“This is our second call to this location,” confirmed the uniformed policeman, who was taking notes for a report.

“Did they chase anyone else?” he asked.

“No, but they might not have had the opportunity.” The policeman flipped his notebook shut. “The other incident occurred just before dawn.”

“That time rap music from their car’s radio awakened one of the owners who lives close by,” added the elderly man. “They called the police.”

The EMT stood up. “I don’t think you’re going to need stitches,” he told Whitney. “It’s just a bad scrape. You’ll probably have a doozy of a bruise, though.”

“Th-thanks, th-thanks…so…” Whitney’s voice quivered, then trailed off.

The EMT backed away and joined his partner. The policeman said to Adam, “She’s badly shaken. You’d better get her home.”

“Hot milk or tea might help,” advised the man with the retriever. “Or bourbon.”

“I wish I could say we’re going to catch this jerk,” the policeman told Whitney, “but I doubt it. Without a description of the car or…anything.”

“I’m telling you, it was too dark for anyone to see a blasted thing.” The old man pointed to the dark area behind them. “I’ve still got twenty-twenty and I couldn’t tell you what kind of car it was. I heard screeching tires, then screaming. I came running. I’m not as fast as I used to be. All I saw was the outline of a car.”

“He couldn’t even tell us the color, except that it wasn’t a light color,” added the police officer. “Neither could she.”

Adam bent close to Whitney. “Did you see anything? Was it big like an SUV or was it small?”

Her glassy eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. She hadn’t been crying, but shock and a desperate need to control her emotions showed on her face. “I-It all happened so fast. M-my impression is mid-size. I don’t think it was an SUV but I’m honestly not sure.”

IT HAD SEEMED LIKE THE RIGHT idea at the time. The paramedics didn’t think she needed to go to the emergency room. He’d been anxious to get her out of there, get her home. Now, Whitney was sitting on the edge of his bed, and he wasn’t so sure.

She’d insisted on bringing the dachshund with her, almost as if she was afraid to let the little dog go. She hadn’t said a word on the short drive home. When he’d directed her upstairs, she obeyed in a robotlike way.

Shock.

Adam had seen it often enough in Iraq. He’d dealt with it himself after the suicide bomber killed his friends and almost took his life as well. There wasn’t much he could do for her. Time and sleep helped. He’d learned that much from his own experience.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. “Is something wrong with your shoulder? You seem to be favoring it.”

She put down the dachshund and scooted between the sheets. Da Vinci and Jasper were already curled up on top of the bed and Grey joined them. Lexi was on the floor looking anxiously up at Whitney, mirroring what Adam was feeling.

Whitney leaned against the pillows he’d arranged for her while she’d been in the bathroom changing into his T-shirt. “I’m fine. My shoulder’s a little sore because Grey was hanging from me.”

“Do you feel up to telling me about it?” He didn’t have any more information than what he’d learned at the scene.

She reached down to the end of the bed and stroked Grey. “You know what’s amazing about dogs?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “They forgive you for anything.”

Her answer seemed a little spacey and he wondered if she’d hit her head during the so-called prank.

“Even the most abused dog will lick his owner’s hand-first chance the dog gets. You’d think they would bite or run away. They don’t. Dogs are so forgiving.” She petted Grey’s head and the little dog nosed her with his snout. “I nearly killed this dog. He doesn’t even know me, but the second we hit the ground, Grey licked my face to see if I was okay.”

Hit the ground? Where had she been? Adam sat down on the bed beside her. He did his best to keep anger and fear out of his voice. “Tell me what happened.”

He listened carefully as she described the car that appeared suddenly from out of nowhere. He envisioned it deliberately changing course and wheeling to the right and charging directly at her. Imagining her on the fence, the dachshund hanging from her arm, made him smile despite the situation.

“Good thinking,” he told her. “Fast thinking. You might have been killed otherwise.”

“If that’s what was happening.” She edged backward until she was propped up against the pillows again. “Mr. Fisher-he’s the older man with the Golden-thought it was a prank. He may have been right.”

“Why do you say that? It sounds intentional to me. If not, it was dangerous as hell.”

“When I looked back, the car had stopped several feet behind me. It didn’t ram the fence even though it could easily have crushed the back of my legs.”

Adam had to admit that did seem a little odd. “Maybe he didn’t want to damage his car.”

“And maybe I overreacted. Even if it had been a prank, it was dangerous. I could have been accidentally killed. The driver needs to be found and stopped before someone gets hurt.”

Adam wasn’t sure what to think. His training as a detective warned him that two near misses on the same person’s life wasn’t just a random coincidence. “Maybe someone mistook you for Miranda,” he said, thinking out loud.

“I doubt that. There’s been enough publicity about the firebombing for anyone to realize Miranda isn’t around.”

“Criminals often seem clever, but most of them are stupid. I remember a case we had in Robbery-Homicide. There had been a series of bank robberies. The banks started booby-trapping money with vials of indelible ink that exploded when thieves removed the paper banding a stack of bills.

“We were pissed because the media found out about the trick and publicized it. Everyone and his mother knew about it. A few days later, another bank was robbed. We caught the guy because he was covered with ink. He hadn’t seen the news reports.”

“You think someone believes I’m Miranda?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“It’s possible, I guess. Mr. Fisher mistook me for Miranda at first.”

Adam mulled over the facts for a few minutes but couldn’t come up with a better explanation. Mistaken identity, or just a prank? “Listen, I’m going to hop in the shower. Why don’t you get some sleep? We’ll see what the police come up with tomorrow. They’ll make plaster casts of the tire tracks in the lawn. That should tell us what type of car it was. With luck, that will help.”

He leaned over and gently kissed her lips. He wanted to pull her into his arms and squeeze her tight-to reassure himself that she was all right. But she’d been through so much that he didn’t want to risk hurting her.

She pulled the sheet up to her chin, and he turned out the light. He stood in the shower and let the water stream over his body. He felt helpless, the way he’d felt when he’d arrived at his uncle’s villa in Siros. He hated not being in control, not being able to help Whitney.

As soon as Quinten Foley’s men searched the house tomorrow, he was going to Cancún with Whitney. If Miranda wasn’t working in a shop at Corona del Mar, he believed they would find her in Cancún. She had the answer to this-

“Holy shit!” he said out loud. He leaped out of the shower, wound the towel around his waist, left the bathroom and raced through the dark bedroom. He was down the hall and in his uncle’s office before he saw Lexi had followed him.

“Go guard Whitney,” he said, then realized Whitney was with the dog.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her eyes wide.

Adam grabbed the picture of his uncle fishing off the wall. “It just hit me. Something’s written on my uncle’s baseball cap.” He flung open the middle drawer of the desk and found the magnifying glass.