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She turned around to grin at him. “Aha! So you were eavesdropping. I thought you were probably lurking back there. I was afraid that you were going to try to throw Tyler out of the house.”

“Maybe I would have if you hadn’t finally gotten a grip and pushed him out. I wasn’t a bully or a know-it-all, either, when I was growing up. I never tortured you.”

“Don’t become part of your own script, Adam. I can also write whatever I want to on that script, since it involves me.”

“I’m not gay, either.”

She just laughed at him.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, jerked her against him, and kissed her fast and hard. He said against her mouth, “I’m not gay, damn you.”

She pulled away from him, stood stock-still, and stared at him. She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.

He streaked his fingers through his hair, standing it on end. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean to do that. I’m not gay.”

She started shaking her head, then, just as suddenly, unexpectedly, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed, wrapping her arms around herself.

It was a nice sound. He bet she hadn’t laughed much lately. She hiccuped. “You’re forgiven for trying to enforce your manhood. Got you on that one, hmmm?”

He realized he’d leapt for the bait. How could that have happened? He looked down at his fingernails, then buffed them lightly against his shirtsleeve. “Actually, what I should have said is I’m not at all certain yet that I’m gay. I’m still thinking about it. Kissing you was a test. Yeah, I’m still not certain one way or the other. You didn’t give me much data.” Not much of a return hit, but it was something.

She walked past him into the kitchen. She started measuring out coffee. When she finished, she turned the machine on and stood there, staring at the coffee dripping into the pot. Finally she turned and said, “I want to know who you are. Now. Don’t lie to me. I can’t take any more lies. Really, I just can’t.”

“All right. Pour me that coffee and I’ll tell you who I am and what I’m doing here.”

While she poured, he said, leaning back in his chair, balancing it on its two back legs, “Because you’re an amateur I looked at the problem very differently. But like I already told you, you didn’t do badly. Your only really big mistake was your try at misdirection with the flight from Dulles to Boston, then another flight on to Portland. Another thing: I reviewed all your credit card invoices. The only airline you use is United. Since you’re an amateur, it wouldn’t occur to you to change.”

She said, “Trying another airline flicked through my brain, but I wanted out as fast as I could get out and I feel comfortable dealing with United. I never thought, never realized—”

“I know. It makes excellent sense, just not in this sort of situation. I didn’t even bother checking any of the other airlines.”

“However did you get ahold of my credit card invoices?”

“No problem. Access to any private records is a piece of cake, for anyone. Thankfully, law enforcement has to convince judges to get warrants and that takes time, a good thing for you. Also, I’ve got a dynamite staff who are so fast and creative that I have to give them raises too often.

“No, don’t stiffen up like a poker. We’re talking absolute discretion here. Now, there were only sixty-eight tickets issued to women traveling alone within six hours of the flight you took to Washington, D.C. I believed it would be three hours, but we all wanted to be thorough. It turned out you called the airline to make reservations only two hours and fifty-four minutes before the flight, as a matter of fact. You moved very quickly once you made up your mind to get the hell out of Dodge. Then you had to buy a ticket to Boston, then on to Portland, Maine, when you arrived at Dulles in Washington, D.C. You didn’t want to buy it in New York, for obvious reasons. You ran up to the ticket counter, knowing full well that the next flight to Boston was in a scant twelve minutes. You wanted out of the line