She was silent for a moment, then let out a long sigh. “Thanks, Rand. I needed that. I felt so damned helpless.”

Rand remembered holding Reed, seeing death take life from his eyes. “I’ve been there. Helpless and screaming inside.”

“You sure didn’t look helpless tonight.”

“Different time, different place. Next time, next place-” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

What she could see of his face told her the same thing his voice did. He meant every word.

Not Tarzan, yodeling through the jungle on waves of testosterone.

Not a lapdog.

Altogether intriguing.

The SUV popped over a rocky ridgeline and started down into Dry Valley. In the distance, a light burned. As they came closer, the single yard light in a fixture on a power pole next to the ranch house outlined every detail around the small house.

“No cars,” Rand said. “No trucks. But then, I’d put my wheels out of sight and wait inside.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Do you really think someone’s inside my-Bertone’s-house?”

“Probably not. But why regret not doing what’s smart?”

He drove slowly into the yard between the corral and the low-roofed ranch house. The cone of light from the single bulb fell across a post that was mounted with three swinging arms, each about a foot long. At the end of each arm there was a hummingbird feeder with a clear plastic barrel and red plastic base.

“You still have a key to the door?” Rand asked.

“I never lock it.”

“You live alone and you don’t lock up?”

She shrugged. “Mom and Dad never did. There’s a deadbolt on the inside I can use if I’m home.”

“The last of the innocents,” he said softly. “After I get out, crawl over to the driver’s side. Don’t open the door. If you see anyone but me, hit the horn and drive like a bat out of hell to the Royal Palms. Ask for Joe Faroe.”

“What about you?”

Instead of answering, Rand lowered the window and listened.

Above the sound of the engine came a rush of wind, the rub of dry plants against each other, the call of a song-dog wishing for the moon. Rand listened as the coyote called again.

Nothing answered.

“Put your hands over the dome light,” he said.

She stared for a moment, then put her palms squarely over the SUV’s interior light. Her hands glowed red when he opened the door. Quickly, quietly, he shut the door behind him and disappeared into the shadows beside the corral and barn.

Kayla scrambled across to the driver’s seat and watched the ghost that was Rand. He used every bit of darkness and landscape to break up his outline against the pale dirt and star-blazing sky. Slowly he circled toward the back of the house.

And vanished.

When he disappeared, she felt a sudden isolation. She was in a place that was utterly familiar to her. And utterly unfamiliar, because a stranger was in the shadows of her childhood home looking for other strangers carrying bags holding handcuffs and duct tape and silenced guns.

I don’t know who advised people to believe three impossible things a day, but I’m working on it.

Don’t work, she told herself. Just accept.

Treat this like a foreign country. I don’t need to understand everything at once. I used to be good at that, at letting go, at not getting hung up on differences to the point that I couldn’t enjoy a new place.

Now I’m in a new place.

Accept it.

Rand appeared at the other end of the ranch house. The silenced gun gleamed dully in his hand. He tested the front door, found it unlocked, and pushed it wide open. Then he waited, listening. After a few moments he went inside.

Kayla waited, listening, breath held. She flinched and let out an explosive breath when a light turned on inside the house. Other lights came on. Rand reappeared on the porch and walked to the SUV. The gun was nowhere in sight.

“Shut it down,” he said. “We’re alone.”

She turned off the engine and got out of the car, walking into a familiar, foreign land.

He took her arm with his left hand. It was an impersonal gesture, a means of guiding her, yet Kayla was aware of his touch immediately, intensely. Then she saw that his right hand never strayed far from the gun at the small of his back.

“I thought you said we’re alone.” She looked pointedly at his right hand.

“I’m ninety-seven percent sure. The gun’s for the other three percent.”

“Are you certain you aren’t a federal cop?” she asked.

“Would you feel better if I was?”

“No.”

He stopped by the front door. “Interesting. Why?”

“I saw Bertone talking to some of the most powerful politicians in the state tonight. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of dollars in campaign donations flow from the Bertones to national politicians all over the States.”

“So?”

“So right now I don’t trust anyone who draws a public paycheck. Call me a cynic.”

“I’d call you a realist. Money is just another word for power.”

Rand suspected that Faroe could name every politician who’d taken Bertone’s money, but Rand would ask Faroe just to be certain.

Bertone’s political allies were Kayla’s enemies.

“Anything look out of place to you?” Rand asked when Kayla walked into the house.

She glanced around. “Considering that I’ve been packing up stuff, no.”

She walked into the bedroom.

He followed.

“You’re neater than I am,” Rand said, looking around the room. “Or did you pack up all the little things already?”

“No. But too much clutter is like a traffic jam-it makes me edgy.”

An open book lay facedown on the bedside table. Rand picked up the paperback. The Lonely Planet guide Australia and New Zealand on a Shoestring. She’d been reading about the high lake and glacier country of South Island.

“Is this where you were going to go to ground?” he asked, gesturing with the book.

“Up until yesterday, all I had was itchy feet.”

“And now?”

“I itch everywhere.”

He almost smiled. “Smart.”

“Uncomfortable.”

“You get used to it.”

“I’d rather go to Queenstown and stop itching.”

He gave her a sideways glance and saw that she was looking wistfully at the picture of glaciers and lakes.

“You mentioned blackmail,” Rand said.

“I did?”

“Back in the garden. You said Bertone was the blackmailer, not you. What did you mean?”

“Guess my dossier wasn’t quite complete,” she said.

He closed the book and turned to her.

“Thursday I sold the ranch,” she said. “Got a really great price, never met the buyer.”

“Bertone.”

“How did you know?”

“I know Bertone.”

“Well, thanks to him,” she said bitterly, “now I look like a down-and-dirty banker.”

“Figures.”

“You believe me?”

“It fits with the rest of your dossier,” Rand said. “You’re too clean to volunteer for the kind of mud bath Bertone needs. He had to have a twist on you. Why didn’t you go to the feds?”

“Bertone has a lot more traction with the feds than I do. I didn’t want to bet my freedom on a he-said-she-said slanging match. Maybe I should have. But I couldn’t get enthusiastic about my chances of winning, so I looked for another way out.”

“Find one?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t know.”

Kayla turned and walked out of the bedroom. The kitchen area was the center of the small ranch house. With the ease of long familiarity she pulled out several stockpots, dumped in sugar and hot water, and put the pots on the gas stove. Each burner came on with a soft whump.

She stared at the flames.

“What do you think?” she asked finally. “Should I go to the feds?”

Rand thought of Neto being refused a visa-not in U.S. interests-and of the politicians sucking up expensive champagne at the Bertones’ paint-off. “As a last resort, maybe.”