An excerpt from
THE
FINAL
KILL

Alicia’s smile was tight, her eyes distraught. Her pale blond hair, ordinarily smooth and shiny, was tangled, as if she’d been nervously running her fingers through it.

As for Jancy? Abby remembered her as a cute kid with a brown ponytail, dressed in Catholic school plaids. Now Allie’s child was dressed all in black, had a short, spiked hairdo with orange and purple streaks, and a strange, staring expression in her eyes—which were so heavily made up Abby wondered how she could hold them open.

Still, Helen’s reference to Hades, whether god of the dead or hell, had been a bit strong. Little Jancy had simply become a teenager.

Alicia grabbed Abby’s hands and held on as if they were her only lifeline. “You’ve got to help us,” she said, her voice shaking. “Please, Abby. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

Looking into Alicia’s familiar green eyes, Abby knew she should be happy to see her old friend. Not only that, but she owed her so much. If Alicia hadn’t helped her, back when her own world was falling apart—

But something was very, very wrong. And some instinct—the kind that raises hairs on the back of one’s neck—told Abby that Trouble with a capital T had just walked through her door.

“Meg O’Brien is a highly skilled writer who keeps things interesting.”

—The Romance Reader on Sacred Trust

Also by MEG O’BRIEN

THE LAST CHEERLEADER

CRIMSON RAIN

GATHERING LIES

SACRED TRUST

CRASHING DOWN

The Final Kill
Meg O’Brien

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dear Reader,

So many people wrote to me about Sacred Trust, saying it was their favorite book of mine, I decided to write a sequel. The Final Kill is that sequel, in that it involves many of the same people and places.

Sacred Trust came out in May 2000 from MIRA Books. It’s not necessary to read Sacred Trust first, but if you’d like to know more about Abby’s life before this story—what happened to her two years ago, her relationship with Ben and with the Prayer House—you can order Sacred Trust by going on my Web site, www.megobrien.com, and clicking on one of the many links to online bookstores on my “Books” page. You can also order any of my books from your local bookstore.

Please also leave a note for me on my Guest Book page. I love to hear from readers, and I answer all Guest Book notes, as well as all e-mail, the address of which is also on my Web site.

With best wishes,

Meg O’Brien

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Prologue

It all began with the lilacs. The day he sprayed the poison and turned them all brown, I knew I would have to kill him.

It felt strange, getting so upset over lilacs. Even stranger was planning a murder over their loss. But what goes around comes around, and Frank Frett himself was a killer. Oh, he might have been a hardworking man, not a bad sort to his friends and coworkers. But I knew that, on his days off, he killed. He killed wildlife, fish, trees, whatever still had a breath to give. I should have known he would get to my lilacs one day.

Lilacs had been my favorite flower since childhood, and I had planted them around the perimeter of my garden shortly after moving here five years ago. There were twelve in all, having grown from two-foot stubs to six-feet high by five wide in no time. They cast a beautiful lavender haze over the daffodils and tulips in spring, and in the summer they lent a nice filtered shade to the hydrangeas and violets. I had put a comfortable wooden bench under one of the lilac bushes that I’d shaped into a tree. More than anything, I loved sitting out there in the shade on hot afternoons.

The lilac bushes also served the purpose of making the wild berry bushes along the fence behind them look more attractive. My little niece, Lolly, who is four, loved coming here in the summer to ride the horses and pick the blackberries. It was something she looked forward to every summer, and it had felt good to be able to provide this kind of fun for her. Toward the end of the summer I’d bake juicy, sweet pies from the berries and sit them on the windowsill to cool, the way my grandmother always had back home. I’d invite my sister and Lolly to come over and finish them off with me, and we’d play Scrabble amid the leftover piecrust crumbs.

But of course, when Frank Frett murdered the lilacs, he got the blackberries, too. The spray must have blown everywhere, even hitting the top of a beautiful old maple tree that used to turn a gorgeous gold and copper in the fall.

Let me be clear about this. It wasn’t so much the loss of the lilacs themselves, although that was bad enough. It was the total disregard for living things, and the devastation. By the time Frank Frett had finished with his spraying, the entire perimeter of the garden looked as if an army had come through it with a flamethrower. I have no idea how many days after the spraying it was before I looked out one morning and saw it—the otherwise green, lush garden entirely circled now by pitiful brown shrubs and trees.

I had complained, of course. I told him that he might have warned me ahead of time. Even given me a chance to argue the point. After all, I paid him a hefty month’s rent, and legally, as long as a tenant is current on the rent, the property belongs to the tenant—not the landlord.

He argued that only the house belonged to the tenant, not the land. And he hadn’t had time to cut the lilacs and berry bushes back this year. To spray poison on them was the quickest and easiest way to go.

I wanted to say that if he’d spent less time camping, fishing and killing deer, he might have had enough time left over to cut the berries back.

Oh, I know. There are far more things to worry about in life than some dead lilac trees and crispy-crunch berry bushes. There’s the war in the Middle East—whichever one is going on at any given time. And there’s South Africa. There are people being slaughtered and starving over there, and young kids here buying engagement rings with conflict diamonds in them, blithely unaware of what they’re doing, but saving a penny or two. Here in the United States, in fact, there are homeless people all over the streets of every major city.

So what’s the big deal about lilacs?

It’s only a big deal because it matters to me. It cuts me to the quick to know they’ve been poisoned, every bit as much as if he’d taken an ax to them and chopped them right down. They mattered to me. I’d waited all winter for them to bloom. Now they wouldn’t bloom for years, if ever. And Frank Frett didn’t give a damn that he’d killed these things that I’d loved.

There was, therefore, only one thing to do: I would have to kill the killer.

1

Abby Northrup wasn’t, by nature, vengeful. In fact, it was more in her nature to be at peace, especially since she’d come to live in this private little apartment at the Prayer House. There were times, however, and situations…

She took the small sheaf of papers she’d been reading and set them down on the table next to her chair. Carrying her cup of lukewarm coffee, she went into her office and sat at her computer. Opening a new document, she began to write out a plan. There was no rage in her words, no heat. Just a hard, cold resolution.

She did it as a Q & A: Where is the lilac killer now? Out in the potting shed? Or has he gone into town? And what should she use? Poison? Ah, yes. The perfect karmic weapon.

Better yet, an ax. Or perhaps a knife from the kitchen. But Sister Edna would surely spot it missing. Would she turn her in? Or cover for her? Would anyone understand why she’d done what she’d done?

The abbey bells sounded a solemn tone over her head, announcing the midnight hour. The timing was perfect. She began to jot down her plan, and drew a map of the property alongside her keyboard. Here was the garden shed. And here the stables, then the well house. Or perhaps she’d find him in the little shack on the hill that hadn’t been used in years, except for that one time when someone…

A shiver ran through her. Never mind that now.

She would go first to the stables. If he wasn’t there, she would wend her way across the field to the well house. It was on the way to the shack on the hill, so if she hadn’t found Frank Frett by then, she’d just keep going uphill.

Leaving her office, she went into the adjoining living room. There she took a gun and ammunition from the antique Spanish armoire. Quietly shutting the armoire doors, she crossed to her bedroom, where she removed her jeans and shirt and slipped on cargo pants and a plain black jersey with long sleeves. Next she strapped the ammo around her belt. She dragged her hiking boots out from under the bed, then pulled them on. Finally, she stood still for a moment with her eyes closed and her arms out, level with her chest. I am strong, she said silently to herself. I will not fail.

Opening her eyes for one quick look around, she didn’t see it at first. Then it was there, on her pillow, as if it had appeared through some ancient magic spell while her eyes were closed.

Which was foolish, of course. It was only a piece of paper. A note, put there hours ago while she was still in her office.

She stooped down and picked it up. It read:

You won’t win. Don’t even try.

2

So her quarry knew she was after him. She ignored the note, crushing it in her fist and tossing it into a corner. Picking up her gun bag and equipment, she stepped out into the tiled hall, listening for any unusual sounds. There were three floors to the old Spanish abbey, each of them with someone living on them, but it didn’t surprise her that she didn’t hear a thing. No one here ever spoke after midnight.

Across the wide, semidark hallway from her apartment was a carved oak door. She opened it and went swiftly through a short, narrow corridor and then a door that opened into a rose garden near the front of the house.

It was a little before one a.m. now, and June gloom was upon the entire Carmel Valley, bringing damp, biting temperatures. As she stepped outside she cursed herself for forgetting a jacket. Too late to turn back for one, though.

Just above the rim of a nearby hill, a half moon veiled by clouds managed to look eerie rather than helpful. It cast no solid shadows, only pale glimmers of gray that turned every would-be shadow into formless, evanescent ghosts moving deep within it. She pulled a small flashlight out of her pants pocket, turning it on but shading it with her other hand and pointing it only toward the ground. It was important to watch for snares.

Newly blossoming roses assailed her nostrils with a rich scent that was far too powerful, overriding all other senses. She quickly moved away from the garden, keeping her back against the wall of the adobe convent. Along this side was an arched stone colonnade over a cobbled walk. She followed the colonnade to the field in back, where several small buildings stood. One was a women’s center for learning, another the horse barn and another a greenhouse. A tiny adobe chapel had been built several yards behind the convent by a couple of runaway Carmelite friars in the 1600s. They put down stakes here when the rest of their party sailed off, and after they died, no one lived here until the early 1900s, when the nuns came. They found the humble little monastery the friars had built and expanded it for their use.

The gentle old friars, Abby thought, would never have been the type to murder living, growing things. If there were lilacs in their gardens back then, they would have brought them inside in huge, fragrant bunches to dress their kitchen table for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As she paused there on the edge of the field, her mind played tricks. Several coastal live oaks dotted the ankle-high grass, their black branches dripping with moss that swayed and twisted like angry snakes in the dank wind. The perfect setting for the demise of one Frank Frett, she thought, shivering.

Or me.

She shook herself, feeling a tremor of anxiety. Focus, Abby.

It worried her that her mind had been wandering. Did her target know she would do that? Did he know she’d be an easy mark, once surrounded by her beloved gardens and the multitude of wonderful scents in the night air? That she’d go off on some historical reverie of days gone by and lose her concentration for the job at hand?

Possible. He knew too much about her, didn’t he? So, then. She would have to go against her norm, act in some way he wouldn’t expect.

Carefully steering away from the oak trees and the greenhouse beyond them, she picked her way along a rutted track to the horse barn. Thick old eucalyptus trees lined the track, but they were too far apart to provide absolute cover. Abby crouched and moved swiftly but silently between each one, standing only when she knew she couldn’t be seen from the windows lining this side of the dilapidated barn.

Barely breathing, she listened for even the slightest sound. Certain rustlings, she knew, came from the four horses inside, softly snorting. Now and then a hoof thudded against the floor of a stall. The other sounds were night animals: raccoons, mice, coyotes. Of them, the raccoons worried her the most. She’d gone up against the fierce little buggers more than once, and they’d love nothing more than to chomp down on her foot and run off with it. At one point, when she’d tried to shoo one away outside the Prayer House kitchen, he’d grabbed the broom from her and carried it off in his paws.

A spotlight at the front of the barn shone bright as day on a corral and about fifty square feet of open ground. Both stood between her and the barn. The thought of being that exposed worried her, but she had no other choice. If Frank Frett was in there and she ran to the greenhouse and gardening shed without first checking out the barn, she would only be handing him her back.

Watching a few moments, she didn’t catch any movement at the windows along this side of the old building. Still, she knew there were cracks here and there in the wooden siding where the boards had warped from the winter’s hard rains. Frett could have stationed himself at one of those cracks, where he could easily see out, yet be invisible to her.

Abby took her gun from its bag and held it at the ready, then ran as silently as she could toward the barn. Her heart pounded under the too-bright spotlight, and the only thing in her mind was, He can see me now. The man is evil, spawn of the devil, and if he’s at one of those windows, he can see me now. Her imagination, always in top form, was so strong she could almost feel him grabbing her from every side. He was before her, no, behind her, he had a finger on the trigger of his own gun—

Damn.

As she came within feet of the barn, she saw that one of the two big doors in front, usually locked up at night, stood half-open. An invitation.

How considerate. But sorry, Frank. I have other plans.

Veering off toward the far side of the building, she ran the way she’d been taught, barely touching the ground and with little sound. But as she reached that side, her heart jumped to her throat.

