“There’s something here that’s giving me a lot of trouble,” he finally said. “Assuming Ramey is neither a fool nor a lunatic, he must realize that you’ll move heaven and earth to find your kid.”

“Which makes it even harder to understand why he’d go off with her.”

“Unless we look at it from another angle, one that isn’t so straightforward.”

“What does that mean?”

“Suppose he has no intention of keeping Livie with him permanently. Suppose he’s just—for want of a better word—borrowed her for a time. Didn’t you tell me he left most of her clothes behind? That could indicate he was planning to return her. Maybe he meant to have her back before you even knew she was gone, before you had any reason to be alarmed.”

“But I have learned she’s missing, and I am alarmed.”

“Yeah, because you came home ahead of schedule. Just when were you supposed to return from Atlanta?”

“The trade show ends late tomorrow. I was to fly out the next morning, Friday, which was a change from my original plan around Sissy Baldwin and her latest house, but that has no bearing here since—”

“Whoa!” Stopping her, Devlin drew her out of the stream of pedestrian traffic and off to one side of the walk. “Now run that by me again. What original plan?”

She explained it to him. “Dream Makers has this client, Sissy Baldwin. She’s a tiresome woman, but she’s good for business.”

“Rich?”

“So rich that she can afford to indulge her hobby. Sissy collects houses, and she hires us to redesign them. Her newest toy is this historic row house in Savannah. When she learned I was going to be in Atlanta for the trade show this week, she invited me to come down to Savannah on Friday. I was supposed to spend the holiday weekend as her guest discussing possibilities for the house.”

“Through the Fourth on Monday?”

“Yes, and then we’d fly back here on Tuesday. But, Devlin, there’s no point in my telling you all this, because I canceled that visit my first morning in Atlanta. With what I was going through about ending my marriage, there was no way I could spend a weekend with Sissy Baldwin.”

“And what about your husband? Did you inform him that you wouldn’t be staying on through Monday?”

“Yes, certainly. I phoned him at his office right after I called Maud at Dream Makers. Well, I didn’t speak to him directly. He was tied up with a client or something. I told his assistant, Bonnie, and she promised to give him the message.”

“What if he somehow didn’t get that message? What if he still thinks you’ll be in Georgia through the Fourth, and he has all that time to use Livie without you being aware that he’s taken her?”

“Use her? Dear God, for what?”

“I don’t know. It’s only a possibility, maybe a wild one. But in my work you examine all the possibilities, because more often than not, one of them turns out to be right.”

Karen felt her insides tighten all over again with fear. “I don’t know how I’m going to stand this,” she said in a small voice. “It just seems to get worse.”

“I can’t promise you it won’t be rough. Just keep hanging on to the thought that she’s going to be safe and that we are going to get her back.”

Did he earnestly believe that? she wondered. Or was it just his professional way of calming a client?

“Come on,” he urged, “let’s keep moving. Even a useless action is better than none.”

She fell in step beside him again. They continued along the river walk, moving in the direction of the lot where they had left his car. As they walked, he reviewed in a speculative murmur what she had told him on the paddle wheel boat about Michael and her.

“Conventional. That’s the word you used about how the two of you got together, isn’t it? Including the way you dated, even your marriage. All very conventional.”

“You make it sound like it was something deliberate.”

“Maybe it was.”

“To what purpose?”

“Conventional lifestyles draw no attention. I mean, the guy even looks bland in that picture I showed you. Good-looking maybe, but bland all the same. Speaking of which, do you have any current photos of him back at the house?”

Karen shook her head, explaining how the few that existed were destroyed. “Yes, I know,” she said. “It was no accident, was it?”

“Probably not. But you are carrying that picture of Livie in your wallet. Let me have it, please.”

She produced the photograph from her purse and handed it to him. He took it without glancing at it. His gaze was busy in another direction, searching the shops they passed. At this season along the popular river walk nearly all of them were open late.

“What are you looking for, Devlin?”

He didn’t answer her until a moment later. “That,” he said, pointing to a convenience store featuring a small office service open twenty-four hours a day.

Standing beside him at the counter inside, after supplying him with a description of Michael’s car, she watched him as he addressed a fax message to his mother at the home office in Chicago.

“Ma will post the particulars, along with Livie’s photo, on the Internet,” he explained. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Though out of necessity he’d been referring to Livie by name since the boat, she noticed that nowhere in his message to his mother did he make any mention of his paternal connection with her. And when the material had been faxed, he returned the photograph to Karen without further comment. And, again, without looking at his daughter’s likeness. Well, he’d warned her, hadn’t he?

Twilight had faded into a balmy summer evening by the time Devlin delivered her to her front door. He had been silent again on the drive back to Summit Avenue. Deciding their next course of action, she hoped. She meant to know just what that was before they parted for the night.

He didn’t reveal it, however, until she faced him on the stoop, asking an anxious, “What now?”

“You get a good night’s sleep.”

“You don’t really suppose that I can possibly—”

“Try,” he urged, “because there’s nothing more we can do until tomorrow.”

“Then what?”

“We go to your bank when it opens in the morning. Providing, that is, you and your husband have any joint accounts that we can examine.”

“We share a checking account.” She understood Devlin’s intention. If Michael had cleaned out that account, it would be a strong indicator that he wasn’t coming back. “There’s also a safe deposit box. It doesn’t contain any valuables like jewelry, just the usual essential documents.”

“Good. What’s inside a deposit box can sometimes tell you more than any account.”

Or what’s not in it, he might have added. But Karen didn’t want to think about that.

“I’ll say good night then,” he said. But he lingered for another moment on the stoop. There was something obviously nagging at him. He finally made up his mind to address it. “Got something to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“Were you in love with him?” he blurted.

The question startled her. Why in the world had he asked it? “I thought so,” she said.

“And what about now?”

“No, but does it matter?”

“I guess not.” He started to leave and then turned back with a husky, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to offer you that safety you were looking for when you turned to Ramey. I’m just not a safe kind of guy.”

Was he warning her about himself? “I’ll remember that,” she called after him as he started down the walk to his car.

“There’s something else I want to ask you to do,” he said over his shoulder. “Try again to reach what’s-her-name, this assistant of Ramey’s. Could be she has the answers.”

“Bonnie Wodeski, and I will.”

She watched him drive off to his hotel, and then she went into the house and rang Bonnie’s apartment. As before, she got nothing but the answering machine. Leaving another message, she went up to her bed.

As she had predicted, sleep was impossible. And not just because she was sick with worry about Livie. The image of Devlin Hawke, with his black hair, blue eyes and killer smile, troubled her thoughts. He was a necessity. She couldn’t find Livie without him. But their essential alliance was as uneasy as the atmosphere before a summer storm, charged with issues and past conflicts as volatile as chain lighting. Karen didn’t know how she was going to survive him.