Still, as she drove along she turned the situation over in her mind. The image of Donald Sales's last hateful stare filled her mind. It had to be him who killed Frank Castle. It was him… or it was Lipton. Lipton's confession echoed through her mind. Had it been a sick joke or was it really true? But why would Lipton kill Frank Castle? Only Sales had reason for that.

And if Sales would go to the trouble of hunting down Frank Castle, couldn't he be watching her as well? Casey shivered involuntarily and checked her rearview mirror again. There was nothing there outside the normal evening traffic. Casey thought about the guard gates that protected her community and the extensive alarm system in her home. She was safe. With disgust, she turned her mind to Taylor. They had spoken only briefly during the day, and he had brushed off the news about Frank Castle the way he did everything else. Casey imagined what it would be like to have a man who hurried home from halfway across the world to make sure she was all right. Didn't she deserve someone like that? To be sure, there had been men in her life who would have reacted that way.

When she got home, she changed out of her work clothes, then took a steak from the freezer. While it defrosted in the microwave, she steamed some broccoli. When the meat was ready, she put it on a plate and took it out back to the grill that was built into the stone bar beside the pool. Casey relished a good steak and she didn't mind cooking it herself. Growing up, steak had meant chuck steak, a cut of meat so tough your cheeks were sore the next day from chewing. One of the things she enjoyed most about being financially comfortable was eating well.

As the meat popped and sizzled on the open flame, Casey gazed out across the low shrubs surrounding the pool area to the rippling golf course lake, the lush fairway, and the dusty green hills beyond. Casey took a deep breath of evening air laced with the smell of good steak. The tranquillity of her surroundings sometimes allowed her to relax. She'd come a long way.

She thought back to her girlhood home, a modest farm that revealed its age by a rash of ancient gray wood beneath the pockmarks of peeling paint. She looked back over her shoulder at the towering white edifice she lived in now. Maybe her marriage wasn't as bad as she was making out. Most people had problems. Things were never perfect. She thought of her own mother's devotion to a husband who treated her like a chair. Occasionally, he would take his ease with her. Otherwise, he apparently gave her no thought whatsoever.

They'd never done much of anything together besides eat at the same silent dinner table to begin with, although in the early days there was at least a vitality about them. Her mother's pretty cheeks always seemed flushed with sun or wind, and the muscles in her father's forearms bespoke the sinewy strength of a farmer. But then, as the years passed, each of them went to seed. Her father's belly began to hang over his belt, and as her older brother did more and more of the work, his muscles grew flaccid. Her mother's face grew pale and drawn, and her hair began to fade to a mousy gray as she shrank in stature. It wasn't long before disinterest grew into disdain, at least on her father's part. Casey's lot was better than that anyway. If nothing else, Taylor still had a strong sexual hunger for her.

Casey flipped the steak and in the edge of her vision saw something move. Someone had ducked back into the woods bordering the fairway. She searched the cart path that looped around the water, back to the tee, and then snaked along the fairway through the cluster of trees on the near side of the course. There wasn't a cart in sight. Neither was there a golf bag or anything that would indicate the presence of a golfer who'd hooked his shot into the thick woods on the far side of the fairway. The sun was low in the west but not yet below the ridge of hills beyond the golf course. It still burned brightly yellow, and Casey had to shade her eyes and squint toward the spot in the woods where she was almost certain she'd seen the strange movement.

What she needed was a glass of wine. She was jumpy and overreacting to an emotional few days. She took her steak off the grill and cut the flame. With several glances over her shoulder, she went back into the house, stopping to lock the sliding door that led into the kitchen. She set her steak on the granite bar and dumped the broccoli down on the plate beside it.

From the wine rack she removed a good bottle of merlot, opened it, and poured a large glass. While the wine breathed, she went back to the glass door and peered outside for several minutes. The sun had dropped down below the edge of the hills, and the sky was already beginning to turn a deep postcard pink. Casey took little notice of the sky. Instead, she carefully studied the woods that bordered the fairway.

After a while she turned her attention back to her meal. But before sitting down, she went upstairs and took a small Colt 7mm automatic out of the dresser drawer. She set it down beside her plate and took a long sip of wine. The steak was a little underdone, but she ate it anyway, relishing the taste of blood with her wine. Half a bottle later, with her stomach now full, she began to relax once more.

When the doorbell rang, she jumped. They didn't live in the kind of neighborhood where people made house calls. Each house was on its own small estate. Neighbors naturally afforded one another a considerable degree of privacy. But no one else should have been able to get into the development without stopping at the gate. Security would have called to ask her permission to let them in. Pistol in hand, she cautiously approached the front door. Through the ornate beveled glass in the door, she could make out the shadowy form of a man.

With her free hand on the doorknob she said, "Tony?"

He was the only person she could think of who might be able to get past the security gate without their calling, although even that didn't make sense. The fleeting images she thought she'd seen in the garage and outside came back to her. Whoever it was rang the bell again.

"Tony!" she said as an edge of panic crept into her voice. "Is that you?"

There was a sidelight next to the door that was cloaked in a translucent curtain. Casey wanted to pull the curtain aside and look out, but something inside her didn't want to be seen peering out like a timid mouse by whoever was there. The man rapped his knuckles hard and loud against the wood of the door. Casey started to feel angry now; angry at her fear and angry at the insistence of whoever was out there. She was no coward. She'd grown up literally fighting like a boy. In that moment, she remembered with pride the shock on her parents' faces when she'd been suspended from school for breaking the nose of an insolent boy. If she had to shoot someone to defend herself, she could do that, too, and without hesitation. Against her better senses, she raised the gun, twisted the lock, and yanked open the door with a ferocious look on her face.

"Ms. Jordan."

"Detective," she said, still angry. "Why in hell are you here?"

"Did I shake you up?" Bolinger asked, eyeing the gun with only mild concern. His badge had been enough to get him through the gates. Bolinger had actually tracked Unger down at the clubhouse. To make the agent feel a part of things, he'd filled him in on the details of his investigation into Lipton's computer, including the titillating details about Roman Empire Ltd., before requesting that Unger process a subpoena.

"No. Yes. You didn't shake me up," Casey explained, dropping the gun down to her side, "but I certainly didn't expect to be disturbed by you at home, my home, without warning."

"Well, I don't mean to disturb you," Bolinger said sarcastically. "But my captain wanted me to make sure you knew about Frank Castle and that we're still looking for Donald Sales and I was… in the neighborhood, so to speak."