"Naomi."

"I hurt her on Friday night, at the bar. I meant to. And she walked out of there with her wrist aching, her pride ripped up, and her temper leading her. Otherwise, she'd have left with her friend."

"I looked at you instead of her. You want me to feel guilty about that, to try to work some blame up because it was you, not her? This isn't about you and me, Naomi. It's about the son of a bitch who did this to her."

It was the tone as much as the words that snapped her back. The raw impatience with anger bubbling beneath.

"You're right. Maybe that's why I needed to call you. I wouldn't get endless there-theres and poor Naomis from you. That sort of thing just makes it all worse. And it's not about me."

"Finding her's about you. Having to see that's about you. You don't want any poor Naomis, I'll keep them to myself, but goddamn I wish you'd gone anywhere else to take pictures this morning."

"So do I. We sat right out on the deck earlier. And she was down there. She had to have already been there." She took a breath. "Does she have family?"

"Her mother lives in town. Her father left I don't know how many years ago. She has a brother in the navy, joined up right out of high school. A couple years ahead of me. I didn't know him really. And she has Chip. This is going to flatten him."

"They don't care about that."

"Who?"

"Killers. They don't care about any of that, they don't think about all the other lives they rip apart. He strangled her. I could see the bruising, her throat. He dumped her clothes near her. I think she was wearing those pink heels on Friday night. I think she was. She must've been with him since then, since she left the bar."

He wanted to pick her up, just lift her up and carry her back to the house. Instead, he kept a solid grip on her hand.

"There's no point in telling you not to think about it, so I'll say yeah, it's most likely he took her after she left the bar. We don't know what happened after that. They've got ways to figure out if she was killed there or somewhere else and dumped there."

"Yes, they have ways."

When they came out of the forest she saw the two patrol cars, Xander's bike.

"If he didn't kill her there, why take her all that way? Why not dump her body in the forest, or bury it there? Or drop her in the water?"

"I don't know, Naomi. But if you hadn't gone down there this morning, it's likely she wouldn't have been found yet. You wouldn't see her from the house, not as close as she was to the foot of the bluff. And from the water? Maybe if somebody came close to shore, maybe. So maybe leaving her there gave him more time to get away."

As they approached the house he looked over at her. "Do you want me to have Kevin pull the crew off for the day?"

"No. No, for once I think I prefer noise to quiet. I think I'm going to paint."

"Paint?"

"The second guest room-my uncles' room. I wouldn't be any good at work, and I don't want to go into town. Errands can wait."

"Okay. I'll give you a hand."

"Xander, you've got a business to run."

"I get not wanting a lot of there-theres." He had his arm around her waist now-a step closer to just carrying her-and kept his voice level. "I'd suck at giving them anyway. But I'm not going anywhere, so we'll paint."

She stopped, turned to him, into him, let herself just hold on. "Thank you."

Because it soothed him, and hopefully her, he ran his hands up and down her back. "I'm a crap painter."

"Me, too."

She went upstairs to set up without him. She knew he lingered below to tell Kevin so she wouldn't have to. When he came up, he set down a cooler.

"Some water, some Cokes. Thirsty work, painting."

"Especially when you're crap at it. You told Kevin."

"The chief's going to come up, check on you, so yeah. He'll keep it to himself until then, and the crew will do the same to give the chief time enough to tell her mother, and Chip."

"Mason says that's the worst part, the notifications. I always wonder if it's that hard to give, how much harder it is to get."

"I think it has to be worse not to know. If she hadn't been found, or not for a while longer. It's got to be harder not knowing."

She nodded, turned away. Some of the girls her father had killed had been missing for years. Even now, after all this time, the FBI wasn't sure they'd found all the remains.

Bowes gave them another every few years-for some new privilege. And, as Mason had told her so many years ago, for the fresh attention.

"So . . . you don't like this piss-yellow color?"

She tried to center herself, studied the walls. "I knew it reminded me of something."

He didn't fill the silence with small talk while they worked. Something else to be grateful for. Rolling the primer on the walls, covering something ugly with something clean, soothed.

The dog wandered in and out, and finally settled on stretching himself across the doorway for a nap, so they couldn't leave the room without alerting him.

They'd finished priming two walls, and had begun to debate which of them had a lousier hand at cutting in, when the dog's head shot up and his tail beat on the floor.

Sam stepped up to the doorway.

"Got yourself a guard here."

Naomi clasped her hands together to keep them still. "Are you- I'm sorry, there's nowhere to sit down in here. We can go downstairs."

"I won't be long. I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"I'm all right. I wanted to keep busy, so . . ."

"I hear that. First off, if you're nervous about being alone up here, I can have one of the men sit on the house tonight."

"She won't be alone." As Naomi started to speak, Xander glanced at her. "Consider it the fee for the crap paint job."

