She didn’t stir or so much as groan when I got off the bed. I put on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt as quietly as possible and headed toward the door adjoining the suites, then stopped. I came back around to her side of the bed and knelt by her, touched her warm face with the palm of my hand, and kissed her lips lightly, breathed in her smell.

In the last thirty-two hours, I’d been shot at, been thrown from a speeding vehicle, had cracked my shoulder blade, had taken innumerable shards of glass into my flesh, had shot a man dead, had lost about a pint of blood, and had been subjected to twelve hours of hostile questioning in a sweltering cinder block box. Somehow, though, with Angie’s face warming my palm, I’d never felt better.

I found my sling on the floor by the bathroom, slipped my dead arm into it, and went next door.

The heavy dark curtains were drawn against the sun and only a small light on the nightstand provided any illumination. Desiree sat in an armchair by the nightstand, sipping coffee, and appeared to be naked.

“Miss Stone?”

“Come in. Call me Desiree.”

I squinted into the near darkness as she stood up, and that’s when I saw that she wore a French-cut bikini the color of roasted honeycomb, about a shade lighter than her flesh. Her hair was slicked back off her head as she came to me and placed a cup of coffee in my hand.

“I don’t know how you like it,” she said. “There’s cream and sugar on the counter.”

I flicked on another light, went to the kitchenette counter, found the cream and sugar beside the coffee maker.

“Went for a swim?” I came back over by her.

“Just to clear my head. It’s better than coffee really.”

It might have cleared her head, but it was making mine awful fuzzy.

She sat back in the chair, which, I noticed now, was protected from the dampness of her skin and bikini by the bathrobe she’d removed at some point while sitting in it.

She said, “Should I put this back on?”

“Whatever makes you most comfortable.” I sat on the side of the bed. “So, what’s up?”

“Hmm?” She glanced at her robe, but didn’t put it back on. She bent her knees, placed the soles of her feet on the edge of the bed.

“What’s up? You woke me for a reason, I assume.”

“I’m leaving in two hours.”

“For where?” I said.

“Boston.”

“I don’t think that makes a whole lot of sense.”

“I know.” She wiped at some perspiration on her upper lip. “But tomorrow night my father will be out of the house, and I have to get in there.”

“Why?”

She leaned forward, her breasts pressing against her knees. “I have things in that house.”