Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author

KAREN HARPER

“Strongly plotted and well written, featuring a host of interesting characters, Harper’s latest is a winner.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Below the Surface

“Karen Harper proves yet once again why she is on my ‘auto buy’ list.”

—www.longandshortreviews.com on Below the Surface

“Harper keeps tension high as the insane villain cleverly evades efforts to capture him. And Harper really shines in the final act, providing readers with a satisfying and exciting denouement.”

—Publishers Weekly on Inferno

“Harper spins an engaging, nerve-racking yarn, alternating her emphasis between several equally interesting plot strands. More important, her red herrings do the job—there’s just no guessing who the guilty party might be.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Hurricane

“Well-researched and rich in detail…With its tantalizing buildup and well-developed characters, this offering is certain to earn Harper high marks.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dark Angel, winner of the 2005 Mary Higgins Clark Award

“Harper…has a fantastic flair for creating and sustaining suspense…[the] deft knitting of fact and fiction enables Harper to describe everything from wilderness survival to supernatural lore with the kind of detail that convinces readers anything is possible.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Falls

KAREN HARPER
THE HIDING PLACE

Thanks to the Jason Kurtz family for a great time in Confier, especially to Heather for all the support and advice.

As ever to Don, for being a great travel companion to parts known and unknown.

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

Author Note

Prologue

Near Black Hawk, Colorado

May 20, 2004

She was terrified she’d be too late. Tara Kinsale-Lohan took the next tight turn on the slick road faster than she should have. She’d been driving Colorado mountain roads for years, but never at this speed.

The big sedan fishtailed, but she steered it back onto the narrow, two-lane road, running with spring rain. Thank God, there was little traffic in this weather. She longed for her old four-wheel-drive truck, but her husband, Laird Lohan, liked only luxury cars. The road became a twisting, one-lane gravel path. When the next widely spaced driveway came into view, she hit the brakes again. Gripping the steering wheel in both sweating palms, she squinted to read the numbers on the mailboxes through the mountain mist. Her windshield wipers slapped gray rain aside, whap-whap…whap-whap. She was getting closer. She prayed she’d get there in time.

How could a bright woman like Alexis have been so stupid to try to snatch her child back? Rats like her ex-husband, Clay, a moral coward, could be vicious when cornered. And how, Tara berated herself, could she herself have been so careless to let her dear friend sneak into her office and take her skip trace report on Clay? One of Tara’s cardinal rules when she started her one-woman private investigating firm, Finders Keepers, was that the locate information went first to a lawyer or law enforcement, not to an emotional woman who might mess everything up, trying to take her child back on her own.

She’d simply trusted Alex too much, but they’d been close ever since they’d roomed together in college. Tara was an only child, and Alex was the closest she’d ever had to a sister. Like sisters, they sometimes argued, but when an outsider threatened them, they’d always come to each other’s rescue. When Tara’s parents had died while she was at the university, Alex’s widowed mother had taken her in for holiday visits. With no family of her own, Laird’s close-knit clan had looked so appealing to Tara—until she got to know them.

But Clay was the enemy now. Even for Alex, Tara did not like taking risks. She did almost all her work from her office on the phone or online. She never did her own surveillance or ventured out to serve a summons or subpoena where things could go bad. She had promised Laird she would not do any fieldwork, though she’d recently gone Dumpster diving—perfectly legal, though he’d had an absolute fit, just as he did each time he saw that she was not going to be remade into his picture of the perfect Lohan wife.

Their agreement, actually part of a prenup, was that she could still help women get their children back, if she agreed to hand Finders Keepers over to someone else when she and Laird had their own children. Laird was obsessed with having an heir for his share of the Lohan family fortune. The thing was, shortly after their honeymoon, their marriage had become so rocky that she had told him she was staying on birth control pills until they smoothed out their differences.

She’d seen numerous times that, if a marriage wasn’t on solid ground, having kids only made things worse for the adults—and damaged the kids, too. Lately, to her amazement, it seemed that Laird had accepted that. The last few months, he’d become amazingly understanding, though she was pretty sure he still thought children could bind any marital rift.

Tara hit the brakes and felt the big car skid. At this altitude, way above mile-high Denver, she was actually driving through clouds. She began to creep, squinting through the windshield, straining to keep control of the car and her fears. The road narrowed even more. As if protecting their lofty realm, tall lodgepole pines and blue spruce loomed like mythical giants as they closed in around her.

At least, Tara thought, trying to buck herself up, she was getting close, but why did it have to be a place like this one? When Clay Whetstone, Alex’s ex-husband, had snatched their four-year-old daughter, Claire, six months ago, Tara had agreed to trace him. Both she and Alex assumed he’d head out of state, which was why it had taken her this long for the locate. Clay loved to gamble, so Tara had spent precious hours online checking Las Vegas and Reno area U-Haul records, change-of-address Web sites, and expensive state-sponsored databases.

But Clay had outfoxed them. He’d been living—probably gambling, too—less than forty miles away in the casino-studded town of Black Hawk. She had finally located him through a hunting license he took out, since that required an address and a Social Security number. Clay and Alex had shared custody, but he’d only had Claire every other weekend. When Alex went into the hospital for an operation, he’d taken off with some house furniture and their child. Tara was worried, not only for Alex’s safety, but that she might cause Clay to panic and run with Claire again before he could be arrested.

Yes, there it was, 4147 Elk Run! Tara had cross-checked the address through purchasing the subscription lists for two of Clay’s favorite magazines, Western Big Gamer and Poker Player U.S.A. Now Clay was the hunted and, she prayed, his hiding game was over.

To doubly confirm Clay’s location, Tara had used an online telephone directory, then phoned Clay’s neighbor to the north, pretending to be a previous owner in the area. She’d asked if the Brown family still lived at the 4147 address, claiming their phone number had evidently changed. Pretexting, it was called; P.I.s used the chat-someone-up practice all the time to get information.

“Oh, no, the Browns don’t live there,” the woman had told her. “Carl Weatherby and his cute little daughter, Claire, live there now. Moved in ’bout Thanksgiving, though they kinda keep to themselves. He keeps funny hours, goes to play poker in Black Hawk sometimes. Steve—that’s my husband—saw him there once. I mean, Steve don’t go there much, ’cause we’re churchgoing and all, but Carl does, comes and goes, you know…”

Unfortunately, everything the woman told her about “Carl Weatherby” and his daughter, Claire, was also detailed in the report that Alex had evidently pilfered from Tara’s active file on her desk.

The road here was so narrow and steep that she couldn’t park on the berm, nor was she going to take that crooked, single-lane driveway to Clay’s residence. She couldn’t even see the house from here. Could Alex already be here and have driven in? Surely she wouldn’t approach like a storm trooper, however desperately she wanted her daughter back. After all, Clay was an avid, skilled hunter, so that could mean guns on the premises.

Tara had planned to phone the Central City P.D. today, so they could take Claire into protective custody and arrest Clay. But with Alex possibly on the scene, she was afraid to get them here in case it turned into a hostage situation. Little Claire was like a niece to Tara and she wanted to protect the child, as well as Alex, at all costs. If she could only find a place to park on this narrow road, she’d sneak onto the property to look for Alex’s car. Then she’d escort Alex—hopefully with Claire—out of here and call the cops.

Just past the property, Tara pulled as far over as she could, parking tight to a line of precariously tipped pines. After she hit her warning taillights on and killed the engine, she got out and opened her umbrella. The rain drummed hard against it. The mud and grass were slick where she started up, veering off the twisting driveway so the trees would hide her. The shifting air, unfortunately, had cleared some of the mist away; it would have made perfect camouflage. The wind seemed to howl as if in protest or warning, and her footsteps crunched incredibly loudly.

She almost went down to her knees in the slippery pine needles. Hanging branches shuddered more cold water onto her. The wind changed again, whipping the rain sideways. She closed her useless umbrella and left it on the ground. At least these thick boughs provided some cover from which to view the house.

From behind a shroud of shivering, new-budding aspens and spiky blue spruce, a small A-frame of dark-brown-stained boards emerged, with an attached one-car garage. This place was a far cry from the beautiful home Alex had up for sale in Evergreen. Knowing Clay, he had big plans for recouping his losses and moving onward and upward in the world soon. Maybe he just needed time to buy himself a new legal identity as Carl Weatherby, then find a job. As he’d often said when pushing his opinion about anything onto others, “You can bet on it!”

No, Alex’s car was not parked outside. Surely it wasn’t in the small garage. Could she have been wrong to assume Alex had come here with her information? Had she come and gone, maybe with Claire? If so, Tara knew she’d better get out of here.

She went farther up toward the back of the house. The line of trembling, drooping trees threw cold water on her each time their branches moved. Rocks and thick forest fringe clung tight to the back lot line, but she didn’t want to go higher and get cut off from a quick exit to her car. Her sopped hair stuck to her face and neck and dripped cold water down her back.

Oh, no! Alex’s car was here, driven around in back, parked on the grass next to a sodden sandbox that must be Claire’s. Her stomach lurched. Could Clay and Alex have reconciled? In her wildest dreams, she never thought that was a possibility. Or had something else happened?

Bending low, she rushed toward the back deck. It was elevated, with a narrow set of wooden stairs going up. On them, her footsteps sounded too loud despite the eaves and gutters spouting noisy rivulets of rain. Above, two house windows stared at her like blank eyes, running with tears. If she could just glance in…

No lights shone from inside, even on such a dark day. Surely Claire would be home from school by now. But where could Alex have gone?

Her heart thudded so loudly it almost drowned out the rain. Tara huddled against the wooden back door on the deck, then leaned slowly inward to peek in the closest window.

Alex! Alex, sitting in—no, tied to—a kitchen chair! Slumped over. Dead? Oh, dear God in heaven, help her—help me! She didn’t see blood, but it was so dark in there….

Tara’s first instinct was to scream her friend’s name, to break a window and climb in to help, but her gut told her that Alex could be bait. Where was Claire? Worse, where was Clay? This was a crime scene.

She thudded down the stairs, fumbling for her cell phone in her pocket as her car keys jingled. Hide back in the trees, she told herself. The number of the Central City police was on her instant dial. Call them. Hide, wait, watch until they come.

She hit their number, tried to whisper for help, then just shouted, “Nine-one-one! Forty-one forty-seven Elk Lane, above Black Hawk—a woman’s been hurt—”

Her panicked cry was prophetic. She slipped and went down in slick mud and pine needles, twisting her ankle.

In the screaming wind, she heard fast footsteps behind her. A man’s booted foot slammed on her wrist. Her phone skidded away.

A moment’s stunning pain screamed deep into her brain. Blackness fell on her. Was this death? She wanted to live. Hide! She had to hide.

In that dark, secret place, some scents and sounds still clung to the her: sharp, stabbing smells; muted music; her heart pounding in her ears and someone crying, crying, crying.

1

September 6, 2007

“I’m really kind of nervous today,” Tara told her new doctor’s nurse as the spiky-haired blonde prepared to take her blood pressure. “Because of my coma and rehab, I haven’t been to a personal physician in years, only specialists and physical therapists. I figured I’d better get back on track with pap smears and all. Here I am, thirty years old, and I feel like a teenager facing her first time again—for a cervical exam, I mean.”

The nurse, whose name tag said only Pamela, nodded and smiled. She was young but seemed kind and efficient. “I’ve got to tell you,” Pamela said as she inflated the blood-pressure band around Tara’s arm, “I’ve never known anyone in a coma that long—a whole year?”

“Eleven months, and then a lot of physical therapy to get my body working again, especially my left leg. I went from a walker to a cane. I’m finally back to normal, though I guess I’ll never be the same person again.”

“I read that article in the paper about you, and about your friend being lost. I’m really sorry.”

Tara blinked back tears and said, “Thanks.”

She lay back on the examining table while Pamela prepared to draw blood. B.C.—Before Coma—she used to hate needles and shots, but they were familiar ground now, as were doctors, medicines, pain. But all that was nothing next to the agony of these last long months since she’d been out of the coma. She could recall no events from the day Clay had struck her with the butt of the gun with which he’d shot Alex, but other people had pieced everything together for her. Alex was dead, and Clay Whetstone was serving a life sentence for murdering his ex-wife, though his lawyers had claimed it was in self-defense. Seven-year-old Claire was in effect an orphan, but Tara had moved in with her at Alex’s family’s home when the girl’s maternal grandmother had died. So much loss and grief…

At least Claire’s needs and love had kept Tara sane while she mourned not only Alex’s death, but the death of her own marriage. No wonder this stranger and others pitied her. It was public knowledge that during her long coma, her husband had divorced her and left the area to start a new Lohan Investments office in the Seattle area. She had not seen or talked to him since. Tara had tried to tell herself it was all for the best. She’d been crazy to marry Laird, however wealthy, handsome and charismatic he was—Prince Charming in the well-toned flesh. Laird Lohan had, as the old saying went, swept her off her feet.

Why had he wanted her, when he could have had almost anyone? Since he hadn’t stuck with her when times got tough, she had only one answer: he’d been hooked by her looks, lust at first sight for her red-gold hair, green eyes in a heart-shaped face, and her slender, graceful frame. Probably he’d been initially drawn to her independent nature, too, though. Until that fateful day she’d gone after Alex, she’d taken few risks.

