"I know that. As I said, it was a friend." Daniel's interest in her visitor went beyond concern for her safety. She looked down at her hands, unable to meet his questioning gaze. Why should it matter to her that he was jealous? But it did. Even at the thought, her heart beat faster. Daniel Dubonet was a man in whom she could have developed a real interest. Except that he was a liar and G.o.d knew what else.

Daniel saw that she wasn't going to give him any more information. He started at the windows, checking the locks. As he worked his way around the room, Familiar darted between his legs. "Hey." He looked down at the black cat who had swiftly untied his shoelaces. "What gives with the kitty?"

"Familiar is a peculiar cat." Sarah tugged at a strand of her hair. "It's as if he can understand everything I say to him. And the worst part is, I think he may be smarter than I am."

At Sarah's friendlier tone, Daniel felt a rush of grat.i.tude to the cat. Bending over, he picked him up and carried him to the sofa. "Now I have to retie my shoes." As he sat down, Familiar pushed the family alb.u.m toward him. With a quick flick of a black cat paw, he revealed the page with the picture of Jean-Claude as a young boy. There were several snapshots, including one of Jean-Claude and Sarah playing together in a sandbox. Familiar slapped Jean-Claude's face with a soft paw.

"Meow."

"Meow, what?" Daniel pulled the book closer. The black paw came down on the young boy's face again.

"Who is this, Sarah? Familiar has an intense interest in him."

"That's my uncle Vince's son, Jean-Claude."

Daniel looked up, startled. "Your cousin?"

Sarah dropped her hair. "No, not really." But it was almost as if they were blood relatives. She felt awkward even thinking about Jean-Claude and his recent romantic interest in her. "Uncle Vince is my adopted uncle. There's no blood kinship, just a lot of affection."

"Meow!" Familiar slapped the picture and then ran to the front door.

Daniel didn't believe what he was seeing. "Was Jean-Claude the guy who was here?" He motioned to the winegla.s.ses.

"How did...?" Sarah looked at Familiar. "You little rat fink!"

"Meow!" Familiar's voice was indignant.

"Thanks." Daniel gave Familiar a long, approving look. "That's one h.e.l.l of a cat."

"I should have known that you guys would stick together. I can't believe he-"

"Ratted on you?" Daniel laughed.

Familiar leapt across the room and swatted Daniel on the shin as if to say enough.

"Well, at least Familiar is on my side," Daniel gloated.

"And what side is that?" Sarah asked coldly.

"The side of truth, justice and the American way." Daniel's face grew serious. "And I'm hoping it's the side that will prove to you that I'm a good person, Sarah, because it's becoming more and more important to me that you believe that."

THERE THEY GO AGAIN, using animals as verbs-ratted. What a crude and ugly term. In my days of wandering the alleys of Washington, rodents gave me some of my better moments. They may be sneaky and steal food, but I've never known one to turn-forgive me, birdies-stool pigeon. Ah, well, that only goes to show what poor observers of animal nature human beings are. See, I've often discovered that people will inform on each other. How would it sound to say "You humaned on me"? Much, much more logical.

At any rate, Daniel and Sarah have acknowledged that little spark between them. That's a step in the right direction. I'm not certain that I have a true reading on Jean-Claude. He's very sophisticated, and I do believe that humans can grow up and change for the better. I've seen it happen.

That isn't my primary concern at the moment. Dotty and Bureau Boy may believe the coast is clear now, but I don't think so. It wasn't Jean-Claude who was following us. I'd be willing to stake one of my lives on it. He knows the way here. He didn't have to follow anyone. And if it wasn't him, it had to be someone else. And it wasn't Daniel, because even though he was tailing us, he saw someone else.

My kitty instincts tell me there's going to be some trouble tonight. If I have to figure out a way to trick Daniel, he's going to stay around. Dolly is pretty self-sufficient, but tonight she's going to need the brawn of a man and the brain of a cat.

Chapter Ten.

"That sounds very n.o.ble, but I'm not buying into it. I think it would be best if you left." Sarah couldn't allow herself to believe what Daniel was saying. He'd tricked her before, had drawn her into something that could well cost her the career she'd worked so hard to establish. She didn't believe that Daniel was involved in killing anyone, much less Cody, but that still didn't make him an honorable man. And both honor and honesty were her basic requirements.

