he next day, Faith found the note inside her car, lying on the driver’s seat. She saw the folded piece of paper and picked it up, wondering what she had dropped. She unfolded it, and saw the block letters:

DON’T ASK ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT GUY ROUILLARD SHUT UP IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU

She leaned against the car, a light breeze fluttering the paper in her hands. She didn’t lock her car at home, so she didn’t have to wonder how the note had gotten in there. She stared at the paper, reading it again and wondering if she had been threatened, or if the writer had simply used a familiar phrase. Shut up if you know what’s good for you. She had heard variations of it a hundred times, with only the command changing. The note might or might not be a threat; likely it was more of a warning. Someone didn’t like her asking questions about Guy.

Gray hadn’t left the note. It wasn’t his style, for one thing; he had delivered his threats in person, and spelled them out. The last one still had her rattled. Who else would have been disturbed by her questions? There were two possibilities: someone with something to hide, or someone who thought to curry Gray’s favor.

She had been on her way to town for yet another fact-finding mission, this time to try having a word with Yolanda Foster, so there was a certain irony to the timing of the note’s appearance. After a moment’s consideration, she decided that she was still going to try. If the writer wanted her to take the threat seriously, he or she would have to be more specific.

First, though, she carried the note inside and locked it in the desk, being careful not to handle the paper more than necessary. In itself, this wasn’t something that warranted calling the sheriff, but if she received another, she wanted to be able to present both of them to him for evidence. She wasn’t eager to see the sheriff in any case. She had a stark memory of him standing beside his patrol car, beefy arms folded as he approvingly watched his deputies empty the shack of the Devlins’ belongings. Sheriff Deese was thoroughly in Gray’s hip pocket; the question was whether or not he would do anything even if she received a death threat.

The note properly stored, she drove to town. Lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, she had planned her strategy. She wouldn’t call Mrs. Foster; that would give her a chance to refuse a meeting. It would be best to take her by surprise, face-to-face, and slip in a few questions before Yolanda got over being startled. She didn’t know where the Fosters lived, however, and the address in the phone book had been unfamiliar to her.

Her first stop was the library. To her disappointment, the chatty Carlene DuBois wasn’t behind the desk; instead it was manned – or girled – by a frothy little blonde who barely looked old enough to be out of high school. She was chewing gum as she leafed through a rock music fanzine. What had happened to the stereotypical librarian with her hair pulled back in a bun and reading glasses perched on a thin nose? The gum-chewing rock fan wasn’t an improvement.

Realistically, Faith knew, she herself was probably no more than four or five years older than the little librarian. Mentally and emotionally, however, she wasn’t even in the same generation. She had never been young in the way this girl still was, and she didn’t think it was a bad thing. She’d had responsibilities from an early age; she could remember cooking when the iron frying pan had been too heavy for her to lift, and she’d had to stand on a chair to stir a pot of beans. She had swept with a broom that was almost twice as tall as herself. Then she’d had Scottie to care for, the greatest responsibility of all. But when she had finished high school, she’d been prepared for life, unlike kids who had never taken care of anything and had no idea how to cope. Those "kids" were still running back to their parents for help when they were twenty-five.

The girl looked up from her magazine to pull her bubble-gum pink lips into what passed for a professional smile. Her eyes were so heavily lined with black that they looked like almonds in a pit of coal dust. "May I help you?"

The tone was competent, Faith thought with relief. Maybe the girl was just stuck in makeup limbo. "Do you have maps of both the town and parish?"

"Sure." She led Faith to a table on which a large globe stood. "Here are all the maps and atlases. They’re updated yearly, so if it’s an older map you need, you’ll have to go to the archives."

"No, I need a current map."

"Here you go, then." The girl pulled out an enormous book, easily three by two feet, but she handled it easily as she placed it on the table. "We have to seal the maps in plastic and put them in the book," she explained. "If we don’t, they get stolen."

Faith smiled as the girl left her. The solution made sense to her. It was one thing to fold a map and put it in your pocket; spiriting out a huge, plastic-encased sheet would take some ingenuity.

She didn’t know if the Fosters lived in town or out in the parish, but she looked first in the town map, running her finger down the list of streets printed on the back. Bingo. Noting the coordinates, she flipped the page and quickly located Meadowlark Drive, in a subdivision that hadn’t existed when she had lived here before. With a name like Meadowlark Drive, she should have known. Land developers were an unimaginative bunch. After memorizing how to get there, she replaced the map book and left. The librarian was engrossed in her magazine again, and didn’t look up as Faith passed the desk.

