"I stole Nolan's laptop and found something on it you need to see. Do you have time to meet?"

Myka wasn't sure what had her wondering more, the unprompted contact from Helena, the theft, or the fact that four days after their fake date at the apple orchard, she was still thinking about it, a lot. What she wasn't spending much time wondering about was what Helena had found. It was going to be bad. The only thing she didn't know was the form the badness would take. How would Helena be implicated in the fraud involving the alternative energy start-ups this time? She had left her desk to talk to Steve about the investigation and when she returned, she saw the steady red light on her desk phone. Unable to resist the impulse, she grabbed her cell phone and looked over the tops of the cubicles to determine whether any of the conference rooms were free. The wiser course of action would be to sit down at her desk and return the call. The only one who would bother to listen in would be Pete, but that was precisely the problem. He knew her too well, and she didn't trust that she wouldn't give herself away. She liked Helena . . . more than she should.

Helena answered before the first ring ended. "Can you hang on a sec?"

Myka couldn't make out all of the noises, but there were a lot of them for someone who was taking a call at her desk, which suggested to her that Helena wasn't. Helena was probably on the hunt for a private space as well, with more reason than she had. The glass panel in the conference door was frosted. She wouldn't be able to tell whether there were people waiting outside, but she had at least ten minutes before she had to worry about it. "Thanks," Helena said, a little breathlessly, "I'll make this quick because, frankly, I don't enjoy talking in a lavatory. Do you have time, preferably this evening, to look at a file I copied from his laptop?" With an uneasy laugh, she added, "At my home."

"What time do you want me to come by?"

"I fix dinner for Christina at six."

"If the two of you are open to takeout, I can bring dinner," Myka heard herself volunteering. "Does she like Chinese?"

"Sweet and sour chicken," Helena said. She chuckled. "Heavy on what she calls the 'pink sauce.'"

"And you?"

"Surprise me."

Helena ended the call but not before Myka heard the echoey clatter of heels on tile and a slightly startled, "Hi, Helena." She stared dumbly at the icons of the handful of apps she had on her screen. A lot of them were organizational and time management aids. None of them would have any suggestions for how to prevent herself from turning what were work-related encounters into quasi-dates. First, the apple orchard, now dinner. Helena hadn't said no, but then she was hardly in a position to say no to an FBI agent. Myka was tempted to call her back but sensed she might end up making things worse. She didn't realize she was frowning until she was passing Pete's cube on her way back to her own, and he flagged her with "Why the long face?"

"Just thinking."

"You're thinking so loud you're making my head hurt." He pressed his hands against his temples and mock groaned. At her grimace, he sobered and asked, "Would it help to talk about it?"

"I'll work it out, thanks."

She didn't. She stared at files on her monitor and old paper files, not yet digitized for some inexplicable reason, from the office's library. There was more on the Amundson companies than she had anticipated, but little of it directly touched the Amundsons themselves: minor embezzlement by a few employees over the years, a scam that had purported to solicit funds for Nolan Amundson's campaign for governor in the 1990s, a series of multi-state thefts of Amundson trucks and their cargo. The only interesting find was the record of an old court case involving Perry Amundson. In college, he had been arrested for selling tickets to a nonexistent concert by Soul Asylum. He had described it as a prank, and, in the end, he had had only to pay a fine and put in several hours of community service. Myka vaguely recalled the band, but she had been in elementary school at the time of Perry's arrest. Apparently there had been nothing warranting the FBI's interest in the 25 plus years that had passed since then, but she saved the file into her Amundson Securities folder. So far her research into the Amundson family had uncovered what she expected to find, that the Amundson sons were pillars of the community, devoted family men, donors to charities and causes too numerous to mention. Even their wives looked alike, blond, attractive professional women whom one would never think to call trophy wives but who were a little too attractive, a little too fit for the average executive.

Pete actually rolled his chair into the aisle when he heard the unmistakable sounds of her preparing to leave. "Is the world about to end and you're getting a" he looked down at his wristwatch, "two hour head start?"

"I'm meeting Helena."

He made a show of his looking at his watch a second time. "A dinner meeting, perchance?"

"A meeting," she said firmly.

"Yeah, right." He glanced at her skeptically.

Myka couldn't shrug off the look. It followed her into the elevator and into the parking ramp at the end of the block. She could have told Helena that she and Pete would be over to look at the file. It would have been better, certainly more professional if she had. She had never hesitated in similar situations, but inviting Pete along hadn't occurred to her. She rubbed the back of her neck trying to massage the knot away. At least trying to negotiate rush hour traffic would force her to concentrate on something else. A twenty-minute crawl on the business loop allowed her to search the internet for a Chinese restaurant in the northern suburb where Helena lived. There was a Plum Blossom only a few miles away from Helena's townhouse complex. She hadn't had the Plum Blossom's kung pao since . . . since she and Andi had last talked about buying a house. Something that was bigger than Andi's downtown studio apartment and that they could co-own, co-design, co-furnish, unlike Myka's then-rundown bungalow. That had been a long time ago, back when they believed they still had a future together, before she decided to turn her house into a home all on her own.

