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Three days of healing disappeared almost as if they'd never been.

She sat at the edge of the dog park, where she was in plain view of traffic and could make a run for it if she had to, and where she could also be seen doing exactly what she'd been doing for the past eighteen months—taking her middle-class baby for a morning stroll in the park while his father worked putting out the city's fires. Sitting there, in the warmth of that first Wednesday in May, Tricia slowly froze inside. Her son slept in his stroller and the puppy they should never have given
him had worn himself out tugging at the leash to which he was tied and now lay at her feet chewing on a twig.

He'd be up and darting off again. Just as soon as someone walked by, or a bug buzzed or a bird flew. He didn't know that Leah was dead. Didn't understand what it meant.

Throat dry, Tricia read the headline again. She'd been dreading the news for so long, it hardly seemed real. Leah's body had been found. Without Leah in it. Tricia, who'd counted on their friendship to see her through every single crisis in her life, was alone now—just one woman, not part of two. All these months, the awareness of Leah's presence had kept her strong, kept her pushing ahead.

Through her whole life Leah's unconditional support had kept her sane, believing in herself.

She didn't even know that tears were dripping silently down her cheeks until she felt their splash as they hit the paper. Leah was gone.

The rest of it—the fact that her friend's body had been trapped in a tree for twenty-one days, the fact that their cliff had been the site of her death—were things she'd have to think about later. Tricia couldn't take them in right now.

Not if she was going to get her son and his puppy safely home. A car pulled up several yards away. A woman got out with a Papillon in her arms.

Leah had fallen a hundred feet and hit a tree. An impact like that could easily cause a miscarriage….

The Papillon saw Dog and barked, a high-pitched insistent call. Jumping up, Dog moved closer to Tricia, pushing against her ankle beneath the table, oddly silent. Scott had given her son a coward.

Taylor flinched, but his eyes didn't open. He'd be awake soon, though. The stroller almost always put him to sleep, but his morning naps were usually no more than an hour.

…and if the fetus hadn't been caught by the tree, as Leah had, marauding animals could easily have dealt with it, leaving no evidence. She and Leah used to talk about all the mountain lions, foxes, bobcats, black bears and sundry smaller creatures that shared their secret place with them. They'd had a healthy respect for the land's inhabitants, but, still, had valued their presence.

The Papillon barked again—much farther away now. His owner had stopped beside a masculine-looking woman who'd been in the park all morning, working with a German Shepherd.

Tricia knew she'd have to move. When Taylor awoke, he wasn't going to lie there quietly and wait for her to find the strength to get up.

You know what to do.
She had almost two years' worth of practice. That woman she'd been in San Francisco, the life she'd known there—all off-limits. She couldn't think about them. She wasn't that woman anymore. Her heart had been irrevocably marked. If it was going to survive, if
she
was, she had to focus only on the present.

And what if the lack of a fetus let Thomas Whitehead off the hook? What if Leah's pregnancy had been the probable cause the prosecutor had been planning to use for motive in his case? Would they drop the charges? Cut a deal? Let him out to hurt someone else? Because he would. There was no doubt of that now.

Taylor moved. Just an arm thrown over his face. Tricia stared at him as hard as she could, willing herself to focus only on him, only on this second's reality. The park. Dog. Taylor and her. She could make it off the bench, out of the park, if there was nothing but Taylor and Dog and her.

And she would. But even as she stood, crooned shakily to the puppy, threw the newspaper she'd purchased in the trash, Tricia knew that her time was running out. Things were getting too complicated. Someone was having her watched—and he or they were doing that for a reason.

Taylor stretched. In about ten seconds his eyes were going to pop open and he'd be raring to go. Wrapping Dog's leash around her hand, she set the stroller in motion so her son would be content to remain seated for a few minutes longer.

She couldn't let Thomas Whitehead get away with her best friend's murder.

And Scott…he'd come to mean so much. Too much.

She might shut her mind off to places inside herself, but that didn't stop them from hurting. And the pain was becoming too intense to hide.

How her life had ever become so crazy she didn't know. She'd done her best, made choices dictated by conscience, not merely desire, thought of others, did for others, worked hard, shared what she had. And she'd ended up here, in a web of confusion so tight, so thick, she didn't think she'd ever find a way out.

T
ricia was almost home, past the Big Kitchen, a quaint old restaurant that still did a decent business. She'd thought Scott was kidding when he'd first told her Whoopi Goldberg used to live there. He hadn't been. Taylor chatted away, his conversation obviously interesting to himself, although unintelligible to his mother. Occasionally he'd lean over the side of his stroller, inform her that Dog was there, and then sit back again. Maybe the balmy, seventy-degree breeze was having a calming effect on him, too.

He was a happy boy. And that was all that mattered.

