“What is this?” Aqua asked.

“You tell me.”

He didn’t like it. She could see that. This whole break in his routine was agitating him. She didn’t mean to do that. She knew there was a danger in upsetting him.

“Aqua? Just take a look, okay?”

He did. He looked at the sheets of paper. She tried to read him. His expression remained perturbed, but she thought she saw something light up in his eyes.

“Aqua?”

There was fear in his voice. “Why are you showing these to me?”

“Does he look like someone you know?”

“No,” he said.

She felt her heart crash. Then Aqua started to hurry away.

“It doesn’t look like Jeff, Kat. It is Jeff.”

Chapter 9

Kat had just hung up the phone, replaying Monte Leburne’s words in her head for the umpteenth time, when the computer dinged as “YouAreJustMyType Instant Message!” popped up on her screen.

The instant message request was, she could see from the tiny profile picture, from Jeff. For a moment, she just sat there, almost afraid to move or click the READ button because this contact, this connection seemed so fragile and tenuous that any sudden act on her part could snap this thinnest of a frayed thread.

The heart icon next to his profile picture had a question mark on it, awaiting her approval to commence the conversation. For the past three hours, Kat had been working on her father’s case. The file told her nothing new and yet held all the old problems. Henry Donovan had been shot in the chest at close range with a small Smith & Wesson. This too had always bothered her. Wouldn’t you go for the head shot? Wouldn’t you come up behind him and put the gun against the back of his head and pull the trigger twice? That had been Monte Leburne’s MO. Why change it here? Why fire into the chest?

It didn’t mesh.

Neither had something Monte Leburne said to Nurse Steiner when she asked who killed Henry Donovan: “How should I know? They visited me. Day after I got arrested. They told me to take the money and the fall.”

Obvious question: Who were “they”?

But perhaps Monte had given her the answer. “They” had visited him in prison. Not only had they visited him, they had visited him the day after he got arrested.

Hmm.

Kat had grabbed the phone and called an old friend of hers, Chris Harrop, who worked for the Department of Corrections.

“Kat, nice to hear from you. What’s up?”

“I need a favor,” Kat said.

“What a surprise. I figured you were calling me for sweaty hot sex.”

“My loss, Chris. Can you get me a visitor log for a prisoner?”

“Shouldn’t be an issue,” Harrop said. “Who’s the prisoner and where is he doing time?”

“Monte Leburne. He was up at Clinton.”

“For what date?”

“Um, well, it was March twenty-seventh.”

“Okay, let me get on it.”

“Eighteen years ago.”

“Pardon?”

“I need his visitor log. From eighteen years ago.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, it’ll take some time,” Harrop said. “The computerization started in 2004. I think the old records are in storage in Albany. How important is this to you?”

“Hot-sweaty-sex important,” Kat said.

“On it.”

It was when she had hung up the phone that the YouAreJustMy Type instant message balloon had popped up. With a shaking hand, she clicked the question mark, said yes, and then, after a small delay, Jeff’s words appeared:

Hey, Kat, I got your message. How are you?

Her heart stopped.

Kat read the instant message from Jeff two more times, maybe three. It was hard to know. She saw the beating heart next to his name—he was online, right now, waiting for her response. Her fingertips found the keyboard.

Hey, Jeff . . .

She stopped, trying to think what to add to that before she hit SEND. She decided to go with what was on her mind:

Hey, Jeff. You didn’t recognize me, I guess.

Kat waited for his reply—an explanation that would probably be full of some sort of defensive baloney like “You’re even prettier now” or “The new haircut is so flattering,” something like that, whatever. Who cares anyway? It didn’t make a difference. Why did she even raise it? Stupid.

But his answer surprised her:

No, I recognized you right away.

The heart next to his profile picture kept beating. She wondered about that little icon or avatar or whatever the hell you called it. A beating red heart—the symbol of romance and love, and if Jeff left right now, if he decided to disconnect, the heart stops beating and then fades away. You, the customer and potential partner, don’t want that to happen.

Kat wrote: So why didn’t you say so?

More blinking heart: You know why.

She frowned, gave it a moment, mulled it over. Then she typed: Actually, I don’t. Then thinking even more about it, she added: Why didn’t you say anything about the “Missing You” video?

Heart. Blink. Heart. Blink.

It’s just that I’m a widower now.

Whoa. How to reply to that one? I saw that. I’m sorry.

She wanted to ask him a million questions—where he lived, what was his child like, when and how did his wife die, did he still think about Kat at all—but instead she sat there, nearly paralyzed, waiting for Jeff’s reply.

Him: Being on here is weird for me.

Her: For me too.

Him: It makes me more cautious and protective. Does that make sense?

Part of her wanted to answer: “Yes, of course. That makes perfect sense.” But a bigger part of her wanted to type: “Cautious? Protective? From me?”

Kat settled on: I guess.

The steady beating-heart icon was hypnotizing her. She could almost feel as though her own heart were keeping rhythm to the one next to Jeff’s profile picture. She waited. He took longer than she expected to reply.

Him: I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to talk anymore.

The words landed on her like a surprise wave at the beach.

Him: Going back feels like a mistake. I need a fresh start. Do you understand?

For a moment, she truly hated Stacy for butting in and buying her this stupid account. She tried to shake it off, tried to remember that this had been a ridiculous fantasy to begin with, that he had dumped her before, hurt her, had broken her heart, and she would be damned before she would let him do it again.

Her: Yeah, fine, I understand.

Him: Take care of yourself, Kat.

Blink. Heart. Blink. Heart.

A tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek. Please don’t go, she thought, while typing: You too.

The heart on her screen stopped beating. It faded from red to gray to white before vanishing for good.

Chapter 10

Gerard Remington was losing his mind.

He could almost feel the brain tissue tearing off as though by some bizarre centrifugal force. Most of the time, he was in darkness and in pain and yet through the haze, a startling clarity had come to him. Perhaps clarity was the wrong word. Focus might be more apt.

The muscled man with the accent pointed to the path. “You know the way.”

He did. This would be Gerard’s fourth trip to the farmhouse. Titus would be waiting. Once again, Gerard considered making a run for it, but he knew he’d never get very far. They fed him just enough to keep him alive, no more. Even though he did nothing all day, locked away in that damn underground box, he was exhausted and weak. The trek on this path took all he had. There was nothing left.