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Scott shook his head. “Just a bevy of female cousins.”

She felt a brief curiosity about them. Would probably have liked them. If she could’ve met Scott sooner, in college maybe, before she’d made the one critical choice that had ruined the rest of her life.

Staring at the braided rug in the middle of the floor between the rocker and bed, she didn’t realize Scott had stood until she felt the warmth of his hand prying the pillow from her fingers. With gentle pressure, he pulled at her hand. Tricia didn’t resist. In his arms she came alive.

She knew her attempt at escape through fantasies of nightmares for the lie it was.

Everything Scott had just told her was true. All true.

And everything about her—including her mousy-brown hair—was false.

2

T he peace Tricia generally found in Scott’s arms was elusive that morning. She snuggled up to his warmth, buried her face in his neck, inhaling the musky scent of his aftershave—a cheap drugstore brand she’d bought him for Christmas.

A drugstore brand when he’d probably been used to several-hundred-dollar-an-ounce varieties.

He’d shaved before he’d come home that morning. The skin on his neck was smooth, soft. She kissed him. A small caress that lingered.

God, let this all go away.

Scott held on to her, saying nothing, but there was a sense of things left unsaid. Of more things coming.

She had to get a San Francisco paper. It was going to tell her that Leah had turned up, healthy and happy, though embarrassed as hell for having fallen prey to the consequences of some inane idea she’d had. Wasn’t it? She’d promised herself, sometime during the long lonely hours of the night, that it would.

“Taylor’s going to want his walk,” she said into Scott’s shoulder, making no move away from him.

It was during those morning walks that Tricia usually picked up the San Francisco Gazette from a stand at the food mart a couple of blocks away. And unless Scott was on twenty-four-hour duty at the station, she read it at the Grape Street dog park, where no one would pay attention or ask questions. And where Taylor could squeal at the four-legged creatures.

In another lifetime he’d have had a dog. Or three. In another life, her son would’ve had anything and everything his little heart desired.

“I don’t think he’ll be too upset about exchanging a walk for Blue.” Scott’s lips nuzzled her neck, sending chills down her spine. Good chills. And chills of warning, too. She’d never have believed it was possible to experience such opposing thoughts—emotions—sensations—all at the same time.

She had to take that walk. Get away from Scott. She had to buy the paper.

And she had to stand up, face what was before her, move on. Taylor’s life depended on her ability to take the next step. And the next.

Reaching up to release the ponytail that was giving her a headache, Tricia pulled back from Scott and shook her head, letting the long brown strands fall around her. She’d never had long hair before.

She’d gotten used to it. Maybe even liked it if she could get past how unfashionable it looked.

“The fresh air’s good for him.”

“You’re angry.”

She turned away. Dropped the ponytail elastic on the Formica dresser top.

“No, I’m not.”

Turning back, Tricia met his gaze briefly, and then glanced at the blue fake-down comforter on the bed behind him, covering what she knew were sheets with such a low thread count that the only way she’d been able to make them soft was to wash them repeatedly with tons of fabric softener. The throw pillows she’d sewn herself from fabric remnants left over from her contract job as an independent alterations specialist at a Coronado dry cleaner. Behind the bed were walls so thin any insulation that might’ve been there had probably deteriorated years before, and windows whose frames were bent enough that if the wind blew just right during a storm, water would come in.

His body, leaning against the bed, captured her attention for a second. And then she looked him in the eye.

“I don’t understand.”

He shrugged, didn’t ask what she meant. “It’s a long story.”

“I can always start Blue over if I have to.”

He gestured to the bed. “You want to sit down?”

She didn’t. Her nerves were stretched too taut. Tricia peeked out the bedroom door, down the hall to the living room where she could see her son happily playing, his little chin raised as he stared at his idol on the screen in front of him.

And she turned back. As much as she didn’t want to hear whatever Scott had to tell her, she had to. She loved him.

With one hip resting on the bed just below her pillow, she kept both feet firmly on the floor, arms crossed over her chest.

She’d once been told that her C-cup breasts were the best part of her. At the time, she’d considered the words a compliment.

