Praise for the novels of
CARLA NEGGERS

“No one does romantic suspense better!”

—New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich

“Neggers’s brisk pacing and colorful characterizations sweep the reader toward a dramatic and ultimately satisfying denouement.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Cabin

“These pages don’t just turn; they spin with the best of them.”

—BookPage on The Waterfall

“Neggers delivers a colorful, well-spun story that shines with sincere emotion.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Carriage House

“Suspense, romance and the rocky Maine coast—what more can a reader ask for? The Harbor has it all. Carla Neggers writes a story so vivid you can smell the salt air and feel the mist on your skin.”

—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

“Tension-filled story line that grips the audience from start to finish.”

—Midwest Book Review on The Waterfall

“Carla Neggers is one of the most distinctive, talented writers of our genre.”

—New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

CARLA NEGGERS
Night’s Landing

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Christine Wenger, Glen Stone, Paul Hudson and Dr. Carla Patton for answering all my questions and thinking up a few I didn’t know to ask.

A special thank-you to my Southern in-laws, Jimmy and Estelle Jewell, whose Tennessee roots literally go back to Daniel Boone. Writing this book gave me the opportunity to get them to talk about the Cumberland River and some of the changes in it and middle Tennessee over the past century—I love to listen to their stories! Although…no, I never do want to get eyeball-to-eyeball with a water moccasin.

Thanks also—always—to Meg Ruley and everyone at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, and to Amy Moore-Benson, Dianne Moggy, Donna Hayes, Katherine Orr, Tania Charzewski and everyone at MIRA Books.

As I write this, I’ve put away my hiking boots (I’m determined to hike all forty-eight peaks over 4,000 feet in the New Hampshire White Mountains) and I’m deep into my next book. To get in touch with me, visit my Web site, www.carlaneggers.com.

Take care,

To Lynn Katz…

I love your photography and your sense of humor!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

One

After ninety minutes, the press conference dribbled to a close. As far as Nate Winter was concerned, the whole thing could have been wrapped up in fifteen minutes, tops. Announce the results of the joint fugitive task force. Outline its future. Answer a few questions.

Done.

But reporters had an uncanny ability of coming up with another way of asking what they’d just asked and politicians of saying what they’d just said. And the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and New York Police Department brass wanted their fair share of credit. Deservedly so, maybe, but Nate just wanted to get back to work.

He cleared out of the airless meeting room on the ground floor of a fancy Central Park South hotel—the choice of the mayor’s office—and made his way out to the street, welcoming the blast of chilly New York air.

It was midday. Traffic was bad. Some of the pedestrians had unfurled their umbrellas, but it wasn’t really raining. Just misting, not even drizzling. People were craving real spring air—it was the first week in May—but it felt like March again.

Rob Dunnemore, a fellow deputy U.S. marshal, stood next to Nate and hunched his shoulders against the cold. “My southern blood is protesting.”

Nate glanced at his younger colleague. They both had on their best dark suits, plus their nine-millimeter semiautomatics, their cuffs, their badges—the hardware wasn’t visible, but Nate doubted they could pass for New York businessmen, either. “Air feels good to me.”

“It would. I’ll bet the snow hasn’t melted where you come from.”

Cold Ridge, New Hampshire, in the heart of the White Mountains. Nate hadn’t been home since his sister Carine’s wedding in February. “My uncle tells me there’s still snow on the ridge. It’s melted in the valleys.”

“The frozen north.” Rob gave an exaggerated shiver. He had the kind of blond good looks and southern charm tinged with danger that had an irresistible effect on the female support staff—and more than one female marshal. “New York’s plenty cold enough for me. Come on. I need a dose of springtime. Let’s check out the tulips in Central Park.”

“Tulips? Dunnemore, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw about a million tulips when I was in Holland a couple weeks ago visiting my folks.” He gave Nate an unabashed grin. “I’m kind of into them right now.”

Before Nate could respond, Dunnemore seized on a break in traffic and jaywalked across Central Park South. Nate, who was taller and lankier, followed at a slower pace, still unaccustomed to his fellow deputy’s wide range of interests. He had no idea how or why Rob Dunnemore had ended up in the U.S. Marshals Service, never mind being assigned to its southern New York district. The Dunnemores were a prominent Tennessee family—Rob had been educated at private schools in Nashville and Washington, D.C., and graduated from Georgetown. He’d done a year abroad. Paris. He’d been everywhere and spoke six or seven languages, including Arabic and Farsi. Sooner or later, someone in Washington would reel him in and put him to work in intelligence.

After just four months in New York, Rob noticed everything. After five years, Nate didn’t even notice the noise and grime anymore. He liked the city, but he didn’t delude himself. He wasn’t staying there. There was talk of sitting him at a desk at USMS headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. It would be a major promotion after more than a dozen years in street law enforcement.

He and Rob walked down the steps at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street and entered the normally busy southeast corner of the park. But on such a miserable day, it was quiet, the noontime traffic above them almost distant, as if they’d entered an oasis in the middle of the tall buildings and millions of people. The grass was lush and green, the spring leaves thickening on the trees and brush on the steep bank along the Central Park South fence and the famous elliptical-shaped pond. There was just enough of a drizzle to cause pinpricks across the pond’s gray water.

“The tulips are something, aren’t they?” Rob walked up the gently curving path along the edge of the pond. “My sister says they’re done for in Tennessee.”

“Rob, Christ. I’ve got work to do. I can’t be wasting time looking at flowers.”

“What’s the matter? We hard-ass marshals can’t appreciate tulips?”

Nate made himself take in the thousands of tulips that blossomed in waves on the sloping lawn to the right of the path, opposite the pond. Dark pink, light pink, white—they added a cheerful touch of color against the gloom. “All right. I’ve appreciated the tulips.”

“When do tulips bloom in New Hampshire? July?”

“We’re a couple weeks behind New York.”

Probably more than a couple weeks this year, according to his uncle. Even for a tried-and-true northern New Englander like Gus Winter, it had been a long winter. More snow than normal, more days with temperatures that fell below zero—and a Valentine’s Day wedding in the middle of it. The second of Nate’s younger sisters, Carine, and her childhood friend, Tyler North, had finally married. They’d almost made it to the altar the previous Valentine’s Day, but called the wedding off at the last moment. It had taken a murder in Boston and a dangerous showdown with a madman on infamous Cold Ridge in the White Mountains before they came to their senses and finally married.

The previous October, Nate’s other younger sister, Antonia, had married Hank Callahan, now the junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

No one had said, “Two down, one to go,” but Nate had heard the words in his mind. He had no intention of getting married while he was still working on the streets. He’d been orphaned as a little boy. He liked not having anyone worrying about whether he’d come home that night. A wife, kids. A dog. He didn’t even own a cat.

Gus, at least, left him alone. His uncle was in his fifties now and had never married. He was just twenty when he’d ended up raising his nephew and two nieces after their parents died of exposure on the ridge that loomed over their small New Hampshire town of the same name.

Nate had left Cold Ridge at eighteen and never went back to live.

He never would.

“I caught the dogwoods when I was home in April,” Rob said in his amiable southern accent. “You don’t see so many dogwoods up here.”

“Dunnemore? Are you going to keep talking about goddamn flowers all afternoon?”

“Dogwoods are a flowering tree—”

“I know. Give me a break.”

“You should come to Nashville. My sister—” Rob flinched suddenly, his body jerking back and up, his knees stiffening as he grabbed his upper left abdomen and swore. “Fuck. Nate…shit…”

Nate drew his Heckler & Koch, but told himself Rob could just be having a back spasm or a heart attack. The guy almost never swore. Something had to be wrong. Maybe a bee sting. Was he allergic?

Rob staggered back a step, his suitcoat falling open.

Blood.

It seeped between his fingers and spread across his white shirt on his upper left side.

A lot of blood.

“I’ve been shot,” he said, sinking.

Nate caught him around the middle with his left arm, still holding the HK in his right hand, and glanced around for cover, spotted a rock outcropping near the pond on the other side of the path.

The shooter—where the hell was he?

Rob tried to keep his feet moving, but Nate more or less dragged him toward the rocks, then realized he hadn’t heard any gunfire. Apparently no one else had, either. People were going about their business. Two elderly women with Bergdorf Goodman bags, a middle-aged man jogging on the path, a park worker inside a fenced area near the far edge of the tulips. They were all potential targets.

“Get down!” Nate yelled. “Federal officers! Get down now!”

The park worker dove for the ground without hesitation. The women and the jogger were confused at first, then did likewise, covering their heads with their hands and going still, not making a sound.

The rocks seemed a million miles away. Nate had no idea where the shot had come from. Fifth Avenue? Central Park South? The undergrowth along the shore of the pond presented a number of places for a shooter to conceal himself.

A trained sniper could be within hundreds of yards.

A bullet tore into Nate’s upper left arm. He knew instantly what it was. He swore but didn’t let go of Rob, didn’t let go of his semiautomatic.

Definitely no gunfire. Even with the street noise, he should have been able to hear a shot.

The asshole was using a silencer.

“Put pressure on your wound,” he told Rob. “Don’t let go. You hear me? I’ll get help.”

But before Nate could get to his feet, a mounted NYPD police officer rode toward them. “What’s—”

“Sniper,” Nate cut in. “Get off your horse before—”

He didn’t need to finish. The NYPD cop saw Rob’s bloody front, saw his badge on his belt and dismounted, shouting into his radio for help. Officers down. Sniper at the pond in Central Park.

Nate knew the cavalry would be there in seconds.

The young NYPD cop stayed calm and crept toward the rocks. “You both hit?”

Nate nodded. “We’re deputy marshals. The shooter’s using a silencer.”

“All right. Stay cool.”

Rob moaned, his arm falling away from his wound. Nate took over, applying pressure with his hand, as he’d learned in his first-aid training. He could feel his own pain now. His suit jacket was torn and bloody where the bullet had ripped through the fabric. What caliber? Where was the bastard who’d shot him?

Who was next?

The NYPD cop yelled instructions to bystanders.

Sirens. Lots of sirens on the streets above them.

Nate looked at the thousands of tulips brightening the dull landscape.

What the hell had just happened?

Two

Sarah Dunnemore jammed a cinnamon stick among the ice cubes and the slice of orange in her tall glass of sweet tea punch and sat back in the old wicker rocker on the front porch of her family’s 1918 log house. The air was warm, no hint yet of the heat and humidity that would come with the middle Tennessee summer, and the sky was washed from yesterday’s rain. A gentle breeze floated up from the river and brought with it the faint scent of roses.

Somewhere nearby, a mockingbird sang.

Sarah had warned herself to be prepared for the worst when she came home. Leaks in the roof, unmowed grass, bats, mice, food rotting in the refrigerator—her parents had last been in Night’s Landing in early April, though they wouldn’t necessarily notice such things or have them tended to. But they’d hired a new “gardener,” as her mother called the property manager, and he seemed to be working out. He hadn’t disappeared yet, as so many of his predecessors had, and he was good at his job. The lawn was manicured, the flower and vegetable gardens were in top shape, and the house was in good repair on what was a perfect early May afternoon.

The Dunnemores had arrived on the Cumberland River in the late eighteenth century and had been there ever since, sometimes eking out a living, sometimes managing quite nicely—always having adventures and too often dying young.

After just one sip of her tea punch, Sarah resolved not to drink the entire pitcher by herself. It was even sweeter than she remembered. She’d come home last at Christmas, but tea punch was a summer treat. She’d only made it to Night’s Landing once the previous summer, a whirlwind visit that did not involve a leisurely afternoon on the porch.

The porch was shaded by a massive oak that she and her brother, Rob, used to climb as children, but even the lowest branch was too high now. They’d sneak up there and spy on Granny Dunnemore and their father, arguing politics on the porch, or their mother as she snapped beans and hummed to herself, thinking she was alone.

Sarah had made the tea punch herself, dunking tea bags into Granny’s old sun-tea bottle and setting it out on the porch for an hour, then adding the litany of ingredients—frozen orange juice and lemon juice, mint extract, spices, sugar. She knew not to ponder them too much or she’d never drink the stuff. She never had an urge for sweet tea punch except when she was home in Tennessee.

Her friends in Scotland had made faces when she’d described Granny’s recipe. “Do you waste proper tea on it?”

Well, no. She didn’t. She used the cheapest tea bags she could find.

She took her friends’ chiding in stride. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have oddities in their comfort cuisine.

