“Was it you?” Sam asked.

Come on, he wanted them to talk. Alyssa had said he didn’t know who she was. Well, hey, she wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get to know, considering every time they exchanged more than a few sentences, she started fighting with him, tooth and claw.

Although, okay, it was true that she wasn’t always the one who started it.

She glanced over at him now, and he couldn’t for the life of him read the expression on her face.

He wondered if she knew how hard he was trying, how determined he was not to let this opportunity—all these hours spent in this car together tonight—pass him by.

Alyssa opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it. She glanced at him again, and then, with her eyes firmly affixed to the road, she said, “My mother died when I was pretty young.”

“When you were thirteen,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. “I told you that?”

“Yeah. It was, uh, in that bar, actually. Back in D.C. Shortly before you, um, came back to my hotel room and, you know, handcuffed yourself to me. You didn’t go into details, but you did say you were thirteen when she died.”

She’d told him, and he’d remembered. It had been years since D.C. He watched her face as she came to that realization.

“I don’t remember telling you.” Alyssa glanced at him again. Her eyes were enormous, making her look fragile and vulnerable and even a little frightened. It was just an illusion—Sam knew she wasn’t afraid of anything.

“I don’t remember much about that night,” she admitted. “Much of what we said,” she quickly corrected herself. “That whole evening is kind of fragmented. I have, like, these shards of memory that are really sharp and clear but— Do you mind if we don’t talk about this?”

“No,” he said. “Sorry. I honestly wasn’t trying... The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”

She shot him another look. “And why don’t I believe that?”

“Because you don’t believe anything I say. I think we’ve already successfully established that.”

Alyssa laughed. Good. Laughter was good.

It was way better than gut-wrenching heartache.

Sam, for God’s sake, you eviscerated me!

He could still remember Alyssa’s face when he told her he was going to marry Mary Lou.

But then she’d told him, later, after he was married, when they ran into each other during a time-out for coffee while battling terrorists in Indonesia, that she’d never intended their relationship to be anything more than a good time. A short-term good time, as a matter of fact. A hot, brief fling. Hello, hello, hello, hello, good-bye. That, she’d said over a cup of mediocre mocha matari, was all she’d ever wanted from him. It was not a scenario that included any kind of evisceration.

“Were you lying?” he found himself asking. “In that hotel coffee shop, in Jakarta?”

She didn’t look at him as she signaled to get off at the next exit. “What does it matter?” she countered. “If I’m going to marry Max?”

Ouch. Evisceration usually started with a sharp stab like that. If she married Max...

“I think you should dump him,” he said point-blank, because, damn it, he’d spent too much time over the past few years not telling Alyssa what he thought, what he wanted, what he felt. “And we should start over. Start fresh.” He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Roger Starrett. Most of my friends call me Sam. It’s a nickname I got back when I first became a SEAL. See, people started calling me Houston, because of ‘Roger, Houston’—that’s what the folks in the space shuttle said over the radio while talking to the command center. But Houston’s still too much of a mouthful as a nickname, so someone started calling me Sam, because of Sam Houston.

“I also answer to Bob and you probably noticed that Noah calls me Ringo. Bob because there’s a character in some book named Bob Starrett, and Ringo because my uncle Walt—Noah’s grandpa—started calling me that back in seventh grade when we first met. It was because he liked the Beatles.

“I’ve seen you shoot,” Sam continued, purposely not letting her get in a word edgewise. “You’re an amazing sharpshooter, I’m impressed as hell. I’ve been impressed by your work in the Bureau, too, these past years. You’re solid, Locke. I’d trust you to guard my six any time. And I’d like very much to get to know you better.”

Alyssa didn’t take his hand. She didn’t even turn her head in his direction. To his dismay, she just stayed silent as she pulled off the highway into the brightly lit lot of a twenty-four-hour gas station.

She pulled the car up to a pump and cut the engine. “Do you honestly think,” she finally said, only then turning to look at him, “that I’m going to be eager to jump back into whatever it was we had going while we’re in the process of searching for your wife and daughter?” The look in her eyes was glacial.

“Ex-wife,” he pointed out. As soon as the word left his lips, he knew it was a mistake. Alyssa had her sense of humor shut down to zero.

“I should have said no,” she told him. “No, I can’t take you to Waldo tonight, and no, you can’t leave Sarasota until we verify that you aren’t the chief suspect in a murder investigation.”

“But you know I didn’t—”

“Hush,” she ordered him sharply. “It’s my turn to talk. Hit on me again, Starrett, just one more time, and I will deliver you into the custody of the local police, who will transport you back to Sarasota.”

She was serious. He followed her out of the car and over to the gas pump, where she was running a credit card through the computer, her movements jerky with anger.

She accused him of... And now she was mad at him?

“I wasn’t hitting on you,” he protested. He knew the last thing he should do was let her piss him off—and let her know that she’d pissed him off—but he was too freaking tired to care. “If you thought that was me hitting on you... Shit. This is me hitting on you.”

He grabbed her and pulled her in, hard, so that her body was pressed against his. And it was heart attack time. Alyssa Locke, in his arms again. He faltered then, because she froze, too. If she’d slugged him, he would have known what to say, what to do. Instead, time stood still under the brightly lit overhang of the Sunoco as he stared down into her eyes.

