She shook her head.

“Right, I forgot, you don’t drink. Darn, now I don’t have to share this bottle.”

She laughed. “I’ve been calling the numbers on your list.”

He leaned back into the easy chair, a big man comfortable with his size, and let his eyes run up the expanse of smooth skin between the bunched top of the thick socks to the tail of the blue plaid shirt. “What about them?”

She smiled. Flirting was the thing Brendan McCord knew best how to do, next to litigation.

“The response has been”-she hesitated-“mixed.”

“Getting hung up on by the elite?” Brendan asked.

“How did you guess?”

“Yeah, well, hang on to your hat, because I’ve got some more bad news for you.”

“Great.”

“The investigating officer is dead.”

Kate searched her memory. “Sgt. Charles Baltzo?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn,” Kate said with real feeling. “Do you know of anybody else who was around at the time of the murder? Someone who might know something about the case?” She added, “Who is actually alive?”

“I can see where alive would be good,” Brendan said gravely.

“Also, is Henry Cowell still practicing in Anchorage?” He raised an interrogatory eyebrow. “Victoria’s defense attorney. I looked in the phone book. He’s not there.”

He thought. “I don’t know the name.”

“Could you find out where he is?”

He poured himself another shot. “What’s it worth to you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I figured you got your payment in advance.”

He looked at the bottle and opened his mouth, and the doorbell sounded.

Kate’s pulse scrambled. “Excuse me,” she said, and went to the door.

Jim Chopin was on the doorstep, his face like a thundercloud. It seemed that Kate had credited him with more self-control than he actually had.

“Jim,” she said, unable to keep a grin from spreading across her face. “How nice to see you again. What’s-”

He stepped inside, shoved her against the wall, and kissed her hard.

“Who is it, Kate?” Brendan said from the living room.

Jim raised his head. “Who the hell is that?” He stalked into the living room, hands knotted into fists. Kate pulled herself together and followed.

Jim looked from Brendan, shot glass in hand, taking his leisure in the easy chair, to Kate standing next to him in Jack’s shirt and socks and apparently very little else. He looked back at Brendan and said, “Get out.”

Brendan thought about that for a little longer than Jim thought strictly necessary. He moved, but Kate grabbed his arm. “Thanks for coming over, Brendan,” she said. “Let me know what you find out. I’ll be here.”

Brendan saw the barely repressed glee in her eye and threw in the towel, at least for tonight. “All right, don’t shoot. I’m gone.”

He lumbered outside. The door had barely shut behind him when Jim turned and tossed Kate up into his arms. He took the stairs two at a time.

“Oooooh,” she said, “I feel just like Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Shut up,” he said.

He woke up alone again. “Son of a bitch” he said.

While Jim was jerking on his pants, full of a fine, righteous wrath, the source of which he did not bother to identify, Kate and Mutt were out for a run on the coastal trail. She didn’t run as a habit, but at home simple maintenance around the homestead kept her fit. In town, she took her exercise where she found it. Considerate of Jack to buy a house so close to the coastal trail.

She was feeling much more limber this morning-the benefits of regular sex on the various muscle groups were not to be denied-and she ran smoothly, stretching her legs out in front of her, carrying her arms at midtorso, breathing deeply in and out, with no hint of labor. It was another day of unbroken sunshine, Susitna and Denali and Foraker were on her right, and she felt good. Hell, she felt great, every cell in her body was singing. Mutt, loping next to her, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth, legs and haunches moving like pistons, looked not unhappy herself. Mutt knew how to live in the moment, to savor it, not to fear or try to second-guess the future. Kate decided that Mutt had a lot to teach her, and picked up the pace.

They trotted down a hill and around a curve, and a park bench appeared. It was occupied.

There were two boys, one lying on the bench, the other beneath it. Both were asleep. Two bikes lay on their sides on the grass nearby.

The boys looked to be about ten and twelve, respectively. Kate slowed to a halt and stood looking down at them. Their eyelashes stood out darkly against their cheeks and their faces were smooth and innocent enough to break her heart.

She could think of a number of scenarios that would result in the boys sleeping on a bench next to the coastal trail, chief among them trouble at home, a fight between parents maybe, resulting in the boys getting out of the house until it was all over.

There was also the possibility they had not left their home voluntarily, that they could have been thrown out. Or had run from punishment, or abuse.

She found herself reluctant to disturb them. At least in sleep, there was respite from whatever troubled them awake.

But she was equally incapable of just walking away. “Hey,” she said.

Neither boy stirred.

She raised her voice. “Hey.”

The boy on the bench moved, groaned, and opened his eyes. It took him a minute to focus. When he did, he sat up abruptly, accidentally kicking his companion, who banged his head against the bottom of the bench when he sat up.

“Ouch!” He rubbed his head.

His brother-the resemblance was obvious around the eyes and the way the hair grew stiffly from the hairline-risked taking his eyes off Kate for a moment. “You okay, Kevin?”

Kevin rubbed his head. “Yeah. I’m all right. Who’s she, Jordan?”

“Nobody.” Jordan got up and headed for his bike. “Come on, Kevin. Let’s go.”

“Where you going?” Kate said.

“None of your business,” he said shortly.

“You’re right,” she said, which at least surprised him enough to halt forward motion. “But I could give you some breakfast, if you’re interested.”

He looked at her, frowning. Kevin rolled out from beneath the bench and brushed ineffectively at the leaves adhering to his clothes. “I’m hungry, Jordan,” he said plaintively.

“We don’t know her, Kevin,” Jordan said. “She could be some kind of weirdo.”

“Right again,” Kate said, noticing that Jordan wasn’t automatically making for home. “How about this? You follow me to my house. You stay outside, and I’ll bring the food out.”

“You’ll call the cops is what you’ll do.”

She met his eyes squarely. “Not unless and until you give me permission to,” she said.

With the timing and tact of a seasoned diplomat, Mutt trotted over and shoved her nose under Jordan’s hand. Her tail whapped vigorously against Kevin’s knee.

Even Jordan smiled.

Jim was still at the town house when Kate and entourage arrived. He stood glaring at her from the front door. She almost lost the boys when they saw his uniform shirt. “He’s a trooper from the Bush, he doesn’t know from Anchorage,” she said quickly.

They didn’t run, but they looked ready to.

“Who’re they?” Jim said as she leapt the steps to the minuscule front porch.

“Friends,” Kate said, “hungry friends.” She turned. “ Come in or park it on the lawn, your choice.”

In the end, the four of them sat down to breakfast together- eggs scrambled with cheese, onions, garlic, and green chilies, served on tortillas with salsa and sour cream. The boys had cocoa and she and Jim had coffee.

I’m going to have to buy more eggs, she thought as she watched the boys, their heads bent over their plates. Hungry as they were, they ate neatly. Someone had been teaching them manners. That wasn’t always a good thing, in her experience.

She looked at Jim. She saw him look at the boys. He opened his mouth, and she caught his eyes and shook her head once from side to side.