The restaurant was squeezed into a strip mall, and she had driven past it a couple of times before she picked out the blossom petals on the sign. She joined the line, long for a Thursday night. Helena had said to surprise her. That was a first date question, describe yourself as Chinese takeout. She didn't think Helena was sesame chicken, but she had had a sudden inspiration while waiting in line and decided to go with it. However, when Helena opened the container some 15 minutes later, her cool "I didn't think you would surprise me with this" had Myka casting about for an apology until she felt Helena's hand on her arm. "But Christina will like it because it's sweet. You anticipated that I'll be an indulgent mother and share." She laughed softly. "You've calculated correctly. It wouldn't pay to underestimate you, would it, Agent Bering?"

It was ridiculous, but Myka missed the touch of her hand when Helena stepped away and began opening cupboards. "I doubt that you'll let yourself. Never let your guard down in front of the enemy."

"'Never' might be too strong. 'Enemy' might be too.'"

Christina helped Myka set the table, scolding her when she set the water glasses in the wrong places, "Mommy sits there, I sit here," and viewing the arrangement of the silverware with uncertainty. However, when Helena spooned sweet and sour chicken over a small mound of rice on her place, Christina clapped her hands and wriggled onto her chair. Helena went back into the kitchen and returned with chopsticks.

"Can you really use them, or are you just trying to impress us?" Myka ostentatiously flourished her fork before she opened the carton of kung pao.

"I don't have to try to impress anybody, least of all you, Agent," Helena responded with mock hauteur.

A few minutes later, Myka saw what she meant. Helena used the chopsticks with the familiarity of a long-time practitioner. While Myka, if she worked at it, could successfully pincer a piece of chicken and lift it to her mouth, if her head was skimming the plate, she couldn't use chopsticks to eat rice. Aware of Myka's staring, Helena leaned over and deftly scooped up some of Christina's sweet and sour chicken. She chewed it, flashing triumphant smiles at Christina and Myka both.

"Don't smirk. Unlike yours, mine wasn't a globetrotting family. Chopsticks weren't a part of our utensil drawer."

"Another nugget from the FBI's file on me?" The sardonic edge to Helena's laugh was blunted, but Myka still flushed. Ordinarily her use of the information she had gleaned from a file was strategically deployed, not casually dropped into a conversation . . . as if she were on a date. "We lived in a lot of different places because of my father's work, but I actually learned to use chopsticks when we lived in New York." She grinned at Myka's surprise. "I loved New York. When I graduated from uni, I wanted to work on Wall Street. So I came back, worked for a few houses, and then Charles came over to start up a New York office, and I worked for him. Those days I ate meals at my desk, a lot of Chinese take-away."

"Take-away?"

"It makes more sense, if you think about it, than 'take-out.' Impeccable British logic."

"I love New York, too," Christina suddenly announced, showing them cheeks and chin daubed with sweet and sour sauce.

"And what do you love about it? What makes New York special?" Helena asked, with maternal skepticism. She gestured at Christina to wipe her mouth.

Christina swiped at her face with a napkin. It might have come within inches of her face. "Everything," she said cannily.

Helena pointed a chopstick at her. "Sometimes, sunshine, you are too clever by half." Christina giggled and held up her plate for more sweet and sour chicken. "How about you, Myka? Have you been to New York?" Helena sidled her a look that was part curiosity, part dare before serving her daughter a small second helping.

That first year with Andi, it had felt like she was traveling to New York every weekend. Felt like but wasn't actually the case. Still, she figured she averaged a trip at least once a month, often for no more than a three-day weekend, and she would have happily spent herself into penury to see Andi more often than she did. Crazy in love was reason enough for all the irrational, emotionally exuberant behavior she hadn't indulged in before, hadn't even known she was capable of feeling until she met her. Myka had been to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Met, all of the touristy must-sees, but she couldn't recall them in any detail. New York was Andi, Andi was New York. Its variety of sights, sounds, and smells were reduced to blond, blue, the tremor in "Good-bye," and the citrus scent of Andi's body wash. "A few times," Myka said blandly, offering nothing more.

Helena gave her a long look but didn't press. After Christina firmly declared that she was "done, Mommy, done," Helena steered her into the living room and suggested she work on her designs for her Halloween costume. Christina only agreed once Helena promised her that Myka would look at her designs and provide an "impartial opinion."

"What's a 'partial 'pinion'?"

"It means that Myka will tell you which one she thinks is best. Only mommies can say they're all the best."

"Myka's 'partial?"

"That's Myka's career, honey," Helena said as she retreated from the living room, "sitting in judgement." The mocking smile that punctuated her words took only some of the sting from them.

"Ouch," Myka said, theatrically rubbing her arm. Mildly, she added, "I wouldn't call what I do 'sitting in judgment.' I investigate and arrest people so others can sit in judgment of them."

"Touché." Helena hesitated, then asked, "You're investigating me. Do you think you'll have to arrest me?"

"I hope not. I don't want to."

Myka helped her clear the table. Helena carefully saved the leftover food in Tupperware containers and put them in the refrigerator. The dishes went into a dishwasher that Myka thought looked half the size of the one in her house, but Helena's entire kitchen could fit into her kitchen with space left over. Helena ran upstairs for her laptop, and when returned she with it, she set it on the table, which was still wet where Myka had cleaned it with a dishcloth. She turned it on and pushed a thumb drive into a USB port.

