A sharp pain in his chest reminded C.J. of the breath he’d taken in some time back and hadn’t gotten around to letting go. He released it in a gust of swearing and mashed the power button on the remote, cutting off the anchorman as he was launching into news of the latest statehouse scandal. He hitched himself around on the bed till he’d got his feet on the floor and reached for his cell phone. His heart tapped hard against his ribs as he punched a number programmed in the autodial.

“Hey, bro,” he said to the groggy voice who answered. “Wha’d I do, wake you?”

“What? Who’s that-C.J.? Naw, you didn’t wake me. I just dozed off watching the news. What’s up?” There was an audible yawn. “Where in the hell are you? Everything all right?”

“I’m okay.” Well, it wasn’t much of a lie. “Hey, is Charly around?”

“She’s right here. Aw, hell-you’re not in jail, are you?”

C.J. shrugged off that conclusion and the low opinion of his own character it reflected. Where his brothers were concerned, he’d accepted the fact that it was going to take a while to live down certain escapades of his misspent youth. “Just let me talk to her, okay?”

There was a pause, and then in a molasses-thick Alabama drawl, “Hey, C.J.-honey, how’re you? What’s up?”

“Hey, Charly. You see tonight’s news?”

“I’m watchin’ it right now. What part in particular?”

“The president’s niece getting jailed for contempt.”

“Oh, yeah. I did catch that. What about it?”

“Well, I’m…I think I’m sort of involved. Or…I might be.”

“What? Lord’s sake, how?”

He told her the whole story, then waited through a thinking silence. A quickly drawn breath.

“You did exactly the right thing, if that’s what you’re askin’. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. The police are probably gonna want to ask you some questions-that’s to be expected. If you want me-”

“That’s not…” C.J. rubbed at his temples with his free hand. “It’s not me I’m worried about. What I was wondering…I was thinking, you know, maybe you could go up there, see if she needs anything…”

“She? You mean the mother-what’s her name-Mary Kelly? Hon’, you know she’s probably lookin’ at kid-”

“Well, her, and…uh, Caitlyn.”

“Caitlyn?”

He said a bad word under his breath. “Miz Brown, then-the president’s niece. Whoever.” He paused, but his sister-in-law didn’t say anything, so he added in self-defense, “I didn’t see any sign of a lawyer on that news footage, did you? Aren’t they usually right there, shielding their client from the buzzards? I offered, you know-to get her one. Well, hell, I’m the one turned ’em over to the cops, it seemed like the least I could do.” He’d about rubbed a burned spot on the skin of his forehead, but it hadn’t done a thing to help the pounding inside his skull.

“Don’t you go blamin’ yourself,” Charly scolded. “Those women are grown-ups, they made their choices, one of which was to involve you in their mess. It’s not your fault their choice of getaway driver turned out to be a law-abidin’ citizen.”

C.J.’s face stretched into a grimace nobody was there to see. “Yeah, well…I’d feel a whole lot better about that if I knew she had somebody in her corner, is all. I know she made at least one call after I told her I was turning her in, and I just assumed… But I’m thinking that must’ve been how she arranged for somebody to pick up the little girl. If she did, maybe-”

“C.J., she’s the ex-president’s niece, for Lord’s sake. Do you seriously think they won’t have the best lawyers money can buy?” C.J. didn’t say anything, and after a moment she let out an exasperated breath. “Okay, look, do you want me to see what I can find out for you?”

It was his turn to let a breath out in a rush of relief. “If you wouldn’t mind? I’d go myself, but I’m stuck up here in Wilmington waiting for my load. Soonest I can get there is-”

“Best you stay out of it,” Charly said in a warning tone. “If she gives you up as the person who gave her a lift and the cops come lookin’ for you to ask you questions, that’s one thing. Otherwise, speakin’ as your lawyer and as your brother’s lovin’ wife and therefore family, I’m advising you to keep your distance. For all kinds of reasons, startin’ with the fact that if this Ari Vasily is as dangerous as these gals make him out to be, you don’t want to mess with him. And like I said, it’s not like she hasn’t got resources. She’s the president’s niece.”

“Yeah…” His laugh was dry and bitter. “She neglected to tell me that little bit of information.”

Charly snorted. “What did you expect her to do? Say, ‘Hi, I’m hijacking you, and by the way I’m the president’s niece’?”

“She had plenty of time later on to tell me anything she wanted to,” he said, feeling sullen and put-upon. “She never told me a damn thing about herself. Not even her name. I only got the Caitlyn part when the other woman called her that.”

