl Cilla passing through a time or two, but he’d never caught a glimpse.

Now she was talking to plumbers, tearing down porches and . . . He paused when he recognized the black pickup turning into the drive across the road as belonging to his friend Matt Brewster, a local carpenter. When a second truck pulled in barely thirty seconds later, Ford decided to get himself another cup of coffee, maybe a bowl of cereal, and take his breakfast out on the veranda so he could watch the goings-on.

He should be working, Ford told himself an hour later. Vacation was over and done, and he had a deadline. But it was so damn interesting out here. Another truck joined the first two, and he recognized that one as well. Brian Morrow, former top jock and wide receiver, and the third in the pretty much lifelong triumvirate of Matt, Ford and Brian, ran his own landscaping company. From his perch, Ford watched Cilla make the circuit of the grounds with Brian, watched her gesture, then consult the thick notebook she carried.

He had to admire the way she moved. Must be all that leg, he supposed, that had her eating up the ground so efficiently while appearing to take her time. All that energy so tightly packed in that willowy frame, the glacier blue eyes and china-doll skin masking the muscle it took to . . .

“Whoa, wait a minute.” He sat up straighter, narrowed his eyes and pictured her with the hammer hefted on her shoulder again. “Shorter handle,” he muttered. “Two-sided head. Yeah, yeah. Looks like I am working.”

He went inside, grabbed a sketch pad and pencils and, inspired, dug out his binoculars. Back on the veranda, he focused on Cilla through the glasses, studying the shape of her face, the line of her jaw, her build. She had a fascinating, sexy mouth, he mused, with that deep middle dip in the top lip.

As he began the first sketch, he rolled around scenarios, dismissing them almost as soon as he considered.

It would come to him, he thought. The concept often came from the sketches. He saw her . . . Diane, Maggie, Nadine. No, no, no. Cass. Simple, a little androgynous. Cass Murphy. Cass Murphy. Intelligent, intense, solitary, even lonely. Attractive. He looked through the glasses again. “Oh yeah, attractive.”

The rough clothes didn’t disguise that, but they played it down. He continued to sketch, full body, close-up face, profile. Then stopped to tap his pencil and consider. Glasses might be a cliché, but they were shorthand for smarts. And always a good mask for the alter ego.

He sketched them on, trying out simple, dark frames, rectangular lenses. “There you are, Cass. Or should I say, Dr. Murphy?”

He flipped a page over, began again. Safari shirt, khakis, boots, wide-brimmed hat. Out of the lab or classroom, into the field. His lips curved as he flipped the page again, and his mind raced as he sketched out who and what his newly minted Cass would become. The leather, the breastplate—and the very nice pair rising over it. Silver armbands, long bare legs, the wild swirl of hair with the circlet of rank crowning the head. Jeweled belt? he wondered. Maybe. The ancient weapon—double-headed hammer. Gleaming silver when gripped by the hand of the blood descendant of the warrior goddess . . .

And yeah, he needed a name for her.

Roman? Greek? Viking? Celt?

Celtic. It fit.

He held up the pad, and found himself grinning at the image. “Hello, gorgeous. We’re going to kick some major ass together.”

He glanced back across the road. The trucks were gone now, and while Cilla was nowhere in sight, the front door of the farmhouse stood open.

“Thanks, neighbor,” Ford said, and, rising, went inside to call his agent.

SURREAL WAS the best way to describe Cilla’s view on finding herself sitting on the pretty patio of her father’s tidy brick colonial, sipping iced sun tea fussily served by her stepmother. The scene simply didn’t fit in with any previous phase of her life. As a child, her visits east had been few and far between. Work trumped visitations, at least in her mother’s game.

He’d come to her now and then, Cilla remembered. And taken her to the zoo or to Disneyland. But at least during the heyday of her series, there’d always been paparazzi, or kids swarming her, and their parents snapping photos. Work trumps Fantasyland, Cilla thought, whether you wanted it to or not.

Then, of course, her father and Patty had their own daughter, Angie, their own home, their own lives on the other side of the country. Which, Cilla mused, equated to the other side of the world.

She’d never fit into that world.

Isn’t that what her father had tried to tell her? A long way, and not just the miles.

“It’s nice out here,” Cilla said, groping.

“Our favorite sitting spot,” Patty answered with a smile that tried too hard. “It’s a little chilly yet, I know.”

“It feels good.” Cilla racked her brain. What did she say to this sweet, motherly woman with her pleasant face, dark bob of hair and nervous eyes? “I, ah, bet the gardens will be great in a week or two, when everything starts to pop.”

She scanned the bed, the shrubs and vines, the trim swath of lawn that would fill with pockets of shade when the red maple and weeping cherry leafed out. “You’ve put a lot of work into it.”

“Oh, I putter.” Patty flicked her fingers over her short, dark bob, twisted the little silver hoop in her ear. “It’s Gavin who’s the gardener in the house.”

“Oh.” Cilla shifted her gaze to her father. “Really?”

“I like playing in the dirt. Guess I never grew out of it.”

“His grandfather was a farmer.” Patty sent Gavin a quick beam. “So it came down through the blood.”

Had she known that? Why hadn’t she known that? “Here, in Virginia?”

Patty’s eyes widened in surprise, then slid toward Gavin. “Ummm.”

“I thought you knew—your grandmother bought my grandfather’s farm.”

“I—What? The Little Farm? That was yours?”

“It was never mine, sweetie. My grandfather sold it when I was just a boy. I do remember chasing chickens there, and getting scolded for it. My father didn’t want to farm, and his brothers and sisters—those living at the time—had mostly scattered off. So, well, he sold it. Janet was here, filming on location. Barn Dance.”

“I know that part of the story. She fell in love with the farm they used and bought it on the spot.”

“More or less on the spot,” Gavin said with a smile. “And Grandpa bought himself a Winnebago—I swear—and he and Grandma hit the road. Traveled all over hell and back again for the next six, seven years, till she had a stroke.”

“It was McGowan land.”

“Still is.” Still smiling, Gavin sipped his tea. “Isn’t it?”

“I think it’s a lovely kind of circle.” Patty reached out, patted her hand over Cilla’s. “I remember how the lights would shine in that house when Janet Hardy was there. And how in the summer, if you drove by with the windows open, you could hear music, and maybe see women in beautiful clothes, and the most handsome men. Now and then, she’d come into town, or just drive around in her convertible. A picture she made.”

Patty picked up the pitcher again, as if she had to keep her hands busy. “She stopped by our house once, when we had a litter of puppies for sale. Five dollars. Our collie had herself a liaison with a traveling salesman of indeterminate origin. She bought a puppy from us. Sat right down on the ground and let those pups jump and crawl all over her. And laughed and laughed. She had such a wonderful laugh.

“I’m sorry. I’m going on, aren’t I?”

“No. I didn’t know any of this. I don’t know nearly enough. Was that the dog that . . .”

“It was. She called him Hero. Old Fred Bates found him wandering the road and loaded him in his pickup, took him back. He was the one who found her that morning. It was a sad day. But now you’re here.” Again, Patty laid a hand over Cilla’s. “There’ll be lights and music again.”

“She bought the dog from you,” Cilla murmured, “and the farm from your grandfather.” She looked at Gavin. “I guess it’s another circle. Maybe you could help me with the gardens.”

“I’d like that.”

“I hired a landscaper today, but I have to decide what I want put in. I’ve got a book on gardening in this zone, but I could use some direction.”

“It’s a deal. And I’ve got a couple of gardening books that might give you more ideas.”

“A couple?”

Gavin grinned at his wife’s rolling eyes. “A few more than a couple. Who’d you hire?”

“Morrow? Brian Morrow?”

“Good choice. He does good work, and he’s reliable. Was a football star back in high school, and never pushed himself to be more than a dead average student. But he’s built up a good business and reputation for himself.”

“So I hear. I met another of your former students today. Ford Sawyer.”

“Of course,” Patty put in. “He lives right across the road.”

“Clever boy, always was.” Gavin nodded over his tea. “Tended to daydream, but if you engaged his mind, he’d use it. He’s done well for himself, too.”

“Has he? How?”

“He writes graphic novels. Illustrates them, too, which isn’t usual, I’m told. The Seeker? That’s his. It’s interesting work.”

“The Seeker. Super-crime-fighter sort of thing?”

“Along those lines. A down-on-his-luck private investigator stumbles across a madman’s plot to destroy the world’s great art through the use of a molecular scrambler that renders them invisible. His hopes to stop them—and secure his own fame and fortune—result in the murder of his devoted girlfriend. He himself is left for dead, but he’s also exposed to the scrambler.”

“And is imbued with the power of invisibility,” Cilla finished. “I’ve heard of this. A couple of the guys who worked on my flips were into graphic novels. God knows Steve was,” she said, referring to her ex-husband. “They’d argue the Seeker versus the Dark Knight or X-Men as compared to the Fantastic Four half the day. When I said something about grown men and comic books, I got the fish eye.”

“Gavin enjoys them. Well, Ford’s in particular.”

“Do you really?” The image of the quiet-natured high school teacher poring over superhero comics amused her. “Because he’s a former student?”

“That’s certainly a factor. And the boy tells a good, meaty story centered on a complicated character who seeks redemption by seeking out evil. He attempted to do the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons. To stop a madman but for his own personal gain. And that single act cost the life of the woman who loved him, and whom he’d treated carelessly. His power of invisibility becomes a metaphor—he becomes a hero but will never be seen. Interesting work.”

“He’s single,” Patty added, and made Gavin laugh. “Well, I’m only mentioning it because he lives right across the road, and Cilla’s going to be alone at the farm. She might want some company now and again.”

Head that one off at the pass, Cilla thought. “Actually, I’m going to be spending my days on the rehab, and my evenings plotting out the phases of the job. I’ll be too busy for much company for a while. In fact, I should get back to it. I’ve got a full day scheduled tomorrow.”

“Oh, but can’t you stay for dinner?” Patty protested. “Let’s get a nice home-cooked meal into you before you go. I’ve got lasagna all made up and ready to pop into the oven. It won’t take long.”

“That sounds great.” Cilla realized it did just that. “I’d love to stay for dinner.”

“You sit right here, have another glass of tea with your father.”

Cilla watched while Patty popped up, then bustled across the patio and into the house. “Should I go help her?”

“She likes to fuss with meals. It relaxes her, the way gardening does me. She’ll like it better if you sit out here and let her.”

“I make her nervous.”

“A little. It’ll pass. I can tell you she’d have been disappointed if you’d said no to dinner. Lasagna’s Patty’s specialty. She makes the sauce from my tomato harvest every summer and cans it.”

“You’re kidding.”

His lips quirked at her quick and absolute surprise. “It’s a different world, sweetie.”

“I’ll say.”

In this world, Cilla discovered, people ate homemade lasagna and apple cobbler, and treated a meal as food rather than a performance. And a guest or family—she thought she fell somewhere in the middle—was given a plate of each covered in tinfoil to take home for leftovers. If the guest/family was driving, she was offered a single glass of wine with dinner, then plied with coffee afterward.

Cilla glanced at her watch, smiled. And could be walking in her own door by eight.

After stowing the two plates in her trusty cooler, Cilla planted her hands on her hips and looked around. The bare bulbs cast harsh light and hard shadows, spotlighted cracked plaster and scarred floorboards. Poor old girl, she thought. You’re in desperate need of a face-lift.

She picked up her flashlight, switched it on before turning off the overhead bulbs and, using it to guide her way, started toward the steps.

A glance out the front window showed her the lights sparkling from homes scattered across the hills and fields. Other people had finished their home-cooked meals, she supposed, and were settled down to watch TV or finish up a little paperwork. Maybe kids were being tucked into bed, or being told to settle down and finish their homework.

She doubted any of them sat reading changes in the script for tomorrow’s shoot, or yawned through another running of her lines. Foolish to envy them, Cilla thought, for having what she never had.

Standing there, she picked out the lights in Ford’s house.

Was he crafting the Seeker’s next adventure? Maybe chowing down on frozen pizza, what she imagined the bachelor’s version of a home-cooked meal might be? And what was a comic book writer—pardon me, graphic novelist—doing living in a beautifully restored old Victorian in rural Virginia?

A single graphic novelist, she remembered with a smirk, with an unquestionably sexy Southern drawl and a lazy gait that edged up toward a swagger. And an odd little dog.

Whatever the reasons were, it was nice to see the lights shining across the road. Close but not too close. Oddly comforted by them, she turned away to continue upstairs, where she intended to slide into her sleeping bag and work on her plans.

HER CELL PHONE woke her out of a dead sleep, had her eyes flashing open, then slamming shut again against the glare of the light she’d neglected to turn off before dropping off. Cursing, Cilla pried one eye partially open as she slid a hand over the floor for the phone.

What the hell time was it?

Heart pounding, she read the time on the phone—3:28 A.M.—and her mother’s data on the display.

“Crap.” Cilla flipped the phone open. “What’s wrong?”

“Is that any way to answer the phone? You don’t bother to say hello?”

“Hello, Mom. What’s wrong?”

“I’m not happy with you, Cilla.”

What else is new? Cilla thought. And you’re drunk or stoned. Ditto. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, especially at three-thirty in the morning, East Coast time. Which is where I am, remember?”

“I know where you are.” Bedelia’s voice sharpened even as it slurred. “I know damn well. You’re in my mother’s house, which you tricked me into giving you. I want it back.”

“I’m in my grandmother’s house, which you sold to me. And you can’t have it back. Where’s Mario?” she asked, referring to her mother’s current husband.

“This has nothing to do with Mario. This is between you and me. We’re all that’s left of her! You know very well you caught me in a weak moment. You took advantage of my vulnerability and my pain. I want you to come back immediately and tear up the transfer papers or whatever they are.”

“And you’ll tear up the cashier’s check for the purchase price?”

There was a long, brittle silence during which Cilla lay back down and yawned.

“You’re cold and ungrateful.”

The thin sheen of tears on the words was much too calculated, and too usual, to get a rise. “Yes, I am.”

“After everything I did for you, all the sacrifices I made, all of which you tossed away. Now, instead of you willing to pay me back for all the years I put you first, you’re tossing money in my face.”

“You could look at it that way. I’m keeping the farm. And don’t, please don’t, waste my time or your own trying to convince either of us this place matters to you. I’m in it, I’ve seen just how much you care about it.”

“She was my mother!”

“Yeah, and you’re mine. Those are the crosses we have to bear.”

Cilla heard the crash, and pictured the glass holding her mother’s preferred nighttime Ketel One on the rocks hitting the nearest wall. Then the weeping began. “How can you say such a horrible thing to me!”

Lying on her back, Cilla swung her arm over her eyes and let the ranting, the sobbing play out. “You should go to bed, Mom. You shouldn’t make these calls when you’ve been drinking.”

“A lot you care. Maybe I’ll do what she did. Maybe I’ll just end it.”

“Don’t say that. You’ll feel better in the morning.” Possibly. “You need to get a good night’s sleep. You’ve got your show to plan.”

“Everyone wants me to be her.”

“No, they don’t.” Mostly, that’s just you. “Go on to bed now, Mom.”

“Mario. I want Mario.”

“Go on to bed. I’ll take care of it. He’ll be there. Promise me you’ll go up to bed.”

“All right, all right. I don’t want to talk to you anyway.”

When the phone clicked in her ear, Cilla lay as she was a moment. The whining snub at the end signaled that Dilly was done, would go to bed or simply lie down on the handiest surface and pass out. But they’d passed through the danger zone.

Cilla pushed the speed-dial button she’d designated as Number Five. “Mario,” she said when he answered. “Where are you?”

It took less than a minute to recap the situation, so she cut off Mario’s distress and hung up. Cilla had no doubt he’d rush home and provide Dilly with the sympathy, the attention and the comfort she wanted.

Wide awake and irritated, she climbed out of her sleeping bag. Carting her flashlight, she used the bathroom, then trudged downstairs for a fresh bottle of water. Before going back to the kitchen, she opened the front door and stepped out onto the short section of porch that remained.

All the pretty sparkling lights were gone now, she noted, and the hills were utterly, utterly dark. Even with the thin scatter of stars piercing through the clouds overhead, she thought it was like stepping into a tomb. Black and silent and cold. The mountains seemed to have folded in for the night, and the air was so still, so absolutely still, she thought she could hear the house breathing behind her.

“Friend or foe?” she asked aloud.

Mario would rush into the house in Bel Air, murmur and stroke, flatter and cajole, and ultimately sweep his drunken wreck of a wife into his toned (and younger) Italian arms to carry her up to their bed.

Dilly would say—and say often—that she was alone, always so alone. But she didn’t know the meaning of it, Cilla thought. She didn’t know the depths of it.

“Did you?” she asked Janet. “I think you knew what it was to be alone. To be surrounded, and completely, miserably alone. Well, hey, me too. And this is better.”

Better, Cilla thought, to be alone on a quiet night than to be alone in a crowd. Much better.

She stepped back inside, closed and locked the door.

And let the house sigh around her.

THREE

Ford spent two full hours watching Cilla through his binoculars, sketching her from various angles. After all, the way she moved jump-started the concept every bit as much as the way she looked. The lines, the curves, the shape, the coloring—all part of it. But movement, that was key. Grace and athleticism. Not balletic, no, not that. More . . . the sort of grace of a sprinter. Strength and purpose rather than art and flow.

A warrior’s grace, he thought. Economical and deadly.

He wished he could get a look at her with her hair down and loose instead of pulled back in a tail. A good look at her arms would help And her legs. And hell, any other parts of her that might pop into view wouldn’t hurt his feelings any.

He’d Googled her, and studied several photographs, and he’d NetFlixed her movies, so he’d have those to study. But the last movie she’d done—I’m Watching, Too!—was about eight years old.

He wanted the woman, not the girl.

He already had the story line in his head, crammed in there and shoving to get out. He’d cheated the night before, taking a couple hours away from his latest Seeker novel to draft the outline. And maybe he was cheating just a little bit more today, but he wanted to do a couple of pencils, and he didn’t want to do those until he had more detailed sketches.

The trouble was, his model had too many damn clothes on.

“I’d really like to see her naked,” he said, and Spock gave a kind of smart-assed snort. “Not that way. Well, yeah, that way, too. Who wouldn’t? But I’m speaking professionally.”

There came growlings and groanings now, with Spock rolling to his side. “I Am a professional. They pay me and everything, which is why I can buy your food.”

Spock snagged the small, mangled bear he carted around, rolled again and dropped it on Ford’s foot. Then began to dance hopefully in place. “We’ve been through this before. You’re responsible for feeding him.”

Ignoring the dog, Ford thought of Cilla again. He’d pay another “Hi, neighbor” call. See if he could talk her into posing for him.

Inside, he loaded up his sketch pad, his pencils, tucked in a copy of The Seeker: Vanished, then considered what he might have around the house to serve as a bribe.

He settled on a nice bottle of cabernet, shoved that into the bag, then started the hike across the road. Spock deserted the bear and scrambled up to follow.

SHE SAW HIM COMING as she hauled another load of trash and debris out to the Dumpster she’d rented. Inside the house she’d started piles of wood and trim she hoped to salvage. The rest? It had to go. Sentiment didn’t magically restore rotted wood.

Cilla tossed the pile, then set her gloved hands on her hips. What did her hot-looking neighbor and appealingly ugly dog want now?

He’d shaved, she noted. So the scruffy look might’ve been laziness rather than design. She preferred laziness. Over one shoulder he carried a large leather satchel, and as he came down her drive, he lifted a hand in a friendly greeting.

Spock sniffed around the Dumpster and seemed happy to lift his leg.

“Hey. You’ve had a lot going on here the last couple of days.”

“No point wasting time.”

His grin spread slow and easy. “Wasting time can be the point.” He glanced at the Dumpster. “Are you gutting the place?”

“Not entirely, but more than I’d hoped. Neglect takes longer to damage than deliberation, but it does the job just as well. Hello, Spock.” At the greeting the dog walked over, offered a paw. Okay, Cilla thought as they shook. Ugly but charming. “What can I do for you, Ford?”

“I’m working up to that. But first, I brought you this.” He dug into the satchel, came out with the bottle of red.

“That’s nice. Thanks.”

“And this.” He drew out the graphic novel. “A little reading material with your wine at the end of the day. It’s what I do.”

“Drink wine and read comic books?”

“Yeah, actually, but I meant I write them.”

“So my father told me, and I was being sarcastic.”

“I got that. I speak sarcasm, as well as many other languages. Do you ever read them?”

Funny guy, she thought, with his funny dog. “I crammed in a lot of Batman when they were casting Batgirl for the Clooney version. I lost out to Alicia Silverstone.”

“Probably just as well, the way that one turned out.”

Cilla cocked an eyebrow. “Let me repeat. George Clooney.”

Ford could only shake his head. “Michael Keaton was Batman. It’s all about the I’m-a-little-bit-crazy eyes. Plus they lost the operatic sense after the Keaton movies. And don’t get me started on Val Kilmer.”

“Okay. Anyway, I prepped for the audition by studying the previous movies—and yes, Keaton was fabulous—reading some of the comics, boning up on the mythology. I probably overprepped.”

She shrugged off what had been a major blow to her at sixteen. “You do your own art?”

“Yeah.” He studied her as she studied the cover. Look at that mouth, he thought, and the angle of her chin. His fingers itched for his pad and pencil. “I’m territorial and egotistical. Nobody can do it the way I do it, so nobody gets the chance.”

She flipped through as he spoke. “It’s a lot. I always think of comics as about twenty pages of bright colors and characters going BAM! ZAP! Your art’s strong and vivid, with a lot of dark edges.”

“The Seeker has a lot of dark edges. I’m finishing up a new one. It should be done in a few days. It would’ve been done today, probably, if you hadn’t distracted me.”

The wine tucked in the curve of her arm took on another level of weight. “How did I do that?”

“The way you look, the way you move. I’m not hitting on you on a personal level.” He slid his gaze down. “Yet,” he qualified. “It’s a professional tap. I’ve been trying to come up with a new character, the central for another series, apart from the Seeker. A woman—female power, vulnerabilities, viewpoints, problems. And the duality . . . Not important for today’s purposes,” he said. “You’re my woman.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Dr. Cass Murphy, archaeologist, professor of same. Cool, quiet, solitary woman whose heart really lies in the field work. The discovery. Prodigy. Nobody gets too close to Cass. She’s all business. That’s the way she was raised. She’s emotionally repressed.”

“I’m emotionally repressed?”

“I don’t know yet, but she is. See.” He pulled out his sketchbook, flipped to a page. Angling her head, Cilla studied the drawing, studied herself if she wore conservative suits, sensible pumps and glasses.

“She looks boring.”

“She wants to look boring. She doesn’t want to be noticed. If people notice her, they might get in the way, and they might make her feel things she doesn’t want to feel. Even on a dig, she . . . See?”

“Hmm. Not boring but efficient and practical. Maybe subtly sexy, given the mannish cut of the shirt and pants. She’s more comfortable this way.”

“Exactly. You’ve got a knack for this.”

“I’ve read my share of storyboards. I don’t know your field, but I can’t see much of a story with this character.”

“Oh, Cass has layers,” he assured her. “We just have to uncover them the way she uncovers artifacts at a dig. The way she’ll uncover an ancient weapon and symbol of power when she’s trapped in a cave on a mythical island I have to create, after she discovers the dastardly plans of the billionaire backer of the project, who’s also an evil sorcerer.”

“Naturally.”

“I’ve got some work to do there, but here she is. Brid, Warrior Goddess.”

“Wow.” It was really all she could think of. She was all leather and legs, breastplate and boobs. The boring and practical had become the bold, dangerous and sexy. She stood, legs planted in knee-high boots, masses of hair swirling and a short-handled, double-headed hammer lofted skyward.

“You might’ve exaggerated the cup size,” she commented.

“The . . . Oh, well, it’s hard to tell. Besides, the architecture of the breastplate’s bound to give them a boost. But you hit on what you can do for me. Pose. I can get what I need from candid sketches, but I’d get better with—”

“Whoa.” She slapped her hand over his as he flipped to a page covered with small drawings of her. “Those aren’t character sketches. That’s me.”

“Yeah, well, same thing, essentially.”

“You’ve been over there, watching me over here, making drawings of me without my consent? You don’t see that as rude and intrusive?”

“No, I see it as work. If I snuck over here and peeked in your windows, that would be rude and intrusive. You move like an athlete with just a hint of dancer. Even when you’re standing still there’s a punch to it. That’s what I need. I don’t need your permission to base a character on your physicality, but I’d do a better job with your cooperation.”

She shoved his hand away to flip back to the warrior goddess. “That’s my face.”

“And a great face it is, too.”

“If I said I’m calling my lawyer?”

At Ford’s feet, Spock grumbled. “That would be shortsighted and hard-assed. And your choice. I don’t think you’d get anywhere, but to save myself the hassle, I can make a few alterations. Wider mouth, longer nose. Make her a redhead—a redhead’s not a bad idea. Sharper cheekbones. Let’s see.”

He dug out a pencil, flipped to a fresh page. While Cilla watched, he drew a quick freehand sketch.

“I’m keeping the eyes,” he muttered as he worked. “You’ve got killer eyes. Widen the mouth, exaggerate the bottom lip just a hair more, diamond-edge those cheekbones, lengthen the nose. It’s rough, but it’s a great face, too.”

“If you think you can goad me into—”

“But I like yours better. Come on, Cilla. Who doesn’t want to be a superhero? I promise you, Brid’s going to kick a lot more ass than Batgirl.”

She hated feeling stupid, and feeling her temper shove at her. “Go away. I’ve got work to do.”

“I take that as a no on posing for me.”

“You can take that as, if you don’t go away, I’m going to get my own magic hammer and beat you over the head with it.”

Her hands curled into fists when he smiled at her. “That’s the spirit. Just let me know if you change your mind,” he said as he slid the sketchbook back into his bag. “See you later,” he added and, tucking his pencil behind his ear, headed back down her driveway with his ugly little dog.

SHE STEWED ABOUT IT. The physical labor helped work off the mad, but the stewing part had to run its course. It was just her luck, just her freaking luck, that she could move out to what was almost the middle of nowhere and end up with a nosy, pushy, intrusive neighbor who had no respect for boundaries or privacy.

Her boundaries. Her privacy.

All she wanted was to do what she wanted to do, in her own time, in her own way—and largely by herself. She wanted to build something here, make a life, make a living. On her own terms.

She didn’t mind the aches and pains of hard physical labor. In fact she considered them a badge of honor, along with every blister and callus.

Damned if she wanted her steps, her movements documented by some pen-and-ink artist.

“Warrior goddess,” she muttered under her breath as she cleaned out clogged and sagging gutters. “Make her a redhead and give her collagen lips and D cups. Typical.”

She climbed down the extension ladder and, since the gutters completed her last chore of the day, stretched right out on the ground.

She hurt every damn where.

She wanted to soak herself limp in a Jacuzzi, and follow it up with an hour’s massage. And top that off with a couple glasses of wine, and possibly sex with Orlando Bloom. After that, she might just feel human.

Since the only thing on that wish list at hand was the wine, she’d settle for that. When she could move again.

With a sigh, she realized the stewing portion of the program was complete, and with her mind clear and her body exhausted, she knew the core reason for her reaction to Ford’s sketches.

A decade of therapy hadn’t been wasted.

So she groaned, pushed herself up. And went inside for the wine.

WITH SPOCK and his bear snoring majestically, Ford inked the last panel. Though the final work would be in color, his technique was to approach the inking as a near completion of the final art.

He’d already inked the panel borders, and the outlines of the background objects with his 108 Hunt. After completing the light side of his foregrounds, he stepped back, squinted, studied, approved. Once again, the Seeker, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast, face half turned away, slipped back toward the shadows that haunted his existence.

Poor sap.

Ford cleaned the nib he’d used, replaced it in its section of his worktable. He chose his brush, dipped it in India ink, then began to lay in the areas of shadow on his penciling with bold lines. Every few dips he rinsed the brush. The process took time, it took patience and a steady hand. As he envisioned large areas of black for this final, somber panel, he filled them in partially, knowing too much ink too fast would buckle his page.

When the banging on the door downstairs—and Spock’s answering barks of terror—interrupted him, he did what he always did with interruptions. He cursed at them. Once the cursing was done, he grunted a series of words—his little ritual incantation. He swirled the brush in water again and took it with him as he went down to answer.

Irritation switched to curiosity when he saw Cilla standing on his veranda holding the bottle of cab.

“We’re cool, Spock,” he said, to shut up the madly barking dog trembling at the top of the stairs.

“Don’t like red?” he asked Cilla when he opened the door.

“Don’t have a corkscrew.”

This time the dog greeted her with a couple of happy leaps, and an enthusiastic rub of his body against her legs. “Nice to see you, too.”

“He’s relieved you’re not invading forces from his home planet.”

“So am I.”

The response had Ford grinning. “Okay, come on in. I’ll dig up a corkscrew.” He took a couple steps down the foyer, stopped, turned back. “Do you want to borrow a corkscrew, or do you want me to open the bottle so you can share?”

“Why don’t you open it?”

“You’d better come on back then. I have to clean my brush first.”

“You’re working. I’ll just take the corkscrew.”

“Indian giver. The work can wait. What time is it anyway?”

She noticed he wasn’t wearing a watch, then checked her own. “About seven-thirty.”

“It can definitely wait, but the brush can’t. Soap, water, corkscrew and glasses all conveniently located in the kitchen.” He took her arm in a casual grip that was firm enough to get her where he wanted her.

“I like your house.”

“Me too.” He led the way down a wide hallway with lofty ceilings framed in creamy crown molding. “I bought it pretty much as it stands. Previous owners did a good job fixing it up, so all I had to do was dump furniture in it.”

“What sold you on it? There’s usually one or two main hooks for a buyer. This,” she added as she walked into the generous kitchen with its wide granite serving bar opening into a casual family room, “would be one for me.”

“Actually, it was the view, and the light from upstairs. I work upstairs, so that was key.”

He opened a drawer, located a corkscrew in a way that told her his spaces were organized. He set the tool aside, then stepped to the sink to wash the brush.

Spock executed what looked like a bouncing, nail-tapping dance, then darted through a doorway. “Where’s he going?”

“I’m in the kitchen, which sends the food signal to his brain. That was his happy dance.”

“Is that what it was?”

“Yeah, he’s a pretty basic guy. Food makes him happy. He’s got an autofeeder in the laundry room and a dog door. Anyway, the kitchen’s pretty much wasted on me, and so was the dining area they set up over there since I don’t actually dine so much as eat. I’d be a pretty basic guy, too. But I like having space.”

He set up the cleaned brush bristles in a glass. “Have a seat,” he invited as he picked up the corkscrew.

She sat at the bar, admired the stainless steel double ovens, the cherry cabinets, the six-burner range and grill combo under the shining stainless hood. And, since she wasn’t blinded by end-of-the-day fatigue, his ass.

He took two red wineglasses from one of the cabinets with textured glass doors, poured the wine. He stepped over, offered her one, then, lifting his own, leaned on the bar toward her and said, “So.”

“So. We’re going to be across the road from each other for quite a while, most likely. It’s better to smooth things out.”

“Smooth is good.”

“It’s flattering to be seen as some mythical warrior goddess,” she began. “Odd but flattering. I might even get a kick out of it—the Xena-meets-Wonder-Woman, twenty-first-century style.”

“That’s good, and not entirely off the mark.”

“But I don’t like the fact that you’ve been watching me, or drawing me when I wasn’t aware of it. It’s a problem for me.”

“Because you see it as an invasion of privacy. And I see it as natural observation.”

She took a drink. “All my life, people watched me, took pictures. Observed me. Take a walk, shop for shoes, go for ice cream, it’s a photo op. Maybe it was usually set up for that precise purpose, but I didn’t have any control over that. Even though I’m not in the business, I’m still Janet Hardy’s granddaughter, so it still happens from time to time.”

“And you don’t like it.”

“Not only don’t like it, I’m done with it. I don’t want to bring that by-product of Hollywood here.”

“I can go with the second face, but I’ve got to have the eyes.”

She took another drink. “Here’s the sticky part, for me. I don’t want you to use the second face. I feel stupid about it, but I like the idea of being the inspiration for a comic book hero. And that is something I never thought I’d hear myself say.”

Inside, Ford did a little happy dance of his own. “So it’s not the results, it’s the process. You want something to eat? I want something to eat.” He turned, opened another cupboard and pulled out a bag of Doritos.

“That’s not actual food.”

“That’s what makes it good. All of my life,” he continued as he dug into the bag, “I’ve watched people. Drawn pictures—well, I drew pictures as soon as I could hold a crayon. I’ve observed—the way they move, gesture, the way their faces and bodies are put together. How they carry themselves. It’s like breathing. Something I have to do. I could promise not to watch you, but I’d be lying. I can promise to show you any sketching I do, and try to keep that promise.”

Because they were there, she ate a Dorito. “What if I hate them?”

“You won’t, if you have any taste, but if you do, that would be too bad.”

Contemplating, she ate another chip. His voice had stayed easy, she noted—over the rigid steel underlying it. “That’s a hard line.”

“I’m not what you’d call flexible about my work. I can pretzel about most anything else.”

“I know the type. What comes after the sketching?”

“You’ve got to have a story. Graphics is only half of a graphic novel. But you need to . . . Bring your wine. Come on upstairs.”

He retrieved his brush. “I was inking the last panel on Payback when you knocked,” he told her as he led her out of the kitchen and to the stairs.

“Are these stairs original?”

“I don’t know.” His forehead creased as he looked down at them. “Maybe. Why?”

“It’s beautiful work. The pickets, the banister, the finish. Someone took care of this place. It’s a major contrast with mine.”

“Well, you’re taking care now. And you hired Matt—pal of mine—to do some of the carpentry. I know he worked on this place before I bought it. And did some stuff for me after.” He turned into his studio.

Cilla saw the gorgeous wide-planked chestnut floor, the beautiful tall windows and the wide, glossy trim. “What a wonderful room.”

“Big. It was designed as the master bedroom, but I don’t need this much space to sleep.”

Cilla tuned into him again, and into the various workstations set up in the room. Five large, and very ugly, filing cabinets lined one wall. Shelves lined another with what seemed to be a ruthless organization of art supplies and tools. He’d devoted another section to action figures and accessories. She recognized a handful of the collection, and wondered why Darth Vader and Superman appeared so chummy.

A huge drawing board stood in the center of the room, currently holding what she assumed to be the panels he’d talked about. Spreading out from it on either side, counters and cubbies held a variety of tools, pencils, brushes, reams of paper. Photographs, sketches, pictures torn or cut out of magazines of people, places, buildings. Still another leg of the counter held a computer, printer, scanner—a Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figure.

Opposite that, to form a wide U, stood a full-length mirror.

“That’s a lot of stuff.”

“It takes a lot of stuff. But for the art, which is what you want to know, I’ll do a few million sketches, casting my people, costuming them, playing with background, foreground, settings—and somewhere in there I’ll write the script, breaking that into panels. Then I’ll do thumbnails—small, quick sketches to help me decide how I’m going to divide my space, how I want to compose them. Then I pencil the panels. Then I ink the art, which is exactly what it sounds like.”

She stepped over to the drawing board. “Black and white, light and shadow. But the book you gave me was done in color.”

“So will this be. I used to do the coloring and the lettering by hand. It’s fun,” he told her, leaning a hip on one leg of the U, “and really time-consuming. And if you go foreign, and I did, it’s problematic to change hand-drawn balloons to fit the translations. So I digitized there. I scan the inked panels into the computer and work with Photoshop for coloring.”

“The art’s awfully good,” Cilla stated. “It almost tells the story without the captions. That’s strong imaging.”

Ford waited a beat, then another. “I’m waiting for it.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “For what?”

“For you to ask why I’m wasting my talent with comic books instead of pursuing a legitimate career in art.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time. I don’t see waste when someone’s doing what they want to do, and something they excel at.”

“I knew I was going to like you.”

“Plus, you’re talking to someone who starred for eight seasons on a half-hour sitcom. It wasn’t Ibsen, but it sure as hell was legitimate. People will recognize me from your art. I’m not on the radar so much anymore, but I look enough like my grandmother, and she is. She always will be. People will make the connection.”

“Is that a problem for you?”

“I wish I knew.”

“You’ve got a couple days to think about it. Or . . .” He shifted, opened a drawer, drew out papers.

“You wrote up a release,” Cilla said after a glance at the papers.

“I figured you’d either come around or you wouldn’t. If you did, we’d get this out of the way.”

She stepped away, walked to the windows. The lights sparkled again, she thought. Little diamond glints in the dark. She watched them, and the dog currently chasing shadows in Ford’s backyard. She sipped her wine. Then she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “I’m not posing in a breastplate.”

Humor hit his eyes an instant before he grinned. “I can work around that.”

“No nudity.”

“Only for my personal collection.”

She let out a short laugh. “Got a pen?”

“A few hundred of them.” He chose a standard roller ball as she crossed the room.

“Here’s another condition. A personal, and petty, requirement. I want her to kick a lot more ass than Batgirl.”

“Guaranteed.”

After she’d signed the three copies, he handed her one. “For your files. How about we pour another glass of this wine, order a pizza and celebrate the deal?”

She eased back. He hadn’t stepped into her space; she’d stepped into his. But the tingle in her blood warned her to mark the distance. “No, thanks. You’ve got work and so do I.”

“Night’s young.” He walked out of the room with her. “Tomorrow’s long.”

“Not as young as it was, and tomorrow’s never long enough. Plus I need extra time to fantasize about putting in a Jacuzzi.”

“I’ve got one.”

She slid her eyes toward him as they came down the stairs. “I don’t suppose you have a massage therapist on tap, too.”

“No, but I’ve got really good hands.”

“I bet you do. Well, if you were Orlando Bloom, I’d consider this a sign from God and be sleeping with you in about ninety minutes. But since you’re not”—she opened the front door herself—“I’ll say good night.”

He stood, frowning after her, then stepped onto the veranda as she hiked toward the road. “Orlando Bloom?”

She simply lifted a hand in a kind of brushing-off wave, and kept walking.

FOUR

She had a couple of good, productive days. She’d lined up her plumber, her electrician, her head carpenter, and had the first of three projected estimates on replacement windows. But her luckiest find, to her way of thinking, had been connecting with an ancient little man named Dobby and his energetic grandson Jack, who would save and restore the original plaster walls.

“Old man McGowan hired my daddy to do these walls back around 1922,” Dobby told Cilla as he stood on his short, bowed legs in the living room of the little farm. “I was about six, came around to help him mix the plaster. Never saw such a big house before.”

“It’s good work.”

“He took pride in it, taught me the same. Miz Hardy, she hired me on to do some pointing up, and replastering where she made some changes. That’d be back around, ’sixty-five, I guess.”

Dobby’s face reminded Cilla of a piece of thin brown paper that had been balled tight, then carelessly smoothed out. The creases deepened like valleys when he smiled. “Never seen the like of her, either. Looked like an angel. Had a sweet way about her, and didn’t put on airs like you’d reckon a movie star would. Signed one of her record albums for me, too, when I got up the gumption to ask her. My wife wouldn’t let me play it after that. Had to frame it up for the wall, and buy a new one to listen to. It’s still hanging in the parlor.”

“I’m glad I found you, to keep the tradition going.”

“Not hard to find, I expect. Lot of people, in Miz Hardy’s day, and with her wherewithal, woulda put up the Sheetrock.” He turned his deep brown eyes on Cilla. “Most people’d do that now instead of preserving it.”

“I can’t save it all, Mr. Dobby. Some of it has to change, and some just has to go. But what I can save, I intend to.” She ran a fingertip along a long crack in the living room wall. “I think the house deserves that kind of respect from me.”

“Respect.” He nodded, obviously pleased. “That’s a fine way to look at it. It’s right fitting to have a McGowan here again, and one who comes down from Miz Hardy. My grandson and I’ll do good work for you.”

“I’m sure you will.”

They shook hands on it, there where she imagined his father might have shaken hands with her great-grandfather. And where Janet Hardy had signed an album that would stand in a frame.

She spent a few hours off site with a local cabinetmaker. Respect was important, but the old metal kitchen cabinets had to go. She planned to strip some of them down, repaint them and put them to use in the combination mud- and laundry room she’d designed.

When she got home again, she found the open bottle of cabernet topped with a goofy, alien head glow-in-the-dark wine stopper, and a corkscrew sitting on the temporary boards at her front door.

The note under the bottle read:

Sorry I didn’t get this back to you sooner, but Spock chained me to my desk. Recently escaped, and you weren’t home. Somebody could drink all this selfishly by herself, or ask a thirsty neighbor to join her one of these nights.

Ford

Amused, she considered doing just that—one of these nights. Glancing back, she felt a little poke of disappointment that he wasn’t standing out on his porch—veranda, she corrected. And the poke warned her to be careful about sharing a bottle of wine with hot guys who lived across the road.

Considering that, considering him, made her think of his studio—the space, the light. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that sort of space, that sort of light, for an office? If she pushed through with her long-term plans of rehabbing, remodeling homes, flipping houses, she’d need an attractive and efficient home office space.

The bedroom she’d earmarked for the purpose on the second floor would certainly do the job. But imagining Ford’s studio as she set the wine down on the old kitchen counter (slated for demo the next day), her projected office came off small, cramped and barely adequate.

She could take out the wall between the second and third bedrooms, she supposed. But that didn’t give her the light, the look she now imagined.

Wandering the first floor, she repositioned, projected, considered. It could be done, she thought, but she didn’t want her office space on the main level. She didn’t want to live at work, so to speak. Not for the long term. Besides, if she hadn’t seen Ford’s fabulous studio, she’d have been perfectly content with the refit bedroom.

And later, if her business actually took off, she could add a breezeway off the south side, then . . .

“Wait a minute.”

She hustled up the stairs, down the hall to the attic door. It groaned in cranky protest when she opened it, but the bare bulb at the top of the steep, narrow stairs blinked on when she hit the switch.

One look at the dusty steps had her backtracking for her notebook, and a flashlight, just in case.

Clean Attic. Install new light fixtures.

She headed up, pulled the chain on the first of three hanging bulbs.

“Oh yeah. Now we’re talking.”

It was a long, wide, sloped-roof mess of dust and spiderwebs. And loaded, to her mind, with potential. Though she’d had it lower than low on her priority list for cleaning and repair, the lightbulb was on in her head as well as over it.

The space was huge, the exposed rafter ceiling high enough for her to stand with room to spare until it pitched down at the sides. At the moment, there were two stingy windows on either end, but that could change. Would change.

Boxes, chests, a scarred dresser, old furniture, old pole lamps with yellowed shades stood blanketed with dust. Dingy ghosts. Books, probably full of silverfish, and old record albums likely warped from decades of summer heat jammed an old open bookcase.

She’d come up here before, taken one wincing look, then had designated the attic to Someday.

But now.

Go through the junk, she thought, writing quickly. Sort the wheat from the chaff. Clean it up. Bring the stairwell and the stairs up to code. Enlarge window openings. Outdoor entrance—and that meant outdoor stairs, with maybe an atrium-style door. Insulate, sand and seal the rafters and leave them exposed. Wiring, heat and AC. Plumbing, too, because there was plenty of room for a half bath. Maybe skylights.

Oh boy, oh boy. She’d just added a ton to her budget.

But wouldn’t it be fun?

Sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor, she spent a happy hour drawing out various options and ideas.

How much of the stuff up here had been her great-grandfather’s? Had he, or his daughter or son, actually used the old white bowl and pitcher for washing up? Or sat and rocked a fretful baby in the spindly rocker?

Who read the books, listened to the music, hauled up the boxes in which she discovered a rat’s nest of Christmas lights with fat, old-fashioned colored bulbs?

Toss, donate or keep, she mused. She’d have to start piles. More boxes revealed more Christmas decorations, scraps of material she imagined someone had kept with the idea of sewing something out of them. She found three old toasters with cords frayed and possibly gnawed on by mice, broken porcelain lamps, chipped teacups. People saved the weirdest things.

She bumped up the mice quotient on discovering four traps, mercifully uninhabited. Curious, and since she was already filthy, she squatted down to pull out some of the books. Some might be salvageable.

Who read Zane Grey? she wondered. Who enjoyed Frank Yerby and Mary Stewart? She piled them up, dug out more. Steinbeck and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

She started to pull out a copy of The Great Gatsby, and her fingers depressed the sides. Fearing the pages inside had simply deteriorated, she opened it carefully. Inside, in a depression framed by the raw edges of cut pages, sat a stack of letters tied with a faded red ribbon.

“Trudy Hamilton,” Cilla read. “Oh my God.”

She sat with the open book on her lap, her palms together as if in prayer, and her fingertips pressed to her lips. Letters to her grandmother, sent to a name Janet hadn’t used since childhood.

The address on the top envelope was a post office box in Malibu. And the postmark . . .

Reverently, Cilla lifted the stack, angled it toward the light.

“Front Royal, Virginia, January 1972.” A year and a half before she died, Cilla thought.

Love letters. What else could they be, tied with a ribbon, hidden away? A secret of a woman who’d been allowed precious few under the microscope of fame, and surely concealed by her own hands before, like Gatsby, she died young, tragically.

Romanticizing it, Cilla told herself. They could be chatty letters from an old friend, a distant relative.

But they weren’t. She knew they weren’t. Laying them back in the book, she closed it and carried it downstairs.

She showered first, knowing she didn’t dare handle the treasure she’d unearthed until she’d scrubbed off the attic dirt.

Scrubbed, dressed in flannel pants and a sweatshirt, her wet hair pulled back, she poured a glass of Ford’s wine. Standing in the hard fluorescent light—and boy, did that have to go—she sipped the wine, stared at the book.

The letters were hers now, Cilla had no qualms about that. Oh, her mother would disagree—and loudly. She’d weep about her loss, her right to anything that had been Janet’s. Then she’d sell them, auction them off as she had so many of Janet’s possessions over the years.

For posterity, Dilly would claim. For the public who adored her. But that was so much crap, Cilla thought. It would be for the money, and for the reflected glow of fame, the spread in People with photos of Dilly holding the stack of letters, her eyes sheened with tears, with inserts of her and Janet.

But she’d believe her own spin, Cilla thought. That was one of Dilly’s finest skills, as innate as her ability to call up those tear-sheened eyes on cue.

What should be done with them? Should they be hidden away again, returned to sender? Framed like a signed record and hung in the parlor?

“Have to read them first.”

Cilla blew out a breath, set the wine aside, then dragged a stool to the counter. With great care, she untied the faded ribbon, then slipped the top letter out of its envelope. The paper whispered as she unfolded it. Dark, clear handwriting filled two pages.

My Darling,

My heart beats faster knowing I have the right to call you that. My darling. What have I done in my life to earn such A precious gift? Every night I dream of you, of the sound of your voice, the scent of your skin, the taste of your mouth. I tremble inside As I remember the sheer glory of making love to you.

And every morning I wake, afraid it’s All just A dream. Did I imagine it, how we sat by the fire on that cold, clear night, talking As we had never talked before?

Only friends, As I knew what I felt for you, what I wanted with you, could never be. How could such A woman ever want someone like me? Then, then, did it happen? Did you come into my Arms? Did your lips seek mine? Did we come together like madness while the fi re burned And the music played? Was that the dream, my darling? If it was, I want to live in dreams forever.

My body Aches for yours now that we Are so far from each other. I long for your voice, but not only on the radio or the record player. I long for your face, but not only in photographs or on the movie screen. It’s you I want, the you inside. The beautiful, passionate, real woman I held in my Arms that night, And the nights we were Able to steal After.

Come to me soon, my darling. Come back to me And to our secret world where only you And I exist.

I send you All my love, All my longing in this new year.

I Am now And forever,

Only Yours

Here? Cilla wondered, carefully folding the letter again. Had it been here in this house, in front of the fire? Had Janet found love and happiness in this house in the final eighteen months of her life? Or was it another fling, another of her brief encounters?

Cilla counted out the envelopes, noting they were all addressed the same way and by the same hand, though some of the postmarks varied. Forty-two letters, she thought, and the last postmarked only ten short days before Janet took her life in this house.

Fingers trembling a bit, she opened the last letter.

Only one page this time, she noted.

This stops now. The calls, the threats, the hysteria stop now. It’s over, Janet. The last time was a mistake, And will never be repeated. You must be mad, calling my home, speaking to my wife, but then I’ve seen the sickness in you time And time again. Understand me, I will not leave my wife, my family. I will not endanger All I’ve built, And my future, for you. You claim you love me, but what does A woman like you know About love? Your whole life is built on lies And illusions, And for A time I was seduced by them, by you. No longer.

If you are pregnant, As you claim, there’s no proof the responsibility is mine. Don’t threaten me again with exposure, or you will pay for it, I promise you.

Stay in Hollywood where your lies Are currency. They’re worth nothing here. You Are not wanted.

“Pregnant.” Cilla’s whispered word seemed to echo through the house.

Shaken, she pushed off the stool to open the back door, to stand and breathe and let the chilly air cool her face.

CULVER CITY 1941

“To understand,” Janet told Cilla, “you have to start at the beginning. This is close enough.”

The hand holding Cilla’s was small and soft. Like all her dreams of Janet, the image began as an old photograph, faded and frayed, and slowly took on color and depth.

Two long braids lay over the shoulders of a gingham dress like ropes of sunlight on a meadow of fading flowers. Those brilliant, cold and clear blue eyes stared out at the world. The illusion of it.

All around Cilla and the child who would become her grandmother people bustled, on foot or in the open-sided jitneys that plowed along the wide avenue. Fifth Avenue, Cilla realized—or its movie counterpart.

Here was MGM at its zenith. More stars than the heavens could hold, and the child clutching her hand would be one of its brightest.

“I’m seven years old,” Janet told her. “I’ve been performing for three years now. Vaudeville first. I wanted to sing, to perform. I loved the applause. It’s like being hugged by a thousand arms. I dreamed of being a star,” she continued as she led Cilla along. “A movie star, with pretty dresses and the bright, bright lights. All the candy in the candy shop.”

Janet paused, spun into a complex and energetic tap routine, scuffed Mary Janes flying. “I can dance, too. I can learn a routine with one rehearsal. My voice is magic in my throat. I remember all my lines, but more, I can Act. Do you know why?”

“Why?” she asked, though she knew the answer. She’d read the interviews, the books, the biographies. She knew the child.

“Because I believe it. Every time, I believe the story. I make it real for me so it’s real for all the people who come to watch me in the movie show. Didn’t you?”

“Sometimes I did. But that meant it hurt when it stopped.”

The child nodded, and an adult sorrow clouded her eyes. “It’s like dying when it stops, so you have to find things that make it bright again. But that’s for later. I don’t know that yet. Now, it’s all bright.” The child threw out her arms as if to embrace it. “I’m younger than Judy and Shirley, and the camera loves me almost as much as I love it. I’ll make four movies this year, but this one makes me a real star. ‘The Little Comet’ is what they’ll call me after The Family O’Hara’s released.”

“You sang ‘I’ll Get By’ and made it a love song to your family. It became your signature song.”

“They’ll play it at my funeral. I don’t know that yet, either. This is Lot One. Brownstone Street.” Just a hint of priss entered her voice as she educated her granddaughter, and tugged her along with the small, soft hand. “The O’Haras live in New York, a down-on-their-luck theatrical troupe. They think it’s just another Depression-era movie, with music. Just another cog in the factory wheel. But it changes everything. They’ll be riding on the tail of the Little Comet for a long time.

“I’m already a drug addict, but that’s another thing I don’t know yet. I owe that to my mama.”

“Seconal and Benzedrine.” Cilla knew. “She gave them to you day and night.”

“A girl’s got to get a good night’s sleep and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.” Bitter, adult eyes stared out of the child’s pretty face. “She wanted to be a star, but she didn’t have it. I did, so she pushed, and she pushed, and she used me. She never hugged me, but the audience did. She changed my name, and pulled the strings. She signed me to a seven-year contract with Mr. Mayer, who changed my name again, and she took all the money. She gave me pills so I could make more. I hated her—not yet, but soon. Today, I don’t mind,” she said with a shrug that bounced her pigtails. “Today I’m happy because I know what to do with the song. I always know what to do with a song.”

She gestured. “That’s the soundstage. That’s where the magic happens. Out here, we’re just ghosts, ghosts and dreams,” she continued as a jitney full of actors in evening dresses and tuxes passed right through them. “But in there, it’s real. While the camera’s on, it’s all there is.”

“It’s not real, Janet. It’s a job.”

The blue eyes filled with warmth. “Maybe for you, but for me, it was my true love, and my salvation.”

“It killed you.”

“It made me first. I wanted this. That’s what you have to understand to figure out the rest. I wanted this more than anything I wanted before, or anything I wanted ever again, until it was nearly over. Those few moments when I do the scene, sing the song, and even the director’s eyes blur with tears. When, after he yells ‘Cut,’ the crew, the cast all break into applause and I feel their love for me. That’s all I wanted in the world, and what I’d try to find again and again and again. Sometimes I did. I was happy here, when I was seven especially.”

She sighed, smiled. “I would’ve lived here if they’d let me, wandering from New York to ancient Rome, from the old West to small-town USA. What could be a better playground for a child? This was home, more than I’d had. And I was pathetically grateful.”

“They used you up.”

“Not today, not today.” Frowning in annoyance, Janet waved the thought away. “Today everything’s perfect. I have everything I ever wanted today.”

“You bought the Little Farm, thousands of miles from here. A world away from this.”

“That was later, wasn’t it? And besides, I always came back. I needed this. I couldn’t live without love.”

“Is that why you killed yourself?”

“There are so many reasons for so many things. It’s hard to pick one. That’s what you want to do. That’s what you’ll need to do.”

“But if you were pregnant—”

“If, if, if.” Laughing, Janet danced over the sidewalk, up the steps of a dignified brownstone façade, then back down. “If is for tomorrow, for next year. People will play if about my whole life after I’m dead. I’ll be immortal, but I won’t be around to enjoy it.” She laughed again, then swung Gene Kelly style on a lamppost. “Except when you’re dreaming about me. Don’t stop, Cilla. You can bring me back just like the Little Farm. You’re the only one who can.”

She jumped off. “I have to go. It’s time for my scene. Time to make magic. It’s really the beginning for me.” She blew Cilla a kiss, then ran off down the sidewalk.

As the illusions of New York faded, as Cilla slowly surfaced from the dream, she heard Janet’s rich, heartbreaking voice soaring.

I’ll get by, As long As I have you.

But you didn’t, Cilla thought as she stared at the soft sunlight sliding through the windows. You didn’t get by.

Sighing, she crawled out of the sleeping bag and, scrubbing sleep from her face, walked to the window to stare out at the hills and mountains. And thought about a world, a life, three thousand miles west.

“If that was home, that was what you needed, why did you come all the way here to die?”

Was it for him? she wondered. Were you pregnant, and they covered that up? Or was that just a lie to stop your lover from ending your affair?

Who was he? Was he still alive, still in Virginia? And how did you keep the affair off the microscope slide? Why did you? was a keener question, Cilla decided.

Was he the reason you unplugged the phone that night, then chased the pills with vodka, the vodka with more pills until you went away? Not because of Johnnie then, Cilla mused. Not, as so many theorized, over the guilt and grief of losing your indulged eighteen-year-old son. Or not only because of that.

But a pregnancy so close to a death? Was that overwhelming or a beam of light in the dark?

It mattered, Cilla realized. All of it mattered, not only because Janet Hardy was her grandmother, but because she’d held the child’s hand in the dream. The lovely little girl on the towering edge of impossible stardom.

It mattered. Somehow she had to find the answers.

Even if her mother had been a reliable source of information—which Cilla thought not—it was hours too early to call Dilly. In any case, within thirty minutes, subcontractors would begin to arrive. So she’d mull all this, let it turn around in her head while she worked.

Cilla picked up the stack of letters she’d read, retied the faded ribbon. Once again she tucked them inside Fitzgerald. Then she laid the book on the folding table currently standing as a work area, along with her stacks of files and home magazines—and Ford’s graphic novel.

Until she figured out what to do about them, the letters were her secret. Just as they’d been Janet’s.

FIVE

As nervous as a parent sending her firstborn off to school, Cilla supervised the loading of her vintage kitchen appliances onto the truck. Once restored, they’d be the jewels in her completed kitchen. Or that was the plan.

For the foreseeable future, she’d make do with the under-the-counter fridge, hot plate and microwave oven, all more suited to a college dorm than an actual home.

“Get yourself brand-new appliances down at Sears,” Buddy told her.

“Call me crazy,” Cilla said, as she suspected he already did. “Now let’s talk about putting a john in the attic.”

She spent the next hour with him, the electrician and one of the carpenters in the musty attic outlining her vision, then adjusting it when their suggestions made sense to her.

With the music of hammers, drills, saws jangling, she began the laborious task of sorting and hauling the attic contents out to the old barn. There, where the ghostly scents of hay and horses haunted the air, she stored both trash and treasure. While spring popped around her, Cilla watched old windows replaced by new, and old ceramic tiles hauled to the Dumpster. She breathed in the scents of sawdust and plaster, of wood glue and sweat.

At night she nursed her blisters and nicks, and often read over the letters written to her grandmother.

One evening, too restless to settle after the various crews had cleared out, she hiked down to study and consider her iron gates. Or she used them as an excuse, Cilla admitted, as she’d seen Ford sitting out on his veranda. His casual wave as she stood on her side of the road, and Spock’s wagging stunted whip of a tail, made it easy, even natural to cross.

“I saw you rebuilding your veranda,” he commented. “Where’d you learn to use power tools?”

“Along the way.” After greeting the dog, she turned, looked back at the farm. “My veranda doesn’t look too bad from yours, considering mine’s not finished or painted. The new windows look good, too. I’m putting bigger ones in the attic, and adding skylights.”

“Skylights in an attic.”

“It won’t be an attic when I’m done. It’ll be my office. That’s your fault.”

He smiled lazily. “Is it?”

“You inspired me.”

“I guess that’s tit for tat, so to speak.” He lifted his Corona. “Want a beer?”

“I really do.”

“Have a seat.”

She slid into one of his wide Adirondacks, scratched Spock’s big head between his tiny pointed ears while Ford went inside for the beer. It was a good perspective of her place from here, she thought. She could see where she needed new trees, shrubs, where it might be a nice touch to add a trellis to the south side of the house, how the old barn wanted to be connected to the house by a stone path. Or brick, she thought. Maybe slate.

“I imagine the sound carries over here,” she said when Ford came back out. “All that noise must be annoying.”

“I don’t hear much when I’m working.” He handed her the beer, sat. “Unless I want to.”

“Superior powers of concentration?”

“That would be a lofty way of saying I just tune things out. How’s it going over there?”

“Pretty well. Fits and starts like any project.” She took a pull of her beer, closed her eyes. “God, cold beer after a long day. It should be the law of the land.”

“I seem to be in the habit of giving you alcohol.”

She glanced at him. “And I haven’t reciprocated.”

He kicked out his legs, smiled. “So I’ve noticed.”

“My place isn’t fit for even casual entertainment at the moment. Neither am I. You see that iron gate?”

“Hard to miss.”

“Do I have it restored, or do I have it replaced?”

“Why do you need it? Seems like a lot of trouble to be stopping the car, getting out, opening the gates, driving through, getting out, closing them again. Even if you put in something automatic, it’s trouble.”

“I told myself that before. Changed my mind.” Spock bumped his head against her hand a few times, and she translated the signal, went back to scratching him. “They’re there for a reason.”

“I can see why she needed them, your grandmother. But I haven’t noticed you using them since you moved in.”

“No, I haven’t.” She smiled a little as she sipped her beer. “Because they’re too much trouble. They don’t fit the feel of the place, do they? The rambling farmhouse, the big old barn. But she needed them. They’re just an illusion, really.” God knew she’d needed her illusions. “Not that hard to climb over them or the walls. But she needed the illusion of security, of privacy. I found some old letters.”

“Ones she wrote?”

She hadn’t meant to say anything about them. Was it two sips of beer that had loosened her tongue, Cilla wondered, or just his company? She wasn’t sure she’d ever met anyone so innately relaxed. “No, written to her. A number of them written to her in the last year and a half of her life. By a local, I’d say, as the majority of the postmarks are from here.”

“Love letters.”

“They started that way. Passionate, romantic, intimate.” She angled her head, studied him over another sip of beer. “Why am I telling you?”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t told anyone else yet. I’ve been trying to figure them out, figure him out, I guess. I’m going to talk to my father about it at some point, as he was friendly with Janet’s son—my uncle. And the affair seems to have begun the winter before he was killed—and appears to have started to go downhill a few months after.”

“You want to know who wrote them.” Ford rubbed the dog lazily with his foot when Spock shifted to bump against him. “How’d he sign them?”

“ ‘Only Yours’—until he started signing them with varieties of ‘up yours.’ It didn’t end well. He was married,” she continued as Spock, apparently rubbed enough, curled up under Ford’s chair and began to snore. “It’s no secret she had affairs with married men. From flings to serious liaisons. She fell in love the way other women change their hairstyle. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“She lived in a different world than most women.”

“I’ve always considered that a handy excuse or justification for being careless, for being selfish.”

“Maybe.” Ford shrugged. “Still true.”

“She craved love, the physical and the emotional. As addicted to it as she was to the pills her mother started feeding her when she was four. But I think this one was real, for her.”

“Because she kept it secret.”

She turned back to him again. He had good eyes, she thought. Not just the way they looked with that rim of gold around the green, the flecks scattered in it. But the way he saw things.

“Yes, exactly. She kept it to herself because it was important. And maybe Johnnie’s death made it all the more intense and desperate. I don’t know what she wrote to him, but from his letters I can feel her desperation, and that terrible need, as easily as I can read his waning interest, his concerns with being found out and his eventual disgust. But she didn’t want to let go. The last letter in the stack was mailed from here ten days before she died.”

Now she shifted, and her gaze focused on the farm. “Died in that house across the road. He told her, in very clear, very harsh words, that they were done, to leave him alone. She must’ve gotten on a plane right after getting the letter. She walked off the set of her last, unfinished movie, claiming exhaustion, and flew here. That wasn’t her way. She worked, she loved the work, respected the work, but she flicked it off this time. Only this time. She must’ve been hoping to win him back. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. You do.”

“I do.” It hurt, she realized. A little pang in the heart. “And when she realized it was hopeless, she killed herself. Her fault. Hers,” she said before Ford could speak. “Whether it was the accidental overdose, as the coroner decided to rule it, or the suicide that seems much more realistic. But this man has to know he played a part in what she chose to do that night.”

“You want the piece of the puzzle so you can see the whole picture.”

The shadows were long now, she thought. Long and growing longer. Soon the lights would sparkle through the hills, and the mountains behind them would fold up under the dark.

“I grew up with her like another person in the house, or wherever I went, whatever I did. Her life, her work, her brilliance, her flaws, her death. Inescapable. And now, look what I’ve done.” She gestured with the bottle toward the farm. “My choice. I’ve had opportunities I never would have had if Janet Hardy hadn’t been my grandmother. And I’ve dealt with a lot of crap over the years because Janet Hardy’s my grandmother. Yeah, I’d like the whole picture. Or as much of one as it’s possible to see. I don’t have to like it, but I’d like, maybe even need, the chance to understand it.”

“Seems reasonable to me.”

“Does it? It does to me, too, except when it doesn’t and strikes me as obsessive.”

“She’s part of your heritage, and only one generation removed. I could tell you all kinds of stories about my grandparents, on both sides. Of course, three out of four of them are still living—and two of those three still live around here. And will talk your ear off the side of your head given half the chance.”

“And apparently so will I. I need to get back.” She pushed to her feet. “Thanks for the beer.”

“I’m thinking about tossing something on the grill in a bit.” He rose as well, casually shifting in a way that boxed her between the porch rail and his body. “That and the microwave are my culinary areas. Why don’t you have another beer, and I’ll cook something up?”

He could cook something up, she thought, she had no doubt. Tall, sun-streaked and charming with a faint wash of nerd. Too appealing for her own good. “I’ve been up since six, and I’ve got a full day tomorrow.”

“Ever take a day off?” He trailed his fingertips—just the fingertips—down her arm. “And this would be me officially hitting on you.”

“I suspected that. I’m not actually scheduling any time off right now.”

“In that case I’d better take advantage of the moment.”

She expected smooth, a nice quiet cruise by the way his head dipped toward hers, by the lazy interest in those gold-rimmed eyes. Later, when she could think about it clearly, she decided she hadn’t been entirely wrong. It was smooth, in the way a good shot of excellent whiskey, straight up, is smooth.

But rather than a nice, quiet cruise, she got a strong, hard jolt when his mouth closed over hers. The sort that bulleted straight to her belly. The hands that gripped her arms gave one quick, insistent tug that had her pressed against him. In another of those subtle moves, he had her back against the post, and her mouth completely captivated.

Zero to sixty, she thought. And she’d forgotten to strap in first.

She clamped her hands on his hips and let the speed take her.

Everything he’d imagined—and his imagination was boundless—paled. Her taste was more potent, her lips more generous, her body more supple. It was as if he’d painted this first kiss in the brightest, boldest colors in his palette.

And even they weren’t deep enough.

She was a ride on a dragon, a flight through space, a dive into the deep waters of an enchanted sea.

His hands swept up from her shoulders to her face, then into her hair to tug the band tying it back. He eased away to see her with her hair tumbled, to see her eyes, her face before he drew her back again.

But she pressed a hand to his chest. “Better not.” She let out a careful breath. “I’ve already hit my quota of mistakes for this decade.”

“That didn’t feel like a mistake to me.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I have to think about it.”

He ran his hands down to her elbows and back up as he watched her. “That’s really a damn shame.”

“It is.” She took another breath. “It absolutely is. But . . .”

At her light nudge, he stepped back. “Here’s what I need to know. There’s persistence, there’s pacing and there’s pains in the ass. I’m wondering which category you’d consider it if I wander over to your place now and then or invite you over here, with the full intention of trying to get you naked.”

The dog made an odd gurgling sound from under the chair, and Cilla watched one of those bulging eyes open. As if he waited for the answer, too.

“You haven’t come close to the third yet, but I’ll let you know if you do.”

She sidestepped. “But I’m going to take a rain check on that offer of food and nudity. I’ve got a porch—veranda—to finish tomorrow.”

“Oh, that tired old excuse.”

She laughed, went down the steps before she changed her mind. “I do appreciate the Corona, the ear and being hit on.”

“Come back anytime for any or all of the above.”

He leaned on the rail as she walked across the road, returned the wave she sent him when she reached the open gates. And he bent and picked up the little stretchy band of blue he’d tugged out of her hair.

FORD DEBATED GIVING her some time, some space. Then decided the hell with that. His latest novel was on his editor’s desk, and before he dove too deeply into Brid, he wanted some visual aids. Plus, since Cilla didn’t appear to be put off by the persistent, he intended to be just that.

After he rolled out of bed at what he considered the civilized hour of ten, checked the backyard to see that Spock was already up and chasing his ghost cats, he took his coffee outside and watched her work on her front veranda.

He considered he could get some very decent shots of her, in action, with his long lens. But decided that edged over into the murky area of creepy. Instead, he poured himself a bowl of Cheerios and ate them standing up, studying her.

The body was great. Long, lean, lanky and on the athletic side rather than willowy and slight. Cass would be fit, he decided, but instinctively conceal her . . . attributes. Brid, well, she’d be right out there.

The hair, that deep blond like shadowed sunlight, he decided. An easy transition there, too. Cass would habitually keep hers restrained; Brid’s would fly and flow. Then the face. He wished he could see Cilla’s now, but it was blocked by the brim of the ball cap she wore as she worked. He had no problem conjuring it in his mind, the shape, the angles, the tones. It would be a face Cass played down, one made quiet and intellectual by the glasses, the lack of makeup.

Beauty restrained, just like her hair.

But Brid, for Brid, the beauty would be bold, luminous. Not simply released but wild with it.

Time to get started.

Inside, he packed up his satchel again, hung his camera around his neck by its strap. He considered another token, and shoved an apple into the bag.

The sound of her nail gun peppered the air like muffled gunshots. And made Ford think of battles. Brid would never use a gun—much too crass, too ordinary. But how would she defend herself against them? With sword and hammer, deflecting bullets like Wonder Woman’s magic bracelets? Maybe.

As he walked closer, the echoey music from one of the workers’ radio jangled out country. Why was it always country? he wondered. Was it some sort of construction law?

Country music (including selected crossover artists) must be played on portable radios on all sites.

He caught the buzz of a saw, the whine of what might’ve been a drill, and assorted bangs from inside. Adding them together, along with the decor of Dumpster, Porta Potti and pickups, he found himself grateful he’d bought his own place move-in ready.

Plus, he sincerely doubted any of the workers he might have hired otherwise would have owned an ass like the one currently snugged into dusty Levi’s and happily facing his way.

He could’ve resisted, but why? So he lifted the camera, framed her in and took the shot as he walked.

“You know why they have those calendars of scantily clad women holding power drills and such in mechanics’ shops?” he called out.

Cilla looked over her shoulder, sized Ford up through her safety goggles. “So men can imagine their dicks as a power drill?”

“No, so we can imagine women imagine it.”

“I stand corrected.” She shot in the last two nails, then swiveled around to sit. “Where’s your faithful companion?”

“Spock? He’s busy, but sends his best. Where’d you learn to shoot that gun?”

“On-the-job training. I’ve got more boards to cut and nail, if you want a turn.”

“Tragic and terrible things happen when I pick up tools. So I don’t, and save lives.” He reached in his bag. “Brought you a present.”

“You brought me an apple?”

“It’ll help keep your strength up.” He tossed it to her, cocking a brow when she caught it neatly, and one-handed. “I had a feeling.”

She studied the apple, then bit in. “About what?”

“That you’d field what comes at you. Mind if I take some pictures while you’re working? I want to start some more detailed sketches.”

“So you’re going forward with the warrior goddess idea.”

“Brid. Yeah, I am. I can wait until you take a break if the camera bothers you while you work.”

“I spent more than half my life in front of cameras.” She pushed to her feet. “They don’t bother me.”

She tossed the apple core into the Dumpster before stepping over to her lumber pile. Ford snapped away while she selected, measured, set the piece on the power saw. He watched her eyes as the blade whined, as it cut through wood. He doubted the camera could capture the focus in them.

But it captured the cut of her biceps, the ripple of toned muscle when she hefted the planks and carried them to the finished decking.

“Living in California, I expect you’re a woman who spends regular time at a gym.”

Cilla set the plank on her marks, braced the distance with spacers. “I like a good gym.”

“Let me say working out’s worked out for you.”

“I tend toward skinny otherwise. Rehab work helps the tone,” she continued, driving in the first nail. “But I miss the discipline of a good gym. Do you know any around here?”

“As it happens, I do. Tell you what, you come on over when you’re finished up for the day. I’ll take you to see the gym, then we’ll have dinner.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re not the coy type. ‘Maybe’ means . . . ?”

“It depends on when I finish up.”

“Gym’s open twenty-four/seven.”

“Seriously?” She flicked him a glance, then worked her way down the board with her nail gun. “That’s handy. I’ll adjust the maybe to probably.”

“Fair enough. On the dinner end, are you vegetarian or fruititarian or some other ’tarian that requires restrictions on the menu?”

Laughing, she sat back on her heels. “I’m an eatitarian. I’ll eat pretty much what you put in front of me.”

“Good to know. Mind if I take a look inside, see what all the banging and sawing’s about? It’ll also give me the chance to rag on Matt about whatever comes to mind.”

“Go ahead. I’d give you the tour, but my boss is a bitch about unscheduled breaks.”

“Mine’s a pushover.” He stepped up, then bent down, sniffed at her. “First time I ever realized the smell of sawdust was sexy.”

He stepped inside and said, “Holy shit.”

He’d expected a certain amount of chaos, activity and mess. He hadn’t expected what struck him as a kind of maniacal destruction. There had to be a purpose behind it all, he thought, as Cilla struck him as firmly sane, but he couldn’t see it.

Tools scattered over the floor in what hit his organized soul with dismay. How did anyone find anything? Cords snaked and coiled. Bare bulbs dangled. Sections of wall gaped where for reasons that escaped him someone had cut or hacked them out. The wide planks of the floor were patchworked with stained cloths and cardboard.

Baffled, and slightly horrified, he wandered through, observing the same sort of mad bombarding in every room.

He found Matt in one of them, curling blond hair under a red ball cap, tool belt slung, measuring tape at the ready. He gave Ford an easy smile, said, “Hey.”

“You make this mess?”

“Pieces of it. Boss lady’s got ideas. Good ones. That’s a woman who knows what she’s doing.”

“If you say so. How’s Josie?”

“Doing good. We got a picture of the Beast.”

Ford knew the Beast was the baby Josie was currently carrying. Their two-year-old son had been the Belly.

He took the sonogram shot Matt pulled out of his pocket, studied it, turned it and finally found the form. Legs, arms, body, head. “He looks like the other one did. Midget alien from Planet Womb.”

“She. We just found out. It’s a girl.”

“Yeah?” Ford glanced up at his friend’s huge grin, found his own spreading. “One of each species. Nice going.”

“She’s not dating till she’s thirty.” Matt took the picture back, looked at it with love, then slipped it back into his pocket. “So, you up for poker night at Bri’s?”

Ford thought he’d rather face a root canal than poker night. But he, Matt and Brian had been friends just about all their lives. “If there’s absolutely no escape.”

“Good. I need the money. Hold that end of the tape a minute.”

“You know better than that.”

“Right.” Matt set the tape himself. “If you touch it, it’s likely to explode in my hand. I could lose a finger. Have you been through the place yet?”

“I just started.”

“Take a look around. It’s going to be a hell of a thing.”

“It already looks like hell.”

Unable to resist, he backtracked, went upstairs. It didn’t get any better. What had been a bathroom was now a bare box with stripped walls and skeletal pipes, with raw holes in the floor and ceiling. Two bedrooms stood doorless, their windows still bearing the stickers of the manufacturer, their floors covered with ratty carpet.

But when he opened the door to the next bedroom, astonishment clicked up to temper. What the hell was she thinking? An air mattress and sleeping bag, cardboard boxes and an old card table?

“I take back the sane,” he muttered, and headed back down.

He found her standing in front of the newly planked veranda guzzling water from a bottle. The warming temperatures and the labor combined to lay a dark sweat line down the center of the white T-shirt she wore with the jeans. It only added to his annoyance that he found a sweaty, possibly unstable woman so damned appealing.

“Are you crazy or just stupid?” he demanded.

Slowly, she lowered the bottle. And slowly, she tipped her head down until those glacial blue eyes met his. “What?”

“Who lives like that?” He jerked a thumb back toward the house as he strode down to her. “The house is torn to pieces, you’re down to a hot plate in the kitchen, and you’re sleeping on the floor and living out of a cardboard box. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“I’ll take that one at a time. I live like this because I’m in the middle of a major project, which is why the house is torn up, though hardly to pieces. I’m down to a hot plate because I’m having the appliances rehabbed. I’m sleeping on an air mattress, not the floor, because I haven’t decided what kind of bed I want. And there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Go on up and get what you need. You’ll take my spare room.”

“I stopped taking orders a long time ago. From my mother, from agents, managers, directors, producers and all manner of others who decided they knew what was best for me, what I wanted, what I should do. I’m afraid you’re too late.”

“You’re living like a squatter.”

“I’m living as I choose.”

He caught the flare of heat in the icy blue, but pushed anyway. “There’s a bedroom over there with a perfectly good bed, one with sheets.”

“Oh, if it’s got actual sheets . . . no. Go away, Ford. My break’s over.”

“Your bitch of a boss’ll have to give you another couple minutes. You can see this damn place from mine, and you can walk over every morning in about ninety seconds—after you’ve had a decent night’s sleep in an actual bed, and used a bathroom that isn’t the black and blue of a psychedelic bruise, and about the size of a quarter.”

For some reason his obvious fury banked any embers of her own. Amused now, she laughed outright. “The bathroom’s hideous, I’ll give you that. But doesn’t persuade me to pull up stakes. I get the impression you’re a lot more fastidious than I am.”

“I’m not fastidious.” Temper veered sharply into insult. “Old men in cardigans are fastidious. Wanting to sleep in a bed and piss in a toilet that was manufactured sometime in the last half century doesn’t make me fastidious. And your hand’s bleeding.”

She glanced down. “Must’ve scraped it.” She wiped the shallow cut carelessly on her jeans.

He stared at her. “What the hell’s wrong with me?” he wondered, and grabbed her.

He jerked her up to her toes. He wanted those ice-blue eyes level with his, wanted that gorgeous, tasty mouth lined right up. He didn’t think any further than that before he swooped in and plundered.

She was sweaty, covered with sawdust and possibly had any number of screws loose. And he’d never, never wanted anyone more in his life.

He ignored her jump of shock. The bolt of lust that slammed into him blasted away any thought of niceties. He wanted, he took. It was as elemental as that.

The water bottle slipped out of her hand and bounced on the ground. For the first time in too long to remember she’d been caught completely by surprise. She hadn’t seen this move coming, and even the potency of the kiss they’d shared the evening before hadn’t prepared her for the punch of this one.

It was raw, and it was randy, and plowed straight through her to leave her muscles quivering and nerve ends quaking. She wanted, for one mad moment, to be gulped down in one greedy swallow, wanted him to throw her over his shoulder and drag her off to some dark cave.

When he jerked her away again, her head actually spun.

“Fastidious, my ass.”

As she stared at Ford, she heard Buddy the plumber call her name from behind. “Don’t mean to interrupt,” he continued, “but you might take a look at what I’m fixing to do in this bathroom. When you get a minute.”

She lifted a hand, wagged it vaguely in the air without looking around. “You’re a dangerous man, Ford.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t know how I missed that. I’m usually good at spotting dangerous men.”

“I guess I wear it well, since I’ve missed that my entire life myself. There’s a lock on the spare bedroom. I can give you my word not to kick the door down, unless the house is on fire. Even then, since I’ve never kicked one down, you’d probably have plenty of warning.”

“If and when I sleep at your house, it won’t be in the spare room. But for now, I’m staying put. You’re a dangerous man, Ford,” she repeated before he could speak. “I’m a determined woman. I not only like living here, I need to. Otherwise, I’d be staying at the closest motel. Now, I’ve got to get inside. I’m putting in a basin-style sink with exposed pipes and wall-hung fixtures. Like you, Buddy doesn’t understand my line of thinking.”

He looked over her shoulder at the house, shook his head. “Right now, I’m not sure anyone understands your line but you.”

“I’m used to that.”

“Come on over when you’re done, we’ll check out that gym.” He picked up his satchel and camera. Then the water bottle. “Your shoes are wet,” he told her, then headed home.

Cilla looked down at her feet. Damned if they weren’t. She squished her way into the house to talk to Buddy.

SIX

Cilla spent the bulk of her afternoon looking at toilets. And choosing sinks. She debated the advantages of travertine tile and granite, limestone and ceramic. In her last incarnation of flipping houses, budget had been king. She’d learned to stick to one, to select the best value and look at the neighborhood as well as the house itself. Too much over, too much under, and profit would be sucked away like dust bunnies in a Dyson.

But this time things were different. While budget could never be ignored, she was making choices for home, not for resale. If she intended to live on the Little Farm, to build a life and a career there, she’d be the one living with those choices for a long time to come.

When she’d stumbled into the real estate game, she learned she had a good eye for potential, for color, texture, balance. And she discovered she was fussy. A slight difference in tone, shape or size in bathroom tile mattered in her world. She could spend hours deciding on the right drawer pull.

And she’d discovered doing so, and finding the right drawer pull, made her absurdly happy.

On her return to the now empty construction zone of a house, she grinned at the new planks of her veranda. She’d done that, just as she’d build the rail, the pickets, then paint it a fresh farmhouse white. Probably white, she corrected. Maybe cream. Possibly ivory.

The sound of her feet slapping down on those planks struck her like music.

She hauled the samples she’d brought with her up to the bathroom, spent time arranging, studying. And basking in her vision. Warm, charming, simple. Exactly right for a guest room bath.

The oil-rubbed bronze fixtures she’d already bought and had planned this room around would be wonderfully complemented by the subtle tones in the tile and old-fashioned vessel sink.

Buddy, she thought, would eat his words when this was done.