"While we're waiting your computer to boot up, why don't you explain what you meant by 'stealing Nolan's laptop.'"

"It wasn't a joke. I did take it without permission." As the screen brightened, showing a picture of Christina, Helena typed in a password. "The senior officers got new laptops and phones. Amundson Securities also buys Nolan a laptop because, well, he's Nolan Amundson. Their old laptops were stored in the equipment room, and they were supposed to be delivered this week to the central office for a thorough scrubbing. I went into the room on Monday and took the one that was Nolan's. No one saw me, which is a very good thing because I don't have a lot of margin for acting suspiciously right now." She sighed. "If central office runs an audit, they'll see that l last accessed the computer, which might be a little awkward to explain but less so than being caught putting it my bag and leaving the office with it."

"What made you run the risk?"

"What I said while we were at the apple orchard, about the start-ups being a fraud from the start. If it was true, then there might be a clue, an email, a spreadsheet, something, and it would probably be on Nolan's computer, if anybody's." She opened the file on the thumbdrive. "This is what I found."

Myka had moved her chair closer to Helena, but she still couldn't get a good view of the screen. Helena turned the laptop toward her. She saw a copy of an email dated 18 months ago from Helena to Nolan Amundson. On the surface, the language seemed innocuous. Helena was informing Nolan of a potential investment opportunity involving three alternative energy companies, which were in need of additional capital. She was touting the creativity and innovation of the companies' management, noting that they were bringing fresh thinking both to the sources of renewable energy and the nagging issue of economies of scale. Her email was like many that Myka had read before, almost breathlessly optimistic. Although problems were acknowledged, their potential magnitude was dismissed in favor of the profit that could be realized. Misleading, yes, fraudulent – not by themselves. Yet when she reread them, other phrases struck her. This will take some craft on your part, investors may need to be guided, financial data will need "context," finding the right balance between promise and risk is crucial, but the one that was especially foreboding was feel free to reach out to Mac – he knows these companies inside out. Mac Horner. The director who had been investigated by the SEC, who was associated with other suspect investments. The rest of the file contained summary financial information, business strategies, and bios of senior management.

"Do you need me to say that I wasn't in contact with Nolan then? That I wouldn't be for another ten months?" With an exasperated huff, she added, "This doesn't even sound like me. It's hucksterish. Stuart could have written it."

The bitterness was unmistakable, but Myka resisted the impulse to look at her. She needed to focus on the file. "How did you find this?"

"Not easily. It was nested deep in the hard drive. No place where most people would've saved a secret file, but a place where someone with some tech knowledge would know how to find."

This time Myka didn't resist the impulse to look at her. "So it would've been found by the techs scrubbing his computer . . . or will be found. Did you delete the file?"

"No, obviously I copied it, but I left it where it was, and I returned the laptop to the equipment room."

"You mentioned 'central office.'" Myka prodded her as Helena closed the file and removed the thumbdrive. Helena silently handed it to her, and Myka dropped it into her suit jacket pocket. "It's not the IT staff at Amundson Securities that scrubs the companies' old computers?"

"Not the officers'. Certainly not Nolan's. I don't know why central IT is entrusted with the disposal of their electronic devices, but that's the protocol." She stared hard at Myka. "They also have the broadest administrative access. They can access any shared network, site, or drive within the Amundson organization."

"You think it's someone at central IT who altered the reports and who will 'discover' this file Nolan forgot to delete."

"It's someone at central IT who planted the file . . . and it's someone much higher who authorized the creation of the email. Why would Nolan save it in another format, save it at all? It wouldn't be to implicate me because it potentially implicates him as well."

"Yes, I see that," Myka said dryly. "We'll take a look at it. It would be helpful if you could provide me with a list of the employees in central IT."

"I'll try, but once this file is found, I'll likely no longer have a job." Helena shut down the laptop and closed the lid.

"Not right away," Myka said and, in response to Helena's questioning glance, only shrugged. "Call it a hunch." She suspected a copy of the file would be anonymously sent to DA Kosan's office, yet another goad but, this time, a higher intensity one. It would be the first time that the fraud would directly touch Nolan Amundson. She fingered the drive in her pocket. "Thank you."

"My efforts are self-interested. However, your bringing dinner was not, so thank you."

Myka felt the heat build under her shirt and spread up into her neck. "It didn't occur to me until later that it could be considered intrusive or make you feel uncomfortable."

"You don't seem a 'take-out and make your move' type of person." Helena's appraisal was mocking, but there was good humor in the twitch of her lips. "My paramours have tended to aim higher than that. Granted, my first date with Stuart was hot dogs and beer, but he followed it up with an invitation to hobnob with the Yankees after the game."

"The hot dogs and beer I can manage, but my courtship rituals are pretty modest."

"You do all right, I think."

