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  She’d been so careful whenever he was in the house, always taking her purse with her if she went into another room, or locking it in the trunk of the car if she’d known ahead of time that he was coming over. But what if she hadn’t known he was there? What if he’d lurked outside, waited until she was in the shower or even in bed asleep, then quietly slipped the lock and let himself in? She could easily see him doing that. In hindsight she realized she should have installed an alarm, but she hadn’t wanted to spend any money on a place where she wasn’t going to be living much longer, and she’d let it slide. She was still in the habit of avoiding relatively small expenses, because they were outside her experience, and now it had cost her big time.

  When she got home she took out her checkbook and carefully went through it, looking at the numbers to make sure none were missing. The books each had twenty-five checks in them, and she kept only one book at a time; the others were in the safe deposit box. She knew what checks she’d written, because she kept a careful record. The blank check on top was the next one in sequence. They were all there … except for the very last one in the book.

  She looked up the last time she’d balanced the account, and carefully began subtracting the amount of each check she’d written. The total was more than she’d thought. She’d had a balance of twenty-seven thousand, four hundred three dollars and twenty-two cents. Jerry had even taken the four hundred. Heck, he’d evidently even done the math himself, to see how much he could write the check to himself for. If he hadn’t, if he’d left her a few hundred, it might have taken her days longer to realize what he’d done.

  And this was it. He’d finally done it, finally gone past her limit. This was turning out to be a hell of a day. First Michelle, and now Jerry, though actually Jerry had made his move first, even though she’d just found out about it. She hadn’t seen him since Wednesday. Two days, then. He’d have left immediately because he wouldn’t be certain she wouldn’t turn him over to the cops for forgery.

  She wouldn’t. Let him have the money. Let this mark the complete end. She’d been waiting for this moment from the second she realized she’d won the lottery, wondering how much it would cost her, and now she knew: twenty-seven thousand, four hundred dollars.

  She sat in the silent duplex, feeling exhausted and empty, and suddenly she had a moment of clarity. She’d known all along that winning the lottery would change her life, known that some of the changes would be jarring, but she hadn’t expected how complete the change would be.

  Part Two

  BAD LUCK

  Chapter Six

  Seven years later

  “WE HAVE A SITUATION DEVELOPING,” THE FAMILIAR voice said on Cael Traylor’s secure, encrypted cell phone.

  Cael could put both a name and a face to the voice, because he’d made a point of being able to do so. Finding out what he wanted to know had required a cross-country drive, but driving had kept him off the radar, which he wouldn’t have been if he’d flown. Any time his name showed up on a passenger list, certain elements of the U.S. government learned of it. Not Homeland Security, not the State Department, but certain people who handled black ops, such as the man who was currently talking to him on his phone.

  “Details,” he said briefly, turning off the television and wheeling away from his computer so he could concentrate. He didn’t take notes; a paper trail could come back to bite him on the ass. He did take precautions to make certain he was never hung out to dry, but notes weren’t part of his routine.

  “We’ve picked up some transmissions from the North Koreans that make us suspect they’ve established a source for some technology we’d rather they not have.”

  Cael didn’t ask what that technology was—not yet, anyway. At this point he didn’t need to know. If at some point he decided he did need to know, then he wouldn’t proceed without that information. “Who’s the source?”

  “Frank Larkin.”

  Cael’s interest level shot up several degrees. Larkin was a multimillionaire who was one of the behind-the-scene powers in Washington, D.C., with a lot of friends and contacts in high places. He had jumped on the green bandwagon with so-called environmentally friendly businesses and products that were questionable at best, and were probably outright cons. Cael didn’t get emotionally involved in causes, but in his opinion it took a particularly sleazy type of bastard to take advantage of people who were trying to do something good.

  “He pulls a lot of juice” was all he said, his tone neutral. Because of Larkin’s connections, anything they got on him would have to be ironclad—and even then there was no guarantee that anything would ever be done. On the other hand, in a lot of these cases no formal charges were ever brought. The “problem” was taken care of, and would look like a heart attack or a stroke, at least on paper, while the bullet hole in the back of the head would somehow escape the medical examiner’s notice.

  Cael had done his share of wet work, but that was for another country, in another decade. His true specialty was surveillance, so what he was being called on to do was get the goods on Larkin, not take him out.

  “Specifics,” he said.

  “Larkin is one of a consortium that’s expanding into luxury ship cruises. The first ship, the Silver Mist, is scheduled to go into service very shortly. Before that, however, her maiden voyage will be a special two-week charity cruise to Hawaii. The passengers will all be the super-elite, all the proceeds from the cruise will be donated to charity, and there’s a huge public relations push going on. Larkin will be the host of the cruise. We think he’ll be meeting with the North Koreans while he’s in Hawaii, but the place and time won’t be set until shortly beforehand. We need to know when and where.”

  Cael mulled that information over. The computer age had changed espionage; actual prototypes or products didn’t have to be stolen. Instead, the specs could be transmitted in the blink of an eye, and the receiving country or agency could proceed from there. The North Koreans were famously paranoid; a face-to-face meet, especially on foreign soil, posed far more risk to them than a simple file transmission.

  “Something’s off,” he said. “Why would the Koreans agree to that? Why the need for a face-to-face meet?”

  “We don’t know. There may be something else going on that we haven’t unraveled yet. What we do know is enough.”

  Cael gave a mental shrug. In the end, it didn’t matter why the Koreans would agree to such a risky move, just that they had. “When’s the cruise?”

  “Two weeks.”

  Not much time then. “Can you get me and my people booked? We’ll need the suite next to Larkin’s.”

  “How many rooms do you need?”

  “Two,” he replied. He and Tiffany would take one room, Ryan and Faith the other. In fact, the best arrangement would be Ryan and Faith in the suite adjoining Larkin’s. This cruise was just the type of thing they would do, so their presence wouldn’t be in any way remarkable. “And I’ll need two people embedded in the ship’s crew.”

  “Names.”

  He provided them, his thoughts already moving ahead. He would also need someone on the security staff, and putting one of his people there at this late date was probably impossible. Therefore, he needed to buy someone who was already on staff. He relayed that requirement, too.

  “I’ll have everything set up. Get your people ready.”

  They both hung up. Cael left his chair to get more coffee. He’d been awake and at the computer for more than an hour, but it was barely five o’clock in the morning, California time, too early to call any of his people and put them on alert. Instead, he took his cup out onto the porch and sat in one of the comfortable rocking chairs, stretching his long legs out to prop them on top of the porch railing. Dawn hadn’t yet rolled across the mountains to the east of him, but the birds and insects were producing an anticipatory symphony. He listened to them, enjoying the songs and solitude, the soft feel of the early-morning air on his bare chest.

  His house was the only one