She left the samples where they were—she wanted to take another careful look at them in natural, morning light—then all but danced to the shower to wash off the day’s work.

She sang, letting her voice boom and echo off the cracked, pitiful and soon-to-be-demolished tiles of her own bathroom. No playback from a recording studio or soundstage had ever pleased her more.

WHEN FORD OPENED THE DOOR, Cilla held out the traveling bottle of cabernet. He took it, held it up and estimated there was nearly half a bottle left.

“You lush.”

“I know. It’s a problem. So how about a drink before we go scout out this gym?”

“Sure.”

She’d left her hair down, he noted, so that it spilled, ruler straight, inches past her shoulders. Her scent brought a quick, vivid sensory memory of the night-blooming jasmine that rioted outside his grandmother’s house in Georgia.

“You look good.”

“I feel good. I bought three toilets today.”

“Well, that certainly deserves a drink.”

“I picked out bathroom tile,” she continued as she followed him back to the kitchen, “cabinet knobs, light fixtures and a tub. A really wonderful classic slipper-style claw-foot tub. This is a big day. And I’m thinking of going Deco in the master bath.”

“Deco?”

“I saw this fabulous sink today, and I thought, yeah, that’s it. I could do a lot of chrome and pale blue glass in there. Black-and-white tiles—or maybe black and silver. A little metallic punch. Jazzy, retro. Indulgent. You’d be tempted to wear a silk robe with marabou feathers.”

“I always am. As I’ve always wondered what is a marabou, and why does it have feathers?”

“I don’t know, but I may buy that robe just to hang in there and finish it off. It’s going to rock.”

“All this from a sink?” He handed her a glass of wine.

“That’s how it usually works for me. I’ll see a piece, and it gives a tug, so I can see how the rest of the room might work around it. Anyway.” She lifted her glass in toast. “I had a good day. How about you?”

She sparkled, he thought. A trip to Home Depot, or wherever she’d been, and she sparkled like sunlight. “Well, I didn’t buy any toilets, but I can’t complain. I’ve got a good handle on the book, the story line, and managed to put a lot of it on paper.” He studied her as he sipped. “I guess I understand your sink, after all. I saw you, you gave a tug. And the rest works around you.”

“Can I read it?”

“Sure. Once I get it smoothed out some.”

“That’s awfully normal and untemperamental. Most of the writers I’ve known fall into two camps. The ones who plead for you to read every word as it’s written, and the ones who’d put out your eyes with a shrimp fork if you glimpsed a page of unpolished work.”

“I bet most of the writers you’ve known are in Hollywood.”

She considered a moment. “Your point,” she conceded. “When I was acting, script pages could come flying at you while you were shooting the scene. I actually liked it that way. More spontaneous, keeps the energy up. But I used to think, how hard can it be? You just put the idea down in words on paper. I found out how hard it can be when I started to write a screenplay.”

“You wrote a screenplay?”

“Started to write. About a woman who grows up in the business—an insider’s view—the rise and the fall, the scrambling, the triumphs and humiliations. Write what you know, I thought, and boy, did I know. I only got about ten pages in.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I failed to factor in one little element. I can’t write.” She laughed, shook back her hair. “Reading a million scripts doesn’t mean you can write one. Even a bad one. And since of that million scripts I’ve read, I’ve read about nine hundred thousand bad ones, I knew a stinker. With acting, I had to believe—not make believe, but believe. Janet Hardy’s Number One Rule. It struck me it’s the same with writing. And I couldn’t write so I could believe. You do.”

“How do you know?”

“I could see it when you started telling me about this new idea, about this new character. And it shows in your work, the words and the art.”

He pointed at her. “You read the book.”

“I did. I confess I intended to flip through it, get the gist so I wouldn’t fail the quiz if and when you asked me about it. But I got caught up. Your Seeker is flawed and dark and human. Even when he’s in superhero mode, his humanity, his wounds show through. I guess that’s the point.”

“You’d guess right. You just earned yourself another drink.”

“Better not.” She put a hand over her glass when he reached for the wine. “Maybe later, over dinner. After you show me the gym. You said it was close.”

“Yeah, it is. Come take a look at this.”

He gestured, then opened a flat-panel cherry door she’d admired. Lower level, she assumed and, since touring houses always appealed, started down with him.

“Nice stairs again,” she commented. “Whoever built this place really . . . Oh. Man.”

Struck with admiration and not a little envy, she stopped at the base. The slope of the hill opened the lower level to the rear of the house through wide glass doors and windows, and a small and pretty slate patio beyond, where the dog currently sprawled on his back, feet straight up, sleeping.

But inside, on safety mats over the wide-planked oak floor, stood the machines. In silence, she wandered, studying the elliptical trainer, the weight bench, the rack of weights, the recumbent bike, rowing machine.

Serious stuff, she mused.

An enormous flat-panel TV covered one wall. She noted the components tucked into a built-in, and the glass-front bar fridge holding bottles of water. And in the corner where the wood merged with slate rested a whirlpool tub in glossy black.

“Matt’s work?”

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“I’m more and more pleased with my instinct to hire him. You never have to leave here.”

“That was sort of the idea. I like to hole up for long stretches. It was designed as a family room, but since my family doesn’t live here, I figured why haul myself to a gym when I can bring the gym to me? And, hey, no membership fee. Of course, it cuts out being able to ogle toned and sweaty female bodies, but you’ve got to make some sacrifices.”

“I have a basement,” Cilla mused. “An actual underground basement, but it’s big. I gave some thought to finishing it off eventually, but more for storage and utility. But with the right lighting ...”

“Until then, you’re welcome to use this.”

Frowning, she turned to look at him. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Don’t evade. Why?”

“That wasn’t an evasion.” And wasn’t she an odd combination of caution and openness, he thought. “But if you need more specifics, I only use it a few hours a week. So you’re welcome to use it a few hours a week, too. Call it Southern hospitality.”

“When do you generally work out?”

“No set time, really. More when the mood strikes. I try to make sure the mood strikes five or six days a week anyway, otherwise I can start to resemble Skeletor.”

“Who?”

“You know, Skeletor. Masters of the Universe? Archenemy of He-Man. And, no, you don’t know. I’ll get you a book. It doesn’t fit anyway, because despite the name, Skeletor’s ripped. Anyway, you can use those doors there, when your mood strikes. I won’t even know you’re here. And I might get lucky, have my mood match yours—then I’d be able to ogle a toned, sweaty female after all.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Pull up your shirt.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“Keep your pants on. Just the shirt, Ford. I want to check out the abs.”

“You’re a strange woman, Cilla.” But he pulled up his shirt.

She poked a finger into his stomach. “Okay. I just wanted to be sure you actually use this equipment, and the mood striking is a side benefit rather than a purpose.”

“I’ve got a purpose when it comes to you.”

“Which I get, and which is fine. But I’d really like to take you up on your offer and do that without strings or expectations. I appreciate the hospitality, Ford. I really do. Plus you have Matt’s seal of approval, and I like him.”

“It’s a good thing because I pay him five hundred a year for that seal.”

“He loves you. It came across when I subtly and cleverly pumped him about you.”

He felt a quick and happy twinge. “You pumped him about me?”

“Subtly,” she repeated. “And cleverly. And he’s a nice guy, so . . .” She scanned the room, the equipment again, and he could almost feel her longing. “How about we barter? I’ll happily take advantage of your equipment, and if you have something around the house that needs fixing or dealing with, I’ll take care of it.”

“You’re going to be my handyman?”

“I’m pretty damn handy.”

“Will you wear your tool belt, and a really short skirt?”

“Tool belt, yes. Skirt, no.”

“Damn it.”

“If I can’t fix it, I’ll send one of the guys over. Maybe one of them will wear a really short skirt.”

“I can always hope.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Great.” Smiling, she studied the room again. “I’m going to take advantage first thing tomorrow. Why don’t I take you out to dinner to seal the deal?”

“I’ll rain-check that, as I’ve got the menu planned up in Chez Sawyer.”

“You’re going to cook.”

“My specialty.” He took her arm to turn her toward the steps. “I only have the one that doesn’t involve nuking. It involves tossing a couple steaks on the grill, stabbing a bunch of peppers on a skewer and baking a couple of potatoes. How do you like your steak?”

“So I can hear it faintly whisper moo.”

“Cilla, you’re a woman after my own heart.”

SHE WASN’T. She wasn’t after anything but the pursuit of her own goals, and the satisfaction of finding them. But she had to admit, Ford made it tempting. He engaged her mind, putting it at ease and keeping it on alert. It was, Cilla thought, a clever skill. She enjoyed his company, more than she felt was altogether wise, particularly since she’d planned to spend more of her time alone.

And he looked damn good standing over a smoking grill.

They ate on his back veranda, with the well-fed Spock snoring in table-scrap bliss. And she found the down-to-basics meal exactly right. “God, it’s so beautiful here. Peaceful.”

“No urges for club crawls or a quick foray down Rodeo Drive?”

“I had my fill of both a long time ago. Seems like fun at the time, but it goes sour fast if it’s not really your place. It wasn’t mine. What about you? You lived in New York for a while, didn’t you? No urges to take another bite out of the Big Apple?”

“It was exciting, and I like going back now and then, soaking up that energy. The thing was, I thought I was supposed to live there, given what I wanted to do. After a while, I realized I was doing more work when I came down to visit my parents for a few days, hang with friends, than I was in the same stretch of time up there. I finally figured out there were just too many people thinking up there, all hours of the day and night. And I thought better down here.”

“That’s funny,” she replied.

“What is?”

“In an interview once, a reporter asked my grandmother why she bought this little farm in Virginia. She said she could hear her own thoughts here, and that they tended to get drowned out with everyone else’s when she was in L.A.”

“I know exactly what she meant. Have you read many of her interviews?”

“Read, reread, listened to, watched. I can’t remember a time she didn’t fascinate me. This brilliant light, this tragic icon, who I came from. I couldn’t escape her, so I needed to know her. I resented her when I was a kid. Being compared to her, and always falling short.”

“Comparisons are designed to make someone fall short.”

“They really are. By the time I was twelve or thirteen, they actively pissed me off. So I started to study her, very purposefully, looking for the trick, the secret. What I found was a woman who was stupendously and naturally talented. Anyone compared to her would fall short. And realizing that, I didn’t resent her anymore. It would be like resenting a diamond for sparkling.”

“I grew up hearing about her, because she had the place here. Died here. My mother would play her records a lot. She went to a couple of parties at the farm,” he added. “My mother.”

“Did she?”

“Her claim to fame is kissing Janet Hardy’s son, that would be your uncle. A little odd, isn’t it, you and me sitting out here like this, and back years, my mother and your uncle made out in the shadows across the road. Might be odder still when I tell you my mama did some of the same with your daddy.”

“Oh God.” On a burst of laughter, Cilla picked up her wine, took a quick drink. “You’re not making that up?”

“Pure truth. This would be, of course, before she settled on my father, and your father went out to Hollywood after your mother. Complicated business, now that I think about it.”

“I’ll say.”

“And mortifying for me, when she told me. Which was with some glee, when I ended up in your father’s class in high school. The thought that my mother had locked lips with Mr. McGowan was damn near traumatizing at the time.” His eyes lit with humor. “Now, I like the synchronicity that my mother’s son has locked lips with Mr. McGowan’s daughter.”

Circles, Cilla thought. She’d thought of circles when she’d come to rebuild her grandmother’s farm. Now here was another circle linked to that. “They must’ve been so young,” she said softly. “Johnnie was only eighteen when he died. It must’ve been horrible for Janet, for the parents of the other two boys—one dead, one paralyzed. She never got over it. You can see in every clip, every photo of her taken after that night, she was never the same.”

“My mother used to use that accident as a kind of bogeyman when I got old enough to drive. You’d see Jimmy Hennessy around town from time to time in his wheelchair, and she never missed the opportunity to remind me of what could happen if I was careless enough to drink or get high, then get behind the wheel or into a car with someone who’d been using.”

He shook his head, polished off his steak. “I still can’t go to a bar and guiltlessly enjoy a single beer if I’ve got to drive myself home. Mothers sure can screw things up for you.”

“Does he still live here? The boy—well, not a boy now—the one who survived the wreck?”

“He died last year. Or the year before. I’m not sure.”

“I didn’t hear about it.”

“He lived at home his whole life. His parents looked after him. Rough.”

“Yes. His father blamed Janet. Blamed her for bringing her Hollywood immorality here, for letting her son run wild, for buying him the fast car.”

“There were two other boys in that car. Nobody forced them into it,” Ford pointed out. “Nobody poured beer forcibly down their throats or pumped pot into their systems. They were young and stupid, all three of them. And they paid a terrible price for it.”

“And she paid them. According to my mother—and her bitterness over it tells me it’s true—Janet paid each of the families of those boys a considerable sum of money. Undisclosed amount, even to my mother. And again, according to the gospel of Dilly, Janet only kept the farm as a kind of monument to Johnnie, and tied it up in trusts for decades after her own death for the same reason. But I don’t believe that.”

“What do you believe?”

“I believe Janet kept it because she was happy here. Because she could hear her own thoughts here, even when those thoughts were dark and dreadful.” She sighed, sat back. “Give me another glass of wine, will you, Ford? That’ll make three, which is my absolute personal high-end limit.”

“What happens after three?”

“I haven’t gone over three in years, but if history holds, I go from relaxed, perhaps mildly and pleasantly buzzed, to drunk enough to have yet one or maybe two more. Then I’d be very drunk, jump you, and wake up tomorrow with a hangover and only blurred memories of our encounter.”

“In that case, you’re cut off after this.” He poured the wine. “When we encounter, your memory’s going to be crystal.”

“I haven’t decided on that yet, you know.”

“That’s okay, I have.” He propped his chin on his fist, stared at her. “I can’t get myself out of your eyes, Cilla. They keep pulling me in.”

“Janet Hardy’s eyes.”

“No. Cilla McGowan’s eyes.”

She smiled, sipped her last glass of wine. “I was going to make up an excuse—or not even bother to make one up—about not coming tonight.”

“Is that so?”

“That is so. Because you got bossy about my living arrangements.”

“Defining ‘bossy’ as ‘sensible.’ Why did you come?”

“Buying the toilets put me in a really good mood. Seriously,” she said when he choked out a laugh. “I’ve found my thing, Ford. After a long time looking.”

“You found your thing in toilets.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I found my thing in taking something broken down or neglected, or just a little tired, and making it shine again. Making it better. And doing that’s made me better. So because I was in a good mood, I walked across the road. I’m really glad I did.”

“So am I.”

SHE DIDN’T SEE him or Spock when she let herself in his home gym the next morning. Cilla plugged in her iPod and got down to business. She gave herself a solid hour, and at some point during it the dog strolled out into the backyard and lifted his leg a number of times. But there was still no sign or sound from Ford when she let herself out again, with one wistful glance at his hot tub.

No time for jets and indulgence, she told herself. But as Spock raced over, so obviously thrilled to see her, she spent a good ten minutes rubbing him while he gurgled and grunted in what seemed to be some form of communication. The workout, the silly dog, just the day itself put her in a fine mood as she jogged back across the road. She showered off the workout sweat, downed coffee and a blueberry yogurt. By the time she strapped on her tool belt, her crews and subs began to arrive.

It took time, every morning, but Cilla was happy to spend it. Talking, evaluating, brainstorming away problems.

“I’m going to expand the bathroom, Buddy,” she told him, and, as she expected, he let out a windy sigh.

“The one I’m using now, not the one you’ve roughed in.”

“That’s something anyway.”

“I’ve already talked to Matt,” she said. “Come on up, and I’ll show you what we’re going to do.”

He hemmed and he hawed, but that was expected, too. In fact, she’d come to look forward to it. “Now that we’re putting my office upstairs instead of in this bedroom, I’m going to use this space to make it a master suite. We’ll be taking out this wall,” she began.

He listened, he scratched, he shook his head. “Gonna cost you.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll draw it up in more detail later, but for now, here’s the idea.” She opened her notebook to the sketch she’d drawn with Matt. “We’ll keep the old claw-foot tub, have it refurbished and set here. Floor pipes and drains. Double sinks here, and I’m thinking undermount.”

“Guess you’ll be putting a slab of granite or whatnot.”

“No, zinc.”

“Say, what?”

“Zinc countertop. And over here, I’m putting in a steam shower. Yes,” she said before he could speak. “Hollywood ideas. Glass block here, to form the water closet. In the end, it’s going to reflect and respect the architecture, pay homage to retro, and, Buddy, it will rock.”

“You’re the boss.”

She grinned. “Damn straight.”

The boss moved outside, to build her rail and pickets in the April sunshine.

When her father pulled in, Cilla had her sides run, and had worked up a fresh sweat.

“Doesn’t that look nice,” he commented.

“It’s coming along.”

He nodded toward the house, and the cacophony of construction noise. “Sounds like more’s coming along inside.”

“First-stage demo’s done. I’ve changed some things, so we’ll have more demo on the second floor later. But the inspector’s coming tomorrow.” She lifted her hand, crossed her fingers. “To approve the rough plumbing and electric. Then we’ll boogie.”

“It’s the talk of the town.”

“I imagine so.” She gestured toward the road. “Traffic’s increased. People slow down, even stop, to look. I had a call from the local paper for an interview. I don’t want pictures yet. Most people can’t see what it’s going to be while it’s at this stage, so I gave the reporter a quick hit over the phone.”

“When’s it going to run?”

“Sunday. Lifestyle. Janet Hardy still has the switch.” Cilla pushed back her cap to swipe the back of her hand over her forehead. “You knew her, Dad. Would she approve?”

“I think she loved this place. I think she’d be pleased you love it, too. And that you’re putting your mark on it. Cilla, are you building that railing yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“I had no idea you could do that. I thought you had the ideas, then you hired people to work them out.”

“Some of that, too. Most of that, I guess. But I like the work. Especially this kind. I’m going to go for my contractor’s license.”

“You . . . Well, how about that?”

“I’m going to start a business. This house? Talk of the town, and that’s going to turn into revenue for me down the road. I think people might like to hire the woman who rebuilt Janet Hardy’s little farm, especially if she’s Janet’s granddaughter. And after a while?” Her eyes narrowed and gleamed. “They’ll hire me because they know I’m good.”

“You really mean to stay.”

So he hadn’t believed it. Why should he? “I mean to stay. I like the way it smells here. I like the way I feel here. Are you in a hurry?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want to walk around a little, play landscape consultant?”

He smiled slowly. “I’d like that.”

“Let me get my notebook.”

Walking with him, listening to him as he gestured to an area, described the shrubs and groupings he suggested, Cilla learned more about him.

His thoughtful way of listening, then responding, the pauses between while he considered. His ease with himself, the time he took.

He paused at the edge of the pond, smiled. “I swam in here a few times. You’re going to need to get these lily pads and cattails under control.”

“It’s on the list. Brian said maybe we’ll do some yellow flags.”

“That would be a nice choice. You could plant a willow over there. It’d make a pretty feature, weeping over the water.”

She scribbled. “I thought a stone bench maybe, somewhere to sit.” Remembering, she looked up at him. “So, is this where you kissed Ford Sawyer’s mother?”

His mouth dropped open in surprise, and, to Cilla’s delight, a flush rose up into his cheeks. He chuckled, and began to walk again. “Now how’d you hear about that?”

“I have my sources.”

“I have mine. I hear you kissed Penny Sawyer’s son out in the front yard.”

“Buddy.”

“Not directly, but he’d be the root of it.”

“It’s a little weird.”

“A little bit,” Gavin agreed.

“You haven’t answered the question.”

“I guess I’ll confess I did kiss Penny Quint—which she was in those days—more than a few times, and some of those times here. We went steady for a number of months in high school. Before she broke my heart.”

He smiled when he said it, and had Cilla smiling in return. “High school is hell.”

“It sure can be. The heartbreaking took place here, too, as it happens. And back there, near the pond. Penny and I had a fight—God knows about what—and we broke up. I admit to having been torn between wooing her back and making a play for your mother.”

“You dog.”

“Most boys are dogs at eighteen. Then I saw Penny, near the pond, kissing Johnnie.” He sighed, even now, remembering. “That was a blow. My girl—or I still half thought of her as my girl—and one of my friends. It broke the code.”

“Friends don’t move in on exes,” Cilla said. “It’s still the code.”

“Johnnie and I had words about it. Then and there, and Penny gave me a piece of her mind. About that time, your mother came along. She’s always been drawn to drama. I went off with her, soothed my heart and ego. That was the last time Johnnie and I spoke. The last words we spoke to each other were hard ones. I’ve always regretted that.”

There was no smile now, and in its place, Cilla saw old grief. “He died two days later. And so did another of my friends, and Jimmy Hennessy was paralyzed. I was supposed to go with them that night.”

“I didn’t know that.” Something squeezed inside her. “I’ve never heard that.”

“I was supposed to be in that car, but Penny kissed Johnnie, Johnnie and I had hard words. And I didn’t go.”

“God.” A shudder snaked down Cilla’s spine. “I owe Ford’s mother quite a bit.”

“I went off to college the next fall, like I planned—then a couple of years in, I dropped out, went off to Hollywood. Got myself a contract. I think it was, at least in part, because I was another kind of reminder of her brother, her mother, that had your mother giving me another look. She was too young when the look turned serious. We both were. We got engaged secretly, broke up publicly. Back and forth, back and forth for years. Then we eloped.

“We had you hardly a year later.” He draped his arm around Cilla’s shoulders. “We did our best. I know it wasn’t very good, but we did our best.”

“It’s hard, knowing so much of what happened, what was done, was rooted in death at worst, on mistakes at best.”

“You were never a mistake.”

She didn’t respond. How could she? She’d been called one often enough. “You were still in college when Janet died?”

“I’d finished my first year.”

“Did you hear anything about a man, someone out here, she was involved with?”

“There was constant speculation, constant gossip about Janet and men. I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary, or any talk of someone from here. Why?”

“I found letters, Dad. I found letters written to her from a lover. They’re postmarked from here, or a lot of them are. She hid them. The last one, bitter, after he’d broken off the affair, was mailed only ten days before her death.”

They’d walked back to the house, stood now at the edge of the back veranda. “I think she came back here to see him, to confront him. She was desperately unhappy, if even half of the accounts from the time are true. And I think she was in love with this man, this married man she’d had a passionate, tumultuous affair with for over a year before it cooled.”

“You think he was local? What was his name?”

“He didn’t sign them by name. She—” Cilla glanced over, noticed how close they stood to the open window. Taking her father’s arm, she drew him away. “She told the man she was pregnant.”

“Pregnant? Cilla, there was an autopsy.”

“It might have been covered up. It might not have been true, but if it was, if it wasn’t a lie to get him back, it could’ve been covered up. He threatened her. In the last letter, he told her she’d pay if she tried to expose their relationship.”

“You don’t want to believe she killed herself,” Gavin began.

“Suicide or not, she’s still dead. I want the truth. She deserves that, and so do I. People have talked murder and conspiracies for decades. Maybe they’re right.”

“She was an addict, sweetheart. An addict who couldn’t stop grieving for her child. An unhappy woman who shone in front of the cameras, on the stage, but who never really found her happiness away from them. And when Johnnie died, she lost herself in grief, and smothered the grief with pills and alcohol.”

“She took a lover. And she came back here. Johnnie kissed your girl, and as a result, you lived. Small moments change lives. And take them. I want to find out what moment, what actual event, took hers. Even if it was by her own hand.”

SEVEN

LAS VEGAS 1954

Janet held the sleeveless, full-skirted dress up, and did a twirl in front of the wall of mirrors. “What do you think?” she asked Cilla. “The pink’s more elegant, but I really want to wear white. Every girl should be able to wear white on her wedding day.”

“You’ll look beautiful. You’ll look beautiful and young, and so incredibly happy.”

“I am. I’m all of those things. I’m nineteen. I’m a major movie star. My record is number one in the country. I’m in love.” She spiraled again, and again, spun-gold hair flying in gleaming waves.

Even in dreams, her sheer joy danced in the air, fluttered over Cilla’s skin.

“I’m madly in love with the most wonderful, the most handsome man in the world. I’m rich, I’m beautiful, and the world—right this moment—the world is mine.”

“It stays yours for a long time,” Cilla told her. But not long enough. It’s never long enough.

“I should wear my hair up.”

Janet tossed the dress onto the bed where the pink brocade suit already lay discarded. “I look more mature with my hair up. The studio never wants me to wear it up. They don’t want me to be a woman yet, a real woman. Always the girl next door, always the virgin.”

Laughing, she began to fashion her sleek fall of hair into a French twist. “I haven’t been a virgin since I was fifteen.” Janet met Cilla’s eyes in the mirror. And with the joy layered amusement, and a thin coat of disdain. “Do you think the public cares if I have sex?”

“Some do. Some will. But it’s your life.”

“Goddamn right. And my career. I want adult roles, and I’m going to get them. Frankie’s going to help me. Once we’re married, he’ll manage my career. He’ll handle things.”

“Yes,” Cilla murmured, “he will.”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking.” Standing in her white silk slip, Janet continued to place pins in her hair. “Within the year I’ll be filing for divorce. Then a brief reconciliation gets me knocked up with my second child. I’m pregnant now, but I don’t know it. Johnnie’s already started inside me. Only a week or so, but he’s begun. Everything changes today.”

“You eloped to Vegas, married Frankie Bennett, who was nearly ten years older than you.”

“Vegas was my idea.” Janet picked up a can of hair spray from the dressing table, began to spray suffocating clouds of it. “I wanted to stuff it down their throats, I guess. Janet Hardy, and all the parts she plays, wouldn’t even know Vegas exists. But here I am, in the penthouse of the Flamingo, dressing for my wedding. And no one knows but me and Frankie.”

Cilla walked to the window, looked out.

A pool sparkled below, lush gardens flowing back from its skirting. Beyond, the buildings were small and on the tacky side. Colors faded, shapes blurred, like the old photographs Cilla supposed she’d pieced together to form the landscape for the dream.

“It’s nothing like it will be, really. Vegas, I mean.”

“What is?”

“You’ll marry Bennett, and the studio will spin and spin to counteract the damage. But there won’t be any, not really. You look so spectacular together, and that’s almost enough. The illusion of two gorgeous people in love. And you’ll take on your first true adult role with Sarah Constantine in Heartsong . You’ll be nominated for an Oscar.”

“After Johnnie. I have Johnnie before Heartsong. Even Mrs. Eisenhower will send a baby gift. I cut back on the pills.” She tapped the bottle on her dressing table before turning to lift the dress. “I’m still able to do that, to cut down on the pills, the booze. It’s easier when I’m happy, the way I am now.”

“If you knew what would happen? If you knew Frankie Bennett will cheat on you with women, will gamble away so much of your money, squander more. If you knew he’d break your heart and that you’d attempt suicide for the first time in just over a year, would you go through with it?”

Janet stepped into the dress. “If I didn’t, where would you be?” She turned her back. “Zip me up, will you?”

“You said, later, you’ll say that your mother offered you like a virgin to the studio, and the studio tore the innocence out of you, piece by piece. And that Frankie Bennett took those pieces and shredded them like confetti.”

“The studio made me a star.” She fastened pearls at her ears. “I didn’t walk away. I craved what they gave me, and gave them my innocence. I wanted Frankie, and gave what was left to him.”

She held up a double strand of pearls, and understanding, Cilla took them to hook around Janet’s neck.

“I’ll do amazing work in the next ten years. My very best work. And I’ll do some damn good work in the ten after that. Well, nearly ten,” she said with a laugh. “But who’s counting? Maybe I needed to be in turmoil to reach my potential. Who knows? Who cares?”

“I do.”

With a soft smile, Janet turned to kiss Cilla’s cheek. “I looked for love all of my life, and gave it too often, and too intensely. Maybe if I hadn’t looked so hard, someone would have given it back to me. The red belt!” She danced away to snatch a thick scarlet belt from the clothes tossed on the bed. “It’s just the right touch, and red’s Frankie’s favorite color. He loves me in red.”

She buckled it on, like a belt of blood, and stepped into matching shoes. “How do I look?”

“Perfect.”

“I wish you could come, but it’s only going to be me and Frankie, and the funny old justice of the peace and the woman who plays the spinet. Frankie will leak it to the press without telling me, and that’s how the photo of the two of us coming out of the tacky little chapel gets into Photoplay. Then the chit hits the fan.” She laughed. “What a ride.”

And laughed, and laughed, so that Cilla heard the echoes of the laughter as she woke.

BECAUSE SHE WANTED to let her thoughts simmer away from the noise and distractions, Cilla spent the majority of her time the next two days sorting out the dozens of boxes and trunks she’d hauled into the barn.

Cilla had determined on her first pass that her mother had already culled and scavenged whatever she deemed worthwhile. But Dilly had missed a few treasures. She often did, to Cilla’s mind, being in such a rush to grab the shiniest object, she missed the little diamonds in the rough.

Like the old photo tucked in a book. A very pregnant Janet plopped on a chaise by the pond, mugging for the camera with a glossily handsome Rock Hudson. Or the script for With Violets—Janet’s second Oscar nomination—buried in a trunk full of old blankets. She found a little music box fashioned like a grand piano that played “Für Elise.” Inside, a little handwritten note read: From Johnnie, Mother’s Day, 1961, in Janet’s looping scrawl.

By the end of a rainy afternoon, she had a pile designated for the Dumpster, and a small stack of boxes to keep.

When she hauled out a load in a wheelbarrow, she found the rain had turned to fragile sunlight and her front yard full of people. Ford and her landscaper stood on the wet grass laughing at each other, along with a man with steel-gray hair who wore a light windbreaker. Crossing to them from a little red pickup was the owner of the roofing company she’d hired. A boy of about ten and a big white dog trailed after him.

After some posturing, and looking out from between Ford’s legs, Spock tiptoed—if dogs could tiptoe—up to the white dog, sniffed, then plopped down and exposed his belly in submission.

“Afternoon.” Cleaver of Cleaver Roofing and Gutters gave her a nod of greeting. “Had a job to check on down the road, and thought I’d stop on the way home to let you know we’ll be starting tomorrow if the weather’s clear.”

“That’s great.”

“These are my grandsons, Jake and Lester.” He winked at Cilla. “They don’t bite.”

“Good to know.”

“Grandpa.” The boy rolled his eyes. “Lester’s my dog.”

As Cilla crouched to greet the dog, Spock bumped through them to claim Cilla’s hand. It was a clear: Uh-uh, you owe me first.

Cleaver hailed the trio of men walking toward them. “Tommy, you son of a . . .” Cleaver slid his gaze toward his grandson, smirked. “Gun. Don’t think you can fast-talk this lady into selling. I’ve got the roof.”

“How you doing, Hank? I’m not buying. Just checking up on my boy here.”

“Cilla, this is my dad.” Brian, the landscaper, gripped his father’s shoulder. “Tom Morrow.”

“He’s a slick one, Miz McGowan,” Hank warned her with another wink. “You watch out for him. Before you know it, he’ll talk you into selling this place, then put up a dozen houses.”

“This acreage? No more than six.” Tom offered a smile and his hand. “Welcome to Virginia.”

“Thanks. You’re a builder?”

“I develop land, residential and commercial. You’ve taken on quite a project here. I’ve heard you hired some good people to work on it. Present company excepted,” he said with a grin to Hank.

“Before these two get going,” Brian interrupted, “I’ve got some sketches on the landscaping I wanted to drop off for you to look at. Do you want a hand with that haul?”

Cilla shook her head. “I’ve got it. I’m just going through the stuff I brought down from the attic, stowed in the barn. Rainy-day work, I guess.”

Brian lifted a dented toaster out of the wheelbarrow. “People keep the damnedest things.”

“I can attest.”

“We cleaned out the attic when my mother passed,” Hank put in. “Found a whole box of nothing but broken dishes, and another dozen or more full of papers. Receipts from groceries back thirty years, and God knows. But you want to be careful sorting through, Miz McGowan. Mixed all in there we found letters my daddy wrote her when he was in Korea. She had every one of our report cards—there’s six of us kids—right through high school. She never threw a blessed thing out, but there’re important things up there.”

“I’m going to take my time with it. I’m finding it an interesting mix of both sides of my family so far.”

“That’s right, this used to be the McGowan farm.” Tom scanned the area. “I remember when your grandmother bought it from old man McGowan, back around 1960. My father had his eye on this land, hoping to develop it. He brooded for a month after Janet Hardy bought it—then he decided she wouldn’t keep it above six months, and he’d snap it up cheap from her. She proved him wrong.

“It’s a pretty spot,” Tom added, then gave his son a poke. “See that you make it prettier. I’d better get going. Good luck, Miss McGowan. If you need any recommendations on subs, just give me a call.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I’d better get on, too.” Hank pulled at the brim of his cap. “Get my grandsons home for supper.”

“Grandpa.”

“They’ll talk another twenty minutes,” Brian commented when his father and Hank strolled toward the red pickup. “But I really do have to get going.” He handed Cilla a large manila envelope. “Let me know what you think, what kind of changes you might want.”

“I will, thanks.”

After Brian tossed the toaster into the Dumpster, he shot a finger at Ford. “Later, Rembrandt.”

On a short laugh, Ford waved. “Around and about, Picasso.”

“Rembrandt?”

“Short story. Wait. Jesus.” After she’d handed him the envelope and started to push the wheelbarrow up the Dumpster’s ramp, Ford nudged her aside. “Flex your muscles all you want, but not while I’m standing here holding paper and guys are around.”

He shoved the envelope back at her, then rolled the wheelbarrow up to dump. “Brian and I could both draw, and somehow or other got into a sex-parts-and-positions drawing contest. We got busted passing sketches back and forth in study hall. Earned us both a three-day pass.”

“Pass to what?”

He looked down as he dumped. “Suspension. I guess you didn’t go to regular school.”

“Tutors. How old were you?”

“About fourteen. I got my ears burned all the way home when my mother picked me up, and got grounded for two weeks. Two weeks, and it was my first and last black mark in school. Talk about harsh. Hmm.”

“I bet they still have them,” she said when he rolled the barrow down again. “And future generations will find them in the attic.”

“You think? Well, they did show considerable promise and a very healthy imagination. Want to go for a ride?”

“A ride?”

“We can go get some dinner somewhere, catch a movie.”

“What’s playing?”

“Couldn’t say. I’m thinking of the movie as a vehicle for popcorn and necking.”

“Sounds good,” she decided. “You can put the wheelbarrow back in the barn while I wash up.”

WITH HER NEW WIRING APPROVED, Cilla watched Dobby and his grandson replaster the living room walls. Art came in many forms, she decided, and she’d found herself a pair of artists. It wouldn’t be quick, but boy, it would be right.

“You do fancy work, too?” she asked Dobby. “Medallions, trim?”

“Here and there. Not much call for it these days. You can buy premade cheaper, so most people do.”

“I’m not most people. Fancy work wouldn’t suit this area.” Hands on hips, she turned a circle in the drop-clothed, chewed-up living space. “But simple and interesting might. And could work in the master bedroom, the dining room. Nothing ornate,” she said, thinking out loud. “No winged cherubs or hanging grapes. Maybe a design. Something Celtic . . . that would address the McGowan and the Moloney branches.”

“Moloney?”

“What? Sorry.” Distracted, she glanced back at Dobby. “Moloney would have been my grandmother’s surname—except her mother changed it to Hamilton just after Janet was born, then the studio changed it to Hardy. Gertrude Moloney to Trudy Hamilton to Janet Hardy. They called her Trudy as a girl,” she added and thought of the letters.

“Is that so?” Dobby shook his head, dipped his trowel. “Pretty, old-fashioned name Trudy.”

“And not shiny enough for Hollywood, at least when she came up in it. She said in an interview once that no one ever called her Trudy again, once they’d settled on Janet. Not even her family. But sometimes she’d look at herself in the mirror and say hello to Trudy, just to remind herself. Anyway, if I came up with some designs, we could talk about working them in upstairs.”

“We sure could do that.”

“I’ll do some research. Maybe we could . . . Sorry,” she said when the phone in her pocket rang. She pulled it out, stifled a sigh when she saw her mother’s number on the display. “Sorry,” she repeated, then stepped outside to take the call.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t hear about it? Did you think I wouldn’t see?”

Cilla leaned against the veranda column, stared across the road at Ford’s pretty house. “I’m good, thanks. How are you?”

“You have no right to criticize me, to judge me. To blame me.”

“In what context?”

“Save your sarcasm, Cilla. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“I really don’t.” What was Ford doing? Cilla wondered. Was he writing? Drawing? Was he turning her into a warrior goddess? Someone who would face down evil instead of calculating how to stretch the budget to accommodate hand crafted plaster medallions, or handle a motherly snit long-distance.

“The article in the paper. About you, about the farm. About me. AP picked it up.”

“Did they? And that bothers you? It’s publicity.”

“ ‘McGowan’s goal is to restore and respect her neglected heritage. Speaking over the busy sounds of banging hammers and buzzing saws, she states: “My grandmother always spoke of the Little Farm with affection, and related that she was drawn to it from the first moment. The fact that she bought the house and land from my paternal great-grandfather adds another strong connection for me.” ’ ”

“I know what I said, Mom.”

“ ‘My purpose, you could even say my mission, is to pay tribute to my heritage, my roots here, by not only restoring the house and the land, but making them shine. And in such a way that respects their integrity, and the community.’ ”

“Sounds a little pompous,” Cilla commented. “But it’s accurate.”

“It goes on and on, a showcase during Janet Hardy’s visits for the luminaries of her day. A pastoral setting for her children, now peeling paint, rotted wood, overgrown gardens through a generation of neglect and disinterest as Janet Hardy’s daughter, Bedelia Hardy, attempted to fill her mother’s sparkling footsteps. How could you let them print that?”

“You know as well as I do you can’t control the press.”

“I don’t want you giving any more interviews.”

“And you should know you can’t control what I do, or don’t. Not anymore. Spin it, Mom. You know how. Grief kept you away, and so on. Whatever happy times you spent here were overshadowed, even smothered, by your mother’s death here. It’ll get you some sympathy and more press.”

The long pause told Cilla her mother was considering the angles. “How could I think of that place as anything but a tomb?”

“There you go.”

“It’s easier for you, it’s different for you. You never knew her. She’s just an image for you, a movie clip, a photograph. She was flesh and blood for me. She was my mother.”

“Okay.”

“It would be better, for everyone, if you vetted interviews with me or Mario. And I’d think any reporter who works for a legitimate paper would have contacted my people for a comment or quote. Be sure they do, next time.”

“You’re up early,” Cilla said by way of evading.

“I have rehearsals, costume fittings. I’m exhausted before I begin.”

“You’re a trouper. I wanted to ask you something. The last year or so, before Janet died, do you know who she was involved with?”

“Romantically? She could barely get out of bed by herself half the time in the first weeks after Johnnie. Or she’d bounce off the walls and demand people and parties. She’d cling to me one minute, and push me away the next. It scarred me, Cilla. I lost my brother and my mother so close together. And really, I lost them both the night Johnnie died.”

Because she believed that, if nothing else, that was deeply and painfully true, Cilla’s tone softened. “I know. I can’t imagine how terrible it was.”

“No one can. I was alone. Barely sixteen, and I had no one. She left me, Cilla. She chose to leave me. In that house you’re so determined to turn into a shrine.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. Who was she involved with, Mom? A secret affair, a married man. An affair that went south.”

“She had affairs. Why wouldn’t she? She was beautiful and vital, and she needed love.”

“A specific affair, during this specific period.”

“I don’t know.” Dilly’s voice clipped on the words now. “I try not to think about that time. It was hell for me. Why do you care? Why dredge that kind of thing up again? I hate the theories and the speculations.”

Tread carefully, Cilla reminded herself. “I’m just curious. You hear talk, and she did spend a lot of time here in that last year, year and a half. She wasn’t really involved with anyone back in L.A., that I’ve heard about. It wasn’t like her to be without a man, a lover, for very long.”

“Men couldn’t resist her. Why should she resist them? Then they’d let her down. They always do. They make promises they don’t keep. They cheat, they steal, and God knows they can’t stand for the woman to be more successful.”

“So how are things with you and Num—with Mario?”

“He’s the exception to the rule. I’ve finally found the kind of man I need. Mama never did. She never found a man worthy of her.”

“And never stopped looking,” Cilla prompted. “She would have wanted the comfort, the love and support, especially after Johnnie died. Maybe she looked here, in Virginia.”

“I don’t know. She never took me with her back to the farm after Johnnie. She said she had to be alone. I didn’t want to go back anyway. It was too painful. That’s why I haven’t been back in all these years. It’s still a fresh wound in my heart.”

And we come full circle, Cilla thought. “Like I said, I’m just curious. So if something or someone occurs to you, let me know. I’d better let you get to rehearsal.”

“Oh, let them wait! Mario had the best idea. It’s phenomenal, and such a good opportunity for you. We’ll work a duet for you and me into the show, in the second act. A medley of Mama’s songs with clips and stills from her movies on screen behind us. We’ll finish with ‘I’ll Get By,’ making it a trio, putting her onstage with us, the way they did with Elvis and Céline Dion. He’s talking to HBO, Cilla, about broadcasting.”

“Mom—”

“We’ll need you back here next week for rehearsals, and costume design, choreography. We’re still working out the composition, but the number would run about four minutes. Four spectacular minutes, Cilla. We want to give you a real chance for a comeback.”

Cilla closed her eyes, debated sawing off her tongue, letting it fly—and settled on somewhere in the middle. “I appreciate that, I really do. But I don’t want to come back, geographically or professionally. I don’t want to perform. I want to build.”

“You’d be building.” Enthusiasm bubbled across the continent. “Your career, and helping me. The three Hardy women, Cilla. It’s landmark.”

My name’s McGowan, Cilla thought. “I think you’d be better spotlighted alone. And the duet with Janet? That could be lovely, heart-wrenching.”

“It’s four minutes, Cilla. You can spare me four fucking minutes a night for a few weeks. And it will turn your life around. Mario says—”

“I’ve just finished turning my life around, and I like where it’s standing. I’ve got to go. I’ve got work.”

“Don’t you—”

Cilla closed the phone, deliberately shoved it back into her pocket. She heard the throat clear behind her and, turning, saw Matt in the doorway. “They just got the grouting done on the tile in the bathroom upstairs. Thought you’d want to take a look.”

“Yeah. We’ll be installing the fixtures tomorrow then.”

“That’d be right.”

“Let me get my sledgehammer. We can start taking down that wall up there. I’m in the mood for demo.”

THERE WAS LITTLE, Cilla decided, more satisfying than beating the hell out of something. It relieved frustration, brought a quick and wild rise of glee, and fulfilled all manner of dark fantasies. The fact was, it was—on several levels—every bit as therapeutic as good sex.

And since she wasn’t having any sex—good or otherwise—at the moment, knocking down walls did the job. She could be having sex, she thought as she strode out of the house trailing plaster dust. Ford and his magic mouth had made that fairly clear.

But she was on a kind of moratorium there—as part of the turn-the-life-around program, she supposed. New world, new life, new style. And in there, she’d found the real Cilla McGowan.

She liked her.

She had the house to rehab, her contractor’s license to study for, a business to establish. And a family mystery to unravel. Scheduling in sex with her hot neighbor wouldn’t be the smartest move.

Of course, he just had to be standing out on his veranda when she walked out, thinking of sex. And the low-down tingle had her asking herself if it was really, completely, absolutely necessary to abstain. They were both adults, unattached, interested, so why couldn’t she walk on over there and suggest they spend the evening together? Doing something more energetic than sharing a beer?

Just straight out. No dance, no pretenses, no illusions. Isn’t that what the real Cilla wanted? She angled her head as she considered. And plaster dust rained down from the bill of her cap.

Maybe she should shower first.

“You’re weak and pitiful,” Cilla muttered and, amused at herself, started to circle around to the back of the house and the landscaping crew.

She heard the deep-throated roar of a prime engine, glanced back. The sleek black bullet of a Harley shot down the road and seemed to ricochet through her open gates. Even as it spit gravel, she ran toward it, laughing.

Its occupant jumped off the bike, landed on scarred combat boots and caught Cilla on the fly.

“Hello, doll.” He swung her in one quick circle, then kissed her enthusiastically.

EIGHT

Who the hell was that? And why in the hell was she kissing him?

Ford stood holding his after-coffee-before-beer Coke and stared at the man Cilla was currently attached to—like, like sumac on an oak.

What was with the ponytail anyway? And the army boots? And why were the hands—the guy wore a bunch of rings, for Christ’s sake—rubbing Cilla’s ass?

“Turn around, buddy. Turn around so I can get a better look at your Wayfarer-wearing face.”

At Ford’s tone, Spock gave a low, supportive growl.

“Jesus, his whole arm’s tattooed right up to the sleeve of his black T-shirt. See that? You see that?” he demanded, and Spock muttered darkly.

And that glint? Oh yeah, that was an earring.

“Move the hands, pal. You’re going to want to move those hands, otherwise . . .” Ford looked down at his own, surprised to see he’d crushed the can of Coke, and the contents were foaming over his own fingers.

Interesting, he thought. Jealousy? He wasn’t the jealous type. Was he? Okay, maybe he’d had a couple of bouts with it in high school, and that one time in college. But that was just part of growing up. He sure as hell wouldn’t get worked up about some over-tattooed earring guy kissing a woman he’d known for a month.

Okay, maybe she’d gotten under his skin. And Spock’s, he conceded as his dog stood at full alert, snarling and grumbling. But a good part of that could be attributed to the work, and her starring role in it. If he felt territorial, it was just a by-product of the work, nothing more or less.

Maybe a little more, but a man didn’t like to stand around and watch a woman slap her lips to some strange guy’s when they’d been slapped to his a couple of days before. The least she could do was stop flaunting it in his face and take it inside where . . .

“Shit. Shit. They’re going inside.”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE HERE.”

“I told you I’d swing down if I had time.”

“I didn’t think you’d have time, or remember to swing down.”

Steve tipped down his Wayfarers and looked at Cilla over them with his deep and dreamy brown eyes. “When have I ever forgotten you?”

“Do you want a list?”

He laughed, gave her a hip bump as they crossed the veranda. “When it counted. Whoa.” He stopped just inside the doorway, scanned the living area, its pockets of drying plaster, the patchwork of scarred floors and splattered drop cloths. “Excellent.”

“It is, isn’t it? And it will be.”

“Nice space. Floors’ll clean up. Walnut?”

“They are.”

“Sweet.” He wandered through, passing casual how’s-it-goings to the workers still on-site cleaning up for the day.

He walked lightly, and looked slight. Looks, Cilla knew, were deceiving. Under the T-shirt and jeans, he was ripped. Steve Chensky honed his body with the devotion of an evangelist.

Cilla thought if he’d worked half as hard on his music, he’d have made it from struggling artist to serious rock star. Or so she’d told him, countless times. Then again, if he’d listened to her, their lives might have turned out very differently.

He stopped in the kitchen, took his measure of the place with his sunglasses hooked in his T-shirt. “What’s the plan here?”

“Take a look.” She flipped through the notebook sitting on the one remaining counter, found her best sketch of the concept.

“Nice, Cill. This is nice. Good flow, good work space. Stainless steel?”

“No. I’m having the fifties appliances retrofitted. Jesus, Steve, they rock. I’m looking at faucets. I’m thinking of going copper there. Kind of old-timey.”

“Cost ya.”

“Yeah, but it’s a good investment.”

“Granite countertops?”

“I toyed around with doing polished concrete, but for this? You’ve got to go with granite. I haven’t picked it out yet, but the cabinets are in the works. Glass fronts, see, copper leading. I nearly went white there, but I want the warmth, so they’re cherry.”

“Gonna have something.” He gave her an elbow bump this time. “You always had an eye.”

“You opened the door so I could use it.”

“I opened it. You knocked it down. I drove by the Brentwood house before I headed to New York. Old time’s sake. It still looks fine. So, gotta beer?”

She opened the mini fridge, pulled out a beer for each of them. “When do you have to head back to L.A.?”

“I got a couple of weeks. I’ll trade labor for digs.”

“Seriously? You’re hired.”

“Like old times,” he said, and tapped his beer to hers. “Show me the rest.”

Ford bided his time. He waited a full hour after the crews headed out for the day. No harm in wandering over, he told himself. Paying a friendly visit. He scowled at the Harley, and after Spock peed copiously on its front tire, crouched down to exchange a quick high five with his loyal best friend.

It wasn’t as if he’d never driven a motorcycle. He’d taken a few spins in his day. Okay, one spin. He just didn’t like bugs in his teeth.

But he could drive one if he wanted to.

He jammed his hands in his pockets and resisted giving the Harley a testing kick. He heard the music—ass-kicking rock this time—and instead of going to the front, followed the sound around back.

They sprawled on the steps of the veranda with a couple of bottles of beer and a bag of Doritos. His flavor of Doritos, Ford noted. With her head tipped back against the post, Cilla laughed so the sound of it poured right over the music. And straight into Ford’s gut.

Tattoo Guy grinned at her, in a way that spoke of love, intimacy and history.

“You never change. What if you’d . . . Hey, Ford.”

“Hey.”

Spock stiff-walked over to Tattoo Guy. “Steve, this is Ford, my neighbor across the road. And that would be Spock. Steve detoured down from New York on his way back to L.A.”

“How you doing? Hey, guy, hey, pal.” He ruffled Spock’s big head with his ringed hand. Ford’s lips curled in disgust when his dog—his loyal best friend—dropped his head lovingly on Steve’s knee.

“Want a beer?” Steve offered, giving Spock a full-body rub.

“Sure. Are you driving the Harley cross-country?”

“The only way to travel.” Steve opened a beer, passed it to Ford. “My girl out there, she’s my one true love. Except for Cill here.”

Cilla snorted. “I notice you still put the bike first.”

“She’ll never leave me, like you did.” Steve clamped a hand on Cilla’s knee. “We used to be married.”

“You and the bike?”

The cool remark had Steve tossing back his head and laughing. “We’re still married. Cill and I only were.”

“Yeah, for about five minutes.”

“Come on. It was at least fifteen. Pull up a step,” Steve invited.

The polite thing to do, the sensible thing to do, would be to back off, back away. But Ford was damned if he’d be polite or sensible. He sat. And the brief sour look he sent Spock had the dog hanging his head. “So you live in L.A.”

“That’s my town.”

“Steve got me into flipping. Houses,” Cilla added. “He needed some slave labor on a flip one day, drafted me. I liked it. So he let me go into the next one with him.”

“When you were married.”

“God no, years after that.”

“You were writing a script when we were married.”

“No, I was doing voice-overs and recording. I started the script after.”

“Right, right. I worked on a session with Cilla, picking up some change and contacts while I was trying to get my band off the ground.”

“You’re a musician.” It just figured.

“Right now I’m a licensed contractor who plays guitar on the side, and does the HGTV thing.”

“Rock the House,” Cilla supplied. “Home-improvement type show that takes the viewer through stages of a rehab, remodel, a flip. Named after Steve’s construction company.”

TV guy, Ford thought. That just figured.

“Construction was my day job, back in rock-star-hopeful days,” Steve continued. “And I talked Cill into bankrolling my first flip when I saw how the real estate market was heading and when the band flushed away. Hit that mother in the sweet spot. Is that your Victorian across the street?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice. So do you know where we can get a pizza around here?”

Pizza was a key word for Spock, who lifted his shamed head and did his happy dance. “Eat in or delivery?”

“Delivery, man. I’m buying.”

“I’ve got the pizzeria’s number,” Cilla told him. “Do you want the usual?”

“Stick with a winner.”

“Ford?”

“Whatever you want’s fine.”

“I’ll call it in.”

When Cilla went in, Steve tipped back his beer. “Did you rehab the place yourself?”

“No, I bought it that way.”

“So what’s your line? What do you do across the street?”

“I write graphic novels.”

“No shit.” Steve bumped Ford in the arm with his beer. “Like The Dark Knight and From Hell?”

“More Dark Knight than Campbell. You into graphic novels?”

“Ate comic books for breakfast, lunch and dinner when I was a kid. But I didn’t discover the graphics until a few years ago. Maybe I’ve read some of yours. What . . . damn, are you Ford Sawyer?” The brown eyes went child-like wide, and full of thrill. “Are you the fucking Seeker?”

So maybe the guy wasn’t a complete asshole, Ford decided. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“This is unreal. It’s like surreal. Check this out.” Standing, Steve yanked off his T-shirt, turned his back. There, among the other art decorating Steve’s back, was a tattoo of the Seeker striding over the left shoulder blade.

“Well . . . wow.” Ford’s usually active mind switched off.

“Your dude is completely awesome. I mean, he totally rocks. He suffers, and I feel that.” Steve punched a fist into his chest. “But he keeps going. Picks it up and goes, does what he has to do. And the bastard can walk through freaking walls! How do you come up with that shit?”

“Jesus, Steve, are you stripping again?” Cilla demanded as she came back out.

“You’ve got Ford Freaking Sawyer living across the street. Man, he’s the Seeker.”

Cilla studied the tattoo Steve tapped as he looked over his shoulder. “When are you going to stop that?”

“When my whole body tells a story. Still got you on my ass, doll.”

“Do not pull down your pants,” she said, knowing him. “Pizza will be here, thirty minutes or less.”

“I’m going to grab a shower.” Steve punched Ford’s shoulder, gave the delighted Spock a quick scratch. “This is way, over-the-top cool.”

As the screen door slammed behind Steve, Ford studied his beer. “That was just weird.”

“That was just Steve.”

“To whom you were married for five minutes.”

“Technically, five months.” She sat again, stretched out long legs. “You’re looking for the story.”

“I’d be a fool not to.”

“There isn’t that much of one. We met, we clicked. He wanted to be a rock star, and I was, at seventeen, an actor already trying for a comeback. Except, even then, I didn’t really want one. And Steve was exactly the opposite image of what everyone expected from me. So he was perfect.”

“Good girl meets bad boy.”

“You could say. Still, I wasn’t so good, and he wasn’t so bad. We loved each other, made each other laugh and had really good sex. What else could you ask for? So the minute I turned eighteen, we ran off and got married. It took us about that five minutes to wonder, what the hell did we do this for?”

She tipped back her head and laughed. “We didn’t want to be married, to each other or anyone else. We wanted to be friends, to hang out, and maybe have good sex now and then. So we fixed it, way before there was any ugliness or damage, and we still love each other. He’s the best friend I ever had. And, tattoos aside, the most stable and solid.”

“He didn’t let you down.”

Cilla looked over, nodded. “Not once. Not ever. I couldn’t do what I’m doing here if it wasn’t for Steve. He taught me. He’s a fifth-generation contractor. Part of the rock star bit was a rebellion against that, you could say. Man, I’m banging a guitar, not a hammer. But he eventually figured out he was better, and let me say a hell of a lot better, with the hammer. I lent him some money for his first flip, this sad little dump in South L.A. He made it sweet, and paid me back, bought another. He asked me if I wanted in, and, well, one thing led to another. Now he owns his own company and has the TV gig. He still turns sad little dumps, and he turns million-dollar properties. He’s launching a branch in New York, and there’s talk about a spin-off for the show for the East Coast. He was up there, doing the business, so he swung by before he heads back to L.A.”

“And he has you tattooed on his ass.”

“For old time’s sake. Got any?”

“Tattoos?” Oddly, he felt foolish. “No. You?”

She smiled, sipped her beer. “A lot happens in five minutes of marriage.”

Ford ended up eating pizza, and wondering what sort of tattoo Cilla had chosen, and where she’d had it inked.

Because the idea wouldn’t leave him alone, he decided Brid should probably have one. Researching symbols gave him something to do once he returned home other than obsess as to whether or not Cilla and Steve were talking rehab plans or having good sex.

By two A.M. both his eyes and his energy gave out. Still, curiosity had him wandering to one of his front windows to take a last look at the house across the road. A slow smile curved his lips when he spotted the beam of a flashlight cutting through the dark toward the barn.

If Steve was bunking in the barn, good sex wasn’t on the night’s agenda.

“Let’s keep it that way,” Ford muttered, stripped off his clothes and fell facedown on the bed.

“ YOU HEAR THAT?” Steve poked Cilla awake, an easy job as they were sharing her sleeping bag.

“What? No. Shut up.” Rolling over, Cilla vowed Steve would find other sleeping arrangements the next night.

“I heard something. Like a moan, like the way a door sounds when it opens in an abandoned house in a creepy movie. We ought to go check it out.”

“Do you remember what I said when you proposed we have sex?”

“That was a no.”

“Same answer for this. Go to sleep.”

“I don’t know how you can sleep with all this quiet.” He rolled, rolled again until she snarled at him. “You need a white-noise machine.”

“I need to get you your own sleeping bag.”

“Harsh.” He kissed the top of her head. “You’ll be sorry when some wild-eyed mountain dude runs in here with a meat cleaver.”

“When that happens, I promise to apologize. Now shut up or go away. Crew’s coming at seven.”

THE ELABORATE BRASS headboard banged rhythmically against the red wall, the sound punctuated by her cries of pleasure. A shaft of moonlight illuminated those blue crystal eyes, glazed now as he plunged into her. She called out his name, nearly sang it while her body surged under his.

Ford. Ford.

Yo, Ford.

He woke with a spectacular morning hard-on, the sun beaming into his eyes and a vague sense of embarrassment that it was Steve calling his name. But at least the realization was already doing the job of deflating the hard-on.

Ford stuck his head out the window, yelled, “Hold on.” He dragged on the jeans he’d stripped off the night before, then stumbled his way downstairs.

“Got doughnuts,” Steve said when Ford pulled open the door.

“Huh?”

“Hey, man, were you still in the sack?”

Ford stared at Steve’s affable smile, at the box of Krispy Kremes. “Coffee.”

“I hear that.” When Ford turned and groped his way to the kitchen, Steve followed. “Great house, man. Seriously. Use of space, choice of materials. Figured you were up since Cilla’d been over to use your gym. Thought I’d try trading doughnuts for some gym time.”

“Okay.” Ford set a mug in place, punched on the coffeemaker, then opened the box Steve set on the counter. The smell hit him like a lightning bolt.

“Caffeine and sugar.” Steve grinned as Ford grabbed a jelly-filled. “Best way to start the day, after nooky anyway.”

Ford grunted, got down a second mug.

“Things are hopping at Cill’s this morning, so I cut out for the doughnuts. Guys in construction dig on the doughnuts. Hey, man, look at your dog.”

Ford glanced toward the window, saw Spock running, leaping, nosing down to stalk. “Yeah, it’s cats.”

“What is?”

“He’s hunting cats. Magic cats only he can see.”

“Son of a bitch, that’s just what he’s doing.” Steve grinned out the window, a ringed thumb hooked in his belt loop. “So it’s cool if I catch a workout with Cill in the A.M., or hit it late in the day? Not cramping your style?”

“It’s fine.” The sugar rush got Ford’s eyes open, and the first hit of coffee did the rest. “I figured you’d sleep in later today. Long day for you yesterday, and you probably didn’t get the best night sleeping in the barn.”

“I like long days.” Steve took the coffee Ford gave him, then dumped in the milk Ford sat on the counter. “What barn? Cill’s barn? Cill wouldn’t make me bunk in the barn. I got a corner of her sleeping bag.”

“Oh.” Damn. “I was working late, saw you head out there. I just figured—”

“I didn’t go out there. Man, it’s dark out there. In-the-sticks dark. I’m a city boy.” He cocked his head. “You saw somebody out there?”

“I saw a flashlight, the beam. I think. It was late, maybe I—”

“No freaking way!” He slammed a hand to Ford’s arm hard enough to make Ford stumble back. “I told her I heard something, but she’s all shut up and go to sleep. What time was this?”

“I don’t know. Ah . . . little after two.”

“That’s it. Going for the barn? We gotta go check this out.”

“Crap.” Ford downed more coffee. “I guess we do. I need to get a shirt, shoes.”

“Can I come up? I’m digging on the house.”

“Whatever.” It was annoying to feel himself tugged into friendship with the guy who was having sex with the woman he wanted to have sex with. But there didn’t seem to be a way to dig in his heels and hold it off. “So . . . you didn’t bring your own sleeping bag, I guess.”

“Shit, man, I stay in hotels. Room service, bars, pillow-top mattresses. Cill’s the one for roughing it. You don’t have a spare, do you?”

“Actually—”

“Whoa! Holy shit! That’s Cilla.”

Before Ford could respond, Steve strode into his office and to the sketches pinned and hanging.

“Super Cilla. Dude.” Steve tapped a finger to a corner of a sketch. “These are awesome. You’re a genius. This isn’t Seeker stuff.”

“No. New character, new series. I’m just getting started.”

“With Cill as the . . . what, like, model? Does she know?”

“Yeah. We worked it out.”

Nodding, Steve continued to grin at the sketches. “I got the vibe when you came over there yesterday. But seeing this? I totally get why she turned down the on-site booty call last night.”

“She—” Mentally, Ford pumped his fist. “So . . . the two of you aren’t . . .”

“Road’s clear there, man. I’m going to say, straight out, doing her’s one thing—if she’s down with that. Messing with her? That’s another. Do that, I’ll rip your still-beating heart out. Otherwise? We’re cool.”

Ford studied Steve’s face and decided every word spoken was the silver truth. “Got it. I’m going to get my shoes.”

Steve poked his head in the bathroom, then into Ford’s bedroom. “You’ve got good light in here. How come you’re not tapping that yet?”

“What? Tapping the light?”

“Come on.” Steve shook his head as Ford pulled on a T-shirt. “Cilla. How come you’re not tapping that yet? I’d know if you were. And she’s been over there about a month now.”

“Listen, I don’t see how that’s your business. No offense.”

“None taken. Except I see how it is, because there’s nobody who matters more to me. I don’t want to say she’s like my sister, because that would just be sick, considering.”

Ford sat on the side of the bed to pull on his shoes. “The lady seems to want to take it slow. So I’m taking it slow. That’s it.”

“That’s solid. I like you, so I’m going to give you a tip. She’s tough, and what you’d call resilient. She handles herself and what comes at her. But she’s got depths, and in some of those deep places she hurts. So you’ve got to be careful there.”

“She wouldn’t be doing what she’s doing over there if she didn’t have depths, and if some of them didn’t hurt.”

“Okay. Let’s go be men and check out the barn.”

IN WHAT WOULD be her laundry/mudroom, Cilla straightened to stretch out her back. As she’d suspected, the old and yellowing linoleum covered a scarred but salvageable hardwood floor. She’d rather be upstairs having fun with power tools, but it made more sense for her to focus her sweat equity into ripping up the linoleum. Her carpenter didn’t need her up there, especially with Steve on site, so . . .

Through the window she spotted Steve, who obviously wasn’t upstairs, walking toward her barn with Ford. Setting aside her tools, she headed out to find out why Steve was out for a morning stroll instead of supervising the master suite rebuild.

The barn door stood open, and the two men were inside by the time she got there. They appeared to be debating which one of them should climb the ladder into the hayloft.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.

“Checking it out,” Steve told her. “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”

“No, and why should it be?”

“Ford saw somebody skulking around out here last night.”

“I didn’t say ‘skulking.’ I said I saw someone out here with a flashlight last night.”

“You’re out on somebody else’s property in the middle of the night, with a flashlight, that’s skulking.” Steve pointed at Cilla. “I told you I heard something.”

Cilla shook her head at Steve, turned to Ford. “From all the way across the road, in the dead of night, you saw someone skulking around my barn?”

“While I have to agree with the definition of ‘skulking,’ what I said was I saw a light, the beam of it. The beam of a flashlight, moving toward the barn.”

“It was probably a reflection. Moonlight or something.”

“I know what a flashlight beam looks like.”

“Plus,” Steve interrupted, “when we opened the door, it groaned. That’s the sound I heard last night. Somebody came in here. You’ve got a lot of shit in here, Cill.”

“And it’s pretty clear the lot of shit is still here.”

“Maybe something, or some things, aren’t,” Ford pointed out. “There’s a lot of inventory here, and I’d say a valiant attempt to organize it, but I doubt you know everything that’s here, or exactly where you put it the last time you worked in here.”

“Okay, no, I don’t.” She set her hands on her hips to study the piles and stacks, the arrangement. Had she stacked those boxes that way? Had she turned that broken rocker to the left?

How the hell did she know?

“I’ve got a lot to go through, but I haven’t found anything especially valuable yet. And okay,” she continued before Steve could speak, “a teaspoon Janet Hardy dipped into a sugar bowl would be worth a spot of breaking and entering for a lot of people.”

“Who knows you’ve got stuff in here?”

“Everyone.” Ford answered Steve’s question. “There’s a bunch of people working in the house, and that bunch of people saw Cilla hauling this stuff out here—even helped. So anyone any of them talked to knows, and anyone the anyones talked to and so on.”

“I’ll get a padlock.”

“Good idea. How about the letters?”

“What letters?” Steve wanted to know.

“Did you tell anyone besides me about the letters you found in the attic?”

“My father, but I hardly think—”

“You found letters in the attic?” Steve interrupted. “Like secret letters? Man, this is like one of those BBC mystery shows.”

“You never watch BBC mysteries.”

“I do if they have hot Brit chicks in them. What letters?”

“Letters written to my grandmother by the man she had an affair with in the year before she died. And yeah, secret letters. She had them hidden. I’ve only told Ford and my father—who probably told my stepmother. But it wouldn’t go further than that.” She hoped. “Except . . .” She blew out a breath. “I realized when I was telling my father we were standing right beside an open window so I pulled him away to finish. But if one of the men was anywhere near the window, they would have heard enough.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Stupid. Plus, I pushed my mother yesterday morning about whether Janet had a lover—and one from out here—before she died. She’d blab, if the mood struck. Added to that, she’s pissed at me.”

Reaching over, Steve patted her shoulder. “Nothing new there, doll.”

“I know. But in her current mood, she might have sent someone out here to poke around, looking for something of value.”

“Give me the letters, and anything else you’re worried about. No one’s going to look at my place for them,” Ford added when she frowned at him.

“Maybe. Let me think about it.”

“Anyway,” Steve said, “we can cross off the wild-eyed mountain man with a meat cleaver. Right? Or we can as soon as Ford climbs up there and makes sure there aren’t any dead bodies or severed body parts.”

“Oh, for Christ sake.” Cilla turned toward the ladder.

Ford blocked her, nudged her back. “I’ll do it.”

He tested his weight on each rung on the climb, as he pictured himself crashing through and breaking any variety of bones on the concrete floor. As he reached the top, he cursed roundly.

“What is it?” Cilla called up.

“Nothing. Splinter. There’s nothing up here. Not even the lonely severed head of an itinerant fieldworker.”

When he’d climbed down again, Cilla took his hand, winced at the chunk of ladder in the meat of his palm. “That’s in there. Come on inside and I’ll dig it out for you.”

“I can just—”

“While you guys play doctor, I’ll go strap on my tool belt and do a man’s work.”

Cilla glanced back at Steve. “About damn time.”

“Had to make the doughnut run. Later,” he said to Ford and strolled out.

“Did he bring you doughnuts?” Cilla asked.

“Yeah. A bribe for use of the gym.”

“Mmm. Come on in, and bring the chunk of my ladder. I assume he also woke you up.”

“You assume correctly.” Ford shoved the barn door closed behind them. “And from a very interesting dream involving you, a red room and a brass headboard. But the jelly doughnuts almost made up for it.”

“Steve believes in the power of the doughnut. So, just what was I doing in a red room with a brass headboard?”

“Hard to describe. But I think I could demonstrate.”

She looked into his eyes, bold green against gold rims. “I don’t have a red room. Neither do you.”

“I’ll go buy the paint.”

Laughing, she reached for the mudroom door, and quickly found herself with her back to the wall of the house. It came as a constant surprise just how potent, how dangerous that mouth could be. The same mouth, she thought dimly as it assaulted hers, that smiled so charmingly, that spoke in such an easy drawl about everyday things. Then it closed over hers and spiked through her system like a fever.

He gave her bottom lip a light nip before he stepped back. “I thought it was Steve headed to the barn last night. To bunk down.”

“Why would Steve sleep in the barn?” It took another minute for her brain to fire on all circuits again. “Oh. We’re all grown-ups, Ford. I’m not asking Steve to sleep in the barn.”

“Yeah, I got that. But he’s going to borrow my old sleeping bag. I haven’t used it for about fifteen years, or since sleeping in a bag on the ground lost its thrill for me. He’ll like it. It’s Spider-Man.”

“You have a Spider-Man sleeping bag?”

“I got it for my eighth birthday. It was a highlight, and has never lost its luster.” He leaned down, brushed her lips with his and opened the door behind her. “I’m more than happy to get it out of storage so Steve can use it while he’s here.”

“Neighborly of you.”

“Not especially.”

She opened the first aid kit, checked the contents. “I’ve got what I need here. Let’s do this outside. In the light.” When they stepped out onto the veranda, she gestured for him to sit. She doused a cotton ball with peroxide and cleaned the wound.

“It’s not neighborly,” Ford continued, “because the motives are entirely self-serving. I don’t want him sleeping with you.”

She shifted her gaze up to his even as she began to clean a needle and tweezers with alcohol. “Is that so?”

“If you wanted to sleep with him, then I’d be out of luck.”

“How do you know I don’t? That I didn’t?”

“Because you want to sleep with me. Ow!” He looked down at his hand and the hole she’d made at the top of the splinter with the needle. “Jesus.”

“It’s too deep to milk out, and needs a route. Suck it up. If I want to sleep with you, why haven’t I?”

He eyed the needle in her hand warily. “Because you’re not ready. I can wait until you are. But—and don’t jab me with that again—I’m goddamned if I want you sleeping with someone else, old time’s sake or not, while I’m waiting. I want my hands on you, all over you. And I want you thinking about that.”

“So you’ll lend Steve your treasured Spider-Man sleeping bag so I can think about it without caving in to my needs and sleeping with him because he’s handy.”

“Close enough.”

“Look at that.”

He turned his head to look in the direction she indicated. The sharp, quick sting had him jolting. When he cursed, Cilla held the hefty splinter in the teeth of her tweezers. “Souvenir?”

“No, thanks.”

“You’re done.” She packed up the kit, then grabbed him by the hair, crushed her mouth greedily to his. Just as quickly, she broke the kiss, rose. “And you can think about that while you’re waiting.”

With a cool smile, she walked back into the house, let the screen door slap shut behind her.

NINE

Cilla grew so accustomed to the cars that slowed or stopped at the end of her driveway she barely registered them. The lookie-loos, gawkers, even the ones she imagined took photos, didn’t have to be a problem. Sooner or later, she thought, they’d grow accustomed to her, so the best solution to her way of thinking was to ignore them, or to toss out the occasional and casual wave.

To become part of the community, she determined, she had to demonstrate her intent and desire. So she shopped at the local supermarket, hired local labor, bought the majority of her materials from local sources. And chatted up the sales-clerks, the subcontractors, and signed autographs for those who still thought of her as TV Katie.

She considered it symbolic, a statement of that intent, when she took Ford’s advice and followed her first instincts and had the gates removed. To follow up, she planted weeping cherry trees to flank the drive. A statement, Cilla thought, as she stood on the shoulder of the road and studied the results. New life. And next spring, when they burst into bloom again, she’d be here to see it. From her vantage point, she looked down at the house. There would be gardens and young trees as well as the grand old magnolia. Her grand old magnolia, she thought, with its waxy white blooms sweetening the air. The paint on the house would be fresh and clean instead of dingy and peeling. Chairs on the veranda, and pots of mixed flowers. And when she could squeeze a little more out of the budget, pavers in earthy tones on the drive cutting through lush green lawns.

Eventually, when people slowed down to look, it would be because they admired a pretty house in a pretty setting, and not because they wondered what the hell the Hollywood woman was doing with the house where Janet Hardy had swallowed too many pills and chased them with vodka.

She stepped back toward the wall at the sound of an approaching car, then turned at the quick beep-beep as the little red Honda pulled to the shoulder.

It took her a moment—and brought on a twist of guilt—to recognize the pretty blonde in cropped pants and a crocheted cami who hopped out of the car.

“Hi!” On a bubble of laughter, Angela McGowan, Cilla’s half sister, rushed forward to catch Cilla in a squeeze.

“Angie.” The fresh, sassy scent enveloped her as completely as the arms. “You cut your hair. Let me look at you. No! Don’t hug me again. I’m filthy.”

“You really are.” On another bubble of laughter, Angie pulled back, met Cilla’s eyes with her own enormous hazel ones. Their father’s eyes, Cilla thought. Their father’s daughter. “And you smell a little, too.” Beaming, just beaming, Angie gripped Cilla’s hands. “You shouldn’t still be so beautiful, considering.”

“You look amazing.” Cilla brushed her fingertips over the very abbreviated ends of Angie’s hair. “It’s so short.”

“Takes two seconds to deal with in the morning.” Angie gave her head a quick shake so the sunny cap lifted, ruffled, settled. “I had to practically have a blindfold and a cigarette to get it done.”

“It’s fabulous. What are you doing here? I thought you were at college?”

“Semester’s done for me, so I’m home for a while. I can’t believe you’re here. And this.” She gestured toward the house. “You’re actually living here, and fixing it up and . . . all.”

“There’s a lot of All.”

“These are so pretty. So much prettier than that old gate.” Angie touched one of the curved branches with its blossoms of soft, spring pink. “Everyone’s talking about what’s going on here. I’ve only been home for a day, and already I’ve had my ears burned by all the talk.”

“Good talk or bad talk?”

“Why wouldn’t it be good?” Angie cocked her head. “This place was an eyesore. So yeah, it’s not so pretty right now, either, but you’re doing something. Nobody else has. Is it hard? I don’t mean the work, because obviously . . . I mean is it hard being here, living here?”

“No.” But Angie would ask, Cilla knew. Angie would care. “In fact, it’s easy. It feels right, more than anything or anywhere else. It’s strange.”

“I don’t think so. I think everyone’s supposed to be somewhere, and the lucky ones find out where it is. So you’re lucky.”

“I guess I am.” The bright side of optimism, Cilla remembered, was where Angie lived. Her father’s daughter. Their father’s daughter, Cilla corrected. “Do you want to come in, take a look? It’s in serious flux right now, but we’re making progress.”

“I would, and I will another time. I’m on my way to meet some friends, but I detoured, hoping to see you for a minute. Didn’t expect to see you on the side of the road, so I guess I’m lucky, too. So if . . . uh-oh.”

Cilla followed the direction of Angie’s glance, noted the white van that slowed and pulled to the shoulder across the road.

“Do you know who that is?” Cilla asked. “I’ve seen that van pull up out here before, several times before.”

“Yeah, that’s Mr. Hennessy’s van. His son was—”

“I know. One of the boys with Janet’s son, in the accident. Okay. Stay here.”

“Oh God, Cilla, don’t go over there.” Angie grabbed at Cilla’s arm. “He’s just awful. Mean son of a bitch. I mean, sure, what happened was terrible, but he hates us.”

“Us?”

“All of us. It’s a by-association kind of thing, Dad says. You should stay out of his way.”

“He’s in mine, Angie.”

Cilla crossed over, met the bitter eyes in the thin, pinched-mouth face through the windshield as she crossed to the driver’s-side door. A lift van, she saw now. One designed to handle his son’s wheelchair.

The slope of the shoulder put her at a disadvantage—slightly off-balance and several inches lower than the man who glared out at her.

“Mr. Hennessy, I’m Cilla McGowan.”

“I know who you are. Look just like her, don’t you?”

“I was sorry to hear you lost your son last year.”

“Lost him in 1972 when your worthless kin crushed his spine. Drunk and high and not giving a damn about anything but himself, because that’s how he was raised. Not to give a damn.”

“That may be. I know those three boys paid a terrible price that night. I can’t—”

“You’re no better than she was, thinking you’re better’n anybody else ’cause you’ve got money to spend, and expecting people to kowtow.”

The well of Cilla’s sympathy began to dry up. “You don’t know me.”

“Hell I don’t. I know you, your kind, your blood. You think you can come here where that woman whored around, let her kids run like wolves, where she cost my boy his arms and legs, his life?” His anger slapped out, bony fingers, in short, brittle blows. “You think you can buy some wood, some paint and use it to cover up the stink of that place? Shoulda burned it down years back. Burned it to the godforsaken ground.”

“It’s a house, Mr. Hennessy. It’s wood and glass.” And you, she thought with no sympathy at all, are a lunatic.

“It’s as cursed as she was. As you are.” He spat out the window, barely missed the toe of Cilla’s boot. “Go back where you came from. We don’t want you or your kind here.”

He pulled out so fast, fishtailing, that Cilla had to scramble back. She slid on the slope, lost her balance and went down on her knees as Angie ran across the road.

“Are you okay? Jesus, Jesus, he didn’t hit you, did he?”

“No. No.” But her eyes were narrowed, iced blue, on the speeding van. “I’m fine.”

“I’m calling the police.” Quivering with indignation, Angie pulled a hot pink cell phone out of her pocket. “He spat at you! I saw him, and he nearly ran you over, and—”

“Don’t.” Cilla put a hand to the phone as Angie flipped it open. “Let it go.” She sighed, rubbed at her knee. “Just let it go.”

“Are you hurt? You went down hard. We need to look at your knee.”

“It’s okay, Mom.”

“Seriously. I’ll drive you down to the house, and we’ll see if you need to have it checked out. That old bastard.”

“The knee’s fine. I’m not hurt, I’m pissed off.”

As if to stabilize, Angie took a couple of whooshing breaths while she studied Cilla. “You don’t look pissed off.”

“Believe me. Whoring around, wolves, cursed, your kin. Asshole.”

Angie laughed. “That’s more like it. I’m driving you down to the house, now don’t argue.”

“Fine. Thanks. Does he act that way to you?” Cilla asked as they crossed to Angie’s Honda.

“He snarls and sends what you could call burning stares, mutters. No spitting. I know he’s gone off on Dad. And I mean, God, do you know anybody with more compassion than Dad? Just because he was friends with Mr. Hennessy’s son, and the rest of them, doesn’t make him responsible for what happened. He wasn’t even there that night. And clue in, you weren’t even born.”

“He’s got the sins-of-the-father thing going, I’d say. If he wants to drive by, stop and glower and think bad thoughts, let him.”

At the end of the drive, Cilla opened the car door. She took a breath herself now, and realized she felt better, more level, she supposed, with Angie there. “Thanks, Angie.”

“I want to look at your knee before I go.”

“The knee’s fine.” To prove it, and to change the mood, Cilla swung into a quick tap routine on the patchy lawn, and ended with a flourish while Angie giggled.

“Wow. I guess it is fine.”

“Nice stems, doll.” Steve stepped onto the veranda, tattoos and tool belt. “And who’s your friend?”

“We’re not friends,” Angie said, “we’re sisters.”

“Angela McGowan, Steve Chensky. Steve’s a friend from L.A. He’s giving me a hand for a few days.”

“Maybe longer.” Steve smiled, big and bold.

“Angie’s just home from college, and heading out to meet some friends.”

“I am. I’m late. You tell him about Mr. Hennessy,” Angie ordered, climbing back into her car.

“Mr. who?”

“I will. Have fun.”

“That’s the plan. I’ll be back. Nice meeting you, Steve.” With a wave out the window, she did a neat three-quarter turn and drove out.

“Your sister’s hot.”

“And barely legal, so hands off.”

“ ‘Barely’ would be the key word. You gotta love that McGowan DNA.”

“No. No, you don’t. How’s it coming in the attic?”

“It’s fucking hot. They need to finish getting the AC up and running. But it’s coming along. Get your tools, doll. Daylight’s wasting.”

“I’m right behind you.”

HE’D BEEN RIGHT about the heat. Cilla calculated she’d dropped a couple of pounds in sweat alone by the time she unhooked her tool belt for the day. She treated herself to a long, cool shower in her one nearly completed bathroom. Paint and light fixtures yet to go. And thought about fixing herself an enormous sandwich.

She ate it in solitary, pig-out splendor on her back veranda, and imagined the blooming shrubs, ornamental trees, the colorful plants in place of the hacked overgrowth. She imagined a rugged stone bench under the spread of the big sycamore and pictured the new slates and bricks on the patios and paths. The drip of willows at the pond, the shade of red maples, the glossy beauty of magnolias.

