"Do you have a sense of what kind of man he was?"

"Not an easy one. My father was just ten when he was killed. He wasn't a big talker. Sometimes when we were out hiking, he would tell me stories-he said his father was a hard man but basically good, and he never got over Posey's death."

"How sad," Zoe murmured. "Your grandfather wasn't from Goose Harbor?"

"Nova Scotia, as far as I know."

"It was such a long time ago. Yet just last year, Aunt Olivia was sitting right here at this table-" But Zoe stopped abruptly, some of her surprise wearing off, and frowned at J.B. "You could have told me this sooner, you know."

"Why?"

She had no good reason to give him. "It would have been polite."

"You broke into my room at mean old Lottie Mar-tin's inn and came at me with a drapery rod."

"I did not break into your room."

He raised an eyebrow.

She smiled. "I had a pass key."

Her smile pleased him more than it should have. It meant she was feeling better-and his reaction meant he was sliding in deeper with her. Any deeper and he might not be able to climb out again. And he'd have to. He knew it. Something was wrong in Goose Harbor, Maine, and she'd run from it a year ago. But she wouldn't again.

He was supposed to be on vacation. His superiors back in Washington would skin him alive if they knew he was dipping a toe into the unsolved murder of a small-town Maine police chief.

Zoe's father.

He had his life away from here. He needed to go back to it.

"As for the drapery rod," she said, "you're lucky I didn't beat you over the head with it. That nook isn't for public consumption."

He pushed back his dark thoughts and stretched out his long legs, sexy, deliberately provocative. "Meaning it's blackmail material? I wonder what I could get in return for my silence."

The warmth spread through her-he could see it. It unsettled her, got her moving. But she didn't back down. She stood over him, leaned in toward him. "Eavesdropping on private conversations, trespassing, not hiking and boating and relaxing like you're supposed to-I wonder what I could get in return for my silence."

"Lots." He folded his hands on his stomach, just above his belt, unabashed by the stirring in his groin. She had to know by now what they were moving toward. "Just depends on what you want."

But that, apparently, was all Zoe could stand. She bolted for the front room. "I can see why Aunt Olivia named her evil nemesis McGrath. If your grandfather provoked people the way you do-"

"She never killed him off," J.B. said. "I think she kind of liked him."

"I should sic Kyle on you. Do you know what he'd do for original letters from my aunt to her best friend? Letters no one else has ever seen?"

"Maybe she never intended for anyone else to see them. Maybe my grandmother didn't, either, and she only saved them because they reminded her of Goose Harbor."

Zoe turned suddenly, tears shining in her eyes. "It's a sad story, isn't it? Your grandmother must have been in her twenties when she died. That's so young. I feel almost selfish, missing Aunt Olivia as much as I do."

"She was a presence in your life for a long time."

"The letters-did you read them all?"

"One by one," he said. "I went back to Montana to bury my father. It was cathartic to go through his cabin. I found the letters in an old trunk-I don't know if he'd ever read them. He wasn't an introspective man."

"I'm sorry. You must miss him."

J.B. nodded. "I do. There's a line in one of the let-ters-your aunt's clearly responding to something my grandmother had written to her about her little boy."

"Your father," Zoe said.

"Your aunt wrote, ‘Perhaps your son was meant to be in Montana.'"

"Meaning it was all worth it?" She sounded skeptical.

"I don't know. I think it helped your aunt understand why her friend left." "Posey hadn't just been swept off her feet by a rogue-she'd played out some cosmic destiny."

J.B. rose but felt weighted, as if the forces of gravity had suddenly decided to grab him by the feet and drag him to the center of the earth. He had to make himself take another step. "My father was meant to be in Montana, Zoe. Somehow a Maine writer who never moved out of the house she was born in, who never met him, knew it." He shrugged, and he even had trouble moving his arms. "That's all I can say."

"J.B., are you okay?"

He didn't answer. He pictured himself in the cabin on a snowy winter night as he dug into the trunk and found his father's old christening gown that Olivia West had sent from Maine, three first-edition copies of her first books, signed by her, a black-paper photo album of fading pictures-and the letters. He'd come to know his grandmother through the eyes of another woman.

Zoe smiled gently, and he noticed the slenderness of her fingers as she placed one hand on the doorjamb. "I wonder if Aunt Olivia knew, on some level, that Posey Sutherland and Jesse McGrath's lawman grandson would end up here, back in Goose Harbor. If that was meant to be, too."

Luke was still on his run when Betsy got back to the yacht after seeing Zoe West. She fixed herself a margarita and sat out on the afterdeck, only to experience a jolt of restlessness mixed with fear, the kind of powerful emotion she knew propelled people into acting on impulse, doing things they shouldn't.

She'd already set down her drink and was slipping through the plush, luxurious yacht, stealthily, her very manner giving her away. She knew she was taking a stupid risk, knew she was about to do something she had no business doing.

Prying, meddling, spying.

She was Luke's lover and his nurse, but he didn't share much about his finances with her. They weren't intimate in that way.

She came to his stateroom. It was his sanctuary. Determinedly masculine, richly appointed. She was not allowed in here unless it was with him, at his behest. He'd made that clear. He was odd, she thought, but not cruel.

The brass bell occupied its usual spot on his nightstand. She felt a rush of embarrassment and shame. How could she explain the bell to anyone? Who would understand? The bell was beyond odd. The bell veered toward cruelty.

Now that she'd come this far, she went ahead and knelt in front of a two-drawer filing cabinet, its deep, polished dark wood making it fit into the stateroom's decor. He kept it locked.

Betsy knew where to find the key. She'd learned to recognize what she might need to know if something happened to her patient, including things they might never think to tell her or want to contemplate-or hide. She considered knowing a part of what was expected of her as a caregiver.

Reaching up to the nightstand, surprised that she wasn't more nervous, she lifted the bell and tucked two fingers up inside it, where the key was taped. She'd noticed it because sometimes it affected the ring of the bell. She hoped she'd have enough time to retape it when she was finished. If not, she'd do it later, even if she had to empty a sleeping pill into Luke's herbal tea and knock him out.

But she couldn't think about that now, let it panic her.

She unlocked the cabinet and slid open the top drawer. Given his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, Luke maintained the files himself and had every one of them neatly labeled. Betsy flipped through them, expecting she'd know which one she wanted when she saw it.

She did. It was a slender folder stuck between two fatter folders, labeled Miscellaneous.

There were two sheets of green ledger paper inside the manila folder. Luke didn't trust computers. The writing on the pages, in black ink, was clearly his. At the top of the first page, he'd written in capitals, T.S., as if that would fool anyone, and recorded three payments. The earliest was last fall, before Patrick West's death.