t was after eight-thirty p.m. when Max uncovered the messages on his temporary desk at the Sarasota office.

Kelly Ashton Paoletti had called. Seven times.

Kelly Ashton Paoletti.

In fact, one of the messages actually called her Mrs. Lieutenant Commander Thomas Paoletti. No doubt that was in case he’d missed the significance of her new last name.

Max stood up for the first time in what seemed like hours even as his intercom buzzed.

Even though his assistant hated it when he shouted, he crossed the room and pulled open his door. “Laronda!”

There was really no need to raise his voice, considering her desk was right there, but he was going on five short hours of sleep over three long days, and sometimes shouting and moving quickly fooled his body into releasing a little extra adrenaline. “Get me Kelly Ashton Paoletti right—”

Away.

Another good reason to stay behind his desk and communicate via the intercom was standing there, looking at him.

“Gina Vitagliano to see you, sir,” Laronda told him, shooting him a look that said “Now how am I supposed to tell her that you’re in a meeting, fool?”

Jules Cassidy was near Laronda’s desk, collecting his phone messages, and the man didn’t so much as glance in Max’s direction, but he, like everyone else in the room, was suddenly paying very close attention. Or maybe that was just Max’s own paranoid imagination.

Unlike him, Gina hadn’t changed her clothes since he’d seen her a few hours ago in Tampa. She was still wearing cutoff jeans. They weren’t as short or as low-cut as the styles Max had seen some women wearing today, even in downtown Sarasota, away from the beaches, but despite that, they made her tanned legs look incredibly long. Her funky T-shirt didn’t quite meet her shorts, revealing a glimpse of an equally tanned stomach and, yes, that sparkling turquoise belly button ring he’d first been hypnotized by a few hours ago.

It was all Max could do not to break out into a cold sweat.

The sandals, the toenail polish, the leather ankle bracelet, her long dark hair down loose around her shoulders—it all made Gina look as ridiculously young as she actually was.

“Can you give me ten minutes?” she asked him. Her eyes were somber, and she hadn’t flashed even a subdued version of her vivacious smile in his direction. She looked tired, with shadows underneath her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Her makeup didn’t hide them so well, here in the land of fluorescent light.

“How’d you get down here?” he asked. It was more than stalling—it was information he needed to know.

One of the big problems caused by her getting into an accident with the rental car was that, technically, she wasn’t supposed to be driving. The rental car company, like most in the area, had a “drivers must be twenty-five years or older” policy. But the vehicle had been rented and insured by Gina’s employer, and she hadn’t even known about the rule. The company was overlooking the alleged violation, but they had refused to replace the damaged car. Which had left Gina stranded. Which shouldn’t have been a problem if she’d stayed in Tampa until her flight home to New York.

“Bus,” she told Max now. “Then cab.”

Max nodded as he handed the message slip to Laronda. “Get me Kelly Paoletti on the phone in exactly ten minutes.” He knocked on the desk. “Cassidy.”

Jules looked up as if startled, a question in his eyes, pretending he hadn’t been listening to every word. He was a good actor, but Max knew him well and didn’t buy it for a second.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Max ordered the younger man. He silently held his office door open for Gina, and followed her inside.

He purposely left it ajar, but she went back and closed it tightly as he went to sit behind his desk.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said.

“I really don’t have much time,” he told her. “I’m in the middle of a situation.”

She sat down across from his desk. Crossed those legs. “When aren’t you?”

“Good point.” Max forced a smile.

She didn’t smile back. “I need to ask you something. I know you’re not going to want to talk about this, but...”

Well, wasn’t this going to be fun? He just waited.

Gina took a deep breath. “Why did you stop returning my calls?”

It was the question he’d been expecting. The question he was ready for. He’d done everything but rehearse saying it aloud.

“I started seeing someone,” he lied without blinking. Well, it was really only half a lie. “Someone I’m still very serious about. I don’t think it’s going to shock you, Gina, if I admit that my relationship with you has always had undercurrents of something more than mere friendship.”

It was a gamble, admitting that, and he could see both surprise and something vaguely triumphant in Gina’s eyes. Someone had to teach this girl how to put on a poker face. She just let everything she was feeling and thinking show.

He was a manipulative son of a bitch, which was bad enough, but if he were a truly evil manipulative son of a bitch, he could take total advantage of her.

“Under those circumstances, continuing my friendship with you didn’t seem right,” he concluded.

She nodded, and then she laughed. “You’re a brilliant liar.”

Max caught himself about to shift in his seat—a basic negotiating blunder. Never let them see you squirm. Instead, he made himself sit still and hold her gaze. “I’m not lying.”

“Today you said that you were still angry,” Gina told him. “About what happened to me on that plane.”

Yeah, he had said that. Max didn’t clear his throat, didn’t move. He could still hear the sound her head had made as she had been thrown down onto the cockpit deck. He blinked it away. Nodded. Even managed to smile. “Of course I’m still angry. Everyone who worked that op is still angry about what happened to you.”

