Ransom

Four different lives.

One act that changes everything forever.

RANSOM

PRAISE FOR

DANIELLE STEEL“Steel pulls out all the emotional stops.… She delivers.”—Publishers Weekly“Steel is one of the best!”—Los Angeles Times“The world's most popular author tells a good, well-paced story and explores some important issues…. Steel affirm[s] life while admitting its turbulence, melodramas, and misfiring passions.”—Booklist“Danielle Steel writes boldly and with practiced vividness about tragedy—both national and personal… with insight and power.”—Nashville Banner“There is a smooth reading style to her writings which makes it easy to forget the time and to keep flipping the pages.”—Pittsburgh Press“One of the things that keeps Danielle Steel fresh is her bent for timely story lines…. The combination of Steel's comprehensive research and her skill at creating credible characters makes for a gripping read.”—Newark Star-Ledger“What counts for the reader is the ring of authenticity.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Steel knows how to wring the emotion out of the briefest scene.”—People“Ms. Steel excels at pacing her narrative, which races forward, mirroring the frenetic lives chronicled; men and women swept up in bewildering change, seeking solutions to problems never before faced.”—Nashville Banner“Danielle Steel has again uplifted her readers while skillfully communicating some of life's bittersweet verities. Who could ask for a finer gift than that?”—Philadelphia Inquirer

PRAISE FOR THE RECENT NOVELS OF

DANIELLE STEELRANSOM“This suspense novel has automatic appeal for Steel fans.”—Booklist“A sure-fire best seller.”—New York Daily NewsECHOES“Romance and risk mark the latest adventure from the prolific Steel, as a young woman must survive the Nazi regime if she is to be reunited with her family.”—Sacramento Bee“Get out your hankies…. Steel put her all into this one.”—Kirkus ReviewsSECOND CHANCE“Vintage Steel.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press“Gazillions of readers around the globe worship Steel's books.”—New York PostSAFE HARBOUR“Danielle Steel offers readers a poignant tale of friendship, family, and hope. The relationships are full, and the unforgettable spirit with which the characters struggle to renew their love for life makes this book a treasure.”—Oklahoman“Her page-turning plot and charming depiction of loving relationships will endear Ms. Steel to her fans.”—Library JournalJOHNNY ANGEL“Call us sentimental, but sometimes we prefer the classic authors. Make it a point of pride to read Johnny Angel….”—Chicago Sun-TimesDATING GAME“A cheerful story full of colorful dating scenarios…you can't stop devouring it.”—Chicago TribuneANSWERED PRAYERS“Smooth plotting…”—Publishers WeeklySUNSET IN ST. TROPEZ“Steel's skillful character development shines.”—Newark Star LedgerA MAIN SELECTION OF

THE LITERARY GUILD

AND DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUB

Also by Danielle Steel

ECHOES VANISHED SECOND CHANCE MIXED BLESSINGS SAFE HARBOUR JEWELS JOHNNY ANGEL NO GREATER LOVE DATING GAME HEARTBEAT ANSWERED PRAYERS MESSAGE FROM NAM SUNSET IN ST. TROPEZ DADDY THE COTTAGE STAR THE KISS ZOYA LEAP OF FAITH KALEIDOSCOPE LONE EAGLE FINE THINGS JOURNEY WANDERLUST THE HOUSE ON SECRETS HOPE STREET FAMILY ALBUM THE WEDDING FULL CIRCLE IRRESISTIBLE FORCES CHANGES GRANNY DAN THURSTON HOUSE BITTERSWEET CROSSINGS MIRROR IMAGE ONCE IN A LIFETIME HIS BRIGHT LIGHT: A PERFECT STRANGER The Story of Nick Traina REMEMBRANCE THE KLONE AND I PALOMINO THE LONG ROAD HOME LOVE: POEMS THE GHOST THE RING SPECIAL DELIVERY LOVING THE RANCH TO LOVE AGAIN SILENT HONOR SUMMER'S END MALICE SEASON OF PASSION FIVE DAYS IN PARIS THE PROMISE LIGHTNING NOW AND FOREVER WINGS PASSION'S PROMISE THE GIFT GOING HOME ACCIDENT a cognizant original v5 release october 15 2010

To all of my wonderful children,

who are extraordinary people I admire, love,

and respect so much,

And especially to Sam, Victoria, Vanessa,

Maxx, and Zara for being brave, loving,

patient, and courageous.

And to the remarkable men and women

in state, local, and federal agencies,

often unknown and unseen,

who keep all of us safe.

with deepest thanks

and all my love,

d.s.

“Tenderness is more powerful than hardness.

Water is more powerful than the rock.

Love is more powerful than violence.”Hermann Hesse

Chapter 1

Peter Matthew Morgan stood at the counter, picking up his things. A wallet with four hundred dollars in it, from his cash account. The release papers he had to take with him, and give his parole agent. He was wearing clothes the state had given him. He was wearing jeans, a white T-shirt with a denim shirt over it, running shoes, and white socks. It was a far cry from what he had worn when he came in. He had been in Pelican Bay State Prison for four years and three months. He had served the minimum amount of time of his sentence, which was nonetheless a big hunk of time for a first offense. He had been caught with an extraordinary amount of cocaine, prosecuted by the state, convicted in a jury trial, and sentenced to state prison at Pelican Bay.

At first, he had only sold to friends. Eventually, it not only supported the habit he had developed inadvertently, it supported all his financial needs and at one time his family's as well. He had made nearly a million dollars in the six months before he'd been caught, but even that didn't fill the hole in the dam he'd created with the financial juggling he'd done. Drugs, bad investments, selling short, huge risks on commodities. He'd been a stockbroker for a while, and got in trouble with the SEC, not enough to be prosecuted, in which case he would have been arrested by the feds and not the state, but he never was. He had been living so far beyond his means, to such an insane degree, had so many potentially explosive balls in the air, and developed such a massive drug habit hanging out with the wrong people, that eventually the only way to negotiate his debt to his dealer had been to deal drugs for him. There had also been a small matter of bad checks and embezzlement, but he got lucky once again. His employer had decided not to press charges, once he got arrested for dealing cocaine. What was the point? He didn't have the money anyway, whatever he had taken, and it was in fact a relatively small amount in the scheme of things, and the money was long gone. There was no way he could recoup the funds. His employer at the time felt sorry for him. Peter had a way of charming people, and making them fond of him.

Peter Morgan was the epitome of a nice guy gone wrong. Somewhere along the way, he had opted for the low road too many times, and blown every golden opportunity he'd ever had. More than Peter, his friends and business associates felt sorry for his wife and kids, who became the victims of his crazy schemes and rotten judgment. But everyone who knew him would have said that at the core, Peter Morgan was a nice guy. It was hard to say what had gone wrong. In truth, a lot had, for a long time.

Peter's father died when he was three, and had been the scion of an illustrious family from the cream of social circles in New York. The family fortune had been dwindling for years, and his mother managed to squander whatever his father left, long before Peter grew up. Soon after his father died, she married another very social, aristocratic young man. He was the heir of an important banking family, who was devoted to Peter and his two siblings, educated and loved them, sent them to the best private schools, along with the two half-brothers who came into Peter's life during the course of their marriage. The family appeared wholesome, and moneyed certainly, although his mother's drinking increased steadily over time, and wound her up in an institution eventually, leaving Peter and his two full siblings technically orphaned. His stepfather had never legally adopted them, and remarried a year after Peter's mother died. His new wife saw no reason why her husband should be burdened, financially or otherwise, with three children who weren't his own. She was willing to take on the two children he had had by that marriage, although she wanted them sent away to boarding school. But she wanted nothing to do with the three children that had come into his previous marriage, with Peter's mother. All Peter's stepfather was willing to do after that was pay for boarding school, and then college, and an inadequate allowance, but he explained, somewhat sheepishly, that he could no longer offer them haven in his home, nor additional funds.

After that, Peter's vacations were spent at school, or at the homes of friends, whom he managed to charm into taking him home. And he was very charming. Once his mother died, Peter learned to live by his wits. It was all he had, and worked well for him. The only love and nurturing he got in those years were from friends' parents.

There were often little incidents, when he stayed with friends during school holidays. Money disappeared, tennis rackets vanished mysteriously, and seemed to be missing when he left. Clothes were borrowed and never returned. Once a gold watch seemed to evaporate into thin air, and a sobbing maid was fired as a result. As it so happened, it was later discovered, Peter had been sleeping with her. He was sixteen at the time, and the proceeds from the watch that he had talked her into pilfering for him had kept him going for six months. His life was a constant struggle to come up with enough money to cover his needs. And he did whatever he had to do to meet those needs. He was so kind, polite, and pleasant to have around, that he always appeared innocent when things went sour. It was impossible to believe that a boy like him could be guilty of any misdeed or crime.

At one point, a school psychologist suggested that Peter had sociopathic tendencies, which even the headmaster found hard to believe. The psychologist had wisely surmised that under the veneer, he appeared to have less of a conscience than he should. And the veneer was incredibly appealing. It was hard to know who Peter really was beneath the surface. Above all, he was a survivor. He was a charming, bright, good-looking kid, who had had a bunch of rotten breaks in his life. He had no one to rely on but himself, and deep at his core, he had been wounded. His parents' deaths, his stepfather's distancing himself from him, and giving him almost no money, the two siblings he never saw once they were sent to different boarding schools on the East Coast, had all taken a toll on him. And later, once in college, the news that his eighteen-year-old sister had drowned was yet another blow to a young soul already battered. He rarely talked about the experiences he'd had, or the sorrows that had resulted from them, and on the whole, he appeared to be a levelheaded, optimistic, good-natured guy, who could charm just about anyone, and often did. But life had been far from easy for him, although to look at him, you'd never know it. There was no visible evidence of the agonies he'd been through. The scars were far deeper and well hidden.

Women fell into his hands like fruit off trees, and men found him good company. He drank a lot in college, friends remembered later on, but he never seemed out of control, and wasn't. Not obviously at least. The wounds on Peter's soul were deep, and hidden.

Peter Morgan was all about control. And he always had a plan. His stepfather lived up to his promise, and sent him to Duke, and from there he got a full scholarship to Harvard Business School, and graduated with an MBA. He had all the tools he needed, along with a fine mind, good looks, and some valuable connections he'd made in the elite schools he had attended. It seemed an absolute certainty that he was someone who would go far. There was no question in anyone's mind that Peter Morgan would succeed. He was a genius with money, or so it seemed, and he had a multitude of plans. He got a job on Wall Street when he graduated, in a brokerage firm, and it was two years after he graduated that things started to go wrong. He broke some rules, churned some accounts, “borrowed” a little money. Things got dicey for him for a while, and then, as usual, he landed on his feet. He went to work for an investment banking firm, and appeared to be the golden boy of Wall Street for a brief time. He had everything it took to make a success of his life, except a family and a conscience. Peter always had a scheme, and a plan to get to the finish line faster. He had learned one thing from his childhood, that life could fall apart in an instant, and he had to take care of himself. There were few, if any, lucky breaks in life. And whatever luck there was, you made yourself.

At twenty-nine, he married Janet, a dazzling debutante, who happened to be the daughter of the head of the firm where he worked, and within two years, they had two adorable little girls. It was the perfect life, he loved his wife and was crazy about his kids. It looked like a long stretch of smooth road ahead of him finally, when for no reason anyone could fathom, things started to go wrong again. All he talked about was making a lot of money, and seemed obsessed with that idea, whatever it took. Some thought he was having too much fun. It was all too easy for him. He had fallen into a golden life, played too hard, got greedy, and inch by inch, he let life get out of control. In the end, his shortcuts and old habit of taking what he wanted did him in. He started cutting corners and making shaky deals, nothing he could be fired for, but nothing his father-in-law wanted to tolerate either. Peter appeared to be on a fast track, heading for danger. Peter and his father-in-law had several serious talks, while walking the grounds of his parents-in-law's estate in Connecticut, and Janet's father thought he had made the point. To put it simply, he had tried to point out to Peter that there was no such thing as a free lunch or an express train to success. He warned him that the kind of deals he was making, and the sources he used, would come back to haunt him one day. Possibly even very soon. He lectured him about the importance of integrity, and felt sure that Peter would heed him. He liked him. In fact, all he succeeded in doing was make Peter feel anxious and pressured.

At thirty-one, first for the “fun of it,” Peter started doing drugs. There was no real harm in it, he claimed, everyone was doing them, and it made everything more amusing and exciting. Janet was worried sick about it. By thirty-two, Peter Morgan was in big trouble, losing control over his drug habit, despite his protests to the contrary, and started running through his wife's money, until his father-in-law cut him off. A year later, he was asked to leave the firm, and his wife moved in with her parents, devastated and traumatized by the experiences she'd had at Peter's hands. He was never abusive to her, but he was constantly high on cocaine, and his life was completely out of control. It was then that her father discovered the debts he'd incurred, the money he'd “discreetly” embezzled from the firm, and given their relationship with him, and the potential embarrassment to them, and Janet, they covered his debts. He agreed to give Janet full custody of the girls, who were by then two and three. He lost his visiting rights subsequently, over an incident involving him, three women, and a large stash of cocaine on a yacht off East Hampton. His children had been visiting him at the time. The nanny had called Janet on her cell phone from the boat. And Janet had threatened to call the Coast Guard on him. He got the nanny and the girls off the boat, and Janet wouldn't let him see them again. But by then he had other problems. He had borrowed massive amounts of money to support his drug habit, and lost what money he had on high-risk investments in the commodities market. After that, no matter how good his credentials, or how smart he was, he couldn't get a job. And just as his mother had before she died, he spiraled down. He was not only short of money, but addicted to drugs.

Two years after Janet left him, he tried to get a job with a well-known venture capital firm in San Francisco, and couldn't. He was in San Francisco by then anyway, and settled into selling cocaine instead. He was thirty-five years old, and had half the world after him for bad debts, when he was arrested for possession of a massive amount of cocaine with intent to sell. He had been making a fortune at it, but owed five times as much when he was arrested, and had some frightening debts to some very dangerous people. As people who knew him said when they heard, he had had everything going for him, and managed to blow all of it to kingdom come. He was in debt for a fortune, in danger of being killed by the dealers who sold to him, and the people behind the scenes who financed them, when he was arrested. He had paid no one back. He didn't have the money to do it. Most of the time, in cases like that, when people went to prison, the debts were canceled, if not forgotten. In dire cases, people got killed in prison for them. Or if you were lucky, they let it go. Peter hoped that would be the case.

When Peter Morgan went to prison, he hadn't seen his children in two years, and wasn't likely to again. He sat stone-faced through his trial, and sounded intelligent and remorseful when he took the stand. His lawyer tried to get him probation, but the judge was smarter than that. He had seen people like Peter before, though not many, and certainly not one who'd had as many opportunities that he'd blown. He had read Peter well, and saw that there was something disturbing about him. His appearance and his actions didn't seem to fit. The judge didn't buy the pat phrases of remorse that Peter parroted. He seemed smooth, but not sincere. He was likable certainly, but the choices he'd made were appalling. And when the jury found him guilty, the judge sentenced him to seven years in prison, and sent him to Pelican Bay, in Crescent City, a maximum security prison, inhabited by 3,300 of the worst felons in the California prison system, three hundred and seventy miles north of San Francisco, eleven miles from the Oregon border. It seemed like an unduly harsh sentence for Peter and not where he belonged.

On the day Peter was released, he had been there for all the time he'd served, four years and three months. He had gotten free of drugs, minded his own business, worked in the warden's office, mostly with their computers, and hadn't had a single disciplinary incident or report in all four years. And the warden he worked for totally believed him to be sincerely remorseful. It was obvious to everyone who knew him that Peter had no intention of getting in trouble again. He had learned his lesson. He had also told the parole board that the one goal he had was to see his daughters again, and be the kind of father they could be proud of one day. Peter made it sound as if, and seemed to believe that, the last six or seven years of his life were an unfortunate blip on an otherwise clear screen, and he intended to keep it clear and trouble-free from now on. And everyone believed him.

He was released at the first legal opportunity. He had to stay in northern California for a year, and they had assigned him to a parole agent in San Francisco. He was planning to live in a halfway house until he found work, and he had told the parole board he wasn't proud. He was going to take whatever kind of work he could get, until he got on his feet, even manual labor if necessary, as long as it was honest. But no one had any serious worries that Peter Morgan wouldn't find a job. He had made some colossal mistakes, but even after four years in Pelican Bay, he still came across as an intelligent, nice guy, and was. With a little bit of luck, his well-wishers, which even included the warden, hoped that he would find the right niche for him, and build a good life. He had everything it took to do that. All he needed now was a chance. And they all hoped he'd get one when he got out. People always liked Peter and wished him well. The warden came out himself to say good-bye and shake his hand. Peter had worked for him exclusively for the entire four years.

“Stay in touch,” the warden said, looking warmly at him. He had invited Peter to his own home for the past two years, to share Christmas with his wife and kids, and Peter had been terrific. Smart, warm, funny, and really kind to the warden's four teenage boys. He had a nice way with people, both young and old. And had even inspired one of them to apply for a scholarship to Harvard. The boy had just been accepted that spring. The warden felt as though he owed Peter something, and Peter genuinely liked him and his family, and was grateful for the kindness they'd shown him.

“I'll be in San Francisco for the next year,” Peter said pleasantly. “I just hope they let me go back east for a visit soon, to see my girls.” He hadn't even had a photograph of them for four years, and hadn't laid eyes on them in six. Isabelle and Heather were now respectively eight and nine, although in his mind's eye they were still considerably younger. Janet had long since forbidden him to have contact with them, and her parents endorsed her position. Peter's stepfather, who had paid for his education years before, had long since died. His brother had disappeared years before. Peter Morgan had no one, and nothing. He had four hundred dollars in his wallet, a parole agent in San Francisco, and a bed in a halfway house in the Mission District, which was predominantly Hispanic and a once-beautiful old neighborhood, some of which had gone downhill. The part Peter was living in had worn badly. The money he had wouldn't go far, he hadn't had a decent haircut in four years, and the only things he had left in the world were a handful of contacts in the high-tech and venture capital worlds in Silicon Valley, and the names of the drug dealers he had once done business with, and fully intended to steer clear of. He had virtually no prospects. He was going to call some people when he got to town, but he also knew there was a good chance he could be washing dishes or pumping gas, although he thought that unlikely. He was after all a Harvard MBA, and had gone to Duke before that. If nothing else, he could look up some old school friends, who might not have heard that he'd gone to prison. But he had no illusions that it was going to be easy. He was thirty-nine years old, and however he explained it, the last four years were going to be a blank on his résumé. He had a long uphill climb ahead of him. But he was healthy, strong, drug-free, intelligent, and still incredibly good-looking. Something good was going to happen to him eventually. Of that much, he was certain, and so was the warden.

“Call us,” the warden said again. It was the first time he had gotten that attached to a convict who worked for him. But the men he dealt with at Pelican Bay were a far cry from Peter Morgan.

