AMBURG, GERMANY

JUNE 21, 2005

PRESENT DAY

Gina’s body was being held at the airport.

Upper-echelon FBI team leader Walter Frisk himself met Max at the plane—which had to be Jules Cassidy’s doing.

Frisk didn’t do more than shake Max’s hand, murmur something extremely brief about sorrow and loss, and then use his local clout to lead the way unchallenged through customs, through the terminal, and down into the airport morgue.

All of that was Jules’s doing, too. The junior agent had balls, that was for sure. When they arrived at the door to the room where the body was being held, Jules thanked Frisk and then politely but firmly dismissed the man, telling—not asking—him to wait outside in the outer hall with the security guard.

Giving Max privacy to go in on his own.

Which he did. On legs that were suddenly leaden. As bad as the past twenty-odd hours had been, these next few minutes were going to be worse, and he steeled himself.

Gina wasn’t alone in the holding area. There were dozens of the white space age–looking body boxes tagged and stacked against the wall. They belonged, no doubt, to the other victims of the terrorist attack, along with tourists who’d had heart attacks and car accidents, as well as a few expats who were finally ready to return home.

Someone had moved Gina’s open container—Max just couldn’t bring himself to think of it as a coffin—to a table in the center of the room. They’d also pulled a white sheet up and over her face. He just stood there, staring at the profile of her face beneath that shroud.

Her prominent nose.

Gina had laughingly called it her beak. Her passport to an extra large piece of tiramisu when she had dinner in Little Italy.

He’d never told her that he thought it made her face even more exoti-cally beautiful. He’d never said just how much he’d loved it.

How much he’d loved her.

Time passed. Minutes. Many, many of them.

And Max didn’t lift that sheet. He could not make himself move.

He didn’t want to see her dead.

Yet he knew he had to look. He couldn’t put her on that flight home until he’d provided a positive identification.

But until he saw her, until he touched her cold, lifeless face, he could pretend that they were wrong. That Gina wasn’t really dead.

That her eyes were still sparkling the way they sparkled whenever she laughed and leaned in close to kiss him.

I’ll stay as long as you need me.

But she hadn’t stayed. Probably because Max had convinced her that he didn’t need her.

And now he would never be kissed by her again.

Because he’d been too goddamn afraid.

“Max, I’m coming in.” Jules Cassidy closed the door behind him with a solid-sounding thunk.

Jesus. Max somehow found his voice. “Don’t.” The word was little more than a growl.

Cassidy didn’t flinch or falter. “Sweetie, you’ve been standing in here for nearly half an hour,” he said gently. “I’m just going to pull this from her face so we can see her, okay?”

It was obviously not a question Jules wanted Max to answer, because he didn’t give him time to respond. He just reached out and...

God God God! Gina was horribly, hideously burned. Max recoiled, taking a step back, but then...

He stopped. All air had left his body, as if he’d been slammed in the stomach, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.

But Jules could. “It’s not her,” he whispered, wonder in his voice. “Holy shit, it’s not Gina.”

Whoever was in that coffin was young, female, with long, dark hair and a prominent nose. When she was alive, she had probably looked a lot like Gina, particularly from the distance. At dusk.

But whoever she was, she was not Gina Vitagliano.

It was entirely possible that Max was going to throw up.

But he knew that he couldn’t, because throwing up would take far too much time.

Instead, he spun to look at the rows of other coffins lining the room, and Jules—good man—knew exactly what he was thinking. He quickly moved to help.

The latches weren’t locked. They popped open and...

Old man.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir.” Jules Cassidy gently closed the lid.

Max moved on to the next, barking, “He’s dead, he doesn’t care.”

He flipped the latches, and opened the lid and his heart stopped because it was another young, dark-haired woman lying there, but thank God again because she, too, wasn’t Gina.

Still, something inside of him finally snapped.

He must’ve made some sort of sound, because Jules was right there, next to him. Jules—the only man Max knew who would apologize to a corpse.

Or dare to put comforting arms around his boss, a man whose hardassed intolerance for stupid mistakes—one strike and you were off his team—was legendary.

