There.

There it was again.

Clutching her purse with its woeful $38.57 in folded bills and change inside, she glanced over her shoulder without slowing her step. As before, the sidewalk behind her was empty.

Despite the sweltering July heat, hair prickled up on the nape of her neck, creating a cold trickle down her back.

No one there. Just her imagination.

Quickening her pace to match the increased rhythm of her heartbeats, she hurried toward the transit opening. She loved everything about her new job except the evening hours. Walking the nearly abandoned D.C. streets gave her the creeps and aptly described the type of people she usually brushed past in her rush for home. Driving her car through the snarl of traffic when she was a brisk three blocks from the Metro seemed foolish during daylight hours, and she was trying so hard to maintain her new air of financial responsibility. Her father would approve. And so would her dyed-in-the-wool common sense friend, Rae. But when the pulsing energy of the working world became the seeping shadows of evening, it seemed far less foolish to toss off her desire to make those two role models proud and spring for the extravagance of cab. Especially with her heart hammering in her chest and her paranoia galloping full tilt at every sound. Then it was harder to live up to her new life of respectable frugality.

Close to midnight, crime statistics had an annoying habit of haunting her.

But then her father and her bold former friend were afraid of nothing – not of daily challenges to behave as responsible adults, not of the constant struggle to live within the wages earned, not of the uncertainty of carving out a new life alone. But she was getting braver. Even Rae would be impressed by her sensible outlet store clothing and strict regime of healthy habits.

She concentrated on the destination rather than the journey, on taking off the tight new sandals that had looked so snappy on the shelf but felt like an Inquisitor’s boot when her toes swelled up at mid-day. A pint of rainbow sherbet and the caress of the air conditioner beckoned at the end of her fifteen minute ride. Rewards for a long day and a silly fright. Eager to shake them both off, she started down the steps of the Metro tunnel, anticipating the cool that came with subterranean travel.

She paused at the top of the escalators as that shivery feeling crawled along her arms and marched in an uneasy ripple down her spine. A quick glance showed an empty stairway and the night sky above.

Chuckling softly at her case of hyperactive nerves, she stepped onto the escalator and began the descent into the bowels of D.C.

The Metro system was a boon to tourists and employees alike, providing cheap, reliable transportation every five minutes during the rush hours to just about anyplace one needed to go. Once you got used to the transfer stations, carrying correct change and the color-coded lines, it was sit back and leave the driving to them. She knew the underground system better than the streets above and felt comfortable riding the rail . . . once she got to it.

It was that first step that always got her.

Of all the stops, this was the only one that made her hold her breath as if she were taking an e-ticket excursion straight to hell.

The escalator plunged into darkness, its pitch so steep, its drop so far that one couldn’t see top nor bottom to gage a final or starting destination. Suspended in some eerie Twilight Zone where one could only guess at the world where one would finally emerge, the ride went on forever.

Too much late night TV, she thought with another chiding chuckle as she glided deeper into the earth.

That’s when the lights flickered out, and the metal step beneath her shuddered to a stop.

Darkness. Complete and cold.

She spoke a soft explicative. Annoyance settled before alarm. Now what? Start climbing back up and foot the expense of a cab or continue down and hope this was an isolated failure and that the train would be there for its twelve-minute interval. She couldn’t see the bottom of the escalator to tell if the lights were on below, and the idea of feeling her way down into that black oblivion held no appeal.

Well, it was onward and upward and the cost of a cab.

Taking a deep breath in anticipation of the climb ahead and a tight hold on the rubberized rail, she turned. And stumbled back several steps.

Above her in the dark were twin pindots of red, like lasers shining in the blackness.

Repair technicians.

Her breath expelled in a relieved rush.

"Thank goodness. The lights went out," she called to the figure above her. "Do you know if the train’s still running?"

Her questions echoed and hung unanswered.

The fiery dots began to descend smoothly, as if the escalator was still moving.

"Hello? Can you help me?"

Silence. No sound of footsteps on the metal risers.

Hair stirred to attention upon her nape again.

Briefly, she thought of abandoning her cramping shoes and running down into the tunnel. She considered sliding down the separating steel between the up and down escalators then recalled the upraised metal studs embedded to prevent such mischievous behavior. No help there.

Remembering the credit card-sized flashlight her father had given her to attach to her apartment keys so she could locate her door lock after dark, she fumbled in her purse as the glowing twin dots came closer, closer. Her breath gusted loudly, the only noise in the chill tunnel until the clatter of her lipstick and car keys against the grated steps. She dug more frantically, beginning to retreat, backing down the immobile escalator as sobs panted from her. Her fingers closed on the flashlight. She jerked it free, her purse falling from her shaking hands. She heard its contents spill into the void of blackness below.