“She was probably just tryin’ to keep you out of it as best she could.” Charly’s tone was uncharacteristically sympathetic. “I doubt she was happy about havin’ to do what she did.”

“Spoken like a defense attorney.”

“Which is what I am, and the whole reason you called me, sugar. And by the way, if you’re so PO’d at the woman, why are you tryin’ to help her?”

Damned if he knew. He closed his eyes, thinking how much he wished he had a beer right now. Or something stronger. Which was just about unheard of, for him; he’d spent his teenage years watching his brother Roy battle the booze and it had left a lasting impression on him. He heaved a big sigh and said, “Just see what you can do, okay? I’m gonna be home probably late tomorrow night, but you can reach me on my cell.”

“I’ll make some calls, but I’m not promising anything.”

“That’s fine. And Charly…thanks.”

He disconnected but sat where he was for a long time, fidgety and keyed-up, slapping the cell phone against the palm of his hand. He’d done the right thing, turning them in, he knew he had. It wasn’t his affair, and Charly was right, he ought to stay the hell out of it. So why was it he couldn’t get her out of his mind? Her. All three of them, really. Except, it wasn’t Mary Kelly’s scared brown eyes or even little Emma Vasily’s big black ones he saw whenever he shut his eyes, as if the backs of his eyelids had been tiny TV screens. Uh-uh. No, it was her face that haunted him, pale and frozen in the shadows of the back seat of a police cruiser, the silvery slash of her eyes zeroing in on him, seeming to look right into his soul with mute and desperate appeal.


He was on I-95 somewhere south of Richmond when his cell phone tweedled at him from the no-hands holster mounted on the dash. He reached over and mashed the Receive button and hollered, “Yeah?” over the roar of highway noise.

“C.J., honey, that you?” Charly’s voice was distant and tinny.

His heart gave a little kick. He turned up the volume and yelled, “Yeah, Charly. What’d you find out?”

“Couple things. First thing is, she’s still not talking. Neither one of ’em is-the mother, either. So they’re both back in the pokey, and it looks like they might be there for a while. Judge Calhoun seems determined to keep ’em where they are until they give up the little girl.” She paused.

“And?” C.J. prompted. He kept his hands easy on the wheel, but a pulse was tapping hard against his belt buckle.

“She doesn’t want any help, C.J.-at least, not from you.”

“Did she say that?” He squinted at the ribbon of interstate rolling out ahead of him, though there wasn’t a speck of glare. “You got that straight from her? Not some other lawyer? You talked to her?”

He heard the gust of an exhalation. “In a word, C.J., yeah. What she actually said was that you’d done enough.” There was a long pause before Charly added gently, “She’s right, you know. Give it up, honey. It’s not your trouble, so don’t go spendin’ any more time stewin’ about it. You got other things to worry about-which reminds me, how’s that law degree comin’? When are you plannin’ on tackin’ up your shingle here with Troy and me?”

C.J. managed a grin, his first in quite a while. “Why would I want to do that? I’d have to live in Atlanta. Hell, might as well just shoot me now.”

Charly laughed. “Wait’ll you pass the bar, and then we’ll see about that. Atlanta’s where the action is, sugar.”

“Yeah, yeah-just don’t hold your breath.” His grin lasted about a second longer than it took him to disconnect. Then he took in air and huffed it out, waggled his shoulders like somebody’d just relieved him of a burdensome load.

Charly was right; it wasn’t any of his affair. He had a load to deliver, an exam to take. A semester to finish. A final to pass. A law degree to earn. A life to get on with.

As for a hijacker with a fairy-tale face and unforgettable eyes…well, he’d find a way to forget her. Somehow.


During the next five months or so C.J. concentrated hard on doing that, which, if nothing else, had a beneficial effect on his study habits. He got his law degree in June and spent the summer cramming for the bar exams, which he was scheduled to take the last week in September and as a matter of principle was determined to pass on the first try. He still had a lot to prove, mainly to himself.

What he mostly learned during that long, hot summer, in addition to a whole lot of law stuff, was that it was one thing to try to forget somebody and another to actually succeed.

His task wasn’t helped any by the fact that hardly a day went by he didn’t hear the name Caitlyn Brown or see her face on the nightly news-that same file footage of a handcuffed prisoner in a hooded sweatshirt being hustled into a police cruiser. It seemed to be one of those stories the media had sunk its teeth into and wouldn’t let go, and why not? It had everything: a mysterious billionaire, his ex-stripper wife, a beautiful young woman with connections to one of the most famous families on the planet, and, of course, a missing child.