The old man took two steps back, then two more, until he was close to the middle of the one-lane dirt road. There he stood, hands on his hips and a scowl on his face, watching the painters tuck the last of their scaffolding into the rusty bed of an old pickup truck of indeterminable color. The only vehicle in a twenty-mile radius that might have been older than the painters' was his own.

"So, what do you think?" The young woman stood on the bottom step of the front porch, the smile on her face a sure sign that she had a pretty good idea of what her elderly neighbor was thinking.

"Your grandfather be spinning in his grave, right at this very minute, that's what I think." He wagged a gnarled finger at her. "Old Jonathan be spinning out of control right down there where we laid him. Surely he is."

"Now, Mr. Webb" -- Kendra Smith bit back a grin and forced her most earnest expression -- "what is it that you think my grandfather might object to?"

"Well, since you ask, let's start right there with that purple door." The cigar that Oliver Webb held jabbed at the air in the general direction of the house that was the object under discussion.

"It's called aubergine. It means eggplant." She came down off the step to stand next to him.

"Fancy word for purple." He all but spit out the word. "What in the name of the Jersey Devil were you thinking? Painting the house green and the door purple!"

"I was thinking that the house has spent all of its two-hundred-plus years painted white." She tucked an arm through his. "I was thinking it was time for a change."

"Houses supposed to be white, maybe," Oliver Webb said, perhaps with a little less bluster. "If in fact they need to be painted at all."

"I like it, Mr. Webb." Kendra tilted her head as if to study the paint job that had just about all of the 147 residents of Smith's Forge, at the fringe of New Jersey's Pine Barrens, lingering at the counter in MacNamara's General Store for an extra ten or fifteen minutes just to talk about. "I like it a lot."

"Be suiting you, then," he grunted, and she knew he was softening, just as she'd known he would.

"Suits me just fine." She smiled, disarming him.

"Hmmph." Mr. Webb took a puff or two on his cigar. "Well, anyone come looking for you, you won't be hard to find, that's for sure."

He knocked the ash off his cigar and climbed into the cab of his 1976 Chevy pickup. The passenger door no longer opened, and the flatbed was riddled with cancer, but it ran, and as far as seventy-eight-year-old Oliver Webb was concerned, running was all a pickup really had to do.

Still shaking his head, Webb made a U-turn and headed back toward the main road, which lay a mile or two through the pine trees. On his way, no doubt, to MacNamara's, where he'd tell one and all that yes, indeed, Kendra Smith had painted the old Smith house two shades of green and he'd seen with his own eyes that the front door was purple and that was a fact. Kendra shoved her hands into the pockets of her worn jeans and watched the painters clear the last of the paint cans from the foot of the drive, then waved as they crowded into their truck and drove off in a cloud of dust. She took one last leisurely stroll around the side of the house, admiring the way the darker shade of green set off the windows from the pale sage of the clapboard. The afternoon sun sent shadows across the new roof -- now a sturdy gray -- and played up the clean new look of the ancient siding. Pleased more than ever with her decision to have the old house painted, she went up the back steps and opened the door.

During the months since her decision to return to Smith's Forge, to make the old house her own, she'd had the electrical wiring upgraded, the plumbing updated, and the pine floors refinished. She'd also toyed with the idea of central air-conditioning, but resisted rather than disturb the two-hundred-and-forty-year-old joists in the attic. There were some modern amenities that Smith House simply hadn't been built to accommodate.

The brick fireplaces had all been cleaned and relined, the kitchen spruced up just a bit, and she'd even had some insulation tucked into the attic. Bringing the family furniture out of storage where the pieces had languished for years had given her particular satisfaction. Seeing the rooms as they had been when she was a child had brought her the first bit of peace since her mother's death almost four years ago.

When Kendra's ill-fated marriage had fallen apart over the past year, there was no question of where she'd go to lick her wounds. Once having returned to Smith's Forge, she had no desire to leave, and so began the task of renovating the house to conform to her needs, just as her ancestors had done, each in their own time. Now that the last of the work was finished, she was ready, eager, to get back into the mainstream of life. She looked forward to once again feeling that zing when a new case caught her interest, the rush when she'd completed her task. The quiet satisfaction she got when her work helped some poor soul find closure.

She'd made a few phone calls earlier in the week, and late yesterday afternoon, her phone had rung with the request that she take on a job that was right up her alley. A packet of material would arrive within twenty-four hours, she'd been told. Could she begin work immediately?

Could she ever.

