What time was it? She glanced at the stove clock. Six-fifteen, but she was in Central Time. It was seven-fifteen in New York. Still early, possibly even by Deputy Winter standards.

He answered on the second ring. “Winter.”

Sarah took a calming breath. Though he was at home, he sounded as if he was on duty. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell him. What if the note was for real and the person who wrote it did have her phones tapped, her house bugged? Or Nate’s phones, his apartment?

What if she talked and ended up getting someone killed because of it?

“Sarah? What’s going on?”

“I knew you’d have caller ID.” She gave a faltering laugh. “Paranoid cops. I’m home, safe and sound. I wanted to let you know.” She didn’t sound believable even to herself. “It’s early, I realize, but you strike me as the crack-of-dawn type.”

“You sound like you’re coming undone.”

“Do I?” She tried another laugh, but it only seemed to make her sound even nuttier.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Have a good day. Sorry if I woke you.”

She slammed down the phone and took it apart, then charged into the living room and took apart that phone, and finally ran upstairs and took apart that one.

She didn’t find anything that looked like a phone tap, not that she knew what she was looking for.

“You’re insane,” she said aloud. “Just drive to the police station and hand them the stupid letter.”

There. A plan.

What if she was followed?

What if Ethan Brooker had sent her the letter?

From New York?

Okay, so that didn’t make sense. But the point was-did she dare risk telling someone, anyone? Did she dare risk not telling someone?

At least her parents were safe in Amsterdam, and her brother had his armed guards in New York.

She put the phones back together and made more hot tea, calming down as she sipped it and stared at the note, as if it might make better sense to her now that she’d gotten over the initial shock of it.

If I can get to your brother, I can get to you.

Special Agent Collins would definitely want a look at this little missive. The FBI had profilers, handwriting analysts, fingerprinters, paper analysts and ink analysts. They’d figure out if it was for real or just some jerk getting off at her expense.

Feeling more in control of herself, Sarah opened the rest of the mail and discovered two obvious crank notes. One was from a woman who wanted a lock of Rob’s hair so she could make psychic contact with the sniper-obviously she was not a legitimate psychic. The other was from a man who claimed Rob and Nate had lived only because God was giving them a second chance to renounce their sinning ways.

In that context, the anonymous note from New York maybe wasn’t for real. The shooting had received maximum news coverage. It had brought out a few nuts, and the writer of the offending note could be just another one of them, someone who wanted to frighten and get everyone stirred up but who wouldn’t act on his threats.

Her phone rang, startling her. Her mind leaped in a dozen different directions, but she composed herself enough to answer in a reasonably calm voice on the third ring. “Dunnemores.”

“I’m on a midmorning flight to Nashville,” Nate said. “Stay put.”

He hung up before she could say a word.

Midmorning his time. A two-hour flight would put him in Nashville before noon her time, in Night’s Landing thirty to forty-five minutes later. He hadn’t asked her to pick him up at the airport. For all she knew, he’d get a ride from another marshal.

Rob would tell her she was on a need-to-know basis and should learn to live with it.

Blowing out a lungful of air, Sarah got a pair of dented aluminum tongs from a drawer and shoved the offending note and its envelope to the bottom of the pile of mail. When Nate arrived, she’d show it to him.

Problem solved. He was the law enforcement professional. He could help her figure out what to do.

He’d be on his way back to New York by tonight.

In the meantime, she’d make her prune cake.

Fifteen

Nate bought a map and rented a car at the Nashville airport and drove east until he came to Night’s Landing, basically a wide bend on the Cumberland River. It wasn’t even a town, really. He pulled into a gas station and started to call Sarah for directions to her house, but there was no cell service. Before using a pay phone, he asked inside.

“I thought Sarah was still in Scotland,” the skinny old man at the cash register said. “I’ve been telling the reporters that. She and Rob used to like to come in here and buy red licorice. I told them it’d rot their teeth.” He eyed Nate suspiciously. “Why should I tell you where they live?”

Nate was in no mood to screw around and showed the man his badge.

Directions involved a cornfield, a country church and a back road he wasn’t supposed to take and one he was.

The back road brought him down toward the deep, slow river, and he turned left, as the old man had instructed, onto a long driveway that led to a log house nestled among shade trees and gardens, its sprawling lawn ending at a dock on the riverfront. On one side of the property were more fields, on the other, thick woods that seemed to go on forever. Spring was further along in middle Tennessee than in New York, the leaves full and dark, a huge pink azalea growing close to the house, a tangle of white roses creeping up one side of the front porch.

Nate parked behind an old pickup with Tennessee plates and climbed out of his car. He could smell freshly mowed grass tinged with the sweetness of flowers and heard a small boat puttering on the river.

In the side yard, a ponytailed man in overalls stabbed a pitchfork into a pile of compost and dumped it onto a plowed vegetable garden. One end had sprouts growing-spinach, onions, loose-leaf lettuce. The man shooed a horsefly with one hand. “Can I help you, sir?” he called to Nate.

Nate walked down to the garden. “I’m looking for Sarah Dunnemore.”

“And you would be?”

“Deputy U.S. Marshal Nate Winter. I work with her brother.”

The man-presumably the property manager Sarah had mentioned-had a black bandanna tied around his forehead. Sweat dripped down his face nonetheless. “You’re the other marshal who was shot with him, aren’t you? Doing okay, sir?”

“Yes, thanks, and you’re-”

“Brooker, sir. Ethan Brooker.” He grinned amiably, not breathing that hard from his work. “Chief manure spreader. Composted or not, horse manure stinks, don’t it? I take care of the place.”

Nate noticed the tattoo on the man’s tanned, muscular right arm. He had on a dirty T-shirt under the overalls. By contrast, Nate had put on a suit for his travels south. His bandaged arm had given him some discomfort on the flight, but he’d taken a couple of Tylenol when he landed.

“Dr. Dunnemore’s in the house,” Brooker said. “Is she expecting you? She’s got company.”

Nate didn’t like the idea of her having company, not after her early-morning phone call. She’d tried to hide her stress and fear, but they were obvious. He nodded to Brooker. “Yes, she’s expecting me.”

He left Brooker to his manure spreading and took a half gravel, half stone path to the back steps. It seemed more like the main entrance than the one on the porch that faced the river. Through a screen door, he could hear Sarah talking to a man with a pronounced southern accent.

They were discussing prune cake recipes.

“My granny always made a three-layer prune cake,” the man said. “She insisted it was best the next day, after the flavors had time to settle and blend.”

Sarah laughed, but Nate could hear a lingering strain in her voice. He wondered if the guy with her noticed. “I like prune cake anytime, anywhere, provided it’s not hard as a rock.”