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  “Oh, one more thing and then I’ve got to run, I have to pick Steven up from his soccer game,” Sheila said. “My friend I talked to out there asked if he was in trouble.”

  “Cohen?”

  “Yep. Said he’d been taking a lot of personal time off recently.”

  “Hmm,” Alex said. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her not that I knew of. I didn’t figure you’d want him to know, so I hinted that somebody here at headquarters had personal reasons for wanting to know, like she had the hots for him or something. Judging by his ID photo, it’s likely true of somebody.”

  “Oh, he’s a looker, all right,” Alex said wryly. “Do me a favor and keep digging, will you? Anything you can find.”

  So, she thought after she’d hung up, he was assigned to a case centered close to Athena, but apparently unconnected to the school. And he’d been taking time off.

  Could he be investigating Athena officially, but in an undercover capacity? That was a possibility. But why? Did someone else think there was something suspicious about Rainy’s death? But that made no sense. Even if someone did suspect, the FBI would have no jurisdiction. Unless there was even more involved here than the Cassandras suspected.

  Alex shook her head sharply. She felt like she was slogging through a swamp, with things pulling at her from all sides, some poisonous, some just trying to drown her. She wanted all of these questions answered, but they were incidental. The real bottom line was simple, she told herself, and all the other stuff was secondary. Was Justin Cohen one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?

  It was a question she couldn’t answer right now, and she’d learned long ago not to waste energy on such things. She would stay alert and gather more information whenever she could. But right now she needed to clear up the things that had piled up in her absence so she could get back to her personal investigation.

  I have to pick Steven up from his soccer game….

  She’d heard Sheila say it a dozen times a month over the years. Steven this, Steven that. Her eight-year-old son was her pride, her joy, practically her life. Alex had never quite understood the bond between them, but had figured she would when she had children of her own someday.

  Children of her own.

  A chill swept through her. Her entire vision of her future was rattled, maybe destroyed. Would it ever happen? Or had the choice really been taken away from her, like it had been for Rainy?

  Easy, there, you’re making an awful lot of assumptions, she told herself. You’re not certain exactly what happened to Rainy, and you have no idea that anything at all happened to you. Chill.

  Her phone rang, and she was grateful for the interruption of thoughts that shook her way down deep. She wasn’t used to her emotions being out of control, but she seemed to have lost the knack of controlling them the moment she’d learned about Rainy, and it was getting worse every minute.

  “Forsythe,” she said into the receiver.

  “Hello, Alexandra.”

  “Emerson,” she said. “I was going to call you this evening to let you know I was back in town.”

  “And going to stay this time, I hope?”

  “I’m not sure how long. There are…things I still have to handle in Arizona, and I don’t know yet when the funeral will be. Soon, though.”

  “I see.” He said it calmly, ever patient. “Shall we have dinner this evening?”

  “Can you, on such short notice?” He was usually as busy as she was, sometimes more. Whenever they went out they both turned off their cell phones, but that only made it a toss-up as to whose pager would go off first.

  “Everything is under control at the moment. I’ve made my last rounds, and everyone appears to be stable.”

  “All right.”

  “Seven?”

  “Make it eight. I’ve got a lot of catching up left to do here.”

  “Fine. Eiffels?”

  “I’d rather do Fran O’Brien’s, if you don’t mind. I’m hungry for one of their steaks.”

  “How carnivorous of you. But if you must.”

  She knew he hated the football-themed restaurant, but they served the best steaks around. She stifled the urge to tell him to get his nose lowered. She knew she was running short on patience in just about every area right now, so she tried to be extra careful. And she did want to see him, talk to him. He was so calm, so controlled, that just being with him might help her get a handle on these unaccustomed emotions.

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said.

  She turned her attention back to her desk and began to plow through reports. The paperwork had been the hardest thing to get used to—she was used to doing. It was only because of years of strictly imposed self-discipline that she was able to focus on the work at hand and not let her mind skitter back to the all-consuming matter of Rainy’s death.

  Every one of these people, she lectured herself, probably left people behind who are now feeling just like you feel with Rainy gone. Remember that, and give them your best.

  It was still warm when she finally left the office, but it would cool a little throughout the evening. And soon, she thought, glancing in the direction of the academy, the trees would start to turn, and Quantico would put on its fall dress of gorgeously colored leaves.

  And Rainy would still be dead.

  At five to eight—Alex was never one to be late, nor to play the game of keeping a man waiting—she arrived at the lower level of the Capitol Hilton and walked into the restaurant named after the former Washington Redskins tackle.

  “Ms. Forsythe, welcome!”

  “Thank you, Candace,” Alex told the hostess who had seen her here often with her grandfather, less often with Emerson. “Is Mr. Howland already here?”

  “Yes, I’ll take you to the table.”

  With the good manners that were inbred in him, Emerson stood up as she approached. A smile warmed his face, the same smile that had drawn her to him in the first place. She was still amazed at how it changed his usually solemn expression.

  “You look lovely, as always,” he said, giving her a welcoming embrace.

