Page 153 of Kingmakers, Year Three

“I’ll never stop being sorry,” she sobs. “I missed you so much. It almost killed me. If I didn’t have Frances . . .”

She looks across the stretch of field dotted with blue and yellow wildflowers. The little girl is still utterly absorbed in her book, her expression as serious as Dean’s.

“Can I meet her?” Dean asks, quietly.

“Yes,” Rose says. “That’s why I brought her.”

“You weren’t afraid to bring her here?” Dean asks. “You weren’t afraid what I might be like now?”

Rose looks up into Dean’s face, shaking her head.

“I know who you are, Dean. I know you would never hurt us.”

With Rose’s approval, Dean crosses the field and ducks under the low, reedy branches of the willow. He sits down on the blanket next to his little sister. Frances sets down her book and shifts her headphones from ears to shoulders. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can see the identical expressions of concentration on their faces.

Rose takes a tissue out of her purse and tries to clean her face.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I haven’t even said hello.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” I say. “I’m Cat, by the way.”

“Dean told me about you,” Rose says. “He said you were the one who found me.”

I can feel myself blushing.

“Yes, uh, sorry about that . . .” I say, realizing how drastically I breached the privacy of this woman who hid so well for so long.

“I’m grateful that you did,” she says. “I didn’t know that Adrian was gone.”

She looks across the lawn to her daughter. I feel her relief that Frances is safe now, truly safe. And I understand what an impossible choice she had to make.

“You’re right about Dean,” I say. “He’s a good man. The best man. No one loves harder than him.”

“That’s how he was as a boy . . .” Rose says, softly. “He felt things so intensely. I never knew if it would make him, or destroy him.”

Frances is showing Dean a particular passage in her book.

Dean’s silver-blond hair falls down over his left eye, his expression intent. In the gray light, his skin glows pearlescent and his body looks immense and powerful next to the slim girl. I’ve never seen him look more god-like. Yet he’s gentle and careful as he turns the pages of the book.

Rose and I sit side by side, loving him with all our might.

THE SPY

THREE YEARS AGO

Iwake to my mother’s hand clamped over my mouth.

“There’s someone in the house,” she murmurs in my ear.

I slide out from under the light summer sheet, moving silently and listening for whatever sound might have alerted her. I hear nothing at all—not even the whir of a fan, or the mild hum of the appliances down in the kitchen. Glancing at the digital clock on my nightstand, I see only a dark face.

The power’s been cut.

That’s what she heard—not a noise, but the sudden absence of sound as everything in the house shut off.

I’m wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt. It’s been sweltering in Poseidonia, the sea breeze barely managing to cool the villa by midnight. I bend to retrieve my shoes. My mother gives a swift shake of her head.

She’s barefoot beneath her silk pajamas, padding noiselessly toward the window. She checks the garden below, and the deck to the left, without ever bobbing her face into view. Then she motions for me to follow her toward the door, staying against the wall where the boards are less likely to creak. She glides along like a shadow, her dark hair tousled with sleep.

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