“No.”

“You have a secret admirer.”

“I guess I do, strange as it sounds.”

“It’s supposed to be the girl who gets the flowers.”

“I’d have sent you a huge bouquet if I knew where you’re staying.”

“Well, of course, I’m at the Island Hotel,” she said, almost as though she must be aware that he had followed her there on the night they met. “But don’t send flowers, David. I might not be staying there much longer, and I’d hate to leave them behind while they’re fresh and lovely.”

Golden sunlight spangled the sea, as though Midas had gone for a swim and transformed the water into a treasure, and the palm trees cast shadows as royal purple as they were black, and flecks of some mineral sparkled like tiny diamonds in the pathway pavement, as if the park were a king’s garden in which a bespelled princess waited to be awakened.

She said, “Maybe the flowers aren’t for you. Maybe they were for the girl next door.”

“The ‘girl’ who lives next door is eighty years old.”

“If someone loves her, she’s still a girl to him.”

It occurred to David that by ‘girl next door,’ she might have meant Emily, for whom half the double-wide gravestone was reserved.

They had parked in the same public lot.

At her car, he said, “When will I see you again?”

“Soon. Very soon. I’ll be free for a while after I attend to this evening’s unpleasant task.”

“The assassination.”

She smiled, shrugged, and seemed to be acknowledging that they both understood her claim of being an assassin was a mere fantasy, that whatever task awaited her was mundane even if nevertheless unpleasant.

And yet . . . this time she kissed him not on the mouth but on the cheek, with a certain solemnity, as if greater passion were inappropriate with murder in the wind.

He watched her until she drove out of the lot and out of sight.

He was weak with a desire that was more longing than appetite, a craving to set right the great wrong of his past. His heart felt swollen and yet empty in her absence. He told himself that he did not know Maddison well enough to love her, but he felt as if he’d known and cherished her for half his lifetime.

Whatever the answer to the mystery of this woman might be, David Thorne believed that what he felt for her was right and true, that if they couldn’t make a future together, he would have no future at all and no reason to want one.