T TOOK A WHILE BEFORE SHE BEGAN THINKING COHERENTLY, logically, but Sarah had nothing but time on her hands. She sat alone in the interview room for long stretches of time, broken by periods when the detective with sandy hair and freckles would ask her a lot of questions. If she had to go to the bathroom, she was escorted. If she asked for something to drink, it was brought to her.

She wondered if they would let her leave, if she tried. She hadn’t been arrested, hadn’t been handcuffed, she had come here voluntarily. Besides, she had no place else to go. She couldn’t stay in the bungalow, she hadn’t been able to think clearly enough to give instructions about gathering her clothes and other needed items so she could stay in a hotel again, and she certainly couldn’t go to Cahill’s house. When she did begin thinking again, that was the one fact that was glaringly obvious.

He thought she was guilty. He thought she’d committed murder.

He hadn’t come near her earlier, at the bungalow, just stood there watching her with cold eyes. This wasn’t like when the Judge was murdered; she had been under suspicion then, too, until he’d checked out her story, but it hadn’t been personal. She’d understood. But now... he knew her now, as no one else had ever known her. Last night, except for when he’d gone on that call, she had been with him all night. They’d made love, several times. And yet he thought she had left the house soon after he did, driven to the Lankfords’ house, shot both of them in the head, then stopped by the grocery store and bought ice cream on the way back to his house.

She would have understood him doing his job. It would have hurt, but she’d have understood. She didn’t understand him actually believing she was guilty.

That cut, so deeply and cruelly she wasn’t certain the wounds would ever heal. With one slash he’d severed the bonds between them, leaving her adrift. She felt like an astronaut whose safety line has snapped, only no one from the mother ship was making any effort to retrieve her. She was lost, floating farther and farther away, and she didn’t much care.

The grief she’d felt when the Judge was killed was nothing compared to this. It wasn’t just over the violent death of the Lankfords, those friendly, down-to-earth people whom she’d liked very much; it was for the loss of Cahill as well, of the magic she’d thought they shared. She loved him, but he didn’t, couldn’t love her, because to really love someone you had to know that person, know what made her tick, how she was put together as a human being. Cahill obviously had no clue about her. If he had, he’d have come to her and said, “I know it looks bad, but I believe in you. I’m behind you.”

Instead he’d looked at her as if she were dirt, and then he’d walked away.

That wasn’t love. He’d wanted to screw her, that was all. And, boy, had he ever.

She understood now why he was so bitter and distrustful after finding out his wife had betrayed him. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to really trust anyone again, either. Her family, yes; she could rely on them through thick and thin, hell and high water, and every other applicable cliché. But anyone else? She didn’t think so. The lessons learned hardest were the lessons learned best.

In the meantime, she did something that was foreign to her nature: she endured. She had always been one of those people who, when something wasn’t to their liking, didn’t rest until they had wrestled, pummeled, and otherwise whipped whatever it was into a shape more to their liking. In this instance, however, there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t change the past. Cahill had walked away from her when she needed him most, and no amount of wrestling or pummeling on her part would alter that.

It was a funny type of love that talked marriage one day, and turned its back the next. So why wasn’t she laughing?

Instead she sat in the armless chair in the windowless little interview room, and let time wash around her. She was in no hurry. She had nothing to do, and nowhere to go.

Lieutenant Wester rubbed his hand over his nearly bald head. “Okay,” he said wearily. “What do we have? Do we hold her, book her, or let her go?”

Everyone was exhausted. The media was in an uproar, the mayor was in an uproar, city hall was in an uproar, and the citizens of Mountain Brook were frightened. Three of their number had been murdered in their homes in the past month, which would have been big news in any community but in Mountain Brook was horrifying. The murder victims had thought they were safe, with their security systems and walled estates, electric gates and floodlights. Instead they had been no safer than a young mother in a drug-ridden neighborhood, cowering with her children in the bathtub at night because the walls were too thin to stop the bullets that regularly whined through the streets.

People paid a high price to live in Mountain Brook, with its crushing property tax. They paid through the nose for the astronomical real estate values, the excellent school system, the illusion of safety. The property taxes bought them a town without slums, and a police department that they expected to keep crime to a minimum, and solve the ones that did occur. When the people in multimillion-dollar homes lost that illusion of safety, they were vocal in their unhappiness. That made the mayor unhappy, which made the captain unhappy, et cetera, et cetera. The pressure was on the investigative division to produce results, or else.

Rusty Ahern consulted the papers before him. “Okay. Here’s what I think: We have three spent shell casings, which on preliminary testing appear to match the bullet that killed Judge Roberts. We don’t have any viable fingerprints, in either case. We have no physical evidence other than the three shell casings, period. We also have no sign of forced entry at either location, indicating the victims knew the perp and opened the door. We have a busted lock on an interior door. Call-back on the Lankfords’ phone went to a pay phone in the Galleria, the same pay phone that showed up as the last call to Judge Roberts. I don’t know about you guys, but that right there leads me to think Miss Stevens didn’t do either murder.”