Not cursed, she thought, rubbing lightly at the knee that was a little stiff and sore. Ignored, neglected for too long, but not cursed, despite the accusations of a bitter old man.

She’d put up a martin house, and hummingbird feeders. And the birds would come. She’d plant a cutting garden with her own hands—after she researched what should be planted—and draw more birds and butterflies that would wing about as she harvested blooms for vases.

She’d buy a dog, one who’d chase sticks and squirrels and rabbits, and she’d have to chase him when he dug in the gardens. Maybe she’d even see if she could hunt up an appealingly ugly one, like Spock.

She’d have parties with colored lights and music with people wandering through the house, over the lawn, filling it, filling it with sound and movement. Pulses and heartbeats and voices.

And she’d wake up every morning inside a home. Her home.

She looked down at the paper plate in her lap, watched the tear plop. “Oh God, what’s this?” She rubbed her hands over her wet cheeks, pressed them to the tightness in her chest. “What’s this, what’s this?”

On the sagging veranda facing the ruined gardens, she sat alone while the sun slid toward the mountains. And gave in to the sobs. Meltdown, part of her brain thought. Had to happen.

Dogs, people, colored lights? Failure was a lot more likely. No, the house wasn’t cursed. It had good bones, good muscle. But wasn’t she cursed? What had she ever done that mattered? What had she ever finished? She’d fail here, too. Failure was what she did best.

“Stop it. Stop this crap.”

She choked back the next sob as she pushed to her feet. Grabbing the plate and the half-eaten sandwich, she marched inside, tossed them away. Breathing slowly, she splashed cold water on her face until it was drown or suck it up. Steadier, she went upstairs, deliberately applied makeup to conceal her pity bout, then picked up the copy of Gatsby.

She carried it across the road and knocked on Ford’s door.

“This is handy,” he said when he came to the door. Spock stopped his aliens-at-the-door trembling and raced forward to press his body to Cilla’s legs. “I was just going over a short list of excuses, deciding which one to pick that covered going over to your place. I was sitting out back so I wouldn’t appear to be obviously casing your house.”

She stepped in, handed him the book. “You said I could keep this here.”

“Sure. The letters?”

“Yeah.” Because the dog looked up at her with love shining in his protruding eyes, she crouched for a moment to scratch and rub him into ecstasy. “I’m in a mood. I don’t want them in the house right now.”

“Okay.”

“Would you read them sometime, when you get a chance? I think I’d like someone else’s take.”

“That’s a relief. Now I don’t have to fight a daily war between curiosity and integrity. I’ll put them in my office. Do you want to come up a minute? I’ve got some sketches I think you’ll like.”

“Yeah.” Restless, she thought. She felt restless, itchy, a little headachy. Better to keep moving, keep doing. “Yeah, why not?”

“Want a beer, some wine?”

“No, no. Nothing.” Alcohol wasn’t the best idea after a meltdown.

“Where’s Steve? I thought I heard his bike a while back.”

“He went out. He said he wanted some action, maybe he’d play a little pool with some of the guys on the crew. I think he’s hoping to get lucky with one of the landscapers. Her name’s Shanna.”

“Shanna and I go back. Not that way,” he said quickly. “Been friends since we were kids. Me, her, Bri, Matt.”

“Nice. Nice to have friends you go back with. Oh. Wow.”

He had two boards loaded with sketches. Action poses, she thought. Mid-leap, mid-stride, mid-spin. In all she looked—there was no mistaking her face—she looked strong, fierce, bold and brilliant.

Everything, she realized, everything she didn’t feel at that moment.

“I’m thinking tattoo. I got hung up on that. Now I’m figuring out what and where.” He tucked his hands in his back pockets as he gave the sketches a critical study. “Small of the back, shoulder blade, biceps. I’m thinking small and symbolic, and somewhere people wouldn’t notice it on Cass. Or better, it’s not on Cass, but forms when she changes to Brid. That way, it’s not just a symbol but part of the power source.”

He narrowed his eyes as he scanned the sketches. “I need to figure it out before I start on the panels. The story’s outlined, and I like it. It holds up, but . . .”

Because Spock had begun to whine, Ford glanced over. And his trend of thought snapped into tiny pieces. Tears streamed down Cilla’s face.

“Oh man. Crap. What? Why?”

“Sorry. Sorry. I thought it was finished. I thought I was done.” Backing up, she swiped at her cheeks. “I have to go.”

“No. Uh-uh.” There might have been a hole spreading in the pit of his stomach, but he took her arm, and his grip was firm. “What’s the matter? What did I do?”

“Everything. Nothing.”

“Which?”

“Everything’s the matter. You did nothing. It’s not you. It’s me. It’s me, me, me. That’s not me.” She gestured wildly toward the sketches. The tone, the gesture had Spock slinking over to his bed. “I’m nothing like that. I can’t even gear myself up to have sex with you. Do you want to know why?”

“I’m pretty interested.”

“Because I’ll end up messing it up, ruining it, then I won’t have anyone to talk to. I don’t make things work. I screw up everything, fail at everything.”

“Not from where I’m standing.” Baffled, he shook his head. “Where’s this coming from?”

“From reality. From history. You don’t know anything about it.”

“So tell me.”

“For God’s sake, I was washed up at twelve. I had the tools, I had the platform, and I screwed it up. I failed.”

“That’s bullshit.” His tone was matter-of-fact, and so much more comforting than soft sympathy. “You’re too smart to believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter that I know it’s not true—exactly. But when you’re told you’re a failure over and over, you start believing it. That goddamn show was my family, then bam! Gone. I couldn’t get it back, not the family, not the work. Then it’s do concerts, live shows, and I can’t. Stage fright, panic attacks. I wasn’t going to take pills.”

“What pills?”

“God.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, grateful the tears had stopped. Spock slunk back over, dropped a half-chewed stuffed bear at her feet. “My manager, my mother, people. You just need something to smooth the edges, to get you out there. So you can keep bringing in the money, keep your name in the public consciousness. But I wouldn’t, I didn’t, and that was that. So there’s bad movies, horrible press—then worse from some viewpoints, no press. And Steve.”

Wound up, she tossed out her arms, paced the room. “I jumped into marriage two seconds after I turned eighteen because finally, finally, here was someone who loved me, who cared, who understood. But I couldn’t make that work.

“I tried college, and I hated it. I was miserable and I felt stupid. I wasn’t prepared, and I didn’t expect so many people to actually want me to fail. So I did. I matched their low expectations of me. One semester and I was out. Then there were voice-overs and humiliating bit parts. I’d write a screenplay, no, couldn’t do that, either. Photography, maybe? No, I sucked. I had income, thanks to Katie—and the fact, which I found out years later, that my father went to the wall to make sure my income was legally protected until I was of age.

“I was in therapy when I was fourteen. I thought about suicide at sixteen. Hot bath, pink candles, music, razor blade. Except after I got in the tub, I thought, this is just stupid. I don’t want to die. So I just took a bath. I tried things. Maybe I could manage someone else, or do choreography. Name it. Tried it. Bombed. I don’t get things done. I don’t stick.”

“Take a breather,” Ford ordered, in such stern, authoritative tones she could only blink at him. “You were a cute kid, a cute, talented kid on TV.”

“Oh hell.”

“Just shut up a minute. I don’t know how these things work, exactly, but I’d have to guess the show had run its course.”

“And then some.”

“But nobody took into account there was a kid involved, one who’d grown up on that show and who had to feel as if she’d been ripped away from her family. Orphaned. Who might feel it was her fault.”

“I did. I really did. I know better, but—”

“Anybody who offers much less pushes tranquilizers on a fourteen-year-old girl to get her to perform ought to be shot. There’s no gray area there, not to me. You’re not going to be able to claim those events as your failure. Sorry, they’re off the list. Actually, it’s a clean sweep,” he continued as she stared at him. “College didn’t work, writing, photography, whatever. It’s not failing, Cilla, it’s trying. It’s exploring. You had a marriage that didn’t work, and you’ve managed to remain friends—real friends—with the ex? That’s a failure? See, that comes up strong in the plus column for me. And how about the houses back in California that you fixed up and sold? If you’ve hit a snag across the road, you’ll just have to unsnag it.”

“I haven’t.” She pushed at her hair, managed to take a clear, easy breath. “Things are actually going really well. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t believe I dumped all this on you. I had a meltdown earlier, and I thought I’d finished it off. For some reason the sketches opened the floodgates again.”

She bent down, stroked Spock as he continued to look at her with great concern. She picked up the tattered little bear. “This is disgusting.”

“Yeah. He’s had it awhile. He only gives it to people he loves.”

“Well.” She leaned forward, kissed Spock on the nose. “Thanks, baby. Here, you better have it back.”

His tail wagged as if to say, Crisis over, and he took the bear back to his bed.

“What brought on the meltdown in the first place?”

“Oh boy.”

She walked away from Ford, from the sketches, to the window. The sun had dipped down behind the mountains so its light haloed their dignified peaks. The sight of them—distant, a bit aloof—was comforting.

“My half sister stopped by today. Angie, who I often think of internally as my father’s daughter. I don’t often think of myself that way, or didn’t. It was easier not to. She’s so there. Happy, smart, pretty. A nice girl, but not so nice you can’t stand being around her. I haven’t made any particular effort there, or with my stepmother. Cards and an appropriate gift at Christmas and on birthdays. I didn’t recognize her for a minute, she’s cut her hair, but that wasn’t why. Not really. I just blanked at first. I felt stiff and awkward, and she didn’t. So I have to feel guilty about that, which makes me feel more stiff, more awkward, and she’s just bubbling over, happy to see me. No pretense, no agenda.”

She sighed now, irritated with herself. Big whiny baby, she thought. Just can’t stand that everything’s going well. “I’d been congratulating myself on having the gates taken down—the symbol of it—and planting trees. Opening things up, putting in roots, looking to the future, and she made me realize I keep skimming over people and relationships, like a stone skipped over a river. Don’t want to sink in.”

“Maybe you’re more treading water awhile now.”

She glanced back. He looked so damn good, she thought, in the ancient sweatshirt, torn jeans, ragged hair. “Maybe I am. Anyway, while we’re standing there talking, and I’m trying to figure it out, Mr. Hennessy pulls up across the road. I’ve seen his van out there before, just sitting there. Angie recognized it.”

She turned around. “Did you know he’s slapped out at my father and his family?”

“No. Maybe. He’s a hard man, Cilla.”

“So I found out when I went over to talk to him. He pretty much blames me and all my kin, as he put it, for what happened to his son. The house is cursed, I’m a whore like my grandmother, and so on. He actually spat at me.”

“Bastard.”

“I’ll say. Then he pulls out so fast, I lost my balance, and Angie’s all mother hen.”

“You should call the cops. They’ll talk to him.”

“And tell him not to spit on my shoes? Better if I just make sure he doesn’t have the chance to do it again. I’m done feeling sorry for what happened to him before I was born. I thought I was just pissed off, went back to work and sweated it out. But later, I guess it just all hit, resulting in the massive pity event I’ve just shared with you.”

“I’d call it a more medium-sized event, and that it illustrates you’re way too hard on yourself. I don’t know anything about building houses, but I do know the person in charge of what’s going on across the road. She’s no screwup. She’s smart and bold and she works for what she wants. She may not have the mystical powers of the goddess but . . .” He tapped one of the sketches. “That’s her. That’s you, Cilla. Just the way I see you.” He took down one of Brid, gripping a two-headed hammer in both hands, her face alive with power and purpose.

“Take this one, put it up somewhere. You feel one of the events coming on again, take a look at it. It’s who you are.”

“I have to say, you’re the first person to see me as a warrior goddess.”

“That’s not all she is.”

Cilla looked from the sketch up into his eyes. There was tightness in her chest again, but not the sort that presaged tears. It was the flexing, she thought, of something starting to open again. “Thanks for this, and for the rest. As payback . . .”

She turned, had his pulse bounding when she lifted the back of her shirt, bent just a little at the waist so her jeans gapped at the spine. And there, at the base, in deep blue, the three lines of the triple spiral curved.

He felt the punch in his libido even as it hit the intellect. “Celtic symbol of female power. Maid, mother, crone.”

She glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows cocked. “Aren’t you smart?”

“I’ve been researching.” He stepped closer to study the tattoo. “And that particular symbol was top of my list for Brid. That’s freaking kismet.”

“It should be on her biceps.”

“What? Sorry. Very distracted.”

“Biceps.” Cilla turned, flexed hers. “It’s stronger there. Not as sexy, maybe, but stronger, I think. And if you go with the idea of having it form when she transforms, it’s a bigger statement.”

“You were listening.”

“So were you.” She lifted a hand, touched his cheek. “You’re good at it.”

“Okay. We need to get out of the house now.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. Because I could talk you into bed now, and I really want to. Then we’d both wonder if it was because you had a bad day and I was just here. Angst and awkwardness ensue. So . . . let’s go get ice cream.”

Another key word had Spock deserting bear and bed and leaping up.

Smiling, she stroked her fingers down to Ford’s jawline. “I want you to talk me into bed now.”

“Yeah. Shut up. Ice cream. Let’s go.”

He grabbed her hand, pulled her along. The dog passed them at a run in a race for the front door.

“You’re a confusing man, Ford.”

“Half the time I don’t understand myself.”

TEN

To Steve’s mind very little topped the sensation of roaring along a country road, hugging the curves with the warm night wind streaming. Scoring with the hot brunette, Shanna the landscaper, would’ve edged that out, but he’d come close there.

And there was always next time.

He’d gotten a taste, anyway, and had the feeling the full dish would live up to the promise of the sample. Yeah. He grinned into the wind. Next time.

But for now, cruising along the deserted road after a little beer, a little pool, a few laughs and the prelude with Shanna hit all the chords. Swinging down, taking a couple of weeks to hook up with Cilla, yeah, that was working for him.

She’d taken on a big one, he mused. A big, complicated project, and a wicked personal one. But it was working for her, too. He could see it in the way she looked, the way she talked. And she’d make herself something—something big, complicated and personal. Just like she’d always needed to.

He could give her another week, maybe ten days on it. Because damn if the rehab didn’t grab him, and tight enough he wanted to see it through a little longer. He wanted to hang with Cilla a little longer, too, watch her build the framework of her new life.

And hopefully close the deal with Shanna while he was at it.

A week ought to do it, he thought as he swung around the turn and onto Cilla’s road. By then, the rural charm of the Shenandoah Valley would start to fade for him. He needed the action of the city, and though New York appealed to him for short stints, L.A.’s gloss and sparkle was home, sweet home.

Not for Cilla. Steve glanced idly at a car parked on the shoulder near a long, rising lane. No, for Cilla L.A. had always been just a place. Probably another reason getting married had been such a whacked idea. Even back then she’d been looking for a way out, and he’d been looking for a way in.

And somehow, they’d both found it.

He turned into her drive, smiling to himself when he noted she’d left a light on out front for him, and another inside that glowed against one of the windows. That was Cilla, he thought. She thought of the little things, remembered details.

And the light in the window reminded him it had to be after two in the morning. In the country quiet his Harley sounded like a tornado blowing out to Oz. She’d probably sleep through it—when Cilla went out, she went out—but he cut the engine halfway down the drive and coasted.

Singing under his breath, he hopped off the bike to guide it the rest of the way to the barn. He took off his helmet, strapped it onto the bike, then pulled open the creaking barn door. He left the headlight on to cut a swath through the dark and, with a belch that brought back the memory of Corona, slapped the kickstand down. When he angled the front wheel, the headlight cut across one of Cilla’s storage boxes. It sat open, with its lid beside it, and scattered with photos and papers.

“Hey.”

He took a step forward for a closer look. He heard nothing, saw nothing, and felt only an instant of shattering pain before he pitched forward onto the concrete.

CILLA HAD the first of what she thought of as a heads-together with Matt just after seven A.M. She planned others with the electrician and the plumber, but she wanted Steve in on that. As long as he was here, she thought, she’d use him.

Plus, she wanted him to go with her on a buying trip. She needed to choose tile and hardware, fixtures, and order more lumber. By seven-thirty, the cacophony of saws, hammers and radios filled the house, and figuring Steve had had a late night, she took pity on him and carried a mug of coffee up to the bedroom where he slept in his borrowed Spider-Man sleeping bag.

When she saw Spidey was currently unoccupied, she blew out a breath. “Somebody got lucky,” she muttered, and drank the coffee herself as she headed downstairs.

She grabbed her lists, her notebook, her purse. As she stepped outside, the landscape crew pulled in. Cilla’s eyebrows quirked up when she spotted Shanna. Just who did Steve get lucky with? she wondered. Shanna lifted a hand in a wave, then, carrying a to-go cup of coffee, wandered over.

“Morning. Brian’s got to site another job this morning, but he’ll swing by in a couple hours.”

“Fine. I’m heading in to pick up some materials. Do you need me for anything?”

“We’re good. But you ought to come around when you get back. We’ll be starting on hardscape—the patio and walkways today.” Shanna glanced at the house. “So, is Steve among the living this morning?”

“Haven’t seen him yet.”

“I’m not surprised.” Adjusting the cap over her dark braid, Shanna flashed a smile. “We about closed the place down last night. That Steve, he sure can dance.”

“Yes, he can.”

“He’s a sweetie. Followed me home to make sure I got there safe, then didn’t push—or not hard—to come in. He’d pushed a little harder, and who knows?” She hooted out a laugh.

“He didn’t stay with you?”

“No.” Shanna’s smile faded. “Did he get home all right?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him inside, so I assumed . . .” With a shrug, Cilla jingled her keys. “I’ll just go see if his bike’s in the barn.”

Shanna fell into step beside her. “He was fine when he left, I mean he hadn’t been drinking much. A couple of beers all night. I only live about twenty minutes from here.”

“I probably just missed him in the house.” But her stomach started to jump as Cilla reached the barn door. “Maybe he went up while I went down.”

Sunlight splashed into the barn and erupted with dust motes. Cilla blinked to adjust her eyes and felt a fresh wave of anxiety when she didn’t immediately spot the Harley.

Stepping in, she noted some of her storage boxes were tipped over, the contents spilled. An old chair lay broken on its side. She saw the Harley then, on the floor, handlebars up as if its rider had wiped out. Steve, arms and legs splayed, sprawled under the weighty bulk of it.

“Oh God.” She sprang forward, Shanna beside her, to lift the bike off Steve. Blood matted his hair, and more stained his raw and bruised face. Afraid to move him, Cilla pressed her fingers to his throat. And nearly shook as she felt his pulse beat.

“He’s alive. He’s got a pulse. Call—”

“I am.” Crouching, Shanna punched nine-one-one on her cell phone. “Should we get a blanket? Should we—”

“Tell them to hurry. Don’t move him.” Cilla leaped up and ran for the house.

HE COULD USUALLY sleep through anything. But the shouting scraped along Ford’s consciousness, then the sirens drove straight in. Too bleary to put them together, he rolled out of bed, stumbled out onto the veranda. Yawning, he scanned across the road, wished he could conjure a cup of coffee with the power of his mind. The sight of the ambulance outside Cilla’s barn had him snapping awake. When he didn’t see her in his quick, panicked search, he rushed back inside to drag on clothes.

He streaked across the road, up Cilla’s drive, keeping his mind blank. If one image, even one image, formed, a dozen horrible others would follow. He pushed through the crowd of workers, said her name once, like a personal prayer.

When he saw her standing behind the portable gurney, his heart started beating again. Then it slammed into his belly when he realized Steve lay on the gurney.

“I’m going with him. I’m going.” Her voice teetered on the thin edge between control and hysteria. “He’s not going alone.” She gripped the edge of the gurney, stuck like glue as they transported it to the ambulance.

The fear in her eyes chilled Ford to the bone. “Cilla. I’m going to follow you in. I’m going to be there.”

“He won’t wake up. They can’t wake him up.” Before anyone could deny her, Cilla climbed into the back of the ambulance.

He took her purse because Shanna had retrieved it and pushed it into his hands. Shanna, Ford thought, who’d had tears streaking down her face.

“He was in the barn,” Shanna choked out, and slid into Ford’s arms for comfort. “Lying on the floor, under the bike. The blood.”

“Okay, Shan. Okay, honey. I’m going to go. I’m going to find out how he is.”

“Call me, please. Call me.”

“First thing.”

After a wild drive to the hospital, Ford carried Cilla’s purse into the ER, too worried to feel even marginally foolish.

He found her standing outside a pair of double doors, looking helpless.

“I gave them his medical history, the stuff I could remember. Who remembers all of that kind of thing?” She pawed at the neck of her shirt, as if looking for something, anything, to hold on to. “But I gave them his blood type. I remembered his blood type. A-negative. I remembered.”

“Okay. Let’s go sit down.”

“They won’t let me in. They won’t let me stay with him. He won’t wake up.”

Ford put an arm around her shoulders and firmly steered her away from the doors and to a chair. Instead of sitting, he crouched in front of her so her eyes were on his face. “They’re going to fix him now. That’s what they’re doing. Okay?”

“He was bleeding. His head. His face. Lying there bleeding. I don’t know how long.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know!” She pressed both hands to her mouth, and began to rock. “I don’t know. He wasn’t in his room, and I figured, I thought, well, I figured, he shoots, he scores. That’s all. I almost left. God, God, I almost left without even looking, even checking. It would’ve been hours more.”

“Breathe.” He spoke sharply, took her hands and squeezed. “Look at me and breathe.”

“Okay.” She breathed, and she trembled, but Ford saw a hint of color come back into her face. “I thought he’d stayed at Shanna’s, so I was going to go buy materials, but he didn’t. I mean, she got there and said he didn’t. I worried that he might’ve gotten lost or something. I don’t even know. But I went to see if his bike was there. And we found him.”

“In the barn.”

“He was lying under his bike. I don’t know what could’ve happened. His head, his face.” Now she rubbed a hand between her breasts. Ford could almost hear the slam of her heart against the pressure. “I heard them say he’s probably got a couple of broken ribs, from the bike falling on him. But how did the bike fall on him? And . . . and the head injuries. His pupils. They said something about a blown pupil. I know that’s not good. I had a guest spot on ER once.”

She hitched in three raw breaths, then let them out in a gush. And the tears came with it. “Who the hell has a motorcycle accident in a barn? It’s so goddamn stupid.”

Taking the tears, and the hint of anger, as good signs, Ford sat beside her and held her hand.

When the door flew open, they lurched to their feet together. “What is it? Where are you taking him? Steve.”

“Miss.” One of the ER nurses put herself in Cilla’s path. “They’re taking your friend up to surgery.”

“Surgery for what? For what?”

“He has bleeding in his brain from the head injury. They need to operate. I’m going to take you up to the surgical waiting area. One of the doctors can explain the procedure to you.”

“How bad? You can tell me that. How bad?”

“We’re doing everything we can. We have a good surgical team prepping for the procedure.” She gestured them to an elevator. “Do you know if Mr. Chensky was in some sort of fight?”

“No. Why?”

“The injury to the back of his head. It looks as though he’s been struck. It’s just not consistent with a fall. Of course, if he was driving without his helmet . . .”

“It didn’t happen when he was driving. It didn’t happen on the road.”

“So you said.”

“Cilla.” Ford laid a hand on hers before she could get into the elevator. “We need to call the cops.”

HOW WAS SHE supposed to think? How could she sit in this room while somewhere else strangers operated on Steve? An operating room. Operating theater. They called it a theater sometimes, didn’t they? Would the patient and doctor be co-stars? Who got top billing?

“Miss McGowan?”

“What?” She stared into the blank eyes of the cop. What was his name? She’d already forgotten it. “I’m sorry.” She groped through the chaos of her mind for the question he’d asked. “I’m not sure what time he got back. I went to bed about midnight, and he wasn’t back. Shanna said he left her before two. Just before two, she said.”

“Do you have Shanna’s full name?”

“Shanna Stiles,” Ford supplied. “She works for Brian Morrow. Morrow Landscape and Design.”

“You found Mr. Chensky at approximately seven-thirty this morning?”

“I said that. Didn’t I say that?” Cilla pushed at her hair. “He wasn’t in the house, so I checked the barn for his bike. And I found him.”

“You and Mr. Chensky live together?”

“He’s visiting. He’s helping me out for a few weeks.”

“Visiting from?”

“Los Angeles. New York. I mean, he was in New York, and he’s going back to L.A.” Whatever churned in her belly wanted to rise up to her throat. “What difference does it make?”

“Officer Taney.” Ford put a hand over Cilla’s, squeezed. “Here’s the thing. A few nights ago, I saw someone walking around, going into Cilla’s barn. It was late. I was working late, and I looked out the window on the way to bed and saw someone, saw a flashlight. I thought it was Steve, and didn’t think anything of it.”

“But it wasn’t.” Remembering, Cilla shut her eyes. “I was supposed to buy a padlock, but I didn’t. I forgot about it, didn’t think about it, and now—”

“What do you keep in the barn?” Taney asked her.

“I cleaned out the attic and stored things there. A lot of things I have to sort through. And there’s other stuff. Old tack, tools, equipment.”

“Valuables?”

“For some, anything connected to my grandmother is valuable. Stupid, stupid to think I could turn it all around, make it new.” Make it mine, she thought. Stupid.

“Was anything taken?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Mr. Chensky went out at approximately eight last evening, to a bar. You don’t have the name of the bar—”

“No, I don’t have the name of the bar. You can ask Shanna Stiles. And if you’re thinking he was drunk and somehow bashed himself on the back of the head, smashed his face into the concrete and knocked his bike on top of him, you’re wrong. Steve wouldn’t get on his bike drunk. You can ask Shanna or anyone else who was in the bar last night about that.”

“I’m going to do that, Miss McGowan, and if it’s all right with you, I’ll go over and have a look at your barn.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“I hope your friend comes through okay. I’ll be in touch,” he added as he rose.

Ford watched him cross to the nurses’ station, take out a card.

“He thinks it was drunken clumsiness, or that Steve was stoned and stupid.”

“Maybe he does.” Ford turned back to Cilla. “Maybe. But he’s still going to look at things, talk to people. And Steve can fill in the blanks when he’s able.”

“He could die. They don’t have to tell me that for me to know it. He might never wake up.” Her lips trembled before she managed to firm them. “And I keep seeing him in there, in this scene out of Grey’s Anatomy, with the interns up there in that glass-walled balcony looking down at Steve. And everybody’s thinking more about sex than they are about Steve.”

Ford took her face in his hands. “People do their jobs while they think about sex. All the time. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.” When she let out a weak laugh, he kissed her forehead. “Let’s take a walk, get some air.”

“I shouldn’t leave. I need to be here.”

“It’s going to be a while. Let’s clear the head, hunt up some decent coffee.”

“Okay. A few minutes. You don’t have to stay.” She looked down at her hand as they walked to the elevator, saw it was caught in his again. “I wasn’t thinking. You don’t have to stay. You barely know Steve.”

“Don’t be stupid. I do know him, and I like him. Anyway, I won’t leave you alone.”

She said nothing, couldn’t, as they rode down. Her eyes stung, wanted to flood. Her body ached to turn into his, press against the solidity of him, be enfolded. Safe. She could hold on there, she thought. Be allowed to hold on.

“You want food?” he asked as they stepped out at the lobby level.

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Probably still sucks anyway.”

“Still?”

“My dad was in for a couple days a few years ago, so I choked down the cafeteria fare a time or two. It hadn’t improved since I was a kid and did my own time.”

“What were you in for?”

“Overnight observation—concussion, broken arm. I, uh, got the idea to put these Velcro strips on my snow gloves and socks. Thought I’d be able to climb up and down buildings like Spider-Man. Fortunately my bedroom window wasn’t that high up.”

“Maybe you should’ve tried climbing up before climbing down.”

“Hindsight.”

“You’re taking my mind off Steve, and I appreciate it. But—”

“Five minutes,” Ford said as he drew her outside. “Fresh air.”

“Ford?”

Cilla looked over as he did toward the pretty woman wearing a suit of powerful red. A laugh played over lips painted the same bold color, while she drew off sunglasses to reveal eyes of deep, dark brown.

Her arms opened wide, then closed around Ford in a hard, proprietary hug. She added sound effects, Cilla noted, a low mmmmmMM! before she broke off, shook back the short swing of glossy brown hair. “It’s been ages!”

“A while,” Ford agreed. “You look seriously great.”

“I do my best.” She turned those eyes, those smiling lips on Cilla. “Hi there.”

“Cilla, this is Brian’s mom, Cathy Morrow. Bri’s doing a job for Cilla.”

“Of course,” Cathy said. “Janet Hardy’s granddaughter. I knew her a little. You certainly have the look of her. And you’re fixing up the old farm.”

“Yes.” It was surreal, the conversation. Cilla thought of it as lines from a play. “Brian’s a big help. He’s talented.”

“That’s my boy. What are y’all doing here?”

“Cilla’s friend’s in surgery. There was an accident.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” The bright, flirtatious smile transformed into a look of concern. “Is there anything I can do?” Cathy’s arm went around Cilla in a gesture so genuine, Cilla leaned into it instinctively.

“We’re just . . . waiting.”

“The worst. The waiting. Listen, I volunteer here a couple of days a week, and I head a couple of the fund-raising committees. I know a lot of the staff. Who’s his surgeon?”

“I don’t know. It happened so fast.”

“Why don’t I find out, see if I can get you some information? I don’t know why they don’t understand we do better if we know things.”

The offer was like water on a burning throat. “Could you?”

“I can sure try. Come on, honey. You want some coffee, some water? No, I’ll tell you what. Ford, run on down and get Cilla a ginger ale.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you back upstairs. You’re in good hands.”

It felt like it. For the first time in too long to remember, Cilla felt as if it was okay to just let go and allow somebody else to take charge.

“What happened to your friend?”

“We don’t know, exactly. That’s part of the problem.”

“Well, we’ll find out what we can.” Cathy gave Cilla a comforting squeeze as they crowded onto an elevator with visitors and flowers and Mylar balloons. “What’s his name?”

“Steve. Steven Chensky.”

Cathy took out a red leather notebook and a silver pen to note it down. “How long’s he been in?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve lost track. We got here about eight, I think, into the ER, and he was there for a little while before they brought him up. Maybe an hour ago?”

“I know that seems long, but it’s not, really. Here now.” Cathy patted Cilla on the back when the elevator doors opened. “You go on and sit, and I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Don’t you give it a thought.”

Cilla walked back to the waiting room but didn’t sit. She didn’t want to sit with the others who were waiting for word on a friend, on a loved one. On life and death. She wished for a window. Whose idea had it been to design an interior waiting room with no windows? Didn’t they understand people needed to stare out? To will their minds outside the room?

“Hey.” Ford stepped up beside her with a large go-cup.

“Thanks.”

“Cathy’s talking to people.”

“It’s very kind of her. She’s very fond of you. When she first came up, I thought she was an old girlfriend.”

“Man.” Mortification flashed. “She’s a mom. She’s Brian’s mom.”

“A lot of men go for older women, sport. And she looks really good.”

“Mom,” Ford repeated. “Brian’s mom.”

Cilla started to smile, then tensed when Cathy stepped in.

“First, Dr. North is operating,” Cathy began in brisk, practical tones that were enormously comforting. “He’s one of the best. You’re very, very lucky there.”

“Okay.” Cilla’s breath eased out. “All right.”

“Next, do you want all the medical terms, the jargon?” Cathy held up her notebook.

“I . . . No. No, I want, just, to know.”

“He’s holding his own. He’s stable. It’s going to be another couple of hours, at least. And there are other injuries that need to be addressed.” She flipped the book open now. “Two broken ribs. His nose and left cheekbone were broken, and his kidney’s bruised. His head injuries are the most serious, and Dr. North’s working on him. He’s young, fit, healthy, and those factors are in his favor.”

“Okay.” Cilla nodded. “Thank you.”

“Why don’t I check back in a little while?” Cathy took Cilla’s hand.

“I appreciate it, Mrs. Morrow, very much.”

“Cathy. And it’s nothing. Take care of her,” she said to Ford, and left them alone.

“I’m going to go out, call the house. Let everyone know what’s going on.”

“I did that,” Ford told her, “when I got your drink. But we can do an update.”

They walked. They sat. They stared at the waiting room TV someone had tuned to CNN. As the projected couple of hours became a few, Cathy came back in.

“He’s out of surgery. Dr. North will come in to talk to you.”

“He’s—”

“They won’t tell me much right now, except that he made it through. That’s a good thing. Ford, you make sure Cilla has my number. You call me if you need anything. All right?”

“Yes.” Cilla’s fingers tightened like wires on Ford’s when the man in green scrubs paused in the doorway. His gaze scanned the room, paused on Cathy with a flicker of acknowledgment. And Cathy’s hand rested briefly on Cilla’s shoulder.

“You call,” she repeated, and moved away as the doctor crossed the room.

“Miss McGowan?”

“Yes. Yes. Steve?”

North sat. His face looked quiet, Cilla thought. Almost serene, and smooth, smooth as brown velvet. And he angled his body toward hers, kept his dark eyes on her face as he spoke.

“Steve suffered two skull fractures. A linear fracture here,” he said, running his finger along the top of his forehead. “That’s a break in the bone that doesn’t cause the bone to shift. Those usually heal on their own. But the second was a break here.” Now he held his hand to the base of his skull. “A basilar fracture. And this more severe break caused bruising of his brain, and bleeding.”

“You fixed him.”

“He came through the surgery. He’s going to need further tests. We’ll monitor the pressure inside his skull in the ICU with a device I inserted during surgery. When the swelling goes down, we’ll remove it. He has a good chance.”

“A good chance,” she repeated.

“There could be brain damage, temporary or permanent. It’s too soon to tell. Right now, we wait and we monitor. He’s in a coma. His heart is very strong.”

“Yes, it is.”

“He has a good chance,” North repeated. “Does he have family?”

“Not here. Just me. Can I see him?”

“Someone will come in to take you up to ICU shortly.”

When they did, she stared down at him. His face under the clouds and streams of bruises was deathly pale. It wasn’t right, was all she could think. None of this was right. He didn’t even look like Steve with those blackened, sunken eyes, and his nose all swollen, and the white bandages around his head.

They’d taken his earring off. Why did they do that?

He didn’t look like Steve.

She took the small silver hoop out of her ear and, bending over him, fixed it to his. And brushed his bruised cheek with a kiss.

“That’s better now,” she whispered. “That’s better. I’m going to be here, okay?” Lifting his hand, she kissed his fingers. “Even when I’m not here, I’ll be here. You don’t get to leave. That’s the rule. You don’t get to leave me.”

She stayed, holding his hand, until the nurse shooed her out.

Part Two

REHAB

Change your opinions,

keep to your principles;

Change your leaves,

keep intact your roots.

—VICTOR HUGO

ELEVEN

We can take shifts.” Ford glanced over at Cilla as he drove. She hadn’t objected when he insisted she needed to go home, get some rest, have a meal. And that worried him. “They’re pretty strict in ICU anyway, and don’t let you hang out very long, so we’ll take shifts. Between you and me, Shanna and some of the guys, we’ll cover it.”

“They don’t know how long he’ll be in a coma. It could be hours, or days, and that’s if—”

“When. We’re going with when.”

“I’ve never had a very optimistic nature.”

“That’s okay.” He tried to find a tone between firm and sympathetic. “I’ve got one and you can borrow a piece.”

“It looked like he’d been beaten. Just beaten.”

“It’s the skull fracture. I talked to one of the nurses when you were in with him. It’s part of it.” Knowing it, even knowing it, he thought, hadn’t dulled the shock when he’d been allowed a minute with Steve. “So’s the coma. The coma’s not a bad thing, Cilla. It’s giving his body a chance to heal. It’s focusing.”

“You do have plenty of optimistic pieces. But this isn’t a comic book where the good guy pulls it out every time. Even if—or we can go with your rainbow when—he comes out of it, there could be brain damage.”

He’d gotten that, too, but saw no point in pushing through to worst-case scenario. “In my rainbow world, and in your darker version, the brain relearns. It’s a clever bastard.”

“I didn’t get the goddamn padlock.”

“If somebody got in the barn and went at Steve, why do you think a padlock would’ve kept them out?”

She curled her fingers into her palms as they approached her drive. “I took down the gates. And planted fucking trees.”

“Yeah, I figure the trees are what did it. Makes it all your fault.” He waited for her to take a shot at him—better, to his mind, than wallowing. But she said nothing. “Okay, again, if someone wanted in, how would a couple of wrought-iron panels stop them? What happened to pessimism?”

She only shook her head and stared at the house. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. That crazy old man was probably right. The place is cursed. My uncle died, my grandmother, and now Steve may die. For what? So I can buff and polish, paint and trim this place? Looking for that link, that click, that connection with my grandmother because I’ve got none with my own mother? What’s the point? She’s dead, so what’s the point?”

“Identity.” Ford gripped her arm before she could push the car door open. “How can we know who we really are until we know where we came from, and overcome it, build on it or accept it?”

“I know who I am.” She wrenched free, shoved the door open. Slammed it behind her.

“No, you really don’t,” Ford responded.

She strode around the side of the house. Work, she thought, a couple hours of sweaty work, then she’d clean up and go back to the hospital. The patio had been repaired, the new slate laid, with the walkways roped and dug except for the one she’d added to the plans. The one leading to the barn. Yellow crime-scene tape crossed over her barn door like ugly ribbon over a nasty gift. She stared at it as Shanna dropped her shovel and raced over the lawn.

Cilla willed her compassion back into place. She wasn’t the only one worried and distressed. “There’s no change.” She gripped Shanna’s extended hand.

The rest of the landscape crew stopped working, and some of the men from inside the house stepped out. “No change,” she repeated, lifting her voice. “They’ve got him in ICU, monitoring him, and they’ll be doing tests. All we can do is wait.”

“Are you going back?” Shanna asked her.

“Yeah, in a little while.”

“Brian?”

Brian gave Shanna a quick nod. “Go ahead.”

Yanking her phone out of her pocket, Shanna strode toward the front of the house.

“Her sister can pick her up,” Brian explained. He pulled his cap off his short brown hair, raked grimy fingers through it. “She wanted to knock off when you got here, go by and see Steve herself.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“The rest of us, and Matt and Dobby and such, we’ll go by, too. Don’t know as they’ll let us in to see him, but we’ll go by. Shanna had a jag earlier. She’s blaming herself.”

“Why?”

“If she’d let him stay the night, and so on.” Sighing, he replaced his cap. After one glance at Ford, he got the picture. Taking off his sunglasses, he focused his summer blue eyes on Cilla. “I told her there’s no ifs, and no blame except for whoever did that to Steve. Start hauling out the ifs and the blame, you could just as soon say if Steve hadn’t gone out to play pool, if he hadn’t gone in the barn. And that’s crap. Best thing is to hold good thoughts. Anyway.”

He took a bandanna out of his pocket to wipe the sweat from his face. “The cops were here, as I guess you can see. Asking questions. I can’t say what they’re thinking about this.”

“I hope they’ve stopped thinking he was drunk and did that to himself.”

“Shanna set them straight on the drunk part.”

“Good.” It loosened one of the multitude of knots in her belly. “I met your mother.”

“Did you?”

“At the hospital. She was a lot of help. Well.” Tears continued to burn the back of her eyes as she stared into the sunlight. “The patio looks good.”

“Helps to have work.”

“Yeah. So give me some, will you?”

“That I can do.” He shot a smile at Ford. “How about you? Want a shovel?”

“I like to watch,” Ford said easily. “And I’ve got to check on Spock.”

“Just as well. Give this guy a shovel or a pick?” he said to Cilla. “And if there’s a pipe or a cable in the ground, he’ll hit it, first cut.”

“That only happened once. Maybe twice,” Ford qualified.

WHEN THE CREW KNOCKED OFF, she knocked off with them and hit the shower. She wanted to say she felt human again, but was still well shy of the mark. Like an automaton, she pulled on fresh clothes. She decided she’d buy some magazines, something to occupy her mind at the hospital, and maybe snag a sandwich from a vending machine.

When she jogged downstairs, Ford stood in her unfinished living room.

“I’d say you’re making progress, but I don’t know that much about it, and it doesn’t look like it to me.”

“We’re making progress.”

“Good. I’ve got dinner out on the veranda. Spock sends his regards, as he’s dining at home this evening.”

“Dinner? Listen, I—”

“You have to eat. So do I.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her out. “We’ve got my secondary specialty.”

She stared at the paper plates and cups, the bottle of wine and the can of Coke. And in the center of the folding table sat a dish of macaroni and cheese.

“You made mac and cheese?”

“Yeah, I did. That is, I put the package in the microwave and programmed according to directions. It’s mac and cheese if you aren’t too fussy.” He poured some wine in a paper cup. “And the wine’ll help it along.”

“You’re not having wine.”

“That’s ’cause I like the nuked version just fine, and I’m driving you to the hospital.”

A hot meal, companionship. Help. All offered, she thought, without a need for asking. “You don’t have to do that, do this.”

He pulled her chair out, nudged her into it. “It’s more satisfying to do something you don’t have to do.”

“Why are you?” She looked up, into his eyes. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“You know what, Cilla, I’m not entirely sure. But . . .” He pressed his lips to her forehead before he sat. “I believe you matter.”

She clutched her hands in her lap as he scooped out two heaping spoons of the macaroni and cheese onto her plate. Then, to clear her throat, she took a sip of wine. “That’s the second thing you’ve said to me today no one else ever has.”

Those eyes of his lifted, zeroed in on hers. “No one ever told you you mattered?”

“Maybe Steve. In different words, in different ways. But no, not just that way.”

“You do. Go on and eat. That stuff gets cold, it turns to cement.”

“The second thing—or the first, actually, that you said to me today was you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

He only looked at her, and she couldn’t tell if it was pity or understanding, or simply patience, on his face. Whatever it was, she knew it was exactly what she needed. And so much what she’d never expected to find.

“I guess you meant it, because here you are.” She stabbed up a forkful, slid it into her mouth and smiled around it. “It’s terrible. Thanks,” she said and stabbed another bite.

“You’re welcome.”

THERE WAS NO CHANGE when they arrived at the hospital, and no change when they left hours later. Cilla slept with the phone clutched in her hand, willing it to ring, willing the on-duty nurse to call to tell her Steve was awake and lucid.

But no call came. The dreams did.

SHENANDOAH VALLEY 1960

“This is how it looked, the first time I saw it. My little farm.”

In red capri pants, a white shirt tied at the midriff and white Keds, Janet strolled arm in arm with Cilla. Janet’s sunshine hair bounced in a jaunty ponytail.

“Of course, that’s not true—exactly—as when I first came here there were the trailers, the lights, the cables, the trucks. The city we make on locations. You know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But we’re looking through that now. As I did then. What do you see?”

“A pretty house, with simple lines. A family home with wide, welcoming porches with old rocking chairs where you can sit and do absolutely nothing. Sweet little gardens and big shade trees.”

“Keep going.”

“The big red barn, and oh! Horses in the paddock!” Cilla rushed over to the paddock fence, thrilled with the breeze that fluttered through her hair and rippled the manes on the mare and her foal. “They’re so beautiful.”

“Did you always want a pony?”

“Of course.” Laughing, Cilla turned her head to smile at Janet. “Every little girl wants a pony. And a puppy, a kitten.”

“But you never got them.”

“No, I had call sheets and script changes. You know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“A chicken house! Just listen to them cluck.” The sound made her laugh again. “And pigs rooting in their pen. Look at the fields. Is that corn? And there’s a kitchen garden. I can see the tomatoes from here. I could grow tomatoes.”

Janet’s smile was both indulgent and amused. “And have a pony, a puppy and a kitten.”

“Is that what I want? I’m not ten anymore. Is that what I want? I can’t seem to figure it out. Is it what you wanted?”

“I wanted everything I didn’t have, and if I got it, it was never exactly what I wanted after all. Or in the long run. Even this place.” She swept out an arm, a graceful dancer’s gesture, to encompass the farm. “I fell in love, but then I fell easy and often, as everyone knows, and out again. And I thought, I have to have it.”

Lifting both her arms, Janet turned, circle after circle. “The family home with the wide, welcoming porches, the big red barn, tomatoes on the vine. That’s what I’ve never had. But I can buy it, I can own it.” She stopped spinning. “Then, of course, I had to change it. The gardens had to be lusher, the colors bolder, the lights brighter. I needed bright, bright lights. And even though I made it bolder, brighter, even though I brought the stars here to stroll like Gatsby’s ghosts across the lawn, it never really changed. It never lost its welcome. And I never fell out of love.”

“You came here to die.”

“Did I?” Janet cocked her head, looked up under her lashes, suddenly sly. “You wonder, don’t you? It’s one of the reasons you’re here. Secrets—we all have them. Yours are here, too. It’s why you came. You told yourself you’d put it back, as it was, and somehow put me back. But like me, you’ll make changes. You already have. It’s not me you’re looking for. It’s you.”

In the dream she felt a quick shiver, a chill from truth. “There is no me without you. I see you when I look in the mirror. I hear you when I speak. There’s a filter over it all, just enough to dim the brilliance, but you’re under there.”

“Did you want the pony or the call sheets, Cilla?”

“For a while, I wanted both. But I’d have been happier with the pony.” Cilla nodded, looked back toward the house. “Yes, and the family home. You’re right. That’s why I’m here. But it’s not enough. The secrets, the shadows of them. They’re still here. People get hurt in the dark. Steve got hurt in the dark.”

“Then turn on the lights.”

“How?”

“I’m just a dream.” Janet smiled, shrugged. “I don’t have any answers.”

WHEN SHE WOKE, Cilla grabbed the phone she’d dropped in her sleep and speed-dialed the hospital.

No change.

She lay in the dim light of predawn, the phone pressed between her breasts, wondering if she should feel fear or relief. He hadn’t died in the night, hadn’t slipped away from her while she slept. But he still lay trapped in that between world, that place between life and death.

So she’d go talk to him, nag him, browbeat him into waking up. She climbed out of bed, cleaned herself up. She’d make coffee, she thought, make lists for any of the subs she might miss while she was at the hospital.

As she passed the next bedroom she stopped, and studied Ford. He slept half in, half out of the sleeping bag. And what was out, she had to admit, was very nice.

The dog curled at the foot of the bag, snoring like a chain saw in mid-massacre. Ford hadn’t wanted Spock to spend the night alone, she remembered, and went to get him when they returned from the hospital. Went to get his dog, she thought, after he told her he’d be sleeping in the spare room.

He wouldn’t leave her alone.

She went down, made the coffee, drinking hers on the back veranda. There had been no patio in the dream, but her subconscious had known Janet had added that, and the walkways. The crops in the field, another given. The kitchen garden? She couldn’t remember if that had been original, or one of Janet’s additions. Either way, it was something she herself wanted.

And the barn? It was no longer red. That bright color had weathered away long ago. The coffee turned bitter in her throat as she stared at the yellow tape crossing the door. If Steve died, she’d tear the bastard down. Tear it down, burn it, and everything inside it.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she battled back the anger that wanted to scream out of her. If he lived, she told herself, if he came back whole, she’d paint it that bright, happy red again. Red with white trim.

“Please, God.”

Why God gave a damn if she burned the barn to the ground or painted it red with yellow smiley faces she couldn’t say. But it was the best she had.

She went back inside, poured another mug and carried it upstairs to Ford.

She sat cross-legged beside him and, sipping her own second cup of coffee, gave him a good study. Unlike his dog, he didn’t snore, which added points in his favor, but the way he sprawled indicated bed hog. Points deducted. He had a good growth of stubble going, considering he hadn’t shaved the day before, but she had to admit it added a sexy edge to the package.

He wasn’t what she’d call buff or ripped, but reasonably toned over a build that leaned toward skinny. Just a touch of gawkiness, she mused. Add a few cute points for that.

He had good arms. Strong, lean rather than bulky. Best, she thought, they knew how to hold on. Major points, she decided. He just kept racking them up.

And the lips—top score. Leaning over, she rubbed hers to his. He made a humming sound in his throat, reached out. When she eased back, his eyes blinked open.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

“No. A strange one, but I’m prone to them. It’s morning.”

“Uh-uh.” He shifted enough to turn his wrist, blink at his watch. At the foot of the bag, Spock yawned, a high-pitched whine, then went back to snoring. “Nope. Six-forty isn’t morning. Crawl in here with me. I’ll prove it.”

“Tempting.” More so when he tugged her head down again and improved, considerably, on her casual wake-up kiss. “Very tempting,” she said. “But some of the crew should be pulling up in about twenty minutes.”

“I can get it done in twenty minutes.” He winced. “That probably didn’t translate to my advantage.”

“Have coffee.” She held out the mug, waved it slowly under his nose.

“You brought me coffee?” He sat up, took the first sip. “Now you have to marry me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and bear me eight young, dance naked for my pleasure every Tuesday and wake me with coffee—that’s after the sex—every morning. It’s the law of Kroblat.”

“Who’s Kroblat?”

“Not who. The planet Kroblat. It’s a very spiritual place,” he decided on the spot. “I try to live my life by its laws. So, we’ll have to get married and all the rest.”

“We’ll get on that, first chance.” She brushed her hand over his hair. “Thanks for staying.”

“Hey, I got coffee, a wife and eight kids out of it. You checked on Steve?”

“No change. I’m going to go see him. Maybe I can bitch-talk him awake, you know?”

“Maybe. Give me ten minutes, I’ll drive you.”

“No. No, I’m fine. I’m going to sit with him awhile, nag him awhile. Then I’m going to pick up some supplies and materials, drop them back here. I’ll be back and forth a lot today. Let me ask you something. If I made a bargain with myself—or with God, fate. Whatever. And it was that I’d paint the barn red, red with white trim if Steve comes out of this okay, would I be jinxing it if I bought the paint before . . . before he comes out of it?”

“No. In fact, it shows faith.”

She shook her head. “I knew you’d say that. I’m just the opposite. Too scared to buy the damn paint.” She pushed to her feet. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll be by the hospital.”

She stopped at the door, hesitated, then turned back to look at him. “I can pick up dinner for tonight, if you want.”

“That’d be great.”

“I really want to sleep with you.” She smiled when he nearly bobbled the coffee and when Spock’s tiny ears perked. What a pair they were. “I really want to know what it’s like, to just let go. But I guess it’s like buying the paint, for now.”

He kept his gaze on hers, and smiled. Slowly. “I’ve got time. For later.”

Ford sat where he was, drinking coffee and making a mental note to write down that stuff about Kroblat. It could come in useful sometime, somewhere.

He felt pretty damn good for a man who’d slept on the floor, he decided. And one who’d had some trouble not thinking about the woman sleeping on the floor in the next room.

Now, since he was up at this ungodly hour, he’d drag his ass across the road, get in a workout, check on Steve, get a couple solid hours in on the novel, then drop by the hospital.

“You get your lazy ass up, too,” he said to Spock, and juggled the dog fully awake with his foot. He heard the first truck pull up as he pulled on his pants. By the time he was dressed and pouring a second cup of coffee, with Spock doing what Spock had to do in the backyard, the noise and activity level hit the red zone. Deciding he’d just borrow the mug and bring it back later, Ford headed outside with the coffee.

He saw Brian directing one of his men toward the back of the house with what looked like a load of sand. Ford shot up a wave. “Hey, Bri.”

“Well, hey.” With his thumbs in his front pockets, Brian strolled over and shot a meaningful look toward the house. “And hey.”

“Nah. Separate rooms. I didn’t want her to be alone.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Seems steadier this morning. She’s already on her way to see Steve.”

“Shanna called the hospital. No change yet. It’s the damnedest thing. Hell of a nice guy.”

“Yeah.” Ford looked over at the barn. “How much paint do you figure it’d take to do that barn?”

“Hell if I know. Ask a painter.”

“Right.” He glanced over as another car pulled up. “This place is a madhouse half the time. I’m going home.”

“Cops.” Brian jerked his chin. “Cops’re back. I hope to hell they don’t want to talk to Shanna again. It gets her going.”

“I’ll see if I can take it.”

Neither of the men who stepped out of the Crown Vic were the cop—Taney, Ford remembered—they’d talked to the day before. Neither of them wore a uniform, and instead sported suits and ties. Detectives, he assumed.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

The taller of the two, with snow-salted gray hair and prominent jowls, gave Ford a curt nod. The second, small, lean and black, eyed him coolly.

And both, he noted, stared down at the dog that stared up at them.

“Cilla—Miss McGowan’s—not home,” Ford began. “She left for the hospital about fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”

Tall White Guy studied him. “And you’d be?”

“Sawyer. Ford Sawyer. I live across the road. I spoke with Officer Taney yesterday.”

“You live across the road, but you stayed here last night. With Miss McGowan.”

Ford sipped his coffee, met Short Black Guy’s eyes while Spock grumbled. “Is that a statement or a question?”

“Your hair’s still wet from the shower.”

“So it is.” Ford offered an easy smile, then sipped his coffee.

Tall White Guy took out a notebook, flipped pages. “Can you tell us where you were night before last, between two and five A.M.?”

“Sure. Would you mind doing the ID thing? It’s not just for TV.”

“Detective Urick, and my partner, Detective Wilson,” Tall White Guy said as they both produced their badges.

“Okay. I was in bed—over there—from about one A.M. until I heard the sirens yesterday morning.”

“Have company?”

“Yeah, Spock.” He gestured at the dog. “You could take a statement from him, but I’d have to translate so it probably wouldn’t work. Look, I get you have to check out everything and everyone, but the fact is somebody was out here a few nights before. I saw somebody skulking around with a flashlight.”

“We got that.” Urick nodded. “You’re the only one who claims to have seen anything. What’s your relationship with Miss McGowan?”

Ford beamed an exaggerated country-rube grin. “Friends and neighbors.”

“We have the impression, from other sources, that your relationship is more than friendly.”

“Not yet.”

“But you’d like it to be.”

As Ford blew out a breath, Spock began to circle the cops. He wouldn’t bite, but Ford knew if irritated enough, Spock would sure as hell lift his leg and express his opinion.

Bad idea—probably.

“Spock, say hello. Sorry, he’s feeling a little irritated and ignored. If you’d take a minute and shake, he’ll settle.”

Wilson crouched, took the paw. “How’s it going? Damnedest-looking dog I ever saw.”

“Got some bull terrier in there,” Urick commented, and leaned down to shake.

“Yeah, at least that’s what I’ve been told. Okay, back to would I like it to be more than friends and neighbors. Have you seen Cilla? Met her? If so, you’d know I’d have to be stupid not to like it to be. What does that have to do with Steve?”

Urick gave Spock an absent scratch before straightening. “Miss McGowan’s ex-husband, staying with her. Three’s a crowd.”

“Again, only if you’re stupid. But you’ve made it clear that none of what happened was an accident.” Ford turned, studied the barn. “Somebody was in there, and whoever it was fractured Steve’s skull and left him there. Just left him there.”

The thought of that, just the thought of that stirred the rage he’d managed to hold still and quiet. “Son of a bitch. What the hell were they looking for?”

“Why do you think someone was looking for anything?” Urick demanded.

Ford’s eyes were cold green ice when he turned back. “Give me a fucking break. Not some scavenger, either, not some asshole poking around trying to score a pair of Janet Hardy’s shoes to sell on eBay. That doesn’t follow.”

“You’ve given this some thought.”

“I think a lot. Listen, look at me as long as you want, as hard as you want. If you’ve got more questions, I’ll be around.”

“We’ll find you, if and when,” Wilson called out.

No doubt about it, Ford thought as he headed for home with his dog.

TWELVE

He wanted to get into the barn, and Ford figured if he tried it, it would add a few more layers to the suspect cake the cops were baking for him.

He was a suspect. It was actually kind of cool.

God, once a nerd always a nerd, he thought as he went through a series of lats and flys.

Once he’d worked up a sweat and an appetite, he checked in with the hospital, downed some cereal. Showered, shaved, dressed, he stepped into his office, up to his workstation.

He closed his eyes, held up his hands and said, “Draco braz minto.”

The childhood ritual put everything outside the work, and Ford into it. He sat, picked up his tools and began to draw the first panel for Brid.

CILLA HAD her chair angled toward the bed so she could look directly into Steve’s face as she spoke. And she spoke, keeping up a constant one-sided conversation, as if any appreciable stretch of silence could be deadly.

“So it’s moving. Clicking along better than I anticipated, even with the changes and additions I made to the original plans. The attic space shows real promise. Later on, I’m going to go pick out the flooring for up there, and the fixtures and tiles for that bath, and the master. We’ll be able to have a beer out on the patio, soon as you’re ready. What I need is pots. A couple of big-ass pots. Monsters. Oh, and I’m going to plant tomatoes. I think it’s about the right time to do that. And, like, peppers, maybe carrots and beans. I should wait until next year when the house is done, but I think I could scratch out a square for a little garden now. Then—”

“Miss McGowan.”

Cilla took a breath. When it hurt her chest to draw it in, it told her she’d been pushing too hard. “Yes.” What was the nurse’s name, the nurse with the curly blond hair and warm brown eyes? “Dee. It’s Cilla.”

“Cilla. The police are out there. A couple of detectives. They asked to speak to you.”

“Oh. Sure. Just a sec. I’ve got to do this thing,” she told Steve. “I’ll be back.”

Spotting the cops was the easiest thing she’d done all day, Cilla thought. She stepped up to them. “I’m Cilla McGowan.”

“Detective Wilson. My partner, Detective Urick. Is there somewhere we could talk?”

“There’s a little waiting room down here. They’ve got something they call coffee. You’re looking into what happened to Steve now,” she said as she led the way.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you know he didn’t trip over his own feet, bash himself in the head and fall under his own bike.” She hit the coffeepot, added powdered creamer. “Do you know what did happen?”

“We’re looking into it,” Urick said. “Do you know anyone who’d wish Mr. Chensky harm?”

“No. He’s only been here a few days. Steve makes friends, not enemies.”

“You were married.”

“That’s right.”

“No hard feelings?” Wilson prompted.

“None. We were friends before we got married. We’ve stayed friends.”

“He’s living with you.”

“No, he’s visiting me, and giving me a hand for a couple of weeks on the house. I’m rehabbing the house. He’s in the business.”

“Rock the House,” Urick commented. “I’ve caught the show.”

“Best there is. You want to know if we’re sleeping together. No. We have, but we’re not.”

Wilson pursed his lips, nodded. “Your neighbor, Mr. Sawyer, states that he saw a prowler on your property a few nights ago.”

“Yeah, the night Steve got in. Steve heard something outside.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, I sleep like a rock. But Steve woke me up, said he heard something. I brushed it off.” The guilt wormed its way back. “Then Ford mentioned the flashlight he’d seen. I was supposed to get a padlock for the barn, and I let it slip by.”

“We noticed you seem to be using the barn to store things. Boxes, furniture . . .”

“Junk,” Cilla finished, and nodded at Urick. “I brought it down from the attic. I’m having the attic finished off and needed to clear it out. I’ve been sorting, but it’s a big job. I thought I’d separated what struck me as potentially valuable, but it’s hard to tell on a couple of passes.”

“You didn’t notice anything missing?”

“Not at this point.”

“Some of the boxes were crushed, the furniture knocked over.” Wilson gestured. “It looked, possibly, as if Mr. Chensky drove his bike into the barn, lost control, went down.”

“That’s not what happened. You know he wasn’t drunk or stoned.”

“His alcohol level was well under the legal limit,” Urick agreed. “There were no drugs in his system.”

Inside her chest, her heart began a tripping beat. “A sober man, and one who’s straddled a Harley for about a dozen years, doesn’t get off the bike, open the door, get back on the bike and yee-haw drive in over a bunch of boxes and furniture.”

“The X-rays indicate Mr. Chensky was struck at the base of the skull. Probably a crowbar or tire iron.”

Cilla pressed her hand to her heart as it tightened to a fist. “Oh, God.”

“The force of the blow pitched him forward, dropped him so that he hit the concrete floor, which caused the second fracture. Our reconstruction indicates the Harley was rolled to where Mr. Chensky lay, then pushed over on top of him, breaking two of his ribs and bruising his kidney.”

Urick waited, watched as Cilla set her coffee down, as her hand trembled. Her color went from pale to ghostly. “Now, let me ask you again. Do you know anyone who’d wish Mr. Chensky harm?”

“No. No, I don’t know anyone who’d want to hurt him. Who’d do something like that to him.”

“How did Sawyer get along with him?”

“Ford?” For a moment she went blank. “Fine. They hit it off. Big-time. Steve’s a fan. He’s even got . . . Oh, for God’s sake.”

Understanding, Cilla pressed her fingers to her eyes, then dragged them back through her hair. “Okay, follow the dots, please. I am not and was not sleeping with Steve. I am not and was not sleeping with Ford, though that is on the table. Ford did not attack Steve in a jealous rage, as I don’t think he has a lot of rage in the first place and, more importantly, he knew there was nothing to be jealous about. I was up front with him regarding my relationship with Steve, and in fact was out with Ford the night Steve got hurt. The night both myself And Ford knew Steve had gone out to sniff around Shanna Stiles. There’s no romantic or sexual triangle here. This isn’t about sex.”

“Miss McGowan, it looks as though someone was in your barn, and may have been lying in wait. You and Sawyer knew Mr. Chensky had gone out for the evening, and that he stored his motorcycle in the barn.”

“That’s right, that’s absolutely right, Detective Wilson. Just like we both knew he’d gone out to try to score with a very attractive brunette. Neither of us could know if he’d get lucky or bomb out. So you’re suggesting that after spending the evening with me, Ford snuck back, hid out in my barn, just in case Steve came back. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Shock, anger, guilt, annoyance all drained into sheer misery. “None of this makes any sense.”

“We’d like you to go through the items you have stored in the barn, see if anything’s been disturbed or taken.”

“All right.”

“Your grandmother left a deep mark,” Wilson continued. “I’d guess most people figured anything of hers in that house was taken away a long time ago. Word gets out, as word will, there’s still some things around, someone might be interested enough to break into a barn.”

“And fracture a man’s skull. Yeah. The thing is? Most of what’s in the barn is from the McGowans. The ordinary side of the family.”

She went back to Steve, but this time sat in silence.

When she left, walked to the elevator, she saw her father get off the car. “Dad.”

“Cilla.” He strode quickly toward her, took her shoulders. “How is he?”

“The same, I guess. He’s critical. He came through the surgery, and that’s a plus, but . . . A lot of buts and ifs and maybes.”

“I’m so sorry.” He pulled her tight for a moment. “I know I only met him a couple of times, but I liked him. What can I do?”

“I just don’t know.”

“Let me take you downstairs, get some food in you.”

“No, actually, I’m just leaving for a while. I have some errands.” To get out, to do, to stop thinking for just a couple of hours. “Maybe . . . Do you think you could go in and sit with him for a little bit? Talk to him? He liked you, too.”

“Sure, I will.”

“And when you leave? Remind him that I’ll be back later. I’ll be back.”

“All right.”

Nodding, she pressed for the elevator, hitched her bag on her shoulder. “I appreciate . . . I really appreciate you coming. You barely know him. Hell, you barely know me.”

“Cilla—”

“But you came.” She stepped into the elevator, turned, met her father’s eyes. “You came. It means a lot,” she said as the doors closed between them.

WORK. WORK GOT HER THROUGH the day. And the next day. She was better at work, she thought, than at sentiment, at expressing emotions—unless they were scripted. She made her schedule, and stuck to it. So many hours on the house, on the landscaping, so many at the hospital, so many in the barn.

That left her so many hours to fall on her air mattress and clock out.

So far, she thought, so good.

Except Steve’s mother had jumped down off her broomstick and thrown the schedule into the Dumpster. So, more time for work, Cilla told herself. More time to get things done.

She picked up a pole lamp, scowled at the six funnel-shaped shades running down the spotted brass rod. “What were they smoking when they bought this?”

On impulse, she took a few running steps and launched it at the open barn doors like a javelin. Then yipped when Ford stepped into view. He jumped back so the lamp whizzed by his face with a few layers of dust to spare.

“Jesus Christ!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”

“Shouldn’t you yell ‘fore,’ or something?” he demanded. “How the hell would I have explained that one? Yes, Doctor, I’ve been impaled through the brain by perhaps the ugliest pole lamp in the history of pole lamps.”

“I don’t think it would’ve impaled. More dented. Anyway, it offended my eye.”

“Yeah, mine too. Almost literally. What are you doing back here? It’s early for you,” he added when she frowned at him. “I saw your car. I thought maybe . . .”

“No. Nothing new. Except Steve’s mother’s there.”

“Yeah. I ran into her this morning for a minute.” He dipped his hands into his pockets, hunched a little. “She’s scary.”

“She hates me. For marrying Steve, for divorcing him. She doesn’t actually like Steve all that much, but me? She hates. So I cleared the field. Deserted, actually. I don’t do well with mothers.”

“You do okay with your stepmom. She sent over that nice casserole last night.”

“Tuna noodle. I’m not sure that’s a sign of affection.”

“It is, take my word.” He stepped through and around some of the mess to get to her, to touch her cheek. “You’re working too hard, beautiful blond girl.”

“I’m not.” She pulled away, kicked at one of the boxes. “The cops want me to go through this stuff, to see if anything’s missing.”

“Yeah. I think I’ve been bumped down the suspect list, which is oddly disappointing. Tall White Guy asked me to sign a copy of The Seeker: Indestructible for his grandson.”

“Tall . . . oh, Urick. I told them it wasn’t about you or Steve or me. But what the hell is here? What’s here somebody would want so damn bad? It’s junk. It’s trash. It should be tossed, all of it. I’m tossing it,” she decided in an instant. “Help me toss it.”

He grabbed her, pulled her back up as she started to drag up a box. “No. You don’t toss when you’re churned up. And you know that what someone might have wanted isn’t here. Because you already found it and put it somewhere else.”

“The letters.”

“That’s right. Did you tell the cops about the letters?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Partly because all I could really think about at first was Steve. And what would they do with the letters? Thirty-five-year-old letters, unsigned, no return address.”

“Fingerprints, DNA. Don’t you watch CSI?”

“Fact, fantasy. And it’ll leak. It always leaks, that is a fact. Letters from a lover, days before her death. Was it suicide? Was it murder? Was she carrying a love child? All the speculation, the print, the airtime, the reporters, the obsessed fans, it all pumps up. Any chance I had here, at peace, at a life, pretty much goes up in flames.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to live like that, in the crosshairs of the camera lens. I want this to be my home.” She heard the edge of desperation in her own voice but couldn’t dull it. “I wanted to bring something back from her, and for her. But I wanted it to be mine at the end of the day.”

“You don’t want to know who wrote those letters?”

“Yes, I do. I do. But I don’t want to ruin his life, Ford, or his children’s lives because he had an affair, because he broke off the affair. Even if he was cruel about it. There has to be a statute of limitations. Thirty years should cover it.”

“Agreed.”

He said nothing more, just watched her, looked into her eyes until she closed them.

“How could anyone prove it?” she demanded. “If, if, if she didn’t kill herself. If, if, if some of the conspiracy theories have been close to true and someone—this someone—made her take the pills, or slipped them to her. How could we prove it?”

“I don’t know, but the first step would be asking the right people the right questions.”

“I don’t know the people or the questions, and I can’t think about this. Not now. I need to get through today, then get through tomorrow. I need—”

She threw herself against him, locking her arms around his neck while her mouth latched on to his. He wasn’t prepared for the eruption, the bursts of desperation and appetite. Who could have been? With quick, catchy gasps, low, sexy moans, she devoured. She hooked one of those long, long legs around him, sank her teeth into his bottom lip, tugged. And he went instantly, helplessly, hard as stone.

She rubbed her body against his until he could literally feel the blood draining out of his head and heading south. “Lock the door.” Her lips moved to his ear, parted on a breathless whisper. “Lock the door.”

He quivered, felt the shock of need ram into him—head, belly, loins—like fists. “Wait.” Even as he said it his mouth collided with hers again for one more greedy gulp. But he managed to order himself to pull back, to get his hands on her shoulders to peel her away, a couple of inches.

“Wait,” he repeated, and momentarily forgot his train of thought as those brilliant blue eyes burned into his.

“No. Now.”

“Cilla. Whoa. Jeez. I can pretty much feel myself growing breasts as I say this.”

She took his hands, pulled them down, pressed. “Those are mine.”

“Yeah.” Soft, firm. “They are.” And with considerable regret, and what he considered heroic restraint, he put his hands back on her shoulders. “Where was I? I meant to say, even at the risk of sounding like a girl, this isn’t right.”

She slid her hand over his crotch. “Then what’s this?”

“The penis has a mind of its own. And boy, oh boy,” he managed as he took her wandering hand and yanked it up. “I should get an award for this. A monument. Let’s just step back.”

“Step back?” Shock and insult leaped out with the words. “Why? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“The penis is asking those exact questions. But the thing is . . . wait,” he ordered, taking a firm hold of her arms when she started to jerk away. “The thing is, Cilla, you don’t toss stuff out when you’re churned up. Just like when you’re churned up, you don’t . . . lock the barn door.”

“It’s just sex.”

“Maybe. Maybe. But when it happens? It’s going to be just you and me. Just you.” He tested his willpower by leaning down and taking her mouth in a slow, soft kiss. “Just me. No Steve or Steve’s mom, no Janet Hardy, no letters. Just us, Cilla. I want lots of alone with you.”

She let out a sigh, gave one of the boxes a halfhearted kick. “How am I supposed to feel pissed off and rejected after that?” Hooking her thumbs in her pockets, she lowered her gaze deliberately to his crotch. “Looks like that’s still doing a lot of thinking. What are you going to do about it?”

“I just need to get a picture of Maylene Gunner in my head.”

“Maylene Gunner.”

“Maylene was mean as a snake, big as a battleship and ugly as homemade sin. She beat the living snot out of me when I was eight.”

No, she couldn’t possibly stay pissed off. “Why would Maylene do that?”

“Because I had drawn a very unflattering portrait of her. I didn’t possess the talent to draw a flattering one. Da Vinci didn’t possess that much talent. I drew her as a kind of Good-year Blimp, soaring and farting. Very colorful. Little people on the ground clutching themselves or lying sprawled and unconscious, running for cover.”

“Cruel,” Cilla said as her lips twitched.

“I was eight. In any case, she got wind—so to speak—and ambushed me and proceeded to pound me to dust. So when I need to, I just picture that Jupiter-sized face, and . . .” He glanced down, smiled. “There we go. Retired from the field.”

Cilla studied him a moment. “You’re a very strange man, Ford. Yet oddly appealing. Like your dog.”

“Don’t get me started again. Even Maylene Gunner has only so much power. Why don’t I give you a hand here, then we’ll go see Steve together. Between the two of us, we can take his mama.”

Yes, she thought, a very strange and appealing man. “Okay. You can start by taking what’s left of that pole lamp out there to the Dumpster.”

SHE GOT THROUGH THE DAY, got through the night. And Cilla geared herself up for her second visit of the day, and second confrontation with Steve’s mother. Pacing in front of the hospital entrance, she gave herself a pep talk.

It wasn’t about her, wasn’t about old business, grudges, one-upmanship. It wasn’t about tossing a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

It was about Steve.

She bounced her shoulders to loosen them like a boxer before a bout, and stepped toward the doors as someone called her name.

Relief at the temporary interruption might have been cowardly, but she’d take what she could get. Turning, she smiled at Cathy and Tom Morrow.

Cathy reached out to rub a hand along Cilla’s arm. “How’s your friend?”

“The same. Pretty much the same. I want to thank you again for your help when Steve was in surgery.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was a lot to me. Are you volunteering today?”

“Actually, we’re here to see our goddaughter. She had a baby.”

“That’s nice. Well . . .” Cilla looked back toward the doors.

“Would you like me to go up with you first?” Cathy offered.

“No, no, I’m fine. It’s just . . . Steve’s mother’s probably up there. She harbors extreme dislike for me. It makes it pretty tight in that room with both of us in there.”

“I can fix that.” Cathy held up a finger. “Why don’t I go up, lure her away for fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“How?”

“Volunteer mode. I’ll buy her a cup of coffee, lend a shoulder. It’ll give her a break and give you a few minutes alone with your friend.”

“She can do it,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “Nobody resists Cathy.”

“I’d be so grateful.”

“Nothing to it. Tom, keep Cilla company for a few minutes. Five should do it.” With a cheery wave, Cathy strode into the hospital.

“She’s great.”

“Best there is,” Tom agreed. “Let’s sit down over here, give her that head start. I was sorry to hear about your friend.”

“Thank you.” Three days, she thought. Three days in a coma.

“Do the police have any idea how it happened?”

“Not really. I guess we’re all hoping Steve can tell us if . . . when,” she corrected, “he wakes up.”

She caught a glimpse of a white van crossing the parking lot and, with a shudder, looked away.

“I hope that’s soon.” Tom gave her hand an encouraging pat. “How’s Brian doing on your place?”

“It’s shaping up. He does good work. You must be proud of him.”

“Every day. It’s an ambitious project you’ve taken on. The grounds, the house. A lot of time, money and sweat. Word gets around,” he added.

“It’ll be worth it. You should drop by sometime, look at the progress.”

“I was hoping you’d ask.” He winked at her.

“Anytime, Mr. Morrow.”

“Tom.”

“Anytime,” Cilla repeated, and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to sneak up, see if Cathy had any success.”

“You can take it to the bank. I’ll say a prayer for your friend.”

“Thanks.”

And this, Cilla thought as she crossed the lobby to the elevators, was the reason to make this home. People like the Morrows, and like Dee and Vicki and Mike, the ICU nurses she saw every day. People who cared, who took time.

People like Ford.

Hell, even people like cranky, dyspeptic Buddy.

She stepped off the elevator and spotted Mike at the nurses’ station. “How’s he doing?”

“Holding steady. Kidney functions are normal. That’s an improvement.”

“Yeah, it is. Is anyone with him?”

Mike wiggled his eyebrows. “Mrs. Morrow breezed in and took Mrs. Chensky down for coffee. You got a clear road.”

“Hallelujah.”

Bruises still covered his face, but they were turning yellow at the edges. Thick stubble masked his jawline and pricked her when she leaned over to kiss him. “I’m back. It’s hot out this afternoon. Strip-it-off weather.”

She tuned out the machines, started to turn to the window to describe the view for him before she relayed construction progress. And she saw the sketch taped to the glass wall.

“What have we got here? Con the Immortal?” She glanced back at Steve. “Did you see this? Striking resemblance.”

Ford had drawn it. Cilla didn’t need to see the signature looped in the bottom corner to know it. Steve stood, wearing what she supposed was a loincloth, with thick black straps crossing over his chest, and knee boots. His hair flew out as if in a strong wind, and his face was set in a fierce, fuck-you grin. His hands rested on the hilt of a sword, with its point planted between his spread feet.

“Big sword, obvious symbolism. You’d love that. And the biceps bulging over the armbands, the tats, the necklace of fangs. Con the Immortal. He’s got you pegged, doesn’t he?”

Tears rose hot in her throat, were ruthlessly swallowed down. “You’ve really got to see this, okay?” She crossed back to take Steve’s hand. “You’ve got to wake up and see this. It’s been long enough now, Steve, I mean it. Goddamn it. This bullshit’s gone on long enough, so stop screwing around and . . . oh God.”

Had his hand moved? Had it moved in hers or had she imagined it? She let her breath out slowly, stared down at the fingers she held in hers. “Don’t make me yell at you again. You know if I cut loose I can out-bitch your mother. Who’s going to come back here pretty soon, so . . .”

The fingers twitched, curled. The lightest of pressure on hers.

“Okay, okay, stay there, don’t go anywhere.” She reached for the call button, held her finger down on it. “Steve, come on, Steve, do it again.” She lifted his hand, pressed her lips to it. Then, narrowing her eyes, bit. And laughed when his fingers twitched and curled again.

“He squeezed my hand,” she called out as Mike came in. “He squeezed it twice. Is he waking up? Is he?”

“Talk to him.” Mike moved to the side of the bed, lifted one of Mike’s eyelids. “Let him hear your voice.”

“Come on, Steve. It’s Cill. Wake up, you lazy bastard. I’ve got better things to do than stand around here and watch you sleep.”

On the other side of the bed, Mike checked pulse, pupils, BP. Then pinched Steve hard on the forearm. The arm jerked.

“He felt that. He moved. Steve, you’re killing me. Open your eyes.” Cilla grabbed his face, put her nose nearly to his. “Open your eyes.”

They fluttered, and she felt another flutter on her chin. More than his breath, she realized. A word.

“What? What? Say it again.”

She leaned down, her ear at his lips. She caught his slow, indrawn breath, and heard the hoarse, raw whisper of a single word. He said, “Shit.”

Cilla let out a sob that choked into a laugh. “Shit. He said shit!”

“Can’t blame him.” Quickly, Mike strode to the door to signal another nurse. “Page Dr. North. His patient’s waking up.”

“Can you see me?” Cilla demanded when his eyes opened. “Steve? Can you see me?”

He let out a weary sigh. “Hi, doll.”

SHE SPOKE to the doctor, even managed to smile genuinely at Steve’s mother before she locked herself in a bathroom stall for a jag of weeping relief. After she’d washed her face, slapped on makeup and sunglasses to hide the damage, she went back to the nurses’ station.

“He’s sleeping,” Mike told her. “Natural sleep. He’s weak, and he’s still got a lot of healing to do. You should go home, Cilla. Get a good night’s sleep yourself.”

“I will. If he asks for me—”

“We’ll call you.”

For the first time Cilla stepped into the elevator with an easy heart. As she crossed the lobby, she pulled out her phone and called Ford.

“Hey, beautiful blond girl.”

“He woke up.” She moved down the sidewalk toward the parking lot with a bounce in every step. “He woke up, Ford. He talked to me.”

“What’d he say?”

“‘Shit’ came first.”

“As it should.”

“He knew me, his name and all that. His left side’s a little weaker than his right, just now. But the doctor says he’s looking good. They have to do tests, and—”

“Looking good works. Do you want me to come by, bring you some dinner?”

“No, I’m heading home now. He’s sleeping. Just sleeping. I wanted to tell you. I just wanted to say that I saw your sketch, and I was teasing him about it right before . . . I think it might have done the trick.”

“Nothing stops Con the Immortal for long.”

“You are so—Oh God! Son of a bitch!”

“What? What was that?”

She stared down at the door of her truck. “I’ll be home in a few minutes. I’ll come by.”

She clicked off before Ford could respond. And read what someone had written on the driver’s-side door in black marker.

WHORES BEGET WHORES!

THIRTEEN

Ford watched Cilla take digitals of the pickup’s door. His rage wanted to bubble up, but he couldn’t figure out what he’d do with it if he spewed.

Kick the tires? Punch a couple of trees? Stalk around and froth at the mouth? None of the options seemed particularly helpful or satisfying. Instead he stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, and the rage at a low, simmering boil.

“The cops’ll take pictures,” he pointed out.

“I want my own. Besides, I don’t think Wilson and Urick are going to make this a priority.”

“It could be connected. They’ll be here in the morning.”

She shrugged, then turned the camera off, stuck it in her pocket. “That’s not coming off. The sun baked that marker on so it might as well be paint. I’ll have to have the whole damn door done. I haven’t had this truck three months.”

While he watched, she kicked a tire. He decided he’d been right. She didn’t look satisfied. “You can use my car until it’s fixed.”

“I’ll drive this.” Both the defiance and the temper glared out of her eyes. “I know I’m not a whore. I saw Hennessy’s van in the parking lot before I went in to visit Steve. He could’ve done this. He could’ve hurt Steve. He’s capable.”

“Did Steve say anything about it?”

“We didn’t ask him. He was still so weak and disoriented. Probably tomorrow, the doctor said. He’d be up to talking to the police tomorrow. Damn it!”

She stalked for a few minutes but, he noted, didn’t froth at the mouth or punch a tree. Then she stopped, heaved out a breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m not going to let some asshole spoil this really excellent day. Does the liquor store in town have any champagne in stock?”

“Couldn’t say. But I do.”

“How come you have everything?”

“I was a Boy Scout. Seriously,” he said when she laughed. “I have the merit badges to prove it.” She was right, he decided, no asshole should be allowed to spoil an excellent day. “How about we heat up a frozen pizza and pop the cork?”

From his perch on the veranda, Spock leaped up and danced.

“Sounds good to me, too.” As she moved in to kiss him, a horn beeped cheerfully.

