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T hursday morning brought more bad news. Senator Thomas Whitehead sat behind his mahogany glass-topped desk, hands steepled at his chin as he faced the best defense attorney on his team, Kilgore Douglas. Thomas still maintained a penthouse office at the downtown San Francisco high-rise that housed the law firm he owned—although he no longer practiced there.

“Kassar found reasonable grounds to issue search warrants.” Kilgore came right to the point after announcing that he’d just heard from Detectives Stanton and Gregory.

Judge Henry Kassar. Democrat. Openly opposed to every Republican branch in Thomas’s family tree.

Sharp pain stabbed at Thomas’s stomach, but only for the second it took his mind to take control, issue calm. “To search what?”

“Your home. Cars. Offices. Everything.”

“I have nothing to hide.” But it wouldn’t look good to his constituents. And once doubt was cast…

Damn Kassar. Thomas had wiped the floor with his Democrat opposition—who’d been fully endorsed by Kassar—during last year’s election. The man would stoop to anything to get his own back. He’d seen Thomas’s remarks to the press as a personal attack. It wasn’t personal at all. Publishing a man’s accomplishments or lack thereof, as the case might be, was just part of politics.

Douglas, resting against Thomas’s desk, glanced down at the papers he held, nodding. Thomas recognized the blue folder. It contained the complete record of Thomas’s experiences with San Francisco’s law enforcement—one traffic ticket when he was sixteen, and everything relating to Kate’s disappearance.

The familiar jolt that shot through him as he stared at that folder, remembering his beautiful and spirited wife, hurt worse than usual today.

“I don’t like it,” Douglas said. “You have an airtight alibi. They shouldn’t still be poking around. I plan to appeal.”

Douglas was the best on his team, but only because Thomas, once the city’s highest-paid defense attorney, wasn’t practicing anymore.

Thomas shook his head. “Appeal on a warrant decision is so rare, it would play right into Kassar’s hands, drawing even more attention to me. Besides, if we do that, some people are going to think I have something to hide.”

“You know as well as I do that your being clean won’t stop them from finding potential evidence if they try hard enough.”

“They won’t try. They don’t have a case and they know it. They don’t want to come out of this with egg on their faces, either. Kassar aside, as far as the D.A. is concerned, this is merely a formality. So he can tell the mayor, and the mayor can tell his voters, that it’s been done. San Francisco’s second wealthy young beauty has just disappeared. They have to turn over every stone on this one.”

These were all facts he was comfortable with. Still, out of curiosity…

“What were the reasonable grounds?”

“You’re associated with both women.”

“What wealthy young woman in San Francisco don’t I know?” Thomas asked. In the past ten years, he’d done enough campaigning, socializing, smiling and schmoozing to get elected president of the United States if he decided to make a run for that office. “What wealthy person don’t I know?”

“You were the husband of one and escort of the other.”

Thank God that well-known fact was all they had to go on. He was innocent in both cases, but the prosecution might come to a different conclusion—the wrong conclusion—if they had all the facts.

“They’re going to see if they can find something among my things—phone calls I’ve made, bills I’ve paid, food in my refrigerator, whatever—that might connect the two disappearances.”

He hadn’t practiced courtroom law so successfully for seventeen years without learning how to outthink the prosecution.

“Leah and Kate were best friends.”

“So maybe they ran off together!”

Douglas chuckled without any real humor. “You don’t really believe that.”

Thomas rubbed his hand across his face, an unusual display of weakness. Revealing emotion, especially negative emotion, was something he almost never did. A Whitehead kept up appearances at all costs. In his world, that rule had been the most important condition for sustaining life. Breathing came in a close second.

“No,” he said, looking up at his attorney and closest friend. “I don’t believe that.” His voice broke and he stopped a moment to calm himself. “Kate and I…we—”

“I understand, buddy.” Douglas’s hand on his shoulder kept him from making even more of an idiot of himself.

“Sorry,” he said, standing. The ability to detach himself had always served him well—in the courtroom and in life. He wouldn’t lose it again.

“Hey, Thomas, this is me. No need to apologize.” Douglas rounded the desk, shoving the folder back in his hand-tooled leather briefcase. “Frankly, man,” he continued, his voice a little muffled as he bent over the chair in front of Thomas’s desk, latching his case, “I don’t know how you do it. If it were me and I’d lost Kate—let alone the baby—they’d have had to pull me out of the river. And now Leah. It’s…unsettling, you know?”

“I know.” Arms crossed over his chest, Thomas stood beside his desk, nodding slowly.

Douglas straightened, stared at him for a long silent minute. “Yeah, I guess you do. Listen, you want to hit the club tonight? I could use a drink.”

“Maybe.” He’d be drinking, that was for sure. “As long as Mother’s okay.”

“What’s it been, six months now since your father died?”

Thomas nodded.

“How’s she doing?”

“Like the rest of us, I guess. She has good days and bad ones. Nights are the hardest.”

Shaking his head, Douglas moved to the door. “You guys have had it rough lately, but you know what that means.”

“What?”

“That your turn’s coming for something really big.”

Thomas was counting on that.

