Dear Reader,

Sometimes a story unfolds in real time; a man and woman meet, fall in love, overcome obstacles both interior and exterior, and we have our happy ending. But sometimes things don’t work out that way; sometimes the obstacles are too great, the desire bringing them together not as strong as the problems tearing them apart.

This was the case with Jade Sunshine and Court Becket, who met, succumbed to their strong mutual desire—and then realised that desire wasn’t enough to hold their union together in the face of life in a world not designed for lovers.

But had theirs been simply physical attraction, the proverbial fire too hot not to cool down? Or had there been more? With their divorce about to become final, that question lingers for both of them.

When Jade’s father is buried after an assumed suicide, Court races to Jade’s side, whether she wants him there or not. Jade and her sisters believe Teddy Sunshine has been murdered and are out to prove his innocence by capturing the real murderer. But the Sunshine sisters didn’t know Teddy the way Court did, the way all the men in the Sunshine sisters’ lives knew the enigmatic man who had been part loving father, part manipulator.

Mischief 24/7 is a story told in real time, but also a story told within that story—memories of a hasty courtship, an impulsive elopement and the clash of two strong personalities all unfolding as both Jade and Court look to the past to find their future, together.

Join me as we retrace the steps that led Jade and Court to where they are now, looking for love amid tragedy and danger, even as we race through a nonstop twenty-four hours of dangerous mischief.

All the best,

Kasey Michaels

Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author KASEY MICHAELS

“Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

“Known for developing likeable characters and humorous situations, Michaels adds an element of danger and suspense to this sexy romp.”

—RT Book Reviews on Dial M for Mischief

Also available by Kasey Michaels

THE SUNSHINE GIRLS Dial M for Mischief Mischief Becomes Her Mischief 24/7

THE BECKETS OF ROMNEY MARSH A Gentleman by Any Other Name The Dangerous Debutante Beware of Virtuous Women A Most Unsuitable Groom A Reckless Beauty The Return of the Prodigal Becket’s Last Stand

Mischief 24/7

Kasey

Michaels

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To John Edward Groller.

Welcome to the world, Johnny!

THE TIME IS NOW, the place, the City of Brotherly Love. And the crime is murder.

Murders, actually. Murders old, murders new.

Retired Philadelphia homicide detective Teddy Sunshine had been working four cold cases whenever business was slow at the Sunshine Detective Agency. He’d been conducting a routine semiannual updating of his files on those cases when he was found dead in his home office, an apparent suicide.

But Teddy hadn’t eaten his old service revolver, the police said, until after he had strangled the woman he’d been stalking for three weeks—Melodie Brainard, the wife of the leading mayoral candidate.

His three daughters aren’t buying that story. They can’t. They loved Teddy Sunshine.

One by one, Jolie, Jessica and the oldest, Jade, who had been partnered with Teddy in the

Sunshine Detective Agency, took on the cold cases and worked them the way their father had worked them, sure one of the cases was connected with their father’s death. One by one, the old cases were solved, leaving only two: the surely un-solvable tragedy of a high-school scholar athlete gunned down in a drive-by shooting, and the sad haunting case dubbed the Baby in the Dumpster.

But every answer the Sunshine sisters found seemed to raise new questions, and while the girls have felt cheered by their progress with the cold cases, they still can’t prove Teddy’s innocence.

Jade, even more than her sisters, feels a responsibility to clear Teddy’s name. But will her obsession with the old cases, old hurts, past mistakes, risk her future with the man she had always loved, the man she’d thought gone from her life after their short, troubled time together as Mr. and Mrs. Court Becket?

The clock is ticking….

SUNDAY, 11:06 P.M.

THERE WAS A SUMMER thunderstorm making it a noisy night outside the suburban Philadelphia mansion belonging to antiques importer Samuel Becket. Sam wasn’t there, however, having traveled to California with his on-again-off-again and now on-again fiancée, movie star Jolie Sunshine.

He’d invited the three Sunshine sisters—Jolie, Jessica and Jade—to stay at the mansion as long as they liked, since their family home had been damaged by a suspicious fire shortly after the death of their father. Sam’s sprawling, securely fenced-in estate, complete with a gatehouse manned by intrepid former professional wrestler Carroll “Bear Man” Yablonski, was now Operations Central for the Sunshine Detective Agency, or what was left of it.

And what was left, now that Jolie had been forced to return to California, were TV cable news journalist Jessica and Philadelphia homicide detective Matt Denby, Jade, and Sam’s cousin from Virginia, Courtland Becket. Court, owner of an almost embarrassing empire of five-star hotels, among his other assets, had flown immediately to Philadelphia when he’d heard about the alleged suicide of Teddy Sunshine. He wasn’t going anywhere as long as Jade needed him. Even if she said she didn’t.

Jade closed her cell phone with a snap and looked blankly at her ex-husband as he entered the living room. “I don’t believe it.”

Court, casually elegant in belted, pleated tan slacks and a form-fitting navy pullover too expensive to sport a label, tipped his head to one side inquiringly, and then headed for the bar in the far corner of the large room. “For the sake of harmony, neither do I. Ginger ale for you, right? Considering the tone of your voice, however, I think I’ll have a beer. Oh, and what don’t I believe?”

“Jessica, of course,” Jade said, thinking about her baby sister, who had left the house not four hours ago on what she had called a mission. “Poor Matt.”

“Poor Matt? That doesn’t sound good.” Court returned to the conversation area with their drinks and sat himself down on the facing couch. “When we discussed this earlier, I thought the idea was that your sister was going to give him some space. What was it she was going on about? If you love someone, let him go, et cetera, et cetera? In which case, might I point out, you obviously adore me.”

“Not now, Court, please,” Jade said, getting to her feet and smoothing down the wrinkled skirt of her simple shirtwaist cotton dress. She was bone-weary and definitely rumpled. Only Court could still look fresh, and heart-crushingly handsome, this late in the day. Or maybe it was a gift bestowed only upon those who were born to generations of money.

Not that she wanted to think about that right now, either. She needed to pace, to work off some of the tense energy that had driven her these past weeks. Not even two weeks, in fact, since she’d come home to find Teddy’s body in his office, the back of his head blown off and his service revolver on the floor beside his desk. And yet sometimes it felt like an eternity. “The bottom line is, Jessica and Matt are together again, how I don’t know.”

“You’re talking Jessica when you say you don’t know, right? As to that, Sam and I have a theory that might apply here,” Court said, speaking of his absent cousin. “We’ve decided that your baby sister is a witch. The good, G-rated, pretty, blond, nose-twitching kind. But still a witch.”

Jade smiled in spite of herself. “You and Sam might have a point. In any case, they’ve gone off somewhere together. To celebrate before the rest of the world knows anything, which they will, soon, from coast to coast and in several large foreign cable markets—and that’s as close to a direct quote as I think I can get. She won’t say where they’ve gone, but she did say to hold the fort and that they’ll be back tomorrow night sometime.”

Court took a long pull on his beer, then smiled up at Jade. “Gone? Really? Let’s do roll call, Jade, all right? Sam and Jolie? In California, getting ready to fly to Ireland to shoot your sister’s next movie. Matt and Jessica? Whereabouts unknown, although the words hotel suite with a king-size bed and room service seem to be one fairly plausible conclusion. They should have called me and I could have arranged for the penthouse downtown.”

Jade winced inwardly. She remembered that penthouse very well. She tried to cover her sudden discomfort by saying brightly, “Ah, but then we’d know where they are, and I don’t think Jessica wants anyone to know.”

“Good point. In any case they’re gone, they’re not here. Jessica took our new friend Ernesto home earlier, where he is even now packing to leave for college on Tuesday. Mrs. Archer has the weekend off, although she may have come back by now. Still, her apartment is pretty isolated. Bear Man is in his gatehouse at the end of the drive, most probably standing in front of a mirror as he strikes a few muscle-popping poses. Leaving this very large house—and you and me. For the first time since we got here, Jade, I think I like the odds.”

It was tiring, always fighting Court—fighting herself actually—so Jade gave in. “You forgot Rockne,” she said, smiling as Teddy’s beloved, aging Irish setter snored in front of the cold fireplace. “He’s my chaperon-slash-bodyguard. Rockne! Sic him, boy!”

Rockne’s left ear twitched a single time, but his eyes didn’t open.

“I suppose you could go see if Mrs. Archer is available. She’s probably deadly with a rolling pin at twenty paces,” Court suggested. “What do you say, Jade? Can we put the cases to one side for one night? Just one?”

Jade returned to the couch and sat down, not to agree with Court, but to reach for the file folders that had been piled on the coffee table. “We’re getting so close, Court. I mean, taking the process of elimination into account, I should be able to wrap this all up in a few days.”

“You’re going to wrap this all up in a few days? Just you? Who solved the case of the Vanishing Bride?”

“Jolie and Sam,” Jade said, shifting the manila folders on the tabletop. “With a lot of help from Teddy, who nearly had the whole thing wrapped up before he… before he was murdered.”

“Steady, Jade,” Court said, leaning across the table to squeeze her fingers. “Let’s move on. And the Fish town Strangler case?”

“Jessica and Matt. Except that’s not completely solved, not if Herman Longstreet is telling the truth about Tarin White not being one of his victims, remember?” She put a hand to her head. “Sometimes it’s like we’re going in circles, you know?”

“Look, I don’t want to push this, but every day you look more… well, fragile. Your hands look a lot better since the night of the fire, but the burns still have to be tender. You don’t eat enough, I don’t know when you sleep, and when I think maybe you’re taking it easy for a while, I find you in the workout room running on the treadmill. You’ve got to slow down, Jade. Stop beating yourself up.” Jade pulled her hand free of his. He was wrong. The burns she’d gotten trying to put out the fire were completely healed now. It was the rest of her that remained wounded. “That’s just crazy, Court. I’m not beating myself up. Why would I beat myself up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because you didn’t come home earlier that night, find Teddy while he was still alive and draining that bottle of Irish whiskey, talk him out of what he was going to do?”

“Teddy did not kill himself!” Jade clasped her hands together in her lap because her hands were shaking and, otherwise, Court would see. He already saw too much.

“All right. Fine. He didn’t kill himself.” Court rubbed at his own forehead now, and Jade suppressed a guilty wince, knowing that he was as tired as she was. They were all tired.

“I’m sorry, Court. I know what it looked like. I was there, remember? The door to the office closed, Rockne shut outside that door, whining and agitated. The nearly empty bottle of whiskey for liquid courage. Teddy’s body on the other side of that door, slumped back in his chair, the gun on the floor beside him after he’d… after he’d been shot. I know, Court. I know how it looked. I’ll never forget how it looked.” “And the front door locked, the alarm on and no signs of forcible entry anywhere,” Court added, his voice tight, as if he didn’t want to say what he was saying, but likewise, knew that some things had to be said.

“I don’t remember,” Jade told him. “Honestly, Court, I don’t. Is that it? Have you been thinking that I lied to you all about that? About the alarm being on or off, the door locked or unlocked? Do you think I only said I don’t remember about the security code because otherwise the verdict of suicide is impossible to argue? How long have you thought I’ve been lying?”

