He'd never fired a real gun in his life. His only experience with firearms was of the toy variety: Laser tag, Paintball, video games. When he was a teenager, his dad had been a weekend outdoorsman and would go hunting for white-tail deer and quail, and he would want to bring Joshua along-but his mother had forbid it. She'd been concerned for Joshua's safety.

Joshua cautiously touched the trigger. The thought of handling the revolver and actually using it for self-defense was almost as absurd as the idea of Rachel using the weapon. He was not a combative person by nature, would have rather fled the scene than engage someone in a violent confrontation of any kind, least of all a gunfight.

He opened the box of ammo and dumped a couple of rounds into his palm. They were shiny, silver, deadly.

Was the revolver loaded? He didn't know, and didn't know how to check. What was the point of him having a gun if he was clueless about how to use it?

He was tempted to pack the revolver in the box and shove it in the rear of a closet and forget about it, but Rachel's warning whispered through his thoughts.

. . . you know how I sometimes get these feelings.

He vividly recalled her dead-on intuition about certain things. Look at how she'd known he would get the contract with the restaurant group, if he took her advice to call them at a particular time of day. It was one of countless instances in which she truly seemed able to foretell the future.

As he regarded the revolver-it was totally incongruous on the table beside the salt and pepper shakers-he hoped that she was wrong this time. But he wasn't willing to bet against her. The accuracy of her track record was undeniable.

He'd better learn how to use the gun.

Chapter 31.

Dexter had put over three hundred miles on the Chevy that day, driving from one place to another around metro Atlanta, and he had yet to find his wife's residence.

He'd visited single-family homes, townhouses, and apartment complexes. He'd driven through the hood and upscale subdivisions. He'd been mired in gridlock, in various parts of town-this city had the worst traffic he'd ever seen in his life-for a cumulative total of maybe five hours.

But no luck.

He was convinced that he would know, intuitively, when he arrived at his wife's home. The exterior details of the residence, and the neighborhood in which it was located, would be telltale indicators of whether he was at the right place. He knew his wife.

He would not lose confidence in his instinct. An ordinary man would have been ready to throw in the towel by this point, would have begun second-guessing his intuition and plotting a new name search to begin the tedious process all over again. Not Dexter. He was supremely confident in his strategy, and believed time would bear out the wisdom of his approach.

So he continued to drive, undeterred, crossing entries off the print-out after each unsuccessful visit. He interrupted his work only to eat. He got his meal from a Publix grocery store: he summoned the cloak of invisibility and then went inside, whereupon he grabbed a hand basket and filled it with three lemon-pepper rotisserie chickens from the deli, a family-size tub of potato salad, and a six-pack of Coke. He left, without paying for the items, of course, and no one stopped him.

The cold, gray winter afternoon had darkened into a frigid evening when Dexter began driving to the next-to-last address on his list. It was an apartment in College Park.

He hoped this would be the one, mostly because he had become annoyed with the rickety Chevy. He needed a car in better condition to navigate these twisty, hilly roads and to keep up with these maniacal drivers. When he'd bought the car, he hadn't thought that he might have to drive cross-country to find his wife. That had been a mistake of planning on his part-he'd underestimated her fear of him, the lengths to which she would go to avoid him.

But she hadn't gone far enough.

He was driving along on a busy, four-lane thoroughfare when the GPS system instructed him to hook a right at the next intersection. He made the turn, which plunged him down another of those stomach-flipping hills. At the foot of the hill, the road banked to the left, wove around a cluster of pine trees, and then unfurled into a long straight-away bordered by winter-ravaged trees and shrubbery.

A large sign came into view ahead, on the right: Forest Ridge Apartment Homes.

A cold tingle traveled the length of Dexter's spine. This was it. This was where she lived.

Entry to the complex was restricted by a set of electronically activated, wrought-iron gates. Big, red holiday bows adorned the centers of the gates. A call box, also garlanded in holiday finery, stood in front of the gateway, between the entrance and exit paths.

Dexter drove to the call box and lowered his window. Chilly wind hit him in the face. He squinted against the gust, studying the small gray display and the accompanying keypad.

Residents were listed by first name initial and last name; a three-digit code was beside each entry, so you could call the person you were visiting and ask them to buzz you inside.

Putting his thumb on the button, Dexter scrolled to the "H"s. He did not find any Halls.

Yet he knew this was where she lived. He knew it.