She slipped off her sandals and left them to one side of the front door, fighting back a slight twinge of conscience as she turned the lock. There wasn't one resident of Smith's Forge she wouldn't trust with her life, and locking the door felt as if she was locking it against them. To Kendra, that smacked of mistrust. But years working as a sketch artist for various law enforcement agencies had given her an up close and personal view of the darkest side of human nature. Kendra had come to learn the value of taking those few basic steps to keeping all safeguarded and secure.

Step number one was keeping your home under lock and key, a sad but necessary commentary on modern times, even here, where in so many ways time had stood still. On her way out the back, she locked that door as well before slipping the key into her pocket.

The well-seasoned canoe that Kendra had dug out of the barn when she returned to Smith's Forge lay facedown on the ground where she'd left it yesterday at just this time. She flipped it over, then pulled it forward with both hands, dragging it over forty feet of scrubby grass and pale gray sand to the bank of the stream.

Wonder what Oliver will have to say when I paint the barn to match the house, she mused as she slid the canoe into the stream, then waded after it, climbed in, and pushed off in the shallow water.

The stream, at a narrow point behind the Smith property, both widened and deepened gradually as it flowed toward the lake deep in the woods. Miles of tributaries of this river or that snaked through the Pines, sometimes merging before going their separate ways again. There were endless ways of becoming disoriented and lost in any one of them. Once Kendra had known these waterways well. Her father had been raised in this house, had explored these woods and streams in this same canoe, and had shared the beauty and the mystery of the Pine Barrens with his wife and his children. Summer vacations, spring breaks, fall weekends, winter holidays -- at every opportunity, Jeff Smith had brought his family here, to the million acres that made up the Pine Barrens, the landscape that had changed so little since the first Smith had settled there.

While still a child, Kendra had been taught by her father how to find her way around the Pines. Now, as an adult, a novice once again, she had to learn her way alone. Every day she repeated the previous day's run through the waterways, adding another mile or so to her trek, memorizing the natural landmarks. A right at the gnarled old cypress tree would bring her a mile and a half downstream from the next largest tributary of the river. Taking the left where the water forked would lead to the first of the lakes that lay beyond the marsh, one of several lakes that were born years ago when the river was dammed to create cranberry bogs. Once she had know it all as well as she knew the back of her hand. She was determined to learn it all over again, bit by bit, mile by mile.

Kendra reached her goal for the day -- the point where the stream snaked past the old iron forge -- and turned the canoe around to head back. It had been years since that last trip she'd made here with her father and her little brother. Ian had just turned four, and he'd amused himself by trailing his little fingers in the dark, tea-colored water as Kendra had helped paddle. Jeff Smith had been strong then, strong enough to paddle the canoe on his own, though he'd let Kendra lend a hand. Two months later, he was diagnosed with leukemia, and their whole world was turned on end. Seven years later, Ian, too, was gone, lost forever. And then her mother, Elisa . . .

Kendra raised her paddle from the water and drifted for a moment. She'd come back to the Pines hoping to find that something of herself, something of her lost family, had remained here. Working on the house had immersed her in the past, filling the hours with memories that had to be worked through if she was to move on, and God knew the time had come for that. The last few months had taken their toll, but now she'd made her peace and was ready to put the past to rest and to find something meaningful to fill her days. For Kendra, that meant work.

Ten minutes later she saw the scrub pines that marked the edge of the Smith property. Just beyond the curve in the stream would be the clearing where she'd pull the canoe to shore. She slipped out of the small craft and into the water, preparing to drag the canoe up the slight incline, when she saw the figure of a man near the back of her house. Kendra froze, then slunk slowly down behind an outcropping of wild blueberry.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered with sandy hair cut close. He tossed a stick to the very large black dog that bounded across Kendra's backyard as if both dog and yard belonged to him. He wore khakis and a polo shirt of dark suede-blue that Kendra knew was the same color as his eyes.

She crouched in the creek for several minutes watching the man and the dog, hoping he'd leave. She blew out an irritated breath as it occurred to her that he was a man on a mission -- why else would he have made the trip? -- and as such he'd simply wait around until she showed up.

"Oh, hell," she muttered.

And then she splashed loudly to draw his attention, because only a fool would sneak up on the FBI.

"Nice dog," he called to her as she dragged the canoe to the barn and leaned it against the wall.

"Thanks, but she's not mine." Kendra braced herself for the dog's enthusiastic greeting. "She belongs to my neighbor down the road, though she does occasionally forget that, don't you, Lola...?"