Holding the flat pocket light in both hands, she pressed down on the sensor pad. A thin beam shot upward, wavering wildly, illuminating steps, blank walls, impotent lights . . . and then a sight so terrifying all logic fled her.

Thin lips pulled back from horrible fangs.

She dropped the light and raced downward toward hope of possible salvation, slipping on the strewn contents of her bag as she ran.

A sudden push of air, cold and silent, descended upon her.

Her scream trailed down into darkness, thinning then stopping all together.

After a long moment, the lights blinked back on. The escalators began their efficient humming, until steps splattered with crimson disappeared beneath the bottom plate.

Umbrella tops crowded together like mushroom caps growing in the shadows of a slated sky. After a morning of continuous drizzle, puddled walks provided a challenge for the stylishly dressed groups hurrying toward their luxury cars to get out of the weather and away from the dismal scene. No one liked to linger in a graveyard, even on the best of days. On this one, only the heavens remained to weep for the one they buried. The heavens and Rae Borden.

She’d arrived too late to hear the comforting words of a life eternal spoken over the casket of her best friend. She’d only heard the news six hours before and was still reeling from shock and denial. She’d taken the first plane out of Detroit and still held her hastily packed overnight bag as she watched an indifferent grounds crew begin to disassemble the drooping mourners’ canopy. Flowers hung limp and skewed from the weight of the water as a heavier rain pelted a baleful tympani off the metal folding chairs. Only as the loneliness of the scene struck her did Rae really begin to believe.

Ginny Grover was gone.

Her best friend, her pseudo-sister and soul mate.

Dead. And now buried.

And she hadn’t had the chance to say good-bye.

There was no reason to remain as the rain swept down in merciless sheets, soaking the freshly turned earth, fluttering the ribbons of the graveside wreaths bearing the grieving words, Beloved Daughter. There was nothing more to be done here, nothing she could do for the body of Ginny Grover encased in satin, brass and mahogany for her eternal sleep underground.

But if there was something she could do to make her friend’s memory rest easier within her heart and soul, she would see it done before saying her final farewell.

That was the graveside promise she made in place of a prayer.

***

Memories came rushing back as she piloted her rental car up the wide horseshoe drive of the Grovers’s country home. Some of those remembrances, like that of two young girls learning to drive a stick shift and ending up in the azaleas, made her smile briefly. But others were too painful to embrace without breaking down completely. Those she would cherish when she was alone, taking them out one by one to examine then store away as if they were delicate Christmas ornaments wrapped in a protective tissue of emotion and bittersweet recall.

And then there was her last memory—that of driving away from this home, this family, in anger and disgrace. It was that moment that made her doubt her welcome, that ugly parting that made her ache for a place she could no longer call home, for these people she should no longer think of as family. For four years she’d been waiting for a reason to come back, hoping for an invitation. But when the invitation finally came, it wasn’t to mend those damaged fences but to bury forever her last chance for forgiveness.

She needed to know how Ginny Grover had died. And why.

An accident was what the report had read. She’d had it faxed to her and had agonized over every detail it hadn’t explained. Like how Ginny had fallen from the platform in front of the oncoming train. There’d been no witnesses other than the horrified conductor who’d had no time to stop or even slow. Like why, if it was an intentional suicide, her purse and its scattered contents had been found at the escalator instead of where she had died.

Unless she hadn’t died in the fall.

Unless someone had been chasing her.

The unfortunate thing about trains was that they left so little evidence behind.

Except one odd piece that had puzzled her when reading it. One strange, unexplained observation that gave her a moment’s pause.

Ginny Grover’s body had been a nearly bloodless corpse.

Was she the only one who wondered why?

First, she would pay her respects to the man who’d been like a father to her. Then she’d bulldoze her way into the local investigation to get at the real facts of the case.

Rae hadn’t been inside the house since that last disastrous evening four years before. There’d been subtle music and well-dressed guests and long tables of catered food at that event, too. Only today, they weren’t celebrating a future about to unfold. That truth wedged hotly in Rae’s throat on the edge of a sob. At any minute, she expected to hear the slightly bawdy laughter ringing a bit too loudly over the subdued conversation. If she looked up, would she see the willowy figure in designer clothes and tennis shoes descending the slow curl of the staircase...or sliding down its polished bannister? The ache of knowing neither of those things would ever be a part of her world again swelled hurtfully within her breast.

