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didn’t completely believe them. If anything happened to Bernadette, she’d die!
    The child pulled away and looked into her parent’s worried eyes. “Mommy, I’m all right,” Bernadette assured her. “Really.” She smiled. “I’m going to be a detective one day, working in a big city, and there’s this very handsome man who’s going to marry me. I dreamed it.”
    Sarina’s eyes closed and she shivered. The child could truly see ahead. It was a relief, in a way.
    â€œSo you mustn’t worry,” Bernadette continued. She bit her lower lip. “I’m going to be fine.” She didn’t add that she had worries about her mother that she didn’t dare share. She forced a smile. “Maybe Santa Claus will bring me that microscope anyway,” she added, grinning. “In fact, I’m almost sure he will!”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIt never hurts to ask. Right?”
    Sarina got up, chuckling. “We’ll see. Now, let’s order that pizza!”
    Â 
    C OLBY L ANE went home to his small rented apartment and fixed himself a frozen dinner. He had a sudden urge for pizza and couldn’t understand why.
    He checked his telephone messages while the microwave cooked. There were no messages. He wasn’t surprised. The only people he knew in town were the Hunters. He had no social life to speak of, no close friends except Tate Winthop. Tate was in D.C. now, with Cecily and their son, working for the government again—although not in any dangerous situations. Colby’s father had died two years ago, although he hadn’t known until he’d made a trip to the reservation the year before. He still had cousins there, but they were oddly reluctant to speak of his late father. All they’d told him was that the old man had lived in Tucson until his death. His body had been buried at the old Apache cemetery near his former home in a small, private ceremony. His cousins had been oddly reticent to speak of the ceremony.
    He and his father hadn’t spoken since he married Maureen. The old man hadn’t approved of her, and Colby had overreacted to the criticism. He and his father had never been really close. He’d loved his mother, but she’d died when he was very young and his father had started drinking and become brutal. He blamed the old man for everything. Now that he was older, and had been obsessed with a woman himself, he began to understand his father’s behavior. He wished he’d made an effort to see the old man while there was still time. Now he was alone in the world. No wife, no kids, no parents. He had an uncle in Oklahoma and a cousin or two. He wouldn’t have recognized them if he’d seen them on the street. It was a lonely sort of life.
    When he and Maureen had married, he’d envisioned them being together for life with a houseful of kids. But she didn’t want mixed blood kids. Just as well, he thought bitterly, since he was infertile. He thought about that little girl Bernadette, Sarina’s daughter, who was Hispanic. He wondered who her father was, and how Sarina had managed to conceive a child after the nightmare of pain he’d given her on their wedding night. He’d had a couple of neat whiskies. He’d hoped it would be enough to leave him incapable. It wasn’t. Long afterward, he’d left her in their hotel room, shivering under the covers, and he’d been eloquent about how he felt about the wedding that had been forced on him.
    He’d gotten himself a separate hotel room afterward, ordered a whole fifth of Cutty Sark and finally passed out, dead drunk. He didn’t awaken until the next day, and when he went to look for her with an uneasy conscience, she’d left. A letter had been sent to him the day after the quick wedding by some attorney, with a terse note from her father. Annulment papers would be mailed to him as soon as they