A white Honda Civic with a lighted, Papa John's placard on its roof had pulled up behind him. The driver tapped his horn, impatiently.

Anger streaked through Dexter, but he checked himself. He veered to the right, out of the entryway, and stuck his arm out the window to wave the driver past.

The pizza delivery driver punched a code into the call box, and the gates began to swing inward.

Dexter pulled behind the Honda, only inches from the rear bumper, to fool the sensor system. He followed the car through the gate without incident.

"So much for security," he said.

The complex was a maze of four-story buildings with stacked stone foundations and gray siding, accessible via blacktopped, debris-free roadways. The leasing office and a clubhouse stood off to the right, near a large fountain with an angelic sculpture centerpiece. A sign on the clubhouse advertised an upcoming holiday party for community residents.

His survey of the property cemented his belief that his wife lived here, or had, until recently. The gated entry offered the promise of safety that she would desire, and the environment was solidly middle-class: upwardly mobile single professionals and young families saving for their first homes would choose to live in such a place.

Most important, besides the complex's appearance, the needle on the compass of his intuition was vibrating as if he stood smack dab on magnetic north.

Her apartment number was five-seventeen. He followed the signs to building five hundred, and found it located squarely in the middle of the community. Unit five-seventeen was on the third floor, and knowing his wife, likely faced the parking lot so she could look through the window and see who was coming and going.

A handful of late-model cars were parked in front. When he and his wife had lived in downtown Chicago, he hadn't allowed her to own a car; he believed that a pretty woman with her own set of wheels was destined to get into trouble. But she had once expressed interest in an Acura sedan, a silver one, and he was sure that she had purchased the vehicle when she'd relocated. Her way of celebrating her liberation from him and all of that feminist bullshit.

There were no Acuras parked nearby. He didn't expect to find one, because he was increasingly certain that she no longer lived in the community.

He parked in front of the building, glanced at his face in the sun visor mirror. Satisfied with what he saw, he got out of the car and climbed the stairs to the third floor.

Apartment five-seventeen, as he'd suspected, was an end unit that overlooked the parking lot. A couple of phone books were stacked on the doorstep, and a tri-fold menu for a Chinese restaurant bristled between the knob and door jamb.

He rang the bell a couple of times, but predictably, no one answered. The apartment was vacant.

He ought to drop a pointed note to Omega Search. Their database was out of date. How long ago had his wife moved out?

He considered kicking in the door, but there would be little point. Whenever a tenant left, the apartment manager most likely dispatched housekeepers to clean these units from top to bottom. He doubted there would be anything inside that might tell him where she had moved on to.

He turned around, looked at the doors surrounding him.

But she'd had neighbors, hadn't she?

He approached the unit directly across the corridor from five-seventeen. He placed his ear against the cold door.

He heard a television broadcasting the news, and a woman talking loudly, probably on the phone. She sounded young, which was good. An impressionable young woman would be pliable to his purposes.

He smoothed the edges of his mustache and straightened his jacket, grateful that he had cleaned up that morning and changed clothes. It was time to turn on the charm.

He rang the doorbell.

The volume of the television dropped. A few seconds later, he felt the woman looking at him through the peephole.

He kept his expression relaxed, pleasant.

"Who's there?" she asked from behind the door.

"I'm sorry to bother you this evening," he said, using his crisp, lawyerly voice. "I was wondering if you knew Rachel Hall? She lived in five-seventeen. I'm her cousin Brian, from Chicago."

A pause. Then: "Hold on."

He heard a security chain pop free. The door opened.

He found himself looking at a black woman in her mid-twenties. She was about five-seven, mocha-skinned, with shoulder-length dark hair. She had soft, almond-shaped brown eyes that would believe anything a brother with half-decent game would tell her.

She wore a green v-neck sweater that showed off a mound of luscious cleavage, and black slacks that hugged long, shapely legs. She was barefoot, her pedicured toes nestled in the carpet. Her ring finger was bare, and when he glanced over her shoulder, he didn't see anyone straining to find out who had rung the doorbell.

"Hi." He gave her his best, disarming smile.

Automatically, she smiled back at him, showing pretty dimples, and he knew she would give him anything he wanted.

"Hey," she said. "You said you're Rachel's cousin?"