“We’ll find her, sweetie,” Jules told Max, his voice in his ear. “We will. But I honestly don’t think we’re going to find her in here.”

For several dizzying seconds, it was possible Jules was the only thing holding Max up.

“God, I want her to be alive,” Max squeezed the words out, daring to put voice to his emotions. He wanted it so badly, he didn’t trust himself to be unbiased about the odds. He pulled away from Jules, wiping the tears from his face. Fuck that, until he found Gina, he didn’t have time to cry. “Do you really think she’s still alive?”

The kindness and sympathy he saw in Jules’s eyes pissed him off.

“And don’t goddamn answer that as my friend. You’re not my friend. Fuck friendship,” Max said, even though he knew damn well he wouldn’t be having this conversation with any random subordinate. “You work for me. Answer as if your job depended on your telling the truth as you see it—as an experienced field agent.”

Jules nodded as he closed the second coffin, keeping his apology to its occupant silent this time. “It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.” He glanced at Max as they moved on to the next box. “A misplaced body. You know that as well as I do, sir. It falls under the way too common snafu heading.”

He opened the locks and Max braced himself as they lifted the lid and...

Young man. Very battered, very dead young man. Somewhere his mother was crying.

“But I think,” Jules continued as they moved to the next, “that at this point, it’s okay if you allow yourself to feel at least a little bit of hope.”

Max had to wipe his face again. He hadn’t cried at all when he’d thought Gina was dead. He’d just turned his heart into solid stone. But now these freaking tears just would not stop.

Because his heart was beating again. He could feel it, thumping wildly in his chest.

Hope wasn’t the only thing he was feeling. He was also feeling fear. If Gina was alive, then where the hell was she? If she wasn’t dead, then she could be in danger.

“We’re going to need some assistance in here,” Jules continued, looking over to where the coffins were stacked, some six high. “I’ll stay. Frisk can send some of his team to help.” He paused. Made sure Max was listening. “We’ll also need to double-check with the lab doing DNA identifications. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Some of the people killed in the terrorist blast were little more than jumbled body parts. That grim knowledge made it easier to stop the motherfucking crying.

“Why don’t you go over to the hotel,” Jules suggested. “I’ll check with Frisk’s team, find out why they put this other girl on their list as Gina Vitagliano. You know, was she carrying Gina’s passport, or was the passport found somewhere in the rubble and assumed to be this girl’s? God, Max, if Gina’s passport was lost or stolen...”

It could have happened. Gina might have taken a side trip to, say, Berlin. Somewhere in-country. It was possible she might not know her passport was gone. Hell, she might not even know she was believed to be dead.

If Gina’s passport had been stolen, she could be back at her hotel, right now.

“I know it’s a long shot,” Jules was saying, “but it wouldn’t be the first time that type of snafu has happened, either and... Whoa!”

That much hope had brought Max to his knees.

Apparently if he didn’t let himself weep like a little girl to relieve this emotional pressure building inside of him, he was in danger of hitting the ground in a dead faint.

Jules crouched beside him, checking for his pulse. “Are you okay? You’re not, like, having a heart attack or a stroke, are you?”

“Fuck you,” Max managed, swatting his hand away. “I’m not that old.”

“If you really think heart disease is about age, then you definitely need to make an appointment with a cardiologist, like, tomorrow—”

“I just... tripped,” Max said, but when he tried to get up, he found he still hadn’t regained his equilibrium. Shit.

“Or maybe you needed to get on your knees to pray,” Jules said as Max put his head down and waited for the dizziness to pass. “That excuse sounds a little more believable, if you want to know the truth. ‘Hello God? It’s me, Max. I know I’ve been lax in my attention to You over the past forty-mmph years, but if You give me a second chance, I’ll make absolutely certain that this time around I’ll tell Gina just how much I love her. Because withholding that information sure as hell didn’t do either of us one bit of good, now did it?’ ”

“I did what I—” Max stopped himself. To hell with that. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“That’s right, you don’t.” Jules ignored Max’s attempt to push him away, and helped him to his feet. “But you might want to work up some kind of Forgive-Me-For-Being-a-Butthead speech for when you come face to face with Gina. Although, I’ve got to admit that the falling to the knees thing might make an impact. You’ll definitely get big points for drama.”

