No, they were, in fact, smiling. Something she said made him laugh.

Then Anne backed away, fishing keys from her purse, and O’Neil stepped closer and hugged her. No kiss, no fingers cupping her hair. Just a hug. Chaste as soccer players after scoring a goal.

Then he waved to the children and returned to the office. Anne fired up the SUV. She drove toward the exit.

And Dance suddenly recalled something else. The other night when she’d asked about O’Neil’s new babysitter, his body language had changed.

“New sitter?”

“Sort of.”

So that’s who it was. And would Anne also be the “friend” he’d mentioned in response to the invite to Maggie’s recital? Probably.

Dance watched the sleek SUV pull out of the lot.

Then a brief honk from behind the Pathfinder. Dance started. She glanced into the rearview mirror and waved at the driver she’d been blocking, whispering a “Sorry” that he couldn’t hear. She headed to the CBI building, parked and climbed out.

Glancing back to where Anne’s SUV had just exited, she found herself humming the song Maggie had prepared for the concert.

Let it go…

Inside headquarters she found O’Neil in her office with TJ, poring over what turned out to be DMV records.

“Five thousand, give or take, Honda sedans in the three-county area. Gray, white, beige, anything light colored.”

“Five thousand?” Ouch. As she sat down beside O’Neil, she smelled his aftershave again, as last night. But it was slightly different.

Mixed with perfume?

O’Neil added, “No reports of theft.”

TJ added, “And none of the other people at the club, the ones I’ve talked to, remember it. The wheelbase and the track, they’ll give us the model. Civic and Accord’re different. Might help.”

Narrow the number down to 2,500, she thought wryly. If—big if—it was even the unsub’s vehicle.

“Want to take a look?” O’Neil asked. “At where it was parked?”

Dance checked the time. It was three twenty. “The kids are at Mom and Dad’s.”

“Mine’re covered too.”

I know.

She said, “Let’s take a drive.”

“For this, it’s not Serrano. You going to take a weapon?”

He knew the rules. Wondered why he’d asked. “I’m still Civ-Div.”

A nod.

Dance told TJ to start canvassing the owners of light-colored Hondas.

In a half hour Dance and O’Neil were at the roadhouse. The club was still closed and the trucking company was also dark. But there was some activity. A couple was here, laying flowers at the front entrance. Dance and O’Neil approached and she asked them if they’d been patrons the other night. They hadn’t been; the husband’s cousin had died, and they were paying respects.

There also were some workers about two hundred feet from the club, in the direction of the path she’d taken the other day to the witness’s house. It was a team of surveyors, with their tripod and instruments set up. They were engrossed in the obscure art of reckoning longitudes and latitudes, or whatever it was surveyors did.