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“No.” His tone left no room for doubt. “Never.”

“Then I don’t need hearts and flowers.”

“What about sex?”

“Sex I need.”

Later, they lay together on their sides, spoon-fashion on the wide bed. The cool smooth skin of her bottom was nestled against the fuzzy warmth of his middle. His chin rested on the crown of her head. His arm was around her, his hand possessively covering her breast. Occasionally his thumb drifted across her nipple. Occasionally she raised his hand to her lips and kissed the spot that still bore faint teeth marks where she’d bitten him weeks ago.

She grew drowsy. Then just before falling asleep she spoke his name.

“Hmm?”

“You want to hear something ironic?” He didn’t say anything, but she knew by his stillness that he was listening. “I loved my father. Desperately.”

Softly, into her hair, he whispered, “I know.”

Epilogue

The telephone on Barrie’s desk rang. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes until she was due on the set. Time to take one quick call. It might be Gray. Frequently he called just before airtime to tell her to break a leg—preferably his, as soon as she got home.

Smiling at the possibility, she picked up the phone. “Barrie Travis.”

“Saw you on TV yesterday. Did you color your hair?”

It was Charlene Walters. “I had it highlighted. Do you like it?”

“No. You ought to change it back the way it was.”

Barrie smiled. Charlene was almost as famous as she. Her name had appeared in every story, broadcast or print, about the collapse of the Merritt administration. The prison inmate now considered herself Barrie’s colleague.

“How are you, Charlene?”

“I’ve got gas. They fed us beans at lunch.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Listen, I’m due on the set in—”

“You must be walking on air, on account of what all you started.”

Six months had passed since Becky Sturgis’s resurrection. Trials were pending for Merritt and Armbruster. Prosecutors were still organizing their cases. Defense attorneys were trying to scrape together a defense against overwhelming evidence and witnesses willing to give incriminating testimony in exchange for immunity or leniency.

“I don’t take any pleasure in lives being destroyed,” Barrie said. “Although I hope this will serve to prevent such unconscionable abuse of power in the future.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, people being what they are.”

Barrie glanced at the clock. Three minutes. She placed the phone in the crook of her neck and took a mirror and powder puff from her desk drawer. There’d be no time for makeup. “It’s been great talking to you, Charlene, but—”

“For myself, I wish they’d take the bastards out and hang ’em. After what they did to Becky, they shouldn’t be allowed to go on breathing another day.”

“If they’re convicted, the justice system will punish them appropriately.”

Charlene snorted her contempt of the system. “At least when I told you about Becky, you did something. It took you a while, but you finally got busy.”

“Yes, well—”

“Not like her. She didn’t do a damn thing.”

“Well, she was in prison. As she said, there wasn’t much—”