XO

Chapter 67

THE DAY OF the show.

The band had arrived from Nashville at nine a.m. and come straight here, the convention center, where Kayleigh and the crew were waiting. They got right to work.

After a couple of hours Kayleigh had called a break. Backstage she had a tea and called Suellyn, then spoke to Mary-Gordon; she was going to take the girl shopping that afternoon for a new dress to wear to the concert.

After she disconnected she picked up her old Martin again and practiced a bit more with the picks that Edwin had given her.

She liked them a lot. Top flat-pickers, like Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Tony Rice and Bishop Towne, would never use big flexible triangles; the real virtuosos used small, hard picks like these. Kayleigh was more a strummer, but she still liked the control that-

A voice startled her. “How’s the action?” Tye Slocum asked, appearing silently from nowhere, despite his size. His eyes were on the instrument.

Kayleigh smiled. The guitar tech was referring to the height of the strings above the fret board. Some guitars had a bolt or nut that could be turned to easily alter the action. Martins didn’t; to make that adjustment required more effort and skill.

“Little low. I was getting some buzz on the D.”

“I’ve got a saddle I can swap,” he said. “I just found some bone ones. Real old. They’re pretty sweet.” The saddle, vital to a guitar’s tone, was the white bar on the bridge that transmitted the sound from the strings to the body. Acoustically the best material was hard ivory, from forest elephant tusks; soft ivory was the next best-from large African elephants. Bone was the third best material. Both types of ivory were available-some legally and some not-but Kayleigh refused to use ivory and wouldn’t let anyone in her band do so either. Tye, though, had good sources for vintage bone, which produced a sound nearly as good.

A pause. “Just wondering: Is he going to be mixing tonight?” A glance toward the control platform in the back, where Barry Zeigler sat with hard-shell earphones on, hands dancing over the console.

“Yeah.”

Tye grunted. “Okay. Sure. He’s good.”

Bobby Prescott had not only been the chief roadie but handled the demanding job of sound mixing, his father’s profession, at the live shows. Anyone on the crew could do a decent job on the massive, complex Midas XL8 mixing console-Tye was pretty good himself-but she had decided to ask Zeigler, as long as he happened to be in town. Her producer had started in the business as a board man when his own dreams of being a rock star hadn’t come to pass. Nobody was better than Barry at getting right both the FOH-front of house-audio, along with the foldback: the sound the band heard through their monitors.

Slocum wandered off to his workstation of tuners, strings, amps and tools. Kayleigh walked out onstage and the rehearsal resumed.

Her band was made up of artists whose whole professional lives had been devoted to music. There are a lot of talented people out there, of course, but Kayleigh had worked hard to assemble folks who understood her and her songs and the tone she strived for. Folks who could work silkenly together; oh, that was important, vital. There are few professions as intimate as making ensemble music, and without complete synchronicity among the performers the best songs in the world and the most talented front person will be wasted.

Kevin Peebles was the lead guitarist, a lean, laid-back man in his thirties whose mahogany scalp glistened with sweat under the lights. He’d been a rocker for a few years before turning to his real love-country, a genre in which his race had not been traditionally well represented.

Bass player and backup singer Emma Sue Granger was one of the most beautiful women Kayleigh’d ever seen. With shoulder-length raven-black hair, decked out with occasional microbraids and a flower or two, Granger wore tight sweaters she knitted herself and leather pants. Kayleigh’s audience was 60 percent female, but for the sake of the other forty, Emma Sue got a lot of front-stage time.

In a battered straw cowboy hat, brims rolled into a near tube, plaid shirt and ancient blue jeans, Buddy Delmore manned the band’s pedal steel guitar, the smooth, seductive instrument that Kayleigh, for all her talent, had never been able to play. She thought anybody who could master one well was a genius. He also would play the distinctive-sounding Dobro and National steel guitars, with their pie-plate resonators. The sixty-five-year-old was from West Virginia and played music to support his true love: chicken farming. He had eight children, the youngest of whom was two.

The drummer was new to the group. Alonzo Santiago had come out of the barrio in Bakersfield and could make rhythm with anything he could pick up or touch. This too was magical to Kayleigh, who could perfectly follow a beat but relied on others to create and sustain it. Santiago was one of those crazy parents who’d actually given his young children drum sets, only to be disappointed to learn his daughter dreamed of being a NASCAR driver and his son a comic book artist.

The other band member, a sturdy, round-faced redhead in her forties, was the “orchestra.” Sharon Bascowitz was one of those people who could pick up an instrument, even one she’d never seen, and play it like a virtuoso. Sousaphone, cello, harpsichord, marimba, Native American flute… anything. Sharon could get it to sing. Always decked out in three or four colorful layers of tie-dye and lace, and dangling with glittering fake jewels, the woman was as brash as Emma Sue was shy.

The rehearsal was informal; they’d performed most of the material so often, it probably wasn’t even necessary, but there was a new song order and Kayleigh had added Patsy Cline and Alison Krauss/Robert Plant covers and had written two new songs, which she’d faxed to the band last night. One was dedicated to Bobby; Alicia would not be mentioned, Kayleigh had decided.

They finished the raucous and fun “I’m in the Mood (for Rock ’n’ Roll)” and she looked toward Barry at the mixing board. He gave her a thumbs-up. He was satisfied. She was satisfied. Kayleigh announced to the band and crew, “Okay, I think that’s it for now; reconvene at six for the final sound check.”

According to the God of Performances, Bishop Towne, you could never rehearse too frequently but you could rehearse too much. They needed a break now, to let the new ideas bake.

She handed off her Martin to Tye Slocum to fit with the new saddle, slugged down another iced tea and picked up her phone. Debating a moment, then a moment longer. Finally she did something she couldn’t have imagined until today.

Kayleigh Towne called Edwin Sharp.

“Hello?” He still sounded a bit groggy.

“Hey, it’s Kayleigh.”

“Well, hi.”

“Are you in the hospital still?”

He laughed. “Didn’t think I’d really hear from you. No. I got sprung.”

“How you feeling?”

“Sore, sore, sore.”

“Well, I hope you’re well enough to come to the show,” she said firmly. “I got you a ticket.”

There was silence and she wondered if he was going to refuse. But he said, “Okay. Thanks.”

“I’ve got it now. Meet you for lunch?”

She could have left it at the will-call window but that seemed petty, considering what he’d done for her. She’d reconciled with Sheri; she could do the same with Edwin.

He said, “I’m supposed to go see Deputy Madigan to give them a statement, but that’s not till two. I guess. Sure.”

He suggested a diner he’d been to. She agreed and they disconnected. Kayleigh headed for the stage door, glancing at Tye Slocum, who had already destrung her Martin and was filing away on the new bone saddle, as lost in his task as a sculptor completing his masterwork.

Her eyes then rose and looked into the murky heaven of the convention center. Kayleigh had wakened that morning at her father’s house, thinking that the concert was the last thing she wanted. She’d even considered using the smoke from the fire at her house as an excuse to cancel, reporting that her throat still stung, even though it was fine. But once she’d arrived here, greeted the band members, tuned up and walked out onstage, her attitude changed completely.

Now she couldn’t wait for the concert. Nothing was going to stop her from giving the audience the best show they’d ever seen.

Chapter 68

THE CASE WAS over.

But one consequence of that resolution for Kathryn Dance was that a greater problem loomed.

One she’d have to face soon and she’d decided today was the day.

She’d had a decadent brunch of huevos rancheros and was now back in her Mountain View Motel room, on the phone with her website partner, Martine, discussing the songs she’d recorded of Los Trabajadores. She’d emailed them to the woman and they’d spent hours deciding which of the two dozen they’d make available on their site.

The decisions were hard; they were all so good.

But from time to time, as the women spoke, that Greater Problem intruded, the one Dance was now resolved to deal with: the question about the men in her life. No, that’s not correct, she reminded herself. There was only one man in her life-in that way. Jon Boling. That he was close to ending the relationship was irrelevant. She had to keep Michael O’Neil out of the equation for the time being. This was between her and Boling.

So what’m I going to do?

“Hey, you there?” Martine’s voice nudged her from her thoughts.

“Sorry.” They returned to the task and finished the Los Trabajadores song list. Then she disconnected the call, flopped down on the bed and told herself: Call Jon. Have it out.

Dance stared out the window, eyes on what might have been a true mountain view had the day been exceedingly clear, which it definitely wasn’t, not in this dead end of summer.

She then scrutinized her mobile, which she turned over and over in her hand.

The photo skin on the back depicted two children with giddy smiles, and two dogs in the oblivious joy of dogness.

The other side was her phone’s address book window, Jon Boling’s number highlighted and ready to be dialed.

Back to the pictures.

Eyes on a bad painting on the wall, of a harbor. Did the interior designer think all Californians owned sailboats, even those three hours from the coast?

Flip… the phone’s address book. Her French braid tickled her left ear. She absently flicked the strands aside.

Call or not, call or not?

Her intent was to ask bluntly why he was moving to San Diego without talking to her first. Odd, she reflected, she had no problem slipping on her predator specs, sitting down across from snarling Salinas gangbanger Manuel Martinez to learn where he’d buried a portion of the remains of Hector Alonzo, specifically the head. But asking a simple question about her lover’s intentions was paralyzing.

Then a wind shear of anger. What the hell was he thinking? Becoming friendly with the children, easing into their lives, making himself a part of the family, fitting in so seamlessly.

She grew analytical. Maybe this was the answer: on the surface Jon Boling had been perfect for her, fit, funny, kind, sexy. They’d had no harsh words, no fights, no fundamental collisions of any kind-unlike, for instance, as with Michael O’Neil… Wait, she reminded herself. O’Neil did not exist for the purposes of this equation.

With Boling did the absence of friction mean the gears of love weren’t truly engaging?

Could there be more love in sweat than in laughter?

That just didn’t seem right.

Clutching the phone, turning it over, over, over…

Call, not call?

Children screen children screen children screen…

Maybe I’ll flip it like a coin on the bed and let fate take charge.

Children screen children screen…

Chapter 69

KAYLEIGH MET A slow-moving Edwin Sharp in the front of the diner.

She liked the choice of restaurant; it was in a quiet part of town and she suspected she wouldn’t have to deal with autograph hounds. That was something even minor celebrities like her always had to consider.

