Books 1-4

The Grave Man

Death Sung Softly

Love and War

Framed

David Archer

www.david archerbooks.com

Sam Prichard Boxed Set Copyright © 2015 by David Archer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

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BOOK I

1

Going to the office wasn't as pleasant lately, Sam thought, as he made his way through the back entry to the detectives' division. There weren't so many people there that day, and it seemed like a lot of them were avoiding the place, just staying away as much as they could. He could understand that.

After almost ten years as a Denver cop, Sam was sick of seeing what humanity was really capable of. He had grown up reading cop stories, always seeing how the cops would save the day, watching them rescue the innocent and punish the guilty every week on TV, until he finally knew that he had to be one himself. After a short stint in the Army that never even got him out of the country, he'd come home and applied for the academy. He'd been accepted, and that was the start of an illustrious career.

Now, it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the mornings, make himself come in and see what new horrors he'd have to deal with. The past four months he'd been on loan to the DEA, and they'd made some big drug busts, shut down some of the most evil purveyors of sin and death that ever lived, but they were like the mythical hydra—as soon as you cut off one of its heads, three more grew back to take its place.

Sam wanted to stop cutting off heads and find the creature's heart, but there was almost no evidence as to where that heart might be. They knew there was something big behind the drug operations in the city, but it was so well organized and so carefully designed that no one seemed to have any idea where or how to find it.

His cell rang as he sat down at his desk, and he saw his partner's number. Dan Jacobs was already out on his station, watching one of the dealers they'd identified the day before.

“Yo,” Sam answered.

“Sam, it's Dan. I been thinkin', and it seems to me that we might be lookin' in the wrong direction, y'know?”

Sam blinked a couple of times. “Danny, I've been awake for about fifteen minutes, and haven't even opened my Starbuck's yet. What the heck are you talkin' about?”

“I'm sayin', maybe we're goin' about this all the wrong way, tryin' to find dealers and trail 'em, follow the tracks up the ladder. There's something about this whole setup that smacks of serious organization, something big enough to hide in plain sight, know what I mean? If it's that well laid out, we can follow minions all day long, we're never gonna find the top guy, because they don’t ever see the top guys.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, you're probably right,” he said, “but unless you got a crystal ball lead on where else to go, I don’t know what good it's doin' us. Where else we gonna find any leads at all? Got a clue, there?”

“Maybe,” Dan said. “We've been tailing a lot of these clowns the past few weeks, right? Have you noticed one thing they all do the same?”

Sam thought about it, but nothing jumped out at him. He looked at it from a couple of different angles, then shook his head. Into the phone, he said, “Nope. So, what is it?”

“Facebook. No matter what else they're doin', these bastards never miss checking in on Facebook every day, several times a day. They go on, look at what people are sayin' on their pages, sometimes they answer and sometimes they don't, and then they go back to their drug dealin' ways.”

Sam rubbed his temple. “Dan, everyone does that. Everyone on freakin' earth is on Facebook, and always checkin' it out. That's just part of modern livin', old buddy!”

“I know, I know, but hear me out. The only time they ever go make a drop or get money is right after they're on Facebook. I think maybe the stuff that's being said on there is some sort of code or somethin', a way to let 'em know when and where, y'know?”

Sam's phone beeped. It was their boss, Agent Carlson. “Dan, I got Carlson beepin' in, lemme call you back.” He hit the button to switch calls before his partner could answer. “Prichard,” he said.

“Sam, we got a hit on the north side crew; they got a big load in, overnight, and they're cuttin' it out today. I'm pulling everyone in, we're gonna take 'em down. Where's Dan at?”

“He's on a stakeout, watchin' Pink Dog and his crew. Want me to bring him along?”

“Yeah, get him. Meet us at the back of the AT&T building downtown, by their freight entrance. We're staging there. Can you make it in twenty?”

Sam checked his phone, thinking about how no one bothered to use watches, anymore. “Yeah, we'll be there. Later.”

He hung up and dialed Dan back, told him where to go, and hung up again, grabbing his coffee and rushing back out to his car. The AT&T Building was downtown, which meant the raid was going to be in a high-traffic area. That was never good, and Sam got that nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that he often got when things were likely to go wrong. He'd never come to the point of thinking of it as a predictor, but he'd felt it before, when things went way out of control, so it made him nervous and cautious. If something bad was going to happen, he wanted to do everything in his power to make sure it didn't happen to him or his partner!

He made his way across town quickly, but without turning on his Christmas lights. Whoever they were about to hit would certainly be listening to scanners and checking traffic reports, so any mention of a police car moving toward them with lights on would spook them. The idea in these cases was to avoid notice, catch them completely off guard, so that no one had any chance to destroy or tamper with evidence.

That was the big problem with drug raids, he thought. You never knew who on the inside of any gang might have connections on the force, and it wasn't uncommon for a cop to accidentally let slip something that gave them a tip-off. Even worse were the times when the perp was a cop's kin, and got a quick warning by cell phone minutes before a bust. That happened far more often than anyone wanted to admit; it's not that the cop involved was actually dirty, it was just a last-ditch attempt to get a nephew or cousin to walk away from the criminal life before it was too late.

Problem was, those phone calls and tips sometimes got officers killed. How could any cop live with that? Geez, how could any person live with it? Knowing you got a cop killed just to save someone from what would probably be nothing more than a slap on the wrist would be an awfully heavy load of guilt to bear.

Sam didn't have any nephews or cousins, and wouldn't tip one off anyway. His attitude was that if you made your bed, you had to lie in it, so if someone close to him got jammed up, that was their problem. Sure, if it was someone who might have a chance of coming out and going straight, he might stand up for them at sentencing, or something like that, but he'd never risk letting a perp know what was going down. He'd let his own mother get busted before he'd do that.

Good thing Mom wasn't into drugs, wasn't it?

Sam didn't have anyone he was that close to. His dad had died when he was a teenager, leaving a lot of weight on some young shoulders, but Sam had done his best to hold the rest of the family together. His mom was managing, working as a real estate agent for one of the better companies, but the market was slow, so she was lucky she was even earning a living. Now and then she'd get a little behind on some bills, and Sam would help out.

His sister Carrie was out in California somewhere, trying to become an actress. He didn't hear from her except maybe at Christmastime, and once in a blue moon when she also needed to borrow a few bucks. He always sent it, because that's what big brothers do, and what else did he have to spend any money on?

He'd been married, once, back when he was young and new on the force and thought a cop could have a family life. Jeanie was beautiful and sexy, and thought that the young cop who had pulled her over for a broken taillight was the hottest thing she'd ever seen, so she'd scribbled her phone number on the back of the warning ticket he gave her and handed it back to him. He'd called her the next day and they'd dated for four months, then married in a surprise elopement and bought a house through his mom two weeks later.

The house was awesome, with a big yard, a two-car garage and a decent-sized pool in the back. There were four bedrooms, for all the kids they planned to have, with one downstairs and three upstairs, and three bathrooms so no one would ever have to dance outside a bathroom door for too long. It was a wonderful house, and he looked forward to the day it would have kids running through it.

He was doing a lot of double shifts back then, saving up money so they could pay for the house they'd bought, and Jeanie said she understood and was proud of him. She lasted less than ten months before the long hours finally got to her, and he came home to find her packed and gone to her mother's house in Tampa, with a note explaining that she'd “sort of met someone.” She filed for divorce, and since they hadn’t had any kids yet and she didn't want anything from him, he didn't fight it. He kept the house, even though it was way too big for him all by himself, so he just lived on the first floor.

His only hobby was in his garage; during one case, a drug dealer was busted hauling a quarter-million bucks worth of meth and coke in a 1969 Corvette Stingray, and his vehicle was seized. The car was damaged during the bust, so Sam watched, and when it came up for auction, he bid on it and won, and was gradually rebuilding it. It was actually close to being finished, but Sam was always looking for one more thing to fix, afraid of not having even the car to occupy his lonely days when there was nothing left to do to it.

Okay, he told himself, enough Memory Lane crap. Let's get back to reality!

The AT&T Building was looming ahead, and he wheeled the big Dodge Charger squad car into the service and delivery driveway. He saw the staging ahead, with six DEA blackouts—the big black SUVs the agency used—and a SWAT van from the Denver PD. Parking out of the way, he got out and grabbed his vest and gear from the trunk before walking over to where Carlson stood.

“So what have we got?” he asked, and Carlson frowned up at him. His DEA boss stood about five foot eight, and was a classic case of “little man syndrome” if Sam had ever seen one.

“We've got about forty perps in a small warehouse, with somewhere between fifteen and twenty mil in pot and cocaine they're divvying up. Word is this is a new deal between some of the street gangs, that they're splitting up the city into territories and working together to run all the dope.”

Sam shrugged. “Okay, so we take 'em down today, they'll be back with another load somewhere else tomorrow. Hell, half the assholes we arrest today will be back out before then, and workin' with the next new batch by morning.”

Carlson leaned back and looked at him, as Dan Jacobs walked up from his own car. “So you think we should just leave 'em alone and let 'em keep pushing this crap on the streets? The more we take away from them, the more they gotta spend to get it back. If we can hurt them economically, then we got a chance of slowing this stuff down, getting it off the streets and away from our kids.”

“Hey, I'm not arguin', boss, you're preachin' to the choir! I just wish the courts would work with us, instead of against us! If we could keep some of these creeps locked up, that would slow the operations down, too.”

Dan laughed. “Save it for the next election and run for office, why don't you? That's the only way you'll ever get that song and dance out there.”

Sam glared at him. “Excuse me, sir, I ain't no politician! I prefer to be honest and work for my livin'!”

Carlson growled, “Okay, knock off the funnies. Let's group up. You guys will be with Matheny's group, going in the front door. The others will be crashing the back and side doors, and SWAT's here to back us up if needed.” He led the way to where the rest of the agents and officers were standing around, already geared up. “All right, we're about to go. Remember, we don't want any grandstanding. This is a sweep, plain and simple; we're going in to round 'em up and take their goodies, and that's it. No heroics, and hopefully they won't be trying any, either! Everyone ready?”

There was an answering chorus of “Hoo-Rah!” and Sam fought back the urge to laugh; not one of these guys had ever been a Marine, he was sure, but they did love to play tough. He nudged Dan, beside him.

“I'm so glad I've got you on my flank,” he said softly. “I wouldn't trust one of those yahoos with my dog's life, and I ain't even got a dog.”

“Yeah, well, you just remember that while I've got your back, you're the yahoo who's got mine! Let's get both of us in there and out alive, deal?”

“Deal!” Sam said, and they bumped elbows as they got into the back of one of the blackouts.

The trucks bounced them around as they pulled out of the lot, and Sam thought of the way they showed scenes like this in movies, with special vehicles where cops who looked more like soldiers were lined along the wall of something like a Hummer, with special armor and helmets protecting them, and weapons that looked like something from the future bristling everywhere. He stifled a laugh, fighting it down from that nervousness in his gut. Last thing he needed at that moment was someone thinking he was losing it.

When the action began, it was all at once. The trucks slid to a stop, each at it's pre-designated spot, and the men and women inside poured out. They ran to position at the door, four on each side, as the ram slammed into the doorknob and bashed it open, and then all of them were inside, weapons ready, screaming, “Federal Agents, get on the ground!”

The building was an open warehouse design, with only a few pillars holding up the ceiling, and they could all see the activity going on out on the floor. There were several tables set up, and multiple piles of bricks of marijuana and bags of white powder. Each table held a mix of the two, and the mixes were being plastic wrapped together into big bundles. The people working looked up as the cops and agents entered, but not one of them made a move to duck until more cops came pouring in through other doors, all screaming the same things.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose, as half a dozen of the workers reached for handguns and began firing wildly around at any of the cops they could see. There was the staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire, and instantly, everything seemed to go into slow motion for Sam. He saw one of the officer's he'd worked with go down with a bullet to his head, and the shooter who got him took a dozen rounds that turned him into hamburger. Another shooter fired off several shots, and another cop went down, a woman, the left side of her face apparently gone, and Sam thought about the three kids she was so proud of, but there wasn't any time for that, so he turned to the shooter and blew him away.

Dan let out a strangled scream and Sam spun to see why; his partner was down, holding his side. The shooter had come from behind them, and Sam fired without even thinking as the guy aimed at Dan again and readied another squeeze on the trigger. The shooter went down in a spray of blood and brains, and Sam started toward Dan, but then a semi-truck slammed into him and he was thrown down onto the concrete floor, his head hitting it hard. He was stunned, and the noises around him seemed muffled, suddenly, like he had ducked underwater.

He knew it hadn't been a truck that got him; he knew it was bullets, and probably several of them. He  was hit, and while all he could feel was a dull ache at the moment, he knew it was probably bad, and so he decided to take as many of these assholes with him as he could, just to even out the score. He rolled over to find a target, but everything was already over, and all the remaining perps were down with their hands on their heads. There were four of them over to the side, obviously dead, and he saw people working on his comrades who'd gone down.

Johnson, that was the name of the woman, and he saw enough to know that she wasn't dead. She was holding something against her own face, so maybe the wound was only bloody, and not as deadly as it had looked. One of the male officers who went down had been covered by a jacket, his face no longer visible at all, so Sam knew he was gone. He wasn't sure who it was, and that made him wonder if anyone knew he and Dan had been hit.

Dan—he rolled back to find his partner, and saw him lying there not five feet away. He was alive, and even threw a smile at Sam, but it took a second to register what he was saying.

“...we got 'em, Sam, we got 'em, we got the bastards who got us! I shot yours, and you got mine, ain't that cool?”

Sam managed a smile and gave a thumbs up, but he couldn't get his head to work well enough to speak. He tried to raise it and look around, but something big and dark fell over him, and everything was gone.

* * * * *

When the lights came up again, Sam thought he must have died, because this much white must be Heaven. He'd always known he was good with the Lord, ever since that church camp when he was twelve, and even though he'd made a few mistakes along the way, he was still sure of his ticket to the Pearly Gates. He was glad he'd never let himself get like so many others who tossed it off, pretended they cared about God but didn't really even believe in him. Sam believed. He'd held on to that faith, and now that he'd bought the farm, here he was, in what had to be Heaven, because no place on earth could ever look so clean!

A nurse walked in and saw that he was awake, and the whole fantasy of Heaven popped like a bubble. “Aw, crap,” he said, and the nurse raised her eyebrows.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

Sam shook his head. “Sorry about that,” he said, “it had nothing to do with you. It was just I thought for a minute I'd got killed and gone to Heaven, and I was kinda enjoying the idea. Then you came in and I realized I was still alive and stuck in this mess.”

The nurse scowled. “Well, forgive me for ruining your day, Mr. Prichard, but it's good to see you awake, anyhow. The doctor wanted to know as soon as you woke up, so I'll go call him now.” She turned and flounced out the door.

“Bout damn time you woke up,” he heard from over to his left, and he looked over to see Dan there in another bed. “I been layin' here a day and a half waitin' for you to decide if you was gonna live or not. Glad you decided to stick it out!”

Sam smiled at his partner, and felt a sharp pain in his right hip as he rolled his head to look closer at him. “Ow,” he said, and then again, “Ow! How bad you get hit, Danny?”

“Not terrible, just took one in the side that didn't even manage to hit anything important. Hurts like hell, though.”

Sam looked at the bracelet on his right wrist, but it said nothing about what might be wrong with him. He felt his hip, and realized that there was an awful lot of gauze there, and it was terribly numb. “What happened to me?” he asked, but Dan shrugged his shoulders.

“I dunno,” he said. “Docs won't tell me squat, on account of you never makin' an honest woman outta me.”

Sam's eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Because we ain't married, or otherwise related, the docs say I got no right to know how bad you got hit, and wouldn't tell me zilch. I tried to explain that your partner is closer than a wife, but they didn't buy it.”

“Good,” Sam said, “I don't buy that crap either. If you were closer than a wife, you'd be over doin' my dishes.”

“Well, well, Mr. Prichard,” came another voice, and Sam turned to see a doctor walk in. “How are you feeling today?”

“I ain't worth a crap!” Sam answered. “I'm tryin' to find out how bad a shape I'm in, so if you're not the guy who can tell me, go find him, okay?”

The doctor smiled. “I'm Doctor Schmidt, and I'm definitely the guy,” he said, “so relax and stop picking on my nurses.” He picked up a clipboard that was hanging on the foot of the bed and glanced through the top couple of pages.

Sam shifted his position, and said, “Ow!” The doctor looked up and smiled.

“Well, that tells me that you know where you got shot, anyway. Your right hip was hit three times, all of them deflected down into it from your bulletproof vest. The right acetabulum, the socket that your thighbone's ball end fits into, was shattered, and we had to go in and basically put it all back together with several tubes of superglue and a handful of screws. You're going to be in a wheelchair for a while, because the glue and screws we put in won't stand up to a lot of walking around, and we don't want to put a cast on you at this point.”

Sam was stunned. “A wheelchair? A wheelchair? What kinda cop you know goes around in a wheelchair? How long will I be outta work, Doc?” The doctor suddenly looked uncomfortable, and Sam sensed what was coming. “What?” he demanded. “What is it you ain't told me yet?”

“Mr. Prichard,” Doctor Schmidt began, “what you need to understand is that this is something that is beyond any degree of medical skill to repair...”

Sam held up a hand to stop him. “Just hold it,” he said, “just hold it. I get the feeling you're about to say something I don't wanna hear, and I want to take a minute and get myself ready, okay? You here with me, Danny?”

“Right here, Sam, I'm right here.”

Sam closed his eyes tightly for a couple of seconds, and then forced himself to take a deep breath and relax. He opened his eyes again and looked at Doctor Schmidt.

“Okay, go ahead, then,” he said.

Doctor Schmidt looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Mr. Prichard, the degree of damage to your acetabulum means that you will never walk normally again. Your right hip will have very limited range of motion, and simple things like normal running and jogging will be impossible to you. You will have difficulty with stairs, and will find ramps easier to handle. You will almost certainly need a cane a good part of the time, and that's even after physical therapy that will probably take a year or more. I'm afraid there is no possibility that you'll ever be able to return to active police work.”

Sam lay there for a long moment without saying a word, then turned to look at Dan Jacobs. “You hear this crap?” he asked, and Dan nodded.

“I heard it, Sammy.”

The two old friends looked at one another for a long time, and then Sam closed his eyes. The doctor left the room after a few moments more, and Dan lay there in silence, wondering how his friend was going to get through this one.

When morning came, Sam woke to find a whole new world being thrown at him. No sooner than breakfast was over, he was suddenly invaded by four people from HR, who had all kinds of forms for him to sign.

“What we're doing,” said the guy in the fanciest suit, “is giving you full medical retirement, in accordance with the union's policies and procedures. That means that you'll get seventy-five percent of your current income for life, with bi-annual cost-of-living raises, and full medical coverage from now on, as well. We need you to understand that this is not disability income, and you may apply for state or federal disability income if you wish, but you would probably be denied because of your medical retirement income, so there isn't a lot of point.”

The lone woman in the group shoved the suit aside and got right in Sam's face, which wouldn't have been such a bad thing under other circumstances, since she was cute. “Now, we also need you to understand that you have to comply with the instructions of your physician, and that any failure to comply, such as refusal of medications or treatments, refusal of surgery or physical therapy, and similar issues, can result in the loss of your medical retirement certification and income, including your medical insurance coverage and...”

The four of them droned on for quite a while, but Sam caught the gist of it. As long as he cooperated and did what the nice doctors wanted him to do, he'd get paid to stay home and take it easy. Since he couldn't be a cop anymore, that was fine with him; maybe he could finally get the Corvette out and drive it. It would be months before he was out of the wheelchair anyway.

The suits also told him that they were paying for a nice new powered wheelchair, and would have someone build a ramp at his house, leading up to his front porch. The doors and such were already wide enough, and since he only lived on the bottom floor, it was no big deal. He'd manage, and when he was inside and no one could see him, he and that wheelchair wouldn't need to be such buddies all the time, anyway; what the docs didn't know wouldn't hurt Sam, he figured.

The only bad part of all of this was that he could no longer be a cop, which was all he'd ever wanted to be. He'd given most of his life to it in one way or another, even down to losing his wife over the job; if the truth were to be told, he didn't work the double shifts as much for the money as for the love of the job, so he could only blame himself for Jeanie finding another set of arms to roll around in.

Without being a cop, Sam Prichard wasn't really all that sure who he was. He was told that he'd have to go to a therapy group once a week, some deal about how to cope when you're no longer on the force, so he figured he could let his feelings out there, some. He knew some guys didn't like to talk at those shindigs, but he wasn't gonna be one of them. He was losing a big part of his identity, and he needed help to cope with that, so he would take advantage of whatever was offered.

He was released from the hospital a little more than a week after being admitted and rushed into surgery, and he was surprised when Dan Jacobs and Agent Carlson were the ones to show up and drive him home. Dan would be on desk duty for another week or so, but Carlson had not been hurt; Sam was actually glad to see the little butthole.

“You ready to stop pretending to be hurt and get off your lazy rear end?” Carlson asked.

“Ready as I'm gonna be, I guess. Good of you guys to come help the hospital toss me out on my ear!”

Dan grinned. “Yeah, isn't it? But then, what are friends for?”

They helped him into the car, and drove him to his house. The new powered chair had been delivered there, and was waiting to be assembled in his garage, courtesy of his mom, who had met the truck there and opened the garage door so they could put it inside.

They opened the garage to get it out, but there was a hang-up. “The dang thing's still in the box, Ben,” Dan said. “What good is that gonna do you?”

Carlson, surprising Sam once again, pointed to the big toolboxes that stood over by the Vette. “I bet there's instructions,” he said. Sam and Dan looked at him like he'd grown a third ear. “What?” he shot back. “Look, maybe we're not Santa's elves, but we're not stupid, either! We can put it together, don't you think? What do you say, Jacobs, you in?”

Sam laughed at the look on Dan's face. “I'll tell you what,” he said. “If you guys'll stick around and help me get Franken Wheelie all put together, I'll order in pizza and a twelve pack o' beer. Deal?”

The guys accepted his offer, and the beast was together and working an hour later. That prompted a goofy session in which they each took turns driving it around the garage and the yard. That ran down the not-yet-fully charged battery, so by the time they were ready to take it inside the house, they had to push it, and then Sam had to plug it into the wall and let it charge overnight. Luckily, there was an outlet right next to his couch, which is where he ended up sleeping.

He could walk short distances with a cane, but the docs insisted he do so as little as possible. They didn't have to say it too often, because it hurt like hell every time he tried, and since he'd be doing a lot of it during physical therapy, he thought he'd save that pain for those days. Still, it meant he could get to the bathroom without “the Monster,” as he called the powered chair, and that was a good thing. Big mother wouldn't even fit through the bathroom door!

Once he was home, things began to settle in for him. He had some money put back, so he bought himself a used minivan, an old Chevy Astro, and had a ramp built into the back end of it so he could putt right inside and then get into the driver's seat and go wherever he needed to go. The ramp would fold down to let him get in and out, and fold up so he could close the doors and drive, so it was a pretty good setup. Of course, the only places he ever went were to physical therapy and group sessions, the grocery store, the parts store, and out to eat now and then.

After three months, the docs said he could give up the wheelchair and start walking around with the cane. It still hurt, but like they said, the pain was a sign that he was getting stronger and making improvement, so he parked the electric scooter in the garage and went to walking, He still liked the van, though; for some reason, sitting up higher in it was easier than getting in and out of a car would be, so he didn't trade it off like he'd planned.

At six months, he was starting to walk around a bit without the cane, and that's when he broke down and bought himself a motorcycle. His legs were strong enough to hold him up at stoplights, and it was something he'd always enjoyed but never felt he had time for, so this was his chance. It felt good, and he noticed that he was even being checked out by some girls now and then.

His bike wasn't a Harley, but that didn't seem to matter to the girls. His old Honda Shadow, a sort of “Harley wannabe,” got some attention as he rode it around town, and now and then, he'd even get to talk to a girl at a stop light. Once, a girl pulled up beside him and said absolutely nothing, but hurriedly dug out a piece of paper and scribbled a number on it. She handed it to him, held her hand to her face as if it were a phone and mouthed the words, “Call me!” as she drove away.

You sure don't get that on a powered wheelchair, he said to himself. Should have bought a motorcycle sooner!

He tucked the number into his shirt pocket, and found it later that evening when he was getting ready to shower. He looked at the name, Judy, thinking about how long it had been since he'd even been on a date, then grabbed his phone and called.

“Hi,” he said when a feminine voice answered. “Is this Judy? You gave me your number today, and this is the first chance I've had to give you a—yes, on the motorcycle, that was me, yeah. Well, I would have called sooner, but I've been pretty busy today. What do I do? Well, I, um, I'm a retired cop, but I'm still called in sometimes as a, as a consultant! When they have a big case, y'know, sometimes I get called in to give my opinion about certain parts of it. Why am I retired? Oh, that's because I got shot a while back, and they gave me a medical retirement. I've got a bad leg, so I can't run like you have to when you take the police physical and such. Yeah, it's rough, but I'm a survivor. Well, I was thinking that if you wanted to, we could maybe go for a ride this Saturday? I love to ride up into the mountains, just get some clear mountain air, y'know? You would? That'd be great, Judy! Sure, I can pick you up there! Ten AM, that's perfect! I'll see you then!”

Saturday morning saw Sam out on the bike a little before ten, spare helmet strapped onto the sissy bar and ready to go out with a woman for the first time in more than three years. He climbed on and rode to Judy's house, over on the west end of Aurora. She saw him ride up and came running out, wearing a nice light leather jacket and some of the tightest jeans he'd ever seen spray painted onto a woman!

“Hi, Judy,” he said, and she rushed up and kissed him full on the mouth. “Oh,” she said, “I have been going nuts waiting for you to get here! Do you know how long it's been since I was on a motorcycle? Oh, god, I think it's been at least five years, and that is just too long! I've been dying to get back on one for so long!”

She climbed on, and they took off, riding up 225 until it hit I-70, then following the Interstate west into the foothills of the Rockies. They rode for about four hours, and stopped at Aspen for lunch, visiting the historic Woody Creek Tavern for their famous tilapia tacos. Sam was ready to sit and rest a bit, his hip giving him fits for spending so much time on the bike—he hadn't really ridden into the mountains before—but Judy was ready to go again as soon as lunch was over.

Sam stalled as long as he could, then forced himself to smile as he got the bike fired up again. When he got her back home and dropped her off, Judy invited him to come in and stay a while, but he begged off and said he'd call her the next day.

He never called her again.

Another woman he met on the bike was Kathy, a short blonde who said she was a little afraid of motorcycles, but that she did like to have a thrill, now and then. He made a date with her for one evening that weekend, and she nervously climbed on and clung to him for half an hour as he cruised her around the city. She laughed in his ear at how much fun it was, and when he offered to buy her dinner, she asked if they could just go to one of the outdoor eateries, so he chose the Appaloosa Grill, one of the more refined patio dining experiences in Denver. She sat and talked with him for a couple of hours, and Sam was actually beginning to think he might want to date her again. He said so, and that was when she told him that she really enjoyed the ride, but she just didn't feel a connection to him, that going out with him felt more like hanging out with a brother than going on a date. He smiled and told her he understood, and took her home as soon as he got the chance.

He came to the conclusion that motorcycle dates weren't all they were cracked up to be, and stopped paying a lot of attention to the girls who flirted when he was on two wheels.

Sam was settled into the life of the medically retired cop. He tinkered with his car, tinkered with his bike, watched a lot of TV and Netflix, and tried not to think too much or too often about what Dan was doing, or his old team. Dan had come by a few times, but nobody wants to hang out with the guy who has cancer, and being forced into retirement was like having the big C to cops who were still on active duty. Sam couldn't blame him for not coming by anymore. He'd even stopped calling, finally, and Sam was sort of glad. It was too hard to find things to talk about that weren't connected to the old days.

He'd given up on all of those past hopes and dreams. That was why it was such a shock when he got dragged back into cop work once again.

2

The big Honda thumped underneath him and made him feel alive, sometimes, and he knew that his neighbors all watched as he rode it in and out of his garage. Some of the women flirted a bit, but he'd let it be known that he didn't flirt with his neighbors’ wives, and so they made sure it was all in fun, and always right in front of their husbands.

He knew most of the neighbors, lately, because when the news about his shooting had gotten out, a lot of them had come over to tell him that they appreciated his service, and to offer any help he might need. He'd swallowed his pride and thanked them, even though offers of help only reminded him that he might need it, now, and that hurt worse than anything.

After a while, though, it was nice to be able to wave hello and goodbye to neighbors who were more than just a face you recognized as someone on your street, or to stop and talk to someone while he was mowing his grass. The first time he’d heard mowers outside his own window and looked out to see two of his neighbors out there, one on a mower and another running a weed-eater along his fence and walkways, it had brought him to tears.

He'd gone out and told them how much he appreciated it, and pointed out that he'd been planning to hire someone to do it, but they told him that's what neighbors were for. That led to a talk about his Corvette, which led to Sam's mechanical skills helping one of them—Jim Mitchell—put new brakes on his wife's car. Before long, there was a neighborhood swap system going on, and Sam never worried about his lawn again.

Everyone in the neighborhood could do something that someone else would need at one time or another, and so it became a kind of “pay it forward” situation. When someone needed mechanical work, Sam was glad to help out with his tools and knowledge, and when he needed some electrical work done, he found that the guy three doors down was a professional electrician, and that's whose rear axle Sam had fixed two weeks earlier. What goes around comes around, they say, and it was certainly working that way for Sam and his neighbors.

It had been a year since the shooting. Sam had adjusted well, so well that he'd graduated from his emotional support group and been released from physical therapy. He still used the cane a lot, but he could manage to go without it at times, and he'd even had a few more dates lately, though still not any he'd want to ask out again. Life was looking up a bit, and he was feeling like everything was alright, sitting on his front porch and watching the neighbors go past on their ways to work or visits or church or wherever they might be going.

He saw the lady walking up the street from a block away but didn't know who she was, so when she turned into his driveway and walked toward him, he was a little surprised. She came right to the edge of the first step, and stopped there.

“Are you Mr. Sam?” she asked.

She was a small woman who appeared to be in her late forties, and the lines in her face said she'd had her share of grief and heartaches. He smiled and motioned for her to come on up and take the other chair.

“That's me,” he said. “How can I help you?” He suspected that she might have a problem with her car, and he was always ready to help out his neighbors. The “swap thing,” as he called it, had given him a lot of purpose, and he enjoyed it.

The lady came up and sat beside him, but she didn't say anything for a moment. When she did, she didn't look up at him, and spoke softly, like she was trying to say a prayer but was a little bit afraid someone would overhear it and be angry.

“My granddaughter, she's gone missing, and the police say they can't help me. They say there's too much other stuff they have to do, so they can't look for a missing little girl.”

Sam knew what she was saying, even if she didn't. It wasn't that the police weren't interested, it was that they simply did not have the manpower to devote to every case that came along. If the child had been missing for less than a day, they wouldn't even take a report; if she'd been missing more than three days, they would assume she's either a runaway or she's dead. That was just how things went, and some cops were so callous that they didn't even bother to try to explain.

“What's your name?” Sam asked.

“I'm Sandy Ward, and my granddaughter is Cassie Rice. She's only twelve, Mr. Sam, and she didn't come home the other day after she went to visit with her daddy. He says he dropped her off, but nobody saw him, and she never came home.” She finally raised her eyes to meet his. “Mr. Donaldson, down there at the end of the block, he said you used to be a policeman, and maybe you'd know how to find her.”

Sam felt his heart breaking for the lady, but the words that rose to his lips were only, “I wish I could help, Mrs. Ward.” As soon as he said them, he regretted it, because he knew that she'd take it as a sign that he didn’t care, either, and if there was one thing Sam had always cared about, it was kids, but what could he do? He wasn't a cop anymore; he didn't have any way to help her.

She nodded, and looked back down at the floor. “I didn't figure you could,” she said, “but he said I should ask, so I thought I would. I mean, you never know, right? Maybe there'd be something you could do, or maybe you'd know somebody who could. I had to try, right?” She got to her feet, and started down the steps. “Thank you, anyhow,” she said, and Sam could almost hear the tears trying to fall as she spoke.

“Mrs. Ward,” he said, “please come back. Maybe there is something I can do.”

Once again, as soon as the words left his lips he wanted to kick himself, but it was too late. When she turned around, there was that faint glimmer of hope in her face, and there was no way he could bring himself to destroy it. He motioned for her to take the other seat again, and she did so, her eyes wide.

“Mrs. Ward, I used to be a police detective, and I even worked the department that looks for missing kids for a while, so I know the basics of what to do. The problem is that I don't have all the connections I used to have, and so if I go looking for Cassie, it's not gonna be like having the real police looking for her, you understand? Now, there's a chance I can find her, but I can't make any promises; if you can accept that, then I'm willing to give it a try, okay?”

Mrs. Ward nodded her head. “Mr. Sam, I can accept that, because as it is right now, no one is willing to do anything. I know you can't make any guarantees, but I can guarantee that if no one goes looking at all, then there's no way she'll ever be found, am I right?”

Sam smiled. “You're right. So tell me all about Cassie and how she came to be missing.”

“Cassie lives with me, since her mama got messed up on meth a few years ago, and her daddy gets her on weekends, even though he's in a lot of trouble himself. He hasn't gone to prison yet, though, so he still gets his parental rights, even though my daughter got hers taken away for the same charges he's facing. That just isn't right, but oh well. Not anything I can do about that. Anyway, Allen, Cassie's daddy, he came over five days ago to pick her up, late like always, but she didn't come back home that night like she was supposed to. I called him that night and asked him where she was, and he started yellin' at me, said he dropped her off right when he was supposed to, and if I lost her that was my own fault.” She sniffled. “Mr. Sam, I know down in my heart that he didn't bring her back, and I know he's done something with her, but I don't think she's dead. I think if she was dead, he'd have been long gone by then, cause he's a coward.”

“Sounds about right,” Sam said. “His name is Allen Rice?”

“Allen Rice, yes sir,” she answered. “He doesn't have a job, but he's always got money, and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out, not in this day and age. Cassie's told me herself that he's made her take packages and give them to people in exchange for money, but the court says I still have to let him take her for a visit every other Saturday.”

Sam took out his phone and dialed a number from memory. “Dan? Listen, it's Sam.”

“Hey, Sam,” Dan said with a genuine smile in his voice. “Been a long time since you called, you doin' all right?”

Sam grinned. “Yeah, long time, that's true, and I'm doin' fair. Listen, Danny, I've got a small favor to ask, okay? You ever hear of a dealer, probably small time, name of Allen Rice?”

“Hmm, lemme see. What else you got on him? White or black?”

Sam covered the phone and turned to Mrs. Ward. “Allen's a white guy, right?” She nodded and he spoke into the phone again. “Yeah, Caucasian, probably early thirties or thereabouts. Might be known to use his daughter as a delivery mule.”

“Hmm. I've got one Allen Rice in the database, and he's noted as using a little girl for parcel post. Lives on Princeton Drive, down in old town. Want me to see what else I can dig up on him?”

“Yeah, that sounds like my guy, so please do. The little girl's gone missing, and the grandma's a friend of mine, thought I'd see what I can dig up. I might call again if I need more info, is that okay? I don't wanna get you in trouble…”

“What trouble?” Dan asked. “I can talk to my old partner all I want to, and anyone don't like it can kiss my patootie!”

Sam laughed. “Okay, thanks man, you know I appreciate it! Later!”

He hung up the phone and turned to Mrs. Ward. “Okay, that was my old partner, and drugs is where we worked together. He knows Allen, and he'll get me some info on him. Meanwhile, can you get me a picture of Cassie, one I can hold onto?”

Mrs. Ward reached into a pocket of her jeans and took out a photo that she handed to him. “This is her,” she said. “This was only taken a couple of weeks ago.”

Sam took it, and saw a pretty little girl who was just at the stage of turning into a young adult. Cassie had honey-blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and the bare beginnings of a figure that would probably be driving boys crazy within a year. He tapped the picture on his hand and smiled at Mrs. Ward.

“Give me a day or so, and let me see if I can find anything. What's your number?” She gave it to him, and he put it into his phone to save it.

When she'd gone, Sam sat there for a long moment and thought about what he'd just agreed to do. With Dan's help, it was possible he could actually find out something about the child, but there were no guarantees. What if the worst-case scenario was true, and the child really was dead? There was no way to predict anything in police work, but he'd said he would try, so try he would.

His phone rang again a few minutes later, and he answered it instantly.

“Yeah?” he growled.

“Sam, it's Dan. I ran this guy through everything we got up here, and I may have something for you, if you can figure out how to use it. Remember I used to gripe all the time that some of these drug dealers were using Facebook? Well, there's a whole new website out there, and on the surface it's nothing, but there's a back end to it that seems to be how these guys are making their deals without leaving a trace. They're moving money in so many different ways that it's mind-boggling, too, and never leaving us anything to grab onto. We get little bits and pieces, but never any real info we can use to go after any of 'em, or shut 'em down.”

“Wow,” Sam said. “Sounds rough, but what's that got to do with my guy?”

“Well, it's a big 'if,' but if you can find a way into that network, you might find out what he's up to. From everything I can find, he's one of their people, working through this online network to sell his dope. Then all he does is drop it off, and he's done. The beauty of it is that even if we catch him, it's never with enough to make a difference; he's only got a small amount, and we can't even make a charge of 'possession with intent to deliver' stick. He never collects any money, so we can't get him for delivery of a controlled substance for sale, either. It's a nightmare.”

Sam thought about it for a moment. “What's the website?” Dan gave him the name, drugspot dot org, and he memorized it so he could look it up later. “Thanks, Buddy, I owe you one. Keep your ears open on the little girl, too, okay? Cassie Rice is her name. Anything you hear, I wanna hear.”

“You got it. You goin' into the private eye biz?” Dan asked.

Sam laughed. “No,” he said, and then thought about it. “Well—maybe.”

“Could be a good thing,” Dan said. “Just remember that if you go into it as a pro, then that makes me your consultant, and I get a fee! Deal?”

Sam laughed out loud. “You got it, Bud! Talk to you later!”

Sam was decent with a computer, and had a nice one all set up in his dining room, but he wasn't a hacker. He played around on the dealers' website for a couple of hours, but all he saw was a bunch of pages about prescription drugs, how they work, what their side effects were, and things along those lines. He began to think that maybe he should try to find someone who could do what he and law enforcement couldn't: get into the back door of this site, even if it wasn't quite legally.

He went to craigslist and posted an ad in Computer Gigs:

Wanted: Someone who can wear a Dragon Tattoo. If you know what that means, answer by email asap!

The reference was to the book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, of course, which was about a girl who was a computer hacker. Sam had heard an arrestee use that term once, about someone who had hacked into police computer networks: “that dude could wear a dragon tattoo!” Now, Sam needed someone who could fit that description.

He waited about three hours, but there was no response. It was getting close to dinnertime, and since he'd forgotten to set anything out, Sam thought he'd just go out to eat. Taco Bell tickled his fancy now and then, and the weather was nice, so he climbed onto the Shadow and road off to the nearest one, out near the Mall. He liked the outdoor tables there, and often went through the drive-through to place his order, then rode around and parked so he could eat at one of them. That's what he did that day.

He'd gotten his usual—five regular tacos and a coke—and sat down at his favorite table, when his phone chirped to tell him he had a text message. He checked it automatically, and then read it again, his food all but forgotten.

Why does an ex-cop on medical retirement want a hacker? ~Indie

Sam thought fast. Whoever this was had managed to get through the craigslist email redirect and find out his real name, then dug into his past and learned an awful lot in a short time. This was either a trap of some kind, or exactly the person he needed. He typed:

Working on a missing child case privately. Need some mad skills to help learn her fate.

He hit the send button, and then remembered the tacos. He ate while waiting to see if there would be another reply.

The phone chirped again, and he snatched it off the table.

We can talk. Are those tacos good? Buy me some? ~Indie

He was still squinting at the phone when the chair opposite was pulled out and someone sat down. He looked up and saw a short, pretty girl in her early twenties smiling back at him, phone in hand and a thick laptop case slung over her shoulder. She was around five feet tall, and her hair was multi-colored, dark underneath, but blonde on top. Combined with her big brown eyes, it was a strikingly pretty look, and when he let himself think it over, he changed that opinion from pretty to beautiful.

“I'm Indie,” she said.

Sam looked at her for a long moment, then glanced down at his phone and back to her face. “I gather you're hungry?”

“Starving. I hope you don't mind I asked, but I was watching you eat and it got to me. I'd get my own, but I'm sorta broke at the moment.”

Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills, chose a twenty and handed it to her. “Here. You've earned that just by showing up here. Go get your food and then tell me how you did that.”

Indie smiled and set her bag down next to Sam's chair, then hurried inside to order. She was back in four minutes, and sat down across from him again as he finished eating his last taco. She had four of her own and two burritos, with a large coke to wash it all down, and began eating furiously.

“I saw your ad, and sent a fake email to it with no data, but a packet that sent me a reply and then deleted the reply from your email client. That gave me your personal email address, so then I could Google you and get your name, which let me go digging for more info. I found where you got shot and lost your job as a cop, and that got me interested, so I looked deeper. I found your address and went and was gonna park down the road to watch you for a little bit, but then I saw you ride out, so I followed. When you started eating, I was hooked. So, what do you need a hacker for?”

Sam studied her for a moment. “Not so fast. If you’re that good, why are you broke? I thought hackers were always loaded with money.”

“Black hats are the ones who go after money. They're crooks. I'm not one of those. I'm more a gray hat; I'll do what I've gotta do to get done what I gotta get done, but I don't steal and I don't do this stuff for personal gain.”

“Hmph,” Sam said. “How do you make a living, then?”

She looked at him as if he were an idiot. “I get a job, like everyone else. Just happens I haven't been able to find one lately. Ran outta money last night, and I'll be outta gas soon. Is this a paying gig? If it is, and you’re really out to help a kid, then I'm in.”

Sam smiled. “It's a paying gig, and I'm really looking for a missing kid. Where do you live?”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Depends. Lost my apartment a couple months ago, so I've been doing the shelters. I'm supposed to go back to St. Mary's tonight. If I have to, if you need me close by or something, I can sleep in my car.” She pointed to an older Ford Taurus in the parking lot.

Sam sat there and thought for a moment. “What's your name?” he asked.

She looked at him oddly again. “Indie, I told you. That's my real name, or sort of; it's Indiana, Indiana Perkins. My mom named me after Indiana Jones, cause she said it shoulda been a girl's name. Mom was stoned a lot, when I was growing up.”

Without taking his eyes off her, Sam pulled out his phone and called Dan Jacobs again. “Dan, it's Sam again.”

“No kidding,” Dan said. “I'd never recognize your number!”

“Smart ass. You still at work?”

“When am I not? What do you need, Bud?”

“Tell me what you can find on a girl, Indiana Perkins, early twenties, five foot nothin', blonde and brown.”

“Gimme five,” Dan said, and the line went silent.

Indie was smiling at him. “Holy Geez, you're checking me out? You do realize that you won't find anything I don't want you to find, right?”

Sam smiled back. “So tell me what we're gonna find,” he said.

She shrugged again. “I went to MIT for IT, got a Bachelor's Degree, and been looking for a decent job for a year, now. No arrests ever, never been in any kind of trouble, and don't ever wanna be. That enough, or you want my shoe size?”

Sam grinned. “That'll do. Let's see if my partner can match it. You get enough to eat?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I'm gonna save the rest for later. Oh, here's your change!” She dug into a pocket and came out with the money.

“Keep it,” Sam said, waving it away. “You said you need gas, right?”

Indie smiled. “Thanks, man. Really.” She stuffed it back into her pocket.

Sam heard the phone come to life again. “Sam, still there?”

“I'm here, whatcha got?”

“Your girl is Indiana Marie Perkins, twenty-two, born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, but moved here to Denver with her mother when she was about ten. She did well in school, got a degree in Information Technology from MIT of all places, then came back here and went to work for Dairy Queen for a while. Guess it didn't work out; she's had a few little jobs since then, but nothing steady, and nothing in computers. Looks like she's a single mom, got a little girl of her own, no father around. No wants or warrants, she's clean as a whistle, but there's a note that she might be homeless and if she's seen, then we're supposed to notify Child Protection Services.”

“Thanks, Dan,” Sam said. “I appreciate it. She might be a help on this thing I'm working on, just wanted to be sure who I'm dealing with. Catch you later.”

“Okay. And by the way, I'm lookin' at her drivers' license photo—she's kinda cute. Go get 'em, tiger!”

Sam hung up and looked at Indie. “Okay, you were mostly right. The only thing you missed is that he found out about your little girl. Where's she at?”

Indie seemed to crumple in the chair. “I was kinda hopin' they wouldn't mention that,” she said. “She's actually asleep, over in the car.”

Sam nodded. “So you were saving the extra food for her, right?”

The girl sat there and said nothing for a moment, then a tear spilled out of one eye. “Look, it's not easy taking care of a kid when you can't even find a decent job, okay? I do the best I can, but sometimes—I won't say I haven't thought about how easy it'd be to jack someone's credit, y'know, get money the easy way, but I never have done that, not yet, anyway. With the food and the money you gave me, we can get through another day, and if you're really gonna pay on this gig, then maybe I can make it another week or so. C'mon, man, don't turn me in, please? All I want is to work and take care of my kid.”

Sam sat another moment and thought through what he was about to do, just trying to be sure it was what he wanted to do. He'd come to like his privacy, and he was about to throw it away.

“Here's the deal. I need your help, and you need a place to live. I've got a huge house with three extra bedrooms upstairs that have never even been used, and you've got a little girl you're gonna lose if the state finds out you're homeless. I think maybe we can solve each other's problem. Don't you?”

Indie looked at him for a long moment. “I've had offers like this before, man. I'll admit I'm pretty desperate, and you're not exactly ugly, but I'm not into anything really weird, got that? So, I mean, as long as you don't want anything kinky, then—well, maybe...”

Sam's eyes went wide and he held up both hands to stop her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're reading me all wrong, Indie! No strings attached, not anything like that! All I want is your help with this case I'm on, and if you want to stay after that, then we can talk about rent, or helping out around the place, something along those lines! I'm not the kind of guy to try to take advantage of a girl in a bad situation!”

The two of them played stare-down for a minute, but finally Indie blinked. “Seriously? No strings? Just a place to stay while we work on this together?”

Sam nodded. “I'll provide the room and board, and pay you on top for whatever your work is worth, you tell me. But let's get you and your baby off the street, okay?”

Indie smiled again. “She's not exactly a baby, she's almost four. Her name is Mackenzie—Kenzie for short—and I'll warn you, she's likely to be all over you. She's never had a father and tends to grab onto men, if they let her. Is that a problem?”

“Nah,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I like kids. And I've got a big TV in the living room, so she'll probably like that. The upstairs bedrooms—I set one up as a guest room, but the other two were supposed to be for kids eventually, back when I was married. There's not anything in them as far as furniture, so you and the little one will have to bunk together. I haven't been upstairs in probably two years, so I have no idea how dusty things might be up there.”

Indie cocked her head to one side, and just looked at Sam. “You're an odd man, Samuel Prichard. Um—are we maybe talking about starting this tonight?”

“Yes,” Sam laughed, “just follow me on home—oh, wait, you know where I live, don't you? Is there anything you need, for you or the little girl? I'm not sure what I'd have for food she might like, so maybe we should get some stuff.” He reached back into his pocket and pulled out another pair of twenties. “Tell you what, take this and go by a grocery store, get whatever you think you'll need for the next couple of days, and meet me at the house when you're done. We'll go over the case, and go from there. Deal?”

The girl looked at the money in his hands, but made no move to take it. “I'm very good at what I do,” she said. “If there's a way I can help you find this missing kid, I will. But this—what you're doing for me right now—I'll pay you back, somehow, on top of that.” She took the money and then shook his hand. “Deal.”

Sam watched her go back to her car, and saw her lean into the back seat with some of the remaining food. A little blonde head came into view for a moment, and then he saw the little girl's face light up when she saw food. Apparently burritos were high on her list of things she liked to eat, and Indie had bought her two of them. The child must have been hungry, too, Sam thought, because they were gone in what seemed like only seconds, and Indie handed over the coke before she got behind the wheel.

He could hear her telling the little girl that they had met a nice man who was going to let them stay at his house for a few nights, so they didn't have to go back to the shelter, and that they had to be very nice and not make a lot of noise, and other things parents say to kids when they feel like a burden has been lifted off their backs and they want the kid to be grateful.

Sam waited until she'd driven away before he got on the bike and rode home.

3

Indie drove up a half hour after Sam got home, and he held the door open as she carried in three grocery bags and a couple of small suitcases. The little girl, Mackenzie, followed her mommy and looked up at him with big, blue eyes.

“Kenzie,” Indie said, “this is Mr. Prichard...”

“Just Sam,” he said with a smile. “Mr. Prichard was my dad, and he's been gone a long time.”

Indie grinned. “Okay, this is Sam. Can you say hi?”

The little one blushed and softly said, “Hi, Sam,” then hurried after her mom into the kitchen. Indie said, “I got cereal and milk, and some peanut butter and jelly and bread and stuff like that. Oh, and I hope it's okay, I got some cookies and chips and stuff, too.”

“That's fine,” Sam said. “When you get it all put away, go upstairs and check out the guest room. I think the bed is all made up, but like I said, I haven’t been up there in a couple years, so it may need some cleaning up. Then come on down and we'll find something on TV for Mackenzie, and you and I can talk.”

Indie smiled. “Okay,” she said, and a moment later, she and her daughter went up the stairs to explore, with Indie dragging their two suitcases.

The second floor of the house was typical of suburban homes, with three bedrooms and a big bathroom. Indie and Kenzie looked through all of them, though only the first bedroom at the front of the house had been set up. There was a queen-size bed, a dresser and two nightstands; the furniture was from the sixties and looked like it might have come from a garage sale, but Indie wasn't about to complain. She checked the bed and found that while the covers were a little dusty, the sheets and pillows were clean enough. Fluffing the quilt got rid of most of the dust, or at least spread it out so it wasn't so visible.

She set their suitcases on top of the big dresser and opened them, then got Kenzie a pair of pajamas out. It was late enough that she hoped the child would be asleep soon, and wanted to get her ready. She set her up on the bed and began getting her changed.

“Tomorrow, we'll get you a bath,” she said, “but you'll be okay for tonight. Let's just get you into your jammies, so you can be comfy, okay, babe?”

Kenzie looked up at her. “Is this our room tonight? The whole room?”

Indie nodded, smiling. “Yep, Baby, we get the whole room to ourselves, tonight. Nice, huh?”

“Uh-huh!”

The bathroom was dirtier, with thick dust on every smooth surface, and she noticed that the toilet bowl was completely dry. She flushed it, and was surprised to see rusty-looking water come flooding into the bowl, then realized that it had sat there so long unused that the water in the bowl had simply evaporated. She turned on the water in the sink and tub and let them run for a few moments, until the rusty color was gone and the water was clear, like it should be.

Indie decided she'd clean the bathroom up later, after talking to Sam. She wanted to find out more about the job he was offering her, and do her best to help find the girl who was missing, but at the same time, she wanted to know more about Sam, too. Not too many single men would let her and her daughter stay with them unless there were ulterior motives, but she thought he was being sincere when he said there would be no strings of that nature. Maybe there were some decent guys left, after all.

She gathered up her daughter and went back down the stairs.

Sam had gone to the living room and sat in his favorite recliner, just waiting for the two girls to come back down. Part of him wondered if he was nuts, letting them stay there, but he was pretty sure he could trust Indie. There was something about her that just said she was a good person in a bad situation.

He wondered if there were more to that situation than what he could see on the surface. Was it really that hard for a young woman to get a job? The little girl was old enough that she must have been born not long after Indie got out of high school; he wondered how she'd managed to go to college with a child, and whether anyone had helped her out.

Those things weren't any of his business, of course, but a cop's curiosity was always running wild. He'd have to try to keep it in check, at least where Miss Indie was concerned.

He heard voices a few moments later, and the girls came into the living room. Mackenzie was holding two cookies, and offered one to Sam. He smiled and took it, saying, “Thank you, Sweetie.” The little girl lit up in a smile, and Indie helped her climb up on the couch.

“The remote's over there on the coffee table,” Sam said around a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie. “Put something on she'll like, and we can talk about the case.”

Indie turned on the big TV that hung on the wall, and shortly after, there were cartoons on the screen. The little girl was delighted, and began laughing and pointing at the screen.

“She hasn't seen a lot of TV lately,” Indie said. “Even when we had our apartment, we didn't have one. The only time she got to watch cartoons was when I could get on the neighbor’s wifi and get online. Cartoon Network dot com. The shows are stupid, but at least they're entertaining and keep her calm.”

Sam nodded. “I guess,” he said. “Never had much experience with 'em. You ready to go over this mess?”

She settled into the corner of the couch closest to him, and dragged her laptop out of its case. “Yeah, what have we got? Wait, you got wifi here?”

Sam nodded. “I do, but you need the password. Tell me when you’re ready and I'll give it to you.”

Indie tapped a few keys, and then looked up. “Okay, ready.”

“The password is, and this is all one long word with no punctuation, youdontneedmystinkingpassword.”

Indie looked at him and grinned as she typed it in. When it logged her onto his network, she shook her head. “That is probably the best password I've ever seen.”

“It works,” Sam said. “Okay, then, we've got a missing twelve-year-old girl named Cassie Rice. Her father, who has visitation with her every other Saturday, is Allen Rice, a known drug dealer who works with a web-based outfit known as drugspot dot org. What we think is that it has a back end that allows drug dealers to connect with their buyers secretly, so that they make their purchase through some online payment service, then the dealer just drops off their order.”

Indie nodded. “Yeah, I've heard about things like this. They use a lot of different bots to move the money around, flipping it through Paypal, Goldmoney, Payeer, Bitcoin, all of them. Makes it impossible to trace, they think. Not just drug dealers, lots of people who want to hide money, or hide where it comes from.” She was tapping keys as she spoke. “Let's start with the daddy. What's his name again? Allen Rice, right? Any idea where he lives?”

Sam thought for a moment. “Yeah, Princeton Drive. That's not as nice a neighborhood as it sounds like.”

“I know, I lived on College, just a block away. Pretty rough area, not good for kids.” She looked at her daughter. “She likes to go outside and play, and I notice you've got a nice yard. Will it be okay if I let her out during the day time?”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Just keep an eye on her, there's a pool out there. I'll let the neighbors know I've got company, and they'll all watch out for her, too. This is a good neighborhood, by the way. There are some other kids around, too. I know there are some around her age a couple doors down.” He pointed in the direction of the house he was referring to. “The Mitchells have two kids, twins, and they're about the size of yours, there.”

Indie was looking at her screen. “Okay, I've got Allen Rice, found him on Facebook and got his email. Give me a little time, and I can tell you just about anything about him you might want to know.” She continued tapping away. “So, you said you were married, once. Didn't work out?”

Sam grimaced. “Not exactly, but it was sort of a mutual thing. I was more married to my job than I was to her, and she didn't like being at home alone all the time. One day I came home and found out I had the place all to myself. That was about nine years back.”

“Sorry,” Indie said. “Must suck, if you weren't expecting it.”

Sam grinned. “Pretty much. On the other hand, almost every other cop I know has been through that or worse, with divorce, custody fights over kids and that kind of stuff. I think maybe I got off easy, cause there weren't any kids and she didn't even ask for anything. I let her take the car I'd bought her, and I paid for it, but other than that, it was all pretty simple.”

Indie was looking closely at something on her screen. “How long has it been since anyone saw this Allen character?” she asked.

“Not sure; probably not more than a day or so, I'd guess. Why?”

“Because a bunch of people on Facebook have been trying to get his attention since the day before yesterday, and he hasn't logged on. That's odd, since I can scroll back and see that he checks in several times a day, normally. Give me a minute...” She went back to tapping steadily.

Sam thought about it for a moment, then took out his phone and called Sandy Ward.

“Mrs. Ward, it's Sam Prichard. You said your granddaughter went with her father on Saturday?”

“Yes, that's right,” the woman said. “She was supposed to be back here by seven that evening, and hasn't been home since.”

“Okay, and when was the last time you talked to her father?”

“Well, that would have been the same night. I called him around eight or so, cause he's late sometimes, and he said he dropped her off in front of my house at seven. I've tried to call him a few times since then, but he never answers.”

Sam thanked her and hung up, then repeated the information to Indie. “Sounds like this guy may have split, after all. Mrs. Ward had said she didn't think Cassie was dead because her dad hadn't run away, but if he can't be found...”

“Then it doesn't sound good, right?” Indie asked, and Sam made a sad face.

“Not good at all,” he said. “You say he hasn’t been online, either?”

“That’s not what I said,” Indie pointed out. “I said he hadn’t been on Facebook, and there's a big difference. He has, however, checked his email every day, and even just a few hours ago.”

“How can you tell that?”

“Cause I figured out his password and I'm in his email account right now. Since I can see that most of the emails have been read, and several of them are only a few hours old, it's a safe bet he was in here today.”

Sam's eyebrows were high. “Any info in there?”

“Not a lot, but I do see that he's out of town somewhere. The IP address he's logging into his email from is different from the local one, so he's definitely gone someplace. On the other hand, this is the email associated with his Facebook, so I've put in a request to reset his password. Soon as I get that, I can go into his Facebook and see who he's been talking to there. That might lead us to where he's gone, if he's got friends out around the country who log on from that same IP.”

The reset came a few moments later, and Indie logged in to Rice's Facebook account. She poked around for a few moments, then started going through his message inbox.

“Okay, this is interesting,” Indie said. “Up until he disappeared, Rice had been messaging a lot of people, mostly locals and most of them over and over, about the same thing, namely 'drop offs.' Pretty sure that alludes to dropping off some recreational drugs, wouldn't you think?”

“Most likely. Any kind of ID on who the buyers are?”

“Oh, heck, yeah, I've got the whole list. These idiots put all their info out there for anyone to snatch. Where do we wanna start?”

Sam leaned over and looked at the screen, as she showed him the several hundred friends of Allen Rice. Most of them, it seemed, were also customers, and he sat there for a moment thinking about where to begin.

“Are all of them local? Is there any who might be from wherever he's at now?”

“I'm checking,” Indie said. “Nope, all I've got are local folks. He's got a few people on his friends list from other places, but no recent chats with any of them, so I'd bet he's not visiting any of them, either.”

“I've got an idea,” he said, and got up out of his chair to hobble toward his dining room. His computer desk was in there, and he grabbed a stack of paper from the printer and began laying it out on the table. He noticed Indie had followed him and was watching. “What I'm gonna do is set up a flow chart. Let's go through all of his deals that we can and see who he goes to most often, that sort of thing. Why don't you bring your computer in here, and we can get started tonight.”

Indie shrugged and went to get her laptop, checking on little Mackenzie as she did so. She came back quietly a moment later and took the chair beside him. “Kenzie's out like a light. She usually won't fall asleep until she's snuggled up next to me; she must feel safe here.”

Sam grinned. “Good, because you can both feel safe here. Now, let's make a list of his customers and see if we can figure out which ones he talks to most frequently...”

Indie slid her laptop in front of him, and he saw a spreadsheet laid out on it, with names and email addresses, along with dates and times. “That would be all of these in the first twenty-odd rows. I copied his friends list and scanned through his chats to get the times and dates when they talked, then had the computer put it all together in this format. Does that help?”

Sam stared at the screen, then realized that each entry had a link attached. When Indie clicked one to show him what it did, a box opened up that held the actual chat conversation from that particular time.

“Okay, and why is it the police don't hire people like you?”

Indie grinned at him. “I'm guessing that would be because the police would have to get a warrant to do what I'm doing, and that isn't always so easy to do. Hey, I told you, I'm a gray hat. I'm honest as they come in my own way, but laws are meant to keep people honest, and when they don’t, then they're just in the way! If you can't live with that, then I need to shut down and leave now.”

Sam stood still for a moment and looked at the screen. “I can live with it. Heck, I can even be grateful for it. So, these are his most common customers? Can you get me real IDs on them all?”

“Already did.” She clicked another link, and a different spreadsheet appeared. This one had names and addresses, and even some phone numbers. “Here they are.”

Sam shook his head in amazement. “Wow,” he said. “What I coulda done with you, back when I was on the force!”

She sneered. “Back then, you probably would have at least thought about arresting me. I like you better this way.” She pointed at the screen. “So, what else do you need to know? I can sort the data just about any way you might wish.”

Sam looked at the screen for another moment, then pointed at his desk. “My printer is wireless; can you print this stuff out, and then let's start printing out info on each of the top twenty, so we can build a pattern out of it all. If we can find the patterns, then we can find the source of the patterns.”

Indie looked at the printer and turned it on, then went to her laptop and tapped on the keys. A moment later, the first of the spreadsheets began spitting out on a number of sheets. The others followed, and then Indie was printing out individual pages on each of the people Rice had been dealing to through his Facebook account: Jason Burgess, John Merrell, Steve Wilson, Connie Miller and sixteen more. Each of them had a photo of the individual, base information like name, email, and address (if Indie could find it), phone numbers, and any other info she could dig up that seemed relevant. Some of them included arrest records and aliases, courtesy of public records databases that Indie had hacked her way into.

“How do you get all this info so fast?” Sam asked her, as the sheets kept spitting out. Each one he looked at amazed him for all the data he saw on it, more than most cops ever have available to work with.

“I don't,” she said. “I let Herman do it. Herman's a program I wrote; I gave him all the passwords for the databases I use, and then when I feed him a profile, he'll take the names and info off of it and check through all of them. When he finds something that's a ninety-five percent match or better, he puts it into his report. Those reports are a lot like what you’re seeing now.”

Sam looked at the report in his hand—Marvin Dennis—and then looked back to Indie. “Herman did all this work? In a matter of seconds?”

She nodded. “Yep. He's fast.”

“Yeah! No wonder you found me so quickly. I should hire Herman and let you go!”

Her eyes darkened. “Don't even think about it, Herman is loyal! We're a team, me and him!”

“Okay, fine, then,” Sam said with a laugh. “But you pay Herman out of your share! I don't need to keep adding people to my payroll!”

They kept going over Herman's reports, and it wasn't hard to determine which of the customers were Rice's regulars. They were using tape to stick significant reports to one wall of the dining room, and Sam had found some string to use to indicate connections between different individuals. The five most common contacts went into one group, and Sam planned to start visiting them the following morning.

By the time they got their game plan laid out, it was nearly one AM. Sam had noticed Indie yawning. “You're tired. Why don't you go on to bed, and we'll work on this tomorrow. I'm gonna get up early and start on these first creeps, so you can sleep in. We'll talk when I get back and you’re awake.”

She smiled. “Thanks. The shelters make you get up at five thirty and eat breakfast, and then you gotta stay out ‘til after seven that night and hope you're in line to get a spot to sleep. We were up early the last few mornings, and I don't sleep well in crowds of people I don't know.” She walked to the living room and picked up her daughter, then carried her carefully up the stairs.

Sam went around and turned off lights, then made his way to his own bedroom. As he did so, he heard the shower start upstairs, and it occurred to him that it was kind of nice, having other people around. He hoped he'd still feel that way in three days, which is about as long as he'd ever lasted before with visitors until they got on his nerves.

He tossed off his clothes and pulled on the shorts he always slept in, then let himself lay back and relax. He was asleep within seconds.

Upstairs, Indie was enjoying the first really hot shower she'd had in weeks, and wishing she'd bought some new shampoo; the bottle she had was getting pretty low, and the only thing she found in the bathroom was a bottle of “Men's 2 in 1” that was so old it was crystallized. She'd have to scrape through the change she had left and see if there was enough for something generic.

There were towels, though, big fluffy ones that looked brand new. The top one had been pretty dusty, but the rest were fine, and she enjoyed the feeling of the one she was using against her skin. She'd give Kenzie a bath tomorrow, she thought, and let the little girl feel how nice the big towels were, too.

She slid into shorts and a t-shirt, then went back to the bedroom where Kenzie was sleeping already, climbed into bed, and whispered a short prayer of thanks to God for this break.

Sam's room was in the back of the house, which meant that the window on that wall was facing due east. That was fine by Sam, who hated to sleep late in any case, and so the sun coming through the window was better than an alarm clock. His eyes fluttered open, and he realized that it was morning.

He threw off the covers and reached for his cell phone, plugged into the charger he kept on the nightstand. The time display on it told him that it was already past seven, so he'd managed to sleep through some of the sunrise. A quick trip to the bathroom got him feeling more alive, and then he decided to finish it off with a shower.

Sam was a guy who sang in the shower, and he completely ignored the fact that there were others in the house. Something had him feeling so good that he launched into his own version of “Don't Worry, Be Happy,” which was nothing like the original in any way. He sang through it twice during his shower, and was still humming it when he made it to the kitchen fifteen minutes later.

He froze as he entered, because there was something in the air that was unfamiliar to him. It was—it was—was that the combined smells of fresh coffee and bacon?

“Morning, Sunshine,” Indie said from over by the range. “I couldn't sleep, and neither could Kenzie, so we decided to make breakfast.”

“We're makin' breakfast!” said Kenzie, sitting on a stool beside her mother. Sam couldn't hold back a big grin at her delighted smile.

“You are?” he asked the little girl. “Well, now, I don't know what to say! Nobody's made me breakfast in a long time! Are you gonna eat breakfast with me?”

The little blonde smiled from ear to ear as she nodded her head vigorously. “Uh-huh, me and Mommy!”

Indie was smiling at their exchange. “I warned you,” she said. “She likes you already! Go ahead and sit, and I'll get you a cup of coffee.”

Sam's hip gave him more trouble in the mornings than any other time, and was hurting, so he took her up on the offer. When he’d gotten himself into a chair at the kitchen table, Indie handed him a cup of coffee and a spoon. The sugar was on the table where he kept it, so he added his usual and stirred, then took a big sip.

“There's something about a cup of coffee that you didn't make yourself that always tastes better, you know?” he said, and Indie laughed.

“Yeah, well, this is the first coffee I’ve had in a while that wasn't either stale or too strong to drink. The stuff they give you in the shelters is some kind of acid; there's a theory that it's designed to dissolve the homeless, so that society won't have to deal with them anymore.”

A few moments later, she slid eggs and bacon onto plates, and then took a tray of hot buttered toast out of the oven, where it had been staying warm. She put two slices on each plate, then set one in front of Sam while Kenzie pulled out a chair for herself next to him. Sam reached over to help her get it where she wanted it, while Indie set their own plates on the table and joined them.

“We say grace,” Indie said. “Is that gonna bother you?”

“Not a bit,” Sam replied, then folded his hands and closed his eyes as Indie and Kenzie did so.

“God is great,” said Kenzie, “God is good, and we thank Him for our food, Amen!”

“Amen!” Sam echoed, and Indie smiled at him.

“Thanks. I'm trying to teach her to be thankful for what we do have, instead of upset over what we don't.” She suddenly found her plate to be interesting, and stared at it. “Um, I was thinking, since you're gonna be out today for a while, would you mind if I did some of our laundry in your washer and dryer? And could I use some cleaning supplies to clean up the upstairs? It's kinda messy and dirty up there.”

Sam frowned. “Well, of course, you can use anything I got, but I don’t know what cleaning supplies there are. I have a lady who comes in once a week to clean down here, and she brings a bucket full of stuff with her. I can give you some money, and you can go get whatever you need. I'm sure we could stand to have that kind of stuff around, anyway, right?” He shoved another forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Now that I think about it, is there even any soap or shampoo up there? And do you need anything for Kenzie, like special soaps for little kids?”

Indie grinned and looked up at him again. “You haven't been around kids much, have you?”

“Only when I get invited to the Mitchells' place, lately, and that isn't often.” He looked at Kenzie and reached over to tickle her under the chin, which made her laugh. “But I could get used to this one, I sure could!”

Kenzie smiled and looked at her mother. “Mommy, does that mean we can live here?”

Indie choked, but Sam laughed. “It means you sure can for now, anyway, Sweetheart. No more shelters, okay? You and your mom can stay here for as long as you need to, and Mommy can help me out with some things.”

“See, Baby?” Indie said. “We prayed for God to give us someplace safe to stay, and He brought us to Sam! We can stay here for a while, and I can help Sam with something in return for him letting us stay.”

The little girl nodded her head wisely. “God's like that,” she said, and Sam and Indie both burst into laughter.

They enjoyed their breakfast together, and then Sam gave Indie another fifty dollars to use to buy cleaning supplies and other necessities. She and Kenzie went back upstairs to finish dressing for the day, and Sam headed out to the van. He fired it up and drove to Rice's address.

The old town neighborhood was pretty run down and rough, but Sam had been there many times and wasn't too intimidated. He found the house and parked in front of it, climbed out and walked up to the door. There was a doorbell, but he didn’t hear a sound when he pushed the button, so he knocked loudly.

A woman came to the door wearing only a long t-shirt, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Yeah?” she said.

“I'm looking for Allen Rice,” Sam said. “I was told he lives here. Is he around?”

She looked up at him. “Nope, he hasn't been back since Sunday. You with the others lookin' for him? I already told those guys, I don't know where he'd go, and he didn't leave no money or dope here.”

Sam nodded, as if he already knew that. “Yeah, well, he may have made a big mess, and we're just trying to clean up a lot of loose ends. You don't mind if I take a look around, do you?”

The woman stood there looking at him for a moment, then stepped back and motioned for him to enter. “Not a bit. Come on in.”

Sam stepped inside carefully, leaning on his cane more as a caution against whatever might be slippery on the floor than because of his hip, and made his way through the small house. There was a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, and it took him only minutes to know that there was nowhere in any of them where a grown man might hide. The bedrooms only had mattresses on the floor, and the only furniture of any size was a sofa in the living room. Even the refrigerator in the kitchen was one of the small, college-dorm sized ones, but he peeked inside just to be safe.

“Listen,” he said to the woman, “one of the problems he left us with is about his little girl. She's gone missing, and if the cops get to lookin' too close, things could get ugly. You don't know where she might be, do you? Or what might have happened to her?”

The woman's eyes went to the floor, and she said, “I don't know where she is, but he said she was gonna make him a lot of money. All I know is she's supposed to be back in a week, if everything goes the way he wants it to, and he said we'd have enough money to get out of this rat hole and move out to Vegas.” She looked up at Sam. “I don't know anything other than that, but I've met the kid and she's okay. I hope he ain't done nothin' that's gonna get her hurt.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “me, too.” He took a pen out of his pocket and found a slip of paper to write his cell number on. “If you hear from him and call me, there's a twenty in it for you. And just so you know, all I really care about is finding the kid.”

She looked at his name there on the paper. “Sam Prichard,” she said. “You used to be a cop, you’re the one who got hurt last year, right? My dad's a cop, he talked about you. You know him, Bob Bennet?”

Sam smiled. “I know Bob, he's a good man. You're his daughter?” He wanted to ask her what had brought her down so far, but some things just were none of his business.

She glanced around and then nodded. “Yeah, I'm Carly—but it isn't something I talk about a lot, not around here, y'know? He's always tryin' to get me out of here, back on the straight and narrow. Maybe someday I'll make it. I'll call you if I hear anything.” She shut the door, and the conversation was over.

He went back to the van and thought about his next move. He had a printout from Indie's work of the night before, showing him the names and addresses of the top five of Rice's customers. These were the ones who seemed to be trying hardest to reach him, so they were the ones Sam thought most likely to have some idea of what was going on. He scanned through them, deciding who was closest.

He parked the van outside the home of his first contact, Jason Burgess. Jason had apparently made a number of buys from Rice over the past few months, and was looking to score again. Sam climbed out and went to the door, knocking “shave and a haircut” to see what reaction it would get.

The man who answered the door looked pretty rough, as though he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. “Yeah?” was all he said.

Sam smiled. “You Jason?” The guy nodded. “I'm Sam Prichard, and I'm looking for a friend of yours, Allen Rice. Any idea how I might find him? It's kind of important.”

The guy suddenly looked more alert and wary. “I don't know any Allen Rice. Who told you I knew this guy?”

Sam tried to look surprised. “Well, Allen told me,” he said. “Allen said if anything ever happened to him, that you'd be the guy to go to. He's disappeared, and so here I am.”

The guy shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Allen told you to come to me, if something happened to him? Why would he do that? I don't know nothin' about his business, and he didn't leave anything here with me.”

Sam smiled. “Okay, good, so you do know him, and you know he's disappeared with money and dope that isn't his. Now we're getting somewhere. Tell me what else you know, Jason, like what you know about his little girl who's missing.”

Jason's eyes got wide, and he started looking around as if trying to find something to say to get him out of whatever mess he was getting into. “No, look, man, all I know is there's other people askin' about where'd he go, and where's the stuff, and I don't know none o' that! He was supposed to bring me some stuff day before yesterday, and never showed, so that's all I know.”

Sam leaned forward until his nose was only an inch from Jason's. “Okay, that's cool,” he said, “but just for fun, lemme tell you this: if it turns out you know anything about the little girl, and you don’t tell me, then I'm gonna come back, and you will not enjoy my next visit. So get on your computer and spread the word, there's a guy comin' around looking for that child, and if I don't find her soon, it's a pretty safe bet that the whole list I've got of all of Allen's customers is gonna end up in the hands of the DEA. Got all that?”

Jason's eyes were wide, and he nodded his head rapidly. “I got it, man, but I swear, I don't know nothin' about the kid! If I did, I'd tell you right now!”

Sam pulled out his pen and reached over to grab Jason's hand, then wrote his name and number across the palm. “If you hear anything about the kid, or about where Allen is hiding, I want to hear it a minute later. If I find out you didn't call me, or if I find out you waited two minutes to call me, I will be back to see you, and you will not like it.” He let go of Jason's hand and smiled, then turned and walked back to his van.

4

The rest of Sam's morning was similar, but around ten thirty, he noticed that people seemed not to be so surprised when he showed up at their doors or workplaces. They also seemed less inclined to talk to him, so he was beginning to think he was shaking someone up. If he could find out who that was, he might get a little closer to learning what had actually happened to Cassie.

By noon, he was out of what he considered serious leads, and decided to go home. He called Indie's phone, and she answered on the first ring.

“Road Kill Cafe, you kill 'em, we grill 'em!”

Sam laughed. “Oh, Lord, I haven't heard that since I was a teenager! Listen, it's Sam; I'm heading back to the house and was thinking about grabbing something for lunch. You guys like pizza?”

Indie chuckled. “Have you ever known a girl who didn't like pizza? Of course we do! Supreme, if you can handle it!”

“I can, that’s my fave. I'll swing around and bring home a giant one. What about drinks? I'm into root beer, myself.”

“That'll work for us, too. And don't be shocked when you get home, I've been cleaning, and you need to fire your cleaning lady! The gunk I got out of your carpet and kitchen counters? Grrr-oss!”

Sam grinned. “We'll talk about it when I get there. Bye!”

He called his favorite pizza parlor, a small independent shop that beat all the chains he'd ever tried, and ordered their giant supreme with a couple of big jugs of root beer. They told him it would be ready in twenty minutes, so he drove slowly in that direction.

He called Dan while he was poking along.

“Hey, Buddy!” he said. “I've been shaking a few trees today, and you might bear some rumbles about it, as well. That guy Allen Rice I asked about? He seems to have vanished, and apparently a significant amount of merchandise and/or cash has gone into the wind with him.”

“I'm already hearing it. Word is that you're making people nervous, claiming to have lots of info I'd like to get my hands on. Any truth to that rumor?”

“Am I making people nervous? Yes. Do I have any such info? I do. Are you gonna get it? Yes, as long as you don't ask too many questions about how I came by it.”

“Came by what? I don't know what we're talking about. So how is this fitting into your hunt for a missing kid?”

“Allen Rice is a small-time dealer for this online outfit, I think, but he seems to be trying to get bigger. He told his girlfriend that his daughter would be gone a few days, but that she was going to make him a lot of money, then he drops off the face of the earth with money and dope that belongs to the big guys. Sounds to me like he’s going after a big score, something that'll move him up in the organization, and using the kid as some kind of collateral.”

Dan let out a low whistle. “I've heard of things like that,” he said, “but I didn't think I'd ever come this close to a scumbag who'd do it. Any leads on where she is, yet?”

Sam shook his head automatically, even though he knew his friend couldn't see the gesture. “Nothing. I'm hoping that someone will decide to talk to try to keep me quiet about Allen's little black book, which they all think I've got. It's not that good, but it's worth some brownie points.”

“You get it to me, and I'll see you get the points. Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“You got it,” Sam said, and hung up. He pulled in to the pizza shop a few minutes later and got his purchase through the drive-up window, then headed for home.

It suddenly hit him that this would be the first time in more than nine years that he would be going home and finding someone there, other than his mother or his sister on one of her rare visits. Sam had resigned himself to being alone while he was a cop, because so many cops had a hard time making relationships work. Wives hated the waiting, and dreaded the midnight phone calls, so they didn't usually manage to stick it out for long.

After the shooting, he had tried to date again a bit, but he still couldn't quite see himself with a wife and family. Maybe someday, he thought, but not anytime soon.

He pulled into his driveway and parked next to Indie's Taurus. As he climbed out of the van, carefully balancing the pizza on one hand and holding the bag with the root beer in the other, Mrs. Tanner said hello to him over the hedge that separated his place from hers.

“Hello, Sam!” she called. Mrs. Tanner was about seventy and pretty lonely, so whenever she saw him outside, she was sure to call out and chat for a moment, and he never let it bother him.

“Hey, Mrs. T! How you been?”

“Oh, I'm fine,” she said, “but I see you've got some company staying with you. Is that your girlfriend? She's awfully pretty!”

Sam laughed. “No, she's just a friend of mine who needed a place to stay for a bit. Yeah, she's a pretty little thing, that’s true, but don't go tryin' to get rid of me, now, you know you're my sweetheart!”

The old woman smiled, but gave him a look that said he was full of it. “Sam, if I was forty years younger, I'd be all over you, boy, but I've seen those cougars on TV, and I can't live that way! You're safe, don't worry, but if that one is as nice as she seems, you better grab on while you can! And that little one she's got, she's just precious!”

“I'll bear that in mind, Mrs. T, but I don't think there's much to worry about there! I gotta go in, I brought home lunch! Wanna come join us for pizza?”

“Ha! No, thank you, you go on! That'd give me heartburn for days to come!”

Sam was still smiling as he went inside. Indie asked what had him so delighted, and he couldn't resist.

“Next door neighbor, Mrs. Tanner. She must have spotted you on your way out this morning, because she's decided I need to marry you and make an honest woman of you.”

Indie's eyes were wide, but she was smiling. “And did you happen to suggest to her that I might have something to say about that?”

Sam set the pizza down on the kitchen table. “I did better than that,” he said. “I told her I couldn't marry you because I'm so in love with her, but she wasn't havin' me, either. Guess I'll just have to wait for Kenzie to grow up, and marry her.”

Kenzie had come into the room when she heard his voice, and Sam reached down to tousle her hair, which got him a giggle. He picked her up and set her in a chair while Indie got out plates and glasses, then opened the box and put a slice on Kenzie's plate first.

They sat down together and Kenzie led them in saying grace, before Sam dug in. He had always liked pizza, and he got a kick out of watching the little girl eating hers.

“Well, we've got some people nervous,” he said. “I'm not a hundred percent sure what's going on, but the way I'm reading things, Rice has used his daughter as some sort of collateral on a big drug deal; it looks like he's letting someone hold her in order to ensure he delivers on whatever it is he's doing, and that seems to be something that will make him a lot of money and get him a better spot in their organization. If we could figure out what that spot might be, we could be onto something big.”

Indie shook her head. “If anyone told me I had to leave my daughter as a deposit for something, I think I'd kill 'em! That's disgusting!”

“It is, and it's even worse when you think about the kinds of things that might happen to a child in such a situation. I've known of people literally allowing others to abuse their kids in exchange for drugs and other things they wanted. I'm concerned about what little Cassie might be going through, and that makes me all the more determined to bring her home as soon as possible.”

“Well, I had an idea,” Indie said, “and maybe it'll help. I've got Herman scanning all over drugspot. Out on the surface, it's about getting information about prescription drugs, you know, but there are several hidden links that lead to different sections. Herman can spot those, and follow them, and that way we can find which ones lead into the back end, where we can find out more information. Then I'll try to figure out Allen's login and password, and we'll go from there. If I can get into his account there, we should be able to find out a lot more about what he's doing, and what drugspot does.”

Sam smiled. “You're quite a whiz with that computer stuff, aren't you?”

“Yep. Now if only I could find a job doing it, I'd have it made!”

“Well, you've got one for right now. Let's eat up, then see what old Herman's been doing, okay?”

“Huh-uh, not ‘til you let me show you how bad your housekeeper's been ripping you off! I don't know what you're paying her, but it's way too much; as far as I can tell, all she's doing is sweeping dirt under the carpet and slinging a dirty mop and rag around in your kitchen, and I am not kidding!”

“Hmm. She came highly recommended, too, by my mother. Mom's a real estate agent, and this gal cleans up empty houses for her. She doesn't cost a whole lot, but if you want the job, I'd be willing to talk about it.”

Indie froze and looked at him for a moment. “You mentioned something yesterday, about housekeeping in exchange for room and board. Is that offer on the table? I keep the place clean, and me and Kenzie get to stay here?”

Sam thought it over. “I could go along with that, but there isn't that much cleaning to do. I guess that would leave you free to get another job, if you wanted to...”

Indie nodded. “That's what I was thinking,” she said. “If I knew we had a place to stay, then I could get a real job and put some money away so we could get our own place, sometime.”

Sam nodded and extended a hand. “Deal. But don't go job hunting ‘til we get done with this case, okay? I'll pay for your time on it, no problem, and if you need some cash in the meantime, just say so.”

They shook hands, and Sam made a note to call his mother and tell her she didn’t need to come help with cleaning his house any longer. He just hadn’t wanted to admit to Indie that the cleaning lady was his mom, and that it was actually him who'd been sweeping stuff under the carpet.

When their lunch was over, they went to the dining room, while Kenzie got to go out into the backyard and play for a while. There was a privacy fence that went all the way around, and the pool was secured with a safety fence around it, so there was nothing out there that would be likely to cause an injury. They left the big sliding glass doors open and listened as she played.

Indie pulled up Herman, and let Sam see what it was doing. “Another part of Herman is a search program that allows me to put in various criteria that I want him to look for. That way, I can tell him to look for things, like people who are all friends with Allen Rice on Facebook and also have Sam Prichard as a friend. Surprisingly, you guys have three mutual friends, though I suspect they're just people who friend everyone; there's a lot of those out there. Anyway, he can also scan every bit of text or code or imagery on a website and look for hidden links, back doors, gateways and such, and when he finds them, he tries to figure out how to get past them. That's what I've had him doing since I got back from the store this morning, so let's get his report.” She tapped the keyboard rapidly, and then sat back to watch as line after line of text began to appear on the screen. She was reading it as fast as she could, silently, and running a finger along each line as it appeared.

“Okay, we've got some pay dirt, here. Herman found an unsecured back door into a directory called 'freightliners,' and from what I'm seeing, it's probably a listing of names and usernames for their dealers or delivery people. This link was a single period in the fine print in the footer of one page, so the chances of anyone other than a robot ever finding it without being told are slim to none! Let's see if we can find Mr. Rice—and there he is, big as life! His username is tinman!”

Sam stared at all of the data on the screen, and shook his head. “Indie, you're amazing. Now, does this mean we can get into his account?”

She shook her head in the negative. “Not just yet. Now we need his password, and that won't be in a list on the site. However, if he used his main email address...” She began tapping keys again, and a moment later, a dark blue page appeared with only two white boxes. “This is the login page. We put in his username, tinman, and then we use his password from his email account—nope, that wasn't it, but we got lucky, and it has a lost password bot! So I put in his email address, and yes! It's sending him his password even as we speak!”

She opened another browser and brought up Rice's email account, then clicked on the email from drugspot.org. There was a link inside it, and she clicked that, as well, and then got another email that contained his password. She quickly deleted those emails.

“I'm getting rid of those, so he can't log in and see them. This way he doesn't know we got his passwords and can watch everything he's doing.”

“Smart girl, aren't you?” Sam said, and she grinned up at him.

“One of the smartest!”

“I believe it. Let's see what we've got there!”

She went back to the original browser and entered the password into the box. The page began to refresh, and then there were more entry fields, with titles like District, Crew, Services and more. Some of them were simple text boxes, and others were checkboxes that allowed multiple selections; for instance, the section titled Services had possible selections like: NRCS, SXL, BMKT and other alphabet soups, and it was possible to select more than one at a time. Since they didn't know what Rice might be involved in, they were cautious.

Sam pointed to NRCS. “Narcotics, I'd bet,” he said. “We know Rice is into drugs, so let's try that one.”

“Okay, but what about crew and district and line? We don’t know what they mean, let alone how he would enter the data.”

“True, but we gotta try something. District is a drop-down list, so just check the first one, then same for crew and line. Can't be worse than it already is, right?”

Indie shrugged. “Okay,” she said. She clicked on District, and selected “1,” then on Crew and selected “A.” Line didn't have any entries, so she ignored that, and continued choosing the first item she could in each of the other fields. When all of them had an entry, she hit the Submit Button at the bottom of the page.

Suddenly, they were looking at a page that appeared to be a collection of business programs. There were folders arranged all over the page, and each one had a title. The first was called “Accounting,” and that was followed by “Marketing,” “Receivables,” “Payables” and then “Deliveries.”

The one that caught Sam's attention, however, was titled “Communications, Internal,” and he pointed to it. Indie clicked on it, and what looked like an email program popped open.

There were dozens of messages, each one either to or from Rice. They began looking at the ones that had already been read, and the story that unfolded before them was mind-boggling!

Allen Rice had dreams of being bigger in the organization, all right, and he didn't care what he had to do to get there! Some of the earliest emails between him and his supervisor were discussions about his insistence that he was smart enough to run a crew all by himself. The supervisor found this funny, apparently, and let Rice know that he didn't have anywhere near the brains it took to run a crew for the Company. Rice protested, over and over, that all they needed to do was give him a chance and he'd prove himself.

This had all begun weeks before, and every email seemed to be a mere continuation of the same theme. Rice demanded his chance; the supervisor denied it. Sam shook his head.

“Personally, I'd have shot the guy after the first week,” he said. “I don’t know how this supervisor had the patience to keep putting up with him all this time! I couldn't have done it!”

They continued reading, and suddenly struck gold. Only two weeks before, the supervisor finally made a proposal that Rice found interesting.

“I was out your way last weekend,” the email read, “and saw you with a young girl. That would be your daughter, of course, whom you get to see every other Saturday. She's a pretty little thing, and I thought that perhaps you might be worth a try after all. If you were to arrange for her to come and stay with us for a few days, with no harm to come to her at all, of course, then I would see fit to let you have a shot at running a crew. We'd send you off to St. Louis to handle a specific situation for us. When you get back, if you've sold all your product and done well, then we'll give you a crew of your own to run out in Vegas. Your daughter would only be our guest until you got back from St. Louis, of course, and she'd be returned to you as soon as you come back with our money.” The next few emails discussed the idea further, and the last one—dated the previous Friday—was Rice's agreement and promise to deliver his daughter the next day.

Sam shook his head. “That's what I figured,” he said. “He used his daughter as security, so he could make some fast money.”

“Man, that is sick,” Indie said. “Can we hang this guy? I want to see him do time over this, especially if the little girl gets hurt!”

“Oh, I promise you,” Sam said coldly, “this guy's going down, one way or another.”

“Okay, look here,” Indie said, pointing. “He says he'll drop her off at 'the old warehouse,' wherever that is. Let me see if there's anything here that gives us locations, but I'm sure they're smarter than that.” She tapped at the keys for several minutes, pausing now and then to look at the screen, but finally, she shook her head. “No luck, I'm afraid.”

Sam sat there and thought for a few moments. “What about other users of this system? Can we identify anyone else? If we can get a lead on one of the others, maybe I can shake the location of that warehouse out of that one.”

Indie nodded. “Give me a little time, I'll get someone!” Her fingers flew over the keys and the screen flashed back to the page full of names and usernames. “I've got Herman scanning for any name on here that matches one of Rice's Facebook friends. It's beyond any logic that of all the people he knows, he's the only one on here. I'd bet he's friends with at least one or two others who deal for this outfit.”

A moment later, the computer made what Sam considered a triumphant beep, and two names appeared on the screen: Levi Stein and Matthew Bryant.

“Bingo!” Indie said. “Both of these guys are dealing, just like Rice. Odds on they'll know something about the warehouse, wouldn't you think?” She looked up at him excitedly, and for a brief second, Sam thought she was absolutely beautiful.

He shook it off. “Darn right,” he said. “Get me their addresses and where they work, and I'll go see 'em!”

The girl nodded. “Give me five,” she said, and went back to typing. A few moments later, the printer hummed to life, and she snatched a page from it. “Here you go. Both their addresses, and their jobs. Levi works at the Wal-Mart on Evans Avenue, and Matthew works for his dad's trucking company out on the edge of town, Bryant Trucking.”

Sam smiled a grim smile. “I think I'll go pay them a visit,” he said. “Let's see what they know.”

“Hey, hold up a minute,” Indie said. “I just wanna check one more thing.” Her fingers flew, and a moment later there was another report coming out of the printer. She looked at it and whistled. “Look at this,” she said to Sam. “Levi and Matthew have both been arrested before, for the same attempted murder charge, but the witness disappeared and the charges got dismissed for lack of evidence. Other than that, they've both got rap sheets as long as your arm, and mostly for violent offenses.”

She was right. Both of the men had been arrested numerous times for assaults, robberies, threatening and other forms of violence, and almost all of the charges were dismissed when victims changed their minds or witnesses failed to remember what they'd seen, or even to show up at all to testify. These guys were dangerous, and Sam was just a semi-crippled ex-cop.

He went to his bedroom and opened his bottom dresser drawer, then took out the lock-box he kept there. The key on his key ring opened it, and he withdrew the forty-caliber Glock he'd carried as a detective. He worked the action to make sure it was still well lubed and free, then picked up one of the four loaded clips that were in the box beside it and slammed it home. He dug in the drawer again and found the clip-on holster and slipped it onto his belt, and the gun went back into its familiar place like it had missed being there.

He went back to the dining room and sat down beside Indie, then took out his phone and dialed a number. When he got an answer, he smiled.

“Is that Kimberly? Hey, Kiddo, it's Sam Prichard, how you been? I'm good—listen, I need a favor, and I know you’re the gal who can do it. I'm going into the PI biz, and I need a Concealed Carry Permit. How long would it take me to get one? Girl, you are an absolute gem! I'll be there in a half hour!” He hung up and smiled at Indie. “That's the girl at the sheriff's office who tests people for their concealed carry permits, and she said if I can get there in a hurry, she'll get me in this afternoon's test and I can have my permit today. I gotta run.”

He stood up, and that's when he noticed that Indie was staring at the gun on his hip. He looked down at it, then at her. “Is that gonna be a problem?” he asked. “I think I need to have it, if I'm gonna be doing this sort of thing, don’t you? Especially with the kind of people we're looking at here?”

Indie sat there without speaking for moment, then shook her head. “It's no problem,” she said. “The thought that you might need it just makes me a little bit nervous, that's all. I'll be okay.”

He went out to the van and got in, then took off for the sheriff's office. The CCL tests were held at the sheriff's firing range, and he'd have to demonstrate his ability with the gun, but he wasn't worried. He'd passed every test with a handgun since he was eighteen years old, and knew without any doubt that he would be as good with it that day as he'd ever been.

He was right; an hour later, he had passed the test with flying colors, and his brand new CCL was in his wallet, with a sheriff’s endorsement. With that, he could carry his weapon anywhere, since it made him a de facto deputy sheriff. Sam was once again a law enforcement officer.

He went into the courthouse and filed for a Private Investigator's License, as well. Colorado didn't actually require one, but they instituted a voluntary license in 2012. Having it didn't give any more authority, but it did lend a lot of credibility. Sam thought, since he was going to be carrying concealed, he might as well go all out and get the license that would justify it if he ever had to use his weapon in the course of an investigation. Because of his history as a police officer, he was granted his license and shield immediately, though he had to pay almost a hundred dollars for the latter.

He walked out into the sunshine and called Dan Jacobs. “Hey, Buddy, guess who just got tagged as a straight-up PI?”

“You? Sam, I think that's great. Keep you busy, and let you do some good. And you always got me to do the grunt work, right?”

Sam laughed. “Yep. Thanks, man, I just wanted to tell somebody. I'll be in touch.”

“You better be,” Dan said. “You did promise me a copy of that info you got, remember?”

“I ain't forgot, don't worry. You'll have it within a few days or so.”

He cut off the call, and then did the thing he'd been avoiding all day; he called his mother.

“Sam, my God! It's about time I hear from you, are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Mom, how you been?”

“Oh, my God, I'm just going crazy with the way real estate prices are dropping right now. It's terrible! So what blessed event has resulted in you giving your old mother a call?”

Sam grimaced. “Well, actually, Mom, there's a couple of things. First off, I got a new housekeeper, a girl who's gonna live in and take care of the place for me...”

“Sam! You got a girlfriend? Oh, that's wonderful! Tell me about her, is she a nice girl? She's not like your ex-wife, is she, I mean, that woman, oh! She was just so not right for you, Sam, and...”

“Mom? Mom! No, I don't have a girlfriend, Mom, she's just a girl I know who needed a place for her and her little girl to stay, and so we worked out a trade while she looks for a regular job and gets on her feet. That's all it is, but you don't need to come over to help me clean up anymore, its covered now.”

His mother seemed slightly offended. “Well, if that's what you want, then I guess that's fine, Sam, but do you really know this girl? She isn't some stray you picked up, is she, cause you know how you always used to bring home stray dogs and cats all the time, and it was always so heartbreaking for you when we had to get rid of them.”

“She's not a stray, Mom, just a friend of mine who was down on her luck, and I've got all that room. Anyway, the other thing is that I've decided to go into the Private Eye business, and I just got my licenses today. I know you've got friends at the courthouse, so I wanted to tell you before any of them could.”

“Well, Sam, I think that's wonderful! You need something to keep you busy, I've said that before! Maybe you can help some poor woman catch her husband cheating, God knows I wish I'd been able to catch your father, but then he didn't care, so...”

“Mom!” Sam yelled into the phone. “Mom? You're breaking up, I can't hear you! You gotta get a new phone, Mom, that one's...” He hung up.

She didn't bother to call back. She never did. He made his way back to the van, and then headed for Evans Avenue. Levi was probably at work right then, and what better place for the chat they were about to have than Wal-Mart?

5

Sam pulled up and parked in one of the handicapped spaces at Wal-Mart on Evans, and then climbed out and headed inside. He was using his cane, and it was helping, since his hip was acting up that day. He got inside and spotted a woman who was walking around with lots of keys and looked like she knew what she was doing, so he caught her attention.

“Excuse me, Ma'am,” he said, flashing his new shield and ID. “My name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator. I'm looking for one of your employees, Levi Stein. Can you tell me where I might find him?”

The woman looked at his ID for a second, then took a walkie-talkie out of a pocket and called someone on it. “I've got a Detective here,” she said, “looking for Levi. Is he back there?” She held the speaker to her ear and listened for a moment, then said, “Okay, thanks, I'll send him back.” She put the talkie back in her pocket and said, “He's out back in receiving. If you go through the double doors at the back of this aisle, you'll see the loading docks. That's where you'll find him.” She turned away as if Sam didn't even exist.

He walked down the aisle and out the double doors she'd indicated, then saw the loading docks at the end of a long hallway. There were forklifts and pallet jacks moving around with people operating them, and he had to dodge them to get by, but finally he saw Levi standing at the back of a semi-trailer. He walked up and flashed his ID.

“Levi, I'm Sam Prichard, private investigator. I'd like to ask you a few questions about Allen Rice.”

Levi shrugged his shoulders. “Go ahead and ask,” he said. “What can I tell you?”

“I'm trying to find Allen's little girl,” Sam said bluntly. “I know that he gave her to someone in the drugspot organization, as security for some big deal he's doing. All I care about is getting the little girl back safely; nothing else matters to me right now. If you can help me do that, I can forget your name and everything else I know about you.”

Levi was standing there calmly, and didn’t seem the least bit concerned with what Sam might know. He grinned at him and said, “I don't know anything about that. I heard some rumor that Allen's getting a promotion, but I don't think it's for real, and if it is, he'll find a way to mess it up like he does everything else. Any idea who he gave the kid to?”

Sam was surprised at how open Levi was acting, and it made him wary. He looked around, but there was no one close enough to overhear them. “No. All I know is he was supposed to drop her off at something called the old warehouse. Any idea where that is?”

Levi sucked on his bottom lip for a moment, looking at the floor, then raised his eyes back to Sam's. “Only place might be called that is the building where the night shipments come in. If I give it to you, you'll forget me? Completely?”

Sam smiled, then crossed his heart with his finger. “Completely,” he said. “And if it gets the kid back safe, I'll owe you one personally. Maybe you'll need a favor one day, maybe not, but it would be there.”

Levi grinned. “I'm sure I'd need it sooner or later, but I can't be sure this is gonna get you what you need; no promises, but the place I think they call the old warehouse is down on Green Valley, near where it hits E 470. It's a big yellow building, adobe-looking thing. There's an office there, but the old guy who works there wouldn't know anything about the Company, so don't shake him up too bad. That's about all I can tell you, man, but I hope it works out for you.”

Sam stared at him. “Thanks. Can you tell me why you're being so helpful?”

Levi looked back at him and grinned. “Sure,” he said. “I want to see you find the kid, and get her out of the mess her daddy put her in, that's part of it; but the main reason is because I know who you are, Detective Prichard, and I'm the informant who gave your guys the info the day you got shot. I figure I owe you one, y'know? Now, I gotta get back to work.”

Sam stood there for a moment as Levi walked away, then turned and made his way back through the store. Part of him wanted to get angry at that guy, make him pay for what happened that day, but he was just the source of the information. He didn't get the warrant, he didn't orchestrate the raid, he didn't do anything but let Carlson's people know that there was a major shipment due in, giving them a good chance to make a major dent in the local drug operations.

Sam let it go, and then got into the van and drove away. He started to call Dan as he did so, but changed his mind. He didn't have enough information to justify a warrant, and Carlson probably wouldn't let him be in on it anyway, so he decided to go check out the warehouse for himself.

Dan would probably shoot him if he knew about it.

An hour later, he drove the van up to the only building that fit Levi's description. There was indeed an office, and he walked up and knocked on the door there. An elderly man came and opened it.

“Can I help you, young feller?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “I think so. I heard a rumor this building might be coming up for lease sometime soon, and I was wondering if I could take a look around inside it?”

The old man looked surprised. “Up for lease? Oh, goodness, I hope not! I've worked here nearly forty-five years, I'd hate to lose my job now!” He looked Sam up and down. “Well, you just never know, though, do you? Come on in, it can't hurt nothin' to let you look around, I guess.”

Sam followed the man inside and let him lead the way into the big, empty expanse that was the old warehouse. There were several smaller rooms off to the sides, but all of them were empty and open.

“What's this place used for now?” Sam asked.

“Oh, they bring in some trucks now and then and unload stuff here, stuff that's going on to other places, I reckon. They sort it out and load it back on other trucks, and out it goes again, zoom! Like sortin' the mail, I guess, just decide where it goes and send it on its way.”

Levi had been right; this old fellow didn't know much of anything, and he appeared to be a bit simple, anyhow. If this was the place where Rice had dropped his daughter off, there would be no sign of her presence left by then. Still, Sam couldn't just walk away.

“Say,” he said, “I was wondering, do you know who the actual owner of the building is? I'd like to give a call and see if I can get a deal worked out before it gets away from me, y'know? And don’t worry, if I can lease it, I'd still need someone to watch over it, so you'd still have a job if you want it.”

The old guy looked a little confused for a moment, but then he brightened. “Oh, you must mean Mr. Ingersoll! He's the owner, or at least, he's the one I talk to. I think there's several owners, you know, but Gene Ingersoll, he's the one who runs everything. Here, let me get you his phone number, it'll just take me a minute!” He went into his own little office and flipped through an old-fashioned Rolodex for a moment, then scribbled something onto a post-it note and brought it to Sam. “Here you go, that's his office number right there. And if you do lease it, then yeah, I'd sure like to keep my job if I can.”

Sam smiled and took the note. “Thank you, sir, and I'll sure keep that in mind. You have a good day, now, okay?” He made it out of the building and into the van without any further delays, and then looked at the note in his hand.

Eugene Ingersoll, it read, with a phone number. Sam got out his phone and dialed it immediately.

“Hello?” said a voice that sounded highly cultured.

“Mr. Ingersoll?” Sam asked, and the man chuckled.

“Yes, this is Gene Ingersoll. May I ask who I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

Sam smiled. “Mr. Ingersoll, I'm Sam Prichard, a private investigator, and I'm trying to locate a missing child. I've been given to understand that you may have some knowledge of where that child is, and if you could tell me, I think it would be very good for both of us.”

The laugh came again. “Well, first, Mr. Prichard, I'm certain that I don't have any such knowledge, so we're wasting a lot of time already. However, second, if I did, then I'm also certain that the mere stupidity of calling me this way and demanding it would be enough to ensure that I would keep it to myself, don't you think? Why on earth would I admit to knowledge that could put me in prison?”

“The short answer to that would be that I'm calling out of a desperate desire to see the child come home safely, and I was hoping you'd help. However, I'm also in possession of a great deal of information regarding a certain venture that you are almost certainly a part of, Mr. Ingersoll, and that information can be lost if I get that child back safely. If I don't, then that information, all of it, will make its way into the hands of some people who would probably like to ruin your day for the rest of your life. I hope that allows us to understand each other, sir, and that it will make it possible for us to work together to bring this situation to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.”

The man on the other end burst out into raucous laughter, and the cultured accent became less noticeable. “Well, well, you went straight for the jugular, there, didn't you? Now, assuming that I do have any involvement in that venture you’re speaking of, what kind of assurance do I have that you're a man of your word? And assuming I did know anything about that missing girl, of course.”

Sam grinned. “The only assurance I will give you, sir, is this: you just slipped and told me that you do know exactly what I'm talking about, which makes you an accessory to kidnapping at the very least. If you give me the kid, and she is safe, then that will be the very last you ever hear of me. If you don't, then I can guarantee you that I'll have the DEA crawling up your ass within a matter of days, and whatever they don't tear to shreds, I will! I'm a private investigator, Ingersoll. I'm not a cop, not anymore. My job is to find and recover that girl, not to get into your business. If I achieve my goals with your help, then your business stays your business. If not, then I'll make it my business to destroy you. Do we understand each other?”

Ingersoll was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “Mr. Prichard, you play a dangerous game, but I can say this. I know about the girl you’re looking for, but I don't have her, and I don't know where she is. To do what you want will take some time, a day, maybe. If you can give me that long, I'll try to help you out, and I'll trust—for now—that you'll honor your end of this bargain. I'm sure you know enough to know that if you don't, it will cost you your life, am I right?”

“I know that's how you see it, but I'm notoriously hard to kill. So you want me to call you in twenty-four hours?”

“No need to call me at all, Mr. Prichard, I have caller ID just like you do. I'll call you as soon as I know something. And I won't promise you that there won't be some additional price for our cooperation, so bear that in mind. Don’t worry, it wouldn’t be money; we just might need your services at some point in time. If that addendum were to be presented as part of getting you what you want, would you be agreeable?”

Sam thought it over. “My legitimate services, sure. Just don’t ask me to break any laws for you.”

Ingersoll laughed again. “I wouldn't dream of it, Mr. Prichard. Now, go home and wait for my call; it may come sooner than you think.”

The line went dead, and Sam felt a shiver run down his spine. He was pretty sure he'd just spoken to one of the actual heads of the Hydra that ran the drug operation they'd been trying for years to shut down, and there was no doubt in his mind that the man he'd just talked to could order his death with a single phone call.

On the other hand, Ingersoll had made it clear that he was more interested in having Sam indebted to him than having him dead. That alone made Sam think he had a chance of getting the girl back safely, and living through it at the same time. Just the knowledge that the Hydra was willing to discuss returning the girl meant that she was probably alive and relatively intact. That meant there was a chance, and that was more than he'd have thought he could say that morning.

He started up the van and drove towards home. He'd made his contact, and now it was just a matter of waiting for the response. He drove into his driveway just before five thirty, and made his way inside.

The smell got him first; he hadn't smelled anything that good in so many years that he'd forgotten what it was! It was coming from his kitchen, of course, and he followed his nose to see what it could be. Indie was standing there at the stove, her back to him as she stirred something in a large pot, and she jumped when he said, “I hope that's supper cooking, and there better be enough for me!”

“Oh! Geez, don't do that, you scared the life outta me! Yes, it's supper and there's plenty; I found a small roast in your freezer, and some canned veggies that looked like they had ten years dust on 'em, and made a stew. I hope that's okay.”

He grinned as he limped over and sniffed at the pot. “It's fine. I bought that roast a few months ago, when I thought I was gonna have a date over for dinner one night, but she backed out and I never got to use it. The cans aren't that old, but they probably were pretty dusty. Smells delicious! Where's Kenzie?”

“Oh, Mrs. Mitchell came down and introduced herself, said Mrs. Tanner told her about us, and she invited Kenzie to come and play with her twins for a while. They're all the same age, so it's great, and I got a break for the first time in, like, forever! She said she'll bring her back down around six thirty, so I'm timing dinner for about then. Hope you can hold out that long.”

“I'll manage, but it won't be easy, as good as that smells. Meanwhile, let's talk while we wait. Got any coffee left? I could use a cup.”

“No, but it only takes ten minutes.” She started setting up a pot of coffee, and Sam sat down at the kitchen table. He glanced around the kitchen, and said, “You know, I think I've spent more time in there these past two days than in the past year.”

Indie looked at him. “Okay, you know that's kinda sad, right?”

Sam looked at her and grinned. “I prefer to think of it as more poignant than sad. Sad makes it sound, I dunno—sad! Poignant sounds more like something big is coming down the pike, and it just hasn’t got there yet!”

Indie shook her head at him. “No, it's just sad. The kitchen is supposed to be the place where a home lives, y'know, and to not even go into it on a daily basis, that's just...”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam interrupted. “It's sad!”

Indie laughed. “So, tell me how things went for you today, while I wait for your coffee.”

Sam sighed. “You're not gonna believe it, but I think I've got a good chance of getting Cassie back safe. I went and got my CCL and then I figured I might as well be legal, so I got my PI license, too, and then I went to see Levi Stein. Believe it or not he's a decent sort, in his own way, and opened right up and told me what I wanted to know about the warehouse. I went down and checked it out, and managed to get the old guy who works there and knows absolutely nothing to give me the owner's name and number. I called that guy, and he said there was a good chance he could get me the girl back, but it would take time, and may leave me owing him a favor. I told him if I got her back safe, fine; if not, I was gonna ruin his whole life!”

Indie was staring at him with her mouth hanging open. “Sam, holy crap! You coulda got yourself killed!”

“Yeah, he said something like that, too, and I reminded him that it isn't something that's all that easy to do. I'm a tougher old bird than you might think; I mean, I lived through the last time they tried to kill me, right?”

Indie scowled at him. “That's like saying, hey, I got away with murder once, I can get away with it again! That's stupid, Sam. I may not know you all that well, but I do kinda like you, and I don't wanna see you get hurt. Besides, what would that do to my living arrangements? I need you alive and well so I can live here, remember?”

The coffee was done a few moments later, and she poured him a cup and brought it to him. He fixed it up and took a sip, then said, “So, you can clean, and now I find out you can cook, too. How much would it cost me to just keep you here as my housekeeper and cook?”

Indie blinked. “Are you being serious?” she asked.

He shrugged. “That depends on the answer. If I can afford it, then yeah, I'm being serious.”

Indie stared for a moment, then said, “Well, you’re already providing me with room and board, so if we just take off what I'd have to pay for rent and utilities and groceries, then I could do it for about a hundred and fifty a week. Is that too much?”

Sam grinned. “For a buck and a half a week, I can get cooking like this every day? You got a deal, girl!” He shoved his hand out for her to shake, and she took it nervously.

“Sam, can you really afford that? Aren't you on like a pension or something?”

“My medical retirement is seventy-five percent of my pay at the time of the shooting, with bi-annual cost-of-living increases, so it's not that bad,” he said, “but then there's the hazardous duty coverage; that pays me another twelve hundred a month, just because I got shot in the line of duty. I can pay you outta that and never touch my pension!”

Indie shook his hand again. “Then you've got yourself a cook and housekeeper! Sam, you really were a Godsend, you know that? I don’t know what would have happened to me and Kenzie if you hadn’t placed that ad when you did.”

Suddenly, there were tears falling down Indie's cheeks, and Sam reached across the table without thinking to place his hand on hers.

“Indie,” he said, “what is it that you haven’t told me? Is there something that's gonna come back to bite you in the butt? Or me?”

She shook her head and even managed a laugh. “No, there's nothing like that. It's just that—Sam, when I got back here from MIT, I moved back in with my mom, and it didn't go well. She had a boyfriend, and he thought since I was my mother's daughter, I must be as easy as she was. When he tried to get friendly with me, I sorta beat him half silly with mom's portable mixer. He was screaming like a banshee, and she came running to see what was wrong with him, and when I told her what happened, she threw me and Kenzie out. I was working at Dairy Queen, then, and had a little money saved up, so I got an apartment for us, but then the manager wanted me to date him and when I said I didn't date my boss, he found a reason to fire me—said I showed up late three times in a row, by changing the schedule after the fact. I haven't been able to get another steady job, and that's how I lost the apartment, and ended up in the shelters. It's a miracle no one called CPS on me.” She wiped her eyes. “So, yeah, if you hadn't come along when you did, I don't know where Kenzie and I would be now.”

Sam sat there for a moment. “What happened to Kenzie's father? Is he around?”

She made a sound that was another half sob, half laugh. “No, that's another whole story. His name was Jared MacKenzie, which tells you who my daughter is named for. He was my high school sweetheart, and we were actually planning to be married once I got out of college. He wanted to join the Marines, so he figured he'd get his basic training and AIT all over with while I went to college, and then we'd get married as soon as possible after that. Of course, we were sleeping together, and I guess birth control isn't as foolproof as they want you to believe it is, because a couple months after he shipped out for boot camp and I went to MIT, I woke up to morning sickness! I hadn’t even skipped a period, so it was a real surprise, y'know? I wrote to him and told him I was pregnant, and he called me the night he got the letter, all excited. He said he wanted to get married as soon as he got out of AIT, which would have been in five more months, but then he was killed in an accident during his training. He hadn't even gotten a chance to make any provision for me or the baby, so I was SOL and all on my own.”

“Wow,” Sam said. “You've had it tough, girl. What about his folks, don't they want to be part of his daughter's life?”

“Not exactly. They blame me for his decision to join the Marines, because I was going to college and he couldn't afford to; they think he only joined to show me he was a real man, y'know? And since that's how he died, they blame me for that, too.”

Sam shook his head. “Maybe one day they'll come around,” he said lamely.

There was a knock on the front door, and Anita Mitchell came in with Kenzie. “Hi, Sam,” she said, then turned to Indie. “Indie, she was a little angel! She can come down anytime, just holler! Tracy and Lacey loved having her over, and she did me a favor cause they're worn out and down for a nap, now!”

Indie smiled. “I'm glad she behaved herself,” she said. “And the same goes for you. Anytime you need a break, I'm willing to watch all three sometimes—if it's okay with you, Sam?”

Anita smiled. “Ignore Sam, he's a big pussycat! He won't mind; he's actually watched them for me a couple times, himself!”

Sam grinned. “Nope, I don't mind a bit. Tell Jim I said hi.”

Anita smiled and waved as she left. “I will,” she called over her shoulder as she went out the front door again.

Kenzie climbed up into the chair beside Sam and smiled up at him. “Did you know they got a doggie, a great big one, and it's got babies?”

“They do?” Sam asked. “And did you get to play with the puppies?”

“Yeah, and I got to go in their yard and see the babies, and they let me hold one of 'em, and it licked me right up my nose!”

Sam laughed, and Indie joined in. “Right up your nose? Oh, no!”

“Oh yeah, and it tickled!”

Sam and Kenzie continued to talk about puppies and tickles while Indie got plates and began putting dinner on the table. The stew smelled delicious still, but when she ladled it over buttered Texas toast, Sam thought he'd died and gone to Heaven! The beef, carrots, onions and potatoes all blended together to make an awesome meal, and he was delighted to see that there would be plenty of leftovers.

When dinner was over, they all went into the living room and turned on the TV. This time, Indie chose a movie that she'd wanted to see, and managed to get Kenzie to sit still and watch it with her. Sam sat in his recliner and watched with them, until Kenzie fell asleep around eight. The movie was almost over by then, and he and Indie started watching another one.

It was almost nine PM when his phone rang, and Sam pulled it out to see Ingersoll's number on the display. “Yes,” he said, answering instantly.

“Mr. Prichard, I've made some calls and located the package you were asking about, and I've been assured that it's in perfect condition. However, there is a hitch in getting it to you, and this is where the contingency I mentioned earlier comes into play.”

Sam sighed. “What do you need?” he asked.

Ingersoll spoke softly. “Listen carefully, for I have to be cautious how I say these things. The package was brought to us by a certain deliveryman, and that deliveryman then took another package from us, to deliver elsewhere. Are you with me so far?”

Sam knew what he was saying; that when Rice dropped off his daughter, he took a package of drugs or money or something that he was supposed to take to another city. “Yes, I am.”

“Good. That deliveryman was supposed to make a delivery at another location, but our package has not arrived. We need to recover it, Mr. Prichard, and as quickly as we can. Since we have lost track of that deliveryman, we would like to engage you to locate and retrieve our package. In return, we will see to it that the package you are looking for is returned to you.”

Sam sat up straight. “So, if I can find the 'deliveryman' that took your package and get it back for you, then you'll let me have the original package? How do I know you'll come through?”

“Mr. Prichard, despite what you may think, we are men of our word. To prove that to you, we're going to do the one thing you would never expect of us. We're going to pay in advance. The package you want will be delivered to you, in good condition, within the hour, and we are relinquishing all claim to it. All we ask is that you prove as resourceful in locating our missing package as you did in tracking this one.”

Sam's eyes went wide. “I can assure you, sir, I will do my best. And—thank you.”

Ingersoll laughed. “I doubt you want to thank me, Mr. Prichard. There will undoubtedly be parts of this arrangement that you will not like; just remember that you agreed to lose certain information, and we will remember not to have anything bad happen to you or the young lady staying with you.”