How could Ginny be gone? How could one senseless, violent act end such a vibrant presence? One that still shimmered with firefly incandescence through the conservative rooms?

"Rae, so glad you could make it."

This was the moment she’d dreaded, this confrontation with those she’d humiliated so publically upon her last visit to their home. As much as she yearned to reach out to share in the terrible pain of loss and mourning, she held herself back, unsure of her reception.

"Thank you for calling me. I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you...considering." She’d tried for a neutral tone, but her voice wavered. Just as Bette Grover’s polite smile wavered.

"Don’t be ridiculous, Rae. Of course we’d call you. You were her best friend, regardless of how things ended. That’s what we’ll remember. The rest just isn’t important anymore."

Not quite open-armed acceptance, just a weary truce. She’d take it.

Struggling for control against the tidal force of gratitude and grief, she presented her cheek to the soft, scented press of Bette Grover’s, murmuring, "Where is he?"

Bette, still remarkably unlined for all her fifty-three years, as if age or gravity wouldn’t dare disturb such beauty, was ever the perfect hostess. Even in the waning hours of her step-daughter’s funeral, she remembered to ask after Rae’s flight and to commend her paltry luggage and wet coat into the care of one of the hired crew. Then the facade wavered slightly as she beheld her daughter’s friend through welling eyes. Her voice shook as she finally addressed her question.

"He’s in the study. It’ll do him good to see you. The last few days have been...difficult."

How could they have been anything else to a man for whom the sun rose and set upon his only child?

The study had been father and daughter’s refuge. They’d celebrated the addition of each trophy in the wall-to-wall glass case, whether it be for forensic speaking or scratch golf or the sixth grade science fair. They’d wept on the big leather sofa as Ginny’s mother struggled upstairs in a losing battle against cancer. They’d discussed math problems and boyfriend problems and college choices across the big teakwood desk as if making global policies. And Rae had been a part of it, like family.

Thomas Grover stood before that wall of glass studying the polished plaques engraved with his daughter’s accomplishments. He didn’t turn to address her but rather acknowledged her presence by speaking as if she hadn’t just arrived.

"I told her that horse was too big for her, but would she listen? She proved me wrong, didn’t she? And she and that big brute...what was his name?"

"Charlemagne," Rae supplied softly.

"Yes. Charlemagne. She wouldn’t admit that he was too much for her until after she’d won the trophy. Because you had told her she could do it, and she was afraid of letting you down. Stubborn child, like her mother. What am I going to do without her, Rae?"

She walked to him then, slipping her arms about a figure that had just started to relax into a heavier middle as the result of success. With her head resting against his broad back, with her hands crushed up in his big, callused palms, she finally admitted, "I don’t know."

"She missed you, Rae. All she could talk about was making you proud. Your opinion meant everything."

Rae shuddered with remorse and whispered, "I was proud."

They stood like that for a long while, until a tap on the door brought them back from their private well of misery.

"Thomas, our guests are asking for you."

"In a minute, Bette."

Wordlessly, his new wife withdrew. He’d waited almost eight years after Ellen died to remarry. The mourning period had been almost operatic. Then Bette—bright, efficient, loving Bette—had forced his life back on course. Only to have it steer astray once more with this new devastation. His sigh was tremendous, overwrought with pain and sorrow.

"What happened?" Rae asked at last.

Never in all their years together had Thomas Grover been less than completely honest with her. Never until this moment.

"I don’t know, Rae. An accident. A tragic accident. How could it have been anything else?"

Indeed. How could it have been?

All Rae’s professionally honed instincts came into play, reading between those carefully tendered lines to find unspoken volumes of guilt and evasion.

What wasn’t he telling her?

"I know this isn’t exactly the best time–"

Grover pulled away from her embrace to stalk to the sideboard, splashing a large quantity of rarely consumed Scotch into a tall glass. He drank it down neat in two big swallows. "Is there ever going to be a good time to discuss a daughter’s death?" His voice grated rough with the burn of liquor and regret.

"Do you think it was suicide?"

"Ginny?" A harsh laugh. "Ginny loved life. She loved her new job. She was in love. The idea of her killing herself is as obscene as her death."

"No money troubles, no man troubles, no emotional troubles—none of that?"

"No." Said quietly. "No." With more force of conviction. "An accident," he repeated, as if trying to convince himself that it was true.

Neither of them believed it for a minute.