"Yes, I flew in from Chicago this morning for a business trip, and thought I'd drop by to visit Ray-Ray. I haven't talked to her in a couple of years-"

"Sweetheart, you're kinda late." She had a syrupy sweet Southern accent. "Rachel moved out like six months ago."

"Are you serious? I asked Aunt Nita a hundred times if this was the correct address. I think she's going senile in her old age, God bless her."

"Uh huh." The girl giggled. "Rachel moved out when she got married."

Dexter blinked. That single phrase-when she got married-almost destroyed his act. Married? Was she telling the fucking truth? The bitch had gotten him thrown into prison, come down here, and gotten married?

He had a sudden, violent impulse to grab this young woman by the throat and throttle her, to choke her as if she were his wife, his cheating, no-good wife- But he caught himself so quickly that the girl didn't appear to notice his temporary lapse.

"And you know, I asked Aunt Nita about that, too," he said. "I said, 'Aunt Nita, are you sure Ray-Ray didn't move after she got married?' She said no." He shrugged. "But it's not as though I was invited to the wedding."

"Chile, who you tellin'?" She rolled her eyes. "I lived next door to her for a year, and I didn't get an invitation. Plus, I was going to her salon, too. Ungrateful."

Her off-hand mention of the salon clinched the deal. Ever since he'd known his wife, she'd been a hair stylist. Although she had relocated, changed her name, and supposedly gotten married, she was plying the same trade-probably because she couldn't do anything else.

"Is that so? Ray-Ray could be a trip sometimes." He sighed, glanced at the parking lot for dramatic effect, and then turned back to her. "Where's her salon? I'll try to catch her there."

"It's over in East Point, like ten minutes from here. Hold on a minute. I think I have her card somewhere."

She disappeared inside. Dexter waited in the hallway. Looping the revelation through his mind.

She got married . . .

His balled his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms and leaving red marks like stigmata.

She got married . . .

He blew out a breath, relaxed his hands. He could not allow himself to contemplate this new knowledge, not yet. It would drive him to an unprecedented degree of fury, and he had to contain his rage-like a snake handler trapping a black mamba in a burlap sack.

A few minutes later, the woman came back to the door. She had brushed her hair and applied a fresh coat of burgundy-colored lipstick. He thought he picked up a whiff of perfume, too.

She handed a business card to him. Their fingers touched, briefly.

"I'm Shakira, by the way." She was smiling hard, displaying those dimples.

"Nice to meet you, Shakira." He studied the card. It was printed on thick, glossy red stock, with embossed white lettering. The name of the salon was Belle Coiffure. It listed the master stylists and owners as Tanisha Banks and Rachel Hall. "You've been to this place?"

She nodded. "It's real nice. I haven't been in a minute, though. It's kinda hard to get an appointment."

"Ray-Ray always could do some hair, you know." He tapped the card against his wrist. "Thanks for this, Shakira. I appreciate it. I'm going to visit the salon right now-I'll be sure to tell Rachel you said hello."

"You do that." Leaning against the doorway, arms folded across her bosom to lift her perky breasts higher, Shakira batted her eyelashes. "How long you gonna be in town, Brian?"

"That depends on how long my business keeps me here."

" 'Cause I was gonna say, if you need someone to like, show you the city . . . I'm a native. A luscious Georgia peach." Her gaze was direct.

He wasn't surprised by her flirting, but he was surprised by his lack of interest. Back in the day, if a sista as fine as her had come on to him, he would've had her legs in the air before she knew what had happened.

But that evening, a harem of Halle Berry look-alikes could not have tempted him away from his mission.

"I'm flattered." Dexter raised his ring finger, showing her the platinum band. "But I'm a married man."

"I saw that. So? Your wife isn't in town with you, is she?"

"Listen, I take commitment seriously." His voice was so taut it almost crackled. "The holy vows. For better or worse. Till death do us part. That's important to me. More important to me than anything."

She shrugged. "Well, you're a good man. Not too many brothers could turn this down." She swept her hand across her body as if showing off a new car.

"You'll never meet another brother like me," he said, turning to leave.

She stared at him, stunned at his rejection, and then she huffed and slammed the door.

He hurried to the car and roared out of the apartment complex, tires squealing, in his haste almost running down a woman walking her toy poodle. He'd been struggling to keep a lid on his rage, but it was steaming out of him, uncontainable, like lava erupting from a volcano.

She got married . . .

He clenched the steering wheel, feeling as though he could snap it in half like a pretzel.

She got married . . .