“I’ve dreamed about you every single night, Lys,” he whispered. “I would sell my soul to the devil to win you back.”

He leaned down to kiss her, and for a moment he’d thought he’d won, because she moved closer to him, stepping between his legs. If he didn’t know her so well, he might’ve misinterpreted it as a surrender. But he did know her, and he twisted away in just enough time to hip check her little gift of a knee to his balls.

She pulled free from his arms. “You are such an asshole. You always have to prove that you’re right, don’t you? So that’s you hitting on me—thank you so much for the demonstration. Forgive me for my earlier confusion. God forbid you should ever be so subtle as to hit on a woman by only using words. As long as we’re clearing things up: Touch me again, and you’ll be wearing my shoe print on your ass.”

She thought... “That wasn’t...” Sam shook his head. “I mean, yeah, it started out—”

“If you want to go to Waldo, you’ll shut up right now!” Alyssa slammed open the gas tank door and yanked the hose over to the car to fill it up. “From here on in, you’re not even going to talk to me. In fact, you’re so wide awake, you’re driving. I’ll be in the backseat. Asleep.”

Aw, shit. He’d gone too far. Again.

“Jesus,” Sam said.

Alyssa rubbed her eyes and sat up in the back of the car. Jesus, indeed.

There were some lovely motor home parks in Florida, with well tended landscaping and flowering shrubbery and gleamingly clean double-wides in neat rows. The trailer park they had just pulled in to was not one of them.

It was like something out of a horror movie, where people with bad teeth who changed their clothes once every six years lived with their twenty-seven vicious pit bulls, most of which weren’t house trained.

Sam rolled to a stop, the headlights of the car illuminating a former recreational vehicle, a once white metal container vaguely shaped like a rust-streaked can of ham, with deflated tires. A light was visible through the ragged shades that covered its windows.

“Is this...?”

“Number two, Happy Lane,” Sam told her grimly. “Mary Lou’s not here. Believe me. She wouldn’t let Haley spend twenty seconds in this shithole, let alone three weeks.”

“People do unusual things when they’re desperate.” Alyssa tried to get a glimpse of herself in the rearview as she smoothed down her hair.

He met her eyes in the mirror. “I thought you weren’t talking to me ever again.”

“I’m not,” she said. Being semiconscious for the past ninety minutes hadn’t really helped her feel any less exhausted. It had, however, kept the conversation at a minimum. “I’m talking to myself while you eavesdrop. I think I’ll go see who’s home.”

She reached for the handle on the car door, but Sam didn’t move.

“Fuck,” he swore. “I know it’s stupid, and I know I said I didn’t think Haley would be here, but I was hoping... no, I was counting on her being here.” He hit the steering wheel. “Fuck.”

What could she possibly say? Don’t worry, we’ll find her? But Alyssa wasn’t convinced they would. If Mary Lou and Haley had been held at gunpoint and taken to some out-of-the-way swamp or bog where they were murdered, their bodies might never be recovered.

Although there was a solid part of her that couldn’t believe that they could be dead. Life just wasn’t that easy. And wasn’t that a terrible thought? Shame on her.

“We may not find out anything helpful tonight,” Alyssa told him. “But we will tomorrow, when we talk to the car dealer in Gainesville.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I know. It’s just... tomorrow. Shit. Patience isn’t one of my strengths.”

No kidding.

He met her eyes in the mirror again, forcing a smile that faded quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m just... scared to death for her, you know?”

The last thing in the world she should do was touch him. Alyssa knew Sam Starrett far too well, knew that he would get the absolute wrong idea. Still, she reached out and touched his shoulder, trying her best to make it a brief, fairly impersonal squeeze.

He was warm and solid beneath the cotton of his T-shirt, and he reached up to cover her hand with his. But he didn’t try to hold on to her. He let her fingers slip out from beneath his as she pulled her hand away.

“I’m sorry, too,” she told him. She was sorry about so many things.

Sam took his hat from the dashboard. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“Let’s,” she said. “Maybe Mrs. Morrison— What’s her first name?”

“Darlene,” he told her.

“Maybe she knows where Mary Lou and Haley are.”

“Yeah.”

She knew he didn’t believe it for a second. As she watched, he took a deep breath and blew it out hard. He turned off the car, and together they climbed out.

“Jesus.” The place smelled like raw sewage—as if the septic system had broken down a long time ago.

There was a collection of trash in the front yard—if you could call it a yard. A twisted bicycle, the remains of what looked like an old swing set in a haphazard pile of candy-striped metal bars, a battered shopping cart, part of a rusting car.

Alyssa tested the rickety steps leading to the troll-sized entrance before she stepped onto them. She knocked, three loud raps on the door. Something mean-sounding started barking inside, quickly joined by something equally nasty, and Sam grabbed her by the elbow and pushed her back, stepping in front of her as the door opened.

“Last call was two A.M.,” a woman said before she even saw who was standing there. “I keep bar hours.” Her speech was slurred, her voice a strange mix of the sugar of the deep south and the hacksaw baritone roughness of a three-pack-a-day smoker.

She was backlit by the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling of her trailer, her face and form in shadows. She looked to be wearing some kind of robe that hung open in the front.

“Darlene Morrison?” Sam asked.

