I settled back in the seat and tried to look defeated. I didn't want to tip her off to anything. She'd already made the mistake of not paying attention to what was going on around her. All I had to do was wait for her to make another mistake.

Which I discovered less than a second later when my cellphone vibrated in my back pocket.

She had apparently left my bag behind, but it hadn't occurred to her to search me for anything of importance.

Like a cellphone.

I leaned forward a little and reached behind me like I was checking the sore spots left by the stun gun. Instead, I slipped the phone from my pocket and slipped it under my thigh. With a little careful maneuvering, I was able to move it to where I could see the screen.

"Keep your head down," it said.

I bit my lip, biting back a relieved laugh.

Thank you, Richard.

"What are you doing?" Janet asked, twisting in her seat as the car slowed for a red light.

Before I could respond, the sound of squealing tires surrounded us. A voice yelled, "Get your hands up." I dove to the floorboards, making myself as small a target as I possibly could. Janet reached back for me, but her fingers barely scraped the back of my t-shirt before her side window was shattered and she was pulled free of the car.

"Mellissa?"

Hands were on my back, my arms. I climbed out of the car and found myself face to face with Richard. I threw my arms around his neck.

"Thank you," I moaned.

"You okay?" he asked, pushing me back so he could see my face, his fingers brushing lightly against the cheek Janet had punched.

"Yeah."

I turned just in time to watch a uniformed cop push Janet into the back of a police cruiser. She looked back at me, hatred written in the lines of her mouth and the lines around her eyes. I shivered, as I imagined that woman interrogating Madison. No wonder she had clung to Rawn so tightly when he came to see her in the hospital. No wonder her voice shook when she talked about the spooky look in her eyes.

I could only imagine what she had planned for me.

"Come on," Richard said. "We have an appointment downtown."

It was over. So why did I so desperately want to cry?

Richard handed me a cup of coffee, even as the doctor was attempting to assess the lump that was forming on the side of my head from where I hit it against the car's window. She finally backed away and offered me a sympathetic smile.

"For someone who was just kidnapped, you look pretty good."

"Thanks."

Richard leaned back against the front edge of his desk-or whoever this office and that desk belonged to-and studied my face for a long minute.

"She's right, you know. You do look pretty good for everything you've gone through. You're a damn tough girl."

"For a half pint, right?" I asked, remembering the nickname he used to tease me with when we first met.

He smiled, clearly remembering the same thing. "Yeah. For a half pint."

I sipped at the coffee, making a face when the bitterness washed over my tongue. I leaned forward and set it on the desk at his side.

"Where are we?"

He looked around the office as though seeing it for the first time. "Downtown police department. Local chief was kind enough to let us set up our command center here."

"Command center?"

"We've been looking for your friend, Janet French, for almost a year now, Mellissa."

I sat back in the uncomfortable club chair and pulled my knees up against my chest, wrapping my arms around them for comfort as much as anything else.

"Janet French...not her real name, I would guess."

"Tough and smart." Richard smiled. "No. Her real name is Margaret, or Peggy, Duprey."

I lay my cheek across my arms and regarded him. "She told me she was his sister."

"They were estranged for years, but they apparently made amends while he was in prison. When he got sick, she fought the courts to get him a compassionate release, but the nature of his crimes was not to be overcome. He died while she was still fighting."

"She wanted revenge."

"And she saw your uncle as the reason why her brother died-instead of the fact that he actually did commit the crimes he was convicted of or that he had an inoperable brain tumor."

I closed my eyes, wondering how I would feel if my uncle were to die of some sort of disease while he was incarcerated. I might have been angry, too. But I'm not sure I would have resorted to kidnapping.

"Madison's kidnapping was just her way of trying to get to me?"

"She was working with a group of radicals who believe that all technology should be available free of charge to the general public. These people had an issue with the way Cepheus normally only releases most of their products to the academic and commercial industries, and they've been looking for a way to mass produce them for the general public. Peggy-Janet-saw them as a means to an end."

"But they grabbed Madison instead."

"Their information wasn't as accurate as it should have been. I'm guessing that this was because Peggy had pictures of you from when you were a teen, but she didn't know what you look like now. And you and Madison bear a vague resemblance-if you don't actually stand next to one another."

I chuckled a little. "If we don't stand side by side and the beholder is wearing rose-colored glasses."

"Anyway," Richard said, reaching over to ruffle my hair. "She came to our attention about the time Johnny died, but she was living under the radar. We had to wait until she made a move on you before we could catch her. Last week..."

"She took Madison and moved out into the open."

