Dance found the boy’s home number and called. His mother spoke briefly to her husband and then said it was fine for him to stay for dinner but he should be home by nine.

She disconnected, then returned to the living room where her father, Stuart, and ten-year-old Maggie sat in front of the TV.

“Mom! You came in the back door!”

She didn’t, of course, tell her that she’d been checking the perimeter and double-locking the gate. Two active cases, with a number of bad actors who could, if they really wanted to, find her.

“Give me a hug, honey.”

The girl complied happily.

“Wes and Donnie won’t let me play their game.”

“It’s a boys’ game, I’m sure.”

A frown crossed the girl’s heart-shaped face. “I don’t know what that is. I don’t think there should be boy games and girl games.”

Good point. If and when Dance ever remarried, Maggie had announced she was going to be “Best Woman”—whatever her age. The girl had also learned of feminism in school and, returning home after social studies, had declared, to Dance’s delight, that she wasn’t a feminist. She was an “equalist.”

“Hi, Dad,” Dance said.

Stuart rose and hugged his daughter. He was seventy, and though his time outdoors as a marine biologist had taken a toll on the flesh, he looked younger than his years. He was tall, six two, wide-shouldered, with unruly white hair, thick. Dermatologists’ scalpels and lasers had left their mark too and he now rarely went outside without a floppy hat. He was retired, yes, but when not babysitting the grandkids or puttering around the house in Carmel, he worked at the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium several days a week.

“Where’s Mom?”

Staunch Edie Dance was a cardiac nurse at the Monterey Bay Hospital.

“Took the late shift, filling in. Just me tonight.”

Dance headed into the bedroom, washed up and changed into black jeans, a silk T-shirt and burgundy wool sweater. The Central Coast, after sunset, could get downright cold and dinner tonight would be on the Deck.

As she walked down the stairs and into the hallway a man stepped through the front door. Jon Boling, forties, wasn’t tall. A few inches above Dance but lean—thanks mostly to biking and a bit of occasional free weights (twenty-five-pounders at his place and a pair of twelves at hers). His straight hair, thinning, was a shade similar to Dance’s, though a little darker than chestnut, and with none of her occasional gray strands (which coincidentally disappeared after a trip to Rite Aid or Save Mart).

“Look, I’m bearing Greek gifts.” He held up two large bags from a Mediterranean restaurant in Pacific Grove.

They kissed and he followed her into the kitchen.

Boling was a professor at a college nearby, teaching the undergrad Literature of Science Fiction, as well as a class called Computers and Society. In the graduate school, Boling taught what he described as some boring technical courses. “Sort of math, sort of engineering.” He also consulted for Silicon Valley firms. He was apparently a minor genius in the world of boxes—computers. She’d had to learn about this from the press and Wes’s assessment of his skill in coding; modesty was hardwired into Boling’s genes. He wrote script the way Richard Wilbur or Jim Tilley wrote poetry. Fluid, brilliant and captivating.