“That’s one of my names, darlin’. And goodness, look at you. For you, hon, I’ll make an exception and open up shop,” she said to Sam. “Fifty bucks for the works, twenty or a bottle of scotch for the best hand job in the county—up front, and you provide the rubber.”

Oh, this was charming. Apparently Darlene had never met her daughter’s husband before. And apparently Sam hadn’t known his mother-in-law turned tricks for a living. He seemed something at a loss for words.

Alyssa stepped out from behind him. “Mrs. Morrison, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. We have some questions—”

“You cops need a warrant to come on my land!” Darlene shouted, as she slammed the door shut.

Alyssa looked at Sam in dismay. “I purposely didn’t say I was—”

“You have three seconds to get back into your car before I set these dogs loose!” Darlene’s harsh voice came from the trailer. “One!”

“Mrs. Morrison, we’re looking for your daughter,” Alyssa shouted back, but it was clear from the noise the woman was making that talking this out wasn’t an option.

“Two!”

Sam had gathered that, too. He was already grabbing for the metal bars of the former swing set. “Lys, catch!”

“Three!”

He tossed one of the pieces of metal to her as the door opened again and two snarling balls of fur and teeth burst out.

Sam threw himself at both of the dogs, batting one of them back with the metal bar he’d grabbed for himself, kicking at the other with his boot, never letting either of them come even remotely close to Alyssa. His hat fell off and his long hair flew as he spun around, seeming to know just where the dogs would go before they moved.

Alyssa hefted the blue-and-white candy-cane-striped bar of metal he’d tossed her, convinced that the best way to help was to stay out of his way. She’d been in his shoes before and the last thing she’d needed at the time was someone tripping her up.

One of the dogs was bigger and uglier than the other, but they both had lots of sharp little teeth. Neither of them took well to being smacked, although the smaller one was meaner and kept coming back for more.

As Sam kept the smaller dog at bar’s length, he grabbed hold of the broken bicycle with his left hand and threw it at the larger dog.

Who turned tail and ran.

The smaller dog was growling low in its throat, ears back against its head, eyes glued to the bar Sam wielded menacingly.

“I don’t want to hurt your dog,” Sam called to Darlene Morrison, who was still inside the tin can. “Call him off!”

The shade at the window moved slightly, and Alyssa knew that the woman was watching.

Alyssa made a show of tossing down the metal bar Sam had given her and taking out her side arm, holding it in a two-handed Hollywood Movie Cop stance—unnecessary but visually effective—drawing a bead directly between the dog’s eyes.

“I don’t give a damn about the dog, but the last thing I want to do tonight is paperwork,” Alyssa called to Darlene. “All we want to do is talk to you. You’re not in trouble. Not yet. But if your dog attacks my, uh, partner again, I’ll shoot him dead.”

“The dog, not the partner, right?” Sam said in a low voice, his eyes fixed on the dog.

Alyssa ignored him. “Once I discharge my weapon, paperwork is going to have to be filed. And as long as I’m stuck filling out reports, you better believe that I’ll charge you with aggravated assault, which, by the way, is a felony in this state.”

“I was just protecting my property!” came from inside. “There’s no law against that.”

“But there is against solicitation,” Alyssa pointed out.

The trailer door squealed open. “Trapper,” Darlene barked. “Inside.”

The dog backed its way to the stairs, and then, with one last look and snarl in Sam’s direction, he slunk into the trailer.

“Step down the stairs, ma’am,” Alyssa ordered the woman. She lowered her gun, but she kept it out and visible.

“You said you just want to talk.”

“We do. But away from the trailer, please.” With that dog securely on the other side of the door. She looked at Sam. “You okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“I’m fine.” Like she’d done anything more than stand here and watch. How many dogs would have had to come out of that trailer before he’d needed her help?

“What’d you do to Hawk?” Darlene complained as she came down the steps. “Hawkeye!” she bellowed. “Hawk! You get your ass back here, you little coward!”

“He was moving pretty fast when he lit out of here.” Sam reached down and picked up his baseball cap, slapping it on his thigh to shake the dust off of it. “I’d be surprised if he’s back before morning.”

Out in the yard, with the streetlight shining on Darlene, Alyssa could see the family resemblance. And for the first time, she honestly felt sorry for Mary Lou Morrison Starrett, even knowing what she now knew from Clyde—that Mary Lou had gotten herself pregnant on purpose in an attempt to make Sam marry her.

Imagine having a mother who would... for scotch. As Sam would say, Jesus.

“I’m Lt. Sam Starrett, ma’am,” he said now to Darlene. “Your daughter Mary Lou’s ex-husband?”

Darlene Morrison made a sound that might’ve been a bark of laughter. “Well, shoot, honey,” she said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

TUESDAy, JUNE 17, 2003

Tom Paoletti was awake and already pulling on his pants when the door to his room opened.

He’d woken up at the commotion in the hallway. Whoever was out there hadn’t made any effort to be quiet as they entered the building. There were a hell of a lot of them, too.

His first thought was lynch mob. His second was that his team was back and had come to break him free. Both were equally absurd. But it was probably best to have pants on, whatever the situation really was.