“You said I have no reason to want to check up on you,” Gina persisted. “That, of course, you were okay. That you weren’t the one on that plane.”

“That’s right.”

She shook her head. “No, Max. You’re wrong. You were on that plane.”

He smiled again, as condescendingly as he could. “Gina—”

She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “You can pretend you weren’t, but you were as much a prisoner as I was. You can tell me you walked away, out of that surveillance room, but I know you didn’t. I know you were listening when it happened. I know you saw at least part of... of... it... with the minicameras the SEALs installed.”

He didn’t bother denying it.

She laughed in disgust, sitting back a little. “Listen to me. It. When it happened. We rarely talk about it, and you know, when we do, we always use euphemisms, don’t we? When I was attacked. When I was hurt.” She leaned forward again. “I was raped and beaten, Max. You were forced to watch and listen while I was brutally raped and beaten. That happened to me—and it happened to you, too.”

Max shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Anything to keep her from looking—God help him—too closely into his eyes.

“I think you stopped calling me because seeing me, talking to me, thinking about me, makes you have to think about it, to remember it.”

God damn it, she just wouldn’t let up. Max pretended to stare out the window, trying not to think about the way her long hair had fanned out, looking so beautiful, as she’d fallen right in front of the minicamera. Trying not to remember the way her screams had turned from panic to pain to despair.

Gina’s voice was quiet now. “I think that in addition to having to deal with this as something traumatic that happened to you, you also have to deal with the fact that you see the entire incident as one of your few failures.”

She was silent then, and when he finally glanced at her, she was watching him, just waiting, with such tenderness in her eyes. Obviously, it was now his turn to say something. This twenty-three year old girl was out-negotiating him.

“What can I possibly say?” His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat again. “You asked a question, I gave you an answer. I understand that you don’t like my answer, and you can theorize all you want, but that doesn’t—”

“You didn’t fail,” Gina interrupted him, her husky voice even thicker with emotion. “Don’t you see? You succeeded. I’m alive. I’m here!”

Yeah, he’d kind of noticed.

“You saved my life,” she told him. “You saved the lives of nearly all the people on that plane—”

“Right.” Max stood up. “This has been fun, but I have to take a phone call—”

She stood up, too, spoke right over him. “You saved me more times than you’ll ever know. You were there, with me. Every single time I really needed you.”

He laughed aloud at that—he couldn’t help it. How could she say that?

Gina knew exactly what he was thinking. “I didn’t need you while they were raping me,” she told him, leaning over his desk, hands braced on the files that held his notes from his meeting with the President of the United States. “I knew you couldn’t stop them. Don’t you see? I knew no one could stop them. The best anyone could do was to keep them from killing me. And that’s what you did. I heard you talking over the radio, talking to them the entire time, the voice of sanity—reminding them that they were in a better bargaining position if they kept me alive. You didn’t fail—you saved my life. And then you saved me again when it was over, when my parents were flying out to be with me in the hospital. You stayed with me. I can’t begin to tell you what that meant to me. I’m not your failure, Max. I’m your biggest success!”

The intercom buzzed.

Max looked at the phone, looked at her. “I have to take this call.”

She straightened up. Nodded. Cleared her throat. “Well, I said what I came to say. I guess I can’t force you to listen, can I?”

“Excuse me for a second.” Max picked up the phone. “Yeah.”

“Kelly Paoletti on line one, sir.”

“Ask her to hold for a minute, Laronda.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell Jules Cassidy to come in.” Max hung up the phone, turned back to Gina. “I’m going to have one of my agents drive you back to Tampa.”

“I’m not staying in Tampa anymore,” she told him as Jules knocked on the door.

Oh, damn. He waited for her to drop the anvil on his head.

“I’m staying here in Sarasota—out on Siesta Key—for the next few days,” she said. “At a place right on the beach.”

Boing. The hotel Laronda had found for his team was also on Siesta Key. Please let there be a God and don’t let it be the exact same place.

“Come in,” Max called. If that was the case, a solution would be for him just to never leave this office. It wasn’t as if it would be the first time....

Jules opened the door, sticking his head in as he looked cautiously from Gina to Max and back.

“Gina Vitagliano, Jules Cassidy.” Max gave them a no-frills introduction. “Drive her back to her hotel,” he ordered.

Jules recognized it as the dismissal that it was, but Gina didn’t move.

“I’m playing tomorrow night at a jazz club,” she said, and at first her words didn’t make sense. Playing? But then he remembered. She was a musician—a percussionist. She’d been on that plane because she was touring Europe with her college jazz band.

“Fandangos,” she continued, “on Siesta Key. A friend of a friend needed someone to fill in for his regular Wednesday night gig because his sister’s getting married out in Seattle next weekend. I knew I’d be down here, so I agreed to replace him for the night. It’s been on my schedule for three months.”

