He waited for what felt like a whole night, staring into the pale outline of her face. Two glints of eyes, white specks in the dark staring back at him. He’d taken a chance on that shape, on those eyes. An even bigger chance on something inside her, what he’d hoped was a soul that matched the goodness and beauty of its outer shell. For this reason, he’d even entertained the idea of risking his career and personal reputation on protecting Lea. They were blood, the same DNA. And while they might have different careers and life paths, there must have been that same cosmic goodness in both siblings. Ethan had once before called it fairy dust, some absurd ethereal connection. A blind trust in the goodness of not only Kalani—which came easily—but the pair of them.

But there was something disturbing about the recent cloudiness that had come over the sisters, blotting out the normally shimmering fairy dust. Blotting across Kalani’s face when she’d talk about Lea, when trying to hide the obvious buildup of fears, and of growing suspicions about Lea’s lingering involvement in her Blackwater past. It was funny, or horrifying, that just when Ethan felt ready to trust Lea, he’d get this glimpse. The way Kalani was looking at him in the dark.

“I messed up,” Ethan said. “Didn’t I?”

Still a silent, unmoving shape. He felt the beginning edges of terror. Just how big did he screw up? One sister, or two?

Finally, Kalani said, “I never told you to do anything like that, to start . . . taking risks for her.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I’m with you, Ethan. Of course I’m with you.” She grabbed the sides of his arms, little clutching hands tying to pry him into her.

But Ethan’s resistance came to a very sharp point. A question. “Why didn’t you tell me if you were having these kinds of doubts about her?”

“Because she’s my sister.”

“So?” Ethan said, knowing that such a reason could only work to a point. Knowing that there had to have been a cutoff. “So if your sister goes and . . . if she goes and kidnaps—”

“No, no,” she said, cutting him off. “But if I start suspecting something, I really have to . . . I have to know I’m right. It’s taken me a lot just to get to this place where I’m even questioning her. If I had some solid evidence, of course you’d know about it.”

Her hands still held on to him. He believed her. It was that simple. It was her touch, her energy. It was her, in him.

“She and I have gotten close again,” Kalani said. “Even through all the fighting and everything. That doesn’t matter. The fighting almost makes us closer. But we’ve reconnected after all these years, and finally I want to start calling her, you know, to really start calling her my sister.” She sniffled, wiping a tear as it dripped down the side of her nose. “And now I start feeling like this. I . . . I don’t understand it. I don’t know what to do . . . Right now it’s still so . . . up in the air.”

Now it was his turn to hold on to Kalani tighter. “Maybe we can solve some of the mysteries, then.”

She shrugged and made a sort of groaning sound.

“You’re afraid to,” Ethan said.

“Yeah, but we have to. There’s no choice but to find out some horrible truth about her.”

“It might be horrible,” Ethan said. “It might not be anything.”

She had let go of his arms and had begun pacing gently. Kalani took a big sigh and said, “You know what I don’t get?”

“What? How I can trust you so pathetically fast?”

“Pathetic?”

“Never mind,” Ethan said. “Keep going.”

“What I don’t understand,” Kalani said, “is where all the bugs went. Have you noticed?”

Ethan laughed. It was sort of a relief. He said, “The wind.” He felt it, thank God, brushing by his face. He could hear it in the trees. If it had been a little brighter, or if the moon hadn’t been hidden by a mix of clouds and branches, then he’d perhaps see how it played with her hair. That was one thing he’d wanted to see, one thing he really missed from Hawaii. The sea-salted breeze combing her hair.

“Shall we continue?” Kalani said.

“We shall.”

They started walking again.

“Do we know what we’re looking for?”

“Not exactly . . . But I think we’ll know it when we see it.” His mind went back to Tucker’s photos. Tucker had seen something, and he’d known enough to record it for posterity, a documentation. Potential evidence. Ethan knew, too, perhaps, that Tucker’s photo could have been meant as a type of communication in case he wasn’t able, or around, or alive. Ethan thought again how he’d found the camera . . . with the messy and uncharacteristically rushed packing job, the dirty clothes, the bag that might have been handled by someone else. The quick fumbling hands of some hired goon who could have easily missed that one curiously lumpy pants pocket.

