“Really!” said Jane, her voice high with feigned surprise.

“Yeah, looks like I’m gonna have to wait until tomorrow to see about those, though. Apparently, they’re locked up tight in her shop.”

But you’re lying, Jane thought. Because as important as whatever it is you’re looking for seems to be to you, I know you’d go in after it right this minute, locks or no locks. If you’re waiting for morning, there’s a reason for it. What is it? What are you up to, Agent Hawkins? Why are you lying to me?

“I’m just amazed you got here so fast.” Words tumbled over themselves in their rush to leave her, the way they did at parties, or other occasions when she felt ill at ease. “Actually, I just got home myself, a little while ago. I haven’t even had time to change my clothes, or-”

“Yeah, how come? Greenville’s…what? A hundred miles from here?” And she could hear the tenor of his voice change with his frown.

“It’s a long story,” she said, tossing it off with light, rueful laughter. I know he still suspects me, she thought, shivering as the evening chill found its way inside her jacket and penetrated instantly to her bones. And I’m making it worse.

But she couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Not until she’d had a chance to find out for sure. Bacause…what if it wasn’t true? There still might be an innocent explanation for everything. Oh, God, she prayed, please let there be an explanation. She couldn’t bear the thought that she might have been so wrong, so stupid.

As soon as he could, when they’d left the narrow pier behind and begun to trudge uphill across the broad expanse of lawn, Hawk moved up to walk beside Jane. “Where are your daughters this evening?” he asked, making it sound like an effort at polite and casual conversation, though it was something he really did need to know.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the deck, smiling gamely, as if trying hard to remember her manners. He was surprised to find that he had to fight with every ounce of will he possessed to keep from reaching for her and pulling her back into his arms. Surprised by how much he wanted to stroke her and hold her and murmur soothing things into her hair, until she trusted him enough to tell him what she was trying so hard not to. Dammit, Jane, don’t lie-you’re not good enough at it.

“The girls are with their father,” she said in a gracious-hostess voice as she started up the stairs, once more preceding him. “Skiing. They’ll be gone all week. Where are you staying, the Best Western?”

“Uh-huh,” said Hawk absently. What he was wondering as he topped the last step and moved across the deck, was whether he could expect the bureau’s “surveillance” to extend this far outside the house. He was amazed how much it unsettled him to think of someone listening to his private conversations, for a change.

“I understand the rooms there are quite nice. Please come in.” She pulled the French doors shut after them and bustled through the living room and into the kitchen, turning on lights, setting thermostats and firing questions over her shoulder at him as she went. “Can I get you something to drink? Have you eaten?”

Her kitchen was like her, he thought. Nice. Ordinary. The kind of kitchen you felt comfortable in right away. White curtains at the windows of a breakfast alcove, blue checks on the walls, touches of yellow in sunflowers and daisies…

“Would you like coffee?”

Still thinking of bugs, he shook his head and coughed over his muttered reply.

Her smile was brilliant and painful. “Well. All right, then. Please make yourself comfortable. We’re a very casual household-realty. Just help yourself from the fridge if you’re hungry”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll just step outside for a smoke, if that’s all right.”

“Oh-of course. But you don’t have to go outside. I can get you an ashtray-”

“No, that’s okay, I’d rather-really.”

“Oh, well, then.” A valiant smile flickered across her face. “I won’t be long…”

He waited until he heard a door close somewhere down a hallway before he let himself out the kitchen’s side door. In the carport he paused to light up, and managed a couple of deep drags on the way out to where he’d parked the red Nissan. With the cigarette stuck between his lips and smoke curling into one eye, he unlocked the trunk and opened his travel bag, removing from it a small black object which he put in the pocket of his jacket. He then closed and relocked the trunk, took one last pull on the cigarette, dropped it onto the gravel at his feet and went back into the house.

He could hear the water running as he tiptoed down the hallway and into what had to be Jane’s bedroom. Please, God, he thought, curling his fingers around the electronic receiver in his pocket, let her take long, long showers.

It took him all of fifteen seconds to zero in on the frequency and then locate the first bug, behind the headboard of her bed. That made him mad. Just what in the hell, he wondered, were they hoping to hear from that one? He quickly found another one behind the mirror above her dresser, then spent a suspense-filled and futile five minutes going over the rest of the room before he was willing to call it clean.