The line went dead.

Sam stared at the phone for a long moment.

“Sam?” Indie asked. “You okay?”

“That was the man I talked to earlier today. He has just agreed to return Cassie to me, tonight, within the hour, but the price for this is that I have to find Allen Rice for them and get back whatever it was that he took.”

She was staring at him. “Wait a minute, they're giving her back? Just like that? Sam, that doesn’t make sense.”

“I know,” he said, nodding. “They're only doing it to put me in the position of owing them, so I'll feel more obligated to find Rice.”

“And what happens to him once you find him?”

Sam was wondering the same thing, but his concern for Rice was overshadowed by his concern over the implied threat that ended the call. Ingersoll knew about Indie, at least that she was staying with him. If he'd known that she was the means by which Sam was acquiring his information, Sam suspected they would have already demanded her involvement, so he probably thought she was nothing but a girlfriend; a romantic involvement would make it likely that Sam would be protective of her, so that would be another level of leverage they had on him. Okay, good, let them think that.

“Indie, whoever the people are that guy is working for, they know you're staying here, and hinted that if I don’t do what they want, something bad could happen to you. I think they believe you’re my girlfriend, and I'd really prefer they not find out what you can do, information-wise, you follow me?”

He could see the wheels spinning in her head, but it was less than two seconds before she smiled sweetly, and said, “I'm with you, babe. All part of the job, right, still no strings, though?”

It was Sam's turn to run her words through the Enigma Machine, and then he grinned. “Still no strings. But let's let anyone watching think we're getting pretty serious, okay?”

Indie giggled. “Okay, but I'm gonna lay it on thick whenever anyone's lookin', so you better have some good self-control. Now, what about Cassie? When is she supposed to be coming home?”

“All he said was 'within the hour.' Could be any time, I guess, and I don't know if she'll be dropped off at home, or here, or where. We'll just have to wait and see.” He got up and hobbled without the cane to the front door, looked out through the window, and then said, “Holy Geez...” as he snatched the door open.

Indie glanced at Kenzie, still sound asleep on the couch, and then ran over to stand beside Sam. Two men were walking up to his front porch, and both were dressed in black, SWAT-like uniforms, but neither appeared to be armed. One of them was carrying what Sam first thought was the body of Cassie Rice, and he was just about to reach for the Glock that was still on his hip when the other one put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Shh. We were told not to wake her if possible. You're Mr. Prichard?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah; she's really okay?”

The guy actually grinned. “She's fine, other than a serious sugar crash. We were told to take her out for ice cream on her way home, and let her have all she wanted, then wait ‘til she passed out to bring her to you.” He reached slowly into a pocket on the leg of his combat trousers and extracted an envelope, then held it out to Sam. “I was also told to give this to you.” Sam took it and glanced at it, but only put it into his own pocket.

The men were on the porch by this time, and Sam moved aside to let them bring the sleeping girl in. The guy holding her laid her down on the couch, on the opposite end from Kenzie, then smiled at Sam.

“We're just hired security,” he said, “and our employers told us to tell you that all we did was babysit and make sure the little princess there was safe and got whatever she needed.”

“We're paid off, now,” said the other one, “and we won't be working for them again, so if you need anything...” He handed Sam a card that read Darkhouse Security Services. “I'm Terry Darkhouse. Call anytime. Seems you shook those guys up, and that isn't easy to do.”

The two men walked out and down to the car that Sam hadn’t even noticed until that moment, got into it and drove away. He watched them go, then turned around to look at the sleeping girl.

Indie was kneeling beside her, and had a hand on her forehead. “Hey, sweetie,” she said. “Hey, wake up.” Cassie moaned for a moment, then stretched and finally opened her eyes. She looked at Indie and frowned.

“Who are you?” she asked, and then she saw Sam. “Are you the man they said was gonna take me home?”

Indie smiled and beat him to it. “That's him, honey,” she said. “That's him.”

Sam took out his phone and dialed Sandy Ward's number. “Mrs. Ward? Sam. I think you should come down here; your granddaughter is sitting on my couch, and wants to go home.”

6

Since Cassie had been returned unharmed, as promised, and all she knew was that her father had told her he arranged for her to have some fun for a few days, which she did—she'd been to every theme park and fun spot within a hundred miles, always with her two black clad escorts—it was decided to keep her return quiet. Her grandmother took her home, and Sam told Mrs. Ward that he didn't think they'd be seeing Rice for a long time, if ever again. The woman thanked him over and over, insisting that she could make payments to him, but Sam told her it was all just part of the neighborhood swap, and to let it go.

Indie held his hand and smiled as they walked away. “Neighborhood swap?” she asked.

He nodded and closed the door, then let go of her hand. “Long story. When I was first hurt, some of the neighbors started coming over and helping out with things, like the lawn and such. They wouldn't let me pay them, but I'm a good mechanic, so when one of 'em needed some work on his car, I was able to help him out. It sort of snowballed from there, but now we all help out whenever we can, and everyone benefits.”

“I see. So, now, you're gonna be the neighborhood private eye, right?”

Sam sighed as he sat down in his recliner. “Probably,” he said. “But not ‘til I find Allen Rice. They held up their end, I'm gonna hold up mine.”

Kenzie had wakened when Cassie and Mrs. Ward were there, but it was nearing midnight and she was dozing again. Indie looked down at her and said, “About bedtime, I think, don't you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I'm ready to crash. I'll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Sure. Hey, question: you found her, so is that the end of the job for me?”

Sam stopped and turned to look at her. “I thought we agreed you were staying on as housekeeper?”

Indie smiled. “We did,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure. And you’re gonna need me to find Rice, right?”

“Yep. Now go get the little one to bed, and yourself, too. Scat!”

Indie giggled as she carried Kenzie up the stairs, and Sam smiled as he watched her go. He had to admit that it was a very pleasant view.

He went to his room and put the Glock into the drawer of his nightstand, then took out the envelope the men had given him. He looked it over carefully, but could find no sign of wires or trigger mechanisms that might indicate a letter bomb, so he slowly slid a thumb under the flap and opened it. There were papers inside, and a stack of hundred dollar bills. He dumped the contents out onto his bed.

He glanced at the money—ten thousand dollars—but let it lie there as he picked up a typed sheet of paper. It read:

Mr. Prichard,

Despite your history with the police and the obvious conflict that may cause you with our company, we are not quite as evil as you assume us to be. Returning the girl to you in advance of our request for your assistance is, we hope, some evidence of that.

That being said, we do feel that you have a better chance of finding our missing package than we do, and are grateful for your assistance. The money included herein is intended as a retainer, with more to follow if you are successful. For the record, this money is from my own very legitimate business interests, which I never mingle with the other ventures of which we spoke earlier. You can accept it in good conscience.

Here is what we do know. Mr. Rice has been asking for some time to be given greater responsibility in the company; in effect, he wanted to become a regional sales manager. We did not feel he was ready for such a position, but after repeated requests, we decided to give him a small task and test him. That task was to take a small package of our merchandise to another location and deliver it, then see to its distribution and report back to us within five days. He was to bring back with him the proceeds of the entire operation. He should have been back here two days ago.

In the interest of aiding you in accomplishing your mission, we're going to give you the information we have. Allen Rice left here on Sunday morning, planning to drive to St. Louis, Missouri. His instructions were to find a Miss Caroline Baker and deliver the goods to her, then work with her as her new manager while she distributed the goods. The trip should have taken him about fifteen hours, but according to Miss Baker, he never arrived at all.

The car he was driving was one of ours, a silver 2015 Lincoln MKZ. We have checked, and it has not turned up in any accidents or incidents, so we suspect that Mr. Rice has simply absconded with our goods. We have no idea where he may have gone, so we are handing you quite a problem, but the fact that you were able to learn so much about us in such a short time indicates that you have some significant resources in gathering information. As long as those resources are working for us, rather than against us, we would like to maintain a mutually beneficial working relationship with you, and in accordance with your request, we will not ask you to do anything outside the law.

For that reason, all we ask you to do in this case is to locate either Mr. Rice or our goods. We will not ask you to take any action, or to physically touch anything. Simply notify us of the location, and we will do the rest.

We hope this meets with your approval, Mr. Prichard. If it does, we can assure you that we will also make our resources available to you in the future, should you ever need information that we can provide.

Incidentally, we do understand that you have friends in certain circles who are expecting you to give them some of your information. We can afford to lose some of our lower-level staff, in order to allow you to keep your relationship there in good standing. No offense will be taken if you need to give some of them up, now and then.

E.I.

Sam read it through several times. If he were reading it correctly, then as long as he kept his end of the bargain, Indie and Kenzie would be in no danger. He could do that, he knew, simply by not giving Dan and the DEA all of the information he had. There was still plenty he could give them, in the “lower-level staff” the letter spoke of, but by leaving out names like Ingersoll's, he could eliminate any risk to Indie and her daughter, thereby also eliminating the need to pretend she was his girlfriend.

Sam wasn't sure he liked that.

When morning came, he woke to find Indie and Kenzie up and in the kitchen again. There were pancakes and sausage cooking, and he found his coffee freshly poured and waiting on the table.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said cheerfully.

“Mornin', Sam!” said Kenzie, and Sam smiled as he tickled her chin. Indie laughed and said, “Morning! Hope you like pancakes!”

“I like food!” he said. “I'll eat anything that don't eat me first, and a few things that would!”

She slid a plate of two big pancakes and a couple of sausage links in front of him, and a single pancake and link in front of Kenzie. Sam reached for the butter and offered some to Kenzie, who nodded excitedly, so he slathered some onto her pancake before doing the same to his own, then waited for Indie to join them and supervise the syrup. Kenzie said grace, and they all said, “Amen!”

“I was thinking,” Sam said, “that since you’re going to be staying a while, we need to get some furniture for Kenzie and set her up a room, upstairs, don't you think?”

Indie froze, and just looked at him. “Um—that'd be great, Sam, but it'd probably cost a lot, too, wouldn't it? I don't want you to go to any extra expense.”

He shrugged. “It won't cost that much, and since we need to keep people thinking we're an item, it would be in character. I've got some cash saved up, and you can take it and go to the Furniture Discount Warehouse, or whatever it's called. Get her a bed of her own, and dressers, that sort of stuff.”

Indie looked at him for a moment, then turned to Kenzie. “You hear that, baby? You want your own bedroom?”

Kenzie lit up like a light bulb, and Sam grinned from ear to ear. They talked all through breakfast about the kind of canopy bed Kenzie would like to have, and what Disney characters were her favorites for decorating her new room. Sam wondered if this was anything like what it would have felt like if he'd had a family of his own, and finally decided that he didn’t care. He was just going to enjoy it while he could.

There was no doubt in his mind that Indie and Kenzie would move along, someday. One of the things he knew very well was that nothing lasts forever, not in this world, and he would make sure he was prepared for the heartaches that would come when that day arrived. For now, though, he would enjoy the game, the pretense that they were his family, that Indie was his girl.

When they were done eating, Indie got Kenzie settled into the living room with some educational programs for children, and she and Sam went to the dining room to get back on the computer.

“Okay, so this morning I thought about how to track Rice, and put Herman to going through all of his emails and other communications to find where he's hiding. The IP address he logs into his email from is out of a little place called Harrison, Arkansas, and so I started checking hotels there, going into some of the back doors of the bigger chain hotels. There's a Super 8 motel in Harrison that uses wifi through that IP address, and there's an Allen Rice registered there since last Sunday night.”

Sam shook his head. “This idiot actually used his own name to get a hotel? I'm surprised the company couldn't find him on their own.”

“Well, they probably could have if he'd used a credit card, but as far as I can tell, he doesn't even have one. He paid cash for the room for one night, and has been paying each day to stay over.”

Sam sucked on his bottom lip for a moment. “Something isn't making sense to me, here. He apparently headed for St. Louis, just like he was supposed to, but then took a detour into Arkansas. There, he got a hotel room and has been just staying there, day after day, without calling in once to try to get himself out of trouble. Is he really that stupid?”

“Either that, or there's something going on that isn't obvious to us or them. I mean, why would he blow the deal he's been trying to get? He finally got his shot, it doesn't make sense he'd just throw it all away without a reason.”

Sam sat there and thought about it, but couldn't come up with a better explanation than stupidity, so he gave up. “Okay. Well, I'd probably better go there and make sure this is really him, before I give them the address. If I head out this morning, I can be there by tonight, make sure it's him, and then keep him in sight while they come and do whatever they're gonna do.”

Indie looked at him. “And what if what they do is kill him?”

“I've considered that,” Sam said, “and the truth is, if he was stupid enough to scam these kind of people, then he's brought that down on himself. If I hand him over, then it may be faster, but sooner or later they're gonna find him, and it's gonna happen. I can either stand up to them and try to be a hero and get us all killed, or I can do what I'm hired to do and let him deal with the consequences of his actions. If it comes down to a choice between him getting hurt or you and Kenzie getting hurt, them it's gonna be him. End of story.”

She stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I just don't want you to get to feeling later like our being here forced you to do something you didn't want to do.”

Sam laughed. “I'll tell you a little secret about me. No one, no matter how they complain that someone made them do something, or that they got trapped into doing something, no one ever does anything they don’t want to do. The difference between me and most people is that I know I don’t do anything I don’t want to do! This guy bought his own ticket to hell, Indie, I didn’t buy it for him. It's his ride, and his fault he's got to take it.”

Indie smiled. “Okay. You just stay in close touch with me, okay? I'm gonna be worried about you.”

Sam grinned. “I'm tougher than I look, I promise you,” he said. “You don't have to worry about me.”

She winked at him. “Worrying is a girlfriend's prerogative, Sam, and don't you forget it!”

Sam went to his room and began packing a few things to take along. He didn't anticipate being gone more than a couple of days, so he packed enough clothes for an overnight trip, then clipped the Glock onto his belt and slipped the three extra clips into his bag. When he was ready, he picked up the stack of hundreds and broke the band, peeling off ten of them and putting the rest into his pocket. He went out to where Indie was still sitting at the dining table.

“Here,” he said, and handed her the ten hundred dollar bills. “That's a thousand, and it ought to be enough to get the bedroom setup you want. You can use what's left over to get blankets and sheets and stuff, and if you need more, we'll do that when I get back, okay?”

Indie smiled up at him. “Okay. You know, you don't have to do this, right? Me and Kenzie can sleep in the same room, it's no big deal.”

He looked over to where Kenzie was enthralled by Dora the Explorer, and nodded toward her. “You've done pretty good by her under the circumstances you've had to deal with, Indie, but a child needs some kind of stability and individuality in her life. Since you've agreed to stay here and work for me for a while, we might as well let her get started on that, don't you think? Giving her a bedroom isn't hurting me any, and it's not like I've got a woman waiting for me to propose or anything; the extra rooms up there'll be empty for a long time if you don’t use one of 'em for Kenzie, so why not? It'll give you time to find a real job, the kind you want, and to get on your feet again.”

She stood up and looked him in the eye for moment, staring up at his six foot one from her “five foot nothing,” as he'd put it, then reached up and grabbed the sides of his face and pulled him down for a kiss. It wasn't a passionate kiss, it was just a kiss, but there was a hint in it that there could be more, if he played his cards right.

“Thank you,” she said, and let him go.

Sam had admitted to himself months earlier that the Vette was finished, but he hadn’t taken it out for a drive yet. As he walked out the front door—after a tearful goodbye from Kenzie, who was afraid he might not come back—he suddenly decided the van just wasn't the way he wanted to go, so he hit the button on his key fob and opened the garage door. Indie had followed him out and was watching as it rolled up, and her eyes bugged out when she saw what was hidden inside.

“Holy cow,” she said, “that is beautiful! What is it?”

“Nineteen sixty-nine Corvette Stingray,” Sam said. “I bought it a few years ago when it was seized in a drug deal, and been rebuilding it ever since. It's been done for a few months, but I haven’t had a reason to take her out, ‘til now.” He went to the car and opened the door, tossing his bag inside before climbing in. He sat there for a moment, then put the key into the ignition and fired up the aluminum 427 cubic inch engine known as the ZL1.

The rumble that came from the twin factory side exhaust pipes was enough to make the windows rattle in the house, and when he eased the clutch out, the car slid forward like a shark moving toward a swimmer. Indie was still staring, and when Sam stopped it right in front of her and powered down the passenger window, she leaned in and said, “Remind me that when you get back, you're taking me for a ride in this thing!”

He laughed. “Sounds like a date!”

Indie looked around the interior of the car and then back into his eyes. “It might be,” she said, and then turned and let him watch her wiggle her way back into the house. She got inside and looked at her daughter, who was still watching TV, and said, “Sweetie—it might be just barely possible that we've found the nicest guy there is! How would you feel about having Sam for a Daddy?”

Kenzie, who Indie had thought wasn't listening, spun around and said, “Yeah! Sam's gonna be my Daddy! Yay!”

Uh-oh, Indie thought. I hope she forgets that before he gets home!

Sam got onto I-70 at the Steel Street ramp and let the Vette have its head. He was cruising at eighty before he even realized it, and just enjoyed the feel of the powerful car beneath him. The road slid by like water over a dam, and he let himself think through all that had happened in the past few days.

Sam had thought his working days were over, and he'd certainly never thought he'd be doing any kind of investigative work again. When Mrs. Ward had come to him about Cassie, his instinct was to consider it beyond his ability to find the girl, but in essence, he had done just that. She was home safe because he'd done what had to be done.

Of course, a lot of that was attributable to Indie. It was her skills with computers that made it possible for him to learn the things he was able to use as leverage, and so he owed a lot to her, too. A part of him thought that they made a great team, and he had already decided to offer her more pay to help with any further cases he might get. That might get her to stay longer, anyway, and he was ready to admit to himself that he really liked having her and Kenzie around. They'd been with him less than two whole days, and it already felt like they just belonged there with him.

On the other hand, Sam wasn't the type to jump in too fast. He'd want to go slow, even though he got the feeling that Indie was interested in letting the relationship grow, too. The kiss she'd given him—that had come out of nowhere, but he'd certainly enjoyed it! Heck, he'd love to go right back there and kiss her again!

Down, boy, he said to himself. He'd already realized that Indie was very pretty, but watching her go up the stairs the night before had made him admit that he found her sexy as could be, too. That little wiggle of hers was something few men could ever fail to admire, and he wasn't one of them! He could watch that all day long, but it only led to thoughts of other things that he'd promised not to try, so he made himself behave as long as she was around.

The miles were passing, and it wasn't long before he was in Kansas. I-70 took him to Kansas City, and his GPS told him that he'd go south there onto I-49. He had a few hours of Kansas flatland ahead, though, so he cruised along, only stopping for gas, and once for a sandwich.

Back in Denver, Indie had googled all the local discount furniture places, and decided to go shopping. She cleaned Kenzie up and dressed her, and the two of them got into her car and headed for the first one on her list.

They walked into the store, and a salesman spotted them instantly, but he seemed more interested in hitting on her than finding the things she wanted to see. After about fifteen minutes, she said she'd forgotten something at home and would be back, then drove off to the next store. That one was more rewarding, and the sales lady there was happy to help her find a perfect bedroom suite for Kenzie, and even discounted it more when she found out that Indie was paying cash! She got everything she wanted for less than five hundred, and was delighted!

Then it was off to the mall and the stores that sold bedding for kids. Kenzie ended up with Frozen-themed bedding from the Disney store, and a Dora-themed set from another one. They bought appliques to put up around the walls, and pictures of some of Kenzie's favorite characters to hang around the room, and Indie still had enough left to buy Kenzie some toys and even a little table and chair set that the two of them fell in love with. When she rang it all up and was stuffing it into her car, she hoped Sam wouldn't mind the extras, but she somehow had the feeling that he would be okay with it.

She got everything in the car, even though the table was stuffed into the back seat next to Kenzie, and started for home. She thought about the fact that she'd have the big house to herself for the night, and that made her feel a bit lonely. Sam was a very nice guy, and she had already come to realize that she was very attracted to him, but she wasn't sure how he felt about her. Okay, yeah, she could tell he thought she was cute, and she knew he was watching her go up the stairs the night before, which gave her a tingle if she was going to be honest, but was he actually interested in her, or just in her femaleness? He was a man, after all, so she needed to be careful not to give him the wrong signals, and not to read his wrong, either.

She got home and was unloading her purchases when Anita Mitchell came down to see if Kenzie wanted to come over and play for a while. Kenzie certainly did, so Indie had the rest of the afternoon to start putting things together, and when the furniture store's delivery truck showed up at three, the guys driving it were thrilled to help her get everything set up.

Sam's gonna be amazed at how much I got, she thought, and I bet he likes it all, too. Maybe it'll show him I'm worth his notice…

She shut down that train of thought, instantly!

Sam wondered if there was ever a place as boring and flat as Kansas. Holy cow, he hadn't seen anything taller than a small tree in two hundred miles! He'd passed Hays, Salina, Abilene, Junction City, and Topeka, and was coming up on Kansas City, but still, it was almost nothing but flatland. How could anyone live there?

He checked his GPS and got ready to make the turn onto 49. He'd have to follow that down to a town called Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he'd get onto Highway 412, a back road if he ever saw one! That would be the one to take him to Harrison, where Allen Rice was hiding out.

He checked the time and saw that it was getting close to five, so he called Indie just to see how she was doing. A part of him was feeling bad for not telling her she didn't have to play the girlfriend after all, but another part wanted to keep it going as long as possible. When she answered, he decided to see how quick she was.

“Hey, Baby, how's it going?” he asked, a smile evident in his voice.

“Well, hi there, Darlin'!” she came back. “It's goin' good, here, how's the road trip?”

“It's long and boring. I've come to the conclusion that Kansas is the place God created for people who are too afraid of life to live in the mountains! There is nothing in Kansas taller than a rabbit!”

Indie laughed, and Sam realized that he liked hearing her laugh. “Well, I went shopping, like you told me to do,” she said, “and I did really good. I got everything I needed to set up her bedroom, and I hope it's okay, but I kinda bought her some toys and stuff, too.”

Sam grinned. “That's fine, and now that you mention it, I should probably buy her something while I'm out, too. I think she'd liked to know I was thinking of her, so if I bring her back a toy or something...”

“She loves stuffed animals,” Indie said. “Any kind, she just loves them!”

“I'll remember that!”

They were both quiet for a moment, and then they both tried to speak at once.

“So, I was thinking...”

“Indie, I was wondering… okay, you go first.”

“No, you go on, I can wait,” Indie said.

“Well—I was just gonna ask, does it bother you, having to pretend we're, y'know, an item?”

She hesitated for a moment, and Sam cringed, afraid of what she was about to say, but then she said, “No, I don't mind. I mean, you’re a good-lookin' guy, so we probably look nice together, y'know, and you're so good to me and Kenzie. I mean, it wouldn't bother me, y'know, if we had to—if we had to keep it up for a while, y'know?”

Sam was smiling and nodding into the phone. “Okay, good, cause I think maybe, if you're okay with it, I think maybe we should keep it this way for a while, maybe even quite a while, just to be safe, you know, and so when I get back, maybe we can start going out, like on dates, you know?”

Indie swallowed hard. “Yeah, that'd probably be a good idea, y'know, let everyone see us out like we're really boyfriend and girlfriend, y'know.”

They kept assuring each other that it was a good idea for a few more minutes, and then Sam's phone beeped an incoming call. He said goodbye, and switched over.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Stranger,” said Dan Jacobs. “Anything good goin' on over there?”

“Well, some things,” Sam said. “I found the girl, and got her home last night, but it's led to a mess. In return for getting her back, I've got to find Allen Rice, who is hiding in some little town in Arkansas. I'm headed there now.”

“Geez, Arkansas? Is that a real place?”

“Yeah, it's real,” Sam laughed. “Listen, I haven’t forgotten about you. I'm putting together some info you're gonna find useful, but I'm afraid it's mostly just street scum.”

“Hey, every little bit helps! If I can make a few good busts, I have a chance of getting a promotion one of these days, and I could use the pay raise that would come with it!”

Sam smiled. Dan was always complaining about his pay, even though he lived alone and had no real expenses. “I'll see what I can do to speed that up for you!”

“Okay, good. You be careful in Arkansas, I've heard stories about those rednecks out there!”

They hung up, and Sam saw his exit ahead. He was in Missouri, and it was time to go south to redneck land. He followed 49 all the way to Fayetteville, Arkansas, passing through Bentonville (the Home of WalMart) on the way. He found his exit for US 412, and followed it, moving through small hills and vales that were known locally as The Ozark Mountains.

How anyone could call these speed bumps mountains is beyond me, he thought. The road was curvy and wound up and down, but it was decent and well maintained, so he was making good time.

It was getting late, nearing eleven in the evening, and he hadn't stopped for several hours. He spotted a big gas station and store in a little town called Marble that was barely more than a wide spot in the road, and pulled in to gas up. The store sported a small restaurant, and he bought some chicken strips to eat on the way.

“That be all for you?” the counter girl asked as he paid for his gas and purchases.

“That'll be it. Can you tell me how much farther it is to Harrison?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah, Harrison's about another forty-five minutes or an hour ahead. You're almost there.”

He got back on the road and let the Vette cruise again, and sure enough, he found Harrison right where she'd said he would. He rolled into town past the Wal-Mart and car lots and banks, and spotted the Super 8 Hotel, then pulled in and got a room.

7

Sam got up at six the next morning and wandered out to the lobby for the free continental breakfast they'd told him about when he checked in. Waffles sounded good, and they had the machine there that made them fresh on the spot. He got himself a cup of coffee, then started his waffle, and was standing beside the counter waiting for it when Allen Rice strolled into the breakfast room.

Rice looked nervous, Sam thought. There was something about the guy that said he was scared, and while Sam could understand that, it struck him as odd that Rice was hanging out in some little redneck town in the middle of nowhere. He should have been in some other part of the world. Sam didn't know how much money Rice may have taken off with, or how much value the drugs he took may have had, but if it was worth leaving his daughter as collateral, it was probably a substantial amount. Surely it could have gotten him somewhere further and more anonymous than Harrison, Arkansas!

All Sam knew at the moment, though, was that he had confirmed the location of Rice, and that meant his job was almost done.

The waffle iron went ding, which meant his waffle was done. He got it out of the machine and onto a plate, then smothered it in butter and syrup and carried it to one of the little tables. He sat down as Rice began making a waffle of his own.

Rice sat at the table beside his, and began to eat hunkered down over the plate as if he was afraid someone was going to steal his breakfast away. Sam didn't understand why, but something about the way Rice was acting was bothering him, and if there was one thing Sam couldn't take, it was not understanding something.

“Good waffles, here, aren't they?” he said, before he even realized he was going to speak.

Rice looked up at him and grunted something that may have been agreement, then turned his eyes back down to his plate. A second later, he jumped as his cell phone rang, and he snatched it out and answered in a whisper.

“Hello?” he said softly into the phone. “Hey, Babe, thanks for calling me back. I didn't know who else to call.”

He listened for a few moments, and Sam strained to hear any of what the caller was saying, but it wasn't loud enough. He could tell it was a woman's voice, and he suspected it was the girlfriend he'd met at Rice's house.

“I don't know what to do,” Rice was saying. “I've waited here for most of a week, now, and no one has come like they said. I'm gettin' scared, Babe. This is too weird, but when I call 'em, no one answers. It's like they put me out here to be a bait, or something, but I don’t know what for.”

Sam was listening to the words, but he was also listening to the voice Rice was using, and it was one that was full of fear and worry. The skin on the back of Sam’s neck was prickling, and something told him that things were not right, here.

“If I don't hear something by tomorrow,” Rice said into the phone, “I'm comin' home. They can take this job and shove it. I don't want no part of this. They can give me Cassie back, I'll give their stuff back, and I'll just go on my way and they can go theirs!” He listened again for a moment, then sighed. “Okay, Babe, well, if that guy comes back, you go ahead and call me and let me talk to him. This is just gettin' too weird, like I said.” He ended the call and put the phone back into his pocket.

Sam pretended not to have heard anything, finishing his waffle like everything was fine. He drank his coffee and then refilled his cup, trying to wait until Rice was done. He wanted to talk to the man, but not here where the desk clerk could hear everything said.

His patience was rewarded a moment later, as Rice threw his plate and cup away and started toward the elevator. Sam caught up to him and tapped him on the arm just before he pushed the button.

“Mr. Rice, I think we need to talk,” he said, and Rice immediately spun to face him. He threw his back against the wall behind him and stared at Sam, the fear evident in his face.

“Are you gonna kill me?” he asked in a quavering voice.

“Not intentionally,” Sam said. “Let's go to my room and talk, shall we? I promise I'm not going to hurt you. And if that was Carly you were talking to, then I'm probably the guy who came to talk to her that she told you about. The one asking about Cassie?”

Rice swallowed. “Why are you here? How did you find me?”

“I'm a private eye, and I'm very good at what I do,” Sam said. “We can talk in my room. Right now I just want to find out why you’re here, and why certain people are looking for you so hard.”

Rice stared at him for a moment, then nodded, and Sam pointed down the hall to his room. Because of his cane, the clerk the night before had given him a ground floor room, and they slipped inside and shut the door.

“Have a seat,” Sam said, and Rice took one of the chairs at the table across from the bed. Sam sat in the other and looked at him. “I couldn't help overhearing your phone call a bit ago, and I gotta tell you, something is sounding pretty fishy to me. See, I was hired first to find your daughter, by her grandmother; that led me to tracking you down, and I found out about your deal with the Company, the one where they held your daughter for security. That made me track down one of the owners of the Company, and...”

Rice's eyes went wide. “You know who they are?” he asked in panic-stricken tones. “Man, they'll kill anyone who knows who they are! That's one of the first things they tell us, if we ever try to find out who they are, we're dead!”

Sam held out a hand to calm him down. “Relax; all I know is one of them, and he and I have an agreement. I don't mess with him, and he won't mess with me. In fact, it was them who hired me to come and track you down. According to what they told me, they think you took off with a lot of their dope or money, or both, and I think they're out for your blood.”

Rice stared at him. “They think I—oh, God, I'm dead! I'm dead! Did they follow you here? Did they send you to kill me? I'm dead, I'm just dead!”

“Calm down and talk to me,” Sam said forcefully. “If there's a legitimate reason why you’re here instead of in St. Louis or Denver, then maybe I can find a way to keep you alive. The way I got it, you were supposed to take a load of merchandise to St. Louis and give it to a woman named Baker. Is that what you were told?”

Rice nodded slowly. “Yes, at first, but then when I was on the road, they called and told me to go and hide somewhere, instead. They said someone was after me, and they didn't want me to get caught with it, so I should go somewhere no one would look for me and hide until they called, but I been here for days and no one's called!”

“Okay, who called and told you that? Was it the same one who sent you to St. Louis?”

Rice nodded. “Yeah, I don't know his name or nothin'. He's my district leader. Usually we only talk on email, but when you’re a crew leader, you get a phone so they can talk to you that way.” He held out the cell phone he'd been using earlier. “He called me when I hit Kansas City and told me to go somewhere else and hide ‘til he calls me back. I turned off and followed a bunch of different roads ‘til I got too tired to keep going, and stopped here.”

Sam was thinking, and not liking the ideas that were going through his mind. The way he saw it, there were only three possibilities:

First, someone was setting Rice up for a fall by sending him into the wind with a lot of the Company's value, and that someone was planning to take that value for himself. That plan almost certainly involved killing Rice in the process.

Second, someone was setting Sam up. He had been hired to find Rice, but someone probably already knew right where he was, and a hit team could be waiting to strike at any moment. If it did, and Rice were killed, Sam would be the most likely suspect.

Third, Rice was set up, but whoever was behind it really did lose track of him. They hired Sam to find him, and would have to eliminate both of them once the job was done.

None of the options held much appeal for Sam, but he had to choose the most likely one, and fast. That would dictate his next move, and if it was the wrong one, then he and Rice, and maybe even Indie and Kenzie, were going to end up dead.

“Rice, tell me this: do you still have whatever it is they gave you? All of it?”

Rice smiled from ear to ear. “You bet your ass, I do! No way was I letting it out of my sight!”

Sam breathed a small sigh of relief. That was one part of the problem out of the way. “Good. Now, tell me about the man you talked to on the phone. What does he sound like?”

Rice looked at him, not comprehending. “Sound like? I dunno, he sounds like a guy from the South, I guess. Got a Southern-type accent, know what I mean? Like he's from Texas or somewhere like that.”

Okay, Sam thought, that's not Ingersoll. He's more the city-tough-guy type, pretending to be a society gentleman. “Sit tight,” he said to Rice. “I've gotta make a phone call, and you don't want this guy to know you’re here, not yet. Be as quiet as you possibly can, but I'm gonna let you hear his voice, and all I want you to do is nod or shake your head, to tell me if it’s the voice you know. Got that?”

Rice nodded. “Yeah, I got it. I won't make a sound!”

Sam took out his phone and hit the button to dial Ingersoll's phone. As he expected, it was answered almost immediately.

“Mr. Prichard,” the voice said, “are you calling to give me good news already?”

Sam held the phone so Rice could hear the voice on the other end, and watched Rice's face. When the man shook his head calmly, indicating that he did not know Ingersoll's voice, Sam relaxed a bit.

“Well, I'm not so sure it's good news, but I've got something. I have located your missing package, and its deliveryman, but it appears to me that you've got a problem somewhere at your end. The delivery was rerouted by whoever originally sent the package on its way, and the deliveryman was told to wait for new instructions.”

Ingersoll was silent for several seconds. “Mr. Prichard, do you have reason to believe this is actually true?”

“I'm afraid I do, sir. I'm here with the deliveryman now, who assures me your package is present and intact, and he's been waiting here for those new instructions for several days. Long enough that even he's begun to get suspicious, but he didn't know whom to call.”

More silence for another ten seconds. “I see. Well, it appears that I do have a problem. However, you have done your job, so if you wish you can walk away now and I'll forward the additional fee I mentioned in my letter—but if you're willing, I think I could stand to employ you a bit longer.”

Sam smiled. “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

“I should like for that deliveryman to return to Denver safely, and I suspect that there may be someone who is not going to want that to happen, don't you? I'm afraid I made an error in judgment, Mr. Prichard, and that I must now confess it to you; the person of whom we are speaking was made aware of our arrangement, and has almost certainly been following you. I think that if you accept this new assignment, you should probably take that deliveryman and his package and vacate your location within the next few minutes.”

Sam caught on instantly; whoever had sent Rice on this wild mission was almost certainly following him, and most likely was watching the hotel at that moment. They'd be out to get Rice and his package, and wouldn't care who got in the way.

“Wait a minute,” Sam said. “If this is the person who sent the original shipment, then why wouldn't he know where the deliveryman is? He called him by phone to tell him to divert, but he's never called him back. Are you sure we're talking about the same one?”

“I'm afraid we are, and the reason your deliveryman was lost is very simple; the phone the deliveryman has is one of thousands that we use and then throw away once they've served their purpose. It was programmed for this one shipment only, and its number entered into only the phone of the person sending it out. Unfortunately, that phone suffered a mishap the other evening, and fell into a bathtub. By the time it was dried out, its memory was completely wiped, and the shipper no longer has the deliveryman's number. He does, however, know what you are driving, and he and his helpers have been following you since you left yesterday morning. Once again, Mr. Prichard, I would not waste any time in getting away from where you are. Good luck.”

The line went dead. Sam looked at Rice and knew that he didn't have time to explain everything.

“Where is the package, Mr. Rice?” he demanded. He'd already made such an impression that Rice didn't hesitate.

“I told you, I never let it out of my sight,” Rice said. “It's right here!” He reached into a pocket and produced a small, square bottle.

Sam stared. “That's it? What on earth is in it?”

Rice shrugged his shoulders. “I don't have a clue, but whatever it is, it must be pretty strong stuff. I mean, they'd have to cut it thousands of times to do any good with it, right?”

Sam reached out and took the bottle from Rice's hand and just looked at it for a moment. The top was sealed with some sort of glue-like substance. “You haven't tried to open it, have you?”

“Lord, No!” Rice said. “That's one of the things they told me. It's so strong that if I even smell it, it would probably kill me! I'm not about to touch that cap!”

Sam hefted it. It wasn't glass, he thought, but more of a heavy plastic. If it was that concentrated, that was probably a good thing. He handed it back to Rice.

“Okay, here's the deal. It looks to me like someone set you up. The guy who sent you out with this stuff is also the one who wanted you to take it and hide, but then he dropped his phone into the tub and lost your number. When I came along and was able to track your daughter to them, the guy I talked to decided to hire me to try to find you. The one who sent you out, however, he may have followed me after all, and if so, then he’s probably gonna try to kill you and take that from you. My pal on the phone has asked me to try to keep you alive and get you back to Denver with it. The only way I can do that is if we leave, like right now.”

Rice stared at him. “Um—okay, let me go get my...”

“No, I mean, we leave right now! My car is parked right outside that window, and that's how we're going out of here. We don't have time for you to go get anything, let's go, now!” He moved past Rice and threw open the window, then kicked the screen off of it. He stuck his head out and looked around for a moment, didn't see anyone watching, and said, “Come on, let's go,” before climbing over the sill and stepping onto the grass. Three quick steps took him to the drivers' door of the Vette, and Rice was suddenly at the passenger door.

Sam unlocked the driver's door and got in, then reached across and popped open the passenger door. Rice slid into the seat, and Sam told him to get low and stay that way, then backed out of his parking spot and headed toward the main street out in front of the place. He reached down and took the Glock from its holster and laid it in his lap for safety, then turned left and headed north on US 65.

He glanced into the rear-view mirror and started to congratulate himself on making a clean escape, but then he saw two cars come fishtailing out of the hotel's parking lot. “They've seen us,” he said, and downshifted the Vette into second gear, flooring it. The car took off like a rocket, and he started weaving in and out of traffic like a race driver.

The cars behind him were new Mustangs, and were every bit as powerful as the Vette, he was sure. Sam could only hope he was the better driver, and that his car was better suited to the curvy roads of northwest Arkansas. When he got to the turnoff for 412, he slammed the Vette into it at more than a hundred miles an hour, taking the curving ramp at twice the speed it was built for.

The Mustangs were right behind him, though, and they were not having any trouble keeping up as he roared up the four-lane highway. He remembered that there was a small town ahead, where the road took a sharp turn to the left, and hoped he could gain some distance on them by the time they got there.

The Vette was fast and powerful, but the other cars were newer and had more advanced components that gave them handling and power that didn't exist in sixty-nine. Fortunately, they also had computerized governors that limited their top speed, despite that power. Sam pushed the Vette as hard as he could, red-lining the tachometer as he tried for just a little more power from the big aluminum V8. He was slamming the gears up and down, doing everything he could to gain just a little more advantage in this game of automotive cat and mouse. By the time he got close to the next town, the Mustangs were barely visible in the mirrors.

The sign said “Speed Zone Ahead,” and he came flying into the tiny town of Alpena, Arkansas. A post office, two gas stations and a guy who carved logs into statues with a chain saw were the only claims the town had to being noticeable, and he flew past all of them at close to a hundred and fifty. The road turned left, and he had to slow down, but he still managed to drift the turn at more than seventy miles an hour. He was over the first hill by the time the Mustangs made it to the intersection, and had opened the throttle up wide.

He grabbed his phone and called Indie.

“Hello,” she said, and he started talking.

“Indie, I've got troubles! The whole thing’s been a setup, but somehow I've come down on the right side of it all. I've got bad guys on my tail, chasing me right now. They want to kill Rice and take what he's got, and they'll kill me, too, if they catch us! I need back roads, a way to lose the cars chasing us, and I don't have lots of time. What can you do?”

“Oh, God, Sam, let me get on the computer! Where are you now?”

“I'm on US 412, about two miles west of Alpena, Arkansas! I need a route that'll get me off this road and get me back to Denver.”

“I'm lookin', I'm lookin', hang on! Okay, about nine miles ahead, you've got a road going north, it's State Highway 103. If you take that right turn, then go straight when you come to a little town called Rudd, that's a shortcut to another road, Highway 21. That'll take you to Berryville, and there's a dozen ways out of there. Those roads have lots of curves, be careful!”

Sam laughed. “Don't worry, Babe,” he said, “this car was built for curves. I can handle it! I'll call you later, when I'm on a safer road!”

He ended the call and pushed the Vette, going for every bit of power he could pull out of it to keep distance between him and the two Mustangs. He told his phone to call up GPS and find the way to Berryville, and a moment later it told him he'd be turning right in two miles.

He glanced over at Rice and saw that the man was white as a sheet. He was holding onto the door with one hand and the console with the other, but his face was ashen. “Just hang on, man, I'll get you home safe!” Sam yelled over the sound of the engine and the wind.

Rice nodded and tried to grin, but didn't quite make it.

Sam slid the car into the turn for 103, and poured the power back on as he raced up the curvy road. Chicken houses and farms flashed by on either side, and then he came into a tiny little town. The main road turned hard to the right, but there was another road that went straight like Indie had said, and Sam took it, flying over a small hump in the road and then straightening out as he followed the asphalt into the hills.

He made it to Highway 21, and was sure that he'd lost the Mustangs, so he turned right and headed into Berryville. The old town was not very big, but he was able to find a way up through Missouri that would help them avoid the ones who were after them. When he was well on the way and feeling safe for the moment, he called Ingersoll again.

“Okay,” he said, “I've got Rice and the package, and we're on the road. Who is it that's trying to kill us, and what the heck is this thing that can be so small and still so valuable?”

“Mr. Prichard, there are some things I'm prepared to tell you, and some that I am not. For now, you'll have to let me decide what things you need to know. The package is not one of those things. As for the person after you, I'm afraid you've identified a rebellion within our ranks, and one of our top people seems to have decided to split with us. That is who you're dealing with, but his identity is not going to do you any good. If you make it back here, then I shall be willing to meet with you and discuss some of this information, but not over the telephone. Once again, I wish you good luck, Mr. Prichard. Oh, and please tell Mr. Rice that he is not in any danger from the actual Company—provided he survives the current situation.”

The line went dead again. “Damn, I hate when he does that! Just hangs up without telling me squat!”

“They're all like that,” Rice said. “They only tell you what they want you to know, nothing else.”

Sam looked over at him. “How many have you talked to?”

“Well, only one on the phone,” he said, “but I've talked to all three of them by email. At least, I think I have. You can't really tell, that way.”

“You say there's three of them? How do you know that?”

“Well, there's three districts, that's all I know for sure, so it makes sense there's only three district managers, right? That's what I mean by all three of them. I don't know how many there are over the district managers.”

Sam shook his head. The Company seemed to be set up like a normal business in some ways, but it was obviously a criminal organization, and apparently ruthless. Right at the moment, all he wanted to do was survive another day. His deal with Ingersoll meant that he couldn't turn them all in, but if he could help cause the rift between the apparent leaders to get wider, then there might be an internal collapse of their system, something that would leave enough gaps for Dan and the DEA to get in and do some damage.

The road out of Arkansas wasn't very long, and they soon found themselves on US 65 once again, but this time it was going north through Branson, MO and up to Columbia. There, they would pick up I-70 again, and make their way back to Denver.

Sam thought about stopping to rent a different car, but he didn’t want to leave his Vette behind and didn't want to be in something with less power if they were found. The old ZL1 was still one of the best engines ever built, and the old-style technology of the muscle car era had just proven itself superior to all the high-tech, computer-regulated power that was automatically limited in the newer machines.

He drove until he had to stop for gas, and then grabbed food for him and Rice. They ate on the fly, wolfing down their sandwiches and fries, guzzling the cokes that washed down the mea, actually starting to enjoy the ride.

Sam looked over at Rice. “So, how did you get mixed up in all this?”

The other man shrugged. “Long story, and probably one you've heard before. Me and my ex got into dealing some pot, and that led to some other stuff. She got busted and gave me up, but I fought it. It's all still going on; I got a court date in a couple months. Anyway, when I was going to my first hearing, I got approached by the Company, and they said if I wanted to work for them, they could keep me from doing any time over the bust, so I agreed, y'know? I was doing good, too, making some good money and not getting into any trouble, but I just wanted to move up, right? I felt like I could do even better, and then I got with Carly, and she liked the money I was makin' a lot, so I wanted to make even more. I started askin' about promotion opportunities, like could I run a crew, and they finally said I could if I could just handle this little job. All I had to do was take this stuff to St. Louis and give it to the crew leader there, and when I got back, I'd get my own crew. They were talkin' about giving me a crew in Vegas, man.”

“And all you had to do was give them your daughter?” Sam had enough bitterness in his voice that Rice could hear it.

“It wasn't like that, man,” he said. “They told me all they wanted was to hang onto her so they had reason to know I'd come back, and I was definitely gonna come back! Then this crazy crap happened, and I didn't know what to think. I couldn't get no one on the phone, and nobody was callin' me back, nothin'. I was scared, but I was gonna head back today, if I didn't hear from no one. I wasn't gonna leave Cassie there, man, no matter what you think. I mean, I shoulda been back within two days, not a week, like this!”

Sam sneered. “Well, Cassie is safe, and luckily for you, the guy who was really in charge has at least a small streak of decency in him. Girls like her end up in some pretty messy situations when they get swapped off for dope, or used for security in deals like this. She was lucky.”

Rice looked down at his hands. “Sounds like she was lucky you got involved, to me,” he said. “And maybe that goes for me, too. If the man hadn’t messed up his phone, I'd probably have told him where I was and I'd be dead by now. Wasn't for you, I probably still would be. They woulda found me sooner or later.”

Sam couldn't argue with that, so he didn't try. He called Indie, instead.

“Oh, my God, it's about time you called me! Are you okay? I've been worried sick!”

“I'm okay, hon,” Sam said, and then realized what he'd said. “Everything okay there?”

“Yeah, we're fine, I've just been worried about you! I mean, it's not like you called me and said someone was out to kill you or anything, right? Geez!”

He talked to her for a few more minutes, then promised to call again later. When she let him off the phone, he called Ingersoll.

“Okay, we seem to have slipped the bad guys,” he said. “How are you gonna handle them on your end, or is that in the 'I don't need to know' category?”

“We're already handling it, Mr. Prichard. Our associate is fully aware that his plan has gone awry, of course, so he's decided not to return to our fair city. I don't think he'll be attempting to trouble you any longer, simply because that would bring him within our reach, and that, I promise you, is something he'll want to avoid. I doubt there's any chance he'll happen across you on the road today, anyway.”

“Let's hope not,” Sam said. “Now, about when we get back; you said Mr. Rice would not be in danger?”

“That is correct,” Ingersoll said. “We're aware that the delay and diversion of our product was not his doing, so he is not to be held responsible. I think that any of our staff would have done the same, under similar circumstances.”

“Okay, then, what do I do when we get back to Denver? Do you want me to drop him off somewhere? Let him go home? What?”

“Actually, Mr. Prichard, I think I'd like to meet you face to face, if you’re willing. If you would simply call me when you’re getting close to the city, I'll set up a safe meeting place and we can sit and talk like gentlemen. Would that be acceptable?”

Sam thought it over. If Ingersoll was willing to meet with him, it meant he either trusted Sam, or he planned to kill him. No matter how safe a meeting place might seem to be, a good sniper could make it a deadly trap; there would be no way to know whether it was safe or not, from Sam's point of view.

“What would we need to discuss that we can't talk about over the phone?” Sam asked.

“Mr. Prichard, let us just say that there are aspects of my business that you would find not only acceptable, but worthy of occasional support. I have found that you are a man of courage and honor, and I would like to show you why you should find me to be one, as well. We need not see entirely eye to eye in order to recognize qualities worthy of respect in each other, am I right?”

Sam grinned. “Okay, you've got my curiosity up. I'll call, and if it looks reasonably safe, I'll meet you. What about Rice?”

“You'll drop Mr. Rice off near where we will meet, and there will be people there to see to his safety. I give you my word that he will not be harmed, and he will find himself rewarded for the simple fact that he kept our product safe to the best of his ability during this fiasco. You may tell him that, if you wish.”

Another dead line. “That guy says goodbye like a cat!”

Rice's eyebrows went up. “Like a cat?”

“Yeah, he just sticks his tail up into the air and leaves! Just hangs up without even saying goodbye, it's annoying! By the way, he says you're not in any trouble, and you'll be rewarded for the fact you kept the package safe the best you could in this mess. I'm supposed to drop you off with some people who will see that you’re safe, and then I have to go meet him.”

Rice looked over at Sam, and his face fell. “Aw, man, I'm sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry for what?”

“I told you, man, if you find out who they are, they kill you. I think he wants to meet you so he can look you in the eye before you die!”

8

It was nearing ten o'clock at night, and Indie was sitting in the living room with Kenzie when the car pulled up into the driveway. She went to the door to see who it was, and an elderly man she didn't know came walking up the steps onto the porch.

“Is Mr. Prichard here?” he asked when she opened the door.

“No, I'm afraid not,” she said, and then she saw the pistol come out from behind his back and point at her face.

“Well, that's good,” the old man said, “because then I'd lose the element of surprise. Let's step inside, shall we?”

Indie moved backwards, and the old man followed, his gun still up close to her face. Kenzie looked up from the TV and saw the old man, but she didn't realize what was happening. “Hi,” she said.

The old man instantly smiled at Kenzie, while whispering to Indie, “I have no desire to hurt you or your daughter, my dear girl. I need to speak with Mr. Prichard, so I want you to get him on the telephone.”

She swallowed, and started to refuse, but then the old man did something that startled her, she stared at him for a moment. She took out her phone and punched the icon that would dial Sam's number.

He answered on the second ring. “Well, hey, good lookin',” he said.

“Sam, there's someone here who wants to talk to you,” Indie said slowly, and then held the phone out to the old man. He took it and said, “Hello, Mr. Prichard. I think we have some business to discuss. And since I have something that you value, and you have something that I value, I think we should be able to come to some equitable terms, don't you?”

In the Corvette, Sam heard the southern accent and knew that this was the voice of the man who had set this whole thing in motion. He motioned for Rice to be quiet, who nodded in understanding.

“I'm listening,” Sam said. “What do you have in mind?”

“It's very simple,” the man said. “I want the material that you recovered from Mr. Rice. In return, I will give you the lives of these two young ladies I found in your home. This is a one-time offer, Mr. Prichard, so don't take too long to think it over.”

Sam thought fast. “Look, I'm wishing I'd never even heard of this stuff, so I'm more than willing to give it up! How do you want to make the swap? Just say when, where and how, and I'm in. Those girls are a lot more important to me than this crap is.”

The old man chuckled. “Oh, I'm so glad you feel that way! I thought you would, but then again, you just never know about people, nowadays. How far out are you, would you say?”

Sam knew he was only about a half hour out of town, but he wasn't going to give that away. “I'm a good two hours away, but I'm moving steadily that direction.”

“Alright then, that'll give us time to get this set up. I'll call you again in about an hour, and tell you where we'll meet. Don't get any crazy ideas, now, I'd hate to have to ruin their hairstyles, but I will if you force me to. One hour, don't forget to answer!”

The line went dead, and Sam instantly called Ingersoll.

“Yes, Mr. Prichard, I assume you're getting close?”

“I'm about a half hour out, but that isn't why I'm calling, Your rogue man was just at my house, and holding my girls hostage. He wants this stuff as bad as ever, I'm guessing, and says he wants me to meet with him to trade.”

Ingersoll was quiet for a long moment. “Mr. Prichard, I am truly sorry that you got involved in this. If he's got them, then I'm sure you have already figured out that he has no intention of letting them or you live, not after any of you have seen his face. That leaves us to decide how to handle the situation, for I do not want their deaths on my conscience any more than you want them on yours.”

“I'm listening,” Sam said, “but we better come up with something fast. I bought a little time by telling him I was two hours out. He's gonna call me back in an hour and tell me where to meet up.”

Ingersoll sighed. “Well, that gives us a small advantage. I was under the impression that he was gone today, out of town, and I assumed he'd gone with those he sent to follow you. I was obviously wrong, and this means that I've underestimated him twice now. Let me think for a moment.”

“What is it about this stuff that makes him want it so bad? Is it some kind of super-concentrated heroin, or something? Rice said he was told that just smelling it would kill him; is it really that potent?”

Ingersoll didn't answer for a moment, but then Sam heard him sigh. “Can Rice hear me?”

“No, just me.”

“Good. Mr. Prichard, things are not always as they seem. The product you are carrying is not a drug at all, but a very potent chemical weapon, one that could kill thousands just by spilling it out into the air. It was smuggled into this country by agents of ISIS, through networks that normally transport drugs. The person Rice was taking it to is actually an undercover operative of the US Government who was to take it further to a research lab, to have it reverse engineered for the development of an antitoxin. I can't give you more details than that, but you should be able to figure out who is really behind my operation.”

Sam felt his mind begin to reel, and forced himself to keep calm. Holy Crap, I've gotten mixed up with some crazy CIA thing! He shook his head.

“What about the guy who's got Indie and the baby? Will he be alone?” Sam asked. “If he is, I can probably take him.”

Ingersoll chuckled. “Mr. Prichard, the man you’re dealing with was once one of America's most elite soldiers, a navy SEAL, and has spent an amazing amount of time in the employ of the CIA. He's in his sixties now, but as old as he is, I assure you that you could not take him. In fact, I sincerely doubt that any fewer than a half dozen men would be able to take him down, unless they were themselves so highly trained. This is not a man to toy with. Let me make some calls, and I will get back to you in a few minutes.”

Sam slammed the phone down into his lap. “Now, look at this crap!” he yelled. “I go out on a limb for you, and now I've got two people I care about who could end up dead!”

Rice looked over at him. “Is it the southern guy?”

Sam nodded. “He's got my—my girlfriend and her daughter,” he said, using the official version to save time. “He wants your package or he'll kill them, he says.”

Rice slumped down further in his seat. “Man, I'm sorry. I made a real mess of all this, didn't I?”

Sam shook his head. “I don't know who to blame, Rice, all I know is that those girls mean a lot more to me than you or that damned bottle.”

They were on I-70, less than twenty minutes from his house, but the chance that he'd be able to get there and actually save the girls was not good enough for him to risk trying it. As much as he hated the thought of working with an organization like the Company, he didn't see any other way to come out of this with everyone in one piece. He only hoped Ingersoll was not as inept as he seemed where this guy was concerned.

The phone rang and he snatched it up, checking the caller ID to be sure he was answering Ingersoll.

“Go,” he said, and Ingersoll began speaking.

“I've asked some specialists to come on board for this operation, Mr. Prichard. I've had your phone tapped, so that when he tells you where to meet, we'll know it as soon as you do. That will allow me to get some people on site quickly, and some of them will have the sole duty of seeing to it that those hostages are not harmed. These are professionals of the highest quality, and will do whatever it takes to accomplish their mission goals. While they are getting into position, however, you will need to go in and do your best to keep him convinced that you are working alone. Do not, I repeat, do not give him the product at any time, for the moment it is in his hands, he has no further use for you or the hostages. If you try to bluff him, he will know it and will kill you. If you try to barter with him, he will lie to you. If by some miracle you get a chance to kill this man, Mr. Prichard, do not hesitate for even a split second, for that is all the time he would need to turn the tables on you, and then you will be the one who will die.” He seemed to take a breath, and then went on. “There is hope, Mr. Prichard, but I cannot say there is a lot of hope. The men I've contracted for will do all they can to take him out. If they succeed, be careful, for he may not be working alone. Watch for someone else who may appear and try to get the product, and don't hesitate to shoot if you are sure you have a target! As soon as this is over, call me.”

Once again, the line went dead, but this time Sam was ready for it. The line had to stay clear for the old southerner's call, and Sam could only hope that whoever Ingersoll had brought in would be capable of doing the job.

Because he had given the old man a false timetable, Sam decided to keep moving in circles near the middle of the city. That would enable him to get to any meeting place quickly, possibly giving him some advantage. With two innocent lives on the line, Sam was going after any advantage he could get.

The phone rang almost exactly an hour after Sam had last spoken to the southerner, and he answered, praying the old man could not tell the line was tapped.

“I'm here,” he said.

“And so am I,” said the southerner. “I've been thinking about where to meet up, and I think that we should go to the warehouse. I think you know the one I'm referring to, don't you? The one you visited the other day, before you called Eugene?”

“I know where it is, yes. How do you want to make this trade?”

“I think the simplest way would be inside, don't you? I'll have the loading doors open, and you can drive right on in. When you get inside, you will simply step out of your car, walk twenty paces straight ahead and set the product on the floor, carefully. The lights will go out for a few seconds, and when they come back on, the product and I will be gone, and you will find these two lovely young ladies waiting safely in one of the offices.”

“If the lights go out, how do I know they and I won't end up dead? I've got a better idea. I'll go to the warehouse and pull inside. I'll get out, and have the bottle with me, and you send the girls out to me. They get into my car, and then I'll set the bottle down and back out of the building and drive away. When we're gone, you can take that bottle and shove it up your ass, for all I care!”

The line was quiet for a moment. “Mr. Prichard, do you think I've come to the position I'm in by letting people like you dictate to me? If you want these girls to die, then go ahead and try to push me again. I can always track you down and get the bottle after I've disposed of their bodies. Now, once again, we shall do this my way.”

Sam shook his head, praying he was doing the right thing. “Nope. For all I know, the girls may be dead already, and you're luring me into a trap. If I don't get the girls, then you'll never get this bottle, because I'll personally destroy it. The only chance you've got to get your hands on it is to do this the way I want.”

Indie's voice came on the line. “Sam? Kenzie's asleep on my lap, and he's got a gun pointed at her head right now. Oh, and I fed your stupid dog, Herman! Sam, get me out of this, please?”

Sam made a face. His dog? Herman was the computer program—holy cow, she was saying that there was something on the computer that might help! He spun the wheel and raced toward his house as the southerner came back on the line.

“As you can see, they are alive for now. Test me again, and they won't be. What I will do is this: when you arrive at the warehouse, I will have them in plain sight. You can set the bottle down and walk over to them, I'll leave the lights on until you get there. The lights will go out then, and you will wait one minute, then you may take them and leave, and our business will be concluded.”

The line went dead, and the phone rang again less than twenty seconds later.

“You did very well, Mr. Prichard. He expected you to try to manipulate him, and you played it just right. I've got people moving in on the warehouse right now, and it appears that he is not there yet. If possible, they will take him down before you arrive, but I've given orders to only do so if they can keep the hostages safe.”

“Okay, and I'm on something, too. The girl said she fed my dog, but I don’t have a dog. That was a code telling me to look at her computer, and that's where I'm going now.”

Sam slid to a stop in his own driveway, and hobbled as fast as he could inside the house, with Rice following him. He went to the dining table and opened Indie's laptop. The screen lit up, but at first, all Sam saw was a map of the area. He stared for a moment, and then realized that there was a moving dot, and it had Indie's cell phone number on it.

“Good girl!” he said, and then remembered the phone. “She set her computer to trace her own cell phone, somehow, and that's what he's using to call me. Right now, they're at the corner of Washington and 78th Street in Welby! What the heck is he doing? That's nowhere near the warehouse...”

“The warehouse,” Ingersoll said, “is obviously a trap. He's got someone waiting there, I'm sure, to kill you and take the product. He's probably taking the hostage somewhere else to dispose of them, and the only place out that way he could possibly be planning to use would be the recycling center out in Northglenn. I'm diverting forces there now, and they should get there before he does.”

Sam looked at the computer. “Okay, I'm going there now. I've got Rice here with me, and I'm parking him on this computer to keep me advised of any changes in their direction. I'll call you back when I know more.” This time it was Sam who hung up without a goodbye.

He grabbed Rice and pointed at the computer's screen. “Here's where you get to pay for the mess you made. See that moving dot? You watch that thing, and if it makes any turns at all, you call me at this number.” He scribbled his cell number on a piece of paper and shoved it at Rice. “Now, give me that damned bottle!”

Rice handed it over and Sam shoved it into a pocket, then took off out the door, hopping on his good leg and bouncing on the bad one, to make a clumsy sort of running motion. He was back in the Vette and rolling within seconds, heading towards Northglenn at high speed.

He punched the recycling center into his phone's GPS, pushed the big 427 for all it had, and made it to US 87 in only a minute and a half. The traffic at nearly midnight wasn't heavy, and what there was didn't slow him down, but he had a few near misses when he flew through red lights and stop signs. He was in a race against Death, and he didn't plan to lose.

He passed the 84th Avenue exit and suddenly saw police lights come on behind him, but he didn't have time to worry about a speeding ticket. The squad car couldn't even come close to catching the Vette, so he cut off onto Thornton Parkway and took it over to Washington, then turned north again. The police car had kept going on the highway overpass, and Sam remained focused on getting to where he was going. The GPS recalculated after his detour, but he was still only minutes away.

His phone rang, and he answered. “Go!”

“That dot stopped,” Rice said. “It's at the corner of Washington and 112th Avenue. It's been there for about half a minute, so I thought I should call.”

“Good job,” Sam said. “Call me back if it moves again.” That was not the location of the recycling center, but it was close. At the speed he was moving, Sam would be there in less than two minutes.

Two minutes can be a lifetime when someone you care about is in danger. Sam shoved the accelerator down as hard as he could, making the old Corvette move even faster as he dialed Ingersoll.

“He's at Washington and 112th in Northglenn,” Sam said as soon as he got an answer. “I'm almost there now. Give me something, what can I do to get through this and save those girls?”

“I don't know what to tell you, Mr. Prichard. I've got a team on the way there, but they'll be at least five minutes more. If you can find any way to stall, take it! My team will be there as soon as they can, and they will do all they can to take him down.”

“I'll do what I can,” Sam said, and cut the call. He saw a sign indicating that the next light was 112th, and began slowing, downshifting to let the engine drag the vehicle's speed lower. At the light, he was down to only forty miles per hour, and managed to turn into a parking lot for a small electronics store. He stopped and let the car idle for a moment, trying to figure out where to go next.

On three sides, the intersection was surrounded by residential areas. Only one corner had some commercial buildings, like the one he was parked at. Further up the street was a small strip mall, but there were almost no cars in sight. There was no sign of the southerner or of Indie and Kenzie.

His phone rang, and he snatched it out of his lap. It was Indie's number, and the southerner's voice came on instantly.

“Are you confused yet, Mr. Prichard? I see you understood the young lady's message, and found the computer tracing us. Obviously I wanted to get you alone, but I needed to separate you from my former associate, Eugene. Miss Perkins and her daughter are safe and here with me, and as soon as you are ready, we can all meet and get this unpleasant business over with.”

“Where are they?” Sam asked, looking around frantically. It was apparent that the southerner knew he was there, and had even wanted him there, but he didn't understand how Indie was involved.

A car across the lot flashed its lights, and Sam eased his clutch out to roll toward it. As he got closer, a door opened and Indie stepped out. Sam sped up and slid to a stop in front of her, then jumped out. His hop-skipping run covered the short space between them as the old man behind the wheel got out of the car and came around to him, dodging a small newspaper delivery van that almost ran him over.

Sam held onto Indie with one hand, and drew his Glock with the other aiming it at the old fellow's face. Indie tried to push the gun down, but Sam held her back.

“Indie, I've got this,” he said. “This bastard's been running a game for days, trying to get his hands on a deadly poison, a chemical weapon that could kill a lot of people. Are you hurt? Where's Kenzie?”

“She's in the car, sleeping, and there wasn't really any gun pointed at her, Sam! He told me to say that because he figured the other guys were tapping your phone, by then, and he had to get you away from them. The whole Herman thing was my idea.”

Sam looked at the southerner. “Look, I don't know what's going on, but you've got about two minutes before Ingersoll's specialists get here, and they're out to kill you. Wanna start explaining?”

The old man carefully lifted his right hand and showed Sam a card, which he then held out to Indie. “Show him, please, my dear,” he said, and she reached past Sam and took it, then held it closer for Sam to see. It identified the old man as Special Operative Harold Winslow of the Department of Homeland Security.

Sam looked at the old fellow askance. “According to your partner, you're an ex-CIA, ex-Navy SEAL who can't be trusted. Why should I believe this is real?”

“Because if you don't, then all of us are about to die, and that bottle is going to be sold to the highest bidder! I'm trying to prevent that from happening, and I need your help, Mr. Prichard. If you'd let my agents speak with you in Arkansas, we'd be all done with this by now, and my cover would still be intact, but you're an incredibly good investigator. No one else has ever managed to track Eugene down from outside, but you did, and now you've destroyed a fifteen-year-long investigation into channels of entry for terrorist activity! We need to get into a vehicle and out of here, Mr. Prichard, now, before Eugene's team arrives!”

Sam stared at him for a moment, but he knew he had to make a choice as to which of these men to trust. The thing that swayed him was that this man, Winslow, appeared to be completely alone, while Ingersoll was bringing in a team that he referred to as killers.

He looked at both of them and nodded toward Winslow's Lincoln. “Get in,” he said, “let's get moving and try to sort this out.”

Indie slid back into the back seat with Kenzie, and Winslow got behind the wheel as Sam got into the front passenger seat. His gun remained pointed at Winslow as the car got moving, but he glanced into the back where Indie and Kenzie were. The little girl was asleep, but Indie smiled at him happily.

“I'm so glad you're okay!” she said. “Mr. Winslow has been filling me in, and he asked me to help him find a way to get you away from the ones you've been talking to. The Herman thing was all I could come up with.”

Sam smiled back. “Well, it worked! I saw you had it tracking your phone, and when I realized the phone wasn't where he was saying it should be, I started to figure something was screwy.”

“I hate to interrupt the reunion, but do you have any idea where Eugene's men might be coming from?” Winslow asked.

Sam shook his head as he turned back to face the old guy. “No, only that he said they'd be five minutes behind me. I figure we've got maybe two minutes left. Better move fast, and hope we don't pass them on the way.”

Winslow grinned. “We won't. Let's make some distance between us, and I'll try to explain as we go.”

Sam nodded. “You do that!”

The old man turned south on Washington, then took an immediate right into what should have been the continuation of 112th, but ended suddenly only a hundred yards later. There was, however, a narrow dirt lane that went on through the area, and Winslow followed it. It went all the way to Grant Drive, a thousand feet to the west, and then he turned north onto that street.

“I'm going to tell you a story, Mr. Prichard, one that starts almost twenty-six years ago. Back then, I was still in the Navy, though no longer on active duty with the SEALs; I was more of a liaison officer, working with the CIA on matters that required the special talents the SEALs had to offer, such as recon, intelligence, things like that. Despite the stories you hear, SEALs don't get involved in assassinations and espionage, not usually. My job was to provide special consultants and contractors when needed by the CIA for special operations in other countries.” He paused and looked at Sam.

“I'm listening, go on.”

“In late June of nineteen eighty-eight, I was approached by my CIA contact about something that they had come across in Iran. There was some evidence of a new terrorist group coming together there, and it's entire purpose for existence seemed to be to destroy the United States of America. It was called Al Qaeda, and there were two men whose names were usually attached to it. Osama Bin Laden, and Abdullah Azzam. I'm sure you recognize those names, they've become rather important parts of American history, after all.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, Nine Eleven, The World Trade Center attack, The Pentagon, etc.”

Winslow nodded as well. “Right. Back then, there was no idea that this group would ever get powerful enough to do such things, but they were getting so much attention that it seemed to warrant someone taking notice. The problem was that nobody wanted to. The CIA had tried to get someone to take on the responsibility of watching these people, but nobody wanted the job, so they finally came to me to see if I could start some fires under someone who might take some sort of action. I was successful in starting that fire, I suppose, because the next thing I knew, I was appointed to be Special Secretary for Intelligence Regarding Al Qaeda, and they became my own personal problem. I reported, at that time, directly to the President of the United States, Bill Clinton.”

“How'd that work out for you?” Sam asked sarcastically. “Sorry, never cared for Clinton.”

Winslow smiled. “Nor did I, but none of them were any better than any others. All he asked of me was to let him know of any activity by the group that might pose a threat to the USA, and I made my reports daily. I don't think he paid any attention. When he left office in 2001, George Bush wasn't even really concerned about them at all, until Nine Eleven, of course. That day changed everything. Within hours, I was out and the whole department I'd built was handed over to some young kid who was fresh from the CIA's analysis division. There was talk of bringing me up on charges, saying I'd failed to warn the President about the risk of such an attack; I avoided it by threatening to release the electronic files I had amassed over the past three years, showing every report I'd made. Several of them included rumors of attacks on the World Trade Center and attacks using hijacked airliners, not to mention the reports I made about middle eastern flight students who didn't care about learning to land!”

9

Sam smiled. “I heard about that,” he said. “You mean it was really true?”

“Yes. Four students from Iran went to a flight school for commercial jets in Florida, and said they didn't need to learn to land, only to control the plane in the air to make it go where they wanted. Most of the staff of the school laughed it off, but one employee managed to make enough of a fuss that I heard about it and interviewed him. That report was one that went to Mr. Bush and was summarily discarded.”

“Okay, then where does all this come in? All this going on right now?”

“When I was released from my position, I was then recruited by the CIA, who needed someone to start putting together info on terrorist support groups. They had found that there were many organizations that had a singular purpose: to fund Al Qaeda operations within the US and other countries. Suddenly, I was running a division of the CIA that watched these groups, looked for connections between them and other groups, identified splinter groups that split off from them and built new networks. The damn things grew like wildfires, and most of them used drugs as the vehicle that brought in money. They patterned them after the street gangs we were already dealing with here in our country, and didn't even worry about what our police might do. The war on drugs meant nothing to them, because they paid well to their dealers and pushers and suppliers, and whenever we eliminated one group, two more sprang up to take its place.”

“Yeah, the Hydra. Cut off one head, and it grows seven more, or whatever.”

Winslow nodded vigorously. “Exactly, Mr. Prichard, the Hydra! No matter how many we took down, there were always more of them! We tried every method we could think of, and finally decided that our only hope was to infiltrate as many of them as we could. I volunteered for that duty myself, and built a new identity with bits and pieces of the histories of other men who'd been involved in the drug trade for a long time, and recruited other older men like myself to help out. We were all placed in different cities, given money to use for capital, and began working our ways into these groups. It's taken me almost ten years to build the cover that I'm blowing tonight, but it's important enough that I'm more than willing to do so. If that formula gets away from us, I don't even want to think about the lives that would be lost!”

Sam's phone rang, but he only looked at it and shook his head. “Okay, look, I'm gonna admit that I'm so confused I don’t know which end is up. According to Ingersoll, you’re the bad guy and he's trying to recover this stuff to make sure it goes to Washington to get analyzed for an antidote. Now I've got you telling me how you're the guy who's been fighting terrorism longer than anyone else, and I don't know who Ingersoll is supposed to be! Can you tell me anything that might help me clear this up?”

Winslow sighed. “Eugene Ingersoll was one of my recruits, many years ago. He and I have worked together to build this organization from the ground up, and make it a credible front for terrorist operations. By sheer coincidence, we were contacted four months ago by a member group of ISIS, who wanted to find a way to get a chemical weapon into the US undetected. This weapon, he said, would be capable of killing more people in a single hour than were killed in all of Nine Eleven's events. In the space of an hour, he said, merely pouring the liquid out onto the ground would cause everyone within a quarter mile to die in horrible convulsions. There is no antitoxin known for it, and without access to the formula, there is no way to make one. We agreed to carry it into the country, and I made very special arrangements so that we would not be stopped by customs anywhere, because this is the first sample of it that has ever been revealed. If we can deconstruct it, then it's possible we can make a defense against it; at the very least, we'll know just how dangerous it is, and what it can do. It's even possible that analysis can reveal where it's made, and we could destroy the manufacturing facility before more of it can get out.”

“That doesn't answer my question,” Sam said. “Which one of you bastards am I supposed to trust now? If you were working together, then why are you on opposite sides now? Which one of you is actually trying to save the world, and which one is trying to destroy it?”

“I'm not trying to save the world, Mr. Prichard, I'm merely trying to save lives. The world, I can promise you, will still be here long after we're gone! Eugene and I are on opposite sides today because he has become disillusioned by the forces in this world that simply don’t care, anymore. There are countries right now that would pay enormous sums of money for that bottle, so that they can toss it out of a helicopter over their own capital, or into a region where their enemies are prevalent. I know of one group who would pay well for it in order to use it against Al Qaeda itself, and don't think that wasn't a temptation!” He let out a long sigh. “Unfortunately, Eugene has been offered enough money that he wants to sell, and he justifies it to himself by saying that he has carefully chosen a buyer who won't use it in the US of A. They want to use it in the UK, instead, and it would probably mean the end of the Royal Court in England.”

Sam laid the Glock in his lap. “Ingersoll says you're a killer, and that you're the bad guy. He told me he could see to it that this thing gets to DC or wherever, safely, but that if you get it, the girls and I are as good as dead. To be honest, the only reason I haven’t tried to kill you yet is because I'm not sure you couldn't take me out before I got it done, but it seems odd to me that if you're as deadly as he says, you'd be talking so much and trying to swing me to your side of this thing.”

Indie spoke up from the back seat. “Sam—the thing that made me trust him was that, just before I called you, Mr. Winslow had a gun pointed at my face. When he asked me to get you on the phone, I was about to say no, and suddenly he turned the gun around and handed it to me, butt first, then put my finger on the trigger and pushed the barrel up against his own forehead. He looked at me, and then he whispered 'please,' and I knew I had to help him. Sam, I think we need to trust him.”

Sam looked back and stared at her, then turned back to Winslow. He said nothing for a long moment, then took a deep breath.

“Winslow, I'm gonna trust you. I...”

His phone rang again, and this time he winked at Winslow and answered it. “Yeah,” he growled, and put the call on speakerphone.

Ingersoll's voice sounded relieved. “Mr. Prichard, you’re alive! I've been trying to reach you—what about the hostages? Are they alright?”

“They're fine, at the moment. What happened to your boys, who were supposed to save the day?”

“My men arrived at the intersection and found only your car, Mr. Prichard, and no one else. Can you tell me what happened? How did you escape?”

Sam shook his head in disgust. “I think you know I didn't escape anything, Ingersoll, because there was nothing to escape. Mr. Winslow and I have been having a very interesting conversation. Would you care to hear about it?”

There was a low chuckle from the other end of the line. “I doubt I'd find it very enlightening, Mr. Prichard, but I'm sure you have. Very well, let's drop all the pretense and get down to business, shall we? We have found Rice, and we have copied the ingenious little program that is tracking Miss Perkins' phone, so we know where you are at this time. I'll give you one chance to turn this into a win-win situation, and then we'll just get to eliminating all of the problems at once. I know you've got the bottle, and you know that I want it. Hand it over to me now, without a fuss, and I'll give you ten million dollars, tax-free. You have fifteen seconds to agree.”

Sam laughed. “Fifteen seconds? I don't need fifteen seconds, the answer is NO! You stupid son of a bitch, all I want to do right now is get my hands on you! Why don't we do this the old-fashioned way, you and me, settle this mano e mano? How about it? You kick my ass, the bottle is yours, I kick your ass, you do life in federal prison! Fair enough?”

Ingersoll laughed again. “Oh, well, I didn't really think you'd go for it. Tell me, Mr. Prichard, do you hear a helicopter overhead? We used your program to piggyback on, and my team is flying up on you right now. I don't think you want to risk the bottle being damaged, so I would suggest you stop the vehicle now, and set it out on the ground. In fact, if you'll do that, I'll tell them not to fire on you, and let you all go on your way.”

Sam looked around, ducking his head to look into the night sky in all directions. He glanced at Winslow, and saw that he was grinning. He made a motion as if he were tossing something, and Sam remembered the newspaper van that drove past them as the old man came to talk with Sam.

He'd tossed the phone into the van, knowing that Ingersoll would catch on and start tracing it. That had bought them some extra time, and now Sam had to figure out how to use it.

“Y'know, it's odd, but there are not helicopters around here at all. Are you sure you sent them in the right direction?”

The line was quiet for a moment, and then Ingersoll laughed again. “Winslow, you sly old dog, I have really got to stop underestimating you. It appears you've beaten me, then, doesn't it? If we're chasing the wrong rabbit, then you've got the product and won't make the mistake of being where I can find you again, I'm certain. I'm going to concede this game, then, because I can't see a way to win. Mr. Prichard, it has been a real pleasure, sir. You're an excellent player in your own right, and I hope we'll come up against each other again one day. Goodbye, gentlemen, and ladies, of course!”

The line went dead. Sam looked at Winslow.

“Now what?” he asked, and Winslow laughed loudly.

“We won, Mr. Prichard. We outsmarted him, and within a matter of minutes, there will be no trace of Eugene Ingersoll anywhere to be found.”

Sam stared, and in the back seat, he could see Indie staring at Winslow, as well. “You're just gonna let him go? Isn't there any way to catch him? I mean, if I'd known you were just gonna roll over, I'd have called my pals at the PD and they could've picked him up.”

“Mr. Prichard, Eugene is not as long out of the trenches as I am, and he's a very dangerous man. I don't think there's much hope we could have caught him, but I can assure you that there will be entire units assigned to finding him by noon tomorrow. He won't get away for long, none of them ever do.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sam said. “Then explain Osama Bin Laden! It took more than ten years for your guys to find him!”

Winslow burst out laughing. “Mr. Prichard, don't ever believe anything that comes out of the White House; Bin Laden isn't dead, he's been in a special holding cell under the Pentagon since two thousand and six! He comes in handy, now and then, so we hang onto him! The whole 'Bin Laden Is Dead' thing was so he'd give up any hope of ever being rescued.”

Sam leaned back against the headrest and sighed. “You people are all crazy, you know that?” He took the bottle out of his pocket and handed it over to Winslow. “What about this, now? Why on earth was a doofus like Rice trusted to take this to St. Louis, and why was it going there anyway?”

“I sent it to St. Louis because that's where the lab is, the one that was going to analyze it. The lady Rice was supposed to deliver it to wasn't part of the drugspot operation; she's with the Department of Scientific Intelligence. The reason Rice got the job was because we needed to make this seem like a low-priority mission, keep anyone within the organization from figuring out that it had any importance at all. Eugene and I were not the only two deep covers here, but only he and I were privy to the reality of the mission. When I learned that he was talking with a buyer, I called Rice and warned him off, but Eugene managed to send a team after me. That's how I lost my phone and couldn't make contact with Rice again.”

“Ingersoll said he told you that I was going after Rice, and that he thought you were following me. I take it the guys who went after us in Arkansas were really his people?”

“Oh, no, they were mine, and if they'd managed to catch you before you ran, we probably could have handled all this a lot more easily. However, now we'll deal with it the best we can. For tonight, I think it best we don’t bother to go home, any of us, and we need to get that under secure control.”

Sam agreed, and they turned a few minutes later into a residential area. Winslow drove up to a house and the garage door opened, so he pulled inside.

“We're at your house?” Sam asked.

“Not exactly. This is a safe house we use now and then for special operations. Eugene doesn't know about it, and so I thought it would be ideal for tonight. There should be plenty of room, and we make sure there is always food and such. Come on in and make yourselves at home.” He climbed out of the car and led the way into the house.

Kenzie had slept through almost all of the excitement, so Indie found a place to put her down for the night and got her shoes and socks off, then lay down beside her and fell asleep, herself. Sam followed Winslow through the house, making sure they were alone and secure, and they put the bottle into a safe that Winslow showed him behind a picture on the wall. Sam admitted to himself that he was glad to be rid of it, and that he was exhausted, so it wasn't long before he was stretched out on a spare bed, his Glock under the pillow.

The first crash woke him, but he heard several more, as people dressed in blacked-out battle gear came through windows, guns in their hands and shouting for everyone to get down and stay down. He rolled off the bed instantly, taking the Glock with him, and looked carefully around to see if he could tell how many he had to deal with.

A shot rang out from a room down the hall, and he heard Indie scream. He was up and moving, his hop-skip helping him hurry along, and when he saw a man in black with a short machine gun swinging around toward his own face, he fired without thinking. The helmeted face suddenly imploded, and blood flew everywhere as the man fell back into the hall. Sam snatched up the Heckler and Koch MP7 almost before it hit the floor, and using it in his right hand and the Glock in his left, began moving in the direction of Kenzie’s loud cries.

A motion to his right caught his peripheral vision, and he snapped around to see two men step out of a room. Both were dressed like the one he'd already shot, so he fired the MP7 on full auto, two short bursts of three or four rounds that took both men down at the same time. As he started toward them, he saw Winslow suddenly emerge from the room across the hall and grab one of their weapons, then look at him and motion him on toward Kenzie's terrified sobs.

He turned and started down that hall again as Winslow moved up beside him. They walked low and cautiously to where the hall met the stairwell leading down, and Sam peeked quickly around and down. He turned to Winslow and motioned that there was no one in sight on the stairs, then stepped quickly across and stopped just short of the room where Indie and Kenzie had been sleeping.

He could hear Kenzie crying, and Indie telling her to be quiet, that everything would be okay and Sam would take care of them. He looked quickly into the room and saw that they were on the floor behind the bed. Indie saw him, and started to rise, but he motioned for her to stay put as he turned to the last door on that floor.

Winslow slipped past him and got to it first, leaning his head over to peek in, and then leaning in again and opening fire with his MP7. A muffled curse and a crashing fall from inside told Sam that the old man's aim had been true.

Winslow turned to Sam. “I don't know how they found us, but it's Eugene and his people. They're after the bottle, of course, and we can't let them get it. You understand? We cannot let them get it!”

“I know, and I'm with you. It's downstairs, though, and so are any that are left. Let's get down there and stop 'em!” He leaned around to Indie and tossed her his cell phone. “Call Nine One One,” he said, and then he and Winslow were gone. Indie snatched up the phone, but a second later she realized that it had no signal at all, and simply slid back down behind the bed with her daughter and tried not to listen to the shouts and gunshots going on downstairs.

Sam went down first, with Winslow right behind him, and when he got to the landing where the stairs turned to the right, he leaned quickly and checked before moving out onto it. There seemed to be men in the living room area, where the safe was, and he could hear whispering, but couldn’t make out what was being said.

Winslow was beside him, then, and pointed two fingers toward the living room and then at his own eyes. He laid his weapon down on the stairs beside Sam and stepped out with his hands wide, then walked slowly toward where the whispers were coming from.

“I'm coming in,” he said, “and I am unarmed. Please don't fire on me.” He stepped into the room and out of sight, and Sam waited to hear a shot, but thankfully, it didn't come.

“Open the safe,” Sam heard, recognizing Ingersoll's voice. “Just open it up and we'll be gone, Harry. No more fighting, no more problems.”

“Eugene, you know that's not going to happen. You can kill me if you want to, but that won't get you into it, and no one else has the code. Give it up and leave, while you can. I've had the girl call for help, you know.”

“I don't doubt you told her to, but she didn't. I've got a jammer going, there's not a cell phone within a half mile that can get a signal. And you built this place off by itself, so I'm not worried about neighbors hearing us. No, I can stay here as long as it takes to get that safe open. The only thing you might do by opening it for me is make your own life a little easier. It would mean I wouldn't have to kill those poor girls, and Mr. Prichard. Where is Mr. Prichard, incidentally?”

Sam had moved silently down the rest of the steps, and was standing just outside the door to the living room. He heard his name, and smiled, taking it as a cue, and swung himself around the edge of the doorframe. “I'm right here,” he said, taking in the scene in front of him. Ingersoll had to be the tallest of the three men he saw, the one who was facing Winslow, and the other two seemed to be merely waiting for an order. When they saw Sam, they both tried to bring their weapons up to bear on him, but it was too late.

Sam opened fire, taking them both by surprise, while Ingersoll dived for the floor. Winslow rolled himself to his right, putting him on the floor right in front of Ingersoll, and the two men began grappling for the gun Ingersoll was holding. Sam saw one of the two he'd shot trying to get to his feet, and fired once again, dropping him like a brick. He stepped over to Ingersoll and aimed his MP7 at the man's head.

“Give me half a reason,” he said, “and I'll be more than happy to pull this trigger!”

Ingersoll froze instantly, and looked up at Sam, while Winslow took his weapon. The old man got slowly to his feet, the gun in his hand also keeping Ingersoll covered as he did so.

“There may be more of them,” he said to Sam, “but I doubt it. He would have been counting on the diversion of the men upstairs to throw us off, and probably expected them to take us out in our sleep. Check his pockets for the jammer; he's probably got it on him. Once it's off, we can call in the police.”

Sam found it and turned it off, and called up the stairs for Indie to call the cops again, and Winslow called out the address of the house. She shouted down a moment later that they were on the way, but Sam told her to stay put until they had everything cleared.

The police began arriving less than ten minutes later, and it took a lot of explaining and calls to Homeland Security and the FBI to make the locals understand how serious the situation was. Between that and the number of bodies, both dead and wounded, that were scattered around the house, the cops were trying to find someone to arrest who wouldn't be spirited off by the feds as soon as they cuffed him!

That's exactly what happened to Ingersoll. Four special agents from the FBI showed up and took him into custody, making sure he was chained at the wrists, around his waist, between his ankles and then hobbled so he had to walk bent over halfway. Winslow said that would give them a halfway decent chance of not letting him escape, as long as he couldn't find anything to pick a lock with. They loaded him into the back of a van and drove him away.

The interviews and questioning went on until noon, and Sam had to throw a fit to get some food brought in for little Kenzie. When he managed it, the cop in charge had sandwiches brought for the rest of them, as well. Indie thanked him, but the guy was in no mood for politeness, and told her to shut up.

Winslow had told Sam to let him handle the explanations, since there were some things that couldn't be told for security reasons, and Sam was more than happy to agree. The day finally came to a close about three PM, when two men in suits walked in and shook hands with Winslow. Five minutes later, all of the local cops were being escorted out of the house, and Winslow opened the safe and handed the bottle to one of the two suits. It went into a metal briefcase, and Sam thought he'd never been so glad to see the last of something in his entire life.

The adventure, he was told, was over. Somehow, Winslow said the whole thing would come down looking like Ingersoll had tried to make some sort of terrorist deal all on his own, so his cover that he'd worked so hard to maintain would be intact, after all. By the next day, he'd be back to running drug dealers and watching the people who wanted to destroy America.

And Sam could go home and pretend he hadn't helped save the world.

10

Sam got a cab and went to get his Corvette from where he'd abandoned it the night before, only to find that it was gone. He'd left it sitting with the door open and the engine running when he went with Winslow and Indie, and a cop had found it a little while later and decided it must have been the one that outran him an hour before. He’d had it impounded. It took Sam calling in favors from Carlson to get it released, but he finally got home around six that evening. Indie had caught a ride with Winslow, and she and Kenzie were playing in the backyard when he came inside.

He walked out onto his back deck and looked at the two of them, kicking a ball back and forth. Indie spotted him and smiled up at him, then told Kenzie to look who was home. The little girl turned and saw him, then broke into a big smile and ran to him with her arms wide. Sam reached down and caught her, swinging her up and around, and coming to rest with her in a big hug, facing her mother. Kenzie had both arms around his neck, and said, “Sam's home!”'

Sam's eyes went wide, and Indie's went round. They smiled, delighted at the happiness in the child's voice.

Indie stepped up close and patted Kenzie on the shoulder. “You like your Sam, don't you, Sweetie?”

“Yeah, and so do you!” she said, and Indie blushed while Sam laughed.

“Yeah,” Indie said, “he's okay, I guess. Think we oughta stick around a while, do you?”

Kenzie nodded emphatically and said, “Yes!” Sam nodded right along with her, and said, “You just try to get away, just try it! I'm a private eye, baby, I can track you anywhere!”

Indie laughed. “I think I'll take your word for it. Seriously, Sam, this is the best I've felt in a long, long time.”

Sam looked into her eyes and smiled. “I can say the same. It's weird, I know we've only known each other a few days, but I'd swear we've been together for months! It's like I just know you, like I've been looking for you, and didn't know how to find you, but I always knew I would.”

Indie blushed again, and said, “I know what you mean. C'mon in, let me get dinner started.”

Sam, still holding Kenzie, reached out and caught her hand. “Let's go out and have dinner, instead,” he said. “My treat.”

Indie smiled. “Oh, okay. And is this a date, Mr. Prichard?”

“It is indeed, Miss Perkins. Is that all right with you?”

“Why, it's fine with me, Mr. Prichard, but you'll need to ask my daughter's permission, of course!”

Sam grinned and looked at Kenzie, there in his arms. “Kenzie,” he said, “is it okay with you if I ask your Mommy to be my girlfriend?”

Kenzie beamed. “Mommy! Sam wants you to be his girlfriend!” She looked at Sam, and said, “Yeah! That's okay!”

They all went inside to get ready to go out. Sam took a shower, but Indie and Kenzie had already had theirs earlier, so they just changed clothes and Indie took the time to put on makeup and do something with her hair. When Sam came out a half hour later, he let out a low whistle.

“Wow,” he said. “You clean up pretty nice, Indie!”

She blushed, admiring the way Sam looked in a suit and tie, and feeling underdressed in her simple jeans and top. “I think I need to go and find something else to wear,” she said, but Sam caught her arm and stopped her.

“Why would you want to change when you look perfect the way you are?” he asked.

“Um, because you’re wearing a suit, and I feel a little awkward in this getup. I've got a dress. Let me go put it on and...”

Sam stopped her. “I've got a better idea,” he said. He took off the jacket and tie and tossed them onto the couch. “Now we can go!” He took her arm and led the way to the van, putting Kenzie in with her car seat first, before holding Indie's door open for her. When they were both in, he went around and got behind the wheel, and drove them to one of his favorite restaurants: Taco Bell!

They ate at one of the outside tables and Kenzie laughed and had a blast. Indie smiled a lot as they ate tacos and burritos, and then began telling him about the furniture she'd bought for Kenzie's room. She promised to show it to him when they got back home.

Sam was spending a lot of time just watching her with Kenzie, and enjoying it. She was a good mother, he thought, and let himself wonder if she would want to have more children. He'd never quite given up on the idea of having a son or daughter of his own, and since he was allowing himself to admit that he was attracted to Indie, he figured he could let himself have a fantasy or two about the family they might have together.

They made it back home around eight, and Indie announced that it was Kenzie's bedtime. This, she explained patiently to the little girl, was part of the benefit of having her own bedroom; it meant she could not go to bed at a regular time each night. She didn't bother to explain that the one who got the most benefit from it was the mommy, however!

Kenzie had to show Sam her new bedroom, so he carefully followed her up the stairs and into the room beside the one that had been set up as guest room. He made all the right admiring noises about the beautiful canopy bed and dressers and nightstands and the wonderful Disney playset table and chairs, and the toys that were neatly arranged on the shelves that Indie had bought for them. All in all, Sam told Indie, he had to agree that she'd done quite well with the little bit of money he'd given her to spend, and he was proud of her.

The two adults went down to the living room, and Sam started to sit in his recliner, but changed his mind and took a seat on the couch. He lay back against one end of it with his right leg extended, and just let himself relax for a few moments, eyes closed and head back. He opened them when he felt Indie sit down beside him, and let his leg down so she'd have more room.

“Am I crowding you?” she asked him, and he smiled.

“Not a bit. I'm actually enjoying the feel of someone this close to me; that hasn't happened for a long time.”

Indie sat there and looked at him for a long moment. “Me neither,” she said. “I—I should tell you that I haven't even tried to have a relationship with anyone since Jared died, so I'm pretty rusty at it. I mean, I know I like you and all, and I want us to—you know, get to know each other—but I'm not in a hurry to go too far, if you can understand that?”

Sam let his hand fall to her shoulder there beside him, and smiled as he caressed it. “I understand, and I agree. I think people rush too many things, and then they regret it. I don't want you or me to have any regrets about us, okay?”

Indie nodded. “Okay.”

They turned on the TV and started watching a movie, snuggled together in a lighthearted way. It was just beginning to get interesting when the doorbell rang. Indie said, “Let me get it,” and rose from the couch. She peeked out through the window, and then opened the door to Harold Winslow.

“Come in,” she said, as Sam got up and walked toward him.

“Winslow,” he said. “I didn't expect to be seeing you again anytime soon. What brings you over tonight?”

Winslow smiled and accepted the offer of a seat on the couch. “Sam—may I call you Sam, now, after we've fought side by side?”

Sam laughed. “I'd say that's fine,” he answered.

“Sam, as you know, my cover is that I run a drug-dealing street gang setup. Only a few people know the truth, and only you two are privy to it around here. It turns out that I'm going to be needing some help to run it, now that Eugene is gone and discredited, and I wondered if you might be interested?” He held up a hand. “And before you suggest it, I've already given Mr. Rice a promotion, and sent him out to the Vegas operation. That was mostly to get him away from his daughter, but he might know a bit too much for my peace of mind, anyway, so I'm glad he's out of here!”

Sam looked at him for a long moment. “Winslow...”

“Harry, please,” the old man said.

“Okay, Harry—I understand that you do what you do for the greater good that comes from being there to spot things like the stuff we just stopped, but underneath it all, the people you run are still dealing drugs. I spent ten years trying to put a stop to that, and I can't see how I could bring myself to work at selling the stuff now.”

Winslow smiled. “I thought you'd feel that way, to be honest, so I've got a couple of backup people in mind. The problem is that there will be times when you and I may seem to be on opposite sides, and I don't want to lose the friendship and respect we've acquired. I may need your help at times, doing what you do, and I want to be able to call on you. Likewise, I want you to know that if you need fodder to ease things for you with your friends on the force, I will be more than willing to let you skim off the dross of the organization. Frankly, I hate most of the people who hustle the drugs, and would be delighted to see them get cycled through the jails now and then!”

Sam paused before responding. “I know that what you do is for the greater good, like I said. I can handle that, I just can't handle being down in the mud and mire of it. If you need me, all you gotta do is say so. And you can bet your sweet ass I'll be calling for favors now and then, myself. And as for my friends on the force—I need to give them something within the next day or two. You might want to start hiring, cause I'm gonna dent your employee list.”

Winslow nodded and rose. “It's all good, then. I'll leave you be—oh, wait, I just remembered, I have something for you.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. “This is a token of appreciation from your country, Sam. It isn't as much as you deserve, but it's more than the man in the White House gives most people who do so much for their country. I thought you could probably use it.”

He handed it to Sam, who opened it and looked inside, then whistled. “I don't think I've ever seen so many hundred dollar bills,” he said. “What is that, about half a million dollars?”

Winslow laughed so hard it scared Indie. “Nowhere near,” he said. “I think there's about sixty thousand there, and frankly, the only reason I managed to give you that much is because Eugene had already stolen it and it was off the books. If it were up to Washington, you'd have gotten about a thousand bucks! Enjoy it in good health, and spend some of it on this pretty girl of yours!”

Indie smiled. “I like that idea,” she said. “I could use some new clothes, y'know!”

Winslow shook Sam's hand, but when he reached for Indie's, she shoved his hand away and hugged him. When he finally managed to get free, he smiled and left.

Sam looked at the money in his hand. “I'm thinking that we're going to take some of this and put it away for Miss Kenzie, so that she can go to college someday. Then we'll use some of it to get you an even better computer system, and some things I'll need for PI work, and then we might have to think about a new car for you, cause I'm not sure that Taurus has a lot of life left in it...”

Indie's eyes narrowed. “And just what, I'd like to know, is wrong with my car? I'll have you know that is the one thing I got from Jared, cause he gave it to me when he shipped out for basic, so I'd have it to drive for school. I mean, I know it's not new, but it's paid for!”

Sam smiled. “If it means that much to you, then let's just get it fixed up for you, okay? And I'm sure we'll think of other things around our house we need to spend this money on, don't you think?” Sam suddenly realized that Indie was staring at him. “What? Did I grow a third eye or something?”

Indie smiled. “Do you hear what you're doing? You're saying 'we' and 'us' and you said 'our house' a minute ago. You know, if you're not careful, I'm gonna start to think you like having me around!”

Sam grinned. “Well, of course I like having you around!” he said. “Where else am I gonna find a computer genius who can make me look like a super Private Eye?”

BOOK II

1

“Sam, look,” Kenzie said to him, as he came out of his bedroom. “Mommy made waffles!”

“Waffles?” Sam asked, with a face full of delight. “Oh, wow, I love waffles! Don't you love waffles?”

The little girl nodded as he took his usual chair beside her own. “Uh-huh, I love waffles, too, and I love the syrup that goes on 'em, and everything!”

“Yep! Me, too! Syrup and everything!” He watched as Indie, little Mackenzie's mother and his housekeeper and cook, popped two more waffles out of the waffle iron and onto plates. “And here they come!” he said, bouncing up and down on his chair.

Indie laughed at his antics as much as her daughter did, and slid a plate in front of him. She'd poured him a cup of coffee when she'd heard his bathroom toilet flush, so he reached for the butter and syrup that were on the table and began slathering butter into every single hole in Kenzie's waffle, before smothering it in his own favorite original maple syrup. As soon as hers was ready, he turned and started on his own.

“Kenzie, tell Sam thank you,” Indie said, and the little girl smiled up at him.

“Thank you, Sam,” she said sweetly, and he bowed his head to her.

“You are most welcome, Milady,” he said in a fake English accent, and she giggled at him. Indie smiled and patted his arm.

“You're spoiling my kid rotten,” she said. “I may have to ask for a raise, so I can afford to pay for her therapy. You gonna be okay with that?”

“Depends,” Sam answered. “I think a little spoiling is good for a kid, so the therapy shouldn't be too expensive. Maybe I'll just pay for it myself as a bonus.”

They bowed their heads as Kenzie said grace, and then dug in and ate their breakfast. They talked while they ate.

“I've been thinking,” Sam said, “and to be perfectly honest, being a PI beats the heck outta being a medically retired cop, so it seems to me that I should put the license to good use and open up shop. How would you feel about being my receptionist and resident computer whiz?”

Indie looked at him. “Let's see, you mean on top of being the housekeeper and chef here at home? Does this job pay better than I'm getting now?”

Sam nodded. “I was thinking I could raise you to three hundred a week, and we'd leave the current room and board as part of it. How would that sound?”

Indie thought it over. “And where would the office be? If it's here at your house, I can handle that, cause it lets me be here for Kenzie.”

“Of course it's here,” he said, smiling. “You don't think I'm gonna blow money on a separate office, do you? That'd be silly, at least while I'm just starting out. I mean, I've got my pensions, and I checked it out; I don't lose them if I go into business for myself, so anything I make is just extra income. I mean, I know we don't really need it, but it couldn't hurt, right?”

Indie looked thoughtful again. “Where at? The dining room?”

“Nah. I've got a room I use for storage off the garage. It's got a window, so if we clean it up a bit, I was thinking that's where I'd put the office. It gives us a place to talk to clients privately, and it's big enough if we take all the junk out of it. It's even got a separate entrance, on the opposite side of the garage from the main house, so if we put a sign up, we can point right to it. We don't even need to go there except when we're meeting clients.”

Indie smiled. “Sounds good to me, Chief,” she said. “How would you start?”

“I'll put an ad in the local paper, I guess, and maybe take out a commercial on some of the radio stations. That shouldn't cost too awful much, and if it brings in some business, we're good. Wanna help me set all that up today?”

They finished breakfast and started working on wording for the newspaper ad. Indie showed Sam how to get a free phone number through Google that he could redirect to his home phone, and then came up with wording that Sam liked. They called it in before noon, but the ad sales person talked him into a display ad, rather than a simple classified, and emailed him a proof so he could see what it would look like. It showed a silhouette of a man who looked a lot like Sherlock Holmes, with the wording:

Sam thought it was hilarious, but Indie said it would catch attention, so he approved it. The ad was set to begin that evening, and so they called a few local radio stations to get a commercial arranged. Before the day was done, Sam had spent more than a thousand dollars on a month's worth of advertising, and was shaking his head.

Indie sent Sam to buy some office supplies, including some “print your own” business card blanks so she could make some for him with his new phone number on them, and then they spent the afternoon setting up the office, which wasn't hard. Mostly, they just hauled things into the garage and shoved them onto shelves, then cleaned up the mess they'd made. Sam had a desk and some chairs he'd bought from the PD once when they were putting in new office furniture, so he and Indie set them up, added some plants and lamps, and it was done.

Neither of them expected anything to happen for a few days, at least, so they were both surprised when the new number got a call less than an hour after the newspapers hit the stands that night. Indie raised her eyebrows, but it wasn't quite four thirty, so she answered the phone in the living room.

“Sam Prichard, Private Eye,” she said. “How can we help you today?”

A man's voice answered hesitantly. “Um—Barry's disappeared, and well, we all thought maybe it was time to get help. The cops don't wanna do anything, so we thought maybe we'd hire somebody.”

Indie nodded to Sam that it was a real call. “Okay, can you tell me a bit more about the missing person?”

“Yeah. He's Barry Wallace, the singer, and he hasn't been seen in over a week, now. We're all pretty worried, cause it isn't like him, y'know? I mean, we've had to cancel three gigs this week, and it's really starting to hurt us.”

“Okay, then what I need to do is make you an appointment with Mr. Prichard, to come in and talk to him about it. Would tomorrow morning work for you?”

There was a hushed debate on the other end of the line, and then the man came back on. “Um—we can't talk to him tonight? I mean, this is pretty important. If you don’t know, Barry's about the hottest thing to hit the Denver rock scene since Kip Winger!”

“Hold on a moment, please,” Indie said, muting the phone. She turned to Sam, who was sitting in his recliner. “This is a guy who's looking for a missing rock singer, and he wants to see you tonight, if possible. You up for it?”

Sam shrugged. “Heck, that's why we ran the ad. Tell him to come on over!”

She gave the man the address and said that Sam would see him as soon as he could get there. The guy thanked her profusely, and said he'd be over in fifteen minutes. They set Kenzie up with one of her favorite shows, left the door into the house open so they could hear her if she called them, and went to the office to wait.

A car pulled up less than fifteen minutes later, and Indie showed four people into the office. She hurried to find a couple of extra folding chairs (Sam had some in the garage for when he had friends over, working on their cars) and got them all seated while they made introductions.

The guy who had called was Chris Lancaster, and he was probably in his late forties. He was lead guitarist for the band called Step Back Once, and he introduced the others with him. “This is Stan Bennet, our drummer; Candy McAlester, she plays bass; and that's Janice Peet, she's on keyboards.”

Stan was maybe thirty or so, and looked like he'd been through some tough times. His hair was wild and long and seemed to have no idea what it was supposed to do, so it simply stood out in different directions and waved. He was thin and tall, and it seemed he wouldn't look anyone in the eye.

Candy was maybe in her early to mid twenties, chunky and blonde, but Sam could tell from the roots that the blonde came from a bottle. She seemed straight and level headed, and smiled as she was introduced.

Janice, on the other hand, was brunette, thin and nervous, her eyes darting around as if she expected to see a ghost pop up any second. Sam marked her as a tweaker instantly.

Sam shook each hand and said, “Okay, it's good to meet all of you. So, tell me what's going on with this Barry.”

“He's dead,” Janice said without preamble, but Chris interrupted her before she could go any further.

“We don’t know that,” he said. “He could just be stoned out of his mind, somewhere, or off on a tear. He's done that before.”

“Not lately,” Janice went on, “and he hasn't missed coming by to see me every night for weeks, not ‘til now.” She lowered her eyes, as if nervous about what she was saying. “He—he knows how messed up I get, and he's been helping me cope with things.”

Sam squinted at her. “What kind of things?” he asked bluntly.

Janice looked at him for a moment, then lowered her eyes back to the floor. “Barry's like my big brother; it's not like it sounds. He knows I got problems with some stuff, and he's been coming over to make sure I stay clean. He wouldn't miss it if he was alive, so I think he's dead.”

Chris and Stan looked at each other, then Chris said, “Jan's been messed up on meth, before, but she's been clean for a few months. Barry got her off it, and she's afraid she won't make it without him. Me and Stan, we think he's fallen off the wagon himself; he used to be a big drinker, and when he'd get really wasted, sometimes he'd take off for weeks.”

Sam looked at Candy. “And what do you think?”

She shrugged like it didn't really matter. “No clue,” she said, “but I'm new. I've only been in the band a few weeks. I'd love to say he's just off on a bender, but I don't know, man. All I know is I was promised I'd be playing gigs, and without him, we don't play and we don't get paid.”

Sam nodded. “Okay, tell me about him.”

Chris, who was obviously the spokesman of the group, leaned forward in his chair. “Barry Wallace is probably one of the best singers to ever get close to a microphone. He's got a set of pipes that won't quit, and when he sings, people just stop whatever they're doing and listen, man. I've never seen anything like it, and I've been around the music scene for a long time. His voice isn't like anyone else's, but he's got the kind of draw that Elvis had. People just like to hear him sing, and he puts on a helluva show while he does it. That's what made us so popular, the last few months. We're all good at what we do, but without a singer, we're just another garage band. Barry made us special.”

“And when did you last see him?”

Chris rubbed a hand down his right cheek. “We played two weeks ago Friday night, and then he called me on Saturday and said he needed to talk, but he never showed up.”

Sam sat and looked at them all for a few moments without saying anything. He had always been a pretty good judge of people, and most of the band seemed okay, but something about Stan seemed odd. He looked at the drummer.

“Stan, what do you think has happened to him?” he asked suddenly, hoping to catch the man off guard and get a reaction that would tell him more about the guy.

Stan looked at him, then, and made eye contact calmly. “I can't even guess, Sir,” he said. “He's never done this since I've known him, but I've heard stories about him going off and falling into a bottle. I just don't know what to say; if he's done that, he's probably ruined us all.”

Sam grunted, surprised at the clear, articulate answer, but didn't let it distract him.

“Okay, here’s the deal. I get a thousand-dollar retainer, and I charge two fifty a day plus any expenses. I can't guarantee results, but I'm good, and I guarantee that you'll get every effort I can put into looking for him. If you hire me, I'm gonna want everything you can give me about him; his Facebook account, email address, cell phone number, friends and family, lovers, favorite party spots, everything you know about him. Still want me to look for him?”

They all looked at one another, and then Chris reached into a pocket and counted off ten one hundred dollar bills onto Sam's desk. “How soon can you get started?”

“How soon can you get me all the information you have on him? As far as I'm concerned, I'm on the case as of right now.”

All four began to speak, and Sam and Indie both took notes, even though Sam had a recorder going on the desk. They talked for four hours, and gave Sam copies of their two latest CDs so he could hear what they were saying about Barry's voice. By the time they were done, Indie nodded to Sam that she had enough to get started with, so they all shook hands again and the four musicians left.

Sam and Indie went into the living room and found Kenzie sound asleep, so she carried the little girl up and put her to bed. Sam plugged one of the CDs into his stereo and let it play. (Click to listen)

Six AM, it's time to rise and shine

I stretch and wipe my sleep away

Then a thought of you comes to me

Like a summer breeze

And I know that it's gonna be a very good day

And I wish that I could tell you

What a difference you have made

You've rescued me from darkness

And brought me to the light

But I guess I'll have to show you

I don't think I have the words

To make you understand

Just what you’re doing right

It's another good day

For thinkin' about you

Another good day

For holdin' you so tight

When I wake up every morning, now

The first thought on my mind

Is it's another good day

For lovin' you tonight

I spend the hours waiting

For evening time to come

So I can see you smile again

And sometimes I remember

How bad it used to be

Before I opened up and let you in

But lately I've forgotten

Just how I used to feel

When I dreaded waking up

To face the dawn

Life's gotten so much sweeter

And it's all been thanks to you

Baby, can't you see

What your sweet love brought along?

It's another good day

For thinkin' about you

Another good day

For holdin' you so tight

When I wake up every morning, now

The first thought on my mind

Is it's another good day

For lovin' you tonight

Barry was a very good singer, he thought, and Indie said, “Wow,” as she came back into the room.

“The guy really is good,” Sam said. “I used to be into rock pretty heavy, and this guy's got more than just talent, he's got that special something they're all looking for. If I'd had that, I'd still be lead singer for Dead On Time, my college band. He's good.”

“You said that already,” Indie said with a smile. “And I agree, he's really good. I wonder why he'd drop out of sight like this?”

“There are three reasons people disappear,” Sam said. “One is what police call 'maliciously missing,' which is when people take off to avoid responsibilities, or to escape situations they consider unbearable, or to gain something; it might be a new lover, a new life or money, like when someone gets a big payday and doesn’t want to share it with anyone. Second is when they flee something, like a criminal charge, or if they think someone is out to harm them and run away, or maybe they suffer from a mental illness that leads them to think they have to hide. The third time people disappear is when something from outside their lives is the cause, like if they're abducted or murdered, caught in some sort of accident that leaves them hidden. One of those things applies to almost every possible case of a missing person, as long as there are no witnesses to the disappearance, like in the case of a drowning or a plane crash.”

“So you're saying that Barry Wallace either disappeared deliberately for whatever reason, or someone did something to him, right?”

Sam nodded. “I'm thinking along those lines, yeah. If he got drunk and went on a bender, then he may turn up all on his own, but my gut says this isn't one of those cases. I think Mr. Wallace has fallen victim to foul play, simply because he seems to be a guy who was trying to hold his own life, and other people's lives, together. He wouldn't flake out like this, not without trying to make some provision for the band, especially the girl he was cleaning up.”

Indie nodded, thoughtfully. “One of the band, you think?”

“That's definitely where I plan to start. Let's see if you can get into his accounts and find out if any of them might have been hostile to him lately. People are so into email and social media nowadays that they don’t even think about sending hateful or threatening messages that way as being something that can lead back to them. And see if you can get anything on his phone records, too.”

She smiled. “I'm on it, Chief!”

Sam grimaced. “Indie, please don't call me Chief; I hate that!”

She looked sheepish. “Sorry, Sam,” she said.

They moved into the dining room, where Indie kept her computer, and she went online to begin looking into Barry's life. Running him through several databases that compiled information on Americans gave her some insights into his background.

Barry Wallace was not quite thirty, and had a checkered past. He had a number of DUIs on his record, but none in the past three years, and he had been in trouble a few times in his teens, but nothing worse than smoking pot and drinking. He'd grown up right there in Denver, attended high school and college within the metro area, and had a degree in journalism. He'd worked many different jobs, including a couple of stints with newspapers, but mostly he seemed to gravitate toward the music industry.

He'd spent the past two years working as a sound engineer in a small recording studio, and that's how he'd met Chris. They'd become friends, written a few songs together, and when Chris heard Barry sing them for demo tracks, he was blown away. With his encouragement, Barry had agreed to sing lead for the new band, and he'd been building a fan base rapidly. The band was popular in the entire area, playing nightclubs, resorts and even many of the casinos that had opened up around Colorado. Casino gigs were considered a step towards success for a band or performer, and there were rumors of a possible recording contract in the offing.

Barry's parents still lived in Aurora, and he had two sisters who were younger than him. Indie added their names and addresses to the database she was creating, as well as the names of several of his old friends that turned up. After nearly an hour of searching, she had a substantial pile of data, and loaded it all into “Herman.”

Herman was a computer program she had written herself that could scan through tons of data and look for common threads, match facts against other facts, and generally find things much faster than human searchers could hope to do. He also found things that humans were likely to overlook, and could compile all of his info into reports that Indie could read. Once he'd done his thing in data mining, she could then tell him to look for what she called “keys,” things that people commonly use when creating passwords or security questions, and then he would begin trying to get into email, social media and other online accounts.

She set him up with his instructions and told Sam she was going to bed. He'd been sitting there quietly, watching her as she worked, which was one of his favorite pastimes. Indie was a beautiful young woman, and Sam felt that just looking at her constituted a great way to spend time.

“Alright, Kiddo,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

2

Morning came, and Sam joined Indie and Kenzie for breakfast, like always, then let Indie show him what Herman had been up to.

“We've gotten into Barry's email and Facebook accounts, and he hasn't been online for at least a week,” she said. “The thing is, some of the last emails he sent were all to one person, a guy named Jimmy Smith, who seems to be a talent agent. Check this out, it looks like Barry was being offered a recording contract.”

Sam leaned over to read the email she had opened.

Barry, I've talked to Mick at Sony, and they're ready to make this official and get serious, but you've got to get over your stubbornness. They want you, but they don't want your band, and if your guys are any kind of friends, they'll understand. They're a good band for bar and club gigs, but they're just not ready for the big time. You've got to let go of them, and they need to let go of you.

You sign this contract and I can have you opening for Three Days Grace for their entire next tour! That's two hundred dates next year, and you'll be pulling down 10 Gs a show! If you can't see the handwriting on the wall, then I don't know what to tell you.

Talk to the band, and let them know this isn't personal, it's just business. Sony wants you, and if you sign with them, your career is made. Let me know ASAP!

Jimmy

“Did he ever answer?” Sam asked.

Indie shook her head. “Nope. He read it, but never answered it, and it came on the day he disappeared. All the emails from Jimmy before this one, he answered within a few hours.”

“Find me this Jimmy Smith, let's see what he's got to say.”

“Already did. Here's his number, let me get him on the phone for you.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “Hello, is Jimmy in? Yes, my name is Indiana Perkins, and I work for Sam Prichard, a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Barry Wallace. Yes, I'll hold.” She handed the phone to Sam, and whispered, “They're getting him.”

A moment later, Sam heard, “This is Jimmy, talk to me!”

“Jimmy, this is Sam Prichard. I'm a private investigator looking into the circumstances around the disappearance of Barry Wallace, and I've been told that you were talking to him about a recording contract.”

“Damn right, I was,” Smith said. “We were supposed to sign it last week, but I haven't been able to get hold of him. You got any idea where he is?”

“Not yet, no,” Sam said. “I was actually hoping that you might have heard from him, and could give me some ideas.”

“I ain't heard a peep, but I can tell you what I think. Barry was about to make it big, and I mean big with a capital B-I-G! The only thing holding him back was loyalty to his band, but the label didn't want them, only him. He said at first he wouldn't sign without them, but the last time we talked on the phone, Saturday before last, he said he was gonna cut 'em loose and sign, cause it was just too good a deal to pass up.”

“Do you know if he ever talked to them about it? The band is who hired me, and they didn’t mention anything about this at all.”

“All I know is he said he was gonna tell 'em that night, and I haven't been able to reach him since. To be honest, I'm starting to wonder if he'll ever turn up. There's been stories in the past about somebody about to make it big, but they had to cut someone loose, and then they're never seen again, y'know? This is starting to feel like one of them.”

Sam nodded into the phone. “Maybe. Thanks for you help.” He hung up without saying anything more.

“He says Barry was going to tell the band the night he disappeared that he was gonna sign without them. If he did, and one of them got mad, we could be looking at a murder.”

Indie looked at him for a moment. “Seems odd, if one of them killed him or whatever, that they'd want to hire you to try to find him. I mean, that'd lead right back to them, wouldn't it? I'd think so, anyway.”

“People do strange things after they kill someone. Hiring me might make the killer think it makes them look innocent, like the guy who steals something, and then accidentally finds it and returns it when people start looking his way.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, I got Barry's phone records here; he did call Jimmy Smith's cell number a little while after that email came in, and then he called Chris, the guitar player. That’s the last call made from his phone, but there are a lot of calls that came in to it. Several from Jimmy, and four or five from each of the band members, including Chris.”

