lyde Wrigley was a freaking crybaby.

But he didn’t cry at the news that his ex-wife, Janine, was dead. No, he didn’t start wailing until he realized that the FBI thought he might somehow be involved in her death.

Forget about Janine. The son of a bitch was crying because he was scared he might have to go back to jail.

He was right where Sam had expected him to be—parked in front of the TV at the house Clyde and Janine had shared back when they’d first moved to Sarasota. It was the same address Mary Lou had given Sam when he’d called to find out where to send money, after he’d been served with those divorce papers.

Manuel Conseco had made the scene, and he and his assistant—the young blonde who’d helped interview Sam—were questioning Clyde.

Sam itched to grab the son of a bitch by the T-shirt, slam him against the wall, order him to stop sniveling, and tell where Mary Lou and Haley were.

Alyssa surely knew that, too. She was standing close—close enough to grab Sam and keep him from getting himself into trouble.

Of course, he could use a little grabbing from Alyssa Locke right about now.

He experimented, shifting his weight, just a little, toward Clyde. Sure enough, Alyssa shifted just a little bit closer to Sam.

What would he have to do to get a full body block? Although, chances were, if he did that, she’d hustle him out of there and he wouldn’t get to hear whatever lame information Clyde did spit out.

“Three weeks,” Clyde was sobbing. “I haven’t seen Janine in at least three weeks. At least. And before that, it was months. Not since she moved out.”

“And when was the last time you went to her home on Camilia Street?” Conseco asked.

“That was it. It was the first time and the last time.” Clyde couldn’t seem to speak without a fresh flood of tears and snot.

Someone give the asshole a Kleenex. Crying was bad enough, but crying in public was freaking humiliating. Sam’s face heated as he remembered the way he’d broken down himself just a few hours earlier. Alyssa, thank you God, had quickly given him some privacy—unlike the time she’d barged into his hotel room and come across him weeping like a baby. She’d just stood there and stared. That had been embarrassing—doubly so since he’d been crying over her. He’d actually had to chase her out.

“It was the only time I went to her house,” Clyde was saying. “I didn’t even know where she lived until I ran into Carol.”

“Carol who?”

“I don’t know her last name. She was just some friend of Jan’s—she worked with her at the dry cleaners.”

Conseco made notes on his pad. “Which dry cleaners was that?”

“Quickie-Clean over on Clark,” Clyde said. “But Janine stopped working there—same time she moved out, months ago. I think she quit because she didn’t want to see me.”

“Because she was afraid of you?”

“No, man! She just... I don’t know, she said she was tired of lending me money. I’m on disability—half pay. You can’t live on that. It’s been rough these past few years and—”

“So Carol told you where Janine lived?” the blonde asked.

And Sam couldn’t keep it in anymore. Who cared what Carol told him? “Where’s Haley?”

Clyde aimed his teary gaze at Sam. “Jeez, I don’t know, man. I didn’t see her when I went over there. I haven’t seen Mary Lou or the baby since they all moved out.”

“Let us ask the questions, Lieutenant,” Alyssa murmured, as Conseco glared at them both. She was now standing so close that Sam couldn’t help but get a noseful of her every time he so much as inhaled.

She smelled so good. She wasn’t wearing perfume from a bottle, at least not the way Mary Lou had, in overpowering amounts guaranteed to overdose his sense of smell. No, Alyssa’s scent was far more subtle. It came from her shampoo or soap or maybe some kind of lotion she used or, who knows, maybe it was the perfume from her laundry dryer sheets, used to avoid static cling. Whatever it was, on Alyssa it smelled incredible.

It was enough to distract the shit out of him—to make at least part of his brain start working on the best way to get her naked and wrapped around him, as soon as possible, preferably tonight.

And—he was a freaking genius—now she knew it, too. The past few hours had put him way off-balance and he was far from on top of his game. Not only was he thinking about sex—again—when he should have been thinking only about his missing daughter, but he was enough of an asshole to fail to hide the nature of his thoughts from Alyssa.

Yes, indeed, she knew him well enough to know exactly what he was thinking, just from looking into his eyes.

For several long seconds, she just held his gaze, the expression on her face unreadable.

