“Tell you what, why don’t I meet you, help you take care of this stuff? Then you and I can talk a little about how you’re really doing.”

Yeah, right. Still, what could she say? Coop didn’t have to know what was in the safe-deposit box; it wasn’t his business. She could be silent as the Sphinx if she wanted to. She felt filled with energy, excited about what she would find in that box. But it was more than that. She felt revved, ready to take on the world, even Kirsten Bolger. “Sure, Coop, that’ll be fine. I’m, ah, in front of the First National Bank here in Chevy Chase.”

“Wait for me.”

Lucy punched off her cell, sighed again, and closed her hands tightly around the steering wheel. Should she wait, or go into the bank? She saw there was a Starbucks across the street with not much of a line.

When Coop arrived in his blue Corvette, people rubbernecking to get a better look, she smiled. She stepped out of her Range Rover as he navigated his splendid machine into a parking space nearly as small as hers.

She knew he was studying her face through his dark sunglasses as he walked toward her with that lazy walk of his. He was in his prized shearling coat, since it was chilly today. She gave him a big grin and handed him a covered cup of coffee—black, the way he liked it. She saluted him. “Thanks for coming to me, Coop.”

He slipped his sunglasses in his coat pocket. “Yeah, well, it’s my pleasure, Agent Carlyle. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have seen you today. Sherlock and I are flying up to New York City in a couple of hours. There was another Black Beret killing up there last night, and we have a good witness—a guy who talked to her.”

“Savich didn’t call me. Why aren’t I going?”

“Savich wants you here with him after what happened. Don’t look blank, Lucy, you know exactly what I mean. You found your grandfather in a steamer trunk, and got yourself hypnotized. Dr. Hicks’s orders, Savich said. He’ll probably call you.” He took a sip of the sinful coffee, gave a little shudder. “This perks my chest hair right up.”

“I was just thinking that.”

He eyed her. “I might need some clarification. You were thinking exactly that?”

She laughed. “I’m here to look in a safe-deposit box that belonged to my grandfather, Coop.”

“Really? You’re going in to see what’s in the box? Right now?”

“You got it.”

She was excited, nervous, he read it clearly on her face, and there was something else in her eyes as well. Was it fear? Fear of finding something else that would wreck her world, something about why her grandfather’s body was in that steamer trunk?

She tried to leave him in the main lobby inside the bank, but he stuck with her. He said nothing at all when the bank employee looked up the box number on the computer and told her there was a note that she could be coming, even though this was the very first visit to this particular safe-deposit box in twenty-two years, and wasn’t that a kick?

Yeah, Coop thought, a real kick, but then again, her grandfather had been dead for twenty-two years. He had a good dozen questions ready to trip off his tongue, but Lucy was doing her best to pretend he wasn’t there. She followed the woman to the elevators, and disappeared.

Who had kept the box open, he wondered, standing against a wall with his arms crossed over his chest, and why hadn’t she come to the bank before and opened the box rather than waiting until today? Had she just found out about it?

Coop waited for twenty minutes, until she walked out of the elevator, carrying only her purse. But her purse was huge. He found himself wondering how much bloody weight women could actually carry until their backs gave out.

“So, what was in the box?”

She pressed her purse against her chest. He was on full alert.

“Come on, Lucy, state secrets from World War Two? Something so classified you’ve got tucked in that purse that if you tell me, you’ll have to either kill me or marry me?”

That brought an unwilling smile. “Well, we’ve already had the pre-honeymoon.”

“It was too short. I’d like to see the squirrel nightshirt again.”

“What was in the box is personal, so forget it,” she said, and walked beside him out of the bank. He saw a glow in her eyes, no other word for it. She was ready to kick butt. She’d found something significant, something related to what had happened twenty-two years ago. He wanted to know; he wanted to protect her. But from what?

“You aren’t going to tell me what your grandfather placed in that box?”