Ethan caught her before she crossed the foyer and grabbed her by the arm with more force than was necessary for a man of God. "Not so fast."

Gabe appeared in the doorway. "Eth? What's going-Rachel?" For a moment, he stood frozen. Then he came inside and closed the door behind him. "I wondered when you were going to use that key."

"You gave her a key?" Ethan said.

"Not exactly. Let's just say I knew she had a spare."

He had set her up, and that made her furious. "If you knew I had it, why didn't you say something? And what are you doing here, anyway?"

The fact that she'd gone on the attack when she was clearly in the wrong seemed to rob Ethan of speech, but Gabe simply shrugged. "Cal said Ethan could take the dining-room table for the community room at church. We were loading it into the truck."

His eyes drifted downward over her damp pink dress, mud-splattered calves, and bare feet. She told herself it was the chill that turned her skin to gooseflesh. She regarded him accusingly. "You said you had business. This isn't business. This is moving furniture!"

Gabe said nothing, but Ethan had finally recovered. "I don't believe it. Are you actually going to stand there and let her attack you? She's the one who broke into the house!"

"Sometimes it's easier to give Rachel a chance to unwind before you try to talk to her," he said in his low, toneless voice.

"What's going on between you two?" Ethan's face grew redder. "Why are you even listening to her? She's a liar and a con artist."

"And those are her good points." Gabe gestured toward her feet. "Lose those sexy shoes of yours?"

"I didn't want to track mud."

"Considerate."

Ethan broke away and headed for the phone. "That's the box Jane uses to store her computer diskettes. I'm calling the police. There's been something strange about Rachel showing up here right from the beginning."

"Don't bother. I'll take care of her. Hand over the chest, Rachel."

"Stuff it."

He arched one dark eyebrow. "Take the truck, Eth. I've got the tarp over the table so it won't get wet."

"I'm not leaving. After everything you've been through you shouldn't have to put up with this, too. I'll take care of her."

Once again little brother had jumped in to shelter big brother. Rachel gave a snort of disgust.

Ethan heard and whirled to confront her, his expression indignant. "What?"

"Tragedy doesn't make people helpless," she pointed out. "Stop coddling him."

That seemed to shock even Gabe. He had never spoken to her about his loses, although he must have known Kristy would have said something to her by now.

Ethan's hostility had developed a cold edge. "What right do you have to comment on anything between my brother and me? Gabe, I don't understand this. I thought she was just working for you, but…"

"Go on, Eth."

"I can't do that."

"You have to. Remember you're on the town council, and, if you actually witnessed someone getting murdered, you'd need to report it."

"I don't think you should be alone with her," he said flatly.

"I won't be alone." Gabe gave her a thin smile. "I'll have Rachel's screams to keep me company."

10

Ethan left the house reluctantly. Rachel realized that all she needed was a few minutes alone with the chest, a few minutes to look beneath the lining or find the secret compartment and she could go.

She wrapped her fingers more securely around the corners and tried to buy herself some time. "Your brother's a grouch. I guess it runs in the family."

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against one of the elaborate columns that led to the living room. "I'm surprised you didn't unbutton your dress and offer to take him on to keep him quiet."

"Everything happened too fast. I didn't have time to think of it."

He lifted an eyebrow and took a lazy step forward. "Hand it over."

Her heart felt as if it were moving toward her throat. "No way, Slick. This is mine. It was a present from my grandmother on my sixth birthday."

"Give it to me."

"She sold zucchinis in the broiling sun one entire summer so she could give this to me, and she made me swear always to keep it."

"We can do this easy or rough, it's up to you."

She swallowed hard. "Okay, you win. I'll give it to you. But first I need to dry myself off. I'm freezing." She edged away from him toward the family room.

He stepped in front of her, blocking the way. "Nice try."

With one swift movement, he pulled the chest from her arms.

Ignoring her gasp of dismay, he headed for the stairs. "Go ahead and dry off while I put this away. And I'll take that key when you're done."

"Stop it!" She couldn't let him do this, and she charged after him across the marble. "You're being a sadistic ass! Just let me look at it."

"Why?"

"Because I might have left something inside."

"Such as?"

She hesitated. "An old love letter from Dwayne."

He regarded her with disgust and turned back toward the stairs.

"Stop!"

He kept going.