He greeted her at the door with a smile and let her precede him into the air-conditioned, brightly lit restaurant, which was nearly empty. The waitress grinned, noting their famous patron, but Kayleigh was an expert at categorizing fans. She knew the woman would be efficient and cheerful but far too nervous to utter a word beyond order taking and comments about the heat.

They sat at a booth and ordered iced teas and, for Kayleigh, a burger. Edwin got a milkshake; the wound in his neck made chewing painful, he explained. “I love ’em. But I haven’t had one for months. Hey, if nothing else, you got me to lose that weight I’d been trying to for years.”

“Wow, that bruise is something.”

He lifted the chrome napkin holder and used it as a mirror. “I think it’s getting worse.”

“Hurts a lot?”

“Yeah. But the big problem is I have to sleep on my back, which is something I’ve never been able to do.” Their meals came and they ate and sipped. He asked, “How’s your house?”

“I’ll need new carpets, have to replace a lot of floor and a wall. The big problem is the smoke damage. It got into everything. They’re talking about a hundred thousand dollars. Half my clothes have to go too. They stink.”

“Sorry.”

Then an awkward silence arose and it was clear Edwin didn’t want to talk about the terrible events of the past few days. Fine with her. He started chatting about music and some of the founding women of the country scene. He talked about the records in his collection-he still listened to a lot of music on LPs and had invested in an expensive turntable. Kayleigh too thought that vinyl-analog recordings-produced the purest sound, better than the highest-quality digital.

Edwin mentioned he’d just found some Kitty Wells singles in a used record shop in Seattle.

“You like her?” Kayleigh asked, surprised. “She’s one of my favorites.”

“Have almost all of her records. You know she had a Billboard hit when she was sixty?”

“I did, yeah.”

Wells, who started singing in the 1950s, was one of the first women inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

They talked about country music back then-Nashville versus Texas versus Bakersfield. She laughed when Edwin quoted Loretta Lynn, who fought her way up through the male-dominated recording Industry: “A woman’s two cents’ worth is worth about two cents in the country music world.”

In Edwin’s opinion country represented the best of commercial music, much better than pop and hip-hop. It was well crafted, used appealing tunes and incorporated themes about important issues in everybody’s lives like family, love, work, even politics. And the musicians were top craftspeople, unlike many folk, alternative, hip-hop and rock artists.

On the broader issue of the music world, he wasn’t happy about the decline of the recording industry and thought that illegal downloads would continue to be a problem and erode the quality of performances. “If artists don’t get paid for what they do, then what’s the incentive to keep writing and making good music?”

“I’ll drink to that.” Kayleigh tapped her iced tea glass to his milkshake.

When they were through with lunch, Kayleigh gave Edwin his ticket. “Front and center. I’ll wave to you. Oh, and those picks are the best.”

“Glad you liked them.”

Her phone buzzed. A text from Tye Slocum: the Martin’s ready to go, how you doing?

Curious. He rarely texted, much less about something as mundane as the status of an instrument.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just…” She didn’t finish and put her phone away. She’d respond later.

The bill came and Edwin insisted on paying. “Well, this is a real treat. I never thought I’d be in the front row at a Kayleigh Towne concert.”

They walked into the parking lot. As they approached her Suburban, Edwin gave a laugh and pointed to his old red car, a few spaces down from hers. “‘Buick’ would be pretty tough to rhyme with. Good thing you picked ‘Cadillac.’”

“‘Toyota’ would’ve been worse,” Kayleigh joked.

“Hey, now that you know I’m not the crazy person you thought I was, how about dinner sometime? Maybe after the concert?”

“I usually go out with the band.”

“Oh, that’s right. Well, sometime, maybe… How ’bout Sunday? You don’t leave again for two weeks. The Vancouver show.”

“Well… weren’t you leaving?”

He pointed to his throat. “Taking those pain pills. You were right-they’re pretty heavy duty. Probably better if I don’t do any long-distance driving. I’m back in the rental for a few days.”

“Oh, sure, you have to be careful.” They were at her SUV. “Okay, thank you again, Edwin. For everything you did. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.”

She nearly hugged him and kissed his cheek but decided not to.

XO…

“‘I’d Do It All Again,’” he said, smiling. The title of one of her first hits. Kayleigh laughed. After a moment he said, “Hey, here’s a thought: I could drive up to Canada. Vancouver’s not that far from Seattle. I know some great places. There’s this beautiful garden in the mountains, where-”

She smiled. “You know, Edwin, it’s probably best if we don’t get together. Just… I think it’s best.”

A grin crossed his face. “Sure. Only… well, after everything, I just thought…”

“It’s probably best,” she repeated. “Goodbye, Edwin.” She extended her hand.

He didn’t take it.

“So… you’re breaking up with me?” he asked.

She started to laugh, thinking he was joking-like his reference to the flowers in the hospital last night. But his eyes narrowed, focusing on hers. And the smile morphed into the one she recognized from before. The faint twisting of his lip, fake. “After everything,” he repeated in a whisper.

“Okay, you take care,” she said quickly. And gripped her key fob, unlocking the door.

“Don’t go,” he said in a breathy whisper.

Kayleigh looked around. The parking lot was deserted. “Edwin.”

He said quickly, “Wait. I’m sorry. Look, let’s just take a drive and talk. We can just talk. Nothing more than that for now.”

For now. What did he mean?

“I think I should go.”

“Just talk,” he said stridently. “That’s all I’m asking.”

She turned fast but Edwin stepped quickly forward, boxing her in. “Please, I’m sorry. Just a little drive.” He looked at his watch. “You don’t have to be at the concert hall for six hours and thirty minutes.”

“No, Edwin. Stop it! Get out of my way.”

“You like men who talk, remember your song, ‘You Never Say a Word’? That’s not me. Come on. You liked talking to me at the restaurant just now.” He gripped her arm. “That was so much fun. The best lunch I’ve ever had!”

“Let go of me!” She tried to push him away. It was like trying to move a sack of concrete.

He said ominously, “You understand I was almost killed.” He pointed to his neck. “I was almost killed saving you! Did you forget that?”

Oh, Jesus Lord. He shot himself. Alicia was innocent. He set her up. Edwin killed Bobby, he killed Alicia! I don’t know how but he did it.

“Please, Edwin…”

He released her, relaxed and looked contrite. “I’m so sorry! Look, this isn’t going well. Here’s the thing, you need a place to stay. The fire at your house. You could stay with me until it’s fixed.”

Was he serious?

She spun around and tried to bolt. But his massive hand went around her face and pinched hard. An arm gripped her chest and squeezed as he dragged her to the back of his Buick and opened the trunk. The struggle for air became more and more hopeless. As her vision crumbled to black, she heard-she believed she heard-a voice, singing in a whisper, “Always with you, always with you, your shadow…”

Chapter 70

KATHRYN DANCE DIDN’T play coin toss with the phone.

She decided to be an adult about the whole San Diego Situation. She rose and hit CALL as she pitched out her Starbucks carton.

Her eyes were on the motel room trash can as Boling’s phone rang once.

Twice.

Three times.

She disconnected fast.

Not because she’d lost her nerve about talking to him; no, another thought surfaced.

A to B to Z…

How did Edwin Sharp know that Alicia Sessions had stolen his trash?

That’s what he’d said in the hospital. Yet she’d never mentioned the fact. Dance had said only that Alicia had taken some things of his. That she had garbage bags in her apartment was never mentioned.

Slow down, she told herself. Think.

Could he have learned about it some other way? She decided no. At Kayleigh’s house last night he was unconscious for most of the time and only the medics spoke to him, not Madigan or Harutyun, the only others who knew about the trash. And Kayleigh and Dance were the first ones to visit him in the hospital.

A logical deduction on his part? If Alicia was going to plant something of his it made sense for her to have taken his trash.

Surely possible.

But another explanation was that Edwin had put the two bags of his trash in Alicia’s apartment, along with the notes supposedly forged by the assistant, but that he himself had produced. He’d then planted the evidence outside his own house, like the neatsfoot oil trace and the boot print, to implicate Alicia, suggesting she’d been spying on him last Saturday.

No, no, this was absurd. The shooting incident at Kayleigh’s house? That surely had been Alicia.

Or had it?

Rethink the scenario, Dance told herself. What had Kayleigh told her, Madigan and Harutyun about the attack last night?

Was there any possible way Edwin had orchestrated it?

Think.

A to B to Z…

Come on, you get into the minds of killers plenty. Do it now. How would you have set it up?

And the ideas began to form.

Edwin goes to Alicia’s, ties her up. He plants his own trash, Gabriel Fuentes’s gun case and the forgeries of Kayleigh’s note there. Uses her phone to send texts to Kayleigh and to his own phone about meeting at Kayleigh’s house, and he goes to the hotel near Alicia’s and uses her computer to send the request for the fourth verse to the radio station.

But there were two cars at Kayleigh’s. His own and Alicia’s. Well, maybe he pays a teenager or field picker to drive his car to the shoulder in front of Kayleigh’s house and leave it there, then vanish. Then he drives to Kayleigh’s in Alicia’s pickup, with her tied up in the back. Or maybe she was already dead at that point-the time of death, with a badly burned body, would be close enough.

But Kayleigh heard Alicia calling her name in the house.

A tape recorder!

Edwin could have threatened her back at the apartment to say Kayleigh’s name into a high-def digital recorder-the same one used to play “Your Shadow” to announce the impending murder.

With your eyes closed, you couldn’t tell the difference between someone really singing or the digital replay. Only a pro would have a recorder like that.

Dance recalled her reply to Kayleigh:

Or a fanatical fan.

He’d probably planned out several scenarios for the “rescue” of Kayleigh Towne-depending on where the singer was in the house when he arrived. If she was downstairs or on the porch, maybe the fight with Alicia would have occurred in the driveway or out by the road. But when he’d gotten to the house he would have seen her in the bedroom. That gave him the chance to get inside and masquerade as Alicia-all thanks to Dance herself, of course, who’d called Kayleigh and told her to barricade herself upstairs.

And Edwin’s wound? Well, if he was mobile now, the gunshot may have been dramatic but obviously it wasn’t that serious.

The bullet missed the carotid and his spine…

Dance pulled a portion of her own skin away from her neck. Yes, he could easily have shot himself and missed anything vital.

She tried to consider any other items of evidence that were unaccounted for.

The bone dust was the first thing that came to mind.

Human bone dust.

