He stopped, near one of the tables lining the swimming pool, set the keys down and raised his cell phone to his ear.

I held my breath.

I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the way he was gesturing indicated that the call represented some kind of unpleasant surprise.

I waited and watched.

Sure enough, he went into the house, evidently forgetting that he’d left the keys outside, on the table. I stared at them, glinting in the lights surrounding the pool, my heart skittering unevenly.

After about thirty seconds, I shut off my cell phone, dropped it into my bathrobe pocket, eased open the guesthouse door and dashed for the poolside table. Snatched up the keys.

I barely noticed the sting in the bottoms of my feet as I ran to the Volvo, zapped the locks from the fob and jumped inside.

I left the headlights off and drove slowly around to the main driveway. About the thousandth thing I needed was for Joseph to see or hear me and thwart my escape.

The gates presented a major problem.

They were closed.

I could crash through them, of course, but I suspected that technique worked better in the movies than it would in real life. I was sitting there, like a lump, wondering what to do, when I saw headlights swing off the main road, coming in my direction.

I backed through a flowerbed, hoping the Volvo and I were hidden from view in the shrubbery.

The senator’s Jaguar purred to a stop on the other side of the gates. By electronic magic, they swung open.

I gunned the engine the instant I thought there was enough space to pass through and shot past the Jag, flipping on my headlights as I streaked toward the road.

Glancing into the rearview mirror, I saw the taillights of the Jag, still sitting in front of the open gates.

After that, I didn’t look back again.

If I had, I might have seen something important, but I wasn’t exactly in the zone when it came to taking sensible precautions. I just knew I needed to get out of there, fast.

I headed straight for the cemetery. I’m not sure why—just some instinctive need to be close to Lillian, I guess. I wished she’d appear to me, the way Nick had, and answer all the questions she’d never been willing to deal with in life. All the while, I knew she wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to get that lucky.

There were no gates at the graveyard. At the time, fresh from my break from Casa Larimer, I saw that as a good thing.