Next to the bingo building on the corner was the Alano club—a place for recovering alcoholics. Tricia turned down Ivy Street. Everywhere she looked was vivid green, trees, grass—even the weeds were intensely green—interspersed with beds of boldly colored flowers. And behind it all were rows of houses, a lot of them stucco, relatively small, some with aluminum siding, mostly old, and yet each was original
with a style, a personality, unlike its neighbors. Some had trash in the yards instead of flowers, but always there was green.

And the street names—they were all plants and trees—as though someone was determined to have nature remembered in the midst of urban chaos. She stopped to glance over her shoulder. A woman who was almost a block behind her looked exactly like the woman in the park with the Papillon—minus the dog.

“Let's sing,” Tricia said loudly to her son as she bent once again to untangle Dog's leash. In spite of the hours Scott had spent working with the little guy during his four days off, Dog still had problems containing his curiosity long enough to pay attention to his lead. But at least he wasn't at a dead standstill anymore.

The woman in the distance had a black baseball cap on that the woman in the park hadn't been wearing. She was minus the white windbreaker, replaced by a black sweater tied around her waist, and had exchanged sandals for tennis shoes. She stopped to drop something in a mailbox on the corner.

“The itsy-bitsy spider,” Tricia blurted out, reminding her son how to climb with his fingers before she gave the stroller a heavy push. As the spider climbed up the spout, Tricia told herself to calm down.

It wasn't the same woman. She was overreacting. Losing her ability to differentiate between fact and fiction.

In the song, the rains came down, and she turned the
corner. Sped up for a block. Turned again and then again. When the sun was coming out to dry up all the rain for the third time, she was back at Ivy.

And when the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again, with Taylor's heart-felt if inarticulate help, Tricia got another glimpse of the woman. Only she was even closer now. And if the bulge on her side beneath the sweater was a handgun, as Tricia suspected it might be, the woman wasn't out for a casual stroll, either.

Grabbing Dog under one arm with a quick sweep, Tricia held tight to the stroller and ran. The woman could shoot her dead, take Taylor and be gone forever. When you had enough money, anything was possible.

Thump.
The stroller went over a crack in the sidewalk.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The world became little else. The beating of her heart in her ears, unmasked by anything except the rhythm of the stroller's rubber wheels crossing crack after crack. Taylor's sudden silence, the stillness with which he sat, watching the world whiz by, scared her more than anything else. Even her eighteen-month-old baby knew something was wrong.

She ran down Ivy, stopping only long enough to go behind a car waiting at the corner as she crossed, not sure in her panic where she was headed. The houses were taller, wider, the yards larger, and still she pushed. Until she ran out of sidewalk. There was nothing ahead of her but a canyon.

San Diego was riddled with canyons. They were big. Cavernous. Covered with trees and brush, blanketing much of their acreage. There was no time to think. No time for rational decisions or hesitation. Tricia plowed through the brush, thankful that most of it was just high grass but still worried about scraping Taylor's face, scratching his eye. She prayed the stroller's canopy would protect her son from injury.

Still, a scratch or two was preferable to hanging dead from a tree, or being carried off by a fox or a mountain lion.

“Hold on, baby,” she whispered. She'd get him to that cluster of trees, undo the strap around his waist with the hand holding on to Dog, and swing him up with her right. If she was quick enough, grabbed him under the arms, she could do it all while barely missing a step.

And if she had to, she'd drop Dog.

Breathing heavily, Tricia shoved ahead. A branch cracked behind her and she bit her lip. She couldn't cry out. Couldn't scare Taylor.

“It's a game, baby!” she said suddenly. “Do you like Mama's game?”

And then it was time. Her throat raw, legs rubbery, and yet energized Tricia had the baby free, against her side, and was gone.

It had taken her two months to save for the stroller she'd left behind.

 

“Hi, it's me.”

“And?” The voice was tense.

“She took the baby to the park, walked home the long way, detoured down Ivy to the canyon and disappeared. She showed up at home an hour later and never left the house again.”

“What's in the canyon?”

“The baby stroller. She left it there.”

“What? Why?”

“No idea. Still had a little sweatshirt, a book, a bottle half filled with juice and a plastic bag with some crackers in the pocket on the back. I saved them for you.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“Want me to continue as planned?”

“Yes.” His certainty was clear.

 

She didn't know a lot about computers, generally. Knew, intricately, the program she'd used for her work, and knew the number she dialed whenever something went wrong with the machine itself. Whether it froze, gave her an error report or a virus warning, she simply picked up the phone and dialed.

Or rather, the person she used to be had done that.

Thursday morning, it was just her and the machine, or rather, Scott's machine—which she'd never touched before, which she'd prefer not to touch, but she had little choice.

With Taylor and Dog sleeping soundly on Scott's bed behind her, Tricia clicked the help button on his Internet browser. First she had to learn how to clear his
tory when she was finished, and then she'd search. There was no room for chance. No reason to implicate Scott in anything.

