Avery agonized for days over how to contact Irish.

Once she had reached the soul-searching conclusion that she needed counsel, she was faced with the problem of how to go about informing him that she hadn’t died a fiery death in the crash of Flight 398.

No matter how she went about it, it would be cruel. If she simply appeared on his doorstep, he might not survive the shock. He would think a phone call was a prank because her voice no longer sounded the same. So she settled on sending a note to the post office box where she had mailed her jewelry weeks earlier. Surely he had puzzled over receiving that through the mail without any explanation. Wouldn’t he already suspect that there had been mysterious circumstances surrounding her death?

She deliberated for hours over how to word such an unprecedented letter. There were no guidelines that she knew of, no etiquette to follow when you informed a loved one who believed you to be dead that you were, in fact, alive. Straightforwardness, she finally decided, was the only way to go about it.

She wrote it with her left hand—a luxury these days—so that he would immediately recognize her handwriting, and mailed it without a return address on the envelope.

Tate had barely been civil to her since their argument over breakfast the previous Saturday. She was almost glad. Even though his antipathy wasn’t aimed at her, she bore the brunt of it for her alter ego. Distance made it easier to endure.

She dared not think about how he would react when he discovered the truth. His hatred for Carole would pale against what he would feel for Avery Daniels. The best she could hope for was an opportunity to explain herself. Until then, she could only demonstrate how unselfish her motives were. Early Monday morning, she made an appointment with Dr. Gerald Webster, the famed Houston child psychologist. His calendar was full, but she didn’t take no for an answer. She used Tate’s current celebrity in order to secure an hour of the doctor’s coveted time. For Mandy’s sake, she pulled rank with a clear conscience.

When she informed Tate of the appointment, he nodded brusquely. “I’ll make a note of it on my calendar.” She had made the appointment to coincide with one of the days their campaign would have them in Houston anyway.

Beyond that brief exchange, they’d had little to say to each other. That gave her more time to rehearse what she was going to say when she stood face-to-face with Irish.

However, by Wednesday evening, when she pulled her car to a stop in front of his modest house, she still had no idea what to say to him or even how to begin.

Her heart was in her throat as she went up the walk, especially when she saw movement behind the window blinds. Before she reached the front porch, the door was hauled open. Irish, looking ready to tear her limb from limb with his bare hands, strode out and demanded, “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck is your game?”

Avery didn’t let his ferocity intimidate her. She continued moving forward until she reached him. He was only a shade taller than she. Since she wore high heels, they met eye to eye.

“It’s me, Irish.” She smiled gently. “Let’s go inside.”

At the touch of her hand on his arm, his militancy evaporated. The furious Irishman wilted like the most fragile of flower petals. It was a pathetic sight to see. In a matter of seconds he was transformed from a belligerent pugilist into a confused old man. The icy disclaimer in his blue eyes was suddenly clouded by tears of doubt, dismay, joy.

“Avery? Is it…? How…? Avery?”

“I’ll tell you everything inside.”

She took his arm and turned him around because it seemed he had forgotten how to use his feet and legs. A gentle nudge pushed him over the threshold. She closed the door behind them.

The house, she noted sadly, looked as much a wreck as Irish, whose appearance had shocked her. He’d gained weight around his middle, yet his face was gaunt. His cheeks and chin were loose and flabby. There was a telltale tracery of red capillaries in his nose and across his cheekbones. He’d been drinking heavily.

He had never been a fashion plate, dressing with only decency in mind, but now he looked downright seedy. His dishevelment had gone beyond an endearing personality trait. It was evidence of character degeneration. The last time she’d seen him, his hair had been salt-and-pepper. Now it was almost solid white.

She had done this to him.

“Oh, Irish, Irish, forgive me.” With a sob, she collapsed against him, wrapping her arms around his solid bulk and holding on tight.

“Your face is different.”

“Yes.”

“And your voice is hoarse.”

“I know.”

“I recognized you through your eyes.”

“I’m glad. I didn’t change on the inside.”

“You look good. How are you?” He set her away from him and awkwardly rubbed her arms with his large, rough hands.

“I’m fine. Mended.”

“Where have you been? By the Blessed Virgin, I can’t believe this.”