At first, she had thought Laird was a gift from heaven. His apparent adoration had gone straight to her heart. He’d declared that she was his ideal woman, but he’d obviously only meant superficially. Some men joked about being a legs man or a breast man; Laird had been a face man. “Just wait until you see what our kids look like!” he’d boasted to his parents and his brother.

“We got your medical records from Dr. DeMar.” Pamela interrupted Tara’s agonizing. She pressed a cotton ball to the puncture on Tara’s inner arm where she’d drawn the blood into a plastic vial. Tara was surprised that part was all over.

“Yes, Dr. Jennifer DeMar, my old doctor. I mean, my former doctor—she’s not much older than I am. She got her chance to be part of a bigger clinic near L.A. None of her patients were happy to have to switch doctors, though I’m sure Dr. Holbrook is good and your office is not far from where I live.”

“He’s very good. He’s not even taking new patients, but he wanted to—to help you. Bet your Dr. DeMar misses our lifestyle here—clean air, the mountains,” Pamela rushed on. “Ick, L.A., with all those cars and smog. Now, if you’ll remove your clothes and put this lovely little gown on, tied in the front.” She forced a laugh. “I know everyone hates these things. I’ll be right back, and Dr. Holbrook will be right in.”

With a sigh, Tara followed orders and lay back on the examining table, staring up at the white ceiling with its recessed lights. That was what she remembered seeing first when she came out of her coma: instead of darkness, she saw blankness, then cautious, curious faces staring down at her as they performed their cognitive and physical tests on her. But no Laird, no Dr. Jen, who had been a friend as well as her physician. Yet Alex’s mother, Linda MacMahon, had been there for her, visiting almost daily, even bringing Claire now and then. Laird’s mother, Veronica, had come to see her, too, holding her hand, filling her room with bright sunflowers and saying, “So, so sorry about how things have worked out between you and Laird. Maybe it’s for the best he’s moved away….”

Tara sensed her former mother-in-law’s visits were secret, not at the behest of the rest of the Lohans, who never showed up or even called. Still, it was through the beneficence of their family clinic that she’d been so well taken care of all those blank months.

Tara sniffed and tried to stop her tears, but they ran down her cheeks into her ears. She swiped the tracks of water away. Her new doctor didn’t need to see her crying. She’d been doing so well lately, working hard to resurrect Finders Keepers and growing closer to Claire. Tara was pretty much back on her feet when Alex’s widowed mother had suddenly died of a stroke. Tara was certain it was partly from grief over her only daughter’s death. She’d been given temporary custody of Claire by Claire’s new legal guardian, Nick MacMahon. Claire’s uncle Nick was working in the Middle East helping the troops train tracker dogs. Tara and Claire’s makeshift family included his pet dog, Beamer, a beautiful, smart golden Lab.

The good news and the bad news was that Nick was coming home soon. Claire was so excited, but she didn’t fully realize he would probably take her and Beamer away. And then Tara would be alone again, with only her job helping strangers find their children to focus on.

Nick MacMahon, still in fatigues and field boots, dropped his heavy rucksack in the front yard of his boyhood home on Shadow Mountain Road. He inhaled deeply, grateful not to breathe in hot desert dust. The air, crisp and clean, bit down into his lungs. Thank God, he was home where he didn’t have to watch his back, where the sun felt warm instead of scorching. Nothing like being nine thousand feet up in the fresh air of the Colorado sky, above the little valley town of Conifer.

His family home, surrounded by rocky outcrops with thick pine and aspen forests, stood where Shadow Mountain and Black Mountain hunched shoulder to shoulder in the foothills of the Rockies. His family had always described their location as about twenty miles and forty minutes southwest of Denver on the edge of the Arapahoe National Forest.

He lifted a hand in farewell to his buddy. With a honk! honk! their rented truck roared away; Jim was eager to get back to his fiancée near Vail by dark.

Nick heard Beamer start barking, either at the sound of a stranger’s vehicle or because he just plain scented his best friend and partner. Nick couldn’t tell if the dog was in the house or around in back. Leaving his gear where it was, he jogged up the gravel driveway. Though he was in good physical shape, he felt the altitude and slowed to a walk. He’d have to get used to “high living” again, as his dad had jokingly called it.

Nick’s carpenter father, who had died eight years ago, had designed and built the cedar house and its elevated wraparound railed deck with his own hands almost twenty years ago. Yeah, his dad had known how to build a house, and a strong family, too. Nick could remember helping him clear the lot of heavy stones. The place had large panoramic windows and side wings, which made it seem poised for flight. The interior boasted two-toned hickory flooring, well-insulated paneled walls and custom-made cabinetry.

Three bedrooms and two baths were upstairs; the middle floor had a kitchen and a two-story great room. Downstairs, the large garage was one way, and down a few more stairs was a huge area which had once been his dad’s carpentry workshop. Now it was a rec room that could double as a guest suite. He and Alexis had been their only children, but the senior MacMahons had planned space for lots of grandchildren visiting. At least to their only one, Claire, it was home for now. Nick figured he’d never sell it. Maybe he’d lease it to Tara Kinsale, if he decided to take the job in the East.

“Beamer! Beamer boy, your partner’s home!” he shouted, but the dog was not in the fenced-in run out back. The run was required by law, whether to keep the dogs safe from marauding bears or smaller wildlife safe from dogs, Nick wasn’t sure. Beamer was not a hunter; he retrieved escaped or lost people. He was one of the best dogs Nick had ever trained. Put a working collar on him, give him someone’s scent and he was off to the races. What a team they’d been. At eight years, Beamer was getting pretty old to work long days now, but he’d always have a home as Nick’s pet.

No other sounds came from the house but frenzied barking. Nick was glad to be here before Claire got off her school bus from West Jefferson Elementary. They’d passed the school below and he’d been tempted to have Jim let him out there, to find Claire’s classroom and hug her and tell her everything would be all right now that he was home.

The kid had been fighting battles of her own. She’d lost her mother—thanks to her bastard father—and her grandmother. He wanted to assure her that she would not lose her uncle Nick. It was his duty to take care of Claire. He had a great job offer to train more dogs at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, though his dream had always been to start a school near Denver for tracker dogs and their human partners. Wherever they ended up, Claire would have to learn to love it. Though he’d never been married or had a child of his own, he had no doubt he could somehow learn to be both parents to her.

“Beamer!” he shouted again as he walked back around to the front of the house. Puffing from the altitude, he went up on the elevated deck. The Lab jumped on his hind legs, trying to paw his way through the picture window. Considering this manic display, he was sure no one but Beamer was home. Nick’s reluctance to leave his beloved pet was one reason he almost turned down the military consulting job with Delta Force in the desolate, dangerous province of Nuristan, Afghanistan, but duty called.

Nick cursed the fact he didn’t have a house key. Maybe there was one still hidden where his mother had always left it. It was so bittersweet to come home but not find her here for the first time in his life.

He strode behind the house and heard Beamer follow him to the back door. He had hoped Tara, his sister’s best friend and Claire’s temporary guardian, would be home. He should have called her from the Denver airport, but at the last minute he and Jim had flown standby from Dulles in D.C., and then he thought it would be fun to surprise them.

Nick had met the beautiful, redheaded Tara here at the house a couple of years ago. He couldn’t quite recall when, but he could recall her. It was before he’d signed the contract with the army to train dogs to sniff out the cave-clinging Taliban, including Bin Laden, who had a reward of a cool fifty million dollars on his head. They’d located a lot of the enemy but not the man himself, a small regret compared to his tragic failure while he was there.

Trying to deep-six that memory, Nick glimpsed a photo of Tara and Claire together, all dressed up for some event. The picture was on the coffee table, in great danger of being swept off by Beamer’s tail. The photo reminded him of Tara’s lavish wedding to big money. She still looked like how he’d picture an old-fashioned Irish lass though, not someone on the society pages of the paper. She was a natural, windblown-looking beauty with red hair to her shoulders. He only really knew her through a couple of phone calls and their sporadic e-mails, all dealing with Claire. He’d been stationed so far out in the boonies with the Delta boys that he hadn’t even known Clay had murdered Alexis until she’d been buried for over a week. Anyway, if he’d been here, he probably would have tracked Clay down and then strangled his former brother-in-law with his bare hands.

This homecoming was also tough because Nick had been incommunicado with a Delta chalk squad when the stroke killed his mother. Tara and some distant relatives had taken care of the arrangements, as well as of little Claire. He owed Tara Kinsale big-time.

He checked for the house key under the flower crock where his parents had always kept it. Negative. With walls still between them, he and Beamer raced for the front of the house again. He’d just bivouac on the front deck, waiting for Claire and Tara to show. But if he didn’t calm Beamer down, the high-ceilinged great room was going to look like a bomb blew up in it. He shuddered at that image—that memory.

“Good dog,” he shouted through the window. Time to see if Beamer still knew who the senior partner was, the alpha pack dog, after their time apart. If Beamer obeyed him, he’d take that as a sign that Claire would happily do whatever he decided was best. After all, how hard could it be to take care of a young girl when he’d trained dogs and given orders to the Delta boys, no less.

“Sit,” Nick commanded solemnly. “Beamer, sit. Beamer, quiet.”

Tears blurred Nick’s vision of the big, wide-eyed, panting dog as he immediately sat silent with his tail thumping the floor like a pendulum.

Tara wished she’d been able to find a female doctor who was taking new patients. She really did miss Jen. They had met at a social event years ago and had been friends before they’d been patient and physician. But Jen could never understand why Tara didn’t gladly toe Laird’s line. Jen hadn’t brought it up, but Tara suspected she probably blamed Tara for their divorce, despite the fact that Laird had left her. Though Tara was grateful to be out of a bad marriage, it did hurt that Laird had deserted her in her hour of need. It was so strange to be married to him, and then, when she awoke from the coma—which felt like the very next day to her, though it was almost an entire year—to be divorced and not to have any contact with him. A blessing, in one way, but a curse to her psyche, too, one that counseling had not quite erased.

“A dream catch,” Jen had called Laird with a sigh the first time she’d laid eyes on him. “Wish I’d been the one doing some social work with patients at the Lohan Mountain Manor Clinic. You sure were lucky, running into the eligible fair-haired son there.”

Jen and Tara had talked via cell phone several times while Tara was rebuilding her life, but she knew Jen was busy starting over, too. Lately, they spoke less and less. It seemed, at least on Jen’s part, they had little in common now.

Dr. Gordon Holbrook, Tara’s new G.P., came into the examining room and said cheerily, “Good afternoon, Tara.” He was fifty-something, with gray etching his temples and prominent crow’s-feet and worry lines on his pleasant face. He sat down to chat about how she’d been feeling since waking from the coma and to go over the extensive medical records he’d received from Jen and from the Lohan Clinic, where she’d spent the last nine and a half months of her coma, then two months of rehab and counseling.

In short, Dr. Holbrook seemed to have a good bedside—or examination tableside—manner. He was thoughtful enough to call Pamela back into the room when he began the cervical exam and pap test, so Tara would feel more at ease.

Tara was still tense, but responded to his small talk about how the property values were skyrocketing in the area. He had friends who lived on Shadow Mountain Road, but not as high up as her. She didn’t know them. She explained that she’d only lived in the area since her foster child’s grandmother had died, because she didn’t want to uproot Claire again. Their nearest neighbors lived about a football field away.

When he was done, Dr. Holbrook slid the stirrups back under the table, covered her legs with a light blanket and had her sit up. He told Pamela she could step out. He had stopped the light talk; in fact, he stopped talking at all as he went to her folder. He scanned it again, frowning. With all Tara had been through after the coma, she could tell when bad news was coming. She gripped her hands tightly together.

“What is it, Doctor? Is something wrong?”

“No, simply an incomplete record here—by far. There is nothing I see here about your pregnancy or your delivery of a baby. Was the child lost or perhaps adopted?”

Her insides cartwheeled, then she actually snorted a little laugh of surprise. His question didn’t give her a lot of faith in him now. “That’s because I’ve never had a baby.”

“I do understand,” he said, “that you might have private reasons for not wanting to admit to a pregnancy or having borne a child. But I’m not here to judge you in any way.”

“Doctor, I have not had a child. Besides, I was on birth control pills the entire two years I was married. What gives you the idea I was even pregnant?”

“Several key indicators,” he said. Sitting, still frowning, he leaned slightly toward her. Her pulse picked up and her stomach cramped. “Tara, you have all the signs of having had a pregnancy and a vaginal delivery.”

“Oh, you mean the stretch marks on the sides of my stomach. Those are from lying comatose so long, I think, even though they moved and massaged me and—”

“I didn’t even notice those. There are telltale indicators of a pregnancy that must have gone at least nearly full-term.”

“What? Doctor, there is no way. I said I was on birth control pills and—”

“There have been instances of pregnancies while someone is on the Pill. One missed pill, or even counterfeit ones coming in from China that have found their way into reputable drugstores or other suppliers.”

“It’s still impossible. You’ve read my record. That’s all there is!”

“Tara, your vagina is relaxed, not tight.”

