omeone had been in her room.

After walking on the beach—the water glistening romantically in the light from a moon that didn’t realize she was alone—Gina had wandered over to check out Fandangos, the club where she was going to be playing tomorrow night.

It was going to be a no-pressure gig. The room was incredibly friendly. She’d sat at the bar and shut the place down, listening to the elderly members of a jazz quartet jam their way through some pretty out-there arrangements of standards like “Night in Tunisia” and “Harlem Nocturne.”

They looked like they were pushing ninety, but they were impossibly hot players, particularly the guy on bass. The music was so great, she’d almost made herself forget about Max.

But then she got back to her room to find someone had been in there, going through her things. Searching for information about where she was heading next week, no doubt. Mad as hell, she called Jules Cassidy, waking him up. She told him in no uncertain terms that this kind of invasion of her privacy was going way too far.

Approximately three minutes after she hung up, her phone rang. It was Max.

“Boy,” Gina lit into him, cutting him off before he could speak, “you really don’t fool around, do you? You know, I should call the police, report a break-in.”

“I already have,” he said, his voice tight. “Gina, you need to get out of there, because it wasn’t us.”

“What?”

“Go into the motel lobby,” he ordered her. “Right now. I’m on my way, and the local police are, too—”

“There’s no lobby.” This room was small, but she hadn’t checked under the beds or in the closet or the bathroom or... She backed toward the sliding door, stretching the curly phone cord as far as it would go, her heart suddenly pounding. “There’s an office, but it’s closed and locked at night—”

He swore sharply. “Is the parking lot well lit?”

“I don’t think you could call it well lit.” Her voice shook, and she made herself slow down. Don’t panic. Don’t flip out. “This is stupid,” she said briskly, as much to convince herself as him. “I’m just going to look under the beds, because I know no one’s in here.”

“No. Go out to the parking lot,” Max told her. “Stand in the middle, away from the parked cars. If you see anyone at all, if you see anything move, start screaming. Wake up the entire island if you have to. I’m two minutes away from you.”

But the parking lot was filled with shadows despite the brightness of the moon, and the fear she was working hard to keep at bay came crashing through her tough-guy facade. A lot of bad stuff could happen in two minutes. She knew that from experience.

“I can’t go out there,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Okay,” he said, no argument, just that warm, familiar voice, wrapping around her. “Just stay on the phone with me then, Gina. Stay as close to the door as you can.”

“I’m there.”

“Good. I’m passing that resort that looks kind of like a castle,” he told her. He was very close. Not two minutes away after all.

“I’m sorry,” Gina said. “I know you don’t need this right now.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he said, and he actually sounded as if he meant it.

And then there he was. Max.

His headlights swept across her as he pulled in to the parking lot. He got out of his car and ran toward her. He’d thrown a long raincoat over—no way!—plaid pajama pants and a gray T-shirt that had a picture of Snoopy dressed up in an aviator helmet and scarf to fight the Red Baron. He’d jammed his feet into a beat-up pair of sneakers, his hair looked like he’d gone straight from his bed into his car, and he definitely hadn’t shaved in the past three or four hours. It was such a far cry from his usual dress code, she started to laugh. It was either that or burst into tears.

He pocketed his phone as he approached, as he looked at her hard, making sure she really was okay.

“Plaid, Max?” she said.

“If you mention it to anyone,” he said, “I’ll flatly deny it.” He pulled her into his arms and hugged her as hard as he’d looked at her, but it was way too brief. He set her aside and stepped into her room. “Wait out here.”

He actually had a gun.

Gina hadn’t really thought about the fact that as an FBI agent, Max carried and knew how to use a gun. Holding it like that, with that steely look in his eyes, he looked dangerous. Even with the plaid pajama pants and the bed-head.

But a gun was just a gun. Having one in your hand didn’t shield you from the other guy’s bullets.

“Be careful,” she called, then held her breath as he checked under the beds and in the closet.

He vanished into the bathroom, and she could hear the sound of the shower curtain being pulled back.

