She turned and bolted for the stairs at the far end of the balcony. I ran after her, pulling up short as she

turned the corner and fired off a shot behind her.

Cautiously, I peered around the corner, looking down on an empty stairwell faintly illuminated by the glow of the security light. She could have been waiting beyond the landing, tucked against the wall, waiting for me to charge after her. I could see myself turning the corner on the landing and the bullet hitting me square in the chest, my blood the only color in a black-and-white scene.

I went instead to the end of the balcony and looked down. She was gone. I ran down the stairs. The engine of Trey's Porsche roared to life as I hit the ground. The headlights blinded me as the car leapt toward me.

I brought my gun up and put a round through the windshield, then dove to the side.

Paris tried to swing the Porsche around, tires spinning, dirt and gravel spraying out behind it. The car skidded sideways and slammed violently against the side of the concrete building, setting off the horn and alarm system.

Paris shoved the door open, fell out of the vehicle, got up and started to run down the driveway, a hand pressed to her left shoulder. She stumbled and fell, got up and ran another few steps, then stumbled and fell again. She lay sobbing on the ground within sight of the sign proudly announcing construction of Lucky Dog Farm.

"No, no, no, no, no!" she whimpered over and over as I reached her. Blood ran between her fingers from the bullet wound in her shoulder.

"The game is over, Paris," I said, looking down at her. "You're out of luck, b.i.t.c.h."

Molly sat curled up in a little knot on her bed, knees pulled up beneath her chin. She was trembling and trying hard not to cry.

She listened to the fight going on below her, their voices coming up through her floor. Bruce shouting. Things crashing. Hateful and angry, her mother shrieking like something from a nightmare, like nothing Molly had ever heard. An eerie, high-pitched tone that rose and fell like a siren. She sounded insane. Bruce called her insane more than once.

Molly feared he might be right. That maybe the tight band that had held Krystal together all this time had just broken, and everything she had held repressed inside her had come bursting out.

As the shrieking rose again, Molly jumped off the bed, locked her door, and struggled to shove her nightstand in front of it. She grabbed the phone Elena had given her, scrambled back to her spot against the headboard, and dialed Elena's cell phone.

She listened to the phone ring unanswered. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

Below her the noise abruptly stopped and a strange, horrible silence took its place. Molly strained her ears for any kind of sound, but the silence pressed in on her until she wondered if she'd gone deaf.

Then came a small, soft voice drifting up through the vent as if from another dimension. "I only ever wanted a nice life. . . . I only ever wanted a nice life. . . ."

Landry arrived on the heels of the ambulance that had been called for Paris. My shot through the windshield had clipped her shoulder. She had lost some blood, but she would live to see another day, and another and another-all of them from a prison cell, I hoped.

Landry got out of his car and came directly to me, holding a finger up at the deputy who had secured the

scene, warding him off for the moment. Deputy Saunders, my escort from the night Michael Berne'shorses had been turned loose, stood watching me, not willing to accept my word for my innocence. Landry dismissed him, his focus on me. "Are you all right?" I gave him the half smile. "You must be tired of asking me that. I'm fine." "You've got more lives than a cat," he muttered. I filled him in on what had happened, what had been said, my take on it all. "What made you come here in the first place?" he asked. "I don't know. I thought Paris might try to get to Trey. It all revolved around him-around Trey, around his money, around this place."

I looked back at the barn, the ma.s.sive walls washed in the colored lights from the ambulance and county radio cars. Trey was being escorted in handcuffs to one of the cruisers.

"I believe Trey and Jade cooked up a scheme to kill Sallie Hughes so Trey could inherit and build this

place. I confronted Trey about it. He didn't even bother to deny it. That's why he's stayed loyal to Jade. He didn't have a choice. Paris wanted Jade out of the way so she could have it all. And in the end, none of them will end up with anything," I said. "All the deceit, all the scheming, all the pain they caused-it's all for nothing. Everybody loses."

"Yeah," Landry said as the ambulance rolled out with a cruiser behind it. "Cases like this one make me wish I'd listened to my old man. He wanted me to be a civil engineer."

"What did he do for a living?" I asked.

His mouth quirked. "He was a cop. What else? Thirty years on the Baton Rouge PD."

"No sign of Van Zandt yet?" I asked as we walked back toward our cars. "Not yet. The guy at the cargo hangar told us Van Zandt's horses arrived by commercial shipper a whileago, but they haven't heard from Van Zandt all day. You think he was in it with Paris?"

"I still believe he killed Jill. But Trey said Paris got out of his bed to go check the horses that night. Jill's body was left to be found, and whoever put it there knew everyone would connect it to Jade. That furthers Paris' plan."

"We know Van Zandt was at The Players that night," Landry said. "He was all over the girl. Say he followed her out, thinking to pick up the pieces after Jade had broken her heart. Maybe she said no and he didn't want to hear it. She ends up dead."

"Paris comes on the scene and convinces Van Zandt to dump the body in the manure pit," I speculated. "Was he involved in the rest of it? I don't know. Chad tried to tell me someone had actually raped Erin, that Paris had let things get out of hand. Maybe Van Zandt came into it and took over."

"If that's what happened, I'm sure she'll spill it," Landry said. "She's in custody, he's not. Nothing ruins a partnership faster than threat of jail time. Good work, Estes."

"Just doing my civic duty."

"You should still have a badge."