"I'll leave the house, but I'm staying outside in the car. I'm concerned for you, Sarah."

"I'm perfectly safe here. No one knows where I am. Besides, today went perfectly fine. There were no problems. You think this relates back to my past. Well, I've got a news flash for you. I think this is all something to do with you and your past. You're the one with make-believe agents coming back from training. You're the one who was abducted at gunpoint by a cabbie. You're the one whose apartment was destroyed and whose reports have gone missing. Not me. I'm only involved on the periphery of this, and I didn't have a trouble in the world until you showed up at my door at midnight."

Daniel nodded. "You're right in most of what you say. But I was at your place because three people got sick. And you called me back because of the pepper, remember?"

Sarah did. She couldn't deny those facts. As much as she wanted to blame Daniel, it seemed as if their fates had been thrown together by some outside force. She was definitely caught up in something beyond her control. Maybe he was, too.

She glanced at him and caught the hungry look in his eyes. Her body tensed in antic.i.p.ation of both pleasure and pain. She'd never trusted herself to care about anyone. Not care in the sense that she was willing to give more than a small measure of herself. Until now. Daniel wasn't the best candidate for the position in her heart, but he was the one her heart had chosen. She hadn't wanted to admit that fact, not even to herself. But as she looked at him, she knew it was true.

"I did call you back," she admitted in a softer voice.

"You did that because you thought you could trust me."

She couldn't help a slight smile. "I did it to pay you back for coming to my house at midnight."

"And because you thought I would test those peppers. And I did. I didn't believe you completely, that's true. But I gave you the benefit of the doubt and asked Cody to run the tests."

Sarah scooped Familiar into her arms. "Why did you do that? You could have refused."

"I probably should have refused. I didn't know at the time why I did it, but I think I know now." He walked to her and gently reached out to stroke Familiar's head. "Sometimes your heart is smarter than your brain. When you saw this cat, you risked taking him into your home. You risked caring and losing because your heart made the decision. I think when I saw you, my heart made a decision, too. It recognized that you were the person I could become deeply involved with, and though my brain tried to throw up all the roadblocks of training and caution, my heart won out." His hand moved from the cat up to Sarah's chin. He lifted her face with the utmost gentleness until she was staring up at him.

"I don't know you well enough to say that I love you, but I believe that, given time, I will. If you give me the chance, I'll love you like you've never been loved before. And I believe you'll love me."

Sarah knew that a wise woman would back away from this. Here was a man employed by an agency she had every reason to despise. He'd lied to her, by omission. He was in danger of being labeled a murderer. Everywhere he went, troubled followed. Yet the touch of his hand on her face was the most rea.s.suring thing she'd felt in years.

"I can't handle this now." She spoke the only defense she had left. Very slowly, she stepped away.

Daniel's hand lowered to his side. "You don't have to. All I'm asking is that you let me stay. Close enough to look out for you, but not close enough to crowd you. I've made a choice, Sarah. I've given up my career." He lifted his eyebrows. "Not exactly my choice. Circ.u.mstances played a big part in it. When I drove out here to follow you, I knew that I was making a decision that would cost me my job."

"You shouldn't have done that! I'm perfectly fine here." Sarah felt a moment's panic. She couldn't be responsible for this, not for Daniel's loss of career. It wasn't fair that he was going to try to pin that on her. Not with everything else.

Daniel smiled. "You might be part of the reason, but I made the decision. It was the decision I wanted to make. I guess you could say I've lost my confidence in the Bureau." His smile was bitter, and he held a finger to his lips to hush her protests so that he could continue. "That's wildly understated. It would be fair to say I think someone in the FBI is actively trying to injure me, defame me, and possibly kill me."

"Why?" Sarah knew he wasn't kidding.

"That's a good question. One we'll solve together, if you allow me to."

"This isn't up to me."

"Whether we work together is completely up to you. 1 have to resolve this. My good name is at stake. If I'm ever going to have a future in law enforcement, even outside the Bureau, I'm going to have to figure out what happened to Cody. I believe, and I think you do, too, that we're tied together. I don't know how or why, but we are linked."

