clothing, smiled at her gratefully when she handed him his tea. 'I'm from Washington,' she joked. 'I'm here to help.'
As a victim of many hit-and-run federal bureaucrats, the quip made Brandon laugh aloud. 'Good,' he said. 'I'll take whatever help I can get.'
Without saying anything further, he handed her a piece of chopped log, which she obligingly carried to the stack. They worked together in silence for some time before Brandon somewhat warily broached the subject of the university tea. 'How was it?' he asked.
Diana shrugged. 'About what you'd expect,' she said. 'By holding it at the Arizona Historical Society instead of someplace on campus or at the president's residence, they managed to make it clear that as far as they're concerned, I'm still not quite okay.'
'You can't really blame them for that,' Brandon said. 'Andrew Carlisle isn't exactly one of the U. of A.'s more stellar ex-professors. You can hardly expect them to be good sports about what they all have to regard as adverse publicity.'
In writing Shadow of Death, Diana hadn't glossed over the fact that Andrew Carlisle had used his position as head of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Arizona to lure Diana's first husband, Garrison Ladd, into playing a part in a brutal torture killing. Members of the local literary community-especially ones in the university's English Department who had known Andrew Carlisle personally and who still held sway over the university's creative writing program-were shocked and appalled by his portrayal in the book. They were disgusted that a book one Arizona Daily Sun reviewer had dismissed as nothing more than 'a poor-taste exercise in true crime' had gone on to be hailed by national critics and booksellers alike as a masterwork.
'You were absolutely right not to go,' Diana added, bending over and straightening a pile of branches into a manageable armload. 'The vultures were out in spades. Several of the women took great pains to tell me that although they never deign to read that kind of thing themselves, they were sure this must be quite good.'
'That's big of them,' Brandon said. 'But it is quite good.'
Diana stopped what she was doing and turned a questioning look on her husband's tanned, handsome face. 'You mean you've actually read it?'
'Yes.'
'When?'
'While you were off in New York. I didn't want to be the only person on the block who hadn't read the damn thing.'
When she had been writing other books, Brandon had read the chapters as they came out of the computer printer. With the manuscript for Shadow of Death he had shown less than no interest. When the galleys came back from New York for correction, she had offered to let him read the book then, but he had said no thanks. He had made his position clear from the beginning, and nothing-not even Diana's considerable six-figure advance payment-had changed his mind.
Hurt but resigned, Diana had decided he probably never would read it. She hadn't brought up the subject again.
Now, though, standing there in the searing afternoon heat, cradling a load of branches in her arms, Diana felt some of the months of unresolved anger melt away. 'You read it and you liked it?' she asked.
'I didn't say I liked it,' Brandon answered, moving toward her and looking down into her eyes. 'In fact, I hated it-every damned word, but that doesn't mean it wasn't good, because it is. Or should I say, not bad for a girl?' he added with a tentative smile.
The phrase 'not bad for a girl' was an old familiar and private joke between them. And hearing those words of praise from Brandon Walker meant far more to Diana than any Pulitzer ever would.
With tears in her eyes, she put down her burden of wood and then let herself be pulled close in a sweaty but welcome embrace. Brandon's shirt was wet and salty against her cheeks. So were her tears.
'Thank you,' she murmured, smiling up at him. 'Thank you so much.'
By mid-afternoon, Mitch Johnson's errands were run and he was back on the mountain, watching and waiting. The front yard of the Walker place was an unfenced jungle-a snarl of native plants and cactus-ocotillo, saguaro, and long-eared prickly pear-with a driveway curving through it. One part of the drive branched off to the side of the house, where it passed through a wrought-iron gate set in the tall river-rock wall that surrounded both sides and back of the house.
Late in the afternoon what appeared to be an almost new blue-and-silver Suburban drove through an electronically opened gate and into a carport on the side of the house. Mitch watched intently through a pair of binoculars as the woman he had come to know as Diana Ladd Walker stepped out of the vehicle and then stood watching while the gate swung shut behind the vehicle.
She probably believes those bars on that gate mean safety,Mitch thought with a laugh. Safety and security.
'False security, little lady,' he said aloud. 'Those bars don't mean a damned thing, not if somebody opens the gate and lets me in.'
Using binoculars, Mitch observed Diana Ladd Walker's progress as she made her way into the house. She had to be somewhere around fifty, but even so, he had to admit she was a handsome woman, just as Andy had told him she would be. Her auburn hair was going gray around the temple. From the emerald-green suit she wore, he could see that she had kept her figure. She moved with the confident, self-satisfied grace that comes from doing what you've always wanted to do. No wonder Andrew Carlisle had hated Diana Ladd Walker's guts. So did Mitch.
A few minutes after disappearing into the house she reemerged, dressed in work clothes-jeans, a T-shirt, and hat and bringing her husband something cold to drink.
How touching,the watcher on the mountain thought. How sweet! How stupid!
And then, while Brandon and Diana Walker were busy with the wood, the sweet little morsel who was destined to be dessert rode up on her mountain bike. Lani. The three unsuspecting people talked together for several minutes before the girl went inside. Not long after that, toward sunset, Brandon and Diana went inside as well.
In the last three weeks Mitch Johnson had read Shadow of Death from cover to cover three different times, gleaning new bits of information with each repetition. Long before he read the book, Andy had told him that the child Diana and Brandon Walker had adopted was an Indian. What Mitch hadn't suspected until he saw Lani in the yard and sailing past him on her bicycle was how beautiful she would be.
That was all right. The more beautiful, the better. The more Brandon and Diana Walker loved their daughter, the more losing her would hurt them. After all, Mikey had been an angelic-faced cherub when Mitch went away to prison.
'What's the worst thing about being in prison?' Andy had asked one time early on, shortly after Mitch Johnson had been moved into the same cell.
Mitch didn't have to think before he answered. 'Losing my son,' he had said at once. 'Losing Mikey.'
His wife had raised so much hell that Mitch had finally been forced to sign away his parental rights, clearing the way for Mikey to be adopted by Larry Wraike, Lori Kiser Johnson's second husband.
'So that's what we have to do then,' Andy had said determinedly.
This was long before Mitch Johnson had taken Andrew Carlisle's single-minded plan and made it his own. The conversation had occurred at a time when the possibility of Mitch's being released from prison seemed so remote as to be nothing more than a fairy tale.
'What is it we have to do?' he had asked.
'Leave Brandon Walker childless,' Andy had answered. 'The same way he left you. My understanding is that one of his sons is missing and presumed dead. That means he has three children left-a natural son, a stepson, and an adopted daughter. So whatever we do we'll have to be sure to take care of all three.'
'How?' Mitch had asked.
'I'm not certain at the moment, Mr. Johnson,' Andy responded. 'But we're both quite smart, and we have plenty of time to establish a plan of attack. I'm sure we'll be able to come up with something appropriately elegant.'
For eighteen years-the whole time Mitch was in prison-he sent Mikey birthday cards. Every year the envelopes had been returned unopened.
Mitch Johnson had saved those cards, every single one of them. To his way of thinking, they were only part of