“So, how far will you take this?” Kalani said, “Without telling your guys?”

“I guess that depends how far Lea took things,” Ethan said, suddenly feeling a little badly. He eased up and augmented it off with, “If she took it anywhere at all.”

“Well, she took it far enough to meet someone out in the woods.”

“But like you said, it could also have just been . . .”

“Also what, Ethan? I’d love to know what you’re implying.”

“Well, it could have been,” he said, chuckling, “a booty call?” He snickered again. He couldn’t help it. He was also a little glad for the levity.

“She could also have never really left the captain,” Kalani said, her voice remaining hard and straight. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s what we’re all afraid of, I’m sure. They were in love, you know.”

“You think it was the captain in the photo?”

“I have no idea who that could be. And isn’t he locked up somewhere?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “Well, the closest thing to it.”

“She and the captain, though. I think, for as sick as he seems, and as sick as they are together . . . I think she thinks there’s something real there.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “Or at least, I heard. I just have a hard time believing anyone can be in love with someone like that.”

“No one’s saying you have to believe in their love.”

“Well, I believe in love itself,” Ethan said, already aware of how corny it sounded. And so another augment, “And I know it can make you do some pretty crazy stuff.”

“Crazy like help a guy like Tucker get kidnapped? Someone’s partner?”

“He’s all of our partners,” Ethan said.

“I meant Macy.”

Macy was the woman Tucker had rescued from Africa. She’d been practically smuggled aboard a container ship to flee killers that had been contracted by her own government. And once in her country, after what seemed to be a ceremonious landing, she’d realized there was an even older enemy, all starting from the captain’s associate, a corrupt St. Louis police chief. A shared enemy. Perhaps Tucker’s abduction was payback.

Or a random crime.

Or nothing.

Or a sign of what was to come for Ethan, if he kept nosing around in the West Virginia woods.

“It’s right here,” Kalani said. “Stop.”

They turned to look at each other, Ethan trying to follow where her glance slipped off to. Where in the darkened woods she’d been looking. Where she found her landmark. The vegetation there, at least on the ground, was low. Open dirt, mostly, dotted with tall, slender trees. She made her way over to an outcropping of rocks. They gleamed soft white. Her shape moved across them. He heard her hands on the rock.

“Do you remember the rocks?” she asked him.

“No. What’s with the rocks?”

She moved off them.

“So why do you think they were standing here?”

“Should we use your flashlight?” she said. “I want to look around the ground here.”

Ethan turned it on its lowest setting. A soft red glow. He held it close to the ground so as to not attract too much attention. Combing the ground just a few feet off the dirt, moving in a slow circle around where Kalani had pointed. Where she thought the infamous couple had been standing. He chuckled a bit, and when Kalani asked him about it, he said, “Maybe we should get some Luminol.”

“What? Why?”

“You know, what they use in crime scenes. Check for bodily fluids.”

“You think this was a crime scene?” she said.

“Never mind.” He kept gliding his light over the dirt. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up. No bullet casings. No condom wrappers.

“Bodily fluids?” Kalani said again.

“You know what I mean,” Ethan said, laughing.

“I wish I didn’t . . . No, keep looking.”

Ethan had clicked off the light.

“Keep looking,” she said. “I know for sure they were right here.”

“How do you know that?”

“A hunch,” she said. “A sisterly hunch.”

He clicked the light back on, and was mildly excited for a half second when he came across a tree root, then a leaf. But he wasn’t expecting much. “So what else is around here? Where else does the path go?”

“There’s a swimming hole, and . . . I don’t know where the other fork goes. I’ve never gone that way. It goes through the woods.”

In the back of his mind, Ethan heard a little voice say, “Absolutely not, will you go down that path tonight alone with Kalani.”

“Ethan?” she said, her voice almost wavering.

“Yes?”

“Will you tell her? Lea? That you saw her picture?”

He thought for a minute, mainly about how he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Maybe. It depends what we find out here,” he said. “Or don’t find.”