Tom checked his watch as he zipped his fly—it was 0612. That wasn’t early at all by Navy standards, but most of the mob that came through his door were wearing suits. He recognized some of them as FBI and searched for Max Bhagat’s familiar face. And came up empty.

The lawyer from the JAG office was there, though. Which was not good news. Well, compared to a potential lynching it probably was. But it meant this gang was here to question him. And at 0612 in the morning, that meant sometime in the night they’d received some kind of tip or lead that had them foaming at the mouth.

“What’s going on?” he asked the JAG lieutenant, but the lawyer just shook his head. It wasn’t clear if he wasn’t telling or if he didn’t know, but Tom would’ve put good money on didn’t know.

He made them wait while he took a leak and shaved and put on the rest of his choker whites. It felt like he was dressing for his own funeral. He was picking up all kinds of tension and bad vibes from the various guards and players. The mood in the room was positively spooky.

Then he went downstairs, surrounded by guards who watched him as closely as they might have watched Osama bin Laden. He was escorted into a car, which drove all the way over to the nearby base administration building, where he was escorted inside, into one of the larger conference rooms. There were more FBI in there, but still no sign of Max.

Tom sat down and put his legal pad in front of him on the table. Took his pen out of his pocket and lined it up neatly next to the pad. He’d remembered most of the details of that op where they’d scuttled the downed helo, the op he’d been questioned about extensively just yesterday. He’d re-created his schedule to the best of his ability, accounting for his time from the moment the team had gone wheels up in Coronado to the moment they’d returned. He was ready for this. But the first question completely threw him.

“What is your relationship with Mary Lou Starrett?”

He actually laughed aloud in surprise. Who? “Excuse me?”

“What is your relationship with Mary Lou Starrett?”

Tom shook his head. “I don’t have a relationship with—Are you talking about Lieutenant Roger Starrett’s wife?” Ex-wife by now, wasn’t she? Her name was Mary Lou, wasn’t it?

“How long have you known Mary Lou Starrett?”

Mother of God. What was this about? These weren’t just casual questions.

“I don’t know,” Tom admitted. “I have to think about it. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure I met her shortly after she married my lieutenant.”

“Do you know the current whereabouts of Mary Lou Starrett?”

That one he answered without any hesitation. “No. I do know she left the San Diego area about six months ago. I believe she went to Florida. Lieutenant Starrett informed me at the time that they were separating and that she’d filed for a divorce. To be honest, I was relieved. It was clear both to me and to my XO that their marriage wasn’t working out and that that was impacting Starrett’s performance as an officer and a SEAL.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Mary Lou Starrett?”

“I’m not sure I ever spoke to her,” Tom said. “I mean, not to say more than ‘Hi, how are you?’ What does this have to do with—”

“We’re asking the questions. When was the last time you saw Mary Lou Starrett?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “I repeat, I didn’t know her. She wasn’t friends with—” Kelly, he’d been about to say, but no way was he bringing her into this. “We didn’t run in the same social circles,” he amended. “I occasionally saw her on base when she came to visit Sam—Lieutenant Starrett.”

“Did you ever exchange written or electronic correspondence with Mary Lou Starrett?”

Jesus Christ. Tom reached down deep for his patience. He was going to need every ounce that he had. Because this was going to be one goddamn long morning.

Alyssa’s cell phone rang at 0845.

“Locke,” she managed to say, sinking back with it into the motel bed, praying it was a wrong number.

“Are you actually still asleep at quarter to nine in the morning? Or did I totally blow the math?”

It was her partner, Jules Cassidy.

“I’m not asleep anymore,” she mumbled. Jules hadn’t been her first partner straight out of Quantico. But by her third week on the job, after she’d gotten a sampling of potential partners—including two James Bond wanna-bes, four self-important MIBs without Will Smith’s sense of humor, a Gunsmoke revivalist who said, “Let me help you with that, little lady,” at least twice a day, and seven men of the “Partners should be close. Real close. So why don’t we go out and get a drink after work?” variety—she’d found herself requesting, no, begging to be paired up with Jules Cassidy.

Almost unbearably cute, with a pretty face, boy-band hair that he dyed or bleached depending on his mood, and a trim, perfect body that was slight of stature, Jules had spent the first few years of his career with the FBI passing himself off as a teenager, investigating everything from gang-related crimes to drug trafficking. Street smart, intelligent, and loaded with experience and a solid sense of humor, he was everything Alyssa was looking for in a partner.

As a bonus, he was gay. Flamboyantly, out of the closet, shock-your-grandmother gay.

He was the perfect partner, and he’d become a close friend. “Are you calling from Hawaii?” she asked. It had to be, what, close to 0400 there.

“I’m on a red-eye somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico,” Jules reported. “Cruising at thirty thousand feet. And spending forty dollars a minute to talk to you on one of these ridiculous phones that are attached to the back of the seat in front of me.”

Alyssa opened her eyes. “You’re not supposed to be back until... Friday?”

“Yeah, well, I got a call yesterday from Laronda, saying the boss wanted me back in ASAP—first flight out after Mom’s wedding, that is. Isn’t Max a romantic fool? But people in my family don’t do things like get married without the largest possible dose of high drama. Mom skipped out two days ago, Phil went chasing after her, and they ended up tying the knot in Tokyo. Why Tokyo? Don’t ask. Was I at the ceremony after traveling thousands of miles to be with them? Not even close. They weren’t coming back, so I hopped the next flight out. Which is why I’m calling you. Can you pick me up at the airport, pretty please, schnookums, at ten-fifteen?”