“That call to Chris, that was on Saturday, so that's the call he mentioned. He claims Barry never showed up to talk, and he hasn't seen or heard from him since. If he's telling the truth, then that makes me think Barry talked to one of the others, first. If not, then Chris would be my number one suspect, if I knew Barry was dead.”

“Think Chris would call his phone, if he killed him? Trying to look innocent again?”

“Yeah, that would be normal. Wish I could hear if they left voicemails.”

Indie grinned. “Give me a minute,” she said, and then went to her room. She returned a few minutes later with a cell phone that wasn't her own. “I got his phone's electronic ID number from his carrier's records. If I can clone this one to it, then maybe we can get into his voicemails and listen to them.”

She started punching keys on the phone, and a few minutes later she said, “Bingo! Let's try it.” She put it on speaker, punched in a code, and they could hear ringing on the other end.

“Welcome to your voice messages. Please enter your password.”

Indie punched in four zeroes, and smiled up at Sam. “I reset it through the carrier's system, so it would let us in this way,” she said.

“You have thirty-seven new messages. To listen to new messages, press one.” Indie did, and they began to listen to message after message.

Barry, it's Chris. You still comin'?

Barry, this is Jimmy. You get this all worked out? Call me!

Barry, it's Jan, I need you to call me, okay? Or you can come by, if you want. Bye.

Barry, dude, it's Jimmy! Where are you hiding? Call me, we don't wanna blow this!

Hey, Bare, it's Chris. What's the deal, man, it's almost five and we go on at Biggie's at seven. Where you at?

Barry? It's Jan, Barry, where are you? Why haven't you come over? I need you! Please call me!

The rest of the messages were similar, all from Jimmy or the band members wanting to know where he was, and why he wasn't calling them back. There was one message from one of his sisters, all ticked off and asking if he had forgotten his niece's dance program, but that was the only one that was not from the band or the agent.

“Nothing really suspicious, there, other than the fact that he never got these messages. Got anything else at the moment?”

Indie shook her head. “Nope. What's next?”

Sam thought for a moment. “Barry called Chris after he got the email from Jimmy, which lends credibility to Jimmy's statement that Barry was going to tell the band he was taking the contract. On the other hand, neither Chris nor anyone else from the band mentioned it, and they claim they never saw him since the night before. I think it's time to ask Chris point blank what he knew; he seems to be the leader, maybe even the band's manager. I'm gonna pay him an early morning visit and see what I can shake out of him. Call me if you find anything else, okay?”

“You got it,” Indie said.

Sam said goodbye to Kenzie and walked out the door to get into his van. They had gotten all the band members' addresses the night before, and he punched Chris's address into the GPS on his phone as he pulled away. The directions took him into a nice neighborhood in Arvada, and he parked in front of a neat little bungalow, then walked up to the door.

He knocked several times before he heard someone moving around inside, and a moment later the door was opened by Candy, the bass player. She looked at him for a moment, recognition running a little slow, and then smiled.

“Hey,” she said, “the PI guy, right?”

Sam grinned. “Right. Is Chris home?”

She nodded and opened the door up wide. “Yeah, c'mon in, I'll get him.” He followed her inside and watched her walk down a hallway, suddenly realizing she was wearing nothing but a t-shirt that wasn't quite long enough. He turned and studied the living room until he heard Chris come out of his bedroom.

Chris had also obviously been sleeping, and was pulling a shirt over his head as he came into the room. “Hey,” he said, “you find him already?”

Sam shook his head. “No, but I've come across something I hope you can clear up for me. Do you know an agent named Jimmy Smith?”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Jimmy? Heck, yes, Jimmy's always been around, man. He's the guy who always makes lots of promises but unless you kiss his ass, he never delivers. A couple weeks back, he told Barry he could get him on some big label, but he'd have to leave the band, and Barry told him to go suck eggs. Why? He know something about where our boy is?”

Sam studied his face, and saw no sign that Chris was nervous or lying. “No, but he claims that Barry agreed to sign a contract, and was going to tell all of you guys that he was dumping you the night he disappeared. I checked his phone records, and he called you about a minute after the last time he talked to Jimmy. Little while later, you called him back and left a voicemail asking him if he was still coming over. That makes it sound like Jimmy could be telling the truth.”

Chris scratched at his beard. “Barry called me that afternoon, said he needed to talk to me and would be over in a half hour, but he never showed. I remember I waited ‘til about two, then called him back, but he didn't get back to me. That's it. Jimmy really said that? Cause…that was one thing Barry was like, uber-stubborn about—he flat refused to take the deal unless it was for all of us. He hadn’t even mentioned Jimmy in better'n a week, at least. I'd pretty much forgot about him.”

Candy came back into the room, then, wearing jeans and a different t-shirt. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Chris turned to her. “Remember that agent that was after Barry a while back? He claims Barry was gonna sign and dump us, and he was supposed to tell us that the night he disappeared.”

Candy scoffed. “That's bull crap,” she said. “Last time he mentioned it to me, he said he wouldn't be any good if he had to work with a band he didn't know, so he told 'em no.”

Sam nodded. “Still sounds funny he'd call Jimmy, then call you and say he needed to talk. He didn't say what it was about, nothing at all?”

Chris shook his head. “Nope. Just said he needed to talk, but you gotta understand, that wasn't anything unusual. Barry'd come over to talk about just about anything on his mind. He said I was his sounding board, and he could bounce ideas off me, or just gripe about stuff and let the stress off. He was always callin' and sayin' he needed to talk.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “I just wanted to clear that up. I'll let you know if I come up with anything else.” He turned toward the door, then stopped and looked back at Chris. “What's the band doing while Barry's gone?” he asked.

Chris shrugged his shoulders. “We keep rehearsing, kinda hopin' he'll just show up like nothin' happened. That's what he used to do, y'know, take off on a bender and then walk back in a week or two later like it was just the next day. We're in rehearsal this afternoon, about two if you wanna come by. It's over at Stan's place, we use his garage. A real garage band, that's us.” He grinned as he said it.

Sam nodded. “Thanks, I might. I listened to your CD, and it was pretty good. I used to front for a band myself, years ago in high school, then a couple times in college, so I'd enjoy sittin' in on a jam session.”

Chris laughed. “Come on, then, man, we'll stick a mic in your hand and let you relive the glory days.”

Sam grinned and thanked him, then went back to the van. He sat in it for a few moments, thinking.

Nothing in Chris or Candy's demeanor suggested that they were lying, but it was possible that they had anticipated the question and rehearsed their responses. He was sure they'd tell Stan and Janice about it, but he thought that seeing them in their rehearsal might let him watch their interactions, get an idea whether any of them were nervous about his presence.

He drove back toward the house, but called Indie once he was on the way. “Got anything new?”

“Well, I'm not really sure,” she said. “I found the band's fan page on Facebook, and there are some pretty nasty comments there from a guy who claims Barry stole some song lyrics from him, and the songs he's complaining about are a couple of their biggest hits, including Another Good Day. He says he wrote them once when he and Barry were jamming together, and Barry just took them and claimed them as his own. The odd thing is, I found this guy's website, and he's a pretty good songwriter; a lot of his stuff does sound like these songs, so it could be true.”

“Interesting,” Sam said. “Got his name and address?”

“Yep, I knew you'd ask, so here it is. His name is Bill Miller, and he lives at the Grand Crowne Apartments on East Evans Avenue, number four twenty. Doesn't have a job as far as I can tell, and he's on Facebook pretty much all the time.”

“Okay,” Sam said, “I'm on the way to see him.”

Sam didn't need GPS for this one; the Grand Crowne was a hotbed of criminal activity, and he'd been there many times during his ten years as a cop. It took him almost a half hour to get to the place, but he found unit four twenty with no problem, and rang the doorbell.

When the door opened, Sam was surprised to see a very small man; Bill Miller was what used to be called a midget, a very short person who was of normal proportions. Bill was about four-and-a-half feet tall, and if you weren't aware of his age, he would have looked like he might be a ten-year-old boy.

“Yeah?” he said in a high voice, looking annoyed. “Whatever you’re sellin', I ain't buyin'!” He started to close the door, but stopped when he saw Sam's ID held in front of his face.

“Mr. Miller, I'm Sam Prichard, private investigator. I'm looking into the disappearance of Barry Wallace, and it's come to my attention that you and he were acquainted, and not on the best of terms?”

Miller stared at the ID for a moment, then looked up at Sam. “You're really a private eye named Sam? Isn't that just a bit cliché?” He shook his head as if he were amazed at the coincidence, then swung the door open. “Come on in,” he said. “Barry Wallace is a pain in my ass sometimes, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. We'll see what I can tell you and if it helps.”

Sam followed the little man into the living room of the apartment, and sat in the chair he was offered. “Thanks for giving me a few minutes,” he said.

“No worries. You want coffee? I just put some on, and I'm getting me a cup.”

“Sure, and thanks.”

Miller went into the kitchen and returned a few moments later with a tray. On it were two cups, a carafe, and cream and sugar with spoons. He set it on the coffee table, poured coffee into the cups and said, “I don't mind bringing it, but you can doctor up your own.”

Sam grinned, added sugar to his cup and stirred as Miller did the same. He took a sip, and said, “Thanks, this is good.” He set the cup down and looked at his host. “Mr. Miller, you claim that Barry Wallace stole some songs from you. Can you tell me the last time you saw or spoke to him?”

“Yeah, no worries,” Miller said. “Barry and I haven't been face to face for a couple months or so, but we talk on the phone now and then. He'll call me up when he gets stuck on a line, or can't find a good hook, and we'll brainstorm on it ‘til we get it right.”

Sam's eyebrows went up. “You mean, still? Even after you guys started fussing over the ones you said he stole?”

Miller laughed. “We're songwriters, man. Every songwriter needs a gimmick to make it in the business, and that's ours. Barry and I go round and round about some lyrics I say he stole, or he says I stole, and people go to hear the songs out of curiosity. They look at our work, then, and see some similarities, and next thing you know I got agents calling who want their artist to record one of my songs, or maybe they think I'm full of it, so they look at Barry's songs and go after one of his. Either way, we both get attention and we both make more money.”

“So, it's all a game? Just a marketing gimmick?”

“Yep. Barry and I have been writing songs together since we were kids. The reason we don't hang out is because we gotta keep the image up, the one that says we hate each other. We really don't, and to be honest, most of the songs we each put out are ones we wrote together. We just flip a coin sometimes to see who gets writing credit.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?” Sam took another sip of coffee.

Miller leaned back in his chair. “I guess about two weeks ago. He was talking to Jimmy Smith, the so-called talent agent, about a record deal and wanted my opinion on it. Jimmy said he could get him a deal and a tour, but only if he left Step Back Once and let them put a new band behind him. He asked me should he do it, and I said, 'not just no, but hail no!' That band has been exactly what Barry needed; Chris Lancaster's one of the best guitarists that ever lived, and he's got a feel for Barry's voice that's almost eerie. He can make the band sort of mold itself around whatever voice is out front, and that's gold in this business, you know what I mean?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I do,” he said. “I used to sing in a couple of bands, and one of them had some of that. They made me sound a whole lot better than I really was.”

“Right, then you get it. Now, imagine this: you got a guy with golden vocal chords, he can sing in almost any range, carry any kind of tune, and he's got a voice that makes women want him and men want to be him! Put that voice in front of a band like that, and you've got the next Bon Jovi or Nickelback or Green Day! You don't just have a band, you've got a band that will put out classic hits for the rest of their lives! Their very first records will still be selling twenty years after they're all dead and gone!”

Sam cocked his head to one side. “Then why on earth would a label want to split them up? That sounds like pure stupidity, to me.”

Miller was nodding so hard Sam thought his head would fall off. “It is stupidity! The trouble is that a big label can't always see that; they've got some agent shoving an artist at them, and all they know is what they hear. If the agent's talking to a lower-level exec, and he says that it's the artist making the band sound so good, then the exec only wants the singer!”

“But won't they all make more money by keeping a winning team, the whole band, all together?”

“Sure, they would, but if you got an agent who doesn't like someone in that band, he don't care! He'll get fifteen percent of everything the artist makes, whether the band is there or not. In this case, I know that the agent involved, Jimmy Smith, he flat hates Chris! That's why he wants Barry to dump the band.”

“What does Jimmy have against Chris?”

Miller grinned. “This goes back to 2003, okay? Chris was playing for a small band, lead singer was a guy named Stewart something or other, I can't remember now. Anyway, Jimmy wanted Chris to come play with a hot Canadian band that already had a record deal, already had a hit record, and was looking for a new lead guitar. He made a lot of promises about making him a superstar, and for once he was probably telling the truth, but Chris wanted to bring Stewart along. Stewart was a good singer; he was not, however, a great singer, and the band didn't want him. Chris had to choose between his future and his friend, and he chose Stewart. That band Jimmy wanted to put him in? Three Days Grace! They ended up with Barry Stock, instead, and went on to be one of the biggest rock bands of the century, so far. Platinum, double platinum—Chris could outshine Barry Stock a dozen ways, and they could have been even bigger; if Jimmy had brought them Chris, they would have both made fortunes, but it didn't happen because Chris was too loyal to his friend. Jimmy's an old-school music biz type; he never forgave Chris.”

Sam sat there and finished his coffee while he thought over what he'd just learned. If Jimmy felt he had a potential superstar in Barry, and once again lost out over loyalty, would he perhaps resort to violence?

“Tell me something,” he said to Miller. “You've known Barry a while; I've got some info that says he tends to get drunk now and then, and just take off, but this guy had a lot going for him right now, so that doesn't make sense to me. What would you guess is going on, here?”

Miller suddenly looked sad. “If Barry Wallace has disappeared, there's a reason, and it's not because he got drunk. My best guess is that someone was really pissed over this deal with Jimmy. Could be Jimmy himself, if Barry turned him down; I know that he has a temper that gets out of hand, now and then. I've heard stories about him making threats if he doesn't get his way, even threats about how he's got mob connections, and being as he's in the music business, that might be true.” He paused for a moment, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “On the other hand, if he really was thinking about taking the deal, it's possible the band might have been mad. Chris is pretty mellow, but that other guy, Stan, he's an oddball. He's got a lot of money, family money, and nobody really knows what to make of him. If Chris made him mad, I don't have a clue how he'd take it. You just don't know about people.”

“So you think there may be foul play involved?”

Miller shrugged. “Only other thing I can imagine would make Barry take off is a woman, and last time we talked, he was pretty wrapped up in Janice Peet. I don’t know if you know her story, but he got her off the street and off of meth. Barry kept talking like he was in love with her, and I heard that he told her that when she was clean a year, they'd talk about marriage. I don't know if that's really true, mind, but the way he talked about her, I could believe it.”

“Would she be violent, if she thought she was losing him?”

Miller laughed again. “Dude, you're talkin' about a tweaker. They can be pretty crazy, especially if they get back on that crap. It's like in the Bible; if you cast out a demon, and then let it back in, it doesn't come alone. It brings all of its friends, and you end up far worse than you were before. If she fell off the wagon, and then he said he was leaving her—even if it was only for a while—it's very possible that she'd be mad enough to chop him into little bits and feed him to the birds!”

“Well,” Sam said. “You've definitely given me a lot to think about, and I appreciate it.” He rose to his feet. “And thanks for the coffee, too, by the way.” The two men shook hands, and Miller got up to walk him to the door.

“For what it's worth,” he said, “I really hope Barry turns up. He's the best songwriting partner I've ever had, but besides that, he's a pretty good guy. We have a sort of history together, but I won't go into that. I just have a bad feeling about this, and I don't think we're gonna see him again.”

Sam got back into his van and started back to his house. Halfway there, he took out his phone and called his old police partner, Dan Jacobs.

“Well, well, well,” Dan said as he answered the call. “How's the big PI doing these days?”

“Working my first official case,” Sam replied. “Tell me something; you ever heard of a girl named Janice Peet, that's P-E-E-T? A tweaker?”

“Janice Peet,” Dan mused. “Can't say I have. Want me to run the name and see what I find?”

“Yeah, would you please? I'll hold.”

“Be right back,” Dan said, and the PD hold music started. Sam listened to some bad instrumental versions of old pop songs for a couple of minutes, and then his old friend came back on the line.

“Okay, Janice Peet is twenty-four and has two arrests for using, none for dealing. From what I see, she was probably on it for a long time, and went through rehab about three or four months back. Nothing on her since then.”

“Okay, thanks,” Sam said. They chatted for a minute about the weather and promised to get together sometime soon, then ended the call.

3

Sam pulled into his driveway a half hour later, and walked inside to find Kenzie asleep on the couch, with Dora the Explorer on the TV. Indie was sitting in his recliner, and he filled her in on all he'd learned.

“So,” Indie summarized, “Barry didn't really steal the songs, and Jimmy the agent has a problem with Chris the guitar player, and Janice could be a raging psycho lunatic. Am I close, here?”

“Pretty much on target,” Sam said. “The whole thing stinks to high heaven, to be honest, and I'm not far from agreeing with Janice that Barry is probably dead. The only questions are which one of several motives caused which one of several possible suspects to kill him, and where is he now?”

“Okay, then, so next step?”

“I'm gonna go to the band's rehearsal this afternoon, see if I can pick up anything from Janice or Stan. Chris seems to be clean, and Candy's too new to be much of a suspect; I can't see any kind of a motive for her to want him dead, or even out of the picture.”

Indie nodded. “Well, I've actually been busy, here, while you were out having gabfests. I did some background checking on all of the band members, and you might find some of it interesting. Come look at what Herman's put together.”

Sam followed her into the dining room, and she handed him some printed sheets. Each one had the name of one of the band members at the top, and he scanned over them quickly.

“Stan Bennett,” he read from the first one. “Thirty-two years old, ah, he's done a little time, I see. Two years for manslaughter?”

“Yeah,” Indie said. “He was driving when his car ran off the road and killed a friend who was riding with him. Since the skid marks said he was doing more than a hundred miles an hour, they cited him for reckless driving, and so he was charged with manslaughter over his buddy's death. He plead guilty and did two years in state prison for it, hasn't been in any trouble since then.”

“Mm-hmm. Chris Lancaster has a clean record except for a couple of DUIs a long time ago, but I see he spent a few months in drug rehab five years back.”

“Yep. Painkillers, he got hooked on them after an accident where he got rear-ended by a semi-truck. He went in voluntarily, and from what I can tell, he's stayed clean since then.”

“Candy McAlester, twenty-two, got a record for, holy cow, prostitution?”

“Don't get all high and mighty, there, Sam, she had a kid to feed and apparently did what she had to do. I've considered it myself, not long ago; if you remember, I thought you were proposing a little 'take it in trade' thing when you first offered to let me and Kenzie stay here. You'd be surprised what a mother will do to feed her child. Anyway, because she was homeless, she ended up losing the kid to her ex, and only gets to see him on weekends now. I can imagine what that must feel like, and it makes me grateful to you all over again.”

“De nada,” Sam said. “Janice Peet, twenty-four; I had Danny run her through the computer, so I knew about her history with meth, but you've got something here about jail time? Dan didn't find that.”

Indie smirked. “Dan doesn't have Herman. It was juvie jail, and after what you just told me, I think she might be a serious suspect. She was convicted of attempted murder at fourteen, a neighbor guy who apparently had been molesting her, and spent the last four years of her childhood behind bars in the Adams Youth Services Center in Brighton. She was released at eighteen, and she's been on drugs off and on ever since. Did rehab a few months ago; I guess that's when Barry started working with her. And incidentally, the guy she tried to kill went to prison, too, eight years for statutory rape.”

Sam nodded and flipped to the next page. “And here's the man of the hour, Barry Wallace. Twenty-seven, no felony record, just some minor mix-ups when he was drinking, apparently. Worked as a delivery driver for pizza for a few years, then started singing with different bands. Looks like he's been with several, before this one.”

“Yeah, but is that really strange? I mean, don't singers jump around while they're learning the ropes?”

“Probably. I was never into it that seriously, so I didn't care that much. I just liked to sing.” He set the papers on the table and looked at Indie. “You want to come with me to the rehearsal?”

Indie smiled. “Sure. Let me see if Anita can watch Kenzie.” She grabbed her phone and called the neighbor lady, whose twins were Kenzie's new playmates. A few minutes later, she woke Kenzie up and fed her lunch, then got her dressed to go down the street and play for the afternoon. When she got back, Sam was ready to go.

“It's a little early,” he said, “so I thought I'd offer to buy you lunch. Interested?”

Indie smiled. “You bet! Give me fifteen minutes to get ready?”

Sam took out his phone. “I'm setting my stopwatch—now!”

Indie laughed and ran up the stairs, while Sam watched. There was something about the way that girl moved that just tickled him.

When she came back down, her makeup was perfect, her hair was brushed, and she'd put on a pair of jeans and a nice top that accentuated her shapely figure. Sam cleared his throat and said, “Wow, girl, you clean up pretty nice!”

Indie spun once, to let him look her over completely, and Sam blushed just a bit; the pirouette had shown him just how well those jeans fit, and he had to admit that they fit quite well—everywhere! He kept his thoughts to himself, however, and walked her out to the garage, opening the garage door to get to his Corvette.

“I thought we'd go in style. Besides,” he said, “I recall I promised you a ride in it a couple weeks back.” Indie giggled as he opened her door for her and let her get in, then closed it. He walked around with his cane, got in and said, “Buckle up,” then put the key in the ignition and fired up the big 427. Indie smiled as the car backed out of the garage, and Sam turned it toward downtown.

He took her to a nice restaurant on East 26th Street, and they enjoyed a leisurely lunch of roast beef and potatoes. Sam enjoyed the jealous glances of the executive types that were eating there, watching him with what was undoubtedly the loveliest girl in the place, and let himself think a bit about what it would be like if she was his girl.

They'd pretended she was, once, as part of a plot to keep her safe when he was dealing with some very bad men. He didn't want anyone to know what she was capable of with a computer, so he'd convinced her to pretend she was his girlfriend for a while. He'd even gotten a kiss, once, and admitted to himself more than once that he wished she'd do that again.

Ah, face it, ya big ape, he thought to himself. Indie's the best girl you've ever known, and little Kenzie is as good a daughter as you could ever hope to have! Why not just admit you're falling for her?

He shook his head to cancel out that thought, and concentrated on finishing his lunch.

When they were done, he drove them to Stan's address, which turned out to be a pretty nice house on the outskirts of Golden, in a subdivision that allowed some room between the homes. The garage was large and attached, and the door was standing open as Sam pulled the Vette into the driveway.

The loud exhaust caught the attention of the band, and they all came out to see the car. Sam and Indie shook hands all around, and Chris said, “Cool, you brought the wife!”

Sam started to speak, but Indie beat him to it. “Not yet, I'm not,” she said with a grin, and Sam stared at her. “I'm just the housekeeper, but he throws in fringe benefits now and then, like getting to come hear you guys play. I hope it's okay?”

“It's fine, Honey,” Candy said. “We're musicians, we love an audience! Come on in, we've got some folding chairs in the garage!”

They all went inside, and Sam and Indie got chairs and parked themselves just inside the door. “Best spot,” he said to Indie. “The empty garage acts like a band shell and reflects all the music right to us.”

“I take it you've done this before?” she asked.

He grinned. “I was in a garage band before they called them garage bands. Back then, we just called 'em rock groups.”

They sat back and Janice came out of the house with bottles of Coke for them, and then the band all took their places. Chris stepped up to the front microphone. “Since Barry's gone AWOL, I'm doing the vocals, just to keep us in practice,” he said. “I'm not as good as he is, but I'm what we've got at the moment.”

They launched into a rendition of one of their songs, then, and Sam and Indie rocked their chairs and slapped their thighs in time to the music. One song followed another, and Indie commented to Sam that Chris wasn't all that bad, himself.

“Ah,” Sam said, “I've heard better, and not just from Barry.”

The band took a break after about an hour, and they all sat around talking.

“So,” Chris asked, “what do you think? I mean, I know it's not right, with Barry not here, but I think the music is pretty good.”

Sam nodded. “It is, it really is. Reminds me of my own days with the band in college. We did a lot of metal, back then, not so much of the pop stuff as you guys are doing, but I always wanted to soften things up a bit.”

“Hey, that's right, you used to sing,” Chris said. “Wanna hit the mic for a few?”

Sam laughed. “No, thanks, I don't know any of your songs. When I sing nowadays, it's usually the stuff I wrote, so nobody knows if I mess up besides me.”

“Do you play? Guitar or anything?”

Sam nodded. “I play a little guitar, yeah. Not as well as you, though, just more of an acoustic style, I guess.”

Chris got up and went further back into the garage, and came back with a nice Yamaha acoustic guitar. “Here ya go,” he said. “Show us what you got?”

Sam waved it off. “No, no, really,” he said, but the band and Indie all joined in to encourage him. He tried to laugh it off, but they wouldn't let it go, so finally he said, “Okay, fine, then, one song.”

He took the guitar and moved to sit on a stool near the mic, while Chris plugged a cord into the base of the instrument and turned a couple of dials on the amp.

“All yours,” Chris said. “Make it moan, man!”

Sam strummed the guitar's strings a few times, felt out the frets and then began to play softly. “This is something I wrote about ten years ago,” he said, and then began to sing softly into the microphone. (Click to listen)

She walked along the riverside, the fall leaves blowin' by

And stopped beside a small cascade, a flower caught her eye

And as the petals fall, she whispers that old rhyme

He loves me, loves me not, which one wins this time?

And who would believe

That a daisy, after all

Could heal a broken heart

By letting petals fall

She walked along the riverside, and silently she cried

If just one petal had remained, her hopes might not have died

But as the rhyme went round, those petals blew away

Until the last one softly fell, he loves me not, today

And who would believe

That a daisy, after all

Could heal a broken hear,

By letting petals fall—all—all

She walked along the Riverside, her heart lost in despair

And almost missed the whispered sound of another lost heart there

She stood beside the willow tree, and watched the lonely man

And listened as he whispered to the daisy in his hand

And who would believe

That a daisy, after all

Could heal a broken heart

By letting petals fall

She walked along the riverside, a flower caught her eye…

The garage went silent as the last note faded away, and Sam looked up to find five people staring at him, their mouths open in utter shock.

“Dude,” Chris said, “man, that was freakin' awesome!”

Stan was nodding. “I am sayin',” he said. “Man, music lost out when you stopped singing!”

Candy and Janice just started applauding, and a moment later, the rest of them joined in. Sam looked at Indie and saw tears streaking her cheeks.

“Aw, c'mon, it wasn't that good! I haven't even practiced it in years, I'm surprised I got through it!”

“Well, do something else, then,” Indie said, and the band all echoed her. “Yeah, man, do another one!” “Encore, encore!”

Sam shook his head. “Okay, fine, one more. Lemme think—okay, I got one.”

He struck one note, and then a chord, and a moment later he began to sing. (Click to listen)

Life brings with it things that we can never live without

We all need air and water, fire to keep the cold world out

But in my heart I've found a source, to give me all I need

A way to keep me goin' that escapes mortality

I live here in a place that human eyes could never see

A place where every hope I've ever known can be set free

Where my fears can be forgotten, and my dreams can all come true

Cause everything I need I found in you

And I don't need money, when I can spend

Some moments with you, now and then

I don't need water when I'm thirsty

I can drink your beauty in

I don't need fire to keep me warm

When your eyes hold the perfect flame

And I don't need air

I can just breathe your name

I look into your eyes and see my soul reflected there

Your smile lights up the path I follow down life's thoroughfare

Your strength can keep me standing when I'm weak enough to fall

And your love lets me know that I can make it, after all

You sing and I hear music other hearts will never know

A song of love and wonder that ‘til now had gone untold

And I'll spend every tomorrow doing all that I can do

To prove that everything I need, I found in you

And I don't need money, when I can spend

Some moments with you, now and then

I don't need water when I'm thirsty

I can drink your beauty in

I don't need fire to keep me warm

When your eyes hold the perfect flame

And I don't need air

I can just breathe your name

I don't need fire to keep me warm

When your eyes hold the perfect fla—a—me

And I don't need air

I can just breathe your name…

Once again there was silence, but it lasted for the space of about five seconds before all five of those listening burst into applause. Chris was on his feet, bouncing from one foot to another, and clapping his hands together.

“Oh, man,” he said, “dude, that was incredible! I love the lyrics to that song!”

Candy had tears in her eyes. “That,” she said, “was about the most incredible love song I have ever heard! I don't know who the lucky girl is that you wrote that for, but she's a fool if she let you get away!”

Indie nodded her head. “Holy cow, Sam, I didn't know you had that kind of romance in you!”

Chris was still talking. “Do you have other songs like that that you've written? Man, I'd love to see us record that, heck, both of 'em! And I wanna see anything else you got! Please?”

Sam was turning red. “Yeah, I've got a few more,” he said, “but this is getting way outa hand! I didn't come here to sing, I came to listen.”

“He's good,” Stan said suddenly. “He's really good. I mean, like he's almost as good as Barry, but in a different way.”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I totally agree, man, I totally agree!”

Stan walked up to Sam and looked him in the eye. “Would you fill in ‘til Barry comes back? We can teach you our songs, that's no big deal, but we need a lead singer. Chris doesn't have it, and neither do I or the girls. We're all good on harmony and backup, but we need a good lead. If you'd stand in, we could make some of our gigs that are scheduled, and to be perfectly honest, man, we need the money!”

Sam stared at him, as the rest of the band suddenly jumped onto the idea. Even Indie was nodding her head, as Sam was shaking his. “Come on, now, all of you,” he said. “I'm no singer, I'm a private eye! I haven't been in front of an audience in better than twelve years!”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Chris asked him. “You've got the voice, you've got a style—man, I'm telling you, this is a great idea. And it might even be the thing that'll get Barry to come in out of the cold! I mean, how would you feel if you were the lead singer of a band, and suddenly you get replaced by an unknown? You'd get mad, right? If he hears about it, maybe he'll come back and we can find out what happened!”

The conversation just went downhill from there, as far as Sam was concerned, but in the end, he agreed. The band would begin teaching him their songs the next day, and he assured them he'd be there at two to start learning.

The thing that finally convinced him to go along with it wasn't any hope that Barry might show up, however; it was Indie's comment that his songs got to her heart and made her feel as if he was actually singing to her. He didn't know what to say to that, because, if he were to be honest with himself, he sort of was. He had specifically chosen those two songs from his personal repertoire because they made him think of her when he let them run through his mind.

4

Sam and Indie made it home about six, after stopping down at the Mitchells' place to pick up Mackenzie. Indie was all excited as she told the little girl that Sam was going to be a singer, and then he had to get out his guitar and sing a song for her, to prove it.

“Never had a child that young call me a fibber, before,” he said to Indie, and she laughed.

“My daughter is a lot like her mother,” she said. “You tell one of us something, you better be ready to back it up! Why didn't you ever tell me you could sing like that?”

Sam looked at her, letting his head rock around a bit as if confused. “Um, excuse me,” he said, “but if I recall correctly, I've known you for about two whole weeks, now. Since I haven't been trying to make time with you, saying, 'Hey, let me serenade you' didn't seem to be too high on my list of priorities. Sorry about that! I'm sure I would have mentioned my music sooner or later, it just hadn’t seemed to fit into our conversations so far.”

Indie stared at him for a moment, and then stunned Sam by turning and running up the stairs to her room. He heard the door slam a second later, and then Kenzie came to him.

“What's the matter with Mommy?” she asked, and Sam only shook his head.

“Sweetheart, I wish I knew!”

Upstairs, Indie was lying across her bed, and fighting back the tears that were trying to come.

Just stop it, she thought. Okay, so he doesn't see me that way, I get it! And like he said, Dummy, you've only known him two weeks; be kinda stupid to be falling in love this fast, wouldn't it? Oh, but why does he have to be such a great guy, then? Why does he have to make me feel like I'm the most beautiful girl in the world when he looks at me? Am I losing it, do I not have what it takes to attract a decent guy anymore?

She lay there for several minutes, until Kenzie came in and climbed onto the bed beside her. “Mommy, are you okay?” the little girl asked, and Indie dried her eyes as she looked up at her daughter.

“I'm fine, Baby,” she said. “I just thought something that made me sad, that's all, but I'm all better now. Let's go make dinner, okay?”

“Okay!” Kenzie said, and took her mother's hand to pull her up off the bed.

When she got downstairs, Sam was sitting in his recliner, but he got up and came into the kitchen as he heard her moving around in there. He sat at the kitchen table and watched as she got out pans, and Kenzie went back to the living room and turned on the TV.

He'd been startled when she took off, and he'd seen the tears trying to come from her eyes just before she did, so he'd sat down and tried to figure out what he had said that hurt her feelings. The trouble with being a cop is that you become accustomed to analyzing motives, and so his thoughts had gone in that direction, trying to fathom what could have motivated her to start to cry simply because he hadn't told her about his music, yet. He'd let the possibilities run through his mind, and finally realized that the only one that made any sense was that she was feeling an attraction to him, just as he was feeling one to her.

The other thing about being a cop is that you become quite confident in your own powers of deduction, so he was pretty sure he'd hit on the answer. The only question remaining was what to do about it, and that's the one he wasn't sure of. He sat and watched her for a moment, until she finally turned to face him.

“Okay,” she said, “I owe you an apology. I don't know what hit me, just then, and I shouldn't have done that. I hope it's okay, and you'll forgive me.”

“Nope,” he said, and her eyes went wide. “It's not okay, not until we talk about it. Come sit down for a minute, Indie.”

She stared at him, afraid that she'd messed up somehow and might even lose the home she and Kenzie were becoming so fond of. “Can I get dinner started first? I'm gonna make chili mac, unless you don't want me to?”

“That's fine,” he said, “go ahead.” He sat and watched as she put water on to boil in one pot, and put two cans of chili into another, turning the heat on low beneath it. When she was done, she came and sat down across from him, watching his face nervously.

“Indie,” he said, “there's something I want to tell you, and I hope it's not gonna cause us a problem, cause I really, really like having you and Kenzie here. If what I say upsets you, I hope we can get past it and keep things the way they are, okay?”

Okay, now I'm really nervous, she thought. “Okay—I'll try, anyway.”

Sam smiled. “Okay,” he said, and then he seemed to be at a loss to say any more. He opened his mouth twice, but nothing came out. It was the third time that was the charm. “Indie, you are a very beautiful girl,” he managed to say, “and I want you to know that I notice that. I notice it every single time I look at you, in fact, and I'm sure you've caught me looking at you a lot.” He blushed as he said it, and Indie suddenly felt a surge of hope begin to swell up within her. “The thing is, when I offered to let you come stay here, I promised you I wouldn't try anything, that it wasn't like that, you remember?”

She nodded her head, and watched him closely.

Sam cleared his throat. “Okay, well, see, if I'm gonna be completely honest, the more I'm around you, the more I'm feeling—attracted to you. I just adore Kenzie, and I've come to the point that I can't deny what I'm feeling for you, anymore, either. I've been trying not to let it show, because I didn't want you to think anything bad of me, but I can't deny that I think you're a pretty wonderful woman, and sometimes, I think about—us. Being an 'us,' I mean, I think about us being an 'us,' and—I think you think about it sometimes, too.” He seemed to be struggling for the words he wanted to say, and paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “If I'm wrong, I'm about to feel like a real idiot, but if I'm right, then I think we need to be grown ups and talk about it, don't you?”

Indie sat there for a long moment, and it was Sam's turn to be nervous. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, it was very softly.

“Sam, I've been all on my own for a long time, now, just me and Kenzie. I've met a lot of guys, and it's always seemed like all they want is to get close enough to make me want them, and then they're done. I've had my heart broken a lot, y'know? And so has Kenzie, when she gets to liking a guy who seems to like me, and then he’s just gone.” She looked down at her hands, which were nervously fiddling with the saltshaker, and shoved it away. “When you first made your offer, I thought you were just another guy out to get into my pants, and I was desperate enough I thought about it, just because it would mean Kenzie had a place to stay for a while. But you made it clear, right from the start, that you weren't like that, and even though I didn't believe it at first, I began to after a few days. You could have made a move on me after you bought Kenzie her own furniture, and I'd have felt like I had to go along with it out of gratitude, as much as out of desperation. I would have understood it, even if I didn't really like it, but again, you weren't like that. You were just a great guy helping out a girl who needed it, but then you went even further and gave me a real job—one after another, if you think about it.”

She let out a long sigh. “Sam, no one's ever been there for me like you have, and yeah, I know we haven't known each other for a long, but the truth is, I think you're the greatest guy on earth. Do I wanna hop into bed with you? I don’t have to, but I won't pretend I haven’t thought about it, though, and if you tell me you haven’t had a fantasy about me, I'll call you a liar. We're a man and a woman living in the same house, we're both feeling a mutual attraction and neither of us has anyone, so of course we're going to have fantasies about each other. That's normal; rushing into something wouldn't be. Do I like you? Oh, yes! Am I thrilled to know you like me? Oh, hell, yes!”

She looked up into his eyes. “The question is, what do you want to do about it?”

Sam smiled at her, and she smiled back. “I think,” he said, “that we've just taken the first step, don't you?”

Indie smiled back. “Yeah.”

“Indie, I would like very much to date you. Would that be something you'd consider at this point?”

Her smile got even wider. “I would love it!” she said.

Sam reached over and took her hand, and she let him hold it. He leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “Is this the part where I get to call you my girlfriend for real?” he whispered, and she burst out laughing.

“Sam,” she said, “I can honestly say I thought you'd never ask! Yes, if I can call you my boyfriend!”

Sam reached into his pocket and pulled something out in his closed fist, and held it out to Indie. “When I was in school, if I had a steady girlfriend, I always gave her my class ring. I don’t have that anymore, but I wonder if you'd like to have this?” He opened his fist, and there lay his Police Academy ring. “I'm not trying to make this a permanent thing, Indie, I think it's way too early for that, but if I can find a place inside that beautiful heart of yours for now, I'll be a happy man.”

Indie reached out and took the ring, slipping it onto her finger, and they both laughed as it spun there. “Yeah, it's a little big,” she said, “but it kinda makes me happy that you'd want me to have it.”

“Indie,” Sam said, “I like you, and I like you a lot. I see how beautiful you are, and I'll admit I like that about you, but that isn't why I like you; and if this turns into more, then it still won't be because you're beautiful on the outside; it'll be because of the woman I see on the inside.”

Indie sat there for a moment, and Sam could see tears welling up in her eyes again, but he thought they were okay, this time. She got up and walked around the table, leaned down and kissed him. It wasn't the chaste little kiss she'd given him before, but a truly passionate kiss that said that the future might hold some surprises.

She turned back to her cooking then, and Sam sat there and watched his new girlfriend make dinner.

After they'd eaten, Sam asked Indie to see what she could dig up on Jimmy Smith, the agent. She went to the computer and told Herman what she wanted him to do, and then she and Sam went into the living room and put a movie on the TV. Sam passed up his recliner and sat on one end of the couch, and a moment later, Indie sat down beside him and leaned back against him.

“Well, hi, there,” Sam said, smiling down at her.

“Hi,” she said. “Is this okay?”

Sam didn't answer, but put an arm around her and pulled her closer. She snuggled in and relaxed, and they watched most of the movie before Kenzie noticed the way they were sitting. When she did, she didn't say a word, but climbed up on Sam's lap and let her head rest against her mother's on his chest. Within minutes, she was fast asleep.

“Want me to take her on upstairs?” Indie asked quietly, but Sam shook his head.

“She's just fine where she is,” he said.

When the movie ended, however, Indie said it was time for Kenzie to go to bed, so she took her up and tucked her in. Sam went to the dining room and looked at the computer, but it was just running numbers across the screen. He waited for Indie to come back, and then she punched a few keys, and papers began to spit out of the printer.

“Okay,” she said, looking over the printouts. “Jimmy Smith is fifty-two years old, married, with two kids in college, and get this, he's got four felonies on his record. Two for assault, one for fraud, and another for tax fraud. This is not a very good guy, Sam.”

“And he's been known to harass people who don't do things his way. The more I hear about this guy, the more suspicious I get. What else you got there?”

“Well, he's been sued repeatedly by people who claim he didn't deliver on his promises, and he's settled out of court with most of them. Paid out a settlement of more than half a million to one band that said he promised them a recording contract that never materialized. He's got some shady deals in his history.”

“What about the assaults? How bad were they?”

Indie looked through the papers. “One was against a woman named Samantha Harris, who backed out of signing a contract with a minor record label, and the other was in a bar fight. He broke a beer bottle over some guy's head, then slashed him up with it. According to the victim, Johnny Darnell, Smith was mad because he rejected a musician Smith wanted to put in his band. In both cases, he got probation. The woman was back in 2006, and the bar fight was in 2010, not all that long ago.”

“Hmm. Sounds like a guy who might lose it if he doesn't get what he wants, then, doesn't he? I think I'll go see him in the morning, see what kind of reaction I get.” He looked at Indie, and smiled. “You done good, there, kid. Now go get you some sleep. We've got a big day tomorrow.”

She looked at him and grinned. “A big day?”

“Well, you don't think I'm gonna get up there and sing without my number one fan, do you? We've got rehearsals to go to, and I'm not doing this without you.”

Indie inclined her head. “Okay,” she said, then stood. She started toward the stairs, but stopped, turned around and came back to him. “Sam,” she said, but then she just leaned down and kissed him. “Goodnight, boyfriend,” she said, and was gone up the stairs while he watched with a smile.

The following morning, Sam headed off to see Jimmy Smith, who had an office in Denver. He didn't call for an appointment, instead just arriving at the office shortly after it opened at nine. The receptionist looked up as he walked in and asked, “May I help you?”

“Sam Prichard,” he said, “private investigator. I'd like to speak with Mr. Smith.”

The receptionist frowned. “You're not on my appointment list, Mr. Prichard, and I'm afraid Mr. Smith doesn't see anybody without one. Can I set one for you? He has an opening next Friday...”

“No, that's okay. You just tell him I'm here, and if he doesn't have time to see me, I'll go on down to the police, and maybe he'll have time to see them.”

She looked at him blankly for a moment, then said, “One moment.” She picked up a phone and pushed a button. “There's a Mr. Prichard here who would like to see you,” she said, “and he said if you're too busy, he can send the police, instead.”

Jimmy Smith came out of his office a few seconds later, and Sam was surprised at the sheer size of the man. Where Bill Miller had been a very small fellow, Jimmy Smith was almost a giant; he stood at least six foot six, and was built like a football coach's dream.

“Mr. Prichard,” he said with a scowl. “If you'd called ahead, I would have been happy to see you without the theatrics.”

“That's okay,” Sam said with a smile. “I think theatrics can be fun, now and then. Besides, I didn't want to risk anyone else finding out I was coming, so this was easier.”

Smith gave him a menacing look, but Sam kept smiling. “Come on in,” Smith said after a moment.

Sam followed him into his office, and sat in the chair in front of the big desk that dominated the room. “I do appreciate you taking the time for me, Mr. Smith, and I've only got a few questions. Can you tell me about your relationship with Chris Lancaster?”

Smith scrunched his eyes together. “Lancaster? He's a jerk, I can tell you that much. I got him a gig years ago that would have made him rich, and he blew it off like it was nothing. I spent thousands of dollars setting it up, and when it came down to it, he just decided it wasn't good enough for him. The guy who got it has made about two hundred million bucks, while Lancaster's been playing barrooms and dives ever since.”

“So you're not fond of him, then?”

“Not really, no.”

“Is that why you insisted Barry Wallace had to leave his band behind? To get back at Chris for that incident?”

Smith stared at him for several seconds. “No, of course not. Barry is far too good for Chris and his band, that was all. He needed more professional musicians to back him, and I could make that happen. When he signed with Sony, he'd have had his pick of musicians; they'd have let him have anyone he wanted, no matter who it was or what the cost.”

Sam cocked his head. “Then why couldn't he have the ones he already had, the ones you knew he really wanted? You say Sony wanted him so badly they'd have let him choose the band he wanted; why did he have to reject the one he already knew and had chosen? That sounds more like your decision than the label's.”

Smith leaned back in his chair. “Look, Mr. Prichard, with all due respect, I know this business. Barry might have done all right with the band he had, if he'd signed and taken them along, but he could do much, much better with a truly professional band. One of the things my job entails is teaching artists about how the business really works, and Barry was one of those guys. He didn't know what was best for him, but I did.”

Sam nodded. “Okay. Now, you say Barry told you he was going to sign, and would tell the band he was gonna leave them, right? Thing is, no one else ever heard that, and apparently he'd been adamant that he never would. The band thought he was done with you two weeks earlier, after he told you he wasn't interested if they didn't go with him.”

“That's their story, I'm sure, but then, it would be. They aren't going to admit he was leaving them, even if they had nothing to do with his disappearance, because it would hurt them as a band. If the word got out that someone like Barry thought they weren't good enough, no other serious singer would be interested in fronting them just because they all think they're the best. If this band wasn't good enough for one singer, they aren't good enough for anyone else, either. Simple music marketing.”

Sam nodded again. “So the only reason you wanted him to leave the band was so you could help him do better, right?”

“That's exactly right.”

Sam smiled. “Okay, got it. Tell me about Samantha Harris.”

Smith blinked, and his eyes went dark. “Mr. Prichard, I don't see what ancient history has to do with your current investigation, and I think that this interview is over.” He started to rise from his chair, but Sam went on.

“It has to do with the fact that you've got a record of violence whenever an artist doesn't do what you want. According to Ms. Harris, you slashed her hand when she declined a contract you wanted her to sign. I was giving you the chance to tell me your side of it.”

Smith sat back down in a huff. “Samantha Harris was a good singer, very good, but she had one flaw; she was nuts about her keyboard man, who stank to high heaven. As a result, she refused to see past her emotions to the fact that the guy was usually stoned out of his mind on coke, and couldn't play 'Chopsticks' without missing notes. When I tried one last time to explain that fact to her, she picked up a vase and threw it at me, but it hit a wall and shattered. A piece of it bounced back and nicked her hand, and she claimed I had hit her with it. If the cops hadn't been idiots, it would have been obvious she was lying, but I ended up having to take a plea bargain for probation because the prosecutor was going to put some of her friends on the stand, people who claimed they were there and saw it, even though they weren't.”

Sam nodded. “Uh-huh. And John Darnell? Did he break a beer bottle over his own head?”

Smith was on his feet instantly. “John Darnell attacked me with a knife, and I defended myself! When the cops got there, they took the damned knife and it was never seen again. Once again, his friends all said I had gone after him, and I took another plea to stay out of jail! Now, we are done, Mr. Prichard, finished. Shall I show you out, or can you find your way?” The man was angry and breathing hard.

Sam stood, but he walked toward Smith, not to the door. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Smith. I've got enough information to convince me that you are quite capable of violence if you don't get your way, and that makes me wonder if you know more about Barry's disappearance than you say you do. I'm going to keep digging until I find out what happened to him, and if that leads back to you, then I'm going to make damn sure that I have the most airtight case against you that I can hand to the prosecutor. Now, if you've got nothing to hide, then good; I'll keep looking. But if it comes back to you, then I'm going to hang you as high as I possibly can.”

Smith's face had turned bright red, and he was trembling. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Get—out!” and pointed toward the door.

Sam smiled, then walked out of the office. He felt sure that Smith was capable of violence, and didn't believe his stories of innocence for a second, but he wasn't sure that Smith actually had done anything to Barry Wallace. He got to his van and sat in it for a few moments while he thought it through, then called Dan Jacobs.

“Danny, this is a little outside your office, but can you check for any John Doe corpses around the area in the past ten days? Yeah, thanks.” He sat and listened to the hold music for a minute.

When Dan came back, he said, “There's two bodies that turned up with no ID, and the coroner is trying to identify them now. One is old, probably been dead six months, but the other is a little fresher and missing some important pieces, like head and hands. White male, thirty-ish, about five nine when he had his head. They're saying he's been dead about ten days.”

Sam sighed. “Where'd he turn up?”

“Out on Route Thirty, behind Buckley Air Force Base. Found in a ditch by a jailhouse road cleanup crew two days ago.”

“That may be my guy. I'll get with the coroner and see what I can find out. Thanks.”

Sam called the coroner's office and spoke with a clerk there, who suggested he come on down and talk to the ME on the case. He started the van and headed downtown, arriving about twenty minutes later.

The ME, a woman named Bertha Ochoa, listened to Sam and asked only one question. “Do you know if Mr. Wallace had had any surgeries in the past year? This JD has apparently had a bout with a testicular problem, because he's had one of them removed within the last twelve months.”

Sam's eyes went wide. “Give me five minutes and I can tell you,” he said, then took out his phone. He called Chris Lancaster.

“Chris, it's Sam, and I got an odd question for you. Did Barry have both his balls?”

Chris hesitated, but then said, “No. It was supposed to be a big secret, but he got a cancer down there about nine months ago, and he went to a clinic in Arizona to have it treated. When he got there, they said the only way to stop it was to take one out, so they did.” He sighed. “I'm guessing the reason you're asking is cause things aren't looking good?”

“I'm afraid Barry's dead, Chris. I'll tell you guys more this afternoon.” He hung up and looked at Bertha. “Looks like we have a winner. Testicular cancer, one removed.”

She gave him a sad smile. “Sorry,” she said, as Sam rose to leave.

5

Sam, Indie and Kenzie drove up to Stan's place at two on the dot, after a stop at Taco Bell for lunch. Chris had called to say that the band all felt they should go ahead with rehearsals, that Barry wouldn't want them to stop, so they were still on. Sam wasn't sure how well it would go, but he agreed to come.

There were chairs lined up just inside the garage, and they all sat down. Sam started by explaining about his call to Dan, and then described his meeting with the ME, including the way the body had been found and the condition it was in.

“When Chris confirmed that Barry'd had a testicle removed, that clinched it pretty well,” he said. “I'm afraid we're now looking at a murder case. If you want me to stay on it, I will, but you only hired me to find out where he was, and I did. Your call.”

“You can't quit,” Janice said, tears flowing steadily. “You can't. You gotta find out who did this to him.”

Sam looked at Chris, who seemed to be the band's manager. Chris looked at each of the others in turn, then looked back at Sam. “I think we all need to know,” he said. “We'd like to keep you on it for now, if that's okay. We can afford a few more days, and maybe you'll figure it out.”

Sam nodded. “Okay, then. I'm working some leads, and I'll give it my best shot.”

“Let's make some music,” Stan said. “Barry wouldn't want us to quit over this. Let's make some music.”

The rest agreed, even Janice, who couldn't stop crying. The band all took their positions and Chris gave Sam some printed out lyrics to their songs. They chose four songs to work on that day, and then they played them through with Chris singing, so Sam could learn how they went. On the second run-through, Sam stepped up to the mic and sang along with Chris, and on the third he sang alone. By the time five o'clock came around, Sam knew them fairly well, and someone ordered pizza so they could break to eat and then go through them a few more times.

Indie and Kenzie were having a blast. The more Sam sang, the more animated Kenzie became, until finally she was standing in front of him, dancing her little heart out to the beat of the music. Indie laughed happily, and soon she was dancing, as well, holding hands with Kenzie, both of them shaking everything they had. While there were moments of sadness, all of them were enjoying themselves to some degree, and when they finally broke it off at nine, they were all exhausted.

“Same time tomorrow,” Chris said as Sam and Indie took a sleeping Kenzie to the van and buckled her into her car seat. Sam smiled and waved, and they headed for home.

“So, how bad was I?” Sam asked.

“You were terrific,” Indie said. “I'm blown away, Sam, you're really every bit as good as the guys say you are. I love hearing you sing!”

Sam turned a little pink. “I kinda like singing for you,” he said. “I like seeing you smiling at me while I sing, I mean, and Kenzie just tickles me!”

Indie leaned her head back and looked at him, smiling. “So, when am I gonna get to hear more of your songs?”

Sam grinned. “We'll have to see what we can do about that,” he said. “Did I ever tell you I cut a few records, years ago? They weren't rock—I was actually in a country music band for a while, and we went into a studio and made an album. I've still got some of the tracks, somewhere.”

Indie's eyes were wide open. “And you're gonna find them for me, aren't you?” she asked. “I like country music, too, I'd love to hear them!”

Sam grinned. “I'll see what I can do about that, but not tonight. I think we need to get our little one into bed, and then we can take it easy a bit before we give it up for the night.”

Indie was staring at him, and Sam got nervous. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

She shook her head slowly. “You don't even know what you said, do you? Sam, you just called Kenzie 'our little one,' and that's the first time I've ever heard anyone say those words...” Suddenly she had tears on her cheeks. “That was just so sweet,” she whispered.

Sam shrugged. “Well—I guess that's just how I think of her. I mean, I know I'm not her father, but when we're together, I just think of all three of us as being part of something, so that makes her 'ours' in that sense, right? I'm not making any sense, am I?”

She laughed and nodded. “Yes, you are,” she said, “you're making perfect sense.” She sat and chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “If I tell you something, you promise not to freak out on me?”

Sam grinned and looked at her. “I didn't know people still say 'freak out,' like that,” he said, “but I won't. Go ahead.”

“Mom was an old hippie, what can I say? Anyway, what I was gonna tell you is, a couple weeks ago, when you left to go to Arkansas after that guy, Kenzie actually asked me if you were going to be her daddy.”

Sam turned the van onto his street before he looked at her again. “And what did you say?”

Indie rolled her eyes. “I said, 'Hush, child, we'll see!' and left it at that!” She smiled. “But I can't say I haven’t thought about it.”

Sam slowed the van to pull into the driveway, and once he was parked, he said, “So have I. And part of me is scared of the idea, because I’ve never had kids and I don't know if I'd be good at it, and another part of me is hoping it turns out that way, but it's way too soon to be having conversations this deep, so let's get her inside and into bed.”

Indie leaned over and kissed him, then climbed out and opened the side door to get Kenzie. She carried the little sleeper inside while Sam stood there and watched her from the driveway. He looked up at the sky for a moment, and whispered, “If you sent her into my life, then thank you. And please help me make the right choices, where they're concerned.”

He went inside and got out two bottles of Coke, then took them into the living room, sat on the couch again and turned on the TV news, just in time to catch the story about the discovery of Barry's body. The reporter interviewed Barry's sister, Marjorie Newcomb, who was in tears.

“He was the sweetest guy you'd ever want to know,” she said, “always had a big, warm heart for everyone. Barry was the kind of man who never met a stranger; to him, everyone was just a friend he didn't know yet. The world will be a much darker place without him in it.”

Indie came in as the anchor was wrapping up the story. “That’s odd,” she said. “Barry's a well-known singer, but they didn't even call any of his band to ask about him, or get their reactions to his death? I'd think that would be just about as important as asking his family.”

Sam looked at her. “It would,” he said. “Good point, and one worth looking into. For tonight, let's just spend a little time together, okay?”

Indie grinned and came to sit beside him. She accepted her Coke and took a sip, then set it on the coffee table.

“Sam,” she said, “sing me a song.”

He chuckled. “What, right now? Right here?”

She turned and kissed him, hard, then leaned back and looked him in the eye. “Yes, right now and right here! Come on, sing for me!”

Sam looked into her eyes for a moment, then pulled her down to lean against him. “Okay,” he said, "you wanna grab my guitar for me?”

She got up and brought it to him, then sat on the other end of the couch so she could watch him.

“This is one of my country songs,” he said, “one we actually recorded. I'll dig that out for you another time, but here goes.” He began to play a melody then, and a moment later, he sang: (Click to Listen)

You all remember the story, you heard a long time ago

The prince was throwin' a party, but Cinderella couldn't go

Then a miracle happened, and she attended after all

And by the time it was over, Cindy was the Queen of the Ball!

But there was more to the story, and if the truth was ever told

You'd learn that hap'ly ever after, turned into somethin' cruel and cold

And if you're wonderin' how I know, what I'm talkin' about

I'm the prince who once was charming, ‘til Cinderella threw me out!

There ain't no happy endings

There ain't no ever afters

Why don't we stop pretending

With all the lies and laughter?

You know it's only in the moo—oo—vies

Where the boy gets the girl

There ain't no happy endings

Out in the real world!

You know your mama always told you, that love was waitin' at your door

And all you gotta do is find it, and you'll be happy evermore

But you know it's just a fairy tale, like little children love to hear

Let's leave the stories for the children, and cry our lonely, grown-up tears!

There ain't no happy endings

There ain't no ever afters

Why don't we stop pretending

With all the lies and laughter?

You know it's only in the moo—oo—vies

Where the boy gets the girl

There ain't no happy endings

Out in the real world!

There ain't no happy endings

There ain't no ever afters

Why don't we stop pretending

With all the lies and laughter?

You know it's only in the moo—oo—vies

Where the boy gets the girl

There ain't no happy endings

Out in the real world!

Indie sat there in silence as the last vibrations of the guitar faded away. “That was so beautiful,” she said, “but so sad.”

Sam grinned. “Yeah, I wrote that right after my girlfriend at the time dumped me, so it was kinda dark, I know.” He set the guitar down beside the arm of the couch. “But that's not how I really feel, it was just a way to express what I was feeling at that time. I know that happy endings are possible, Indie; but I also know we have to work to make them happen.”

“Yeah,” she said, “we do.” She slid over closer, leaned her face in and kissed him, and this time, he put his arms around her and held on. They kissed without paying attention to anything else for a long time, and when they finally broke, Sam said, “I think it's bedtime, Babe. Get on upstairs.”

Indie smiled. “If I don't go now, I might not go at all.” She kissed him once more and then got up and headed for her bedroom. Sam sat where he was for another half hour, just thinking, and then got up and went to bed himself.

Sam was awakened the next morning by his phone ringing, and sleepily grabbed it from his nightstand.

“Hello,” he said.

“I hear you wanna know what happened to Barry Wallace,” said a woman's voice.

Sam was instantly awake. “Yes,” he said, “I most certainly do. Can you tell me?”

“Yeah, but not over the phone. Can you meet me somewhere? Maybe at a restaurant or something, someplace pretty public? This could get me killed, so I'd rather be in a crowd.”

“Sure. How about the Cherry Creek mall, the food court? That's always pretty crowded, but we should be able to talk.”

“Okay,” the woman said, “that'll work. Meet me there in an hour, and I can tell you what you need to know. You'll know me, I'll be wearing a jacket with Barry's band on it.”

She hung up before Sam could say another word, so he got up, showered and dressed. It wasn't even seven AM yet, so Indie and Kenzie were still in bed. He wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table, then went out and got onto his motorcycle, fired it up and rode off toward the mall.

The weather was nice, and the ride woke him up quickly. When he got to the mall, he parked as close to the food entrance as he could, pulled his cane from the clips he'd mounted on the bike to hold it, and started walking toward the food court.

There weren't a lot of people there yet, but he spotted a woman in a Step Back Once jacket sitting off by herself near the coffee shop. He walked past her at first and saw that she didn't react, so he got himself a cup of coffee and then went to her table.

“Are you the lady who called me this morning?” he asked, and she looked up at him nervously. “About Barry?”

She nodded, and he sat down. “I'm Samantha Harris,” she said. “Barry and I were old friends, and sometimes more than that, if you know what I mean. I can't believe he's dead, but I think I know how he got that way, and Billy Miller said you'd be the guy to call about it.”

Sam sipped his coffee, but said nothing. After a moment, she went on. “Barry was dealing with Jimmy Smith, the agent, you knew about that?” Sam nodded. “Well, he came to me last Saturday afternoon, and said Jimmy said he had him a deal with Sony Records, but he had to quit his band if he wanted it. He knew I'd been through that with Jimmy once before, and wanted to talk to me about it, right? So he called me up and said could he come over, and I said it was okay.”

She picked up her own coffee and took a big gulp of the steaming liquid. “So he tells me Jimmy's singing the same old tune, and I said he should ditch the bum, not the band. I told him he's one of the best, and if the label really wanted him, they'd have asked to talk to him by now, and he could ask them if he could bring his band along. I mean, sure, they'd probably need a better keyboardist; Janice is good, but she's got problems, y'know. But the rest of them would probably make it fine, right? So we talked for about an hour, and he said he wanted to call Jimmy and tell him the deal was a no-go, but his phone was dead, so I let him use mine. He called and said he wasn't gonna do it, and I could hear Jimmy screaming at him, but Barry finally just laughed and said Jimmy could go flip himself and hung up. A little later, he left, and he's never seen alive again, right?”

Sam leaned forward. “You're saying you were there and actually heard him tell Smith he wouldn't take the contract?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, and then took out her phone. “Here, you can see where he called Jimmy that afternoon from this phone.” She showed him the call log, and Smith's number was there. “But that ain't all. Sunday morning, I get a call from a blocked number, and I don't ever answer those, so it went to voicemail, right? Listen to this.”

She hit a button on her phone, and it called into her voicemail. She chose “saved messages,” and Sam heard:

“Sammie, you should know better than to get in the middle of stuff that isn't your business. I promise you that you're gonna regret sticking your nose into this.”

The voice sounded like Jimmy Smith's, and Sam could hear the menace in it.

“Was that it? Has he called you again?” Sam asked.

She shook her head. “No, but then yesterday I got this in the mail.” She pulled an envelope from her purse and handed it to him.

The envelope had her address typed on it, with no return address, and it was one of those with the stamp already printed on it. Carefully, Sam used a pen to raise the flap and peer inside. There was what appeared to be a lock of hair in it, but when he looked again, he could see that the hair was still attached to a bit of skin, and there was a mild, foul odor coming from it.

Sam looked up at Samantha. “I'm gonna need to take this for the lab to check out,” he said, “and the police are gonna want to talk to you about it, I'm sure.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I figured. I just don’t want Jimmy finding out about this, cause I know how mean he can be.”

Sam looked at her for a moment. “He claims that it was you who threw a vase at him when he was charged with assaulting you, and that you and your friends lied about it.”

She stared at him, then lifted her left hand to show the scar of a fairly large cut. “There was no vase thrown,” she said. “He grabbed one and smashed it down on my hand in a rage, and my friends and I went running out the door screaming! That lying son of a...”

Sam reached out and touched her hand. “I know,” he said, “I know. I figured him out pretty quickly. Let me take this and have it checked out, and I'm sure the police will want to talk to you later today, so stay close, okay? Is the number you called me from your cell phone?”

She nodded. “Yeah. You can reach me on it, or give it to the cops, whatever.”

Sam took the envelope with the hair and skin and walked her out to her car, which happened to be in the same area as his bike. He thanked her again, and rode out of the lot, then turned toward the main police station downtown.

Walking into the station felt odd, since he hadn't been there more than a half-dozen times since he was shot a little over a year earlier. He went to the desk and asked for whoever was in charge of the Barry Wallace murder investigation. “I've got some possible evidence,” he added.

The desk officer checked on a computer, and said, “That's Karen Parks. Hang on a sec, and she'll be right out.”

Sam stood off to one side, and a moment later a heavy woman in a skirt and suit jacket appeared. “Sam?” she asked. “God, it really is you, isn't it? Come on back, and tell me what you've got.”

He waited until they were in her cubicle and then handed her the envelope. “This was sent to a woman who contacted me this morning, Samantha Harris. She's also got a voicemail message saved on her phone that may implicate a possible suspect, name of Jimmy Smith.”

Karen looked into the envelope and made a face at the odor, then looked back at Sam. “Jimmy Smith, the talent agent? We've had a dozen calls saying he had it in for Wallace, but there's nothing to tie him to anything. We haven't even gone out to talk to him, yet, just because most of the calls seem so hostile; sounds more like they want Smith in trouble than any concern for what really happened to Wallace. You got any reason to think he was involved?”

“Some things seem to indicate it,” Sam said. “I know that Smith was trying to get Barry to sign a record deal that required him to leave his band behind, and apparently he didn't want to do that. According to Smith, the day he disappeared he agreed, and said he was going to tell the band that night, but they claim they never saw him. Now Samantha tells me he came to her that afternoon to talk about it, and used her phone to call Smith and tell him it was no deal. Barry left and disappeared, but the next day, a voice that sounds like Smith called her phone and left a warning voicemail, telling her she should stay out of it. This came in the mail to her yesterday, and she said a friend of hers that I'd spoken to said she should call me.”

Karen looked into the envelope again. “Hair color's right,” she said, “but we'll need DNA to be sure it's his. That'll take weeks.” She looked at Sam. “So it's true you went into PI? Is that how you got involved in this?”

“Yep. The band hired me to try to track him down, but now they want me to find his killer. Naturally, I'll share everything, and I'm hoping you’ll do the same.”

She smiled. “Anything for an old comrade,” she said. “I haven't forgotten our time in the juvie division together, or that you saved my bacon there a couple of times.”

“Thanks, Karen,” Sam said with a smile. “I appreciate it. Here's Samantha's number, and that's her address on the envelope. I suggest you get a copy of that voicemail, have it run through voice analysis. If it's Smith, then he's my favorite for this one, so far.”

“If it is, it'll get us enough for a warrant. Whoever sent this to your girl must have Wallace's head in a freezer, somewhere, or did until yesterday. If it was at Smith's house, we'll find at least traces of it.”

Sam thanked her again and got up. He made a detour over to Narcotics before he left the building and saw Dan Jacobs at his old desk, so he snuck up on him and put both hands over his eyes.

Dan froze, but then laughed. “Sam, you old son, how are you?” Sam let him go, and he spun around in his chair and stood to wrap his old partner in a hug.

“Oof!” Sam said. “I'm good, or I was ‘til you broke me! I figured I've been yakkin' at you on the phone enough; I was here talking to homicide, and wanted to pop in before I left.”

“Good thing you did, or I'd have had to come hunting you! You on a murder case?”

“Yeah, as of yesterday. MP I was looking for turned up dead in a ditch, minus hands and head. I just got handed what may be part of his scalp, so I brought it in.”

Dan scowled. “I hate murder cases,” he said. “I'll stick to drugs and vice.”

The two men chatted for a few minutes, and then Sam's phone went off. He looked to see Indie's number, and answered.

“Yeah, Babe,” he said without thinking, and Dan's eyebrows went up a half inch. “Babe?” he mouthed silently, but Sam ignored him.

“Sam, I just got to thinking about some things this morning, and I realized I didn't ever check out that songwriter, Bill Miller. I had Herman do a run on him, and you're not gonna believe what I found!”

Sam grinned. “So, tell me, then, and I'll do my best.”

“Bill Miller isn't a William—he's a Wilhelmina!”

6

“Wait a minute,” Sam said. “Run that by me again, only in English.”

Indie laughed. “Yeah, that's what I said, too. Bill Miller was born Wilhelmina Marie Miller, a girl, only in 2003, not long after he got out of high school, he left town for about a year. When he came back, he went by the name Bill, and has been posing as a man ever since. He's only got his mother still living here, no other family, and apparently he's enough of a loner that no one's ever made a fuss about it.”

Sam shrugged. “Okay, well, to each his own, I guess...”

“No, wait,” Indie said, “there's more! During that time he—she—I dunno, it was gone, there was a baby born, and guess who the mother was? Yep, Wilhelmina! Wanna take a wild guess as to who was listed as the father?”

Sam groaned. “Don't tell me,” he said.

“Barry Wallace! Is that weird, or what?”

Sam shook his head. “It's pretty weird, all right, but I don’t see it having any connection to this case. Or is there something more, still?”

“Just this: the Baby is being raised right here in Denver, by Barry's sister Marjorie. Apparently, since Wilhelmina didn't want it and Barry wasn't stable enough to support it, they signed off to let her adopt the child. That wouldn't mean much on its own, but then Herman found a lawsuit filed about two months ago by Barry, asking to reclaim his daughter, and just to make sure I keep you totally confused, according to the lawsuit, Barry was married to none other than Janice Peet! That blew my mind, so we did a search of marriage records, and sure enough, the two of them were married just over two months back in a civil ceremony down in Littleton.”

Sam was shaking his head steadily. “Indie, this is wild, but unless you’re suggesting his sister killed him, I think it still doesn't fit into the case.”

“No, probably not, but I thought it was odd enough that I should tell you right away. By the way, are you gonna be home soon? Kenzie wants you; I told her you were working and she said that's fine, she'll wait, but she really needs to tell you something, and she won't tell me what it is.”

That got a chuckle out of him. “Tell her I'll be there within the hour,” he said, and then added, “and tell her I love her!”

Indie was silent for a couple of seconds, then said, “Okay, I'll tell her. Bye!”

Sam said, “Bye,” but he heard the line go dead before he got it out. When he put the phone back into his pocket, Dan was staring at him.

“You said, 'Babe,' and then you said, 'Indie.' Is that the girl you had me check out a couple weeks ago?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, and before you start in, we just got around to realizing we like each other over the past couple days. I woulda told you sooner or later.”

Dan grinned. “I'm not complaining! I'm just glad to see you coming back to the world of the living! I didn't think I'd ever see you with a woman again, at least not one you really wanted to hang on to, but this sounds kinda serious. Is it?”

Sam smiled sheepishly. “I don't really know yet, Danny,” he said, “but it's definitely looking good so far! She's beautiful, and smart as they come—a lot smarter than me, I can tell you that—and she's got the most adorable little girl you ever laid eyes on, who thinks I should be her daddy.”

Dan shook his head, laughing. “Old Buddy, all I can say is I wish you the best! You deserve it, Sam, you really do. But I wanna meet her, and soon!”

Sam grinned. “Well, since that cat is outa the bag, let's go for another one. Come down to Herman's Hideaway this Saturday night, and you can meet her while you watch me make a fool of myself. I'm the new lead singer for Barry Wallace's band, and we're playing there this weekend.”

Dan looked shocked. “No! You're lying! Man, you haven't been on stage in how many years? This I gotta see, make sure you get me a seat!” He turned and shouted to the whole room. “Hey, everybody! Sam's gonna be singing at Herman's this Saturday night! Let's all go and make him proud!”

The entire narcotics division exploded into applause, and Sam blushed as he waved to everyone. Several of the people there, detectives and other staff alike, came over to ask if was true and congratulate him. He didn't get out for another ten minutes, and had to push the bike through back streets to get home as soon as he'd said.

Kenzie, still in her pajamas, was waiting for him at the door when he got off the bike, and opened it for him as he came onto the porch.

“Sam! Sam, guess what!”

“What?” Sam asked, his eyes wide with pretended anticipation. “What is it, Kenzie? What?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside, then rushed him into the kitchen. “We've got a mouse!” she said loudly, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “But don't tell Mommy, she's scared of mouses!”

“We've got a what?” Indie shrieked. “Where's a mouse?”

Kenzie showed them both where she insisted she'd seen a mouse under the edge of the kitchen counter, and when Sam got down and looked, he did indeed find a mouse hole.

“Well,” he said. “Looks like we need to get something.”

Kenzie was nodding her head vigorously, and Indie whispered, “Oh, no,” but she was too late. The little girl smiled up at Sam and said, “Yeah, we gotta get a cat!”

Sam's eyes popped wide open, and he looked at Indie. “A cat?” he asked her. “She wants a cat?”

Indie nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I hadn't thought about it to tell you, but when we had our apartment, we got a kitten, and when we lost the place, we lost the cat, too. We couldn't take it with us, so one of our neighbors adopted it. She's asked me a dozen times if we can get another one someday, and all I ever said was, 'yeah, someday, maybe.' I didn't think she was still thinking about it, though.”

Sam grinned. “I may not know a lot about kids, but one thing I'm sure of is that they don’t forget much of anything, if it's something they want.” He winked at her. “I don't know about a cat, though. I mean, a cat is a pretty important decision. Someone has to make sure to feed a cat, and then there's making sure it gets to play a lot—cats need a lot of playing, you know. I'm not sure I've got time to feed and play with a cat, every day, Honey, do you?”

Indie caught on, and smiled. “No, I don't think I do. If we got a cat, someone would have to do all that, but who would we get to do it, Sam?”

“Me!” Kenzie screamed at the top of her lungs. “Me! I'll feed it, and I'll play with it! Please? Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please can we get a cat?”

Sam and Indie smiled at each other, and Sam reached down and scooped Kenzie up into his arms. “If we get a cat, Kenzie, do you promise to take care of it and feed it and play with it?”

She nodded her head so fast that Sam almost thought she was going to fall out of his arms, but he held on. “I will, I will, I will!”

He looked at Indie. “Well, it sounds to me like we're off to the animal shelter, then. Why don't you go get ready, Kenzie, while Mommy and I talk for a minute?” He set her down, and she ran up the stairs to change her clothes.

Indie stared at Sam. “Do you even like cats?” she asked.

“We had them when I was a kid,” he said, “and I always got along with them. I'd even thought of getting one after I wasn't on the force anymore, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. It was one of those 'maybe I oughta' things that run through your mind, but never seem to materialize, y'know? If you're asking if I'm good with us getting a cat, I am. Are you?”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm a cat lover from way back, Sam, so yeah. But I feel like maybe we're pushing you into things you might not want, and I don't want to do that. I—I like where this seems to be going, and I don't want anything to mess it up.”

Sam took her into his arms. “I don't think anything's gonna mess it up, Babe,” he said. “If I wasn't such a coward, I'd already be talking about college funds and fixing up the other bedroom and stuff like that, but I don't want to push you, either.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I get the feeling you and Kenzie are the best things that ever happened to me, Indie.”

Indie rested her head against his chest for a moment, and sighed. “I know I could get used to this. And I understand about being scared, Sam, I'm a little scared, myself. This almost seems too good to be true, and I keep waiting for something to go wrong, or I'm afraid I'll make you mad and you'll toss us out—except I don't think you'd do that, even if I did make you mad.” She wrapped her arms tighter around him and squeezed. “You're something, Sam Prichard. Something pretty special. Now where were you four years ago, when I was falling apart?”

Sam was quiet for a moment, but then they heard Kenzie coming back down the stairs, so he leaned back and looked into her eyes. “I've got a feeling I was right on the path that I was supposed to be on, so I'd be here when you needed me most.” He kissed her lips quickly, and let go just as Kenzie came running into the room.

“I'm ready!” she announced, and they all headed out to the van. Indie got Kenzie buckled into the car seat, climbed in, and they were off.

The animal shelter was out on West Bayaud Ave, just off of Highway 87, and it took them about a half hour to get there. “An old friend of mine told me a while back,” Sam said, “that if I ever needed a pet, I should come here because they don't have all the red tape you have to go through with other places. No waiting periods, in other words; if we find a cat we like, we can take it home today.”

“Ah,” Indie said. “Sounds like a good idea, then.”

They got out of the van and went inside, and only a few moments later they were being shown all of the cats that were available for adoption. They looked at alley cats, tiger stripes, Persians, Siamese and every other kind of cat you could imagine, but Kenzie just kept shaking her head at each one.

“I'll know it when I see it,” she said, and Sam and Indie could only smile and follow her. She walked through row after row of cages, and Sam had to lift her up now and then to peer into one that was too high for her to see, but still she shook her head.

Finally, the lady showing them around said, rather testily, that all that were left were some that might need minor medical care, and Sam nodded that they would look at those, too. “Might as well cover all the bases,” he said, and they were led into the last room.

Kenzie instantly pointed at one cage that was on top, and said, “That's the one!” Sam lifted her up and she stuck her fingers through the chain link of the cage, and a small cat came to sniff at them. A moment later, it licked her fingers, and Kenzie said again, “This is the one!”

Sam put her down and turned to the lady. “What’s the story with this guy?” he asked.

The woman smiled for the first time in twenty minutes. “Actually, that's Samson,” she said. “He doesn't actually need any medical care, but he does have a special situation. He had distemper when he was a kitten, and managed to survive it, but it left him with a neurological problem; when he tries to run, his back legs sort of pass his front legs, and he'll end up tumbling head over heels every time. We named him Samson because he was strong enough to overcome the distemper; most cats don't live through it, but he did. If you want to adopt him, you need to know that he may get hurt now and then, from his problems. But there's not a more loving and loyal cat in the world, I can tell you that about him. I'd really love to see him go to a good family like yours.”

Sam looked at Indie, and she nodded her head. “Looks like Samson has a new home,” he said, “but if I hear one joke about him being 'Sam’s-son,' somebody is sleeping in the van!”

Indie laughed. “I hadn’t even caught it ‘til you said that!” she said. “But don't worry, I won't say a word about it.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “I believe that! We'll take him home with us!”

They filled out all the paperwork and Samson got to ride in Kenzie's lap. He didn't seem to mind, and spent a good deal of the time just nuzzling her hands. They stopped by a small pet store and bought a litter box, litter, cat food and a number of toys, as well as a carpet-covered stack of boxes for Samson to climb on and play in, hopefully saving the furniture from his claws.

He was obviously content as they drove the rest of the way home, purring in Kenzie's lap. Indie sat sideways in her seat so she could watch them.

“He's gonna be good for her,” Indie said. “I hope we just did the right thing.”

Sam looked at her. “If he's good for her, then why would it not be the right thing?”

“Sam, we just went out and got a cat together,” she said. “Just like an actual family; what happens if things don't work out between us? Kenzie is feeling happier and more secure than she's ever been. If anything goes wrong and we don't make it work—I'm just worried about her, that's all.”

Sam smiled, then reached over and took her hand into his. “One day at a time, okay?” he said, and she smiled back and nodded.

She sighed. “One day at a time. I'll be okay.” She pulled his hand up and kissed it.

They got to the house and took Samson inside, and all three laughed as he explored the house. More than once, they got to see his physical problem, as he would get excited and try to run. He'd make it about four strides before his back end passed his front end, and suddenly he was tumbling and rolling. When he stopped, he'd shake his head as if wondering what had just happened, then get up and walk slowly for a bit, but sooner or later, he'd forget and take off running, only to have it happen again.

As noon approached, Indie made them a lunch of tuna salad. Samson got part of Kenzie's sandwich, which she dropped under the table to him, but Sam and Indie pretended not to notice.

Kenzie didn't want to go to rehearsal that afternoon, preferring to stay and play with Samson (“That's my job, remember?”), so Indie stayed home with her as Sam got on the bike and rode off to Stan's house. Sam was glad they stayed home. He had a number of questions to ask the band when he got there, and he wasn't sure how some of them were going to go over.

He parked the bike in the driveway, and walked into the open garage. Only Candy and Janice were there at the moment, and he smiled as he said hello.

“Janice,” he said, “could I talk to you privately for a moment?”

Candy got up and said, “Hey, I gotta go to the little girls' room, anyway, and I'll see what the guys are up to. Back in five.” She walked into the house, leaving Sam and Janice alone in the garage.

“What's up?” Janice asked.

“Does the band know you and Barry got married?” Sam asked her softly.

Tears instantly fell down her cheeks as she shook her head in the negative. “No. He said we needed to keep it a secret for now. I wanted to tell them all, but he said Chris would get nervous if he knew, so we didn't tell anyone. That's why I said he was like a big brother.” She laughed and wiped tears away. “It was so lame, pretending we were just friends, but a lot of people thought I was bad news for him, cause of my problems, y'know? But he loved me, and I loved him, so we went and got married secretly. We were gonna tell them pretty soon, just not yet.”

“And you were in favor of the two of you getting his daughter from his sister?”

She looked at him, surprised. “Wow, you found out about that? Yeah, he told me about her, and said if he was married, he could get his sister to let him have her back, but when he told her we'd got hitched, she freaked out and started yelling. Said he'd never be able to support a child, and she wasn't gonna let the kid grow up with a druggie stepmom. It was a big fight, and I felt like it was all my fault, so Barry wanted to take her to court and force it. I guess that's how you found out?”

Sam nodded. “The court filing is public record, so it turned up when I had a computer search done. If you want to keep it all a secret, I'll keep my mouth shut, but that's up to you.”

She looked down at the concrete floor. “I was gonna tell all of you today. His funeral is Monday, and there's no way I'd be there and pretend I wasn't his wife, y'know?”

Sam put a hand on her shoulder. “I can understand that. I'll try to help keep everyone calm about it. Do you know the story behind Barry's daughter?”

She shrugged. “With Barry, you only know what he tells you. He said she came from an old girlfriend in his senior year in high school, and his sister adopted her since he wasn't makin' much money, driving pizzas around.”

Sam nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I'll let you bring it up when you’re ready.”

Candy and the two men came out a couple of minutes later with cans of pop, and Sam asked them all to sit down while he explained about Samantha Harris and how Barry had gone to talk to her the day he vanished. He told them that Barry had apparently called Jimmy Smith from her phone, saying he would not leave the band, and then told them about the voicemail message that seemed to be from Jimmy, and the envelope and its contents.

Janice started crying at that point, and Sam stopped talking. He looked at her, and she nodded.

“Listen, guys,” she said, “there's something I gotta tell you.” She went through it all, then, how Barry had told her he loved her, that he wanted to get his daughter back, and that being married would make it more likely his sister would agree, but that they shouldn't tell the band just yet. “I guess it doesn't matter now,” she said, “but I just wanted you all to know before the funeral.”

Chris and Stan both looked at her, their faces calm. Chris said, “I knew he loved you, that was obvious, and I asked him once if you guys were gonna get married. I wish he'd told me, but it's too late to cry over that now.”

Stan nodded. “Yeah, I told him more than once he should keep you,” he said. “He never let on, but I'm glad you guys were together before...”

Candy just smiled and took Janice's hand. “You would have made him happy,” she said. “I'm glad you got to marry him, even if it was only for a little while.”

Sam told the band about the police investigation into Barry's death, and that the lead investigator was looking hard at Jimmy Smith. With the evidence of Samantha's phone message and her statement that Barry did call Jimmy from her phone to decline the contract, it was looking more and more like Jimmy may have killed him.

“Not all the facts are in, yet, though,” Sam said, “so we can't jump to any conclusions. Especially in something this serious, we have to be absolutely certain.”

“He did it,” Chris said. “I know, wait ‘til all the evidence is in, but I've been on the receiving end of his temper before, and I'm bettin' on him! I think he did it, just cause Barry wasn't doing what he wanted.”

“I think he did it,” Stan said. “I've never dealt with him personally, but I know other people who have, and he's been pretty rough. He's certainly capable of it. If Barry really told him that day that he wasn't gonna sign, then I think Barry got him to meet up or something, and did him in.”

Sam nodded. “I tend to agree with you, both of you,” he said, “but unless we find some proof, there isn't a lot that can be done about it. What we've got now is only circumstantial evidence, unless they find his prints on the envelope with the hair in it, or they find more evidence when they search his place. If he really did have Barry's head there somewhere, most likely the CSI team will find some trace of it. That's what I'm counting on, physical evidence.”

Chris sighed. “Well, the sad part is that Barry's gone. I can't really believe we'll never hear him sing again, but it's true whether I like it or not.” He raised his can. “To Barry; Heaven's got a new voice singing up there today, and it's one that will outshine a lot of the angels!”

“To Barry,” they all echoed, raising their cans high.

Chris set his can down. “Now, let's make some music. We've got a gig to get ready for, with a brand new lead singer!”

Everyone agreed, even Janice, and they got up and started running through the songs Sam had learned the day before. He had them down pat, so they spent a couple hours on the next four songs, then went on to another four. The show on Saturday night would run four hours, from seven to eleven, with a few breaks interspersed in it, so they had another dozen songs to learn before they were ready.

They worked until after nine, and Chris said he was sure Sam would be more than ready by Saturday night. They had one more day to rehearse, and then would get together Saturday afternoon before the gig to go through the show one more time.

7

Friday morning came to Sam with a surprise, as Samson decided that the old man in the house had slept long enough. He got into Sam's room with some minor help from Kenzie, jumped up on the bed, and started licking Sam's nose with his rough tongue. It only took a few licks before Sam brushed him away and then opened his eyes.

That was Kenzie's cue, and she giggled as she ran in and jumped up onto the bed with the both of them. Sam looked and saw Indie standing in the doorway, a big smile on her face.

“Are you just gonna stand there, or come get in on this?” Sam asked with a grin.

Indie looked shocked for a second, then let out a laugh and ran across the room to jump onto the bed the way Kenzie had done. Sam caught her and pulled her close, then rounded up Kenzie and Samson for a group hug. Both of the girls got kisses, but Samson had to settle for having his head rubbed.

“Mmmm,” Indie said, “I could get used to this! Your bed is comfy!”

“Yeah? You should try it without kids and kitty-cats, it's even better.”

Indie looked him in the eye. “Maybe we'll find out, one of these days,” she said, and then slid off onto her feet. “But not right now, it's breakfast time. Come on, I've got you steak and eggs!”

“Yeah!” Kenzie said, and grabbed Samson to carry him off to the kitchen. Sam got up and followed, with a quick stop in the bathroom, tossing a t-shirt over the shorts he wore as PJs.

They had breakfast together, and Kenzie made sure that Samson was included by slipping him bits of her own cut-up steak. This time Indie spoke up.

“Kenzie,” she said, “there's a reason why we bought cat food! Stop feeding Samson your breakfast!”

“But he likes it,” Kenzie said innocently.

“I know he does, but he's a kitty, not a people, and he's supposed to eat cat food! People food is for people, cat food is for kitties. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kenzie said resignedly. “Sorry, Samson, I'll get you your breakfast in a minute.” She resumed eating her own.

When breakfast was over, Sam sat at the table and called Karen Parks, the homicide detective.

“Karen, it's Sam,” he said when she answered. “Anything new?”

“Actually,” she said, “we just got a search warrant for Jimmy Smith's home and offices. I've got two teams going out this morning to hit them both at once. Still don't have anything more, but the hairs you brought in had a bit of scalp still attached, and the blood type matches Wallace. We checked the voicemail message on Ms. Harris's phone, and it was from Smith, so the coincidence of him leaving that message and her getting the envelope in the mail gave us enough to convince the judge we should look closer at him. I'll let you know if we find anything.”

“Thanks, Karen, I appreciate it!” He hung up and then called KUSA, the TV station whose news program had first run the announcement of Barry's murder. It took a few minutes, but he finally got to speak to the reporter who'd interviewed Barry's sister.

“I'm just curious,” Sam said, “why no one from any news agency has contacted his band about his death.”

“That's an easy one,” the woman said. “We're a news agency, not a public relations outfit. We were looking for a sympathetic interview, not one that would have people flocking out to see those guys perform. If they want publicity, they can buy ads like everyone else.”

“And it never occurred to you that they might have something significant to say? That Barry Wallace's loss will be felt by many more people than just his family?”

“Look, man,” she answered, “I just do the news. We did our part, telling people the guy was murdered, and then we get the family to make a statement; that's how it works. If we brought in his band and talked to them, it'd take away from the story by making people think about those poor musicians, boo-hoo, and they'd become stars by playing off the guy's death. That's not news, that's marketing, and it's not what we do.”

Sam thought about it, and conceded that she had a point. He thanked her and hung up.

He couldn't think of anything else to do regarding the investigation at the moment, so he sat in his recliner and watched TV with Kenzie for a while, as Indie went about cleaning up the house. He could hear her loading the dishwasher in the kitchen and starting it, and then he heard the vacuum cleaner running in his room. A smile crossed his face as he realized that hearing someone cleaning the house was an awfully comforting set of sounds. It made the house feel a lot more like a home.

Kenzie was engrossed in SpongeBob cartoons, so Sam got up and went to his bedroom door. He stood there for a moment, watching as Indie ran the vac and then started making the bed. She hadn't noticed him standing there, so when she went to the opposite side to straighten the covers, she jumped when she finally did.

“You startled me,” she said. “I didn't know you were there.”

Sam grinned at her. “I just wanted to watch you being little miss domestic for a minute. Want me to help with that?”

“No,” she said as she tucked his pillows into place. “I've got it. I like cleaning this house, and I like looking up and seeing you watching me. Makes me feel like I'm doing this for more than just a job, lately.”

“Oh, I see. And does it make you feel like some guy is getting himself an eyeful of your gorgeous little body? Cause I am, you know.” He smiled, and got one in return.

“Maybe,” she said, “but when I do feel like that, it isn't a bad feeling. Not as long as it's you.”

She finished up the bed and came toward him, but he didn't move out of her way. “Indie,” he said, “I'm not really in practice at this whole 'family man' thing. If I miss something, or if there's something you want me to do, you'll need to let me know. You won't hurt my feelings, I promise.”

She stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the lips. “You're doing an awfully good job so far,” she said. “Half the time, I don't think like I used to, y'know, 'me and Kenzie,' but I think about 'me and Kenzie and Sam,' instead. I think about next week, and the first thing I think about is what you want for dinner, rather than what Kenzie and I can hope to afford.” She smiled up at him. “I guess what I'm trying to say is, you've got me thinking like a woman, not like a housekeeper, and it feels good to do that again.”

He moved and let her out of the room, then followed her as she straightened the dining room. They used it mostly as their computer station, but it still became a mess of piled papers at times, and she liked to keep everything organized. Sam watched as she put each one into a file folder and labeled it properly, once again just enjoying the thought of having her there.

The morning went by, and once she'd finished cleaning up, Indie went to the kitchen and dug out a crock pot Sam had bought back when he was married (and probably hadn't seen since), and set it up to make a roast for dinner. She knew Sam would be at rehearsal until late, so she planned on a late dinner, which allowed plenty of time for the roast to cook.

Thinking of rehearsal reminded her that Sam would be playing his first show the following night, and she called Anita Mitchell to arrange for Kenzie to spend the night there. Kenzie heard her and wanted to know if she could take Samson along, and Anita said that would be fine; they had a cat of their own, so it wouldn't be a problem.

At just before noon, Sam's phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Sam, it's Karen. I thought you'd like to know that a cadaver dog found Barry Wallace's head and hands buried on Jimmy Smith's property. It was in a shallow grave, looks like he was hiding it in a hurry, and we found a spot that scalp piece was cut from. The head looks like it was damn near split in half with an ax, and we're betting that'll be the cause of death. We've taken him into custody, but of course, he's screaming that he was framed.”

“Don't they always?” Sam asked. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Indie was sitting beside him on the couch, and he turned to her. “That was Karen. They found Barry's head and hands buried in Jimmy Smith's yard. She said it looks like he was trying to just hide them fast and didn't do a very good job of it. One of the sniffer dogs found them. They arrested him for murder.”

“Well, at least they caught him, and he didn't get away with it. That means the investigation is over, then?”

“Yep, I'd say so. I'm gonna call Chris and the others, let them know.” He dialed Chris's number and it was answered on the second ring. “Chris, it's Sam. They found Barry's head and hands on Jimmy Smith's place, and he's been arrested for the murder. You wanna tell the others, or would you like me to do it?”

Chris sighed into the phone. “We're all here, man,” he said. “We got together this morning to go over a new song we want to teach you this afternoon, wanted to have it down before we hit you with it, you know? I'll tell 'em. We'll see you at two, right?”

“I'll be there,” Sam said, and ended the call. “The rest are with him, so he's telling them now.”

Indie sighed. “I feel sorry for Janice. She's a sweet girl, and the life she's had has been a rough one. This is just one more tragedy for her.”

“Sometimes, that's how it goes. No idea why, but some people just have the worst possible luck.”

Sam turned the TV to the news while Indie got up to make them some lunch. He watched as the announcer told how Jimmy Smith, the talent agent, had been arrested in connection with the murder of local rock singer Barry Wallace. There was actual footage of the arrest, with Smith being cuffed right in front of his house and shoved into a police car, while shouting that he was innocent and had been framed.

Sam felt a let down settle onto him. He'd been hired to find Barry, which he'd done by helping the ME identify the body, but then he was hired to find Barry's killer. He'd certainly been instrumental in helping to do so, but he felt that the police would have caught Smith even without his help. Surely, Samantha Harris would have gone to the police with what she had, sooner or later, and it still would have led to Smith.

Something was bothering him, though, down deep inside. He went over it all in his mind, thinking through all that had happened, but he couldn't find any other logical explanation than that Smith had killed Barry for not taking the record deal that would have made them both a lot of money.

Indie came in and sat back down with him. “Lunch'll be ready in twenty minutes,” she said. “I'm making pizza.”

Sam kissed her cheek. “Sounds good, Babe,” he said.

“Mmm, I like when you call me that,” Indie said with a grin, so he kissed her again.

“Me, too,” he said. “I was just sitting here thinking that we're out of work, with the case closed. We got one call out of that ad the very first night it ran; I'd have thought there would be more interest.”

“We've had a few more calls,” Indie said, “but they were the usual kind, about tracking somebody's wife or husband, so I said you were busy at the moment. I got all their numbers, if you want to get back to them and take the jobs.”

Sam chuckled. “No, that's okay. We don't need the money, I just like being able to work, but I wouldn't want to do that kind of work. You keep telling those kind of callers no.”

She smiled and settled herself against him. “So now you're just a rock singer?”

“For now,” he said. “I don't know that I really want to do this long term, but it could be fun for a bit.”

“And what if some big record label decides you're the next big thing? Would you turn it down?”

Sam thought for a moment, and then nodded his head. “I think I would. I don't think I'm cut out for a life of fame and fortune, Indie. I think I prefer my life pretty much the way it is now, and trying to be some famous rocker would interfere with that. I mean, do you think we'd make it if I was on the road two hundred days a year?”

Indie snuggled in tighter. “I don't want to try. I like this, Sam, I like it a lot; I like being here with you and Kenzie, and I like how much she adores you. I love the way you've taken to her, too. She's needed a man in her life.” She turned and looked up at him. “And so have I.” She tilted her head back, asking for a kiss, and she got it.

They watched more of the news until the timer went off on the oven, then moved to the kitchen table for lunch. Indie got out the pizza, and Sam cut it up for them, and then they called Kenzie in from where she'd been playing in the back yard with Samson. The fence around the yard was secure enough to keep the cat in, so they didn't mind her taking him out to play.

When lunch was over, Sam got ready to go to rehearsal. Since Kenzie would be spending all Saturday night with the Mitchells, she wanted to stay home with her daughter that night, and Sam kissed them both goodbye as he walked out the door. The sky was overcast, so he decided to take the van, rather than the bike, and drove away after honking the horn at the two of them, standing there on the porch, waving goodbye.

The band was ready when he got there, and by the time six o'clock came around, Sam knew enough of their songs to get through the gig. Chris asked Sam to teach them one of his songs, so they could add it into the show, and he thought about it for a minute.

“Like you’ve heard, most of my stuff isn't really rock,” he said, “more like country, or country rock. I've got an idea for a pure rock song I want to do, though, and I've got the lyrics and a basic melody all worked out in my head; think you guys could help me get the music done tonight? It—it's sort of a surprise for Indie, so I don’t want her to hear it until we're on stage.”

They all broke into smiles. “That's awesome, man,” Chris said. “Let us hear it.”

Sam took a guitar and played the melody as he sang, and by the time he was halfway through the first verse, the band was playing along, feeling their way through the chords and following his lead. They went through the song a couple of times, and then Chris and Stan made a few suggestions that Sam liked, and the final version sounded fantastic! They rehearsed the song several times, and by eight, they had it perfect.

Chris slapped Sam on the back. “Dude,” he said, “the girl is gonna love it!”

Sam got home at just before nine, and saw that the house was pretty dark. Indie met him at the door, kissed him a welcome, and then led him into the dining room, where a candlelight dinner was waiting for the two of them.

“Kenzie's asleep,” she said. “I let her have her dinner early, so we could have some time to ourselves."

She took the cover off the pot that was sitting in the middle of the table, and began making a plate that she set in front of him. Roast beef with potatoes, onions, and carrots—Sam was amazed, and smiled.

“So, what did I do to deserve all this?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “This is just for being you,” she said, and made another plate for herself. She sat down at the place beside him and looked into his eyes. “Sam, you scared me to death when you offered to let us stay here, but then you proved yourself a man of your word over and over. There were a couple of times when I was feeling so lonely and weak that if you'd made a move on me, I probably would have welcomed it, but you never did.”

Sam grinned. “Good thing I didn't know that,” he said, “or my self-discipline might have slipped!”

She slapped his arm playfully. “No, it wouldn't have. I know you, now, and you'd have told me how tempting it was, but that it wasn't a good idea and sent me up the stairs to bed.”

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, I probably would have. I've never been the kind to take advantage of vulnerability, not on purpose.”

“And that's why you deserve to be treated like the man you are. I've always wondered what it would be like to be with a man who was really a gentleman, but tough enough to take on the world and win, and now I know, thanks to you. Thank you, Sam.”

Sam blushed. “You're welcome, Indie, but don't misunderstand my willingness to do the right thing as lack of desire to do something else. If you think it's been easy not to make a pass, think again. I watch you walk up the stairs, and it's like lighting a fire under a rocket! I do see how beautiful you are, and I see how sexy you are, and I like both. Neither one of us should let our guard down, Babe, not yet. Not ‘til you’re sure of what you want.”

Indie nodded. “I understand,” she said, “and I agree. I don't want a relationship based on sex, and I don't think you do either. I want a relationship that's based on two people who actually want to share their lives with each other, and I think we may be headed in the right direction—but we're not there yet. Am I right?”

“I think so. I know I feel something more than just liking you, Indie, and it's happened so fast that it scares me a bit. I want this to grow, but I want it to grow without any pressure from me. Just don't expect me to stop enjoying the view, okay?”

Indie blushed bright red. “Okay, fair enough.” She picked up a glass that held cola and raised it in salute. “To whatever the future may hold, and a hope that it finds us together.”

“I'll drink to that,” Sam said, and clinked his glass to hers. They talked through their dinner, then, and just got to know one another a little better. Indie told Sam about her childhood, being raised by a single mother who always wanted to be a hippie, and Sam shared about his own life, growing up after his father died of a heart attack when he was only fourteen. They talked about their college years, and the dreams they each had held on to, and the ones they'd let go of.

It was a nice evening, and when they finished dinner, they sat in the living room together and watched a movie. It was a romantic comedy of some sort, but Sam couldn't remember what it was about the next morning; he'd been too busy looking into Indie's gorgeous brown eyes.

8

Sam woke up on Saturday morning with a song running through his head, and he had to make himself not sing it as he took a shower; it was the one he'd written over the past few days and finished with the band the night before, the one he wrote specifically for Indie. He didn't want her to have any clue that it was coming, so he forced himself to sing something else while he showered.

When he came out into the kitchen, Kenzie was at the table eating cereal. “Sam! Sam!” she shouted at him. “Mommy's letting me take Samson down to Tracy and Lacey's house, and we're gonna do a sleepover!”

“Yes,” Sam said, “I heard about that! You make sure Samson is a good boy down there, okay? Don't let him get into trouble, now.”

She smiled up at him. “I won't,” she said. “He's a pretty good cat, but sometimes you just gotta keep an eye on him, you know?”

“I know!” Sam said. “He can be a real stinker, sometimes, can't he?”

Indie cracked up laughing, and Sam joined her a moment later. Sam got up and got a bowl of cereal for himself—he loved the kind with the marshmallows in it, and that's what Kenzie was eating—and sat down to eat, while Kenzie finished hers and ran upstairs to start getting dressed and ready for her big adventure.

It was going to be quite a day, Sam thought, with just him and Indie spending it together. They had the final rehearsal in the afternoon, and then the gig that evening, and Sam was as nervous as he could be.

Indie seemed a bit frantic, herself. When Kenzie came down a few minutes later, all ready to go and with a bag packed full of PJs, spare clothes and toys for both her and Samson, Indie was fully ready to take her daughter down the street and have a break from Mommy-hood.

Sam thought they could relax, then, but he was wrong. “I've got to get a bath, and do my hair and makeup, Sam,” Indie said. “Since we're gonna be out all day, I gotta get all that done now!”

The band had agreed to meet at Stan's garage at noon, so that they could run through everything a couple more times before they were due to go on stage, and Sam and Indie pulled up in the Vette just a few minutes later. Indie was wearing a dress she'd snuck out and bought the day before, while she and Kenzie were at home alone, and Sam had almost fallen over when he saw it. It was black with gold and silver trim in spots, and went all the way to the floor. It looked good on her, and she knew it; Sam's reaction told her it was definitely the right choice!

Sam was wearing jeans with a gray button-down shirt, and Indie thought he looked hot! Candy and Janice agreed, and Stan ran back into his house to change his own shirt to one that was a little darker gray than Sam's. Chris was wearing a white shirt, and the three of them made a nice contrast.

The girls were wearing jeans and tanks, and both of them were wearing more makeup than they needed. Candy had added in a wig that was a light pink, which Sam thought made her look pretty fake, but he figured it was all part of the band's persona, so he didn't say a word.

They visited for a moment, and encouraged each other, everyone saying it was going to be a great night. Chris told them that the manager of Herman's had called him to ask if they were going to be there, now that the word was out that Barry was dead, and he'd assured the guy that their new singer was every bit as good. Sam didn't think he was, but no one wanted to hear his opinion, so he dropped it.

They started their rehearsal, then, and Indie got to be a one-girl audience. She did her best to make them feel like they were onstage, cheering and shouting and clapping after each and every song, no matter how many times they did it. Sam was having as much fun watching her as he was standing at the microphone.

The afternoon wore on, and the closer it got to time to go, the more excited they all got. At five, Sam suggested they all go and grab a bite to eat, so they climbed into their vehicles and went to a restaurant Chris knew, where he promised they could get the best Italian Beef sandwiches they'd ever eat. Sam said later that he was right, and promised Indie they'd eat there again soon, with Kenzie!

It was showtime.

They parked at Herman's, and Sam and Indie got out of the car. She looked at the building and said, “I've never been here. Is it a nice place?”

Sam shrugged. “I was here a few times, years back. I hear it's getting a little run down, but it's still one of the hot spots for live music in town.”

They followed the rest of the band inside, and Sam was introduced to the manager, a guy named Tony. Tony looked him over and grinned.

“Well, you ain't as pretty as Barry, but Chris says you got a sound that's gonna make the crowd happy. That's all I care about. They're getting pretty restless out there, dancing to the jukebox; you guys ready to go on? I know it's a few minutes early, but...”

Chris smiled. “We're ready!” he said. “Give us twenty minutes to get set up, and we'll hit 'em with everything we've got! You're gonna love Sam, I promise! What a sound, man, what a sound!”

Tony grinned. “Just show me, don't tell me! Okay, the stage is yours. Get out there and make 'em dance! The dance floor don't lie; if you’re any good, the people will dance, and if you’re not, they'll just sit there. Since they drink more when they're dancing, I want to see 'em dance!”

Chris, Stan and the girls began setting up their instruments. Sam asked Chris what he could do to help, and was told to just stay out of the way. “We've been doing this a while, man, no problem. We got it!”

Sam felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Dan Jacobs standing there with a dozen of his old friends from the force. He introduced Dan to Indie, and then to everyone else. The whole crowd decided she was far too good for Sam, and he had to threaten to go and get his gun to make them back off, but it was all in fun and they all knew it. The group of cops found a big table and commandeered it, while Indie found a smaller one closer to the stage and claimed it.

When the stage was ready, Chris told Tony, and a few moments later the lights went down and the jukebox cut off suddenly. Tony's voice came over the sound system.

“Okay, folks, we've all heard the sad news about Barry Wallace, may God rest his soul, but his band is still here, and with a new lead singer! They tell me this guy is every bit as good, but we're gonna let you be the judges, right? Everybody put your hands together for Step Back Once!”

Sam took his place at the microphone, and a second later he heard Chris say, “a-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four...”

The first song was one of their most popular, and Sam let the music come over him the way it used to back in his earlier singing days. His voice seemed to come from somewhere deep inside himself, and he felt the bass drum rumbling through his chest as he began to sing.

At first he was nervous, because the audience simply sat there and watched, and he knew they were making up their minds about whether he was a worthy replacement for Barry, but by the time he was well into the first verse, there were people out on the floor. Within minutes, it was full, and many of them were cheering and applauding already. He heard shouts of, “Hell, yeah!” and “You got it, man!”

The next few songs got similar reactions, and Sam admitted to himself that he was having a blast. His friends from the force were hooting and hollering like wild men and women, and he was laughing in between songs.

When they took their first break after an hour on the stage, he was hot and thirsty, and made his way to the table where Indie was waiting for him, a few feet off to the right of the stage, just outside of the dance floor. He fell into a chair, and she leaned over to kiss him hard, which got a lot of shouts and cheers of its own from the audience.

Sam wasn't much of a drinker, he'd told Indie, so she had a glass of Coke waiting for him, and he downed it in seconds. A barmaid brought another one quickly, as people kept coming over to slap his back and shake his hand, telling him he was awesome or incredible or one of a dozen other words that he was sure weren't true, but felt good to hear anyway. He looked at Indie and grinned.

“I actually agreed to this, didn't I?” he asked, and she laughed and nodded.

“You did, Baby,” she said. “Regretting it?”

He rocked his hand from side to side. “Not really regretting it, but boy, am I gonna be tired and sore tomorrow! It's bad enough in rehearsal, but doing this in a live show is a serious workout! I didn't know I could move like that, and my hip is not a bit happy with me for trying!”

“Poor Baby,” Indie said. “Maybe if you're good, I'll give you a back rub later. Would that help?”

Sam looked her in the eye, and let a mischievous glint appear in his own. “I don't know about my hip, but the rest of me would love it!”

Indie just looked at him and smiled. “We'll see,” she said.

The break was only for ten minutes, and then it was time to get back on the stage. Sam sang his heart out for another fifty minutes, and the audience danced and cheered and clapped and let him know that, while he wasn't Barry, he was acceptable. The thought crossed his mind that being in the band might not be so bad, after all, and he could still work his PI practice on the side.

When the next break came, it was none too soon for Sam. His hip was screaming, and he reminded himself that he’d known it would happen. He sat down with Indie and guzzled a couple more Cokes while he rested up for the final set. Ten more songs, he told himself, just ten more songs.

He'd planned his song for Indie to start off this third set, and he was getting a little nervous as he got back up to take the microphone again. Chris and the girls gave him the thumbs up, and Stan did a drum riff as he walked up to it once more. Sam stood there for a moment, and then he leaned forward.

“This next song,” he said, “is one that I wrote just a couple of days ago, and these guys have been good enough to learn it and let me sing it tonight. That's pretty important to me, see, because I wrote this song for a very special girl, and she's sitting here tonight.” He pointed at Indie, and the spotlight hit her. “Indiana Perkins, this song is called The Woman Inside, and I wrote it for you.”

The whole place erupted into cheers and applause, as Chris began the riff that would launch the song, and several of them were congratulating her on having a special song all her own. Indie was staring at him, wide-eyed, completely taken unaware by his announcement, and when he began to sing, she felt the tears start to flow despite everything she could do to hold them in. The table full of cops was screaming their support, and Sam put his whole heart into singing the song. (Click to Listen)

I love the time that we spend together

Feel so lonely when we're far apart

Babe, I'm not tryin' to make you mine forever

Just wanna find a way inside your heart

Now there's some truth in all the things that they say

One look at you is all it ever takes

They take what they want

And leave your heart to break

And I see those guys

They follow you around

For the chance to break your heart

And let you down

Oh, Baby, they just can't see

The woman standing in front of me

All they look at is the part

That you can't hide

But I'm not after what my eyes behold

I want the part of you that's lonely and cold

And if I fall in love, it's gonna be

With the woman inside!

Wasn't that long ago my heart was breakin'

And nothin' on this earth could take my pain away

Who'd believe you'd come along and save me

A little smile that brightens up my day

I can't see the future

I take it a day at a time

Just knowin' that you're here

Keeps me feelin' fine

No, Baby, they just can't see

The woman standing in front of me

All they look at is the part

That you can't hide

But I'm not after what my eyes behold

I want the part of you that's lonely and cold

And if I fall in love, it's gonna be

With the woman inside!

Oh, Baby, they just can't see

The woman standing in front of me

All they look at is the par

That you can't hide

But I'm not after what my eyes behold

I want the part of you that's lonely and cold

And if I fall in love, it's gonna be

With the woman inside!

Indie sat there and stared as the crowd around her went completely wild, screaming and applauding and dancing around as if the music were still going. Sam smiled down at her, and held out a hand, and the spotlight hit her once more.

“That was for you, Baby,” he said, and the crowd went crazy again.

Chris hit a lick on his guitar and they launched into the next song in the set, and slowly the place went back to the normal, loud dance club that it was. Sam sang over and over, and the more he sang, the more the crowd loved him, and he knew he'd found something that he wanted to hold on to, at least for a while.

When the final set was over, Sam and the band all sat down together for a few minutes, gathered around Indie's table. Candy patted Indie's hand, and asked, “So, did he get to you?”

Indie laughed. “Oh, yeah, you could say that! It's funny, but all the words in that song were things he's said to me; that it isn't my looks he wants, that we need to take it a day at a time, all of it—and yet, when I heard him sing it, they all took on a whole different meaning, y'know?” She was looking at Sam, and he felt like blushing.

“I know what you mean,” Candy said. “You know what I'd give to have a guy feel like that about me? You are one lucky girl, Indie, and don't you dare let this one get away!”

They packed everything up, and Chris went to get paid. When he came out, he handed Sam a stack of bills.

“What's this?” Sam asked.

“Your cut, man. Everybody gets fifteen percent of the gig, and the rest goes into the operating fund. We got two grand for the gig, so there's three hundred bucks there for you.”

Sam looked at the money in his hand. “I almost feel bad, taking this,” he said. “Maybe—maybe this should go into a memorial for Barry, or something.”

Chris shook his head. “No, man, you stepped up and did the job, so you get the pay. Trust me when I say Barry would want it that way. He was as fair and honest as they come, he'd want it this way, I promise.”

Sam nodded and slipped the money into his pocket, and then it was time to go. He walked Indie out to the Vette, limping all the way and leaning heavily on his cane, but still insisted on opening her door for her, and closing it when he was in. He went around to the driver's door and got behind the wheel, then looked over at her.

“Well,” he said, “how did I really do?”

Indie smiled at him, and then leaned over and kissed him with everything she had. Sam put his arms around her and pulled her close, and the kiss got even hotter, until he finally said, “Whoa, we gotta stop this!”

“Why?” Indie whispered into his ear.

“Because this is a Corvette, and there isn't enough room in this car for what's about to happen if you don't stop, right now! I've been a gentleman, but a guy can only take so much, Baby, and you’re pushing all my buttons!”

Indie slid back into her own seat and smiled at him. “Then I suggest you get us home,” she said in a sultry voice, “so I can show you just how much you really got to me tonight!”

Sam fired up the Vette and left rubber on the parking lot pavement. He drove as calmly as he could, but Indie was caressing his arm and running her hand on his right leg, and he was doing all he could to force himself to remember the rules of the road.

9

Sam's phone woke him the next morning, and he woke groggily to reach for it, but couldn't move his arm. A second later he was wide awake, as he realized that the reason it wouldn't move was because Indie was laying on it. Instantly, he remembered the night before, and exactly how she'd shown him how he'd gotten to her with his song, and the smile that spread across his face was a mile wide.

The phone was still ringing, though, and so he reached with his other arm behind his head to get it.

“Hello?” he said, and then a recording began to play.

“Hello. This call is from…” A new voice said, “Jimmy Smith,” followed by the original voice saying, “…who is an inmate at the county jail. To accept the call, dial five. To decline the call and block all future calls from this inmate, dial nine.”

Sam looked at the phone and thought for a second, then pressed the number five. A second later, he heard sounds in the background on the other end.

“Hello?” he said again.

“Hey, man, thanks for taking the call. Listen, I was wondering if you would come down and see me.”

Sam shook his head. “Why is that, Jimmy? I mean, I didn't put you there, the cops did.”

Smith laughed ironically. “Yeah, I know,” he said, “but here's the thing. I didn't do it. I did not kill Barry Wallace, and someone is going to great lengths to make it look like I did. If I don't get some serious help real soon, Mr. Prichard, I'm gonna find myself standing trial for a murder I didn't commit, and the way it looks, even I would convict me! I need help, and you're the only guy I trust, right at the moment.”

“Jimmy, why would you trust me? From what I've been told, you seem to be the only viable suspect in this case. Why do you think I can help you?”

“Look, Mr. Prichard, the cops aren't even trying to look for anyone else in this case, they think they got the right guy, and with the evidence stacking up the way it does, I can't blame them. That doesn't change the fact that I did not do it, though, so I need someone who knows how to investigate properly, and you're about the only PI in the whole damn state worth his salt. I need someone with your experience and skills, and you’re the only one who really wants to see the truth in this case. Now, I can pay you whatever you want, and I will; I just need your help.”

Sam thought for a long moment, and the first thing that crossed his mind was that he'd had some kind of misgivings about the way the case was solved so easily.

“I'll come down,” he said. “What time is visiting hours?”

“They start at noon, but I asked the head jailer, and he said if I hire a PI or a lawyer, they can come anytime and we can go into a meeting room and talk privately. I'll be ready anytime, just come as soon as you can, okay?”

Sam sighed. “I'll be there in a couple of hours,” he said.

Smith let out a sigh of his own. “Thanks, Mr. Prichard, I really appreciate it. I'll talk to you then.”

Sam put down the phone, and noticed that Indie was awake and looking at him. “Jimmy Smith?” she asked.

“Yep. He says he didn't do it, and wants to hire me to try to prove it.”

“You think there's any chance he's telling the truth?”

Sam nodded. “Strange as it may seem, Babe, I think there might be. Something about the way the case ended has been bothering me, like there's something I've overlooked. I think I want to hear what he's got to say.”

“I heard you say you'd be there in two hours. How long does it take you to get there?”

“Half hour or so.”

“Good,” she said, “cause I'm not done with you yet.” She rolled over on top of him, and he stopped thinking about Jimmy Smith.

An hour later, he got up and showered while Indie went back to sleep for a while, then slipped into his clothes and out the front door. He drove the van downtown to the jail and told the jailer he was there as a PI to see Jimmy Smith. A few minutes later, another jailer came to escort him to an interview room normally used by police and lawyers.

“You sit here,” the jailer said, indicating one of a pair of chairs on one side of a table. “Smith will sit across from you. If he gets violent or anything, just yell, and one of us will be right outside. I don't know if you've seen him, but he's a big son of a bitch!”

“I know him,” Sam said, and the jailer nodded and left. A moment later, he returned with Smith and told him to sit in his chair and not to get out of it for any reason.

“No problem,” Smith said, and the jailer left them alone.

“Mr. Prichard,” he began, but Sam held up a hand to stop him.

“Just Sam,” he said, and Smith nodded.

“Thanks for coming, Sam. I know it must have been a hard decision, especially after the last time we met. I wasn't very polite, and I apologize for it.”

Sam shrugged. “I was pretty rude, myself, that day. Let's forget that and get on to this. To be honest, I wasn't a hundred percent convinced you were guilty, and I guess I'm still not. Tell me your side of it.”

“That's part of the problem,” Smith said, “I don't even have a side to tell. I have no idea how Barry died, and no clue how his head ended up on my property. The place where they found it, that spot is back by the road behind my place, and if you ask me, anyone could have driven up there in the middle of the night, got out and buried that stuff, and been gone before anyone noticed. I sure didn't hear anything.”