Prescott being the size it was, finding Meadowlark Drive took less than five minutes. The subdivision included acreage, rather than just lots, so the houses were fewer and farther apart than normal. There probably weren’t many people in Prescott who could afford to build there, either, as the houses looked to be in the two-hundred-thousand range. In the Northeast and along the West Coast, they would have been worth a cool million, easy.

The Foster house was designed to look like a Mediterranean villa, nestled comfortably amid huge oaks draped with Spanish moss. Faith parked in the driveway and walked up the brown brick pathway to the double front doors. The button for the door bell was disguised amid some scrolls, then discreetly lit so people could find it. She pressed it, and heard the chimes echo through the house.

After a moment there was the rapid tapping of heels on a tiled floor, and the right half of the door was pulled open to reveal a very pretty middle-aged woman, stylishly clad in slim taupe pants and a white tunic. Her short, ash brown hair was a tumble of curls, swept to one side, and she wore gold hoop earrings. Startled recognition flashed in the dark blue eyes.

"Hello, I’m Faith Hardy," Faith said, hurrying to correct the woman’s horrified assumption that she was Renee. "Are you Mrs. Foster?"

Yolanda Foster nodded, evidently struck speechless. She continued to stare.

"I’d like to talk to you, if it’s convenient." To tilt the answer in her favor, Faith took a step forward. Yolanda fell back, in an involuntary gesture of admittance.

"I really don’t have much time," Yolanda said, her tone apologetic rather than impatient. "I’m having lunch with a friend."

That was believable, unless Yolanda always dressed at home as if she were the nineties version of June Cleaver. "Ten minutes," Faith promised.

Looking puzzled, Yolanda led her into a spacious living room, and they sat down. "I don’t mean to stare, but you are Renee Devlin’s daughter, aren’t you? I heard you were in town, and the resemblance – well, I’m sure you’ve been told it’s startling."

Unlike a lot of people, there was no censure in Yolanda’s tone, and Faith found herself unexpectedly liking the woman. "Several people have mentioned it," she said dryly, earning a chuckle from her hostess that made her like her even more. Liking her, however, didn’t deflect Faith from her course. "I want to ask you some questions about Guy Rouillard, if I may."

The blusher-pinkened cheeks paled a bit. "About Guy?" Her hands fluttered a bit, then she clasped them in her lap. "Why ask me?"

Faith paused. "Are you alone?" she finally asked, not wanting to cause the woman any trouble if someone should overhear their conversation. "Why, yes. Lowell is in New York this week." That was fortuitous in one way, and not in another, because depending on her conversation with Yolanda, she might want to talk to Lowell, too. She took a deep breath and went right to the heart of the matter. "Were you having an affair with Guy that summer before he left?"

The blue eyes darkened with distress, and the cheeks paled even more. Yolanda stared at her, the seconds ticking away in silence. Faith waited for a denial, but instead Yolanda gave a curiously gentle sigh. "How did you find out?"

"I asked questions." She didn’t say that it had evidently been common knowledge, for Ed Morgan to know about it. If Yolanda wanted to think she had been discreet, let her have.that dubious comfort.

"That was the only time I was ever unfaithful to Lowell." The older woman looked away, and her fingers plucked nervously at her slacks.

"I’m sure it was," Faith said, because Yolanda seemed to need to be believed. "From what I’ve heard about Guy Rouillard, he was an expert at seduction."

An unwilling, rueful little smile touched Yolanda’s lips. "He was, but I can’t blame it on him. I was determined to sleep with him before I ever approached him." Her fingers continued their nervous little movements, now smoothing the upholstered arm of the chair. "I found out Lowell was carrying on with his secretary, and had been for years. I pitched a fit, let me tell you. I threatened him with all sorts of things if he didn’t stop, immediately, and divorce was the only one of them that wasn’t physically damaging. He begged me not to leave him, swore that she didn’t mean anything to him, it was just the sex, and he’d never do it again – you know, that kind of bull. But I caught him, not three weeks later. It’s so silly, the little things that give them away. When he undressed one night, his shorts were on wrong side out, the label visible in the back. The only way he could have gotten them turned wrong would be if he’d had them off."