And then he was coming toward her, reholstering his weapon. “All clear.”

“Thank God. Thank you.” Gina stepped back into the room, closing the screen behind her as her heart started to beat again.

“Is anything missing?” His Snoopy T-shirt was faded and worn, clearly a favorite. It hugged a chest that may have been forty-two years old but looked nothing like her father’s. Not that it would have mattered to her if it had.

“I don’t know. I had my wallet with me. My plane ticket’s electronic, so...” She looked around. “Oh, shit. My CDs and my Walkman.”

“Try not to touch anything as you look,” Max told her.

She’d put her laptop into her suitcase and locked it shut. It was still there, thank goodness. But several pieces of jewelry—all inexpensive trinkets with only sentimental value—were gone.

Along with... She started to laugh. “They stole my underwear.” They actually stole all of it—her running bras, too. “Oh, man...”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” She gestured to the drawer that was open and empty. “See?”

“I meant, are you sure you didn’t put it somewhere else?”

“Yes, I am, but feel free to search for it.”

“Why would someone steal underwear?” he asked.

“Because the TV was bolted to the dresser?” Gina countered as he opened the other drawers, using the edge of his raincoat to keep his prints off the knobs.

Outside the door, the police were pulling in to the lot.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” she said. “ ‘Can you describe your missing underwear, Ms. Vitagliano?’ ‘Well, yes, Officer, I could, but I just might give you a heart attack.’ ”

“Is anything else missing?” Max asked. “Anything of real value?”

“Hey,” Gina said. “That was two paychecks’ worth of goods from Victoria’s Secret.”

“I didn’t particularly want to know that,” Max muttered as he escaped out the door.

“That’s four weeks of me going commando before I have the money to buy it back,” she called after him. That wasn’t true. She had the money in the bank. But she was determined. Before this night was through, she was going to push Max past his breaking point.

“Any medication or prescription drugs missing?” the young detective who’d introduced himself as Ric Alvarado asked Gina as they stood in her motel room.

Max had stayed silent through most of this, letting the locals do their job. But now Gina glanced over at him. “I, uh, didn’t look.”

“Would you mind checking?” Alvarado asked. He had one of those ridiculous soul patches under his lower lip, and since he’d come in, he’d spent more time looking at Gina than looking around the room.

She went into the bathroom, and the detective turned to Max. Alvarado hadn’t missed that look Gina had shot in Max’s direction, and knew what it meant. It was possible he was a decent detective after all.

“Would you mind waiting outside, sir?” he said in a low voice. “Your being in the room might make it hard for your daughter to be forthcoming about whatever prescriptions she might have had stolen—birth control pills or antidepressants or whatever.”

His daughter.

“We’ve had a rash of break-ins in this area,” Alvarado continued, apparently not noticing that Max was now grinding whatever was left of his teeth into stubs, “and it’s usually always CDs and whatever’s in the medicine cabinet. We’re pretty sure it’s the same group of kids.”

Gina was already coming out of the bathroom.

“She’s not my daughter,” Max told Alvarado, making sure that she heard him say it. “Although I can understand why you might have thought that she was.”

Alvarado was embarrassed. “Sorry, I—”

“Max is actually my own private stalker,” Gina told him. “And yes, I’m missing some sleeping pills.” She gave Max a challenging look that said “So now you know I have a prescription for sleeping pills.”

As if he hadn’t already known that.

Alvarado, boy detective, really didn’t like that stalker comment. So Max sighed and pulled out his ID and handed it to the young man, while he shook his head at Gina in a silent reprimand.

The detective recognized his name and nearly crapped his pants as he tried to remember if he’d said anything else that might’ve offended the Great Max Bhagat, Law Enforcement Legend.

Max let the little bastard squirm. “You need her for anything else?” he asked as he repocketed his ID wallet. “Or can I get her moved to a more secure location now?”

“We’re done here, sir,” Alvarado said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t realize who you were—”

Gina was looking at Max like he’d grown a second head. “Excuse me? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You are. Pack your stuff. I’m moving you to my hotel.”