“Not lying, Jade. Not intentionally. But sometimes we do forget what we don’t want to remember.”

“Then I should have been able to forget finding Teddy like that. Holding Rockne back so he couldn’t contaminate the scene when all I wanted to do was go to Teddy, shake him back to life. Calling Jolie and Jess and telling them our father was dead. Living through the hell of the medical examiner and a bunch of cops poking around the house for hours, all of them talking about Teddy and other cops who couldn’t take civilian life and ate their guns,” Jade said, blinking back tears. “Why can’t I do that, Court? Why can’t I forget any of that? Why can’t I forget that Teddy went to his grave labeled both a murderer and a suicide, disgraced, denied the departmental funeral his long years of service to Philadelphia demanded?”

Court had gotten up from the couch and come to sit beside Jade as she spoke. Now he gathered her close. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m a jerk for bringing it up at all. I’m so, so sorry.”

“But you’ve been thinking it,” Jade said against his chest even as she put her palm against his shirtfront and pushed herself away from him. She dipped her head forward, allowing a curtain of long, golden-brown hair to fall forward and hide her profile. “Sam, too? And Matt?”

“We’ve discussed it. But two things still can’t be explained. One, Teddy didn’t leave a note, and we think he would have done that. And two? You’re right, Jade, Teddy wouldn’t do that to you. He wouldn’t have let you find him. If he were going to kill himself, he wouldn’t have done it where you could see what he’d done. He loved you too much.”

Jade wiped her eyes with the handkerchief Court had passed to her. “Thank you. Unfortunately those conclusions come from our feelings. The cops worked with what they saw. Just the way they saw Teddy on Melodie Brainard’s front-door security cameras, the last visitor the camera picked up before she was found doing the dead man’s float in the swimming pool.” She made a face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Although dead woman’s float doesn’t sound any better.”

“You were around Teddy all the time,” Court reminded her. “Sometimes you sound a lot like him.”

“And that’s a bad thing,” Jade said, sighing, willing herself to be composed, or to behave as if she were. “Or at least, it wasn’t a good thing when I met your friends. Savannah Harper? She was always after me to tell her stories about how to shadow a cheating husband.”

“She would be, considering she’s done some fairly extensive cheating of her own on poor Buzz.”

Jade allowed herself to be diverted. “She got caught?”

“Caught, forgiven, and she’s back at it. Jade, many of the people I associate with are simply social or business acquaintances. Not my friends. You knew that. But I did pretty much toss you into the deep end with their wives, didn’t I? I’m sorry about that.”

Jade moved to return his handkerchief, but then reconsidered, and blew her nose into it. “It’s all right. It was even fun at first, listening to them, sorting them out. But I wasn’t built to be a society wife, Court. We both know that now. It wasn’t that I couldn’t fit, because I think I could, if I worked on it. I just didn’t want to fit. Country club lunches and charity balls? They’re not my thing.”

“You were bored.”

“No, Court, I was being smothered. Melting away, losing myself. There’s a difference.” She looked at him, felt a small catch in her belly and reached once more for the stack of files. Those files were the only things she could hold on to right now. Solving the remaining cold cases, praying one of them led to Teddy’s killer.

“I was a jackass, only thinking of my own happiness,” Court said, and she sliced a quick look back at him, seeing the hurt in his face.

Such a handsome man. That’s what had caught her attention at first, his dark good looks, but his innate goodness had been what held that attention. She couldn’t stand to see him hurting.

“I should have told you I was unhappy—that was unfair of me. And we were both pretty stubborn, as I remember it. You were always gone on business, and Teddy needed help back here until he could replace me. One thing led to another, didn’t it? But that’s all water under the bridge, right?”

“Is it?”

“Court, I…” She dumped several files in Court’s lap. “Let’s do this now, clear off Sam’s priceless antique table, sort out what we need and don’t need. I can’t count on Jessica having her head anywhere near the game for at least a few days, and I think we’re getting too close to slack off while she walks around with stars in her eyes.”

“We’re going to have to talk about this sooner or later, Jade. You do know that. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

“Court, please,” Jade all but begged him. “Not now.”

“Not now. That’s becoming a familiar refrain.”

“I’m sorry, Court. But I really can’t do this now. Every day that Teddy is believed to be a murderer is one day too many. If we’re…if I’m to have any future, I’ve got to correct the past.”

“Sometimes that isn’t possible, Jade. Sometimes we simply have to close the door and move on.”

“Like we have? Our divorce was final almost a year ago. Have we moved on, either of us? Would you be here now if Teddy hadn’t died? Is it time we gave up, Court, and closed the door on us?”

Court looked at her for a long moment, his deep brown eyes unreadable. “Point taken. Pass me one of those folders.”

Jade handed him one of the files, blindly, as she couldn’t read the words on the tab through the tears in her eyes, and then pulled another file onto her lap. She opened it, staring at nothing as she felt Court’s assessing gaze on her, burning into her. What was he thinking?

THE BECKET PHILADELPHIA

Two years earlier

IT WAS THREE DAYS after Christmas. Court sat at the hotel bar with Sam Becket, watching as his cousin made a valiant attempt to drown his sorrows with gin and tonic. Clearly not a dedicated drinker, his cousin, or else he’d go for a single malt, neat, and doubled.

“Tell me again why you didn’t just go after her?” Court said, thinking it might be a good idea to keep Sam talking, instead of drinking. “You know, fly to the Coast, grovel, plead, grovel some more?”

“I told you,” Sam said, lifting his glass and looking into it, frowning. He set it back down. “I don’t even like gin and tonic. Teddy warned me away.”

“Teddy. That’s the father, right? Jolie’s over twenty-one, isn’t she? It wasn’t as if you needed his permission.”

“Jolie’s his daughter. He knows her better than anyone. Obviously better than I do, or I wouldn’t have offered her money.”

Court picked up his own glass. Bottled water with a twist of lemon, as he had elected himself designated driver, even though he was staying at the hotel and that meant driving Sam back to his own house in the middle of a snowstorm. But these were the sacrifices one made for family. “I have to hand it to you, Sam, that’s unique. Here’s money—marry me. Yet slightly lacking in romance, I’d say.”

Sam shot his cousin a sharp look. “I offered her money to live on while she waited tables or whatever it is out-of-work actors do to survive while looking for their big break. She threw it back in my face. Literally.” He pushed back on the bar stool. “Damn it, Court, I was trying to help.”

“But that help came with a time limit. I remember this part. Go to Hollywood, Jolie, fall flat on your face—but eat well while you’re doing it—and then come home at the end of one year and marry me. You ought to think about a career in the diplomatic corps. Especially since, last I heard, she’s still out there and you’re still here, kicking yourself in the backside.”

“I’m done kicking myself for that one, Court. I’ve done something else since that fiasco. The dumbest damn thing I’ve ever done.”

“Dumber than the day you pinned a pillowcase to your shoulders and flew off the garage roof?”

Sam smiled at the memory, rubbing the arm he had broken in the fall into some saving shrub. “I was seven. I had an excuse. I don’t have an excuse for this one. I know a few people out there in La-La Land and I… I bought Jolie’s way into the worst movie ever released straight to video.”

“Porn?”

“Very funny. No, Court, a horror flick. You know, kids out for a night of necking in the woods, the obligatory masked madman running through those woods, chopping up teenagers with a souped-up Cuisinart or something. She had a few lines and then got some pretty good close-ups where she had to look scared and scream a lot.”

“All right, I think I’m beginning to follow this,” Court said, commandeering a bowl of peanuts from the bartender. When you own the hotel, someone is always watching, ready to supply anything you want. “The film bombs, Jolie bombs, and she gives up, comes home to pick out china patterns. So? Tell me about the flaw in this master plan, because obviously there was one.”

Sam ran a hand through his already mussed dark blond hair. “So this big Hollywood type saw her, said he’d never seen anyone the camera loved more since Julia Roberts, and signed her to a three-picture deal. The first one isn’t out for another month or so, but according to the grapevine, she’s brilliant in it.”

“Ah, hoist with your petard,” Court said, toasting Sam’s debacle with bottled water. “Or something like that. Now what?”

“Now I face the fact that I’ve lost and I’ve got to learn to live without her, that’s now what. Now I keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Burying yourself in work,” Court said, thinking of Sam’s legacy separate from the Becket family inheritance, a large import/export antiques empire that had its beginnings nearly two hundred years ago and, in the past few years, a steady increase in high-end retail antique stores. Court had leased him a large area inside this same hotel and many of his hotels around the world. “How’s that going for you?”

Sam held up his glass. “How does it look like it’s going? But enough of me crying in my gin and tonic. How are things with you? I know you just flew in from somewhere. Where was it this time? London? Paris?”

“Rome. You’ll be happy to know that your share of our latest acquisition to the Becket family portfolio includes an owner’s suite overlooking Vatican City. It’s yours to use whenever you want.”

“Sweet,” Sam said, clinking glasses with Court. “I propose a toast. To Ainsley Becket and his entrepreneurial spirit. Shipbuilding, land, thoroughbred horses, banks, developing industries. He was a man ahead of his time.”

“He was a privateer and a pirate, chased out of his own country before he could be hanged,” Court said, smiling. “Come to think of it, so are we. Pirates, that is. We just play more within the rules than he did two centuries ago.”

“Good, because I don’t think getting hanged from some yardarm is on my to-do list for the New Year. How about you? Court? I said, how about you?”

“Hmm?” Court had turned on his bar stool, his interest caught and held by the woman just entering the bar. He watched her steady progress toward him, everyone else in the crowded room fading away as if a spotlight was on her, moving with her.

She was stunning, from her unbelievably long legs to the artlessly piled honey-brown hair that made him itch to find the pins that held it in place and slide them out one by one, all those warm-looking curls cascading down over her bared breasts. The clear mental image surprised him. “A couple of days after the fact, but better late than never. Thank you, Santa Claus.”

“Santa Claus? What the hell are you talking—Oh, damn it all to hell. What’s she doing here?”

“You know the lady?” Court asked, dragging his gaze away from the woman who was heading for a bar stool two down from him. A good thing he was civilized, or he’d push the guy next to him to the floor so she could sit beside him. “Talk to me, cousin. If I’m going to propose marriage to the woman, I probably should know something about her.”

Sam kept his head down, a hand raised to shield his profile. “That’s Jade Sunshine. Jolie’s older sister. She works with Teddy at the Sunshine Detective Agency. She’s a PI, Court. And you’d have about as much luck trying to tackle a porcupine. Maybe more luck with the porcupine, come to think of it. Trust me. You don’t want any part of that.”

Court was silent for a full three beats. “Really. She’s a private detective? Do you think she’s here on a job or something? At least she isn’t a high-class call girl, which would have ruined every-thing. You know, thinking ahead, for when one of our kids asks how I met their mother.”

