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Contemplating a future full of relentless, unanswered questions, she brought shaking hands to her face and dragged her hair back. Holding the stuff hard, she pulled at it as if she could yank all the spinning, crazy thoughts out of her head.

Christ, what if Rehv’s deception was the equivalent of her father’s financial ruin? The thing that took her over the edge into madness?

And this was the second time a male had shown her up, wasn’t it. Her fiancé had done something similar—the only difference being that he had lied to everyone else except her.

You’d have thought she’d learned her lesson about trust thanks to her first trip through the park. But evidently not.

Ehlena stopped pacing, waiting for…hell, she didn’t know, her head to explode or something.

It didn’t. And no luck on the cognitive weeding with all her hair pulling, either. All that was getting her was a headache and a Vin Diesel ’do.

Turning away from the bed, she saw her laptop.

With a curse, she walked across the shallow space and sat down in front of the Dell. Dropping the death grip on her hair, she put her fingertip on the mouse pad and killed the screen saver.

Internet Explorer. Favorites: www.CaldwellCourierJournal.com.

What she needed was a dose of concrete reality. Rehv was the past, and the future was not about some slick lawyer with a bright idea. Right now, the only thing she could trust was her job search: If Saxton and his papers fell through, she and her father were out on the street in less than a month unless she found employment.

And there was nothing false or misleading about that.

As the CCJ’s Web site loaded, she told herself that she was not her father, and that Rehv was a male she had been involved with for all of, what…a matter of days? Yes, he had lied to her. But he was a flashy-dressing, supersexy player, and in retrospect, she shouldn’t have put any faith in him in the first place. Especially given what she already knew about males.

His bad, and her mistake. And although the realization that she’d been seduced into stupidity didn’t make her pick up her pom-poms and cheer, the idea that there was an internal logic, even if it sucked, helped her feel a little less crazy—

Ehlena frowned and leaned in close to the screen. On the splash page of the Web site was a picture of a bombed-out building. The headline read: Explosion Levels Local Club. In smaller font beneath there was: ZeroSum latest casualty in drug war?

She read the article without breathing: Authorities investigating. Unknown whether there was anyone in the club at the time. Suspicion that there were multiple detonations.

A sidebar detailed the number of suspected drug dealers who had been found dead around Caldwell in the past week. Four of them. All killed in a professional way. The CPD was looking into each of the murders, and among the suspects was the owner of ZeroSum, one Richard Reynolds, a.k.a. the Reverend—who was now missing apparently. It was noted that Reynolds had been on the CPD Narcotics watch list for years, though never formally charged with any crime.

The implication was obvious: Rehv had been the real target of the blast because he’d been killing the others.

She scrolled back up to the pictures of the decimated club. No one could survive that. No one. The police were going to report that he was dead. It might take them a week or two, but they would find a body and declare that it was his.

No tears fell from her eyes. No sobs from her lips. She was too far gone for that. She just sat in silence, arms going around herself once more, eyes staring at the glowing screen.

The thought that occurred to her was bizarre, but inescapable: There was only one thing that would have been worse than what she had faced walking into that club and learning the truth about Rehv. And that would have been reading this article before she’d made that trip downtown.

Not that she wanted Rehv dead, God…no. Even after everything he had snowed her on, she