“Marino, can I never have a moment’s peace?” I said with no rancor, for I knew he meant no harm to me.

“Not tonight,” he said. “I got some really bad news and think you might want to sit down.”

I immediately thought of Lucy and felt the strength go out of my knees. I swayed and put my hand on his shoulder as my mind seemed to shatter into a million pieces. I had always known the day might come when someone would deliver her death notice to me, and I could not speak or think. I was miles beyond the moment, sucked down deeper and deeper into a dark and terrible vortex. Marino grabbed my arm to steady me.

“Jesus,” he exclaimed. “Let me get you to the car and we’ll sit down.”

“No,” I barely said, because I had to know. “How’s Lucy?”

He paused for a moment and seemed confused.

“Well, she don’t know yet, unless she’s heard it on the news,” he replied.

“Know what?” I asked as my blood seemed to move again.

“Carrie Grethen’s escaped from Kirby,” he told me. “Some time late this afternoon. They didn’t figure it out until it was time to take the female inmates down for dinner.”

We began walking quickly to his car as fear made him angry.

“And here you are walking around in the dark with nothing but a keychain,” he went on. “Shit. Goddamn son of a bitch. Don’t you do that anymore, you hear me? We got no idea where that bitch is, but one thing I know for a fact, as long as she’s out, you ain’t safe.”

“No one in the world is safe,” I muttered as I climbed into his car and thought of Benton alone at the beach.

Carrie Grethen hated him almost as much as she hated me, or at least this was my belief. Benton had profiled her and was the quarterback in the game that had eventually resulted in her capture and Temple Gault’s death. Benton had used the Bureau’s every resource to lock Carrie away, and until now, it had worked.

“Is there any way she might know where Benton is?” I said as Marino drove me to my house. “He’s alone on an island resort. He probably takes walks on the beach without his gun, unmindful that there might be someone looking for him . . .”

“Like someone else I know,” Marino cut me off.

“Point well taken.”

“I’m sure Benton already knows, but I’ll call him,” Marino said. “And I got no reason to think that Carrie would know about your place in Hilton Head. You didn’t have it back then when Lucy was telling her all your secrets.”