“So, where’s your mom?” he asked.

“She passed away when I was nine,” she said, pausing at a picture of a young couple with a toddler. “Here she is, pregnant with Brianna.”

“Was she sick?”

“Yeah, very. But we muddled through somehow. I managed to get Brianna through her teens without killing herself.” She laughed softly. “No mean feat, with that one.”

“You managed?”

She shrugged. “My dad was always on a dive, or researching or speaking somewhere. I just stepped in and did the big sister thing.” She looked around, zeroing in on the one empty surface, a small typing table. “Wherever she is, she has her laptop. That’s strange.”

Con noticed the printer silently flashing a yellow light over the empty paper bin. He grabbed a few sheets of blank paper, fed them in, and instantly the machine clicked to life.

“Something’s in the printer cue.” He read the paper as it fed out of the ink-jet printer. Delta Airways. Boarding Pass. Brianna Lynn Dare. “Could she have gone to Lisbon?”

Lizzie laughed. “I seriously doubt that.” When she read the paper he held out, she paled a little. “I will kill her if she went to Portugal.”

“Why? She’s not a child.”

Her eyes flashed. “I know, but…” She waved her hand, studying the boarding pass. “There has to be an explanation. I’m going to call her.”

She slipped her phone from a side pocket of her cargo pants and dialed.

“Not that I think it will go through in Lis-” From down the hall came a digital jingle. “Shit,” she murmured, hitting a button. “Why would she do this?”

“She’s a grown woman, Lizzie. Is it really out of the realm of possibility that she’d take a trip? Maybe she couldn’t reach you.”

“Maybe. And nothing’s out of the realm of possibility with her. It’s just that…” She sighed. “She’s all I’ve got. And I’ve always been a little protective of her. More so since my dad died.”

“But she took her laptop,” he noted. “Why don’t you e-mail her? My phone has Internet service.”

She agreed and took his phone, sending a message while he perused the papers on the desk, on the file cabinet, everywhere.

“Alachua High Springs?” he asked, reading out loud from some notes on a yellow pad. “I’ve been-”

“What is that?” Lizzie put down the phone, drawn to what he was reading. “That’s my dad’s handwriting,” she said softly, her body slumping. “And those must be the notes from his last dive. That’s where he died, and the day it happened.”

“He was cave diving?”

She gave him a look. “You know the place?”

“I’ve dived there, up under the Suwannee and Ichetucknee rivers. I spent most of my life over near the Panhandle in Tarpon Springs, not far from there, so, yeah, I know the whole area. Tons of caves.” He frowned, studying the map. “When you said he died of nitrogen narcosis, I figured it was a deep SCUBA dive for salvage. This…” He indicated the hand-drawn map on the page. “Is a whole different thing. This is more of a thrill-seeker’s sport.”

“I know, which is why it was strange. He didn’t even tell us he was going on this dive, but I figured he didn’t want me to worry.” She bit her lip. “Which makes me mad as hell, on top of missing him.”

She glanced at the notes along the side, describing “underground rooms so big you could drive two tractor-trailers through side by side” with three exclamation points.

“Have you dived these caves?” she asked.

“I have. And this particular one”-he circled the map sketch with one finger-“is very advanced. It’s a three-and-a-half-mile labyrinth about three hundred feet deep. That’s some serious diving. Was his dive partner a pro?”

“Dylan Houser, a California cave diver. I never even met him during the investigation, but the authorities interviewed him. He was a diver my dad met through his contacts. He was on the surface when my dad died, and, no, they didn’t use tethers.” She shook her head, dropping the pad on top of a pile of books, and headed out of the room.

Con picked up the printed boarding pass she’d left behind, folded it and slipped it into his pocket, then grabbed the backpack from the dining-room table on the way to the spare bedroom.

The room was small, barely holding a double bed, dresser, chest of drawers, and a small empty aquarium in the corner. Lizzie paused at the door, reached for the bag, and gave him a pointed look.

“Okay. Thank you. Good-bye now.”

He laughed softly. “Excuse me?”

“I can’t get to the bank on Sunday afternoon, so I’m going to hide this, and I don’t want anyone to know where it is. Even you.” She put both hands on the bag and gave it a strong pull; he relinquished it.

“Are you crazy? What if someone broke in here and stole it-”

“No one will ever find where I’m hiding it.”

Right. “What if there’s a fire?”

She looked hard at him. “The bank’s closed. We’re due back at that marina in an hour. And he will leave without us, to make his point. Do you have a better idea, Con?”

He did. He’d have Lucy send someone down here and retrieve it if he had to. “Not this second. Go ahead, hide it.”

She backed into the room, and closed and locked the door. Like that little scrap of metal could keep him out. But he didn’t need to be in the room to know what she was doing; he could hear her moving around.

He put his ear to the door and picked up the ruffle of some bedding, the brush of someone crawling on carpeted floor, and pictured her crawling under a bed. She liked that hiding place; it was the same thing she did with the scepter.

He pressed his ear to the door and heard a snap, then a zipper too high-pitched to be the backpacks. Something hit wood… the scepter? If he had to find it without her, he now knew enough from what he’d heard.

A loud knock on the front door pulled him away from her door. When she didn’t emerge and the visitor knocked again, harder, he missed the nuance of the next sound.

“Lizzie,” he called. “Someone’s here.”

“One sec.” The zipper sound again, and a snap, then another.

He inched to the door to hear what she was doing, but another sound caught his attention. The lock opening in the front.

Automatically, he reached for his weapon. He advanced down the hall toward the front, listening. Whoever it was made no effort to hide that he or she was there. A female, judging from the sound of heels on tile, moving fast across the living area.

He gave it three seconds, then popped around the corner to surprise her, and got a deafening scream in return.

Behind him, the door to Lizzie’s room crashed open and she tore out. “What the hell?”

An older woman with graying hair, huge brown eyes, and impressive lungs stood frozen with her hands balled to her cheeks.

Lizzie shot right past him and almost lost her balance at the sight of the woman.

“Joy!”

The scream stopped. “Oh my. Lizzie. You scared me!”

“No, he scared you.” She glared at the Glock. “You can put that away. This is a neighbor, Joy Caldwell. What are you doing?” she asked the woman.

She held up a handful of mail. “Getting the mail while your sister’s out of town.”

“Damn. She really is gone?”

“She went to Lisbon, honey. I don’t think she was expecting you to stop by anytime soon. Aren’t you out diving?”

Lizzie just shook her head. “Is she alone?”

“I believe so.”

“She didn’t happen to say why she was going to Portugal, did she?”

Joy shrugged. “I thought it was for fun. She was awfully darn excited and, well, you know Brianna. Just doing something spontaneous.”

“Thanks for the mail, Joy,” Lizzie replied, resignation in her voice. “Did she leave an itinerary?”

“I’m sorry, no.” The woman’s gaze flicked to Con. “Are you a cop or something?”

“Something.”

Lizzie gently nudged Joy to the door. “I’ll call you if I hear from her, and you do the same. You have my cell phone number, right?”