The car left the parking lot with its tires squealing. Jack pulled Kate to the Suburban, shoved her inside and slammed the door. As he stalked around the front of the vehicle, Kate reached for a rear door but that wouldn't open either.

Jack got in and sighed. "I told you, you can't get out of this car."

"Let me go, please." Her voice was hoarse. "I'll forget I ever saw you. I won't go to the police. Please let me go."

Jack clipped her belt in place. "Try that again and the next one won't be lucky.

Give me your bank card."

"Let me go." She lashed out but he caught her wrist and twisted it again. The pain made the world go white.

"Now where would be the fun in that?"

"They'll catch you. You'll go to prison." Her mouth ran away with her. Kate called him every bad word she knew.

He twisted her wrist harder and harder until she fell silent, except for tiny hiccupping sobs.

"Finished?" Jack asked. "Got that out of your system? Good." He released her, fastened his safety belt and started the engine. "Your card?" Kate pulled it from her pocket, gave it him, then pressed herself against the door fighting not to cry.

As he pulled onto the highway, she went back to wondering why he'd chosen her. She wasn't rich, didn't have wealthy parents. She didn't work in a bank and know the combination to the safe. There was no political angle, no valuable secrets in her head. What use could she be? Maybe she'd hit on the truth earlier.

He'd chosen her because she wasn't rich or famous or important. If she disappeared, no one would know or care.

Well, Jeannie would worry tomorrow when Kate didn't go for a drink. She'd have registered the hint about coffee and know Kate hadn't forgotten she didn't like it. If Kate didn't answer the door and the phone remained disconnected, Jeannie would speak to Fryer, the building superintendent. Only, if they looked in her apartment, what would they see? That card with the flowers implied she'd gone off with a boyfriend. The clothes strewn everywhere made it seem like she'd packed. There was no toothbrush, hairbrush. No ID. She'd written that message, but why check a toilet lid? Kate clutched her aching wrist and bit back a sob. She had to stay alert because once they left the city, the chances of attracting attention would diminish fast.

She was nearsighted without her glasses, but didn't miss the patrol car at the intersection a couple of blocks ahead. Kate didn't think of the consequences, just reached for the steering wheel and wrenched it down. The Suburban swerved and horns blared.

"Ssshit," Jack hissed.

He dragged Kate's hand off the wheel and pushed her away. Once the car was steady, he thumped her so hard she crashed into the side window.

"What the hell? Don't fucking move."

Kate knew he'd just seen the patrol car. She prayed for sirens and lights, but nothing happened. When she banged on the window, Jack grabbed her by the neck and forced her down, thrusting her face into her legs, pinning her like a bug.

Kate fought to get up and he pinched the skin at the base of her skull, twisting the roots of her hair until she screamed.

"It fucking well serves you right."

Kate sobbed into her knees. She'd blown another chance to get free and made him angry. But her face was inches from her purse. She unzipped the small compartment he'd missed and pulled out her library ID and gym card. As she slipped them inside her sandal, Kate felt a flicker of hope.

Chapter Three.

Nathan Beranson held the envelope across his desk. The woman didn't lift her hand to take it and he wondered if she'd changed her mind. This was merely proof of what he'd just told her. A flash of red nails and his hand was empty. Her fingers shook as she took out the photographs. Then came the tears. Nathan had her pegged as a weeper. She sobbed as if her world had been destroyed.

Correction. Sobbed because Nathan had helped destroy her world. He put a box of tissues on the desk between them.

"Could it be a mistake?" Her voice cracked.

Nathan shook his head, hardly able to believe the question considering what she held. "No. Sorry." He hated his job. How could he enjoy someone paying him to wreck their life?

She put the prints back inside the envelope and pressed down the seal. He suspected she wished she hadn't opened it. The images he'd captured of a young dark-haired guy giving her husband a blowjob were now imprinted in her mind.

She put her hand in her purse and for a crazy moment, Nathan thought she'd reached for a gun. She pulled out a slip of paper and placed it on the desk. Didn't hand it to him. That was something else he'd noticed. People didn't want to come anywhere near him, like he had some infectious disease.

"Payable to N. Beranson?"

Nathan nodded.

She rose to her feet. "Thank you."

Thanking him for ruining her life. He knew her husband had done that, not him, but Nathan still felt guilty. He exhaled deeply as he shut the door behind her and returned to his chair. Leaning back, he closed his eyes. He'd had enough of this, offering Pandora's Box, knowing the idiots would open it and leave everyone unhappy, himself included. He hadn't envisioned a life spent following cheating partners. Word-of-mouth recommendations led to more of the same work.

Nathan was a victim of his own success and beginning to think one half of San Antonio cheated on the other half.

He glanced at his watch, a present from his sister, Elisa. The hands went backward and the numbers were reversed. It said SEILF EMIT' on the dial. Time flies.' Her way of telling him he was getting older, had no girlfriend and worked a job he hated. She was a pain, but right.

Nathan waited for several minutes before he closed his office and went downstairs. A waste of time because his last client sat behind the wheel of her car, still crying. What more could he say? He knew how she felt, what it was like to be cheated on, but exposing his own misery wouldn't make her feel any better.