It depended on when you did the counting. In the six, no, seven months since Andi had left, she hadn't even had an incidental encounter at the grocery store that might have twigged her interest . . . except, of course, her meeting Helena at the fair. The last time she and Andi had broken up, she hadn't been interested in dating, but she had gotten together with a fellow agent during a week-long training course they were both attending, and they had ended up making out in her hotel room, but they had stopped, thankfully, before she had had something to really regret the next morning. Before that . . . that was before Andi, and while there had been relationships, they had been short-term and, in comparison, mainly forgettable. She didn't date. She was biding her time until she found the one who threw everyone else into shadow. She hoped she had another supernova in her future . . . mmm, no, not a supernova, they left black holes. Myka groped for another metaphor, maybe the tried-and-true bolt of lightning. She hoped another bolt of lightning would cross her path . . . preferably before she started believing that Helena Wells might be it.

"Come see my pictures!" Christina shouted imperiously from the living room.

Myka hung back, but Helena wagged a finger at her. "She hasn't forgotten you. Remember, the three critical words are 'wonderful,' 'gorgeous,' and 'talented,' as in 'That is so' and 'You're so very.' Repeat as necessary."

Christina had lined up three large sheets of drawing paper on the living room floor. The middle drawing was the easiest to decipher, a chocolate chip cookie. The Michelin tire man on one end was actually an astronaut, or so Helena stage-whispered behind her hand. The design on the other end . . . Myka walked around the drawing paper to look at it upside down. An upside-down metal ice cream cone? Christina had liberally cross-hatched the page with a silver marker, building toward an apex with a definite hook left. "It's wonderful," Myka said, plastering a big smile on her face, "but it's so inventive, I'm not sure what it is."

Christina wasn't fooled. "It's the Eye-filled Tower, silly."

"Yes, silly. How could you not know?" Helena demanded.

"Thanks for letting me go first," Myka said wryly. "So, Christina, which one's going to be your Halloween costume?" When she bit her finger and shrugged, Myka said, "If you go as a chocolate chip cookie, we've got some Cookie Shack sandwich boards I can lend you, and I can give you a Cookie Shack cap. You'll be a walking advertisement." She grinned at Helena. "The sandwich boards are about as tall as she is, but after she trips over them a couple of times, she'll get used to it."

Frowning down at the Eiffel Tower, Helena muttered, "Bollocks." Fixing her daughter with a severe look, she said, "The Great Pyramids would've been much easier. Some cardboard, scissors, tape, we're done. What am I supposed to do? Wrap you in wire mesh?"

"Yes," Christina said loftily.

"You have no idea what mesh is, do you?"

"It's wire," Christina said with a crafty glance.

"Smarty pants."

After being offered a bribe of frozen yogurt, Christine hurriedly gathered her designs and markers. With a shout of "I want chocolate!," she ran for the stairs to put them away. Although Helena's invitation to stay sounded sincere, Myka declined, although she would have preferred to stay. She wasn't a frozen yogurt fan, but she liked watching Helena interact with her daughter. The coolness that Helena used as a shield in their own interactions was replaced by a warmth that didn't lack for a little tartness when she was responding to Christina's latest efforts or provocations. Myka recognized the tug and was determined to resist it. She didn't need to become Helena's friend to do her job. In fact, it was all to the good that Helena maintained her reserve. Myka hadn't gotten stung yet from trusting an informant in an investigation, but she had heard stories about agents who lost their professional distance. The mistake didn't only derail investigations, it derailed careers. She hadn't seen or heard anything yet that convinced her that Helena was a willing or knowing co-conspirator, but she couldn't let her attraction undermine her objectivity.

But whatever doubts she had about her objectivity, she knew better than to show them. She had had a lifetime of practice hiding how she felt. It wasn't her father's criticisms that had both dogged and driven her, it was the unspoken disappointment – that she wasn't a son, that she wasn't athletic, that she wasn't . . . everything . . . that he had wanted in a first child. However, while she had had 35 years to hone the skill with her father, she hadn't had near that long with Irene Frederic, and, truth be known, Irene was a far shrewder and tougher customer than Warren Bering. Her heart started beating faster when she met with Irene, Pete, and Steve the next morning and said she had gone over to Helena's townhome the night before to look at the file Helena had found. She didn't need to confess the dinner or the design judging, but she sensed that Irene knew there had been more than a simple hand-off of a file. It was also possible that Irene had registered Pete's difficulty in keeping a frat boy smile off his face when she had said "I was at Helena's home last night." However, Irene's expression gave nothing away, and she returned her attention to her print-out of the file.

"Suggestive but not incriminating." She laid the print-out on her desk. "Did you give the drive to our IT?" At Myka's nod, she said, "I realize they might not be able to get much, but anything they can find will be a help."

"It changes our focus, doesn't it?" Steve, as usual, was impeccably dressed. The suit had been tailored, the dress shirt was too crisp not to have been professionally cleaned, and the tie was perfectly knotted. Pete, by contrast, had left his suit jacket hanging over the back of his chair, and he already had what appeared to be a jelly, as in jelly doughnut, stain on his shirt, which also displayed several ironed-in creases. The bulbous growth at the base of his neck was the tie knot he could never finish off neatly. After over ten years in the FBI, an iron was still a foreign object in Pete's hands, as was, apparently, a tie.

"It's not just Helena, it's Nolan Amundson, too," he chimed in.

"Maybe Helena's not the real target," Myka said quietly. "Maybe it's Nolan, but Helena is what gets us to start looking at him."