“Which one of us was drinking tonight? Look, Court, give me your elevator key. I don’t think I should drive tonight, so I’ll crash with you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I may have plans for that suite. Believe me, cousin, they don’t include you as a roommate.”

“You’re casting Jade in that role?” Sam peeked out from behind his hand to grin at his cousin. “I’ve got fifty bucks here that says it doesn’t happen.”

“Just go to the front desk and tell them I want you set up in a room, all right? Now, if you’re not going to introduce us, just go away. If you two don’t like each other, you won’t be any help, anyway.”

Sam slid off the stool, his head still averted. “It’s not a question of dislike. It’s just that I hurt Jolie, or at least that’s how Jade sees it. Stick to first names,” he advised quietly. “She hears Becket, and you can kiss any ideas you’ve got goodbye.”

But Court was barely listening, as he was already tuning in to the conversation going on between the middle-aged man next to him and Jade Sunshine.

“And you’re sure I can’t buy you a drink, honey?” the guy was saying, his back to Court. “Something real. Who comes to a bar to drink ginger ale?”

Jade stirred her soda with the plastic swizzle stick, the ice clinking. “I like to start slow and then build from there. In my business, a clear head is a part of the service.”

Court liked her voice. A little bit low, slightly husky. Definitely sexy. And he was pretty sure she knew it. The guy next to him was nearly drooling.

“And what is your business, honey?” the guy asked her.

Jade kept her right hand on the swizzle stick as she gracefully swiveled on the bar stool and carefully crossed those long legs beneath the short, black sheath. Court swore he could hear the silk of her stockings whisper with the movement.

She reached out with her other hand and stroked a finger down the guy’s tie. “I thought I told you, handsome. Service. You see, honey, I serve people. Should I serve you? I’d really like to serve you. What’s your name, honey?”

Court lowered his head and let his breath out slowly, wondering why the ice cubes in his own glass, and in every glass in the bar, hadn’t melted yet.

“I… I’m Harvey,” the poor sap stuttered. “If… if, uh, we’re going to get to know each other, um, better, maybe you should tell me your name?”

“Sure thing, honey,” Jade said, her hand leaving the man’s shirtfront to slide down his thigh and then onto her own knee. “I’m Lucy. Lucy Lawless.”

“But isn’t that the name of that actress who… Oh. Oh, right. I guess, in your line of, uh, work, names aren’t real. I should have thought of that. But I am Harvey. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Harvey, honey,” Jade soothed, inching up the already short skirt of her dress. Her other hand had left the swizzle stick and now rested on Harvey’s jacket lapel. “It’s a great name, Harvey. What goes with it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Court saw the bartender moving down the bar, probably to eject the obvious hooker. Court shook his head slightly, warning the guy away.

Harvey’s eyes were all but glued to Jade’s leg as she slid two fingers beneath her hem and slowly headed North. “Hubbard. I’m… I’m Harvey Hubbard. Should you be doing that here? I’ve got a room upstairs and…”

Court caught a mind-blowing glimpse of black lace garter as the blue-cover-clad tri-fold appeared from beneath Jade’s hemline. At the same time, her other hand grabbed at and pulled on Harvey’s jacket front, and an instant later the obvious summons was in his inside jacket pocket.

“Harvey Hubbard—honey—you can now consider yourself served,” Jade said, getting to her feet as she let go of him.

Harvey wasn’t too quick on the uptake, at least in Court’s opinion, but he certainly reacted pretty quickly to what had just happened.

“You bitch, I’ll kill you,” Harvey muttered murderously as Jade turned to walk away. He flew off his bar stool and clapped a hand on Jade’s shoulder a split second before Court was off his own stool and reaching for him.

Court shouldn’t have bothered. He’d already had a front row seat for the show from where he’d been sitting. In fact, he almost got his nose in the way as Jade rounded neatly on Harvey, her left arm—fingers together, palm rigid—cutting through the air like a whip. Well, like some sort of efficient judo move, anyway, but who needed particulars?

Harvey sure didn’t. He simply went down like a felled tree. It was, Court had told Sam later, a thing of real beauty to watch. Poetry in motion.

Court raised his left hand slightly and pointed toward the crumpled Harvey, and two bartenders quickly hauled the man up by his underarms and half carried him out of the dimly lit bar. Most of the patrons, intent on living their own lives, hadn’t even noticed anything unusual.

Leaving Court and Jade facing each other. She tipped her head to one side, blinked and then just stared at him as he stared right back at her. She had to feel it. The attraction, the pure, physical pull between them. But she didn’t flinch, didn’t run away. She just lifted her chin slightly and continued looking at him.

She was tall, but he was taller. Their bodies would fit together like a song, a symphony. Did she hear the same music?

Her eyes sparkled. She was very obviously on a natural high after serving Harvey—or maybe it was taking the guy down that had gotten her blood flowing hot in her veins. She probably needed an outlet for all that pent-up energy, and Court felt it only his duty as a good host to help her out there.

“Hello,” he said at last, pushing back the bar stool recently occupied by Harvey. “I’m Court Becket, the owner of this hotel.”

Her chest was still rising and falling fairly rapidly from her recent exertion. “Good for you. And you want me to leave your hotel.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I want to marry you. Which means we probably should get to know each other a little better. We could do that here, or up in my suite. There’s a fantastic view of the city skyline, including City Hall. Billy Penn’s wearing a Santa hat. You should see it.”

“That’s sacrilege—on all counts—and he is not.”

“How do you know? You haven’t looked As for the first part, yes, I am. Going to marry you, that is. Would you like me to go down on one knee? I mean, I’m game if you are.”

She didn’t move. She also didn’t look away from him. He imagined she had learned every inch of him and committed it all to memory.

“I saw Sam trying to avoid me. I’ll assume you’re related to him.”

Court took a single step forward, not quite invading her space, but close enough to smell her perfume. “His cousin. And you’re Jolie’s sister. Consider us destined, if you want. You. Me. This time. This place. Not Harvey, though.” He lost his smile. Whatever works for you, Jade Sunshine.”

Something moved through her magnificent sherry-colored eyes. A decision made? A bridge crossed?

Her voice took on a new huskiness. Low and intimate. “This isn’t a good idea, Court Becket.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, you know.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” he said, holding out his arm to her.

She slipped her arm through his. “You saw me take Harvey down.”

“I’ll consider myself warned,” Court said before they walked out of the bar in silence, toward the last elevator on the right side of the lobby, the one that served only the penthouse.

The first hairpin dropped to the carpeted floor of the elevator almost before the doors had whispered shut….

SUNDAY, 11:42 P.M.

“WHAT’S WRONG? Court? Court blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“You… I think you groaned,” Jade said, looking at him. “Is it something in that file?”

“No,” he said, looking adorably confused, or at least as confused as an intelligent man could look. “I was just…my mind was wandering, that’s all. Sorry.”

“And you tell me I need sleep?” Jade took the file that was still closed on his lap and frowned at it. “This is the Vanishing Bride case. It’s already solved.”

“Really? I guess I didn’t notice.”

Jade looked at him again, and she was surprised she could resist putting a hand to his brow to check him for a fever. “You’ve been sitting here for nearly forty-five minutes looking at a solved case?” She put the file on the coffee table and stood up. “Come on, let’s go.”

Court got to his feet. “To bed? Would it be too tacky to say that your wish is my command?”

“Yes, and we’re not going to bed. You’re coming to the kitchen with me. I think you need food.”

“Sustenance of some sort would probably be helpful, yes,” he said as she led the way into the large kitchen. “What are you going to cook for me?”

“Cook for you? Are you crazy? It’s nearly midnight,” Jade said, her head half inside the large refrigerator. “You’ll get whatever I can find in here and like it.” She heard her own words and bit her lips together, turned to look at him. “Sorry. I just had a flashback, I think. Suddenly you were Jess or Jolie, demanding to be fed long after I’d cleaned up the kitchen for the night. I had to keep reminding them that I wasn’t their servant.”

“Did it work?” Court had sat himself on one of the stools at the large granite island.

“Not in my memory, no,” Jade said, making a face. “They always asked, and I always gave in. For one, Jolie was too skinny, anyway. And Jess? She’d just look at me with those big puppy dog eyes, and I’d melt.”

“You’re their sister. You sound like their mother. Where was your childhood, Jade?”

She turned back to the refrigerator. “PB and J on white bread,” she said, avoiding his question. “Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it. And I’m sorry if I’m opening an old wound here. But you never talk about what it was like for you after your mother left. I spoke with Jessica about it the other day, and she had what she called a small epiphany. It’s her conclusion now—besides the notion that your parents never should have married in the first place—that she and Jolie were spoiled brats and that you got a raw deal. I’m betting you don’t feel that way.”

“Don’t count on it. There were times I hated them all, even as I played Frankenstein to their monsters.” Jade opened cabinet doors until she found the jar of peanut butter and set about making them each a sandwich. “Looking back from where I am now, I’d say that I played the cards I was dealt the best I knew how at the time, that we all did. Pretend I’m a teenager again, however, and that changes. At times I felt like running away and leaving them to realize how they’d be lost without me—but that would make me just like our mother, so it wasn’t an option.”

“Much better to emulate your father? Did you ever wish you’d been born a son, instead of a daughter?”

“I’ll ignore that.”

“That’s probably good. Go on.”

“I will, since you started this. At other times, I liked being the one in charge of everything and wouldn’t have it any other way. And I was in charge, Court, at least in the beginning. Teddy… poor Teddy just fell apart when he finally understood that our mother wasn’t coming back this time. I had to stick close.”

“Our mother? As in, to all four of you? You know, to an outsider, it could almost look as if you raised all three of them, Teddy included. But eventually Jolie and Jessica went to college, and Teddy managed to get his act back together. And yet still you stayed home.”

“So? I have an associates degree and my PI license,” Jade said, knowing she sounded defensive. Which was probably because she felt defensive. “I wanted to work with Teddy, so I didn’t need anything else. Jess and Jolie did.” She slid one of the plates across the granite. “Here. Eat.”

“So you didn’t have any idea of what to do differently with your life once the others were established? You always wanted to work with Teddy?”

“Who said I wanted to work with… What is this, Court? An interrogation? Exactly what was Jess saying to you when you two had your little talk? And for the record, I don’t appreciate being the topic of conversations going on behind my back.”

“I’m sensing that, yes. Good sandwich, but it’s missing something.” Court walked around the island to take a carton of milk from the refrigerator. He poured a glass for each of them and placed one in front of Jade before returning to the other side of the island. “Nothing better than ice-cold milk with your PB and J. Drink up, and as long as you’re angry with me, anyway, let’s do a hypothetical, all right?”

“I don’t deal in hypotheticals,” Jade told him nervously. “I deal in facts, evidence.”

“Tell that to someone who isn’t working these cases with you,” Court told her as he put down his glass. “We’re working with about forty percent hypothetical, and another forty percent hunch. Leaving not a lot of room for facts, if you’re adding up numbers on your fingers.”

