Deaver called up all the townships in Washington state. Seventeen cities, ninety-two townships. Four ending in—ville. None of them had a newspaper called the Gazette.

Deaver sat back, thinking furiously.

This whole exercise might be futile. Maybe he was barking up the wrong tree. Caroline Lake had been a pretty girl. If she’d grown into a beautiful woman, she’d be married by now. Hell, she might be on her second or third marriage, having changed names a couple of times. She could be Caroline Warner in Las Vegas, or Caroline Yoo in San Francisco or Caroline Steinberg in New York.

Fuck.

Maybe he should start looking for Jack, who wasn’t bothering to hide his tracks. Maybe he should just hole up here for as long as Axel’s credit card lasted until the next time Jack used his credit card.

Idly, Deaver Googled “newspaper + Gazette + Washington + 1995” and bingo! There it was. He leaned forward, surprised at the hit. Goddammit, bless the Internet because there it was in black and white, cursor blinking gently, just waiting for him to connect the dots. The Summerville Gazette, local rag for a small city called Summerville, defunct since 2002, but alive and well in 1995.

Eyes narrowed, Deaver leaned over the keyboard, Googling Caroline Lake + Summerville, Washington, and came up with ten hits, all concerning a Caroline Lake who ran a bookshop, gave prizes and played the piano in church. To be on the safe side, he clicked on images and gazed at about fifteen photographs of Caroline Lake. Prescott’s Caroline Lake. Still beautiful, still unmarried.

Jack Prescott was there, right now. He’d bet his left nut on it.

Deaver started furiously looking for online sites to book a flight immediately to Seattle, cursing because there was no way he could get there before 9:00 P.M. tomorrow night. Most flights were booked solid till after the New Year. The flights he finally found would take him twelve hours from Newark to Atlanta to Chicago to Seattle. It was the best he could do.

Well, at least he’d be there on Monday morning.

He looked once again at the photos of Caroline Lake, a truly stunning woman.

Prescott would still be in Summerville on Monday. Oh yeah. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Summerville

They never did have that big Christmas meal Caroline had planned.

After the crying storm, Caroline had fallen into the deepest sleep of her life, almost a coma. When she woke up alone in her bed, it was pitch-black outside, and she had no idea how long she’d slept.

It was dark, the only light coming from the hallway outside. Caroline lay in bed, staring at the black ceiling, sorting through her feelings, so mixed it was impossible to know which was the strongest—shame, embarrassment or relief.

There was some shame, but not much. It was true, she should be feeling ashamed for crying like a baby on Jack’s shoulder—a man she barely knew, even if they had had sex. And she did feel ashamed. Then there was embarrassment. That wild crying jag after—not even while coming—wow, that was beyond embarrassing.

But there was also such a great sense of…peace. It was as if the tears had washed away something black and foul inside her, leaving her depleted, exhausted, empty—but not sad. The sadness was gone. Sadness had been her constant companion for years now, and she almost didn’t recognize herself in its absence.

She felt rested, refreshed and…hungry. A quick trip to the bathroom to put a cold compress on her eyes, a quick shower, pulling on cherry red sweats, and she was out the door.

Caroline was halfway down the staircase when Jack appeared suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, though she hadn’t seen him move.

When their eyes met, her heart gave a massive thump in her chest.

His dark eyes checked her over quickly, impersonally, like a soldier checking a comrade for wounds. Then his gaze turned warm.

“Hi.” His deep voice was calm, quiet.

“Hi.” Caroline’s voice sounded breathless to her own ears.

He started up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he came to a stop on the step below hers. It put her face almost on a level with his.

His face was fascinating—so deeply unequivocally male. “How are you feeling?” His eyes searched hers.

“Better, believe it or not.” She shook her head slightly. “Though a little embarrassed at bawling all over your shoulder.”

“Anytime.” That hard mouth lifted in a half smile. He took her right hand, lifted it to his mouth, placed it on his left shoulder. “Consider my shoulder yours.”

It was an interesting notion. It was an interesting shoulder. Caroline kneaded the hard muscle under the soft cotton of his sweat suit. She’d held him in her arms a couple of times now, and it never failed to astonish her—the absolute iron feel of him, as if he were made of something harder than mere human skin and muscle.

Her hand danced lightly from his collarbone to the huge ball of his shoulder, and she remembered very vividly the feel of him naked under her hands. Without the softening effect of clothes, he was almost frightening in his power, the strongest-looking human she’d ever seen.

She watched his face as she smoothed her hand over the broad, deep muscles. It was a mystery how a man who wasn’t handsome could be so attractive. He was wearing his long, black hair loose instead of tied back, and it framed that strong, narrow face, softening its harsh features. It was almost impossible to guess how old he was, though she suspected he was about her own age, but without the benefit of moisturizer, which she used religiously. The skin was weather-beaten, with faint white lines fanning out from the corners of his dark eyes.

He’d shaved this morning—she’d heard the electric razor buzzing—but he already had a five o’clock shadow. Had he grown a beard in Afghanistan? Many of the photographs of the men guarding the president showed them with beards.

What was his background? Jack Prescott—it was a perfectly ordinary name for an unordinary man. His skin and eyes were so dark, there must have been Hispanic or—considering his high cheekbones—Native American blood somewhere in his ancestry.

She could stand here for hours, one step above him, looking at him. His face was so fascinating. She’d never met anyone even faintly like him, and yet she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling of recognition each time she studied his face.

She could only imagine that it was the sex. They’d short-circuited the normal getting-to-know-you phase, and the hot sex had imprinted her with him, so that she felt as if she’d known him forever. Déjà vu sex.

“Let’s go down,” Jack said, placing a strong arm against her back. Caroline wondered what he thought about her standing and staring at him. She’d make dinner memorable, to compensate.

“What would you like for din—” Caroline cut herself off. Something was missing. They were walking down the stairs, and something was missing. Something should have—“The steps! You fixed the steps! Oh my gosh!” She turned and threw her arms around Jack’s neck in a rush of gratitude. “Thank you thank you thank you!”

It was on her urgent to-do list. Item number 476 on her superurgent to-do list. Call carpenter to fix stairs before someone breaks their neck. But she knew she could get around to it only when she had some spare cash. Which meant never.

His arms had gone around her immediately, holding her tightly against him. “If I’d known I’d get this reaction, I’d have fixed all your stairs. They creak a little. I did, however, fix your shelves in the bathroom, repair the banister and fix the loose doorknob to the study. What do I get for that?”

He was teasing her. She had no idea that was in him. He actually had…well, not a smile exactly, but his eyes crinkled, and his hard mouth curled slightly upward.