Irene leaned back in her chair, which looked ergonomically dubious, as did most of the furniture in the office, and steepled her hands over her stomach. "It's possible. It's also possible that she's trying to set him up to deflect the blame. She could end up claiming that her promoting the companies as investments to him was innocent and, once they started to fail, he coerced her into falsifying information."

"How likely do you think that is?" Myka challenged.

Irene rocked forward in the chair. "As likely or as unlikely as anything else at this point. We still don't know enough." She clicked a key on her keyboard and stared at her monitor. "Myka, you said she told you she didn't delete the file."

"If what she's thinking is right, that it was planted with the intention of being discovered, I imagine we'll be hearing from Kelly Hernandez soon about more anonymously sent information." Myka noticed that Pete instinctively sat straighter in his chair at the mention of Kelly's name.

Irene frowned at the monitor before surveying the three of them like a commander in the field about to deploy her troops. "I'm in Washington all next week for meetings, so, Steve, you're in charge of next steps. What are your thoughts?"

"Pete needs to keep digging into the alternative energy companies and any connections between them, the Amundsons, and Helena Wells." Blue Justice was looking especially intense and intensely blue this morning. Myka attributed it to the blue of Steve's suit – and the smell of larger prey in the air. "Broaden the focus – any ties whatsoever, no matter how innocuous." Steve leaned forward to look around Pete and trained Blue Justice on her. "Touch base with Kelly and our friends in the state attorney general's office and find out if there are any pending or ongoing investigations into any of the Amundsons' interests. This will take some finesse, but we should tap every contact we have about the Amundson family. If Nolan's a target, the likeliest suspects will be those closest to him. Who's finally coming clean about the family's dirty laundry? Who among the family hates his guts? We also need to know more about why he brought Helena Wells here. If she's not volunteering more, then we need to find somebody who will." His glance at Irene sought her approval.

She nodded at Pete and Myka. "You have your marching orders."

"Maybe Pete should be the one pumping Kelly for information. He has an existing relationship with her." Myka said, keeping her gaze focused on Irene's desk. If she looked at him, she would start laughing.

"I wouldn't call it a 'relationship,'" Pete protested. "We're in the same softball league."

"Still, she may be willing to share things with you that she wouldn't with me." Myka stared so hard at the cherry veneer of Irene's desk, she thought she could see through it to the cheaper pine underneath. Given the ever-shrinking federal budget, she wouldn't be surprised to walk into the office one day and find all of their workstations gone and boxes of IKEA self-assemble desks and chairs in their place.

"Okay. Pete, getting on Kelly's good side is your job now," Steve said cheerfully.

"I have to find it first," Pete grumbled.

After Irene shooed them out of her office so she could take a call, Pete followed Myka into the break room. He took a can of Mountain Dew from the refrigerator as Myka poured herself a cup of coffee. Number four, but who was counting? Except Pete. In the spirit of the best defense is a good offense, she asked, pointing to the can he held, "Is that even yours?"

He squinted at the best-by date on the can bottom. "Two months past. Does it matter at this point?" He smiled at her sourly. "Thanks a lot in there. You can stop it with the revenge matchmaking. I'm not interested, and, even if I was, she's already got someone." The smile turned sly. "Word is that her someone is your ex."

Myka's thoughts immediately went to Andi. "What?" Objectively, in a reality other than the one she currently occupied, she could see it. Kelly was cute and confident. Andi would feed off the positive energy. As for what Kelly would get out of it . . . Andi, when she was focused on you, was hard to deny on any level.

"Not her," Pete said impatiently. "Sam. Your other ex."

"Oh." Myka dismissively slurped at her coffee. She didn't know that she would describe Sam as an ex. As "someone I briefly dated before his sister swept me off my feet" would be more apt. "He's a nice guy, she seems nice, too, so maybe it'll work out between them."

The look Pete gave her was, if possible, more scornful. "He's boring, he's a drudge. He's the houseplant of boyfriends."

"You are interested in her."

"All's I'm saying is that I know when people fit and when they don't." He tilted his head to drink the last of the soda, then flicked the can in a high arc toward the recycling bin. He pumped his fist when it ricocheted off the rim and fell to the bottom. "Just like you're so into our very own Ruth Madoff. 'Maybe Helena's not the real target,'" he said, mimicking her. "Be careful. It's okay for me to know, but not Blue Justice and Irene."

"I'm only following your gut," Myka said dryly.

"What you're following is farther south than that."