God, making love to her had been exquisite. How could she not want to do that, to feel that, again?

Because Sam had dumped her for Mary Lou, for one thing. Not that that had mattered so very much in the long term. Because Alyssa had told him in very clear English that she’d never intended to have more than a hot, brief affair with him—just a few months, tops, of that brain-searing sex—with no real emotional attachment involved.

At least not from her.

Now she was in a real relationship with someone she actually loved.

Max. The fucker.

Max wouldn’t have gone six months without seeing his daughter. Of course Max was too perfect to have had a daughter with some stranger he’d picked up in a bar in the first place. But if he did have a daughter, he’d no doubt have found her and brought her home by now, instead of standing around with his thumb up his ass, wistfully hoping that the kid was still alive.

Please God let Haley be alive.

“Sorry.” Sam was the one who broke eye contact.

“Keep it zipped,” Alyssa warned him sharply, “or you’re out of here.”

Interesting choice of words and definitely not unintentional.

“Carol didn’t know where Janine lived,” Clyde was saying. “I asked her because... because Jan took my Phish CDs when she moved out, and I wanted them back.”

Yeah, right.

“All Carol knew was that Janine just got a new job working as a receptionist at the vet’s over in Siesta Village,” Clyde continued, wiping his nose on his T-shirt sleeve. “She told me that Janine was doing really well, that she was working hard to stay clean. She said they were letting her help take care of the dogs on the weekends, and that she really liked doing that.”

“And you figured she was probably getting paid overtime, so you went to see her?” Conseco knew the truth. Clyde had gone to see Janine to try to borrow some money. And when she’d refused to lend it to him...

“He wouldn’t have killed her over that,” Sam murmured to Alyssa. “Not this guy. It’s not in him.”

She glanced at him, glanced at Conseco, and then back.

“I’m not interrupting them,” he said softly to her. “As for the rest of me—I’m zipped.”

Alyssa Locke wasn’t the type to blush easily, but she definitely avoided eye contact at that. However, after a moment, she did lean slightly closer to whisper back to him, “What if he found her with another man—a new boyfriend?”

“No. Maybe he’d go home and smoke an extra doobie or two to deal with the pain, but...” Sam shook his head. “Nah. Besides, where’s the boyfriend? Wouldn’t he have shown up before this, saying, ‘I think something’s wrong—my girlfriend hasn’t answered her phone or her doorbell for nearly three weeks’? I mean, come on. Even assuming he’s an asshole and doesn’t come see her unless he wants some, three weeks is way too long for a guy to go without sex.”

Alyssa gave him a disgusted look, but then exhaled a short laugh and shook her head. “Men suck.”

“Some women suck, too.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

“No. I wanted those CDs back,” Clyde was sticking to his lame excuse. “That’s why I went over there and waited until she left work. I couldn’t find a parking space, so I ended up just following her home.”

“Where you killed her?”

Clyde started crying again. “No way, man. I didn’t kill her. I just, you know, rang the bell and we talked and—”

“Front door or back?”

“Front.” He perked up. “You know, her neighbor was out in the yard, washing his car. He saw me go in and he saw me come out, too. And Jan was with me when I left. She came out to get one of my CDs from the car.”

“Which neighbor?” Conseco asked.

“The fat guy who lives in the house on the left,” Clyde told him, “if you’re facing Jan’s house. I swear to you, I didn’t kill her.”

Conseco was silent, just looking through his notes.

“Can you please ask him if he knows where Mary Lou worked?” Sam said to Alyssa, loudly enough for Conseco and Clyde to hear. “Or where Haley went for day care?”

Clyde didn’t wait for the FBI agents to play telephone. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Honest. The only way I knew Haley was still living with Jan was from the toys on the living room floor.”

“Can you tell me your whereabouts the rest of that evening?” Conseco asked.

“I came here,” Clyde said. “And, you know, listened to my Phish CDs.”

“You were alone?”