The guitar picks! Made not from a deer antler but from the hand of Frederick Blanton, the file sharer-the body part hadn’t been burned away; Edwin had cut it off before he set the fire. He’d lied about sending the picks to her earlier; how would Kayleigh know? Her assistant returned everything he’d sent, probably unopened.

Grim justice for a singer; using picks made out of the bone of a man who’d stolen her music.

It’s a wild theory. But…

Close enough for me, Dance decided and called Kayleigh. No answer. She left a message, telling her what she suspected, then called Bishop Towne and told him the same.

“Oh, fuck,” the man growled. “She’s having lunch with him right now! Sheri was at the convention center for the rehearsal. She left an hour ago to meet him.”

“Where?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Hold on.”

After an excruciatingly long time, he came back on. “The San Joaquin Diner, on Third. Do you-”

“If she calls you have her get in touch with me right away.” Dance hung up and debated calling 911 or the sheriff’s office. Which would be the shorter explanation?

She dialed.

“Madigan,” came the voice.

“Chief, it’s Kathryn. No time now but I think Edwin’s our perp after all.”

“What?” She heard a tap, an ice cream cup being set down. “But… Alicia?”

“Later. Listen. He and Kayleigh’re at the San Joaquin Diner. On Third. We need a car there now.”

“Know it, sure. He armed?”

“All the firearms we know about’re accounted for but it’s pretty easy to buy a piece in this state.”

“Gotcha. I’ll get back to you.”

Dance paced along the carpet, then hurried to the room’s desk, where her notes from the case sat. There were dozens and dozens of pages. If she’d been working one of her own cases, especially a task-forced operation, she would have organized and indexed them by now. But since it seemed that the case had been resolved and others would be handling the prosecution, she hadn’t yet bothered. Now, she spread the pages out on the bed-her conversation with the witnesses, the evidence Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs had analyzed, the notes from the interview with Edwin.

But as it turned out, Kathryn Dance didn’t need to parse her handiwork to determine if Edwin was or was not the perp.

P. K. Madigan called back and, in a voice uncharacteristically rattled, blurted, “She and Edwin left the diner a half hour ago. But her SUV’s still in the lot. And her keys were on the ground nearby.”

“She dropped them, to let us know he’d snatched her. Her phone?”

“Battery’s out or it’s been crushed. No signal to trace. I sent Lopez to Edwin’s house and the Buick’s there. But the place is empty, looks like he’s moved out.”

“He’s got new wheels.”

“Yep. But I checked. Either stolen or bought private. Nothing at DMV in his name, no rentals at any of the companies in our database. He could be driving anything. And going anywhere.”

Chapter 71

ALIBI WOMAN HAD lied.

When Dance had spoken with her on the phone, twenty minutes before, seventy-two-year-old Mrs. Rachel Webber had once again-and very quickly-verified Edwin’s story about the time he’d been at her house on Tuesday.

But it took the agent only three minutes of trim questioning to learn what really happened: Edwin had found her in the garden early that morning. He’d forced her inside with a gun and gotten the names of her children and grandchildren and said that when the police came to ask her, she was to say he was there at twelve-thirty.

Now Dance and Dennis Harutyun were listening to Madigan having a conversation with the Crime Scene Unit boss. Finally he grunted and slammed the receiver down. “Backyard of Edwin’s, Charlie’s folks found some human bones and some tools. Buried deep, so CSU wouldn’t find them when they searched the other day. You were right, Kathryn; he made those guitar picks himself, outa that file sharer’s hand.”

Dance rocked back and forth in a cheap swivel chair in Madigan’s office. A cup of ice cream soup sat coagulating beside his phone. And she thought again, How did I miss? What’d gone wrong? She hadn’t been able to read his deception but she’d known that body language analysis of someone like Edwin Sharp would be difficult if not impossible.

So she’d looked at the facts he’d mentioned, tried to analyze not his kinesics but his verbal content. Well, think about it. Was there anything that might help them find where Edwin would go with his love?

And what would happen when they got there?

Dance believed she knew the answer to that question and she did not want to consider it.

Harutyun asked, “Why didn’t he just snatch her a few days ago?”

Dance gave her thoughts. “Oh, he didn’t want to snatch her at all. It’s why he set up Alicia as the killer. So he could rescue Kayleigh and win her over with his heroism. Like some arsonists-they set fires and then rescue people, to be heroes. Which is exactly what he did.

“He probably pitched his case to her at lunch, reminding her that he’d saved her life, why didn’t they go out on a date, or something like that. She said no. That was his last chance to be close to her in private so he did what he had to, kidnapped her. But it’s not impulsive. Believe me, he’s known this was a possibility and he’d had it all planned out as a last resort.”

Something was eating away at her. Something elusive. Facts again… verbal content. Facts were not meshing.

What is it?

She sighed. The thought vanished before it solidified. Then:

Wait… Yes! That’s it!

She grabbed the phone and placed a call to her friend and colleague, Amy Grabe, FBI Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco.

The woman’s low, sultry voice said, “Kathryn, saw the wire-kidnapping and possible interstate flight.”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

“It’s really the singer Kayleigh Towne?”

“I’m afraid so. A stalker.”

“Well, what can we do? You think he’s headed this way?”

“That’s not why I’m calling. What I need are a couple of field agents in the Seattle area. I have to conduct an interview with a witness and I don’t have time to get up there. It’s got to happen now.”

“Can’t you do it over the phone?” the SAC asked.

“I tried that. It didn’t work.”

Chapter 72

WELL, THOUGHT KATHRYN Dance, staring at the computer screen. Look at this.

The woman she was gazing at, presently in Seattle and connected via Skype, could have been Kayleigh Towne’s sister.

Not an identical twin but real close. Straight, blond hair, a petite frame, a long, pretty face.

Edwin’s former girlfriend, Sally Docking, stared nervously at the computer screen. Her voice broke as she said, “These people, I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything wrong.” There were two FBI agents behind her in the living room of her Seattle apartment.

Dance smiled. “I just needed them to bring one of their computers so you and I could have another chat.”

Actually they were there because she didn’t think Sally would voluntarily go onto Skype for a second conversation.

Dance’s voice was casual, despite the urgency she felt. “You’ll be all right. Provided you tell me the truth.”

Not “tell me the truth this time.” That was too confrontational.

“Sure.”

A discrepancy had occurred to Kathryn Dance-certain facts were not lining up. Now that Edwin Sharp had been revealed to be the perp, his behavior with Sally Docking didn’t ring true. Her earlier account of life with Edwin had been more or less credible over the phone but a kinesic expert needs to see her subject, not just hear, to spot deception.

And so Amy Grabe had called the Seattle field office of the Bureau and sent two agents to Sally Docking’s apartment in a working-class section of the city. They brought with them a very expensive laptop, which incorporated a high-definition webcam.

Dance was in a conference room in the sheriff’s office, the overhead lights off but a desk lamp not far from her face. She’d adjusted the illumination carefully; she needed Sally to see her very clearly-and under ominous lighting. Sally was lit by ambient rays but the lens and software rendered the image perfectly.

“It looks like a nice apartment, Sally.” Dance wore her pink-rimmed glasses, the nonthreatening ones, unlike the steel- or black-rimmed predator specs she put on when she wanted to present an aggressive image.

“It’s okay, I guess. I like it. Rent’s cheap.”

Dance asked a number of other questions about the girl, her family, her job, as she drew a baseline of the woman’s behavior. She caught only one microburst of stress, when Sally said she didn’t mind the commute to her job at a mall fifteen miles from where she lived.

Good, she was getting a feel for the woman, who tended to appear nervous and uncertain even when she was being asked simple questions and answering truthfully.

After ten minutes of this, Dance said, “Now, I’d like to talk to you about Edwin some more.”

“Everything I told you was true!” Her eyes bored into the camera.

This was awkward: a blunt denial quickly delivered. Dance couldn’t over- or underreact; it might tip her hand. “It’s just routine. We often follow up to get more information when there’s been a change in developments.”

“Oh.”

“We need your help, Sally. See, the situation down in Fresno’s… difficult. Edwin may have been more involved in a crime than it originally seemed. I’m worried that he might be going through a bad phase and could hurt somebody. Or hurt himself.”

“No!”

“That’s right.” Dance had made certain that not a single soul leaked to the public the news that Edwin had snatched Kayleigh. Sally Docking wouldn’t know. “And we need to find him. We need to know where he might go, places that are important to him, other residences he might have.”

“Oh, I don’t know anywhere like that.” Her eyes whipped to the computer screen.

A baseline variation. It confirmed that she did have some ideas. But dislodging this nugget would take some work.

“Well, you might know more than you think, Sally.”

“But I haven’t heard from him for a long time.”

Nonresponsive. And the vague adjective didn’t mask the fact that this was probably a lie but Dance let it go for now. “Well, not necessarily someplace he wanted to move to. Just someplace he mentioned when you were together.”

“No.”

“No?”

Sally was thinking quickly. “I mean, he was pretty much into Seattle. He didn’t travel much. He was, like, a homebody kind of guy.”

“Never mentioned anything, really?” A glance at the sheet in front of her.

Sally caught the glance.

As long as you tell the truth…

“I mean, he talked about going on vacations some. You know. But I didn’t think that’s what you meant.”

“Where did he want to go?”

“Nashville was one place. The Grand Ole Opry. And then maybe New York, so he could go to some concerts.”

Edwin Sharp probably did say that but he was not going to run off to Nashville or Manhattan with Kayleigh Towne and set up housekeeping, however skewed his sense of reality.

But Dance said, “Good, Sally. That’s just the sort of thing we’re looking for. Can you think of any other places? Maybe you were watching a TV show and he said, ‘Hey, that looks neat.’ Something like that?”

“No, really.” Eyes on the web camera.

Lie.

Dance grimaced. “Well, I appreciate you trying. I don’t know what I’m going to do. You were really the only person we can turn to.”

“Me? I broke up with him a while ago. Uhm, nine months. About that.”

“I just mean you had a very different relationship with Edwin than some people. You won’t believe it but he can be very abusive and obsessive.”

“No, really?”

Dance’s heart tapped faster. She was on the trail of her prey and closing in. Still, easy as could be, she continued, “That’s right. When people reject him, that pushes a button. Edwin has issues about abandonment and rejection. He clings to people. Since he broke up with you, you’re not a negative in his life. In fact, he told me he still feels bad about the breakup.”