"What's her mix?"

"I've heard great Dane and cocker spaniel, though I have some difficulty imagining such a pairing."

Kendra stopped to pet the dog and sighed in resignation. Didn't it just figure that the day Adam Stark pulled into her driveway she'd be wearing old cut-off jeans -- old and wet cut-off jeans -- a shirt tied at the waist, no shoes, and her hair would be a frizzy tangle tied up without thought on the top of her head.

"How've you been, Adam?" She walked toward him with her hands on her hips. Fat lot of good it would do to worry about her appearance now.

"Great." He nodded. "How've you been?"

"Great," she said without much enthusiasm.

"You look . . . great," he said, and her eyes narrowed, thinking he was mocking her. When she realized that he didn't appear to be, she softened.

"Thank you, so do you." She stopped a few feet in front of him. "It seems that life is agreeing with you."

"No complaints."

They stared at each other, former more-than-friends not-quite-lovers, for a long minute.

"When John said he'd have a package delivered, I assumed he meant via some overnight mail service," she said to break the silence.

"Well, I was visiting my father in Pennsylvania when John called yesterday afternoon. He had the file delivered to me at my dad's before dinner last night so that I could look it over before bringing it to you."

"Why?"

"Because he wanted me to go over the case with you."

"I see." She walked to an outside hose and sprayed a thin veil of water over her sandy feet. Lola came closer to investigate, licking at the spray. "John said he's heading a special unit that focuses on serial crimes -- abductions, rapes, murders. . . ." "Right. I guess you discussed all this with him."

"Not to any great extent. He just said he had a case he wanted me to work on for him. He's pretty much a legend, you know, all those high-profile serial killer cases he worked on. So when you have a chance to work with him, you drop what you're doing." She resisted adding, Which in my case was nothing. "By the way, I did some work with one of your colleagues from the Seattle office while I was living in Washington state. Portia Cahill."

Kendra switched feet. Lola's pink tongue followed the spray.

"She's worked with John, too, she said." Kendra looked up at him and added, "She said she knew you."

"Portia and I were at Quantico together" was all Adam said.

Kendra shot him an amused glance that let him know that she knew there had been more to it than that. Having made her point, she continued.

"Anyway, I worked on a few cases with her while I was out there." Kendra turned off the hose and slung it over the water spout in a loose O. "She's working mostly with the terrorist unit now, did you know?"

"I'd heard that." Adam nodded. "Her sister, Miranda, was recently assigned to Mancini's unit."

"Portia said she had a twin sister with the Bureau." Kendra stood about five feet away from him, her hands on her hips, as if waiting. Finally, she said, "These cases, the ones John called about, they started as kidnappings?"

"I think the local agencies held out hope that that was all they were. Until the bodies were found. Three, actually, that we believe to be related."

"John said there'd been two." He had her total attention now, her wayward hair and wet cut-offs forgotten.

"The third body was found this morning. John called again right before I left my dad's."

"Three in how many weeks?"

"The first was found almost a month ago."

"He's been a busy boy," she murmured. "How were they killed?"

"Strangled. The body of the last victim showed evidence that she'd been roughed up a bit more than the first two before strangulation, but there's no question in anyone's mind that it's the same guy."

"Why?"

"Similarities between the victims, the nature of the crimes, the manner in which the bodies were disposed of, in such a way that it was clear the women had served their purpose, were no longer of any value to him. DNA from the first victim matched that found on the second. They haven't had time to finish testing the latest vic yet." He paused, then asked, "Did I mention that all three women had been raped?"

She shook her head no.

"The DNA was run through CODIS," he added, "but there were no hits."

"Which only means he hadn't previously committed a crime that would have put his DNA in the national database."

"True enough. Neither of the first two women had any other injuries, by the way. No excessive bruising, no marks that I could see from the photos, other than the strangulation marks at the neck."

"Interesting."

"Everyone seems to think so. Kathleen Garvey was found outside a little town called Deal, about twenty miles from Lancaster. According to the police report she'd last been seen talking with a man outside the sporting goods store in the center of town. Forty-eight hours later her body was found in the Dumpster behind the shop. An artist was brought in to prepare a sketch of the man she'd been seen with, but it isn't all that great."

"Can we get copies of the statements from the witnesses to see how they described him? And a copy of the sketch?" "I have them."

Kendra glanced at the driveway and the shiny silver Audi sports coupe that sat there, sassy as hell with its top down.

