“Not anymore. He’s being released Friday.” He started to get to his feet, oblivious to Clancey’s white face and trembling hands. “I don’t think he’ll do anything to Darrell. He’s sure as hell not going to want to go back to jail...”

He was cut off by the front door opening and the sound of high-heeled feet coming down the stairs. Banks looked up in time to see a woman with chestnut hair in a bun, wearing a dark blue concealing dress and a lightweight coat coming into the office.

“Colter?” she called.

He stepped around the pillar, bareheaded, breathless. “Grace!”

Before she could speak again, he had her up in his arms and he was hugging the life out of her. “Grace!” he whispered into her throat. “Oh God, it’s been so long!”

She laughed and held him back, smiling. “Years and years and years. Oh, it’s so good to see you!”

Clancey felt as if her world had suddenly fallen apart. Morris was coming home, and Colter Banks’s true love was in his arms. She thought she might strangle on her own misery.

Thoughts rushed through her head. She had to get herself and Tad out of the house. She had to collect all their treasures, including her grandfather’s guitar, and put them someplace safe. With the Martins? No. Too risky. Morris knew them. He could find out that Clancey and Tad went to church with them every Sunday. She grimaced. They’d have to give up going to services for the time being. They had to be someplace Morris couldn’t get to them easily.

She didn’t want to involve Cal Hollister. He’d done so much for them already. She didn’t want to make him a target for Morris. But she could trust her guitar and her most precious items—photographs and scraps of memory in an album—and the quilts her grandmother had made for her and Tad to him. She’d have to come up with some good lie about why she couldn’t take those things to her new apartment. Something about being afraid of theft because the apartment was in a low-rent district. She could tell him they were going to the Brandiff Apartments. They were near her job, full up, but Cal was unlikely to check it out. He trusted Clancey to always be truthful with him. She ground her teeth together. She was going to have to deceive a lot of people, and if Banks checked out Morris, it was inevitable that the trail would lead to her. She’d barely escaped detection when she applied for the job, by not putting any relatives except Tad on her application. But Morris was coming home, and she was in terrible danger.

“Clancey!”