"I don't feel any connection to him," she admitted. "But I've never met him, so perhaps that's why."

"You've never met my mother, yet she seems to come into your head on a regular basis. Why not Ravino?"

"I can't answer that."

"Well, I can. Because he's not the one. It's my father," Dylan said with a resigned shrug. "It has to be him. This is his plan. Maybe he used Erica because he knew she was my source and that she could easily be bought. He's the one who figured out I was at my grand-mother's house. And he didn't kill me because he wasn't ready to have me die yet. There's something else he wants to do to me. Something else he wants me to know, perhaps."

Catherine listened as Dylan unraveled the twisted threads in his head. She didn't disagree with his assessment of what had happened so far, but she thought he was missing a critical piece; she just didn't know what it was. When he finally wound down she said, "Are you hungry? I read in the hotel brochure that they have a free continental breakfast. I could go down and get some pastries and tea-coffee for you."

"I don't want you to go anywhere without me. It's too dangerous. Let me get dressed. Then we'll go together."

Dylan got out of bed without any hint of self-consciousness and strode to the bathroom. He was about to shut the door when he stuck his head back out. "Next time don't take your shower without me. I had a few dreams of my own last night, and they involved you and me and some very slippery soap."

Her stomach clenched at the image his words created, and she was almost tempted to strip down and take another shower, but he was already closing the door. It was most likely a good thing, though. It was a new day, and they needed to focus on staying alive.

While Dylan showered she returned to reading. She started to skim, impatient with Ruth's retelling of the minutiae of her life. She'd never known anyone to take such careful note of every conversation, every bad moment, every little thing her kids or husband did to make her happy or sad. And yet on the other hand it was nice to have such a close look at the life of a woman who would probably never be able to tell any of her stories again. In her journal those stories would be forever remembered.

As Catherine flipped through a few more pages, an envelope fell out of the book. Her breath caught in her chest. Instinctively she knew that this was what she'd been looking for.

Before she could open it, Dylan walked out of the bathroom with a towel slung around his hips. He stopped, frowning as his gaze settled on the envelope in her hand. "What's that?"

"I'm not sure. I was just about to look."

Dylan's face tightened. He looked like he wanted to snatch the envelope out of her hand and burn it, but he didn't move, and she gave him credit for staring down his fear.

She pulled out a folded piece of paper and a faded photograph. She gazed at the picture first. It was of a bunch of people sitting under a big beach umbrella. There were four kids-two boys, two girls-two women, and a man. She recognized Dylan's mother from her wedding photograph, and, of course, there was Dylan, towheaded and sunburned, holding a red pail and an orange shovel. "It's you and Jake and your mom at the beach, I guess. I don't know who the other people are."

Dylan didn't step forward or make any attempt to look at the photograph. "What does the note say?"

She glanced down at the handwritten words and began to read aloud: " 'Dear Ruth, The summer is flying by. The boys have grown so much you won't recognize them. They love it here. There are lots of kids their age to play with. I must admit I love it, too. I know you think I'm selfish, leaving my husband every summer, but this place is where I feel safe, happy, and the truth is that Richard and I haven't been getting along for years, and recently our relationship has taken a turn for the worse. I want to make him happy, but it seems impossible. He won't talk to me about what he needs, and I can't seem to guess right. I always make him angry. He doesn't think I'm a good mother or a good wife.

" 'The day before we left, he slapped me. He apologized shortly thereafter, but he told me it was my fault for making him so mad, for not doing things right. Maybe it was my fault, but he shouldn't have struck me. I wasn't sure if I should tell you, and perhaps it's wrong to tell you now. He's your son, and I know you love him, but I'm afraid of what he's becoming. He drinks every night and takes sleeping pills. Ambition consumes him. His small failures make him crazy. His anger knows no bounds. He needs help, and I'm hoping he'll listen to you, even if he won't listen to me. Perhaps you can get him to slow down, to talk to someone before it's too late.

" 'Your loving daughter-in-law, Olivia.' "

Catherine looked up at Dylan. A mix of pain and anger filled his eyes. It had been twenty-three years since he'd heard his mother's words. She couldn't imagine how hard it must be to hear them now.