Last night had been Chinese takeout with Helena and Christina. Tonight was whatever Tracy and Kevin were putting on the table. Her mother and father were invited, too, which meant it would be some version of meat and potatoes. Otherwise her father would sulk, and nothing was more appetite-killing than Warren Bering in a snit. Myka was glad she had put on the jeans that were too big for her in the waist. Her contribution to the meal was the two bottles of wine in the passenger seat. As usual, because she was running late, the food was already on the table and Tyler peevish by the time she arrived. Steak and baked potatoes. If Tracy had come out of the kitchen in a dress with a knee-length full skirt and a wasp-waist, Myka could have believed they were on the set of Leave It to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet until her father opened his mouth and went into a diatribe about taxes, the national debt, and the cost of living. Her mother eventually shushed him, but both Tracy and Kevin, in the meantime, had refilled their wine glasses. Jeannie soon followed suit. Stuck with her usual Perrier, Myka conscientiously overchewed the piece of steak in her mouth. It was a wonder he hadn't disowned her when she had revealed during her sophomore year in college that the "someone" she was seeing was her chemistry lab partner from high school. In high school, Alicia had been pretty but shy and seemingly permanently affixed to the varsity wrestler who walked with her from class to class, even if he had to sprint across the building to meet up with her. In the two years since their chemistry class, Alicia's prettiness had increased ten-fold, she had long since dropped the wrestler, and her shyness was nowhere in evidence when she and Myka hooked up after a poetry reading. There had been guys before Alicia and there were guys after Alicia, although far fewer in number after. In fact, Myka had to search her memory for the last time she had slept with a man. Her first year in law school? The summer before? She recalled a name, Jeff, and a resultant wave of boredom or disappointment or both. There had been coffee or dinner dates here and there with men, mainly because her mother or Tracy had set them up, and because, since she didn't define herself, she thought she shouldn't narrow her options. Sam was the last man she had touched in the most remotely intimate of ways, and, true to an anomaly, his disruption of her pattern had been brief and insignificant. It was only in the area of her romantic relationships that her father had had nothing to more to say her than, "I don't care who you're with, Myka, other than that they're a good person and they make you happy."

That didn't make him any the less judgmental when it came to being good enough for his eldest daughter. She had invited a few of the women she had dated to dinner with her parents, sometimes, honestly, to discourage them. Her introduction of Andi to her parents had been the only one to make her sweat, to make her lose sleep, to vow that, if it went badly, she would never subject Andi to such an experience again. Yet her mother had loved Andi on sight, still did, and her father, although he now growled that Andi had never been worth her time, hadn't been immune to her either. As her father finished his diatribe only to launch into an interrogation of Kevin's prospects for advancement at the new accounting firm he had joined, Myka's thoughts drifted to what her parents would make of Helena were she ever to bring her to their home for dinner. That was the first wrong step, bringing Helena to her parents' crackerbox of a home. (Suitable for senior living, her father had claimed, but without the atrocious rents charged by senior living developments.) She wouldn't wrongfoot Helena like that. Helena wasn't like Andi, to whom everyone she met was an audience to win over. Helena's reserve was like lake ice; if temperatures remained below freezing, you could eventually drive a truck on it. Her father would be put off. He hadn't liked her when he met her at the fair, and he would like her even less when he checked her out – as he did all who crossed his doorstep – on the internet.

What was she thinking? There was no future with Helena. She sawed off another piece of steak, only to feel her father's stare on her. "Your mother was telling you about running into Andi's mom the other day," he growled.

"Sorry, Mom."

"Don't worry, hon. You look tired." She glared at her husband. "Ellen was telling me that Andi's coming back."

"For a visit?"

"She thinks for good."

"Already?" Warren scoffed. "She's just got out there, to Los Angeles or wherever."

"Hardly," his wife said. "Ellen told me that Andi was excited about her role on," Jeannie snapped her fingers "on – what's the show called?"

"Disunion," Tracy provided.

"Yes, Disunion. They hadn't gotten far shooting episodes for the next season, though, when Andi was told that her part had been cut out. The producer decided he wanted the show to go in a different direction, apparently. She tried getting on at some other shows, but she had no success. Just a few weeks ago, an old friend working at – what's that theater, Myka, that Andi used to work for here?" Jeannie carefully avoided looking at her daughter as she asked the question.

"River Town." Myka cut off another piece of her steak. These weren't steaks, they were slabs, and far more beef than she typically ate. Would it kill her father to request a chicken breast every once in a while?

"Right, River Town. Anyway he asked if she would be willing to help out the rest of the year and maybe stay on into spring as well. Ellen said she's going to learn the ropes as an assistant director. She said she thought it might be enough this time to get Andi to stay."

She's thought that before. For that matter, so have I. Myka tried to keep her expression neutral. "That's great for Ellen, and I'm glad for Andi."

"Have you been watching Disunion, Myka?" Tracy employed the same forced casualness she had used since the two of them had shared a bedroom in the apartment over the bookstore. It was designed to make the needling all the more provoking while ensuring that Myka would have no defense if she went after her little sister. She was asking you nicely, Myka. Shame on you. If Myka had heard her mother say it once, she had heard her mother say it a hundred times. Not quite that many, she had eventually learned not to react.

"No, I haven't had the time." It was true, sort of. She would never turn down a good story, even if it was a climate-change inspired drama about the United States splitting into four territories battling each other for water and arable land, and even if it was going to have her ex-girlfriend as one of the cast. However, she preferred to use her limited amount of spare time to read down her ever-present stack of books.

Tracy rose a little from her chair to see what Tyler was doing with his collection of toy trucks in the family room. "Kevin and I have been watching it. I admit, we started watching it because we knew Andi was going to be on the next season, but it's pretty good." Kevin grunted around a forkful of salad, and Myka wasn't sure whether he meant it as affirmation or an expression of martyrdom. His taste in TV dramas ran to hockey fights and sideline shouting matches. "The last episode is something of a cliffhanger . . . ." Tracy started recapitulating the plot of the nine previous episodes to explain the cliffhanger, another habit she had had since she was a child and only slightly less annoying than her habit of asking her sister questions that she knew Myka didn't want to answer.