The usual porch light wasn’t on over here.

The fixture was on the wall at the far end of the stable. It should have illuminated this side dimly—just enough to see if someone else had gotten here before her—but the bulb had apparently burned out. Or Frett had knocked it out. It was so black here, it felt like the dark side of the moon. And the air was thick. Thick with fear. She thought she heard another heart beating, and her legs turned to jelly.

Several moments later, she realized she was hearing the heartbeat of one of the horses on the other side of the barn wall. Only then did she know that her hearing had improved because her own heart had actually stopped a few beats. She’d been holding her breath so long, it was a wonder she hadn’t passed out.

She sucked in air, steadied herself and listened a few more moments for any human sounds.

Nothing.

But that might not matter. Frank Frett would know better than to reveal himself that carelessly. He could be anywhere inside the stables—in the tack room, the feed room, in Sister Ellen’s office—and no matter where he was, he wouldn’t make a sound.

She was so sure of that, she made an on-the-spot decision and did what any impulsive, get-the-job-done person like her wouldn’t do.

She sat down.

She didn’t barge in screaming like a banshee, hoping to shock her target and take him by surprise, risking a shot in the back. Nor did she sneak around to the back door or through a window the way he’d expect her to.

No, he’d be covering the back door, the windows, all the routes she might take to outwit him. After all, she was the type to barrel right in, wasn’t she? That was pretty much what he’d said the other day, mixing both clichés and awkward metaphors. “You’re an open book, Abby, and anybody can hear you coming a mile away.”

Much to her chagrin, she had to admit he was at least half-right.

So, instead of the expected, she just sat down.

It shouldn’t take long, she thought, squatting and easing her back against a tree opposite the barn wall. Five or ten minutes of absolute silence, and if he was in there, he’d get impatient and wonder where she was. He’d come out—and that’s when she’d get him. Frank Frett wasn’t the type to sit around, and several minutes without any kind of movement from her would drive him nuts.

While she waited, she imagined the things she would do to the lilac killer, once he was good and dead. She’d get something from the gardening shed…lye, perhaps. Yes, lye. That should do it. She’d dig a grave just deep enough to dump him in it. Then she’d pour the lye over his entire body. It would eat away at his skin and other mucous membranes in no time. His eyes would go first, but whether it would eat through his bones, she didn’t know. It really didn’t matter. The pain is what mattered. The same kind of pain her lilacs had felt when they were burned by poison at the hands of Frank Frett.

Lye, she recalled, was what they used when they buried people in the old days to prevent diseases from spreading. She remembered, too, a story about St. Margaret Mary, who claimed to have had visions of the Blessed Mother and was told by her to begin a devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She did, and it was said that when they dug her up years later, her heart was still red and fresh, that the lye hadn’t touched it. It was God’s grace that her heart was preserved, the Church said, because of her love for the Blessed Mother. It was one of the miracles, Abby thought she recalled, that was used to prove her a saint.

Well, Frank Frett’s heart would never be touched by God’s grace. If they ever dug him up, they’d find it was cold, black and hard as a rock. Even lye couldn’t eat through a heart that hated lilacs.

A too-sweet smell of hay filtered through the wall of the stable, along with the sweaty odor of horses in their warmed stalls. Abby’s nose began to itch, and she pressed a finger under it to keep herself from sneezing. That did nothing for the smell of manure, which was faint but enough to make her empty stomach clutch. She hadn’t eaten in twelve hours, and she was hungry suddenly, though not in a good, healthy way. Instead, she really thought she was about to vomit. Covering her mouth with both hands, she gulped back the bile that rose in her throat, telling herself over and over, It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Just don’t make a sound, not a sound.

It was Frett himself who saved her. Just when she thought she couldn’t hold it back any longer, she heard movement at the rear of the barn. She forgot all about throwing up and crouched, moving that way, listening for a direction. Then she saw him. He was crouching, too, and then running from the barn toward the little chapel, his body nothing more than a black form about fifty feet ahead of her.

She brought her gun up and pointed it at his back. “Stop!”

He twisted around, his own weapon raised. But she’d taken him by surprise, and she shot first. He went down.

Abby ran over to him, touching his leg with her foot. He didn’t move, and the splattered red blotch on his chest told her she’d hit her mark.

“Gotcha,” she said softly. “Your days of poisoning lilacs are over, Frank Frett.”

“You think so?” he taunted, grabbing her pant leg and yanking at it. She was so surprised, she lost her footing and fell, dropping her gun. Stumbling to her feet, she picked it up, but he was already running again. Reaching a live oak tree, he stood behind it for cover, and she ran in a zigzag pattern until she was close enough to shoot again.

It didn’t work, and she saw it coming before she felt it. He stepped out from behind the tree and aimed his Shocktech 2003 at her. The thrust went straight to her heart, and she went down with an enormous rush of breath and a moan.

She wasn’t faking it the way he had. The pain was sharp and stinging, and for a few seconds everything went black. Then, her vision clearing, she saw “Frank Frett” kneeling over her in the person of Ben Schaeffer, her lover, his face twisted in anger.

“Dammit all to hell, Abby! Why aren’t you wearing your protective gear? A face mask, at least! Paintballs can blind you, you know.”

3

Considering Abby’s “injury,” Ben wasn’t all that gentle as he dumped her from his shoulder onto her bed.

“If you’d worn the damned chest protector I bought for you, this never would have happened!”

“Don’t swear,” she said, laughing facedown into her pillow. “The nuns might hear.”

“I don’t give—” He checked himself and lowered his voice. “And why the hell didn’t you wear your face mask?”

“It makes me sweat,” she said.

“So you’d rather lose an eye? Turn over.”

“No.”

“Turn over!”

She pressed her belly into the sheets rather than give in.

He tugged at her shoulder. “C’mon, Abby. I want to see how bad you’re hurt. If you don’t turn over, I’ll turn you myself.”

She knew he could do it, so she rolled over, grinning. “You think that silly little paintball did me in? No way.”

“It got you square on the chest,” he argued. “For God’s sake, it almost knocked you out.”

“Don’t be so dramatic! All it did was smart and knock the wind out of me. A little. Besides, I got you first.”

“So you did. But I, at least, was wearing my chest protector,” he pointed out.

Pulling her jersey up over her chest, he swore again. His fingers carefully wiped the crimson glop from the flesh over her heart—where, despite her brilliant plan to one-up his character of “Frank Frett, the evil lilac killer,” he’d managed to get her with a big red splat of paint. The spot where the paintball had hit was badly inflamed. Ben stroked it gently. “Abby, this is final. If you don’t start wearing protective gear, I’m not—” He sighed.

“Not what?”

“Playing anymore.” The tone of his voice told her he knew the words sounded ridiculous, but his eyes were dead serious.

She pulled him down on the bed beside her and nuzzled his neck, while at the same time pressing herself seductively against him. “You’re not playing anymore? You sure about that?”

“I’m serious,” he said sternly. “This game is getting out of hand.”

She planted her lips against his ear. “And whose idea was it in the first place?” she murmured. “Who left me that scenario about some crazy gardener named Frank Frett killing off somebody’s lilacs? And where the hell did you get that scenario, anyway?”

He rubbed noses with her. “From watching you with your rose garden, of course. You almost leveled poor Sister Binny that day you caught her with a spray gun.”

She touched his lips with hers. “Only because I didn’t know she was using organic spray. And I made it up to her by letting her have all the lavender she wanted.”

“How kind of you. To be nice to a nun, of all people.”

“Not as kind as you, leaving that barn door open for me so I’d walk right into your snare, Frank Frett. I can’t believe you thought I’d fall for that.”

“Ah, but you did believe my fake death.”

“Okay, so I’m easy to fool where you’re concerned.”

Ben turned serious. “Easy to fool? What exactly does that mean?”

The way he said it made her think there was something she was missing. But she already regretted her choice of words. If there was something she was being a fool about, and lately her instincts had been telling her there was, she honestly didn’t want to know it. Not yet. Life was complicated enough, as her mother would say, without looking for dust balls under the bed.

“I didn’t mean a thing,” she said. “And by the way, don’t forget you promised to help us finish the remodel on the old friar’s chapel out back.”

“Don’t try to change the subject, Abby. Dammit, this is it. It’s the second time you’ve been hurt during one of our paintball capers, and that wasn’t what the game started out to be.”

She grinned. “I know. But don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it. It’s our best sexual fantasy. If you hadn’t knocked me off my feet tonight, just imagine what might have happened.”

“I don’t even want to think about what could have happened to you.” He frowned. “Abby, ever since—Never mind. The point is, you’re way too reckless. What if you’d lost an eye?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ben. People play paintball all the time.”

“They get hurt all the time, too. There are thousands of cases every year of people being blinded by a paint-ball—and worse.” He swore. “I never should have taken you to survivor camp with me last fall. You’ve got to let this go, Abby.”

“But you agreed I needed to get my self-confidence back. And my experience there made a great article for Action Pursuit Games.”

“An article that barely paid you anything, and you already have more money than you know what to do with.”

“Not true. There’s the little chapel, and the Women’s Center for Learning needs expanding, and the old horse barn could use a ton of work—”

He groaned. “Look, I admire the fact that you decided to buy the Prayer House from Lydia and help the nuns out. But why do you have to live here?”

And now we’re getting to the real meat of things, Abby thought. What he means is, Why weren’t you happy enough living with me?

“I love your apartment in town,” she said. “But, Ben, you were out most of the time chasing criminals around Carmel, and I was alone. I wanted to be around people more.”

“You could walk around Carmel Village anytime and be up to your knees in tourists from every hemisphere.”

“But I can think better out here. It’s quiet. Besides, I can still drive to the village whenever I want to.”

The truth was, she didn’t want to all that often. Windhaven, the multimillion-dollar Ocean Drive house that she’d lived in with her husband, still held too many bad memories. Just driving by it gave her the willies.

“And as for chasing criminals around in quaint little old Carmel,” Ben said, “it’s not exactly the way I thought it would be when I moved down here from San Francisco. I thought having a chance to be chief one day would be the perfect job.”

“It’s not?” Abby was surprised. They had never talked about this before.

“It could be,” he said, “for the right person. But don’t you ever get the feeling that living in Carmel is like living in a bubble? We’re so isolated here. A two-hour drive to San Francisco, no direct flights out of Monterey to most cities…”

“Sweetie,” Abby murmured, leaning over to kiss his cheek, “you’re not old enough to be having a midlife crisis.”

“Ha. I’m over forty.”

“No!” she said mockingly. “You’re that old? Good grief, what’s a young thirty-eight-year-old like me doing with the likes of you?”

“Growing old,” he said, grinning, “and way too fast, if you’re not careful.”

She punched him on the shoulder. “Okay, so how about this? You get a hobby.”

He snorted. “Like what?”

“Painting, maybe. Or golf.”

“Great. Then there would be three million and one painters in Monterey County. And four million and one golfers.”

She sighed. “You won’t let me make you feel any better, will you?”

“Depends on how you’re feeling now,” he said, pulling her close and nuzzling her ear. “Hey, ya know what? I just figured out my new hobby.”

She was about to agree that his new hobby was a fine one when the intercom next to her bed buzzed softly. Sister Helen, who acted as keeper of the front door at night, would never interrupt her when Ben was there unless it was important.

She pressed the button for two-way conversation. “What’s up, Helen?”

The nun’s voice was so raspy from allergies, Abby could hardly make it out. Turning up the volume, she put a finger over her lips to quiet Ben, who was still trying to nuzzle.

“There are two women here,” Helen said. “Rather, a woman and a teenage girl who looks old enough to be Hades.”

“Hades?”

“God of the dead. For heaven’s sake, girl, don’t you remember anything I taught you in high school? Anyway, the older one says they’re seeking sanctuary.”

“I haven’t had a call from anyone setting that up,” Abby said, looking at the clock. It read 2:38 a.m.

“I didn’t think so,” Helen said. “Do you think it’s safe to let them in?”

“Keep them in the reception room. I’ll be right there.”

Yet one more abused family, she thought wearily, sitting on the edge of the bed and rubbing her eyes. God, there were so many more than a year ago. And the little she did for them never felt like enough. Food, clothes, a bed for the night…then off they went in the morning to the next way station. It really wasn’t much.