In case he got the idea that she was looking for excuses to stay in Sarasota.

“It’s a restaurant, too,” she told him. “I’ve heard it’s pretty good. So if you’re looking for someplace to eat tomorrow night—”

“I’ve got a situation that I’m in the middle of dealing with,” Max reminded her.

“Right,” Gina said, more hurt than anger in her eyes. “But in the event that your situation gets handled and anything I’ve said today makes even the teeniest amount of sense... I’d really love for you to hear me play.”

Max could do nothing but stand there. If he said anything at all, she’d take it as encouragement. And telling her that he wouldn’t go, that he didn’t want to go, would be too cruel. Even for him.

“You could sneak in the back,” Gina continued when he didn’t respond. “No one would have to know you were there. I wouldn’t have to know you were there. That’s the way you like to do it, right?”

Max glanced at Jules.

Gina turned to Jules, too. “Did you know Max likes to follow me—to keep tabs on me? Isn’t that kind of creepy?”

Jules looked at Max. “Uh, actually, it’s one of our team’s policies to monitor the whereabouts of individuals who have spent considerable amounts of time with known terrorists. It’s both for their protection and—”

Gina laughed in disbelief. “To make sure they haven’t crossed to the Dark Side? Yeah, Babur Haiyan and Alojzije Nabulsi were really trying their best to convince me to join their cause. Max witnessed the finesse of their recruitment techniques.” She laughed again—forced joviality. “Of course, maybe you did, too. Maybe everyone in this office watched.”

And Max realized what it must have taken for Gina to come walking in here. To look Laronda in the eye and announce her name—just in case anyone hadn’t already recognized her.

She turned back to Max. “If you really are wasting taxpayers’ dollars stalking me for those reasons, you’re in an even worse situation than you think.”

“I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” Max said quietly. “But—”

“You have to take that call,” she finished for him. “Right. It’s been nice seeing you, Max. But I’ve got to confess, you look tired. Whoever she is, she’s not taking very good care of you.”

She caught the look that Jules flashed in Max’s direction, and she laughed. “I’m almost done. I’m going. I’m not going to flip out. I just want to say, don’t worry. I’m a week away from being out of your hair for an entire year. I’m leaving the country. Of course, you probably already know that, right?”

Max didn’t. “You’re... Going where?”

She was going out the door. “Good-bye, Max.”

“This is not a good time to be an American abroad.” He followed her to Laronda’s desk.

She didn’t look back.

Jules did. I’ll find out where she’s going, he mouthed to Max.

Laronda was watching him out of the corner of her eye—probably because he was gritting his teeth so hard little pieces of enamel were shooting out of his ass.

“Kelly Paoletti on line one,” she reminded him in a whisper.

Max went into his office to take the call, slamming his door behind him.

“I’ve just had this incredible epiphanal moment.”

It was Sam Starrett.

Calling her again, from his cell phone.

“Are you ready to surrender?” Alyssa asked.

“Hell, no.”

“Then I don’t want to hear it.” She hung up.

Her cell phone rang again. She opened it and silently put it to her ear.

“Hey,” Sam said. “I’m serious.”

“I am, too,” she countered. “I’m not going to play, Starrett. I’m not going to talk to you while you sit somewhere, watching me, jerking off.”

“Jesus, Locke, you really think I’m some kind of deviant, don’t you?” It was possible she’d actually offended him.

“I meant that figuratively.” She hadn’t. Not really. But she’d said it only because she was pissed off because the earliest this could end was tomorrow.

It was going to be one very long night, and she was tired of sitting here, in her car, near the Dumpster behind the Sunset Motel.

“I’m not going to lie and say that I haven’t done my share of thinking about you while I’m... self-entertaining,” he said, “but I’d never do that while you’re on the other end of the phone. God.”

Alyssa sighed. She supposed it was her fault this conversation had turned in this direction. “You know, I’m just not interested. I’m tired and I’m hungry and if you really want to talk to me, you can come sit right here, in this car with me.”

She hung up.

Her phone rang again.

“My father was a racist son of a bitch who used to beat the shit out of me just for being friends with Noah.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Alyssa said, and hung up.

The phone rang.

“Of course, he used every excuse in the book to beat the shit out of me. After he died, I found this huge collection of child pornography in his house. And suddenly some of those beatings made a little more sense. You know, his belt against my bare ass...”

Oh, God! “You’re making that up just to keep me on the phone,” Alyssa accused him. But she couldn’t make herself hang up on him again.

“I wish,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made her heart go into her throat. Oh, Sam. “I was shocked when I saw it—his collection—because he was such a man’s man, you know? A rednecked good ol’ boy. But it was like, holy fuck, Pop. Some of that stuff he had made me sick to my stomach even just to glance at, and it was clear he’d, um...” Sam laughed in disgust. “He’d worn some of it out, if you know what I mean. Apparently dear old Dad was really into little boys. Who knew?”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked even though she already knew the answer. He wanted to make it impossible for her to hang up the phone. This was Sam Starrett’s version of 1001 Arabian Nights.