“You have a milk mustache,” Jade told him, wishing he’d leave her alone. Leave her alone, or take her in his arms and run off with her, the way she’d sometimes wanted to run away from all her teenage responsibility. “All right. A hypothetical. One, and then it’s back to the files.”

Court wiped his mouth carefully, as if mentally forming his question, the single one she’d allowed him. “All right,” he said, putting down the napkin, “here goes. If—if—your mother hadn’t left, how would your life be different? In other words, and still the same single question, would you still have joined Teddy in his private-investigator business or would you have pursued another dream?”

Jade felt a stab of regret, then quickly pushed it aside. “Sure, Court, there was something else I wanted to do. I wanted to go out West and be a cowgirl. Right after I was the first female astronaut to step on the moon. One small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind. Come on, let’s get back to work.”

“Stay where you are,” he said, and something in his voice told her he wasn’t going to let her get away without giving him a straight answer.

“Why, Court?” she asked him, nearly pleaded with him. “Why this question and why now? What I want, wanted, has nothing to do with what happened then or with what’s happening now.”

“True enough. But someday this is going to be over, one way or the other. What are you going to do then, Jade? Run the agency by yourself?”

She shook her head. She’d wondered when he’d get around to asking this particular question.

“No, that’s not possible. Teddy was the heart and soul. I was just the nuts-and-bolts person, working the computer and hardly ever going out into the field. I don’t have… I don’t have his flair. The Sunshine Detective Agency is officially out of business.”

“Leaving you free to go out West and be a cowgirl or fly to the moon. Which will it be, Jade?”

Did he have any idea how much he was hurting her? Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away as she cleared the counter. “Neither. I suppose I’ll have to find a new dream.”

“Or tell me the real one,” Court said, finishing his sandwich. “I’m guessing ‘chef isn’t on the top of your list.”

Jade smiled at his attempt to lighten the moment. Obviously he did know he was hurting her. Yet he kept on pushing. Maybe if they’d talked more before they’d married, they wouldn’t have fallen apart at the first obstacle. Maybe…

“You’re not going to stop, are you? You’re going to push at me and push at me until I tell you what you think you want to know.”

“That’s the general plan, sweetheart, yes,” he said, following her back into the living room. “Is it working?”

She stopped and turned to face him, surprised that he had been walking so closely behind her. “A doctor. I thought I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, all right?”

Court just looked at her, his expression unreadable. “What kind?”

Jade sighed. “What do you mean, what kind? A doctor doctor. Okay, so I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician,” she said quietly. “From the Christmas I was six and got a play medical kit and practiced on all our dolls. And on Jessica and Jolie, whenever they’d let me. It’s all I’d ever wanted. And then our mother took a hike and I had to have other priorities. Now I’m edging into my thirties and too old to think about years of medical school, specializing, going through an internship and residency. A dream, that’s all it was back then, and I’ve put it away. Happy now?”

“No, I can’t say that I am,” Court told her as he reached out a hand and gently stroked her cheek. “A pediatrician. Because you love medicine and you love kids. Ah, baby, it still hurts, doesn’t it? All these years later, and it still hurts.”

She longed to melt against him, feel his arms tight around her, his strength supporting her as she let go of some of her grief. For Teddy. For everything she’d lost. “I told you, Court, medical school was only a childish dream. I’m too practical to live in dreams. I needed… I wanted to help Teddy.”

“Because he needed you. Because he relied on you. And you let him steal your dream.”

“No, that’s not true!” Jade bristled, probably because she’d sometimes thought the same thing. “My mother was gone. She didn’t care enough about me…about us all, I mean, to stick around. So maybe I needed him, too. Maybe I needed to feel indispensable to someone. Did you ever think of that? Don’t dissect me, Court. I know I’m not perfect, I know I’ve got what shrinks call baggage. But it’s my baggage and I can live with it. And we made it work, Court. Look at Jolie, look at Jessica. Look at their successes. We made it work.”

“Not to belittle your achievement with your sisters, Jade, but to hell with Jess and Jolie. I’m looking at you, I’m looking at us. But there is no us. I never really fit in there anywhere, did I? Yet there I was, at least for a little while. Jess and Jolie grown and gone, and you still here, still mothering the bright, personable, but always needy Teddy. What was I for you, Jade? Your one stab at rebellion, at adventure—at independence?”

“You’re wrong. It wasn’t like that between us. It couldn’t have been like that, damn it.” Her eyes shifted involuntarily to the left—according to

Jessica, a sure sign someone is at least searching for an alternative truth—so she quickly looked at Court again. “Don’t cheapen what we had, please, or try some psychobabble explanation to explain it. I loved you.”

“I hope so, Jade. I really hope so. I hope that, somewhere inside, you still do.” He leaned in and kissed her. On the cheek. Like they were friends, pals. Former lovers, one-time mates. “Come on, let’s do what you really want to do. Let’s get back to work.”

Jade nodded, unable to say anything, and Court took her hand and led her back to the couch, back to the stack of files on the coffee table.

He picked up the Vanishing Bride file and tossed it to the floor. “One down. What’s next?”

“The Fishtown Strangler,” Jade said, willing her mind back on the cases. The cases, and solving them, clearing Teddy’s name, that’s all that was important now. Later, when the nightmare was over, when she’d fixed things—yes, fixed things, the way she always did—only then could she think about what Court had said to her. “This is where it all gets tricky, doesn’t it? Jess and Matt found the killer, but he denies that Tarin White was one of his victims.”

“The man’s a terminal AIDS patient in Grater- ford Prison. His confession to Matt and Jess could almost be called a dying declaration. There’s no reason not to believe him. And no real reason for him to lie, come to think of it.”

“I know,” Jade said, looking at the photograph of Tarin White. “Yet the MO, on the surface, is so similar, right down the line. Raped, strangled, dumped in Fishtown. The same brand of plastic wash-line cord used to bind her wrists and ankles, everything. Allegedly a prostitute, just like the other victims, and smack inside the time frame when the Fishtown Strangler was active. So what makes her different?”

“Which of Jess’s many theories do you want to run with?” Court asked her, picking up a legal pad with Jessica’s neat notes written on the top sheet, the main points highlighted in pink. “Crazy as it sounds, I pretty much favor the one where Tarin White dovetails somewhat into the Baby in the Dumpster case.”

“I know, me, too. Tarin as the dead baby’s mother,” Jade said, nodding. “Farfetched, but possible, especially since the infant’s body had been frozen, making time of death impossible to determine. Nobody ever claimed the child, no one reported a child that age missing. With Tarin dead, who could?” She reached for the Baby in the Dumpster file. “Give me the date of Tarin’s murder again.”

After a few moments Court told her the date on the medical examiner’s report. “Does that work?”

“It’s the same year, the same summer. About three months give or take between the day of Tarin’s death and the discovery of the baby’s body. But anything else is conjecture, just another of Jessica’s theories. Let’s review what we actually know, okay?”

Court ripped off the page of Jessica’s notes and picked up a pen, ready to start a new list. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“In a second,” Jade said, shuffling notes and papers. “So much is fact and so much is conjecture. It’s becoming difficult to sort them out in my head. Okay, let’s start just with Tarin.”

“Prostitute.”

“We don’t even know that for sure, do we?” Jade asked, looking at the photograph again. Tarin White had the face of an angel, her dark eyes and dusky complexion surrounded by a halo of soft black curls. “Her former landlord disputes that and told Jessica and Matt that Tarin had a boyfriend. As in singular. Write her name, write prostitute on the first line beneath her name, but put a question mark behind it.”

“You want strict outline form, Roman numerals, that sort of thing, Ms. Sunshine, or do I just wing it?”

Jade finally smiled. “I’m giving orders, aren’t I? I’m supposedly very good at that, being bossy, Jolie says, although I’ve never really noticed. Sorry.”

“All right. And I’ll be sorry that I’m not very good at taking orders and do what you want, even as I add a second line—mother of dead baby, question mark.”

“That’s out of order,” Jade said, and then bit her lip. “No, no, that’s good. Now let’s go back to more on Tarin as Tarin, not as prostitute or as anybody’s mother. We know from her autopsy report that she had extensive dental implants, high-quality work.”

“Unusual for a street prostitute, correct,” Court said as he wrote on the pad. “And thanks again to Jessica and Matt and to one intimidated dentist Teddy found just before he died, we now know that Joshua Brainard, mayoral candidate and husband of the late Melodie Brainard—who, it turns out, is your father’s supposed victim—paid for that extensive dental work.”

“Which still totally blows my mind,” Jade admitted as she turned over pages in the Fishtown

Strangler file. “The connection is definite, easily proved with the dentist’s records, and Brainard has to know that. You’d think he’d be running scared, not running for mayor. But now we get back into conjecture. Like, Tarin wasn’t a prostitute at all. Like, her boyfriend was the very wealthy, handsome Joshua Brainard, just out of grad school, married, and up-and-coming-man-about-town back then, Philadelphia’s fair-haired son now.”

Court consulted Jessica’s notes. “While talking about Joshua Brainard, we have to take into consideration that he and his father were present at the gravesite when Tarin was buried. Jessica and Matt got the tape from her studio archives and there they were, front and center. Them, and a few prostitutes. We think we might know why Joshua was there, but how do you explain the prostitutes?”

“A show of solidarity? They assumed Tarin was one of them, because all the previous Fishtown Strangler victims had been working girls?” Jade shrugged. “And the Brainards were there because Daddy Brainard was a member of the mayor’s commission pulled together to help solve the Fishtown Strangler case. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. And to be fair, the rest of the commission was also there.”

“But that doesn’t explain Joshua. He wasn’t on the commission.”

“He was lending his father moral support, or at least I’m sure that’s what he’d say if anyone asked. I don’t know why he was there, Court. Maybe because he was Tarin’s married lover. Maybe he paid for her dental work and fathered her child and then killed both of them because Tarin was suddenly more inconvenience than potential life partner. Maybe because he’d figured out that with his looks and Daddy’s money and position, he had a big future in politics. He didn’t need the baggage, Tarin didn’t want to go away quietly, so he chose a more permanent way of saying farewell to young love. That’s the conjecture part.”

“Mixed with the facts. Like the dental implants.”

Jade toed off her shoes and tucked her feet beneath her on the couch. “Here’s another fact. With Clifford Brainard as one of the commission members, sonny boy would have had access to anything his daddy brought home from the office. Like, for instance, how the other women died. Right down to the brand of rope used to tie up his former lover, beat her, rape her and then strangle her—and, by the way, strangling someone isn’t easy. It takes time, lots of up-close-and-personal time, so strangling someone is actually pretty rare, rare enough to brand a killer. Strangling someone you once loved, someone who bore you a child, takes a special sort of sadistic bastard, Court. Except…”

“Go on.”

“Matt told me something a few days ago,” Jade said, frowning. “And he took the medical examiner’s one-page summary out of Tarin’s file so Jessica wouldn’t see it and go ballistic, so don’t bother looking for it. According to the medical examiner, Tarin wasn’t raped and then killed. She was killed—strangled—and only then assaulted sexually with a foreign object. Like, you know, the other victims were raped, so Tarin had to appear to have been raped, as well, to keep with the MO. Which is why Matt and I weren’t as surprised as the rest of you when the Fishtown Strangler denied that Tarin was one of his victims.”

