He stiffened. "You may leave now."

I almost laughed at that. I had left long ago. He'd just never noticed.

"Oh, and Joanna?" His voice stopped my hand on the doork.n.o.b, and I turned. He was already seated again, angling a stream of smoke upward. He spoke from the corner of his mouth. "Stay out of Valhalla. If I hear of one more incident compromising the reputation of my property, I'll throw you out myself."

I used the only weapon I had left. "No wonder she left you."

He picked up his pen and began writing again, never looking up. "She left you too."

Well, that was the crux of it, wasn't it? My mother had left me. Sure, she'd left Xavier and Olivia too, but they hadn't been recovering from a life-threatening attack. They hadn't felt it as yet one more in a string of devastating losses. They hadn't needed her like I had.

But there was no point rehashing all that now, I told myself. My mother had walked away from her family-simple as that-and like the rest of my joyful past-not-it was behind me. So as I left Xavier's office I imagined stomping down on the memories that voicing my mother's name had evoked, grinding them back down with the heel of my boot into the mental grave where all my old pains rested. I was no longer that fragile-minded teen with a damaged body and a weary soul. I didn't need or want my mother in my life anymore.

I'd just reached the foyer and was shooting imaginary bullets at Xavier's giant portrait when I heard the snuffling. It was a faintly strangled sound, and as easily recognizable as the beating of my heart. I found Olivia standing at the large leaded windows overlooking the side lawns, her body in silhouette, her curves and curls and color mocking the severe lines of the cold gla.s.s panes. Her arms were wrapped around her core like she was holding herself together...and had been, I thought, for a long while. My heart dipped at the fragile, if stunning, picture she made, and I descended quickly into the sunken living room. I knew she heard me; her head tilted, but she didn't turn.

"Hey," I said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Where's the One Name Wonder?"

"Outside," Olivia sniffled, and I knew it was bad when she didn't insist I call Cher by her proper name. "Waiting in the car."

"You're going to be late for high tea," I said, turning her toward me and wrapping my arms around her. All the latent maternal instincts I'd never wanted scuttled forward whenever I saw my sister with tears in her eyes. Sure, I teased her about things we both knew didn't matter, but if anything truly touched her heart, my hackles went up like a she-wolf protecting her cub.

"Are you sure we can't get together tonight?" she asked, looking down into my eyes with her own imploring ones. We were usually the same height, but she was teetering on four-inch Manolos. "I really want to spend some time with you."

"I have a date," I said quietly, and watched her face fall. "With Ben."

She clasped her hands together with a surprised cry of delight, and her teary eyes suddenly shone with something more. "Oh, Joanna!"

"Don't make too much of it," I said, but even I was having a hard time keeping the excitement from my voice. "It's just a date."

"But it's Ben. Benjamin Traina," she sighed heavily, and crossed her hands over her heart. "I always knew you two were meant for one another. Oh, you have to tell me everything!"

"I will," I promised. "Tomorrow."

"Tonight," she insisted, squeezing me.

"Olivia..." I tried to make my voice firm, but her excitement was contagious. Besides, she was the only one who knew, who could know, what this meant to me. "All right. I'll stop by your place around eleven-thirty or so. We should be finished by then."

"I'll give you your gift then too, though it can't compete with Ben Traina!"

What could? I thought, pulling from her grasp. I smoothed her hair from her face and smiled. "You should go clean up. You'll be a mess for tea time."

She nodded but didn't move. "Are you okay?"

I shrugged. "I'm used to it." And then, because I knew she needed to believe it, I forced a bright smile. "Really. I'm fine."

Another nod, then she squeezed my hand before we both turned toward the door. We couldn't talk in Xavier's house. Nothing happened within these walls that he didn't somehow find out about. Yet Olivia surprised me. As we exited the foyer into a bright winter day and I turned in the opposite direction of Cher's waiting Corvette, Olivia grasped my forearm, her grip unusually strong.

"You're the only family I truly have left," she said, looking me hard in the eye. "Without you, I'd probably believe all the things they say."

