The judge fired back. "What's imperative is this. Next time you charge someone with a capital crime, counselor, get the right person."

The prosecutor was clearly seething with frustration. She said nothing, but her glare spoke for itself. She fully intended to come after Marnie, but for now, there was nothing she could do but accept the judge's decision.

Julia ducked out of the courtroom without a word to anyone. Marnie found the presence of mind to thank Paul Esposito and ask him to give her a moment to catch her breath. Paul agreed to wait outside, and as he turned to go, Andrew was there.

Marnie didn't know what to feel or think as she looked at him. She was blank, still numb from the ordeal, and shaking. Even his appearance confused her. His slacks and shirt were immaculate, straight off the rack of some designer boutique, but his skin was devoid of color. His face was as gray and burned-out as ashes.

He reached into the pocket of his shirt and drew out the gold chain she had given him. "You seem to need this more than I do," he said, offering it to her.

Marnie was startled at the icy chill of his hand as she took back her good luck charm. She studied the copper ring, she realized what had just happened. Julia had made sure that she exposed Andrew today, and now he would probably become the object of another investigation into Alison's death, if she was dead. And who knew what he might be facing if the prosecutor decided to press charges? Someone had to have altered or switched Alison's fingerprint records, and who had a better reason?

Marnie had no idea where he'd been, but she was just beginning to understand what it might have cost him to show up at this hearing. His face was gaunt, as if he hadn't eaten or slept in days.

At least he'd had his freedom, she told herself. Fiery anger burned the back of her throat. She had no idea what to say to him. None.

Fortunately, he articulated the emotions she couldn't.

"You must want to shoot me," he said, his voice low enough that only she could hear him. "Give me a chance to explain before you pull the trigger."

Marnie had heard him, but she still couldn't respond. She moved around him, her heart aching. She was throbbing with some emotion she couldn't describe. It was too much for her, all of it, too much to take in. What she wanted now, the only thing she wanted, was to walk out of this courtroom, out of the courthouse, and see for herself if the sun was still shining.

33.

So this was where he'd been?

Marnie made no attempt to hide her shock as she registered the quaint beauty of the beach house Andrew had used as his hideout. The Cape Cod design had decks overlooking the ocean and a warm, rustic interior. It was hard not to fall in love on sight with the cedar shake walls, the comfortable plaid couches and the old-fashioned wood-burning fireplace.

"Can I get you something?" Andrew gestured toward the kitchen, part of the great room they'd just entered. "I could make you an omelet. The food couldn't have been very good."

"The food in jail, you mean?" Her tone was too sharp. The protective numbness had worn off, leaving her raw and exposed. She was angry that he'd abandoned her, angry that he'd left her to twist in the wind, angry that he hadn't saved her sooner.

"Marnie, you can't think I wanted you to go through that."

She cut him off with a toss of her head. "So this was where you were-a perfectly charming beach house, while I was locked in a cement bunker, choosing between swill and starvation? Good food? Andrew, I was in hell, facing my life and my death. What were you doing?"

"Trying to get you out of that cement bunker." He walked to the wet bar, opened the refrigerator and took out a can of Red Bull.

"Are you going to explain yourself?" she said.

He popped the top and took a deep pull of the drink. The can stayed locked in his fist as he set it down, his back to her. "The original plan was to flush out a killer. I set a trap to see who would take the bait. But I had no way of knowing that LaDonna would be murdered and you'd get arrested. I just needed a little more time."

"Well, excuse me if I inconvenienced you." She wanted to slap him. All of the emotion that had been dammed up by despair was flowing out of her, and she couldn't seem to hold anything back.

He turned and leaned against the bar, his arms folded. "I brought you here to tell you everything. Honest to God, I did. Are you going to let me do that?"

She folded her arms, too. "Start with the change-of-plea hearing. How did you know about that? It can't have been coincidence that you showed up in that courtroom at that moment."

"I had Diego Sanchez checking the court calendar on a daily basis. He's the detective I hired to keep you safe while I was gone. Unfortunately, Bret took a dislike to him and kicked him off the premises, but Diego came through in other ways. His contacts within the criminal court system let me keep track of what was going on with you."

"So you knew I was in jail, charged with two counts of murder?"

"You're going to hate me for this, but at some point I realized you were safer in jail than at Sea Clouds. I needed the time to hunt down LaDonna's killer, and I wanted you safe, Marnie. I had to rethink everything when I found out about your change-of-plea hearing. I couldn't figure out what the hell you were doing, but I knew I had to get you out of there before you pleaded guilty to anything."

"How did you get Julia to the hearing?"

"Simple blackmail. I searched her bedroom suite and found your birth certificate in her wall safe. That was enough to shake her down. I also insisted on a copy of Alison's birth certificate for comparison."

"You knew where to look for my birth certificate?"