“Jules, I’m not in D.C.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I’m flying into Sarasota. I understand our little mutual friend Sam Starrett’s been causing some trouble in the Sunshine State.”

Alyssa sat up. “You’re coming to Sarasota?”

“Me and George and Deb and Yashi and Frannie and the new guy, what’s his name,” Jules told her. “Even Laronda’s on her way down.”

She turned on the light. “Why on earth... Everyone’s coming to Sarasota? What’s going on?”

“Hmmm. The mystery thickens. I thought you’d be able to tell me.”

“I’m not in Sarasota,” Alyssa told him. “I’m in Gainesville. Sam and I drove up here last night.”

“To talk to the car dealer.”

“Yeah. That’s on the morning’s agenda. How much do you know about what’s gone down?” she asked.

“Dead ex-wife baking in the kitchen for three weeks... whoops, it’s not the ex—it’s a dead sister-in-law,” Jules recited. “BOLO sent for both Mary Lou Starrett and Clyde Wrigley, Wrigley found. Mary Lou apparently pretended she was her sister and sold her car lock, stock, and barrel to some ‘We Pay Cash for Your Wreck’ establishment in Gainesville three weeks ago and maxed out her credit card at the Orange Park Mall, outside of Jacksonville. Unless you know more, I think I’m completely up to speed on that funfest. So let’s get personal now, Alyssa, my pumpkin. You and Sammy drove to Gainesville and stayed where last night? You know I love Roger Starrett like a brother, but... are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Separate motel rooms,” Alyssa said.

“Thank God,” Jules said. “Because if you’re going to break Max’s heart, I at least want to be in the same state when he gets the news. You know, so I can provide comfort.”

“You know, the only thing funny about that was that I know it’s costing you forty dollars a minute,” Alyssa said.

Jules knew damn well that Alyssa and Max were not—and never had been—involved. He’d believed the rumors for a while, but then he’d started to notice little things. Like Max never touched her. Ever. Even the times they’d all three gone out for Chinese food after hours. Even the times Jules had dropped by Alyssa’s apartment to find Max over, watching the baseball game.

And when Jules had asked her outright, Alyssa hadn’t been able to lie to him. She’d never been able to lie to him. And yet, even knowing all that, Jules was still rooting for Alyssa and Max to get together.

“Seriously, sweetie,” Jules said now. “Was it smart to spend four hours in a car with Sam Starrett, who I’m going to kill for not telling me about the divorce? Did you know I spoke to him on the phone just two weeks ago? He said nothing. So, okay, news flash—he’s single again. Red alert! Run away! Don’t get into a car with him again! Didn’t your father and I teach you anything? I mean, great sex is great sex, and I’m the last person who should be shaking my finger at you for wanting to get some, but there must be a list of eligible bachelors a mile long—including Max—who’d be more than willing to do the horizontal cha-cha with you, without shredding your heart in the process.”

“I’m not going to sleep with Sam Starrett,” Alyssa said. But how many years had it been since she’d uttered those very words to Jules, and then gone ahead and done just that? She could hear his skepticism now, in his silence. “I really mean it this time. I didn’t mean it the last time I said it. But now... It’s not going to happen. There are too many bad feelings between us.”

“Uh-huh,” Jules said in his best noncommittal therapist voice.

“I mean, yes, sure, he’s been dogging me—in fact, he’s been pretty up-front about it—but I’m not going there again. You know, if the idea of a relationship with a white redneck macho he-man Navy SEAL asshole wasn’t already completely crazy, now the man comes with an ex-wife and a daughter vying for his time. I don’t need that. I don’t need Mary Lou calling up at all hours of the night because her tire’s flat. I don’t need to go scouring the countryside, looking for her every time she turns up AWOL. And I don’t need Haley hanging around every other weekend—because you know sure as hell Sam will get called out, and he’d be like, ‘Hey, Lys, you don’t mind watching the baby for a day or two until Mary Lou can pick her up, do you?’ No. No, no, no. This is not the life I want.”

“Well,” Jules said. “That’s good. I guess. But if that’s the case, I can’t figure out what you’re doing with him in Gainesville.”

“He’s freaking out about Haley. Oh, Jules, I can’t even think about the possibility of Sam’s daughter being dead. He keeps asking me if I think she’s still alive, and I don’t know what to say. How do you ever recover from something like that?”

“The same way you recovered when your sister died. With the help of your friends,” he said.

“But losing a child...”

“Hey,” he said. “We don’t know that Mary Lou hasn’t taken Haley and gone on vacation. She may not even know that Janine was killed.”

“Oh, she knows,” Alyssa told him. “The reason we drove up last night was to go to Waldo, just north of here, to talk to Mary Lou’s mother, Darlene. Who, in her spare time, when she’s not working her job selling frozen yogurt at the Gainesville rest stop—southbound—is the town whore. I kid you not. Talk about freak show. FYI, the going rate for a hand job in Waldo is a bottle of scotch.”

“Oh,” Jules said. “I don’t want to know how you know that.”