Scott’s four days off made it difficult for Tricia to get to the paper every morning, but that didn’t stop her from driving herself crazy until she had the most recent edition of the San Francisco Gazette in her hands. She hated lying to Scott, hated being impatient with him when he accompanied her and Taylor on their morning walks, and then suggested going to the Grape Street dog park so the little boy could run and play with the animals. For some reason, her son was smitten with dogs. She’d never had a pet in her life and she’d certainly never considered having one that not only lived in the house but shed, drooled and didn’t wipe after it went to the bathroom. But watching Scott and Taylor with the unleashed pets in the park, she couldn’t help laughing.

And wishing that life was different—that she had a place where she felt secure enough to buy her son a puppy.

Still, she made excuses every day to get out of the house on her own. Thread she’d suddenly run out of. A quick trip to the grocery. A rush job that she’d forgotten had to be delivered.

He’d raised his eyebrows at that one, but had said nothing.

Which was pretty much what she got from the San Francisco Gazette. Nothing. Senator Thomas Whitehead had returned from an annual fishing trip. He’d stopped by the precinct the moment he’d heard about the heiress’s disappearance and no arrest had been made.

He was in the clear. Again.

On Saturday, the last day of his off-rotation, Scott stood in the doorway of the smallest bedroom in his modest three-bedroom home, watching the woman he thought of far too often for his own good. She sat there, some kind of dark garment in her hand, doing nothing.

He always wondered where she went when she did that. But he didn’t ask. The answer could very well take him into territory they’d agreed not to travel.

“You almost done?”

She jumped, bent her head for a second, and then turned to him, her ready smile in evidence. “Almost, why?”

Whatever had been on her mind, she wasn’t sharing it with him. Not that it mattered. He had no business knowing what made her jump in the middle of the night—or in the middle of the day when her lover spoke to her from a doorway in their home.

Soon after Tricia had moved in with him—which had been right after he’d met her, six months pregnant, in a bar where he used to hang out with the guys on his shift—he’d given Tricia this room for her sewing. He didn’t know anything about what she did, since he’d never seen his mother or his cousins so much as hold a needle, but even he could tell she was skilled at it.

He didn’t mind giving up his office/weight room for the sewing machine the dry cleaner had lent her so she could work at home while her baby was young. In the almost two years that followed, they’d added a cabinet from the flea market to hold her growing collection of materials, threads, scissors and tape measures, buttons and fasteners.

And she’d painted the room yellow with white trim. Not his style, but around her it looked good.

“The little guy’ll be up from his nap soon. How about a trip over to Coronado?”

As far as he could tell, it was her favorite place in the world—or at least in the San Diego area.

“To walk on the beach?” Her smile didn’t grow, it relaxed. She was back with him.

“Sure. And maybe get a burger downtown. I promised Taylor some French fries.”

“Can you give me fifteen minutes to finish these?” She held up the dark garment—a pair of women’s slacks. They were creased where she’d been holding them. “They’re the last of an order, and we can drop them off while we’re there.”

She looked so damned cute sitting there with minimal makeup on her flawless light skin, her long silky hair hanging down the white button-up shirt she was wearing over a pair of faded jeans. Compelled by something other than his own thoughts, Scott moved closer, catching and holding her gaze. Accepting the invitation he read in those deep blue eyes. He’d never seen such blue eyes on a brunette.

Or at least that was the reason he gave himself for the way they caught—and held—his attention even after nearly two years of living with her. Sleeping with her. Waking up beside her.

“Sounds good.” He finally uttered the words that were waiting to be said. He couldn’t quite remember the question he was answering.

His lips lowered, touching hers as, eyes slowly closing, she lifted her chin and nodded. Adrenaline shot through him, a streak of energy igniting every nerve in his body on the way through. Her lips were so soft, almost innocent, and so intent on passion he shook with it. She was moist and fresh and burning him all at once.

“Oh, God, woman, what you do to me,” he mumbled against her mouth, falling down to his knees between her legs, pulling her head with him. Tricia’s hands slid up his shoulders, pressing into him, her touch sending chills across his skin.

“How long did you say it would be before he woke up?” Her voice was ragged, as was the chuckle that accompanied it.

He had no idea. Couldn’t remember when he’d put Taylor down. Or what time he’d interrupted her.

“Ten minutes. Twenty if we’re lucky.”

Hands on her waistband, Tricia raised her bottom off the chair, and slid the jeans, with panties inside, down over her bare feet. “Let’s get lucky,” she said, her blue eyes glowing as she grinned up at him, her unsteady fingers meeting his at the button on his jeans.

He’d never known a woman whose hunger matched his. And that made him even hungrier. They’d done this in bed a few hours ago. It should have been enough.

“Hurry,” she said, the tip of her tongue gliding lightly on his neck.

He was so hard it hurt to shove the jeans down. Scooting her bottom forward on the chair, he tilted her just enough to fit him and then slid home.

Quickly. Again and again.

Thank God for home. It made life worth living.

“Mama, down!”

Laughing, Tricia leaned down to steady her son in the sand. With one hand wrapped firmly around his small fingers, she glanced up through her sunglasses to stare at her own reflection in Scott’s mirrored lenses. “Seems to be his favorite phrase with me these days,” she told him.