Scott closed his eyes, one bent leg pulled up on the mattress, his other foot still on the floor.

“I had it all once.” His voice had an edge she didn’t recognize. The man she’d grown to count on was peaceful and compassionate. He was a healer. Not a hurter.

Taylor’s babyish lisp rang out from the other room, his rendition of Blue’s theme song. Another episode was starting.

Plastic scraped against plastic. He was playing with his hollow square color blocks, trying to fit one inside another. Only problem was, her son hadn’t quite grasped the concept that the smaller block went into the bigger one.

“The best of everything. Best home. Best clothes. Best education.” He’d opened his eyes and was looking right at her, making her uncomfortable.

He knew nothing about her. But this wasn’t about her.

Silently, keeping her own counsel, she waited.

“I had my own servants.”

He’d said that as though it was one of the seven deadly sins. Her skin felt hot. And she shivered with cold.

“On my seventeenth birthday, my father surprised me with a brand-new Porsche.”

They were nice cars, though Tricia was more fond of Jaguars. Navy-blue ones. With beige leather interiors and seats that heated up at the touch of a button.

“Alicia loved that car.”

What? “Alicia?”

He nodded. Tense enough that the cords in his neck framed his next swallow. “I met her in high school.”

“Your girlfriend?” She wasn’t jealous. Had no reason to be jealous. Obviously Scott hadn’t stuck with this girl. Still, had she ever seen that warmth in his eyes when he’d been focused on her?

“She was more than just a girlfriend.” His voice took on a distant quality, almost as though he was talking in his sleep. His sight had definitely focused inward, leaving Tricia sitting there alone.

And yet… He was sharing this with her. That meant something.

“How so?” she asked softly, dragging a blue-and-white throw pillow onto her lap, hugging it, pulling at the tasseled trim she’d sewn on by hand.

He tilted his head slightly, a restless hand coming to rest on the side of his boot.

“It sounds crazy,” he told her. “Always has, even in my own mind, but Alicia was special. Different. From the first time I met her, it’s like we connected. Suddenly everything in life made sense. I felt as if I’d been thrown from a hurricane into a rainbow.”

Which described exactly how she’d felt when she met him. Emotion burned at the back of her throat. She felt that way about him. He’d felt that way about someone else.

“It doesn’t sound crazy.” But this love story didn’t have a happy ending. Had the woman dumped him? For someone who was more…what? Couldn’t be richer. Meaner, then? Politically motivated?

Or had their families been involved? Disapproved of the match?

“Did your parents like her?” Was she rich enough for them?

“Everyone liked her. Alicia was the only daughter of one of California’s most influential bankers. But unlike the other girls at school, her attitude wasn’t defined by her family’s wealth. She was blond, small, popular. She liked nice things. But she spent her time thinking about poetry. And social problems—how she could help people.”

Tricia had spent most of her teenage years dreaming about clothes. But she’d volunteered at the animal shelter every weekend and during the summer. Leah had taken her there. Among the animals Tricia had found peace. Security. Unconditional love.

“So what happened? I can’t imagine she didn’t like you.”

His grin was slow, not fully present, but Tricia felt heat in her cheeks anyway.

“We were pretty much inseparable the last two years of high school. We graduated. Celebrated our eighteenth birthdays that summer.”

His was in July. Three months away. Last year had been the first she’d celebrated with him. He’d been embarrassed by the fuss she’d made—which had consisted of one new shirt and a homemade cake.

“The third Saturday in August, just before we were due to leave for college, we took the Porsche out for a long drive along Highway One.”

The coastal road followed the Pacific Ocean all the way up the state of California and beyond. Tricia and Leah had run away for a couple of weeks one summer during college and driven the entire craggy coastline, marveling at the natural beauty that took their breath away, the mountains and drop-offs, the mammoth rocks and roaring waves, stopping wherever the spirit took them. They’d spent three days in Carmel.

Tricia had sworn she’d go back there with a lover someday.

She never had.

“Somewhere about a hundred miles north of Santa Monica I pulled into a deserted overlook and asked her to marry me.”

This was where the story got sad. Those narrowed, glistening eyes said so.

