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pregnancy because I hadn’t stood by you the way you needed.”
    “You—” She had to swallow the hot ball in her throat. “You wanted the baby?”
    “I didn’t know.” Even now he didn’t know. “But I’ve never regretted anything more in my life than not holding on to you that day on the beach. Then everything drifted, almost like it never happened.”
    “It hurt me. I had to get over it. Over you.”
    Slowly, he pulled the window down again. “Did you?”
    “I made a life for myself. A lousy marriage, an ugly divorce.”
    “That’s not an answer.”
    When he turned back, his eyes very blue and level on hers, she shook her head. “It’s not a fair question just now. I’m not going to start something with you that’s based on what was.”
    “Then maybe we’d better take a look at where we are, and start from there.”

twenty-one
    M iranda went back to work on the computer, revising charts, making new ones. It kept her mind occupied, except for the times she caught herself looking out the window, willing Andrew’s car to come up the hill.
    Ryan had settled in the bedroom with his cell phone. She imagined he didn’t want several of the calls he was making to pop up on her records. That was something she wasn’t going to worry about.
    He’d given her a whole new line of worry. If he was right, the quick and rough daylight robbery hadn’t simply been a matter of chance, hadn’t been some itinerant thief looking for fast cash. It had been a well-planned, carefully orchestrated part of the whole. She’d been a specific target, the motive behind it nothing more than delaying her trip to Italy and her work on the bronze.
    Whoever had stolen it, copied it, had already decided to discredit her. Had that been personal, or the luck of the draw? she wondered. She believed, as she had few genuine friends, she had few genuine enemies. She’d simply avoided becoming close enough to anyone to create them.

    But the messages coming over her fax were very personal.
    The attack had been personal, she thought, designed to terrify. The silence, the little nick at the throat with the knife. Had that all been routine for the attacker, or had he been given instructions to leave his victim frozen in shock and fear?
    It had cost her a large slice of her confidence, her sense of safety, certainly her dignity. And it had delayed her trip by almost a week. The delay had put her at odds with her mother before the project even began.
    Layers, she mused, very cleverly applied layers that coated the core. Yet it hadn’t begun with the attack, but with the forgery and theft of the David.
    What had been going on in her life then? What was she missing that tied the one to the other?
    She’d been working on her doctorate, she remembered. Splitting her time between the Institute, her studies, her thesis. Her social life, never a glitter ball of events, had been nil.
    What had been going on around her? That, she realized, was harder to pin down. Paying attention to the people around her wasn’t her strong suit. That was something she intended to change.
    For now, she closed her eyes and tried to bring the time span, and the people in it, into focus.
    Elise and Andrew had been married, and still by all appearances deeply in love. She could remember no fights or squabbles. Andrew’s drinking had been routine, but nothing she’d worried about.
    Then again, she’d done her best to give him and Elise as much privacy as possible.
    Giovanni and Lori had entertained each other with a brisk, friendly affair. She’d known they were sleeping together, but since it hadn’t interfered with the quality or quantity of their work, Miranda had kept out of that as well.
    Her mother had come into the Institute briefly. A day or two, Miranda thought now. No longer. They’d had a handful of meetings, one stiff family dinner, and had parted ways.
    Her father had stayed only long enough to see the bronze through initial testing. He’d only sat in on a portion of the meetings and had made some excuse to avoid attending the family meal.
    Vincente and his wife had come in her father’s place, but even their vivid personalities hadn’t brightened the event. If memory served, Gina had come into the lab only once.
    Richard Hawthorne she remembered only as a vague presence buried in books or hunched over a computer.
    John Carter had been a constant presence, overseeing projects, worrying over reports. Miranda rubbed her temples as she