“Let’s just put it this way, Annie. It’s really tough having to compete with a dead man for your attention. Especially when that dead man was, by all accounts, an absolute paragon of-”

“Stop it, Evan. Just… stop it.”

She turned her back and started toward the stairs. She got up to the second step and turned back to him.

“I will say this one time, so listen up.” She took a deep breath. “If you are waiting for me to tell you that I did not love Dylan, you are going to be very disappointed. I did love him. I loved him with all my heart. I planned to marry him and grow old with him. When he was killed, I thought I’d never feel that way about anyone, ever again. I accepted that.”

“Annie…”

“Don’t. You started this, you will let me finish.”

She came down off the steps.

“The first time I met you, I knew how I was going to end up feeling about you. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. But I met you, and I thought, Well, now, how about that? Lightning can strike twice, apparently. Then we began dating, and for a time, I was confused, because I wasn’t sure I understood how anyone could be lucky enough to find that kind of love more than once. And I knew that I loved you, pretty much right from the time we started seeing each other. There was just something in you… something so good and honest, something that just spoke to my heart.” She took a long breath.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but there was something else I saw in you that I saw in Dylan as well, and I don’t mean this to sound as if I’m comparing you to him. I’m not. It wasn’t that you were alike. It’s more in the way he cared about what he did. It might sound corny, but he took the whole business of fighting crime very seriously. He was always on the side of the victims, always stood for those who couldn’t stand for themselves. I loved that in him. I saw all those same things in you-that same determination, that same dedication-and I loved it in you, too. I really felt that in spite of what had happened, I would have my happily-ever-after. With you.”

Evan rubbed the back of his neck, then shoved his hands into his pockets. He just didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry that you felt left out on Friday. I have to be very honest with you-I did feel uncomfortable, after a while, the way Dylan’s family was turning my sister’s wedding into a sort of memorial service. But you have to understand that this is a very close family. In some ways, they are still trying to come to grips with Dylan’s death. His father will probably never accept it. He’s still reeling from it. I feel bad for all of them. It hasn’t been easy.”

“You didn’t seem to be protesting too much when I saw you.”

“What was I supposed to do, Evan? Tell them all to just get over it, to get on with their lives?”

“You didn’t have to sit there all night and be part of the wake. It looked to me that you fit right in.”

“I did not know what else to do, Evan. I did not know how to gracefully walk away. They see me as a link to him. Especially Thomas. Dylan loved me; they have to love me, too. If he hadn’t died when he did, I’d have been one of them.”

“You are one of them.”

“This is a family that has been shattered by a death they believe wasn’t supposed to happen. It makes it all the more difficult for them to accept because they still don’t really know what happened that night. That wound is still festering. That one of their own was murdered, and none of them-none of the big bad FBI Shieldses-has been able to bring his killer to justice.”

“Someone else said something like that, someone I was talking to near the bar. He said that the FBI still didn’t know what went wrong.”

“True. And it haunts everyone, everyone who knew him.”

“Are you haunted by him, Annie?”

“Not by him, maybe, but for him, I guess. I wish I did know what happened that night. I wish I did know who killed him, and why. I wish there could be justice for him. It was set up to look like it was part of that undercover drug deal, but no one ever thought that felt right, and no one has been able to come up with an alternative that makes any sense, either.”

“What didn’t feel right? It’s not unusual to have an undercover op go bad.”

“The dealers Dylan and Aidan were meeting didn’t arrive until after Dylan had been shot. They pulled into the alley just after, and of course, the agents in the building across the alley opened fire, and-”

“So you’re thinking if the dealers had been onto the op, they wouldn’t have shown up at all. If anything, they’d have sent their henchmen to kill Dylan and Aidan and simply disappeared.”

“Exactly. But these men came to the buy, just like they’d planned. And they all denied having known that Dylan and Aidan were law. They all swore they had no clue.”

“Of course they’d deny it. No one in his right mind admits to setting up the FBI.”

“True. But no way, if they’d shot an FBI agent minutes before, would they have shown up at all. That’s just plain stupid, and these guys have been at this a long time. They’re far from stupid.” She shrugged. “And that’s what’s so hard to accept for everyone. Dylan’s killer got away with murder, and no one has the slightest idea who he is. That’s what keeps it raw, keeps it stuck in everyone’s craw. Not knowing why, or who.”

“Does anyone really think they’ll ever answer those questions?”

“Realistically, no. But they’ll never stop asking, never stop talking about it.”

Evan shook his head somewhat vaguely.

“What?”

“I’m sorry for what happened to him, I swear I am. But I can’t fight them for the rest of my life, Annie. There are just too damned many of them. Your sister married into the family; they’re always going to be around.” He took a deep breath. “I’m always going to feel as if I’m sleeping in a dead man’s bed. I’m just not sure how long I can go on doing that.”

“Oh God, Evan, I had no idea you felt that way. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I can’t change the situation,” she said softly. “But I can’t change what was or what is. I’m so sorry, for both of us. I was hoping that you and I…”

Her voice trailed off and she made a gesture-a sort of “I give up” flutter of her hands-before going up the steps and directly to the front door. Once in her car, she sat quietly for a few moments, trying to compose herself, fighting back the tears that had been threatening to fall, trying to stop the hollow feeling inside her from spreading, but it soon engulfed her. With a sense of sorrow and regret, she put the car in gear and headed toward the airport. It was going to be a long trip back to Virginia.

Evan sat on his back steps, his forearms resting on his thighs, mindlessly peeling the label from his bottle of beer, dropping the little scraps of paper at his feet. The deck he’d started building in the spring was just as he’d left it two months ago, mostly frame, some little bit of floorboard. Incomplete, like the basement.

Like his life.

Well, he’d almost had it all, hadn’t he? The girl, the job, the future he’d always dreamed of. Then, of course, he had to go and let that green-eyed monster take over his intellect, had to go and open his big mouth. Well, that was the end of that. Shit, he must have sounded like a bratty adolescent who’d caught his girl walking with another guy to her locker.

He blew out a long breath that was filled with exasperation and self-doubt. He had some big decisions to make, and he’d have to make them now, before things between Annie and him got any worse.

Like they could get worse.

He went inside, dropped the empty beer bottle into the glass recycling bin, and got himself another, then went back outside. He walked the deck frame, balancing carefully as he followed the narrow supports that would eventually be covered with flooring.

If I get that far.