"I'd been through the room before and found the safe in the closet. I'd also noticed that she had certain months circled on her calendar, and the initials B.C. with an arrow pointing to the letter S. I put it together that the months were the numbers in her combination." He lifted a shoulder. "You can imagine my shock when I discovered she was your biological mother. I thought she was going to kill me with her bare hands when I confronted her."

Marnie had no trouble imagining his shock, or Julia's. But something else was troubling her. She wanted to know more about the trap he'd set for the killer. Ever since he'd mentioned it, she'd been grappling with a question.

"Was I the bait for your trap?" she asked him.

He seemed genuinely shocked. "No-hell, no. I'd had a plan in the works for months, long before we came to Mirage Bay."

She listened quietly as he admitted that the concert had only been a small part of his reason to go to Baja. He'd chartered a private plane and made the trip to finalize the details of his plan, which included the remains that washed up on shore. They were not Alison's, he explained. He'd paid off an assistant in the oficina de juez de guardia, the local coroner's office, to have the body of an unclaimed drowning victim found on the beach.

"It was risky," he acknowledged, "but the goal was to flush out the person who had the most to gain from Alison's death. Obviously, that's the same person who tried to frame me."

"And may have killed LaDonna? You think they're all connected."

"I do." He shrugged. "But everything changed when you got arrested."

Marnie realized that he'd had to abort his plan and expose himself to prosecution to show up at her hearing. Julia wouldn't rest until he was indicted for Alison's murder, and there could be fraud charges. It wouldn't surprise Marnie if Julia launched a civil suit for damages because of their plan to deceive her, but Marnie had no assets. It was Andrew who would pay if Julia won.

"Who altered Alison's fingerprints?" she asked.

"I had that done months ago, after you and I entered into our arrangement. I'd taken a set of your fingerprints while you were in the hospital. I didn't know if you were going to regain consciousness, and I had to find out your identity. Diego did a search for me, but he never found a match. Later, I had him switch your fingerprints for Alison's."

"How did he do that?"

"Diego doesn't give away his secrets, but he did tell me the only fingerprints he found for Alison besides her DMV record were in a local police database. She had a traffic accident when she was a teenager that resulted in a driving offense. To change the prints required some hacking, I'm sure, but nothing like breaking into the FBI's database."

Marnie wondered what happened to people who altered fingerprint records. Andrew was probably in much greater jeopardy than she was.

It was all beginning to sink in, and it was very frightening. She let out a huge, pressured sigh, remembering the horror of the last few days.

"Andrew," she whispered, "in the name of everything that's holy, why didn't you pick up the phone and give me a call to let me know you were all right? Do you know what it did to me, not knowing?"

She averted her eyes as tears threatened. She didn't want him to know how vulnerable she felt, still.

"I couldn't call without putting you at risk," he told her. "Diego had time to search Sea Clouds before Bret kicked him out, and he found bugs all over the house. Someone had wired the place, but Diego couldn't remove them without alerting whoever had done it."

Marnie could hardly believe it. "Why would anyone bug Sea Clouds?"

"No clue, but he found devices in every room he checked, including our bedroom."

She still couldn't accept Andrew's rationale. "You could have told me the real reason you were going to Mexico. You didn't know the house was bugged then."

"Marnie, you were worried about the dangers of a rock concert. What if I'd told you I was trying to trap a killer? I couldn't take you with me, and I couldn't have gone, knowing I was leaving you in torment. I'm not trying to frighten you, but we could be talking about a serial killer. Whoever killed LaDonna may have killed Alison, and possibly even Butch-and trust me, it won't stop there. Somebody needs to stop this freak."

"Do you have any idea who it is?"

"I have suspects, lots of them."

She began to speculate aloud. "Julia, maybe? Bret? He just broke up with LaDonna. Tony Bogart? Maybe he killed her and then reported her murder."

"It could be any one of them, and if LaDonna was murdered for the sole reason of framing you-or rather, Alison-then the list of suspects widens. There's even a kinky estate attorney that Julia's screwing around with."

"Really?" Marnie was more than a little curious about that, but it had just dawned on her that Andrew had missed some names. "I can think of a couple more people to add to your list," she said.

"Who?"

She shook her head, quelling a nervous, exhausted smile. "Make me that drink first. And some food, dear God in heaven, make me that omelet you promised!"

As Marnie watched him pull things from the refrigerator, she wondered what kind of omelet he had in mind. Mandarin oranges and feta cheese? It should be interesting. She also wondered why he was so sure Alison was dead. He hadn't included her in his list of suspects, but Marnie had never been convinced she wasn't alive.

Marnie closed her eyes and took a long, slow sip of her Cristal champagne. This was not actually nirvana, she told herself. It just felt like paradise, compared to everything else.

The doors to the deck of the beach house were wide open and a balmy ocean breeze gently ruffled her hair. The gulls cried as they soared and dived, feeding on fish. In the distance, dazzling white sails belled in the afternoon winds. The blue-and-gold seascape that stretched out before her was beautiful, and for once, she was actually enjoying the view.

