Birthright

Carlyle’s dead. Simpson and his bitch of a wife are gone. Maybe if I had nothing but time and money I could keep an investigator or a team ofthem working indefinitely to track them down. But I don’t have that luxury.”
    “Whether or not you can look the bastard in the eye, you know who you are. Whatever price he’d pay wouldn’t change what he did to the Cullens, to your parents, to you. What you do now, for them and for yourself, is what counts.”
    Everything he was saying had already played through her head a dozen times. “What am I going to do, Jake? I can’t be Jessica for Suzanne and Jay. I can’t ease the guilt my parents feel for their part in all this. The one thing I felt I could do was get down to the answers, put the person responsible on trial.”
    “What answers do you need?”
    “The same I always need. All of them. How many others are there? Others like me, others like Barbara Halloway? Do I look for them? What do I do if I find them? Do I walk up to someone and turn their life into chaos, the way mine’s been for the last couple months? Or do I walk away, leave it alone. Let the lies stand. Let the dead stay dead.”
    He leaned back against the wall again, picked up his wine. “Since when have we ever let the dead stay dead?”
    “This could be the first.”
    “Why? Because you’re pissed off and depressed? You’ll get over it. Carlyle’s dead. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have the answers. You’re about the best I know at finding answers from the dead. With me being the best, of course.”
    “I’d laugh, but I’m busy being depressed.”
    “You know where he was living. Find out what he was doing there. Who he knew, kept in contact with. How he lived. Explore his stratigraphy and extrapolate your data from the layers.”
    “Do you think I haven’t considered all that?” She rose to set her cello back in its case. “I turned it over in my head and looked at it from every angle after we went back to the dig this afternoon. And none of those angles gives me a reason. Nothing I can think of tells me what good itwould do, for anyone. If I keep at this now, without Carlyle as a focal point—or more, a target—it’s only prolonging the anxiety for my parents, and the unhappiness for the Cullens.”
    “You left yourself out of the equation again.”
    Never missed a trick, she thought. “So, I’d get some personal satisfaction from it. Personal and intellectual satisfaction from finishing the pattern. When I weigh that against everything else, it’s just not heavy enough.”
    She bent over to pick up her wine. “Two people are dead, but I can’t be sure they’re connected to this now. I can’t even be certain Lana’s fire’s a part of it. By all accounts Carlyle was old and sick. He sure as hell didn’t bop up to rural Maryland and kill two people, shoot at you, knock me unconscious and burn down Lana’s office.”
    “Must’ve made a hell of a lot of money selling babies over the years.” Jake studied the wine in his glass. “Enough to hire the kind of people who kill, knock women out and burn down buildings.”
    “You’re just not going to let me off the hook here, are you?”
    “No.”
    “Why?” Torn between frustration and curiosity, she kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Why do you want me obsessing on this?”
    “I don’t. You won’t stop obsessing until you finish it.”
    She kicked him again, for the hell of it, then paced away. “When did you get to know me so well?”
    “I always knew you pretty well. I just didn’t always give what I knew the right priority.”
    “I can’t figure out what you’re looking for. You already know I’ll have sex with you.”
    “Want a surprise?” He picked up the bottle, filled his glass nearly to the rim. And he drank half before he spoke again. “I want you to be happy. I want that more than I realized. Because . . .” He paused, drank deep again. “I love you more than I realized.”
    She felt the shock of it, and the thrill, blast straightthrough her heart and down to her toes. “You need to guzzle wine before you can say that?”
    “Yeah. Give me a break, I’m new at this.”
    She walked back, crouched down so they were level. “Do you mean it?”
    “Yeah, a little wine helps the words slide out. Yes, I mean it.”
    “Why?”
    “I knew you wouldn’t let it be simple. How the hell do I know why? I do, that’s all. Since I do, I want you to be happy. You’re not going to be