“Abby?” Sister Helen’s voice came over the intercom at the same time that Ben nudged her, calling her back from a suddenly overwhelming depression.

“Sorry, Helen,” she said. “Tell them I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Of course.”

Abby pressed the off button. She knew Helen would also call Sister Benicia, who would be glad to get up and go to the kitchen to heat leftover soup from dinner for the two women.

Abby bent over to plant a quick kiss on Ben, but he’d have none of it. Rolling her under him, he covered her from head to toe and pressed himself hard against her. “Just remember, I won this time.”

“Hell, you can win all the time,” she said, wiggling beneath him until it was clear he was aroused. “But I really must go,” she added, laughing. “Duty calls.”

He groaned and let her up. “Vixen. Okay, I’ll go back to town and check in at the station.”

“I thought you weren’t working tonight,” she said, tugging on clean jeans and a sweatshirt.

“I’m not. I just feel antsy after all that exercise.”

“It’s not the exercise that got you antsy,” she said, tossing a pillow at him.

Abby reached for her boots, and Ben swatted her on the backside on his way to the bathroom. “I didn’t say what kind of exercise. See you in the morning, Annie Oakley.”

Abby looked briefly into the little mirror on the door that led into the convent, and brushed her shoulder-length brown hair back behind her ears with her fingers. No time for makeup. A clean flannel shirt to cover the paint splatters on her tee would have to do.

Downstairs, she entered the large old reception room with its antique furnishings and expensive rugs that Lydia Greyson had brought here from her own Carmel home when she owned the Prayer House. It was cold in here and, shivering, Abby noted both women were standing, warming their backs at the fireplace. She drew closer, then stopped midway, surprised to see that she knew both the older woman and the teenager with her: Alicia Gerard, one of her oldest friends, and Jancy, her daughter.

“Allie!” she said, crossing over to her and holding out both hands. “What on earth? I haven’t seen you in, geez, what is it—two years?”

Alicia’s smile was tight, her eyes distraught. Her pale blond hair, ordinarily smooth and shiny, was tangled, as if she’d been nervously running her fingers through it.

As for Jancy? Abby remembered her as a cute kid with a brown ponytail, dressed in Catholic school plaids. Now Allie’s child was dressed all in black, had a short, spiked hairdo with orange and purple streaks, and a strange, staring expression in her eyes, which were so heavily made up Abby wondered how she could hold them open.

Still, Helen’s reference to Hades, whether god of the dead or hell, had been a bit strong. Little Jancy had simply become a teenager.

Alicia grabbed Abby’s hands and held on as if they were her only lifeline. “You’ve got to help us,” she said, her voice shaking. “Please, Abby. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

Looking into Alicia’s familiar green eyes, Abby knew she should be happy to see her old friend. Not only that, but she owed her so much. If Alicia hadn’t helped her, back when her own world was falling apart…

But something was very, very wrong. And some instinct—the kind that raises hairs on the back of one’s neck—told Abby that Trouble with a capital T had just walked through her door.

4

Alicia Gerard was forty-one, yet close up Abby could see that there were new stress lines in her forehead and around her mouth that made her look closer to fifty. Allie had always been beautiful, and still was. But her face now was more like a photograph that had blurred because life had moved slightly and unexpectedly, causing a distortion.

Abby had known Alicia Gerard since she was a reporter in Los Angeles, years ago. At that time, Allie’s husband was just beginning as a legal aid attorney. In a short amount of time he became a legislator, and finally progressed to what he was now—a mover and shaker in the business world. Abby had followed the growth of his career, from a real estate developer to a Donald Trump-like mogul whose face had been on the cover of every important magazine in the world. More recently, H. Palmer Gerard, better known to friends and family as Gerry, had spoken in Washington before a committee on illegal immigration. As one of the top developers in the world, he shocked the committee by taking the position that restrictions on immigration from Mexico were unrealistic and should be eased, and that pay for illegal Mexican laborers should be raised.

Paying illegal aliens a decent wage wasn’t a popular position, especially when the economy was in trouble and jobs were hard to come by. In an attempt to dilute Gerry’s argument, politicians came down on him in the media, calling him an “elitist who had so much money he no longer felt any loyalty to hardworking Americans who were struggling to make a living for themselves and their families.”

In response, Gerry then challenged the administration to create more jobs for U.S. citizens by cutting back on outsourcing—the hiring by U.S. companies of cheap labor in other countries at much lower pay than American employees commanded.

After his appearances on Capitol Hill, a storm of controversy began. Thanks to Gerry Gerard, the administration now had its hands full. If Gerry had been a politician, his career would almost certainly have gone downhill from there. But because of his powerful business ties, no one had dared to take an open stand against H. P. Gerard. Alicia’s husband was feared by senators and presidents alike—not because he played dirty, but because he refused to. Some said he could run for and win the next presidential election on the votes of the poor alone. There were impressive leaders of blacks and Hispanics who swore they could get out the vote if he ran.

Abby took Alicia’s arm and led her over to the sofa, at the same time taking in the state of Jancy, who, she thought, must be fourteen by now. Named Jan Christine, and called Jan C. to rhyme with H.P., the spirited little girl had changed the spelling of her name to “Jancy” herself, at the age of eight.

Abby urged Alicia and her daughter to sit on the large, comfortable sofa that was at a right angle to the fireplace; she sat across from them in a stiff antique chair with a cane seat. Jancy flopped down at the far end of the sofa from her mother and took up a slouching position, her arms crossed in front of her chest in a defensive manner.

For a moment, Alicia simply looked at Abby, a question in her eyes: Will you help us? Can we trust you? Abby had seen it so many times. Just about every time, in fact, that women came to her, pleading that she help them escape whatever abuse they were running from.

Paseo, the underground railroad that she’d operated out of the Prayer House for two years, was a secret organization. Ordinarily, women were sent here through the local women’s shelters. No one came here without their visit having been set up by a trusted third party, and great care was taken to ensure that they weren’t followed here, and that no one could know where they went when they left.

Alicia, however, had simply shown up. Might she have led someone here who could cause trouble for the Prayer House?

Before Abby could begin to ask questions, Sister Benicia came in with a polished wooden tray. It held three cups, three bowls and a plate of her homemade brown bread. Beside it was a small dish piled high with butter, three butter knives and three spoons.

“I’ve brought everyone a bowl of soup and some nice hot cocoa,” she said softly to Abby, setting the tray on the coffee table between her and the women. Abby thanked her, and the shy nun tiptoed out with barely a whisper of her rosary beads.

Abby turned to Alicia and Jancy. “Please, help yourselves. A warm bowl of Binny’s soup usually helps me to relax.”

She picked up a cup and put it on the sturdy mission-style end table next to her chair, then slathered a piece of bread with the butter and took a bite, hoping to set them at ease. Alicia picked up her knife and buttered a piece of bread, handing it to Jancy, who shook her head and turned away. Alicia sighed and set the bread down.

“Abby,” she began, taking a napkin and twisting it nervously in her hands. “I meant it when I said I didn’t know where else to go. I had a little…problem…in Carmel, and I remembered that you were here in the Valley, and that the Prayer House was kind of hidden…” She paused. “Out of the way, I mean. I thought you might put us up for the night.”

As she talked, Alicia kept looking around. Once, when a cupboard door in the kitchen closed a bit loudly, she jumped.

Abby leaned forward and kept her voice low. “What happened? What’s going on?”

Alicia shook her head. “Please, just trust me. Jancy and I need a safe place to sleep tonight. If you help us, I swear I won’t bother you after that.”

“You’re not a bother,” Abby said. “But tell me this, at least. Is it about Gerry? Has he…” She looked at Jancy. “Has he done something?” It was the most obvious question to ask a mother on the run, and came out without her thinking about it.

Alicia looked blank for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh, God no! How could you ask that?”

“Well, we haven’t talked on the phone or seen each other in a long time. People change.”

Alicia’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Abby. It’s just that I’ve been so damned busy. But you’ve always been the kind of friend I felt I could turn to if I ever needed help. You’re the most solid and dependable person I know.”

Clearly, my friend doesn’t know me all that well anymore, Abby thought—at least, not the insecure me that had grown out of searching two years ago for my friend Marti’s killer.

But as for Alicia’s plight, Abby had learned through her work with Paseo to be cautious in these kinds of situations.

“I need to know what’s going on before I can decide whether I can help you, Allie. One thing I can’t do is put the nuns and other women living here in jeopardy.”

Alicia stood and walked back to the fire, although the reception room was quite warm now. She paused there a few moments. When she turned to Abby, the expression in her eyes was that of strain, fatigue and a touch of something else. Fear?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it that way,” she said, her voice trembling. “I had no business coming here and bringing trouble into your home. I’ll leave, Abby. I’ll leave right now. I just…I mean, could you just…” She crouched down beside Abby and put a shaky hand on her arm. “Could you just keep Jancy a few days?”

Abby stole a glance at Jancy and saw that, though her chin was up and her lips drawn tight in a defiant expression, tears had spilled onto her cheeks. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her black jacket, the gesture of a five-year-old.

“Go ahead, leave,” she said sullenly to her mother. “You always do. And you know what? I don’t even care anymore.”

Alicia sighed. “Honey, I wouldn’t leave you if I didn’t have to. But you’ll be safer here with Abby—alone, I mean. Without me.”

“Oh, sure, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Jancy laughed shortly. “No, Mother, the real point is, if you foist me off on your friend here, you’ll be free as a bird. You won’t have me to bother with anymore.”

Alicia frowned and stood, folding her arms as she addressed her daughter. “I don’t know about free as a bird, young lady,” she said with an edge, “but I will have less worry if I know you’re safe.”

She sighed, and her voice shook. “Honey, I need to be on my own a few days. There are things I need to do. Please try to understand.”

The bowls of creamy soup had become cold and glutinous. Abby carried them over to a sideboard to remove herself a bit from the argument. She needed a few moments to figure out how to respond to all this. Two phrases rang in her ears “Go ahead, leave…you always do…” And, from Alicia, “I will have less worry if I know you’re safe.”

What on earth had been going on in this family since she’d seen them last?

“Allie,” she said, turning back, “if this isn’t about some problem with Gerry, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t rather have Jancy stay with him.”

“No,” Alicia answered quickly, shaking her head. “Trust me, that wouldn’t work right now.”

“The thing is, I just don’t think I can help you with this.”

“Abby, please! I—it’s just that he’s in New York, and he’s up to his ears in major business negotiations.”

“But surely he’d want to help.”

“Absolutely not!” Alicia said even more vehemently. “I want Gerry kept out of this as long as possible. Believe me, Abby, it’s for his own good.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Jancy said angrily, “why don’t I just stay at the house in Big Sur alone? I’m sixteen, after all. I’m not a kid.”

Alicia said, “Jancy,” reprovingly, while Abby just looked at the girl until her gaze fell away.

“Okay, I’m fourteen,” Jancy snapped. “But I’m more grown up than most kids my age. If you only knew…”

Alicia looked at her in desperation, as if to say, “See what I have to put up with?”

Jancy turned away, her angry gaze pretending to examine the air.

Abby studied the two of them and thought a minute, while Jancy fidgeted and Alicia looked over her shoulder, as if expecting someone to jump out from a corner at any moment.

Despite whatever other factors there might be, Abby’s strongest urge was to help. Alicia and Gerry had supported her when her job at the Los Angeles Times was on the line, years ago. Abby had written a story about a brilliant fifteen-year-old boy who, after having been orphaned at the age of five, had lived alone in an abandoned tenement building. The little boy had taken care of himself by stealing food off the streets and living with homeless adults who took care of him as best they could. Still, the situation he’d lived in was undeniably perilous.

The kid had talked to her only on the condition that she promise never to tell anyone who he was. Abby made the promise but vowed to do everything she could to help him after the story broke. She’d get a promotion and have plenty of money then, she reasoned, to do whatever was needed for him: high school, college…who knew what heights a kid that bright and self-sufficient might reach?

Abby shook her head now at the memory of those youthful fantasies. Instead of being promoted, she was fired for not giving up the boy’s name, and accused of making the story up. Stone-cold broke, she was on the verge of being homeless when Gerry, a young legal aid attorney at the time, represented her in court pro bono, while Allie took her into their house until her salary started coming in again. Abby won the case against wrongful firing, kept her job, and once the story hit the wires she won awards around the world. Not only was her career saved, but she was able to help the kid just as she’d hoped. He was now a resident MD at Swedish Hospital in Seattle.