“I was unconscious for almost a year! Every part of me was relaxed!” She kept shaking her head. This was ridiculous—impossible. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She even felt insulted. But when he’d said the words vaginal delivery, for some reason, she’d felt the earth shake.

“Also,” he went on, “your cervix is open about one centimeter, and it doesn’t have the tip-of-a-nose-with-dimple appearance of a woman who has never been pregnant and delivered. But the first thing that I noted was external body signs, beyond the stretch marks you mention. From your naval to the pubis, there is a slight dark line called the linea negra, which pregnant women present. On women who have not had a child, it would be much lighter—a linea alba, or white line. And I’m sure you’ll note that the areolas around your nipples are darker than they used to be.”

Her heart thudding, she stared gap-mouthed at him. This man didn’t know what was normal for her—not before today, at least. Yet she was riveted, trying to take in each word.

“Tara, whatever you share with me will stay privileged from everyone, unless you choose to release the information. Since so much of your private life has been made public lately, I can understand your reluctance to trust me. But as we embark on our professional relationship, this is something very important you should consider sharing with your physician.”

Tara actually couldn’t talk. She sputtered, half-furious, half-stunned. She blinked back tears. He—he had to be wrong. Even if by some fluke she’d gotten pregnant while on birth control pills, there was no way she’d had a pregnancy or a baby, not in a full-blown coma! She was getting out of here right now. She’d pick up Claire, go home and hide out with her and Beamer, where things were normal, safe and sane.

2

“Uncle Nick!” Claire exploded, and pointed out the truck window. “It’s Uncle Nick! He’s here!”

The child screeched in excitement as Tara pulled the truck into the driveway. She watched as Nick, grinning and waving a bit sheepishly at the raucous greeting, hurried down the steps of the front deck to greet them.

Nicolas MacMahon was taller than Tara remembered from their one meeting. He was big shouldered and bronze skinned; his close-cropped blond hair and white beard stubble glistened in the September sun. He was the only man she’d ever seen who did not seem to shrink in this vast mountain setting. Though still in pale-colored combat fatigues, he didn’t blend in with the background but seemed the center of the scene.

Claire was out of the car like a shot to hurl herself into his outstretched arms. He lifted and swung her around while she squealed in delight. After losing his sister and his mother while he’d been away, Tara thought, this must be the moment he knew he was home.

Holding Claire in one arm as if she were a toddler, he met Tara partway around her truck. His ice-blue eyes glinted from under straight, pale brows and his teeth shone white in his tanned face as he smiled. Despite her height of five feet eight inches, he stood more than half a head taller. The late-day sun threw shadows in the clefts of his cheeks and a wayward dimple to the left of his mouth. His prominent nose was a bit crooked but it suited his look, a blend of ruddy and just plain rugged. He didn’t really resemble either his sister or his mother; from photos Tara had seen, he had clearly inherited his father’s form and face.

He finally put Claire down. A moment of awkward silence stretched out between him and Tara, as if they’d been caught by a slo-mo camera. Something loud but unspoken arced between them before he threw his free arm around her shoulders and hugged her hard against his rock-hard side, then let her go.

“Welcome home, Nick,” she said, shoving her hair from her face in the sudden breeze as she took a step back and looked up into his happy face. “Welcome home!”

She meant it and was happy for him and her precious little Claire. Family at last, for both of them. But another loss loomed for her, unless she could convince him to at least stay in the area. The house was his, Claire was his, even Tara’s best wishes were his, but in a way he was her enemy.

Ashamed of that thought—or blushing from the closeness of the man himself—Tara turned away. She hurried to the house and unlocked the door while Claire chattered to Nick about her two best friends at school, about how she and “Aunt Tara” were going to go to the Denver Zoo and to a concert at Red Rocks and would he go, too. Thank heavens the seven-year-old had no hang-ups about her uncle, whom she hadn’t seen for over two years except for e-mailed photos and one face-to-face online interview. The child was so happy she flaunted the gap-toothed grin she’d been shy about ever since she’d begun to lose her baby teeth. Her brown eyes danced in her narrow, freckled face while, in her excitement, she stood on first one sneakered foot and then the other.

Tara stood frozen for a moment, gazing at them, her mind racing. She had to try to convince Nick not to take Claire away—at least, not far away. In that split second of mingled frustration and fear, she sensed what her clients must feel in that moment they realized their husbands or exes or boyfriends had taken their beloved kids and disappeared.

With a sniff, she turned away to open the front door. Instead of his usual single bark and gentle greeting, Beamer tore past her in a blur of movement and strength. Nick saw him coming and put Claire behind him while the golden Lab nearly leaped into his arms. Another moment to remember, Tara told herself, then realized she felt left out—almost jealous. Today of all days, when she’d needed her closeness to Claire and some peace and quiet to deal with her own problems, this!

Nick hugged Beamer and knelt to bury his face in the dog’s hair. The three of them looked like a matched set, all golden haired, perhaps with golden futures. Tara leaned in the doorway with tears in her eyes, then realized she was resting both hands protectively on her belly.

What Dr. Holbrook had told her today hit hard again. He was mistaken, of course. If the birth of her own child were a fact, the only possibility was that it had occurred while she was comatose. But that was impossible. Insane. Yet, just to ease her mind, she was going to use her online skills to check it out, phone Jen in L.A., too, and perhaps even get a second opinion beyond Jen’s. But even comatose women didn’t have babies they never knew about, especially not while they were on birth control, for heaven’s sake. The man was wrong, and she’d told him so.

Now, she just had to prove it to herself.

However strange things seemed without his mother here, the old house seemed to welcome Nick. He’d held the door for Tara, and his words—After you—echoed in his head. Yeah, he could really see himself going after a woman like this. Yet she seemed more than wary, as if she had an invisible fence around her that she—or he—dare not cross. Hell, he couldn’t blame her, since she probably figured he could take Claire away from her. Maybe she was scarred from her sudden divorce, too, even if that was a while ago.

After his excited niece dragged him from room to room, as if he’d never seen the place he’d grown up in, he sat at the kitchen table with a Coors beer, taco chips and Claire while Tara fixed a salad and spaghetti. He filled them in on his flights home, then told them how he’d left the ten dogs he’d helped train with their new partners in the mountains of Afghanistan and how they wanted him to train even more here in the States. Beamer, tight to his leg under the table, seemed to listen to each word, too.

“Aunt Tara showed me where you were on the map and I can spell Afghanistan, too,” Claire piped up. “And I think that’s where afghans like that one on the sofa Grandma knitted first came from. Beamer missed you. Aunt Tara, too. We all did, ’specially after Mommy went to heaven and Daddy went to prison.”

That incredible last sentence, delivered in the child’s light voice, reminded Nick of some sappy Western music lyrics. Hard to believe it was all true and had happened to his family. Tears filled his eyes. Crying in his beer already. Man, he must be exhausted as well as jetlagged. Everything was getting to him today. His eyes met Tara’s green gaze again over the steam from the boiling pasta. What was this woman really like? Was she that lovely inside, too? She had tried to save Alex at the risk of her own life and had taken such good care of Claire. In the coma Clay’s attack had caused, she’d lost almost a year of her life and had lost her husband, the life she’d known. He knew she ran a P.I. firm that searched for lost kids. She must have a heart of gold.

He could tell she forced a smile before she looked away from him. She was tall but shapely. Any moron who’d been living with men and looking only at the occasional woman swathed in black burkas for the past two years would appreciate that. Her grace and femininity made him weak in the knees, yet she seemed to have an edge to her. Her sunny looks often crashed to frowns or near tears. Damn, they had a lot to say to each other. He could only hope she’d understand his dilemma about taking Claire and leaving.

Tara intended to let Nick read Claire her bedtime story and tuck her in tonight, but both Claire and Nick had insisted she come into the child’s bedroom, too. Ironically, Claire had chosen Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day—she liked any book title with a resemblance to her mother’s name in it. Nick shot Tara a what’s-with-this-book look, since the child seemed so happy. He’d soon learn, Tara thought, that Claire had lots of problems that came out in lots of ways. As Nick read the familiar book to his niece, Tara’s mind drifted. She could have written Tara’s Horrendous, Impossible, Ridiculous, Gut-wrenching Day. She felt both emotionally exhausted and keyed up; for once, the glass of red wine she and Nick had drunk with dinner was not making her sleepy. She was as revved up as if she’d downed a whole pot of coffee and she was dying to get online to search comatose woman + childbirth and to phone Jen. But she needed to talk to Nick in private first.

After they tucked Claire in bed, they sat out on the deck overlooking the darkening mountains. For the first time in the thirteen months since she’d moved in with Claire, Tara felt like a guest. It was an amazingly peaceful scene and yet she felt so uptight.

“You’re probably very tired,” she said, feeling she should give him a way out of further conversation if he wanted to be alone—with man’s best friend, that is. Beamer trailed him everywhere and now lay two feet from the rungs of Nick’s rocker.

“I’m kind of jazzed, tell you the truth.”

They shared small talk, things about Claire’s daily schedule. He with another beer, she with herbal tea, they rocked and watched the setting sun stain the western sky bloodred. To the northeast, down the mountain and over the darkening silhouettes of spiky pines and leaf-rattling aspens, they could see the distant lights of Denver coming on in twinkling pinpoints. Behind them, up the mountain, the thick, black tree line loomed.

“Lots of memories here,” he said softly, then cleared his throat. “I guess it’s pretty tough to have lost some memories, when you were…hurt.”

“Besides losing Alex, I lost my husband. That was just as well though. No woman wants someone who isn’t in for the hard times as well as the good. We had a lot of differences.” She switched to a news-reporter-style voice: “Independent, self-supporting, middle-class woman weds big money and becomes property of the lord of the manor, along with the loyal-only-unto-themselves Lohan family.” She dropped the elevated tone and went on. “Laird Lohan gave me a shock when he left me—and left town—but also saved me some heartache. I’m slowly getting my real self back, becoming just working girl Tara Kinsale again. And Claire’s been such a big part of my life and recovery.”

“Alex had a tough marriage, too. Things were bad with Clay, obviously, even before he took Claire from her.” He shook his head. “I guess I was in my own little freewheeling-bachelor and dog-training world during most of that. Thank God, the cops found Clay, and he’s locked up for life.”

“Yes, but you should know that his family, especially his younger brother Rick, really took Clay’s conviction personally, as if it was Alex’s, or even my fault. She wasn’t around to blame, so Rick berated me. Told me off in person and later sent me a threatening letter, which I saved.”

He frowned and shifted in his chair so hard it creaked. “Yeah, that sounds like Rick. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s more of a blowhard than someone with the guts to do something. He doesn’t have a family and never quite made a go of things professionally—keeps changing jobs, even careers. He hasn’t bothered you since his initial eruption, has he?”

“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.”

“Beamer would growl if he came around here.”

“You’ll have to have a chat with Beamer,” she said, glad to change the subject. “He doesn’t growl, but he barks anytime a fox or elk or bear is around.”

“He just needs a bit of reeducation on manners. So…” He drew the word out as if he hesitated to embark on whatever he was going to say. “I take it that happy, smiling Claire still has her dark moments—that book she chose tonight, stuff like that.”

“Yes. I think hearing about another kid’s difficult day comforts her. It teaches her she’s not the only one with problems and losses, although few suffer what she’d been through. The two of us are open about her losses, and she knows about mine—”

Her voice caught. But did she have a loss Claire didn’t know about—one that she herself didn’t know about? No, she could not have had a child of her own, a baby who would now be—let’s see, probably around two and a half years old. If, by the wildest stretch of imagination, that were true, where was the proof? Where was the child?

“Go on,” Nick prompted, making her realize she’d stopped in the middle of a sentence. It took her a moment to get back on her mental track.

“Claire and I have leaned on each other,” she said. “But don’t be startled if you hear her shrieking in the middle of the night.”

“Bad dreams?”

She nodded. “Very.” She didn’t tell him that ever since her recovery from the coma—or perhaps even during the coma—she also had been stalked by the monsters of warped, horrendous nightmares. She’d received counseling for the dreams at the Lohan Clinic when she was trying to make plans and put her life back together.

“Nick,” she said, speaking faster now as she turned in her rocker to face him, “if you don’t mind my asking, what are your plans?”

“Undecided. I’ve got a too-good-to-turn-down offer to train dogs for the armed forces, but it would mean a move to North Carolina. With all my experience, I feel it’s my duty, in peace or wartime. These dogs would not be bomb sniffers but trackers who hunt the enemy—specific people, when we can give the dogs a scent, like what I’ve been doing these last two years. But Claire’s my duty now, too.”

“Your mother told me once that when you got the funding, you wanted to open a dog academy around here, to train dogs and their humans to search for lost people.”

“True. I love this area. In a way, we’re both in the finders business, aren’t we? Tara, I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done for Claire. I know you didn’t do it for me, but speaking for my entire family, gone though they are…” His voice trailed off again. He cleared his throat. “Anything I can do to help you—to repay—I don’t mean with money. Guess you’ve been there, done that.”

“I appreciate your support,” she told him. Damn, she was resting her free hand on her belly again, almost as if she had a stomachache. Here she was discussing what was most important to her and Claire and she kept coming back to the fact she could not have had a baby. No! No way in all creation was that remotely possible!

