As they sat, Seybold said, "We might have a problem, I have to tell you."

The butterflies Dance had felt earlier-that something would go wrong and the case would derail-returned.

The prosecutor continued, "The defense's made a motion to dismiss based on immunity. I honestly can't tell you what the odds are it'll succeed. The hearing's scheduled for day after tomorrow."

Dance closed her eyes. "No." Beside her O'Neil exhaled in anger.

All this work…

If he gets away, Dance thought…but then realized she had nothing to add to that, except: If he gets away, I lose.

She felt her jaw trembling.

But Seybold said, "I've got a team putting together the response. They're good. The best in the office."

"Whatever it takes, Ernie," Dance said. "I want him. I want him real bad."

"A lot of people do, Kathryn. We'll do everything we can."

If he gets away…

"But I want to proceed as if we're going to win." He said this confidently, which reassured Dance somewhat. They got started, Seybold asking dozens of questions about the crime-what Dance and O'Neil had witnessed and the evidence in the case.

Seybold was a seasoned prosecutor and knew what he was doing. After an hour of interviewing them both, the wiry man sat back and said he had enough for the time being. He was momentarily expecting another witness-a local state trooper-who had also agreed to testify.

They thanked the prosecutor, who agreed to call them the instant the judge ruled in the immunity hearing.

As Dance and O'Neil walked back to the lobby, he slowed, a frown on his face.

"What?" she asked.

"Let's play hooky."

"What do you mean?"

He nodded at the beautiful garden restaurant, overlooking a canyon with the sea beyond. "It's early. When was the last time anybody in a white uniform brought you eggs Benedict?"

Dance considered. "What year is it again?"

He smiled. "Come on. We won't be that late."

A glance at her watch. "I don't know." Kathryn Dance hadn't played hooky in school, much less as a senior agent with the CBI.

Then she said to herself: Why're you hesitating? You love Michael's company, you get to spend hardly any downtime with him.

"You bet." Feeling like a teenager again, though now in a good way.

They were seated beside each other at a banquette near the edge of the deck, overlooking the hills. The early sun was out and it was a clear, crisp June morning.

The waiter-not fully uniformed, but with a suitably starched white shirt-brought them menus and poured coffee. Dance's eyes strayed to the page on which the restaurant bragged of their famous mimosas. No way, she thought, and glanced up to see O'Neil looking at exactly the same item.

They laughed.

"When we get down to L.A. for the grand jury, or the trial," he said. "champagne then."

"Fair enough."

It was then that O'Neil's phone trilled. He glanced at Caller ID. Dance was immediately aware of his body language changing-shoulders slightly higher, arms closer to his body, eyes focused just past the screen.

She knew whom the call was from, even before he said a cheerful, "Hi, dear."

Dance deduced from his conversation with his wife, Anne, a professional photographer, that a business trip had come up unexpectedly soon and she was checking with her husband about his schedule.

Finally O'Neil disconnected and they sat in silence for a moment while the atmosphere righted itself and they consulted their menus.

"Yep," he announced, "eggs Benedict."

She was going to have the same and glanced up for the waiter. But then her phone vibrated. She glanced at the text message, frowned, then read it again, aware that her own body orientation was changing quickly. Heart rate revving, shoulders lifted, foot tapping on the floor.

Dance sighed, and her gesture to the waiter changed from a polite beckon to one of mimicking signing the check.

The California Bureau of Investigation's west-central regional headquarters is in a nondescript modern building identical to those of the adjacent insurance companies and software consulting firms, all tucked neatly away behind hills and decorated with the elaborate vegetation of Central Coast California.

The facility was near the Peninsula Garden, and Dance and O'Neil arrived from the hotel in less than ten minutes, minding traffic but not red lights or stop signs.

Climbing out of his car, Dance slung her purse over her shoulder, and hefted her bulging computer bag-which her daughter had dubbed "Mom's purse annex," after the girl had learned what annex meant-and she and O'Neil walked into the building.

Inside they headed immediately to where she knew her team would be assembled: her office, in the portion of the CBI known as the Gals' Wing, or "GW"-owing to the fact that it was populated exclusively by Dance, fellow agent Connie Ramirez, as well as their assistant, Maryellen Kresbach, and Grace Yuan, the CBI administrator, who kept the entire building humming like a timepiece. The name of the wing derived from an unfortunate comment by an equally unfortunate, and now former, CBI agent, who coined the designation while trying to press his cleverness on a date he was touring around the headquarters.

Everyone on the GW still debated if he-or one of his dates-had ever found all the feminine hygiene products Dance and Ramirez had seeded into his office, briefcase and car.

Dance and O'Neil now greeted Maryellen. The cheerful and indispensable woman could easily run both a family and the professional lives of her charges without a bat of one of her darkly mascaraed eyelashes. She also was the best baker Dance had ever met. "Morning, Maryellen. Where are we?"

"Hi, Kathryn. Help yourself."

Dance eyed, but didn't give in to, the chocolate chip cookies in the jar on the woman's desk. They had to be a biblical sin. O'Neil, on the other hand, didn't resist. "Best breakfast I've had in weeks."

Eggs Benedict…

Maryellen gave a pleased laugh. "Okay, I called Charles again and left another message. Honestly." She sighed. "He wasn't picking up. TJ and Rey are inside. Oh, Deputy O'Neil, one of your people is here from MCSO."

"Thanks. You're a dear."

In Dance's office wiry young TJ Scanlon was perched in her chair. The redheaded agent leapt up. "Hi, boss. How'd the audition go?"

He meant the deposition.

"I was a star." Then she delivered the bad news about the immunity hearing.

The agent scowled. He too had known the perp and was nearly as adamant as Dance about winning a conviction.

TJ was good at his job, though he was the most unconventional agent in a law enforcement organization noted for its conventional approach and demeanor. Today he was wearing jeans, a polo shirt and plaid sports coat-madras, a pattern on some faded shirts in her father's storage closet. TJ owned one tie, as far as Dance had been able to tell, and it was an outlandish Jerry Garcia model. TJ suffered from acute nostalgia for the 1960s. In his office two lava lamps bubbled merrily away.

Dance and he were only a few years apart, but there was a generational gap between them. Still, they clicked professionally, with a bit of mentor-mentee thrown in. Though TJ tended to run solo, which was against the grain in the CBI, he'd been filling in for Dance's regular partner-still down in Mexico on a complicated extradition case.

Quiet Rey Carraneo, a newcomer to the CBI, was about as opposite to TJ Scanlon as one could be. In his late twenties, with dark, thoughtful features, he today wore a gray suit and white shirt on his lean frame. He was older in heart than in years, since he'd been a beat cop in the cowboy town of Reno, Nevada, before moving here with his wife for the sake of his ill mother. Carraneo held a coffee cup in a hand that bore a tiny scar in the Y between thumb and forefinger; it was where a gang tat had resided not too many years ago. Dance considered him to be the calmest and most focused of all the younger agents in the office and she sometimes wondered, to herself only, if his days in the gang contributed to that.