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He shrugged. “All part of the shrink-wrap.”

That was what he called the recovery program he’d worked out with his doctors. It included drugs for neuropathic pain, antidepressants and antianxiety meds, and a group for survivors of violent crime. The rest was his own doing: throwing out the booze, swimming every day. And now switching from the Stones to John Coltrane. It was a slow struggle to shore, but at least now when he drove away I didn’t worry that he’d smash the car into a bridge abutment.

Now I had other worries.

In my ear the phone rang one more time and a message clicked on saying the call was being diverted. A new ring-tone sounded. My father answered.

“Kit? What’s up, honey?”

Four words and I felt safe. Time had added gravel to his voice, and the prairie rhythms had deepened. Nobody made gruffness sound more welcome than Philip James Delaney, captain USN, retired.

“I’ve been hit with a wild pitch. The thing is, I think it’s aimed at you.”

“Sounds serious. Does it involve your cousin Taylor?”

That made me smile. I hopped up and sat on the kitchen counter. “You don’t want to know about Taylor. This is something else.”

“Shoot.”

“Project South Star.”

On his end I heard a television burbling theme music. Four bars, six, eight.

“Dad?”

“Are you on a land line?”

Ting.
I felt a cold drip on the back of my neck. “My cell. At Jesse’s.”

“Hang up.”

I set my phone on the granite counter, feeling the chill seep down my spine. He wanted me off the cell.

Jesse’s phone rang. He turned toward it, but I jumped off the counter. “That’s Dad calling back.”

I picked it up from the coffee table in the living room. The brusqueness in my father’s voice no longer sounded protective.

“Who’s dredging up South Star?”

“Nobody you know.”

“Whoever it is has an agenda. Probably seeking publicity for himself. Whatever they’ve told you, just forget it. Drop the whole matter.”

“Publicity is not the issue.”

“Then why’d they throw this at a journalist? Who is it, a politician? Or one of those activists who thinks the government kills puppies for oil?”

“Dad, tell me about the project.”

“I can’t. It’s classified.”

I exhaled. Across the room Jesse watched me, trying to assess the conversation.

Dad’s voice sharpened. “Somebody’s yanking your chain, Evan. South Star is dead, and you don’t need to know any more than that.”

“Yes, I do. The murders in China Lake may relate back to South Star.”

A beat. “Murders?”

“You don’t know?”

Hesitation again. “I’ve been traveling. Kit, what murders?”

“Two people from my graduating class, at the reunion this weekend. Kelly Colfax and Ceci Lezak.” I sat down on the sofa.

“Wait—
at
your reunion? You were in China Lake this weekend?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Now will you listen to me?”

I summarized what Jax had told me about Project South Star: that it was a black project, outside the navy’s purview, possibly shut down when the research caused unpredictable results.

“Dad, what’s the deal? A dead project from twenty years ago shouldn’t make you concerned about cell phone interception.”

“What else have you been told?” he said.

“About Coyote.”

“What’s that?”

“Not what. Who.” I pulled my feet up under me on the couch. I felt cold. “He may be the killer.”

I filled him in. When I finished, he spoke slowly.

“Listen carefully. I don’t know what’s going on. But you need to back away from this immediately.”

“I can’t.”

“Kathleen Evan—” He caught himself. After a second he spoke with strained calm. “If thirty-three years of being your father have taught me anything, it’s that you will always question authority. But this once, please do exactly as I say without debate.”

The chill fingered down my back again.

“Don’t talk about this to anybody else. Don’t dig into it. Will you be at home later?”

“I’m staying with Jesse for a few days.”

“Good. Keep that to yourself.”

That was when fear began bug-crawling across my skin. “Dad, I’ve already talked to the China Lake police. And they’re contacting the FBI.”

I could hear the TV behind him, applause and new music. “Put Jesse on.”

Disconcerted, I stood and beckoned to him. When I held out the phone he looked wary. He’d met my dad once, talked to him maybe two other times. He put the phone to his ear.

“Mr. Delaney?” A nod. “All right—Phil.”

