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forgotten about him,” I lied smoothly, “until he showed up here.”
    “Well,” she didn’t sound convinced, but she seemed willing to cut me some slack. “If you say so.” She gave me a sharp look. “You’d tell me if it was more than that, wouldn’t you, Georgiana? I mean, I am your mother.”
    I sighed. “Of course I would.” Another lie, but a necessary one if I wanted to put an end to this conversation. “But there’s nothing to tell. Really.”
    Mom walked past me toward the kitchen door. She stopped and gave me a stiff hug. Then, as though embarrassed by the moment, she pulled away and walked quickly back into the dining room.
    I sighed again. She drove me nuts, and we disagreed about nearly everything, but she was still my mother. We were all we had—if I didn’t count Gregory, which I didn’t—and we were stuck with each other.
    I was sure there were worse things.
    I was about to find out how true that was.
     
    By morning I had put Gregory and his odd behavior out of my mind. He had certainly been in a strange mood, but that was his problem, not mine. Who knows? Maybe he saw me as a threat to his relationship with my mother.
    Not that I had any intention of interfering in Sandra Neverall’s love life. I preferred to stay as far away from that subject as possible.
    My own track record wasn’t anything to brag about, after all. Before the Blake debacle there were several years of a social life that consisted primarily of study groups, the occasional Ptomaine Tommy’s burger run, and the annual liquid nitrogen frozen pumpkin drop. And while Ditch Day had its social aspects, it was practically a civic duty. Not a serious romantic relationship in the bunch.
    I’d dated Wade for a few months in high school, and my mother had harbored high hopes for our future together. He was smart and ambitious, and she still considered him a very acceptable choice.
    She never understood why we broke up, and I hadn’t tried to explain. I mean, how do you explain dumping an otherwise nice guy because he didn’t rat out his buddy for cheating on your best friend? I ranted about his complicity to my friends—I was as dramatic as any teenager, albeit with a better vocabulary—but never to my mother.
    Sue had found out about the jerk on her own, dumped him, and become the first prom queen to show up without a date. My relationship with Wade had never recovered.
    Now we were dating again, trying to figure out if there was still something between us.
    I was beginning to believe there was, though Wade had occasional doubts; like the time a few months earlier when he’d almost caught Sue and me breaking into Martha Tepper’s house. Sure, we’d been trying to catch a thief and a murderer—and we’d been right—but having a cat burglar for a girlfriend was a definite detriment to a political career.
    The skies were gray and a heavy fog clung to the highway as the Beetle chugged up the final hill to the McComb site. It was going to be a lousy day to work outside: cold and clammy, the daylight deadened by the low-hanging clouds. It had rained during the night, and there would be water standing in the bottom of the moat.
    I wasn’t looking forward to the day’s work.
    As I neared the top I heard idling engines and male voices carrying through the still morning. I wasn’t always the first one on the site, but I was usually early, and I cherished those quiet moments before the crew arrived.
    It was a habit I’d developed at Samurai Security. Arriving before my employees had allowed me uninterrupted time, a rarity in the hard-driving high-tech world. Yet Blake had somehow managed to turn even that against me in the final days.
    I shook off the memory. Blake was history. Period.
    When I topped the rise, emerging on the plateau where the site looked down on the surrounding pine forest, the sky was lit with red-and-blue strobe lights.
    In the middle of the gravel pad an ambulance idled, puffs of exhaust creating vapor