Pelican Bay had been built as a maximum security prison to house the worst criminal elements that had previously been sent to San Quentin. Most of the men were in solitary. The prison itself was highly mechanized and computerized, and state of the art, which allowed them to confine some of the most dangerous men in the country. And the warden had spotted instantly that Peter didn't belong there. Only the vast quantities of drugs he'd been dealing, and the money involved, had wound him up in a maximum security prison. Had the charges been less serious, he could just as easily have been incarcerated in a minimum security facility. He was no flight risk, had no history of violence, and had never been involved in a single incident during his time there. He was a quintessentially civilized person. The few men he chatted with over the years respected him, and he steered a wide berth of potential problems. His close relationship to the warden made him sacrosanct and gave him safe passage. He had no known associations with gangs, groups known for violence, or dissident elements. He minded his own business. And after more than four years, he seemed to be leaving Pelican Bay relatively unscathed. He had kept his head down, and done his time there. He had done a lot of legal and financial reading, spent a surprising amount of time in the library, and worked tirelessly for the warden.

The warden himself had written a glowing reference for him to the parole board. His was a case of a young man who had taken a wrong turn, and all he needed was a chance now to take the right one. And the warden was certain he would do that. He looked forward to hearing good things from and about Peter in future. At thirty-nine, Peter still had his whole life ahead of him, and a brilliant education behind him. And hopefully the mistakes he'd made would prove to be a valuable lesson of some kind. There was no question in anyone's mind that Peter would stick to the straight and narrow.

Peter and the warden were still shaking hands, as he was about to leave, when a reporter and photographer from the local newspaper got out of a van, and walked up to the desk where Peter had just collected his wallet. Another prisoner was just signing his release papers, and he and Peter exchanged a look and nodded. Peter knew who he was—everyone did. They had met in the gym and in the halls from time to time, and in the last two years, he had frequently come to the warden's office. He had spent years unsuccessfully seeking a pardon, and was known to be an extremely savvy unofficial jailhouse lawyer. His name was Carlton Waters, he was forty-one years old, and had served twenty-four years for murder. In fact, he had grown up in prison.

Carlton Waters had been convicted of the murder of a neighbor and his wife, and attempting unsuccessfully to murder both their children. He had been seventeen years old at the time, and his partner in crime had been a twenty-six-year-old ex-con who had befriended him. They had broken into their victims' home and stolen two hundred dollars. Waters's partner had been put to death years before, and Waters had always claimed that he did none of the killing. He had just been there, and he had never swerved once from his story. He had always said he was innocent, and had gone to the victims' home with no foreknowledge of what his friend intended. It had happened quickly and badly, and the children had been too young to corroborate his story. They were young enough not to be a danger in identifying them, so they had been badly beaten but ultimately spared. Both men were drunk, and Waters had claimed he blacked out during the murders, and remembered nothing.

The jury hadn't bought his story, and he'd been tried as an adult, despite his age, found guilty, and lost a subsequent appeal. He had spent the majority of his life in prison, first in San Quentin, and then in Pelican Bay. He had even managed to graduate from college while there, and was halfway through law school. He had written a number of articles, about the correctional and legal systems, and had developed a relationship with the press over the years. With his protestations of innocence throughout his incarceration, Waters had become something of a celebrity prisoner. He was editor of the prison newspaper, and knew just about everyone in the prison. People came to him for advice, and he was greatly respected within the prison population. He didn't have Morgan's aristocratic good looks. He was tough, strong, and burly. He was a bodybuilder and looked it. Despite several incidents in his early days when he was still young and hotheaded, in the past two decades he was a model prisoner. He was a powerful, fearsome-looking man, but his prison record was clean, and his reputation was bronze, if not golden. It was Waters who had notified the paper of his release and he was pleased that they were there.

Waters and Morgan had never been associates, but they had always been distantly respectful of each other, and had had a few minor conversations about legal issues while Waters waited to see the warden, and Peter chatted with him. Peter had read several of his articles in the prison newspaper, and the local newspaper, and it was hard not to be impressed by the man, whether innocent or guilty. He had a fine mind, and had worked hard to achieve something in spite of the challenge he had had growing up in prison.

As Peter walked through the gate, feeling almost breathless with relief, he looked back over his shoulder once, and saw Carl Waters shaking the warden's hand as the photographer from the local paper snapped his picture. Peter knew he was going to a halfway house in Modesto. His family still lived there.

“Thank you, God,” Peter said as he stood still for a moment, closed his eyes, and then squinted up at the sun. This day felt like it had been a lifetime coming. He brushed a hand across his eyes so no one would see the tears springing from them, as he nodded at a guard, and set off on foot toward the bus stop. He knew where it was, and all he wanted now was to get there. It was a ten-minute walk, and as he hailed the bus and stepped aboard, Carlton Waters was posing for one last photograph in front of the prison. He told his interviewer again that he had been innocent. Whether or not he was, he made an interesting story, had become respected in prison over the past twenty-four years, and had milked his claims of innocence for all they were worth. He had been talking for years about his plans to write a book. The two people he had allegedly killed, and the children who had been orphaned as a result, twenty-four years before, were all but forgotten. They were obscured by his articles and artful words in the meantime. Waters was winding up the interview as Peter Morgan walked into the bus terminal and bought a ticket to San Francisco. He was free at last.

Chapter 2

Ted Lee liked working swing shift. He had done it for so long by now that it suited him. It was an old comfortable habit. He worked the four to midnight in General Works, Inspector Detective Lee in the San Francisco police force. He handled robberies and assaults, the usual smorgasbord of criminal activity. Rapes went to the Sex detail. Murders to Homicide. He had worked Homicide for a couple of years in the beginning and hated it. It was too grim for him, the men who made a career of it always seemed strange to him.

They sat around for hours looking at photographs of deceased victims. Their whole view of life got skewed by having to harden themselves to what they saw. What Ted did was more routine, but to him it seemed much more interesting. Every day was different. He liked the problem-solving aspect of matching criminals to victims. He had been in the police force for twenty-nine years, since he was eighteen. And a detective for nearly twenty, and he was good at what he did. He had worked Credit Card Fraud for a while too, but that seemed too boring. General Works was just his cup of tea, just as the swing shift was. He had been born and raised in San Francisco, right in the heart of Chinatown. His parents had come from Beijing before he was born, and both his grandmothers had come with them. His family was steeped in ancient traditions. His father had worked in a restaurant all his life, his mother was a seamstress. Both his brothers had joined the police force, just as he had, fresh from high school. One was a beat cop in the Tenderloin and didn't want to be more than that, the other was on horses. He outranked both, and they loved to tease him about it. Being a detective was a big deal to him.

Ted's wife was second-generation Chinese American. Her family was originally from Hong Kong, and owned the restaurant where his father had worked before he retired, which was how Ted had met her. They fell in love at fourteen, and he had never even dated another woman. He wasn't sure what that meant. He wasn't passionately in love with her, hadn't been in years, but he was comfortable with her. They were best friends now, more than lovers. And she was a good woman. Shirley Lee was a nurse in the intensive care unit at San Francisco General Hospital, and saw more victims of violent crimes than he did. They each saw more of their coworkers than they did of each other. They were used to it. He played golf on his day off, or took his mother to buy groceries, or whatever else she needed. Shirley liked to play cards or go shopping with her girlfriends, or get her hair done. They rarely had the same day off, and no longer worried about it. Now that the kids were grown, they had few obligations to each other. They hadn't planned it that way, but they had separate lives, and had been married since they were nineteen. Twenty-eight years.

Their oldest son had graduated from college the year before, and had moved to New York. The other two boys were still in college, in the University of California system, one in San Diego, and the other at UCLA. None of their three boys wanted to go into the police force, and Ted didn't blame them. It had been the right choice for him, but he wanted something more for them, although the department had been good to him. When he retired, he would have a full pension. He couldn't imagine retiring, although he would have thirty years in the coming year, and lots of his friends had retired long before that. He had no idea what he'd do when he retired. At forty-seven, he didn't want a second career. He still liked his first one. He loved what he did, and the people he did it with. Ted had seen men come and go over the years, some retire, some quit, some killed, some injured. He'd had the same partner for the last ten years, and before that for a few years, they had paired him off with a woman. She had lasted four years, and then moved to Chicago with her husband and joined the force there. He got Christmas cards from her every year, and in spite of his initial reservations, he had liked working with her.

The partner he'd had before that, Rick Holmquist, had left the force and joined the FBI. They still had lunch once a week, and Rick teased him about his cases. Rick always made it clear to Ted that what he did at the FBI was more important, or at least he thought so. Ted wasn't so sure. From what he could see, the SFPD solved more cases and put more criminals behind bars. A lot of what the FBI did was gathering information, and surveillance, and then other agencies stepped in and took it out of their hands. The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms guys interfered with Rick a lot of the time, the CIA, the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney, and U.S. Marshals. Most of the time, no one interfered with Ted's cases at the SFPD, unless the suspect crossed state lines, or committed a federal offense, and then of course, the FBI stepped in.

Once in a while, he and Rick still got to work on a case together, and Ted always liked that. They had remained close friends in the fourteen years since Rick had left the SFPD, and they still had a lot of respect for each other. Rick Holmquist had gotten divorced five years before, but Ted's marriage to Shirley had never been in question. Whatever they had become, or their relationship had evolved into over the years, it worked for them. Rick was currently in love with a young FBI agent, and talking about getting remarried. Ted loved to tease him about it. Rick loved to pretend he was tough, but Ted knew what a sweet guy he was.

What Ted loved best about working swing shift, and always had, was the island of peace he found when he got home. The house was quiet, Shirley was asleep. She worked days, and left for work before he got up in the morning. In the old days, when the boys were young, it had worked for them. She dropped them off at school on her way to work, while Ted was still asleep. And he picked them up, and coached them in sports on his days off, whenever he could, or at least attended their games. When he was working, Shirley got home right after he left for work, so the boys were always covered. And when he got home everyone was asleep. It meant he didn't see a lot of the kids, or her, while they were growing up, but it brought in the bacon, and they had almost never needed to pay for a sitter, and never had to worry about day care. Between them, they had covered all their bases. It had taken a toll on them, in the time they hadn't spent together. There had been a time, ten and fifteen years before, when she had bitterly resented the fact that she never saw him. They had argued a lot about it, and eventually made their peace with his hours. They had both tried working days for a while, but they seemed to argue more, and he'd worked nights for a while, and then went back to swing shifts. It suited him.

When Ted came home that night, Shirley was sound asleep, and the house was quiet. The boys' rooms were empty now. He had bought a small house in the Sunset District years before, and on his days off, he loved to walk on the beach and watch the fog roll in. It always made him feel human again, and peaceful, after a tough case, or a bad week, or something that had upset him. There were a lot of politics in the department, which sometimes stressed him, but generally, he was an easygoing, good-natured person. Which was probably why he still got along with Shirley. She was the hothead in the family, the one who got angry and raged at him, the one who had thought their marriage and relationship should have been more than it turned out to be. Ted was strong, quiet, and steady, and somewhere along the way, she had decided that was enough, and stopped trying to get more out of him. But he also knew that when she stopped arguing with him, and complaining to him, some of the life had gone out of their marriage. They had given up something, passion for familiarity and acceptance. But as Ted knew, everything in life was a trade-off, and he had no complaints. She was a good woman, they had great kids, their house was comfortable, he loved his job, and the men he worked with were good people. You couldn't ask for more than that, or at least he didn't, which was what had always annoyed her. He was content to settle for what life offered him, without demanding more.

Shirley wanted a lot more than what Ted demanded of life. In fact, he demanded nothing. He was content with life as it was, and always had been. All his energies had gone into his work, and their boys. Twenty-eight years. It was a long time for passion to survive, and it hadn't for them. There was no question in his mind, he loved her. And he assumed Shirley loved him. She was not demonstrative, and rarely said so. But he accepted her the way she was, the way he accepted all things, the good with the bad, the disappointing with the comforting. He liked the security of coming home to her every night, even if she was sound asleep. They hadn't had a conversation in months, maybe even years, but he knew that if something bad happened, she'd be there for him, as he would be for her. That was good enough for him. The kind of fire and excitement Rick Holmquist was experiencing with his new girlfriend was not for him. Ted didn't need excitement in his life. He wanted just what he had. A job he loved, a woman he knew well, three kids he was crazy about, and peace.

He sat at the kitchen table, and had a cup of tea, enjoying the silence in the peaceful house. He read the paper, looked at his mail, watched a little TV. At two-thirty he slipped into bed next to her, and lay in the dark, thinking. She didn't stir, didn't know he was lying next to her. In fact, she rolled away from him and muttered something in her sleep, as he turned his back to her, and drifted off while thinking about his caseload. He had a suspect he was almost sure was bringing heroin in from Mexico, and he was going to call Rick Holmquist about it in the morning. As he reminded himself to call Rick when he woke up, he sighed softly, and fell asleep.

Chapter 3

Fernanda Barnes was staring at a stack of bills, as she sat at her kitchen table. She felt as though she had been looking at the same stack of bills for the four months since her husband died, two weeks after Christmas. But she knew only too well that even though the stack seemed the same, it grew bigger every day. Each time the mail came in, there were new additions. It had been a never-ending stream of bad news and frightening information since Allan's death. The latest being that the insurance company was refusing to pay on his life insurance policy. She and the attorney had been expecting that. He had died in questionable circumstances while on a fishing trip in Mexico. He had gone out on the boat late at night, while his traveling companions slept at the hotel. The crew members had been off the boat, at a local bar, when he took the boat out and had apparently fallen overboard. It had taken five days to recover his body. Given his financial circumstances at the time of his death, and a disastrous letter he'd left for her, filled with despair, the insurance company suspected it was a suicide. Fernanda suspected that as well. The letter had been given to the insurance company by the police.

Fernanda had never admitted it to anyone, except their attorney, Jack Waterman, but suicide had been the first thing she thought of when they called her. Before that, Allan had been in a state of shock and panic for six months, and kept telling her he was going to turn things around, but the letter made it clear that even he didn't believe that in the end. Allan Barnes had had one of those extraordinary lottery-ticket-type windfalls at the height of the dot-com era, and sold a fledgling company to a monolith for two hundred million dollars. She had liked their life fine before. It suited her perfectly. They had a small, comfortable house in a good neighborhood in Palo Alto, near the Stanford campus, where they had met in college. They had married in the Stanford chapel the day after graduation. Thirteen years later, he had hit the big time. It was more than she'd ever dreamed of, hoped for, needed, or wanted. She couldn't even understand it at first. Suddenly he was buying yachts and airplanes, a co-op in New York for when he had business meetings there, a house in London he claimed he had always wanted. A condo in Hawaii, and a house in the city so vast that she had cried when she first saw it. He had bought it without even asking her. She didn't want to move into a palace. She loved the house in Palo Alto that they had lived in since their son Will was born.

Despite Fernanda's protests, they had moved to the city four years before, when Will was twelve, Ashley was eight, and Sam was just barely two years old. Allan had insisted she hire a nanny so she could travel with him, which Fernanda hadn't wanted either. She loved taking care of her children. She had never had a career, and had been fortunate that Allan had always made enough to support them. It had been tight sometimes, but when it was, she tightened the belt at home, and they squeaked through it. She loved being home with their babies. Will had been born nine months to the day after their wedding, and she had worked part time in a bookstore while she was pregnant the first time and never since. She had majored in art history in college, a relatively useless subject, unless she wanted to get a master's, or even a doctorate, and teach, or work at a museum. Other than that, she had no marketable skills. All she knew how to be was a wife and mother, and she was a good one. Their kids were happy and wholesome and sensible. Even with Ashley at twelve and Will at sixteen, potentially challenging ages, she had never had a single problem with their children. They hadn't wanted to move into the city either. All their friends were in Palo Alto.

The house Allan had chosen for them was enormous. It had been built by a famous venture capitalist, who sold it when he retired and moved to Europe. But to Fernanda, it looked like a palace. She had grown up in a suburb of Chicago, her father had been a doctor and her mother a schoolteacher. They had always been comfortable, and unlike Allan, she had simple expectations. All she wanted was to be married to a man who loved her, and have wonderful children. She spent a lot of time reading up on experimental educational theories, she was fascinated by psychology in relation to childrearing, and she shared her passion for art with them. She encouraged them to be and become all that they dreamed of. And she had always done the same with Allan. She just hadn't expected him to make his dreams materialize to the extent he did.

When he told her he had sold his company for two hundred million dollars, she nearly fainted, and thought he was kidding. She laughed at him, and figured maybe with some extraordinary luck, he might have sold the company for one or two or five, or at a wild guess, ten, but never two hundred million. All she wanted was enough to get their kids through college, and live comfortably for the rest of their days. Maybe enough so Allan could retire at a decent age, so they could spend a year traveling in Europe, and she could drag him through museums. She would have loved to spend a month or two in Florence. But what his windfall represented to them was beyond dreaming. And Allan dove into it with a vengeance.

He not only bought houses and co-ops, a yacht and a plane, but he made some extraordinarily risky high-tech investments. And each time he did, he assured Fernanda that he knew what he was doing. He was riding the crest of the wave, and felt invincible. He was a thousand percent confident of his own judgment, more so than she was at the time. They started fighting over it. He laughed at her fears. He was plunging money into other companies that had yet to prove themselves, while the market was skyrocketing, and everything he touched turned to gold for nearly three years. It appeared that no matter what he did, or what he risked, he could not lose money, and didn't. On paper for the first year or two, their immense new fortune actually doubled. Notably, he invested in two companies that he had total faith in, and others warned him might plummet. But he didn't listen, not to her or the others. His confidence soared to dizzying heights, while she decorated the new house, and he chided her for being so pessimistic and so cautious. By then, even she was getting used to their new wealth, and starting to spend more money than she thought she should, but Allan kept telling her to enjoy it and not worry. She stunned herself by buying two important Impressionist paintings at a Christie's auction in New York, and literally shook as she hung them in their living room. It had never even dawned on her that one day she might own those paintings, or any like them. Allan congratulated her on her good decision. He was flying high and having fun, and wanted her to enjoy it too.

But even at the height of the market, Fernanda was never extravagant, nor did she forget her more modest beginnings. Allan's family was from southern California, and they had lived more lavishly than hers had. His father was a businessman, and his mother had been a housewife, and a model in her youth. They had had expensive cars, and a nice house, and belonged to a country club. Fernanda had been seriously impressed the first time she went there, although she thought them both somewhat superficial. His mother had been wearing a fur coat on a balmy night, as it dawned on her that even living in the frozen winters of the Midwest her mother had never owned one, and wouldn't want to. The show of wealth was far more important to Allan than it was to her, even more so once his overnight success broadsided them. His one regret was that his parents hadn't lived to see it. It would have meant the world to them. And in her own way, Fernanda was relieved that her parents were gone too, and couldn't see it. They had died in a car accident on an icy night ten years before. But something in her gut always told her that her parents would have been shocked at the way Allan was spending money, and it still made her nervous, even after she bought the two paintings. At least they were an investment, or at least she hoped so. And she truly loved them. But so much of what Allan bought was about showing off. And as he kept reminding her, he could afford it.