“Yeah, but I swear, I didn’t kill her.” He pointed to Sam. “Why aren’t you questioning him? Maybe he killed her. The SEAL. You know, before Jan moved out, she and Mary Lou were always whispering about him. Stuff like, ‘What if Sam finds out?’ Like, ‘He won’t find out, how could he find out?’ I heard Jan say—more than once—’What’s he going to do if he does find out? Kill me?’ I finally asked her what was going on—I was a little worried he was going to kick down the door in the middle of the night. I thought maybe Mary Lou had stolen something from him when she left. Something more valuable than a couple of CDs, you know? But Janine told me it was nothing—that back a few years ago, she gave Mary Lou a special box of condoms that wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do, if you get my drift. It was so that she’d get pregnant and the SEAL would have to marry her. Only now they were getting a divorce, so what did it matter? That’s what Jan said.

“But I remember thinking, Man, if I’m the SEAL and I find out about that...”

“Jesus,” Sam said. He’d heard the words Clyde was saying, but they’d stopped making sense. And then they made too much sense. Mary Lou had gotten pregnant on purpose. He’d always known that, but he hadn’t actually known it.

But apparently the condoms they’d used had been tampered with. God damn it, he’d always been so careful, so Mary Lou’s pregnancy had caught him by surprise. He’d spent hours trying to figure out exactly where he’d failed. It made so much more sense now.

And—perfect—now Conseco was looking at him with renewed interest. As if Sam really did have a motive for killing Janine.

It was so ridiculous, Sam didn’t say a word. He just held Conseco’s gaze. It was far better than looking at Alyssa, who had to be thinking that he was a total fool. Mary Lou had come to him, pregnant and alone and seemingly frightened to death, and he’d walked away from a budding relationship with Alyssa—a woman that he was crazy about—so he could do what he’d thought was the right thing. He’d taken responsibility for this woman he’d accidentally knocked up.

Only it hadn’t been accidental.

Jesus.

Alyssa pulled Conseco aside. She spoke quietly, but Sam still managed to overhear. “Look, he’s exhausted. Tomorrow, he’ll be giving you a complete record accounting for his time over the past weeks. If you still want to question Lieutenant Starrett after that, you’re welcome to do so, of course. But for right now, I’m taking him out of here.”

Conseco said something too quietly for Sam to hear.

“Absolutely,” Alyssa responded.

Conseco turned back to Clyde, and Alyssa headed for Sam. “Let’s go.”

He followed her out the front door, down the steps, and toward her rental car.

“You okay?” Alyssa asked.

Sam glanced at her. He laughed—a short burst of disparaging air. “Yeah, you know, that’s the best part about being a fucking idiot. You’re too stupid to know when you’re not okay.”

Alyssa opened her mouth and was about to say something, when her phone rang.

Alyssa answered after only one ring. “Locke.”

“Hey, it’s me,” Max said, opening the refrigerator and taking out the half gallon of milk. “How’s it going?”

“As well as can be expected, sir,” she answered, “considering that Manuel Conseco doesn’t play happily with us other children.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that about him. Other than that, he’s very good at what he does.”

“Yes, sir. And his entire team thinks he’s God, which makes me the Antichrist.”

“Cut it out with the sir,” Max ordered. “It’s after hours.”

“Maybe for you. But not for us angels of Satan. Or for poor overworked Manny Conseco. You know, actually, I feel like I’m one of those commodores on Star Trek—the ones who come in and make it hard for Captain Kirk to do his job.”

Max laughed, some of the fatigue of the day falling away. Talking to Alyssa always made him feel better. “Wow. How come I didn’t know you were a Trekkie?”

Crap. The milk was dated over three weeks ago. How did that happen? He didn’t bother to take a sniff, he just opened it up and poured it directly down the sink.

“When I was growing up, Lieutenant Uhura was a major role model for me,” Alyssa told him. “A strong black woman on the bridge of a starship...?”

“In a miniskirt, answering the interplanetary telephone?” Max looked at the bowl of Rice Krispies he’d already poured. Now what? He’d taken off his suit first thing upon arriving home, and walking down to the convenience store on the corner in his boxer shorts might not go over too well with his neighbors.

“Yeah, well, there were definitely some kinks that needed to be worked out.” She paused. “Is there a purpose to this phone call?”

“I was hoping for a status report. I figured you’d still be up.” Max took the bowl to the sink, adding water. It was pathetic, but it seemed less so than eating it dry.

“Up and running,” she told him. “I’m about to drive Lieutenant Starrett to the home of one of his friends.”