She’d spent two weeks in Scotland in the fall and then the past three months straight, working nonstop, completing—yes, that was the word, she told herself—the final project in a series of projects under one huge heading: the Poe House. How dry and ordinary it sounded. Yet it had consumed her since high school, before she even knew what historical archaeology was.

The Poes had arrived on the Cumberland River not that long after the Dunnemores. Sarah knew their family history, the history of their post—Civil War house just downriver, of the land it was built on, better than she did her own. She’d written articles and papers, she’d done interviews and research; she’d organized archaeological digs on the site; she’d preserved documents and artifacts; she’d scrambled for grants; she’d helped create a private trust that worked with the state and federal government to preserve the Poe house as an historic site; and now she’d produced a documentary that took the family back to its roots in Scotland.

It was time to move on. Find something else to do.

She had no idea what but pushed back any thought of the possibilities before it could explode into a full-blown obsession, as it had on the long trip home from Scotland. What would she do now? Teach full-time? Work for a foundation? A museum? Find a new project?

Have a life?

Sarah yanked her cinnamon stick out of her glass and licked the end of it, watching the dappled shade on the rich, green lawn. She wondered if her grandfather, who’d built the log house in order to attract a bride, had ever imagined that dams would raise the river and bring it closer to the front porch, if he’d ever pictured how beautiful the landscape would be almost a hundred years later—if he’d ever guessed that his family would become so attached to it. Sarah had never known him. He’d died an early and tragic death like so many Dunnemores before him.

When she was a little girl, she’d believed stories that the logs for the house had come from trees cut down, blown down or otherwise destroyed when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed up the Cumberland for flood control and hydroelectric power, until she realized that the dams had been built decades after the house.

More than most in middle Tennessee, her family had a flare for storytelling and would go to great lengths, including embellishment, to make an already good story better.

She was convinced it was one of the reasons her father was such a natural diplomat. He didn’t necessarily believe anything anyone told him, but at the same time, he didn’t condemn them for stretching the truth, exaggerating, tweaking and otherwise making what they had to say suit their ends. To Stuart Dunnemore, that was all perfectly normal.

Sarah had no intention of making researching her own family her next career. It was enough to have researched her Night’s Landing neighbors—especially when the last of the Poes had just been elected to the White House. She’d promised John Wesley Poe—President Poe—that he could be the first to view her documentary, which was finished, edited, done. But he couldn’t ask her to change anything. That was the deal.

A mockingbird was singing somewhere nearby. Sarah smiled, watching a boat make its way upriver along the steep bluffs on the opposite bank, and drank more of her tea. Maybe it wasn’t too sweet, after all.

Maybe, despite having nothing particular to do, this time she wouldn’t get herself into trouble. She’d never done well with time on her hands. She hated being bored. She liked the independence her work afforded her, being her own boss, making her natural impulsiveness a virtue rather than a liability. Some of her best work had started out as wild-goose chases. But when she had no focus, nothing to anchor her, her impulsiveness hadn’t always served her well. Once, she’d tried building her own boat and nearly drowned. Another time she’d tried her hand at frog-gigging and came up with a leg full of leeches. Then there was the time she’d ended up, on a whim, in Peru with nowhere near enough money to get by.

No affairs, anyway. She’d learned not to be impulsive with men.

The telephone rang, interrupting her mind-wandering. She set her glass on a rickety old table and reached for the ancient, heavy dial phone that had been wired up for use on the porch for as long as she could remember. It would never die. The phone company would have to come for it and tell them they couldn’t use it anymore.

It was probably a solicitor. Not many people knew she was home. Her parents, but they were in Amsterdam. Rob, but he was on duty in New York—she’d promised to get up there soon to see him. Her Scottish friends.

The president, except Wes Poe didn’t call that often.

Virtually none of her Tennessee friends and relatives knew she was back in Night’s Landing. It had only been a week—she had only just recovered from jet lag.

She lifted the receiver but didn’t get a chance to say hello. “Sarah.” She barely recognized her brother. “God…” His voice was weak, breathless.

Sarah gripped the phone hard. “Rob? What’s wrong? What—”

“I made Nate call you. I…damn.”

“Are you in New York?” She could hear sirens in the background, people shouting, and felt panic rising in her throat. “Rob, talk to me! What’s going on? Who’s Nate?”

A fat bumblebee landed on the rim of her glass. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, as she waited for her brother to answer.

“I’ve been shot. I’ll be okay.”

“Rob!” She jumped to her feet. “Rob, where are you? What can I do?”

Another voice came on the line. “Miss Dunnemore? Nate Winter. I work with your brother. Is someone with you?”

“No. No, I’m here alone. Rob—”

“He wanted you to hear the news from him. A paramedic’s with him now. We’ve got to go. I’ll call you as soon as I can with more information.”

“Wait—don’t hang up! Where was he shot? How bad is it?”

“He took a bullet to the left upper abdomen.” Nate Winter’s voice was professional, unemotional, but Sarah thought she heard a ripple of something else. Pain, dread. “Paramedics are coming for me. Sorry, I’ve got to go. We’ll get you more information. I promise.”

His words sank in. “Have you been shot, too? My God—”

The line went dead.

Sarah’s hands shook so badly she had trouble cradling the receiver. Was Nate Winter another deputy U.S. marshal? She knew very little about her brother’s work. He knew even less about hers. Historical archaeology—he’d say he didn’t even know what it was. Traditional archaeology studies prehistoric people and cultures. Historical archaeology is a subdiscipline of archaeology that studies people and cultures that existed during recorded history.

She’d given Rob that explanation dozens of times.

He chased fugitives. Armed and dangerous fugitives. She knew that much.

Had one just shot him?

Her teeth were chattering, and she was pacing. Gulping for air.

“Ma’am?”

Ethan Brooker, her parents’ new property manager, walked slowly up the porch steps, his concern evident. He had on his habitual overalls and Tennessee Titans shirt, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, at least a two days’ growth of scruffy beard along his square jaw. He was tanned and muscular and had a black graphic tattoo on his huge right arm.

“Miss Sarah, you don’t look so good.” He spoke in an easy, heavy West Texas drawl. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I need—” She took in another breath, but couldn’t seem to get any air. It was as if her entire body was trying to absorb the shock of Rob’s call. “I need to wait for a phone call. My brother…” She couldn’t finish, just kept trying to get air into her lungs.

The old porch floor, painted a dark evergreen, creaked under Ethan’s weight. He was a year or two older than she was at thirty-two and taller. Her parents had found him down on the dock fishing when they were home for a few days. Trespassing, really, but he’d explained that he’d just moved to Nashville and was looking for work. Since they’d come home to a leaky ceiling in the living room and an overgrown yard, they offered him a job. He’d worked hard every day since Sarah had arrived in Night’s Landing a week ago. He lived in Granny Dunnemore’s old cottage down by the river, close to the woods between the Dunnemores and the Poes.

Granny had lost a husband in a logging accident, a son in World War II. Her surviving son’s first wife had died after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Granny had built the cottage for herself after insisting he and his very sick wife move home.

Sarah knew the story of how her father had almost withered away here in Night’s Landing after his wife’s death, until he met her mother, twenty-two years his junior, the young and vibrant Betsy Quinlan, a woman even Granny Dunnemore had come to believe had changed the Dunnemore luck.

Sarah could feel her heart thumping in her chest.

Not another Dunnemore tragedy…not Rob…

“What about your brother, Miss Sarah?”

Ethan was invariably polite and deferential. She suspected he was a country-western musician looking for his big break in Nashville. She’d heard him playing acoustic guitar on the cottage porch early in the morning and late in the evening.

“Ma’am?”

“Rob—he’s been shot.”

The words felt no less surreal now that she’d said them herself.

Biting back tears, trying to breathe normally, she told Ethan about her brother’s call from New York, Nate Winter, his promise to call her as soon as possible.

“What a shame, Miss Sarah. What a crying shame.” He shook his head and exhaled forcefully, as if it would ease his own tension. “Who’d want to shoot two people like that?”

“Rob’s a deputy U.S. marshal. They’re called deputies. I didn’t know that when he first started. A U.S. marshal heads up each district—they’re not deputies. They’re appointed by the president. I—” She didn’t know what she was saying. “I don’t know what Rob was doing.”

“The marshals must have an office in Nashville. They’ll send someone out here. You just sit tight.” Ethan spoke with confidence as he withdrew a faded red bandanna from his back pocket and wiped away the dirt and grease stuck between his fingers and under his fingernails. “You’re your brother’s closest kin in the country, aren’t you? The marshals will take good care of you.”

Sarah’s stomach twisted. “My parents. They’re in Amsterdam. Oh, God. Who’s going to tell them?”

“Let the marshals do it. You don’t have enough information yet. If you try calling now, you’ll just scare them, maybe unnecessarily.”

Ethan’s steady manner helped her to regain her composure. She felt as if someone were standing on her chest—she couldn’t get air—and made herself breathe from the diaphragm, counting to four as she inhaled through her nose, then to eight as she exhaled through her mouth.

“Rob was able to talk,” she said. “That’s a good sign, don’t you think?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Why don’t you go inside and throw some cold water on your face? That always helps me when I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me.”

Cold water. She wondered if she looked as if she was going to pass out.

“Go on,” Ethan said calmly. “I’ll go down to the cottage and get cleaned up, then come back here and stay with you until the marshals get here or this deputy you talked to calls back.”

“You don’t think he will, do you?”

“Not if he was shot, too, ma’am. Doctors and FBI will have him sewn up. Now, go on. One step at a time, okay?”

Sarah nodded. “Thank you. Rob and I are twins. Did you know that?”

“I think your mother told me that, yes, ma’am.”

“She almost died when she had us.”

Supposedly. It could have been another in a long string of Dunnemore enhancements. Although not a blood Dunnemore, Betsy Quinlan had fallen right in line with that particular Dunnemore tradition. Even letters and diaries from the nineteenth century that Sarah had uncovered in her Poe research had mentioned the Dunnemores and their zest for drama and adventure. They’d made so many bad, romantic, impractical decisions that had led to disaster—which was exactly how their father had viewed Rob’s decision to become a marshal. A bad decision that would lead to disaster.

But Sarah didn’t know why she’d mentioned that their mother had almost died in childbirth—why she’d even thought of it.

Ethan didn’t comment and walked back down the porch steps with the same deliberateness as he’d mounted them. He paused, glancing up at Sarah as if to make sure she hadn’t fallen apart in the few seconds he’d had his back turned. She couldn’t smile. She couldn’t do anything to reassure him.

“A splash of cold water, Miss Sarah,” he repeated. “It’ll help. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She managed to pull open the screen door and step into the front room with its walls of squared logs and thick, white caulking, with its old furnishings and frayed knitted afghans, its threadbare rugs, its wall of framed photographs. Her gaze landed on an oval portrait of Granny Dunnemore at eighty, in her pink sweater and cameo pin, a woman who’d endured so much sorrow and tragedy, who’d nonetheless stayed strong and kept her spirit, her faith.

Sarah ran back to the kitchen and turned on the faucet in the old sink.

“I’ve been shot. I’ll be okay.”

Crying, she splashed her face with cold water and prayed those wouldn’t be her brother’s last words to her.

An hour after Sarah’s brother took a bullet in Central Park, two deputy marshals arrived at the Dunnemore house in a black government car. They came all the way around to the front porch, which afforded Ethan Brooker the opportunity to wish her luck, ask her to give her brother his best and slip out the back door.

He didn’t need to be introducing himself to a couple of feds.

As pretty as she was, Sarah looked like hell. Pale, frightened, splotchy-faced from shock and tears. The other fed shot with her brother—Nate Winter—hadn’t called her back. Understandable. The cable news channels reported that both he and Rob Dunnemore were in surgery. Winter was stable. Rob Dunnemore was critical and unstable.

If the reporters got it right. There was a lot of confusion, and the feds weren’t releasing much information.

Ethan had talked Sarah into shutting off the television. CNN, MSNBC and FOX were all carrying the story live, with helicopter shots of Central Park and the manhunt for the sniper. They’d brought in experts to talk about what kind of person would do such a thing and explain what the U.S. Marshals Service was.

They repeated footage from the news conference that had preceded the shooting and showed Nate Winter and Rob Dunnemore standing behind the mayor, the U.S. marshal from their district, the chief deputy marshal, the assistant director in charge of the FBI, the NYPD commissioner—an impressive gathering of state, federal and local law enforcement types.

Winter was tall, rangy and all business.

