a two- to three-foot expanse of frozen lake. In the summer, child’s play. In the winter, a great way to break a hip.

It occurred to her to use one last niggling prick to her psyche to get her to make this leap: Her career had become troubled, but coming out of this situation with a healthy baby and no bloodshed would make her a hero. All the sarcastic supervisors and defense experts in the world wouldn’t be able to change that.

Please, God, don’t let that be my only reason.

And while we’re at it, don’t let Drew kill me. That would upset my mother.

“Drew! It’s Theresa. I’m coming aboard.”

He slid open the door just an inch, enough to say, “All right, come on. Don’t slip.”

“Easier said than done,” she grumbled as she bent her knees. She made it with two inches to spare, though her bottom smacked the rear gunwale and the impact reverberated throughout her bones. The boat swayed in its hammock.

Drew slid the door open another inch, and Theresa pushed it farther to enter, actually grateful for the rush of warmth and the shelter from the constant icy wind. She sniffled, rubbed her hands, and let her pupils expand to take in the darkened interior.

The houseboat had not changed much since her first visit, except perhaps for a fresh dusting of clutter on the uppermost layer of the surrounding surfaces. Drew wore his standard baggy pants and the knit, zippered jacket. He bounced with an internal mania but his eyes were clear and dry. Cara, warmly bundled up in pink blankets in his arms, cried in sporadic bursts. His left arm supported her back and head. He held her legs in the crook of his right arm and a Luger in that hand.

Theresa drew in a deep breath. Now that she had arrived, she hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do except to remain calm and keep Drew talking instead of acting. “Has she eaten lately?”

Drew glanced down at the baby in his arms as if unsure of how she’d gotten there. “I don’t know. I forgot to ask the babysitter when I-took her. I got some stuff, though. Look.”

He gestured with the gun’s barrel to his kitchen counter, littered with diapers, formula, and a stuffed tiger. Theresa cleared off the stove, found a pan, filled it with water and heated up the formula, turning her back to him without hesitation. She had nothing to fear from Drew Fleming. Or so she told herself.

The activity did not slow her heart rate, but she managed to keep her voice steady when she faced him again. “I know how worried you are about Cara, Drew, but you have to know that this was not a good idea. It only makes you look unstable.”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“And by default it makes Evan look more innocent.”

“The court made him her official guardian. If she dies, he gets the whole account. Why would he wait?”

“He wouldn’t dare do anything to Cara now, not with all the scrutiny over Jillian’s death.”

“There is no scrutiny!” He gave the baby an agitated rocking, prompting another startled cry from the infant. “Your department released the body. The police aren’t investigating. No one cares about Jillian except you and me.”

Theresa swirled the formula in its warm water bath, wondering how much to tell him. “I’ve found something out, though. I think I know how he did it.”

This appeared to stun him, so she made a grab for the baby in case he dropped her, thinking too late that sudden movements were not a good idea. But he handed the baby over without a pause and focused on this new information. “You do? How?”

She told it simply and slowly, with plenty of pauses for transferring the formula into a bottle and finding a comfortable seat so that the baby could drink without movement and, Theresa hoped, sleep. She emphasized the painlessness of Jillian’s death, well aware that dwelling on how his loved one came to leave the earth might push him to his own personal brink.

“So she just went to sleep?” he said at last.

“Yes.”

Now his eyes filled with tears. “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not.”

“She was too young.”

Unbidden, the memory of the marble floor came, with Paul’s blood spreading in a dark pool. He had not simply gone to sleep. He had to sit and wait, soaked in his own fluids, knowing what that seepage meant and able to tick off every last second of his life. Did he think of me? Did he think of his first wife, dead of cancer before her thirtieth birthday?

Who did he regret leaving more?

An unworthy question, but humans are such unworthy animals.

Cara pushed the bottle away, finished, not bothered by Theresa’s inner upheaval. The baby had most likely felt nothing else from the adults around her for the past week, and had grown used to it. “Drew, we have to-”

“It’s worse on us. The survivors, me, you-even your mother. Your father died when you were young, didn’t he?”

“How did you know that?”

“I found a bio that Cleveland magazine did on you last year.”

“My father died of an aneurysm. It’s different.”

Was it? Did it make her pain over Paul any worse than her mother’s had been? And why had the similarity never-

“At least Jillian could die with hope. We have to live without it.”

She could feel the tears filling her eyes, a wave that seemed to start at the back of her head-not for the dead, but for the living she’d been too wrapped up in herself to think about lately. She bit her lip to divert the tears, which never worked. “Drew-”

“We could help each other.”

She shook her head as if to clear her hearing. She hadn’t taken off her coat and now the cabin seemed a bit too warm. “What?”

“We understand each other, you and I. The kind of grief that will last the rest of our lives. If your fiance had a child, you’d do anything for that child, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.” The word erupted before she’d finished hearing the question.

“He didn’t-right? But I have Cara. In a way Cara is even more important than Jillian, since Jillian chose Evan. But Cara is innocent. I’ll give anything for her, even my life, to keep Evan from harming her. And you’ll help me, won’t you? You wouldn’t be here now if you didn’t feel that way.” He sprang from his chair and neatly sidestepped the coffee table in two paces, dropping the gun on the corner and collapsing to his knees in front of her as if proposing marriage. Or begging. “You have to help me save her. You’re the only one who can.”

“That’s what I said, Drew, I only need a little more time and I can-”

“It won’t work. Even if you can prove she died from the nitrogen, you won’t be able to prove he did it. He’ll have thought of every detail. It’s what he does for a living. It’s how he fooled Jillian in the first place.” He reached out and slowly took the baby bottle out of her right hand, holding her fingers in his. She fought the instinct to pull away. “I have a snowmobile. The stockbrokers who own that Grady-White two spaces up leave it under their hull with the keys in it because they come out every weekend. It’s got gas-I checked. We can get over the water before the cops even know what’s happening, be at Burke Lakefront Airport in ten minutes. A friend of mine loads cargo onto air express planes and there are two leaving this afternoon, for Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Depending on which one we take-”

“Drew!”

“My boss at the bookshop can get my funds to me, and I packed my most valuable editions to take along and sell. We won’t be millionaires, but at least we’ll be safe.” His eyes danced in the hazy indoor light, and she thought that maybe she was afraid of Drew Fleming, just a little.

“Drew, I can’t-”

Her phone rang. Drew jumped back, dropping her hand.

Breathe, she told herself. In and out. “I think I should answer that.”

Drew looked around for his gun as if trying to remember where he’d left it.

“It’s just a phone, Drew. And if it keeps them from approaching us-”

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