Max set the bowl down on the counter, his appetite gone. Alyssa was still with Sam Starrett. At nearly midnight. There were a million questions he wanted to ask, none of them appropriate. He settled for “Is he okay?”

“Yes,” Alyssa said. “It’s been a very difficult day, but... yes. I assume you heard that the victim wasn’t Lieutenant Starrett’s wife after all. It was her sister.”

“Janine Wrigley.” Max had heard. He also heard the way Alyssa kept saying “Lieutenant Starrett.” She called Sam that whenever she tried to pretend she didn’t give a damn about him. And the key word there was pretend. Apparently she didn’t realize that Max had picked up on that a long time ago.

“Since it’s not Lieutenant Starrett’s wife who’s dead, the entire situation’s a little less volatile,” Alyssa said, “so you probably don’t need to—”

“Yeah,” Max interrupted her. “I’m not sure yet whether I’m still coming to Tampa tomorrow. Sarasota,” he quickly corrected himself. Crap. He was beyond tired, and he was losing it. The only thing he knew for goddamn sure was that whether or not he went to Sarasota tomorrow, he wasn’t going anywhere near Tampa. Or Gina Vitagliano.

He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “What’s Starrett’s take on the potential Gainesville connection?”

“Gainesville?” Alyssa asked.

Typical of Manny Conseco. Not only didn’t he play happily with others, he didn’t share his toys. Or information. “I got a call about two hours ago,” Max told her. “Apparently three weeks ago Janine Wrigley—or someone claiming to be her, because according to forensics she was already dead—sold a black 1989 Honda Civic hatchback to a used-car dealer in Gainesville, Florida.”

“Who does Mary Lou know in Gainesville?” Alyssa asked—presumably of Sam.

“No one that I know of.” Max could hear Starrett’s lazy Texas drawl through Alyssa’s cell phone. He had to be sitting really close. No doubt because the rental car Alyssa was driving was small. It didn’t mean anything.

And pigs could fly. Max knew Starrett was sitting as close to Alyssa as he possibly could.

“Why?” Starrett asked.

“We think she sold her car in Gainesville,” Alyssa told the SEAL.

“When?” Starrett sounded as if he’d woken up, all laziness gone from his voice.

“Three weeks ago.”

“Ah, man, that trail’s got to be stone cold.”

“A cold trail’s better than no trail,” Max heard Alyssa say tartly. “Don’t complain. We’re closer to finding Mary Lou and Haley than we were just a few minutes ago.”

“All we know is that—maybe—Mary Lou was in Gainesville three weeks ago. Three weeks.” Sam wasn’t happy about that.

“Locke,” Max interrupted them, hating the way both Alyssa and Sam had said we. Like they were already a team. Or a couple. “Will you call me back after you drop off Starrett?”

“Is there something more?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I just... I wanted to touch base with you at a time when you could, I don’t know, speak more freely, I guess.”

“Max, I’m fine,” she said, her rich voice warm in appreciation of his concern.

“Please don’t—” Max stopped himself. Let him get within six feet of you. What was she going to do? Make him sit in the backseat? “Good,” he said instead. “Good.”

“Wait a sec,” he heard Sam say. “You have a map of Florida?” he asked Alyssa.

“Hang on,” Alyssa told Max. “In the pocket of the... Yeah, in there.”

“I just remembered—Mary Lou’s mother. She called me about two months ago,” Max heard Sam say over the crinkling of paper being unfolded. “Because she didn’t have Mary Lou’s new phone number, and she wanted to tell her she was moving out of Georgia, down to northern Florida, to... shit, where was it? I remember the address, number two Happy Lane in, Jesus, Wallace or Wanker or Wacker or—”

“Max, we might have a connection to—”

“Waldo!” Sam said. “Fuck me! Look at this!”

Max had to laugh. Most people said “Eureka.” Sam Starrett, however, said “Fuck me.” Interesting use of the phrase as an expression of jubilation. Sometimes he really had to work to hate the guy.

“Mary Lou’s mother lives just northeast of Gainesville in a town called Waldo,” Alyssa told Max, excitement making her voice ring. “I’d call that a major connection.”