“I want you to know me,” he told her quietly. “I want you to know why I get my back up when you imply that I’m a rednecked good ol’ boy—that I’m as narrow-minded as my father was. Because I’m not. You know what it was that I finally figured out tonight?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “That Roger Starrett Senior was merely my sperm donor. My real father was my uncle Walt. Walter Gaines. I learned all I need to know about being the best father in the world from him. About fucking time I realized that, huh?”

Alyssa closed her eyes. She could tell from his voice that he was sitting, or maybe even lying down. She knew quite well that he wasn’t just using this conversation as a means to distract her while he slipped unnoticed into the Sunset Motel.

“With my biological father, love was conditional,” Sam continued. “If only I could get good grades, if only I could hit a home run, if only I could cut the lawn exactly the way he liked it cut. Of course I never could, and I finally stopped trying.

“But Uncle Walt, he was... unswerving in his love for me. He hated when I got into a fight, but he’d patch me up, and he’d give me a hug and he’d tell me how proud he was of me because he knew how hard I’d tried not to hit that other kid. I wish he was still alive so you could meet him.”

“Okay,” Alyssa said. “I’m talking to you. I didn’t hang up. You’ve won. Now please admit you’re making up that stuff about your father.”

Sam rattled off a phone number. She scrambled for her pen. “Five oh eight, what?”

He repeated it.

Area code 508 was outside of Boston. He’d once told her that was where his sister lived.

“It’s Lainey’s number,” he told her. “She was with me when we cleaned out Pop’s house. Call me back, okay?”

This time he was the one who cut the connection. Alyssa glanced at the clock on the dash. Almost 2100. It wasn’t too late to call. Of course, he could be bluffing. He didn’t really think she’d call his sister. Or did he? She dialed the number.

“Hello?” A man picked up.

“May I please speak to Elaine?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Alyssa Locke. I’m a... a friend of her brother’s.”

She waited while Sam’s brother-in-law put his hand over the telephone receiver and had a muffled conversation, probably with Elaine.

Then a woman’s voice. “Do you know where my brother is?” Elaine’s Texas drawl was slighter than Sam’s. She sounded a little like Holly Hunter.

“Florida,” Alyssa told her. “Probably somewhere in the Gainesville area.”

“Well, if you see him, will you tell him that the FBI is looking for him? Did you know that? There’s some kind of warrant or something out for him. Tell him his sister says to stop being an idiot, to turn himself in before someone gets hurt!”

“He’s aware of that,” Alyssa said. “And I am, too—I’m with the FBI myself. I doubt I’m going to see him, but I have been talking to him on the phone. If you want, I’ll pass along your message.”

“You’re with the—”

“I’ve been friends with Sam for a few years now,” Alyssa said. “We’ve been...” She cleared her throat. “Intimate at times and—”

“Oh, my gosh,” Elaine said. “You’re her, aren’t you? The one Ringo—Sam—told me about. He wouldn’t tell me your name. Just that there was this woman and... well. He said something about the FBI and... you’re her.”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said. Sam had told his older sister about her? “I guess so.”

“So now you’re back, messing with his head some more?”

Okay. Hostile witness. “I’m trying to talk him into turning himself in—just as you asked. I’ve been speaking to him on the phone,” she said again. “I’m doing the best I can in a bad situation. A terrible situation, if you want to know the truth. This is hard for me, too. Did your brother happen to mention that he stopped seeing me in order to marry Mary Lou?”

Elaine laughed her surprise. “No.”

“Yeah, well, ask him about that next time you see him.”

There was a pause, and then, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“No,” Alyssa said.

Elaine was silent for longer this time.

“I’m on your side, Elaine. I really don’t want Sam to do something stupid and end up getting himself killed. So I need your help. I need to ask you about something that he just told me. It’s something you might not be too comfortable talking about, something about your father.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Elaine said. “He actually told you about Pop?”

“He said when the two of you were cleaning out his house, after your father died, that you found some pictures—”

“Pictures, videos, magazines. Enough to fill an entire trunk,” Elaine told her. “I can’t believe Ringo told you. Shoot, he won’t even talk to me about it. What did he say?”

“Just that he found the pictures and...” Oh, Sam. Alyssa closed her eyes. “Do you think there’s a chance that your father...?”

“Abused him sexually?” Elaine said the words that she couldn’t. “No. I know he didn’t. I mean, you should have seen Ringo’s face when we found that stuff. He was as stunned as I was. The first thing we did was look at each other and go, ‘Did Pop ever touch you when we were kids?’ But Pop never came near me, and Ringo told me the exact same thing.”

“And you believed him?” Alyssa asked.