She touched the ring that hung around her neck. There was little in her experience that allowed her to grasp what Andrew had done. He'd sacrificed his plan, his chance to exonerate himself, and possibly his freedom for her. Crazy as it seemed, it would have been easier to believe that he'd run out on her. That would have made more sense, because this felt like a miracle, and miracles didn't happen to people like her.

She turned just enough to see him stretched out on the couch, his bare feet up on the rattan coffee table and an iced drink in his hand, looking surprisingly relaxed. He'd changed into khaki shorts and a flowing silk shirt after their talk, and then he'd opened the Cristal so they could celebrate.

At the moment, she was so madly in love with him it was sickening.

Fortunately, she understood the feeling as an aberration. She was no more in love with him now than she had been at twelve or thirteen. Then, it was a fantasy. Now it was relief, loneliness and gratitude. Not love, not nirvana; it just felt like that compared to jail and Sea Clouds.

She wondered how much time they had left, and then she pushed the thought away. Impulsively she said, "It's such a beautiful day. Do you think we could go for a sail? I've never been out in a sailboat."

"Never?" He dropped his feet to the floor and set his drink down. "Seriously? We have to remedy that at once."

His smile was wide, his teeth a flash of brilliant white, and as he rose from the couch and walked over to her, Marnie felt her heart shift in a very odd way.

What is going to happen to us?

She was avoiding the question. They both were, but it had been hanging in the air between them since they'd left the beach house. Marnie moved out of the beating sun and into the shade of the canopy over the wheel, closer to Andrew, who was at the helm, guiding the sailing yacht toward San Diego.

She'd asked Andrew to drive her over to see her grandmother before they went out on the boat. Gramma Jo had taken one look at Andrew and asked if he was the surprise she had mentioned. Marnie had blushed and said that yes, he was quite a surprise. She'd also heard herself promising to get Gramma Jo out of that place, without knowing how she was going to do it. There was no chance Julia would be involved. But it was a promise Marnie intended to keep.

Questions could wait, she decided. This was an adventure, a respite from the world and serious talk. Questions were irrelevant when you had an ocean of water beneath you and an ocean of sky above.

Andrew had suggested they dock at one of the marinas in San Diego and have dinner that evening, another of his brilliant ideas. Marnie had even brought along a sexy little sundress for the occasion. They were celebrating her freedom, and it was important to celebrate well. She had no idea how long it would last, and very soon they would need to talk seriously about what they might be facing in the way of criminal charges, and how to deal with it. But for now, they would go where the wind took them.

Andrew spotted her to his left, and his gaze swept over her in a very physical way. Perhaps it was a male reflex, but the look was nakedly interested. He caught himself and smiled. She was wearing one of the bathing suits he'd packed. The silky two-piece was a decent fit, except for the top. She was fuller there than Alison, and possibly he'd just realized that. His only other opportunities to compare had been fast, heated, and at very close range.

Not like today. This was a slow trip, leisurely. They could go only as fast as the ocean breezes would let them. The land was to their left, the open sea to their right, and they were headed due south. Maybe they would just keep going.

Blue waves crashed against the bow, scattering liquid diamonds. She could taste the salt spray on her tongue. "I know why you love this," she said. "It's glorious."

His hands rested lightly on the wheel. "I'd go insane if I couldn't get out on the water."

She could hear the conviction in his voice. He actually meant it, and that concerned her, because there was nothing she could do to ensure that for him. If he'd really been her husband, he would have reached for her, and she would have gone to stand beside him. But they hadn't touched other than when he'd offered a steadying hand as she came aboard. It was almost as if they had never touched.

"Do you want to take the wheel?" he asked.

"Yes." The boat rocked as she went to join him. Yes, she did.

He stepped back, giving her access, but he stayed behind her as she slid between him and the teak and stainless steel steering mechanism.

"What do I do? This boat is huge."

"Technically," he said, "it's a yacht."

Laughter fizzed up. "Is that supposed to be helpful?"

"Someone once described sailing as half ecstasy and half abject terror," he told her. "You decide."

"It feels like freedom to me," she said without hesitation. She tried the wheel, surprised at how sensitive it was, even to the lightest touch. Odd that a caress was all it took to control such a huge vessel. It was a lesson some CEOs and politicians could learn.

"Do you think she's still alive?" Marnie asked him. The question came with no preamble, but he seemed to know what she meant.

"Someone pushed LaDonna off that cliff, and according to Bogart, the perp looked just like Alison."

"Why would she do it?"

"To get rid of you, I'd guess."

"All she had to do was come forward and expose me."

"Ah, but then she couldn't get me. If Alison were alive, I would no longer be the prime suspect in her death. She's a mastermind, Marnie, as cunning as she is seductive. She befriended Regine for the sole purpose of getting rid of her."

Marnie studied him. "Do you have any proof of that?"

"Nothing that would hold up in court. Alison didn't show her true colors until after we were married. That's when she started pressuring me to get her a record deal and to let her open shows for some of my big names."

"But you didn't?"