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also guilty of protecting her. She hoped Emily never had to be faced with the realities of her job as a deputy prosecutor. Now that Emily was in preschool the girl’s questions became more difficult. Last week she wanted to know why Grace’s last name was different than hers and Daddy’s. Grace couldn’t remember exactly what she told her, but it certainly had not been the truth. How could she tell her four-year-old that the reason she used her own name was that, if any bad people who Mommy pissed off came looking to hurt her, they wouldn’t find Emily and her father?
    “Don’t worry,” Grace said, squeezing her husband’s hand. “I’ll be okay. I always am, right?”
    He smiled down at her, apparently satisfied and unaware that her mind had already become preoccupied as she scanned the airport terminal, looking through groups of people coming and going. Making sure that Jared Barnett was nowhere in sight.
     
CHAPTER 6
     
    9:50 a.m.

Interstate 80
     
    Andrew Kane discovered a hole in the traffic and gunned the engine, easing into a space in the fast lane. He was getting good at driving with his left hand. Still, he kept an eye on the speedometer. No need—the fast lane was doing a whopping forty-five miles per hour. Checking the speedometer had already become instinctive, an annoying new habit. Not that he could afford another reason to take his eyes off the road now that he was relegated to using only one hand. He had enough problems without adding another speeding ticket.
    Almost since the moment he drove the torch-red Saab 9-3 off the dealer’s lot, it had attracted police radar as if it contained some secret, invisible force. He wondered if it was punishment for buying what had been a magnificent splurge, so much so that he had added vanity plates that read, “A WHIM,” as if he needed to explain. Would he ever consider this car the well-deserved reward he intended it to be? After six years of playing the starving novelist and living off one credit card advance after another, he was finally reaping the financial awards, the fruits of his labor, so to speak. In other words, the royalty checks for his five novels were finally adding up. This car was supposed to symbolize his success. It was supposed to represent an end to the struggle and a new beginning, a promise of what was yet to come. Maybe all that was too much to ask of a car, any car.
    He checked the rearview mirror. Traffic had slowed enough for him to adjust the canvas shoulder harness that threatened to strangle him and itched like crazy, especially in this sweaty heat. After three long weeks it still bugged the hell out of him. The doctor kept insisting Andrew wouldn’t notice it “after a while.” He was beginning to think his doctor’s measure of “after a while” wasn’t the same as his own.
    Yet it wasn’t the shoulder strap that Andrew wanted to rip from his chest. That hatred he reserved for the blood-sucking contraption that practically glued his arm to his chest. His doctor had also told him that he would learn quickly to make do with his left arm as if his right no longer existed. His doctor obviously had never broken his collarbone or been without use of his dominant hand and arm…hell, practically that entire side of his body.
    It didn’t help matters that this injury—what Andrew wished he could have chalked up to a simple biking accident—had unleashed the reminder that Andrew’s forty-three-year-old body wasn’t what it used to be. It was as if his reward for all the hard work and struggles, for his newly acquired success, was high blood pressure and broken bones. His doctor called it “a wake-up call,” then smiled when he added, “Who knew writing novels could be so stressful, huh?” Andrew shook his head. Maybe he needed a new doctor.
    He glanced at the worn leather briefcase on the passenger seat. It had been with him through the writing of every one of his novels, a gift from Nora back in the days when she