But you'll never know for sure.

Loren looks off again. "Back in Livingston," she says.

You both shake your head. You both sip your beers.

Over the course of the year Loren visits every once in a while. If the weather is cooperating, you two sit outside.

The sun is high on that day a year later. You and Loren are sprawled out in lawn chairs. You both have Sol beers. Loren tells you that they're better than Coronas.

You take a sip and agree.

As always, Loren looks around and shakes her head and says her usual refrain: "Back in Livingston."

You are in your backyard. Your wife Olivia is there, planting a flower bed. Your son Benjamin is on a mat next to her. Ben is three months old. He is making a happy cooing noise. You can hear it all the way across the yard. Kyra is in the garden too, helping her mother. She has been living with you for a year now. She plans on staying until she graduates.

So you, Matt Hunter, look at them. All three of them. Olivia feels your eyes on her. She looks up and smiles. So does Kyra. Your son makes another cooing noise.

You feel the lightness in your chest.

"Yeah," you say to Loren with a silly grin on your face. "Back in Livingston."

Acknowledgments

ONCE AGAIN, a nod of gratitude to Carole Baron, Mitch Hoffman, Lisa Johnson, Kara Welsh, and all at Dutton, NAL, and Penguin Group USA; Jon Wood, Malcolm Edwards, Susan Lamb, Jane Wood, Juliet Ewers, Emma Noble, and the gang at Orion; Aaron Priest and Lisa Erbach Vance for all the usual stuff.

A special thanks to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. He constantly shows me the beauty of his state and her inhabitants, even if, for the sake of drama, I end up putting my own spin on them.

The author also wishes to thank the following for their technical expertise:

• Christopher J. Christie, United States Attorney for the state of New Jersey;

• Paula T. Dow, Essex County (NJ) Prosecutor;

• Louie F. Allen, Chief of Investigators, Essex County (NJ) Prosecutor's Office;

• Carolyn Murray, First Assistant Essex County (NJ) Prosecutor;

• Elkan Abramowitz, attorney extraordinaire;

• David A. Gold, MD, surgeon extraordinaire;

• Linda Fairstein, lotsa-things extraordinaire;

• Anne Armstrong-Coben, MD, Medical Director of Covenant House Newark and just plain extraordinaire;

• And for the third straight book (and final time), Steven Z. Miller, MD, Director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. You taught me about much more than medicine, my friend. I will miss you always.

About the Author

Winner of the Edgar Award, the Shamus Award, and the Anthony Award, Harlan Coben is the author of eleven previous novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Just One Look, No Second Chance, Gone for Good, and Tell No One, and the popular Myron Bolitar series. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.