When she finished, she said, "Are you still sure you don't want me to come over?"

"No." To her surprise, Sig sounded firm, more in control.

"I need to mull this over while I watch the talking heads."

She hung up, and Riley let out a long, cathartic breath. She was restless, her mind racing in a thousand different directions at once.

She turned to Straker.

"How about dinner out? There's a quiet little Thai restaurant a few blocks from here. We can walk over and pretend we're normal people."

"I didn't know any normal people lived in Cambridge."

"Straker, you are so damned obnoxious. I don't know how anyone stands you."

He grinned.

"You stand me pretty well, as I recall."

"That was post-traumatic stress. It took jumping out of a burning building to get me into bed with you."

"Ah." "No sane woman would go to bed with a shot-up, burned-out FBI agent who never could get along with anyone."

"But you've regained your sanity?"

She eyed him, felt the traitorous reaction, low and deep. She licked her lips.

"I'm trying."

"Try away, St. Joe. Come on, we'll do dinner out. It'll remove temptation for an hour or so."

Unfortunately, she thought, temptation would be right across the table from her.

But maybe he, too, needed some semblance of normalcy, some balance between the life he'd led for the past six months and the highly charged atmosphere, the danger and questions and fears, of the past week--which, she presumed, was more like his "normal" life.

They sat in the back of the tiny restaurant and ordered too much food, and by unspoken agreement, they talked about things other than fires, murder and sabotage. He wasn't a regular guy. She'd known that when she was six. But he was even less of a regular guy at thirty-four.

Regular guys didn't rescue hostages from terrorists. They didn't, she thought, have friends like Emile Labreque, and they didn't touch her the way John Straker had.

"Do you like being an FBI agent?" she asked.

"I'm good at it."

"That's not the same."

He smiled.

"It suits me. It's good work, rewarding work. For a while back in April, May, I thought I'd quit, buy a lobster boat."

"But you've changed your mind," Riley said.

"I figure dead bodies would keep turning up until I got the point."

When they walked back to her apartment, she found her hand in his, found herself leaning against his strong shoulder, whispering, "You don't have to sleep on the futon."

"What about the Holiday Inn?" "A cheap Mainer like you paying for a room when a free one's available?" She smiled.

"I don't think so." "A free room and a willing woman. Life could be worse."

She punched his arm.

"St. Joe, you've been waiting for years for me to walk back into your life. You need a man who doesn't tiptoe around that big mouth of yours."

"You didn't walk back in, Straker. You barreled in."

He squeezed her hand.

"Sexier that way."

When they reached her apartment, he made no pretenses, just scooped her up and carried her back to her bedroom caveman style, smothered her laughter with a breathtaking, spine-melting kiss. He was indeed, she thought, an intensely physical man, with an enthusiasm for sex that was staggering, that made her feel as if he would never get enough of her.

They had a cycle going. The more he wanted her, the more she wanted him; the more she wanted him, the more he wanted her. On and on it went, until the cycle fell in on itself and they couldn't stop, couldn't breathe, couldn't imagine release.

And when it happened, when release came, it wasn't gentle, or slow, or easy, but soul penetrating, washing over them in great, searing waves, as if it had a logic and a will of its own, one that bypassed all careful reasoning, all knowledge, all common sense.

"I can't fall in love with you," she whispered, drawing the blankets up over them as she settled against his shoulder.

He slid his hand over the curve of her hip, moved lower, eased his fingers between her legs.

"Of course you can't. Falling's not your style."

And his mouth found hers, his tongue probing with the same erotic rhythm as his fingers, beginning the cycle again.

"What's your style?" she asked as he kissed her throat, took a nipple between his lips.

"I'm better at action than words."

He raised up off her and eased his fingers away, then entered with a deep, hard thrust that made her cry out with its intensity. He didn't follow with another, but stayed in her, caught up her hand in his and locked eyes with her. A man of action. A man of great physical needs.

He was asking her not to fall, but to take control, to choose.

"Again," she breathed.

"Don't stop."

"As if I could," he said, thrusting harder, deeper.

