Prologue

He seemed different from the others, but Colleen couldn't put her finger on the reason. He was tall, but not particularly tall. He was good looking, but not strikingly handsome. Nothing about his clothing stood out as distinctive—perhaps that was the difference from all the other college guys in the bar who seemed to be trying to stand out.

Colleen herself was conflicted about standing out. On the one hand, she had come to this off-campus dive because she'd been depressed. She'd been so sure Harris loved her. She'd freely given him her precious innocence, only to have him drop her like a warty toad. Now her therapist advised her to get over her depression by going out more and meeting some interesting guy.

Interesting? In the one semester she'd been at the State University at Hurlesburg, she'd concluded that Five Towns had to be the dullest place in the known universe. They may have merged five dinky towns into a big one, but Ashburn, Blue Lake, Golden, New Milton, and Hurlesburg combined still didn't add up to one real city. All it did was make for long, boring travel times. Not that there was anything you'd want to see in Ashburn or Boring Lake.

In high school, she'd always been an effortless A student—the shy bookworm, ignored by the boys. She had looked forward to more challenging classes in college, but her first semester had been a disappointment. Classes were so boringly easy they almost made New Milton seem interesting. Except for Chemistry. She actually loved the lab, making things out of other things, like magic. Chemistry was just about the only thing that kept her from killing herself. Maybe she would switch her major next semester, then things would be more tolerable.

In the meantime, her therapist had strongly suggested she needed some love interest to eradicate her self-destructive thoughts. She was trying, here in this crowded bar, but she was simply too shy to play this pick-up game. Searching for a decent guy in this meat-market was making her even more depressed. They all seemed so young, so clumsy and unsophisticated compared with the few boys she knew in New York.

Of course, she was young herself, barely eighteen, though she tried not to act that way. That was the other half of her conflict. It had cost most of her small savings to acquire a fake ID so she could meet some older guys. Tonight was her trial run. She'd dressed as carefully as she could, trying to look as mature as possible, but now she couldn't resist glancing down to study her scarlet fur-trimmed boots. In this wintery weather, she'd needed her warmest boots, but were they just too cutesy? Would a twenty-two-year-old wear such bright boots? They were fashionable in New York, but maybe they were too conspicuous here in Hicktown?

Maybe she should drink something more sophisticated than screwdrivers, but it was the only drink he knew besides rum and coke, and that had tasted awful. Anyway, the guys here probably wouldn't know the difference. Her head was already growing fuzzy. She really ought to stop drinking, or at least not switch to something with unknown ingredients.

She forced her eyes away from her boots and watched Mr. Different watching her. He looked older than most of the crowd. He didn't seem to notice her boots or any part of her outfit. Or care. And he didn't stare at her boobs like the others did. She had worried that she'd gone too far with her maturity look, showing rather too much cleavage. Now she worried if she showed enough.

Was that what made him different? Could he be gay?

No, it wasn't that. She knew some gays in the city, and some of them talked funny, but otherwise you couldn't tell. Mr. Different did talk funny, but not that gay way.

Maybe that was it—the way he talked. Yes, that was it.

All the other guys came on to her with a false cheerfulness, but his somber tone matched the depression she was trying to shake. She liked the way he listened attentively to her troubles—her mother's nagging about the need to find a husband, her father's reminders of how much he was sacrificing to put her through college. And he understood her when she said she was going to do change her major next semester.

There was something else, but she was having problems focusing her mind. It seemed tiring to try thinking clearly about him.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked in a gentle voice. "Do you want another screwdriver?" He reached out as if to touch her arm, but stopped short and pulled back.

No. Another drink didn't seem like a good idea. She liked being tipsy, but somehow this bar's screwdrivers were having too powerful an effect. Maybe the orange juice was off.

"I'm … I'm a little … little woozy."

He nodded sympathetically. "Would you like to come outside for some fresh air? That might clear your head."

She couldn't focus on what she wanted to do. Something told her she shouldn't go outside with him, but he paid her bar tab. She protested feebly, not wanting to be under any obligation, but when he offered his arm, she took it.

He steered her out the front door. The parking lot was full, but seemed rather dark.

Cold.

Her feet were cold. The fur wasn't keeping them warm.

He opened the door to his car.

And that was the last thing she remembered.

Chapter 1.

