They were on his terrain now.

Familiar territory.

The tension eased from his spine.

But not his shoulders.

"There's a fifty-fifty chance."

Well, at least he was being honest with her.

No one quoted odds like that and boasted about them.

"'seat low?") " Hey, those are good odds.

" It all depended on how you looked at things." Crime shows to the

contrary, the bad guy usually goes free." He felt rather than saw her involuntary shiver. He hadn't beentrying to frighten her. He was so accustomed to the danger that lived on the streets he walked, he hadn't thought how such knowledge might affect someone else." Worried?

"Who, me?"

She wanted to laugh it off, but didn't quite attain the desired

effect.

Her smile faded.

"Maybe just a little."

He did what he could to make amends.

No one deserved to live in fear.

"Whoever did it is probably sitting at a bus station right now with a

ticket to Somewhere Else, U S.A clutched in his hand."

She'd like to believe that.

Would like to believe that they would either catch whoever had done it

or that the man would vanish, never to turn up again.

She bit her lower lip as she turned toward Graham.

"You think?"

With practiced ease Graham pulled up a few blocks away from her shop,

guiding the wide car into a parking space that just barely accommodated

it.

Shutting off the engine, he looked at her.

She could still wring things from him the way no one else could, even after all that had passed between them.

"I think," he assured her.

Digging into the breast pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a small card and handed it to her.

"If you want to talk, or you remember anything else about this morning,

call me."

Caitlin glanced at the card.

It had his name and the precinct number on it.

All very professional.

She slipped it into her purse, an annoying ache building in her

chest.

"You're probably right," she agreed.

"The man's probably gone."

She said it to convince herself, and they both knew it.

"What are you going to do now? About the case," she qualified quickly,

afraid that he might misconstrue her question.

She had no personal desire to know what he was doing.

The procedure was standard.

He recited it for her.

"Question people in the neighborhood. See if anyone's seen or heard

anything relevant. We'll pass around that sketch Nathan drew from your initial input," be said, mentioning the police artist.

"The killer might have been in the neighborhood earlier."

Caitlin nodded, feeling oddly weak-kneed.

The implications of the case were finally settling in like a heavy, wet army blanket.

It hadn't been a movie this morning.

It had been real life.

And she had witnessed it.

Her face suddenly paled.

For a moment he thought she was going to faint.

Without thinking, he took her arm to steady her.

"Hey, it's going to be all right," he said gruffly.

He.

didn't know how to offer sympathy.

Not to her.

Not with the ghost of summers past hovering between them in the, car.

But he didn't like the fear that he had glimp@ in her eyes, either.

"Sure it is."

Abruptly she opened the door and stopped out as if the seat had

suddenly caught fire.

She didn't want to think about anything.

Not about Graham, not about the dead man and not about the man who had

shot him.

She just wanted her life back, the way it had been yesterday.

Organized.

Orderly.

It had taken her a long time to achieve that state, building it out of

the shattered pieces he had left behind.