Remember When

and making them right. At least as right as they can be made. But it's not a good fit. He doesn't play well with others."
    She smiled a little as she went back to the salad. "Doesn't he?"
    "Not so much. And all those rules, they start itching. Like a collar that's too tight. He figures out what he really likes to do is look under rocks, but he likes to pick the rocks. To do that, you've got to go private. To do that and live well... I like living well, by the way."
    "Naturally." She poured some wine in with the chicken, lowered the heat, covered the pan.
    "So to live well, you've got to be good at picking those rocks, and finding people who live even better than you to pay you to poke at all the nasty business going on under them." He snitched a chunk of carrot to snack on. "Southern boy moves north, Yankees a lot of time figure he moves slow, thinks slow, acts slow."
    She glanced up from whisking salad dressing ingredients together in a small stainless steel bowl.
    "Their mistakes."
    "Yeah, and my advantage. Anyway, I got interested in computer security-cyber work. Nearly went in that direction, but you don't get out enough. So I just throw that little talent in the mix.
    Reliance liked my work, put me on retainer. We do pretty well by each other all in all."
    "Your talents extend to table setting?"
    "A skill I learned at my mama's knee."
    "Dishes there, flatware there, napkins in that drawer."
    "Check."
    She put water on for the pasta while he went to work. After checking the chicken, adjusting the heat, she picked up her wine again. "Max, I've thought about this a lot today."
    "Figured you would."
    "I believe you'll do right by my father for a couple of reasons. You care about me, and he's not your goal. Recovering the stones is."
    "That's a couple of them."
    "And there's another. You're a good man. Not shiny and bright," she said, when he paused to look at her. "Which would just be irritating to someone like me, because I'd keep seeing my own reflection bounced off someone like that, and I'd always come up short. But a good man, who might bend the truth when it suits, but keeps his word when he gives it. It settles my mind on a lot of levels knowing that."
    "I won't make a promise to you that I can't keep."
    "You see, that's just the right thing to say."
    ***
    While Laine and Max ate pasta in the kitchen, Alex Crew dined on rare steak accompanied by a decent cabernet in the rustic cabin he'd rented in the state park.
    He didn't care for rustic, but he did appreciate the privacy. His rooms at the Wayfarer in Angel's Gap had abruptly become too warm to suit him.
    Maxfield Gannon, he mused, studying Max's investigator's license while he ate. Either a free agent out for a bounty, or a private working for the insurance company. Either way, the man was an irritant.
    Killing him would have been a mistake-though he'd spent a tempting and satisfying moment considering it as he'd stood over the unconscious detective, fuming over the interruption.
    But even a yahoo police force such as those fumbling around that pitiful little town would be riled to action by murder. Better for his purposes if they continued to bumble about giving parking tickets and rousting the local youth.
    Better, he mused as he sipped his wine, and easier by far to have taken the irritant's identification, to have placed an anonymous call. It pleased him to think of this Maxfield Gannon trying to explain to the local law just what he'd been doing inside a closed store at three-thirty in the morning. It should have knotted things up nicely for a space of time. And no doubt it sent a very clear message to Jack O'Hara through his daughter.
    But it was annoying just the same. He hadn't been able to take the time to search the premises, and he'd had to change his accommodations. That was very inconvenient.
    He took out a small leather-bound notebook and made a list of these additional debits. When he caught up with O'Hara-and of course he would-he wanted to be able to detail all these offenses clearly while he tortured the location of the remaining diamonds out of him.
    The way the list was mounting up, he was going to have to hurt O'Hara quite a bit. It was something to look forward to.
    He could add O'Hara's daughter and the PI to his payment-due list as well. It was a bonus, in the grand scheme, for a man who equated inflicting pain with power.
    He'd been quick and merciful with Myers, the greedy and idiotic gem buyer he'd employed as an inside man. But