None of that would have happened without Alicia and Gerry. She owed them a lot.

But her job now, first and foremost, was to protect Paseo. When Lydia Greyson, a good-hearted Carmel philanthropist, became ill and sold the Prayer House to her two years ago, she had trusted Abby to keep Paseo going. And Abby did, using the money that came out of her ill-fated marriage to Jeffrey, and the sale of the multimillion-dollar house on Ocean Drive. She had been still recovering from the monstrous act that killed her best friend, Marti Bright, though—and the attack that nearly killed her, as well. So at first, more or less sleepwalking through life, she just plowed money into Paseo, giving it little thought otherwise. It was her plan, indeed, to do that and no more.

It didn’t take long, however, to become emotionally involved. Some of the stories of abuse she heard—stories the women who came to the Prayer House for help had told her—were horrendous.

So, protecting Paseo was her first priority. And to take Alicia and Jancy in without knowing what kind of trouble they were in might risk the secrecy and safety of the other volunteers, and the moms and kids as well.

While she was considering all this, Allie picked up her purse and motioned to Jancy. “C’mon, honey, we have to go.”

“Al—”

“No, it’s all right, Abby, I never should have come here. I’m sorry.”

Her voice was shaking and her stride unbalanced, as if she were too tired to walk straight. She took Jancy’s arm, though, and pointed her in the direction of the door. Abby hesitated a few seconds more, but Allie’s condition and the sudden expression of fear on Jancy’s face was what settled it.

For some reason, the girl was afraid to leave here. But why?

Abby could still hear Lydia Greyson’s voice: People don’t listen to children. They pooh-pooh their fears, as if a child can’t possibly have all that much to worry about. Don’t do that, Abby. Don’t ever, ever do that. You don’t know how much harm you could be doing to that child.

“Allie,” she said quickly, “don’t go. Of course you can stay. For tonight, at least. All right? You can sleep here, both of you.”

Tears filled Alicia’s eyes. “Oh, Abby, thank you so much! I promise, you won’t regret—”

“Wait,” Abby said, interrupting. “Don’t make too much of this. You need to understand that I can’t keep Jancy here alone, as much as I’d like to help you with that. The fact that she’s a minor could be a problem. And since I don’t know what’s going on, I have no idea what might come up.”

“Tonight, though?” Alicia said with the first glimmer of hope in her voice. “You said, both of us? And no one will know?”

“Absolutely no one,” Abby said firmly. “I don’t know what you’re running from, Allie, but you’ll be safe here.”

And God help me if I do end up regretting this.

Allie let out a long breath, as if a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Jancy didn’t say a word, but sat biting her black-painted fingernails to the quick. Abby noted that otherwise they looked freshly done, and now that the first moments were over, she also recognized Jancy’s black jeans jacket as being from a famous designer.

She looked at Alicia’s shoes and recognized them, too, as having cost somewhere in the neighborhood of seven hundred dollars. Back in the days of her marriage to Jeffrey, Abby had learned to have an eye for fashion like that. At least one thing seemed certain: Allie and Jancy wouldn’t suffer from a lack of funds, wherever they ended up.

There was a bellpull by the doorway into the reception room, a leftover from the days when the cloistered Carmelites lived there. Preserved for history’s sake, it also had a functional use. Within a minute or two of Abby’s gentle tug, Helen appeared from her room near the front door. Abby asked her to have someone take Alicia and Jancy to the second floor.

“There’s a room prepared?” Abby asked.

Helen shot her a look as if to say, “Isn’t there always?” To Alicia and Jancy, she said, “All right, then, come with me.”

But Helen was limping, and Abby didn’t want her to climb the stairs. “Sister Liddy is probably up already. Why don’t I ask her—”

“I’m not that useless yet,” Helen grumbled, lumbering to the door with a frown.

Abby knew when to fold ’em, so she contained her usual smile at Helen’s crustiness and turned to Alicia. “Okay, then. You and Jancy go with Sister Helen. She’ll take you to your room.”

Alicia hugged her. “How can I ever thank you enough?”

“A donation would be nice,” Abby said, with a laugh. “A big one, for the Women’s Center for Learning.”

“It’s a promise,” Alicia said, squeezing her hard.

Abby took her by the shoulders. “No, seriously, just take care of yourself and Jancy. Do you have a cell phone with you?”

She nodded.

“If you need anything in the night, then, don’t hesitate to call me.” Abby took a piece of notepaper and a pen from a desk and wrote her private cell phone number on it.

“I’ll only be a floor away,” she said. “Since the night’s almost over, you might as well sleep in. Call me when you’re up, and I’ll let Sister Benicia know. She’ll fix you something to eat.”

Allie nodded again and squeezed her hand. As she and Helen headed for the door, Abby touched Jancy’s arm and pulled her back a bit.

“Are you all right?” she asked in a low tone. “Is there anything special you want or need?”

Jancy gave a shrug, but tears filled her eyes again. Closer up, Abby could tell that what she had thought was heavy eye shadow was actually swollen lids that she’d apparently tried to cover up by reapplying her makeup several times. The shadow had creased and flaked, and some of it had fallen, leaving rivulets of black glitter on her cheeks.

Abby’s ability to spot troubled kids was usually right on target, and this one was shouting “trouble” all over the place.

But Jancy shoved her hands in her pockets, sniffled and shrugged. “What good would it do?” she said tiredly.

“Jancy,” Alicia said in a firm tone. She gestured for her daughter to catch up. “We’ve bothered Abby enough for tonight.”

“See what I mean?” Jancy murmured.

Abby followed Jancy and the two women into the hall. Instead of turning right toward her apartment, she paused and watched as they started up the curving mahogany stairs toward the second floor. Helen had to grasp the railings on both sides to pull herself up each stair, and Abby didn’t know whether to feel bad for her or angry with her. She could be so damned stubborn.

Standing there, she felt a sudden chill. While she was glad she’d let Allie and Jancy stay, she would have felt better if she’d known what was wrong. Something to do with Gerry, after all? Alicia clearly didn’t want him to know where they were or what had happened. For someone as afraid as she was, there had to be a good reason for keeping her husband out of it.

Add to that Jancy’s attitude. The child exuded anger and pain out of every pore, which could either be normal teenage acting out—or a sign of abuse. But Gerry? Was he really capable of that?

Abby didn’t know. She hated to think that way, but she hadn’t been around him recently enough to spot signs of abuse.

Her questions, or some of them, were answered moments later. Before Jancy, Helen and Alicia even made it to the landing between the first and second floor, there was a loud, abrupt banging on the front door.

All four women stopped moving and stared at one another.

“It’s them!” Alicia said in a low, frightened voice. She didn’t say who, and there was no time to ask questions. Abby raised a finger to her lips, while with her other hand she motioned for them to keep going. Alicia turned and ran farther up the stairs, with Helen doing her best to keep up. But Jancy still stood as if frozen, staring down at the carved double doors. They were old and thick, of Spanish design and meant to protect the early Carmelites from intruders. They couldn’t be broken down by anything less than a battering ram, but there were newer windows here on the first floor that were far more vulnerable.

Abby’s automatic reaction was to protect the woman and child under her care and ask questions later. Running as silently as possible up the stairs, she whispered to Helen to go back down and give them a minute or two before she opened the door. Grabbing Jancy’s arm, Abby pulled the girl after her. She followed numbly, as if in shock.

“It’s okay, you’ll be okay,” Abby whispered, but by the time they had reached the second floor and the Sacred Heart statue, Jancy was sobbing. Abby grabbed her arm and forced Jancy to face her.

“Stop it! Stop it right now! They’ll hear you!”

Jancy gulped and nodded, then rubbed her nose with the sleeve of her jacket. The heavy makeup was wearing off, and she looked more her age now, young, frightened and vulnerable. Abby saw that Allie was waiting for them, half-hidden behind the statue. Allie took Jancy’s hand and pulled her down the corridor to the left, whispering for Allie to follow.

They ran to a room near the big, oval solarium that overlooked the front gardens. By this time, the noise at the front door had escalated. The banging continued, growing louder and louder. Then a male voice shouted. “Abby? Abby, open up!”

Confusion set in. Ben?

Another voice followed his. “FBI! Open the door!”

A quick look at Alicia and Jancy told Abby they were terrified. She knew everyone in the Prayer House must be awake by now, and Helen would have to open the door, or someone else would.

Pulling on Alicia and Jancy’s hands, she whispered to them to crouch down as she led them into the solarium. Although the room was pitch-dark, there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. It was possible that anyone moving about in here could be seen by someone standing way out in the garden, by the rim of trees.

Abby, going ahead, dropped to her knees, then inched along the inner wall in a belly crawl. There, she felt along the edge of one oak panel. Finding the right spot, she pressed. The bottom third of the panel swung open, revealing a small, dark cubbyhole.

“Here!” she whispered to Alicia and Jancy, urging them to crawl across the floor the same way she had. They did, and when they got to her she said, “You’ll have to squat down, and it’ll be a tight fit, but I’ll come for you as soon as it’s safe.”

“What is this?” Alicia asked, peering into the dark hole with a tremor in her voice.

“A modern-day version of a priest’s hole,” Abby said. “I remodeled the solarium, and I’m the only one who knows it’s here. Get in! There’s a lock on the inside so no one else can open it from out here.”

She pushed them both harder than she meant to, but the male voices were louder now, as if coming from inside the downstairs foyer. Her own anxiety ran high, and she began to shake. What the hell was going on?

Making sure the two women were safely in the priest’s hole and the inside lock was in place, she went quickly down the stairs. Entering the foyer, she slowed and rubbed her eyes as if she’d just woken up.

She didn’t have to pretend much to look surprised; the scene in her foyer worked pretty well as a wake-up call.

Ben stood there with another man, talking to Helen. Abby studied the other man before walking up to them. He was dressed in a dark blue blazer and khaki pants, and he was tall, even taller than Ben, who was just over six feet. He had silver hair that complimented his tanned face and steel-gray eyes, and he held himself with an air of assurance. When he looked up and saw Abby, he nodded to Helen and said politely, “That’ll be all. Thank you very much, Sister.”

Helen shot a glance at Abby. She nodded and Helen left, walking toward the kitchen. Abby noted that the front doors were open behind Ben and this man. In the semicircular gravel drive, the bright motion lights revealed two police cars and at least three unmarked cars. There were several figures in dark suits, some of them on one knee behind the open car doors. They had guns drawn and pointed directly at the Prayer House, as if expecting an attack by insurgent nuns on the lam.

“What’s going on?” Abby asked Ben, trying to steady her voice. “What is the FBI doing here?”

“We want the two women who came here earlier,” the other man answered for him.

“I don’t understand.”

“Special Agent Robert Lessing,” he said, holding out a hand. Abby shook it. His palm was dry and warm. No nerves, she thought, for this fellow. Too bad that couldn’t be said for her.

“We know they’re here,” Lessing said. “And I’m sorry to disturb you, Ms. Northrup, but this is FBI business. We need to take those women in for questioning.”

“I still don’t understand. Who are you talking about, and what did they do?”

“Please, Ms. Northrup,” he said irritably, “it’s been a long night. Trying to hide these women can only make it worse for you. Do you really want to be charged as an accessory?”

“Accessory?” She looked at Ben. “To what?”

“Murder, Abby,” Ben said.

“Murder!”

“Chief, I asked you not to—” Lessing began.

Ben ignored him. “I got a call on my cell phone, on my way back to the station. A man was murdered in a room at the Highlands Inn. There was an envelope of photos in the room, photos of two women—actually, a woman and a teenage girl.”

Abby was shocked, but went for total innocence. “So you identified the woman and girl in the photo as the women who came here earlier? Without even having seen who was actually here?”

“Abby, I heard Sister Helen on the intercom. She said there was a woman and a teenage girl seeking sanctuary. This is a small town, and I don’t believe in coincidence. Besides that, this sort of thing doesn’t happen here every day.”

“But you’d like it to, wouldn’t you?” she said testily. “Shake things up a bit in this boring little bubble. Isn’t that what you called Carmel? A bubble?”

“I didn’t say it was boring,” Ben snapped, his voice rising. “And please don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“Act as if I’d tell the FBI about your work here for no other reason but a personal desire to stir up some action.”