“She turned you down?” She hadn’t meant to sound incredulous, but she really couldn’t believe it.

“No.” He glanced up with a bit of a smile. She’d never seen a smile look so sad. “She said yes. And started to cry when the ring I nervously pulled out of the glove box fit her finger perfectly.”

“How’d you manage that?” She was hurting and didn’t even know why.

“Got one of her rings from her mom and took it to the jewelers.”

His thoughtfulness didn’t surprise Tricia. Except as confirmation that he’d always been like that. She’d occasionally wondered if he was so different from the other men she knew because of something that had happened to him. Apparently not. Apparently he’d been born thoughtful and kind.

“An hour later, flying high on life, I took a corner twenty miles an hour too fast, lost control of the Porsche and slammed into the side of a mountain.”

San Francisco Gazette

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Page 1

Socialite Still Missing

Forty-eight hours after thirty-one-year old charity fund-raiser Leah Montgomery was reported missing by her brother and sister, there has still been no word on her whereabouts. According to a police source, they have no clues other than the black gown hanging in her shower. The missing woman was apparently planning to wear it two evenings ago at a charity gala. There was no sign of struggle in her Pacific Heights security-system-controlled home. Montgomery’s white Mercedes convertible has not been found.

Standing at the checkout counter at Gala Foods, her basket empty except for the fresh vegetables she’d suddenly decided she wanted for dinner, Tricia read the article a second time. Her hands were trembling so hard she could barely make out the words bouncing in front of her.

They weren’t what she’d expected to read. No inane idea to explain her friend’s sudden disappearance. No embarrassing statement of apology for the rash or naive behavior that had made her miss her own black-tie function. No Leah.

Dammit, Leah, what have you done this time? Who’s rescuing you from whatever mess you’ve created now that I’m not there to do it?

And whose gown did you buy?

It was almost one in the afternoon. The paper had gone to press before six that morning. Perhaps Leah had been found by now.

Yeah, that was it. Tricia folded the paper, putting it on top of her purse in the metal child-seat in the front of the basket. Tomorrow she’d read all about it. The harebrained scheme. The embarrassment. Leah safe and sound and laughing it all off in such a way that everyone would eventually laugh along with her.

Taking a deep breath, hooking the hair that had fallen over the shoulder of her T-shirt back behind her ear, she pushed her basket closer to the moving conveyer belt, unloading a head of cauliflower, broccoli florets and peeled baby carrots.

The San Diego daily paper was there at the checkout—without any mention of Leah on the front page. Somehow that was comforting.

“Paper or plastic?” the older man who bagged groceries asked.

His question startled her. Brought her back to the present moment—the only moment she had to worry about right now.

“Plastic, please.” She pushed her empty basket through to the end of the aisle.

“Where’s your little one this afternoon?” asked Gabriella, the young, slightly plump and quite beautiful Hispanic cashier.

“Home napping with his dad.” She’d snatched the opportunity to get out alone to grab the paper. Away from the house, she could freely study news from the town where she’d grown up and dispose of the evidence with no one but her eighteen-month-old son the wiser.

Only occasionally during Scott’s four-day rotations on would she spoil herself, bringing the paper home to enjoy over a cup of coffee as she had the day before.

“You are one lucky woman!” Gabriella was saying, her fingers flying over the number keys of the computerized register, typing in prices for the fresh vegetables. “Most of us just fantasize about being with a gorgeous fireman. You not only got one, but he’s a good dad, too.”

“And he cooks!” Tricia smiled at the girl she’d come to know. She and Taylor made at least three trips a week to the neighborhood grocer.

“’Course, you ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” Gabriella continued. “I’d give a year’s worth of paydays to have your long legs.”

“And I’d give the same to have your beautiful black hair.” Tricia pulled cash out of the black leather bag she’d sewn from the bolt Scott had given her for Christmas the year before, after he’d seen her fingering it in a department store.

“You really should get one of them cards,” Gabriella said, pointing to the debit machine by Tricia’s right arm. “It’s not safe, a woman like you carrying cash around. Not in this neighborhood.”