So far it had been a big fat nothing. And he was a little glad of that. Sure, he wasn’t expecting a folded-up scrap of paper with the enemy’s handwritten plans, but even just the presence of some inconspicuous piece of trash could set off any number of crazy conspiracy theories. The house was awash with enough of them as it was, especially since the discovery of the equipment. Recording equipment sending audio to an unknown source. The guys back at the house exported that work, passing it on to Tansy and company back at the headquarters. But no one knew about the latest work going on the darkened woods. They would have to know. And soon.

“There’s nothing here,” Ethan said, turning off the light and holding it down by his side. Kalani didn’t say anything in response, especially after he walked away to search the surrounding area. He was looking for any hints of a path, any places where the traffic had filtered to. Lea and the man must have had a reason to be out there, aside from being alone. They could have been alone about ten minutes back on the path. But there was something at that spot worth traveling to.

What else was worth traveling to tonight?

Again, the conflicts began to arise, the urge in him to want to take on a new mission with Kalani. A not-so-helpful mission perhaps, but something he could at least try to blend into the overall theme. That was, he could admit, partly what he was doing there that night.

“Should we move on?” he said.

She walked back over to him, her arms swinging at her sides as she walked. A youthful playfulness about her. Surprising given the circumstances . . . What was the little pixie thinking about? What activity?

Get going, he thought. But not down that forest path.

So, where else?

Finally, she said, “Maybe just a little bit? You might as well get a little tour out of this.”

His mind was on more serious matters than tours and not-so-random playfulness. But as they walked together down the path, she rested her head against the side of his shoulder. Her hand reached around to pull his side. A tour. He thought the concept over in his mind.

“You know?” she said. “Maybe we’ll find some other clues.”

Ethan appreciated the gesture, an attempt to add just a little bit of legitimacy to their latest activity. But maybe she had the right idea. All through his life, when he really needed to find something, it always seemed to come after he’d given up looking. There was some advantage with easing up on the pressure and allowing a whimsical stroke of pure luck to come gleaming through the dark.

“So,” she said, “when was the last time you went for a moonlit swim in an abandoned quarry?”

A whimsical stroke of luck, indeed. Tonight that may come in the form of a cool-down, he thought, imagining himself and Kalani slipping into the cold waters of a swimming hole. It was a hot night, and his head was stuffed and drunk-feeling with all the twists and turns and pressures of the latest case. Perhaps a little sensory stimulation, a little relief, would be good for both of them.

But there was a certain pull in his mind, his imagination sinking below the surface and conjuring up an image of a submerged body. Someone lodged underneath a boulder, dead and bloated. Tucker.

What else could be down there?

Ethan shuddered, hoping that Kalani didn’t feel it through their embracing walk. He took a breath, as if ready for the plunge into the unknown, and said, “I’ve actually never swum in a swimming hole before. I mean, in an abandoned quarry type swimming hole.”

“Me neither, before this one. But it’s great. It’s really cold because of how deep it is. And, well, it’s beautiful. The high rock walls and everything. You’ll like it, especially on a hot night like this.”

“You’re sure it’s safe and everything?”

“Safe? What do you mean?” She laughed. “Yeah, it’s safe. I survived, didn’t I?”

“There’s no, um, buried mine equipment or anything?”

No dead bodies.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, pulling off him and away. “I don’t know what’s at the bottom. I haven’t had the chance to swim down there.”

“Would you?”

“Huh? Would I what?”

“Swim down there, if you had the chance. I mean, if you could.”

Kalani paused for a moment, then said, “I feel like you’re trying to allude to something . . .”

“Oh?”

“Something creepy,” she said.

“No, of course not. Nothing creepy.”

“You sure? You’re not trying to scare us away from swimming?”

Was that what he was doing? Ethan decided to remain quiet about his fears. No, not fears, concerns.

“I know it’s not as glamorous as the waterfall,” she said.

He needed no further elaboration to know what waterfall she was thinking of. They swam under several during their brief stay in Hawaii, their little mini vacation before things got out of hand once again. But there had been one swim in particular that had stayed in his mind. Rather, burned an image of itself into his mind. And he was so happy it did. That image, that day . . . that fantasy, had played out in his mind often during the last several months of no contact.

Other things had been worn out, too, during their long and torturous time apart. An ordeal that he’d struggled with alone, and struggled with sometimes rather enjoyably. But nevertheless, struggled.