I didn't have to ask who she meant. People who wrote magazine articles about her but never dreamed of conversing with her. People who looked her in the chest rather than the eye. People who forgot there was a person beneath all the beauty and gloss, and, yes, that included Xavier.

"Olivia Archer," I said, taking her hands in mine, "you are all the things they say, and more. You're beautiful, kind, intelligent, and strong. You're true and you're loyal, and even though you possess a baffling penchant for mud baths"-she choked out a strangled laugh at that-"you are also my sister. Beneath the high sheen of your society face lies a solid core of strength, and a spirit stronger than I'll ever possess. Touch that in your mind when you begin to forget, okay?"

She nodded, teary, and I let her go before we both started blubbering on Xavier's palatial steps. I wouldn't give him the pleasure. Still, halfway down the steps I turned. "And Olivia?"

She paused, and I raised my voice so it would carry to her, Cher, and whatever listening devices might be lying in the shrubbery. "Blood sister or not, I'll never, ever leave you."

And I wouldn't. She was all I had left now too.

5.

Ben Traina forgot nothing. The Italian restaurant was the same place he'd taken me on our first date, years earlier, in a borrowed pickup truck and a suit that didn't quite fit. This time his clothes did fit-a snug pair of jeans that made me look twice, and a worn leather jacket that called for a third glance-and the vehicle was his own, though still a four-wheel drive and still souped to the nines. The restaurant had hardly changed at all.

Taverna Deliziosa was an intimate Italian-American hole-in-the-wall that lived up to its name. The dual scents of Italian sausage and fresh bread greeted us at the door, and Sinatra wafted from invisible speakers. The dining area was simply one large room with heavy velvet curtains to soften the corners, and photos of Italian sports and movie stars adorning the crumbling brick walls. A mahogany bar lined the opposite side of the room, its mirror reflecting us back on ourselves, and its edges adorned with greenery, grapes, and old Chianti bottles. Individual tables sported red-and-white checkered cloths, and were topped with atmospheric gold hurricane lamps that did little to brighten the room.

There were a fistful of couples dining tonight, and a Mormon family with an absolute brood of children had taken up the long trestle in the corner. Only one man was alone, his back to us as he sat hunched at the bar. I studied his face through the bartender's mirror but saw nothing to alarm me. A retiree probably; older, graying, and harmless looking enough, but I still maneuvered so my back was to the wall and the scope of the entire room available to me. If Ben noticed, he didn't let on.

"The waiter knows you by name," I said after a bottle of Panna and a bread basket had been placed in front of us.

Ben shrugged out of his jacket. He was wearing a shortsleeved, collared shirt, and it moved nicely with his body. I looked up, trying to focus on his words, but his lips were equally distracting. "They keep cop hours and it's on the way home."

He said nothing about it being the setting for our first date, so neither did I.

"Seems I'm a little overdressed, though," I said, motioning down. I'd worn slacks in concession to the blade sheaths fastened at my boot and lower back, but had chosen a bright coral top to stand out against the contrasting black, its neck draping nearly to my navel. A short battle with double-sided tape had ensured it concealed all the right spots, while a matching purse easily concealed my aluminum kubotan, only six inches long. I could have the blunt steel barrel in my hand in one quick move. I might be paranoid, but I was fashionably paranoid.

"That's all right," Ben said, leaning his elbows on the table. "I'm enjoying looking at you again, Jo-Jo."

I blushed, such a novel reaction for me that I was forced to look away.

We'd seen each other just once after the attack. I'd just been discharged from the hospital, and it was a long enough period for the bruises to have faded from my skin but short enough that neither of us had yet become the people we were today. I didn't talk much back then-didn't see or think or taste or feel much either-and I'd been too afraid to call him or to meet, knowing that the sweetness of the moment-being pierced beneath that concerned gaze as he remembered how I'd felt beneath him-was the same thing that would make it bitter.