She shook her head, as if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been more careful. The words were spilling out of her now, as if she had held them inside for twelve years. "I didn’t say anything to him. But the next day I called Guy and asked him to meet me at the summerhouse on their lake. Lowell and I, and some other friends, had been there for barbecues and picnics, so I knew the place."

The summerhouse again! Faith thought wryly. Between father and son, the sheets in those two bedrooms must have stayed hot. "Why did you pick Guy?" she asked.

Yolanda gave her a surprised look. "Well, I’d hardly have picked anyone repulsive, would I?" she asked reasonably. "If I was going to have an affair, I at least wanted it to be with someone who knew what he was doing, and from Guy’s reputation, I thought he likely filled the bill. Then, too, Guy was safe. I intended to tell Lowell what I’d done, because what good is revenge if no one knows about it, and Guy was powerful enough that Lowell couldn’t do anything to him, if Lowell found out his identity. I intended to keep that secret, at least.

"So I met Guy at the summerhouse, and told him what I wanted. He was very sweet, very reasonable. He tried to talk me out of it, if you can imagine! Talk about a wound to the ego!" Yolanda smiled, her eyes misty with memory as they met Faith’s. "Here was a man who tomcatted all over the state, and he turned me down. I had always considered myself attractive, but evidently he didn’t. I almost cried. I did tear up a little bit, and Guy was frantic. He was so sweet, a real woman’s man. Tears turned him to mush. He started patting my shoulder, explaining that he really thought I was pretty and he’d love to take me to bed, but I had asked for all the wrong reasons, and Lowell was his friend – he went on and on."

"But you finally convinced him?"

"What I said was, ‘If it isn’t you, it’ll be someone else.’ He just looked at me with those dark eyes that made you feel like you could drown in them, and I could tell he was wondering who I would pick next. He was worried about me, thinking I’d be down at Jimmy Jo’s, looking that crowd over for candidates. Then he took my hand, put it on his crotch, and he was ready. He said, ‘I’m it,’ and took me to the bedroom." She shivered a little, her gaze unfocused as she looked back in time. She fell silent, and Faith waited patiently for her to sort through her memories.

"Can you imagine," Yolanda finally said, her voice soft, "what it’s like to be married for twenty years, to love your husband and be perfectly satisfied in bed – and then find out that you had no idea what passion could be? Guy was… God, I can’t tell you what Guy was like as a lover. He made me scream, he made me feel and do things I didn’t – I only meant it to be that one time. But we stayed there the whole afternoon, making love.

"I didn’t tell Lowell. Telling him would have ended my revenge, and I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stop seeing Guy. We met at least once a week, if I could manage it. Then he left." She glanced at Faith, as if gauging the effect of her next sentence. "With your mother. When I heard, I cried for a week. And then I told Lowell.

"He was furious, of course. He ranted and raved, and threatened to divorce me. I sat there and watched him, not arguing or anything, and that made him even madder. Then I said, ‘You should always make sure your shorts are right side out before you put them back on,’ and he stopped dead, staring at me with his mouth open. He knew that I’d caught him again. I got up and left the room. He followed me about half an hour later, and he was crying. We made up," she said, briskly now. "And as far as I know, he’s never been unfaithful again."

"Did you ever hear from Guy?"

Slowly Yolanda shook her head. "I hoped, at first, but… no, he never wrote, or called." Her lips trembled, and she looked at Faith with anguish stark on her face. "My God," she whispered, "I loved him so."

Another dead end, Faith thought as she drove home. According to Yolanda, her husband hadn’t known about her affair with Guy until after Guy had already disappeared, which put Lowell in the clear. Yolanda had been too open, too oblivious to even the possibility that Guy had been killed, or that there was the slightest reason why she shouldn’t unburden herself to Faith. Instead she had wound up clinging to Faith’s hands while she wept for a man whom she hadn’t seen in twelve years, but with whom she had shared a summer of passion.

She had finally recovered her poise, flustered and embarrassed. "My goodness, look at the time – I’m going to be late. I can’t imagine – I mean, you’re a stranger – crying all over you this way, carrying on – oh, my." This last as she fully realized just what she had been saying to this stranger. She had stared at Faith with horrified dismay.