He listened, gazing past me. I bit my thumbnail.

“I do.” Nodding. “Always.” He rubbed his leg. “I understand.”

He handed the phone back to me. I scowled and mouthed,
What was that?
but he shook his head and angled around into the kitchen.

I got back on the line. “What did you say to Jesse?”

“I explained about being careful right now.”

“Dad, what does a government-trained killer want with two members of the Bassett High reunion committee?”

Jesse opened a kitchen drawer and began rustling around. I put a finger in my ear, but TV music was still coming from my dad’s end.

Hang on. The TV music sounded familiar. “Is that
The Tonight Show
?”

The Tonight Show
came on at eleven thirty, which meant it had long since finished in Key West, but was just starting here in California. I thought back to the way my call to him had been diverted before he picked up.

“Where are you?” I said.

“On travel, honey. I’m up north.”

“North as in San Francisco?” I pulled the phone from my ear to glance at the display.
Number withheld
. “Are you at Mom’s?”

“Where I am is beside the point. I’m going to double-check a couple of things. I want you to keep your head down.”

I heard metallic sounds in the kitchen. Glanced over. The Glock lay on the counter, and in his hand Jesse held a box of nine-millimeter ammunition. Shit.

“Dad.”

“This may be absolutely nothing. A wild-goose chase. But I want you to play things safe. Jesse knows what to do.”

“He’s loading rounds in a spare clip.”

“Good.”

“Why? You think one clip won’t be enough?”

His voice dropped another notch. “Lie low. I mean it. I’ll talk to you as soon as I know anything.”

I hung up. Jesse’s eyes were cool. I watched him slide cartridges into the clip, feeling scared.

Also pissed off. My father was being evasive. Both he and Jesse were treating me as too fragile to watch out for myself. Of course, Jesse sometimes complained that this was how I treated him, and man, did this helping of my own medicine taste sour in my mouth.

He set the spare clip on the counter. “I’m simply being cautious.”

“Right. I know drag racers who are more cautious than you.”

He picked up the Glock. “Then consider this another form of stress management.”

“This is not reducing my anxiety. Not in the least.”

“Tomorrow we’ll go to the firing range. Target practice is an excellent relaxation technique. Focus, breathe, fire. Very centering.”

“Blackburn, sometimes you seriously give me a stomachache.”

“Cool down. You want an antianxiety mechanism, I’ve got the best.” He looked at the gun. “Stopping power.”

By midnight the moon was up, conjuring white light on the Monterey pines outside the plate-glass windows. I was wide-awake, but Jesse turned off the table lamp and held out a hand.

“Let’s try to get some sleep.”

I stood up. He went to the kitchen and took a couple of painkillers. I shut down the stereo, noticing that he planned to skip the trazodone that fought his insomnia.

“Jess?”

“Not tonight.”

“Nothing’s going to happen tonight. Don’t mess with your meds.”

A few months back, messing with his meds had gotten him cruising toward a diazepam addiction.

“Call your doc in the morning, but tonight stick to the regimen. Please, babe.”

He scrunched his mouth. “Yes, nurse.”

I tried to smile with relief, but he was watching me clench and unclench my hands. I relaxed my fingers and changed tack, sticking out a hip.

“To play nurse I need a little white uniform and those sexy medical tights.”

“No.” He mock shivered. “Hospitals and sexiness—in my mind those don’t mix.”

I dropped the pose. “Could you ever imagine me in photos? Dressed in lingerie?”

He was at the sink filling a water glass. He looked at me over his shoulder.

“Does this have to do with Cousin Tater?” he said.

“Glossy shots. Me, in lace and latex.”

His lips parted. The water reached the rim of the glass and spilled out, running over his hand.

“So that’s a yes,” I said. “What should I wear?”

“French maid.”

“No, seriously. I was thinking more a—”

“Dead serious. French maid.”

Hands on my hips. “You mean with an apron and a microminiskirt and black stockings?”

“That go way up your thighs.” The water was running down his arm now. “And stilettos.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Four-inch stilettos. And yeah, red panties. Did I mention French maid?”

