"I see someone out there, and I'll shoot first, ask questions later. Take my chances the judge is a sports fan." He wasn't threatening, just stating fact. "A guy like that comes after you, you don't get a second chance. Ask Caroline. Ask the other women he sent to the emergency room. His nickname in the league was Gale Force. Guy handed out concussions like business cards. Ask Trent Green, Kurt Warner. We call those guys a snake bite: all it takes is one hit to kill you."

Gail Force. Walt wiped the smirk off his face, wondering why he'd never thought of that one himself.

"No more guns."

"How about a machete or a baseball bat?"

"Try the phone next time. That's why we're here."

"To protect and serve. Right, Sheriff?"

"Right."

"So protect me."

"Try the yellow pages."

"Find Gale, you'll do us all a favor."

"Let me know about setting up the thing with Boldt. The sooner the better."

"Two-eighty?" Wynn said as Walt turned to leave.

The comment spun him around.

"Your batting average. You're a switch hitter," he said. "Calluses." He indicated Walt's hands.

Walt looked down at his palms. "Maybe I'm a gardener," he said.

"Yeah, I can see that," Wynn said sarcastically. "Two-eighty," he repeated confidently.

"Two eighty-five," Walt answered. Impressed, but trying not to show it.

10.

The temptation proved too great and Walt made the turn at the split rail fence at the side of State Highway 75. He drove through the overbuilt log gate and turned left up the hill toward a stand of fir.

He approached the Engleton guesthouse thinking up an excuse for the visit. He stopped and returned to the Cherokee to retrieve his camera.

Movement caught his eye and he looked toward the main house in time to see a woman's silhouette standing in a downstairs window. It was Kira. She held something in her hand across her chest-a baseball bat, he realized.

Fiona opened the cottage's door wearing a T-shirt, navy blue sweat-pants, and rubber flip-flops. Her hair was held off her face by a pair of plastic clips.

"Problems?" she asked.

"You weren't answering calls," he said.

"No," she replied.

"We had a situation: a guy throwing shots in his backyard, believing a client of his was coming after him. I needed some pictures. Took them myself, no big deal."

"A broker? I wouldn't want to be a money manager in this town right now. I can't imagine the amounts people must have lost."

"No, not a money guy, a sports agent. Thought some ex-football jock was creeping around his backyard, and decided it was safer to shoot him than to say h.e.l.lo." He offered her his camera, making it clear it was a professional, not personal, visit. Wasn't sure why he felt that so important.

She staggered back a step, off balance. He caught her by the elbow and held on.

"You're saying he saw this . . . football guy?" she said.

"No. The whiskey might have done the seeing, I think. It was more likely a neighbor."

"Come in," she said, accepting the camera. "Want me to print these for you?"

"Please." He stepped inside.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

"Sit," she said.

"It's a nice place," he said.

"Have you never been here?"

"No."

"How pathetic of me. I can't believe it's your first time."

It was done up as an English cottage. Leslie Engleton had great taste and deep pockets.

"I was worried about you," he said, blurting it out.

"Me? That's nice of you. But I'm fine. Just quiet. You know me." She filled the kettle. "I do that now and then."

She got the stove lit under the kettle and sat down in front of a laptop at the breakfast table. She fished around in a box of wires at her feet and connected his camera to the computer.

"Yours?" he asked, admiring a photo of a black woman on a porch holding a small terrified child.

"Yes. Just after Katrina."

"Powerful."

"Thanks. So who was this guy with the gun? This sports guy?"

"Believe me, you don't care. Just another guy with a gun who shouldn't have been drinking. I gave him a warning."

She seemed about to say something, but didn't.

"No prowlers, I take it?" he asked.

"For the record, I tried to get Kira to take a trip with me. And that was before the campsite and the hikers. I'd just as soon not be here. For her sake, not mine," she added emphatically-a little too emphatically, he thought. "She doesn't need any more scares."

He recalled seeing Kira with the bat and made sense of it.

"Gilly's a good tracker," Walt said. "I think we'll catch this guy."

"You'd get no complaint from me. But seriously, did he know it was this football guy? How weird is that?"