Even though the giant sycamores were naked now, Josh loved these lush woods as much as he despised the barren city. Last night's storm had cost the silver maples half their dried leaves, but their irregular ranks still blocked the sunrise wherever the thick trunks of white oaks failed to provide adequate cover. Overhead, now, he could see the lightening sky, but in summer, these trees had shaded out all the small plants underneath, creating a flat carpet of red and gold leaves.

As a youth, Marfan syndrome had damaged his connective tissue, producing the gangling body and fragile joints that kept him away from athletics. Then, seven years apart, his hips had failed and the doctors insisted he develop the habit of regular, but moderate, exercise.

Now that the syndrome was quiescent, he was in better condition than at any time in his life. He might have enjoyed this drenched jog, but at forty-nine, a morning romp in the rain on two artificial hips was not his idea of sylvan recreation. For Heathcliff, though, these morning expeditions rivaled every sport but barking in the futile pursuit of squirrels.

As Josh plugged on—ten steps running, ten walking, feet cold and muddy, hips aching, stooping every so often to pick up a morsel of trash and place in it a black plastic bag. He actually looked forward to spending the afternoon in a dry, heated office, even if he despised working on an important case that had him completely stumped. He allowed himself to imagine returning to his decoding lab and finding that Presidential helicopter waiting to take him to Camp David. No doubt Carmela would again try to convince him to change his clothes before meeting the President.

"Don't you want to change?" he remembered her saying.

"Why? I'm comfortable." Of course, now he would have to change just because he was wet, but it was dry and summer then.

"A jacket at least," she had pleaded.

"I certainly don't need a jacket. It will be even warmer in D.C.?" The President had been at the White House when he kicked off the SNG project.

"But it's the President? You can't let him see you without a jacket."

He had shrugged without understanding. "Yeah? I've met lots of presidents without wearing a jacket. What's different about this one?" What was different was that those times had been before he retired, before Carmela knew him. Later, she explained to him about protocol, but it still didn't make any sense.

He laughed to himself and turned his fantasy turned to the present, arriving in wet running clothes to find the President himself waiting to congratulate him for saving the nation. Why not? If he hadn't been asked by the Chief himself, he would never have come out of retirement to tackle this impossible case.

If he hadn't let his ego take control of his logic.

He spotted a Coors can and added it to his collection. When all else failed, collecting garbage kept his ego in check. Yes, the president would be impressed by his can collection—nine different brands so far today.

This amusing Presidential fantasy shortened the two woodsy miles from campus to home, the obligatory frigid, soggy rehabilitation for his newest hip. As it turned out, the fantasy distracted too well, causing him to stumble over an exposed root. He twisted his ankle and grabbed a tree for support, skinning his palm.

His ankle throbbed and his hand stung, excuse enough to take the shortcut home. But once he had committed to a task, Joshua Rosemont never permitted himself excuses, not even for stabbing pain every time he planted his foot.

If he wasn't to become a complete cripple, he knew he mustn't start shortcutting his rehab runs. He would rather not think much about his body, but he'd learned the hard way that he had to take care of it. As he approached fifty, his brain was sharper than ever, but as Carmela was always reminding him, his body was the essential platform that kept that brain from oozing out and falling on the floor.

Jogging back into a gimpy rhythm, he coaxed his brain into overriding the pain by performing the mathematics of decoding the Solarian files.

He knew that cracking the encryption would turn the Solarian Natural Gas case around, and he knew that if he couldn't do it, nobody else in the world could.

At least that's what the President thought.

Billions were at stake, billions that were about to be siphoned into terrorist coffers. If they were lost, the press would pulverize the president's re-election campaign, but that wasn't Josh's problem. All the motivation he needed was the math itself, the problem only he was supposed to be able to solve,. In Josh's world, all problems had to be solved. Damn ego again.

Was it arrogance if it was true? His record had given the President plenty of spectacular reasons for believing he could solve any problem–cracking the Cincinnati bank vault, computing the source of the American SARS epidemic, breaking the trigger codes for the terrorist dirty bomb. Yes, those and many others.

He knew others who could have solved them, but each one added to his reputation, so now he had trapped himself. Even though he had retired, hoping for a quiet life of mathematical contemplation, his name always came up when something terrible happened–like billions in fraudulent gains. And all those fraudulent gains would soon pass into the hands of some nasty people if he couldn't find them and steal them back first.

