Dance laughed, though the sound only made her feel worse, a reminder of the many good times they’d shared. They walked to a deserted part of the backstage area.

Boling looked around. “What’s going on? Everybody okay?”

“Hard to say.” She couldn’t avoid the cryptic response.

He looked her over. “We’ve had the worst phone luck. I’ve been doing ten-hour days. And you, your mom said you were working on that kidnapping case. Some vacation you had, hm?”

My mother, my spy.

“And Lincoln and Amelia were here?”

“Couldn’t’ve done it without them.” She told Boling about the minute bits of trace that gave her the idea that Edwin had taken Kayleigh’s song to heart, the one about growing up near a silver mine. “That’s how we traced him.”

Boling leaned forward and kissed her quickly, his lips firmly against hers.

Her phone vibrated. A glance downward. It was Michael O’Neil.

Well, how’s that for some irony?

“You have to get that?”

“I’ll let it go,” Dance said.

“Good turnout,” he said. “I listened to one of Kayleigh’s CDs on the way here. I can’t wait for the show.”

“About that … there may be a rain check situation.”

And she told him about the blowup between father and daughter.

“No! You mean cancel the whole show?”

“Looks like it.”

The crew, Kayleigh’s band, the local backup musicians, a children’s choir … everybody was standing around awkwardly, heads and eyes pivoting, engaged in a radar search for the centerpiece of the evening. The sense of dread was evident. Kayleigh was the least temperamental performer on earth. If she stormed out it was not diva drama, with her in the trailer waiting to be coaxed back. Her absence probably reflected the sentiment in one of her early hits: “Gone for Good (and It’s Good to Be Gone).”

Bishop Towne, alone, wiped his hands on his slacks. It was five minutes past showtime. The audience wasn’t restless yet but they soon would be.

Dance found her shoulders in a terrible knot. She glanced back at Boling’s handsome face, his thinning brown hair, his perfect lips.

But, she told herself, feeling the spring steel of her soul flex within her, she’d lost one man to tragedy and she would far rather lose one this way—everyone going forward in life, healthy and with some vestige of affection. Something might work out in the future. At least there wasn’t—she assumed—somebody else in his life. She would make sure that Boling and the children stayed in touch. Thank God they hadn’t actually moved in together.

“Here. Snuck this in.”

He handed her a Starbucks cup and she smelled immediately that it contained red wine, and since Boling was the barista it would be a good one. Yes, a nice Malbec, she deduced from a sip—one of the varieties they’d been exploring lately at wine tastings in Monterey and Carmel. They’d had so much fun on those nights….

Kathryn Dance told herself: No tears.

That was nonnegotiable.