“When we asked if she knew where Mary Lou and Haley were, Darlene told us that Janine called her, just about three weeks ago, to tell her that Mary Lou was dead.”

“Hello!” Jules said.

“Yup,” Alyssa said. “Darlene admitted that she was skunked when she got the call—she’s pretty much always skunked—so she couldn’t say for absolute certain that it wasn’t Mary Lou pretending to be Janine. Apparently, the two sisters sounded alike, especially over the phone. And maternal contact wasn’t high on Darlene’s daily to-do list, so it wasn’t like she spoke to them often enough to know the difference. Whoever called Darlene said that she was Janine, and that Mary Lou was dead, and that she was going to Alaska. She didn’t mention Haley at all.”

“Alaska,” Jules repeated.

“To make a fresh start.”

“My bullshit meter is clicking wildly.”

“No kidding,” Alyssa said. “But wait, there’s more. We’re not the only ones who’ve come calling, asking about Mary Lou. Darlene told us that two men stopped in about a week ago. She told them exactly what she told us.”

“Zounds,” Jules said. “Mary Lou knows that someone’s looking for her, possibly to do to her what they did to her sister, and she’s using her mother to spread disinformation.”

Zounds? “Yeah, that was our take on it, too.” Alyssa’s cell phone beeped. “Shoot, that’s my call waiting. I’ve got to get this.”

“It’s probably Ma-ax, checking up on you-oo.”

Alyssa hung up on Jules, clicking over to the other call. “Locke.”

“Missy, where have you been?” It was Laronda, Max’s administrative assistant.

Everyone thought Max’s elite counterterrorist group ran super efficiently because of his brilliant leadership skills, and maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth. Because Max had found Laronda—a single mother of two teenage boys—in the typing pool, back when he was fresh out of Quantico, and whenever he’d moved upward, he’d made sure she’d moved with him.

“Gainesville,” Alyssa said. “Max was aware that I—”

“Where are you right now?”

“The Motel Six off Route 75—”

“And you didn’t call in and give your location and a phone number when you landed last night,” Laronda scolded. “Cell phone satellites were out from five-thirty this morning until about ten minutes ago. We couldn’t reach you, Locke. Max is not happy. I am not happy. No one is happy—”

“I tried, but it was oh-five-hundred when I got here,” Alyssa protested. “Which wasn’t that long ago. I was getting one of those system-wide busy signals, and I figured since I was only going to have about four hours before I got back on the road, I might as well use that time to actually sleep instead of trying to call in.”

“Where’s Lieutenant Starrett?”

“Next door,” Alyssa said. “Probably still sleeping.”

“Get him,” Laronda ordered. “Stay with him. Bring him back to Sarasota.”

“What’s going on?” Alyssa asked. “I just spoke to Jules and he said everyone’s heading down there.”

“Does anyone ever tell me anything?” Laronda complained. “I’m Max’s message service today. Eighteen years and I’m walking voice mail. Let me read you Max’s complete message: ‘Tell her to bring the son of a bitch—’ that would be Lieutenant Starrett ‘—back to Sarasota ASAP. Tell her not to let him out of her sight. Tell her I’ll call her as soon as I’m out of this expletive deleted meeting.’ An expletive deleted meeting with the United States President, I might add. So do what the boss says, Locke, and get yours and the son of a bitch’s butts to Sarasota. Now.”

Mary Lou had just cleaned up Haley and Amanda after their breakfast and set them up with The Little Mermaid video, when she heard the sound of crying.

She followed it to Whitney’s room—with all of its pink and white frothy froufrous that had been hand selected by some famous interior decorator.

The door was ajar, and Mary Lou knocked on it as she pushed it open.

“Go away,” Whitney sobbed. “Just leave me alone!”

And Mary Lou might have—had she not caught a glimpse of the girl’s face. Someone had given her one hell of a bloody lip. Someone? Someone named Peter Young, the little prick.

Mary Lou went into Whitney’s bathroom and wet a washcloth with cool water. She carried it back out into the bedroom, where she sat on the edge of that candy-colored bed and rubbed Whitney’s back.

“Come on, honey,” Mary Lou said, with the same gentleness that she used with Haley and Amanda. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Whereupon Whitney launched herself at Mary Lou and hugged her with a ferocity that was not unlike her two-year-old daughter’s.

Mary Lou rocked her and let her cry, murmuring that it would be okay, it was going to be okay—knowing what it was like to be so desperate for affection that any attention from any man was interpreted as potential love. If true love made you blind, then lonely, self-loathing desperation made you blind and deaf and unable to think clearly—so much so that the seemingly appropriate response to a leering look from a stranger was to sleep with the man.

When the girl’s tears finally let up, Mary Lou asked, “You want to tell me what happened?”

“What do you care? You’re just being nice to me so that I won’t tell my father that your name isn’t really Connie Grant.”

Mary Lou had to laugh. “Go on and think that if you want. Besides, I already know what happened. Peter broke up with you, you got in his face about it, and he backhanded you.” She pressed the cold cloth gently against Whitney’s swollen lip.

The girl’s eyes welled with fresh tears as she pushed the cloth away, but this time they were tears of anger. “I caught him with his dick in Sarah Astrid’s mouth.”

And this actually came as a surprise?