Josh stumbled agonizingly on, lost in his mind, until Heathcliff stopped running, snuffing instead through the pile of damp leaves. At first, Josh didn't notice. Too involved reexamining his code-cracking procedure, he ran a good fifty yards farther along before he realized his German Shepherd companion was no longer at his side.

By the time Josh had turned around and threaded his way back through the sucking mud and denuded autumn trees, Heathcliff's nose was trembling over a dead rabbit crucified on a plank with four-inch spikes.

Blood stains pronounced evidence that the bunny had been alive when the nails were driven through its four limbs, its belly, and, perhaps in a final obscene mercy, through each eye.

"Leave it," Josh commanded, and Heathcliff backed off and stood, eyes on the rabbit.

The sight was revolting, but Josh forced himself to notice that the skewered rabbit was outlined by a sequence of carefully painted digits on the bloody plank:

His mathematician's eye could not fail to recognize the numbers, but before he could puzzle over this oddity, he was distracted by the snuffling sound of Heathcliff burrowing in the leaves.

A blaze of scarlet caught his eye—a red boot trimmed with brown fur. At first, he imagined it was just a boot, lost by some coed making out in the woods behind the campus. Effortlessly, his mind began trying to connect the two found objects. Was the sadist female?

Repelled by the mutilated rabbit, Josh urged Heathcliff to come away, but the dog continued pawing at the cold leaves. Halfway turned around to continue his exercise, Josh realized the boot was not loose.

It was attached to a black-clad leg.

"Sit!" he commanded. Heathcliff responded crisply, just as if he were in an obedience trial, winning another championship.

Josh studied the position of the leg and the size of the leaf pile, then estimated where the head would be if indeed an entire human body lay underneath. Because of his hips, he knew better than to kneel to test his theory. Bracing himself on the nearest tree, he squatted, painfully. Ever so carefully, he picked away slick wet leaves, one by one, just enough to determine if it really was a body undeneath, with minimum disturbance to the scene in case it was.

Though his thick glasses fogged from the breath of his own exertion, he began to recognize the shape, then the color, then the size of a human face. Exactly where he had calculated.

He lifted away one more large red-rimmed leaf for confirmation and, suddenly, the face was Jenny.

His legs failed. He slumped to the ground, afraid to open his eyes and look more closely at his long-dead daughter.

Heathcliff whined, jolting open Josh's lying eyes. Yes, it was a woman. A girl, really, like Jenny. The same age—the age Jenny would always be.

But not, of course, Jenny. That wasn't logical.

He studied the face more closely now, wondering why he had thought it was Jenny. It was impossible, of course. Jenny was dead. Ten years dead. Aside from the hair, he now saw only a superficial resemblance to the face he loved so well.

She looked alive. No, dead. He couldn't tell.

He brushed away a few more leaves, the better to see her face, but some green ones among the red and gold stuck to her forehead. Not fallen leaves. A wreath. Like the crown Jenny had worn—in her coffin.

He snapped out of his reverie, recovering his logic, assessing what actions he needed to take. Not to revive her—she was certainly dead. Or was she? The pale bluish face bespoke death, but that was no scientific proof.

With an effort of will, he swept away the last fog of his emotional reaction. He didn't want to disturb a possible crime scene any further, but was too meticulous to accept an incomplete proof. If she was alive, even barely, he had to act fast to save her.

He wiped his glasses with the hem of his soggy t-shirt and held them under her nose to test his hypothesis.

No fogging, thus no breathing.

No breathing, thus no life.

Hypothesis confirmed.

He held the glasses for a full two minutes, in case for some reason she might be holding her breath, but, no, she was certainly dead. He was a code cracker, not a homicide detective, but during his problem-solving career, he'd been at least peripherally involved in dozens of murder cases. He knew enough not to touch anything else. Even so, a message from deep in his gut urged him to brush away the leaves so he could see her hands. See if she held the wildflowers that had gone with Jenny to her grave.

No, it wasn't logical. He had already seen it wasn't Jenny, and better sense took over. Or was it fear? Fear of becoming involved, again, with a problem he was not equipped to solve.

He decided there was no need to disturb this scene—almost certainly a crime scene—any more than it had already been disturbed by small animals. By Heathcliff. By his own clumsy bungling. He would see later, when he brought back the police.