Sarah nodded. What he was saying made sense. His honest a.s.sessment of his emotions had frightened her, but he wasn't going to push that issue. Why, suddenly, did she have two men vying for her when in the past twelve months she couldn't have scared up a date to save her life? Nothing made sense. Nothing at all.

"Let me stay tonight and make sure you're okay. We need to put all of our cards on the table and see if we can figure this out. My past, your past. No secrets."

She hesitated, then nodded. "Okay."

"Good." Daniel started to go to her, but he stopped. "No pressure, I promise. Tonight is strictly business. When all of this is behind us, we can think about the personal element of our relationship, agreed?"

"Let's cross that bridge when we get there," Sarah answered. Caution had always been her motto, and she wasn't about to jump off the cliff now. "I'll see what's in the cupboard and make some dinner for us." She glanced out the window. The bay had taken on a dark, dull cast that spoke of a storm brewing. "It looks like bad weather is about to set in."

"Why don't we call for pizza delivery? That'll save you from cooking, and we can sample that wine."

Sarah grinned. She was tired of cooking, and pizza sounded perfect.

An hour later she was lying on the floor, her head on a pillow, and a fire crackling in the fireplace. Familiar dozed in her arms, and Daniel had a.s.sumed a comfortable position on the sofa. To Sarah's surprise, she found herself talking about her childhood. She'd already told Daniel about her early love of cooking and the trips to New Orleans with her parents and Vincent Minton. "He encouraged me, I suppose. And he introduced me to the finest chefs in New Orleans. They all took me seriously, even though I was so small I had to stand on a stool to stir a pot." She was smiling at the memories.

They'd avoided any talk of her father, but Sarah knew they were headed that way. She was of two emotions. Her first inclination was to resist, to protect herself and her family by remaining quiet. But there was also the impulse to tell Daniel, to set the record straight once and for all.

"Does your mother cook?" Daniel asked. He relaxed on the sofa and enjoyed the fact that Sarah was only a few feet from him. He studied her profile against the fire and wondered at the pale softness of her skin. It was almost more than he could bear not to reach out and touch it, just to feel the sensation of it beneath his fingertips. But he held himself in check.

For the first time since he'd met her, Sarah was actually relaxing. He'd never noticed how wound up she was most of the time, until now. With her head propped on a pillow and her third gla.s.s of an excellent merlot in her hand, she was mellowing into a woman who compelled him deeply. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to hold her, and to talk with her until there were no secrets left between them. The raw power of his emotions frightened him enough to keep him still.

He'd felt varying degrees of s.e.xual attraction for many other women, and he'd wooed and won his fair share of them. Many of them he'd enjoyed in every sense of the word-as friends, lovers and comrades. But Sarah was something else. She stirred his blood in a slower, more enticing fashion.

He realized she was answering his question, talking about picnics and fried chicken and apple pies. She made it sound as if she'd lived the American dream of childhood. But he knew that wasn't the whole truth.

"And your father, was he a chef, also?"

"Daddy cooked great spaghetti. And he actually made better piecrust than anyone I've ever known. But he didn't cook often. Every time he got in the middle of something, he was called out, so he said it wasn't worth the effort. Mom agreed, because she had to clean up his mess, and she said it was amazing how a man could cook one dish and mess up every pot in the house."

They laughed together, and Daniel leaned down to refill her gla.s.s. He felt a twinge of deceit as he moved the questions along to where he wanted to go.

"You father loved his job, didn't he?"

"Until the last." Sarah felt her body begin to tense, and she willed herself to relax. Daniel was asking what he had to know. Once it was said, he'd believe what he wanted. But if she wouldn't tell him, then she couldn't really blame him for going to Jenkins for whatever lies that old agent had to tell. Daniel was a man trained to seek out facts, and he had to look wherever he found a clue.

"After the accusations were made, Daddy kept doing his job, but it was like he didn't walk as proud. He felt that everyone thought he was a crook. It... diminished him."

The anger and bitterness in Sarah's last words made Daniel want to go to her. He reached down to grip her shoulder, one small gesture that showed be understood how tough that would be for a man of character. "I'm sorry," he said. How was it possible that Sarah saw her father one way and a trained FBI agent saw him another? He sat up, not knowing what to do with his sudden burst of anxious energy.