“To your room?” she asked.

Their eyes locked, and Max knew with temperature-raising certainty that she wanted to share a room, a bed, bodily fluids. With him. She wanted him. Right now. Tonight. All he had to do was say yes. “No.”

She turned away. “Then I’m not going.”

He reached down deep for whatever patience he had left. There wasn’t much there. “Gina.”

“Max,” she said with the exact same inflection.

“What do you need to happen?” he asked. “Your room was broken into.”

“By kids. Right, Ric?”

Alvarado was pretending not to pay attention, but now he turned back to them. “Uh, yeah. And these doors are easy to jimmy when you’re out of the room, but with the night lock on they’re—” He saw from Max’s face that he wasn’t helping. “—safe. I’ll go, um... Go.” He looked at Gina. “I’ll let you know if we find your CDs or your, uh...” He cleared his throat.

“Underwear,” she supplied.

“Yeah, but to be honest, it’s not likely you’ll get it back. And if you do, you might want to burn it.”

“Interesting.” Gina gave him a smile. “A man actually suggesting that a woman burn her bras.”

Ric laughed aloud, but his broad grin quickly faded when he glanced at Max. “Sorry, sir. I’m going now.”

He closed the door behind him.

“Don’t you get tired of that?” Gina asked. “People treating you like you’re God?” She sat down on one of the beds. “Of course it doesn’t help when you give them your death glare.”

“Please,” Max said. “Let me get you a room where I know you’ll be safe.”

“I’ve already paid for this room. I don’t want to spend more money.”

“I’ll pay for it,” he told her.

“But I like it here. And Ric seemed to think I’ll be safe.”

“Ric’s a fucking child who’s been a detective for about two weeks,” Max countered. He closed his eyes. Shit, shit, shit. “I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Tired?” she supplied. “I am, too, Max.” She stood up, moved toward him. “Maybe if you stay here with me, we’ll both finally be able to sleep.”

Jesus Christ, she didn’t let up. It took every ounce of self-control he had in him not to rip off his raincoat and throw her back down on that bed and—

How could he even think of having that kind of rough sex with someone who’d—

Someone he’d let get—

They’d had to stitch her back up. He’d seen the hospital reports. Brutal didn’t begin to describe it.

“I can’t stay, and you goddamn know it!” Ah, Christ, he was losing it, transforming totally into Max the raving lunatic. The wall puncher. The asshole. “Don’t you goddamn make me sit out in my car, in that parking lot, all night long! If you don’t come with me, that’s what I’m going to have to do, and I’m too goddamn old for that shit!”

He was shouting now—although not about what he really wanted to shout about—and she stopped moving closer. Yeah, that’s right, honey. Meet the real Max Bhagat.

“You want to know why I don’t get tired of people treating me like God?” he told her, practically foaming at the mouth. “Because when they treat me like God, they do what I say! Three hundred million people in this country and everyone treats me like God—except you!”

“That’s because I’m in love with Max the man,” she told him, her voice shaking—because, Jesus Christ, was she actually afraid of him?

When he got like this, he was afraid of him.

He had to get out of here, especially when he paid attention to the words she’d said and not just the tone of her voice. Love. No. No. Love wasn’t this crazy, emotional tornado. Love was what he had with Alyssa Locke. Love was a comfortable blend of attraction and friendship and passion. Controlled passion.

Not this blinding mix of anger and frustration and howling, gut-wrenching, consuming desire for someone he couldn’t have. Someone he would only hurt if he gave in to his desperate, obsessive need to possess her.

“It’s not love, it’s transference,” he told her harshly as he headed for the door.

She didn’t say another word, but the expression on her face nearly brought him to his knees.

“Lock this door,” he ordered, damn near snarling. “I’ll be in the car.”

Mary Lou sat up in her bed, suddenly wide awake. She sat in the dark, listening, her heart pounding. Something was wrong.