He rose with great difficulty, leaning against the tree, not bothering to brush away the leaves on his wet sweatpants. He wanted to stay with the body, though it was unlikely anyone else would come through these woods in the rain. But someone had to fetch the police. No doubt, he thought, Carmela would use this occasion to prove to her husband how useful a cell phone could be. He would resist. His well-trained dog was far more reliable than any clumsy technology.

"Down," he told Heathcliff.

Heathcliff lay down, his long nose pointing toward the body. Without question, he was a smart dog, with exactly the right training and instincts. He was perfectly capable of guarding the body, but Josh wanted to stay.

He untied his nylon jacket from around his waist and fetch the plastic bag with pen and note cards he always carried to record his inspirations. He penned a note to his wife, put it in the plastic bag, and wedged it into Heathcliff's collar.

"Go," he ordered. "Go home to Carmela."

Heathcliff hesitated only a moment, then took off running. Josh moved ten yards away from the body, put on his nylon jacket, and sat down with his back against an evergreen whose green needles above him somewhat diminished the light rain. He massaged his painful ankle, then rotated his arms to keep from growing stiff while he tried to figure out how the body came to be here.

But he couldn't keep his mind from slipping back to Jenny's unsolved death—his greatest failure, and the last thing he wanted to think about. ˙

Chapter 2.

It was a full half hour before the police arrived, led by Heathcliff towing Carmela, who was toting a large red canvas bag. Her black, braided hair glistening wet as she ran to him, her soaked yellow nylon jacket clinging to her tiny, voluptuous body. He smiled, knowing that only the sight of her could distract him from a math problem—or the problem of a corpse in the woods.

"You're going to get seriously ill," she said, more worried than accusing. "I was about to send someone out looking for you when Heathcliff arrived."  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to her level for a kiss.

After a long moment, she turned away and looked past him. "Where did Heath go?" Her smile disappeared.

"I suppose he's guarding the corpse," he gasped, pulling his lips back to his. He couldn't bring himself to say "dead girl." "He knows better than to touch it."

"Corpse?" She stiffened. "My God, there really is a corpse?"

He heard a commotion and turned to see Heathcliff growling at two uniformed policemen. "Heath found it."

"Not another dead deer! He'll be dragging in the rotten parts for weeks, like the last one."

"Not a deer. A person." He still couldn't bring himself to say "girl."

He called out to Heathcliff. "Okay, Heath. Come!" The dog left the body and trotted swiftly to his master, coming to a perfect sit directly in front of him.

Carmela dug into the canvas bag and pulled out a down jacket. "Here, put this on. You'll freeze out here, …" She looked at his muddy pants. "… but you'll have to remove those filthy things before you'll be allowed inside the house."

They stopped talking and watched a plainclothes detective examining the body, guarded by the two uniforms. After a few frigid minutes, Lieutenant Jameel Brown left his assistants and strode over to ask about finding the body. Josh had worked with Brown before, so telling the story of how he had found the body added only five more minutes to his broken schedule. But telling it a second time, with questions, took ten more—until he told Brown he was freezing and would answer any more questions at home.

Josh gathered up his second trash bag and limped back home on his now-stiffened and swollen ankle, consuming another fifteen minutes even though Carmela found him a walking stick and Heathcliff herded them along. Once they emerged from the woods in their back yard, Carmela directed him to the back door where she set up the kitchen step-stool so he could sit and undress. By now, he thought, he was at least an hour behind schedule.

His schedule, of course, meant nothing to Carmela, who was now patiently drying Heathcliff and telling him what a good dog he was. Josh knew he had to wait patiently, though patience was not his best quality. He knew he could not leave without satisfying his wife's unquenchable curiosity, even if he hadn't promised the lieutenant he would stay. If he was to be spared her fiery temper, he had to offer at least the gist of the story.

"If Heathcliff and I hadn't been picking up trash," Josh said, sitting down, "the body might have been buried in snow until April." There was no way he was going to tell her about seeing a momentary resemblance to Jenny—or his irrational outburst of uncontrolled emotion.

"Trash?" Carmela bent her head to the side the way Heathcliff did when he heard La Boheme. She was already out of her wet coat, and he could see she was dressed for class in one of her lady anthropologist outfits—long full black skirt, multicolored long-sleeved Bolivian peasant shirt, hand-woven sandals from somewhere in Africa, about twenty bracelets encircling each forearm, and a bamboo-beaded voodoo necklace with a large yellowed fang hanging down into her cleavage. "Why were you picking up trash?"

