“Sloppy’s one thing. Jabbing a sharpened toothbrush into your own body, that’s another. He could’ve miscalculated, or gotten jostled at the key moment.”

“He didn’t. He wasn’t.”

“Still an enormous risk,” Hugh put in. “For what possible gain?”

“How I figure he figures? It takes him off the suspect list. ‘Look at me, I was attacked, too.’ The man’s a liar, one who’s run his life on lies and cons.”

Face set, Red tapped a fist on the table. “I tell you as sure as I’m sitting here he lied to me and Mic when we talked to him. A load of horseshit about just wanting to do his time, how he deserved what he got. He made sure to shift some of the blame to Denby and Dupont, but claimed he’d put it behind him.”

Red took another drink. “Horseshit.”

“You really believe this? Dillon believes this?”

Red nodded. “It’s what adds up for me. It smells right to me. Mic, well, she’s about halfway there on it. The other half doesn’t see him as having the spine to do it, to hurt himself.”

“He’s still in prison,” Cate pointed out. “How could he do all this from prison?”

“Start with Denby. Nobody liked the bastard. He got his ass kicked regularly, did time in solitary. I’m betting you could barter his murder for a couple packs of smokes. With nearly two decades in, you can be sure a man like Sparks made connections, made friends, knows who’ll do what and what they want to do it. Grifters, they’re going to grift inside or out.”

Hugh looked over the pool to the deeper, bolder water of the Pacific. “The others wouldn’t be that easy.”

“Connections. An ex-con doing a job, taking a quick score for it. There are ways to make money in prison, to get it in, get it out. Sparks would find ways. The two that came for me did time. Not in San Quentin, but you put the word out, order the hit.”

Tapping that fist, Red scowled out to sea. “We’d have gotten it out of them if they’d lived. Sparks got lucky there.”

“This isn’t just a theory for you,” Cate realized.

“It’s a theory until I can prove it.” Red reached into the bowl of berries, eating absently. “His lawyer? He hired this one over a year ago. She’s a writer, too, one with a bad-guy fetish.”

“I’m not sure I want to know what that means, exactly.”

Red gave Cate a half smile. “A lot of women get hung up on men in prison. Write them, visit them, hell, even marry them. This one writes about them. She’s got a couple of true crime books under her belt. I read one of them, and maybe it’s just the cop in me, but my take? She leans toward the side of the criminal. She got clearance to interview Denby and Sparks for a book she’s going to write, or is writing.”

“What’s her name?”

“Jessica Rowe,” he told Hugh.

“That’s familiar. Give me a minute.” He rose, took out his phone, walked to the other end of the pool.

“I’m not playing devil’s advocate, but it seems logical a criminal would want a lawyer who sympathizes with criminals.”

“She’s forty-six, single. Never been married. And don’t give me grief for saying she’s on the sturdy side, and plain-looking.”

“And how is that relevant?”

“What’s relevant to me is since she’s been representing Sparks, since she’s been visiting him at least weekly, she’s spruced up. Taken off some weight, wearing better clothes, had the gray taken out of her hair, that kind of thing.”

“You think she’s doing that for him? That she’s fallen for him, like my mother fell for him?”

“It slides right in to the adding up.” He glanced over as Hugh walked back.

“I needed to check. Jessica Rowe contacted my publicist last year, and again six months ago, trying to arrange an interview. She pitched for an interview with you, honey, three times.”

“I never heard of her.”

“What have you told our mutual publicist to say regarding interviews or comments on the kidnapping?”

“The answer’s always no.”

“And she said no, every time. I’m going to assume she tried to contact Aidan, Lily, other members of the family.”

“My mother.”

“Most certainly. Charlotte wouldn’t have said no if she saw any advantage.”

“Which would connect her with Sparks again,” Cate murmured. “I still don’t see what this writer, lawyer, could mean in all this.”

“What would you do for love?” Red speculated.

What would she do? Cate asked herself after she walked back home.

Not kill, not help to kill. Not kidnap a child.

But what other lines would she cross?

She didn’t know. She’d never been tested.

Maybe because she’d learned—early—to take care with who she loved.

Her family, always her family. Darlie, who was the next thing to a sister to her. Luke, but who wouldn’t love such a sweet, happy boy?

Noah. Oh, she had loved Noah, as openly, as freely, as fully as she’d known how. And if, in the end, he’d disappointed her, she’d never blamed him. Not fully.

She walked to the glass wall, looked out to sky and sea, so much blue, so much beauty, and searched her heart.

No, she hadn’t fully blamed him, but a part of her had. Maybe still did. And fair or not, holding on to that part of her had made her wary of loving like that again.

She’d given her body if not her full and open heart to two other men who hadn’t deserved it. Who wouldn’t be wary?

After all, when a Sullivan loved, really loved, it was forever.

With that on her mind, she went upstairs to her bedroom, opened what she thought of as her memory box. Playbills—including the one she’d had signed by the cast and crew of Mame—ticket stubs, all the way back to her childhood, the recipe for soda bread—one she’d committed to memory long ago—in Mrs. Leary’s careful handwriting.

And the little gold heart Noah had given her for her eighteenth birthday.

She hadn’t worn it since the day he’d walked out of her life, and still she’d kept it.

Testing herself, she put it on, studied herself in the mirror, tracing the heart with her finger as she had so many times before.

A little pang for what had been, but no longing, and more important, no regret. It was only a memory, after all, a symbol of a sweet time. She had loved him, she thought as she took it off again, put it back in the box. As much as she’d known how at eighteen.

“But not forever, not for either of us.”

What would she do for love? Maybe it was time to find out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Work always helped. Closing herself in her studio, focusing, becoming took her out of herself. She knew something in the back of her brain would and could work on the problem—both problems—while she produced.

The external problem wanted to terrify her, and she couldn’t let it. But the idea that someone—Sparks, if Red’s instincts proved accurate—arranged killings, with her kidnapping at the center, rated some terror.

Revenge? It seemed like such a useless motive. He’d never get the years back. At the same time, he risked spending the rest of his life behind bars.