“Cut it out,” he muttered, but one side of his hard-carved mouth twitched into what might be construed as the barest of smiles. Shoving one hand through his hair, he glanced back at the house to Olivia, the woman who had become his rock. “Jesus, Kristi,” he said. “You’re a piece of work.”

“It’s genetic.” She found the keys.

His eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened.

They both knew what he was thinking, but neither mentioned the fact that he wasn’t her biological father. “You don’t have to run away.”

“I’m not running ‘away.’ Not from anything. But I am running to something. It’s called the rest of my life.”

“You could—”

“Look, Dad, I don’t want to hear it,” Kristi interrupted as she tossed her purse onto the passenger seat next to three bags of books, DVDs, and CDs. “You’ve known I was going back to school for months, so there’s no reason for a big scene now. It’s over. I’m an adult and I’m going to Baton Rouge, to my old alma mater, All Saints College. It’s not at the ends of the earth. We’re less than a couple of hours away.”

“It’s not the distance.”

“I need to do this.” She glanced toward Olivia, whose wild blond hair was backlit by the colored lights from the Christmas tree, the small cottage seeming warm and cozy in the coming storm. But it wasn’t Kristi’s home. It never had been. Olivia was her stepmother and though they got along, there still wasn’t a tight family bond between them. Maybe there never would be. This was her father’s life now and it really didn’t have much to do with her.

“There’s been trouble up there. Some coeds missing.”

“You’ve already been checking?” she demanded, incensed.

“I just read about some missing girls.”

“You mean runaways?”

“I mean missing.”

“Don’t worry!” she snapped. She, too, had heard that a few girls had disappeared unexpectedly from the campus, though no foul play had been established. “Girls leave college and their parents all the time.”

“Do they?” he asked.

A blast of cold wind cut across the bayou, pushing around a few wet leaves and cutting through Kristi’s hooded sweatshirt. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was gray and overcast, puddles scattered across the cracked concrete.

“It’s not that I don’t think you should go back to school,” Bentz said, leaning one hip against the wheel well of her Honda and, today, looking the picture of health—his skin ruddy, his hair dark with only a few glints of gray. “But this whole idea of being a crime writer?”