“You were talking about me with Edwin? Like, recently?” Delivered fast, like spilled water.

“That’s right. Funny, you could get the impression, from what he said, that he kind of misses you.” Dance crafted her sentences very carefully. She never intentionally deceived her subjects but sometimes let them do it for her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was curious what you’re up to.”

Sally swallowed and, with tentative fingers tipped in blue polish, she brushed at her long hair-an echo of Kayleigh’s, though not as long, not as fine. When she tilted her head Dance noticed the roots; she was not a natural blonde. The young woman asked in a slightly higher pitch-a stress tone: “What did he want to know?”

“Just general things.” Intentionally evasive.

She swallowed again.

Dance glanced down at a blank sheet of paper then up once more. She noted a faint glistening of sweat on Sally’s forehead as she strained to see it.

The FBI has some really good equipment.

Dance again glanced down at the sheet and Sally’s eyes dropped toward the desk in front of her as if the paper were two feet from her. Dance asked, “Your brother in Spokane? And your mother in Tacoma?”

“I just… my brother, my mother?”

“Edwin was close to them?”

The stalker had not said more than one or two sentences about Sally Docking and nothing at all about her family. Dance had looked up the details through Washington state and federal records, after she suspected the true relationship between the two.

“Did he say anything about them?” Sally asked.

“They were friendly, weren’t they? Close?”

“I…”

“What, Sally? Would you be concerned if Edwin showed some interest in your family?”

Ah, the power of the hypothetical.

Some interest in…

“What did he say?” she blurted. “Please tell me!”

“What’s the matter, Sally?” Dance tried to appear perplexed.

“I…” The tears began. “What did he say?” Behind her, one FBI agent shifted, perhaps sensing the edge of hysteria, as was Dance. “Edwin? What did he say about my family?”

Dance said evenly, “Why are you troubled? Tell me.” Her brow furrowed.

“He’s going to hurt them! He won’t understand that I did what he wanted. If he mentioned them to you it means he’s going to hurt them to get back at me. Please, you have to do something!”

“Wait.” Dance looked troubled. “I hope you’re not telling me that you’re the one who wanted to break up.”

“I-”

“Oh, no. That changes everything… I mean, what I told Edwin…” She stopped speaking and peered at Sally uneasily.

“Please! No! What did you tell him? Where is he? Is Edwin going to Tacoma, Spokane?”

“We don’t know where he is, Sally, I told you that… Let me think. Okay, this is a problem.”

“Don’t let him hurt my mama!” She was sobbing now. “Please! And my brother’s got two babies!”

The scenario was playing out just as Kathryn Dance had planned. The agent had needed to plant the seeds of fear within the woman to get her to open up and had formed her questions to give the impression that Edwin was practically en route to kill her family… and possibly then her.

Breathless with tears: “I did what he wanted. Why is he going to hurt us?”

Dance said sympathetically, “We can help you, Sally. But we can’t do anything for you or your mother or brother if you’re not honest.”

In fact, she’d already talked to the local authorities and made sure that both Sally’s mother’s and brother’s houses were being guarded, though the family members didn’t know it at this point.

Sally struggled for breath. “Please. I’m sorry. I lied. He told me I had to. He told me if anybody asked, I was supposed to tell them that he was the greatest guy and never stalked me or anybody and he broke up with me, not the other way around. I’m sorry but I was scared. Send the police to my mother’s. And my brother. He’s got the babies! Please! I’ll give you the addresses.”

“First, tell me the truth, Sally. Then we’ll see about the police. What’s the real story between Edwin and you?”

“Okay,” the woman said, wiping her face with tissues one of the agents behind her provided. “Last year Edwin was a security guard in the mall where I was working and he saw me and it was like, bang, he got totally obsessed with me.”

Because she looked like Kayleigh Towne.

“He started this campaign to win me over. And one thing led to another and we started going out. Only he got weird. I wasn’t allowed to do this, couldn’t do that… Sometimes he just wanted to sit and look at me. He’d just stare or lie in bed and stroke my hair. It was so fucking creepy! He’d tell me how beautiful I was, over and over. The fact is he thought I looked like this singer-the one he liked. I think I mentioned her before. Kayleigh Towne.”

Sally scoffed, “We had to play her music all the time. He talked about her every day. Mostly it was ‘poor Kayleigh this, poor Kayleigh that.’ Nobody understood her, her father sold the family house she loved, her mother died, the fans don’t treat her right, the label doesn’t record her right. He went on and on. I couldn’t take it. I just left one night. It was sort of okay for a month. He stalked me, yeah, but it wasn’t terrible. But then his mother died and he freaked out. I mean totally.”

The stressor event that had pushed him over the edge.

“He came over, crying and acting all weird, like his life was over with. I felt bad for him-and I was scared-so we got back together. But he just got stranger and stranger. He wouldn’t go out at all, he made me drop all my friends, he got jealous of men at work. He thought I was sleeping with every one of them there. As if… All he wanted was for me to be at home with him. Look at me and watch TV and have sex. He’d play her music when we did that. It was horrible! Finally…” Sally debated and pulled her sleeve up and displayed a scar on her wrist. “It was the only way I could get free. But he found me and got me to the emergency room. I think that convinced him to back off.”

“When was this?”

“December, last year.”

The second stressor event, the one that had initiated his stalking Kayleigh.

Dance made a decision. “He’s kidnapped her, Sally.”

“Who, Kayleigh Towne?” she whispered. And yet she didn’t seem too shocked.

“We’ll protect you and your family, Sally. I promise. And we’ll get him and put him in jail for the rest of his life-he’s also killed some people.”

“Oh, no. My God, no.”

“But we can only do that if you help us. Do you have any idea where he might go?”

Another debate raged within her.

She knows something. Come on, Dance thought. Come on…

“I…”

“We’ll get the police to your family, Sally. But you have to meet us halfway.”

“Well, he said he had this, like, religious experience, seeing Kayleigh sing for the first time. An outdoor concert, a couple years ago. He said if he could live anywhere, that’s where it would be. In a cabin in the woods near there.”

“Where?” Dance asked.

“Some town in California, on the ocean. Monterey. I don’t know exactly where it is.”

Dance finally looked away from the screen and caught Madigan’s eye. She looked back at the tearstained face of her subject. “That’s all right, Sally. I do.”

Chapter 73

AS THEY DROVE along, Edwin Sharp was singing, loud and more or less in key.

She gets gallons to the mile, not the other way round,

And the tailpipe, it really makes a pretty nasty sound,

The heater hardly works at all and forget about the air.

Duct tape’s been involved in most of her repairs.

But she’s big and fast and solid and I know I can depend

On her to always be there… unlike a lot of men.

She’s my red Cadillac… my red Cadillac.

She gets me where I’m going, and she always gets me back.

I love her like a sister, she’s my red Cadillac.

“We had to say good-bye to her,” he called into the back of the van. “My red Buick. Sorry.”

Kayleigh was concentrating on not crying. This was a survival, not an emotional, issue. Her nose was already perilously stuffed up and she was sure if she started sobbing she’d suffocate. The tape on her mouth was a tight seal. She wasn’t blindfolded but she was in the far back of the windowless van, on the floor. He’d pulled her boots off. Lovingly smelled the leather. Sick.

They were about an hour from Fresno, though she didn’t know which direction, probably in the foothills toward Yosemite or the Sierras because the road seemed to be at an incline. West or south, the landscape was flat. They stopped once, after Edwin had glanced into the rearview mirror at her and he’d frowned. He pulled off the road and climbed into the back; she’d shied away. He’d said, “No, no, made a mistake there.” A thick strand of her hair had been imprisoned by the duct tape and Edwin had carefully loosened it and worked the hair free from the adhesive. “Can’t have that.” And he recited again how long it had been since she’d cut it. “Ten years, four months… You could write a song. That’d be a good title.”

Then to her horror he’d pulled a brush from his pocket and run it through her hair gently, meticulously. “You’re so beautiful,” he’d whispered.

Then the drive had resumed.

He now sang, “‘She gets me where I’m going and she always gets me back. She’s my red Cadillac.’ Love it, just positively love it.”

Kayleigh’s hands were cuffed in front of her. She’d hoped she could grab one of the rear door levers, open it and tumble out, taking her chances on the road and traffic.

But there were no door levers. He’d removed them. Edwin Sharp had planned this carefully.

As he continued to sing, she felt the van turn off the main road and drive for a time along a smaller highway, one in bad condition. Definitely going up. Ten minutes later the tires began to crunch over dirt and gravel. Then the surface got even rougher and the vehicle strained uphill for several miles. Finally the van leveled off and ten minutes later came to a stop.

Edwin climbed out. Then there was silence for a long moment.

This isn’t fair, she thought. It just isn’t goddamn fair.

You walk out onstage and sing folks your songs,

You make them all smile. What could go wrong?

“Hey there!” Edwin was opening the rear door, revealing a field surrounded by a pine forest. He helped her out and pulled the tape off her mouth-gently, though she was thoroughly repulsed once more by the touch of his skin on hers. She smelled his aftershave-yes, definitely her father’s-and his sweat.

She inhaled hard, shivering with relief. She felt like she’d been half drowned.

Edwin stepped back and stared at her adoringly but there was no artistic admiration in his gaze now; his eyes lingered on her breasts and crotch.

“My boots,” she said.

“Naw, I like you barefoot.” A glance down. “We’ll have to do something about that polish. It’s a little too red, you know.”

Then he was gesturing at a small single-wide trailer, covered with camouflage netting. It sat in the middle of the clearing. “Familiar?”

“Look, if you let me go, you can have a head start. Six hours, ten hours. And I’ll arrange to get you money. A million dollars.”

“Doesn’t it look familiar?” he repeated, irritated that she wasn’t understanding.

She gazed around. It did, yes. But what was-

Oh, my God…

Kayleigh realized, stunned, where she was standing. This was the property she’d grown up on! That her grandfather had cleared and where he’d built the family house. Edwin had put the trailer pretty much where the manse had been. There’d been a lot of clearing over the years but she could easily recognize landmarks from her childhood. She remembered that Edwin had been aware that she’d been upset Bishop had sold the property-just as he’d lost his own childhood house. How had he found the land? A deed search, she supposed.

Kayleigh knew too that because the company that had bought up all of the private property here had gone bankrupt, there wasn’t a soul around for twenty miles.