Grover reached for the decanter, then his hand hung, trembling, just shy of grasping it. Finally, he lowered it and murmured, "I should see to our guests. You’ll be staying, of course." Not a question.

"Yes. For a few days."

For however long it took to discover the truth.

The truth Thomas Grover was hiding from her.

***

He’d never get used to riding in style. He was an old, beat up Camaro with a rumbling muffler kind of guy. If folks looked his way, it was because he was breaking sound ordinance laws and leaving four feet of rubber on the ground. They’d shake their heads, thinking he’d be in jail by the time he was thirty. Wouldn’t their eyeballs just pop if they could see him now, leaning back into seats of butter soft leather so form fitting they almost swallowed him whole, wearing shoes that cost more than that first fast car, sporting a haircut that would have taken his first paycheck and change. When people stared now, it was because they were impressed by the pewter-colored limo with its mysterious tinted windows. Inside they’d expect to find a success story in Italian loafers, not a hellraiser from a poor parish outside Baton Rouge. How amusing to be both at the same time.

He stared out through the bulletproof glass at the upscale Maryland countryside rolling past the window and purely marveled at the fortuitous turn his life had taken. Perhaps some day he’d live in one of these sprawling estates and raise pedigreed dogs and children of his own where they could run wild and free. They’d never have to smell the stench of poverty, see hopelessness in the eyes of those they loved or know loneliness that sank, cold and sharp, all the way to the bone. Or fear. A fear of failure. A fear of never being able to escape. Of losing the spark of ambition in one’s own eyes. The way it had extinguished in his own father’s gaze.

"We’re here."

The quiet statement pulled Nick Flynn from the dark direction of his thoughts. He glanced ahead as their limo glided into the U-shaped drive of one of those enviable brick mansions. The drive and part of the immaculate lawn beyond were crowded with luxury vehicles.

"Looks like we’ll be interrupting a party."

His companion smiled slightly. "Something like that."

"Are you sure this is the right time?"

"Timing is everything. And I guarantee you, the time is right. Mr. Grover will be expecting us." And again the small, mirthless smile.

Everything about his employer, Kazmir Zanlos, was as enigmatic as that smile, from the accent that was impossible to pinpoint to the expressions that were impossible to read. The flat onyx of his stare reminded Nick of a shark’s. The comparison would have amused the owner of the largest legal firm in the Capitol area. Perhaps that’s why he’d taken such a shine to Nick, whose charismatic dazzle reflected off his own smooth surface. For whatever the reason, Nick was grateful. He was about to close on his biggest deal ever, with a percentage that brought all his dreams to fruition.

Life was good, and he wouldn’t question the whys and wherefores.

As the two of them entered the big house, there was no music or cheer associated with a celebration. The somber tone alerted Nick to the fact that all was not right in the Grover household. He was about to mention his observation to Zanlos when his scanning gaze caught upon one of the guests and could not break away.

She stood apart from the others, by choice rather than design. Her comfort with that isolation made his attention pause that extra involving second. While those around her were carefully coifed and purposefully subdued, she stood in their midst, unapologetically underdressed and seething with intensity. Her rumpled, khaki-colored vest and shorts held a slept-in softness next to the knife-edged creases and silky stockings of the other guests. Her features were equally unprepared for the occasion—her eyes smudged, her dark auburn hair shaped into flattened geometrics by the rain, and her face naked of artifice in both cosmetics and emotion. She was a raw nerve, a flame-thrower in a room of mellow tea lights. And Nick was mesmerized, not so much by her striking appearance as by her aggressive attitude—her stance one of coiled energy, her gaze ever in motion.

She had as much business in this crowd as they did.

Then their stares locked in an instant of combustible awareness. Her eyes were green, as glittery as fresh-struck emeralds. Then several couples passed between them, severing that visceral contact and allowing him to release the suspenseful breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. And then she was gone.

"Ah, there’s our host," Kaz murmured, drawing his focus away from his search of the gathering to the man who stood at the end of the hall. Kaz approached like a money-seeking missile.

"What are you doing here?"

Thomas Grover’s growl made them feel as welcome as dog doo on a white rug.

Without a break in his bland facade, Kaz reached out his hand. Nick supposed it was to shake the other man’s, but then he saw Kaz’s palm turn upward to reveal what looked like a credit card. Then he saw it was a thin, touch pad flashlight holding a single key. Grover stared at it blankly at first, then with a horror that built like a tower of cards to a dangerously wobbly height.

"Where did you get that?" His voice quavered.