“Neither can I. God, I’m so glad to see you.”

Clinging to each other again, they wept. At least a thousand times in her life, she had run to Irish for comfort. In her father’s absence, Irish had kissed scraped elbows, repaired broken toys, reviewed report cards, attended dance recitals, chastised, congratulated, commiserated.

This time, Avery felt like the elder. Their roles had been reversed. He was the one who clung tightly and needed nurturing.

Somehow, they stumbled their way to his sofa, though neither remembered later how they got there. When the crying binge subsided, he wiped his wet face with his hands, briskly and impatiently. He was embarrassed now.

“I thought you might be angry,” she said after indelicately blowing her nose into a Kleenex.

“I am—damn angry. If I weren’t so glad to see you, I’d paddle your butt.”

“You only paddled me once—that time I called my mother an ugly name. Afterward, you cried harder and longer than I did.” She touched his cheek. “You’re a softy, Irish McCabe.”

He looked chagrined and irascible. “What happened? Have you had amnesia?”

“No.”

“Then, what?” he asked, studying her face. “I’m not used to you looking like that. You look like—”

“Carole Rutledge.”

“That’s right. Tate Rutledge’s wife—late wife.” A light bulb went on behind his eyes. “She was on that flight, too.”

“Did you identify my body, Irish?”

“Yes. By your locket.”

Avery shook her head. “It was her body you identified. She had my locket.”

Tears formed in his eyes again. “You were burned, but it was your hair, your—”

“We looked enough alike to be mistaken for sisters just minutes before the attempted takeoff.”

“How—”

“Listen and I’ll tell you.” Avery folded her hands around his, a silent request that he stop interrupting. “When I regained consciousness in the hospital, several days after the crash, I was bandaged from head to foot. I couldn’t move. I could barely see out of one eye. I couldn’t speak.

“Everyone was calling me Mrs. Rutledge. At first I thought maybe I did have amnesia because I couldn’t remember being Mrs. Rutledge or Mrs. Anybody. I was confused, in pain, disoriented. Then, when I remembered who I was, I realized what had happened. We’d switched seats, you see.”

She talked him through the agonizing hours she had spent trying to convey to everyone else what only she knew. “The Rutledges retained Dr. Sawyer to redo my face—Carole’s face—using photographs of her. There was no way I could alert them that they were making a mistake.”

He pulled his hands from beneath hers and dragged them down his loose jowls. “I need a drink. Want one?”

He returned to the couch moments later with a tumbler three-quarters full of straight whiskey. Avery said nothing, though she eyed the glass meaningfully. Defiantly, he took a hefty draught.

“Okay, I follow you so far. A gross error was made while you were unable to communicate. Once you were able to communicate, why didn’t you? In other words, why are you still playing Carole Rutledge?”

Avery stood up and began roaming the untidy room, making ineffectual attempts to straighten it while she arranged her thoughts. Convincing Irish that her charade was viable and justified was going to be tricky. His contention had always been that reporters reported the news, they did not make it. Their role was to observe, not participate. That point had been a continual argument between him and Cliff Daniels.

“Somebody plans to kill Tate Rutledge before he becomes a senator.”

Irish hadn’t expected anything like that. His hand was arrested midway between the coffee table and his mouth as he was raising the glass of whiskey. The liquor sloshed over the rim of the tumbler onto his hand. Absently, he wiped it dry on his trousers leg.

“What?”

“Somebody plans—”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, Irish,” she said, raising her voice defensively. “And I don’t know where or when, either, so save your breath and don’t ask. Just hear me out.”

He shook his finger at her. “I may give you that spanking yet for sassing me. Don’t test my patience. You’ve already put me through hell. Pure hell.”

“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic for me, either,” she snapped.

“Which is the only reason I’ve restrained myself this long,” he shouted. “But stop bullshitting me.”

“I’m not!”

“Then, what’s this crap about somebody wanting to kill Rutledge? How the bloody hell do you know?”

His mounting temper was reassuring. This Irish she could deal with much more easily than the woebegone shell he’d been minutes earlier. She’d had years of practice sparring with him. “Somebody told me he was going to kill Tate before he took office.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shit,” he cursed viciously. “Don’t start that again.”