  “You’re looking dapper yourself.”

  He always looked well, with his well-cut blond hair and regular features, but he was wearing the dark blue suit she’d helped him pick out just before she’d gotten the call from Rainy. She was touched that he’d thought to wear it tonight.

  “A lady of excellent taste selected it,” he said as she took the chair he held for her.

  “The lady thanks you,” she said.

  She felt herself beginning to unwind. Emerson’s presence was always soothing, she guessed it was part of what made him such an excellent doctor. And it was a calm she needed just now, more than ever.

  An expert at small talk, probably because of the necessity for a facile bedside manner, Emerson carried the conversation easily through the ordering of dinner and wine. As he chatted about what had been happening with people they knew while she’d been gone, Alex wondered suddenly what kind of doctor he would be dropped in a small town like Eloy, where Rainy had died. For an acclaimed physician who had spent his entire life on the heavily populated eastern seaboard, the idea of a small, isolated town of merely ten thousand population would probably be stultifying. Especially when he thrived on the adulation of the medical community.

  Not, Alex reminded herself, that he didn’t deserve it. The man quite literally saved lives by the dozen. It was one of the things that had made her say yes when, after they’d met at one of those social functions she’d grown to dislike, he’d called and asked her to dinner.

  She knew she was distracted, but it was brought home to her sharply just how distracted by his reaction when the question that had been bubbling up inside her finally popped free.

  “Do you want children, Emerson?”

  He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  They had mentioned it in passing when they’d become officially engaged, but it had been in that general, far off, someday
kind of way. Now it had suddenly become urgent.

  “It’s something we should talk about more seriously, don’t you think?”

  His mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “Quite. I just hadn’t expected you to bring it up in the middle of a discussion about new open-heart procedures.”

  “Oh.”

  She felt herself start to flush, and lowered her head to hide it. She obviously hadn’t heard a word he’d been saying on the subject, since she’d had no idea that was what he’d been talking about.

  “It’s all right, Alexandra. I know you’re a bit muddled right now.”

  She half expected him to reach out and pat her hand. If he had, she wasn’t sure she could have kept herself from biting it. Emerson’s patience was sweetly endless, but also a bit condescending at times.

  She shoved those thoughts aside and repeated her question, adding, “I mean really want children, want to be a father, not just feel it’s your job to contribute the next generation of Howlands to the world.”

  Something about the flicker in his eyes hinted that she’d hit exactly the right—or wrong—nerve. Was that how he felt? She knew his parents had been pushing him to marry and reproduce, and had long suspected it wasn’t out of the desire to cuddle grandchildren. The Howland name was old and respected, nearly as much as the Forsythe name, and both his parents had been delighted at the thought of melding the two families. It seemed a match made in heaven. And if Alex now and then suspected it would also be heralded on Wall Street and by the DAR, she tried not to let it bother her.

  “Of course,” Emerson finally said, long after the quick gut reaction she would have preferred, “I wish to have children. I look forward to raising them, molding them. I’d like to think I—we—could contribute finely-raised, educated and worthwhile members of society.”

  Nothing wrong with the sentiment, Alex thought. So why was her first thought that he sounded like a pompous bore? What was wrong with her? She had never been so critical of Emerson before. He’d never set her so on edge, made her wish he would simply let his hair down, skip shaving on a weekend, put on sweats to go somewhere other than just the gym where he kept in tiptop shape, pointing out that performing hours-long heart operations was no job for the weak in body or mind.

  “Personally,” she said, unable to stop herself, “I look forward to summers at the farm, teaching them about hoof picks and shoveling manure.”

  “Equestrian pursuits are acceptable,” he said with a nod.

  If she’d hoped to rattle him, she obviously hadn’t succeeded. And why, she wondered, did she want to rattle him at all? Was it simply that she wanted to pierce that unflappable exterior?

  She dropped the subject, and Emerson reverted to exactly where he’d been in conversation before she had interrupted him as if she had never brought it up. Alex let him, although she barely tuned in. She was too busy trying to figure out her own motivations.

  It made no sense, she thought as their meal arrived, that she would want to shake him up. Hadn’t she wanted that very calm she’d been trying to shatter? Hadn’t she come tonight in part because she hoped his unruffled demeanor would somehow rub off and calm her own tumultuous emotions?

  She took a bite of her steak, then another, found it excellent as always, but somehow she wasn’t enjoying it as much as usual. Odd, she thought, how she’d always resented people who judged her as being cool and aloof without even knowing her, but now she was trying desperately to be just that. And failing miserably.

  “—for the children’s sake.”

  She stopped chewing midbite, Emerson’s last words echoing in her head and telling her she should have been paying more attention.

  “Excuse me?”

  Patiently, he repeated himself. “I said I will be glad when we do have them, and you turn to more suitable activities for the children’s sake.”

  She stifled the urge to say “Excuse me?” again, in an entirely different tone of voice. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” she said instead, taking care to keep her tone neutral.

  “Of course I mean your work. It’s certainly no job for a mother to have.”

