“Not for nuthin’, but the disappear job back then was expensive and extensive. I mean, for him to have lasted this long undercover? Sure, you can do it—this is a big country and all—but you got to be careful, because there are a lot of central databases. He hasn’t been using his own social security number—that is different than the one with the name originally—so it could be part of how he stayed gone. But my sense is, he knows what he’s doing. And he has some serious backing.”

“What kind of serious backing?”

“I’ll give you two initials: U and S.”

“Last name ‘government’?”

“I was going with Uncle Sam, but yup, that fits.”

“I don’t get it, though. If he wanted to stay lost, why did he keep his own name? You buy a new social, usually it comes with a different first and last, doesn’t it?”

“You’d have to ask him about the whys. But first thing comes to my mind—he never expected to be found. And I’ll tell you this . . . I’d be careful around him. That body in that ditch in Mississippi didn’t get there by accident. I’d bet my retainer on the fact that someone killed a white boy who looked enough like him to pass in a closed casket—and guess what: Your client there is still breathing. So that SOB could be a murderer.”

Grier closed her eyes. Great. This just kept getting better: She’d not only bailed out a flight risk who had bolted, but a man who might well have killed somebody and faked his own death.

Polite and gentle my ass, she thought, wondering how in the hell someone like her, who’d passed nineteenth grade summa cum laude, had managed to be so stupid.

At that moment, the crowd parted to reveal Daniel in a tuxedo lounging next to one of those Degas. As he toasted her with a champagne flute, his handsome face was wallpapered in told-you-so.

The dead sonofabitch had a point. Even though he’d passed two years ago, she was still performing a kind of CPR on him: Desperate to bring him back to real life, she was caught up in other people’s dramas, that urge to get in and help sometimes the only thing that kept her going.

“You okay there, girl?”

She gripped her cell phone harder and wondered what the PI would say if he knew she was staring into the all-knowing eyes of her deceased sibling. “Not really, Louie.”

“He snow you?”

“I snowed myself.”

“Well, I got one other piece of info for you—although I’m not sure I want to give it over. Sounds like you’re in too deep already.”

Bracing herself, she muttered, “Tell me. I might as well know all of it.”

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8

North Lawn, Heaven