“A guy’s gotta see what he can do for himself,” he told her, bending to take Taylor’s other hand. They were a family, the three of them, laughing and kicking up sand as they strolled barefoot, jeans rolled up their calves, along the Coronado beach line. A moment in time.

That was just about how long it lasted. Taylor tugged at their hands. Tried to run. Laughed when Scott scooped him up, throwing him into the air, and before she knew what was happening, Tricia found herself sitting on the sand, an observer, while Scott and Taylor played a baby version of football with a shell Taylor had picked up.

Mostly the game consisted of Scott letting Taylor “catch” the shell and then chasing after the toddler, whose legs tripped over themselves in the sand, ending in a tickle tackle that had him screaming with glee.

And filled his hair with sand, too, she was sure. Not that she cared. Taylor’s squeals were so joyful they were contagious. She sat there grinning like an idiot when what she needed to do was get to a newspaper. She’d yet to see Saturday’s issue. Turning, looking for a newspaper box, she suddenly noticed the tall man in the distance. Noticed him because his slacks and dress shoes were hardly proper attire for the beach? Or because he didn’t seem to react to Taylor’s joy?

He was staring at the baby, though, and all thought of newspapers, of football games and joy fled Tricia’s mind. Taylor ran several yards up the beach with Scott in mock pursuit. Tricia followed their progress from the stranger’s perspective. He was watching them.

And, she was fairly certain, her as well.

Heart pounding, she stood, cloaked herself with the protective numbness that kept her mind focused and moved slowly up the beach. Had he seen them together? Did he know that she and Taylor were a pair?

If not, she had to keep it that way. Anyone looking for her would be looking for a woman with an eighteen-month-old boy. Not a woman wistfully watching a man with one.

And if he’d seen them together?

Then her walking off alone would at least throw him. Taylor was safe with Scott. Would be safest with him if something happened. She had to go. Separate herself from them. Be a woman on her own, unencumbered, unknown, spending a quiet Saturday alone in Coronado.

A brunette who’d lost twenty pounds in the past fifteen months wearing store-bought clothes and big plastic sunglasses.

Up the beach a couple of yards was a road access. Tricia took it, not once looking back. She didn’t know that man and child, had never seen them before in her life. Leaving them was nothing to her.

God, let me escape before Taylor sees me. Calls out to me. Let me go before Scott notices….

She didn’t breathe until she made it to the street—and then almost passed out with dizziness. She walked on. Half a mile. Maybe more. Unhurried, glancing at the flowering bushes, the palm trees lining the road. The resorts in the distance. Maybe she was on vacation. Or perhaps she was there on business.

Maybe her folks had a condo on Coronado Island.

Yeah, that was it. A condo. She could play that role. Had to play a role in her mind if she was to give the appearance of being someone else. A woman on the run looked like a woman on the run—a woman whose body was so filled with fear it hurt her muscles to move.

Tricia was a woman visiting her parents’ condo. Appearances were everything. They had to be. Without them, she and Taylor would’ve been dead two years ago.

A car passed. A light-blue Toyota. Going too fast. Probably because a high-school-age boy was driving. He had a young girl in the passenger seat.

No sign of the man. She couldn’t be sure he wasn’t behind her, though. She didn’t hear footsteps. Didn’t see shadows.

Pulling her bag over her shoulder while she walked, Tricia took out a tissue, dropping the pack in the gravel. Bending to pick it up, she looked back between her legs. And saw the dress slacks. He’d stopped, too. Was leaning against a lamppost, lighting up a cigarette. His hair was blond. And too long. He needed a shave. And he should lose about thirty pounds.

Mouth dry, Tricia was sweating beneath the sun as though it were midsummer rather than a balmy April day.

Scott and Taylor would have noticed her missing by now. Scott would be worried. She’d have to come up with something damn good to explain this. An urgent need for a bathroom might do it. Guys didn’t usually ask questions when a woman needed to take care of personal matters.

The man was still there, facing in her direction.

If she had to, she could always meet up with Scott at the house later. He’d return there eventually. It would be better, though, if she could get to a phone and call his cell. He always had it with him in case of an emergency at the station. The bathroom excuse would be more credible if she called him.

If she had a chance. She was away from Taylor now. It might be the perfect time to get her. After all, she was the commodity; the baby had been unnecessary baggage.

She walked on. She could feel the man following behind her. Was he merely visiting relatives on the island? Stopping for a smoke because he had the time and nothing better to do? Still, she’d spent countless hours on Coronado Beach since arriving in San Diego and she hadn’t seen many vacationers there in dress slacks and shoes.

None that she could remember.

Maybe she was overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time since this nightmare had consumed what had once been a satisfying life.

And yet, what if she didn’t react? What if she grew complacent, quit watching, quit taking action—and was found?

Tricia turned onto the next major street, strolling slowly—and watching. The possible price if she relaxed her vigilance was too high to pay.

She was a woman on vacation at her parents’ condo. She’d go to her grave with that story if she had to. If it meant Taylor lived.