“How so?” Nolan asked. “I’m not following.”

“She wouldn’t have any reason to call ahead, to make certain the electric gates were open, or the victims were at home, or whatever,” Cahill said. “She had full access to both homes. All she had to do was go in, at any time.”

“Right. And what would be the motive?” Ahern asked. “That’s what’s driving me crazy. Nothing was taken in the Roberts killing. Miss Stevens got a hefty chunk in his will, but that’s in probate, it isn’t as if you’re handed a check as soon as the body’s planted. And like you pointed out, Doc, she isn’t hurting for money.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Nolan said. “Some people always want more. And don’t forget that big diamond ring that’s missing. A rock worth a quarter of a million will get a lot of people’s attention. Plus some people are just fucking crazy.”

Cahill held on to his temper. “But she isn’t. She’s as sane and even-tempered as anyone I’ve ever met, and, Nolan, if you say one more time she has me pussy-whipped, I’m going to feed you your teeth.” They’d been in each other’s faces a couple of times already today. Both of them were tired and irritable, and Nolan had a habit of carrying teasing too far.

“Let’s cool it, guys,” Wester said. “Doc, what about that photo you came up with from the pay phone on the Roberts case? Has it been shown around the Lankfords’ neighborhood?”

“Not yet. We’ve been concentrating on Sarah.”

“Well, get it out and circulate it. Since the last call to the Lankfords’ came from the same pay phone, that guy has to be our man.”

“But it still doesn’t make sense,” Nolan argued. “Why kill Judge Roberts and not take anything, unless it was for the money in the will? So it’s in probate; she’ll get it eventually. Look at it this way: she works for Roberts and he gets popped. She goes to work for the Lankfords and they get popped. Does anybody else see a pattern here?”

“Then what’s your theory on the guy in the picture?” Wester asked.

“It’s simple. They’re working together. Has to be. She goes inside and gets all the information, the alarm codes, the keys, whatever is needed. I don’t know how they’d decide when —I mean, she worked for Judge Roberts for almost three years, so why wait so long to off him? Then she’s with the Lankfords only a little over a week and they get offed. Maybe it’s whenever they need the money. Who knows? But she makes sure she has an alibi, and he waltzes in and does the job. They never even know he’s in the house until he walks up on them and pulls the trigger. He has no known connection to the victims, so it’s essentially a stranger killing, and they’re damn hard to solve.”

“Do you have an alarm system in your house?” Cahill asked.

“Yeah, it’s called a dog.”

“Well, the victims would hear the killer come in. In both houses, whenever an outside door or window was opened, an alert is beeped. If you weren’t expecting anyone to be there, you’d check it out, right? You wouldn’t sit in your recliner and wait.”

“Unless they thought it was Stevens.”

“In the Lankfords’ case, they knew she was gone until Tuesday morning.”

Wester frowned. “You’re saying in both cases the victims knew the killer.”

“Looks like it to me.”

“And the killer in both cases is the same guy.”

They all looked at one another.

“We’re still missing something,” Ahern said. “Motive.”

“I keep telling you, it’s the money,” said Nolan.

“And I keep telling you,” Cahill said impatiently, “the only way money makes sense is if Sarah is doing the killing.”

“Or is having it done.”

“But the victims knew the killer, who is very probably the man who made the calls from the pay phone. You yourself said her so-called partner wouldn’t have any connection to the victims, so it can’t be both ways. They either knew him, or they didn’t. If they didn’t know him, why did they let him in the house? Why did Judge Roberts sit down to talk to him? The killer was an acquaintance of both Roberts and the Lankfords.”

“Well, shit.” Nolan frowned at the surface of the table, thinking hard.

“So our guy is someone they knew in business, or moved in the same circles. My guess is business,” Cahill said. “Judge Roberts was in his mid-eighties, and he didn’t do the party circuit. He had his circle of poker-playing cronies, and that was it. But he still had business concerns that he stayed on top of, and Sonny Lankford had more irons in the fire than a blacksmith.”

“Looking at it that way, the motive may be money after all,” said Ahern. “We need to find out what business ventures or financial concerns they had in common, some deal that went bad but they came out of okay, while someone else lost his shirt.”

“But then it would be sheer coincidence that Sarah Stevens happened to be working for both Roberts and the Lankfords when each was murdered,” Wester said. “That’s bullshit. Coincidences like that don’t happen.”

“Maybe it’s not as far-fetched as you’d think,” Ahern said, doodling furiously on his legal pad as he chased his thoughts. “How many people can afford a butler, especially one who makes in the range that Sarah Stevens makes? Not many. It would be a small circle, even in Mountain Brook. Most people here work like hell to pay the property taxes and their mortgages, and keep their kids in school. But these rich folks who can afford her, they probably all know one another, through business if not socially. They had to get rich somehow, didn’t they? I say business dealings are the link.”

