Birthright

not a coincidence. Funny she didn’t mention working at the hospital where Suzanne Cullen’s baby was born. Funny she didn’t mention living in the area when that baby was stolen.”
    Jake set the pot down. “We’ll want to verify it.”
    “Oh, we will. Poffenberger was rambling on about her. ‘Cool,’ she said. ‘Snooty redhead just out of nursing school.’ That bitch was part of it, Jake. Simpson connects to Carlyle, Halloway connects to Simpson, and so to Carlyle. Simpson and Carlyle to my parents. Halloway to Suzanne.”
    “We’ll verify,” he repeated. “Find out where she went to school. Dig the next level.”
    “We sat in their house. We sat in their house and they dripped shock and sympathy, and she served us goddamn lemonade.”
    “We’ll make them pay.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, gently. “I promise you.”
    “I need to go to Virginia, face them with this.”
    “As soon as we get the rest of the data on her, we’ll go. We’ll go together.”
    She lifted a hand, closed it over his. “He held my mother’s hand. He used my father’s grief. I’m going to hurt them.”
    “Damn right. Let me take over there for a while.”
    “No, I can do it. I need to do it,” she said, gripping his hand when she saw the shutter come down over his face. “I need to do it for my parents, for the Cullens. For myself. But I don’t know if I can if you step back.”
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    This time she took his face in her hands. “There are a lot of ways of stepping back from someone. I could never make you understand that. You close up, and I can’t find you.”
    “If I don’t close up, you slice me in two.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never hurt you.”
    “You broke my heart. For Christ’s sake, you broke my goddamn heart.”
    Her hands fell limply to her lap. “I did not. No, I didn’t.”
    “Don’t tell me.” More furious with himself than with her, he spun away, paced to the door. “It’s my heart. I ought to know.”
    “You . . . you left me.”
    “Bullshit.” He whirled back. “That’s bullshit, Callie. You’ve got a damn convenient memory. I’ll tell you exactly what happened—fuck!” He balled his hands into fists as the phone on his desk shrilled.
    He snatched it up. “Graystone.” He’d lifted a hand to rake his fingers through his hair. They froze. And Callie got shakily to her feet as she saw his expression. “Name of God. How? All right. All right. Keep everybody calm. We’re on our way.”
    “What happened?” she demanded. “Who’s hurt?”
    “Bill McDowell. He’s not hurt, Callie. He’s dead.”

Eighteen
    C allie sat on the ground at the edge of the fallow field just beyond the dig. The sky was fierce with stars, each one of them sharply clear, as if they’d been carved with a laser on black glass. And the half-moon was a white globe cleaved with a honed ax.
    The air held the faintest chill when the breeze fluttered. Fall, it seemed, was already moving into the mountains.
    She could hear the whine of insects in the grass, and the occasional throaty bark from the dog across the road as the nighttime activity disturbed his routine.
    Mr. and Mrs. Farmer, as she thought of the dog’s owners, had come out to see what the ruckus was about. Though they’d gone back inside now, the old farmhouse blazed with lights.
    She’d rushed out of the house with Jake minutes after the phone call, with Rosie and Leo right behind them. They’d beaten the police to the scene by ten minutes. But they’d still been too late for Bill McDowell.
    Now she could only watch and wait.
    Sonya sat beside her, weeping pitifully against her own knees.
    Other members of the team sat or stood. The initial chatter born of shock and panic had passed into a kind of dullness that precluded words.
    She could see the lights spearing through the trees where the police worked, and occasionally a voice would catch the air just right and carry over to the field. Every once in a while someone nearby would whisper.
    What’s going to happen?
    Not how could this happen, though that had been the first question. They’d moved beyond that already, into the what now?
    She knew they looked to her for the answer. With Jake in the trailer with Digger, and Leo over by the woods with some of the police, she was the only one in authority.
    But it was just one more answer she didn’t have.
    “I don’t think I can take it. I don’t think I can stand