It was the same feeling she used to get when she left her curling iron on before going to work. It was a sense of unease. Something had been forgotten or overlooked. She’d slipped up somewhere, and he was going to find her. At three o’clock in the morning, she was more often convinced than not that he was going to find her.

The man who’d killed her sister. The man who’d smuggled those weapons into the naval base, in the trunk of her car. A man she could identify, pick out of a lineup, help convict, and send to jail. Provided anyone would believe her. After all, she knew her fingerprints were on that gun. She would bet her life his weren’t.

He didn’t seem to realize that if she came forward, if she called, say, Alyssa Locke, Sam’s FBI girlfriend—Lord, she’d probably already moved into the house with Sam. If Mary Lou called the bitch on the phone and said, “I think you’re probably looking for me,” she was the one who would go to jail.

And then, while she was in prison, she’d get a knife stuck in her heart, because that’s what always happened, at least in the movies. Bad guys always had connections inside the prison, and she’d end up bleeding to death, staring up at the gray ceiling of the prison cafeteria.

But at least Haley would be safe. Mary Lou’s biggest nightmare was that he would find her, and he would pump a bullet into Haley’s head first, while Mary Lou was forced to watch.

She reached over and turned on the light on her bedside table. Although what good that did, she didn’t really know. All it meant was that she’d see death coming. Unless he shot her the way he’d shot Janine. In the back of the head.

Mary Lou got up and checked on Haley, who was fast asleep, holding tightly to her Pooh Bear—as if she’d fight to the death before letting anyone take it from her. Sam had given her that bear—or at least he’d given her its predecessor. But Haley couldn’t tell the difference between New Pooh and Pooh-who-had-been-left-behind, thank the Lord, or there’d be hell to pay. It was funny—and surely just a coincidence—that Sam should be able to guess so precisely the type of stuffed toy Haley would adore.

She felt a pang of guilt. He’d made plans to come and visit Haley a number of times, but she’d always canceled on him. She’d been terrified even back then that he would be followed by... Bob Schwegel.

It was such a friendly-sounding name for a cold-blooded killer. A sister killer. A presidential assassination conspirator. An insurance salesman impersonator—was that a crime? Surely Bob Schwegel was an alias.

Mary Lou lightly touched her sleeping daughter’s cheek before moving to the other bed to check on Amanda. Both girls were fast asleep.

She turned on the baby monitor that she didn’t normally use at night because her own room was nearby, and went back into her own bedroom. Slipping on her robe and slippers, she found the huge ring of keys Mrs. Downs had given her that afternoon before she’d left for her niece’s wedding.

She took the monitor and headed down the hall, stopping briefly to listen for the sound of Whitney’s steady breathing from her bedroom.

Once she was down the stairs, she turned on the lights, leaving them blazing as she went. Past the dining room. Past the kitchen. Past the laundry room.

She turned and went back and into the laundry room, taking an empty laundry basket from the stack by the door. Then she went on. Past the library. Down the corridor.

King Frank’s office was locked, but she and Whitney and the two little girls were the only people here in this great big house, and she had the keys. It took her a solid ten minutes of trial and error before Mary Lou found the key that opened the door.

She didn’t turn on the overhead lamp, she just let the light shine in from the hallway as she crossed the plush carpeting and set down the basket and opened the wall of cabinets behind King Frank’s desk.

And there they were. Frank Turlington’s vast collection of guns. Firearms, Sam would’ve called them. Whitney’s father had everything from hunting rifles to pre-Revolutionary War flintlocks to teeny little handguns a gangster’s moll would hide in her garter to Wild West six-shooters. Not to mention the three racks of assault weapons. He had everything you could possibly need to keep an invading horde from storming the King’s castle.

They were locked behind glass that she’d heard King Frank boast about. It was unbreakable. You could hit it with a tire iron and you still wouldn’t get through it. But Mary Lou didn’t need a tire iron. Because tonight she had the keys.

At three-thirty, Max called Alyssa.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I needed to talk to you, but I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Max laughed, looking at the light still burning behind Gina’s window curtain. “You actually thought I was sleeping?”

