“I said because of innocent people. Because I didn’t want to hurt them.”

“What innocent people?”

“His wife. His kids. And for that matter, Jack himself—what we were talking about just now, his instability. I don’t know how he’d react, what he’d do.”

“Would he kill?”

Liz studied him resentfully, knowing what he had tossed at her. “I wouldn’t know,” she said finally.

“You know him.”

“I don’t know anyone, Mr. Hook. And I don’t know anyone who knows anyone. I live in a world of strangers, remember?”

“Did you know Chris?”

She did not answer. Her eyes fell away from his, fastened on the tangle of her hands. For a while Hook sat there watching her and then he reached over and covered her hands with his own.

“Stay with me today,” he said.

She looked up at him. “Why?”

“Because I want you to.”

“I repeat. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

For long seconds Hook met her pained, ironic gaze. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “Why don’t we find out?”

And somehow he managed it. He got around her. So instead of driving her back to the motel to pick up her car, they drove on out of the city to the beach house, where she changed into a yellow turtleneck sweater and brown corduroy slacks stuffed into boots of brushed leather. She was going into the mountains, she said. She felt a need for physical exertion and solitude, so she was going to hike up to one of her favorite canyons to her own “special secret place,” and he could come along if he wanted but she doubted that he would enjoy himself; it was a steep trail and his shoes, loafers, were not exactly made for rough country.

“Another thing,” she said. “You’ll have to get rid of that tie. I won’t go hiking with someone wearing a tie.”

Hook took it off and they drove back through the city, heading for the foothills. But as they were driving past the Old Mission she asked him if he would like to stop and go through it.

“Have you ever seen it inside?” she asked.

“No. Never.”

“Then let’s stop.”

As they parked and walked to the entrance, Liz told him a little about the place, how it had been founded ten years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, and how the early fathers had gone about rescuing the local Chumash Indians from their heathen ways, with such success that now there were no Chumash left.

“But it is beautiful, isn’t it?” she concluded.

“Yes.”

And it was. Situated on a hill about midway between the mountains and the sea, the Mission with its twin bell towers and rough adobe facade was one of the most photographed, most “toured” buildings in all the country. Twenty-five years before, Hook had almost gone through it with Mrs. Cunningham—“We can confess in the chapel,” she had said, “and drive some poor celibate wild.” But somehow the appointed day had slipped past them, in bed and on the beach, and they had never made it.