He tried to change the subject. "Your feet will freeze in those sandals."

She waved him off. "I'll put on boots again before I leave, and change at my office. Wasn't there a breakfast meeting of the budget committee?"

"Precisely." Josh offered her his left leg. "Here, see if you can untie these wet laces? And hand me the towel. I'll dry Heath."

Keeping her skirt well away from his mucky shoes, she set to work on the double knot, not missing a syllable of her questioning. "What does precisely mean?"

"After the previous budget meeting, I created a new principle." He placed his hand gently on hers. "Don't pull on the long lace, you'll only tighten the knot."

"I can do laces," she said, continuing to tug, but held back her skirt with one hand. "Tell me about your new principle."

"You weren't so fastidious when you were drying Heathcliff."

"That's because he's neater than you. Now what did you mean by precisely?"

"I mean that from now on, I'm going to measure the value of my committee service against an activity with a known value to the campus. And stop pulling on the lace."

Ignoring his instructions, she yanked the long lace and the knot came loose. "I can't think of any campus activity that has known value. Other than teaching."

"Sure you can. Try gathering the litter in our beautiful woods. I calculated what it would cost to hire someone to do the job at minimum wage. Since the committee's value doesn't measure up, I pick up trash." He proudly kicked his black plastic bag, rattling the aluminum cans inside, grateful that this irrelevant argument was distracting Carmela from talking more about the body. "I left a full bag to pick up later. Would have had both full if we hadn't been interrupted."

"But the budget committee is the most powerful, important committee on the faculty. Wait, let me get another towel." Heathcliff followed her into the kitchen, hoping for a treat. She paused in the doorway. "You think collecting garbage is more valuable?"

He hollered in through the kitchen door after her. "Precisely. I have more than an entire bag of aluminum cans. Once I separate them, their value can be added to the minimum wage. Since all the committee ever does is rubber-stamp the administration's budget, my time there isn't worth even the two or three bucks I can get from recycling the cans."

She came back, luring Heathcliff with a stick of desiccated bull penis. After dispensing the treat, she wrapped a faded orange towel around Josh's size-fifteen shoe. "That many? I knew the students used the woods for drinking, but this time of year?"

"Well, somebody was out there doing more than drinking." Reminded of Jenny again, he steered away from the subject of drinking. "You saw how pissed Brown was until I assured him I hadn't messed up his crime scene any more than necessary."

"Brown would have been pissed at you no matter what you did. When I was on the force, I was always pissed when some civilian found a body." Carmela finally yanked off his cross-country shoe and began working on the other one. "How is the lieutenant now?"

"Pissed. … But not at me. He likes me. At the murderer."

"So he thinks it was murder?" She shuddered involuntarily, causing her matched voodoo earrings to jangle. "Right out there between the campus and our house."

"If you want, we can start locking our doors." He knew that retired police officers always locked doors, even if they were now sophisticated anthropologists. He also knew that their husbands, who had never seen the seamy side of the street, always kidded them about it so they wouldn't get too serious. "But we have Heathcliff to guard us."

Hearing his name, the dog's ears perked up, but Carmela ignored her husband's teasing. "How was she killed?"

"Brown said there was no obvious cause. There wasn't a mark on her. No blood. No sign of violence at all."

"So why does he think it was murder?" She worried the wet knot back and forth.

"I'll let you guess. Next to the body, nailed to a board, was a mutilated rabbit." He had to tell her now, since it could soon be public knowledge, and she'd want to know why he hadn't described the body. "This young woman—possibly a student—was posed on the ground with her arms crossed on her chest, a fresh wreath around her head, holding a little bouquet of dried flowers in her hand."

Josh wasn't sure if Carmela knew the significance of that pose—Jenny's funeral pose—but if she did, she knew enough not to comment, for which he was grateful. "Doesn't sound like suicide, but first impressions of crime scenes can be misleading. Maybe she froze to death while doing some mystical pagan rituals."

"Something you teach in class? Sacrificing animals?"

"Nothing I teach, you can be sure of that. I try not to teach anything dangerous, and certainly never animal sacrifice. But you know kids."

No, he thought, I don't know kids at all. I didn't even know my own daughter.

She poked him in the ribs, breaking his reverie. "Here, put your shoes on the mat."

