In Too Deep

she is still alive, depends on it.”
    “And if she is dead?”
    Isabella’s eyes darkened. “Then I will avenge her.”
    He steepled his fingers, thinking. “What makes you think someone would try to kill her?”
    “Because they don’t want her to expose the conspiracy on her website, of course. But I’m praying that she outwitted them. Grandma is really, really good when it comes to this kind of stuff. With luck, the bastards believe that she’s dead.”
    Wheels within wheels
, Fallon thought. Classic conspiracy theory logic. No context, no hard facts, no problem.
    “Why would they believe she’s dead?” he asked.
    “There’s plenty of documentation confirming her death.” Isabella waved that off. “There was a notice in the local paper. A death certificate was filed. According to the records, Grandma was cremated. It’s all very neat and tidy.”
    “But you’re not buying any of it?”
    “It’s possible that they found her,” Isabella conceded. “But I think there is also a very good chance that she is alive and has gone into hiding. I have no way to contact her. That was part of the plan, you see. She told me that if she ever had to disappear, we had to make it look solid.”
    “But she told you to come to J&J for help?”
    “Yes.” Isabella watched him with a steely determination. “They’re after me, too. I got away once, but I might not be so lucky a second time.”
    Fallon went stone cold. “Someone tried to kill you?”
    “In Phoenix about a month ago. They found me at the department store where I was working. That’s when it hit me.” Isabella broke off. Tears glistened in her eyes.
    “When what hit you?” he prompted.
    “That they might have found her, after all.” Isabella opened her desk drawer, yanked a tissue out of the small box she kept there and wiped her eyes. “I had been telling myself that she was following the emergency plan. Gone into hiding. But if they found me, maybe they found her, too. Maybe she really is dead.”
    Isabella was crying. He had no clue what to do in a situation like this.
    “Isabella,” he said.
    “Sorry,” she said. She sniffed into the tissue. “It’s just that if she really is gone, it’s as if she never even lived. She set things up that way. Her only legacy is her website, and it just sits there online like some kind of virtual tombstone. I can hardly bring myself to look at it.”
    “Isabella,” he said again. And stopped because he could not think of anything else to say.
    “If she’s dead, it’s my fault because I told her about the conspiracy,” Isabella said into the tissue.
    He was on his feet without conscious thought. He rounded his desk, yanking the clean, neatly folded white handkerchief out of his pocket. She took the handkerchief from him, looked at it for a few seconds as if she had never seen one and then she started to cry quietly into it.
    He hauled her gently to her feet, wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, as if he could somehow shield her from the dark fantasy world she had constructed.
    With a small cry, she dropped the damp handkerchief onto the desk, buried her face against the front of his black pullover and sobbed in earnest.
    He stood there with her while the fog off the ocean rolled in, cloaking the town and the office windows, isolating them from the rest of the world.

15
    A fter a while, Isabella stopped crying. She raised her head and gave him a shaky smile.
    “Sorry about that,” she said. “Lately that’s been happening to me without warning. I’m fine one minute and then I think about how she might actually be dead and that maybe I’m just fooling myself and all of a sudden I’m crying.”
    “It’s all right,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He realized that she was trying to step back. Reluctantly he opened his arms and released her.
    She sat down, carefully refolded the damp handkerchief and handed it to him. She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose one last time. She tossed the tissue into the trash basket, drank some tea and composed herself.
    He stood in the center of the office for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next. When nothing helpful came to mind, he went back to his desk, swallowed more coffee and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand.
    “Using your line of logic,” he began.
    She gave him a wan smile. “That’s a polite way of saying you don’t believe me.”
    Out of nowhere anger flashed through him.