Remember When

that's the best I can do and scoop Laine up, tuck her away in Savannah. Of course, he'd have to sedate her, hog-tie her and keep her in a locked room, but he'd do it if he believed it would take her out of the mix and keep her safe.
    But since he didn't think either of them would be very happy with her drugged, tied up and locked away for the next several years, it didn't seem like the way to go.
    Crew would just wait, bide his time and come after her when he chose.
    Best if Crew made the move while he was on their ground, with them both on full alert.
    Because she had to know. Two things Laine wasn't, were slow and stupid. So she knew a man didn't steal millions, kill for it, then count his losses cheerfully and walk away from half that pie.
    It wasn't just a case with the fun and challenge of the investigation, and a fat fee at the end of it, any longer. It was their lives now. To secure their future, he'd do whatever it took.
    He scanned his notes again, stopped and nearly kicked back in the delicate chair before he remembered it wasn't suited to the move. He hunched forward instead, tapping his fingers along his own printout.
    Alex Crew married Judith P. Fines on May 20, 1994. Marriage license registered New York City.
    One child, male, Westley Fines Crew, born Mount Sinai Hospital, September 13, 1996.
    Subject filed for divorce; divorce granted by New York courts, January 28, 1999.
    Judith Fines Crew relocated, with son, to Connecticut in November 1998. Subsequently left that location. Current whereabouts unknown.
    "Well, we can fix that," Max muttered.
    He hadn't pursued that avenue very far. His initial canvass of Judith's neighbors, associates, family had netted him little, and nothing to indicate she'd continued contact with Crew.
    He flipped through more notes, found his write-up on Judith Crew nee Fines. She was twenty-seven when they married. Employed as manager of a Soho art gallery. No criminal record.
    Upper-middle-class upbringing, solid education and very attractive, Max noted as he looked over the newspaper photo he'd copied during his run of her.
    She had a sister, two years younger, and neither she nor the parents had been very forthcoming, nor very interested in passing on information. Judith had cut herself off from her family, her friends. And vanished sometime in the summer of 2000 with her young son.
    Wouldn't Crew keep tabs on them? Max wondered. Wouldn't a man who took such pride, had such an ego, want to see some reflection of self, some hint of his own immortality in a son?
    Maybe he wasn't particularly interested in maintaining a relationship with the ex, or with a small boy who'd make demands. But he'd keep tabs, you bet your ass. Because one day that boy would grow up, and a man wanted to pass on his legacy to his blood.
    "All right, Judy and little Wes." Max wiggled his fingers like a pianist about to arpeggiate. "Let's see where you got to." He played those fingers over the keyboard and started the search.
    ***
    Walking voluntarily into a police station went against the grain. Jack didn't have anything against cops. They were only doing what they were paid to do, but since they were paid to round up people just like him and put them in small, barred rooms, they were a species he preferred to avoid.
    Still, there were times even the criminal needed a cop.
    Besides, if he couldn't outwit the locals and wheedle what he needed to know out of some hayseed badge in a little backwater town, he might as well give it up and get a straight job.
    He'd waited until the evening shift. Logically, anyone left in charge after seven was bound to be closer to the bottom of the police feeding chain.
    He'd shoplifted his wardrobe from the mall outside of town with an eye to the personality he wanted to convey. Jack was a firm believer in the clothes making the man whatever the man might elect to be.
    The pin-striped suit was off the rack, and he'd had to run up the hem of the pants himself, but it wasn't a bad fit. The clown-red bow tie added just the right touch, hinting at harmless.
    He'd lifted the rimless glasses from a Wal-Mart, and wasn't quite ready to admit they actually sharpened his vision. In his opinion, he was entirely too young and virile to need glasses.
    But the look of them finished off the intellectual-heading-toward-nerd image he wanted to project.
    He had a brown leather briefcase, which he'd taken the time to bang up so it wouldn't look new, and he'd filled it as meticulously as a