"Wait!" She grabbed his arm, then wished she hadn't touched him, and quickly let go. "Okay, maybe Dwayne might have left something in it."

He paused with one foot on the bottom step. "Like what?"

"Like-" Her mind raced. "A lock of Edward's baby hair."

"You're going to have to do a lot better than that." He began to climb.

"All right! I'll tell you." She struggled to come up with another lie, but couldn't think of anything that would be even mildly convincing. She would either have to tell him the truth or let him take the chest away. It was no choice. She couldn't let the chest disappear again until she'd looked inside it, and she'd have to take the risk.

"Like the secret behind where he hid five million dollars."

That brought him up short. "Now we're getting somewhere."

She gazed up at him and worked hard to swallow. "The money's mine, Bonner. It's Edward's legacy. There are still some debts left, but the rest belongs to him. I earned every penny!"

"How do you figure?"

She got ready to give it to him-her smartest, sassiest, most wiseassed response. But then, just as the words were coining out, something happened inside her throat, and her voice broke. "Because I sold my soul for it," she whispered.

For a moment he didn't say anything. Then he tilted his head toward the top of the stairs. "I'll get you a robe. Your teeth are chattering."

Half an hour later, she sat across from him in the kitchen wearing nothing but her panties and his maroon terry-cloth robe as she stared down at the Kennedy chest. Her eyes were dry-she'd never cry in front of him again-but inside, she felt desolate.

"I was so sure." She shook her head, still unable to believe the chest held no clues. They had examined every microscopic inch of it and found nothing: no secret compartment holding a safe-deposit key, no Swiss bank-account number etched into the wood beneath the lining, no map or microfilm or computer password.

She wanted to slam her fists against the table, but instead, she forced herself to think. "The county sheriff was there along with the Salvation police, so there was a lot of law enforcement. One of them must have looked in the chest when he confiscated it and found something. One of them must have it."

"That doesn't make sense." Gabe picked up her coffee mug and carried it to the sink, where he refilled it from the pot on the counter. "You told me you checked the box before you got into the car. You looked and didn't find anything, so why would they? Besides, if the sheriff or one of our local police had stumbled on that kind of cash, we'd have seen some evidence of it by now, and the only person in the community who's spent any big money has been Cal."

"Maybe he-"

"Forget it. Cal made millions while he was in the NFL. Besides, if he or Jane had found anything in that box, they wouldn't have kept it a secret."

He was right. She slumped back into the red-velvet banquette in the kitchen's eating alcove. In her day the alcove had been wallpapered with gruesome full-blown metallic roses on the verge of decay, but they were gone now, replaced with small yellow rosebuds. The wallpaper was so completely out of place that it could only be some kind of private joke on the part of the current owners.

Gabe set the fresh mug of coffee in front of her and brushed her shoulder in a surprisingly gentle gesture. She wanted to tilt her cheek against the back of his hand, but he removed it before she could give in to the impulse. "Rachel, the odds are the money's at the bottom of the ocean."

She shook her head. "Dwayne had to leave the country too fast to handle any kind of complicated transaction. He couldn't possibly have taken that much money with him on such short notice."

Gabe sat across from her and set his arms on the table. Her eyes lingered there. His forearms were strong and deeply tanned, sprinkled with dark hair. "Tell me again everything he said that day."

She repeated the story, leaving out nothing. When she was done, she twisted her hands on the table. "I wanted to believe him when he told me he had to say good-bye to Edward, but I knew something was wrong. I suppose Dwayne loved Edward in an abstract way, but not in any way that counted. He was too self-centered."

"Then why didn't he just tell you to bring him the chest? Why did he bother asking you to bring Edward at all?"

"Because we were barely speaking at that point, and he knew that saying good-bye to his son was the one thing I couldn't refuse him." She cradled her coffee mug. "During my pregnancy with Edward, I finally came out of denial about what was going on at the Temple, and I made up my mind to leave him. But when I told him, he went ballistic. Not out of sentiment, but because, in those days, I was popular with his electronic congregation." Her mouth twisted bitterly. "He said he'd take Edward away from me if I ever tried to leave. I had to stay where I was, go on television with him for every broadcast, and not give any sign I was unhappy. Otherwise, he told me he knew men who would testify that I'd seduced them, and he'd prove I was an unfit mother."