"So she knew he was a bastard, and she still left us alone with him. Mother of the year." He picked up his clothes and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Catherine felt his sense of betrayal as keenly as if it were her own. She read through the short letter again, noting the fact that Richard had hit Olivia. His anger had crossed an unforgivable line. Olivia had run to the beach to lick her wounds, to protect her children, and maybe to give Richard some space.

She looked at the date on the letter. Dylan had told her that his mother left when he was seven years old, just before Christmas and shortly after an illness that had put him in the hospital. This letter must have been from the summer before, a few months prior to her departure. Catherine couldn't help wondering if Olivia had actually left voluntarily. Had something else happened to her? Had Richard's abuse escalated?

Catherine's stomach began to churn as she considered the darker possibilities. If Richard Sanders was behind the recent moves against Dylan, then he wasn't afraid to kill. Had he done it once before? Was that why Olivia had never seen her sons again?

Catherine had just slipped the picture and note back into the envelope when Dylan returned, dressed and primed for battle. She'd seen his game face before, and she knew he was now a man on a mission. No more teasing. No more seductive smiles. He was all business.

"I'm going to check my e-mail," he said briskly. "Then I'll go down and get you some breakfast."

"Dylan, don't you think we should talk about the letter?"

"There's nothing to say."

"There's a lot to say."

He sat down in the chair across from her and opened his laptop. "Even if my mother had a reason to leave, she saved herself and not us."

"Dylan, look at me."

He reluctantly met her gaze. "I don't want to hear about any more of your visions of my mother. Let's just table that for now."

"This isn't a vision; it's an opinion, and I'm going to give it to you, because we said we'd be honest and direct with each other, right?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "Have you ever considered the possibility that your mother disappeared at your father's hands, that she didn't leave of her own accord?"

The color left his face, his eyes darkening. "You think he . . . he killed her? Shit! You think he killed her," he repeated. He got to his feet and paced around the small area. "You think that's why she never came back, never sent a card or a Christmas gift."

She didn't answer, because Dylan needed to talk it through himself.

He stopped pacing. "I didn't think of that. I never in my life thought of that. Why? Why was I such an idiot?"

"You were told a story when you were a little boy, a story I'm sure other relatives in the family confirmed- your grandmother, your aunt, cousins. Everyone thought your mother left voluntarily, didn't they?"

"Because they all believed him, the master manipulator. That's why my mother keeps coming into your mind," he added slowly. "She's dead and she wants justice. She wants you to catch him."

Catherine stared back at him, suddenly feeling as off balance as Dylan did. The link between them had tightened with the new information, the mirror of their lives reflecting back upon each other. Her father had killed her mother. Had his father done the same thing? "Oh, my God," she murmured. "It's all on me again. I can't do it. I couldn't do it before, and I can't do it now."

"Not for your mother, but maybe for mine," Dylan said, following her train of thought. "That's why we're connected."

She knew he was right. Her mother had died twenty-four years ago. His mother had vanished twenty-three years ago. They'd been almost exactly the same age when they'd lost their mothers. But the prospect of trying to get justice for Dylan's mother overwhelmed her.

"You can't depend on me. My dreams are unreliable and cryptic and not at all helpful. And we could be on the wrong track here. Your mother might not be dead. She might be living somewhere else, remarried, with other kids. Maybe she's sitting on a beach right now, digging her toes into the sand, sad that she doesn't have you anymore, but not sure how to fix it. When I see her in my dreams she doesn't plead for me to save her."

"Because she's already dead."

"Or she's not," Catherine argued, not sure whom she was trying to convince, herself or him.

"We have to find out. It's time to go back to San Francisco."

"Your father won't tell us anything more. And if we go back there's a good chance you'll get locked up, and we'll never figure this out. Check your e-mail, Dylan. Maybe Mark or someone has come up with something else for us to think about."

"Julie wrote back," Dylan said a moment later. "She says that Blake took a trip with a woman she thinks might have been Erica. They went to Seattle together." He looked up. "That confirms what Mark told me, but I don't get why she would have gone there with Blake." He paused. "I suppose Blake could be involved, too. He could have known my father through the Metro Club. I have to believe that my father is at the heart of this. And the timing with Jake being out of town plays into that. No one would believe my father is a monster, except for him."

"And me," she said quietly, reminding him that even without Jake he wasn't alone.

"And you," he echoed.

