Love blinds, yes, but not nearly as much as wanting to be loved.

That was what Titus had learned. People weren’t so much gullible as desperate. Or maybe, Titus concluded, those were two sides of the same coin.

Now his perfect operation seemed to have hit a major snag. Looking back on it, Titus could blame only himself. He had grown lazy. It had all gone so smoothly for so long that he let down his guard. Immediately after “Kat”—he recognized her as the woman who had reached out to Ron Kochman at YouAreJustMyType .com—had contacted Ron Kochman, Titus should have closed down the profile and cut the line. He hadn’t for several reasons.

The first was, he was close to nailing two other victims using that profile. It had taken a lot of work to get there. He didn’t want to lose them over what at first blush seemed to be nothing but contact with an ex. Second, he had no idea that Kat was an NYPD officer. He hadn’t bothered to check her out. He had simply assumed she was a lonely ex-girlfriend and that his “let’s not go back to the past” spiel would be the end of it. That had been incorrect. Third, Kat hadn’t called him Ron. She called him Jeff, making Titus wonder whether she had mistaken him for another guy who looked like Ron, or Ron had once been known as Jeff, therefore making it even harder to find him and an even better fake profile.

That too had been a mistake.

Still, even if hindsight is twenty-twenty, how had Kat put it together? How, from a small communication on YouAreJustMyType, had Detective Kat Donovan found Dana Phelps and Gerard Remington and Martha Paquet?

He needed to know.

So now Titus couldn’t just kill her and be done with it. He had to grab her and make her talk to see the level of threat. He now wondered whether his perfect operation had run its course. That could be. If he learned that Kat was closing in on him or had shared the information with anyone, he would hit the DELETE button on the whole enterprise—that is, kill the rest of the targets, bury them, burn down the farmhouse, move on with the money they’d made.

But a man had to find balance too. A man could panic under these circumstances and make the mistake of being overcautious. He didn’t want to make a final decision until he knew more facts. He needed to get ahold of Kat Donovan and find out what she knew. He would have to make her disappear too. For some reason, there seemed to be this myth that if you killed someone, the law would come down on you harder. The truth was, dead people tell no tales. Missing bodies give no clues. The risk was greater, far greater, when you let your target or enemies work with impunity.

Remove them entirely and you’re always better off.

Titus closed his eyes and leaned his head back. The ride to New York City would take about three hours. He might as well take a nap so he could be well rested for what might come.

Chapter 36

Kat stood frozen in the backyard of this ordinary house in Montauk and felt the earth open up and swallow her whole. Eighteen years after saying that he no longer wanted to marry her, Jeff was a scant ten feet away. For a few moments, neither one of them spoke. She saw the look of loss and hurt and confusion on his face and wondered whether he was seeing the same on hers.

When Jeff finally spoke, it was to the old man, not Kat. “We could use a little privacy, Sam.”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

In her peripheral vision, Kat saw the old man close the book and go in the house. She and Jeff didn’t take their eyes off each other. They had either become two wary gunfighters waiting for someone to draw or, more likely, two disbelieving souls who feared that if one of them turned away, if one of them so much as blinked, the other would vanish into the eighteen-year-old dust.

Jeff had tears in his eyes. “God, it’s so good to see you.”

“You too,” she said.

Silence.

Then Kat said, “Did I really just say ‘you too’?”

“You used to be better with the comebacks.”

“I used to be better with a lot of things.”

He shook his head. “You look fantastic.”

She smiled at him. “You too.” Then: “Hey, that’s becoming my new go-to line.”

Jeff started toward her, arms spread. She wanted to collapse into them. She wanted him to take her in his arms and press her against his chest and maybe pull back and kiss her tenderly and then just wait for the eighteen years to melt away like the morning frost. But—and maybe this was more a protective maneuver—Kat took a step back and held up her palm to him. He pulled up, surprised, but only for a moment, and then he nodded.

“Why are you here, Kat?”

“I’m looking for two missing women.”

She felt on firmer ground when she said this. She hadn’t gone through all this to rekindle a flame her old fiancé had long ago extinguished. She was here to solve a case.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Their names are Dana Phelps and Martha Paquet.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

She had expected this answer. Once Kat put together that she was the one who said, “It’s Kat” first, the rest had fallen into place.

“Do you have a laptop?” she asked.

“Uh, sure, why?”

“Could you get it, please?”

“I still don’t—”

“Just get it, Jeff. Okay?”

He nodded. When he went inside, Kat actually dropped to her knees and felt her entire body give out. She wanted to sink to the ground and forget about these women, just lie on the earth and let go and cry and wonder about all the what-ifs that this stupid life brings us.

She managed to get back up a few seconds before he returned. He turned on the laptop and handed it to her. She sat at a picnic table. Jeff sat across from her.

“Kat?”

She could hear the pain in his voice too. “Not now. Please. Let me just get through this, okay?”

She got to the YouAreJustMyType page and brought up his profile.

It was gone.

Someone was closing ranks. She quickly opened up her old e-mail and found the link Brandon had sent her with Jeff’s inactive Facebook page. She brought it up and spun the laptop toward him.

“You were on Facebook?”

Jeff squinted at the page. “That’s how you found me?”

“It helped.”

“I deleted the account as soon as I found out about it.”

“Nothing online is ever deleted.”

“You saw my daughter this morning. When she was going to school.”

Kat nodded. So the daughter had called him after she made contact. Kat had figured as much.

“A few years ago, Melinda—that’s her name—she thought I was lonely. Her mother died years ago. I don’t date or anything, so she figured that the least I could do was have a Facebook page. To find old friends or meet someone. You know how it is.”

“So your daughter set up the page?”

“Yes. As a surprise to me.”

“Did she know you used to be Jeff Raynes?”

“She didn’t then, no. As soon as I saw it, I deleted it. That’s when I explained to her that I used to be someone else.”

Kat met his gaze. His eyes still pierced. “Why did you change your name?”

He shook his head. “You said something about missing women.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you’re here.”

“Right. Someone used you in a catfish scheme.”

“Catfish?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s what they call it. Have you seen the movie or TV show?”

“No.”

“A catfish is a person who pretends to be someone they’re not online, especially in romantic relationships.” Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. She needed that now. She needed to just spout facts and figures and definitions and not feel a damn thing. “Someone took your pictures and created an online profile for you and put it on a singles site. Two women who fell for the catfish-you are missing.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Jeff said.