Feeling compelled to comfort Yolanda, Faith had touched her shoulder and said, "You needed to talk about it. I understand, and I swear I’ll keep your confidence."

After a few strained seconds, Yolanda had relaxed. "I believe you. I don’t know why, but I do."

So now Faith was left with no suspects or leads, not that she’d had anything concrete to begin with. All she had was questions, and her questions were annoying someone. The proof of that was in the note she’d found that morning. Whether the note was indicative of a guilty conscience, she didn’t know.

Nor did she know what else to do, except keep asking questions. Sooner or later, someone would be stung to respond.

If she could keep busy enough, maybe she wouldn’t think about Gray.

The theory was proving difficult to put into practice. She had avoided thinking about him, purposefully pushing him from her mind after she had left him the afternoon before. She had ignored the unfulfilled ache in her body, and refused to think about what had almost happened between them. But for all her will, her subconscious had betrayed her, admitting him into her dreams so that she had awakened in the early morning to find herself reaching for him. The dream had been so vivid that she had cried out, in longing and disappointment.

She had no more resistance to him; she might as well admit it. If he hadn’t said what he had, she’d have given in to him there on the grass. Her morals and standards were useless when he took her in his arms, paper tigers that were vanquished by his first kiss.

As she eliminated each person from her list of suspects, the tower of motive leaned more and more toward Gray. Logically, she could see it. Emotionally, the idea met with total rejection. Not Gray. Not Gray! She couldn’t believe it; she wouldn’t believe it. The man she knew was capable of going to extraordinary lengths to protect those he loved, but cold-blooded murder wasn’t one of them.

Her mother knew who the killer was. Faith was as certain of that as she’d ever been of anything. Getting Renee to admit it, however, would take some doing, for that would mean trouble for herself. Renee wasn’t likely to act against her own self-interest, certainly not for such an abstract notion as justice. Faith knew her mother well; if she pushed too hard, Renee would run, partly from fear, but the biggest reason would be to avoid trouble for herself. After wringing the information about the summerhouse from her, Faith knew she would have to wait awhile before calling again.

The box was delivered the next day.

She returned home from a grocery-shopping expedition to the neighboring parish, and after carrying the groceries in and putting them away, went out to the mailbox to collect the day’s mail. When she opened the lid of the oversized box, there was the usual assortment of bills, magazines, and sales papers lying there, with a box deposited on top of them. Curiously she picked it up; she hadn’t ordered anything, but the weight of the box was intriguing. The flaps had been sealed with shipping tape, and her name and address were scrawled across the top.

She carried everything in and placed it on the kitchen table. Taking a knife from the cabinet drawer, she slit the tape down the seam of the flap and opened the two halves, then parted the froth of tissue paper that had been used for packing. After one horrified glance, she turned and vomited into the sink.

The cat wasn’t just dead, it had been mutilated. It was wrapped in plastic, probably to keep the smell from alerting anyone before the box was opened.

Faith didn’t think, she reacted instinctively. When the violent retching had stopped, she reached out blindly for the telephone.

She closed her eyes as the deep, smoky voice spoke in her ear, and she held on to the receiver as if it were a lifeline. "G-Gray," she stammered, then fell silent as her mind went blank. What could she say to him? Help, I’m scared, and I need you? She had no claim on him. Their relationship was a volatile mixture of enmity and desire, and any weakness on her part would only give him another weapon. But she was both sickened and abruptly terrified, and he was the only person she could think of to call for help.

"Faith?" Something of her terror must have been evident in the one word she’d spoken, because his voice became very calm. "What is it?"

Turning her back on the obscenity on the table, she fought to regain control of her voice, but still it emerged as only a whisper. "There’s a… cat here," she managed to say. "A cat? Are you afraid of cats?" She shook her head, then realized he couldn’t see her over the phone. Her silence must have made him think the answer was yes, though, because he said soothingly, "Just throw something at it; it’ll scat."

She shook her head again, more violently this time. "No." She took a deep breath. "Help."

"All right." Evidently deciding she was too terrified of cats to deal with it on her own, he assumed a brisk and reassuring tone. "I’ll be right there. Just sit someplace where you can’t see it, and I’ll take care of it when I get there."

He hung up, and Faith took his advice. She couldn’t bear to be in the house with the thing, so she went outside on the porch and sat motionless in the swing, waiting numbly for him to arrive.