“Well,” Ford said when a Mustang convertible in fire-engine red pulled in behind Cilla’s car, and Spock tore down the steps to spin in delirious circles, “it had to happen sometime.”

The vivid color of the car had nothing on the windswept red mop of the woman who waved from the passenger seat, who tipped down her big, Jackie O sunglasses to peer at Cilla over the top as she stepped out onto peep-toe wedges to greet the bouncing, spinning dog.

The driver unfolded himself. It was the height and the build that alerted Cilla, even before she got a good look at the shape of the jaw.

Her palms automatically went damp. This was definitely meet-the-parents. An audition she invariably failed.

“Hello, my cutie-pie!” Penny Sawyer clamped her hands on Ford’s cheeks once he’d walked down the slope to her. She kissed him noisily. Her laugh was like gravel soaked in whiskey.

“Hey, Mama. Daddy.” He got a one-armed bear hug from the man with hair of Cary Grant silver. “What are y’all doing?”

“Heading out to Susie and Bill’s. Texas Hold ’Em tournament.” Penny poked Ford in the chest while Ford’s father squatted to shake hands with Spock. “We had to drive right by, so we stopped in case you wanted in.”

“I always lose at poker.”

“You don’t have gambling blood.” Penny turned her avid eyes on Cilla. “But you do have company. You don’t have to tell me who this is. You look just like your grandmama.” Penny moved forward, hands outstretched. “The most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

“Thank you.” Left with no choice, Cilla wiped her hands hurriedly on her pants before taking Penny’s. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Cilla McGowan, my parents, Penny and Rod Sawyer.”

“I know your daddy very well.” Penny shot a sly glance at her husband.

“Now you cut that out,” Rod told her. “Always trying to make me jealous. Heard a lot of good things about you,” he said to Cilla.

“Heard hardly a syllable out of this one.” Penny poked Ford again.

“I am the soul of discretion.”

Penny let out her quick, rumbling laugh again, then dug into her purse. She pulled out an enormous Milk Bone that sent Spock into a medley of happy growls, grunts and groans while his body quivered and his bulging eyes shone.

“Be a man,” she said to the dog, and Spock rose up on his hind legs to dance in place. “That’s my sweetheart,” she crooned and held the biscuit out. Spock nipped it and, with a full-body wag, ran off to chomp and chew. “I have to spoil him,” she said to Cilla. “He’s the closest thing resembling a grandchild I’ve gotten out of this one.”

“You have two of the human variety from Alice,” Ford reminded her.

“And they get cookies when they visit.” She gestured to the house across the road. “It’s a good thing you’re doing, bringing that place back to life. It deserves it. Your grandfather’s going to be at the game tonight, Ford. My daddy was madly in love with your grandmother.”

Cilla blinked. “Is that so?”

“Head over. He has scores of pictures she let him take over the years. He wouldn’t sell them for any price, even when I had a notion to frame a few and display them at the bookstore.”

“Mama owns Book Ends in the Village,” Ford told Cilla.

“Really? I’ve been there. I bought some landscaping and design books from you. It’s a nice store.”

“Our little hole in the wall,” Penny said. “Oh now, look, we’re going to be late. Why do you let me talk so much, Rod?”

“I have no idea.”

“Y’all change your mind about the game, we’ll make sure you get a seat at a table. Cilla, they’d just love to have you, too,” Penny called out as Rod pulled her down to the car. “I’m going to have Daddy bring those pictures over for you to look at.”

“Thank you. Nice to meet you.”

“Ford! You bring Cilla over for dinner sometime.”

“In the car, Penny.”

“I’m getting, I’m getting. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ford called back. “Win a bundle.”

“I’m feeling lucky!” Penny shouted as Rod zipped into reverse, then zoomed on down the road.

Cilla said, “Wow.”

“I know. It’s like being lightly brushed by the edge of a hurricane. Leaves you a little surprised and dazed, and sure that much more and you’d be flat on your ass.”

“You look a lot like your father, who is very handsome, by the way. But your mother? She’s dazzling.”

“She is, as her own father likes to say, a corker.”

“Corker.” Cilla laughed as they walked into the house. With a polite burp, Spock trotted in with them. “Well, I like her, and I tend to eye mothers suspiciously. Speaking of corks. Where’s the champagne?”

“Spare fridge, mudroom.”

“I’ll get that, you get the pizza.”

Moments later, she came back into the kitchen with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a puzzled frown. “Ford, what are you doing with all that paint?”

“The what?” He looked over from setting the oven. “Oh that. There’s a zillion gallons of primer, a zillion of exterior red, and a slightly lesser amount of exterior white, for trim.”

As her heart did a slow somersault, she set the bottle on the counter. “You bought the barn paint.”

“I don’t believe in jinxes. I do believe in positive thinking, which is just really hope anyway.”

Everything inside her shifted, settled. Opened. She stepped to him, laid a hand on his cheek, laid her lips on his. Warm as velvet, tender as a wish, the kiss flowed. Even when he shifted so she pressed back against the counter, it stayed slow and silky, deep and dreamy.

When their lips parted, she sighed, then rested her cheek against his in a gesture of simple affection she gave to very few. “Ford.” She drew back, sighed again. “My head’s too full of Steve to meet your requirements for sex tonight.”

“Ah. Well.” He trailed a fingertip up her arm. “Realistically, they’re more loose guidelines than strict requirements.”

She laughed, caressed his cheek once more. “They’re good requirements. I’d like to stick to them.”

“Got no one to blame but myself.” He stepped around her to slide the pizza into the oven.

“So we’ll eat bad pizza, get a little buzzed on champagne and not have sex.”

Ford shook his head as he removed the foil and the cage on the bottle. “Almost my favorite thing to do with a beautiful woman.”

“I don’t fall for guys. It’s a policy,” she said when he paused and glanced over at her. “Considering the influence of inherited traits—and the track record of my grandmother and mother in that area—I’ve taken a pass. Steve was an exception, and that just showed how it can go. So I don’t fall for guys. But I seem to be falling for you.”

The cork exploded out of the bottle as he stared at her. “Does that scare you?”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “A little. A moderate amount.”

“I thought it might because it’s got me jumpy. So I figured heads-up.”

“I appreciate it. Do you have, like, a definition for the term ‘fall for’?”

God, she thought as she looked at him. Oh my God, she was a goner. “Why don’t you get the glasses? I think we could both use a drink.”

SHE HIRED PAINTERS, and had some of the crew haul the paint to the barn. She talked to the cops, and made a deal with a local body shop to paint the door of her truck. Whenever she caught sight of the white van, she had no qualms about shooting up her middle finger.

No evidence, the cops said. Nothing to place Hennessy at the scene on the night Steve was attacked. No way to prove he decorated her truck with hate.

So she’d wait him out, Cilla decided. And if he made another move, she’d be ready.

Meanwhile, Steve had been bumped down to a regular room, and his mother had hopped back on her broomstick to head west.

Dripping sweat from working in the attic, Cilla stood studying the skeleton of the master bath. “It’s looking good, Buddy. It’s looking good for tomorrow’s inspection.”

“I don’t know why in God’s world anybody needs all these showerheads.”

“Body jets. It’s not just a shower, it’s an experience. Did you see the fixtures? They came in this morning.”

“I saw. They’re good-looking,” he said, grudgingly enough to make her smile.

“How are you coming with Mister Steam?”

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Don’t breathe down my neck.”

She made faces at his back. “Well, speaking of showers, I need one before I go in to see Steve.”

“Water’s turned off. You want this done, water’s got to stay off.”

“Right. Shit. I’ll grab one over at Ford’s.”

She didn’t miss the smirk he shot her, but opted to ignore it. She grabbed clean clothes, stuffed them in her purse. Downstairs, she had a few words with Dobby, answered a hail from the kitchen area, then spent another ten minutes outside discussing foundation plantings.

She dashed across the road before someone could catch her again, and decided to slip into the shower off the gym rather than disturb Ford.

It wasn’t until she was clean, dry and wrapped in a big white towel that she realized she’d left her purse—and the clothes in it—sitting on her front veranda.

“Oh, crap.”

She looked down at the sweaty, grungy clothes she’d stripped off and dragged a hand through her clean hair. “No, I am not crawling back into them.”

She’d have to disturb Ford after all. Bundling her underwear and baggy work shorts in her T-shirt, she tied it off and carried the bundle with her.

She opened the door to the kitchen, to a very surprised Ford.

“Oh, hi. Listen—”

“Ford, you didn’t tell us you had company.”

“I didn’t know I did. Hey, Cilla.”

Her expression went from slightly harried to mildly ill as she looked over and saw Ford’s mother sitting at the kitchen bar with an older man.

While she stood frozen, Spock dashed over to rub against her bare legs. “Oh God. Oh God. Just . . . God. I’m sorry. Excuse me.”

Ford grabbed her arm. “Back up like that, you’ll pitch right down the steps. You’ve met my mother. This is my grandfather, Charlie Quint.”

“Oh, well, hello. I apologize. I’m, well, what can I say? Ford, I didn’t want to interrupt you. I thought you’d be working. They had to turn the water off at my place for a while, so I ran over to use your shower downstairs—thanks for that. And then realized that when I was being distracted by varieties of spirea, I left my bag and my clothes sitting on the veranda. I came up to ask if you wouldn’t mind running over there and, you know, getting them. My clothes.”

“Sure.” He sniffed at her. “My soap smells better on you than on me.”

“Hah.”

“Cilla, I bet you’d like a nice glass of iced tea.” Penny rose to get a glass.

“Oh, don’t bother, I—”

“No bother. Ford, go on now, get this girl her clothes.”

“All right. But it’s kind of a shame. Isn’t it, Granddad?”

“Pretty legs on a pretty woman are easy on the eyes. Even old eyes. You look more like her in person than you do in pictures I’ve seen of you.”

How much more awkward could it be? Cilla wondered when Ford winked and slipped out. “You knew my grandmother.”

“I did. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her on the movie screen. She was just a little girl, and I was just a boy, and that was the sweetest kind of puppy love. You never forget your first.”

“No, I guess you don’t.”

“Here you go, honey. Why don’t you sit down?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.” She stared at the glass Penny offered and wondered how to take it as she had one hand holding the bundle of filthy clothes, and the other clutched on the towel.

“Oh, are those your dirty clothes? Just give those to me. I’ll toss them in Ford’s machine for you.”

“Oh, no, don’t—”

“It’s no trouble.” Penny pulled them away, pushed the cold glass into Cilla’s hand. “Daddy, why don’t you show Cilla the pictures? We were going to drop by to do just that,” Penny continued from the mudroom. “Just stopped to say hi to Ford first. My goodness! You must’ve worked up a storm today.”

Casting her eyes to the ceiling, Cilla moved closer to the counter as Charlie opened the photo album.

“These are wonderful!”

At the first look, she forgot she was wearing only a towel and edged closer. “I haven’t seen these before.”

“My personal collection,” he told her with a wistful smile. “This one here?” He tapped a finger under a picture. “That’s the first one I ever took of her.”

Janet sat on the steps of the veranda, leaning back, relaxed and smiling in rolled-up dungarees and a plaid shirt.

“She looks so happy. At home.”

“She’d been working with the gardeners—walking around with them, showing them where she wanted her roses and such. She got word I took pictures and asked if I’d come over, take some of the house and grounds as things were going on. And she let me take some of her. Here she is with the kids. That’d be your mother.”

“Yes.” Looking bright and happy, Cilla thought, alongside her doomed brother. “They’re all so beautiful, aren’t they? It almost hurts the eyes.”

“She shone. Yes, she did.”

Cilla paged through. Janet, looking golden and glorious astride a palomino, tumbling on the ground with her children, laughing and kicking her feet in the pond. Janet alone, Janet with others. At parties at the farm. With the famous, and the everyday.

“You never sold any of these?”

“That’s just money.” Charlie shrugged. “If I sold them, they wouldn’t be mine anymore. I gave her copies of ones she wanted, especially.”

“I think I might have seen a couple of these. My mother has boxes and boxes of photos. I’m not sure I’ve seen all of them. The camera loved her. Oh, this! It’s my favorite so far.”

Janet leaned in the open doorway of the farmhouse, head cocked, arms folded. She wore simple dark trousers and a white shirt. Her feet were bare, her hair loose. Flowers spilled out of pots on the veranda, and a puppy curled sleeping at the top of the steps.

“She bought the puppy from the Clintons.” Penny stepped beside her father, rested a hand on his shoulder. “Your step-mama’s people.”

“Yes, she told me.”

“Janet loved that dog,” Charlie murmured.

“You need to make copies for Cilla, Daddy. Family pictures are important.”

“I guess I could.”

“Granddad’s going to make copies for Cilla,” Penny announced as Ford walked in with Cilla’s bag. “He has the negatives.”

“I could scan them. If you’d trust me with them. Here you go.” Ford passed the bag to Cilla.

“Thanks.” Sensing Charlie’s hesitation, Cilla eased back. “They’re wonderful photographs. I’d love to look through the rest, but I have to get to the hospital. I’m just going to . . .” She held up the bag. “Downstairs.”

“You look more like her than your mother,” Charlie said when Cilla reached the door. “It’s in the eyes.”

And in his lived such sadness. Cilla said nothing, only slipped quickly downstairs.

CILLA DID a mental happy dance as the first tiles were laid in the new master bath. She glugged down water and executed imaginary high kicks through the first run of subway tiles in what would be her most fabulous steam shower.

The black-and-white design, retro cool Deco, added just the right zing.

Stan, the tile guy, glanced over his shoulder. “Cilla, you gotta get the AC up.”

“We’re working on it. By the end of the week, I promise.”

It had to be running by week’s end, she thought. Just as the bed she’d ordered had to be delivered. Steve couldn’t recuperate in a steamy house, in a sleeping bag.

She went back to framing in the closet in the master bedroom. In a couple of weeks, she thought, if everything stayed on schedule, she’d have two completed baths, the third, fourth and the powder room on the way. She’d be ready for Sheetrock up in her attic office suite, the replastering should be about wrapped. Then Dobby could start work on the ceiling medallions. Well, he could start once she’d settled on a design.

She ran through projections while she checked her level, adjusted, shot in nails.

And in a few weeks, she’d take the contractor’s exam. But she didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think if she didn’t make it, she’d have to ask one of her own subs for a job by the end of the year. If she didn’t make it, she couldn’t afford to buy that sweet little property down the road in the Village that she knew would make an excellent and profitable flip.

If she didn’t make it, it would be another failure. She really thought she was at her quota already.

Positive thinking, she reminded herself. That’s what Ford would say. No harm in trying.

“Gonna make it,” she stated aloud and stepped back from the framing with a nod of approval. “Gonna kick exam Ass. Cilla McGowan, Licensed Contractor.”

Gathering her tools, she started out to check on the progress of her exterior office stairs with a quick peek at the tile work on the way. She joined the carpenter crew as the painters, working on her new scaffolding, added the first strokes of red to the barn.

The air smelled of the mulch freshly laid around new plantings, and salvaged ones. Roses, hydrangeas, spirea and old-fashioned weigela, and beds of hopeful new perennials, eager annuals already blooming insanely.

More to come, she thought, more to do. But here was progress. Tear-out time was done. Renewal time was here.

She thought of Charlie’s photo album. And breaking off from the work, ran in to get her camera to document.

Shirtless men slick with sweat and sunscreen high on scaffolding. Shanna in shorts and a bright pink T-shirt and ball cap working with Brian on a low, dry stone garden wall. The bones of her stairs, the half-finished back veranda. And around front, the completed one.

For a moment, in her mind’s eye, she saw Janet, leaning on the jamb of the open front door, smiling out.

“It’s coming back,” Cilla said softly.

Turning, she saw Ford and Spock walking down the drive.

The dog trotted up to her, leaned on her legs, then sat back to look up at her, all love and cheer. She rubbed, petted, kissed his nose.

“Brought you a present.” Ford handed her one of the two Cokes he carried. “I swung in to see Steve. He tells me they’re going to spring him in a couple days.”

“He’s coming back strong.” Like the farm, she thought. “I’m pushing to get the AC up, and I’ve got a bed coming.”

“You want him to recoup from having his skull fractured in a construction zone. Do you hear that?” Ford asked, tapping his ear.

Cilla shrugged off the buzzing, the banging, the whirl of drills. “To people like me and Steve, that’s chamber music.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it. But he could bunk at my place. I’ve got the bed, the AC. And digital cable.”

She took a long drink, watching him. “You really mean that.”

“Damn right. I pity anyone without digital cable.”

“I bet. But you’re not going to take on my ex-husband. He’ll need to be . . . Who’s this?” she wondered as a black Lexus turned cautiously into her drive.

“City car,” Ford commented. “Big city.”

“I don’t know who . . . Crap.”

Ford lifted his brows as men exited from both sides of the car. “Friends of yours?”

“No. But the driver’s my mother’s Number Five.”

“Cilla!” Mario, handsome as sin, Italian style, in Prada loafers and Armani jeans, threw out his arms and a wide, wide smile. His graceful forward motion was spoiled when he stopped, then sidestepped around the sniffing Spock.

The sunglasses hid his eyes, but she suspected they were dark and sparkling. Tanned, panther lean, dark hair flowing, he crossed to her, caught her in an enthusiastic embrace and kissed her cheeks. “Look at you! So fit, so competent.”

“I am. What are you doing here, Mario?”

“A little surprise. Cilla, this is Ken Corbert, one of our producers. Ken, Cilla McGowan, my stepdaughter.”

“It’s a real pleasure.” Ken, small and wiry, silver-winged black hair, pumped Cilla’s hand. “Big fan. So . . .” He scanned the farm. “This is the place.”

“It’s my place,” she said coolly. “Ford, Mario and Ken. I’m sorry, I can’t ask you in. We’re a work in progress.”

“So I see.” Mario’s smile never dimmed. “And hear.”

“Spock, say hello,” Ford ordered—after his dog had finished with the tires. “He wants to shake,” Ford explained, “to make sure you’re friendly.”

“Ah.” Mario studied the dog dubiously as he put the tips of his thumb and forefinger on the offered paw.

Spock didn’t appear to be impressed.

Ken gave Spock’s paw the same salesman pump he’d given Cilla’s.

“Lovely country,” Mario continued. “Just lovely. We drove down from New York. We had some meetings. Such scenery! Your mother sends her love,” he added. “She would have come, but you know how difficult it is for her. The memories here.”

“She’s in New York?”

“A quick trip. We barely have time to catch our breath. Fittings, rehearsals, meetings, media. But Ken and I must steal you away, a late lunch, an early drink. Where can we take you?”

“Nowhere, but thanks. I’m working.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mario let out a hearty laugh while Spock squatted on his haunches and stared at him with suspicious eyes. “Cilla is the most amazing woman. So many talents. You can spare an hour, cara.”

“I really can’t. Especially if this is about performing in Mom’s show. I told her I wasn’t interested.”

“We’re here to persuade you that you are. Perhaps you’d excuse us,” Mario said to Ford.

“No, he won’t.” Cilla pointed at Ford. “You won’t.”

“I guess I won’t.”

Irritation tightened Mario’s mouth briefly. The grumbling growl from Spock had him eyeing the dog with some trepidation. “You have a chance to make history, Cilla. Three generations performing together. You saw Céline perform with Elvis? We have that technology. We can bring Janet onstage with you and Bedelia. One extraordinary performance, live.”

“Mario—”

“I understand you’re reluctant to commit to doing the full set of duets with your mother, though I can tell you—as will Ken—what that would mean to the show, and to you. Your career.”

“The advertising and promotion we’ve got lined up,” Ken began. “We can all but guarantee sellouts in every venue. Then the cable special, the CD, the DVD. The foreign markets are already buzzing. We may be able to work a deal to attach a second CD, a special package, for you, solo. In fact, Mario and I were kicking around ideas for videos there. And you’re right, Mario, shooting here would add punch.”

“You’ve been busy, haven’t you?” Cilla’s voice was as soft, and as meaningful, as Spock’s growl. “And you’ve been wasting your time. No. I’m sorry, Ken, I don’t believe Mario made it clear. I’m not looking to be persuaded or revived or promoted. You have no business talking to producers, promoters, advertisers about me,” she said to Mario. “You’re not my agent or my manager. I don’t have an agent or a manager. I run the show now. And this is what I do. Houses. I do houses. Enjoy the scenery on the way back.”

She knew Mario would come after her. Even as she turned on her heel to stride away, she heard him call her name. And she heard Ford speak to Ken, caught the extra yokel he put in his voice.

“Spock, stay. So y’all drove down from New York City?”

“Cilla. Cara. Let me—”

“Touch me, Mario, and I swear I’ll deck you.”

“Why are you angry?” There was puzzled sorrow in his voice. “This is an insanely rich opportunity. I’m only looking out for your interests.”

She stopped, struggled with temper ripe to bursting. “You may actually believe that on some level. I can look after my own interests, and have been for a long time.”

“Darling, you were mismanaged. Otherwise you’d be a major star today.”

“I might be a major star today if I’d had the talent and the aptitude. Listen to what I’m saying to you: I don’t want to be a major star. I don’t want to perform. I don’t want that kind of work. I don’t want that kind of life. I’m happy here, Mario, if that matters to you. I’m happy with what I have, and I’m getting happy with who I am.”

“Cilla, your mother needs you.”

“And here it comes.” She turned away in disgust.

“She has her heart set. And the backers will do so much more with this addition. She’s so—”

“I can’t do it, Mario. And I won’t. I’m not just being a hard-ass. I can’t. It’s not in me. You should have talked to me before you came here, and brought him. And you should listen to me when I say no. I’m not Dilly. I don’t bullshit, I don’t play. And she’s already used up all her guilt points with me. I’m not doing this for her.”

His face, his voice, held nothing but sadness now. “You’re very hard, Cilla.”

“Okay.”

“She’s your mother.”

“That’s right. Which makes me, let’s see. Her daughter. Maybe, this time—this one time—she could think about what I need, about what I want.” She held up a hand. “Believe me, if you say anything else, you’ll only make it worse. Cut your losses here. You’re smart enough. Tell her I said knock them dead, break a leg. And I mean it. But that’s all I’ve got.”

He shook his head as a man might over a sulking child. He walked away in his excellent shoes, and got into the big city car with Ken to drive away.

Ford wandered over, stared off at the barn while Spock rubbed himself against Cilla’s legs. “That red’s going to look good.”

“Yeah. You’re not going to ask what that was about?”

“I got the gist. They want, you don’t. They pushed, you didn’t budge. They pissed you off, which is fine. But in the end it made you sad. And that’s not. So I don’t care about them or what they want. I say fuck ’em, and that red looks good going on that barn.”

It made her smile. “You’re good to have around, Ford.” She leaned down, ruffled Spock. “Both of you. Back in L.A., I’d have paid several hundred dollars for this kind of therapy.”

“We’ll bill you. Meanwhile, why don’t you show me what’s going on around here today?”

“Let’s go bug the tile guy. It’s my favorite so far.” She took Ford’s hand and walked into the house.

FOURTEEN

When Cilla showed Dobby the design she wanted for the medallions, he scratched his chin. And she saw his lips twitching at the corners.

“Shamrocks,” she said.

“I’ve had me a few beers on Saint Patrick’s Day in my time. I know they’re shamrocks.”

“I played around with other symbols. More formal, or more subtle, more elaborate. But I thought, screw that, I like shamrocks. They’re simple and they’re lucky. I think Janet would’ve gotten a kick out of them.”

“I expect she would. She seemed to like the simple when she was around here.”

“Can you do it?”

“I expect I can.”

“I’ll want three.” The idea made her giddy as a girl. “Three’s lucky, too. One for the dining room, one for the master bedroom, and one in here, in the living room. Three circles of shamrocks for each. I’m not looking for uniformity but more symmetry. I’ll leave it to you,” she said when he nodded.

“It’s good working on this place. Takes me back.”

They sat at a makeshift table, plywood over a pair of sawhorses. She’d brought him a glass of tea, and they drank together while Jack finished up the last of the plaster repairs.

“You’d see her around, when she came out to stay here?”

“Now and again. She always had a word. Give you that smile and a hello, how are you.”

“Dobby, in that last couple of years, when she came out, was there any talk about her being . . . friendly with a local man?”

“You mean being sweet on one?”

Sweet on, Cilla thought. What a pretty way to put it. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

The lines and folds on his face deepened with thought. “Can’t say so. After she died, and all those reporters came around, some of them liked to say so. But they said all kinds of things, and most weren’t in the same neighborhood as the truth.”

“Well, I have some information that makes me think she was sweet on someone. Very sweet. Can you think of anyone she spent time with in that last year, year and a half? She came out fairly often during that period.”

“She did,” he agreed. “Talk was, after her boy died, the talk was she was going to sell the place. Didn’t want to come here no more. But she didn’t sell. Didn’t have the parties or the people, either. Never brought the girl out again—that’d be your mother—that I saw or heard about. The best I can recall, she came alone. If anybody had wind of her seeing a man from around here, their jaws would’ve been working.”

“Weren’t so many people around to jaw back then,” Jack commented as he set his trowel. “I mean to say there weren’t so many houses around the farm here. Isn’t that right, Grandpa?”

“That’d be true. Weren’t houses on the fields across the road back then. Started planting them back twenty-five years on to thirty years back, I guess it was, when the Buckners sold their farm off.”

“So there weren’t any close neighbors.”

“Buckners would’ve been closest, I expect. About a quarter mile down.”

And that was interesting, Cilla decided. How hard could it be to have a secret affair when there were no nosy neighbors peeking out the window? The media would have been an extra challenge, but reporters hadn’t been camped on the shoulder of the road seven days a week when Janet had traveled to the farm.

According to what she’d read or been told, Janet had been an expert at keeping certain areas of her private life private. After her death, facts, fallacies, rumors, secrets and innuendos abounded.

And still, Cilla mused, the identity of Janet’s last lover remained blank. Just how badly, she wondered, did she want to fill in that blank in her grandmother’s life?

Badly enough, she admitted. The answer to that single question could finally give clarity to the bigger question.

Why did Janet Hardy die at thirty-nine?

CILLA FOUND BRINGING Steve home both thrilling and terrifying. He was alive, and considered well enough to leave the hospital. Two weeks before, she’d sat beside his bed, trying to will him out of a coma. Now she stood with him as he studied the farmhouse. He leaned on a cane, a ball cap on his head, dark glasses over his eyes, and his clothes bagging a bit from the weight he’d lost in the hospital.

She wanted to bundle him inside, into bed. And feed him soup.

The terror came from wondering if she was competent enough to tend to him.

“Stop staring at me, Cill.”

“You should probably get inside, out of the sun.”

“I’ve been inside, out of the sun. Feels good out here. I like the barn. Barns should always be red. Where the hell is everybody? Middle of the day, no trucks, no noise.”

“I told all the subs to take me off today’s schedule. I thought you’d need a little peace and quiet.”

“Jesus, Cilla, when did I ever want peace and quiet? You’re the one.”

“Fine, I wanted peace and quiet. We’re going in. You look shaky.”

“Goes with the territory these days. I’ve got it,” he snapped at her when she started to take his free arm. He managed the stairs, crossed the veranda.

The scowl smoothed away when he stepped inside the house, took his first look around.

“The plastering looks good. Getting rid of that door over there, widening the opening, that works for you. Better flow.”

“I’m thinking of using that area as a kind of morning room. It gets nice light. Then later on, if I’m still inclined, I could add on a sunroom, put in a hot tub, a couple of machines, some nice plants. Down the road.”

“Be sweet.”

And because she heard the strain in his voice, she nearly fussed about taking him up to bed. Instead she tried a different tack. The first step would be to get him upstairs.

“We’ve done a lot on the second floor. The master suite’s really coming along. You’ve got to see it.”

These steps were longer. She all but felt his weaker left side begin to tremble on the journey up. “We should’ve taken Ford up on his offer. You’d be more comfortable at his place.”

“I can walk up a damn flight of steps. Got a headache, that’s all. Goes with the territory now, too.”

“If you want to lie down . . . I’ve got your pills right here.”

“I don’t want to lie down. Yet.” He pushed her offered hand aside. Again, some of the strain eased on his face when he studied the new bedroom space. “You always had an eye. Good lines, good light. Nice closet, doll.”

“A girl’s best friend. I built the organizer yesterday.” She opened the door, gave a Vanna White flourish.

“Cedar paneling. Good work.”

“I learned from the best.”

He turned away to limp toward the bath, but she’d seen the look in his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Sexy, classy,” he said of the bathroom. “Deco deal. Glass block for the shower wall? When did you decide on that?”

“Last-minute change. I liked the effect, and the way it looks with the black-and-white tiles.” She gave up, just leaned her forehead on his shoulder. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“What if I can’t do this anymore? If I can’t handle the tools? It takes me longer to think, and these headaches about drop me.”

She wanted to hold him, hug him, nuzzle him into comfort. And instead flicked at him with mild annoyance. “Steve, it’s your first day out of the hospital. What did you think, you’d walk out swinging a hammer?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re on your feet. You’re talking to me. The doctor said it’s going to take time. Just as he said you’ve already made an amazing recovery, and there’s every reason to believe you’ll get it all back.”

“Could take months. Even years. And I can’t remember.” A trace of fear eked through frustration. “Goddamn it, I can’t remember anything that happened that night after I left here. Can’t remember going to the bar, or hanging out, trailing Shanna home like she says I did. It’s blank. I can remember getting on the bike. I can remember thinking I might just score with Shanna of the big brown eyes and amazing rack. Next thing I remember is you yelling at me, and your face leaning down over mine. Everything between is gone. Just gone.”

She shrugged, as if it was no big deal. “If you’re going to forget something, that would be the night.”

He smiled a little. “Fricking ray of sunshine, aren’t you? I’m going to crash awhile, take some drugs and crash.”

“Good idea.”

He let her take his weight to lead him to the guest room. Then stopped at the doorway. The walls were painted a soft and restful blue, as was the beadboard wainscoting. The original walnut trim, stripped and restored by her own hands, framed the windows. The floor gleamed, deep, rich and glossy. The iron headboard and footboard in dignified pewter suited the simple white and blue quilt, the star-patterned rug with its blue border. White daisies sprang up out of a cobalt vase on a table in front of the window.

“What the hell’s this?”

“Surprise. I think it’s marginally more appealing than a hospital room.”

“It’s a great room.” Even as he jabbed a finger at her, pleasure shone on his face. “What are you thinking, getting the floors refinished in one room?”

“I’m thinking it’s nice to see one room finished—or nearly. Need some art for the walls, and I have to finish the rest of the trim, but otherwise. And check it out.” She opened an old wardrobe, revealed a flat-screen TV. “Got cable.” She grinned at him. “Digital, at Ford’s insistence. The bath’s finished, too. And looks great if I say so myself.”

Steve sat on the side of the bed. “Going at rehab this way screws up the schedule.”

“I’m not in a hurry.” She poured a glass from the pitcher she’d placed on the nightstand, then got out the pill bottle. “Bottoms up, then we’ll get you undressed and into bed.”

The faintest twinkle winked in his eyes. “Time was you’d’ve gotten in with me, doll.”

“Time was.” She crouched down to take off his shoes.

“I want those subs back here tomorrow.”

“Who made you job manager?” Rising, she gestured so he lifted his arms. But she smiled as she drew off his shirt. “They’ll be back. They wanted to have a welcome-back party. Beer and subs. I scotched that. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to party.” He lay back so she could take off his jeans. “The day I can have a woman strip me down and not want to return the favor’s not a day for partying.”

“I give you a week.” Now, no longer able to resist, she stroked his cheek. “I heard how you hit on all the nurses.”

“It’s expected. I skipped Mike.” He gave her a wan smile. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

She turned down the bed, eased him into it, slipped off his shades, took the cap off his shaved head. The smooth dome marred by the line of stitches hurt her in every cell of her body. “I’m going to be downstairs doing some paperwork. You need anything, just call. If you want the TV, there’s the remote. If you want anything, Steve, I’m right here.”

“Just a few z’s for right now.”

“Okay.” She kissed his forehead, then slipped out.

Alone, he stared up at the ceiling. And, sighing, closed his eyes.

Cilla took her laptop outside to work. Though she snuck up to check on Steve twice in the first hour, she made headway with bills and cost projections. When she heard the crunch of feet on gravel, she glanced up to see Ford and Spock.

“Hi, neighbor,” he called out. “I figured if you were out here, the returning hero’s doing all right.”

“Sleeping.” She looked at her watch. “God, how did it get to be five o’clock?”

“The earth orbits around the sun as it turns on its axis, thereby—”

“Smart-ass.”

“Present. And speaking of.” He shook the bag in his hand. “I’ve got something for Steve. Some DVDs, since you’ve got the set up in his room.”

Cilla cocked her head. “DVDs? Porn?”

Ford’s eyebrows drew together. “Porn’s such a hard word. Just hear how it comes out of the mouth. That short, hard syllable. Spider-Man, the three-movie box set. It seemed appropriate. And a couple of others that involve naked women and motorcycles, which I’d call adult entertainment. Spock picked those out.”

She slid her glance down to the dog, who cocked his head and looked innocent. “I’m sure Steve will appreciate them.”

“Spock believes Sleazy Rider was very underrated.”

“I’ll take his word.” She heard the footsteps first, sprang to her feet. She pulled open the screen door as Steve reached for it from the inside. “You’re up. Why didn’t you call me? You shouldn’t take the steps by yourself.”

“I’m fine. I’m good. Ford.”

“Good to see you out.”

“Good to be. Hey, Spock. Hey, boy.” He sat on one of the white plastic chairs, stroking the dog, who laid his front legs on Steve’s knee.

“You look better,” Cilla decided.

“Magic pills and sleep. I nap like a three-year-old these days, but it does the job.”

“You’re probably hungry. Why don’t I fix you some food? Something to drink? Get you—”

“Cill.” He started to tell her not to bother, changed his mind. “Yeah, I could use a sandwich or something. Not hospital food or smuggled-in goods. Maybe you could throw something together for all of us.”

“Sure. Give me a few minutes.”

When she dashed inside, Steve shook his head. “She’s hovering, man.”

“I talked her out of the little bedside john.”

“I owe you. What’s in the bag?”

Ford passed it over, and after a quick look, Steve broke out in a grin. “Now we’re talking. Thanks. Listen, I need to get the exercise in. You spot me on a walk around?”

“Okay.”

Ford waited until Steve handled the stairs, then walked with him away from the house. “Something on your mind?”

“Lots of shit, man. It still gets a little bogged coming through the channels. Cops don’t have dick, right?”

“That’d be about it.”

“It looks like a one-time thing. Just bad luck. I mean, nothing’s happened since.”

“No.”

Steve stared at Ford’s profile. “You’d tell me straight?”

Ford thought of Cilla’s car door, but set it aside. “Nobody’s broken into the barn, bothered the house.”

“You were bunking here while I was in the hospital. I got word on that.”

“Hey. My sleeping bag.”

“So you and Cilla aren’t in the sack?”

“Not quite yet.”

“But you’re into her. Look, that’s your business, her business and all that bullcrap, but I’m asking because I need to know if you’re going to look out for her when I’m gone.”

Ford paused as Steve did. “Going somewhere?”

“I haven’t said anything to her yet. I was going to when we got back, but Jesus, she fixed up the room for me. Down to flowers, you know. Oh, and thanks for the push on the cable.”

“It’s only right.”

With a nod, Steve began to walk again. “The thing is, I should’ve headed back last week, latest. Plans changed on account of brain surgery. I’d stay if I thought she needed me to watch out for her, or I could help out. She can take care of herself, that’s Christ’s truth, but . . . Hell, maybe it’s the near-death experience. Whatever. I want to get home. I want to sit on the beach, soak up the rays. But I need to know somebody’s got her back.”

“I’ve got her back, Steve.”

Steve stopped to stare at the barn. “She said you bought the paint. While I was still out of it.” He nodded, as if satisfied. “You’re all right, Ford. Totally not the type she usually lets get a taste. It’s about time. She digs on candles. When you’re making it,” Steve added. “She digs on lots of candles around. Doesn’t mind music, either. Doesn’t need it, like some do, but she’s good with it. Lights on, lights off; she’s okay either way. But she does dig on the candle thing.”

Ford cleared his throat. “Appreciate the tips. How are you getting back to L.A.?”

“The doc wants to see me Friday, so I’m going to stick till Saturday. I’ve got a friend in New Jersey who’s coming down in an RV. We’ll load me and the bike up, head west. Don’t say anything to her, okay? I want to tell her myself.”

Cilla whistled from the veranda. “You guys want to eat?”

Spock’s answer was to run toward her as if hellhounds were on his heels.

“The mountains are cool,” Steve commented as they turned back. “That’s part of what pulled her out east. She told me how the mountains seem like home. Me? I miss the ocean.” He nudged Ford with his elbow. “And the women in very small bikinis.”

SHE SLEPT POORLY, with one ear cocked for Steve, and her mind niggling over the fact that he planned on leaving in a matter of days.

How could she take care of him if he was three thousand miles away?

One day out of the hospital, and he was planning cross-country trips. In an RV? It was so like him, she thought as she tossed over onto her back. Always had to move, never stay in one place too long. That’s where the whole flipping houses came from, she reminded herself. You didn’t have to settle on one if you kept turning them.

But he wouldn’t listen to reason on this. And the fact that he was just out of the damn hospital made it impossible to kick his ass. Who’d check on him two or three times a night as she’d done? So he’d been fine when she had. What if he hadn’t been?

She rolled over again, punched her pillow. And gave up.

Dawn was about to break anyway. She’d go check on him again, then go down and make some coffee. She’d have her quiet time outside before the crew started piling in.

As she heard Steve snoring before she reached his doorway, she headed straight for coffee. In another few months, she thought, she’d have an actual kitchen. Refitted antique appliances, countertops, cabinets. Actual dishes. And damn if she wasn’t treating herself to a fancy espresso maker.

Maybe she’d actually learn how to cook. She’d bet Patty could teach her some good basics. Nothing fancy and gourmet. She’d tried that route and failed spectacularly. But your basic red sauce, or meat and potatoes. Surely she could learn how to cook a chicken breast.

Once the house was finished, she promised herself. Once she had her license, geared up for business, found a routine. She’d learn how to cook for herself instead of living on sandwiches, canned soup and takeout.

She carried the coffee outside, drawing in its scent as the first sleepy light played over her new gardens, over earth still turned and waiting. She sipped while the mists rose off the pond she still had to clean.

Every day, she thought. She wanted to do this every day. To step out of her home in the soft, sleepy light and see what she could do, what she had done. What had been given to her.

Whatever she’d paid her mother for this place, this life, didn’t count. In that soft and sleepy light, she knew everything she could see and smell and touch had been a gift from the grandmother she’d never met.

She would’ve taken coffee on a morning walk, Cilla thought as she stepped off the veranda to wander. Accounts spoke of her as an early riser, used to the demands of filming. Often up at dawn.

Often up till dawn, too, Cilla admitted. But that was another side of the woman. The party girl, the Hollywood queen, the star who drank too much and leaned too heavily on pills.

In the quiet morning, Cilla wanted the company of the Janet Hardy who fell in love with this little slice of Virginia. Who brought home a mongrel pup and had roses planted under the window.

The big red barn made her smile as she strolled around the house. The police tape was gone, the padlock firmly in place. And Steve, she thought, was snoring in the pretty iron bed in the pretty room upstairs.

That nightmare was done. A scavenger looking for scraps who’d panicked. The police believed that to be the case, so who was she to argue? If she wanted to solve a personal mystery, it would be the author of the letters inside Gatsby. And in that way, she’d put another piece of Janet’s together, for her own knowledge. Her own history.

The light grew as she neared the front of the house. Bird-song sweetened the air as did the scent of roses and turned earth. Dew tickled coolly on her bare feet. It pleased her more than she could say to know she walked on her own land, over dewed grass, wearing a tank and cotton pajama pants.

And no one cared.

She finished the coffee on the front veranda, gazing out over the lawn.

Her smile faded slowly, changing into a puzzled frown as her eyes scanned the front wall.

Where were her trees? She should be able to see the bowing tops of her weeping cherries from the veranda. As the frown deepened, she set her mug on the rail, stepped down to walk along the lawn beside the gravel drive.

Then she began to run.

“No. Goddamn it, no!”

Her young weepers lay on the narrow swatch of green between her wall and the shoulder of the road. Their slender trunks bore the hack marks of an ax. It wouldn’t have taken much, she thought as she crouched down to brush her fingers over the leaves. Three or four swings at most.

Not to steal. Digging them up would have taken a bit more time, a bit more trouble. To destroy. To kill.

The sheer meanness of the act twisted in her belly in a combination of sorrow and fury. Not a scavenger, she thought. Not kids. Kids bashed mailboxes along the road, so she’d been warned. Kids didn’t take the time to hack down a couple of ornamental trees.

She straightened to take a steadying breath, and looked over at the broken stump of one of her dying trees. That breath caught. Her body trembled, that same combination of sorrow and fury. Black paint defiled the old stone wall with its ugly message.

GO BACK TO HOLLYWOOD BITCH!

LIVE LIKE A WHORE DIE LIKE A WHORE

“Fuck you,” she said under her breath. “Goddamn it, Hennessy, fuck you.”

Riding on pure fury now, she stormed back to the house to call the police.

WITH BLOOD IN HER EYE, Cilla warned every one of the crew that anyone who mentioned the trees or the wall to Steve would be fired on the spot. No exceptions, no excuses.

She ordered Brian back to the nursery. She wanted two new trees planted, and she wanted them planted that very day.

By ten, when the cops had come and gone, secure that her threat would hold and that the crew would keep Steve busy inside, she went out to work with the mason on cleaning the stone.

Ford saw her, scrubbing at the stone, when he stepped out with his first cup of coffee. And he saw the message sprayed over the wall. As she had done earlier, he left his coffee on the rail and jogged down to her in bare feet.

“Cilla.”

“Don’t tell Steve. That’s the first thing. I don’t want you to say a word about this to Steve.”

“Did you call the cops?”

“They’ve been here. For whatever good it does. It has to be Hennessy, it has to be that son of a bitch. But unless he’s got black paint and wood chips under his goddamn fingernails, what are they going to do about it?”

“Wood . . .” He saw the stumps then, swore. “Wait a minute. Let me think.”

“I don’t have time. I have to get this off. Can’t risk sandblasting this stone. It’s too harsh. It’d damage the stone, the mortar, do as much harm, potentially, as the stupid paint. This chemical’s the best alternative. Probably have to have the wall repointed, but it’s all I can do.”

“Scrub at the stone with a brush?”

“That’s right.” She attacked the C in BITCH like she would a sworn enemy. “He’s not going to get away with this. He’s not going to soil or damage what’s mine. I wasn’t driving the goddamn car. I wasn’t even born, for Christ’s sake.”

“And he’s eighty if he’s a day. I have a hard time seeing him chopping down a couple of trees and tagging a stone wall in the middle of the night.”

“Who else?” She rounded on Ford. “Who else hates me or this place the way he does?”

“I don’t know. But we’d better work on finding out.”

“It’s my problem.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“It’s my problem, my wall, my trees. I’m the bitch.”

He met her hot glare with a cool stare. “I wouldn’t argue with the last part right at the moment, but as for the rest? Bullshit. You don’t want to tell Steve, fine. I get it. But I’m not leaving. I’m not heading back to L.A. or anywhere else.”

He grabbed her arm, pulled her back around to face him. “I’m staying right here. Deal with it.”

“I’m trying to deal with this, and with having my best friend leave when he can hardly walk more than five yards at a time. I’m trying to deal with making a life I didn’t even realize I wanted until a few months ago. I don’t know how much more I can deal with.”

“You’ll have to make room.” He cupped her face, kissed her hard. “Got another brush?”

FIFTEEN

Cilla sweated over the long, tedious process most of the day, with breaks to handle scheduled work. She concentrated on the obscenities first as people slowed on the drive by, or stopped altogether to comment or question.

Sometime during the process, the burning edge of her rage banked down to simple frustration. Why had the asshole written so damn much?

She picked up the task again the next morning, before the mason or any of the crew arrived. Two new trees flanked her entrance. She thought of them as defiant now rather than sweet. And that pumped up her energy.

“Hey.”

She glanced around to see Ford, ratty sweatpants and T-shirt, standing on the opposite shoulder of the road with a red bandanna-sporting Spock quivering, but sitting obediently at his feet. “Early for you,” she responded.

“I set the alarm. It must be love. Come over here a minute.”

“Busy.”

“When aren’t you? Honey, you can wear me out just watching. Come on, take a minute. I got coffee.” He held up one of the oversized mugs he carried.

He’d set the alarm, and though she didn’t know quite what to think about that, she owed him for it. And for the time he’d put in the day before, even after she’d been rude and snarly. She set the bristle brush down, crossed the road.

He handed her the coffee, gestured to the wall as she greeted Spock. “Read it from here. Out loud.”

She shrugged, turned, and even as she took a gulp of the coffee felt a little bubble of amusement rise in her throat. “Go to Hollywood, live like an ore ike.”

“Ore ike,” he mused. “I can use that. Seems to me he tried to hurt and intimidate you, and you’ve made him a joke. Nicely done.”

“Unexpectedly ridiculous. I guess that’s a plus. I’ve nearly run out of mad. You don’t have to get into this again today, Ford. How are you going to make me a warrior goddess if you’re scrubbing off graffiti?”

“That’s cruising along pretty well. I can give you a couple of hours before I get back to it. Spock’s looking forward to being what Brian and Matt call a job dog today. He’s just going to go over and hang out with the guys. Hence the bandanna.”

“You know, I’m probably going to have sex with you, without the offer of manual labor.”

“I’m hoping.” He gave her an easy, uncomplicated smile. “You know I’d offer the labor even if you weren’t going to have sex with me.”

She took a contemplative sip of coffee. “I guess that evens it out. I do better on even ground. Well.” She started back across the street, and he and Spock fell into step beside her. “My father heard about this, called me last night. What could he do? How could he help? Why didn’t I come stay there for a while, until the police figured it out? Which is looking like, hmm, never. Then my stepmother got on the phone. She wants to take me shopping.”

“For a new wall? This one’s cleaning up okay.”

“No, not a new wall.” She gave him a light punch, then handed him protective gloves. “Patty, Angie and Cilla do the outlets. Like trolling for bargains would solve my problem.”

“I take it you’re not going?”

“I don’t have the time or the inclination to search out peek-toe pumps or a flirty summer dress.”

“Red shoes, white dress. Sorry,” he added at her quiet stare. “I think in visuals.”

“Uh-huh. The point, I guess, is that I’m not used to people offering—time or company or help—without any number of strings attached.”

“That’s a shame, or perhaps living like an ore ike.”

She laughed, began to scrub.

“Go play,” he told Spock, who trotted off toward the house in his red bandanna.

“I’m trying to learn to accept the offers without the lingering haze of cynicism. It’s going to take a little while.”

He worked for a few moments in silence. “You know what I see when I look over here?”

“Trucks, big-ass Dumpster, a house in desperate need of paint?”

“Sleeping Beauty’s castle.”

“How? Where? Why?”

“First, I risk impinging my manhood by admitting I dug on those kinds of stories as a kid, as much as I did the Dark Knight, X-Men, and so on. And consider Disney’s version solid, with Maleficent one of the top villains of all time. Anyway.”

He shrugged as she continued to stare at him. “You know how the evil Maleficent cast the spell, and surrounded the castle with giant briar, those big, wicked thorns. Closed it in to a dark, forbidding place that held sorrow and, well, trapped beauty.”

“Okay.”

“The hero had to fight his way through the blocks, the thorns, the traps. A lot of risk, a lot of work, but when he reached the goal, the castle came back to life. And, you know, peace reigned across the land.”

She worked her wire brush against the wall. “I have to kiss the princess?”

“Okay, new visual. Interesting. There are some flaws in the metaphor, but basically, the trapped, sleeping castle needs a hero to wake it up. Some people like having a part in that. And some . . .” He tapped his brush on a large black E. “They like to fuck it up.”

“I find myself fascinated by a man who admits to enjoying fairy tales and uses the word ‘impinge’—and barely misses a beat while indulging in a brief girl-on-girl fantasy. You’re a man of layers, Ford.”

“Me and Shrek, we’re onions.”

Oh yeah, she thought. Falling for him, and falling fast.

She stopped as Buddy’s truck pulled up beside them. The plumber leaned out the window, scowled. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“According to Ford, it means some people like to mess things up.”

“Damn kids. No respect.”

“I don’t want Steve to hear about this. He’s got enough on his mind. I need to talk to you about the venting for the steam shower. I took another look last night, and . . . I really need to go over this with Buddy on-site,” she said to Ford.

“Go ahead. I’ve got this for a while.”

“Thanks. Give me a lift, Buddy.” She hopped into the cab of the truck, and as Buddy turned in the drive, tried to imagine the house as Sleeping Beauty’s castle, with about half of the briars hacked away.

FORD GOT IN a solid day before stepping back from the work to take a long look at the panels and the pencils. The story had turned on him a bit, but he considered that a good thing. He’d edit the script later that evening to suit the new images and action that had come to mind.

To do that, he needed to let it stew. To stop pushing while it cooked on one of the back burners of the brain. Which meant, for his process, it was probably time for a beer and a little PlayStation.

Downstairs, he opened the front door to take a quick look at what he thought of as Cilla World before wandering back to the kitchen. He saw Steve picking his way up the walk, the cane in one hand, a six-pack in the other.

“This is what I call superior timing.”

Beside Ford, Spock all but jumped up and applauded.

“I escaped. The warden had to make a supply run, so I stole her beer and booked.”

“Who could blame you?” Ford took the beer, flicked a thumb at a chair.

“Doc cleared me. I’m heading out tomorrow.” He sat, with an audible whoosh of breath, then scrubbed his hand over Spock’s head.

“You’ll be missed.” Ford popped the tops on two beers, passed one over.

“I’m going to try to come back out in the fall, if I can manage it. The way she’s going, she’ll be down to punch-out work.”

Ford glanced dubiously across the road. “If you say so.”

“I’m mostly in her way now.”

“She doesn’t see it that way.”

Steve took a long pull on the beer. “She reamed my ass for going up in the attic to hang out with the guys. Wanted to set me out in a rocker like her grandfather, and give me a paint fan to play with. Jesus, next thing it’ll be crossword puzzles or some such shit.”

“Could be worse. Could be knitting.”

With a grunt, Steve frowned at the stone wall across the road. “What’s your take on what went down on that?”

“Sorry?”

“Don’t bullshit. My brain’s not that damaged. Guys on construction crews gossip like girls. I heard some asshole tagged the wall. Got about six different versions of what it said, but all the same basic idea.”

“My take is some asshole tagged the wall, and he’s got a mean streak. It might be the same one that went after you, or it might not. She thinks it’s old man Hennessy.”

“And you don’t.”

“Old man’s the defining term. Then again, I can’t think of anybody who has anything against her except him. And he’s tough. Stringy, but tough.”

“If I was a hundred percent—or closer to it—I’d stay. But I wouldn’t be much help to her right now.” He tipped his beer at Ford. “Up to you, Sparky, and your little dog, too.”

“We’ve got it.”

“Yeah.” Steve took another sip of beer. “I think you do.”

SHE DIDN ’T CRY when Steve climbed into the passenger seat of the RV on the cool and wet Saturday. She censored herself from making any suggestion he wait until the weather cleared to begin the long trip cross-country. Instead, she kissed him good-bye and stood in the rain to wave him off.

And felt horribly, painfully alone.

So alone, she closed herself in the house. The rain took planting or painting off the slate. She considered moving her things into the guest room Steve had vacated, but that struck her as too much housekeeping. She wanted work, not chores.

She switched on the radio, turned up the volume to fill the house with sound. And got down to the business of building the shelving and framing out the storage closet for the utility room off the kitchen. The task wasn’t on the agenda for weeks yet, but it was exactly the kind of job that smoothed out nerves, soothed the mind.

She measured, marked, sawed, lost herself in the rhythm of carpentry. Content again, she sang along with the radio as her cordless screwdriver spun a wood screw home.

She nearly dropped the drill on her foot when she turned and caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Patty threw up her hands, as if the tool were a loaded gun. “I didn’t mean to scare you. We knocked, but . . . It’s so loud in here.”

Cilla walked over to shut off the radio. “I need it loud to hear it over the tools.”

“I got worried when you didn’t answer the door, and there was all the noise, and your car out front. So we just came in.”

“It’s all right. You just startled me. We?”

“Angie and Cathy. We tried to get Penny, but she’s covering the store. It’s such a poopy day we decided we’d brave the mall, then catch a movie and round it out with dinner. We came to kidnap you.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun.” Like torture, she thought. “I appreciate it, but I’m in the middle of this.”

“You deserve a day off. My treat.”

“Patty—”

“I can hardly believe . . .” Cathy stepped in, trailed off with a wide-eyed stare at Cilla. “We’ve invaded. Gosh, you look so HGTV. I’m nervous about banging a nail into the wall to hang a picture, and look at you.”

“My sister, the handyman.” Perky in a pink hoodie, Angie beamed at her. “Can we look around? Is it all right? The buzz is the action’s on the second floor.”

“Sure. Um, it’s got a ways to go. Actually, it all has a ways.”

“I confess, I’ve been dying to get a look inside this place for years.” Cathy glanced around at the bare walls, the bare floors, the stacks and piles of lumber and supplies. “How do you manage without a kitchen?”

“I’m not much of a cook anyway. I’m having the stove and refrigerator that were in here retrofitted—they’re fairly fabulous. It takes time, so the kitchen’s way down on the list. Ah, the dining area’s over there, so it makes it an open floor plan. It’s good light, nice views.”

“The back gardens look so pretty!” Patty stepped closer to the French doors. “Was this patio here?”

“It needed work, and we redesigned it. The gardens have been a job. Your son does good work,” she said to Cathy. “And he’s got a real talent for landscape design.”

“Thank you. We certainly think so.”

“The dining room opens to the patio, and from the interior flows into this area I’m going to use as a sort of sitting/TV room off the living area. Powder room there’s getting new tiles, new fixtures. Coat closet here off the entryway. It’s a lot of space. It’s good space.”

“I love that you can step outside from every room.” Angie turned a circle.

Cilla led them upstairs where the three unexpected guests cooed over the tiles and fixtures of the completed bath, chattered over the projected master.

“I don’t know what I’d do with a steam shower, but I would love heated tile floors in my bathroom.” Patty beamed at Cilla. “I don’t know how you know all of this, and figure it out, but the two finished rooms are just beautiful. Like something out of a magazine.”

“The resale value’s going to skyrocket,” Cathy commented.

“I think it would, if I were planning on selling.”

“Sorry, my husband’s influence.” Cathy chuckled. “And I know without asking him he’d want first crack if you ever change your mind about selling. What wonderful views. It seems so solitary, even with the other houses around. I admit I like the convenience and the security of living closer to town, but if I had more country girl in me, this would be the spot.”

“Do you ever feel her around? Janet?”

“Angie.”

At her mother’s frown, Angie blinked. “I’m sorry. Is that the wrong thing to ask?”

“It’s all right,” Cilla told her. “I do sometimes. I like to think she’d approve of what I’m doing, even the changes I’m making. It matters to me.”

“There’s such history in this house,” Cathy added. “All the people who came here, the parties, the music. The tragedy, too. It makes it more than a house. It’s a legend, isn’t it? I remember when it happened. I was pregnant with my middle child—just a couple months along, and had such morning sickness. I’d just had a bout, and Tom was trying to feed Marianna—our oldest—breakfast. She wasn’t quite two, and there was oatmeal everywhere. My next-door neighbor—Abby Fox. You remember her, Patty?”

“I do. If there was a drop of gossip, she squeezed out more.”

“Knew everything first, and this was no exception. She came over and told us. I burst right into tears. Hormones, I guess. I got sick again, and I remember how Tom was at his wit’s end trying to figure out how to deal with me and the baby. It was an awful day. I’m sorry.” She shook herself. “I don’t know why I started on that.”

“The house stirs it up,” Patty decided. “Go on, Cilla, get cleaned up and come with us. This rain and gloom’s going to make us sad. We’re just not taking no for an answer.”

She supposed she went along as it was three against one, and because Cathy’s memory had made her sad. It surprised her that she enjoyed herself, poking around a mall, sitting through a weepy chick flick, drinking margaritas and eating grilled chicken Caesar salad.

In the restaurant ladies’ room, Angie joined her to fuss with her hair and lip gloss. “It’s no Rodeo Drive, premiere and dinner at the latest hot spot, but it was a pretty good day, huh?”

“I had fun. And Rodeo Drive wasn’t my usual stomping grounds.”

“It would be mine, if I lived out there. Even if I could only window-shop and fantasize. You really don’t miss it?”

“I really don’t miss it. I—Sorry,” she said when her phone rang. Drawing it out, Cilla saw her mother’s number on the readout, put it away without answering.

“You can take it. I’ll step out.”

“No. It’s the kind of call that’s guaranteed to spoil my nice, subtle margarita buzz. Do you do this a lot? Hang out with your mother on a rainy Saturday?”

“I guess. She’s fun to be around. We always tried to have a day together, and since I went to college, we try harder when I’m home on break. Sometimes we have friends along, sometimes just the two of us.”

“You’re lucky.”

Angie laid a hand on Cilla’s arm. “I know she’s not your mother, but I know, too, she’d really like to be your friend.”

“She is my friend. We just don’t know each other very well.”

“Yet?”

“Yet,” Cilla agreed, and made Angie smile.

WHEN SHE GOT HOME, Cilla checked her voice mail. Two from Ford, she noted—probably when she’d turned off her phone in the movie—and one from her mother.

She got her mother’s over with. It ran long, as expected, covering the gamut from cold disdain to angry resentment, with a short stint of teary tremor between.

Cilla deleted it, played Ford’s first.

“Hey. My mother decided to cook up spaghetti and meatballs, and told me to come over to pig out and bring a friend. You didn’t answer the door, and you’re not answering this. So now I’m wondering if I should worry, mind my own business or be insanely jealous because you ran off with some piece of beefcake named Antonio. Anyway, give me a call so I know.”

She played the second. “Ignore that message. My father ran into your father, so have fun with the girls. Ah, that was your father’s term. The girls. You’re going to miss some seriously awesome meatballs.”

“God, you’re so cute,” Cilla murmured. “And if I wasn’t so tired, I’d walk right over there and jump your bones.”

Yawning, she climbed the steps with two shopping bags. A real bed waited upstairs, she remembered. She could curl up on an actual mattress with actual sheets. Snuggle right in, sleep as late as she liked. The idea shimmered like heaven in her mind as she turned into the guest bath.

It was like being struck in the heart. The lovely floor lay broken—tiles chipped, shattered, heaved up from long cracks. The bowl of the new sink lay scattered over it in pieces. Shocked, she staggered back, the bags dropping out of her hands. The contents spilled out as she turned, with a fist twisting in her belly, to run to the newly tiled master.

The same senseless destruction met her.

A sledgehammer, she thought, maybe a pick. Someone had pounded, chipped, gashed the tiles, the glass block, the walls. Hours and hours of work, destroyed.

With ice coating that fist in her belly, she walked downstairs and outside into the rain to make the now familiar call to the police.

“CAME IN THROUGH the back door,” Wilson told her. “Broke the glass, reached in, turned the lock. It appears he used your tools—that short-handled sledgehammer, the pickax—to do the damage. Who knew you’d be out for the evening?”

“Nobody. I didn’t know I’d be out. It was spur of the moment.”

“And your car remained here, in full view from the road?”

“Yes. I left the veranda light on, and two lights on inside—one up, one down.”

“And you left here about two in the afternoon, you said?”

“Yes, about then. We went to the mall, to the movies, to dinner. I got back about ten-thirty.”

“The three women you were with knew your house would be vacant?”

“That’s right. My neighbor knew, as he called me while I was out. My father knew, and my neighbor’s parents. I suppose Mrs. Morrow’s husband knew, or could have. Basically, Detective, pretty much anyone who had any interest in my whereabouts could have known or found out.”

“Miss McGowan, I’m going to suggest you get yourself a security system.”

“Is that what you’d suggest?”

“This area is lightly developed, it’s part of its charm. You’re relatively remote here, and your property has been a repeated target of vandalism. We’re doing what we can. But if I were you, I’d take steps to protect my property.”

“You can believe I will.”

Cilla pushed to her feet when she heard Ford’s voice, raised in obvious frustration as he argued with one of the cops currently prowling her house and grounds. “That’s my neighbor. I’d like him to come in.”

Wilson signaled. A moment later Ford rushed in. “Are you hurt? Are you all right?” He took her face in his hands. “What happened now?”

“Someone broke in while I was out. They did a number on two of the second-floor bathrooms.”

“Mr. Sawyer, where were you this afternoon and evening, between two and eleven?”

“Detective Wilson—”

“It’s okay.” Ford took Cilla’s hand, squeezed it. “I was home working until about four. I went out to buy some wine and some flowers for my mother. I had dinner at my parents’, got there about five. Got home, I don’t know, about nine, maybe nine-thirty. I watched some TV, fell asleep on the couch. When I surfaced, I started upstairs. I looked out the front door—it’s a habit now—and I saw the cops.”

“Ms. McGowan stated you knew she wasn’t home.”

“Yeah, I called her to invite her to dinner at my parents’. No, walked over first to invite her. She didn’t answer, and I got a little worried, with everything that’s been going on. Then I called. And a little while later, I talked to my father; my mother wanted me to stop and pick up some milk. I told him I was trying to reach Cilla to ask her over, and he said he’d run into her dad, and that she was out with girlfriends.”

“What time did you come over here?”

“Ah, about three, some after, I guess. I walked to the barn when you didn’t answer, but the lock was on, and I walked around the house. I was worried, a little. Everything looked okay. Where did they break in?”

“Back door,” she told him.

“The back door was fine when I did the walk-around. How bad is it?”

“Way bad enough.”

“You can fix it.” He reached for her hand. “You know how.”

She shook her head, walked over to sit on the steps. “I’m tired.” After scrubbing her hands over her face, she dropped them into her lap. “I’m tired of it all.”

“Why don’t you go over to my place, get some sleep? I’ll bunk here so somebody’s in the house.”

“If I leave, I’m not going to come back. I need to think about that. I need to see if staying here matters anymore. Because right now? I just don’t know.”

“I’ll stay with you. I’ll take the sleeping bag. Are you going to leave any cops here?” Ford demanded of Wilson.

Wilson nodded. “We’ll leave a radio car and two officers outside. Ms. McGowan? I don’t know if it makes any difference to the way you’re feeling, but this is starting to piss me off.”

She offered Wilson a sigh. “Get in line.”

WHILE FORD WENT over to get the dog, she fixed plywood over the broken glass herself—a kind of symbol. At that moment, Cilla wasn’t sure if it was a symbol of defense or defeat. When she set down the hammer, all she felt was brutal fa tigue.

“You don’t have to take the sleeping bag. It’s a big bed, and you’re too decent a guy to try anything under the circumstances. And the fact is, I don’t want to sleep alone.”

“Okay. Come on. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow.”

“He used my own tools to ruin things.” She let Ford lead her through the house, up the stairs. “It makes it worse somehow.”

In the bedroom, she toed off her shoes. Then pulled off her shirt. And had just enough left in her to be touched and amused when Ford cleared his throat, turned his back.

Spock, on the other hand, cocked his head and—if it was possible—ogled.

“He didn’t bust up the johns,” she said as she changed into a tank and cotton pants. “I don’t know if he ran out of steam, or if he knew the tiles, the sinks, the block were all more expensive and would take more time and trouble to replace. He’d be right about that. But you don’t have to go outside if you have to pee.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“You can turn around now.”

She crawled onto the bed, didn’t bother to turn it down. “You don’t have to sleep in your clothes. I don’t know if I’m as decent as you, but I’m too damn tired to start up anything.”

Taking her at her word, he stripped down to his boxers, then stretched out on the bed, leaving plenty of space between them.

She reached out, turned off the light. “I’m not going to cry,” she said after a few moments of silence. “But if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to hold on to me for a while.”

He shifted to her, turned, then, draping an arm around her, drew her back against his body. “Better?”

“Yeah.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. What I want, what I need, what I should, what I shouldn’t. I just don’t know.”

He kissed the back of her head, and the quiet gesture pushed tears into her throat. “Whatever it is, you’ll figure it out. Listen, it’s starting to rain again. It’s a nice sound, this time of night. It’s like music. You can just lie here and listen to the music.”

She listened to the music, how it played on and around the house she’d come to love. And, with his arm curled around her, slipped into exhausted sleep.

SIXTEEN

There was music when she woke. The same steady drum and plink of rain that had lulled her to sleep greeted her when she stirred. He’d held on to her, she thought—a little dreamily—when she’d asked. Just held on to her while the rain played and sleep took her under.

Though she had a dim memory of just dropping down on top of the bed, she found herself cozily tucked in.

And alone.

The part of her that didn’t want to face it, didn’t want those memories to clear, urged her to sink down again, to just let the rain and the watery gloom stroke her back to sleep.

Come too far for that, Cilla, she reminded herself. You’ve come too far for the slide and stroke. Pull it up, face the facts. Decide. Then deal.

As she pushed herself up to sit, she thought that nagging, practical voice in her head a coldhearted bitch.

Then she saw the coffee.

Her insulated travel mug sat on the nightstand. Propped against it, one of her notepads sported a mercilessly accurate and wincingly unflattering sketch depicting exactly how she imagined she looked at that precise moment. Tousled, heavy-eyed, rumpled and scowling. Beneath, in bold block letters, the caption read:

I AM COFFEE!!

DRINK ME!

(THEN TURN THE PAGE)

“Funny guy,” she grumbled. She picked up the pad, tossed it on the bed before lifting the mug. The coffee it held was only a few degrees above lukewarm, but it was strong and sweet. And just what the doctor ordered. She indulged, sitting, sipping, letting the coffee give her system that first kick start.

And idly, turned the page in the notebook.

She hadn’t expected to laugh, wouldn’t have believed anything could cut through the fog of depression to pull a quick, surprised chuckle out of her.

He’d drawn her vivid, wide-eyed, exaggerated breasts and biceps bulging out of her sleep tank, hair streaming in an unseen wind, smile full and fierce. The travel mug, a hint of steam puffing out of the drink hole, gripped in her hand.

“Yeah, you’re a funny guy.”

Laying the notepad back down, she went to find him.

She heard the clattering sound when she opened the bedroom door. Glass—no, broken tiles, she decided—against plastic. She wended her way to the master bedroom, pushed open that door, then crossed to the doorway of the bath.

He’d dug up work gloves, she noted, and a small spade, several empty drywall compound buckets. Two of them were filled with tile shards. It struck her almost harder than it had the night before, to stand there and see the methodical clearing of destruction.

“You’re losing your status as a morning slug.”

He dumped another handful of shards, straightened. He scanned her face. “You may have ruined me for life. How’s the coffee?”

“Welcome. Thanks. You don’t have to do this, Ford.”

“I don’t know anything about building, but I know a lot about cleaning up.”

“We’re going to need a lot more than a couple of buckets and a spade.”

“Yeah, I figured. But I also figured I might as well get started because lying in bed with you on a rainy Sunday morning had me . . . energized.”

“Is that what you call it?”

His face remained very solemn. “In polite company.”

She nodded, stepped over to stare at the cracks and breaks in her glass-block wall. She’d loved the look of that, the patterns in the glass, the way the light stole through. She’d imagined painting the walls a sheer, subtly metallic silver to pick up the glints of chrome. Her classy oasis, and yes, maybe a personal salute to old Hollywood.

The roots of her roots.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I honestly don’t know if I want to put this back together. If I’ve got it in me to fight this war someone’s declared on me. I didn’t come here to fight wars. I wanted to build something for myself, and for her. Maybe to build something for myself from her. But you know, when the foundation’s cracked, things keep falling down.”

“It didn’t fall down, Cilla, it was knocked down. That’s a different thing.” He tipped his head to one side, then the other, making a deliberate study of her face. So she saw he understood she meant herself as much as—maybe more than—the room. “I don’t see any cracks.”

“She was a junkie, a drunk. Maybe she was made into one, exploited, used. Pampered and abused. I know what that’s like. Not on her level, but enough to have a glimmer of what it was for her. I could have tried to build anywhere, but I made a deliberate choice to come here. She’s part of the reason. This place is part of the reason. My own wounded psyche and need to prove my own worth on my own terms. All part of the reason.”

“Those are good reasons.” He shrugged in that easy way of his. “So you stay, you clean it up. And you build it. On your terms.”

She shook her head. “You have no idea how screwed up I am.”

“I’ve got a few clues. How about you? Any idea how strong you are?”

How could she argue against that straight-line, stubborn conviction? “It vacillates. I’m on a low ebb right now.”

“Maybe you just need a boost.”

“More coffee?”

“A hearty Sunday breakfast.” He pulled off the work gloves, tossed them on the lid of the john. “You don’t have to decide the rest of your life this minute, or today, or tomorrow. Why don’t you give yourself a break? Take a little time. Let’s blow off the day. We’ll get Spock from outside where he’d be chasing his cats about now. Gorge ourselves at The Pancake House, go . . . to the zoo.”

“It’s raining.”

“It can’t rain forever.”

She stared at him a moment, at that relaxed smile, the warm, patient eyes. He’d held on to her, she thought. He’d left her coffee, and made her laugh before she was fully awake. He was cleaning up her mess, and demanding absolutely nothing.

He believed in her, in a way, on a level no one, not even she, had believed in before.

“No, it really can’t, can it? It really can’t rain forever.”

“So, get dressed and we’ll go overload on carbs, then go check out the monkeys.”

“Actually, the pancakes sound pretty good. After.”

“After what?”

She laughed, and this time the sound didn’t seem so surprising. She took hold of the front of his shirt, watched the awareness come into his eyes. “Come back to bed, Ford.”

“Oh.”

She backed up, tugging him with her. “It’s just us. Right this minute, I’ve got nothing else on my mind. And I really could use that boost.”

“Okay.” He scooped her up, closed his mouth over hers.

When her head stopped spinning, she smiled. “Really nice start.”

“I’ve been planning it out. Change in venue and basic approach,” he said as he carried her to the bedroom. “But I’m flexible.”

Her smile was slow, like a long, low purr. “So am I.”

“Oh, boy.”

She was laughing as she hooked her arms around his neck, caught his mouth with hers. Just them, she thought as they tumbled onto the bed. Everything else was later. Just them, and the music of the rain. In the soft and lazy light, on the rumpled bed, she let herself sink into the here and now. She drew his shirt up, away, hooked her legs around him and said, “Mmmm.”

He could have lingered on her mouth, the taste, the shape, the movement of it, endlessly. That wonderful deep dip in her top lip held a world of fascination for him. The sexy, seeking slide of her tongue against his could have held him enthralled for hours.

But there was so much more. The graceful stem of her neck allured him, the curve of her cheek, the smooth skin just under her jaw offered him countless pleasures as he roamed, as he sampled before finding her lips again.

The flavors there had become familiar over the weeks since they’d begun this dance, and only the more desirable to him. Now, finally, there would be more.

He could glide his lips down her, learn the tastes and textures, madden himself with the subtle swell above simple cotton. He teased and tormented them both, lingering there even as she arched up in invitation. He found warmth and silk and secrets while her heart beat strong against his lips. And when his tongue slid under the cotton, when she moaned in approval, he found more.

He eased the tank up, inch by torturous inch, fingers gliding light as moth wings as he lifted his head to look into her eyes.

Her heart stuttered. Her body simply sighed.

“You’re really good at this.”

“If something’s worth doing . . . I’ve looked at you a lot. In an artistic capacity.” His gaze shifted down as his fingers brushed over her breasts. “I’ve thought about you a lot.”

Thumbs, fingertips sent shivers through her.

“I’ve imagined touching you. Watching you while I did. Feeling you tremble under my hands. You’ve been worth waiting for.”

He lowered his mouth to hers again, taking the kiss deep. Lowered his body to hers. Heat spread where flesh met flesh, sent her pulse to pound. Now her body quivered as he journeyed down it, slow and easy, hands and lips.

She thought she’d let go when they tumbled onto the bed. But she’d been wrong. That had been acquiescence. This, what he seduced from here, was surrender.

He touched with a care, a curiosity, as if she were the first woman he’d touched. And made her feel as if she’d never been touched before. Sensations swam and coiled inside her, shimmered over her skin until pleasure coated her like light. And the light bloomed with such intensity she gripped the tangled sheets to anchor herself in the glow.

He guided her up, up where the light flashed, where in the quick, stunning blindness pleasure turned on its edge and shot through her.

He steeped himself in the shape of her, even as she quaked under him. The slender line of her torso that curved into her waist enchanted him. The feel of her hips, rising up as she peaked, thrilled. Long, lovely thighs led him to gorgeous calves that flexed at the light nip of his teeth.

She moaned, and the sound of it seeped into him when he roamed up again to explore that warm, wet, welcoming center. She said his name when she came, a quick, breathless gasp. Her fingers raked through his hair, then down his back on the coil and release. Damp flesh slid over damp flesh until he looked back down into her eyes.

She touched his face, held the look, trembling, trembling as he slipped into her. And as those icy blue eyes glazed, he took her with long, slow thrusts.

She ached, every part of her. She rose to him, helplessly caught. Swamped in needs he met, stirred and met once more. When they built again, impossibly, she held on.

And she let go.

Limp, loose, languid, she lay under him. The world eked back so she heard the drumming rain again, felt the hot twisted sheet under her back. When the mists cleared from her brain enough to allow random thoughts to wind through, she wondered if the fact that she’d just had the best sex of her life meant it was all downhill from here.

Then he turned his head, rubbed his lips against her shoulder, and she swore she felt her skin glow.

He lifted his head, brushed her hair away from her cheek as he smiled sleepily down at her. “Okay?”

“Okay?” She let out a mystified laugh. “Ford, you seriously deserve a medal, or at least a certificate of excellence. I feel like every inch of me has been . . . tended,” she decided.

“I’d say my job is done, but I really like the work.” He dipped his head, and the kiss sent sparkles dancing in her brain to go with the glow. “Probably need, ah, a coffee break though.”

Deciding she’d never been more relaxed or content in her life, she hooked her arms around his neck. “Understandable. When my bones resolidify, I could use a shower. And it just occurs to me we can’t shower here.”

He saw the worry come back into her eyes and, rolling away, pulled her up to sitting. “We’ll go over to my place.” Where what had happened wouldn’t keep slapping her in the face, he thought. “Toss something on, grab what you want. It turns out I’ve also imagined you wet and slippery. Now I’ll find out how close I was to right.”

“All right. There was a mention of pancakes, too, as I recall.”

“Stacks of them. We’re going to need fuel to get through the rest of the day.”

THEY DIDN ’T MAKE it to The Pancake House. After a long, steamy, energetic shower, the idea struck to stay in and make pancakes. The result was messy but reasonably edible.

“They just need a lot of syrup.” Sitting at the kitchen counter in Ford’s T-shirt, Cilla drowned the oddly shaped stack on her plate.

If the sounds from the mudroom were an indication, Spock had no trouble with his share.

“They’re not so bad.” Ford forked a dripping pile. “And more fun than Eggos. I had this other idea. Instead of going out to see monkeys, we stay in and have monkey sex.”

“So far your ideas are working out pretty well. Who am I to argue? What do you usually do on rainy Sundays?”

“You mean when I’m not eating pancakes with gorgeous blondes?” He shrugged. “I might work some, depending on how that’s going, or fat-ass around and read. Maybe hang out with Brian or Matt, or both. If I had absolutely no choice, I’d do laundry. How about you?”

“Back in L.A.? If I had a project going, I’d tackle some interior work, or paperwork, or research. If I didn’t have a project, I’d scour the Internet and real estate ads looking for one. That’d pretty much sum up my life for the past few years. That’s pitiful.”

“It’s not. It’s what you wanted. A lot of people thought it was pitiful I’d rather hole up scribbling and sketching than, say, play basketball. Being tall, you know. I sucked at basketball. Never got it. On the other hand, I was good, and got better, at the scribbling and sketching.”

“You’re frighteningly well adjusted. Or maybe just compared to me.”

“You seem pretty steady from where I sit.”

“I have abandonment issues.” She gestured with a dripping forkful of pancakes. “I have a drug phobia due to a family history of drug abuse that has me sweating taking an aspirin. I suffer from acute stage fright that escalated in my teens to the point that I could barely cope with being in the same room with three people at a time. The only way I can cope with my mother, sanely, is to stay away from her, and I spent the majority of my life alternately blaming myself or my father for the fact that we didn’t—don’t, really—know each other.”

He made a pfft sound. “Is that all?”

“Want more?” She ate pancakes, stabbed more. “I got more. I have dreams where I engage in detailed conversations with my dead grandmother, whom I never met, and to whom I feel closer than I do to any living member of my family. My best friend is my ex-husband. I’ve had four stepfathers, and countless ‘uncles,’ and being not stupid, understand that is part of the reason that I’ve never had a long-term, healthy relationship with a man other than Steve. I expect to be exploited and used, or I expect the attempt, and, as a result, have successfully sabotaged any potentially long-term, healthy relationship I might have had. Fair warning.”

He forked more pancakes, ate them. “Is that the best you can do?”

With a laugh, she shoved her plate away, picked up her coffee. “That’s probably enough over breakfast.” She rose, held out a hand. “Let’s take a walk in the rain. Then we can come back and dive in your Jacuzzi.”

They left the mess, took a long walk with the dog. Was there anything more romantic than being kissed in the rain? Cilla wondered. Anything more lovely than the mountains, shrouded in clouds and mist? Anything more liberating than strolling hand in hand through the summer rain while all the world huddled inside, behind closed doors and windows?

Drenched, they raced back to the house to strip off dripping clothes. In the hot, bubbling water, they took each other slowly.

Drained, they went upstairs to curl together like puppies to sleep on Ford’s bed.

She woke him with love, the sleepy joy of it, the warm tangle of limbs and soft press of lips. When they dozed again, the rain slowed to a quiet patter.

Later, Cilla slipped out of bed. Tiptoeing to Ford’s closet, she found a shirt. Pulling it on, she eased out of the room. She intended to go down to search out a bottle of water—preferably ice cold—but detoured to his studio. Thirst could wait for curiosity.

When she switched on the light, the drawings pinned to his display board pulled her forward. So odd to see her face, she thought, on the warrior’s body. Well, her body, she admitted.

He’d added her tattoo, but as she’d once suggested, it rode on Brid’s biceps.

Wandering over to his workstation, she frowned at the papers on his drawing board. Small sketches covered them—sparse sketches, she mused, all in separate boxes, and each with a dotted vertical line running top to bottom. Some of them had what she thought she recognized as speech balloons, with numbers inside. She spread them out for a better look.

It was like a storyboard, she realized. The characters, the action, some staging. Blocking. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the sizes and shapes of the boxes had been calculated mathematically as well as artistically. Balance, she mused, and impact.

Who knew so much went into a comic?

On the other side of the board, a larger sheet lay on the counter. More squares and rectangles, she noted, holding detailed drawings, shaded and . . . inked. Yes, that was the word. Though no dialogue had been added, the setup, the art, drew the eye across, just as words in a book would do.

In the center, Dr. Cass Murphy stood in what Cilla thought of as her professor suit. Conservative, acceptable. Bland. The clothes, the dark-framed glasses and the posture defined personality in one shot. That was a kind of brilliance, wasn’t it? she thought. To capture and depict in one single image the character. The person.

Without thinking, she picked up the panel, took it to the display board to hold it against the sketch of Brid.

The same woman, yes, of course the same woman. And yet the change was both remarkable and complete. Repression to liberation, hesitation to purpose. Shadow to light.

When she started to walk back to replace the panel, she saw another stack of pages. Typewritten pages. She scanned the first few lines.

FORD WOKE HUNGRY, and deeply disappointed Cilla wasn’t beside him to slake one area of appetite. Apparently, he decided, he couldn’t get enough of her.

She was all beautiful and sexy and wounded and smart. She knew how to use power tools, and had a laugh that made his mouth water. He’d watched her hang tough, and fall to pieces. He’d witnessed her absolute devotion to a friend, watched her handle acute embarrassment and lash out with temper.

She knew how to work, and oh boy, she knew how to play.

She might be, he mused, pretty damn close to perfect.

So where the hell was she?