The wave continued to build for nearly three years, as Allan continued to invest in other ventures, and huge blocks of stock in high-risk high-tech companies. He had enormous confidence in his own intuition, sometimes counter to all reason. His friends and colleagues in the dot-com world called him the Mad Cowboy, and teased him about it. And more often than not, Fernanda felt guilty about not being more supportive. He had lacked confidence as a kid, and his father had often put him down for not being more brazen, and suddenly he was so confident she felt that he was constantly dancing on a ledge and totally fearless. But her love for him overcame all her misgivings, and eventually all she could do was cheer him on from the sidelines. She didn't have anything to complain about certainly. Within three years their net worth had almost trebled, and he was worth half a billion dollars. It was beyond thinking.

She and Allan had always been happy together, even before they had money. He was an easygoing nice guy, who loved his wife and kids. It had been a joy they shared each time she gave birth, and he truly adored his children, as she did. He was especially proud of Will, who was a natural athlete. And the first time he saw Ashley at her ballet recital, at five, tears had rolled down his cheeks. He was a wonderful husband and father, and his ability to turn a modest investment into a windfall was going to give their children opportunities that neither of them had ever dreamed of. He was talking about moving to London for a year at some point, so the kids could go to school in Europe. And the thought of spending days on end at the British Museum and the Tate was a major lure for Fernanda. As a result, she didn't even complain when he bought the house on Belgrave Square for twenty million dollars. It was the highest price that had been paid for a house there in recent history. But it was certainly splendid.

The children didn't even object, nor did she, when they went to spend a month there when school got out. They loved exploring London. They spent the rest of the summer on their yacht in the South of France, and invited some of their Silicon Valley friends to join them. Allan had become a legend by then, and there were others making nearly as much money as he had. But as with the gaming tables in Las Vegas, some took their winnings and disappeared, while others put them back on the table and continued to gamble. Allan was continually making deals, and huge investments. She no longer had any clear understanding of what he was doing. All she did was run their houses and take care of their kids, and she had almost stopped worrying about it. She wondered if this was what being rich felt like. It had taken her three years to actually believe it, and for the dream of his success to finally seem real.

The bubble burst finally, three years after his initial windfall. There was a scandal involving one of his companies, one he had heavily invested in as a silent partner. No one actually knew officially if, or to what extent, he had invested, but he lost over a hundred million dollars. Miraculously, at that point, it scarcely made a dent in his fortune. Fernanda read something about the company going under in the newspapers, remembered hearing him talk about it, and asked him. He told her not to worry. According to him, a hundred million dollars meant nothing to them. He was well on his way to being worth nearly a billion dollars. He didn't explain it to her, but he was borrowing against his ever-inflating stocks at that point, and when they started to collapse, he couldn't sell them fast enough to cover the debt. He leveraged his assets by borrowing to buy more assets.

The second big hit was harder than the first, and nearly twice the amount. And after the third hit, as the market plummeted, even Allan began to look worried. The assets he had borrowed against were worth nothing suddenly and all he had left was debt. What came after that was a swan dive so staggering that the entire dot-com world went with it. Within six months almost everything Allan had made had gone up in smoke, and stocks that had been worth two hundred dollars were worth pennies. The implication to the Barneses was disastrous, to say the least.

Complaining bitterly about it, he sold the yacht and the plane, while assuring Fernanda and himself that he would buy them back again, or better ones, within a year, when the market turned around again, but of course it didn't. It wasn't just that he was losing what they had, the investments he had made were literally imploding, creating colossal debt as all his high-risk investments fell like a house of cards. By year's end, he was staring at a debt almost as enormous as his sudden fortune. And just as she hadn't when he made the windfall on the first company, Fernanda didn't fully grasp the implications of what was happening, because he explained almost nothing to her. He was constantly stressed, always on the phone, traveling from one end of the world to another, and shouting at her when he got home. Overnight, he became a madman. He was absolutely, totally panicked, and with good reason.

All she knew before Christmas the year before was that he was several hundred million in debt, and most of his stock was worth nothing. She knew that much, but she had no idea what he was going to do to fix it, or how desperate their situation was becoming. And miraculously, he had made many investments in the name of anonymous partnerships and “letterbox” corporations, which were set up without his name being publicly disclosed. As a result, the world he did business in had not yet caught on to how disastrous his situation was, and he didn't want anyone to know. He concealed it as much out of pride as because he didn't want people to be nervous about doing business with him. He was beginning to feel as though he was surrounded by the stench of failure, just as he had once worn the perfume of victory. Fear was suddenly in the air all around him, as Fernanda silently panicked, wanting to support him emotionally, but desperately afraid of what was going to happen to them and their children. She was urging him to sell the house in London, the co-op in New York, and the condo in Hawaii, when he left for Mexico right after Christmas. He went there to make a deal with a group of men, and told her before he left that if it worked out, it would recoup nearly all their losses. Before he left, she suggested they sell the house in the city and move back to Palo Alto, and he told her she was being ridiculous. He assured her that everything was going to turn around again very quickly, and not to worry. But the deal in Mexico didn't happen.

He had been there for two days, when there was suddenly another catastrophe in his financial life. Three major companies fell like thatched huts within a week, and took two of Allan's largest investments with them. In a word, they were ruined. He sounded hoarse when he called her from his hotel room late one night. He had been negotiating for hours, but it was all bluff. He had nothing left to negotiate with, or trade. He started crying as she listened to him, and Fernanda assured him that it made no difference to her, she loved him anyway. That didn't console him. For Allan, it was about defeat and victory, climbing Everest and falling off again, and having to start at the beginning. He had just turned forty weeks before, and the success that had meant everything to him for four years was suddenly over. He was, in his own eyes at least, a total failure. And nothing she said seemed to console him. She told him she didn't care. That it didn't matter to her. That she would be happy in a grass hut with him, as long as they had each other and their children. And he sat at the other end and sobbed, telling her that life just wasn't worth living. He said he'd be a laughingstock around the world, and the only real money he had left was his life insurance. She reminded him that they still had several houses to sell, which all together were worth close to a hundred million dollars.

“Do you have any idea what kind of debt we're looking at?” he asked, his voice cracking, and of course she didn't because he never told her. “We're talking hundreds of millions. We'd have to sell everything we own, and we'd still be in debt for another twenty years. I'm not even sure I could ever dig myself out of this. We're in too deep, babe. It's over. It's really, really over.” She couldn't see the tears rolling down his cheeks, but she could hear them in his voice. Although she didn't fully understand it, with his wild investment strategies, leveraging their assets, and constantly borrowing to buy more, he had lost it all. He had lost far more than that in fact. The debts he was facing were overwhelming.

“No, it's not over,” she said firmly. “You can declare bankruptcy. I'll get a job. We'll sell everything. So what? I don't give a damn about all that. I don't care if we stand on a street corner selling pencils, as long as we're together.” It was a sweet thought and the right attitude, but he was too distraught to even listen to her.

She called him again later that night; just to reassure him again, worried about him. She hadn't liked what he'd said about his life insurance, and she was more panicked about him than their financial situation. She knew that men did crazy things sometimes, over money lost or businesses that failed. His entire ego had been wrapped up in his fortune. And when she got him on the phone, she could hear that he'd been drinking. A lot presumably. He was slurring his words and kept telling her that his life was over. She was so upset that she was thinking of flying to Mexico the next day to be with him, while he continued his negotiations, but in the morning, before she could do anything about it, one of the men who was there with him called her. His voice was jagged and he sounded broken. All he knew was that Allan had gone out alone on the boat they'd chartered, after they all went to bed. The crew were off the boat, and he went late at night, handling the boat himself. All anyone knew was that he must have fallen overboard sometime before morning. The yacht was found by the local Coast Guard when the captain reported it missing, and Allan was nowhere to be found. An extensive search had turned up nothing.

Worse yet, when she got to Mexico herself later that day, the police handed her the letter he had left her. They had kept a copy for their records. It said how hopeless the situation was, that he could never climb back up, it was all over for him, and he'd rather be dead than face the horror and shame of the world finding out what a fool he'd been and what a mess he'd made of it. The letter was disastrous and convinced even her that he had committed suicide, or wanted to. Or maybe he was just drunk and had fallen overboard. There was no way to know for sure. But the greater likelihood was that he had killed himself.

The police turned the letter over to the insurance company, as they were obliged to. Based on his words, they had refused to pay the claim on his policy, and Fernanda's attorney said it was unlikely they ever would. The evidence was too damning.

When they recovered Allan's body finally, all they knew was that he had died by drowning. There was no evidence of foul play, he hadn't shot himself, he had either jumped or fallen in, but it seemed a reasonable belief that at that moment at least, he had wanted to die, given everything he had said to her right before that and what he'd written in the letter he had left behind.

Fernanda was in Mexico by the time they found his body, washed up on a beach nearby after a brief storm. It was a horrifying, heartbreaking experience, and she was grateful that the children weren't there to see it. Despite their protests, she had left them in California, and gone to Mexico on her own. A week later, after endless red tape, she returned, a widow, with Allan's remains in a casket in the cargo hold of the plane.

The funeral was a blur of agony, and the newspapers said that he had died in a boating accident in Mexico, which was what everyone had agreed to say. None of the people he had been doing business with had any idea how disastrous his situation was, and the police kept the contents of his letter confidential from the press. No one had any idea that he had hit rock bottom, and sunk even lower than that, in his own mind at least. Nor did anyone except she and his attorney have a clear picture of what the sum total of his financial disasters looked like.

He was worse than ruined, he was in debt to such a terrifying extent that it was going to take her years to clear up the mess he had made. And in the four months since he died, she had sold off all their property, except the city house, which was tied up in his estate. But as soon as they would let her, she had to sell it. Mercifully, he had put all their other properties in her name, as a gift to her, so she was able to sell them. She had death taxes hanging over her, which had to be paid soon, and the two Impressionists were going up for auction in New York in June. She was selling everything that wasn't nailed down, or planning to. Jack Waterman, their attorney, assured her that if she liquidated everything, including the house eventually, she might break even, without a penny to her name. The majority of Allan's debts were attached to corporate entities, and Jack was going to be declaring bankruptcy, but so far no one had any idea of the extent to which Allan's world had collapsed, and she was trying to keep it that way, out of respect for him. Even the children didn't know the full implications yet. And on a sunny May afternoon, she was still trying to absorb it herself four months after his death, as she sat in their kitchen, feeling numb and looking dazed.

She was going to pick Ashley and Sam up at school in twenty minutes, as she did like clockwork every day. Will drove himself home from high school normally, in the BMW his father had given him six months before, on his sixteenth birthday. The truth was that Fernanda barely had enough money left to feed them, and she couldn't wait to sell the house, to pay more of their debts, or even give them a slight cushion. She knew she would have to start looking for a job shortly, maybe at a museum. Their whole life had turned inside out and upside down, and she had no idea what to tell the children. They knew that the insurance was refusing to pay, and she claimed that their father's estate being in probate had made things tight for the moment. But none of the three children had any idea that before his death, their father had lost his entire fortune, nor that the reason the insurance wouldn't pay was because they thought he had killed himself. Everyone was told it was an accident. And unaware of the letter or his circumstances, the people who'd been with him weren't convinced it wasn't. Only she, her attorneys, and the authorities knew what had happened. For the moment.

She lay in bed every night, thinking of their last conversation and playing it in her head over and over and over again. It was all she could think of, and she knew she would forever reproach herself for not going to Mexico sooner. It was an endless litany of guilt and self-accusation with the added horror and constant terror of bills flooding in, endless debts he had incurred, and nothing with which to pay them. The last four months had been an indescribable horror for her.

Fernanda felt totally isolated by all that had happened to her, and the only person who knew what she was going through was their attorney, Jack Waterman. He had been sympathetic and supportive and wonderful, and they had just agreed that morning that she was going to put the house on the market by August. They had lived there for four and a half years, and the children loved it now, but there was nothing she could do about it. She was going to have to ask for financial aid to keep them in their respective schools, and she couldn't even do that yet. She was still trying to keep the extent of their financial disaster a secret. She was doing it as much for Allan's sake, as to avoid total panic. As long as the people they owed money to still thought they had funds, they would give her a little more time to pay them. She was blaming the delay on probate and taxes. She was stalling for time, and none of them knew it.

The papers had talked about the demise of some of the various companies he'd invested in. But miraculously, no one had strung the entire disastrous picture together, mostly because in many cases, the public had no idea that he was the principal investor. It was a tangle of horror and lies that haunted Fernanda day and night, while she wrestled with the grief of losing the only man she had ever loved, and trying to guide her children through the shoals and across the reefs of their own grief for their father. She was so stunned and terrified herself that most of the time it was hard to absorb what was happening to her.

She had been to see her doctor the week before, because she had barely slept in months, and he had offered to put her on medication, but she didn't want to. Fernanda wanted to see if she could tough it out without taking anything. But she felt utterly broken and in despair as she tried to put one foot in front of the other day after day, and keep going, if only for her children. She had to solve the mess, and eventually find a way to support them. But at times, especially at night, she was overwhelmed by waves of panic.

Fernanda glanced up at the clock in the enormous elegant white granite kitchen where she sat, and saw that she had five minutes to get to the kids' school, and knew she'd have to hurry. She put a rubber band around the fresh stack of bills, and threw them into the box where she was keeping all the others. She remembered hearing somewhere that people got angry at those they loved who died, and she hadn't even gotten there yet. All she had done was cry, and wish he hadn't been foolish enough to go so wild with his success until it destroyed him, and their lives with him. But she was not angry, only sad, and totally panicked.

She was a small, lithe figure in jeans and a white T-shirt and sandals as she hurried out the door, holding her handbag and car keys. She had long straight blond hair she wore in a braid down her back that, at a rapid glance, made her look exactly like her daughter. Ashley was twelve, but maturing fast, and she was already the same height as her mother.

Will was coming up the front steps as she hurried out and slammed the door absentmindedly behind her. He was a tall dark-haired boy, who looked almost exactly like his father. He had big blue eyes, and an athletic build. He looked more like a man than a boy these days, and he was doing the best he could to be supportive of his mother. She was either crying or upset all the time, and he worried about her more than he let on. She stopped for a minute on the steps and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. He was sixteen, but looked more like eighteen or twenty.

“You okay, Mom?” It was a pointless question. She hadn't been okay in four months. She had a constant look of panic in her eyes, a look of shell-shocked distraction, and there was nothing he could do about it. She just looked at him and nodded.

“Yeah,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I'm going to pick up Ash and Sam. I'll make you a sandwich when I get home,” she promised.

“I can do that myself.” He smiled at her. “I have a game tonight.” He played both lacrosse and baseball, and she loved going to his games, and practices, and always had. But lately she looked so distracted when she went, he wasn't even sure she saw them.

“Do you want me to pick them up?” he offered. He was the man of the house now. It had been a huge shock to him, as it was to all of them, and he was doing his best to live up to his new role. It was still hard to believe his father was gone, and never coming back. It had been an enormous adjustment for all of them. It seemed like his mother was a different person these days, and he worried about her driving sometimes. She was a menace on the road.

“I'm fine,” she reassured him, as she always did, and convinced neither him, nor herself, but kept moving toward her station wagon, unlocked the door, waved, and got in. And a moment later, she drove away, and he stood watching her for a minute, as he saw her drive right through the stop sign on the corner. And then looking as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, he unlocked the front door with his key, walked into the silent house, and closed the door behind him. With one stupid fishing trip in Mexico, his father had changed their lives forever. He had always been going somewhere, doing something he thought was important. In the last few years, he had almost never been home, just out somewhere, making money. He hadn't been to one of Will's games in three years. And even if Fernanda wasn't angry at him for what he'd done to them when he died, there was no question that Will was. Every time he looked at his mother now, and saw the condition she was in, he hated his father for what he'd done to her, and all of them. He had abandoned them. Will hated him for it, and didn't even know the whole story.

Chapter 4

When Peter Morgan got off the bus in San Francisco, he stood looking around for a long moment. The bus deposited him south of Market, in an area he wasn't familiar with. All of his activities, when he lived there, had been in better neighborhoods. He had had a house in Pacific Heights, an apartment he used on Nob Hill to do drug deals, and he had had business dealings in Silicon Valley. He had never hung out in the low-rent neighborhoods, but in his state-issued prison hand-me-downs, he fit right in where he stood.

He walked along Market Street for a while, trying to get used to having people swirling around him again, and he felt vulnerable and jostled. He knew he would have to get over it soon. But after almost four and a half years in Pelican Bay, he felt like an egg without a shell on the streets. He stopped in a restaurant on Market, and paid for a hamburger and a cup of coffee, and as he savored it, and the freedom that went with it, it tasted like the best meal he'd ever had. Afterward, he stood outside, just watching people. There were women and children, and men looking as though they were going somewhere with a sense of purpose. There were homeless people lying in doorways, and drunks staggering around. The weather was balmy and beautiful, and he just walked along the street, with no particular goal in mind. He knew that once he got to the halfway house, he'd be dealing with rules again. He just wanted to taste his freedom first before he got there. Two hours later, he got on a bus, after asking someone for directions, and headed for the Mission District, where the halfway house was.

It was on Sixteenth Street. Once he got off the bus, he walked until he found it, and then stood outside, looking at his new home. It was a far cry from the places where he had lived before he went to prison. He couldn't help thinking of Janet, and their two little girls, wondering where they were now. He had missed his daughters terribly for all the years since he'd seen them. He had read somewhere that Janet had remarried. He had seen it in a magazine while he was in prison. His parental rights had been terminated years before. He imagined that the girls had probably been adopted by her new husband by now. The waters had closed over him long ago in her life, and his children's. He forced the memories from his mind, as he walked up the stairs of the dilapidated halfway house. It was open to recovering substance abusers and parolees.

The hallway smelled of cats and urine and burning food, and the paint was peeling off the walls. It was a hell of a place for a Harvard MBA to wind up, but so was Pelican Bay, and he had survived there for over four years. He knew he would survive here too. He was above all a survivor.

There was a tall thin black man with no teeth sitting at a desk, and Peter noticed that he had tracks on both his arms. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and didn't seem to care, and in spite of his dark skin, he had teardrops tattooed on his face, which was a sign that he had been in prison. He looked up at Peter and smiled. He looked welcoming and pleasant. He could see in Peter's eyes the shell-shocked dazed look of a new release.

“Can I help you, man?” He knew the look and the clothes and the haircut, and despite Peter's visibly aristocratic origins, he knew he had been in prison too. There was something about the way he walked, the caution with which he observed the man at the desk, that said it all. They instantly recognized each other as having a common bond. Peter had far more in common with the man at the desk now than he did with anyone from his own world. This had become his world.

Peter nodded and handed him his papers, saying that he was expected at the halfway house, and the man at the desk looked up at him, nodded, took a key out of the desk drawer, and stood up.

“I'll show you your room,” he volunteered.

“Thanks,” Peter said tersely. All his defenses were up again, as they had been for four years. He knew he was only slightly safer here than he had been at Pelican Bay. It was roughly the same crowd. And many of them would be going back. He didn't want to go back to prison, or have his parole violated, over a brawl, or having to defend himself in a fight.