Court sat up straight. “What?”

Jade nodded. “I know, I know. It sounds crazy. The other victims were raped perimortem—we know that from their autopsy reports, just like we know from Tarin’s that she’d given birth not too long before she died. Maybe a couple of months,

Matt told me. Making it possible that she’s the mother of the Baby in the Dumpster.”

“You really think Joshua Brainard murdered Tarin White in a copycat killing?” Court frowned and then held up his index finger, as if asking her not to answer him yet as he was still working it all out in his mind. “If there was any physical evidence left behind by the rapist, that evidence couldn’t differ in Tarin’s case, correct? So he couldn’t rape her. He couldn’t take that chance. But she still had to appear as if she’d been… violated.”

“Exactly. And one other thing. Herman Long-street is a nonsecretor, meaning they can’t get a blood type just from bodily fluids. That was in the police files from the get-go. You can fake a lot of things, but you can’t fake that. So first Joshua kills her and then he sets the scene, simulates the rape. According to Matt, the police weren’t all that concerned with the victims back then, as the killings were still going on and all the victims were assumed to be prostitutes. If they’d found a suspect, if a case had gone to trial, then the discrepancy in Tarin’s autopsy would have immediately become apparent. But there never was an arrest.”

“You’re sold on this, aren’t you? That Joshua

Brainard murdered Tarin White and made it look like she was one of the Fishtown Strangler victims.”

“He killed Tarin and the baby. Don’t forget that poor baby. And yes, I do believe it. Because then the rest makes sense. Think about it, Court. Teddy was investigating all these cases for years, right? He’d pretty much solved the Vanishing Bride case before Jolie and Sam took it over. I love Jolie, I really do, and I’m proud of what she did, being a complete amateur detective, but she and Sam really fell into solving that case. Teddy even had the plane ticket so he could go see for himself if he was right.”

Court shook his head. “No. We’re back to the Vanishing Bride case? Sorry, I’m not getting where you’re headed on this.”

“I’ll explain. Why wouldn’t Teddy have gone flying off the moment he thought he’d figured it all out? I mean, after all the years of chipping away at these cold cases, he finally makes a breakthrough on one of them. He had to be over the moon with his success, so why wait to see if you’re right? Why make airline reservations a week or more out?”

“Because he thought he was also close on another case? Or even better, on two other cases that had suddenly rolled into one?” Court said, and Jade wanted to kiss him. He was so smart.

“Where was Teddy seen the night he was killed? At Joshua Brainard’s house, right? Teddy wouldn’t have gone there looking for Joshua, because Joshua had some speaking thing going on in Kensington, and Teddy would have checked that out easily enough. No, he went there at that time, at night, expressly to see Melodie Brainard without chancing that Joshua would also be there.”

“All right. That makes sense.”

“I know, scary sense. What did Brainard tell Jolie? That Teddy had been stalking Melodie for a couple of weeks, right? The card Matt found in one of Teddy’s shirt pockets, the one with the dentist’s name on it? Teddy had been to see that dentist around two weeks before he died. That made the connection for him. After all these years of schlepping himself from dentist to dentist throughout the greater Delaware Valley and parts of New Jersey, flashing that photograph of Tarin, hitting dead end after dead end, he finally struck pay dirt and landed on the guy he’d been looking for. He finally found out who had paid the freight for Tarin’s pretty smile.”

“Joshua Brainard.”

“Exactly. And suddenly, dotting the final i’s and crossing the final t’s on the Vanishing Bride case had to take a number and get in line, because this was big—huge. He tried to see Joshua at his campaign headquarters, but the great man was too busy with his race to be elected to see him, so Teddy went after the wife, Melodie. Teddy was on to something, Court, he was close. Close enough to call attention to himself. And Joshua Brainard has a lot to lose, doesn’t he?”

“Do you think Melodie told Teddy anything?”

Jade shook her head. “I don’t know. The better question might be—what did Teddy tell her? Let’s switch to what we learned from the girl who shampooed Melodie Brainard’s hair about ten days before the murder. She told us about the bruises on Melodie’s neck and cheek, the ones Melodie tried to cover with makeup, remember? And then that business about that same shampoo girl overhearing Melodie telling her hairdresser she wasn’t going to take it anymore, who did he think he was…whatever that was all about. So, yes, Teddy might have told her something, and maybe she repeated what he’d said to Brainard, who went ballistic on her.”

“All of this taking place about two weeks before they were both dead. Teddy kept going back to see Melodie, didn’t he? Including that last night. He had some information or some plan we still don’t know about, didn’t he?”

“But I think we do know about it, Court,” Jade said, her heart pounding so hard she was surprised he didn’t hear it, and comment on it. She still couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed anything different in Teddy’s behavior, or that he hadn’t chosen to confide in her. When adding up her list of hurts, those two things pretty much topped the list. “I think I suddenly understand why Teddy kept going back to Melodie Brainard, kept working on her, and why he needed her.”

Court laid down the pen. He’d stopped taking notes long ago. “Feel up to sharing?”

Jade pressed a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry. I feel like Jessica, jumping to conclusions—and thank God Matt has put so many stars in her eyes that she hasn’t seen this yet for herself, not that she won’t soon, which is why I’m actually glad she’s gone right now. But I think I know better how Teddy operated, having worked with him. I think I know what he was after. If he had connected the cases, that is. I mean, the idea that the baby’s body was frozen for all those months? What other reason than to disguise the time of death, make it unlikely that Tarin’s death would be in any way connected to the baby’s death, correct?”

“Is this all coming to a head anytime soon? Like Jolie and Sam and Jess, I also don’t have my PI license, remember?”

Jade closed her eyes for a second and then looked at Court. “I’m betting Teddy was after Brainard’s DNA. The man’s staff wouldn’t let Teddy near him, so what better way to get it than to ask the little wife’s help?”

“Why would Melodie Brainard want to help Teddy?”

Jade shrugged. “It wasn’t a happy marriage? Remember the bruises, Court. Teddy and I worked a lot of divorces, have met a lot of wronged wives. He’d have picked up on Melodie’s unhappiness in a heartbeat, and then worked it to his advantage. That’s what he did so well, turning on his Irish charm for the ladies who felt neglected and abused. You’d be amazed to watch him work a divorce case. Even in a no-fault commonwealth like Pennsylvania, smart wives know that having a little leverage, be it a mistress or some iffy business dealings, can go a long way in fattening up the private divorce settlement.”

“Is this where I thank you and Teddy for not putting me through the wringer in our divorce, even though I kept telling your lawyer that anything I had was yours? Not that I had anything to hide, mind you.”

Jade made a dismissive motion with her hand, her mind locked tight on where she was going. “Shh. I’m on a roll here.”

“I’ll make a note not to get back to that subject later,” Court said, grinning at her. “All right, Nancy Drew, carry on. I’m impressed, I really am.”

“I’ll ignore that crack, too. We know the marriage hadn’t been real for a lot of years. Brainard was being all boyish and penitent to Jolie and Sam, blaming himself, their inability to have children, all that stuff. He didn’t just hint or suggest, he came right out and said it. Honest Joshua, Philadelphia’s next mayor, confessing that he and his wife were the best of friends in an otherwise loveless marriage. Jolie said she wanted to puke, except the guy is so good at coming off all boyish and sincere that she was mad at herself for disliking him. Oh, damn it…”

Court covered her hand with his own. “What’s the matter? Something’s bothering you. What are you thinking that obviously hasn’t occurred to me?”

“What if Melodie saw her chance to lord it over Joshua, and told him she’d given Teddy some of his hair, his toothbrush, whatever? No, maybe not that. That would be stupid, because then she’s smack in the middle of a public scandal. She wouldn’t have wanted that. I mean, she would have left Brainard long ago, right, unless there was something in the marriage for her. Money, position, that sort of thing. Less stupid, making it plausible, is that she threatened Brainard with something Teddy had told her, in order to scare him. Sort of an ‘I know what you did’ kind of threat that would get her something she wanted. Blackmail. People are that kind of stupid all the time. And it always backfires.”

“What would she have wanted?”

“Like maybe she was tired of playing the game of public happy family, lousy private life, and she wanted a divorce after the election and half his considerable wealth in exchange for her silence? Or maybe she was a romantic, still loved the bastard, and the demand was that good old Josh keep it zipped and come home once in a while. Maybe Tarin was the only straying he ever did—but I’m doubting it, not if he and Melodie weren’t living as man and wife all these years. The guy’s ego couldn’t take not having it, and other parts of him, stroked on a regular basis.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle of a TV cop show, do you know that, Jade? Who writes your dialogue?”

Jade felt herself blushing. “Sorry. Cop talk again. It can be a little raunchy, but it doesn’t really mean anything and keeps a person from feeling too much when facts are what we need to concentrate on. Teddy didn’t bother to watch his words around me. But let’s get back to this, okay? Does anything I said make sense to you?”

“I think so, yes. Especially the part about Melodie trying to hold what she thought she knew over Brainard’s head and Brainard deciding that his wife—and of course, Teddy—had to go. Kill one, blame it on the other one, play the grieving widower all the way to City Hall in November. The press has already all but ordained him, his wife’s murder passed over in favor of concentrating on the bereaved husband who will press on through this personal tragedy for the good of the city. Very neat, a tidy, convenient solution to all his problems.”

Jade closed her eyes for a moment. “Kills Tarin, kills his own son and then stands there as Tarin is buried, not even blinking. Nearly two decades later, another problem slams him in the chops. What can he do? So he thinks, hey, if it worked once to solve his problems, murder, that is, why couldn’t it work again? They say it’s the only thing that gets easier the more you do it—killing people. Joshua Brainard is a monster, isn’t he? A sociopath with no heart or conscience.”

“If we’re right, yes. If we’re wrong, he’s the wildly popular and lovable guy with a fistful of top-tier Philadelphia lawyers ready to strip us all to our skivvies in a civil lawsuit. Which begs the question—what next? We’re still working on that slim margin of facts up against a ton of conjecture.”

“Yes, but what if we’re right, down-the-line right, start to finish? I don’t think this can wait for Matt and Jessica to get back. We can’t hold off a moment longer than we have to, not with the news about Tarin White not being a Fishtown Strangler victim going to hit the papers at any time. We’ve got nothing to connect Brainard to Teddy’s murder, not a damn thing. We need a confession.”

“Back to Teddy. Right. Nothing like keeping our priorities straight.”

“Don’t do that, Court. Yes, back to Teddy. What happened to Tarin and her baby was horrible, but Teddy was my father, damn it. Tarin is our one big piece of leverage there and I don’t want to lose it. I think we have to confront Brainard immediately, Court. Just go right in, head-on, and slap him with what we do know, and hope he slips up, says something incriminating. We get that, and it’s like dominoes—they all start to fall.”