Dunnemore looked like a frat boy.

Every time she saw the footage of her brother, Sarah went a little paler.

A joint FBI, NYPD and U.S. Marshal’s Service news conference was scheduled for later that night and would, Ethan suspected, tell people nothing. The feds would be playing it close to the vest when two of their own had just been picked off in Central Park in broad daylight.

The all-news networks promised to carry, live, any briefings from the hospital where the two deputies were being treated.

As he made his way down to his cottage, Ethan stayed out of sight of the porch and any windows that could offer the feds a view of him. The breeze had strengthened into a stiff wind, damp and earthy smelling.

He entered through the back door, not making a sound. The cottage was made of the same rough logs as the main house and had an old-lady feel to it. Hand-crocheted afghans in bright, wear-ever yarns, doilies on the end tables, pink tile in the bathroom. When she’d shown him the place, Betsy Dunnemore had explained that her mother-in-law had built the cottage for herself after insisting her son live in the main house when he returned to Night’s Landing with his dying first wife. Even after her daughter-in-law died, Granny Dunnemore, as she was known by everyone, had stayed on in the cottage until her own death fifteen years ago.

The place had a small kitchen, two tiny bedrooms and a front room and small porch that looked out at the river.

It could have been a tent for all Ethan cared.

A fishing boat with two old men talking loudly at each other puttered upstream, and Ethan had to fight an urge to find a boat and get the hell away from Night’s Landing.

Charlene would want him to. Get on with your life. You can’t change what happened.

She wouldn’t be fooled into believing it was justice he was after.

It was revenge. Absolution for his own guilt.

He pulled himself away from the front window. Charlene would have loved it here. She’d never been a grasper—she’d talk about quitting the military and getting a little place in the country, having a couple of kids. He was the one who wasn’t ready to stand down. A couple more years, Char. A couple more.

She hadn’t had years the last time she’d brought up the subject.

She hadn’t had months.

Only days.

And he wasn’t with her when she died.

When she was murdered.

Ethan grabbed the pair of clippers he’d tossed onto the kitchen counter earlier and headed back outside. He didn’t know as much about gardening as he’d claimed to Stuart and Betsy Dunnemore, but they’d never bothered to test his knowledge of flowers, trees and shrubs or even check his phony references. He’d made sure he so looked the part of a disarming, hardworking good ol’ boy that they’d let it go.

He was from West Texas, but the rest was pure fiction.

Concealed behind a cedar tree, he watched the two marshals leave via the back door, one of them carrying a small suitcase, presumably Sarah’s. But instead of following them, she came out onto the porch and trotted down the steps and across the yard to the cottage. “Ethan?” Her voice sounded tight but more composed. “Ethan, I’m going to New York to see Rob. Where—”

He ducked out from his hiding place. “That’s good, ma’am.”

She almost smiled. “You were right about the marshals looking after me. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. A few days, at least, I would think.”

“You just go on and don’t worry about a thing here.”

She seemed relieved, as if she’d expected him to evaporate on her. “I left my cell phone number on the refrigerator in case you need to reach me. You were right about the marshals getting in touch with my parents, too. They just called. They’re waiting to get more information after Rob gets out of surgery before they decide what to do.”

How much information did they need? Their son had been shot. He was in surgery. As far as Ethan was concerned, they should get their butts on a plane.

But Stuart Dunnemore did important work. He was in Amsterdam negotiating world peace or some damn thing. And he was old. A lot older than his wife—eighty or close to it. It couldn’t be easy at that age to drop everything and fly across the Atlantic, even in an emergency.

Ethan put aside his disapproval. He didn’t know what, if any, role the Dunnemores had played in his wife’s death, only that Char had met them in Amsterdam two days before she was killed. He wasn’t even sure if the Dutch authorities knew. Or if it mattered. The Dunnemores had returned to the States the day after they met with Charlene, the day before she was killed. That was eight months ago. Ethan had arrived at Night’s Landing in early April to check them out. They’d ended up hiring him.

He hadn’t bothered using an alias. The Dunnemores showed no sign that Brooker was a name they ought to know. Maybe Charlene had used an alias with them? Maybe they didn’t remember her name? They’d returned to Amsterdam in February and rented an apartment on a canal. Hiring Ethan on a quick trip home in April was supposed to give them peace of mind while they were away—it wasn’t easy for them to get back to Night’s Landing to check on their place. Maybe they didn’t know about Charlene’s death.

Since coming to Tennessee, Ethan had learned that the president of the United States was a family friend who’d grown up next door. He had no idea if that had anything to do with Charlene’s death or what he’d do if the Secret Service decided to check out the Dunnemore’s new gardener.

He’d also searched every inch of the Dunnemore house.

He gave Sarah a reassuring smile. “I’ll take care of the place while you’re gone. You just take care of yourself and your brother.”

“Thanks, Ethan. No wonder my parents were thrilled when you agreed to work here. Thanks for everything.”

He didn’t feel even a twinge of guilt. All Ethan needed to do if he felt guilty about duping the Dunnemores was picture his wife lying in a pool of her own blood. There’d be no civilian life for them. No quiet place in the country. No babies. The investigation into her murder kept hitting brick wall after brick wall. Ethan hadn’t had an update in weeks. In the meantime, he had his own sources, his own methods. So far, they’d brought him to Night’s Landing and the Dunnemores.

He hadn’t anticipated Rob Dunnemore getting shot in New York.

Who? Who was responsible? Did the shooting have anything to do with Char’s murder?

He could hear her voice. You’re grasping at straws, Ethan. Let the authorities do their job.

There wasn’t necessarily a connection between what had happened to Charlene Brooker in Amsterdam eight months ago and what had happened to Rob Dunnemore and Nate Winter in New York that afternoon.

Ethan watched the fed sedan pull out of the long, curving driveway.

Yeah, right. He didn’t believe in coincidence.

There had to be a connection.

He snipped a dead branch off some kind of white-flowering bush. An azalea, probably. He wasn’t sure. Some gardener.

He wasn’t an investigator by nature or training. He was a search-and-destroy specialist. His wife was the plotter, the thinker, the analyst.

She’d want him to call the police when he found her killer.

But he had a feeling he wouldn’t do that.

Three

Nate climbed off the exam table and continued his argument with his doctor—her badge identified her as Sharon Ling, and she was all of five feet tall and maybe thirty years old—about getting his pants and shoes back and clearing out of the E.R. He’d heard that the news reports had him in surgery, but he’d only needed a few stitches. But apparently that was plenty for Dr. Ling. She wanted him admitted.

“Pants, shoes, whatever paperwork I need to get out of here,” he said. “A couple of Tylenol and I’ll be fine.”

She shook her head not for the first time. “No way. You can go home in the morning.”

He’d turned his weapon and cuffs over to Juliet Longstreet, another marshal who’d arrived on the scene before he and Rob were whisked away. The paramedics had shredded his shirt and jacket. Nate figured he could tuck in his hospital gown and change when he got home. But it was hard to look commanding and tough with a gown flapping on his back end. Dr. Ling had explained that he had a perforating, not a penetrating, wound, meaning she hadn’t had to dig out the bullet that had struck him. The FBI investigators were undoubtedly looking for it somewhere in Central Park. Maybe it was at the bottom of the pond. Maybe the ducks had made off with it.

Nate didn’t give a damn. He just wanted to get out of the hospital.

Dr. Ling didn’t seem to consider the armed deputy posted at the exam room door anything out of the ordinary, probably because she’d treated plenty of wounded criminals. Nate knew from his E.R. doctor sister, Antonia, that it was her job as a doctor to treat the patient in front of her. Period. Meaning Dr. Ling would do her job whether he was a murder suspect or a federal law enforcement officer with fifteen years experience catching bad guys.

She sighed through her teeth. “You are a very determined man, Deputy Winter. At least let me get you into a room for a few hours. You can sit tight until your local anesthetic wears off.”

“Doesn’t it make more sense to get out of here while it’s still working? I can have my feet up in front of the television before I start hurting.”

She seemed singularly unimpressed with his argument. She crossed her arms on her chest and gave him a firm look. “You’re a very lucky man, Deputy Winter. I don’t think I’d be pushing my luck any more today.”

What she meant, Nate knew, was that the bullet that had ripped into the fleshy part of his upper arm had caused a superficial wound that would heal fast. No permanent damage. No surgery. A couple inches one way, the bullet would have missed him entirely. A couple inches another way, it could have nicked an artery or shattered bone.

Luck.

He agreed to sit tight for a few hours.

Dr. Ling handed him his pants and shoes—he’d track down Longstreet for his weapon—and an orderly and the deputy guard wheeled him upstairs.

Nate noticed the dried blood on the knee of his pants and the tops of his shoes.

Rob’s blood.

When he got to his floor, he understood the subtext of Dr. Ling’s stubbornness. Control and security. No media allowed, more armed deputies and a private waiting room for family members and any political, FBI, USMS, ATF and NYPD brass who wanted to check on the two wounded deputies.

No family members had arrived yet.

Thank God.

Nate didn’t think he could deal with Gus and his sisters right now. The politicians and law enforcement types in the waiting room stayed put when he was wheeled past the open door.

They wouldn’t want him off on his own too fast. A sniper had just tried to take out two federal agents in Central Park. All hell had to be breaking loose.

A nurse greeted him in his private room. Nate asked about Rob.

“He’s still in surgery.”

“Any word on his prognosis?”

She shook her head.

After she left, Nate ducked into the bathroom and put on his pants. He dampened a paper towel and scrubbed the blood off his shoes. Nothing to be done about the blood on his pants.

He checked his reflection and winced. “Hell.”

It wasn’t just pressure from his bosses that had compelled Dr. Ling to want to admit him. It was her medical judgment. He looked like shit. He was pale, he had dark circles under his eyes, he’d cut his lip from biting down too hard—no wonder she didn’t want him going home right away.

He washed his face, felt his stomach turn over, almost barfed and decided, okay, maybe he should take it easy. He staggered back out of the bathroom.

FBI Special Agent Joe Collins was waiting for him. “Thought I was going to have to go in there and scrape you off the floor. How you feel?”

“Like I look.”

“I was afraid of that. Up to talking?”

Nate knew Collins, although they’d never worked together. The shooting of two U.S. marshals was a federal crime that fell to the FBI to investigate, with the assistance of the Marshals Service, ATF and the New York Police Department. The marshals handled fugitive investigations and apprehension, prisoner transport, witness protection, the security of the federal judiciary and special operations—evidence gathering in federal criminal investigations was up to the FBI.

Nate nodded. “Sure. Excuse the outfit.”

“You’ve got someone bringing you a change of clothes?”

His uncle Gus and sister Carine would have been contacted by now in Cold Ridge, about a six-hour drive to New York unless they got a shuttle flight from Manchester. Antonia was in Washington. Closer. But she was almost eight months pregnant. Maybe she’d stay put.

Not a chance.

And his brothers-in-law would be at their wives’ sides.

Collins looked tired, but he always did. He had the kind of laid-back demeanor that made people think he wasn’t quite with it—their mistake. He was in his mid-forties, his wedding ring too tight on a knuckle-swollen finger, his stomach pushing against the buttons of his button-down blue shirt. He had a friendly face filled with broken capillaries.

Another FBI agent, straight backed, tense looking, maybe in her mid-twenties, stood silently in the corner by the bathroom.

“Any word on Rob?” Nate asked.

“He lost his spleen,” Collins said. “You can live without a spleen. It’s the blood loss the doctors are worried about. It’s still touch-and-go.”

Nate remembered the paramedics talking about internal bleeding at the scene. He didn’t respond. What was there to say?

“How’re you doing?” Collins asked.

“Fine.”

The FBI agent gave him a look that said they both knew better.

“We walked down to Central Park after the news conference. Rob—Christ, he wanted to see the tulips. Someone shot us.” Nate sat on the edge of his hospital bed. “That’s it. End of story.”

Except he knew it wasn’t. Collins would want to ask why they went into the park, who knew they’d be at the news conference, what they saw—and that was just for starters.

At this point, Nate doubted anyone thought it was a random shooting, a guy concealed somewhere in or around the park with an assault rifle and a silencer, waiting for the right moment, as opposed to the right victims, to shoot.

“He had to have an escape route,” Nate said.

“One thing at a time.”

