He called her later that day, staring at Dietz’s file. “I’m heading down to New Jersey for a day. We may have found something.”

Karen sounded excited. “What?”

“I looked through the file on Jonathan Lauer’s hit-and-run. The only eyewitness there, a man named Dietz-he was one of the two witnesses to AJ Raymond’s death, too.”

Karen gasped. In the following pause, Hauck knew she was putting together just what this meant.

“They were set up, Karen. This guy, Dietz, he was at both accidents. Except they weren’t accidents, Karen. They were homicides. To cover something up. You did good. No one would ever have put any of this together if you hadn’t gone to visit Lauer.”

She didn’t reply. There was only silence. The silence of her trying to decide what this meant. In regard to Charles. For her kids. For her.

“What the hell am I supposed to think, Ty?”

“Listen, Karen, before we jump…”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I’m sorry about these people. It’s terrible. I know this is what you were always thinking. But I can’t help thinking that there’s something going on here, and it’s starting to scare me, Ty. What does all this mean about Charles?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m going to find out.”

“Find out how, Ty? What are you going to do?”

There was a lot he had withheld from her. That Charles had a connection to Falcon. To Pappy Raymond. That he was sure Charles was complicit in AJ Raymond’s death-and maybe Jonathan Lauer’s, too. But how could he tell her any of that now?

“I’m going to go down there,” he said, “to Dietz’s home. Tomorrow.”

“You’re going down there? What for?”

“See what the hell I can find. Try and figure out what our next step is.”

“Our next step? You arrest him, Ty. You know he set those poor people up. He’s responsible for their deaths!”

“You wanted to know how this connected to your husband, Karen! Isn’t that why you came to me? You wanted to know what he’s done.”

“This man’s a murderer, Ty. Two people are dead.”

“I know that two people are dead, Karen! That’s one thing you don’t have to remind me of.”

“What are you saying, Ty?”

The silence was frosty between them for a second. Suddenly Hauck felt sure that by admitting he was not going down to bring Dietz in he was somehow giving away everything that was in his heart: the feelings he carried for her, the braids of red hair that had pushed him here, the echo of a distant pain.

Finally Karen swallowed. “You’re not telling me everything, are you, Ty? Charles is tied to this, isn’t he? Deeper than you’re letting on?”

“Yes.”

“My husband…” Karen let out a dark chuckle. “He always bet against the trends. A contrarian, he called himself. A fancy name for someone who always thinks he’s smarter than everybody else. You better be careful down there, Ty, whatever you’re planning.”

“I’m a cop, Karen,” Hauck said. “This is what cops do.”

“No, Ty, cops arrest people when they’re implicated in a crime. I don’t know what you’re going to do down there, but what I do know is that some of it is about me. And that’s scaring me, Ty. You just make sure you do the right thing, okay?”

Hauck flipped open the file and stared at Dietz’s face. “Okay.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Something strange crept through Karen’s thoughts that night. After she hung up from Ty.

About what he’d found.

It lifted her at first. The connections between the accidents. That she’d actually helped him.

Then she didn’t know what she felt. An uneasiness that two people linked to her husband had been killed to cover something up-and the suspicion, a suspicion Ty wasn’t clearing up for her, that Charlie was involved.

Jonathan Lauer worked for him. The fellow who was run over in Greenwich the day he disappeared had had Charlie’s name in his pocket. The safe-deposit box with all that cash and the passport. The tanker that had a connection to Charlie’s firm. Dolphin Oil…

She didn’t know where any of this led.

Other than that her husband of eighteen years had been involved in something he’d kept from her and that Ty wasn’t telling her all he knew.

Along with the fact that much of the life she’d led the last eighteen years, all those little myths she’d believed in, had been a lie.

But there was something else burrowing inside her. Even more than the fear that her family was still at risk. Or sympathy for the two people who had died. Deaths, Karen was starting to believe, against her will, that were inextricably tied to Charles.

She realized she was worried for him, Hauck. What he was about to do.

It had never dawned on her before, but it did now. How she’d grown to rely on him. How she knew by the way he’d looked at her-that day at the football game, how his eyes lit up when he saw her waiting at the station, how he had taken everything on for her. That he was attracted to her.

And that in the most subtle, undetected way Karen was feeling the same way, too.

But there was more.

She felt certain he was about to do something rash, way outside the boundaries. That he might be putting himself in danger. Dietz was a killer, whatever he had done. That he was holding something back-something related to Charlie.

For her.

After he called, she stayed in the kitchen heating up a frozen French-bread pizza in the microwave for Alex, who seemed to live on those things.

When it was done, Karen called him down, and she sat with him at the counter, hearing about his day at school-how he’d gotten a B-plus on a presentation in European history that was half his final exam and how he’d been named co-chair of the teen Kids in Crisis thing. She was truly proud of that. They made a date to watch Friday Night Lights together in the TV room later that evening.

But when he went back upstairs, Karen stayed at the counter, her blood coursing in a disquieted state.

Strangely, inexplicably, there had grown to be something between them.

Something she couldn’t deny.

So after their show was done and Alex had said good night and had gone back upstairs, Karen went into the study and picked up the phone. She felt a shifting in her stomach, school-girlish, but she didn’t care. She dialed his number, her palms perspiring. He answered on the second ring.

“Lieutenant?” she said. She waited for his objection.

“Yes?” he answered. There was none.

“You just be careful,” she said again.

He tried to shrug it off with some joke about having done this a million times, but Karen cut him short.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t. Don’t make me feel this all over again. Just please be careful, Ty. That’s all I’m asking. Y’hear?”

There was a silence for a second, and then he said, “Yeah, I hear.”

“Good,” she said softly, and hung up the phone.

Karen sat there on the couch for a long time, knees tucked into her chest. She felt a foreboding worming through her-just as it had on the small plane that day as the propellers whirred in Tortola, Charlie waving from the balcony, the sun reflecting off his aviators, a sudden sensation of loss. A tremor of fear.

“Just be careful, Ty,” she whispered again, to no one, and closed her eyes, afraid. I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.