“Fine. With one caveat. I want to wait until Jessica and Matt get back. You said they’ll be home tomorrow night. Excuse the cop talk, but it always helps to have a badge along.”

“No, not Matt. He’s already skating on thin ice with the department, according to Jessica. We’ll do it ourselves, tomorrow morning. Unless you’d rather not go with me, and I’d certainly understand if you didn’t want to. I can take Bear Man with me. As Sam said when Jolie pulled one of her stunts that backfired on him, you have to do business in this town.”

“Now I guess I’m caught between bragging—saying Brainard can’t hurt Becket Hotels—and being a wimp and pointing out that, if we’re wrong or just can’t prove what we’re saying, Brainard will use all his political clout as mayor to drive me crazy with inspections and zoning changes and you name it every time I want to put up a new towel rack in the hotel. Let’s stick with bragging—I’m going with you.”

Jade quickly closed the file in front of her and stacked all the folders together on the coffee table. There was still one more case, the most personal of the cases—that of scholar athlete Terrell Johnson. But that had to wait. “Your call, Court, but thank you. I’m going to go upstairs and check Joshua’s official Web site, see where he’s making campaign appearances tomorrow.”

“Out of curiosity, what do you plan to say to the man?”

“All right, let’s review.”

“Please. I like to think I’m a fairly intelligent man, but I have to tell you that it’s getting so a man can’t tell the players without a scorecard. You want to be the one who tells him about Tarin, correct? That’s your opening?”

“See? You do know what I’m planning. Matt said it will be a day or two before the press learns that Tarin White was not one of the Fishtown Strangler’s victims. Knowing how City Hall leaks, knowing that Brainard’s father knows everyone down there, I’d say one day. I think I want to be the one who breaks that particular piece of news to Joshua Brainard. I want to tell him we know he paid for Tarin’s dental implants—that should work for starters—and then hit him with the rest. I’ll be able to tell a lot from his reaction to those two facts. Then I’ll pile on a little with one other piece of information—that we know he donated the plot for Tarin’s burial so that she wasn’t buried in a potter’s field like some charity case.”

“When did we find that out?”

“We didn’t. We just know some anonymous donor came forward and fronted the money for the private plot. We just say we know it’s him, and maybe he admits it, maybe he doesn’t.” She rubbed her palms together carefully as, yes, they were still tender. “I’m glad Jessica isn’t here. I’ve been sidelined long enough with waiting for these burns to heal, and then with chasing my tail trying to get somewhere with the Terrell Johnson case. I can’t wait to go at Brainard tomorrow.”

wait a minute, Jade, I think I might have found a flaw in your plan,” Court said. “Brainard isn’t in town, remember? After his father’s collapse at that political rally last week, he took the old man to some vacation home they’ve got out west. We don’t know if they’re back yet.”

“Damn, I forgot that part,” Jade said, clenching her fists. She was so ready to go after the man. “You know, I still think Clifford Brainard is much too protective of his golden child. That was a pretty convenient collapse, just as reporters were asking him questions about Melodie’s murder seeming a lot like the Fishtown Strangler had struck again. Man, when Jess lies, she lies for effect, doesn’t she? I still can’t believe she got her reporter friend to print that one.”

“You think Clifford Brainard knows his son is a murderer?”

“He wouldn’t be the first parent to protect a monster of a child. Yes, anything’s possible. But that’s a good thought, Court. We need to meet Joshua away from Daddy Brainard.”

“Cut the calf from the herd, you mean. I think I remember now that the Brainard vacation place is a working cattle ranch. Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. I’m still going to go check Joshua’s appearance schedule on his official Web site. Leading in the polls or not, he can’t stay off the campaign trail too long. I’m betting he’s back and will resurface at some point tomorrow. Breakfast at seven?”

Court stood up just as she did, his body close to hers once more. “That sounds reasonable. I have one or two calls to make, playing time-zone tag with a few investors, so I’ll be up around four. It’s almost a waste to try to sleep now, although going to bed remains an option.”

Once again Jade’s eyes pricked with tears. How long had she been holding back the torrent of tears that kept prodding her to let them fall? “Big game tomorrow, coach,” she said, trying to keep her voice upbeat as she pushed a smile onto her face. “No sex before the big game. It’s a team rule.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him the way he had kissed her—quickly and on the cheek. “Which doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate a win when it’s over.”

“As pep talks go, that one was pretty short, but definitely full of incentive,” Court told her, matching her smile for smile.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes any more than she knew her smile had been anything more than lame window dressing. Their smiles, even their banter, only covered a much deeper problem that hadn’t been solved by the two of them sharing a bed the week before, an impulse move that would only make her miss him so much more when he finally went back to his life in Virginia.

But Jolie and Sam were happy again, and Jade had met Jessica in the hallway that night last week, her younger sister more than willing to share that she and Matt had plans for the evening. Why should she, Jade, sleep alone, when Court was so close? As she’d thought at the time, what could it hurt?

Yet it had hurt, badly. She’d never felt more alone than in the days since she’d knocked on

Court’s bedroom door, let him take her hand and lead her to his bed.

“I need…please, Court.”

“I know. Teddy first. I’m familiar with the drill.”

She tried for humor. “Maybe I’m just not good at multitasking.”

“Will I always come in second to Teddy, Jade? Even now? I want you, sweetheart. I want to hold you, love you. Even if it’s only a temporary solution. We can work on the rest.”

“Can we? We still live in two very different worlds, Court. Last week was a mistake and we both know it. So are we going to fight again now? Because I really don’t want to fight now.”

“No, sweetheart, we’re not going to fight now. I already lost, more than a year ago. Sometimes I just seem to have a little trouble believing that. Maybe I’m a poor loser. Was it so bad between us, Jade? Sharing my bed again, letting me love you?”

She felt Court’s gaze on her.

It was his eyes that had gotten to her the first time they’d met, those dark, soulful, old-as-time eyes. She had fallen into them without a thought, without a backward glance.

How easy it would be to simply slip into his embrace the way she had last week, let him hold her, make love to her, even take her with him when he went home—the whole fairy-tale line of Take me away from all of this.

But she’d tried that once. Court didn’t know how right he’d been to call himself her rebellion, and she’d be an idiot to make the same mistake twice. She loved him, but going with him now would be using him, trying to build something together on yet another shaky foundation. Court deserved better from her. Maybe even she deserved something better from herself.

“Good night, Court.” Jade quickly made her way out of the room and toward the staircase in the foyer.

THE PENTHOUSE

JADE LAY intimately sprawled on Court’s chest, her legs tangled with his, her chin in her hands. “Do you know, I think you have gold flecks in your eyes. I hadn’t noticed that until now. No, don’t close them, let me see. Yes, definitely gold flecks. That’s very sexy, Mr. Becket. I think they turn me on.”

“Is that right, Ms. Sunshine? In that case, I’ll be sure to wear sunglasses whenever I’m around you. Out of concern for you, I mean. I wouldn’t want to tempt you at inappropriate moments.”

“Sure you would. You’d make a point of tempting me.” Jade made a small purring noise in her throat as Court’s hands slowly slid up and down either side of her spine. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this content, this complete. Why, they were even talking as if they had a future together, which was insane. “You’re very good at it, by the way.”

“One can only try one’s humble best. Now what are you doing?” His hands pressed her back down as she tried to push herself up and off him. “Keep moving your body like that against me, and we’ll miss hearing the knock from room service.

A man could starve around you Jade. Not unhappily, I’ll admit.”

“We haven’t left this bed in over twelve hours, Court. I need a bathroom, a shower—do you happen to have any spare toothbrushes you keep around for your overnight guests?”

“Becket Hotels prides itself on thinking of every personal comfort,” he told her as he let her go. She dragged the soft cotton top sheet with her and stood next to the king-size bed, watching him watch her wrap its length around her body. “You don’t need that sheet, Jade. There isn’t an inch of you I haven’t already seen and appreciated.”

Jade thought she should tell him he could allow her at least the illusion of feminine modesty. But once you’ve had your legs scissored around a man’s neck while his mouth and fingers took you past the point of rational thought, flew you up to a world you hadn’t known even existed, had you calling out his name over and over and over again as you mindlessly begged him not to stop, not to ever, ever stop? After that sort of carnal intimacy, seriously, what was the point?

“I still don’t believe any of this,” she told him honestly as he propped up his head on one bent arm, doing nothing to cover his own nakedness. She’d never believed the sight of a naked man was all that men would like to think women thought it was. Until now. “I don’t even know you.”

“We knew enough last night Jade,” he told her quietly. “I knew the moment I saw you. I’m going to marry you. It’s that simple.”

“Don’t say that. It… it makes me nervous.”

“I would have thought the same thing twelve hours and five minutes ago, before you walked into the hotel bar and figuratively punched me in the solar plexus.” His gaze went toward the living room of the suite. “That’s room service. The food will stay warm while we both shower. You’ll find a robe in the bathroom closet.”

Jade watched, not moving, until Court stepped, naked, into the slacks he’d worn last night and pulled them up over his hips. Only then did she come to her senses and run for the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

After all, if he thought they were going to shower together, no room-service covers would be enough to keep their food warm for the next two hours. The penthouse suite was huge; there had to be another bathroom somewhere. Probably three or four of them.

This bathroom had no windows, but the overhead lights, including a crystal chandelier that was just downright decadent, came to life the moment she’d shut the door.

Jade dropped the sheet she’d been clutching around her and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the freestanding full-length mirror in the far corner.

No, that couldn’t be her. But then, who was that rather exotic stranger looking back at her as she advanced across the room? Look at the way she moved, like a cat, sure of herself, aware of her every nerve ending, her every sense.

Not a facade, not a role she was playing for the job, the way she’d done last night with Harvey What’s-His-Name. This was real. The way she felt was real. Sexy. Her. Jade. Not Jessica, the blond bombshell, or Jolie, the strikingly different. But her, Jade. Simple, practical, no-nonsense, boring-white-bread Jade. She was looking at a sensual being, only recently awakened and glorying in newfound freedom.

Court had done this to her. A near stranger had awakened her, when she hadn’t even realized she’d been sleepwalking through her life.

Her hair was a wild tangle that cascaded over her shoulders, so unlike the way she normally wore it. Her brown eyes seemed almost smudged, but not with last night’s makeup. The darkness came from within. Her mouth looked fuller, the lips subtly swollen, pouty

She looked like a woman newly risen from her lover’s bed. And she liked the way she looked.

Jade struck a pose. Being silly, being stupid, mo-ronically carefree. Her left arm bent to cover her breasts, her right hand lowered to her center; Botticelli’s famous The Birth of Venus. Or as Jolie had called the painting when she’d nearly flunked her college Art Appreciation course, Venus on the Half Shell

Jade bit her lip to suppress a giggle.

What was wrong with her? How had she lost her mind this way? This wasn’t her. She wasn’t this kind of woman. A fall-into-bed-with-strangers kind of woman. She was responsible. Clearheaded. Dedicated. She didn’t go in for one-night stands. She wasn’t the type.

