He nodded.

"I used the radio in my boat."

"Thanks."

He'd arrived on the scene just as she and Sig leaped off the woodshed roof. His training had kicked into gear, the tight control, the crisp professionalism. He'd dealt with the firefighters, the police, the EMTs, informed Sheriff Dorrman they were following Sig to the hospital.

For once, Riley thought, she and Straker weren't at cross-purposes--but she didn't want to get ahead of herself. Right now, her interests dovetailed with his. When they didn't, so much for being allies.

"Thank God you didn't stay tonight." Her voice was distant, almost as if it were coming from the back seat.

"You'd have been downstairs where the fire started."

"We might have caught it in time."

She shut her eyes. We. As if she'd have stayed downstairs with him.

But whatever Straker was to her, at least he was there. Sig was so damned alone. Married, pregnant with twins, but alone.

Not, Riley amended, that she and Straker were a pair in the making.

After months of isolation and recuperation, of course he'd have at her when he got the chance. It wasn't a ringing endorsement of her attractions, but a practical, objective look at the facts that dictated that conclusion. This was John Straker. He'd never liked her.

She wasn't his type. The sexual electricity he generated just proved what all that time alone could do to a man.

As for herself, she had no explanation. The stress of finding Sam Cassain's body, Emile's disappearance? She didn't know.

And yet earlier on the dock, she'd sensed the possibility of more between them than sex. That, she knew, was dangerous thinking. There was no question he wanted sex. He was physical, earthy, unleashed after many long months of self-denial. It was a tough combination to resist, and she found herself increasingly unable--unwilling--to bother trying. But expecting anything else from him beyond hot, torrid sex was insanity on her part. She wasn't one for self- delusion.

She felt a twinge of guilt at her train of thought. It was so much easier to think about going to bed with Straker than about fires and sirens and her and Sig's narrow escape.

Riley twisted her hands together and blurted, "Sig thinks Matt might have financed Sam Cassain to find the Encounter and bring up its engine. That's where the fire on the ship started."

Straker nodded without surprise.

"Makes sense."

"He and Sam couldn't have done it alone. They must have left a trail."

He downshifted, turned into the hospital driveway.

"If they did, Emile knows. That's why he took off."

Riley fell back against the seat.

"He's crazy."

Straker pulled up to the emergency room.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course I can walk."

But when she hit the sidewalk, her legs went out from under her without warning, and for a mortifying second she thought she might pass out.

Some idiot saw her and called for a stretcher.

Straker came around the car and shook his head.

"Forget the stretcher.

You'd have to staple-gun her to it. "

But once inside, he turned her over to a very intense young doctor and told him to check her out. Straker had that FBI air of authority about him, and Riley looked like hell. Not a good combination. He slipped off to see about Sig while the doctor checked her blood pressure, eyes, nose, mouth, lungs. Any bruises or sprains or pain from jumping?

Her right forearm was scraped and bloody. She hadn't noticed. He had a nurse clean and bandage it.

"My sister," Riley said.

"How is she?"

"The doctors are with her." "What does that mean?"

It meant she'd have to wait. She staggered back to the waiting room, and after a few minutes, Straker joined her. He shoved a bottle of water at her.

"Drink up. They won't let anyone see Sig yet. I called your mother.

Your father's there, too. They're on their way."

"They must be out of their minds with worry."

"The hospital's calling Caroline Granger on Mount Desert."

Riley nodded dully.

"She's up for the weekend. Abigail and Henry are there, too."

"Then that saves you from having to tell Matt."

She bristled.

"I'm not telling that son of a bitch anything. The hospital shouldn't, either."

Straker's eyes went dark.

"Sig's his wife. If they're not divorced, the medical staff won't really have any choice."

"For all I know he's the one who set Emile's place on fire!"

Straker took her by the shoulders and pushed her, not that gently, onto a chair.

"You don't believe that."

"Do not tell me what I believe and don't believe."

"Okay. / don't believe it."

She started to shake. She was exhausted, irritable, smelled like a chimney. Here she was, so glad to have Straker with her, and she was barking at him. But her sister was hurting, and the only real home Riley had known as a child had just been torched. When she'd smelled the smoke, she'd assumed she'd messed up the dampers on the woodstove.

She'd pulled on hiking pants and slipped on her sneakers before realizing it wasn't that simple.

"I felt the fire," she said.

"I was bending down to tie my shoes, and I knew. I can't explain it."

"You don't have to. It happens all the time. Somehow you put together the danger signs on an instinctive level, before they register in your conscious mind."

"I was afraid Sig wouldn't make it through the window. She's tall, and her stomach" -- "She did make it."

"I had to yell at her. She was still so done in from throwing up."

Riley couldn't hold it in anymore. She couldn't keep up the fight.

She sank her head into her hands and cried, sobbed, coughed, choked.

She smeared black gunk over her face.

When she'd finished crying, Straker took her water bottle and dampened a couple of tissues for her. She wiped her face and hands, blew her nose.

"I'm a mess."

"That's the least of your problems."

He wasn't going to pull any punches. And he was right. She flopped back against her chair. "I want to see Sig."

Lou Dorrman arrived, and Straker stood back while the sheriff had Riley tell him about her night, start to finish. She didn't volunteer anything about her brother-in-law showing up after dinner, and Dorrman didn't ask. When she finished, he turned to Straker, who calmly explained how he'd come upon the fire just as the St. Joe sisters were leaping off the woodshed roof.

"Looks like we have a firebug on our hands," the sheriff said.

"Sam Cassain's place burned down the other night. Now Emile's."

"Any evidence they're related?" Straker asked.

"We got the fire out before Emile's woodshed burned completely, found suspicious materials tucked off in the far corner. He has a nice selection of firebug favorites. Linseed oil, rags, beakers, candles, matches, string, an old-fashioned alarm clock." Don-man shook his head.

"It doesn't look good."

Riley shot to her feet.

"That's insane. Someone's setting him up."

The sheriff was unmoved. "Your grandpa needs to come in and explain himself."

"You can't possibly believe Emile would set his own place on fire!"

She paused, tried to calm herself. Shouting wasn't going to help the situation.

"Sheriff, you've known my grandfather for years. He wouldn't do something like that."

"The state police are involved. It's not like what I think or don't think's going to make a difference. They have to go by the evidence."

His cop gaze settled on Riley.

"We all do."

"But you have to look at the evidence with some degree of common sense."

"You talk to your FBI friend here," Don-man said.

"He'll tell you all about evidence. Now, I know you're looking for Emile. I'm going to tell you this once and only once. You listening?"

She sighed, nodded. Even her skin tingled with the frustration boiling through her.

"If you find him and don't tell us, you're going to be in a whole heap of trouble." He paused, let his words sink in.

"That's clear enough, isn't it?"

"You know Emile's not your man." She crossed her arms over her chest as if to keep herself from flying apart.

"He didn't kill Sam, and he didn't set those fires. It's just not possible."

"Then let him talk to the investigators, straighten everything out."

Don-man's tone said he was finished arguing with her and she'd better figure that out be fore he lost patience. The trauma of jumping out of a burning building with her pregnant sister would only excuse so much.

He yielded slightly.

"How's your sister?"

"I'm still trying to find out."

He nodded.

"I'll talk to her later. Hope she's okay."

He left, and Riley dropped back onto a chair next to Straker.

"You trying to make yourself disappear?"