Ethan reached for Kalani’s hand. It felt warm from the walk, a little humid from the air, and searing from Ethan’s thoughts about what she’d had to go through just to make it out of the previous few months with some sanity left. He almost wanted to ask her about it. But, instead, he just gave her a little squeeze. Somehow, the way he’d touched her hand, he assumed she’d known exactly what was on his mind.

He knew what was on hers. The idea of going swimming, alone in the dark . . .

“You don’t have to do it if you’re scared,” Kalani said.

Ethan laughed. “Who said that?”

“You’re sort of saying it.”

“Well, maybe that’s a good idea,” Ethan said. “I can sit back on one of the rocks there and watch.”

“In the dark?”

“This flashlight’s pretty strong.”

“Under water?”

“Hmmm . . . For how long? Will you try breaking some records so I get worried enough to jump in there and find you?”

“That’s the idea,” she said. “Lure you in.”

Ethan slowed his walk so that his arm stretched out to hold hers as she pulled ahead. He pulled her backward into him, laughing. She gently thrust an elbow back into his abs as he pulled harder, directing her back into his body as he swung her around, backing her up against the tree. A lure. It was the lure idea that did it, set him off like that. A mental lure before the actual one, the sexy, shiny little thing dangling in the cool water. His arms were the lures for her, pulling her close. Her face close enough that he could see for once, almost clearly, her petite, pretty features. Something about dark-skinned women had always turned him wild. Dark skin in the darkness of the night was even better.

He tasted her lips that way, in the dark. In the warm closeness. He sucked her gently and almost had to make a conscious effort not to make some moaning sound. But instead, listen to hers. He wanted to take it all in, the tiniest detail of the new stimulation: a most heated and desperate touch, the way her breath hitched when their mouths parted for that brief second for a taste of her chin, her neck. A quiet in the forest filled with the sounds of ruffled clothing and racing heartbeats.

A small segment of his thoughts lingered on the sad truth that he’d so easily let his guard down. Not to Kalani, for whom his guard had perhaps always been down. But for whatever potential enemy they’d been trying to sniff out on the forest patrol. Still, there was some reassurance left. If there had been someone watching—while the two of them turned inward to the exclusion of the rest of the physical world—Ethan was sure he would’ve known by now. A cracked stick under someone’s boot. The flick of a lighter to light a cigarette in a smiling mouth, someone standing nearby with a gun pointed in their direction. Or a hand that wasn’t Kalani’s. Something larger and firmer on his shoulder, instead of her gentle fingers weaving their way through his clothes. He liked her hands, small, lithe but strong. The fingers of a violinist playing along his wrist long after she’d broken her kiss away from his warm, flushed face.

“Good thing you stopped that,” Ethan said.

“I know you don’t have much willpower,” she said, grinning. “So I’ve got to work mine for the two of us.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got other strengths,” Ethan said. “Something else I can work for the two of us.”

“I bet you do.”

“Is it willpower that makes you feel confident about the swim hole? That we’ll just continue our effective and safe investigations? That we’ll stay on track?”

“I don’t know what it is,” she said.

“I think I do.”

She rolled her eyes, and then waited a minute in silence. Then she smiled and said, “Well?”

“What do you have on to wear?” Ethan said quietly. “For swimming . . .”

“Not much,” she said in a quiet laugh. “You?”

He shrugged.

“Is this what it depends on? How much I’ll wear in the water?”

“You should probably take it easy on me.”

“I probably shouldn’t,” Kalani said. “I probably couldn’t.”

Ethan watched her pull away from him, his hand taken up in hers, his arm pulled in her direction. In their direction, down the fork in the trail that would take them swimming.

Swimming? Was that really what they were about to do? Ethan could think of hundreds of other activities—some of them useful to their current predicament in West Virginia. He thought about some of those activities as he walked behind Kalani, in the trail of perfumed scent from her hair. He could have followed her blind. He’d been her bloodhound, nosing all the way in from Washington D.C., following her trail. Her memory. There, in the woods, he’d come to the distinct and sobering realization that he was also tracking someone else, bloodhound to blood.