"Kimberly," he yelled, though he didn't know why.

"Daddy!"

"Hey Andrews," Rainie called. "Look here."

The man jerked around. Kimberly broke free and dove to the floor just as Rainie racked back her Glock.

"No!" Andrews howled. He pointed his gun at her -

And Quincy very calmly, very coolly shot the man point blank in the chest. Andrews dropped to the floor. He did not move again.

"Is it over?" Kimberly asked when the echoes of the gunshot faded away. She was trying to raise herself off the floor. Her left arm wouldn't bear her weight. Blood streaked down her long, fine hair.

Quincy went over to her. He took his injured daughter into his arms, feeling the tremors rocking her slender body. He cradled her against his chest, holding her as gently as he had when she was a newborn. Oh God, she was infinitely precious to him. He had saved her, but he had also hurt her, and he knew it would take them both years to sort out the difference between the two. All he could do was try. Isolation was not protection. No amount of distance kept you safe in the end.

His gaze went to Rainie, now bent over Andrews.

"He's dead," Rainie said quietly.

Kimberly clutched his shoulders more tightly. And then she began to cry. Quincy rocked his daughter against him. He stroked her blood-splattered hair.

"It's over," he said to Kimberly, to Rainie. And then more firmly, to all of them, "The game is over."

A loud knocking on the door. "Hotel security," a voice barked.

And the aftermath began.

Pearl District,Portland

Six weeks later, Rainie Conner sat hunched over her desk in her downtown loft, ostensibly trying to make her budget love her, but really eyeing the phone. Damn thing wasn't making a sound. Hadn't made a sound for days. She was really starting to hate that.

She picked up the receiver. "Well, what do you know, dial tone."

She set down the receiver. She went back to studying her Quicken file. It didn't do a thing to improve her mood.

Quincy had paid her. She'd yelled and screamed and put up a fuss. When they were both satisfied that she'd made all the appropriate noise, she'd accepted his check. A girl had to eat, and all those cross-country plane tickets had just showed up on her AmEx card. Conner Investigations got to have a profit. For about seven days. Then she started flying to Virginia again. She kept telling herself it was all for good reason.

First she had to join Quincy to finish picking Albert Montgomery's brain. The agent had finally admitted that the esteemed Dr. Marcus Andrews had approached him two and a half years ago. Andrews had wanted revenge against Quincy. His wife, Emily, had hired Quincy as an expert witness in the bitter child-custody hearing between her and her ex-husband. Quincy 's testimony had been pivotal in the judge's decision to deny Andrews access to his children permanently. While the case had been important at the time, Quincy hadn't thought about it now in years and the name Andrews had been too common to make Quincy think twice when Kim-berry began talking about her highly respected professor.

Funny how Bethie had always thought it was his career at the Bureau that would put Quincy 's family in jeopardy. None of them had considered that mental health professionals also faced dangers in the form of unbalanced patients and disgruntled families.

Andrews had interviewed Miguel Sanchez as part of his prison research study. As he became familiar with the killing spree and the officers involved in the Sanchez investigation, he'd identified Montgomery 's role and realized here was someone else who probably hated Quincy as much as Andrews did. Dr. Andrews tracked down Montgomery in Virginia, introduced his cause over dinner, and a few beers later, had enlisted Montgomery in a joint quest for revenge.

Montgomery had been playing the inside man ever since. First he helped Andrews understand how the Bureau worked. What would happen if an agent seemed in jeopardy? What if an agent's family was in jeopardy? How fast could the Bureau review past case files? What if an agent was suspected of a crime? From there, Montgomery had simply sunk in deeper. From introducing Mandy to Andrews to confiscating Quincy 's stationery to attacking Glenda because his hatred had festered and grown that insane.

Nine months ago, Montgomery had searched the Oregon corrections department data banks to find a good candidate for Rainie's father. Yes, Ronnie Dawson existed. He went to jail at the right time, he was paroled at the right time. And upon personal investigation, he was a five-foot-two aging redhead, who'd never heard of Molly Conner and was as shocked as anyone to hear that a fat donation had been made to a county DA in his name.

Easy come, easy go. Rainie dedicated three days to feeling kind of funky. Then she surprised herself by getting over it. It was hard to miss something you never had, and she hadn't even truly lost her dream. She did have a father. He was somewhere out there. You never knew.

Attorney-at-law Carl Mitz existed, too. A good lawyer, and as Rainie had learned over lunch, a genuinely nice guy. Just one more person who had the right credentials, so Montgomery got his Social Security number, mother's maiden name, and date of birth. Andrews took over from there.

Rainie was not feeling so good anymore about the electronic age. She'd ordered a copy of her credit report the other day. She found herself checking it compulsively.

Special Agent Albert Montgomery wasn't going to stand trial. Apparently, Andrews had left one last present for him: Cyanide in his blood-pressure medication, which some kindly agent retrieved for him from home. Shortly after Quincy 's final interview with him, Albert opened the bottle. Both he and his guard smelled the odor of bitter almonds immediately. The guard dived forward. Albert downed half the bottle. Sixty seconds later, Albert didn't have to worry anymore about how he was going to live with himself.

For Quincy and Kimberly it wasn't quite that easy. Kimberly spent forty-eight hours in the hospital with a broken arm and severe concussion. Fortunately, she was young and strong and recovered quickly from her wounds. The physical ones, that is. Quincy tried to get her to return to Virginia with him. She insisted on going to New York, however. She wanted her apartment back. Her classes, her routine, her life. Rainie and Quincy called her every day for the first week. Kimberly liked that so much she took her phone off the hook. She was an independent girl and as Rainie understood from personal experience, she needed to deal with things in her own way, in her own time.

Two weeks after Albert committed suicide, the Philadelphia police got the handwriting analysis back from their crime lab and tried to arrest Quincy for his ex-wife's brutal murder. Rainie definitely had to return to Virginia for that. She'd yelled at the detectives, yelled at the district attorney, and made a general nuisance of herself. Glenda, on the other hand, finally convinced the DA to send the incriminating note to the FBI lab, which promptly verified the presence of numerous hesitation marks – a classic sign of forgery. Quincy thanked Rainie for coming. Glenda got a promotion.

Rainie returned once again to Portland. She had her business, Quincy had the case to wrap up and his daughter to think about. Of course they spoke by phone. Rainie told him she understood he had a lot going on. She practiced being sympathetic, supportive, and all around undemanding. He couldn't be there for her, but she could be there for him. This is what relationships were about. Real, adult, mature relationships. If she became any more well adjusted, she was going to have to beat someone.