“Our bond is hard to explain. It’s not quite friendship, more like I grew up on a farm hunting a wolf, but then the two of us rolled off a cliff and had to work together to survive, only to find out a mega-corporation threatened both my farm and his hunting land.”

“I’m not sure I follow. Is that a film or something?”

“He’s like a brother. We don’t always agree; sometimes we don’t even like each other, but he’s there when I need him.”

“What about the FBI agent?”

Caitlin felt a blush coming on. “That’s more fun than serious.”

“Have you ever had anything serious, Caitlin?”

“Sure.”

“Were you ever married?”

“God no.”

“Engaged?”

Caitlin tried to gauge Lakshmi’s direction. “You’re getting good at this, Lakshmi, but I’m on to you.”

The girl’s reaction read innocent enough. “What do you mean?”

“You’re establishing the pattern. Caitlin Bergman, successful career woman, uses sex as a casual tool, gorgeous—”

Lakshmi laughed. “I don’t remember saying ‘gorgeous.’ ”

Caitlin gave her a wink. “It’s implied.”

“So the pattern I’m trying to establish is what, exactly?”

“Did the rape make me who I am? Did that one horrible moment change how I looked at men, at sex, at personal relationships? Did that inability to let anyone get close prevent me from finding what everyone else calls true love?”

Lakshmi’s smile dropped. “Caitlin, I didn’t mean anything like that.”

The girl’s eyes took Caitlin back twenty years. The deputy, Lyle Sugar, had looked at her the same way from the end of a hospital bed.

“Don’t pity me,” she said, the words coming out faster than she could control. “I have loved; I’ve been serious with a man—a brilliant photojournalist with a perfect smile and a better ass. We got engaged before he left for an assignment in Iraq, but he never came back. Well, not all of him.” Caitlin felt a line of tears worming their way into the conversation but stopped them at the door. “I’ve got a healthy sexual appetite, and my schedule means I really need to be into someone to do it on a regular basis, let alone share meals. But it has happened before. I assume it will happen again.”

Lakshmi looked embarrassed. “I really wasn’t asking about any of that.”

One tear got past the bouncer. Caitlin tapped her finger to the corner of her eye. “Guess it was me then.”

Lakshmi stared at her nails, or at least made a show of it. “Do you think,” she started, delicate, “that Angela, if she’s still alive, and if we find her, do you think she’ll ever be the same as she was?”