“Yes,” Elaine said. “Although to be honest, in hindsight, knowing what we now know, I really do think Pop got off—really got off, you know, in an icky way—sexually, I mean—on beating the crap out of Roger. Ringo. He was Ringo back then—he started calling himself that around the time he went into eighth grade, although my father never called him that. But he was adamant about being Ringo. He refused to answer if someone called him Roger, which really pissed my father off. But the beatings stopped when Ringo got bigger—which happened kind of all at once, one summer. You know the way boys somehow just grow? To tell you the truth, I don’t know if Pop backed off because Ringo was big enough to start fighting back, or if it was because he wasn’t a little boy anymore, so Pop no longer got off on hitting him.”

“Oh, God,” Alyssa said.

“I know that Ringo’s more comfortable classifying Pop’s beatings as just plain physical abuse. I think he gives Pop more credit than he’s due for keeping his hands off of us—you know, for being strong enough not to do something he was really obviously pulled toward doing? But I also think Ringo knew all along—on some level—that the way Pop treated him was wrong, that there was something, I don’t know, sick to it, I guess. I mean, why the name changes? First Ringo and now he calls himself Sam? Who knows who he’ll be after he leaves the SEALs. I think he really didn’t want to be Roger, you know? He didn’t want to be that kid whose father treated him like that.” She paused. “It probably doesn’t help that Roger was Pop’s name, too.” Elaine laughed softly. “I still can’t believe he told you about this.”

“I can’t, either,” Alyssa said. “Thank you for being so candid.”

“Do you love him?” Elaine asked. Alyssa was silent, and Elaine laughed again. “Sorry. Not my business. Please tell him to be safe. Tell him to turn himself in. And tell him I love him.”

“I will.” Alyssa thanked her again and cut the connection.

Did she love him? Alyssa had so much bad history with Sam. She’d once been right on the verge of loving him more than she’d ever loved any man. But there was so much pain and hurt, so many stupid mistakes made. Could she really let herself get close to him again without bringing all that bad luggage with her? How could a relationship ever survive with all that excess weight?

In all honesty, she was afraid to get too close to Sam.

But Ringo—this Ringo she was hearing about, this former little boy who had been so naturally open-minded to seek out fatherly love from a black man despite the fact that his own father was a racist—Ringo, who had endured his father’s sadistic treatment to the point where he’d chosen to change his name, to become someone different... It wouldn’t be very hard at all to fall in love with him.

Gina closed her eyes as the FBI agent—Jules Cassidy—drove south down Tamiami Trail.

“So where are you going?” he asked. “To Europe?”

“I really blew it, didn’t I?”

She’d done really well in Max’s office—right up to the point where Max had ended the conversation. Tried to end the conversation. And then she’d lost the upper hand. God, she had a stomachache.

“Well, you’ve got him terrified,” Jules said with a laugh. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t know Max was capable of feeling terror.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. In the changing light from the streetlamps he looked too young to be an FBI agent. “How long have you worked with him?”

“A coupla years.” He was incredibly good looking. Like, total male perfection—to the point that he was prettier than she was. Of course, some people didn’t think she was pretty at all, with her giant nose that broadcast her Italian roots and a mouth that was too big for her face, which was remarkable since her face was pretty damn big. There wasn’t much of her that could be called petite. Her ears, maybe. Yeah, she had little, delicate, feminine ears. Which were nearly always covered by her hair.

“Were you with him in Kazbekistan?” she asked.

He glanced at her with eyes that were impossibly sensitive, eyes that were surrounded by thick dark lashes. “I was, but I wasn’t in the surveillance room when you were raped.”

Whoa. Someone who actually used the R-word. And without hesitating, flinching, or stuttering. The relief was remarkably intense.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It must suck, huh? The way people dance around it. And meanwhile the elephant in the corner of the room gets bigger and bigger....”

“I love you,” Gina said. “Will you marry me?”

Jules laughed.

If he was perfect in repose, then with that smile he was perfection squared. And still, he didn’t hold a candle to Max. Max, with his crooked nose and lines of fatigue and those dark brown eyes that could see inside of her and touch her soul...

“I’m tempted,” Jules said, “if only to piss Max off.”

“Yeah, like he’d care.” Sending her home with this man—handsome, no wedding ring on his left hand, and far younger than Max—was a definite message to her. Go play with someone your own age.

Jules gave her another glance. “Did you know that in K-stan he put his fist through the wall?”

She laughed. “Max?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It was the night before the ca-ca hit the fan. He knew trouble was coming and he wanted to go in, take down the plane right then, but Washington said wait. It was a direct order, and he went apeshit, if you’ll pardon my French—but there’s really no better way to describe it. He completely lost it. Punched the wall.” He gave her another glance. “He does that sometimes.”

Max. Losing it. It was hard to imagine. Or was it?

“How can I make him lose it?”

“Sweetie, I think you probably came pretty damn close today.”