She stared at him as disbelief filled every pore. “You told them? Everything?”

Ben was one of the few people she’d told about Paseo. She had sworn him to secrecy—and tonight, he had told the FBI. Just like that, he had betrayed the trust that women were promised when they came here for sanctuary.

“I trusted you,” she said softly. “You swore never to—” She broke off as her voice failed.

“This is different,” Ben argued, looking decidedly awkward. Nevertheless, his voice was firm. “If these women are killers, you aren’t safe, Abby. No one is safe while they’re here.”

She suddenly couldn’t think straight. Was what he said true? Had Alicia, someone she’d known for years as one of the nicest people in the world, actually murdered someone? Was she in fact running from the FBI?

One thing she’d learned over the years was that people you think you know well can change. And given extenuating circumstances, they don’t always change for the better.

The other thing she’d learned, though, was that the police and federal agencies—given their own extenuating circumstances—can’t always be trusted to know what the hell they’re doing.

“Well,” she said to Agent Lessing, “I’m sorry I can’t help you, but the women who were here are gone.”

Ben stared at her. “C’mon, Abby. This is no time for games.”

Agent Lessing’s voice was even harsher. “If you’re harboring criminals—”

“I could be arrested as an accessory to the crime,” Abby said calmly. “I know. You made that quite clear.”

“Or as a coconspirator,” he said. “Either way, you’ll go to jail.”

“Abby—” Ben began.

“Ben,” she interrupted, “if you had called me before rushing out here with your merry little band of Men in Black, I could have told you not to bother. The women you’re looking for are most definitely not the ones who came here earlier. And they are not here now.”

“I know you, Ab,” he said irritably. “And I don’t believe you. Dammit, I’m worried about you, and I’m getting tired of you hiding things when you know I’d worry even more!”

“And I’m getting tired of you worrying about me as if I were a child. I can take care of myself!”

“Yeah? Well, I can remember a time when you couldn’t,” he said just as angrily. “You wouldn’t even be alive now if—”

Before he could finish, footsteps sounded from the hallway stairs. Startled, Abby turned to see a blond woman of about thirty, dressed in a trim black pantsuit and white blouse, accompanied by three men.

“We’ve checked out every floor,” she said to Agent Lessing. “No sign of them. Quite a few upset nuns, though.”

“How did you get up there?” Abby said, furious now. “You had no right—

“This says I do,” the woman answered, producing a folded court paper from the inside pocket of her suit jacket. “Kris Kelley, special agent.”

Abby opened and scanned it.

“It’s a search warrant,” Ben said.

“I can see that,” she replied shortly.

There was a buzz, and Agent Lessing pulled a two-way radio out of his pocket. “Lessing,” he said, and listened.

After a few moments he murmured, “Right,” and hung up. Turning to Ben, he said, “They haven’t found anyone on the grounds, either.”

“You’ve actually been searching my property?” Abby said, feeling more than ever violated.

“The warrant covers that, too, Ms. Northrup,” he said. “What you have in your hand there is a copy. You may keep it and check with your lawyer about it, if you like.”

“You seem to have come prepared,” she said, striving to sound calm again. “This must be a very big case—with a very important corpse. Mind telling me who it is?”

“Sorry,” Agent Lessing said, shaking his head.

“Why not? It’ll be all over the news by morning.”

“So you’ll find out then,” he answered.

“Look,” Ben said to Lessing, “we aren’t getting anywhere here. I suggest we go back to the station.”

“Just one more question,” Lessing replied. He turned to Abby. “Where did those women go from here?”

“I have no idea. But as I told Ben, the women who were here aren’t who you’re looking for.”

“Oh?” Lessing smiled. “And how would you know that?”

“Because they were old friends,” she answered coolly. “One is a teacher, a woman in her fifties. She’d brought her niece with her, on a field trip. They were driving through town and stopped to say hello, and I gave them some hot soup and cocoa. We talked a bit, and they went on their way.”

“Old friends, huh? And they just dropped by—all the way out here in Carmel Valley—to say hello in the middle of the night?”

Abby shrugged. “They were tired. They’ve been touring the old missions and needed a pit stop on the way to I-5. As you probably know, there’s not much open in Carmel at night. Besides, everyone who knows me knows that I’m up half the night.”

Ben stared at her for a long moment, as if by doing so she might break and give herself up. But then he said to Lessing, “That’s true. Abby’s a freelance writer. She does her best work at night.”

The agent gave Ben a weary look. “We’re getting nowhere here. Let’s all go back to the station.”

Ben turned to Abby, and for the first time his voice was soft. “Ab? You’ll be all right?”

Too little, too late, she thought bitterly. He’d betrayed her, and he wasn’t getting off that easily. “Of course I’ll be all right,” she said irritably, “once all of you people get out of here and I can get to bed.”

“I…I’ll see you in a little while,” he said.

“No. It’s almost three in the morning. I’ll call you. Later.”

He looked taken aback. Shaking his head, he led the way out of the foyer and onto the front drive. The female agent lagged behind. Just before she went through the doorway, she said to Abby, “I’ve heard about you. A couple of years ago, wasn’t it? You must be pretty tough, to have gone through all that and come out unscathed.”

Unscathed? Abby thought. Hardly.

But that was the point, she realized suddenly. The woman somehow knows there are things about me that haven’t healed, and that I don’t always act wisely, but out of leftover emotions—good and bad.

“What are you, some kind of shrink?” Abby said.

“No. Just someone who admires the work you’re doing. There have been times—” She broke off and looked toward the front door, where the men were gathered around the cars.

“You were saying?” Abby prompted.

“Nothing. Gotta run,” the woman said. “Looks like everyone’s leaving.”

5

Abby locked up and stood at a front window, watching till every car had gone down the twisting, oleander-lined driveway to Carmel Valley Road. There they turned right, heading back into town. Finally. The FBI woman’s words kept repeating themselves in her mind. To have gone through all that…come out unscathed…

How does a woman end up unscathed, Abby thought, when she’s so brutally raped she’ll never be able to carry a child? How does she even end up close to being what other people call “normal”?

And the rape was only the beginning. What followed had nearly killed her, just as Ben had said. If he hadn’t been there…

Which didn’t excuse his betrayal tonight.

Glancing at her watch, she decided to wait ten minutes before going up and releasing Alicia and Jancy, just to be safe. In the meantime, she looked for Helen, wanting to thank her for her help. When she didn’t answer the knock on her door, Abby quietly opened it to make sure her old friend was all right, but glancing around, she saw that Helen wasn’t there.

The room was small, no more than a “cell,” as the nuns in former times had called their ascetic cubicles. Most had held little more than a bed, a chest of drawers and a crucifix. Though Helen could have had the biggest, nicest bedroom in the house, this was what she’d asked for, and Abby had built this room to her specifications.

“I can’t sleep if there’s too much space around me,” Helen had muttered. “Or too much clutter, for that matter. Those young sisters and the others can have their big, pretty rooms with their flowered curtains and sheets. To my mind, that’s all nonsense.”

Sister Helen had been Abby’s teacher in high school, and though Abby had feared her at the time, she’d come to love her as an adult. The job of answering the bell that announced nighttime visitors was actually a perk. Because of the arthritis in both her hips and knees, it had been painful for Helen to climb the stairs every night. This way, she could remain on the first floor at all times.

The elderly nun would be aghast, of course, to think she had special privileges, or if she knew that Abby and the other women had come up with this solution to ease her discomfort. Helen was from the old school of Catholics. She believed in suffering and in “offering it up” in exchange for more stars in her crown in heaven.

Abby was no longer a practicing Catholic, despite the year she and her best friend, Marti, had spent in a convent at the age of eighteen. She didn’t know if “offering it up” toward a better future in heaven was still a viable plan, but to each his own.

Come to think of it, she and Marti had both followed a different drummer. Going off to become nuns right out of high school seemed to be a wacky thing to have done later on. But they’d honestly had some idea that to do so would better the world. When they didn’t turn out to be the greatest of nuns, they left, went to college and became journalists.

Marti, though, became a famous photojournalist, while Abby married a guy who turned out to be no Prince Charming. He had an affair with a woman who had boobs out to “there” and dressed like a Hooters waitress. In fact, Abby thought, I called her “the bimbo” every chance I got—until I finally had to stop and forgive her, given that she was my sister.

And where was Karen Dean now? Off on some new adventure in Africa, God love her, trying to save her poor tattered soul by working with children who had AIDS.

Abby looked at her watch. A good ten minutes had passed since everyone had left. It should be safe now to go up and get Alicia and Jancy. Alicia had damn well better have some good explanation as to what she was doing earlier in the hotel room of a dead man.

In the solarium, Abby knelt down and tapped on the panel to the hidden cubbyhole. She waited, but didn’t hear the inside bolt slide open.

“Allie, open up,” she said in a low voice. “It’s me, Abby. They’re gone.”

She waited a few more seconds and tapped again. “Allie? Jancy? It’s okay. You’re safe. Open up.”

Leaning her ear against the panel, she heard a rustle and what sounded like someone sniffling. Another few seconds and the bolt was thrown. Abby opened the panel and saw Jancy, her face swollen and red from crying. The girl shuffled backward on her behind and leaned against the back wall, drawing her knees up to her chin.

“Allie?” Abby squinted, looking around the small dark space. She’d worried about squeezing the two of them into it, as the priest’s hole was never meant to hold two people comfortably.

Well, hell, she thought, both fear and anger vying for a place in her head. That doesn’t seem to matter much now.

Allie was gone.

Abby couldn’t get Jancy to come out, so she sat on the floor just outside the paneled door, talking in gentle tones. “Where did your mother go? Do you know where she is?”

Jancy wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and murmured something Abby couldn’t hear.

“Jancy,” she tried again, “where is your mother?”

“I don’t know,” Jancy mumbled, covering her face with her hands. “Gone. Like always.”

Like always. Her tone of voice set alarm bells off in Abby’s head. “You said that before, honey. Does your mom go away a lot?”

Jancy shrugged.

“How often?” Abby asked.

“I don’t know. At least once a month.”

“Didn’t I hear somewhere that she gives speeches around the country? Something about voting for better health care?”

“Ha.”

“You don’t believe that’s what she’s doing?”

“Oh, sure, she does that sometimes. But a couple times when my school tried to reach her on one of those trips, they couldn’t. Her cell was off the whole three days she was gone, and when they called the hotel she was supposed to be staying at in Chicago, she wasn’t even registered.”

“What about when she got home? Did you ask her where she’d been? Maybe they lost the reservation and she stayed somewhere else.”

Jancy made a sound like a snort but didn’t answer. Abby studied her a moment, then reached for her hand. “C’mon, let’s get you out of there.”

Jancy turned away. Abby touched her arm gently until she looked at her. “C’mon, honey. It’s okay.”

“Will grown-ups ever stop saying things like that?” Jancy said angrily. “It’s not okay. Nothing’s ever okay!”

But she ducked her head and crawled out into the solarium, still not taking Abby’s hand. “Oh, God, I’m stiff!”

Standing, she stretched, bending from the waist and touching her toes. Letting out a long breath, she rose slowly, then raised her arms over her head, bending from side to side in an exercise position Abby recognized as hatha yoga. It seemed to come naturally to her, as if she’d done it out of habit, without thinking. Abby watched her curiously.

When it seemed Jancy was loosened up, Abby took her to the nearby bedroom that was always prepared for unexpected visitors. “It’s so quiet here,” Jancy whispered. “Doesn’t anybody live on this floor?”

Abby smiled. “There are eleven other women on this floor, and fifteen on the one above. It’s quiet because the sisters observe the Grand Silence, and the women who aren’t nuns join them in it, out of respect.”

“Grand Silence?”

“That means they don’t talk between night and morning prayers, except in an emergency.”

Jancy rolled her eyes. “Emergency? Here?”

“You’d be surprised,” Abby said. Two years ago, she’d been pushed from the chapel balcony at the end of this very floor. Murder and mayhem were the order of the day back then, and she was the one who’d brought it inside these walls.

“What about Sister Helen?” Jancy asked. “And the one who brought us our soup?”

“They’re exempted from keeping silence at night because their jobs sometimes require they talk.”

“Oh.”