I was right. I hadn't been able to clear that bitterness from my throat long enough to reach for words, and didn't know what to say even if I had. Do you still love me? Why won't you touch me? Please stop looking at me that way. So after moments turned into minutes, the silence prolonged, the younger Ben had run out of words as well. He looked, then walked, away. And I was left feeling more alone than ever.

"Jo?"

"Sorry." I shook my head, realizing both he and the waiter were now looking at me.

"I asked if you'd like some wine with dinner." He laughed, a little self-consciously. I must have been staring at him forever. "I don't know what you drink anymore."

"Wine would be great," I said, forcing a smile, but I had to wonder if we should really try to start this again.

Once upon a time-and it was a long time ago now-we could've married, and continued on together. Or we might have just as easily drifted; a simple slipping away of two people who'd grown up and apart. Either way it would have been a choice unmarred by tragedy.

Instead, the unnatural death of hope lingered between us, a love murdered as surely as I was meant to be. So the question was, in this world, in my current reality, was that something that could be overcome? Because I was frightened by the long dormant emotions stirring inside me. It felt like I was on the verge of something risky and steep. An emotional precipice I could either leap from into a headlong tumble or pull back from and wisely head for safety. For a full decade now I'd chosen only safety.

"You're thinking too hard, Jo," Ben said, with a smile that made my world tremble.

I leaned back casually, just reclining, I thought. Calm as an earthquake. "How can you tell?"

"Your eyes go black," he said, peering into them. "Nervous?"

"Petrified," I said, surprising us both with my honesty. He laughed, and I was startled at the way it boomed out of him at first, then settled into a rumbling chuckle. Were you supposed to forget your first lover's laugh?

"Don't worry, I don't bite," he said, leaning forward again. "I wouldn't dare."

My gaze dropped to his lips. Too bad.

I searched for a subject that wouldn't stir my hormones or remind us of the past or, G.o.d forbid, make my heart start that perilous tumble, finally settling on a part of his life that had nothing to do with me. "Do you still write?"

He nodded. "I've graduated from poetry, though. I'm into mysteries now, whodunits. Nothing published yet, but I'm still trying."

"I'm glad. Your poetry was wonderful."

He shrugged, a self-conscious rolling of the shoulders that gave away just how much it still meant. "It keeps my mind agile, anyway. I like creating the worlds, the characters, the situations."

"And solving the mysteries?" I asked, and he nodded, popping a piece of bread in his mouth. "Is that why you like being a cop?"

He stopped chewing, looking thoughtful for a moment. "I'm not sure I do like being a cop." And even he looked surprised at the admission.

"Then why do it?"

"I have to. It's a compulsion. A calling."

"An obsession?" I asked warily.

He looked at me. "Yes."

I hesitated. This was fragile territory again. "Because of what happened to me?"

He blinked, but his expression didn't change. I guess he figured if I could speak about it so openly, he could as well. "And because I can't just live a comfortable life on the sidelines while horrible things happen to people who can't protect themselves."

I just stared at him, determined to say nothing until he answered my question.

He shrugged again, but there was a tremor, a visible fury, beneath the movement this time. "What do you want me to say, Jo? Yes, what happened to you, to us, marked me. It changed the way I viewed the world. How could it not?"

I found I couldn't meet his eye. "But how can you let it still affect you?"

Ben circled the question like a tiger, coming at me from another direction. "What about your career, then? The photographer who captures the truth but remains safely on the other side of the lens. n.o.body and nothing touches you, is that right?"

I folded my arms over my chest. That wasn't right at all. My photography was good and relevant. Granted, Xavier's criticism about not making money at it was almost true, but my photos had been heralded for their clear and unflinching look at Vegas's most forgotten streets. When I snapped a photo, I leeched the neon from the scene, and what remained was even more startling for its stark simplicity. People lived on these streets. Teens were corralled into prost.i.tution on these corners. There was a great deal more lost out there every day than in all the glittering casinos combined. I wanted people to recognize and think about that.

"We all become who we need to in order to survive," I said stiffly.