Collins took him through the shooting step by step, minute by minute. Nate could feel his anesthetic slowly wearing off, the bandage heavy on his arm, the reality of what had happened earlier in the day hitting him. He’d been taking down fugitives for a long time, guys wanted for murder, carjacking, drug dealing, torture, rape and every other manner of violent crime. He’d been shot at before, but never like this—never a sneak attack, never with a fellow deputy collapsing, maybe dying, at his side.

“Deputy Dunnemore called his sister before the paramedics arrived?” Collins asked.

Nate pulled himself back to the matter at hand. “That’s right.”

“You dialed?”

“He had her number in memory. He wasn’t in any condition to talk. I think he just wanted her to hear what happened from him.”

“Then you talked to her?”

“That’s right. Rob couldn’t hold on to the phone. I took it.” Nate related his brief conversation with a shocked, frightened Sarah Dunnemore. “I told her I’d call her back, but I haven’t been able to. I’d need Rob’s cell phone. I don’t have her number.”

Collins wanted to know what Rob said to his sister. Nate told him.

There were more questions. The guy wasn’t leaving a stone unturned.

Nate’s head throbbed, and Special Agent Collins was getting on his nerves. Anyone would. He felt woozy from whatever crap Dr. Ling had pumped into him. A couple of Tylenol and directions to the exit would have suited him fine.

“They’re twins,” Collins said, “Deputy Dunnemore and his sister. You have two sisters, right? You call them?”

“Not yet, no. What the hell, Collins? You suspicious because Rob called his sister? For God’s sake, she didn’t shoot him.”

Collins ignored him. “Okay, you rest. Doctors say they might spring you later on, let you sleep in your own bed tonight. That must sound pretty good right now.”

“Just find the damn shooter. Never mind me.”

“Yeah. We’re on it. You’re not going to get in the way, are you?”

Nate said nothing.

“One last thing,” Collins said. “What were you and Deputy Dunnemore talking about before you got hit?”

“Tulips.”

The FBI agent managed a small grin before he left. Even the stone-faced female agent in the corner had a twitch of a smile.

Nate had his bed cranked up to a sitting position and was lying back against his skinny pillow, his shoes still on and his ankles crossed, when his family descended.

Gus, Antonia, Carine and their new husbands, Hank Callahan and Tyler North.

Collins had left almost an hour before. Since then, Nate had refused all company and stared at the ceiling, seeing Rob’s body jerking up as the bullet hit, hearing his sister’s shocked, frightened voice when Nate had talked to her. He saw the blood on the phone. Heard his own calm voice, as if he wasn’t really there, in the middle of chaos, shot, trying to save his colleague, trying to find the shooter. So much happening at once, but certain things stuck with him, wouldn’t recede.

He hadn’t called the sister back. He couldn’t—her number was on Rob’s cell phone.

Someone must have contacted her by now.

Twins. Nate couldn’t remember Rob ever saying much about her.

The image started replaying itself, like a movie, but Nate pulled himself out of it and sat up straighter. He tried to smile at his family. “I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. All I need is Toto to show up. They let you all in here at once?”

His white-haired uncle, built like Nate, grunted. “It’s Antonia’s fault. She told your doctors you could handle all of us.”

Nate eyed his out-to-there pregnant sister, wearing what at a guess was one of her husband’s shirts. “I can handle the stress, but can you, Antonia? You look like you’re going to have that baby any second.”

“Not for a few more weeks.” Always the doctor, she picked up his chart and scanned it, sighing. “How’s your arm?”

“Anesthetized. I can’t feel a thing. Rob Dunnemore’s the one in rough shape.”

She nodded. “So I understand.”

Tyler North, Carine’s air force pararescueman husband, spoke up. “A wound like that. Chances are he’s either going to make a full recovery or he’s going to die. There’s not much in between.”

Antonia winced. “Ty, for God’s sake—”

But North wasn’t one to pussyfoot around. They’d all been friends since childhood, and Nate appreciated his straightforward assessment. Carine leaned over his bed, the stress of the past hours evident in her drawn, pale look, in the blue eyes all three siblings shared. Carine was the youngest. Her auburn hair was lighter than Antonia’s, Nate’s own hair so dark the red streaks were barely noticeable. Carine had been shot at. She knew what it was like. “I’m glad you weren’t killed,” she whispered.

“Me, too.”

Hank Callahan, Antonia’s husband, slipped an arm around his wife and eyed Nate. “Is there anything I can do?” Once a helicopter rescue pilot and now a junior senator from Massachusetts, Hank, like the rest of them, was used to taking action.

“Get me a shirt. I feel like an idiot in this gown.”

Antonia hissed. “I knew you’d be impossible. Didn’t I tell you, Gus?”

Their uncle stared out the window with its view of the street. He was in jeans and a hiking jersey. He was one of the best outfitters in the White Mountains, content to stay home in Cold Ridge and hike, cook and redecorate the house he’d inherited from his older brother. But Gus had been shot at more than any of them. He’d served a year in combat in Vietnam before coming home, only to end up raising his orphaned nieces and nephew.

He glanced back at Nate. “Why don’t you drive home with me? The mountain air’ll do you good.”

Nate shook his head. “Last time I was home, you served orange eggs.”

“They’re not that orange. You’re just used to New York eggs.”

“I’m used to yellow eggs.”

“It’s what Moon feeds them.”

Moon. Moon Solaire. She was a newcomer to Cold Ridge. People called her the egg lady because she had dozens of chickens in a variety of breeds. She and Gus had been seeing each other for a couple of months. “Moon’s really into chickens, isn’t she?”

Nate was starting to feel sluggish and achy, some of his earlier adrenaline rush wearing off. Or maybe now that his family was there, he could allow himself a letdown.

“Who knew there were that many different kinds of chickens?” Gus said. “I thought she might be one of your people, with a fake name like Moon Solaire.”

“What do you mean, one of my people?”

Gus shrugged. “You know, some lowlife you’re protecting so they can testify against some bigger lowlife you’re not protecting.”

He meant WITSEC. The Witness Security Program. Gus’s rendition of its mission of protecting government witnesses and their dependents was oversimplified and biased, but Nate was in no mood to argue. “Not all protected federal witnesses are criminals, and I’d be surprised if we ever gave one a name like Moon Solaire—”

“I know, I know. She made it up. Ex-hippie. Real name’s Linda.”

Nate didn’t know about the ex.

Antonia touched their uncle’s arm. “We should go.”

Gus didn’t budge, his blue eyes pinned on his nephew. With just a thirteen-year age difference between them, Gus was in some ways like an older brother to Nate, in other ways like a father. “I turned on CNN before the marshals called, and I knew it was you. I’m telling you. I just knew.”

“I’m sorry, Gus. It’s my job—”

“It’s not your job to get shot by some asshole in Central Park.”

Antonia groaned. “Gus! Now’s not the time.” She shifted her attention to her older brother. “You’ll do what your doctors say, won’t you? And don’t be stingy with the pain medication. Take what you need.”

“Got it.”

She wasn’t convinced. “You do not. You’re itching to get out of this bed and go find who shot you.”

“And you wouldn’t be?”

She didn’t answer. No one did, because his uncle, his sisters and the men they’d married were all cut from the same cloth when it came to waiting patiently for others to do what they wanted to do themselves. They simply didn’t.

Nate felt bad about what they’d been through today. He knew what it was like—he remembered how he’d reacted when he learned about the close calls his sisters and brothers-in-law had had last fall. “Where are you guys staying tonight?”

No one wanted to answer that one, either, but finally Ty did. “Your place. Hank and I are heading out tonight, but your uncle and sisters are staying. Gus took a lasagna out of the freezer and brought it down.”

The thought of Gus’s rich, uncompromising lasagna made Nate nauseous. Spending the night in the hospital suddenly didn’t look so bad. Armed guards and medical types hovering over him—or his family.

When his nurse entered the room, his entourage retreated, but Nate could hear them out in the hall. If his bandaged arm hadn’t forced the reality of his situation to sink in, their presence did.

He’d been shot.

He’d damn near been killed.

And Rob Dunnemore—it could go either way with him.

After the nurse left, Nate tried to get the deputy at his door to find who he needed to see about checking himself out.

No dice.

He’d just have to wait.

Four

Juliet Longstreet made herself dump the last of her latte in the water fountain next to the elevator that had dropped her off on Rob and Nate’s floor. It was her seventh latte of the day, and she had acid burning up her throat. Not a good sign.

She ran the water to clean the drain but didn’t take a sip. She didn’t like drinking out of hospital water fountains.

She didn’t like anything about this whole damn day.

The chief deputy had turned the care and feeding of Rob Dunnemore’s sister over to her, probably because they were both female and blond. Any comparison ended there. Sarah Dunnemore was just about the prettiest woman Juliet had ever actually met in person. Long honey-colored hair streaked with pale blond highlights, gray eyes, slim build, elegant even in her jeans and dark gray silk twin set. She wore two delicate little rings on her fingers. Juliet still had Band-Aid scum on her thumb after jamming it in the weight room. She was a lot taller. And her hair. Nobody could do a thing with it. A friend had dragged her to a trendy New York salon, and she’d learned about hair wax and identified every one of her cowlicks—she’d spent a fortune and looked good for about three days.

Christ.

Rob was in there dying, and she was thinking about her hair.

“Dr. Dunnemore?” Faking a calm professionalism, Juliet pretended her throat wasn’t burning and motioned toward the waiting room recently vacated by the Winter family. “Let’s go in there. It’ll be quiet.”

It seemed to take a few seconds for her words to sink it, but Sarah Dunnemore nodded and mumbled something about calling her by her first name, then walked into the little room. Juliet had already kicked out any loitering law enforcement types. All the armed marshals in the halls were enough to agitate her, never mind a Ph.D. who’d just learned her twin brother had been seriously wounded in a sniper attack. A New York hospital on a good day was hard to take. This was not a good day.

Juliet had no idea what to say. None.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked finally.

Sarah shook her head. “When can I talk to Rob’s doctor?”

“Soon. Your brother’s just out of surgery.”

The gray eyes were steady, but Juliet could see the fear in them and realized that Sarah couldn’t speak.

“He’s holding his own,” Juliet said, guessing Sarah’s question. “I understand that the next twenty-four hours are critical.”

Sarah took a moment to digest Juliet’s words, then breathed in through her nose and nodded. “What about the deputy who was with him? Nate Winter. How is he?”

“He’s fine. Someone forgot to chain him to his bed, so he got out of here about an hour ago.” It was seven now. Juliet had returned his weapon to him and, like everyone else, futilely told him to go home and take it easy. “The bullet that hit him just grazed his upper arm. He was never in surgery.”

“That’s good,” Sarah said absently. She remained on her feet—she was wearing sandals that would not be adequate for the miserable weather New York was having. “I don’t know much about guns. Shots like that—would they be difficult shots? Do you think the shooter meant to kill my brother and Deputy Winter outright?”

“No answers yet. FBI’s investigating.”

“There must be witnesses. Central Park at midday—someone must have seen something. Are there places for a shooter to hide? How would he escape? If the police arrived quickly—”

“Look, have a seat.” The chief deputy had warned Juliet to try to keep Rob’s sister from dwelling on, dissecting, the shooting. It wasn’t good for her. It wasn’t good for any of them. “At least let me get you a cup of coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee, but thank you. I’m okay. I just want to see my brother.”

“I know, but it might not be tonight.” He was in intensive care, on a respirator. Juliet didn’t want to be the one to tell Sarah Dunnemore that. “Let’s just wait and you can talk to his doctor.”

Sarah nodded, saying nothing, and lowered her head, fiddling with one of her rings, as if to keep Juliet from seeing that she was on the verge of tears.

Hell. Juliet took in a steadying breath. Now her stomach was burning. She had no idea what to say to this woman. “Where are you staying?”

“I could stay at Rob’s. I haven’t visited since he was assigned up here, but I could—I’m sure I could get the key.”

“That’s not a good idea, not tonight. FBI could be going through his place for all I know, but you shouldn’t stay there on your own. Forget about it, okay? Trust me. You can stay at my place if you don’t mind my fish and plants, or I can book you into a hotel.”

“That’s very nice of you, Deputy—Longstreet, right?”

“Juliet’ll do.”

“Juliet. That’s a pretty name.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I used to think I should change it to something meaner sounding.”

Sarah raised her eyes. “You and Rob…” But she trailed off, not finishing.

Juliet understood what she was trying to say. “We used to see each other.”

“Not anymore?”

“No. Not anymore.”