They walked up two flights of stairs in the rancid-smelling halls. It was an old Victorian that had long since fallen into disrepair and had been taken over for this purpose. The house was inhabited only by men. Upstairs, the house smelled of cats, and seldom-changed litter boxes. The house monitor walked to the end of the hall, stopped at a door, and knocked. There was no answer. He opened it with the key and pushed open the door, as Peter walked past him into the room. It was barely bigger than a broom closet. There was badly stained old shag carpeting on the floor, a bunk bed, two chests, a battered desk, and a chair. The single window looked at the back of another house, badly in need of paint. It was beyond depressing. At least the cells in Pelican Bay had been modern, well lit, and clean. Or at least his was. This looked like a flophouse, as Peter nodded and looked at him.

“The bathroom's down the hall. There's another guy in this room, I think he's at work,” the monitor explained.

“Thanks.” Peter saw that there were no sheets on the top bunk, and realized he'd have to provide his own, or sleep on the mattress, as others did. Most of his room-mate's belongings were spread all over the floor. The place was a mess, and he stood staring out the window for a long moment, feeling things he hadn't felt in years. Despair, sadness, fear. He had no idea where to go now. He had to get a job. He needed money. He had to stay clean. It was so easy to think of dealing drugs again to get himself out of this mess. The prospect of working at McDonald's or washing dishes somewhere did not cheer him. He climbed onto the upper bunk when the monitor left, and lay there, staring at the ceiling. After a while, trying not to think of all he had to do, Peter fell asleep.

At almost the exact moment that Peter Morgan walked into his room in the halfway house in the Mission District in San Francisco, Carlton Waters walked into his in the halfway house in Modesto. The room he was assigned to was shared with a man he had served a dozen years with in San Quentin, Malcolm Stark. The two were old friends, and Waters smiled as soon as he saw him. He had given Stark some excellent legal advice, which had eventually gotten him released.

What are you doing here?” Waters looked pleased to see him, as Stark grinned. Waters didn't let on, but after twenty-four years in prison, he was in culture shock to be out. It was a relief to see a friend.

“I just got out last month. I did another nickel in Soledad, and got out last year. They violated me six months ago, for possession of a firearm. No big deal. I just got out again. This place ain't bad. I think there are a couple of guys here you know.”

“What'd you do the nickel for?” Waters asked, eyeing him. Stark's hair was long, and he had a rugged, battered face. He'd been in a lot of fights as a kid.

“They busted me in San Diego. I got a job as a mule across the border.” He had been in for dealing, when he and Waters first met. It was the only work Stark knew. He was forty-six years old, had been state raised, had been dealing drugs since he was fifteen, and using them since he was twelve. But the first time he'd gone to prison, there had been manslaughter charges too. Someone had gotten killed when a drug deal went sour. “No one got hurt this time.” Waters nodded. He actually liked the guy, although he thought he was a fool to have gotten caught again. And being a mule was as low as it got. It meant he had been hired to carry dope across the border, and obviously hadn't been smart about it, if he'd gotten arrested. But sooner or later, they all did. Or most of them anyway.

“So who else is here?” Waters inquired. For them, it was like a club or a fraternity of men who had been in prison.

“Jim Free, and some other guys you know.” Jim Free, Carlton Waters remembered, had been in Pelican Bay for attempted murder and kidnap. Some guy had paid him to kill his wife, and he'd blown it. Both he and the husband had gotten a “dime.” Ten years. A nickel was five. Pelican Bay, and San Quentin before it, were considered the graduate schools of crime. In some places equal to Peter Morgan's Harvard MBA. “So what are you going to do now, Carl?” Stark inquired, as though discussing summer vacations, or a business they were going to start. Two entrepreneurs discussing their future.

“I've got some ideas. I have to report in to my PA, and there are some people I've got to see about a job.” Waters had family in the area, and he had been making plans for years.

“I'm working on a farm, boxing tomatoes,” Stark volunteered. “It's shit work, but the pay is decent. I want to drive a truck. They said I had to box for three months, till they get to know me. I've got two months to go. They need guys if you want work,” Stark suggested casually, trying to be helpful.

“I want to see if I can find a job in an office. I've gotten soft.” Waters smiled. He looked anything but, he was in remarkable shape, but manual labor didn't appeal to him. He was going to see if he could talk his way into something better. And with luck, he might. The supply officer he'd worked for, for the last two years, had given him a glowing reference, and he had acquired decent computer skills in prison. And after the articles he'd written, he was a modestly skilled writer. He still wanted to write a book about his life in prison.

The two men sat around and talked for a while, and then went out to dinner. They had to sign in and out, and be back by nine o'clock. All Carlton Waters could think of as he walked to the restaurant with Malcolm was how strange it felt to be walking down a street again, and to be going out to dinner. He hadn't done that in twenty-four years, since he was seventeen. He had spent sixty percent of his life in prison, and he hadn't even pulled the trigger. At least that was what he had told the judge, and they had never been able to prove he had. It was over now. He had learned a lot in prison that he might never have learned otherwise. The question was what to do with it. For the moment, he had no idea.

Fernanda picked Ashley and Sam up at school, then dropped Ashley off at ballet, and went home with Sam. As usual, they found Will in the kitchen. He spent most of his time at home eating, although he didn't look it. He was an athlete, both lean and powerful, and just over six feet tall. Allan had been six two, and she assumed that Will would get there soon, at the rate he was growing.

“What time's your game?” Fernanda asked, as she poured Sam a glass of milk, added an apple to a plate of cookies, and set them down in front of him. Will was eating a sandwich that looked like it was about to explode with turkey, tomatoes, and cheese, and was dripping mustard and mayo. The boy could eat.

“It's not till seven,” Will said between mouthfuls. “You coming?” He glanced at her, acting as though he didn't care, but she knew he did. She always went. Even now, with so much else on her mind. She loved being there for him, and besides, it was her job. Or had been till now. She would have to do something else soon. But for now, she was still a full-time mother and loved every minute of it. Being there with them was even more precious to her now that Allan had died.

“Would I miss it?” She smiled at him and looked tired, trying not to think of the fresh stack of bills she had put in the box before she left to pick up the kids at school. There seemed to be more every day, and they were growing exponentially. She had had no idea how much Allan spent. Nor how she would pay for it now. They had to sell the house soon, for as much as she could get for it. But she was trying not to think of it as she spoke to Will. “Who are you playing?”

“A team from Marin. They suck. We should win.” He smiled at her, and she grinned, as Sam ate the cookies and ignored the apple.

“That's good. Eat your apple, Sam,” she said, without even turning her head, and he groaned in answer.

“I don't like apples,” he grumbled. He was an adorable six-year-old with bright red hair, freckles, and brown eyes.

“Then eat a peach. Eat some fruit, not just cookies.” Even in the midst of disaster, life went on. Ballgames, ballet, after-school snacks. She was going through the motions of normalcy, mostly for them. But also for herself. Her children were the only thing getting her through it.

“Will's not eating fruit,” Sam said, looking grumpy. She had one of every color, so to speak. Will had dark hair like his father, Ashley was blond like her, and Sam had bright red hair, although no one could figure out courtesy of whose genes. There were no redheads in the family, on either side, that they knew of. With his big brown eyes and multitude of freckles, he looked like a kid in an ad or a cartoon.

“Will is eating everything in the refrigerator, from the look of it. He doesn't have room for fruit.” She handed Sam a peach and a tangerine, and glanced at her watch. It was just after four, and if Will had a game at seven, she wanted to serve dinner at six. She had to pick Ashley up at ballet at five. Her life was broken into tiny pieces now, as it had always been, but more so than ever, and she no longer had anyone to help her. Shortly after Allan died, she had fired the housekeeper and the au pair who had helped take care of Sam previously. She had stripped away all of their expenses, and was doing everything including the housework herself. But the kids seemed to like it. They loved having her around all the time, although she knew they missed their father.

They sat at the kitchen table together, while Sam complained about a fourth grader who had bullied him at school that day. Will said he had a science project due that week, and asked her if she could get some copper wire for him. And then Will advised his brother what to do about bullies. He was in high school, and the other two went to grade school. Will was still holding his own scholastically since January, but Ashley's grades had plummeted, and Sam's first-grade teacher said he cried a lot. They were all still in shock. And so was Fernanda. She felt like crying all the time. The kids were almost used to it by now. Whenever Will or Ashley walked into her room, she seemed to be crying. She put up a better front for Sam, although he'd been sleeping in her bed for four months, and he heard her crying sometimes too. She even cried in her sleep. Ashley had complained to Will only days before that their mother never laughed anymore, she hardly even smiled. She looked like a zombie.

“She will,” Will had said sensibly, “give her time.” He was more adult than child these days, and was trying to step into his father's shoes.

They all needed time to recover, and he was trying to be the man in the family. More than Fernanda thought he should. Sometimes she felt like a burden to him now. He was going to lacrosse camp that summer, and she was glad for him. Ashley had made plans to go to Tahoe, to a friend's house, and Sam was going to day camp and staying in town with her. She was glad the kids would be busy. It would give her time to think, and do what she had to do with their attorney. She just hoped the house sold fast once they put it on the market. Although that would be a shock for the kids too. She had no idea where they were going to live once it sold. Someplace small, and cheap. She also knew that sooner or later it would come out that Allan had been totally broke and heavily in debt when he died. She had done what she could to protect him until now, but eventually the truth would come out. It wasn't the kind of secret you could keep forever, although she was almost certain that no one knew yet. His obituary had been wonderful and dignified and sung his praises. For whatever it was worth. She knew it was what Allan would have wanted.

When she left to pick up Ashley just before five, she asked Will to keep an eye on Sam. And then she drove to the San Francisco Ballet, where Ashley took classes three times a week. She wasn't going to be able to afford that anymore either. When all was said and done, all they were going to be able to do was go to school, keep a roof over their heads, and eat. The rest was going to be slim pickings, unless she got a great job, which was unlikely. It didn't matter anymore. Very little did. They were alive, and had each other. It was all she cared about now. She spent a lot of time asking herself why Allan hadn't understood that. Why he would rather have died than face his mistakes, or bad luck, or poor judgment, or all of the above? He had been in the grips of some kind of deal fever that had led him right up to the edge and past it, at everyone's expense. Fernanda and the children would much rather have had him than all that money. In the end, nothing good had come of it. Some good times, some fun toys, a lot of houses and condominiums and co-ops they didn't need. A boat and plane that had seemed pointless extravagances to her. They had lost their father, and she lost her husband. It was much too high a price to pay for four years of fabulous luxury. She wished he had never made the money in the first place, and they had never left Palo Alto. She was still thinking about it, as she often did now, when she stopped on Franklin Street outside the ballet. She got there just as Ashley walked out of the building in her leotard and sneakers, carrying her toe shoes.

Even at twelve, Ashley was spectacular looking with her long straight blond hair like Fernanda's. She had features like a cameo and was developing a lovely figure. She was slowly evolving from child to woman and often it seemed to Fernanda that it wasn't as slow as she would have liked. The serious look in her eyes made her look older than her years. They had all grown up in the past four months. Fernanda felt a hundred years older, not the forty she was turning that summer.

“How was class?” she asked Ashley, as she slipped into the front seat, while cars backed up behind her on Franklin and started honking. As soon as Ashley was in and had her seatbelt on, her mother drove off toward home.

“It was okay.” Although she was normally passionate about ballet, she looked tired and unenthusiastic. Everything was more effort now, for all of them. Fernanda felt as though she had been swimming upstream for months. And Ashley looked it too. She missed her father, as did the others, and her mother.

“Will has a game tonight. Do you want to come?” Fernanda asked as they drove north on Franklin in rush hour traffic.

Ashley shook her head. “I have homework.” At least she was trying, although her grades didn't show it. But Fernanda wasn't giving her a hard time about it. She knew she couldn't have gotten decent grades either. She felt like she was flunking everything at the moment. Just making a couple of phone calls, dealing with their bills, keeping the house and kids in order, and facing reality on a daily basis was almost more than she could cope with.

“I need you to watch Sam tonight, while I'm out. Okay?” Ashley nodded. Fernanda had never left them alone before, but there was no one to leave them with now. Fernanda had no one to call to help her. Their instant success had isolated them from everyone. And their instant poverty more so. The friends she'd had for years had felt awkward with their sudden money. Their lives became too different, as their new lifestyle set them apart. And Allan's death and the worries he had left her with had isolated her further. She didn't want anyone to know how dire their situation was. She screened all her calls, and rarely returned them. There was no one she wanted to talk to. Except her kids. And the lawyer. She had all the classic signs of depression, but who wouldn't? She had been suddenly widowed at thirty-nine, and she was about to lose everything they had, even their house. All she had left were her children.

She cooked dinner for them when they got home, and put it on the table at six. She made hamburgers and salad, and put a bowl of potato chips out for them. It wasn't health food, but at least they ate it. She picked at hers, didn't even bother to put a hamburger on her plate, and pushed most of her salad into the garbage. She was seldom hungry, nor was Ashley. She had gotten taller and thinner in the past four months, which made her look suddenly older.

Ashley was upstairs doing her homework, and Sam was watching TV, when Fernanda and Will left at a quarter to seven, and drove to the Presidio. He was wearing cleats and his baseball gear, and didn't say much to her. They were both quiet and pensive, and once they got there, she went to sit in the bleachers with the other parents. No one spoke to her, and she didn't try to engage them in conversation. People didn't know what to say to her. Her grief made everyone feel awkward. It was almost as though people were afraid the loss would be contagious. Women with safe, comfortable, normal lives and husbands didn't want to get near her. She was suddenly single for the first time in seventeen years, and felt like a pariah, as she sat watching the game in silence.

Will scored two home runs. His team won six to nothing, and he looked pleased when they drove home. He loved winning, and hated losing.

“Want to stop for a pizza?” she offered. He hesitated and then nodded. He ran in with the money she handed him, and got a large with everything on it, and then he turned and smiled at her when he got back in the car, and sat in the front seat with the pizza box perched on his lap.

“Thanks, Mom… thanks for coming …” He wanted to say something more to her, but didn't know how. He wanted to tell her that it meant a lot to him that she always came, and he wondered why his father hadn't. Not since he was a little kid. He had never even seen one of his lacrosse games. Allan had taken him to World Series games, and the Super Bowl, with some of his business associates. But that was different. He never went to Will's games. But she did, and as they drove home, she glanced over at him, and he smiled at her. It was one of those golden moments that happen once in a while between mothers and children, that you remember forever.

The sky was a gentle pink and mauve across the bay, as she pulled into their driveway, and she looked at it for a minute, as he got out of the car with his pizza. For the first time in months, she had a sense of competence and peace and well-being, as though she could handle what life had thrown at her, and they would all survive it. Maybe things were going to be okay after all, she told herself, as she locked her car, and followed Will up the steps to the house. She was smiling to herself, and he was already in the kitchen, as she closed the door gently behind her.

Chapter 5

Carlton Waters checked in with his parole agent on schedule, two days after he got out. As it turned out, he had the same parole agent as Malcolm Stark, and they went to report together. Waters was told to check in weekly, as Stark had been doing. Stark was determined not to go back this time. He had stayed clean since he'd been out, and was making enough at the tomato farm to stay afloat, to go out to eat at the local coffee shop, and be able to pay for a few beers. Waters had gone to apply for a job in the office of the farm where Stark worked. They said they'd let him know on Monday.

The two men had agreed to hang out together over the weekend, although Carl had said there were some family members he wanted to see on Sunday. They had been warned to stay in the area, and needed permission to go out of the district, but Waters told Stark his relatives were just a bus ride away. He hadn't seen them since he was a kid. They had dinner at a nearby diner on Saturday night, and then went to hang out in a bar, watching baseball on TV, and they were back in the house by nine o'clock. Neither of them wanted any problems. They had done their time, now they wanted peace, freedom, and to keep their noses clean. Waters said he hoped he'd get the job he'd interviewed for the day before, and if not, he'd have to start looking for something else. But he wasn't worried about it. The two men were asleep on their bunks by ten o'clock, and when Stark got up at seven o'clock the next day, Carl was gone, and had left him a note. He said he'd gone to see his relatives, and would see him that night. Stark saw later that Carl had checked himself out in the log at six-thirty that morning. He spent the rest of the day hanging around the house, watching the ballgame on TV, and talking to the others. He never gave any further thought to where Carl had gone. He had said he'd be with his relatives, and whenever anyone asked Stark where Carl was, he said so.

Malcolm Stark hung out with Jim Free from about midday. They walked to the nearest Jack in the Box and bought tacos for dinner. Free was the man who had been hired to kill a man's wife, had bungled the job, and wound them both up in prison instead. But they never spoke of their criminal life when they were together. None of them did. They did in prison occasionally, but out in the world, they were determined to put the past behind them. Free looked like he'd been in prison though. He had tattoos up and down his arms, and the familiar prison teardrops tattooed on his face. He seemed as though no one and nothing frightened him. He could take care of himself and looked it.

The two men sat talking about the ballgame that night, eating their tacos and talking about games they'd seen, players they admired, batting averages, and historical moments in baseball they'd wished they'd seen. It was the kind of conversation two men could have had anywhere, and Stark smiled when Free commented about the girl he'd just met. He met her at the gas station where he worked. There was a coffee shop next to it, and she worked there as a waitress. He said she was the prettiest thing he'd ever seen, and looked a lot like Madonna, which made Stark guffaw. He'd heard descriptions like that before, in the joint, and it always made him question the guy's eyesight. The women never looked anything like the guy's descriptions when you saw them. But if that was what Jim Free thought, he wasn't going to argue with him. A man was entitled to his dreams and illusions.

“She know you been in the joint?” Malcolm Stark asked with interest.

“Yeah. I told her. Her brother did time for grand theft auto as a kid. She didn't look too worried.” It was a whole world of people who seemed to measure time by who went to prison, for how long, and it didn't seem to faze them. It was like a club, or a secret society. They had a way of finding each other.

“You been out with her yet?” There was a woman Stark had his eye on too, at the tomato plant, but he hadn't dared approach her yet. His dating skills were a little rusty.

“I thought I'd ask her about next weekend,” Free said awkwardly. They all dreamed of romance and wild sexual exploits when they were doing time. And once out, it was harder to pursue than they'd expected. They were neophytes in the real world, in a lot of ways. And in some ways seeking out women was the hardest. Most of the time, the men in the halfway house just hung out together, except for the ones who were married. But even they took a while to get to know their wives again. They were so used to a world of men, devoid of women, that in a lot of ways, it was easier staying in an all-male world, like priests, or men who had been too long in the military. Women were an uncomfortable addition to the equation. An all-male society was more familiar to them, and simpler.

Stark and Free were both sitting on the front steps, shooting the breeze when Carlton Waters walked in that evening. He looked relaxed and at ease, and as though he'd spent a pleasant day, as he smiled at the two men. He was wearing a blue cotton shirt open over a T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, and his boots were dusty. He had just walked half a mile from the bus stop, on a dirt road, on a beautiful spring night. And he looked to be in good spirits. He was smiling and seemed relaxed.

“How were your relatives?” Stark asked politely. It was funny how out here manners mattered, and you were supposed to ask questions. In prison, it was always wisest to keep one's own counsel, and ask nothing. In places like Pelican Bay, people took offense at questions.

