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Officer Montague left, al over the fact that he had been called out on a ridiculoushad started out as a party and turned into a search coo ho in the stables anyway, kid," Justin Binder told her He had played a Yankee, and happily His faave her an affectionate hug "You "

"Me, too," John Ashton said He held her shoulders and kissed her cheek "Charles is just fine I’ht, and they drifted away, so, and some to their cars, parked in the lot out front and down the road

She stood on the porch with Beth and her grand-father She couldn’t tell whether they thought she was being ridiculous or not, they were both so patient

Beth gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, "We still have about sixteen guests, and the household I’ve got to get up early to whip up our spectacular plantation breakfast"

Ashley bid her good-night It was down to her grandfather and herself, and Frazier was going to wait for her to be ready to head off to bed

"So I can feel it, Grampa," she said

He set an arm around her shoulder "You know…I have an old friend I’ve been ood tione, he may be able to help us His na hiinia and DC someti the right investigators for strange situations Then the govern him, and his projects were all kind of coot a special unit now, and he’s got federal power behind hiroup froive hiet someone out here to help by tomorrow And if Charles turns up, no harm done"

She lowered her head Adam Harrison She knew the naina Holloway--it had been all over the media because she was a senator’s wife And she knew, too, that Jake Mallory was part of that unit She ht not be a part of his world, but she hadn’t been able to miss it when she’d seen his na that had been real with Jake, because he had terrified her…because he was certain that he had spoken with her father, after he had died And now…

Now Frazier was going to call Ada over aman because of an equally irrational dream

She looked out on the beautiful expanse of their property The river rolling by The h over the clouds The vaults in the celow of night

Jake, I’; she felt that she really understood the expression I feel it in ht about Charles’s disappearance, and she knew it

It was aled into this eerie and haunting reality, and the collision of tio away

Interlude

He’d known for a long ti hinored it The vision he’d seen of the past hadn’t been real But then he’d known He’d knoho he was, and he’d coo away until he’d done what needed to be done And he’d carefully planned it all out, though things had gone a bit strangely today Didn’t al It didn’t matter at all Because, of course, an actor was just an actor

It was Donegal Plantation itself that needed to repay the old debt That old debt could only be repaid one way

With blood

God bless a crowd There was nothing in the world likelike hundreds of witnesses to pull off an escapade such as he had planned, and to do it perfectly

There had been a horde surrounding thee, exceptionally pretty and with a Massachusetts accent When she spoke, there was an r on the name Linda, and there was no r on the car she had "pahked" down the river road

She had giggled when she spoke to Charles, so it was easy to whisper in the reatest achieve to ed in the action then, it was easy enough to meld into the crowd himself, and to swiftly disappear, and hurry to the river road

And there was Charles

He’d approached Charles with a s as well At least he would go in a state of sheer happiness It ot to die that happy?

Poor, du After the initial whack, he never even felt the prick of the needle

He’d thought it all out, exactly where he’d send Charles, because it all had to be done in plain sight In plain sight, people never really knehat they saw

There were tourists heading to their cars But they’d never notice two fellows in unifor by a car Not at an event like this People liked to dress up

Maybe everyone wanted to be someone else, someone they weren’t