“I thought I’d never get over him,” she confided with a long sigh. “My faith saved me. I was almost suicidal when Mike died. I loved him, so much.”

“I know.” His own heart was breaking, not only at the thought of his late best friend, but of Grace and how much she meant to him.

She stared at her bottle of water. She’d refused anything with caffeine, which ruled out tea and coffee. “Do you ever think about what happened with us, just before Mike died?”

His heart leaped. “Of course,” he said. The memory of that long, sweet kiss they’d exchanged had haunted him for years. He’d felt guilty for betraying his best friend, even more so when Mike was killed just shortly after that.

“So do I,” she confessed. “The guilt ate me alive. I couldn’t stand to think about it, so I ran, all the way to South America.”

He slid a big hand over hers. “We’re all human, Grace,” he began.

She sighed and met his black eyes evenly. “Of course we are. But it was a betrayal of the vows I made to Mike. That was hard to live with. I almost went insane when he died.”

“I remember.” His hand tightened on hers. “He was the best friend I ever had.”

“Those were good times that we shared,” she said softly.

He smiled. “Very good times. How long are you going to be in town?”

“Just for two weeks,” she said easily, smiling. “I’m attending a seminar for our sect, learning things about intervention and mission work.”

“It sounds interesting.”

“It’s my life now,” she said simply. “I’ve learned so much about giving, about being a person of faith in a faithless world. I’m doing my part to fight the evil around us and bring people back into the church.”

“A noble goal,” he agreed.

She pursed her lips. “Do you go to services with your sister?”

He cleared his throat. “My job takes up a good bit of my life.”

“Do you shoot people?”

His face hardened. “When I have to.”

“Can’t you just reason with them?” she asked.

He took a breath. “Grace, you can’t reason with a man so high on drugs that he’s just killed one of his kids and is trying to knife two police officers in a frenzy.”

“Oh.” She opened the water bottle and took a sip. She put the lid back on, staring at it instead of Banks. “Isn’t there some way to keep people from using drugs?” she asked. “Outreach programs, that sort of thing?”