"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," Arkady told Karin Lohmann. "Your husband has been murdered." The investigator was speaking long distance over the telephone to the German housewife.

"No!" Karin cried. "It can't be!"

"I'm sorry," Arkady repeated. "The body will be returned to Germany on the next flight out."

He heard Karin sobbing and felt depressed.

"But how did it happen?" she asked.

It was the question he'd been dreading. "He was found naked in a motel room, chopped to pieces with a machete."

"Was he alone?"

Arkady gulped, wondering whether he should lie to the woman. In the end, he decided to tell her the truth. "No. There was a naked prostitute who'd also been murdered on the bed."

He heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. "Why, that bastard!" Karin stormed. "I always suspected he was cheating on me!"

"I'm sorry," Arkady repeated, feeling helpless.

"Two more bodies were found today," Arkady told Irina as they lay in bed that night. Drowsy from making love, her head rested on his shoulder. "A prostitute and her client, both naked and hacked to death with a machete."

Irina gasped, then rolled off him.

"Well, it served them right!" she spluttered. "I'll bet he was married, wasn't he?"

"Yes," Arkady replied. "Needless to say, his wife didn't take it well at all."

"Well, I guess not!" Irina snuggled back up to her husband. "Who could blame her?"

"Mommy!" came a faint cry from the adjoining bedroom. Quick as a flash, Irina slipped from the covers, donned her housecoat, and went to check on her daughter. She found Julia sitting up in bed with tears streaming down her face.

"I had a bad dream!" the little girl sniffled.

"Oh, baby, it's all right! Mommy's here!" Irina pulled her daughter into her lap and held her close until the tears subsided, then tucked her back into bed and kissed her cheek.

By the time she got back to her own bedroom, Arkady was snoring.

As soon as Deanna heard the cry, she knew it was Shyanne. The little girl had been having nightmares ever since Will had allowed the children to watch a movie about dinosaurs several nights previously. One scene in which a baby dinosaur had fallen into the river had upset the most sensitive of the undecaplets. Dashing to her daughter's bedside, Deanna scooped the little girl up into her arms, holding her tight, rocking her.

"There, there. It's all right."

"Mommy, the dinosaur fell down!" Shyanne wailed.

"I know he did, honey, but he was OK, remember?"

Shyanne stopped crying and smiled. "Oh yeah, he was, wasn't he?"

"He sure was!"

With a grin, the little girl scrambled back underneath the covers, snuggling up to Silver. Deanna tucked the covers around her, then returned to her own room.

"Everything all right?" Will asked as she sat on the edge of the bed.

"Yeah. Just the dinosaurs again. I wish you'd be more careful about what movies you let them watch."

Will sighed.

"It was a scam," Arkady told Irina as they were packing to return home. "A plot to steal 250 million dollars in a sugar fraud. Sergei had found out about it and was going to expose it. As for the murders of the prostitute and her client, they were unrelated."

"Who was behind the scam?"

"A group called the 'Havana Yacht Club.' I've turned all the information I have over to the Cuban authorities. It's up to them to handle the case from now on."

"I'm just glad you survived. Every time you take a case, I worry that something might happen to you." She paused to walk over to her husband and put her arms around him, hugging him from behind.

"I worry that something might happen to me, too." He turned and kissed the top of her head.

"Mommy, when will we see all those kids again?" asked Julia.

"I don't know, sweetie," her mother told her. "They live a long, long way away from us."

"Where?"

"You know how, when you look up at night, you can see the stars?"

"Uh huh!"

"Well, they live past the stars."

"Wow, that really is a long way!"

"It sure is!"

Irina and Arkady looked at each other and smiled.