Max straightened his suit, brushed off his pants. He took a deep breath, blew it out hard. He had to remember to keep breathing.

Because Gina was not going to be waiting for him in her hotel room. Life just wasn’t that simple or easy.

He still didn’t know why she had left Kenya in the first place, or even who she was traveling with, for that matter.

“You want me to come with?” Jules asked him. “To the hotel? So you don’t trip again and maybe break your nose this time and—”

Max shook his head. “I need you here.” Jules was the only one besides Max who could identify Gina. There was still a chance she was in one of those boxes—her body merely misplaced.

There was an even bigger chance she was still going to need one of those boxes for her flight home.

He had to remember that.

Even if she was alive, she was missing.

But the odds were that she was not alive. Because even if she hadn’t been killed in the bombing, her passport may have been taken by someone who wouldn’t have wanted her to report it as stolen. One best-case scenario had her tied up and locked in some ancient cellar somewhere. Worst had her already under the cellar’s dirt floor.

Still, the odds of Max finding Gina alive were greater than they had been when he’d first walked into this room. And for that he was grateful.

Jules had his hand on the doorknob, his body language clear—ready?

Max wiped his face one last time. He was as ready as he’d ever be, but first he cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

For maybe the first time in his life, Jules Cassidy didn’t try to make a joke. He didn’t make a big deal out of it in any other way, either. He just nodded and pushed open the door, saying, “You’re more than welcome, sir,” as they both went out of the room.

Sir.

Not “sweetie.” Not even Max.

Not out here where someone might overhear.

But as they walked down the hall toward both Frisk and the security guard, Jules just couldn’t keep himself completely in line. “So about that promotion,” he murmured in a voice so low that even Max had trouble hearing him. “It’s in the bag, right, crybaby-man?”

And Max did the one thing he thought he’d never do again, a mere hour ago as he’d entered the Hamburg terminal to identify Gina’s body for air passage home.

He actually laughed.

KENYA, AFRICA

FEBRUARY 23, 2005

FOUR MONTHS AGO

It was after midnight when Molly finally came to his tent.

Jones had been expecting it, expecting her, and he knew what he had to do.

He just hadn’t realized how difficult it was going to be to do it.

“You can’t come in,” he told her, but she spoke right over him as she pushed her way inside.

“No one saw me,” she said and then she kissed him.

What had he been thinking? That Molly would meekly wait outside, that she’d understand that although the threat was diminished, it wasn’t gone, and that they couldn’t know for sure that no one had seen her coming in here?

And Jesus, had he really—stupidly—believed that when he was with her again, like this, in private, that he’d be able to step back and tell her not to kiss him?

He’d waited an eternity to be with her—it had been so goddamn long...

She was kissing the shit out of him. And hero that he was, he didn’t stop himself from kissing the shit out of her, right back.

He kissed her, even though he knew he shouldn’t, couldn’t. Because fuck that. She was fire in his arms as she pressed herself against him, as his eyes damn near rolled back in his head from all those years of wanting her so badly.

She was touching him, running her hands down his back and across his shoulders, up his neck and through his hair, as if checking to make sure he was really all there. True gentleman, his focus and both hands were on her amazing ass, as she opened herself to him, wrapping one leg around him in an attempt to get even closer.

“You’re so thin,” she breathed. “And that cane—are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. The cane’s a prop.” He knew he had to tell her to call him Leslie now, or Les. But damn, he loved being Dave Jones. It was Jones who’d first met her. It was Jones with whom she’d fallen in love.

She kissed him again, and yeah, she definitely wanted to be closer—she unfastened his pants and lifted her skirt, shifted and...

Molly made a sound that Jones knew he was making, too, and it was only that sudden awareness that they were being too loud that kept him from coming right then and right there, with that first sweet push inside of her.

Oh, God, oh God... Thank you thank you thank you...

Except, this wasn’t happening the way he’d imagined it.