Close wasn’t good enough. She wanted... She wanted him in her life.

“Do you know his girlfriend?” Gina asked, bracing herself for information she really didn’t want to know. Max laughing and talking to someone else, with his arm around her shoulders, his eyes lit with that fire that burned inside of him, 24/7...

For some reason Jules laughed at her question. “If he told you he’s got a girlfriend, he was using a liberal dose of hyperbole. He’s not seeing anyone right now. At least not in the traditional sense.”

Not in the... “Is he gay?”

Jules glanced at her. “That’s not what I meant. But no, he’s definitely not gay. You know, I really shouldn’t be talking about him.”

“What did you mean, then? By ‘not in the traditional sense’?”

Jules was silent.

“Please,” she said.

He sighed. “There is someone,” he told her. “She and Max have been circling each other for a few years now. It hasn’t gone anywhere and it’s not going to go anywhere because she works for him and Max doesn’t have it in him to break the rules like that, and I’m not going to tell you anything more because I hear myself saying this and it sounds like gossip and we don’t gossip about our coworkers and we especially don’t gossip about our boss. That’s kind of like gossiping about God. It’s just not done by anyone who wants to stay with him in the Garden of Eden. Which I do. Very much so.”

“People say he’s the best negotiator—”

“He’s the best, period,” Jules interrupted. “He’s brilliant, he’s fair, he’s loyal, he’s unstoppable. He practically lives in the office because he cares about what we do. He’s driven, not just by ambition but by conviction. He’s the best team leader I’ve ever worked with because he leads from the front. I would do anything to stay on his team. And I would do anything he asked me to do. Anything. Including die.”

He was actually serious.

They rode in silence for a while. But as they pulled up to a red light, Gina couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “Her name’s Alyssa, right?”

Jules looked at her, a blandness in his eyes. It was a case of too little reaction—he was working too hard to hide it, which meant there was definitely something to hide.

“You don’t need to answer that. I asked around about a year ago.” Gina had actually called the older sister of a friend. The sister worked in the Pentagon and had met Max Bhagat several times. Apparently, at the time, there was gossip raging about Max and someone named Alyssa. “Do you know her? You don’t have to say anything. Just nod. Yes or no.”

Jules just laughed as the light turned green.

Gina took that as a yes. “Is she really as amazing as people say?”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, if I tell you, will you tell me where you’re going overseas?”

Gina made a raspberry sound at that. “I can’t believe Max didn’t already have my full itinerary before I even made up my mind to buy the plane ticket.”

“Well, he doesn’t, but he will get it,” Jules told her. “It’ll just make it that much easier if you give me an idea of which hemisphere you’ll be visiting.”

“I’m not going to help him stalk me. If he wants to check up on me, he can do it the way normal people do—by calling me up and asking how I’m doing.”

“Max isn’t normal people,” Jules reminded her. “Which way here? Left or right?”

“Left.” Her motel was just down the road. “Then on the right hand side.”

He pulled into the parking lot, leaning forward to look at the place out of the front windshield. He didn’t say a word, but she knew what he was thinking as he saw that the access to the rooms were through sliding glass doors. To someone whose world was made up of terrorists and criminals, security here probably looked a little lax. Max, for sure, wasn’t going to be happy when Jules gave him his report. And Gina was certain that, after Jules returned to the FBI office, there would be a report.

He held out a business card. “I’m here if you need anything.”

She looked at him. He’d said he’d do anything Max asked. “Anything?”

He held her gaze. “Sweetie, I’m adventurous and I like you very much. I could probably force myself to swing your way for a night and make it lots of fun for both of us, but I really doubt that’s what either one of us needs.”

Whoa. “You’re...” He was looking at her as if he were waiting for something. She said the word. “Gay.” Most people probably talked around it. And boy, did she know how that felt.

“Thank you.” It was no coincidence that he was echoing her very words to him. “Although my elephant is different than yours. Mine’s bright purple and I like to lead him around on a leash and introduce him to people by name.”

Gina nodded. “Well, this really sucks. Our marriage is going to need an awful lot of work.”

He laughed.

“Thanks for the lift.” She opened the car door, and he reached over and put his card in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “I’m not going to need that,” she told him.

“I was thinking that maybe you had a brother you could introduce me to.”

Gina laughed. “Yeah, I’ve got three, but you definitely don’t want to go near them.”

“You can’t be sure. The family’s often the last to know.” Jules got out of the car, too, and spoke to her over the top. “You know, Gina, there are places on the other side of the island that have internal access rooms. You know, like a real hotel? It’s much safer for a woman staying alone.”

She fished in her pocket for her key. “But I like this place. I’m feet from the beach, I can afford it without maxing out my credit card, and I’m perfectly safe. But you can tell Max that you tried your best to talk me out of staying here.” She unlocked her hotel room door, slid it open. “Good night.”

As she closed the door and then shut the curtains, he was still standing there. But a few minutes later, when she went out to take a walk on the beach, he was gone.

