But Jennie just wasn’t the same girl he knew back in college—she was so serious all the time. Businesslike, impersonal. Hardly ever smiled, for one thing, much less laughed. Except when she was trying to get his goat, being sarcastic, or trying to give him a hard time. She always had some kind of smart answer, too.

And she didn’t fit his idea of a real woman anymore, not with that cool, emotionless attitude of hers. Like she’d been taking lessons from Mr. Spock or something. Not a hint that they had ever been close.

She dressed so damned aggressively, in jeans, leather jackets, boots—or really severely tailored suits—no makeup, no jewelry, nothing feminine. She was obviously used to doing everything herself; even when he offered to drive her somewhere, she declined. Too damned independent, that was what it was. She wouldn’t give up control for anyone or anything.

He’d tried making suggestions about this case; mostly she didn’t even give him an argument. Instead, she just ignored them, acted as if he hadn’t even said anything.

That was bad enough; he was used to people listening to him, and asking for directions. He didn’t like being ignored. But what was the most humiliating was that when he’d gone ahead and followed through with his own ideas himself, what he’d tried had usually backfired on him. Like two days ago, when he’d tried to tail Calligan’s new foreman, the guy who’d moved up from assistant after the first foreman went up with the dozer. …

He’d figured the foreman probably knew something, and tailing him seemed like a good idea. After all, no one on the whole crew had a better opportunity to plant something like a bomb than the foreman or the foreman’s assistant. The man had spotted him, and had tried to lose him. Stupidly, he’d tried to keep up. That was when the foreman picked up his cellular phone and called the cops.

Too late, he’d seen the man talking on the handset and looking back at him. That was when David figured out what had just happened and had tried to get away.

At that point, the foreman had turned the tables on him and had started tailing him, keeping up a running cellular report as he did so.

The end of that story was inevitable. The cops had pulled him over, and he’d spent the rest of the afternoon at the station while they checked all fifty states for any outstanding warrants on him, even parking tickets. They didn’t find any, but when they came back now and again to check on him, their file folder with his name on it kept getting thicker and thicker. He figured that before the afternoon was over, he’d cost them a couple hundred bucks in fax charges.