“You’re upset,” he said, leaning toward her with his elbow on the arm of his chair, so they mirrored each other’s body language. They had both stopped rocking; earlier she’d noticed how they had rocked in unison. “Even if Claire and I move across the country,” he told her, “you’re always welcome to visit, and we’ll come see you. I doubt if the move would be permanent. Maybe just a few years. I don’t mean to hurt you after all you’ve been through.”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said, rising to go inside before she blurted out everything to him about today, not to mention the fact that she would just hate it—hate him—if he took Claire away. “Sometimes there’s nowhere to go but up. I know whereof I speak.”

“But all that’s behind you now,” he said as she started inside.

She turned back to face him. Wouldn’t he be shocked if she dumped her doctor’s claim about a belly line and cervical dimples on a man she barely knew on his first day home? The darn doctor was right about the subtle changes to her breasts and belly, but surely all that could have resulted from her coma, too. At least, that’s what she told herself before today.

“By the way,” she said, “I get Claire up for school at seven, but we’ll be quiet if you want to sleep in. It will be nice to have a man on the premises, since it feels a bit isolated up here, even with Beamer on patrol. I’ll start looking for a new place soon, maybe in town.”

“No!” Nick said, thumping his empty bottle onto the wooden deck and standing to take her arm to turn her toward him. “You do anything like that on my account, and Claire will never forgive me. Beamer will track you for us. Before you make any move like that, I’ll find someplace else until everything is decided on and settled.”

Settled, she thought. As she thanked him and wished him a good night’s sleep, she realized she wasn’t ever going to feel settled again until she proved she’d never been pregnant.

3

In her office, Tara turned on the lights and hurried to the PC she used to track down other people’s kids. Finally, some time to herself. She needed answers, and she needed them now. After all, she was a researcher, a finder, a tracker of people. It was nearly midnight, but she’d never sleep if she didn’t look into Dr. Holbrook’s crazy claims.

Her Finders Keepers office was in the large, extra bedroom. In addition to her desk and one armchair, the office had two PCs, one of them always online, a fax/copier/scanner, and four file cabinets—fireproof ones with locks. Since Alex had taken the report on Clay from Tara’s files, she was paranoid about keeping things under lock and key.

One file held her case-data sheets and time logs for payment. Also, this was where she kept her precious list of IBs—information brokers—who were always her last resort. They were expensive, obsessive, underground kinds of people she’d never want to meet in person. One of them, Marv Seymour, had been trying to hit on her via e-mail and fax, as if she’d consulted some lookin’-for-love source instead of purchasing locate info from him. Unfortunately, he did not live far away, in Centennial, south of Denver. She’d told him not to contact her for personal reasons again, after he’d claimed he “knew more than the TV and newspapers had covered about her lonely life.” That was the pot calling the kettle black, since he sounded like a real loner. However much she needed a good local IB, Seymour came across like a weirdo who lived in the shadows. Colorado was one of few states that had no statewide licensing or oversight of private detective agencies, and IBs were never called to account for their actions either.

On the wall above Tara’s big pine desk hung two large corkboards with a splattering of random notes, maps and reminders pinned to them. To her left was a large, white erasable marker board next to a huge calendar on which she kept track of what reports were due when. Because she juggled several cases at once, she had learned to multitask and prioritize. Once she found she could do that again, she’d known she had no lasting mental concerns from her coma. Hard rehab work had brought her through her physical weaknesses. Rather, she thought, the residual damage was all emotional.

Tara’s office telephone system had three lines, one dedicated to the fax. Only one had a listed number. Tape recorders were attached to two of the three phones, because she often recorded witness interviews. Taping was legal because she always stated and then repeated that the conversation was being recorded. Her clients received a copy of the tape along with the final report—a report she would have given to Alex after Clay was in custody and Claire was on her way back to her mother.

Now, in Tara’s zeal to learn if a comatose woman could deliver a child—maybe even a living child—she caught a glimpse of why Alex had rushed after Claire the moment she had learned her location. Like Tara tonight with Nick and Claire, Alex had chatted normally on that fateful day. She had controlled her desperation in order to hide the fact she intended to find Claire at any cost, even if it meant stealing the progress report from her friend and lying to her about where she was going.

Though Tara had told no one but her psychiatrist at the Lohan Clinic, deep down she blamed Alex for putting herself in a position to be murdered. Tara also blamed Alex for indirectly placing her in a dangerous situation that led to Clay robbing her of a year of her life. It was a miracle that Alex’s rash actions hadn’t pushed Clay into harming Claire, as well. Tara hated feeling so conflicted about her best friend, but she couldn’t help feeling anger as well as anguish over her loss.

Tara sat down in her desk chair and double-clicked her mouse. The big, flat screen woke up, displaying the latest wallpaper on her home page. She had taken a photo of the mountains and valley from the highest safe access point above the house, an outcrop called Big Rock. But over the breathtaking view she had superimposed the headline from the Denver Post reporting her recovery from her coma: Comatose Conifer Woman Gets Back Life But Not Her Past. Was it possible her coma had taken something else from her?

The article had told about her memory loss, starting the day Clay had slammed her over the head with the butt of the same gun he’d used to kill Alex. It had also revealed that her husband, well-known locally through his wealthy, influential family, had left her and moved to the West Coast during her long coma. That had surely made Laird look cold and selfish, Tara thought, and the Lohans hated bad PR. They always wanted to be seen as altruistic and generous. Laird must have wanted to get away from her badly. Veronica, his mother, was the only Lohan who had seemed to sympathize with Tara in the dissolution of the marriage, but of course, Lohan blue blood didn’t flow through Veronica’s veins. She’d married into the clan, just like Tara.

Tara kept the headline on her screen because, in facing its brutal truth, she tried harder to live each day better and stronger. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, the Nietzsche quote went. Now those words might even carry a new meaning.

She quickly located an item on comatose woman + childbirth on the CBS News site. There was also an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer about the same case:

Doctors in Cincinnati say it’s an extremely rare case—a twenty-four-year-old woman who was in a coma for nearly her entire pregnancy has given birth to a healthy, full-term baby…Chastity Cooper of Warsaw, Kentucky, has been comatose since she suffered severe head injuries in an auto accident in November, two weeks after she conceived. The pregnancy was discovered after the accident. Obstetricians said it was extremely rare that a woman could deliver a baby full-term when she was in a coma and bedridden through the pregnancy…Doctors said they used labor-inducing medications, but no strong pain relievers in the vaginal delivery…

Tara just stared at the screen. Doctors said…Obstetricians said… Her mind bounced back to what her own doctor had claimed today. He was theorizing, of course, that she’d had a child before her coma, possibly years ago. A comatose delivery might have been “extremely rare” but, obviously, it was not impossible. And vaginal delivery. Why did those words especially disturb her?

Her hands clasped so hard in her lap that her fingers went numb, she reread the article, word for word. “But this girl obviously wasn’t on birth control pills,” she whispered aloud as she tried to convince herself that one rare case proved nothing.

She searched further and came across a Fox TV Web site with a brief mention of a similar case. At first, because it took place in Kentucky, Tara thought it referred to the same rare instance, but it was much more current, from exactly three months ago.

We have an update tonight on a story Fox 7 first told you about in January. A comatose Webster County, Kentucky, woman has given birth to a healthy baby girl. Ashley Chaney was allegedly beaten by her ex-boyfriend and remains unresponsive in a nursing home. Chaney delivered the five-pound baby girl in late May. Thomas Matthew Yancy is charged with beating Chaney and putting her in a coma…

Tara shuddered. Despite the fact she had no memory of her own assault, she pictured herself being hit on the head by Alex’s ex-husband. After she had come out of her coma, when she’d interviewed the Central City law officer who had found her, he’d described how she was sprawled lifeless on the wet ground. Could she have been harboring a new life within her?

After shooting Alex and attacking Tara, Clay had fled again, taking Claire with him. But he’d made the mistake of speeding and had been pulled over near Grand Junction. Ballistics later proved his rifle, found in the cab of his truck, killed Alex; it still had Tara’s hair and blood on its butt.

The law officer’s exact words echoed in Tara’s mind: “You were sprawled lifeless on the ground.” She lay lifeless there—and for long months after that, first in a rescue helicopter, then a Denver E.R., then intensive care, and finally, at the Lohan Clinic. How could she have produced another life?

No, she still didn’t believe that possibility. It was rare—extremely rare, doctors said. So what was wrong with Dr. Holbrook? Was he just looking for his moment of fame, a newspaper article or TV segment, like these quoted doctors? An article in a medical journal? No way a comatose pregnancy and delivery could have happened to her. But then, she’d been in hell all those months, helpless, lost to herself and others, except for some sounds she thought she heard, and a relentless parade of nightmares she sometimes thought she could almost recall.

All that time she’d been in the coma, could something as momentous as childbirth have occurred?

Tara jolted alert and looked at her big office clock. Too late to make the phone call to Jen now. That would be like getting a second opinion, since she’d been her ob-gyn for years and hadn’t left the area until Tara was comatose. Though her former physician and friend had drifted away from her, she was calling Dr. Jennifer DeMar first thing in the morning.

Tara had finally fallen asleep when a scream shredded the silence of the night. She awoke instantly. Claire! One of Claire’s nightmares. She used to have them every night, but now they only happened when something set her off. Perhaps Nick’s homecoming had.

Tara ran for Claire’s bedroom before she realized she hadn’t put a robe on over her T-shirt and panties, in case Nick came running, too. But the child was shrieking, “No, no, don’t hurt her!”

Tara didn’t turn back even when she heard Nick thudding up the steps from his room in the basement. It was nicely finished down there with a Franklin stove for warmth, a bathroom and sofa with its Hide-A-Bed. Right now she wished it was farther away or he was a sounder sleeper.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” she crooned to Claire, and clicked on the bedside lamp to add to the wan night-light that was always on. “Just another bad dream. I’m here.”

Tara scooted her bare legs under the covers next to the quaking child as Nick’s big form filled the doorway. He was in Jockey shorts and a cutoff gray T-shirt that showed his flat stomach. Tara cradled Claire, who wound her arms tight around her.

“They were shouting,” Claire choked out through such thick sobs her words were barely discernible. “He said he’d kill her. He locked me in my room. Mommy was screaming my name…then a big bang.”

“It’s over. You’re here and safe now,” Tara whispered, rocking her like a baby. “It’s all right.”

“It isn’t! He’s going to kill her all over again.”

When Nick stepped into the room, Claire jolted. She went stiff in Tara’s arms, then limp as a doll. “Oh, Uncle Nick. I thought—I thought you might be him, that you were going to hurt me, too.”

“No,” Nick said, his voice raspy either from being suddenly awakened or from a rush of emotion. “No, I’d never hurt you. And your dad’s gone, so he can’t hurt anyone now.”

“I think he’s hiding up in the trees outside, like when he hurt Aunt Tara. Out the window—I saw him hit her on the head by the trees. He could come back. He’s in the trees above our house.”

“No, no, he isn’t, and he won’t be back,” Tara said, her lips moving against the top of Claire’s head. “He’s all locked up and can’t get out. And I’m all right now. Both you and I are safe, especially with Beamer and your uncle Nick here.”

Tara’s eyes met Nick’s over the girl’s head. It was a new nightmarish twist that Clay could be lurking up in the trees above the house. Tara had thought Claire understood and accepted that he was in prison on the other side of the state, but, of course, it was just the bad dream speaking.

Nick stood silent, taking them both in. The big guy, who’d been living in the desert and caves, in danger of losing his life for two years, had tears in his eyes for a child’s nightmare.

“Listen to me, Claire,” he said, his voice steadier as he came a step closer. He gestured with his index finger as if scolding her. “He’s not hiding up in the trees, and he’s not going to hurt you or Aunt Tara again, ever. So you just tell yourself there’s no reason for any more nightmares!” he added, his voice sounding as if that was a military order. With a sniff, he leaned closer to pat the girl’s shoulder, somehow managing to tangle his fingers in Tara’s hair. He gently tugged free, did an about-face and marched out into the dark hall.

He’d been in a dangerous no-man’s land with Special Forces soldiers who probably survived on giving and taking orders, so for now, Tara ignored Nick’s brusqueness to the child. She really didn’t think his just-get-that-out-of-your-head-right-now approach would work with Claire—or with her, either. She was done with guys who came on to her like that.

A half hour later, when Tara left the sleeping girl to go back to her own bed, she saw Nick sitting on the floor of the upstairs hall, still barefoot but dressed now in jeans, long legs stretched out. Beamer lay next to him, his big head on Nick’s knee. She couldn’t see them well at first because she’d left the light on in Claire’s room and her eyes hadn’t adjusted. But Nick’s obviously had. She suddenly felt naked. She crossed her arms over her breasts; at least there was no light behind her.

“I guess I’m too damned used to giving and taking orders,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to sound so stern.”

That touched her. Unlike Laird, this man had a heart and soul. “It’s all right,” she whispered, but her voice caught.

“I do know,” he whispered back, “that everyone has nightmares. I’ve had my share, and sometimes it works for me to tell myself, ‘You will not have that bad dream again.’”

“Can’t you sleep tonight?”

“I’m okay. But I heard footsteps. It sounded to me like you were up late, even before this.”