Whitney wiped her nose with the back of her hand, wincing as she got a little too close to her cut lip. “He was in his car, and he and Sarah just looked up and laughed when they saw me standing there.”

“Oh, honey...”

“So I called him up later and pretended I wanted to see him and, you know, get it on, like I didn’t care about what he did with Sarah the slut.”

Whitney wasn’t a particularly pretty girl, but she did have a certain something in her eyes that, when lit, gave her charisma. It was on fire now.

“See, his parents were going out of town, so we made plans for me to come over—this was last night. So I bought, like, twenty-five bags of ice and got there before he got home. I climbed in through the kitchen window and I put the ice in his bathtub and filled it up the rest of the way with cold water. And then I lit all these candles in the bathroom and turned off the lights, like we were going to have some kind of big romantic moment, like something out of a movie, you know? And when he got home and saw that, he took off his clothes so fast, he didn’t even notice the ice in the bathtub, so I pushed him in and pulled out one of Daddy’s guns—”

“Whitney!”

She wiped her nose again. “It wasn’t loaded,” she said scornfully. “I’m not stupid. Of course, Peter the shithead didn’t know that. So I held it on him and made him sit there in that ice water for about five minutes, till his lips started to turn blue. Then I made him get out and stand there, and I took some digital pictures of him with his little, teeny shriveled dick. And I put them on the Internet.”

Mary Lou couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. “Oh, my Lord, girl!”

Whitney was laughing, too, but it faded quickly. “But then this morning, he told me if I hadn’t of done that, he was going to ask me to marry him, but now he wasn’t going to. And then he backhanded me.”

The tears were back in her eyes, and Mary Lou gave her a gentle shake. “What are you doing crying over a boy who can’t keep his johnson out of Sarah Whatsis’s ugly mouth? You think he was serious about marrying you—for any reason other than he wanted to get his hands on your father’s money? Here’s a hot tip, hon. If a man loves you, truly loves you, he’s not going to be fooling around with anyone else. And he’s sure as hell not going to backhand you and make you bleed. Not ever.”

Whitney moved slightly away from her, taking the washcloth and pressing it to her lip, pulling it back to look at the blood. But then she made a face. “Yeah, what do you know about true love, Connie-Wendy-whatever? Your loving husband wants to kill you.”

Sam may not have been loving, but he certainly hadn’t wanted to see her dead. Mary Lou got a twinge of remorse every time Whitney referred to her fictional murderous spouse. And over the past day or so, the girl had managed to bring the subject up an awful lot.

“Actually,” Mary Lou said, “toward the end of my marriage, I did meet a man who loved me the way true love should be. With grace and kindness and sweet devotion.”

“You cheated on your husband?” Whitney asked incredulously. “No wonder he wants to kill you.”

“I didn’t cheat,” Mary Lou said, then corrected herself. “Ihbraham didn’t allow me to cheat. I would have if he’d have let me. I was that desperate.”

Whitney nodded. For once she had no smartass response.

“I didn’t realize I loved him at first,” Mary Lou told the girl. “He was a gardener and, Lord, he wasn’t even white....”

“Oh, my God!”

“Yeah. And my husband was this officer in the... the—” Air Force, she was going to lie, but really, what did it matter? “The Navy.” She went with the truth. It was easier to remember. “That seemed so much, I don’t know, flashier, I guess. More important. I mean, who wants to say, ‘My husband is a gardener’? But you know what? It really, honestly, doesn’t matter. What you really want to be able to say is ‘My husband loves me, and I love him, too.’ That’s what matters.” Unfortunately, it was a lesson she herself had learned too late.

“So where is he?” Whitney asked. “If he loves you so much? What’s his name—Abraham?”

“EE-braham Rahman, spelled with an I,” Mary Lou said. “He was from Saudi Arabia.”

“He’s, like, an Arab?” Whitney’s mouth dropped open. “Weren’t you afraid he was a terrorist?”

“No,” Mary Lou said.

Whitney could smell a lie a mile away. Took a liar to know another liar. The girl just lifted an eyebrow and waited.

“Yeah, okay,” Mary Lou admitted. “So there was this bad... thing that happened, and I thought he was involved, and I left town with... with Chris because I was all freaked out, and I thought not only was he a terrorist, but that he was a dead terrorist.” It had broken her heart.

“Wait a minute,” Whitney said. “You thought what?”

“I thought he broke the law,” Mary Lou simplified. Yeah, simplified was an understatement. What she’d thought was that Ihbraham had been part of a plot to assassinate the U.S. President. She’d thought he’d used her to smuggle guns onto the Coronado Navy base in the trunk of her car. She’d actually seen one of those guns, touched it even. She’d first thought it was Sam’s and had been royally pissed that her Navy SEAL husband had left it in the trunk of her car, where she might’ve gotten into trouble for carrying it around.

But it turned out that Ihbraham had nothing to do with the terrorist plot. He hadn’t put that gun there, either. He was just a gardener. Just an American who happened to be born in Saudi Arabia.

Who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone else had used her to smuggle those guns onto the Navy base. Someone who had traced her to Sarasota all these months later and killed Janine. Someone who was surely still searching for Mary Lou.