Edwin said with a sincere intensity, “I knew how much this meant. This property. I wanted to give it back to you. You’ll have to show me where you rode your pony and walked your dogs when you were a little girl. We can go for the same walks. That’ll be fun! Maybe we’ll do that before supper tonight.”

She supposed she should play along, pretend she was touched and then when his back was turned grab a rock and break his skull and run. But she couldn’t feign. Revulsion and anger swirled within her. “How the hell can you say you love me and do this?”

He grinned and gently stroked her hair. She jerked her head away. He hardly noticed. “Kayleigh… from the first time I heard your opening number at that concert in Monterey, I knew we were soul mates. It’ll take you a little longer but you’ll figure it out too. I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world. I’ll worship you.”

He covered the van with a camouflaged tarp, secured it with rocks and slipped his arm around her shoulders, very firmly. He guided her toward the trailer.

“I don’t love you!”

He only laughed. But as they approached the trailer, his gaze morphed from adoring to chill. “He fucked you, didn’t he? Bobby. Don’t say he didn’t.” He eyed her carefully as if asking tacitly if it was true. And wanting to hear that it wasn’t.

“Edwin!”

“I have a right to know.”

“We were just friends.”

“Oh, I don’t know where it’s written friends don’t ever fuck. Do you know where that’s written?”

So, the sanitized language from earlier-in conversation and emails-had been phony, just another part of the innocent image he created. And she now knew that he hadn’t been simply tapping his leg in time to the music the other day.

They were at the trailer door now. He calmed and smiled again. “Sorry. I get my hackles up, thinking about him.”

“Edwin, look-”

“I should carry you over the threshold. The wedding night thing, you know.”

“Don’t touch me!”

He gazed at her with some pity, it seemed, then pushed the door open and swept her up into his arms like she weighed nothing at all. He carried her inside. Kayleigh didn’t resist; one of his massive hands firmly cradled her throat.

Chapter 74

“WE’RE ON OUR way,” Kathryn Dance said into her phone, speaking to Michael O’Neil.

She then gasped as Dennis Harutyun nearly demirrored his cruiser as the passenger side of the car came within inches of the truck he was passing. He skidded back into the lane and sped up.

“Are you okay?” O’Neil asked. “Are you there?”

“Yes. I’m… yes.” She closed her eyes as Harutyun took on another tractor-trailer.

O’Neil was at his desk in his own sheriff’s office. Dance opened her eyes briefly and asked, “What’s in place?”

“Two helicopters around Point Lobos-that’s where Edwin first saw Kayleigh at the concert two years ago. And another chopper’s covering the area from Moss Landing up to Santa Cruz. Concentrating on the deserted areas. CHP’s setting up roadblocks around Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach and Carmel. We’ve got about forty Monterey county and city uniforms involved.”

“Good.”

“And your boss is doing his thing.”

The head of the Monterey branch of the California Bureau of Investigation, Charles Overby, the consummate artist at press conferences, was enlisting the aid of the public to be on the lookout for Edwin Sharp and Kayleigh Towne.

The many fan sites too were abuzz and included pictures of the suspect and his victim, though Dance supposed that anyone with a TV or iTunes subscription knew what Kayleigh Towne looked like.

“How’re you doing?” O’Neil asked, echoing his earlier question.

A curious inquiry.

But not so curious in the context of where they’d left their personal lives just before he returned to Monterey.

But now was not the time for those considerations.

“Fine,” she said. Which didn’t mean fine at all but was like a fencer’s parry. She hoped O’Neil got it.

He seemed to. He asked. “What’s your ETA?”

She glanced at Harutyun and posed the question.

“Half hour,” he said.

Dance relayed this to O’Neil and added, “Better go, Michael. We’re doing about two hundred miles an hour here.”

Drawing a rare smile from the mustachioed deputy.

They disconnected. She leaned back against the headrest.

“You want me to slow down?” Harutyun asked.

“No, I want you to go faster,” Dance said.

He did and she closed her eyes once more.

“WHAT DO YOU think?” Edwin asked cheerfully. He waved his arm around the trailer, which was perfectly neat and scrubbed. It was also stifflingly hot.

Standing in the kitchenette, still cuffed, Kayleigh didn’t answer.

“Look, a high-def TV and I’ve got about a hundred DVDs. And plenty of your favorite foods.” He opened cabinets to show her. “Whole Foods. Organic, of course. And your favorite soap too.”

Yes, it was, she noted. Her heart sank at this foresight on his part.

She also noticed several lengths of chain in the trailer, fixed to the walls, ending in shackles. Apparently Edwin’s idea of thoughtfulness was to glue lamb’s wool to the metal clamps that would fit around her ankles and wrists.

Mr. Today…

Then, once again, his smile faded. “If you’d gone out with me, like I asked,” Edwin said, “we wouldn’t’ve had to go through all of this. Just dinner. And stayed in my rental for a few days, while they fixed your house. What was the big deal?”

Kayleigh sensed he was shivering with anger.

Edwin has a reality problem. All stalkers do.

His voice grew cold again. “I know you’re not a virgin… I’m sure you didn’t want to fuck anybody, it just sort of happened. You did fuck Bobby, didn’t you?… No, I don’t want to know.” He reflected for a moment. “And I’m sure you didn’t do anything weird-you know, disgusting. Sometimes the good girls-the ones in glasses and buttoned-up blouses-they can do really sick things. But you wouldn’t.” He looked at her closely. But then like a light switch clicking on, his face warmed and he was smiling. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re mine now. It’s going to be okay.”

He showed her the trailer more closely. The place was a shrine to her, of course. Posters and memorabilia, clothing and photos.

Kayleigh Towne everywhere.

But no weapons.

No sharp knives in the kitchen-the first thing she looked for. Also, no glass or ceramic. It was all metal and plastic. She noticed a pack of cigarettes and looked for a lighter. But there was none.

He followed her gaze. Edwin said quickly, “Don’t worry. I don’t smoke, not anymore. Just needed a few of those to point the finger at that bitchy Alicia. For you, Kayleigh, no cigarettes and no liquor. I’m clean. And I never did drugs-like that friend of yours Mr. Bobby Prescott.”

Sweat poured, her skin crawled. “This is hopeless, Edwin. You don’t think ten thousand people are going to be looking for me?”

“Maybe not. They might think you ran off with somebody you realized loved you and cared for you. They’ll still be thinking Alicia was behind it all, killed Bobby and tried to kill you.”

Was he that far removed from reality?

“But even if they are looking, they aren’t going to find us. They think we’re in Monterey, hiding out. Two hundred miles away. This bitch I went out with for a while told them that’s where we’d be. I knew she’d turn me in. I set that up a long time ago. We’re completely alone here… On the drive? There wasn’t a single helicopter or roadblock all the way from Fresno. If they thought we were headed here, they could’ve shut down Forty-one in a minute. No, Kayleigh, they’ll never find us.”

“You put this all together… to, what? Win me over?”

“To make you see reason. Who else would go to all this trouble, except somebody who loved you?”

“But… the congressman? I don’t understand.”

He laughed. “Oh, yeah, that was interesting. I learned a lesson there. I’ve stopped posting things online. That’s how Simesky found out about you and me. You didn’t believe me when I said the whole world was trying to exploit you.”

You and me…

“But something good came out of that. I did see somebody outside my house on Saturday night. It was Simesky or that Babbage woman but at the time I thought it was just kids. But that got me thinking. I’d set it up so that it looked like Alicia had been spying on me. I planted some evidence that’d make the police think she was the stalker. Sometimes it’s lucky how things work.”

Then Edwin grew impatient. He looked at her hair, her breasts, her legs. “Well, come on. You know what it’s time for.” He glanced toward the rumpled bed, beside which was a Bose iPod player. “You see that? I’ve got fifty of your concerts I recorded. I have a nice recorder. I saved up to buy it. We’ll play your concerts while we, you know…” His face blossomed with concern. “Oh, don’t worry. Yeah, I recorded them but I never sold the songs or shared them with anybody. It was just for me… and now for us.”

“Please, no, Edwin. Please.”

He stared at her hair, then leaned against the kitchen sink. “You shouldn’t be so… you know, standoffish. I did you a favor. Fred Blanton was a shit who stole your music. And Alicia, well, she probably did want your career. And Sheri? Oh, please. You deserve a better stepmother than her. She’s a store clerk who got lucky with Bishop. She’s not worthy of you, Kayleigh. They deserved to die. And Bobby? All he wanted to do was fuck you.” And once more he stared at her, awaiting confirmation of her infidelity.

Then he seemed to control himself.

She said, “At least, let me clean up? Just a shower please. I don’t feel comfortable like this.”

“I don’t think so.”

She snapped, “And you say you’re Mr. Today? Bullshit. I just want to take a fucking shower and you won’t let me?”

He frowned. “All right. Only don’t say words like that. Don’t ever say words like that again.”

“All right, I won’t.”

“You can take a shower. But you know I have the only keys and there’re no weapons here. And all the windows are barred.”

“I figured that. I really just want to clean up.”

He undid the cuffs and she rubbed her wrists.

Shoulders slumped, she walked through the narrow space into the bathroom.

“Oh, Kayleigh. Wait.”

She stopped and turned. He was awkward. Was his face reddening? “About that woman I was telling you about. The one in Seattle. You don’t have to be jealous. It wasn’t serious between us. I never slept with her. Really. Honest.”

Kayleigh could see he was lying but what shocked her was that he seemed honestly to believe that his fidelity was important to her.

He smiled. “Hurry back, love.” And he walked into the bedroom to wait.

Chapter 75

EDWIN COULDN’T DECIDE which of her songs was his favorite.

But then he realized that that debate was a clunker, another of his mother’s terms. It was like you didn’t have a favorite kind of food, you liked everything (well, he did, at any rate-he would have weighed three hundred pounds if Kayleigh hadn’t been in his life to keep him trim).

He clicked the air conditioner on a little higher-with the camouflage tarp covering the trailer it was beastly hot inside. But he still kept the temperature warm. Kayleigh, he’d noticed before she headed to the shower, had been sweating. The beads on her skin had turned him on even more. He imagined licking her temples and scalp and grew even more aroused. It had been okay fucking Sally, with Kayleigh Towne’s voice singing through the speakers, but this would be a thousand times better.

