“Well, whoever it is,” Hawk said through the truckload of rock in his throat, “I don’t think she’s gonna be sitting here in Cooper’s Mill, North Carolina. waiting for her customer. She’s gonna be going to see the boss. So if you’re figuring on waiting for the rendezvous and getting both birds with one stone…”

“Right. So we move on her as soon as we know she’s got the disk. Uh, by the way, Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“What can you tell us about Mrs. Carlysle? We, uh, seem to have lost our… Ahem. The, uh, surveillance equipment we had on her seems to be down for some reason. You wouldn’t know anything about that, I don’t suppose.” Campbell’s voice was carefully neutral. “Or where she might be at the moment?”

“No, I don’t.” Hawk rubbed a hand over his eyes and then across his unshaven jaw. He felt like nine miles of bad road. “But I’ve got an idea she may be headed your way.”

“Say again?” He could hear the FBI agent’s voice crack.

“You heard me. I don’t know where she is. But I think she might be on her way to a meeting with our suspect.”

Campbell borrowed Hawk’s word and made it his own. “You don’t think she means to warn her?”

“Warn her of what, for God’s sake! Use your head. She doesn’t know anything. Look-I don’t know what she’s up to, but I’ll tell you this-she hasn’t got a clue who she’s dealing with.”

There was a pause, during which Agent Campbell held a mumbled conversation with someone on his end, and Hawk made the discovery that none of the cow pastures he was driving past now bore any resemblance to the ones he’d driven past last night.

“Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“You figure Mrs. Carlysle to be heading for the suspect’s house or her store?”

Hawk thought about it while he was peering through the windows and checking all his mirrors, hoping to find something that looked the slightest bit familiar. “My guess would be the house,” he muttered. “Too early-the store wouldn’t be open, would it?” Damn. It seemed to him one cow looked pretty much like every other cow. And the same went for daffodils.

“Yeah, you’re probably right In that case, we should be okay.”

“How’s that?”

“I just got word-suspect’s on the move. She just left her house in a blue van, and is heading into town. We are in position. What’s your ETA?”

“Damned if I know,” Hawk snarled, and disgustedly hit the wheel of the red Nissan with the palm of his hand. “I think I’m lost!”


“My goodness, such a lot of cars for this early in the morning,” Jane said to herself as she glided through the green signal light and onto the brick-paved square. She wondered if it was jury-selection day over at the courthouse, or if maybe the Rotary Club was having a breakfast meeting at the Cooper’s Corner Café.

Connie’s Antiques looked dark and empty, but that didn’t mean anything. Connie was almost always in her shop early on Monday mornings, especially if she’d been on a buying trip over the weekend. Often Jane would leave for work half an hour early on Mondays, just so she’d have time to drop in at the shop and see what treasures her friend had brought home this time. Connie would have the teakettle on. and a tin of those English biscuits she liked, and she’d tell Jane all about her trip, and Jane would admire-and sometimes wistfully drool over-her latest purchases.

Right now. Jane thought, she’d most likely be in the back of the shop somewhére, just as usual, busy unpacking, cataloging, pricing and marking the things she’d bought at the auction in Arlington. Just as usual…

Oh, God, she thought, please don’t let it be true. This is Connie. Connie…my friend.

But her heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and she kept taking deep breaths that didn’t do any good. Her hands were like ice, and her legs felt weak and shaky.

Okay, she was terrified.

But she had to know. She had to.

Connie’s van wasn’t in its usual place in the tiny unpaved parking lot behind her store. Jane pulled into a spot far enough away from the back door so there would be plenty of room for the blue van and settled down to wait.

Alone in the quiet car, Tom came to her. She could smell him…feel his warmth soaking through his sweater and into her skin…feel the tender roughness of his whiskers against her softest places. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine he was there with her now…hear his emotion-scratchy voice saying, “Well, Carlysle, what have you got to say for yourself?”

No regrets. Even now. How could she regret something so wonderful, so lovely and rare, just because it was for only one night? She might as well regret lilacs, because they only bloomed once every spring…or bluebirds, or shooting stars, or dolphins. Once in a lifetime.

Her lips even curved in a smile as she remembered the gift he’d given her, that she would carry with her for the rest of her life, like a secret keepsake, hidden close to her heart. The gift of a single word. “Wow…”

She was debating whether to turn off the engine or leave it on so she could run the heater, when she heard the van bump down the potholed alley and roar into the parking lot behind her. Her hand shook as she turned off the ignition.

Shivering, she stood beside her car and waited while Connie backed the van into its place and climbed out, jingling keys. Giving Jane a little wave, she bent to unlock the back door of the shop, then straightened, calling out cheerily, “Hullo, dear-back from Washington so soon?”

Sidling closer, Jane thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat and gave a nervous laugh and a little shrug of vexation. “Oh-wouldn’t you know, the girls have gone off skiing with their father? Very spur-of-the-moment-typically David. Of course, I’d have had to come back to work today, anyway. Unless I took a sick day, I suppose. I could have, but if I’d stayed longer, I wouldn’t have had anyone to pick me up at the airport, would I? So I guess it’s just as well…” She was babbling. She never babbled.

Take a deep breath, Jane.

“There, dear, you’re shivering.” Connie was standing beside the back door of her shop, holding it open for her, smiling in her usual friendly way. “Do come in-I’ll just put the kettle on.”

Chapter 17

Hawk was climbing back into the driver’s seat, having just received directions to the main highway from a farmer in a pickup truck with a bale of hay the size of Delaware in the back, when the cellular phone rang.

“Jeez,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed at it, “they got a camera in this thing, or what?”