Abby was glad she didn’t ask any more questions. Instead, Jancy sat heavily on one of the sparse twin beds with its coarse white linens. As she looked up at Abby her chin trembled, despite her brave attempt to hide it with a smile.

“What’s going to happen to me?” she asked. “Do I have to stay here till my mom comes back?”

“I don’t know,” Abby said honestly. “There are still a lot of questions to be answered. Like, first of all, why doesn’t your mom want you to be with your dad?”

“She told you, he has some important deal coming up. He can’t come home.”

“But now that your mom has left, if I tell him you’re alone here and what’s happened—”

“Believe me, he won’t come home,” Jancy said.

So her mother goes off on private little jaunts whenever the mood hits her, Abby thought, and her father’s too busy to hang around. Or at least he’s left her with that impression.

“You mentioned Big Sur,” she said. “Is that where you’ve been living? I thought you were still in L.A.”

“We are. But we come up to Big Sur sometimes. Look, I’m not supposed to talk about it. It’s not even ours.”

“What isn’t?” Abby asked.

“The house in Big Sur. My dad’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph, loaned it to my dad so we’d have more privacy. From reporters and stuff, you know?”

She looked at Abby quickly, anxiety showing in her eyes. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Don’t worry,” Abby assured her. “My lips are zipped. But what were you doing at the Highlands Inn, if you weren’t staying there?”

“Having dinner in the restaurant,” Jancy said, yawning. “Can I go to sleep now?”

Abby had hoped Jancy might give her some clue as to what had actually happened, but the question had closed her down.

She studied the girl a moment, wondering if she should press for more. But the kid genuinely looked tired, and it wouldn’t have surprised Abby if she simply fell over with her clothes on and stayed like that all night.

“Of course. Get some sleep,” she said. On the side of the antique night table there was a button. “If anything happens that worries you, or if you just feel troubled, push this. It rings through to my room, and I’ll come right up.”

Abby took clean, plain white pajamas out of a drawer in the dresser, and put them on the bed for her. “Restrooms are down the hall on the right,” she said. “It’s communal, so you may run into some of the other women who live here. Don’t let that bother you, just don’t talk to them until after morning prayers. That’s at six. And here’s a clock so you’ll know what time it is when you wake up.”

Abby turned the tiny travel clock so that it faced the bed. “I see it’s almost five, so you’ll probably sleep through breakfast. When you’re ready, come down to the kitchen. It’s along the hall, the opposite way from where you and your mom came in. I’ll tell Sister Binny to expect you. But watch out. She’ll probably try to bury you under pancakes.”

For the first time, Abby thought she saw a genuine smile pass over Jancy’s face. It didn’t last long, but she was ready to take anything she could get.

“Thank you,” Jancy said softly. “I’m really sorry, Abby.”

“Sorry?” Abby said, surprised. “For what?”

“For all this trouble. For making you do so much stuff, and for being such a brat. You’ve been really nice.”

Abby smiled. “You’re pretty nice to do stuff for, Jancy. Now, sleep tight, and I’ll see you when you get up.”

Closing the door behind her, Abby was still smiling, but her expression quickly turned to a frown. She might not know a lot about teenagers, never having raised one, but one thing she had discovered from friends’ kids was that when they made such a fast turnaround from bratty to sweet, they usually wanted something.

Or they were planning something.

Like running away.

Abby didn’t even try to go back to bed. In her apartment, she changed clothes, then sat for a few minutes in her double-wide armchair before going to the kitchen. Ben and I used to sit in this chair and cuddle, she remembered. Used to. After tonight, will that ever happen again?

She deliberately tried not to think of Allie and where she had gone, why she had left her child here alone even after Abby had told her that was out of the question. It was all too much for one night—Allie and Jancy appearing without warning, then the FBI, Allie under suspicion for murder…

And Ben. His betrayal.

Back to Ben. Always back to Ben.

She squeezed her mind shut against that worry, but other memories crowded in. Her eyes took in this small, compact living room that she’d built for herself, and the few things she’d brought with her from Ocean Drive. She’d sold the multimillion-dollar house “as is” and fully furnished, except for the photos of her and Murphy—

Damn. At times like this, she missed Murphy more than ever. Her adventurous little dog had gotten loose one day and been struck by a car out on Carmel Valley Road. One of the carpenters, who helped build the very room she was sitting in, saw it happen and picked Murphy up off the road and carried him to her. The thing that had gotten to her most was that he looked just as he had when asleep, so she didn’t realize at first that he was gone. Then she saw the blood on the side of his head that was next to the carpenter’s arm. He had thoughtfully hidden it from her until the first shock was over.

Abby chose a spot on the edge of the forest to bury him. There were five other workmen on the property at the time, and they all stood around with the sisters and other women to offer prayers. By the time the little ceremony was over there were heaps of flowers on Murphy’s grave. The workmen brought wildflowers from the surrounding meadows, and it touched her heart to see their big, rough hands carrying those fragile little stems and placing them so carefully over Murphy’s grave. The Prayer House women brought early spring flowers from the gardens, and several of them wept along with her.

It took Abby a while to get past the stage where she was looking for her little companion around every corner and expecting him to be there to greet her when she walked through the door. She would never get over the feeling that it was her fault he ended up in the road in the first place. Murphy had an adventurous soul, and he’d gotten away once when he was younger. She should have been watching him better the day he died, but she’d trusted him not to run like that again.

Trust was a bitch. It could hurt the person who trusted, and the one trusted, as well. She would have to remember that when deciding what to do about Alicia and Jancy.

And Ben.

Impatiently, Abby shook her head as if shaking dust out of a rug, and went to the kitchen. Binny was already cooking hot cereal, and she returned Abby’s “Good morning” as she reached into the fridge for eggs to boil. The room was filled with the scent of oats, blueberry muffins and coffee.

A half-finished platter of sliced fruit was on the worktable, and Abby poured herself a cup of coffee and took up a knife to finish the job.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Binny said in her soft voice.

“I know. I just like to.”

Abby stole a look at Binny as she stood over the stove, her ordinarily pale face pink now from the steamy cereal. She was still in the black cotton robe that she always wore until after she’d cooked breakfast, and a white kerchief held back her wispy gray curls. For the second time this week, Abby thought she looked as if she was losing weight, and Binny of all people didn’t need that. She made a mental note to talk her into getting a checkup.

“You already do too much around here,” Binny said in the voice she saved for a quiet reprimand. “Didn’t I see you mucking out the stalls the other day?”

Abby smiled. “Oh, and what? I’m supposed to be above that?”

“No, you’re supposed to save your energy for your real work,” she said.

“Binny—”

“That’s all I’m sayin’. That and no more.”

Abby rolled her eyes and sighed. No one at the Prayer House was supposed to talk about Paseo unless absolutely necessary—a firm rule that kept everyone from slipping and saying something in front of the wrong people. Binny, though, was past the age where she followed rules.

And speaking of breaking rules, where was Helen?

“Have you seen Sister Helen?” Abby asked, cutting into a juicy ripe strawberry and popping half into her mouth.

“Not since last night when your visitors came,” Binny said.

This wasn’t at all like Helen. Abby was beginning to get worried. She was debating whether to rouse the other women and start a search party when Helen appeared on the back porch, wiping her boots on the bristles of the mud scraper.

“Where have you been?” Abby demanded, her voice rising with anxiety. “I was worried!”

“Oh, you were, were you? I seem to remember saying the same thing to you a few hundred times at St. Joseph’s High. I guess that makes us almost even now.”

Helen sat on the wooden bench next to the kitchen door and tugged off her wellies, the knee-high boots that she always wore for mucking about in the stables. Abby couldn’t fathom why she’d been out there at this early hour. She was about to ask when Helen’s face creased with pain as she tried to get one of the heavy rubber boots off.

“Here, let me do that,” Abby said. Helen flicked her a grateful smile and leaned back, sighing.

“I used to dream of a handsome young man pulling my skates off for me,” she said dreamily as Abby tugged at the first boot. “Down at the pond on my parents’ farm, that was. There would be a fire for us to warm our hands, and he’d be wearing a navy-blue sweater and a bright red scarf. We’d be sipping hot cider, and when he looked at me with those eyes—” She groaned. “Oh, Lordy, those eyes.”

“Helen!” Abby couldn’t help it; she giggled. “I never knew that. Were you in love with this guy?”

“Ha. More like in love with my dream of him. Sometimes our dreams are better than the real thing, you know.”

“You think so?”

“Of course. In our dreams, a man can be anything. In real life, he’s just another human being like the rest of us. Warts and all.”

She gave Abby a pointed look.

“Are we talking about Ben now?” Abby asked, sighing. She knew Helen had reservations about Ben—or rather, Ben and her as a couple. She’d always thought he would let Abby down one day. And of course, he had. Today.

“He just wanted to make sure we were safe,” Abby said, half in an attempt to convince herself.

“I doubt that. Following the rules, he was. Always following the rules.”

Abby’s hands were poised over the second boot, but she sat back on her heels.

“You’ve been a nun for almost fifty years, Helen. Since you were twenty-five. And you cracked a pretty strict whip when I was in school. Are you telling me now that it’s a bad thing to follow rules?”

“I’m telling you he shouldn’t have brought them here,” she said, frowning. “Not those FBI people. He broke your trust.”

Abby pulled the other boot off and Helen winced. “Ouch! Don’t take it out on my poor feet, child! I’m just telling you what you already know.”

Mornings in Carmel Valley could be cold, especially when there was fog, as there was today. Helen’s foot, when Abby took off the mended black cotton sock, was icy. She took it in her hands to rub it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tug so hard. But, Helen, when you were Marti’s and my teacher, you never talked like this. You were so…” Abby searched for the right word. “Religious.”

She thought it best not to tell her that Marti and she sometimes called her a “mealy moral mouth.”

The truth was, though they’d feared Helen then for her strictness, she was the best teacher they’d ever had. Deep down, they loved the valuable things she’d taught them. When she moved from St. Joseph’s High to the motherhouse, where Abby and Marti were training as nuns, they felt a healthy combination of anxiety and excitement.

Helen didn’t let them down. Despite her brusque attitude, Abby and Marti had always suspected their teacher had a heart of gold. She would sneak peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of the motherhouse kitchen for them in the late afternoons, when their stomachs were growling and dinner wasn’t for another two hours.

And were they ever hungry. Aside from attending college classes all day to become teachers, they were still nuns, and had to follow all the rules demanded of the other sisters: up at 4:00 a.m. for prayers, Mass at six, scrubbing floors, taking turns in the community laundry…. The work of keeping up a large Gothic-style “mansion” that housed one hundred and fifty nuns, five stories and 1930s tile floors that needed polishing every week, never ended.

“My dear girl,” Helen said irritably, interrupting Abby’s thoughts, “religion doesn’t make you blind and dumb. At least, it shouldn’t. Do you think I got to be this old without knowing what people are all about?”

“Of course not,” Abby said. “I guess I’m just surprised that you’re—”

“What, jaded? Nuns don’t have a right to get jaded? Lordy me, girl, it’s been years since I’ve made the sign of the cross right— ‘in the name of the Father, the Son,’ and all that—instead of just saying one, two, three, four. You get burned out! And you should know that better than most. It’s not like we haven’t been through this all before.”

“But you’re still a good person, Helen. And, in your own way, a good nun.”

“Ha. In my own way, huh? Well, thank you—I think. My point is that you don’t have to be religious to be good, girl. That’s where some of those churches get it all wrong. God loves us all, and he’s not about to let the people he loves go to hell just because they didn’t say a certain set of words in front of a certain kind of preacher and get water dumped all over their heads.”

Abby smiled. “Tsk-tsk, Sister Helen Marie. You sound more like a renegade every day.”

“Well, maybe I’ve been hanging around you too long,” she grumped.

Abby took a cup of green tea and went into her office, debating whether she should put aside her anger and hurt of the night before and call Ben. She could at least ask if they’d caught whoever had committed the Highland Inn murder.

In the end, she decided it wouldn’t be wise to show too much interest. Ben wouldn’t even have to wonder why she’d asked; he’d know right away that she’d lied through her teeth the night before, and that Alicia and Jancy had been here.

Rubbing the weariness lines in her forehead, Abby wondered if she should call social services to see what her options were with Jancy. But even that she waffled about. Instead, she called a private investigator she often used when relocating abused women. Bobby had helped her out many times when she’d had to have a violent husband tracked to make sure she and Paseo didn’t relocate his battered wife anywhere near him.

