She wandered into the living room and opened the blinds. Damn. Still. Dark. She glanced at the clock-

4:18. Too early to make coffee.

With a husband in the military, she was accustomed to being on her own-she didn't get spooked. She lay down on the couch and pulled a throw over her, but knew she was too fidgety to sleep. She turned on the television and watched CNN. Nothing much going on in the world. That was probably good. She flipped over to the Weather Channel and got the weather for Europe. She wanted to go to Spain one day. Paris and London didn't interest her as much. Rome might be fun.

At six o'clock, with a mug of hot coffee in her and a sketchy plan of action in mind, she flipped through Manny's address book on the computer and found Nate Winter's number in New York.

He answered on the first ring. She almost hung up, but he was a U.S. marshal and probably the naturally suspicious type. "Nate? It's Valerie Carrera, Manny Carrera's wife. We met at your sister's wedding. Actually, we've met a couple of times-"

"Of course, Val, I remember you." He was polite, almost formal, no doubt because he knew he was talking to the wife of a possible murder suspect. Or maybe because she'd never called him before. "What can I do for you?"

God, she was an idiot. A card-carrying idiot. "Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing. I'm sorry to bother you."

She hung up.

She couldn't ask a U.S. marshal to do a background check on Louis Sanborn on the sly. That just wasn't the way to go. Manny would have her head. Her ass'd be out the door for sure.

She'd have to do it herself.

Twelve

Carine woke up in the wrong bed. Wrong bed, wrong house.

But she knew where she was. She wasn't disoriented for even half a second as she sat up in the snug, four-poster bed and tried to guess what time it was. Seven? Sunlight angled in through the windowpanes. At least seven.

She imagined her life pre-Tyler North, pre-Boston, pre-Louis Sanborn's murder, when she'd get up in her cabin across the meadow on just such a sun-filled, pleasant morning and make herself a pot of tea and build a fire in her woodstove to take any lingering chill out of the air before she got to work. She loved every aspect of what she did. Assignments from various magazines and journals were her mainstay, but she was selling more and more prints, earning a name for herself at shows, and she had her own Web site and taught nature photography workshops. Before moving to Boston, she'd been putting together plans for a set of New England guidebooks, new specialty cards and her annual nature calendar for a local mountain club.

She viewed her life in the city as a kind of sabbatical, not a permanent move. But she'd felt that way about her log cabin, too, when she moved in five years ago. She hadn't meant to spend the rest of her life there.

After his mother died and Ty decided not to sell the house, he'd asked Carine to check on it when he was away, make sure the yard guys were mowing the lawn, let the cleaning people in, pick up packages. He'd offered to pay her, but she considered herself just being a good neighbor. She had no idea how he could afford to keep up the place-a big house with a shed, a long driveway, fifty acres. The property taxes alone had to be astronomical. Even after they became engaged, she hadn't asked for specifics, which, in a way, summed up their relationship. She hadn't taken care of business. But, she hadn't exactly been thinking straight.

Like yesterday in her apartment, she reminded herself with a groan.

She debated going for a run, then remembered collapsing against the lamppost yesterday morning. Ty would have been on her trail then and must have seen her. She didn't like it that he'd caught her at her most vulnerable, in shock, shattered by what she'd seen. But she didn't have to be professional, distance herself. It wasn't her job to catch the killer.

But a run could wait until she was more secure on her feet.

When she got out of bed, she felt steadier, less stripped raw by her experience. She headed down the hall to the shower, taking her time, washing her hair twice, scrubbing her skin with lavender-scented bath salts left over from her last stay there. She took the time to blow-dry her hair and dressed in her most comfortable pair of jeans and her softest shirt, determined to go easy on herself today in every way she could.

She brought her digital camera downstairs with her and set it on the table then she poured herself a cup of grayish coffee. Jodie Rancourt liked the instant gratification of the digital camera, but Carine had explained her preference for film. It'd be a while before she replaced her 35 mm Nikon and 300 mm zoom lens with a digital camera. But she wasn't resistant to change- she would do whatever worked, whatever got her the right picture.

The coffee was undrinkable. Ty must have made it hours ago. Carine spotted him outside at the woodpile, splitting maul in hand as he whacked a thick chunk of wood into two pieces. He looked relaxed, at home. He deserved this time off, she thought, dumping her coffee in the sink. She knew his military career had been intense during the past nine months-he didn't need to spend his leave making sure she didn't meddle in a murder investigation.

She returned to the table and decided she'd take pictures today. That would reassure everyone she was back in her right mind. She popped out the memory disk she'd used at the Rancourt house and popped in another disk with less memory. Whoever broke in to her apartment yesterday had ignored her less sexy Nikon, but her digital camera might have been too great a temptation if she hadn't brought it into Boston with her that morning.

She slipped the Rancourt disk into an inner coat pocket and headed outside with the camera. The morning was brisk and clear, the frost just beginning to melt on the grass. "You need a dog," she said, joining Ty at the woodpile. "Maybe Stump could father puppies."

He paused, eyeing her as he caught his breath, his eyes greener somehow in the morning light. "I'm never here long enough for a dog, and if I were, I wouldn't get one with any blood relation to Stump. He digs."

"All dogs dig."

"All dogs don't dig. All Gus's dogs dig."

She smiled. "Gus has never been much of a disciplinarian."

Ty lifted another log into place. He was wearing heavy work gloves, with wood chips and sawdust on his jeans and canvas shirt. She noticed the play of muscles in his forearms. "Your brother called," he said.

"Nate? What did he want?"

"He said Val Carrera called him at the crack of dawn and hung up." He glanced up at her, everything about him intense, single-minded. "What do you suppose that was all about?"

"I have no idea. Did Nate?"

"Nope. He and Antonia talked last night-apparently they decided you were in good hands. Or at least you could be in worse hands. He says Hank and Antonia are hiring Val as an assistant."

"With all her bookstore experience, I think she'd be great at just about anything." Carine didn't know Val Carrera all that well but liked her. "It must be weird for her with Eric away at school. She was so devoted to him when he was sick."

"Still is. She knew she had to pull back." Ty swung the heavy maul idly in one hand. "Nate told me to tell you hi."

"He's not happy about this situation, is he?"

"Hates it. But we all do."

Ty raised the maul, then heaved it down onto the log, splitting it in two, both pieces managing to fly in her direction. She jumped aside, and he grinned at her, shrugged without apology. If she didn't know how to get out of the way when someone was splitting wood by now, she deserved her fate. She felt an urge to grab a maul and have at a chunk of wood herself.