Sam sat there and looked at him for a minute. “I've talked to someone who says Barry called you from her phone and said he wasn't interested in your record deal, a few hours after you say he told you he'd sign and leave the band.”

Smith nodded. “I heard. Samantha Harris. I got a call from her that day, but it wasn't from Barry. She called me and said Barry asked her to call and say he wasn't interested. I said that was BS, but she insisted it was true, so I started trying to call Barry and he never answered. I figured she talked him out of it, and that he just wasn't answering for me, and that's when I called her and left the message they're using against me. I was trying to tell her to butt out, was all, cause I figured she was talking him into ignoring me.”

Sam thought it through. He'd seen the call to Smith's phone on Samantha's, but there was no way to know who had placed it, of course. Smith could be telling the truth.

“What did the cops say when you told them this?”

Smith snorted. “I asked them to put me on a polygraph, and they said it wasn't worth their time and effort. They basically said they've got me, so they're not gonna look for anyone else. That's why I thought to call you, Sam.”

“So who do you think is framing you? Samantha Harris?”

“Nah, she's not this smart,” Smith said. “But I can guarantee you she knows who's doing it, and is working right along with 'em! Otherwise, she'd never have thought to say Barry called me that day from her phone. She'd have tried to pretend she never talked to me at all.”

“Then who else could it be? It'd have to be someone who hated Barry enough to kill him, and hated you enough to want you to go down for it. Any ideas?”

Smith nodded. “Two possibilities,” he said. “One would be Chris Lancaster; we've had a problem since I tried to get him in with that big band, and he's run his mouth several times about wanting to see me get what he says I deserve, and if Barry did say he was leaving the band, he'd have been hot enough to flip his lid. He'd be the first one I'd look at.”

“And the second?”

“Barry's sister, Marjorie. Back when I started working with Chris, Barry told me about how his sister was raising his kid, and he was trying to make enough money he could get her back. I thought if I could help him out with that, then he'd sign the contract and I'd be home free and making the big money, so I went to talk to her. She and her husband went absolutely nuts on me; she even pulled a gun and threatened to shoot me if I ever talked to her again! She said she'd see Barry rot in hell before she ever let him have his daughter back, and that if I didn't stay out of it, she'd send me there right along with him. She's a nutcase, and I guarantee you she'd be capable of killing her own brother!”

Sam sat there for another long moment, just considering what Smith had said. If he was telling the truth, and there was no reason to doubt him at the moment, then it was very possible that he was innocent. Sam wasn't convinced that Chris was a killer, but the sister was an unknown quantity.

“Let's assume for the moment that I believe you're innocent. There still are no guarantees that I can prove that. You do understand that, right?”

Smith nodded. “I know,” he said, “but you’re the only hope I've got. I'll pay you fifty thousand to get your ass out there and try to find the real killer, Sam. If you manage it, I'll give you another fifty on top of that. Fair enough?”

Sam nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “How do I get the money? They let you have a check book in here?”

“No, but I talked this over with my wife Sheila last night, and she said to call you. I'll give you her number, and she'll give it to you in cash today.”

Sam's eyebrows went up. “You keep that kind of money around in cash?”

“Hey, sometimes cash is what makes the big deals happen! I keep better than half a million in cash there in a safe, just in case I need it. Just call her and she'll let you have it. And Sam? Thank you, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“If you really are innocent,” Sam said, “then I'm gonna do my best to prove it. If you’re not, and you're playing me, then I'm gonna take your money and enjoy the heck out of it while you rot in prison, understood?”

Smith stood up and extended a hand. “Perfectly,” he said, “and I'd feel exactly the same way if I was you!”

Sam shook his hand, and then knocked to let the jailer know he was done. The same one came and escorted Smith back to his cell, while another walked Sam out.

When he got outside, he dialed the number Smith had given him, and a woman answered.

“Mrs. Smith, this is Sam Prichard,” he said, and she started talking and crying all at once.

“Oh, thank God, Mr. Prichard, thank God you called! You talked to Jimmy already?”

“Yes, he told me—”

“To call me, yes,” she said. “I've got the money for you now, fifty thousand dollars in cash. Can you come by for it, or do you want me to bring it to you somewhere?”

“I can come by. I can be there in about thirty minutes, is that alright?”

“Yes, yes, I'll be here! And thank you, thank you so much for being willing to help!”

Sam hung up and got into the van to drive to the Smith place, a fairly large mansion on the edge of the city. He got there just when he'd said he would, and Mrs. Smith answered the doorbell instantly. She was a ravishingly beautiful woman, a few years younger than her husband, but obviously in great shape. She invited him in, and he stepped into a grand foyer, then followed her into her kitchen.

She picked up a small cloth bag, the kind used by upscale stores, and handed it to him. Sam glanced inside and saw several stacks of bills with paper bank wrappers still on them. Each was marked $1000, and he estimated that there were probably fifty of them, as promised. He didn't bother to count it.

“Mr. Prichard,” she said, “I do thank you for helping us. Jimmy isn't nearly as bad a man as some people think, and this is very hard on our whole family. I know he didn't do this, Mr. Prichard, I know he didn't do it. I even told the police, how he was with me the whole day that Barry disappeared; I was here when Barry called him, and when that woman called him, too. I know for sure that he's innocent, but the police think I'm just lying to try to protect him, and I guess I can see why they'd think a wife would do that, but I’m telling the truth!”

Sam looked at her for a moment, and then asked a question. “Mrs. Smith, would you have any ideas who might want to frame your husband for murder? Does anyone come to mind when you think about it?”

She looked him in the eye for a long moment, and then asked one of her own. “Mr. Prichard, is a private investigator like a lawyer? Do you keep confidential what your clients tell you?”

“We're not protected by the law on such matters, Mrs. Smith, but I can give you my word on it. Anything you tell me will stay between us.”

Mrs. Smith stood there for a few seconds, then said, “Mr. Prichard, my husband is a good provider and a wonderful father, but he's also a man, and sometimes he strays. This Samantha Harris was one of those he has strayed with in the past, and the truth about the time he supposedly assaulted her is that they got into a fight because he would not leave me and marry her. That's what caused her to back out of the contract he was working on for her, and that led to the big fight. If you ask me, she's had it in for him ever since, and since she's the one who supposedly came up with all this evidence...”

“Then you think she's behind it? I asked Jimmy about her, and he said she isn't smart enough to do this on her own.”

Mrs. Smith smiled, but it was a bitter smile. “My husband has a low opinion of the female intelligence, I'm afraid. Is she smart enough? Oh, yes, she's very intelligent, and very devious! I think she's quite capable of doing this, and I know she's had some sort of relationship with Barry that was pretty rocky, too. I'm not sure what it was all about, but there were times when she loved him, and others when she hated his guts!”

Sam let her words digest for a moment. “I'll do what I can, Mrs. Smith. Meanwhile, if you have any ideas or need anything from me, here's my number.” He handed her one of the homemade business cards. “Just call me.” He started to turn and leave, but she caught his arm.

“Mr. Prichard, please find out who did this,” she said. “And if what I've given you isn't enough, or if there's—anything else you might want, as an incentive—please let me know. I'd give you anything to help my husband, because no one else will.”

Sam smiled, but assured her the money was more than enough, and he thought he detected a hint of disappointment in her face as he turned away. He'd known instantly what she was offering, but he wasn't interested, especially now that he had the woman he truly wanted waiting for him at home. This was one conversation he wouldn't be telling her about; Indie might be small, but he'd bet she could take Mrs. Smith in a fair fight.

He got back into his van and glanced into the bag full of money again. What was it about people nowadays, always giving him cash? Didn't anyone know how to write a check anymore?

He called Indie and told her that he'd accepted the case, and that he'd picked up the money, but wanted to go and try to see Samantha Harris, to see if he could rattle her at all. She went to the computer and found the woman's address in a matter of seconds, and he was on the way.

Samantha Harris lived in Arvada, so it was about a forty-minute drive from where he was to her place. He pulled up and parked on the street in front of her townhouse, and walked up to ring her bell. She answered almost immediately, and seemed very surprised to see him standing there.

“Ms. Harris, I was wondering if I could ask you a few more questions,” he said, and she opened the door wide so he could enter.

“I thought everything was over, now that Jimmy's been arrested,” she said.

“Well, I'm just trying to clear up a few details,” Sam said, “and I was hoping you could help.”

She shrugged. “Sure, if I can. Have a seat.” She pointed to her couch and he sat.

“Okay, now, according to Jimmy, it wasn't Barry who called him from your phone that day, it was you. He claims you said that Barry asked you to call and tell him he wasn't going to sign the contract, and that that was the real reason for the voicemail message he left you.”

She laughed. “Oh, good grief,” she said, “he actually said that? What a liar! No, like I said, Barry's phone was dead and he used mine to tell Jimmy to forget it. That's the honest truth.”

Sam couldn't tell if she was being honest or not, for sure. She seemed relaxed enough, but something was off. “Okay, thanks. Now, can you tell me about your affair with Jimmy? That was back before your hand got hurt, right?”

Her eyes went dark, suddenly. “Yeah, we had a fling once,” she said through clinched teeth, “years ago. He kept telling me I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and how he wished I was his kids' mother, all the crap married men say when they want to get into a girl's pants, and I fell for it. Hell, I was barely in my twenties, then, and he was a handsome, rich guy, so I fell for it all. We broke it off after he hit my hand with that vase, though! I wasn't gonna be one of those women who keep getting out and then going back, not me. That was the end of that, and I was glad to be out of it!”

Sam thought for a minute. “Naturally, Jimmy is saying he's been framed, and that he's innocent, so we have to look into all these little things he's saying. Do you have any idea who might have hated Barry and Jimmy enough that they'd murder one and frame the other for doing it? Just assuming there's any truth to his claim, I mean, who do you think might be that kind of person?”

A flash of something dark went through her eyes, and she gave a derisive snort. “That little crack-whore of his might do something like that. What’s her name, Janet? Janice, that's it. She might be that evil, if Jimmy was telling the truth, not that he is!”

Sam hesitated a moment. “Samantha, did you know that Barry and Janice got married a couple of months ago? They were keeping it a secret for the time being, but it's true.”

The darkness hit again, but vanished after only a second. “Yeah, I knew. He told me right after, cause we'd been on-again, off-again lovers for a year or so, and he wanted me to know why he wasn't coming around anymore. He still came by once in a while to talk, though, just like that day. He said I had a level head on my shoulders, and he liked getting my opinions on stuff.”

Sam nodded as if accepting it all. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks for giving me your time, and helping me clear some of this up.” He stood and turned toward the door. “One more question,” he said. “Who else besides you knew that you'd gotten that message from Jimmy, warning you to stay out of his business?”

She thought for a second. “I told Bill about it after I got the hairs in the mail. Other than that, I don't think I told anyone.” She paused. “You almost sound like you believe Jimmy.”

Sam turned to her and shrugged his shoulders. “Something about this whole case is bugging me. It almost seems like it was too easy, and in my experience, when a case seems too easy it's because you missed something. I'm just trying to make sure nothing got missed.”

“I don't think Jimmy is innocent,” she said, “but if he is, then I hope you find whoever really did this. Barry deserves that, but I can tell you that it wasn't me, and I've told you the only other one I could think might do it. Even if they were married, there could be a thousand reasons why she'd turn on him, and there's just something about her that never set right with me. You need to take a good look at her, I think.”

Sam nodded. “I guarantee you, I'm going to. You're right; Barry deserves to have the truth come out, one way or another.”

Sam left, then, and drove back toward his home. Since it was a Sunday morning, there wasn't a lot of traffic, and he spent the time thinking over all that he'd learned about the case.

Jimmy still seemed the most likely suspect, but if his wife was telling the truth, then he couldn’t have done it. Samantha had been eager to come forward with the evidence she had, implicating him, but there was always the possibility that Jimmy was telling the truth and it was she who had called him from her phone, rather than Barry. The envelope containing the hairs had been typed, so anyone could have sent that to her, even she herself. Whoever did send it had been in possession of Barry's head at some point, and if that wasn't Jimmy, then it was someone who knew that Jimmy had called and left a threatening message on her phone, because they knew that her receiving the hairs would go along with that voicemail to implicate the agent. But according to Samantha, no one had known about it until after the envelope had been delivered.

The whole thing was like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Each piece left a place for a new piece, but the more pieces you had, the more complex the whole thing became and the harder it was to figure out the next piece.

His route home took him through some business districts, and he stopped to pick up a cup of coffee and a newspaper, then saw a store across the street that was open, and wandered inside. He spent a half hour there, browsing through their stock, and had to go back to the van to get some money from the bag. He made his purchase and left, smiling to himself.

He pulled into his driveway and parked the van next to Indie's old Taurus, looking over at it. With what was left of the money he'd just gotten from Mrs. Smith, Sam had a little over a hundred thousand dollars in cash lying around, and he thought that maybe some of it ought to go to buying her a better car. Every time she started that thing, it sounded like it was about to explode, and it had enough rust on it that he was expecting the cops to say it wasn't roadworthy any day.

He took the bag of money inside and found Indie sitting at her computer, just surfing the web, so he carried it into the bedroom and put it in his safe. When he came back to the dining room, she looked up at him.

“How did it go?” she asked.

He sat down beside her and set the bag on the table. “Well, I'm fifty thousand dollars richer, and probably twice as confused as I was before I got up this morning. No matter how I look at this case, there are parts that don't add up, and every time I get a statement from one person, someone else counters it, so at least one of them is lying, but I can't tell which one. Jimmy says it wasn't Barry who called him from Samantha's phone that day, but she swears it was. Whoever sent the hairs to her had to have known that Jimmy left a hateful message on her phone, but she says no one knew about it until after she got them. There's just no common thread I can follow through this thing.”

Indie got up and began rubbing his shoulders. “You're tense,” she said. “This thing is really getting to you.”

“Yeah, cause I don't really believe Jimmy did it. Something about him killing Barry doesn't feel right; it'd be like the guy who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Barry was so good that sooner or later, some label was going to want him, and they'd let him bring the band along. Jimmy was the guy who could find that label, and even if he hated Chris with a passion, he still loves money. He'd have made the deal with Chris and the band in it before he'd have let all that money get away. Heck, he probably would have given in to Barry on it any day, just to get him to sign.”

Indie wrapped her arms around him from behind and leaned her face down to kiss him. “There has to be an answer, and you'll find it. I know you will, Baby.”

Sam held onto her arms, just feeling the goodness of her holding him.

“I hope so,” he said. “I hope so.”

10

Kenzie wouldn’t be home until after dinner, so Sam and Indie would have most of the day to themselves. Sam decided he wanted a late breakfast, so they got into the Corvette and went to a diner he knew. They had eggs and bacon and hash browns, and Sam told Indie that he wanted to replace her car.

“We talked about that before,” she said. “That car is all I've got left of Kenzie's father, Jared. I don't really want to get rid of it.”

“I'm not saying you have to get rid of it, Babe. I was thinking we'd put it into the garage and start rebuilding it, but get you something else to drive so I know you and Kenzie are safer when you leave the house. The Taurus is in pretty rough shape, and when a car gets too rusty, it starts to get exhaust leaks and other problems that can be dangerous. I promise, we'll restore it completely, and one day when Kenzie is old enough to drive, you can give it to her.”

Indie smiled at that thought. “That would be nice,” she said. “Sam, she never knew him, but I've told her a little about him, and one day I'm sure she's gonna want to know more, even if we're together and she thinks of you as her Daddy. People always want to know where they came from, y'know? If we could give her his car one day, that would at least let her have a piece of him in her life, too. Does that make sense?”

Sam smiled. “Makes a lot of sense,” he said, then changed the subject. “We've got all day to kill; what do you want to do?”

She laughed. “How about you surprise me?”

Sam smiled and said, “Okay, one big surprise, comin' right up!” He paid the check and they drove back home.

Indie smiled. “Is my surprise gonna be like your surprise last night?” she asked.

Sam laughed. “Not right at the moment,” he said. He parked the van and got out, then opened the garage door and led her to the motorcycle. He handed her a helmet. “Have you ever been on a motorcycle?”

Indie grinned. “Not since high school, but yeah. Jared had one, but it wasn't as big as this. I've been wondering when you were gonna give me a ride, but it's hard to do when Kenzie's with us, I know.” She slid the helmet over her head, and then Sam had to help her with the straps.

He backed the bike out and turned it around, then told her to climb on. When she was settled behind him, he pushed the starter button and they were off.

He took her out on I-70 and up into the mountains, then took the Casino Parkway for the winding ride up through Black Hawk. Indie was holding on tight, her arms wrapped around his waist, but she grabbed even tighter when there were cliff walls alongside, some going up, and some showing drops of a hundred feet or more. Sam maneuvered the bike expertly through the curves and switchbacks, and they stopped in Black Hawk for lunch at the Main Street Restaurant.

Once they were seated, Indie said, “Okay, this is a blast! I haven't had so much fun in years! Sam, I had forgotten how much fun it can be just to get on a bike and ride!”

He smiled. “I had a feeling you'd like it,” he said, “and I wanted us to get out of all our day-to-day stuff for a little while. Sometimes you just need a break, and I wanted to talk to you about something anyway, so I thought we might just get away for a little while.”

“I'm lovin' it!” Indie said. “What did you want to talk about?” A waitress appeared suddenly, and Indie had to wait while they placed their orders. Both of them opted for burgers and fries, and the waitress said it would only be a few minutes. “So, again, what did you want to talk about?” Indie asked.

“Indie, I want to talk about us,” Sam said, and the smile on his face was so bright that Indie suddenly felt her heart swelling. “I think last night changed things between us, and I want to know if you’re feeling the same things I'm feeling.”

Indie grinned. “I am, if you’re feeling like we need to do that again!”

Sam laughed right out loud, and a few people turned to look at him. He got himself under control, and said, “I am, and again, and again! But at the moment I was referring to how you're feeling about us and our future together.”

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn't have gone where we went last night if I wasn't pretty sure we're right for each other. I mean—Sam, you're only the fourth man I've ever been with. Jared was first, and the last two were just out for—you know—and they vanished after they got it. So if I hadn't been sure you weren't gonna disappear on me, we never would have gone there.”

Sam sat and stared at her for a moment. “I'd never do that to you,” he said. “Indie, I'm not sure why, but I feel like there's something very special going on here. I know that when we're together, I feel complete, and when I'm away from you, I have to concentrate or I'll just be thinking about when I'll see you again. Sometimes I think about what would happen if you decided to move out, and it makes it hard to breathe, so I guess what I'm saying is that I seem to have become addicted to you. I feel good when I’ve got you, I jones for you when I don't, and I'm scared of the withdrawals if I had to give you up, so I figure you’re my drug of choice!”

Indie's eyes went wide. “Wow, I've never been called a drug before,” she said, “but I think I understand what you’re saying. I feel the same way; the other night, before we talked, I was scared to death you were gonna say it wasn't working and I'd have to leave, and I thought I'd die if you did.”

Sam took her hand across the table. “Then we're both on the same page, right? We both want to keep this together?”

Indie's breath was coming in short little bursts, and she was suddenly nervous. “Yes. We do.”

Sam smiled. “Then let's make it official. I want to make sure I don't lose you, not ever, Indie. I want us to be together from now on.”

Indie squeaked out, “Me, too.”

“I know this is crazy, we've only known each other about three weeks, now, but I think I know enough to know what I want.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out the item he'd purchased on his way home earlier, and held out a small box. When he opened it, Indie saw the beautiful diamond ring that was inside, and suddenly she could barely breathe at all. Sam took the ring out of the box and held it out to her as he got out of his chair and carefully dropped to one knee. “What I want is to make you and Kenzie my family. If this is too soon, I hope it won't scare you off, but—Indiana Perkins, will you marry me?”

Half the place was watching them, as Indie sat there and stared at the ring in his hand for more than a minute, without saying a word. Her hands were clasped tightly before her face, but then she extended her left hand out to Sam, and simply said, “Yes.”

Sam slipped the ring on her finger, but it was a little too large, so he reached back into his pocket and took out a packet of little plastic things. “When I told the jeweler how tiny you are, he said these would help until I can bring you in to get it re-sized.” He helped her fit one into the ring, and then slid it back on again, and this time it stayed in place.

Sam got up and so did Indie, and then she was in his arms and kissing him, and the whole place erupted in applause and cheers. Indie had to wave her hand around and show off the ring to all the ladies, and Sam got to shake hands and get his back slapped by most of the men. After a few moments, they were able to sit down again, and the waitress brought their food a minute later.

“The boss says this is on the house, kids,” she said. “It isn't often we see something like that in here, so this is our gift to the two of you! Enjoy!”

Sam and Indie smiled as they ate their lunch, and she kept looking at the ring on her finger. “I can't wait to tell Kenzie,” she said. “Do you—do you have an idea as to when you want to...” She trailed off.

“I want to get this case settled, first,” Sam said, “and then I thought we'd look at a small ceremony with just family and good friends, then take a nice honeymoon somewhere special. Any idea where you'd like to go? Anywhere in the world?”

Indie smiled from ear to ear. “When I was younger,” she said, “I used to dream about getting married and having a honeymoon in Mexico, but later I started thinking about having one in Hawaii. I've heard about people going there for a honeymoon, and how wonderful it all was. Do you think we could do that?”

“I think Hawaii would be perfect. We can certainly afford it, with all we've made this month, and if I can prove Jimmy didn't do it, we've got another fifty thousand coming. I've always thought of going to Hawaii, but never did. When Jeanie and I got married, our honeymoon was a weekend in Vegas, but we were young and not too smart; I want to do better by you.”

Indie was still smiling. “I bet we could get Anita to keep Kenzie while we go. I love my daughter, don't get me wrong, but a honeymoon is a once-in-a-lifetime event, or—you know what I mean, and I don't think it's a good one to take kids along on.”

Sam laughed. “I kind of agree with you on that,” he said, “but we could always take a second honeymoon to Disney World, I'm sure she'd enjoy that.”

“I've always wanted to take her there, but I never thought it would be possible. Do you really think we could do that?”

“I think we'll plan it for right after we get back from honeymoon number one, how would that be?”

Indie sat there and stared at him for several seconds, her burger in her hands and halfway to her mouth. “Sam Prichard,” she said, “I love you. It just hit me that we got engaged before either of us ever said that out loud.”

Sam smiled. “I've said it to you a dozen times in my thoughts. Just didn’t have the nerve to let it come out, but I can now. Indiana Perkins, I love you, and having you say yes has made me the happiest guy in the world!”

They finished eating and left the restaurant to a chorus of “Congratulations!” and “Best Wishes!” Indie put her helmet back on and climbed onto the back of the Shadow, and they rode back toward Denver by another route, this one with even more twists and curves than the last. Sam loved the laugh he heard from Indie when he powered the big bike through the curves, and knew that it was definitely a good day.

They got home a little after two, and still had several hours alone, so they put a couple of them to use in a very personal celebration of their engagement. Afterward, they lay together in bed, holding each other close and whispering about their love for one another. Sam said, “I don't know that I've ever really been in love before. I thought I was, when Jeanie and I got married, but I've gotta tell you, this feels so different and so much better; when she left, I didn't even get as upset about it as I thought I should have been. I think I was more in love with the idea of being in love than I was with her, does that make any sense?”

Indie nodded, and Sam felt it on his chest, where her head was lying. “I think I was in love with Jared,” she said, “but this still feels different. It feels—I dunno, more grown up and mature, maybe, more real, somehow. I'm not saying what I had with Jared wasn't real; just, this is definitely not a bad thing.”

Sam laughed and hugged her, then planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I know, Baby, I know. And I want you to know that I'm not a bit jealous of your feelings for Jared. Don't ever worry about talking to Kenzie about him, even right in front of me. I may become her daddy, but he'll always be her father.

They got up after a while and took a shower, then went out into the living room and turned on the TV. There was a local news program on, and the announcer was talking about the murder. The scene cut to a shot of Jimmy's place, and the hole the police had found Barry's head and hands in.

Sam looked at the screen, and something in him twitched. He leaned forward and stared hard at it.

“What's the matter, Babe?” Indie asked, but Sam only shook his head.

“Not really sure, but look at that hole. It's right there next to the road, just like Jimmy said, but just across the street is a creek that's flowing pretty good. Now, if you were trying to get rid of body parts, would you bury them on your own property, or walk another twenty yards and toss them into a creek where they'd probably wash away and never turn up?”

Indie blinked. “You'd go for the creek. Anybody would, it's just easier than trying to dig a hole and bury it.”

“Right. Jimmy's telling the truth, Honey; someone is framing him for murder. Now all I gotta do is figure out who, and prove it.”

“What about what Samantha said? Do you think there's any chance Janice could have done it?”

“Not unless she's an Oscar-worthy actress. She's a wreck without him, and that's pretty obvious. I don't think a real recovering addict could keep up an act like that for so long.”

“Okay, then who else could have known about the phone message? That's sort of the key to solving it, don't you think? Whoever wanted to frame Jimmy had to know about that message, or there would have been no point in sending the hairs to her.”

Sam nodded. “It's possible that it's just a coincidence that she got both the message and the hairs, but that would be a pretty big one. I'm inclined to think whoever killed Barry knew about the message, and wanted to use Samantha to bring the heat down on Jimmy. If we knew who else could have known about that message, we'd have a pretty good idea of how to proceed on this.”

Indie got up and started for the dining room. “Let's talk to Herman for a bit,” she said. “Maybe he can find something we're missing.”

Sam followed her. “I don’t know what it could be, but I'm ready to try your magic. What are you thinking?”

“If Herman can get into Jimmy's phone records, then we can see what time he made that call to Samantha's phone. We can then look at other calls he made, and see if we can get any idea who he might have told about it.” She looked at him. “It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if she didn't tell anyone about the message, then maybe Jimmy did. Let's see who else he called around the same time.”

Sam stopped where he was and stared at her. “Babe,” he said, “have I mentioned today that I love you? That's a brilliant idea!”

Indie looked back at him over her shoulder. “Just part of my plan to keep you dependent on me, Baby, so you won't get cold feet and back out of marrying me! Let's see what Herman can do.”

She sat down at her laptop and began tapping on the keys, and soon Herman was filling the screen with lines and lines of code that Sam couldn't tell from gibberish. Indie ran her finger over bits and pieces of it, then tapped more keys, and a moment later it all started again.

“What I'm doing is making Herman try all the different carriers to see who Jimmy's phone is with. We got it, here, he's on Verizon, and now Herman is trying to get into their billing computer. I've hacked it before, so it won't take long, and then we can look at his bill and see all of his call and text and data records.”

Sure enough, the screen suddenly changed. A browser opened to a Verizon page that showed Jimmy Smith's phone bill for the past month.

“Okay, Jimmy's got four phones on his account, probably his wife and kids have the other three. Here's the statement for his personal number.” She clicked a link and another page opened up, with lines and lines of phone numbers with times and dates beside them, as well as how long each call had lasted. They looked for the Saturday two weeks prior, the day Barry disappeared, and found it.

“Okay, here's the call from Barry's phone, and here an hour and a half later is the one from Samantha Harris' phone. Check this out; the very next call Jimmy made was to Barry's phone. Now, why would he do that if he'd just talked to Barry on Samantha's?”

Sam nodded. “You're right, he wouldn't; he'd have called right back to hers and demanded to talk to Barry again.”

“Let's keep going,” Indie said. “Here's the next morning, and here's a call to Samantha's number. See that little double star next to the call? That means he used star six seven, to block the caller ID from showing who was calling. The call lasted eleven seconds, just long enough to leave the message, so that's the one we're looking for. Now, who did he call right after? He made three calls within the next ten minutes; let's find out whose numbers those are.”

She switched to another screen and entered the numbers, letting Herman do his thing. Less than a minute passed before there were three lines of information before their eyes.

“Check it out,” Indie said. “The first call he made after leaving that message was to Bill Miller, less than a minute later, and it lasted four-and-a-half minutes. The second was to his wife, but that one only lasted a few seconds, and the third was about eight minutes later, to none other than Janice Peet, and it lasted almost four minutes. Kinda odd that neither Bill nor Janice ever mentioned those calls, isn't it?”

“Especially since they both knew I was looking at Jimmy Smith as a suspect. Telling me about them would have made me even more sure I was after the right guy, but they kept quiet. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice. I think I need to visit them both in the morning, before Barry's funeral.”

“Sam,” Indie said, “when you go to see them, do me a favor, will you?”

“What's that, Honey?”

“Take your gun.”

11

They spent the rest of the afternoon watching movies on television, until Kenzie came home at seven.

“She was a delight,” Anita said, and her husband Jim added, “She's welcome anytime! The twins are delighted to have another kid their age in the neighborhood.”

“Well, we appreciate it,” Sam said, and then Indie showed Anita her ring, and the congratulations and hugs and backslapping began all over again. Kenzie jumped up and down when Indie told her that she and Sam were going to be getting married, and asked, “Now can he be my daddy?”

Sam picked her up and hugged her. “You bet I can, sweetheart!” he said, and that got him the biggest hug she'd given him yet.

Jim and Anita had to get back home, where her mother was watching their twins, so they said their goodbyes and left. Kenzie looked up at Sam after they were gone, and said, “Daddy?”

Sam smiled down at her. “Yes, Kenzie?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. I just wanted to say it.” She turned and went to get Samson, who was sniffing around as if wondering what had changed while he was gone. Sam and Indie laughed as they watched her go.

“She's happy,” Indie said. “She's wanted a daddy for a long time, and me telling her that her daddy was in heaven didn't help. She picked you even before I did, I think.”

Sam looked at her. “Here's a question,” he said. “Who all do we need to tell? I should call my mom and my sister, I guess, and Dan, and we'll tell the band tomorrow. What about you?”

Indie sighed. “I guess it's time I call my mom,” she said. “I've been avoiding it for a while, because she always complains about how I live, but she doesn't want us staying with her, either. It's not that she doesn't love us, it's just—well, you'll get to know Mom, that's all I can say.”

They sat down together at the dining room table, and Sam went first calling his mother on speakerphone.

“Mom,” he said, “it's Sam.”

“Like I wouldn't know my own son's phone number when you call,” she said, and Sam winced. “Even though I don't see it pop upon the phone very often, I still know it's you, cause it tells me it’s you. To what do I owe the pleasure of you taking the time to call your old mother this time?”

Sam took a deep breath. “Well, Mom, I guess it's because I'm getting married.”

“Married? You're getting married? Is it that girl you told me about, the one who moved in and took over cleaning your house, so I don't get to come over and see my only son every week? Oh, I hope she's not like that one you were married to before, Sam, that woman was just never the right one for you, I do hope this one is better!”

“She's better, Mom, I promise, and yes, it's the same girl I told you about a few weeks ago. Her name is Indiana, and we call her Indie, and she's right here listening, I've got you on speaker.”

“Well, hello, there, and what did you say her name was, was it Cindy?”

“No, Mom, it's Indie, short for Indiana, like in the movies with Indiana Jones. Indie.”

“Hello, Indie, it's nice to talk to you, and don't believe half the things he says about me, I'm really not that bad! This is awfully quick, isn't it, Sam, I mean, you only told me she moved in with you what, a week ago? Two weeks? How can you be getting married so soon?”

“When it's right, Mom, it's just right, and Indie and I are very much right for each other. I just wanted you to know, and when we have a date set, we'll let you know that, too.”

“Well, Sam, I have to say it's about time you found someone you really care for. You're just too nice a guy to be single, don't you think so, Indie?”

Indie laughed. “Yes, Ma'am, I sure do!”

“Oh, my God, what's with this 'ma'am' stuff, we can't have that! I'm just 'Mom,' sweetheart, let's keep it simple. Oh! Wait a minute, Sam, you told me she had a little girl! Does this mean I finally have a grandchild? That's it, I'm coming over! I'll be there in an hour!” The line went dead instantly.

Sam looked at Indie sheepishly. “Mom's got a memory like an elephant, I'm afraid, and she never forgets anything! She's been begging me and my sister to make her a grandmother for as long as I can remember, so she's gonna latch on to Kenzie as fast as she can!”

Indie smiled. “Don't worry, Kenzie will have her wrapped around her little finger in no time flat!”

Sam dialed again, and called his sister. “Carrie, it's Sam,” he said when she answered, and his sister responded with delight.

“Sam? And you're calling me? Uh-oh, Buddy, what kind of trouble are you in now?” Indie could hear the smile in her voice.

“No trouble,” he said. “I just thought you'd want to know that your big brother is gonna be getting married soon. I just got off the phone from telling Mom, and wanted you to be the next to know.”

Carrie squealed through the phone line. “Married? You're getting married? Okay, tell me everything, like who is she, and how long have you known her and everything!”

Sam laughed. “Her name is Indiana, and she goes by Indie, just like Indiana Jones, and she's gorgeous and has a beautiful four-year-old daughter named Mackenzie, but we call her Kenzie for short. We've known each other about three weeks, but it's been the most intense three weeks you can imagine, and we just came to the conclusion today that we're right for each other, and this is what we want. We don't have a date yet, but we'll let you know as soon as we do so you can come to the wedding. Say hi, I've got you on speaker.”

“Oh, hi, Indie! I'm Carrie, Sam's little sister, and I'm not nearly as bad as he'll tell you I am, well, maybe I am, but it's all good, anyway, right? Oh, my goodness, this is so exciting! And you've got a little girl? Mom will go absolutely crazy over that!”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “she's actually on the way here right now. If I know her, she's probably gonna get a speeding ticket on the way.”

Carrie laughed. “Yeah, probably! Indie, tell me all about it! How did you guys meet?”

Sam looked at Indie and let her take the conversation. “Well, he actually ran across me when he needed help with something, and me and my little girl were not doing so well. We were actually homeless, and Sam had this big old house, so he said we could stay with him for a while, and the more we were around each other, the more we just knew there was something special going on. I knew I was in love with him a week ago, and today he surprised me with a ring and popped the question, and I said yes. Kenzie is so happy she's about to burst; she's been wanting him to be her daddy since the day we met him, I think.”

“Oh, I can tell already we're gonna get along great! If there's one thing I love, it's being impulsive, and if you guys are getting married this fast then you're probably as impulsive as I am! I cant' wait to meet you! Are you on Facebook?”

The two girls exchanged Facebook info and promised to friend each other, then Sam managed to get them off the phone. He called Dan and told him, and that set off another round of excitement. He said he'd spread the word around the PD the next day, and that he'd better be on the list for Best Man. Sam promised him that he was at the top of that short list, and they ended the call.

Then it was Indie's turn. She said she had very few friends, and most of those were only on Facebook, so all she needed to do was call her mother. She dialed the number nervously, and like Sam, she put it on speaker.

“Hello?” came a voice that was surprisingly similar to Indie's.

“Hey, Mom,” Indie said.

“Indiana? Hey, Sweetie, how are you? Where are you? I haven't heard from you in weeks! Are you okay? Is Kenzie okay?”

“Yes, Mom, we're fine. I'm actually calling to tell you some good news. Are you sitting down?”

“Good news? I can stand some of that! Yes, I'm sitting down, go ahead.”

Indie took a beep breath of her own. “Mom—I'm getting married.”

“Married?” her mother echoed, incredulous. “Did you just say you're getting married?”

Indie laughed. “Yes, Mom, I said I'm getting married. I've met a wonderful man who loves me and Kenzie, and we just adore him, and he's asked me to marry him. His name is Sam, and he's a private investigator. We met when I went to work for him.” She held a finger to her lips to tell Sam to be quiet.

“Oh, that's wonderful, Indie! But when did this happen? The last I heard from you, you were homeless and out of work!”

“Um—well, about three weeks ago, Sam needed some help with something, and I answered an ad he put out, and when he found out we were living in shelters, he said he had a big house with extra rooms, and let us stay with him, and we just—hit it off. I really love him, Mom, and he loves us. This is a good thing.”

Her mother was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Yes, I can feel that it is. This Sam is a good man, and he'll be a good husband.” Sam raised his eyebrows, and Indie signaled to wait, that she'd tell him later, but her mother blew that. “You did tell him about Beauregard, didn't you?”

“Um, well, I hadn't quite got around to that yet. You're on speaker, Mom, Sam can hear you.”

“Hello, Mrs. Perkins,” Sam said.

“Well, hello, Sam! I am so happy for Indie that she's found you! Beauregard says you're a great man, and that he knew you in a past life, when you fought at Valley Forge together! He says you'll make a wonderful husband to my daughter, and a terrific father for little Mackenzie!”

Sam looked at Indie, who made pleading eyes at him. “Well,” he said, “I don't remember that, but tell Beauregard I said thank you for the endorsement!”

“He says you're welcome, and most people don't remember their past lives, so it's okay. He says not to worry, you'll know him again one day; he's scheduled to be reborn sometime in the next year or so.”

Sam's eyebrows went up another notch. “Oh, well, that's great, then,” he said, looking at Indie for guidance.

“Well, anyway, Mom, I just wanted to let you know, and when we get a date set, I'll let you know that, too. We'll make sure to send you an invitation!”

“Okay, sweetie,” her mother said. “I'll keep you both in my meditations!”

“Bye, Mom,” Indie said, and cut the call off before her mother could say anything else.

She looked sheepishly at Sam. “I probably should have warned you about that,” she said, “but I was sort of hoping she wouldn't mention Beauregard this soon. Sometimes she doesn't, ‘til she gets to know you better.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam said. “And Beauregard would be...”

“Remember I told you Mom was sort of a throwback hippie? Well, she's into a lot of their new age stuff, and Beauregard is her, um—her spirit guide. She says he's an old soldier from the civil war, but he tells her about a lot of other past lives too. And he seems to know a lot about just about everyone, because she always says he knew someone in a past life somewhere along the line. You're lucky he didn't say he knew you during Roman times, or even in the dark ages. Valley Forge is at least part of American history.”

Sam looked at her for a minute. “And do you have a spirit guide?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “No! I've never bought into that crap, not even when I was a kid!” Then she shrugged. “Although, I can say that there have been times when Beauregard's told her things that turned out to be right. She says he told her that I'd never be married to Jared, even though he thought Jared was a great guy, too. All he would say was that something would keep us from ever being married, and he turned out right about that.”

“You sound like you almost believe in him.”

Indie shrugged again. “I don't, not really. I think maybe my Mom has a touch of second sight or whatever you want to call it, but I think Beauregard is just a figment of her warped imagination, y'know? He's the way she deals with things she knows that she doesn't understand how she knows.”

“Well, as long as he likes me, I think we'll try to stay on his good side, right?” A car pulled into the driveway, then, and they heard a door open and close. Sam closed his eyes for a second. “That would be Mom,” he said, and got up to go to the door. Indie called Kenzie to come back in from the back yard.

“Sam!” His mother said as she came onto the porch and found him standing there. “Sam, you’ve made me the happiest mother on earth! I just couldn't wait another minute to come and meet this wonderful girl and your new daughter!”

Sam gave her a hug. “Come on in, Mom, Indie's inside with Kenzie.” She followed him in, and they found Indie in the living room, holding Kenzie in her arms.

“Indie, Kenzie, this is my mother, Grace; Mom, this is Indie and Mackenzie, but we call her Kenzie for short.”

His mother threw her arms open and wrapped both girls in a hug. “Oh, my God, I'm so glad to meet you both! This is a dream come true to an old woman!”

“Mom!” Sam said. “You're not even fifty yet!”

“But I feel sixty, so it counts!” She let them go and stood back, looking at both of them. Kenzie was smiling widely, but Indie's smile was a little nervous. “Oh, what a preciously adorable little girl! Indie, I hope you understand, dear, but I've wanted to be a grandma forever, and so I'm planning to spoil this child completely rotten, is that okay? Because if it's not, then you're just marrying into the wrong family, sweetheart, that's just how it is! Kenzie, I'm gonna be your new Grandma, is that okay with you?”

Kenzie smiled and said, “Yes!” and then surprised both Indie and Sam by reaching her arms out to Grace, who squealed with delight and took her from Indie. “Oh, Sam, she's wonderful, they both are! You are such a lucky man, Samuel Prichard, to have found this wonderful young woman and gotten the chance to bring them both into your life! Don't you ever forget to count your blessings, young man, and I mean don't you ever forget it!”

Sam chuckled. “Trust me, Mom, I won't! And I know just how lucky I am to have both of them!”

Grace took Kenzie to the couch and sat down, holding the little girl on her lap. Kenzie showed no sign of wanting down, so they sat there together, Kenzie on her new Grandma's lap, while Sam and Indie sat together on the love seat across the room.

“Okay, tell me everything,” Grace said, and Sam and Indie looked at each other in confusion for a second. Grace cleared it up by adding, “I want her clothing sizes, her shoe size, what her favorite colors are, what kind of toys she likes, all of it! This is my first grandkid, and I plan to enjoy myself! Or can I just come get her sometime and take her to the mall? Would that be alright?”

Indie looked at Sam, and he nodded with a grin. “Sure, yeah,” she said. “I'm sure Kenzie would love it, but don't let her get away with too much...”

“Nonsense, there's no such thing as too much for a first grandchild! One of the joys of being a grandma is that I get to take the child out and buy her goodies, then bring her home and let you deal with the aftermath!”

“Mom,” Sam began, but Indie stopped him.

“Sam, it's okay, I know what she means,” she said with a grin. “My mother always said the same thing.”

“Of course it's okay, mothers understand these things, don't they, Indie?” Grace turned her attention to Kenzie. “So, tell me, Kenzie, what kind of things do you like to do?”

Kenzie thought for a minute. “I like to go to the zoo,” she said, “and I like to play with Samson.”

“Oh, is Samson your doggie?” Grace asked, but Samson picked that very moment to come running into the room, which naturally resulted in him tumbling halfway across the living room floor. When he came to a stop, he shook his head like always, then stood up and looked around. When he spotted Kenzie sitting on Grace's lap, he walked over and jumped up to join her.

Kenzie said, “This is Samson! He's a kitty cat!” She started petting Samson, who immediately began to purr.

“I see that,” Grace said, “and a very nice kitty cat he is!” She looked at Sam. “Does he always fall like that? Is he okay?”

“That's normal for our Samson, Mom, he's fine. He just has a problem getting his back legs to work with his front legs when he's running.”

Grace looked at Kenzie, at Samson, then up to Indie and Sam. “I've got to say it, Sam,” she said. “You've got yourself a beautiful little family here. Dare I hope that there will be more children in the future?”

Sam and Indie looked at each other, both realizing that they hadn’t discussed how either of them felt about having more kids. Indie smiled at him and turned back to Grace.

“I think so,” she said. “I want more kids, and Sam needs kids of his own, as well as Kenzie, don't you think?”

Grace looked at Sam with a huge smile. “Samuel!” she said. “Why couldn't you have found this one before you ever met that other one?”

Sam looked at Indie and grinned. “Um, well, Mom, that might not have worked out, cause Indie would have been about thirteen, then, and I'm not sure how her mother would have taken to her dating a cop who was twenty-one.”

“Good point, but at least you found her now! And Grandma is just so happy she could cry,” she said, aiming it at Kenzie, “yes, she is!”

Kenzie giggled, and hugged her, and then Grace suddenly did have tears in her eyes. She looked at her son and said, “I am so proud of you, Sam, and your father would be, too.”

12

Sam and Indie put Kenzie to bed after Grace left, and spent some time alone in the living room. Sam sat on the couch with Indie cuddled up to him the way they had gotten used to, and they watched a bit of TV together, but their minds weren't on the show.

“So, you do want more kids?” Sam asked.

“Uh-huh. Do you?”

“I do,” he said. “I can't believe we didn't talk about that at some point.”

“I'm sure we would have gotten to it soon,” Indie said. “Your mom doesn't pull any punches, does she?”

Sam laughed. “Not Mom, no. Whatever she's thinking tends to fall right on out of her mouth! That's one of the things you just have to get used to, with her.”

“Well, at least it's her own thoughts, and not Beauregard's. I can live with it, trust me! And did you see how Kenzie took to her? That child normally needs at least a couple of days to get used to anyone, but she actually reached for your mom! I was shocked!”

“Yeah, I was half afraid Mom would be so over-exuberant that it would scare Kenzie off, but it didn't turn out that way. I'm glad; she and Mom will get long good, I think.”

They sat together in silence for a few minutes, and then Indie asked the question they were both thinking about. “So—what do you want to do about, um—sleeping arrangements? Do you want me to move on in with you, or should I stay upstairs for now? I mean, Kenzie's in her own room, now, so it isn't like she needs me up there...”

Sam grinned. “Well, I'd be a liar if I said I didn't want you with me,” he said, “but the one we have to consider is Kenzie. How do you think she'll handle it if you move downstairs?”

“I sort of asked her how she'd feel if I moved down with you when I put her to bed,” Indie said, “and she said, 'don't mommies and daddies have to sleep together?' Sometimes I think she's a lot older than she pretends to be. Anyway, I said that sometimes they do, and she said it was okay with her. I just didn't know how you'd feel about it, when we're not actually married, yet.”

Sam smiled down at her. “Baby, I would love it if you wanted to be with me, and not just for the obvious reasons. I like waking up with you beside me, and I love the feeling of someone snuggled up beside me. Are you okay with it?”

She nodded against his chest. “Yeah, I am. I liked being with you last night, and I woke up this morning after you left, and I cried, because I thought it was something that might only happen once, or maybe only now and then. I wanted to tell you when you got home that I was in love with you, but I was afraid I'd scare you, or make you pull back from me, so I didn't say anything. But I wanted to move down and be with you, I did. I still do, and now I can.”

“We'll worry about the moving tomorrow. For tonight, we'll just wing it. You might want to go up and get anything you want to sleep in, though, because I suspect the bedroom door won't necessarily keep Miss Kenzie out anymore.”

“Um, yeah, you're probably right. I'll be right back.” She got up and went upstairs, coming back down a few moments later with a nightgown and her bathroom things, and went into Sam's room. He rose and turned off the TV, then followed her. She was in the bathroom, putting her things away, and he walked over to the door there and watched her.

“This is nice,” he said. “This place has needed a woman's touch forever. You can redecorate in here, if you want to. Shower curtain, all that stuff, even in the bedroom. Heck, you can redecorate the whole house, if you want to. None of the stuff that's here was Jeanie's, so it's not that her touch is on any of it, but you can do it however you want.”

She smiled at him. “Well, the shower curtain is kinda mildewy, and I guess I could see a few changes I'd like to make. You sure that's okay?”

He stepped inside and pulled her into his arms. “Indie, this is your home now, too. I want you to make it the way you want it. I'm not one of those guys who can't sleep under a frilly blanket, Babe.”

She leaned against him and put her own arms around him. “I love you, Sam.”

“I love you, too, Indie. Let's go to bed. I'm still sore from last night, and the bike ride didn't make it any better.”

They got into sleeping clothes and climbed into bed. A couple hours later, they went to sleep in each other's arms.

Sam woke up at eight, to the alarm they'd set the night before. Indie was already up and out of bed, and he took a fast shower and dressed, then found her making breakfast in the kitchen. Kenzie was up, too, and sitting on the floor with Samson. She looked up at him and said, “Hi, Daddy!” and Sam broke into a smile.

“Hello, Baby girl!” he said. “How's my princess this morning?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “Mommy sleeps down here with you now.”

“Um, yeah, I know. Is that okay with you?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, nodding. “All my friends who have mommies and daddies told me their mommies and daddies sleep together, so I know that's how it's 'posed to be.” She went back to making the cat dance on his back paws, and he seemed to be enjoying it.

Sam walked over to where Indie was stirring pancake mix and slipped his arms around her from behind. “Hello, my big Baby girl,” he whispered into her ear, and she shivered.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me when you whisper into my ear?” she asked him. “Makes me want to drag you right back into that bedroom!”

“I'm good with that, but we better wait ‘til Kenzie isn't around. Might give the poor kid a complex if she saw her mommy dragging her daddy, y'know?” He kissed her ear, which made her shiver again, and then went to pour himself some coffee, taking it to the table. He sat down and took a long sip of it, and smiled from ear to ear.

When the pancakes were ready, Sam told Kenzie to get up to the table and helped her get her chair situated the way she wanted it, then helped her get the butter and syrup onto her short stack. Indie joined them a second later, and asked Kenzie to say grace.

“Thank you, God, for this breakfast, and for my new daddy and for Samson and for making mommy smile so much. Oh, and thank you for my new Grandma! Amen!”

Sam and Indie said, “Amen!” and then looked at each other and fought back the giggles that wanted to come out of them both. If Kenzie had noticed Indie smiling more, then they might need to be a little less obvious.

They ate their breakfast and talked about the things they were going to do for the day. Sam said he had a couple of people he wanted to see, and then he wanted to take Indie out car shopping, and Indie said she wanted to go and get some groceries and things for the bathroom. Kenzie wanted to know if she could get a new doll, one that could talk and move and do all this neat stuff that she saw on TV, and Sam said it was okay with him if she could talk her Mommy into it. Indie glared at him with mock ferocity, but then pretended to give in after a half dozen cries of “please” from both Kenzie and Sam.

Sam put his Glock into its holster and strapped it onto his belt, then left shortly after breakfast and went to Bill Miller's apartment. When he rang the bell, Miller answered, looking half awake.

Sam couldn't help staring for a moment. Knowing that the man standing in front of him was really a woman, he could see certain characteristics that should have been obvious the first time they met. Miller had no Adam's Apple, his skull was shorter than it would be if he were genetically male, and the first fingers of each hand were slightly longer than the third fingers. Each of these was a common indicator that police were trained to spot when dealing with gender impersonators, but Sam had missed them.

“Mr. Prichard,” Miller said. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm trying to wrap up some details about Barry's death, and wondered if we could talk for a few more moments?”

Miller shrugged. “Sure, come on in. Give me a minute and I'll put coffee on.”

Sam went in and sat on the couch again, and waited for a few minutes. Miller came back with two cups of coffee on the same tray, and Sam kicked himself again, mentally. Men don't often use serving trays, preferring to carry extra items like sugar and cream in a separate trip. Miller set the tray down, and Sam added sugar to his coffee.

“So how can I help?” Miller asked.

“Well, there have been a few things come up that aren't fitting in so well, and I'm hoping you can help me make sense of them. For instance, you know that Jimmy Smith was arrested for the murder, right?”

“Yeah, and I can't say I was terribly surprised.”

“Well, it turns out that he left a nasty message on Samantha Harris's voicemail the day after Barry disappeared, and when he was asked who else he called that day, he said he called you. Can you tell me what the call was about?”

Miller looked at him warily for a second. “I'm afraid he must be lying, Mr. Prichard. Jimmy Smith and I don't talk, and he'd have no reason to call me.”

Sam sat there for a moment and wondered why he'd just been lied to. “Mr. Miller—or should I actually be saying Miss Miller? I've seen Jimmy Smith's phone logs, and it clearly shows a call to your cell phone that lasted four-and-a-half minutes, not even a minute after he left that message on Samantha’s phone. Now, can we get past the BS and into some truth here?”

There was silence for a moment, and then a tear appeared on Miller's cheek. “No one has mentioned that in so long that I had hoped I'd never have to talk about it again. It's not really a matter of 'miss' or 'mister,' I'm afraid, Mr. Prichard. I am actually a hermaphrodite, both male and female. My mother couldn't deal with that inconvenient truth, and so I was raised as a girl. It wasn't until I was raped and became pregnant that it truly mattered to me, and once the child was born, I chose to comport myself as a man from then on.”

Sam cocked his head to one side. “But according to records, Barry Wallace was the child's father. Are you saying Barry raped you?”

“No. Barry wasn't the kind of man who could do such a thing. Instead, he was the kind who would take the responsibility and help me cover up that horrible night, by saying that he and I had gotten drunk and made a mistake, which left me with child. When the baby was born, his name was listed as the father, but it wasn't really his.”

“Then whose was it?” Sam asked.

Miller only looked at him. “It was a gang rape, Mr. Prichard. I had been invited to a party with a bunch of the more popular kids, and I went. Somewhere during the evening, someone slipped a drug into one of my drinks, and as far as I can remember, there were no fewer that a dozen who had me that night. I have no idea who some of them were, and I simply couldn't bear to tell anyone what had happened, so I called the one real friend I had, and that was Barry. He came and got me and helped me clean myself up, then took care of me through the rest of that night, while I wept and screamed and even beat on him as a representative of the males of the species.” He sniffled and wiped his nose with a napkin from the tray. “Of course, some of those who had done it told, and soon the word was out that I had both sets of sexual organs, a vagina and a small but definite penis. People began to shun me, and that's part of the reason I've been able to live here again; those who knew me have done their best to forget me, and I look very different as a man than I did as a woman.”

“Miller, I'm sorry. But I still need to know about that phone call.”

Miller sat there and looked at the floor for several seconds, and Sam merely waited. After almost a minute, Miller said, “Jimmy called me. Jimmy Smith is one of the very few people who know the truth about me, and about what happened that night, because he was the agent who had bought the first song I ever sold, one that Barry and I had written together. When I called Barry that night, he was with Jimmy Smith, and Jimmy brought him to pick me up.” He sniffled once again, and used the napkin. “My clothes were torn so badly that there wasn't enough left to cover myself with, so Jimmy took off his jacket and wrapped it around me, and he paid for the motel room where Barry cleaned me up and took care of me. He even went and got antiseptic lotions and such, to help, and he never told anyone about it, but I've avoided ever having to face him again, since then. Barry always dealt with him when he wanted one of my songs, so I wouldn't have to. He knew that Barry and I were still close friends, despite the public stuff that said we hated each other, so he figured if anyone knew where Barry was, it'd be me.”

“Then, you had reason to believe Jimmy was innocent. I'm curious why you didn't come forward.”

“And have to explain how I know so much? I'd have to relive that night all over again, and if you think telling you about was hard just now, imagine what I'd be like if I had to tell it in court. Do you think a prosecutor wouldn't use it to tear me up on the stand, make it sound like I was lying because I was loyal to Jimmy for his help that night? No, thank you. Jimmy did me a favor, yes, but I've paid it back many times in other ways. He's on his own with this one.”

Sam looked at him and thought about what he'd just heard. “Tell me something else. Assume someone hated Barry enough to kill him, and hated Jimmy enough to frame him; who would you think it would be?”

Miller thought about it, Sam could tell, but then shook his head. “See, the first half of that is the problem,” he said, “because I can't imagine anyone ever hating Barry. He was just the absolute nicest guy you'd ever want to know, and he'd give you or anyone else the shirt off his back. I can't imagine who could hate him, not at all. Jimmy? Lots of people hate Jimmy, and not all of them are former clients. He's never been close to anyone who didn't end up hating his guts, and I do mean not anyone! If they've known Jimmy Smith for more than a few months, they hate him for one reason or another.” He wiped his nose once more. “How strange is it that the only two people he ever knew who didn't hate him would be me and Barry? And neither one of us can help him.”

“One last question, and it's about your child: did you know that Barry and Janice Peet got married, and that he was trying to take the little girl back from his sister?”

Miller's eyes went wide, and Sam knew the answer instantly. “No! He'd never said a word, not about getting married, and not about trying to get Abbie back! I had no idea, but I can tell you this, his sister will never let that little girl go. She couldn't have kids of her own, and when Barry said he had a child he couldn't raise, she jumped up to adopt her, and she's been very, very good for her. But give her up? If Barry was trying that, you might want to find out where she and her husband were the night he died.”

“Then they know that you were the mother?”

“Yes, but it was all sealed in the adoption records. I'll say it again, Mr. Prichard; if Barry was trying to take that little girl away from Marjorie and Philip, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they killed him. Abbie's their one and only reason for living.”

Sam left, completely blown away by everything he'd heard. Could it be possible that the killer was Barry's own sister, or his brother-in-law? He called Indie.

“Babe, it's too long to go into over the phone, but I need an address for Barry Wallace's sister, Marjorie and her husband. At the moment, they may be my top suspects in this mess.”

“Wow,” she said. “Hang on a minute and I'll have it for you.”

A minute later, Sam punched the address into his GPS and headed off into Arvada to find Barry's sister. He had a gut feeling that he was getting close to the real solution to the case, and wanted to bring it to a close as soon as he could.

He parked in front of the house and walked up to knock, but the door opened before he could raise his hand. A woman stood there, and he recognized her from the news story.

“Mrs. Newcomb? My name is Sam Prichard, I'm a private investigator hired to look into your brother's death. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Who hired you?” she asked.

Sam smiled. “Ma'am, that's confidential, and I'm not at liberty to answer that question, but I've come across some information that makes me think we really ought to talk.”

“I don't think I have anything to say to you, Mr...”

“Ma'am, you can talk to me and help me clear this up, or I have to turn it all over to the police, and let them come talk to you. Since some of it involves your daughter, I thought you might prefer to deal with me.”

Marjorie froze for a second, and then opened the screen door wide. “Come on,” she said stiffly, and let Sam enter, then led him into the living room of the house. A little girl of about twelve was sitting at a table in the adjacent dining room. Marjorie said, “Abbie, I've got to talk some business with this gentleman, Honey, so I want you to go up to your room for a while.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” the girl said, and picked up her things and walked up the stairs.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Prichard,” Marjorie said, and Sam sat down on a chair, while she sat on the sofa. “Now, what is this all about?”

“I know all the details behind your adoption of your little girl, Mrs. Newcomb, even the ones that are sealed. I also know that your brother was trying to take her back from you, and that you were dead set against that happening. I've also been told that you made threats about seeing Barry in hell first, and that you would send anyone who tried to help him there as well, at gunpoint.”

“That's ridiculous,” she said. “I've never said any such thing.”

“Mrs. Newcomb, Jimmy Smith is half convinced that you killed your brother and set him up to take the fall for it. If he goes on a lie detector and tells about his confrontation with you, I think you're gonna be trying to explain it to police detectives, not just me.”

Marjorie sat there and stared at him for twenty seconds. “Fine, that bastard Smith came out here and tried to convince me to let Barry have her back! He got pushy, and I lost my temper, and I grabbed my gun out of my purse and told him that if he didn't leave, I'd shoot him. And before you ask, yes, I have a concealed carry permit.”

“That doesn't matter to me, I have one, too. What I want to know is the last time you actually saw Barry and talked to him.”

“The last time I saw him was almost a month ago, when we met at my attorney's office to explain that the adoption is sealed, and can't be reopened. He got angry and said that he and his new wife would be better for Abbie, and I said it was ridiculous to rip a child away from the only family she's ever known, and try to force her to accept a new one. He threw the papers he had at me, and stormed out the door, and I never saw him again.” She sighed. “The last time I talked to him, however, was the day he disappeared. He called me and said he'd been thinking about what I said, and that I was right; that taking Abbie away from us and trying to make her understand that he was her father would only confuse her and cause her problems, so he was going to drop the lawsuit. We made up that day, and talked for about an hour, the first time we'd really talked in weeks. I even invited him to come to her dance recital the next week, and when he didn't show up, I got angry and thought he was going to start playing games; I didn't know we'd never see him alive again.”

Sam looked at her for a moment, trying to read her body language, but nothing about her seemed to indicate she was lying. He thanked her for her time and left, and called Indie as soon as he got into the van.

“Can you still get into Barry's phone records?” he asked, and she said, “Sure. What do you need?”

“Tell me if he called his sister the day he vanished.”

“Gimme a minute,” she said, and he could hear her tapping keys. “Yep,” she said a moment later. “He called her about an hour before his call to Jimmy Smith.”

“How long did the call last?” Sam asked.

“Hmm. Fifty-two minutes.”

Sam thought. “That doesn't sound like a call where people are angry and hateful, does it? According to his sister, he called her that morning to say he'd decided to drop his suit to take the little girl, because he'd come to understand that it would be a shock to her; the Newcombs are the only parents she's ever known, and she has no idea that Barry is supposed to be her father. To be honest, I believe she's telling the truth.”

“And you don't think Miller is involved?”

“Well, not in any way that's criminal, no.”

“Then that only leaves Janice, doesn't it?”

Sam sighed. “Yeah, and that's where I'm going next. I'll call you when I get done there.”

Sam pulled up to Janice's apartment building forty minutes later, and rang the bell to let her know someone was there. Her voice came over the intercom a moment later.

“Yes?”

“Janice, it's Sam Prichard. Can I come up and talk to you for a few minutes?”

The door buzzed and let him in, and he took the elevator up to the third floor, where her apartment was. He found it and tapped lightly on the door, and she let him in.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table and chairs. The apartment was an efficiency, with only a small bedroom, a bath and a kitchen, so he sat where she indicated. “What can I do for you, Sam?”

“The day Barry disappeared, Jimmy Smith called you. Can you tell me what it was about?”

“Jimmy? Jimmy didn't call me, not that day. I mean, I've talked to him before, but not that day.”

Sam sighed. “Janice, I saw his phone records, and they show that he did call your phone that day. It was just a little while after he called Samantha Harris and left that voicemail.”

Janice seemed to brighten a bit. “Oh, his phone! Yeah, I got a call from his phone, but it wasn't Jimmy.”

She stopped, and Sam looked at her, exasperated. “Well, if it wasn't Jimmy, then who was it?”

“Oh. It was his wife, I think her name was Sheila.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “She called you from Jimmy's phone? Did she say what she wanted?”

“Oh, yeah, she wanted to know if Jimmy had been over here lately. See, me and Jimmy had a little thing a couple years back, and she hates me. She called me to see if he'd been coming to see me again, and I told her no, and that I wasn't interested in seeing him, either. I didn't tell her me and Barry got married, but I said we were talking about it.”

Sam's mind began to race. “And you’re sure that was when she called you? That it wasn't Jimmy who called?”

She nodded emphatically. “Yeah, I'm sure. She was all mean and everything, really mad about something, and I didn't know what, but then she said he'd been talking to Sammie Harris, and I guess he just thought he'd been calling some of his old girlfriends. She said if I ever saw him again, she'd come after me, but I just told her to get a life, y'know? I didn't need that crap.”

Sam sat there and thought it all through for a moment, then got up and thanked her. He let himself out and started down the hall to the elevator.

Things were starting to make some sense, but he wasn't sure if it was any kind of sense he could put together and prove. He needed one more piece of information before he could be sure of what he was thinking, and that was at the county jail.

It took him another thirty minutes to get there, and he hurried in and said he needed to see Jimmy Smith. The jailer on duty told him to wait a minute, then called another to take him back. He was seated in the same interview room, and a minute later Smith was brought in.

“Sam,” Smith said with a grin. “Can I hope you've got some good news?”

“I'm not sure yet, Jimmy, but I think I’m onto something. I need to ask you a question, though. The day you called and left the voicemail for Samantha Harris, right after that, you made some other calls. Can you remember who else you called?”

Smith hesitated for a second, but then he shrugged. “I called a guy named Bill Miller, he's a friend of Barry's. I figured if anyone might be able to get Barry to talk to me, he could.”

Sam nodded. “And after that?”

Smith scrunched up his face in concentration. “I don't remember calling anyone else, after that. I went to get something from my office, and remember I left my phone at the house.”

“According to your phone records, right after you called Miller, you called your wife, but the call only lasted a few seconds.”

Smith's face lit up. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I called Sheila, cause I thought she was out shopping, but she was there at the house. When I called her I heard her phone ring, and I turned around and she was just coming into my den, so I hung up and told her I had to run to the office for a few minutes. I thought I'd put my phone in my pocket, but I must have set it down without thinking, and left it.”

Sam leaned forward. “Jimmy,” he said, “think about this: how long was she right behind you?”

Smith sat there and stared at him. “I don't know,” he said after a few seconds. “I thought she was just coming in, but she might have been there for a few minutes, I don't know. Why?”

Sam shook his head. “Never mind that, tell me this,” he said. “Who else knew about the message you left on Samantha's voicemail?”

Smith scrunched his face again. “Well, no one that I can think of. Sam, why are these questions so important?”

“Jimmy, if they are, I'll know it soon, and I can tell you then. For right now, though, don't tell anyone, and I mean not anyone, that I asked them! I'll be back in touch pretty soon—but I think we just caught a break—sort of.”

Sam called for the jailer and left, thinking through everything that he had learned. He'd been after one piece of information for the past two days, and he finally thought he had it, but there was one thing that still didn't fit in. He had an idea of who had framed Jimmy; the only remaining question was how that person had come into possession of Barry's head and hands. He had to find that out to make it all work and nail the killer.

13

Sam pulled up in front of Jimmy Smith's house about forty-five minutes later, and rang the doorbell. Mrs. Smith answered after a few moments, and smiled at him. “Mr. Prichard,” she said. “Is it good news, I hope?”

“Actually, it is, Mrs. Smith,” Sam said. “I'm pretty sure I’m going to be able to prove that Jimmy was framed, but I need your help with it.”

She looked excited. “Certainly, just tell me how! Won't you come in, where we can talk more comfortably?” She held the door wide and Sam stepped in, then followed her to the living room and they sat on the couch.

“Mrs. Smith, I've got an idea of who framed your husband for the murder of Barry Wallace, but I need you to help me figure out a few details.”

She looked a little confused. “Details? I don't know how I can help, but I'm willing to try.”

Sam smiled. “Good, because the one thing I can't figure out is how you killed Barry Wallace.”

Sheila Smith's eyes went wide instantly. “How I killed him? Mr. Prichard, what on earth would make you think I would, or even could do something like that?”

“Mrs. Smith, someone sent an envelope containing some of Barry's hairs, removed from his head after he was dead, to Samantha Harris. The only reason for the person framing your husband to do that was because that person knew that your husband had left a threatening message on her voice mail system; with that message, and then the envelope turning up, there was just barely enough evidence that your husband might be involved to allow a search warrant to be issued, and of course, the search found Barry's head and hands buried in your backyard. The problem is that not more than another forty yards ahead was a creek, and if someone wanted to dispose of those body parts, they would have walked that little bit further and tossed them in. The creek flows pretty fast; those pieces of Barry would have been miles downstream by the next morning, and there would be no connection to your husband at all. If he’d been the one to try to get rid of them, he would have thought of that.”

She looked at him coolly, and Sam realized that he was up against a shrewd woman. “I don't see how that leads you to think I killed Barry.”

“Only the killer would have known where Barry's head was, to get the hairs. And the killer would only know to send them to Samantha Harris if she knew that Jimmy had already left an incriminating message on her phone. The only one who knew that, who could possibly have known that, was you, Mrs. Smith.”

Mrs. Smith sat there and looked at him calmly. “And how do you intend to prove it, Mr. Prichard?”

Sam shrugged. “Actually, I don't think I need to prove it at all. See, this isn't about me getting your husband out of jail, Mrs. Smith. It's about me taking care of me. I was promised another fifty thousand if I prove he didn't do it. I'd think it would be worth a lot more than that to you for me to forget what I know, don't you?”

She smiled at him. “That depends on how much you want, doesn't it, Mr. Prichard? How much would that be?”

“Your husband told me that he keeps more than half a million here, in cash. I think half of that would make me forget.”

Mrs. Smith sat and stared at him for a full minute without saying a word, then smiled again. “And then what? I end up paying you over and over? You keep coming around to collect more when you run out?”

“Nah,” Sam said, “I'm not that greedy. With a quarter-million bucks, I can live good in Belize for the rest of my life, and that's what I've got in mind. You only have to pay me once, Mrs. Smith, and I'm out of your hair forever.”

She sat there another minute, and Sam was starting to think she wasn't going to go for it. Then she smiled once more.

“Will you wait here, Mr. Prichard, or are you going to insist on going with me to get it?”

“Oh, I'm not letting you out of my sight, Mrs. Smith. Lead the way.”

She got up and turned toward the back of the house, and Sam rose to follow. As they walked, he said, “There is one other thing you could do for me, though, just to satisfy my own curiosity.”

“And what's that, Mr. Prichard?” she asked.

“Tell me what really happened to Barry. I hate not knowing all the details.”

She glanced at him. “And I suppose you’re wearing a transmitter? Are the police listening to all of this, Mr. Prichard?”

“God, I hope not, since I just shook you down for a quarter-million dollars! No, I seriously just like to know. If you don’t want to tell me, that's fine, I was honestly only trying to satisfy my own curiosity.”

She smiled but said nothing and walked on into a large room that was decorated like a major corporate office. She went over to a massive chair that sat near a wall, flipped its cushion over and reached down to turn the dial of a safe that was built into its base.

Suddenly she looked up at him. “Barry came over here looking for Jimmy, but he wasn't here. I didn't like Barry very much, not since he was our pool boy for a while back when he was in high school; he always seemed too arrogant for his own good, and I never cared much for him. Anyway, I didn't go to the door when he knocked, I just watched from behind a curtain, and I saw him slip something under a rock outside. That made me wonder what he was up to, so as he was walking away, I stepped out and looked, and it was a note from Samantha Harris, telling Jimmy she wanted to see him again. It said she still loved him, and wanted to talk about getting things going again, and I simply lost my temper.”

She looked back down and finished opening the safe, then looked back up at Sam. “I called him, and he turned and saw me and came back. He tried to play innocent with me, and said he was just stopping by to see if Jimmy was home, but I was so mad—I shoved the note in his face and called him liar, and then I just pushed him, and he fell back and hit his head on a rock. He laid there, and I thought, oh, dear God, I've killed him, and I panicked. I decided I needed to get rid of his body. I had some plastic sheeting, and I put that into the bed of Jimmy's old pickup truck, and backed it up close to where he was laying, and then I managed to get him into it. I slammed the tailgate and hid the truck out behind the old woodshed so Jimmy wouldn't see it, and then I got to thinking about where to hide his body. I thought if I cut off his head and his hands it would make it harder to identify him, and something about that got me all excited, so I went and got an ax. I got up in the truck, and swung the ax to chop off one of his hands, and he screamed, and I just about died, but I grabbed the ax and swung it again and hit him in the head with it, and that was it. He was dead, then, so I went ahead and cut off his other hand and then his head. Do you know, Mr. Prichard, that it took me five chops to get his head off?”

Sam stood there, staring at her as she described murder and dismemberment, and barely managed to answer. “Yeah,” he said. “Those neck bones can be pretty tough.”

“Anyway, I put those parts in a big plastic trash bag and hid them in the woodshed, then waited ‘til way past midnight and drove the truck out by the Air Force Base and rolled him out of it. I didn't come up with the idea to hang it on Jimmy ‘til the next day, when I heard him calling that tramp and telling her to stay out of it. That made me madder, and I knew that if she got some parts of Barry, she'd go to the cops, and with that message, I figured they'd come search our place, so I cut off a piece of his scalp and mailed it to her, then took the bag with the head and stuff, and buried it out there that afternoon. Then it was just a waiting game.”

“Why did you agree to let him hire me?”

She shrugged, as if to say she didn't know if it was going to rain or not. “I didn't think there was any way you'd figure out it was me. I thought I'd covered my tracks too well for that, so I figured, sure, let him have a little hope. It'd make me look all that much more innocent, the poor wife, all worried about hubby, right? Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it's gonna cost me another quarter million, but I've got everything else, and he'll still be gone. Works for me. The bastard should never have played around with those whores of his!”

She looked down at the open safe, and then reached in and took out a bag and began filling it with stacks of money. “Would you come over here for a moment, Mr. Prichard?” Sam walked slowly over to where she was standing, and she pointed into the safe. “As you can see, Mr. Prichard, I am giving you exactly what you asked for, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. I'm not even deducting the fifty thousand you already got from me, but what I really wanted you to see, Mr. Prichard, is the pistol that was lying in the top of the safe. I could easily have pulled it out and shot you just now, Mr. Prichard, while you were so engrossed in my story, but I didn't. I find that I can't sleep very well since I killed Barry; he haunts me, even in the daytime. I keep seeing him everywhere I go, everywhere I look, so I didn't want to kill you, Mr. Prichard. I don't need another ghost to haunt me.”

She closed the bag and offered it to Sam, but he didn't take it. Instead, he said, “I don't want your money Mrs. Smith. All I wanted was to get you to confess to murder, and you just did. You asked if I was wearing a transmitter, and I said no, because I'm not. You don't need one, not in the age of cell phones. All I did was call Detective Parks and told her where I was going and that I was going to ask you to pay me off to keep me quiet, and that all she needed to do was listen in, because I left the line wide open.” He took his phone out of his shirt pocket, and showed her the red light that said it was in an active call and on speakerphone setting. “Did you get it all, Karen?”

A tiny voice came from the phone. “Every word, Sam, and all of it recorded. We're driving into the estate now.”

Sam put the phone back into his pocket, took the bag of money from her hand and set it back down in the safe, then closed it. He took Sheila Smith by her arm and walked her out through the house and into the waiting arms of Detective Karen Parks of the Denver Police Department's Homicide Division.

“You're coming down to give a statement, aren't you, Sam?” Karen asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I'll be there shortly. I need to go see my client first, is that okay? I think I should be the one to tell him.”

She nodded. “That's fine, I want to see you right after, though. And I'll see that he's released when you get there.”

Sam nodded, and walked over to get into his van. He drove back to the jail, and the jailer smiled when he walked in.

“I got a phone call from the prosecutor's office a little while ago, and they said to release Mr. Smith to you, Mr. Prichard. He's almost through processing, and will be right up.”

Sam just nodded. “Don't tell him anything yet,” he said. “I think I should be the one to tell him what's going on.”

“No problem, all we know is that the charge against him has been dismissed, and we're to let you take him out of here. He should be done in a just a few minutes.”

Sam sat down in a chair and waited, and about ten minutes later, Jimmy Smith was escorted out of the jail. He saw Sam and broke into a huge grin.

“Sam! You did it, man, you did it! I don't know how to thank you!” He reached out and grabbed Sam's hand, and shook it ‘til Sam thought it was going to come off.

Sam finally got it back. “Look, Jimmy,” he said as they walked out the door into the sunlight, “there's something I gotta tell you...”

“Well, first, just tell me who it was who did this to me! That's what I want to know more than anything!”

Sam nodded. “Well, that's part of it. I did find out who really killed Barry, and who was trying to frame you for it, but I don't think you're gonna be all that glad.” He cleared his throat. “Jimmy—it was your wife, Sheila. She caught Barry bringing you a note from Samantha Harris, and lost her mind over it, and she hit him and thought she'd killed him, so she was trying to hide his body before you found it.”

Smith looked shocked, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He tried to say something twice, and then managed to croak out, “Sheila...”

“Yeah. She had it in her head that if she cut of his hands and his head, it'd make it harder to identify him, so she got an ax and chopped off a hand, but he wasn't dead, and he screamed, and—well, then she hit him in the head with the ax, and that pretty much did him in. She went ahead and cut his other hand and his head off, and then dumped the body that night out where it was found. I don't know where she kept his head and hands, but she planted them in the yard and sent the hairs off to Samantha to get back at you for your affairs.”

Smith was just staring out through the windshield as Sam drove, and didn't say anything more for a long time. Sam brought him along to the police department so that he could talk to the detective, and gave his statement to another cop while Karen talked to Smith. When he was done, he drove Smith to his house.

He parked in the driveway and let Smith out, then started to drive away.

“Hey!” Smith yelled at him. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

Sam stopped and looked at him. “What?”

Jimmy managed a weak smile. “Hell, man, I owe you another fifty thousand dollars! Aren't you gonna come and get it?”

Sam looked at him. “Mail me a check,” he said, and drove out of the estate. He had one more stop to make before he considered himself finished, and wanted to get it over with.

He rang the doorbell and waited only a moment before Samantha Harris answered. “Mr. Prichard,” she said, seeming surprised to see him. “What can I do for you?”

“You can answer just one question for me, Miss Harris, and then I'll go and leave you alone. You told me that it was Barry who called Jimmy Smith from your phone, and when I told you that Jimmy said it was you, you insisted that it was Barry. Trouble is, I'm quite certain now that you lied about that, and to be perfectly honest, I just need to know why. It was you who called Jimmy, wasn't it? Tell me why you lied to me.”

She looked for a moment like she was going to get angry, but then she seemed to collapse into herself. She looked at him for a long moment, and then said, “Barry died at Jimmy's place, didn't he?”

Sam nodded. “He did,” he said, “but it wasn't Jimmy who killed him. It was his wife, Sheila. She killed him because she said she caught him bringing Jimmy a note from you, saying that you wanted to start up your affair again.”

The woman almost did collapse, then, and had to lean against the doorframe for support. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, God, I didn't know—I asked Barry to take the note because he said he was going to go and tell Jimmy in person that he wasn't going to sign. I never dreamed he'd run into her...”

“But he did, and now he's dead. Why did you really call Jimmy that day?”

She sighed. “I did call to tell him Barry wouldn't sign,” she said, “but I was gonna tell him I thought I could talk him into it. He never gave me a chance, though; he started yelling at me and saying I was the reason Barry wasn't listening to him. The truth was, I thought if I got Barry to sign, he might take me back, and maybe he'd realize how good we were together.”

“So you sent Barry there to leave a note saying you loved him? That's all it was? And you thought you could get Barry to go ahead and leave the band, so you were trying to use that to get close to Jimmy again?” He shook his head. “You didn't mean for anything bad to happen, I get that—but in the long run, it was your selfishness that cost Barry his life, and took away the future he could have had. You're an amazing piece of work, Miss Harris.”

Sam turned and walked away, ignoring the weeping woman who was shouting that she was sorry.

He got home about three in the afternoon, and told Indie all of it. She was as shocked as he had been at the way it had all turned out, but she went with him to Stan's garage to meet up with the band. They were all there, fresh from Barry's funeral, just waiting after Sam had called them and asked them to get together, and he sat in one of the folding chairs and told the whole story again.

Chris stared into space, Stan got angry and began to pace around, Candy just sat there, and Janice went and sat in the grass outside and cried. Indie went and sat with her for a while, and finally the two of them came back into the garage.

“At least we know what happened,” Janice said, “and that means a lot, Sam.”

“Yeah, man, it does,” Chris said.

They sat and talked a little longer, and then Sam said he wasn't up to rehearsing that evening, so he and Indie went home to be with Kenzie.

They sat in the dining room and played Go Fish and Old Maid with her for a little while, but Kenzie was more interested in playing with Samson, so they let her go. Sam and Indie gathered up all the papers she'd printed out on the case and put them into a file, and marked it “Closed,” then went to make dinner. No one was feeling very energetic, so they settled for tuna salad sandwiches and chips that night.

They decided to watch a movie, and Sam said he wanted to see a comedy. He said life was too much sometimes, and he just needed a good laugh or two, so they found a movie that sounded good, and laughed themselves silly. By the time it was over, it was time for Kenzie to go to bed, and Sam and Indie went to bed only a few minutes later.

Sam was too quiet, Indie said, so she put some effort into getting his attention, and a few minutes later it dawned on him that everything was alright in his world.

The sun came through the curtains, which had been opened, and woke Sam around eight the next morning. He rolled over and saw that Indie wasn't there, so he got up and showered and went out to the kitchen. She was making omelets, and Kenzie was at the table. Sam put his finger to his lips, and Kenzie smiled and did the same as he snuck up on Indie and grabbed her from behind, then began kissing her neck and ears.

She squealed. “Sam!” she said. “Darn it, I've told you what that does to me! Stop it, or I'll sleep upstairs tonight!”

“Fine, fine,” he said, but he let her go and went to sit at the table with Kenzie. A few minutes later they were all eating omelets, and laughing and talking normally once again.

“So,” Sam said, “today we are going car shopping, but I was thinking that I already have one car too many, so I thought we'd trade off the van, and get us a family vehicle. I can drive the Vette as my personal car, and if I need the bigger car, you can drive it.”

Indie looked at him. “Um, Sam—I can't drive a stick shift.”

Sam smiled at her. “You can learn,” he said. “I'll teach you, and soon you'll be begging to drive the Vette! We'll just buy an extra car seat for Kenzie and keep it in the garage, for when one of us needs to take her somewhere in it.”

Indie smiled, and seemed excited about learning to drive the Corvette, but she was more interested in what kind of car they were going to buy that day.

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “An SUV, maybe, something with four-wheel drive, for the snow in the winter?”

“Now, that might be a good idea,” Indie said. “I hate driving in the winter time, but four-wheel drive would make it a lot better.”

“And an SUV would mean more room for grocery shopping and such. I think we're onto something, here. Let's all get dressed and ready, and we'll go.”

Kenzie ran up the stairs, with Indie yelling at her not to run up the stairs. Indie went to change out of her nightgown, and Sam followed her and watched, his eyes roaming over her body as he smiled.

She caught him looking. “What?” she asked with a grin.

He smiled at her. “Baby,” he said, “I'm just admiring the view!”

BOOK III

1

“I'm getting' married in the mornin'

Ding dong, the bells are gonna chime!

Pull out the stopper, let's have a whopper,

But get me to the church on time!”

Sam Prichard, private eye, loved to sing in the shower. Being a private eye was his second career, after his first one as a police detective was ended by a bullet that shattered his right hip and left him with a permanent limp, but to be perfectly honest, Sam loved to sing anywhere, which led to what he thought of as his third career, as lead singer for the band Step Back Once.

Sam had been hired to locate missing lead singer Barry Wallace a few weeks earlier, but Barry turned up very dead, leaving the band without a singer. When they half-heartedly talked Sam into singing one of his own songs for them, it suddenly dawned on them that they'd found a new one, and Sam had done several gigs with them since.

Most of the songs that Sam wrote, though, were more in the country music genre, and after listening to a few of them, the band had unanimously voted to go country and let Sam write their music. Since then, they'd been getting more gigs in country venues, and Sam was becoming a popular vocalist.

The song he was singing in the shower that morning, however, had nothing to do with the band. It was because he and his fiancé, Indie, were planning to be married in just a few hours, and would be leaving for their honeymoon a few hours after that. He really was “gettin' married in the morning,” and he wanted to sing about it.

The wedding was set for 10 a.m. at the nearby Baptist Church, and the reception for the three dozen guests would be held at the Holiday Inn's small banquet room. The catering was all arranged, the cake was ready, and Sam had spent a ridiculous amount of money making sure that Indie would have the wedding she'd always dreamed of, and then the honeymoon to go with it. He didn't mind, though; she was well worth it!

“Sam, Sam,” his soon-to-be stepdaughter, Mackenzie, yelled through the bathroom door, “Mommy's got breakfast ready and she said you gotta stop singin' and come eat before it gets cold!”

“Okay, sweetheart,” Sam yelled back, “I'll be right out!” He rinsed the last of the shampoo out of his hair and cut the water off, then stepped out and dried himself quickly. Five minutes later, he was sitting down at the table, where Kenzie was waiting for him to help her with her scrambled cheesy ham and eggs.

“What do you want, Sweetie?” he asked, and she said, “Ketchup! And salt and pepper!”

He dutifully applied the salt and pepper, then squirted ketchup onto her pile of eggs in a swirly pattern that delighted her. When Indie set Sam’s own plate in front of him, he treated his to the salt and pepper, but let the ketchup slide; he wasn't a big ketchup and eggs man, he said when Kenzie asked him why.

“Sam likes his eggs without ketchup, Kenzie. There's nothing wrong with that,” Indie said when Kenzie gave him an odd look.

“But it tastes better with ketchup!” Kenzie insisted. “It just does!”

“To you, it does,” Indie explained patiently, “but not to everybody. You don't like broccoli, but Sam does, and he thinks it tastes great, even though you think it tastes like dog doo.”

Sam looked at Indie. “Dog doo?” he asked.

“Okay, she's four, remember? I speak on her level on some things!”

Sam nodded. “I gotcha. That's why you looked at me last night and said, 'I gotta go potty,' right? Because you were speaking to me on my level?”

Indie laughed. “No, that was just plain parent-ese, and you speak it too, sometimes, lately! Comes with having a little one running around the house.”

“Good point,” he conceded. “And worth it!”

They ate their breakfast and talked about the upcoming wedding and honeymoon adventures. Kenzie was excited about their getting married, because it meant she'd finally have a Daddy of her own—her father had been a Marine who was killed in a training accident before she was even born—and she'd decided Sam was the one she wanted even before Sam and Indie had realized they were falling in love.

Kenzie wouldn't be going on the honeymoon, however. She and their clumsy cat, Samson, would be staying with her two grandmothers— Sam's mother, Grace, and Indie's, whose name was Kim. The two women had met during a wedding planning dinner three weeks earlier and had become almost inseparable friends—which shocked Sam, since Kim was known to talk right out loud to her “spirit guide,” Beauregard, regardless of where she was or who was around. Grace had heard about Beauregard and suddenly admitted to a fascination with the spiritual. The next thing Sam knew, Kim was moving into a spare room at Grace's house.

Beauregard had suggested it, they said, and both women thought it a grand idea. Sam thought they were both nuts, but kept his opinions to himself. The last thing he needed was to get Beauregard mad at him!

In any event, when Grace suggested Kenzie stay with them during the honeymoon, the idea made so much sense that he and Indie were happy to agree. They had her all packed and ready, so Kenzie could go home with them right after the wedding. Kenzie was looking forward to it, because both of her grandmas loved to go shopping for the little girl, and with two weeks to have them all to herself, she knew she was about to hit the jackpot!

Sam had given his mother some extra money, just in case, and Indie had warned hers not to tell the child too many stories about spirits and ghosts and other supernatural things. Kenzie was sleeping soundly every night in her own bed upstairs, and Indie didn't want that to change!

Sam and Indie, on the other hand, would be on their way to Hawaii, where two weeks of fun, excitement, love and privacy awaited them. Indie had once confessed to Sam that she would love a Hawaiian honeymoon, and he'd called a friend who was a travel agent a couple of days later. The things the agent recommended sounded great to Sam, so he bought the whole package.

Sam and Indie hadn't known each other as long as most couples who were embarking on such a lifelong journey. They'd met just seven weeks earlier, when Sam had stumbled into his first PI-type case. He was looking for a missing little girl, and there were signs that her father had done something with her. The man was involved with an online drug ring, and Sam placed an ad on Craigslist for a computer hacker to help him learn more about the ring and what the man was doing. Indie had answered it by tracking Sam down, and showing up while he was eating lunch at a Taco Bell. During their conversation, Sam had learned that she had a little girl, and was currently homeless.

Sam owned a big, empty four-bedroom house, so he did the only thing he could think of and offered to let her use one while she helped him on the case, which they solved together, bringing the little girl home safely. Sam liked having Indie and Kenzie around, though, so he offered Indie a job as cook and housekeeper, which she happily agreed to accept, since it came with room and board, including a room for Kenzie.

One thing led to another, and by the time she'd been there three weeks, he had proposed—and she had accepted! The only one who wasn't surprised was Kenzie, who had asked by the third day if Sam could be her daddy. Indie had already decided that Sam was the nicest guy she'd ever met, and let herself think about the possibility, and the rest sort of just fell into place.

Sam, for his own part, had noticed immediately that Indie was beautiful, and the more he was around her the more he thought she was the finest woman he'd ever known. That, plus the fact that little Kenzie had wrapped his heart around her within the first few hours he'd known her, and he was hooked. All it took was time for him to realize that he wasn't the only one fantasizing about their being together. He asked her to date him, but less than two days later he knew what he really wanted, and bought an engagement ring. When she said yes, Sam decided he was in Heaven.

They'd spent the last four weeks planning, and now it was almost time. Sam was walking on air, he said, happy and excited to be so close to having the girl of his dreams as his wife, and Indie was so happy she kept blurting out things like, “Oh, my God, I can't believe we're really doing this!”

They finished breakfast and began getting ready to go. Everything was already packed, both for their trip and for Kenzie and Samson (who was snoozing contentedly in his pet carrier), so all they had to do was load the dishwasher and get into their truck and head out. The truck was a Honda Ridgeline, and had been a compromise; Indie's old Ford Taurus was the only thing she had left from Kenzie's father, but it was in pretty rough shape. Sam had made a deal with her: let him buy them a new family vehicle that she could drive, and he'd put the Taurus in the garage and restore it over time, so that one day she could give it to Kenzie. With four doors and four wheel drive, the Ridgeline was big enough and secure enough for all of them, but Indie could handle it easily.

They got to the church with an hour to spare, which was good, since Indie had to go with her mother and mother-in-law-to-be to get into her dress. Sam got to go into another room and change into his tuxedo, and his best man, his former police partner Dan Jacobs, was waiting for him there, along with his band. They shooed the two girls from the band out, and Sam started getting into his “monkey suit.”

“I've got the music all set,” Chris Lancaster said. Chris was lead guitarist for the band, and usually manager, as well. Sam had written a special song for the wedding, a surprise for Indie that they had been forced to rehearse in secret, when she wasn't with him. It wasn't easy, but they'd gotten it down pat, and were anxious to play it before an audience for the first time. “Everyone is ready, man, and we can't wait to see Indie's face!”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “me, either! I just hope she likes it. It's not like any of the others.”

“Dude, relax,” said Stan, the drummer. “You had Candy and Janice in tears with it, I guarantee Indie's gonna love it!”

They got him dressed and ready, and almost before he knew it, it was time. Sam was called out to the sanctuary to take his place at the altar. He walked out and thanked everyone who congratulated him, then stood where the preacher told him to. There were many whispers among the small crowd about how sharp he looked, and how they could barely notice his limp, lately, especially when he was so well dressed, and Sam had to suppress a grin.

Janice, the band's keyboard player, began the Wedding March, and it was all Sam could do not to start singing, “Here comes the bride...” but he managed it. A moment later, little Kenzie came out, spreading flower petals for her mother to walk on, and Sam felt his throat constrict. The child was as beautiful as her mother, and he suddenly felt very thankful that they'd come into his life.

There she was. Indiana Perkins, who was about to become Indiana Prichard, walked out of the bride room and into the aisle, and Sam's breath caught. He had not seen the wedding dress, yet, sticking to the old tradition, and he couldn't believe how beautiful she looked in it. She walked slowly, her mother by her side since her father was no longer living, and Sam thought it was going to take forever and a day for her to reach him, but then she was there beside him, and they stood facing each other.

And then her eyes took on a look of confusion, as Janice began to play a different melody, and then Chris joined in with his guitar, and Candy on bass, and finally Stan's drums.

And Sam pulled a microphone out from behind his back, and began to sing. (Click to listen)

If anybody had told me,

That someone like you,

Could ever love me,

The way that you do,

I'd've said, "You're a liar,

There's just two things I believe,

Only fools play with fire,

And there's no love for me.”

But you've made the difference in my life,

With the love you've shown to me,

You've made the difference, taught me how,

To be the man I've longed to be,

You've made the difference, deep inside,

Oh, you've opened my eyes to see,

And this broken heart has healed inside of me,

Yeah this broken heart has healed inside of me.

If anybody had told me,

Just the touch of your hand,

Could make all these changes,

In all that I am,

I'd've said, "You're a dreamer,

Love tore my world apart!

But now look at the difference that you've made in my heart!”

But you've made the difference in my life,

With the love you've shown to me,

You've made the difference, taught me how,

To be the man I've longed to be,

You've made the difference, deep inside,

Oh, you've opened my eyes to see,

And this broken heart has healed inside of me,

Lord this broken heart has healed inside of me.

If anybody had told me,

That there'd come a day,

When I would know what love is,

When I would feel this way,

I'd've said you were crazy,

gotten up and walked away,

But one look into your eyes,

This is all I can say,

But you've made the difference in my life,

With the love you've shown to me,

You've made the difference, taught me how,

To be the man I've longed to be,

You've made the difference, deep inside,

Oh, you've opened my eyes to see,

And this broken heart has healed inside of me,

Yeah this broken heart has healed inside of me.

Yeah this broken heart has healed inside of me,

Oh this broken heart has healed inside of me.

Sam finished singing, and looked lovingly into Indie's tear-filled eyes, and she lost all composure. She threw her arms around him and kissed him, to the delight of the crowd that burst into spontaneous applause. The preacher, standing there half stunned, suddenly began to laugh, and leaned around them to say, “I think she's trying to skip ahead to the ending,” which set the whole crowd to laughing and cheering.

It took a moment for them to pull themselves together, but finally they did, after peeking out at the crowd and smiling at everyone there. They faced the preacher who wouldn't resist one last laugh. “Is it okay if I do my part now?” he asked, and Indie covered her face as she nodded.

“Dearly beloved,” the preacher said in the age-old traditional beginning, and neither Sam nor Indie could focus on his words until he got to their parts.

“Samuel Wayne Prichard, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, to love, honor and cherish, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

Sam swallowed hard, and said, “I do.”

The preacher turned to Indie. “Indiana Katherine Perkins, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, to love, honor and cherish, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

Indie, with tears streaming, said, “I do.”

The preacher smiled. “By the power vested in me by the State of Colorado and the Baptist Church, I now pronounce you to be Man and Wife! Now, you may kiss the bride!”

The crowd erupted into cheers again, and Sam and Indie left the church to get into the back of the limousine that awaited them for the drive to the Holiday Inn, the tin cans tied to its back rattling along the pavement as it pulled away. Everyone else would be along as soon as they could get to their cars, though the band would take a few minutes more to get all their instruments. Sam and Indie were married, and looking forward to a life together.

If they'd known what was in store for them on their honeymoon, they might have eloped!

2

Sam and Indie said goodbye to Kenzie and their mothers as the boarding call was announced, and went to get into their seats on the airplane. Indie almost made it to the gate before rushing back for one more kiss goodbye from Kenzie, but then they were through the gate and walking down the ramp onto the 757 that would take them to Honolulu, Hawaii and into the biggest adventure of their lives.

They got seated, with Sam at the window and Indie beside him, and Sam looked at his bride.

“Have I mentioned today that I love you?” he asked her, and she smiled as she nodded happily.

“Only about fifty times, but I never get tired of hearing it,” she said. “You can say it as often as you want!”

“That’s good, because I'll probably say it a lot, now. It just seems to roll off my tongue, I can't imagine why.”

“Oh, Sam,” she said. “Am I dreaming? Did we really just get married?”

He laughed. “We did, baby, we sure did. I know what you mean though, it's like it hasn't really sunk in yet. I keep thinking I'll wake up, and it's still yesterday. Or worse, that I'll wake up and you were just a dream, and none of this is real.”

Indie pinched his arm, and he yelped. “Was that real?” she asked innocently.

“If it wasn't, I'm in the most realistic dream I've ever had! Ouch, babe, that really hurt!”

Indie laughed, but leaned down to kiss the spot she had pinched. “I'm sorry. I just thought you wanted to know if I was real or not, and I promise you, while I may be dreaming this, I'm still very real, and very much in love with you!”

Sam leaned over and kissed her, and then sat back to watch out the window as the workers loaded luggage and other things into the plane. They closed the hatch they were working at and moved off to another airplane a few places down the line.

“Looks like they got all the bags stowed,” Sam said, “so we should be taking off soon. Next stop, Honolulu! And I get you all to myself for the next two weeks!”

“Mmmm,” she said, “I do like the sound of that! But what will you do with me, Mr. Prichard, for two whole weeks?”

Sam grinned. “I've got a whole list in my head, babe, and if any of them scare you, I've got plenty more where they came from!”

“Oh, if they scare me, huh?” Indie asked, smiling. “And do you really think that's likely?”

“Nah, but I can hope, right?”

Indie sighed. “I suppose,” she said. “But you never can tell, I might like 'em!”

“I'm hoping so!”

She smacked him playfully on the arm. “You're so bad!”

“Hey, you married me, remember?”

She smiled. “Yes, I did, and it's made me the happiest girl alive!”

“Well, it's making me pretty happy, too, you know,” Sam said. “I mean, look at me— I was a lonely, grouchy old bachelor until you came along and swept me off my feet.”

Indie looked at him, in mock shock. “I swept you off—now, wait just a minute, Buster, I distinctly recall being the one who got swept off her feet! You and your 'Prince Charming' act got me hooked, and I never even saw it coming!”

“Prince Charming? Now I'm Prince Charming? What does that make you, Cinderella or Snow White?”

“Hmm, I hadn't thought it through that far. I think I'll go with Cinderella. I was pretty poor, y'know, and you did work me pretty hard for a while there, always cleaning your house, cooking your meals...”

Sam grabbed her and pulled her close, then shushed her with a kiss. He was still kissing her when the stewardess closed the door and the sound of the airplane began to change. A moment later, air started coming from the vents, and he knew they were about to leave the parking space and taxi to the runway.

Sam sat back and relaxed in his seat, clutching Indie's tiny hand in his own big one, and they looked out the window together. Sam was curious about the workers out there, and watched as they moved around the big plane like worker bees around a hive. He was startled, though, when one of them hurried up to the plane carrying a huge yellow and purple duffel-type bag on a sling over his shoulder, so big and heavy that he seemed barely able to move with it, and yanked open the luggage hatch again. The guy thrust the bag inside and turned around and ran, just as the plane began to move backward and out of its space.

“That's odd,” Sam said, and Indie leaned over to try to see what he was looking at.

“What's odd, babe?” she asked, but he shook his head.

“A guy ran up at the last minute with somebody's bag, and opened the hatch. I would've thought it would set off some alarm in the cockpit, but as soon as he shut it again, we started moving. Maybe the pilots knew and were watching.”

“Yeah,” Indie said. “Probably just somebody got lucky and their suitcase didn't go to Istanbul!”

They laughed, and then the plane began to taxi off toward the runway, and to their new lives together. Sam watched the planes and buildings slide past, and then they were moving onto the runway.

The pilot sat on the tarmac for a few moments as two other planes took off, and then it was their turn, as he positioned the plane to face the whole length of the runway. A second later, Sam and Indie felt themselves pressed backward as the pilot gave the big jet engines all of their power, and they began rolling faster and faster. The ground outside slid past them at incredible speed, and then the nose came up, and a few seconds after that, the sound of the wheels came to a sudden halt as they lifted off and were in the air.

The plane climbed rapidly, the engines screaming and roaring as they pushed it to ever-greater heights. Sam loved watching the land grow smaller and smaller below them, as the plane rose higher and higher into the air. People and cars went from recognizable objects to tiny little things that seemed to be moving across a toy landscape, and the entire effect always fascinated him.

The captain announced that they had reached cruising altitude, and the seat belt sign went off. A few people got up and began to move around, while the flight attendants started preparing to offer drinks and pillows. Sam and Indie stayed in their seats.

“I love flying,” Indie said. “I have since I was a kid. When my dad was alive, we used to go on vacations and we always took a plane. It was as much fun to go to wherever we were going as it was to be there.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I've always liked it. I haven't done a lot of flying, but I love it when I can. My first flight was after I became a cop, and I got sent to New York to bring back a runaway that turned up there, a twelve year old girl. I want you to know, that little brat actually tried to convince the stewardess that I had kidnapped her, and I had to show the pilot my paperwork to calm things down.”

Indie laughed. “Girls can definitely be trouble,” she said. “And now, look what you've done, you went and married one of us! You should have learned your lesson from that one!”

Sam took her hand. “I'm pretty happy with my choice, here. babe, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me.”

Indie smiled and snuggled as close as the seats would allow. “I'm pretty happy with it, too, and I feel the same way about you.” She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “So, what's on the agenda for this trip? You've been pretty secretive about it, so far.”

“Well, when we get there, we'll get checked into our room at the Marriott on Waikiki Beach. It'll still be just a little after five, since we're chasing the sun, so by the time we get in and unpacked, it'll be time to have dinner in one of the five different restaurants there. Afterward, we'll go and see one of the big shows in Honolulu, and then I'm going to take you back to our room and show you some of those wild ideas I was talking about.”

Indie giggled. “Sounds like fun,” she said. “I'm all for it!”

The flight took almost eight hours, and since neither of them had gotten a lot of sleep the night before, they both dozed off for a few of them. When they woke, it was time for their in-flight meal—Sam told Indie that airline food always left you hungry, so they'd still need dinner later—and after that, they were both so excited about the adventures they were going to have that they spent the remaining flight time cuddling and chatting.

The plane landed, as Sam had said, at just a little past 5 p.m. Hawaii time, and it took more than half an hour to get their bags, watching the carousel and waiting for someone to get them off the plane and into the terminal. Sam saw that yellow and purple duffel come through, and noticed that it was picked up by a man who appeared to be Middle Eastern, but then he spotted his own suitcases and forgot about it. Indie's came through a moment later, and they hurried off to catch a shuttle to their hotel. By the time they got checked in it was nearly six-thirty, and Indie admitted she was hungry again, so they just dropped their bags in their room and headed for the restaurant.

“This place is fantastic,” Indie said as they ate the most wonderful food she'd ever tasted. She had ordered lau lau, kalua pork, lomi lomi and rice, and every bite she took resulted in a moan of pleasure. Sam, being a simpler sort, had ordered London Broil and potatoes and was making similar noises.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I don't know if I've ever eaten anything this good in my life, except for your cooking, of course.”

“Hey, don't worry, this is better than anything I can do,” she said with a smile. “It's okay to say it's better than my cooking, I won't get my feelings hurt!”

“Then it really is the best I've ever had! I take it you like the stuff you’re eating? What is that, fish?”

“There's salmon in this part,” she said, pointing at the lomi lomi, “but this is pork, and I think this is, too.”

Sam looked at her plate and shrugged his shoulders. “I'll stick to steak,” he said. “At least I know where it comes from.”

“Hey, come on, we're n Hawaii! You've gotta try some new things! Taste this,” she said, pushing a fork full of meat toward him. “It's pork and some kind of fish, it's really good!”

Sam scowled, but took the fork and tried the bite she offered him. He chewed for a moment, then his eyes went wide. “Wow,” he said, “that is good. I'll have to try it next time.”

“See?” Indie said with a grin. “It's okay to try new things, they won't hurt you!”

“Okay, okay, I won't be such an old stick in the mud. But I'm gonna finish this steak for now.”

They finished their dinner and took a cab to a theater downtown, where a Hawaiian dance show was playing. Between the hula dancers, fire dancers and other acts they saw, both Sam and Indie were amazed.

“I wonder,” Sam said as they watched, and Indie looked at him.

“Wonder what?”

“I wonder if you can move like that? That would fit right into some of those ideas of mine.”

She slapped him on the arm. “You'll be perfectly happy with the way I can move, Mr. Prichard!”

“I already am, Mrs. Prichard!” he said, and then he pulled her close and kissed her.

“Mmm,” she said, “you keep that up and we may not get to finish the show. I’ve got a few ideas of my own running through my head about now!”

“Shh,” Sam said, “watch! It's coming up on a good part!”

She pinched him.

When the show was over, they took a cab back to their hotel, and went straight to their room. Sam took a fast shower, then got into bed and waited patiently as Indie spent half an hour in the bathroom.

“Hey!” he called out. “Did you fall into the sink and drown?”

“Be patient,” she yelled back. “I'm making myself beautiful for you!”

Sam sat there for a moment and thought about what she said. “But all that takes is a smile!” he yelled to her.

“Yeah, and that's what I'm gonna put on your face in about five minutes! Just wait, you'll see!”

Sam’s lips pulled into a smile then, and he was still wearing it when the bathroom door finally opened. Indie hid behind it for a second, and then one leg came around, bare as far as he could see, and his eyebrows shot up.

“Lookin' good so far,” he said, his voice husky.

An arm came around the door, and then Indie stepped out and let Sam see her. She was more beautiful than he'd ever imagined she could be, and the white, lacy negligee she was wearing only accentuated it.

“Oh, my,” Sam said, as she walked toward him, and the way she moved caused him to squirm around in the sheet. She came to his side of the bed and sat down, and then leaned down to kiss him gently. When she sat back up, Sam was staring at her, and she knew that he was very pleased with what he saw.

“Come to bed,” he whispered hoarsely, and she did.

3

Sam's phone was ringing, and he groped toward the nightstand for it. He glanced at it and saw that it was his mother calling.

“Hello,” he said groggily.

“Sam!” his mother shouted through the phone at him. “Oh, thank God! I've been trying to get through to you for an hour! Are you watching the TV?”

“Huh?” he said. “Why?”

“Terrorists, Sam! Terrorists are saying they've got nukes all over the country and they're gonna set them off if the government doesn't give them what they want! One of them is here in Denver, and there's one in Honolulu!”

Sam was instantly awake. “Okay, I want you to take Kenzie and get out of the city, now! Go out to Dad's old cabin, and I'll come for you there! I'm gonna turn on the news now!”

Indie was awake and staring at him. “What's going on?” she asked, “What's happening?”

Sam shook his head. “I don't know, yet. Mom says terrorists have planted nuclear bombs around the country. There's one in Denver and one here. That's all I got so far.” He reached for the TV remote and hit the power button, and a news announcer came on immediately.

“...Security says the threat is genuine. No one knows where these devices are, but the information sent to the FBI describing the mechanisms, and the photos and sample material indicates that they are real, and could be powerful enough to do significant damage. If you're in one of these cities, it may be difficult or impossible to get out, because people fleeing are jamming the roadways, and all commercial transportation is currently suspended. Since we do not know where the devices are located in the cities, the safest thing you may be able to do is remain in your homes. Again, if you’re just tuning in, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have released a statement that they have received notice and evidence that twelve nuclear devices have been smuggled into the United States and placed somewhere in the following cities: New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Honolulu. No particular organization has claimed responsibility at this time, but the terrorists are demanding that the US pull all of its troops out of the Middle East immediately, and say they will detonate the devices if the withdrawal is not announced and begun within seventy-two hours. The Department of Homeland Security says the threat is very genuine and should be taken seriously. If you're in one of these cities, it may be difficult or impossible to get out, because people trying to flee are jamming the roadways, and all commercial transportation is currently suspended. Since we have no way of knowing where the devices are located in these cities, the safest thing you can do is remain in your homes.”

His mother was still talking in the phone. “...and Kim is getting us some food and clothes packed up now. We'll be out of here in fifteen minutes, but the local news says all the roads are jammed with people trying to get out of the city, Sam, I don't know if we can go anywhere...”

“Mom,” Sam said, “Mom! Listen! From where you're at, you can take Bear Creek Boulevard down to West Morrison, then follow that all the way out to Idledale. Once you get there, you can take Bear Creek Road on out to the highway, and you should be able to reach the road to the cabin! You've got our Ridgeline, it's four wheel drive, so if you have to go off-road for parts of it, do it! Get going as fast as you can, that way ought to be clear enough to get you there within a couple of hours. Go!” He hung up.

Indie was sitting close to him on the bed. “Sam, my God, what's going on?”

“Terrorists is all I know, but they've got nukes in all those cities. Mom and Kim are getting Kenzie out of the city, and going out to my dad's old hunting cabin. Mom knows how to handle a gun, and they should be safe there until we can get back. There's another nuke right here in Honolulu, it says, and I'm trying to figure out how to get us back to the mainland.”

“As long as they're going somewhere safe,” Indie said. “This is horrible...”

Sam suddenly remembered the yellow and purple duffel. “Holy—I think I know how they got them into place. Remember that bag that was stuffed onto the plane at the last second? I saw the guy who picked it up, and he was Arab. The thought hit me then that he looked like ISIS, but I just brushed it off. I gotta call the police!”

He Googled the number for the Honolulu Police, and dialed it quickly. When he got an answer, he said, “My name is Sam Prichard, and I think I have a lead on the nuke that's been planted in the city, here. Put me through to whoever I need to speak to about it.”

The woman on the other end of the line said, “Look, Mr. Prichard, we appreciate your call, but we've gotten ten thousand calls just like it this morning, and we just don't have time for them. Please keep this line clear for real emergencies.” She hung up on him.

Sam stared at the phone. “She hung up,” he said, and looked at Indie. “I'm calling with what may be real information, and she hung up!”

Indie just looked at him. “Honey, maybe they're getting too many calls. They're probably only taking regular police calls, right now.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, that's exactly what she said. Trouble is, I think I may really be onto something, but if I can't get anyone to listen, what good is it?”

“Okay, think it through,” Indie said. “What did you actually see?”

Sam thought about it for a moment. “I saw a man run up to our airplane just as it was preparing to back away from the terminal and open the cargo hatch, shove a big purple and yellow bag inside and then close and latch it. He walked away then, and—wow, it didn't hit me at the time, but as he walked away, he took off his vest, the one that airport employees wear, and rolled it up and stuffed it into his pocket. That seems odd, now that I remember it. Then, when we were waiting for our luggage, I saw that same bag on the carousel, and a Middle Eastern man in a turban grabbed it. I remember thinking that he was looking around like he was nervous, and that he looked like he belonged in ISIS or Al Quaeda or something like that, but I just thought I was being prejudiced and let it go. Now I think I was dead on the money!”

Indie got up and went to her suitcase, opened it and took out her laptop. “Maybe we can get something more,” she said. “Airports have their security video tied into their local area networks, and those are connected to the Internet. If Herman can hack into their system, we can try to find the guy on the video.” She had it turned on and was tapping keys, Googling the airport for general information. “Okay, here's a link for online purchases of tickets; that may give us a way in.” She tapped a few more keys, and Herman, the program she'd created for hacking, began scanning lines of data faster than the human eye could even see them. She turned back to Sam.

“Do you think they can really get Kenzie out of the city?” she asked. “Oh, Sam, I'm so scared! If anything happened to Kenzie...”

“Mom has our truck, and she knows how to use four wheel drive. She's also got a gun she carries everywhere, and she knows how to use it, so anyone trying to stop her will be in for a shock. She'll get them to the cabin, and they should be fine there for a while. We'll figure out a way to get back to them as soon as possible.”

“Should we get out of Honolulu? Maybe go to one of the other islands?”

“I don't know how we could, at the moment. The news said all commercial transportation is suspended, so that probably means planes, boats, everything. I think we're stuck here.”

She looked at him, and suddenly burst into tears. “Oh, God, Sam, this is supposed to be our honeymoon! Why does this have to happen now?”

He went to her and pulled her into his arms. “Baby, we'll get through this. Kenzie and our moms are safe, and we can only pray for everyone else we know, but I promise you, we'll get through this and get home, somehow!”

She clung to him for a few moments and cried, then pulled back and looked into his face. “If anyone can get us out of this, Sam Prichard, I know you can. Let's see what we can do to help stop it!” She turned back to her computer and looked at what her program was doing. “Herman's found a way in,” she said, and began tapping keys once more. A moment later, there was a screen full of links on her monitor. Some of them Sam could figure out: Baggage Claim 1, Baggage Claim 2, Concourse 1, etc.

“Okay, can you remember exactly what time it was we got our bags?”

“Yeah, we landed at eleven minutes after five, so it took us about ten minutes to get off the plane and into baggage claim; let's say five twenty-one, try that.”

Indie had clicked one of the links, and it led to another page just like it, but this one had dates. She selected the date of their arrival, and then chose five fifteen, the closest link to the time Sam had given her.

“Okay, is that our carousel? Yeah, it is. Let me run forward a bit—there we are. Do you see the guy you're talking about?”

Sam leaned close and watched the video play on the monitor. He could see himself and Indie as they stood there watching for their bags. “We were there for quite a while before the bags showed up. Let's go forward some.”

Indie chose another time, five forty-five, and they began watching again. “There we are, and there's the guy I saw! He's looking around, see, like he's nervous. He was probably worried that someone had caught on to the bag not being listed and was watching to see who claimed it. Watch—there’s his bag, see it? Big, yellow and purple, like they wanted to be sure it couldn’t be mistaken for someone else's. He grabs it and turns around instantly, he's in a hurry. See? He's still looking around like he's waiting for someone to grab hold of him.”

Indie nodded. “Yeah, he's definitely worried that someone is gonna spot him and ask questions, I agree. Now, then,” she said, and began clicking other links. “Okay, here's the front entrance area, a couple of minutes before he grabbed the bag. Let's watch and see if he comes out.” They stared at the monitor for about four minutes, and then the same man appeared. “There he is,” Indie said. “Watch—he's getting into a cab, look! That's a Royal Hawaiian Taxi Service cab, number four fifty-one, remember that!”

She began tapping keys once more, and in less than three minutes, Herman was signaling for her attention. “Okay, we've got Royal Hawaiian Taxi's back door. Cab companies have to have their logs online for law enforcement now, and if it's online, Herman can get into it! Let's find cab number four fifty-one's log entries for yesterday.” She began clicking through links, and a moment later she said, “Aha! Gotcha! Sam, that cab picked up a fare at the airport at exactly five fifty two, and delivered him to the Dresden Hotel, and it's smack in the middle of downtown and three miles from the beach. Let me see if we can get into their security system.” More key tapping, and shortly Herman beeped again.

“I swear,” Sam said, “I think I love Herman as much as I love you!”

“Watch it, there, Buster, I'm the jealous type! Herman's mine, you go get your own computer program! Here we go, we're into their security network. Finding the right time, which was about six oh-eight, and the front entrance—there's your boy, and he's got the bag! He's going into the lobby, and now we've got him getting into the elevator. Can you see the floor indicator? I can't.”

Sam shook his head. “Nope. It's not angled right.”

“Well, that's easy enough,” Indie said with a sigh. “We'll check each floor and see where he got off!” She started moving from camera to camera, and they watched each floor's elevator entrance for a few minutes. When nothing happened, she went to the next floor and they watched again. They found him getting off the elevator on the fourth floor, and Indie switched cameras to follow him as he carried the bag down the hallway. He stopped at a door and inserted a key, then opened the door and walked in.

“Fifth door on the left, to the right from the elevator. We've got him,” Sam said. “Now, the question is how to get anyone to listen!”

Indie said, “Uh-oh,” and Sam looked at the monitor again. The man came back out of the room without the bag, and seemed to be in a hurry as he headed back to the elevator. Indie switched back to the ground floor entrance camera, and they watched as he went out the front doors and got into a waiting car with a driver. The car rolled away quickly.

“Any hope of getting that tag number?” Sam asked, but Indie was already switching cameras to one outside the entrance. The car came into view, but the license plate was obscured by what looked like a splotch of mud, and couldn't be read. “Okay, no tag, but that was 2015 Lexus sedan. Probably a rental, so without a tag, we've got nothing. On the other hand, we've got every reason to believe that the nuke is in that bag, and that it's still in that room.”

He grabbed his phone and redialed the police number. The same voice answered again.

“Your nuclear device is in the Dresden Hotel, on the fourth floor. The room is fifth on the left to the right of the elevator.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman said, “thank you for your tip.” She hung up again.

Sam stared at his phone again. “They must be getting thousands of tips every hour, from people who don't have a clue what they're doing. If they ever get around to checking that, it'll be after it's way too late.”

Indie looked at him sadly. “You're going over there, aren't you?”

He smiled. “Babe, do I look stupid? Nukes are out of my league, but remember, we know one person who can get some serious attention to this. If we can get him on the phone, we might have a chance of saving Honolulu, at least.”

Indie wrinkled her brow. “We know someone? Who—Oh! Harry Winslow!”

Sam nodded. “Yep. He's Homeland Security, even if he is on a different assignment. Let me see if I can get through to him— I'm sure the international lines are jammed right now.” He scanned through the contacts in his phone, and found the one marked “Southerner,” then touched it to make it dial the number.