"Shoes, yes, that's it." He took his shoes.

"That's what?"

"That's how Brown knew it was murder." The shoes hung from his fingers while he was lost in thought. As he stepped into the kitchen, he automatically ducked his head. Even in his bare feet, he was too tall for most doors. Ducking on entry had been an automatic reflex since high-school.

"How did he know?"

"The soles of the boots were clean. She didn't walk in there."

"Maybe they were wiped clean as part of the ceremony." She held out her hand. "Here. Give them to me. And hand me that towel, so I can wipe off the rest of the mud. It would have helped if you wiped them on the mat first, but I know that never happens."

"Sure it happens."

"What?"

"Murder. But you're right—Brown says not very often. This is the first case in the campus area since about three years ago."

"I remember that one. Strangled with the yellow cheerleader scarf. You hacked the killer's computer for Brown, if I recall correctly."

"It was a trivial problem. Anyone could have done it."

She shook her head, tossing her braid from side to side. "I certainly couldn't have. Nor Brown. And not anyone could have known which computer to hack. Did he ask you to help him this time?"

"Yes." Josh was trying to pull one arm out of his thermal parka.

"Good. I'll help you."

"I can do it." Josh's long arm snapped out of the sleeve, flicking water on Carmela.

She checked her shirt for spots. "You could use my help."

He pulled off the other sleeve, then tossed the parka onto the one empty hook. "Why? It's already off."

"Not your parka. Pay attention," she said, not sounding very hopeful that she could pull him out of wherever his mind had gone. "On the case."

"What do you know about encryption?" he said, glancing at his watch. He was going to be very late.

"Not the SNG case. The murder case. I've worked dozens of murders in my day. I can help."

"That was a long time ago. You're not a cop now, darling. You're an anthropologist."

"It could be a ritual murder. I heard Brown say something about cryptic writing on her chest."

"We don't know it's a murder. There's such a mess of clues, it could be anything."

"So I can help you?"

"How can you help me? I'm not working on the case."

"But you said Brown asked you."

"That's correct. He asked me, and I refused."

"Oh, no. Don't refuse. I could probably get a paper or two out of this. I could use a few more publications before my contract comes up."

"Isn't that rather callous? You're beginning to sound like a real academic." Then he saw she was grinning at him. He thought he had a good sense of humor, but she always seemed able to trap him with her jokes.

She stopped grinning and turned serious. "Why aren't you helping? You've helped on lots of interesting cases. You're smart, and your government experience puts you way ahead of the locals."

"That's just it. When I was with NSA, I was a government employee, so I had to help any time they asked. Now, I don't do murders any more. Not when I can avoid it. Murders aren't interesting. Murder is a crime of weakness—weak mind, weak-self-esteem—people who can't think of more creative ways to solve their problems. Or get attention. Stupid people do murders. Smart people find other ways to right the wrongs they perceive in their lives. Like computer crimes and swindles. Those are the crimes that interest me."

She stood with her knuckles on her hips. "Thanks for the lecture, Doctor Rosemont. What's it hiding?"

"Sorry," he said. He meant sorry for revealing too much. He started to head for the shower to avoid answering, stripping as he went. "It's a bad habit. Anyway, I haven't got time to solve murder mysteries. From now until the trial, all my spare time has to be dedicated to SNG. I'm having enough trouble finding time to exercise."

She followed him, gathering all his wet clothes. "Now who's being callous? Aren't you concerned about that poor girl?"

"Of course I'm concerned," he said. Too concerned, he thought. "But she's only one person, and she's already dead. Solving the SNG case—keeping all that money out of hostile hands—could prevent the death of millions. Which choice is logical?"

"For me, the one closer to home. Our logics are different."

"True, which is one of the reasons we make such a good team. Besides, I think the police can handle it quite nicely without my help. How complicated can it be?"

"Darn. Well, if we're a team, I wish you'd thought of me. You know ritual and crime are my specialties."

"Of course I know. That's why I told Brown he could use your help."

Before she could thank him appropriately, Heathcliff began barking and ran to the back door. "That's probably Brown now," Josh said. "Why don't you talk to him while I'm getting clean and changing clothes. Greta's going to kill me."

TO BE CONTINUED (ORDER THE FULL STORY BELOW)

If you are a reviewer for a regular publication and would like a review copy of this novel, email me with your request for a reviewer copy.