“I had some office work to do. See you in the morning.”

“Tara.” He rose lithely to his feet, forcing Beamer to lift his head. Even barefoot, Nick seemed tall. Leaning one broad shoulder on the wall, he whispered, “I wish they hadn’t let her testify against Clay, telling all she saw and heard that day. It’s no doubt made her bad dreams worse, screwed up her mind.”

“If I hadn’t been comatose, my testimony might have made her deposition unnecessary. At least she was kept out of the courtroom and the papers. They convinced your mom the deposition was the best way to convict Clay. But I, for one, can certainly see how all this has screwed up her mind.”

“I didn’t mean to sound critical any more than I meant to sound harsh.”

“She’s still very fragile, Nick.”

“I hear you. We all are, all got our minds screwed up by something or other.”

“Yes.” She fought back the tears prickling behind her eyelids. “And I know Claire and I aren’t the only ones who have been through very tough times.” She reached out to touch his rock-hard upper arm, then headed for her bedroom before either of them could say or do more. She closed the door quickly but quietly. She did not want to shut him up or shut him off, but after today, she was even more scared of her own nightmares. And she was still fighting the compelling urge to tell that big stranger all about them.

At seven-thirty the next morning, Tara dialed Dr. Jennifer DeMar’s cell phone number. “Nothing like caller ID.” Jen’s voice came crisp and clear. “Tara, how are you?”

“All right. Listen, I know it’s a bit early in the morning, and I apologize for that. But I know you’re an early riser, and I wanted to catch you before you went to work.”

“You caught me, all right.”

Her voice seemed slightly slurred. Tara hoped she hadn’t wakened her. She also noted an undercurrent to her voice that had entered their recent, sporadic conversations. Obviously, Jen had been trying to gently cut ties.

“Is everything all right?” Jen asked when she hesitated. “You sound upset.”

“I need to ask you a professional question and a personal one.”

“You’re talking in riddles, but then, you always did love puzzles. A professional medical question? Something about complications from the coma?”

“In a way. Jen, Dr. Holbrook actually asked me when I had a baby.”

A beat of silence, then, “He what?”

“Let me back up a second. After he did my pelvic exam and pap smear, he said I showed signs that I’d been pregnant and had had a vaginal delivery. I think he meant of a full-term baby.”

“Is he crazy? You mean he’s implying you delivered a baby in the middle of a long coma?” Jen’s voice was shaky but dripping sarcasm. “An invisible infant? Maybe one abducted by aliens?”

“So you do think he’s wrong?”

“I hope you told him he’s dead wrong. If he’s saying your uterus or cervix is stretched, so what? Some women have larger ones, even if they haven’t been pregnant. I don’t know of any studies done on formerly comatose women to see if their uterus or cervix would be naturally relaxed. Do you know how rare a comatose pregnancy and delivery would be?”

Tara was glad Jen was shocked and outraged. Jen was more recently trained than Dr. Holbrook, so she probably knew much more about current medical discoveries and advances. But then, how much could have changed about how a woman who’d delivered a child looked?

“I researched it,” Tara told her. “I realize a birth to a comatose mother is extremely rare, but I found a couple of such cases.”

“My dear friend,” Jen said, her voice quiet now, “your new doctor is not serving your needs well. He should have his license yanked, but that would take time and money. However financially generous Laird may have been with you, it’s best if you just don’t go back to him—the doctor.”

“Would you advise I get a second opinion?”

“That’s absolutely not necessary. Next year when it’s time for your annual physical, get someone else. Try one of the doctors at the Conifer Medical Center on Pleasant Park. They’re all good. As for the personal question—you’re going to ask if I visited you while you were comatose, right? Yes, I certainly did, a couple of times before I moved. You most definitely were not pregnant, nor had you been. I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this—this new trauma. Set your mind at ease, and take care of your niece. Go on with building your new life in Conifer. That’s what I’m doing here—both professionally and personally, as you put it. Listen—I’ve got a full day. Gotta go. Tara, just forget all that nonsense and have a great day and a great life.”

Jen must have covered the mouthpiece of the phone, because her last few words came out muffled. Was that a man’s voice in the background? Yes, very muted. Jen must have a new man in her life. That reminded Tara she had Nick to deal with today. That thought actually gave her a lift.

“Thanks for—” Tara was cut off by Jen hanging up.

As she watched the light go out on the screen of her cell, Tara thought that had sounded not like a temporary goodbye but a permanent one. However much she valued her former friend’s advice, she’d sounded like Nick ordering a nightmare-terrified girl to just forget her fears, as if they were not worth a damn. She resented that Jen considered her earthshaking question nonsense.

It seemed as if Jen were shuffling her aside as a friend, but had she also done so as a doctor? Despite Jen’s fervent claims, maybe she did need another doctor’s opinion. But it would have to be fast, because this—unlike what Jen had counseled—couldn’t wait.

4

Nick borrowed Tara’s truck so he and Beamer could take Claire to school. When he returned, he found a hearty breakfast of pancakes and sausage waiting for him. Tara had laid out a bright woven place mat and a matching cloth napkin. A ceramic vase held orange and yellow wildflowers. Tara looked a bit wild, too, beautiful but exhausted and windblown. She’d evidently been outside to pick the flowers. She wore no makeup and her hair was tousled as if she’d just gotten out of bed. Nick shifted his legs under the table. The woman got to him in more ways than one.

“This looks great. I didn’t mean to oversleep,” he told her.

“You were able to spend some time with Claire before school, and that’s what mattered. I’m sure you’re jet-lagged. Is the Hide-A-Bed okay?”

Biting back a tease that he’d rather have her bed, he dug into the pile of pancakes. “That foldaway mattress is not half hard enough for what I’m used to. I’m going to have to bring in some dirt and rocks to approximate what I’ve been sleeping on. It’s even weird to be sitting at a table to eat.”

She poured him a glass of orange juice and set it beside his coffee. She seemed to keep her distance, not physically but emotionally. Polite but careful. Kind but distracted. Lack of sleep, or worry he was going to take Claire and Beamer and leave the area, he decided. He hoped she’d didn’t lump him with the kind of guys who took their kids and ran. It did get to him that Claire had just started second grade and liked her teacher and had friends in her class. But she’d learn to settle into a new situation if she had to. Whatever he decided was the reasonable thing to do, Claire would have to go along.

Beamer shifted his position on the floor, tipped his head and perked up one ear, as if interested in their conversation. Tara was washing dishes at the sink, banging things around pretty good. Yeah, she was upset about something.

“Great pancakes. So, how did you get into your line of work?” he asked, spearing a sausage link. He hoped not only to get to know her better, but to discuss something harmless. “Not many P.I.s specialize in tracing kids who are snatched by their dads.”

“Or their mothers’ boyfriends, as the case may be,” she added. “Three reasons, I guess. First of all, I’ve always loved puzzles…finding something hidden in a picture, like in those old Highlights for Children magazine years ago. Riddles, cryptograms, Sudoku, you name it. But more importantly, my uncle snatched my nine-year-old cousin, Linc, who was my age and to whom I was pretty close. When we were about fourteen, I suppose Linc really started to question or challenge his dad about their situation. My uncle just dropped Linc back at my aunt’s house, then disappeared again. But Linc was completely changed—out of control, defensive, nasty. He even felt his mother had betrayed him. He ran away when he was seventeen, and my aunt had no way of knowing what happened. We still don’t know if he’s dead or alive,” she said, her voice snagging.

Well, he thought, wrong topic choice again. He stood with his dirty plate and went closer to put it on the counter. “Tough memories. Sorry I stirred them up.”

“No, it’s fine. I—That’s not the only reason I started Finders Keepers. I went on to get my degree in social work from the University of Colorado. Well, you knew that, of course, since Alex and I roomed together. I specialized in family relations and human development.”

Damn, but he noted that tears glazed her eyes again. Was Claire’s guardian this unstable? He hoped he wasn’t making her uncomfortable. From the first he’d felt as instinctively protective of her as he did toward Claire.

“I worked with cases of abuse and neglect,” she went on, going back to washing dishes with a vengeance. She had a dishwasher right there, but maybe she needed something to do with her pent-up energy. “I placed kids in foster care and tried to get families reunified whenever possible, especially kids put back with their biological parents.”

“However draining the work was, you must have felt you were doing good—like you are now with Finders Keepers and with Claire.”

“I saw some pretty bad situations,” she said, nodding, “so I hated the job almost as much as I loved it. I tended to get so involved with my cases that I always took my work home with me. When I stumbled on a couple of cases that involved ex-husbands snatching their own kids and saw how tragic that was for the left-behinds—professional lingo for the mothers of the kids—I started my own specialty firm.”

“Have you ever retrieved snatched kids for their fathers when their mothers took off with them?”

“You know, I haven’t, but I would if the case seemed right. It’s just that word about my services has spread among women, I guess.”

“Did you get a lot of family support for all this?”

“Not really. When I became engaged, my fiancé didn’t think that profession was appropriate for a Lohan wife, so I really had to stand firm with him.”

Beamer jumped to his feet and growled. They both turned to look at the dog as he went to the double sliding glass doors and stood alert. With Beamer, that meant a stiff stance, intense expression and another long, low growl.

“Someone must be coming up the road,” Nick said, and walked toward the sliding doors to the deck. He looked through the glass in one direction, then the other. “I didn’t hear a vehicle and don’t see one either.”

“Elk come into the yard about this time but, as I said, he barks at them, and doesn’t usually growl. There’s been a fox around here lately, too.”

“I don’t see a darn thing, but Beamer’s looking up into the tree line.”

He walked back into the kitchen and leaned over the sink next to Tara to look out and up through the window in front of her toward the thick clumps of pines and aspens above the house. He thought he saw a glint of bright blue in the early slant of sun. A blue jay? Or could Claire’s night fear have been prophetic? Maybe she’d seen a hunter or hiker up there and translated it into a bad dream about Clay. It was hunting season, after all, deer and elk for archery, and wild turkeys and blue grouse for muzzle-loading rifles. Years ago, they’d had trouble with careless hunters too near these isolated houses.

“I’m planning to go over to a friend’s house today and get my truck out of his garage,” Nick told her, “but I think I’ll take Beamer for a walk first. He’s obviously eager to track whatever creature’s up there. Be back in a few minutes. You do keep all the doors locked, don’t you?”

“Always. Just habit from some of the bad scenarios I’ve heard about through my cases, though I know your mom seldom locked the doors.”

“Be back soon,” he repeated, and took Beamer’s thirty-foot lead and working collar off the peg on the wall. Beamer immediately stood at attention. He’d always been eager to work, but then, he’d always been able to sense danger, too.

After Tara locked up behind Nick, she went to her office and called local ob-gyns until she found one who could see her today—thank heavens for a cancellation in just a couple of hours. She called Dr. Holbrook’s office to arrange to pick up her medical records. Then she tried to get herself back on track with her caseload. Despite getting up now and then to look out her window for Nick, she forced herself to concentrate.

She always treated her open cases with respect—even keeping the folders clean, unbent and neat. To her they symbolized the heartaches and hopes of those who were missing their children. As she handled each and added more information, she knew they were trusting her to find them.

One case, which she could now happily put in her inactive file, lay on top of the cabinet she unlocked. Like Nick, her client had served her country despite great hardships at home. When Susan Getz’s National Guard unit had been sent to Iraq, the divorcée had left her three-year-old son, Bryce, for whom she’d been given legal custody, in her mother’s care. Her ex-husband, Dietmar Getz—a U.S. citizen, though he’d been born in Germany—had moved to California and seldom paid child support or even saw little Bryce. But, while Susan was deployed in Iraq, Dietmar returned to Denver and snatched the boy, sending an e-mail that he could take better care of his son than that old woman, the mother of a woman who put war first.

Tara had a copy of that e-mail; the whole case had really upset her. Dietmar knew his wife was in the guard and could be called to active duty when he married her, just as Laird had known she was dedicated to Finders Keepers when he proposed. Tara was proud she’d located Dietmar. Since his passion was extreme biking, she had traced him through rally events for that sport. The result had been great for Susan, who was reunited with her son, and terrible for Dietmar. He’d paid heavy fines, had been incarcerated for a while and lost his job at a bike shop. Susan’s Denver lawyer, through whom Tara had been paid, told Tara that Dietmar was furious with both his ex-wife and Tara, whose name he’d gotten off court papers.

With another sigh, Tara filed the folder in the Inactive/Resolved section of the drawer and hoped the case would remain that way.

She took out the folder of a new case, a fascinating one. The left-behind, Myra Gavin, was convinced her ex had not only abducted their fourteen-year-old son, Ryan—Tara didn’t take cases where the child was eighteen or older—but that her ex had faked his own death. His car had gone over a cliff into a swollen river, and though there was no body found, the police believed the body had washed downstream, just as they believed Ryan, who had been a troubled kid, had run away. Myra wanted Tara to prove a case not of suicide but of pseudocide, as the lawyer who had hired her had called faking one’s own death. And, of course, to locate Ryan so he could come home.