“Can you drive me back to Camilia Street?” Sam was saying to Alyssa. “My rental car’s still there.”

“Whoa,” she said. “Sam, what are you thinking?”

Max knew exactly what Starrett was thinking. Midnight road trip to Gainesville, ETA ASAP. “Alyssa, for the love of God, talk him out it.”

“I’m not going to sleep at all tonight,” Sam said. “I might as well head up to—”

“You’re exhausted,” Alyssa said. “Let’s wait until the morning—”

“I can’t wait. I’m sorry, Lys.” The SEAL actually sounded sincere. “I know it’s unlikely, but if there’s even just a chance that Mary Lou and Haley are in Waldo—”

“Okay,” Alyssa said. “But it doesn’t make sense for you to go by yourself. I promised Manny Conseco that I’d keep tabs on you, so—”

“No,” Max said. “No, no, no. What are you doing? Damn it, Locke, you suck when it comes to negotiating. You’re already caving. Let me talk to him.”

“Max wants to talk to you,” he heard Alyssa say.

Then Starrett’s voice directly in his ear. “Yeah.”

“If you insist on going tonight, she’s going to go with you,” Max said. “You know that. And she’ll never admit it, but she’s tired, Starrett. Give her a break.”

“I’ll drive,” Sam said. “She can sleep in the car.”

“First thing in the morning, I’ll arrange for a chopper to take you up to—”

“Look, I’m really sorry,” Sam said. “You want to keep me from going?”

Max sighed and said it with him. “Find your daughter. Yeah, I know.” He sighed again. “I didn’t want to have to say this, but... You mess with Alyssa, and you’re dead.”

Most people who knew Max crapped their pants when he put that cold edge into his voice. But Starrett just laughed. “I hear you, and I know exactly where you’re coming from.”

Max Bhagat was one of the FBI’s top negotiators. He was a professional communicator. He could read a person’s intentions clear as day by what that person didn’t say. And since Sam hadn’t said, “Okay, Max, I promise I’ll keep my distance from Alyssa,” he was essentially broadcasting his intention to do the exact opposite.

“Listen to what I’m about to say, Starrett,” Max emphasized. “I can fuck you up but good. One word from me, just one word, and you’re working a desk job in a windowless office until the day you retire. Don’t you forget that for one single second.”

“I can’t believe it.” It was Alyssa’s voice on the phone now. “Were you actually threatening him?”

Shit. When busted, go with the truth.

“Yeah,” Max said. “Actually, I was. It didn’t seem to be working too well, though. Do me a favor and make sure he heard that part about the windowless office, because I don’t think he—”

“Good-bye, Max.”

“Alyssa, wait. Don’t hang up—”

But she was gone.

Damn it.

He was definitely going to Tampa tomorrow.

Sarasota.

Sarasota.

Jesus H. Christ.

Max dumped his Rice Krispies into the garbage disposal by throwing the bowl into the sink and breaking it in half. Rubbing the back of his neck, he went into his study and tried to make himself stop thinking about all of them—Alyssa and Sam and Tom Paoletti.

And Gina.

He turned on his laptop and started reviewing his notes for tomorrow morning’s meeting with the President, hoping that would do the trick.

It didn’t.

“He really loves you,” Sam said.

Alyssa glanced over at him, but she couldn’t see his face well in the dim light from the dashboard, especially since he had his hat pulled down over his eyes. She’d thought he was asleep. She should have known better.

“Yeah,” she said, hoping that he wouldn’t push the topic. He was talking about Max, and the truth was, Max didn’t love her. Not the way Sam thought.

She and Max were friends. True, theirs was an odd friendship. And yes, at one point over the years they’d worked together, they’d begun a different kind of relationship. They’d shared lots of dinners. They’d had lots of long conversations late into the night. They’d even kissed more than once. But right before they’d stepped across the line into a sexual relationship, Max shut them down. Alyssa would have gone there. In fact, she’d wanted to rather badly.

And that was a polite way of summarizing that awful night nearly a year ago when Max had come to her apartment for dinner. Dinner had led to a second and then a third glass of wine, which had led to some of those kisses and some more of those kisses and...