The noise and lights of the city—the crush of people—struck Sarah as oddly reassuring as she and Juliet Longstreet climbed out of the back of the government car that had driven them to the Marriott Marquis in the heart of Times Square. It wasn’t that far from the hospital, but Rob’s bosses didn’t want her walking. They’d made that clear. They didn’t say it was because a sniper was on the loose in the city and they were afraid Juliet or even Sarah might be his next target—they said it was because Sarah was obviously exhausted, emotionally wrung out and on edge.

But they all were tired and on edge, she thought. A steady stream of law enforcement and political types had stopped at the hospital to check on Rob and Nate and to greet her, to offer to do whatever they could for her. She’d sensed not only their concern for the injured officers, but their worry about the situation itself. The chief deputy, the district U.S. marshal, the FBI agent leading the investigation, the FBI assistant director in charge of the New York FBI office, the mayor—they’d all attended the news conference that had preceded the shooting. The shooter could have been after one of them instead and seized on Rob and Nate as a second choice, targets of opportunity—get someone, anyone, who’d been at the news conference.

The bottom line was clear. Two federal agents had been gunned down in daylight in Central Park, and the gunman was still at large.

“I’ll check you in,” Juliet said, briskly leading the way up the elevators to the eighth-floor lobby of the huge conference hotel.

She’d insisted on carrying Sarah’s bag, saying it was part of the job. Sarah wanted to ask about Juliet’s relationship with her brother, who’d only mentioned in one e-mail that he’d been seeing another deputy and it hadn’t worked out—but Juliet had cut off that topic.

When they arrived at the lobby, Sarah waited off to the side while Juliet checked her in. She’d never seriously considered imposing on her marshal escort—she liked the anonymity of the large hotel. She needed time to herself. Space. Rob’s doctors were guarded but not discouraging in their assessment of her brother’s condition. He’d lost a lot of blood but the surgery had gone well. The bullet could have done far more damage than it had, although the damage it had done was considerable. They’d watch him closely for complications from blood loss, a recurrence of bleeding, infection—he had a long way to go.

Without her having to plead, his doctors had allowed her peek in on him.

He was intubated and attached to a ventilator, hooked up to a myriad of IVs and tubes and unconscious. But he was alive, and that was what Sarah had tried to focus on as she touched him gently on the forehead and told him she was there and would see him in the morning. She hoped that on some subconscious level he could hear her, knew she was rooting for him and he wasn’t alone.

But when she left the I.C.U., she burst into tears and almost threw up. Juliet Longstreet had hesitated, obviously awkward and unsure of what to do, but the chief deputy—Mike Rivera, a stocky rock of a man—stepped forward and maneuvered Sarah into the waiting room.

That was when they all decided she shouldn’t walk alone to her hotel.

Juliet turned from the front desk with a small key folder. “Tenth floor okay?”

“Anything’s fine.”

“Elevators are over here.”

When they reached her room, Juliet used the card key and pushed open the door, then checked out the place, even pulling open the closet and drawers. Sarah caught a glimpse of her weapon, a reminder that her escort was a federal agent on duty. She wasn’t just being kind.

“Place looks clean and safe enough.” Juliet turned from the closet and frowned at Sarah. “You look beat. Take a bath and get some sleep. If there’s any news, someone will call you. Promise.”

Sarah sank onto the bed. Her room was clean and pleasant, a large window overlooking Times Square with its huge, flashing billboards. She was struck by the disconnect between here and her family home in Night’s Landing. Not that long ago, she’d been listening to a mockingbird and drinking tea punch.

She doubted she’d sleep, never mind the flashing billboards and sirens down on the busy New York street.

A cell phone trilled, but it took a moment for Sarah to realize it was hers. She fished it from an outer pocket of her tote bag.

“Sarah—Sarah, honey, it’s Wes.”

Fresh tears welled in Sarah’s eyes at the sound of John Wesley Poe’s familiar, caring voice. “Wes—I’m so glad you called. It’s been an awful day.”

“I know, honey. I heard about Rob. I am so, so sorry.”

“I saw him for a few seconds. He made it out of surgery. That’s a good sign.”

Juliet turned from the window, not hiding that she was listening. Sarah knew she couldn’t possibly explain that she was talking to the president of the United States. Deputy U.S. Marshal Juliet Longstreet’s ultimate boss. Rob’s boss. But to her, he was a friend, a neighbor, a man she’d known and adored all her life.

“Ev and I are thinking of you, praying for both you and Rob,” Wes said. “If there’s anything we can do, please, just say the word.”

“Thank you. Thank you for calling. Just knowing you’re thinking of him makes a difference. He’s—it’s tough, Wes. He’s on a respirator—the bandages—” Her voice faltered. “But I keep telling myself that at least he’s alive. He has a chance.”

“He’s strong, and so are you.” But beneath his soothing words, she heard the undertone of concern and fear, because for all his brilliance and compassion, Wes Poe didn’t know if Rob would live, either. “Where are you now?”

“A hotel in New York.”

“Alone?”

“I have a deputy marshal escort. Wes, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re waiting until morning their time before they decide what to do.”

“God love them. This has to be a parent’s worst nightmare.”

Wes and Evelyn Poe had no children. That it was a political liability was something Sarah had found distasteful. Evelyn had had four miscarriages and stillbirths before an emergency hysterectomy put an end to all hope of giving birth. Sarah remembered how distraught Wes was after that fourth and last loss. He’d come to Night’s Landing alone, so his wife wouldn’t see him mourn, so he could be strong for her when they were together. But even before that terrible day, Sarah had become something of a surrogate daughter to them. In some ways, they’d been more reliable and solid—more available—than her own parents.

“Sarah…the media…” Wes hesitated, a rarity for him. “They’ll zero in on my relationship with your family at some point. Right now, there’s no indication that Rob was targeted because of it.”

Sarah nearly dropped the phone.

Juliet Longstreet took a step toward her, her expression tight, alert.

“Wes!” Sarah choked, gripping the phone. “My God, that never even occurred to me!”

“I’m mentioning it only because it could come up as a theory, and I don’t want you to be blindsided.” The strain in his voice, famous for its ability to soothe yet sound commanding, was evident. “Honey, you just focus on being there for Rob. I’ll worry about the rest of it.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“Ev sends her love.”

“I love you both. Thank you for calling.”

After Sarah hung up, Juliet pulled the drapes. “Do you mind if I ask who that was?” she asked.

Sarah’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. Her eyes felt squeezed. In Scotland, for weeks—for most of John Wesley Poe’s first months in office—she hadn’t had to deal with the reality that her closest and oldest family friend had been elected president of the United States.

“Sarah?”

“Wes. Wes Poe. He and my father go way back. My mother went to college with him. She almost married him.” Sarah winced, wondering why she’d brought that up. “Supposedly. You never know with my family.”

“Jesus Christ,” Juliet said under her breath, then snapped up straight, looking every inch the federal agent she was. “All right. No goddamn way am I leaving you to your own devices tonight. Either we switch to a double room and I camp out with you, or you take the futon at my place.”

“Would I be sleeping with the fish or the plants?”

She managed a crooked smile. “Both. You’ll see.”

Since she’d be sleeping in a strange bed no matter what she did, Sarah rose and grabbed her suitcase. She had no intention of making Juliet spend the night in a hotel after the day they’d both had—and there was no way Sarah was going to talk Deputy Longstreet into leaving her alone.

“Rob never mentioned we were friends with President Poe?”

“No.”

“He didn’t want it to affect him on the job—”

“We weren’t always on the job.” Juliet bit off a sigh. “We worked out okay before he was transferred to New York. I knew your family was white bread, but—” She tore open the door, grinding her teeth. “You didn’t happen to mention your friendship with the president to the FBI, did you? Collins? He talked to you, right?”

“He asked me about my phone call from Rob. Our friendship with the president didn’t come up.”

“Trust me,” Deputy Longstreet said, walking out into the hall, “it will.”

Five

Ethan switched off CNN and listened to the crickets out in the dark. He had the windows in his cottage open. The breeze had died down, making the crickets even more noticeable. He almost turned the television back on, but he didn’t think he could take one more idiot talking about the possible firearm the sniper could have used. What the hell difference did it make? Two federal agents were in the hospital. Go find the fucker.

He put his feet up on the old flat-topped trunk set up as a coffee table, its wood varnished to a high gloss, probably hurting its value as an antique. The Dunnemores didn’t seem to think much in terms of antiques. A different sort of family, for sure. Eccentrics. Ethan’s parents were ranchers in West Texas. Hard working, well-respected. They had no idea what their younger son was up to.

Char’s father was a widower, career military, who pretty much thought Ethan had killed her.

He wasn’t that far off.

FOX News had done a diagram of the kind of wound Rob Dunnemore might have suffered in his left upper abdomen. Explained how he could live without a spleen. About the risks of blood loss, the strain it put on the kidneys. Luckily, he’d gotten medical attention within the “golden hour.”

Char hadn’t.

Because Ethan hadn’t been there.

He hadn’t been there a lot during their two-year marriage.

He jumped to his feet and tore open the small refrigerator, grabbed a glass container of leftover barbecue and popped it into the microwave. It was an ancient microwave. It must have been one of the first ones off the assembly line. The Dunnemores weren’t into gadgets.

He got out dill pickle slices and found a dried-up sesame-seed bun in the bread box. He softened it up in the microwave and put the whole mess together and ate it leaning against the sink, wondering what in hell he thought he was doing. Night’s Landing. The Dunnemores. President Poe’s boyhood home just up river. Ethan knew better than to turn into some kind of nut-ball loose cannon, but here he was.

He’d read Sarah Dunnemore’s dissertation on the Poe house and how the Poe family fit into the post-Civil War South. Thought he’d go blind. She’d just finished producing and directing a documentary. There was talk of her becoming the director of the Poe House and working to open it to the public as an historic site. Now that he’d met her, Ethan couldn’t see Sarah Dunnemore spending her time figuring out where the visitors’ center should go, doing fund-raising, training docents—she needed a new project.

Ethan had taken his own private, illicit, midnight tour of the Poe house downriver from the Dunnemores. It hadn’t produced a single thing except a spider bite on his ankle. His search of the Dunnemore house hadn’t produced much more. He’d gone through file cabinets, photo albums, old yearbooks. The father had written plenty of boring papers of his own. The mother was into art.

He’d found Sarah’s locked diary from when she was fifteen but decided he wasn’t low enough to break into it and read it.

But he might yet. He was that goddamn frustrated.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find in Tennessee. A connection, a hint, a link. Something that explained Charlene’s interest in the Dunnemores. Why she’d contacted Betsy Dunnemore in Amsterdam two days before she was killed. What it had to do with her death.

She’d gone to Amsterdam on her own. On holiday, she’d told her friends and superiors, Euro-style. Ethan had shown up at her base in Germany without notice, found her gone, figured out where she was and headed to Amsterdam to join her. He could track down anyone, so he’d tracked down his ambitious, incredible wife.

He hadn’t considered the importance of her trip until she’d turned up dead. Then he wanted to know everything. Why Amsterdam? What had Char been up to?

Weeks of probing, spying and prowling in Europe had landed him on the Cumberland River in middle Tennessee, playing gardener.

Waiting like a damn fool for answers to fall into his lap.

Ten days ago, he’d bought a ticket back to Amsterdam.

But he hadn’t yet used it. Because Sarah Dunnemore had returned from Scotland. And now her brother had been shot in Central Park.

Suddenly Ethan realized the crickets had stopped chirping.

He set his plate in the sink and went still, listening, aware of the .38 semiautomatic strapped to his ankle under his overalls.

“Mr. Brooker? It’s me, Conroy Fontaine.” The accent was distinctly Southern, the voice amiable, familiar. “Would you mind if I had a word with you?”

Ethan stifled a groan. Just what he needed, a bottom-feeding reporter who liked to pass himself off as a legitimate journalist-historian. Before he could respond, Fontaine was at the door. He was working on an unauthorized, tabloid-style biography of the president. He’d set up shop a couple weeks ago at a cabin he’d rented at a fishing camp farther up river from the Poe house. He was worming his way into Sarah’s good graces, presumably in an attempt to get access to the president and dig up any dirt he could find—not that she was anyone’s fool. As far as Ethan had seen, so far she hadn’t told Fontaine much more than what kind of mint extract she used in her sweet tea punch.

