She stayed like that until she felt steadier. Then sat awhile longer, just thinking it all through.

She had to read the report, no getting around it. And since she couldn’t handle even the idea of eating, she’d make herself a smoothie—then make herself drink it.

After that …

When Sadie went on alert, Adrian’s stomach clenched, but even as she pushed up, she recognized Raylan’s car. And everything calmed.

She even managed to put on a smile when he got out of the car. When Sadie and Jasper raced toward each other. “Did you escape from the kids?”

“Briefly. I can’t stay. Monroe’s giving Bradley a guitar lesson, and Mariah’s deigned to play with Phin. But I can’t stay.”

“If you’re here to lecture me about my reckless behavior, I may need another glass of wine, and I’ve already had one and a half.”

“I’m not.” He came up on the porch, smelling of grass and spring.

“You’re been mowing.”

“Yeah, a little sweaty, but.” He cupped her face in his hands, kissed her. Gently, she thought, as he might kiss someone with a mild illness. “Teesha gave me the lowdown.”

“She’s still pissed at me.”

He wagged a hand back and forth. “I get she unloaded on you, and Harry, too. Anyway, I watched the video for myself. One day you’re going to have to tell me how you do that plank to jump-in-the-air thing without breaking something important. And okay, reckless impulse maybe, but … brilliant.”

“What?”

“You wanted to kick him in the nuts, and you hit the target, and never broke character. Just a short bonus workout—if you’re strong enough, tough enough. You needed to take a punch, so you did. I’m behind you on that.”

“You’re behind me on that.”

“Do I wish you hadn’t done it?” He shoved his fingers through his hair—also a little sweaty. “That you hadn’t gotten another poem? That you’d never gotten the first one? Sure I do. But we can all rub a lamp, and it doesn’t pop the genie out. We deal with what is.”

She stared at him, and started to cry.

“Come on now.” He drew her in. “You’ve had a crappy day.”

“Really crappy. You came over. You came over and said just what I needed.” And she could let herself go a little, let the tears come, because he had.

“You had company,” he murmured. “Two wineglasses, two little plates.”

“Rachael McNee. The PI.”

“And did that add more crap to the day?”

“Oh boy, did it.”

“Let me ask Teesha if they can wrangle the kids for another half hour. And you can tell me about it.”

She pressed her face harder into his shoulder. “Oh yes, please.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

She went in first to slap some water on her face, then got them both a glass of lemonade. A better choice than wine at the moment, she thought.

Then she sat and told him everything.

“First, it sounds like your mom found an ace in the PI.”

“Yeah, she did. She stays so calm, and … It feels as if how I feel matters. Facts matter more, but she’s not just ignoring how I feel. And that helps.”

“It always does. Next, I don’t have to tell you that if her theory pans out, the motivation is pure bullshit. I don’t have to tell you because you’re not an idiot or the type who likes to play martyr.”

“So … more of what I need to hear. I do know it, Raylan, but it helps, again, it helps to hear it said out loud. I separated myself a long, long time ago from the biological factor of my paternity. He is and was nothing to me, and aside from basic DNA, I don’t believe he’s in me. At all. That would’ve been harder to manage without my grandparents, and, looking back, my mother. Without Mimi and Harry, Teesha, Hector, and Loren. Without Maya and your mom. Without all of it,” she said, gesturing at the town in the distance.

“Because I could do that, because I had all this, I never thought of his children, his wife, any of it.”

“Because they’re not a part of your life.” He said it simply—and that helped, too. “Why would they be? If one or both of them had contacted you, tried—for whatever reason—to make a connection, it might be different. But they didn’t. Or maybe they did, but not in an Oprah kind of way.”

“Definitely not. Raylan, if one of them, or both of them—those two women.”

He put a hand over hers. “Those two women didn’t know. They weren’t on alert. For whatever reason, they want you to be. But here’s the thing.”

He brought her hand to his lips in a gesture she’d have found heart-meltingly romantic under other circumstances.

“They’re murderers,” she finished. “They’re crazy, obsessed, violent killers, and they want to finish what their father started when he tried to throw me down the stairs.”

He kissed her hands again, those green eyes steady on hers. “But they won’t finish anything. Your ace of a PI is going to put together enough to get them arrested. But in the meantime, you could take a trip, go somewhere else—quiet, private, secure—until she does.”

“Where? A cabin in the mountains, a house on some beach, a flat in Paris or whatever? Raylan, I’d be alone. Really alone. What always happens to the woman in jeopardy when she takes herself off to hide from the bad guy in some remote, supposedly secure and secret location?”

“That’s fiction.”

“Which is often rooted in reality. Bad guy finds woman, and she’s on her own. They’ll have to come at me here, if they come. Here where cops are five minutes away, and stalwart friends and lovers less than that. Where I know every corner of this house.

“I’m not alone here, and feel safer here than I would anywhere else. And I believe Rachael’s going to do exactly what she said she’d do. Get enough to have them arrested.”

“You can’t expect me to feel good about you alone here.”

“I don’t, but the alternatives are worse.”

“Maybe. And the maybe stops me from arguing with you. How about this? As soon as school’s out we’ll all go somewhere.”

“We will?”

He smiled, and the smile was a challenge. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of taking a summer vacation with a couple of kids and two dogs?”

“I fear nothing. I haven’t taken an actual vacation in a long time.”

“Then you’re due. I vote beach, and so will the kids, which makes your vote moot. I’ll see what I can come up with. I’ve gotta get back.”

“School night.”

“Yeah, it is.” But he drew her to her feet, and this time didn’t kiss her as if she were vaguely ill. “Lock the doors, okay? Then go around again to make sure you locked the doors, and set the alarm. Then text me before you go to bed.”

“All right. You made me feel better than the kale smoothie I’m making myself for dinner.”

“Jesus God, I hope so.” He kissed her again, quick, then headed down the steps. “I’m never drinking one of those. Let’s go, Jasper.”