The hard truth was, she’d had him half undressed on her sofa, she hadn’t thought of Sam Starrett once all evening, and she was so, so ready to get busy with a man who honestly liked her, a man who listened when she talked, a man who wanted to know what she was thinking and feeling—and whammo.

Max threw on the brakes. Because he couldn’t get past the fact that she worked for him. The man had actually had the nerve to ask her if she’d be willing to transfer out of his elite FBI team. If she transferred—and he couldn’t have anything to do with getting her placed elsewhere in the Bureau, he’d made that more than clear—then and only then could they become sexually involved.

Oh, he’d apologized left and right. Effusively. At one point, Alyssa had been close to certain that he was even going to start to cry. It was one of the weirdest rejections of her life. It was clear that he wanted to spend the night with her as badly as she’d wanted him to stay, but when push came to shove, he simply could not do it.

She had been half-naked herself, and in the process of unfastening the man’s pants. The fact that he’d had the strength to say no, to refuse to let his beliefs get overrun by physical desire, still impressed her. It would have been nicer if he’d figured out that it wasn’t going to work between them before they wound up on the sofa, but still...

The entire incident had made her fall a little bit in love with Max Bhagat. Which was just her style. She apparently only loved men she couldn’t have. Men she shouldn’t want.

Max had refused to let the weirdness of that night of almost-sex screw up their growing friendship. The kissing and the romantic dinners stopped, but the long conversations continued. He’d been relentless about it, continuing to call her and bring over pizza until she almost forgot that she’d been ready and willing to sleep with him. Almost. Alyssa was certain that Max hadn’t forgotten it, either. But that had nothing to do whatsoever with whether or not he truly loved her.

“So are you going to, you know, marry him?” Sam asked now.

“He hasn’t exactly asked me,” she replied with a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t a lie, not like the lies she’d told about her relationship with Max in the past, but it was close, because it perpetuated Sam’s misinformation. Still, she couldn’t afford to let him know the truth.

“If he asks you, are you going to marry him?”

She glanced at him again. “I’m really not interested in talking about this.”

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked. A car approached from behind them, its headlights hitting the rearview mirror and lighting Sam’s face. His mouth was tight and his eyes were shadowed. “The fact that Mary Lou intentionally set out to get pregnant? The fact that I’m never going to use a condom again unless it’s one I’ve bought and taken out of the box myself? The fact that I was played—completely? Jesus, could I be more of a fool?”

Alyssa forced herself to watch the road. “Not all women are like Mary Lou.”

“Not all women are like you, Alyssa. In fact no other woman in the entire world—”

“Stop,” she said sharply.

He was silent for only a few heartbeats. “I’m sorry, but I have something I need to say—”

“Don’t waste the effort,” she told him. “Because we are not going to have sex. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not next week, not ever. Never again. Listen closely, Roger, and I’ll repeat it—”

“That’s not what I—”

“Nev. Ver. A. Gain. We played that game, and it was terrible—”

“It was incredible and you know it,” he countered hotly.

“Yeah, right up to the point where it was incredibly terrible,” she insisted.

“There were some bad moments, yeah, but the rest of it—it was worth it,” he said.

“Speak for yourself!”

“I am. Alyssa, look, I know you were unhappy when I—”

“Unhappy?” She was shouting now. “Sam, for God’s sake, you eviscerated me!”

The thick emotion in her voice seemed to echo in the car. Her words seemed to shock Sam as much as they’d shocked her. She hadn’t meant to tell him that. Shit.

Thank goodness the car behind them on the highway had sped up and gone past and it was once again too dark for her to see his face. She hoped he also couldn’t see hers.

What was she doing here? It was insane and absurd. She was helping this man who had once been her lover, whom she’d done shockingly intimate things with, who’d gotten under her skin, and whom, even now, all these years later, she still hadn’t managed to shake loose....

And she was helping him find his wife. Ex-wife, sure, but he was pretty freaking eager to find her, wasn’t he?

Okay, that was just petty jealousy talking. Sam was eager to find his daughter. To be fair, his concern was mostly for Haley.

But still...

“You have no idea how sorry I am,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” she said, angry at him, angry at herself. “Thanks. Gee, that makes it all better.”

“I want to try to make it up to you.”