She leaned across the table and stole a quick kiss. "Why don't you go get me that breakfast? Some food might bring clarity."

"We've tried everything else."

As Catherine set down the envelope on the table, her gaze tripped over the return address. She'd seen those numbers before. "Dylan, wait," she said, grabbing his arm as he got up. She handed him the envelope. "Three-seven-four Falcon Way. Remember the vision I had at Erica's apartment? She was holding a key and a note with directions to get to an address. The word Falcon was there."

"Damn," he muttered, staring down at the address. He lifted his gaze to hers. "That key Erica had was to my mother's beach house on Orcas Island, and those were the directions: right off the bridge, left on Falcon, pink flowers in the window box. Why didn't I realize it before?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. And Erica flew to Seattle. From there she could have driven up to Anacortes and gotten the ferry to Orcas Island, where my mother used to take us every summer. That's the beach you keep seeing in your visions."

"But why would Erica go there?" Catherine questioned.

"To meet someone-my father, perhaps? To hide out? Who the hell knows? Maybe Blake went with her, and that's where the three of them concocted this plan.

This is the best clue we've had so far."

"We're not going to get breakfast, are we?"

"On the way," he said, packing up his computer. "Grab your stuff. We have a long drive ahead of us. At least we're narrowing down the list of enemies. The only person who knows about that house is my father."

"And your mother," she couldn't help adding. "Don't forget about her."

"You won't let me," he said heavily. "But I can't think about her right now. If she's dead, then she's dead. And if she's not . . . well, we'll have to see what happens."

Chapter 17.

The trip to Seattle took fifteen long hours as they made their way over the northern California border, up through Oregon, and finally crossed into Washington State. They stopped to eat twice, filled up the gas tank three times, and learned the words to just about every song on the radio. Catherine drove for a couple of hours, but Dylan did most of the driving, his foot heavy on the gas, his eye on the mirror for any cops. They didn't talk about the past, agreeing to put a moratorium on any more personal revelations until they got off the road. Instead they discussed politics and vacation spots, art, books, movies, music. Dylan was well-read, with opinions on just about everything.

Catherine loved listening to him talk. She liked the enthusiasm he brought to topics he was interested in. He cared about a lot of things. He was involved in the world. He made her want to care, want to defend her positions. He pushed until she pushed back. And in the end she realized she'd shed the cocoon she'd hidden herself inside the past few years. Under Dylan's warm but often challenging gaze she'd blossomed.

She wouldn't be the same person when this was over. And she was glad to say good-bye to the girl who'd been very good at hiding and not so good at living. Life was short. She knew that better than anyone. She had to get on with it. Maybe telling Dylan about her father was the first step in freeing herself from the ties of the past.

She would have liked to have finished reading his grandmother's journals, but the sight of them always seemed to annoy Dylan, and reading in the car tended to make her nauseous, so she decided to save the diaries for later. They had enough to consider as it was.

They reached Seattle at two in the morning. Dylan checked them into another motel, where they promptly collapsed on the bed. Catherine hoped exhaustion would send her into a dreamless sleep, but as she drifted off, a voice came into her head.

"Don't come," the woman said. "Protect him. Save him. I couldn't. I tried, but I failed. It's not who you think. It's never who you think."

Catherine opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, wondering whom the warning had come from. The voice had sounded like Olivia's, Dylan's mother. Was she trying to send them a message? Or was Catherine hearing words from a lifetime ago?

She glanced over at Dylan. He was asleep on his side, his breathing deep and steady, his face turned away from her. She scooted up next to him and put her arm around his waist, snuggling into his back. She would protect him any way she could.

They woke up by eight o'clock the next morning and made the two-hour drive north to Anacortes, where they would catch the ferry to Orcas Island just before noon. The ferry landing was busy, and it took a while to get through the line and on board. After leaving the car on the lower deck, they made their way up to the top deck and looked out at the view.

Catherine had always been a water and beach kind of person, and the vista before her was stunning. She'd never before been to the San Juan Islands, a chain of over a hundred and fifty islands in Puget Sound. She knew that the island they were going to, Orcas Island, was one of the three larger islands, but beyond that she didn't know much, except that Dylan had spent every summer there until his mother had left.