Sarah turned so that she was staring at the fire, and he saw the cat rise to lick a tear from her cheek. Lucky cat, he thought ruefully. But he had given his word he wouldn't pressure her, and if he had to go dunk himself in Chesapeake Bay to keep that word, he intended to do so.

"You're wondering how I could love my father so much, and yet how other people thought he was a crook, aren't you?"

"Yes." He tightened his fingers in his hair, tugging just enough to put pressure on the roots. He noticed that Sarah, too, had a strand of hair that she was twisting and pulling. They both had some of the same nervous habits.

"That man, Jenkins. The reason I got so upset when you went to talk to him is because he had a personal vendetta against Dad. Believe it or not, he did. He set out to prove Daddy was guilty of something, anything. And he didn't stop until my father was dead. I think he may be the only person in the world my mother wishes dead."

The cold starkness of her words reached Daniel. He believed her-and he understood. "Agents trained by the FBI aren't supposed to work on personal vendettas," he said softly, "but it's happened in the past, and it will happen again. A law enforcement agency is only as good as the men in it. Some men are corrupt, and so are some agents."

Sarah shifted so that she was looking up at him. "You believe me?"

"I believe it's possible. Jenkins was...is a highly respected man."

Her hopeful expression fell away, exposing deep sorrow.

"But even to me, his determination to nail your father seems obsessive." Daniel struggled to put his feelings and intuitions into careful words. He didn't want to raise Sarah's hopes that he was committed to her way of thinking. He wasn't. But he wasn't one hundred percent in line with the FBI's stand, either. His thoughts had taken some radical curves since Cody's death.

"Then you're willing to consider that my father was an innocent man?" Blood rushed through Sarah's heart, giving her a feeling of light-headedness. She put her winegla.s.s on the hearth and eased into a sitting position. Familiar, dislodged, recurled himself against her thigh.

"Perfectly willing to consider that possibility."

"If he was innocent, then you might go one step further and think about the possibility that he was... murdered?"

Daniel had wondered if Sarah's thinking had ever gone along those lines. "If he was innocent and someone was going to that much trouble to frame him, then it is very possible it became cost-effective simply to kill him."

Spoken so factually, the words did not pierce Sarah as deeply as she'd expected. The same thought had been percolating in her head for some time. She'd always resisted, because with that line of thinking came a necessary line of action-revenge.

Daniel watched her jaw harden. He started to admonish her against the thoughts he knew she was having, but he knew he'd think exactly the same thing. Exactly.

"Tell me what you know," Sarah requested.

Her request was unexpected, but Daniel was glad to see her emotions hadn't overpowered her ability to reason. She was some kind of woman.

"Jenkins was certain your father took a payoff. He said he had an informant."

"An informant." Sarah repeated the words as she tried to think of who that might be. "Male or female?"

"A man, but he didn't say who. Only that it was someone he trusted implicitly. He implied it was someone who'd worked with your father." Daniel didn't want to tell Sarah too much. What if she went off half-c.o.c.ked and got herself in trouble, or even worse, in a dangerous position?

Sarah rolled onto her knees and hobbled the few steps to the telephone.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm calling my mother," she said, as if he were asking the most foolish of all questions. "She'll remember everyone who ever knew my father at that time. If there's an informant in the woodwork, we'll sniff him out."

Daniel pressed the switch hook down. It was well past midnight, and the fire they'd built in the fireplace was glowing embers. "Wait until morning. You'll have her up all night, fretting and worrying, and she won't be able to think a bit better."

Sarah hesitated. She wasn't used to having anyone second-guess her actions. It was an odd feeling, to listen to Daniel and accept that he was right, even in such a minor thing. "Okay."

His hand slipped over her fingers and curled them inside his. "You are one very together woman," he said. "I know how hard this is, and you're thinking, sorting, using your brain. Not just turning on the emotions."

The warmth of his hand on hers was doing something strange to her body, but Sarah didn't want to acknowledge that. "I've had a lot of years to think about things. There were always some loose ends, some questions without answers. My mother won't talk about this. Or she hasn't in the past. Now she's going to have to. After Dad died she became so.. .pa.s.sive. If someone killed him, that would explain a lot of things. If, and I know it's a big if, my father was murdered, I want to find out who did it and make them pay."

"And we will."

Sarah felt the tickle of a smile at the corners of her mouth. We. Daniel was still with her. So far.