Though Tara took any case where she thought she could help, she liked working for law firms rather than for emotional, distraught individuals directly. Like Claire’s mother, they could get in the way of ultimate success. Lawyers remained calm and controlled, mostly, and she knew she’d get paid. If Laird had not left her a decent financial settlement—as Jen had hinted this morning—Tara could not have afforded to take on some cases where she knew she’d get little or nothing for her efforts.

The other case she needed to review today concerned a biological dad, Jeff Rivers, who had kidnapped his own nine-year-old son from a couple who had adopted the boy over eight years ago. Tara was working hard to locate the man. Usually, she wanted a biological parent to have a child, but in this case, the more she learned about the skip, the more she realized he was a horrible person. So far, she’d had no luck finding him.

But she’d had great successes from other difficult cases, which encouraged her to keep going. Carla Manning, one of her first clients, whom she’d known from her old neighborhood when she was single, had not only gotten her daughter from an abusive husband, but she’d gotten her life back. Carla had returned to college and was now an attorney and child-rights advocate in Seattle. Tara would love to visit her someday, except that’s where Laird had moved, and she couldn’t bring herself to even be near the same area.

Tara sucked in a big breath and got up to look out the window again. No Nick or Beamer in sight. It was as if the forest had swallowed them. She crossed her arms over her stomach, feeling it cramp. It was almost time for her period to begin, but she knew it was more than that. It wasn’t worry about Nick; if there was anyone who could take care of himself, it was him, though she still wasn’t convinced he could take care of Claire. No, this was because of what the doctor had said yesterday. And nerves about seeing another doctor for a second opinion—actually, a third, counting Jennifer’s—so soon.

Tara sat down so hard in her chair it rolled away from her desk. She had felt all uptight like this in the weeks before Clay killed Alex, almost as if she sensed something would go wrong with one of her cases. Did that mean she was sensing something like that now, or was she just getting paranoid because of how tracking Clay had ended up? No, too much was going on in her life right now, that was all.

But her stomachache had triggered a memory. A couple of weeks before her coma, she’d had what she thought was a virus, with nausea and cramping. She wasn’t due for a period then, not until a week later. On the Pill, she’d been so regular. Surely she could not have had morning sickness that week! She bent over her knees, agonized, feeling she’d be sick right now. She wanted to get what the doctor had said out of her head, but it kept coming back to haunt her. It would be hard not to blurt it out to Dr. Bauman today, and demand that he disprove it.

“Listen to yourself!” she scolded aloud and sat up. “You just have a stomachache. You certainly aren’t pregnant now, and you weren’t pregnant then!”

But what if? What if?

She reached for her cell phone. Though the last thing in the world she wanted to do was contact Laird’s family, she was going to call his mother, Veronica. If she had any chance of getting a straight answer from Laird’s family about whether she could have been pregnant during her coma, it would be from her.

Nick saw a web of paths through the brush and trees above his property. There had been animal trails up here for years. Most were made by mule deer and elk. He saw places on the trees where animals had rubbed off the bark to mark their territories. This was probably a wild-goose—that is, wild deer and elk—chase, but Beamer was tracking something.

As far as Nick was concerned, the alert, self-confident track-and-trail breeds of dogs were one of God’s great gifts to mankind. Most bloodhounds, beagles, German shepherds and Labrador retrievers could smell hundreds of different scents, sometimes from something as tiny as shed skin cells. Whereas people might enter a kitchen and smell vegetable soup cooking, tracker dogs could break that down into meat stock, celery, potatoes, even pepper or herbs. Beamer could sprint up to forty miles an hour. He had a wide range of vision, nearly one hundred eighty degrees, and could see something as small as a mouse from a football field away. He could swivel his ears in two separate directions to pick up diverse, muted sounds at a great distance. All that, and he was eager to give hours of exhausting nose time to search for anyone from lost kids to escaped criminals, just for a bit of praise and a scratch behind his ears.

Nick had no idea what trail Beamer was working so hard now, but he felt increasingly wary and on edge. The exertion at this altitude soon got him out of breath again. The Lab took him higher, slightly around the south side of the mountain toward a deserted hunting cabin he remembered. In the old days, people who lived in Denver would come up and stay in cabins on the weekends, but with better roads and vehicles, the small buildings were seldom slept in anymore. Derelict cabins were scattered throughout these mountains. He and Alex had played up here years ago in this one, pretending that the native Arapaho, Ute and Cheyenne tribes were still in the area and that the old place was their fort. He saw the cabin was still there, in more ramshackle shape than ever.

In his heart he envisioned Alex, as she used to look, with her face all smudged and a stick rifle in her hands. He bit his lower lip hard as he followed Beamer to the door. It stood ajar and askew.

Nick stopped so suddenly that he jerked Beamer’s lead. For one moment, he had pictured how careful the Delta boys were when they entered a cave. Buried bombs abounded, and the Taliban could be hunkered down in the shadows, guns ready to blaze destruction and death. Or the troops sometimes cornered someone hiding, like Sadam Hussein himself. But they’d never found the big quarry, Bin Laden, and that haunted him yet. And then there was that hellish moment when they’d lost lives…

Nick shook his head to clear it. Stop it! he told himself. No post-traumatic stress syndrome for him. He wouldn’t allow it. Duty had called, and he’d done his duty. It wasn’t reasonable to dwell on failure, so he would not. He had hold of his weak emotions, and he would do what he must to keep it that way.

His breath still coming hard and his heart pounding, he peered inside, even looking behind the door. He was surprised to see the floor was fairly clear, as if someone had swept out debris and leaves, even spiderwebs, at least with feet and hands if not with a limb-and-leaf broom. And a bed of fresh-looking moss had been brought inside and bore the slight imprint of a human form. The moss wouldn’t last long in here without sunlight or water, he thought. Yes, this had to be fairly new, but then it was a hunter’s cabin and it was hunting season.

His gaze snagged on a clean-looking purple, light green and white paper wrapper in the corner of the cabin. He picked it up and turned it toward the filthy window to read in the wan light: Cacao Reserve by Hershey’s. Dark Chocolate. Bright fruity notes and delicate spices. He flipped it over. Made in Germany, no less. This wasn’t your everyday hunter’s candy bar.

But finally, he had an object to scent Beamer on. “Find. Find!” he ordered, and thrust the wrapping at the dog’s nose.

With one big sniff, the Lab jerked his head and, nose to the ground, took off immediately, out the door, retracing the path they’d taken to come up here. The dog locked on the trail and worked it hard the whole way. Nick kept a pretty short lead on the leash so Beamer wouldn’t wrap it around a tree.

Unfortunately, the dog led him to a spot just above the house. Beamer raised his hackles, then went in a circle as if he’d found a scent pool where their quarry had sat for a while or even lain.

Then Beamer growled and stood perfectly still. Picturing the enemy snipers he’d seen too often up on a rock or cliff, Nick gritted his teeth and shook his head. Stooping next to Beamer and looking through the blowing scrim of pine needles, he could see directly into the kitchen through the window over the sink, and into Tara’s office and bedroom.

5

Veronica Lohan could not find her cell phone. It was ringing, wasn’t it? That is, playing her favorite pop culture organ piece, the theme from The Phantom of the Opera. But why did it sound so muted?

The cell should be on the bedside table. She felt for it there and found nothing. Maybe she hadn’t heard the music at all. Often melodies danced through her head, pieces she knew by heart or, at least, ones she once knew. She used to misplace her tiny cell phones all the time, especially when she was in detox and recovery treatment at the clinic, but she’d been good lately, so normal. No more secret stashes of Vicodin washed down with double martinis.

It was still dark, so it must be early. She and her husband, Jordan, had shared a lovely, late dinner at home last night, a meal he’d ordered from their cook for her—her favorite pasta primavera, although he liked heavier fare. “If I had one last meal to eat on this earth,” she’d told him, “this would be it.”

Whatever was wrong with her? It must be dark and quiet because she had her earplugs and silk sleeping mask on.

Still trying to drag herself from sodden sleep, she yanked the plugs out and pulled off the mask. Oh, for heaven’s sake—broad daylight and the sun up already. Ten in the morning? How could she have slept so late? She was an early riser, always had been.

Feeling strangely light-headed, she got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Catching her reflection in the mirror, she leaned, stiff-armed, on the fluted basin and did not like what she saw.

At age fifty-six, Veronica Britten Lohan, Juilliard class of ’73, knew she was still a good-looking woman, even without her usually upswept coiffure and makeup. She had great bone structure under smooth skin, a gift from God or at least genetics. She was trim, maybe too trim, but still statuesque. Her hair was raven black, as the poets used to say—with a bit of help from her hairdresser. She had rather liked the silver at her temples and the big streak of it flowing back from the center of her forehead. It was a sign of someone who had lived, someone worthy of stating an opinion or two or giving advice. But Jordan had urged her to color it.

She’d had two facelifts her family had talked her into, done right on the grounds of the Lohan Mountain Manor Clinic by a doctor Jordan had imported, just the way he and Laird had brought in a specialist for poor Tara’s coma treatment. She just didn’t look like herself anymore. Her eyes were tilted up a bit too exotically, and her forehead, cheeks and mouth felt tight each time she smiled. Indeed, the feel of her face was an ever-present reminder that almost everything she’d done the last thirty-four years of her life had been to please her husband or two sons, not herself.

Still, she was the same inside, still a Britten at heart more than a Lohan, she tried to tell herself as she washed up, humming a Bach prelude. She was grateful for her musical talent, enamored of her grandchildren and, of course, proud of her sons, though she was disappointed in Laird lately.

She should have breakfast in bed this morning. She could call down to the kitchen and get something brought up, especially her hazelnut coffee. She felt a bit rocky from it being so late and not eating this morning, that was all. Why, she’d slept as if she were drugged.

As she headed back toward the big bed she seldom shared with Jordan anymore, though he had an adjoining suite she could visit whenever she wished, she heard her cell phone again. Surely she wasn’t hearing things this time. The organ music filled her as The Phantom of the Opera played those dissonant chords, Da, da, da, da, da!

She frowned when she saw the phone on her bedside table where she was sure she’d put it last night. How had she missed seeing it earlier? Oh, and a breakfast tray was on the table by the window, as if someone had known exactly when she got up. She could smell her favorite coffee from here. She had mentioned yesterday to her maid, Rita, that she always forgot to recharge her cell. Rita had probably done that for her when she saw she was still sleeping, then brought up this tray. Thank heavens, she had not been imagining things or hallucinating as she used to during the worst days of her dependencies. She hurried to the cell and punched the talk button while she poured herself some coffee with the other hand.

“Veronica? It’s Tara. How are you?”

“Tara, how lovely to hear from you. I’ve been fine lately, my dear, much better than most of your memories of me when I was ill, I assure you. I believe we can both consider ourselves successful alumni of Mountain Manor Clinic. How are you and your little charge, Claire, doing?” she asked as she sat down on the edge of the bed to steady her legs.

“Fine, thanks. I’m so glad to hear you’re well. Are you still on the advisory board for Red Rocks?”

Red Rocks was a huge outdoor amphitheater, set in a stunning array of mammoth, tilted sandstone monoliths. Between Conifer and Denver, it was nearby for Tara and the senior Lohans, whose home was in Kerr Gulch in Evergreen. Jordan and Veronica Lohan had long been benefactors of Red Rocks, and for years Veronica had been active in helping to select the wide range of cultural events staged there.

“Yes, a real veteran of the advisory board,” Veronica told her with a little laugh. “But why do you ask? May I get you tickets for something?”

“I was wondering if we could meet there today. I’ve appreciated how kind you’ve been through everything and was hoping we could keep in touch. I haven’t had a mother for years, but I’ve always valued your advice. I don’t suppose Laird would approve but—”

“Nor would his father or brother, so let’s do it!”

There was still something exhilarating, Veronica thought, about bucking Jordan, the head of the clan, or even her dyed-in-the-Lohan-wool sons, Thane and Laird, who always thought they knew what was best for her. Talk about the Kennedy women having to toe the line for their husbands’ careers!

Veronica smiled stiffly, recalling she’d once overheard Tara tell Laird that he really didn’t want a Lohan wife but a Stepford wife, a clone windup doll like his brother Thane’s Susanne, who was a perfect and perfectly obedient wife.

Tara had always reminded Veronica of herself, back when she still thought she could maintain her career as a concert organist with the symphony. But she hadn’t managed to even play a theater organ for classic silent movies in the summer or be some church’s guest organist. Instead, Jordan had bought her not one but two massive pipe organs, one here at home and one in the chapel at the clinic. She usually ended up just playing for family or friends, when she’d always longed for a bigger stage—like the one at Red Rocks.

“What time shall we meet?” she asked Tara. “It’s already after ten, but we could meet near the restaurant in the Visitor Center at one.”

“Would you be willing to make it one-thirty? I’ve got a doctor’s appointment. Can you meet me out by the first set of rocks to the left of the west entry, the one with the great view of Creation Rock? You remember, where we took that walk and had that heart-to-heart talk?”

“The one with the natural table and bench?”

“Yes. I’ll bring a picnic for us, then we can get caught up in private without all the people you know coming up to our table to chat in the restaurant. It’s been a while since we’ve really talked, though I treasured your visits after I came out of the coma.”

“Is there something wrong, Tara? You can tell me, and it will go no further.”

