"I'll keep that in mind," I said. The thought of Operation Vestal actually coming in useful did something complicated inside my chest, made it hard to breathe. I knew if I blinked Frank would notice.

"Think you can do that?"

Lexie, I thought, Lexie wouldn't tell him to mind his own business and let her mind hers, which was my main instinct here, and she sure as hell wouldn't answer. Lexie would yawn in his face, or tell him to quit nagging and lecturing like someone's granny, or demand ice cream. "We're out of biscuits," I said, stretching--the photos slid off my stomach, all over the floor. "Go get some. Lemon creams," and then I laughed out loud at the look on Frank's face.

* * *

Frank graciously gave me Saturday night off--heart of gold, our Frankie--so Sam and I could say our good-byes. Sam made chicken tikka for dinner; for dessert I tried an incongruous tiramisu, which turned out looking ridiculous but tasting OK. We talked about small stuff, unimportant stuff, touching hands across the table and swapping the little things that new couples pass back and forth and save like beach finds: stories from when we were kids, the dumbest things we'd done as teenagers. Lexie's clothes, hanging on the wardrobe door, shimmered in the corner like hard sun on sand, but we didn't mention them, not once.

After dinner we curled up on the sofa. I had lit a fire, Sam had put music on the CD player; it could have been any evening, it could have been all ours, except for those clothes and for the fast ready beat of my pulse, waiting.

"How're you doing?" Sam asked.

I had been starting to hope we could make it through the night without talking about tomorrow, but realistically this was probably too much to ask. "OK," I said.

"Are you nervous?"

I thought this over. This situation was totally bananas on about a dozen different levels. I probably should have been petrified. "No," I said. "Excited."

I felt Sam nod, against the top of my head. He was running one hand over my hair in a slow, soothing rhythm, but his chest felt rigid as a board against mine, like he was holding his breath.

"You hate this idea, don't you?" I said.

"Yeah," Sam said quietly. "I do."

"Why didn't you stop it? It's your investigation. You could have put your foot down, any time you felt like it."

Sam's hand stopped still. "Do you want me to?"

"No," I said. That, at least, I knew for sure. "No way."

"It wouldn't be easy, at this stage. Now that the undercover operation's up and running, it's Mackey's baby; I've no authority there. But if you've changed your mind, I'll find a way to--"

"I haven't, Sam. Seriously. I just wondered why you gave the OK to start with."

He shrugged. "Mackey has a point, sure: we've nothing else on the case. This could be the only way to solve it."