"Sort of. But it alerted us to the fact that she was in the area. We knew if we waited long enough, she'd make an attempt. We just weren't expecting it to go down quite like it did."

"Were you waiting for her to shoot me?"

Richard made a gesture that suggested that was exactly what they were waiting for.

"Hey!" I jumped to my feet and began to pace. "Nice to know the very people who were supposed to be protecting me were hoping for me to be shot."

"That's not what I meant. We just needed her to reveal herself."

I ran my fingers through my hair, the tears I was trying so hard to stave off threatening to spill once again.

"So now what? Where am I going?"

"Home." Richard crossed to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. "There are some people here who have been quite insistent on seeing you. I don't know if you-"

"Wait. What do you mean, home?"

Richard was a large man, probably well over six foot, so he had to bend a little to put his face close to mine. He touched my cheek with a gentle caress that reminded me of the way my uncle would stroke my cheek whenever he came home late at night and thought I was sleeping.

"It's over, Mellissa. All the people we identified as a threat to your life are either dead or in prison. This Peggy was the last of them, and I would say it's most likely she will be going away for a very long time."

"You mean I don't have to leave Portland."

"I mean that we will continue to monitor your case, but you are pretty much on your own from this point forward. You can stay here; you can go to Chicago or Mexico or wherever the hell you want to go. Though I wouldn't suggest you try to return to New Orleans just now..."

"It's over."

He smiled. "It is. But you don't have to be so relieved to see the last of me."

I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his throat. The tears flowed, unhindered, but they were no longer tears of fear or grief. They were tears of relief.

"There's a lot of paperwork," Richard said a moment later as he gently extracted me from him.

"There always is."

Another smile. I was going to miss those smiles.

"We can talk about it later. In the meantime, you better go see your friends before they break the door down."

He opened the door, and the first face I saw was Madison's. And then Annie and Rawn. When I didn't see Conrad, my heart dropped into my stomach. I hadn't thought that what I said in the car this afternoon would stick, but maybe it had. Maybe I was rougher than I had imagined.

But then Madison made a subtle gesture. I turned and saw Conrad sitting on a low bench, his face in his hands.

"Hey," I said, kicking his shoe with the side of my foot, "are you really going to let a little tiff come between us?"

He looked up, his skin pale under that Texas tan. But that cocky smile slipped across his lips, and he leaned back, resting his head in his raised hands.

"Depends. Do you have to insist on calling it a tiff?"

Then, he was on his feet and I was in his arms, his mouth warm and more comforting than a bowl of gumbo on my lips.

"I thought I'd lost you," he whispered in a tortured voice as he pulled me tight into his arms.

"No. In fact, it looks like you're stuck with me."

His eyes lit up, even as his fingers discovered the growing lump on the side of my head. "I don't know who's stuck with whom, but I can't imagine a better way to step into the future than with you at my side."

And then he kissed me again, much to the pleasure of our applauding friends.

Chapter Fourteen.

A week later.

I sat back on the Adirondack chair and pulled the blanket closer to my chin to block the cold breeze that was coming in from over the ocean. Madison handed me a glass of wine and settled in her own chair.

"I told you to wear a heavy sweater."

"I'll listen to you next time."

Conrad glanced over his shoulder at us from the grill-where he was trying to teach Rawn what a proper Texas barbecue looked like. He winked before he turned back, chastising Rawn for trying to turn the heat up on the grill.

"I guess Annie's excited about the photoshoot next week."

Madison smiled. "You would think she'd been invited to watch the filming of Nightmare on Elm Street nine thousand, or something."

"Do you really think she might have a chance with Logan?"

"I think Logan is a doll for agreeing to do these ads when he's supposed to be in Los Angeles the next day to begin filming his next big picture. As for Annie..." She hesitated. "I don't know."

"Well, the rest of us have had some luck in love lately. Maybe she will too."

Madison cast a longing glance at Rawn and nodded. "Maybe."

"Ready!" Conrad announced a moment later.

We moved into the dining room-thank goodness!-and settled down to steaks, twice-baked potatoes, and an amazing kale and spinach salad. Madison teased Rawn about avoiding his salad, suggesting an inside joke that Conrad and I weren't privy to. But I was beginning to understand little secrets like that now that Conrad and I were spending as much time together outside of bed as in.

"So," Rawn said as he came back to the table after getting another bottle of wine, "you said there was something the two of you wanted to talk to us about?"

I glanced at Conrad. This had been more his idea than mine.

"I started to talk to you about it last week," Conrad said, his eyes falling on me for a long, lingering moment. "It's about Aurora."

"Aurora?" Madison asked, surprise clear in the tones of her voice.

"Does this have something to do with her resigning?"