“I hope not. I’ll save it all for our lunch.”

“I’ll be there, my dear, and if something goes awry, I’ll call you.”

“Tara, I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but I think someone’s been watching the house,” Nick told her. She was madly stuffing chicken salad into pita bread; a wicker picnic basket sat on the kitchen counter. Her hands stopped; she looked up at him, eyes wide.

“Did you see someone?”

“No, but Beamer found a trail to that old hunter’s cabin, which has been swept out and used. I know it’s hunting season, but there’s a distinct spot above the house in the tree line where someone’s been lying down with a clear view in through these back windows.”

“Animals sometimes lie down. Maybe Beamer—”

“No. I scented him on this. Does it mean anything to you?” he asked, extending the Cacao candy bar wrapper to her.

She took it from him and read both sides. “It’s not the kind of Hershey’s for s’mores around the old campfire, not that campfires are permitted around here. I see it’s made in Germany.”

“And?” he prompted.

“Nothing, but success in investigation work is often in the details.”

“Tell me about that detail,” he said, pointing at the words she was frowning over.

“One of my disgruntled skips was born in Germany,” she explained, going back to her sandwich-making. “But I recently checked, and he’d gone back to California. He’s not pleased I tracked him down and made him pay for snatching his son. Still, that’s a far stretch over a candy bar wrapper in some old hunter’s cabin.”

“Is he a hunter, like Clay was?”

“No, he’s a biker—a mountain biker.”

“I know it might mean nothing, but I always had to watch my back the last two years, and that’s a hard habit to shake.” He glanced out the window over the sink again. “I’m going to keep an eye out for someone up there—and Beamer will keep a nose out.”

She turned to him and smiled, evidently at the way he’d worded that. It lit up her face and made her look younger. They still stood close together over the sink, and she didn’t move away this time.

“I’ll be careful for Claire’s sake as well as mine,” she promised. “And I’ll recheck to be sure Dietmar Getz is still in San Jose, at least for his home base. He’s not only a mountain biker but a so-called extreme biker who goes all over the West for races and rallies. Would you believe he thought he’d provide a better home for his child than a devoted relative who stays in one place?”

Nick wondered if that was a hint he should leave Claire with her, but Tara was already off on another topic as she went back to fixing food again.

“I have an appointment in town, then I’m going to have lunch at Red Rocks with my former mother-in-law, but I’ve made extra for you, in case you’re hungry later. Or if this doesn’t suit you or fill you up, please just take anything you want around here.” She shoved her hair back from her face and their eyes snagged again. “You know what I mean,” she added, blushing.

“Like food from the fridge or laundry soap,” he told her, as he bit back a grin. “But about someone watching the house, a word to the wise.” As she closed the picnic basket, he put his hand around her wrist like a big, warm bracelet. “If it’s just some neighborhood voyeur or your garden-variety teenager, Beamer and I will be enough to scare him off—but you need to be very careful,” he added, stressing each word. “Besides being a good-looking woman, you’re in a business where you’ve made enemies. Just for the heck of it, as soon as I get my truck, I’m going to drop in to see Clay’s brother and find out what he’s been up to. If he was as upset as you said—well, you just never know.”

“Thanks. Since you were his brother-in-law for years, he won’t be suspicious and maybe you can calm him down. And we agree that I’ll be careful, for Claire and myself.”

“Oh! Jordan!” Veronica said, when her husband suddenly walked into her suite from his adjoining one. “You gave me a start! I thought you had gone by now.”

Despite the fact she had a terrible headache, she was dressed and ready to head out to meet Tara at Red Rocks. The coffee and breakfast seemed to have steadied her a bit. She could tell Tara had needed her and she was not canceling their appointment. She hoped Jordan hadn’t planned on her eating with him here.

To her surprise, her primary-care doctor from the clinic, Henry Middleton, followed Jordan into the room. They were both distinguished-looking men, even when not attired in suits, shirts and ties as they were now. Jordan had always been handsome and had kept his good looks—full head of hair, square jaw and six-foot frame—over the years. He hardly had a gray hair amid the dark brown he kept perfectly trimmed.

Dr. Middleton, prematurely silver-haired and blue-eyed, was a good bit shorter but also had an athlete’s build. A real health fanatic who often jogged the rustic paths on the clinic acreage, he had been very instrumental in her successful treatment for alcohol and drug dependence. Because Mountain Manor was heavily endowed by the Lohans, Jordan, in effect, was the doctor’s—all employees’ there—superior.

“Whatever is it?” she asked, putting one hand to her throat. “Thane or Laird haven’t been hurt? The grandchildren? What—”

“I’m doing family intervention early this time, Veronica,” Jordan said, “before this snowballs again and Thane and Laird need to be called in.”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

Instead of answering, Jordan went over to her bedside table and rummaged around in the top drawer. Dr. Middleton looked so very sad, upset even.

“Here—I thought so, I feared so,” Jordan said, and thrust a pill bottle at the doctor. “I won’t say she’s mixing booze with these again, but, for her sake, we have to stop it now. I—the entire family—can’t go through all that again. ‘The Betty Ford of Denver’ newspaper headlines be damned.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re wrong,” she told Jordan, facing him down as steadily as she could. In truth, she was still feeling a bit strange, but it must have been something she ate either last night or this morning. “If those are Vicodin—”

“They appear to be,” Dr. Middleton interjected, frowning at the bottle.

“Then they are old ones, because I’m clean,” she insisted. “Oh, yes, I want a drink now and then, but I stick to Perrier, and I have not touched a Vicodin tablet since I was admitted to Mountain Manor! Jordan, we had a long dinner last night together. You saw I was normal then—”

“On the contrary, my dear. Your erratic actions and wandering talk were what forced me to face the fact that you’re having a relapse.”

She gasped. He was lying. He had to be lying. She had to get away from him, get away from her own husband. Trying desperately to hold herself together, she said, enunciating each syllable so they would realize she was not slurring her words, “Excuse me, both of you. I’m leaving. I have an appointment and—”

“If,” Jordan said, stepping close to grip her right arm, “you haven’t had a relapse, you won’t mind my looking around at your old stash locations and will agree to a few tests.”

“I won’t. I tell you I’m not using, and I expect you to believe me. I’m fine and—”

“Don’t you realize you’re denying everything, just as you did before?” Jordan demanded.

Traitor! she wanted to scream. But why? Did he want her admitted to the clinic for some reason? It was like a prison there. Did he have another woman? Or could he have somehow learned she was meeting Tara and was terrified she’d tell him about Laird’s other woman?

Dr. Middleton took her left arm. “Please keep calm, Veronica. A relapse is not uncommon, and we can help you again. We’ll have you tested at the clinic by mid-afternoon and admitted if there’s a need—”

“No!” she shouted, trying to yank free. “There is no need! Jordan, what is the matter with you? I’m not going!”

Veronica Britten Lohan, matriarch of the most powerful family in the area, felt sicker and sicker as she was hustled off down the back stairs to a car waiting at the side entrance, as if she had no power over her own her life at all.

Tara had always loved the unique area called Red Rocks, though one could feel very small and insignificant here. Such a powerful display from the author of the universe, she thought as she walked the trail. But now, again, everything had changed. Dr. Bauman had not been as forceful in his opinion as Dr. Holbrook had but, after examining her, he had concurred with the impossible.

“Yes,” he’d said, peering at her over the top of his horn-rims. “You do present some signs of having had at least a long-term pregnancy and, probably, a natural delivery. No signs of cesarean section. A vaginal birth would be incredibly unusual, since you were comatose, but it’s not impossible.”

She’d hardly heard a thing he’d said after that. Dr. Jen had been so adamant that she had not been pregnant during her coma. Obviously, she was trying to protect her from more grief—the loss of a child she never knew. But Veronica would tell her the truth, help her solve this puzzle. Surely her former mother-in-law would know whether Tara had borne a child, another grandchild to Veronica.

Carrying her picnic basket, she forced herself to look around, not to keep agonizing within. This awesome area had a way of putting people in their place. After all, she was only one person in the march of time. Geologists claimed the surrounding, sharply uptilted monoliths here recorded the history of the ages. Not far from the spot where she was going to meet Veronica, dinosaur tracks from the Jurassic period and fossil fragments of sea serpents were imprinted in the rocks. Jurassic Park, indeed. Yes, she thought as a shiver snaked up her spine despite the warmth of the day. She could imagine a primordial monster crashing around the corner of a cliff, ravenous for prey. She was just as ravenous for answers about her lost child, no matter what stood in her way.

A good distance from this fringe area lay the amphitheater itself. Cut like a gigantic sandstone bowl into the surrounding red, rocky terrain, it had once been listed among the seven wonders of the world. With its stone-and-glass Visitor Center, which stood sentinel over it, the vast outdoor concert venue was situated between the largest two rock formations, both standing taller than Niagara Falls. The southern massive monolith, because of its appearance, was called Ship Rock; on the other side loomed Creation Rock, which Tara could see clearly from here.

But her awe was tempered when she passed a familiar brown sign with white print, which brought her back to earth with a thud: No Climbing on Rocks. $999 Fine or 180 Days in Jail or Both.

She reminded herself that life had consequences. Putting her own panic about having possibly been pregnant aside, she wondered if Nick could be right that someone had been watching the house. If she only knew why, surely she could find out who. Worse than that worry, her desperate dilemma pressed hard against her heart again. Laird had been so understanding, so solicitous in the month or so before her coma. He had even seemed to accept that she wanted to stay on the Pill until they settled their problems, although he had fretted and fumed over that before. They had made love more than usual those last days. If she had not taken her pills religiously—she did recall she had done so—she supposed she could have gotten pregnant.

She reached the spot where she and Veronica had taken walks twice before. Tara had served as a docent here, working in the Visitor Center when she and Laird were first married. She put the picnic basket on the natural rock table with its red sandstone bench, which seemed to be carved for their use. No wonder the early Spanish explorers had named this entire area Colorado, their word for “reddish color.”

This was the perfect place for an early-afternoon respite, because the overhanging cliff shaded it from the sun. But she felt hot, flushed. The sun was still warm for September and she’d hiked in from her car at a good clip, but she was perspiring from nerves.

Dare she ask Laird’s mother if she’d been pregnant during her coma? Wasn’t that not only a shocking but a stupid question? She trusted Veronica to tell her the truth, but if by some wild chance she had been pregnant, that meant Veronica’s own son was to blame for not telling his wife about their child’s birth and death. And both the senior Lohans were protective of their family.

Surely, Tara agonized, if she had borne a child, he or she must have died. But wouldn’t Laird—or at least his lawyers who had handled the divorce—have had the decency to tell her about the loss of her own child?

She paced back and forth in the stark shadow under the rock rim, then glanced at her watch. Her former mother-in-law was late. Veronica had been through her own terrible times, and it had taken her a long while to get back on her feet.

Tara’s and Veronica’s stays at the clinic had overlapped, though their luxurious outlying cabins were widely separated on the hilly, heavily wooded grounds. At Mountain Manor, the individual residences were called “cabins,” just the way the Vanderbilts and Astors had called their mansions in Newport “cottages.” It was, indeed, an opulent place to recover from dreadful problems. As far as Tara knew, Veronica’s face-lifts and Tara’s own treatment for coma were the only medical procedures done there that didn’t relate to drug or alcohol dependency and recovery.

Although Tara’s memory of her long treatment for her coma was a big blank, she was sometimes certain she had heard sounds during the dark depths of her unconscious hours, sounds she couldn’t quite recall. Maybe voices, too. Had she hallucinated, or had she heard Veronica playing the huge organ in the clinic chapel?

Tara paced faster. Her stomach knotted tighter. What if Veronica wasn’t coming? What if she couldn’t face her former daughter-in-law because she’d guessed what Tara wanted to talk to her about? What if she actually had been pregnant when her coma began? And what if Nick was right that someone was watching or even stalking her? Would Nick take Claire away from her even sooner? She could not bear to lose Claire and then learn she’d lost a child, too.

Tara closed her eyes to ward off a bit of blowing dust. Then she realized it came not from the wind, but from above, like gritty rain. It was in her hair and on her shoulders.

Something scraped, then rumbled. Thunder? The entire earth seemed to shudder. She looked up and shrieked as a huge sandstone rock rolled over the ledge above her head.

6

Tara’s scream shredded the air. She threw herself back against the cliff, banging her shoulder and hitting the back of her head. She cringed inwardly at the blow to her head—fear of another injury, a coma…

The boulder, the size of a wheelbarrow, crashed into the natural sandstone table five feet from her, just missing her purse but smashing the picnic basket and the edge of the table. Fragments flew, but the boulder’s momentum kept it rolling. It disappeared in a cloud of pebbles and grit off the other side of the flat, waist-high structure, where its massive weight ground it to a stop.

She was stunned but still conscious. Sucking in dust, pressed against the solid rock behind her, Tara was drenched in sweat, yet she shivered as if she were freezing. At last, but for her thudding heart and panicked panting, there was silence.

The red sandstone dust shower burned her eyes, making her blink back tears and cough. A sharp shadow of a man thrust itself onto the surface of the remains of the sandstone tabletop. Someone must be peering over the edge of the cliff above. She was grateful he must have come running to see what had happened, but he shouldn’t be climbing the rocks.