"Andi's due back in a couple of weeks. She'll be staying with her parents for now, but apparently she's told Ellen to get ready for some house hunting," Jeannie interrupted Tracy mid-flow, this time meeting her oldest daughter's gaze and holding it. "Ellen always tells me how much she misses seeing you."

Myka pushed her plate away. She couldn't eat any more steak, and whether it was because the amount of steak she had eaten had hit some invisible steak ceiling or because she was taking out her frustration with the direction of the conversation on a cut of sirloin unable to object, she didn't care. "Andi and I both decided to move on, and," she hesitated, "I have. The woman I've been seeing, I really like her."

Tracy and their mother exchanged glances. Tracy passed the bottle of wine to Jeannie. "A new installment in the saga of Myka Bering's Love Life. It's been a while. Do tell."

That probably hadn't been the wisest choice. Like Kevin, she should have taken refuge in a grunt. Myka wearily pressed the button on the garage door opener, and as the door rattled shut, she opened the garage's side door and walked the flagstone-laid path to the backdoor of her house. In her attempts to evade inventing details about her new "girlfriend," to evade saying much of anything at all, she had found herself half-promising to invite her Mystery Woman, as her mother and father both had started calling Helena, for Thanksgiving dinner – assuming they were still dating and assuming things had progressed to a point where meeting the parents over turkey and stuffing was the next logical step. The door stuck, as usual, and she shoved it open with more force than necessary. Maybe she would make herself some decaf and resume her place in her book; it was still early yet for a Friday night, not even 10:00. If Andi were still in her life, they would likely be sharing a bubble bath about now, which sounded a hell of a lot more inviting than the science fiction novel she had been reading for . . . months.

She pulled out her coffee maker and filled the carafe with fresh water. She needed more than a single cup, so the Keurig wouldn't do for tonight. She measured out decaf for the basket and then let the machine start its asthmatic pumping as she checked her messages. Nothing. Seeking additional distraction while the coffee dripped into the pot, she checked her work voice mail, and she listened to another voice mail from Helena. Helena had left it about the same time that Kevin, shivering from the cold, had come in from the deck carrying a platter of steaks fresh off the grill. I couldn't stand it any longer. Does the file change at all how the FBI views me?

Early to be home on a Friday night but late to be calling anyone other than, well, no one. Certainly not a woman who was assisting them under duress, whose innocence hadn't been established, and who was clearly calling her out of desperation. Myka watched herself press Helena's name in her contact list. This could wait until Monday, this could wait until Monday sang in her head as she counted the rings. On the fifth, a breathless Helena answered the phone. "Hello?"

Now the song in Myka's head was How do I get out of this gracefully? But there was no getting out of it gracefully. "I got your message," she said briskly, acting as though Helena had demanded that her call be returned as soon as possible.

"Oh, uh, thank you," Helena said uncertainly, "I just finished getting Christina settled down for the night." There was a creak, suggesting she was sitting down, and there was a sigh, suggesting she was relaxing . . . or preparing herself for the worst. "For the fifth time," she added grimly.

"I'm sorry, this was poor timing. We can talk on Monday." Myka wanted to sigh, too.

"I don't want to wait until Monday, now that you've called."

"It's not what you hoped." The coffee maker coughed and spat to a stop. It was like listening to an old man, Myka thought. Putting her phone on speaker and setting it on the counter, she took a mug from the cupboard and filled it. The half and half in her refrigerator smelled okay, and she poured in a generous helping. She was listening for the line to go dead. "It's not what you fear, either."

"That the FBI thinks I'm willing to implicate myself if I can give them a bigger target?" Helena paused. "Ah, the warrens your law enforcement minds go down." A second pause, which initiated a change in subject. "What are you drinking? If it's wine, I'll take a glass."

"Coffee."

"Do you have no downtime, Agent?" Another louder creak and then a thump. It sounded like someone had put a pillow against a headboard and then leaned back against it. Myka decided it was the coffee that was making her chest feel warm. "Of course not," Helena wearily answered her own question. "You're calling me on a Friday night when you should be doing whatever people who aren't mothers of five-year olds generally do."

"You mean sit through a family dinner as your mother silently despairs of the fact that you're still single?"

"We'll call it a draw." As Myka picked up her phone and carefully carried her mug into the living room, Helena asked. "What can I do now? What do you want me to do now?"

"May I remind you that I also said it wasn't as bad as you might have feared? We're having our IT staff look at the file to see if there's anything we can take from it. We're also interested in as much as you can tell us about how the Amundsons act around each other, to the extent that you can comment on it." Myka sat in her favorite overstuffed chair and hooked a foot under the matching ottoman to drag it closer. "You can also tell us as much as you know, or can find out, about Nolan's friendship with your parents."

"You're going to force me to talk to my mother. At least yours silently despairs. Come to think of it, despairing would be a step up." Helena was silent, and Myka let the silence hang between them. She had the feeling that Helena was talking more to herself. If it was possible to hear a head shaking, she was pretty sure Helena was shaking her head at that moment. "I've had my allotment of self-pity for the evening. I've been planning to talk to her about the very same thing, so you're hardly forcing me."