Then again, she also knew she’d never felt this good before, not in her entire responsible, clearheaded, dedicated life. Jessica, the romantic one, would say that Jade was in love, that it had been love at first sight between Jade and Court.

Which was ridiculous. Lust at first sight? Yes, that sounded more plausible. Physical attraction, pheromones, whatever, it had been an instant crash of mutual desire and need, that was certain.

The question now was what to do about it.

There was a knock at the door. “I don’t hear the shower running. Are you ready to eat? I don’t know about you, but I seem to have worked up quite an appetite.”

Jade dropped her irreverent pose and headed for the oversize shower stall. “In a minute!”

“All right. Do you like strawberries dipped in dark, warm chocolate?”

“What? Do I… for breakfast? Um, yes, sure, I suppose so. Why not?”

“Good, because I’m working up this fantasy where you lie with your head on my lap as I feed one to you, and then you return the favor.”

“Sounds, um, sounds like a plan?” Jade fussed with the taps, wondering why anyone would need so many controls to turn on a simple shower. Except this wasn’t a simple shower, not with all those extra showerheads. “Just give me five minutes and… and we’ll talk about it.”

She didn’t wait for the water to turn warm, but stepped quickly under the cold sprays that seemed to come from everywhere, teasing at her already sensitive skin. She had to get her head back on straight, was what she had to do. She had to shower, find her clothes, make up some sort of excuse and get the hell out of here.

If she didn’t go, now, she’d never want to leave. As it was, she was fairly certain that the memory of last night, of Court Becket and his bottomless brown eyes, the wild abandon they’d shared, would haunt her for the rest of her life.

MONDAY, 4:16 A.M.

“No. NOT YET, NOT YET, you idiot… don’t leave yet, don’t go…” Jade pleaded, keeping her eyes firmly closed, trying to recapture the dream. No, not a dream. A memory. Her life, the one she’d had within her grasp and then so carelessly thrown away.

She gave up and opened her eyes, silently cursing the ringing phone that had awoken her, sparing one of her choicest swear words for Court, who seemed to think nothing of doing business in the middle of the night. The least he could do was answer the damn phone.

“Four o’clock?” she muttered, aiming her outstretched arm toward the nightstand. Her fingers closed on the receiver and she pulled the phone onto the bed with her as she fell back against the pillows. “Mr. Becket will be with you in a moment,” she half slurred into the phone, praying she was right. Otherwise, she’d have to get up and go hunt Court down. And then kill him.

“Which one are you?”

Jade pulled the phone away from her ear and squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment, hoping she’d feel more awake when she opened them again. The voice was deep, most probably male and obviously disguised by one of those electronic devices anyone could pick up on eBay. Probably the same guy who had called before, the one Matt’s friend Ernesto had thought was a kid playing phone pranks.

Fully awake now, Jade held the phone to her ear once more. “Screw you,” she said, and then winced. Obviously she couldn’t be as awake as she thought she was. Screw you wasn’t exactly the snappiest comeback in the books.

“Okay, you’re the bitchy one. Jade, right? Not the actress? I’ll bet most of your callers want to talk to the actress. Too bad, but as long as I have you, how about we just chat?”

“How about I just hang up and you go seek professional help?”

The caller went on as if Jade hadn’t said anything. “Brains are messy, aren’t they, Jade? They hit that knotty-pine paneling, and then they slide down it, the bits that don’t get hung up on the pieces of skull stuck in the wood like shrapnel. No, never mind. You don’t have to answer me.

You know how it looks, Jade, don’t you? You saw how it works.”

Jade quickly covered her mouth with her hand, afraid she might vomit. Then she took it away and sucked in a lungful of air, letting it out again slowly. She had to calm down, refuse to let this guy get to her. They’d had a million phone calls since Jessica had the bright idea of putting their number on the air during her news-magazine show, asking for help from the public. What they’d gotten were whack-jobs. One good lead with Melodie’s shampoo tech, granted. But most of the calls were like this one, complete with electronic voice disguisers. So many sick tickets out there with time on their hands. “And you’d know this how?”

“How do you think I know?”

She should just hang up, but she was too angry. “Are you confessing to killing my father? Hey, terrific. But first tell me what you did with Jimmy Hoffa. Is he really buried beneath the goalposts at the Meadowlands?”

“Back off, shut down that smart mouth of yours, or else I’ll show you how I did it. I can get at you, any one of you, anytime I want. For instance, do you know where your blond-bimbo sister is right now? I do. Should I reach out and touch her, or are you going to behave?”

Okay. This had never been funny, but now it was turning ugly, and Jade was beginning to get a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, because she didn’t know where Jessica was right now. She was already half out of the bed when her bedroom door opened and Court stepped inside, a cordless phone to his ear. He lifted one finger to his lips and then motioned to her to keep talking, keep the caller on the line.

“It’s a little late at night for fairy tales,” she said as she subsided back onto the bed, her eyes on Court as he advanced across the room toward her and squeezed her outstretched hand. “Or should we just call that threat what it is—you’re blowing smoke.”

“Am I? Do you really want to find out?”

Oh, my God oh, my God oh, my God. Jade began to rock back and forth on the bed as Court put down the cordless and fished his cell phone out of his pants pocket. She knew what he was doing. He was calling Jessica’s cell, or Matt’s. Hurry hurry hurry. Make her answer make her answer.

“All right, you’ve got my attention now, so talk to me,” Jade told the caller, clutching at anything she could think of to say, hoping to keep the monster on the line. Joshua Brainard? Was she talking to Joshua Brainard? No, that wasn’t likely. What were the odds? Jess had said something about the whole world knowing something soon. Whatever she and Matt had done, were doing, might already be public knowledge. “Why are you calling me? What do you want?”

“You know what I want. I want you and your sisters to stop digging where you shouldn’t be digging. Parading yourself all over television and the newspapers, crying about your poor dead daddy. A person could get hurt sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. Your old man is dead. You don’t really want to join him, do you?”

Court smiled and held his cell phone to Jade’s free ear.

“Hello? I said, hello! Do you have any idea how scary it is to hear a phone ring at four in the morning, Jade? Damn it, Jade, talk to me, and if someone isn’t bleeding to death, I’m going to—”

Jade sagged in relief as Court pulled the phone away and walked to a corner of the room to tell Jessica what was happening. Matt was with her. Matt was a cop, he carried a gun. He’d protect her.

“Party’s over,” Jade said to the anonymous caller. “We won’t say it hasn’t been fun, you getting to play with your little electronic toy and pretend you’re a real bad guy, just like in the movies, but I’m hanging up now.” Jade climbed out of bed, her fears all turned to cold, hard anger.

She’d decided it was time she took control, control she had ceded to the man the moment she’d picked up the phone, and got rid of this squirrel once and for all. If it was Brainard, she knew where to find him. But chances were it wasn’t—Brainard was too smart to play phone tag with her. “Look, hey, before I go, let me tell you something. Call here again and I’m going to make finding and prosecuting you my own personal project. You got that?”

She slammed the phone back down even as Court took her in his arms and held her trembling body close against his strength. “Good girl,” he crooned into her hair. “Good girl. That had to be an idiot with a sick sense of humor. Matt warned us this could happen again. Not that the bastard didn’t have me going for a minute there. I think it’s that electronic disguise of the voice that makes it all sound so real.”

“That’s the whole point of it, to weird us out that way. I should have hung up the minute I realized it was a wacko with a hard-on for causing other people misery,” she said against his chest before pushing herself away from him to begin pacing, burning off her adrenaline-burst of energy.

“It’s that he had Sam’s private number—that’s what kept me hanging on the phone. This makes twice he’s called. Not your average squirrel, like Matt said, and he really had me going, too, when he started asking if I knew where Jess was. There are some badly bent people in this world.”

“Matt got on the phone with me once Jess calmed down. He said you and I are to stick here at Sam’s until he gets back,” Court told her, watching her from the bed. “They’re in South Carolina, by the way, but they’ll definitely be back tomorrow night, as promised. Tonight, actually. Or sooner, if they can get an earlier flight. Not that I hadn’t already half planned to call Matt before this phone call and get him back here, in case you hadn’t figured that out on your own.”

“I did. But I was hoping you wouldn’t do it.”

Court ran his fingers through his already mussed hair. “I know how much you want to confront Brainard on your own. I was still wrestling with my conscience when our new friend called.”

“Pretty much taking the decision out of your hands, at which point you told Matt everything. I understand.” Jade stopped pacing to look questioningly at Court. “South Carolina? What in hell are they doing in South Carolina?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you, but they’re down there meeting Matt’s mother and father,” Court said, smiling. “That’s where his dad retired when he left the force, some rural area that took them a plane change to get to, he said. According to Matt, Jess has already charmed the socks off them, even if they had to drag themselves to the airport at midnight to pick them up. I don’t understand the rush, but Matt said something about it all going public on television by tomorrow morning, anyway, just as Jess hinted to you, so he wanted to get to them first. I didn’t pursue it. They’re already planning the wedding, Jess and Matt’s mother. Oh, and Matt sounds a little… dazed.”

“I wish I’d taped her show tonight. I have a feeling it was pretty good.” Jade tried to smile. She was happy for her sister, both her sisters. Out of tragedy had come Jolie’s reconciliation with Sam, and Jessica’s meeting Lieutenant Matthew Denby could almost be seen as Teddy reaching down from heaven to make sure his Little Princess would be taken care of now that he was gone.

Leaving her, Jade, to wish she could see the same sort of happy ending for herself. But again Teddy had left her with the responsibility, hadn’t he? Just as he’d left her to find him in his—“Oh, my God, Court.”

Court was on his feet immediately. “Jade? You’ve gone white as a ghost. What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

Jade began pacing once more, her mind racing. “I was only half-awake when the phone rang, still fighting off a dream I’d had about… Never mind. It’s my only excuse. I was only half-awake and I was mad, not thinking clearly. How else did I miss it? He was trying to scare me, sure, but he slipped up, said too much. Cocky bastard, blowing his own horn. He said knotty pine, Court. Knotty pine.”

“Damn it, you’re right. I heard that, too, but I didn’t pick up on it. Teddy’s office had knotty-pine paneling. Jesus, Jade.” Court pulled his cell phone from his pocket once more. “I’m calling Matt. He needs to get back here now, even if he has to charter a plane to do it. He can do things we can’t. He might even be able to find out where the bastard was calling from.”

Jade raced over and closed the cell phone, torn between relief and a new urgency. “No, please don’t do that. He tried doing that after the first call, and it didn’t work. These guys use throw-away cell phones now and we can’t trace them. Besides, it’s already almost morning. You said they’ll be home tonight. Don’t bother them.”

Court looked at her, his expression tight. “I never thought you believed me to be stupid, Jade. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not still doing this on your own, not after that call. Not if I have to tie you to the bedpost.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m just going to talk to Brainard, in his office, in a public place. That’s all, Court. The plan hasn’t changed. What else would I do—go in there with my six-guns blazing, like we’re in the Old West?”