“I know how to get Sam to surrender,” she steamrolled over him. “If you give him forty-eight hours before he needs to come in for questioning, I’ll deliver him—and probably Mary Lou, too, because he’s extremely motivated to find her—to the Sarasota office.”

“I thought we were working on a plan to apprehend him tomorrow morning.”

“We are,” she said. “We’re ready with that, of course. But there’s no guarantee it’ll work. This way, you’ll have them both in forty-eight hours.”

It was entirely possible Gina slept with the light on.

“He wants to find his daughter,” Alyssa said, “and get her safely set up with a relative before he and Mary Lou both turn themselves in.”

“He told you that.”

Max hadn’t asked it as a question, but she answered it. “Yes.”

And you believed him. Crap. He’d called her to talk about Gina. He’d called because he was going crazy and he needed her as a friend. But she was so wrapped up in what was going on with Sam Starrett, that she didn’t even notice the desperation in his voice.

Gina’s curtain moved, and he saw the pale flash of her face as she looked out at him. No, no, no. Don’t come outside.

“Marry me,” he said to Alyssa, “and I’ll give him twenty-four hours.”

It was so obviously the wrong thing to say or do—to bring their relationship into this negotiation. Alyssa made an exasperated sound, and Max’s heart sank even farther. She was so personally invested in this negotiation, she didn’t even realize that he was messing with her head.

“For someone who tries so hard not to be guilty of sexual harassment, you can be an incredible asshole. Sir.”

“I was kidding.”

“Not completely.”

Yeah. The bitch of it was, she was right.

“Help me,” Max said, “I’m in over my head.” But he said it without opening his mouth, without making a sound. Please God, let her hear him anyway.

“Sam’s not going to agree to this if it’s less than forty-eight hours,” Alyssa said.

Sam. Always Sam. “He’s not going to agree to it, period,” Max told her. “Let’s stick with the plan.”

“Max, please,” Alyssa said, and he knew.

She hadn’t even realized it herself yet, but Max knew. Sam Starrett had won. She was toast, and Starrett was going to gobble her up.

As he watched, Gina pulled aside the curtain, undid the night lock, and slid the door open. She stepped outside.

“You have forty-eight hours,” Max said into his phone, watching Gina move gingerly across the pebbled parking lot in her bare feet. Her feet weren’t the only things that were bare. She was wearing a baggy pair of boxer shorts and a tank top that barely covered her—her version of PJs, no doubt. God damn, she had an incredible body. A twenty-three-year-old’s body, with the kind of curves most twenty-three-year-olds starved themselves to avoid having. “No, you know what, Alyssa? I’ll give you fifty-three. But if you don’t deliver Sam Starrett to my office on Friday by eight-thirty A.M., I’ll expect your resignation on my desk.”

“Agreed.” God damn it, she didn’t even hesitate. “Thank you, Max.”

“Watch out for his teeth,” he said, but she’d already cut the connection.

He put his phone into the car’s cup holder as Gina opened the passenger’s side door and slipped her incredible body and her equally incredible, indomitable spirit into the seat next to him.

“I don’t sleep too much anymore,” she told him, “but it doesn’t seem fair to make you lose sleep, too.”

“Do the pills help?” he asked. “Because tomorrow I can help you replace what was stolen.”

Gina looked searchingly into his eyes, and he forced himself to hold her gaze, praying she didn’t see his desperation.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hate taking them, so I hardly ever do. It makes it too hard to wake up in the morning.”

Max nodded. He knew. He’d tried something similar himself, just a few months ago.

“We’re really going to be looked at askance if I bring you to my hotel with me in this and you in that,” he said.

“I’m not going to your hotel. But you should go.”

Max sighed. “That’s what I was afraid you were going to say. Thanks, but no. I’m fine right here.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“I’m not lying. But maybe I should rephrase—I’m just as miserable here as I would be anywhere else,” he told her.