"Not exactly standard issue," she noted.

"I had a lot of road to cover in a short period of time. Standard issue doesn't always cut it. Besides, I was on my own time when I left Virginia on Monday."

Kendra climbed the stairs to the back door, then paused on the top step.

"Get your files and bring them in. Let's see what you have." She stepped into the house, letting the screen door close behind her.

Adam crossed the yard in long strides, opened the trunk, and lifted out his briefcase. Lola, no longer distracted by the hose, followed behind, tail wagging, until a squirrel caught her eye and she took off in the direction of the dirt road.

"This is a really interesting place you have here."

At six feet four inches, Adam had to duck as he passed through the doorway between the back porch and the kitchen.

"Thanks." Kendra watched Adam's eyes gaze upwards as if to assure himself that he could stand up without the top of his head brushing the ceiling. "It was built by my father's family."

"Must have been at least two hundred years ago, judging by the height of the ceilings."

"Very close," she told him, "1768."

"Would it be rude to ask why anyone would have built out here in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, two hundred years ago? What was the attraction?"

Kendra laughed.

"Iron. My great-great-great-grandfather -- there may have been a few more greats in there -- had a forge that used bog iron to make cannon as well as cannonballs, some of which were used, the story goes, by Washington's troops at Valley Forge. Back then, this wasn't the middle of nowhere. Two hundred years ago, Smith's Forge was a town of over five hundred people, though there are fewer than one hundred fifty now. "

"I guess I blinked and missed the town on my way through."

"You didn't have to blink. After the iron industry moved from the area, many of the towns were pretty much deserted. Over the years, the woods took over."

"What happened to all the buildings?"

"Burned, many of them." Kendra took two glasses from a cupboard and a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator. "We have an inordinate number of forest fires in the Pines. It's just a fact of life here. And actually, some of the plant life here depends on it, needs the high heat to germinate. But once the fires start, they're often difficult if not impossible to control."

"What saved this house?"

"As the realtors say, location, location, location. We're on the outer edge of the Pines, and on the opposite side of a large lake from the woods." Ice clunked into the bottoms of both glasses. "We've come close a few times -- that barn out back is actually the third one -- but the house never caught. The one that's there now dates from 1847 or 1857, I forget which. Before the Civil War, I know, because this house used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad. There were a lot of places here in the Pines that served as refuge to the runaway slaves."

She stood at the window and looked outside. "When I was little, I used to stand at my bedroom window at night and think about what it was like to be slipping through those dark, narrow waterways at midnight, holding your breath, your life in the hands of so many strangers."

"You must have had quite an imagination as a child." He smiled at the thought of her in an upstairs window, staring into the night.

"It was well-fueled by my grandparents, I assure you," she said, laughing. "And once my little brother found the tunnel, he'd sneak in there and make all kinds of spooky noises to make us think there were ghosts in the house. So any imagination I had was cultivated by my family."

"There's a tunnel?"

"From the barn into the basement of the house, where there's a hidden room with dirt walls and floor. It's tiny and windowless, as I recall. I never went into the tunnel, myself. Too dark and creepy. Really creepy" -- she hunched her shoulders -- "spiders and mousies and bugs. Yuck."

Kendra poured tea into both glasses, then handed one to Adam. "Other buildings in the area weren't always as lucky as we were. But you can still see remnants of the town proper about a mile or so into the woods on the other side of the lake."

"Only remnants? You make it sound like a ghost town."

"As I said, we get a lot of fires in this area." She leaned back against the counter, sipped at her tea, and tried to decide how she felt about seeing Adam again.

He was leaning against the opposite end of the counter, his long legs stretched out in front of him. She hadn't for a minute forgotten the set of his jaw or the lines that ran along the sides of his mouth, though those, it appeared, had deepened since she'd last seen him. The tiny lines that were just beginning to settle in around his eyes four years ago were deeper now, too, a testimony, perhaps, to the nature of things he'd done and seen since they'd last seen each other.

She raised a hand self-consciously to her own face, wondering how the stresses and strains of the past several years might now be playing out. Was he looking at her and seeing a different woman from the one he'd known back then? How much, she wondered, had they both changed?

Baggage best dealt with at another time, she cautioned herself, and tucked that bit of business aside.

"All right, then." Kendra gestured for him to take a chair at the square enamel-top kitchen table that sat in the middle of the room. "Let's see what you brought me. . . ."

Copyright © 2003 by Marti Robb