Sometimes they talked about Thomas and wondered what gift he'd possessed and had kept secret all his life. She said made you humble to think of it, made you realize everyone and everything was more complex and mysterious than you could know.

To get the police off their backs, they had admitted workin on a case for one Frank Pollard from El Encanto Heights, who believed his brother James was trying to kill him over a misunderstanding. They said they felt James may have been a comPlete psychotic who had killed their employees and Thomas merely because they had dared to try to settle the matter between the brothers. Subsequently, when the Pollard house was found torched with gasoline, with a confusing arra of skeletal remains in the aftermath, police pressure was slowly lifted from Dakota & Dakota. It was believed that Mr. James Pollard had killed his twin sisters and his brother, as well, and was currently on the run, armed and dangerous.

The agency had been sold. They didn't miss it. She no longer felt she could save the world, and he no longer needed to help her save herself.

Money, a few more red diamonds, and negotiation had convinced Dyson Manfred and Roger Gavenall to invent another source for the biologically engineered bug when, eventually, they published their work on it.

Without the cooperation of Dakota & Dakota, they would never know the actual source, anyway.

In the finished attic of the beach house, they kept the boxes and bags of cash they had brought back from Pacific Hill Road. Candy and his mother had tried to compensate for the chaos of their lives by storing up millions in a second-floor bedroom, just as Bobby and Julie had suspected before they had ever gotten to El Encanto Heights. Only a small portion of the Pollards' treasure was now in the beach-house attic, but it was more than two people could spend; the rest had been burned, along with everything else, when they'd torched the house on Pacific Hill Road.

In time he came to accept the fact that he could be a good man and still sometimes have dark thoughts or selfish motives. She said this was maturity, and that it wasn't such a bad thing to live outside of Disneyland by the time you reached middle age.

She said she'd like a dog.

He said fine, if they could agree on a breed.

She said you clean up its p.o.o.p.

He said you clean up its p.o.o.p, I'll take care of the petting and Frisbee throwing.

She said she had been wrong that night in Santa Barbara when, in her despair, she had claimed no dreams ever came true. They came true all the time. The problem was, you sometimes had your sights set on a particular dream and missed all the others that turned out your way: like finding him, she said, and being loved.

One day she told him she was going to have a baby. He held her close for a long time before he could find the words to ex press his happiness. They dressed to go out for champagne dinner at the Ritz, then decided they would rather celebrate at home, on the porch, overlooking the sea, listening to Tommy Dorsey recordings.

They built sandcastles. Huge ones. They sat on the porch and watched the incoming tide wreck their. constructions.

Sometimes they talked about the wordburst he had recei in the car on the freeway, from Thomas at the momentdeath. They wondered about the words "there is a light loves you," and dared to consider dreaming the biggest dream of all-that people never really die.

They got a black Labrador.

They named him Sookie, just because it sounded silly.

Some nights she was afraid. Occasionally, so was he.

They had each other. And time.