“That’s a terrible way to live.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

They sat in silence for a moment, and then he said, “I’m sorry about before. I, uh, shouldn’t have, uh—”

“You’re allowed to be angry,” she interrupted him. “You don’t need to apologize for expressing the way you feel.”

He laughed. “God, Gina...”

More silence.

“What?” she said. “God, Gina, what?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know anything.”

“I do,” she told him in a voice that was very, very soft. “I know that when I’m with you, I don’t feel so lost.”

Don’t look at her. Don’t do it. Don't turn your head, Max, you goddamn idiot— He looked. He did more than look. He reached for her, and she went into his arms. Fortunately sanity prevailed before he kissed her. He kept her head tightly tucked under his chin as he held her. And Gina seemed to know not to ask for more than he could give. She just clung to him, soft and warm and vulnerable as all hell.

She was trying to hide it, but she was crying. Max stroked her hair and her back and the soft smoothness of her bare arm. Touching her like that screamed of impropriety, but he was too tired to make himself stop. Jesus Christ, it was just her arm.

Max closed his eyes, knowing that he had to push her away, that she had to go back into her room. But it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, fifteen tops, before he realized that she’d stopped crying. She was breathing slowly and steadily. Gina, who didn’t sleep much either anymore, had fallen asleep in his arms.

On the other end of the phone, Sam was silent.

“Are you still there? Still awake?” Alyssa asked him. When she’d called, he hadn’t been.

“Yeah, I’m...” His voice was rusty from sleep. “I’m thinking. I’m a little groggy, so... So you went to Max and he just agreed to give me forty-eight hours?”

“Fifty-three,” Alyssa said.

“And I’m supposed to believe him?”

“You don’t have to believe him,” she said. “You can believe me.”

He was silent again for several long moments. “Yeah,” he finally said. “And I want to. I, uh, just don’t know if, um...”

Sam didn’t trust her. That shouldn’t matter so much, but it did. “You know, if you don’t agree to do this, I’m going to look really foolish. After going to Max and laying it on the line for

you...?” Her voice was just a little too sharp.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he really sounded as if he were. “Lys, really, it’s not you I don’t trust. It’s Bhagat. Why would he agree to something like this?”

“Your suggestion—you know, the one about the blow job? It really worked.”

“That is so not funny.”

“Neither is you not trusting me,” Alyssa countered.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Enough to promise Max that I’d deliver either you or my resignation to his office by the end of those fifty-three hours.”

“Fuck,” Sam said. “You shouldn’t have promised that. I mean, what if we haven’t found Haley by then?”

“We’ll just have to work fast.”

“Fuck,” he said again. “Fuck. Alyssa, Jesus. I don’t know what to say.”

“How about, ‘Let’s meet at the Hardee’s in ten minutes’?”

“You’re really going to share information with me?” he asked, clearly not believing her at all.

“Yes.” What could she tell him to convince him? “You’ll be part of the team working to find Mary Lou. For fifty-three hours.”

He laughed. “Yeah, right. And you’ll tell me what you found out from the desk clerk at the Sunset Motel, huh? What’s her name. Did she actually remember seeing Mary Lou?”

“Beth Weiss,” Alyssa said. This was it. In her attempt to make him believe her, should she tell him about her plan to intercept him, or not? She hadn’t considered the possibility that she was going to have to catch him to make him understand that those fifty-three hours Max had granted him were real, but it sure sounded as if that was going to be the case. “Look, Sam, please trust me. At least enough to meet. Right now. You name the place, I’ll be there—alone.”

“And naked?” he asked. “Because I’m actually considering it, and the naked part would probably push me over the edge.”

Alyssa closed her eyes. “You know, I’m being serious here and—”

“And I can’t do it,” he said. “Alyssa, there’s a part of me that wants to take you up on this offer—if only to prove to you what a bastard Bhagat is. He’s messing with you. I know you don’t believe that, but as soon as I agree to meet you, he’s going to send in the cavalry and have me down on my face on the sidewalk so fast—”

“Max doesn’t operate that way.”

