To her surprise, they hadn't taken her harmonica, so she pulled it out. It seemed natural to do, since she didn't smoke-the only other logical solitary prison activity. Sad, plaintive tunes suited her surroundings, suited her new role as prisoner, she thought wryly. Something to put her in the right mood.

She didn't try to think or plan. Planning would come later, when she had a better sense of what moves had been made by the other players in the game while she slept. Right now she didn't care. Drifting from song to song, she felt suspended in time, in space, even in identity. Who was she?

She didn't know and wasn't sure she cared. That was for later, too. She'd been so many different people, she didn't know who to be now. As if her soul had been set adrift. Or maybe'she paused in her song'she was like the chemical ice pack she'd given Dewey, waiting to be twisted by this final game, waiting for all the people she'd been to mix into someone entirely new.

She liked that idea. Why not blend all the whos she'd been? The past, the present, all the roles she'd played in all their games? Maybe when this was over she could put all those pieces together and be a single, whole person. Maybe, just maybe, she could lay her burden down and have, if not a real life, something that looked and felt real if not examined too closely.

Someplace warm. She wrapped the blanket more tightly around her and tried to think of warm things. Like how hot it felt up there on the tiny stage at JR's when she was performing.

She'd miss being Phoebe. Miss the bar, the guys, and the music. If she left Phoebe behind, would she also lose her feelings for Jake? What she felt with him, for him, made her feel more alive than she'd ever felt. She didn't want to go back to her former dormant state.

In playing the game, in keeping her distance, she hadn't lost touch only with other people. She'd lost touch with herself. In a way, she'd given her stepfather a partial victory. She didn't know the psychology of his need for power over her and Kerry Anne, his need to destroy lives, but her gut was telling her, if she retreated from these feelings, he'd win, even if they managed to take him down.

Love, she was coming to understand, could heal even as it hurt. That's what Kerry Anne had been trying to tell her the night she died, but the girl Phoebe had been hadn't understood. Maybe she couldn't have understood without meeting Jake. Maybe love's lessons could only be learned in its furnace.

And maybe she was heading just a tad too far into the philosophical zone? At this rate, she'd be a pathetic puddle of pure angst by the time they made their move.

Time to lighten up.

She played a jazzy riff, then stopped when she felt him watching her.

She looked up. He wasn't alone. A couple of guards were with him. One had two chairs, one a small table and another what looked like bags of...Chinese food? She held back a grin. The boy did not know when to give up.

Jake saw her half grin as he signaled for the guard to open the door, then waited outside until the table was set up. The guard locked him in with her. A sudden case of stage fright held him by the door, but she looked so ordinary, so innocently pleased as she got up to investigate the cartons of food, he relaxed.

"I didn't even realize I was hungry." She smiled. As soon as her gaze met his, a current of heat did an end run around his resolve before he could close the circuit. His first thought was he was glad his back was to the camera and the people at its other end. His second was this was going to be much harder than he'd expected it to be. His third, had he really expected anything to do with Phoebe to be easy?

He returned her smile, holding back as much of himself as he could. He sat down opposite her and watched her help herself to the sweet and sour pork. She chose chopsticks instead of the plastic fork, wielding them expertly.

"Am I allowed to know what time it is?"

Jake looked at his watch, even though he knew exactly what time it was and how many hours he had left. "It's after midnight."

"No wonder I'm awake. I'm usually singing right about now." She tried her drink. "Diet Coke. You remembered." Her lashes lifted, and for a moment something intimate arced between them.

"Yes. It's a gift, or a curse. Haven't decided which. It's useful in my line of work. It's the little details, unnoticed habits, things people can't give up, that trip them up."

"So if I wanted to say, disappear, I should probably give up Diet Coke?"

"If you don't want to get caught."

She looked thoughtful but didn't say anything more until she pushed the carton back and patted her tummy.

"That was great, thanks." The spark of mischief in her eyes gave him a brief warning the games were about to begin. "Interesting interrogation technique."

"What?" Jake cleared the debris, setting it on the floor by the table.

"Let the suspect get rest and food." She propped her elbows on the table. Her accent was getting more Southern. "You trying to kill me with kindness, cowboy?"

Jake grinned, gave a half shrug. "I knew the typical wouldn't work with you, Reb."

She laughed, a throaty sound that sent quivers through his mid-section. Knowing Bryn and others were watching him kept his blood supply moving up instead of down.

With a smooth motion, she got up, reversed her chair and straddled it. She did that, Jake had noticed, when she was on the defensive.

"Are we waiting for Calvin to join us? You weren't going to question me without my lawyer present, were you?"

"I'm not going to question you at all." Her eyebrows shot up. Seems he'd finally managed to surprise her. "This little session is completely off the record."

He turned toward the camera and made a slicing motion across his throat. After a pause, the red light went out.

"Interesting opening gambit, Cowboy. Unexpected. Curious." Her smile was all mischief reminding him of that morning in her kitchen.

It was a good diversionary tactic. He'd been more than curious in her kitchen. His mouth twitched with a suppressed grin as he took a file folder out of the briefcase he'd brought with him and laid it on the tabletop.

"I'll begin with a broad outline of what I know."

"The facts, just the facts, ma'am?" She propped her chin on her elbows and gave him her attention with a look that shouldn't have made his toes curl in his shoes. "By all means, put the rest of your pieces in play-or would that be cards on the table? Are we playing chess or poker?"

"Might be blind man's bluff." This was either a brilliant strategy or the dumbest thing he'd ever done.

The lift of one eyebrow acknowledged the hit. A slight nod gave him tacit permission to begin.

"You were born Nadine Beauleigh, formerly of Valdosta, Georgia. We were able to match your fingerprints with a set done at a mall, in one of those protect-our-kids-from-abduction booths. Possibly the same day you choose the red shoes over that boy?"

If she could lob personal-moment bombs, so could he, although he wasn't immune to the collateral effects of them. What would she choose today? Would he be able to reach her? Her eyes gave away nothing, though a tiny pulse beat in her neck.

"When you ran away from home following the suicide," Her eyelashes flickered at this, "of your sister, Kerry Anne, your stepfather, Montgomery Justice, turned over your prints. Your mother took a fatal tumble down some stairs not long after, and Justice seems to have dropped off the face of the earth."

He paused, but she didn't fill the silence, just stared at him as if what he was saying, while interesting, had nothing to do with her.

"We found Dewey Hyatt's fingerprints in your home and at Smith's, where you were apprehended."

For a moment, he thought she might speak. He admired her control. He knew the flaws in his case as well as she did. Suspicions without proof were just sound and fury.

He moved on, detailing the links they'd made between her and Dewey Hyatt. Why he believed they'd both been present during the heist at TelTech. Touched on areas of investigation he believed were vulnerable for her, like the answering machine tape they'd taken from Ollie Smith's crime scene.

"You're Pathphinder, Phagan's strategist." He watched her for a long count, then said, "We could probably uncover all your secrets, given enough time and attention. You haven't been under the big microscope yet. Once you are, there's no turning back. If we put the time and resources into investigating you, we will press charges on anything we turn up. And we'll make them stick. This could be the beginning of a long incarceration."

"I'm not a lawyer, but-"

"-You've played one," Jake inserted.

Her gaze met his without flinching, but it did narrow to wary. "Which makes me think you're being overly optimistic about your chances of linking me to anything substantial."

"We could find out." He waited a long beat, then said, "Or..."

Against her will, Phoebe felt her curiosity rise. There was danger in listening to him, because she wanted a way out.