“We're sorry. All circuits are busy, now. Please try your call again later.” The recording told him he'd been right, so he hit redial. It took him twenty-four tries before he heard ringing on the other end.

A slow voice with a southern drawl answered. “Sam? Is that you? I thought you'd be on your honeymoon by now.”

“I was, Harry, until I saw the news this morning. Indie and I are in Honolulu.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Harry said, “I'm sorry to hear that, Sam. Can you get away from the city? From what I'm hearing, these devices are small, probably less than a kiloton design— to give you perspective, the one we dropped on Hiroshima was about fifteen kilotons. The blast radius should only be a few city blocks, but the radiation will be terrible. If you can get at least forty miles away, you should be able to go get under concrete and be safe. Sixty miles would be outside the danger zone, at least until the fallout hits.”

“Harry, I'll worry about that in a while— I'm not calling you for help or advice, I'm calling because I'm pretty sure that Indie and I have located the Honolulu nuke!”

4

Harry was silent for five seconds. “Sam, I know you well enough to know you wouldn't joke about this, but how in the world could you possibly have gotten that information in so short a time?”

“My incredible powers of observation, combined with a certain computer whiz I happen to know. I spotted someone putting something in the cargo hold of our plane just before it left Denver, and then I saw a nervous, middle-eastern type picking it up here. When I heard what was going on, I put two and two together and came up with a big fat four! When I went over it with Indie, she managed to get into some video feeds, so we could follow the guy out of the airport, and that let us see what cab he took, and that led us to the Dresden Hotel. I tried giving it to the police, but they didn't seem interested.”

“I'm sure they're flooded with tips, yes. Sam, do you have a room number for this person?”

“No, but it's on the fourth floor, fifth room on the left, if you go to the right of the elevator. Thing is, the guy isn't there. He dropped the bag off and then hot-footed it out the door. He got into a new model Lexus rental with another man, and drove away.”

Harry said, “He'll be back. They wouldn't leave a package like that unattended for long, it's too important and too valuable. Can I get you back on this number?”

“Yes, of course,” Sam said.

“Alright, let me see if I can get someone on this, and I may call you back. And Sam—thank you, and thank that lovely new wife of yours, too.” He was gone.

“Harry says thanks, to both of us.”

“Well, if you get the chance, tell him he’s welcome. Did he take you seriously?”

“He says he knows me well enough to know I wouldn't joke about it, but of course, we're still only guessing that this is the nuke. He's going to get someone looking into it. He, uh, he said we need to get more than forty miles out of the city. That would get us outside the danger zone for both blast and radiation. I'm guessing they think these are dirty bombs.”

Indie looked at him. “I think we need to stay here, for right now. If he needs you...”

Sam looked at his wife, and smiled. “Well,” he said, “if we're going to be here anyway, we might as well act like honeymooners.” He reached and took her into his arms and kissed her, and then pulled her to the bed.

A half hour later, as they lay in each other's arms, Sam's phone rang again, and he picked it up to see that it was Harry calling.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Sam, it's Harry. I'm sorry to do this, but I'm afraid we need your help once again.”

Sam nodded, even though Harry couldn't see him. “What can I do, Harry?”

“We've got only a few people in Hawaii, and they're chasing leads the way a hound chases rabbits. I tried to tell them that I have a lot of confidence in you, but the leads they've got are also high confidence; some of them are coming from people we've got inside terrorist cells in other countries, so they're going through those, first.”

“That makes sense. What do you want me to do, Harry?”

The old man sighed. “Sam, do you think it's possible you can get into that room and confirm whether there is a suitcase nuclear device in there?”

Sam closed his eyes. “If that's what you need me to do, Harry, I'll try. What do I look for?”

Harry chuckled. “Sam, I'd bet my rear end that you'll know it's a nuke, if it is. Just be very careful, and try not to blow yourself and the whole city to kingdom come, all right?”

“You got it. Soon as I know something, I'll try calling you, but the circuits are all jammed, so it may take me a while.”

“No, it won't. I've had your number put on high priority; if you place a call, it'll go through even if it has to knock someone else off the line. I'll be waiting to hear from you.” Once again, he was gone before Sam could say another word.

“What does he want?” Indie asked.

“He wants me to try to get into that room, and see if there really is a nuclear bomb in it.” Sam went to his suitcase and opened a compartment on the inside and withdrew his Glock automatic. Indie looked at it.

“I didn't know you brought your gun,” she said, “but now I'm really glad you did. Let me get dressed.”

Sam looked at her. “Baby, you're staying here.”

She had stood up and started toward the bathroom, but now she turned to face him. “And how far do you think you're gonna get with that, gun or no gun? I just married you, remember? If you think I'm gonna let you out of my sight when we may be living our final hours, you have another think coming to you! I'll be ready in ten minutes.”

Sam shook his head, and started changing his own clothes, then slipped his holster onto his belt and put the Glock in it. He wanted to get a shower, but it could wait; saving lives took precedence, he felt, so he'd worry about a shower after he found out if he was right about the bomb. Besides, he figured he'd be a lot sweatier by then.

Indie was ready in less than nine minutes, and Sam hurried into the bathroom to freshen himself quickly. His Power Stick would cover him until he got time for the real shower, and he swirled mouthwash around in lieu of brushing his teeth. He came out a minute later and was ready.

They went down on the elevator, and were instantly inundated with noise. There were probably two hundred people there, all demanding that the hotel concierge find them a plane or a ship that would take them home. A harried young man was trying to tell them all that there was nothing he could do.

At the front desk, just as many people were shouting about checking out. A girl there was telling them all that she would check them out as fast as she could, but she was the only one there because everyone else had left.

Sam and Indie went out the front door, but there were no cabs in evidence. A shuttle van sat there, but the people standing around it seemed confused. Sam heard one man tell another that the driver had parked it, gotten out and run toward the parking lot.

“There's our ride,” he said to Indie, and moved toward the van, pushing people out of the way. “Make way,” he yelled, “coming through!” A break appeared in the crowd, and a man grabbed his sleeve.

“Are you the driver?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “Yes, I'm the relief driver. I'm going toward downtown right now, to pick up some folks there. Any of you want to ride downtown?”

Everyone stepped back except one young woman. “I do,” she said. “I've got an exhibit at the Museum of Art, and I have to get there!”

“Climb on,” Sam said, while Indie stared at him. “The rest of you, another van will be here soon, just hang on.” He climbed into the driver's seat while Indie and the other young woman got in and settled themselves. He leaned over to Indie and whispered, “Find out where the museum is.”

She nodded and took out her phone to Google it, then handed it to him so he could see the directions. As he'd expected, the keys were in the ignition, so he started the van and drove off toward the downtown district. The museum was only a few minutes away, and very close to the Dresden, so he swung by there and let the young woman out.

As she exited the van, she looked around at him. “Thanks. I know you’re not really the driver, but you just saved my life! I appreciate it!” She turned and was gone before Sam could reply, but he figured that was just as well, since he didn't have a clue how to respond.

He turned the van toward the Dresden, and they were there in less than five more minutes. Sam parked it on the street and got out, with Indie right on his heels.

“Any idea how you're gonna get into that room?” she asked him, and he smiled.

“Did you see the confusion back at our hotel? Think this one's gonna be in any better shape? Most people are gonna figure that the bomb will be set to take out downtown, so I wouldn't be surprised to find it just about empty.”

They walked in through the front doors, and Sam saw that he was nearly correct. A half dozen people were at the front desk, where another lone girl was trying to get them checked out. A few more were scattered here and there around the lobby, most of them talking rapidly or dialing over and over on cell phones, trying desperately to call someone to help them. Most of them kept hanging up and dialing again.

Sam walked straight through the hotel lobby and to the elevators as if he owned the place, and no one even bothered to ask him where he was going. The emptiness of the security station told him that even the guards had decided to run out on their jobs, probably to get their families and flee the city as fast as they could. They stepped into the first elevator to open and Sam pushed the button for floor number four.

The ride up was in silence, and neither of them wanted to break it. When the elevator stopped, they got out and went to the right, going straight to the fifth door without any problem. It was room 517, and Sam knocked once with his hand on the Glock.

There was no answer, as he'd hoped, but when he tried the door, it was locked securely. He looked around for a moment, and realized that the next room, 519, was standing open. He went to it, peeked inside, then motioned for Indie to wait at the door to the room they wanted to enter. He went into the open room and to its big window.

The window slid open and he stepped out onto a balcony. He could see the balcony next to it, but there was a ten foot gap between them, and Sam knew that with his bum leg, there was no way he could ever hope to jump across. He abandoned that idea and started back out of the room, but these were suites, and he suddenly spotted the maid's cart in the bedroom that opened off of the room he was in.

He checked it quickly to see if her master key might have been on it, but it wasn't. However, he noticed that the window from this room, though smaller, would be a lot closer to the balcony next door. He went to it and tried to open it, but this one was sealed.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he muttered, then picked up a lamp from the nightstand and threw it as hard as he could at the window. He'd expected the glass to be harder to break, but the lamp went through it like it was nothing, and he used the curtain, wrapped around his arm, to bust out the remaining shards. Leaning out, he saw that the railing of the balcony on 517 was only about three feet away, so he began climbing through the hole.

The window was only about four feet high, so when he got out onto it, he was in an awkward position, trying to stand on the narrow ledge while holding on to the top of the window frame. He could see the balcony railing to his left, so he leaned as far as he could in that direction, then extended his left leg over. With his right hand still holding the top of the window frame and his left plastered against the wall, he was just barely able to put his left foot onto the rail, but that was as far as he could go.

Sam knew he shouldn't look down, but he did anyway, and saw a sheer drop of four stories to a concrete alleyway below him. He looked back at the railing with his foot on it, thought, Ah, hell, and pushed off with his right foot as hard as he could, letting go with his hand.

Suddenly he was balanced on one foot on top of a railing that was about an inch wide, and flailing his arms to try to swing his weight over just a little further. As he felt himself start to fall, he slapped the wall with both hands and shoved himself hard to his left, and then fell hard onto the floor of the balcony to 517.

He lay there for several seconds, gasping for breath and praying the ache in his side would go away soon, but he knew he didn't have a lot of time. The broken window may have set off an alarm, or someone down below may have seen the lamp come crashing down, but either way, he figured he was due to be discovered at any moment. He rolled to one side and got painfully to his feet, his hip telling him in no uncertain terms what it thought of his attempts at acrobatics.

The sliding glass door was locked, of course, but Sam was in no mood to let that stop him. He drew his Glock from its holster and used the butt of the gun as a hammer to break through.

The glass shattered, but didn't break. He hit it again, and saw that it had some sort of reinforcement on the inside. He'd heard of a film that made glass stay together in the event it was shattered this way, and that made him mad, so he hit it again as hard as he could, and saw with satisfaction that he'd managed to put a hole through it big enough to slide a hand through, and just over the latch. He reached in and unlocked the door, then slid it aside.

He stepped inside and started looking around. There was no one there, of course; in fact, there wasn't even any sign of human occupation, so he opened the closets and looked through the dressers. He didn't find the bag in the main room, so he moved into the bedroom, and there it was, in plain sight, on the floor right beside the bed.

Sam went to the front door of the room and opened it from the inside, letting Indie slip in. “Found it,” he said, and she swallowed.

“And is it? A bomb, I mean?”

“I don't know yet, I haven't looked. Come on.”

They went into the bedroom, and Sam started looking the bag over from the outside. He ran his hands all around the zipper that opened it, and felt along all of the seams.

“What are you doing?” Indie asked in a whisper.

“Checking to see if I can tell whether it's booby trapped. You know, like a wire that'll detonate it if I open it the wrong way, or something.”

“Oh,” Indie said. “You think of the sweetest things.”

Sam shrugged. “I can't see anything, so I'm just gonna go for it.” He leaned over and kissed her passionately. “Just in case that's the last kiss we ever get,” he said, and before he could think of another reason to delay, he grabbed the pull of the zipper and tugged it open.

He'd held his breath, but when he got the zipper wide open, they were still there, so he let it out and pulled the sides apart to look into it. He saw what looked like three steel canisters mounted on a flat metal plate, with a metal box on either side, something that appeared to be a battery and wiring all over the place. Dead center was a digital display with a keypad beside it, and he saw that there was a countdown running. The timer had just over sixty hours left on it.

He took out his phone and snapped a picture of it and sent it to Harry's number. A minute and a half later, his phone rang.

“Young man, you must enjoy having the US Government owe you favors.”

“Not particularly, Harry, but from that I'd guess the picture I just sent you is a nuke?”

“Well, I'm no expert by any means, but I'd say it sure looks the part to me. I've forwarded it to the boys who'll know for sure. Was anyone there with it?”

“No, and I did some damage getting in, so they're gonna know someone's been here whenever they come back. There was no other way, though, not if you wanted to know right away.”

“You did exactly right, Sam, but it's a safe bet someone's gonna be coming by to check on it. Are you armed, by any chance?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Tell me again where you are. I'm going to send someone to you right away, but I need you to stay there and make sure no one can touch that device. If the damage you had to do is obvious, then do your best not to let them see it until you've got them under your control, and Sam? Do not, and I repeat, do not under any circumstances let such a person get a hand into a pocket. If they try and you have no other choice, you shoot the bastard through the head! Reaching into a pocket would almost certainly mean they're going for a remote detonator; these boys don't mind blowing themselves up right along with their enemies, so do not let him touch anything!”

Sam swallowed, and told him the name of the hotel and the room number. “Yes, sir. How long before reinforcements arrive?”

“Well, now that you've found that, I'm gonna get someone to you within the next fifteen or twenty minutes. They'll give you a pass phrase, and yeah, I know this sounds silly, but humor me. The pass phrase will be, 'Harry is a big,' and you will respond with 'horse's ass.' Got that?”

Sam couldn't hold back the smile. “I've got it, Harry. Send 'em quick, I've got Indie here with me, and I don't want her hurt.”

“Trust me, son, I'm pushing this as fast as I can!” The line went dead.

Sam looked at Indie. “Harry's sending someone to relieve us, but he wants me to stay here until they arrive, just in case the bad guys come to check on the bomb. I want you to go into the room next door and wait for me.”

“I'm staying with you,” she said.

“Indie, if one of them did show up, you're a liability. If they were to threaten me, I could handle it, but if they threaten you...”

She sighed. “Okay, I get it. But I'm gonna have my ear to the wall, and if I hear anything bad, I’m coming back in a hurry!”

Sam smiled and kissed her. “Fine, but go. These people could come back any second.”

He walked her to the door and peeked out, saw no one in sight, and hurried her out. When he saw her go into the next room, he shut his door and stood just out of sight of anyone who might open it.

5

Sam felt like he'd stood there for an hour, but there was a knock on the door less than fifteen minutes later. He peeked through the peephole and saw five men wearing suits. A couple of them were carrying what looked like equipment cases.

“You got something you need to say to me?” he asked, and one of the men grinned.

“Harry is a big what?” the grinning one said, and Sam opened the door.

“He's a big horse's ass,” he said. “And am I glad to see you guys!”

The men stepped inside, and each of them held out an ID. “I'm David Carlyle,” he said, “Homeland Security. This is Jim Cork, Mack Evans, Frank Melchior, and Bob Dorf. Harry says you’re the man of the hour.”

Sam smiled. “I'm Sam Prichard, and I’m just a private investigator from Colorado who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Come on, I'll show you what I blundered into.”

Cork stayed by the door on guard, while Carlyle and the others followed Sam into the bedroom and looked at the bomb. Carlyle whistled, the kind of whistle someone gives when they realize something bad has just come their way, and stooped down to look more closely at it.

“That's a nasty piece of work, right there,” he said. “Modification of an old Soviet design, which tells me that whoever actually built this thing has their own pet nuclear physicist working for them, or they'd never have been able to make this work. See that timer? That means they probably have no intention of stopping these things from going off, even if the government complies with their demands. They might be able to enter a disarm code on the keypad, but they'd still have a hot nuke on their hands. I can't see them putting all of the money and effort into this, and not getting all the bang they can for their buck!” He pulled a small device from a pocket and held it over the bomb; a constant ticking began, almost sounding like bacon frying in a skillet. “And she's definitely hot. The shielding on it is good, and that's why we couldn't find it from the air, but there's enough radiation leaking to know it's genuine.”

“Radiation?” Sam asked, his eyes suddenly going wide. “I've been in here with it for a while...”

Carlyle shook his head. “No danger to you. The Geiger counter makes it sound like a lot, but you've had a hundred times more exposure in a single x-ray.” He looked at one of the other men. “Frank? Check this out, this timer has a little less than sixty hours to go. I don't see any visible sign of a receiver, so we may be in luck, and it's not set up for remote detonation. Let's get it packed up and shipped to Pearl as soon as we can, and you kids can play with it.”

He turned to Sam. “Sam,” he said, “Harry said to tell you that he'll be in touch, but I think you're done here. You've eliminated the threat to Honolulu, my friend, and that's a pretty big thing.”

Sam shrugged. “How do you know they don’t have another one of these stashed somewhere else in the city?”

“Simple logistics. These things would cost them millions of dollars each, and the material is extremely difficult to obtain. They went to great pains to put one device in each of a dozen cities, so the chance that they had more than that number is pretty small. There would be only one per city. With these little bombs, they're not after mass destruction as much as mass terror, and they're accomplishing it just with the rumor.” He looked down at the bomb on the floor. “We're actually lucky they chose to put one here in Honolulu, especially since it wouldn't normally be considered a terror target. If you hadn't been so Johnny-on-the-spot and found this one, we wouldn't have the data we need to be able to find the others. With the radiation signature from this baby, though, we can fine tune our equipment to spot them more easily from the air, and we've got a chance now of getting more of them before they go off.”

He patted Sam on the shoulder. “Like Harry said, Sam, you done good! Go relax and take it easy for now.”

Sam nodded, and it suddenly hit him that he was exhausted. The adrenaline that had been driving him all morning was suddenly wearing off. He nodded, and said, “Thanks, David,” then walked out of the bedroom and past Cork at the door. He turned and went to the door to the next room, which was still open a crack, and stepped through it.

“Indie?” he called. “We can go now.”

She didn't answer. A chill went down his spine, and Sam knew instantly that something wasn't right. He snatched the Glock from its holster as he moved through the rooms, and found Indie being held by a man with a gun to her head in the bathroom. Sam leveled his gun at the man and stared into his eyes.

“Sam?” Indie said. “I'm sorry, Sam, he saw the men go into his room, and came in here to hide and try to watch. I didn't see him till he grabbed me.”

“Baby, it's okay, it'll be okay. I'll get you out of this...”

The man smiled. “That's touching, my friend, but let us discuss how you plan to do so. You have my device, I have your woman. If you can give me back what I want, then I am willing to give you back what you want.”

“Or I can blow your head off right now,” Sam said. “If you so much as flinch your gun hand, I will. Now, let her go and put your gun down.”

“Ah, I see, you're an amateur,” the man said. “But I am not. I am more than willing to die, my friend, so your threats have no meaning to me. The question is, are you willing to let your poor woman perish?”

Sam stared hard at him. The gun held to Indie's head was a Beretta, a nine millimeter automatic that was easy to obtain just about anywhere. It was a single action model, and the hammer was cocked back. If the man squeezed even the slightest bit on the trigger, it would go off and Indie would die instantly.

“The government has your bomb,” Sam said, “and there is no way I can get it back. Your plan here has failed, so the only option you have right now is to let her go and I'll let you walk out of here. If you try anything other than that, I will kill you. Your call.”

The man smiled. “Put your gun on the floor and let me walk out of here, and I will release her when I've gotten off the elevator.”

Sam shook his head. “Not gonna happen. She's not moving from that spot, and neither are you unless it's on my terms.” Sam kept his eyes on the other man's own, but a flicker caught his peripheral vision, and he realized that Indie had winked at him. A split second later, she simply dropped right out of the man's grasp to the floor.

The terrorist looked startled. He glanced down at where she was now sprawling on the floor and trying to roll away from him, and his gun hand started to move to aim at her again. Sam fired, instinctively going for a shot at the gun, and his aim was true. The man screamed as his hand exploded into several pieces, and his gun dropped to land on Indie's thigh. She grabbed at it and got it into her hands as she rolled.

Sam leapt forward and tackled the bleeding terrorist, and they fell into the bathtub. With his gun placed against the other man's forehead, Sam got him by the throat, and the pain in his prisoner's mangled hand made him surrender.

The gunshot had alerted the men in the next room. Carlyle and three of the others came bursting in, guns drawn. One of them almost shot Indie as she was trying to get to her feet with the terrorist's gun. Sam screamed, “No!” The agent raised his weapon at the last possible second, removing his finger from the trigger he'd nearly squeezed, and a wide-eyed Indie let the gun fall back to the floor.

“What the hell is going on here?” Carlyle demanded, and Sam pointed at this captive.

“This guy was apparently checking on his toy next door, and saw me let you guys in. He came in here to hide, just like Indie, and found her. He wanted to trade me, make me get the bomb back for him, but Indie managed to get loose and that let me take out his gun hand.”

Carlyle let out another whistle. “Sam, you just captured Ahmed Al Faruq. He's been on the top ten list for six years.” He turned to the captive terrorist. “What are you doing here, Ahmed? Shouldn't this be a job for one of your foot soldiers?” Carlyle motioned to one of his men. “Get that wound staunched, and let's get this bastard somewhere he can be properly interrogated.” He turned to Sam, as Indie finally got close enough to let Sam get an arm around her.

“You okay, babe?” he asked, and she nodded, but there were tears flowing down her face.

“I'm okay, I was just so scared, Sam,” she said. “Oh, God, I thought he was gonna kill us both! When he let his arm relax a bit, I just thought if I could drop down, then you could shoot him. I didn't know what else to do!”

“You did perfect, baby, you did perfect! We got him!”

“Yeah, you did. We've been after him a while. What the heck is it about you, that you can walk right into things that we're killin' ourselves tryin' to do?”

Sam shrugged, but he wasn't paying much attention to Carlyle. He was too busy holding Indie close. “I'm just lucky, I guess,” he said, “but I'm more than willing to go back to letting you guys handle this crap. It's all yours, now!”

Carlyle grinned and nodded. “I bet! We'll have to get a statement from you at some point, but you can go for now if you want to. We'll handle the police when they come, don't worry about that.”

“Oh,” Sam said, “what about all the damage I did here, breaking into that room? Shooting the guy...”

“I'm pretty sure Uncle Sam won't mind paying for it. You were working for us, we've got it covered. Don't worry— you're safe now.”

Sam nodded, and led Indie out of the room as one of the others was taking care of Al Faruq's hand. They walked down the hall and got into the elevator, and then Indie began to cry in earnest.

“I'm sorry, Sam,” she said as she wept. “I'm trying not to fall apart, but...”

“Shh,” he said as he held her close. “It's okay, baby, it's okay. You've got every right to cry.”

“But I almost ruined everything! If he'd shot you, Sam, I don't know what I'd have done! I can't make it without you!”

Sam didn't tell her that the man would surely have killed them both, but he knew it was true. If she hadn’t distracted him, there would have been a gunfight that would probably have left all of them dead. She didn't need to hear that right then, though, so he just kept reassuring her that everything would be alright, and when the elevator opened, he walked her out through the lobby.

Police officers were coming in just then, but another agent in the lobby stopped them. They paid no attention to Sam and Indie, who walked right past them and out the front doors. Sam started toward the van, parked across the street, and they got to it without anyone bothering them.

They drove back to their own hotel, and a different crowd of people were waiting when they stopped. Sam got out and was instantly accosted by several of them.

“Hey, I've got to get to...”

“Can you get us over to...”

“I'm not the regular driver,” he said. “I think the guy will be here any minute now, just wait.” He and Indie walked hand in hand back into the hotel, and went into one of the restaurants, but there was no one working. They turned and went to their room, and Sam made them coffee as they turned on the TV again.

There was no news about the bomb being found, and Indie looked at Sam. “Why aren't they talking about it yet? You'd think they'd want to let people know they can relax.”

Sam shook his head. “They're gonna want to keep the terrorists from knowing they've got this one for as long as possible,” he said. “Once they find out, they may try to set the others off early. Carlyle said they can use this one to set their equipment so they can find the others more easily, so they're probably not gonna say a word yet.”

“So everyone gets to keep worrying. Can we try to call Kenzie, and our moms? Make sure they got out okay?”

Sam nodded. “Harry said my phone was set to high priority,” he said, “so let's see how well it works.” He took it out and dialed his mother's number.

“Sam!” she yelled as she answered. “Are you guys okay?”

“We're fine, Mom,” he said. “What about you? Everyone okay there?”

“Yes, yes, we made it to the cabin about half an hour ago. This place is filthy— it looks like no one's been here in years! Don't you ever come up here anymore?”

Sam grinned. “Well, not since I got shot, but it should still be in pretty good shape. You should be safe there until this blows over. Listen, Mom, I can't go into detail, but the bomb here has been found, and we're safe. I don't know how soon we can get back there, but there's a good chance they're gonna be able to stop the bombs. Just lay low there, and we'll be home as soon as possible. How's Kenzie doing?”

“Oh, she's fine, she thinks this is all a big adventure! She and Kim are outside playing now. I'm trying to get this place cleaned up a bit, it's just filthy!”

“Well, call her in for a minute, would you? We want to talk to her.”

“No problem,” Grace said, and he heard her shouting for Kim and Kenzie to come inside. “Kenzie, here, Daddy and Mommy are on the phone!”

A second later, Kenzie's voice came on the line. “Hi,” she said, and Sam grinned. “Hey, sweetheart! You havin' fun?”

“Yeah! We're in a log cabin, and there's deers and rabbits outside!”

Indie reached for the phone and Sam handed it over. “Hey, baby, it's Mommy! I miss you!”

“I miss you, too, we're in a old log cabin, and there's lots of animals outside! Me and Grandma Kim been out looking at 'em! There was a deer that came right up in the yard and it wasn't even scared of us!”

Indie laughed. “Well, that sounds exciting! Are you being a good girl?”

“Yeah. Grandma Grace says I'm the best little girl in the whole world!”

“Well, good, you keep her fooled that way! I love you!”

“I love you too, and guess what? There's a big fireplace in here, and Grandma Grace says we have to cook in the fireplace! Isn't that cool?”

Indie laughed despite everything that had happened, and Sam smiled at her. “Yeah, that sounds really cool! Let me talk to Grandma Kim for a minute.”

“Okay, bye!” Kenzie said, and then Indie's mother was on the phone. “Indiana, are you guys safe? Grace says they found the bomb out there?”

“Yes, thanks to my husband! Sam saw something suspicious, and because of that he was able to track it down! I married a superman!”

Sam yelled, “What she's not telling you is that she's the one who tracked it down and found it, not me!” but Indie shushed him.

Kim was talking. “Beauregard says Sam isn't done yet, he has to find the one here, too.”

“Well, I don't know how he can do that, Mom, we can't even get back there right now. There's no flights.”

“I'm just telling you what he said. He hasn't ever been wrong, you know!”

Indie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, I think he's off on this one. Listen, Sam says you guys will be safe there until we get back, and we'll be there as soon as possible. For once, just do what Grace says, and wait for us, okay?”

“Oh, we'll be fine here. Beauregard says this is a good place to be.”

“Yeah, well, I'm glad he agrees with me for once. Take care of Kenzie, and we'll be home as soon as we possibly can! Bye for now, and love you!”

“We love you too,” Kim said, and then the line was dead.

Indie smiled nervously at Sam. “Beauregard says you've got to find another bomb, the one in Denver.”

“Ha!” Sam barked. “I'd love to know how he expects me to do that! Beauregard is the most annoying figment of anyone's imagination I've ever encountered!”

“Yeah, I sorta told Mom there wasn't any way, but she has complete faith in old Beauregard. Sometimes I wonder if she's losing something.”

“Like her mind? Yeah, I kinda wonder that sometimes, too.”

The two of them sat back on the bed, and Sam flipped channels, but almost all of them were running news about the bombs. After a few minutes, he clicked it off, and they lay back and just held each other.

Sam's phone rang, and he picked it up. “It's Harry,” he said.

6

“Hello, Harry,” Sam said.

“Sam, I've just about decided that I need to keep a leash on you, or at least a GPS tracker so I can find you whenever the world is in danger. You not only tracked down a nuclear bomb, you captured one of the most wanted terrorists on the planet. Now, how the hell am I supposed to put this into a report?”

“Hey, that's not my problem,” Sam said with a grin. “But if Uncle Sam wants to throw another reward my way, I'd be game.”

“You know how that works, they don't give me squat to work with,” Harry said in his slow drawl, “but believe me when I say that I plan to work something out. Gotta keep on your good side, boy, I might need you to save my own hide again, one day!”

“So this is just a social call, then? Chit chat?”

The old man laughed. “I know you don’t believe that,” he said. “No, actually, I'm calling because I remembered you've got a little girl back here in Denver. Where is she? I want to get your family out, just in case.”

“We already did,” Sam said, “but I appreciate it. My Dad left me his old hunting cabin out on Hoosier Ridge. My mom and Indie's were taking care of Kenzie, and I had them all go out there. They're safe.”

Harry was quiet for a moment. “Then, I'd hazard a guess that you'd like to come back to Colorado pretty soon?”

Sam sat up. “You could arrange that?”

“I can. If you give me the go ahead, I'll have a car there to get you in twenty minutes, and you'll be in a specially authorized aircraft in an hour, on your way back here.”

“Do it,” Sam said. “Now, what's the catch?”

“Sam! You hurt me, boy! Why would there be a catch?”

“Because you're with the government, and the government never does anything without strings attached! What's the catch?”

Harry sighed. “I'm shorthanded, back here. Denver is not a high priority station for Homeland Security, not as high as LA or Chicago, anyway. I need a man who's actually seen one of these things, and has the cojones to go after it. That leaves me you. Will you help me out?”

Sam turned to Indie, his eyes wide. To Harry, he said, “Would you believe me if I said an old Civil War soldier already told me I had to?”

Indie's eyes went just as wide as Sam's, but she didn't say anything. Harry said, “At some point, boy, you are going to tell me the story behind that, but not right now. I'm sending the car, so be ready in twenty.” The line went dead.

Sam turned to Indie. “Harry will have a car here for us in twenty minutes, to take us to a plane that's gonna take us home. He wants me to work with his people on finding the bomb.” He stared at her, and then said, “If I survive this, I'm gonna kill Beauregard!”

Indie shook her head, rolling her eyes. “You can't, I've tried. Believe me, I've tried!” They got up and started packing hurriedly, and were downstairs at the front desk when the car arrived. The crowd of people trying to leave earlier had finally dispersed, and Sam was able to check them out with no trouble.

“Mr. and Mrs. Prichard?” the driver asked, and Indie nodded. “May I take your bags?”

“Thank you,” Sam said, turning to meet the man. They followed him out to a sedan, and he put their bags into the car's trunk.

“I'm to take you straight to the airport,” he said. “There is a plane waiting for you, so hang on. I was told, with absolutely no way to misunderstand my orders, that I am to get you there as soon as possible, and that is exactly what I plan to do.”

Sam and Indie buckled into the back seat, and the driver took off. He was apparently serious about needing to get them there quickly, because he took every shortcut and even ran a few red lights. They were at the airport in less than twenty minutes, and he drove them straight through a gate to where a Gulfstream jet was waiting on the tarmac. As they got out of the car, another man wearing a pilot's uniform approached them.

“Mr. Prichard?” he said to Sam. “I'm Ken Simpson, I'll be your pilot today. I work for Senator Macklin, and he was asked to lend you his plane for a special emergency flight. If you'll follow me, please.” He led them into the plane, where a flight attendant waited to settle them into the comfortable seats.

“Would you like something to eat or drink?” the young woman asked them.

Sam smiled. “Well, we haven't had anything to eat today, so what's available?”

“I've got a selection of meals available, let me get you menus. What would you like to drink?”

They both asked for cokes; the attendant was back with them a moment later, and gave them menus that looked like they belonged in a fine restaurant. Sam chose a steak sandwich, and Indie selected a grilled chicken salad.

The plane was rolling within only a couple of minutes, and went straight to the runway. Sam quipped, “Advantage of all the flights being grounded, I guess,” and Indie smiled. A moment later they were in the air and climbing.

Once they leveled off, the flight attendant brought them their meals, and Sam whistled. “You don't get this much at most restaurants,” he said.

“Hey,” Indie said, “don't complain, I'm starving!”

“Who's complaining? The steak on this sandwich is bigger than the one I had at the restaurant last night! I'm in steak Heaven!” He took a bite, and moaned in pleasure. “Okay, that's it, I'm going into politics! If they eat this good, it's worth having everyone hate your guts!”

“Oh, no,” Indie said. “I have enough trouble keeping you to myself now, I'd never see you if you were in that stupid game! I may let you make most decisions, but I'll put my foot down and throw a fit over that one, buster!”

“Good point,” Sam said. “I'm too lazy for all those meetings anyway. I'll stick to being a gumshoe!”

They ate their lunches, then enjoyed the flight. The way the seats were arranged, they were facing each other, and both could look out the windows. Indie liked looking down at the Pacific Ocean below them, but it also reminded her that there was nowhere to land if something went wrong.

“I'm sure they've got a life raft in here, somewhere” Sam said with a grin, “This plane probably goes back and forth all time, so they'd have some kind of survival gear.”

Indie stared at him. “That's fine, but I don't really want to spend a week or so floating around the ocean, either! I just want to get back over land so if we had to put it down, we could!”

“We'll be back in Colorado in a few hours, baby, and we'll go straight to the cabin, first, get you back with Kenzie. Then I'll go find out what Harry wants me to do.”

The plane put down at 8 p.m. local time at the Leadville Airport, the pilot managing to land them safely despite being on a runway designed for smaller aircraft. Sam and Indie thanked him and his crew as they exited the plane to be met by Harry Winslow, himself.

“Sam, boy, it's good to see you again,” the old man said, and Sam pumped his hand. “George,” he said to his driver, “get their bags, please.”

“Yes, Sir,” George said, and Harry turned back to Sam.

“Harry, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you getting us back here,” he said. “I want to get Indie to the cabin, and then I'm all yours. What have we got?”

Harry got them into his car, climbing into the back of the limo with them and sitting in the forward seat, facing them in the back. “Sam, the boys at Pearl Harbor's labs have managed to get a radiation signature from the bomb you found that's letting them scan each city from the air. Special equipment can spot similar signatures from helicopters flying overhead, and they've already got three more. We're keeping your discovery a secret for now, of course, so the terrorists don't start moving them.”

“Then I don't know why you wanted me. If you can find them, you can disarm them, right?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, and now I've got to ask your forgiveness for not being completely honest with you. Y'see, Sam, I've only got a two-man team here for HS, and they're pencil pushers, not agents. Trouble is, they've come up with something that says we may be in the middle of the hot spot; the cell that's behind this whole operation seems to be based right here in Denver, but I can't get anyone upstairs to accept that. They say it doesn't make sense, that terrorist cells work inside true major cities, and wouldn't base their operations in a place where they can't get access to certain things they'd have in New York or LA, or even Chicago.”

Sam looked at Indie for a moment, then back to Harry. “I'm getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Go on.”

“Sam, I'm too old to go chasing bad guys myself, and Uncle won't give me any agents for this. I've been granted one search team, but they're scientists, not fighters. Yes, we need to disarm the bomb, but I want the bastards behind this thing, and if my bright boys are right, then the way to catch them is with someone who's got what it takes to track them down. I've seen what you two are capable of; I'm asking for your help.”

Sam leaned forward and rubbed his hands over his face. “Harry,” he asked, “do you know where the bomb is? The one here?”

Harry smiled. “We spotted it two hours ago, tucked into a parking garage not half a block from the State Capitol. I haven't let anyone go near it yet. All the ones we've found are on timers set to go off at the same time. For us, that would be about midnight the day after tomorrow. Since they had someone checking on your bomb, I'm sure they're watching this one, too, and what I want you to do is watch and find whoever's checking on it. If you can do that, then I'm hoping you can track that person back to whoever he's working with, and if we're damned lucky, you just might be able to identify the cell itself.” Harry paused and just looked at Sam for a moment. “Sam, boy, can you imagine how much that would mean?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. If we can nail a major operational cell, it could lead to intelligence that would find others working inside the country. Let's get Indie to the cabin, and I'm in.”

Indie was watching silently to this point, but she'd heard enough. “Sam,” she said, but he cut her off.

“Babe, I've got to. Harry's right, this is too good a shot to miss, and if he doesn't have anyone he trusts to do it, then I can't turn him down.”

Indie laughed, but it wasn't in humor. “Do you know you're an idiot?” she asked. “Of course you've gotta do it, baby. All I was gonna ask was if there's internet access at the cabin! If I can get online, and you keep in touch with me, I can help.”

Sam grinned. “Sorry, babe,” he said. “There's no internet there, though.”

Harry held up a hand. “Not a problem,” he said. “This car has better Wi-Fi than any five star hotel, and we can leave it with Indie, if you've got another way to go.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, Mom's got our truck at the cabin, we can take it. What about phones? Are they all still working around here?”

“Your phone is still on the priority list, Sam, and I can put Indie's on it, too. Any number you call will go through, either of you.” He took out his own cell phone. “What's your number, gorgeous?”

Sam gave him a fake nasty look, but Indie rattled off her cell number before he could say anything, and then Harry was on the line making sure Indie's phone got the same priority rating as Sam's. When he got done, he looked back at them both.

“So,” he said, “how was the honeymoon?”

“Short!” Indie said. “Way too short!”

“Honey, when this is over, I'll personally see to it that you get to go back and finish it! For now, all I can say is that your country needs your help, and I can't thank you enough for coming.”

They turned onto the road that led to the cabin just a half hour later, and Sam directed the driver up the gravel track. There were numerous side roads, and he hadn't been there in several years, so he had to watch for the signs to be sure which one they needed. When he saw it, they turned in and pulled up to the cabin five minutes later.

Sam hadn't thought to call ahead, and Indie had wanted to surprise Kenzie anyway. As they parked, Sam saw the door of the cabin open, and when George stepped out to open their doors, they were all startled by the blast of a shotgun.

“You move a finger and I'm gonna blow you to the sky!” his mother shouted, and the driver dropped to his knees with his hands in the air. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Sam touched the button to roll down his window. “Hey, Mom,” he called out, “I'd really prefer it if you didn't shoot the man who brought us home!”

Grace lowered the shotgun and stared. “Samuel? Samuel? What the hell are you doing here?”

They all climbed out, and Grace set the gun down against the porch rail as Kenzie and Kim came running out. Kenzie leapt into her mother's arms, laughing with delight and hugging her tightly, while Sam explained and introduced Harry to his mother and Indie's.

Harry took each of their hands and bowed low over it, touching it with his lips. “It is my pleasure to meet you, ladies,” he said, his deep southern drawl making the words seem somehow sultry. Sam saw his mother's eyes light up, and groaned silently. If Harry wasn't careful, she'd wrap him around her finger in no time! He'd seen her do it to other men since his dad passed away, but she'd never met one she really thought was a true man. He wasn't sure Harry, as tough as he was, could handle her, but he kept his mouth shut.

They went inside and Kim insisted on making them all dinner. Since the flight had taken almost seven and a half hours, Sam and Indie were hungry again, and before long they were sitting around the big oak table eating spaghetti and meatballs.

Harry spent part of the time telling the ladies how Sam and Indie had tracked down the bomb in Hawaii and saved the country, but he didn't go into detail about what Sam would be doing for him next, and Sam wanted it left that way. Kim, however, couldn't keep her own mouth shut if it meant saving her life!

“Beauregard says Sam is going to find the bomb here, too,” she blurted out, and that led to an explanation of who Beauregard was, which got Harry looking at Sam oddly. Sam held up his hands.

“Hey, Beauregard came with her,” he said, “I got nothin' to do with it!”

Harry smiled at Kim, and Sam saw a flash of jealousy cross his mother's face. “And would Beauregard happen to know where it is, to help Sam do so?”

Kim closed her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head. “He says he can't see it, but Sam will know where to look,” she said, “and that he's to be extremely careful when he meets the man with the red eye.”

Harry and Sam both said, “Red eye?”

Kim smiled and shrugged. “That's all he'll say,” she said, “that you're to be careful when you meet him, because he's not what he seems, and he's much more dangerous than you think. I guess that means you'll know him when you see him.”

Sam shook his head. “I'll keep an eye out for him,” he said, winking at Harry.

Harry looked at Kim. “Would Beauregard have any messages for me?” he asked.

Once again, Kim closed her eyes, and her lips moved silently. Suddenly she smiled, and looked at Harry. “He says he hasn't seen you since Gettysburg, but you're going to be doing something new, soon, and you'll be much happier in your new job.”

Harry's eyebrows went up. “Gettysburg?” he asked, his face turning pale. “What about Gettysburg?”

“Beauregard says you and he fought together there, and he hasn't seen you since then. He says he's glad to see you again.”

“How interesting. If he decides to tell you more, please don't hesitate to let me know.” He passed each of the ladies a business card, and both of them smiled.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, if the séance is over, can we get on to business? Indie, you need to get your computer out and make sure you can get online through Harry's car, and then he and I need to get moving.”

Indie went to her bags and got out her laptop, and a moment later Harry gave her the security key for his car's Wi-Fi system. She logged on and whispered, “Wow,” when she saw the data speed. “Ten megs a second! That's awesome. Harry, you might not get your car back!”

“Don't get excited, honey,” the old man said, “it's just a loan. George will take you ladies anywhere you need to go while Sam and I are gone, just let him know.”

Sam kissed Indie, and Kenzie ran to him for a hug and kiss of her own. “I missed you, Daddy,” she said, and Sam smiled. “Not as much as I missed you,” he said, and the little girl giggled and hugged his neck.

Sam turned to Harry. “Let's do this,” he said, and Harry got up from his chair. He kissed the hands of all the ladies, including Kenzie, and they walked out to the Ridgeline.

Sam looked at Harry as they got in and started it up. “If anything happens to me on this job, Harry...”

Harry didn't even try to reassure Sam that he'd be back; both of them knew that dealing with terrorists carried greater risks than any Sam had ever faced on the police force. “They'll be well taken care of, Sam, I promise.”

Sam nodded once, and put the truck in gear.

7

They rolled into Denver a bit over an hour later, and parked outside a run-down building Harry had directed Sam to. As they got out of the truck, a door opened and a young man stepped out.

“Hey, Harry,” he said in greeting.

“Ron, meet Sam Prichard,” Harry said. “Sam's on loan to us for the duration. Sam, this is Ron Thomas. Ron runs my HS office, here.”

Ron extended a hand. “Mr. Prichard, it's an honor! Harry's told us a lot about you.”

Sam shook his hand. “Just Sam will do, Ron. What have you got for me?”

They went into the building and Ron led them to an office where another man sat at a computer.

“This is Jeff Donaldson, my assistant. Sam, what we do here is basically just gather intel, scanning through the internet, text messages, phone calls and such looking for clues that might lead to terror activities. Mostly, we end up bugging people in simple private conversations, because the program that flags things for us doesn't know the difference between someone saying 'my head feels like it's gonna explode' and someone else saying 'the bomb is set to explode in two hours,' leaving us to check it out and see if there's any real threat.”

Sam nodded. “I get it,” he said.

“We've been hunting any clues in this case, and we're pretty much coming up empty. None of the normal channels have any chatter that could be tied to the cell we're looking for, except for this: we got one phone call early this morning, a guy with a Middle Eastern accent saying, 'Ahmed is not answering his telephone. Should I go and check on the toy here?' The response was, 'No, leave Ahmed to himself.' Now, other stations have reported that 'toy' seems to be the code word for the devices, but that seems to be coming from individual operatives saying that their own 'toy' is in place and armed. This is the only communication intercept we've found that seems to be an operative checking in with a superior, and it was an incoming call to a disposable cell phone that was located here in our area. We got the number the call came in to, but ten minutes later it was dead, and we never got a location on it.”

Sam thought for a moment. “What about where the phone was sold? Could you track that? Maybe they bought a bunch of them at once, and you could get other numbers.”

Ron nodded. “We tried that, but this phone was actually bought at a truck stop, one of those you get and buy minutes for, without any ID or anything. The store that sold it said they only sold four phones that day, and we checked all of the others, but they seem to be in normal use. Truckers calling girlfriends they don’t want their wives to know about, things like that. No other chatter of interest on any of them.”

“These guys have caught on to a lot of the ways we track them,” Jeff said. “They don't buy phones in bulk anymore, just one at a time, random locations and scattered over many different days.”

Ron nodded. “We've got data miners going through every throwaway phone sold in the past three months, going back a month before the one we were able to identify, but so far they're getting nothing. They all seem to be either dead or in normal use. We're digging through everything, scanning facebook and every other social site, dating sites, wikis, emails, you name it. They're not using normal channels of communication except for something they consider urgent, that's my guess.”

Sam nodded. “Sounds like it,” he said. “What have we got on the bomb in the parking garage?”

Ron shrugged. “Harry told us to stay away, so all we know is that it's there. The scan team pinpointed it by the rad signature, but Harry didn't want anyone going near it, so no one has.”

“It's probably in a car,” Jeff said. “I've got you some gear ready, let me show you.” He got up from his seat and led Sam and Harry into another room, while Ron sat down at another computer.

He picked up a cell phone with a bluetooth earpiece. “This is something the spooks get to use in the big cities, but sometimes we manage to get a few such items here. It's a Geiger counter disguised as a phone, and instead of making any audible noise, it sounds off in the earpiece, so no one around you knows what you’re doing as you scan for rads. All you need to do is carry it in a pocket and walk around the area where you suspect radiation might be found; if it's there, this'll find it and let you know. Just walk through the garage, and when the noise gets louder, you’re getting warm. When it's loudest, you're hot, and if it starts to fade, then you're walking away from the device. Should make it easy to spot the car with the bomb.”

He handed it to Sam, and then picked up a wrist watch. “This is a working digital watch, but it's also a GPS signal generator. Every fifty seconds, this little baby signals to the nearest cell tower your precise location, so we can track you no matter where you go. It can also be activated as an audio monitor, which means that if you feel the need, you can tell it to call us on a cell signal and let us hear everything going on around you. There are two buttons on the side; if you push both of them at once, it activates that feature for thirty minutes, and its pickup is extremely sensitive. If your hands are tied behind your back, you can whisper and we'll hear what you're saying. If someone is talking in another room and you can just barely hear them, this baby can pick up what they're saying and transmit it to us.”

Sam smiled. “Sounds like you boys have been watching James Bond movies,” he said, and Jeff laughed.

“Nah, we're not that good,” he said, “or I'd have you a gun that looks like a pen, or a car that drives itself. 'Fraid this is the best we can do, on our budget, but here's one last thing; you're going into a situation where you're trying to watch whoever's watching the bomb. If he's already hidden there someplace and spots you, you're blown and could get killed without ever knowing it, so I got these out for you.” He held out a pair of glasses. “Latest thing from Langley for covert surveillance; they give you an infrared view. If anyone is hiding in that building, even behind concrete, you'll see his shape appear in red on the inside of the lenses, even if he's moving. Check for anyone hiding before you get out and walk around with the Geiger counter.”

Sam put the watch on, looked through the glasses at the red outlines of Jeff and Harry, and was surprised that he could see everything else, as well; the glasses only showed the red images of a heat signature superimposed over them, without obscuring the world itself. He smiled. “These are great,” he said. “And thanks for the watch; at least I know you'll find my body if they kill me, right? Let me get going.” He tucked the glasses into his shirt pocket.

Harry walked outside with Sam, and they stood beside the truck for a moment. “Sam,” Harry said, “I want you to think about one thing as you go out on this mission. This is not police work, and it is not a case for a private eye. You are entering the world of terrorism and espionage, and the rules you've always played by don't apply here. There is one thing you must do, and that is complete the mission, no matter what you have to do to accomplish it. Your mission is to identify the cell behind this attack, and if that means you have to kill someone, then do it. If it means you have to let someone die, then do it. If it means you have to make someone talk when they don't want to, then do it, no matter what you have to do. Civil rights don't apply in this world, Sam, nor do any others. Can you understand what I'm saying to you, boy?”

Sam looked him in the eye. “My mission is to find the cell behind the bombs, and I'm to do anything necessary to accomplish that mission. Trust me, Harry; these bastards didn't just attack America, they attacked my home and my family, and all I need to do is turn that part of me loose.” He turned to his truck and opened the door. “I'll do whatever I've got to do to get them.”

Harry grinned. “I know you will. Oh, wait,” he said, digging into a pocket. “Got two more presents for you.” He handed Sam an ID case, and when he flipped it open, Sam saw his own face on a Homeland Security ID card with a badge on the opposite flap. The picture was a copy of his driver's license photo, but Sam didn't comment on it. He accepted it and slid it into his pocket.

“Then there's this,” Harry said, and reached behind his back to produce a small automatic pistol with a silencer attached. “This is a thirty-two caliber automatic, and it's loaded with hollow points designed to go through a flak vest. It's very quiet and very deadly.” Sam took the gun and slid it into his own waistband at his back, while Harry produced two extra clips from a pocket. Sam put them into a pocket of his own.

“Thanks, Harry,” he said. “Let's just hope I don't need it.”

“Use it if you do. Sam—just be careful out there,” Harry said, “and come back safe if you can. I'm sorta fond of you, Sam, boy.”

Sam got in and shut the door. “I'm gonna do my best. Got a wife and kid who need me, y'know?” He started the truck and drove away before Harry could say anything more.

The trip to downtown would take about forty minutes from where the hidden office was located, so Sam called Indie as he drove. “Hey, babe,” he said when she answered. “How's it going there?”

“It's okay, but I'd rather be curled up in bed with you,” she said. “Kenzie says to tell you hello.”

“Hi back to her. I got to meet Harry's two playmates; does the word 'nerd' mean anything to you?”

She laughed. “I can imagine. They're probably both into Warcraft and other games, besides tracking down international bad guys. Long as they do their jobs and get you home safe, I can forgive 'em. Where are you now?”

“On the way down to see if anyone's watching our package. The nerds gave me some neat new toys to play with, so I don't have to take too many chances. I can spot them before they can spot me.”

“That's good, I don't want them spotting you at all! You better come home to me, Sam Prichard, do you hear me?”

“I'm planning on it, baby. Give Kenzie a kiss goodnight for me, and tell her I said it's past her bedtime.”

“I will,” Indie said. “You call me soon as I can help with anything. I love you, Sam.”

“Love you, too, babe. I'll call.” He hung up the phone and paid attention to the streets.

They were all but deserted. With the news constantly covering the search for the bombs, most anyone who could leave the city probably had. Sam wondered about his friend on the police force, and started to call his old partner, Dan Jacobs, but stopped himself. Dan would want to know why Sam was back, and then he'd want to help. Sam didn't have the authority to let anyone else in on what he was doing, so he put the phone away without dialing.

He got to the parking garage and drove inside, grabbing a ticket as if everything were perfectly normal. He slipped on the glasses, watching through them as he drove slowly through the building, the Geiger counter phone on the dashboard and the earpiece in place. He heard an occasional click, which he knew was normal, just the unit picking up stray background radiation that’s always there, but there was no rapid chatter yet.

He drove up onto the second floor level, and still got nothing from the Geiger, so he continued higher. The garage went up five levels, and when he got to the top without hearing anything, he began to wonder if he was in the right place. He started down again, still wearing the glasses. When he got back to the ground floor without hearing any chatter, he knew their guess about a car had to be wrong.

He parked the truck close to the only other vehicle on the ground floor, a sports car that was probably abandoned in the rush to flee the city, and got out, slipping the Geiger phone into his shirt pocket and keeping the glasses on. He walked through the deserted structure nonchalantly, as if he had every reason in the world to be there when no one else would even want to, and spied a door in one of the side walls. He walked over and tried it, but it was locked, so he held the Geiger up to it.

Nothing. He was starting to wonder if the bomb had already been moved, but he kept walking, looking for anywhere else it might be hidden. So far, the only place he hadn't checked was the security gate where you had to pay your parking fee to get out, so he walked toward it.

The earpiece suddenly began to sound like an old radio with static, and he stepped up his pace. The closer he got to the gate, the louder and faster the chatter became, and he knew he'd found what he was looking for.

The gate was in plain sight from the street, so he walked right past it as if he were heading somewhere. He put the phone to his ear and spoke into it as he walked, pretending to be engrossed in whatever conversation he was having, and let his eyes wander around the area. Just a hundred yards away, he saw a car sitting alone, and there was the definite red outline of a man sitting inside it. The way the car was parked meant that the man inside it would be looking straight at him.

Sam walked past the car on the opposite side of the street and kept going. The guy didn't seem to be paying undue attention to him, but Sam would have bet his life that he was being watched like a hawk. He went to the end of the block and turned the corner, waited five seconds and then turned around walked right back to the intersection, looking around as if he were lost.

The man had gotten out of his car and had been jogging toward the corner, but when Sam reappeared, he froze and ducked into the doorway of one of the buildings on that side of the street. Sam saw him, but pretended not to.

“Well, which way is it?” he yelled into the dummy phone. “Honey, I'm standing in the middle of a ghost town at night, and you can't remember where you left your car? Come on, now, think!”

He turned and went back around the corner and kept walking, yelling into the phone about how stupid his wife was, and how he was going to slap her silly when he got home. He got to the other end of the block and stopped, turning as if looking for the missing car, and spotted the infrared outline of the man's head peeking around the previous corner at him. He started across the street to his left, and then stopped just out of the man's sight.

The glasses could spot a heat signature through concrete if the heat signature was right behind it, but they couldn't see through an entire building. Sam waited and listened, and when he was sure the man wasn't coming his way, he started off again in the same direction he'd been going and hurried as well as his bum leg would allow to the other end of that block, then turned left again. Two blocks further he made another left, and shortly came to the rear of the parking garage.

There were no watchers on that side of the building, so Sam climbed over the concrete half-wall and slipped into the ground floor again. He watched through the glasses as he moved stealthily along the shadowed wall toward the gate, but saw no sign that the man had come inside. He got to the front side of the building and peeked over the half-wall again to see the guy sitting back in his car. He was just close enough to the gate that the Geiger was picking up a bit more radiation, and the earpiece was clicking steadily, so he took it off and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

He'd found the one he was looking for, he was sure, and had made the guy believe he was just a man looking for his wife's misplaced car. He slunk back into the shadows and called Harry.

“Okay,” he said when the old man answered, “I've found the bomb, but tell Brainiac Jeff it wasn't in a car. It's in the exit gate building, and I can't get to it without being seen; they’ve got a guy stationed in a car outside, keeping an eye on the gate. I tested him, and he followed me until he was sure I was a nobody, then went back to watching the gate again.”

“Good work,” Harry said. “Leave the bomb alone, we'll handle it. What do you want to do next? If he's just sitting there, he may not be relieved for a while, and he may not go back to the cell even when he is. Can you take him?”

Sam thought about it. “I think I can,” he said. “Odds are he's not looking behind himself very often, and I can get around the block and come up that way. There's an alley just a few feet behind where he's parked, so I think I can take him by surprise. Want me to turn on your super ears?”

Harry hesitated. “Do you recall what we talked about just before you left here?”

“Yes, about doing whatever it takes.”

“Don't turn on the ears. Just go do what you have to do.”

8

Sam went back the way he'd come, out through the half-wall and around the two blocks until he found the alley that led up behind the watcher's car. He walked slowly, taking it easy on his leg so that he'd have its full use when he got to where he was going.

At the end of the alley, he got down on the ground and peeked carefully out, glasses in place. The red silhouette was in the car, glowing brightly and clearly to show him that the man watching the garage was sitting up, but with his head back against the headrest of his seat.

Sam pulled back and thought for a moment, then peeked out again. He read the car's license number, and then moved halfway down the alley to call Indie.

“Honey, run a tag number for me, just a hunch—AAX 771.”

Indie said, “Gimme a minute,” and he heard keys being tapped. A moment later, she said, “It comes back to a business, Mahmoud Imports. Address is out at West Fifty-Sixth Street and Pecos.”

“Interesting,” Sam said. “Thanks, baby!” He hung up and called Harry.

“Yes, Sam?”

“Harry, I got the tag off the watcher's car and had Indie check it out. Ever heard of Mahmoud Imports, out on Fifty Sixth and Pecos?”

Harry asked Ron and Jeff, but neither had heard of the company. “Nothing here, I'm afraid. Think they might be involved?”

“No idea, but it strikes me as odd that the car he's in is registered to a company with a Muslim name attached. Any suggestions?”

Harry was silent for a moment. “Sam, it's your call. If you think this should be checked out, go ahead, but I'd hate to lose the one lead you've already got sitting there now.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I think I'm going to question the guy here, and see what I can find out. I'll get back to you when I'm done.” He ended the call and moved to the end of the alley again, this time staying on his feet. When he was there, he took a couple of deep breaths, then stepped out and walked quickly to the vehicle. He was at the driver's window, which was down, before the man knew he was even nearby, the little silenced thirty-two in his hand and pointing right at the man's face.

The guy jumped, and started to raise the gun in his own hand, but he froze when he realized he was looking into the eye of death. Sam reached in and took the piece, an older style Colt forty-five, and shoved it into the same spot the thirty-two had occupied seconds earlier, then looked at his captive. The watcher was a boy, probably not over eighteen yet.

“Since I'm pretty sure you speak English, I'll keep this simple. You move, you die, right here and now. Got that?”

The boy nodded, his wide eyes never leaving the silencer that was inches from his face. Sam reached in again and took the keys out of the car's ignition and slipped them into a pocket.

“Why don't you come on out of there, and let's take a little walk down the alley,” Sam said, and the kid slowly raised a hand to open the door as Sam stepped back out of his reach. When he was out and had shut the door, Sam motioned with the gun for the kid to precede him into the alleyway, and he did so. They walked down to the middle of the alley, and Sam said, “Okay, far enough. Turn around and face me.”

The boy did so, keeping both hands in plain sight the whole time. “Look, Mister,” he said, but Sam cut him off.

“No, no, here's how this works,” he said. “I ask a question, and you give me an answer. If I believe you, you live a minute longer; if I don't, I pull this trigger and your brains turn into jelly on the wall behind you. Understand?” The guy nodded. “Good. What's your name?”

“Zayan Jamal,” he said. “I'm just...”

“Just answer the question, nothing else. Okay, Jamal, why were you sitting there with a gun, watching that building? Remember, it's all about whether I believe you or not, so be sure you're telling me the truth.”

Jamal swallowed. “I was told to,” he said, and stopped.

“By whom?”

“By my uncle, Imran Mahmoud.”

“And what is it you're supposed to be watching for?”

Jamal swallowed again. “I was told to watch for anyone entering the little room where you pay.”

“Why?”

Jamal began to tremble. “Because there is something in there that my uncle wishes not to be disturbed.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam said. “And what might that be, Jamal?”

Jamal began to cry, then, and Sam had to fight the urge to feel sympathy. “It is a bomb, that's all they told me. I was to watch and make sure no one goes in there to find it.”

Sam looked at him for a moment. “And what were you supposed to do if someone did?”

Jamal's tears were flowing freely. “I was to just watch unless someone went inside, or if I saw someone acting suspicious,” he said, “but if they went in, or they were trying to get in, I was supposed to kill them.”

Sam suddenly slapped him across the face. “And what if it was just somebody who works there? It might be a woman, a mother with kids at home even younger than you. Were you supposed to kill her?”

Jamal nodded, sobbing. “Yes, I'm sorry, my uncle told me I must do this for Allah's Glory!”

Sam looked at him again, thinking. “Jamal, do you hate America?”

Jamal shook his head from side to side, gasping his words out through his sobs. “No, I don't, I grew up here! I do not hate America!”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“I don't have a choice! If I do not do as I am told, I will be killed!”

“Do you want to live?”

The boy nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir, yes, I do, please, please don't kill me!”

“I'm going to ask you some very important questions, Jamal, and if you answer them right, I won't kill you. But if I think you're lying, just as I said before, I'll shoot you dead right here and now. Is your uncle the man behind these bombs?”

Jamal shook his head. “No, he's just one of many who are helping to do this. I don't know who the others are, I swear I don't!”

“Do you know how I can find them?”

More head shaking. “No, sir, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't.”

Suddenly a cell phone rang, and the sound came from Jamal's pocket. The boy looked terrified, but he stared at Sam and said, “If I don't answer it, they will think I've run away, and my uncle will kill my mother and my sisters. Please, let me answer it!”

Sam nodded, making a sudden decision. “Can you speak English to them?”

Jamal nodded as he took out the phone. “We always speak English, so no one suspects us,” he said, then pushed a button on the phone. “Hello?” he said. “No, nothing. No one has been here since I got here. No, it's a little cool out, and I've been sneezing, that's all.” He sniffled. “It's making my nose run. Yes, I know; no one will get inside, I promise. May I speak to mother?” He grinned nervously at Sam, then said, “Mother, are you all right? Yes, I'm fine. I'm doing as Uncle asked, don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you or Shaista or Bisma. Yes, put him back on.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Yes, Uncle? No, I took a walk down the alley. I had to—you know. Go pee.” He listened for a moment, and then his eyes went wide. “Yes, tell him I'll be right there,” he said, and ended the call.

He looked at Sam and his eyes were filled with terror. “A man is here, to see me,” he said. “If I don't go, he will come in here looking for me, and he will kill us both! I will not tell him you are here, and maybe you will help me to save my mother and sisters?”

Sam made a split second decision. “Go,” he said, and the boy sprinted up the alley. Sam stood as far into the shadows as he could until the boy was out of the alley, and then began moving quickly up it. He got to the end and was able to hear Jamal talking to another man.

“I just had to go to the bathroom, and I thought the alley was best,” he was saying, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Jamal went on. “No one has been here all night, except for one man who parked inside and then walked out. He went down the street that way, and never came back.”

“You're doing a good job, Zayan,” the other man said. “I will send someone to take over for you when the sun is coming up, but do not leave your post again, do you hear? When I saw the car empty, I thought you had been taken, but I was speaking to your uncle on the phone and he said to let him call you and find out where you were. I understand the need to piss, but next time, piss your pants before you leave your post.”

Jamal seemed scared as he said, “Yes, sir, I will. I'm sorry.”

“Good,” the man said, but then there was silence for a moment. “Zayan, where is your gun?”

Sam knew the kid had blown it, somehow, and was about to step out and confront the man, but Jamal said, “Oh! Oh, no! I set it down when Uncle called, because I was going to the bathroom, and I only have two hands! I'll go and get it, I'm so sorry!”

The man burst out laughing. “Go, get it now while I'm here! Be quick!”

Sam snatched the gun out of his waistband and had it ready when Jamal came running into the alley, and shoved it into his hands. He kept his own gun pointed at the boy, and put a finger to his lips, but the kid's eyes only showed gratitude and trust. Jamal ran back out of the alley with the gun in his hand, and the man laughed again.

“As I said, next time, piss your pants! That gun is far more important to you than your little pecker, but you put it down rather than let go? Allah grant that you learn from this, boy, or next time I'll break a finger!”

Jamal said, “Yes, sir, I'll never put it down again, I swear!”

Sam heard a car door, and then an engine starting. He stayed in a shadow as the man drove away in a nondescript sedan.

A second later, he saw Jamal stick a hand out into the alley, holding the gun by its barrel. His face followed, and Sam reached out to take the gun from him again.

“If you had not given it to me,” Jamal said, “he would have come in here, and you would have had to kill him, or he would kill both of us. I did not know what you would do, but I said the only thing I could think of. I hoped that if he came with me, you could stop him in time, so we would not die, you and I.”

“Jamal,” Sam said, putting his gun away, “that was pretty good thinking. Now, tell me all you can about your uncle and where he is.”

Jamal nodded. “My uncle, he owns a business and he lives in an apartment above it. We all live there, my mother and sisters and I, and his two sons, my cousins. When I was only a baby, my father brought us here, but he died a few years ago in a car accident. My mother moved us in with her brother, my uncle, and we have lived there since then, but he is an evil man. He makes us do things, especially my sisters; and me, he makes me carry messages and things. He has been part of this plan for a long time, I know, but he has never made me do anything like this before. Never before did he give me a gun and tell me I must kill someone.”

Sam nodded; he knew there were thousands of kids like Jamal, forced to go along with the evil of their elders. Some of them were able to escape, especially if they got help. Sam hoped Jamal and his sisters might be lucky, if they could live through this night.

“Okay, who was the man who came here?” Sam asked.

Jamal grimaced. “I don't know his name for sure. My Uncle calls him Ibrahim, but I have heard others call him by other names, so I don't know which one is real. He is not the man who is in charge, I think, but he is high in the people who are involved, because he carries important messages and my uncle listens when he speaks.”

“Then he's probably a lieutenant in the organization. Sit in your car, I've got to make a phone call.”

Jamal got into the car, and Sam stepped into a doorway where he would not be visible from the street. He called Harry.

“Okay, here's what I've got. The watcher is a kid named Zayan Jamal, and he's been forced to watch the bomb because his uncle, Mahmoud, is holding his mother and sister hostage. Uncle is part of the cell, but not high in it, and from what it sounds like, I think the girls are being used a sex slaves, and this kid is a message boy. He says this is the first time he's ever been given a gun, but his orders were to keep anyone from getting to the bomb, even if it meant killing them. He's spilled his guts for me, and he's begging me to help him save his mother and sisters.”

Harry sighed. “Boy, you get into the worst messes. You think you can trust this kid?”

“Yeah, I do. I had him down the alley interrogating him, and his phone rang. I let him answer, and he didn't even try to give me up, but then when a higher ranking goon showed up here at his car, he had the chance to set me up and didn't. I trust him; he wants to live in this country, and to save his mom and sisters. I want to help him do that, if I can, but I agree, the mission has to come first.”

Harry was quiet for a minute. “Sam, is there anyone on the police force you trust completely?”

“Yep. My old partner, Danny. Why?”

“If you can get him to keep an eye on the bomb and make sure no one moves it, then I think you should go after Mahmoud. Take him if you can do it alone, but don't let on in front of anyone else that it's about anything other than him. Nothing about the bomb, or the cell, you're just after him because he owes you money or some such crap. When you've got him alone, then make him talk. We want the people at the top of this thing.”

“You got it,” Sam said, and hung up, then dialed Dan Jacobs' cell number.

“What are you doing calling me when you're on your honeymoon?” his old partner answered.

“Danny, I don't have any time for questions and answers, but I need your help. How fast can you get to Twelfth and Corona?”

Dan hesitated only two seconds. “Nine minutes,” he said.

“Get there, then. I'll explain when I see you.”

“You better!” Dan said and hung up.

Sam went back to Jamal. “I've got to go down the street to meet someone, a good friend who is going to come and watch that bomb for me. He won't bother you, and you don't need to pay any attention to him, but he'll keep an eye on you, too, just in case Ibrahim comes back and gives you trouble. Then I'm going back to get my truck and go after your uncle. I'll get your mother and sisters to somewhere safe as soon as I can. Give me your cell number.” He punched it into his phone and saved it, then said. “Here are your keys and your gun. Tell me how the building is laid out where your uncle is.”

Jamal nodded. “It's a two story building, with a store on the main floor and the apartment upstairs. You can go up a flight of stairs on the back of the building to get to the back door.” He took a key from his keyring and handed it to Sam. “That key will open the back door, and it leads into a storage room. No one inside will hear it open. My uncle will be in the living room, with my mother and sisters. No one else will be there right now, I think. My cousins are out of town right now. If you go in the back door, you will go through the storage room into the kitchen, and there is a door to the right that goes into the living room. When you come into the kitchen, you will be able to see my uncle's big chair.”

Sam was listening intently, but he interrupted. “What will your mother and sisters do if I come in suddenly?”

Jamal smiled. “They are Muslim women living under the rule of a fanatic,” he said. “They will do nothing unless you, as a man, tell them to.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “I want you to stay right here until you hear from me. If you betray me, I'll hunt you down and kill you. Got that?”

Jamal nodded vigorously. “Sir, I will stay right here, I won't move, I won't do anything. Please, help my mother and sisters, and I will be your man forever!”

Sam nodded. “I might just hold you to that!” he said, as he turned to go and meet Dan.

The police detective showed up right on time, and got out of his car to shake Sam's hand. “You wanna tell me why you’re here and acting all mysterious, instead of making whoopee with that little beauty of yours in Hawaii?”

“Got drafted,” Sam said. “I'm temporarily on loan to the Department of Homeland Security and working on this whole terrorism thing.” He showed Dan his HS identification, and his old partner whistled.

“Sonny boy, when you go whole hog, you do with a big pig! So how can I be of service to the Federal Government?”

“Here's the deal, and it really is top secret at the moment. The Denver bomb is in the exit gate of the parking garage behind me, and I need it to stay there. There's a kid sitting in a car outside, watching it for the terrorists, but he's being forced and has switched sides. Don't mess with him unless you absolutely have to, or if someone is giving him trouble; I said you’d keep an eye on him, okay? Just don't let anyone go into that guardhouse and take that bomb out of there, got it? And yes, that means use any amount of force necessary, including lethal.”

Dan looked at the gate and shook his head. “Something told me I shoulda stayed home and not answered that phone,” he said. “How on earth did you get mixed up in this?”

“Stuck my nose in where it didn't belong. I saw something funny when we were leaving for our honeymoon, somebody putting a big ugly bag into the plane's luggage bay at the last second. When we got to the airport at Honolulu, I saw an ISIS-type picking it up, so when the bombs were announced, I remembered it. Tracked him down and found the bomb, and now it looks like this is where the cell is that sent them all over the country, so I got brought in as a contractor.” He sighed. “I've got to go and track a lead on finding that cell, but I didn't want to leave this bomb unguarded, so when they asked me who I could trust on the force, I naturally thought of you. Up for it?”

“Heck, yes,” Dan said. “You know I got your back, any time! Let me get into the garage and I can watch it from in there.”

Sam nodded. “Good, you can give me a ride. My hip is killing me!” he climbed into the passenger seat, and Dan drove into the garage. He parked beside the Ridgeline, and Sam got into it and drove out the wrong way, so that he didn't have to break out through the gate.

9

The ride out to Pecos was about half an hour long, but Sam wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. He had to find the place, reconnoiter it and look for possible guards, then figure out how to get to Mahmoud without drawing too much attention to himself. He thought through the description Jamal had given him, and prayed the boy was right about no one else being there.

He found the building with no trouble, thanks to the big sign that read “Mahmoud Imports” across the front of it, then went and parked half a block away. He got out and walked slowly toward the building, infrared glasses on and working. There were red blobs up on the second floor, but none down below, and he saw none anywhere else in the area.

Most people would have been out of the city, he knew, trying to escape the nuclear bomb that was supposed to be there. It made a sick sort of sense that the very people behind them would be unafraid to remain, knowing how small the actual range of devastation would be, while most Americans would only think that any nuke would be like the ones that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two.

Sam walked into the alley behind the building and saw the stairs where Jamal said they would be, so he climbed them as quietly as possible and found the back door. There was no window in it, so he put his ear up close and listened, but heard nothing. He took out the key Jamal had given him and slid it gently into the lock, turning it slowly and listening for any sound. Nothing. Sam turned the knob and the door opened on oiled hinges, so he slipped inside and closed it quietly behind him. He could hear a television not far off.

He drew the silenced automatic and held it at the ready as he moved through the room full of boxes and jars. When he got to the doorway leading to the kitchen, he paused and peeked carefully around it, spotting the balding head of a large man in a recliner through the further doorway to the right, just as Jamal had said he would. Once again he listened, but the only sounds were from the TV set, so he steeled himself and walked quickly through the kitchen to put his gun against Mahmoud's head.

“Make a move I don't like, and you're a dead man,” he said as he looked around the room. A woman and two teenaged girls were sitting on a sofa, and simply looked at him as he held the gun on Mahmoud.

“What do you want?” Mahmoud asked. “If it's money, I have very little here.”

“Money we'll talk about, but not here,” Sam said. He turned to the women. “I am taking this man with me. Do not move from where you are until someone comes for you. Do you understand?”

The woman nodded without saying a word, and after seeing her do so, the girls also nodded. Sam turned his attention back to Mahmoud.

“I want you to get up very slowly, with both hands where I can see them. Don't turn around until I tell you to.”

Mahmoud was nearly six feet tall and remarkably obese, weighing in at probably three hundred and fifty pounds, Sam guessed. He rose slowly, his hands out at his sides. With the gun still at the back of Mahmoud's head, Sam stepped around the chair and patted him down, but he seemed to be unarmed. A glance at the chair showed Sam a large revolver tucked down beside its cushion, and he pushed Mahmoud further from the chair, then reached down and picked it up. It went into his waistband at the back.

“Now, you and I are going outside,” he said, “so walk slowly ahead of me. If you try to turn or run away, I will kill you without hesitation. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Mahmoud said, as he began walking haltingly toward the kitchen. He turned into the storage room and opened the outside door, walked out onto the landing and waited for Sam before starting down the steps. “I do not keep money here, not even in the store,” he said. “We are a mail order company, we sell our wares on the internet. Very little do we sell from here.”

Sam waited until they got to the ground, then put his glasses on and looked around while he kept Mahmoud in place. There was still no sign of anyone else around them, so he pushed Mahmoud toward an open garage in the alley. When they got inside, he said, “Turn around.”

Mahmoud turned to face him. “If you do not want money, then why have you taken me from my home?” he asked, his voice shaky, and Sam realized that he was absolutely terrified.

He smiled. “I'm here because Ibrahim is concerned that you are not worthy of our trust. He sent me to see what I think.”

At the name of Ibrahim, Mahmoud's face took on a look of sheer panic. He tried to speak, but only stuttered, so he closed his mouth and tried again. “I am faithful to Allah,” he said, “and to our great cause! Why would he doubt me, when I have done nothing to cause doubt?”

“Someone has leaked information,” Sam said. “There are those who know of the plan, and where the device is hidden. Your nephew is not the only one we have watching; there are policemen snooping around, and someone has told them where it is. Ibrahim feels that it may be you. Were you paid for that information? How much?”

Mahmoud was beginning to cry, just as his nephew had done earlier. “Allah, preserve me,” he said, “I have told no one anything! I do nothing that I am not told to do! I beg of you, you must believe me!”

Sam smiled at him and raised the gun so that Mahmoud was looking into the silencer. “No,” he said, “I really don't have to believe anything you say. Maybe Ibrahim is right, and we should just kill you now.”

Mahmoud dropped to his knees, his hands clenched together as if in prayer. “No, please! I beg of you! Ask Noori, or Mohsin! They will tell you, I am faithful!”

Sam scowled at him. “We don't even know where they are, right now, so they may be just as filthy as you are.” He suddenly pulled the gun back a bit. “Wait,” he said. “Maybe you know where they are. Do you?”

“No, if they are not in their homes, I do not know where they could be!”

Sam stared at him for a moment, then smiled again. “Okay,” he said and shoved the gun at Mahmoud's face once more.

The Muslim tried to duck behind his own hands. “But wait!” he cried. “I can find them for you, I am sure I can! If you will only allow me a little time, I will go and find them and bring them to you!”

Sam pretended to think it over. “No, I don't think Ibrahim would like it if I let you go. I think he wants you dead, so maybe I'd better just...”

“I can drive you to them!” Mahmoud all but screamed, his tears streaming down his face. “I can take you to them! I know I can! If they are not at home, then they must be with Dawid! They must be at the core house! We can go there and you can ask them! You can ask Dawid himself! He knows I am faithful, he brought me in!”

Sam thought for a moment. “I don't think you even know where the core is,” he said, and aimed at Mahmoud's head once again. “Say goodnight,” he said.

“In Edgewater!” Mahmoud screamed, “Teller Street and Twentieth Avenue! The big white house with the pillars, I do not know the address, but I have been there with Ibrahim many times! Take me to Dawid, and he will tell you that I can be trusted! It must be Ibrahim who is selling us out, and he is trying to put the blame onto me, but I would never do such a thing! I am faithful!”

Sam said, “Sit down and put your face on the floor,” Sam said roughly, “while I make a phone call. If you move, I'll kill you, remember that!” He watched as Mahmoud did as he was told, then walked backward until he was out in the alley. A quick glance around showed him that no one new had come around, and when he looked up at the apartment, he saw the red blobs that meant the women were sitting where he'd told them to stay. He looked back at Mahmoud, then took out his phone and called Harry.

“Sam? You're on speaker, boy, what have you got?”

“Mahmoud is a coward,” Sam said. “All I had to do was imply that is friends don't trust him, and he started singing like a bird. He says that there's something he calls 'the core' at Teller and Twentieth in Edgewater, and somebody there named Dawid must be pretty important; according to Mahmoud, Dawid is who brought him into the cell. Got two other names, too, Noori and Mohsin. Any of those mean anything?”

Jeff's voice came through the line. “Dawid Fareesh is one we keep an eye on, but we've never had anything on him. He lives out there, big colonial style house. Mohsin could be Mohsin Ayyud Al Mayim, he's got some connection to Dawid. Not sure about a Noori, though.”

Sam grunted. “Then I've given you something to work with. Harry, what do you want me to do with Mahmoud?”

“I've got a police squad car on standby, not far from where you're at, and we've got you on the GPS map now. If you want to keep him around, I can have them come and get him, lock him up till I can get someone from up top interested, or you can put him down if you think he's outlived his usefulness.”

Sam looked at the phone. “I don't think I've got a reason for that. Send me the squad and we'll put him on ice for now. What about the bomb, are we ready to snatch it up out of there?”

“Not just yet. We're leaving all of them but your first one in place until we get some more intel on who's behind this, which is why I wanted you to put someone you trust on it. Let's get Mahmoud locked away, then we'll decide on the next move.”

“Sounds good,” Sam said, and hung up. He walked back in by Mahmoud and looked down at him. “Seems today is your lucky day,” he said. “You don't have to die, and you get free room and board for the rest of your life.”

“You are not one of us,” Mahmoud said, without even raising his head. “You used tricks to make me tell you what you wanted to know, and now you will ruin it all.”

Sam nodded at him. “I sure as hell plan to ruin as much of it as I can, Mahmoud. One thing you never want to do is piss off an American Private Eye!”

Mahmoud rocked his head from side to side, his nose still on the dirty concrete floor. “It does not matter. Allah will see all of you destroyed, sooner or later. I only wanted to be part of the glory of bringing your deaths upon as many of you as I could, but I am not important. Allah will not be stopped.”

Sam heard tires crunching through the gravel in the alley, and stepped back far enough to see the squad car coming toward him. The officer saw him and accelerated, then stopped outside the garage and got out.

“You Prichard?” he asked, and Sam nodded. “I was told you have a prisoner for me?”

“I do. This is Imran Mahmoud, and he will be a guest of Homeland Security for a while.” He flashed his ID at the cop, whose eyebrows went up.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and then withdrew handcuffs from his belt. He cuffed Mahmoud, and Sam helped him get the fat man on his feet and into the back seat of his car. When they had driven away, Sam took out his phone and called Jamal.

“Hello?” the boy answered.

“Jamal, this is your friend from the alley, remember?”

“Yes,” Jamal said excitedly. “Oh, yes, sir! I am still here, I have not moved, just as you said!”

Sam smiled. “Well, I just wanted to let you know that your uncle is going to be gone for a long, long time, and your mother and sisters are safe. They're waiting for you to come home and tell them what's going on.”

The boy sounded like he was weeping again. “Oh, sir, I cannot thank you enough! I am your man, sir, I am your man forever!”

“Yeah, well, we'll worry about all that another time. Just thought you'd want to know.”

He listened to another round of thanks, and then ended the call. As he walked back to his truck, he called Harry again.

10

Dan Jacobs sat in his car and wondered what on earth he'd gotten dragged into. Sam, his old partner who had recently become a private eye, was somehow working with Homeland Security, and that was mind-boggling enough in itself, but the case they had him on involved terrorists and nuclear bombs, and that was way past mind-boggling into downright crazy!

When Sam had called, Dan had thought it was just to make sure he was okay, what with the bomb threats and all, and he'd been shocked to find out Sam was back in town. He hadn't hesitated when Sam said he needed help, of course, because it didn't matter that Sam was no longer on the force; they were partners, and you come when your partner calls. His new partner, a guy named de Silva, hadn't gotten that through his head yet, but Dan was patient, and would break him in eventually. Until then, no one but Sam would be his partner— not in his mind.

So, now, here I sit, watching a nuclear bomb that could blow up any second, while Sam is out tracking down the real problem, the terrorists behind it. Hard to believe that a plot like this could get cooked up right here in our back yard, but if Sam says it did, I believe him.

Dan leaned back in his seat and got a little more comfortable. He'd done enough stakeouts to know that you couldn't let yourself get cramped up, but you had to stay awake and alert, too, and he'd learned to be comfy and still keep his mind active. For him, that meant going through old cases in his memory, especially the ones he hadn't solved. Reviewing them had, on a couple of occasions, resulted in insights that actually solved an old case, so it was a mental exercise he found stimulating and exciting.

* * * * *

Jamal hung up from Sam's call, and a smile spread over his face. At last, his uncle was gone, removed from his place of tyranny over the lives of his family. Jamal couldn't let anyone know that he had arranged it, that it was he who had given the American the information that got rid of the old bastard, but he knew that it all fit into Allah's will.

Weeks before, Jamal had come to the conclusion that his uncle and the group he worked with were fools. Their plan to disrupt America with their dirty little bombs was so simple, so stupid, that even he could see the flaws in it, and even if they managed to pull it off, what would they gain? A few weeks of terror and rhetoric, and then the bombing of every place where true Islam was practiced would begin anew. Such a plan would only result in even greater atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other countries where Jihad was supported, whether openly or in secret. The Americans would be screaming for revenge, and the military forces of this large country would be determined to get it.

No, this was not the way to bring glory to Allah, and Jamal was still amazed when he recalled how the epiphany had come to him, that it was he whom Allah had actually called to make His greatest strike against the United States of America, that great friend of Israel and enemy of Islam. His plan had come to Jamal through a series of visions while he was doing his schoolwork, and he had spent countless hours since then in prayer and meditation, desperately seeking confirmations of what he believed Allah was telling him to do.

Jamal didn't know how he was supposed to do these things, but his faith in Allah was strong, and had been for years. He was a devout student of the Q'uran, and loved the teachings about how to deal with infidels. As young as he was, Jamal had already dispensed justice to some of them, and knowing that Allah had selected him for such great glory as this was enough to send him into rapturous delight.

Allah had told him to use the knowledge he had been given through his recent work in school to strike a blow that would not only bring terror of Islam to the American hearts, but would also cripple the nation, making it impossible for this infidel government to do anything but lick its wounds and try to cope with the devastation that he, Jamal, would wreak on it. The only question in Jamal's mind was how he was to accomplish this wondrous work when there were so many obstacles in the way.

The first obstacle was how he was to obtain the device he would need, when he was constantly watched by his uncle. That part of Allah's plan began to come together almost a week earlier, when he had pleased Ibrahim by telling him that his friend Marty worked at the parking garage downtown, closest to the capitol building, and said he could hide something in the little storage room of the gate shack there. Since Marty was the day guard, he had the only key to that room, and when Jamal convinced him that what he needed to hide was only a big gift for his mother (“I got her the special sewing machine she has always wanted, the one that can do all the fancy things!”), he had agreed. Marty liked Jamal; he brought young girls over sometimes, and Marty was always ready to party. Doing him a favor would only result in more of those parties.

Ibrahim had understood, and helped Jamal carry the box with the bomb in and conceal it in the storeroom. Marty had been grinning the entire time, and Ibrahim hid is disgust with the man and his appetites behind a grin of his own, pretending to be Jamal's older cousin to explain why he was helping. When Marty invited him to come along the next time Jamal brought girls, he had almost blown it and beaten the man senseless, but he'd caught himself and merely smiled as he promised to try to come along.

As a reward for finding such a location for the bomb, Ibrahim had taken him to see the bombs being armed, and the top man in their local cell had liked the boy. “Little Zealot,” he had called him, and Jamal had shown such interest in the bombs themselves that he told the men who were arming them to let him watch, teach him a bit about the mysteries of nuclear science. Jamal had been overjoyed when they had actually shown him the codes for arming and disarming the bomb, and how they set the timer for each one. They'd been so delighted with his laughter and excitement that they'd actually allowed him to arm one of them.

What a thrill that had been, to know that if he only entered one number different, he could make the bomb explode right then and there. He was not afraid of death, but he wanted to kill as many of Allah's enemies as he could while he died. That was why he was so pleased with the glory Allah was offering him; he would be the greatest hero Islam had ever known, for he would kill so many millions of Americans that it would take the country many years to recover enough to even think about retaliation, and by then, Islam would rule the world!

Jamal would kill more than anyone else in history. Not even Hitler could come close, even if you allowed that he had killed millions of Jews as some claimed he had done. He had killed no more than six million; if things went the way he knew they would, Jamal would kill more than fifty million before his actions were fully felt, and the number could conceivably climb far higher than that.

Once he knew this part of his holy mission, he began to pray about other aspects, such as how he would be freed from his uncle, and how the bomb would fall into his possession. He had known it would happen, but he was worried when it came down to the last hours and he still had the old fool and his friends hovering over his shoulder. He had finally been assigned to simply sit here and watch, and so he was planning to take the bomb while he was on guard duty and go, praying that they would not catch him at it.

Then Allah had sent him the most unexpected aid he could imagine, in the form of the American. He had known instantly that this man was his salvation, and when he used his wits to play the man, he was certain. By the time Ibrahim had been there and gone, Jamal had the American eating out of his hand, and it was easy to feed him the information that would take Uncle and his fellows out of the picture.

They were fools, after all; it was Allah's will that they be caught and punished for their failure, and the American would see to that. At the same time, it would leave Jamal free to do what he must do. The American had gone and taken his uncle, and called to tell him that his mother and sisters were now safe. That call had meant he was free of the fools, and was Allah's final sign that it was time to accept glory and be the hand of Allah in this final blow against His enemies in the west.

Jamal was excited, so excited that he wanted to call someone and tell them! He called his friend in Chicago, the man he'd met through his uncle, the one who sold him the drugs he peddled to Marty and others, but the woman who answered said Zikouri was in jail. He'd been caught selling his drugs, and would be locked up for at least a few days.

Jamal hung up, and then called his mother. She knew she was not to answer the phone given to her unless it was a call from Jamal, his uncle or one of a few others she had been told might call it.

“Mother, it's me,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“A man came,” she said curtly. “He took Imran, and left.”

Jamal laughed. “Uncle will not be back, I think. I am going to be coming by the house, and I need your phone. After I get it, you and the girls may need to find a new way to live. I will be doing Allah's will, and will not return, either.”

His mother said nothing, and he knew that she was probably saying a prayer of thanks. Jamal was more of a tyrant to her and his sisters than Uncle Imran ever had been. He hung up, and a moment later he made one more call.

“This is Zayan Jamal, nephew of Imran Mahmoud. I have received a word from Allah, and I am now in possession of one of the devices.”

The man on the other end of the line had been sleeping, but he was suddenly wide awake. “Are you now?” he asked. “And what do you wish to do, sell it? I could perhaps be a...”

“No, you old fool!” Jamal spat. “I have been given word from Allah on how to use it to cripple this country, and I will do as Allah has instructed me, but I felt you should be warned. You and your people should leave California as soon as possible. It will not be safe there by the day after tomorrow.”

The call lasted quite a while, as he gave the man only minor details of his plans, and at the end, the man on the other end of the line gave him another number. “Call this number if you need anything, and we will do all we can help you.”

He hung up from the call, and got out of the car quietly. He knew that the American had told another man to wait inside the garage and watch the bomb, and that man was the last obstacle, but Jamal knew that Allah would deliver the man into his hands. He walked confidently into the garage and toward the car, which was parked where the driver could watch the exit.

As he approached, he saw that the man had his head leaned back on the headrest, and he walked as quietly as he could to the car. His shoes, the ones he wore for school, had soft soles that made no sound on the smooth concrete of the floor, and the man gave no indication that he was aware of Jamal's presence, even when he was standing right beside the driver's door. Jamal watched for a moment, and saw that the man's lips were moving, as if he were whispering to himself about something.

Jamal felt the thrill, and reached behind his back slowly for the gun. When he brought it around, he aimed it at the man's head, but before he pulled the trigger, he tapped lightly on the glass with the barrel. The man opened his eyes, startled, and then turned his head to see the big gun pointed at him, and his mouth came open as his hand started to reach for his own gun.

It was the last thing he ever saw, and the last thought he ever had. Jamal listened with a feeling of satisfaction to the rolling echo of the gun’s report as it bounced off of the many tons of concrete that surrounded him, and then he walked calmly back to his car and drove it into the building. He parked it beside the exit gate and used the keys he'd made a few days earlier, when he'd stolen them from the old pervert as he played the fool with the girls who would do anything for liquor and drugs, to open the door and enter, then unlock the storeroom.

The box was very heavy, but Allah gave him strength, and after a struggle, he managed to get it into the back seat of his car. He knew that the American would remember his car, so he would have to find another one, but that should be no trouble. There would be plenty of people trying to get to their families to the west, and some of them would stop for gas. He had already been shown by Allah where he should wait, and he drove straight there.

11

“Okay, Mahmoud is en route to jail,” he said. “What do you want to do about Dawid Whatsisname? Should I go out there and look around?”

Harry didn't answer for a moment. “Sam, you've done more already than anyone could expect of you,” he said finally. “If you go to Fareesh's home—if he's actually running the cell and you get caught, his people will kill you without any warning. They shoot first and don't bother with questions.”

“Yeah, Harry, I get it, if I go out there, I'm on my own. On the other hand, as soon as they realize Mahmoud is missing, they're likely to go to ground in a hurry. If I can get enough to confirm they're in the cell, it'd be worth the risk.”

Harry sighed. “Turn on the watch when you get there, so we can hear what happens. You can speak softly and give us a running account.”

“Good,” Sam said. “Then, if they do kill me, at least you'll have whatever I got up to that point, and enough to go after them for murder, anyway. I'll turn it on when I go in, so be listening.” He hung up and got into the truck, then headed for Edgewater.

He glanced at the clock on the stereo and saw that it was almost eleven thirty. He called Indie, who was awake and answered on the first ring.

“Sam!” she said. “I've been worried! What's going on, babe?”

“I've identified four cell members, and may have the leader,” he answered. “I'm on the way to check him out right now. Just wanted to hear your voice,” he added with a smile.

“I love you, Sam Prichard,” Indie whispered. “Don't be too big a hero tonight, okay?”

“Trust me, babe, I'm not out to win any medals. I just need to check this guy out, and if I can get anything that says he's our guy, the feds'll take it from there. My job is just to give Harry enough evidence to get Washington to listen.”

“Then, he's right? The whole plot was cooked up right there?”

Sam shrugged, even though she couldn't see him. “That I don't know, yet, but if we've got a real local cell, then it's possible. Let's face it, Denver isn't known for being too high on the feds' watch list, so realistically, it's an ideal place for them to sit and plan. My goal is to make sure it doesn't work out for them.”

Indie sighed. “Just be careful. Kenzie and I need you, baby.”

“And I need both of you. I'll be careful, don't worry.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “I think you might as well lose those words from your vocabulary—I married the wrong guy not to worry. I love you, and I wish you were here doing all those wonderful things to me again!”

Sam smiled. “Me, too, but just hold that thought. We'll be back on our honeymoon before you know it!”

“Right now, I'd settle for just having you here with me. I know I say this a lot, but, God, Sam, be careful. Please?”

“Careful is my new middle name, babe. I'll see you soon.” He ended the call before he could talk himself into telling Harry he was quitting.

The house at Teller and Twentieth was not what Sam would call 'colonial,' but it had some big white columns and was rather large. He parked down the street in the lot of a medical clinic and walked back toward it with the glasses on. Heat blobs in several houses showed what appeared to be people sleeping, and one who must have been watching TV; a second heat signature was probably a television, from its shape and placement. He scanned the mansion itself, and saw only four blobs, all of which seemed to be lying down. There was a small one moving around, however, and he watched for a moment before concluding that it was probably a cat.

He walked into the yard and slipped quietly around the side of the house before he remembered to turn on the watch's audio function, so he stopped and did so. He waited a second to let it warm up if it needed to, then whispered, “I'm at Fareesh's place. No sign of guards, no dogs. I don't see any obvious alarm system, no motion detectors or anything. I'm going to check out the exterior, and then think about what to do next.”

He moved toward the back of the house and came to a fence. He scanned along it with the glasses but saw nothing that indicated anyone, man or animal, so he followed it to a gate and looked it over carefully. Luckily, the moon was fairly bright, so he didn't need a flashlight; there were no signs of sensors on the gate, so he opened it gently and slipped into the back yard.

There was a large pool, a beautiful patio and a child's playset, the kind made of wood with swings and slides and a playhouse on the top. He cursed himself for not finding out if Fareesh had children, but he'd come too far to back off, so he went through the yard to the back door, which seemed to lead into the garage.

Suddenly he heard a noise and froze, but it was coming from his shirt. He glanced down and realized that it was the earpiece from the Geiger phone in his pants pocket, and took it out to listen to it. The clicking was steady and fairly rapid.

Radiation? He took out the Geiger phone and waved it around the door, and the clicking intensified slightly. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and whispered, “I've got definite radiation here, coming from the garage. I'm gonna try to get in and see how much.”

He felt the doorknob and tested it, but it was locked. He used his own phone as a light and looked at it, seeing that it was a simple single lock, set into the doorknob. A moment later, a credit card slipped the latch, and he pushed it open slowly. He heard nothing that indicated he'd set off any alarms, and entered slowly.

The clicking got louder, and he waved the Geiger around to determine where the radiation was strongest, but it was steady. He walked carefully around the one car that was inside, a big Cadillac Escalade, but the clicking remained as it was. It hit him that he wasn't picking up radioactive material; he was getting the radiation that had collected in the garage while some radioactive material was stored there. Odds were, he thought, he'd discovered where the bombs had been stored, or maybe even assembled, though that was doubtful. What was far more likely was that they had been hidden in this garage for some time, possibly even weeks, before they were sent to their final destinations a few days earlier.

“Okay, guys, you better be listening. I'm in the garage, and there is a lot of stray radiation all over the place. My guess is this is where they kept the bombs for a while, maybe while they were figuring out how to get them spread out around the country. I'm thinking this is enough evidence to back your suspicions, Harry. I'm gonna back on out of here and let you big boys play a while.”

He turned and looked toward the house, and saw a large red blob moving in what seemed to be his direction. He whispered, “I may be caught,” and snatched the silenced automatic from his belt as he watched the blob come closer and closer.

The blob was fairly good sized, so he figured it was a man, and likely Fareesh. He ducked down behind the Escalade and waited, watching the blob moving behind the wall that divided the garage from the house, and it came to the door between them and paused. There was a long moment of stillness, and then the door opened slowly.

12

Sam saw the hand with the gun in it, surrounded by the red glow of the infrared, as it came ahead of the man through the doorway. Sam stayed still and watched, and a moment later the whole man appeared. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, and then stepped softly into the garage and closed the door behind him.

“I know someone is here,” he said. “Do not be foolish; show yourself, now. If I have to come and find you, I will not be as lenient as I may if you come out.”

Sam kept quiet, waiting and wondering what to do. He was there to get information, not confront the terrorist, and yet, a part of him wanted to be the one to take this guy down.

The man took another step into the garage, and Sam could tell he was looking at the car. There was no way out, he knew, but he also knew that if he showed himself while the other guy was armed, he was probably going to die. He made a decision, and aimed the automatic, suddenly wishing he'd had a chance to try it out on a firing range.

Shoulda thought of that sooner, he thought as he squeezed the trigger. His aim was good; the little gun made a loud phweet! sound, and the man's gun flew out of his hand as the bullet struck its barrel. Sam rose and showed his weapon as the man let out a yelp and grabbed his injured hand with the other.

“Don't move,” Sam said, “or I'll kill you. Come closer; are you Fareesh?”

“I am Dawid Fareesh. You are a dead man,” he said. “When I heard the door open, I called for people, and they will be here any moment. You cannot hope to escape.”

Sam shrugged. “I've heard that line before,” he said, “in bad movies, usually. Let's just say I'm a cocky bastard, and skip all that stuff. How many bombs were kept in this garage, Fareesh? I mean, this place is so full of radiation, you and your family are probably dying already from radiation poisoning, so I know you had some of them here. How many?”

Fareesh's face was red with anger and pain, but he seemed to react when Sam mentioned his family. “I will not tell you anything, Dead Man,” he said. “You are nothing to me.”

Sam walked toward him. “I'm nothing to you?” he asked. “Maybe you want to think about that again, Fareesh, because at the moment, I'm the man who's got a gun on you and can end your life.”

Fareesh shrugged his shoulders, and then winced. “If I die, I die for the glory of Allah. You will still not escape when my people come for you.”

“So dying doesn't scare you? What about your family? I could just as easily kill you, now, and then go into your house and kill all of them. If I’m going to die anyway, what have I got to lose?”

Fareesh watched him, but said nothing. Sam looked around, letting his glasses tell him that there were no other figures moving around him at the moment, then looked back at his captive.

“Let's try this one more time,” he said, “but if I don't like your answer, then I'll just shoot you in the head and then go and do the same for your wife and children. How many bombs were here?”

Fareesh glared at him, and for a moment Sam thought he would refuse to speak, but finally he spat out, “All of them! Allah gave them to me, and instructed me on how to use them, and they will destroy your people with the fear and panic that they cause!”

Sam laughed. “What, those little things? They might blow up a building or two, but you warned us, so I really doubt anyone is going to get hurt; everybody got out of town wherever you put one, so who do you think you're going to scare? Nah, you blew it with this one. I don't think Allah's gonna be happy with you, things might not go well when you get to paradise.”

Sam heard a noise outside, and a moment later he saw a red blob at one of the garage doors. The figure held something in one hand, and Sam didn't need a degree to know it would be a gun. The blob shifted, and someone knocked gently.

“Dawid? Is that you in there?”

Fareesh suddenly screamed, “There is a man here with a gun, he has shot me! Come in, come in!”

The blob moved suddenly, and Sam turned his gun toward it and fired twice, the silencer muting the noise into a pair of sharp whistling sounds, and the figure outside the door grunted loudly and then fell. Sam had aimed for the head, and hoped his shots had been fatal.

“Well, he's dead,” Sam said, controlling the shaking he felt trying to get into his voice. “Got any more of them coming? I can do this all day, if you want. Now, tell me this: who's the real brains behind this operation? Cause I know you're not smart enough for it.”

Fareesh had gone quiet when Sam had fired, and the sound of his man grunting told him that Sam had hit his target. Fareesh couldn't understand how Sam had known where to aim, and he was shaken. “More are coming,” he said. “I will tell you nothing more.”

Sam shrugged and aimed the gun at his head. “Okay. Hey, just out of curiosity, your kids—boys? Girls? One of each? I'll be killing them, next, so I'm just wondering.”

Fareesh stared at him with pure hate. “My children are innocent. Kill me if you wish, and then go, and you may escape before the others arrive.”

“No, no, that wasn't our deal. It was, if I get answers, your wife and kids don't get killed; but you're not talking, so I guess you want them to die. Boys or girls?”

Fareesh slumped. “The operation was ordered by a contact in Syria, I don't know his name. He sends me messages through the internet, and the bombs were delivered to me a few weeks ago in furniture cartons. We had to arrange ways to ship them out, and then we had to put the batteries in them, and then they were gone. That is all I can tell you.”

“No, you can tell me a lot more than that,” Sam said. “How many in your cell, and who are they? Tell me now, and I will leave you and your family alive; if you don't, you all die, it's that simple.”

Fareesh seemed to think about it for a few seconds, but Sam knew he was trying to buy time for his help to arrive. After a moment, he said, “There are only seven of us. Myself, Assam Al Razi, Ibrahim Al Khalid, Hisham Hasin, Imran Mahmoud, Mohsin Al Mayim and Noori Bina. Those are all of us. Now go, and leave us be, as you promised!”

Sam's phone rang, and he jumped, but recovered and took it out to answer it.

“Yeah? Kinda busy, here!” he said.

Harry chuckled. “Just a busy little bee, aren't you, Sam, boy! Thought you'd like to know that you're about to be visited by some police officers. We've got the list you just got, and we'll be rounding them up as fast as we can, but we thought we'd give you a break and get you out of there. The cavalry should arrive any second now. Take the whole family into custody, and we'll figure out what to do with them later.”

“You got it,” Sam said, and hung up as flashing lights hit the thin garage doors. He looked around and saw the remote door opener on the visor of the Escalade, reached in and pushed the button. As the door went up, he lowered his gun and held out his ID to the two officers who came rushing in with weapons in their hands.

“Sam Prichard, Homeland Security,” he said, and one of the officers stopped and stared at him.

“Sam?” he asked, incredulous. “Man, I heard you were disabled and retired! I'm Jack Simmons, we went to the academy together!”

“Long story, Jack,” Sam said. “This is Mr. Dawid Fareesh, and he's being arrested for international terrorism. HS will give you all the details. There are four family members inside the house, and you're to take them into custody, as well. Once again, HS will be in touch about what to do with them all.”

The two cops took Fareesh, and two more that arrived went into the house, returning a few minutes later with Mrs. Fareesh and two teenaged girls. While they were being loaded into a car, a truck pulled up and four men climbed out. Two of them carried Geiger counters, and began scanning the garage.

“We're gonna need everyone out of here,” one of them said to Sam after seeing his ID. “This place is moderately hot; it's not particularly dangerous unless you live in it for a few months, but it's gonna require a hazmat cleanup.”

Sam shook his head. “How do you clean up something like this?” he asked.

The man smiled. “Demolish the house and haul it off somewhere safe, dig up about ten feet of the ground under it and replace it with new fill. Won't be anything left of this place in a week.”

Sam left the men to their work, and went to his truck. He called Harry when he'd gotten inside and shut the door.

“Harry,” he said, “I'm tired.”

“I know you are,” the old man said. “Sam, boy, you done good! You identified the cell, and got evidence that the whole bomb plot was cooked up right here, which means we'll get some new funding and a better HS station. I can't thank you enough, son.”

“No problem, Harry. Just glad I could help, but now I'm gonna go back to the cabin and get some rest with my beautiful wife.”

Harry laughed. “You do that, Sam. We'll take it from here.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Hey, what about the bomb downtown? I left my old partner watching it.”

“We've got a bomb team coming in on a special flight from White Sands in a few hours, so they'll take charge of it. Your guy can watch over it till then, can't he?”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah, but we'll let him stew over it till they get here. If I call him now, he'll want to know why someone else can't come and babysit it. I'll buy him a steak tomorrow night and apologize.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Harry said. “And I'll figure out a way to say thanks for this, too. For both of you! Incidentally, once again thanks to you, I just heard that all of the bombs have been located and are being picked up and disarmed.”

“Talk to you tomorrow, Harry,” Sam said, and ended the call.

He started the truck and put it into gear, heading for I-70 and the two hour drive back to the cabin. He called Indie, knowing she'd be awake and waiting.

“Sam? Is everything okay?”

“What's that music they use in the movies, when the mission is accomplished? I want to hum that tune, but I can't remember it at the moment.”

Indie giggled. “I don't know, but does that mean you're done?”

“It does, it does! I found the cell, got the leader, and identified the rest of its members! Their tenure as Denver's Terrorist Cell is officially ended, and I'm on the way back to you as we speak!”

“Baby,” Indie said, “that's the best news I've heard all night! Hey, was Beauregard right? Did you meet up with the man with the red eye?”

“Nope. Nobody fit that description, so we can mark him wrong on that one! I'm sure it's not the first time he's been wrong, is it?”

Indie was quiet for a moment. “Well, actually, I can't think of another time when he was. But who cares? Gotta be a first time for everything, right?”

Sam laughed. “Right. I'm on the road, and about to get on the Interstate, babe. I should be there in a couple of hours, but I might push it a bit, since there's almost no traffic. See you as soon as I can!”

“I'll go keep the bed warm for you. I love you, Sam!”

“I love you, Indie,” Sam said with a smile, and hung up.

The road was as deserted as he'd expected it to be, so Sam was pushing the Ridgeline up to ninety miles an hour. He saw one State Trooper, but the cop had a truck pulled over on the other side, so he didn't even slow down. When he got to Breckenridge, he was almost on empty, so he pulled into a gas station and used his credit card to fill up. He was almost thirty minutes ahead of schedule, and even after stopping for gas, he made it to the cabin faster than he'd ever done before.

He parked the truck next to the limo and got out, but he hadn’t even gotten the door closed when Indie came running out to throw her arms around him. She kissed him deeply and happily, and Sam laughed as she finally let him catch a breath.

“Hey,” he said, “I thought you were planning to keep the bed warm for me?”

“I couldn't sleep, and just laying there without you wasn't any fun. Kenzie is in with our moms, so we've got the whole loft to ourselves. Come on, let's go get cuddly!”

Sam laughed again as she dragged him inside, but by the time they got up the ladder into the loft, which took Sam a minute thanks to his bad hip, he was past laughing. They closed the curtain across the front of the loft and Indie dropped her nightgown where she stood, leaving Sam just staring at her naked beauty.

“Are you gonna stand there all night, or get undressed?” Indie asked, and Sam needed no more prompting. Shoes, shirt and pants went flying, and they fell into the big bed together. A moment later, Indie was gasping as he showed her once again just how much she turned him on!

Afterward, they slept, and Sam kept Indie in his arms all through the night.

13

Sam's phone was ringing, and he reached for it, but there was no nightstand. He raised his head from the pillow and looked around, realized he was in the cabin loft with Indie, and grabbed the phone from where he'd laid it on the floor. A glance at it told him it was only four AM, and he answered groggily.

“Hello?”

Harry's voice came through the line. “Sam, I'm sorry to wake you, but something has happened, and I knew you wouldn't want to wait until morning to be told.”

Sam sat up, wiping furiously at his eyes to shake off the effects of too little sleep. “I'm up, Harry, what is it?”

Harry sighed. “Sam, I felt I should be the one to tell you. Your friend, Detective Jacobs, is dead. He was killed while sitting in his car in the parking garage, watching the bomb for us.”

Sam almost fell forward onto the floor, but caught himself. Indie was sitting up behind him, but all he could say was, “How?”

“He was shot once in the head, Sam, at very close range. The bullet was a forty five caliber.”

Sam's mind was racing. He'd left Danny to just keep an eye on the bomb, make sure no one moved it, and he knew Danny was the type who wouldn't take his eyes off it for a second. The only way a shooter could have gotten close enough to kill him up close would be if he had no reason to consider the shooter a threat, and the only one he might not have worried about was…

Jamal. Sam had told him that the kid was being forced, and wasn't a problem, but he had a forty five.

“The bomb?”

“Gone. We've got no idea who may have done it, or where they may have taken the bomb, Sam, and the chopper that can find it is already gone.” He sighed. “We may lose this one, son.”

“Jamal,” Sam said. “The kid I got the info from about Mahmoud, is there any sign of him? He was their guy to watch the bomb—he was sitting out front of the building in a little Buick.”

“No, no sign, not of him or his car. Right now we're assuming he killed Jacobs and took the device, but that doesn't tell us much. We checked with his mother, and she and his sisters swear they haven't seen or heard from him at all. Is there anything you can think of that might help?”

Sam said, “Yeah. I can find and kill that little son of a bitch!” He hung up without another word, and was surprised when the phone didn't ring again.

“Sam? What's wrong?” Indie asked.

“That kid I trusted, last night,” he said. “He killed Danny Jacobs and took the bomb, and I gotta go find him.” He pulled a pair of jeans out of his suitcase on the floor, then grabbed a shirt and began getting dressed. Once he had them on, he slid his feet into socks and shoes, then began transferring things from the clothes he'd worn the night before. He took the watch and glasses, then the Geiger phone and its earpiece, thinking he might need them if he found Jamal. Last, he picked up the silenced thirty-two and his own Glock forty; he'd left the revolver he'd taken from Mahmoud in his truck.

Jamal, he thought, and reached for his phone. “Indie, if I give you a cell number, can you find it? Find out where it is?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I can get its GPS.” She rolled out of the bed and pulled on her nightgown, then went down the ladder ahead of him. By the time he got to the ground floor, she was powering up her laptop. Sam glanced at the couch and saw George, Harry's driver, sound asleep, and breathed a short prayer of thanks that the car was still there.

“What's the number?” Indie asked, and he looked at his phone to give it to her. A moment later she looked up. “It's on I-70, heading west. It went past Frisco about twenty minutes ago.”

Sam kissed her. “Keep that on, and let me know if he changes his route. Call me if you see anything I need to know about.” He walked out the door and ran to the Ridgeline, jumped in and fired it up. A second later he was on the gravel road and driving fast.

Jamal was going west, and from where Indie had said he was, he was about an hour ahead of Sam, but not for long. The Ridgeline was designed with an electronic speed limiter set at a hundred and twelve miles per hour, but Sam had installed a Magnum Tuning Programmable Chip and boosted it by twenty percent, so he had plenty of power. The only question was how well the truck would take some of the curves on I-70 at high speed.

He made almost eighty miles an hour up most of Route 9 to Frisco, and got on the Interstate. Flooring the big V6, he felt himself pressed back into his seat as all 250 Horsepower opened up, and he was doing a hundred and twenty before he knew it. He called Indie.

“Got a location for me?” he asked.

“Updating now,” she said. “He's about ten miles past Copper Mountain. I'd say he's doing about the speed limit, maybe a little more.”

“Okay. I'm pushing this thing, so I'm gonna concentrate on the road, babe. I'll call you again in a bit.”

“Okay,” she said, “but Sam—be careful. I love you.”

“I'll be fine, baby. This is just something I have to do. I love you, too.”

He cut off the call and watched the road, once again amazed at the lack of any traffic. At the speed he was moving, he should be able to catch Jamal within the next hour or ninety minutes, and that was his goal.

The road was full of twists and curves, but most of them were long and gentle. Sam had to slow to just under a hundred a couple of times, but he was still making incredible time as he flew along the interstate highway. When he'd been on the road for half an hour, he took out his phone and called Jamal, just to see if he would answer.

“Hello, my friend,” said the young voice, and Sam felt a rage wash over him.

“Hello, Jamal,” he said through clenched teeth. “So—you put a good one over on me, didn't you?”

“I'm sorry, my friend, but it was necessary. I knew you would get rid of my uncle if I told you how to do it, and then I knew you would make him talk and get rid of the rest. They were fools, all of them, and not worthy of the glory they were given. I am the chosen one to bring glory to Allah with this bomb, and I have known it for weeks, but I didn't know how it would be delivered into my hands. When I met you, Allah spoke into my heart and told me that you were His chosen instrument, and that you would make it possible for me to do as He commanded me to do!”

“So, you killed my friend, and now you've got a nuclear bomb that you’re taking to—where?”

Jamal laughed. “Perhaps I will take it to Washington, and blow up the White House, or your Pentagon. Perhaps I should take it to New York, to take out Wall Street. I could go to Los Angeles, and destroy its docks, to keep ships away, or to San Francisco, or a hundred other places, but there is one place where Allah's punishment can be most complete at this time, so that is where He wants me to go. Alas, but that place is not for you to know, my friend. I do the will of Allah, and you cannot stop me.”

Sam bit his tongue to keep from screaming. “Oh, I plan to stop you, Jamal. Remember what I told you? If you betrayed me, I would hunt you down and kill you? Well, when I said that, it was an empty threat, just something I said to scare you and make you do what I wanted, and you played along just beautifully, I admit that. You had me fooled, so fooled that I led my best friend into the trap that got him killed.” His voice was getting higher, so he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Well, it's not just talk, now, Jamal. I'm going to find you, and I'm going to kill you.”

Jamal laughed. “The sad part of this is that you truly believe your own words, but they are empty. You have no power over me, for I am in the hands of Allah, and He alone shall have power over my life. It is His, for He gave it to me, and He may take it as He sees fit. But you will not find me, my friend, for I know the ways that you policemen and agents work. Goodbye, my friend.”

The line went dead, and Sam looked at his phone in frustration. He had let off the gas a bit as they had talked, and so he shoved his foot to the floor. The speedometer went back to one twenty, and then crept up to one twenty-five, and one thirty. That was as far as it would go, but Sam watched the world speeding by as he tried to gain on the Muslim who was out to deliver his god's wrath to an unsuspecting world.

His phone rang, and he knew it would be Indie before he answered.

“The phone is dead, right?”

“No, but it's stopped moving, and I'm guessing he threw it out the window, because it seems to be laying right on the edge of the west bound lane.”

“Yeah. I called him and told him I'm coming for him, so he thinks getting rid of the phone will save him. He's wrong. Dead wrong.”

Indie sighed. “Sam—don't let him bring you down to his level.”

“Babe, if I'd taken him into custody last night, Danny'd be alive, but he's dead because he trusted me, and I trusted this monster. He's got the bomb, and says Allah told him to take it where it will best deliver punishment to the world. I'm guessing he means Vegas, so that's where I'm headed, unless I spot him along the way. If I don't, then I'll find him there. Somehow, I'll find him, and I'll stop him. I love you, baby, I do, but I have got to do this.”

Indie sounded as if she were crying, but all she said was, “I love you, too, Sam. I understand. It just—who is this kid, anyway? Maybe I can find something on him that will help.”

Sam smiled. “That's my girl. His name is Zayan Jamal, and he lives on Pecos. Anything you can find on him will help, I'm sure, so let me know if you get anything. Give Kenzie a hug for me, and tell her I love her, too.”

He ended the call without saying anything else, keeping his speed up and watching every car that appeared ahead of him to see if he had caught up to Jamal. None of them were Buicks, but he looked closely every time he passed one, just to be sure the kid hadn't switched cars on him.

The road and the mountains kept rolling by and he passed Vail, then Glenwood Springs as he watched constantly for the next car on the road ahead. By the time he got to Parachute, the sun was trying to fight its way up over the mountains behind him, and he knew that he'd either passed Jamal in a different vehicle or at a gas stop.

Of course, it was possible the boy had left the highway, taken another route, but Sam thought he was still on the road. He called Harry.

“He went west on 70,” Sam said when the old man answered. “I'm on his trail, but I'm not certain of his vehicle. Has his Buick turned up?”

“Not that I've heard about, and I would have. That doesn't mean he isn't in a different car, though. There were four that were reported missing overnight in our area, and I've got APB's out on all of them.”

Sam thought for a moment. “I got him on his phone for a few minutes, but he pitched it. One of the things he bragged about was knowing how the police track people, so he won't be in a stolen car, I'm sure. He'll be in one that won't be missed, or one that he had a key to for whatever reason. Can you see if Mahmoud Imports had any other vehicles registered?”

“Give me credit, Sam, I already did, and while they had two other cars, they're both accounted for. So far, we can't find any other vehicles this boy would have access to.”