“Okay, I guess. Something must have happened. I took two buses all the way out to their farm, and damn if they hadn't gone somewhere. I told them I was coming, but I guess they forgot. I just hung around, and sat on their porch for a while, walked into town and had something to eat. And took the bus back.” He didn't look bothered about it. It just felt good to be on a bus going anywhere, and walking in the sunshine. He hadn't had a chance to do anything like that since he was a kid. And he looked like one, as he sat down on the steps with them. He looked happier than he had the day before. Freedom agreed with him. He looked as though a weight had lifted off his shoulders, as he leaned back on the steps and Malcolm Stark grinned at him. When he did, you could see that Stark had almost no back teeth, just front ones.

“If I didn't know better, I'd say you were bullshitting me about your relatives, and you spent the day with a woman,” Stark teased. Waters had the kind of sated, giddy look people had after great sex.

Carlton Waters laughed out loud at what Stark said, skipped a rock across the road, and offered no further comment. And at nine o'clock, they stood up, stretched, and went back inside. They knew their curfew. They signed the log, and went to their rooms. He and Stark talked for a while, sitting on their bunks, and Jim Free went to his room. They were used to the familiar peaceful routine of lockdown at night, and had no objection to the house rules or curfew.

Stark had to get up at six for work the next day, and by ten o'clock, both men were asleep, as was the whole house. Looking at them, sleeping peacefully, no one would have suspected how dangerous they were, or had been, or the damage they had done in the world, before they got there. But hopefully, for the most part, they had learned their lesson.

Chapter 6

As she always did, Fernanda spent the weekend with her children. Ashley had a rehearsal for a ballet recital she was preparing for in June, and afterward Fernanda dropped her off for a movie and dinner with friends. Fernanda chauffeured her to all of it, with Sam sitting in the front seat beside her. She had invited a friend in to play with him, on Saturday, and they went to one of Will's games while Ashley was at rehearsal. The children kept her busy, and she loved it. It was her salvation.

She had some paperwork she had to do on Sunday, while Ashley slept, Sam watched a video, and Will worked on his science project, with the Giants game droning in the background on the TV in his room. It was a boring game, and the Giants were losing, so he wasn't paying much attention. Fernanda was trying to concentrate unsuccessfully while she went over the tax papers the lawyer had given her to fill out. She would have liked to go for a walk on the beach with the kids. She suggested it at lunch, but none of them was in the mood. She just wanted to get away from her tax work. She had just taken a break, and walked into the kitchen for a cup of tea, when there was a sudden loud explosion that sounded very near them. It seemed as though it was right next to them, in fact, and afterward there was a long silence, as Sam ran into the room and stared at her. They both looked panicked.

What was that?” he asked her, looking worried.

“I don't know. It sounded big though,” Fernanda answered. They could already hear sirens in the distance.

“It sounded huge,” Will corrected her, as he ran in, and Ashley came downstairs, looking confused a minute later, as they all stood in the kitchen, wondering what had happened. The sirens sounded as though they were on their street, and rapidly approaching. There were a lot of them, and three police cars sped past their windows, with lights flashing. “What do you think it is, Mom?” Sam asked again, looking excited. It sounded like a bomb had exploded at the home of one of their neighbors, although Fernanda knew that was unlikely.

“Maybe some kind of a gas explosion,” she suggested, as they all looked out the window and saw more flashing lights speed by. They opened the front door and peeked out, and it looked like a dozen police cars had congregated down the street, as more arrived, and three fire trucks whizzed by. Fernanda and the children walked to the curb, and they could see a car in flames down the block, as firemen aimed hoses at it. People had come out of their houses, all up and down the street, and were chatting with each other. A few approached the burning car out of curiosity, but the police signaled them back, as a police captain's car arrived on the scene, but most of the excitement seemed to be over, as the flames on the car were extinguished.

“Looks like a car caught fire, and the gas tank must have exploded,” Fernanda explained sensibly. The excitement was almost over. But there were police and firemen everywhere, as the captain got out of his car.

“Maybe it was a car bomb,” Will said with interest as they stood outside, and eventually they went back into the house, while Sam complained. He wanted to see the fire trucks, but the police weren't letting anyone near the scene. There were a flock of cops down the block, circling the scene, and more still arriving. A car in flames didn't seem to warrant that much attention, but there was no denying the explosion had sounded impressive. She had jumped about a foot when it happened.

“I don't think it was a car bomb,” Fernanda commented, once they were back in the house. “I think a gas tank exploding would make a pretty big bang. It was probably burning for a while, and no one noticed.”

“Why would a car catch fire?” Ashley added, looking puzzled. It seemed dumb to her, but had sounded scary anyway.

“It happens. Maybe someone dropped a cigarette and didn't see it. Something like that. Maybe vandalism,” although that seemed unlikely. Particularly in their neighborhood. Fernanda didn't know what else to suggest to explain it.

“I still think it was a car bomb,” Will said, delighted to be distracted from his science project. He hated doing it, and any excuse to avoid it was valid, especially a car bomb.

“You play too much Nintendo,” Ashley said to Will with a look of disgust. “No one blows up cars, except in movies or on TV.”

They all went back to their respective activities then. Fernanda continued her tax work for her attorney, Jack Waterman. And as he left the room, Will said he couldn't finish his project without more copper wire, which they didn't have, and his mother promised to get him more on Monday. And Ashley sat with Sam, watching the end of the video with him. It was another two hours before the last of the police cars left, and the fire trucks left long before that. Everything was peaceful again, as Fernanda cooked dinner for them. She was just putting the dishes in the dishwasher when the doorbell rang. She hesitated at the front door, looked through the peephole, and saw two men standing outside, talking to each other. She'd never seen them before. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her hands were wet when she asked who it was through the door. They said they were police officers, but they didn't look like it to her. Neither was in uniform, and she was thinking about not opening the door, when one of them held his badge up to the peephole so she could see it. She opened cautiously and looked at them. They both looked respectable, and apologized for disturbing her, as she stood looking at them in confusion.

“Is something wrong?” It didn't occur to her at first that their visit had anything to do with the car they'd seen burning that afternoon, or the explosion they'd heard when the gas tank must have exploded. She couldn't imagine why they had come to see her. And for a moment it reminded her of the agonizing days after Allan's death, dealing with the authorities in Mexico.

“We were wondering if we could talk to you for a minute.” They were two plainclothes officers, one Asian, and the other Caucasian. They were both nicely dressed men somewhere in their forties, wearing sport coats, shirts, and ties. They said they were Detectives Lee and Stone, and handed her their cards, as they stood in the front hall, talking to her. There was nothing ominous about them, and the Asian man looked at her and smiled. “We didn't mean to frighten you, ma'am. There was an incident up the street from you this afternoon. If you were home, you probably heard it.” He was pleasant and polite and put her instantly at ease.

“Yes, we did. It looked like a car caught fire, and I assumed the gas tank exploded.”

“That's a reasonable assumption,” Detective Lee volunteered. He was watching her, as though looking for something. There was something about her that seemed to intrigue him. The other detective said nothing. He let his partner take the lead.

“Do you want to come in?” Fernanda asked. It was obvious that they weren't ready to leave yet.

“Would you mind? We'll only take a minute.” She walked them into the kitchen, and found her sandals under the kitchen table. They looked so respectable, she was embarrassed to stand there talking to them barefoot.

“Would you like to sit down?” She waved at the kitchen table, which was almost cleared. She used the sponge to get off the rest of the crumbs, tossed it into the sink, and then sat down with them. “What happened?”

“We're still working on it, we want to ask the neighbors some questions. Was anyone in the house with you when you heard the explosion?” She saw him glance around the room, taking in the elegant kitchen. It was a big handsome room, with white granite counters, state-of-the-art equipment, and a big white Venetian glass chandelier. It was in keeping with the grandeur of the rest of the house. It was an imposing, large, very formal house, in direct proportion to Allan's success at the time they acquired it. But she looked very normal and relaxed as Detective Lee took in the jeans, T-shirt, and hair loosely tied in an elastic. She looked like a kid, at first glance, and it was obvious that she had been cooking dinner, which seemed surprising to him. In a house like hers, he had expected to see a cook. Not a pretty woman in jeans and bare feet.

“My children were here with me,” she said, as he nodded.

“Anyone else?” Along with a cook, he expected maids and a housekeeper too. It was the kind of house he presumed would be staffed. Maybe an au pair or two, or even a butler. It seemed odd to him that she was the only one there. Maybe they were off on Sunday, he assumed.

“No, just us. The kids and I,” she said simply.

“Was your husband home?” he asked, and she hesitated, and then glanced away. She still hated to explain it. It was too new, and the word still hurt whenever she had to say it.

“No. I'm a widow.” Her voice was soft and seemed to catch as she said it. She hated the word.

“I'm sorry. Did any of you go outside before you heard the explosion?” He sounded kind as he asked the questions, and she didn't know why, but she liked him. So far, Detective Lee was the only one doing the talking. The other inspector, Detective Stone, still said nothing. But she saw him glance around and notice the kitchen. They seemed to be taking in everything, and studying her as well.

“No. We went outside afterward, but not before. Why? Did something else happen? Did someone set fire to the car?” Maybe it was malicious mischief, and not an innocent fire after all, she thought.

“We don't know yet.” He smiled pleasantly. “Did you look outside, or see anyone on the street? Anything unusual, or anyone suspicious?”

“No. I was doing some paperwork at my desk, I think my daughter was asleep, one of my sons was watching a video, and the other one was doing a science project for school.”

“Would you mind if we asked them?”

“No, that's fine. I'm sure the boys will think it's exciting. I'll go get them.” And then she turned as an afterthought as she stood in the doorway and Ted Lee watched her. “Would you like something to drink?” She glanced at both of them, and they shook their heads, but both of them smiled at her and thanked her. They seemed extremely polite to her. “I'll be back in a minute,” she said, and bounded up the stairs to the children's rooms. She told them that the police were downstairs and wanted to ask them some questions. As she had predicted, Ashley looked annoyed. She was on the phone and didn't want to be interrupted. And Sam looked excited.

“Are they going to arrest us?” He looked both scared and hopeful. And Will tore himself away from a Nintendo game long enough to raise an eyebrow and look intrigued.

“Was I right? Was it a car bombing?” He looked hopeful.

“No, I don't think so. They said they don't know what it was, but they want to know if any of you saw someone or something suspicious. And no, Sam, they are not going to arrest us. They don't think you did it.” Sam looked momentarily disappointed, and Will stood up and followed his mother to the stairs, while Ashley objected.

“Why do I have to come downstairs? I was asleep. Can't you tell them that? I'm talking to Marcy.” They had serious matters to discuss. Like the eighth-grade boy in their school who had evidenced some recent interest in Ashley. As far as she was concerned, that was a lot more important, and more interesting than the police.

“Tell Marcy you'll call her back. And you can tell the detectives yourself that you were sleeping,” Fernanda said, as she preceded them downstairs and they followed her to the kitchen. The children came into the room right behind her, as the two detectives stood up and smiled at them. They were a nice-looking bunch of kids, and she was a nice-looking woman. Ted Lee suddenly felt sorry for her, and from the look on her face when she'd answered him, he got the feeling her widowhood was recent. He had an instinctive sense of things, after almost thirty years of asking questions and watching people when they answered. She had looked wounded when she answered him, but she looked more comfortable now, surrounded by her children. He noticed that the little redheaded boy looked like an imp, and he was staring up at him with interest.

“My mom says you're not going to arrest us,” Sam piped up, and everyone in the room laughed, as Ted smiled down at him.

“That's right, son. Maybe you'd like to help us with the investigation. How does that sound? We could deputize you, and when you grow up, you can be a detective.”

“I'm only six,” Sam said apologetically, as though he would have liked to help them out if he were older.

“That's all right. What's your name?” Detective Lee was good with kids, and instantly put Sam at ease.

“Sam.”

“I'm Detective Lee, and this is my partner, Detective Stone.”

“Was it a bomb?” Will interrupted, and Ashley rolled her eyes at her brother, convinced it was a dumb question. All she wanted was to go back upstairs and get back on the phone.

“Maybe,” Ted Lee said honestly. “It might be. We're not sure yet. Forensics has to check it out. They're going to be going over the car pretty closely. You'd be surprised what they can find out.” He didn't tell the kids, but they already knew it had been a bomb. There was no point frightening the neighbors by telling them yet. What they wanted to know now was who had done it. “Did any of you go outside, or look out your windows before you heard the explosion?”

“I did,” Sam said quickly.

“You did?” His mother looked at him with amazement. “You went outside?” It seemed more than unlikely to her, and she looked at him skeptically, as did his brother and sister. Ashley thought he was lying to seem important to the police.

“I looked out the window. The movie got kind of boring.”

“What did you see?” Ted asked with interest. The boy was cute as could be, and reminded him of one of his own sons, when he was little. He had had that same open, funny way of talking to strangers, and everyone he met loved him as a result. “What did you see, Sam?” Ted asked, sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs, so he didn't tower over him. He was a tall man, and once he sat down, Sam looked him right in the eye without hesitating.

“People were kissing,” Sam said firmly with a look of disgust.

“Outside your window?”

“No. On the movie. That's why it was boring. Kissing is stupid.”

Even Will smiled at that one, and Ashley giggled, while Fernanda watched him with a sad smile, wondering if he'd ever see kissing again in real life. Maybe not in her lifetime. Only in his. She forced the thought from her mind, as Ted asked him more questions. “What did you see outside?”

“Mrs. Farber walking her dog. He always tries to bite me.”

“That's not very nice. Did you see anyone else?”

“Mr. Cooper with his golf bag. He plays every Sunday. And there was a man walking down the street, but I didn't know him.”

“What did he look like?” Ted asked almost casually.

Sam frowned as he thought about it. “I can't remember. I just know I saw him.”

“Did he look weird or scary? Do you remember anything about him?” Sam shook his head.

“I just know I saw him, but I didn't pay any attention. I was looking at Mr. Cooper. He bumped into Mrs. Farber with his golf bag, and her dog started barking. I wanted to see if the dog would bite him.”

“And did he?” Ted asked with interest.

“No. Mrs. Farber pulled on the leash, and yelled at him.”

“She yelled at Mr. Cooper?” he asked, smiling, and Sam grinned. He liked him, and answering Ted's questions was fun.

“No,” Sam explained patiently, “she yelled at the dog, so he wouldn't bite Mr. Cooper. And then I went back to the movie. And then after that, it sounded like something blew up.”

“And that's all you saw?”

Sam concentrated again and then nodded. “Oh. And I think I saw a lady too. I didn't know her either. She was running.”

“Which way was she running?”

Sam pointed away from the place where the car blew up.

“What did she look like?”

“Nothing special. She looked kind of like Ashley.”

“Was she with the man you didn't know?”

“No, he was walking the other way, and she bumped into him. Mrs. Farber's dog barked at her too, but the lady just ran by them. And that's all I saw,” Sam said conclusively, and then he glanced up at the others, looking embarrassed. He was afraid they would accuse him of showing off. Sometimes they did.

“That was very good, Sam,” Ted complimented him, and then looked at his brother and sister.

“What about you guys? Did you see anything?”

“I was sleeping,” Ashley said, but she was no longer hostile about it. She liked him. And the questions were interesting.

“I was doing my science project,” Will added. “I didn't look up till I heard the explosion. I had the Giants game on, but the explosion was really loud.”

“I'll bet it was,” Ted said, nodding, and then stood up again. “If you think of anything else, any of you, give us a call. Your mom has our number.” They all nodded, and as an afterthought, Fernanda asked him a question.

“Whose car was it? Any of our neighbors, or just a car parked on the street?” She hadn't been able to tell with the fire trucks all around it. The car had been unrecognizable by then, engulfed in flames.

“Judge McIntyre's, he's one of your neighbors. You probably know him. He's out of town, but Mrs. McIntyre was there. She was about to go out and drive somewhere, and it really scared her. Fortunately, she was still in the house when the incident occurred.”

“It scared me too,” Sam said honestly.

“It scared all of us,” Fernanda admitted.

“It sounded like they blew up the whole block,” Will added. “I bet it was a car bomb,” he insisted.

“We'll let you know,” Ted volunteered, but Fernanda suspected they wouldn't.

“Do you think it was meant for Judge McIntyre, if it was a bomb?” Fernanda asked with fresh interest.

“Probably not. It was probably just some random, crazy thing.” But this time, she didn't believe him. There had been too many police cars on the scene, and the captain's car had arrived very quickly. She was beginning to think Will was right. They were obviously looking for someone, and doing some careful checking. Too much so, she thought, for it to be just a random fire.

Detective Lee thanked them, then he and his partner said good night as they left, and Fernanda closed the door behind them with a thoughtful look.

“That was interesting,” she said to Sam. He was feeling very important after answering all their questions. They talked about it all the way up the stairs, and then went back to their own rooms, and Fernanda went back to finish cleaning up the kitchen.

“Cute kid,” Ted Lee said to Jeff Stone as they walked to the next house, where no one had seen anything either. They checked all the houses on the block, including the Farbers and the Coopers Sam had mentioned. No one had seen anything, or at least nothing they remembered. Ted was still thinking of the adorable little redheaded kid three hours later, when they went back to their office, and he poured himself a cup of coffee. He was putting cream in it, when Jeff Stone made a random comment.

“We got a printout on Carlton Waters this week. Remember him? The guy who killed a couple of people when he was seventeen, was tried as an adult, appealed about a million times, and tried to get a pardon. He never got it. He got out this week. Paroled to Modesto, I think. Wasn't McIntyre the sentencing judge on that case? I remember reading about it somewhere. He said he never doubted for a minute Waters was guilty. Waters claims his partner pulled the trigger and did the shooting, he was just standing there, innocent as a newborn babe. The other guy died by lethal injection at San Quentin a few years later. I think Waters was in Pelican Bay.”

“So what are you telling me?” Ted asked as he took a sip of the steaming coffee. “That Waters did it? Not very smart of him, if he did. He tries to blow up the sentencing judge, twenty-four years later, a couple of days after he gets out of prison? He can't be that dumb. He's a smart guy. I read a couple of his articles. He's no fool. He knows he'd get a one-way ticket back to Pelican Bay on an express train on that one, and he'd be the first one they'd think of. It's got to be someone else, or just a random thing. Judge McIntyre must have pissed off a lot of folks before he retired. Waters isn't the only one he ever sent to prison.”

“I was just thinking. It's an interesting coincidence. But probably only that. Might be worth a look though. Want to ride up to Modesto tomorrow?”

“Sure. Why not? If you think there's something to it. I don't. But I don't mind a ride in the country. We can go up there as soon as we come on, and be there by seven. Maybe something else will turn up between now and then.” But no one had seen anything or anyone suspicious so far. They had come up dry at every house.

The only thing that did turn up was the confirmation from Forensics that it had in fact been a car bomb. A nice one. It would have done the judge and his wife some serious damage if they'd been in the car. As it turned out, it had gone off prematurely. The bomb had a timer, and the judge's wife had missed being blown to kingdom come, by at least five minutes. When they called the judge on the number his wife had given them, he said that he was convinced someone was trying to kill him. But like Ted, he thought Carlton Waters was too big a stretch. He had put too much effort into winning his freedom to take a risk like that after he'd only been out a few days.

