“Stay where you are, I’m on my way,” Riley had told her, and rung off with the soft burr of her barely audible “Thank you” in his ears. It was that sound he thought about. Along with the image of her mouth forming the words, it kept returning to his mind in spite of all his efforts to quell it, like a phrase of music, a tiresome bit of song.

The government building that housed the FBI’s small Augusta field office was closed up tight at that hour. At the front entrance Riley identified himself and stated his business through an intercom, and after a short wait he was buzzed into a cubicle where he confronted a directory mounted on one side wall. Momentarily derailed, he was about to select someone at random when the elevator doors to his right suddenly slid open. He muttered a sardonic “Thank you” as he stepped on.

The doors whisked shut and, after a brief ride to an indeterminable floor, opened again on a large, well-lit room crowded with desks, windowed cubicles and computer terminals. It appeared to be empty of people, except for a tall man with dark hair, a shadowed jaw and the patient, sorrowful look of martyrs and bloodhounds. He gave Riley’s tux a silent and cynical once-over, shook his hand and said, “Mr. Grogan? Special Agent Redfield. Come with me, please?”

He led Riley through the maze of desks and down a short hallway, tiptoeing, for some reason, past a couple of rest rooms, and paused before a door at the far end, one hand on the doorknob and a finger to his lips. Riley quelled a flare of impatience and nodded. The FBI agent turned the knob and pushed the door partway open. Riley stepped silently past him and into the room.

It was a typical off-duty room, perhaps a bit more generously outfitted than some, crowded with refrigerator and microwave, sink and coffeemaker, a table cluttered with newspapers and crossword puzzle pads, several chairs. There was a large sofa along one wall, and a TV set perched on a bookcase with shelves occupied by a VCR and an assortment of reading material that ranged from a Bible to National Geographic.

On one end of the sofa, Summer Robey sat slumped awkwardly sideways with her head pillowed on one arm. The other arm was draped protectively over the body of a small child-a girl, Riley guessed-who lay with her head in her mother’s lap. Both were asleep, jaws slack, mouths slightly open, snoring softly. At the other end of the sofa, a boy lay in a tight fetal curl, his cheek uncomfortably pillowed on a backpack. His mouth was open, too, and there was a small, round wet spot on the fabric of the backpack beneath its corner. Even asleep, Riley noticed, the child’s forehead was creased in a worried frown.

He backed soundlessly out of the room and pulled the door closed before turning to Agent Redfield and remarking in an acid tone, “You couldn’t have taken them to a hotel?” He felt indefinably shaken; somehow he’d forgotten about the children. Lord, of course there were children; she’d mentioned them several times. It wasn’t like him to forget a detail like that.

Redfield said dolefully, “Yeah, well…it seems there’s just one…slight…complication.”

Riley frowned. “Complication?”

A grimace gave Agent Redfield’s lips an upward tilt, almost like a smile; he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Seems she has some…other baggage.”

“Baggage?”

“Pets.”

“Pets.” Riley said the word as if it were a foreign language.

“Yeah. Lucky for them, they were at a friend’s house-I guess they’d been out of town over the weekend, some family thing-so they weren’t involved in the fire. Anyway, she-well, the kids, actually-they insisted we had to go and get them before we did anything else.”

“They insisted?” Riley repeated in an incredulous tone.

“You have no idea,” Redfield said dryly, “how persuasive they can be. Believe me. It was a whole lot easier to go than not” He looked, Riley thought, like a man who’d recently survived an unnerving experience.

“Humph,” he said without sympathy. “These… friends couldn’t have kept the, uh, pets for another few days? What kind of pets are we talking about? Cat? Dog? Goldfish?”

Redfield straightened with a laconic gesture for Riley to follow him. “I guess the best way is to show you… Oh, I think they would have, if they’d been asked,” he said, answering Riley’s first question as they walked. “I kinda got the feeling they weren’t on very good terms-some sort of altercation among the kids, apparently. Anyway, she-Mrs. Robey-she didn’t feel like she could impose.”

No, thought Riley, she wouldn’t That damned pride. He couldn’t decide whether he admired it or not, at least not in a client, but he did understand it He understood it very well.

“Anyway,” Redfield continued, “I figure no hotel in the world’s gonna want to take this bunch. Here-see for yourself.” He halted in front of one of the rest room doors but didn’t open it-took a step backward, in fact, as if he expected a bomb might go off any minute.

Riley gave him a look of annoyance and the door a push.

“Get out!” a woman’s voice shrieked as a dog began to bark ferociously. “Get out, get out, get out!”

What the hell? At the first words, Riley had jumped back as if he’d bounced off a rubber wall. He threw the FBI man a cold and murderous glance. “Your idea of a joke?”

Redfield wasn’t smiling. He shrugged. “No joke. Go ahead-just go on in.”

Riley gave him a long, considering stare; he was not in the habit of being made the fool. Beyond the door all seemed quiet now, almost eerily so-no human voices or barking dog, no hurried flushing sounds or running water. He pushed on the door…then pushed it wider.

A woman’s voice-a different one, he’d have sworn-muttered evilly, “Go to hell.” That was followed by a jubilant “No wa-a-ay!” as the high-pitched barking began with renewed frenzy.

“Oh, good Lord,” Riley said under his breath.

In the middle of the tile floor sat three pet carrying cases, the kind made of plastic with a steel-mesh door at one end. In one, the ugliest cat Riley had ever seen in his life sat and stared at the world with pure, unadulterated malevolence; from another, a very tiny Chihuahua with huge, bulging eyes was voicing a strong desire to tear anything that came within range of its minute jaws limb from limb-or at least, toe from foot. The third carrier was covered with a blue cloth, and apparently it was from here that the voices had issued. Because one was at that very moment muttering, “Stupid…dog,” employing an adjective Riley would never have used, at least not around children.