Sam chewed his lip for a second. “Of course, just because a car won’t be missed, doesn't mean it isn't stolen, it only means it hasn't been reported. That could mean he found one that was abandoned, or the owner just hasn't noticed it's gone.”

“Or he's jacked someone in their own car, and still has them.”

“Yeah, good point. If we could find his car, we could look for missing persons in that area, or missing vehicles; we might get some idea of what we're looking for, or at least some leads to follow.”

Harry sighed. “That's true. We've got cops everywhere looking for it, so hopefully it'll turn up soon. Sam, I'm an old man, and I've got to get some sleep, I'm afraid. I'll keep my phone with me, but if I don't answer, please leave me a message.”

“No problem, Harry, go rest. I'll handle this.”

“I have every confidence, Sam, boy, that you will.” He was gone as soon as the words came through.

Sam kept driving, frustrated. If he hadn't called Jamal, he might still have the phone, and Indie could track him, but he'd let his anger get the best of him. That was a mistake, he knew, but it was done, and there was no taking it back. He'd have to think of another way to find the boy.

Will I actually kill him? Sam asked himself. God knows I'm mad enough, but I don't know if I can do it, not just out of revenge. God, Danny, I'm so sorry! At least you weren't married, and didn't have kids—God, what am I thinking? My best friend has lost his life, and it's all my fault!

The miles rolled by under him. At the Grand Junction exit, he stopped and filled up again; it was either that, or he'd have been walking within five more minutes. He grabbed some doughnuts and coffee, and got back on the road, crossing into Utah a half hour later, and was struck by the fact that there was suddenly more traffic on the road.

Of course, when he thought about it, he'd seen more traffic for the last hundred miles or so; he just hadn't paid as much attention because he had thought of himself as being in pursuit. Now that he'd stopped and walked around, eaten something and guzzled some coffee, he was in a different mindset. Now he was on a manhunt, not a pursuit, and he wasn't sure which one was more intense.

Greater traffic meant that he couldn't drive as fast as he had been, but by following a semi truck that was doing eighty, he managed to keep up a good pace. Truckers knew where the cops would be, so when the driver slowed, so did Sam. While his HS identification would get him past any problems, he didn’t want even a few minutes' delay, so it was better to avoid being stopped at all. When he thought about it, he realized he'd been lucky not to have been stopped so far.

Sam felt tired, but not as exhausted as he thought he should, and he figured that his adrenal glands were working overtime. He kept driving, basing his continued route on Jamal's words, that he had an opportunity to “deliver Allah's punishment,” and to Sam, that meant the place that many people, even Americans, considered “Sin City,” the place where all your favorite sins and vices could be had for a price, and where you could leave your guilt behind you when you left. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” as the old saying went, meaning that once you left, you could always pretend that whatever you did never happened.

If “Allah” wanted to punish America, Sam thought Vegas would be the ideal place. He pushed the accelerator down harder, willing the truck to get him there ahead of Jamal.

14

Zayan Jamal was no fool. Though he was only twenty years old, he'd been watching his uncle and the men who ran the cell for several years, and he felt that there was no logic to their actions. They did not pray to Allah before they made their decisions, and they put little thought into what they could do to bring greater glory to Allah, or to themselves. Now that they were out of the picture, he could step up and serve Allah the way he was meant to.

How odd it had seemed when the stranger came to him in his car, and made his threats. Almost as soon as he had seen the man's face, something inside him had said that this was the one Allah had told him would come, this was the man who would deliver glory to him. When Ibrahim had come, Zayan had briefly thought of testing the man, letting him kill Ibrahim right then and there, but Allah had told him in a dream that the man who would come to give him his glory would kill no one. It is wrong to test Allah, he knew, and so he had done what he could to avoid their confrontation.

Using his mother and sisters had been a stroke of brilliance, and he had already given thanks for the idea several times, but he knew he would again. Those whores were of no consequence to him, not when he had known for more than a year that he was the chosen of Allah, the glowing star who would bring true punishment to the heathen Americans. He, and he alone, Allah had said, would be given the means to wreak true havoc, to destroy the wretched self-love of the proud Americans. What had only begun in New York on Nine Eleven would be finally perfected in the strike that he, Zayan Jamal, would deliver for the glory of Allah!

The man who had delivered this glory to him was no fool, either, but he did not understand how wonderful were the ways of Allah, nor how perfect were His works, even His works of punishment and retribution. The man thought he could stop what Allah had set in motion, but that was the pride of these people that made him think so, nothing more.

He would have known that Zayan was driving west, of course. American television and movies were delighted to show off how the police and government officials could track you with a cell phone, and that was why he had kept it as long as he had. When Allah had told him to kill the policeman who was watching over the bomb, Zayan had realized that it was a perfect way to throw the man off his true path. He would be so angry over the death of his good friend that he would want to find Zayan, of course, and he would use the cell phone to do it.

Zayan had waited for the call that he knew would come, and then he had destroyed the phone. He had said enough to make any American cop think he was going to Las Vegas, and he was sure his ploy had worked on this one. The pride, the arrogance, of Americans made them easy to manipulate. Zayan had done it a thousand times, whether it was to get money from them, to seduce their women—no matter what he wanted, he was always able to use their arrogant pride against them, and it had never failed him.

Las Vegas was in the right direction, but it was not where he was going, and since they had no idea how he was traveling, there was no way they could find him. As soon as he had thrown away the phone, he had gotten off of the Interstate and found a place to stop and sleep for a while, knowing that the American would keep driving, hoping to see him so that he could stop him and kill him. He had slept for three hours, and now he was a refreshed as if he'd slept for a whole night. He could drive for many hours, and would be in place at the right time to set off the bomb.

He knew how to do so, how to reset the timer on it and make it go off when Allah willed. He had begged his uncle and Ibrahim for days to let him learn about the “devices” they whispered about, so that he could one day serve Allah as they were, and like the Americans they were becoming, their own arrogance and pride had played right into his hands. They treated him like a child, which he used against them all the time, and when he had done something that made them proud, they had asked him what he wanted as a reward. He told them, and Ibrahim had called Dawid and gotten permission to bring him over to see the bombs. Dawid had liked him, this “Little Zealot,” as he named Zayan, and told the bomb men to show him what they were doing as they got them ready last week.

They all thought he was cute. Soon they would know that he was the mighty hand of Allah, when he caused more destruction and despair with one bomb than they had sought to cause with twelve! Their plans were nothing in comparison to the glory that Allah would give to him when he caused the deaths and despair of millions!

Yes, it was a small bomb, but it wasn't the destructive force that should be used. Rather, Allah had shown him through the internet how to use it in such a way that just the one bomb that he had would literally cause millions of Americans to lose everything, including, for many of them, their very lives!

Let the American go to Las Vegas. Yes, that city was going to suffer from Allah's wrath, but so would most of Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California. There would be no stopping Zayan, Mr. American. Allah wills it so!

He smiled as he thought of how well he had acted his part when the man came to him the night before. There were no words to describe his delight at his own acting. He had wept when the man threatened to kill him, even though he had no fear of death. Did not the Koran say that all who died in the cause of Allah would go immediately to Paradise?

The Q'uran, Sura 47, p.5 And those who are slain in Allah's cause, their works shall not go wrong; He will guide them and set right their mind; and will make them enter into Paradise which He has told them of.

Yes, Zayan wept, but it was because Allah gave him the wits to do so! He begged for his life, not for fear of losing it, but to use the American's pride against him, to make him yearn in his breast for the poor boy who was forced to commit unspeakable acts against the country that he loved!

It had worked, and it had worked better than ever! The arrogant American had swallowed it all, better than the American girls that Zayan used and abused, giving them to his uncles to sell into slavery. Once again he gave thanks for the wisdom Allah had given him, the discernment that allowed him to see just how to manipulate these unfaithful dogs!

The Q'uran, Sura 47, p.4 And when ye meet those who misbelieve - then striking off heads until ye have massacred them, and bind fast the bonds!

Zayan would strike off many heads for Allah, and would enter immediately into Paradise to receive his rewards. His name would shine like the stars of heaven for a thousand years, for the glory that he would bring to himself and to Allahu Akbar!

15

Mile after mile, Sam had watched for any sign of Jamal, but seen nothing to indicate that he was getting anywhere closer to finding his elusive prey. The boy had seemingly vanished after tossing his phone, and the only thing Sam could think of was getting to Vegas. Since he hadn't seen Jamal on the interstate, he figured the kid must have gotten off and stopped for a while, or else he was taking a different route. Either way, Sam thought, he must have gotten ahead of the boy with the bomb.

It was nearly two in the afternoon by the time he reached his destination, and Sam was tired. He stopped just outside of the city to get something to eat; a couple of burgers would get him revved up again, he figured, especially if he washed them down with about a gallon of coffee, and then he could try to figure out a way to locate Jamal. He got his food and sat at one of the outside tables the restaurant offered, then took out his phone to call Indie.

“Sam!” she squealed when she answered, “I've been trying to call you for an hour! Oh, god, I've been so worried!”

Sam looked at his phone, but it showed no missed calls. “Babe, I don't know, it hasn't rung once. Maybe there's a cell tower down, I hadn't even tried it for a couple of hours.”

She sighed. “As long as you're okay, that's all that matters! Listen, Sam, I've been thinking about what you said that kid told you, about delivering punishment, right? But he's only got one of the bombs, and Harry said they aren't all that big or powerful.”

“Right,” Sam said around a mouthful of burger.

“Well, I've been digging, and I found something. Zayan Jamal has a Facebook page like everyone else, and I've been going over and over it, looking for anything that might give us an idea of where he'd go. Well, he posts stuff several times a day, so there's been a lot to go through, but about an hour ago I found where he did a research project on nuclear weapons and their threats to the United States about a month ago. He got an A on the paper, and he was so proud of it that he posted it to his Facebook. I read it, and Sam, this boy's been planning this for a while now, I'm telling you! So, anyway, in his paper, he came to the conclusion that the most devastating way to use a small nuclear bomb would be to detonate it just under the surface of a major water supply, like Lake Mead! The initial radiation surge would be minimal, wouldn't affect many people directly, and the fallout would only affect a few thousand—but the contaminated water would mean that almost a quarter of the country wouldn't have water for drinking, or crop irrigation or anything else for at least five years! Sam, almost sixty-five million people are dependent on that water, not to mention who knows how many farms and small towns that get their water from the Colorado River! It goes all the way to Mexico!”

Sam's eyes shot open. “Holy Mother—that's it, that's gotta be it!”

“I think so, yeah,” Indie said, “but there's more! Jamal has a Twitter account, and he's been tweeting since early this morning. His last three tweets say, 'On the way to the most important day of my life,' then, 'Allah has given me greater glory than I deserve,' and finally, just a half hour ago, he tweeted, 'Allah grant that I be remembered as a hero of Islam forever!' Sam, do you know anything about Islam?”

“Yeah, we had to take a course on it when I was on the force. This kid's on a suicide mission! He plans to be with the bomb when it blows.”

“I think it's worse than that, Sam. According to something he posted on Facebook last week—wait, let me find it again—okay, here it is. He posted last week that he had been accepted into a special brotherhood, and given the mystery of the atom. Sam, I think he knows how to program that bomb to go off whenever he wants it to!”

Sam thought furiously, and talked through his thoughts. “Okay, then, he's headed for Lake Mead, Hoover Dam. That bomb won't blow the dam, I don't think, but it might do some damage, but from what you're saying, he doesn't want to blow the dam itself, he wants to contaminate the water. What would be the effect of contaminating the water? Couldn't they just shut it down and get water from somewhere else?”

“Not enough, no. I've been researching it, and if Lake Mead were to go dry or become unusable as a water source it would mean an end to water in the southwest, according to every source I can find. There are seven states that will pretty much dry up. Southern California, Nevada and Arizona would be the worst hit, and it's actually possible that if Lake Mead and the Colorado River can't supply water, as much as ninety percent of the people in those states would have no choice but to leave. If they stayed, there'd be no way to provide enough water, and they'd die. If we look at people below poverty level who couldn't afford to move, Sam, this boy could actually be killing as many as twenty million people!”

Sam sat at his table in shock at the sheer magnitude of the crime he was trying to prevent, and the weight of it almost overwhelmed him. He caught himself rocking back and forth, and shook his head to snap himself out of it.

“Dear God,” he said. “What would happen to the country if thirty or forty million people had to leave the southwest and go to other parts to live? Not enough jobs, nowhere near enough food—we're talking famines, riots, probably martial law and civil wars!” He paused and a thought hit him. “Indie—you said he's tweeting? How can he do that without a phone?”

“Well, obviously he's gotten hold of another one somewhere. I thought of that, but there's nothing that ties a cell number to a tweet, so I can't hack into it.”

“I'll call you back,” Sam said and hung up, then immediately dialed Harry's number. The old man answered instantly. “Harry, I need to know—is there any way your people can get a cell number from a tweet?”

Harry asked the question of Ron and Jeff, but when he came back on the line, he sounded downhearted. “They say it can be done, but that Twitter fights cooperating with the government, so it might take a few days. What have you got, Sam?”

“I'll have Indie call and fill you in, but I know where he's going, and I'm close! Harry, Jamal plans to blow the bomb in Lake Mead, to contaminate the water supply. If he manages it, he'll destroy almost all of the southwest in a single blow!”

Harry's voice failed him. “Oh, my God,” he managed to whisper. “Sam, we can't let this happen...”

“I know, Harry, I know, believe me! That's why I asked about the Twitter thing. Indie found where he's still putting stuff on there, and he must have a cell to do it. If we could get the number, we might be able to find him!”

“I'll get DOJ on it now, and pray we can get a warrant fast enough. Tell Indie to call me ASAP, get me all the info she's found. And, Sam? If you believe in God, son, start praying!”

“Already am, Harry, I already am! Now, Lake Mead is behind Hoover Dam, so I'm guessing he'll do it from there. Can you get the area evacuated?”

Harry hesitated. “Sam—protocols for this sort of thing are not always the way we think they should be. If he gets that bomb into the reservoir there, it'll be the biggest disaster we've ever faced as a nation. Now, I'm with you, I think he'll go to the dam, but if he gets there and finds it's being evacuated, then he's likely to choose somewhere else. There's hundreds of miles of shore on that lake, and thousands of places to get access to it. He could put the bomb in a small boat and take it out to the middle and blow it, and do just as much harm.”

Sam scowled. “So we can't evacuate the dam? Harry, if he sets it off anywhere around there, everyone on or near it is gonna die.”

Harry sighed. “The greater good, Sam. The greater good.”

Sam didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. He cut the call and dialed Indie again. “Babe, I'm going to Hoover Dam, I'm only a few miles from it; it's the most likely place for Jamal to do this, and maybe I can spot him when he gets there! Call Harry and give him everything you've just told me, he's gonna try to track the phone those tweets are coming from. Between us all, we might just have a chance. I love you, Indie, and if...”

“Don't even say it,” she cut in, sobbing. “I love you, too, and I need you! No matter what happens, you come back to me, Sam Prichard! We'll survive this, we can survive any disaster, as long as we're together, but I can't make it without you, not now! You come back to me!”

Sam fought back the tears that wanted to come, and forced himself to smile for her. “I will, babe, I will. But first I gotta stop a madman!” He hung up and hurriedly finished his lunch, then started to rush back to the truck and hit the road, but a thought hit him. There was a store attached to the restaurant, and he went inside.

Fifteen minutes passed, and Sam came out wearing a tourist-like western shirt, a leather vest that concealed his holster and the gun in his waistband, a cowboy hat and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He was confident that Jamal wouldn't recognize him in this getup, and that could be very important. He got into the truck and headed for Hoover Dam.

His GPS directed him further into Vegas, and took him off of I-15 onto Highway 95. Hoover Dam was almost forty miles away, but Sam clung to his belief that he was ahead of Jamal, and pushed the speed limit as much as he could. The winding road took him through Henderson and out of the metroplex, and soon he was on Highway 93, the road that went across the Bypass Bridge.

Fifteen minutes later, he turned onto the Hoover Dam Access Road, the one that allowed cars to drive over the top of the dam itself, to get to parking areas. If he had any chance of spotting Jamal, that's where he figured it would be. He followed the road right up to the dam, and drove into an area that was marked “No Entrance” and was for employees of the dam. A security guard asked him why he was there.

Sam showed his ID. “Sam Prichard, Homeland Security,” he said, and the guard nodded.

“Yes, sir, we got a call that you were coming, and to cooperate with you in any way. Just let us know what you need.”

“Right now, I just need to park this thing and get onto the dam.”

“Yes, sir, if you'll follow this lane about fifty feet, you'll come to staff parking, and you can put it there.”

Sam drove to the parking lot and got out, then walked painfully toward the top of the dam. His hip always gave him trouble after he'd been sitting for too long, and he'd been in the truck for most of the past twelve hours. The walk was about three hundred yards, and he was limping heavily and missing his cane by the time he got to the middle of the dam.

Just as he got there and perched himself atop one of the low safety walls, his phone rang. He looked at it, and answered, “Hello, Harry.”

“Sam, I've got a four man team on the way to you out of Vegas. They should be there any time, and they've studied numerous photos of Jamal. Station them wherever you need them, they're under your orders. We've also got a rad-spotter on the way, and the fire department will loan us their rescue chopper for it. As soon as it gets there, we'll set them to them scanning all the roads he might be coming in on, looking for the bomb itself, but since we don't know his timetable, it may not do any good.”

“Okay,” Sam said, “and thanks for the help. Do these guys know to shoot on sight?”

“That's your call, Sam. As I said, they're under your orders.”

Sam sighed. “Then that's how it's gotta be. I want the bomb, but I want him down before he can do anything with it. If Indie's right, he's been taught how to arm them and reset the timers; for all I know, it could go off as soon as he gets here.”

“Our guys in D.C. took what Indie came up with and extrapolated from it; they think he's gonna want to get the bomb into the water before it goes off. That's how his paper says to get the most contamination, and while he didn't go into specifics, our hunch is that he'll want to shove it right over the reservoir side of the dam. The blast won't hurt all that concrete, but the surge pressure will almost certainly damage the electrical generation turbines, and contamination will get into the outgoing pipes and the river within only seconds afterward. With his scenario, that'll be the most bang for his buck, taking out the water and killing electricity for millions of people at the same time.”

“I thought of that, too, and I'm sitting right in the middle of the dam, now. I'm in a sort of disguise, hopefully good enough to keep Jamal from spotting me too easily. I'm watching for any vehicles that act suspiciously. Incidentally, have you had any luck identifying that cell phone he's using to tweet?”

“Afraid not,” Harry said. “The AG got a special warrant an hour ago, but it seems there's so many tweets per second that identifying any particular one in the server that takes them in and converts them isn't all that easy. It's just data, and when it's been sent out as a tweet, that data is filed away. There's a process for back-tracing, but they say it takes time, and that's one commodity we're getting short on. However, Indie found out a bit ago that he's using a spare phone his uncle had, but the GPS on it is of, so we haven't been able to track it. That girl is sharp, Sam; she's given us quite a few good leads.”

“Yeah, she's something else,” Sam said. “Any new leads on missing vehicles?”

“Nothing, I'm afraid, though Jamal's car turned up an hour ago. It was abandoned in a stand of trees behind a gas station that was closed last night, off of the interstate, but no vehicles went missing around there, so we're still working blind.”

Sam thought for a moment. “He's jacked someone, then. Probably spotted somebody getting gas at the pumps and surprised them.”

“That's our guess, as well, but the place had no security cameras, so we have no clues. If it was someone passing through, he could be driving anything at all.”

“Not quite anything,” Sam said. “That bomb is heavy, and if it's like the one I saw, it's not small. We're looking for something bigger than a Prius, I'm sure. I'd bet on a van or truck, maybe an SUV; something he could slide it into easily.”

“Good point, and I'll pass it along. Let me know if you get anything, and I'll do the same.”

Sam put the phone into his pocket, but it rang again almost immediately. He didn't recognize the number, so he answered, “Prichard.”

“Mr. Prichard, this is Special Agent Dickens with Homeland Security Vegas. I have a team with me, and was told to report to you for orders. I'm just parking at the Hoover Dam Store, now.”

“Dickens, thanks for coming. I'm out on the dam, dressed like a cowboy wannabe. Come on out as soon as you can, you can't miss me.”

“Yes, sir, we'll be right there.”

Sam waited, and ten minutes later he saw four people coming toward him. There were three men and a woman, all of them dressed casually in jeans and shirts, and they were watching around themselves as they followed the walkway.

“Mr. Prichard?” asked one of the men, as the four of them got to Sam.

“That's me,” he said, and they shook hands all around.

“I'm Jimmy Dickens, no relation to the country singer,” the first man said. “This is Sandra Wills, Mark Brennan and Tom Sands. We're here to help however you need us.”

Sam nodded. “I appreciate it, guys. As you can see, this is a big dam, and we're trying to spot a man who intends to detonate a nuclear device in the reservoir. The bomb isn't big, but it's dirty; if he does what he's planning, this reservoir won't be usable for at least five years, and most of the population in the Southwest will either move, or die of thirst or radiation sickness. Food grown here won't be usable, which means that we'll see a nationwide famine, and with millions of people relocating suddenly to other areas where they won't be able to find work, there'll be starvation and food riots and god knows what else. We can't evacuate, because it would warn him we're here and make him go to a different spot, so all we can do is pray we get him before he sees us. I know you've got pictures of the suspect, so what I want you to do is spread out along the dam. If anyone spots Jamal, your orders are to shoot on sight.”

All four of them looked at each other, but they all nodded and gave a curt, “Yes, sir.” they talked among themselves for a moment, and then separated to go to different points along the top of the dam and keep their vigils. Dickens handed Sam a small walkie-talkie. “We use these for communication,” he said, “and I figured you might not have one, so I brought a spare.”

“Good thinking,” Sam said. “Let's pray we get this guy before he can do what he wants to do.”

“Amen to that,” Dickens said as he walked off to his chosen post.

It was after five and the sun was getting lower, but it was still hot out on top of the dam, even under the covered walkway that Sam enjoyed at the middle. The concrete itself, one of the largest masses on earth, collected heat whenever the sun shone on it, and it radiated upward like they were standing on top of a furnace. After an hour on post, Sam gave the okay for one of the men to go and get them all bottles of water from the store, and he accepted his gratefully when it came. Dickens had gone personally to get them, and used the delivery as an excuse to talk to Sam.

“Word is,” he said, “that you're on special detail here. You're not HS?”

Sam grinned. “Nope. I'm a private eye from Colorado who blundered into this whole thing. Long story short, I saw something suspicious that let me find one of the bombs, and I knew a man from HS...”

“Harry Winslow,” Dickens said, and Sam grinned again.

“Right. When I couldn't get local police to listen to me, I called Harry, and after we got the bomb, I was so stinking lucky that I managed to capture one of the terrorists behind it all. Apparently he was a big muckety-muck, and what he was doing there is anybody's guess, but it made Harry decide he wanted me working on the case. I got drafted, and my job was to find the cell behind it all, which turned out to be in Denver, and then one of their lower-level members, just a kid, managed to convince me he was a victim, so I trusted him. I had a local cop, a friend of mine, watching the bomb while I went after the cell, and this kid blew his head off and took the bomb. He seems to think he's Allah's chosen vessel of our punishment, and we discovered a paper he'd written about how blowing up a nuke in Lake Mead would destroy America, so here we are.”

Dickens stared. “Holy Geez,” he said. “You did all this yourself?”

Sam thought of Indie. “Actually, it's my wife who figured out what Jamal is up to. She's sort of a computer whiz, and found him on Facebook. Going through his old posts, she found where he'd bragged about getting an A on a school paper and posted it right on his page, so she read it. It was the one about how this would be the biggest disaster we'd ever know. Since he's got his hands on a nuke, and already has this figured it out, it just made sense that this is what he was gonna try to do.”

Dickens shook his head. “Glad I'm on your team,” he said, and then walked back to his own post two hundred yards away.

The four of them watched every vehicle that came across the dam, scrutinizing each driver. They weren't only looking for Jamal's face behind the wheel, but also for any sign that the driver was nervous, scared or under someone else's control. If Jamal had carjacked someone, he might be forcing them to drive, and that person might be afraid to let his or her emotions show in front of the security guards, but there were tourists all over the place. They'd be unlikely to watch their emotions so carefully in front of people who weren't any sort of authority, so one person in plain clothes might see what a dozen uniformed guards wouldn't. That was what they were praying for.

16

Indie was frightened. Her husband of only three days, Sam, was more than seven hundred miles away, chasing a terrorist who was determined to detonate a nuclear bomb in Lake Mead, and since they didn't know how he was traveling or when he would get there, she was terrified that Sam would be too late to stop him, and would die trying. She had just hung up from telling him about Jamal's school report, and the fear was eating her alive.

She hadn't even known he existed only a couple of months earlier; now, she couldn't imagine life for her and her daughter without him, but she knew that he was a man who could never give up as long as there was hope, and until that bomb actually went off, he'd keep trying to save the world. That was who he was, and one of the many reasons she loved him.

The night before, after Sam had found the cell's leaders and had them in custody, he'd come to her and made love to her in ways she had never imagined were possible. Afterward, as they lay together, he told her the whole story of how he had found the boy who gave up his uncle and the others. He'd told her almost every detail, and when it turned out a few hours later that it was that same boy who had killed Dan Jacobs and taken the bomb, Sam had gone after him without a second thought, as she knew he would as soon as he'd told her what had happened.

Since that moment, she had sat at her computer and used Harry's car's wifi to dig into everything she could think of to try to help. When she found the kid's Facebook and spent hours going through it, she'd felt she was wasting time, but that time paid off when she discovered his school paper detailing what he considered the most devastating use of a small nuclear device. That discovery had led Sam to where he was waiting for Jamal, and where Indie was terrified he would die.

She hadn't stopped there, though. When she told Sam about Jamal's latest tweets, she'd been thinking in the back of her mind about any way she could determine how he was doing it, but nothing would come to her. She had wracked her brain, run dozens of searches through hacker sites for ways to track a phone through tweets, but nothing worked. When even the Attorney General couldn't get the information in a timely manner, she'd abandoned that line of logic and gone back over everything she knew, looking for anything that might give her another avenue to locate the terrorist kid.

She'd had his number, and used it to locate him at first, but then Sam had called the kid and he'd pitched the phone out the window. Indie figured he'd only kept it so Sam could call, so that he could gloat over killing Danny, but somehow he was still able to send tweets, and that indicated another phone, probably with a Twitter app, or maybe just with a browser. Either way would let him tweet, even if the phone wasn't actually tied to his account.

The question was, where had he gotten another phone? It could be one belonging to someone he'd carjacked, of course, and if so, then there were no leads she could follow. She thought about whether he had a second phone of his own, but couldn't find any indication of it.

In desperation, she went back to his old phone and got into his account through his carrier. She worked her way through its security until she got to his phone logs, and began looking them over.

Zayan Jamal had made six phone calls that night—three before Sam met him, and three after. He had received four calls, one of which was from Sam; the others were all from the same number, and it took her only seconds to confirm that it was his uncle's phone.

The outgoing calls, though, had been to different numbers, and she began to wonder about them. She opened her hacker program, Herman, and put each of those numbers into fields that told Herman what to do with them, then sat back to wait. Moments later, Herman dinged, and she began scrolling through his report.

The first number was registered to a woman in Lakewood named Donna Jarvis, and lasted four minutes. The next was owned by a man named Robert Kimball, three minutes. Neither name was Arabic, so she discounted those numbers for the moment.

The third was to a phone that belonged to Mahood Al Ravi. It lasted for seven and a half minutes, and she told Herman to run that name through everything he had. It came back as being a student at a local high school, a boy of only fifteen. Possibly connected, but nothing felt sinister, so she went on.

The fourth number, the first call he made only moments after Sam had left him, was only a minute long, and went to someone in Illinois named Raman Zikouri. She ran that name, and then stared at the screen; Zikouri was currently in jail, but not for terrorism—he had been arrested only days before as a major supplier of drugs to Chicago street gangs. Indie wondered how Jamal could be connected, and whether it was tied to his current activities, but simply saved the information for the moment.

Call number five was to a phone on his uncle's account and lasted for three minutes, but it wasn't the one he'd received calls from earlier. That caught her attention, and she saved that, as well.

Number six was an eighteen minute call to a phone with a California area code, and Indie felt her pulse begin to race. Herman said the number belonged to a Mousif Al Mahdi, and when she ran that name through his searches, her heart almost stopped.

Mousif Al Mahdi was a director of an organization in Riverside, California, called Islam Reigns, which was suspected of having ties to ISIS! How could Jamal even have such a person's number?

She grabbed her phone and dialed Harry's number, and when he answered, she told him all that she'd discovered. He seemed shocked, and then he asked, “Indie, what number do you have for Jamal?” She told him, and he sighed.

“That explains a lot,” he said. “We've been going after the number we had for him from his school activities, and it's a whole different number. None of those calls appear on it at all! I'm getting on this right now, and see if we can get any kind of leads out of any of these people!”

“Oh, God, Harry, I'm sorry! If I'd known, I would have given it to you before now!”

“I know, dear, and so would Sam, but it never occurred to me that Sam had a different number for the little beast! I'll let you know if I get anything!”

Indie sat back and stared at her screen. If Harry and HS hadn't had the number Jamal was using the night before on his terror cell activities, what else might they not have? She wracked her brain for any more ideas that might help her keep her husband safe.

One of the calls he made was to another number on his uncle's cell phone account. She copied the number and went back into the carrier's website to check its activity. Herman did his thing, and shortly she was looking at the call log for that phone.

Strangely enough, the only incoming call it had received in the past twenty-four hours was the one from Jamal the night before, and it had only one outgoing call, made a few hours earlier that day. That call, she noticed with excitement, was to a California area code. She fed the number to Herman and a moment later he reported that it belonged to no one.

A throwaway phone, she thought. I think the little bastard's using that spare phone of his uncle's! Now, let's see who he called!

She went to her favorite phone locating site and plugged the number in. A moment later, the site told her that the phone's GPS locator was not functioning. She grumbled to herself, then plugged in the number of the phone that had made the call. She got the same message; someone had disabled the GPS locators on the phones.

Federal Law Enforcement, however, could turn them back on, as long as they weren't physically broken. She dialed Harry again and gave him both numbers. When she explained what she'd found, the old man told her that he was going to kidnap her and make her work for him!

“I'll get our people on these and see if we can find them. If Jamal's got help from Islam Reigns, he may not be alone, and Sam needs to be aware of that. I'll call him the minute I get anything on these.”

“Okay,” she said. “Harry, if you think of anything else I can do...”

“I'll call you, I promise!” He cut the call short, and Indie went back to staring at the screen.

17

Zayan Jamal was less than two hours away from where Sam awaited him, sitting at a small rest area just off I-15. He had stopped to use the bathroom, and took the time to get a soft drink from the vending machine outside, drinking as he walked toward the motor home.

He smiled as he looked at the big machine. No one would ever guess that he would be driving across the country in such a vehicle, and it was big enough to hide the bomb inside easily. The thing was heavy, and it had been difficult to get it inside, but the couple in the motor home had been glad to help, once they saw the barrel of Zayan's gun staring into their faces. They had worked together to carry it in, while he kept them both in its aim, and when he told the man to drive while the wife sat in the back with Zayan, he had complied after only a moment of begging for their safety. Zayan laughed, and told him that his choice to stop for gas in the middle of the night had been Allah's will, and that he would play a part in Allah's greatest triumph over America.

Then the American had called, and Zayan had tossed out the phone that could lead to him. When the next exit appeared, he had told the man to pull off and he would let them go. There was a gas station at the exit, but he told the man to drive on past it, following a curving road that led up into the mountains. After a few miles, when he had not seen any houses or cars for a while, he told the man to stop.

He had not lied; he had allowed them to step out of the motor home, and then made them walk into the forest, where he shot them both through their heads. He had enjoyed the look of shock and horror on the woman's face, as she watched her husband die, but then the second bullet had ended her grief, and he watched as she fell right beside him.

Death was a beautiful thing to Zayan. Sending these people to their fates in the Abyss of Hell gave him a wonderful thrill, just as killing the policeman had the night before. He had discovered the thrill when he was only eleven years old, and had been taken by an American boy to a wooded place, promised that there was a bear cub there that he would see.

When they arrived, however, there was no bear cub, and the other boy suddenly became cruel, demanding that Zayan do something unspeakable! He threatened Zayan, and brandished a small knife, saying he would kill Zayan if he did not do as he was told, but Zayan was weeping and begging to go home. The boy poked at him with the knife, and the tip of it cut his arm, a small scratch, and suddenly a rage came over Zayan. He spotted a branch that had fallen from a tree, grabbed it and swung it, hitting the other boy in the head and knocking him to the ground. The knife was dropped, and Zayan snatched it up. He laughed as he saw the fear in the other boy's eyes, and as he raised the knife and brought it down to stab into his chest, again and again, and the thrill took him as the boy's screams became weaker and weaker after each new wound appeared.

He'd looked at the dead boy and felt no shame for what he'd done. He was proud of himself, but he knew that others would consider it a bad thing, so he wiped the blood from himself and from the knife. He took off his bloody shirt and stuffed it down into his pants, then went home. When his mother asked him about the blood the next day, he smiled and told her it was not a woman's business to question a man about his work, and she never asked again.

The body of the other boy was found a few days later, but no one had seen the two of them together. No one asked Zayan about it, not then, and not any of the other times.

He went back to the motor home and drove it back to the gas station, parked it behind the building and got into one of the beds to get some sleep, setting an alarm on his other phone to wake him and make sure he got back on the road after a bit of rest.

When he woke, he used the now-dead man's credit card to fill the tank on the big monster, and then got back on the road. He had lots of time to think, and to plan his actions so that Allah would be greatly pleased with him.

He drove steadily through the day, maintaining the speed limit and thinking about the fame and glory that would be his. There would be stories told about him, and Allah would welcome him into Paradise personally.

A part of him, however, did not want to die yet. He kept reminding himself that this was the only way to ensure that he would go to Heaven, to Paradise, for only those who die defending Islam and destroying its enemies were assured of Reward. When he got there, seventy-two young virgins would await him, and their purpose of existence would be only to please him. What could this world offer that would make remaining in it worthwhile, compared to the wonders of Paradise?

He knew that what he was feeling was fear, and that there was no place for fear in the heart of Allah's hand on earth. For a few moments, he doubted whether he could do what had to be done, knowing that his earthly life would end, and so in the afternoon, he took out his phone and called the number that Mousif Al Mahdi had given him the night before. He was to call if he needed help to carry out his plan, and he felt that having someone with him would strengthen him. Two are always stronger than one, he knew.

“This is Muaz,” said a voice on the other end of the line.

“This—this is Zayan Jamal. Mousif gave me this number...”

“Yes, Zayan, I have been waiting for your call. How can I be of help to you, great one?”

Zayan thought quickly; he could not admit to any fear or weakness, could not tell this warrior of Allah that he was afraid that he might not have the courage to complete his task. “Do you know my mission?” he asked, forcing the quaver out of his voice.

“I do, and praise be to Allah for your great wisdom and courage!”

Zayan smiled at that. Already, the legend that would grow around him was being born in the words of Mousif and his people. “The thing is heavy,” he said. “Is there one among you who is willing to enter Paradise with me, and help me to do what I must do?”

“I am he,” Muaz said. “Mousif sent me on my way this morning, so that I might be near to you when you call. Let me come and meet with you, and I will go along and help you achieve your glorious mission.”

“Yes, yes,” Zayan said. “Where shall we meet? I am still driving to the place Allah has guided me to, but it will be a few hours before I get there.”

“I am near to there, in Las Vegas. There is an exit as you come into the city, Speedway Boulevard. Take that exit to the south and you will see a truckstop on your right. I am there. Call me when you arrive, and we will meet and complete your glorious mission together, and I will sing your praises for allowing me to aid you and go with you into Heaven!”

“Yes, yes,” Zayan said again. “I will call as soon as I arrive there!”

The call was over, and Zayan no longer was afraid. Mousif had sent him a warrior to help him, a warrior who would follow his orders and help Zayan to do Allah's will! He reached over and turned on the radio, but there was only news and talk, voices running on and on about the bombs, and how the crisis was almost over.

He laughed aloud. They didn't know what a crisis was, yet.

He arrived at the truckstop at a little after 6 p.m., and called Muaz.

“I am here,” he said. “I am in the big motorhome, white with brown on the sides.”

“Ah, I see you. Park it near the trucks and I'll come to you. I have a truck, and we can take it the rest of the way.”

“Yes,” Zayan said, “that will be good.”

He drove the big machine over to where the trucks were parked, and put it into a place among them. A moment later, a big Ford pickup pulled in beside him on the right, and a large man got out. Zayan opened his driver's door and climbed down to walk around and meet him.

Muaz came to him and wrapped his arms around him in a hug. “Praise Allah,” he said. “You are an answer to our prayers.”

“Thank you,” Zayan said. “It is a great honor to serve Allah, and to be given such glory! I give thanks to Him in all of my prayers!”

Muaz smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Let's get the device into the back of my truck, and we can go. How much time do we have?”

It was Zayan's turn to smile. “I have turned off the timer,” he said, “and studied the maps of the dam. Just before we get there, there is a place to pull off. We'll stop there, and I will set it for only ten minutes. Then, we will drive right out onto the dam and stop, then get out and throw it over together. It will be too late for anyone to stop it, even if they dive in and follow it to the bottom of the lake.”

They went into the motorhome and Zayan showed Muaz the bomb. This one was in a large plastic case, rather than a duffel, with handles on each end. Between the two of them, it was easy to carry it out and slide it into the bed of the pickup. Muaz threw a tarp over it, fastening it down with stretch cords so that it would not blow off.

Zayan looked at the bomb, there under the tarp, and felt a surge of pride. The device had been intended to cause a little destruction and fear, but now, in the hands of one who was chosen by Allah, it would mean the end of America as a superpower in the world. Once it had done its job, this country would be too busy trying to deal with millions of starving and angry and terrified people within its own borders to ever bother any other nation again.

Muaz jumped down and closed the tailgate, and Zayan turned to him. “Are you prepared? Do you wish to eat a last meal or anything before we...”

He barely saw Muaz move, but the pain in his face told him instantly that something was wrong. The great fist had struck him just ahead of his left temple, and his head exploded with agony. It came again, and his head rocked back from the second blow.

“What...” he cried out, “Why?”

“You stupid young fool!” Muaz said to him. “You think yourself the hand of Allah? Our plans were perfect, whether or not the bombs went off! The terror we caused in this nation was precisely what we wanted, but you think you know the will of Allah better than we, who have served him faithfully for years?” He struck again, and Zayan went down onto the ground between the truck and the motor home.

Muaz stepped toward him, and drew a pistol from his pocket. The gun had a silencer on it, and Zayan saw him raise it and aim it—and yet, somehow, Zayan knew that he would not die. A calm came over him, and he looked Muaz in the eye.

“You cannot harm the hand of Allah,” Zayan said, and it was at that moment that a man stepped into view, a truck driver coming back to his rig after a meal.

The man saw them, and saw the gun in Muaz's hand pointing at the young boy on the ground. He yelled, “Hey, there, hold on...”

That was as far as he got, for Muaz shifted his aim to the man and fired. The gun coughed twice, and the truck driver fell to the ground, but in that instant, as Muaz had his attention off of Zayan, the boy reached into his pocket and snatched out the knife, the same knife that had once threatened him in the hands of another boy, the same knife that he had kept and used seven times to end the lives of American whores he had seduced and grown tired of, the knife he had practiced opening and throwing until he could strike with it like a snake! With a flick of his thumb and finger, the blade flashed out, and then his arm whipped back and forward. The knife flew from his hand and flew true, and as Muaz turned back to aim again at Zayan, it embedded itself in his throat.

Muaz's eyes flew wide, and he dropped the gun as he reached for his throat. Instinctively he pulled out the knife, but that only ripped open his jugular vein even more than it had been, and his blood sprayed out. Zayan scrambled for the gun and snatched it up, then crabbed backward to get out of the way of the life blood that Muaz was spraying onto the ground.

Muaz looked at him and tried to say something, but his voice would not work, and he reached out with both hands as if he would strangle Zayan, but the boy raised the gun and fired once. A hole appeared in the center of Muaz's forehead, and his eyes rolled up into his head as he fell backward.

Zayan got to his feet and looked around. There was blood everywhere, and two dead men lay in plain sight, but as always when he killed, there was no one who could see him. He looked quickly into the truck and saw the key in the ignition, so he jumped in and started it, then threw it into gear and drove calmly away from the corpses behind him.

He looked into the mirror, and saw the marks that Muaz had left on his face. He could barely recognize himself, so severe was the swelling, but it was even and didn't look so much bruised as perhaps just dark. However, what struck him the most was that his left eye was filled with blood. The vessels in it had burst when Muaz had hit him, and his eye was bright and red.

He drove carefully, keeping the truck just under the speed limit to avoid drawing attention, and so it was exactly seven twelve when he stopped a quarter mile short of the dam and set the timer for ten minutes.

18

It was seven fifteen on the dot. Sam and the others had been on the dam for almost four hours, and there had been no sign of Jamal. Sam was wondering if he'd been wrong about where Jamal would go, and was beginning to doubt himself, but he had no other leads. They had not been able to track the phone Jamal was using, and the rad spotter hadn't found any trace of the bomb. Still, Sam waited on the dam, praying that he'd been right, and that this is where the boy would want his last great stand to take place.

“Anything?” he asked into his walkie-talkie, but all four agents replied that there was nothing suspicious visible.

“I've got a quartet of girls in a Prius,” Dickens said, at the far end of the dam, “and nothing else at the moment.”

Sandra Wills, who was stationed at the store, said, “Pickup truck coming past me now. Guy driving it looks a little like our boy, but it isn't him. Face is too dark, and his eye looks odd.”

Tom Sands, about four hundred feet from Sam, said, “Nobody here.”

Brennan said something, but Sam didn't catch it. He clicked the mike on his talkie and said, “Sandra? What's that about an eye?”

“Guy that passed me a minute ago,” she said. “At first I thought it might've been Jamal, but when he got close to me, I got a good look at his face and it's not. This guy's left eye is all bloodshot, bright red, and his face is a lot darker than Jamal's.”

Sam thought, It couldn't be…

“Is it the red truck starting across now?” he asked.

“Yeah, that's the one,” she said, suddenly sounding worried.

Brennan said, “I just got a look, and I don't think it's him, either. This guy's face is real fat and puffy, but she's right about the eye. Bright red!”

Sam didn't say a word, but watched the truck approaching him, keeping his eyes low so that he was looking out from under the brim of his hat. The truck was moving slowly, like every other vehicle that crossed the dam. The speed limit there was only fifteen miles per hour, and stopping on the dam was prohibited, but the only security was at either end, so occasionally someone tried to stop to take a photo or something. A voice over a loud speaker would tell them to keep moving, and if they didn't, then security guards would begin moving toward them. There had been only a few times that anyone was actually arrested, and usually it was just for a bad attitude.

Sam knew in his gut that this was it. That truck would be carrying the bomb, whether it was Jamal in it or not, and he stepped slightly away from the low wall he'd been sitting on as it came nearer. It was still too far away for him to see the driver clearly, but the dark hair matched. A tingle ran down his spine, the frisson of fear of what he would see when he and the driver came face to face. The others who'd seen him had said he had a red eye.

Be careful when you meet the man with the red eye, Beauregard had said, according to Kim.

The truck was almost a quarter of the way across the bridge, and Sam was at its midpoint. In just a moment, it would be right there beside him, and he would know for sure. He let one hand swing nonchalantly at his side, ready to snatch the Glock from its holster. The little thirty-two had done well, but for this, he wanted the gun he knew and trusted.

Time suddenly went into slow motion, as the truck stopped without warning, and then went into reverse and swung around so that the back end literally bashed into the low concrete wall over which tourists could see Lake Mead. Sam stared as the driver's door flew open and a skinny man leapt out and then hopped right over the side and into the bed of the truck.

“Jamal!” Sam shouted, and the boy looked up in shock to see him standing there.

Sam froze, as he saw the bright redness of Jamal's eye, and that moment of hesitation almost cost him his life, as Jamal raised his forty-five and aimed it at him. He squeezed the trigger just as people standing on the dam began to scream and point at his gun, and Sam felt something slam into his left side, spinning him around and knocking him to the ground.

He'd been shot, he knew, and then he knew he had to get up, he had to kill Jamal before he could throw the bomb into the water. It was all he could do to get a leg under himself, and as he pushed up with his arms, he felt as if his whole left rib cage was being ripped out, but there was too much at stake. The mission was to stop the bomb, and nothing could stop the mission!

He got to his knees, and when he was able to look, he could see Jamal struggling to lift a box that was clearly too heavy for him to handle alone, but he had one end up on the mangled tailgate. Sam knew that if he got the other end raised just a little higher, the whole thing would slide right over, and the mission would fail.

He had somehow gotten his Glock into his hand as he'd fallen, and it was still there. He raised it and fired, not even bothering to give a warning, but his first shot missed as Jamal bent down to get a better grip on that end of the box. Another shot came from somewhere else, and Jamal fired once in that direction, but then he was bending again and Sam watched in horror as the box began to tilt.

To get his end of it that high, Jamal had to stand, and he was almost fully upright, straining to lift the box a little higher, when he turned and looked at Sam once more, and the bright red eye seemed to be laughing at him. Sam fired again, and this time the bullet struck Jamal in his right arm, breaking the bone and making him fall, the box falling back and landing on his right foot. The bones of his foot broke, and Jamal screamed as Sam got to his feet and hobbled as fast as he could to the truck.

He got to it a moment later, and whipped his gun over the side of its bed to aim it into Jamal's face, but the boy had dropped his own gun and was holding his wounded arm. Sam reached in and got the forty-five, tossing it onto the concrete behind him.

“Disarm the bomb, Jamal,” he said, but the boy only looked at him for a moment, and then, even through his tears of pain, he began to laugh.

“It's too late, my friend,” he said. “Even from here, it will do great harm to your country, for the fallout alone will be enough to ruin the water for weeks, perhaps months. And you will die with me, but you will go to hell, and I shall go to Paradise!”

Sam growled, “Like hell!” as he threw himself over the side and into the truck bed. The box was still at its angle, and Sam looked for a latch, finding it on the opposite side from where he was standing over Jamal. He reached for it and flipped it up, raising the lid, and there was the bomb.

It was identical to the one he'd seen in Hawaii, and he saw that the timer was down to five minutes and fifty one seconds. He looked at Jamal. “Tell me how to stop it,” he said, “or I'll kill you right now.”

Jamal laughed. “Then kill me,” he said, and Sam pointed the Glock at his red eye and squeezed the trigger. He almost squeezed it far enough to let the hammer fall and end Jamal's miserable life, but he caught himself and reached for his phone instead, punching for Harry's number.

“Yes, Sam,” Harry said.

“I've got the bomb, but the timer has just over five minutes before it goes off. Do we know how to disarm it?”

Harry could be heard passing the phone to someone else, and another man's voice came on the line. “Sam, is the keypad intact?”

Sam looked. “Yes!”

“Enter this sequence: five, one, seven, nine, three, six, two. Watch the timer and tell me if stops after ten seconds.”

Sam counted off seconds the best he could, but when he reached ten, the timer was still going. “No change,” he said into the phone. “C'mon, man, gimme something, I've got less than five minutes.”

“Okay, we'll do it the hard way. Do you see the battery? The big gray rectangle on the right of the timer?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Okay, here's where we test your luck. The way the others were wired, there are three wires coming off of that battery, and they were all red wires. Same on yours?”

“Yes, red wires,” Sam said.

“Cut them. Cut them all at the same time, if you can, because it's possible that if you don't, the timer could give out one last spark and set off the bomb.”

Sam stared at the wires. “Cut them, how?” he yelled. “I don't have a knife!”

“I do,” Sam heard, and turned to see Agent Dickens standing beside the truck with blood streaming from his right shoulder. He fumbled in a pocket and produced a Swiss Army knife that he passed to Sam.

Sam got the blade open, and then grabbed the wires with one hand while he slid the blade under them with the other. He thought of Indie, of Kenzie, of Danny Jacobs, of his mom and the band and everyone he’d ever cared about, and thought, God, please, let this work!

He pulled upward with the blade, and felt it slide against the wires, but then they were cut, and when he looked at the timer, it had gone dark. He fell back against the side of the truck as the dam's security people came running up, and he let Wills, Sands and Brennan keep them back.

“Timer has stopped,” he said into the phone. “It's over.”

Sam felt a movement to his left and looked up to see that in his haste to stop the bomb, he'd actually laid his Glock down beside him, and Jamal had gotten it. His face was twisted into pure rage as he lifted the gun with his left hand and tried to aim it at Sam's face.

“You ruined everything!” Jamal screamed, and shoved the gun at Sam as he tried to squeeze the trigger and kill at least this one of Allah's foes, but before his brain could tell his finger to do so, it exploded out the side of his head. Sam thought at first that he'd been shot, but then Jamal's lifeless body fell, and Dickens stood there, his face deathly pale, but his gun hand firm and strong, still aimed at the spot where Jamal's head had been a second before. He let the gun fall, and then he looked at Sam and smiled, just before he slid down the side of the truck and onto the dam.

Sam heard something, and lifted his phone to his ear. It was Harry, yelling for Sam to answer.

“I'm here, Harry, I'm here. I'm down, and so is Dickens. Jamal shot us both, but he's dead, now.”

“I'm sending help, Sam, stay with us, son!”

Sandra Wills leaned over the side of the truck and looked at Sam, and he handed her the phone as he passed out.

19

Sam felt something, but he didn't know what it was; a sensation, as if something were touching him, but he had been so long in the dark and without any sensation that it seemed alien and unrecognizable. Then there were the sounds, strange sounds that seemed to be liked beeps and clicks. He knew he'd heard them before, sometime long ago, maybe, but he couldn't remember what they were.

A new sensation, and he began to realize that he had a body again, and it was in pain. He didn't know why he was in pain, but realizing it brought back a memory of another time he'd been in pain, and those same sounds had been there, then, too. The beeping and the clicking, those were the sounds he'd wakened to when he'd been shot, a long, long time ago…

“Oh, crap,” he muttered, and then the new sensation became stronger. It was a hand holding his own hand, and then new sounds came, as well.

“Sam? Oh, God, Sam, please wake up, baby! Sam, I'm here, babe, and I need you, please wake up!”

Sam managed to listen to the voice, and realized that it was Indie talking to him. He tried to smile, but there was something in his mouth, and he opened his eyes to see Indie there, smiling at him, with tears flowing down her cheeks.

“Sam? Oh, baby, can you hear me?” He managed a nod, and then pulled his hand away from her to try to get whatever was in his mouth out, but she grabbed it again when she saw what he was doing. “No, babe, you have to leave it alone. They've got a lot of tubes and wires in you right now, but the doctor said he can take them out when you come to. Let me call the nurse, and she'll get him, okay?”

He nodded again, and then a movement on his other side made him turn his head. Harry stood there, smiling down at him.

“You done good, son,” the old man said in his southern drawl. “You stopped him, Sam, and you saved the country from what would have been nearly the worst possible disaster that terrorists could ever pull off.”

Sam tried again to smile, but still couldn't manage it with the tube down his throat. Harry patted his hand. “Just rest, son, you're getting better. You took a bullet into your left lung, and it's a wonder you didn't up and die on the spot, but you didn't. The docs are saying it's a miracle, that the bleeding they found in your lung should've done you in, but I just told 'em they don't know Sam Prichard like I do.” Harry patted his hand again. “That's not to say it hasn't been touch and go,” he said. “You've been in a coma for almost two weeks, and they had to shock you a few times the first day or two. Couple days ago, though, the doc said you were getting stronger, and he took you off the critical list, so your beautiful bride and I have just been waiting for you to wake up, since then.”

Indie came in with two other people just then, and a doctor stepped up to the side of the bed.

"Mr. Prichard,” the doctor said, “I'm glad you decided to join us. Give me a couple minutes to look you over, and maybe we can get some of this crap off of you, okay?”

Sam nodded, and the doctor began poking and prodding and listening, doing all of the things that doctors do. After about ten minutes of such treatment, he smiled at Sam, and told the nurse to remove the tube from his throat.

“Mr. Prichard, that tube was there to make sure we didn't get too much fluid buildup in your lung, because we had to operate on it rather extensively. There was a lot of damage, but you have one of the most amazing constitutions I've ever seen, because most of the healing is complete, and you don't have nearly as much scarring as I was expecting. What that means is that, even though you literally came within a hair's breadth of death, you're almost certainly going to be fine, now that you've rejoined the living. You'll be pretty sore for a few days, and I'm not gonna let you out of here until I've seen you wide awake for at least a day or so, but I'd say you're on the road to being about as good as new as you were before this.”

The nurse had gotten the tube out and was removing a couple of IVs. Sam spent most of the doctor's monologue rolling his tongue around his mouth and working his jaws to get the stiffness out of them. He managed a lopsided smile, and said, “Thanks, Doc, I guess.”

“You're welcome,” he said. “That's what we do here, but from what these folks have told me, it should be all of us saying thanks to you. You just rest up another day, and maybe I'll let you get back to your honeymoon soon.” He winked at Sam. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

The doctor left, and Indie took hold of Sam's hand again. “Hey,” she said softly as she smiled into his face. She had tear-tracks on both cheeks, and some of them looked like they'd been there a while.

“Hey,” he answered. “Didn't mean to scare you.”

She sniffled, and fought back a sob. “It's okay,” she said. “the doctor says you’re gonna be fine, now, and by the time he lets you go, you should be almost back to normal, other than a little soreness, and that's good, cause if I have to go much longer without some cuddling, I'm gonna go crazy.” She leaned down suddenly and kissed him. “Ack,” she said when she came back up for air. “You need mouthwash.”

“I bet,” Sam said, “but I also need something to drink. Any water around here?”

Indie showed him a pitcher of ice water, and poured some into a glass for him. She handed it to him and he drank it all, then asked for more. As she was pouring it, he turned to Harry.

“How's Dickens?” he asked, and Harry smiled.

“He's doing better than you, and already got to go home, but he said to tell you you’re his new hero. He got one in the shoulder, which was bad, but he wasn't bleeding to death internally, so you get the trophy for worst mission wound this time.”

Sam nodded. “And Jamal is dead, right?”

“He is,” Harry said, nodding. “Dickens' shot took out most of the gray matter he had in his skull, and nobody's managed to live through that, yet. Sorry you didn't get to do it yourself.”

Sam shrugged without thinking, and instantly regretted it. “You can't have everything,” he said painfully, “and revenge isn't all it's cracked up to be, anyway. Danny wouldn't rest any easier if I'd fired the shot that killed him. All he'd care about is that we stopped the bomb and the terrorist plot.”

Indie was holding his hand again, and Sam turned back to her. “So, Mrs. Prichard,” he said. “I hear there's a new honeymoon package available someplace in a wheat field in Illinois. Want to go? I think we can hide there so no one can try to blow up the world and interrupt us.”

Indie giggled and smiled. “Anywhere, as long as it's just us. No cell phones, no guns, no terrorists, and no Harry! He gets on your nerves, after a while, trust me!”

Sam smiled. “I believe it. You guys been here the whole time? And where are we, anyway?”

Harry smiled. “You're in Valley Hospital Medical Center, Las Vegas. They had to fly you here, Sam, you were all but dead by the time you disarmed the bomb.”

“And, yeah,” Indie added, “Harry called me when he heard you'd been shot and had George get me to the airport, then we flew out here right away. Both our moms and Kenzie are here, too, in a room down the hall they gave us to rest in. As soon as they know you're awake, they're all gonna want to see you.”

Sam nodded. “Fine, but tell your mother to leave Beauregard somewhere else. If I never hear of him again, it'll be far too soon.”

Indie just looked at him. “I heard,” she said. “Jamal had a red eye.”

“Yeah. I don't know how, but something had happened to him, apparently, and his eye was bright red and bloodshot. Gave me the creeps, and then the little monster actually managed to shoot me! I guess Beauregard's record is still intact, but I hope he never had another message for me!”

She shrugged. “We can hope. Now, let's forget him, and tell me you love me!”

Harry smiled and left the room, and Sam looked into his wife's eyes. “Baby,” he said, “I love you with all my heart!”

“Ditto!” she answered, and leaned down to kiss him again. She didn't complain about his needing mouthwash, this time.

A little later, after they'd chatted a bit more, Indie went to get Kenzie and their mothers. The older ladies let Kenzie have him first, and Indie helped her get up onto the bed (at Sam's insistence) to give him a hug.

“I missed you, Daddy,” she said. “You can't get shot no more, okay?”

Sam grinned at her. “I promise you, sweetheart, I'm going to do my best not to. It hurts!”

Kenzie nodded solemnly. “I know, Mommy told me! Samson says to tell you hi!”

“Well, you tell Samson I said hi right back, okay? I can't wait to see him. Where's he at while you're here?”

Kenzie smiled. “George is taking care of him. He likes kitty cats.”

“Well, we'll have to thank George when we see him, too, then, won't we?”

Kenzie spent a few minutes letting him know she was happy, now that he was awake again, and then she got down. Sam's mother came up to the bed and looked down at him.

“Samuel,” she said, “I think you need to think about a new line of work. You've got a family now, and this running all over the country trying to get yourself killed has simply got to stop!”

Sam laughed, but it hurt his ribs. “Trust me, Mom, that was not the plan, at all! I had no intention of getting shot, it just sorta happened that way.”

“Well, it's too much for an old woman like me, getting a call saying you're laying in a stretcher in a helicopter, and they don’t know if you’re gonna make it or not! You were in surgery for seven hours, Sam—seven hours! We flew in and you were still in surgery, and then your heart stopped a few times, and they thought you were gonna die, and oh! I just can't take this, you've got to stop! I told Harry if he ever gets you involved with terrorists again, I'm going to wring his little scrawny neck!”

“Hey, it wasn't Harry's fault, Mom,” Sam said, “don't blame him. I knew what I was getting into when I took the mission. Someone had to do it, and this time, it was me.”

“I'll blame whoever I darn well want to,” she said. “Harry is a nice man, but I'm not going to put up with him dragging you into National Security problems anymore, and that's just that!”

Sam laughed again, but it still hurt, so he cut it short. “Okay, you win,” he said. “Next time he wants me to save the world, I'll tell him no.”

Grace smiled at him. “Like heck you will. But I have to try to protect my baby boy, don't I? That's what mothers are for!”

Kim came up on the other side of the bed and smiled at him, too. “She's been a wreck, Sam, but she'll be okay now that she knows you're going to be. And we're all so proud of you.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and then looked at Sam again, but he pointed a finger at her.

“Not one word about Beauregard, Kim, I mean it! Not now, not ever! No more!”

Kim looked stricken. “But...”

“Nothing! Not a word!”

She relaxed and smiled. “Okay,” she said, and Sam sighed. “He says not to bother you with him, for now...”

“Out!” Sam said, pointing to the door.

The doctor pronounced Sam fit to go home the next afternoon, and Harry arranged for a plane. Commercial flights were back to normal, and in fact, the whole country thought the incident had all been a hoax, but Harry didn't want Sam to have to deal with security measures. A Gulfstream like the one that brought them back from Hawaii was waiting at the airport when they arrived, and Sam managed to walk up the stairs on his own, with Indie beside him in case he needed any help. An agent from HS had been assigned to drive the Ridgeline back to Denver for them, so they'd have it back by the next day.

George was waiting for them at Denver with Samson in his carrier, and drove them all home, making his last stop at Sam and Indie's house, where the cat spent an hour making sure no one had bothered with it while they were gone. By the time he was satisfied, Sam was in his favorite spot on the couch, with Indie curled up beside him and Kenzie playing happily in the floor. Except for his soreness, Sam could almost convince himself the whole episode never happened, but he knew it had.

He also knew that he could never again pick up a phone and call Danny Jacobs, and that was the part of it all that hurt the most. Sam had thought he was a good judge of character, and had trusted Jamal. But that trust had only led to the situation getting worse. No one had said that it had gotten Danny killed, but Sam knew it, and there was no way he could just let it go. He'd told Indie he wanted to go the next day and visit Danny's grave, to make his apologies, and she'd understood.

The band came by to visit that evening. Indie had called and told them that Sam had been wounded while helping out on the “bomb scare,” and they'd all wanted to pay their condolences over the loss of his friend. The official story of Danny's death was that he'd been killed by a drug suspect, who was still at large, and it was all Sam could do not to tell them the truth.

Harry came back over just after the band left. Indie answered the door and let him in, but warned him that if he'd come to ask Sam to take on another case, he needed to think again. Harry smiled.

“No, dear, nothing like that. I just dug through some of our local resources and came up with something I thought you kids could use. I know it'll be a few days yet before you can get too, um, rambunctious, but this might come in handy soon.” He held out an envelope and Indie took it and opened it.

Inside were two tickets to a resort on Maui and ten thousand dollars in cash. Sam grinned when Indie showed him, and said, “We'll be ready in a few days. Maui might be less of a problem than Honolulu turned out to be, anyway.”

“That's sort of how I saw it, too,” Harry said with a smile. “And the cash is just spending money, a little reimbursement of the money you lost on the last honeymoon. I'll see what I can do about a proper reward when you get back.”

Sam shook his head. “No reward is needed, Harry. I didn't do this for money, I did it because it had to be done.”

Harry just smiled, kissed Indie on the cheek, gave a sleepy Kenzie a hug and left.

“That old man likes you,” Indie said.

“Yeah, I get that feeling, too. On the other hand, every time I get involved with him, somebody ends up trying to kill me. Maybe I should just stay home more, and chase you around the house.”

“Hey, now, that's an idea I can really get into!” she said, and Sam pulled her down for a long kiss.

“So, Mr. Prichard,” Indie said, “how are you really feeling? I'm about ready to get to bed, and I have had all of sleeping by myself that I care to do. Feel like some serious cuddling?”

Sam grinned. “Baby,” he said, “you won't believe just how serious I can get about that! And just so you know, I may be a little sore, but I will never be too sore to make love to you!”

“Sam!” Indie said, “Kenzie's right there!”

“And I was whispering in your ear, babe, not shouting it from the rooftop! Calm down! And come here!”

Indie kissed him, and whispered, “Let me get her to bed, and then I am all yours, buster!”

She told Kenzie it was bed time, and the little girl gathered up Samson and walked dutifully up the stairs to her room. Sam got up and made his way up there, as well, and sat on the edge of her bed to tell her a story about Hoppy the Super Bunny—he had to make it up as he went along—which she loved, and then they kissed her goodnight and went down to their own room.

Sam got into bed while Indie went to the bathroom, and after a few minutes, he called out softly, “Honey, you okay in there?”

She didn't answer, but the door opened, and a bare leg came around it. It was followed a moment later by an arm, and then the door swung aside to reveal Indie in a floor length negligee that was split perfectly down the middle.

“I didn't get to show you this one,” she said, her voice thick with excitement, and Sam only smiled at her as she walked sultrily toward him.

“Better late than never,” he said.

BOOK IV

1

Indie rose from bed a little after six, as she usually did, kissed Sam on the lips as he slept and went into the bathroom to shower. When she came out a half hour later and dressed, she kissed him again, but this time she made sure he didn't sleep through it.

“Hey, Sleepyhead,” she said. “The honeymoon's over, and it's time to get up and go back to real life. You've got rehearsal this afternoon, remember?”

“You go to rehearsal for me,” Sam mumbled, “and I'll stay here and take care of Kenzie.”

Her eyes went wide. “As tempting as that sounds, I can't sing like you can, so get your butt outta that bed, Mister! Come on, get up. I'm making eggs and sausage and hash browns this morning!” She said that last in a singsong voice, and Sam finally rolled over onto his back.

“Fine,” he said. “For hash browns, I'll get up.” He went through his morning stretching ritual, working the cramps out of his bad leg, and by the time he actually got up and went to the shower, Indie was cracking eggs into a bowl, and Kenzie was on a stool beside her, ready to whisk them all together.

Fifteen minutes later, Sam was in his chair and Kenzie bowed her head to say grace over their breakfast. When she had done so, Sam and Indie said, “Amen!” with her, and then it was time for the day to begin.

“Kenzie, stop tossing eggs under the table to Samson,” Indie said, “he eats kitty food, not people food!”

“Sorry, Mommy,” Kenzie said, but the little grin she was trying to hide told Sam that she wasn't really all that sorry. The cat was her pet and her responsibility, and she took him seriously on both counts; that meant feeding him, but feeding him stuff he liked, and he loved eggs!

“So what all are you girls up to today?” Sam asked.

“Well, we're going grocery shopping,” Indie said. “Anything that wasn't frozen or canned went bad while we were gone, so I gotta replace a lot. And then we're going over to the preschool and get a certain Miss Kenzie registered, because it starts in two weeks, and she's all excited about it!”

“Yeah!” Kenzie said. “When you go to school, you get to make friends, and you get to eat lunches from bags, and learn how to read and write and all kinds of stuff!”

Sam looked at her with his eyes wide. “Really?” he asked. “You get to do all that at school? I think I wanna go to school with Kenzie—that sounds more fun than workin'!”

Indie laughed, and so did Kenzie. “You can't go to school, it's not for old people, just for kids!”

This was the way their mornings went, when they were all at home where they belonged. Sam was glad to be there, and thoughts of how close he had come to never seeing his home or family again ran through his mind.

Sam and Indie had married only five weeks before, and immediately flew off to Hawaii for a luxurious honeymoon, but the next morning had been when the announcement came of the terrorist plot to try to blow up twelve cities with small suitcase nukes. Sam had seen something odd as they were flying out of Denver, and then again when they'd arrived at Honolulu, and when he put them together, he and Indie were able to track down one of the bombs.

When local Honolulu police were too swamped to pay attention to Sam's tips, he'd called Harry Winslow, an undercover operative of the Department of Homeland Security that Sam had helped out once before. Harry not only listened, he ended up recruiting Sam to track down the terrorist cell in Denver that had actually initiated the entire plot. Their honeymoon already ruined, and with Kenzie in the care of their mothers in a cabin Sam had inherited from his father, they agreed to fly home and do what they could.

Sam found the terror cell, but a single error in judgment by Sam ended up costing the life of his friend and former police partner, Dan Jacobs, and then Sam was off across the country, chasing a lone fanatical terrorist who had concocted a plot to use one of the bombs to destroy a quarter of the country.

The plan was to set it off in Lake Mead, where it would contaminate the water that supplied seven states. If he had succeeded, it would have meant that millions of people would have had to relocate to other parts of the country to survive, while several million more, those too poor to move, would have died of radiation poisoning within months.

It was Indie who discovered the depth of the plot, and gave Sam the clue he needed to head it off, but he was severely wounded by the terrorist in the process. Another agent of Homeland Security, assigned to assist him, had taken the terrorist out just as he was trying once more to kill Sam. The bomb was disarmed, the plot was foiled, and Sam slipped into a coma that was almost the end of his life.

Sam Prichard wasn't one to go easily into that famous good night, however; defying the doctor's prediction of his demise, he had slowly gotten better, and wakened at last to find his beloved Indie there beside the bed, tears streaking her face as she prayed for him to come back to her. Those prayers were answered, and Sam was able to leave the hospital only a few days later.

Harry had surprised them with a new honeymoon package, and they had just gotten back from it the day before. Kenzie had stayed with her grandmothers again, having the time of her life since both of them loved spoiling the child rotten. But now they were home, and Indie was right—it was time to get back to life. They had found a few calls on their voicemail, clients interested in hiring Sam for various investigative work, and several messages from Chris Lancaster, the lead guitarist and manager of the band that Sam sang with, demanding that he get to rehearsal as soon as possible, and bring them some new songs to learn. He had called Chris the night before and promised to make rehearsal that afternoon at two.

Indie was loading the dishes into the dishwasher while Sam was running all of this through his mind, and when she finished she turned to him.

“So,” she said, “are there going to be any new songs today that I haven't heard? You know, you promised to play some for me weeks ago, and I still haven't heard them.”

Sam grinned. “I still haven't found that old CD, yet. You'll get to hear them all soon, though; Chris says we're going into the studio next week, so we've got to work hard to get songs ready before then. If you get done with all your errands this morning, you can always come down and listen.”

She smiled, and came over to him, slipping her arms around him and stretching up for a kiss. When he let her up for air, she said, “You can count on us being there. A band needs an audience, right? That's mine and Kenzie's job!”

Sam hugged her close, and Kenzie came over to get in on it, so he reached down and lifted her up to join them. She giggled as he made growly sounds at her, and squeezed his neck tight.

“Mmm,” he said, “a guy could start to like this!”

“You'd better,” Indie said, “’cause we're gonna keep it up forever!”

Sam let them go, and Indie had Kenzie go and get dressed so they could go and take care of shopping and school registration, while she went to their bedroom to change from nightgown to street clothes. Sam followed, and stood by the door and smiled as he watched.

“What?” Indie asked when she saw him looking her way.

Sam shook his head gently. “Just admiring the view, babe,” he said. “Just admiring the view!”

She laughed, and said, “You're crazy, I don't even have makeup on, yet!”

“Babe,” Sam said, “you don't need any. You're beautiful just the way you are!”

“Yeah, well, I'm very glad you think so, Mr. Prichard, but I don't go out without it!” She slid a pair of jeans up her legs and wiggled her way into them, glaring at Sam the whole time, then pulled a long-sleeved white top over her head, hooking her hands into her hair to pull it all out of the collar. “Aren't you supposed to be calling clients?” she asked as she went into the bathroom.

“I guess I can do that,” he said with a grin, and turned to go out to his office. He sat at his desk, picked up a pen and hit the Play button on the voicemail machine.

“Mr. Prichard, my name is Jim Durban, and I'd be interested in talking to you about a matter of marital infidelity...” Sam deleted that one, and the machine went to the next.

“Hello, I'm looking for Mr. Prichard,” said a woman's voice. “My name is Juliette Connors, and I have a matter of some urgency to discuss, involving assets my soon to be ex-husband is hiding, and if you'd call me back, I'd appreciate it. My number is...” Sam made a note of the number; Indie could knock that one out in her sleep, and it might be worth some serious money.

There were a couple more like the first one—Sam didn't do wife or husband trailing, just as a matter of principle—and he deleted those as well. He hit play on the next to last one.

“Mr. Prichard,” said a man, “I'd like to talk to you about finding my wife. She disappeared about three months ago, and I've got people trying to say I've done something with her, but I haven't. Her sister claims that my wife told her she was afraid I was going to kill her. Mr. Prichard, I never was a threat to her, not in any way, and I don't know why she left, or where she could have gone, or anything, but my lawyer says just the fact that no one can find her is making me look bad. I need help, please. My name is Albert Corning, and my number is...” Sam wrote it down. This man sounded like he might have a real problem that needed his help.

The last call was different, though. When Sam hit play, he heard a recorded voice say, “Hello. This call is from” and another voice said, “Carl Morris,” followed by the first, recorded voice, saying, “who is an inmate at the county jail. To accept the call, press five. To decline the call and block all future calls from this inmate, press nine.” The call had come in the day before they got home, and there were no more calls after it.

Sam thought about it for a moment, but he was pretty sure he didn't know any Carl Morris. Still, it could be someone to whom he'd been recommended, so he looked at the number it had come from and dialed it back. A bored deputy answered, “Detention Center.”

“Hi,” Sam said. “Can you tell me if you still have a Carl Morris in jail there?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Sam heard whispering on the other end. He furrowed his brow, wondering what was going on, but suddenly a different voice came on the line.

“You're looking for Carl Morris?” it asked, gruffly.

“Yes. I'm Sam Prichard, private investigator, and he left a message on my phone a few days ago from the jail. I was calling to see if he's still there.”

“Well, Sam Prichard,” the voice said. “This is Sheriff's Detective Orville Kennedy. I happened to be here at the detention center right now, because I'm officially notifying Carl Morris that he's been indicted on three counts of murder this morning. Is he a client of yours?”

Sam let his eyebrows come back down off his hairline. “Not yet,” he said, “but then I haven't had the chance to speak with him yet. Can he be given a message to call me back?”

Detective Kennedy made a sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a snort. “Yeah, I can do that. Word to the wise, though,” he added. “If you agree to work for him, get your money up front, and quick. His assets may be frozen pretty soon. Morris was indicted this morning on three counts of first-degree murder in the axe-murder-style deaths of his wife and their two kids. Wife's family is already talking about filing wrongful death lawsuits, so he may not have any way to pay you before too long.”

Sam's eyebrows went back up. “You sound like you've got a pretty solid case. Any possibility of his innocence?”

That snorting laugh came again. “I was at the scene,” Kennedy said. “We found Morris passed out cold on the floor, right next to the bodies, and there was blood everywhere. His prints were on the old hatchet he used as a weapon, some of them even bloody prints, ‘cause the blood was splattered everywhere, all over the room and all over him. He reeked of cheap whiskey, and had Adivol in his system. You know what that is? Sleeping pills, but when it's mixed with alcohol, it can cause some pretty bizarre behavior. No sign of a drinking problem before this. We couldn't wake him up, so we took him to jail and let him sleep it off. When he woke up, he said he didn't have any idea how he got there, and didn't remember anything, so I told him what he'd done, and the guy just fell apart and flipped out. He's a big mother, a bodybuilder, and it took eight of us to restrain him and the nurse had to give him a shot to calm him down. You figure it out—I sure as hell can't.”

Sam wrote down what he was hearing. “All right,” he said. “Please, tell him to call me. You never know, he might have something to say, and if it seems appropriate, I'll call you.”

“You do that,” Kennedy said, and hung up.

Sam looked at the number for Albert Corning, the man who said his wife was missing, and dialed it. It rang twice, and then the same voice as the one on the message answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Corning? This is Sam Prichard, private investigator. I'm returning your call.”

“Yes!” Corning said excitedly. “Mr. Prichard, thanks for calling me back, I really appreciate it! This has turned into a nightmare!”

“Well, I heard what you left on my voicemail,” Sam said. “Can you give me a bit more information?”

“Sure,” Corning said. “About four months ago, my wife Annie started acting strangely, and I have no idea why. She started going out and being gone for hours without answering her phone, and a few times she took some money out of the bank but swore she didn't know where it went, and then I woke up in the middle of the night a few times to find her gone, but she'd come in sometime in the early hours of the next morning and say she just couldn't sleep and went for a drive. The next morning, she'd insist I dreamed the whole thing, that she hadn't gone anywhere. I asked her if she was seeing someone, having an affair, and she always swore she wasn't, and that everything was fine between us. Then, three months ago, I came home from work on a Tuesday and she was gone, but no one has seen her since then. She left her clothes, didn't take any extra money out of the bank; the only thing I can tell she took with her is her purse. Her car was found abandoned at Wal-Mart.”

Sam pursed his lips. “Mr. Corning, did you ever find any kind of evidence of an affair? Was she inattentive to you, did she seem cold or standoffish?”

“That's the thing,” Corning said, “she always acted like everything was good! We made love almost every night, and she was always doing little things for me, like making me coffee and bringing it to me in the mornings, or getting herself all prettied up before I got home from work, meeting me at the door in a negligee—I thought she was just going through some kind of a phase, and I tried not to worry about it, you know? But then she just vanished, and I have tried everything I can think of to find her on my own, and now her kids and her sister are saying I killed her or something! I can't sleep, I can't work, I can't even think! I need help, Mr. Prichard.”

Sam nodded into the phone. “Yeah, it sounds like it. Listen, can you come over to my office this morning? Say in a half hour?” Corning agreed, and Sam gave him the address.

He hung up the phone and looked at the other number he'd made a note of: Juliette Connors. He dialed the number and it was answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” he heard, in a low, sultry voice.

“Mrs. Connors? This is Sam Prichard, private eye, returning your call.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Prichard,” she said. “I'm glad to hear back from you. I've got a problem, I'm afraid; my husband Alex and I are getting a divorce, and in the financial disclosures we both have to make, he's missing some assets that I know exist. I'm looking for help in finding where he's hidden them. Is that something you can do? An old friend of mine suggested I call you, and said you'd know his name—Jimmy Smith?”

Sam stifled a groan. Jimmy Smith was a former client who had hired Sam to clear him of a murder charge that Sam had helped to bring against him.  Sam had thought Smith would never want anything to do with him again, even though he'd been quite generous with his fee and bonus.

“Yes,” Sam said, “I know Jimmy. And I think I can help you with your problem. Could you come by the office later this morning, say around ten-thirty?” Once again he gave out his address, and sat back to think about the strange cases he was looking at.

Mrs. Connors' case wasn't too bad. Sam was fairly sure that once he knew what assets were being hidden, Indie could track them down pretty quickly. Corning's case, on the other hand, could be a pickle. If his wife had vanished voluntarily then she was one of the “maliciously-missing” that police often complained about. These people were often very hard to track, especially if they'd done any research on how to disappear without a trace. In most cases, they didn't turn up until something almost coincidental happened, like running into someone they knew, or getting fingerprinted after some minor arrest.

On the other hand, if someone had orchestrated her disappearance, then Sam could be looking for a body, and then a killer. If Corning was actually innocent, then there was someone out there who knew the truth, and Sam's job would be to figure out who that might be and bring them in for questioning.

He was letting all of this roll through his mind when his desk phone rang. He answered it, saying, “Sam Prichard, Private Eye.”

“Hello. This call is from” and he heard Morris's voice say, “Carl Morris,” and then the recording continued, “who is an inmate at the county jail. To accept the call, press five. To decline the call and block all future calls from this inmate, press nine.”

Sam punched the five, and then said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Prichard? This is Carl Morris. The detective said you wanted me to call you back?”

“Yes, Mr. Morris,” Sam said. “I got your message and called this morning to see if they'd tell you to call me back, and ended up talking to Detective Kennedy. From what he told me, you're in quite a mess.”

“Ha!” Morris said. “Yes, I guess you could say that. I've been charged with killing my wife and kids, and they just told me that they're going for the death penalty.”

Sam sighed. This man's voice said that he had already given up, and a hopeless man wasn't the best to work with. “What did you want from me, Mr. Morris?”

Morris was quiet for a long moment, and then said, "Mr. Prichard, I suppose I'm hoping you can find out just why I did it."

Sam's eyes went wide again. “Mr. Morris—you're saying you're guilty?”

“Mr. Prichard, here's what I know,” Morris said. “I was found unconscious beside the bodies of my family on my living room floor. The doors were all locked from the inside, and the police had to break in. I was unconscious, like I said, and they couldn't rouse me, so they brought me here and did blood tests, and found that I was drunk and had drugs in my system, the kind of drugs that supposedly can make you do this sort of thing. When they told me what I'd done, I just lost it, and they had to sedate me, but I've come to grips with it now.” He sighed. “The murder weapon was an old tomahawk that I've owned for more than twenty years, and it had my prints all over it, including many of them in my family's blood. Since there is no way anyone else could have done this, Mr. Prichard, what I want to know is how and why I did it. Y'see, Mr. Prichard, I don't ever drink, and I don't take any kind of drugs, not even aspirin. It's sort of a phobia, because I hear all the possible side effects on TV commercials, and I just can't see putting that stuff into my body. So I want to know how I got drunk, and how I had this sleeping drug in me, since that combination is probably what made me do this. And then I want to know what could have triggered me doing something like this.”

The longer Sam had listened to Morris, the more he was getting an eerie feeling that something about this case wasn't right. “Mr. Morris, if you want to hire me, then I need to come down and see you. I can be there around noon, if that's okay with you.”

“I'd like that very much, Mr. Prichard. Shall I tell them you'll be coming?”

“Yes, do,” Sam said. “They know me down there, it won't be a problem.”

Sam got off the phone and read through the notes he'd made several times. If Morris was telling the truth, then Sam couldn't help but wonder how any combination of drugs and alcohol could bring something like that out of a man who wasn't already prone to violence. He made a note to ask Morris about his mental health history, and to have Indie find anything she could on the man and his family. If he had any kind of a record, she'd find it, and it might tell Sam something about how this might have happened.

Meanwhile, he wasn't entirely computer illiterate himself. He went to the local newspaper's website and ran a search for Morris's name, and found the stories that had run already.

“Aurora Family Slain In Grisly Triple Murder,” screamed the first headline. The story underneath it told how police had received a tip that Carl Morris, thirty-four years old, had murdered his wife (Genevieve, thirty-three) and children (David, sixteen, and Elana, thirteen) by hacking them to pieces with an old Indian tomahawk. They had arrived to find the house locked up tight from the inside, and when they'd seen through a window what appeared to be bodies, they had broken in to find the three victims, and Carl unconscious on the floor beside their bodies.

Carl was taken to the jail, where blood tests were run; he was found to have alcohol and zolpidem, a drug most commonly sold under the brand name Adivol, in his system. Zolpidem, the article said, is known to have side effects that can include hallucinations, especially when taken with alcohol, and there was speculation that this may have played a part in the horrific crime.

Neighbors said they were shocked, and that Morris had never seemed to have any sort of drinking problem. Most described the family as happy and always friendly, and it was noted that they'd had a big cookout at their house only two nights earlier, with most of the block in attendance.

Sam read several of the articles that were available online, and found the same things in all of them. Police got a tip, went to the house and found Morris out cold on the floor beside the bodies. The house was locked from the inside, and there was no sign of any other person having been present at the time of the killings. Despite the odd things about the case, such as the anonymous tip—who else could have known about the crime was still a mystery—police said the preponderance of the evidence led to Carl as the perpetrator, regardless of how nice a guy his neighbors thought he was.

The only person who seemed to believe that Carl was innocent was a teenaged girl who had been a friend of his children. Her name was Miranda Nielsen, and she insisted that she knew the family well and could never believe that Morris would harm his wife and kids.

The whole thing was so screwy that Sam couldn't imagine how it could have happened. Without knowing more about Morris, he was at a standstill. He picked up his phone to call his old partner on the force, Dan Jacobs, to ask him to run Morris' background.

He put down the phone. Danny was dead, and for just a moment, he'd forgotten. Danny was dead, and Sam would never quite be able to forgive himself for the lapse in judgment that had led to his death.

He got up and went into the house to get himself a cup of coffee; thinking about Danny wouldn't help, and he knew it wasn't really his fault, but he also knew he'd go through this from time to time. He'd cope with it; if Sam was anything, he was a survivor, and guilt was something you had to learn to live with.

He went back to his office and sat there making notes until Corning arrived.

2

“Mr. Corning,” Sam said as he opened the office door for him. “Come on in and have a seat.” He extended a hand, and Corning shook it firmly.

“Thanks for seeing me,” Corning said as he sat down in the chair in front of Sam's desk. “I'm about at my wits' end, and when you didn't call back right away, I tried other investigators, but none of them wanted to talk to me about this.”

“Missing persons are always tough cases,” Sam said. “I was out on my honeymoon when you called, and just got your message this morning, I'm afraid.”

“Well, in that case, congratulations, and thanks for getting back to me so quickly! How do we start this?”

Sam turned on his recorder, but also picked up a pen to make notes. “First thing we do is, you tell me everything you know about the situation. Let's start with some background on you and your wife.”

Corning nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Well, I'm Albert James Corning, I was born August fourth, nineteen seventy-nine, right here in Denver. Joined the Army at eighteen, spent four years in as a medic, got out in oh-three and went to work as an EMT with the fire department, been there ever since. I've made some good investments, and my net worth is about eight hundred thousand. Never been in any kind of trouble, other than a few traffic tickets over the years. I think the last one was back in oh-nine.”

He paused and leaned his head back for a moment, then went on. “My wife is Annie Leanne Mitchell Corning, born January sixth, nineteen eighty-two, in Aurora. I met Annie right after I started at the department; she was working in dispatch, and we started dating. Got married after dating a year, and we've never had any real problems. She got restless back in oh-six, after we found out she couldn't have kids, and went to stay with her sister for a month, but came back home after that and we've been great ever since. We looked at adoption, but after a while she decided she just wanted to spend time in charity work, so she's been a volunteer with a bunch of them over the years. Her favorite was always working with the troubled kids at the Mary Williams Foundation in Aurora.”

Sam held up a hand to stop him. “Do you know who she worked with at these places, especially the ones she's been working at lately?”

Corning nodded. “The last two years, she's only worked at Mary Williams and twice a month at the homeless shelter over on Tenth Street, on their food line. That was every other Sunday, and the guy who runs it is Pastor Evans from the Tenth Street Baptist Church. I know him, he's a pretty nice guy. Mary Williams is run by a woman named Charlotte Peters, but there's a lot of people working there, some on payroll and some volunteers like Annie. The only one she ever spent any of her free time with was a woman named Cindy Benton; they got to be friends when they had to deal with this one girl who was always getting into trouble.”

Sam nodded. “Okay. What about Annie's background? Any troubles in her past?”

Corning looked down and to the left, which Sam knew meant that he was thinking of how to answer, and whether to answer truthfully. After a second, he looked up and said, “This isn't something I'd want getting out, of course, but a couple years before we met, Annie was involved in some things that she isn't very proud of. A boyfriend of hers had gotten her to do some porn movies, said it was just private stuff, but a few years ago, they turned up on the Internet. Someone tracked her down and it was pretty embarrassing. They tried to shake us down for money, but we talked it over and refused to pay. Annie even went forward at our church and admitted to it, and the people were great about it, let her know that the mistakes we made in the past don't matter, once we accept Christ.” He ran his hands over his face. “Other than that, there's been nothing, not until she started acting strange.”

“Okay,” Sam said, “now let's talk about that. What was the first thing you noticed?”

Corning thought for a moment, and said, “She stopped answering her cell phone. I'd always call or text her during the day, and she used to always answer or respond, but suddenly she just stopped. That was about four months ago, and I asked her why, and she'd say the phone never rang, or she just was too busy to answer, or she got distracted and forgot to answer a text. Seemed like most of the time when I'd call her, she didn't answer. Sometimes she would, but even then, it was like she wanted to get off the phone in a hurry.”

Sam made a note. “And then?”

“Well, about two weeks after she started acting weird, I woke up and she was gone, about 1 a.m.. I tried calling but her phone was on the nightstand, and she came back about four. I was pretty upset, and I guess I yelled a little, but she swore she just couldn't sleep and went for a drive. That happened about four or five times before she left. Then I came home one day, it was a Tuesday, I remember, and she wasn't home. I tried calling, but she didn't answer, like usual, so I just made dinner and waited, but she never came home. I tried filing a missing person report, but the cops wouldn't take one till she'd been gone forty-eight hours, and then they found her car in the parking lot at a Wal-Mart in Aurora, but there's been no other trace of her since then.” He ran his hands over his face again.

Sam said, “Mr. Corning...”

“Al, please,” Corning said. “Everyone calls me Al.”

“Okay, Al—on the message you left, you said Annie's sister is saying that your wife said she was afraid of you?”

Corning nodded. “Yeah, she came forward about two weeks after Annie vanished and said Annie told her she was afraid I was going to kill her, but never said why. Her name is Connie, Connie Dozier. She's married to Ron Dozier, the lawyer, and they've managed to get the police to open an investigation into whether I did something to my wife, but I swear I didn't. I hired a lawyer myself, Carol Spencer; she says the cops could try to charge me with murder, even though they don't have a body.”

Sam nodded. “If they have enough circumstantial evidence, it's possible, but I doubt it's likely unless they get something that they can consider physical evidence. Have they searched your home?”

Corning rolled his eyes. “Five times, so far,” he said. “They took my car and Annie's and went through them, and they say they haven't found anything to support the idea that I've done anything to her, but they won't stop pushing. They've called me in for questioning a dozen times, and the only thing they say is that my story seems to be the same every time. It's like they want to make me say something else, so they can charge me with something!”

“Yeah, cops can be pretty brutal, but that's their job. If you did do something, they're supposed to find out and bring you to justice, but it does seem like they're going after you harder than usual. Is there anything else you can tell me that might explain that?”

Corning shrugged. “Not that I can think of,” he said. “Everyone down at Mary Williams is still supportive; they say she never led them to think there was any problem, or that she was afraid of me. Pastor Evans just says they miss her, but he won't really talk to me. I'm just praying she's okay somewhere, and that she'll come home, but I don't know what to think. That's why I need help, Mr. Prichard.”

Sam smiled. “That's what I'm here for,” he said, “and you can call me Sam. Al, I get a thousand dollar retainer, and I charge two fifty a day plus expenses. If that's okay with you, I'll get started right away.”

Corning nodded, and took out his wallet. “I anticipated as much, and brought cash.” He counted out ten one hundred dollar bills onto Sam's desk, and then handed over a photo of him and his wife. “I hope you can find her, Sam.” He shook Sam's hand again, then stood and left without another word.

Sam sat there and went through his notes, deciding to talk to the Pastor first. He Googled his phone number and dialed.

“Pastor Evans? My name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator. I've been hired by Albert Corning to look into the disappearance of his wife, and wondered if you might have any information that could help.”

The minister was quiet for a moment. “Mr. Prichard, Mrs. Corning is a very troubled woman. I don't know much about their home life, but she was always talking about how there were things she couldn't say to her husband, and sometimes she would confide in me, but I can't say there was ever anything that could explain her disappearing like this. I'll confess that I've wondered if something has happened to her, but I can't say there's any particular thing that makes me think so. I've told all this to the police, of course.”

“When she confided in you, Pastor, was it ever about any kind of extramarital affair? She seems to have been acting strangely before she left.”

“Oh, no,” the pastor said hastily. “I don't think that was ever an issue with them. In fact, she told me often that they were extremely happy together, but that there were certain things she couldn't talk to him about.”

“Do you know what sort of things she might have meant? Pastor, I know there's some confidentiality in her conversations with you, but anything you can tell me might help.”

The minister sighed. “She was concerned that her husband was working too hard, that was one thing, but said he wouldn't listen when she brought it up. He's an EMT, you know, and I guess he takes his work very seriously. The only other thing she said was that he didn't ever want to talk about the past, and sometimes she wanted to get closure on things. I'm afraid she never told me what they were.”

Sam wrote what he had heard and thanked him for his time. He was thinking of calling Charlotte Peters at the Mary Williams home when he heard a car pull up in the driveway. Juliette Connors was arriving twenty minutes early, and Sam got up to let her in.

“Hi, Mr. Prichard?” she said as he opened the door. “I hope you don't mind I'm a little early, I wasn't sure where you were, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't late.”

“No problem,” Sam said, shaking her hand. “Please come in and have a seat.” He led her to the same chair Corning had vacated only a few minutes before. She sat down, and it suddenly hit Sam that she was wearing an awfully short skirt, and her top was cut almost low enough to be illegal in some states. This was a woman who thought her looks would get her anything she wanted, he knew, but all Sam was interested in was the money he could make from helping her find whatever assets her husband was trying to hide. That sort of case got a percentage, and if the assets were truly valuable, the reward could be pretty good.

“Now,” he said, keeping his eyes firmly glued to hers, “I got the gist of your problem. If you can give me some of the specifics, we'll see how I can help.”

She rolled her eyes. “Where to start?” she said. “Well, my husband Alex and I are getting divorced, and we're each supposed to divulge our assets, so the court can divide them equitably. Alex is a dentist, and he's done quite well while we were married, investing a lot of money into stocks that have really soared in value. Now, though, his money seems to be all hidden somewhere, and he's come up with business records claiming he's had a lot of losses in the past couple of years. I know he's got at least thirty million hidden away, and legally, half of that is mine, since he had nothing when we got married. Besides, it was me that worked and paid his way through dental school, and that's where he got the money he invested. What I want to know is how he hid the money, and where, so the court can divide it fairly and I get my share.”

Sam nodded, smiling at how quickly she'd spoken. “Do you have any idea how he's hiding it? I mean, hasn't he paid taxes on the money? There has to be some kind of records.”

She leaned forward, showing a lot of cleavage. “See, that's the thing,” she said. “Alex is a tax protester, so he's always reinvesting his earnings, deferring the taxes and then making sure his top investments are offshore, through foreign investment companies. He's got it in his head that, by doing it this way, the IRS can't find his money and make him pay, but I think he's just courting disaster. If there's one thing about the IRS, it's that they never give up! If you've got it, they'll find it, and I want to find it before they do and get mine!”

Sam made a note. “Well, to be honest, I'm fairly sure I can find anything he's got hidden. I'll need a lot of information, like his social security number, date of birth, and all of his email and social media accounts.”

She smiled and took an envelope from her purse. “I had my attorney draft this up,” she said. “It's all of that information and a whole lot more.”

Sam grinned as he took it and skimmed the documents inside. “This looks pretty complete,” he said. “I get a retainer of one thousand dollars, and in a case like this, I take ten percent of any recovered assets.”

She smiled. “That sounds fair enough, since my lawyers will make him pay the fees, anyway, once we prove he's been hiding assets.” She took out a checkbook and wrote him a check for a thousand dollars without batting an eye. “I'll look forward to hearing from you,” she said as she handed it over, and he showed her out a moment later, just as Indie pulled into the driveway in their truck. He stepped out and introduced Indie to Mrs. Connors, and gave her a short account of the case he'd just taken. Indie smiled, knowing that this one would likely be hers.

Since he was already outside, he helped Indie carry in the groceries she'd bought, and told her about Albert Corning and Carl Morris, as well.

“Wow,” she said. “You've had an exciting morning, especially with Mrs. Come-and-get-it, there. If that skirt was any shorter, she'd be arrested for indecent exposure!”

Sam laughed. “Some women think they get what they want by being flirtatious. That doesn't work on me.”

Indie glared at him for a moment, then relaxed. “I know it doesn't,” she said. “I tried flirting with you that first week I was here, and you didn't even notice!”

“Oh, I noticed,” he said with a grin, “but I had promised not to make a pass, so I pretended you weren't getting to me. If I'd known how well things were gonna work out, I might have noticed better and let you seduce me!”

Indie threw a bag of beans at him, and he caught it, laughing, then dropped it onto the counter and spun to throw both arms around his wife. He kissed her, and she let out a low moan, then pushed him away. “Stop it,” she said. “If you've got to be at the jail at noon, I need to make an early lunch. How about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”

“Sounds like a winner to me,” Sam said.

“Cool, and easy. I got Kenzie all registered, by the way. She starts in two weeks!”

Kenzie came running into the kitchen just then, with Samson in hot pursuit. The cat was running, which was always comical, since he'd suffered nerve damage from a bout of distemper as a kitten, and his back legs suddenly came around in front and he went tumbling across the floor. He rolled to a stop, then shook his head and got up, walking sedately to where Kenzie had also come to a stop. He contented himself with licking her legs as she looked up at Sam.

“Daddy,” Kenzie said, “Mommy said we get to go hear you sing today.”

Sam reached down and picked her up, causing the cat to stumble when the leg he was leaning on suddenly rose into the air. “That's right, Sweetie. You like that, don't you?”

“Yeah,” she said, “cause Stan keeps M&M's for me!” Stan was the band's drummer, and they rehearsed in his big garage.

“Hmm,” Indie said. “I'm gonna have to have a talk with Stan!”

Kenzie looked at her, panic stricken. “But, Mommy, M&M's are good!”

“Yes, they are, and they're full of sugar! Stan doesn't pay your dental bills, we do!”

Sam decided it was time to derail a potential argument. “Hey, Kenzie, we're gonna have grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch! Think Samson will like that?”

Indie grabbed his face with both hands. “Samson,” she said through clenched teeth, “eats kitty food for lunch!” She kissed him then, and let go, turning to the refrigerator to get out the cheese and start making their lunch, while Sam and Kenzie sat down and took turns holding Samson in their laps.

When lunch was over, Sam took Indie aside and asked her to start looking into everything she could find on Carl Morris, and to call him if she found anything that stood out and might shed any light on his case. A moment later, he got into his Corvette and drove down to the detention center. The jailer saw him come in and said, “Prichard, right? I got a note you'd be coming down to see Carl Morris. Have a seat and we'll get it set up for you.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, and took a seat in one of the plastic chairs along the wall. A moment later, a female jailer came to get him.

“Mr. Prichard? If you'll follow me, please?” Sam got up and followed her down a hallway to the interview room he'd been in before with Jimmy Smith. “You're seeing Mr. Morris?” she asked, and Sam nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “He wants to talk about how I might be able to find out why he killed his family.”

The jailer nodded. “He's kind of an enigma,” she said. “He's probably one of the nicest men we've ever seen here, but what he did—it's just terrible. Though, some of us wonder if he's been framed; he just doesn't seem the type, you know what I mean?”

Sam nodded again. “I know exactly what you mean, and I can say there are things about the case that bother me. I'm hoping he can clear some of them up for me.”

She led him into the interview room, and left him alone there. It was about five minutes later when Morris was escorted into the room by another jailer, a man, and handcuffed to the table. The jailer left and closed the door behind him.

Sam looked Morris over. The man was not terribly tall, standing about five nine, but he was quite muscular, and it was apparent that he must work out regularly. His face was broad and serene, the face of a man who was comfortable with who he was and not worried about what others might think.

“Mr. Prichard,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I know that this sort of a case is hard for anyone to deal with, but I can assure you that you can't possibly think worse of me than I think of myself.”

Sam looked at him for another moment before replying. “Mr. Morris, at this point, I'm not sure what I think. I did some research on your case, and frankly, there are things about it that bother me. Apparently someone knew that your family was dead and tipped the police. Do you have any idea who it could have been?”

Morris shook his head. “The police have asked me that a dozen times,” he said, “but I have no idea. It's the one thing I wish I knew, because that person may know what really happened that night. I just want to know how and why I could have done this. They're saying they want to go for the death penalty, and I don't blame them, but I'd like to know the answers to those questions before I go into that room for the injections. Then I could go to my Maker in peace, I think.”

Sam cocked his head. “You sound like you're certain that you did this, Carl. Have you considered the possibility that you may have been framed?”

Morris looked down at the tabletop. “I've had thoughts like that,” he said, “but I cast them out when they come. I couldn't bear to let myself believe that, and then find out that I really did do it. It's better to just accept the responsibility and deal with that, I think.”

“Carl, the police say someone tipped them off that they'd find your family dead in that house, even though it was locked from the inside. I don't know yet where that tip came from, but it seems to me that there is at least a chance that you were drugged, your family was murdered, and then you were put into place to look like you did it.”

“My prints, my bloody prints, were on the tomahawk,” Morris said. “I had my wife's and children's blood on my hands while I was holding it, while I was hacking them to death with it.”

Sam shrugged. “It's possible that you didn't. Your hand could have been smeared in their blood after they were dead, and then wrapped around the handle, so that it would leave your prints there, and...”

“Mr. Prichard, I don’t want to hear theories about how it might have happened, how I might be innocent. I was the one there, and there's nothing to suggest anyone else did this. What I want you to do, sir, is find out how I ended up drunk and drugged. If someone did that to me, then maybe some of the guilt is not mine, but as far as the police are concerned, and as far as I'm concerned, I am the one who held that tomahawk and killed my family with it. Now, if you'll do that for me, then I will be happy to pay whatever you want.”

Morris was looking Sam in the eye, and the feeling that went through him was eerie. It was as if Morris wanted to be guilty of this heinous crime, but wanted someone else to be responsible for that guilt. Sam had never seen such a thing before, and it spooked him.

“Very well,” he said. “Then that's what I'll do.”

Morris smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “If you'll go to see my attorney, Carol Spencer, she'll pay your retainer and fees. Please let me know about anything you find, as soon as you are able.” He lowered his eyes to the table once more.

“Before we get to that,” Sam said, “tell me about the last couple of days before the murders. What was going on in your family that last couple of days?”

Morris looked him in the eye again. “Not much, nothing out of the ordinary. We had a party a couple nights earlier, had most of the neighbors over, and after that everything was normal. I went to work, my wife went to her job, the kids did whatever they do. The night it happened, I came home like always and Elana, my daughter, asked me to help her move her bedroom furniture around, so we did that, and then I went down to watch some TV with my wife. I don't remember drinking anything at all, but the next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital, chained to the bed, and there were four cops standing guard over me. They told me what had happened, and I sort of lost it, and then that detective came in and made me look at pictures they took before they even moved me. There I was, covered in their blood.” He suddenly had tears streaming down his face. “Mr. Prichard, I had their blood all over me, even on my face. It was on my lips, as if I'd been kissing them while I was killing them. What kind of monster does this kind of thing?”

Sam shook his head. “I don't know the answer to that, Carl,” he said, “but I can promise you I'm gonna find out. I'll let you know what I learn as I learn it. Call me whenever you need to, and especially if you remember anything that you think will help.”

Sam knocked for the jailer, and the man came to take Morris back to his cell. A moment later, the woman returned to escort Sam out of the secure areas of the detention center.

“See what I mean?” she asked. “When you talk to him, you just can't quite believe he did this, can you?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “You just don't know what people can do, sometimes,” he said, “but in this case, I have to agree. Something just doesn't fit, and I'm gonna do my best to find out what it is.”

She looked at him. “We're afraid he's going to hurt himself. He's on suicide watch, already, because they always put people who kill loved ones on it, but somehow I don't think that would stop him.”

Sam looked at her and smiled sadly. “He won't,” he said, “not until he knows the answers to his questions.” He nodded once more and left the building.

When he got to his car, it was only twelve-thirty, so he called Indie to let her know he was coming home and could ride with her and Kenzie to rehearsal.

“Good,” she said. “I want to show you something about Carl Morris, anyway, and I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”

“Okay, babe, I'll be there in twenty minutes.” He started the car and pushed it a bit to get there on time.

3

“I was able to find a couple of things about Carl Morris that are interesting, but I'm not sure they're related,” Indie said when Sam got home. “I tracked down his Facebook, and from that he seems like a pretty normal guy, so I looked at his friends list, and check this out.” She clicked on a link and another Facebook profile popped up. “Look familiar?” Indie asked, and Sam let out a low whistle. The profile that came up was for Jimmy Smith, the talent agent who had been framed for murder a few weeks earlier.

“That's curious,” Sam said. “Probably not related, but we'll check it out. And it's doubly curious because Juliette Connors said Jimmy recommended me to her. I wonder if he told Carl to get hold of me, too.”

“No way to tell, from this, but you might want to ask him the next time you talk to him. I mean, if Jimmy's sending you business, that's cool.”

“True. You said you found a couple of things, so what else was there?”

She did a half shrug. “Well, everyone says he's Mister Mellow, but Carl Morris has a history of violence. Back in ninety-seven, he was arrested for beating a man severely in an argument at a gym, charged with 'assault with a deadly weapon.' The deadly weapon in this case was his hands! He got probation, went to anger management, and hasn't been in any trouble since then, but I thought you should know about it. Other than that, I can't even find a rumor of any problem around him. Pillar of the community type, he is.”

Sam nodded. “So I see. Even the jailers think he must have been framed, and frankly, I'm halfway leaning that direction already. The only ones who really think he did are the cops and himself, but it just bugs me that someone tipped the police and had to have known about it, but they aren't even taking that into consideration.”

Indie shrugged. “They might be,” she said. “Just because it isn't in the newspapers doesn't mean they aren't looking into it. Is there anyone you can call and ask?”

Sam looked sad, suddenly, and Indie regretted her question, but then he said, “I can try the detective in charge of the case—he's with the sheriff's office. I'll give him a quick call, and then we've got to head for rehearsals.” He took out his phone and called the sheriff's office, asking for Detective Kennedy. He was put through almost instantly.

“Kennedy,” the man answered.

“Detective Kennedy, this is Sam Prichard,” he said. “If you've got a minute, I'd like to ask you a couple of things about the Carl Morris case.”

Kennedy sighed. “Somehow I just knew I was gonna be talking to you again soon, Sam Prichard. What do you need?”

“Well, I've talked to Carl and been hired, but he's not asking me to prove he didn't do it—he wants me to find out how he got the alcohol and drugs in his system, because he thinks that's what made him do this.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kennedy said. “Sad thing when a man does something like this, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it is, but there are a few things bothering me. From what I've read and been told, someone called in an anonymous tip the night his family was killed, telling you guys what you'd find there. Do you have any idea who it was, and if not, are you doing anything to try to find out?”

“Well, we don't know who it was, no, and the reason we get anonymous tips is because they come in on an anonymous tip line. That line doesn't record the numbers of incoming calls. That's why people are willing to call in on it. As for trying to find out who it is, of course we are. Whoever it was had knowledge of a felony, and failing to come forward and provide further information they might have is a felony in itself.” He sighed. “Now, if what you're really asking is whether we've considered the possibility that whoever made that tip may have been the actual perpetrator, the answer is a very precise 'maybe,' and I say that off the record, got that? There's things about this case that are bothering me, too, like the fact that there is no trace of Adivol in that house, anywhere, not in Morris's car, or anywhere else associated with him. You'd think that if he were taking it at all, there'd be some more around someplace, right? I would, and since I know that you’re an ex-vice cop, I know you’re thinking that's strange, same way I do. And by the way—sorry about Dan Jacobs. I know he was your partner, and even if you're not on the force anymore, I know it hurts.”

Sam swallowed. “Thanks,” he said, “and yeah, that strikes me as odd, too. What else is bothering you?”

Kennedy seemed to lean closer to the phone and speak more softly. “Okay, again, this is off the record, but you may be able to do something with it that I can't. Morris was being stalked by a woman, and he'd tried to get her to leave him alone without involving police, because she was married and he didn't want to ruin her life. She was following him around, even showing up at his house in the middle of the night and trying to get him to come out and talk to her. I only know about this because he'd confided in one of the neighbors, but he told me about it when I asked. The funny thing is, it all came to a sudden stop a few months ago, and when I got to digging, I found out that the reason it stopped is because the woman who was stalking him disappeared, herself. Denver PD is running the investigation, but they seem to think her husband did her in and got rid of the body.”

Sam's blood ran cold. “Don't tell me—Annie Corning?”

Kennedy sounded surprised that Sam knew the name. “How did you know that? Did he tell you?”

“No,” Sam said. “But her husband hired me this morning to try to find out what happened to her.”

“Well, you don't need to look at Morris for that one,” Kennedy said. “I checked it out thoroughly, and the day she disappeared, he wasn't even in town, he was in a bodybuilding competition in California in front of thirty thousand people. He couldn't have had anything to do with it.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Anything else you can tell me? Like, what was the actual tip message, can you tell me that?”

Kennedy was quiet for a moment, but Sam could hear papers rustling. “Here it is,” Kennedy said. “It said, 'Some people are being murdered at sixty-four ninety-two West Garvin Court in Aurora.' That was all. The voice was garbled, like it was run through a computer, but our tech guys think it was a male voice. They're trying to unscramble it, but they say they don't know if they'll be able to or not.” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “There is one more thing. There's a girl, a teenager who hung out at their house a lot. We think she had a crush on Morris, but I don't think that's related. The thing is, she says there was no possible way Morris would ever hurt anyone, that she knows because she'd seen him deal with some serious stuff, and he never, ever lost his cool. When I asked her what kinds of things, she got evasive, but said that one of them was when he found out his wife had been having an affair a year or so back. All he did was ask her to give him another chance to be a better husband, and they'd been doing great since then, I guess. I know she's just a kid, but I have to agree with her that a man like that doesn't sound like a killer.”

Sam nodded into the phone, and said, “Yeah, I agree. Something about this just isn't adding up. Listen, thanks for talking to me, and if I do get anything, I'll return the favor as soon as I can.” He ended the call as Indie came walking up to him.

“Get anything?” she asked, but Sam just shook his head.

“A lot,” he said, “but we'll talk about it later. For now, let's go make some music and I'll let it all roll around back in that black hole I call my mind.”

“Sounds good,” she said, and then she kissed him. “I love it when you sing, you know.”

“Good, cause I'm singing for you! Other people can listen if they want, I don't care, but I'm singing for you, babe!”

They finished getting ready, made sure Samson wasn't getting out of the house, and climbed into the truck to go to Stan's place. It was about a forty minute drive through city traffic, and they got there a little early. The band was all there, though, and Candy and Janice were delighted to see them after they'd been away for so long. None of them knew the details of Sam's involvement in stopping the terrorist attack, and had been told that Sam was wounded while stopping a robbery he'd stumbled upon. They all let him know how glad they were that they weren't looking for yet another new lead singer.

“Okay,” Chris said, while Stan was showing Kenzie where the new bag of M&M's was hidden, “we're opening at the Casino this weekend, debuting our new full country show. Sam, I hope you've got some songs ready, Buddy.”

Sam grinned. “I do,” he said, “I just hope you guys can stand them. These are some of the ones we used to do when I was in college, but I've dressed 'em up a little. I think I'm a better songwriter now than I was back then, anyway.”

“Just let us have 'em, man,” Chris said. “We'll make you sound good, don't you worry!”

“Okay, well, somebody gimme a guitar, and we'll see.” Stan handed him an acoustic, and Sam settled onto the stool they kept there for him because of his bad hip. “This one was always fun. It starts off with a riff from Elvis's big comeback show, you know, da-da-dah, da-da-duh, da-da-dah, da-da-duh. Then we go into a thumping beat. It goes like this.”

He began to play, and Chris joined in instantly, following along. Stan was next with the drums, then Candy and Janice caught up. They ran through the melody once, and then Sam said, “You got it, now let's do it!” (Click to listen)

Woke up this mornin’ and the sun was shinin’ in, and I just knew the day was gonna be a good’un!

Kicked off all the covers, started getting’ outta bed, when I heard a voice say “Boy, I wish you would’n’,”

So I looked around the room, it was just as I had thought, there was no one there but me, I grabbed my head!

I was standin’ there a-wond’rin’ if I mighta lost my mind, when this girl crawled out from underneath my bed!

Hadn’t happened in a while, so I looked her in the eye, and I asked her, "What're you doin’ under there?"

She cried out, "Oh, you don’t remember," and she broke down into tears, I was so surprised all I could do was stare!

Then she raised her little hand, and she waved it in my face, and I saw this pretty shiny diamond ring!

She said, "You flew us out to Vegas and you married me last night!" How do I get myself into this kinda thing?

Oh my goodness, won’t somebody tell me what to do, I got married in the Elvis Room last night!

I’m sure I musta thought it was a good idea back then, but this mornin’ something just ain’t seemin’ right!

I guess this is the reason Momma used to tell me, "Son, don’t be hangin' out in bars and gettin’ tight!"

But it’s a little late to listen to what Momma told me now, I got married in the Elvis Room last night!

She stormed out to the kitchen and I followed her and tried to talk the sitchy-ation over sensibly,

But she just wouldn’t listen, she was cryin’ even more, she said, "Last night you said you fell in love with me!"

So I tried to break it gently, "I don’t even know your name!", and the tears went flyin’ all around the room,

And I knew I better think of somethin’ quick before I drown, so I said, "Where we goin’ on our honeymoon?"

Oh my goodness, won’t somebody tell me what to do, I got married in the Elvis Room last night!

I’m sure I musta thought it was a good idea back then, but this mornin’ something just ain’t seemin’ right!

I guess this is the reason Momma used to tell me, "Son, don’t be hangin' out in bars and gettin’ tight!"

But it’s a little late to listen to what Momma told me now, I got married in the Elvis Room last night!

Well, now it’s six months later, I’ve quit drinkin’ and I think that there just might be somethin’ good here after all,

The honeymoon was perfect and her name is Lori Sue, she’s a soft and cuddly livin' lovin' doll!

You know I knew a lot of women in my wild and single days, but I never found the one I thought was right,

Till the night before I called my Momma on the phone and told ‘er, "I got married in the Elvis Room last night!"

The band had gotten so into the song that, when Sam paused between the second and third verse, they'd automatically gone into a bridge that had them all dancing as they played, and Indie and Kenzie were even up on their feet. When Sam finished singing, they rolled it into a close that fit perfectly, and Sam couldn't help doing his Elvis impersonation: “Thank ya, thank ya very much!”

“Whoo hoo!” Chris yelled, and Stan said, “Man, that's awesome!” All four girls echoed them, and Sam jokingly took a bow.

Indie said, “Sam, what about the one you played for me, No Happy Endings? I'd love to hear what the band can do with that one!”

Chris said, “Let 'er rip, man,” so Sam played through the first verse and chorus for them, and then they tried it together. (Click to listen)

You all remember the story, you heard a long time ago,

The prince was throwin' a party, but Cinderella couldn't go,

Then a miracle happened, and she attended after all,

And by the time it was over, Cindy was the Queen of the Ball!

But there was more to the story, and if the truth was ever told,

You'd learn that hap'ly ever after, turned into somethin' cruel and cold,

And if you're wonderin' how I know, what I'm talkin' about,

I'm the prince who once was charming, till Cinderella threw me out!

There ain't no happy endings,

There ain't no ever afters,

Why don't we stop pretending,

With all the lies and laughter?

You know it's only in the moo—oo—vies,

Where the boy gets the girl,

There ain't no happy endings,

Out in the real world!

You know your mama always told you, that love was waitin' at your door,

And all you gotta do is find it, and you'll be happy evermore,

But you know it's just a fairy tale, like little children love to hear,

Let's leave the stories for the children, and cry our lonely, grown-up tears!

There ain't no happy endings,

There ain't no ever afters,

Why don't we stop pretending,

With all the lies and laughter?

You know it's only in the moo—oo—vies,

Where the boy gets the girl,

There ain't no happy endings,

Out in the real world!

There ain't no happy endings,

There ain't no ever afters,

Why don't we stop pretending,

With all the lies and laughter?

You know it's only in the moo—oo—vies,

Where the boy gets the girl,

There ain't no happy endings,

Out in the real world!

Once again, the band was blown away. “Man, these are great! Country music is full of heartache and sadness, and that one's gonna be a hit, I can tell! What else you got?”

Sam played them a few more songs, and they worked them up, as well. Indie cried when they went through the song Sam had written for their wedding, and they all enjoyed practicing it again. They worked until the sun began to go down, and agreed to meet again the following day to rehearse more. With some cover tunes to fill in, they had a good show for that weekend and they knew it.

Sam, Indie and Kenzie climbed into the truck and went home, and Sam watched Dora the Explorer with Kenzie while Indie made what she called “Instant Italian Chicken;” this consisted of putting chicken breasts into a casserole dish, covering them with pizza sauce and smothering the whole thing with shredded mozzarella cheese, then sticking it into a three hundred and fifty degree oven for forty-five minutes. When it was getting close, she put on some green beans and broccoli, and Sam began making comments about how good it all smelled.

They came to the table, and Kenzie made them bow their heads to say grace.

“God, thank you for our food, and for Daddy's singin'!” she said, and Indie echoed with “Amen!”

“So,” Indie said as they dug in, “what are the other two cases about?”

Sam grinned. “Well, one of them is in your ballpark; that woman wants to know where her husband is hiding his money. According to her, he's got several million stashed somewhere, and trying to keep the court from knowing about it. I figure you should be able to find it, and we get a ten percent finder's fee on any of it we locate. The court will make him pay up to her if we can find it, and we get paid then.”