"Just a little something to shed light on our negotiation. Are you ready to talk business now, Mr. Grover?"

Like a creature caught in a soul sucking quicksand trying to warn others from the same threat, Grover cast his gaze about, but his guests were too far away to have heard their words or to have noticed him in the shadowed doorway to his study. Then he glared at the two of them through eyes shiny with pain and shock.

"Have you no decency at all?"

Then Nick understood. This was a funeral gathering.

"I’m afraid that’s not one of my better qualities," Kaz admitted with a mildly amused candor so out of place with the circumstance that Nick rode out a shuddering chill from head to toe. He touched his boss’s arm.

"Perhaps we should come back later."

Zanlos’s black stare fixed up on him with a cyclonic intensity, but still he smiled. "Nonsense. No time like the present. Mr. Grover’s put off this moment a bit too long already, haven’t you Mr. Grover?"

His features ashen, Grover made a tremulous gesture to the room at his back. "In here. We won’t be disturbed."

"Excellent. I knew you could be a man of reason."

"Rae, let me take you up to your room."

The interruption of Bette’s voice jerked her from her gravitational pull toward the dark stranger, and when she glanced back, he and his equally slick and enigmatic friend had disappeared.

Who was that guy?

She’d never felt such immediate attraction and...alarm. Not only because he was the most jaw-droppingly handsome man she’d seen this side of a pinup calendar but because she’d felt the punch of his presence all the way across the room and was still tingling. And since she’d been taught never to play with a downed power wire, she was understandably cautious of that potentially deadly surge of...what? Desire? Lust? Need? She was feeling particularly needy at the moment, and perhaps that Darwin thing had just kicked in, coaxing her to find the best the species had to offer. And wow, had he come through for her.

"Rae?"

Pulled once again from her odd musings, Rae smiled up at the other woman. "Thanks for putting me up."

"I’m just glad you’re here."

Again, warning bells jangled. There was more than just the stress of the circumstances in Bette Grover’s voice. A genuine snag of desperation reached out to her.

What was going on? Why had Bette Grover called her after a painful four-year exile? Not to wax sentimental. Not to forgive and forget.

Then why?

Did she suspect there was something wrong in the way her stepdaughter had died?

Suddenly, Rae was eager to leave the milling crowd and the intrigue of the dark stranger to pump Bette Grover for information.

The upper floor of the house was quiet and cool, just the thing after the chaos of travel and mugginess of a D.C. rainstorm. The stir of air against her skin was almost as good as a cold shower for waking up her senses.

Who was that guy? The prickly heat of awareness wouldn’t go away.

"You can have your old room, of course. It’s been given a facelift, but you should still feel right at home." Bette was chattering away with a frantic cheerfulness, the ‘nothing’s wrong’ smile pasted awkwardly over whatever else lurked beneath.

Rae stepped inside and stepped back in time. The colors had changed. Gone were the screaming pinks and limes of her teen years, replaced by a subdued mauve and forest green. But there was the same canopy bed under which she and Ginny had shared secrets and dreams. There were the casement windows that opened onto the roof below. And from there just a short drop to the plush lawn and an evening’s freedom. Her carry-on case was next to the armoire where they’d tucked one of Ginny’s more aggressively amorous suitors when the first Mrs. Grover had come to say good night.

How could this be so reminiscent of a time that was forever past? How could the spirit of Ginny Grover, preserved so perfectly within this room, be no more?

Sorrow swelled up on an engulfing tide that Rae could only forestall with a barrier of anger.

How dare someone take her friend’s life and all the memories they had left to make between them?

"Bette, what’s wrong here?"

The older woman looked startled, then afraid. Such an odd yet strong reaction. Rae knew she hadn’t been far off in her intuitions. She held up her hand to stop the expected platitudes.

"Please. This is my family. Didn’t you think I’d notice?"

Bette released a tremulous breath. "I was hoping you would, almost as hard as I was hoping you wouldn’t."

"Is it Ginny? What happened to Ginny?"

"It goes back before Ginny. There’s been something going on with Thomas. He’s been so preoccupied, so...distant. For a time, I even thought he was having an affair." A soft, bittersweet laugh. "How I wish he had been. I could have survived that much easier than this."

"This what, Bette? What’s been going on?"

"I don’t know. He won’t tell me anything. There’ve been sudden trips into the city, phone calls late at night that leave him upset and...and frightened. And then Ginny’s death. Rae, I’m afraid something terrible is going to happen."

And as if that hushed sentiment was a harbinger of things to come, the explosive sound of a shot punctuated it.