“Uh-huh.”

Behold, the idiot box’s remarkable power. Ben wondered if Rachel’s teachers had ever captured her attention as easily as a six-foot plasma TV. This “coming home early to tuck the kid in” thing was going over like a boulder tossed in a pond.

“How you feeling tonight, sweetie?”

“Good. Not sick.”

“Not sick is always good.”

He stroked his fingers over the soft blond hair that snuck out from under her scarf and kissed the crown of her head. The hair had begun to grow back in superfine strands.

Rachel wrinkled her nose but snuggled in closer to him. “You smell good, Daddy. What’s the spice again?”

“Cloves. And you smell—” he sniffed her hair “—like a purple dinosaur.”

“It’s groovy grape! I love that shampoo. It’s so mummy I could eat it.”

Ben propped his heels on the coffee table and nestled beside his daughter’s warm yet frail body.

The past two months she’d been through radiation therapy. Yet even with radiation, the chordoma tumor the doctors had removed from the base of her skull could grow back. In fact, the oncologist had seemed sure of it. The relentless cancer could lie in hiding for as long as ten years, and then suddenly strike again.

Rachel had lost weight and hair—but not hope. He worried he’d break her if he hugged her too tightly.

“What are you watching that has your attention so rapt?”

“ Chasing History’s Monsters.What’s ‘rapt’?”

“Rapt is what you are right now. Glued to the set. Immersed in the screen. Can’t bother to give your dad a real hug. Chasing History’s Monsters?Sounds creepy.”

“It’s not, Daddy. It’s got this really pretty woman who stalks through caves and forests and tries to find monsters. She’s really smart, too. Not like the other woman with the big knockers.”

“Knockers? Rachel, where did you pick up a word like that?”

“Tracy says her dad calls them knockers.”

“That’s not an appropriate word for little girls to use.”

And did they still use that word nowadays? Apparently so.

“Mom calls them boobs. What do you call them, Daddy?”

Ben pointed to the TV to avoid the topic. “Is that her? The one with the, er…”

“No, she’s the smart one I like.”

The chestnut-haired woman on the screen held some bit of pottery and pointed out the crack in it. Her voice commanded with a good solid tone. Droll, but punctuated with real enthusiasm. She was obviously very learned and passionate, even about some crud-encrusted bit of vase.

“She is very pretty,” he agreed.

“Her name’s Annja Creed, and she travels everywhere,” Rachel explained. “I want to be like Annja Creed someday.”

“Host of a television show?”

“No, silly, an archaeologist,” she said, indicating he was a dunderhead for not getting it straight.

“That woman’s an archaeologist? Huh.”

He had no idea pothunters were so physically appealing. And so what if her knockers weren’t so big, she was a nice package—brains, looks and confidence.

The show broke for commercial and Rachel said, “I e-mailed her the other day.”

“Who? The lady on the television?”

“Yep. It was about the Skull of Sidon.”

Ben’s heartbeat suddenly raced. How could she possibly know? “Rachel, what do you know about the Skull of Sidon?”

“Well, not much until I did research. I saw it scribbled on one of your work papers last week, Daddy. Don’t youknow about it?”

“Yes, but it was just…” A stupid mistake to put questionable information out there for his daughter to find. That made him as inept as the men he’d hired to track Cooke. “It must have been something I heard on a television show. It was just a scribble, sweetie.”

“Yeah, well, I thought it would be perfect for my history report, so I researched it online and wrote an outline for my teacher. She was not happy.”

Ben rubbed a palm over his face. He wasn’t sure how much Rachel could have dug up on the skull, but if the teacher hadn’t been pleased…

“She didn’t want me writing about necrophilia! Do you know what that is, Daddy? Gross.”

“Yes, Rachel, sorry. It’s another of those things kids your age shouldn’t have to worry about. You should have asked me about it before going to your teacher with it.”

“Why are you studying old skulls and all that gross stuff?”

“I’m not, sweetie. Like I said, it was just something that caught my ear, and I wrote it down. Nonsense stuff. You know Daddy is always taking notes in case he gets ideas for work. So did the lady on TV write back to you?”

“Nah. She’s probably really busy. Too busy for a kid, I’m sure.” Rachel sighed. “I really like Annja Creed. Wish she would have wrote back to me.”

She finally shuffled in for a proper hug and Ben squeezed her gently. “It’s about time. I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten how to hug. Want me to tuck you in?”

“Can I watch the end of the show first?”

“I don’t think so. Isn’t Mommy taking you to the zoo tomorrow afternoon? You’ll need your rest for that.”

She gave him the patented pouty face, but Ben knew it wasn’t for real because she followed with a yawn. Poor thing. She’d missed two days of school this week thanks to stomach flu. Last week it had been radiation sickness.

“All right, I’ll go to bed. But will you carry me?”

Ben leaned forward and slapped his back. “Climb on, pardner.”

He secured his daughter’s legs with both arms and pounced through the living room, down the hall and up the stairs to tuck her in. He moved swiftly, because more important things than good-night kisses and wishes for sweet dreams must be tended.

On his way back down to the living room, Ben got sidetracked. The master bedroom door was open. Low light glowed across his wife’s shoulders. It had been too many months since he’d seen her bare skin. He couldn’t remember when he’d last touched it.

Pausing in the doorway, he admired Linda as she pulled the brush through her long blonde hair.

Admittedly, Rachel’s cancer had been tougher on his wife. She was the one who had to bring their daughter to her doctors’ appointments and radiation treatments. It had changed Linda. Made her harder. Distant.

Ben didn’t know how to crack that hardened exterior. So he did not try. Instead, he sought acceptance from others. Rebecca’s exterior was soft and lush and always giving. And she never blamed him for things he could not control.

Linda’s tearful tirade still lived fresh and so punishing in his memory. Two months earlier, Ben had been watching Rachel at the park. He’d wanted her to have a fun afternoon before her doctor’s appointment that day. He and Linda had been concerned about Rachel’s frequent verbal slurs and loss of equilibrium.

He’d had a lot to do that day, as usual, and had spent more time on his BlackBerry than he had watching his daughter. He’d lost her for one heart-wrenching harrowing hour.

Linda had been out of her mind by the time the Central Park police had found Rachel huddled at the base of an oak tree, oblivious to her parents’ fears as she’d chatted with her Barbie dolls.

An hour later, the oncologist diagnosed Rachel’s bone cancer.

That night, her face red with anger and tears, Linda had beat her fists against Ben’s chest and blamed him. If he had been paying attention, Rachel would be safe now.

Not sick,had been the unspoken implication.

“What are you staring at?”

Shaken from his distressing thoughts, Ben staggered into the room and crossed the floor to his dresser. “Nothing, sorry.” He dug out a T-shirt and boxer shorts to sleep in.

“You were late.”

“Rachel was still awake. I got to kiss her good-night and tuck her in. I thought that was what you wanted from me?”

Her reply was a snort.

“It’s hard on me, too, Linda.”

“Yes, I suppose prancing about in your five-thousand-dollar business suits and lunching with executives is rather trying. And when you’re not working late at the office you’re hanging around with that sinister Russian guy.”