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months off after he graduated. Went traveling for a little while, and then decided that he wanted to go back to university. He also wanted to get a PhD.’
    ‘Did he go back to Stanford?’
    ‘No. He went to Yale.’
    ‘Connecticut?’ Taylor was surprised. ‘That’s all the way on the east coast. Why so far away when you have Stanford, Berkley, Caltech, and UCLA right there in California? Four of the best universities in the whole of the country.’
    ‘Yale is also a great university,’ Hunter countered.
    ‘I know that. But you know what I mean. Connecticut is a hell of a hike from California. I’m guessing that, after living there for so many years, he probably had lots of friends and some sort of life back in LA. Why the sudden change? Is that where his family is from, Connecticut?’
    Hunter paused for a second, trying to remember.
    ‘I don’t know where his family is from,’ he said. ‘He never talked about them.’
    Taylor’s gaze slowly moved to Kennedy and then back to Hunter.
    ‘Don’t you think that’s a little odd?’ she asked. ‘You two spent years together sharing a dorm room. As you’ve put it, you became best friends. He never said anything about his family at all?’
    Hunter shrugged matter-of-factly.
    ‘No, and I don’t think that’s odd at all. I never talked about my family, to him, or anyone else for that matter. Some people are more private than others.’
    ‘So you last saw him when you received your PhD diploma,’ Kennedy said.
    Hunter nodded. ‘He flew over for the graduation ceremony, stayed for a day, and flew back the next morning. I never heard from him again since.’
    ‘He just flew back to Connecticut and disappeared?’ Taylor spoke again. ‘I thought you were best friends.’
    ‘Maybe I was the one who disappeared,’ Hunter said.
    Taylor hesitated for an instant.
    ‘Why? Did he try to get in contact with you?’
    ‘Not that I am aware of,’ Hunter replied. ‘But I didn’t try to keep in touch with him either.’ He paused and looked away. ‘After my graduation I didn’t keep in touch with anyone.’

Eleven
    The private Hawker jet touched down on Turner Field landing strip in Quantico, Virginia, almost exactly five hours after taking off from Van Nuys airport in Los Angeles.
    After Hunter’s conversation with Kennedy and Taylor about what he could remember of his old best friend, they all sat in silence for the rest of the long flight. Kennedy fell asleep for a couple of hours, but Hunter and Taylor stayed awake for the duration, each one lost in their own thoughts. For some reason Taylor’s memory took her back to when she was still a child, and how she was forced to learn how to take care of herself at a very young age.
    Her seemingly healthy father died of an unexpected heart attack, triggered by a coronary aneurysm, when she was fourteen years old. Taylor took his death very badly, and so did her young mother. The next couple of years became a tremendous battle, emotionally and financially, as her mother – who had been a housewife for the past fifteen years – struggled with a series of odd jobs and the pressures of being a recent widow, and consequently a single parent.
    Taylor’s mother was a tender woman with a kind soul, but she was also one of those people who just couldn’t handle being by herself. What followed was a string of deadbeat boyfriends, some of them abusive. Taylor was just about to graduate from high school when her mother became pregnant again. Her mother’s boyfriend at the time told her that he just didn’t want that kind of responsibility, that he wasn’t ready to become a father and have a family, and that he had no intention of becoming a father to someone else’s daughter – a girl that he couldn’t care less for. When Taylor’s mother refused to follow through with the abortion clinic appointment he’d set up for her, he simply dumped her and left town the next day. They never heard from him again.
    With her