As Kath approached, one of the ambulance attendants tried to muscle her aside. She pushed right back.

“That’s my husband,” she told him determinedly. “Wherever he’s going, I’m going.”

Nodding his reluctant assent, the EMT handed her up into the back of the ambulance. Then he stepped in himself, closed the door, and called, “We’re in.”

With a squawk of the siren and a lurch of tires, the ambulance sped off.

Tucson, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 4:00 p.m.

93º Fahrenheit

By the time Brandon and Diana neared their home in Gates Pass, Brandon could see that his wife was running on empty. He had suggested they stop in Casa Grande and get something to eat. She had opted for coming straight home. The whole time they’d been in the car she’d been quiet again, quiet and brooding. Since she sure as hell wasn’t talking with him, Brandon couldn’t help wondering if one of those other haunting entities was once again communicating with her.

Pulling into the driveway, Brandon was startled to see a Border Patrol vehicle, a Ford Expedition, parked on the far side of the gate, blocking the way. He was sure the gate at the end of the driveway had been closed when they left the house. No one should have been able to drive inside and park.

“What the hell?” Brandon muttered under his breath. “What’s all this? Wait here,” he said to Diana. “I’ll go check it out.”

Leaving the engine and AC running, Brandon stepped out of the CRV. What had once been a single backyard area had been carved into two separate yards in order to surround the lap pool with a kid-proof fence. Looking over the top of it, Brandon was dismayed to see a young man, a total stranger, splashing around in the pool. A little girl was with him. He would lift her out of the water and then splash her into it, while she alternately shrieked and giggled. Off under the gazebo lay two very wet dogs-Damsel and a huge German shepherd. The dog was a complete stranger, too, as far as Brandon was concerned, but Damsel seemed entirely at home with this arrangement.

The German shepherd caught sight of Brandon at the same moment Brandon saw the dog. He bounded up and came racing toward the gate, barking fiercely and sounding as though he was fully prepared to tear Brandon Walker limb from limb.

“Bozo!” the guy shouted. “No! Down!”

The dog immediately skidded to a stop and ducked down on his belly. He seemed to be under voice control, but Brandon Walker wasn’t taking any chances. He stayed on his side of the gate and made no attempt to open it.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded of the guy in the pool. “And what do you think you’re doing in my backyard? This is private property. Now get the hell out.”

“Sorry,” the young man said, hefting the little girl onto his hip and making his way over to the steps. “You must be Mr. Walker. I’m Daniel Pardee. This is Angelina Enos. Your daughter is off doing some shopping. She thought she’d be back before you got home.”

“Shopping?” Brandon shot back. “Sure she is. If there’s one thing Lani hates, it’s shopping. Now who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

The dog-Bozo? Was his name really Bozo?-clearly took exception to Brandon’s tone of voice. He leveled a withering look in Brandon’s direction, a look accompanied by a low-throated growl and the baring of a set of very sharp teeth.

“Dr. Walker tried to call you to let you know that we were stopping by…” the man began.

“I was working,” Brandon told him. “I forgot to turn my phone back on, but surely Lani understands we can’t just have strangers dropping in and using our pool without any kind of supervision.”

“She needed to do some power shopping,” Daniel said. “She thought she’d be better off without having us along.”

Diana walked up behind Brandon. “Who’s that?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“Apparently our daughter invited some of her friends to stop by and go swimming in our absence,” Brandon said sarcastically.

He was ripped, and he didn’t mind sounding like it.

The little girl slithered off the young man’s leg and went racing back toward the pool, scrambling over the dog in the process. The dog made no move to go after the child, but he still kept a wary eye on Brandon.

“I know your daughter wanted to explain all this to you,” Daniel Pardee began. “I expected her back before now.”

“Who’s that adorable child?” Diana asked over Brandon’s shoulder. “Where did she come from?”

Just then Lani’s Passat came down the driveway. Glancing in the passenger-side window, Brandon could see that the entire vehicle was loaded with boxes. The guy with the kid had evidently been telling the truth about Lani being off on a shopping extravaganza.

“I tried to call,” Lani began, rolling down her window. “I meant to be here by the time you got back.”

Nonetheless, Brandon Walker was furious. It was one thing to have their own grandchildren splashing around in the pool, but to allow a total stranger to bring a child there when no one was home was just asking for trouble, to say nothing of a lawsuit.

Brandon walked over to his daughter’s car. “What were you thinking? You have no business inviting people we don’t know onto your mother’s and my property. Family members are one thing-”

“Angie is family, Dad,” Lani said quietly, stepping out of the car. “She’s mine. Dan agreed to look after her while I went shopping.”

Brandon stopped himself in mid-rant. Was it possible that Lani had had a baby her parents knew nothing about?

“What do you mean, she’s yours?” he croaked.

“It happened this morning. Judge Lawrence issued a court order granting me temporary custody. The problem is, my apartment isn’t exactly child-ready. That’s what I was doing, buying what I’ll need to furnish her room.”

“I don’t understand,” Brandon said. “Why would you be given custody?”

“Her mother, Delphina Enos, was murdered last night,” Lani explained. “Out on the reservation.”

“But why-?”

“Delphina’s maiden name was Escalante, Dad, from Nolic. I’m sure you remember them. She was my cousin. My birth cousin.”

“But if her mother has been murdered, isn’t there someone besides you who can take her?” Brandon asked. “Her grandparents, maybe, or else an aunt or uncle?”

“No,” Lani said. “There’s no one. No one wants to take her.”

“Wait a minute,” Brandon said as he finally managed to process what she’d been saying. “You mean those Escalantes? The same people who…?”

Lani nodded. “Yes, the very same people who wouldn’t take me back after the ant bites. This is evidently similar. Since Angie wasn’t murdered along with her mother, her blood relatives have taken the position that she’s now a dangerous object. They won’t take her back. Angie’s father is in jail. His parents don’t want her, either.”

For a long moment Brandon looked hard at his daughter and then at the little girl. Even now Angie was sitting on the edge of the pool, kicking happily with both feet and churning up a spray of water that splashed as far as Bozo who, Brandon noted, had not yet broken his master’s down command.

Brandon glanced back at Dan Pardee. The interloper stood there still dripping and wearing a faded bathing suit, a Speedo Brandon was quite sure was one of Davy’s cast-offs. The younger man was barefoot, but he stood poised on the balls of his feet. He seemed to be assessing the situation in the same way his dog was. He also looked more than capable of leaping to Lani’s defense if that kind of protection seemed warranted.

Diana was the one who ended the uncomfortable stare-down between the two men. She walked past her husband as though he didn’t exist. Opening the gate, she walked past Bozo as well, kicking off her sandals as she went. Rolling up her pant legs, she sank down on the pool edge next to the little girl, dropped her feet into the water, and began kicking, too.