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    finely formed face. "You never told me the whole story. About Jacqueline, I mean. Were you in love with her?"
    The question hurt a little, but it was an honest one, and it was something he figured she had to know if they were to put this business behind them. "I thought I was, at least for a little while, but I was sending her back to Paris."
    "Why?" she asked, studying his eyes.
    "Because I knew that it wasn't going to work," he said softly. "She wasn't going to leave her home, her family, for me, and I wasn't going to leave the Company. Not like that." That drew an almost sympathetic look from her.
    "Elizabeth said that she was a good person."
    McGarvey smiled sadly. "They got to be friends, but Liz had a tough time of it when we got back to the States."
    "She wouldn't talk to me about it, but I knew that the situation was bothering her."
    "She wanted you and I to get back together."
    Kathleen looked at her hands. She still wore their wedding ring. Even in the bad days, right after their divorce, when she hated him, she'd not taken it off. "I think that our daughter still feels a little guilty about that day, Kirk. But I can't help her unless I know what happened." She was frustrated.
    "It's been a year."
    "You've not forgotten. You never will. You never forget anything." She'd almost said forgive, and McGarvey caught it.
    "Jacqueline wanted to get married. I was supposed to quit the CIA, and go back to teaching somewhere."
    Kathleen's chin raised a little. "But you were afraid that she was going to get hurt, being around you. That was it, wasn't it? You did that thing for a long time."
    "That I did," McGarvey said. He'd been a CIA field officer for twenty-five years, and he'd killed people in the line of duty. A legion of them, whose faces he saw nearly every night in his dreams. There were a lot of grudges out there looking for a place to happen, so he'd pushed the people he cared about away from him; out of harm's way,
    he'd always hoped. But it had never worked, and it certainly hadn't worked with Jacqueline.
    They'd been sitting here almost at this exact spot, having drinks, when he told her that it was no good. That she might as well return to Paris, because it was never going to work out for them. She'd started to cry, and McGarvey clearly remembered holding himself back with everything in his power from reaching out for her hand, and apologizing for being such a bastard. It was for the best, her going home. There was no future here for her. She was a French intelligence officer who'd been sent to keep an eye on McGarvey while he lived in Paris, and she'd fallen in love with him. Too bad for her, too bad for all of them, because she'd followed him back to the States and had gotten herself killed.
    McGarvey glanced out at the street. Jacqueline had been on the way out of the restaurant when the black Mercedes came barreling around the corner. Something, some sixth sense, had warned him just in time to hit the deck when the bomb had been tossed out the back window of the car, landing right at Jacqueline's feet. He closed his eyes.
    Kathleen reached out and laid a hand on his, her touch gentle.
    "There was nothing left of her, Katy. Not a god dammed thing. Nothing even remotely recognizable as human." Elizabeth had come up from the Farm with him, and they were all supposed to go out to dinner somewhere that night. She'd been returning from the bathroom when the bomb was tossed, and McGarvey had managed to pull her behind a table where she escaped the. brunt of the massive explosion. Two dozen people had been killed, and twice that many hurt. The visions would not go away.
    Kathleen was watching the play of emotions on his face. "You saved our daughter's life, my darling. And you got the people who did that horrible thing, and in the process you saved a lot of other lives. That counts for something, even if you don't want to take the credit."
    McGarvey couldn't trust himself to speak. She hadn't
    insisted on