He rolled out of bed, snagged a pair of pants and stepped into them on his way to hunt her down.

He was just about to call her name when he spotted her. She sat at his work counter, legs tucked up and crossed, shoulders hunched, one elbow propped. He had the quick and fleeting thought that if he sat like that for more than ten minutes, his neck and shoulders would lock up for days.

Walking over, he set his hands on her shoulders to rub what he imagined would be knotted muscles. And she jumped as if he’d swung an ax at her head.

She pitched forward, caught herself, reared back as her legs scissored out. Then, spinning around in his chair, she clutched her hands at her chest as her laughter bubbled out.

“God! You scared me!”

“Yeah, I picked that up when you nearly bashed your head on my drawing board. What’re you up to?”

“I was . . . Oh God. Oh shit!” She shoved the chair back, dropped her hands into her lap. “I’m sorry. I completely breached your privacy. I was looking at the sketches you had sitting out, and I saw the book. I just meant to skim the first page. I got caught up. I shouldn’t have—”

“Whoa, whoa, save the self-flagellation. I told you before you could read it sometime. I just hadn’t written it yet. If you got caught up, that’s a plus.”

“I moved things around.” She picked up the panel, held it out. “I hate when people move my things around.”

“I know where it goes. Obviously, you’re lucky I’m not as temperamental and touchy as you are.” He laid the panel back in its place. “So, what do you think?”

“I think the story is fun, exciting and entertaining, with a sharp thread of humor, and with strong underpinnings of feminism.”

He lifted his brows. “All that?”

“You know damn well. The character of Cass behaves in certain ways, and expects certain behavior and attitudes toward her because she was raised by a domineering, unsympathetic father. She’s sexually repressed and emotionally clogged, has been reared to accept the superiority of men and accept a certain lack of respect in her male-dominated field. You see a great deal of that in the single portrait. The one you just put back.

“She’s betrayed, and left for dead, because she’s so indoctrinated to taking orders from male authority figures. To subverting her own intellect and desires. And by facing death, by fighting against it, she becomes a leader. Everything that’s been trapped inside her, and more, is released in the form of Brid. A warrior. Empowerment, through power.”

Fascinating, he thought, and flattering, to listen to her syn opsize his story, and his character. “I’m going to interpret that as you like it.”

“I really do, and not just due to the recent sexual haze. It’s like a screenplay, a very strong screenplay. You even have camera angles and direction.”

“It helps remind me how I saw it when I wrote it, even if that changes.”

“And you add in these little boxes like the ones on the art.”

“Helps with the layout. That may change, too. Just like the story line took some turns on me.”

“You added Steve. You added the Immortal. He’s going to be so . . . well, insane over that.”

“She needed the bridge, the link between Cass and Brid. A character who can straddle her worlds, and help the two sides of our heroine understand each other.”

Not unlike, Ford thought now, how Steve helped Cilla. “Adding him changed a lot of the angles, added a lot of work, but it’s stronger for it. And something I should’ve thought of in the first place. Anyway, it’s still evolving. The story’s down, and now I have to tell it with art. Sometimes, for me anyway, the art can shift the story. We’ll have to see.”

“I especially like the one up there, of Brid in what’s almost a fouetté turn, as I assume she’s about to kick out her leg against a foe.”

“Fouetté turn?”

“A ballet move.” Cilla crossed over to tap the sketch she spoke of. “This is very close, even the arms are in position. To be precise, the supporting foot should be turned out slightly more, but—”

“You know ballet? Can you do that?”

“A fouetté? Please. Eight years of ballet.” She executed a quick turn. “Of tap.” And a fast-time step. “Jazz.”

“Cool. Hold on.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a camera. “Do the ballet thing again.”

“I’m mostly naked.”

“Yeah, which is why I’ll be posting these on the Internet shortly. I just want the feet business you were talking about.”

He had no idea what an enormous leap of faith it took for her to do the turn as he snapped the camera.

“One more, okay? Good. Great. Thanks. A fouetté turn. Ballet.” He set the camera back down. “I must’ve seen it somewhere, sometime or other. Eight years? I guess that explains how you did those high leaps in Wasteland Three, when you were running through the woods, trying to escape the reanimated psycho killer.”

“Grand jetés.” She laughed. “So to speak.”

“I thought you were going to make it, the way you were flying. I mean you got all the way back to the cabin, avoiding the death trap And the flying hatchet, only to pull open the door—”

“To find the reanimated psycho killer had taken a convenient shortcut to beat me there. Sobbing relief,” she said, miming the action, “shock, scream. Slice.”

“It was a hell of a scream. They use voice doubles for that stuff, right? And enhance.”

“Sometimes. However . . .” She sucked in her breath and let out a bloodcurdling, glass-shattering scream that had Ford staggering back two full steps. “I did my own work,” she finished.

“Wow. You’ve got some lungs there. How about we go down, have some wine, while we see if my eardrums regenerate.”

“Love to.”

SEVENTEEN

She didn’t think about the vandalism. Or when thoughts of what waited for her across the road crept into her mind, Cilla firmly slammed the door. No point in it, she told herself. There was nothing she could do because she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

There was no harm in a day out of time. A fantasy day, really, filled with sex and sleep inside the bubble of rain-slicked windows. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been content to spend the day in a man’s company, unless it had been work-related.

Even the idea of wine and video games held an appeal. Until Ford severely trounced her for the third time in a row.

“She—what’s her name?—Halle Berry.”

“Storm,” Ford provided. “Halle Berry’s the actress, and really hot. Storm is a key member of the X-Men. Also really hot.”

“Well, she just stood there.” Cilla scowled down at the controls. “How am I supposed to know what to push and what to toggle, and whatever?”

“Practice. And like I said, you need to form your team more strategically. You formed your all-girl alliance. You should’ve mixed it up.”

“My strategy was gender solidarity.” Under the coffee table, Spock snorted. “That’s enough out of you,” she muttered. “Besides, I think this controller’s defective because I have excellent hand-eye coordination.”

“Want to switch and go another round?”

She eyed him narrowly. “How often do you play this?”

“Off and on. Throughout my entire life,” he added with a grin. “I’m currently undefeated on this version of Ultimate Alliance.”

“Geek.”

“Loser.”

She handed him her controller. “Put your toys away.”

Look at that, she thought when he rose to do just that. Tidy hot guy. Tidy straight hot guy. How many of them were there in the world?

“Saving the world worked up my appetite. How about you?”

“I didn’t save the world,” she pointed out.

“You tried.”

“That was smug. I see the smug all over you.”

“Then I’d better wash up. I got leftover spaghetti and meatballs, courtesy of Penny Sawyer.”

“You’ve got a nice setup here, Ford. Work you love, and a great house to do it in. Your ridiculously appealing dog. The tight circle of friends going back to childhood. Family you get along with, close enough you can cop leftovers. It’s a great platform.”

“No complaints. Cilla—”

“No, not yet.” She could see in his eyes the offer of sympathy and support. “I’m not ready to think about it yet. Spaghetti and meatballs sounds like just the thing.”

“Cold or warmed up?”

“It has to be exceptional spaghetti and meatballs to warrant cold.”

He crossed back, took her hand. “Come with me,” he said and led her around to the kitchen. “Have a seat.” He took the bowl out of the fridge, peeled off the lid, got a fork. “You’ll get yours,” he told Spock as the dog danced and gurgled. Turning back, he set the bowl on the bar, then wound some pasta on a fork. “Sample.”

She opened her mouth, let him feed her. “Oh. Okay, that’s really good. Really. Give me the fork.”

With a laugh, he passed it to her. After adding some to Spock’s dish, he topped off both glasses of wine. They sat at the counter, eating cold pasta straight from the bowl.

“We had this cook when I was a kid. Annamaria from Sic ily. I swear her pasta wasn’t as good as this. What?” she said when he shook his head.

“Just strikes me weird that I know somebody who can say, ‘We had a cook when I was a kid.’ ”

She grinned around more pasta. “We had a butler.”

“Get out.”

She raised her brows, inclined her head and stabbed at a meatball. “Two maids, chauffeur, gardener, under-gardener, my mother’s personal assistant, pool boy. And once, when my mother discovered the pool boy, whom she was banging, was also banging one of the maids, she fired them both. With much drama. She had to go to Palm Springs for a week to recover, where she met Number Three—ironically, by the pool. I’m pretty sure, at some point, he also banged the pool boy. The new pool boy, whose name was Raoul.”

He gestured at her with his fork until he swallowed. “You grew up in an eighties soap opera.”

She thought it over. “Close enough. But, in any case, Annamaria had nothing on your mother.”

“She’ll get a kick out of hearing that. What was it like, seriously? Growing up with maids and butlers?”

“Crowded. And not all it’s cracked up to be. That sounds snotty,” she decided. “And I imagine some woman with a house and family to run, a full-time job and the need to get dinner on the table would be tempted to bitch-slap me for it. But.” She shrugged. “There’s always somebody there, so genuine privacy is an illusion. No sneaking a cookie out of the jar before dinnertime. Actually no cookies for the most part as the camera adds pounds. If you have a fight with your mother, the entire household knows the details. More, the odds are that those details will be recounted sometime down the road in a tabloid interview or a disgruntled former employee’s tell-all book.

“All in all,” she concluded, “I’d rather eat leftover spaghetti.”

“But, if I remember right, you don’t cook.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem.” She reached for her wine. “I’ve thought about maybe asking Patty for pointers in that area. I like to chop.” She hacked down a few times with the flat of her hand to demonstrate. “You know, vegetables, salads. I’m a hell of a chopper.”

“That’s a start.”

“Self-sufficiency, that’s the key. You manage.”

“True, but I’ve been butler-free all my life. I do have a biweekly cleaning service, and am well acquainted with the primary and alternate routes to all takeout facilities. Plus, I have a direct line to Brian and Matt and Shanna, who will handle small household emergencies for beer.”

“It’s a system.”

“Well oiled.” He tucked her hair behind her ear.

“If and when I learn to cook something other than a grilled cheese sandwich and canned soup, I’ll have reached another lofty personal goal.”

“What are some of the others?”

“Lofty personal goals? Rehabbing a house and selling it at a profit. I hit that one. Having my own business and having said business generate an actual income. Which first requires reaching the goal of getting my contractor’s license, which in turn requires passing the test for same. In a couple weeks, actually, if I—”

“You’ve got to take a test? I love tests.” His eyes actually lit up. “Do you need a study buddy? And yes, I capitalize the N in nerd.”

She paused with what she swore would be her last bite of pasta halfway to her mouth. “You love tests?”

“Well, yeah. There are questions and answers. True or false, multiple choice, essay. What’s not to love? I kill on tests. It’s a gift. Do you want any help?”

“Actually, I think I’m good. I’ve been prepping for it for a while now. I think I met your kind during my brief and unfortunate college experience. You’re the one who screwed the curve for me, every time. You are, therefore, one of the primary reasons I’m a one-semester college dropout.”

“You should’ve asked my kind to be your study buddy. Besides, you should thank my kind for putting you exactly where you want to be right now.”

“Hmm.” She deliberately nudged the bowl toward him and away from herself. “That’s very slick and clever. Previous humiliation and failure lead to current spaghetti-and-meatball-i nduced contentment.”

“Or, condensing, sometimes shit happens for the best.”

“There’s a bumper sticker. I have to move.” She pressed a hand on her stomach, slid off the stool. “And I’ll demonstrate my self-sufficiency and gratitude for current contentment by doing the dishes, which includes everything back to breakfast, apparently.”

“We were busy with other things.”

“I guess we were.”

For a moment, he indulged himself with wine and watching her. But watching wasn’t enough. He stood and crossed to her, turned her to face him. She had a wooden spoon in her hand and an easy smile curving her lips. He wrapped her hair around his hand—and saw her eyes widen in surprise, heard the spoon clatter to the floor—as he used it like a rope to tug her head back.

And ravished her mouth.

A new and rampant hunger surged through him, a whip of need and now. He released her hair to drag off her shirt. Even as his mouth crushed back down to hers, he yanked her pants down her hips.

It was a tornado of demand and speed. It seemed she was naked before she could catch the first breath. Plucked up off the ground while her head spun and her heart lurched. He dropped her down on the counter, shoved her legs apart.

And ravished her.

Her hand flailed out for purchase. Something shattered; she wondered if it was her mind. His fingers dug into her hips as he pounded into her, pounded greed and scorching pleasure. Mad for more, she locked her legs around his waist.

His blood pounded under his skin, a thousand brutal drum-beats. The hunger that had leaped into him seemed to snap its teeth and bite even as he drove himself into her to slake it. Its dark excitement pushed him to take, to fill her with the same wild desperation that burned in him.

When it broke, it was like shooting out of the black, into the blind.

Her head dropped limply onto his shoulder while her breath came in short, raw gasps. She felt him tremble, found herself pleased she wasn’t the only one.

“Oh,” she managed, “God.”

“Give me a minute. I’ll help you down.”

“Take your time. I’m fine where I am. Where am I?”

His laugh muffled against the side of her neck. “Maybe it was something in the spaghetti sauce.”

“Then we need the recipe.”

Steadier, he leaned back, took a good look at her. “Now I really want my camera. You’re the first naked woman to sit on my kitchen counter, which I now plan to have sealed in Lucite. I’d like to document the moment.”

“Not a chance. My contract specifies no nude scenes.”

“That’s a damn shame.” He stroked her hair back. “I guess the least I can do after playing Viking and maiden is help you with the dishes.”

“The least. Hand me my shirt, will you?”

“See, I’ve confiscated your clothes. You’ll have to do the dishes naked.”

Her head cocked, her eyebrows lifted. On a sigh, Ford scooped up her shirt. “It was worth a shot.”

HE WOKE in the dark to a quiet house and an empty bed. Groggy and baffled, he rose to look for her. One part of his brain reserved the right to be pissed if she’d gone back across the road without waking him.

He found his front door open, and saw the silhouette of her sitting in one of the chairs on his veranda with Spock stretched at her feet. He smelled coffee as he pushed open the screen.

She glanced over. “Morning.”

“As long as it’s still dark, it’s not morning.” He sat beside her. “Give me a hit of that.”

“You should go back to bed.”

“Are you going to give me a hit of that coffee or make me go get my own?”

She passed him the cup. “I have to decide what to do.”

“At . . .” He took her wrist, turned it up and squinted at her watch. “Five-oh-six in the morning?”

“I didn’t deal with it yesterday, didn’t think about it. Or not much. I even left my phone over there so the police couldn’t contact me. So no one could. I ducked and covered.”

“You took a break. There’s no reason you can’t take a couple more days before you try to figure it all out.”

“Actually, there are real and practical reasons I can’t take more time. I have subs coming in about two hours, unless I call them off. If I take them off for a couple of days, it’s more than screwing up my schedule, which is, of course, already screwed. It messes up theirs, and their employees’. And subs are always juggling jobs, so I could lose key people for more than a couple of days if I hold them off. If that decision is to walk away, I have to tell them that.”

“The circumstances aren’t of your making, and no one’s going to blame you.”

“No, I don’t think anyone would. But it still creates a domino effect. I also have to consider my budget, which is also screwed. I have insurance, but insurance has a deductible that has to be factored into the whole. I’m already over the high end of my projections, but that was my choice, with the changes and additions I made.”

“If you need—”

“Don’t,” she said, anticipating him. “I’m okay financially, and if I can’t make it on my own, I can’t make it. If I really needed extra, I could make a few calls, grab a couple voice-over jobs. Bottom line is I can’t leave the place the way it is, half done. I’ve got custom cabinets I ordered back in March, and the balance due when I take delivery. The kitchen appliances will be back in another couple months. Other details, small and large. It has to be finished, that’s not really a question. The questions are do I want to finish it, and do I want to stay? Can I? Should I?”

He took another hit of her coffee. Serious conversations, he thought, required serious attention. “Tell me what you’d do if you decided to turn it over to someone else to finish. If you left.”

“There are a lot of places I could slip into without the baggage I have here. Stick a pin in a map, I guess, and pick one. Take some of those voice-overs to thicken the bankroll, if I need to. Find a place with potential to flip. I can get a mortgage. Regular and very nice residuals from Our Family look good on an application. Or if I don’t want the stress of that, I could get a job with a crew. Hell, I could work for Steve’s new New York branch.”

“You’d be giving up your lofty personal goals.”

“Maybe I’d just postpone reaching them. The problem is . . .” She paused, sipped the coffee he’d handed back to her. “The problem is,” she repeated, “I love that house. I love what it was, what I know I can make it. I love this place, and how I feel here. I love what I see when I look out my windows or step out my door. And I’m pissed off that someone’s meanness makes me consider giving that up.”

Something that had tightened inside him relaxed. “I like it better when you’re pissed off.”

“I do, too, but it’s hard to hold up the level. The part of me that isn’t pissed off or discouraged is scared.”

“That’s because you’re not stupid. Someone’s set out to deliberately hurt you. You’re going to be scared, Cilla, until you know who and why, and make it stop.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Do you still think it’s old man Hennessy?”

“He’s the only one I’ve met or had contact with around here who’s made it clear he hates me. Which, if this were a screenplay, means he couldn’t be behind all this because he’s the only one who hates me. But—”

“We’ll go talk to him, face-to-face.”

“And say what?”

“It’ll come to us, but basically you’re sticking, you’re making your home here, and neither you nor a house is responsible for something that happened over thirty years ago. And words to that effect. I’m also going to make copies of those letters you found. I’m going to read them more carefully and so are you. You need to think about passing them to the cops. Because if it’s not Hennessy, the next best possibility is it’s someone connected to those letters who got wind they still exist and you have them. Janet Hardy’s married secret lover revealed? That’d be news. Big, juicy, scandalous news.”

She’d thought of that. Of course she’d thought of that. But . . . “They aren’t signed.”

“Might be clues in there about the identity. Might not be, but we’re talking thirty-five years ago. Do you remember everything you wrote thirty-five years ago?”

“I’m twenty-eight, but I get what you’re saying.” In the still, softening dark, she stared at him. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Yeah. The first, the prowler in your barn. That could’ve been somebody hoping to pick up a few Janet Hardy souvenirs. I’ve got to weigh in the place has been empty for years now, and sure I’ve seen some people poking around now and then. Against that, I’ve got to factor most people didn’t know there was anything left inside, and any who did probably thought it was worthless junk left by tenants, not the woman herself. But then you come along.”

“I clear it out, store it in the barn, and it’s clear and obvious that I’m sorting through it, culling out anything that belonged to my grandmother.”

“Somebody gets curious, a little greedy. Possibility. The second, the attack on Steve, could come from the same root. Poking around, somebody’s coming. Panic. But that takes it way over harmless if annoying trespass. Also above, if the letters are the goal, trespass to preserve reputation. It’s up to assault, arguably attempted murder.”

She shivered. “Of discouraged, pissed and scared, scared just leaped way into the lead.”

“Good, because then you’ll be more careful. Next, your truck door. That one’s personal and direct to you. So was the message on the stone wall. Maybe there are two separate people involved.”

“Oh, that really helps. Two people who hate me.”

“It’s another possible. Last, the destruction inside the house. It’s more personal, more direct, and it’s ballsier. So today, you’re going shopping for a security system.”

“Is that what I’m going to do?”

The cold bite in her tone didn’t break his skin. “One of us is. Since it’s your place, I assume you’d rather do it yourself. But if you don’t, today, I will. I’m now authorized as I’ve had you naked on my kitchen counter. No point in whining to me if you didn’t bother to read the fine print.”

She said nothing for a moment, struggling against the urge to stew. “I intended to arrange that anyway—stay or go.”

“Good. And you don’t care for ultimatums. Neither do I, but in this particular case, I’m making an exception. I can sleep over there with you. Happy to. But sleep is a foregone conclusion at some point, just as the house being empty at some time or other for some period of time is inevitable. You need to be safe, and to feel safe. You need to protect your property.

“And Cilla, there’s no ‘go.’ You’ve already decided to stay.”

She really did want to stew, she thought, and he was making it damn hard to indulge. “How come you’re all macho and pushy with your ultimatum, but you’re not all macho and pushy telling me to flee to safety while you slay the dragon?”

“My shining armor’s in the shop. And maybe I just like the sex, which would be hard to come by with all the fleeing. Or it could be I don’t want to see you give up something you love.”

Yeah, he made it damn hard. “When I came out here to sit, I told myself it was just a house. I’ve put a lot of myself into other houses—it’s what makes the rehab worthwhile—and I’ve let them go. It’s just a house, wood and glass and pipes and wire, on a piece of ground.”

She looked down when he laid his hand over hers, when the gesture told her he understood. “Of course it’s not just a house, not to me. I don’t want to let it go, Ford. I’d never get it back, never get back what I’ve found if I let it go.”

She turned her hand over, laced her fingers with his. “Plus, I like the sex.”

“It can’t be overstated.”

“Okay then.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve got to get back. Get ready. Get started.”

“Let me get some shoes on. I’ll walk you home.”

MATT STOOD in the center of the master bath, hands on his hips, face grim. “I’m awful damn sorry about this, Cilla. I don’t know what gets into people, I swear I don’t. We’re going to fix that wall for you, don’t worry. And Stan’ll come back and do the tile. I can get one of my men to chip out what’s damaged in place, but it’d be better to leave the glass block for Stan. I’ll give him a call for you.”

“I’d appreciate that. I need to go pick up the replacement tile and block, some supplies. Arrange for a security system.”

“I hear that. People didn’t lock their doors half the time around here when I was a kid. Times change. Another damn shame when it comes to things like this. You said they busted out a pane in the back door? I’ll get somebody to replace that for you.”

“I’m going to order a new door, and a lock set for that and the front. The plywood’s okay for now. You’ll need to take down that drywall rather than try to repair it. There’s enough on site.”

“Sure there is. Anything else I can do, Cilla, you just let me know. Got the other bathroom up here, too?”

“Yeah. Got it good.”

“I guess we’d better take a look.”

They assessed damage, talked repairs. As she gathered her lists and checked on other areas of the project, crew offered sympathy, asked questions, expressed outrage and disgust. By the time she left, her ears were ringing from it, and with the more comforting sound of whirling drills and buzzing saws.

INEVITABLY, SHE HAD to explain to her usual consultant at the flooring center why she needed to buy considerable square footage of tile she’d already bought, as well as grout. It slowed the process, but Cilla supposed that, too, was inevitable. Even in L.A. she’d formed relationships with specific tile guys, lumber guys, appliance guys. It went with the trade, and good relationships paid off the time spent.

She ran into the same situation at the home supply store when she stopped in to buy the replacement sink and other items on her list. While she waited for the clerk to check stock, she cruised the faucets. Chrome, nickel, brass, copper. Brushed, satin, antiqued. Single handles, vessel style. Matching towel bars, robe hooks.

All the shapes, the textures, the tones, gave her the same rush of pleasure others might find browsing the glittery offerings in Tiffany’s.

Copper. Maybe she’d go with copper on her office bath. With a stone vessel-style sink and—

“Cilla?”

She broke off from her visualization to see Tom Morrow and Buddy coming down the aisle. “I thought that was you,” Tom said. “Buying or deciding?”

“Both, actually.”

“Same for me. I’m outfitting a spec out. Usually my bath and kitchen designer takes care of this, but she’s out on maternity leave. Plus, I like to get my hand in occasionally. You know how it is.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Got my consultant here,” he said with a wink. “Buddy’ll make sure I don’t go buying a center set when I need a wide, or vice versa.”

“You’ve done it before,” Buddy pointed out.

“And you never let me forget. I heard you ladies had a fine time on Saturday.”

“We did.”

“Cathy always says shopping’s her hobby. I’ve got golf, she’s got the mall and the outlets.”

“Don’t see the point in either.” Buddy shook his head. “Fishing’s got a point.”

“Excuse me.” The clerk strode up. “Everything’s in stock, Ms. McGowan. You got the last we have of the wall-hung sink.”

“What wall-hung?” Buddy wanted to know. “I’m plumbing for a pedestal in the third bath.”

“It’s a replacement. The sink you installed in the second-floor guest bath was damaged.”

If he’d been a rooster, Cilla thought, Buddy’s cockscomb would have quivered.

“How the hell did that happen? Nothing wrong with it when I put it in.”

Okay, Cilla thought, one more time. “I had a break-in Saturday. Some vandalism.”

“My God! Were you hurt?” Tom demanded.

“No, I wasn’t home. I was out with your wife and Patty and Angie.”

“They busted up a sink?” Buddy pulled off his cap to scratch his head. “What the hell for?”

“I couldn’t say. But both second-floor baths we’d finished took a hit. They used my sledge and pickax from the look of it, smashed a lot of tile, one of the walls, the sink, some glass block.”

“This is terrible. It’s not the sort of thing that happens around here. The police—”

“Are doing what they can,” she said to Tom. “So they tell me, anyway.” Since she wanted the word spread, she kept going. “I’ll be installing a security system.”

“Can’t blame you. I’m so sorry to hear this, Cilla.”

“Wouldn’t want my daughter living out that far on her own.” Buddy shrugged. “Just saying. Especially after what happened to Steve.”

“Bad things happen everywhere. I’ve got to get my supplies and finish my run. Good luck with the spec.”

“Cilla, if there’s anything we can do, Cathy or I, you just give a call. We’re a growing area, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take care of our own.”

“Thank you.”

It warmed her, and stayed warm inside her, even as her supplies were loaded, even as she drove away.

Our own.

EIGHTEEN

Cilla gave herself the pleasure of removing the old, battered doors with their worn or missing weather stripping, and installing their replacements. She salvaged the old, stored them in the barn.

You just never knew, to her mind, when you might need an old door.

She’d opted for mahogany—damn the budget—in an elegantly simple Craftman style. The three-over-three seeded glass panes on the entrance door would let in the light, and still afford some privacy.

Sucker fit, she thought with pleasure after one of the laborers helped her haul it into position. Fit like a fricking dream. She waited until she was alone to stroke her hands over the wood and purr, “Hello, gorgeous. You’re all mine now.” Humming under her breath, she went to work on the lock set.

She’d gone with the oil-rubbed bronze she’d chosen for other areas of the house and, as she began the install on the lock set, decided she’d made the perfect choice. The dark tones of the bronze showed off well against the subtle red hues in the mahogany.

“That’s a nice-looking door.”

She looked over her shoulder to see her father stepping out of his car. Cilla was so used to seeing him in what she thought of as his teacher clothes, it took her a minute to adjust her brain to the jeans, T-shirt and ball cap he wore.

“Curb appeal,” she called back.

“You’re certainly getting that.” He paused to look over the front lawns. The grass had been neatly mowed, with its bare patches resowed and the tender new shoots protected by a thin layer of straw. The plantings had begun there, too, with young azaleas and rhododendrons, a clutch of hydrangeas already heading up, a slim red maple with its leaves glowing in the sunlight.

“Still got some work, and I won’t put in the flower beds until next spring, unless I manage to put in some fall stuff. But it’s coming along.”

“You’ve done an amazing job so far.” He joined her on the veranda, close enough she caught a whiff of what she thought might be Irish Spring. He studied the door, the lock set. “That looks sturdy. I’m glad to see it. What about the security system? Word gets around,” he added when she raised her eyebrows.

“I was hoping that word would. It might be as much of a deterrent as the system itself. Which went in yesterday.”

His hazel eyes tracked to hers, solemnly. “I wish you’d called me, Cilla, about the vandalism.”

“Nothing you could’ve done about it. Give me a second here, I’m nearly done.” She whirled the last screws in place, then set aside the cordless screwdriver before admiring the result. “Yeah, it looks good. I almost went with a plate style, but thought it would look too heavy. This is better.” She opened and closed the door a couple of times. “Good. I’m using the same style on the back entry, but decided to go with an atrium on . . . sorry. You couldn’t possibly be interested.”

“I am. I’m interested in what you’re doing.”

A little surprised by the hurt in his tone, she turned to give him her full attention. “I just meant the odd details—knob or lever style, sliding, swinging, luminary. Do you want to come in?” She opened the door again. “It’s noisy, but it’s cooler.”

“Cilla, what can I do?”

“I . . . Look, I’m sorry.” God, she was lousy at this father-daughter thing. How could she be otherwise? “I didn’t mean to imply you don’t care what I’m doing.”

“Cilla.” Gavin closed the door again to block off the noise from inside. “What can I do to help you?”

She felt guilty, and a little panicked, as her mind went blank. “Help me with what?”

He let out a sigh, shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m not a do-it-yourselfer, but I can hammer a nail or put in a screw. I can fetch and carry. I can make iced tea or go pick up sandwiches. I can use a broom.”

“You . . . want to work on the house?”

“School’s out for the summer, and I didn’t take on any summer classes. I have some time to help, and I’d like to help.”

“Well . . . why?”

“I’m aware you have plenty of people, people who know what they’re doing, that you’re paying to do it. But, I’ve never done anything for you. I sent child support. I was legally obligated to. I hope you know, or can believe, I’d have sent it without that obligation. I didn’t teach you to ride a bike, or to drive a car. I never put toys together for you on Christmas Eve or your birthday—or the few times I did you were too young to possibly remember. I never helped you with your homework or lay in bed waiting for you to come home from a date so I could sleep. I never did any of those things for you, or hundreds more. So I’d like to do something for you now. Something tangible. If you’ll let me.”

Her heart fluttered, the oddest combination of pleasure and distress. It seemed vital she think of something, the right something, and her mind went on a desperate scavenger hunt. “Ah. Ever done any painting?”

She watched the tension in his face melt into a delighted smile. “As a matter of fact, I’m an excellent painter. Do you want references?”

She smiled back at him. “I’ll give you a trial run. Follow me.”

She led him in and through to the living room. She hadn’t scheduled painting this area quite yet, but there was no reason against it. “The plasterwork’s done, and I’ve removed the trim. Had to. Some of it needed to be stripped, and that’s done. I’m still working on making what I need to replicate and replace damaged areas, then I’ll stain and seal. Anyway, you won’t have to tape or cut in around trim. Oh, and don’t worry about the brick on the fireplace, either. I’m going to cover that with granite. Or marble. There’s no work going on in this area right now, so you won’t be in anyone’s way, and they shouldn’t be in yours. We can drop-cloth the floors and the supplies stored here.”

She set her fists on her hips. “Got your stepladder, your pans, rollers, brushes right over there. Primer’s in those ten-gallon cans, and marked. Finish paint’s labeled with the L.R. for living room. I hit a sale on Duron, so I bought it in advance. You won’t get past starting the primer anyway.”

She ran through her mental checklist. “So . . . do you want me to help you set up?”

“I can handle it.”

“Okay. Listen, it’s a big job, so knock off anytime you get tired of it. I’m going to be working on the back door if you need anything meanwhile.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Ah . . . I’ll check in after I’m done with the kitchen door.”

She pulled away twice during the process of replacing the door—once for the sheer pleasure of walking up and down her newly completed outside stairs. They required staining, sealing, and the doorway cut into what would be her office suite would be blocked with plywood until she installed that door. But the stairs themselves delighted her so much she executed an impromptu dance number on the way down, to the applause and whistles of the crew.

Her father and the painting slipped her mind for over three hours. With twin pangs of guilt and concern, she hurried into the living room, fully expecting to see a weekend DIYer’s amateurish mess. Instead, she saw a competently dropped area, a primed ceiling and two primed walls.

And her father, whistling a cheery tune, as he rolled primer on the next wall.

“You’re hired,” she said from behind him.

He lowered the roller, chuckled, turned. “Will work for lemonade.” He picked up a tall glass. “I got some out of the kitchen. And caught your act.”

“Sorry?”

“Your Ginger Rogers down the stairs. Outside. You looked so happy.”

“I am. The pitch, the landings, the switchbacks. An engineering feat, brought to you by Cilla McGowan and Matt Brewster.”

“I forgot you could dance like that. I haven’t seen you dance since . . . You were still a teenager when I came to your concert in D.C. I remember coming backstage before curtain. You were white as a sheet.”

“Stage fright. I hated that concert series. I hated performing.”

“You just did.”

“Perform? No, there’s performing and there’s playing around. That was playing around. Which you’re obviously not, here. This is a really good job. And you?” She walked over for a closer inspection—and damn if she couldn’t still smell the soap on him. “You barely have a dot of paint on you.”

“Years of experience, between painting sets at school and Patty’s redecorating habit. It looks so different in here,” he added. “With the doorway there widened, the way it changes the shape of the room and opens it.”

“Too different?”

“No, honey. Homes are meant to change, to reflect the people who live in them. And I think you’ll understand what I mean when I say she’s still here. Janet’s still here.” He touched her shoulder, then just left his hand there, connecting them. “So are my grandparents, my father. Even me, a little. What I see here is a revival.”

“Want to see where the stairs lead? My garret?”

“I’d like that.”

She got a kick out of showing him around, seeing his interest in her design and plans for her office. It surprised her to realize his approval brought her such satisfaction. In the way, she supposed, it was satisfying to show off to someone ready to be impressed.

“So you’ll keep working on houses,” he said as they started down the unfinished attic steps.

“That’s the plan. Rehabbing either for myself to flip, or for clients. Remodeling. Possibly doing some consulting. It hinges on getting my contractor’s license. I can do a lot without it, but with it, I can do more.”

“How do you go about getting a license?”

“I take the test for it tomorrow.” She held up both hands, fingers crossed.

“Tomorrow? Why aren’t you studying? says the teacher.”

“Believe me, I have. Studied my brains out, took the sample test online. Twice.” She paused by the guest bath. “This room’s finished—for the second time.”

“This is one that was vandalized?”

“Yeah. You’d never know it,” she said, crouching down to run her fingers over the newly laid tile. “I guess that’s what counts.”

“What counts is you weren’t hurt. When I think about what happened to Steve . . .”

“He’s doing good. I talked to him yesterday. His physical therapy’s going well, which may in part be due to the fact that the therapist is a babe. Do you think Hennessy could have done it?” she asked on impulse. “Is he capable, physically, character-wise?”

“I don’t like to think so, when it comes to his character. But the fact is, he’s never stopped hating.” After a pause, Gavin let out a sigh. “I’d have to say he hates more now than he did when it happened. Physically? Well, he’s a tough old bird.”

“I want to talk to him, get a sense. I just haven’t decided how to approach it. On the other hand, if it was him, I’m not sure that wouldn’t get him even more riled up. I haven’t had any problems for nearly two weeks now. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“He’s been out of town for a few days. He and his wife are visiting her sister. Up in Vermont, I think it is. My neighbor’s boy mows their lawn,” Gavin explained.

Convenient, she thought as her father went back to painting.

And since the living area was getting painted, she decided to set up her tools outside and get to work on the trim.

IN THE MORNING, Cilla decided she’d been foolish and shortsighted to bar Ford from the house the night before. She hadn’t wanted any distractions while she reviewed her test manual, and had planned on an early night and a solid eight hours’ sleep.

Instead she’d obsessed about the test, pacing the house, second-guessing herself. When she slept, she tossed and turned with anxiety dreams.

As a result she woke tense, edgy and half sick with nerves. She forced herself to eat half a bagel, then wished she hadn’t, as even that churned uneasily in her stomach.

She checked the contents of her bag three times to make absolutely certain it held everything she could possibly need, then left the house a full thirty minutes early, just in case she ran into traffic or got lost. Couldn’t find a parking place, she added as she locked the front door. Was abducted by aliens.

“Knock it off, knock it off,” she mumbled as she strode to her pickup. It wasn’t as if the fate of the damn world rested on her test score.

Just hers, she thought. Just her entire future.

She could wait. She could take the test down the road, wait just a little longer. After she’d finished the house. After she’d settled in. After . . .

Stage fright, she thought with a sigh. Performance anxiety and fear of failure all wrapped up in a slippery ribbon. With her stomach knotted, she opened the truck door.

She made a sound that was part laugh, part awww.

The sketch lay on the seat, where, she supposed, Ford had put it sometime the night before.

She stood in work boots, a tool belt slung from her hips like a holster. As if she’d drawn them from it, she held a nail gun in one hand, a measuring tape in the other. Around her were stacks of lumber, coils of wire, piles of brick. Safety goggles dangled from a strap around her neck, and work gloves peeked out of the pocket of her carpenter pants. Her face carried a determined, almost arrogant expression.

Below her feet, the caption read:

THE AMAZING, THE INCREDIBLE

CONTRACTOR GIRL

“You don’t miss a trick, do you?” she said aloud.

She looked across the road, blew a kiss to where she imagined he lay sleeping. When she climbed into the truck and turned on the engine, all the knots had unraveled.

With the sketch riding on the seat beside her, Cilla turned on the music and drove toward her future, singing.

FORD SETTLED on his front veranda with his laptop, his sketchbook, a pitcher of iced tea and a bag of Doritos to share with Spock. He couldn’t be sure when Cilla might make it back. The drive to and from Richmond was a bitch even without rush hour factored in. Added to it, he couldn’t be sure how long the exam ran, or what she might do after to wind down.

So around two in the afternoon, he stationed himself where he couldn’t miss her return and kept himself busy. He sent and answered e-mail, checked in with the blogs and boards he usually frequented. He did a little updating on his own website.

He’d neglected his Internet community for the last week or two, being preoccupied with a certain lanky blonde. Hooking back in entertained him for a solid two hours before he noticed at least some of the crew across the road were knocking off for the day.

Matt pulled out, swung to Ford’s side of the road, then leaned out the window. “Checking the porn sites?”

“Day and night. How’s it going over there?”

“It’s going. Finished insulating the attic today. Fucking miserable job. Yeah, hey, Spock, how’s it going,” he added when the dog gave a single, deep-throated, how-about-me bark. “I’m going home and diving into a cold beer. You coming by for burgers and dogs on the Fourth?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll be bringing your boss.”

“I thought that’s how it was. Nice work, dog. Not you,” he added, pointing at Spock. “Don’t know what she sees in you, but I guess she settled since she knows I’m married.”

“Yeah, that was it. She had to channel her sexual frustration somewhere.”

“You can thank me later.” With a grin and a toot of the horn, Matt pulled out.

Ford poured another glass of tea and traded his laptop for his sketch pad. He wasn’t yet satisfied with his image of his villain. He’d based Devon/Devino predominantly on his tenth-grade algebra teacher, but turns in his original story line made him think he wanted something slightly more . . . elegant. Cold, dignified evil played better. He played around with various face types hoping one jumped out and said: Pick me!

When none did, he considered a cold beer. Then forgot the work and the beer when Cilla’s truck pulled into his drive.

He knew before she got out of the truck. It didn’t matter that her eyes were shielded by sunglasses. The grin said it all. He headed down, several paces behind a happy Spock, as she got out of the truck, then braced himself as she took a running leap into his arms.

“I’m going to take a wild guess. You passed.”

“I killed!” Laughing, she bowed back recklessly so he had to shift, brace his legs, or drop her on her head. “For the first time in my life, I kicked exam ass. I kicked its ass down the street, across county lines and out of the goddamn state. Woo!”

She threw her arms into the air, then around his neck. “I am Contractor Girl! Thank you.” She kissed him hard enough to vibrate his teeth. “Thank you. Thank you. I was a nervous, quivering mess until I saw that sketch. It just gave me such a high. It really did.” She kissed him again. “I’m going to have it framed. It’s the first thing I’m going to hang in my office. My licensed-contractor’s office.”

“Congratulations.” He thought he’d known just how much the license meant to her. And realized he hadn’t even been close. “We have to celebrate.”

“I’ve got that covered. I bought stuff.” She jumped down, then scooped a thrilled Spock into her arms and covered his big head with kisses. Setting him down, she ran back to her truck. “French bread, caviar, a roasted chicken with trimmings, stuff, stuff, stuff, complete with little strawberry shortcakes and champagne. It’s all on ice.”

She started to muscle out a cooler, before he nudged her aside.

“God, the traffic was a bitch. I thought I’d never get here. Let’s have a picnic. Let’s have a celebration picnic out back and dance naked on the grass.”

The stuff she’d bought had to weigh a good fifty pounds, he thought, but looking at the way she just shone made it seem weightless. “It’s like you read my mind.”

HE DUG UP a blanket and lit a trio of bamboo torchères to add atmosphere, and discourage bugs. By the time Cilla spread out the feast, half the blanket was covered.

Spock and his bear contented themselves with a ratty towel and a bowl of dog food.

“Caviar, goat cheese, champagne.” Ford sat on the blanket. “My usual picnic involves a bucket of chicken, a tub of potato salad and beer.”

“You can take the girl out of Hollywood.” She began to gather a selection for a plate.

“What is that?”

“It’s a blini, for the caviar. A dollop of crème fraîche, a layer of beluga, and . . . You’ve never had this before?” she said when she read his expression.

“Can’t say I have.”

“You fear it.”

“Fear is a strong word. I have concerns. Doesn’t caviar come from—”

“Don’t think about it, just eat.” She held the loaded blini to his lips. “Open up, you coward.”

He winced a little but bit in. The combination of flavors—salty, smooth, mildly sweet—hit his taste buds. “Okay, better than I expected. Where’s yours?”

She laughed and fixed another.

“How do you plan to set up?” he asked as they ate. “Your business.”

“Mmm.” She washed down caviar with champagne. “The Little Farm’s a springboard. It gets attention, just because of what it is. The better job I do there, the more chance people see I know what I’m doing. And the subs I’ve hired talk about it, and about me. I need to build on word of mouth. I’ll have to advertise, make it known I’m in business. Use connections. Brian to Brian’s father, for instance. God, this chicken is great. There are two houses within twelve miles up for sale. Serious fixer-uppers that I think are a little overpriced for the area and their conditions. I’m keeping my eye on them. I may make a lowball offer on one of them, see where it goes.”

“Before you finish here?”

“Yeah. Figure, even if I came to terms with the seller straight off, there’d be thirty to ninety days for settlement. I’d push for the ninety. That’d put me into the fall before I have to start outlaying any cash. And that’s seven, eight months into the Little Farm. I juggle the jobs, and the subs, work out a realistic time frame and budget. Flip the house in, we’ll say, twelve weeks, keeping the price realistic.”

She loaded another blini for both of them. “Greed and not knowing your market’s what can kill a flip just as quick as finding out too late the foundation’s cracked or the house is sitting in a sinkhole.”

“How much would you look to make?”

“On the house I’m looking at? With the price I’d be willing to pay, the budget I’d project, the resale projection in this market?” She bit into the blini while she calculated. “After expenses, I’d look for about forty thousand.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Forty thousand, in three months?”

“I’d hope for forty-five, but thirty-five would do it.”

“Nice.” She was right about the chicken, too. “What if I bought the other one? Hired you?”

“Well, Jesus, Ford, you haven’t even seen it.”

“You have. And you know what you’re doing—about houses and picnics. I could use an investment, and this has the advantage of a fun factor. Plus, I could be your first client.”

“You need to at least look at the property, calculate how much you’re willing to invest, how long you can let that investment ride.” She lifted her champagne glass, gestured with it like a warning. “And how much you can afford to lose, because real estate and flipping are risks.”

“So’s the stock market. Can you handle both houses?”

She took a drink. “Yeah, I could, but—”

“Let’s try this. Figure out a time when you can go through it with me, and we’ll talk about the potential, the possibilities, your fee and other practical matters.”

“Okay. Okay. As long as we both understand that once you’ve seen the property and we’ve gone over those projections, and you tell me you’d rather buy a fistful of lottery tickets than that dump, no harm, no foul.”

“Understood and agreed. Now, with the business portion of tonight’s program out of the way.” He leaned over to kiss her. “Do you have any plans for the Fourth?”

“The fourth what? Blini?”

“No, Cilla. Of July. You know, hot dogs, apple pie, fireworks.”

“Oh. No.” My God, she thought. It was nearly July. “Where do people go to watch fireworks around here?”

“There are a few options. But this is the great state of Virginia. We set off our own.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen the signs. You all are crazy.”

“Be that as it may, Matt’s having a cookout. It’s a short walk from his place to the park where the Roritan band plays Sousa marches, there’s the world-famous pie-eating contest, won four years running by Big John Porter, and other various slices of Americana before the fireworks display. Wanna be my date?”

“Yes, I would.” She leaned over the picnic debris, linked her arms around his neck. “Ford?”

“Yeah.”

“If I eat another bite of anything, I’m going to be sick. So . . .” She leaped up, grabbed his hands. “Let’s dance.”

“About that. My plans were to lie here like a dissipated Roman soldier and watch you dance.”

“No, you don’t. Up, up, up!”

“There’s just one problem. I don’t dance.”

“Everybody dances. Even Spock.”

“Not really. Well, yes, he does,” Ford admitted as Spock got up to demonstrate. “I don’t. Did you ever catch Seinfeld? The TV deal.”

“Of course.”

“Did you see the one where Elaine’s at this office party, and to get people up to dance, she starts it off?”

“Oh yeah.” The scene popped straight into her mind, made her laugh. “That was bad.”

“I make Elaine look like Jennifer Lopez.”

“You can’t be that bad. I refuse to believe it. Come on, show me.”

Those gold-rimmed eyes showed actual pain. “If I show you, you’ll never have sex with me again.”

“Absolutely false. Show me your moves, Sawyer.”

“I have no moves in this arena.” But with a heavy sigh, he rose.

“Just a little boogie,” she suggested. She moved her hips, her shoulders, her feet. Obviously, to Ford’s mind, to some well-oiled internal engine. Clutching the bear between his paws, Spock gurgled his approval.

“You asked for it,” he muttered.

He moved, and could swear he heard rusty gears with mismatched teeth grind and shriek. He looked like the Tin Man of Oz, before the oil can.

“Well, that’s not . . . Okay, that’s really bad.” She struggled to swallow a snort of laughter, but didn’t quite succeed. The disgusted look he shot her had her holding up her hands and stepping quickly to him. “Wait, wait. Sorry. I can teach you.”

This time, Spock snorted.

“Others have tried; all have failed. I have no rhythm. I am rhythmically impaired. I’ve learned to live with it.”

“Bull. Anyone who has your kind of moves horizontally can have them vertically. Here.” She took his hands, set them on her hips, then put hers on his. “It starts here. This isn’t a structured sort of thing, like a waltz or quickstep. It’s just moving. A little hip action. No, unlock your knees, it’s not a goose step, either. Just left, right, left. Shift your weight to the left, not just your hip.”

“I look and feel like a spastic robot.”

“You don’t.” She shot Spock a warning glance, and the dog turned his head away. “Relax. Now, keep the hips going, but put your hands on my shoulders. That’s it. Feel my shoulders, just a little up and down. Feel that, let that go up your arms, into your shoulders. Just up and down. Don’t stiffen up, keep those knees loose. There you go, there you are. You’re dancing.”

“This isn’t dancing.”

“It is.” She put her hands on his shoulders, then slid them down his arms until they held hands. “And now you’re dancing with me.”

“I’m standing like an idiot in one spot.”

“We’ll worry about the feet later. We’re starting slow, and smooth. It would even be sexy if you took that pained expression off your face. Don’t stop!”

She did a quick inward spin so her back pressed into him, and lifted an arm to stroke it down his cheek.

“Oh, well, if this is dancing.”

Laughing, she spun back again so they were front to front. “Sway. A little more.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted her lips to a breath from his. “Nice.”

He closed the distance, sliding slowly into the kiss while his hands ran down her back to her hips.

“Feels like dancing to me,” she whispered.

He surfaced to see he was facing in the opposite direction, and several feet away from where they’d started. “How’d that happen?”

“You let it happen. You stopped thinking about it.”

“So, I can dance, as long as it’s with you.”

“Just one more thing.” She danced back with a provocative rock of hips, and began unbuttoning her shirt.

“Whoa.”

“I believe the celebration called for naked dancing.”

He glanced in the direction of his closest neighbors. Dusk had fallen, but torches tossed out light. He glanced down at his dog, who sat, head cocked, obviously fascinated.

“Maybe we should move that event inside.”

She shook her head, and her blouse slid down with the movement of her shoulders. “In the grass.”

“Ah, Mrs. Berkowitz—”

“Shouldn’t spy on her neighbor, even if she could see through that big black walnut tree.” Cilla unhooked her pants, kicked off her shoes, which Spock retrieved and carried territorially to his ratty towel. “And when we’ve finished dancing naked, there’s something else I’m going to do on the grass.”

“What?”

“I’m going to give you the ride of your life.” She stepped out of her pants, continued to sway, turn as she ran her hands over her own body, marginally covered now in two tiny white swatches.

Ford forgot the dog, the shoes, the neighbors. He watched, all of the blood draining out of his head as she flicked open the front hook, opened her bra inch by delicious inch. The torchlight glimmered gold over her skin, danced in her eyes like sun on a pure blue sea.

When the bra floated to the ground, she ran a fingertip under, just under the low-riding waist of her panties. “You’re still dressed. Don’t you want to dance with me?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah. Can I just say something first?”

She trailed her fingers down her breasts, smiled at him. “Go ahead.”

“Two things, actually. Oh Christ,” he managed when she lifted her hair, let it fall over those glowing shoulders. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And at this moment? I’m the luckiest man in the known universe.”

“You’re about to get luckier.” Tossing her hair back, she started toward him. She pressed her naked body to his. “Now, dance with me.”

NINETEEN

On the morning of the Fourth, Ford rolled out of Cilla’s bed. It didn’t surprise him she was already up, even on a holiday. He considered it his duty as an American to sleep in, but apparently she didn’t share his staunch sense of patriotism. He groped his way downstairs, and followed the now familiar sound of whoosh-bang! to the living room.

She stood on a ladder shooting nails into window trim.

“You’re working.” It was an accusation.

She glanced back. “A little. I wanted to see how this trim looks against the paint since my father finished it. I still can’t believe he painted all this, and so well. If he didn’t have a job, I’d hire him.”

“Is there coffee?”

“Yes, there is. Spock’s out back. He fears the nail gun.”

“Minute.”

He heard more whoosh-banging behind him as he dragged himself into the kitchen. The coffeemaker stood on a small square of counter as yet un-demoed. Shielding his eyes from the sunlight blasting through the windows, he found a mug, poured. After the first couple sips, the light seemed more pleasant, and less like an alien weapon designed to blind all humankind.

He drank half the mug standing where he was, and after topping it off felt mostly awake. Carrying it with him, he walked back to the living room and watched her work for a few minutes while the caffeine wove its magic.

She stood on the floor now, fitting the diagonal edges of the bottom piece to the sides she’d already nailed up. In what struck him as wizard-fast time, the dark, wide trim framed the window.

She set the gun down, took several steps back. He heard her whisper, “Yes, exactly.”

“It looks good. What did you do with what was there before?”

“This is what was there before, or mostly. I had to build the sill to match because it was damaged.”

“I thought it was white.”

“Because some idiot along the way slapped white paint on this gorgeous walnut. I stripped it. A little planing, a little stain and a couple coats of poly, and it’s back to its original state.”

“Huh. Well, it looks good. I didn’t get the paint color until now. Thought it looked a little dull. But it looks warmer against the wood. Like, ah, a forest in the fog.”

“It’s called Shenandoah. It just seemed right. When you look out the windows in this room, it’s the mountains, the sky, the trees. It’s just right.” She walked back, picked up another piece of trim.

“You’re still working.”

“We don’t have to leave for . . .” She looked at her watch, calculated. “About ninety minutes. I can get some of this trim run before I have to get ready.”

“Okay. I’m taking the coffee and my dog and heading across the road. I’ll pick you up in an hour and a half.”

“Great. But you might want to put some pants on first.”

He glanced down at his boxers. “Right. I’m going to put on pants, possibly shoes, take the coffee and so on.”

“I’ll be ready.”

HE DIDN’T EXPECT her to be ready. Not because she was female, but because he knew what often happened when he himself got lost in the work. If he didn’t set an alarm, being late, or in fact missing an appointment or event altogether, was the norm.

So it surprised him when she came out of the house even as he stopped in front of it. And her appearance left him momentarily speechless.

She’d left her hair down, as she rarely did, so it spilled dark, aged gold, down her back. She wore a dress of bright red swirled against white, with a kind of thin and floaty skirt and thin straps that set off those strong shoulders.

With his paws planted on the window, Spock leaned out. Ford translated the series of sounds the dog made as the canine version of a wolf whistle.

He got out of the car—he just had to—and said, “Wow.”

“You like? Check this.” She did a turn, giving him a chance to admire the low dip of the back with the flirt of crisscrossing ties.

“And again, wow. I’ve never seen you in a dress before, and this one pulls out some stops.”

Instant distress ran across her face. “It’s too much, too fussy for a backyard cookout. I can change in five minutes.”

“First, over my dead body. Second, ‘fussy’ is the last word I’d use. It’s great. You look all summery sexy, ice-cream-sundae cool. Only now I wish I’d thought to take you out where you’d wear dresses. I feel a fancy dinner coming on.”

“I prefer backyard picnics.”

“They are permanently top of my list.”

SHE’D EXPECTED IT to be awkward initially, the introductions, the mixing. But she knew so many of the people there that it was as easy and pleasant as Matt’s backyard with its generous deck and smoking grill.

Josie, Matt’s pretty and very pregnant wife, snatched Cilla away from Ford almost immediately. “Here.” Josie handed Ford a beer. “Go away. Wine, beer, soft?” she asked Cilla.

“Ah, I’ll start with soft.”

“Try the lemonade, it’s great. Then I’m going to steal you for ten minutes over there in the shade. I’d say walk this way, but waddling’s unattractive unless you’re eight months pregnant. I’ve been dying to meet you.”

“You’re welcome to come by the house, anytime.”

“I nearly have a couple times, but with this.” She patted her belly as they walked. “And that.” And pointed toward a pack of kids on a swing set. “The little guy in the blue shorts and red shirt squeezing Spock in mutual adoration is mine. So between this and that, and a part-time job, I haven’t made it by. Either to welcome you to the area, or to poke my nose in to see what’s going on. Which Matt claims is pretty great.”

“He’s terrific to work with. He’s very talented.”

“I know. I met him when my family moved here. I was seventeen and very resentful that my father’s work dragged me away from Charlotte and my friends. My life was over, of course. Until the following summer when my parents hired a local contractor to put an addition on the house, and there was a young, handsome carpenter on the crew. It took me four years,” she said with a wink, “but I landed him.”

She sat with a long, heartfelt sigh.

“I’ll get this out of the way. I adored Katie. I had a Katie doll. In fact, I still do. It’s stored away for this one.” She ran a gentle circle over her belly. “We’re having a girl this time. I’ve seen most if not all of your grandmother’s movies and have Barn Dance on DVD. I hope we come to like each other because you’re seeing Ford and I love him. In fact, Matt knows if I ever get tired of him and decide to ditch him, I’m going after Ford.”

Cilla sipped her lemonade. “I think I already like you.”

IN THE HEAVY, drowsing heat, people sought out the shade of deck umbrellas or gathered at tables under the spread of trees. Seemingly unaffected by spiraling temperatures and thickening humidity, kids clambered over the swing set or raced around the yard like puppies with inexhaustible energy. Cilla calculated that Matt’s big yard, sturdy deck and pretty two-story Colonial held nearly a hundred people spanning about five generations.

She sat with Ford, Brian and a clutch of others at one of the picnic tables, plates loaded with burgers, hot dogs, a wide variety of summer salads. From where she sat, she could see her father, Patty and Ford’s parents talking and eating together on the deck. As she watched, Patty laughed, laid a hand on Gavin’s cheek and rubbed. He took his wife’s hand, kissed her knuckles lightly as the conversation continued.

It struck, a dull blade of envy and its keener edge of understanding. They loved each other. She’d known it, of course, on some level. But she saw it now, in the absent gestures she imagined neither of them would remember, the steady and simple love. Not just habit or contentment or duty, not even the bonds of—how long had they been together? she wondered. Twenty-three, twenty-four years? No, not even the bonds of half a lifetime.

They’d beaten the odds, won the prize.

Angie walked by—so young, fresh, pretty—with the gangly guy in baggy shorts she’d introduced to Cilla as Zach. Angie stopped, and for a moment Cilla was stunned to realize how much she wished she was close enough to hear the quick, animated conversation. Then with her hand resting on her mother’s shoulder, Angie leaned down to kiss her father’s head before moving on.

That said it all, Cilla decided. They were a unit. Angie would go back to college in the fall. She might move a thousand miles away at any point in her life. And still, they would always be a unit.

Deliberately, she looked away.

“I think I’ll get a beer,” she said to Ford. “Do you want one?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll get it for you.”

She nudged him back as he started to rise. “I can get it.”

She wandered off to the huge galvanized bucket filled with ice and bottles and cans. She didn’t particularly want a beer, but figured she was stuck now. She fished one out and, thinking of it as a prop, crossed over to where Matt manned the grill.

“Do you ever get a break?” she asked him.

“Had a couple. People come and go all day, that’s how it is at these things. Gotta keep it smoking.”

His little boy raced up, wrapped his arms around Matt’s leg, chattering in a toddlerese Cilla was incapable of interpreting. Matt, however, appeared to be fluent. “Let’s see the proof.”

Eyes wide, the boy pulled up his shirt to expose his belly. Matt poked at it, nodding. “Okay then, go tell Grandma.”

When the boy raced off again, Matt caught Cilla’s puzzled expression. “He said he finished his hot dog and could he have a big, giant piece of Grandma’s cake.”

“I didn’t realize you were bilingual.”

“I have many skills.” As if to prove it, he flipped a trio of burgers expertly. “Speaking of skills, Ford told me you ran some of the living room trim this morning.”

“Yeah. It looks, if I must say—and I do—freaking awesome. Is that your shop?” She gestured with the beer to the cedar building at the rear of the property.

“Yeah. Want to see?”

“You know I do, but we’ll take the tour another time.”

“Where are you going to put yours?”

“Can’t decide. I’m debating between putting up something from scratch or refitting part of the existing barn. The barn option’s more practical.”

“But it sure is fun to build from the ground up.”

“I never have, so it’s tempting. How many square feet do you figure?” she continued, and fell into the comfortable, familiar rhythm of shoptalk.

As evening drifted in, people began the short pilgrimage to the park. They crowded the quiet side street, carting lawn chairs, coolers, blankets, babies and toddlers. As they approached, the bright, brassy sound of horns welcomed them.

“Sousa marches,” Ford said, “as advertised.” He shifted the pair of folding chairs he had under his arm while Cilla led Spock on a leash. “You having fun?”

“Yes. Matt and Josie put on quite a cookout.”

“You looked a little lost back there, just for a couple minutes.”

“Did I?”

“When we were chowing down. Before you got up to get a beer, and I lost you to Matt and Tool Time Talk.”

“Probably too much pasta salad. I’m having a really good time. It’s my first annual Shenandoah Valley backyard July Fourth extravaganza. So far, it’s great.”

The park spread beneath the mountains, and the mountains were hazed with heat so the air seemed to ripple over them like water. Hundreds of people scattered through the park, sprawling over its greens. Concession stands did a bustling business under the shade of their awnings, in offerings of country ham sandwiches, sloppy joes, funnel cakes, soft drinks. Cilla caught the scents of grease and sugar, grass and sunscreen.

Over loudspeakers came a whine of static, then the echoey announcement that the pie-eating contest would begin in thirty minutes in front of the north pavilion.

“I mentioned the pie-eating contest, right?”

“Yes, and four-time champ Big John Porter.”

“Disgusting. We don’t want to miss it. Let’s grab a square of grass, stake our claim.” Stopping, Ford began to scan. “We need to spread out some, save room for Matt and Josie and Sam. Oh hey, Brian’s already homesteaded. The girl he’s with is Missy.”

“Yes, I met her.”

“You met half the county this afternoon.” He slanted Cilla a look. “Nobody expects you to remember names.”

“Missy Burke, insurance adjuster, divorced, no kids. Right now she’s talking to Tom and Dana Anderson, who own a small art gallery in the Village. And Shanna’s strolling over with Bill—nobody mentioned his last name—a photographer.”

“I stand corrected.”

“Schmoozing used to be a way of life.”

They’d barely set up, exchanged more than a few words with their companions, before Ford dragged her off to the pie eating contest.

A field of twenty-five contestants sat at the ready, white plastic bibs tied around their necks. They ranged from kids to grandpas, with the smart money on Big—an easy two-fifty big—John Porter.

At the signal, twenty-five faces dropped forward into crust and blueberry filling. A laugh burst straight out of her, drowned away in the shouts and cheers.

“Well, God! That is disgusting.”

“Yet entertaining. Man, he’s going to do it again! Big John!” Ford shouted, and began to chant it. The crowd picked up the rhythm, erupting with applause as Big John lifted his wide, purple-smeared face.

“Undefeated,” Ford said when Porter was pronounced the winner. “The guy can’t be beat. He’s the Superman of pie-eaters. Okay, there’s the raffle in the south pavilion. Let’s go buy some chances on the ugliest, most useless prize.”

They settled, after considerable debate, on a plastic rooster wall clock in vibrant red. Target selected, Ford moved to ticket sales. “Hi, Mrs. Morrow. Raking it in?”

“We’re doing well this year. I smell record breaker. Hello, Cilla. Don’t you look gorgeous? Enjoying yourself?”

“Very much.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I imagine it’s a little tame and countrified compared to the way you usually spend your holiday, but I think we put on a nice event. Now, how much can I squeeze you for? I mean . . .” Cathy gave an exaggerated flutter of lashes. “How many tickets would you like?”

“Going for twenty.”

“Each,” Cilla said and pulled out a bill of her own.

“That’s what I like to hear!” Cathy counted them off, tore off their stubs. “Good luck. And just in time. We’ll start announcing prizewinners over the loudspeaker starting in about twenty minutes. Ford, if you see your mama, tell her to hunt me up. I want to talk to her about . . .”

Cilla tuned out the conversation when she saw Hennessy staring at her from the other side of the pavilion. The bitter points of his hate scraped over her skin. Beside him stood a small woman, with tired eyes in a tired face. She tugged at his arm, but he remained rigid.

The heat went out of the day, the light, the color. Hate, Cilla thought, strips away joy. But she wouldn’t turn away from it, refused to allow herself to turn away.

So it was he who turned, who finally bent to his wife’s pleas to stride away from the pavilion across the summer green grass.

She said nothing to Ford. The day would not be spoiled. She soothed the throat the silent encounter had dried to burning with lemonade, wandered through the crowd as the sun began to dip toward the western peaks.

She talked, laughed. She won the rooster wall clock. And the tension drained away. As the sky darkened, Sam climbed up into Ford’s lap to hold a strange, excited conversation.

“How do you know what he’s saying?” Cilla demanded.

“It’s similar to Klingon.”

They announced “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the crowd rose. Beside her, Ford hitched the boy on his hip. Around her, under an indigo sky, with the flicker of glow tubes and fireflies in the dark, mixed voices swelled. On impulse, out of sudden need, she took Ford’s hand, holding on until the last note died away.

Moments after they took their seats again, the first boom exploded. On the sound Sam leaped out of Ford’s lap and into his father’s. And Spock leaped off the ground and into Ford’s.

Safe, Cilla thought, while lights shattered indigo. Where they knew they’d always be safe.

“GOOD?” Ford asked as they drove down the quiet roads toward home.

“Very good.” Amazingly good, she realized. “Beginning, middle and end.”

“What are you going to do with that thing?” He glanced down at the clock.

“Thing?” Cilla cradled the rooster in her arms. “Is that any way to speak about our child?” She patted it gently. “I’m thinking the barn. I could use a clock out there, and this is pretty appropriate. And I like having a memento from my first annual Fourth. It’ll be way too late in the year for a cookout when my place is done. But after today, I think I’m going to plan a party. A big, sprawling, open-house-type thing. Fire in the hearth, platters of food, flowers and candles. I’d like to see what it’s like to have the house filled with people who aren’t working on it.”

She stretched out her legs. “But tonight, I’m partied and festived out. It’ll be nice to get home to the quiet.”

“Almost there.”

“Want to share the quiet with me?”

“I had that in mind.”

They glanced at each other as he turned into her drive. When he looked back, the headlights flashed over the red maple. “What’s that hanging—”

“My truck!” She reared forward, gripping the dash. “Oh, goddamn it, son of a bitch. Stop! Stop!”

She was already yanking off her seat belt, shoving at the door before he’d come to a complete stop behind her truck.

Loose clumps of broken safety glass hung in the back window. More sparkled in the gravel, crunching under her feet as she ran.

Ford had his phone out, punching in nine-one-one. “Wait. Cilla, just wait.”

“Every window. He smashed every window.”

Cannonball holes gaped in the windshield, erupted into mad spiderwebs of shattered glass. As the cold rage choked her, she saw her headlights had been smashed, her grille battered.

“A lot of good the alarm did me.” She could have wept. She could have screamed. “A lot of damn good.”

“We’re going to go in, check the alarm. I’m going to check the house, then you’re going to stay inside.”

“It’s too much, Ford. It’s just too damn much. Vicious, vindictive, insane. The crazy old bastard needs to be locked up.”

“Hennessy? He’s out of town.”

“He’s not. I saw him tonight, at the park. He’s back. And I swear to God if he could’ve used the bat or pipe or whatever he used here on me then and there, he would have.”

She whirled around, riding on the fury. And saw in the car’s headlights what Ford had seen hanging from a branch of her pretty red maple.

Ford grabbed her arm when she started forward. “Let’s go in. We’ll wait for the cops.”

“No.” She shook off his hand, crossed from gravel to grass.

She’d been six, Cilla recalled, when they marketed that particular doll. She wore her hair—a sunny blond that hadn’t yet darkened—in a pair of ponytails tied with pink ribbons above her ears. The ribbon sashing the pink-and-white gingham dress matched. Lace frothed at the white anklets above the glossy patent leather of her Mary Janes.

Her smile was as sunny as her hair, as sweet as the pink ribbons.

He’d fashioned the noose out of clothesline, she noted. A careful and precise job, so that the doll hung in horrible effigy. Just above the ribbon sash, the cardboard placard read: WHORE.

“Optional accessories—sold separately—for this one included a scale model tea set. It was one of my favorites.” She turned away, picked up a whining, quivering Spock to hug.

“You’re right. We should go inside, check the house just in case.”

“Give me the keys. I want you to wait on the veranda. Please.”

A polite word, Cilla thought. How odd to hear the absolute authority under the courtesy. “We know he’s not in there.”

“Then it’s no problem for you to wait out on the veranda.” To close the issue, he simply opened her purse, pulled out the keys.

“Ford—”

“Wait out here.”

The fact that he left the door open told Cilla he had no doubt she’d do what he ordered. With a shrug, she stepped over to the rail, nuzzling Spock before she set him down. No one had been in the house, so there was no harm in waiting. And no point in arguing about it.

Besides, from here she could stare at her truck, brood over the state of it. Wallow in the brooding. She’d felt so damn good the day she bought that truck, so full of anticipation when she loaded it up for her trip east.

The first steps toward her dream.

“Everything’s okay,” Ford said from behind her.

“It’s really not, is it?” Some part of her, some bitchy, miserable part of her, wanted to shrug off the comforting hands he laid on her shoulders. But she stopped herself.

“Do you know how it felt to me today? Like I was in a movie. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just the opposite. Little slices and scenes of a movie I actually wanted to be part of. Not quite there yet, still pretty new on the set. But starting to feel . . . really feel comfortable in my skin.”

She drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. “And now, this is reality. Broken glass. But the odd thing, the really odd thing. That was me today. It was me. And this? Whatever this is directed at? That’s the image, that’s the mirage. The smoke and mirrors.”

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY 1972

The air sat hot and still while the smog lay over it like a smudge from a sweaty finger. Graves, housing stars and mortals alike, spread, cold slices in the green. And all the flowers, blooming tears shed by the living for the dead.

Janet wore black, the frame within the dress shrunk from grief. A willow stem gone brittle. A wide black hat and dark glasses shaded her face, but that grief poured through the shields.

“They can’t put the stone up yet. The ground settles first. But you can see it, can’t you? His name carved into white marble, the short years I had him. I tried to think of a poem, a few lines to have carved, but how could I think? How could I? So I had them carve ‘Angels Wept.’ Just that. They must have, I think. They must have wept for my Johnnie. Do you see the angels that look down on him, weeping?”

“Yes. I’ve come here before.”

“So you know how it will look. How it will always look. He was the love of my life. All the men, husbands, lovers, they came and went. But he? Johnnie. He came from me.” Every word she spoke was saturated with grief. “I should have . . . so many things. Can you imagine what it is for a mother to stand over the grave of her child and think, ‘I should have’?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“So many are. They pour out their sorry to me, and it touches nothing. Later, it helps a little. But these first days, first weeks, nothing touches it. I’ll be there.” She gestured to the ground beside the grave. “I know that even now because I’ve arranged it. Me and Johnnie.”

“And your daughter. My mother.”

“On the other side of me, if she wants it. But she’s young, and she’ll go her own way. She wants . . . everything. You know that, and I have nothing for her now, not in these first days, first weeks. Nothing to give. But I’ll be there soon enough, in the ground with Johnnie. I don’t know when yet, I don’t know how soon it comes. But I think of making it now. I think of it every day. How can I live when my baby can’t? I think about how. Pills? A razor? Walking into the sea? I can never decide. Grief blurs the mind.”

“What about love?”

“It opens, when it’s real. That’s why it can hurt so much. You wonder if I could have stopped this. If I hadn’t let him run wild. People said I did.”

“I don’t know. Another boy died that night, and the third was paralyzed.”

“Was that my fault?” Janet demanded as bitterness coated the grief. “Was it Johnnie’s? They all got into the car that night, didn’t they? Drunk, stoned. Any one of them could’ve gotten behind the wheel, and it wouldn’t have changed. Yes, yes, I indulged him, and I thank God for it now. Thank God I gave him all I could in the short time he lived. I would do it all again.” She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. “All again.”

“I don’t blame you. How can I? I don’t know. Hennessy blames you.”

“What more does he want? Blood?” She dropped her hands, threw out her arms. And the tears slid down the pale cheeks. “At least he has his son. I have a name carved into white marble.” She dropped to her knees on the ground.

“I think he does want blood. I think he wants mine.”

“He can’t have any more. Tell him that.” Janet lay down beside the grave, ran her hands over it. “There’s been enough blood.”

TWENTY

Cilla told no one. As far as anyone knew, she’d taken the loaner her insurance company arranged to do a supply run.

She pulled up in front of the Hennessy house, on a shady street in Front Royal. The white van sat in the drive, beside a ramp that ran to the front door of the single-story ranch house.

Her heart knocked. She didn’t question if it was nerves or anger. It didn’t matter. She’d do what she needed to do, say what she needed to say.

The door opened before Cilla reached it, and the woman she’d seen the night before came out. Cilla saw her hand tremble on the knob she clutched at her back. “What do you want here?”

“I want to speak to your husband.”

“He’s not home.”

Cilla turned her head to stare deliberately at the van, then looked back into Mrs. Hennessy’s eyes.

“He took my car into the shop. It needed work. Do you think I’m a liar?”

“I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I don’t know your husband any more than he knows me.”

“But you keep sending the police here, to our home. Again this morning, with their questions and suspicions, with your accusations.” Mrs. Hennessy drew in a ragged breath. “I want you to go away. Go away and leave us alone.”

“I’d be happy to. I’d be thrilled to. You tell me what it’s going to take to make him stop.”

“Stop what? He’s got nothing to do with your troubles. Don’t we have enough of our own? Don’t we have enough without you pointing your finger at us?”

She would not back down, Cilla told herself. She would not feel guilty for pushing at this small, frightened woman. “He drives by my home almost every day. And almost every day he parks on the shoulder, sometimes for as long as an hour.”

Mrs. Hennessy gnawed her lips, twisted her fingers together. “It’s not against the law.”

“Trespassing is against the law, cracking a man’s skull open is against the law. Breaking in and destroying private property is against the law.”

“He did none of those things.” The fear remained, but a whip of anger lashed through it. “And you’re a liar if you say different.”

“I’m not a liar, Mrs. Hennessy, and I’m not a whore.”

“I don’t know what you are.”

“You know, unless you’re as crazy as he is, that I’m not responsible for what happened to your son.”

“Don’t talk about my boy. You don’t know my boy. You don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s absolutely right. I don’t. Why would you blame me?”

“I don’t blame you.” Weariness simply covered her. “Why would I blame you for what happened all those terrible years ago? There’s nobody to blame for that. I blame you for bringing the police down on my husband when we did nothing to you.”

“When I went over to his van to introduce myself, to express my sympathy, he called me a bitch and a whore, and he spat at me.”

A flush of shame stained Mrs. Hennessy’s cheeks. Her lips trembled as her eyes shifted away. “That’s what you say.”

“My half sister was right there. Is she a liar, too?”

“Even if it is so, it’s a far cry from everything you’re laying at our door.”

“You saw the way he looked at me last night, in the park. You know how much he hates me. I’m appealing to you, Mrs. Hennessy. Keep him away from me and my home.”

Cilla turned away. She’d only gotten halfway down the ramp when she heard the door shut, and the lock shoot home.

Oddly, the conversation, however tense and difficult, made her feel better. She’d done something besides calling the police and sitting back, waiting for the next assault.

Pushing forward, as that was the direction she was determined to go, she swung by the real estate office to make an offer on the first house she’d selected. She went in low, a fair chunk lower than she felt the house was worth in the current market. To Cilla, the negotiations, the offers, the counters, were all part of the fun.

Back in the loaner, she contacted the agent in charge of the second listing to make an appointment for a viewing. No point, she decided, in letting the moss grow. She drove back to Morrow Village, completed another handful of errands, including a quick grocery run, before heading back toward home.

She spotted the white van before Hennessy spotted her. Since he came from the direction of the Little Farm, she assumed he’d had time to go home, talk to his wife and drive out while she’d been running around Front Royal and the Village.

He caught sight of her as their vehicles passed, and the flare of recognition burned over his face.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she muttered as she rounded a curve, “not my truck, since you beat the hell out of it last night.” She shook off the annoyance, took the next turn. Her gaze flicked up to the rearview mirror to see the van coming up behind her.

So you want to have this out? she wondered. Have what Ford called a face-to-face? That’s fine. Great. He could just follow her home where they’d have a—

The wheel jerked in her hands when the van rammed her from behind. The sheer shock didn’t allow room for anger, even for fear, as she tightened her grip.

He rammed her again—a smash of metal, a squeal of tires. The truck seemed to leap under her and buck to the right. She wrenched the wheel, fighting it back. Before she could punch the gas, he rammed her a third time. Her tires skidded off the asphalt and onto the shoulder while her body jerked forward, slammed back. Her fender kissed the guardrail, and her temple slapped smartly against the side window.

Small bright dots danced in front of her eyes as she gritted her teeth, prayed and steered into the skid. The truck swerved, and for one hideous moment she feared it would flip. She landed with a bone-jarring thud, nose-down, in the runoff gully on the opposite shoulder as her air bag burst open.

Later, she would think it was sheer adrenaline, sheer pissin -your-face mad that had her leaping out of the truck, slamming the door. A woman ran across the lawn of a house set back across the road. “I saw what he did! I saw it! I called the police!”

Neither Cilla nor Hennessy paid any attention. He shoved out of the van, fists balled at his sides as they came at each other.

“You don’t come to my house! You don’t talk to my wife!”

“Fuck you! Fuck you! You’re crazy. You could’ve killed me.”

“Then you’d be in hell with the rest of them.” Eyes wheeling, teeth bared, he knocked her back with a vicious shove.

“Don’t you put your hands on me again, old man.”

He shoved her again, sending her feet skidding until she slammed into the back of the truck. “I see you in there. I see you in there, you bitch.”

This time he raised his fist. Cilla kicked him in the groin, and dropped him.

“Oh God. Oh my God!”

Dazed, adrenaline seeping out like water through cracks in a dam, Cilla saw the Good Samaritan racing down the road toward her. The woman had a phone in one hand, a garden stake in the other.

“Are you all right? Honey, are you all right?”

“Yes, I think. I . . . I feel a little sick. I need to—” Cilla sat, dropped her head between her updrawn knees. She couldn’t get her breath, couldn’t feel her fingers. “Can you call someone for me?”

“Of course I can. Don’t you think about getting up, mister. I’ll hit you upside the head with this, I swear I will. Who do you want me to call, honey?”

Cilla kept her head down, waiting for the dizziness to pass, and gave her new best friend Ford’s number.

He got there before the police, all but flew out of his car. She’d yet to try to stand, and would forever be grateful that Lori Miller stood like a prison guard over Hennessy.

Hennessy sat, sweat drying on his bone-white face.

“Where are you hurt? You’re bleeding.”

“It’s okay. I just hit my head. I think I’m okay.”

“I wanted to call for an ambulance, but she said no. I’m Lori.” The woman gestured in the direction of her house.

“Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Cilla—”

“I’m just a little shaky. I thought I was going to be sick, but it passed. Help me up, will you?”

“Look at me first.” He cupped her chin, studied her eyes. Apparently what he saw satisfied him enough for him to lift her to her feet.

“Knees are wobbly,” she told him. “This hurts.” She laid her fingers under the knot on her temple. “But I think that’s the worst of it. I don’t know how to thank you,” she said to Lori.

“I didn’t do anything, really. You sure know how to take care of yourself. Here they come.” Lori pointed to the police car. “Now my knees are wobbly,” she said with a breathless laugh. “I guess that’s what happens after the worst is over.”

SHE TOLD the story to one of the county deputies as, she imagined, Lori gave her witness statement to the other across the road. She imagined the skid marks told their own tale. Hennessy, as far as she could tell, refused to speak at all. She watched the deputy load him into the back of the cruiser.

“I’ve got stuff in the truck. I need to get it out before they tow it.”

“I’ll send someone back for it. Come on.”

“I was nearly home,” she said as Ford helped her into his car. “Another half mile, I’d have been home.”

“We need to put some ice on that bump, and you need to tell me the truth if you hurt anywhere. You need to tell me, Cilla.”

“I can’t tell yet. I feel sort of numb, and exhausted.” She let out a long sigh when he stopped in front of his house. “I think if I could just sit down for a while, in the cool, until I, I guess the phrase is collect myself. You’ll call over, ask a couple of the guys to get the stuff out of the truck?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

He put his arm around her waist to lead her into the house. “Bed or sofa?”

“I was thinking chair.”

“Bed or sofa,” he repeated.

“Sofa.”

He walked her into the lounge so he could keep an eye on her while he got a bag of frozen peas for her temple. Spock tiptoed to her to rub his head up and down her arm. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m okay.” So he planted his front paws on the side of the couch, sniffed at her face, licked her cheek.

“Down,” Ford ordered when he came in.

“No, he’s fine. In fact . . . maybe I could have him up here for a while.”

Ford patted the couch. On cue, Spock jumped up, bellied in beside Cilla and laid his heavy, comforting head below her breasts.

Ford eased pillows behind her head. He brought her a cold drink, brushed his lips lightly over her forehead, then laid the cold bag at her temple.

“I’ll make the calls. You need anything else?”

“No, I’ve got it all. Better already.”

He smiled. “It’s the magic peas.”

When he turned away, stepped out onto the back veranda to make the calls, the smile had turned to a look of smolder ing fury. His fist pounded rhythmically against the post as he punched numbers.

“Can’t go into it now,” he said when Matt answered. “Cilla’s here. She’s all right.”

“What do you mean she’s—”

“Can’t go into it now.”

“Okay.”

“Her truck’s about a half mile down, headed toward town. I need you to send somebody down to get whatever she picked up today out of it. Hennessy was at her, and now the cops have him.”

“Holy sh—”

“I’ll call you back later when I can talk about it.”

He clicked off, glanced at his hand and saw he’d pounded it often and hard enough to draw some blood. Oddly, it helped.

Deciding he was calm enough, Ford stepped back inside. Because she lay quiet, eyes closed, one arm over the dog, he opened the window seat to take out one of the throws stored inside. Her eyes opened when he draped it over her.

“I’m not asleep. I was trying to remember how to meditate.”

“Meditate?”

“California, remember? Anyone living in California over a year must meet minimum meditation requirements. Unfortunately, I always sucked at it. Empty your mind? If I empty part of mine, something jumps right in to fill the void. And I know I’m babbling.”

“It’s okay.” He sat on the edge of the couch, turned the bag of peas over to lay the colder side on her temple.

