ONATHAN BOLING, LOOKING pleased, was walking up to Dance in the lobby of the CBI. She handed him a temporary pass.

“Thanks for coming in.”

“I was beginning to miss the place. I thought I’d been fired.”

She smiled. When she’d called him in Santa Cruz she’d interrupted a paper-grading session for one of his summer school courses (she’d wondered if she would catch him prepping for a date) and Boling had been delighted to abandon the job and drive back to Monterey.

In her office, she handed him his last assignment: Greg Schaeffer’s laptop. “I’m really desperate to find Travis, or his body. Can you go through it, look for any references to local locations, driving directions, maps…anything like that?”

“Sure.” He indicated the Toshiba. “Passworded?”

“Not this time.”

“Good.”

He opened the lid and began to type. “I’ll search for everything with a file access or creation date in the past two weeks. Does that sound good?”

“Sure.”

Dance tried not to smile once more, watching him lean forward enthusiastically. His fingers played over the keys like a concert pianist’s. After a few moments he sat back. “Well, it doesn’t look like he used it for much of his mission here, other than to research for blogs and RSS feeds, and emails to friends and business associates—and none of them have anything to do with his plot to kill Chilton. But those are just the undeleted records. He’s been deleting files and websites regularly for the past week. Those, I’d guess, might be more what you’re interested in.”

“Yep. Can you reconstruct them?”

“I’ll go online and download one of Irv’s bots. That’ll roam the free space on his C: drive and put back together anything he’s deleted recently. Some of it will be only partial and some will be distorted. But most of the files should be ninety percent readable.”

“That’d be great, Jon.”

Five minutes later Irv’s bot was silently roaming through Schaeffer’s computer, looking for fragments of deleted files, reassembling them and storing them in a new folder that Boling had created.

“How long?” she asked.

“A couple of hours, I’d guess.” Boling looked at his watch and suggested they get a bite of dinner. They climbed into his Audi and headed to a restaurant not far from CBI headquarters, on a rise overlooking the airport and, beyond that, the city of Monterey and the bay. They got a table on the deck, warmed with overhead propane heaters, and sipped a Viognier white wine. The sun was now melting into the Pacific, spreading out and growing violently orange. They watched it in silence as tourists nearby snapped pictures that would have to be Photoshopped to even approximate the grandeur of the real event.

They talked about her children, about their own childhoods. Where they were from originally. Boling commented that he believed only twenty percent of the Central Coast population comprised native Californians.

Silence flowed between them again. Dance sensed his shoulders rising and was expecting what came next.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” She meant it, no reservations.

“When did your husband die?”

“About two years ago.”

Two years, two months, three weeks. She could give him the days and hours too.

“I’ve never lost anybody. Not like that.” Though there was a wistfulness in his voice, and his eyelids flickered like venetian blinds troubled by the wind. “What happened, you mind if I ask?”

“Not at all. Bill was an FBI agent, assigned to the local resident agency. But it wasn’t work-related. An accident on Highway One. A truck. The driver fell asleep.” A wisp of a laugh. “You know, I never thought about it until just now. But his fellow agents and friends put flowers by the roadside for about a year after it happened.”

“A cross?”

“No, just flowers.” She shook her head. “God, I hated that. The reminder. I’d drive miles out of my way to avoid the place.”

“Must’ve been terrible.”

Dance tried not to practice her skills as a kinesics expert when she was out socially. Sometimes she’d read the kids, sometimes she’d read a date. But she remembered when she’d caught Wes in some minor lie and he grumbled, “It’s like you’re Superman, Mom. You’ve got X-ray word vision.” Now she was aware that, although Boling’s face kept its sympathetic smile, his body language had subtly changed. The grip on his wineglass stem tightened. On his free hand, fingers rubbed compulsively. Behaviors she knew he wasn’t even aware of.

Dance just needed to prime the pump. “Come on, Jon. Your turn to spill. What’s your story? You’ve been pretty vague on the bachelor topic.”

“Oh, nothing like your situation.”

He was minimizing something that hurt, she could see that. She wasn’t even a therapist, let alone his. But they’d spent some time under fire and she wanted to know what was troubling him. She touched his arm briefly. “Come on. Remember, I interrogate people for a living. I’ll get it out of you sooner or later.”

“I never go out with somebody who wants to waterboard me on the first date. Well, depending.”

Jon Boling, Dance had come to realize, was a man who used clever quips as armor.

He continued, “This is the worst soap opera you’ll ever hear…. The girl I met after leaving Silicon Valley? She ran a bookstore in Santa Cruz. Bay Beach Books?”

“I think I’ve been there.”