He and Ethan were about the same age, but Conroy Fontaine seemed like a throwback to another generation, pre—World War II, maybe even pre—World War I. He was unfailingly polite and tended to dress in penny loafers with no socks, chinos, polo shirts and a retro Timex watch. He wore rimless glasses and his sandy-colored hair was getting thin on top, but he kept himself in decent shape. Nearly every morning, Ethan would see him up on the road jogging what he said was a six-mile route. He must also pump iron, given his muscle mass, but where he did that, Ethan didn’t know or care.

He opened up the screen door, then remembered his good ol’ boy act. “What can I do for you, Mr. Fontaine?”

“I’m sorry to bother you so late. I’ve been working all day on my book. I didn’t have the radio on. I just heard the news—”

“Yes, sir, it’s an awful situation.”

Conroy shook his head in obvious despair. He had a broad forehead, a strong jaw—not a bad-looking guy. “It’s terrible. Sarah’s gone to New York?”

“She left a short time after she heard about the shooting.”

Fontaine took in a breath. “Good heavens. I simply can’t imagine. The FBI just held a press conference—it was carried by all the news channels. Rob Dunnemore’s still in critical condition, but at least he’s stable. He made it out of surgery. Sarah must be beside herself.”

Ethan noted the familiar way Fontaine talked about Sarah and wondered if they’d struck up a real friendship since she’d arrived back in Night’s Landing. He turned on the tap at the sink and rinsed off his barbecue plate. “She was pretty upset when she left here, Mr. Fontaine.”

“Understandably. Do you know anything? Anything that’s not on the news? Are the parents flying in from Amsterdam? Will Rob be brought down here to recuperate—”

“If I knew anything,” Ethan said, turning from the sink, “I don’t believe I’d tell you. No offense, sir, but you’re a reporter. It’s not my job to blab family business to reporters.”

Conroy’s back stiffened visibly, but he smiled. “No offense taken, but you’re quite wrong about me. If I were the kind of reporter you obviously think I am, I’d be on the phone to CNN right now alerting them to Rob Dunnemore’s connection to the president. But I haven’t done that.”

“No money in it?”

“Name recognition. That would help me with my book when it goes to press.” He sighed, his shoulders sagging. “I’ve never been very good at selling myself. My interest is always the story. This book—I’m doing a responsible job on it. I want it to be respectable. The most difficult part…” He trailed off, avoiding Ethan’s eye. “Sarah. I didn’t expect—” He seemed unable to go on.

“You didn’t expect to want her approval,” Ethan finished for him, then added, matter-of-fact, “She’s a beautiful woman.”

Fontaine still didn’t look at him. He nodded, embarrassed. “That’s right. I want to do my best work on this book. I’d like her respect. I’ve read her dissertation, and I understand the documentary she just finished is stunning. I can’t compete with that kind of scholarship. Of course, her work doesn’t focus on the president. What I’m doing is quite different.”

The guy sounded smitten. Ethan got it, but Sarah Dunnemore was sisterlike material as far as he was concerned. “Look, Mr. Fontaine,” he said, “you don’t have to justify yourself to me. What you do is none of my business. I’ll tell Sarah you dropped by and let you know if I hear anything. Fair enough?”

Fontaine seemed pleased, even relieved. “Thank you. It’s a worrisome situation, isn’t it?”

“Sure is, sir.”

“Sarah…I wonder how long she’ll be up there. If she needs anything—”

“I’ll tell her you offered.”

After Fontaine left, Ethan got a beer out of the refrigerator and walked down to the dock. It was dark out, not much for moon and stars. Chilly. He could fly up to New York. Ask questions, stick his nose where it didn’t belong.

Get arrested.

Bad enough having Conroy Fontaine, would-be presidential biographer, sniffing around Night’s Landing. In New York, Ethan’d be facing scores of hard-nosed, cynical reporters who had space and time to fill with whatever they could fill it with, all of them eager for anything that would spin the Central Park sniper story into a new direction for another day or two of audience-grabbing coverage.

He should have used an alias. Never mind Fontaine and a bunch of national and New York reporters—if the FBI and the marshals fed his name into a computer, God only knows what’d pop out.

“Yeah, well,” Ethan said into the night. “Whatever.”

He finished his beer and went back inside.

Six

Nate woke up irritable and in pain, even before he remembered that his uncle and two sisters were in the next room. He rented an apartment in Queens, upstairs from a New York firefighter he’d met in the aftermath of September 11. Gus had invited him up for lasagna until Antonia intervened and reminded him that Nate had just been shot.

Shot.

Right. He pulled on clothes and popped a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol. No bleed-through on his bandages. Had to be a good sign.

Gus was making omelettes from eggs he’d brought down from New Hampshire in a cooler. “Look at them,” Nate said. “They’re orange.”

“They’re not that orange.”

They were that orange. They turned his stomach.

His uncle sighed at Nate’s obvious lack of enthusiasm. “Okay, so eat toast.”

Nate sat at his small kitchen table. The place had come furnished—he didn’t have Antonia’s money or Carine’s design flare, and, basically, he didn’t care. “I’m sorry. I’m not in a great mood.”

“Relax.” Gus lowered the heat under the frying pan. “You’ve been griping about my cooking since you were a little tyke. How’s the arm this morning?”

“Aches.”

Antonia lumbered into the kitchen, rubbing her huge belly. She smiled. “Baby’s tap-dancing. How’re you doing, big brother?” She checked his bandage and made him check his temperature, then warned him, not for the first time, to take his pain medication. “Just do it.”

Fortunately, his brothers-in-law had headed home last night. Nate had room for two guests. Three was pushing it, but five would have driven him over the edge.

Carine, showered and dressed, wandered into the kitchen and sat across from Nate, frowning at him. “You’re going to take a bath or something, right?”

“What, do I smell?”

“You just look like death warmed over.”

He loved his family. He really did. But he preferred being frank with them versus having them be frank with him, and he was rattled and raw from yesterday’s trauma. Dr. Ling had given him the number of a psychiatrist. The USMS had people he could talk to.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He just wanted the son of a bitch who’d shot him and Rob off the streets. In a perfect world, Nate would be the one who nailed his ass.

Gus flipped an orange omelette onto a plate and set it in front of Carine, who dug right in.

Nate excused himself and beelined for the bathroom in time for a couple of dry heaves over the john.

When he returned to his family, Gus and his sisters were cleaning up the kitchen and packing. “You need your space,” Carine said. “You always have. But if there’s anything we can do, you know where to find us.”

“Guys—”

“Give yourself some time,” Gus said. “Don’t fight it. You’re going to have the yips for a few weeks. It’s normal.”

Antonia, looking tired and strained, smiled. “By ‘yips’ he means posttrauma stress symptoms. Nightmares, jumpiness, irritability. They’re the body’s way of processing a traumatic event. You can also do rapid-eye-movement desensitization and reprogramming therapy—” She stopped herself. “I’m sure your doctor’s discussed your options with you.”

Nate got through breakfast and afterward almost told them not to leave. But he didn’t, and once they were out the door, he headed to the hospital to check in on Rob.

He found Juliet Longstreet slumped in a straight-backed plastic chair in the private waiting room outside the I.C.U. where they had Rob. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning, but her eyes were closed. “Sleeping on the job,” Nate said.

She didn’t open her eyes. “Go to hell.”

“Hey. I was shot yesterday. Be nice.” He also outranked her, but she wouldn’t care. “How’s the sister?”

Now Juliet opened her eyes and sat up straight, frowning. “She’s buds with the president, that’s how’s the sister.”

Nate let her words register. “President Poe?”

“He grew up next to the Dunnemores in Tennessee. Sarah’s like a daughter to him. Rob’s a pal, too. Did you know?”

“Rob never mentioned he’d even met the president. Did you tell Joe Collins?”

“Oh, yeah. Big time. He’s Mr. Cool. Just said, ‘Thank you, Deputy.’” She did a perfect imitation of the FBI investigator. “He might have known already, but I wasn’t taking any chances.”

“Smart move.”

“Bet he’s got the Secret Service hanging on his shoulder, not that we’ll ever know. If the shooter targeted Rob specifically because of his friendship with the president—” She broke off, no further comment necessary. “Sarah wanted me to leave her to her own devices last night, but I gave her a choice of me in her hotel room with her or her on the futon at my place.”

Nate gave a wry smile. He’d known Juliet since she’d started with the Marshals Service four years ago. She was tough and ambitious. “You warned her about the fish and the plants?”

“I did. She was fine with them. Me—I didn’t sleep a wink. I kept picturing assassins bursting through the window and shooting us both dead.”

“You’d have shot them before they shot you.”

“What if someone wants to upset the president by—”

“Don’t go there.”

Juliet clamped her mouth shut. She was thirty and good at her job, but she’d say anything—and nothing intimidated her. Sometimes it scared senior deputies like Nate, but she’d been an asset since her arrival in New York eighteen months ago. She’d kept her relationship with Rob quiet. Then he ended up in New York, but the two of them working out of the same office had apparently killed their relationship.

Nate poured himself a cup of coffee that smelled as if it’d been made hours ago. He added powdered creamer but didn’t stir. He took a sip before the creamer had melted, the little fake milk lumps making the brew even nastier that it might have been.

He eyed Juliet. She had outdoorsy good looks and a direct manner that sometimes took people by surprise. She could be irritating as hell, but she’d earned Nate’s respect. “I take it Rob never told you he and President Poe were friends, either.”

“It didn’t come up.” She stretched her arms above her head, yawning. “Knowing Rob, he wouldn’t want it to become a ‘thing,’ get in the way of his work, make other people feel self-conscious. I gather the sister’s closer to the president than Rob is.”

“Makes for a hell of a fly in the ointment. What’s the word on Rob this morning?”

“He’s doing better. They’ve got him off the respirator. What about you? Should you even be here?”

The Tylenol had kicked in, but Nate still could feel the ache. He didn’t want his brain fuzzed up with prescription painkillers. He swallowed more of the lousy coffee. “I won’t be doing push-ups for a couple weeks, but otherwise I’m fine.”

“What about your head?”

He set his cup on the edge of the coffee station. He couldn’t drink another sip. “I didn’t get shot in the head.”

Juliet scowled. “You know what I mean. Everyone says you should go home to New Hampshire, at least for a few days. Why don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. Gus and his sisters had asked him the same question, and he hadn’t answered them. He wasn’t that close to Juliet Longstreet.

But, of course, she had no instinct for when she was pushing up against her boundaries. “Christ, you are a case, aren’t you?” She got up and poured herself a cup of coffee, taking it black. “I hope you don’t plan to go into the office today and start pissing people off.”

“Juliet—”

“Someone’s going to tie you up and toss you into a trunk, drive you to New Hampshire.” She took a big gulp of coffee, no sign she thought it was old and near rancid. “It’s hard to stand on the sidelines. Can’t be easy seeing the FBI working the case.”

“It’s their job to investigate the shooting of two federal agents—”

“So? Doesn’t mean you have to like it.”

He reminded himself that she’d had a shock yesterday herself—arriving on the scene in time to see the paramedics working on her ex-boyfriend. Rob was still in rough shape. Nate figured he could cut her some slack.

She grinned feebly at him. “I’m overstepping, huh? At least you can go home and climb mountains. I’m stuck here baby-sitting Rob’s twin sister. She’s—oh, shit.” Juliet groaned, nearly spilling her coffee. “Damn. Now I’ve done it.”

Nate glanced behind him and saw a pretty blonde in slim jeans and a black sweater turn about-face and retreat down the hall.

“Sarah Dunnemore?” He shook his head. “Good one, Longstreet.”

“Crap. At least Rob and I ended it on a positive note or this’d be even worse.” She set her coffee on the small refreshment cart. “Sarah’s really nice. Why don’t you come meet her?”

“You dug your hole. I’m not going to help you dig yourself out of it.”

She snorted at him. “I could tell you what people say about you behind your back, you know.”

As if he didn’t know. As if he cared. Nate grinned at her, but she squared her shoulders and headed out into the hall. He had the feeling she’d rather face the sniper who’d shot at him and Rob rather than have to make amends to Rob’s offended twin sister.

The armed deputies securing all access to her brother—medical, professional and personal—underscored for Sarah the gravity of his situation and the cold fact that the shooter was still at large.

The deputies let her pass without explanation of why she’d returned so soon. She’d just left the private corner of the I.C.U. where Rob lay with his tubes and monitors, asleep. She thought she’d step into the waiting room and collect herself before her next visit. Now she wished she hadn’t. Juliet’s words, which she obviously hadn’t meant for Sarah to hear, had stung.