“What do you want me to do, assign you a stack of Herculean feats? And after you do them, I’m supposed to say, ‘Oh, Sam, all is forgiven. Come and fuck me’? Let’s be honest here about what it is you really want, shall we?”

He laughed in disbelief. “You obviously have no idea what I really want.”

She laughed, too, with disgust. “Said the man who ended up married to some bar bunny because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped for half a minute.”

She’d pushed him too far with that one.

“You’re right. You’re abso-fucking-lutely right, you know that? You’re always right, Alyssa, and this time you’re mega-right. Except, you ever wonder why I went home with Mary Lou in the first place? You ever stop to think that maybe it had something—just a little bit—to do with the fact that you wouldn’t have any-fucking-thing to do with me?”

She laughed her anger. “Oh, that’s perfect. So now it’s my fault? You are so fucking immature!” And now he’d gone and done it again. He’d managed to bring her completely down to his super-crude level.

“I’m not saying that it’s your—”

“Forget it. It’s fine,” she said. “Blame me.” She gripped the steering wheel, her eyes on the road, gas pedal to the floor. The sooner they got to Waldo and out of the confines of this car, the better.

“You know, I do blame you to some degree,” he countered. “You used me for sex—”

“Yeah, at the time, you were really complaining—”

“—and I was such a fool, I didn’t realize it was just sex. I fucking fell in love with you.”

Alyssa’s heart stopped. But then, as it started beating again, she shook her head. “You have absolutely no idea what those words mean. You’re like, like... ABBA, singing phonetically in a language you don’t understand. You fell in love with me. No, excuse me. You fucking fell in love with me. Of course. The same way you fucking fell in love with Mary Lou the first time she took off her clothes for you.”

“You are so wrong—”

“What did you fucking fall in love with first, Roger? My breasts or my ass?”

“Your eyes.”

Alyssa laughed. “That’s only marginally better—not that I believe you.”

He laughed, too, in pure disgust. “Why should you believe anything I say? Since you obviously know better than I do exactly how and what I feel—”

“Do you know how many conversations we had before we had sex?”

“No, but I’m sure you do.”

“Only a few. And most of the time we didn’t talk, we argued. We fought—”

“I can tell you, though,” he interrupted, “exactly how many times and how many different ways I made you come—”

“Who am I, Sam? If you fell in love with me, you should know. But I don’t think you have a clue.”

“I do so—”

“Bullshit. Even if you did somehow think you knew me back then, well, guess what? I’m not the same person I was two years ago. And neither are you.”

Sam didn’t speak, but he was far from silent. Alyssa was aware of him sitting there, breathing. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn he was trying to rein in his temper, to keep himself from saying something stupid or hurtful, trying to bring this crazy argument back to a more civilized conversation.

“You’re right,” he said, and his voice was actually quiet. “I am different. I’m very different. I think... I think you might even like me now.”

God help her when he said things like that. Alyssa made herself laugh, tried to make light of what he’d just said, to turn it into a joke. “I doubt it.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, maybe that was a little too optimistic. How about, I think you might not hate me so much now?”

Now she had to fight hard not to laugh. As it was, a snort escaped. “Please just go to sleep.” Despite her efforts, desperation tinged her voice and she took a deep breath before she said, “It’ll be your turn to drive in an hour.”

He sighed, taking off his hat and throwing it on the dashboard, rubbing his forehead as if he had a bad headache. “I’m sorry if I freaked you out,” he apologized. “You know, by saying what I said. It’s just... I didn’t say it soon enough before. I should have told you I loved you before we first—”

“Just go to sleep,” she said again.

He was silent, then, for several minutes. She was on the verge of relaxing, when he said, “I should have written it on you in chocolate syrup. You know, that very first night.”

When she’d gotten completely shit-faced drunk and handcuffed herself to him so she could be sure he wouldn’t sneak out of his hotel room and try to help his friend John Nilsson. She’d lost her mind and spent the night having sex with Sam. And somewhere down the line, they’d unearthed a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and...

The sight of chocolate still made her feel light-headed.

Alyssa kept her mouth closed. If she didn’t respond at all, surely he’d consider the conversation over and go to sleep. The Sam Starrett she used to know sure would have.

