"I have to make a phone call."

His eyes narrowed. "You need to call your boyfriend and ask permission to tell me what I already know?" He gestured toward the phone sitting on his desk. "Go for it."

I turned away from him, walked to the windows that overlooked downtown Portland, and pulled my cellphone from my pocket. Richard answered on the first ring, as I had known he would.

"I'll do what you asked," I said quietly, my heart breaking with each word. "But you have to give me something first."

"Anything."

"You have to let me choose the home for Memaw."

"Of course."

"And..." I bit my lip, trying to stem the flow of tears that I was afraid would never stop if I let that first drop fall. "There's someone I need to tell. I need you to be okay with that."

"The guy in the fancy sports car?"

"He already knows some of it. He recognized me."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "This is really risky, Mellissa," he finally said. "Are you sure you can trust this guy?"

"Yeah. I can trust him."

Another silence. Then he said, "Be ready to go in a week."

I turned off the phone and slipped it into my back pocket. I stayed by the window, afraid that I would lose my determination if I turned and looked at Conrad. The fight against the tears was a losing battle. Everything was so out of control. I wanted things to be different; I wanted to be able to choose my own destiny for once in my life. But decisions had been made that would forever cast a shadow over my life. And there was no escaping the reality of that.

"It started with Hurricane Katrina," I said, my voice stronger than I had expected. "Or maybe it really started long before that, when my parents died in a plane crash when I was two...I don't know, really."

"What did?" Conrad asked in a weary tone.

"This disaster that is my life." I reached up and brushed away a few tears, but they were quickly replaced by more. "My uncle inherited me along with my father's insurance policy and his 1964 Ford Mustang. Memaw came along later, after Pops died."

"Mellissa. I don't really want to hear the history of your family."

"But you want to know who that man was. And that comes with my family history."

Silence fell heavy between us. And then I heard the squeak of his office chair's wheels as he pulled it back to the desk and took a seat.

"Fine."

I cleared my throat, the memory of the storm rushing back to me, so vivid even after all this time. We were expecting it, but not to the degree with which it hit. I was sleeping on the couch, exhausted after staying up half the night watching The Weather Channel with Memaw and Uncle Mike. When it hit, the winds were the first thing. It was like a million angry cats were crying outside our doors. And the walls vibrated like the strings of a guitar. By the time the water came, I had already worked myself into a fit of panic. I was thirteen and everything that was supposed to be safe and secure about my life was coming apart at the seams. And that was just the beginning.

"The storm destroyed our house and my uncle's bar. The insurance didn't cover floods, so it took nearly everything he had to rebuild the house. The bar-it was a complete loss. He never would have been able to reopen. All he had ever done was tend bar. But working in someone else's place didn't offer even half the money he'd been making before. Within just a few months of the storm we were hurting bad enough that even I was aware of how bad it was."

I took another swipe at the tears on my cheeks. "That's when Johnny Duprey approached him. Said he'd give him the money he needed to rebuild his bar. And all he had to do in return was take a few bets. It seemed fairly simple. It wasn't like my uncle was the only one who turned to the dark side to survive in the aftermath of Katrina."

"Yeah, but your uncle did a little bit more than take a few bets."

I nodded. "I was a kid. I had no idea what was going on. But at trial, my uncle said-"

"At trial?"

I glanced over at him. "You knew he went to jail, right?"

Conrad shook his head. "No, I didn't. When Aurora and I left New Orleans, I never looked back."

I turned, leaned back against the window, the cool refreshing against my burning skin, and crossed my arms. "My uncle came under the suspicion of the FBI after only about a year, I guess. They started watching his bar, keeping track of who came and went, taking note when one of Johnny's lieutenants showed up. After a while, they had enough to approach my uncle and ask him to help them get Johnny."

"Your uncle turned on Johnny Duprey?" Conrad whistled under his breath. "That takes balls."

"Yeah." I ran my hands over my face, wiping away the last of my tears, and smoothed my moist palms over my still drying hair. "He tried to get out a few times and Johnny wouldn't let him. He thought that his next best option was to turn on him. He'd have to go to jail, but the FBI promised him they would make sure he got leniency for his cooperation. And that Memaw and I would be protected."

"Let me get this straight," Conrad said, leaning back in his chair. "Your uncle was working with the Feds in '07?"

"Yeah."

"Hell, that's why he..." Conrad shook his head, a bewildered look on his face. "Shit," he whispered.

"What?"

"All these years I thought your uncle screwed me over. But he was really just keeping me from making the biggest mistake of my life."

I didn't understand. I pushed away from the window and moved closer to his desk, watching him struggle with something. He ran his fingers through his hair and then buried his face in his hands.

"Shit!" He looked up at me, his eyes rimmed in red. "All these years I was so angry at him. But now...he called Aurora."

"What?"

"I went to make a bet one day, after he warned me to stop. And Aurora shows up, screaming at me about how I promised to stop and how I was going to mess up both our futures. It got so bad that that goon your uncle kept in drinks at the end of the bar came over and escorted us out of the building. The next time I went back, the goon wouldn't even let me in the door. I thought..." he shook his head, a soft, humorless chuckle slipping from between his lips. "I was so stupid."