“Did you see that?” she shouted, then fell into a coughing fit again. She craned her neck but couldn’t see anyone peering over. She took a few tenuous steps out from the cliff and shaded her eyes to look up into the sun. “Hello! A rock fell and just missed me!”

No answer. No one there and no shadow now. Suddenly, she knew.

She gasped and leaped back against the cliff. Someone had shoved that rock over the edge to hit her, crush her!

Run or stay here? She should not have picked this deserted spot. She was always careful not to take risks, but she hadn’t considered a picnic at Red Rocks to be one. She realized too late that this side of the cliff couldn’t be seen from the road where she’d left her truck.

Tara grabbed her purse and ran. She heard footsteps spitting sand or grit above. An echo? The sounds became more muted, distant. Could her attacker—her would-be killer—be running away? The back side of this behemoth rock was an easier climb than from where she stood.

Tara tore around the side of the cliff toward the road. She spun in a circle but saw no one. If she wanted to get a glimpse of who it was, she’d have to run farther, faster. Had someone followed her here? Followed her from the doctor’s office? She’d seen no one in her rearview mirror. Had someone kept Veronica from coming—or harmed her?

Tara ran farther around the rock structure, then stopped again. Out of breath, a stitch in her side, exposed…What if the person had a gun? No one else had evidently heard or seen what could surely be considered a natural event, an accident. She’d better get to her car, get home. She needed to check on Veronica, and she needed Nick’s help now.

If she asked him for that, he would ask her who wanted to harm her and why. But however much she prided herself in finding answers, right now she had only guesses.

As she neared her truck, grateful to see it looked untouched, she saw a man jogging away toward the amphitheater from the vicinity of the fallen rock. That meant nothing, of course. Someone could have heard the noise and be going to tell a park ranger. People ran here all the time, both in the slanted aisles of the huge acoustic bowl and on the paths in the area. But what if he was the one? He was too far away to recognize.

Tara got in her truck and clicked the door locks closed. Trembling so hard that she couldn’t even get the key in the ignition on the first try, she finally jammed it in. She knew she should report what had happened to the Red Rocks rangers, but she was getting out of here. She had no proof it was an attack, and most certainly not that it was attempted murder. After so much of her life had been made public, she didn’t want her name in the papers again. But she had to admit that locals didn’t even deface these rocks with graffiti, let alone try to harm the natural structure of the place. Nor had she heard of falling rocks here.

As she started away, in her side mirror, Tara saw a mountain biker burst from the rocks near where she had been. But he didn’t follow the road or look in this direction. He was going the other way, fast. There were many biking trails in this area, not to mention thousands of avid bikers on them all the time.

She gripped the wheel and turned onto the highway. Don’t speed, she told herself. You’re all right now. No one is following. Maybe that was just an accident, she rationalized. And someone nearby, who was climbing the cliff and shouldn’t have been, just took off, too. Maybe he’d seen the sign about the fine or jail time. He certainly wouldn’t want to be blamed for a loose boulder almost falling on someone.

Swiping tears from her cheeks as she drove, she headed toward home. But when she caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror, she yanked her sunglasses off, pulled over, parked and burst into sobs. Her hair and face—even her eyes, which she’d instinctively closed in terror when the rock fell—were coated with pale reddish dust. She looked like a ghost tinged with blood, like a nightmare of death itself.

After Nick picked up his truck from his friend and got it serviced in Evergreen, he decided to stop by to check on Clay’s younger brother Rick Whetstone. Luckily the last phone number he had for him connected, and he was still in Evergreen, the next town northwest of Conifer.

Marcie, a woman who described herself as “hanging out here with Ricky,” said he’d be back soon from running errands. She rattled on that he had a really good job catering parties, but they were still in their small apartment above a store near Lake Evergreen. Nick knew the area. It now boasted a new library, soccer fields and an event center, but he’d always referred to the broad part of the valley between Buffalo Park Road and Meadow Drive as “old town.”

Years ago, if Nick had been asked to place a bet on which brother in the Whetstone family would end up in prison, he would have picked Rick, not Clay. A real hell-raiser as a kid, Rick was about twenty-five now. Maybe he’d settled down with Marcie and a decent-paying job. Still, Tara had told him that Rick had blamed her, as well as Alex, for what had happened to his adored brother Clay, so Rick couldn’t have matured too much.

“Tell him I’m going to stop by to say hi,” Nick had told Marcie. “Just wanted to see how he’s doing.”

Evergreen was really spread out these days. Part of the old town was kept up as a historic Western town in fine fashion to attract visitors, and had gift shops and restaurants stretching several blocks on one side of the highway. Most Evergreen residents, however, lived in the northern, newer parts of town in the same valley, or in cliff-clinging homes in various well-to-do, gated gulch communities. As everyone in these parts knew, the Lohans, Tara’s former in-laws, had one of the most spectacular homes in Kerr Gulch, about ten miles from the more isolated Mountain Manor Clinic they funded and pretty much ran, so he heard.

Nick found a parking place near the store where Marcie said they lived. He had always liked this area; it calmed him, despite the traffic and tourists, because across Highway 74, from the row of buildings, ran noisy, rushing Bear Creek, bouncing over rocks. He stopped and got out, taking Beamer with him for a short walk. Man and man’s best friend, they stared at the bursts of foam. The sweet sound of it—damn, what wouldn’t his dust-eating Delta Force buddies he’d left behind give to hear and see this? The water was so strong in places that rocks had been wired back so they wouldn’t tumble in as others had.

He thought about Rick and Clay again. Surely Rick would not get caught up in crazed revenge the way Clay had. Nick hoped what had happened to his brother had put a damper on Rick’s grandiose schemes and volatile temper. And he hoped he wasn’t the one spying on Tara and Claire. What if he tried to snatch Claire the way his brother had or took his anger out on Tara?

Trying to avoid thinking the worst, Nick put Beamer back in the truck to wait for him. Even if that was Rick’s trail the dog had been on yesterday, Beamer would not alert on him without Nick’s command and an item to smell. In some instances, a kindly faced dog could diffuse a potentially bad scene. But if Rick was the one who’d been watching the house, it might take some verbal pushing to get him to give himself away. No way was Nick taking his dog into what might become a volatile situation.

“Be right back, boy,” he told the Lab, and locked him in since the weather was cool enough today. Nick crossed the road, went up the back steps and knocked on the door Marcie had described.

“Hi, you must be Nick,” a twentysomething bleached blonde with short, spiky hair greeted him. She had added reddish highlights, as if to match the rose tattoo she had at the top of her left breast, which her low-cut blouse flaunted. She had a big, toothpaste-ad-perfect smile. Bright red lipstick was not only on her full lips but smeared on her front teeth. “Ricky just got back from some errands, and he’s taking a quick shower ’fore he goes to work for the evening. Come on in,” she said, ogling him from the crown of his head to the crotch of his jeans. “Then I’ll leave you two alone for the Nick ’n’ Rick show.”

She laughed, and Nick smiled. Leave it to Rick to attract a dim bulb, but she seemed nice enough.

“He’s working for a caterer, huh?” Nick asked as he sat on the new-looking leather sofa she indicated. His knees were almost in his mouth. She checked out her appearance in a full-length mirror on the wall, scrubbing the lipstick smear from her teeth with an index finger. Then she checked herself in the mirror front and back, maybe posing for him and not herself. He saw a mop leaning against the door and a vacuum cleaner in the corner. He wondered if she’d hurriedly been cleaning the place for his visit; it looked pretty immaculate, especially for a small place, where clutter could quickly build up.

“Yeah, he’s working for a real deluxe company,” she said. “They do a lot of fancy parties for houses of the you-would-not-believe type. He gets big tips, too, and we’re going to get a house real soon, more new furniture.”

She bent toward a chair to grab her purse and a denim jacket sewn with sequined stars. Her stonewashed jeans were so tight they looked painted on. He noticed her new-looking, tooled Western boots.

“But he still says I need to keep my hostessing job at the L Branch down the street, ’cause what would I do all day but get in trouble, if ya know what I mean. Hey, you just come on into the L Branch sometime. You’d love the taste of the food, I will personally guarantee it,” she said with a hooted laugh, but she lowered her voice instantly when a door banged open from the other room. “Well,” she added, throwing out an arm as Rick came in from what appeared to be the only other room in the apartment, “heee-re’s Rick. By, hon!” She opened and darted out the door with a wink and wave at Nick from behind Rick’s back.

Rick had obviously just showered, because his hair stuck tight to his head. He wore jeans but was bare chested. Nick had forgotten how much he looked like his brother Clay, whom Rick had always admired so much: olive skin, solidly built, curly, dark brown hair with a beard shadow even after he’d shaved. Nick stood to shake hands; he was almost a foot taller than Rick.

“Surprised you looked me up,” Rick said, walking away to lean a slumped shoulder on the frame of the window overlooking the street. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he looked both ways as if he was expecting someone else. “What’s the occasion, man?”

“I just got back from overseas, working with the army in Afghanistan, and thought I’d drop by.”

“Yeah, you missed all the family action.”

“Action!” Nick spit out, then checked himself again. “You mean the tragedy. I regret I wasn’t here. I’m back in Conifer, staying with Claire and her guardian, Tara Kinsale, for a while.” Nick saw the Rick’s jaw tighten at Tara’s name, but that was all. “I can speak for Tara, too, when I say we have no hard feelings—toward you, that is—about what happened.”

“Claire’s my niece, too, much as she’s yours,” Rick blurted, frowning. “You’re just lucky I didn’t put in for her custody, ’cause I was around.”

Nick stopped himself from stating the obvious: it was highly unlikely a murderer’s brother was going to be given custody of a young girl. But if Rick was angry that Tara was caring for Claire, wouldn’t he have harassed her sooner than this? It seemed unlikely he’d been spying on her all this time without making some kind of move—unless Clay had put him up to it lately.

“Have you been to visit Clay recently?”

“Off and on. If you’re here to run him down, don’t start,” Rick said, his tone hardening. “Too many people mixing in, it just got out of hand.”

“Oh, yeah, I’d say it did,” Nick said, clenching his fists at his side. He fought to keep from launching into a harangue against Clay for snatching Claire in the first place, let alone killing Alex. Clay’s claims of self-defense and accidental death had been pure bull.

Rick kept bouncing his right leg like he had the shakes. For the first time, Nick realized he’d miscalculated in coming here. He had told himself he wanted to psyche Rick out and now all he wanted to do was punch him out. Rick repeatedly wiped his palms on the hip bones of his jeans as he frowned out the window again. Maybe he did have someone else coming. Nick had that prickly-back-of-the-neck feeling he used to get—just like the dogs he was training in the desert—when he scented the enemy nearby. Still, he had come to make a point, and he meant to say his piece.

“I’m glad you’ve got a lot going right now,” he told Rick. “Take care of yourself, because it wouldn’t look good if you harassed others who had suffered from Claire’s abduction and Alex’s death.”

Finally, Rick’s dark eyes narrowed and met Nick’s. “I’d never hurt the kid,” Rick muttered. “But maybe you didn’t mean Claire. After all, you moved in with Tara Kinsale fast enough.”

“So you’re implying what?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m implying if I need to spell it out, but you know what I mean. Didn’t catch enough bad guys playing G.I. Joe, so you’ve got to pick on me?” Rick goaded as he thrust himself away from the window and stalked across the room to yank the door open. Nick could see they’d passed the point of no return. “You’re back trying to make up for it,” Rick plunged on, “talking about me doing something wrong?”

Hell, at least he got that part of the message, Nick thought, wanting to pretend Rick was Clay and beat the bastard to a pulp. But then he would have sunk just as low, striking out at someone who—maybe—wasn’t to blame at all.

“Just keep clear of Claire and Tara,” Nick said, and started toward the door before he bounced this guy off every wall in the room. He’d always prided himself on maintaining control at all times, prided himself on doing his duty and being reasonable. He’d expected it of himself, as had the amazingly strong Delta Force units and the Rangers he’d worked with. Even when they’d lost two dog handlers in an ambush and he blamed himself, he’d stayed stoic because he had to. But now it really scared him how powerfully the passion to protect his girls pounded in his ears and roared through his veins.

The moment Tara got back to the house, despite the fact she was still deeply shaken and dust coated, she looked out the back window toward the hiding place Nick had pointed out to her. When she saw nothing unusual, she washed her hands and face at the kitchen sink. Before she leaned out the front door to knock more Red Rocks dust off her purse, she looked both ways out all the front and side windows.

Damn, this was no way to live! She’d never been one to take risks, except for marrying Laird, which she’d thought at the time was a sure thing. For the first time in her life, she felt that even stepping outside was hazardous. She felt almost under siege.

Stepping back into the house, Tara dug in her purse for her cell phone. It was coated with a layer of grit, but it still worked. Feeling in control enough to call Veronica now, she scrolled to her number. It rang five times, then a recorded voice came on asking if she’d like to leave a voice-mail message.

She ended that call and tried the house phone number at the Lohans. Unfortunately, her former father-in-law answered. The old saying “like father like son” was sadly true in the Lohan clan. Both Thane and Laird not only resembled their father physically but had inherited or imitated his worst traits.

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