Yeah, well, it was a hell of a lot safer than leaving any kind of paper trail that could be traced.

Picking up the plastic bag, she nodded. “I know. I’ll get around to it.”

It was the same reply she’d given the first time Gabriella had warned her about the neighborhood. That had been a couple of months before Taylor was born.

“Where were you Monday afternoon and evening?”

Senator Thomas Whitehead, impeccably dressed in a navy suit, cream shirt and red tie, his always freshly polished black Italian leather shoes shining, didn’t immediately spit out an answer to the San Francisco detective’s question. He’d come to the station voluntarily and without counsel.

He had nothing to hide. And everything to gain by carefully thought-out, honest responses.

“I was at my office until close to seven. I stopped on the way home for a steak at McGruber’s, dropped a novel off at my mother’s after she called to say she was having trouble sleeping. I visited with her until shortly before midnight and then went home.”

Detectives Gregory and Stanton, the same team who’d interrogated him after Kate’s disappearance, were seated across from him in the small room. Dirty white cement walls, gray tile floor, a single table with two chairs on either side. Their faces were grim. Gregory was the younger of the two, in his midthirties, tall, dark curly hair with a pockmarked face. Poor guy must’ve had it rough in high school with all the acne it would’ve taken to leave those scars.

“Is there anyone at your office who can verify that?” Gregory asked, head tilted to the left and slightly lowered at the same time. He was still assessing, Thomas surmised. Not yet convinced of Thomas’s innocence, but not thinking him guilty, either. Thomas took an easier breath.

“Yes. My secretary was there, as were Senators Logenstein and Bryer. We’re working on legislation to provide stiffer penalties for anyone bringing drugs within the state’s current safe-school perimeter.”

So much rested on the positive outcome of this voluntary and informal questioning by the police. His mother’s health, certainly. His own emotional health. Particularly if—as it appeared—he’d just lost his wife’s best friend only two years after Kate’s disappearance.

His schedule and convenience were also factors. He was a very busy man who didn’t have time to be hauled into a long drawn-out court case but he’d do what needed to be done. He always did.

And for his constituents, he needed to clear his name as quickly as possible. They trusted him. Depended on him. He’d been told by many of them that they slept better at night knowing he was there taking care of the big decisions for them.

Stanton, proverbial pen in hand, nodded. “Amanda Livingston still your secretary?” Shorter than Gregory, and thirty pounds heavier, too, the older detective was the one Thomas respected most.

“Yes.” The fifty-year-old grandmother was perfect for him. Sharp. Reliable. Mature enough not to get emotional on him. And a great asset in his quest to win voters’ trust. “She’s been with me since I graduated from law school.”

“And that was when, fifteen years ago?” Stanton asked. The man really needed to run a comb through that grey hair once in a while. And iron his cheap suit while he was at it.

“Sixteen. I earned my Juris Doctorate at twenty-four.”

“When was the last time you were in contact with Leah Montgomery?” Gregory didn’t seem to think Thomas’s education pertinent.

He allowed some of the sadness he’d been fighting for the last two days to show on his face. He’d been genuinely fond of Leah. Found her spontaneity engaging. “I spoke with her Monday afternoon.”

“What time?”

“Around four.” Four-eleven, to be precise. His cell phone logged all calls, received or made. As his father had taught him to do with everything in life, he’d come to this meeting prepared.

“You called her?”

“She called me.”

Gregory leaned forward, practically drooling. His instinctive alertness reminded Thomas of a hunting dog. “Why?”

“To say that she wasn’t feeling well.” Thomas slowly, calmly lifted his folded hands to the table. “I’d agreed to escort her to a children’s fund-raiser that evening and she was calling to cancel.”

All he had to do was tell the truth. The rest would take care of itself.

“What was the nature of your relationship with Ms. Montgomery?” Gregory didn’t quite sneer, but the tight set of his lips was enough to put Thomas on edge. And to make his smile that much more congenial.

“We know each other quite well. She was my wife’s best friend. Leah and Kate grew up together, and even after Kate and I were married the two of them spent a lot of time together.”

“And you had a problem with that.”