“Cool!” Indie said. “That's right down my alley! And the other one?”

Sam glanced at Kenzie, who was busy slipping tiny pieces of chicken to the cat under the table and paying them no attention. “That's the one that's mixed up in Carl's case. This man came in and said his wife started acting weird a few months ago, and then disappeared. Well, it turns out that the reason she was acting weird was because she was stalking Carl Morris. When her husband woke up to find her missing from bed, she said she just couldn't sleep and went to take a drive and relax, but she was actually going to Carl's house and trying to get him to come out and talk to her. I don’t know why, yet, but that's odd that my two cases are linked that way.”

Indie nodded. “Yeah, it is,” she said. “Have you got a lot of info on the wife? I might be able to find something on her, too, if she's turned up anywhere. Even a Jane Doe body, though I hope that's not the case, could be matched up if I have enough data.”

“I made a lot of notes, and we can always call the husband for more if we need it. Tomorrow I'm going to talk to Carl about her, but the detective on his case says Carl was out of town and clean for when she disappeared.”

Indie cocked her head. “What if she disappeared to go to wherever he was, and he got fed up? If he knew no one knew where she was, he might—you know.”

Sam shrugged. “It's possible, but the cops feel sure he had nothing to do with it. I'm not gonna rule it out until I'm sure, though. And in another bit of irony, both the husband and Carl have the same lawyer, Carol Spencer. That may get interesting, too, down the line.” Sam shoved another bite of chicken into his mouth. “And incidentally, this is delicious!”

“Of course it is,” she said with a grin. “I didn't grow up with a hippie mom for nothing! She's a wealth of quick and easy delicious recipes, and I soaked up all of 'em!”

“I can see a bigger belt in my future, then,” Sam said with a grin. They finished up their dinner, including Samson the cat, who had decided that Italian Chicken was high on his list of favorite dishes, too, and Kenzie went to play while Sam and Indie went to the office.

Indie had decided to set up her computer in the office when they'd gotten back, saying that it was more professional than having it on their dining table, so they'd bought another small desk and set her up a work station there, then brought the printer and Sam's computer out there, as well. His big desktop computer was set up at his desk, and he'd used it earlier, but this time he pulled his chair over by Indie's desk, and watched as she began going through the information he'd gotten from Albert Corning and Juliette Connors.

“Herman,” Indie said, referring to the program she'd written to do her searches and hacking for her, “is a multitasker, like me. I'll feed him all of Mrs. Connors' info on her husband and his investments, and let him start on that, then I'll give him all we've got on Mrs. Corning, too. He can run both searches at the same time.”

“Just as long as he works cheap,” Sam said, and Indie chuckled.

“He's sorta like you,” she said. “He just likes to keep me happy.”

Sam nodded. “That's my boy! He and I are on the same page!”

The computer gave a ding, and Indie looked at the screen. “Well, well,” she said, “he's got hit on Alex Connors already. Look at this,” she said, pointing to a line of information that Sam couldn't understand if his life depended on it. “Here's an offshore corporation that's registered through three proxies, each one belonging to the one above it, but guess who owns the top one? Connors Dental of Denver, Inc. That's our guy.” She leaned close to the screen. “Now, let's see what else we can find on him.” She typed for a moment, and then turned Herman loose again.

“I'm just curious,” Sam said, “but how did you come up with Herman's name?”

Indie snickered. “My mom used to play this one song a lot, Henry The Eighth. It was from an old band in the sixties named Herman's Hermits, and I always thought Herman was a cute name. If Kenzie had been a boy, she might have ended up a Herman.”

Sam's eyebrows went up. “Lucky for her she was a girl,” he said, and Indie kicked him playfully.

Another ding, and she turned her attention to the computer again. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Got a hit on a body that could be Mrs. Corning. It was found in the woods outside of Telluride about three months ago. Get the picture he gave you, I'm gonna see if I can get a photo of the body.”

Sam grabbed the picture of Albert and Annie Corning from his desk, and Indie produced a photo of the Jane Doe from the news story about it. Both of them breathed a sigh of relief when there were no similarities other than age, size and hair color. Jane Doe had a squat, round face, while Annie's was thinner and longer. It wasn't her.

“Okay, well, each one we eliminate is one we don't have to worry about, right? Herman will keep searching...”

Another ding, and this time is was on Alex Connors, again. Another offshore corporation he owned through numerous proxies. “This guy's pretty sharp,” Indie said. “A normal asset search would never find these, not even from the feds.”

“Yeah, but he didn't reckon on his wife hiring the PI whose wife is the world's best hacker!”

Indie pushed him. “I'm not the best, babe, not by a long shot. I just like that what I'm doing now is helping people out.” She leaned back for a kiss, and got it. “Mmm, especially you!”

Sam grinned. “Me, too. Let's let Herman do his thing, and go spend some time with our little girl, shall we?”

Indie tapped a few more keys, and nodded, so they rose and went to the living room. Kenzie was in the floor with some dolls, while Samson was lounging on the couch and watching. The little gray cat glanced at them as they entered, decided they weren't bringing him any treats, and went back to watching Kenzie play. Sam picked him up and moved him to the recliner, so that he and Indie could have their usual spot on the couch, and Samson seemed to find it acceptable.

“Kenzie,” Sam said, “wanna watch a movie?”

“I'm busy,” the little girl answered without looking up. “You and Mommy can.”

Indie smiled, and picked up the remote. They scanned through the channel guide and chose a movie they thought they'd like—both of them were into action movies—and settled back to watch.

4

Kenzie fell asleep in the floor before the movie ended, so Indie carried her up to bed, then she and Sam went back to the office to check on Herman.

“I told him to look for bank records on any offshore companies that come back to Alex Connors,” she told Sam, grinning at the screen. “Look what he's found.” She clicked a link, and suddenly the screen was filled with data. Sam looked closely, and realized that it was a list of bank accounts, and the total of assets in all of them came to almost thirty-two million dollars.

“Okay,” he said, “now how do we present this information in a way that will satisfy the court?”

Indie smiled. “Easy,” she said, tapped a few keys, and suddenly the printer was spitting out sheets of paper. More than fifteen pages came out before it was done, and Sam looked at them to see that each one listed the offshore company, its ownership all the way back to Alex's dental corporation, and the relevant banks and account numbers with the amount of money in each one. The documents were clear and concise, and would allow the court—and the IRS—to nail Connors for hiding assets. With all of this, Sam figured, Connors wasn't only looking at contempt of court—he was probably going to get federal jail time for tax fraud.

“Wow,” he said. “This'll do it. If the government doesn't hit her too hard, we're looking at about one-point-five million in finder’s fees, babe. If they do, we should still see half a million or so.”

“I done good?”

“Oh, baby,” Sam said, “you done did real good! Maybe we should stick to asset recovery, and forget all the other stuff!”

Indie smiled. “Nah, you'd get bored. Can't have that, now, can we?”

“Good point,” Sam said, and kissed her. “Anything on Mrs. Corning?”

Indie tapped, and a new screen of data appeared. “We've got three more Jane Does—I'm looking for pictures, now,” she said, and a moment later there were three photos on the screen, but none of them were Annie Corning. “Then there's a woman who was picked up in Indiana, apparently suffering from some form of amnesia; let's take a look at—nope, not her. This gal is one of those who doesn't want to be found, I think.”

Sam nodded. “I'm beginning to think so, too,” he said. “The question is, why not?” He shook his head. “See what we can get on Mr. Corning, find out if there's anything he isn't telling me that might shed light on this.”

“Okay, I'll set Herman to looking into him overnight, and we can go to bed. I don't know about you, baby, but I'm beat.”

Sam grinned at her. “Me, too,” he said. “Bed sounds good.”

Indie grinned back. “Fine, but we have to get some sleep, too!”

Morning came like it always does, and Sam rolled over to find that Indie was already up. He could smell coffee, so he got up and took a quick shower, then dressed in his usual jeans and polo shirt and went out to the kitchen. Kenzie was already at the table, and Samson was under it, waiting for his own secret breakfast.

“Something in here smells wonderful,” Sam said as he went to get a cup. Indie slapped his hand and pointed to the table, where a steaming cup was already waiting for him.

“It should,” she said. “I got up early to make hash brown casserole, another one of mom's easy recipes. Hash browns, scrambled eggs and sausage all mixed together, and baked in the oven for half an hour, and then I made sausage gravy to go over it. If you don't love it, I'll ring your neck!”

Sam grinned. “I sincerely doubt I'm in any danger of not loving it,” he said. “From the smell alone, I'd say it's gonna be the best thing I've eaten in at least twenty-four hours!”

Indie walked over and kissed him as he sat down at the table, and then went to take the casserole out of the oven. A moment later she set it onto the table, and added a pitcher of gravy, while Sam dished it out to all of their plates. He poured gravy over his own, and Kenzie nodded when he asked if she wanted some, so he poured it over hers, too, then over Indie's.

“God,” Kenzie said, “thank you for Mommy making this good breakfast for us to eat, Amen!”

“Amen!” they both echoed, and they all dug in. Sam took one bite, and then started exaggeratedly moaning with pleasure, while Kenzie laughed at him.

“Daddy likes it,” she said, and Sam nodded enthusiastically.

“This is absolutely delicious,” he said. “Babe, you are the best cook ever!”

They chatted while they ate, and Sam said that he was going to go and speak with Carl Morris again that morning. He wanted to ask about Annie Corning, to find out just what the story was there. They finished breakfast, then set Kenzie up with the TV while Sam and Indie went out to the office to check on Herman.

Herman had been busy. Not only had he dug up almost everything about Albert Corning's life, but he had four more Jane Does—none of them turned out to be Annie, and Sam and Indie breathed a sigh of relief—and another news story about a woman who seemed not to know who she was. Indie called up the story, and they both froze. The photo of the woman in question showed none other than Annie Corning!

Sam immediately went to his desk and called the police department in Coos Bay, Oregon, where the woman had been found wandering around the bay almost three months earlier. According to the story, fishermen had found her walking around and looking dazed, and when they asked her if she was okay, she had just stared at them. She hadn’t said a word when police were called, just looking at them as if she didn't understand a word they were saying, and so several interpreters were brought in to try other languages, but she'd finally looked at a policewoman and said, “I don't know what you want me to say.” She'd gone silent again after that, but when she was asked who she was, she only shrugged and began to cry. They'd taken her to the local hospital, but since she wasn't sick or injured, she'd been transferred to a mental facility, where she remained.

“Dispatch,” came the answer.

“Hello, my name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator in Colorado. I'm working a case on a missing woman, and I've just come across a news story about the woman you folks found wandering around three months ago. Can you tell me if she's ever been identified?”

“One moment,” she said, and Sam heard some old classical music begin to play. A moment later, a woman's voice came on the line.

“You're calling about Jane Doe?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Sam said. “I'm Sam Prichard, a private investigator from Denver, and I believe she may be a missing woman I'm looking for. Can you tell me if she's been identified?”

“Well, if she had, I wouldn't call her Jane Doe, now, would I? Can you tell me who she is?”

“Well, I believe her name is Annie Corning,” he said. “The photo on the news story looks like her, and she disappeared about a week before yours turned up. She'd been acting strangely for about a month before that, and no one had any idea where she'd gone, or why. Her husband is actually under investigation for possible murder in this case, so he hired me to try to locate her.”

The woman was quiet a moment, and Sam figured that she was writing down what he was saying. “Well, I can give you the number of her doctor at the hospital in North Bend,” she said. “That's where she is right now. I won't say anything to them, so you can handle this however you want, but I appreciate you giving me this information, Mr. Shepard.”

“Prichard,” Sam said automatically, but she was still talking. She gave him the number and told him to ask for Dr. Martinez, and hung up without saying goodbye.

He dialed the number she'd given him, but the person who answered said Dr. Martinez wouldn't be in for another hour. Sam looked at his computer to see the time, and realized that it wasn't even eight o'clock in Oregon, yet, so he thanked her and said he'd call back. He turned to Indie, who was staring at her screen.

“Well, if it's her, we've got two cases done already,” he said, but she held up a hand and motioned for him to come closer. He rolled his chair over beside her again, and she pointed at the screen.

“You know how it seemed odd that Carl's case and the Corning case were related?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “What about it?”

“Well, when I tell Herman to dig up everything he can on someone, he does,” she said. “Albert and Annie Corning both had some dental work done about four months ago, and you wanna guess where they went?”

Sam's eyebrows went up. “Alex Connors?”

“Yep, but that's not all. Since we were searching things on Alex Connors, Herman went a little deeper and pulled up Connors Dental's entire patient list. Wanna guess who else is on it?”

Sam stared at her. “Don't tell me—Carl Morris?”

“Bingo!” Indie said. “He was in for a cleaning the morning of the killings, last week.”

Sam sat there for a moment. “That's odd. I had him tell me about his last few days before the killings, and he never mentioned that at all.”

“It's more than odd, Sam,” Indie said. “There's something sort of creepy about this, y'know? I mean, come on, what are the odds of you getting three cases in one day and all of them being related, somehow?

Sam looked at her for a minute, then said, “I wonder if the Cornings are connected to Jimmy Smith. We know that both Carl and Mrs. Connors are, and that was enough of a stretch in itself, but now we've got Alex connected to both Carl and Mrs. Corning, both of whom may have displayed bizarre behaviors afterward. What I'm wondering is if there is some sort of connection between their visits to the dentist and the strange things they did, or seem to have done, after.”

Indie called up Connors Dental's website, and began looking through it. “Sam,” she said, “Connors uses hypnosis instead of chemical anesthesia.”

Sam looked where she was pointing, but shook his head. “Honey, it's been pretty well established that hypnosis can't make someone do something they wouldn't normally do. I don't think that's the connection we're looking for.”

“No, but what about the drugs and alcohol in Carl's system? That drug they found, Adivol, is really zolpidem, and if we look it up, it's listed as a hypnotic. It's been known to cause people to do things they don't remember doing, and wouldn't do under normal circumstances. Look at this warning, right on their label: 'After taking Adivol, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night…Reported activities include: driving a car (“sleep-driving”), making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex, sleep-walking.' And there are cases of people even killing people and not knowing it.”

Sam looked at her. “Babe, are you serious?”

“Here's a man named Robert Stewart who walked into a nursing home in North Carolina and shot eight people to death, and a woman who took the pill and then got up in the middle of the night and got in her car and ran over and killed a woman. Both of them got reduced sentences because they weren't in control of themselves, and there are others who have been acquitted of manslaughter and murder! The effect is even worse if alcohol is involved, it says. People have been known to do things like eating buttered cigarettes, and it's one of the most commonly used date rape drugs of all, now! When you're on it, you lose inhibitions against doing things you know you shouldn't, and since you don't remember what you've done, there's no guilt. Most of the date rape victims never know what happened to them, or they just think they decided to have sex on a whim.”

Sam shook his head. “Okay, I can see how it could be barely possible that Carl might have really killed his family on this stuff,” he said, “but where does Annie Corning fit in? She seems to have lost her memory...”

“Yeah, and check this out,” Indie said quickly. “Eminem, the rapper, says that Adivol wiped out five years of his memory while he was on it. He says, 'a lot of my memory is gone. I don't know if you've ever taken Adivol, but it's kind of a memory-eraser.' He claims that he sees video of himself during that period, and has no memory of his performances or anything else. Yes, it can wipe out memory, and I'd bet that there's a way to make it do that, even if no one has ever said so.”

Sam was staring at her, listening to all the information she was throwing at him. His mind was racing, and the more he heard, the more he wondered if the connection between the cases might be far more sinister than he'd ever dreamed possible. Could it be that someone, possibly Connors, was actually using zolpidem and alcohol to entice people to commit such heinous acts, or to literally erase their memories?

Sam looked at the time. “I'm going to call Mrs. Connors and let her know that we've got her report ready, then I'm gonna call that Dr. Martinez again in a little while. Once we know for sure whether the Jane Doe is Annie, we can figure out how to handle that, but right now I'm thinking that I want to talk to Carl first. I want to know what the connection between him and Annie was, and then I might even talk to Alex Connors, himself.”

Indie looked at him. “Don't let him near your teeth, and if he asks you to look into his eyes, shoot him!”

Sam called Mrs. Connors' number, and she answered immediately. “Mr. Prichard?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma'am,” he said. “I've got your report on your husband's offshore assets ready. If you'd like to come and pick it up, my wife Indie will be here most of the day, or I can fax it to you, if you prefer.”

“Wow, already? Can you tell me what you found?”

“Yes, he's got a number of offshore companies with a total of about thirty-two million in various bank accounts. I think that fits with what you expected to find?”

She let out a shout of excitement. “Boy, does it ever! Thank you, thank you so very much! Yes, if you would, you can just fax it to my attorney, Carol Spencer. Just a moment, let me get the number!” She was off the line for a moment, then came back and gave him a fax number. “I can't thank you enough,” she said, “or I guess I can, when we get this into court! Alex will be paying both of us, then! Woo-hoo!”

Sam laughed and hung up, then put the stack of reports into his fax machine and dialed the number. Moments later the sheets began feeding in and through it, and that job was done.

Sam looked at the time again and saw that it had been almost an hour since he'd called Oregon, so he dialed the number again. This time he was put through, and a slightly accented woman's voice said, “This is Dr. Martinez.”

“Dr. Martinez, my name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator from Colorado. I'm looking for a woman who went missing a few months ago, and I have reason to believe she may be your Jane Doe.”

“Oh, really?” the doctor said. “Can you tell me who she is? She's been quite a mystery to us, here.”

“I believe her name is Annie Corning, and she disappeared three months ago, after some strange behavior that lasted about a month prior to her disappearance. Can you tell me how she's doing?”

The doctor sighed. “I wish I could tell you,” she said, “but all she does is sit and stare out the windows. Our staff says it's all they can do sometimes to get her to eat, and she rarely even speaks. Is she married?”

“Annie is, yes. Her husband's name is Albert. No kids.”

“Let me go and talk to her, and see if any of this might jog a memory. Give me a number and I'll call you back. Do you know of any identifying marks?”

“No, none were mentioned, but I'll find out and let you know.” He gave her his number and said goodbye, with a promise to ask Albert about any scars or birthmarks.

He turned back to Indie. “It might well be her. The doctor is going to talk to her, see if she remembers Albert or her own name.” He sighed. “If she's had her mind wiped out somehow...”

“Yeah,” Indie said. “What will it take to help her get it back?”

Sam nodded. “I'm going to see Carl. I'll call you when I get done there.” He kissed her, and then went out through the house so he could give Kenzie a hug goodbye, as well. Once that was done, he got onto his motorcycle and rode off toward the detention center.

When he walked in, the jailer looked up and smiled. “Here to see Mr. Morris? Just a moment, I'll get someone up here right away.” Sam stood and waited only a minute before the same female jailer came to escort him to the interview room. He was there less than thirty seconds when Morris was brought in and chained to the table.

“Sam,” Morris said. “Is this good news?”

“I'm not sure, yet, Carl. I wanted to ask you a couple of things. First, the other day you told me about the last few days before what happened, remember?”

Carl nodded. “Yes, sure,” he said. “Why?”

Sam watched him closely. “Well, I'm curious why you didn't tell me about going to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned that morning. Do you remember that?”

Carl Morris cocked his head to one side. “Dentist? I—yes, I remember. Huh. I wonder why that slipped my mind before?” He looked confused. “Does it matter?”

Sam shrugged. “I'm not sure,” he said. “Can you tell me about it now?”

Carl smiled. “Sure. I go to Dr. Connors, he's about the best around here, and he isn't into chemicals and drugs. He uses hypnosis, instead, and for me that's important because I don't like using any kind of medicines. He put me under, cleaned my teeth, and then woke me up and I was done. No big deal, I've been through it a few times before.”

Sam watched him, but couldn't see any sign that Carl was being evasive or untruthful, so he moved on. “Okay, now, what can you tell me about Annie Corning? I understand you had some problems with her a while back?”

Carl's face went sour. “Oh, Lord,” he said, “did I ever! It was a few months ago, she and I met at the Mary Williams home—I go there and work with some of the boys, teaching them about bodybuilding and weightlifting. She was helping out there, and we got to be friends, but then one day she started telling me all this weird stuff, real wild things like how aliens were trying to get into her mind, and wanting to make her do things. I said she might want to see someone, you know, like a shrink, but she kept saying she needed to talk to me, because they were after me next.” He rubbed his free hand over his chin. “She was pretty wild. It got to where she was following me around, and then she started showing up at my house at night, sometimes really late at night. My wife was so mad she couldn't...” His voice trailed off for a moment, and then he shook his head. “She got so mad that she asked me to stop working with the kids, but I said I couldn't do that. Instead, I talked to Mrs. Peters at the home, and she got Annie assigned to different days than me, and that took care of part of it, but she still came to my house a few times. I finally told her that if she didn't stop, I'd go to the police. She came once more after that and I pretended to call the cops, and she left. I never saw her again, and I heard she ran out on her husband, but then there were rumors he'd killed her. I don't know him, so I just stayed out of it.”

“Okay, I heard you went to some competition in California, and were there when she disappeared, is that right?”

Carl shrugged. “I'm not sure if that's when she left, but I never saw her again after that.”

Sam sat there and looked at him for a moment. “Carl, have you ever had any other strange episodes, where you did something but don't remember it? Maybe in the middle of the night?”

Carl stared at him. “Well, not that I—well, there was one time, almost a year ago. I went to bed that night, and when I woke up, I was in my neighbor's pool, swimming around as naked as a newborn. It was about three in the morning, and I was lucky no one saw me.” He looked down at the table, and then back up to Sam. “Sam, is there something wrong with me? Am I like, a split personality or something? I mean, that's the only time I can remember anything like that, but what if there were other times, and I just don't know about them? Maybe I've been doing strange things my whole life, and when I...”

Sam reached out and touched his hand on the table. “Whoa, hold on. I need you to focus for a minute, here. Is there any chance you can recall what all you did the day before that happened, the swimming incident?”

Carl shook his head. “No, I don't think so, but I can tell you the exact date,” he said. “I know the date because it was the night before my wife's birthday, and I was scared to death that someone had seen me and would call her and tell her! It was August twenty-second, last year.”

Sam wrote the date down on his note pad. “Okay, Carl,” he said, “I think that covers it at the moment—oh, wait. Just out of curiosity, you know Jimmy Smith, the talent agent?”

Carl smiled sadly. “Yes,” he said. “We go way back, he's my agent. He's gotten me a few small movie roles, and helped me get into some of the bigger competitions. He's the one who told me to call you; he said when he was accused of murder, you were the only one who was willing to dig down and find the truth, so if there was anyone who could figure out why I did this, it'd be you.”

Sam thanked him and signaled for the jailer to come and let him out. Like always, they took Carl out first, and then the lady jailer walked Sam out.

“Do you think he did it?” she asked when they were alone in the hallway.

Sam shrugged. “At this point, all I can say is it's possible he did, but was under the influence of a drug, and it may have been given to him without his knowledge. I'm still digging, but I'm convinced that it was not a premeditated murder. That doesn't mean he isn't guilty, just that it might not be something he would have done, had he been in his own right mind.”

She nodded. “That's kind of what I'm thinking,” she said, “like maybe he was—I dunno, possessed, or something.”

Sam stared at her as if struck by how much sense her comment had made. “That may be the best analogy I've heard for it, yet,” he said as he left her.

He got outside and called Indie. “Babe,” he said when she answered, “I want you to check something for me. See if Carl went to see Dr. Connors anytime close to August twenty-second of last year, and let me know.”

“Okay, hang on,” she said. “I'm at the computer now, so gimme a sec—August twenty-second, Connors' calendar is coming up—August twenty-second, yes! He was there to get a cap replaced. Why?”

“Because, late that night, he went for a moonlight skinny-dip in his neighbor's pool, and woke up while he was swimming around in it. He got away without being seen, but it's the only other time he could recall ever doing anything strange. He'd gone to bed, and then woke up swimming around in his birthday suit, so it shook him up.”

“And he went to see Connors that day, too. Sam, this is getting more and more weird.”

“I'm pretty sure there's a connection,” Sam said, “but we still have to find out what it is and prove it. I'm going to go and see Connors, and ask a few questions.”

“Okay, but be careful. If this guy's some kind of Svengali, don't you come home trying to kill me, or I'll beat your brains in with a skillet!”

“Trust me, babe,” Sam said, “I have no intention of letting him give me any kind of treatments!”

5

Sam hung up from talking to Indie, and his phone rang instantly. He looked at the number and recognized it as being from the hospital in Oregon.

“Sam Prichard,” he said.

“Mr. Prichard, this is Dr. Martinez in North Bend,” came the doctor's voice. “I wanted to tell you that our Jane Doe is your Annie Corning. I went to her a bit ago and said, 'Annie, are you ready to eat?' and she turned around and looked at me and said, 'Yes, I'm starving!' She says she knows that's her name, but she doesn't remember her husband yet, and nothing else is coming back, but she's been quite animated and talkative since then.”

“Well, that's a start, anyway. I'll contact her husband right now and let him know. Can he come up to see her?”

“Oh, I think that would be a wonderful idea, but you might have him call me, first. I'm not sure she'll be ready or able to leave, just yet. First, I'm sure she's going to want to try to remember her life with him.” She paused for a moment. “Mr. Prichard, is there any reason to believe that there were problems between them? Any kind of abuse, perhaps?”

“None that I know of, and I don't think there was anything like that. On the other hand—Doctor, maybe you can help me. I'm working on a couple of cases now, and hers may be one of them, that seem to indicate that someone is deliberately tampering with people's minds, using zolpidem, possibly combined with alcohol and hypnosis. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

“Oh, dear heavens, Mr. Prichard,” she said. “No, I haven’t, but as a clinical hypnotist myself, I can tell you that the very thought of it suddenly terrifies me! Zolpidem is a powerful drug, with serious effects on our inhibitions. If a small dose were given to someone who was already in trance, and suggestions planted to take more at a later time—my God, it's conceivable that a post-hypnotic suggestion could be planted that would override all of our natural inhibitions!”

Sam sighed. “I was afraid you'd say that. Doctor, it's very possible that Annie Corning was treated in this way. Could such a suggestion possibly result in wiping her memory?”

“I couldn't say with any reasonable certainty, but I would hazard a guess that it is possible, yes. What concerns me even more, however, is how to formulate any kind of recovery program for her; I'd have no concept of where to begin!”

“I'm going now to try to speak to the person I believe is behind this,” Sam said. “I don't know if I'll get any answers that will help you or not, but I'll let you know if I get any at all. Right now, I'm going to call Annie's husband and give him your number. And Doctor, I'm not going to tell him what I suspect just yet; I'm gonna imply that the problem might be a side effect of medication. Can you cover me on that for a bit, till I know for sure what I'm dealing with?”

“Certainly, Mr. Prichard,” the doctor said. “I won't say anything until I hear from you.”

He ended the call and looked in his notes for Albert Corning's number, then dialed it. Corning answered almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“Al, this is Sam Prichard,” Sam said. “I'm calling to tell you that I've found your wife.”

Corning gasped. “Oh, God, Sam, is she—is she alive?”

Sam sighed into the phone. “She's alive, Al, but there are complications. Annie is in a hospital in Oregon, and has amnesia. Until just a bit ago, she didn't even know her own name, and at the moment, she doesn't remember being married or who you are. I have the number of her doctor for you, and she'd like you to call as soon as possible.”

Corning said, “Oh, my God, oh, my God—I'll call right now! Let me get a pen, oh, my God! This is—Sam, how can I thank you? Can I tell the police? Can I tell her sister?”

“I think you should take that up with her doctor, but I'm sure she'll be glad to confirm for them that your wife is alive and in her care. Now, there's something else I want to talk to you about; you and Annie went to get some dental work a short time before she began acting strangely, do you remember that?”

“Dental work? Yeah, sure, I got a check-up and Annie got a crown and a couple of fillings. Why?”

“And Annie started acting strangely right after that?”

Corning was quiet for a moment, as if thinking, then said slowly, “Well, yes. Is there a connection?”

“Well, I happen to be looking at another case, where it's possible that there is a side effect of the dentist's hypnotic anesthesia, combined with other things, that might cause some kinds of amnesia. I just want you to be aware that this isn't Annie's fault, none of it.”

Corning sighed. “Sam—thank you. I don't know what else to say, so I'll just say thank you! I'll call the doctor now, what's the number?”

Sam gave him the number and hung up, then Googled the dentist’s office address. He got onto the Shadow and rode that way.

* * * * *

Indie was worried, but if there was one thing she knew about Sam, it was that he could take care of himself. She went about her daily routine, cleaning up the house, thinking about what to make for dinner and keeping one mother's eye on Kenzie, with another watching that cat! Samson was a pretty good kitty, but every now and then, he'd get it in his head that he was a climber. She'd found him on top of the refrigerator, on top of the cabinets, and once he got on top of the long curtain rod that was over the sliding glass doors leading to the back yard.

Climbing up, it seemed, he was good at. Getting back down always involved Indie having to stand on a chair and coax him into reach.

Still, having the cat had been good for Kenzie. After some of the hard times they'd been through, during which the child never once complained, Indie was thankful for their new lives, for the stability that Sam had brought to them, for the love and happiness that the three of them shared. She often caught herself whispering, “Thank you, Lord,” as she went about her day, and the sense of peace that would come over her made her feel that He was answering, “You're welcome.”

She'd just finished running the vacuum in the living room when her phone rang again, and she glanced to see that it was her mother. She rolled her eyes; she loved her mom, but they talked at least three or four times a day, usually. She answered the call with a smile she didn't necessarily feel.

“Hey, Mom,” she said.

“Indie,” her mother began, “I know how Sam feels about Beauregard, but he insists I call and tell you this anyway.”

A chill went down Indie's spine. Beauregard was the ghost of a Confederate soldier who was supposedly her mother's “spirit guide.” He was also, she firmly believed, a figment of her mother's imagination, but somehow, he seemed to know things, and as long as Indie had been alive, he hadn't been wrong once when he predicted something. She was sure the truth was that her mother had some gift for prognostication, but used Beauregard as the way she dealt with it.

“What is it, Mom?” she asked, dreading the answer. Beauregard had a tendency to predict bad news.

“Well, Beauregard says that Sam is about to be in a lot of trouble, and that it's going to be up to you to save him. That’s all he'll tell me, he says, the rest of it you have to find out yourself.”

Indie's breath caught, but she forced it. “Okay, Mom, I'm gonna call Sam now and warn him. He'll get mad, but I'll do it anyway! Bye!” She hung up and dialed Sam's phone.

It rang four times and went to voicemail, which probably meant he was on the motorcycle and rolling down the road, so he didn't hear the phone. She hung up and tried again, but this time when it went to voicemail, she said, “Sam, call me! Urgent!” and hung up, praying he'd see the missed call and get back to her quickly.

* * * * *

Sam rode up to the dental building, parked the Shadow and got off. His leg was bothering him a bit, so he pulled the cane out of the holster he'd made for it on the front forks and went inside. A chubby, blonde receptionist greeted him cheerfully, and Sam made a joking bet with himself that she was hired by Mrs. Connors, and would probably be replaced as soon as the divorce was final.

“Hi, and welcome to Connors Dental. How can we help you today?”

Sam smiled. “I'd like to speak with Dr. Connors for a moment,” he said, holding out his ID. “My name is Sam Prichard, I'm a private investigator.”

The girl's eyes grew large, and she picked up a phone. “Dr. Connors?” she said after a moment. “There's a private investigator her who would like to speak with you.” She listened for about five seconds, then said, “Yes, sir.” She hung up the phone and said, “He'll be right out.”

A door in the wall behind her opened only seconds later, and a portly, balding man of medium height in a white dentist's smock stepped out. “I'm Dr. Connors,” he said. “How can I help you?”

Sam kept his face stoic, but shook the offered hand. “Doctor, I'm Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator. I'd like to talk to you about a couple of your patients who seem to be having some problems after seeing you.”

Connors' eyebrows went up. “Problems? Come on back to my office, please.” He glanced at the receptionist, who seemed to be ignoring them completely, and led Sam through the door and down a hallway. The office was only a short distance away, and he pointed to a comfortable chair when they got inside with the door closed behind them.

“Now,” he said, “can you tell me what this is about?”

“Dr. Connors, two of your patients have exhibited some bizarre behavior shortly after being here for your services. One of them is Annie Corning, who began acting strangely right after getting some work done four months ago, and then disappeared completely a month later. She's just been found, alive, but with seemingly complete amnesia. The other is Carl Morris, who is sitting in jail right now for the brutal murders of his wife and children. He saw you for a cleaning under hypnosis the morning of the day it happened.”

Connors didn't show any emotion during Sam's recital of the facts. “I'm sorry, I don't see how either of these situations has anything to do with me.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “You don't? Doesn't it seem odd to you that both of these people started acting oddly right after seeing you? That would be a coincidence that would worry me, if I were in your shoes. Suppose their behavior is a side effect of your hypnosis? That could be devastating to your business, if the word got out, and if Carl Morris is able to bring it up as a defense in his murder trial, it's going to be all over the front pages of an awful lot of newspapers, I can guarantee you. Now, don't you want to try to enlighten me about how your hypnosis works, so I can go back and say that I didn't find any connection? Or would you rather I go to the prosecutor with what I've got so far, and let him draw his own conclusions?”

Connors smiled. “Mr. Prichard, I didn't mean to give the impression I don't care, and of course I want to help, but there is a long established fact, and that is that no one will do anything under hypnosis they wouldn't do by their own choice. If Mr. Morris was here that morning, and I've seen the accounts of his crime in the newspapers and TV, then he would have been completely free of any hypnotic suggestion long before the murder took place. And as for the lady you mentioned, no amount of hypnosis can erase a memory for more than a short time. It's been tried, in clinical cases where people wanted to forget past traumas; it can't be done.”

Sam nodded. “Not on its own, no,” he said, “but I'm working on the theory that there might be psychoactive and hypnotic medications involved. Mr. Morris had a large dosage of zolpidem in his system. Zolpidem is better known as Adivol, Dr. Connors, in case you're not aware of that, and it's been associated with many different kinds of bizarre behaviors including a number of murders and accidental killings. I've spoken with a psychiatrist who says it's quite likely that if a dose were given to a person while under hypnosis, the combined effect could cause a suggestion to override the natural inhibitions against doing whatever was suggested.”

Connors didn't even blink. “I can see where that might be possible,” he said, “but that's why it has nothing to do with me. We don't use any kind of chemical anesthesia here other than locals—benzocaine, novocaine, the normal stuff any dentist uses. I don't even use nitrous oxide here, because I don't believe it offers any real benefit.”

“In that case, you wouldn't object to me taking a look around? Just to confirm that you don’t have any kinds of drugs here?”

Connors smiled. “Mr. Prichard, I may be cooperative, but I'm not a fool. If a search is to be made, I'm afraid it will have to be done by the police, and with a lawful search warrant. If you can get the police to believe this crazy story, they're more than welcome to come here, warrant in hand, and look to their hearts' content. Until then, I believe we're done talking.” He stood up. “I'll show you out.”

Sam rose to his feet and looked Connors in the eye. “I'll go, no problem, but I will be back with the police and that warrant. And I'll also tell you this: if I find proof that you are manipulating the minds of people with hypnosis and drugs, I will see to it that you are buried so deep in the prison system that you'll forget what daylight even looked like.” He turned to go through the door, and heard the doctor step forward to follow.

* * * * *

Sam sat up, wiping his face and feeling something wet on it. He looked around, wondering where he was, and suddenly froze. He was sitting on the floor, and beside him was a woman with her back to him. She was covered in blood, and he instinctively reached out to turn her over, so he could see who she was.

It was Juliette Connors, and she was quite dead, he could tell. She'd been shot through the head, and the bullet was apparently a fairly large caliber one; most of the top of her head was gone, along with most of the brain tissue that used to be in it. Sam stared at her, wondering how he'd come to be there, and who had killed his client.

He reached for his phone to call 911, but even as he started to dial, he heard sirens and vehicles roaring up outside of wherever he was. He climbed to his feet and looked around, realizing he was in a house. He saw the front door, and took two steps toward it before it came crashing in.

A policeman stood there, his gun in his hand, and he was shouting at Sam to get down on his knees and put his hands behind his head. Sam complied automatically, his mind racing, and then he was being wrestled to the floor. His hands were wrenched cruelly behind his back, and handcuffs were applied, even as he was trying to tell the officers who were surrounding him that he had just woke up there, that he was trying to call them when they showed up, but they weren't listening.

One of them rolled him over onto his back, and looked down at him.

“Samuel Prichard,” he said, “you are under arrest for the murder of Juliette Connors. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney...”

Sam knew the drill, and shut his mouth. He had no clue what was going on, but he was sure he hadn't killed anyone, and he wasn't going to risk saying something they could use to make him look guilty. He'd go to jail, just as he'd taken numerous others to jail, and then figure out what was going on.

And then he'd call Indie.

He was hauled out and stuffed into the back seat of a cruiser, and left alone there for a while, the engine running and the AC on. He sat there and tried to remember what had happened. He'd gone to see Dr. Connors, and confronted him about the drug-hypnosis connection, which had been denied. He was just leaving when—that's when he woke up.

Dear God, he thought, the bastard's done it to me! But how? I didn't go under hypnosis, and I didn't take or drink anything while I was there…

The only possible answer was that he was drugged suddenly, possibly with something that put him down without a fight. He knew it wouldn't be chloroform—despite its popularity with crime fiction authors and movie producers, actual unconsciousness from chloroform takes about five minutes of inhalation, during which time the victim is usually objecting violently. Sam knew that there were other drugs, though, that could render someone senseless in a matter of seconds, and suspected that one had been used on him.

He couldn't see a clock, so he had no idea how much time had passed since he left the dentist's office. If it had been more than just a few minutes, it was probably enough time that there would be no trace of any drugs or chemicals to be found there, because the man's first logical move would be to get rid of everything that could implicate him. If Sam began talking about his theories, he'd sound like a lunatic, and he knew it. Even the evidence he and Indie had compiled wouldn't be enough to convince a prosecutor.

Prosecutor—Sam had just been arrested for murder, and the worst part was that he couldn't be certain that he hadn’t done it. If Connors was the cunning monster that he and Indie suspected him to be, then it was quite possible that he had programmed Sam to go to his wife's home and kill her. With that thought in mind, Sam was fairly certain that the large caliber bullet that had killed Mrs. Connors would turn out to be a forty-caliber slug from his own weapon.

The police had been forced to break down the door, he remembered. That would indicate that, just like Carl Morris, the doors had been locked from the inside. If that were the case, then it was likely that Sam was the only possible suspect in this crime, and given the circumstances and without knowledge of the possible hypnotic connection, he'd believe it himself.

However, even if he had pulled the trigger and fired the fatal shot, Sam was not the killer—he was the murder weapon, just as Carl Morris had been the weapon that killed his own family. Since neither of them had any knowledge of what they had done, or in fact, whether they had done anything at all, and since neither of them had been complicit in taking whatever drugs were involved, a reasonable defense would likely be that they were not lawfully responsible, any more than a gun was responsible for the death of the person standing in front of it when its trigger was pulled.

There were numerous police officers present, and Sam saw Karen Parks, the homicide detective that he'd worked with on the Jimmy Smith case. She looked at him as she walked past the car, but there was none of the friendliness he recalled from that time. He watched her go into the house, and when she came out twenty minutes later, she was carrying a zip-lock bag with a gun in it. He knew he'd been right as soon as he saw it; the black and white grips were the ones Danny Jacobs had given him once for a birthday present. The murder weapon they were focused on was his own gun.

She walked up to the car and opened the door beside him. “Sam,” she said, “I'm sure you know I hate this, but I've gotta say, this is one ugly mess you've handed me. Want to tell me what happened?”

Sam looked at her, wishing he could tell her all of it, but he knew she'd think he was either nuts, or lying to try to save his own skin. Since he'd been hired by Mrs. Connors to find her husband's assets, a case could be made that he might have made a deal with Connors to kill her so that he wouldn't have to share his wealth. Granted, that would implicate Connors, but it would make an even stronger case against Sam, so it wasn't a line of thought he wanted anyone else to consider. He looked up at Karen and said, “I hate this too, but I think I need a lawyer before I say anything.”

She nodded and closed the door, turning her back and walking away. Sam felt terribly alone, just then, and wished with all his heart that Dan Jacobs were still alive. At least then, he figured, there would be one person on the force who wouldn't believe he was a cold-blooded killer.

A few minutes later, a policeman got into the front seat and said, “I hear you're an ex-cop. That true?”

Sam said, “Yes.”

The officer shook his head. “They're gonna have fun with you in prison,” he said, then started the car and drove out toward the detention center. The last thing Sam noticed as they drove away was that his motorcycle wasn't in the driveway.

The cop pulled the car into the Sally Port at the detention center, and got out to lock his weapon into a locker on the wall before he opened the door and reached in to help Sam stand up. Sam's hip gave a sharp twinge, and he almost fell, but the officer held him up.

“No games,” he said. “We're going inside to booking, don't give me any trouble.”

“I'm not,” Sam growled. “I took three bullets to my hip, and it still gives me trouble. I'm okay now.”

They waited for the jailer on duty to buzz them in, and Sam was escorted past the detention center's operations desk and to a holding cell. The cuffs were removed, and Sam went directly to the pay phone on the wall. He fumbled in his pocket for change, and shoved fifty cents into the phone, then dialed Indie's number.

“Hello?” she said, not recognizing the number.

“Baby, it's me,” Sam said, and Indie began talking fast.

“Oh, God, Sam, where are you? Why aren't you on your own phone? I know you’re gonna get mad, but Mom called, and said Beauregard said to tell you you’re about to be in trouble...”

Sam sighed. “Well, you can tell her he was right again. Indie, I can't tell you all of it on the phone, but I've been arrested for the murder of Juliette Connors. All I know right now is that I woke up lying on the floor beside her body, but it looks like I did it, after leaving the last person I told you I was going to see. As far as I know, she was shot to death with my gun, but I don't remember anything after talking to you-know-who.”

Indie let out a sob. “Oh, my God, Sam,” she said, her voice desperate. “Sam, what do I do?”

“The first thing I need you to do is get me an attorney, fast. In this case, I think I need the same one Carl's using, Carol Spencer. That's also the lawyer Mrs. Connors was using for her divorce, so she may object, but ask her to come and see me as soon as possible. Give her a retainer, whatever she wants; I need her fast.”

Indie was crying. “Okay, Sam, I'll call her right now. Can you call me back in a few minutes?”

“I don't know if I can or not, babe, but I'll call you as soon as I'm able. I love you.”

“Oh, Sam, I love you too! I know you didn't do this, babe, and we'll prove it, I swear!” She sighed into the phone, and Sam's heart was breaking at the pain he could hear in her voice. “Beauregard said I was gonna have to be the one to save you.”

“Well, for once, it's okay to do what Beauregard says. In fact, if he's got any advice, I'm willing to listen!”

“I'll call the lawyer now, and then I'll call Mom and ask. I love you, Sam. I'll talk to you soon!”

She hung up, and Sam did likewise, then went to the little bathroom area and looked into the steel mirror. There was blood on his face, neck and hands, so he rinsed it off the best he could, then took a seat on a bench. He was feeling a little tired, but other than that, he couldn't detect any notable side effects of whatever drugs had been used on him. He hoped the lawyer would get there soon, because he wanted his blood tested immediately. He didn't know how long it took for zolpidem to get out of his system, so he didn't even want to go to the bathroom before that.

6

Sam sat there for about half an hour and was thinking about calling Indie back when his name was called. He looked up to see the female jailer who'd been escorting him to see Carl standing at the door of the cell, just staring at him.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Mr. Prichard,” she said slowly, “you've got an attorney here to see you. I need you to turn around so I can cuff you, sir.”

Sam did as she directed, knowing that it was simply procedure, and she took him by the arm and led him to that same interview room. An older woman with glasses was sitting inside waiting, and when he'd been cuffed to the table, she introduced herself.

“Mr. Prichard,” she said, “I'm Carol Spencer. I've been expecting to talk to you, but this isn't what I'd envisioned. Carl Morris said you were supposed to get with me about your retainer yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “I've been kind of busy. Thanks for coming so quickly. Did my wife happen to give you any background on the cases I've been working on?”

Carol smiled. “That girl can talk faster than any client I've ever had,” she said. “She told me a lot, including your theories about what happened to Mr. Morris, and to Annie Corning, and that you and she think something similar happened to make you kill one of my other clients.” She sat and looked at him for a moment, and he was about to speak, when she went on. “The funny thing is, I believe it. Every word. I've known Alex Connors for years, and this wouldn’t be the first time I've been on the opposite side of a courtroom from him. I represented a couple of women who claim that he sexually assaulted them some time back. They claimed something similar, that they would suddenly wake up in bed with him, and he'd tell them that they ran into each other somewhere, and the ladies couldn't keep their hands off him. Unfortunately for my clients, there were witnesses and security footage that made it clear that he was telling the truth. I often wondered if his hypnosis was involved, but psychiatric experts all say that isn't possible.”

“It isn't,” Sam said, “under normal hypnosis, but when drugs and alcohol are added into the mix, things get murkier. I want you to get my blood tested immediately. We're looking for zolpidem and alcohol.”

“I've already got a nurse coming to draw your blood, should be any second now. I want to know what they find, too. You're aware that both of them were found in Carl's blood, right?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I know. That's what set me on this path. Then, when I found out that he'd been to Connors' office that morning, I began to think that there was a connection. When I found out that Annie Corning was there as well, just before she started acting weird, I was sure of it.”

Carol nodded, and made a note on a pad she'd laid in front of her. “Tell me about your meeting with Connors.”

“I went there unannounced, and he invited me back into his office. I told him my suspicions, which he denied, of course, and then I challenged him, asked if he'd be willing to let me look around. He said no, and told me to get police and a warrant if I thought I had a case, and that he was done talking to me. I started to leave, I remember, and the next thing I know, I'm in Mrs. C.'s house with her body laying beside me and blood on my hands. I saw that she was dead and took out my phone to call for help, and that's when I heard sirens right outside, so I got up and was going to the door when the cops bashed the door in. That's it.”

Carol nodded and scribbled, and then they heard the door opening. A jailer stood there with a nurse.

“I'm supposed to draw blood,” the nurse said, and Carol nodded. She came in and Sam held out his free arm. Carol put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet until the nurse and jailer were gone.

The nurse drew three vials of blood from Sam, and he suppressed the urge to make vampire jokes; he wasn’t in a laughing mood, of course. When she was done, she and the jailer left the room and he and Carol were alone again.

“Sam,” she began, “can I call you Sam? Sam, I'm not gonna beat around the bush. Without some serious evidence, the best we can hope for with this defense is a reasonable doubt as to premeditation. Unless we can prove how any drugs, assuming we find any, got into your system, we can't be convincing as to a motive or a method or a perpetrator. The other problem we're going to run into is that I now have two clients who need this defense, yourself and Carl. If I try it twice in a row, with nothing to back it up other than the circumstantial evidence that both of you were at his office before the murders occurred, I'm going to get both of you sent to death row.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Sam, is there anything else you can think of that might help us prove that Connors is behind this?”

Sam sat and thought, but couldn't come up with anything that he felt would make a difference. “The real problem is that I have no idea of his motives,” he said. “I had already wondered if he was using Annie Corning for sex, and hearing about your previous clients makes me think I was on the right track, there, but why on earth would he want Carl to kill his family? What possible motive could he have for doing this sort of thing to Carl?”

“Well, remember, zolpidem has its own nasty side effects. It's possible that Connors is using it for a less sinister purpose, like to make people more amenable to things he wants them to do, but that what happened with Carl was only a coincidence.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I've considered that, but then we've got me. There's no doubt in my mind that I was programmed to go there, whether I actually killed her or not, and I think we have to assume I did. I can't imagine that he tried to get me to do something innocuous, but instead I went and shot his wife—which, incidentally, is awfully convenient since he was about to have to pay her a whopping lot of money! Did he know that, yet, I wonder?”

“Well, his lawyer did. I sent him copies of the documents you sent to me as soon as I got them. He'd have probably told Connors, and it's even possible that Connors knew who you were when he heard your name, since it was right there on the pages you faxed to me.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I hadn't thought of that, but then, he surely wouldn’t have been expecting me. Somehow, he managed to knock me out fast and then program me, and I literally remember nothing. This guy is incredibly dangerous.”

“Well, I'm not going to dispute that, but we still have to prove it. Any bright ideas, there, Mr. Investigator?”

Sam sat there and hung his head for a minute, trying to think of anything that might help. Suddenly he looked up. “Maybe,” he said. “What if we could get corroborating statements from other people who have experienced weird behavior after seeing him?”

Carol thought about it. “Well, if any of them happened to have gotten into some kind of trouble, actually broken the law by doing something that was convincingly out of character, that would be pretty powerful. I doubt we'll ever get to bring him to justice, though, because he's almost certain to disappear as soon as he finds out we're working on this as a defense, and especially if he knows there are others out there who could add fuel to our fires. If we can get a jury to believe that he's really doing these things, then it is very possible I can get you acquitted, in spite of the physical evidence.” She thought for a moment. “Ironically, one of the women I represented is no longer living; she killed herself over the whole thing, poor kid. The other one I might be able to track down, and she could help, if she will. If it means another shot at hanging Connors, or at least proving she wasn't the slut he said she was, I think she'd do it.”

Sam smiled. “Then you get the blood results and work on that, and I'll get my wife tracking down the rest of his patients from the past few years. Surely we'll find at least a few of them who have gotten into some kind of trouble, doing something they can't explain.”

Carol nodded. “Okay, we've got one more thing to do while I'm here. Detective Parks from homicide wants to speak to you.”

Sam nodded. “That's fine. I just said I wouldn't talk without a lawyer. Should I say anything about our suspicions?”

“I wouldn't go into detail about everything just yet, but you can certainly say that the last you remember, you were at her husband's office, and that you believe you've been framed. Let's keep it simple, we're dealing with a homicide detective; they don’t always have the most open of minds.”

Sam grinned and nodded, and Carol got up and tapped on the door. When the jailer opened it, she said, “We're ready for the detective,” and he closed it again. Carol sat down again, but this time she took a chair next to Sam. Karen Parks came in a minute later with another detective and sat opposite them.

“Sam,” she said, nodding. “Carol. This is detective Brenner, he's assisting on this case.” Brenner nodded, but said nothing. “Sam, I'd like you to tell me how you came to be at Mrs. Connors' home, and what you know about her death.”

Sam shrugged. “Karen, I know you won't believe this, but I don't know anything about either. I went to see her husband about something to do with one of my investigations, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up beside a dead body. I started to call 911, and then I heard sirens and cars outside, so I waited, and the door busted open and I was arrested. That is literally all I know.”

Brenner snorted, but Parks shushed him. “Sam, are you saying Dr. Connors somehow framed you?”

“That's my belief, yes.”

She sat there for a moment, then opened the folder she'd brought in and looked at a page inside it. “Preliminary ballistics says that your gun is the weapon that killed Mrs. Connors.”

“I would expect so,” Sam said. “Not much point in a frame-up if you don’t use the framer's gun.”

Parks suppressed a smile. “I was the one who went to tell Dr. Connors that his wife was dead, and that you were found at the scene. He seemed surprised, but I couldn't tell if it was genuine or not. He said you were working for his wife on their divorce, and that you'd been there to see him, said you were offering to get rid of some documentation you'd found on some of his assets in return for a substantial amount of money. He said he told you to get out, you left, and he hadn't been out of the office since then. His dental hygienist and receptionist both confirmed his story, said you stormed out in a huff and that Connors never left the office afterward.”

Sam snorted. “That's the kind of story I'd expect him to concoct. Did he suggest a motive, why I might want to kill her? If you check it out, you'll find that I was set to receive ten percent of the assets she received from him in the divorce, which would have been around sixteen million dollars. Killing her would be like killing that golden goose, wouldn't it?”

She nodded. “I guess so, but he said you were hitting him up for five million, and figures you went there to demand more from her, when you didn't get anywhere with him. If you were after a bigger golden egg, and she didn't cooperate, I can see where things might have gotten heated. One thing leads to another, tempers go through the roof, and a gun goes off. It's happened before.”

Sam shook his head. “Karen, you've known me how many years? Have I ever gone off half-cocked?”

“Nope,” she said. “But this is the first time we've ever seen this sort of a situation around you, Sam, so we're in unexplored territory. You know how my job works; no matter how I feel about you personally, I've got to look at the evidence, and that doesn't make your armor very shiny right now, old buddy! You got anything you can give me that'll lend any credibility to your story?”

Sam looked at Carol, who shook her head slightly, then turned back to Parks. “How about the fact that Connors stood to lose sixteen million dollars to his wife, which could be a pretty good motive to get rid of her, don't you think?”

“Could be, but he's got a credible alibi, while you were found at the scene with the body and your prints all over the murder weapon. That makes you the star of the show, Sam, whether any of us likes it or not. On the other hand, if his alibi is false, then that implicates the receptionist and hygienist, as well, as accessories.”

Sam sighed. “Karen, do you really believe I did this?”

Parks gave him a sad smile. “Not for a split second, Sam, but it's my job to prove that you did, anyway, and the sad part is that you've given me just about everything I need to do that. If you can give me anything else, anything at all, I'll do what I can, but you gotta give me something to work with.”

Sam looked down at the table. “All I can say right now is that there may be something coming. I can't go into it because if you get involved, it could mess up what I'm trying to do.”

Brenner had been staring at Parks, but at this, he said, “So, what? You're gonna pull some rabbit out of your hat?”

Parks cut her eyes toward him. “Shut up, Brenner,” she said, and then motioned for him to follow her out the door.

Carol patted Sam's hand. “I know it was hard to keep your mouth shut, but I think we need a lot more ammo before we show them our big guns, don't you?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I'm okay. At least I know Karen believes I could be innocent, and she's a good cop. That helps.”

Carol stood. “Alright, then, I'm going to get on this from every angle I can think of. You keep it together in here.” She shook his hand and promised to keep in close touch with both him and Indie. Sam sat there for a few moments after she left, and then the same lady jailer came for him. She looked at him as she walked him back up the hallway.

“I'm hearing rumors that the same demon that got Mr. Morris got hold of you,” she said. “I know a couple of cops who know you, and they say there's no way you'd do this, no matter what the evidence looks like.”

Sam smiled at her. “Well, you tell them I appreciate it,” he said, “but right now, I'm just like Mr. Morris, and I have no real idea exactly what happened. We'll have to wait and see.”

She shrugged. “For what it's worth, I think you're innocent.” A moment later, she took the cuffs off again as she put him back into the holding cell. He was only there a few seconds before another jailer called him, this time to be booked in on a preliminary charge of first degree murder. He was photographed, fingerprinted, weighed and measured, and then taken to a stall where he was stripped naked and hosed down with something that was supposed to kill head and body lice. After that, he was escorted, still naked, to the showers, where he was given soap and a towel. When his shower was done, he was taken into another room, where he was given the orange jumpsuit that is worn by those charged with felonies.

Sam was officially a prisoner of the Denver detention center.

When he was dressed, he was handed a rolled up mattress, with sheets, a towel and something that was supposed to be a pillow but was about as thick as his living room carpet, and taken into a cell block. He was shown to a cell while other inmates shouted insults and comments about fresh meat. The cell he was taken to held two men, and he saw that the bottom bunk was open, so he made it up for himself and then decided he might as well get it over with. He went out into the day room, and into the cellblock's population of gang bangers, drug dealers, murderers and everyone else.

He saw several faces he knew, people he had once arrested and put in this same facility. The looks they gave him said that they knew him, as well, and a few of them were gathering up and whispering. Sam was looking around, trying to find a spot where he could get his back against a wall, when a hand landed on his shoulder, and he spun, ready to fight—to find Carl Morris smiling at him.

“Hey, Sam,” the big man said. “Marilee said you were in here, and told me what happened. I asked her to bunk you in with me, I hope you don't mind. I know your leg is bad, and I moved to the top bunk so you can have the bottom.”

Sam swallowed. Just the sight of the big bodybuilder smiling at him was enough to make the others suddenly want to find something else to do, and Sam could understand why; Carl made Stallone and Schwarzenegger look sort of small.

“Marilee?” Sam asked.

“Yes, she's that little lady jailer who's always so nice. She said she's talked to you a few times, and she likes you. She told me what happened, that it's like what happened to me. Is it really?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, it is, and maybe more than you can imagine. Carl, I'm pretty sure you are not the person who killed your family. I'm still working on some of the details, but there's a very good chance you may be a free man again one day soon.”

Carl looked at him for a moment. “Sam, are you saying someone else killed my wife and kids?” he asked softly.

Sam nodded again. “Yeah, Carl,” he said. “It's complicated, but that is exactly what I'm saying. And now we just both have to hope that I can prove it.”

Carl stared at him for a moment, then turned and walked over to one of the stainless steel picnic tables that were mounted into the concrete floor and sat on the bench. He leaned his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands, and began to weep.

Sam sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder, but didn't say anything while Carl cried his heart out. The sobs got louder and louder, but no one in the room would make a comment, and after a few moments, everyone there became quiet as the big man wept. Sam heard a rattle and turned to see four of the jailers, including Marilee, standing at the door in silence.

Sam waited until Carl had gotten himself back under control, and then went to the phone on the wall of the day room. It required him to call collect, so he called his house number, rather than Indie's cell.

He gave the automated system his name and waited while it called Indie and asked her if she would accept the call. When she did, he heard her saying, “Hello? Sam? Hello?”

“I'm here, babe,” he said. “They got me booked in, and I'm doing okay. How about you?”

She sighed. “Sam, I'm strong,” she said, “and I'll do whatever I have to do to help get you out of this mess. I called Mom, and she said Beauregard won't tell her what I'm supposed to do, because he says I have to find the answer on my own, or I won't understand it. And I called Harry; he says he'll try to find out what he can, but he isn’t normally allowed any interference in local police matters unless they involve National Security, and this won't. If you've got any ideas...”

“Actually, baby, I do,” he said. “I was talking with Carol, the lawyer, and we came up with a game plan. I need you and Herman to go through Connors' patient list and find as many of them as you can. Then, call them and find out if any of them have had any crazy episodes, especially if it involved breaking the law or getting into trouble. If they've had weird experiences at any time, then check and see if they saw Connors right before it. And, we're particularly looking for any women who have found themselves having sex with him; there were a couple that Carol knew of, but Connors was able to prove that they were the ones who came after him, so the cases never went anywhere.”

“Okay, I can do that, and I can get a jump on it; I'll tell Herman to look for any police records that involve his patients right after they saw him, and see if any of them are for strange stuff. Those would stand out like a sore thumb, I think. And I'll check with all of his female patients about the sexual angle. Now, what about Annie and Carl? Is there anything I should be doing about them?”

“No, not at the moment. Al is on his way to go see Annie, and I'm hoping that'll help her memory, and Carl is in here with me. I've let him know that he may not actually be responsible for his family's deaths, and it's hit him pretty hard. Carol will build his defense on what we've got on Connors, if we can get any kind of supporting evidence. We may never get Connors, but we have a good chance of getting acquittals for me and Carl, and I'll take that, for now. Connors I can get another day.”

Indie laughed coldly. “Not if I get to him first,” she said, but Sam cut her off before she could go any further.

“Indie, don't you go near him! I just went to talk to the man, and look at where I'm at. We can't afford anything happening to you.” She was quiet for a moment, and Sam said, “Indie?”

“Okay, okay, I won't go near him. But if he happens to step out in front of the truck, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have brake failure!”

“Stop it! I mean it, Indie, no! Now, get with Herman and see what you can dig up over the next few days. I'll call you now and then, and we'll compare notes. I love you, baby girl, don't you forget that!”

Indie made a sound that might have been a sob. “I won't,” she said, “and don't you, either. I love you, Sam Prichard! And I almost forgot—you've already made the news. Chris and Candy called fifteen minutes ago. I assured them you didn't do it, and they said to let them know when your bail is set.”

Sam chuckled. “Okay, babe. Tell 'em I said thanks. I gotta get off here, we only get a few minutes at a time. I'll call you later, before bedtime.”

“Okay, Sam. Bye.”

“Bye, baby.” He hung up, and felt like sitting down to cry himself.

* * * * *

Indie got off the phone with Sam and checked on Kenzie, who was watching TV quietly. She hadn’t said much since Indie told her Sam would be gone for a day or two, and Indie guessed that she could sense something was wrong from her mother's emotional state.

She left the child watching TV, and went to the office to get Herman on the job. She fed him the data she wanted him to search through, and turned him loose on it, then went back to the house to make dinner for herself and her daughter. It seemed like a pizza night, so she popped one into the oven and sat down to watch old Sponge Bob episodes with Kenzie until it was done, and then brought it into the living room on a platter so they could eat it while they watched.

Kenzie looked up at her mother and said, “Is Daddy gonna get shot again?”

Indie did her best to smile. “Nope,” she said. “He's just working on a case, and has to be gone for a little while. He'll be home soon, I'm sure.”

Kenzie stared at her for a moment, but then she smiled. “I'm glad,” she said, “I don't like when he gets shot.”

Indie couldn't help laughing, then. “Me, neither!” she said, and Kenzie climbed up to sit beside her on the couch while they ate.

When they'd finished, Indie told Kenzie she had some work to do in the office, and Kenzie opted for a movie. She got into their stash of DVDs and found Despicable Me, one of Kenzie's favorites, and put it in, then went to check on Herman.

The program had been busy. Indie scanned the lines of data on the screen and began clicking the provided links, one after another.

Many of Connors' patients had experienced minor run-ins with the law, and Herman had cross-referenced them with the dates of their appointments. Several had found themselves in trouble within twenty-four hours after visiting the dentist, and Indie started going through the various cases.

Robert Morgan, seventeen: The night after his tooth was pulled, he was arrested for indecent exposure, while taking a leak at nine PM on his front lawn. Several neighbors were out on the street, and when one of them asked him why he was doing it, he asked, “Why, don't you?” Later, he told police that he had no memory of the event at all.

Susan Bergen, twenty-four: The night after she went in for a filling, she was arrested for driving through town with no clothes on. According to the arresting officers, she seemed dazed, and thought the arrest was funny. She woke up several hours later with no idea how she'd gotten to jail, and no memory of anything from the night before.

Donald Miller, fifty-six: Early in the morning after a late afternoon appointment to get three teeth extracted, neighbors called police when they saw him in his driveway, hacking his own dog to pieces with an ax. A few hours later, he broke down while in police custody after they had to tell him what he'd done. The dog had been a beloved pet of his wife, who had passed away a year earlier, and neighbors said they couldn't believe he'd done it because he treated the dog as if it were a child.

Nathan Sparks, eighteen: The night after he got a tooth filled, he reportedly asked three teenaged girls to strip naked on top of his car, while he drove through town. He was not arrested, but was warned against making any further such requests. His parents later filed a lawsuit against police that alleged they had made the whole thing up, since their son couldn't remember anything about it at all, but it was dismissed when the entire police report was shown to them, including recordings of their son laughing and telling police that if they had waited a few more minutes, they would have gotten a free show.

Kate Milligan, nineteen: Kate had two teeth filled, and later that night was arrested at the home of Dr. Connors, where she was standing on his wife's car and calling for him to come and have sex with her. She woke up in jail, completely unaware of what had transpired.

Alan Batts, thirty-four: The night after an extraction, he had gone to bed with his wife, but she said he got up an hour later and said he wanted something to eat. He seemed out of sorts, she had said, so when he was gone downstairs for more than half an hour, she went down to see if he was okay, and found him eating their children's pet mice. He was popping them into his mouth and chewing them up, she said, as if they were pizza rolls. When she tried to make him stop, he accused her of trying to steal them from him and threatened to kill her, so she called police, who took him to a mental facility. The next morning, he couldn't remember a thing, but complained of pain in his mouth, where the mice had apparently scratched and bitten his tongue many times.

Darren Pickford, sixty: The night after he got his last seven teeth pulled, in preparation for new dentures, he went to bed as usual, according to his wife, but then rose around 2 a.m. She thought he'd gone to the bathroom, but a few minutes later she saw flashing lights outside her window and looked out to see two officers wrestling her husband to the ground. She ran outside to find that he was being arrested for aiming a gun at people in cars driving by, and his shotgun was lying on the ground beside him. Like all of the others, when he awoke the next morning in jail, he couldn't remember any of it, and refused to believe he'd actually done it until he saw dash cam video from the police car.

And then she hit the one that made her skin crawl.

Betty Morgenstern, twenty: Late in the night after having three teeth pulled, neighbors found her in the bedroom of their twelve-year old twin boys, attempting to instruct them in the arts of sex. She was arrested and taken to jail, but woke up several hours later unable to remember what had happened or how she'd come to be in jail. When she learned what she had done, she went back into her cell, took off her jumpsuit and hung herself. She was seen by a jailer, who tried to save her, but it was too late. Betty had been a student at a theological seminary school, and had planned to become a missionary.

Indie read through several more such cases, including five more that resulted in suicides, and compiled a report that she emailed to Carol Spencer. She added a note that she planned to contact as many of them as she could the next morning.

Sam called just as she was finishing up, and she glanced out the window to see that it was dark. She waited for the recording to tell her to press five, then pushed the button.

“Hey, babe,” she said. “I won't waste our time with the details, but I've got a couple dozen cases of people getting into legal trouble after appointments with Alex Connors. Some of the stories are almost funny, but some of them are just tragic. Six people who got messed up after seeing him have killed themselves, including one girl who only had sex with him, and couldn't live with the things people were saying about her.”

Sam sighed. “I can't say I'm surprised. If I didn't know what was going on, this might be more than I could handle. See if you can talk to any of them, and get them to remember the connection, but be careful. We don't know whether any of these folks might be friends of his, and I don't want him to know what you’re doing.”

“I'll be careful,” she said. “How is it in there?”

Sam laughed. “Well, there are half a dozen of my old arrests from vice in here, and I'm sure they'd love to beat me to death, but Carl is my cellmate, and he makes the Incredible Hulk look tiny. About the time they realized that he liked me, they all decided to let bygones be bygones. Carl saw how they were looking at me a bit ago, and walked over and said something to them, I don't know what, but a couple of them have even offered me soda pop and candy bars!”

“Yikes, don't take any! You never know what might be in them!”

“Don't worry, baby, I won't. Indie, thank you for what you’re doing. I know this isn't the kind of thing you're used to, but...”

“Sam, stop,” she said. “I'm not doing anything more than any other woman would do to save her man. I just happen to have the right skills and resources, is all. I can do this, honey, I can. And Kenzie sends her love, by the way.”

“You tell her I love her too, and can't wait to see here when I get home. Does she know that might be a while?”

Indie gave a sigh. “I told her you're gone on work, and we don't know how long, yet, but that you'll be home as soon as you can. She's okay with that, she says, as long as you're not gonna get shot again.”

Sam laughed again. “Tell her I agree with that, completely. I love you, babe, but I gotta go, there are others who want to use the phone.”

“Okay,” she said, but then, “hey, wait! Is Carl there with you? Can I talk to him?”

“Um, yeah,” Sam said, “just a sec.”

A moment later, a deep, cultured voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“Hi, Carl, this is Indie, Sam's wife. I just wanted to say thanks for watching out for him in there.”

She could hear the big man's smile. “It's my pleasure, Miss Indie,” he said. “He tells me you're the one who's working on proving we aren't as bad as they say we are, so I want to thank you, too.”

“Believe me, Carl, it's my pleasure,” she said, and then Sam came back on.

“Babe? I gotta go, I love you!”

“I love you too, Sam, I love you!”

The line went dead, and Indie sat there for a moment holding the phone to her ear. She finally hung it up, and then sat back and let the tears flow. A few moments later, she broke down and called her mother and told her everything.

7

Indie woke at seven the next morning and got Kenzie up and ready for an adventure. She had called Anita Mitchell, the neighbor whose twins Kenzie often played with, the night before and arranged for Kenzie to spend the day with them. Kenzie was excited about it, because it would be the first time she'd gotten to see them in a few weeks; during Sam and Indie's honeymoon, she had stayed with her two grandmothers, who lived out in Aurora, and hadn't had the chance to go and play since they'd gotten back. Since Jim and Anita didn't mind, even Samson got to go along, so Indie would have the whole day free to start working on the case.

She dropped kid and cat off about eight, and headed back to the house to get started. Her plan was to first try calling each of the people who had been affected and see if they would be willing to cooperate, holding out the incentive that they might get their records expunged if it could be established that they were not in any way responsible for their actions. She sat down at Sam's desk and started going through the list.

Herman had managed to identify and get numbers for most of them the night before, and she had the list printed out in front of her. She gathered her courage and dialed the first number: Susan Bergen.

“Hello?” came a sleepy voice.

“Hi, is this Susan Bergen?” Indie asked.

“Um—who's calling, please?”

“My name is Indiana Prichard, and I work with my husband Sam, who's a private investigator. We're working on a case involving some people who have had some bizarre behavioral episodes after a dental treatment, and your name came up as a possible victim.”

“Dental treatment? I'm not sure I understand...”

“Susan, you were arrested for driving nude the night after you had a cavity filled. You said you had no idea why you were doing it and didn't even remember it afterward, right?”

“Um—yeah, that's right. Are you saying it was because of the filling?”

“Not the filling, but other people who have gone to the same dentist for different treatments have had similar incidents, although some of them had far worse consequences. Do you remember going to get a filling that morning?”

The woman was quiet for a moment, then said, “Well—not really. I mean, I remember being arrested, well, not being arrested, but waking up and finding out I'd been arrested. The whole thing seems like a nightmare, now, to be honest. I got two years of probation over it, and I'd never been in trouble in my life before that.”

“I know, right? The thing is, if we can prove that these weird episodes are related to that dentist, then it's quite possible that this could be removed from your record. Would you be willing to testify about what happened to you?”

“I—I guess so, but I can't even remember whether I went to the dentist that morning. How could we prove that?”

“That's no problem,” Indie said. “I've got the dentist's appointment calendar for the past five years, and it shows that you were there that very morning. Listen, I'm going to have an attorney contact you, okay? She'll be able to explain more about this, and how you can hopefully get your record cleaned up again.”

“Okay, sure,” Susan said, obviously getting excited about the prospect of clearing her record.

Indie thanked her, and made a note that she had her first cooperative witness, then she dialed the next number on her list.

“Hi, is this Donald Miller?” she said as soon as the man answered.

“Yes, can I help you?”

“Mr. Miller, my name is Indiana Prichard, and I work for my husband Sam, who's a private investigator. We're looking into a case involving people who have had strange episodes they can't explain after a dental treatment, and your name is on the list, because of what happened last year with your dog. It's very likely, sir, that you were not responsible for that incident, because you had three teeth pulled the evening before, and what happened is almost certainly a side effect of the treatment you received.”

Miller was quiet for a few seconds, and then asked, “Do you mean you might be able to explain this to me? Tell me why I did this horrible thing?”

“Mr. Miller,” she said, “a lot of people who went to see Dr. Connors have had bizarre episodes like yours, some of them with a lot worse end consequences. What we're trying to do is show that there is a pattern, here, that people who have gone to his office for treatments tend to then do things that are completely out of character for them. We believe that he's doing something there that is causing this, and that he knows it. One man who went there a few weeks ago is in jail right now for murdering his own family, and he has no idea what happened, just like you didn't know until you were told.”

“Young lady, if this is true, then I might finally be able to forgive myself,” he said sadly. “How can I be of help to you in this?”

“Sir, what I'm hoping is that you'll be willing to testify about what you went through. We can show for certain that it happened after the dental appointment, just like all the other people I'm talking to, so if you would...”

“Of course I will,” he said. “I've gone to Dr. Connors for a long time, but if he's doing something like this—of course I'll help.”

Indie pumped the air with her fist, and put a check by his name. “That's great, sir. I'm going to have an attorney get in touch, okay, to go over all of this with you. She should be calling soon.”

“That'll be fine, dear,” he said. Indie thanked him again and moved to the next call.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr., Sparks? My name is Indiana...” She went through her spiel, but this time she got a resounding “no!” Nathan Sparks only wanted to put the incident behind him, and wasn't interested in any explanations for why he'd done what he'd done. He hadn’t gotten into any serious trouble, and just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened.

She called Robert Morgan next, explained who she was and the reason for her call, and he was delighted to learn that there was a probable reason for his behavior that night. He agreed to testify, and wanted to know how soon he could expect to do so. Indie said she didn't know, but that she'd have the attorney call as soon as possible.

Alan Batts agreed to testify. His wife had left him after the incident with the mice, afraid that he might one night become dangerous. They'd been talking about reconciliation, though, and he hoped that this might be the impetus she needed to bring her back home.

Kate Milligan also agreed. She'd often wondered if Dr. Connors had somehow manipulated her into what had happened that night, because she always felt that he was ogling her whenever she had to go to his office, even when she was barely in her teens.

“I'd love to see him nailed for this, if he’s really doing it,” she said. “Listen, can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” Indie said, suddenly curious. “Anything.”

“Well, no one knows this, and if it comes out, well, it might upset my folks—but that wasn't the only time something weird happened. When I was only fifteen, I went to bed one night, and when I woke up, I was naked and in a park, and I could tell I'd—well, had sex. I didn't remember anything about it, though, so I just looked around and found my clothes, then went home and never said anything, but I can tell you it was the night after I got a couple of teeth pulled. I remember that because I'm a bit of a bleeder, and I still had some gauze in my mouth when I woke up. If you need me to, I could tell about that, too.”

“I'll let you talk to the attorney about it, okay? I think she'd be the one to discuss that with.”

Darren Pickford was happy to help. The incident had gotten him a felony conviction for unlawful use of a firearm, and he'd lost his right to even own a gun. He'd been an avid hunter, and would do anything to get his record expunged and get his second amendment rights restored to him.

Indie spoke to a woman named Julia Stoner who had gone in for an extraction and ended up that night in jail for prostitution, with two uniformed police officers claiming she offered them sex in exchange for money. Julia was the wife of a pastor at a small church, and the incident had destroyed both the church and her marriage. She was delighted to find out that there might be a reason other than demonic possession for her behavior, and would be more than happy to testify.

David Lancer had gone to see Dr. Connors for fillings, and had been picked up that night at the zoo, trying to climb into the lion enclosure. He insisted to the officers that the lion had insulted him, and he was planning to kick its butt as a lesson not to talk that way to humans! He had been in a high security job, but after that incident, he had lost his security clearance and his position. He was also glad to help.

Jillian Butler declined. She had a procedure at the office, but had later been caught breaking into a bakery to steal doughnuts. She had a bag with about eighty of them when police responded to the broken window alarm. She'd managed to avoid jail time and just wanted to live the incident down.

By noon, Indie had twenty-seven people who were willing to testify that they suffered bizarre behavioral episodes after being seen by Dr. Connors. She sent the list of to Carol Spencer, then called her to let her know she'd sent it. The lawyer was ecstatic that she'd had such success, and said she'd get to work setting up depositions immediately. That would be the first step, she explained in getting the prosecutor to pay attention when they asked to have Connors detained.

“Detained?” Indie asked. “Don't we have to prove he was doing it deliberately to do that?”

“Oh, not at all,” Carol said. “All we have to show is that there is a definite connection between his treatments and these episodes. We can't prove that any drugs or alcohol were involved in these older cases, and without being able to show that as part of the pattern, we can't really prove that he had any knowledge of the effects, but that doesn't mean he isn't culpable. We can ask for his detention based on the likelihood that he might flee if he isn't held, in order to avoid the civil liability when all of these people file lawsuits against him. There is a lot of precedent for that type of detention, and I plan to go after it hot and heavy!”

Sam called at lunchtime, and was delighted when Indie told him how many she'd gotten and what the lawyer had said. “Baby, you're the best,” he said. “We've just had lunch here, and let me tell you that there isn't anyone here who can cook like you can, but it was filling. Carl says hi, and I've gotta say that he's like a new man. He still feels awful about what happened, but if we can show that it wasn't the real him doing it, I think he'll make it through this. I just hope we can get him acquitted.”

“We will, Sam, and you, too! Connors isn't going to get away with this, I won't stand for it!”

They chatted a bit more, and Indie told him that she was going to work on finding even more of Connors' victims, by simply calling patients cold and asking if they'd ever had such episodes. He told her she was dynamite, and she laughed.

“Yeah, and you know about dynamite, right? It comes in small packages!”

They said their I-love-yous, and hung up. Indie went to the kitchen to make herself something for lunch, decided on leftover pizza from the night before, and was just putting it into the microwave when her cell phone rang. It was Sam's mother's number, and she cringed as she answered.

“Hello, Grace,” she said, and that was as far as she got.

“Indie! Oh, my God, you've got to talk to your mother, I don't know what to do! Beauregard has her convinced she's a superwoman, and she won't listen to me, here, I'm putting her on the phone!” Indie heard a rustling, and her mother's voice saying, “Now, you know it's just going to upset her,” and then her mom came on the line.

“Hi, Sweetie,” she said cheerfully.

“Mom,” Indie said, “what in the world are you up to?”

“Oh, it's really not that big a deal,” her mother, whose name was Kim, said. “I told Grace she shouldn't call you, but you know how she is, always worrying.”

“Mom, just cut the crap and tell me what's going on, now.”

Kim sighed. “Well, I was talking this whole mess over with Beauregard, and he suggested I go and see that dentist, you know, get a treatment. If he's really using this thing of his to get women, well, I'm still an attractive little tart, everyone says so, and I thought maybe he'd try it on me.”

Indie had to admit that she was right about that; at forty-three, Kim was often mistaken for a girl in her early to mid twenties, but that didn't mean this idea wasn't insane.

“Mom, are you crazy?” Indie demanded. “This man is dangerous, Mom, just look what he did to Sam!”

“I know, I know, but Beauregard says we can handle this, that he can keep me from doing anything stupid or weird, and what we'd do, you see, is go right after I left and get my blood tested, see if he used any of his drugs on me. That's all it would take, you know, and then you'd have proof that he uses it on people.”

“Mom...”

“Beauregard says it's perfectly safe, since he can stop me from doing anything even if that man tells me to,” Kim went on, “and if we did find those drugs in my blood, then we'd have something you and your lawyer can use, right?”

Indie hated to admit it, but that part at least sounded like it could be sensible. As for Beauregard being able to keep Kim from acting stupid, Indie wasn't so sure; her mother could act pretty strange even without any mind altering substances in her system! “Mom, I really don't think...”

“Indiana, my mind is made up. I already called and made an appointment, and I really do have a tooth that needs filling. I've been putting it off for a while, so if he does nothing else, maybe I can at least get it filled and it'll stop keeping me awake at night, and Beauregard says we can even come over tonight and let you keep me handcuffed to something, so I can't go out and do anything, although he says that won't happen anyway, because he can keep me from doing anything like that.”

Indie sighed. She knew there was no way she could stop her mother when she—and Beauregard—decided to do something. “Okay, fine, you can go, but I'm going with you. What time is your appointment?”

“It's at three,” Kim said. “I can meet you there, or do you want me to come to your house?”

“Come to the house,” Indie said firmly. “I'm not having you out driving around with God knows what in your system, so I'll drive!”

“Okay, honey, I'll be there in a bit.” She hung up, and Indie sat down and kicked herself for agreeing to this mad plan.

Still, her mother was right about one thing; if she came away from the appointment with zolpidem, or any other drugs, in her blood, then it was more evidence that Connors was guilty. She thought about it for a moment, and then slapped her forehead.

The presence of drugs in her mother's blood after the visit wouldn't necessarily prove that they could only have gotten there at the dental office. For that, they'd need a control test. She grabbed her phone and called Carol Spencer, explaining what her mother wanted to do.

“I think it's brilliant,” the lawyer said, “but you’re right, we need a blood sample from before, as well. Can you run her by a lab, if I get it set up, so they can get a control sample of her blood before the appointment?”

“Yes, just tell me where and let them know that we'll probably be in a hurry!”

“I'll call you back in five minutes,” Carol said, and hung up.

She actually called back in two. “Okay, the lab is only a half mile from Connors' office, so you can go straight to the appointment afterward. I told them to draw a control sample and start the analysis as soon as they do, so that we can get the results quickly. Then, take her right back afterward, and they'll get the comparison sample. This could actually be the break we need, Indie, and you tell your mother I applaud her courage!”

Indie sighed. “It isn't courage,” she said, “it's Beauregard. And no, I won't explain that right now, but we'll get the blood samples.”

Her mother showed up at two, and Indie explained about the need for a control blood sample. Kim smiled and agreed, and they got into the truck and headed out. It was about a twenty-minute drive to the lab, and they got there at just before two-thirty. The phlebotomist was ready and waiting when they arrived, and took them right into the back to draw the sample. They took a full vial of blood, and put a drop of Dermabond—also known as medical superglue—on it to stop the bleeding when they were done.

Kim said, “Well, look at that, they don't even use Band-Aids anymore,” and Indie hurried her out the door. They drove to the dental clinic, and walked in ten minutes before Kim's appointment.

The blonde receptionist looked up as they entered. “Hi, and welcome to Connors Dental. How can we help you today?”

Kim smiled, and Indie grinned. If there was one thing Indie knew her mom could do, it was act!

“Hello,” Kim said. “I've got an appointment to have a cavity looked at. Kim Perkins is my name.”

The receptionist smiled. “Oh, yes, I remember. You were lucky we had an opening, but we had a cancellation this morning, so I was able to get you in.” She handed Kim a clipboard and a pen. “If you'll just fill this out, please,” she said, and Kim took it and went to a chair near the outer wall to do so, with Indie right behind her.

Indie sat quietly while her mom filled out the questionnaire, providing accurate information about allergies, previous procedures and such, but avoiding the truth on her age (she put down twenty-seven) and address. When she was done, she handed it back to the receptionist and sat down again to wait.

They didn't wait long. Another patient came out, and then a hygienist called for Kim. She patted Indie's hand and told her to just wait there, then smiled and followed the girl into the back.

Indie waited, and then waited some more. She was just about to ask the receptionist how much longer it would be when Kim came out. She looked at Indie and said, her words slightly slurred, “All done. My tongue is a li'l bit numb, so if I sound funny, dat's why.” Her eyes seemed okay, though, so Indie smiled and they went out to the truck.

“So,” Indie asked when they got inside. “Anything weird happen?”

“Well,” Kim said, her speech still a bit slurred, “I don't think so, but I was hypnotized, so I don't really remember anything. He said he still uses Novocaine because it stops pain afterward, but when I was under the hypnosis, I didn't feel a thing. I don't remember anything at all.”

“Okay, well, let's go get your blood drawn again. The sooner we know if you got anything extra in there, the better I'll feel!”

They went right back to the lab, and the same phlebotomist drew a second vial of blood. This time she used a Band-Aid to staunch the bleeding, one with purple and pink hearts on it. Kim smiled, and said, “Oh, look how cute!” Indie hustled her out the door again, and they went back to the house.

Kim wanted to go home, but Indie wasn't having it. “Oh, no, you're staying right here ‘til I know you're okay! Some of the people who were affected didn't show any sign of it until the next day, so you’re not getting out of my sight until tomorrow night!”

“But, honey, Beauregard says...”

“I don't give a hoot what Beauregard says, this time it's what I say! You're staying right here, and I'm not taking my eyes off you till I know you’re okay!”

* * * * *

At four o'clock, Sam heard his name called and looked up to see the jailer, Marilee, at the cellblock door. He went to her, and she held out a pair of cuffs. “You've got a visit, your lawyer,” she said, and Sam turned his back obediently.

She led him down the hallways to the interview room, where Carol was waiting. The look on her face didn't make Sam happy, but he waited until Marilee was gone before he looked at her and said, “Well?”

“I got the blood report back, Sam,” she said sadly. “There was no zolpidem in your system, and no alcohol. They did find, however,” and her face suddenly brightened, “that you had recently had a fairly high anesthetic dose of ketamine! If you don't know, ketamine is normally used in anesthesia, and works very quickly. If you were given an injection of it, you'd be out of it pretty quickly, and wouldn't remember the injection or any struggle that may have occurred before you went under. Got any sore spots where a needle might have gotten you?”

Sam stared. “Not that I've noticed. What about hypnotic effects? Could it have been used to make me kill someone?”

“Doubtful,” Carol said excitedly, and Sam stared even harder. “On the dosage they found in your system, buddy, I don't think you could have even walked out of that place! You probably would have had to have been carried out, and if I'm right, then there's no way you could have killed Juliette Connors! Someone else would have had to carry you there, and that means someone else would have had to fire the fatal shot. If I can get that through a few prosecutorial heads, then by this time tomorrow, I'll have you out of here, and all charges dismissed!”

Sam sat there, frozen. “Carol,” he said finally, “are you sure?”

“Well, I can't be a hundred percent certain, of course, but I think there's a very good chance. The only thing that worries me is that this hurts our defense for Carl, but if your mother-in-law has any luck...”

Sam's eyes shot wide open. “My mother in law? What's Kim got to do with this?”

Carol looked at him. “Uh-oh, did I let a cat out of the bag? I thought you would have known; she made an appointment with Dr. Connors today, and went and got her blood tested both before and after. We're praying he used the zolpidem on her, because then we can tie him to it directly!”

Sam stared at her. “That idiot!” he said suddenly. “She has no clue what she's sticking her nose into! How could she be so stupid?”

Carol looked at him in surprise. “Sam, I'm confused,” she said. “This woman just put herself on the line to try to prove you were innocent. Frankly, I think she's amazingly brave!”

“She isn't brave, she's psychotic! Somehow I just know that stupid Beauregard is behind this!”

“Hey, your wife said almost the same thing. Who on earth is Beauregard?”

“Nobody!” Sam yelled, and then refused to say another word on the subject.

As soon as he got back to the cellblock, Sam went to the phones and called home. When Indie answered, he said, “Would someone please tell me how to kill that ghost?”

“Uh-oh,” Indie said. “Carol must have come to see you.”

“Yeah, and she told me about this harebrained scheme of your mother's to go get doped up by Dr. Demento! It was Beauregard, wasn't it? Did she say this was his idea?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“Baby, how could you have let her go through with this? Where is she now? Locked up somewhere safe, I hope?”

“Um—she's in the living room, watching TV. But, Sam, before you go all nuts on me, don't worry, I handcuffed her to the gas pipe on the fireplace. She can't possibly get out of it, and I'm going to stay up all night and watch her. And Kenzie is staying with the twins tonight, Anita said it was no problem.”

Sam counted to ten, then said, “Okay. Fine, it's already done and there's no undoing it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Carol came to tell me that the blood test shows there was no zolpidem in my system. Instead, they found ketamine, which probably knocked me out to the point that I couldn't possibly have killed Mrs. Connors. It looks like I was just plain framed, and she's gonna try to convince the prosecutor of that in the morning and get me released, but that's not definite. We still need to nail Connors, if we can, and use that to show malice. If we can establish that he uses drugs to manipulate people, then we can probably show that he had the only viable motive to kill his wife, and thought he could shut me up in the process.”

“We're working on it,” Indie said. “Carol's got depositions set for tomorrow with a lot of the witnesses I found, and that will help. If it turns out Mom got a dose of zolpidem, then we've probably got enough to hang him, and that's what I'm hoping for. That should give us enough to show you were framed, too.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “Baby, I'm sorry I yelled at you. I just got worried when she said your mom tried this. If he'd known she was connected to me, she could be dead by now.”

“I know, Sam, but she was really just trying to help. And Beauregard, figment of her mind though he is, does have a tendency to be right. This could work; if he really uses his tricks to hook up with women, well, Mom's not bad looking, and she passes for my sister all the time. He might go for her, and then we'll have proof.”

“Okay, baby. I love you, and I'll try to call you back later tonight. Keep a close eye on her, don't let her do anything stupid.”

“Trust me on that, babe,” she said. “She isn't getting out of my sight!”

8

Indie heated up frozen sandwiches for herself and Kim, and they sat in the living room to eat and watch a movie. They had looked through what was on, and finally settled on one of the latest superhero movies. Kim enjoyed them, and Indie liked the action. When it was over, they sat and talked for a bit, and Kim drifted off to sleep on the couch.

Indie hadn't lied to Sam about cuffing her mother to the gas pipe, but she'd actually hooked several pairs of Sam's cuffs together and made a chain about three feet long, with the other end of it hooked to her mother's ankle. Kim couldn't move more than few feet away from the couch, but it allowed her to stretch out and lay down. She was sleeping peacefully, while Indie sat there and watched a movie called “Fireproof,” about a fireman who was having problems in his marriage, and embarked on a forty-day challenge to try to win back his wife's love and respect. It was a wonderful movie, and she found herself in tears at the end.

Kim was still sleeping, and Indie saw that it was nearly eleven. She flipped channels and tried to find another movie, but finally gave up. She went to the bookshelf beside the fireplace and looked through the books; she'd always enjoyed reading, and hadn't had much time, lately. This seemed like a good chance to renew the hobby. She found a book of Sam's called “The Very Swift Witches,” and the title caught her eye, so she flipped it over and read the back. It was a comic drama about three witches from seventeenth century Wales who are magically transported to the Ozark Mountains of today, adopted by a single mother and her kids, and have to adapt to a world where magic is unknown, and carriages run around without any horses to pull them! It sounded cute, so she took it back to the recliner and began to read.

Two hours later, after stifling laughter several times and even shedding a few tears, she glanced up to see her mother sitting straight up on the couch, with her eyes wide open.

“Mom?” she said. Kim looked at her for a second, but then seemed to ignore her again. She looked down at her purse and reached for it, digging in the bottom of it for something, and then came up with a small bottle. She unscrewed the cap and started to put it to her mouth, but then stopped suddenly.

Her face turned to Indie, who was already on her feet and moving toward her mother. She said, “I think perhaps you should take this bottle from your mother, Indiana,” but the voice that came out of her wasn't her own. It had a distinct masculine quality, and Indie froze where she stood.

“Mom?” she said again, and her mother's face smiled while she shook her head.

“I'm afraid she's not here, at the moment, Indiana. She is somewhere in her mind, and I've had to take over to keep anything from happening.”

Indie stared. “B—Beauregard?” she asked, and her mother nodded.

“Yes, dear girl,” that odd voice said. “Now, please—take the bottle. It may contain something dangerous.”

Indie reached out and took the bottle, then got the cap from her mother's other hand. She carefully put it back on, and then looked at her mother again.

“Is Mom okay?” she asked.

“She is acting on something she was told earlier,” the voice said. “She wants to drink that bottle, and then go to a place to meet that fool dentist.”

Indie stared for another minute. “And you're Beauregard? Are you real? Really a ghost, I mean?”

Her mother's face smiled, a jovial expression that was so unlike the way Kim normally looked that it sent a chill down Indie's spine. “I certainly think so, though I know that others don't believe it. Sometimes your mother doesn't believe it, but she still listens to me. She's ready to go back to sleep, now, I think.”

A moment later, Kim lay back down, and Indie stood there until she heard her mother's breathing become deep and steady once again. She looked at the bottle in her hand, and then took it to the kitchen and hid it in the back of a cabinet. She made a pot of coffee while she was there, and waited until there was enough to pour herself a cup.

When she got back to the living room, she half expected to see Kim sitting up again, but she was still sleeping peacefully. Indie watched her for a few more moments, and then picked up her book again and sat down to read. She looked up every few minutes to check on her mother, but Kim didn't move again the rest of the night. Indie didn't take any chances, though, and between the coffee and the book, she managed to remain awake with no problem.

In the morning, Kim awakened normally, stretched and yawned and smiled at her daughter. “See? Everything was fine. I'm still here, and nothing happened in the night.”

Indie stared at her for a moment. “Mom,” she said at last, “you don't remember anything from last night?”

Kim looked at her, and frowned. “No. Should I?”

Indie sat there for a moment, then said, “Last night, about one, you sat up and got a small bottle out of your purse. You were about to drink it, but then you stopped, and...” She trailed off, and had to force herself to go on. “And then you looked at me and said I should take it, but it didn't sound like you, and when I asked if you were okay, you said you were Beauregard. You—he said you were gone in your mind somewhere, and that you were trying to do what Dr. Connors told you to do, to drink whatever's in that bottle and then go to see him, but he stopped you.”

Kim smiled. “Ah,” she said, “so you finally got to talk to him. He doesn't come out very often, he says he doesn't like it out here.” She cocked her head as if listening for a moment, then smiled at Indie again. “He says to tell you that he doesn't always believe in himself, either, whatever that means.”

Indie shook her head, and another chill went down her spine. “Listen, I need to take that bottle to the lawyer so she can get it checked out. Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything?”

Kim laughed. “Well, yes, I could stand to. Would you mind?”

Indie unlocked the cuff on her ankle and followed her to the bathroom, waiting outside while her mother took care of necessary things. When she came out, they went back to the couch and Indie hooked her ankle back up again.

“Sorry, Mom, but I'm not letting you go until I know you're clean.”

Kim smiled. “I understand, honey, don't worry. I'll be fine, but could I have some of that coffee?”

Indie got her a cup, made the way she liked it, and gave her the remote and the book. “If you get sick of the TV, try this. I read it last night, and it's pretty good.”

Kim glanced at the back and said, “Ooh, witches! It sounds good!” She giggled like a teenager, and Indie rolled her eyes.

She went into the kitchen and got the bottle out of the cabinet. Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened the cap and sniffed at it, but jerked back instantly. It smelled like some pretty potent alcohol, stronger than anything Indie had ever tried, and she put the cap back on quickly. She would bet that the zolpidem they were looking for was in that bottle.

She called Carol at eight, and her secretary answered.

“Hi, this is Indiana Prichard,” she said. “I've got something that Carol needs to see right away. Is she in?”

“Actually, she is, but she's in a deposition already this morning. She should be free in about an hour, if you'd like to come then?”

Indie smiled. “I'll be there,” she said, and went to take a shower and get dressed.

When she came out, she checked on her mother and found her reading contentedly. Kim glanced up at her and waved with her fingers, and Indie rolled her eyes again. She grabbed the bottle and headed out the door, telling Kim she'd be back as soon as she could. She went out to the truck and got in, started it up and drove off toward Carol's office downtown.

She arrived at the office as Carol was finishing up with Donald Miller, the old man who had butchered his dog after visiting Dr. Connors a year before. He was smiling, but there were traces of tears on his face as he left, and Indie was surprised to see that Carol's cheeks were also damp.

“That poor man has been beating himself up for a year because of what happened,” Carol said. “Now he has a chance to find peace, knowing that it wasn't just some suppressed insanity of his own that made him do it. We're not only going to nail Connors, Indie, we're helping people recover their lives.” She wiped her eyes quickly. “Now, you’ve got something for me?”

Indie produced the bottle. “I took this from my mom about one o'clock this morning,” she said. “She sat up suddenly from a deep sleep, dug it out of her purse and was going to drink it, but I managed to take it away. She mumbled something about drinking it, then going to see Dr. Connors someplace.” Indie had decided that she didn’t want to even try to explain Beauregard.

Carol looked at the bottle. “Has it been out of your control since you took it from your mother?” she asked.

Indie shook her head in the negative. “No, I hid it in a cabinet and didn't take it out until this morning. There was no one else in the house, and I was awake all night, so no one could have tampered with it.”

“Okay, good, so we've got a simple chain of custody. I want you to take it over to the same lab you went to yesterday; I'll call and tell them what to do with it. You get a receipt from whoever you hand it to, and bring that back to me, okay?”

Indie agreed, and left. She took the bottle to the lab, where a chemist gave her a signed receipt, and took that straight back to Carol. Once she handed it over, she went home again, and found her mother sitting there with tears in her eyes.

“Mom? What's wrong?” she asked, but Kim only shook her head as she wiped at her eyes.

“I'm okay,” she said. “I just finished the book, and the ending made me cry.”

Indie stared at her. “You read that book in two hours? It took me all night!”

Kim waved it off. “Speed reading course, two years ago, before you came back from college. It was great, you should try it.”

Indie rolled her eyes. “I don't have that much time for reading,” she said.

“You would if you took the course,” Kim replied. “I usually read at least one book a day, now. It's very relaxing.”

“I'll bet. You need the bathroom or anything?”

Kim shook her head. “No, not right now. But I could use another cup of coffee.”

Indie went to get it for her, and was bringing it back when her phone rang. It was Carol Spencer.

“Hello?” Indie said.

“Indie, we're looking good! The lab says the bottle you brought in contained four ounces of pure, two hundred proof grain alcohol with ten milligrams of zolpidem tartrate dissolved in it. I've been thinking about our next step, and I'd like your mother to be seen by another hypnotist. I've talked to a psychiatrist who is very knowledgeable and is willing to see her right away. What I'm hoping is that he can actually recover what posthypnotic suggestions she was given, so we can get right down to what Connors was up to. Can you get here there in the next hour or so?”

“Sure,” Indie said. “Gimme the address.”

“Great! It's Dr. Annalee Stratton, and she's over at one thousand Greenbriar Avenue. She’s expecting you any time, so just go on over as soon as you can.”

“You got it!” Indie hung up the phone and said, “Mom, I'll make this to go. You're finally going to see a shrink!”

Kim smiled. “Oh, how exciting!”

Indie rolled her eyes once again, but found a travel cup for her mom's coffee, then made another one for herself. They left the house a few minutes later, after a stop in the bathroom for each of them, and arrived at Dr. Stratton's office after a thirty-minute drive.

The receptionist there was thin and brunette, and ushered them right into the doctor's office as soon as she got Kim's name. She had Kim sit in a recliner, and offered Indie a straight-backed chair, then left. Dr. Stratton came in a moment later, a lovely woman who reminded Indie of one of old porcelain dolls from the early twentieth century. Indie introduced them.

“Hi,” she said, “I'm Dr. Stratton. Ms. Spencer has given me a pretty clear description of the situation, and I'll be honest and tell you that I'm appalled that any medical professional would abuse the power of his position this way. We'll be placing you under hypnotic induction, into the 'trance state,' as it's called. In this state, we should be able to direct you to recall things that you were instructed to forget or conceal, and remove that injunction so that you can tell us about them. Is that okay with you?”

Kim smiled. “Yes, certainly. I understand I tried to do some strange things last night, and I'd love to know what it was I was trying to do. Right now, I can't remember anything.”

Dr. Stratton nodded. “That's because you were instructed not to remember when you're awake. Let's begin, then, shall we? What I want you to do is get yourself as comfortable in the chair as you can, and then we're going to begin.”

Indie held up a hand. “Should I leave the room? I mean, I don't need to be hypnotized...”

Dr. Stratton smiled. “You can stay if you wish. What we're going to do is directed at your mother, and shouldn't affect you at all. You may find yourself relaxing, but you'll be in control of yourself at all times, both of you. All we're really doing is guiding your mother into a relaxation technique that will remove some of her inhibitions, especially any artificial ones from the dentist. Ready?”

Kim nodded with a smile, and Dr. Stratton began speaking softly.

“What I want you to do is simply relax and listen to my voice. You're sitting comfortably and relaxing, and that's all you need to be doing right now...”

Indie watched, fascinated, as her mother's face relaxed completely. Kim usually wore a slight smile, as if life were a joke that she alone could understand, but even that little smile slowly faded away as she listened to the doctor speaking in a soft monotone.

“...feeling like you're sort of floating, you can't even feel the chair under you. Your mind is relaxed, and relaxation is good, oranges are good, too, and sometimes you can find yourself riding in an orange car, riding into further and deeper relaxation...”

Indie stared at the hypnotist, who grinned at her and held a finger to her lips but never stopped speaking in that soft tone. Indie realized that the sudden odd comments were probably designed to disorient Kim's mind for a moment, help her let go of the outside world so that she could focus on what was going on inside of her mind. She was amazed, and watched her mother even more closely.

Kim was completely relaxed by this point, and Indie saw that even the few age lines she had were gone from her face. The doctor spoke softly for a few more moments, and then said, “Kim, I want you to pay attention to me, now. We're going to go back to yesterday and your visit to the dentist. You're in the dentist's office, do you see it?”

“Yes,” Kim said. “I'm there.”

“Good, now, the dentist is there with you. Tell me what he's saying.”

“He says I'm going to be hypnotized so I won't feel any pain, and then he'll give me a shot so it won't hurt later.”

“Okay, very good. Now, he's starting the hypnosis process. Tell me what he's saying.”

“He's saying I should relax and just listen. He says a lot of things, and then he says I can't feel any pain, and to open my mouth.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He says my cavity is bad, and I should have come in sooner. He's drilling, and he says that he can save my tooth. I can't feel the drill, but I can hear it, and he says he's got to give me a shot so it won't hurt later. I can feel the shot, but it doesn't hurt. He waits a little while and then he's drilling again, and he says the drilling is sort of like sex, and asks me if I like sex, and I say I do, and he says he's going to give me a bottle of medicine and I should drink it around the middle of the night and come see him, so we can have some great sex.”

Dr. Stratton looked alarmed. “And what did he say after that?”

“He says I won't remember that we want to have sex, but I'll wake up around one and drink the bottle, and then I should go to the night club on 18th Street and he'll meet me there and we can have sex. He says he wants to show me what great sex feels like, because he can tell I never had it. He says, no matter what, I shouldn't let anything stop me from getting there, because then I'll never know how good it is.”

Dr. Stratton looked at Indie, her eyes wide. “Did it bother you when he said those things?”

“No, I know it should, but it doesn't. I'm just thinking it would be nice to know what great sex feels like.”

“And what did he say after that?”

“He says I'm done and I'm going to wake up, and I won't remember anything he told me but I'll wake up at one and drink the bottle and then I'll come to the night club and see him. He says it's time for me to wake up, and I wake up. My mouth is numb from the shot and he says I'm all done and he'll see me next time and then I go out and Indie and I leave. We go to the lab and get my blood drawn again.”

“Okay, Kim, when I tell you to wake up, you'll still remember everything he told you, and everything we've talked about today. When I count to three, you'll be wide-awake and you'll remember everything. One—two—three! Wake up, Kim.”

Kim's eyes opened, and she suddenly looked normal. She looked at Dr. Stratton, and then at Indie, and she said, “Oh, that horrible man!” She began to cry, then, and Indie went to put an arm around her.

“He wanted me to go and meet him, I remember now. He said he'd be waiting for me, and I was actually going to go! Oh, dear Lord, why would I do that?”

“Kim,” Dr. Stratton said, “it isn't your fault. You couldn't have resisted him. I don't know what was in that shot, but I'm certain it was more than just Novocaine because you should have been able to reject the things he was telling you. Under normal hypnotic induction, you would have been able to, and probably would have awakened and stormed out of there. He was obviously using some sort of drug, and it was probably a dose of the zolpidem. Injected into the tissues of the mouth, it would go straight to the bloodstream in no time flat, and apparently it makes your suggestibility even greater, while eliminating normal inhibitions.”

Indie looked at the doctor. “So, that's it? We can prove now that he's doing this?”

The doctor looked at her, and frowned. “Well, unfortunately, this is only one case, and it would be his word against hers as to what really happened in there. I can testify, but his lawyers would get other experts to testify that what I'm saying isn't proven by medical science, and they'd be right. We need more than just this, but I'm sure it's going to help. I'll write up a report and fax it to the attorney right now.”

“What about me?” Kim asked. “Am I out from under him now, or can he still make me do things?”

“In a case like this, his power over you comes from you not realizing that he has it,” Dr. Stratton said. “Now that you know, I don't think there's anything else he can do. He probably thinks it didn't work, since you didn't show up last night, and I'm sure that's happened before, so I doubt he'll even try to contact you again, but if he does, you'll be aware and able to resist him.”

Indie and Kim left, and drove to Carol's office to let her know what had been learned. By the time they got there, she'd already gotten the doctor's report, and they talked it over for a few minutes.

“I've just gotten a court order for Carl Morris to go to Dr. Stratton today, as well. If she can break through and find out what he was told, then that would be two cases, and with all of the depositions I'm getting today, I think we can get Connors arrested and held, at least, while we work on developing the case. That's what I'm out to do this morning.”

They thanked her for working so hard, and then went back to the house. Kim called Grace, Sam's mother, to let her know what they had found out, and Grace was horrified. They talked for a while, and were still talking when Sam called a bit later.

“Hey, baby,” he said.

“Hey,” Indie replied. “Well, Mom tried to go out in the middle of the night. She took a little bottle out of her purse and tried to drink it, and then she was supposed to go and meet Connors for sex. He'd told her to drink the bottle around one this morning, and that she wasn't to let anything stop her from going to meet him. Sam, that scared me; she was supposed to do anything to get to him, and I would imagine that would even mean hurting someone who tried to stop her! I took the bottle from her and Carol had it analyzed this morning, and it was full of alcohol and zolpidem, so we've got something, at least. Then this morning, I took Mom to a shrink who hypnotized her, and that's how we know what she was told to do.”

“Dear God,” Sam said. “God, baby, she might have hurt you without even knowing what she was doing!”

“Yeah, but—Sam, it was really weird. She started to drink the bottle, and then she just froze, and she looked at me and said I should take it away from her, but it was like it wasn't her talking, y'know? I asked if she was okay, and she said it wasn't her talking, it was Beauregard, and that Mom was gone in her mind somewhere.”

Sam sighed. “Then, for once, I'm thankful she's a split personality nutcase! Beauregard may not be real, but he might have saved your life anyway! Now that we know, though, we've got something. Hopefully, that'll get some attention from the prosecutor, and we may be able to nail this bastard.”

“Carol says it's not enough. She's going to have Carl taken to see the psychiatrist today, too, to see if she can find out what his hypnotic instructions were, and what really happened that night his family was killed. I'm hoping he can handle it, Sam, if it turns out he really did do it.”

Sam was quiet for a moment. “We've talked about it,” he said, “and Carl knows he probably was the one who was using the tomahawk, but that it wasn't something he would actually do if he were in his own mind. Dr. Connors is the murderer in his case. I don't know what on earth the motive could have been, but somehow, whatever he told Carl to do, it resulted in him killing his family. He knows that, now, and if he can find out what that was, it should be enough to let him live with what happened, I think.”

“I hope so,” Indie said. “He seems like such a nice man, it's almost impossible to believe he could have done this.”

“That's the thing, babe, he couldn't have. But the thing that Connors created by removing all of his inhibitions could, because it wouldn't know any better. Carl wasn't the killer; he was the weapon Connors used to kill those people. I just want to know why, but it could be just that they wanted to stop him from doing whatever it was he was really supposed to do.”

“God, this is like a horror movie, like Silence of the Lambs or something. It's too weird to even comprehend.”

“Yeah, it is,” Sam said. “Listen, I love you, and Carol is going to be trying to get enough to get me out of here today, so let's hope she can, okay?”

“I love you, too, Sam, and believe me, my fingers are crossed and I'm praying. I think I'm going to ask Anita if Kenzie can just stay down there again tonight; this is too intense, I don't want her to sense everything I'm feeling right now.”

“That might be a good idea, sweetheart. If you talk to her, tell her I love her and miss her, okay?”

“I will. Love you!”

“Love you, too, babe. Bye for now.”

“Bye.”

She had gone into the kitchen when she took the call, so she went back to the living room then, to check on her mother. Kim was sitting upright on the couch, and she had an odd look on her face.

“Mom?” Indie asked. “You okay?”

Kim looked at her and shook her head slowly. “No. Beauregard just told me that there's something bad coming, and that we need to be together for the rest of the day. He says we should be ready to do something terrible, because we may have to, but he won't tell me what it is.”

9

Sam and Carl were eating lunch when Carl's name was called. He stuffed the last bite of his bologna sandwich into his mouth and went to where Marilee was waiting at the cellblock door. He spoke to her for a moment, then turned and gave Sam a thumbs-up, before putting his hands behind his back and letting her put cuffs on him.

Sam had told him that Carol was planning to have him taken to a hypnotist, and that he might find out what Connors had done to him, and what had really happened the night his family had died. Carl, who was a religious man, had asked Sam to pray with him, and they'd spent the hour before lunch on their knees together in their cell. Sam had prayed that Carl would be able to cope with what he learned, but Carl had prayed aloud for his family to forgive him for what he'd done, and for God to let them know that it wasn't truly he who had done it.

Sam had cried with him as they prayed.

With Carl gone from the cellblock, Sam watched the other inmates closely, but none of them seemed inclined to bother him. He went to one of the men and asked to borrow a pen and paper, then sat down at one of the tables and began to write. A new song had begun to form in his head, and he wanted to get it down on paper before he could forget it.

It was a love song to Indie, but it was more than that. His time in prayer had given him a perspective that he hadn't had before, and he wrote a song that not only spoke of his love for her, but of his prayers for God to take care of her, and of her prayers to bring him home. (Click to listen)

If only I could hold you in these lonely arms of mine, he wrote,

And shelter you from all the world, and more,

Then I'd be king of all there is, a Monarch in the land,

And you'd be all that I'd be living for,

But as it is, my arms are here, and you're so far from me,

So I bow down each night, and then I pray,

For God to keep you safe for me,

Send comfort in His love,

Until He brings me home to you to stay…

There was more, and he sat there and wrote, praying as he did so that God would guide the pencil, that this would be the song that would tell Indie how much he loved her, and how much she meant to him. When it was finished, he was amazed that it had come out of him, and then he prayed once more, a prayer of thanks to God for allowing him to write something so beautiful.

* * * * *

Carl was loaded into a van with Detective Kennedy and four officers to escort him to Dr. Stratton's office, though none of them believed for a moment that he would give any resistance. Every officer and jailer who had dealt with him had reached their own conclusion that, somehow, this man was not truly guilty of the crime for which he was incarcerated, and each of them had said their own form of prayer that the truth would come out and that Carl Morris would be able to put this horrible thing behind him.

The ride wasn't long, and the van was taken to a back entrance at the doctor's office, so that people on the street and in her lobby wouldn't stare at Carl. He had two pairs of cuffs on, because of his great physical strength, and his hands were also chained down to his waist. His ankles were linked with shackles, short enough that he could only take baby steps. If he had tried to run, they would have tripped him before he could go ten feet.

Carl wasn't going to run, though. He was on the way to find out what had truly transpired that night, and that was the thing he wanted to know more than anything else in the world.

He was taken inside through the back door, and then led into Dr. Stratton's office. At her instructions, his restraints were removed, but as they had to, the four guards stood there with their hands on their guns, ready to kill him if he showed any sign of violence. Kennedy stood right beside Carl, but the doctor had the other officers stand as far back against the wall as they could, and then she spoke to Carl.

“Hello, Carl,” she said, “I'm Dr. Stratton. What we're planning to do is hypnotize you, and take you back to what happened in Dr. Connors' office last week. After that, we'll go to the night your family was killed, and I'll help you remember what really happened. Are you ready?”

Carl smiled at her. “Yes, Ma'am. I've made my peace with God and my family, but I still need to know what I did, and why I did it.”

She smiled back. “I can certainly understand that,” she said. “All right, then, let's begin.”

She started speaking softly to him, and after a few moments, his eyes slowly closed. Like Kim, his face softened, and within a few minutes, Detective Kennedy thought that Carl looked younger, almost like a child, as the lines of his face smoothed in relaxation. The induction took some time, but after about ten minutes, Carl was fully under and no one there could have doubted it.

“Carl,” the doctor said, “I want you to go back to when you went to see the dentist last week. Are you there in the dentist's office?”

“Yes. He had me sit in the dental chair.”

“Okay, now, he uses hypnosis, so he's going to hypnotize you. Can you see that happening?”

“Yes. He's telling me to relax, that I won't feel anything. He says I should just listen to him, to everything he says.”

“Okay. What does he say after that?”

“He says he's got to give me one shot so my mouth won't hurt later, and that it won't hurt me. I feel it, but it doesn't hurt and then he says he has to wait a few minutes before he can clean my teeth, so he stops talking for a little while.”

“And when he starts talking again, what does he say?”

“He says my teeth are in pretty good shape, and then he asks me if I like him, and I say yes, I do. He says if I like him, then I should want to do things for him, and would I do things for him, and I say yes.”

Dr. Stratton looked at Kennedy, who was staring at Carl. She held a finger to her lips to remind him to be silent, and he nodded.

“Carl,” she said, “what does he say after that?”

“He says he needs me to do him a big favor, and would I do it for him, and I say yes. He says his wife is trying to kill him and he needs me to go and stop her, but she's so dangerous that the only way I can stop her is to tear her head off, and he asks me if I'm strong enough to do that. I say yes, and he says he's going to give me a bottle of some medicine, and I should drink it around midnight. He says don't let anyone see the bottle and make sure I get rid of it after I drink it. He says I shouldn't let anyone see me drinking it or going to her house, no matter what I have to do, and then I should go to her house and he'll meet me there and let me in. I should go to her bedroom and tear her head off while she's sleeping. He says then he'll let me out and I can go home and go to sleep and I won't remember any of it.”

Dr. Stratton had tears in her eyes, but her voice was soft, yet firm. “What does he say after that?”

“He says he's done, and I'm going to wake up and I won't remember what we talked about, but that I'll get up and drink the bottle and then I'll go to her house. He says he knows I know where it is because she works with me sometimes at the Mary Williams home and I've given her rides before.”

“And what does he say next?”

“He tells me to wake up and I do, and then I go home.”

She stared at him for a moment, shaking her head in disbelief. “Carl, now we're going to that night, and you’re in bed sleeping, but suddenly you wake up. You're going to see everything that happened after you woke up, and tell me about it, but you won't get upset, no matter what happens. Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do when you wake up?”

“I go downstairs and I get the bottle where I put it in my desk, and I drink it.”

“And what do you do after that?”

“I go to the door and open it and start to leave, but my son comes out of his room and asks me where I'm going.”

“What do you do then?”

“I remember that I'm not supposed to let anyone see me go, and I turn around and go to him and hit him.”

The doctor was trembling, and Detective Kennedy was staring in shock. The other deputies were all standing there with their mouths open. “What happens then, Carl?”

“He starts yelling that I'm hurting him, and I hear his mother and sister coming, and I remember that I can't let anyone see or let anything stop me, so I take my tomahawk off the wall where I keep it, and I hit him with it. He falls down and his head is bleeding, but he's trying to get up, so I hit him again with it, and then my wife and daughter are there and they're screaming, so I start hitting them, too. I hit my daughter in the head and she falls down and doesn't move, and my wife is screaming at me and hitting me, so I hit her, too, I hit her in the chest, and I hit her again and again...”

Carl's breath was coming fast, suddenly, as he described what had happened, and he had tears running down his face. “I hit her again and again, and then I hit my daughter again and again and I can't stop, and I hit my son again and again, and I know I need to stop but I can't stop, and then I hear a voice and it says stop, to go and lock the doors and go to sleep, so I stop and I lock all the doors, then I lay down and then I wake up in the jail, and someone told me what I'd done...”

He was becoming agitated. “Carl, relax, that's all over now, just relax. Carl, can you tell me whose voice you heard, who told you to lock the doors and go to sleep?”