She started out by asking him to look for Allie, and gave him certain information about her that she didn’t think the police or FBI had. With any luck, that might help him—and her—to get to Allie first.

Jancy came down to the kitchen around ten, and Binny buzzed Abby over her office intercom to let her know. Since Binny was already busy getting lunch started, Abby put her phone calls aside and scrambled up some eggs for Jancy. She’d insisted she wasn’t hungry, so Abby tossed some cheese, onions and roasted garlic cloves into the eggs, thinking the aromas might tempt her to eat. It worked. When Abby asked her if the eggs tasted okay, she shrugged and kept on eating—gargantuan praise from a teenager.

Abby sat across from Jancy at the wooden worktable and drank a fresh cup of green tea.

“Don’t you eat?” Jancy asked.

“I did, at six o’clock this morning,” Abby said.

“Do you ever sleep?”

“Sure. Not much last night, though. How about you?”

Again, Jancy shrugged. “I kept hearing noises, like real loud footsteps on the ground. I thought maybe it was bears.”

Abby smiled. “We don’t have bears around here. You probably heard the horses.”

At this, Jancy’s eyes lit up. It was easier to see that they were a brilliant green, now that most of the makeup had worn off.

“You have horses here?”

“Four of them. Do you like to ride?”

“I love it!” But her smile turned to a frown. “I guess I won’t be here that long, though, huh? You’ve got to find somebody else to take me.”

“One day at a time,” Abby said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

She washed up their dishes, and Jancy surprised her by offering to dry. After that, Abby invited the girl to join her while she practiced for her black belt in Kenpo.

“What the heck is Kenpo?” Jancy asked.

“It’s a form of martial arts. I need to work on it every morning, if I’m ever going to get that belt.”

“You’re not going to practice on me, are you?” Jancy said somewhat cautiously.

“Well, I hadn’t planned on it, but since you’re here…” From her expression, Abby wasn’t sure if Jancy knew she was kidding.

They went down the hall to the gym Abby had installed, and found Davis Bowen, her Kenpo teacher, waiting patiently in a meditative state in front of the small rock fountain he’d urged her to include in her remodeling plans. His own house was high on a hill above Clint Eastwood’s Mission Ranch Inn, and the view along the coastline was drop-dead gorgeous. Davis also had flowers and three different fountains in his courtyard.

“We need all the beauty we can get in this world,” he’d told Abby long ago. “I think if everyone lived surrounded by nature and beauty, there would be no wars.”

“Same thing if everyone got a massage every day,” Abby had reminded him, smiling.

“Ah, yes…another one of my dreams for creating peace on earth.”

She left Jancy with Davis and went to the locker room to change into her white gi and brown belt. She’d made her way to brown fast, pouring her angry energies into working up from blue after Marti was murdered and she herself had nearly fallen to the same fate. If anyone ever came after her again, she swore, they wouldn’t stand a chance. “First black belt” had stumped her so far, though.

Jancy watched her work out with Davis awhile, but a few minutes later, when Abby turned toward where she’d been, she saw her in front of the fountain instead. She was in a lotus position, palms up and resting on her knees, eyes closed.

Abby shot a surprised look at Davis and caught him smiling just before she sent him a Twisting Vine—including the kick to the groin and fingertips to the eyes. Davis was perfectly capable of protecting himself, so she didn’t do any damage. However, it gave her some small sense of satisfaction that she’d almost managed to catch him off guard. Not that she didn’t love Davis, but when they practiced she went into a zone where he became just one more enemy needing to be struck down.

They continued like that for another half hour. When they’d finished, Jancy was looking around the walls at the black-and-white framed photos Sister Liddy had taken of Davis and Abby training. Usually, when people looked at those pictures, they had something nice to say about them. Even flattering.

Not Jancy, though.

“I can tell from these pictures, and just from watching you today,” Jancy said matter-of-factly, “that you’re trying way too hard. That’s why you can’t get your black belt.”

“What do you mean?” Abby asked, only slightly offended that Jancy didn’t comment on how wonderful she was to have made it this far at all.

“Well,” Jancy said, shrugging, “it seems to me that you’re learning all these moves so you can know how to hurt someone—not just to defend yourself. So you’re going at it way too hard.”

“You think so?” Abby said testily.

Jancy shrugged again. “It shows that you’re insecure. Maybe you should practice meditation. Meditating could help build your self-confidence.”

“Well, thank you so much for the advice,” Abby said sweetly. “Do you think meditating could get you to stop shrugging so damned much?”

“Abby?” Davis said.

She bit her lip and turned to him.

“I’m afraid I have to agree with your young friend here,” he said mildly. “Whatever those pictures are in your mind while we’re working out, maybe they need to be a bit more…friendly. I nearly lost all hope of having children today.”

Abby flushed. “Oh, God, Davis, I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”

He grinned. “Abby, the point is moot. I’m gay, remember?”

“Oh…right.”

“So I won’t be having progeny. I sure would like to know who you’re thinking of, though, when you go off in that world of yours.”

Abby could have told him. A three-hundred-and-sixty-degree, clockwise-twisting circle down the opponent’s arm? Jeffrey.

Left foot to six o’clock, in a right cat stance facing twelve o’clock? Jeffrey.

Right kick to the groin, fingers stabbing the eyes? Who else but her former bastard husband…Jeffrey?

She sometimes thought of Marti, the horrors of her final hours, but that took her to places that made her truly afraid of what she might do.

“Sorry,” Abby said again. “Really. I’ll work on that.”

When Davis left, she gave Jancy a pair of her own black jeans and a black jersey top to wear. Then she pinned the girl’s multicolored hair up and covered it with a small veil borrowed from Narissa, one of the expostulants at the Prayer House. Giving her a once-over, Abby said, “Okay. That looks pretty good—you could pass for a nun in this getup.”

They headed out to the stables. Now that it was daylight, she could see that there were no agents or cops nearby. If anyone happened to be watching from one of the surrounding hills or roads, they just might take Jancy for one of the young sisters.

When they got inside the stables, Jancy talked to the horses, asked their names and rubbed their noses. She clearly loved the animals, but no longer seemed interested in riding.

“I just don’t feel like it right now,” she said, sliding down into a sitting position and leaning her back against the outside of the stall.

She’s depressed, Abby thought. Nearly all the young girls who came through here with moms on the run were depressed, to some extent.

“Maybe someday I’ll take vows and all that,” Jancy said, her fingers twisting in the veil as if it were hair. “It must be easier than living in this stupid world.”

“Well, if that’s what you want,” Abby said, sitting beside her.

“All my life, I’ve wanted to be like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story,” she said.

“Really? All your life?” Abby smiled. “You’re fourteen, Jancy. When did you see that movie?”

Jancy blushed. “Last year, on video. But you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I became a nun at eighteen.”

“You?”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised. It was a temporary fling,” Abby said.

“Wow. I never would have thought that you…I mean, my mom told me about you once, and I thought you were rich. You know…one of those society matrons.”

Abby laughed. “A society matron? God forbid.” “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Have you informed your parents of your plans to become a Bride of Christ?” Abby asked.

“Once. We were driving by a convent and I told my dad. But he pointed at bars on the windows. He said they lock the nuns up in there.”

Attaboy, Gerry. Keep the kid off that vocational track.

“It does seem that way to some,” Abby said. “But actually, in those convents where there are bars on the windows it’s because the nuns want to lock the world out.”

“Really? On purpose?”

“On purpose.”

Jancy seemed to think about that. “Those people last night were looking for us, weren’t they? Mom said if they catch us they’ll lock her up.”

Abby saw no point in telling her anything but the truth. “They said you and your mom had something to do with a man who was found dead at the Highlands Inn last night. They want to question her. And you, too, since you were with her.”

She let that sink in a moment before she asked bluntly, “Did Alicia kill him, Jancy?”

The girl gave a small jump. “No way! We just found him like that!”

“Can you tell me how you and your mom ‘just found him like that’?”

Jancy shook her head and didn’t answer.

“You must know you can trust me by now,” Abby said. “I won’t repeat a word to anyone.”

Jancy hesitated, but then it began to pour out. “He…the guy…he was some sort of reporter. I don’t remember his name, but that’s what Mom said. Some old guy.”

“Old?”

“Fifty, at least.”

Abby tried hard not to smile. “So did your mom know this guy well?”

“I guess. He was eating in the restaurant, and so were we. Mom went over and talked to him. I don’t know what they talked about, but he seemed pretty mad. He got up and walked out, and when she got back to our table she was mad, too. I wanted to go into Carmel and walk around the shops after dinner, but she said no, she had business to take care of. So I sat in the lobby while she made a phone call, and when she got done she said we were going to visit somebody.”

She wiped her eyes, as if to clear them of unpleasant images. “It was awful. We went outside and up the driveway to some room that looked like a private condo from the outside. You know, not in a hallway like a hotel. Mom knocked on the door. Nobody answered, but the door was open a little, so Mom pushed it open more and we went inside. She called out a couple of times—”

“What name did she call?” Abby asked.

Jancy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening, because I felt like somebody could walk in any minute and shoot us for trespassing. All I wanted to do was get out of there.” She took a breath, and her voice began to shake. “Then we saw him. This guy, the same one in the restaurant, that reporter. There was one of those big square tubs with jets right in the middle of the bedroom, and he was there—”

She gave a shudder. “There—there was blood in the water all around him. It looked like somebody had—had cut his throat.”

“My God, Jancy! What a horrible thing to see.”

She began to cry, covering her face with her hands.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Abby said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Look, I just have one more question, then we’ll table all this and do whatever you want. Okay?”

Jancy nodded and wiped her face on her sleeves.

“Did your mom call the police?” Abby asked. “Or did someone else?”

“I think it was the maid. She came in with towels or something, and when she saw us and this dead guy, she started screaming. She ran out, and Mom said she’d tell the police about us and we had to get away as fast as we could.”

“And that’s when you came here?” Abby asked.

“Yeah. Mom said this was the one place in the world she knew I’d be safe.”

Abby started. “She said it just that way? That you’d be safe?”

“Yeah, just like that. At the time I didn’t think it was odd, but now…I guess we’re thinking the same thing, huh?”

“I guess we are,” Abby said. And kudos to this bright little girl for figuring out that Alicia had planned to leave her daughter with me all along.

Now the question was: Why?

6

Eleven men and one woman—Kris Kelley—sat around an interview table in the Carmel police station. It was just before dawn.

“Pass these along, please,” said a twelfth man, who was clearly in charge. He stood at the end of the table, passing slender blue folders to the man on his right.

The lead agent was over six feet tall, with a ruddy tan and eyes like polished nickel. His taut physique was that of a man in his twenties, belying his actual age of fifty-six. The deep lines in his face and the untouched gray hair were the only telltale signs that Robert James Lessing had lived a difficult life. Those who didn’t know him might assume he belonged to a country club and played tennis every day—an incorrect assumption that served him well in his work.

He took a seat at the long table next to Ben Schaeffer. “You’ve all met Carmel’s chief of police?” he asked the assemblage.

They nodded. Every eye scanned Ben, but no one smiled. Lessing turned to Ben. “I understood the sheriff would be here, as well.”

“He will be,” Ben said. “Soon as he can. MacElroy’s putting together a tactical team.”

“All the more reason he should be here,” Lessing said with an edge.

“This is the way it’s done in Monterey County,” Ben replied coolly. He didn’t much like being here, either. “Granted, we don’t have many murders in Carmel, but this one at the Highlands seemed routine—at least, until you folks showed up. The sheriff is following standard practice in bringing together a tactical team from the various law enforcement agencies in the county.”

Lessing spoke dryly. “The murder at the Highlands Inn was anything but routine, Chief.”

“Yeah, I’ve pretty much figured that out.” Ben looked at the other agents, who were busily writing in pocket-size notebooks. “And since I’m already on the tactical team,” he continued, “maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on. You’ve got agents swarming all over the place, knocking on doors in the middle of the night—”

“One specific door,” Lessing corrected sharply. “Which, aside from the fact that you’ve been kind enough to lend us your facilities, is the only reason you are privy to this conversation.”

Ben stifled his anger. This was his ground they were stomping all over, and he hadn’t loaned them his facilities willingly. The fact of the matter was, they’d commandeered them.