"If you made a bet with him, the FBI would have had your name-"

"And I would have been rounded up when they started arresting people."

"But my uncle wouldn't let you. He kept your name off the list."

Conrad nodded. "If he hadn't done that, I never would have married Aurora. I never would have built this business." He stared at me for a second. "I would have fulfilled the other side of my mother's prediction."

"My uncle was a good man."

The irony wasn't lost. Even on me.

I sank into a chair that was positioned strategically in front of Conrad's desk.

"You really didn't know?"

"No."

"But when you said my uncle screwed you over and you should call Johnny Duprey-"

"It was an empty threat. I just meant that I should tell Johnny how your uncle refused to take bets from paying customers. It's the same threat I made to your uncle all those years ago."

It would have been funny if it wasn't so frustratingly stupid.

"I'm in the Witness Security Program. Johnny got a life sentence, but there are a dozen of his lieutenants who got shorter sentences or managed to stay out of jail altogether, and they're pretty eager to hurt my uncle any way they can."

The color drained from Conrad's face.

"The man you saw me with this morning? He's my WITSEC contact. He found out about Madison's kidnapping, that I was the original target, and he wants to move me out of Portland. That's what we were arguing about."

Conrad came around the desk and leaned against it just a few feet in front of me. "That's what you meant, when you said you didn't know what might happen in the future."

"Yeah."

He shook his head, a soft chuckle again slipping from between his lips. "I'm such a fucking idiot. I should have known there was more to it than what I knew. I just...I assumed you left New Orleans to escape your uncle. All this..." He waved his hand. "It never crossed my mind."

"I'm sorry."

He grunted, as he grabbed my arms and pulled me up into him. "You have nothing to be sorry for," he said, running his hand over my back. "None of this is your doing. You're just an innocent bystander."

I moved closer into his arms and buried my face in his chest. For a long second, I took pleasure in feeling his body wrapped around mine. I tried to imagine what it would be like to know that this would always be here, that I would always have the right to take comfort from his touch. To fall in love and trust that we would never be separated.

It was a dream meant for someone else.

"They want to put Memaw into a home and move me next week."

"Next week?"

"It's usually a lot sooner than that. I think the only reason they're waiting is because of Memaw."

"And then what?"

"And then I start over again, for the fourth time. This'll be the first time I'll be on my own. I won't be able to take anything personal with me. I won't be able to call you or any of the other friends I've made. And I won't be able to see any of you again. Including Memaw."

That thought-saying it out loud-took the steel out of my knees. I slipped forward, and Conrad caught me. He lifted me into his arms and carried me to the small couch against the back wall of his office. But he didn't just lay me down. He sat and pulled me into his arms, cradling me like a child. And I fell apart like a child.

"I don't want this," I whispered when I had some control. "I don't want to run for the rest of my life."

"What happens if you elect to leave the WITSEC program?"

"They stop protecting me." I rubbed my cheek a little roughly. "They leave me to my own devices. Chances are good Johnny's people will find me fairly quickly after that."

"They would just dump you?"

"They would take away everything they've been doing to keep me hidden. No more monitoring the local press, no more keeping tabs with the local police. No more paying for my rent, no more dealing with the landlord so he won't get curious about my grandmother and me. No more meetings with Richard to make sure nothing unusual has been happening in the neighborhood." I snuggled closer against him. "I don't know what else. I'm sure they do things that I don't even know about."

"But you would keep your name."

"I guess. I don't know."

Conrad kissed the top of my head. "Well," he said quietly, "we have a week to spend together and to figure out what's next."

"We know what's next. I have to leave."

"Maybe."

I sat up to look him in the eye, hope planting a seed deep in my heart. But before I could form the words to ask him what he was thinking, the door to his office burst open.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Goldstein," his secretary said as two plainclothes detectives-the same two who had interviewed Madison at the hospital-charged into the office behind her.

"Conrad Goldstein?" the taller one asked.

Conrad gently moved around me, standing so that he blocked my view of the room.

"Yes?"

"You're under arrest," the younger man said, grabbing Conrad's arm, pulling him into the center of the room, and turning him to face me. "You have the right to remain silent," he began, making me feel as though I had suddenly fallen into a bad rerun of Law and Order.

"What's this about?" Conrad asked, as the detective snapped handcuffs around his wrists.

The detective ignored him, preferring to finish reading him his rights.

I jumped to my feet, beginning to wonder how much more of this day I could take.

"You have to tell him what the charges are," I announced, not even sure I was right, but pretending I was.

The tall detective looked at me over his partner's head. "You were there at the hospital, weren't you?" He opened the notepad he seemed to always have in his hand, again reminding me of a television detective. "Mellissa Anderson?"

I nodded.

"You were the intended victim. Funny finding you here."

"What is this about?" I demanded again.

The detective looked from me to Conrad, an odd smile on his lips. "Your boyfriend is being arrested under suspicion of orchestrating Miss Miller's kidnapping."

Again that feeling of being doused with ice water.

Could my life possibly get any worse?

Chapter Nine.