In his ultimate fantasy version of their reunion, Molly had always kissed him hello so sweetly, the gentlest of homecomings. She was so soft and warm and her beautiful eyes were always filled with tears. One would escape, and he’d brush it away with his thumb as he cupped the soft curve of her beautiful face, as he whispered that he’d dreamed about this day.

Instead, he kissed her hungrily, trying to absorb the sounds she was making as she strained against him, balancing on one foot, on tip-toes, as he fucked her.

Or rather, made love to her, vigorously. Molly didn’t particularly like the F-word.

Despite the fact that she sure liked F-word-ing. He’d never factored that into his little fantasy, but he should have. He wasn’t the only one, apparently, who’d been on a no-sex diet for way too long.

She’d waited for him, too—only she’d been running on pure faith. She hadn’t known about his plan to find her. She’d had no idea that he’d spent every single day since he’d last seen her, working for this very moment.

Emotion crashed through him, and he knew that the salt he was tasting as he kissed her wasn’t only from her tears.

And as long as he was thanking God, he added the darkness in that tent to his Things to be Grateful For list. There were limits to what a man could endure.

He felt her release—thanks again, God—because he had maybe three seconds left before he—

Jesus!—he wasn’t wearing a condom. He pulled out of her, fast, and she immediately knew why.

“I have one,” she said, fumbling in her pocket.

She’d brought one with her—and Jones knew this wasn’t an accident. She’d come here tonight, intending to jump right back into their relationship, hot and heavy, just the way they’d left off. No questions, no “so, what exactly have you been up to for the past three years?”

And standing there, breathing hard, struggling to see her face in the darkness, he fell in love with her, all over again.

His woman.

Well, okay, so he’d never actually call her that to her face.

But right now they were out of time. “Save it,” he told her, but she reached for him.

“No, Molly, stop.” He could see her incredulity even in the dimness. “We’ve already been in here too long,” he said as he zipped his pants back up—not easy to do—leaving his shirt untucked. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, smoothed down his hair, found Leslie’s glasses, hooking the wire frames around his ears. “Fix your skirt.”

She didn’t understand, and she didn’t move to straighten herself until he grabbed her with one hand and his cane with the other and pulled her out of the tent and into the moonlight.

“I’m afraid it’s terribly inappropriate,” he said in Leslie Pollard’s Brit accent as he led the way, limping toward the still-lit mess tent, “for you to come to my tent, unchaparoned, at this late hour, Miss Anderson.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She didn’t necessarily look like a woman who’d just had sex. No, the flushed, tear-streaked face and crazy hair could’ve belonged to a woman who was grieving and distraught. If you had a G-rated imagination. “But I...”

“I know you have more questions about him. Your dead friend. Dave Jones.” He fished in his pants pocket for his handkerchief, taking advantage of the opportunity to try to adjust himself so his balls would end up only half crushed. But nope, it was hopeless. He was doomed.

Before he handed the handkerchief to Molly, he used it to wipe his mouth—God forbid she’d started wearing lipstick and had left a telltale streak on his face. “I’m not sure, though, what more I can tell you,” he added. “I only met him a few times.”

It was hard to tell what bemused her more—his pretense of propriety, his painfully real limping, or the fact that he was carrying a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose. “I’d heard rumors that... Crazy stuff, like, he’d killed this man, and, I don’t know, run off, I guess, with his wife,” she said. “But then someone said that he killed her, too...”

No way. That old story had made it all the way to freaking Africa...? It apparently had been twisted and changed, like the message in a worldwide game of telephone, but still...

“I knew him well,” Molly continued. “Dave Jones. He would never have hurt anyone.”

Um... Jones made a mental note—file this under things to talk about at another time. Right now, though, he had other priorities. They’d finally moved out of hearing range of the other sleeping tents, so he leaned closer to her, lowering his voice, and changing the subject. “It’s important that you don’t do anything out of the ordinary, Mol. This might be crazy and paranoid, but damn it, if you managed to hear about... Look, I don’t want word getting back to the wrong people that my do-gooder ex-girlfriend has suddenly gotten very cozy with some guy she supposedly just met. Unless you’ve added casual sleepovers with strangers to your repertoire—”

“You know I haven’t,” she told him.