The real thing.

Hey, that was a pretty good title for a song. “The Real Thing.” He’d mention it to her. He had this idea that they could write songs together. He’d come up with the words and she’d write the melodies.

Edwin was good with words.

He thought again: Wedding afternoon. Not wedding night. Afternoon.

That was pretty funny.

That got him wondering if she’d ever made out with anybody when she and her family had lived here. There was that line in her song where she referred to “a little teenage lovin’,” at the old house, which had made him absolutely furious when he’d first heard it. Then he remembered Bishop had sold the place when she was about twelve or thirteen. And because she was a good girl he doubted that she’d done anything more than kiss a boy and maybe do a little petting, which nonetheless also stabbed him with jealousy.

Bobby…

He hoped the fucking roadie had felt a lot of pain as he died. At the convention center he hadn’t screamed as much as Edwin would have liked.

Edwin listened to the running water, pictured her naked inside the shower. He was growing hard. He remembered the article in Rolling Stone about her.

Good Girl Makes Good.

And he decided to relent.

He’d forgive her for fucking Bobby. He’d ask her again and insist she be honest. He had to know but whatever she said, he’d forgive her.

He stripped his shirt off and kneaded his belly. Still a bit of excess skin from where he lost all that weight. But he’d kept the fat off, at least.

Anything for Kayleigh.

Should he take a shower too? No. He’d taken one that morning. Besides, she’d have to get used to having him on top of, or behind, her whenever he was in the mood, whether he was clean or not.

She was his wife, after all.

He turned on the radio and caught the news. It seemed the police hadn’t gone with the innocent interpretation of Kayleigh’s disappearance. Pike Madigan’s voice was explaining solemnly about the kidnapping and alerting people that it was likely that Edwin Sharp and Kayleigh Towne were on their way west, heading toward the Monterey area.

“We don’t know the vehicle they’re in, but go to the website we’ve set up and you can find Sharp’s picture.”

Ah, I knew I could count on you, Sally, you lying little slut. He wondered momentarily who’d gotten her to talk. Kathryn Dance came to mind. Had to be her.

Of course, the diversion about Monterey would buy them only so much time. They’d have to move but this place would be safe for a month or so. Kayleigh had said she liked Austin. Maybe they’d go there next. It was Texas; there had to be wildernesses to hide out in. But then she also had commented in her “On the Road” blog that she liked Minnesota. That might be a better place, especially when she had the baby. The weather would be cooler. Tough to be pregnant in the heat, he imagined.

Babies…

Edwin had Googled that cycle thing about women’s bodies. He wondered where Kayleigh was with that. Then decided it didn’t matter. They’d make love at least every other night, if not more. He’d hit the target sooner or later.

He undid his jeans, slipping his hand into his Jockeys, though he didn’t need any preparation there.

Then the shower water stopped. She’d be toweling off now. He pictured her body. He decided to establish a rule that they had to walk around the trailer naked. They’d only get dressed when they went outside.

Inhaling deeply, he smelled the sweet scent of shampoo fragrance on the humid air.

“Edwin,” Kayleigh said, a playful tone. “I made myself ready for you. Come look.”

Grinning, he walked to the doorway and found her in front of the bathroom door, fully clothed.

Edwin Sharp blinked. Then the smile vanished and he cried out in horror.

Chapter 76

“NO, NO, NO! What’d you do?”

She’d found tiny blunt-end fingernail scissors in the vanity kit he’d bought. TSA approved for air travel and therefore safe.

But they would still cut. And that’s just what she’d done with them: she’d sheared off all her hair.

“No!” He stared in horror at the pile of glistening blond strands on the bathroom floor as if looking at the body of a loved one.

“Kayleigh!”

A two- to three-inch mop of ragged fringe covered her head. She hadn’t showered at all, she’d spent the ten minutes destroying her beautiful hair.

In a mad singsong, she mocked, “What’s the matter, Edwin? Don’t you like me now? Don’t you want to stalk me anymore?… It doesn’t matter, does it? You love me, right? It doesn’t matter what I look like.”

“No, no, of course not. It’s just…” He thought he’d be sick. He was thinking, how long does it take for hair to grow?

Ten years, four months…

She could wear a hat. No, he hated women in hats.

“I think it looks like you care a lot. In fact, you look real upset, Edwin.”

“Why, Kayleigh? Why did you do it?”

“To show you the truth. You love the girl on the album covers, on CMT, on the videos and the posters. In Entertainment Weekly. You don’t love me at all. Remember that day we were alone in the theater in Fresno? You said my voice and hair were the best things about me.”

Maybe he could find somebody to take her hair and make a wig until it grew back. How could he do that, though? They’d recognize him, they’d report him. No, no, no, no, no! What was he going to do?

Kayleigh taunted, “You want to fuck me now? Now that I look like a boy?”

He walked forward slowly, staring at the pile of hair.

“Here!” she screamed and grabbed a handful, flung it at him. It flowed to the floor and Edwin dropped to his knees, desperately grabbing at the strands.

“I knew it,” she muttered contemptuously, backing into the bathroom. “You don’t know me. You don’t have a clue who I am.”

And then he got angry too. And the answer to her question was, Yes, I do know. You’re the bitch I’m going to fuck in about sixty seconds.

He started to rise. Then saw something in her hand. What-? Oh, it was just a cup. It had to be plastic. There wasn’t anything inside that could be broken or made into a knife.

He’d thought of that.

But one thing he hadn’t thought of.

What the cup held:

Ammonia, from under the sink. She’d filled it to the brim.

The cut hair wasn’t a message or a lesson. It was a distraction.

He tried to turn away but Kayleigh stepped forward fast and flung the chemical straight into his face; it spread up his nose, into his mouth. He managed to save his eyes by half a second, though the fumes slipped up under his lids and burned like red-hot steel. He cried at the pain, pain worse than any he’d ever felt. Pain as a creature, an entity, a thing within his body.

Screaming, falling backward, wiping frantically at his face. Anything to get away! Choking, gasping, coughing.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

Then more pain as she hit him hard in the throat, the wound where he’d fired the bullet into his own neck.

He screamed again.

Doubling over, paralyzed, he felt her rip the keys from his pocket. He tried to grab her arm but she was quickly out of reach.

The bitter, biting chemical flowed deeper into his mouth and nose. He sneezed and spit and coughed and struggled to catch his breath. Edwin staggered to his feet and shoved his face under the faucet in the kitchen sink to rinse the terrible fire away.

But there was no water.

Kayleigh had run the supply dry.

Edwin stumbled to the refrigerator and yanked it open, feeling for a bottle of water. He found one and flushed his face, the cold liquid little by little dulling the sting. His vision, though fuzzy, returned. He stumbled to the front door, which she’d closed and locked. But he took a second key from his wallet and opened the door, then hurried outside, wiping his eyes.

He looked around. He spotted Kayleigh running down the road that led to the highway.

As the pain diminished, Edwin relaxed. He actually smiled.

The road was three miles long. Gravel. She was barefoot.

She wasn’t going to get away.

Chapter 77

EDWIN STARTED AFTER her, jogging at first, then sprinting.

The terrible burn of the chemical had diminished his passion but not eliminated it. He was all the more driven to fling her to the ground, rip her jeans off. Then over onto her belly…

Make her cry, the way he was crying. Teach her who was in charge.

He saw her disappear around a curve in the road, only a hundred feet away. He was closing fast.

Seventy feet, fifty…

Teach her that she was his.

And then he turned the corner.

He ran for ten more steps, five, three, slowing, slowing. And then Edwin stopped. His shoulders sagging, coughing hard from the run and the ammonia.

And he laughed. He just had to.

Kayleigh stood with two people: a uniformed deputy and a woman, who had her arm around the singer.

Edwin laughed once more, a deep, hearty sound. The sound his mother made when she was happy and sober.

The man was a deputy he recognized from Fresno, the one with the thick black mustache.

And the woman, of course, was Kathryn Dance.

The deputy held a pistol, aimed squarely at Edwin’s chest.

“Lie down,” he called. “Lie down, on your belly, hands to your side.”

Edwin debated. If I take one step I’ll die.

If I lie down I’ll go to jail.

Thinking, thinking…

In jail at least he’d have a chance to talk to Kayleigh, possibly to see her. She’d probably come visit him. Maybe she’d even sing for him. They could talk. He could help her understand how bad everybody else was for her. How he was the man for her. How he was Mr. Today.

Edwin Sharp lay down.

As Kathryn Dance covered him with her pistol, the deputy circled around, cuffed his hands and lifted him to his feet.

“Could I get some water for my eyes please? They’re burning.”

The officer got a bottle and poured it over Edwin’s face.

“Thank you.”

Other cars were arriving.

Edwin said, “The news. I heard on the news-you thought we were in Monterey. Why did you come here?” He was speaking to the dust and gravel but the person his words were intended for answered.

Dance holstered her pistol and replied, “We have teams in Monterey, true, but mostly for the press. So you’d think you’d fooled us if you listened to the radio or went online. To me, it didn’t make sense for you to go there. Why would you tell Sally Docking anything about a location unless you figured she’d tell us eventually? That is a pattern of yours, you know. Misinformation and scaring witnesses into lying.

“As for here? CSU found trace evidence near your house that could have come from a mining operation. I remembered Kayleigh’s song ‘Near the Silver Mine.’ You knew she was unhappy Bishop sold the place and it made sense you wanted to bring her back here. We looked at some satellite pictures of the place and saw the trailer. Camouflage netting doesn’t really work.”

Edwin reflected that Kathryn Dance was impressive but she quickly vanished from his thoughts entirely as he looked toward Kayleigh, standing defiant, feet apart, staring back coldly. Still, he had the impression that there was a spark of flirt in her eyes.

As soon as her hair grew back, she’d be beautiful again.

God, did he love her.

Chapter 78

AT SEVEN-THIRTY THAT night Kathryn Dance was backstage at the convention center.

There’d been talk about canceling the concert but, curiously, Kayleigh Towne was the one who insisted that it go on. The crowds were rapidly filling the venue and Dance sensed the same electricity that she remembered from her times on stage as a folksinger, years ago.

There really was nothing like that utter exhilaration, the power of voice and music in unison, streaming from the speakers, the audience yours, the connection consuming. Once you’ve been up in front of the lights it’s easy to understand the addiction of having thousands of people in your spell. The power, the drug of attention, affection, need.