Rob stirred when she approached him, as if sensing her presence, and any thought of her embarrassment receded. “Hey, kid,” he said without opening his eyes, his voice hoarse from the respirator. “How ya doing?”

It was the first time he’d managed to speak to her. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Rob—oh, God, Rob, you’ve been through absolute hell, haven’t you? But your doctors say you’re doing well.”

“Yeah.” He moved his fingers, and she took his hand, his skin moist and pale. His eyes fluttered open—they were bloodshot, glassy looking—but the effort was too much and he shut them again. “Sarah, listen to me…”

“Sure, Rob. What can I do for you?”

“You’re on vacation.” He coughed, and she noticed spots of some kind of brownish ointment on his gown, the fresh bandage on his abdomen. He was weak, heavily medicated, exhausted. His attempt to talk—to make sense—had to be a struggle. “I don’t want you here if I’ve got someone shooting at me.”

It wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “Just relax, okay? It’ll be all right.”

“If this guy sees you…”

“Nobody’s going to see me.” She tried to sound cheerful, but his fear was palpable, unnerving. “Rob, please don’t worry—just concentrate on getting better.”

His eyes still closed, he mustered his energy and squeezed her hand. His hair was matted, dirty. “You’re too trusting.”

She wanted to reassure him, but she had no intention of going back to Tennessee, not until he was more himself. “I’ll go home. Of course I will. I can’t wait to go home. After I know you’re better.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s a little after nine in the morning. You were injured yesterday around lunchtime.”

“Tonight. You can catch a flight back to Nashville tonight. Promise me.”

She didn’t know if he was entirely lucid or if the trauma of his injury, the lifesaving surgery and the medications he was on were making him a little crazy. Paranoid. She had a friend whose father, suffering complications after heart surgery, kept insisting he saw waiters in tuxedos delivering him pheasant under glass in the I.C.U.

Or was her brother simply projecting his own fears onto her? If she were drinking tea on the front porch at home in Night’s Landing, he’d feel safer.

“I don’t…” His voice was barely a rasping whisper now. “I don’t remember anything.”

He looked so vulnerable, so out of his element. Sarah could picture him yesterday in Central Park—strong, vital, a professional but also a man with a sense of fun. Why would someone shoot him? Who would do something like that? She’d lain awake much of the night on the futon in Juliet Longstreet’s, surrounded by plants and fish tanks as the questions repeated themselves. And over and over, until she finally gave up on sleeping at all, she kept hearing Rob on the phone, telling her he’d been shot.

She found herself having to choke back tears. “I’ll let you sleep. I’ll see you soon.”

But her twin brother had already drifted off.

Brushing her tears off her cheeks with her fingertips, Sarah stepped backward toward the exit and stumbled on someone’s feet. Before she could fall flat on her face, a firm hand caught her by the elbow, steadying her.

“Whoa, there. Easy.”

She spun around, straight into Nate Winter, the deputy who’d been shot with her brother. She recognized him from the photo they’d shown on TV. He was tall, lean, his dark hair softened with just a hint of auburn, and he had, Sarah thought, the most incisive, the most no-nonsense blue eyes she’d ever seen. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt under a dark plaid flannel shirt and scuffed running shoes.

The blue eyes settled on her. “Sarah Dunnemore, right?”

She nodded. “Deputy Winter—I hope I didn’t hurt your arm.”

She realized she was about to cry. She’d held her tears in check since the marshals had arrived in Night’s Landing yesterday, but now, with her brother lying a few feet away from her, hurting, begging her to go home, with the lingering sting of Juliet’s words, she couldn’t hold back. “I should go.”

Nate Winter didn’t say a word, didn’t try to stop her as she pushed past him and ran out of the I.C.U. into the hall, sobbing, tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t bring herself under control. She hated crying in front of anyone.

Juliet shot out of the waiting room. “Sarah—wait.”

Sarah broke into a run, charging past startled law enforcement officers. She squeezed by doctors and nurses getting off and onto an elevator and pushed her way to the back wall, sinking against it, bracing her knees as she focused on her breathing in an attempt to calm herself.

Nate Winter had been shot yesterday, and he was a rock. Steady, unemotional.

She had no business falling apart.

“You’re too trusting.”

Maybe. Maybe she shouldn’t have told the truth about who’d called last night. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Juliet Longstreet insist on moving her out of the hotel.

Maybe she shouldn’t trust her brother’s colleagues to have her best interests at heart.

They were all in shock themselves. They wanted to find a sniper, not be burdened with a wounded deputy’s archaeologist sister.

She had to get a grip.

Had Winter overheard her brother urging her to go home? Would he take it as his duty to put her on a plane back to Nashville?

She didn’t like the idea of being a nuisance, having these people think they were responsible for her. Before her flight to New York, her deputy escorts had offered to arrange for a counselor to be with her, but she’d turned them down. Maybe if her brother had been killed.

But he was alive. He’d be all right. She’d been so determined not to tempt fate by agreeing prematurely to counseling. She just had an ordeal to get through.

She hadn’t expected, though, that Rob wouldn’t want her in New York.

The elevator doors shut. An elderly doctor frowned at her in concern. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

She nodded and brushed at her tears, relieved to be getting off Rob’s floor, away from the able-bodied deputies. She needed something to eat, a break. She didn’t want to feel sorry for herself. She wasn’t the one lying in the I.C.U. And what kind of compassion did she expect from a bunch of armed federal law enforcement officers? They were doing the best they could.

The elevator doors opened again, suddenly, and Juliet Longstreet stepped in. She put up a hand to Sarah, stopping her before she could get started. “I’m a jerk. I’m sorry. What I said in the waiting room—it was stupid.”

The older doctor moved to the front of the elevator car, letting Juliet take his spot. Sarah felt an immediate urge to ease some of Juliet’s obvious guilt. “It’s a difficult time for everyone.”

But Juliet refused to cut herself any slack. “For you. You’re Rob’s twin sister. I’m only a colleague.” She didn’t mention their past relationship. “I was just trying to look tough in front of Nate. I’m sorry I mouthed off at your expense.”

“No harm done.”

“Sure there was. You must have felt like the kid sister at the big kids’ party.” She smiled crookedly. “I’d say belt me one, but you’d probably have a half-dozen marshals jump on the elevator and pin you against the wall in two seconds flat. We’re all in rotten moods. But, hey, you see some of those guys? Very buff.”

Sarah fought a smile of her own, her first, she thought, in many hours. “Nate Winter—I just met him.”

“Yeah. I can tell. Most people run when they meet him. You’re not the first. He’s a total hard-ass.”

“You’re very irreverent, aren’t you?”

Juliet smiled, relaxing some. “Helps in dealing with things like two marshals getting shot in Central Park. At least the news on Rob is positive. Barring complications, he should be back on the streets before too long.”

Sarah tried to let Juliet’s optimism sink into her psyche, tried to visualize Rob back on his feet, with that lazy grin of his, that way he had of making people think he was a hundred percent on their side. “What about Deputy Winter?” she asked. “How’s he doing?”

“He’d like to get his hands around the neck of whoever shot him.”

“But physically?”

“Just enough of a wound to piss him off.”

The medical personnel all got off at the cafeteria floor, leaving Sarah and Juliet alone in the elevator. “I keep picturing the two of them leaving the news conference yesterday and walking into the park,” Sarah said. “Why did they do that? Do you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“The news conference—did a lot of people know about it in advance?”

“The world. That was the whole idea. It wasn’t thrown together at the last second.” Juliet frowned at her, then smiled gently. “Now, come on, don’t you start. The best investigators in the country are on this thing. In fact, Joe Collins called me while you were in with your brother. He wants to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“Are you kidding? After the bombshell you dropped?”

Sarah winced. “President Poe was calling as a friend—”

“Exactly.”

“I almost wish I’d told you it was another Wes on the line.”

“Nah. It’s better this way. Get it out in the open. Your relationship with the president isn’t something you’d want Joe Collins stumbling over on his own. He’s in a private meeting room down the hall from your brother. He’ll have food. Collins always has food.” Juliet hit the button for Rob’s floor and sighed. “And you look as if you could use something to eat.”

Neither of them had been in the mood to eat that morning at Juliet’s apartment—actually, an apartment she was borrowing from a well-heeled friend, because, she’d explained, even as small as it was, she couldn’t afford Manhattan’s upper west side on her government salary.

“All right,” Sarah said. “I’ll talk to Agent Collins. Then, please, go back to your normal duties. I can book a room at the hotel where we were last night. Tell your boss it’s what I want.”

“You just don’t like my plants and my fish.”

Juliet hadn’t exaggerated—her apartment was a jungle of plants and had at least four fish tanks. But Sarah shook her head. “Your apartment’s great. I’m just used to being on my own.”

“Now that I understand.”

She sank back against the cool wall of the elevator and closed her eyes. “I don’t want you here if I’ve got someone shooting at me.”

But how could she go home? She imagined herself on her front porch, drinking her sweet tea punch and feeling the soft breeze as if nothing had happened.

Given her family’s predilection for not leading quiet lives, she’d been prepared for anything when she returned to Night’s Landing—but not this, she thought. Not her brother getting shot in Central Park. Not the possibility that he could become another Dunnemore who died an early, tragic death.

She stopped her negative thinking in its tracks.

Stay positive.

The elevator opened on Rob’s floor. “Come on,” Juliet said. “Let’s go see Special Agent Joe and talk to him about your Tennessee neighbor.”

Nate didn’t follow Rob’s sister, but he was tempted—and duty and chivalry had nothing to do with it. The feel of her slim waist when he’d grabbed her, the blond hair, the gray eyes, the tears.

Damn.

He stood next to Rob’s bed. “Your sister’s prettier than you are.”

He was awake, but not by much. “Smarter, too. What time is it?”

“About nine in the morning the day after the shooting.” Which Sarah Dunnemore had told him before she’d stepped on Nate’s toes and ran off crying.

“I don’t…” Rob’s red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes tried to focus. “I don’t remember.”

The doctors had warned Nate that Rob might never remember the shooting. His body had poured all its energy into keeping him alive, not in remembering what had happened. “That’s normal. How’re you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

“The nurses are going to get you up today if they can. They like to do that.”

He wasn’t paying attention. “Sarah should go back home.” He coughed, shuddering in agony, his voice weaker, raspier, when he resumed. “She doesn’t belong here.”

His concern for his sister was palpable. “She’s with Juliet right now.” Nate assumed Longstreet would be trying to make amends for her ill-advised remark. “Just because you were shot doesn’t mean she’s in any danger.”

“It wasn’t random. The shooting. I was the target. He was after me.”

“Rob—”

“I know it. I have…this certainty.” He shut his eyes, and he seemed to sink deeper into the bed. “I’m sorry.”

“Get some rest. Don’t worry about anything.”

Rob was done for. His mouth opened slightly as he fell back to sleep. He looked dead lying there in the bed. Nate checked the monitors, just to be sure. He glanced at the stone-faced guard, felt the dull ache in his arm where he’d been shot. He could have been the one shot in the gut.

But he wasn’t. Rob, just four months in New York, was.

Nate had to stifle a wave of guilt and regret—he should have prevented this. Somehow, some way. He should have kept his and Rob’s presence at the news conference quiet. They shouldn’t have gone at all. He should have seen something in the park, sensed it, known they were in danger.

Dead-end thinking.

Better to concentrate on his anger. It was sharp, focused, explosive, not a slow burn, not a simmering kind of fury—and yet there wasn’t a damn thing he could do with it, except go home to Cold Ridge and climb mountains and eat Gus’s orange eggs.

He thought instead he’d check on the gray-eyed sister and see if she’d forgiven Longstreet for being such an ass.

Seven

Betsy Dunnemore’s daughter was attractive, but she, the mother, was beautiful—and she always had been. As he sipped his espresso and watched her coming up the cobblestone Amsterdam street, Nicholas Janssen remembered the day he met her more than thirty years ago, when they were both freshmen at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She was beautiful, shy and nervous, although the campus was less than ten miles from her home in Belle Meade.

It was all such a lifetime ago.

She was pale now, clutching her red leather handbag as she threaded her way among the scatter of tables at the streetside café. She’d tied a red silk scarf over her hair and secured it with a knot to one side of her throat, and she wore black pants and a lightweight black-and-white sweater.

Every man at Vanderbilt had wanted her. Nicholas had been just one among many. They’d never dated, had only attended a few classes together before he’d had to leave in the middle of his sophomore year. Family problems, he’d told people, but that wasn’t the reason. Money was. Always money.

