“He told you all this?”

She nodded, opening her eyes, wishing she could slow her mind, stop the pace of the images repeating themselves. “He was standing on that narrow ledge in front of the cave where Conroy had taken Juliet. I heard him from the path. He was sobbing. I don’t think-” She broke off a moment, searching for the right words. “He’s not one to cry in front of other people.”

Nate picked up her iced-tea glass and took a sip. “Think he was going to jump?”

“I don’t know. I’ll never know.” She rocked back in her chair. “I don’t think he intentionally went out to the ledge to jump. I think he just found himself there. It’s not that much of a jump-there’s no guarantee he’d have died even if he had planned to commit suicide.”

“Water’s deep there, current’s strong.”

“He’s an excellent swimmer. Not that it matters if he’d wanted to die.”

“Was he drunk?”

“Who’s telling this story?” But he’d brought her back to the present, and that was where she needed to be to continue. “He surprised a water moccasin on the ledge. I saw it. It came after him-they can be very aggressive when they’re startled. Wes panicked.”

“And you?”

“I grabbed the snake and threw it in the water.”

Nate smiled. “You and these snakes.”

“The story got told differently than how it was.”

“That’s one way of putting it. He said he saved you from the snake. That he saw you on the ledge and you were the one who panicked.”

“Ah. You’ve done your research. No, he said none of that. It was how the story got told. It was how people wanted it to be. A high school girl and a man who would be president-wouldn’t you want him to be the one to save her from the snake?” She looked out at the river, smelled it on the breeze. “He simply never corrected it.”

“Did he ever ask you not to correct it?”

“Never. Not once. I think if I hadn’t been there, he’d have crawled into the cave and died. He wouldn’t have jumped in the river and committed suicide, but he would have seen the snake as confirmation of all he’d thought and doubted about himself that day. I don’t mind how the story’s been told. Wes understands what it’s like to be at rock bottom. He’s brought that into his public service. His political enemies would say he was a grown man saved by a seventeen-year-old girl, but the truth is far more complicated.”

“He’d never have granted Janssen a pardon on your say-so.”

It was a statement, but Sarah shook her head. “Never. He took an oath. He just wouldn’t-no, never. That Conroy-John Wesley-believed he would was a fantasy on his part.”

Nate took another swallow of tea. “This tea punch is growing on me. I still think it could use a pound less of sugar.”

“Are you drinking out of my glass?”

He leaned toward her, skimmed his knuckles across her cheek. “If this place wasn’t crawling with feds and you hadn’t just been bit by a cottonmouth, I’d be carrying you upstairs right now and drinking-”

“You’re determined to embarrass me, aren’t you?”

“Uh-uh.” He kissed her on her forehead. “Just to make you smile.”

The Dutch authorities released the Dunnemores into the protective custody of a deputy U.S. marshal sent in specifically for the task, who in turn not only put them on a plane but sat next to them for the duration of their flight to New York.

Juliet figured it was the only way to get them to their kids without another damn drama.

She inched her way out to the porch after she’d talked her E.R. doctors out of sticking her in a Nashville hospital and got a ride back to Night’s Landing from a very cute FBI agent with a southern accent.

She hurt all over. She figured she’d hurt until she was a hundred.

Sarah was still in her rocking chair. Nate had joined a million other feds down at Ethan’s cottage. They’d already gone through the fishing cabin that Conroy Fontaine had rented. Apparently he’d left behind a considerable amount of damning information on Nicholas Janssen, who was, allegedly, involved in illegal arms trading, extortion, murder, fraud-tax evasion was the least of his misdeeds.

“I thought you were being admitted to the hospital,” Sarah said.

Juliet gave her a crooked smile. “I had to threaten to shoot my doctor to keep him from strapping me to a stretcher. I hate hospitals.”

“More than most people?”

“Yeah. Probably.” She changed the subject. “Did I see you and Deputy Winter smooching out here?”

Sarah sighed, looking smart and pretty and not blushing even a little. “Maybe it’s the snakebite, but I think I’m falling for him.”

Juliet grinned. “It’s the snakebite.” She glanced out at the cottage and wondered where Ethan Brooker was now. “I knew he’d take off.”

“Ethan? Why didn’t you stop him?”

“He was the one with the nine-millimeter.”

Sarah put her feet up on the porch rail. “I hope someone gets to him before he does something he regrets.”

“Like kill Nicholas Janssen? I’m not sure he’d regret it.” Juliet eased herself slowly, painfully, onto a cushioned chair. “Joe Collins read me the riot act for not stopping him. Like I didn’t have enough to do with two dead bodies, the snakes, you in the river, Nate going Tarzan on us, this Conroy Fontaine character foaming at the mouth.”

“Collins is hard on you because he respects you.”

“He’s hard on me because he’s a prick.”

Sarah smiled. “And I suppose you told him that?”

Juliet realized that she’d come to like Dr. Dunnemore. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

“Ethan’s going after Janssen,” Sarah said.

Juliet nodded. “That must have been some woman he lost.”

Thirty-Three

Janssen cocooned himself in the fishy, salty-smelling woolen blanket and tried to stay warm deep in the bowels of the ancient trawler that was taking him to safety. Away from luxury, away from hope. He hadn’t slept in hours, because when he did, he dreamed of his mother crying for him on her deathbed, of Betsy Dunnemore smiling at him at eighteen and making his heart melt. He’d let them both down.

John Wesley Poe.

Conroy Fontaine.

He was the psycho who’d interfered in his life and shot the marshals in Central Park. Who’d tried to extort five million dollars from him for a pardon that was even more of a fantasy-a flight of fancy-than Janssen’s own dream of getting Betsy Dunnemore to intervene with the president on his behalf.

Conroy had weaseled his way into Janssen’s life last fall and learned everything about him.

No, not everything. Too much, certainly, but not everything.

Not the location of his safe houses. Not his backup plans once he knew there was little hope for a simple conviction on tax evasion charges.

Five years in prison? He’d be lucky now to avoid the death penalty.

Charlene Brooker, lowly army intelligence officer, had been pulling at the thread that would unravel everything and set him up for big trouble. Her meeting with Betsy-beautiful Betsy-was the last straw for Janssen.

But it was Conroy Fontaine with his crazy idea that he was the president’s half brother who’d destroyed the careful life Nicholas had constructed for himself, all in an attempt to extort money from him for a pardon and manipulate the president of the United States into acknowledging him as his brother.

The crazy fuck.

Now the authorities apparently had the concrete information they needed to turn the suspicions of a murdered military intelligence officer into a full-blown investigation of all his activities.

He had become one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

But he was prepared. He had a plan for just such a worst-case scenario.

He would survive. He’d always survived.

The Dutch police, the Swiss police, U.S. law enforcement, Interpol-they all wanted his scalp. But at least with them, even with all he’d done, it was professional, not personal. They would capture him and bring him to trial. They wouldn’t slit his throat in the night.