“We hit it off real well, Cassie and I. Did a lot of outdoor things together. Had some great times traveling. She even survived some visits to my family—well, actually it’s only me who has trouble surviving those.” He thought for a minute. “I think the thing is that we laughed a lot. That’s a clue. What kind of movies do you like best? We watched comedies mostly. Okay, she was separated, not divorced. Legal separation. Cassie was completely honest about it. I knew it all up front. She was getting the paperwork together.”

“Children?”

“She had two, yes. Boy and girl like you. Great kids. Split the time between her and her ex.”

You mean, her not-quite-ex, Dance corrected silently, and, of course, knew the arc of the story.

He sipped some more of the cold, crisp wine. A breeze had come up and as the sun melted, the temperature fell. “Her ex was abusive. Not physically; he never hurt her or the kids, but he’d insult her, put her down.” He gave an astonished laugh. “This wasn’t right, that wasn’t right. She was smart, kind, thoughtful. But he just kept dumping on her. I was thinking about this last night.” His voice faded at that comment, having just given away a bit of data he wished he hadn’t. “He was an emotional serial killer.”

“That’s a good way to put it.”

“And naturally she went back to him.” His face was still for a moment as he relived a specific incident, she supposed. Our hearts rarely respond to the abstract; it’s the tiny slivers of sharp memory that sting so. Then the facade returned in the form of a tight-lipped smile. “He got transferred to China, and they went with him, Cassie and the kids. She said she was sorry, she’d always love me, but she had to go back to him…. Never quite got the obligatory part in relationships. Like, you have to breathe, you have to eat…but staying with a jerk? I don’t get the necessary. But here I am going on about…oh, shall we say an ‘epic’ bad call on my part, and you had a real tragedy.”

Dance shrugged. “In my line of work, whether it’s murder or manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, a death’s still a death. Just like love; when it goes away, for whatever reason, it hurts all the same.”

“I guess. But all I’ll say is it’s a real bad idea to fall in love with somebody who’s married.”

Amen, thought Kathryn Dance again, and nearly laughed out loud. She tipped a touch more wine into her glass.

“How ’bout that,” he said.

“What?”

“We’ve managed to bring up two extremely personal and depressing topics in a very short period of time. Good thing we’re not on a date,” he added with a grin.

Dance opened the menu. “Let’s get some food. They have—”

“—the best calamari burgers in town here,” Boling said.

She laughed. She’d been about to say exactly the same.

THE COMPUTER SEARCH was a bust.

She and the professor returned from their squid and salads to her office, both eager to see what Irv’s bot had found. Boling sat down, scrolled through the file and announced with a sigh, “Zip.”

“Nothing?”

“He just deleted those emails and files and research to save space. Nothing secretive, and nothing local at all.”

The frustration was keen, but there was nothing more to do. “Thanks, Jon. At least I got a nice dinner out of it.”

“Sorry.” He looked truly disappointed that he couldn’t be of more help. “I guess I better finish up grading those papers. And pack.”

“That’s right, your family reunion’s this weekend.”

He nodded. A tight smile and he said, “Woooo-hoooo,” with forced enthusiasm.

Dance laughed.

He hovered near her. “I’ll call you when I get back. I want to know how things work out. And good luck with Travis. I hope he’s okay.”

“Thanks, Jon. For everything.” She took his hand and gripped it firmly. “And I especially appreciate you’re not getting stabbed to death.”

A smile. He squeezed her hand and turned away.

As she watched him walk down the corridor a woman’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Hey, K.”

Dance turned to see Connie Ramirez, walking down the hallway toward her.

“Con.”

The other senior agent looked around and nodded toward Dance’s office. Then stepped inside, closing the door. “Found a few things I thought you might be interested in. From the hospital.”

“Oh, thanks, Con. How’d you do it?”

Ramirez considered this. “I was deceptively honest.”

“I like that.”

“I flashed my shield and gave them some details of another case I’m running. That medical fraud case.”

The CBI investigated financial crimes too. And the case Ramirez was referring to was a major insurance scam—the perps used identification numbers of doctors who were deceased to file bogus claims in their names.

It was the sort of thing, Dance reflected, that Chilton himself might write about in his blog. And it was a brilliant choice for Connie; staffers at the hospital were among the victims, and would have an interest in helping investigators.

“I asked them to show me the log-in sheets. The whole month’s worth, so Henry didn’t get suspicious. They were more than happy to comply. And here’s what I found: The day Juan Millar died there was one visiting physician—the hospital has a continuing-ed lecture series and he was probably there for that. There were also six job applicants—two for maintenance spots, one for the cafeteria and three nurses. I’ve got copies of their résumés. None of them look suspicious to me.

“Now, what’s interesting is this: There were sixty-four visitors at the hospital that day. I correlated the names and the people they were there to see, and every one of them checks out. Except one.”

“Who?”

“It’s hard to read the name, either the printed version or the signature. But I think it’s Jose Lopez.”

“Who was he seeing?”

“He only wrote ‘patient.’”