“If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll explain.”

He took another drink, ground his fist into his other palm, and finally relaxed against the back of the sofa, relaying that he was ready to sit still and listen.

“Believing me to be Carole, somebody came to me while I was still in the ICU. I don’t know who it was. I couldn’t see because my eye was bandaged and he was standing beyond my shoulder.” She recounted the incident, repeating the threat verbatim.

“I was terrified. Once I was able to communicate who I really was, I was afraid to. I couldn’t tip my hand without placing my life, and Tate’s, in jeopardy.”

Irish was silent until she had finished. She returned to the sofa and sat down beside him. When he did speak, his voice was skeptical.

“What you’re telling me, then, is that you took Mrs. Rutledge’s place so you could prevent Tate Rutledge from being assassinated.”

“Right.”

“But you don’t know who plans to kill him.”

“Not yet, but Carole did. She was part of it, although I don’t know her relationship with this other person.”

“Hmm.” Irish tugged thoughtfully on the flaccid skin beneath his chin. “This visitor you had—”

“Has to be a member of the family. No one else would have been admitted into the ICU.”

“Someone could have sneaked in.”

“Possibly, but I don’t think so. If Carole had hired an assassin, he would simply have vanished when she became incapacitated. He wouldn’t have come to warn her to keep quiet. Would he?”

“He’s your assassin. You tell me.”

She shot to her feet again. “You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you believe it.”

“But you think it was my imagination.”

“You were drugged and disoriented, Avery,” he said reasonably. “You said so yourself. You were half blind in one eye and—forgive the bad joke—couldn’t see out of the other. You think the person was a man, but it could have been a woman. You think it was a member of the Rutledge family, but it could have been somebody else.”

“What are you getting at, Irish?”

“You probably had a nightmare.”

“I was beginning to think so myself until several days ago.” She took the sheet of paper she’d found in her pillowcase from her purse and handed it to him. He read the typed message.

When his troubled eyes connected with hers, she said, “I found that in my pillowcase. He’s real, all right. He still thinks I’m Carole, his coconspirator. And he still intends to do what they originally planned.”

The note had drastically altered Irish’s opinion. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “This is the first contact he’s had with you since that night in the hospital?”

“Yes.”

He reread the message, then remarked, “It doesn’t say he’s going to kill Tate Rutledge.”

Avery gave him a retiring look. “This has been a well-thought-out assassination attempt. The plans were long-range. He’d hardly risk spelling it out. Naturally, he made the note obscure, just in case it was intercepted. The seemingly innocent words would mean something entirely different to Carole.”

“Who has access to a typewriter?”

“Everybody. There’s one at a desk in the family den. That was the one used. I checked.”

“What does he—or she—mean by ‘Whatever you’re doing’?”

Avery looked away guiltily. “I’m not sure.”

“Avery?”

Her head snapped around. She had never been able to fudge the truth with Irish. He saw through it every time. “I’ve been trying to get along better with Tate than his wife did.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“It was obvious to me from the beginning that there was trouble between them.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“By the way he treats her. Me. He’s polite, but that’s all.”

“Hmm. Do you know why?”

“Carole either had, or was planning to have, an abortion. I only found out about that last week. I’d already discovered that she was a selfish, self-centered woman. She cheated on Tate and was a disaster of a parent to her daughter. Without raising too much suspicion, I’ve been trying to bridge the gap that had come between him and his wife.”

Again Irish asked, “Why?”

“So I’d know more about what is going on. I had to get to the source of their problem before I could begin to find a motive for a killer. Obviously, my attempts to improve their marriage have been noticed. The killer figures that it’s Carole’s new tactic to put Tate off guard.”

She chafed her arms as though suddenly chilled. “He’s real, Irish. I know it. There’s the proof,” she said, nodding down at the note.

Not yet committing himself one way or the other, Irish tossed the sheet of paper down on the coffee table. “Let’s assume there is a killer. Who’s gonna ice him?”

“I have no idea,” she replied with a defeated sigh. “They’re one big, happy family.”

“According to you, somebody out there at the Rocking R ain’t so happy.”