“There was an... incident some months ago,” Mary Lou told Whitney now, trying to explain why she’d thought Ihbraham was dead. “Terrorists started shooting into a crowd, and yeah, they were definitely al-Qaeda—and they definitely looked it. Some of the folks in that crowd started beating the hell out of anyone who looked like they came from the Middle East. Ihbraham was there and he was attacked.”

“You can’t blame people for trying to protect themselves!”

“No,” Mary Lou agreed. “You can’t. But there’s a huge difference between knocking a guy to the ground and searching him for a weapon or restraining him until the police can come—and kicking a hole in his skull.”

Whitney winced. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. After it was over, he was taken to the hospital, unconscious. No one expected him to survive.

“I filed for divorce from my husband and left town.” She continued with her story, because for the first time ever, Whitney was really, really paying attention. “After I’d gotten to know Ihbraham, it seemed kind of obvious that my husband didn’t love me. Not even a little. And I... I’d finally found out what real love felt like. There was no point in sticking around in a marriage that had nothing to do with anything real.”

She’d also feared arrest. Sooner or later someone would find out that she’d smuggled those guns onto the base. It had been inadvertent on her part, sure, but her past experiences with the police didn’t give her much faith in their ability to see subtle differences in the facts.

“I spent five months thinking Ihbraham was probably dead, and then my sister got sick of me crying myself to sleep every night, and called his business number.” It was the same day they’d moved out of the house they’d shared with Janine’s ex-husband Clyde.

Jan had been feeling extremely proactive in affairs of the heart, so she’d called the phone number on the landscaping business card that Ihbraham had given Mary Lou a lifetime ago. Being Janine, she’d been direct and to the point. She was Mary Lou Starrett’s sister and she wanted to know if an Ihbraham Rahman who’d used to work from this phone number was still alive.

“I was at work when she called him,” Mary Lou told Whitney. “But when I got home she told me that Ihbraham was alive.” Her voice still shook when she said the words.

At the time, Mary Lou had handed Haley to her sister, locked herself in the bathroom, and cried and cried. Ihbraham was alive!

“She actually spoke to him,” she continued. “He’d been in the hospital for three months, but he was almost completely recovered now and even working again. No, he was not a terrorist. He and his brothers had been questioned by the authorities, but they weren’t involved in the shootings. My sister also told me that after Ihbraham left the hospital he spent some time searching for me. But since I was keeping myself pretty well hidden... He asked my sister to tell me that he hoped I would give him a call. But, Lord, as much as I loved him—because I loved him—I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” Then Whitney answered her own incredulous outburst. “Because your husband would kill him, too.”

Mary Lou nodded even though it wasn’t Sam who would kill Ihbraham. Sam would probably welcome Ihbraham with a handshake or even a hug. Take my ex-wife, please....

No, it was the terrorists—the real terrorists—whom Mary Lou was scared to death of. One of them was a man, a very American-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes, who Mary Lou had only known as Bob Schwegel—obviously that had to be an assumed name. She’d met him in the library, of all places. He’d told her he was an insurance salesman, he’d flirted with her, and they’d become friends. Sort of.

He’d certainly had access to her car during the time she’d found that weapon in her trunk. And, months later, she’d seen him leaving her house in Sarasota with another man. Her heart had gone into terrified palpitations at the sight of him, and she’d kept on driving, ducking down so that he wouldn’t see her, grateful as hell that she and Janine had switched cars several months earlier.

Janine’s car—the old light blue and maroon wreck that Mary Lou used to drive—had been in the driveway when she drove past. She’d been scared to death for her sister’s safety, but with Haley strapped into her car seat in the back, there was no way Mary Lou was going to stop. Besides, it was possible the two men had rung the bell and simply asked Janine if Mary Lou was at home.

Wasn’t it?

In hindsight, Mary Lou knew that couldn’t have been the way it had gone down. Bob wanted Mary Lou dead—she had no doubt of that. And there was no way Bob would’ve gone to the door, talked to Janine, and walked away. Because Mary Lou might’ve called before she came home, and Janine might’ve said, “Some guy came looking for you, girl. Blond, killer cheekbones, movie star face...? If you’ve been telling this man no, quick, call him back so I can say yes.”

At which point, Mary Lou would know that Bob had tracked her—somehow—to Sarasota, and would’ve been heading north on the interstate to Jacksonville and beyond, faster than she could say presidential assassination attempt.

On that awful day, Mary Lou had waited until dark, until Haley was fast asleep in the car. She’d parked on the next side street down from Camilia and had crept up to the house from the back, moving as silently as she could. All the windows were dark, even though Janine’s car was still in the drive. The kitchen door was locked, so she’d opened it with her key and...

Found Janine, dead on the floor. Lord God help them all.

As much as she ached to be with Ihbraham, she was not going to call him. He was one of the three people in this world who Mary Lou loved, one of the three who loved her, too. Janine was already dead because of her. Haley was in danger just by being her child. There was no way Mary Lou was going to put Ihbraham at risk, too. No freaking way.

She couldn’t stop herself. She had been strong for so long, but now as she sat on Whitney’s bed, in that horrible pink and white bedroom, she started to cry. And this time it was Whitney—little messed-up demon child Whitney—who put her arms around her and murmured that it was going to be okay, that she wouldn’t tell her father anything, that Mary Lou’s secret was safe.