Before guilt immobilized him, Nathan slunk to his car and drove away.

Not even thirty years old and yet tired of everything-not only his job, but his home, his car, even his extensive collection of jazz and blues CDs. Nathan found no joy in anything. Watching sports only reminded him he couldn't play anymore. He'd been pensioned out of the SAPD three years ago after being shot in an undercover operation. His left leg was full of metal pins and sometimes Nathan thought he could feel every damn one of them.

Determined not to accept a desk job, going into private investigation seemed a good move, only he'd made a mistake. He'd found stakeouts dull as a cop and now he spent whole days sitting in his car, doing nothing but watching and waiting for some man or woman to fuck up. Literally. Even when he secured a more complex case, there was little sense of satisfaction at the end. Too much of what he did seemed trivial and pathetic. Nathan wanted his job to be exciting, and it was plain boring.

For all that, his reluctance to take every job offered meant he barely made enough to cover his expenses. No matter how much Nathan spent on specialist equipment, there was always something new coming onto the market to consume his income. Those who couldn't afford the latest gadget dropped out of the loop.

Dispensing with the office would have made a vast improvement to his financial position, but he didn't want his home tainted by what he did. At least there was some respite there. Well, there would have been if he hadn't had his other little project.

After a long and tiring day, Nathan didn't get home until after midnight. Out of habit, he switched on his computer and while it booted up he grabbed a beer. He took a long pull at the cold liquid, then set the bottle down and clicked on the file "Jack Thompson." Three months of observations. Three months of wasted time.

It seemed longer than three months ago that Nathan had sat in his Ford Taurus, a little way down the road from Ashlands Psychiatric Hospital, waiting for Jack to emerge. The high wall enclosing the facility was so white it blinded.

Green creepers snaked over the top at places along the wall's length, but not one strand made it as far as the ground on the outside. There was no barbed wire, no spiked top, no electric current. The staff utilized other methods of persuading patients to stay, mainly chemical, though a sophisticated security system was in place in case Jesus Christ or Abraham Lincoln decided to make a run for it. Or some idiot tried to break in.

Despite unfinished business with Jack, a guest of Ashlands for nine months, Nathan ruled out climbing the wall. He'd tried to talk his way in several times, and since for most of that time he had murder in mind, perhaps it was as well he'd failed. The one thing he had uncovered was Jack's release date.

He still wondered if he should have driven away that day three months ago, if his future had been sealed because he'd waited for Jack to emerge. If he'd driven off, would he now have a girlfriend, a job he liked? A life? Instead Nathan had waited outside Ashlands, listening to a voice on the radio repeatedly telling him San Antonio was headed for another dry but unseasonably cold day. Not a smudge of white in the sky but Nathan sat under his own personal black cloud.

Every time the gates opened to allow a vehicle to leave or enter, his heart beat faster and the cloud darkened. Three months had passed and he sat under the same fucking cloud. He wished he hadn't gone that day, but he wished more that he'd never met Jack Thompson.

Nathan was three when his mother walked out of his life and into the arms of Don Thompson. After deserting her husband and son, she went on to have two replacement children, Jack and Steven. Nathan's father married again and gave him a sister, Elisa, whom he loved dearly, but Nathan had only met his surviving half-brother, Jack, for the first time a year ago. Nathan wanted to remember he hadn't liked him, but it wasn't true. Jack had been funny, charming and a good listener, and Nathan had been blind.

Less than a week before Nathan expected to marry his fiancee, Alison, he'd come back from work to find her in bed with Jack. Alison had been astride him, thrusting her body up and down, gasping noisily. Jack had seen Nathan at the door, grabbed Alison's hips and pulled her down harder. As Nathan moved away, he heard his fiancee give an ecstatic cry. One he'd not heard before. One that still ate at his gut.

That cry was the reason he'd stayed outside Ashlands and not driven away.

Nathan wanted to know why. He'd not had chance to talk to Jack before he'd been admitted to the hospital in need of psychiatric help. No fucking kidding.

Nathan had talked to Alison, but he needed to talk to Jack. All the time his half-brother was in Ashlands, Nathan thought about what Jack had done. Plenty of time for him to come up with a stupid plan. When Jack was released, Nathan would watch him and find out what it was about Jack he hadn't seen. Then punch the shit out of him.

And that's just what he'd done. The watching, anyway. Three months waiting for Jack to show his real side, to fuck up. And the bastard hadn't. Not really.

Nathan took a swallow of beer and typed up his notes.

17:10 Bought large bouquet of mixed flowers from Del Florios, East 71st Street 18:19 Returned to apartment 20:14 Left wearing baseball cap Bought sandwich from Stinton's deli 20:29 Returned to apartment No further activity Observation terminated midnight He read through what he'd typed and saved it with the other ninety-seven reports he'd written over the last three months. The flowers had surprised him.

Jack hadn't gone out on a date. Other than the trip to the deli, he'd spent the entire evening in his apartment. The baseball cap was another first. Jack didn't wear them. Why tonight?