Dylan drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. "It's strange to be on this boat again. It's been so long. I shouldn't remember anything, but there's a familiarity to the sounds, the smells, the roll of the waves. I feel a sense of excitement, as if I'm going home. That's stupid. The island wasn't home."

"But you were happy there."

"Yes," he admitted. "Summers were awesome- boating, swimming, hiking, picnicking, just running free, wasting hours collecting pebbles on the beach and trying to make them skip across the water."

"It sounds like a lot of fun." In fact, it sounded like more fun than she'd ever had in her childhood. Then again, the good times hadn't lasted that long for Dylan. And the rest of his childhood had been rough.

Dylan put his arm around her shoulders. "The one thing that's different about this trip is you. You weren't with me before."

"I'm with you now," she murmured.

"I'm glad."

His simple words warmed her heart. She never really thought she was helping him much, but maybe in a small way she was. Dylan sneaked a quick kiss and said, "You didn't dream last night. Or if you did I didn't hear you."

"No," she said after a moment. "I didn't dream." She knew he wouldn't want to hear about his mother again, and there was no purpose in telling him. They would find out soon enough whether the island held any answers.

For a few minutes they gazed out at the view. "We might see some whales," Dylan said. "I think this is the season."

"I've never seen a whale up close."

"Then keep your eyes open. Do you want anything to drink?" Dylan asked. "I'm getting some coffee."

"I'm fine, thanks." After he walked away she sat down on a nearby bench. She had a few moments of privacy, and she was itching to read the rest of Dylan's grandmother's journal. Pulling the book out of her purse she skimmed the pages, feeling an intense need to get to the moment when Dylan's mother had left. Perhaps there would be some clue to the breakup of the marriage and where Olivia had gone.

Catherine's heart sped up as she read Ruth's words . . .

I feared it would come to this. I tried to keep Richard away from the hospital, but like a bloodhound he sensed a secret, and he was determined to sniff it out. He didn't understand why Olivia was having private conversations with the doctor, why she was acting so guilty, making calls from a pay phone in the lobby to someone she wouldn't identify, why no one was asking him to donate blood when it appeared that Dylan would need a transfusion. He hadn't wanted Dylan to get blood from a stranger, but in the end Olivia had to tell the truth for Dylan's sake. Richard's blood couldn't save Dylan's life, because Richard was not Dylan's father. Dylan shared a rare blood type with his true biological father. I can't believe I've just written that down. It feels more real now.

Anyway, it seems that Olivia had an affair with another man. And she's lived a lie these past seven years. Now Richard knows the truth, and he's livid. I don't know how he'll ever get past it. He hasn't been home in two days. He can't stand to look at his wife or his child.

My heart breaks for both of them. I am furious that Olivia could do this to my son, could give him such pain, could bring him dishonor. Richard is a man to whom honor is everything. But I also see him for what he is: cold, heartless, a man who can't love anyone as much as he loves himself.

How can I say that about my son? I am racked with guilt. Did I make him this way? Was I responsible for how he turned out?

I knew Olivia was unhappy right after Jake's birth. Richard withdrew from her. He'd wanted a son, and he had one, but he didn't really care to raise a child. He left it all to her, and he couldn't seem to bring himself to want her anymore the way a husband wants a wife. Olivia confided in me after several glasses of wine one night. It was very awkward. I know she must have been desperate, to have told me such a personal thing. I told her to give him time, to pretend all was well and it would be well. It was advice my mother had given me, and it had always gotten me through the difficult times in my own marriage.

But Olivia found happiness only in the summers, when she ran to the beach house her parents had left her in their will. There on the island she was happy.

I suspect it was also there that she met him, the man who fathered her second child. She wouldn't tell me who he was. I'm not sure Richard knows either. But he's too angry to listen. He wants her to go, but she can't leave now. Dylan is just getting better. He needs care, rest, the love of his mother. I pray that Richard will be able to bring his family back together, to forgive even if he can't forget.

I forgive you, Olivia. I just wish I could tell you to your face, but there are some things a mother can't say aloud to the woman who betrayed her son. Richard must have all my loyalty.

Catherine didn't realize she was crying until a teardrop hit the page, smearing the blue ink. She closed the book and lifted her head, staring into Dylan's wary eyes. He handed her a cup.

"Tea," he said shortly.