I looked away. "Oh, well, don't you say the sweetest things? I wouldn't express that opinion around the

SO, if I were you." "f.u.c.k 'em. It's true." I felt embarra.s.sed that his compliment meant so much to me. "Any news of Chad and Erin?" I asked as my phone rang. Landry shook his head. "Estes," I said into the phone. "Elena?" The tremulous sound of her voice sent fear through me like shards of gla.s.s. "Molly? Molly, what's wrong?" I was already hustling toward Landry's car. I could see the concern on his face as he kept pace with me. "Elena, you have to come. Please come!" "I'm on my way! What's happening?" In the background I could hear pounding, like someone banging on a door. "Molly?" And then a strange and terrible keening sound that ended with her name. "Hurry!" Molly said. The last thing I heard before the line went dead was an eerie voice: "I only ever wanted a nice life. . . . I only ever wanted a nice life. . . ."

Okay," Landry said. "Here's how we're playing it. I'm going in first with the uniforms." I let him talk, not caring what he said, not caring what his plan was. All I could think of was Molly. If someone had harmed that child . . . I thought of Chad and Erin running at large. If they had come back to the house-"Elena, did you hear me?" I didn't answer him. He turned in at the driveway and ran the car onto the lawn. A radio car turned in behind us. I was out of the car before it was stopped.

"Dammit, Estes!"

The front door was open. I went through it without a care to what danger might be on the other side.

"Molly!"

Landry was right behind me. "Seabright? It's Landry."

"Molly!"

I took the stairs two at a time.

If someone has harmed that child . . .

L andry went toward Seabright's home office. The house was eerily silent, except for a small, faintsound coming from beyond the office doors. "Seabright?" Landry moved along the wall, gun drawn. In his peripheral vision, he saw Elena bolt up the steps.

"Seabright?" he called out again.

The sound was growing more distinct. Singing, he thought. He sidled along the door, stretching his arm as long as he could to reach the doork.n.o.b.

Singing. No, more like chanting. "All I ever wanted was a nice life."

M olly!"

I had no idea which of the closed doors belonged to her. I stood to the side and opened the first one I came to. Chad's room.

If someone has harmed that child . . .

I shoved open another door. Another unoccupied bedroom. "Molly!" If someone has harmed that child . . . The third door opened an inch and hit something. I shoved at it. "Molly!" If someone has harmed that child . . .

T he doors to the study fell open, revealing a gruesome tableau. Krystal Seabright stood behind her husband's desk, covered in blood. Blood streaked her bleached hair, her face, the pretty pink dress she had been wearing when Landry had seen her earlier. Bruce Seabright was slumped over his otherwise immaculate desk, a butcher's knife sticking out of one of perhaps fifty stab wounds in his back, neck, and head.

"Jesus G.o.d," Landry murmured.

Krystal looked at him, her eyes gla.s.sy and wide.

"I only ever wanted a nice life. He ruined it. He ruined everything."

I f someone has harmed that child . . .

I pulled back, took a deep breath, and rammed the door with my shoulder as hard as I could.

"Molly!"

The block on the other side of the door gave a few inches, enough for me to wedge into the opening and

shove it a few inches more. Someone had piled half the furniture in the room as a blockade.

"Elena!"

Molly ran into me full force. I fell to my knees and caught her in my arms and held her as tightly as I had

ever held anyone in all my life. I put my arms around Molly Seabright and held her while she cried, and held her for a long time after that.

For her . . . and for myself.

All I could say to Molly as I hugged her tight was that it was over. It's over. It's over. It's over. But that was a lie of such grand proportions, all lies that had come before it were dwarfed in comparison. Nothing was over for Molly, except having a family.

Krystal, fragile in the best of times, had shattered under the pressure. She blamed her husband for what she believed had happened to Erin. The kidnapping, the rape. Landry told me she had suspected Bruce of sending Paris Montgomery to her to rent the Loxahatchee house where the whole drama had been staged.

She had reached her limit. In the end, one might have tried to put a n.o.bler face on it and said Krystal had defended her daughter, had taken revenge for her. Sadly, I didn't believe that at all. I believed killing Bruce had been punishment not for ruining her daughter, but for ruining her fairy tale.

I only ever wanted a nice life.

I wondered whether Krystal would have stayed with Bruce if she had found out that what they had all been put through had been orchestrated at least in part by her daughter. I suspected she would have put the blame squarely on Erin and no one else. She would have found a way to excuse Bruce's sins and keep her pretty life intact.

The human mind has an amazing capacity for rationalization.

Landry sent Krystal to the Sheriff's Office in a cruiser, then drove Molly and me to Sean's farm. Not a word was said about calling Child Protective Services, which was standard operating procedure in a case like Molly's.

We rode in silence most of the way, drained of our emotions and our energies, weighed down by the magnitude of what had gone on. The only sound in the car was the crackle of Landry's radio. An old familiar noise for me. For a moment I felt as nostalgic for it as I ever had for any song from my adolescence.

As we turned in at the Avadonis gate, Landry used his cell phone to call Weiss at the airport. There was

still no sign of Van Zandt, and the plane was ready to taxi onto the runway.

Exhausted, Molly had fallen asleep leaning against me in the backseat. Landry scooped her out and carried her into the guest house. I led the way to the second small bedroom, thinking what an odd family unit we made.

"Poor kid," he said as he and I walked back outside onto the little patio. "She'll grow up in a hurry."

"She's already done that," I said, sitting down sideways on a delicate iron chaise with a thick cushion."That one was a child for a minute and a half. Do you have kids?" "Me? No." Landry sat beside me. "You?" "Always seemed like a bad idea to me. I've watched too many people screw it up. I know how badly that hurts."

I knew he was watching me, trying to read into me, into my words. I looked up at the stars and marveled at the vulnerability I had just shown him.

"Molly's great, though," I said. "Figures. She raised herself watching the Discovery Channel and A and