“The guy's too smart for that,” the judge commented on the phone. “I've read some of the articles he's written. He still claims he's innocent, but he's not dumb enough to try and blow me up the week he gets out.” There were at least a dozen other possibilities, of people he suspected were furious at him, and who were out of prison. The judge had been retired for the last five years.

Ted and Jeff went to Modesto anyway, and arrived at the halfway house just as Malcolm Stark, Jim Free, and Carlton Waters were coming back from dinner. Jim Free had talked them into going to the coffee shop at the gas station, so he could see his girl.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Ted said pleasantly, as all three men looked instantly guarded and hostile. They could smell cops a mile away.

“What brings you here?” Waters asked, once he heard where they were from.

“A little incident in our neck of the woods just yesterday,” Ted explained. “A car bombing of Judge McIntyre's vehicle. You may remember the name,” he said, looking Waters in the eye.

“Yes, I do. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy,” Waters said without hesitating. “Wish I'd had the balls to do it myself, but he's not worth going back to the joint for. Did they kill him?” he asked hopefully.

“Fortunately not. He was out of town. But whoever did it nearly killed his wife. The bomb missed her by about five minutes.”

“What a shame,” Waters said, looking entirely undismayed. Lee was watching him, and it was easy to see how smart he was. He was as cool as a glacier in Antarctica, but Ted was inclined to agree with the judge. There was no way Waters was going to risk going back to the joint by doing something as dumb as blowing up the sentencing judge's car. Although there was always the possibility that he was in fact just that ballsy, and just that cool. He could have gotten there by bus certainly, planted the bomb, and gotten back to Modesto again, in time for curfew at the halfway house, with time to spare. But Ted's instincts told him that this wasn't their man. It was an unholy trio, though. He knew who the other two were, and how long they'd been out. Ted always read the printouts when they got them. And he remembered their names. They were a nasty piece of work. He had never bought Waters's claims of innocence either, and he didn't trust him now. All convicts claimed that they'd been framed, and set up either by their girlfriends, their running partners, or their attorneys. He'd heard it too many times. Waters was a tough customer, and smoother than Lee liked. He had all the earmarks of a sociopath, a man with little or no conscience, and he was definitely a smart guy.

“Where were you yesterday, by the way?” Ted Lee asked, as Waters stood watching him with an icy stare.

“Around here. I took a bus ride to see some relatives. They were out, so I hung out on their porch for a while, came back, and sat around with these guys.” There was no one to corroborate the earlier part of his alibi, so Ted didn't bother to ask for names.

“How nice. Can anyone corroborate your whereabouts?” Ted asked, looking him right in the eye.

“A couple of bus drivers. I still have the ticket stubs, if you want.”

“Let's see the stubs.” Waters looked furious, but he went up to his room and brought them back. They showed a destination in the Modesto area, and had obviously been used. Only half the stubs were left. There was nothing to say he hadn't torn them himself, but Ted Lee didn't think he had. Waters looked totally unconcerned as Ted handed the tickets back. “Well, keep your noses clean, guys. We'll come back and see you sometime, if anything comes up.” They knew he had the right to question them, or even search them, whenever he chose. All three were on parole.

“Yeah, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” Jim Free added under his breath as they left. Ted and Jeff heard what he said, but didn't react, got back in their car, and drove away, as Waters watched them with a look of hatred in his eyes.

“Pigs,” Malcolm Stark commented, and Waters said nothing. He just turned on his heel and went back inside. He wondered if every time they had a wrinkle in their shorts in San Francisco, they were going to show up and question him. They could do anything they wanted with him, and he could do nothing about it, as long as he was on parole. The only thing he didn't want was to get sent back.

“So what do you think?” Ted asked his partner as they drove away. “Think he's clean?” Ted was of two minds, and thought anything was possible. His gut was still suspicious of him, but his head told him that the bomb had to have been put there by someone else. Waters couldn't have been dumb enough to do something like that. He was smart. But Ted had to admit, he looked like a bad guy. The bomb could have been set there as a warning of bigger things to come, since a timed bomb would only have killed the judge or his wife if they were in the car or standing near it when the bomb went off.

“Actually, no I don't think he's clean,” Jeff Stone answered. “I think the guy's a nasty piece of work, and innocent on his first beef, my ass. I think he's ballsy enough to roll right into town, plant the bomb on McIntyre's vehicle, and come right back up here without missing lunch. I think he's capable of it. But I think he's too smart to do it. I don't think he did it this time. But I wouldn't trust the guy farther than I could throw him. I think he'll be back. We'll be hearing from him again.” They had both seen men like him go back to the joint too many times.

Ted agreed. “Maybe we should run his mug shots, and show them up and down the street, just in case. Maybe the Barnes kid would remember him, if he saw a picture of him. You never know.”

“It can't hurt,” Jeff said, nodding, and thinking about the three men they had just seen. A kidnapper, a murderer, and a drug runner. They were an ugly group, and a bad lot. “I'll run the shots when we get back. We can take them around on Tuesday, and see if anyone remembers seeing him on the street.”

“My guess is they won't,” Ted said as they got back on the freeway again. It was hot in Modesto, and the trip hadn't produced anything for them, but he was glad they had gone anyway. He'd never seen Carlton Waters before, and there was something about seeing him in the flesh. The guy gave him the creeps, and Ted was absolutely dead certain they'd be seeing him again. He was that kind of guy. There was nothing rehabilitated about him. He had spent twenty-four years in prison, and Ted was certain that he was far more dangerous than he had been before he went in. He had been to gladiator school now for nearly two-thirds of his life. It was a depressing thought, and Ted just hoped he didn't kill someone again before he went back.

The two detectives drove in silence for a while, and then talked about the car bombing again. Jeff was going to run a list through the computer of all the people Judge McIntyre had sentenced in his last twenty years on the bench, and see who else was out. It was probably someone else who'd been out for a while, longer than Carl. The only thing they knew for sure was that it hadn't been a random act. It had been a gift meant exclusively for the judge, or failing him, his wife. It was not a reassuring thought, but Ted assumed they'd figure out who it was eventually. Carlton Waters wasn't entirely out of the running yet. He didn't have a corroborated alibi, but there was no evidence that pinned it to him either, and he and Jeff both suspected there wouldn't be. If Waters had done it, he was too smart for that. Even if he'd done it, they might never be able to pin it on him. But if nothing else, having seen him now, Ted was going to keep an eye out for him. And he figured that one of these days, Carlton Waters was going to drift across his screen again. It was almost inevitable. He was just that kind of guy.

Chapter 7

The doorbell rang at five o'clock on Tuesday, while Fernanda was in the kitchen, reading a letter from Jack Waterman, listing the things she had to sell and what she could expect to get for them. His estimate was conservative, but they were both hoping that if she sold everything, including the jewelry Allan had given her, and there was a lot of it, she might be able to start her new life at ground zero and not significantly below it, which was her worst fear. At best, she had to start from scratch, and she had no idea how she was going to support herself for the next several years, let alone get her kids through college when they got to that point. For the moment, all she could do was trust that she would come up with some idea. For now she would just get through each day, keep swimming, and do her best not to drown.

Will was upstairs doing homework, or pretending to. Sam was playing in his room, and Ashley was at rehearsal for her ballet recital, and due to finish at seven. Fernanda was going to make dinner late for all of them, which gave her more time to brood, as she sat in the kitchen, and gave a start when she heard the doorbell. She wasn't expecting anyone, and the car bombing of two days before was the last thing on her mind when she went to the door and saw Ted Lee through the peephole. He was alone, and he was wearing a white shirt, dark tie, and blazer. He had looked eminently respectable both times she'd seen him.

She opened the door with a look of surprise, and realized again how tall he was. He had a manila envelope in his hands, and seemed to hesitate, until she asked him to come in. He saw a look of strain in her eyes, her hair was loose, and she seemed weary. He wondered what was bothering her. She looked as though she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. But as he walked in, she smiled, and made an effort to be pleasant.

“Hello, Detective. How are you today?” she asked with a tired smile.

“I'm fine. I'm sorry to bother you. I wanted to stop by and show you a mug shot.” He glanced around, as he had on Sunday. It was hard not to be impressed by the house, and the obviously priceless pieces in it. It looked almost like a museum. And in her jeans and T-shirt, as she had on Sunday, she looked somewhat out of place in her casual style. In the setting she lived in, she looked as though she should be sweeping down the stairs in an evening gown, trailing a fur coat behind her. But she didn't look like that kind of woman. Instinctively, Ted suspected he'd like her. She seemed like a normal person, and a gentle woman, although a sad one. Her grief was stamped all over her, and he sensed correctly that she was deeply attached to, and fiercely protective of, her children. Ted always had a good sense of people, and he trusted his own instincts about her.

“Did they find the person who blew up Judge McIntyre's car?” she asked as she led him into the living room, and gestured to him to sit on one of the velvet couches. They were soft and comfortable. The room was done in beige velvets and silks and brocades, and the curtains looked as if they'd been in a palace. He wasn't far wrong in thinking that. She and Allan had bought them out of an ancient palazzo in Venice and brought them home.

“Not yet. But we're checking out some leads. I wanted to show you a photograph, and see if you recognize someone, and if Sam's around, I'd like him to take a look too.” He was still bothered by the unidentified man Sam said he had seen, but couldn't remember in detail. It would have been too easy, if Sam ID'd the mug shot of Carlton Waters. Stranger things had happened, although Ted didn't expect it. His luck wasn't usually that good. Finding suspects generally took longer, but once in a while the good guys got lucky. He hoped this would be one of the times.

Ted pulled a large blow-up out of the envelope and handed it to her. She stared at the face, as though mesmerized by it, and then shook her head and handed it back to him. “I don't think I've ever seen him,” she said softly.

“But you might have?” Ted pressed, watching her every move and expression. There was something both strong and fragile about her. It was odd to see her so sad in these splendid surroundings, but then again she had just lost her husband only four months before.

“I don't think so,” she said honestly. “There's something familiar about his face, maybe he just has one of those faces. Could I have seen him somewhere?” She was frowning, as though dredging her memory and trying to remember.

“You might have seen him in the newspapers. He just got out of prison. It's a famous case. He was sent to prison for murder at seventeen, with a friend of his. He's been claiming for twenty-four years that he was innocent, and the other guy pulled the trigger.”

“How awful. Whoever pulled the trigger. Do you think he was innocent?” He looked capable of murder to her.

“No, I don't,” Ted said honestly. “He's a smart guy. And who knows, maybe by now he believes his own story. I've heard it all before. The prisons are full of guys who say they're innocent, and wound up there because of bad judges or crooked lawyers. There aren't a lot of men, or women for that matter, who tell you they did it.”

“Who did he kill?” Fernanda almost shuddered. It was an awful thought.

“Some neighbors, a couple. They almost killed their two kids too, but they were hardly more than babies and didn't bother. They were too young to identify them. They killed their parents for two hundred dollars, and whatever else they found in their wallets. We see it all the time. Random violence. Human life discarded for a few dollars, some dope, or a handgun. That's why I don't work in Homicide anymore. It's too depressing. You start to ask yourself questions about the human race that you don't want the answers to. The people who commit these crimes are a special breed. It's hard for the rest of us to understand them.” She nodded, thinking that what he did instead wasn't much better. Car bombings were not particularly pleasant either, and they could easily have killed the judge or his wife. But it was certainly less brutal than the crime that he had just attributed to Carlton Waters. Even the photograph of him made her blood run cold. There was something icy and terrifying about him, which came across even in a photograph. If she had seen him, she would have known it. She had never seen Carlton Waters before.

“Do you think you'll find the person who blew up the car?” she asked with interest. She wondered what percentage of crimes they solved, and how much energy they put into it. He seemed very earnest about it. He had a nice face, and gentle eyes, and an intelligent, kind demeanor. He wasn't what she would have expected a police detective to be like. She somehow expected him to be harder. Ted Lee seemed so civilized somehow, and so normal.

“We might find the bomber,” Ted said honestly. “We'll try to certainly. If it really was a random act, that makes it that much harder, because there's no rhyme or reason to it, and it could be almost anyone. But it's amazing the things that come out, when you dig below the surface. And given the fact that it's a judge, my guess is that there was a motive. Revenge, someone he sent to prison who thinks he didn't deserve the sentence he got, and wants to get even. If it's someone like that, we're more likely to find them. That's why I thought of Waters, or actually my partner did. Waters just got out last week. Judge McIntyre was the judge at the trial, and sentenced him.

“Twenty-four years is a long time to hold a grudge, and it wouldn't be smart to bomb the judge's car the week he gets out. Waters is smarter than that, but maybe he's more comfortable in prison. If it's someone like that, it'll surface eventually. Whoever did it will talk, and we'll get a phone call from an informant. Most of the leads we get are either anonymous tips, or paid informants.” It was a whole subculture Fernanda knew nothing about, and didn't want to. And although it was frightening, it was also fascinating to hear him talk about it. “A lot of these people connect and are linked to each other in some way. And they're not great at keeping secrets. They're almost compelled to talk about it, which is lucky for us. In the meantime, we have to check out every lead we've got, and all our hunches. Waters was nothing more than a hunch, and it's probably too obvious, but it's worth checking out anyway. Do you mind if I show Sam the mug shot?”

“Not at all.” She was curious herself now if Sam would recognize him, although she didn't want him put at risk by identifying a criminal who might try to hurt him and get revenge for it later. She turned to Ted then with a question. “What if he does recognize him? Will Sam's identity be kept secret?”

“Of course. We're not going to put a six-year-old child at risk,” he said gently. “Or even an adult for that matter. We do everything we can to protect our sources.” She nodded, relieved, and he followed her up the sweeping staircase to Sam's bedroom. There was an immense chandelier overhead that dazzled him when he looked at it. Fernanda had bought it in Vienna, from yet another crumbling palace, and had it shipped, in tiny individual crystal pieces, to San Francisco.

She knocked on the door of Sam's room, and opened it with Ted standing right behind her. Sam was playing with his toys on the floor.

“Hi.” Sam grinned up at him. “Are you going to arrest me now?” It was obvious that he wasn't the least concerned about Ted's visit, and even seemed pleased to see him. He had felt very important on Sunday, when Ted asked him what he'd seen and let him go into detail. And even though Sam had only seen him once before, he sensed that Ted was sympathetic and friendly, and liked children. Sam could tell.

“Nope. I'm not going to arrest you. But I brought you something,” Ted said, reaching into his coat pocket. He hadn't told Fernanda he was going to give the boy a gift. While he was talking to her, he'd forgotten about it. He handed something to Sam then, who reached out and took it and gave a gasp when he saw it. It was a shiny brass star, much like the silver one that Ted carried in his wallet. “You're a deputy police inspector now, Sam. It means you always have to tell the truth, and if you see any bad guys hanging around, or suspicious people, you have to call us.” It had a number one on it, under the initials of the SFPD, and was a gift they gave to friends of the department. Sam looked as though his new friend had just handed him a diamond. Fernanda smiled at the look on his face, and then at Ted, to thank him. It was a nice thing to do. And Sam was thrilled.

“That's pretty impressive. Very impressive.” She smiled at her son, and walked into the room with Ted behind her. As everything else was in the house, the room was beautifully decorated. It was done in dark blue with accents of red and yellow, and there was everything in it a boy could want, including a large TV to watch videos on, a stereo, and a bookshelf with games and toys and books on it. And in the middle of the room were a pile of Legos and a remote-controlled car he'd been playing with when they walked in. There was a window seat too, which was where Ted suspected Sam had been when he'd been watching the street on Sunday, and saw the adult male he didn't remember in detail. Ted handed him the mug shot of Carlton Waters then, and asked Sam if he'd ever seen him.

Sam stood and stared at it for a long time, as his mother had. There was something about Waters's eyes that hooked you into them in an eerie way, even on paper. And Ted knew after his visit to him in Modesto the day before that Waters's eyes were even colder in person. Ted said nothing to distract the boy, he just stood quietly and waited, while both adults watched him with interest. Sam was clearly thinking and combing his memory for some sign of recognition, and finally he handed the photograph back and shook his head, but he still seemed to be thinking. Ted noticed that too.

“He looks scary,” Sam commented, as he gave Ted back the mug shot.

“Too scary to say you've seen him?” Ted asked him carefully, watching his eyes. “Remember, you're a deputy now. You have to tell us what you remember. He's never going to know you told us, if you did see him, Sam.” As he had Fernanda, Ted wanted to reassure him, but Sam shook his head again.

“I think the man had blond hair like him, but he didn't look like him.”

“What makes you say that? Do you remember more about what the man on the street looked like?” Sometimes things came back later. It was a phenomenon that happened to adults too.

“No,” Sam said honestly. “But when I look at the picture, I know I don't remember seeing him. Is he a bad guy?” Sam asked with interest, and he didn't look frightened. He was safe at home with his new police detective friend, and his mother, and he knew that nothing could harm him. Bad things had never happened to him, except for losing his dad, but it never even occurred to him that someone would want to hurt him.

“A very bad guy,” Ted responded to his question.

“Did he kill someone?” Sam found it extremely interesting. To him it was just an exciting story, there was no reality to it. And as a result, no sense of danger.

“He killed two people, with a friend.” Fernanda looked instantly worried by what Ted told him. She didn't want Ted to tell Sam about the two children they had harmed as well. She didn't want Sam to have nightmares, as he had frequently since his father died. He was afraid she would die too, or even that he would. It was age appropriate for him, but also normal after what had just happened to his father. Ted instinctively knew that. He had children of his own, and was not going to frighten Sam unduly. “They put him in prison for a long time for it.” Ted knew it was important to tell him that he had been punished for it. He wasn't just a random killer roaming the streets, without consequences for his behavior.

“But he's out now?” Sam asked with interest. He had to be, if Ted thought he had been walking down their street on Sunday and wanted to know if Sam had seen him.

“He got out last week, but he was in prison for twenty-four years. I think he learned his lesson,” he continued to reassure him. It was a fine line to walk with a child his age, but Ted was doing his best. He had always been good with children, and loved them. Fernanda could see that, and guessed that he must have kids of his own. He wore a wedding band on his left hand, so she knew he was married.

“Then why did you think he blew up the car?” Sam asked sensibly, which was another good question. Sam was a bright boy, and had a strong sense of logic.

“You never know when someone will turn up where you don't expect them to. Now that you're a deputy, you'll have to learn that, Sam. You have to check out every lead, no matter how unlikely it seems. Sometimes you get a big surprise, and find your man that way.”

“Do you think he did it? The car, I mean?” Sam was fascinated by the process.

“No, I don't. But it was worth coming over here to check it out. What if this photograph was the man you'd seen and I hadn't bothered to show it to you? He might have gotten away with it, and we don't want that to happen, do we?” Sam shook his head, as the two adults smiled at each other and Ted put the mug shot back in the manila envelope. He hadn't thought Waters was dumb enough to do something as obvious as that, but you never knew. And now he had an additional piece of information from Sam at least. He knew the suspect was blond. A small piece of the car bombing puzzle had fallen into place. It didn't hurt. “I like your room, by the way,” he said congenially to the boy. “You've got a lot of great stuff.”