It’s why performers like Kayleigh Towne continue to climb up onstage, despite the exhaustion, the toll on families… despite the risk from people like Edwin Stanton Sharp.

The singer was dressed for the concert-in her good-girl outfit, of course. The only difference was that tonight she was the good girl who’d just been playing softball with friends; on her head a Cal State Fresno Bulldogs’ cap covered her shorn hair.

At the moment she was off to the side, “banging in” a new guitar. She wouldn’t perform on her favorite Martin until it had been restrung and completely cleaned-because of the human bone picks Edwin had given her. Dance, as unsuperstitious as they came, couldn’t blame her one bit; she herself might’ve thrown out the instrument and bought a new one.

“Well.” P. K. Madigan wandered up, accompanied by a short, round woman of about forty. She had a pretty face, rooted forever in her high school years, with big cheerful eyes and freckles, framed by page-boy-cut brown hair. Dance found it charming that they held hands.

He introduced Dance to his wife.

“The CBI’s welcome in Fresno anytime,” Madigan told her, “provided you’re the point person.”

“It’s a deal. Let’s just hope you don’t get any more cases like this one.”

“We’re gonna hear the concert,” he added dubiously. “Or some of it. Long as it doesn’t get too loud. Oh, here.”

He thrust a box into her hand. Dance opened it and laughed. It was a Fresno Madera Consolidated Sheriff’s Office badge.

“Tin star.”

She thanked him and resisted the urge to pin it to her green silk blouse.

Madigan looked around grumpily and then said, “All righty then.” He led his wife to their seats. It might have been Dance’s imagination but he seemed to be looking for something in the back of the hall. Was it shadows or stalkers or ice cream vendors?

Dance turned her attention back to Kayleigh, who’d handed off the new guitar to Tye Slocum with some instructions. The singer then spoke to the band about some last-minute changes in the order of who would take instrumental solos and when. She’d changed a verse in one of her original songs, one that was meant for Bobby. Now, it included a few lines for Alicia. She’d told Dance that she was praying that she could get through the number without crying.

Tye Slocum shyly approached and told her the action had been adjusted as she wanted. She thanked him and the big man waited a moment. His generally evasive eyes snuck a glance or two at the singer’s face and then he headed off. One might infer something suspicious from the expressions and kinesics, but to Dance all they revealed was a sheen of adoration. Which would forever remain unrequited.

But it was clear that he would never act on his secret hope-beyond microsecond glances and making sure her guitars were ready for battle.

Tye Slocum defined the difference between the normal and the mad.

It was then that a man in chinos and starched dress shirt, without tie, came up to Kayleigh and Dance. He was in his midthirties and had a boyish grin. Curly black hair was losing the war against a shiny scalp.

“Kayleigh, hi.” Nothing more for a moment, other than a polite nod to Dance. “I’m Art Francesco.” Both Dance and Kayleigh regarded him cautiously until his all-access badge dangled forward.

“Hi,” Kayleigh said absently. Dance assumed he was a friend of Bishop’s; she thought she’d seen them talking earlier that night in the parking lot.

“I’m so sorry about everything’s that happened. Your dad told me. What a terrible time. But that guy’s in jail, right?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God. Well, just wanted to say how happy I am we’re going to do business together.”

“Uh-hum. And who are you again?”

He frowned. “Art. Art Francesco.” A pause and when she gave no reaction the man added, “Your father mentioned I’d be coming tonight, didn’t he?”

“Afraid he didn’t.”

He laughed. “Isn’t that just like Bishop-a genius, you know. Sometimes details elude him.”

A card appeared.

Dance didn’t have to be a kinesics expert to note the shock that went through Kayleigh’s body. The agent glanced at the singer’s hand. The card was JBT Global Entertainment.

“What do you mean, doing business?”

Francesco licked the corner of his mouth. “Well, I’m sorry. But-”

“What is this?” Kayleigh snapped.

“Well, I thought your father… He didn’t say he hadn’t told you. I just talked-”

“Tell me what?”

“Jesus Christ. Look, I’m sorry. He said he was going to tell you this morning, after we signed up everything. But with that crazy man, maybe he forgot or was distracted.”

“Signed up what?”

“Well, you. Signed up you. He’s… I’m sorry, Kayleigh. Oh, shit. I really thought you knew.” Francesco looked miserable. “Look, why don’t you talk to your father?”

The singer stepped forward. She’d just survived a homicidal stalker. She wasn’t going to be put off by a suit from L.A. “You tell me. Now.”

“He just signed you with Global. He’s not renewing with Barry Zeigler and your label.”

“What?”

“Can he do that?” Dance asked.

Jaw set in anger, Kayleigh muttered, “Yeah, he can. It was set up that way when I was a minor. I never changed it. But he never did anything that I didn’t agree with. Until now.”

Francesco said, “Oh, but it’s a great deal, Kayleigh. And the money!… You won’t believe the money. You’ve got hundred-percent creative control. Bishop and his lawyers drove a really tough bargain. It’s a three-sixty deal. We’ll handle all your concert tours, your recordings, production, CDs, download platforms, marketing, advertising… everything. You’ll go international, big-time. We’ve already got commitments from CMT and MTV, and HBO is interested in a special. That all happened just today after he signed up. And Starbucks and Target both want exclusive albums. This is taking you to a whole new level. We’ll get you into amphitheaters, Vegas, London. You’ll never have to play little… places like this again.”

“This little place happens to be my hometown.”

He held up his hand. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just, this’ll expand your career exponentially. I’m sorry it happened this way, Kayleigh. Let’s start over.” He extended his hand.

She ignored it.

Bishop Towne had seen the exchange and, with a disgusted look on his face, ambled over. He said, “Artie.”

“I’m sorry, Bishop, I didn’t know. I thought you’d told her.”

“Yeah,” he growled. “Stuff happened today. Didn’t get around to it.” As Dance expected, Bishop’s eyes dipped to the stage and remained focused there. “Give us a minute, Artie.”

“Sure. I’m sorry.”

Kayleigh turned on her father. “How could you? I told Barry we weren’t talking to Global. I told him that!”

“KT,” he said in a soft rasp, “Barry’s part of the past. That world is gone now, record companies. It’s the past.”

“He was loyal. He was always there. He made me platinum.”

“And in a few years, there won’t be any platinum, not like there used to be. It’s going to be downloads and TV and concerts and deals with retailers and airlines and ad agencies. The Industry’s always been changing. That’s the way it works. We’re in a new era.”

“That’s a nice speech. Sounds like you’ve rehearsed it plenty.” Her eyes narrowed and Dance saw within them an anger and defiance that had never been present when speaking with her father. She laughed coldly. “You think I don’t see what’s going on here? This isn’t about me. It’s all about you, isn’t it?”

“Me?”

“You fucked up your career. You let your voice go to hell and now you can’t sing or write your way out of a paper bag. So what do you do? You become the great impresario. What’s Global’s tagline going to be? ‘Now Appearing… Bishop Towne’s Daughter’?”

“KT, of course not. That’s-”

“What’s Barry going to do?”

“Barry?” As if Bishop hadn’t thought about it. “He’ll change with the times or he’ll get into a new line of work. Or we’ll have Art find a place for him at Global. We still need producers.”

“So that’s how you treat your friends. It’s sure how you treated me, isn’t it? You made me give up my…” She tailed off. Dance knew what was in her mind but the young woman wasn’t going there now. “You made me give up so much, just so you could stay in the Industry. It was the only way you could hang on.”

She wheeled around and walked away.

He shouted, “KT!”

She paused.

“You wait just a minute there.”

Kayleigh turned back defiantly and Bishop approached. He regarded her not as a child but as a peer. Oblivious to onlookers he muttered, “You’re acting like a spoiled little girl. All right, you want the truth? Yeah, I asked your sister and Congressman Davis here to discourage you from canceling. And, yeah, I cut the deal with Global. But, why I did that, it’s not about me. And it’s not about you either. You want to know what it’s about? Do you?”

“Yeah, tell me,” she snapped.

Bishop pointed to the filling seats. “It’s about them, KT. The audience. They are the only thing in the universe that matters.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re saying.”

“What you’ve got comes along once or twice in a generation. Your voice, your music, your stage presence, your writing… Do you know how rare that is? You know how important?”

His voice softened. “Music’s the truth nowadays, KT. We don’t get answers from religion or politicians; we sure as hell don’t get ’em from TV news. We get answers from music. The whole world walks around with those little earplugs feeding songs into their brains. Why? So they can learn the truth! They need people who can put into words and music the answers they need. People who take away their sadness, make ’em understand everybody goes through lousy times too, show ’em there’s hope, make ’em laugh.

“And for you, doing that’s easy as fallin’ off a log. It wasn’t for me. But it is for you. Tell me, KT, how many songs you think up in the last coupla days? Without even trying? How many? A dozen, I’ll bet.”

Kayleigh blinked and Dance saw that he was right.

“That’s a gift, honey.” A mournful smile. “Pushing you was never about me. It was ’cause I knew you had that gift… I knew you’d be everybody’s shadow, KT. I’m sorry you don’t like it but that’s the hand you got dealt. You gotta play it.” He pointed out to the audience. “They need you.”

“Then they’re gonna be pretty disappointed tonight. Because this concert’s going on without me.”

With that, she was gone.

The two dozen people backstage were now all staring silently at the old man. He’d screwed up, probably intentionally not telling her about the Global deal so she’d go ahead with the concert. But Dance’s heart went out to him. He looked shattered.

But Dance’s meditations on the Towne family vanished at that moment.

She heard a familiar voice behind her. “Hey there.”

She turned.

Well…

Jon Boling’s common greeting, just like his personality, was easy, friendly. And more than a little sexy, Dance had always felt.

Until now.

She stared blankly. He gave a surprised laugh, apparently assuming she was caught up in whatever drama was going on backstage at the moment-all the somber faces. And he stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her.

She returned the pressure anemically, feeling the weight of the blunt realization that he’d come all the way here-three hours-to tell her he was leaving her and moving to San Diego.

At least he’s got the balls to tell me face-to-face…

A line, Dance reflected wryly, that had a good country beat to it, though she guessed it wasn’t the sort of phrase that would ever appear in a Kayleigh Towne song.

Chapter 79

“YOU LOOK MORE surprised than I thought you would,” Boling said, stepping back from the embrace.