It only made matters worse that they had come down on Abby and the Prayer House that way.

“My hospitality—and my facilities—” he said, his brown eyes fixed on the agent with an unmistakable warning, “won’t last long if you don’t tell me what you’re really here for and what the hell you want.”

“I thought I’d made that clear,” Lessing replied. “We’re here because of the murder at the Highlands Inn. And, of course, we’d like your cooperation.”

“That still doesn’t tell me a damned thing,” Ben said. “To begin with, you’ve admitted that the murder at the Highlands was far from routine. I already knew that. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here. As I understand it, the victim was a journalist for a Washington, D.C., newspaper. A Woodward-and-Bernstein type, probably digging into some sort of government secrets. My guess is he got too close to the truth about someone or something, and got his throat cut before he could write a book about it. As I hear it, that’s not exactly something new.”

Lessing sighed and glanced at Kris Kelley. “There are a few people here other than Chief Schaeffer who haven’t been filled in yet. Would you like to do the honors? I really don’t think we can wait any longer for the sheriff.”

Kris nodded and stood, smoothing her skirt. Ben knew she couldn’t have slept much all night, any more than anyone else. Yet she looked crisp and fresh in a beige suit she’d somehow managed to change into. He couldn’t help noticing it was almost the same color as her collar-length hair. He supposed she was nice looking, especially with that great tan. Abby’s dark hair and creamy complexion were just the opposite—

He shook himself mentally. What the hell am I doing?

“As some of you know,” Kris said, “the woman we’re looking for is Alicia Gerard, the wife of multimillionaire H. Palmer Gerard. So far, we’ve discovered that the victim was attempting to blackmail Ms. Gerard, and that she was seen having an angry conversation last night with him at the Pacific’s Edge restaurant in the Highlands Inn. A short time later, she was observed knocking on the door of the victim’s room, a room he’d reserved for three nights. Last night was his second night there.”

She cleared her throat and took a sip of water, then began again. “At ten-twenty or so last night, the hotel maid walked into the room and found Alicia Gerard and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Jancy, standing over the victim. He was lying in a whirlpool tub and his throat had been slashed. In fact, he was nearly beheaded. It was a brutal crime.”

She paused and swallowed hard, as if the scene she’d witnessed the night before was too dreadful to return to, even in her mind. “The minute Alicia and her daughter saw the maid they ran, but the maid later identified them from photos we found in the victim’s room—”

“Hang on,” Ben said. “Since when do maids deliver clean towels at ten-thirty at night?”

“Way ahead of you,” Lessing said. “The victim called and asked for them. Said housekeeping hadn’t cleaned the bathroom that morning. Kris?”

The agent began again. “The photos were of Alicia Gerard and her daughter, Jancy—candid shots taken on the street, at a mall, one of Jancy outside her school. Obviously taken by someone who’d been observing them over a period of time. The husband, H. P. Gerard, wasn’t in them.”

“Hold on,” Ben said. “H. P. Gerard’s wife is who you were looking for at the Prayer House? So this reporter guy is viciously murdered at the Highlands Inn, presumably by the wife and/or child of one of the biggest movers and shakers in this country, and all of a sudden a lightbulb goes on and you say, ‘Oh, that’s where the killers are! At a convent out in Carmel Valley.’” He laughed shortly. “Yeah, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.”

Agent Kelley answered him in a scathing tone. “It does if your girlfriend is one of Alicia Gerard’s oldest friends—and if your girlfriend takes in women and children on the run.”

“Which you wouldn’t even have known if I hadn’t—”

“Confirmed it for us,” she said firmly. “We knew about Abby Northrup’s work long before you decided to enlighten us, Chief Schaeffer. We hardly had to rely on you to inform us—”

“Like hell,” Ben said, interrupting angrily.

“Easy,” Lessing said quietly. “Let’s keep personalities out of this.”

“This is not about personalities,” Kris said sharply. “It’s about not having an outsider at our meetings.”

“Chief Schaeffer is hardly an outsider,” Lessing reminded her, “any more than you are. And so far he’s been cooperating fully.”

“Fully? You may think so, but—”

“I cooperated because you told me that Abby and the Prayer House were in danger,” Ben said, interrupting again. “There wasn’t even time to find out who you were after.”

It was the fear that Abby might be hurt that had made him screw up, dammit. What a fool he was, confirming their suspicions about Abby’s work with Paseo when he’d made a promise a year ago never to tell a soul. And now, because he’d thought it was his duty to do so—and that the suspect might be a danger to Abby and the Prayer House—he’d blabbed to the damned FBI.

Abby would never forgive him.

“I’ve had enough,” he said, standing. “You’re welcome to stay here until you’re done, but I’ve got work to do.”

“Chief—” Lessing raised a delaying hand.

“No. From everything you’ve said so far, this is nothing but a plain and simple homicide. If that’s the case, I sure don’t need you to help solve it. In fact, it looks to me like you’re wasting taxpayers’ money with all this hoopla, but hey, don’t let me stop you.”

He stormed out, slamming the door. Papers on the table scattered from the breeze it created.

Lessing looked at Kris Kelley. “We’ve got to tell him,” he said heavily. “Everything.”

“Oh, hell,” she sighed. “I’ll go get him.”

7

Ben didn’t have to wonder long if his bluff had worked. He had barely leaned back in his chair, boots on his desk, when Kris Kelley sailed into his office.

“Look,” she said tightly, as if saying the words might choke her, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. We need you back in there.”

“You look,” he said, swinging his feet off the desk and planting them firmly on the ground. “This is my town. If anything bad happens to it or the people in it—”

“I know, I know,” she said irritably. “I’m trying to apologize, Chief!”

“And I appreciate that. But if you and the gang in there want any further cooperation from me, you’ll have to damn well tell me what’s really going on. You can’t expect me to sit there and listen to bunk about it being only a homicide when there’s a gaggle of government agents sitting around my conference table.”

Kris half smiled. “A gaggle?”

He didn’t smile back.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “You’ve got it. We’ll tell you everything. But you’ll have to swear not to repeat anything you hear in that room. Not to anyone you work with, your friends, Abby Northrup…no one.”

Ben almost told her to forget it. For a few minutes in there his pride had been hurt, and he’d wanted to force them to take him into their confidence. Now that he’d won the point, though, he’d probably be better off to walk away and wash his hands of the FBI. Tell them to get the hell out of here, and let the chips fall where they may.

The only thing that kept him from doing that was the thought that being on the inside might be the only way he could protect Abby.

Hoisting his six-foot-two frame out of the chair, he rested his hands on his hips. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

Ben took the same chair he’d had before, next to Lessing, who gave him a nod as if Ben had merely excused himself a few minutes to use the restroom. Kris Kelley’s expression was noncommittal as she took her own seat.

Lessing looked at a man halfway down the table. “Agent Bollam?”

“Sir.” The agent walked over to the light switch, flicking off the overheads. Pulling a cart that held a slide projector from a corner, he positioned it behind and to the right of Agent Lessing. Pointing it toward the far wall so that everyone could see, he said, “I’d like to begin with some background.”

He brought up a photograph of two people who looked to be in their twenties or early thirties. The woman had long, curly, strawberry-blond hair that looked windblown and covered half her face. It didn’t hide her smile, though, nor her beautiful large hazel eyes. The man had black hair, and his arms were around the woman from behind, holding her tightly and smiling, his cheek against hers.

“These are Alicia Gerard’s parents,” Bollam said, “Pat and Bridget Devlin.” Behind them was a sign that read Dublin Automotive Services, and in one of the open bays was a dark blue car that Ben, a classic-car nut, recognized as an Irish-built MG Midget, circa 1960s.

“That photo was taken about forty years ago,” Bollam said. “Pat and Bridget Devlin would be in their sixties now.”

He changed the slide to one that depicted the scene of an accident. There were police cars, ambulances and a crowd gathered along a highway with a steep cliff on one side. At the bottom of a ravine was wreckage.

“Some of you might recall hearing about a school bus being blown off the road in Ireland in the seventies. Twenty-eight out of the twenty-nine children aboard were killed.”

A few of the agents nodded.

“Pat Devlin was—is,” he corrected himself, “a brilliant man, a scientist with ties to the IRA. His specialty, in those days, was building explosive devices. After the school bus attack, fragments of the bomb were found, as were certain ‘fingerprints,’ as they say—details in its construction that led straight to Pat Devlin.”

“My God,” Ben said. “H. P. Gerard’s father-in-law? He blew up that bus?”

“Long before Alicia ever met H. P., of course. She would have been around five at the time. And while Pat Devlin did build the bomb the IRA used, he may not have known precisely what it was about to be used for. Reportedly, he was so sickened by the deaths of those children, he tried to get out of the IRA. As the country’s top expert in explosives, however, Devlin was too useful to them. They threatened his family if he tried to leave.”

“But he did leave,” one of the agents pointed out.

Lessing nodded. “He somehow got false papers for his family and fled Ireland overnight with Bridget and Alicia, leaving their home just as it was—food on the table, mail in the box, cat in the yard.”

“Incredible,” Ben said. “How do you know all this?”

“I can’t reveal our sources,” Lessing answered. “Sorry. But let me get to the point. We have solid information—not just chatter—that a splinter group of the IRA calling themselves The Candlelights are using Pat Devlin again. This time, he’s in America, and he’s building the most devastating explosive device this country has ever seen. The Candlelights plan to use it on the fourteenth of this month—exactly one week from today.”

He paused, and his mouth twisted slightly. “Unfortunately, we’ve had no luck finding The Candlelights, and we don’t know where they plan to attack. Our mission, therefore, is to find Pat Devlin. That bomb must never be completed.”

Good God, Ben thought, be careful what you ask for. All I wanted was a little more action, and now…

Lessing’s cell phone rang, and he left the table for a few minutes to take the call. When he returned, Bollam began again.

“As I was saying, Pat, Bridget and Alicia Devlin left Ireland rather abruptly when Alicia was five, using false papers to enter the United States. That would be thirty-five years ago. We know they lived under different assumed names in Philadelphia for a while, then Miami and Los Angeles. We also know the Irish police spent three years looking for them without success, before moving on to what they called ‘more important’ matters. Meantime, this splinter group of the IRA, The Candlelights, was also looking for the Devlins. Every time anyone thought they’d caught up with them, however, they’d find an empty apartment or house. The Devlins apparently knew, somehow, when they were about to be caught.”

Ben spoke up. “So you think someone was helping them out.”

“We have to assume that was the case,” Bollam said.

One of the agents at the table asked, “Do we know where this group, The Candlelights, came from? What’s their agenda?”

“As I understand it,” Bollam said, “in the early days of the Troubles, as they call it, women in Ireland used to leave a candle burning in a window every night, to welcome the men home after their ‘activities.’ We don’t know why, but the name seems to have been picked up by this new splinter group. As to their agenda, it’s the same as all terrorist groups—to throw people into fear and create chaos.”

He flipped the slides to show two plain, inexpensive-looking cottages and an apartment house. “The Devlins’ cottages were in Philadelphia and Miami. The apartment house is on Crenshaw in L.A. This is all we have on them. Over the years, the Irish police and the IRA apparently gave up hunting for them. There’s been little interest, until recently, in finding Pat Devlin.”

He stopped to take a sip from his glass of water, then pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his chin and tie where the water had dribbled.

“Ah, geez, Joe,” a pink-faced agent with bright red hair said. “You were looking so professional up there till now.”

There was mild laughter from the other agents, and a smile from Bollam. “Just don’t forget I’m your senior,” he said.

“In age, maybe,” the first agent came back with.

“We don’t have much time,” Lessing reminded them.

Everyone quieted down and Bollam continued. “As I was saying, no agency with an interest was ever able to find Pat and Bridget Devlin. There’s no record of them having become naturalized citizens, so if they’re still in this country, they’re here illegally. Unfortunately, it seems they’ve changed their names and identity papers every time they’ve moved, so they’re living as much underground as if they were in a witness protection program.”

“Is that a possibility?” Ben asked.

“Not that we know of—and presumably, we would. To hide out the way they have, there must have been someone helping them. Especially recently, given the new technologies we have for finding terrorists—” he paused and looked around the table “—it must be someone with experience at hiding people, someone who can provide false identities and money.”

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