But the man sitting next to her sighed. “No comment, huh? You know, to this day, I can’t eat chocolate without thinking about you, Lys.” He shifted in the darkness, and she knew he was looking at her. “I can’t taste it without tasting you.”

Oh, God. “Go to sleep,” she said, marveling at her own ability to keep her voice sounding relatively cool and reserved. “Or change the subject. Or I’m turning this car around.”

Sam sighed again. “All right, you win. I’ll be good.”

He was quiet again, then, this time for only about thirty seconds.

“What are the odds we’ll actually find Mary Lou and Haley in Waldo?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Alyssa replied. “It depends on a lot of things.” She was relieved to be talking again. This topic was a relatively safe one, and it kept his words from echoing in her head. I can’t taste it without tasting you....

“I keep trying to figure out why Mary Lou would run.” Sam sounded tired, his Texas drawl more pronounced. “I keep trying to imagine that day. She comes home after picking up Haley from day care and goes inside, and there’s Janine with her head blown open, on the kitchen floor. It makes sense she would get out of the house right away—in case the shooter was still in there. But why not hop in the car and drive to the police station?”

“Maybe she knew the shooter,” Alyssa suggested, “and wanted to protect him or her.” She took a sip of her coffee, aware that Sam wasn’t the only one who was tired.

“Or maybe she came home and the shooter was still there,” Sam said grimly. “Maybe she got back into her car with Haley and the shooter. Maybe wherever she went, it was at gunpoint.” He paused. “In which case, by now, she and Haley are probably both dead.”

“We don’t know that,” Alyssa said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I don’t believe that they are. I don’t think...”

He fell silent then, for several minutes this time.

But he spoke again. “You know, when I opened that kitchen door and saw Janine on the floor—and thought it was Mary Lou...” He cleared his throat. “I was sure Haley was in there, too.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

He was silent again, and she couldn’t help but remembering the way he’d covered his eyes and desperately fought any kind of an emotional reaction when they’d gotten the news that it wasn’t Mary Lou’s body that he’d found. She remembered seeing him cry. On more than one occasion.

“I was sure she was dead,” he said now, “and all I could think about was how horrible that must have been for Haley. I mean, it would have been bad enough if she’d been shot and killed, but I kept thinking how really fucking awful it would have been if she hadn’t been. Can you imagine? A nineteen-month-old, locked in a house with her dead mother? Starving to death? Completely traumatized and terrified? Screaming her throat raw?” His voice shook. “Jesus.”

This time Alyssa held tightly to the steering wheel, not because she wanted to hit him, but because she wanted to reach for his hand. “That’s why you didn’t want to wait for Manny Conseco before you went back inside,” she realized.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice tight. “I had to know if she was in there or not.”

“Hiding in the closet,” Alyssa whispered.

“No, I was pretty sure that if she was there, she had to be dead.”

“I know,” Alyssa said. “I was talking about...”

She heard him shift in his seat, felt him watching her.

“Maybe Mary Lou dropped Haley in Waldo,” she said. “You know, with her mother.”

“Her mother’s a drunk,” Sam said. “Mary Lou would never leave Haley there. I mean, unless Darlene cleaned herself up. Which is possible, I guess. God, I hope...”

“If they’re not in Waldo, then tomorrow morning we can go over and talk to that car dealer in Gainesville, see if Mary Lou was with anyone when she sold her car, get a description of him or her....”

And then what? Sam didn’t say the words aloud, but she knew he had to be wondering. If Mary Lou had continued on north from Gainesville—assuming that it was Mary Lou who’d gone to the car dealer—after three weeks she could be anywhere in the United States. By now she could even be in Canada or Mexico.

“We’ll get a sense of how far she could have gotten by how much cash she was paid for her car,” Alyssa told him. Of course, if Mary Lou had been with someone else, someone who was threatening her, all bets were off.

This stretch of the highway was lit with streetlights, and she glanced over to find Sam still watching her.

“Talk to me,” he said softly.

She’d had this very dream, this exact fantasy, too many nights to count. Sam Starrett, sitting there, looking at her, oozing sexuality from every gorgeous pore. And wanting to crawl around inside of her head, to explore who she really was, to listen when she spoke.

“I thought I was.”

He shook his head. “Who was in the closet, Lys?”