Ignoring the girls’ bedrooms, he moved on to the kitchen next, one ear always tuned to the sounds coming from the other end of the hall. He was just finishing up in there when he heard the water shut off. Hurrying now, he skipped the phones and went straight to the living room. So far, two per room seemed to be the limit; he could only hope he’d found them all.

Back in Jane’s bedroom, a door opened. Another closed. Jeez, thought Hawk, grinding his teeth, take your time, dammit! For a woman, she sure was fast. Probably what came from having two daughters and apparently only one bathroom in the house.

He was standing in the middle of the living room, shaking and jingling a handful of small metal objects-about the size of watch batteries-when he heard her bedroom door open.

Damn! he thought. What in the hell was he going to do with the blasted things? He couldn’t very well carry them around in his pocket.

There was pretty much only one thing he could do. Casting one quick look over his shoulder, he opened the French doors, stepped onto the deck and hurled the handful of expensive, state-of-the-art listening devices as far as he could into the woods that bordered the lawn. He broke into a smile when he saw one hit a branch of the oak tree nearest the deck and fall into the bird feeder. Let them try to figure that one out, he thought, envisioning with a great deal of enjoyment the faces of the FBI techs monitoring the mikes when they heard nothing but twitterings and chirpings and random pecking sounds.

“I told you, you don’t have to do that outside,” Jane said from behind him.

He turned to find her standing in the softly lit living room, one hand on the frame of the open door, and almost groaned aloud. She was wearing cream-colored leggings and a long-sleeved knit tunic in a dusty rose shade of pink. And he’d been right about the way she looked in it.

“I actually have ashtrays for my guests, believe it or not.” The shower seemed to have restored her natural serenity. She was smiling slightly, her head tilted a little to one side, and her hair was brushed back from her face and damp from the shower. He didn’t think she’d washed it; she sure as hell hadn’t had time to blow it dry. Her face had the scrubbed-fresh, no-makeup look that always seemed to make her appear so vulnerable, as if she lacked a certain critical layer of protection. The elusive and indefinable scent he associated with her drifted to him on the cold night air.

Nice, he thought, and felt his heart quiver inside him.

“Come inside,” she said gently. “It’s getting cold out.”

Once more he followed her into the house. “I’m going to warm up some soup,” she said as he was closing the door behind him. “Want some?”

“Sure,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, following her into the kitchen. “What’ve you got?”

She’d opened a cupboard and was scanning its contents. “Uh, looks like clam chowder, minestrone and chicken noodle. Oh, and here’s a can of lentil.” Her nose wrinkled; obviously she wasn’t fond of lentil.

“Minestrone’s fine,” he told her. “Unless you’d rather-”

“No, no, minestrone’s good. I’m not a gourmet cook,” she warned him as she deftly opened cans. “As you can tell.”

“Oh. Well, then, forget it,” he said, straight-faced. And got a quick, startled look before she laughed.

He watched her while she worked, only half listening to the tale of her day’s travels, the promised “long story” about why it had taken her so long to get home from Greenville. He was thinking about how he was going to do what he’d come to do. What he had to do. Wondering just how he was going to manage to get his hands on something he could be absolutely certain had her fingerprints on it and no one else’s.

It was when she opened the dishwasher and began taking cups and bowls out in preparation for setting the table that he knew he had his answer.

“Here, let me do that,” he said, stepping quickly forward as she turned with her hands full of dishes, catching her by surprise.

“Oh-no,” she automatically began. “You don’t…” But she had no stock protest ready, and could only juggle the dishes clumsily as he took them from her.

She uttered a soft gasp when he let one-a soup bowl-slip through his fingers.

He spat out his standard, all-purpose cussword under his breath as it shattered, then mumbled, “Ah, jeez-I’m sorry…” He deposited the rest of the dishes haphazardly on the table and dropped to one knee beside the scattered shards, his handkerchief in his hands.

But she was already there before him, on her knees and pushing his hands away, saying in a breathless, almost panicky voice, “Oh, don’t-please. Here, let me-I don’t want you to cut yourself…”