sucking the milk off them when Boyd looked up from his paper long enough to tell her to quit fooling around and eat her breakfast or she was going to miss the bus.
“I don’t like the cereal. It’s
“Not surprised,” Boyd said, and went back to his paper.
Lacking a better target, Susie Grace glared at the TV set, lower lip sticking out, arms folded across her new green top with the yellow and white daisies on the front. A moment later, she sat up straight, sulks forgotten. “Look, Grampa, it’s Mary.”
“What? Where?” Boyd flicked the newspaper over, looking around as if he thought someone might be hiding underneath it.
“Not there.” Susie Grace giggled, then pointed. “Right
Roan poked his head out of the bathroom and frowned at her over the towel he was using to pat his freshly shaved jaws dry. “What are you talking about?”
With patient emphasis she repeated it. “Mary’s on tee vee. I saw her. Come on,
Roan felt the blood draining out of his head and his body going cold, but there wasn’t time for his mind to form coherent patterns. It was a little like being caught up in an earthquake or volcanic eruption-while it was happening there was only one thought possible: catastrophe.
Boyd was staring intently at the small TV set, the remote control he’d used to turn the volume up still pointed at it. “Didn’t realize that little ol’ gal was such a looker,” he muttered without looking up.
“What’s going on?” Roan asked in a low voice, ignoring Susie Grace, who was dancing and chattering excitedly somewhere on the edges of his awareness.
Boyd clicked the remote and turned the sound up another notch. “See for yourself.”
Roan glared at the set through narrowed eyes. It was one of the network morning shows…two well-known faces, one belonging to the morning show’s female host, the other the classically chiseled features of the evening news anchor…sitting in chairs opposite each other in standard interview fashion.
“…did you first realize the woman in the photograph was your-I guess I should say
“Well, as you know, the photo came in on the wire yesterday evening, after I’d signed off the evening news broadcast. I recognized her right away. There was no doubt in my mind that it was Yancy.”
The photograph that had caught Susie Grace’s eye filled the screen, and Roan felt a sharp squeezing around his heart. Because he knew, almost to the second, when the picture had to have been taken. Mary’s clothes were the ones she’d been wearing the day before, during the shopping trip to Bozeman. And the smile…ah, the smile. It was the one he’d only seen a time or two…the one that took his breath away. The last time he’d seen it was the evening before, when she’d turned to him with her face full of joy and laughter and light, and he’d been so blinded by the radiance of it he’d forgotten to pay attention to what was going on around him.
“How well did you know Yancy Lavigne?”
“I’d just started with the network as a reporter. My beat was the west coast-L.A., San Francisco-and of course hers was fashion, which meant she covered all those ‘red-carpet’ events. So our paths crossed quite a bit. I guess I knew her as well as anybody did. She seemed like a genuinely nice girl, which is why we were all so shocked when we heard she’d gotten mixed up with the South American mob.”
“Yes, but if I remember correctly, didn’t she testify against some members of the DelRey family? Wasn’t she the key witness, and instrumental in getting the main kingpins of that cartel convicted and sent to jail?”
“Yes, she was. And after doing so, apparently vanished off the face of the earth-or, as we now know, into the Witness Protection Program. I guess we know now where she’s been all these years.”
There was more, but Roan didn’t hear it. He was too busy cussing under his breath, half-choking on the anger that was billowing up from the cold, burning place inside him, like smoke from dry ice.
And then his phone rang.
On Florida’s Gulf Coast, Joy Cavanaugh, also known as Lynn Starr, creator of the Asia Brand series of bestselling murder mystery novels, was enjoying one of her favorite moments of the day. Her husband Scott, chief homicide detective for the county sheriff’s department, was already at work, and their nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Carrie Jane, had just left for school. This was the time before she tackled the household chores, and then had to face the computer and the overdue rewrites on her current novel, that precious hour-which admittedly sometimes stretched into two or more-when she allowed herself the luxury of curling up with someone else’s book.
She poured herself a second cup of coffee, then settled on the sunroom couch and tucked her bare feet up under the edge of her bathrobe. She heaved a happy sigh as she picked up the hard-cover romance she was currently reading, her place marked with the flap of the dust jacket. The television was on, tuned, as always, to her favorite network morning show. It didn’t interfere with her reading pleasure; she enjoyed an ability to tune it out when it didn’t interest her. And she liked to catch the local news and weather every half hour or so.
She read, contentedly sipping her coffee, the television making companionable noises in the background…until a word, a name, penetrated her shields like a steel-tipped arrow and stabbed straight through to her heart.
Coffee slopped onto her robe. The book slipped unnoticed from her hand. Trembling, clutching the coffee cup to her chest, she stared at the image on the screen…the face of a woman well-remembered, beloved as a sister, lost to her for ten long years.
When her brain resumed functioning she picked up the phone and, with hands still shaking, dialed her husband’s number.
Mary woke on Monday morning to a yawning emptiness…empty house, empty schedule, empty future. After Sunday’s glimpse into the secret garden, the barren landscape of her own life seemed to stretch around her in every direction, as far as she could see…emptiness and only more emptiness.
Since she stayed open on Saturdays, the shop, like most beauty salons, was closed on Mondays. Normally, she filled the day doing the countless routine chores necessary to keep herself, her household and her business functioning-collecting the trash, watering the plants on the kitchen windowsill, cleaning the litter box, dusting and vacuuming and laundry, washing the car, raking up leaves and pine needles, bookkeeping, making out lists of supplies to order for the shop.
Today she didn’t feel like doing any of those things.
Normally, she would have grocery shopping and banking to do, maybe a scheduled appointment with the dentist, or to have her car serviced. But her car was in the sheriff’s department’s impound yard, and she couldn’t carry groceries home without it.
Normally, she might look forward to a drive or a hike in the mountains, or a trip to the firing range, both of which were now out of the question.
Yesterday, strolling through a shopping mall with Roan and his daughter, picking out clothes for Susie Grace, eating ice cream cones in the food court, for the first time in so many years she’d felt…almost happy. Carefree.
Depression settled over her like a blanket.
When Cat came to wake her in his usual manner, she pushed at him irritably, muttered, “Go ’way, dammit,” and pulled the covers over her head. Cat’s response to this was to park himself on her chest and make kneading motions with his forepaws in the mound of blankets where he calculated her face should be.
“I think I liked you better when you hated me,” Mary grumbled, pushing both blankets and the cat aside and reaching for the TV remote. She aimed it at the small portable set on the dressing table across the room and clicked On.
A moment later she was sitting bolt upright in her bed, awash in adrenaline: jangled, head ringing, body gone clammy and cold. She stared at the screen, unable to tear her eyes from it, and this time when Cat came to rub against her she gathered him unthinkingly into her arms and hugged him close, trying to warm herself with his small furry body.