“Ford, he really wanted to kill me.” Her eyes clung to his, and he saw the shadow of pain in them as she pushed herself up to sit. “It’s not like doing grand jetés through the woods while the reanimated psycho killer chases you. I’ve had people dislike me. My own mother from time to time. I’ve even had people try to hurt me. I dated this guy once who slapped me around good one night. One night,” she repeated. “He never got the chance to do it again. But even he didn’t hate me. He didn’t want me dead.

“I don’t know how to resolve that someone does. I don’t know how to fit that into my life and deal with it.”

“You don’t resolve it. You don’t resolve something that has no sanity or logic. And, Cilla, you are dealing with it. You did. You stopped him.”

“A really lucky kick into seventy-, maybe eighty-year-old balls. I was so pissed, Ford, that I didn’t think. Do I stay in the truck, lock the doors, call nine-one-one, or you, or the half a dozen guys a half mile away like a rational person? No, I jump out and confront this . . . this lunatic who’s just tried to run me off the road, like he’s going to fear the sharp lash of my tongue. And I’m still so pissed when he starts shoving me, I don’t take off. Like I couldn’t outrun a man old enough to be my grandfather?”

“You’re not a runner.” He laid his finger over her lips when she started to speak. “You’re not. Do I wish it had occurred to you to lock yourself in the truck and call me? Maybe. Because then I could’ve come speeding to the rescue. I could’ve kicked him in the balls. But the fact is, I feel some better knowing that when somebody tries to hurt you, you know how to take care of yourself.”

“I could go a long time without having to take care of myself like that again.”

“Me too.” He stroked her hair when she laid her head on his shoulder. “Me too.”

And maybe he could’ve gone a little while longer without realizing he was in love with her. He could’ve strolled into that, the way he strolled across the road to her house. Casual and easy. Instead, he’d had it slammed into him, clutched in the meaty fist of fear and rage, in one hard and painful punch when he’d seen her sitting on the side of the road.

Nothing to do about it now, he told himself. Bad, bad timing. What she needed now was a shoulder to lean on, somebody to get her a bag of frozen peas and offer a quiet place to . . . collect herself.

“How’s the head?”

“Strangely, it feels like I bashed it against a window.”

“Will you take some aspirin?”

“Yeah. And maybe a session in your hot tub. I’m a little stiff and sore. I got jostled around pretty good.”

He had to fight to keep his grip on her from tightening, to stop himself from squeezing her against him. “I’ll set you up.”

“Thanks.” She turned her head to brush her lips against his throat. “Thanks especially for helping me stay calm. You too,” she said, and kissed Spock.

“All part of our post-trauma service here at the House of Sawyer.”

He helped her downstairs. He flipped back the lid of the hot tub, hit the jets, while she took off her shirt. “Want the iPod?”

“No, thanks. Maybe I’ll give meditation another shot.” She winced as she reached back for the hook of her bra. “Definitely stiff and sore.”

“Let me. I have experience with these devices.”

She smiled, let her arms drop as he moved behind her.

Fresh fury gushed into him, one hot blast of blind, mindless rage. Bruises purpled across her back, along her shoulder blades, in angry storm clouds. More bruising mottled the skin high on her left biceps, and a raw, red line like a burn rode over her shoulder.

“Having trouble with the mechanics?” Cilla asked him.

“No.” Amazing, he thought, how calm his voice sounded. How matter-of-fact. “You’ve got some bruises back here.”

“So that’s what I feel. It must be from when he shoved me against the truck.” She tipped her head to the side, down, then sucked in some air as she brushed her fingers over her shoulder and across her chest. “Seat belt burn, too. Shit. Well, better than the alternative.”

“Fuck that.” He said it softly, but still she shifted to look around at him.

“Ford.”

“Fuck. That.” He bit off the words now as that gush of fury spewed out, a raging, boiling geyser. “You’ll have to get your calm and your Zen somewhere else, because I’m not up for it. Goddamn it. Goddamn it! The son of a bitch came At you. You’re all bruised and bashed up. He did that to you. Did you see your truck? For Christ’s sake, did you see what he did, what he tried to do? He hurt you.”

She’d turned to face him, to stare at him. With hands stunningly gentle in contrast to his face, his voice, he unhooked her work pants, crouched to ease them down her legs.

“Your truck’s in a fucking ditch, and the only reason you’re not is because you took him out. There were skid marks on the road as far as I could see.” He took off her shoes, her socks, lifted her foot, then the other to free them of the pants.

“Better than the alternative? Better comes when I kick that crazy, murderous bastard’s teeth down his throat. That’s when better comes.” He turned her around, unhooked her bra.

He picked her up, eased her into the bubbling water where she just sat, staring at him.

“I’ll get the aspirin and that robe you brought over.”

After he strode away and up the stairs, Cilla let out a long breath. “Wow,” was really all she could think of.

Meditation might not have worked very well for her, but Cilla found fifteen minutes in hot water with pulsing jets helped considerably. Especially with the image of Ford’s anger playing behind her closed lids.

Steadier than she’d have believed possible, she carefully climbed out. As she wrapped herself in a towel, she heard him coming back down the stairs.

“I’ll do that,” he said when she started to flip the lid back over the tub. “Here.”

He handed her pills, water, and when she’d taken them, helped her into the white terry robe she’d left at his place.

“Sorry about before. You don’t need the ravings of another maniac.”

“You’re wrong. You helped me, you gave me exactly what I needed by staying calm when I was the shakiest. You stayed steady, and took me to the cool and the quiet. You gave me magic peas, and you let me lean on you. There have been a very limited number of people in my life that let me lean on them.”

She laid her hands on his chest, on either side of his heart. “And after I got through the worst of it, you gave me something else. The outrage, the anger, the blind thirst for revenge. It helps to know someone could feel that on my behalf. That while he was feeling all that, he could still take care. It’s no wonder I fell for you.”

“I’m so in love with you, Cilla.”

“Oh.” She felt a jolt, nearly as violent as she had while under attack. “Oh, Ford.”

“Maybe it’s lousy timing, but that doesn’t change a thing. It’s not what I was looking for. It’s not simple and easy, just picking which bed we use and who walks home in the morning. That’s how I figured it, and I was wrong.”

“Ford—”

“I’m not finished yet. When that woman—Lori—called, she was careful to let me know right off you were okay. But all she had to do was say Accident, and my heart stopped. I never really understood what it was to be afraid until that moment.”

Everything he’d felt, and was feeling now, swirled in his eyes. So much, Cilla thought. So much in there.

“When I got there, and I saw you sitting on the side of the road. So pale. The relief came first, waves of it. Waves. There she is. I didn’t lose her. Waves of relief, Cilla, and this lightning strike at the same time. There she is. And I knew. I’m in love with you.”

It had been a day for shocks and jolts, and huge moments, Cilla thought. “You’re so steady, Ford, and I’m so disordered.”

“That’s just another way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ ”

“It doesn’t make it less true. I’m caught right now between the thrill, and the terror, of having someone like you tell me he loves me. And mean it. And that’s complicated because I have such strong, real feelings for you. I think I’m in love with you, too. Wait.”

She threw up a hand as he stepped toward her. “Just, wait. I probably have a mild concussion. I’m at a disadvantage. You’re steady,” she repeated. “And I bet you know exactly what you want out of being in love. I’m disordered, and I don’t. What I do know, or at least what I’m pretty sure of, is you’ll want, expect things to change.”

“Yes. But they don’t have to change today, or tomorrow. Part of being steady might be as basic as knowing how to appreciate what you’ve got, in the moment.” He framed her face. “There she is,” he murmured, and brushed his lips to hers.

Cilla closed her eyes. “Oh, God. I’m in such trouble.”

“It’s going to be fine. Now let’s go up. You should get off your feet.”

He lay her on the living room sofa this time, and as he’d expected, within twenty minutes the emotional and physical upheaval dropped her into sleep. He took his phone out onto the veranda, leaving the door open so he’d hear her if she stirred. Sitting where he could watch her through the window, he started his calls with her father.

When he spotted Matt heading up Cilla’s drive toward his house, Ford figured his friend had been keeping an eye out for any sign. He finished up the call—this one to a friend, an RN, just to make sure he handled Cilla’s injuries correctly.

He gestured Matt to a chair as he disconnected.

“What the hell, Ford?”

“Hennessy,” he began, and ran through it.

“Jesus. Crazy bastard. Are you sure she’s okay?”

“I just talked to Holly. Remember Holly?”

“Nurse Holly?”

“Yeah. She thinks it’d be better if I could talk Cilla into getting checked out. But in the meantime, heat, cold, rest, ibuprofen. Got that covered so far. You saw the truck.”

“Yeah, did a number on it. His own van, too. She got him with a nut shot?”

“Apparently.”

“Well, goddamn good for her,” Matt said with both heat and admiration. “I’d like a shot at him myself.”

“Take a number.”

“Well, listen, you need anything, she needs anything, you know where I am. There are a lot of people across the road there who’d say the same.”

“I know it.”

“And tell her not to worry about the work. We’ve got it covered. You’ll want to come over and set her alarm if she’s staying here tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”

“Any questions, messages, whatever, I’ll make sure I leave them in her famous notebook, and I’ll pass the word to Brian. I’ll check with you tomorrow.”

At the two-hour mark, Ford debated rousing her just in case she actually did have a concussion. Before he could decide, he saw the unmarked car pull into her drive. So he waited, watched Wilson and Urick get out, go in. Come out, get back into the car and pull across into his driveway.

“Mr. Sawyer.”

“Getting to be a habit, isn’t it?”

“Miss McGowan’s here?”

“Yeah. Banged up, worn out and sleeping. Where’s Hennessy?”

“He’s in a cell. Do you want a list of the charges against him?”

“No, as long as there’s enough to keep him in a cell.”

“We’d like to speak to Ms. McGowan, go over her statement.”

“She’s sleeping,” Ford repeated, and rose. “And she’s had more than enough for one day. More than enough, period. If Hennessy had been in a cell where he belonged, he wouldn’t have had a chance to try to kill her.”

“If we’d had any evidence, we’d have put him in a cell before this.”

“So what?” Ford shot back. “Better late than never?”

“Ford.” Cilla pushed open the screen. “It’s all right.”

“Hell it is.”

“Well, you’re right. It’s not. But I’ll talk to the detectives. Let’s get it done.” She opened the door wider. “Would you wait in the living room a minute?” she asked Wilson and Urick.

After they passed, she let the screen door close behind her, and laid her hands on Ford’s shoulders. “No one’s ever shielded me.” She kissed him. “In my whole life, no one ever stood between me and something unpleasant. It’s an amazing feeling. It’s amazing to know I don’t even have to ask if you’ll stay with me while I do this. You can leave your silver armor in the shop. You don’t need it.”

She took his hand, and walked inside with him to get it done.

Part Three

FINISH TRIM

And though home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

—CHARLES DICKENS

TWENTY-ONE

How are you feeling?” Wilson asked when she sat on the sofa with Ford, with the dog between them. “Oddly enough, lucky.”

“Have you been checked out by a doctor?”

“No, it’s bumps and bruises.”

“It would be helpful to have a doctor’s report, and photographs of your injuries.”

“I don’t have a local doctor yet. And I’m not—”

“I’ve got one,” Ford interrupted. “I’ll make a call.”

“We interviewed Hennessy,” Urick told them. “Took a first pass at him. He doesn’t deny ramming your truck or forcing you off the road. He claims you were harassing his wife.”

“I went to see her this morning. I forgot,” she said to Ford. “It wasn’t top of my mind after all this. I went to see him, actually, but she said he wasn’t home. We had a conversation, out on her porch. Then I left. I didn’t harass her, or anyone. And if he thinks having a conversation with his wife justifies running me into a ditch, he really is crazy.”

“What time did you speak with Mrs. Hennessy?”

“I don’t know. Around nine. I left and did a number of errands. Four or five stops, I guess, between Front Royal and Morrow Village. I saw his van coming from the direction of my farm as I was heading toward it. He saw me, and a minute later he was behind me, coming up fast. He rammed me. I don’t know how many times now. Three or four, at least. I know I was all over the road. I went into a skid, thought I was going to flip. I went into the ditch. I guess the seat belt and air bag kept it from being any worse.”

“You got out of the truck,” Wilson prompted.

“That’s right. Supremely pissed. I started yelling at him, he yelled at me. And he shoved me. He shoved me again, and knocked me back into the gate of the truck. He said, ‘I see you in there.’ And he raised his fist. That’s when I kicked him.”

“What do you think he meant by that? ‘I see you in there’?”

“My grandmother. He meant he saw my grandmother. And I’d say if he had to hurt me to get to her, that’s what he’d do. He attacked my friend, vandalized my property, and now he’s attacked me.”

“He hasn’t copped to any of the incidents before this afternoon,” Wilson told her. “He denies the rest.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No, but it’s hard to understand why a man who confesses to vehicular assault, reckless endangerment, assault with intent refuses to admit to trespass and vandalism. The fact is, Ms. McGowan, he seemed righteous about what happened today. Not remorseful or afraid of the consequences. If his wife hadn’t gotten a lawyer in there when she did, we might’ve gotten more.”

“What happens now?”

“Arraignment, bail hearing. Given his age, his length of time in the community, I’d expect his lawyer to request he be released on his own recognizance. And given the nature of the offense, his proximity to you, I expect the DA will ask for him to be held without bail. I can’t say which way it’ll go, or if it’ll land somewhere between.”

“His wife swears he didn’t leave the house last night.” Urick picked up the notebook in his lap. “That they left the park right after they saw you, and he stayed in all night. We did, however, pull out of her that he often spends time in their son’s room, locks himself in, sleeps in there. So he could’ve left the house without her knowing about it. We’ll push there, I promise you.”

Cilla had barely settled herself down after the police left when her father arrived, with Patty and Angie. Even as the anger and emotion level rose toward what she thought might be the unbearable, Ford’s mother sailed in carrying a large Tupperware container and a bouquet of flowers.

“Don’t you get up, you poor thing. I brought you some of my chicken soup.”

“Oh, Penny, that’s so thoughtful!” Patty sprang up to take the flowers. “I never thought of food, or flowers. I never thought—”

“Of course you didn’t. How could you, with so much on your mind? Cilla, I’m going to heat you up a bowl right now. My chicken soup’s good for anything. Colds, flu, bumps, bruises, lovers’ spats and rainy days. Ford, find Patty a vase for the flowers. Nothing cheers you up like a bunch of sunflowers.”

Clutching them, Patty burst into tears.

“Oh now, now.” Penny cradled the Tupperware in one arm, Patty in the other. “Come on with me, sweetie. You come on with me. We’ll make ourselves useful, and you’ll feel better.”

“Did you see her poor face?” Patty sobbed as Penny led her away.

“She’s just so upset.” Angie sat beside Cilla, took her hand.

“I know. It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” Gavin turned from staring out the front windows. “None of it is. I should have confronted Hennessy years ago, had this out with him. Instead, I just stayed out of his way. I looked away from it because it was uncomfortable. It was unpleasant. And because he left Patty and Angie alone. He didn’t leave you alone, and still, I stayed out of his way.”

“Confronting him wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“It would make me feel like less of a failure as your father.”

“You’re not—”

“Angie,” Gavin said, interrupting Cilla, “would you go help your mother and Mrs. Sawyer?”

“All right.”

“Ford? Would you mind?”

With a nod, Ford slipped out behind Angie.

Cilla sat, her stomach twisting with a new kind of tension. “I know you’re upset. We’re all upset,” she began.

“I let her have you. I let Dilly have you, and I walked away.”

Cilla looked into his face and asked the single question she’d never dared ask him. “Why?”

“I told myself you were better off. I even believed it. I told myself you were where you belonged, and being there, being with your mother, allowed you to do what made you happy. Gave you advantages. I wasn’t happy there, and whatever turned between your mother and me brought out the very worst in both of us when we dealt with each other. When we dealt with each other about you. I felt . . . free when I came back here.”

“I was only about a year old when you moved out, and not even three when you went away.”

“We couldn’t speak two sentences to each other without it devolving. It was better, a little better, when we had a few thousand miles between us. I came out every month or two to see you for the first few . . . then less. You were already a working actor. It was easy to tell myself you had such a full life, to agree that it wasn’t in your best interest to come here for part of your summer break when you could be making appearances.”

“And you were building a life here.”

“Yes, starting over, falling in love with Patty.” He looked down at his hands, then dropped them to his sides. “You were barely real to me, this beautiful little girl I’d visit a few times a year. I could tell myself I did my duty—never failed to send the support check, or call on your birthday, Christmas, send gifts. Even if I knew it for a lie, I could tell myself. I had Angie. Right here, every step. She needed me, and you didn’t.”

“But I did.” Cilla’s eyes swam. “I did.”

“I know. And I’ll never be able to make it up to you, or to myself.” His voice went thick. “I wanted a quiet life, Cilla. And I sacrificed you to get it. By the time I understood that, you were grown.”

“Did you ever love me?”

He pressed his fingers to his eyes as if they burned, then, dropping his hands, walked over to sit beside her. “I was in the delivery room when you were born. They put you in my arms, and I loved you. But it was almost a kind of awe. Amazement and terror and thrill. I remember most, a few weeks after we brought you home. I had an early call, and I heard you crying. The nurse had fed you, but you were fussy. I took you, and sat with you in the rocking chair. You spit up all over my shirt. And then you looked at me. Looked right into my eyes. And I loved you. I shouldn’t have let you go.”

She took a breath as something opened in her chest. “You helped me pick out rosebushes, and a red maple. You painted my living room. And you’re here now.”

He put an arm around her, drew her against him. “I saw you,” he whispered, “standing on a veranda you’d built with your own hands. And I loved you.”

For the first time in her memory, for perhaps the first time in her life, she turned her face into his chest, and wept.

LATER, SHE ATE CHICKEN SOUP. It surprised her just how much better it made her feel. A tall green vase full of bright yellow sunflowers didn’t hurt, either. Cilla decided she looked a great deal better when Ford didn’t argue with the idea of her walking over to check on what work had been done that day.

“Walking around some’ll help you not stiffen up too much, I imagine.”

“It’s cooled off some. It feels good to be outside. Smells like rain’s coming.”

“Aren’t you turning into the country girl.”

Smiling, she lifted her face to the sky. “That, and like any contractor, I checked the weather channel this morning. Evening thunderstorms, sixty percent chance. And speaking of weather, you weathered the emotional storm earlier very well.”

“Barely, if you want to know the truth. My mother’s giving Patty the there-theres, and Angie gets going, and that gets my mother started. So I’ve got three women crying in the kitchen while they’re heating up soup and arranging flowers.” Looking pained, he dragged a hand through his mass of disordered hair. “I nearly bolted. Spock slunk out through his dog door like a coward. I thought about doing the same.”

“Sterner stuff is Ford made of.”

“Maybe, but it was touch and go when I looked in the living room to see if that coast was clear and you’re mopping at your eyes.”

“Thanks for sticking it out.”

“It’s what we men in love do.” He unlocked the door, pushed it open.

She paused in the doorway, as Spock made himself at home and walked straight in. “Were you ever, before?”

“Ever what?”

“In love?”

“I was in love with Ivy Lattimer when I was eight, but she treated me with derision and mockery. I was in love with Stephanie Provost at thirteen, who returned my affection for six glorious days before tossing me for Don Erbe and his i n-ground swimming pool.”

She pressed her finger into his chest. “I’m serious.”

“Those were very serious love affairs to me, at the time. There were others, too. But if you mean has it ever been real, have I ever looked at a woman and known and felt and wanted and needed all at the same time? No. You’re the first.”

He lifted her hand, brushed his lips lightly over her knuckles and made her think of her father making the same gesture with Patty. “Looks the same in here to me. What do these guys do all day?”

She wandered into the living room. “Because you don’t know where to look. Switch plates and outlet covers I special-ordered—hammered antique bronze—installed. That was a nice, unnecessary thing to do. Matt left the trim in here because he knows I have an emotional attachment to it and want to hang it myself.”

She moved off, let out a happy sound at the doorway to the powder room. “Tile’s laid.” She crouched, studied. “Nice, very nice, the warm pallet in this mosaic ties in well with the color of the entrance foyer, the living area. I wonder if they got to the bathroom on the third floor, or finished the drywall?”

And she’s up and running, Ford thought, following her through the house.

By the time she’d checked everything to her satisfaction, the first rumble of thunder sounded. Spock let out a pip of distress and clung to Ford’s side like a burr.

She set the alarm, locked up.

“Wind’s starting to kick. I love that. I really love when it waits to rain until night, and doesn’t screw up time on the job. Brian’s crew is scheduled for tomorrow, and we’re finally going to work on the pond. Plus, we’re . . . Oh damn, I completely forgot. I put an offer in on the house this morning. Just had the impulse hit, and hit strong enough, it said do it now. I should hear if they’re going to counter tomorrow. Which is when I made an appointment for us to go through the other house. I figured if that didn’t work for you, I’d just reschedule. And I forgot about it.”

“Gee, wonder why? What time tomorrow?”

“Five. I’ve got a full slate, so five worked out.”

“It’s fine. We’ll go right after your doctor’s appointment. That’s at four.”

“But—”

“Four,” he said in that tone she heard rarely. Which, she imagined, spoke to its success.

“Okay. All right.”

“Now, what do you say we sit outside with some wine, and watch this storm roll in.”

“I say that sounds like a nice way to end a seriously crappy day.”

CILLA THOUGHT SHE was pulling it together pretty well. She’d gotten a decent night’s sleep—maybe aided by two glasses of wine, two Motrin and another bowl of Penny’s famous chicken soup. She’d managed to creak her way out of bed at seven without waking Ford. Another spin in the whirlpool, some very light and gentle yoga stretches followed by more Motrin and a breathlessly hot shower had her feeling almost normal.

Over a quiet cup of coffee she wondered why she needed a doctor’s appointment. It didn’t require a doctor to tell her she’d been banged around and would be a little stiff and sore, a little achy for a couple of days.

But she doubted Ford would see it that way.

And wasn’t that nice, when you got right down to it? There was someone who cared enough to get pushy and bossy about her welfare. It didn’t hurt to be flexible, to bend enough to accommodate.

Besides, the worst was over. Hennessy was in jail, and couldn’t touch her or her property. She’d be able to live, and finish her rehab in peace. And move on to the next.

She’d be able to sit down and really think about what it meant to have a man like Ford in love with her. And, yes, to worry and obsess about what it meant for her to be in love—if she really understood the state of being—with a man like Ford.

They could take some time, couldn’t they, to build on that? To restructure, to decide on tones and trim? They could take a good look at the foundation, evaluate. Because hers was so uneven. Lots of cracks there, she mused, but maybe they could be shored up, supported and repaired.

Since his were so solid, so sturdy, there had to be a chance to make the whole thing stand. To make it last.

She so badly wanted to make things last.

She wrote him a note to prop against the coffeemaker.

Feeling good. Gone to work.

Cilla

The truth would be closer to “less crappy,” but “good” worked well enough.

She filled her insulated mug with coffee and headed for the door only two hours later than her usual start time.

She jolted back a step. Mrs. Hennessy stood on the other side of the door, her hand lifted as if to knock.

“Mrs. Hennessy.”

“Miss McGowan, I hoped you’d be here. I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, under the circumstances.”

“Please. Please.” Mrs. Hennessy opened the screen door herself, crowded in so that Cilla was forced to step back. “I know you must be upset. I know you have every reason to be, but—”

“Upset? Yeah, I’d say I have every reason. Your husband tried to kill me.”

“No. No. He lost his temper, and that’s partly my fault. He was wrong. He was wrong to do what he did, but you have to understand, he wasn’t thinking straight.”

“When wasn’t he thinking? When he drove out here in the first place, or when he rammed into my truck, repeatedly, until he ran me off the road? Or would it be when he shoved me? Or when he raised his fist to me?”

Mrs. Hennessy’s eyes shone—fear, distress, apology. “There’s no excuse for what he did. I know that. I’ve come here to beg you to have some pity, some compassion. To open your heart and understand his pain.”

“You suffered a tragedy, over thirty years ago. And he blames me. How can I understand?”

“Thirty years ago, thirty minutes ago. For him, there’s no difference. Our son, our only child, lost his future that night. We could only have the one child. I had problems, and Jim, he said to me, it doesn’t matter, Edie. We have everything. We have our Jimmy. He loved that boy more than anything in this world. Maybe he loved too much. Is that a sin? Is that wrong? Look, look.”

She pulled a framed photo out of her handbag, pushed it at Cilla. “That’s Jimmy. That’s our boy. Look at him.”

“Mrs. Hennessy—”

“The spitting image of his daddy,” she said quickly, urgently. “Everyone said so, from the time he was born. He was such a good boy. So bright, so sweet, so funny. He was going to college, he was going on to college and to medical school. He was going to be a doctor. Jim and me, neither of us went to college. But we saved, we put money by so Jimmy could go. We were so proud.”

“He was a handsome young man,” Cilla managed, and handed the photo back. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sincerely sorry. But I’m not to blame.”

“Of course you’re not. Of course you’re not.” Tears trembling on the brink, she pressed the photo to her heart. “I grieved, Miss McGowan, every day of my life, for what happened to my boy. Jimmy was never the same after that night. It was more than never walking again, or using his arms. He lost his light, his spark. He just never found himself again. I lost him, and I lost my husband that same night. He spent years tending to Jimmy. Most of the time he wouldn’t let me do. It was for him to do. To feed him, to change him, to lift him. It took his heart. It just took his heart.”

She drew herself back up. “When Jimmy died, I’m not ashamed to tell you I felt some relief. As if my boy was finally free again, to be again, and walk and laugh. But what was left in my Jim just shriveled. Jimmy was his reason for being, even if the being was bitter. He snapped, that’s all. The weight of it all, it just broke him. I’m begging you, don’t send him away to prison. He needs help. And time to heal. Don’t take him, too. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She covered her face, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Out of the corner of her eye, Cilla saw a movement. As Ford came down the stairs, Cilla held up a hand to stop him.

“Mrs. Hennessy, do you know what he did yesterday? Do you understand what he’s done?”

“I know what they’re saying, and I know he hurt you yesterday. I shouldn’t have told him you came. I was upset, and I started on him, how he had to let it go, leave it, and you. How I couldn’t take you coming to the house that way. And he went storming off. If I hadn’t riled him up—”

“What about the other times?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know about other times. Can’t you see he needs help? Can’t you see he’s sick in his heart, his mind, in his soul? I love my husband. I want him back. If he goes to prison, he’ll die. He’ll die there. You’re young. You have everything ahead of you. We’ve already lost the most important thing in our lives. Can’t you find enough pity to let us try to find our peace?”

“What do you think I can do?”

“You could tell them you don’t want him to go to jail.” She reached out to grip Cilla’s hands. “The lawyer says he could ask for a psychiatric evaluation and time in a hospital. That they could send Jim to a place where they’d help him. He’d have to go, isn’t that punishment? He’d have to, but they’d help him.”

“I don’t—”

“And I’d sell the house.” Her hands squeezed Cilla’s harder, and her desperation passed from skin to skin. “I’d swear it to you, on the Bible. I’d sell the house and we’d move away from here. When he’s well enough, we’d move to Florida. My sister and her husband, they’re moving to Florida next fall. I’ll find a place down there, and we’ll move away. He’ll never bother you again. You could tell them you want him to go to the psychiatric hospital until he’s better. You’re the one he hurt, so they’d listen to you.

“I knew your grandmother. I know she loved her boy, too. I know she grieved for him. I know that in my heart. It’s that Jim never believed it, and he blamed her, blamed her every time he looked at our boy in that wheelchair. He couldn’t forgive, and it made him sick. Can’t you forgive? Can’t you?”

How could she hold against such need? Cilla thought. Such terrible need. “I’ll talk to the police. I can’t promise anything. I’ll talk to them. That’s all I can do.”

“God bless you. God bless you for that. I won’t trouble you again. Jim won’t, either. I swear it to you.”

Cilla closed her eyes, then closed the door. With a tired sigh, she walked over to sit on Ford’s steps. She leaned her head on his shoulder when he stepped down to sit beside her.

“There are all kinds of assaults,” he said quietly. “On the body, the mind, and on the heart.”

She only nodded. He understood she felt battered by the visit, by the pleas, by the tears.

“It’s about redemption, isn’t it?” she said. “Or some part of it. Me coming here, bringing her house back. Myself back. Looking for her in it, for the answers, the reasons. She never recovered from Johnnie’s death. Was never the same. And most people say she took her life because of it. Couldn’t you say Hennessy didn’t have that luxury? His child was still alive, but so damaged, so broken, so needy. He couldn’t turn away from it, and had to live with it every day. And that broke him.”

“I’m not saying he doesn’t need help,” Ford said slowly. “That mandatory time in a psychiatric facility isn’t the answer. But, Cilla, it’s not him who’s asking for pity or forgiveness. It’s not Hennessy who’s looking for redemption.”

“No, it’s not.” And there, too, she knew he was right. “I’m not doing it for him. For whatever good it does, I’m doing it for that desperate and terrified woman. And more, I’m doing it for Janet.”

IN CILLA’S EXPERIENCE working with a good crew in construction meant no coddling because you happened to be female. She got questions, concern, anger and disgust on her behalf, but no more than she’d have been afforded as a man.

And she got plenty of jokes and comments about being a ballbuster.

It helped put her back on track so she could spend the morning hanging trim.

“Hey, Cill.” One of the laborers stuck his head in the living room as she stood on the stepladder nailing crown molding. “There’s a lady out here, says she knows you. Name’s Lori. Want me to send her in or what?”

“Yeah, tell her to come in.” Cilla shot in the last nails, started down the ladder.

“If I’d been through what you went through yesterday, I’d be lying in bed, not climbing up ladders.”

“It’s just another kind of therapy.” Cilla set the gun aside and turned to her Good Samaritan. “I was going to come by later today or tomorrow, thank you again.”

“You thanked me yesterday.”

“Not to diminish what you did, but I’m always going to have this image of you running down the road with a portable phone in one hand, and a garden stake in the other.”

With a laugh, Lori shook her head. “My husband and I took this week off, short holiday week, to putter around the house and yard. He was off with our two boys buying peat moss and deer repellant while I restaked the tomatoes. I can tell you, if he’d been home, he’d likely’ve beat that idiot over the head with the stake, even as he went down.”

With a sympathetic smile, she studied the bruise on Cilla’s temple. “That looks painful yet. How are you doing?”

“Not too bad. I think it looks worse than it feels now.”

“I hope so.” She looked around the room. “I confess, while I did want to see you, I’ve always wanted a look inside this place.”

“It’s in major transition, but I’ll give you a tour if you want.”

“I’d love a rain check on that. This room’s very nice. I love the color. Well, let me just wind my way around to the point. Of course I know who you are, and who your grandmother was. We moved here about twelve years ago, but Janet Hardy’s legend looms large, so we knew this had been hers. It’s good to see somebody finally tending to it, which is not the point I’m winding to.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know, because while I know who you are, and feel a particular interest in you now, I don’t know you. I’ve had two reporters call me this morning, wanting quotes and information and my account of what happened yesterday.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“I told them I gave my account to the police. In both cases, they got pretty insistent, and that put my back up.”

“I’m sorry you’re being bothered by this.”

Lori tossed up a hand, waved that aside. “I stopped by to let you know that someone’s been talking to reporters. For all I know you might’ve talked to them yourself, though I can see now that’s not the case.”

“No, but I’ll have to. I appreciate you letting me know.”

“We’re neighbors. I’m going to let you get back to work.” She glanced around. “I think it’s time to go nag my husband about painting the living room.”

Cilla walked Lori to the door, then went back and sat on the stepladder. She considered the cleanest, most direct way to get out a statement. She still had contacts, and even if tapping any of them was dicey, the Hardy name would ring the bell. She needed something brief and concise, carefully written. She’d been taught not to duck a story but to confront it, spin it and ride it out with class.

She pulled her phone off her belt when it rang, then closed her eyes as she answered. “Hello, Mom.”

“Cilla, for God’s sake, what’s going on out there?”

“I had some trouble. I’m handling it. Listen, could you contact your publicist? You’re still using Kim Cohen?”

“Yes, but—”

“Please, contact her and give her this number. Ask her to call me as soon as she can.”

“I don’t see why I should do you any favors after the way you treated—”

“Mom. Please. I could use some help.”

There was a beat of silence. “All right. I’ll call her right now. Were you in an accident? Are you in the hospital? Are you hurt? I heard some crazy man thought you were Mama’s ghost and tried to run you over with his car. I heard—”

“No, it’s not like that. I’m not hurt. I need Kim to help me straighten it out, get out a statement.”

“I don’t want you to be hurt. I’m still mad at you,” Dilly said with a sniff that made Cilla smile. “But I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“I know, and I’m not. Thanks for calling Kim.”

“At least I know how to do a favor,” Dilly said, and hung up.

Cilla couldn’t deny it as the publicist called within twenty minutes. In another twenty, they’d refined a statement between them. By the time Cilla hung up, she knew she’d done the best she could.

“I’M NOT MAJOR JUICE,” Cilla said to Ford as they drove from the doctor’s office to the appointment with the Realtor. “But there’s always some ripples when there’s any sort of violence or scandal. And the Hardy connection may give it a little more play. But the statement should cover most of it. There won’t be much interest.”

“There will be locally. It’ll be big news around here, at least for a few days. And if it goes to trial. Did you get in touch with the cops?”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t—and yes. I know Wilson thought I was the crazy one for asking if they’d consider Hennessy’s emotional and mental state.”

“What did he say?”

“Psych evals are already in the works. One from the defense, one from the prosecution.”

“Dueling shrinks.”

“It sounds like it.”

“I’d say it’s going to be pretty clear to both that Hennessy downed a big bowl of crazy.”

“Yeah. I guess the upshot depends on what the prosecution’s guy has to say as to whether or not the DA holds on the charges, makes a deal or recommends a psychiatric facility and treatment. The house is coming up on the left. The little Cape Cod there.”

“Huh?”

“Red compact out front. She’s already here. Vicky Fowley. It’s a rental—empty—the owner wants to unload. And Vicky’s anxious to get it off her list.”

Ford looked at the overgrown, weedy front yard and the small brown box of a house sitting on it. “I can’t imagine why. Could it be the extreme uglies?”

“Perfect attitude. Keep that up, seriously.” She gave his hand a bolstering pat. “And let me do the talking.”

TWENTY-TWO

Ford knew he had a strong imagination. He considered himself to be a man of some vision. As far as Cilla’s “little Cape Cod” went, he couldn’t imagine how anyone could define it, however loosely, as a house, and could only visualize it being mercifully razed.

Stains of a suspicious and undoubtedly unpleasant nature stamped and streaked the carpet in the pint-sized living room. He could only be grateful he’d let Spock play job dog again, otherwise Spock would’ve been honor bound to re-mark all the previously marked areas.

Either an animal or an army of rodents had gnawed on the baseboard. The ceiling, also unpleasantly stained in one corner, was bumpy with what Cilla called popcorn.

The kitchen was a truly ugly hodgepodge of mismatched appliances, torn linoleum and a rusted sink. The stingy counters carried the round burn marks of pans carelessly set on blue-speckled white Formica. Grime, and God knew what else, lived in the corners.

In his mind’s eye he imagined cockroaches flooding out of that rusted sink, armed with automatic weapons, driving tanks and armored vehicles to wage war against spiders in combat gear firing bazookas.

He found it easy to let Cilla do the talking. He was speechless.

The second floor consisted of two bedrooms scattered with the debris of former tenants and a bathroom he wouldn’t have entered while wearing a hazmat suit.

“As you can see, there’s work to be done!” Vicky showed white, white teeth in what could only be a pained, somewhat desperate smile. “But with some elbow grease and sweat equity, it could be a little dollhouse! Such a cute starter home for a young couple like yourselves.”

“A couple of what?” Ford said and got the fish eye from Cilla.

“Vicky, would you mind if we just looked around on our own for a few minutes? Talked about it?”

“Of course not! Take all the time you want. I’ll just step outside and make some calls. Don’t rush on my account!”

“Why does she say everything in exclamation points?” Ford asked when Vicky was out of earshot. “Is it fear? Excitement? Does she have multiple, spontaneous orgasms?”

“Cute.”

“Cilla, I think that pile of what may have once been clothing in that corner just moved. There may be a body in there. Possibly an army of cockroaches waiting to ambush. We should leave. And never come back.”

“If there was a body, it would smell a lot worse than it does in here.”

“How much worse?” he muttered. “And have you ever actually smelled a body?”

She gave him the fish eye again. “Cockroaches may be a factor, however. If the seller had any brains, he’d have cleaned this place out, ripped up this incredibly smelly carpet. But his loss could be our gain.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. The only thing we could gain from this place is a rampant case of typhoid. Or bubonic plague.” He kept a wary eye on the pile of rags. He wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t moved. “Cilla, this place has no possible redeeming value.”

“Because you don’t know where to look. Deal was, you don’t want to risk it, you don’t. But let me give you the idea first. There’s hardwood under this carpet. I checked when I went through before.”

She walked over, crouched to pull up a loose corner. “Random-length oak, and in surprisingly good shape.”

“Okay, it’s got a floor.”

“And a good foundation, a nice-sized lot.”

“That looks like a minefield. Probably booby-trapped by the atomic spiders.”

“New sod,” she continued, undaunted, “some plantings, a pretty little deck on the back. Gut the bathroom.”

“Wouldn’t it be more humane to bomb it?”

“New tub, new sink, a nice ceramic tile. For a room that size, I could probably find enough of a discontinued style, neutral color. All the carpet goes. Replace the closet doors, add shelves. Redo the ceilings, paint. You’ve got a couple of nice kids’ rooms.”

“And where would the parents sleep?” He slid his hands into his pockets rather than risk accidentally touching something. “In a hotel if they have any sense.”

She crooked her finger. “This wall moves out fifteen feet.”

“It does?”

“It will and, running the width of the house, will hold the master suite, overlooking the backyard. Walk-in closet, attached bath with soaking tub and separate shower. Double sinks, granite countertop. Maybe slate tile. Have to price that out.”

“What holds it up? Hopes and dreams?”

“The new kitchen/great room.”

“Oh, that.” But oddly enough, he began to see it as she did.

Or as he thought she did.

“Horrible carpet treads out, oak treads in,” she said as she started down the steps. “Replace skinny banister. Carpet goes, ceilings redone, new trim, some crown molding. New windows throughout. Gut kitchen.”

“Thank the Lord.”

“Half bath and laundry room here. Kitchen, dining area and family room, open floor plan, breakfast bar for the casual, family meal, all leading out through atrium doors to the nice little deck. Exterior paint in a cheerful color, replace the cracked concrete walkway with pavers, plug in some plants, a little dogwood tree. And that’s about it.”

“Oh, well, that’s hardly anything.”

She laughed. “It’s a lot, but it’ll be a lot. Poor, sad thing. Sixteen weeks. It could be done in twelve, but not with juggling, so I’d say sixteen. With the top offer I’d make and materials and labor, mortgage payments for, we’ll say, five months, and the market value after improvements in this neighborhood, you could see between forty and forty-five K in profit.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yeah. Depending on the market when it’s done, that could be closer to sixty thousand. The neighborhood’s on an upswing.” She began ticking items off on her fingers. “Younger couples, small families moving in, prettying things up. It’s in a good school district, only about ten minutes from a shopping center. Master suites, kitchens and baths—that’s where the sales are made and you get your biggest return on your investment.”

“Okay.”

“No, you have to be sure. Take a little time to think about it. I’ll draw up some floor plans.”

“No, I’m sold. Let’s go make Vicky’s day.” And get the hell out while the cockroaches and spiders have their moratorium.

“Wait, wait. We need to let her suffer more. You’re going to steal this place, Ford.” He found the sly delight on her face infectious. “It deserves to be stolen because the seller couldn’t even be bothered to make an attempt. We’re going to tell her, very unconvincingly, that we’ll think about it. Then we’re going to walk away. In a week, ten days, I’ll call her back.”

“If somebody buys it in the meantime?”

“When it’s been sitting here for over four months, even with two price reductions? I don’t think so. We’re going to go give Vicky the disappointment she’s expecting. Then I want to go home, soak in your hot tub and relax.”

RELAXING PROVED PROBLEMATIC because of the half-dozen reporters camped at her wall.

“Not much interest, you said?”

“This is nothing.” And hardly more than she’d expected. “Just a spillover from the statement. They’ll mostly be local, or out of D.C., maybe. We’re close enough for that. You go inside. I’ll handle it.”

“You’re going to give them interviews?”

“Not exactly. A few crumbs. They’ll take the crumbs and fly away. There’s no reason for you to be involved in this. And you’ll just give them another angle.”

But the minute they stepped out of the car, cameras lifted. Like one entity, reporters surged across the road, shouting Cilla’s name, calling out questions. As it struck Ford as a kind of attack, he moved instinctively to Cilla’s side.

“Georgia Vassar, WMWA-TV. Can you tell us your thoughts on the altercation yesterday with James Robert Hennessy?”

“How serious are your injuries?”

“Is it true Hennessy believes you’re the reincarnation of Janet Hardy?”

“I’ve already issued a statement about the incident,” Cilla said coolly. “I don’t have any more to say.”

“Isn’t it true that Hennessy threatened you previously? And, in fact, assaulted Steve Chensky, your ex-husband, while Chensky lived with you? Was that assault the reason for your failed reconciliation?”

“To my knowledge, Mr. Hennessy hasn’t been charged with the assault on Steve, who was visiting me for a short time this spring. We’ve been friends before, during and after our marriage. There was no reconciliation.”

“Is that due to your relationship with Ford Sawyer? Mr. Sawyer, how do you feel about the attack on Ms. McGowan?”

“There’s speculation that you and Steve fought over Cilla, and he was injured. How do you answer that?”

“No comment. Gosh, you guys seem to be on my property. We’re pretty friendly around here, but you’re going to want to step off.”

“I won’t be as friendly if any of you trespass on mine,” Cilla warned.

“Is it true that you came here in an attempt to commune with the spirit of your grandmother?” someone shouted as she turned with Ford toward the house.

“Tabloid crap,” Cilla stated. “I’m sorry. Most of that was tabloid crap.”

“No problem.” Ford shut the door behind them, locked it. “I’ve always wanted the opportunity to say ‘No comment’ in a stern voice.”

“They’ll give up. It won’t play more than a day or two, and most of that’ll be in the supermarket sheets alongside stories of alien babies being homeschooled in Utah.”

“I knew it!” He shot a finger in the air. “I knew that was the reason for Utah. How about a glass of wine with that soak, while I figure out how to get my dog back?”

“Not a good idea. The wine, yeah, and Spock, but you’ve got a lot of glass in your gym.” She offered an apologetic look, the best she could give him. “Glass, telephoto lenses. No point in handing it to them. They’ve got your name. You’re going to find yourself alongside the alien babies, too.”

“Finally, a lifelong dream fulfilled.” He reached for glasses, glanced down at his answering machine. “Aren’t I the popular guy today? Forty-eight messages.” Even as he spoke, the phone rang.

“You should screen, Ford. I really thought by issuing a short, clear statement I’d head this off. Kim, the publicist, agreed with me. But for whatever reason, some of the media wants to run with it, and turn down cockeyed angles.”

“Let’s do this.” He lifted the phone, switched off the ringer. “I’ll do the same with the others. My family, my friends have my cell number if they need to reach me. I’ll call Brian, see if he’ll take Spock home with him tonight. We’ll take some wine, cook up a frozen pizza and camp upstairs in the bedroom behind the curtains. At last, the opportunity to expose you to a marathon running of Battlestar Galactica.”

She leaned back on the counter as the tension in her shoulders dissolved. Not angry, she realized. Not upset. Not even especially irked. How had she ever managed to connect with someone so blessedly stable?

“You really know how to keep it simple.”

“Unless the Cylons are bent on destroying your entire species, it usually is simple. You get the pizza, I’ll get the wine.”

CILLA WOKE at five A.M. to the beep of the internal clock she’d set in the middle of the night after the alarms had sounded at the Little Farm. Something else she should have expected, she thought as she went to shower. There were some members of some media who routinely ignored the law in pursuit of a story. So she’d spent an hour with the police and Ford across the road.

And she had a lock set on her back door bearing the scratches of a botched jimmy attempt.

She dressed, left a note for Ford. The radio car remained in her drive, where it had been posted after the attempted break-in. Birds chirped, and she caught sight of a trio of deer at her pond. But no reporters camped outside her walls.

Maybe she’d gotten lucky, she thought, and that was that. Using Ford’s car, she drove into town. She was back by six-thirty, and carried a box of doughnuts and two large coffees down her drive.

The cop behind the wheel rolled down his window.

“I know it’s a cliché,” she said, “but.”

“Hey. That was nice of you, Miss McGowan. It’s been quiet.”

“And a long night for both of you. It looks like the invaders have retired the field. I’m going to start work. Some of the crew will be coming along by seven.”

“It’s a nice spot you’ve got here.” The second cop pulled a glazed with sprinkles out of the box. “Heck of a bathroom up there on the second floor. My wife’s been wanting to update ours.”

“If you decide to, give me a call. Free consult.”

“Might do that. We’ll be going off shift pretty soon. Do you want us to call in and request another car?”

“I think we’ll be fine now. Thanks for looking out for me.”

Inside, she set up to finish her run of baseboard. By eight, the hive of activity buzzed. Grouting, drywall mudding, consults on driveway pavers and pond work. Turning her attention to the third bedroom, Cilla checked her closet measurements. As she removed the door, Matt stepped in.

“Cilla, I think you’d better take a look outside.”

“What? Is there a problem?”

“I guess you need to look, decide that for yourself.”

She propped the door against the wall, hustled after him. One look out the front window of the master bedroom had her gasping.

Six reporters had been a nuisance, and not unexpected. Sixty was a disaster.

“They just started showing up, kind of all at once,” Matt told her. “Kinda like there was a signal. Brian called me out, said some of them are yelling questions at his crew. Jesus, there’s TV cameras and everything.”

“Okay, okay, I need to think.” She had at least a dozen crew working between the house and the grounds. A dozen people she couldn’t possibly censor or control.

“There shouldn’t be this kind of interest in me being in a wreck, even with the circumstances. A few blips on the entertainment news maybe, reports locally. I need to make a call. Matt, if you could try to keep the men from talking to them, at least for now. I need a few minutes to . . .” She trailed off as the gleaming black limo streamed through her entrance.

“Man, look at that.”

“Yes, look at that,” Cilla echoed. She didn’t have to see Mario climb out of the back to know who’d arrived. Or why.

By the time Cilla reached the veranda, Bedelia Hardy stood under the supportive protection of her husband’s arm. She tilted her face out at the perfect angle, Cilla thought with burning resentment, so those long lenses could capture her poignant expression. She wore her hair loose so it shone in the sun over the linen jacket the same color as her eyes.

As Cilla let the screen door slam behind her, Dilly threw open her arms, keeping her body angled for the profile shots. “Baby!”

She came forward in rather spectacular Jimmy Choo sandals with three-inch heels. Trapped, Cilla walked down the steps in her work boots and into the maternal arms and clouds of Soir de Paris. Janet’s signature scent that had become her daughter’s.

“My baby, my baby.”

“You did this,” Cilla whispered in Dilly’s ear. “You leaked to the press you were coming.”

“Of course I did. All press is good press.” She leaned back, and through the amber lenses of Dilly’s sunglasses, Cilla saw the calculatedly misted eyes widen in genuine concern. “Oh, Cilla, your face. You said you weren’t hurt. Oh, Cilla.”

It was that, that moment of sincere shock and worry, Cilla supposed, that dulled the sharpest edge of resentment. “I got some bumps, that’s all.”

“What did the doctor say? Oh, that horrible man, that Hennessy. I remember him. Pinched-faced bastard. My God, Cilla, you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, why don’t you at least put on some makeup? No time for that now, and it’s probably better this way. Let’s go. I’ve worked it all out. You’ll just follow my lead.”

“You sicced them on me, Mom. You know this is exactly what I didn’t want.”

“It’s not all about you, and what you want.” Dilly looked past Cilla to the house, then turned away. And again, Cilla saw genuine feeling. Pain. “It never has been. I need the column inches, the airtime. I need the exposure, and I’m going to take it. What happened, happened. Now you can let them keep pushing on that, on you, or you can help spin some of it, maybe most of it, around to me.

“Jesus! What is that?”

Cilla glanced down and saw Spock sitting patiently, paw out, big, bulbous eyes latched on to Dilly.

“That’s my neighbor’s dog. He wants you to shake.”

“He wants . . . Does it bite?”

“No. Just shake his paw, Mom. He’s decided you’re friendly because you hugged me.”

“All right.” She leaned over carefully and, to her credit, in Cilla’s mind, gave Spock’s paw a firm shake. Then smiled a little. “He’s so ugly, but in a weirdly sweet way. Shoo now.”

Dilly turned, her arm firm around Cilla’s waist, and flung out a hand to her husband. “Mario!”

He trotted up, took her hand, kissed it.

“We’re ready,” she told him.

“You look beautiful. Only a few minutes this time, darling. You shouldn’t be out in the sun too long.”

“Stay close.”

“Always.”

Clutching Cilla, Dilly began to move toward the entrance, toward the cameras.

“Great shoes,” Cilla complimented. “Poor choice for grass and gravel.”

“I know what—Who’s this? We can’t have reporters breaking ranks.”

“He’s not a reporter.” Cilla watched Ford shove through the lines. “Keep going,” she told him when he reached them. “You don’t want any part of this.”

“This would be your mother? It’s unexpected to meet you here, Miss Hardy.”

“Where else would I be when my daughter’s been hurt? The new love interest?” She scoped him head to toe. “I’ve heard a little about you. Not from you,” she said with a glance at Cilla. “We’ll have to talk. But now, just wait with Mario.”

“No. He’s no Mario, and he won’t be hanging back at heel like a trained lapdog. Don’t give them that, Ford.”

“I’m going to go in and get some coffee,” he decided. “Want me to call the cops while I’m at it?”

“No. But thanks.”

“Isn’t he all southern-fried and yummy,” Dilly commented as Ford continued toward the house. “Your taste’s improved.”

“I’m so angry with you now.” Indeed, the anger vibrated and pulsed inside her chest. “Be careful, very careful, what buttons you push.”

“You think this is easy for me, coming to this place? I’m doing what I need to do.” Dilly lifted her chin, the brave mother, supporting her injured child. Questions hurled out, but Dilly walked through them, a soldier stoically braving the front line.

“Please. Please.” She held up a hand, lifting her voice. “I understand your interest, and even on some level appreciate it. I know your viewers and your readers care, and that touches me. But you must understand that our family is, once again, going through a difficult time. And this is . . . painful. My daughter has been through a terrible experience. I’m here for her, as any mother would be.”

“Dilly! Dilly! When did you hear about Cilla’s accident?”

“She called me as soon as she was able. No matter how grown up, a child still wants her mother when she’s hurt. Even though she told me not to come, not to break off rehearsals for my cabaret act, not to expose myself to the grief and the memories this place holds for me, of course I came to her.”

“You haven’t been back, by your own statements, to this house since shortly after Janet Hardy’s suicide. How does it feel, being here now?”

“I can’t think of it. Not yet. My daughter is my only concern. Later, when we’ve had time to be together, in private, I’ll explore those feelings. My mother . . .” Her voice cracked, on cue. “My mother would want me to give my daughter, her granddaughter, all my energies.”

“Cilla, what are your plans? Will you open the house to the public? There’s speculation you hope to house memorabilia here.”

“No. I plan to live here. I am living here,” she corrected, cold, clear-voiced, while the temper beat and beat. “The property has been in my family, on both the Hardy and the McGowan sides, for generations. I’m restoring and remodeling it, and it will be, as it’s always been, a private home.”

“Is it true that you’ve been plagued by break-ins, by vandalism during your restoration?”

“There have been incidents. I don’t consider them a plague.”

“What do you say to the claims that Janet Hardy’s spirit haunts the house?”

“My mother’s spirit is here,” Dilly said before Cilla could answer. “She loved her little farm, and I believe her spirit, her voice, her beauty and her grace remain. We’re proof of that.” Dilly drew Cilla closer. “Her spirit’s in us. In me, in my daughter. And now, in some way, three generations of Hardy women are here. Now please, I need to get my daughter inside, where she can rest. I ask you, as a mother, to respect our privacy. If you have any more questions, my husband will try to answer them.”

Tipping her head close to Cilla’s, Dilly turned and walked with her toward the house.

“A little heavy on the mother card,” Cilla told her.

“I don’t think so. What happened to the tree?”

“What tree?”

“That one, with the red leaves. It was bigger. A lot bigger.”

“It was damaged, dead and dying. I replaced it.”

“It looks different. There were more flowers.” Dilly’s voice shook, but Cilla knew it was uncalculated this time. “Mama loved flowers.”

“There will be more when it’s done.” Cilla felt the dynamic shift with every step until she supported Dilly. “You’ve trapped yourself. You have to go inside now.”

“I know it. The porch was white. Why isn’t it white?”

“I had to replace most of it. It’s not painted yet.”

“The door’s not right.” Her breath quickened, as if they were running instead of walking. “That’s not her door. Why is everything changed?”

“There was damage, there was mold and dry rot. My God, Mom, there’s only been the very minimum of maintenance in the last decade, and not much more than that for twenty years before. You can’t neglect without incurring damage.”

“I didn’t neglect it. I wanted to forget it. Now I can’t, can I?”

Cilla felt her mother quiver, and would have soothed, but Dilly nudged her away as they walked inside.

“This is wrong. It’s all wrong. Where are the walls? The little parlor? The paint’s the wrong color.”

“I made changes.”

Eyes hot and gleaming, she whirled toward Cilla on her fabulous shoes. “You said you were restoring it.”

“I said I was rehabbing it, and I am. I’m making it mine, and respecting what it was.”

“I’d never have sold it to you if I’d known you’d tear it apart.”

“Yes, you would,” Cilla said coolly. “You wanted the money, and I want to live here. If you’d wanted it caught in amber, Mom, you had decades to do it. You don’t love this house, it’s a jagged edge for you. But I do love it.”

“You don’t know what I feel! I had more of her here than anywhere else. Second to Johnnie, of course, always second to her beloved son.” Tears ripped through the words. “But I had more of her when we were here than anywhere. And now it’s all changed.”

“No, not all. I had the plaster repaired, and the floor will be refinished. The floors she walked on. I’m having the stove and refrigerator she used retrofitted, and I’ll use them.”

“That big old stove?”

“Yeah.”

Dilly pressed her fingers to her lips. “She’d try to bake cookies sometimes. She was terrible at it. She’d always burn them, and laugh. We’d eat them anyway. Damn it, Cilla. Damn it. I loved her so much.”

“I know you did.”

“She was going to take me to Paris. Just the two of us. It was all planned. Then Johnnie died. He always did spoil everything for me.”

“God, Mom.”

“That’s how I felt then. After the shock, and that first awful grief because I did love him. I did love him even when I wanted to hate him. But after that, and when she wouldn’t go to Paris, I thought, he’s spoiled that for me.” Dilly took a slow, hitching breath. “She loved him more dead than she did me alive. No matter how hard I ran, I could never catch up.”

I know how you feel, Cilla thought. Just exactly. In her way, Dilly loved her mother dead more than she could love her daughter alive.

Maybe this was about redemption, too. So Cilla took another step. “I think she loved you very, very much. I think things got horribly twisted and broken the summer he died. And she never fully mended. If she’d had more time—”

“Why didn’t she take it, then? She took the pills instead. She left me. She left me. Accident or not—and I’ll always, always believe it was an accident—she took the pills, when she could’ve taken me.”

“Mom.” Moving to her, Cilla touched Dilly’s cheek. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that before? How you felt?”

“It’s this house. It upsets me. It dredges everything up. I don’t want it. I just don’t want it.” She opened her purse, took out a silver pill case. “Get me some water, Cilla. Bottled.”

The irony, Cilla thought, would forever be lost on Dilly. The daughter who grieved because her mother chose pills over her, perpetuated the same behavior.

“All right.”

In the kitchen, Cilla pulled a bottle of water out of her mini fridge. She got a glass, added ice. Dilly would have to live without her usual slice of lemon, she mused. Pouring the water, she glanced out.

Ford stood with Brian and her pond expert by the choked waters. He held a mug of coffee, and the thumb of his other hand was hooked through one of the belt loops of his jeans.

Long and lean, she thought, with just that hint of gawky. Messy brown hair with sun-kissed tips. So wonderfully, blessedly normal. It steadied her just to look at him, to know he’d stay—this man who created supervillains and heroes, who had every season of Battlestar Galactica—both series—on DVD. A man who, she was fairly certain, didn’t know an Allen wrench from a Crescent, and trusted her to handle herself. Until he decided she couldn’t.

“Thank God you’re here,” she murmured. “Wait for me.”

She took the water back to her mother, so Dilly could wash down her tranquilizer du jour.

TWENTY-THREE

So they’re gone.” Ford gestured toward the house with the Coke he’d copped from Cilla’s kitchen.

“Yes. After a finale of motherly embraces in view of the cameras.”

“Back to California?”

“No, they’re staying over in D.C. for the night, at the Willard. In that way, she can stage another couple of press ambushes, and get in the plug for her show at the National Theater in September.” Cilla held up her hands, shook her head. “It’s not entirely that calculating. Only about eighty percent was calculated. The remaining twenty was actual concern for me, which she’d have expressed and assuaged on the phone if it hadn’t been to her advantage to make the trip. It took a lot of need for her to come here, to this house. I didn’t understand until today, or fully believe until today, how genuinely it upsets her. It makes it a little easier to forgive the neglect, and accept why she was so bitter when I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

“And it doesn’t enter into logical thinking that if she didn’t want it, couldn’t handle it, she could have given it to you?”

“Not in Dilly’s world. It’s tit for tat. I didn’t know how much she felt unloved at the end, or how completely she felt pushed into second place to her brother in Janet’s heart. I’m not sure she’s wrong. And yes, I know she did something today she knew I didn’t want, and can justify doing it not only because it was to her advantage, but by convincing herself it was what was best for me. It’s a talent of hers.”

“She’ll be an interesting mother-in-law.”

“Oh, really.” Panic teeth clamped on her throat. “Don’t go there.”

“Already through that garden gate and meandering up the walk. ‘Meander’ being the key for now,” he said, lifting his Coke for another sip. “No rush on it.”

“Ford, you have to understand—”

“Cilla. Sorry,” Matt added, stepping out. “Looks like the flooring for the third floor’s coming in. Thought you’d want to take a look, check it out before we take it up.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do. Be right there.”

“Flooring already?” Ford asked her.

“It has to rest on-site, a kind of acclimating, for a few days before installation. Since we’re doing built-ins up there, the floor has to . . . Never mind.”

“Okay. If my services are no longer needed here, I’m going to go try to salvage some of my workday.”

“Good. Good,” she repeated, struggling against nerves.

“Oh, I finished scanning those photos for you. Remind me to give them to you.”

“God, I’d forgotten all about them. I’ll have to thank your grandfather.”

“I think he considers it thanks enough that he got to see you in a towel.”

“And thanks for that reminder.” They came around front where the delivery truck slowly backed down her drive. “Hot dog!”

“I’ll leave you to the thrill of your wood planks.” He caught her face in his hands, kissed her. “We’ll be waiting for you.”

They would, she thought. He and his strange little dog would do just that. It was both wonderful and terrifying.

FORD LOCKED HIMSELF in his box for four straight hours. It rolled, and it rocked along. Even with all the distractions—sexy neighbor, break-ins, a new friend in the hospital, worry about sexy neighbor and falling in love with her—he was making excellent progress.

It occurred to him that Brid might be finished just about the same time Cilla’s house was. That was some superior synchronicity. But now, he deserved to shut it down and indulge in some serious sitting-on-the-veranda time. He unlocked the box, stepped back to take a long, critical look at the day’s work.

“You’re damn good, Sawyer. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

With his back warm from the self-pat, he walked downstairs, stopping to look out the window. Not a reporter in sight, he noted, pleased for Cilla. No trucks in sight, either, which meant her day’s work should be wrapped, too. He headed to the kitchen to get a cold one and to call Spock in from the backyard for the veranda-sitting, wait-for-Cilla portion of their day.

He found a note inside the fridge, taped to a beer.

Finished? If so, drop over to Chez McGowan.

Come Around back.

He grinned at the note. “Don’t mind if I do.”

She sat on the slate patio, at a teak table under a bright blue umbrella. A trio of copper pots, filled to bursting with mixed plantings, cheered the three stairs of the veranda. With her ball cap on her head, her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles of her work boots, and roses rioting behind her, he thought she looked both relaxed and extraordinary.

She smiled—relaxed and easy—when he sat across from her. “I’m basking,” she told him, and gave Spock a rub.

“I noticed. When did you get this?” He flicked a finger up at the umbrella.

“It came in today, and I couldn’t resist setting it up. After I did, Shanna hauled over the planters. I picked them up on one of my sorties, and figured I’d get around to doing something with them, eventually. But she saw the table here, and ran out to the nursery, picked up the plants and did the job, just because. I’ll have to move them when we do the exterior staining and painting, but I really love looking at them now.”

She shifted, reached down and pulled two beers out of the ice in a drywall compound bucket. “And now, even better, you can bask with me.”

He twisted off the tops, then clinked his bottle to hers. “To the first of many basks under blue umbrellas. I take it you had a good day.”

“Ups and downs. It couldn’t get worse than it started, though there were bumps. My excitement over the flooring was short-lived when I discovered they’d delivered the wrong hardwood. Then claimed I’d called in to change the order from walnut to oak, which is just so much bullshit, and will delay the third-floor work schedule a full week. I did finish the closet in the third bedroom, and got a start on the one in the fourth. The vendor messed up the cut on a panel of the steam shower doors, which means a delay there, but the soaking tub I’ve had my eye on for the third bath, second floor, just went on sale. The insurance company is balking at giving me another loaner after getting hit with two claims in two days, and will surely raise my rates. I decided to bask instead of being pissed.”

“Good choice.”

“Well, delays and glitches go with the territory. The roses are blooming, and I have a blue umbrella. So enough about me. How was your day?”

“Much better than average. I solved a major problem in the work, and it rolled from there. Then I found a very nice invitation in my refrigerator.”

“I figured you’d see it first thing, after you surfaced. I actually came upstairs first, but if I’ve ever seen anyone in the zone, you were.” Curious, interested, she cocked her head. “What was the problem solved?”

“The villain. Early version of him was Mr. Eckley, my tenth-grade algebra teacher. I’m telling you, the man was evil. But as the character developed, I knew I didn’t have the right look—physically. I wanted leaner, a little meaner, yet handsome, maybe slightly aristocratic and dissipated. Everything I tried ended up looking like John Carradine or Basil Rath- bone.”

“Good looks, both. Hollowed cheeks, piercing eyes.”

“And too obvious for the character. It kept bogging me down. Today I hit on it. I’m not looking for dissipation, cut cheekbones and intensity. I’m looking for a thin coat of polish and sophistication over a whole lotta smarm. Not the lean and bony Carradine, but something slighter, edging toward effete. The contrast between looks and intent,” he explained. “Between image and purpose. It’s a lot more evil when a guy coldly destroys while wearing an Armani suit.”

“So you based him on a Hollywood agent?”

“Pretty much. He’s Number Five.”

She managed to swallow the beer, barely avoiding a spit take. “Mario? Are you serious?”

“Completely. One look at him out front today, and the scales fell from my eyes. He’s got it all—the build, the posture, the five-hundred-dollar haircut and that sheer, shiny layer of oil. I don’t know why I didn’t see it when I met him before. Too locked into Mr. Eckley, I guess.”

“Mario.” She jumped up to grab Ford by the hair and crush her lips to his in a hard, smacking kiss that sent Spock into his happy dance. “This actually makes that clusterfuck this morning worthwhile. Thank you.”

“I didn’t actually do it for you. Any enjoyment you get from it’s just a side benefit.”

“I’ll take it.” She dropped back in her seat. “This has, indeed, turned out to be a better-than-average day.”

CILLA TACKLED the next batch of trim in the shady shadow of the barn. She liked the work, and the quiet. There might have been miles of trim to strip, replicate, stain and seal through the farmhouse, but she wanted to keep the project her own. One day, she thought as she peeled away layers of white and, unfathomably, baby-blue paint from walnut, she’d walk through her house and admire every inch of restored trim. Best, she’d be able to say: I did that. Every inch.

She stripped down herself, to a tank and army-green cargo shorts as a concession to the heat that had snuck in, even in the shade. When she stopped to guzzle some water, she watched the pond crew removing and dividing water lilies, digging out over-propagated cattails.

Once it was done, she mused, ecologically balanced, she saw no reason she couldn’t maintain the pond herself. She’d need some help with the grounds, she admitted, even once she bought a riding mower. She thought she’d enjoy puttering around, cutting the grass, pulling weeds, blowing and raking leaves in the fall, shoveling snow in the winter, planting new flowers in the spring.

But it wasn’t realistic to believe she could handle it all—house, grounds, pond, gardens—and run a business.

Cleaning service, she thought, reholstering her water bottle and picking up her sandpaper block. That was a weekly definite. Maybe she’d talk to Brian about a once-a-month service, say March through October, at least until she got a better sense of what needed to be done, and just how much she could handle.

Plus, she needed advice on that kitchen garden she hoped to start, especially since she just hadn’t been able to work it in this year as she’d hoped. And she needed to know if the fields should be plowed and planted—and with what. And who the hell would do that? More advice if she gave in to that nagging longing and got a horse. Which would require exercise, housing, feeding, grooming, and was probably a crazy idea.

But . . . wouldn’t a couple of horses be gorgeous romping and grazing in one of the fields? Wouldn’t they be worth the work, the time, the expense?

Next year, she told herself. Maybe.

She couldn’t get cocky and complacent just because she’d had a couple of days of smooth sailing, because she was so damn happy. Reality included leaky faucets, and aphids and crabgrass, clogged gutters and fractious appliances. She’d be dealing with that, and a whole lot more, for the rest of her life.

And wasn’t that just fabulous?

She sang as she sanded the old walnut trim.

“I’d forgotten how much you sound like her.”

She looked up, squinted, then smiled as Gavin stepped from sun to shade. “Without her range, depth or natural vibrato.”

“It sounded wonderful to me, and interesting that a girl of your age would sing ‘Blue Skies.’ ”

“The place sort of calls for old standards. Or maybe she does. And, well”—she pointed up—“we’ve sure got them today.”

“I came in through the front and saw the finished product.” He tapped a finger on the trim. “That’s another thing I’d forgotten, or never noticed when I came here all those years ago. It’s beautiful. Truly beautiful.”

“It makes me happy. Hence the singing. I was wondering when you might drop by again, so I could talk you into picking up another paintbrush.”

“Show me the walls and the paint.”

“I’ve got a bedroom just waiting for a couple coats of Spiced Cognac.” She gestured to the newspapers he carried. “We provide drops. You don’t have to bring your own.” When he didn’t smile, she felt a little warning dip in her belly. “Uh-oh.”

“I heard about the media invasion, and your mother’s visit the other day. There’s been some coverage—TV, newspapers.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of it. Look, I know they brought your name up, and—”

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “That’s not important. Cilla, I debated doing this, and decided someone would tell you or show you before much longer. It might be better if it was me. Patty was in the supermarket this morning. They’d just stocked these at checkout.”

“The tabloids.” She nodded, pulled off her work gloves. “I knew they’d be hitting any day. Don’t worry. I’m used to it.” She held out a hand for the papers.

The headlines screamed. They always did in the tabs, she knew, but the screams seemed only more strident when her name was involved.

JANET HARDY’S GHOST HAUNTS HER GRANDDAUGHTER!

FORMER HOLLYWOOD PRINCESS IN NEAR FATAL CRASH!

BEDELIA HARDY RUSHES TO HER DAUGHTER’S SIDE

AFTER ATTACK BY MADMAN!

IS LITTLE KATIE THE REINCARNATION OF

JANET HARDY?

The pictures were worse, grainy, exploitative. Splashed on one front page was a photo of Cilla, angled to spotlight her injured face, with Dilly holding her close, a single tear sliding down her cheek. Behind them floated the ghostly image of Janet with the caption: “ ‘My mother’s spirit remains trapped here,’ Bedelia Hardy claims. Photographic PROOF corroborates her mournful statement.”

An insert shot showed Cilla carrying the very trim she now worked on out of the house. Cilla struggles to exorcise Janet’s ghost from her Virginia farm.

Ford hadn’t escaped, she noted. They’d slapped his photograph, his name, their ridiculous captions inside.

“Okay, worse. A lot worse than I expected it to be.” She pushed the papers back at her father. “Front page, multiple stories in each. Mom will be thrilled. I don’t care how that sounds,” she snapped before her father could speak. “She amped it up. Everyone I work with, do business with, will see this crap. And Ford’s sucked into the shit pile because he had the poor judgment to fall in love with me. Now he’ll—”

“He’s in love with you?” Gavin interrupted. Even as she started to shrug, Gavin set a hand on Cilla’s shoulder. “He’s in love with you? You’re in love with him?”

“The L word’s been spoken by both parties—or alluded to by me. Or, according to that rag there, spoken by Janet through me as they’re speculating whether Cilla’s outraged lover has been seduced by my grandmother’s spirit. Don’t say I shouldn’t let it upset me. Don’t say everyone knows this stuff is a load of crap. These papers sell because people love reading loads of crap.”

“I was going to say I’ve always been fond of Ford. If he makes you happy, I’m even more fond of him.”

“He’s not going to be happy with me when he sees all this, and has to explain to his family, his friends, his publisher, for God’s sake, why his name and his face have been smeared all over the place.” Helpless, she pressed a hand to her nervous belly. “I knew they’d pull him in, and I warned him, but I didn’t know it would be this bad.”

“You’re either giving yourself too much credit or Ford not enough. Either way, you’ve got a right to be upset. To be thoroughly pissed. I don’t have as much experience with celebrity as you do, but I know you have two choices.”

He spoke calmly, his eyes solemn. “You go out, make a stink, demand corrections and retractions, threaten legal action, or you ignore it. Do the first, and you have a slim chance for some satisfaction, while the story gains legs and they sell more papers. Do the second and it burns in your guts, at least for a while.”

“I have to ignore it, I know that. But it doesn’t go away. They’ll pull out those pictures, the worst of them, anytime they decide to run with another Janet Hardy story, or when Mom eventually divorces Number Five. I need a lot more thoroughly-pissed time before I can resign myself to it.”

“I could buy you a puppy.”

“A what?” Baffled, she pushed a hand at her hair. “Why?”

“Then you could spread these ridiculous papers on the floor for him to poop and pee on.”

She smiled a little. “I always wanted a puppy, but I guess I should actually finish the house before I put on additions like pets.”

“Then why don’t I paint that bedroom for you instead? Spiced Cognac, right?”

“That’s the one. I’ll show you where it is.”

FORD STEPPED OUT of the box for a bottle of water and to study the last pencils he’d completed. He liked the subtle changes in Cass, after she’d awakened and merged with Brid. The look in her eyes, the difference in posture when she was alone. She’d changed, and not just when she called out for power, and the symbol of her rank burned into her arm. The quiet, self-effacing academic would gradually come into her own, until that persona was more of a mask than her true self.

Then that loss would become an issue in future volumes.

To choose a path to destiny, as the Immortal told her in panel three, page sixty-one, required sacrifice. She would never be exactly who or what she had been once that choice was made.

How would she deal? Ford wondered. How would she handle who she became, and who she left behind on that journey?

He thought it would be interesting to find out. He hoped the readers did, too.

It wouldn’t hurt, he decided, to hit some blogs, give a few cryptic hints as to what was in store. He needed to check his e-mail anyway. And an hour break from the work would let the creative juices simmer.

He started to sit at his desktop when he heard a knock on his front door. Cautious since the Invasion of the Reporters, he checked out the window before he went down to answer.

“Hey, Mr. McGowan.”

“Ford. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“No, actually, I was just taking a break. Come on in.”

“There are a couple of things I’d like to talk with you about.”

“Sure.” Stupid to feel nervous, Ford told himself. It had been a long time since he’d had term papers and final exams on the line. “Ah, you want something cold?”

“That would be nice. I just finished doing some priming over at Cilla’s.”

“Is there a problem over there?” Ford asked as he led the way to the kitchen.

“Something about the hot water heater, a protracted debate over drawers versus doors on some sort of cabinetry and Buddy bitching about O rings. Otherwise, it looks to me as if the work over there is going very well.”

“Cilla seems to be able to juggle all the balls. Have a seat. Tea work for you?”

“Perfect.” Gavin waited while Ford poured the cold tea over ice in tall glasses. Then he set the tabloids on the counter.

Ford glanced down, turned the angle of the top paper for a better view. “Ouch. Has Cilla seen these?”

“Yes. I take it you haven’t.”

“No, I’ve been in Centuria most of the day. Working, I mean,” he explained. “How’d she take it?”

“Not well.”

“Jesus, could this be any cheesier?” Ford asked, tapping the photo with Janet’s “ghost.” “Any twelve-year-old can Photoshop better than that. But this insert of Cilla when she was a kid’s pretty cute.”

Saying nothing, Gavin opened the paper, watched as Ford skimmed down and saw his own face. “Man, I need a haircut. I keep meaning to take care of that. Hmm, ‘Cilla’s Outraged Lover Rushes to Her Aid.’ I don’t appear especially outraged in this shot. Concerned would fit better. They ought to . . .”

The full phrase, and the fact that Cilla’s father sat at his counter drinking iced tea, sank in, and had him clearing his throat. “Listen, Mr. McGowan, Cilla and I—That is, it’s not . . . Well, it is, but—”

“Ford, I’m not shocked by the fact that you and Cilla are sleeping together, and I don’t own a shotgun.”

“Okay. Well.” He took a deep gulp of tea. “Okay then.”

“Is it?” Gavin opened another paper. “If you read this one, you’ll see it’s suggested you’ve been seduced by the lonely, trapped spirit of Janet Hardy—or you’ve seduced the granddaughter in an attempt to become Janet’s lover.”

Ford actually snorted. “Sorry, but it just strikes me funny. I don’t know, if they had any real imagination, I’d be the reincarnation of somebody cool. Bogart or Gregory Peck, who’s slaking his lust for the reincarnation of Janet Hardy by banging Cilla every chance he gets. And God, sorry about the banging comment. Really.”

Gavin sat back, took a sip of his tea. “You were one of my best students. Bright, creative. A bit awkward and eccentric, but never dull. I always enjoyed what could be called your unique thought process. I told Cilla this morning I’ve always been fond of you.”

“I’m really glad to hear that, considering.”

“And considering, what are your intentions toward my daughter?”

“Oh boy. I just got this thing in my chest.” Ford thumped on it. “Do you think extreme anxiety can cause a heart attack in somebody my age?”

“I doubt it, but I promise to call nine-one-one if necessary.” Eyes direct, Gavin inclined his head. “After you answer the question.”

“I want her to marry me. She’s not there yet. Still got that thing,” he added, rubbing now with the heel of his hand. “We’ve only been . . .” Probably not the way to go, Ford decided. “We’ve only known each other a few months, but I know how I feel. I love her. Am I supposed to tell you about my prospects and stuff? This is my first time.”

“It’s mine, too. I’d say between you and Cilla, your prospects are more than fine. I’d also say, in my opinion, you suit each other.”

“There, it’s going away.” Ford took his first easy breath. “She needs me. She needs someone who understands and appreciates who she is, and who she’s decided to be. And I need her, because who she is, and who she’s decided to be are—big surprise to me—what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

“That’s an excellent answer.” Gavin rose. “I’m going to leave those here,” he said, gesturing to the papers. “You handle that with Cilla however you think best. I’m going to go paint. I’ll see myself out.” At the edge of the kitchen, he turned back briefly. “Ford, I couldn’t be more pleased.”

Pretty damn pleased himself, Ford sat down at the bar and read through all the papers, all the stories. And knew just how he’d handle it.

It took considerable time, but the end result more than satisfied. He and Spock crossed the road, and finding the front door locked, Ford used the spare key she’d given him. He gave a shout and, when she didn’t answer, started upstairs. The sound of the shower solved the mystery of where Cilla was. He thought briefly and intensely about joining her, but that would spoil the order of events.

Besides, surprising a woman in the shower in a locked house invited screams—and the woman could produce a serious scream. So he contented himself with sitting on the side of the guest room bed—as it remained the only bed in the house—to wait.

She didn’t scream when she saw him, though from the amount of air she sucked in when she stumbled back, she’d have shattered every piece of glass for five miles if she’d cut loose.

“God, Ford. You scared the hell out of me!”

“Sorry. I figured I’d scare you more if I came in the bathroom while you were in the shower.” He fisted his hand as if over the hilt of a knife, pumped it and did a fair imitation of the Psycho shower scene.

“It might’ve been worse. No Spock?”

“He wanted to go see if there were any invisible cats out back.”

“I need to get dressed. Why don’t you go sit out on the patio. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Unhappy, he thought. Irritated. And with a faint haze of discouragement. His idea would either help or make it worse. He might as well find out.

“I brought you something.”

“What? Why don’t you take it down, and I’ll . . .” She trailed off when he took the thin package wrapped in tabloid paper from behind his back.

She hitched the towel a little more securely between her breasts. “So, you’ve seen them.”

“Yeah. Oh, and two of your subs, my supposedly lifelong friends Matt and Brian, snuck off the job to come over and rag me about it. Punish them as you will. But meanwhile, open your present.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I completely underestimated the interest, the angles. And I walked straight into it by using my mother’s publicist in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid .”

“Okay, you can claim the stupid award. Open your present.” He patted the bed beside him.

She sat, stared down at the package he put in her lap.

“I didn’t use pages with any of the stories on them. We might want to make a scrapbook.”

“It’s not funny, Ford.”

“Then you’re really not going to like your present. I’ll just take it back, bury it in the backyard. Where I may come across some worms we can both eat.”

“Really not funny. You have absolutely no idea . . .” Temper had her ripping the paper. Then she could only stare down.

It was a slim volume, comic-book style, she supposed. The cover held a full-color drawing of her and Ford, locked in a passionate embrace. Over their heads, in what she could only call a lurid font, the title read:

THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES AND

MANY LIVES OF CILLA AND FORD

“You wrote a comic book?”

“It’s really more a very short, illustrated story. Inspired by recent events. Come on, read it.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say, not initially. The five pages he’d done in black and white, complete with dialogue balloons, narrative captions and illustrations, ranged from the ludicrous, to pornographic to brutally funny.

She kept her face expressionless—she still had some acting chops—as she read it through.

“This.” She tapped her finger on a panel depicting Ford, full monty, sweeping a naked Cilla into his arms while Spock covered his face with his paws. “I don’t think this is to scale. A certain attribute is exaggerated.”

“It’s my attribute, and I’m the artist.”

“And do you really think I’d ever say, ‘Oh, Ford, Ford, hammer me home’?”

“Everyone’s a critic.”

“But I do like this part in the beginning, where the horny ghosts of Janet and Steve McQueen are floating over our sleeping bodies.”

“It seemed appropriate, as there’s that legend of how they got it on in the pond. Plus, if I’m going to be possessed by the spirit of somebody, he’d be top of the cool scale.”

“All-time champ,” she agreed. “I also like how the pa parazzo falls out of the tree while taking pictures through the bedroom window, and the little X’s in his eyes in the next panel before Spock drags him off to bury him. But my favorite, possibly, is the last panel, where all four of us are in bed smoking cigarettes with expressions of sexual gratification on our faces.”

“I like a happy ending.”

She looked up from the book and into those green eyes. “And this is your way of telling me not to take all this so seriously.”

“It’s my way of giving you another way to take it, if you want.”

She scooted back to prop herself at the head of the bed. “Let’s have a table read. I’ll be Cilla and Janet, you’re Ford and Steve.”

“Okay.” He moved back to sit beside her.

“Then, we’ll act it out.”

He grinned over at her. “Even better.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Every day brought visitors. Some she welcomed, and some she ignored. There was little she could do but ignore those who parked or stood on the shoulder of the road taking pictures of the house, the grounds, of her. She shrugged off the members of the crew who entertained themselves by posing. She couldn’t blame them for getting a kick out of it, for grabbing a portion of that fifteen minutes of fame.