"It'd be good to have someone stay with you. I just want to get your timeline, if you remember about what time you left the house this morning."

"Ah. It was maybe quarter to eight. I don't know exactly how long it took me to walk down to where I caught the track. I took some shots, wildflowers, along the way. I can show you."

"I'm not doubting your word," Sam assured her. "Just trying to get a sense."

"I think I was at least an hour in the forest. And I took some shots from where it thins and you can see the channel. And after I went down, I took more from that big flat rock-the first one you come to from the track. That's when Tag ran up with the shoe. I didn't notice the time, but it had to be after nine. Then the dog kept barking and whining and I turned to tell him to knock it off, and I saw her."

"Okay. I'm sorry about this, Ms. Carson."

"Naomi. Naomi's fine."

"I'm sorry about this, Naomi, and I have to say I'm grateful you walked that way today. It might've been another day or two before anyone found her otherwise."

"You're going to tell Chip," Xander put in. "I know he's not next of kin, but you're going to tell him before he hears somebody talking about it."

With a nod, Sam took off his ball cap, scraped fingers through gray-streaked brown hair, set it back on again. "I'm going to see him right after I talk to her mother. If you think of some other details, Naomi, or if you just need to talk it through, you give me a call. This house is looking better than it ever did-well, in my lifetime. I'm a phone call away," he added, and gave the dog a quick rub before leaving.

- She woke herself from the nightmare, ripped herself out of the cellar, under a nurse log in the dark, green forest. The cellar where she'd found Marla's body. The fear came with her, and the images of the killing room her father had built, and all the blood and death in it.

Her breath wheezed out, wanted to clog up. She fought to hitch it in, shoved it out again.

Then hands gripped her shoulders. She'd have screamed if she'd had the air.

"It's me. It's Xander. Hold on a minute."

He turned her, one hand still firm on her shoulder, and switched on the light.

One look at her had his hands taking her face, a hard grip.

"Slow it down, Naomi. Look at me, slow it down. You're okay, just slow it down. You're going to hyperventilate and pass out on me otherwise. Look at me."

She pulled air in-God, it burned-fought to hold it, slow it before she let it out. She kept her eyes on his, so blue. A deep, bold blue, like water she could sink into and float.

"Better. You're okay, slower, slow it down some more. I'm going to get you some water."

She lifted her hands, pressed them to his. She needed those eyes, just that deep blue for another minute.

He kept talking to her. She didn't really register the words, just the hands on her face, the blue of his eyes. The burn eased, the weight lifted.

"Sorry. Sorry."

"Don't be stupid. Water's right there, on your nightstand. I'm not going anywhere."

He reached around her, picked up the bottle, uncapped it. "Slow on this, too."

She nodded, sipped. "I'm all right."

"Not yet, but close. You're cold." He rubbed those work-rough hands up and down her arms. He looked over her shoulder, said, "Ease off now."

She glanced over, saw Tag with his front paws on the bed.

"I woke up the dog, too. At the risk of being stupid on your scale, I am sorry. Nightmare."

Not her first, he thought, but the first time he'd seen the full-blown panic. "Not surprising, considering. You should get back under the blankets, warm up."

"You know, I think I'll get up, try to work awhile."

"Nothing much to take pictures of at . . . three twenty in the morning."

"It's not just taking them."

"I guess not. We should go down, scramble some eggs."

"Scramble eggs? In the middle of the night."

"It's not the middle of the night on your time clock. Yeah, eggs. We're up anyway."

"You don't have to be," she began, but he just rolled out of bed.

"We're up," he repeated, and walked over to open the doors. Tag bulleted out. "Up and out. Waffles," he considered, glancing over to study her as he pulled on pants. "I bet you could make waffles."

"I could, if I had a waffle maker. Which I don't."

"Too bad. Scrambled eggs, then."

She sat a moment, bringing her knees up to her chest.

He just handled things, she thought. Nightmares, panic attacks, hurt dogs on the side of the road, dead bodies at the foot of the bluff.

How did he do it?

"You're hungry."

"I'm awake." He picked up the cotton pants and T-shirt he'd gotten off her in the night, tossed them in her direction.

"Do you like eggs Benedict?"

"Never had it."

"You'll like it," Naomi decided, and got out of bed.

He was right. The normality of cooking breakfast soothed and calmed. The process of it, the scents, a good hit of coffee. The raw edges of the dream, of memories she wanted locked away, faded off.

And she was right. He liked her eggs Benedict.

"Where has this been all my life?" he wondered as they ate at the kitchen counter. "And who's Benedict?"

She frowned over it, then nearly laughed. "I have no idea."

"Whoever he was, kudos. Best four A.M. breakfast I've ever had."

"I owed you. You came when I called, and you stayed. I wouldn't have asked you to stay."

"You don't like to ask."