The water was beginning to boil. She returned to the stove.

"He has a history with this guy."

"What kind of history?"

"Money. You're certainly the curious one tonight," he said.

"I like staying up on your cases, knowing what you're doing."

"Since when?" he asked.

"Since . . . I don't know. I just do. Particularly this prowler at the Berkholders' or now at this other guy's."

"Could have been the same guy, I suppose, though that's a long way to travel."

"Not so very far."

"That, and the Berkholders' home was empty at the time. With so many homes empty in this community, why hit one where there's a chance of running into someone?"

"Better stocked. Fresh food."

"So, you're the detective now?" He waited. "Hey, that was a joke."

"Ha, ha."

"Listen, Gilly and I found a spot with the gra.s.s beaten down outside the Berkholders'. This guy scouted the place, and timed it so no one was home. You don't have anything to worry about here."

"Which is why you parked the Jeep at the top of the hill where you can't miss it?"

"You noticed that," he said.

"Earth to Walt: I have a photographer's eye. I don't miss much."

"No, you don't, do you?"

His photographs had downloaded. She worked the laptop. Walt stood and looked over her shoulder, impressed with how she modified each one.

"That's amazing," he said.

"You can do anything to a picture. You know that."

"You can. Not me." can. Not me."

"Is it typical of squatters?" she asked. "Scouting a place like that?"

"Probably not."

"No, I didn't think so."

"Keeping all the lights on is good," he said. "He'll stay away, if he hasn't left the area already." He paused. "Why do we make everything about the office? I didn't come here to give you my camera. I thought about that at the last moment."

"Then why did you come here?"

He barely hesitated. All the time spent thinking about this moment, the right situation, and it came down to no thought at all.

He bent down and kissed her on the lips. Her eyes expressed her surprise, but her lips, warm and sweet with wine, pressed to his more tightly, and then her eyes shut and her hands came around his head, and her body shook as if caught in guttural laughter.

He pulled back and she held on to him saying, "Don't . . . don't you dare stop," kissing him hungrily.

Her chair went over backward, Walt throwing his arms around her and saving her from the fall, the weight and warmth of her pressed to him as he eased her to the floor, her hair spread like a fan on the throw rug. She was laughing, in fact, like a child opening an unexpected, yet long antic.i.p.ated, gift. Their bodies touching, hands beginning to explore and delight, she worked her fingers past his ears, holding his face an inch away from her own and managed to growl, "Why . . . so . . . long?"

Walt answered with smiling eyes, his fingers trapping a tear as it spilled down her cheek.

"Do we dare do this?" he whispered.

"You're d.a.m.n right we do," she answered breathlessly, tugging the shirttail from his waistband and running her hands up his back, delivering chills.

Time arrested all thought. Walt fell away from himself, from his planning and predetermining. They knocked a vase off the coffee table. She laughed harder, and slapped his hand as he reached to right it, grabbing and guiding his fingers lower on her. Scared and elated, both present and absent, he felt her respond to his touch, her legs parting, her warmth overwhelming. The scent of her, sacred and mysterious, engulfed him, intoxicating. Dizzy with her, overwhelmed, underprepared, and fearing inexperience, he fell victim to her, suddenly finding himself past any point of reason or thought, driven by human hunger and a forceful need to join her.

When it was over, when the flush beneath her collarbone flared and her bare flesh rippled with gooseflesh, she opened her eyes to the ceiling and smiled devilishly, chortling to herself.

"Oh my G.o.d," she said. She took him by the hair and tugged and laughed privately again and said more softly, "Oh my G.o.d."

He answered not with words-couldn't find any; they'd all deserted him-but with a squeeze of her hand and by lying next to her and hooking his ankle over hers so that their feet embraced as their bodies just had. They stared at the ceiling together.

"You must promise me," she said, "that you'll never pretend that didn't happen. It's all I ask."

"Promise."

Five minutes pa.s.sed into ten. She offered little touches as if making sure he was still there beside her, as if rea.s.suring herself. "There are moments you never forget," she said. "This is one of them."

"Agreed."