Now she would just have to settle in, be patient, and wait for something to happen.

With the late afternoon sluggishly giving way to dusk, she parked down the street, replaced her Trident with two fresh sticks, and settled in. Three hours, she decided, sliding in a best of Sting CD and seeking out "Fields of Gold." If nothing happened after three more hours, she would head back to the city and resume her one-woman stakeout another day.

Not surprisingly, as the time passed she found herself thinking more and more about Gabe Singleton. There was a sweetness and vulnerability beneath his rugged cowboy exterior that had drawn her in immediately. The men in her past had been, well, slick, she acknowledged—smart, self-assured, ambitious, and, almost to a man, not totally forthcoming. Gabe had lost his faith in her honesty the first night they had met when he caught her in the lie she was forced to tell by being undercover. Still, there was no way she could have let him be killed to preserve her status as an undercover agent and no way she could explain her actions that early morning other than with the truth.

He was even wondering if the whole assassin thing was a setup to gain his confidence and lead him to share some presidential medical secrets. Those suspicions were totally off base, but confronting him and denying his concerns would only strengthen them.

She also had chosen not to share the rumors she had heard that the president was not mentally well. They were grossly unsubstantiated—questions from medical unit personnel, whispered in dim, late night taverns—hardly the sort of thing she would expect Gabe to share with her. Where her attraction to the man might lead, if anyplace, was a total mystery at this point. What she did know was that there was something special she felt when she was around him—an almost little-girl musing of what it might be like to curl up with him on a chilly winter night. But she also wondered why a man as bright, handsome, and caring wasn't married . . . or a father.

What secret are you hiding, Gabe Singleton? she asked herself now. Why do you seem so vulnerable?

An hour passed.

Inside the house, lights appeared behind a few of the windows that weren't covered by drapes. The two functioning streetlights remaining on Beechtree Road, neither of them near where she was parked, winked on. Then, just as Alison was considering limiting her time there from three hours to two, the front porch light came on, the front door opened, and two people emerged. Alison brought her field glasses up and focused on their faces. One was a statuesque woman with a face about the color of her own. Latino, Alison guessed.