“I’ve seen that smile.” She dunked a French fry into a puddle of ketchup. “It’s wicked.”

“Wicked?”

“Villainous. Hungry. Wolfish.”

Raley scoffed. “I don’t think any of those descriptions fit me. Especially now that I’ve shaved off my beard.”

“They fit you more without the beard. The jaw, the eyes. Definitely lupine.”

He had returned to the motor court, bringing with him, along with a six-pack of Diet Coke and a can of Lysol spray, a sack of cheeseburgers and fries with a side order of fried shrimp, and two milk shakes. In the amount of time it had taken him to pull his shirttail from the waistband of his trousers and toe off his shoes, Britt had had the food unwrapped and on the table. They’d dug in.

While they ate, he recounted his conversation with George McGowan, trying to be as precise as possible. Britt didn’t allow anything to be glossed over or summarized. She demanded elaboration and details.

“Is she gorgeous?” she asked now.

“Miranda?”

She smiled wryly. “I see you didn’t have to pause and think about who I meant.”

“Yes. Gorgeous.”

“I’ve only seen pictures of her. Did Jay…you know?”

He raised one shoulder. “Maybe. Probably. Everybody else has.”

Britt stopped chewing, the unasked question evident in her expression.

He wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “The first time Miranda caught my eye, she was a high school cheerleader in a short skirt, doing high kicks on the sidelines. Jailbait. By the time she was old enough, I was away at school, and after that I was with Hallie.”

“I see. Lousy timing and lack of opportunity.”

He thought, Let her wonder, and reached for his milk shake. He took a long pull on the straw, then for the next several minutes they ate in silence.

“Raley?” When he looked across at her, her gaze was soft, earnest. “How did you feel? During the service, I mean. How was it for you, coming to grips with Jay’s death?”

“You’re not going to say the word closure, are you?”

She frowned at that. “Despite what he’d done to you, he was your oldest friend. Did you feel a loss? Were you able to mourn?”

He popped a shrimp into his mouth. “Always the interviewer, aren’t you?”

She yanked her head back as though he’d slapped her. Then she tossed down her last French fry and began gathering up the trash, stuffing it into the sack. “Forget it. I thought you might be feeling some conflicting emotions and would appreciate a sounding board to help you sort them out. My mistake.”

She moved back her chair and stood up. Raley caught her arm. “Okay, sorry.”

She pulled her arm from his grasp. “You’re still looking for an ulterior motive in everything I say and do. I thought we were past that.”

“I may never be past that.”

Angrily, she held his gaze for several moments, then expelled a long breath, her shoulders relaxing. “I deserve your mistrust, I guess. But I honestly thought you might want to talk about you and Jay.”

He hesitated, then with a small motion of his head, invited her to sit back down, which she did. He leaned back in the chair, which was much too small for his tall frame, and stretched his legs out in front of him. “You’re not a reporter for nothing, and I mean that as a compliment. Your instincts are excellent. Your questions about the funeral struck a nerve. That’s why I said what I did.”

He shot her a quick glance but found it difficult to look her in the eye while he verbalized these particular thoughts, so he focused on the happy face printed on the cup of his milk shake. “Jay was one of those people you make excuses for. Excuses to yourself.”

“How do you mean?”

“We’d make plans. To go to a ball game. To water-ski. Whatever. He’d arrive an hour late. I’d be furious. He’d be apologetic and penitent. ‘You have every right to be sore,’ he’d say. And even though I did have every right to be mad as hell, I’d let it go. I’d excuse him.

“He’d borrow my car and return it with an empty gas tank. I’d be steamed, but I’d never say anything. We’d be out to dinner. He’d let me pick up the check, saying he would get it the next time, but ‘next time’ never came. It wasn’t a matter of money. That’s not what I resented. It was his taking for granted that I’d pay and never make an issue of it.

“He treated all his friends like that. With a casual disregard that would piss people off if it was anybody else besides Jay.” He sliced the air with the back of his hand. “No matter what the offense, people excused him, saying, ‘That’s just Jay.’

“But-and that’s a big word here-he also had a talent for cheering you up when you were having a crummy day. He could get you to laugh when you felt like crushing something. He was the life of the party. He was never in a bad mood. He was affectionate and fun. That’s why people were drawn to him. Everybody wanted to be near Jay, inside his energy field. Because it was electric and exciting. The air around him crackled. From the outside looking in, it seemed like he had a thousand friends.”

He paused and thoughtfully uncrossed his ankles, pulling his legs in and setting his elbows on his thighs, leaning forward. “But I wonder. Did he have friends, or just acquaintances he could manipulate and get away with it? Was he a friend, or a man who could use you with such finesse you didn’t even realize you were being used?”

He paused a moment, then said, “Looking at his casket today, I had to wonder if anything he had ever said to me, in our entire lives, was honest and real. When I was down or in doubt and he doled out encouragement, was it just so much rhetoric? When I shared my ambitions and dreams, was he bored? Secretly laughing up his sleeve? I think maybe his special gift was just knowing the right thing to say and when to say it, to make you think he was your friend.”

He sighed. “Did I feel a loss? Yeah, I did. I thought my friendship with Jay ended five years ago. Today I realized that it had never existed. We’d never had a true friendship. That’s what I mourned.” Feeling slightly embarrassed over the sentimentality, he slapped his thighs lightly and stood up. “Finished?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes. Thank you. It was delicious.”

He slipped on his sneakers and carried the debris to a trash can outside so as not to stink up their small quarters. As he headed back toward the cottage, he questioned whether or not to tell Britt about what had happened after he parted company with George McGowan. She deserved to know, but did she need to be any more frightened than she already was?

He scanned the parking lot, but there was only one other car parked outside a cabin, and it had been there when they checked in. He went back inside, making certain the door was locked and the dead bolt secured.

He turned to find Britt facing him squarely, hands on her hips. “When are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re walking around with that cannon tucked into your waistband.” She lifted his shirttail and pointed at the pistol grip. “Tell me why you got up to look out the window twice while we were eating. Why-”

“They were at the funeral.”

“Who?”

“Butch and Sundance. The two men who came to the cabin.”

She backed up until her knees hit the edge of the bed, then plopped down on it. “Did they see you?”

“Yes, but I pretended not to recognize them.”

“What happened?”

He’d left George looking ready to implode. Going down the incline toward his car, he’d spotted the maroon sedan out of the corner of his eye. He tried not to give any indication that he recognized the car or the man sitting behind the wheel, although he was sure it was the same man who’d searched his cabin. He was still wearing the pale blue shirt. There was another man in the passenger seat, and although Raley had never got a good look at him, he saw that he was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and had to assume it was the man who’d gone through his truck.