Sooner or later, she told herself, the interest would die down. When she caught sight of paparazzi stalking her while she shopped for hardware or lumber, she didn’t acknowledge them. When she saw pictures of her home, of herself in the tabloids or gossip magazines, she turned her mind to other things. And when her mother’s publicist called with requests for interviews and photo layouts, Cilla firmly hung up.

She went about her business, and prayed that one of the current Hollywood crop of bad girls would do something outrageous enough to shift the attention. As July sweated its way toward August, she concentrated on the house. She had plenty to do.

“Why do you want a sink over here,” Buddy demanded, “when you’re putting a sink over there?”

“It’s a prep sink, Buddy, and I don’t honestly know why I want one. I just do. Sink here.” She laid a fingertip on the revised, and absolutely final, drawing of her kitchen. “Dishwasher here. Refrigerator. And over here, the prep sink in the work island.”

“It’s your business.” He said it in the way, as he often did, that told her she didn’t know squat. “But I’m just saying, if you’re putting this here island in, you’re cutting into your counter space by putting a sink into it.”

“It’ll have a cutting-board top. On when I want to chop something, off when I want to wash something.”

“What?”

“Jesus, Buddy. Um, vegetables.”

He gave her his bulldog frown. “Then what’re you going to wash in the other sink?”

“The blood off my hands after I stab you to death with my screwdriver.”

His lips twitched. “You got some weird-ass ideas.”

“Yeah? Wait for this one. I want a pot-filler faucet.”

“You’re going to have two damn sinks, And you want one of them gadgets that swings out on an arm from the wall over the stove to fill pans with water?”

“Yes, I do. Maybe I want to fill really big pots with water for pasta, or for washing my damn feet. Or for boiling the heads of cranky plumbers who argue with me. Maybe I’ve developed a faucet fetish. But I want it.”

She walked over, tapped her fist on the wall where she’d drawn a circle with an X in it with a carpenter’s pencil. “And I want it right here.”

He cast his eyes to the ceiling, as if asking God what possessed her. “Gonna have to run pipes, so we’re gonna have to cut that plaster to run ’em down, tie ’em in.”

“I know that.”

“It’s your house.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“I heard you bought another one, that old place out on Bing.”

“It looks that way.” The little flutter in the belly signaled excitement and nerves. “We don’t settle until October, but it looks that way.”

“I guess you’ll be wanting your fancy doodads in that one, too.”

“You’ll be pleased to know I plan to go more basic there.” She had to fold her lips when she caught the disappointment on his face.

“You say that now. Well, I can start the rough-in on Thursday.”

“That’d be great.”

She left him to his scowling and calculations.

The kitchen cabinets should be done in a couple weeks, she estimated, and could be stored, if necessary, while the plumbing, the wiring were roughed, inspected, finished, inspected. The plaster repaired, the painting done, the floors laid. If her countertops came in on schedule, she might have a finished kitchen, excepting the refitted appliances, by Labor Day.

Maybe she’d have a party after all. And even thinking about planning a party probably jinxed the entire thing.

“Knock, knock!” Cathy Morrow poked her head in the front door. “Brian said you wouldn’t mind if I came right in.”

“I don’t. How are you?”

“Just fine, except for dying of curiosity. Brian’s been telling us how wonderful everything looks, so Tom and I just had to come by and see for ourselves. Tom’s out there in the back where you’re having the stone wall built up. For shrubs, Brian said.”

“It’ll add height and depth to the yard and cut back on the mowing.”

“I don’t think Brian’s ever done so much work for a private client—noncommercial, I mean. He’s just . . . Oh, Cilla! This is just beautiful.”

With a flush of pride, Cilla watched Cathy walk around the living room. “It’s finished except for refinishing the floor, and we’ll do all of them at the same time. And for furniture, and accessories, art, window treatments and a few minor details such as . . .”

“It’s so open and warm. I love the light. Are those shamrocks on the collar, or whatever you call it?”

“Medallion, and yes. Dobby did an amazing job. And the fixture’s true to the architecture of the house. I don’t know what was there originally. I couldn’t find any pictures showing it, and my father couldn’t remember. But I think the straightforward Arts and Crafts lines and the design, with the diamond shapes of amber and deep blue, work.”

“It’s just lovely. But, oh my God, the fireplace.”

“Focal point.” Walking over, Cilla stroked her hand down the deep blue of the granite. “I wanted it to pop against the walls, the way the sky pops against the mountains. And a strong color like this needed a strong mantel.”

“Wasn’t it . . . Yes, it was brick before.”

“Smoke-stained and pocked, and the hearth didn’t meet code, which you can see by the burn marks from stray embers in the floor.”

“It’s funny, all I remember about this room, or the house, really, was so up-to-the-minute. The long sofa in lipstick pink with white satin pillows. I was so impressed. And the way Janet looked sitting on it in a blue dress. She was so beautiful. Well, everyone was,” Cathy added with a laugh. “The celebrities, the rich and famous and important. I couldn’t believe I was here. We were only invited because Tom’s father was a very important local figure, but I didn’t care why. We were invited here three times, and every time was almost painfully exciting.

“Lord, I was younger than you the last time I was here—in that era, I mean. So much time between,” she said with a wistful sigh. “The last time was a Christmas party. All the decorations, the lights. Champagne, endless glasses of champagne, music. That amazing couch. People begged her to sing until she gave in. There was a white baby grand over by the window, and . . . Oh! Who was it, who was it everyone thought she was having a blistering affair with . . . the composer? And it turned out he was gay. He died of AIDS.”

“Lenny Eisner.”

“Yes, yes. God, gorgeous man. Anyway, he played, and she sang. Magic. It would’ve been the Christmas before your uncle was killed.

“I’m sorry,” Cathy said suddenly. “I’m daydreaming out loud.”

“No, I like hearing about the way it was. The way she was.”

Cathy tucked back her swing of glossy hair. “I can tell you no one shone brighter than Janet. I think, yes, Marianna was just a few weeks old, and it was the first time we’d gotten a sitter. I was so nervous about leaving her, and so self-conscious because I still had all that baby weight on me. But Janet asked me about the baby, and told me how pretty I looked. It was kind of her, as I’d blown up like a whale with Marianna, and was barely down to hippo. And I remember because my mother-in-law nagged me about eating so many canapés. How would I lose the weight if I ate so much? Irritating woman. Oh, but Tom’s father, I remember, too, how handsome he looked that night. So robust and dashing, and how Janet flirted with him, which irritated my mother-in-law and pleased me to no end.”

She let out a laugh now, tickled by the memory. “We never did take, Tom’s mother and I. Yes, he did look handsome that night. You’d never have believed cancer would take him so horribly just twelve years later. They stood right in here, Janet and Drew—Andrew, Tom’s daddy. And then they were both gone.

“Now, I Am sorry. How did I take such a morbid turn?”

“Old houses. They’re full of life and death.”

“I suppose you’re right. It’s about life now, isn’t it, and what you’re doing here. Oh, I completely forgot. I brought you two mimosas.”

“You brought me drinks?”

Cathy laughed until she had to hold her stomach. “No. Trees. Well, they will be trees in a few years, if you want them. I started a couple dozen of them from seed, to give as gifts. I have a pair of lovely old mimosas. You may not want to bother with them, and I won’t be offended if you don’t. They’re barely ten inches high at this point, and you won’t see blooms for several years.”

“I’d love to have them.”

“They’re out on your veranda in some old plastic pots. Why don’t we take them around to Brian, see where he thinks they’d do best for you?”

“They’re my first housewarming gift.” Cilla led the way out, and picked up one of the black plastic pots holding the delicate, fanning seedling. “I love the idea of planting them so young, and being able to watch them grow, year after year. It’s funny, you coming by, talking about the parties. I was thinking about having one, maybe for Labor Day.”

“Oh, you should! What fun.”

“Problem being, the house won’t be completely finished, and I won’t have it furnished or decorated, or—”

“Who cares about that!” Obviously already in the swing, Cathy gave Cilla an elbow bump. “You can have another when you’re all done. It’d be like . . . a prelude. I’d be happy to help, and you know Patty would. Ford’s mother, too. In fact, we’d take over if you didn’t whip us back.”

“Maybe. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

AFTER THE CREWS HAD GONE, and the house fell silent, after two fragile seedlings with their pink, powder-puff blossoms still years from bloom had been planted in a sunny spot bordering the yard and fallow field, Cilla sat on an overturned bucket in the living room of the house that had once been her grandmother’s. The house now hers.

She imagined it crowded with people, beautifully dressed, beautifully coiffed. The colored lights of Christmas, the elegance of candle and firelight glowing, glittering, glimmering.

A lipstick-pink couch with white satin pillows.

And Janet, a light brighter than all the rest, gliding from guest to guest in elegant blue, a crystal glass bubbling with champagne in her hand.

The granddaughter sat on the overturned bucket, hearing the dream voices and drawing in the ghost scents of Christmas pine.

Ford found her, alone in the center of the room, in light going dim with the late summer evening.

Too alone, he thought. Not just solitary, not this time. Not quietly contemplative, and not basking, but absolutely alone, and very, very away.

Because he wanted her back, he walked over, crouched in front of her. Those spectacular eyes stared for another instant, two more, at what was away, then came back, came back to him.

“There was a Christmas party,” she said. “It must have been the last Christmas party she gave, because it was the Christmas before Johnnie was killed. There were lights and music, crowds of people. Beautiful people. Canapés and champagne. She sang for them, with Lenny Eisner on the piano. She had a pink couch. A long, bright pink couch with white satin pillows. Cathy told me about it. It sounds so Doris Day, doesn’t it? Bright pink, lipstick pink. It would never go in here now, that bright pink with these foggy green walls.”

“It’s just paint, Cilla; it’s just fabric.”

“It’s statements. Fashions change, go in and out, but there are statements. I’d never be a pink couch with white satin pillows. I changed it, and I’m not sorry about that. It’ll never be as elegant or bold and bright as it was, with her. I’m okay with that, too. But sometimes, when it’s me in here, I need—and I know this sounds completely insane—but I need to ask her if she’s okay with it, too.”

“Is she?”

She smiled, laid her brow against his. “She’s thinking about it.” She sat back, sighed. “Well, since I’m making crazy statements, I might as well lead up to asking you a crazy question.”

“Let’s sit outside on the crazy-question section of the veranda. There’s too damn much of me to squat down this way for long.” He pulled her to her feet.

They sat on the veranda steps, legs stretched out, with Spock wandering the front yard. “You’re sure this is the crazy-question section?”

“I have season tickets.”

“Okay. Did you know Brian’s grandfather? His father’s father?”

“Barely. He died when we were just kids. I have more of an impression of him. Big, strapping guy. Powerful.”

“He’d have been about, what, sixty that Christmas? That last Christmas party.”

“I don’t know. About, I guess. Why?”

“Not too old,” Cilla considered. “Janet liked older men, and younger, and just about any age, race or creed.”

“You’re thinking Bri’s grandfather and Janet Hardy?” His laugh was surprise and wonder. “That’s just . . . weird.”

“Why?”

“Okay, imagining grandparents having affairs, which means imagining grandparents having sex, is weird to begin with.”

“Not so much when your grandmother is forever thirty-nine.”

“Point.”

“Besides, grandparents have sex. They’re entitled to have sex.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to fix the image in my head, or the next thing I’ll be imagining my grandparents doing it, and see? See?” He gave her a mock punch on the arm. “There it is, in HDTV, in my head. Now I’m scarred for life. Thanks very much.”

“Yes, definitely the crazy section of the veranda. Ford, he could’ve written the letters.”

“My grandfather?”

“No. Well, yes, actually, now that you mention it. He had a crush on her, by his own admission. He took all those photographs of her.”

Ford simply dropped his head in his hands. “It’s a terrible, terrible series of images you’re putting in my brain.”

“Would he tell you if you asked?”

“I don’t know, and I’m not going to ask. Not in any lifetime. And I’m moving out of the crazy section of the veranda.”

“Wait, wait. We’ll switch grandfathers. Brian’s. It’s hard to see yours holding so fondly on to all those photos if their affair ended so badly. But Brian’s was the type, wasn’t he? Powerful, important. Married. Married with a family, a successful—and public—career. He could’ve written those letters.”

“Seeing as he’s been dead for about a quarter century, it’d be hard to prove either way.”

It was an obstacle, she thought, but didn’t have to be insurmountable. “There are probably samples of his handwriting somewhere.”

“Yeah.” Ford let out a sigh. “Yeah.”

“If I could get a sample, and compare it to the letters, then I’d know. They’re both gone, and it could end there. There wouldn’t be any point in letting it get out. But . . .”

“You’d know.”

“I’d know, and I could put away that part of her life that I never expected to find.”

“If they don’t match?”

“I guess I’ll keep hoping I’ll ask the right question of the right person one day.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

IT TOOK FORD a couple of days to figure out an approach. He couldn’t lie. Not that he was incapable of it; he was just so freaking bad at it. The only way he’d ever gotten away with a lie had been when the person being lied to felt pity for him and let it slide. He’d learned to sink or swim in the truth.

He watched Brian and Shanna turning a load of peat moss into the soil behind the completed stone wall.

“You could get a shovel,” Brian told him.

“I could, but there is also value in the watching and admiring. Especially in the watching and admiring of Shanna’s ass.”

She wiggled it obligingly.

“We all know you’re watching my ass,” Brian shot back.

“It’s true. Shanna is only the beard. To be more convincing, maybe she could bend over just a little more and . . . I’m sold,” he said when she did so and laughed.

It came, Ford supposed, from being friends all their lives. Only one more reason a lie wasn’t an option. But stalling was.

“What are y’all putting up there?”

Brian straightened, swiped a forearm over his sweaty forehead, then pointed to a group of shrubs in nursery pots. “Make yourself useful, since you don’t seem to have anything better to do. Haul them up here so we can start setting them, see how they look.”

“He’s just bitchy because I’m taking ten days off. Going out to L.A. to visit Steve.”

“Yeah?” Ford hefted an azalea. “So . . . ?”

“ ‘The future has not been written.’ ”

You had to love a woman who quoted from The Terminator . “Tell him hey, and all that.”

He waited while they arranged the plants he handed up, rearranged them, argued about the arrangement, and eventually jumped down to study and critique the arrangement.

“Okay, you’re right,” Shanna admitted. “We’ll switch that rhodo and that andromeda.”

“I’m always right.” Smugly, Brian poked himself in the chest with his thumb. “That’s why I’m the boss.”

“As boss, can you take a minute?” Ford asked. “There’s this thing.”

“Sure,” Brian replied as they walked away.

“Okay, this has to stay between you and me,” Ford began. “Cilla found some letters written by a guy her grandmother had an affair with.”

“So?”

“Big, secret affair, married guy, went sour right before she died.”

“I repeat: So?”

“Well, they weren’t signed, and Janet kept them and hid them away, so they became Mysterious Letters. In fact, we thought maybe, until Hennessy melted down, that the break-ins were an attempt by the mystery man to get the letters back.”

“Wouldn’t he be, like, a hundred years old?”

“Maybe, but not necessarily. And plenty of guys in their seventies once banged women not their wives.”

“That’s shocking,” Brian said drily. “Hey, maybe it was Hennessy, and he had this wild fling with the beautiful, sexy movie star. Except I think he was born a dried-up asshole.”

“It’s not beyond the realm. But, ah, a little closer into the circle of logical possibility . . . See, she knew your grandfather, and he was an important man around here, and came to her parties.”

Ford stood, scratching his head while Brian bent over double and laughed. “Jesus. Jesus!” Brian managed. “The late, great Andrew Morrow doing the nasty with Janet Hardy?”

“It’s close to the circle of logical possibility,” Ford insisted.

“Not in my world, Saw. I don’t remember him all that well, but I remember he was a hard-ass, and self-righteous.”

“In my world, the self-righteous are often the ones sneaking around getting blow jobs before they go home to the wives and kiddies.”

Brian sobered, considered. “Yeah, you got a point. And God knows my grandmother must’ve been hard to live with. Water was never quite wet enough for her. God, she ragged on my mom all the damn time. Right up till she died. It’d be kind of cool,” he decided, “if Big Drew Morrow had a few rounds with Janet Hardy.”

It wasn’t lying not to mention the claims of pregnancy, and the ugly tenor of the last letters. It was just . . . not mentioning. “Do you have anything he wrote? Birthday card, letter, anything?”

“No. My mother would, I guess. She keeps family papers and that kind of stuff.”

“Can you get a sample of his handwriting without letting her know what it’s for?”

“Probably. She’s got a box of my stuff out in the garage. School papers, cards, that kind of shit. There might be something in there. She’s been after me to take it to my place for years. I could get it out of her way, take a look through.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

“Hey!” Shanna shouted over. “Are you guys about finished or do I have to plant this whole terrace myself?”

“Nag, nag,” Brian shouted back.

Ford studied her. Built, bawdy, beautiful. “How come you never went there?”

“Window of opportunity passed, and she became my sister.” He shrugged. “But we’ve got a deal. If we’re both single when we hit forty, we’re going to Jamaica for a week and spend the whole time engaged in mad, jungle sex.”

“Well. Good luck with that.”

“Only nine years to go,” Brian called out as he strode back toward Shanna.

For a moment, Ford was simply struck dumb. Nine years? Was that it? He didn’t think about being forty. Forty was another decade. The grown-up decade.

How did it get to be only nine years off?

Jamming his hands in his pockets, he veered toward the house to find Cilla.

In the kitchen, where even the slices and chunks of counter had been torn out and hauled away, and odd-looking pipes poked out of a floor that might have been snacked on by drunken rodents, Buddy worked at a wide slice in the plaster wall.

He turned with some sort of large tool in his hand that made Ford think of a metal parrot head mated with a giraffe’s neck.

“Who the hell puts a goddamn faucet over the goddamn stove?” Buddy demanded.

“I don’t know. Ah, in case of fire?”

“That’s a load of crap.”

“It’s the best I’ve got. Is Cilla around?”

“Woman’s always around. Check up in the attic. Toilets in the attic,” Buddy muttered as he went back to work. “Faucets over the stove. Want a tub in the bedroom next.”

“Actually, I’ve seen . . . Nothing,” Ford said when Buddy turned slitted eyes on him. “I see nothing.”

He trooped his way through the house, noted that the trim was nearly finished in the hall, the entryway. On the second floor, he poked into rooms. He could still smell the paint in a room with walls of a subtle, smoky brown. In the master, he studied the three colors brushed on the wall. Apparently, she hadn’t yet decided between a silvery gray, a gray-blue and a muted gold.

He wandered down the hall, then up the widened, finished stairs. She stood with Matt, each holding a sample of wood up to the light streaming through the window.

“Yeah, I like the contrast of the oak against the walnut.” Matt nodded. “You know what we could do? We could trim it out in the walnut. You’ve got your . . . Hey, Ford.”

“Hey.”

“Summit meeting,” Cilla told him. “Built-ins.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Okay, like this.” With his pencil, Matt began to draw on the drywall, and Ford’s attention shifted to the swaths of paint brushed on the opposite wall. She had the same silvery gray here, and a warm cheery yellow competing with what he’d call apricot.

He took a look in the bathroom, at the tiles and tones.

He tuned back in to hear Matt and Cilla come to an agreement on material and design.

“I’ll get started on this in my shop,” Matt told her.

“How’s Josie feeling?”

“Hot and impatient, and wondering why the hell she didn’t do the math last winter and realize she’d be going through the summer pregnant.”

“Flowers,” Ford suggested. “Buy her flowers on the way home. She’ll still be hot, but she’ll be happy.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. I’ll check, make sure the flooring’s coming in on Tuesday. Barring another screwup, we’ll start hammering it out up here. Roses always work, right?” he asked Ford.

“They’re a classic for a reason.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know about the flooring, Cilla.”

As Matt went down, Ford stepped over, tapped Cilla’s chin up, kissed her. “The pale silver up here, the dull gold in the master.”

She cocked her head. “Maybe. Why?”

“Streams better with the bathrooms than your other choices. And while they’re both warm tones, the gray gives a sense of coolness. It’s an attic, however jazzed up you make it. And in the bedroom, that color’s restful but still strong. Now tell me why Buddy’s putting a faucet over your stove.”

“To fill pots.”

“Okay. I talked to Brian.”

“You often do.”

“About the letters. His grandfather.”

“You . . . you told him?” Her mouth dropped open. “You just told him I think his grandfather might have broken commandments with my grandmother?”

“I don’t think commandments were mentioned. You wanted a handwriting sample. Brian can probably get one.”

“Yes, but . . . Couldn’t you have been covert, a little sneaky? Couldn’t you have lied?”

“I suck at sneak. And even if I gold-medaled in the sneak competition, I can’t lie to a friend. He understands I told him in confidence, and he won’t break a confidence to a friend.”

She blew out a breath. “You people certainly grew up on a different planet than I did. Are you sure he won’t say anything to his father? It’s a stew pot of embarrassment.”

“I’m sure. He did have an interesting comment though. What if Hennessy wrote the letters?”

Cilla went back to gape. “Kill-you-with-my-truck Hennessy?”

“Well, think about it. How crazy would you get if you’d been having an affair with a woman, then the son of that woman is responsible—in your eyes—for putting your son in a wheelchair? It’s way-fetched, I agree. I’m going to reread the letters with this in mind. Just to see how it plays.”

“You know what? If it turns in that direction, within a mile of that direction, I don’t think I want to know. Imagining my grandmother with Hennessy just gives me the serious eeuuwws.”

She sighed, started downstairs with him. “I talked to the police today,” she told Ford. “There won’t be a trial. They did a deal, Hennessy took a plea, whatever. He’ll do a minimum of two years in the state facility, psychiatric.”

Ford reached for her hand. “How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t honestly know. So I guess I’ll put it aside, think about now.”

She moved into the master, studied the paint samples. “Yeah, you’re right about the color.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Cilla used Sunday morning to pore through home and design magazines, scout the Internet for ideas and vendors and tear out or bookmark possibilities and potentials. She could hardly believe she’d reached the stage where she could begin considering furniture.

Weeks away, of course, and she needed to add in trolling antique stores, even flea markets—and possibly yard sales—but she was approaching the time when ordering sofas and chairs, tables and lamps, wouldn’t be out of line.

Then there was bedding, she mused, a kitchen to outfit, an office, window treatments, rugs. All those fun, picky little details to fill in a house. To make a house a home. Her home.

Her first real home.

The closer it came to reality, the more she realized just how much she wanted home. All she had to do was step outside, look across the road and see it.

Sitting here now, at Ford’s counter, with her laptop, her magazines, her notebooks, she thought of just how far she’d come since March. No, well before March, she corrected. She’d started this journey on that long-ago trek through the Blue Ridge, one she’d taken specifically, deliberately to see, firsthand, her grandmother’s Little Farm, to see where her own father sprang from, and maybe to understand, a little, why he’d come back, and left her.

And she’d fallen in love, Cilla thought now, with the hills that bumped their way back to the mountains, the thick spread of trees, the little towns and the big ones, the houses and gardens, the winding roads and streams. Most of all, she’d fallen in love with the old farmhouse sagging behind a stone wall, closed in by its desolate, overgrown gardens.

Sleeping Beauty’s castle, maybe, she mused, but she’d seen home, even then.

Now, what she’d dreamed of, yearned for, was very nearly hers.

She sat at the counter, sipping coffee, and imagined waking in a room with walls the color of a glowing and hopeful dawn, and of living a life she’d chosen rather than one chosen for her.

Ford gave a sleepy grunt as he walked in.

Look at him, she thought. Barely awake, that long, long, lean, edging-toward-gawky body dressed in navy boxers and a tattered Yoda T-shirt. All that sun-streaked brown hair rumpled and messy, and those green eyes groggy and just a little cranky.

Wasn’t he just unbelievably adorable?

He dumped coffee into a mug, added sugar, milk. Said, “God, mornings suck through a straw,” and drank as if his life balanced within the contents of the mug.

Then he turned, to prop his elbow on the counter. “How come you look so lucid?”

“Maybe because I’ve been up for three hours. It’s after ten, Ford.”

“You have no respect for the Sunday.”

“It’s true. I’m ashamed.”

“No, you’re not. But real estate agents also have no respect for the Sunday. Vicky just called my cell and woke me from a very hot dream involving you, me and finger paints. It was really getting interesting when I was so rudely and annoyingly interrupted. Anyway, the sellers came down another five thousand.”

“Finger paints?”

“And as an artist I can say it was the beginning of a masterpiece. We’re only ten thousand apart now, as Vicky the dream killer pointed out. So . . .”

“No.”

“Damn it.” He looked like a kid who’d just been told there were no cookies in the jar. “I knew you were going to say no, which you did not say when I was swirling cobalt blue around your belly button. Couldn’t we just—”

“No. You’ll thank me later when you have that ten K to put into improvements and repairs.”

“But I really want that ugly dump now. I want it for my own. I love it, Cilla, like a fat kid loves cake.” He tried a hopeful smile. “We could split the difference.”

“No. We hold firm. No one else has made an offer on the property. The seller isn’t interested in making any of those repairs and improvements. He’ll cave.”

“Maybe he won’t.” Those groggy eyes narrowed into a scowl. “Maybe he’s just as pigheaded as you are.”

“Okay, here’s this.” She leaned back, an expert at the negotiation table. “If he doesn’t cave, if he doesn’t accept your offer within two weeks, you can counter with the split. But you hold tight for fourteen more days.”

“Okay. Two weeks.” He tried the hopeful smile again. “Do you ever think about scrambling eggs?”

“Hardly ever. But I am thinking about something else. I’m thinking, looking at that big, soft sofa over there—as I’ve been in the sofa-hunting mode. And wondering, as I’m thinking, what would happen if I stretched out on that big, soft sofa.”

She slid off the stool, aiming a smile over her shoulder as she strolled to the sofa. “And I’m wondering will I have to lie here all by myself, all alone with my unquenched desires and lascivious thoughts.”

“Okay, lascivious did it.”

He skirted the counter, crossed, then pounced. “Hi.”

With a low laugh, she scissored her legs, reared and rolled until their positions reversed. “I think I’ll be high this time.” Dipping down, she caught his bottom lip between her teeth, chewed lightly.

“This is how I respect the Sunday.”

“I was so wrong about you.” He ran his hands down her, over the loose, white tank. “Cilla.”

“You’re all rumpled and sexy and . . .” She peeled Yoda off, tossed him away. “Mostly naked.”

“All we’re missing are the finger paints.” He pushed up, locking his arms around her, fixing his mouth to hers. “I miss you. As soon as I’m awake and you’re not there.”

“I’m not far.” She wrapped around him, only separating to let him strip the white tank away. And, oh, those hands, those slow, steady hands. “Here. Here.” She cupped his head, guided it down until his mouth closed over her breast.

Everything coiled and curled inside her, and opened again.

She wanted, wanted, with those hands pressing, that mouth feasting. Wanted him inside her, hot and hard. She wiggled out of her shorts, gasping as he touched and teased, moaning as she rose up, eased down, and filled herself with him.

“This is what I want, on Sunday morning.”

She took him, riding up, riding down, her hands braced on the arm of the couch. Slim, hard muscles, burnt honey hair, iced blue eyes so clear they were a mirror into his heart.

No dream, no fantasy came close to the truth of her. No wish, no wonder compared.

“I love you, Cilla. I love you.”

Her breath caught; her heart skipped beats. Her body bowed, and the arrow it shot struck home.

She slid down to him, snuggled right in. He loved the way they fit, line to line, the way her hair felt against his skin.

“So . . . where exactly do you buy finger paints?”

He grinned, lazily walked his fingers up and down her spine. “I’ll find out, lay in a supply.”

“I’ll provide the drop cloth. Where did you get this couch?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere where they sell furniture.”

“It’s a good size, shape, nice fabric. Comfortable. I need to start thinking furniture, and I have that great big living room to deal with. Conversation areas and lighting and art. I’ve never done all that before. It’s a little intimidating.”

He glanced over when Spock wandered in, took one look at them twined together naked on the couch and walked away. Just jealous, Ford thought. “Never bought furniture before?”

“Sure, you’ve got to sit on something. But I’ve never chosen things with the idea of keeping them any length of time. It’s always been temporary.” She brushed her lips over his collarbone, nuzzled at his shoulder. “And I’ve worked with stagers on flips. Staging a property can help it sell. So I know, or have opinions, about what works in a space. But this is different. Staging’s like a set. Load it in, break it down.”

“Didn’t you have a house, an apartment, something in L.A.?”

“Steve had a place. After our five-minute marriage I lived at the BHH awhile.”

“The BHH?”

“Beverly Hills Hotel. Then I traveled some, or stayed at Steve’s when I picked up some work. There was my very brief college stint, and I had an apartment off campus. When Steve bought the property in Brentwood to flip, I camped there. I got in the habit of staying in the flip houses. It gave me a sense of them.”

Place, house, property. Never home, he thought. She’d never had what he and everyone he knew took for granted. She’d never had home. He thought of how she’d sat in the big, empty living room with its beautiful walls and gorgeous trim, and imagined a long-ago holiday party.

She was reaching back to find her future.

“We can move the couch over there,” he said, suddenly desperate to give her something. “You could see how it looks in place and have something to sit on besides the ever-versatile bucket.”

“That’s a very nice offer.” She gave him an absent kiss before sitting up to hunt for her clothes. “But it’s more practical to wait for furniture until after the floors are done. Of course, now that I’ve gotten trapped into giving a party, I’d better find some suitable outdoor furniture.”

“Party?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” She pulled on her tank. “I made the mistake of mentioning to Cathy Morrow that I’d like—maybe—to give a party around Labor Day, but the house wouldn’t be finished or furnished. She jumped right on the first part, completely ignored the second. Now I’ve got Patty calling me with menu ideas, and your mother offering to make her pork barbecue.”

“It’s great stuff.”

“No doubt. The problem remains how I find time to squeeze in party planning while I’m installing kitchen cabinets, running trim, hanging doors, refinishing floors and hitting a very long punch-out list, not to mention exploring the world of sofas, couches, divans and settees.”

“You buy a grill, a bunch of meat and a whole lot of alcoholic beverages.”

She shook her head at him. “You’re a man.”

“I am. A fact which I’ve just proven beyond any reasonable doubt.” And being Sunday, he should get a shot at proving it again. “A party’s a good thing, Cilla. People come, people you know and like, enjoy being with. You show off what you’ve done. You share it. That’s why you took down the gate.”

“I . . .” He was right. “What kind of grill?”

He smiled at her. “We’ll shop.”

In an exaggerated gesture, she crossed her hands over her heart. “Words most women only dream about hearing from a man. I need to go get dressed. I could pick up paint while we’re out, and hardware, take another look at kitchen lighting.”

“What have I wrought?”

She tossed a smile at him as she walked out of the room. “We’ll take my truck.”

He dragged on his boxers, but stayed where he was, thinking about her. She didn’t realize how much she’d told him. She’d never once mentioned the house, or houses, where she’d grown up.

He, on the other hand, could describe in perfect detail the house of his childhood, the way the sun slanted or burst through the windows of his room at any given time of the day, the green sink in the bathroom, the chip in the kitchen tile where he’d dropped a gallon jug of apple juice.

He remembered the pang when his parents had sold it, even though he’d been in New York, even though he’d moved out. Even though they’d only moved a couple miles away. Years later, he could still drive by that old brick house and feel that pang.

Lovingly restored trim, letters hidden in a book, an old barn painted red again. All of that, every step and detail, were links she forged herself to make a chain of connection.

He’d do whatever he could do to help her forge it, even if it came down to shopping for a grill.

“Hey, Ford.”

“Back here,” Ford called out when he heard Brian’s voice, and unfolded himself off the sofa as Brian walked in. “Weber or Viking?”

“Tough choice,” Brian said without any need for explanation. “I went with the Weber, as you know, but a man can’t go wrong with the Viking.”

“How about a woman?”

“Women have no place behind a grill. That’s my stand on it.” He bent down, picked up Ford’s discarded T-shirt. “This is a clue. It tells me that I’ve come too late to interrupt morning sex. Damn that second cup of coffee.” He tossed the shirt at Ford’s face, then leaned down to greet Spock.

“You’re just jealous because you didn’t have any morning sex.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re here. Why are you here?”

Brian gestured to the counter and Cilla’s research pile as he crossed over to open Ford’s refrigerator. “Where’s Cilla?”

“Upstairs, getting dressed so we can go out and debate between Weber and Viking.”

“You’ve got Diet Cokes in here,” Brian observed as he pulled out a can of the real thing. “A sure sign a guy is hooked. I went by my mom’s yesterday.” Brian popped the top, took a swig. “Hauled off, to her surprised joy, not one but two boxes of junk she’s saved for me. What am I supposed to do with a crayon drawing of a house, a big yellow sun and stick people?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t throw it out. According to my mother, dumping any childhood memorabilia they saved dares the gods.” Ford got his own Coke. “I have three boxes.”

“I won’t forget it’s your fault I took possession of that stuff.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket, tossed it on the counter. “However, as I didn’t score female companionship last night, I went through some of it, came up with this. It’s a card my grandfather gave my mother on the occasion of my birth. He wrote some stuff in it.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Damn right. I am now housing every report card I got from first grade through high school. You’ll let me know if it matches. I’m kind of into it now.”

“One way or the other.” Ford picked up the card, studied the strong, bold lettering of Cathy’s name.

“I gotta go, pick up Shanna. I’m driving her to the airport.” He squatted down, rubbing Spock’s head, the wiggling body. “Tell Cilla I’ll have a couple guys there tomorrow to finish that mulching, and I should be able to swing by the new place she’s buying, take a look at the yard.”

“Okay. I’ll get this back to you.”

Brian smirked at the card. “Yeah, I’m worried about that.”

Ford went upstairs, into the bedroom where Cilla was pulling her hair back into a tail. “I’m set,” she told him. “I’m going to go over while you’re getting dressed, take another look at a couple things before we go.”

“Brian just came by.”

“Oh, did he look at the new property already?”

“No, next week, he said. He brought this.” Ford held up the card.

“Is that . . . Of course it is. I didn’t expect him to find something so fast. Wow.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “Big mystery could be solved. It makes me a little nervous.”

“Do you want me to go check it out, then just tell you?”

She dropped her hand. “What am I? A weenie?”

“No, you’re not.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“They’re in my office.”

She went in with him, watched him take the book off the shelf, then set it on the counter for her to open.

“I keep thinking how she chose Gatsby. The rich, shining life, the glitter and then ennui, romance, betrayal, ultimate tragedy. She was so unhappy. I dreamed of her again not long ago. I didn’t tell you. One of my Janet and Cilla dreams. Forest Lawn. They’re both buried there. Her and Johnnie. I only went there once. Her grave was literally covered with flowers. It made me sad to look at it. All those flowers, brought by strangers, fading in the sun.”

“You planted them for her here instead. And even when they fade, they come back new. Year after year.”

“I like to think that would matter to her. My personal tribute.” She opened the book, took the stack of letters out. “I’ll open this,” she said, choosing one. “You open that.”

Ford took out the card. He’d expected a happy picture of a baby, or a sentimental one of a mother and child. Instead he found Andrew Morrow’s initials on heavy, cream-colored stock. “Pretty formal,” he commented, and opened the card.

Congratulations to my lovely daughter-in-law on the birth of her son. I hope these roses bring you pleasure. They’re only A small token of my great pride. Another generation of Morrows is born with Brian Andrew.

Affectionately, Drew

Cilla laid the letter beside the card.

My Dear. My Darling.

There Are no words to express my sorrow, my sympathy, my grief for you. I wish I could hold you, could comfort you now with more than words on A page. Know that I’m with you in my heart, that my thoughts Are full of you. No mother should have to suffer the loss of her child, And then be forced to grieve in so public A manner.

I know you loved your Johnnie beyond measure. If there can be comfort now, take it in knowing he felt that love every day of his short life.

Only Yours

“Is that fitting, is that fate?” Cilla said quietly. “That I’d choose the loss of a son to compare to the birth of another? It’s a kind letter,” she continued. “They’re both kind notes, and both strangely distant, so carefully worded, I think. When each occasion should have filled the page with emotions and intimacies. The tone, the structure. They could be from the same person.”

“The writing’s similar. Not . . . well, not exactly exact. See the S’s in the card? When he starts a word—son, small—with an S, it’s in curvy print. In the letter—sorry, sympathy—traditional lowercase cursive.”

“But the uppercase T’s are written the same way, and the Y’s. The slant of the writing. It’s very close. And they were written years apart.”

“My and my in both really look like the same hand, and the upper-case I’s, but the uppercase D’s, not so much.” Ford knew he looked with an artist’s eye, and wasn’t sure if that was a plus or a minus. “Then again, in the card, that’s a signature. Some people write the first letter of their signature differently than they might a word. I don’t know, Cilla.”

“Results, inconclusive. I don’t suppose you know any handwriting experts.”

“We could find one.” He looked up, into her eyes. “Do you want to go that route?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Damn it. No easy answers.”

“Maybe we could get our hands on a sample closer to when the letters were written. I can ask Brian to try for that.”

“Let’s just put it away for now.” She folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope. “We know one thing after this. It wasn’t Hennessy. I’d forgotten about the letter after Johnnie’s death. No way, even if he was crazy in love, would he have written that after the accident. Not when he was with his own son in the hospital.”

“You’re right.”

“So, if I had a list, I’d be able to cross a name off. That’s something. I guess it’s going to have to be enough for now. At least for now.”

Ford closed the book, put it back on the shelf. He turned to her, took her hand. “What do you say we go buy a grill?”

“I’d say that’s exactly what I want to do.”

But he left the monogrammed note on his desk when he went to dress. He could find a graphologist. Someone outside Virginia to whom the name Andrew Morrow meant nothing. And he could see where that led.

CILLA’S PLEASURE WHEN her walnut flooring finally arrived Tuesday morning hit a major roadblock before noon when her tile layer stormed over to her work area beside the barn.

“Hi, Stan. You’re not scheduled until Thursday. Are . . .”

She found herself backpedaling quickly as she caught the murderous look in his eye. “Hey, hey, what’s the problem?”

“You think you can treat people that way? You think you can talk to people that way?”

“What? What?” He backed her right up into the side of the barn. Too shocked at seeing the usually affable Stan with a vein throbbing in the center of his forehead, Cilla held up her hands as much in defense as a gesture of peace.

“You think ’cause you come from money and got yourself on TV you’re better than the rest of us?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where—”

“You got some nerve, goddamn it, calling my wife, talking to her like that.”

“I never—”

“You got a problem with my work, you talk to me. You got that? Don’t you go calling my house and yelling at my wife.”

“Stan, I’ve never spoken to your wife.”

“You calling her a liar now?” He shoved his face into hers, so close she could taste his rage.

“I’m not calling her anything.” Alarm lumped at the base of Cilla’s throat, so she spaced her words carefully. “I don’t know her, and I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I come home and she’s so upset she can barely talk. Started crying. The only reason I didn’t come straight over here last night is she begged me not to, and I didn’t want to leave her when she was in that state. She’s got hypertension, and you go setting her off ’cause you decide you don’t like my work.”

“And I’m telling you, I never called your house, I never spoke to your wife, and I’m not dissatisfied with your work. In fact, the opposite. Or why in God’s name did I contract you to lay the floor in my kitchen?”

“You tell me, goddamn it.”

“Well, I can’t!” she shouted back at him. “What time was I supposed to have made this call?”

“About ten o’clock last night, you know damn well. I get home about ten-thirty, and she’s lying down, flushed and shaking because you screamed at her like a crazy woman.”

“Have you ever heard me scream like a crazy woman? I was at Ford’s last night at ten o’clock. I nodded off in front of the TV. Ask him. Jesus, Stan, you’ve been working here off and on for months now. You should know I don’t handle things that way.”

“Said it was you. Cilla McGowan.” But puzzlement began to show through the temper. “You told Kay she was a stupid hick, just like most of the people around here. How I couldn’t lay tile for shit, and you were going to make sure word got out. When I lost work, I’d have nobody to blame but my own lazy ass. How maybe you’d sue me over the crap job I did for you.”

“If your wife’s a hick, I am, too. I live here now. I don’t contract with subs who do crap work. In fact, I recommended you to my stepmother just last week, if she ever talks my father into updating their master bath.” She realized she was breathless from reaction, but the alarm had dissolved. “Why the hell would I do that, Stan, if I thought your work was crap?”

“She didn’t just make it up.”

“Okay.” She had to draw in air. “Okay. Is she sure whoever called gave my name?”

“Cilla McGowan, and then Kay said you . . . they,” he corrected, obviously ready to give Cilla the benefit of the doubt, “said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ in that bitchy way people do when they think they’re important. Then just laid into her. It took me almost an hour to calm her down when I got home from the summer league. I had to make her take a Tylenol P.M. to help her sleep. She was that upset.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry somebody used my name to upset her. I don’t know why . . .” Pressure lowered onto her chest, pushed and pushed. “The flooring supplier said I called in and changed my order. Walnut to oak. But I didn’t. I thought there’d just been a mix-up. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe somebody’s screwing with me.”

Stan stood a moment, stuck his hands in his pockets, pulled them out again. “You never made that call.”

“No, I didn’t. Stan, I’m trying to build a reputation, and a business here. I’m trying to build relationships with subs and service people. When someone broke in and went at the bathrooms, you juggled me in for the repair and re-lay, and I know you cut me a break on the labor.”

“You had a problem. And the fact is, I was proud of that work and wanted to make it right.”

“I don’t know how to make this right with your wife. I could talk to her, try to explain.”

“Better let me do that.” He blew out a breath. “Sorry I came at you.”

“I’d have done the same in your place.”

“Who’d do something like this? Mess with you, get Kay all upset?”

“I don’t know.” Cilla thought of Mrs. Hennessy. Her husband was doing two years in a psych facility. “But I hope I can head it off before it happens again.”

“I guess I’d better swing by home, straighten this out with Kay.”

“Okay. You still on for Thursday?”

His smile was a little sheepish. “Yeah. Ah, you got any reason to call me at home, maybe you should come up with a code word or something.”

“Maybe I should.”

She stood in the shadow of her barn, with trim propped against the wall and laid out to dry, stretched across her saw-horses. And wondered how many times she’d have to pay for the crimes, sins, mistakes of others.

TWENTY-SIX

Cilla stood in her bedroom, staring at the freshly painted walls while her father tapped the lid back on the open can of paint. She watched the way the strong midday light flooded the room, and sent those walls to glowing.

“The trim’s not even up, and the floors still have to be done, and still, standing here gives me an ecstatic tingle.”

He straightened from his crouch, took a long look himself. “It’s a damn fine job.”

“You could make a living.”

“It’s always good to have a fallback.”

“You’ve damn near painted the entire house.” She turned to him then. She still couldn’t quite think what to make of that, or what to say to him. “That’s saved me weeks of time. Thanks doesn’t cover it.”

“It does the job. I’ve enjoyed it, on a lot of levels. I’ve liked being part of this. This transformation. We missed a lot of summers, you and I. Spending some of this one with you, well, it’s made me happy.”

For a moment she could only stand, looking at him, her handsome father. Then she did something she’d never done before. She went to him first. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, then wrapped her arms around him. “Me too.”

He held on, hard and tight. She felt his sigh against her. “Do you remember the day we first saw each other here? I came to the back door, and you shared your lunch with me on the sagging front veranda?”

“I remember.”

“I didn’t see how we’d ever get here. Too much neglect, too much time passed. For the house, and for us.” He eased her back, and she saw with some surprise, some alarm, that his eyes were damp. “You gave it a chance. The house, and me. Now I’m standing here with my daughter. I’m so proud of you, Cilla.”

When her own eyes flooded, she pressed her face to his shoulder. “You said that to me, that you were proud, after the concert in D.C., and once, earlier, when you came to the set of Our Family and watched me shoot a scene. But this is the first time I believe it.”

She gave him a last squeeze, stepped back. “I guess we’re getting to know each other, through interior latex, eggshell finish.”

“Why stop there? How about we go take a look at the exterior.”

“You can’t paint the house. The rooms, that’s one thing.”

Lips pursed, he scanned the room. “I think I passed the audition.”

“Interiors. It’s a three-story building. A really big, three-story building. Painting it’ll require standing on scaffolding and really tall ladders.”

“I used to do my own stunts.” He laughed as she rolled her eyes in a way he could only describe as daughterly. “Maybe I didn’t, and maybe that was a long time ago, but I have excellent balance.”

She tried stern. “Standing on scaffolding and really tall ladders in the dog-day heat of August.”

“You don’t scare me.”

Then simple practicality. “It’s not a one-man job.”

“True. I’ll definitely need some help. What color did you have in mind?”

And felt herself being gently steamrolled. “Listen, the old paint needs to be scraped where it’s peeled, and—”

“Details, details. Let’s take a look. Do you want it painted by Labor Day, or what?”

“Labor Day? It’s not even on the schedule until mid-September. When it’s, hopefully, a little cooler. The crew who painted the barn—”

“Happy to work with them.”

Completely baffled, she set her hands on her hips. “I thought you were kind of—no offense—a pushover.”

His expression placid, he patted her cheek. “No offense taken. What about the trim, the verandas?”

She puffed out her cheeks, blew the breath out. She saw it now. Pushover, her ass. He just ignored the arguments and kept going. “Okay, we’ll take a look at the samples I’m thinking about. And once I decide, you can work on the verandas, the shutters. But you’re not hanging off scaffolding or climbing up extension ladders.”

He only smiled at her, then dropped his arm over her shoulders the way she’d seen him do with Angie, and walked her downstairs.

Though it wasn’t on her list—and she really wanted to get up to her office and check on the progress of her floors, see if Stan had finished the tile, start running the bedroom trim—she opened the three pints of exterior paint. “Could go deep, with this blue. The gray in it settles it down a few notches, and white trim would set it off.” She slapped some on the wood.

“Makes a statement.”

“Yeah. Or I could go quiet and traditional with this buff, use a white trim again, or a cream. Cream might be better. Softer.”

“Pretty and subdued.”

“Or I could go with this more subtle blue, again gray undertones keeping it warm, and probably go with a soft white for the trim.”

“Dignified but warm.”

She stepped back, cocked her head to one side, then the other. “I thought about yellows, too. Something cheerful, but soft enough it doesn’t pop out of the ground like a big daffodil. Maybe it should wait. Maybe it should just wait.” She gnawed on her lip. “Until . . .”

“I’ve seen you make decisions, over everything that has to do with this house, with the grounds. Why are you having such a hard time with this?”

“It’s what everyone will see. Every time they drive by on the road. A lot of them will slow down, point it out. ‘That’s Janet Hardy’s house.’ ” Setting down the brush, Cilla wiped her hands on her work shorts. “It’s just paint, it’s just color, but it matters what people see when they drive by on the road, and think of her.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “What do you want them to see when they drive by here?”

“That she was a real person, not just an image in an old movie, or a voice on a CD or old record. She was a real person, who felt and ate, who laughed and worked. Who lived a life. And she was happy here, at least for a while. Happy enough she didn’t let it go. She held on, so I could come here, and have a life here.”

She let out an embarrassed laugh. “And that’s a hell of a lot to expect from a couple coats of paint. Jesus, I should probably go back into therapy.”

“Stop.” He gave her shoulder a quick shake. “Of course it matters. People obsess over something as mundane as paint for a lot less important reasons. This house, this place, was hers. More, it was something she chose for herself, and something she valued. Something she needed. It’s been passed to you. It should matter.”

“It was yours, too, in a way. I don’t forget that. That matters more now than it did when I started. You pick.”

He dropped his hand, actually stepped back. “Cilla.”

“Please. I’d really like this to be your choice. The McGowan choice. People will think of her when they pass on the road. But when I walk the grounds or drive in after a long day, I’ll think of her, and of you. I’ll think of how you came here as a little boy, and chased chickens. You pick, Dad.”

“The second blue. The warm and dignified blue.”

She hooked her arm with his, studied the fresh color over the old, peeling paint. “I think it’s going to be perfect.”

WHEN FORD WALKED over late in the day, he saw Gavin on the veranda, scraping the paint on the front of the house.

“How’re you doing, Mr. McGowan?”

“Slow but sure. Cilla’s inside somewhere.”

“I just bought a house.”

“Is that so?” Gavin stopped, frowned. “You’re moving?”

“No. No. I bought this, well, this toxic dump that Cilla says she can fix up. To flip. The seller just accepted my offer. I feel a little sick, and can’t decide if it’s because I’m excited, or because I can see this big, yawning money pit opening up under my feet. I’m going to have two mortgages. I think I should probably sit down.”

“Pick up that scraper, give me a hand with this. It’ll calm you down.”

Ford eyed the scraper dubiously. “Tools and I have a long-standing agreement. We stay away from each other, for the good of mankind.”

“It’s a scraper, Ford, not a chain saw. You scrape ice off your windshield in the winter, don’t you?”

“When I must. I prefer staying home until it thaws.” But Ford picked up the spare scraper and tried to apply the process of scraping ice from glass to scraping peeling paint off the side of a house. “I’m going to have two mortgages, and I’m going to be forty.”

“Did we just time-travel? You can’t be more than thirty.”

“Thirty-one. I have less than a decade until I’m forty, and five minutes ago I was studying for the SATs.”

Gavin’s lips twitched as he continued to scrape. “It gets worse. Every year goes faster.”

“Thanks,” Ford said bitterly. “That’s just what I needed to hear. I was going to take my time, but how can you when there isn’t as much as you think there is?” Turning, he waved the scraper, and nearly put it through the window. “But if you’re ready, and she’s not, what the hell are you supposed to do about that?”

“Keep scraping.”

Ford scraped—the paint and his knuckles. “Crap. As a metaphor for life, that sucks.”

Cilla came out in time to see Ford sucking his sore knuckles and scowling. “What are you doing?”

“I’m scraping paint and a few layers of skin, and your father’s philosophizing.”

“Let me see.” She took Ford’s hand, studied the knuckles. “You’ll live.”

“I have to. I’m about to have two mortgages. Ouch!” he said when Cilla gave his sore fingers a quick squeeze.

“Sorry. They accepted your offer?”

“Yeah. I have to go into the bank tomorrow and sign a bunch of papers. I’m going to hyperventilate,” he decided. “I need a bag to breathe into.”

“November settlement?”

“I followed the company line.”

She gave him a poke. “Scared?”

His answering scowl was both sour and weak. “I’m about to go into debt. The kind that has many zeros. I’m having a few moments. Do you know that the olfactory sense is the strongest of the five senses? I keep having flashes of how that place smells.”

“Put that down before you really hurt yourself.” She took the scraper out of his hand, set it on the window ledge. “And come with me a minute.” She gave her father a quick wink, then drew Ford into the house.

“Do you remember what the kitchen looked like in here when you first saw it?”

“Yeah.”

“Ugly, dingy, damaged floors, cracked plaster, bare bulbs. Got that picture in your head?”

“I got it.”

“Close your eyes.”

“Cilla.”

“Seriously, close them, and keep that picture in there.”

He shook his head but obliged her, and let her lead him back. “Now I want you to tell me what you see when you open your eyes. No thinking it through, no qualifying. Just open your eyes and tell me what you see.”

He obeyed. “A big room, empty. A lot of light. Walls the color of lightly toasted bread. And floors, big squares of tile—a lot of honey tones on cream with pipes poking up through them. Big, unframed—untrimmed—windows that open it up to a patio with a blue umbrella, and gardens with roses blooming like maniacs, and green gone lush. And the mountains against the sky. I see Cilla’s vision.”

He started to step forward, but she tugged him back. “No, don’t walk on the tiles yet. Stan only finished the grout an hour ago.”

“We can do this.”

“We absolutely can. It takes planning, effort, a willingness to find a way around unexpected problems, and a real commitment to the end goal. We’ll turn that place around, Ford, and when we do, we’ll have something we can both be proud of.”

He turned to her, kissed her forehead. “Okay. Okay. I’ve got some scraping to do.”

She walked out with him, baffled when he signaled so long to her father and kept walking.

“Well, where’s he going? He said he was going to do more scraping.”

Gavin smiled to himself as Cilla shook her head and went back inside. It was good to know his daughter had found her place, her purpose, had found a man who loved her.

It was good to know she was out of reach of the man who’d wished her harm.

THE NEXT MORNING, Cilla walked over from Ford’s to find her tires slashed. On the ground by the left front tire, another doll lay facedown, a short-handled paring knife stabbed into its back.

“You should’ve come back for me. Damn it, Cilla.” Ford paced down the drive, then back to where she sat on the steps of the veranda. “What if he—she—whoever—had still been here?”

“They weren’t. The cops were here within fifteen minutes. They’re pretty used to the run by now. I didn’t see the point in—”

“Because I can’t run a skill saw or a damn drill I’m no use?”

“I didn’t mean that, and you know I didn’t mean that.”

“Simmer down, Ford.” Matt stepped between them.

“No way. It’s the second time somebody killed one of those damn dolls to scare her, and she sits over here alone waiting for the cops and lets me sleep. It’s goddamn stupid.”

“You’re right. Simmer down anyway. He’s right,” Matt said to Cilla. “It was goddamn stupid. You’re a hell of a job boss, Cilla, and one of the best carpenters I’ve worked with, but the fact is someone’s dogging you and threatening you, and standing around here alone after you come across something like this doesn’t show much sense.”

“It was a cowardly bully tactic, and nobody asked you to go running across the road dragging Ford out of bed so the pair of you can gang up on me. I’m not stupid. If I was afraid, I’d have run across the road and dragged Ford out of bed. I was mad, damn it.”

She shoved to her feet, as sitting and looking up at two annoyed males made her feel weak and small. “I’m still mad. I’m pissed and I’m tired of being dogged and threatened, as you put it. Of being run off the road and having good work destroyed, and the whole rest of it. Believe me, if whoever did that had still been here, I’d have probably yanked that knife out of that idiot doll and stabbed him in the throat with it. And still been pissed.”

“If you’re so smart,” Ford said, very coolly, “then you know it was stupid.”

She opened her mouth, shut it and gave up. Then she sat back down. “I’ll give you rash. I won’t give you stupid.”

“Hardheaded and rash,” Ford countered. “That’s my final offer.”

“Have it your way. Now if you’d go back to bed, and you’d go get to work, I could sit here and wallow in my brood.”

Saying nothing, Matt walked up, patted Cilla on the head and continued inside. Ford came over, sat beside her.

“Like I care if you can run a skill saw.”

“Thank God you don’t.”

“I didn’t think about coming to get you. I was too mad. I don’t get it, I just don’t get it.” Shifting, she indulged herself—and him—by pressing her face to his shoulder a moment. “Hennessy’s in psych. If his wife’s doing this, why? I know he’s doing two years, but how is that my fault? Maybe she’s as crazy as he is.”

“And maybe Hennessy didn’t do it. Ran you off the road, no question. Is crazy, no argument. But maybe he didn’t do any of the rest. He wouldn’t admit to it.”

“That would be just great, meaning I have at least two people out there who’d like to make my life hell.” She leaned forward, propped her elbows on her thighs. “It could be about the letters. Someone else knows about them, knows I found them, that they still exist. If Andrew wrote them, someone might know about them, about the affair, the pregnancy . . . His name’s still prominent around here. To protect his reputation . . .”

“Who, Brian’s father? Brian? Besides, it doesn’t look like Andrew Morrow wrote them. I sent copies to a graphologist.”

“What?” She jerked straight again. “When?”

“A couple days after Brian brought the card over. Yes, taking that on myself without telling or consulting you was . . . rash. We’ll call it even.”

“God, Ford, if the press gets ahold of this—”

“They won’t. Why would they? I found a guy in New York, one who doesn’t know Andrew Morrow from Bruce Wayne. And the copy of the page of one of the letters I sent him had nothing in it that referred to Janet or the location, even the time frame. I was careful.”

“Okay. Okay.” He would have been, she admitted.

“The conclusion was, not the same hand. Guy wouldn’t stake his reputation on it because they were copies, and because I told him they were written about four years apart. But he wouldn’t document them as the same hand. He did say they were of similar style, and both might have been taught to write by the same person.”

“Like a teacher?”

“Possibly.”

A whole new avenue, Cilla realized. “So it might have been someone who went to school with Andrew. A friend. A close friend. Or someone who went to the same school, with the same teacher later. And that really narrows the field.”

“I could look into that, or try. Talk to my grandfather. He and Andrew would be about the same age. He might remember something.”

Cilla studied her four flat tires. “I think that’s a good idea. If you want answers, you have to ask questions. I have to go to work. And you have to go to the bank.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Have we made up?”

“Not until we have sex.”

“I’ll put it on my list.”

FORD PULLED UP in front of the little suburban house. He heard the purr of a lawn mower as he stepped out of the car, so with Spock he walked around to the side of the house and through the gate of the chain-link fence.

His grandfather, dressed in a polo shirt, Bermuda shorts and Hush Puppies, pushed the power mower across the short square of lawn between and around the hydrangeas, the rosebushes and the maple tree.

From the gate, Ford could see the sweat trickling down his grandfather’s temples under his Washington Redskins cap. Ford shouted, made wide arm signals as he started over, and saw the smile spread on his grandfather’s sweaty face when Ford caught his eye.

Charlie shut off the lawn mower. “Well, hi there. Hi there, Spock,” he added, patting his thigh in invitation for the dog to plant his hind legs for a head rub. “What’re you doing out this way today?”

“Mowing the rest of your lawn. Granddad, it’s too hot out here for you to be doing this.”

“Meant to get to it earlier.”

“I thought you hired a neighborhood kid to do this. That’s what you told me when I said I’d come by and do it.”

“I was going to.” Charlie’s face moved into what Ford thought of as Quint stubborn. “I like cutting my own grass. Not on my last legs yet.”

“You’ve got plenty of legs left, but you don’t have to use them working out here when it’s already ninety and humid enough to drown in your own breath. I’ll finish it up. Maybe you could get us a couple of cold drinks. And Spock could use some water,” Ford added, knowing that would do the trick.

“All right then, all right. But you be sure you put the mower back in the shed when you’re done. And don’t bump into those rosebushes. Come on, Spock.”

It took less than twenty minutes to finish it off—with his grandfather watching him like a hawk through the back screen door. Which meant, Ford thought, they didn’t have the AC turned on inside.

By the time Ford stowed the mower, crossed over the tiny cement patio and walked through the screen door, he was dripping. “It’s August, Granddad.”

“I know what month it is. Think I’m senile?”

“No, just crazy. Let me assure you, air-conditioning is not a tool of Satan.”

“Not hot enough for air-conditioning.”

“It’s hot enough to boil internal organs.”

“We got a nice cross breeze coming through.”

“Yeah, from hell.” Ford dropped down at the kitchen table and gulped the iced tea Charlie set out while Spock lay snoring. Probably in a heat-induced coma, Ford thought. “Where’s Grandma?”

“Your aunt Ceecee picked her up, for the book club gab session at your mother’s bookstore.”

“Oh. If she was here, she’d give me cookies. I know damn well you gave Spock some before he passed out.”

Charlie snorted out a laugh, but rose to get a box of thin lemon snaps off the counter where he’d left them after treating Spock. He shook some onto a plate, set it in front of Ford.

“Thanks. I bought a house.”

“You’ve got a house already.”

“Yeah, but this one’s an investment. Cilla’s going to fix it up, perform major miracles, then I’ll sell it and be a rich man. Or I’ll lose my shirt and have to move in with you and Grandma, and suffer from heat prostration. I’m banking on the miracle after seeing what she’s done with her place.”

“I hear she’s done some fancy work over there. Changed a lot.”

“For the better, I think.”

“Guess I’ll see for myself at the Labor Day shindig she’s having. Your grandmother’s already been out shopping for a new outfit. It’ll be strange going to a party there, after all these years.”

“I guess a lot of people who’ll go would have been to parties there when Janet Hardy was alive.” Perfect opening, Ford thought. “Mom and Dad, Brian’s parents. You knew Bri’s grandfather, right?”

“Everybody around here knew Andrew Morrow.”

“Were you friendly?”

“With Drew Morrow?” Charlie shook his head. “Wasn’t unfriendly, but I can’t say we ran in the same circles. He was older, maybe six, eight years.”

“So you didn’t go to school with him?”

“We went to the same school. Back then, there was only the one. Andrew Morrow, he had the golden touch. Golden tongue, too,” Charlie said and wet his throat. “He sure could talk anybody into fronting him money, but by God, he lined the pockets of the ones who did. Buying up land, putting up houses, buying up more, putting up the stores, the office buildings. Built the whole damn village, served as mayor. Talk was he’d be governor of Virginia. Never did run though. Talk was maybe he had some dealings that weren’t up-and-up.”

“Who did he hang with, when you were boys?”

“Oh, let’s see.” Charlie rattled off some names that meant nothing to Ford. “Some of them didn’t come back from the war. He ran some with Hennessy, the one’s in the loony bin now.”

“Really?”

“Went around with Hennessy’s sister Margie for a time, then broke it off when he met Jane Drake, the one he married. She came from money.” With a smirk, Charlie rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “Old money. Man needs money to buy up land and build houses. She was a looker, too. Snooty with it.”

“I remember her. She always looked pissed off. I guess money can’t buy happiness if you shop in the wrong places. Maybe Morrow looked for more pleasant companionship.”

“Might could’ve done.”

“And that might be why he didn’t run for governor,” Ford speculated. “Sticky affair, threat of exposure, bad press. Wouldn’t be the first or last time a woman killed a political career.”

Charlie flicked the back of his fingers up the side of his neck. “Politicians,” he said in a tone that expressed contempt for the entire breed. “Still, he was a popular man around here, with most. He gave Buddy’s daddy a leg up in the plumbing business. Brought a lot of work to the valley. Buddy’s doing the work over there at the farm, isn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

“He did some back in Janet’s day, he and his daddy. Buddy had more hair and less gut in those days, and about ran the business by then, I guess. Been about your age, a little more, maybe.”

Ford filed that away, tried to wend his way back. “I guess back when there was only one school, all of you shared a lot of teachers. Like Brian, Matt, Shanna and I did. Mr. McGowan taught us all, and Matt’s little brother, Brian’s older sister. Back in elementary school, Mrs. Yates taught us to write. She always crabbed by my penmanship. I bet she’d be surprised by what I do today. Who taught you to write, Granddad?”

“God, that takes me back.” He smiled now, eyes going blurry with memory. “My mama started me off. We’d sit at the table and she’d have me trace over letters she made. I was right proud when I could write my own name. We all had Mrs. Macey for penmanship, and she’d mark me down for writing the way my mama taught me. Made me stay after school to write the alphabet on the board.”

“How long did she teach there?”

“Years before, years after. I thought she was old as the hills when I was six. I guess she wasn’t more than forty. Sure was a hard case.”

“Did you ever write her way?”

“Never did.” Charlie smiled, bit into a cookie. “My mama taught me just fine.”

Ford reported to Cilla under the blue umbrella, over a cold beer. “It’s not much. Shared teacher in the person of the per snickety Mrs. Macey. A lot of Morrow’s generation, and those coming up behind him, would’ve been taught to write by her. He was friendly with Hennessy, at least until he threw over Hennessy’s sister for the rich and snooty Jane. He put Key-stone Plumbing on the map, along with other businesses. He may or may not have had some shady dealings and/or extramarital affairs that prevented him from running for governor. He had friends in high places and you could say boosted friends into high places. Through the connection to him, some of them could have met your grandmother, and an affair could have followed.”

“The who you know and how you connect doesn’t run that different here than it does in Hollywood.” Or probably anywhere else, Cilla mused. “Buddy worked here when he was in his thirties? It’s a little hard to see Janet tumbling madly in love with a plumber, especially Buddy. Still, he’d have only been a few years younger than she was.”

“Can you picture Buddy writing phrases like ‘I place my heart, my soul, in your lovely hands’?”

“Really can’t. There are more connections between the then and the now than I realized, or appreciated. I may never know if there’s more to then than just the continuity of the place. The way it’s going, I may never know how, even if, what’s been happening here connects.”

“The Hennessy house is up for sale.” Ford laid a hand over hers. “I drove by after I saw my grandfather. Curtains are drawn, no car in the drive. Spanking-new Century 21 sign in the front yard.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, Cilla.”

“Maybe if she’s responsible for this morning, it was a final f uck-you.”

It didn’t play that way for Ford. The panels didn’t fit, and the images in them didn’t form true. He’d keep shifting them, he thought, changing, resizing, until he had not only the picture, but the whole story.

TWENTY-SEVEN

With a great deal of pleasure, Cilla hung her first kitchen cabinet.

“Looking good.” Thumbs hooked in his front pockets, Matt nodded approval. “The natural cherry’s going to work with the walnut trim.”

“Wait until we get the doors on. Things of beauty. So worth the wait. Guy’s an artist.”

She laid her level on the top, adjusted.

“It’s beautiful work, and a lot of it.” He scanned the space. “But we’ll get them in today. How long before the appliances are back?”

“Three weeks, maybe four. Maybe six. You know how it goes.”

“The old-timey stuff’s going to be great in here.” He winked at her as she stepped down off the ladder. “Don’t let Buddy tell you different.”

“It’ll give him something to complain about instead of my pot filler.” She ran her hand, lovingly, over the next cabinet. “Let’s get her up.”

“One second,” Matt said as his phone rang. He glanced at the display. “Hey, baby. What? When?”

The tone, the merging of the two words into one stream had Cilla looking over.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m on my way. Josie’s water broke,” he said, snapping his phone off. “I gotta go.” He lifted Cilla off her feet, a happy boost into the air.

“So this is what goes on around here all day,” Angie said as she came into the room.

Matt just grinned like an idiot. “Josie’s having the baby.”

“Oh! Oh! What’re you doing here?”

“Leaving.” He dropped Cilla back on her feet. “Call Ford, okay? He’ll pass the word. I’m sorry about—” He gestured toward the cabinets.

“Don’t worry about it.” Cilla gave him a two-handed shove. “Go! Go have a baby.”

“We’re having a girl. I’m getting me a daughter today.” He grabbed Angie on the way out, dipped her, kissed her, then swung her back up as he ran out of the room.

“Boy, talk about excellent timing.” With a laugh, Angie tapped her lips. “He gives good kiss. Wow, big, huge day. I need to call Suzanna, Josie’s younger sister. We’re friends. And another wow, look at all this!”

“Coming along. Look around if you want. I need to call Ford.”

While Cilla made the call, Angie poked around the kitchen, in the utility room and back out.

“Men are odd,” Cilla stated, hooking her phone back on her belt. “He said, ‘Cool. Got it. See ya.’ ”

“A man of few words.”

“Not usually.”

“Well, I’ll use some to say, Cilla, this all looks amazing.” Angie spread her arms. “Totally amazing. And how the hell do you know where to put all these cabinets?”

“Diagram.”

“Yeah, but you had to make the diagram. I have a hard time figuring out if I can move my bed from one place to the other in my room, and where the dresser could go if I did.”

“I had a hard time getting through a class, much less imagining teaching one the way you’re going to do. We all know what we know.”

“I guess we do. Well.” Angie gave a snappy salute. “Private McGowan, reporting for duty.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m here to paint. I could try to help you put these up now that Matt’s otherwise occupied. But I think you’ll be a lot happier with my painting skills than my cabinet-hanging ones. How do you hang them, anyway?” she wondered. “I mean, what holds them up? And never mind, I’d rather use a paintbrush.”

“Angie, you don’t have to—”

“I want to. Dad said they’ve finished scraping the old paint on the front and one of the sides, and they’ll be working on the back today. And if there was more help, we could get some of the primer on what’s been done. It’s my day off. I’m the more help.”

She tugged at the leg of her baggy white painter’s pants. “Look. I have the outfit.”

“As fetching as it is, I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

Angie’s face turned from teasing to solemn. “Are you ever going to think of me as a sister?”

“I do.” Fumbling, Cilla picked up her level. “Of course I do. I mean . . . we are sisters.”

“If that’s true, then let me say: Shut up, and show me the paint.” Her smile went sly. “Or I’ll tell Dad you’re being mean to me.”

Amusement came and went, but the quiet glow remained. “You’re a lot like him. The, ah, one who made us sisters.”

“I have only his good qualities. You, on the other hand—”

“The paint’s out in the barn. We can go out this way.” Cilla opened the back door. “Maybe I don’t like having a sister who’s younger than I am and has a cute little cheerleader body.”

“Maybe I don’t like having a sister who has a yard of leg and miles of perfect hair. But I’ve got a better ass.”

“You do not. My ass is famous.”

“Yeah, you showed enough of it in Terror At Deep Lake.”

“I did no ass work in that picture. I wore a bikini.” Holding back laughter, she stopped to pull out her keys, glanced over at the house. “Oh, damn it!”

Turning to look, Angie gaped at the sight of her father, three stories up, standing on scaffolding, scraping away.

“Dad! Get down from there!” They shouted it in unison. Gavin looked around, and down, then sent them a cheerful wave.

“I told him not to go up there. No scaffolding, no extension ladders.”

“He doesn’t listen, not when he’s decided to do something. He pretends to listen, then does what he was going to do anyway. Is it safe?” Angie asked, gripping Cilla’s arm. “I mean, it’s not going to fall over or collapse, is it?”

“No. But . . .”

“Then we’re not going to look. We’re going to get the paint. I’m going around to the front of the house, you’re going inside. Where we can’t see him up there. And we’re never, never going to tell my mother.”

“Okay.” Cilla deliberately turned away, then stuck the key in the padlock on the barn.

OLIVIA ROSE BREWSTER came into the world at 2:25 P.M.

“Matt’s floating,” Ford told Cilla as they drove to the hospital. “Passing out bubble-gum cigars with this dopey smile on his face. The kid’s pretty cute, got all this black hair. Ethan was bald as my uncle Edgar, but the girl, she’s already got a headful.”

“Uncle Ford seems pretty pleased, too.”

“It’s a kick. It’s a pretty big kick. Josie looked pretty whipped when I saw her, right after.”

“There’s a surprise. She should have looked camera ready after pushing eight pounds, five ounces out of her—”

“Okay, okay. No need for details.” He hunted up a parking space in the hospital’s lot. “I talked with Matt while you were cleaning up. He said they’re both doing great.”

“It’s nice to come back here for something happy.” She skimmed her gaze up to the Intensive Care floor.

“Have you talked to Shanna since she got back?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“She had a great time.” Ford took Cilla’s hand as they crossed the lot. “She said Steve’s looking good. Put some of the weight back on he lost, got what she called a Roman gladiator ’do going on. He’s only using the cane when he gets tired.”

Ford pulled open the heavy glass door.

“I’ve been e-mailing him pictures of the house. I need to take some of the kitchen cabinets. Gift shop. Presents for Mommy and baby.”

“I took her flowers already,” Ford objected, “and a big pink teddy bear.”

“Eight pounds, five ounces out of her—”

“Gift shop.”

Loaded down with flowers, Mylar balloons, a plush musical lamb and a stack of coloring books for the new big brother, they walked into the birthing suite.

Josie sat up in bed, in her arms the swaddled baby, a bright pink cap over her dark hair. Josie’s younger sister stood nearby, cooing over a tiny, frothy white dress, while Brian unwrapped a bubble-gum cigar and Matt snapped a picture of his wife and daughter.

“More visitors!” Josie beamed. “Cilla, you just missed your dad and Patty.”

“I came to see someone else.” She leaned over the bed. “Hello, Olivia. She’s beautiful, Josie. You do wonderful work.”

“Hey, she’s got my chin, and nose,” Matt claimed.

“And your big mouth. Do you want to hold her, Cilla?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Trade.” She put the lamb on the bed, took the baby. “Look at you. Look how pretty you are. How are you feeling, Josie?”

“Good. Really good. Only seven and a half hours of blood, sweat and tears with this one. Ethan took twice that.”

“Got some stuff here for big bro.” Ford set the coloring books on the foot of the bed.

“Oh, that’s so sweet! My parents just took him home for dinner. He looks so big, so sturdy. I can hardly . . . Oh, hormones still working,” she managed when her eyes filled.

“It’s a full house!” Cathy announced as she and Tom came in with a bouquet of pink roses and baby’s breath. “Let me see that beautiful baby.”

Cilla turned obligingly.

“Oh, look at all that hair. Tom, just look at this sweet thing.”

“Pretty as a picture.” Tom set the flowers down among the garden of others, then poked Brian in the shoulder. “When are you going to get busy making us one? Matt’s got two up on you now. You, too, Ford.”

“Slackers,” Josie agreed, and held out her arms for Olivia.

“I have such high standards,” Brian said. “I can’t settle for any woman who isn’t as perfect as Mom.”

“That’s a clever way out of it,” Cathy commented, but she beamed with pleasure as she stepped over to kiss Brian’s cheek. She turned and kissed Matt. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. We figured we had another week. When Josie called this morning, I figured it was to remind me to bring her home a caramel coconut sundae. She’s been eating mountains of them.”

“I have, too!” Josie said with a laugh.

“It was peanut brittle for me. Acres of peanut brittle. I’m lucky I have a tooth left in my head.”

“Never touched it again after Brian was born,” Tom commented.

“It’ll probably be a good long while before I can look at coconut.” Josie stroked Olivia’s cheek. “Thank God I didn’t go another week.”

“And now you’ll be able to show off the baby at Cilla’s party. We’re all looking forward to that,” Cathy added. “I guess you could say the house is your baby.”

“Without the pink teddy bear and pretty white dresses,” Cilla agreed.

Matt passed out more cigars. “I had to bail out today. We’d just started installing the kitchen cabinets. How’s it going?”

“We just have to set the island, put on the doors, the hardware. We’ll be ready for the counters, on schedule.”

“I’m going to have a powwow with Patty and Ford’s mother. And if you sweet-talk him,” Cathy told Cilla, “Tom might make his special ribs.”

Cilla smiled. “What makes them special?”

“It’s all in the rub,” Tom claimed. “Family secret.”

“He won’t even give me the recipe.”

“It passes down only through the bloodline. Many have tried to unlock the secret. None have succeeded. We’ve got to be on our way, Cathy.”

“Meeting friends for dinner. You get some rest, Josie. I’ll pop in to see you and that precious baby tomorrow when I’m here.”

It took several more minutes for the leave-taking, especially when other people came in. By the time Cilla and Ford walked out, she had a bubble-gum cigar in her pocket.

“It’s nice that your parents—yours, Brian’s, Matt’s—take such an interest in all of you. It’s almost tribal.”

“We grew up practically joined at the hip, along with Shanna. Her parents split about ten years ago. They both remarried and moved out of the area.”

“Still, three out of four sticking with it. Well above national average. They looked so happy. Matt and Josie. Little beams of happiness shooting out of their eyes. How long have they been married?”

“About six years, I guess. But they’ve had a thing a lot longer. Listen, if you want to stop and have dinner, that’s okay.” His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. “But I’d kind of like to get home.”

“No, I’m fine. Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong.” Except a rampant case of nerves, he realized. And the sudden and inescapable understanding that he needed to take the next step, make the next move.

Ready or not, he thought. Here it comes.

HE POURED two glasses of wine, brought them out to the veranda where she sat rubbing Spock with her foot and studying the house across the road.

“The coat of primer on the front of the first story, on the veranda, doesn’t add style. But it’s clean. And it shows care and intent. It was the oddest thing, Ford, the oddest thing. To be working with one of Matt’s crew on the cabinets, knowing my father was out back scraping old paint, and Angie was out front priming for new. Then Patty shows up at lunchtime with a bunch of subs and sides. Before they were fully devoured, she has a paintbrush in her hand.

“I didn’t know what to think of it, what to make of it.”

“Family pitches in.”

“That’s just it. For basically the first half of my life, family was an illusion. A stage set. I used to dream about my mother when I was a kid. Those lucid, conversational dreams I get. But she was on that set, part of that illusion, a combination of her and Lydia—the actress who played Katie’s mother.”

“Seems pretty much normal to me, given the circumstances.”

“My therapist said my subconscious merged them because I was unhappy with the reality. Big duh, and it was more complicated than that. I wanted pieces of both those worlds. But I was me in them, not Katie. I was Cilla. Katie had her family, for eight seasons anyway.”

“And Cilla didn’t.”

“It was a different kind of structure.” A shaky one, she thought now. “Later, I stepped away from it. I had to. And coming here, I stepped out again. It’s strange trying to figure out how to blend in, or catch up, or sign on with family at this stage.”

“Be mine.”

“What?”

“Be my family.” He set the ring box on the table between them. “Marry me.”

For an instant she wasn’t capable of thought or speech, as if she’d taken a sudden, shocking blow to the head. “Oh my God, Ford.”

“It’s not a poisonous insect,” he said when she snatched her hands away. “Open it.”

“Ford.”

“Open it, Cilla. You’re not supposed to piss a guy off when he’s proposing. Thrill or crush, but not piss off.”

When she hesitated, Spock grumbled at her, and bumped his head into her shin.

“Just open it.”

She did, and in the soft dusk the ring gleamed like dreams. Lucid, lovely dreams.

“You don’t wear jewelry much, and when you do, you don’t go for the flash. You go more subtle, more classy.” He felt that thing in his chest again, the hot rock of pressure he’d experienced with her father in the kitchen. “So I figure, you’re not going to impress the girl with a big, fat rock. Plus you work with your hands, and that has to be considered. So having the diamonds set in instead of sticking up made sense. My mother helped me pick it out a few days ago.”

Yet another layer of panic coated her throat. “Your mother.”

“She’s a woman. It’s the first ring I’ve bought for a woman, so I wanted some input. I liked the idea of the three stones. The past, the right now, the future. We’ve got our yesterdays, we’ve got our right now. I want a future with you. I love you.”

“It’s beautiful, Ford. It’s absolutely beautiful. And the thought behind it makes it more so. I’m such a bad bet.” She reached over, took his hands. “Even the idea of marriage freezes me up. I don’t have the foundation for it. Look at what we were just talking about. You have two parents, with one marriage between them. You believe. I have two parents, with seven. Seven marriages between them. How can I believe?”

Strange, he thought, that her nerves, her fears and doubts dissolved the thing in his chest. “That’s bogus, Cilla. That’s not you and me. Do you love me?”

“Ford—”

“It’s not that hard a question. It’s pretty much yes or no.”

“It’s simple for you. You can say yes, and it’s simple. I can say yes. Yes, I love you, and it’s incredibly scary. People love, and it falls apart.”

“Yeah. And people love and it stays whole. It’s just another step, Cilla. The next step.”

“And this is meandering? Isn’t that what you called it?”

“I picked up the pace. That doesn’t mean I can’t wait.” Ford closed the box, nudged it toward her. “Take it. Keep it. Think about it.”

She stared at the box. “You think I won’t be able to resist opening it, looking at it. That I’ll fall under its spell.”

He smiled. No wonder he loved her. “Dare you.”

She closed her hands over the box and, breathing slowly, pushed it into her pocket. “I’m a has-been actress with a history of alcohol, drug abuse and suicide in my family. I don’t know why in hell you’d want me.”

“I must be crazy.” He lifted her hand, kissed it. In the spirit of the moment, Spock kissed her ankle. “Every few days, I’m going to just say, ‘Well?’ When I do, you can give me your current position on my proposal.”

“The key word is ‘well’?”

“That’s right. Otherwise, I won’t bring it up. You just carry the ring around, and you think about it. Deal?”

“All right,” she said after a moment. “All right.”

He picked up his glass, tapped it to hers. “Why don’t we call out for Chinese?”

At their feet Spock did a happy dance.

SHE DIDN’T KNOW how he did it, she honestly didn’t know. The man had proposed to her. He’d presented her with a ring so utterly perfect for her, so completely right, because he’d thought of her. Of who and what she was when he’d chosen it. Her reaction, her reluctance—be honest, Cilla, she added, while screwing the copper knobs on her cabinets—her stuttering horror at his proposal had to have hurt him.

And yet, after he’d said his piece, after he’d made his deal, he’d ordered butterfly shrimp and kung pao chicken. He’d eaten as if his stomach hadn’t been in knots—as hers had been—then had suggested unwinding with the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (short season, summer replacement).

And sometime during episode three, just as she’d begun to relax enough to think about something other than the ring in her pocket, he’d taken her under with slow, shimmering kisses, with lazy, lingering caresses. By the time she’d come out of the sexual haze, the ring was All she could think about.

Nearly twelve hours later, and she still couldn’t get the damn thing off her mind.