"And who have you become, Joanna? A warrior? Some superwoman bent on vengeance who needs no one and nothing?"

Strange choice of words, I thought, pursing my lips. "Criticizing?"

"Simply asking." But we both knew there was nothing simple about it.

"I was changed too, Ben," I said, taking up the offense. "When someone holds out their hand to me I don't grab it readily. I'm always on the lookout for the fist behind their back." My eyes automatically traveled to the lone man sitting at the bar.

"Most women don't think that way."

"Yeah, and I envy those women. I even remember, vaguely, what it was to be one of them." I leaned back in my chair and blew out a long breath, aware that I sounded way too bitter to be just twenty-five. "But more than envy them, Ben, I fear for them. I especially fear for the ones who will become like me."

We used our waiter's return with the food and the wine as an excuse not to talk, but when we were alone again, Ben said, "There's no one like you, Jo."

I rammed my fork into my pasta. "Don't try and sweet-talk me now. You've p.i.s.sed me off."

He smiled and I wished he wouldn't. I felt myself toeing that precipice again. Tumble, tumble, tumble. It made me want to push him away and run from the room, screaming. It made me want to draw him near and into my bed, sighing. I had more practice with the former, so I pushed.

"The knowledge of violence is my playmate, Ben," I said, twirling angel hair around my fork. "I bed down with it in the evening and wake with it again in the morning. That's never going to change."

"I know about violence, Jo. Seeing what I see every day on the job..." He shook his head, poured wine into our gla.s.ses, and took a sip, his eyes growing dark. "It's enough to make me want to head out onto the streets with you instead."

I drew back. "But that's-" Not what I'm doing, I wanted to say.

"Wrong?" he finished for me, mistaking my puzzlement for disagreement. "Why? How's it different from the way you scour the streets? Searching. Stalking."

"I take photos. I just look. I've never...touched someone," I lied. I had. Once. But to be fair, he'd touched me first.

"You think I shouldn't feel this way because of my badge." It was a statement, not a question.

His defensiveness intrigued me, even as it gave me pause. "That badge gives you access, power over other people." Maybe I was oversensitive to the power one person chose to wield over others just because he could, but this seemed pretty straightforward to me.

But Ben was already shaking his head, breaking a piece of bread apart in his hand, dipping it in the oil. "What this badge gives me is a second pair of eyes. Good thing too, because if I had to filter every foul rotted thing I see in this city through my own eyes I'd go mad. But this way it's bearable. It won't climb into me."

Then what was that look? I wanted to ask him. What was that flicker I saw skirting his gaze, adding a hard glint to his narrowed eyes?

It occurred to me then that this was just as much of a blind date as the one with Ajax. I didn't know who Ben really was. I knew the boy he used to be-the one tormented by his father, disappointed by his mother-but where had the past ten years taken him? What had he been doing? Why did he get divorced? And when did he get the tribal tattoo I'd seen branding his left shoulder when he reached for the bread?

Why, after all this time, had he asked me out?

"Has it ever, Ben?" I said, thinking his answer might tell me a little about all those things. "Gotten into you, I mean?"

He didn't reply for a while, staring into the flame of our hurricane lamp as he chose his words carefully. "There was this call last week, the third time a unit was sent to this guy's house in a month. Typical a.s.shole wife-beater...except this time he'd decided to beat on their two-year-old son. So the boys show up, he greets them with open arms, throws the door open, calls them by name. 'Hey, Harry! Hey, Patrick! How ya doin'?'"

Ben shook his head in disgust, gesturing with his fork. "Invites them right in because he knows his wife isn't going to say s.h.i.t. Meanwhile, the only thing holding that boy's left leg together was his unbroken flesh. The hammer was right there on the coffee table."

"Oh my G.o.d."

"Yeah," Ben said, still shaking his head. "And that p.r.i.c.k is standing there with this s.h.i.t-eating grin because we know he did it, he knows we know, and there's not a d.a.m.n thing we can do about it.