Campbell sounded out of breath. “Hawkins? Not good news here. Mrs. Carlysle just showed up at the suspect’s shop.”

Hawk threw the Nissan into Drive and swore with a vehemence unprecedented even for him. “Get her out of there,” he snarled. “Now.”

“No can do. The suspect’s en route, due to arrive any minute. Can’t risk being spotted.”

“So, what now?” The Nissan’s tires spun briefly on wet grass before they made contact with pavement. Hawk set his jaw and pressed down on the accelerator pedal. “You can’t go in. Not if there’s a chance-”

“Look, Hawkins,” Campbell said with the arrogance that made the FBI such a pain in the butt to work with sometimes, “you’re just gonna have to trust us, okay? We’re not any more anxious than you are for some innocent civilian to get caught in the crossfire, but we both know what’s at stake here. We’ve taken every precaution, and we have every reason to believe we can pull this off without anybody getting hurt.”

Every reason to believe? thought Hawk. Great. Just great.

“We’ve got the whole place wired,” Campbell went on in a smug Bureau purr that made Hawk grind his teeth. “Both picture and sound. We’ll be monitoring the situation from the word go. We’ve got both front and rear exits covered, plus the alley, the parking lot and the whole damn square, and a Hostage Rescue Team ready to roll just in case.”

In case? In case what? Hawk wanted to shout. In case Emma/ Galina puts a gun to Jane’s head, the way she did to Loizeau’s? If she does that, you moron, there won’t be anything for the Hostage Rescue Team to do except carry in the body bag!

A vision came to him then, a vision of Jane’s face, her eyes lifting to his with that sudden, miraculous leap of light and joy that always made him think of dolphins. Then he saw her eyes go dull and flat, the light in them forever quenched, and with it all the joy and light there was in the world. His world.

Carlysle…you idiot…why couldn’t you have trusted me? After last night…after everything…was that too much to ask?

“O…kay…suspect has arrived.” Agent Campbell was trying without success to bury his excitement in a monotone drawl. “She’s pulling into the parking lot at the rear of the shop. Mrs. Carlysle has exited her vehicle. So has the suspect…she’s waving at Mrs. Carlysle…suspect now appears to be unlocking the door of the shop. Okay, both Carlysle and the suspect are inside… we have them on the monitors. Hawk?”

“Yeah?” Becoming aware that his chest was hurting, he grabbed for a breath.

“What’s your ETA now?”

“I dunno.” Hawk glanced down at the speedometer needle, which was hovering around seventy-five. How far could it be to the damn town, anyway? “Five minutes?”

“Take your time. Doesn’t look like Mrs. Carlysle’s in any immediate danger.”

“How the hell you figure that?” Hawk growled.

Campbell exhaled audibly. “They’re having tea.”


“There you are…honey…and lemon.”

Jane watched while Connie, who preferred milk in her tea, poured herself a generous dollop and returned the carton to the camp-size refrigerator that shared the limited space in her cluttered workroom with a working, 1930s-vintage gas stove. An equally old-fashioned teakettle sat on one of the stove’s burners beneath its tea cozy, comfortably steeping.

“Would you like a biscuit, dear?”

“Oh, no…thanks.” Jane stirred and sipped her tea. tasting nothing. Her mind, from the moment she’d entered Connie’s shop, had seemed capable of only one coherent thought: It can’t be true. It can’t be. This is Connie…my friend.

Thank goodness Connie had done most of the talking, as usual, telling her in great detail, as the kettle was coming to a boil, all about her newest customer, something about a fantastically wealthy businessman who apparently wanted her to decorate his villa in Miami Beach.

“He’s Iranian, I behove-seems to have pots of money and no taste whatsoever.” Connie’s eyes sparkled with avarice as she bit daintily into a cookie. “I do believe I may have already found a home for some of those dreadful paintings I bought at Arlington. Oh-and that reminds me, dear-” her eyes came to rest on Jane, causing her heart to give a painful bump “-what did you find out about that nice little one you bought? Was my friend in Georgetown able to have a look at it? What did he say?”

Jane took a sip of tea, which did nothing to dispel the feeling that she’d somehow gotten Connie’s cookie crumbs stuck in her throat. Finally, she coughed and said, “I never got around to it, actually. I told you-I had to cut the whole trip short, and anyway, by the next day getting it appraised began to seem, well, just sort of silly. I’m sure it’s not valuable, and I like it anyway, so why bother? It does look very nice over the piano, though, just like I thought it would.” She set down her teacup carefully, praying Connie wouldn’t notice the slight clatter as it met the saucer.

“Actually, that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I was, um, wondering, I still need something for that space between the windows in the breakfast nook, and now that I have the one painting in the living room, the wall above the TV looks awfully bare, so I was thinking I might like to take another look at those paintings-the ones you bought. I know you said you were thinking of taking them to Miami, but…maybe I could have first crack?”


“Uh-oh.”

“What?” Hawk barked, as the ominous syllables came through the open cellular phone connection in Campbell’s deep-throated cop’s mutter.

His anxiety level shot off the scale when the FBI agent next produced a vehement rendition of his own favorite swearword, followed by an outraged, “What the hell is she doing?”

“You mind letting me in on whatever the hell it is she’s doing?” Hawk almost bellowed, ignoring a blast from a trucker’s horn as he ran the stop sign and made a hard right at the junction with the main road into Cooper’s Mill.

The FBI agent’s reply was lost in the squeal of tires.

“Say again?”

“I said, she’s asking about the paintings. How much did you tell her, Hawkins? Does she know what she’s doing? Is she out of her mind?”