During the McKnight investigation, the agents had interviewed Cynthia Wells and quietly obtained her financial records. Sometimes you got the parent who always knew that her child was no good, destined for prison one way or the other. Sometimes you got the parent who swore up and down that his child could never have swindled people out of their life savings. If you had to go back to the family in the course of the investigation, it wasn't surprising that the parent who couldn't initially accept the possibility that her child had committed a crime would become the one who had known it all along. And then sometimes you got the parent who would never admit it. Of the three, Myka dreaded encountering the first. While they seemed the most helpful and, on occasionally, actually were – once you had sorted through years' worth of transgressions that often had only passing relevance to the investigation – she found it difficult to listen to them. The bile and, sometimes, hatred they expressed, she would wonder how the child, her suspect, had survived it. Then she would look at the file and ask herself what she meant by "survival." There was the golden rule and there was the one made from lead – people treated each other the way they had been treated, if not worse. After reading the agents' notes on their conversations with Cynthia Wells, factual and devoid of commentary though they were, she would have put Helena's mother into the first category. Easily. For a smart girl, Helena can be very stupid. Charles and I saw through Stuart McKnight right away, but Helena never listens to anyone. I don't understand my daughter, I never have. She almost destroyed my son's business. He'll be forever trying to remove the taint she's put on the family name. Warren Bering had been generous with his disapproval and, too often, he had made a cutting remark exactly when it would hurt his oldest daughter the most, but Myka could hear the malevolence in the voice that came through the notes. Her father had never been guilty of that.

"Thanks." Myka ran her finger around the rim of her mug. "I should let you go."

"Before you do," Helena said, "would you be interested in another date?" The mocking quality of the invitation was clear, but Myka's breath giddily caught in her throat. "I hadn't planned to subject myself to the stares and whispers, not even for Christina, but the Amundson family is hosting a fall barbecue next Saturday for their companies' employees. Nolan, his sons, and his sons' families will be there, presiding over the grill and games. If you want to see how the Amundsons interact with each other . . . ."

"I would love nothing better." Myka meant every word of it.

"You can also tell your mother that you went on a date," Helena said lightly.

"To be honest, I've already told her I've been 'dating' someone." Myka couldn't mistake the heat in her chest for drinking coffee too fast.

"And what have you told her about me?" Helena asked archly but with genuine curiosity as well.

"Not much." Hearing how that sounded, Myka supplied hastily, "I can't afford to get too detailed, but, rest assured, I told her that you're very nice." And that I really like you.

"Doesn't sound all that promising. I thought you might be building me up as a grand passion. I could do with the ego boost." Helena was laughing, and Myka was struck once again by the realization that this Helena, who laughed at herself with good-humor and generosity instead of bitterness, could occupy more of her thoughts than was safe.

"I'm not sure I'm ready for another grand passion. They take up a lot of time and energy, and I don't have it to spare at the moment."

Myka had meant it as a joke, but Helena was quiet. "The girlfriend you told me about, I assume." Musingly she said, "I've not had one, a grand passion. Infatuations, hook-ups, flings, and, with Giselle and Stuart, relationships that I kept expecting would grow into something larger but didn't. My daughter has taught me that I'm capable of devotion and a love I can only call unconditional, but that other love . . . given my track record thus far, it's probably better that I remain immune from it."

"Just because you haven't experienced one yet doesn't mean you're immune. Even if they end, they can be worth experiencing. I wouldn't have said I was a candidate for falling head over heels until I met Andi and was wangling vacation days just so I could fly to New York to see her over the weekend."

"I thought I had touched a nerve when I asked you if you had been to New York." A beat and then Helena asked, "Is she an agent in the New York field office?" She added more grimly, "I might have met her."

"An actress, Andrea Martino, and I flew to Los Angeles and Vancouver, too, to see her. She goes where the work is."

"I can see where that could get in the way of a grand passion. There's the romance of long distance and then there's the reality of slogging through airports."

You're assuming I was Andi's grand passion. I was the temporary obstacle in its path. A spouse, a family, some actors made it all work. Others didn't, and some, like Andi, didn't want to have to face making a choice, which, in its own way, was a choice. "Next grand passion, definitely local."

"A love interest in the same city but perhaps not very nice? It's hard to summon up a grand passion about someone who's very nice. Wouldn't she calm the waters rather than stir them up? You need a little resistance, I think."

"For someone who thinks she's immune, you're awfully curious."

"If I'm introducing you to Nolan next Saturday as my girlfriend, I need to sound convincing." The Helena Myka was familiar with made a return, her voice turning sardonic. "He's not as easily buffaloed as Nate, and pretending that I'm madly in love with my FBI watchdog may take more skill than what I have."

"You've got the resistance part of it down that you were talking about," Myka dryly observed.

After the call ended, Myka finished her coffee. It was cold, but she would dump the remaining coffee in the pot. She sensed that her sleep was going to be restless at best. Despite the flashes she saw of what Helena might once have been and, under vastly different circumstances, could be again, Helena wasn't very nice. She was prickly and defensive and often seething with resentment. She was the wrong woman in the wrong situation at the wrong time, and yet Myka was stuck with the undeniable fact that no one, other than Andi, had so captured her attention.