Gregory’s words were more of an assumption than a question. “No, I did not. I’m a very busy man. I was glad my wife had her for company.”

“And now?”

“Leah and I grew closer after Kate’s disappearance, understandably so,” Thomas said, the ever-present pang of grief and anger brought on by Kate’s disappearance stabbing once more. “My wife was a dynamic woman, and her absence left a real emptiness. Leah and I have spent some time together, trying to fill the gap where we could. Mostly in the social arena. Leah accompanies me to various public appearances. And I return the favor. That’s all.”

The older detective cleared his throat. “Where’ve you been for the past two days?” he asked, his tone friendlier than his partner’s.

“Out on a fishing boat with a couple of my late father’s friends. It’s an annual event.”

Thomas waited for the next question. And all the questions after that. He could handle them. And then he’d be free to get on with his life.

Even if that meant living in a house that was empty and far too quiet. Going to bed alone. But then he’d never been one to require much sleep.

3

T he little guy went down without a fuss. It wasn’t all that unusual. Taylor was a great kid. He played hard. Ate well. And slept when it was time. He was a tribute to the woman who’d borne him.

The woman who was pouring a diet soda before joining Scott in the living room Wednesday evening. There was only one lamp burning softly on a small table in the corner. As was the case most evenings when he and Tricia were home together, the television remained silent. He’d put a couple of new age jazz CDs in the player, turning the volume down low. And was sitting in the middle of the L-shaped sectional sofa, dressed in one of the pairs of silk lounging slacks from his old life that he’d never quite been able to abandon and a ten-year-old faded blue San Diego Fire Department T-shirt. He rested his arm along the overstuffed cushion.

“You sure you don’t want anything?” Her voice, as she called from the kitchen, sounded normal enough.

“No, thanks.” What he wanted was a beer. But if he started drinking, he wasn’t apt to stop, and hungover wasn’t the way he wanted to begin his four-day-off rotation. Hungover—or worse, drunk—wasn’t the way he wanted Taylor to see him. Ever.

Taylor. Why couldn’t the baby have fussed a bit tonight? Distracted them? Cut into the time Scott generally lived for—time alone with the most fascinating woman he’d ever held in his arms.

“I brought you a beer,” she said, walking around the corner. She didn’t hand him the bottle, setting it on the low square table in front of him, instead. Then she curled up a couple of cushions down from him, balancing her glass of soda on one jean-clad thigh.

Most nights she changed into pajamas right after Taylor went down.

“Thanks.” He picked up the bottle, taking a sip since she’d opened it for him. Couldn’t have it go to waste.

“You looked like you could use a drink.”

Scott nodded.

“So, are you going to tell me the rest of the story?” Her voice was almost drowned out by the soft music.

He’d known the question was coming. Had felt it in her look, her tentative touch, all day. Ever since Blue’s Clues had ended that morning and Taylor had let out a wail protesting against being ignored any longer.

That had been right after he’d told her about driving his Porsche into the side of a mountain. Taylor’s cry had been like divine intervention. Saving him.

“Nothing lasts forever, huh?” he asked now, glancing at the woman who’d found a way into his life despite the dead bolts he’d firmly attached to any doors that might be left.

She shrugged. Sipped. “Some things do.”

“Yeah?” Divine intervention sure didn’t. Taylor wasn’t crying tonight. In fact, the rescue that morning had only bought him part of a day.

Or nothing at all. Because he’d spent the ensuing hours reliving the horrors. In one form or another.

“Sure.”

“Name one.”

“Love.”

Maybe. Finding out wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

“Take Alicia, for instance. Whatever happened between the two of you, wherever she is now, the love you felt for her obviously still exists.”

Obviously. He stared at her, glad the dim light made it impossible to read the message in her eyes. And his. This wasn’t a time for expectations. Or declarations. It wasn’t a time to break the rules.

To care too much.

“So what happened?”

Maybe if she hadn’t spoken with such compassion he could have stood, walked away. Maybe.

He had to be able to walk away from her.

“She died.” Like millions before her. And millions after. Like Kelsey Stuart the day before. Too much like Kelsey Stuart.