“What is it, Gazelle?”

No small talk for Sybil. She had a loud, demanding voice and a cutting wit, and as far as Rob knew, he was the only one who ever got away with calling her Syb. That was because he was the best in the business.

But when he could no longer produce, she’d squash him like the cockroach she kept telling him he was.

Going after Ashley Wakefield had been Sybil’s idea.

“I’ve got some new shots of our mystery lady.”

“Any info?”

“Getting there.”

Sybil hissed with impatience. “For heaven's sake, Rob, how long am I going to have to wait? All I need is one thing I can use to pin her down.”

“She’s a stunner, Syb.”

“I know that.”

“But she’s skittish. She doesn’t like having her picture taken. If we move too fast, we’ll lose her.”

“Damn.”

“Trust me, Syb. Look, next Saturday she’s going to be at the opening of this new wing at the New England Oceanographic Institute. She’s introducing the governor, and fat asses from all over New England are going to be there. I know fish aren’t your thing, Syb, but this place is supposed to have the biggest exhibit tank in the world and all our Ashley’s fish buddies ought to be there. I should be able to get something. Can you wrangle me a press pass?”

Sybil didn’t even hesitate. “Done.”

Ashley made Amherst, a college town and farming community in west central Massachusetts, in less than two hours. She drove along the back roads she knew so well to the Wakefield Farm, which occupied a hundred acres in the fertile Connecticut River Valley. In spite of soaring land values in the area, it was still a working farm, producing vegetables for market, a few eggs, lambs, wool, just getting by, as it always had, as far back as she could remember.

The farmhouse itself was old, white with red shutters, but not a classic antique. Giant maple trees shaded the front yard, which needed mowing. Close to the side of the house was a small red shed, and beyond it a kitchen garden and a dozen fruit trees. The land rose gently behind the house, where there were a red barn, a chicken coop, pigpen, sheep pen and, farther up, fields and woods.

Ashley parked her Jaguar in the horseshoe-shaped dirt driveway, behind the battered yellow pickup her uncle had driven for years. It was one of two trucks he’d owned since coming to the farm thirty years ago. The first he had driven up from Tennessee, with his infant niece and nephew strapped into the front seat beside him, now his to raise. His name was Bartholomew Wakefield, but Ashley and her twin brother, David, had found Uncle Bartholomew an impossibility, and they’d always called him Barky. Now everyone did, except bill collectors and the IRS.

The grass was yellowing in the late summer sun, and the air was still and filled with the smells of the farm. Vegetables were piled on and around the flat wooden trailer that stood on the edge of the driveway. People could just stop and serve themselves, weighing their produce on the old rusted scale, leaving their money in the three-pound Maxwell House coffee can.