“Do you have kids?” Sam asked, looking up at him. He was still holding his star, as though it was now the most precious thing he owned, and to him, it was. It had been a thoughtful gift from Ted, and Fernanda was touched.

“Yes, I do.” Ted smiled at him and ruffled his hair in a fatherly way. “They're all big guys now. Two of them are in college, and one works in New York.”

“Is he a cop?”

“No, he's a stockbroker. None of my boys want to be cops,” he said. He'd been disappointed at first, but now he'd decided it was just as well. It was tiresome, often tedious, dangerous work. Ted had always loved what he did, and was glad he had. But Shirley had always stressed academics and education to them. One of his boys in college wanted to go to law school after he graduated, and the other was in pre-med. He was proud of them. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Ted asked with interest, although Sam was way too young to know. But he suspected the boy missed having his father around, and it was nice for him to have a few minutes to chat with a man. He didn't know Fernanda's circumstances since her hus-band's death, but on the two occasions he'd come to the house, he didn't have the feeling there was a man around, other than her oldest son. And she had the stressed, nervous, vulnerable look of a woman who was coping with a lot on her own.

“I want to be a baseball player,” Sam announced, “or maybe a cop,” he said, glancing down lovingly at the brass star in his hands, and the two adults smiled again. Fernanda stood there thinking what a good boy he was, just as Will walked in. He had heard adult voices in the room next to his and wondered who it was. He smiled when he saw Ted, and Sam instantly told him he was a deputy now.

“That's cool.” Will grinned, and then looked at Ted. “It was a bomb, right?”

Ted nodded slowly. “Yes, it was.” He was a good-looking, bright kid, much like his brother. Fernanda had three nice kids.

“Do you know who did it?” Will inquired, and Ted pulled out the mug shot again and handed it to him.

“Have you ever seen this man around here?” Ted asked quietly.

“He did it?” Will looked intrigued and stared at it for a long time. Carlton Waters's eyes had the same mesmerizing effect on him, and then he handed it back to Ted and shook his head. None of them had ever seen Carlton Waters, which was something. It didn't totally confirm Waters's innocence, but it made his guilt a lot more unlikely.

“We're just checking out possibilities. There's nothing to link him to it for now. Have you ever seen him, Will?”

“No, I haven't.” The boy shook his head. “Anyone else?” Will enjoyed talking to him, and thought he was a good man. He conveyed decency and integrity, and he had an easy way with kids.

“Not yet. We'll let you know.” Ted looked at his watch then, and said he had to go. Fernanda walked him back downstairs and he stood in the doorway for a minute and looked at her. It was a strange thing to feel about a woman who lived this well, but he felt sorry for her. “You have a beautiful house,” he commented, “and lovely things. I'm sorry about your husband,” he said sympathetically. He knew the value of companionship after twenty-eight years with his wife. Even if they were no longer close, they meant a lot to each other. And he could sense Fernanda's loneliness and solitude like a pall that hung over her.

“Me too,” she said sadly in response to Ted's sympathy.

“Was it an accident?”

Fernanda hesitated and looked at him, and the pain he saw in her eyes took his breath away. It was naked and raw. “Probably…we don't know.” She hesitated for a moment, and felt surprisingly comfortable with him, more than she had reason to, and for no reason she could explain, even to herself, she trusted him. “It could have been a suicide. He fell off a boat in Mexico, at night. He was alone on the boat.”

“I'm so sorry,” he said again, and then opened the door and turned back to look at her again. “If there's anything we can ever do for you, let us know.” Meeting her and her children was part of what he liked about his job, and always had. It was the people he met who made it worthwhile for him. And this family had touched his heart. No matter how much money they had, and they appeared to have a lot of it, they had their sorrows too. Sometimes it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, the same things happened to people in all walks of life, at all economic levels, and the rich ones hurt just as much as the poor ones. No matter how big her house was, or how fancy her chandelier, that didn't keep her warm at night, and she was still alone, with three kids to raise on her own. It was no different than if something had happened to him, and Shirley had wound up alone with his boys. He was still thinking about her when he went back to his car, and drove away, and she quietly closed the door.

She went back to her desk after that, and read Jack Waterman's letter again. She called to make an appointment with him, and his secretary said he would call her back the next day. He had left for the day. And at a quarter to seven, she got in her car, and drove to pick Ashley up at ballet. She was in good spirits when she got in the car, and they drove home chatting about the recital, school, and Ashley's many friends. She was still on the cusp of puberty, and liked her mother more than Fernanda knew she would in another year or two. But for now at least, they were still close, and Fernanda was grateful for that.

As they got to the house, Ashley was talking excitedly about her plans to go to Lake Tahoe in July. She could hardly wait for school to be over in June. They were all looking forward to it, although Fernanda knew she would be even lonelier over the summer while Ashley and Will were away. But at least she would have Sam with her. She was glad that he was still so young, and not nearly as independent yet. He liked sticking close to her, even more so now without his dad around, although Allan hadn't paid much attention to him in recent years. He was always too busy. He would have been better off, Fernanda thought to herself as she walked up the front steps, spending more time with his kids than creating the financial disaster he had, that had destroyed their life, and his own, in the end.

She cooked dinner for the kids that night. Everyone was tired, but in better spirits than they'd been in for a while. Sam wore his new star, and they talked about the car bombing up the street again. Fernanda felt slightly better knowing that more than likely it was specifically directed at the judge by someone he had sentenced harshly over the years, than if it had been just a random act of violence directed at anyone. But even at that, it was an unpleasant feeling knowing that there were people out there willing to hurt others and destroy property. She and her children could easily have been injured in the blast if they'd been walking by, and it was just blind luck that no one was, that Mrs. McIntyre was in her house, and the judge was out of town. All three of the Barnes children were fascinated by it. The idea of something so extraordinary happening right on their block, to someone they knew, seemed incredible to them, and to her. But incredible or not, it had happened, and could again. The vulnerability it left Fernanda still feeling when she went to bed that night made her miss Allan more than ever.

Chapter 8

Peter Morgan called every contact he'd ever had in San Francisco before he left, hoping to find a job, or at least line up some interviews. He had just over three hundred dollars in his wallet, and he had to show his parole agent that he was doing his best. And he was. But within his first week back in the city, nothing had panned out. People had moved, faces had changed, people who remembered him either wouldn't take his calls, or did and fobbed him off, sounding stunned to hear from him at all. Four years in a normal life was a long time. And almost everyone who'd ever known him knew he had gone to prison. No one was anxious to see him again. And by the end of the first week, Peter realized he was going to have to lower his sights dramatically, if he wanted to find a job. No matter how useful he had been to the warden while he was in prison, no one in Silicon Valley, or the financial field, wanted anything to do with him. His history was too checkered, and they could only imagine he'd have learned worse tricks than the ones he knew previously, after four years in prison. Not to mention his predilection for addiction, which had ultimately brought him down.

He inquired at restaurants, then small businesses, a record store, and finally a trucking firm. No one had work for him, they thought he was overqualified, overeducated, one man openly called him a smart-ass and a snob. But worse than that, he was an ex-con. He literally could not find work. And at the end of the second week, he had forty dollars in his wallet, and not a single prospect. A tortilla shop near the halfway house offered him half of minimum wage, in cash, to wash dishes, but he couldn't live on it, and they didn't need to pay him more. They had unlimited numbers of illegal aliens at their disposal, who were willing to work for pennies. And Peter needed more than that to survive. He was feeling desperate as he flipped through his old address book again, and when he started at the beginning for the tenth time, he stopped at the same place he always did. Phillip Addison. Until that moment, he had been determined not to call him. He was bad news, and always had been, in every way, and had caused trouble for Peter before. Peter had never been absolutely sure in fact that he hadn't been responsible for the drug bust that had sent him to prison. Peter had owed him a fortune, and was using so much cocaine himself that he had no way to repay him, and still didn't. For whatever reason, Addison had chosen to ignore the debt for the past four years. He knew there had been no way to collect while Peter was in prison. But with good reason, Peter was still leery of him and worried about reminding Addison of the outstanding debt. There was no way he could repay him or ever would, and Addison knew that.

Phillip Addison owned an enormous company openly, it was a high-tech stock listed publicly, and he had half a dozen other, less legitimate, companies he kept concealed, and extensive connections in the underworld. But someone like Addison could always find a place for Peter in one of his shadier companies, and if nothing else, it was work, and decent money. But Peter hated to call him. He had been sucked in by him before, and once he had you, for whatever reason, he owned you. But there was no one else to call at this point. Even gas stations wouldn't hire him. Their clients pumped their own gas, and they didn't want a guy fresh out of prison handling their money. His Harvard MBA degree was virtually useless to him. And most of them laughed at the warden's reference. Peter was truly desperate. He had no friends, no family, no one to call, no one to help him. And his parole agent told him he'd better find work soon. The longer he was out of work, the closer they would watch him. They knew the kind of pressure it put on parolees not to have money, and the kind of activities they resorted to in desperation. Peter was getting panicked. He was nearly out of money, and he had to eat and pay rent, at least.

Two weeks after he'd stepped through the gates of Pelican Bay, Peter sat staring at Phillip Addison's number for nearly half an hour, and then picked up the phone and called him. A secretary told him Mr. Addison was out of the country, and offered to take a message. Peter left his name and number. And two hours later, Phillip called him. Peter was in his room looking grim, when someone shouted up the stairs that there was a call for him from some guy called Addison. Peter ran to the phone, with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It could be the beginning of disaster for him. Or salvation. With Phillip Addison, it could be either.

“Well, this is a surprise,” Addison said in an unpleasant tone. He always sounded like he was sneering. But at least he had called him. And quickly. “When did you wash up on the beach? How long have you been out of prison?”

“About two weeks,” Peter said quietly, wishing he hadn't called him. But he needed the money. He was down to fifteen dollars, and his parole agent was keeping the heat on him. He had even thought of going on welfare. But by the time he got it, if he did, he'd be starving, or homeless. He realized now that that was how those things happened. Desperation. No options. And there was no question in his mind that it could happen. Phillip Addison was his only option at the moment. Peter told himself that as soon as he got something better, he could always dump him. What he was worried about and trying not to focus on were the shackles Addison put on those he helped, and the unscrupulous methods he used to keep people beholden to him. But Peter had no choice. There was no one else to call. He couldn't even get a job washing dishes for a decent wage.

“What else did you try before you called me?” Addison laughed at him. He knew the drill. He had other ex-cons working for him. They were needy, desperate, and loyal, just like Peter Morgan. Addison liked that. “There's not much work out there for guys like you,” he said honestly. He didn't pull any punches. “Except washing cars or shining shoes. Somehow, I can't see you doing that. What can I do for you?” he said, almost politely.

“I need a job,” Peter said bluntly. There was no point playing games with him. He was careful to say he needed work, not money.

“You must be down to your last buck if you called me. How hungry are you?”

“Hungry. Not hungry enough to do anything ridiculous. I'm not going back to prison, for you or anyone. I got the point. Four years is a long time. I need a job. If you have something legitimate for me to do, I'd really appreciate it.” Peter had never felt so humble, and Phillip knew it. He loved it. Peter didn't mention his debt to him, but they were both aware of it and of the risk Peter had taken when he called him. He was that desperate for work.

“I only have legitimate businesses,” Addison said, sounding huffy, as he ruffled his feathers. You never knew if a line was wired, although as far as he knew, he was on a safe line. He was on an untraceable cell phone. “You still owe me money, by the way. A lot of it. You took down a lot of people when you went down. I ended up having to pay them all off. If I hadn't, they'd have come after you and killed you in prison.” Peter knew it was possibly an exaggeration, but there was some truth to it. He had borrowed money from Addison for his last buy, and never paid it back when he got arrested, and they confiscated the bulk of the shipment before he sold it. In real terms, he knew he probably owed Addison a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and he didn't deny it. For whatever reason, Addison hadn't collected. But they both knew Peter owed him.

“You can take it out of my paycheck, if you want. If I don't have a job, I can't pay you back at all.” It was a sensible way to look at it, and Addison knew it was true too, although he no longer expected to recoup the money. It was one of those losses that happened in that kind of business. What he liked about it was that Peter had an obligation to him.

“Why don't you come in and talk to me,” he said, sounding pensive.

“When?” Peter hoped it would be soon, but didn't want to push. And the secretary had said he was out of the country, which was probably a smokescreen.

“Five o'clock today,” Addison said, without asking if it was convenient for him. He didn't care if it was or not. If Peter wanted to work for him, he had to learn to jump when Addison told him to. Addison had fronted money for him before, but he had never actually employed him. This was different.

“Where do I go?” Peter asked in a dead voice. He could still say no if whatever Addison offered him was too outrageous, or too insulting. But Peter was fully prepared to be insulted, and used, and even mistreated. As long as it was legal.

Addison gave him the address, told him to be on time, and hung up on him. The address he gave Peter was in San Mateo. He knew it was where he held his legitimate business. He had a high-tech company that had been a mammoth success at first, and had trouble after that. It had gone up and down over the years, and had been booming at the height of the dot-com craze. The stock prices had fallen drastically after that, just as everything else had. They made high-tech surgical equipment, and Peter knew he had also made some big investments in genetic engineering. Addison himself was both an engineer and had a medical background. And for a while, at least, he had been thought to be a genius with money. But eventually, he had proven that like everyone else, he had clay feet, and he had overextended himself pretty badly. He had shored up his own finances by running drugs out of Mexico, and the bulk of his net worth now was in crystal meth labs in Mexico, and a land office business he did selling heroin in the Mission. And some of his best clients were yuppies. They didn't know they were buying it from him, of course, no one did. Even his own family thought he ran a respectable business. He had a house in Ross, children in private schools, he served on all the respectable charity boards, and belonged to the best clubs in San Francisco. He was thought to be a pillar of the community. Peter knew better. They had met when Peter was in trouble before, and Phillip Addison had quietly offered to help him. He had even supplied the drugs at discount rates at first, and told Peter how to sell them. If his own use hadn't gotten out of hand, and his judgment with it, Peter would probably never have gone to prison.

Addison was smarter than that. He never touched the drugs he sold. He was clever, and ingenious about how he ran his underground empire. Most of the time, he was a good judge of horseflesh. He had made a mistake in Peter, he had thought he was more ambitious than he was, and more devious. In the end, Peter was just another nice guy gone wrong, who had no idea what he was doing. A guy like him was a real risk to Phillip Addison, because he had all the wrong instincts. Peter had been a petty criminal, forced into it by circumstance and poor judgment, and eventually his own addiction. Addison was a major criminal. For him, it was a lifetime commitment. And for Peter, only a pastime. But in spite of that, Addison thought he could use him. He was smart, well educated, and had grown up with the right people in the right places. He had gone to good schools, was good-looking and presentable, had married well, even if he had screwed it up. And a Harvard MBA degree was nothing to sneeze at. When Peter and Phillip Addison had met, Peter even had the right connections. Now he had blown them, but if he could get on his feet again, with Phillip's help, Addison thought he could be useful. And with what he'd learned in prison in the last four years, perhaps even more so. He had been an amateur conman before, an innocent gone wrong. But if he'd turned pro, Addison wanted him, no question. What he needed to assess now was what Peter had learned, what he was willing to do, and how desperate he was at the moment. His minor claims of only wanting to work legally were of no interest to Phillip. He didn't care what Peter said. The question was what would he do, and the debt he still owed was only a plus in their dealings, from Phillip's viewpoint. It gave him a hold over Peter that appealed to Phillip immensely, and a lot less to Peter. It also hadn't gone unnoticed by Addison that Peter had never divulged his name or exposed him once he was arrested, which showed that he could be trusted. Addison liked that about Peter. He hadn't taken anyone down with him when he went down. It was the main reason why Addison hadn't had him killed. Peter was, in some ways at least, a man of honor. Even if it was honor among thieves.

Peter rode the bus to San Mateo wearing the only clothes he now owned. He looked neat and clean, and had gotten himself a decent haircut. But all he had to wear were the jeans and denim shirt and running shoes they'd given him in prison. He didn't even own a jacket, and he couldn't afford to buy a suit for the interview. As he reached the address on foot, he felt overwhelmed with trepidation.

And in his office, Phillip Addison was sitting at his desk, reading through a thick file. It had been in a locked drawer in his desk for over a year, and was a life's dream for him. He had been thinking about it for nearly three years now. It was the only project he wanted Peter's help with. And whether or not he was willing to do it was of no interest to Phillip. Whether he was capable of pulling it off was the only question. This was the one thing he was not willing to risk, or do badly. It had to be done with the precision of the Bolshoi Ballet, or the surgical instruments he made, with the infinite pinpoint perfection of a laser. There was no room here for slippage. Peter was perfect for it, he thought. It was why Addison had called him back. He had thought of it the moment he got the message. And when his secretary told him Peter was there, he put the file back in the locked drawer, and stood up to greet Peter.

What Peter saw when he entered the room was a tall, impeccably groomed man in his late fifties. He was wearing a custom-made English suit, a handsome tie, and a shirt that had been made for him in Paris. Even his shoes were shined to perfection when he came around the desk to shake Peter's hand, seeming not to notice the garb Peter wore, which he wouldn't have deigned to wash his car with, and Peter knew it. Phillip Addison was so smooth, he was like a greased marble egg sliding across the floor. You could never get a grip on him, or get the goods on him. No one ever had. He was above suspicion. And it made Peter feel uneasy to find him so friendly. His mild threats about the money Peter owed when he called seemed to have been forgotten.

They chatted inanely for a while, and Phillip indulged him by asking what he had in mind. Peter told him the areas that were of interest. Marketing, finance, new investments, new divisions, new business, anything entrepreneurial that Addison thought would be suited to him. And then he sighed and looked at Phillip. It was time to be honest.

“Look, I need the work. If I don't get a job, I'm going to be out on the street with a shopping cart and a tin cup, and maybe only the tin cup and no cart. I'll do whatever you need me to, within reason. I don't want to go back to prison. Short of that, I'd like to work for you. In your legitimate business obviously. The other stuff is just too risky for me. I can't do it. And I don't want to.”

“You've gotten very noble in the last four years. You didn't have quite as many compunctions five years ago, when I met you.”

“I was stupid and a lot younger, and pretty crazy. Fifty-one months in Pelican Bay gets your feet on the floor, and your head out of your ass. It was a good wake-up call, if you can call it that. I'm not going back there. Next time, they'll have to kill me.” He meant it.

“You were lucky they didn't kill you last time,” Addison said openly. “You pissed off a lot of people when you left. What about your debt to me?” Addison asked, not so much because he wanted it, but he wanted to remind Peter that he owed him. It was a fortuitous beginning. For Addison, if not for Peter.

“I told you, I'd be happy to work for it, and have you take it out of my paycheck over time. It's the best I can do for now. I have nothing else to give you.” Addison knew it was the truth. They both did, and Peter was being honest with him. As honest as you could be with a man like Addison. Honesty wasn't something he valued. For him, choirboys were useless. But even Phillip knew you couldn't get blood from a stone. Peter had no money to give him. All he had were brains and motivation, and for now that was enough.