  She knew she was gaping at him, but she couldn’t help it. “Are you trying to tell me you would expect me to abandon my career?”

  “Well, you certainly wouldn’t want to bring such work home to a family, would you? I find the gruesome details repugnant, so a child could likely be traumatized.”

  I’ve not given you half the gruesome details on any case, Alex thought.

  “I’m curious,” she said, hanging on to that even tone with a great effort. “How can a man who makes his living cutting into living, breathing human bodies find my work gruesome?”

  “My work is saving lives,” he said simply. “Yours is dealing with messy, ugly deaths.”

  He had a point, she had to admit. But she felt compelled to point out, “Not always.”

  “Perhaps not. But it is often about crime and evil.”

  “And putting a stop to it,” she pointed out.

  “Yes. That is what makes it bearable. For now.”

  “I see.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “And what exactly is it you see me doing, when that time comes?”

  “Whatever you wish, of course. If you feel you have to stay with the Bureau, surely you could transfer to a different part of the agency? Something…tidier?”

  Ah, yes. Emerson would always want a tidy life. Orderly.

  “What I do,” she said carefully, “is help bring order back to chaos. Sort out chaos so life can become…tidy, if you must use that word, again.”

  He looked at her with a thoughtful expression for a silent moment or two. “I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way before,” he admitted. “And I do see your point.”

  She had to give him that, if you made your point validly, he would always acknowledge it. Still, she couldn’t help thinking in this case it was grudging.

  “But?” she prodded when he didn’t go on.

  He lifted a brow at her. “But nothing. There’s no need to become defensive. I’m processing what you’ve said, Alexandra.”

  She flushed again, aware that he was right, she had reacted defensively. She had felt under attack. But she knew Emerson took his own time to reach a conclusion, and thus when he did, it was nearly unshakable.

  “You seem…uncommonly confrontational tonight,” he said. “Is there something else wrong? Besides your friend?”

  She supposed she should be glad that the man she was engaged to was perceptive enough to deduce that. Many weren’t. She took in a very long, deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out slowly.

  “It’s all tangled up together,” she said, certain now she wasn’t ready to talk about her suspicions and what had led her to ask the question about children in the first place. And it was the truth; it was all intertwined. She just didn’t have all the threads yet. Or the pattern they were woven into.

  After dinner Emerson ordered her a tiramisu without asking, but since it was her favorite dessert here she decided she was pleased, not upset that he hadn’t asked her about it this time.

  “My parents have proposed that you, your mother and Charles come to the house for a planning session soon,” he said over his last cup of espresso.

  “Planning session?”

  “Yes.” He waved his hand—that long-fingered, dexterous surgeon’s hand she loved—rather vaguely. “Picking the site for the ceremony, the reception, the guest list and all those other details.”

  “Oh. Isn’t it a bit early? We haven’t even set a date yet.”

  “When you’re dealing with a wedding of this size, it’s never too early, my mother says.”

  “This size?” Alex tried not to cringe; she’d attended many society weddings in her life, including some within the family, that had hundreds of guests. She had been hoping for something much smaller, simpler.

  “She estimates that between your family’s guest list and ours, we’re looki
ng at upwards of a thousand people, if not more. It will be the social event of the year.”

  He looked pleased. Alex felt a bit sick.

  “She’ll want to give you suggestions on your dress,” Emerson said. “Please, just let her prattle on. Then you can do what you want.”

  What she wanted was to trot into the nearest Saks and pick something off the rack that she liked and that happened to be white or something close. The idea of cramming fittings like the ones her cousin Charlene had gone through into her already impossible schedule added to her queasiness about the whole thing.

  “I’ve never seen your mother so happy,” Emerson said. “She’s so delighted our families will be connected officially.”

  The bite of tiramisu she’d just taken seemed to turn to chalk in her mouth. A snippet of conversation flashed through her mind, from the day she had told her mother Emerson had proposed and she had accepted.

  “Wonderful!” her mother had exclaimed with no small amount of triumph. “The Howlands and the Forsythes. The perfect connection. Finally!”

  Not a word about whether she loved him, was happy herself or even congratulations. Just the acknowledgment that the joining of two such prominent families was a delight to the socially conscious Veronica Forsythe. Alex had finally, years after she had given up even trying, pleased her mother.

  Was that why she was doing it?

  The question leaped into her mind, and she cringed at the impact it had. For a moment she stared at Emerson, wondering if that’s what he was, the trophy presented to her mother, to prove she really was the good girl Veronica Forsythe had always wanted, and not the changeling who continually disappointed her by being more her grandfather’s ideal than her mother’s.

  She also wondered, for the first time, if her grandfather had had to fight her mother to get her to allow Alex to attend Athena. Veronica rarely stood up to anyone. She usually relied on manipulation to get what she wanted. But she hadn’t been able to manipulate Charles. Alex knew her mother hadn’t liked the idea of her going, knew that the kind of woman Athena produced was far from her mother’s vision of what a woman should be, but if there had been any arguing it had been done out of her presence.