Avery gripped the phone. 'No one is stopping me from testifying.'
'Be reasonable.'
'Do you want Skarrett to walk?' Her voice shook with her fury.
'Your safety is more important to me.'
'I'm not letting him walk.'
'We'll have plenty of time to talk about the trial,' Carrie said. 'Why aren't you asking me about Jilly?'
'I don't want to talk about her.'
'I hope when they catch her, I get to have five minutes alone with her.'
'She'd annihilate you.'
'But not you, not with all that tai chi and karate stuff you learned.' Carrie sighed. 'Don't be afraid of her.'
Avery felt like laughing. After all the hellacious stories she'd heard about Jilly over the years, she would have to be as crazy
as Jilly not to be afraid.
'Did you see her? Was she inside the house?'
'Yes,' Carrie answered. 'I'll tell you everything when I see you.'
'I want you to promise me that you'll do whatever the agents tell you to do. Okay, Carrie? Promise me.'
'Yes, of course I will.'
'Don't make their job… difficult. You know how you can get when you're upset or scared.'
'I'm not scared; I'm angry. Very, very angry. Why the hell couldn't Jilly stay dead?'
'She never died,' Avery pointed out.
'They better not put us in a flea-infested shack while they're protecting us. The house is in Florida, so I want something on
the beach.'
'Carrie, that isn't your decision.'
'If it's not nice, you can pull some strings for us. I can't wait to see you.'
Avery braced herself. Her aunt had a very short fuse when things weren't going her way, and Avery was about to ignite it.
'I'm not going to be joining you. I'm not going to the safe house with-'
That was as far as she got. Carrie's scream made her cringe, and she had to move the phone away from her ear.
From where John Paul was seated, he could hear the aunt shouting. The color left Avery's face as she listened. He got up,
walked to the phone, and gently took it from her.
'Say good-bye, sugar.'
'She's very upset.'
'Uh-huh.'
'I love you, Carrie, and I'll see you soon,' she said. 'Bye now.'
She heard Carrie shouting, 'Avery Elizabeth, don't you dare hang up this-'
John Paul placed the phone back in the cradle. 'She sounds nice,' he managed with a straight face.
The waitress was watching them as she placed their plates on the table. Avery pulled away from John Paul and went into the ladies' room to wash her hands. By the time she sat down in the booth, he had already devoured his sandwich and was finishing his iced tea.
'I don't want you to get the wrong idea about my aunt. Granted, she can be difficult, but I'm sure, once you got to know her,
you'd love her as much as I do.'
He grinned. 'I don't see that happening.'
She took a bite of her turkey sandwich, thought it tasted like pressed sawdust, and picked up her glass of iced tea to wash it down.
'You want this?' she asked as she pushed the plate toward him.
He pushed it back. 'You need to eat that,' he said as he helped himself to one of the limp potato chips.
She noticed him watching the highway beyond the parking lot. 'They don't get much business here, do they?'
'They're closing in fifteen minutes. Maybe that's why we're the only customers. Tell me something, Avery. When you filled out your application to work for the Bureau, was it your goal to become an agent?'
'Yes.'
'Then why didn't you?'
She was about to give him her standard answer, but then decided to be completely honest with him. Besides, she was pretty
sure he'd cut through the bull and know she wasn't telling him the truth.
'I thought I should want to be an agent. An FBI agent saved my life, and I think that was when I got it into my head that I
wanted to be just like him. You know, save people.'
'So you were going to save the world. How old were you when you made this momentous decision?'
'Twelve. I'd just turned twelve.'
'That's amazing.'
'Why?'
'That you didn't change your mind, that you held on to that goal all through high school and college.'
'Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were young?'
'I don't remember how old I was when I decided it would be pretty cool to be an astronaut. Maybe ten or eleven.'
'That plan didn't work out?' she asked, teasing.
'Life got in the way,' he said. 'I ended up in engineering at Tulane, graduated, and joined the Marines.'
'Why the Marines?'
'I was drunk.'
She didn't buy it. 'Tell me the real reason.'
'I thought I could make a difference. I liked the discipline, and I wanted something different than Bowen, Louisiana.'
'But you live in Bowen now, don't you?'
'Yeah, I do,' he said. 'I had to go away to realize what I really wanted in life. I actually live outside of Bowen, in the swamp.'
'You really did drop out of life, didn't you?'
'I like solitude.'
'Guess you don't get much company in the swamp.'
'I like that too. Where did you go to college?' he asked.
'Santa Clara University,' she answered. 'Then Stanford.' She took another bite of her sandwich and could barely get the
horrible food down. The bread was soggy; the lettuce was wilted, and the turkey was dry.
'Neither one of us went very far away. We both stayed close to home. Carrie wanted me to go to college in L.A. so I could
work part-time for her company.'
'Doing what?'
She blushed. The instantaneous reaction made him all the more curious.
'She was pushing me to do more commercials. I got roped into doing one for her when she was in a bind.'
'So what'd you have to do in this commercial?'
'Hold up a bar of soap, bat my eyelashes, and sing a silly jingle.'
He didn't laugh but he came close. 'Sing it for me.'
'No,' she said. 'I was awful and I hated it. I guess I'm an introvert,' she added with a shrug. 'Since I'd had