The violet-trimmed duffel that had been packed with periodically updated diapers, changes of clothes and emergency baby supplies, had been pulled out from beneath piles of fabric in the closet of her sewing room. As soon as Taylor awoke, ate, had his bath, they were heading to Coronado, to Patsy's to drop off the next three finished outfits she'd promised her friend—another pair of drawstring slacks, a flowing calf-length skirt and peasant top, and a pair of shorts with a button-up white blouse. After that, she had no idea where she'd go.

She had to leave. It might be illogical, rash, stupid, but she couldn't stay. She'd been followed the day before. A saner person might not think so, might think her imagination out of control, but she knew. There was no doubt. She knew.

The screen was too bright for her eyes in the early-morning dimness. But there was a little history button right on the toolbar where she'd found the help button. A click and another click, and any record of the sites she visited on the Internet would be erased from Scott's computer.

Turning, she watched her son breathe. There was such comfort in that. The simple in and out of air from his lungs, the rise and fall of his chest, had become precious proof that she hadn't lost yet. The baby, dressed
in thin cotton footed bottoms that snapped into the short-sleeved matching shirt, lay sprawled crossways on the bed. He'd been like that most of the night.

Tricia knew because she'd been up watching him through every minute of it. She wasn't taking any chances.

Typing her request into the search bar, Tricia clicked
go
and waited.

She would've left the day before except that she thought she'd be making a mistake to leave prematurely. She was due to meet Miller later that morning and if she could find out who was having her followed—and why—she'd have more of a chance to throw him off. Show Thomas, or whoever it was, something that was the opposite of what he was looking for. Become something she was not.

Again.

She'd done it once. Could do it again. And again. And again. As many times as it took to get her son to his eighteenth birthday.

Besides, this way Dog only had to be alone in the backyard with the blanket and kennel and bowls of water and food she'd set up for two days instead of three.

The hourglass on the computer turned upside down one more time as the machine did her bidding. And then the screen flashed. There were pages of listings for Thomas Whitehead. She looked at the latest one.

 

“Hello.”

On edge more often than not these days, Scott leaned against the station's backyard wall early Thursday morning and pulled his cell phone away from his ear as Tricia answered. He took a deep breath, then moved it back. The other guys were still asleep. He hadn't been so lucky.

“What's wrong?” Tension made the words stronger than he'd intended.

“Nothing! Scott, hi!” As curt as her voice had been seconds before, Tricia now sounded too joyful. Something was wrong. Very wrong. “I was reading—distracted. I'm sorry.”

Reading at seven-thirty in the morning? “I figured you'd just be finished dressing, having your last peaceful cup of coffee before the troops awoke.” He hated playing games. Most particularly with this woman. It was dangerous. Stupid. Too much was at risk.

His freedom. Hers. His heart. Hers. Taylor. The present.

“I am having my coffee. And reading.”

She was lying. Or hiding something. Or someone?

He shook his head. Tricia just wasn't the type to have a lover on the side. Or if she was, he couldn't make himself believe she had one now.

“Reading what?”

“The paper.” Which she rarely read at home when he was there.

“You already went out for it?”

“No. It's yesterday's. I never finished it.”

Odd. But not unheard of. She'd told him she sometimes picked up a paper on her morning walk with her son. But she usually didn't bring it home.

So what had she done yesterday instead?

And when had he started analyzing every word she said, looking for hidden meanings?

The woman was driving him nuts. Keeping him off balance. He couldn't afford to be off balance.

Nor could he seem to walk away.

“Anything earth-shattering?” They'd been too busy at the station for leisure reading.

“Nope.”

Rubbing a hand across eyes that felt the pressure of too many nights of too little sleep, Scott studied the grass at his feet. “You sure everything's okay?” If he asked her any more than that, she'd run. He'd pushed her as far as he could.

“Yes, fine.”

He asked about her plans for the day. She described a day like many others that had gone before. And he wanted to believe her. To accept the momentary peace her words brought him.

But he reminded himself that her words meant little. She was using a lot of effort to hide something from him. She wasn't about to disclose it during a casual rundown of the day's events.

“I love you.” Her voice was soft. Completely Tricia. And Scott sighed, his shoulders, his stomach, relaxing in spite of everything that remained unknown.

“I love you, too.” The admission was one of the few recent changes in their relationship for which he was thankful.

Beyond thankful.

“I mean it, Scott. I really do love you. A lot.”

He believed her.

“I know. Me, too,” he said quietly. And then, when the tension immediately returned to his stomach, he added, “Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

Scott hung up, telling himself he was a lucky man to have the love of such a woman. And his freedom, too.

But the sound of those last two words—“I will”—echoed over and over in his mind. They'd been infused with intensity, too much intensity, almost as though she was saying goodbye.

While he sat helpless—like a man by the side of the road—watching a love die before his eyes.

He'd done what he could, short of marrying her, to keep her next to him. And that he couldn't do.

With a weary shake of the head, he pocketed his phone and went back inside.

 

“They're cops.”

Walking from the door toward the chair in the back of Island Cleaners where Miller sat, unshaven and disreputable-looking as usual, Tricia stumbled.