"Slow down," he cautioned. "The road is tricky here."

She nodded, furrowing her brow and struggling to concentrate. Wheel felt funny in her hand. Round. Huh. Pressed on the brakes. Hit the gas instead. The SUV lurched forward.

"Sorry," she muttered. World was beginning to spin again. She didn't feel well. Like she was going to throw up, or pass out. Maybe both. If she could just close her eyes…

Road moved on her again. Vehicle jerked. Seat belt. Needed a seat belt. She groped for the strap, got the clasp. Pulled. Seat belt spun out toothlessly. That's right. Broken. Must get that fixed. Someday. Today. May day. Stars spinning away, sky starting to lighten. Sun going to come up. Now she just needed a little girl singing, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, there's always tomorrow – "

"Slow down," he repeated from the passengers seat. "There's a sharp turn ahead."

She looked at him numbly. He had a strange gleam in his eyes. Excitement. She didn't understand. "I love you," she heard herself say. "I know," he replied. He reached for her kindly. His hand settled on the wheel. "Sweet, sexy, Mandy. You're never going to get over me."

She nodded. The dam broke, and tears poured down her cheeks. She sobbed hopelessly as the Ford Explorer swerved across the road, and the gleam built in his eyes. "I'm as good as it gets," he continued relentlessly. "Without me, Mandy, you'll be lost." "I know, I know."

"Your own father left you. Now, I'm doing the same. The weekend visits will stop, then the phone calls. And then it will just be you, Mandy, all alone night after night after night."

She sobbed harder. Salt on her cheeks, champagne on her lips. So alone. The black abyss. Alone, alone, alone.

"Face it, Mandy," he said gently. "You're not good enough to keep a man. You're nothing but a drunk. Christ, I'm breaking up with you, and all you can think about is that third bottle of champagne. That's the truth, isn't it? Isn't it?"

She tried to shake her head. She ended up nodding.

"Mandy," he whispered. "Speedup."

"Why didn't Daddy come home for my birthday? But I want Daddy!"

"Sweet, sexy Mandy."

Fill me up. Make me whole.

So alone…

"You hurt, Mandy. I know you hurt. But I'll help you, baby. Speedup."

Salt on her cheeks. Champagne on her lips. Her foot settling on the gas…

"One little push of the accelerator, and you'll never be lonely again. You'll never have to miss me."

Her foot… The approaching curve in the road. So alone. God, I'm tired.

"Come on, Mandy. Speedup."

Her foot pressing down…

At the last minute, she saw him. A man on the narrow shoulder of the country road. Walking his dog, looking startled to see a vehicle at this time of the morning, then even more surprised to have it bearing down on him.

Turn! Turn! Must turn! Amanda Jane Quincy jerked frantically at the wheel…

And it remained pointed straight ahead. Her lover still gripped it, and he held it tight.

Time suspended. Mandy looked up without comprehension at the face she had grown to love. She saw the rushing dark through the window behind him. She saw the seat belt strapped tight across his strong, broad chest. And she heard him say, "Bye-bye, sweet Mandy. When you get to hell, be sure to give your father my regards."

The Explorer hit the man. Thump bump. A short-circuited cry. The vehicle plowed ahead. And just as she was thinking it would be okay, she was still in one piece, they were still in one piece, the telephone pole reared out of the darkness.

Mandy never had time to scream. The Explorer hit the thick wooden pole at thirty-five miles per hour. The front bumper drove down, the back end came up. And her unsecured body vaulted from the driver's seat into the windshield, where the hard metal frame crushed the top of her skull.

The passenger had no such problems. The seat belt caught his chest, pushing him back into his seat even as the front end of the Explorer crumpled. His neck snapped forward. His internal organs rushed up in his chest, momentarily cutting off his air. He gasped, blinked his eyes, and seconds later, the pressure was gone. The SUV settled in. He settled in. He was fine.

He unfastened his seat belt with his bare hands. He had done his homework and he wasn't worried about prints. Nor was he concerned about time. A rural road in the early hours of dawn. It would be ten, twenty, thirty minutes before someone happened by.

He inspected beautiful, sexy Mandy. She still had a faint pulse, but she was now missing most of the top of her head. Even if her body was putting up a last-ditch fight, her brain would never recover.

A year and a half of planning later, he was satisfied. Amanda Jane Quincy had died scared, died confused, died heartbroken.

He and Pierce Quincy were still not even, the man thought, but it was a start.

Fourteen months later

Portland, Oregon

Monday afternoon, private investigator Lorraine Conner sat hunched over her paper-swamped desk, punched a few more numbers into her old, cagey laptop, then scowled at the results shown on the screen. She tried the numbers again, got the same dismal results, and gave them.the same dark look. The Quicken-generated budget, however, refused to be intimidated.

Damn file, she thought. Damn budget, damn heat. And damn circular fan that she'd purchased just last week and was already refusing to work unless she whacked it twice in the head. She stopped now to give it the requisite double-smack and was finally rewarded with a feeble breeze. Christ, this weather was killing her.

It was three in the afternoon on Monday. Outside the sun was shining, the heat about to crest for another record-breaking July day in downtown Portland, Oregon. Technically speaking, Portland didn't get as ridiculously hot as the East Coast. Nor, in theory, did it get as humid as the South. These days, unfortunately, the climate didn't seem to realize that. Rainie had long since traded in her T-shirt for a white cotton tank top. It was now plastered to her skin, while her elbows left rings of condensation on the one clear spot on her desk. If it got any hotter, she was taking her laptop into the shower.

Rainie's loft offered central air, but as part of her "belt-tightening" program, she was cooling her vast, one-room condo the old-fashioned way – she'd opened the windows and turned on a small desk fan. Unfortunately, that little matter of heat rising was conspiring against her. The eighth-floor condo wasn't magically getting any cooler, while the smog content had increased tenfold.

Bad day for belt-tightening programs. Especially in Portland 's trendy Pearl District, where iced coffee was served on practically every street corner, and all the little cafes prided themselves on their gourmet ice cream. God knows the majority of her upwardly mobile neighbors were probably sitting in Starbucks right now, basking in air-conditioned glory while trying to choose between an iced Chai or nonfat mocha latte.

Not Rainie. No, the new and improved Lorraine Conner was sitting in her trendy loft in this trendy little neighborhood, trying to decide which was more important – money for the Laundromat, or a new carburetor for her fifteen-year-old clunker. On the one hand, clean clothes always made a good impression when meeting a new client. On the other hand, it didn't do her any good to land new cases if she had no means of carrying them out. Details, details.

She tried a fresh round of numbers in her Quicken file. Showing a gross lack of imagination, the file spit back the same red results. She sighed. Rainie had just passed the Oregon Board of Investigators' test to receive her license. In the good news department, this meant she could start working for defense lawyers as a defense investigator, a la Paul Drake to their Perry Mason. In the bad news department, the two-year license cost her seven hundred bucks. Then came the hundred dollars for the standard five-thousand-dollar bond to protect her against complaints. Finally, she got to fork over eight hundred dollars for a million dollars in errors-and-omissions insurance, more CYA infrastructure. All in all, Conner Investigations was moving up – except she was now out sixteen hundred dollars and feeling the crunch.