But her hands were clammy, and her vision seemed constricted, as if her mind was resisting taking in the details of her surroundings, mixing them with those of what she’d seen on television on the shooting, what she’d been told and had heard in the hospital corridors.

According to news reports, witnesses hadn’t heard shots fired or noticed anything out of the ordinary, certainly no one crouched in the bushes with an assault rifle. They’d only seen the two men falling, the tall one helping the more seriously injured one to cover behind the rocks, his gun drawn as he shouted instructions to onlookers, then the New York City police officer arriving on his horse, and finally dozens of paramedics and federal, state and city law enforcement officers descending.

The undergrowth along the pond and on the hillside below Central Park South conceivably could hide a shooter, but how could he get away with a near-instantaneous dragnet dropping on the surrounding area? How could he have avoided being seen crawling under the brush, setting up his weapon? The Pond-that was its name, just The Pond-was a wildlife sanctuary in the heart of the city.

Sarah reminded herself she wasn’t an investigator or firearms expert. She ran her fingertips along the smooth granite face of the rock outcropping.

As she forced herself to take a deep breath she noticed a man standing at the stone fence above her on Central Park South. He seemed to be watching her. He wore a black turtleneck and black leather jacket that were a little too warm for the conditions.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

The clothes. The dark hair that was long in the front.

She squinted-yes, the angular features.

She’d seen him before.

Not in New York. He wasn’t a reporter, a doctor, a marshal.

Where?

Amsterdam.

Sarah expelled the air from her lungs and tried to gulp in more, but her head was spinning. How could it have been Amsterdam?

The Rijksmuseum.

Now she remembered. She’d flown to Amsterdam from Scotland three weeks ago to visit her parents while Rob was there on vacation.

They’d all gone to the Rijksmuseum together.

You’re being dramatic again.

What difference did it make if it was the same man she’d seen at the museum?

The man above her on Central Park South made eye contact with her briefly, then turned and disappeared across the street.

Sarah started for a bench, but her knees buckled under her. She felt herself sinking. Damn. I can’t faint.

“Hold your breath.” Nate Winter walked up behind her, speaking firmly, even sternly. “You’re hyperventilating.”

“I’m not-I can’t breathe.”

“It just feels that way.”

She nodded, doing as he said. He slipped an arm around her middle and stood motionless, silent, for the minute or so it took for her to get her breathing back to normal.

Feeling foolish, she stepped back out of his arm. “I’m okay now. Thanks.” She was too far away to have made a credible, positive identification of the man-of anyone-up on Central Park South. Thinking she recognized him had to have been a trick of her imagination. A product of the stress of the past two days. “I hope you didn’t hurt your arm.”

Winter seemed even taller than he had at the hospital. “I didn’t grab you with my injured arm, although I could have. It’s doing fine.”

“I wouldn’t have fainted.”

He half smiled. “Of course not.”

Sarah had no intention of telling him that she may have recognized someone up on the street. New York had a population of eight million-it had to be a common experience for people to think they saw someone they knew and have it turn out to be a perfect stranger. She didn’t even know why she remembered the man from Amsterdam. Because he’d stopped to look at a Dutch painting with her while she waited for her mother?

Not entirely, she thought. She also had wondered if he might be with the silver-haired man who’d stopped to say hello to her mother in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

But that happened all the time. Her parents knew many people that Sarah had never met.

“I didn’t expect to have that reaction,” she said, covering for her embarrassment. “I’ve never fainted. I thought-I guess I didn’t think. I just ended up here, and I assumed I was prepared.” She directed her gaze at Nate, met his blue eyes with an incisive look of her own. “Did you follow me from the hospital or are you here for your own reasons?”

“Both.”

“Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Probably. There’s a hotel bar I like between here and the hospital. I can get a drink and take a breather, and you can get something to eat before you really do pass out. When’s the last time you ate?”

She thought a moment. “I had a candy bar at lunch.”

“No wonder you’re wobbly. Your blood sugar must be in the cellar.” He nodded toward the steps back up to Fifth Avenue. “Let’s go.”

“Deputy Winter-”

“You can call me Nate.”

“Okay.” She made herself smile. “It’s still hard for me to think of my brother as Deputy Dunnemore. When I think of marshals, I tend to think of Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp.”

One corner of his mouth twitched, but he said nothing as he led her up to Fifth Avenue, then back along Central Park South to the Avenue of the Americas and a hotel with a sprawling ground-floor bar that looked out on the street. They sat at a small round table near a window. He ordered a beer, and she ordered a beer and a quesadilla, wondering if she’d have pegged him as a federal agent if she were just meeting him.

More likely as someone here to rob the place, she thought.

Maybe if he were in a suit.

“You okay?” he asked.

She checked her thoughts. “Yes, fine. Thank you.”

He settled back in his cushioned chair, his so-blue eyes narrowed. Although he gave off an air of nonchalance, nothing about him was relaxed. “I can see why your brother wants to get rid of you. You don’t belong here.”

“I was hoping you hadn’t overheard that.”

She scooped up a handful of peanuts and tiny pretzels from a small bowl their waitress had dropped off and noticed the strain in his face, the shadows under his eyes. He’d been out there yesterday. Getting shot, trying to save a colleague. He wouldn’t have known if the sniper meant to mow down everyone within his sights.

“Rob’s just scared and frustrated,” she went on. “It can’t be easy for him to lie in that hospital bed, hurting, unable to chase after whoever shot him.”

“He wouldn’t be able to chase after the shooter, regardless. It’s not his job.”

“Or yours?”

His gaze settled on her. “That’s right.”

The man had zero sense of humor, at least right now-or humor wasn’t something he used to defuse his own anxiety. Or anyone else’s. Like hers. “Rob and I are twins.”

“So I hear. Fraternal twins, obviously. He doesn’t wear sweater sets.”

There. A touch of humor. It threw Sarah, especially when he looked at her in her twinset the way he did. “We’re very close. I’m sure he’s just projecting his own feelings onto me. I think that’s what I just did in the park. I could imagine him out there yesterday-it was so real. On some subconscious level, Rob wants to be safe in Night’s Landing himself, so he wants me to be there.”

“He’s worried about you.”

“Projection. He’s dealing with his own fears by worrying that I could be the shooter’s next victim.”

“I’ve learned to pay attention to my instincts.”

“I’m not talking about instincts.” She decided she should just stop talking, trying to explain. Nate was a concrete thinker. Give him the facts, skip the bullshit, the loosey-goosey bond between fraternal twins, brother and sister. “I’m sure instincts are fine when they’re not clouded by medications, surgery and blood loss.”

Their beers arrived, and Nate took a sip of his, eyeing her. “There’s nothing else?”