Sam sat in the car he’d picked up for a buck and a half at one of Jon Hopper’s rival used-car dealers on the other side of town, and waited for his cell phone to ring.

He was parked in the Wendy’s lot, with a clear view of the exit ramp off the interstate. It was the exit to take when driving from Orlando to the Sunset Motel.

Beth Weiss, the morning desk clerk, wasn’t back from her trip to Orlando. As far as her roommate could guess, she was making the drive in the morning and going straight in to work. And no, she didn’t know where Beth was staying in Orlando. It wasn’t at a hotel—it was with some friend from college.

The straight-to-work thing complicated life a little, considering Alyssa and her gang were still staked out around the Sunset Motel.

If Sam didn’t spot Beth’s blue Ford Focus—with South Carolina plates, thank you, roommate—before she got to the motel, Alyssa would talk to her first. And warn her not to talk to anyone else—like Sam—about the details of the case.

It wouldn’t be long, if it hadn’t happened already, before someone—the nosy desk clerk, the motel manager, Beth’s roommate—brought to Alyssa’s attention the fact that someone had called, looking for Beth. Alyssa would know instantly that it was Sam. And Beth’s lips would be soldered shut.

Although, if she were anything like her roommate, that would be pretty hard to do. The roommate was a talker. She’d told him that Beth always stopped for coffee and doughnuts on her way into work. Sam was hoping that this morning would be no exception, and that he’d be able to intercept her there.

Of course, there were two Dunkin’ Donuts and a Krispy Kreme to choose from between the interstate and the motel—he’d driven the area until he knew it like the back of his hand—so he’d have to start following her right here at the exit ramp.

Beth wasn’t known for arriving to work early, so it was more than likely Sam had a solid seven to eight hours before he had to be watching for her in earnest.

What he really had to do—particularly after a day filled with shopping, not his favorite thing—was to get some sleep. Problem was, the sound of his phone not ringing was keeping him wide awake.

It was entirely possible that Alyssa wasn’t going to call him back. Even after everything he’d told her.

He opened his phone, checking to see that he still had service out here, checking to see if the charger he’d just bought and plugged into the cigarette lighter was working. He did, and it was.

Which meant Alyssa wasn’t calling him because she didn’t want to call him. Not because she couldn’t.

And then, Hallelujah, it rang. But the number displayed on the screen was...

“Donny?” he said into his phone.

“Sam, the game’s almost half over.”

Aw, shit, he’d completely forgotten that he’d made tentative plans to watch the Padres get trounced by the Mets tonight with his crazy-ass next-door neighbor back in San Diego.

“Oh, man, Don, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have called you. I’m still in Florida.”

“How are Mary Lou and Haley?”

“Well, I think they’re probably just fine.” Sam couldn’t tell Donny the truth. The man was quite literally crazy. Seriously mentally ill.

Don DaCosta had missed his friendship with Mary Lou and Haley something fierce when they’d left San Diego. Sam had felt responsible and started bringing the shut-in his mail and dropping off food—little things that Mary Lou had previously done for the guy. Sam had started dropping by Donny’s house, too, because despite the fact that he sometimes wore an aluminum foil covered hat to keep the aliens from reading his mind, he was pretty smart, with his own kind of sideways sense of humor.

Sam actually looked forward to seeing Donny a couple of times a week. Watching football, basketball, hockey, and now baseball.

It was ironic, really. Ever since WildCard and Nils had both gotten married and started spending so much of their free time in their own little perfect worlds with their families, Sam’s two best friends were a homosexual—Jules—and a nutjob—Donny. It was pretty freaking amazing. But tolerance, as Jules would say, was a wonderful thing.

“You remembering to take your medicine, Don?” Sam asked now.

“Yes, but...”

But was never a good word to hear from Donny’s lips. Sam braced himself.

“I saw him again,” Don admitted. “The alien.”

Sam’s call waiting beeped. Oh, freaking perfect. It figured Alyssa would call right now. But there was no way he could hang up on Donny or even put him on hold when he was using the A-word.

“Which alien is that?” he asked, reaching down deep for the patience he was going to need in order not to sound frustrated. Or, worse, to laugh.

“The one who used to watch me from your driveway. He used to hide behind Mary Lou’s car.”

“And he was back? In my driveway?” Jesus God. Sam realized what he was hearing. He’d heard it before, but it suddenly had an entirely new meaning.

His neighbor had seen someone lurking around Mary Lou’s car. The car she’d used to get to her job. On the Navy base. Where a weapon with her fingerprints on it had been smuggled in and used to try to kill the President.

Sam worked hard to keep his voice relaxed, light. “Donny, how long ago did you first see him? You know, hiding behind Mary Lou’s car?”

Time could sometimes be a tough concept for Don. “Oh, gee...”

“I guess it must’ve been back when Mary Lou was there, since you said he was hiding behind her car, right?”

