From the corner of his eye Daniel detected a movement and lifted his Sig, ready to fire. “Police. Stand, with your hands where I can see them.” A man rose from behind an overturned table and Daniel lowered his weapon in stunned recognition. “Randy?”

Deputy Randy Mansfield nodded, mutely. His white uniform shirt was covered in blood and he took a staggering step forward. Daniel rushed to catch him and lowered him into a chair, then sucked in a breath.

“Fuck,” he whispered. Behind the table, a young officer wearing a Dutton sheriff’s department uniform lay flat on his back, one arm outstretched, his finger still curled around the trigger of his service revolver. His white uniform shirt had a six-inch stain across the abdomen and blood ran in a little stream from his back.

“They’re all dead,” Randy murmured, in shock. “All dead.”

“Are you hit?” Daniel demanded.

Randy shook his head. “We both fired. Me and Deputy Cowell. Cowell got hit. He’s dead.”

“Randy, listen to me. Are you hit?”

Again Randy shook his head. “No. The blood’s his.”

“How many gunmen?”

The color was slowly returning to Randy’s face. “One.”

Daniel pressed his fingers to the young officer’s throat. No pulse. Holding his gun at his side he slipped inside the kitchen through the swinging doors.

“Police!” he announced loudly, but there was no reply. No sound at all. He checked inside the walk-in freezer and found it empty as well. He opened the door to the alley behind the restaurant, where a dark Ford Taurus was parked, its motor still running. If the shooter had had any company, that person had long since fled.

He holstered his weapon and returned to where Sheila sat slumped in the corner, looking like a discarded Raggedy Ann doll. He saw something white peeking out of her pocket. Pulling on a pair of the latex gloves he always kept in his pocket, he crouched beside her, knowing what he’d find.

The something white was the edge of a business card. His own.

Daniel swallowed back the bile as he studied her face. Had he seen her this way first, he would have recognized her immediately, he thought bitterly. With her dead eyes and lax facial muscles, the resemblance to one of the women in Simon’s pictures was much clearer.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The voice shook him and Daniel slowly rose to find Frank Loomis standing in the middle of the restaurant, twin flags of color standing out on his pale face.

“She was my witness,” Daniel said

“Well, this is my town. My jurisdiction. My crime scene. You’re not invited, Daniel.”

“You’re a fool, Frank.” Daniel looked at Sheila and knew what he had to do. “I’ve been one, too. But I’m not anymore.” He walked from the pizza parlor, past the small crowd of shocked townspeople that had gathered. When he was alone, he called Luke.

“Papadopoulos.” He could hear the TV in the background.

“Luke, it’s Daniel. I need your help.”

In the background the TV was abruptly silenced. “Name it.”

“I’m in Dutton. I need those pictures.”

Luke was silent a moment. “What happened?”

“I think I’ve identified another one.”

“Alive?”

“Until twenty minutes ago, yes. Now, no.”

“God.” Luke blew out a breath. “What’s the combo to your safe?”

“Your mama’s birthday.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Thanks. Bring them to 1448 Main. It’s a little one-story bungalow next to a park.”

Daniel hung up, and before he could change his mind, he called Chase. “I need you in Dutton. Please come.”

Dutton, Wednesday, January 31, 12:55 a.m.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything, Agent Hatton?”

“I’m fine, ma’am.”

“Well, I’m not,” Alex muttered, pacing the length of the small living room and back.

“Alex, sit down,” Meredith said calmly. “You’re not helping anything.”

“I’m not hurting anything either.” She started to walk toward the window, then caught Agent Hatton’s warning glance. “Sorry.”

“Your cousin is right, Miss Fallon. You should try to relax.”

“She’s running on no sleep and no food,” Meredith told the agent.

Hatton shook his head. “And you’re a nurse. You oughta know better than that.”

Alex glared at them both and sat down hard on the sofa. Then popped up a second later when there was a knock at the door.

“It’s Vartanian,” Daniel called, and Hatton opened the door.

“Well?”

“Three dead,” Daniel said. “One of them my witness. Hatton, I need to talk to Miss Fallon,” he said, and Agent Hatton touched his temple in a mock salute.

“Ladies,” he said. “I’ll be outside,” he said to Daniel.

“Should I go?” Meredith asked and Daniel shook his head. Then he closed the door and stared at it for a long, long time, and with every moment Alex felt her panic climb.

Finally she could stand his silence no longer. “What did you need to tell me?”

He turned. “It’s not good.”

“For who?” she asked.

“Any of us,” he said cryptically, then walked to the counter where he’d kissed her, and leaned against it, head bowed. “When I first saw you I was shocked,” he said.

Alex nodded. “You’d just seen Alicia’s picture in the old article.”

“I’d seen her face before that. You read the articles about my brother Simon.”

“Some of them.” Alex lowered herself to the sofa. “ ‘I’ll see you in hell, Simon,’ ” she murmured. “You knew what it meant when I first told you.”

“No. Not until tonight. Did you read the article that talked about how my parents went to Philadelphia looking for a blackmailer?”

Alex shook her head but Meredith said, “I read that one.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t color all the time. I was going crazy. The article said a woman was blackmailing Daniel’s parents. When they went to Philadelphia to confront her, they learned Simon had been alive all that time and he killed them.”

“You didn’t get the latest, greatest,” Daniel said sardonically. “My father had known Simon was alive all along. He’d thrown him out of the house when Simon turned eighteen. He had… insurance to make sure he stayed gone. Then he told everyone Simon was dead so my mother wouldn’t keep looking. He faked Simon’s death, burial… everything. I believed he was dead. We all did.”

“You must have been shocked to find he was alive,” Meredith said quietly.

“That’s putting it mildly. Simon was always bad. When he was eighteen my father found something that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was because of this he banished Simon and it was this that he used as insurance that he would stay dead.”

“What was it, Daniel?” Alex demanded. “Just tell me.”

A muscle in his jaw spasmed. “Pictures of women, girls. Teenagers. Being raped.”

She heard the quick intake of Meredith’s breath, but for Alex there was no air.

“Alicia was one of them?” Meredith asked.

“Yes.”

Meredith moistened her lips. “How did that blackmailer get these pictures?”

“She didn’t. My mother had them, and when she realized Simon had been alive all that time, she left them for me in the event she didn’t… survive. The blackmailer knew Simon when they were kids. She saw him in Philly and knew he should be dead.”

“So,” Meredith said, “she blackmailed your father on the faked death and burial.”

“Essentially, yes. Two weeks ago, I found the pictures my mother had left for me. That was the day I learned my folks were dead. A few days later, Simon was dead, too.”

“So what did you do then?” Meredith asked. “With the pictures, I mean.”

“I gave them to the detectives in Philadelphia,” Daniel said. “The day I got them. At the time I still thought they were the reason for the blackmail.”

“So they’re up there?” Alex asked. “Pictures of Alicia are up there… with strangers?” She heard the thread of hysteria in her voice and fought it back.

“Copies, yes. But I kept the originals. I vowed I’d find the women. I didn’t know who they were or what part Simon played in it all. I didn’t know where to start. And then my first day back we found the woman in Arcadia.”