The truth was, she loved the house. She’d selected the furniture and decorated it herself, and it was the closest thing to a real home she’d ever had.

If I accept Tony’s offer, I’ll have to leave it.

Silly to let that hold weight with her, she thought. It was only a temporary home, after all. Just for as long as her work at the Ridge lasted, which once she got back shouldn’t be much more than another eighteen months or so. Then she would be moving on again, in the same way that she’d been moving on for her entire life.

“So this is home, hmm?” Garland looked up from what seemed to be a concentrated study of her bed as she walked out of the bathroom, to find him standing in her bedroom doorway. “I always used to try to imagine what kind of place you lived in.”

“Apparently you used to imagine a whole lot of things.” Her reply, no less tart for being said under her breath, emerged before she could stop it.

No surprise: he grinned. “I did.”

She shot him a glance as she crossed to her dresser to retrieve a watch she’d left on it. “Have you been with us the entire time?”

He shook his head. “I figured you were safe enough on the plane. Then I heard the sound of running water, and here I am.”

Strapping the watch onto her wrist, she frowned at him. “Running water?”

“I’ve discovered that it yanks my rubber band, at least when you’re around it. Combine you with an open faucet, and if I’m off exploring, I get pulled back to wherever you are real quick.”

“You go exploring?”

He nodded. “Spookville’s an interesting place.” She got the impression from the look on his face he didn’t much want to talk about it. That impression intensified when he changed the subject by asking, “Find what you came here after?”

She shrugged. “I found the bag I think Holly was talking about. So far, though, I’m not seeing its connection to the case.”

He was looking at a photograph of her and her mother on a small chest beside the door. “You got family, friends, here in town?”

Deciding to shelve the “exploring” conversation she was dying to have for another day, when they had more time, Charlie walked toward him. “Some friends. That picture you’re looking at is of me with my mother. She’s my only real family. She lives in Wilmington with her third husband. Would you mind moving? I need to get back downstairs.”

He obligingly stepped out of the doorway. “Your dad alive?”

Charlie snorted and shrugged as she walked past him into the hall. “Last I heard. I haven’t seen him since I was seven.”

“Brothers? Sisters?” He followed her.

“A couple of half siblings from my father, possibly. It’s only a rumor, and if they exist I’ve never met them.” She stopped on the upstairs landing to give him a quelling look. “Is there a reason you want to know?”

“I’m interested.”

Down below, Kaminsky stepped into the entry hall, catching Charlie’s eye, but thankfully not yet looking up herself.

“Would you go away? I can’t talk to you now,” she hissed at Garland. Then Kaminsky turned and spotted her on the landing and Charlie headed down the stairs.

Kaminsky frowned. “Were you talking to somebody up there?”

“Myself,” Charlie replied as she reached the downstairs hall, relieved to discover that Garland had apparently acceded to her request and vanished. For an instant she wondered if Kaminsky, like Tony, knew about her “psychic abilities,” but she didn’t think so. Tony struck her as the type to keep what he had learned as the result of a background investigation private—and anyway, she was pretty sure Kaminsky wouldn’t be able to restrain herself if she had access to a gold mine of potential digs like that. “It’s a bad habit. Are you ready to go?”

“One hundred percent,” Kaminsky replied with feeling. Moments later, Kaminsky was heading down the short flight of wooden steps at the front of the house. Behind her, wheeling the carry-on, holding the plastic bag she’d come all this way to fetch, Charlie was just stepping through the front door when Kaminsky appeared to miss a step and went sprawling into the grass.

“Are you hurt?” Charlie rushed to her side. Kaminsky was already sitting up by the time Charlie reached her. Fortunately, she’d missed the paving stones that led from the steps to the gravel driveway, which was where the car that had been waiting for them at Lonesome Pine Airport when they arrived two hours ago was currently parked.

“Damn it, I broke my heel.” Apparently otherwise unharmed, Kaminsky pulled the damaged black stiletto, which hung precariously from her toes, the rest of the way off. Its narrow four-inch heel was, indeed, broken off at the sole. She glared first at the ruined shoe, then at Charlie. “Your stupid steps have a crack in the middle of them.”

As each of the steps was made from two boards nailed to a trio of two-by-fours and painted, they did indeed have, by design, an inch or so space running down the middle.

“They’re supposed to. If you didn’t wear such ridiculously high heels, the ‘stupid steps’ wouldn’t have tripped you,” Charlie retorted as she helped Kaminsky to her feet.

“If you were five foot two, you’d wear ridiculously high heels, too. You know how hard it is to be taken seriously in a job like mine when you’re short and curvy?” Kaminsky snapped at her.

Suddenly the other woman’s shoes made sense. Looking at the ruined shoe dangling from Kaminsky’s hand, Charlie could relate. She’d spent most of her working life in a male-dominated world, too.

“Really hard, I imagine.” Charlie’s reply held an undertone of fellow-feeling. “I always wear long pants and sensible shoes for the same reason.”

“Yeah, I noticed the black pants and low-heeled pumps. It’s your uniform, isn’t it? Just like my suits and heels.” Kaminsky’s eyes had a rueful cast as they met Charlie’s. “Sucks, doesn’t it? You think Bartoli or Crane—or any guy, for that matter—ever has to worry about what they need to wear in order to be taken seriously?”

Charlie had to smile at the very idea of it even as she shook her head. “No. Listen, I have some shoes you can borrow.”

“I wear a size five.” Kaminsky was looking skeptically at Charlie’s feet, which were long, narrow size eights.

“Flip-flops,” Charlie specified. Kaminsky grimaced, but nodded. Charlie went in to fetch them and returned to find Kaminsky sitting on the steps, both shoes off and her bare toes wriggling in the grass. “Here.” She handed over the shoes, then as Kaminsky slipped them on turned back to lock the door.

“At least now my feet are comfortable,” Kaminsky said as they headed for the car. Charlie laughed, and Kaminsky looked over her shoulder at her. “So are you going to accept Bartoli’s offer?”

Charlie glanced at Kaminsky in surprise as they got into the car. With Kaminsky behind the wheel, they reversed out of the driveway and headed through the relatively affluent residential area toward the single, two-lane road that led down the mountain.

“He told you about that?” Charlie asked.

“He got Crane’s and my opinion. We’re a team. Things like this, we’ll discuss. For the record, I was opposed.”

“Thanks.” Charlie’s voice was dry. “Care to tell me why?”

Already they were in the central business district, which consisted of maybe a dozen shabby brick buildings, which included a bank, a courthouse, a hardware store, and a couple of restaurants. Towering above them on the top of the ridge, the prison looked like a gray stone fortress. More mountains stretched away into the distance, as far as the eye could see, some so tall they were obscured by the gray rain-clouds that were currently starting to blow in from the east. It had been raining a little when they’d left Kill Devil Hills that morning, and it looked like the weather was following them, although it hadn’t quite caught up yet.

“That whole Tony and Charlie thing you two have going on? It’s divisive on a team like ours.”