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  Cam nodded. "Yes." In his mind, he saw Jamie sitting in his pickup truck, tension creating a blue fugue around his body, asking if Cam was indeed Cameron MacDonald, Laird of Carrymuir. He remembered that what he had noticed about Jamie was his height and the MacDonald red hair, plus the three parallel scratches on his left cheek. Cam had seen Jamie that very morning before driving out to Pittsfield for the grand jury hearing, as per the conditions of Jamie's bail. There were no scratches anymore, a full month later; there weren't even faint white lines. Cam thought that Jamie would have welcomed a scar.

  "Chief MacDonald?"

  Cam looked up and realized that the ADA had asked him a question he had missed. "I'm sorry," he said. "Could you repeat that?"

  "I wanted to know about the confession the defendant signed." She waved a paper in her right hand, which Cam recognized as the voluntary confession statement of the Wheelock police.

  He sighed. "I took the defendant into custody and he told me the circumstances leading up to the death of his wife, which involved a long and protracted illness--cancer, in several forms. He also said that his wife had asked him to kill her, although he didn't have any proof."

  Audra smiled, and Cam was amazed at how predatory she could look. He fleetingly thought of Graham MacPhee, and hoped the attorney had been sharpening his pencils. "Did you advise the defendant of his right to counsel?"

  "Of course."

  "Was there any coercion used to get the confession?"

  Cam scowled at her. "That's not a practice at the station."

  "Did the defendant sign a statement to that effect?"

  Cam sat up. "Look, you've got the damn thing in your hand." He stood up, glorying in the fact that Audra Campbell's face turned a deep shade of red. "I've given you all I can. He confessed. Period. And I've got other things to do."

  Audra pinned him with a glare. "Mr. Foreman, could you direct the witness to answer questions only when asked?"

  A short fellow with a nose turned so high Cam could see right up his nostrils smiled apologetically. "Chief MacDonald, please answer only when you're directed to do so."

  Cam sat down and glared at Audra. She tossed him a glance over her shoulder. "No further questions," she said.

  Usually, when Cam yelled at her, it was because Allie was the closest thing to him. In a way, she supposed it was an honor. She knew that he was not truly angry with her--it was a prisoner rubbing him the wrong way, or a case he was working on--he simply felt comfortable enough with her to let down his guard. So it wasn't the things he was saying that morning that had affected her, but the way he looked when he'd said them. He had been staring at Allie as if he really did not like her at all.

  She glanced at her face in the bathroom mirror for another few minutes, searching for something that might justify Cam's change of heart. "You're being stupid," Allie said out loud. "You're reading into this."

  She slipped out of her heavy terry-cloth robe--a navy one embroidered with metallic stars that Cam had given her for her birthday, with a cute note about being able to move the heavens and the earth for him. She did not have much lingerie--the entirety of her collection was courtesy of her bridal shower five years and seven pounds back. But she remembered that the emerald satin robe, which reached to the knee, had once been Cam's favorite. She remembered making love with it spread beneath them, cool and shifting under her skin.

  She hadn't worn her lingerie since her honeymoon--it was sort of pointless to look sexy for the same man who saw you throwing up with the flu and picking up the trash that raccoons had scattered across the front lawn. The satin felt wonderful against her shoulders and back, clinging lightly with static and skimming over her hips. Allie picked up her spray bottle of perfume and put some on her wrists and behind her ears, and as an afterthought, behind her knees. She had always seen women do it in the movies, although she didn't really understand why. What man spent time sniffing around rhere?

  With a sharp tug at the lapels of the robe, she covered her breasts and walked out of the bathroom. Cam was in bed, his legs drawn up, the latest issue of Field and Stream open in front of him. He glanced at her when she stepped into the bedroom, and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger to show he was tired.

  Allie sat down on the edge of the bed. He hadn't spoken to her much, except for the necessities, since he'd stormed out of the house that morning. "Hi," she said.

  Cam couldn't help it; he smiled. "Hi."

  "I don't want to fight."

  Cam looked at her. In the soft light of the reading lamp, Allies eyes were deep and dark, and triangular shadows danced a pattern down the side of her neck and throat. "Neither do I." He reached for her hand, the one that nervously stroked the tie of her robe. Her fingers were strong and curled naturally into his own. "Come here," he said, patting the space beside him.

  In a flash of leg, Allie crawled over his body. She fir herself neatly to him, her face in the curve of his neck, her arm stretched across his middle, one calf slipped between his own. How many times had they lain like this?

  He felt himself stirring, blood rushing heavy into his center. He thought of Allies body, spread in front of him like a banquet, and he grew harder. He wanted her to touch him. Now.

  He wondered how someone so comfortable and familiar could make him as excited as someone mysterious and unknown.

  Cam took Allies hand and settled it over his boxer shorts, sucking in his breath when her fingers slipped through the opening to brush his skin. She moved her hand up and down, alternately stroking and cupping him.

  There was a pattern to their lovemaking. He felt his balls tighten and he rolled to his side, pushing Allie onto her back. He kissed his way up the insides of her thighs, moving her legs onto his shoulders, all the while thinking of unrelated matters--baseball, world news, duty rosters--to keep himself from going over the edge.

  But when he came into her, he ceased thinking. His body reacted by itself, thrusting so hard Allies head knocked against the headboard. He rubbed his cheek against the L of her neck. He spread his hands in her hair and pinned her to the bed.

  He knew she did not feel any pain--no more than he noticed the bites and the scratches on his shoulders and back that Allie tried to soothe, like a mother cat, when it was over. It was always like this, always had been, with Allie. He considered the nights he had spent with Mia, where lovemaking had lasted hours and had been slow and gentle, a series of increasing, rippling shocks.

  Within minutes he could feel the guilt, pressing up around him from the mattress like a featherbed that threatened to swallow him whole. He was guilty of thinking about Mia when he should have been thinking only of Allie; he was guilty of having sex with Allie when he knew he loved Mia; he was guilty of wanting them both.

  "How come it isn't like this in the movies?" Allie murmured, her lips against his throat.

  His arms tightened around her waist. "Like what?"

  He could feel her smile. "Like they're trying to kill each other."

  Cam thought of what he'd felt with Allie in the kitchen that morning. And he wondered if that hadn't been his very motive after all.

  With a flourish, Audra Campbell opened the courthouse door, smiling with confidence at the collection of media representatives waiting for the outcome of the grand jury hearing.

  "Ms. Campbell," a reporter called. "Can you tell us what happened in there?"

  She turned a beaming smile in the direction of the nearest television camera, wondering how many channels she'd be able to videotape that night. "In the case of the State of Massachusetts versus James MacDonald, the grand jury has voted to indict the defendant."

  A voice spiralled up through the crowd. "Was this something you expected?"

  "Naturally," Audra said, "since he's charged with murder." She glanced around at the people gathered before her, hanging on her words and furiously writing them down for posterity in tiny white notepads. "And I'm very confident of a conviction when we go to trial." She waved--a dismissal--a