She provided him with a verbal run-down of names and each person’s relationship to Tate. “Each has his ax to grind, but none of those axes has anything to do with Tate. Both his parents dote on him. Nelson’s the undisputed head of the family. He rules, being stern and affectionate by turns.

“Zee isn’t so easy to pigeonhole. She’s a good wife and loving mother. She remains aloof from me. I think she resents Carole for not making Tate happier.”

“What about the others?”

“Carole might have had an affair with Eddy.”

“Eddy Paschal, Rutledge’s campaign manager?”

“And best friend since college. I don’t know for sure. I’m only going by Fancy’s word on that.”

“What a cliché. How does this Paschal character treat you?”

“He’s civil, nothing more. Of course, I haven’t put out the signals Carole did. If they were having an affair, maybe he just assumes it ended with the accident. In any event, he’s dedicated to Tate winning the election.”

“The girl?”

Avery shook her head. “Fancy is a spoiled brat with no more morals than an alley cat in heat. But she’s too flighty to be a killer. Not that she’s above it; she just wouldn’t expend the energy.”

“The brother? Jack, is it?”

“He’s extremely unhappy with his marriage,” she mused, frowning thoughtfully, “but Tate doesn’t figure into that. Although…”

“Although?”

“Jack’s rather pathetic, actually. You think of him as being competent, good-looking, charming, until you see him next to his younger brother. Tate’s the sun. Jack is the moon. He reflects Tate’s light but has none of his own. He works as hard as Eddy on the campaign, but if anything goes wrong, he usually gets blamed for it. I feel sorry for him.”

“Does he feel sorry for himself? Enough to commit fratricide?”

“I’m not sure. He keeps his distance. I’ve caught him watching me and sense a smoldering hostility there. On the surface, however, he seems indifferent.”

“What about his wife?”

“Dorothy Rae might be jealous enough to kill, but she would go after Carole before she would Tate.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I was browsing through family photo albums, trying to glean information. Dorothy came into the living room to get a bottle from the liquor cabinet. She was already drunk. I rarely see her, except at dinner, and then she hardly says anything. That’s why I was so surprised when, out of the blue, she began accusing me of trying to steal Jack. She said I wanted to pick up with him where I’d left off before the crash.”

“Carole was sleeping with her brother-in-law, too?” Irish asked incredulously.

“It seems that way. At least she was trying to.” The notion had distressed Avery very much. She had hoped it was only an alcohol-inspired delusion that Dorothy Rae had drummed up while sequestered in her room with her bottles of vodka. “It’s preposterous,” she said, thinking aloud. “Carole had Tate. What could she possibly have wanted with Jack?”

“There’s no accounting for taste.”

“I guess you’re right.” Avery was so lost in her own musings, she missed his wry inflection. “Anyway, I denied having any designs on Dorothy Rae’s husband. She called me a bitch, a whore, a home wrecker—things like that.”

Irish ran a hand over his burred head. “Carole must have really been something.”

“We don’t know for certain that she wanted either Jack or Eddy.”

“But she must have put out some mighty strong signals if that many people picked up on them.”

“Poor Tate.”

“What does ‘poor Tate’ think of his wife?”

Avery lapsed into deep introspection. “He thinks she aborted his baby. He knows she had other lovers. He knows she was a negligent parent and put emotional scars on his daughter. Hopefully, that can be reversed.”

“You’ve taken on that responsibility, too, haven’t you?”

His critical tone of voice brought her head erect. “What do you mean?”

Leaving her to stew for a moment, Irish disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a fresh drink. Feet spread and firmly planted, he stood before her. “Are you leveling with me about that midnight caller you had in the hospital?”

“How can you even doubt it?”

“I’ll tell you how I can doubt it. You came to me, what was it, almost two years ago, with your tail tucked between your legs, needing a job—any job. You’d just been fired from the network for committing one of the worst faux pas in journalism history.”

“I didn’t come here tonight to be reminded of that.”

“Well, maybe you should be reminded! Because I think that’s what’s behind this whole damned scheme of yours. You plunged in that time over your head, too. Before you got your facts straight, you reported that a junior congressman from Virginia had killed his wife before blowing his own brains out.”