He was there in less than fifteen minutes, but those fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity. His tall form unfolded from the Jaguar, and he strolled up to the porch with his graceful, loose-hipped gait and a faint smile of masculine condescension on his lips, the hero arrived to save the helpless little woman from the ferocious beast. Faith didn’t take umbrage; he could think what he liked, if he would just get rid of that thing in her kitchen. She stared up at him, her face so bloodless that his smile faded.

"You’re really frightened, aren’t you?" he asked gently, hunkering down in front of her and taking one of her hands in his. Her fingers were icy, despite the steamy heat of the day. "Where is it?"

"In the kitchen," she said, through stiff lips. "On the table."

With a comforting pat to her hand, he stood and opened the screen door. Faith listened to his footsteps moving through the living room and into the kitchen.

"Goddamn fucking son of a bitch!" She heard the vicious curse, followed by a string of others. Then the back door slammed. She put her hands over her face. Oh, God, she should have warned him, she shouldn’t have given him the same shock she had received, but she simply hadn’t been able to say the right words.

A few minutes later he came around to the front of the house, and remounted the steps to the porch. His jaw was set, and his dark eyes were colder than she had ever seen them before, but this time his rage wasn’t turned on her.

"It’s all right," he said, still in that gentle tone. "I got rid of it. Come inside, baby." Putting his arm around her, he urged her up from the swing and into the house. He directed her toward the kitchen; she stiffened and tried to pull back, but he was having none of it. "It’s okay," he reassured her, and forced her into a chair. "You look a little shocky. What do you have to drink around here?"

"There’s tea and orange juice in the refrigerator," she said, her voice faint.

"I meant the alcoholic variety. Do you have any wine?"

She shook her head. "I don’t drink alcohol."

Despite the fury in his eyes, he gave her a little grin.

"Puritan," he said mildly. "Okay, orange juice it is." He took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with orange juice, then thrust it into her hand. "Drink it. All of it, while I make a call."

She sipped obediently, more because it gave her something to concentrate on than because she wanted it. Gray opened the phone book, ran his finger down the first page, then punched in the number. "Sheriff McFane, please."

Faith lifted her head, suddenly more alert. Gray stared down at her, his expression daring her to protest. "Mike, this is Gray. Could you come out to Faith Hardy’s house? Yeah, it’s the old Cleburne place. She just got a real ugly surprise in her mail. A dead cat… Yeah, there’s one of those, too." He hung up, and Faith cleared her throat. "One of what, too?"

"A threatening letter. Didn’t you see it?"

She shook her head. "No. All I saw was the cat." A shudder rippled through her body, making the glass tremble in her hand. He began opening and closing doors. "What are you looking for?" she asked.

"The coffee. After the sugar to counteract shock, you need a shot of caffeine."

"I keep it in the refrigerator. Top shelf."

He got out the canister, and she directed him to the filters. He made coffee rather competently, for a rich man who probably never did it at home, she thought, and felt a ghost of amusement flicker inside.

Once the coffee was in the process of making, he drew up another chair and sat facing her, so close that their legs touched, his on the outside of hers, warmly clasping. He didn’t ask her what had happened, knowing she would soon be going through that with the sheriff, and she was grateful for his tact. He just sat there, lending her his heat and the comfort of his nearness, those dark eyes sharp on her face as if he were debating pouring the orange juice down her, if she didn’t drink it as fast as he thought she should.

To forestall just such an action, she took a healthy swallow of juice, and actually felt a slight lessening of tension in his muscles. "Don’t you dare," she muttered. "I’m trying my best not to throw up again."

The grimness of his expression was lightened briefly by amusement. "How did you know what I was thinking?"

"The way you were staring at the glass, and then at me." She took another swallow. "I thought Deese was the sheriff."

"He retired." Gray had the fleeting thought that her memory of Sheriff Deese wouldn’t be a pleasant one, and wondered if that was why she had looked at him with such alarm when he’d asked for the sheriff. "You’ll like Michael McFane. How’s that for a good Irish name? He’s young for the job, still interested in keeping up with new techniques." Mike had also been at the shack that night, Gray remembered, but Faith wouldn’t know that, probably wouldn’t recognize him. In her shock, the deputies would have been faceless uniformed figures. Only he and the sheriff, standing off to the side, would have been locked in her memory.