Nathan leaned forward and put his head in his hands. What the fuck am I doing? Jack was supposed to be the crazy one, but for the better part of a year Nathan had wasted his time, waiting for Jack to be released only to watch his brother lead an ordinary life. So ordinary, he was freaking out about flowers and a baseball cap. For Christ's sake, give it up. Nathan knew he should stop. He shouldn't have started. He'd told himself one month, then two slid into three.

He'd achieved nothing. He hadn't even spoken to the fucker. Why? Scared he'd kill him? For a while, Nathan wanted to.

He took another mouthful of beer. Time to move on, draw a line, kill a cliche.

Nathan said that to his clients, so why couldn't he take his own advice? For the same reason most of his clients couldn't-wouldn't. The need to understand why.

Alison had been his, why had Jack taken her? What did he have that Nathan didn't? Nathan was relieved no one else knew the depth of his obsessive stupidity, but his sharp-eyed sister had spotted his worsening depression and kept bugging him about what was wrong.

So stop. Right now. No more watching Jack Thompson. What had he been hoping to achieve? To catch his brother fucking someone else's woman? Was Nathan planning to ruin Jack's life the way Jack had ruined his? Fuck Jack's girlfriend and dump her like Jack had Alison? Nathan leaned back in his chair.

Well, if he was being honest, he'd thought about making a move on Jack's girlfriend. He liked the idea of giving his brother a taste of what it was like, even though he knew it was a terrible thing to do. But as far as Nathan knew, since Jack had been discharged from Ashlands, he'd never managed more than one date with any woman.

Over the last three months, Jack had worked seven different jobs. He'd walked out of three and been fired from four. No need for Nathan to wreck Jack's career, he was doing fine by himself and Jack was wrecking Nathan's without even trying.

Nathan's fingers hovered over delete.' If he wanted to make a new start, this was the first thing to do. Delete the file. Not difficult. He took a deep breath and pressed. Nathan smiled briefly. Deleting Jack from his mind wouldn't be as easy.

Memories of Alison and her cry of delight were still too vivid and when Nathan thought of her, he thought of Jack. He sighed. No more watching Jack Thompson. Nathan was used to waking with an ache in his chest that lasted all day. Maybe now it would stop.

Chapter Four.

Jack glanced at Kate. The drug had worked fine. She'd been so deeply asleep since they left the suburbs of San Antonio, he'd risked stopping to top off the gas without restraining her. He also took the opportunity to disable the frigging horn and withdraw the final five-hundred dollars from her account. He'd parked away from the machine and pulled the cap low so the camera didn't catch him. She hadn't lied about the PIN, but then he hadn't expected she would.

Her cheek was red and swollen and there was a scratch above her lip. Jack was annoyed he'd marked her face. He hadn't expected her to fight so hard. She was still thinking up ways to escape. Probably dreaming them. He sniggered. Not scared enough. His mistake. He should have fucked her in the apartment. He'd thought about it, especially when he'd had her in his arms on the floor and looked at those long legs. Jack laughed. Yeah, he should have fucked her. Now, it was a pleasure to savor.

Kate woke with a crick in her neck, a dry mouth and a throbbing pain in her head. When she opened her eyes, she blinked against the bright light flooding the car. Desert everywhere. Kate took a moment to pull herself together, then eased upright on the seat. Her limbs felt leaden, her wrist stiff and aching. She felt Jack glance at her but she didn't react.

"Water in the box behind you," he said.

Kate wanted nothing from him, but no point staying thirsty. She reached back to snag a bottle of spring water, wedged it between her legs to unscrew the top one-handed and drank deeply.

"Better?"

She wondered where they were. No more pills. She'd slept for hours.

"Want to know where we're heading?"

Kate dragged the word out. "Yes."

"Vegas. Ask me why." He almost bounced in his seat.

"Why?"

"To get married."

She wanted it to be a joke, but a metal band tightened around her chest. "I don't want to get married. I don't even know you."

"Yeah, you do."

She turned to face him and he smiled. She hated his smile.

"I know a lot about you," he said. "Your doctor's name, what supermarket you use, what makes you scared."

Kate's heart fluttered.

"Dr. Mark Hodson, you shop at HEB and what makes you scared? Me. Boo!" She jumped and he laughed. The pain in her chest increased.

"Your parents are dead. No brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts or uncles. Distant relatives on your mother's side in Florida, but you've lost touch. You wouldn't know them if they knocked on your door holding a bunch of flowers." He grinned.

"You rarely go out. No boyfriend. Until now." He patted her knee. Kate flinched.

She didn't want to listen but the more he talked, fascination surged alongside fear.

"You like cheese pizza and praline ice cream. You don't like chocolate cake. Me neither. You ride the bus to work and read all the way. Head down, no eye contact. Don't want no crazies talking to you. You bring lunch from home and eat in the park, unless it's raining. You like the zoo, especially the hippos." Now she knew for sure he'd followed her.

"When you were a kid you used to think you were from outer space. You built your own spaceship and made up a weird language." Kate gaped at him. "How do you know that?" He chuckled.

"How the hell could you know that? Why have you kidnapped me? What do you want? I'm going to lose my job."

"I haven't fucking kidnapped you," he snapped. "Don't worry about your job. You've resigned."