Much later, she slipped out of bed, pulled on a bathrobe and went into the living room. She turned on a light and sat on the futon with a clipboard and a pencil, drew a line down the middle of a yellow pad.

On the left, she jotted everything she knew to be a fact. On the right, she jotted everything else.

When she finished, her hands were shaking and she was fighting tears.

There was more under the 'everything else" column. None of it looked good for Emile.

Straker came and sat beside her. He'd put on jeans, nothing else. He took her clipboard, examined it.

"Not bad. You'd make it through Quantico."

"I'm afraid for Emile," she said.

"He's always believed in destiny, fate. That's how he could take on so much for so many years, without fear. He's never been able to look over his shoulder and see his enemies coming. And Matt" -She gulped for air.

"I'm afraid for him, too. He's in over his head, isn't he?"

Straker was expressionless. "He should tell the police what he knows.

Bow out and let them do their job."

"Sig couldn't stand to lose him. Straker, she's pregnant, she can't"

"She knows all the risks." He laid Riley's clipboard on top of a stack of magazines.

"Sig might be a free spirit instead of a scientist, but she's no one's fool."

Riley stared at her columns of facts, rumors, musings, suppositions.

"Bennett Granger came aboard the Encounter at the last minute. I wrote that down under facts. I don't know if it makes any difference--I just jotted down stuff as it came to mind."

"Why the last minute?"

"Spur of the moment, he said. He did that sort of thing from time to time. This wasn't one of Emile's big research expeditions--we were just going out for a few days to test an experimental submersible. My own reasons for being aboard were tangential." She swallowed, barely able to continue. "Do you suppose whoever sabotaged the Encounter would have done it if they'd realized Bennett was aboard?"

"It's something to consider." Straker's tone was professional, unemotional.

She shivered, suddenly cold.

"I don't know how you do this kind of work for a living."

"Because it's necessary."

She nodded. "If this was your case" -- "It's not my case. I haven't been treating it as my case. I'm Emile's friend. I'm your friend. I told you right from the beginning I'm not acting in a professional capacity." He managed a quick smile.

"Which is a good thing. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to sleep with you, and that wouldn't be any fun."

She smiled, feeling less cold.

"Thank you."

"It's easy to be reassuring in the middle of the night. In the cold light of day..." He got to his feet, touched her hair.

"We'll take another look at your list in the morning."

Fifteen -^ @^~ Otraker listened to Riley explain her plan of action-or, more accurately, inaction--as he drove her into Boston in the morning. With her leather tote on her lap and wearing a crisp white shirt and black pants, she was ready to spend the day as director of recovery and rehabilitation for the Boston Center for Oceanographic Research. Henry Armistead, she said, would just have to put up with her.

"I'm going to try to sit tight," she said.

"I think it's important to give the authorities a chance to pick apart Sam's movements in the past few weeks and get on with finding out how he died, who's framing Emile and setting fires."

Straker had his doubts about Riley St. Joe ever sitting tight, but he kept silent.

"I suppose answers would be easier to come by if my damned grandfather and brother-in-law quit their cloak-and-dagger games and talked to investigators." She inhaled, her frustration with them palpable.

"But I understand. I was aboard the Encounter, Straker. If I were in Matt's or Emile's place, I'd probably do what they're doing.

"You haven't been much better," he pointed out.

"It's going to be a close call whether they end up with charges against them."

Her arms tensed, and her eyes darkened a fraction. A week ago he might not have noticed. Now he noticed everything she did. Which, he knew, would be of no comfort to her whatsoever. She said, "Emile won't care.

Matt. " She inhaled.

"He's probably never even had a parking ticket.

But he can afford a good lawyer. "

Straker shook his head.

"Yep. You're going to sit tight." His tone was laced with sarcasm and amusement at how un self-aware she could be.

"You'll start to twitch the minute someone hands you a report on the skin problems of a moray eel and you realize this is it, no bad guys to root out."

"I like my work."

"So?"

She shot him a stubborn look.

"So what?"

"So I give you thirty minutes before you start climbing the walls."

"You're not going to give me anything. You're going to leave me alone.

Got it, Straker? I mean it. Henry still has you down as a stalker, you know. "