“I could still have you killed, you know,” Addison said quietly. “Some of our mutual friends in Mexico would be happy to do it. More particularly there's one in Colombia who wanted to have you taken out in prison. I asked him not to. I always liked you, Morgan,” Addison said as though discussing his golf game with him. He played golf regularly with heads of industries and heads of state alike. He had important political connections. He was a fraud of such a lofty degree that Peter knew he would be helpless to go after him, if anything ever went wrong. He was a powerful man, an evil force, with absolutely no integrity or morals. None whatsoever. And Peter knew it. He was outclassed in every possible way. If Peter went to work for him, he would be a pawn in one of Addison's chess games. But if he didn't, sooner or later, out of sheer desperation, he could wind up back in Pelican Bay, working for the warden.

“If that's true, about the guy from Colombia, then thank you,” Peter said politely. He didn't want to lie to him, and in response to Addison saying he had always liked him, Peter didn't respond. He never had liked Addison. He knew too much to like him. Addison looked good, but was rotten. He had a very social wife, and four very lovely children. To the few who knew him well, and knew the many masks he wore, they compared Phillip Addison to Satan. To the rest of the world, he seemed successful and respectable. Peter knew better.

“I figured you'd be more useful to me alive one day,” Addison said thoughtfully, as though he had something in mind for him, which he did. “And that time may have come. It seemed like a waste having you die in prison. I have an idea for you. I was thinking about it after we talked today. It's sort of a precision issue of sorts. A highly technical, carefully organized, synchronized combined effort between experts.” He made it sound like open heart surgery, and Peter couldn't figure out what kind of project it was, from what he was saying.

“In what field?” Peter asked, relieved to be talking about work finally, and not threats to have him killed, or the money he owed him. They were getting down to business.

“I'm not prepared to explain it to you yet. I will. But I want to do some more research. Actually, you're going to do the research. I want to think about the execution of the project. That's my job. But first, I want to know that you're in. I want to hire you as the project coordinator. I don't think you have the technical knowledge to do the job. Neither do I. But I want you to line up the experts who will do it for us. And together, we'll share in the profits. I want to cut you in on this deal, not just hire you as an employee. If you do this right, you'll have earned it.” Peter was intrigued as he listened. It sounded interesting and challenging, and profitable. It was just what he needed to get on his feet and make a few investments of his own again, maybe start his own company. He had a keen sense for investments, and had learned a lot before he got off on the wrong track. This was the chance he needed to start over. It was too good to hope for. Maybe his luck was turning. Addison was finally doing something decent for him, and Peter was grateful.

“Is it a long-term research project, to be developed over several years?” There was job security in that, although it might tie him to Addison for longer than he wanted. But it would also give him plenty of time to get on his feet, which was something. He might even get visitation rights with his girls again, which Peter still dreamed of, when he allowed himself to. He hadn't seen his daughters in five years, and his heart ached when he thought of it. He had screwed everything up so badly in the past, even his relationship with his children, while they were still babies. He hoped one day to get to know them. And with financial stability again, he could approach Janet more reasonably, even if she had remarried.

“Actually,” Addison went on to explain the project he had in mind for him, “it's relatively short term. I think we can accomplish it in months, or even weeks. There will be some research and set-up time, of course, the project itself, which might take a month or even two to handle, and the clean-up afterward. I don't think we're talking long term here. And the profit sharing could be extraordinary.” It was hard to guess what it was. Maybe some new high-tech invention he was planning to release on the market, and he wanted Peter to organize the launch, in terms of marketing and PR. He couldn't think what else it was. Or some start-up venture he wanted Peter to handle while it was being shot out of the cannon into the public at first, to be handed over to other people once it was. Addison was being mysterious about it, as Peter listened and tried to guess what it was.

“Are you talking about product introduction or development, or market testing of some kind?” Peter was groping to understand it.

“In a way.” Addison nodded and then paused. He had to say something to him, even before he took him into his confidence entirely. “I've been considering this project for a long time, and I think the time is right for it. I think your call to me this morning was strangely providential,” he said with an evil smile. Peter had never seen eyes as cold or terrifying as his.

“When would you want me to start?” He was thinking of the fifteen dollars he had in his wallet, which weren't going to get him past dinner that night and breakfast in the morning, provided he ate at McDonald's. If not, it would be gone by that night. And after that, he'd be begging on the street, and could be violated for that, if he got caught.

Addison looked him dead in the eye. “Today, if you like. I think we're ready to start. We need to handle this project in stages. Over the next four weeks, I would want you to take on research and development. In fact, I want you to do the hiring.” Peter's heart gave a hopeful leap. This was better than he'd hoped for, and the answer to his prayers.

“What kind of people are we talking about hiring here?” He still didn't understand the scope, or even the focus, of the project. But obviously, it was something top secret and high tech.

“Who you hire is up to you. I want to be consulted of course but I think your connections in this area are better than mine,” Addison said generously. And with that, he unlocked the drawer he had locked as Peter walked in, and took out the heavy file he had been compiling for years, and handed it to him. In it were clippings and reports on virtually every project Allan Barnes had undertaken for the past four years. Peter took the file from him and opened it, and then looked up at Phillip. He was impressed. He knew who Allan was. There was no one in the financial or high-tech world who didn't. He was a dot-com genius, the biggest of them all. There were even several photographs of him with his family in the file. It was extraordinarily complete.

“Are you thinking of a joint venture with him?”

“I was. Not anymore. You've been a little out of the loop apparently. He died in January, leaving a widow and three children.”

“That's too bad,” Peter said sympathetically, wondering how he had missed it, although there had been times in Pelican Bay when he didn't read the papers. The real world had seemed too remote.

“The project would actually have been more interesting while he was still alive. I think we would have gotten better response from him, but in this case, I'm actually willing to work with his widow,” Phillip said magnanimously.

“On what?” Peter looked blank. “Is she running his empire now?” He really was out of the loop. He hadn't read anything about it.

“I assume he left her his entire fortune, or most of it, whatever he didn't leave to his kids,” Phillip explained. “I understand from a friend that she was his sole beneficiary. And I know for a fact that he made half a billion dollars before he died. He died on a fishing trip in Mexico. He fell overboard and was lost at sea. They're being close-mouthed about their plans for his companies, but I assume she is going to be making most of those decisions, or some of them.”

“Have you approached her directly about a joint investment of some kind?” Peter had never had the impression that Allan Barnes's interests lay in the same fields as Addison's, but it was an interesting concept, and whatever money problems Addison still had were going to be solved by an alliance with an empire as solvent as the one Allan had left, or so Peter thought. It hadn't occurred to either of them that the empire had crashed and burned before he died, let alone that that was why he had. Barnes had done such a masterful job of hiding companies behind other companies, and concealing the insane gambles he had taken, that, for the moment at least, even a man with Addison's connections had no idea of the depth of the rubble Allan Barnes had left in his wake. Fernanda, the attorneys, and the heads of Allan's defunct companies had done a brilliant job keeping it quiet, although they couldn't do it forever. But for the four months since he died, they had managed, and the legend of Allan Barnes had not been tarnished yet. Fernanda wanted it that way for as long as possible, to honor her husband's memory and for her children's sake. The benefit to Addison of an alliance with Barnes, from what Peter could see, was that the world Barnes had created around him was so respectable, it would gild his ventures with the same golden brush. In fact, any kind of joint project between them was a stroke of genius, and Peter approved. Allan Barnes's name and reputation were respectable and admired in the extreme. And certainly a project involving both groups of companies was exactly what Peter needed to put him back on the map. For good. It was a dream come true, and he sat smiling at Phillip Addison with new respect, as he held the thick file that Phillip had handed to him.

“I haven't approached Mrs. Barnes directly myself,” Addison went on to explain. “We're not ready to do that yet. You have to do the hiring first.”

“I guess I'd better read the file, in order to fully understand the nature of the project.”

“I don't think so,” Phillip said, reaching across the desk, and taking it back from him. “All that is, is a history and chronology of his accomplishments. It's relevant, of course, but you probably know most of it anyway,” he said vaguely, as Peter looked confused again. The entire project seemed to be shrouded in mystery, so much so that he was being asked to hire people for a nameless project, in a field that hadn't been explained to him, to do a job that Addison had yet to outline. It was more than a little confusing, which was precisely what Addison had intended. He smiled across the desk at Peter again, as he locked the file back in the drawer.

“Who am I supposed to hire, if I don't have a clear idea of what we're doing?” Peter sounded puzzled.

“I think you have a clear idea, Peter. Don't you? Do I have to spell it out for you? I want you to hire some of your friends from the last four years.”

“What friends?” Peter looked even more confused.

“I'm sure you've met some very interesting people, some entrepreneurial sorts who would like to make a very large amount of money, and then quietly disappear. I want you to do some serious thinking, and we'll handpick them to do a very special job for us. I don't expect you to do the manual labor here, but I do expect you to oversee it, and run the project.”

“And the project is what?” Peter was frowning, he suddenly didn't like what he was hearing. From a business standpoint, the last four years of his life had been a blank. All he had met were criminals and rapists, murderers and thieves. And suddenly, as he looked at Addison, his blood ran cold. “Where does Allan Barnes's wife fit in?”

“It's very simple. After we put together the project, or you do more precisely, we make our proposal to her. We provide a little incentive for her to accept our offer. She pays us handsomely. In fact, I am prepared to be reasonable with her, given the size of her fortune, and the estate taxes she is probably required to pay. Assuming he was worth half a billion dollars when he died, the government will want just over fifty percent of that. Conservatively, I'd say she'll be worth two hundred million dollars when all is said and done. And we're only asking her for half of that. At least that's what I have in mind.”

“And what is she going to be investing in?” Peter asked in a chilled voice, but he had already guessed.

“The lives and safe return of any and all of her children, which would be cheap at twice the price. Essentially, we are asking her to split her net worth with us, which I think sounds very fair, and I'm sure she'll be happy to pay it. Don't you?” Addison was smiling evilly, as Peter Morgan stood up.

“You're telling me that you want me to kidnap her children for a ransom of a hundred million dollars?” Peter looked like he'd been shot out of a cannon, as he stared at the man across the desk from him. Phillip Addison was insane.

“Absolutely not.” Phillip shook his head calmly and leaned back in his chair. “I'm asking you to locate and handpick people who will. We want professionals doing this, not amateurs like you and me. You were only a petty criminal when you went in, and a very sloppy drug dealer. You're no kidnapper. And neither am I. I wouldn't even call this a kidnapping. It's a business deal. Allan Barnes came up with a winning lottery ticket. That's all it ever was. A very lucky one, I'll admit. There is no reason why his widow should hang on to all of it. You or I could just as easily have won the same lottery he did, and there's no reason for him not to share that with us now posthumously. We're not going to hurt the children. We're just going to hang on to them for a short time, and return them to her safe and sound, in exchange for a slice of the pie Allan left her with. There's no reason not to share that pie. He didn't even earn it, for God's sake. He just got lucky. Now, so will we.” Phillip's eyes glinted evilly as he smiled.

“Are you nuts?” Peter was standing and staring at him. “Do you know anything about the sentences for kidnapping? We could be put to death if they catch us, whether we harm them or not. In fact, just committing conspiracy to commit kidnap could get us the death penalty. And you expect me to organize this? I won't do it. Find yourself another guy,” Peter said, and started to walk away. Addison looked unmoved.

“I wouldn't do that, if I were you, Morgan. You have a stake in this too.” Peter turned to look at him blankly. He didn't give a damn what he owed Addison. He would prefer to let him kill him first than to risk the death penalty for him. Besides, it was a heinous idea, preying on other people's misfortune and grief, and the survival of their kids. The thought of it made him sick.

“No, I don't,” Peter answered him. “What stake could I possibly have in your kidnapping someone's kids?” He spat the words at Phillip. Addison disgusted him. He was even worse than Peter had feared. Much, much worse. He was inhuman, and so greedy as to be insane. But what Peter didn't know was that Addison's empire was in trouble, and without a major shot in the arm of this magnitude, his own house of cards was about to fall. He had been laundering money for his Colombian associates for quite some time, and investing it in high-risk dot-com deals, which promised a tremendous return. The results had been extraordinary for a while, until the tides had begun to turn. They had not only turned finally, but damn near drowned him when they did. And he knew the Colombians would be lethal once they discovered the money he had lost for them. He had to do something about it soon. Peter's call had been a godsend for him.

The answer to Peter's question to Addison was simple. “The stake you have in this,” Phillip Addison said with an evil smile at Peter, “is saving your own children.”

“What do you mean, ‘saving my own children’?” Peter looked suddenly nervous.

“I believe you have two little girls, whom you haven't seen in a number of years. I used to know your ex-father-in-law in my youth. Nice man. And I'm sure they're lovely kids.” Phillip Addison's eyes never left his, as something icy cold and terrifying ran down Peter's spine.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Peter said, as he felt something turn over in his stomach. The beast he felt churning within him now was terror. Not for himself this time, but for his kids. Without even meaning to, he had put them at risk by talking to Addison. The thought of it made him sick.

“It wouldn't be very difficult to locate them. I'm sure you could too, if you were interested. If you stand in the way, or expose us somehow, we'll settle for your two daughters. And there won't be any ransom involved. They will just quietly disappear, never to be seen again.” Peter's face went pale.

“Are you telling me that if I don't kidnap the Barnes children for you, or orchestrate it, you're going to kill my children?” Peter's voice cracked and shook as he asked. But he already knew the answer.

“That's precisely what I'm telling you. You have no choice here, as I see it. But I have every intention of making it worth your while. There are three Barnes children, and I'll settle for any one of them. If you can get all of them, fine. If not, any one will do. I want you to hire three good men to do the job. Professionals, not amateurs like you. I want the real thing, so nothing gets bungled. You find them and hire them. I will pay each of them five million dollars, paid into either a Swiss or South American account. I'll pay them a hundred thousand dollars up front, and the rest when the ransom is delivered into our hands. I will pay you ten million dollars to run the show. Two hundred thousand up front, and the balance into a Swiss account. I'll even cancel your debt to me, as of now. The rest is mine.” Peter did a rapid calculation and realized that out of the hundred-million-dollar ransom he was talking about, Addison was keeping seventy-five. He and the three men he hired were supposed to divide up the rest, like so much pie. But Addison had made very clear to him what the ground rules were. If he didn't agree to do it for him, his own two children would be killed. This was beyond playing hardball. This was nuclear warfare. Whatever way Peter turned, he was screwed. He wondered if he could warn Janet of the danger to the girls, before Addison got to them, but he didn't want to rely on that. Addison was capable of anything, he knew now. And Peter wanted none of these children hurt, neither his, nor the Barneses. Suddenly there were five lives at stake, as well as his own.

“You're a maniac,” Peter said, and sat down again. He couldn't see a way out of this, and was afraid there was none.

“But a clever one, you'll have to admit,” Addison said with a smile. “I think the plan is sound. Now you have to find the men. Offer them one hundred thousand each up front. I'll pay you the two hundred thousand up front. That ought to buy you some decent clothes and get a place to stay until you get things up and running. You have to find a location to take them, of course, while we wait for the ransom to be paid. Having just lost her husband, I don't think Mrs. Barnes will take a long time to pay for her children's return. She's not going to want to lose them too.” He correctly assumed that this was a vulnerable time for her, and he wanted to strike while the iron was hot. It was sheer providence that Peter had called. This was the omen he had been waiting for, and the man he needed to run the project. He was sure Peter would know the right men after his years in Pelican Bay. He did, of course, but this was not the job Peter had wanted from him. In fact, he was thinking of just walking out. But then what would happen to his girls? Addison had him by the balls. There was no other way to see it. And if his own chil-dren's lives were in fact at stake, then he had no choice. How could he possibly take the risk? He didn't think Janet would even talk to him, and by the time he found her to tell her of the danger their children were in, his own daughters might be dead. There was no way he was going to take that risk, with a man as dangerous as this. Addison would have had them killed without a second glance.

“And if things go sour with the Barnes children, and something goes wrong? What if one of them is killed?”

“It's your job to see that doesn't happen. Parents aren't generally as enthusiastic about paying ransom for dead kids. And it upsets the cops.”

“Never mind the cops. We're going to have the FBI on our asses the minute those kids disappear.”

“Yes, we will. Or you will. Or someone will,” Addison said pleasantly. “Actually, I'm going to Europe this summer. We're going to the South of France, so I'm going to be leaving this matter in your very capable hands.” And avoiding any possible implications that he was involved in it, of course. “By the way, if one of your men gets caught in the process of this, I am prepared to pay them half the promised amount. That should cover their attorney fees, and even a fairly reliable escape.” He had thought of everything. “And you, my friend, can either brazen it out here afterward, or disappear very comfortably to South America, where ten million dollars will buy you a very agreeable life, whichever you think best. We might even do some business together after that. You never know.” And Addison would be blackmailing him forever, of course, threatening to expose him to the FBI, unless he did whatever Phillip wanted. But no matter how he looked at this, what clinched it for Peter was his own children's lives on the line. Even if he hadn't seen them since they were toddlers, he still loved them, and he would die before he'd put them at risk. Or risk prison, or even the death penalty to protect them. All he could think now was that it was his responsibility to see to it that the Barnes children weren't killed in the course of the kidnap. It was the only thing he wanted, even more than the ten million dollars.

“How do I know you'll pay?” When Peter asked the question, Phillip knew he was in. It was done.

“You get two hundred thousand in cash up front. The rest paid into a Swiss account when the job is over. That ought to give you enough play money for now. The rest will come when we get paid. Not a bad petty cash account for an ex-con without a pot to piss in. Wouldn't you say?” And he had already said that Peter's previous debt to him was canceled. Peter didn't answer, he just stared at him, shaken by all he'd heard. In the last two hours, his entire life had gone down the drain again. There was no way he would ever be able to explain the money, and he would be on the run for the rest of his life. But Addison had thought of that too. “I'm prepared to say that I fronted you the money for a business deal with me, and the investment paid off brilliantly. No one will ever know.” But Addison would. And no matter how he cooked his books, there was always the risk that someone would talk. The prisons were full of guys who thought their asses were covered, until someone sold them out. And Addison would own his ass for the rest of his life. But he already did. The moment he explained the plan to him, it was all over for Peter. Or his kids. And the Barnes children for sure.

“What if she doesn't have the money? If he lost some of it?” Peter asked sensibly. Stranger things had happened, particularly in the current economic climate. Fortunes had come and gone in the last few years, leaving in their wake a veritable Everest of debt. Addison only laughed at the idea.

“Don't be ridiculous. A year ago the man was worth half a billion dollars. You can't lose that much money if you try.” But others had. Addison just refused to believe it about Barnes. He had been too smart to lose it all, or even most of his fortune, or so Addison thought. “The man was pure gold. Trust me. It's all there. And she'll pay. Who wouldn't? All she has now are her kids, and his money. And all we want is half of it. That leaves her plenty to play with, and her family intact.” As long as they stayed that way. That was going to depend now on the men Peter chose. It was all resting on him. His life had turned into a nightmare in the past two hours. Worse than ever before, and beyond anything he could imagine. He was risking the death penalty, or life in prison at the very least.