She didn’t believe in marriage. Simple as that. Even living together was fraught with pitfalls. For God’s sake, she’d barely gotten used to him telling her he loved her, to believing it. She hadn’t finished her house, or opened her business. She’d gotten as far as she had while being harassed for months.

Didn’t she have enough on her mind? Didn’t she have enough to do without having an engagement ring weighing down her pocket, and the worry of not knowing when Ford might say, “Well?” preying on her mind?

“Hello?”

“Cilla?”

At the voices, Cilla simply banged her head repeatedly on the cabinet door. Perfect, she thought, just perfect. Patty and Ford’s mother. Icing on her crumbling cake.

“Here you are,” Patty said. “Hard at work.”

Cilla watched as two pairs of eyes zoomed straight in on the third finger of her left hand. And watched two pairs of eyes cloud with disappointment. Great, now she was responsible for bringing sorrow into the lives of two middle-aged women.

“We were hoping you’d have a few minutes to talk about the menu for the party,” Patty began. “We thought we could do at least some of the shopping for you, store the supplies since you don’t have a place for them yet.”

You were hoping for more than that, Cilla thought. “Let’s get this out of the way. Yes, he asked me. Yes, the ring is absolutely beautiful. No, I’m not wearing it. I can’t.”

“It doesn’t fit?” Penny asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t think about it. I can’t not think about it. It was damn sneaky of him,” she added with some heat. “I appreciate—No, I don’t just appreciate the two of you coming here like this, but I’m trying to understand why you would. I’ve got enough on my mind already, enough on my head, and he adds this. I don’t even know if he listened to what I said, if he’s getting the reasons why . . .” She trailed off.

He doesn’t listen, Angie had said of their father, not when he’s decided to do something. He pretends to listen, then does what he was going to do anyway.

“Oh, God. God, isn’t that perfect? He’s Dad. He’s Dad with a layer of nerd. Solid, steady, chipping away so patiently, you don’t even know you’ve had your shields hacked down until you’re defenseless. It’s the type.”

“You’re not in love with a type, you’re in love with a man,” Penny corrected. “Or you’re not.”

Ford’s mother, Cilla reminded herself. Be careful there. “I love him enough to give him time to consider all the reasons this won’t work. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Of course you’ll hurt him. He’ll hurt you. It’s all part of being connected to someone. I wouldn’t want a man I couldn’t hurt. I sure as hell wouldn’t marry one who couldn’t hurt me.”

Baffled, Cilla stared at Penny. “That makes absolutely no sense to me.”

“If and when it does, I think you’ll be ready to see if the ring fits. I think your cabinets are beautiful, and they’re giving me cabinet lust. Why don’t we find somewhere to sit down, go over this menu for a few minutes. Then we’ll get out of your way.”

Cilla sighed. “Maybe he’s not so much my father’s type. Maybe he’s you.”

“No, indeed. I’ve always been so much meaner than Ford. Let’s sit out there.” Penny pointed out the window. “Under that blue umbrella.”

When Penny sailed out, Patty stepped closer to slip an arm around Cilla’s waist. “She loves her boy. She wants him happy.”

“I know. So do I.”

MAYBE SHE SHOULD make a list, Cilla considered. Reasons for and reasons against taking the ring out of the box. She depended on lists, diagrams, drawings in every other area of her life. Surely it made sense to utilize one before making such a huge decision.

The against list would be the easy part, she thought as she scooped up some post-workout, pre-workday Special K. She could probably fill pages with those items. She could, in fact, write a freaking book, as many others had, on the Hardy women.

To be fair, there were a number for the pro side. But weren’t they primarily, even exclusively, emotion-driven? And weren’t her emotions twisted up with nerves because she was waiting—as he damn well knew—for him to stroll up to her at any point in any day and say, “Well?”

Which he hadn’t, not once, in days.

So she jumped, nearly bobbled her bowl of cereal, when he strolled in.

“Too much coffee?” he suggested, and poured himself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Spock dashed straight in to attack his dog feeder. “How do you eat that stuff? It looks like little twigs.”

“As opposed to your choice, the vehicle for sugar?”

“Exactly.”

Not only up at six in the morning, she thought, but cheerful and bright-eyed. And she knew he’d worked late. But he was up, dressed and eating Frosted Flakes because he insisted on walking her across the road, hanging out until some of the crew arrived.

Would that sort of thing go on the for or against list?

“You know I’m not going to be attacked crossing the road at six-thirty in the morning.”

“Odds are against it.” He smiled, ate.

“And I know you worked late last night, and find it unnatural to be up at this hour of the morning.”

“Had a good run, too. You know, I’m finding that I can get a lot done by round-about noon most days with this routine. A habit which I intend to shed like a bad suit in what I hope is the near future. But right now?” He paused to shovel in more Tony the Tiger. “It’s working. I should have ten chapters fully inked by the end of today and have time to put a couple of new teaser panels up on my website.”

“Happy to help, but—”

“You’re looking for the negative. I like that about you because it pushes me to look on the brighter side of things—sides I might’ve missed or taken for granted otherwise. You remind me I love what I do. And loving what I do, it’s interesting to do more of it than usual for a space of time. And to pay us both back for all this industry, I’ll be taking us to the Caymans—a favorite place of mine—right about the middle of January, where we’ll soak up sea and sand while our neighbors are shoveling snow.”

“I’ll be finishing up two flips. I—”

“You’ll have to make time in your schedule. We can always bump sun and sea to February. I’m easy.”

“Not nearly as much as you pretend to be.” She opened the dishwasher to load in her bowl, spoon, mug. “You’re a slow leak, Ford.”

His eyes continued to smile as he scooped up cereal. “Is that what I am?”

“A slow leak, unchecked, eventually eats through just about anything. Stone, metal, wood. It doesn’t make much noise, and it’s a long way from the big gushing flood. But it gets the job done.”

He shook his spoon at her. “I’m going to take that as a compliment. Kitchen counter’s coming in today, right?”

“This morning. Then Buddy’s on for the finish plumbing this afternoon.”

He tucked his breakfast dishes in with hers. “Big day. Let’s get started. Walk!” he said, lifting his voice, and Spock raced in to run in circles.

She walked out with them, then stopped just to look at the Little Farm. Summer thrived over the grounds, lushly green. The big red barn stood, its practical lines softened by the curve of the stone wall, the textures of the plantings. She could see a hint of the pond, with the last vapors of dawn still rising, with the graceful bow of a young willow dipping. Back to the fields, wild with thistle and goldenrod, back to the mountains stretched across the morning sky.

And the house, the centerpiece, rambling and sturdy, with its white veranda, and its front wall half painted in warm and dignified blue.

“I’m glad my father talked me into painting the exterior ahead of schedule. I had no idea how much satisfaction it would give me to see it. When the painting’s finished, it’ll be like a strong old character actress after a really good face-lift.”

She laughed, the mood lightened, and she took his hand as they walked. “One that allows her to maintain her dignity and personal style.”

“I guess that’s apt enough, considering all the cutting and stitching that went into it so far. But I don’t get the whole face-lift thing.”

“It’s just another kind of maintenance.”

Alarm literally vibrated out of him. “You wouldn’t ever . . .”

“Who knows?” She shrugged. “I’m vain enough to want things to stay put, or have them shored up when they sag. My mother’s had two already, in addition to other work.” Amused by the stunned horror in his eyes, she gave him a nudge. “A lot of men have work done, too.”

“You can put that one away. Deeply buried in a remote location. Are you mailing something out?” He nodded toward her mailbox and the raised red flag.

“No. That’s funny. I didn’t stick anything in there after yesterday’s delivery. Maybe one of the guys did.”

“Or someone put something in it for you. Not supposed to. Mail carrier doesn’t like it.” He veered over, reached for the lid.

“Wait! Don’t!” She grabbed his hand while her heart leaped up to pound in her throat. Beside them, Spock quivered and growled at the alarm in her tone. “Rattlesnake in the mailbox. It’s shorthand for the unexpected—an unpleasant, dangerous surprise.”

“I know what it is. Code name for the season-three finale of Lost. Well . . . keep back some.”

“Wait until I—”

But he didn’t wait. Instead, he shifted his body, putting it between Cilla and the box, then yanked the lid down.

No snake coiled and hissed inside. None struck out and slithered down the pole. The doll sat, her arms lifted as if in defense. The bright blue eyes were open, and the smile frozen on Cilla’s young face. The bullet left a small, scorched hole in the center of the forehead.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Enough was enough, Ford decided. The cops had the doll; the cops would investigate. And so far, the cops hadn’t been able to do dick-all about stopping the threats against Cilla.

They weren’t pranks, they weren’t harassment. They were threats.

Dusting the damn doll and the mailbox, asking questions, even determining—if they could—what caliber of bullet had been used wasn’t going to solve the problem. None of those things would prevent that look of shocked horror from covering Cilla’s face the next time.

Everyone knew there’d be a next time. And the next time, at any time, it could be Cilla instead of a doll.

Yeah, enough was more than enough.

He pulled up in front of the Hennessy place. It was somewhere to start, he thought. Maybe it was somewhere to finish. He walked up, banged on the door.

“Wasting your time.” A woman under an enormous straw gardening hat walked over to stand at the picket fence that formed the boundary between houses. “Nobody’s in there.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Everybody knows where he is. Locked up.” She tapped her temple under the brim of the hat, then circled it. “Tried to kill a woman over on Meadowbrook Road a couple months back. Janet Hardy’s granddaughter—the one who was the little girl in that TV show? You want to talk to him, you’ll have to try Central State Hospital, down in Petersburg.”

“What about Mrs. Hennessy?”

“Haven’t seen a sign of her the last couple weeks. Selling the place, as you can see there.” She pointed to the Century 21 sign, then slipped a small pair of clippers into a pocket of her gardening belt. Settling in, Ford knew, for a little over-the-fence chat.

“She’s had a hard life. Her boy was crippled back when he was a teenager. Died a year or so ago. That husband of hers never had a good word to say to anybody around here. Shouting or shaking his fist at kids for playing too loud, or telling people to mind their own if they offered a helping hand. Me, I’d’ve left him after the boy died, but she stuck. Could be she’s taken off now he’s locked up, but more likely, she’s gone down to Petersburg. Don’t know if anybody’s looked at the house yet. I’m going to hope somebody buys it who knows how to be neighborly.”

It was a haul to Petersburg and back, Ford considered. “I guess you’d have noticed if she moved out. I mean, furniture, luggage.”

“Might have, if I was home.” She gave Ford a harder measure from under the wide brim of her hat. “You’re not kin to them, are you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, I can tell you I haven’t seen her or heard a peep out of the house for days now. In fact, I’ve taken to watering what flowers she put in. I can’t stand to watch something die of neglect.”

CILLA TRIED to take a page out of Ford’s book and look at the bright side. The bright side could be that a defaced doll in the mailbox did no damage to her property. It cost her nothing but time and stress.

A bright side could be the police took the whole ugly business very seriously. True, they’d had no luck tracing any of the dolls so far, not when they were sold regularly on eBay or in secondhand and specialty shops, or could have been taken out of someone’s personal collection. But it brought her a measure of comfort to know the police were doing whatever the hell the police did.

And her crew was pissed off on her behalf. Having people in your corner, even if it was only to express outrage and support, was always a bright side.

Plus her new countertops and backsplash kicked serious ass. That knocked her level of stress down several notches. The streaks and specks of warm gold, flecks of black and white against rich chocolate brown set off her cabinets. And, Jesus, her copper hardware would just pop. She’d been right, so absolutely right, to go for the waterfall edging. She couldn’t believe how long and hard she’d stressed over that. It gave the counters such presence, such authority.

Cilla ran her hand over the island as she might a lover’s warm, naked flesh, and all but purred.

“Pretty dark, especially with this half acre of the stuff you’ve got in here.”

Cilla merely looked over, tipped her head and spoke in the tone she’d use to a naughty little boy. “Buddy.”

His lips twisted, but the attempt to defeat the smile failed. “I guess it looks all right. Cabinets are nice, anyway. Got a forest of them in here, but having the glass fronts on some breaks it up a little. I’ll get your sinks mounted. Be back tomorrow after they’ve cured to hook up the plumbing, the dishwasher and the faucets. Don’t know why anybody’d want copper for faucets.”

“I’m just crazy that way.”

“Crazy some way. Are you going to help me mount these sinks, or just stand around looking like the canary-eating cat?”

While they worked on the first undermount, Buddy whistled through his teeth. A few bars in, Cilla caught herself humming with him.

“ ‘I’ll Get By,’ ” Cilla said. “My grandmother’s signature song.”

“Guess the mind wanders to her in here. Got that clamp on there?”

“It’s on.”

“Let’s test the fit then. Second time I put a sink in this place.”

“Really?”

“Put in the one you’re replacing for your grandmother. That’s been going on forty, forty-five years, I expect. Probably time for a new. That’s right, that’s right,” he murmured. “That’s a good fit. That’s a good one.” He marked the location for the mounting clips.

“Let’s lift her out.”

Cilla gripped the two-by-four clamped to the sink. “You and your father did a lot of the work around here back then.”

“Still got plenty.”

“You did a lot for Andrew Morrow.”

“That’s a fact. We did all the plumbing for Skyline Development. Thirty-three houses,” he said, taking out his drill.

“That job made it so I could buy one of those houses. Lived there thirty-seven years come October. A lot of people got their homes because of Drew Morrow. I’ve fixed the johns in most of them.”

AFTER THE TWO sinks were mounted, Cilla went outside to hunt up her father. She’d kept him off the scaffolding that morning, conning him into “doing her a favor” and painting her shutters.

It looked as if he was having as much fun running the paint sprayer as he had hanging up three stories. “Take a break?” she asked and offered a bottle of water.

“Sure can.” He gave her arm a quick rub. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better since I got to work. Better yet when I stand staring at my counters with a big, sloppy smile on my face. Something occurred to me when I was working with Buddy. How he and his father did some work here. Dobby did, too. I’m wondering who else who’s working here now, or who I didn’t hire, or who’s retired, might’ve worked on the place when Janet had it. Maybe they’re pissed off because I’m changing it. It’s no crazier than Hennessy trying to run me down for something that happened before I was born.”

“I’d have to think about it. I was a teenager, Cilla. I can’t say I’d have paid much attention.”

He took off his hat, ran a hand through his hair. “There were gardeners, of course. The grounds were a showplace. I’ll ask Charlie if he remembers who she had for that. I do remember she had what you’d call caretakers. A couple who’d look after things when she wasn’t here, which was more than not. They’d open the house up when she was expected, that sort of thing. Mr. and Mrs. Jorganson. They’ve both been gone for years.”

“What about carpentry, electrical, painting?”

“Maybe Carl Kroger. He did a lot of handyman work back then. I’ll ask about that, but I know he retired some years ago. Florida maybe. I only remember that because I went to school with his daughter, and I ended up teaching her daughter. I can’t see Mary Beth Kroger—that’s Marks, now—giving you this kind of trouble.”

“It’s probably a stupid idea. Just another straw grasped at.”

“Cilla, I don’t mean to make it worse, or give you more to worry about, but have you considered that whoever’s doing this has a grudge directed at you? You, not Janet Hardy’s granddaughter?”

“For what? I’m a former child star, a failed adult actress who recorded a couple of moderately successful CDs. My only ties to this area were to her, and you. You, Patty and Angie were literally the only people I knew when I came here. And let’s be honest, I didn’t know any of you that well. I’ve dumped a few hundred thousand into the local economy. I can’t see how that would piss anyone off.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s the dolls. It’s such a direct strike at you. More than the vandalism, Cilla. Mutilating those dolls, the child you were, seems so much more personal than the rest.”

She studied him. “Are you here to paint, or to keep an eye on me?”

“I can do both. At least until school starts up. The summer’s flown by,” he said, looking past her. “I’ll miss being around here, the way I’ve been able to. We’ve made a lot of progress since June.”

You And I. She understood the words he didn’t say. “We have. Despite everything, it’s been the best summer of my life.”

FORD WATCHED WHILE Cilla hung shutters her father had painted on the front windows. The scent of the paint hung in the air, along with grass, heat and the dianthus in a big blue pot on the veranda.

“I just want to finish this off. You don’t have to hover.”

“I’m not hovering. I’m observing. There’s something satisfying about sitting on a summer day and watching somebody else work.”

She spared him a glance as he sat, at ease. “You know, I could teach you how to set a few screws.”

“Why would I need to do that when I’ve got you?”

“I’ll ignore that since you bought me that very pretty planter. And the steaks you’ve promised to grill—on the grill I assembled.”

“Corn on the cob, too, and tomatoes fresh from the roadside stand. We’ll have ourselves a feast.”

She tested the shutter, checked it with her level, then moved to the next.

“Before we move to feasting,” he continued, “let’s get less pleasant business out of the way. I went by the Hennessy place this morning. She’s not there,” he added when Cilla glanced back. “Hasn’t been there, according to her neighbor, for a couple of weeks. One supposition is she went down to Petersburg, to be close to the state hospital where they have him. That’s proved out.”

“How do you know?”

“I called the most likely hotels and motels in the area. She’s registered at the Holiday Inn Express.”

“Aren’t you the clever detective?” she replied.

“Taught the Seeker everything he knows. Or vice versa. Anyway, I considered driving down, but it struck me as a waste of time. It’s better than a hundred miles one way, Cilla. It’s hard to believe she’d drive more than two hundred miles, in what had to be the middle of the night, to pose a doll she’d shot in the damn head in your mailbox. If she wanted to get at you, why move herself so far off when she’s got a house twenty minutes away?”

He knew how to put things together, Cilla thought. Into panels that followed a logical line. “I hate that that’s realistic, that it rings true for me. Because it would be easier, simpler, if it was her. If I can’t believe that, I have to know it’s someone else. That someone else hates me.”

She tipped back her cap, idly watched Spock stalking one of his cats in the front yard. “I’m looking at Buddy today because he’s whistling one of my grandmother’s songs, and I’m thinking, Hey, Buddy, did you happen to start a mad, passionate affair with my grandmother one night when you came by to fix a leak? Or, did she maybe reject your advances in a way that causes you to want to hurt me? I went through that same process with Dobby, who is, yes, entirely too old. But he had a son, and his son has a son. And I was just twisted up enough today to wonder if the very affable Jack was spending time shooting my plastic image because of something—anything—that went on with Janet three and a half decades ago. Or maybe my father had a point, and someone took a vicious and pathological dislike to Katie, and seeks to take revenge on me.”

“Your father thinks you’re being threatened by somebody who hates a TV character?”

“No. Not exactly. He suggested whoever’s doing this has some grudge against me, personally. But that doesn’t make any sense, either.” She sighed, lowered the screwdriver. “And because it doesn’t make any sense, none of it, I keep going around in circles, which leaves me dizzy and annoyed. Added to that, I’m going to have dozens of people here in a few days. And I know I’m going to be wondering, even as I pass the potato salad, if that person’s the one. If the person looking at me and smiling, thanking me kindly for the potato salad, would like to shoot me in the head.”

He pushed up, walked to her. “I may have gotten my ass kicked with some regularity as a boy, but that—as my mother liked to say—builds character. The kind of character that means I can say to you, and you can believe me when I say it, nobody, Cilla, nobody is going to hurt you while I’m around.”

“Keeping me from being hurt hasn’t been anyone’s priority up till now. Because of that, I do believe you. I feel safer with you, Ford, than I ever have with anyone.”

He kissed her very gently, eased back and said, “Well?”

“Oh, damn it! I walked right into it. I gave you a damn cue.” She pulled away, picked up her screwdriver. “Look, it’s been a really long day. I just don’t want to get into this now.”

He simply put a hand under her chin, lifted it until their eyes met.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t made the lists yet.”

He rubbed his thumb over her jawline. “What lists would that be?”

“My lists, for and against. And if you’re going to push at this point, I’ll warn you that I can rattle off a ten-minute monologue of the againsts. The ones I’ve already given you and more.”

“Give me one of the fors.” He tightened his grip when she shook her head. “Just one.”

“You love me. I know that you do, I know that you mean it. But they call it ‘falling into’ for a reason. It’s the floundering around after you surface, the wondering what the hell you’re doing there and looking for the escape that make the falling-out-of part so horrible. And it’s not a practical for,” she insisted, when he just smiled and rubbed her jawline. “One of us has to be practical. What if I said yes, yes, let’s run off to Vegas—as both my grandmother and mother have done before me—and hit The Chapel of Love? What—”

“I’d say you pack, I’ll book the flight.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” She tried to be annoyed, but nerves kept jumping in the way. “You don’t want some tacky Vegas fly-by. You’re serious. You’re serious about friendships, about your work, your family. You’re serious about Star Wars, and your active dislike of Jar Jar Binks—”

“Well, God. Come on, anyone who—”

“You’re serious,” she continued before he went on a Jar Jar rant, “about living your life on your terms, and being easygoing doesn’t negate that one bit. You’re serious about what kind of kryptonite is more lethal to Superman.”

“You have to go with the classic green. I told you, the gold can strip Kryptonians’ powers permanently, but—”

“Ford.”

“Sorry. We’ll skip that and go back to Vegas.”

“We’re not going to Vegas. God, you make my head spin. You’re not thinking of a single practicality, of the reality.”

“Test the theory. Give me one.”

“Fine. Fine. Where would we live? Do we flip a coin, ask your Magic 8-Ball. Or maybe we’d—”

“Well, for God’s sake, Cilla, we’d live here. Here,” he repeated, knocking his knuckles against the wall of the house.

His instant answer tipped her off balance. “What about your house? You love your house. It’s a great house. It’s tailor-made for you.”

“Yeah, for me. Not for us. Sure, I love my house, and it’s got a lot of me in it. But it’s just a house for me, and Spock.” He glanced around in time to see Spock catch and destroy the hated invisible cat. “He’s happy anywhere. I haven’t poured myself into my place the way you have this one. This is home for you, Cilla. I’ve watched you make it.” Now he picked up her screwdriver. “With more than this. A lot more than tools and nails and gallons of paint. It’s your place. I want it to be ours.”

“But . . .” But, but, her mind was full of buts. “What about your studio?”

“Yeah, it’s a great space. You’ll think of something.” He handed her back the screwdriver. “Make all the lists you want, Cilla. Love? It’s green kryptonite. It powers out all the rest. I’ll go out back and start the grill.”

She stood, stunned, a power tool in her hand, as the screen door slapped shut behind him. And thought: What? Love is kryptonite? She’d think of something?

How could she understand, much less marry, a man whose mind worked that way? One who could make statements like that, then stroll off to start the grill? Where were his anger, his angst, his annoyance? And to suggest he could give up his place and move into hers without any real thought to where he’d work? It didn’t make any sense. It made no sense at all.

Of course if she added the home gym off the south side of the house the way she’d been toying with, she could put on a second story, tying that into the existing house. Angle it for a little interest. Tight-winder stairs would work, and be fun to do. It would keep the work spaces entirely separate, give them both privacy. Plus the southern exposure would give a studio excellent light. Then she could . . .

Well, God, she realized. She’d thought of something. A damn good something, too, she added and put down her tool to pace the veranda. Having destroyed his quota, Spock trotted up to pace with her.

The sort of something that would not only work, not only blend in with the existing structure, Cilla realized, but enhance it. Break up the roof line, finish it off with a sweet little balcony. Jib windows for access.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! Now she could see it. Now she wanted it.

She stalked down the steps, around to the south side of the house with Spock bounding happily behind her. Oh yeah, yeah, not only doable, she thought, but it now seemed the house begged for it.

She jammed her hands into her pockets, and her fingers hit the ring box she carried there. Kryptonite, she thought, pulling it out. That was the trouble, the big trouble. She did understand him. And more terrifying, more wonderful, he understood her.

Trusted her. Loved her. Believed in her.

WHEN SHE WALKED to the patio, Ford had the grill smoking. The ears of corn, husks in place, were submerged in a big bowl of water for reasons that eluded her. He’d brought out the wine. The scents of roses, sweet peas, jasmine tangled in the air as he poured her a glass. Sun streamed through the trees, glinted off the pond where Spock wandered to drink.

For a moment, she thought of the glamour that had once lived there, the colored lights, the beautiful people wafting like perfume over the lawns. Then she thought of him, just him, standing on stones she’d helped place with her own hands, offering her a glass of wine, and a life she’d never believed she could have.

She stood with him, one hand in her pocket, and took the first sip. “I have some questions. First, just to get it off my mind, why are you drowning the corn?”

“My mother said to.”

“Okay. If I thought of something, how do you know it’s something you’d want?”

“If I didn’t,” he said, picking up the conversation as if there had been no break, “I know how to say I don’t want that. I learned how to do that at an early age, with mixed results. But the odds are, if we’re talking about construction and design, whatever you thought of would work.”

“Next. Could I hurt you?”

“Cilla, you could rip my heart out in bloody pieces.”

She understood that, understood he could do the same to her. And wasn’t that a hell of a thing? Wasn’t that a miracle? “I couldn’t have done that to Steve, or him to me. As much as we loved each other. As much as we still do.”

“Cilla—”

“Wait. One more question. Did you ask me to carry the ring around with me because you hoped it would act as kryptonite, and weaken me over time until I agreed to marry you?”

He shifted his feet, took another drink of wine. “It might have been a factor.”

With a nod, she drew her hand out of her pocket, studied the ring sparkling on it. “Apparently, it works.”

His grin flashed, quicksilver delight. But when he moved to her, she slapped a hand on his chest. “Just hold on.”

“That was my plan.”

“Wait. Wait,” she said again, softly. “Everything I said before, it’s true. I’d made up my mind never to get married again. Why go through the process when the odds are so stacked for failure? I failed a lot. Some was my fault, some was just the way it was. Marriage seemed so unnecessary, so hard, so full of tangles that can never really be fully unknotted. It was easy with Steve. We were friends, and we’d always be friends. As much as I love him, it was never hard or scary. There wasn’t any risk, for either of us.”

Her throat filled, so much emotion rising up. But she wanted—needed—to get the rest out. “It’s not like that with you because we’re going to hurt each other along the way. If this screws up, we won’t be friends. If this screws up, I’ll hate you every day for the rest of my life.”

“I’ll hate you more.”

“Why is that absolutely the best thing you could’ve said? We’re not going to Vegas.”

“Okay, but I think we’re missing a real opportunity. How do you feel about backyard weddings?”

“I feel that’s what you had in mind all along.”

“You’re what I had in mind all along.”

She shook her head, then laid her hands on his cheeks. “I’d love a backyard wedding. I’d love to share this house with you. I don’t know how anything that scares me this much can make me so happy.”

He took her lips with his, soft, soft, spinning the kiss out in the perfumed air, with the sun streaming through the trees. “I believe in us.” He kissed her again, swayed with her. “You’re the one I can dance with.”

She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes.

THE LITTLE FARM 1973

“I believed in love,” Janet said as she sat back on the white silk pillows on the lipstick-pink couch. “Why else would I have thrown myself into it so often? It never lasted, and my heart would break, or close. But I never stopped opening it again. Again and again. You know that. You’ve read all the books, heard all the stories, and the letters. You have the letters so you know I loved, right to the end.”

“It never made you happy. Not the kind that lasted.” Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Cilla sorted through photographs. “Here’s one taken the day you married Frankie Bennett. You’re so young, so happy. And it fell apart.”

“He wanted the star more than the woman. That was a lesson I had to learn. But he gave me Johnnie. My beautiful boy. Johnnie’s gone now. I lost my beautiful boy. It’s been a year, and still I wait for him to come home. Maybe this one will be a boy.”

She laid a hand on her belly, picked up a short glass, rattled the ice chilling the vodka.

“You shouldn’t drink while you’re pregnant.”

Janet jerked a shoulder, sipped. “They didn’t make such a to-do about it when I was. Besides, I’ll be dead soon anyway. What will you do with all those pictures?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ll pick the ones I like best, have them framed. I want pictures of you in the house. Especially pictures of you at the farm. You were happy here.”

“Some of my happiest moments, some of my most desolate. I gave Carlos—Chavez, my third husband—his walking papers right in this room. We had a vicious fight, almost passionate enough to have me consider taking him back. But I’d had enough. How he hated it here. ‘Janet,’ he’d say in that Spanish toreador’s voice that seduced me in the first place, ‘why must we camp out in the middle of nowhere? There isn’t a decent restaurant for miles.’ Carlos,” she added and lifted her glass, “he could make love like a king. But outside of bed, he bored me brainless. The problem there was we didn’t spend enough time outside of bed before I married him. Sex is no reason to get married.”

“Ford never bores me. He made me a goddess, and still when he looks at me, he sees me. Too many of them didn’t see you.”

“I stopped seeing me.”

“But in the letters, the letters you kept, he called you Trudy.”

“The last love, the last chance. I couldn’t know. Yet maybe some part of me did. Maybe I wanted to love and be loved by what I’d lost, or given up. For a little while, I could be Trudy again.” She stroked her fingers over one of the white pillows. “But that was a lie, too. I could never get her back, and he never saw her.”

“The last chance,” Cilla repeated with photos spread before her, and Janet on the bright pink couch. “Why was it the last? You lost your son, and that was horrible and tragic. But you had a daughter who needed you. You had a child inside you. You left your daughter, and that’s haunted her all her life—and I guess it’s haunted me too. You left her, and you ended the child when you ended yourself. Why?”

Janet sipped her drink. “If there’s one thing you can do for me, it would be to answer that question.”

“How?”

“You’ve got everything you need. It’s your dream, for God’s sake. Pay attention.”

TWENTY-NINE

Crazy. She had to be crazy hosting a party. She didn’t have any furniture, or dishes. She didn’t own a serving spoon. She was at least three weeks out from delivery on her stove and refrigerator. She didn’t own a goddamn rug. Her seating consisted of a single patio set, a couple of cheap plastic chairs and a collection of empty compound buckets. Her cooking tools were limited to a Weber grill, a hot plate and a microwave oven.

She had supplies, God knew. A million festive paper plates, napkins, plastic cups and forks and spoons, and enough food—which she didn’t know how to prepare—stuffed into Ford’s refrigerator to feed most of the county. But where were people supposed to eat?

“On the picnic tables my father, your father and Matt are bringing over,” Ford told her. “Come back to bed.”

“What if it rains?”

“Not calling for rain. There is a thirty-percent chance of hail and locusts, and a ten-percent chance of earthquakes. Cilla, it’s six in the morning.”

“I’m supposed to marinate the chicken.”

“Now?”

“No. I don’t know. I have to check my list. I wrote everything down. I said I’d make crab dip. I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never made crab dip. Why didn’t I just buy it? What am I trying to prove? And there’s the pasta salad.” She heard the lunacy in the rant, couldn’t stop. “I took that, too. Eating pasta salad through the years doesn’t mean you can make pasta salad. I’ve been to the doctor through the years. What’s next? Am I going to start doing elective surgery?”

Though it was tempting, he didn’t put the pillow over his head. “Are you going to lose your mind like this every time you give a party?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Good to know. Come back to bed.”

“I’m not coming back to bed. Can’t you see I’m dressed? Dressed, pacing, obsessing and postponing the moment when I go downstairs and face that chicken.”

“All right. All right.” He pushed himself up in bed, scooped back his hair. “Did you agree to marry me last night?”

“Apparently I did.”

“Then we will go down and face the chicken together.”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“I’ll also face the crab dip and the pasta salad with you. Such is the depth of my love, even at six o’clock in the morning.” Spock rose, yawned, stretched. “And apparently his. If we poison people, Cilla, we’ll do it together.”

“I feel better. I know when I’m being a maniac.” She walked to him, leaned down and kissed his sleepy mouth. “And I know when I’m lucky to have someone who’ll stick with me through it, right down to the crab dip.”

“I don’t even like crab dip. Why do people eat stuff like that?” He gave her a tug, pulling her onto the bed. And rolled on top of her. “People are always making dips out of odd things. Spinach dip, artichoke dip. Have you ever asked yourself why?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Why can’t they be satisfied with some Cheez Whiz on a cracker? It’s simple. It’s classic.”

“You can’t distract me with Cheez Whiz.” She shoved him off. “I’m going down.” She tugged her shirt back into place. “I’m ready.”

IT WASN’T ALTOGETHER horrible or intimidating, Cilla discovered. Not with a partner. Especially when the partner was as clueless as she. It was almost fun. She thought, with some repetition, and a bit more skill, boiling pasta or mincing garlic might slip past the almost and become actual fun.

“I had a Janet dream last night,” she told him.

“How can the simple tomato come in so many sizes?” He held up a beefsteak and a handful of grape tomatoes. “Is it science? Is it nature? I’ll have to do a study on it. What was the dream about?”

“I guess it was about love, at least on one level. And my subconscious poking around about what it means. Or what it meant to her. We were in the living room of the farm. The walls were my walls—I mean the space was mine, the color of the paint, but she was on that bright pink couch. And I had photographs spread on this glossy white coffee table. Photos I’ve managed to get my hands on, the photos your grandfather took, photos I think I might have just seen in books. Hundreds of them. She was drinking vodka in a short glass. She said it had been a year since Johnnie died, and how she hoped this baby was a boy. She said it was her last chance. Her last love, her last chance.

“It’s so odd. She knew she was going to die soon. Because I knew. I asked her why, why did she do it? Why did she turn away from that last chance and end it all?”

“What did she say?”

“That if I could do anything for her, it would be to find that answer. That I had it all in front of me, but I wasn’t paying attention. So I woke up frustrated because, as she said, it’s my dream. If I know something, why don’t I know it?”

Ford took up his assignment of slicing the beefsteak. “Is it too much to accept she might’ve been too sad, too deep in the dark, and saw it as the only way to end the pain?”

“No. But I can’t quite make myself believe it. I never fully could, or never fully wanted to. And since I came here, started on the house, I believe it less—and want to believe it less,” Cilla admitted. “She found something here. Look at all she took and let go of again. Men, marriages, houses, possessions. She was famous for acquiring and disposing of. But she kept this place, and more, made arrangements so it would remain in the family long after she died. She found something she needed here, something that contented her.”

She looked out the window and watched Spock on his morning rounds. “She kept the dog,” Cilla murmured. “And an old jeep. A stove and refrigerator that were out of date. I think, in a way, this place was real to her. The rest, it’s not. For the smart ones, it’s a job. It’s good work. Fame can be a by-product, but it’s fleeting and fickle and so much of it’s an illusion. She didn’t need the illusion here.”

“And falling in love here made it more real?”

She looked over, grateful he followed the thread of her thoughts. “It follows, doesn’t it? The worst thing in her life happened here when Johnnie was killed. An inescapable reality. But she kept coming back, facing it. She didn’t close the place up, or sell it. He called her Trudy, and that’s who she wanted to believe he loved. I think she wanted that last chance, desperately. I think she wanted the baby, Ford. She’d lost one child. How could she, why would she kill herself and end the chance for another?”

“And if she realized it wasn’t Trudy this guy loved, that that was another illusion?”

“Men come and go. They always did for her. And I guess I remembered that, resolved that through the dream last night. Her one true love was Johnnie. Her work, too. She passionately loved the work. But Johnnie was hers. My mother always knew that, always knew she didn’t quite hit the same spot. The last love, the last chance? I think it was the child for her. I can’t believe, just can’t, that she’d have killed herself over a love affair that went south.”

“You said she was drinking in the dream. Vodka.”

“Her standard.” When the timer dinged, Cilla hefted the pot of pasta, carried it to the sink to drain into the waiting colander. “But there weren’t any pills in the dream.”

She stood, watching the steam rise. “Where were the pills, Ford? I keep circling back to those letters, to the anger in the last few. He didn’t want her in this house. She was a threat to him, an unpredictable woman, a desperate one, pregnant with his child. But she wouldn’t give it up. Not this place, not the child, not the chance. So he took it from her. I keep circling back to that.”

“If you’re right, proving it would be the next step. We’ve already tried to find out who wrote those letters. I don’t know how many more avenues there might be to take.”

“I feel like . . . I feel like we’ve already been down the right one, or close to it. And missed something that was right there. Right there. That I didn’t pay attention, and it slipped by.”

She turned. “This is my reality now, Ford. You, you and the farm, this life. I found that, I can take that because of her. I owe her. And I owe her more than planting roses and painting and hammering wood. More than bringing this place back as tribute. I owe her the truth.”

“What you’ve found, and what you take may have started with her. And if you need the truth, I’ll do whatever I can to help you find that. But the farm, what you’ve done here, it’s more than a tribute to Janet Hardy. It’s a tribute to you, Cilla. What you can do, what you’ll work for, what you’ll give. The walls were yours in the dream.”

“And I haven’t put anything inside it. I talk about it, but I don’t take the step. Not a chair, not a table, beyond what I needed for Steve. I guess I have to fix that.”

He’d been waiting for that. Waiting for that step. “I’ve got a house full of stuff here. It’s a good start for picking and choosing.”

She walked to him, linked her arms around his neck. “I pick you. I pick the guy who’ll slice tomatoes with me at seven in the morning because I’m a lunatic. The guy who not only promises to help me, but does. The one who makes me understand I’m the first Hardy woman in three generations lucky enough to be in love with a man who sees me. Let’s pick something, and take it across the road. We’ll put it inside the house so it’s not hers, it’s not mine. So it’s ours.”

“I vote for the bed.”

She grinned. “Sold.”

IT WAS RIDICULOUS, of course, for two people who were preparing for a party to leave the work to break down a bed, to haul frame, headboard, footboard, mattress, box spring, bedding downstairs, out to the truck, drive it across the road with a dog in tow. Then reverse the procedure.

But Cilla found it not only symbolic, she found it therapeutic.

Still, Ford’s suggestion that they try it out in its new place was going too far.

Tonight, she told him. Definitely.

Their room now, she thought, giving the pillows an extra fluff. Their room, their bed, their house. Their life.

Yes, she’d put pictures of Janet in the house, as she’d said in the dream. But there would be other pictures. Pictures of her and Ford, of friends and family. She’d ask her father if he had any of his parents, his grandparents she could copy. She’d repair and refinish the old rocker she’d found in the attic, and she’d buy cheerful, happy dishes, and put Ford’s wonderful roomy couch in their living room.

She’d remember what had been, and build toward what could be. Really, hadn’t that always been the purpose? And she’d keep looking for that truth. For Janet, for her mother, for herself.

At Ford’s she deserted the field, ducking outside to call Dilly in New York.

“Mom.”

“Cilla, it’s barely nine in the morning. Don’t you know I need my sleep? I have a show tonight.”

“I know. I read the reviews. ‘Mature and polished, Bedelia Hardy comes triumphantly into her own.’ Congratulations.”

“Well, I could’ve done without the mature.”

“I’m awfully proud of you, and looking forward to seeing you triumphant in D.C. in a couple of weeks.”

After a brief pause, Dilly said, “Thank you, Cilla. I don’t know what to say.”

And when her mother went on a long riff about the hard work, the three encores, the curtain calls, the Acres of flowers in her dressing room, Cilla just smiled and listened. Dilly was never at a loss for words for long.

“Of course, I’m completely exhausted. But somehow, the energy’s there when I need it most. And Mario’s taking very good care of me.”

“I’m glad. Mom, Ford and I are getting married.”

“Who?”

“Ford, Mom. You met him when you came here.”

“I can hardly be expected to remember everyone I meet. The tall one? The neighbor?”

“He’s tall, and he lives across the road.”

“When did all this happen?” Dilly demanded, with the first notes of petulance in her voice. “Why are you marrying him? When you come back to L.A.—”

“Mom, just listen. Just listen and don’t say anything until I’m done. I’m not going back to L.A. I’m not coming back to the business.”

“You—”

“Just listen. This is my home now, and I’m building a life here. I’m in love with an amazing man who loves me back. I’m happy. I’m as happy at this moment as you are when you step out into the lights. I want you to do one thing for me. Just this one thing, just this one time. I want you to say, whether you mean it or not, just say, ‘I’m happy for you, Cilla.’ ”

“I’m happy for you, Cilla.”

“Thanks.”

“I am happy for you. I just don’t understand why—”

“It’s enough, Mom. Just be happy. You don’t have to understand. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

It’s enough, Cilla thought again. Maybe one day there would be more, maybe there wouldn’t. So it was enough.

She went back into the house, and to Ford.

REINFORCEMENT ARRIVED with platters and bowls, with tables and pounds of ice. Penny dispatched Ford to help unload at the farm before she bustled into the kitchen with Patty, where Cilla agonized over the pasta salad.

“Someone needs to taste it. Ford and I are too emotionally involved with the pasta. We have no objectivity.”

“It’s so pretty!” Patty exclaimed. “Isn’t that a pretty salad, Pen?”

But Penny, whose eagle eyes spotted Cilla’s ring in under three seconds, latched on to Cilla’s hand. “When?”

“Last night.”

“What? What am I missing? Oh God, oh God! Is that what I think it is? Is that it? Oh, let me see!” Patty crowded in, peered down at the ring. “It’s just beautiful. It’s just so beautiful. I’m so happy. I’m so happy for both of you.”

No prompting needed from the wings here, Cilla thought as Patty threw her arms around Cilla and dipped them both side to side.

“Didn’t take you long to come to your senses. Let go, Patty, she’s going to be my daughter-in-law.” Nudging Patty aside, Penny moved in for a hug. “He’s a very, very good man.”

“Only the best.”

“I’m pretty sure you almost deserve him.” Penny leaned back, all smiles and damp eyes. “Aren’t they going to make us beautiful grandbabies, Patty?”

“Oh, well . . .”

“We won’t start nagging you about that yet. Much,” Patty put in. “First we get to nag you about the wedding. Did you set the date?”

“No, not really. We just—”

“It’s too late to take advantage of the fall season. The foliage will peak in about six weeks. And there’s so much to do.”

“We thought an outdoor wedding, at the farm. Simple,” Cilla began.

“Perfect.” Patty counted off on her fingers. “May, early May, don’t you think? May’s so pretty, and that gives us a comfortable time for all the details. The dress comes first. Everything builds around the dress. We have to go shopping. I can’t wait!” Patty threw her arms around Cilla again.

“Captain Morrow reporting to the staging area,” Cathy said as she came in, loaded with bags. “What’s all this? Has everyone been slicing onions?”

“No.” Patty dashed at tears. “Cilla and Ford. They’re getting married.”

“Oh!” Cathy jumbled bags onto the counter, righted one before its contents spilled. She turned, beaming smiles. “Congratulations! What happy news. When’s the big day?”

“May, we think,” Patty told her. “Don’t we think May? Oh my God, isn’t she going to be the most beautiful bride? An outdoor wedding at the farm. Isn’t that perfect? Imagine the gardens next May.”

“It’s going to be the event of the year. Simple,” Penny added with a light in her eyes that told Cilla they might have different definitions of the word. “We’ll say simply the event of the year.”

“You two are scaring the girl.” With a laugh, Cathy put an arm around Cilla’s shoulder. “She’ll be running for the hills any minute.”

“No. I’m staying right here. It’s nice,” Cilla decided. “We’ll make it the event of the year. In a simple way.”

“There you go.” Cathy gave Cilla’s shoulder a squeeze. “Now, ladies, if we don’t get this particular show on the road, we’re going to have a lot of hungry people, and the disaster of this year on our hands.”

IT WAS so much easier than she’d imagined, and amazingly satisfying. Under the afternoon sun dozens and dozens of people spread around the grounds. They crowded at borrowed picnic tables, perched on the steps, sat at folding card tables on the veranda. They ate and drank, admired the house, the gardens. No one seemed concerned about the lack of furniture and formality.

She watched Dobby sitting in a lawn chair he’d brought himself, eating her pasta salad, and felt a ridiculous surge of pride. Her home, she thought, might not be finished, but it was more than ready to welcome people.

She joined Gavin while he flipped burgers on the grill. “How’d you earn the KP?”

“I gave Ford a break.” He smiled down at Cilla. “Practicing being a father-in-law. It’s a good party, Cilla. It’s good to have one here again.”

“I’m thinking of it as the first annual Labor Day at the farm. Next year, even better.”

“I like hearing you say that. Next year.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be. There’s still a lot to do. Still a lot I need to know.” She drew a breath. “I talked to Mom this morning.”

“How is she?”

“Mature, polished and triumphant, according to the reviews. It’s going to be difficult for her to come here, to the farm, for the wedding. She will, but it’ll be difficult for her. Will it for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Having her here, going through that ritual, the wedding, with her here?”

“Absolutely not.” The surprise in his voice brought her comfort. “It wasn’t all bad times between us, Cilla. It had to end for me to be exactly where I want to be, and, I suspect, for your mother to be mature, polished and triumphant.”

“Then that’s something to cross off my should-I-worry-about-this list. I want to get married here. It’s our place now, Ford’s and mine. And I like knowing my parents had their first kiss over there. And that my grandmother walked the gardens. That your grandfather plowed those fields. It all trickles down. I’ve wanted that all my life. Look at the house,” she murmured.

“It’s never looked more right, more real than it does now.”

“That’s what I want, too. The right, and the real. Did you come here after Johnnie died?”

“A few times. She seemed to like seeing me. The last was a couple of months before she died. I was doing some summer stock in Richmond. My father was ill, so I came to see him. When I learned she was here, I came by. She seemed better, or she was trying very hard to be. We talked about him, of course. I don’t think he was ever out of her mind. She hadn’t brought anyone with her, not like before when the house always seemed full of people. It was just the two of us for about an hour, in the living room.”

“On the pink couch with the white satin pillows,” Cilla added.

“Yes.” He laughed a little. “How did you know about that?”

“I heard about it. Very Doris Day.”

“I suppose it was. I must have commented on it, because I remember her saying she wanted bright in the house again. It was time for the new and the bright, so she’d had it shipped all the way from L.A.”

He poked at the grilling chicken, flipped a burger. “She went back the next day, and I went back to Richmond for the rest of the summer. So that would’ve been the last time I saw her. It’s a good image, really. Janet sitting on that pink, Hollywood couch with her dog snoring under the coffee table.”

“I wonder if I have a picture of her on it. Ford’s grandfather gave me so many pictures. I need to go through them again. If I can find one, I’ll give you a copy. Here, let me have that platter.” She took the dish Gavin had loaded with burgers, hot dogs, grilled chicken. “I’ll deliver this to Station Meat, then go find Ford.”

She wended her way through the backyard crowd, around the veranda dwellers and into the kitchen. She saw that Patty or Penny had been through by the stack of empty and freshly washed plates and bowls. Since that brought on some mild guilt, she prepared to wash the pair of serving plates she’d brought in with her instead of just putting them in the sink.

It felt good, watching through the kitchen window while she washed up, having this quick moment alone. She saw her father still at the grill, with Ford’s father now, and Brian. Buddy and his wife at a picnic table with Tom and Cathy, and Patty stopping by to chat. There was Matt tossing a ball to his little boy while Josie looked on, the baby tucked in her arm.

Penny was right, Cilla realized with a quick laugh. She and Ford would make gorgeous babies. Something to think about.

When the phone she had charging on the counter rang, she picked it up with the smile still curving her lips. “This is Cilla. Why aren’t you here?”

“Ms. McGowan?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“It’s Detective Wilson. I have some information.”

WHEN FORD CAME IN through the front he saw her standing at the sink, looking out. “Look at us, being hosts. You washing up, me taking out the trash. I loaded a couple of bags in your truck. One of us needs to hit the dump tomorrow.”

He slipped his arms around her, started to draw her back against him, and felt it immediately. “What is it?” He turned her, scanned her face. “What happened?”

“Hennessy’s dead. He killed himself. He made a noose out of his own shirt, and—”

He drew her against him now, hard. She trembled first, then held on. “Oh God, Ford. Oh God.”

“Some people can’t be saved, Cilla. Can’t be helped.”

“He never got over it, got past it. What happened to his son. All these years, he had a purpose, and he had his bitterness. But when his son died, all he had was the bitterness.”

“And it killed him.” He pulled her back, looking into her eyes to be sure she understood just that. “It’s the hate that ended him, Cilla.”

“I’m not blaming myself. I have to keep saying it, keep thinking it, so I won’t. And I’m not. But there’s no denying I was part of it. He made me part of it. I guess that’s another kind of revenge. His poor wife, Ford. She’s lost everything. And horribly, there’s a part of me that’s relieved.”

“He hurt you, and he tried to do worse. Do you want some time? I can go out, try to wrap things up.”

“No. No. He did enough.” She looked back out the window, at the people on her lawn. “He’s not going to ruin this.”

“FORD, JUST THE MAN I wanted to see.” Gavin handed over the spatula and tongs, then picked up the platter. “Your turn.” With his free hand, he hefted a beer. “And mine.”

“You sure this younger generation knows how to handle the grill?” Tom asked.

“We can put you guys down,” Brian responded. “Anytime, anywhere.”

“I feel a grill-off coming on. But before we get to that, I need to exploit my future son-in-law. I’d like you to come in and talk to my creative writing students.”

“Oh. Well. Um.”

“Actually, we’d like to do a three-part, possibly five-part, program on storytelling through words and art. Our art teacher is very excited by the idea.”

“Oh,” Ford repeated, and had Brian laughing.

“He’s getting a flashback of high school, where he was president of the Nerd Club.”

“Three years of being pantsed and recovering from wed gies.”

“Matt, Shanna and I saved you when we could.”

“Not often enough.”

“I give you my word, your ass will not be exposed or abused on my watch.”

Ford gave Gavin a sour look. “Can I have an armed escort?”

“We’ll need to work out the details, the dates, and anything you might want or need. I can talk to you about my end of it. You should contact Sharon, the art teacher. She loves your work, by the way. Let me give you her contact information. Ah . . .” He looked at his full hands. “Got anything to write on, with?”

“No. Gee, I guess we’ll have to forget the whole thing.”

“I happen to have something.” Grinning, Tom pulled a small leather-bound notebook and short pen out of his pocket. “Sharon, you said?”

Gavin relayed the information, cocked an eye at Ford when he passed him the sheet. “You do want to marry my daughter, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Trapped, Ford stuffed the paper in his pocket.

“I’m going to deliver this, then I’ll come back and give you the basic overview of what I have in mind.”

“I should’ve known there’d be strings,” Ford muttered when Gavin strolled away.

“Get used to it.” Tom clamped a hand on Ford’s shoulder. “And now that you’re engaged, and there’s Matt with his lovely family, how long before the last of the Musketeers settles down?”

“Your turn,” Ford said gleefully.

Brian shook his head. “You bastard. Under the circumstances, I don’t know why I’m telling you we’re continuing this holiday with poker—guys only—at my place tonight. We’re tapping you for leftover beer and food, Rembrandt.”

“I suck at poker.”

“Which is why, even under the circumstances.”

“I don’t know if—”

“See?” Brian pointed at his father. “She’s already got him by the balls. And you ask me why I’m single.”

“She doesn’t have me—”

“Still getting pantsed. Only now by a woman.”

“Jesus. Remind me why I’m friends with you.”

“Nine o’clock. Bring beer.”

WITH CONSIDERABLE HELP from friends, cleanup went quickly. Trash was bagged, leftovers tubbed, recyclables binned. A small convoy of the faithful hauled what needed to be hauled back to Ford’s.

“Two households,” Angie commented, “and still not quite enough room. What should I do with this pie?”

“Ford can take it to Brian’s.”

“I don’t think I’m—”

Cilla cut him off with a look. “Go, be a man. Get out of my two households for a few hours. I’m fine.”

“Of course she’s fine.” Patty sealed a small bowl of leftover three-bean salad. “Why wouldn’t she be fine? Has something else happened?” she said when she saw the way Ford glanced at Cilla. “Is something wrong?”

“Hennessy killed himself last night. Ford’s worried I’ve taken it too much to heart.”

“Oh, honey!”

“It’s that, plus I don’t like leaving you alone.”

“We’ll stay,” Patty said immediately.

“We’ll all stay,” Penny put in. “We’ll have our own—all women—party.”

“You will not stay. I don’t need babysitters. I’m going to work on the photos your father gave me,” she said as she handed a bowl to Ford’s mother. “A couple of hours of quiet is just what I need. No offense.”

“But—”

“And I want to draw up some ideas for the gym and studio addition without you hanging over my shoulder. Go away. I’ll stay here until you get back,” she added when she saw more arguments in his eyes. “Brid, Warrior Goddess, requires no bodyguards. Now leave.”

“Fine. It won’t take me more than a couple hours to lose anyway.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“All right, girls, let’s claim our dishes and load it up. I’ll give everyone a ride home since the men have deserted us.” Penny put her hands on Cilla’s shoulders. “I’m going to call you tomorrow, and we’re going to set the time and place for you, Patty and me to hold our first Wedding of the Year strategy session.”

“Should I be afraid?”

“Very.” Penny kissed her cheek. “You’re a good girl.”

Watching the way Penny herded everyone out the door told Cilla she would have a very interesting, and very compatible, mother-in-law.

“Now you,” she told Ford.

“I can probably lose in an hour.”

“Stop. I’m tucked in here. No one’s going to bother me. No one has bothered me for some time now. The fact is, Hennessy’s dead, and the media is going to pick up on that. Some of it will start again. I could use a quiet, normal evening before the circus comes to town. And I’m not going to have either of us live worrying about me spending a quiet, normal evening alone. Besides . . .” She bent down to scratch Spock. “I have a bodyguard.”

“Keep the door locked anyway.”

“I’ll keep the door locked anyway.” She gave him a last kiss, then a shove out the door. “Don’t bet on an inside straight.” Then shut it, locked it at his back.

She turned around, let out a long sigh, then grinned at Spock. “I thought they’d never leave.”

Content, she walked upstairs for the box of photos.

THIRTY

It gave her such pleasure to look through them. It occurred to Cilla that Ford might like to choose some of the photos they’d frame and display. The group shot, for instance. Her father, his mother, her uncle, Janet, and . . . that had to be a young and handsome Tom Morrow. Brian certainly took after him.

She began to sort them by type, then the types in a loose chronological order.

She watched her own mother grow, from child to girl to young woman. Amazing, Cilla mused, how much better they got along with distance. Not so amazing, she added with a dash of cynicism, how much better they got along when her mother collected strong reviews.

No sour notes, Cilla warned herself, topping her to-be-framed pile with the photo of Janet in the farmhouse doorway.

Had someone in one of these group shots been her lover? she wondered. Had they been careful not to be photographed together? Or had they played it cool and casual on the surface, with all that passion simmering beneath?

No sour notes, she reminded herself. But she couldn’t resist speculating, studying. Would it show? It seemed to Cilla that every man photographed with Janet looked half in love with her. She’d had that power.

God, even Buddy looked spellbound—and skinny—in the shot of them on the veranda, and Janet mugging by pretending to brain him with his own pipe wrench.

She’d been irresistible, in baggy jeans or couture. Spectacular, she mused, in a red dress against the white piano. Christmas, she thought, lifting the shot, scanning it. Red candles and holly on the glossy piano, the sparkle of lights in the window.

That last Christmas before Johnnie’s death. Her last party. Too painful, she decided, to frame that one. Or any from that night. It twisted her heart a little to see one of her parents, framed together in front of the tree. And the doomed Johnnie grinning as he held mistletoe over his head.

And all the young people—Gavin, Johnnie, Dilly, Ford’s mother, and what she knew had to be Jimmy Hennessy and the boy who died with Johnnie that night, crowded together on the sofa in their party best. Smiling forever.

No, she could never frame that one, either.

She set it aside and picked up one of Tom. It took her a moment to recognize the woman beside him as Cathy. Her hair had been mouse brown then, and awkwardly styled in a kind of poofy ball. She looked so shy, so nervous and self-conscious. Baby weight, Cilla remembered, which the dress and the hairstyle only accentuated. Good pearls, the flash of diamonds said money, but she had certainly not yet come out of her cocoon.

Still, she might enjoy having a copy of the shot.

She continued sorting, pausing again when she came to one of Janet perched on the arm of the couch, Cathy sitting, and both women laughing. Cathy looked prettier in the candid, Cilla decided. More at ease, and with the hint of the woman she’d become in that natural smile.

She started to set it on the pile, then frowned as she studied it again. Something nagged at the edge of her mind. As she began to spread out what she thought of as Last Christmas shots, the doorbell rang.

Spock’s terrified barking joined the bell.

FORD PUNCHED the button for a Coke on Brian’s Sky Box. He was pitiful enough at poker without adding alcohol to the mix. In the pre-game hang-out portion of the evening, men who would soon take his money gathered around the bar Matt had built in what Brian called his Real Man room.

Bar, pool table, poker table, big-ass flat screen—virtually always tuned to ESPN—leather recliners, sofa. A lot of sports decor. And, of course, the secondary TV earmarked for video games.

He needed one of those in his new studio, he decided. A guy had to have his space. He could tell Cilla he wanted it sort of sectioned off from the work area.

Maybe he should call her. He dug in his pocket for his cell, and as he pulled it out the paper he’d stuffed in the same pocket fluttered to the floor.

“No women.” Brian shook his head. “Which includes calling one. Hand it over.”

“I’m not giving you my phone.” Ford stooped, picked up the note.

“Pussy-whipped. Hey, Matt, Ford’s already calling home to check in with Cilla.”

“Jesus, even I’m not that bad.”

“Phones, both of you. In fact, everybody,” Brian announced. “No phones at the table. House rules. Lay ’em on the bar. Hand it over,” he told Ford.

“Christ, you’re a pain in the ass. Remind me why I like you?”

“You can still beat me at Grand Theft Auto.”

“Oh yeah, that’s the reason.” He passed over his phone, immediately felt naked and bereft. Phoneless, he thought, poker and, with a glance at the note, soon to be traumatized by a return to high school.

What a man did for love and friendship.

He started to stuff the note back into his pocket, then stopped, took a closer look.

His heart took a hard slam in his chest, dropped to his belly.

The handwriting was a little shaky, a little sloppy. After all, Tom had been standing up, using a stubby pen when he’d written out the information.

The urge to deny pushed at him. He couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t possible to be sure. At least not until he’d compared the note with the letters, side by side. Or sent them to the graphologist. It didn’t make any sense anyway.

It was Brian’s father. It just couldn’t be.

And it made all the sense in the world.

He stared across the room at Tom standing with his own father, with Cilla’s, grinning at Brian as they tapped bottles of Rolling Rock. He thought of how Tom had once helped him fly a kite on a vacation they’d all taken together at Virginia Beach. Pitched a tent for them to camp in overnight in the Morrows’ big backyard.

And he thought of Steve in the hospital. Of Cilla staring at broken tiles. And a doll in a pink party dress hanging from a red maple tree Brian had planted.

Walking over, Ford tapped Tom on the shoulder. “I need to talk to you a minute.”

“Sure. Looking for poker tips?”

“Maybe we could walk outside.”

Tom’s eyebrows raised. “Sure. A little fresh air before your father starts lighting those cigars. Ford and I are stepping outside so I can give him a few pointers.”

“Lots of luck,” Brian called out. “Make it quick. We’ll be anteing up shortly.”

No point in wasting time, Ford thought. No point in putting it off. And no way he could sit at a poker table with this tightness in his chest.

“Nights are cooling off again,” Tom commented as they stepped out onto Brian’s deck. “Another summer at our backs.”

“You had an affair with Janet Hardy.”

“What?” Tom’s head jerked around. “For God’s sake, Ford.”

“She kept your letters. But you knew that. One of the guys on Cilla’s job heard her telling Gavin. Most of them work for you, too. It’s good juice. Too good not to spread around.”

“I barely knew Janet Hardy. This is a ridiculous thing to—”

“Don’t. The handwriting matches.” He drew out the note. “I’ve got a good eye for that kind of thing. Shapes, style, form. I bet your father taught you to write. He’d have wanted you to get a leg up.”

Tom’s face hardened, the lines around his mouth digging deep. “Not only is this an insulting accusation, but frankly, none of your business.”

There was a coldness inside Ford he hadn’t known he possessed. A hard and icy rage. “Cilla’s my business. What happened to her grandmother, and what’s been happening to her, that’s my business.”

“Her grandmother killed herself. And Hennessy is responsible for what happened at the farm. I’m surprised at you, Ford. And disappointed. Now I’m going back inside. I don’t want to hear any more about this.”

“I always respected you, and I love Brian.” It might have been the tone, very cool, very quiet, that had Tom stopping. “That’s why I’m standing here with you. That’s why I’m talking to you before I go to the police with this.”

“With what? With a stack of unsigned letters written more than thirty years ago and a note I scribbled this afternoon?”

“I didn’t say they were unsigned.” Ford turned away.

“Wait. Now wait.” With the first hint of panic, Tom gripped his shoulder. “This isn’t a matter for the police, Ford. It won’t do anyone any good for this to come out. Do you need me to admit the affair? All right, all right. I was mesmerized by her, and I betrayed my wife. I’m not the first man to slip. I’m not proud of it. And I ended it; I ended it before you were born, for God’s sake. When I came to my senses, when I realized what I was doing, I ended it. Why would you punish me, hurt and embarrass Brian and Cathy, over a mistake I made when I was younger than you are now?”

“You tried to get them back, and put a man in the hospital.”

“I panicked.” He held up his hands. “I only wanted to find the letters and destroy them. I panicked when I heard him coming in. There was no way for me to get out. I never meant to hit him that hard. It was instinct, just instinct. My God, I thought I’d killed him.”

“So you shoved the bike on top of him, what, to be sure of it?”

“I tell you, I was in shock. I thought he was dead, what else could I do? I could only think it had to look like an accident. He’s fine now. He’s all right now,” Tom insisted in a tone of quiet reason. “What point is there in making an issue out of any of it?”

Ford could only stare. This man he’d respected, even loved, one he’d thought of all his life as a kind of second father, was shifting in front of his eyes. “He nearly died, Tom. He could have died. And you did that for what, to save your reputation over a slip? To cover up something you thought was already buried?”

“I did it to spare my family.”

“Really? What else have you done to ‘spare your family’? Let’s go back. Let’s go all the way back. Did you kill Janet Hardy?”

MILDLY IRRITATED by the interruption, Cilla went to the door, peeked through the sidelight. Irritation turned to puzzlement as she opened it for Cathy.

“It’s okay, Spock. See?”

He stopped quivering to prance forward and bump Cathy’s legs in greeting.

“I’m so sorry. Not five minutes after Penny dropped me off, I realized I’d left my rings at your place.” Cathy pressed her ringless hand to her breast. “I always take them off at the kitchen sink. At least I hope I did. God, if I lost them . . . No they’re there. I’m just a little frantic.”

“I’d be, too. I’m sure they’re there. We’ll go get them right now.”

“Thank you. Cilla, I feel so stupid. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost them.”

“Just let me grab my keys.” She snagged them off the little table by the door. “Come on, Spock, let’s take a walk.”

The walk word had him shooting through the door to dance on the veranda.

“They’ll be there,” Cathy reassured herself. “I’m sure they’ll be right there. I lost my wedding and engagement rings down the drain years ago. I’d lost weight, hadn’t had them resized. I was terrified until Buddy—whom I called in hysterics—took the pipes apart and found them. So I always take them off before I shower or do dishes, or . . . I’m babbling.”

They crossed the road in the moonlight. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’re right where you left them.”

“Of course they are.” But the strain in her voice had Spock making concerned whines. “I put them in a little glass—I remember—at your sink. If someone didn’t see them in there, and—”

“We’ll find them.” Cilla put a hand on Cathy’s trembling arm.

“You must think I’m an idiot.”

“I don’t. I’ve only had my ring for a day, and I’d be a basket case if I thought I’d lost it.” She unlocked the door.

“I’m just going to—” Cathy made a dash for the kitchen, and, hopeful, Spock raced behind her.

Cilla closed the door, plugged in the security code to offset the alarm, then followed.

Cathy stood in the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks with Spock rubbing against her legs in comfort. “Right where I left them. Right by the sink. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. It’s okay.” Moving fast, Cilla got an old stool out of the utility room. “Just sit down a minute.”

“God, thank you. Now I do feel like an idiot. They’re insured, I know, but—”

“It’s not about insurance.”

“No, it’s not. Look at me. I’m a mess.” She pulled a tissue out of her purse to dry her cheeks. “Cilla, could I have a glass of that?” She gestured to the bottle of wine on the counter. “And an aspirin.”

“Sure. Aspirin’s upstairs. I’ll be right back.”

When she came back, Cathy sat at the counter, her head propped in her hand, and two glasses of wine poured. “I know I’m taking up some of that quiet time you were after, but I just need a few minutes to calm down.”

“It’s no problem, Cathy.” Cilla set down the aspirin.

“To wedding rings—engagement rings—and all they represent.” Cathy lifted her glass, held it expectantly, then tapped it to Cilla’s when Cilla picked hers up.

“And I hope that’s the last time you find me knocking hysterically on your door.”

“I thought you held it together pretty well. They’re beautiful. I’ve admired them before.”

“Tom wanted to buy me a new wedding ring for our twenty-fifth. I wouldn’t have it.” Her eyes sparkled as she sipped. “So he gave me a diamond bracelet instead. I’ve got a weakness for diamonds. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you wear any, other than your spanking-new ring. Your grandmother had some fabulous jewelry.”

“My mother has it. And the kind of work I do?” Cilla shrugged, drank a little more wine. “Doesn’t lend to glitters.”

“You don’t need them with your looks. Neither did she. It’s us lesser mortals who require the enhancements. Of course, beauty fades if you live long enough. Hers didn’t. She didn’t.”

“I was just looking through some old photographs and thinking . . .” Cilla pressed a hand to her temple. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I was so tired. The wine must’ve topped it off.”

“You’ll need to drink the rest of that. And one more, I think, to finish the job.”

“I’d better not. I’m sorry, Cathy, but I feel a little off. I need to—”

“Finish your wine.” Cathy opened her purse, drew out a small revolver. “I insist,” she said as Spock began to grumble.

“JANET COMMITTED SUICIDE. I’ve regretted whatever part I might have played in that for more than thirty years.”

“She was pregnant.”

“She claimed . . .” Something in Ford’s eyes had Tom pausing, nodding. “Yes. I didn’t believe her, not until we spoke face-to-face. After, after she died, the day she died, in fact, I went to my father. Confessed everything. He was furious with me. He had no tolerance for mistakes, not when they affected the family name. He handled it. We never spoke of it again. I assume he paid off the medical examiner to omit the pregnancy.”

And his political career, Ford thought, had gone down the toilet.

“It was the only thing to do, Ford. Imagine what the public would’ve done to her if it had come out? Imagine what might have become of my family if I was named the father?”

“You spoke, face-to-face.”

“I went to the farm. I wanted her to leave it alone, to move on, but she persisted. So I went to see her, as she demanded. She’d been drinking. Not drunk, not yet, but she’d been drinking. She had the results of the pregnancy test.”

“She had them with her?” Ford prompted. “The paperwork.”

“Yes. She’d used her real name, went to a doctor who didn’t know her. Personally, that is. She said she’d worn a wig and used makeup. She often did when we’d meet somewhere. She knew how to hide when she wanted to. I believed her then, and I believed her when she told me she intended to have the baby. But she was done with me. I didn’t deserve her, or the child.”

Ford’s eyes narrowed. “She dumped you?”

“I’d already ended it. I suppose she wanted the last word on that. We argued; I won’t deny it. But she was alive when I left.”

“What happened to the doctor’s report?”

“I have no idea. I’m telling you, she was alive when I went home, and looked in on my daughter. I thought of all I’d risked, all I might have destroyed. I thought of Cathy, and the child she carried. How I’d nearly asked her for a divorce only months before so I could be, openly, with a woman who didn’t really exist. I might have done that. I nearly did that.”

He leaned heavily on the deck rail, closed his eyes. “It was Cathy telling me she was pregnant that helped me begin to break the spell. I lay down on the cot in the nursery with my daughter, thought of the baby Cathy would have in the fall. Thought of Cathy and our life together. I never saw Janet again. I never risked my family again. Thirty-five years, Ford. What would it accomplish to bring it out now?”

“You terrorized Cilla. You nearly killed a man, and when that wasn’t enough, you terrorized her. Breaking into her house, writing obscenities on her truck, her wall, threatening her.”

“I broke in. I admit that, too. To look for the letters. And I lost control when I couldn’t find them. It was the anger, the impulse that had me smashing the tiles. But the rest? I had nothing to do with it. It was Hennessy. I realized the letters didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. No one would connect me.”

“Hennessy couldn’t have done all the rest. He was locked up.”

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t me. Why would I lie about a stone wall, the dolls?” Tom demanded. “You know the worst of it.”

“Your wife knew. Janet called her. You said so in the letter, the last letter.”

“Janet was drunk, and raving. I convinced Cathy that it wasn’t true. That it was alcohol, pills and grief. She was upset, of course, but she believed me. She . . .”

“If you could live a lie this long, why couldn’t she? You claim you slept in the nursery the night Janet died.”

“Yes, I . . . I fell asleep. I woke when Cathy came in to get the baby. She looked so tired. I asked if she was all right. She said she was fine. We were all fine now.” In the moonlight, the flush of shame died to shock white. “My God.”

Ford didn’t wait for more reasons, more excuses. He ran. Cilla was alone. And Cathy Morrow knew it.

“YOU PUT SOMETHING IN THE WINE.”

“Seconal. Just like your whore of a grandmother. But it was vodka for her.”

Queasiness rose up to her throat. Fear, knowledge, the mix of drugs and wine. “The couch wasn’t pink; the dress wasn’t blue.”

“Drink some more wine, Cilla. You’re babbling now.”

“You saw the couch, the dress the night . . . the night you killed her. That’s what you remember—that night, not the Christmas party. Tom wrote the letters, is that it? Tom was her lover, the father of the child she carried.”

“He was my husband, and the father of my child, and the child I carried. Did she care about that?” Fury blasted across her face. Not madness, Cilla thought, not like Hennessy. Sheer burning fury.

“Did she give one thought to what marriage and family meant before she tried to take what was mine? She had everything. Everything. But it wasn’t enough. It never is for women like her. She was nearly ten years older than he was. She made a fool of me, and even that wasn’t enough. He went to her, left me to go to her that night while I rocked our daughter to sleep, while our baby kicked in my womb. He went to her, and to the bastard she made with him. Drink the wine, Cilla.”

“Did you hold a gun on her, too?”

“I didn’t have to. She’d been drinking already. I slipped the pills into her glass. My pills,” she added. “Ones I thought I needed when I first learned she had her hooks in him.”

“How long? How long did you know?”

“Months. He came home and I smelled her perfume. Soir de Paris. Her scent. I saw her in his eyes. I knew he went to her, again and again. And only touched me when I begged. But it changed, it started to change when I got pregnant. When I made sure I did. He was coming back to me. She wouldn’t allow it. Kept luring him back. I would not be pitied. I would not see myself compared to her and laughed at.

“I’ll shoot you if you don’t drink. They’ll call it another break-in. A tragic one this time.” She reached back into her purse, pulled out the large plastic bag, and the doll trapped inside it. “In case you’d rather go with the bullet, I’ll leave this behind. I bought several of them years ago. I couldn’t resist. I never knew why until you came here.”

Struggling against the dizziness, Cilla lifted the glass, wet her lips. “You staged her suicide.”

“She made it easy. She invited me in, like an old friend. Apologized for what she’d done. She was sorry she’d hurt me, or caused me any pain. She couldn’t undo it, wouldn’t if she could. Because that would undo the baby. All she wanted now was the baby and a chance to make up for past mistakes. Of course, she’d never reveal the name of the father. Lying bitch.”

“You drugged her.”

“When she started to slide, I helped her upstairs. I felt so strong then. I nearly had to carry her, but I was strong. I undressed her. I wanted her naked, exposed. And I gave her more pills, gave her more vodka. And I sat and I watched her die. I sat and I watched until she stopped breathing. Then I left.

“I’d drive by here. After they’d taken her away to where she never belonged, I’d drive by. I liked watching it decay while I . . . emerged. I starved myself. I exercised until every muscle trembled. Beauty salons, spas, liposuction, face-lifts. He would never look at me and want her. No one would ever look at me with pity.”

An image, Cilla thought. An illusion. “I’ve done nothing to you.”

“You came here.” With her free hand, Cathy added more pills to Cilla’s glass, topped it off with wine. “Cheers!”

“I was wrong,” Cilla mumbled. “You’re as crazy as Hennessy after all.”

“No, just a lot more focused. This house deserved to die its slow, miserable death. She only went to sleep. That was my mistake. You brought her back by coming here, shoved it all in my face again. You had my own son plant roses for her. You seduced Ford, who deserves so much better. I’d have let you live if you’d gone away. If you’d let this house die. But you kept throwing it in my face. I won’t have that, Cilla. I see what you are. Hennessy and I are the only ones.”

“I’m not Janet. They’ll never believe I killed myself.”

“She did. Your mother attempted it—or pretended to—twice. You’re fruit from the tree.” Casually, Cathy tucked back her swing of hair with her free hand. “Pressured into becoming engaged, distraught over causing the death of a man whose life your grandmother ruined. I’ll be able to testify how anxious you were for everyone to leave you alone. If only we’d known.”

“I’m not Janet,” she stated, and tossed the remaining contents in her glass into Cathy’s face.

The action had Spock leaping up, the grumbling going to a snarl. As his head rammed against Cathy, Cilla grabbed for the bottle, saw herself smash it against Cathy’s head. But, impaired by the pills, she swung wide and barely grazed her temple.

It was enough to have Cathy tipping in the stool. Cilla lurched forward, shoved while the dog jumped against the teetering stool. The gun went off, plowing a bullet into the ceiling as the stool toppled.

Fight or flight. She feared she had little of either in her. As her knees buckled, she let herself fall on Cathy, raked her nails down Cathy’s face. The scream was satisfying, but more was the certainty that even if she died, they’d know. She had Cathy Morrow under her nails. She grabbed Cathy’s hair, yanked, twisted for good measure. Plenty of DNA, she thought vaguely as her vision dimmed at the edges. And Spock’s snarling barks went tinny in her ears.

She swung out blindly. She heard shouting, another scream. Another shot. And simply slid away.

FORD’S HEART SKIDDED when he saw Cathy’s car in his drive. He wouldn’t be too late. He couldn’t be. He slammed to a stop behind the Volvo and ran halfway to his door before his instincts stopped him.

Not here. The farm. He spun around, began to run. It had to be at the farm. He cursed, as he’d cursed for miles, the fact that his phone sat on Brian’s bar.

When he heard the shot, the fear he thought he knew, the fear he thought he tasted, paled against a wild and mindless terror.

He threw himself against the door, shouting for Cilla as he heard Spock’s manic barks. Someone screamed like an animal. He flew into the kitchen. It flashed in front of him, etched itself forever in his memory.

Cilla sprawled over Cathy, fists flailing as if they were almost too heavy to lift. Cathy with blood running down her face, her eyes mad with pain and hate as Spock snapped and growled. The gun in her hand. Turning, turning toward Cilla.

He leaped, grabbing Cathy’s wrist with one hand, shoving Cilla clear with the other. He felt something, a quick bee sting at his biceps, before he wrenched the gun from Cathy’s hand.

“Ford! Thank God!” Cathy reached for him. “She went crazy. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what she’s on. She had the gun, and I tried—”

“Shut up,” he said coldly, clearly. “If you move, I swear to God, for the first time in my life, I’ll hit a woman. Spock, knock it off! And I’ll make it count,” he told Cathy. “So shut the fuck up.” He aimed the gun at her as he edged toward Cilla. “Or I may do worse than knock you out. Cilla. Cilla.”

He checked for wounds, then lifted her eyelid as Spock bathed her face frantically with his tongue. “Wake up!” He slapped her, lightly at first. “Move one more inch,” he warned Cathy in a voice he barely recognized himself. “Just one more. Cilla!” He slapped her again, harder, and watched her lids flutter. “Sit up. Wake up.” One-handed, he pulled her up to sit. “I’m calling for an ambulance, and the cops. You’re all right. Do you hear me?”

“Seconal,” she managed, then braced herself with one hand. And shoved her fingers ruthlessly down her throat.

LATER, A LONG TIME LATER, Cilla sat under the blue umbrella. Spring had gone, and summer nearly, she thought. She’d be here when the leaves changed and burned across the mountains. And when the first snow of the season fell, and the last. She’d be here, she thought, in all the springs to come, and the seasons to follow.

She’d be home. With Ford. And with Spock. Her heroes.

“You’re still pale,” he said. “Lying down might be a better idea than fresh air.”

“You’re still pale,” she countered. “You were shot.”

He glanced down at his bandaged arm. “Grazed” was the more accurate word. “Yeah. Eventually, that’ll be cool. I got shot once, I’ll say, rushing in—just a little too late again—to save the love of my life before she saved herself.”

“You did save me. I’d lost it. I CSI’d her,” she added, wiggling her fingers. “But I was done. You and Spock—fierce doggie,” she murmured as she bent down to nuzzle him. “You saved my life. Now you have to keep it.”

He reached over, took her hand. “That’s the plan. I nearly went in the wrong house. That’s it, Cilla. No more two households for us. I nearly went to the wrong one. Then I would’ve been too late.”

“You figured it out, and you came for me. You can draw all the heroes you want. You’re mine.”

“Hero, goddess and superdog. We’re pretty lucky, you and me.”

“I guess we are. Ford, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for Brian.”

“We’ll help him get through it.” No question there, Ford thought, no choice. “We’ll find a way to help him get through it.”

“She carried that betrayal with her all these years. And couldn’t stand what I came here to do. In a way, this house was a symbol for both of us.” She studied it—her pretty home, the fresh paint, the windows glinting in the early morning sun.

“I needed to bring it back; she needed to watch it die. Every fresh board, every coat of paint, a slap in the face to her. The party? Can you imagine how that must have gnawed at her? Music and laughter, food and drink. And wedding talk. How could she stand it?”

“I knew them both all my life and never saw through it. So much for the writer’s power of observation.”

“They put it away. Locked it in a closet. She watched Janet die.” That still twisted in her heart. “She had it in her to watch. And she had it in her to put it away, to remake herself. To raise her family, to shop with her friends, to bake cookies and make the beds. And to drive by here, every once in a while, so she could let it out.”

“Like a pressure valve.”

“I’d say so. And I locked down the valve. My grandmother didn’t commit suicide. That’s going to be major news. Cameras, print, movie of the week—perhaps a major motion picture. More books, talk shows. Much.”

“I think I’ve got the picture by now. No warning necessary. Your grandmother didn’t commit suicide,” he repeated.

“No, she didn’t.” When her eyes filled, the tears felt like redemption. “She didn’t leave my mother, not in the way Mom always thought. She bought a lipstick-pink couch with white satin cushions. She grieved for a lost child and prepared for another.

“Not a saint,” Cilla continued. “She slept with another woman’s husband, and would have broken up his family without a qualm. Or much of one.”

“Cheating’s a two-way street. Tom betrayed his wife, his family. And even when he claimed he’d broken it off, he slept with Janet again. He had a pregnant wife and a child at home, and slept with the image—and refused to take responsibility for the consequences.”

“I wonder if it was the brutality of that last letter that snapped Janet’s feeling for him, had her come back, face him down with the facts. ‘I’m pregnant, the baby’s yours, but we don’t want or need you.’ ”

She let out a breath. “I like to think so.”

“Plays, doesn’t it? Sure jibes with what Tom told me. Cathy took and destroyed the pregnancy results, but she didn’t know about the letters. She didn’t know about Gatsby.”

“Janet kept the letters, I think, to remind her that the child was conceived in at least the illusion of love. And to remind herself why it would belong to only her. I think, too, she made certain the farm couldn’t be sold because she wanted the child to have it one day. Johnnie was gone, and she knew my mother had no real ties to it. But she had another chance.

“And maybe there will always be questions, but I have the answers I needed. I wonder if I’ll still dream of her, the way I always have.”

“Do you want to?”

“Maybe. Sometimes. But I think I’d like to start dreaming about what might happen, about what I hope for, rather than what used to be.” She smiled when he brushed his lips over her fingers.

“Take a walk with me.” He got to his feet, drew her to hers. “Just you. Just me.” He looked down at Spock as the dog did his happy dance. “Just us.”

She walked with him across the stones, over the grass still damp with dew, with roses madly blooming and the last of the summer’s flowers unfolded like jewels. Walked with him while the sweet, ugly dog chased his invisible cats around the pond strung with lily pads.

With her hand in his, she thought this was dream enough for her. Right now. With the three of them happy and safe and together.

And home.