He backed out of the room, bringing the door gently to a close, then stood and stared at it for a moment. “Well,” he said. And after a moment, “You people don’t have a safe house of some kind?”

Redfield shook his head. “Nothing appropriate for the…you know.” His head jerked toward the room they’d just left.

Riley said nothing. Turning on his heel, he strode down the hallway to the big room with all the desks in it. He chose one that wasn’t buried in computers and paperwork, leaned his backside against it, folded his arms and waited for the FBI man, who was right behind him.

“Agent Redfield,” he said in a soft, even tone, “before I let my client know I’m here, I do have one or two questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll do my best to answer ’em for you,” Jake Redfield said in a voice just as calm, just as quiet, as he leaned his rear against the desk across the aisle from Riley and folded his arms on his chest in an exact duplicate of his posture.

And then for a few moments there was silence while the two men took each other’s measure, like a couple of dogs meeting in an alley, Riley thought, figuring out which one was going to be top dog.

Funny thing was, he had an idea they weren’t really all that much different, he and this man from the FBI. Sure, the guy was obviously at the end of a long day that promised to get longer yet, and looked it-baggy-eyed and unshaven and as if he’d slept in his clothes-while Riley appeared calm, cool and immaculate in a dinner jacket and black tie. Appeared being the key word-and he just hoped the facade was going to be thick enough to stand up to the fact that at the moment he felt as off balance and ill-equipped as a man trying to tiptoe through a cow pasture in patent-leather shoes. But under their two very different skins, he’d be willing to bet, there lay the same junkyard-dog toughness, a few of the same ideals and principles, and maybe even something else, something Riley would never put a name to or let anybody see. He was pretty sure Jake Redfield didn’t, either.

“You mind telling me,” Riley said, “just exactly what is the FBI’s interest in my client?”

“We consider her an important witness in an ongoing investigation,” Redfield answered promptly. “I thought we made that clear to her.” His eyebrows lifted. “You mind telling me what it was that would make her feel like she had to call in her lawyer?”

Riley let his lip curl with just a touch of sarcasm. “Maybe you scared her? Maybe your methods were a touch heavyhanded, considering who you were dealing with? That is a nice lady in there. Seems to me, if you want cooperation from nice people, it generally works best to ask nicely.”

Redfield snorted. He rubbed at the back of his neck and muttered, “We’re not who she needs to be scared of.”

“Ah, yes. My client mentioned you think this involves a gambling syndicate?”

“Gambling, among other things-yes. One of the biggest left in the country. I’ve-we’ve been trying to nail the lid shut on these people for a long time.” The FBI agent’s face had a dark and tense look, as if his jaw were clenched and his blood pressure rising. After a moment Riley saw him take a deep breath and give his head a quick shake, as if it were a selfcontrol regimen he practiced frequently. “Never quite been able to manage it. Can’t quite get anything-or anybody-that’ll stick through the whole system of due process, if you know what I mean.” He threw Riley a resentful look. Plainly, the agent thought that lawyers should have been required to wear a special security pass stamped Enemy.

“I can certainly sympathize,” said Riley evenly, not bothenng to point out that he wasn’t a criminal defense attorney and therefore had little if not nothing to do with the government’s failure in their quest to stamp out organized crime. “But what does this have to do with my client?”

“We want her husband,” Redfield said softly, his eyes like long, dark thoughts. “Hal Robey. We think she can help us.”

Riley made a disgusted noise. “My client has no idea where her ex-husband is. When he disappeared he left her and the kids flat broke, did you know that? If she knew where he was, don’t you suppose she’d be after him herself?”

Redfield shrugged. “Maybe…maybe not. All I know is, the syndicate we’re interested in wants Hal Robey, and they have come after his wife in a very serious way. To me, that says they must have some good reason to think she can give them what they want. Since we also want Hal Robey, and would very much like to find him before the bad guys do, we have to pay attention to that. You follow me? We have no choice but to look very hard at Mrs. Robey. The difference between us and them is that we don’t burn down people’s houses and threaten to hurt their children to get what we want.”

There was a hard, unhappy silence. Then Riley straightened and said quietly, “I believe I will see my client now.”


There had been a year in Summer’s childhood when the winter rains came early and stayed on into May in the California deserts and mountain foothills. They hadn’t known about El Niño then; old-tuners called it the year of the Hundred-Year Flood. For a while, California was in its glory. The desert bloomed with carpets of wildflowers, some that appeared only once or twice in a lifetime, and poppies and brush grew thick and lush on the slopes. And then in June the rains ceased and the Santa Ana winds blew down the canyons, and the vegetation became tinder. And the fire season began.

As the hills and forests and subdivisions of Southern California burned and firefighters and equipment poured in from all over the country to help wage the unwinnable war, base camps sprang up near those communities in the most desperate states of seige That year, one such tent city had been located in Summer’s hometown, because of its proximity both to an airfield large enough to accommodate the water bombers, and a reservoir that would be their source of water.

At the height of the holocaust, Summer’s daddy, Pop Waskowitz, the town’s chief of police, had taken his children to visit the camp. While Evie had run around taking pictures and home movies for a school social studies project, and Mirabella had fussed and fumed over what she considered to be rampant inefficiency and disorganized chaos, Summer had stared in silent sorrow at the firefighters coming in from the line. Too exhausted to eat, they would fall asleep where they hit the ground, sometimes with their heads pillowed on knapsacks, hard hats or bare ground. Their smoke-blackened faces and red-rimmed eyes had haunted Summer’s nightmares for weeks afterward.