“Yeah,” Don said, grateful for an easy answer. “Yeah.”

“How often did you see him?”

“Oh, all the time.”

“Like, every day?” Sam asked. Maybe the guy Donny had seen was hiding so that no one would see him going into and out of Sam’s house. Maybe Mary Lou had been stepping out on Sam with some terrorist scum right in his own flipping bed.

“I don’t know,” Donny said. He was starting to sound upset, no doubt picking up Sam’s sudden tension. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Hey, whoa, no problem,” Sam said as soothingly and as laid-back sounding as he could manage. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. His call waiting beeped again, but he refused to let his blood pressure rise. “I was just curious, buddy. If you don’t remember, it’s no big deal. Here’s a question, though, one I bet you can answer easily.” Please God.

“Oh, good.”

“You told me once that the aliens try to look human, right?”

“Right. Right. That’s right. Right.”

“Well, that wasn’t the question, but that’s good, because now we’re both on the same page. Here’s the question.” Sam paused, trying to figure out the way to get a description of Don’s “alien” without putting too much pressure on the guy. “What color... what color skin does this alien have?”

“White,” Don said. “Like mine.”

“Excellent. How about—what color hair?”

“Light.”

“Really? I mean, really?” Sam adjusted the tone and inflection of his voice so he didn’t sound like he didn’t believe Don.

“Yeah, lighter even than Haley’s. Very, very light. Shiny at night.”

A blond terrorist.

Well, why the hell not? Just because most of al-Qaeda came from the Middle East didn’t mean there wasn’t a cell operating out of Stockholm.

Unless this blond “alien” was simply some random guy Mary Lou was using to two-time—three-time?—both Sam and her terrorist boyfriend.

Sam tried another tack. “When you saw him again—was it today?”

“This morning.” Don said with an unusual amount of decisiveness before adding, “I think.”

“Do you remember what he was doing?”

“Yes.” Another absolute.

But Sam had been hanging out with Don enough to realize that the mistake was his own, and he shouldn’t wait for Don to expound. He hid a laugh inside of a cough. “Don, I really love you, man.”

Don laughed, clearly pleased. “Really?”

“Yes,” Sam said, then asked, “What was the alien doing when you saw him?”

“Oh, he was watching the flower man.”

“The flower man?”

“Yeah,” Don said. “You know the flower man. Mary Lou’s friend.”

Mary Lou was also friends with some flower man. Holy shit. Sam didn’t have a clue who the flower man was, but he didn’t want to freak out Donny who seemed convinced that he did. “So what was the, uh, flower man doing?”

“He was ringing your doorbell,” Don said. “But you weren’t home so no one answered the door.”

“So then what’d he do?” Sam asked.

“He came over and rang my doorbell,” Don reported. “But I didn’t answer either, because even though he didn’t know it, I could see the alien was down the street, watching him.”

“How come he didn’t see the alien?” Sam asked.

“Because the alien was in his car. After the flower man left, the alien drove past, really slowly. I got a good look at him. It was definitely him.”

“What color skin does the flower man have?” Sam asked, trying to make sense out of any of this.

“Brown,” Don said.

“And how about his hair?”

“Black. Mary Lou told me that he’s from Saudi Arabia.”

Well, now, wasn’t that interesting?

“Did the flower man used to ring my doorbell a lot?” Sam asked. “You know, back before Mary Lou went to Florida?”

“I don’t think he ever did,” Don said.

“You mean, he just walked in the door?”

“No, Mary Lou came outside. I think she saw his truck. Or maybe she heard the lawnmower. He was nice. I wish I could’ve opened the door.”

Don was talking about... “The flower man used to cut lawns and do yardwork in the neighborhood,” Sam clarified. He had only a vague recollection of a skinny, swarthy man with a beard and a warm smile.

“Yes.”

Oh, man. He had to get this information to Alyssa.

“So are you okay?” Sam asked Don. “Even though you saw this alien this morning?”

“I guess,” Don said. “He scared me. He looked right at me, and even pointed his finger at me. He saw me watching from the window.”

Sam had a sudden disturbing image of Don lying facedown in his kitchen, with half of his head blown away. Oh, fuck...

“Donny, I want you to stay away from the windows and doors, okay?” Shit, this was going to set Don back about ten years in terms of his overcoming his fears of alien invasion. “Don’t answer the door, okay? I’m going to call your sister, see if Mike—her husband—is back in town. If not, I’ll get your grandparents over there. They’ll come in with their own keys, Don, so don’t answer the door, okay? I’m going to need you to tell everything that you’ve just told me to someone from the FBI. Do you think you can do that?”

“Can’t you come over?” Donny asked, sounding very worried.

“I’m in Florida, Don,” Sam said. “But I promise I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Sam cut the connection and immediately dialed Alyssa’s number, pulling out of the Wendy’s lot and heading downtown.