“That was a safe bet, in a hospital,” Dance said wryly. “Why is it suspicious?”

“Well, I figured that if somebody was there to kill Juan Millar, he or she would have to have been there before—either as visitors or to check out security and so on. So I looked at everybody who’d signed in to see him earlier.”

“Brilliant. And you checked their handwriting.”

“Exactly. I’m no document examiner but I found a visitor who’d been to see him a number of times, and I’d almost guarantee the handwriting’s the same as this Jose Lopez’s.”

Dance was sitting forward. “Who?”

“Julio Millar.”

“His brother!”

“I’m ninety percent sure. I made copies of everything.” Ramirez handed Dance sheets of paper.

“Oh, Connie, this is brilliant.”

“Good luck. If you need anything else, just ask.”

Dance sat alone in her office, considering this new information. Could Julio actually have killed his brother?

At first, it seemed impossible, given the loyalty and love that Julio displayed for his young sibling. Yet there was no doubt that the killing had been an act of mercy, and Dance could imagine a conversation between the two brothers—Julio leaning forward as Juan whispered a plea to put him out of his misery.

Kill me….

Besides, why else would Julio have faked a name on the sign-in sheet?

Why had Harper and the state investigators missed this connection? She was furious, and had a suspicion that they knew about it, but were downplaying the possibility because it would be better publicity against the death-with-dignity act for Robert Harper to go after the mother of a state law enforcement agent. Thoughts of prosecutorial malfeasance buzzed around her head.

Dance called George Sheedy and left a message about what Connie Ramirez had found. She then called her mother to tell her directly about it. There was no answer.

Damnit. Was she screening calls?

She disconnected then sat back, thinking about Travis. If he was alive, how much longer would he have? A few days, without water. And what a terrible death it would be.

Another shadow in her doorway. TJ Scanlon appeared, “Hey, boss.”

She sensed something was urgent.

“Crime scene results?”

“Not yet, but I’m riding ’em hard. Rawhide, remember? This’s something else. Heard from MCSO. They got a call—anonymous—about the Crosses Case.”

Dance sat up slightly. “What was it?”

“The caller said he’d spotted, quote, ‘something near Harrison Road and Pine Grove Way.’ Just south of Carmel.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“Nope. Just ‘something.’ I checked the intersection. It’s near that abandoned construction site. And the call was from a pay phone.”

Dance debated for a moment. Her eyes dipped to a sheet of paper, a copy of the postings on The Chilton Report. She rose and pulled on her jacket.

“You going to go over there to check it out?” TJ asked uncertainly.

“Yep. Really want to find him, if there’s any way.”

“Kind of a weird area, boss. Want backup?”

She smiled. “I don’t think I’m going to be in much danger.”

Not with the perp presently residing in the Monterey County morgue.

THE CEILING OF the basement was painted black. It contained eighteen rafters, also black. The walls were a dingy white, cheap paint, and were made up of 892 cinder blocks. Against the wall were two cabinets, one gray metal, one uneven white wood. Inside were large stocks of canned goods, boxes of pasta, soda and wine, tools, nails, personal items like toothpaste and deodorant.

Four metal poles rose to the dim ceiling, supporting the first floor. Three were close to each other, one farther away. They were painted dark brown but they were also rusty and it was hard to tell where the paint ended and the oxidation began.

The floor was concrete and the cracks made shapes that became familiar if you stared at them long enough: a sitting panda, the state of Texas, a truck.

An old furnace, dusty and battered, sat in the corner. It ran on natural gas and switched on only rarely. Even then, though, it didn’t heat this area much at all.

The size of the basement was thirty-seven feet by twenty-eight, which could be calculated easily from the cinder blocks, which were exactly twelve inches wide by nine high, though you had to add an eighth of an inch to each one for the mortar that glued them together.

A number of creatures lived down here too. Spiders, mostly. You could count seven families, if that was what spiders lived in, and they seemed to stake out territories so as not to offend—or get eaten by—the others. Beetles and centipedes too. Occasional mosquitoes and flies.

Something larger had shown an interest in the stacks of food and beverages in the far corner of the basement, a mouse or a rat. But it’d grown timid and left, never to return.

Or been poisoned and died.

One window, high in the wall, admitted opaque light but no view; it was painted over, off-white. The hour was now probably 8:00 or 9:00 p.m.—since the window was nearly dark.

The thick silence was suddenly shattered as footsteps pounded across the first floor, above. A pause. Then the front door opened, and slammed shut.

At last.

Finally, now that his kidnapper had left, Travis Brigham could relax. The way the schedule of the past few days had turned out, once his captor left at night he wouldn’t be back till morning. Travis now curled up in the bed, pulling the gamy blanket around him. This was the high point of his day: sleep.

At least in sleep, Travis had learned, he could find some respite from despair.