When he’d transferred, everyone still assumed that Betsy Quinlan would end up marrying handsome, likable John Wesley Poe, who wasn’t the best student or the worst but was, by far, the most ambitious. Instead, a month after graduation, Betsy married brilliant, eccentric Stuart Dunnemore, a childless widower twenty-two years her senior.

She inhaled sharply when she saw Nicholas and almost stumbled backward. He had deliberately chosen her favorite café not far from the apartment she and her husband had shared since agreeing to participate in a special commission at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

For a moment, Nicholas thought Betsy would run in the opposite direction, but she regained her composure and proceeded to his table.

She sat across from him and looked at him as if she might have just found a disagreeable insect on her table. But he could see the fear in her gray eyes, the strain of the past twenty-four hours. Amsterdam was six hours ahead of New York—it was late afternoon now. This time yesterday, she would have been just getting the news of the shooting in Central Park.

“Did you have anything to do with what happened to my son?” she asked, her voice low, intense, accusatory.

“Betsy. How could you think—”

She didn’t back off. “Did you?”

Nicholas sipped his espresso and took a small bite of the cookie that came with it. It was a cool, windy afternoon. The café was uncrowded, although bicycles and people moved about in the streets. He was dressed casually in a brown silk sweater and trousers, trying not to call attention to himself, although he doubted a federal agent would jump out of an alley and kidnap him back to the United States. They had bigger fish to fry. Or so they believed.

People often underestimated Betsy Dunnemore. Because she’d married a man so much older, because she’d devoted herself to him and to raising her children. An educated housewife, an amateur art historian. The condescension had to be hard for her to take at times. But Nicholas had known her at eighteen, and he had never underestimated her—her intelligence, her determination, her grit. It was her steady devotion to her aging husband that had taken him by surprise. He’d seen it when he’d first contacted her last fall—another “chance” meeting—with the hope of maneuvering himself into her circle, the dream, even, of having an affair.

He remembered how much he’d wanted her at eighteen.

“I had nothing to do with the shooting.” He kept his tone mild. “I’ve made my share of mistakes, but I’m not a violent man. You’re upset. I understand that.”

“Don’t patronize me. Don’t.” She didn’t yell, but she was tight with anger, an easier emotion for her, he thought, than fear. “You should turn yourself in to U.S. authorities and go home to stand trial. You’re a fugitive, Nicholas. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“My status is a complicated legal matter.”

“It’s not complicated. You’re charged with felony tax evasion. You were supposed to appear for trial in a U.S. court of law. Instead you fled.” She looked away from him, her lower lip quivering, a weakness she wouldn’t want him to see. “You slipped out of the country to Switzerland—”

“I have a home there.”

“You knew it would be difficult if not impossible for you to be extradited for tax evasion. I don’t know about the Netherlands.” She shifted, her gray eyes on him. “Is it safe for you here?”

“Don’t get carried away. It’s a trying legal matter. Nothing more.”

“Did Rob see you at the Rijksmuseum last month?” She kept her voice low, but her sarcasm was knifelike. “Did he recognize you? Did you have him shot because of it?”

The Rijksmuseum. Nicholas recognized now that intercepting her at the renowned Amsterdam museum had been bad timing. He hadn’t realized her son the U.S. marshal was in town. A critical oversight. But he’d only dared surface in the Netherlands for a short time—he wanted to strengthen the bond between them now that he’d reestablished contact with her. It had been a long, trying winter. Seeing her had renewed his sense of hope.

Yet when they’d stood together three weeks ago in front of Rembrandt’s massive, famous painting, The Night Watch, Betsy had told him—again—that she wanted nothing to do with him.

“Betsy. Please. I’m not here to argue with you. I made an effort to see you because you were a familiar face, an old friend.” That was the truth, as far as it went. Nicholas smiled tenderly. “We had a pleasant visit when I was here last in November. A cup of coffee. A nice chat about old times. It was a chance encounter—”

“It wasn’t chance. You arranged it. You manipulated me so that I’d run into you. I wasn’t aware of your legal status, but I am now.” She didn’t soften. “And we were never friends.”

He attributed her coldness and sarcasm to her desperate fear for her son. He let his gaze drift to the swell of her breasts, the soft shape of her hands. He’d accepted that the chance of a sexual affair was remote, at least while her husband was still alive. Nicholas was a vital man, wealthy, his hair silver now but his body taut, well-conditioned. Stuart Dunnemore was old. Just plain old. He was in his late seventies, but still a force in diplomatic circles, an expert—a visionary—in international conflict resolution. A realist, not a romantic. A pragmatist, not an ideologue. And a good man. He had humility, and he was kind. He’d endured terrible losses, a father dead in a logging accident at thirty-two, a brother killed on the beaches of Normandy, a wife he’d watched slowly waste away from multiple sclerosis.

Betsy would never leave him. But he wouldn’t live forever, either.

Right now, Nicholas needed to play on her emotions—her sympathy for him as a former classmate, for the struggling eighteen-year-old she must remember. He was a self-made man. He’d worked hard. He had so much to offer the world. But he couldn’t contribute if he was behind bars.

The Dunnemores were known for their compassion.

And they had the ear of the new president of the United States.

Betsy was right. It wasn’t just friendship that had drawn him to her. Nicholas wanted to convince her to tell her friend, Wes Poe, that their old classmate deserved a break. He’d paid a price for his mistakes. He would use his wealth for good.

He wanted her to get him a presidential pardon. It would stop the legal proceedings against him dead in their tracks. A pardon wouldn’t exonerate him, but it would keep him out of prison and buy him time to distance himself from his other activities before they, too, caught up with him. Time to take his profits and move on.

“How is Rob?” Nicholas asked quietly.

Her eyes glistened with sudden tears—a mother’s tears. They made her seem vulnerable, even more beautiful. He’d wanted Betsy Quinlan for a long time. He had wanted the girl she’d been at eighteen, and he wanted what she could do for him now, as a woman, as a friend and confidante of President John Wesley Poe.

“Oh, Nicholas. Damn. I must be out of my mind. I don’t approve of what you’ve done, but tax evasion—” She collapsed back against her chair. “It’s not a violent crime.”

“You’re upset because of Rob. I understand.”

Even in her early fifties, her skin was translucent, smooth and barely lined, her delicate bone structure the stuff of a man’s dreams. Nicholas wanted to take her hand and comfort her, but he knew better, resisted the instinctive reaction to her tears. A mother’s grief. She gulped in a breath. “He’s holding his own. I want to be there now—” She broke off, biting back a sob.

“When will you go?”

“As soon as we can. I told Sarah—” She stopped herself, as if she realized she was venturing into territory that was none of his business. “Travel isn’t as easy for Stuart these days, and he’s in the middle of critical meetings. If Rob were in danger—we’d be there now.”

“Of course you would.”

“But his doctors tell us that each day—each hour—that passes without complications is a good sign. They expect him to make a full recovery.” She held her purse close to her chest and got to her feet. “Sarah’s in New York. My daughter. She was at the Rijksmuseum, too.”

Nicholas had seen her. Pretty, smart. One of his men had delayed her to give him time to speak to her mother—who’d promptly told him she didn’t want him to contact her again.

“I hope Sarah didn’t see you,” Betsy said. “I hope no one saw you.”

He leaned back, studying her as he had when he’d sat behind her in a dull philosophy class, wondering if she were a virgin. The word in the dorm halls said she was. The Quinlans were well-to-do, classy people who gave a lot of money to Vanderbilt.

He sighed, pushing his coffee aside. “Betsy, please believe that I had nothing to do with the shooting yesterday.”

“I wish we’d never run into each other.” She seemed tired now, spent. “Call the U.S. embassy. Turn yourself in. If you’re innocent, trust the judicial system—”

“My attorneys—”

“I don’t want to hear about your damn lawyers!” She took a breath, her tears gone now. “You should have told me right from the start you were on the lam. I shouldn’t have had to find out on my own.”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “How did you find out?”

She averted her eyes. “That doesn’t matter.”

But it did. Charlene Brooker had told her. Betsy had to wonder why an army captain stationed in Germany had contacted her to discuss her relationship with him.

Did Betsy know that Captain Brooker had been murdered in Amsterdam, two days after the meeting about him?

“Stay away from me,” Betsy whispered tightly. “Stay away from my family.”

With a spurt of energy, she jumped up, almost turning over a chair as she made her way back out to the narrow cobblestone street, then quickly disappeared past a cheese-and-bread shop. She was smartly dressed, but she wore shoes that could handle Amsterdam’s many brick and cobblestone walks and streets, reminding him that she wasn’t eighteen anymore.

A large group of American tourists started rearranging tables, calling loudly, cheerfully, to each other about who would sit where.

A street musician fired up his accordion and moved in, playing a cheerful tune. The tourists laughed, loving it.

Janssen paid for his coffee and walked down the street to a small Mercedes that awaited him. The back door opened, and he slid onto the cool leather seat next to Claude Rousseau, his most experienced bodyguard.

“She won’t say anything,” Nicholas said. “She hasn’t told anyone that we’ve met. She’s not going to now that her son’s been shot. It would only complicate the situation for everyone—her, her husband, her son. The president.”

“Is she afraid?”

“Terrified.”

He sighed, his pulse quickening. Yes, terrified. And yet all beautiful Betsy Quinlan Dunnemore knew was that her old acquaintance from college was a convicted tax evader.

“Did she believe you?” Rousseau asked.

“About her son? I don’t know.” That troubled him, because he’d told her the truth. He’d had nothing to do with the shooting. “Have you heard from our man in New York? Does he have any idea what the hell’s going on there?”

Rousseau shook his head. He was dark haired, angular, good-looking and lethal. Thrown out of the French army. A mercenary, plain and simple. “Nothing.”

“Be prepared. You might have to go to there.”

Claude smiled. “All of my passports are in order.”

Janssen knew not to ask how many passports, how many identities, Rousseau—if that was his real name—had at his disposal. Even if Claude would tell him, which he wouldn’t, there was always, for Nicholas, the question of plausible deniability. Some things he was better off not knowing. His people knew it and sometimes didn’t trouble him with details.

Could his man in New York have taken it upon himself to try to kill Rob Dunnemore?

If so, he should have finished the job—done it right and killed both marshals. Now it could look like a botched job, which, if his friends or enemies thought he was behind it, would only make Nicholas appear weak.

The Mercedes pulled out into Amsterdam’s tangle of impossibly narrow streets, many indistinguishable from the sidewalks and ubiquitous bike paths. Janssen settled back in his seat and shut his eyes, picturing himself bike riding in the hills of northern Virginia as a boy, picking wild strawberries on a warm spring day, driving north into Pennsylvania with his father and walking up Little Round Top as his father regaled him with details of the Battle of Gettysburg. It had all sounded so romantic. To Father, the soldiers on both sides exemplified duty, honor, integrity and courage. They were men who’d never given up.

Nicholas imagined the federal agents hunting him were much the same. He had no illusions they’d forgotten about him. “Failure to appear” was not a good thing. If convicted of the tax charges, he faced a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison—what would taking off to Switzerland before his trial tack onto his sentence?

Going to trial wasn’t an option.

Prison wasn’t an option.

But he could never go home.

That was what he hadn’t realized, on a soul-deep level, when he’d fled.

He did now.

He opened his eyes, saw a Dutch couple riding bicycles with their blond toddlers in little seats on the handlebars. Everything seemed so foreign to him. He felt the familiar lump in his throat. He was, he thought, so far from home.

Eight

Sarah passed bellmen and limousines on Central Park South and lingered a few seconds under the awning of the expensive hotel where the news conference touting the joint fugitive task force had been held.

She could almost see Nate Winter and her brother walking out onto the street in their dark suits, relieved to have that tedious ninety minutes behind them.

The weather was better today. Cool, partly cloudy.

And it was later in the day. Afternoon rush hour. Sarah made her way across the busy street. There had to be more cars and more pedestrians on Central Park South now than yesterday at midday.

For the first time all day, she was—at last—alone. She walked alongside the stone fence overlooking the south end of the park until she came to Fifth Avenue, which ran north along the huge park’s eastern side.

Her interview with Joe Collins had been short and to the point. Sarah had made it clear that President Poe had checked on her simply as a friend. It wasn’t that big a deal. She didn’t know whether Collins was convinced or not. She spent the afternoon with her brother for five or ten minutes at a time. He was still out of it from his surgery and medications, but when he was awake enough to talk, he told her to go back to Tennessee.

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