Carl was beginning to breathe slower, and he seemed to think about the question for a moment. He leaned his head one way and then the other, and then he said, “I think it was God.”

Dr. Stratton looked at Kennedy, but he was obviously shaken. She turned back to Carl, and said, “Okay, Carl, let's come back to today, now. You're going to wake up in a moment, but you're going to remember everything we've talked about. You won't be upset about it, but you'll remember it all. When I count to three, Carl, you're going to wake up. One—two—three.”

Carl's eyes slowly opened, as tears continued to fall down his cheeks. He looked at the doctor and smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

Kennedy told Sr. Stratton that he wanted a copy of her report, and she promised to send it to him within the hour. He and the deputies chained Carl again, and led him out to the van. They drove him back to the Detention Center in silence, and shortly he was back in the cellblock with Sam.

He told Sam all of it, and Sam sat in the cell with him as he wept anew.

“Well, that tells us what he really wanted was for you to kill his wife,” Sam said, “but by telling you that you couldn't let anyone see you go, he caused the deaths of your family. Carl, I know this is hard on you, but you've got to accept the fact that you were not their killer; Connors was. You were just the weapon he aimed irresponsibly.”

Carl nodded. “Yes, I know. I just hope they can bring him to justice, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Me, too.”

* * * * *

Indie had gone down to the Mitchells' house to ask if Kenzie could stay over again, and Anita had assured her it was no problem. “The twins are in heaven,” she said, “they're getting all their wildness out! This is good for us, too!”

She told Kenzie that Sam loved and missed her, and promised to give her love to him when she talked to him again, then went back to the house. Her mother was still there, and they sat and talked for a bit, then Kim asked about something to eat. It was well past lunchtime, so she and Indie went into the kitchen and made chicken noodle soup together.

When they'd eaten, they went back to the living room and found a movie. The two of them sat on the couch, mother and daughter, and laughed their hearts out at Adam Sandler's adventures as a shoe repairman who learns the true meaning of “walking in another man's shoes.”

Indie's phone rang at just before 4 p.m., and she looked to see that it was Carol calling.

“Hello?”

“Indie, we're making some serious progress,” Carol said. “I've got Will Burton, the deputy prosecutor, ready to sit down and listen to everything in the morning. I tried to get him today, but he's been in court all day and won't give me the time until tomorrow, but we got Carl's hypnosis report today, and it shows that Connors tried to make him kill Mrs. Connors, but—oh, God, it's just too horrific to go into. The poor man did kill his family, but he couldn't possibly have stopped himself.”

“Oh, that's awful,” Indie said. “But will he be held responsible?”

“Not if I can help it,” Carol replied. “I'm out to hang Alex Connors for it, and for his wife's murder, too. The good news is, I'm pretty sure we can get Sam out in the morning, and back to you!”

“Carol, that would be wonderful! Let me know, okay?”

“I will, as soon as I know. Oh, wait! I wanted to tell you, I talked to Albert Corning a bit ago! He wanted to let me know that his wife is slowly regaining some of her memory, and I got to speak to her doctor and let her know that we've learned about Connors through Carl and your mother, and she said she'd already begun the deprogramming process, based on things Sam told her. Mrs. Corning will probably be able to come home within a few days. I just thought you'd want to know that. Bye!”

She hung up, and Indie let herself breathe a sigh of hope. “That was Carol,” she told her mother. “She says the prosecutor is going to look at all of this tomorrow, and there's a good chance Sam will be released. The other man, Carl, it turns out he killed his family, but only because of what Dr. Connors did to him. I don't know the details, yet, but we'll find out tomorrow.”

Kim smiled sadly. “When I think that if you hadn't taken precautions, I might have hurt you—Indie, I feel so sorry for that man. I don't know what he's gone through, but I know how I'd feel if I'd done something like that. It would be devastating.”

Indie nodded. “I know. If I woke up and found out I'd done something to Kenzie...” She let the thought trail off, because there was nothing suitable to say.

Sam called a little after six. “Hey, babe,” she said as she answered. “Have you talked to Carol today?”

“No,” he sighed. “She was hoping she might get me out of here today, but I guess it isn't going to happen.”

“Well, I talked to her a little while ago, and she said she's got a meeting with the prosecutor in the morning. She think she's going to be able to convince him to arrest Alex Connors, and drop charges against you, and then she's going after Carl's charges. She wants to have Connors held responsible for that, too, and hopes to get Carl released, and Annie Corning is already showing signs of improvement and getting her memory back.”

Sam sighed. “Well, that's something, at least. Carl told me what happened with the hypnotist, and it's helping him, but he still feels some responsibility.”

“That's understandable,” she said. “It's got to be hard to realize that you did something so terrible, even if you couldn't have kept from it because of something some evil person did to you. I mean, how could you ever accept completely that it wasn't your fault? I know if it was me, I'd be thinking that I should have been strong enough to stop, no matter what had been done to me.”

“That's what he's going through, I'm sure. It's just that part of us that thinks we're always in control; when we find out that it's possible for someone else to make us do things so totally against our own natures, it makes us wonder what kind of evil we're capable of on our own. If we're so weak that someone can use a drug to make us do things against our will...”

“I did a little research,” Indie said, “and to me, it looks like Connors stumbled across a method of using hypnotic suggestions to actually direct the behaviors of his victims when they're under the influence of the zolpidem, and since those behaviors are even more intense and uninhibited when alcohol is involved, he figured out that giving them potent alcohol along with it would make them even more likely to do what he wanted them to do. If I were in a college psych class, I'd start writing a paper on it! This is incredibly sinister, but I'd almost bet the government adopts it.”

Sam felt a chill. “That's terrifying,” he said. “Imagine being able to turn everyday people into assassins or spies, without them even knowing it. I can see Harry Winslow now when he hears about it. 'Hmmm,' he'll say, 'hmmm.' I like Harry, but he's as devious a spy as ever lived, and if he can think of a way to use this to make the country safer, he'd do it.”

Indie laughed. “True, but at least he'd only use it for good. Connors was using it to make himself feel like a god, and a man can't get any more evil than that!”

“I know, babe, I know. And speaking of feeling like a god, Carl says that after he killed his family, there was a voice that told him to lock his doors and go to sleep. He says he thought it was the voice of God, but my gut says it was someone a lot more human. I wish there was a way to find out who else could have been there; I'd just about lay odds that Connors was there, somehow, but there's no way to prove it. Carl didn't see whoever was talking to him, so we'll probably never know.”

Indie said, “It had to have been whoever called in the tip, Sam. If it was Connors, maybe they can unscramble the voice and prove it that way. I know there's ways to do that, depending on how it was altered.”

“They said they were trying, but hadn't had any luck and weren't sure they could. I'm gonna suggest they check traffic stops, too; sometimes when people are nervous after a crime, they do things that get them stopped, and once in a while, we just get lucky and they get pulled over for a bad taillight or something.”

“Sam,” Indie said, “Herman can check that—and what about that neighborhood, do they have cameras up on the lights out there? If I could find a picture of Connors' car out there that night, that might help nail him.”

Sam smiled into the phone. “Babe, that's brilliant! West Garvin Court, that's in a ritzy neighborhood, and they'd have cameras up because it's a residential area with a lot of kids, and some main streets go through there. You can also check the security companies, see if any of the neighbors use video security. Any camera that could show Connors' car anywhere in that area around that time that night, and the coincidence would be too much to dismiss!”

Indie was excited. She'd been wishing there was something more she could do to help prove the case against Connors was legitimate, and this might be it. What were the odds, she figured, that someone else would have showed up at Carl's house and told him to lock the doors and go to sleep? No one but Connors would even know he'd respond to such suggestions, and anyone else would surely have screamed and run out the door.

She and Sam said their love words and ended their call, and Indie told her mother what she was going to do, and they went to the office. Kim wasn't very computer literate, so Indie had to explain as she went along.

“Herman, my search bot, can get into just about any database around here, because we've had to do it at one time or another. I'm telling him to check all of the stoplight cameras within two miles of Carl's house between midnight and three AM that morning. He'll get me all of the photos they took, and I can scan through them to see if I can spot Connors' car, which is a...” She looked at a quick report she'd had Herman do for her, and read, “two thousand fifteen Jaguar F-Type Coupe. That's a pretty distinctive car, so it shouldn't be too hard to spot.”

She tapped a few more keys. “I'm also telling him to get into all of the local security companies that offer video security, and check to see if any of Carl's neighbors have it. Most people have cameras facing the street, and the video is stored on a server so it can be checked later if necessary. If he finds a house on Carl's street that has it, he'll get me the links to their video storage, too.”

Kim watched, fascinated. “The thing I'm wondering,” she said, “is how can you tell the police you got this if you do find him? I mean, isn't this illegal without a warrant?”

Indie smiled. “It would be,” she said, “but remember that case where Sam stopped the terrorist? He was granted a Homeland Security Badge and Security Clearance over that, and Harry likes Sam, so he let him keep it. That means that if I find something Sam can use in an investigation, and it turns out we need it to be admissible in court, all we have to do is let Harry know, and he'll arrange a subpoena or a warrant for it. Then I can have Herman generate a report dated after that, and it's good to go.”

Kim nodded. “So it's illegal when you do it, but Harry makes it legal to use it, right?”

Indie laughed. “Something like that, yeah.” She tapped a few more keys, and Herman got busy. “Okay, this is going to take a couple of hours. Let's go find something to do.”

The two of them went back to the living room, and Indie brought a bag of chips and some soft drinks in so they could relax and find a movie. They looked through the list, and found Maleficent, which appealed to them both, and decided to watch it.

They enjoyed the movie, and the time together. Indie and her mother had a somewhat tumultuous relationship most of the time, but Kim was a bit subdued after realizing how closely she'd come to trying to harm her daughter, and they were getting along pretty well. Indie was glad, and was enjoying the time while she could; she was sure it wouldn't last long.

When the movie ended, they went to the office to see how Herman had done. There was a list of cameras on the screen, with hundreds of links that would allow Indie to see what each of them had seen during the time period she had chosen. She clicked the first one, and saw a photo taken at midnight at one of the intersections. There was one car visible, but it wasn't a Jaguar so she went to the next one.

She clicked the link, and looked at another image. This time there were three cars visible, but again, none were Jaguars. She closed it and went to the next.

“We're gonna be at this a while,” Kim said, and Indie nodded as she went to the next link.

10

Orville Kennedy was a good cop, and he knew it. He'd been a cop for one force or another for almost thirty years, and his record of arrests was one that was envied by every other cop in Denver County, and probably in the whole state, so he felt justified in feeling that he was good at his job.

Every once in awhile, though, a cop ran across a case that made him feel completely inadequate, and this Carl Morris case had him almost ready to hit the bottle, something he hadn't done in more than ten years. He was sitting in his chair, the one he considered his own chair, the one that was big and worn in and comfortable, and that no one else ever sat in. His wife Jeanie wouldn't sit in it, and when his son Travis had been around, he wouldn't sit in it; it was Orville's, and everyone knew it. It was the chair he sat in when the job was getting to him. He could sit there and let all of the stress sort of leak out, slowly, and after a few hours, he could put it behind him and let it go.

This case wasn't letting go.

He'd known, the night he'd gone into that house and seen the bloody mess, that there was something not right about it. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a family massacred, not the first time he'd seen it done by a family member and not even the first time he'd found the perp so drunk that he seemed to be in a coma at the scene.

It was, however, the first time he'd seen such a thing after an anonymous tip from someone who took pains not to be identifiable. In crimes like this, anyone who knew enough to call it in was usually crying, screaming, panicking—they weren't under control of themselves enough to take the time to get on a computer or use some smart phone app to disguise their voices. In Orville's experience, the only ones who could do such a thing were people who not only knew about the crime, but were in some manner involved in it. For such a tip to come in meant that there was a person out there who knew that Carl Morris had hacked his family to death, and had done nothing to try to prevent it, done nothing to try to get help before it was too late, and wanted Morris to be seen as the only perpetrator.

Only an accomplice or co-conspirator would want that, and this one fact had troubled Orville ever since he'd walked into that house. Someone knew, but did nothing to try to save those people.

As he'd done his job and investigated the case, there was nothing to explain that to him, and nothing he found could explain why a well known health nut and teetotaler, a man who was considered a model husband and father who loved his family more than anything, would suddenly get himself dead drunk and take some drugs, then decide in the middle of the night to murder the people who were most important to him in the whole world—and not kill himself in the process.

That was it; when people murdered their families in any way similar to this, they always took their own lives, as well, but Carl hadn't even tried to. From everything they could tell from the crime scene, he had murdered his family, then locked his doors and simply laid down right beside them and passed out cold. The fingerprints on the doors showed that he had blood on his hands when the locks were secured, and that was another odd thing: why weren't the doors secured before the crime? Most people would have locked them first, so that no one could come in and interfere.

These factors bothered Orville, and they had bothered him even before he had gone to the psychiatrist with Carl and his escort that afternoon. He'd heard about the escort just before it was to begin, and since he didn't have anything scheduled at that moment, he decided to ride along and see if any new facts actually came to light. All he'd known was that Carl's lawyer wanted him to be hypnotized to try to learn more about what had happened that night, and if anything new came out, Orville wanted to hear it. The lawyer hadn't objected to his presence at the interview, so he'd gone along.

He reached into his pocket, took out another cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers. He'd gone along, and he couldn't make up his mind whether he would have done so, if he'd had any idea what he was going to hear.

Carl had done it, from the purely physical standpoint of wielding the weapon and delivering the fatal injuries that claimed the lives of his wife and children. Of that, there was no doubt, and while the report from the psychiatrist could not be considered a confession for the purposes of prosecution, there was no doubt that it detailed precisely what happened during the relatively few moments that were required to bring their lives to their grisly ends. Carl Morris had first struck his son, and when the boy cried out, he had reached for what he knew would be a deadly weapon and used it to kill the boy, and then to kill his daughter and his wife. He had known, at that moment, that he was silencing them permanently, which meant that he was killing them.

However, in the larger sense, Carl hadn't even been there. The man who was Carl Morris had been sent into some dimension where he had no connection to reality, while some creature that had not existed before that morning took control of his body and committed the most horrendous of crimes. Orville, because he'd felt all along that there was something about the case that just wasn’t right, had no problem accepting this fact.

However, the existence of that creature meant that there was a creator that had brought it into existence, and after listening to what he'd heard from Carl under the skilled direction of the hypnotist, he had no doubt that the creator was Alexander Connors.

He'd called Carl's lawyer to ask if there was any other evidence of Connors' culpability, and she had forwarded to him a set of reports and depositions that detailed dozens of arrests that were likely the direct result of Connors' manipulations. The more he read, the more he was appalled and shocked and enraged.

There were cases of women who were apparently “programmed”—he couldn't think of a better word—to meet Connors for sex, and many of the women were quite young. There were people who did incredibly bizarre things after their own treatments by Connors, and many of them had done things that were illegal and dangerous. Some of them had done things so devastating to their own psyches that they had ended up taking their own lives.

Orville had dealt with many evil people throughout his long career, and he had put many of them away in prison, even seen a couple go to death row. Sitting in his chair that night, he couldn't think of one of them who was more deserving of justice than Alex Connors.

The last report he read was from the psychiatrist, and detailed the hypnotic debriefing of a woman who had actually volunteered to go and see the dentist. She was an attractive woman who did not look her age, according to the report and the attached photos, and Connors had taken the bait. She had been programmed to meet him for sex that night, and might have done so, but her daughter had taken precautions and chained her to a pipe so she couldn't get away. She had also been instructed to make sure no one stopped her from coming, but somehow, the daughter had managed to keep her from hurting herself or anyone else, and the two of them were prepared to testify against Connors if charges could be brought against him.

Orville was worried that the bastard was going to get away with it.

It was terribly hard, he knew, to prove that anyone might be able to cause you to commit a crime by using hypnosis. There had been a few such cases, most of them long ago, but the general consensus today was that a person would not do anything under hypnotic induction that he or she would not do in the waking state.

Orville was convinced that the general consensus would have to be revisited, because there was no doubt in his mind that Connors had found the way to do it. The drug in this case was already known to cause people to do things that were not normal for them, and that normal inhibitions should have prevented, but didn't; by giving people instructions under hypnosis that literally directed the things they would do and the inhibitions they would ignore, he could actually program them to commit any act he chose. Several of the women who had been his victims, even though they could not prove it at the time, had found themselves involved in sexual practices that left them scarred for life, and some had committed suicide after learning what they had done.

Connors had tried to program Carl Morris to kill his wife, and Orville had no doubt that if he had gotten out without his family seeing him, he almost certainly would have done exactly as he had been told to do—ripped Juliette Connors' head from her body.

Orville picked up the other report he'd gotten from the lawyer, the report on the toxicology scan of the private eye's blood. The drug that was found in his system meant that there was literally no way he could have gone to Mrs. Connors' house and killed her. He would not have been conscious enough to even walk, let alone carry out a complex plot. There was no doubt, based on that report alone, that Sam Prichard was set up, that he'd been carried to that house and left there beside the body, but that someone else had used his gun and fired the shot that killed the woman. Orville considered who could possibly have a motive for wanting Mrs. Connors dead, and the only suspect would be Dr. Connors.

Orville had been a cop for a long time, and one of the things he'd learned was that prosecutors didn't always see things the way cops did. The current prosecutor was one of those that Orville had butted heads with pretty often, and there were people walking around the streets in the county who, in Orville's opinion, should be serving long prison terms. Some of them had been up on much simpler charges, with far more concrete evidence against them, and yet, because “we might not get a conviction,” those charges had been dismissed, or never brought at all.

The lawyer was going to talk to Will Burton, a deputy prosecutor who had some actual cojones, but he would have to go to his boss before any charges could be filed. If the only evidence he had to work with was what was in these reports, Orville was afraid the head prosecutor would be afraid of failure and refuse to go after Connors. In order to give Burton what it would take, more evidence was needed, and the most powerful kind of evidence would be a statement by the perpetrator himself.

Orville had faced other such cases, before, where he needed at least a partial confession in order to make the charge stick. He'd gotten confessions, more than once, but he'd been warned that any further confessions that were obtained under the same methods could get him forced into retirement, no matter how well it worked in putting a perp behind bars.

He felt that bringing Alex Connors to justice would be worth being retired. He sat there for a few more minutes and thought that over, made sure that he really felt that way, and then he got up out of his chair and went to the bedroom. Jeanie was sitting up on the bed, reading as she did most nights. He kissed her and said, “Goin' out for a bit. Got something I need to take care of.”

She smiled up at him. “All right, honey,” she said. “I'm probably gonna go to sleep, pretty soon.”

He smiled back. “I'll try not to wake you when I come in.” He kissed her once more and walked out of the bedroom and out of the house. He got into his Ford Expedition and backed out of the driveway.

He knew Connors' address, from all of the things he'd read that day and evening. Each one had contained details of Connors home and office locations, as well as the apartment building he owned, which was where he'd been staying since moving out of the house he had shared with his wife. He drove straight there, expecting to find him at home since it was after eleven.

Sure enough, Connors' Jaguar was in the parking space for his apartment. There weren't any empty spaces, so Orville drove down to the next intersection and turned around, planning to park on the street out front. He had just pulled back onto the street when he saw the Jag's lights come on, and it backed out of its space and started down the street away from him.

Orville followed, using every trick in his long book to avoid being spotted. He let other cars get between them, counting on the Expedition's high stature to let him keep the Jag in view, and switched lanes periodically, just to make things look different in Connors' rear view mirror. He turned on his low-mounted fog lights once, when Connors turned a corner, then turned them off again at the next turn; all of these tricks were designed to keep a subject from realizing that a single vehicle was staying on his tail.

Connors seemed to have a destination in mind, Orville thought. At one point, when he was only the second car behind him, it looked like the dentist was on his cell phone, but Orville couldn't be sure. He just stayed on the Jag's trail, and waited to find out where the man was headed.

The Jag finally pulled into a parking lot at a bar. Orville thought it was a little odd that a man whose wife had just been murdered would be going out for a drink, but then he remembered that he'd tried to program that PI's mother-in-law to meet him for sex only the day after the murder, so maybe he shouldn't be so surprised.

He parked his car at the edge of the lot, then watched until Connors went inside. When he'd been in for a minute, Orville got out and sauntered toward the door, trying not to be noticeable. He went in, stood near the bar as his eyes adjusted, then scanned the bar in the big mirror until he spotted Connors.

The dentist was sitting near the back wall, at a table by himself. He seemed to be waiting for someone, and when a young woman entered a few moments later and immediately sat down at his table, he suspected that he was witnessing the beginning of one of Connors' drug-fueled rapes.

The girl seemed enchanted by Connors, smiling and reaching out to touch him. She didn't object when he grabbed her by her hair and pulled her into a kiss, and when it became obvious that he was touching her breast, she only giggled happily. Orville guessed the girl at being in her late teens or really early twenties, and just watching was making him angry and sickened.

Orville couldn't let it go on. He rose from where he'd been nursing a Coke at the bar, and walked straight to Connors' table and sat down opposite him.

Connors looked at him, surprised. “Is there something I can do for you?” he asked.

Orville nodded, and then took out his shield case and held it so Connors could see it. “Yeah, you can let this little girl go home.”

Connors smiled. He turned to the girl and asked, “Penny, do you want to go home?”

Penny laughed, a sultry laugh that shouldn't come from one so young. “Huh-uh, I wanna have fun! Let's go have fun!” She had her arms around Connors' neck, and was acting like a lovesick schoolgirl.

Orville leaned forward. “Look, you sick son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “Your game's over. We know it all, now, Connors, all about how you program people to do what you want with your hypnotism and the drugs you use, and we've got all the evidence we need. Tomorrow sometime, you're gonna be arrested, and when the Grand Jury gets done indicting you, I figure you're looking at a few hundred years in prison. Send the girl on her way, and then go home and stay there till we come for you.”

Connors stared at him, and Orville could see the man's mind racing like made. He started to speak a couple of times, but closed his mouth, and then it looked like some kind of resignation came over his face, like he was accepting that something he'd dreaded had finally come true.

“How?” he asked. “I've always covered my tracks. How did you figure it out?”

Orville snorted. “We didn't,” he said. “Some private eye did, and then his wife and her momma set you up for the big fall! Remember that little hottie you tried to set up for last night? She was the PI's mother-in-law, and they got her blood samples to prove you doped her up. And that little bottle of happy juice you gave her? Well, they tested that, too, and your ass is cooked once the prosecutor sees it all tomorrow morning.”

Connors stared at him. “They set me up?” he asked, incredulous. “They actually tried to set me up? How did they keep her from coming to me last night, did they keep her locked up all night?”

“Her daughter did, yeah, and then today they went to a real hypnotist, and got everything out of her. How she was supposed to meet you for sex, how she wasn't supposed to let anything stop her. And guess what they did after that? They got Carl Morris out of his cell, and took him down to that same doctor, and he told them all about how you wanted him to kill your wife, and how you told him not to let anyone know what he was doing. You son of a bitch, you made that poor man kill his own wife and kids with that crap, and if it's the last thing I ever do, I'm gonna see that you go down for that, instead of him!”

Connors sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you really think it's that easy?” he asked. “Do you really think I wouldn't have plans for when this might happen?” He turned to the girl. “Penny, this man is trying to rape you, and you don't want that. You need to scream for help.”

Penny leapt from her chair, and before Orville could react, she began to scream. “Help!” she screamed, pointing at Orville, “Help, he's trying to rape me! Help!”

A half-dozen men grabbed at Orville, and nobody even heard him trying to identify himself as a cop. He was thrown to the floor, and he heard Connors yell that someone should call the police, and he turned his head to look at the dentist, just in time to see him hand something to Penny and whisper into her ear. She nodded, and looked at Orville with a rage in her face, and then she screamed and launched herself at him, her hand raised, and Orville saw the long knife in her hand as she brought it down into his chest. The men who were holding him began to scream, then, but the knife went up and down, over and over, and the last thing Orville Kennedy saw before the blackness descended was that Connors was no longer there.

* * * * *

Connors wasn't as surprised as Orville had thought he would be. When you've created a way to become like a god on earth, there will always be those who want to destroy you, who want to stop you, and he knew that. It had been the same way back in college twenty years ago, when he'd first begun developing his techniques. He'd been given Adivol by a friend, who said it was awesome at making girls more cooperative, and when he'd seen just how effective it was in turning normally prudish girls, even the Jesus-freak girls, into raving nymphomaniacs, he realized that it had some sort of inhibition-deactivation effect. That had prompted him to do some research, which he originally planned to lead to his doctoral dissertation in psychology; however, his dissertation adviser had pushed him to move into other areas, and since his adviser was chair of the dissertation committee, he had decided to do as he was told.

His decision to go into dentistry had been fueled, in part, by his research. He wanted to go into a field that would allow him access to patients who would be amenable to both hypnosis and medication, and when an audited seminar on hypnosis promoted it as a leading form of anesthesia in dentistry, he'd been sold! That only required him to find ways to get the initial dose of Adivol into them, and he solved that by adding it to the Novocaine that he injected into the gums. By injecting it into the mouth, the zolpidem solution went almost instantly to the bloodstream.

Since the patient was already under hypnotic induction, he could bypass the sleep inducing function of the drug, and the patient would remain awake, though some of them seemed drowsy. They always blamed that on the effects of the Novocaine itself, so it never caused a problem. For almost twenty years, he'd used this technique to seduce the most beautiful women, milk wealthy clients for millions of dollars in fees for services they believed he'd rendered, though he often hadn't, and he'd even developed his techniques to the point that he could make people do literally anything he wanted them to do.

His first experiments with that had been incredible; he'd been attacked and beaten by a man who had followed his wife and found her meeting Connors at a motel room. He'd been enraged, but he was no match, physically, for his attacker, and so he seethed for weeks, planning an appropriate revenge.

The man ran a construction company, and had several projects going around the area, and Connors made it his business to learn all he could about them. His opportunity came almost two months later, when a man who worked with the attacker came in for a root canal. Connors had given him the drug, and carefully programmed him to take the additional dose the following morning at work, then follow his boss up onto the roof of the eight-story building they were working on. The attacker fell to his death, and there were apparently no witnesses.

Connors had realized then that he was almost a god and that he could do anything and get away with it. He had stepped up his experiments, then, adding in other things that he knew would increase his feeling of omnipotence. When a friend had come to him complaining that his business partner was about to reveal some things he had done that would probably lead to jail time, Connors programmed an older patient to go and shoot the partner dead. The killer was caught, sleeping in his car just outside the scene of the crime, and swore that he had no idea what had happened. Police could find no connection between the two, and when a psychiatrist had testified that the man honestly had no memory of what had happened, it had resulted in the killer being sent to a mental institution instead of standing trial.

Connors was invincible. He could eliminate any problem for anyone, and it wasn't long before he let a few trusted people know that he could do so. Over the past ten years, he had caused witnesses to disappear completely, made evidence vanish, and arranged for certain women to suddenly find a man who desired them irresistible. His fees were high, but he almost always delivered.

Sure, there were occasional problems, but he took care of them. When a couple of the women he'd chosen for himself woke up too soon and realized they were in bed with him, they had protested and even accused him of somehow forcing them, but that was why he always met them in public places. Witnesses and security tapes would show that they were not only willing to leave with him, but insistent. When they realized that, they dropped everything, and all he'd had to do was use his talents to make his wife let it go.

Juliette had been one of his most successful experiments. Beautiful, young and fairly rich, she had married him while he was still in college working on his psych degree, and then she had paid for his dental schooling. She had been one of the girls he had programmed to date him back in school, but when her money had come to light, he had continued programming her every time they met until she was certain that she was in love with him. Her family had never understood why she chose him, but once they were married, they had accepted him.

Unfortunately, she had slowly become less susceptible to his control. After the first few times he was caught with other women, she had stopped being as forgiving as he'd liked, and eventually they began to fight over his affairs. For a long time, she had almost ignored him, and it finally hit him that it was because he was finally wealthier than she was; that was when he began setting up his offshore accounts. He pretended to be a tax protester, but the truth was that he always paid the taxes on his income, then hid it so she couldn't get to it.

He'd known that divorce would be coming sooner or later, and he'd even thought more than once of just having her killed—but he actually did care for her, at least enough to avoid murdering her until it became necessary. When she started asking questions about his hidden accounts, it had been the last straw, and he'd planned it out carefully. He chose a patient who had already done some minor things for him, a strong and powerful man who could kill her quickly and easily. Carl Morris was a fairly simple man, and he took his programming easily.

Connors was so excited about getting Juliette out of the way that he decided to take a risk and go and watch. He'd gone to Carl's house, planning to follow him and make sure there weren't any complications, but there had been. He'd been parked just in front of the house next door, and he saw the front door start to open—but then it closed, and he'd wondered what was going on. He'd stepped out of his car, and that was when he heard the first scream.

He rushed to the door and found it half open, so he's pushed it a bit further to see if he could tell what was going on. Carl had his son down on the floor, and as Connors watched, he struck the boy in the head with a hatchet or something. A second later, a woman and a girl came running in and grabbed him, trying to stop him, but he struck them both savagely, hitting them over and over until they both were motionless and silent. He started to rise, and Connors knew that, in this condition, Carl would leave a trail a mile wide, even if he managed not to get stopped on the way to Juliette's place, so he decided to abort the plan.

He said, “Carl, stop. I want you to forget what you were supposed to do, and go and lock your doors, then lay down and go back to sleep. Lock your doors, Carl, and then go back to sleep, do you understand?”

Carl had not even looked his way. He nodded and said, “I'll lock the doors, then go to sleep,” and turned to shuffle to the front door. Connors backed away, and when he heard the door latch click shut, and then the deadbolts slide home, he turned and sprinted hurriedly to his car and went straight home.

He was trembling, but it wasn't with fear or remorse; he had just witnessed exactly how powerful he really was, and seeing those people die so violently had left him in a heightened state of excitement that he'd never known before. He got to his apartment and rushed inside, locking the door behind him and then sitting in a chair the rest of the night, reliving the experience over and over.

It was almost like he'd killed those people himself, but that was thrill he'd never known. He'd dreamed about it, but he'd always felt that it would be senseless to take any of the risks upon himself, so he had never allowed himself to act on it.

Then that stupid PI had showed up at his office, and he'd gotten angry. He knew it was the same one that had done the asset search his lawyer had faxed to him that morning, but he pretended to know nothing. When it dawned on him that this young punk actually knew what he was doing, what he was capable of, it had infuriated him. He needed a way to get rid of him, and suddenly it hit him that he could use the PI to his advantage.

When Sam had stood to go, Connors had risen behind him, and driven a hypodermic needle full of ketamine—one he kept prepared at all times—into his lower back. Sam had spun, of course, and tried to put up a fight, but the proximity to the kidneys had meant that the drug was in his bloodstream within seconds. Sam's bad hip had worked against him, and he'd fallen as he spun, and by the time he was able to start getting to his feet, he was so woozy and weak that he couldn't manage it, and a moment later he was out cold.

Connors had called for Gina, his hygienist and Becky, the receptionist, the two women who were his greatest successes. Both of them took daily reinforcements of his programming, and would automatically do anything he told them to do. He told the receptionist to tell anyone who came in that he was indisposed in the bathroom, and then had the hygienist help him carry Sam out to his car.

He spotted Sam's motorcycle, and called a friend who owed him a big favor. The motorcycle would be gone within minutes, and would cease to exist in only a few hours.

They drove straight to Juliette's house, and Connors had taken Sam's gun and gone to ring the doorbell. When Juliette answered the door, her face set in a smirk, it had pissed him off even more, and he'd raised the gun and pointed it into her face. She'd stumbled back, begging him not to do anything stupid, and suddenly he'd just had his fill, of her, of wanting to feel the thrill of a kill, of being almost—but not quite—omnipotent, and he'd pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, firing once, twice, a third time…

The first bullet had caught her just over the right eye, and she was dead instantly, her brain gone and splattered all over the wall behind her. The second bullet had struck her right shoulder, and the third had gone wild, burying itself in a bookcase. He'd stood there staring at what he'd done for a moment, and then the thrill hit him so hard that he had an orgasm.

He'd gone to the car, and he and the hygienist had carried Sam in. They laid him down next to Juliette's body, and Sam told Gina to rub Sam's hand in the blood that was all over the floor and then wrap it around the grips of the gun and use his finger to fire one more shot. That would put powder residue on Sam's hand, Connors knew, and that would be important.

Then they'd gone back to the office, Gina keeping her bloodied hand up so that she wouldn't risk leaving any blood spots in the Jag. When they'd gotten back, the receptionist said no one had come in, so he told her to make sure that no one ever knew he had left that day. Both she and Gina were programmed to believe that they had seen Sam leave angrily. Gina washed up, and then forgot the entire episode as she was told to, and Connors composed himself and got ready for the visit from the police that was sure to come.

A half hour later, it dawned on him that Sam would be waking up soon, and he needed the police to find him there with the body. He called Gina in and told her to go to the convenience store that was only a few blocks from Juliette's place and use the payphone there to call the police and report hearing shots from the house. She was to refuse to give a name, and then get back as soon as possible. She did as she was told, promptly forgot it, and was back almost an hour before the police showed up to tell him his wife had been murdered.

But all of it was falling apart on him. That stupid PI and his wife and her mother had ruined everything! Well, the PI was in jail, and he couldn't get to him; all that remained was to deal with the wife and mother!

11

Indie and Kim had been at the computer for hours. They'd looked at more than three hundred images, and were just about ready to conclude that Connors hadn't been near Carl's house the night of the murder, but commitment and loyalty to Sam made them keep looking. Indie saw that it was almost 2 a.m., and she knew they were both exhausted, but she didn't want to quit. If they could find one image of Connors' Jaguar anywhere in that area that night, it should be enough to make a jury believe he could have been in Carl's house that night. Every little thing they got on Connors would help when it came time for the prosecutor to make his decision on Sam, as well as on Carl. She kept going.

She clicked another link, and they looked at the cars in the picture. “Nope,” Kim said, and she closed that window. She clicked the next, with the same result. Kim yawned beside her as she clicked the next one, and said, “Nope,” as she yawned, but Indie said, “Wait!”

She looked closely at the image on the screen, and then went to another window where she had a picture of a Jag like Connors' saved for comparison. She went back and forth a few times, and then Kim said, “Holy mother, you got him!”

“Yeah, I think so. Now, let's get the tag from that car,” she said, blowing up the image and moving it so they could see the license plate on the front of the car. “AQR 912,” she said, then looked at a note on her desk.

Kim jumped out of her chair when Indie slapped her desk and shouted, “Bingo! We've got him! That's his car, right there, and if you take a good look, I'll bet you can recognize your old friend the dentist, there!”

Kim leaned close to the screen and looked closely at the blown-up image. “That's him. I'd know that shiny bald head anywhere, now!”

“Do you mean this shiny bald head?” said a voice behind them, and both Indie and Kim turned to find Alex Connors standing behind them. He had a chrome-plated automatic in his right hand, and it was waving back and forth between them. “Well, hello, Kimberly. Since you remember me so well, I must have made quite an impression on you. Why didn't you introduce me to your daughter, yesterday? Why, the three of us could have had so much fun together!” He sighed. “But you had to play detective, and try to ruin everything for me, didn’t you? Well, I guess I can understand; it was your move, I suppose, but what you need to understand is that you're playing against a master, and I never lose.”

Indie stared at him and his gun, trying to think of anything she could say or do to save their lives, but she was at a loss. She couldn't understand how he could have gotten in, she was sure she'd locked the door, but that wasn't important; he was there, and he apparently planned to kill them both. The only thing she could think of was to thank God that Kenzie wasn't home, because this sick monster would have killed her, too. She knew that Sam would do his best to raise the child, and that he'd make sure she didn't forget her mother.

“If you hurt us, the police will know who did it,” she said, and then kicked herself mentally. This was a man who thought he was above the law, and beyond the reach of justice. That was obvious, from everything he had done so far. His delusions of grandeur and invincibility blinded him to the mistakes he'd made, and he wouldn't believe anything she said about getting caught.

“Oh, I've already dealt with one of them,” he said, “and I had planned for this contingency a long time ago. I'll be long gone before your bodies are found, with a new name and no way I can be found, so I'm not concerned about any repercussions. But I do want to know one thing, before I do what I came to do, and that's how you did all this. How did you and your husband figure me out?”

Indie thought fast; he was giving her a chance to buy time, as stupid as any movie villain. If she could use it properly, there was a slim chance she could get some kind of advantage, and she prayed she'd know it if she saw it.

“I'm a computer whiz,” she said slowly. “I was looking at your business records, and checked your patient logs, and saw that Carl Morris was one of your patients, and that he'd been there the morning before he killed his family, and then I saw that Annie Corning was there before she started acting strange, and I put two and two together and got four. There were too many coincidences.”

Connors smiled. “Wow, what a smart girl you are,” he said. “Still, there was nothing to connect me to them. How did you get that cop to believe you?”

Indie didn't know what cop he could be talking about, because as far as she knew, none of the police involved would know anything about it until after Carol met with the prosecutor in the morning. She didn't want to lose the advantage, though, so she shrugged as it was no big deal.

“I just showed 'em everything I had, and they came to their own conclusions,” she said.

Kim leaned forward suddenly, smiling. “And that's why they said you might come after us,” she said, “and put officers to watching the house from hiding. Between that and the video cameras we hid all over the place, we've got an audience of about twenty people watching us right now.”

Connors' face went blank, and his eyes began flashing around the room. “What cameras? I don't see any cameras...”

Indie seized on her mom's idea. “We use nanny cams, heard of those? See the clock on the wall? Camera. See the plant over there on the desk? Camera. There are about twenty scattered around here, and I suspect our guard detail will be coming through the doors any second now!”

Connors stared at her, but his eyes kept flicking to the clock and the plant, then back to her face. He stood there for a moment in shock, but then his face contorted in rage.

“No!” he screamed, “no!” He had lowered the gun slightly, letting its aim hang down toward the desk for a second, but he suddenly started to raise it, and then he froze again. Indie stared at him for a second, and then realized that his eyes weren't on her any longer, they were looking to her right, and there was blood on his chest. Indie turned her head to her right, and saw her mother standing there with Sam's other gun, the little thirty-two with the silencer that Harry had given him when he was dealing with the terrorist.

Connors fell to the floor, and Indie immediately jumped up and grabbed his gun from him as he hit. She felt for a pulse and found one, weak but somewhat steady, and then grabbed the phone to dial 911.

“I need police and an ambulance right now,” she said, then looked at her mother's face. “I've just shot an intruder who was trying to kill me and my mother. No, he's down and wounded, but alive. Yes, we'll have the front door open.”

She got off the phone and turned to look at her mother. “Mom? Mom, give me the gun...”

“I shot him,” Kim said slowly. “Beauregard said I would have to do something terrible, but I didn't know I'd have to shoot him...”

Indie reached out and took the gun, slowly and carefully, and her mother turned to look at her. “Mom, it's okay,” she said. “You saved our lives, Mom, it's okay.”

Kim stared at her for a moment. “Beauregard told me the gun was in the desk drawer, and to open the drawer while we were looking at the computer. When he lowered his gun, he told me to get it and shoot him, and I did...”

Indie swallowed. “Okay, and you did, you saved our lives, but I think—I think when the cops get here, it would be better if we say I shot him, okay? And let's—let's just leave Beauregard out of it completely, shall we?”

* * * * *

Karen Parks was called out of a dead sleep to respond when the call came in that Orville Kennedy had been stabbed numerous times at a bar on Eighteenth Street. When she arrived, she found that he was badly injured, but alive, and left her assistant Brenner to get witness statements and handle the perp—a young girl who swore she didn't remember doing it—while she went with Kennedy to the hospital.

He regained consciousness in the ER, and was able to tell Karen how he'd come to be at the bar, and why. She had not yet been briefed on Connors, and was having a hard time believing what she was hearing, but she knew Orville; if he said it, she believed it. When she heard that there was even evidence that Sam Prichard was innocent, she breathed a sigh of relief, because she owed that man.

She was still there, waiting with Jeanie for him to get out of emergency surgery, when the next call came in two hours later, that Sam Prichard's wife had just shot an intruder, so she left and threw her light on the dash as she raced to Sam's place.

The intruder was none other than Alex Connors himself. Karen had let the paramedics work on him, then took Indie and Kim to the station to be interviewed. By the time they had all of the reports and statements—with some strange comment about someone named Beauregard, which Indie insisted was a delusion of her mother’s, brought on by the shock of the whole situation—and knew what had actually happened, it was almost 10 a.m., and Karen was surprised when she got a call from the prosecutor's office. She slipped out of the room to take it.

“Parks,” she answered.

“Karen,” said a tired voice, “this is Will Burton. I've been going over an absolutely humongous pile of science fiction that happens to be highly detailed and uncannily credible evidence that we have a man in this city who has literally been using mind control to make people commit murder and other crimes.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I'm dealing with part of that situation right now. Alex Connors attempted to kill two people early this morning, and got himself shot in the process. It's not a life-threatening wound, and he's in custody at the hospital now. I'm going over it all with the wife of Sam Prichard, the private investigator; it was her and her mother that Connors tried to kill, and the wife who shot him.”

Burton sighed. “And she didn't have the decency to finish the job for us? Tell her I hate her. Anyway—I've seen enough to say that Prichard is almost certainly innocent, and I can guarantee we'd never get a conviction against him in any event, so I've just sent a motion to the judge to dismiss, and it's been granted already. He'll be released any second now, so you're off that case.”

Karen smiled. “I'm glad to hear it, and I'll share the news with his wife. Any word on the Carl Morris case? I hear it's right in the middle of this mess.”

“Oh, dear God, Karen, do you know who my boss is? When I told him there is evidence that Morris was manipulated beyond any hope of resistance into doing that deed, he threw a fit at first. It took us an hour to convince him he isn't going to get a conviction, but that wasn't good enough for him. He's decided to offer Morris a deal: no jail time, if he pleads to manslaughter and agrees to testify against Connors. His lawyer called me ten minutes ago to say he accepted, so we're going to court to close the deal this afternoon.”

Karen thanked him and hung up the phone, then went to tell Indie the good news.

* * * * *

Sam and Indie arrived at the Casino an hour before the band was scheduled to play. Because they were playing in the lounge and alcohol would be served, minors weren't allowed, and Kenzie was happily staying with the twins again that night. They went inside and found the seats they'd asked for, reserved for Indie, their mothers and a couple of guests: Harry Winslow and Carl Morris. Carl had been released the day after Sam; he'd accepted the plea agreement, pleading guilty to manslaughter in return for one year of probation and psychological counseling. Sam had invited him to attend the show, and he'd been happy to accept, once he got over the shock of his private investigator being a performing country singer.

Once they were all there and seated—Grace, Sam's mother, had Harry parked right beside her, and Kim was doing her best to provide friendly conversation to Carl—Sam went back to get changed and ready.

Chris spotted him first. “Sam, good deal!” he called out. “We're all set, are you?”

“Yep,” he said. “Let's do it now, we don't have a lot of time.” He pulled printed sheets out of a pocket and passed them around, then took the acoustic guitar Chris handed him, strummed it a couple of times, and then began to sing. The rest of them listened, making notes on paper that would be meaningless to anyone else, but to them was a chart that would become music as soon as they got on stage.

“Okay,” Sam said. “What do you guys think?”

Candy threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, tears in her eyes. “Sam, that's one of your best yet! Indie's gonna be blown away. Are you sure she doesn't know anything about it?”

Sam grinned. “Nothing at all! I wrote it while I was in jail, memorized it and gave the original to Carl to hold for me. He's got it, and he'll give it to her when we do the song on stage.”

They had Sam go through it once more, so they were all sure they had their parts figured out, and then it was time to get on the stage and get ready. The lights were off, and no one could actually see them as they got into place and prepared for the moment of truth.

The lights came on, and the announcer's voice said, “Everyone, put your hands together and give a big Casino welcome to our newest act—Step—Back—Once!”

Chris lit up his guitar with the opening riffs of I Got Married In The Elvis Room Last Night, and the crowd got into it almost instantly. When Sam started singing, they began dancing in their seats, and by the time he hit the third line, the dance floor was filling up.

They went through No Happy Endings, and Sam was surprised to see quite a few people dancing to that one, as well, some of them getting so creative that he was amazed even as he sang. He let the final notes roll off, and then Sam signaled the light man, and a spotlight hit Indie.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I'm Sam Prichard, lead singer and chief songwriter for Step Back Once, and that beautiful young lady right there is my wife, Indiana. She is the inspiration for all of the love songs I write, and now and then I like to surprise her with a new one. Tonight, you all get to help me do that, because the song you’re about to hear has never been performed in public before.” He looked down at Indie and blew her a kiss. “This is for you, babe,” he said, and then Chris began to play. (Click to listen)

If only I could hold you in these lonely arms of mine,

And shelter you from all the world, and more,

Then I'd be king of all there is, a Monarch in the land,

And you'd be all that I'd be living for,

But as it is, my arms are here, and you're so far from me,

So I bow down each night, and then I pray,

For God to keep you safe for me,

Send comfort in His love,

Until He brings me home to you to stay…

And somewhere up in Heaven,

There's an angel just for me,

God put him there to do what I can't do,

His name means, “Love, Forever,”

His robe will dry your eyes,

His wings will always fly my love to you…

Whenever you remember, all those times I held you near,

That's when he dries the lonely tears you've cried,

And when you're softly sleeping, in some sweet dream of me,

He's whisp'ring all the love I feel inside,

And when you sit there cryin', and pray for my return,

And ask the Lord to let me soon be there,

The angel flies to Hea-ea-ven and kneels before the Throne,

To lay before the Lord your loving prayer,

And somewhere up in Heaven,

An angel sheds a tear,

As God looks down with love on you and me,

And shakes his head in wonder,

That we made an angel cry,

For an angel's tears were never meant to be

And somewhere up in Heaven,

An angel sheds a tear,

As God looks down with love on you and me,

And shakes his head in wonder,

That we made an angel cry,

For an angel's tears were never meant to be

No, an angel's tears were never meant to be

Indie sat there in tears as the final strains died away, and the crowd went wild. A dozen people ran over to shake Indie's hand, and twice as many ran up to tell Sam how much they loved the song. It took a few moments for everything to settle down, and the show went on.

When the show was over, Sam flopped into a chair beside Indie and ordered a cold soft drink. When the barmaid brought it back, she handed him an envelope and said, “There's a guy out back who gave this to one of the bouncers and asked to see that it got to you.”

Sam took it and looked at it, then opened it up. Inside were three photographs and a sheet of paper. When he took them out, he saw that the photos were of three different people, two women and one man, whose faces had been obscured. He unfolded the sheet of paper and saw that it was typed, probably from a cheap, throwaway printer. He read through it once, then passed it to Indie.

“Mr. Prichard,” it said, “the people you see in the photos will be killed within the next forty-eight hours, unless you stop me. I have been following your exploits closely, and I think that you are the one I need to make sure I stop doing this. I've been trying for more than fifteen years to kick this habit, but I can't.

Normally, I don't strike so many times so close together, but in order to get you interested, I'm going to up the odds. I need you to do only two things: discover who each of my victims are, and then do all you can to stop me before I can kill each one. The first one will die exactly twenty-four hours after you receive this note; the second will die twelve hours after that, and the third twelve hours later. If you cannot stop me before I can kill the third one, then no one can. Then there will be a fourth victim, but you get no clues for that one.”

Indie read it two times, and then passed it to Harry. “Sam?” she said. “Any idea who sent it to you?”

Sam shook his head. “Not even a clue.”

Harry read it quickly, and passed it back to Sam. “What do you plan to do, son?” he asked.

Sam shrugged. “I guess I'm gonna find a killer. Indie and I will get started as soon as we get home.”

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Prologue

Friday night had finally come; Sam was on stage, and loving it! It was the band's first performance as a country act, and he'd been nervous about how they'd be accepted. They'd done incredibly well as a rock band with Barry Wallace, before his untimely death, and he'd worried that their rock reputation would turn country audiences against them before they even heard the new sound. Sam had invited his mom and Indie's, and then added Harry Winslow and Carl Morris, the man Sam had only days before proven innocent of murdering his own family, because he had been programmed to do it and could not possibly have prevented it.

He shouldn't have let it bother him. If the reaction at the Casino Lounge had been any indication, SBO was going to be even more popular on the country circuit than they ever were on the rock. Sam debuted seven new songs in the show, and they did a few of the most popular current country hits as well, just to keep everyone happy.

It was a fantastic show, and when it was over, Chris slapped him on the arm and said, “Tomorrow night will be even better, you'll see! These people will be telling everyone about us, and the house'll be packed fuller than it was tonight!”

The band spent an hour talking to the crowd, shaking hands and hearing how well they'd done, and they all had to sign autographs as if they were already big stars. Sam admitted to himself that he was enjoying it, even if he didn't think he'd want to do it full time.

Everything finally died down as the bar sounded the Last Call at a little after one. Sam flopped into a chair beside Indie and ordered a cold soft drink. When the barmaid brought it back, she handed him an envelope and said, “There's a guy out back who gave this to one of the bouncers and asked to see that it got to you.”

Sam took it and looked at it, then opened it up. Inside were three photographs and a sheet of paper. When he took them out, he saw that the photos were of three different people, two women and one man, whose faces had been obscured. He unfolded the sheet of paper and saw that it was typed, seemingly from a cheap, throwaway printer. He read through it once, then passed it to Indie.

Mr. Prichard, it read, the people you see in the photos will be killed within the next forty-eight hours, unless you stop me. I have been following your exploits closely, and I think that you are the one I need to make sure I stop doing this. I've been trying for more than fifteen years to kick this habit, but I can't.

Normally, I don't strike so many times so close together, but in order to get you interested, I'm going to up the odds. I need you to do only two things: discover who each of my victims is, and then do all you can to stop me before I can kill each one. The first one will die exactly twenty-four hours after you receive this note; the second will die twelve hours after that, and the third twelve hours later. If you cannot stop me before I can kill the third one, then no one can. Then there will be a fourth victim, but you’ll get no clues for that one.

Indie read it two times and then passed it to Harry. “Sam?” she said. “Any idea who sent it to you?”

Sam shook his head. “Not even a clue.”

Harry read it quickly before passing it back to Sam. “What do you plan to do, Son?” he asked.

Sam shrugged. “I guess I'm gonna find a killer. Indie and I will get started as soon as we get home.”

1

Sam and Indie were in his office, going over the note and the photographs. They'd talked to the bouncer who'd received it, but he hadn't gotten a good look at whoever gave it to him in the darkness—all he knew was that the guy was very tall—and then they'd spent half the night with the police, letting them scan the items for fingerprints and DNA. None were found. Karen Parks, the homicide detective, had taken hi-resolution color copies and then returned the originals to Sam.

“I'm giving these back because it may be important to the killer for you to have them,” she said, “but don't think for a second that you're gonna play lone wolf on this one. I'm in your pocket, Buddy; everything you get, you give me too, right?”

Sam nodded. “No problem. We got any idea on who this guy's past victims might have been? He said he's been at it for fifteen years, so there must be something in the unsolved cases that would be his.”

Karen snorted. “Our unsolved homicides number over fourteen hundred, and probably half of those are from the past fifteen years. God knows how many of them might be his.”

Sam nodded. “It was worth a shot. Believe me, Karen, I want all the help on this one I can get. I don't know why I got singled out for this honor, but I wish like mad I could dump it onto you and walk away.”

She shrugged. “I'll take it if you want, but that'd piss our guy off. We know he's threatening three, maybe four people; if he thinks you're not playing, he may up the game.”

“Yeah, that's why I said, 'I wish,' and didn't try to leave you stuck with it. Just wish I hadn't gotten so much good press lately.” Especially since only about half of it was true, he thought. The rest was still classified and hadn't been released to the press.

Sam Prichard had blundered into private detective work after recovering from the gunshot wound that ended his career as a police detective. A neighbor had come to him asking for help to find her missing granddaughter, and Sam had agreed to try. When he stumbled into a National Security situation, he'd been enlisted to help stop a deadly chemical warfare agent from falling into the wrong hands, and he'd accomplished it.

Being a PI beat being bored; Sam went and got his license, and set up shop with his new helper, gray-hat computer hacker Indiana Perkins. Between her mad computer skills and his own instincts, he'd busted a murderer and freed a man who was framed for the crime in his first case, and the press had been all over him. That case had led to his spot as lead singer for a rock band, but after hearing some of the songs Sam had written, the band voted unanimously to go country, and the show the night before had been their country debut, and a rousing success.

A few more small cases had worked to build a reputation, and he was enjoying life again—especially since he and Indie had fallen in love and were married. Trouble was, Sam was a magnet for trouble, and even on his honeymoon, it found him. He'd seen something suspicious as they were preparing for their flight to Hawaii, and then again when they arrived. Both things stuck in his mind, and when the Feds announced the next morning that terrorists had planted suitcase nukes in twelve American cities, including Honolulu, where Sam and Indie were trying to enjoy their first days of married life, he'd been drawn back into National Security work. That time, he'd stopped a lone, rogue terrorist from destroying a quarter of the country, though the press was only told that he'd thwarted a plan to do some damage to Hoover Dam.

He'd been badly wounded again in that one, and it had taken time to recover, followed by another honeymoon. When he and Indie had gotten home, there were clients lined up, and he'd taken on three seemingly unrelated cases simultaneously, but somehow, they all led back to one person—a dentist who was using hypnotic anesthesia, and who had developed a method of actually programming people to do things they'd never do on their own, and then forget they'd even done them. He'd started out using it to seduce women he wanted from among his patients, but then he'd graduated to arranging “accidents” for people who gave him or his friends trouble, and then to a form of “murder for hire.”

All three of Sam's cases were connected to the dentist. First, his wife was divorcing him and wanted Sam to find out where he'd hidden his assets; second, a man whose wife disappeared had asked Sam to find her, which led to the discovery that she'd been one of his patients; and third, another man had hired Sam to find out why and how he had gotten up in the middle of the night and murdered his own family. That man had seen the dentist only that morning, and when all the threads were unraveled, Sam was able to prove that he was not the killer—he'd only been the weapon that the dentist had aimed and set off half-cocked. He'd not been told to kill his family, but to kill the dentist's wife. Unfortunately, a command not to let anyone know he was leaving the house had blown up, and when the man's son had seen him trying to go out the door, his programmed brain had interpreted the command to mean that a witness could not be allowed to live. The son's screams had brought his mother and sister to try to help him, but they also died in the attempt.

The press had gone insane over the case, and Sam was hailed as a hero. That was undoubtedly why he'd been chosen for this madman's game of cat and mouse, but Sam wasn't one who could turn down a challenge, especially when lives were at stake.

“The cops scanned for prints on all of the items,” Indie was saying, and Sam snapped out of his reverie to listen to her, “and tested it for any sign of DNA, but didn't find either. What they didn't do is scan it for any type of microscopic residue on the paper or photos, so I'm gonna try that, now.”

“Microscopic residue?” Sam asked. “You've got a microscope hidden away somewhere?”

Indie grinned. “Yeah, an electronic one. My scanner is capable of resolutions at almost twenty thousand dots per inch, which makes it a pretty good electron microscope. If we can find any environmental residues, it might give us a clue about where the note and photos were put into the envelope.”

Sam nodded. “Like, if there's a piece of a pine needle on it somewhere, then the guy might live in the woods, right?”

“Yeah,” Indie said. “I'm hoping to spot something that might be more exclusive to an area than that, but you get the idea.” She carefully placed the first of the photos on the scanner and closed the cover on it. “Let's see what we find.”

The scanner began to hum, and a moment later, the screen on Indie's computer began to form an image. Sam realized it was one of the photos, of one of the two women. The image was so large that all he could see was the upper left corner, which showed only a bit of her hair. This one was a blonde; the other woman had dark hair.

The faces on all of the photos had been blurred out, so all they had to go on was hair and general build. The photos had stock blue backgrounds, as well, nothing to give any idea of where they had been taken. Indie moved the photo around on the screen, looking at every spot and imperfection on it, trying to identify each one and get a sense of where it might have come from.

“Most of these are just specks of dust, most likely,” she said. “Here's one that might be a moisture stain, probably a drop of water that got on it somehow. Could have happened last night at the Casino, when you opened it, or anywhere else. This one is bright red, when we get it big enough to see, might be a tiny shard of something plastic. It's embedded into the photo, so it's something hard.” She kept moving the picture around, looking at it intently. “Bingo!” she said suddenly. “Here's your first clue, Sherlock!” She pointed to a spot at the very edge of the woman's left arm, where a tiny line of green was visible.

Sam looked and nodded. “Aha!” he said. “The clue! Now the only question is, what is this clue?”

Indie grinned. “That, my dear Watson, is a residual group of pixels from before the background was inserted by whatever program the killer used to edit these pictures. That's not a green screen; the color is too dark. That is part of whatever was in the original background.”

“And so, this tells us exactly what?”

“Well, it tells us that this woman posed for this picture in front of something that had that shade of green on it. That could be a car, a building, maybe even a sign, but it's definitely an object that was actually in the picture.”

Sam thought for a moment. “Is there any way to peel away the blue stuff?”

She shook her head. “If I had access to the original digital file, I could, but not from one that's been printed. The layers have been erased, so all that's printed out is the top layers you see on the screen.” She scrolled the image to the blurred-out face. “Now, there is a very slim possibility that Herman can figure out what distortion was applied to this part and undo it, so we can see the face. Let me put him on it, and then we can get a couple hours of sleep.”

Sam nodded. “That sounds like a good idea to me. I'm beat, but even a couple of hours will get me in better shape to deal with this.” He waited until she stopped typing, then took his wife's hand and led her to their bedroom. Sam set an alarm on his phone for eight AM, and they were both asleep within minutes.

The sun was getting high by the time the alarm went off, and Sam woke to find Indie already up and in the shower. He went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, and had just finished when she came out. He grabbed clean clothes and went for his own morning ablutions.

When he had finished, Sam went back to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Indie was already at the table with her own, and she smiled as he sat down.

“Would you like some breakfast?” she asked. “I can whip up some scrambled eggs and sausage.”

He nodded. “Fuel for the investigative engines,” Sam said, and Indie grinned. “Sounds good, Babe.”

She stood and leaned down for a kiss as she walked past him to the refrigerator, and Sam took the chance to pinch her bottom. “Ouch!” she squealed, and slapped his hand, but the smile on her face told him that she liked his attentions.

Sam grinned as he watched her moving about the kitchen. Indie had beautified his life, he often told himself, and watching her was one of his favorite pastimes. She blushed a lot when she caught him just looking at her, but that was because she'd never had a man look at her so lovingly, and she knew it. A beautiful woman is watched a lot, even stared at and ogled, but it won't be until she finds the man who looks past her beauty that she'll know the look that only comes through love-colored glasses. Indie enjoyed knowing that Sam thought looking at her was a great way to spend time or take a break from work.

Sam was in love, and so was Indie. It meant that they could trust each other and depend on each other, and they'd proven themselves over and over.

The sound of sausage sizzling in the skillet was almost musical to Sam, and when Indie slid a plate of eggs and sausage links in front of him, he inhaled deeply of their aroma and moaned in delight. “Baby, you make something as simple as this smell and taste like a hundred-dollar plate at a fancy restaurant. I'm so glad I was smart enough to marry you!”

“Yeah, me too,” she said. “Who else would get you out of trouble the way I do?”

Sam grinned, but dug in to eat, and Indie did the same. When Kenzie was gone to stay with her little friends down the street, they didn't need so many words to communicate their feelings to each other; the look in Sam's eyes when he glanced at her, the glow in her own when he happened to look up and find her watching him—words couldn't express those things well enough.

They finished breakfast, Sam loaded the dishwasher, and they went out to the office. Indie sat down at her desk, while Sam took the chair he'd put beside her in the early morning hours. She turned to the computer. “Okay, Herman, show me what you got!”

The screen lit up when she touched the mouse, and there were several links on the page. Indie looked at the data beside each one and pointed at the first. “Herman did several versions, trying different formulas to undo the scrambling that was done to the faces. Each link is one of the results. Ready?”

Sam nodded, and she clicked the first link. An image came up that was almost the same photograph, but with a slightly distorted face visible. Indie looked at it, then glanced at Sam. “Look familiar at all?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I can't make out eyes or lips,” he said, “and they're the two most recognizable features. Of course, we probably don't know the people in the pictures, anyway.”

“True, but I'm betting that these people are not just your average citizens,” Indie said. “My gut instinct is that they're going to be at least a little bit well known, so there's a chance we might have seen them on TV or something.”

Sam shrugged. “I hope you're right.”

She clicked the next link, but it was even more distorted than the first one. She went through them, one by one, some of them better and some of them worse. Each of them was distorted in a different way, as Herman, the program Indie used for her hacking and cracking, had tried different algorithms to undo the damage done by the sender.

It was the eighth photo that suddenly made them stop and stare. It was almost perfectly clear. “Okay,” Sam said, “I'm thinking you were right. I don't know who she is, but I swear I've seen that face before.”

“Yeah,” Indie said, “same here. I don't know her, but I know I've seen her somewhere. TV, you think?”

Sam nodded. “Could be,” he said, and then he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, can Herman do facial recognition? Would he be able to spot other pictures of this woman?”

Indie made a face. “He can do basic stuff. If we had an idea of some website where we might find more pictures of her, it's possible. Got any ideas?”

“Not right at the...” He suddenly froze and looked at her, and together they said, “Facebook!” Indie turned back to the computer and set Herman to scanning female Facebook members within fifty miles, using his facial recognition algorithms to look for pictures that resembled the woman like the one on the screen.

“Done,” she said, “but I'm sure it's gonna take a while.”

Sam nodded. “That's fine, at least we're doing something. Send that one to Karen, and let's see about the others.”

Indie nodded, emailed the picture to Karen Parks, and then put the second photo into her scanner. She captured the image and told Herman to apply the same algorithm used on the one they'd chosen, and a moment later, the new, less-distorted picture began to appear. It took a moment for it to come into focus completely.

This was the other woman. Once again, Sam had the nagging feeling that he should know her, but his memory was failing him. Indie stared at it for a few seconds, then shook her head. “Nothing. You?”

“This one doesn't even look familiar. I wonder how I'm supposed to find people from messed-up photos, when I have no clue who they could be even when the photos are unscrambled.”

Indie added it to Herman's facial recognition queue, then sent it to Karen and loaded the last photo. Herman did his thing, and the image came in. They were looking at the almost perfectly clear face of a man in his fifties.

Sam let out a low whistle. “Okay, this guy I know,” he said. “That's Caleb Porter; he was a lawyer here in town, ‘til he got nailed for embezzling millions of dollars from a few of his clients. He sold off everything he had and managed to pay them back, so he only served about a year in prison. When he got out, though, it turned out he'd found Jesus in the joint and he started a church out in Aurora. Super guy. His church makes a lot of money, but he's well known for giving it all away, everything but what he needs to keep it going.”

Indie nodded. “I know him,” she said. “Kenzie and I stayed at their shelter for a little while, but the way they're set up, you can only stay two weeks at a time. I got into one of the others that didn't have that restriction, so I never went back, but I can tell you that the people there are as good as they come. They treated us great, and the ladies cried when I had to take Kenzie and leave.”

“Well, at least it gives us a place to start. I wish we knew which one of these people would be first on the list. Send that to Karen, and ask her to call me when she gets it. I doubt she's even out of bed yet.”

Indie nodded and did what he said, then looked up at him. “Where do we go from here, Sam? Any ideas?”

Sam sat and thought for a minute. “Well, I'm guessing that the killer expected us to unscramble these photos, so he'd guess that I'll know Porter, I think. He might think I'd know them all, but I doubt it; he'd want to choose people that would make this harder for me, not easier. By putting Porter into the mix, he's probably expecting me to focus on him as the one I know best.” He ran his hands over his face and sighed. “I wish we had any other leads on the women. I'm pretty sure one of them will be first.” He sat forward again, and said, “Let's see if we can put together anything about this guy's MO. Let's look at all unsolved murders over the last fifteen years, I'd guess about a fifty-mile radius.”

Indie typed at Herman and turned him loose. The screen began to fill with links as he found things that matched her search parameters. Indie looked at Sam. “I told him to check news sources, but also to scan through police files. Sometimes they don't let any information out about certain cases, and if this guy has a specific MO, they might have a file on him.”

“Karen didn't think so, but she isn’t in cold cases. If our guy did something in her district in the past two years, she'd have a file on it, for sure, but anything older than that would go to the basement.” The basement was a police nickname for the cold-case squad, based on the fact that their office was down in the lowest level of the building.

“Okay, it seems kind of odd,” Indie said, “that she'd assume the police wouldn't have come across this guy, somewhere along the line, doesn't it?”

“I think she's basing her assumption,” Sam said, nodding, “on the fact that there hasn't been any sort of press activity regarding a long-running series of related killings. There's no doubt police have come across his individual killings before, but the cases haven't been connected, whether from lack of due diligence on the part of the officers involved, or simply because they just didn't seem to be related for one reason or another. If Karen doesn't know of any such related cases, we're gonna have to assume he's slipped through the cracks, somehow.”

“Okay, so I let Herman do his thing, then. Any guidelines you want me to give him?”

“We're gonna get a lot of results; we need to think of ways to filter them down. Let's start with any files closed by exception. What that means is that the cops know who did it, but there's a reason they can't make an arrest. Could mean there isn't enough evidence to get a conviction, or that the evidence was compromised and can't be used, or even that the killing was sanctioned by the government.”

“Okay, we'll cut those out,” Indie said. “How about if we eliminate all files with a prime suspect, too? Most of those would probably be right, wouldn't they? So they wouldn't be our guy, right?”

“At least some of them, yes. What we need are the ones that happened here in our area with no known motive, no suspects. We can look for patterns in them, see if anything seems to fit this guy.”

Indie tapped keys for a few seconds, and then hit the enter key. “Even for Herman, this will take a little time,” she said. “What else can we do?”

Sam thought. “What about the note?” he asked. “Think your super scanner can find anything on it?”

“Let me try.” She took the note from its envelope and laid it on the scanner. A moment later, it began to hum as the light moved down it. It took almost five minutes to scan the whole thing and render the image. Once again, it was far larger than a normally scanned document, and Indie began moving it around as she studied it for anything that might lend a clue to where it had come from or who had sent it.

“There's little bits of stuff all over it,” she said, “but I don't know what it is. We could send it to a lab for analysis, but that would probably take weeks...”

“We don't have weeks,” Sam said, “and I have more confidence in you and Herman than in the police lab. I've seen the mistakes they can make that let criminals walk free, so I'd rather trust you with this.”

Indie looked at him. “I can't do all the things they can do, though, Sam,” she said. “There may be chemical residue on this that could tell us exactly where it came from.”

“And the lab took samples from it last night, remember? They did enough tests to say there was no DNA on it, so I'm sure they have enough samples to check for chemicals and such. Tell me what you think you're seeing.”

Indie turned back to the screen, hiding the smile she couldn't contain. She stared at the screen as she manipulated the image, watching the dots and blotches that represented the impurities in the paper.

“That looks like a crystal, maybe salt or sugar. Our guy might have put this together while he was eating dinner.”

“That doesn't help us. What else do you see?”

“Well, that could be a speck of black pepper, which fits with salt and sugar. Could mean he was eating, or having a cup of coffee. Let's see what else I can find.” She continued scanning the document, moving it around on the screen so that she could see it all. There were several other spots that seemed to catch her attention. “Look at this,” she said. “It's a discoloration of some sort, not sure what it is. Any ideas?”

Sam stared hard at the screen. “I'm not sure,” he said. “Almost looks like a blot of mustard, don't you think?”

Indie shrugged. “Could be. Definitely looks like mustard. It's just that it's so small, that's what makes it hard to tell.”

“So, what we’ve got is evidence that our perpetrator was having lunch somewhere,” Sam said. “I'm thinking that he wasn't at home, simply because most people would be more careful at their own homes then they would be at a restaurant or someplace like that.” He leaned in closer to look again. “Yeah, looks like mustard to me.”

Indie moved the image around some more, and pointed out a few other spots that seemed unnatural. After a moment, she pointed to another one. “Here's one,” she said. “That's a fiber from something, and I would bet that it's from a pair of gloves. Seems like we have a man who likes to eat with gloves on. Wonder how many restaurants see that on a daily basis?”

“Okay, now that's interesting,” Sam said. “I would have expected him to use rubber gloves, or plastic, but not cloth gloves that would leave fibers behind. That seems like a pretty amateurish mistake.”

Indie nodded. “It does, doesn't it? The trouble with that is, we are dealing with a serial killer who has not been caught in 15 years, or so he says. That makes it seem pretty unlikely that he would make such a stupid mistake. Sam, I think he deliberately threw you a clue, here.”

Sam shrugged. “Not much of a clue, when I don't have any way to identify what kind of fiber it is. Unless you or Herman can do so in some magical way that I'm not aware of?”

“Nope, sorry,” she said. “Our magic doesn't go that far, I'm afraid. Best I can do is point these things out and let you figure out what to make of it. Remember, you're the private investigator, here, not me. It's up to you to play Sherlock Holmes. I'll stick to being Watson.”

Sam laughed. “Well, it doesn't tell us a whole lot, but it does give us something to work with. I can ask Karen to have officers checking with restaurants to see if they remember someone eating with gloves on last night. You never know, they might come up with something that way.”

Sam took out his phone and dialed Karen's number. As he'd half expected, it went to voicemail. “Karen, it's Sam. Listen, Indie found a fiber on the note that looks like it might have come from a nice pair of gloves, and there's salt and pepper and a splotch of mustard on it, too. Wonder if you can get someone checking restaurants, see if anyone recalls seeing someone eating a sandwich or hotdog or something with gloves on, or putting gloves on after eating. Thanks, let me know.” He hung up.

With nothing more to go on, Sam decided to pay a visit to the preacher, Caleb Porter. He told Indie where he was headed, had her print out copies of the note and photos to take with him, then kissed her goodbye and went out through the garage to get his Corvette. As he backed out of the garage, he noted that the air was cooling off; fall was upon them, and when you’re a mile high, that means winter isn't that far away. He rolled the window up, but didn't turn on the AC as he usually did. Just letting some air come through the vents was cool enough.

2

The ride to Pastor Porter's church wasn't a long one, and Sam was there in just about forty minutes. The church was in an old factory building, one that Porter had talked a former client into donating, and then managed to get volunteers to contribute time and money on the remodeling. Sam knew that many people considered him a con man, but apparently, this particular prophet managed to keep some honor in his home town, because he had more than a million dollars a month coming through his offering plates.

The church was said to be “always open,” so Sam parked the Vette as close to the front doors as he could, then used his cane as he walked up to it. A tall man inside opened the door for him and asked if he could be of service.

“Possibly,” Sam said. “I'd like to see Reverend Porter. My name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator.”

The man's eyebrows went up. “Oh-oh,” he said, “don't tell me the Pastor's in some kind of trouble.”

Sam smiled. “Not that kind, anyway. I'm not here to investigate the church or Reverend Porter, just to ask him some questions that might help on a case I'm working on.”

The man stuck out a hand and Sam shook it. “In that case, I'm happy to take you to him. I'm Darrel Unger, by the way, a Deacon here. Follow me, he's in his office.” Unger led the way down a long hall, and turned to look at Sam over his shoulder as they walked. “Is this connected to one of our church members? I'm not asking what it is, I'm just curious.”

Sam grinned; he'd known a lot of curious people over the years, and in his experience they always wanted desperately to know whatever it was they swore they weren't trying to find out. “I'm afraid I can't say,” he replied honestly, and Unger sighed and nodded, continuing on in silence.

They came to an area that had several offices laid out rather nicely, and he led Sam to the biggest of them. The sign on the door said, “Rev. Caleb Porter, DD”, and Unger knocked politely before pushing it open. Porter sat at a desk inside, a Bible open in front of him. He looked up and smiled, and Sam thought the smile seemed quite genuine.

Unger said, “Caleb, this is Sam Prichard, a private investigator. He said he wanted to ask you a few questions about a case he's working on. I hope it's okay I brought him in?”

Porter smiled and rose, and Sam was struck by his height; the preacher stood a good four inches over his own six-foot frame. Sam had the fleeting thought that everyone in the church took growth hormones. “Of course it is, Darrel,” he said. “Come in, Mr. Prichard, have a seat.” He looked at the Deacon. “Thanks, Darrel, that'll be all.”

Sam took a chair that faced Porter's desk, and the preacher sat down in his own again. He glanced at his Bible and read aloud, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” He smiled up at Sam. “I've found that the Lord speaks to me through His Word in very personal ways, sometimes. I woke up this morning with that verse going through my mind, and haven't been able to shake it. I was just sitting here reading the whole passage and praying about it when you arrived. I know who you are, of course; your reputation precedes you.” He stood again and came around the desk, extending his hand. “Caleb Porter, formerly a sinner, later a prisoner, and today a servant of Jesus Christ. What can I do for you, Mr. Prichard?”

Sam smiled, liking the man despite himself. “Reverend...”

“I don't care much for titles,” Porter said with a grin. “Just Caleb will do fine.”

Sam inclined his head in thanks. “Caleb,” he began again. “Then it's just Sam, for me. I'm here because I was given some pictures last night, and a note that says the people in them will be murdered over the next couple of days, unless I can find and stop the killer. The pictures were distorted, the faces unrecognizable, but my wife, who's an absolute genius with computers, managed to unscramble them, and one of them—” he held it up “—looks a lot like you. What do you think? Is this a photo of you, Sir?”

Porter leaned forward and looked closely, but did not attempt to take the photo from Sam. “That's one of my old publicity shots, from last year. They took out the background – it was taken right here in this office – but that's me, all right.” He stood straight again, then leaned back against his desk. “Ironic, isn't it? I wake up thinking about not fearing death, and then learn that someone wants to kill me.” He closed his eyes and stood there for a moment, then opened them and looked at Sam. "Mr. Prichard,” he said, “do you know Jesus?”

Sam smiled. “I do,” he said. “Sometimes I'm pretty sure He wishes I'd be friendlier, but we do talk a lot.”

Porter smiled. “Good. I'd hate to face Him and have Him ask me why I didn't ask you that question before I died. Now, what can I do to be of assistance to you?”

“Well, to be honest, I'm hoping you might have some idea of who it is that might want to kill you. I doubt this person is actually connected to you, since most serial killers choose victims they don't know personally, but I can't be sure of that, so I'm trying to cover all the angles.”

Porter sucked in his bottom lip and shook his head. “I could probably make a list of people who might not mind all that much if I died, but I don't think they'd actually take any action.”

Sam nodded. “I didn't really think so, but I'm trying to hit all the possibilities.” He showed the preacher the photos of the two women. “Any chance you recognize either of these ladies?”

Porter took the photos and looked at each one closely, but shook his head. “I don't think so. The second one looks a little like one of the ladies in our congregation, but I can't say it's her. Doris Blevins is her name.” He turned and went to a bookshelf, then withdrew a large book and flipped through its pages. “Here she is,” he said. “This is our yearbook from last spring. This is Doris, right here.” He held the book out and pointed at one photo.

Sam looked at the one he indicated, and then at the one in his hand. “No, I don't think that's her,” he said. “I wish it had been, that would make my job easier.” He looked up at the preacher. “So, the question that remains, then, is where are we gonna hide you for a few days? The killer says he's going to kill one of the victims around one AM tomorrow morning, and each of the other two twelve hours apart after that. If I don't stop him by the third one, he says there will then be a fourth, but he won't give me any leads at all on that one.”

Porter looked down at the floor and closed his eyes for a moment. Sam could see his lips moving, but there was no sound, and he knew the preacher was praying. A moment later, he opened his eyes and looked at Sam.

"Sam,” he said, “I can't go into hiding.”

Sam stared at him. “That's up to you, Caleb, but if not, I'd suggest hiring a bodyguard. I can get the police to assign you a detail...”

Porter smiled. “You're not understanding me. Remember the passage I quoted when you came in? 'And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.' I must place my trust in my Savior, and if it's time for me to leave this world, then that's okay with me. God will decide whether or not I die, not this poor soul who wants to play games with you.” He sighed. “I'd greatly prefer it if no one knew about this. Is that possible?”

Sam sat there and just looked at him for a moment. “I can try. The police have all of the information I have, including your picture. They may not be as willing to stay out of it as you want them to be, though.”

Porter nodded. “We'll let God handle that, then, too. I think He's capable, don't you?”

Sam stood and took a business card out of his pocket to give to the preacher. “If you change your mind, or have any thoughts that might help me, please call me.”

Porter slapped him on the back. “I certainly will, Sam. Thank you for coming.” He extended a hand again, and as Sam shook it, he said, “I love you.”

Sam's eyebrows went up an inch, and Porter laughed. “I love you, and everyone else,” he said. “Christ commands us to love one another, remember? How can I do the work He's called me to do if I'm not willing to follow His commandments?”

Sam grinned. “Okay,” he said. “And in that case, Caleb, I love you, too.”

“Great! Hey, we'd love to see you at our Sunday morning service! Bring the wife and kids, we're fun for the whole family!”

Sam nodded. “I'll give it serious thought,” he said. “Indie and I have talked about finding a church, but things have been pretty unsettled lately. Maybe it's time.”

Sam left the office and found his way back to the front doors, where Unger was waiting. “Well, Mr. Prichard,” he said. “Get everything straightened out?”

Sam smiled and nodded. “I think so,” he said. “The Pastor was very helpful. You have a good day, now.” He slipped through the door that Unger held open and hobbled back to his Corvette.

He saw the note sticking up from the windshield wiper before he got to the car, and a shiver went down his spine. He walked up to it, took his Swiss Army knife from his pocket, and pulled out its tweezers. Using them, he tugged the note free and saw that it was a single, folded sheet of paper with no envelope. It was typed in the same way as the last one.

Mr. Prichard, it read, I'm delighted to see that you're on the case! Even better, that you've already determined the identity of one of my targets. That pleases me, so I'm going to give you a few more hints.

One of the women will be the first target. She lives alone near the Denver-Arvada line, and owns a business that caters to new mothers. If you can determine who she is before the deadline tonight, I will let her live.

“Aw, crap,” Sam said, as he took out his phone and dialed Karen Parks again. This time, she answered. “Karen, it's Sam...”

“Sam!” she said. “We're going over these pictures. The man is Caleb Porter, we're sure of it, and I've got officers on the way to tell him right now.”

“Call 'em off,” Sam said. “I'm at his church right now, and he does not want to hide or have protection, says he prefers to trust God. That isn't why I'm calling, though, Karen; I've got another note, and this one was put on my car while I was in talking to Porter. I'm going back inside to see if just maybe they've got cameras on this place and got a shot of whoever did it. And you don't have to say it, I'll wait right here till you show up!”

“You—you'd better!” she said, and hung up on him.

Sam turned back toward the church and Unger opened the door again. “Forget something, Mr. Prichard?” he asked.

Sam shook his head. “No, but while I was inside, someone put a note on my car. I don't suppose you might have seen who did it? Or that you've got security cameras on the front parking area?”

Unger frowned. “We don't have any cameras, I'm afraid, and I didn't see anyone out there. Of course, I was gone for a bit, went to the little boys' room for a few minutes. I don't think anyone would have known I wasn't at my post, though.”

Sam looked at him. “Somebody did,” he said. “The police are on the way here now, and they're going to want to check every computer and printer in the place. If this note was typed up here, we need to know it.”

Unger stared at him. “Couldn't have been,” he said, “unless the Pastor did it. He's the only one here that has a printer of his own; everyone else uses the big one that's hooked to all the computers.”

Sam nodded. “Then let's see that one,” he said. Unger shrugged and led the way back down the same hallway.

The main office was staffed by three ladies, and they were more than happy to let Sam look at the printer. He glanced at the note again and saw a thin, dark line running down the page about three-fourths of the way to the right edge. That would be from a flaw in the printer, and would be as identifiable as the scoring on a bullet.

He asked one of the ladies to print something, anything. One of the ladies smiled and clicked something on her computer, and a page came out a second later. Sam snatched it up and looked, but there was no line, and the print was much cleaner and crisper than on the note. He shook his head. “Wasn't this one. And there are no other printers in the building?”

One of the ladies shook her head. “Only the one in Pastor's office,” she said, “but he almost never uses it.”

Sam stalked back to Porter's office and knocked, then entered. Porter looked up, surprised but smiling. “Sam,” he said. “Something wrong?”

Still holding with just the tweezers, Sam held out the note. “This got put on my car since I've been here,” he said. “I need to see a page from your printer, please, right now.”

Porter looked confused, but said, “Sure.” He reached down to his computer and tapped a couple of buttons, and the small printer on his credenza began to hum and click. A moment later, a sheet fed out of it and Sam grabbed it.

No line. The note hadn't come from this one, either. That wasn't a huge surprise, since Sam had been with Porter for most of the time he'd been at the church, but he'd had to check.

Sam sat down in the same chair he'd been in before. “According to this note, he's glad I found you so quickly. He's given me a couple of hints about who one of the women is, and says if I can figure out her identity before the deadline tonight, he'll leave her alone.” He looked Porter in the eye. “No one saw him put the note on my car, and you guys don't have security cameras up. Either he's following me around, or he was here, waiting for me to show up.”

Porter frowned. “But how would he have known you'd find me?”

“My wife,” Sam said, “is a computer genius, and that's been mentioned in the press a few times. If he knows that, then he'd have figured she'd find a way to unscramble the photos, and your face is pretty recognizable around here. He'd have figured I'd know you, I think, if he expected us to clean up the pictures. Then, he'd expect me to visit you first, I would imagine. Yeah, he could have been waiting somewhere around here for me to drive up, had this note all ready to go.”

The two of them sat there for a moment, and then Porter came around and sat in the chair beside Sam's.

“Sam,” he said, “Let's pray.”

Sam only nodded, and closed his eyes. Porter began, “Dear, precious Heavenly Father, we ask Your aid in this grave matter. Sam is faced with a fight against pure evil, and we know that only You can see into all hearts and know the thoughts of all men. We ask, Father, that You touch Sam Prichard and guide him as he strives to protect innocent lives, lives that may not yet be ready for eternity. Father, lead Sam to this woman, that her life might be spared, and lead him to this person who is doing this thing, so that he can be stopped in time before anyone has to die to satisfy his evil plans. We ask this in Jesus's Name, Father. Amen.”

“Amen,” Sam said, and looked at the preacher. “Thank you, Caleb. I need all the prayers and help I can get on this one.”

Sam got up and went back to the front of the building, where he sat on a bench just inside the front doors until Karen arrived with four uniformed officers. He showed her the note, and then took a picture of it with his phone so that she could take the original back to check for prints, but he knew they wouldn't find any. The officers checked the printers, just as he had done, and then Karen spent fifteen minutes trying to convince Porter to let her put a police guard on him, but as Sam had predicted, she had no success. Finally, she told Sam he could go.

He was just leaving the parking lot when his phone rang, and he saw that it was Indie. “Hey, Babe,” he said.

“Okay, Herman didn't have any luck on photo recognition, but he's narrowed the unsolved cases down to about a hundred that might fit our guy. I've got a printout going now; are you gonna be home anytime soon, to look at it?”

“I'm on the way now,” he said, then told her about the note. “Think Herman can help us figure out who this woman could be?”

“Herman can do anything, as long as he has enough data. I'll plug this into him and turn him loose.”

“Okay. I'll be there in a bit. I love you!”

“Love you too!” she said, and the line went dead.

Sam drove for a few minutes, and then picked his phone up again. This time, he called his mother-in-law. She answered and sounded out of breath.

“Sam?” she asked. “Is something wrong? Is Indie okay? Is Kenzie okay?”

Sam smiled. “They're fine,” he said. “I was actually calling to, um—I want to know if Beauregard has anything to tell me.”

There was dead silence on the line for several seconds, and then, “Well—he says you may win the game, but not all of the hands. Does that make any sense to you?”

Sam sighed. “I'm afraid it does,” he said. “Anything else?”

Silence again, for the space of five breaths. “He says to remember Sun…Sue. Who is Sun Sue?”

“An old, dead Chinaman,” Sam said. “He said that if you know yourself and know your enemy, you can win a hundred battles. Tell Beauregard he could be a little clearer.”

“He says you have to find out as much about your enemy as you can, and that will lead you to the answers you're looking for.”

Sam sighed. “That's what I get for asking a ghost,” he muttered.

Kim said, “What?”

“I said, tell him he's the most!” Sam said, and then he said goodbye and hung up before she could say anything else. “Learn all I can about my enemy, yeah,” he mumbled as he drove.

He got home twenty minutes later, and Indie met him at the door. “Hey, Baby,” she said. “So, how did it go with the preacher?”

“Pretty good. He says he'll trust in God to keep him safe, rather than in the police. Can't say as I blame him.”

“Well, come on in and see what I've got for you. Herman's been a busy boy, and I think he's made some fantastic discoveries. Come and see for yourself.”

He followed her through the house and into the office. There, on the computer screen, was a whole list of unsolved cases from the past fifteen years. Indie sat down in her chair, and Sam took the chair beside her like always.

“Okay,” she said, “I told Herman to look for all unsolved cases from the past fifteen years that did not have a known suspect, and that seem to be similar in one way or another. These are what he came up with.”

Sam started looking through the list of dozens of headings.

Lone woman killed by a gunshot wound to head.

Single man shot in the head.

Sniper kills man walking on the road with his wife.

Gunshot claims one, leaves another.

Shot fired through window, kills a man while he’s sitting with his girlfriend.

Man shot dead while driving, car crashes into railings.

Man shot in the head while driving.

Single shot kills two.

Sam clicked on each one, reading everything he could about each case. The victims seemed to be chosen at random, but after the note Sam had gotten that day, he didn't believe that for a moment. Each of the three in the photos had been chosen for a specific reason, and the killer had apparently studied them thoroughly. Sam would bet that, if any of these were victims of the killer he was dealing with, the killer had come to know each of them quite well by the time he had pulled the trigger.

There was no easily spotted pattern to the victims. They ranged in age from around twenty up to sixty; they seemed to be equally distributed between male and female, white and black (interesting, Sam thought, no Asians or Hispanics at all), light haired and dark, big and small, tall and short. All of them had been killed by a gunshot wound, almost all of them to the head. There was no pattern to where they were killed or whether they were alone or with someone at the time.

The only oddity was that the killer seemed to enjoy killing people in front of their loved ones. At least half of the victims were in close proximity to someone else when they were shot, but in one case he had seemingly deviated from that pattern. A couple who had only been married a week were both shot through their heads when they leaned together for a kiss.

There were almost a hundred such cases. If the killer was being truthful in the first note, that would mean an average of about seven victims per year. Sam shook his head.

“I can't believe there were this many killings like this, and I've never heard about it before. That's incredible. This many cases with similar MOs should have been blasted all over the news; the FBI should have been camped out here. How on earth could this happen?”

Indie nodded. “I thought the same thing, so I looked them over. Check it out. These cases are spread over a pretty large area, from Loveland to the north, down to Colorado Springs. He didn't ever do two in one city in the same year, and usually he didn't go back to a city for at least three years. We've got two stretches when he just stopped altogether for a while; there's only one killing in all of oh four, and none at all between November of twenty ten and January of twenty twelve.” She pointed at the dates she had charted. “To me, it looks like these cases all got very little attention. None of the victims were wealthy or notable in any way.”

Sam nodded. “I see that, but now he's chosen Caleb Porter. That's out of character if this is him.”

“Unless he chose him just to make sure he got your attention, or to give you the chance to win an early round. He'd figure that Porter is off limits, now that you know about him, so maybe he wanted to give you one, so you'd feel more confident and work harder on the other two.”

Sam shook his head. “I don't think that's it,” he said. “In this new note, he said that if I can identify the woman who's next, he'd let her live, but he didn't say anything about sparing Caleb. I'd guess that he'd consider any attempt to protect Caleb as nothing more than a challenge to his talents, so I expect him to move Caleb to number one, if I find the woman.”

“Or to number three. That way, he could go after the one you didn't know, then take Porter out last. Maybe what he's hoping is that you'll finally stop him then.”

Sam rubbed his eyes. “I did something today that I never thought I'd do,” he said. “I called your mother and asked Beauregard for help.”

Indie's eyes went wide. “And?”

“He said I'd win the game, but not every hand. To me, that means I'll catch the guy, but some of the victims are going to die. He wouldn't say how many, but then he said I should remember Sun Tzu.”

“The Art of War? That guy?”

“Yeah. I'm going through all of the Sun Tzu quotes we had to memorize in the academy, trying to figure out which one is pertinent. I think it's the one about knowing yourself and knowing your enemy.”

“If you know yourself and your enemy, you can win a thousand battles? That one? I had a professor in college who used to quote that all the time, in my psych class. He said it was the most powerful advice that anyone has ever written.”

“The problem is, how do I get to know this guy? I mean, all we've got are old murders that may or may not be his work. These don't tell us anything about him, about who the man himself is, and I don't mean his name; I'm referring to his personality, the way he thinks.”

Indie shrugged. “Maybe they can. I've got access to the actual police files on all of these; let's pick some and go through them with a fine-tooth comb, and see if we can get any sense of how he thinks.”

Sam thought about it for a moment. A lot of times, there will be little details in police files that are not given to the public. Police and FBI profilers use those details to build a psychological profile of the perpetrator. If Sam and Indie could do something along that line, it might give them insights into the killer that would help him figure out the next move he needed to make in the “game.”

“It's worth a shot,” he said. “Which ones catch your eye?”

Indie looked over the list. “We've got a lot to choose from. I see two MOs, here: the ones where he takes a single victim who's alone, and the ones where he kills someone right in front of their loved ones. If we take a dozen of each and go through them, I think we'll be getting a fair sampling of his methods, and if we can figure out a pattern to them, we might have an edge.” She tapped a few keys, and the list on the screen began losing items. “I told Herman to choose twenty-four at random from each category. Let's see how he does.” A moment later, there were two groups of links on the screen, labeled “Alone” and “Not Alone.”

Sam looked at the two lists. “Random is as random does,” he said in a bad Forrest Gump impersonation. “Let's see what we've got.”

3

Indie smiled and clicked the first link in the “Alone” section, which led to a digitized version of the complete police file on the case.

Thirty-two-year-old Michael Henson was jogging along the side of Highway 83, behind the Valley Country Club, at five thirty in the morning on June fifth in 2007. Numerous witnesses came forward after the news of his murder was released to say they had seen him, and many said they saw him out there every morning. No one saw what happened to him, however; he was discovered laying half in the road by a motorist, and when the driver stopped to see if he was okay, he found that Henson had been shot through the head. Police were called, but Henson's body was the only evidence they found.

The Medical Examiner said the bullet that had killed Henson was relatively small, probably a .223 Remington, but with a powerful charge behind it. It left a small entry wound that passed through the helix (the top edge) of his left ear and penetrated the skull just behind it. The bullet mushroomed on impact with the skull, causing it to roughly triple in diameter, so that the actual impact on the brain inside was three times as destructive as it had been on the skull itself.

The brain is made up of very soft tissue, and so when a chunk of metal invades it, it can't absorb the impact as well as denser tissue, such as muscle. The distorted slug not only penetrated the brain, but also shoved it to the right of the skull with enough force that the skull there was fractured from the inside. It shattered and the skin containing it was ripped as the brain was pushed ahead of the ballistic forces and out through the resultant opening in the cranium. The mangled brain was found fifteen feet away from the body, in the grass on the side of the road.

“Kronlein shot,” Sam said. “There have been cases where the bullet shattered the skull and literally blew the brain right out of it. In the most famous case, the brain was found completely intact in the crotch of a tree.”

“Yuck,” Indie said. “It's bad enough we gotta read this stuff, do you really need to provide such graphic mental images?”

Sam grinned and kept reading. Police found no cartridges, no powder residue, and no other evidence that might have been left behind by the killer. From the way the body was found, the ME decided that Henson had still been in motion when the bullet struck and almost certainly did not know it was coming. His footprints in the soft earth beside the road showed that his stride had not lengthened, so he wasn't trying to flee, and the skid marks left by his body said his velocity was no greater than an average jogger's speed.

Based on all of the factors they could see, the ME concluded that the fatal shot was probably fired from a moving vehicle. Since the bullet struck squarely from the side of him that appeared to have been facing the road, and considering that Henson had not been aware of the danger, the shot was almost certainly fired as the vehicle passed Henson while going in the same direction of travel as he was.

“He never saw it coming,” Sam said. “What gets me is that the killer fired from a moving vehicle; that's not easy to do, not with any accuracy. Our guy would have to practice, and stay in practice.” Sam sucked on his bottom lip for a moment. “Okay, this tells us that he's obsessive about what he does. To practice hitting a moving target from a moving vehicle means that he's got an isolated place set up with a track or something, and some kind of moving target to aim at as he drives.”

Indie looked at him. “Then he's got money. He'd have to own a place like that, don't you think? So that he wouldn't run a risk of someone finding it?”

Sam nodded. “That makes sense. He wouldn't want to set it up on public lands, and if it was someone else's property, they'd discover it sooner or later, somebody would. Hunters, if no one else. And all that being logical, then he probably lives somewhere outside of any town, somewhere he isn't worried about people stumbling across him, or hearing gunshots. This guy's a hermit of some kind, but he's not one who shuns technology; he's got a computer, at least, and knows about forensics.”

“Probably watches CSI,” Indie said. “Everyone does, and they think all the stuff they see there is actually true.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “cracks me up. They show just enough real science to be convincing, then they blow it all with test results that can't possibly be true.” He sighed. “Okay, so we know the guy is probably fairly rich, which also fits with the fact that these killings happen at all hours of the day and night. If he had a job he had to go to every day, he'd probably be most active during his off-duty hours, and we'd see a pattern to it. He's aware of and knows how to use modern technology. The fact that he's using a .223 bothers me a bit; most of them are rifles, and firing a rifle from a moving vehicle would mean one of two things. He's either extremely strong, strong enough to hold and aim a rifle accurately with one hand, or he isn't working alone. Someone else would have to be driving for him.”

Indie was tapping keys. “Look at this,” she said. “Thompson Center Contender, a .223 single-shot pistol. Here's another one, Magnum Research Lone Eagle, .223 single-shot pistol. Both of them are considered hunting guns, and someone as obsessed as our guy might like the idea that he's only got one shot.”

Sam looked at her. “I think you hit it on the head, Babe,” he said. “In each of the cases where someone was with the victim, they always reported only hearing a single shot. We haven't seen a single one where he missed and had to fire again. And the single shot theory would explain why the only time he ever killed two was when he could do it with one shot! I wonder if there are any reports of someone being fired at once, and missed?”

“Telling Herman,” Indie said. “Let's go on through these while he looks that up.”

She clicked on the next link. This one was about fifty-year-old Thomas Ritter, who had been shot by the same type of round, but through the center of his forehead. The shot blew out the back of his head, also nearly removing his brain completely. Ritter had been at home in Golden, mowing his yard, when it happened. Witnesses reported hearing a shot, but no one had seen anything.

Next was Caroline Bitner. She had been driving along Constitution Avenue in Colorado Springs when a single shot came through her windshield and struck her just above her right eye. She had not died instantly, but the loss of almost half of her brain left her a vegetable on life support that was turned off a month later. She was twenty-eight years old and the mother of two children, whom she had just dropped off at day care only minutes earlier. Her car had remained on the road and slowly lost speed, drifting slowly to the right, until it was stopped by a curb. Witnesses said they heard nothing, but only saw her slump over in her seat as the car began to slow.

Then there was twenty-year-old Martin Planck. Martin was a bicycle messenger, riding through downtown Denver in May of ‘09 when he was shot from behind. The bullet entered dead center at the back of his skull, and exited through his nose, obliterating his face completely. In this case, the bullet went on to strike the driver of a passing car in the left shoulder, but its energy was so spent that it was only a minor wound. A witness said she saw a man in a gray car point something at Planck just before he flew over the handlebars of his bike, but she did not get a license number or any description of the shooter. She did not hear a shot, so police were not convinced that she had actually witnessed the murder at all.

They went through the rest of the “Alone” cases, picking up tidbits as they went. In one case, a man in Boulder had walked into his living room and found his wife, whom he had thought was still out shopping, dead on their sofa, her head almost completely blown away. Her bags of groceries were spilled on the floor beside her, indicating that she had been walking and fallen onto the sofa. A hole in the screen on the window was the only evidence that the shot had come from outside, but no one had heard anything.

Sam said, “That shot wasn't made from a moving car. Passing a house and seeing a victim, then managing to make the shot, would be pretty much impossible; he stopped and aimed that one.”

“So he's not fanatical about doing it while moving. He's willing to take an easy shot if he can get it.”

Sam sighed. “I don't think so,” he said. “My guess is that he had chosen her as a target, but didn't get to take the shot when he wanted to, so he followed her home and waited for an opportunity. He parked and watched her carry the bags in, then waited ‘til she passed the living room window and fired.”

Indie shook her head. “Then he won't give up on one just because he doesn't get to kill when he wants. It's not about the opportunity, it's about the target he's chosen.”

Sam nodded. “That's how I see it, yes. That confirms for me that Caleb isn't safe, but I already thought that.”

They found one case that stood out. Forty-two-year-old Cassie Morton had been walking her dog in a park in Longmont when she was shot, but the bullet did not strike her in the head; instead, the shot took her right through the base of her throat and all but decapitated her. This case happened in ‘08, and the place where she died was almost three hundred yards from the nearest road. A witness near the park entrance said she heard a gunshot from not far away, and saw a red pickup truck driving away at normal speeds just afterward.

“Holy cow,” Sam said softly. “A shot like that, if we're right about his choice of weapon, would take incredible skill. This guy wouldn't use a scope; it'd be useless to his moving shots. To make this one, he'd have to aim high, over the target, and count on gravity to bring the bullet down to hit what he was aiming at. He had his windage right, but it looks like he underestimated the amount of drop, so the bullet hit lower than he intended.”

Indie looked at him. “What's windage?” she asked.

“When you fire a bullet at a long-range target, you have to take a lot of factors into account, and one of them is the direction of the wind. If it's blowing at all, it can change the trajectory of the bullet, move it to one side of the target or the other, so you miss. If you're good, you can estimate how much it will move it, and aim to the side of the target so the wind can bring it to where you want it. He got that right, but he didn't aim quite high enough for a head shot, so the bullet came in low and hit her in the throat.”

Indie shivered. “You do know it's freaky that you can talk about things like that as calmly as you talk about the weather, right?”

Sam looked at her. “And that's from a girl whose mother talks to a ghost?”

“Beauregard isn't mine, he's Mom's, and I don't want to hear about it. You're the one who called and asked for his advice, remember?”

“It was a moment of weakness. I've got two more people whose lives depend on me finding this clown, and when it comes to something like that, I'll take any help I can get from anywhere!”

“Well, we're gaining some insights, so let's keep going. Ready for the 'Not Alone' group?”

“Lay on, MacDuff,” Sam said. He added, “Macbeth,” when Indie looked at him strangely. “What? You think I wouldn't know Shakespeare?”

She didn't say anything, but clicked the first link in the new group.

Charles Murphy, forty-seven years old, was sitting on his back deck with his wife, Dierdre, when he was shot. Dierdre said she heard a car moving through the alley behind their home, and then a shot rang out. She felt something splatter the side of her face, and turned to ask her husband if he had spit on her. That was when she realized that the top of his head was missing, and began to scream. Neighbors came out of the house next door to see what was wrong, and found Dierdre trying to pick up his brains and put them back into his head. The only evidence found was the marks of some worn tires in the alley.

“The fact that no spent cartridges are ever found sort of confirms the single-shot pistol theory, for me,” Sam said. “Almost all .223 rifles are assault rifles, with multiple-round magazines. They're semi-automatic, so they eject cartridges. If he was using one of those, I'd think there would have been at least a few cartridges found along the way. Granted, there are devices that catch the cartridges, but they'd add weight to the gun, and make it even harder to fire from a moving car.”

The next was the case of two killed with one shot. Twenty-three-year-old Danny Morgan and his wife of only seven days, Geneva, were at an outdoor table at a bar in Greeley. Witnesses said they were smiling and happy, and that just as Danny leaned forward to kiss his wife, a shot rang out and both of their heads seemed to explode. The bullet entered the back of Danny's skull, exiting through his right eye and removing most of the right side of his face, then entered Geneva's head just over the bridge of her nose. Because it was already mushroomed from hitting Danny but still had energy and momentum, it took out both eyes and left a hole the size of a man's fist in the back of her skull. More than a dozen people reported hearing the shot, but only one claimed to have seen the shooter, describing him as a tall man wearing western clothes, who walked calmly away as the bar's patrons began screaming. The witness said he tried to follow the shooter, but the panicking patrons overran him and knocked him down. By the time he got to his feet, there was no sign of the man.

The investigating officers discounted the witness, saying he seemed too drunk to have actually tried to pursue, but Sam thought it was probably true. “Only two kinds of people will try to follow someone they just saw commit a murder in front of their eyes,” he said. “A heroic type who believes he can handle the situation, or someone who's too stupid or drunk to know better. The panicky crowd that knocked him down might well have been himself, but I think he was telling the truth about what he saw and what he wanted to do, even if he was too wasted to do it.”

Indie cocked her head to the right. “But don't you think, if one person saw the shooter, others would have? I mean, it was an outdoor setting. A shot goes off; wouldn't most people turn to look where it came from?”

“Read the statement,” Sam said, pointing to the screen. “The couple who was killed was getting all the attention even before they were shot. Probably all of the people who might have seen the shooter were watching them and smiling as they kissed, and then they'd be in total shock as soon as they realized what had happened. Very few of them would be thinking of anything except where to go to get out of the line of fire. Our witness was probably turned away from all that, and happened to see a figure raise a gun and fire. If he was drunk, he might not have even looked to see who was shot, he would have just thought, 'wow, that dude shot somebody,' and tried to keep him in sight. Somebody bumps into him, and in his inebriated state, he goes down. By the time he gets up, our boy is long gone.”

“Then, you believe his story?” Indie asked. “That the shooter was on foot at the time?”

Sam nodded. “It fits what I'm seeing in this guy. He's arrogant, thinks he's too good at what he does to get caught. If he decided he wanted to make a shot like this, he'd choose his targets and then follow them, look for any chance to make the shot. When he sees it, he'll gauge how the people nearby are acting, and fire when he's confident he can get away.”

Indie shuddered. “Sam,” she said, “what if he's actually chosen you? What if all of this is a ploy to get you to somewhere he wants you, so he can kill you?”

Sam laughed. “Baby, this guy wouldn’t bat an eye at stalking me, and he probably is, even now. He knew I was at the church within minutes this morning, so he's probably following me. The fact that I didn't spot him is more worrisome to me than anything else, but you can bet I'll be watching everything around me from here on out.”

Indie clicked the next link. This one detailed the death of Walter Simon, a fifty-eight-year-old man who was shot as he and his lady friend, Priscilla Borden, walked along the side of the street they lived on. The shot hit him in the center of his forehead, causing his skull to explode and splattering Priscilla with gore. Priscilla said she heard the shot, but didn't see anything to indicate where it had come from. Another witness claimed to have seen an old Gremlin racing away, but Sam discounted the statement immediately.

“A Gremlin might have driven away, but it wasn't our boy driving it. He's too cool; he wouldn't risk driving in any way that might attract attention. To do so would risk him getting stopped, and even if he only got a ticket, it would link him to the time and area of the killing. He's too cool, and too smart, to let that happen.”

She clicked the next link. “Constance Peterman,” she read aloud, “twenty-one years old. In March of two thousand ten, she was shot in the side of the head as she rode a bicycle along the side of the road in Fort Collins. She had her best friend, Jill Stewart, riding right beside her when it happened. Jill said she saw a tall man driving a maroon truck pass them just as it happened, but she didn't see a gun. Right as she saw him, Constance fell against her, and she didn't see the license plate. She realized what had happened, freaked out, and by the time she got her wits back, the truck was gone.”

“He's not worried about being seen,” Sam said. “Let's see if Herman's gotten anything on missed shots, and then let's have him check out stolen vehicle reports around the same times as these shootings. He can do that, right?”

Indie smiled. “Yep!” she said, and tapped her keyboard. A new set of links appeared, this time only about a dozen of them. “Okay, these are the reports of people being shot at and missed for the same time period. There aren't many.”

“That's because this guy is good, whoever he is. Email Karen and ask her to check firing ranges for someone firing a single-shot .223 pistol. I doubt he'd ever go to a range with it, but it's worth checking out.”

Indie typed rapidly, then said, “Done. Ready?”

“Yeah, let's look at these.”

Indie clicked on the first link. In ‘07, a man named Harold Brinker had called police and reported that he had heard a shot fired as he was driving down a residential street. When he stopped to look, he noticed a bullet hole in his car, on the post just behind the driver's door, and at about the level of his head. The bullet that was removed from the car was a .223, just like all the others.

Each case was almost identical. Someone who would have been precisely the type of victim chosen in the actual shootings either reported hearing a shot fired, or saw a sudden bullet hole appear in a vehicle, wall or something else. In each case, the recovered slug was from a .223.

Sam nodded. “So, sometimes he misses, and since none of these people are on the list of victims, that means he never goes back after a target if he does. That's interesting, but doesn't tell me whether Caleb is still at risk, so we're going to assume that he is. Let's see about the stolen vehicles.”

Indie tapped, and a long list of links appeared. Sam whistled. “Well, well,” he said. “Looks like our boy can hotwire a car, too. Let's see, March twenty ten, is there a maroon pickup reported stolen?”

Indie scanned through the links and clicked on two that were reported within three days of the Constance Peterman killing. “Bingo!” she said. “Got a maroon Ford F-150 stolen the morning of that shooting. Owner said he parked it at work that morning, and when he came out at lunchtime, it was gone. Found late that night about a mile from where the shooting took place.”

They looked at some of the other reports that said a vehicle was seen, and in each case, a similar vehicle was stolen within the previous few hours, usually not more than an hour before the shooting occurred. Sam was getting excited.

“He's got money, and he's a car thief as well as a murderer. He's addicted to killing; it makes him feel high or excited, and he likes the thrill. He's daring, and likes to show that witnesses don't scare him. Most of that would fit the normal profile of a serial killer. The big difference, in this case, is that this guy isn't a glory hound; his killings have gotten very little press, and only a few of them have even been speculated as being the work of a serial killer at all, but he's never contacted any reporters, newspapers or TV stations to brag about his work. That’s unusual. This guy isn't the normal type; he's only in it for himself, and he's not able to stop on his own; that's why he wants someone to catch him.”

“And that's why he chose you,” Indie said. “He doesn't make the news, but he follows it for sure, and he's seen all the stuff that they've been saying about you. He figures, hey, here’s a guy who can catch terrorists and expose mind control and all that, he might be the one who can help put an end to my madness, too.”

Sam nodded. “Not meaning to be as egotistical as this is gonna sound, but that sounds right. He wants someone to stop him because he can't stop himself. That means that the people who do know him probably have no idea that this side of him even exists. He's probably a genuinely nice guy, when he isn't out to kill someone.”

“Mr. Brooks,” Indie said. “Did you ever see that movie, with Kevin Costner? He was this rich, successful businessman that everyone loved, but he was addicted to killing people. He went to AA meetings and talked about his addiction as if it was to booze or drugs, and even had a plan to have someone else kill him, because he couldn't make himself stop...” She suddenly trailed off, and her eyes got wide. “Except, when he got to the place where he was supposed to be killed, with the guy who was gonna do it, he backed out. He killed the other guy, instead, and went right on killing for the thrill of it.”

Sam shrugged. “Addicts always back out of kicking their habit, until they reach that point where they can't go on. This guy would be like that, too, if he gets the chance. Remember the first note? He says if I can't stop him, then he figures no one can, and so he'll go on killing. He wants this game, so that there's a chance he'll lose and his addiction will end, but he doesn't want to lose. If he can beat me, even if it means killing me, he'll do it.”

Indie nodded, but Sam could tell she was worried. “Okay, we've got a profile,” she said. “Now, let's find the first target. He said she lives alone near the line between Denver and Arvada, and she owns a business that new mothers use. Let's see what Herman can find. What are some businesses new mothers use?”

Sam stared at her. “You're asking me? I've never even known a new mother!”

Indie rolled her eyes. “Men are such wimps,” she said, then began typing, speaking softly as she did so. “Diaper service—baby furniture, baby clothing stores—pediatricians—nutritionists…”

“Nutritionists?” Sam asked.

Indie nodded. “Mm-hm,” she said. “New mothers, especially if they're breastfeeding, go to nutritionists to learn how to eat to make their milk as good for the baby as possible—what else? Oh, babysitters and day care! Some of them actually specialize in newborns, for when the mom has to get back to work in a rush!”

She continued typing, and came up with several more ideas. Finally, she hit the enter key, and turned to Sam. We'll give him some time to work, and see who all he comes up with. If we're lucky, we'll find websites with photos, so we can tell if we're getting the right woman, but once we get names, we can go back to Facebook and try looking them up that way. That should let us find her, if she's in the list.”

Sam leaned forward and put a hand on the back of her neck, pulling her to him for a kiss. “I just figured we deserve that, and I might not get another chance, once we get this list and get busy again.”

“Mmm,” she said, “look, Mr. Prichard, you need to understand one thing; I'm your wife, now, and you can do that anytime you want to! That’s in the marriage rulebook, it is, I checked. Says you are now allowed to kiss me anytime—unless I'm pissed at you, then you better wait ‘til I calm down.”

“And are you mad at me now?” Sam asked.

“Um—no.”

“Good,” he said, and kissed her again.

Herman made a ding, and they let go of each other and turned their attentions back to the screen. There were almost three-dozen links there, and they began looking through them.

Indie had told Herman to look for females whose homes were along the border between Denver and Arvada and who owned a business of one of the types she had described. He had done exactly as she'd instructed, and they began checking each link to see if any of them looked like either of the photos the killer had sent to Sam.

They could eliminate some on the basis of race; both of the women in the photos were Caucasian, so when they saw a black, Hispanic or Asian woman, they clicked back and went to the next link. One or two looked a little like one of the women, but none of them were exact.

However, some of them had no photos of the owners, so Indie had to go to Facebook and start hunting for them. The trouble with that was the number of people on Facebook that have similar names; when she typed in Julie Williams, she got almost a hundred possibilities in the Denver area alone.

Some of them she could eliminate, in the same way, by scanning the list and looking at the miniature profile photos, but some people use other things for their profile pictures; in those cases she had to click on the picture and let their pages load, then look through their photos to see if they had a match. It was a slow process, because so many people don't even post a lot of pictures of themselves, and some don't allow any but their friends to see the photos they do post, or much of their profile at all.

That didn't stop Indie, however. She merely copied the URL of the person's profile picture, then pasted it into a browser and removed a section of it, then hit enter, and she had all of their photos available instantly.

Sam's eyebrows went up. “I didn't think there was a way around Facebook's privacy settings.”

She smiled at him. “Puh-lease,” she said. “Did you forget who you’re talking to, here? Actually, that's a pretty simple hack that's all over the internet. Anyone can do that.” She went through enough of the person's photos to be sure it wasn't who she was looking for, then went on to the next name on their list.

Sam glanced at the time and realized that it was past one thirty; they'd been at this for almost two-and-a-half hours. “Babe, you getting hungry?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I am. Want me to make us some lunch?”

“How about I do that, while you sit here and babysit Herman? We've got some heat-and-eat burritos, right?”

“Yep, bottom shelf of the freezer. I could eat one,” Indie said. “And could you bring me a root beer? I'm about coffee-logged.”

“You got it,” Sam said, then got up and went to the kitchen. The burritos were right where she'd said, and since it took only three minutes to heat up three of them, he stuffed them into the microwave and got out a couple bottles of root beer and some paper plates while they cooked. When they were done, he carried them all back into the office and found Indie sitting frozen and staring at the screen.

He set her plate and drink down beside her.

“Okay,” he said, “that expression means you've got something. Give,”

Indie nodded slowly, without turning to face him. “Well, I had Herman look for baby-related businesses on Facebook, because some companies set up business profiles, y'know? Then you can find the owner of that page, and see who it is. Look.”

Sam leaned in and looked at the Facebook profile she was staring at. He got a good look at the photo, glanced down at the one Indie was holding—it was the blonde woman—and then looked at the name. Sam suddenly realized why the photo had looked mildly familiar.

“Holy cow,” Sam said, “that's Samantha Harris!”

“Yep,” Indie said. “I knew I had seen that face somewhere before, but it was still a bit distorted and I didn't recognize her right off the bat. Since when is she in business for herself?”

Sam shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “I never asked what she did for a living. On the other hand, doesn't it seem a bit coincidental that she turns out to be a woman I met in one of my first cases?”

Indie nodded. “Yeah, it does,” she said. “Sam, it's like this guy knows everything about you. All about your cases, and everything.”

Sam stared at the screen. Like Indie, the fact that it was Samantha Harris whose profile they were looking at was bothering him. He shook his head again. “I don't know what to think. This is turning out to be pretty weird. On the other hand, if I've identified her, then she should be safe. I guess what I need to do is go and talk to her.”

Indie nodded. “Yeah,” she said, “but watch your back and look for anyone following you.”

Sam looked grim. “You can count on that,” he said. “What’s the address of her place of business?”

Indie looked. “It says she works out of her home. Same place she's lived all along.” She paused, then turned to look at Sam. “Wanna know something weird?”

“What?”

“Sometimes Herman scares me a bit. I gave him a whole bunch of different baby-related businesses to search, right? Well, one that I didn't think of was a midwife, but you wanna guess what Samantha does for a living?”

Sam looked at her. “I'm gonna go out on a limb and say midwife for two hundred, Alex.”

“Yeah,” Indie said. “Which means Herman added that occupation to his own programming.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, so?”

“Sam, Herman isn't really a person, he's a computer program. Computer programs can't think for themselves; we have to tell them what to think about. But, somehow, he did what he can't do; he deduced for himself that there was at least one other business that caters to new mothers—like, the newest mothers—and added it to his search parameters. That should be impossible.”

Sam stood there, unsure of what to say. Finally, he settled for, “Hey, Babe? As long as he's on our side, I don't care if he comes to life, but the minute he starts calling himself Skynet, I'm blowing your computer to kingdom come, got that?”

Indie only nodded, so he kissed her goodbye and left.

Click Here To Continue The Series.

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David Archer was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. He is a fiction author and novelist, writing in the mysteries and thrillers genre. His approach to writing is to hit deep, keep you entertained, and leave you wanting MORE with every turn of the page. He writes mysteries, thrillers, and suspense novels, all of which are primed to get your heart pumping.

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Table of Contents

BOOK I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

BOOK II

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

BOOK III

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

BOOK IV

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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10

11