“My ex-wife’s fingerprints were on a weapon used in a presidential assassination attempt,” Sam said. “I think he’s probably under a great deal of pressure to get some kind of answers.”

That much was true. But would Max deliberately lie to her? After proposing marriage? Alyssa didn’t kid herself. That proposal was a crazy-assed attempt on Max’s part to protect himself from his mixed up feelings about Gina Vitagliano.

She sighed. “Shit, Sam...”

“Shit is right.”

“Look, I only know what Max told me—that if you surrender yourself to me, we’ve got fifty-three hours before I have to bring you in.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t trust him.”

“Sam—”

“I’m sorry.” He cut the connection.

The FBI’s plan was going to have to work. And wasn’t he going to be surprised when he found out that the fifty-three hours Max had granted him was real? Unless...

Why would Max agree?

If he had a choice between getting Sam Starrett into custody immediately or in fifty-three hours, wouldn’t he pick immediately?

Maybe Sam was right, and Max had an alternate plan that he hadn’t bothered to tell Alyssa about. She opened her phone and dialed Jules’s cell phone number. Time for her to put into place her own plan B.

WEDNESDAy, JUNE 18, 2003

Gina was roused by the sound of a cell phone ringing. It was blindingly bright wherever she was, so she kept her eyes tightly shut. God, her neck and back were stiff from sleeping funny, but, hey, at least she’d slept.

“I know,” a male voice said. Whoever it was was speaking in hushed tones, probably to keep her from waking up. A pause, and then, “Alyssa, I’ll be there.”

Alyssa.

Gina opened her eyes and discovered that she was sleeping in Max Bhagat’s rented car, with her head on Jules Cassidy’s lap. She had Max’s raincoat over her.

Jules looked down at her as he closed his cell phone. “Damn, I woke you. I’m sorry.”

Gina sat up, rubbing her neck. Maybe it wasn’t sleeping funny that made her ache. Maybe it was mild whiplash from yesterday’s accident. It was nothing, though, that a hot shower wouldn’t fix.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly six,” he told her.

“Where’s Max?”

“He has a meeting in about half an hour that he couldn’t miss—and couldn’t show up for in plaid pajamas and a Snoopy shirt.” Jules smiled. “Who knew? I think I love him more than ever now.” He handed her a folded piece of paper. “He asked me to give you this.”

Gina opened it. Gina, either move to a safer hotel, or Jules Cassidy will be your roommate tonight. That was it.

“Did you read this?” she asked Jules.

“No,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Of course I read it. I’m an FBI agent. It’s a clue.”

“He didn’t even sign his name,” Gina said.

“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”

“He’s pushing me away because he let me get too close last night,” she said.

“Oh, yeah? Exactly how close did he let you get?”

“Not as close I wanted,” she admitted. She sighed, looking down at Max’s neat handwriting again. Jules Cassidy will be your roommate... “He’s trying to set me up with you, you know.”

Jules laughed at that. “No, he’s not.”

“Yes, he is. Every time I turn around, he’s pushing you at me.”

“No, he most certainly is not. He’s using me to baby-sit you, which is something else entirely for you to get mad about.”

She waved the letter. “But—”

“He’s using me to baby-sit you because he thinks that because I’m gay, I’m safe. If he knew what I said to you last night, he’d probably have a coronary. And then he’d transfer me to Nebraska.”

“Max knows you’re gay? You’re positive?”

“Sweetie, either he knows I’m gay or he’s an idiot, and I’m pretty sure he’s not an idiot. I’m gloriously out of the closet. The entire office knows, even though they don’t ask and I don’t tell. But there’s more than just a discreet gay pride flag in the pencil holder on my desk—there’s a signed picture from the cast of Queer as Folk. I sing show tunes in the hallway. I use words like gloriously when I talk. I smell good all the time. Believe me, Max knows.”

Gina stared at him. She had been so sure.... But if Max knew... “Oh, man,” she said. “Just when I’m sure I’ve got him figured out...”

She found out that she was still completely clueless.