She pressed her fists against her temples as that horrible sequence of events unfolded like a scroll in her memory.

“First reporter on the scene, Avery Daniels,” Irish announced with a flourish, showing her no mercy. “Always hot on the trail of a good story. You smelled fresh blood.”

“That’s right, I did! Literally.” She crossed her arms over her middle. “I saw the bodies, heard those children screaming in terror over what they had discovered when they had come home from school. I saw them weeping over what their father had done.”

“Had allegedly done, dammit. You never learn, Avery. He allegedly killed his wife before blasting his own brains onto the wallpaper.” Irish took a quick drink of whiskey. “But you went live with a report, omitting that technical little legal word, leaving your network vulnerable to a slander suit.

“You lost it on camera, Avery. Objectivity took a flying leap. Tears streamed down your face and then—then—as if all that wasn’t enough, you asked your audience at large how any man, but especially an elected public official, could do such a beastly thing.”

She raised her head and faced him defiantly. “I know what I did, Irish. I don’t need you to remind me of my mistake. I’ve tried to live it down for two years. I was wrong, but I learned from it.”

“Bullshit,” he thundered. “You’re doing the same damn thing all over again. You’re diving in where you have no authority to go. You’re making news, not reporting it. Isn’t this the big break you’ve been waiting for? Isn’t this the story that’s going to put you back on top?”

“All right, yes!” she flung up at him. “That was part of the reason I went into it.”

“That’s been your reason for doing everything you’ve ever done.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re still trying to get your daddy’s attention. You’re trying to fill his shoes, live up to his name, which you feel like you’ve failed to do.” He moved toward her. “Let me tell you something—something you don’t want to hear.” He shook his head and said each word distinctly. “He’s not worth it.”

“Stop there, Irish.”

“He was your father, Avery, but he was my best friend. I knew him longer and a whole lot better than you did. I loved him, but I viewed him with far more objectivity than you or your mother ever could.”

He braced one hand on the arm of the sofa and leaned over her. “Cliff Daniels was a brilliant photographer. In my book, he was the best. I’m not denying his talent with a camera. But he didn’t have a talent for making the people who loved him happy.”

“I was happy. Whenever he was home—”

“Which was a fraction of your childhood—a small fraction. And you were disconsolate every time he waved good-bye. I watched Rosemary endure his long absences. Even when he was home she was miserable, because she knew it would be for only a short time. She spent that time dreading his departure.

“Cliff thrived on the danger. It was his elixir, his life force. To your mother, it was a disease that ate away her youth and vitality. It took his life quickly, mercifully. Her death was agonizing and slow. It took years. Long before the afternoon she swallowed that bottle of pills, she had begun dying.

“So, why does he deserve your blind adoration and dogged determination to live up to his name, Avery? The most valuable prize he ever won wasn’t the fucking Pulitzer. It was your mother, only he was too stupid to realize that.”

“You’re just jealous of him.”

Steadily, Irish held her gaze. “I was jealous of the way Rosemary loved him, yes.”

The starch went out of her then. She groped for his hand, pressed it to her cheek. Tears trickled over the back of it. “I don’t want us to fight, Irish.”

“I’m sorry then, because you’ve got a fight on your hands. I can’t let you continue this.”

“I’ve got to. I’m committed.”

“Until when?”

“Until I know who threatened to kill Tate and can expose him.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know,” she groaned miserably.

“And what if this would-be assassin never goes through with it? Suppose he’s blowing smoke? Will you stay Mrs. Rutledge indefinitely? Or will you simply approach Rutledge one day and say, ‘Oh, by the way’?”

Admitting to him what she had admitted to herself only a few days earlier, she said, “I haven’t figured that out yet. I didn’t leave myself a graceful escape hatch.”

“Rutledge has got to know, Avery.”

“No!” She surged to her feet. “Not yet. I can’t give him up yet. You’ve got to swear you won’t tell him.”

Irish fell back a step, dumbfounded by her violent reaction. “Jesus,” he whispered as the truth dawned on him. “So that’s what this is really about. You want another woman’s husband. Is that why you want to remain Mrs. Rutledge—because Tate Rutledge is good in bed?”