For some reason, Daniel came to mind, and she remembered the pair of them being thirteen and sixteen and stealing their father’s car. It had been down at Hyannis Port in the summer—where night wasn’t just dark; it was pitch black. They’d pushed the Mercedes two-seater down the drive, started it up, and gone for a ride, changing places, each taking the wheel. They’d ended up on the breakway in front of the marshes, on the sandy road right on the lip of the ocean. With the sea wind in their hair and the whoosh of the air and the sense of electric freedom, they’d laughed until they couldn’t see.

Which was how they’d crashed into a shack.

They’d both been hardwired wrong, hadn’t they—Daniel a little wronger than her, granted, but it wasn’t just her brother who did crazy things. And in a way, his descent into the seedy needle underlife had been her drug: The peaks and valleys as she made progress with him and then lost it and then got through to him once more became the drum section in her life’s orchestra, the driving force that marked all the other notes.

And now that he was gone . . .

She dropped her hands and looked over at the closed door, picturing Isaac on the other side.

He was the perfect fit for the vast hole her brother’s death had left behind, a wave of drama sweeping into her life and becoming the thing she could throw herself into. After all, Daniel as a ghost wasn’t half as vivid as he’d been alive.

Isaac was pure octane.

Yanking the covers over herself, she sat up and drew her hair back behind her ears. The reality was, that man in there had had more sense than she did. He’d wanted to go and leave her; she’d made him stay. He’d given her a chance to go back to bed alone; she’d shut them in together. He was going to take off without looking back; she was going to want to see him after tomorrow. . . .

Frowning, she realized there were still no sounds in the bathroom. Nothing.

What was he doing in there? It had been a while.

Grier dragged a sheet with her as she got up and walked over to the door. Knocking softly, she said, “Are you okay?”

No answer. “Isaac? Is there something wrong?”

Well, other than the fact that he was on the lam from both the federal government and now the state of Massachusetts and was staying at his soon-to-be former attorney’s house . . . having had sex with her.

Details, details.

Or wait, did the lack of orgasm on his part mean the hookup didn’t count? She had finished, though . . . so maybe she’d been with four and a half men now?

“Isaac?”

When there was no response, she rapped quietly. “Isaac?”