It was then he saw a flash of bright red hair. Sherlock’s hair. She was bent low, moving toward Kirsten.

He heard a door slam, heard a woman’s high, frantic voice. “Amanda! What’s going on here? Who are you? Oh, no, you’ve got a gun! You’re hurting my daughter!”

Kirsten fired toward the woman and missed, but the woman fell to her knees and scrabbled behind a bush.

But she was up in the next instant. “You let go of my daughter!”

Kirsten took dead aim, but Amanda was jerking at her arm, twisting wildly, screaming, “Don’t you shoot my mama! Don’t!”

CHAPTER 74

Ruth gunned the Silverado through the Sunday traffic toward Chevy Chase. She eyed the ring clutched in Lucy’s hand. “Listen, Lucy, I don’t understand what it is about this ring that makes it so valuable, but don’t you think it’s time to tell me? Your cousin Miranda tried to kill you for it. Why?”

“Miranda wanted the ring badly, Ruth—she believed what my grandfather wrote, that it held some kind of power that belonged to her, and she could bring that power to life, but it didn’t work out that way. I know in my gut she’s going to confront her mother about it, and she’s enraged. I don’t know what she’s going to do, Ruth.”

Ruth tossed Lucy her clutch piece. Then she grabbed her cell and speed-dialed Ollie.

“No, Ruth, please don’t call for backup, not yet.”

She got a raised eyebrow from Ruth. “I know these people are your family, Lucy, but I’m getting the cold, hard feeling these people are nuts. We’re going to follow standard procedure, both of us.” She called Ollie.

They were pulling into the Silvermans’ driveway when they heard a gunshot.

Lucy was out of the Silverado in a second, Ruth shouting after her, “Don’t you go in there alone, Lucy, you hear me? Stop or I’ll hurt you!”

But Lucy couldn’t stop. She shoved the front door open and ran through the elegant entrance hall to the living room. She flung the heavy wooden door open and skidded to a stop. Uncle Alan, Aunt Jennifer, and Court stood huddled together beside Uncle Alan’s favorite burgundy leather sofa. They were frozen in place, Miranda standing in front of them.

Uncle Alan stepped in front of his wife. “No, Miranda, don’t shoot that gun again, do you hear me? She’s your mother, for God’s sake, your mother!”

Miranda raised the heavy Kel Tec, aimed it directly at her father. “Dad, why would you protect her? She betrayed you. She got pregnant by another man. She cheated me out of what was mine. Don’t you understand, she stole everything from me!”

Lucy said, “Miranda, stop now! You can’t hurt your mother!”

Miranda whirled around. “Lucy, go away, I don’t want you here. What? Are you going to shoot me, Lucy? And her? Will she shoot me, too?”

Lucy said very calmly, “No, I’m not going to shoot you, Miranda, and neither is Ruth. I want all of this to stop. Drop the gun, Miranda, and all of this can be over.”

“No, it’s not over. She destroyed everything that should have been mine; she made me into nothing, do you hear me, Lucy? I’m nothing!”

“You’re much more than nothing, Miranda; we all are. Listen, it’s only a ring, a stupid ring that shouldn’t even exist. You lived without the ring a very long time. You did fine. You don’t need it. Drop the gun and we’ll talk about this as much as you want.”

Miranda said in a dead voice, “Alan Silverman is not my father. I asked mother, and she told me the truth. She slept with some kind of artist she met in a coffeehouse—can you believe that? She said she was lonely then because my father—Alan—was working so much she hardly ever saw him. She said she wanted to protect me from knowing that, but she was protecting herself.

“And that’s why the ring wouldn’t work for me—I’m not a Silverman. Don’t you think it’s funny that I fell for an artist in a café myself? A real loser, like my own real father, I’ll bet. Like me. I know that now. And look at you, all grown up, an FBI agent, and you have the ring, and it works for you, doesn’t it? I would have sworn I hit you outside that motel, but then you weren’t where I thought you’d be. Not that you deserve to die; you really don’t. You’re the one who has everything now.”

She laughed. “And still you come back after me, Lucy? You think you’re going to arrest me?” She laughed again, and then she fired the pistol.

CHAPTER 75

The little girl pulled and jerked at Kirsten’s arm when she raised her gun to shoot again at her mother, and Kirsten clouted her. Savich’s bullet caught her in her right shoulder. She staggered, screamed, and fell to the ground, taking the little girl with her.