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smiled.
    Grace took one shuddering breath, exhaled it slowly. “Well,” she said in a clear, steady voice, “it’s gratifying to know someone would weep copiously over me.”
    Both women whirled. For a moment, all three stared, three pair of eyes brimming over. To Seth’smind, they all moved as once, as a unit, so that their leaping rush across the room to each other held an uncanny and undeniably feminine grace. Then they were fused together, voices and tears mixing.
    A triangle, he thought, frowning. With three points that made a whole. Like the golden triangle that held three priceless and powerful stones.
    â€œI think they could use a little time,” Cade said quietly, and gestured to the other man. “Lieutenant?” He motioned down the hall, lifting his brows when Seth hesitated. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere just now.”
    With a barely perceptible shrug, Seth stepped back. He could give them twenty minutes. “I need your phone.”
    â€œThere’s one in the kitchen. Want a beer, Jack?”
    The third man grinned. “You’re playing my song.”
    Â 
    â€œAmnesia,” Grace said a little time later. She and Bailey were huddled together on the sofa, with M.J. sitting on the floor at their feet. “Everything just blanked?”
    â€œEverything.” Bailey kept her hold on Grace’s hand tight, afraid to break the link. “I woke up in this horrible little hotel room with no memory,over a million in cash, and the diamond. I picked Cade’s name out of the phone book. Parris.” She smiled a little. “Funny, isn’t it?”
    â€œI’m going to get you to France yet,” Grace promised.
    â€œHe helped me through everything.” The warmth in her tone had Grace sharing a quick look with M.J. This was something to be discussed in detail later. “I started to remember, piece by piece. You and M.J., just flashes. I could see your faces, even hear your voices, but nothing fit. He’s the one who narrowed it down to Salvini’s, and when he took me there… He broke in.”
    â€œShortly before we did,” M.J. added. “Jack could tell the rear locks had been picked.”
    â€œWe got inside,” Bailey continued, and her tear-ravaged eyes went glassy. “And I remembered, I remembered it all then, how Thomas and Timothy were planning to steal the stones, copy them. How I’d shipped one off to each of you to keep it from happening. Stupid, so stupid.”
    â€œNo, it wasn’t.” Grace slid an arm around Bailey’s shoulders. “It makes perfect sense to me. You didn’t have time for anything else.”
    â€œI should have called the police, but I was so sure I could turn things around. I was going into Thomas’s office to have a showdown, tell them it was over. And I saw…” She trembled again. “Thefight. Horrible. The lightning flashing through the windows, their faces. Then Timothy grabbed the letter opener, the knife. The power went out, but the lightning kept flashing, and I could see what he was doing…to Thomas. All the blood.”
    â€œDon’t,” M.J. murmured, rubbing a comforting hand on Bailey’s knee. “Don’t go back there.”
    â€œNo.” Bailey shook her head. “I have to. He saw me, Grace. He would have killed me. He came after me. I had grabbed the bag with their deposit money, and I ran through the dark. And I hid down under the stairs. In this little cave under the stairs. But I could see him hunting for me, blood all over his hands. I still don’t remember how I got out, got to that room.”
    Grace couldn’t bear to imagine it—her quiet, serious-minded friend, pursued by a murderer. “The important thing is that you did get away, and you’re safe.” Grace looked down at M.J. “We all are.” She tried a bolstering grin. “And how did you spend