“A lot of companies have had problems this past year. It’s possible someone took a soaking and is holding a grudge about it.” Wester considered the scenario. So far, it made more sense than any other theory they’d considered. “Okay, I’ll take this to the captain. We’ll put out some statement that’s vague enough it won’t spook this guy. He’s already killed three people, and he may have started liking it. We don’t want any more bodies in this town.”

He looked at Ahern. “You can release Miss Stevens, have someone collect some clothes for her and drive her to a motel. And, no, she can’t stay at your house,” he said pointedly to Cahill. “I want you to stay away from her for the time being. The press is going to be all over us for turning her loose, and if one of those guys follows her and finds out she’s living with a Mountain Brook detective, our collective asses will go up in flames. Is that clear?”

Cahill saw the wisdom of Sarah’s not living in his house. Staying away from her, though, wasn’t in the cards. He had some major bridge repair to do, and he wasn’t going to wait until they broke this case to do it. All day it had been burning in his gut, the way she’d cried when she said she needed him. She had walked in on a horror this morning, made all the worse by being a repeat of the scene with Judge Roberts. She’d been a walking basket case, and he hadn’t gone to her, hadn’t held her. She’d been alone all day, slowly rocking back and forth, hugging herself. Even worse, she knew he’d thought she was the killer.

This wasn’t merely doing his job; this was a lack of trust so gargantuan he didn’t know if he’d be able to regain his lost ground. He’d die trying, though. If he had to crawl to her on his hands and knees, literally as well as figuratively, to get her forgiveness, then he’d wear out the knees in every pair of pants he owned if that was what it took.

She was in a fragile state right now. He remembered that when the Judge was killed she hadn’t been able to eat; today she certainly hadn’t had anything since breakfast, which was at least a thousand years ago from the way he felt. They had offered her food, but she had refused it with a silent shake of her head. She was usually the strong one, the go-to person in a crisis, but now she needed someone to take care of her.

The first order of business was to get her things from the bungalow and get her checked into a hotel under an assumed name so she could rest. Ahern would take care of that.

There was no way in hell, though, that Cahill intended to let her leave without apologizing, for whatever good that would do.

He walked down the short hall and opened the door to the interview room. She looked up, then quickly averted her gaze when she recognized him. She was still pale, her face drawn and her dark eyes dull. Coming so soon after the Judge’s murder, this had knocked her flat.

He stepped inside and closed the door. The ceiling-mounted camera wasn’t on right now; they were private. If she wanted to slap his face, he’d take it. If she wanted to kick him in the balls, he guessed he’d take that, too. He’d take anything from her if she would forgive him afterward. But she didn’t move, even when he crouched beside the chair so he could see her face.

“Ahern is going to take you to a hotel so you can rest,” he said quietly. “We’ll pick up your clothes and bring them to you. Let him check you in; you’ll be under an assumed name, so the press can’t find you.”

“I’m not being arrested?” she asked, her voice thin and colorless.

“Sarah... we know you didn’t do it.”

“Why? Did some evidence turn up today? You thought I was guilty this morning.” There was no accusation, no heat in the words, just a statement of fact. He felt as if she had put miles of mental distance between them, between herself and everyone else. It was the only way she could cope.

“I was wrong,” he said simply. “I’m sorry. God, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. The coincidence slapped me in the face, and all I could think was that you’d gone out last night after I left on the call.”

“I understand.”

The lack of inflection in her voice made him wince. “Do you forgive, too?”

“No.”

“Sarah—” He reached out, and she pulled back, her expression frantic.

“Don’t touch me.”

He dropped his hand. “All right. For now. I know I fucked up big time, but I won’t let you go. We think we’re getting this thing figured out, and—”

“It isn’t up to you,” she interrupted.

“What? What isn’t up to me?”

“Letting me go. You don’t have a choice.”

There was a big black hole yawning at his feet, and he felt as if he were being sucked down into it. If he lost her—well, that wasn’t going to happen. He refused to let it. Once she was over the initial shock, she would at least listen to him. Sarah was the most reasonable person he’d ever met. And if she wouldn’t listen, then he didn’t mind fighting dirty. He’d do whatever it took to keep her.

“We’ll talk later,” he said, stepping back to give her the space she needed right now.

“There’s no point.”

“There’s every point. I’ll give you some room and time now, but don’t ever think I’ve given up. Ever.”

“You should,” she said, and went back to staring at the wall.

Fifteen minutes later, Ahern hurried her out the back door and across the parking lot to his car. The print and television reporters camped out by the front saw them and the cameramen got some footage, but that was it. One enterprising guy jumped into his car and started to follow, but his way was blocked when a white Jaguar swung in front of him, and by the time he pulled into traffic, both the unmarked cop car and the white Jaguar had vanished from sight.