I walked toward him. “Time-out. Since when did you develop a cleaning fetish?”

“Petticoats. Garter belt. Those legs. So when you bend down to, like, polish something, ah, I mean stretching way, way over, you—”

Finally noticing the water, he turned off the faucet.

I came closer. “What if I were riding a motorcycle?”

“Stay on topic. Your hair’s up but strands are falling in your face. You have a smudge on your cheek, near your lips. . . .”

His gaze flowed over me. How that made me feel searing hot, I can’t explain. I swear my jeans unzipped themselves. They shimmied down to my ankles and got kicked across the floor.

“A smudge,” I said.

He nodded. He was tan and his hair was sun-bleached from swimming. He looked so handsome that I was about to have a seizure.

“Because I’ve been getting dirty,” I said.

His voice dropped. “Doing—”

“You.”

He was still holding the water glass. He splashed himself in the face with it.

I laughed. He shook his head, flinging water. And we both knew we were whistling past the graveyard, and didn’t care.

I put my hands on his shoulders, and he set down the glass, pulled me onto his lap, and snaked his arms around me. My blouse had come unbuttoned, I realized. His hands ran across my bare skin, and his mouth brushed my collarbone. I began working his shirt up his chest, but he murmured, “You first,” and spun with me to wheel us into the living room. At the sofa he half tossed me off his lap.

“On your back,” he said.

I lay down on the sofa and pulled one foot up. Then he was sitting between my knees and skating his hands up the inside of my legs. Way up, and I hupped a breath and tried to stop my foot from bouncing.

He traced the edge of my panties. “This isn’t scary. Why are your teeth chattering?”

“The hell it’s not scary. I could burst into flame.”

His fingers teased past the lace and kept going. I looked at the ceiling. He leaned down and I felt his lips on my knee, and then on my thigh.

“Holy cow,” I said.

“
En français
, dirty maid.”

I felt his breath and his warm mouth on my hip, and on—

“God. Whoa. Jeepers creepers.”

That’s a paraphrase. My actual words involved blasphemy and animal sounds.

So at two a.m. I was wide-, wide-awake.

Through the shutters I watched clouds shred across the Milky Way. Beside me Jesse lay deep asleep, one arm tossed over his eyes. He wouldn’t stir unless I poked him with an ice pick.

I got out of bed. In the living room I turned on the Sci Fi Channel and booted up my computer. I propped it on my lap and went online, looking for South Star.

I found everything except what I was looking for. South Star Plumbing. South Star Travel. Native American folklore:
In Pawnee mythology South Star was the god of the underworld, magical and feared
.

Curious but not useful. Next I hit the big conspiracy-minded sites. The China Lake project wasn’t even a whisper at
trustnobody.com
. I was going to have to look elsewhere. I slumped on the sofa, rubbing my eyes. Outside, the night sky closed in.

Hearing birds cawing overhead, I opened my eyes. Sea-gulls screeched outside in the sunrise, wheeling above the water. Getting up, I went to the kitchen, started the coffeepot, and picked up the phone. I used the landline.

When I said hello, my mother practically cheered. “Evan!”

Her voice sounded so much bigger than she was in real life. She was a hundred pounds dripping wet, with an elfin smile and a gunnery sergeant’s mouth. The zest in her voice was perfect for shouting at passengers to evacuate the 747,
now
. She’d been a flight attendant for twenty years. She worked in management for the airline, training new recruits.

“Honey, Lord, this is early for you.”

Six a.m.—yeah. The Glock stress-reduction method wasn’t working. “I’m too anxious to sleep.”

“Sweetheart, God. This bastard up in China Lake. I can’t believe it. Ceci and Kelly, I remember both those girls.”

“Mom, I think the killer was part of Project South Star.”

Blank silence on her end. Déjà vu.

Far too late, she cleared her throat. “Beg pardon?”

“The man who killed Kelly and Ceci may have worked on South Star. I’ve already talked to Dad about it.”

“Really.”