He looked around, an exaggerated frown on his face. “Your secret lover must be here somewhere. And, dammit, I bought a ticket. You probably got him comped.”

Dance laughed, though the sound only made her feel worse, a reminder of the many good times they’d shared. They walked to a deserted part of the backstage area.

Boling looked around. “What’s going on? Everybody okay?”

“Hard to say.” She couldn’t avoid the cryptic response.

He looked her over. “We’ve had the worst phone luck. I’ve been doing ten-hour days. And you, your mom said you were working on that kidnapping case. Some vacation you had, hm?”

My mother, my spy.

“And Lincoln and Amelia were here?”

“Couldn’t’ve done it without them.” She told Boling about the minute bits of trace that gave her the idea that Edwin had taken Kayleigh’s song to heart, the one about growing up near a silver mine. “That’s how we traced him.”

Boling leaned forward and kissed her quickly, his lips firmly against hers.

Her phone vibrated. A glance downward. It was Michael O’Neil.

Well, how’s that for some irony?

“You have to get that?”

“I’ll let it go,” Dance said.

“Good turnout,” he said. “I listened to one of Kayleigh’s CDs on the way here. I can’t wait for the show.”

“About that… there may be a rain check situation.”

And she told him about the blowup between father and daughter.

“No! You mean cancel the whole show?”

“Looks like it.”

The crew, Kayleigh’s band, the local backup musicians, a children’s choir… everybody was standing around awkwardly, heads and eyes pivoting, engaged in a radar search for the centerpiece of the evening. The sense of dread was evident. Kayleigh was the least temperamental performer on earth. If she stormed out it was not diva drama, with her in the trailer waiting to be coaxed back. Her absence probably reflected the sentiment in one of her early hits: “Gone for Good (and It’s Good to Be Gone).”

Bishop Towne, alone, wiped his hands on his slacks. It was five minutes past showtime. The audience wasn’t restless yet but they soon would be.

Dance found her shoulders in a terrible knot. She glanced back at Boling’s handsome face, his thinning brown hair, his perfect lips.

But, she told herself, feeling the spring steel of her soul flex within her, she’d lost one man to tragedy and she would far rather lose one this way-everyone going forward in life, healthy and with some vestige of affection. Something might work out in the future. At least there wasn’t-she assumed-somebody else in his life. She would make sure that Boling and the children stayed in touch. Thank God they hadn’t actually moved in together.

“Here. Snuck this in.”

He handed her a Starbucks cup and she smelled immediately that it contained red wine, and since Boling was the barista it would be a good one. Yes, a nice Malbec, she deduced from a sip-one of the varieties they’d been exploring lately at wine tastings in Monterey and Carmel. They’d had so much fun on those nights…

Kathryn Dance told herself: No tears.

That was nonnegotiable.

“Everything okay?”

She explained, “Tough case.”

“I was worried about you when we kept missing calls.”

Quit doing that! she silently raged. Make me hate you.

He sensed her tension and backed off, let go of her hand, gave her space.

And that conscientiousness irritated her even more.

But then he decided it was time. She could easily tell from his stance. Yes, he probably wanted to wait before delivering the bad news but preferred to get it over with. Men did that. Either they never said anything personal and serious, or they blurted it all out at the wrong moment.

Boling said, “Hey, wanted to talk to you about something.”

Oh, that tone.

God, how she hated that tone.

She shrugged, sipping some of the wine. A big sip.

“Okay, I know this is going to seem a little odd but…”

For God’s sake, Jon, get on with it. I’ve got my children to get back to, my dogs, my guests from New York… and a friend here who’s about to become the nemesis of 35,000 people.

“Sorry, I’m a little nervous about this.”

“Jon, it’s okay,” she said, finding her voice surprisingly warm. “Go on.”

“I know we’ve had a, well, sort of policy of not traveling with the kids, not overnight. Well…” He seemed to realize he was stammering and now just blurted, “I’m thinking I’d like all of us to take a trip.” He looked away. “For this consulting gig, they need me down in San Diego for two weeks-La Jolla. The company rented me a place near the beach. It’s a month rental and they said I could keep it for a week or two after the job’s done. So I was thinking we could all drive down, see Hearst’s Castle, then go to Lego Land and Disneyland for the kids. Well, actually, I want to go there too. Not Lego Land particularly. But Disneyland. So, what do you think? A week in San Diego, all four of us?”

“A week?”

He grimaced. “Okay, I know it’s hard for you to get off, especially after you took some time now. But if there’s any way you could… See, it’s a four-bedroom place. We’d have separate rooms, all of us. You and me too. But still, it’s a good step forward, with the kids, I was thinking. Traveling together but not together together, you know what I mean?”

“A week?” Dance was stammering herself too.

He’d be thinking: I said that, didn’t I?

Oh, God-the move was temporary. Her mother hadn’t gotten all the information.

He sensed her hesitation. And said stoically, “No problem. If that’s too much time, maybe you and the kids could fly down and we could spend a few days together. I mean, you could always come down alone but, I don’t know, I thought it might be nice to take a family vacation.”

Those last two words were like lace trim: flimsy yet hopeful.

“I… hey.” He stumbled back as she threw her arms around him, both euphoric and utterly ashamed of her assumption, which was based on the worst thing a law enforcer can be swayed by-faulty information.

She kissed him energetically. “Yes, yes, yes! We’ll work it out. I’d love to.” Then she frowned. “But a favor?”

“Sure, of course.”

She whispered, “Can you and I get adjoining rooms? Sometimes the kids go to sleep early.”

“That can be arranged.”

She kissed him once more.

Just as her phone chirped. This time, O’Neil had sent a text: Signed the divorce papers. Enjoy the concert. See you soon… I hope.

Oh, brother, she thought.

Oh, brother.

Another ding. She looked down: XO, Michael.

She slipped the phone away and took Boling’s hand.

“A problem?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “No problems at all.”

Then the hulking form of Bishop Towne was approaching. He paused and, ignoring Boling, grunted to Dance, “Guess this is it.” He took a deep breath. “Times like these’re when I really miss a drink. Guess I better go make a slew of people real unhappy.”

He ambled out onstage.

There was, of course, a resounding thunderclap of applause and shouts; this was Mr. Country himself greeting them, about to introduce his even more talented daughter.

He waved.

Pandemonium.

Dance and Boling walked into the wings to see better. As the spotlight found Towne, he looked diminished and old and in pain. He squinted slightly, hesitated and continued to an active microphone.

He scanned the crowd and seemed surprised there were so many people there, though Dance suspected that the savvy businessman would know the exact head count and box office receipts.

He rasped, “Good evening, y’all. I-” His voice caught and he started again. “I surely do ’preciate you coming out tonight.” Bishop, Dance had noted, had no Southern accent when he was engaged in regular conversation. Now, a twang of Appalachia tinted his words.

More whistles and shouts and applause.

“Listen up, listen up. Uhm, I have an announcement I’d like to make.”

There was a beat as the crowd grew silent, expecting something was wrong, perhaps related to Kayleigh’s kidnapping earlier in the day and the other events of the past week.

Collective dismay was starting to brew.

“Again, we ’preciate your being here and appreciate all the support you’ve shown to Kayleigh and the band and her family during this difficult time.”

He cleared his throat once more.

As he said, “I gotta tell you-” The applause began again and kept going and kept going, swelling, swelling, and became a force of its own. Within two or three seconds, the entire crowd was on its feet, howling, clapping, whistling.

Bishop was confused. What was this about?

Dance too didn’t have a clue, until she looked stage left and saw Kayleigh Towne walking forward, carrying a guitar and waving to the crowd.

She paused and blew them a kiss.

More unearthly sounds filled the concert hall, glow sticks waved back and forth, flashes from the prohibited cameras exploded like sunlight on choppy water.

Dance noticed that Suellyn and Mary-Gordon were now standing with Sheri Towne in the wings opposite, watching Kayleigh stride up to her father. They weren’t alone. Art Francesco, from Global Entertainment, was now with them and chatting warmly with Sheri and her stepdaughter.

Onstage, Bishop bent down, hugged his daughter and she kissed him on his cheek. Kayleigh lowered a second microphone to her mouth and waited until the crowd grew silent.

“Thank you all! Thank you!… My daddy was going to tell you we have a big surprise for you tonight. But I decided I couldn’t let him get away with hogging the spotlight, like he usually does.”

Huge laughter.

“Anyway, what we want to do tonight is open the show with something we haven’t done for years. A father-daughter duet.” A bit of South was in her own voice now.

More otherworldly applause.

She handed Bishop the guitar and said, “Y’all probably know my daddy’s a better picker than me so I’m going to let him have the git-fiddle and sing and I’m going to do a bit of harmony. Now, this’s a song that Daddy wrote and used to sing to me when I was a little girl. I think it was probably the first song I ever heard. It’s called ‘I Think You’re Going to Be a Lot Like Me.’”

A glance his way and he nodded, the faintest of smiles curling into his weathered face.

As the surge of applause and hoots settled, Bishop Towne swung the guitar strap over his broad shoulders, strummed to test the tuning and he and Kayleigh adjusted the microphones.

Then he looked behind him toward the band, now in position, noted that they were ready and turned his attention back to the thousands of expectant fans, silent as thought. He started tapping his foot, leaned forward and counted out into the microphone, “One… two… three… four…”

Your Shadow

Is It Love, Is It Less?

Near the Silver Mine

The Truth About Men

Another Day Without You

My Red Cadillac

Fire and Flame

The Puzzle Of Your Heart

Leaving Home

Mr. Tomorrow

I’m in the Mood (for Rock ’n’ Roll)

The Crew

Bobby Prescott Traynor Davis

Tye Slocum Sandy (“Scoop”) Miller

Hector Garcia Carole Ng

Sue Stevens

The Band

Kevin Peebles, lead guitar Alonzo Santiago, drums and

Emma Sue Granger, guitar, bass percussion

guitar and vocals Sharon Bascowitz, keyboard,

Buddy Delmore, National guitar, saxophone, oboe, cello and vocals

Dobro and pedal steel Kayleigh Towne, guitar, vocals

Produced by Barry Zeigler, BHMC Records.

With thanks to Alicia Sessions and Bishop Towne-Love you, Daddy!

This album is dedicated to my niece, Mary-Gordon Sanchez, the cutest six-year-old on the planet!