Yeah. He nodded. “That means anyone with brains will put two and two together and know it’s gotta be me.”

She stopped him with a hand on his arm. But she didn’t touch him for long—as aware as he was that Sister Maura was in the mess, making herself a cup of tea, taking a break from the hospital’s night shift. The nun didn’t seem to have seen them out here in the moonlight, but they couldn’t know that for sure.

“So we’ll need to be discreet,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears again. “I can’t believe that you’re really here. Wow, that is one awful haircut.”

“We were discreet in Indonesia,” Jones told her. He took off his glasses, polishing them with the edge of his shirt. It was something to do with his hands. As opposed to reaching to push her hair back from her face. Or pulling her into his arms again, to kiss her, to finish what they’d started. “And how long was it before your entire camp knew? Two days or three?”

“Then we’ll have to be even more—” she started.

He cut her off. “Discreet’s not good enough.” He put his glasses back on. “What happened in my tent tonight... Mol, it’s not going to happen again.”

“What happened in your tent,” she pointed out, “only half happened.”

Yeah. He was well aware of that. “Not for a while, anyway,” he added.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said, searching his eyes.

He tried hard to look resolute. This had been way easier in theory, as part of his grand plan. “We need to do this right,” he told her, reminding himself as well.

“When?” she asked. “How long is a while?”

“Months,” he said.

Molly laughed—a burst of disbelief. “You came all the way around the world to—”

“Have coffee.” He nodded. “With you. To sit at the same table, across from you. Shit, Mol, to sit in the same mess tent with you is enough—I don’t even need to be at the same table.”

“For months,” she clarified. “Units of time, usually consisting of a complete lunar cycle.”

“Yeah,” Jones said. “And we should start with you not talking to me again for, I don’t know, maybe even a couple of weeks.”

She was starting to get mad. She just didn’t get it. “You can’t be serious—”

“Jones is dead,” he told her. “Think about it. I’m the one who brought you that news. What’s that expression, you know, about shooting the messenger...? So okay, church ladies usually don’t shoot people, but they probably avoid ’em for a while.”

“I’m certainly mature enough to be able to separate the bad news from the bearer of the bad news,” she shot back. “Or haven’t you noticed three additional years of wrinkles on my face—”

“We need to make this look real,” he interrupted her again. “Don’t you get the fact that just being here scares the shit out of me? I won’t put you into danger. Again. God knows I’ll burn in hell for what I did the last time—”

She interrupted him, waving away both his mortal sins and the years he’d spent trying desperately to redeem himself. “So you think my ignoring you for a week or two is going to convince all the people who are watching us—who might not even be watching, might I add—that you’re not you. So then what?”

One of the people who might not even be watching—the battle-ax, Sister Maria-Margarit—had opened the squeaky screen door of the nuns’ larger, wooden-framed tent. She tied the belt of her robe around her waist as she started toward them.

He had to talk fast. “Then we take it slowly. We have a conversation in the mess tent every now and then. Eventually you invite me over for tea. In the daylight. With your roommate there. We stretch it out—over as many months as it would take for a geek like Leslie Pollard to realize he’s in love with you—and then to get up enough nerve to actually do something about it.”

And the sister was upon them.

Leslie turned toward her. “I’m so sorry, did we wake you? Miss Anderson was having trouble sleeping, naturally, after receiving such bad news... She came to my tent with some questions, and of course, that’s not the proper place for a conversation, so... I thought perhaps a glass of warm milk...?” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “She was so upset, I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

Sister Maria-Margarit didn’t cluck, didn’t hug Molly, didn’t show a snippet of sympathy. In fact, the look she gave Jones was filled with suspicion.

But it was probably no different than the way she looked at every man who walked God’s earth.

He turned back to Molly, sending her a silent apology as he nodded his farewell. “I’ll leave you in good hands, then, Miss Anderson.”

“Thank you for being so kind,” she said. “Mr. Pollard. And I apologize again for disturbing you and... everything.”

He knew exactly what she meant by everything, and, yeah, as he walked back to his tent, he knew that the next few months were going be among the longest of his entire life.