"She might be attractive if she got the stick out of her ass," Lily muttered, predisposed to disliking the woman intensely.

"And got rid of the awful hairstyle and glasses," Wyatt agreed. "She's rather distinctive, isn't she? I recognized her immediately when I saw the photo."

Lily tilted her head in sheer surprise. "You've met her in person?"

Shaking his head, he explained cryptically, "No. Just held a door for her."

"Must have been a pretty impressive door."

His eyes glittered as he dropped the next bombshell. "It was the door to the Eastern Virginia Plastic Surgery

Center. Ms. Vincent was coming in just as I was leaving the other day."

"Bingo," Lily whispered, realizing why he was so confident that this whole case was somehow connected to Dr. Kean and her family. It all made sense now.

Someone in that practice had gotten the family's trusted attorney to work on Jesse Boyd's appeal and there could be only one reason why.

They were getting close-she could feel it right down to her very core.

"Ready?" Wyatt asked. When she murmured her assent, he nodded at Brandon. "Go ahead."

Brandon clicked the touch pad to start the clip, skimming through the introductions to the meaty part of the workshop, when the actual speakers all got their turn at the microphone. Lily listened intently as the first one began educating his audience about the most recent procedures in sucking the fat out of people's posteriors. Charming. And his pompous, older-sounding voice was utterly unfamiliar.

"Not him?" Wyatt asked, frowning.

Almost feeling as though she'd disappointed him, she slowly shook her head.

"Continue." He bent over the back of her chair, his hand on her shoulder, listening along with her to the next speaker. This one sounded younger, forthright, and brusque. And, again, was no one she'd ever heard before.

Wyatt s hand tightened on her shoulder, not a lot, just enough to indicate his rising tension. "Keep going. We're not finished yet."

Lily nibbled on her bottom lip, leaning so close to the laptop's speakers, her hair brushed the screen. Her heart pounded furiously. Wyatt seemed so sure. She almost held her breath as the next speaker began. Then disappointment made her release it in a gush.

"No," she said after the third man spoke only a few words. He sounded young and even a little flirtatious. Not the cold, arrogant voice she remembered. "It's not him. None of them are him."

Brandon sank back in his lounge chair, muttering a curse. Wyatt straightened and turned away, crossing his arms and tilting his head down, as if studying his feet. Though he appeared disappointed, he certainly didn't look thrown. Nothing ever really threw the man for long.

"A miscalculation, then," he said, sounding thoughtful. "I don't believe in coincidence, of course. I still strongly believe Dr. Kean and her family have something to do with this and that they brought that attorney into Boyd's case. But who…" He shook his head, visibly frustrated. "I'm sorry I got your hopes up."

"Don't apologize to me," she said. "Not for anything, not ever. I intended to listen to clips from every workshop, anyway. This just knocks one out of the way. We'll figure it out."

He nodded absently, rubbing his clean-shaven jaw.

"Hey, there a party going on back here?" a woman's voice suddenly called, shocking all three of them into near immobility. "Nobody answered out front, so I decided to come around."

Lily didn't have to turn completely around to recognize Jackie Stokes, who had opened the gate at the side of the house and stepped into the courtyard. Her heart started to pound, and on the table, her hands clenched into tight fists.

Please don't let her hate me.

Jackie, who still stood just inside the gate, suddenly froze. Her keys, which she'd been holding in one hand, slipped unnoticed from her grasp, landing on the flagstone walkway.

She hadn't even gotten a good look at Lily yet; from where she stood, she couldn't have seen more than her profile. But it had apparently been enough.

"Oh my God," the other woman whispered. She appeared in shock, her mouth open in confusion, her eyes wide and quickly filling with tears. "Is it you? Is it really you?"

Lily pushed the chair back and rose, turning to face the woman who'd become so close to her in the months they'd worked together. "It's me, Jackie."

They stared at each other from about a dozen steps away, not moving for a second, as if Jackie needed to give her brain a chance to catch up with what her eyes and ears were telling her. Then, with a shriek, she cried, "Lily!"

Flying across the courtyard, Jackie threw her arms around Lily, hugging her tightly enough to cut off her circulation. "It's you, it's you, it's you," she kept whispering, stroking Lily's short hair, wetting her cheek with her tears. "Oh, thank you, Jesus."

Lily was crying, too, by the time Jackie released her and stepped back to stare her in the face. Jackie might be angry when she found out Lily had been hiding all these months, but at least for a few minutes, her friend had made it clear that she was very happy Lily was alive.

Offering Jackie a tremulous smile and reaching for the other woman's hand, she drew her over to where Wyatt and Brandon stood, watching silently, shoulder to shoulder.

*'If you're going to thank somebody, these two would be a good place to start. Because they saved my life."

Chapter 12

The private investigator called at eleven a.m. Friday. It seemed far too early for news, but there was always hope. "Do you have something?

"You could say that," said the PI, who called himself Jonesy, an ex-cop who'd been fired for roughing up suspects. Though obviously an alcoholic, with the spider veins on his nose, the sloppy clothes, and the bright red cheeks to prove it, Jonesy was good at what he did. And, most important, discreet. "Easiest job I ever took."

He sounded as if the case was solved. Was it really possible? After such a short time, just twenty-four hours since he'd been put on the job, had he really come up with a lead on Lily Fletcher? There had been no doubt the woman would come crawling back to D.C. when she heard the news about Boyd, but this soon? It seemed almost too good to be true.

"You discovered something about Agent Fletcher?"

"You could say that."

"Tell me everything."

The man made a smacking noise as he cracked his gum, which seemed to be the second-most frequent item in his foul mouth, after the lip of a beer mug. "I been sit-tin' outside that Blackstone guy's house since last night. Told ya I saw him pull up with a black-haired woman, who spent the night."

"And I told you, I'm not interested in Blackstone's girlfriends. I hired you to follow him in case he goes to meet up with Fletcher." Or even to arrest her, a strong possibility. If Lily was ready to come back to life, whom else would she trust to bring her to the FBI building than her former boss? And wasn't she in for a surprise when her former supervisor picked her up and informed her she was a suspect in four murders?

Blackstone was good, his team's reputation strong. Even if Lily didn't turn herself in, they would be on her tail by now, considering she'd been well and truly exposed as a murderous vigilante. With Wyatt Black-stone's reputation as a scrupulously honest, by-the-book straight arrow, he'd bring Lily in the minute he located her.

It would be easier to take the woman out before she was in FBI custody, but if it had to be done afterward, there were ways.

"I'm getting there," Jonesy said, his voice puffed up with self-importance, as if he knew he had something good.

Maybe he did. Maybe this really was all going to be over with very soon. With Lily taken care of, it would just be a matter of cleaning up a few loose ends, like Jesse Boyd and Will Miller. And, perhaps, Jonesy. Then life could go back to normal and the infuriating worrying could stop.