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, you’re not doing it. This call changes everything, and you know it. You’ll look at him, and he’ll see that you know, that you’re a real, imminent danger to him, and suddenly the target is pinned to your back. He’s talked to you now, he knows you’re no pushover. That surprise element you’re hoping for, charging in there and springing what you know about Tarin White? That’s all gone now, Jade. Hell, if he’s got a brain at all, he’ll simply refuse to see you.”

“I can play a role. I’ve done it before. You’ve seen me do it.” Jade winced, as they both knew she was referring to the night they’d met. “Besides,” she added quickly, “half of being a PI is acting.”

“You’re not Jolie. Besides, nobody’s that good an actor. You won’t let me contact the police, and

I understand why you’re against that after the way you were treated the night Teddy died, which means we’ll wait for Matt. So scratch any visits to Brainard’s campaign headquarters, his house or anyplace he might be later today giving one of his speeches. You’re not going, it’s not happening. I forbid… Oh, damn. I should have quit while I was ahead, shouldn’t I?”

Jade smiled at him. She couldn’t believe it, but she actually felt… happy. They hadn’t discussed it, but both she and Court knew what hearing the words knotty pine really meant. Just those two small words, and everything had changed. Those words meant that Teddy hadn’t been alone when he died and he hadn’t killed himself. The call also meant that they were getting close, really close, and it might have been Jade who’d felt spooked by the call, but it was the killer, it was Joshua Brainard, who was really spooked. She felt like rubbing her hands together in glee like a mad scientist. She felt like dancing a jig—which was stupid.

“It doesn’t matter where you quit, Court, because I’m still going to do what I’m going to do. You know that. I know that. That call didn’t change my plans, it just made them more urgent. We’re almost there, Court. We’re already looking at the right answers, and Brainard knows it. I can’t not confront him—we have to end this.”

“I agree that we’re close. I’ll give you that much.”

“Good. So, please, let’s not argue. Although, if you want me to yell at you, you could always try that ‘I forbid it’ line again. Now excuse me, I’m going to go shower and look over the files one last time. I’m betting we have more of the answers, more of the puzzle pieces, than we think we do, more fact than conjecture. I can’t sleep anymore, anyway. Besides, don’t you have phone calls to make?”

“I do, unfortunately,” Court said, and sighed. He looked rumpled, and worried, but Jade could see that his sharp mind was also considering the ramifications of the phone call. “He did say it. I heard him. Knotty pine. He could have said ‘the wall,’ or even just ‘paneling,’ but he was specific.”

“And, according to the decorating magazines, knotty pine isn’t exactly a big trend out there right now.”

“And probably hasn’t been since the middle of the last century. Teddy’s whole office was one big time warp. Brainard really slipped up with that one. What I’m not quite getting is why he’s making these calls at all. I mean, what’s the point?

Nobody ever backed away from something important because of a threatening phone call.”

“Maybe not you, Court, not a man—but a woman might,” Jade pointed out sarcastically. “At least that’s how a man who has no real respect or regard for women might think about it. The calls make for one more nail in Brainard’s coffin—something else that leads straight back to him. I’d say he’s afraid of what we’re doing, but even I don’t completely buy that one.”

“I understand. He’s worried, but he still thinks he’s in the driver’s seat.”

“His ego again, right. He thinks he committed the perfect crimes all those years ago, and again now. Reaching out to touch us, talking about seeing Teddy? That was arrogance, Court, plain and simple. And a man who can’t stand not being in control, not being the one giving the orders. He almost told us who he is with this latest phone call, although I doubt that was part of his plan.”

“He’s someone used to being obeyed, as well, maybe used to having his name and background pave over any potholes for him.”

“Exactly. That threat about Jessica was a sort of ultimatum—drop what you’re doing or suffer the consequences. He had control for a while, too, until I heard Jess’s voice. Then I took control back by hanging up on him. It’s all shrink stuff I’ve read about a thousand times, the ceding and taking of power. We’re not dealing with Joe Blow Average Guy here, Court. We’re dealing with a man used to being in the catbird seat his entire life, giving all the orders and getting what he wants. Which again leads right back to Joshua Brainard. He fits the bill, right down to his poor opinion of women. He cheated on his wife, remember?”

“So that’s what, bottom line, you think these phone calls have been about? The man is trying to control you? You?” Now Court smiled, but it was a self-mocking smile. “Lots of luck with that. I’m still living with the consequences of my own stab at offering you an ultimatum. And no, we probably don’t want to go there right now, so I’ll shut up.”

“Who says men aren’t intuitive?” she quipped, trying to smile. This was no time for ancient history. But the time was coming, and they both knew that. In some strange way, Teddy’s death, the old cases, Brainard’s imminent arrest for murder, they were all preludes to the main event. At some point, she and Court had to talk about the past. Only then could they consider a future.

He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “You’ll be all right? We have an agreement here? No ditching me and sneaking down the back staircase and out into the foggy, early-morning darkness, swirling your cape as you head off to confront Joshua Brainard on your own?”

“Last time I had to do a pinky-swear was with Jess, when she was eleven. Yes, I promise.”

“I’d ask what a pinky-swear is, but it’s probably a girl thing, right?”

“Pretty much. And I haven’t been entirely honest with you. I checked on the Internet, and Brainard isn’t scheduled to appear in public until seven-thirty tonight. We have all day to get through before anybody swirls any capes.”

“So Matt and Jess will most probably be back by then. And you made me go through all that business about warning you not to try anything on your own?”

Jade nodded, feeling almost childish. “Yeah. You’re cute when you’re concerned. I mean, I could have done without that ‘I forbid it’ part, but the rest was pretty nice. I, uh, I like when you care. It’s nice.”

“No, Jade. It’s love,” Court said quietly. He was silent for a moment while she felt herself longing to melt into his arms. “Okay, then. I’ll see you downstairs at seven.”

“If Mrs. Archer isn’t up yet, I’ll make us some bacon and eggs,” Jade promised as she lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave. Once Court was gone, she grabbed clean underclothes from a drawer and half ran for the bathroom, feeling the need to wash away the fear she’d felt when she’d thought Jessica might be in danger. She shouldn’t have let Brainard be the one in control, not even for a moment.

“Always be the one pulling the strings, Jade, honey, never the one dancing to someone else’s tune at the end of them,” Teddy had told her more than once when he’d explained the balance of power as it applied to the way he’d worked suspects during his years on the police force. She had the strings now, nearly all of them, Jade believed, and it was time to make Joshua Brainard dance to her tune.

Daylight couldn’t come soon enough for her, and the all-day wait until Brainard’s first public appearance at his seven-thirty rally seemed light-years in the future. Still, she had to prepare, as well as find a way to fill the hours. She’d read those damn files so often she knew most of them by heart. She’d give them one more shot, but she couldn’t face another day of doing nothing but reading them again.

She had a command of the facts now. She’d filled in any blanks with supposition and intuition. She’d practiced a killer opening line for when she confronted Brainard, sure, but after that she was prepared to simply wing it, go where Brainard took her for a while and then lead him where she needed him to go.

She’d save the Baby in the Dumpster for her coup de grâce, hit him right where he lived. No quarter, as Teddy would crow, no mercy.

So maybe, to kill some time, she’d do a little more work on the Scholar Athlete case, the one she’d chosen when she and Jess and Jolie had first divided up the cold cases. Jermayne Johnson haunted her, the sad, lost little boy still residing deep inside that huge, mostly grown-up body. If she needed closure about Teddy’s death, how Jermayne must have been longing for the same thing in his brother’s case this past decade and more.

Yes, that was what she’d do. She’d take another run at Jermayne, press him to remember more about the friends his brother, Terrell, had run with before he was killed, things like that. People knew, remembered, more than they thought they did. It was just a matter of coming at them from the right angle. You could ask the same question a dozen times and not be happy with the answer, and then, the thirteenth time, trying yet another approach, you could hit pay dirt.

Court could go with her, since he was feeling so protective of her. She had a feeling he’d be like gum on the bottom of her shoe until Joshua Brainard was arrested.

Then again, Court Becket, rich and powerful, also liked being in control. That was why they’d fought. That was why they’d both won their last argument, just as they’d both also lost it.

Jade had already begun stripping out of her pajamas when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink and stopped, approached the glass.

Who was this woman? Her hair long and straight, with no hint of curl because the curling iron had broken and she hadn’t bothered to buy a new one. When was that? A year ago?

Jade touched a hand to her cheek, her too-thin cheek. She unbuttoned her no-nonsense cotton pajamas and pushed back the material to see the hollows around her collar bone, actual concave scoops. Thin might be in, but not this thin. When was the last time she’d had an appetite?

Tipping her head to one side, Jade continued the inventory. Eyes, huge but dull. Her complexion almost muddy. She leaned in close to the mirror, tracing what looked to be fine lines forming between her nose and mouth. She didn’t wear foundation or powder. She didn’t even bother with face creams or sunscreen. And it showed.

She was only eleven months older than Jolie, and Jolie looked a good five years younger.

Where was the young, carefree Jade, the girl she had been? Where was the well-loved woman she’d seen in the mirror at Court’s hotel the morning after their first night together? Where had that woman gone?

Was there any way to get her back? Any way to get back what she’d lost?

“It doesn’t matter,” she told her reflection. “Nothing matters now but proving Joshua Brainard murdered Teddy. Nothing and no one can matter. Not me, not Court, not the past and not the future. Just the now. You got that?”

Jade turned away from the mirror, unable to lie to herself face-to-face.

Changing her mind about the shower, she returned to the bedroom to pull on cotton-knit shorts and a sleeveless top, and headed down to Sam’s exercise room, intent on running a couple of miles on the treadmill.

If only the treadmill was a time machine, and the faster she ran, the more the calendar flipped backward, until she’d returned to those first days after she’d met Court. Then, this time, she could move forward without making all the same dumb mistakes.

SOMEWHERE ALONG BOATHOUSE ROW

JADE’S RIGHT running shoe found a shallow, slushy puddle as she was forced to move to the edge of the trail by a quartet of joggers decked out in brand-new jogging gear and iPods, and carrying containers of take-out frou-frou coffees.

Joggerettes, Jade called them, not really here for the exercise, but just to see and be seen. The four women had fanned themselves out across the running trail of the east bank of the Schuyl-kill River, along historic Boathouse Row, paying more attention to the men jogging by in the opposite direction than on where they were going.

“Amateurs,” Jade muttered under her breath as, avoiding any more puddles, she redirected her attention to the asphalt. She touched her gloved right hand to her left wrist to check her pulse, and picked up her pace.

It was cold this morning, typical Philadelphia winter weather, but the sky seemed higher than it had when she first got to Fairmont Park, so chances were that the snow the TV weatherman had warned of earlier wouldn’t come.

She was good on time, her routine telling her that if she’d just passed the Vesper Rowing Club boathouse, she’d be able to get in at least most of her usual run before meeting Teddy at the diner to discuss how they were going to approach their latest insurance case.

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