The puzzling contradiction formed in his mind. She had been.obviously reluctant to meet Sheriff Deese, but she had never revealed any such uneasiness in her dealings with himself. She’d been bold, provoking, maddening, frustrating, but she’d never shown the least hesitation about being in his company.

Nor was hesitation something that had troubled him. Why else, when he’d gotten her call, he thought to remove a pesky cat from the premises, had he promptly canceled a business meeting and driven here as fast as possible, with Monica’s enraged protests still ringing in his ears? Faith had called him for help, and no matter how minor he thought the problem, he would help her if he could. As it turned out, the problem hadn’t been minor at all, and all his protective instincts had been outraged. He intended to find out who had done such a disgusting thing, and someone would catch hell. His fists ached with the need to pound them into the culprit’s face.

"Why didn’t you think I’d done it?" he asked softly, his attention locked on her face to catch every flicker of expression. "I’ve been trying to get you to leave town, so logically I should have been the person you’d suspect first." She was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking, the movement making the sleek bell of her hair swing about her face. "You wouldn’t do something like that," she said with absolute conviction. "Any more than you would have left me the first note."

He paused, distracted from the pleasure of her trust in him. "Note?" Sternness laced that one word.

"Yesterday. When I went out, there was a note in the front seat of the car." "Did you report it?"

She shook her head again. "It wasn’t a specific threat." "What did it say?"

The look she gave him now was slightly uneasy, and he wondered why. "To quote: Shut up if you know what’s good for you."

The coffee was ready. He got up and poured a cup for both of them. "How do you drink yours?" he asked absently, his thoughts still on the note and the package, which this time had been accompanied by a more specific threat. The wings of cold, black fury beat upward within him, barely controlled. "Black."

He gave her the cup, and sat down again in his original position, close enough to touch. She was more adept than anyone else at reading his face, and something in his expression must have alarmed her, because she launched into one of those deflecting maneuvers of hers, "I used to drink coffee with loads of sugar, but Mr. Gresham is diabetic. He said that it was easier to give up everything sweet than to fool with artificial sweeteners, so there wasn’t anything in the house to use. They would have bought it for me if I’d asked, but I didn’t want to impose – "

If she’d meant to distract him, he thought irritably, she’d succeeded. Even recognizing the maneuver didn’t blunt its effectiveness, because she used such interesting bait. "Who’s Mr. Gresham?" he asked, breaking into the flow of words. He felt the burn of jealousy, wondering if she was telling him about some guy she’d lived with before moving back to Prescott.

The slumberous green eyes blinked at him. "The Greshams were my foster parents."

A foster home. God. A cold fist clenched his stomach. He had imagined her life as continuing in much the same vein as before. Realistically, a good foster home would have been far preferable to the way she’d been living, but it was never easy for kids to lose their families, no matter how rotten, and be deposited with strangers. Finding a good home was a crapshoot, at best. A lot of kids were abused in foster homes, and for a young girl who looked like Faith…

The crunch of gravel signaled Mike’s arrival. "Stay here," Gray growled, and went out the back door. He beckoned to Mike as the other man’s lanky form unfolded from the patrol car, and walked around to the back of the house where he had left the box.

Mike joined him, his freckled face tightening with disgust as he looked down at the carcass. "I see a lot of sick things in this job," he said conversationally, squatting by the box, "but some things still turn my stomach. Why in hell would someone do this to a helpless animal? Have you handled the box much?"

"Just to carry it out. I was careful to touch only the front left corner, and the back right. I don’t know how much Faith handled it before she opened it. I used a pen to open the flaps wider," he added. "There’s a message on one of them."

Mike used the same technique, taking a ballpoint from his pocket. He pursed his lips as he read the message, printed in block letters, with a felt-tip marker, on the cardboard:

GET OUT OF PRESCOTT OR YOU’LL BE JUST LIKE THE CAT

"I’ll carry it in, see if we can get any fingerprints. The plastic would be our best bet, since it hasn’t been disturbed." He glanced toward the house. "Is she okay?"

"She was pretty shaky when I got here, but she’s settled down now."

"Okay." Still using the pen, Mike closed the flaps and stared down at the box for a few seconds, then grunted.

Gray looked down, too, and saw what he had missed the first time. "Shit. There’s no postage mark. It was on top of her other mail, so I thought it had been mailed, too."

"Nope. Someone hand-delivered it. Let’s go see if she heard anything, or saw a car."

They entered the kitchen, and Gray saw that Faith was still sitting where he had left her, sipping her coffee. She glanced up, outwardly calm now, but he suspected her control was hanging by no more than a few thin threads.

She immediately got to her feet, looking at Mike. "Ma’am." He touched his fingers to his hat. "I’m Michael McFane, the sheriff here. Do you feel like answering a few questions?" "Of course," she said. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Please."

"Sugar or cream?"

"Sugar."

That social nicety taken care of, Faith returned to her chair. Gray stood beside her, propped against the enormous table. Mike took up his position by the sink, his feet crossed at the ankles.

"Where did you find the box?" Mike asked.

"In the mailbox."

"There’s no postage mark on it. It wasn’t mailed, so I’m assuming someone put it in the box after your mail was delivered. No one’s supposed to use the box except the postal service, so the carrier probably would have taken it out. Did you hear the mail run, or see another car pass by?"

She shook her head. "I wasn’t here. I’d been grocery shopping. I came home, put up the groceries, then went out to get the mail."

"Is anyone mad at you? Someone who might give you a dead cat to get even?"

Another shake of the head.

"She found a note in her car yesterday," Gray interjected.

"What kind of note? What did it say?"

"To shut up if I knew what was good for me," Faith replied.

"Did you keep it?"

She sighed, gave Gray a wary glance, and went to get the note. She came back holding the sheet of paper by one corner. "Put it on the counter," Mike said. "I don’t want to handle it."

She obeyed, and Gray moved beside Mike to read it. It was printed in the same block letters than adorned the cardboard box. Don’t ask any more questions about Guy Rouillard shut up if you know what’s good for you. Gray flashed her an irritated glance, understanding now that wary look she’d given him.

"All right," he growled. "What have you been up to now?"

"You know as much about it as I do," she replied, with a smoothness that he was beginning to think hid as much as it revealed.

"Well, now." Mike scratched his jaw. "What does your daddy have to do with this, Gray?"

"Little Miss Nosy has been asking questions about him all over town." He scowled at her.

"Why would that aggravate someone so much that they’d send her a note like this, and leave a dead cat in the mailbox?"

"It aggravated the hell out of me," Gray said frankly. "I don’t want Monica or Mother upset by having all the old gossip stirred up again. I don’t know who it would piss off this much."

The sheriff was silent, blue eyes hooded as he thought. "On the surface," he finally drawled, "you’re the most likely suspect, Gray." Faith started an immediate protest, but he waved her to silence. "Guess you knew that, too, what with the note and all," he said to her. "So that makes me wonder why you called him, rather than the sheriff’s department."

"I knew he didn’t leave the note, or the box."

"It’s no secret that you weren’t happy when she moved back," Michael said, looking at Gray.

"No, I wasn’t. I’m still not." Gray’s hard mouth curved into a humorless smile. "But threatening notes and dead cats aren’t my style. I fight my battles out in the open."

"Hell, I know that. I just wondered why Mrs. Hardy called you for help."

Gray snorted. "Figure it out."

"Reckon I already have."

"Then stop being an asshole."

The sheriff didn’t take umbrage, just grinned. An instant later, he was all business again. "I need for both of you to come down to the courthouse so we can get your fingerprints, and check the box and note for any sets that don’t match. You’ll need to give us a statement, too, Mrs. Hardy."

"All right. I’ll get my keys." Faith stood, and Gray caught her arm.

"I’ll drive you."

"There’s no need in your coming all the way back here – "

"I said I’ll drive you." Implacably he looked down at her, forcing his will on her. She looked irritated, but made no further protest, and the sheriff grinned again.

Gray hustled her out and deposited her in the luxurious leather seat of the Jaguar. "You don’t have to drive me," she said grumpily, as she buckled the seat belt.

"Sure I do, if I want to talk to you."

"What’s there to say?"

He started the car and reversed out of the driveway, following Sheriff McFane’s patrol car down the road. "Obviously some nutcase has it in for you. You’ll be a lot safer somewhere away from Prescott."

She averted her head, staring stonily out the window. "It didn’t take long for you to come up with that angle," she retorted.

"You stubborn little witch, can’t you get it through that red head of yours that you might be in danger?"