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the way Ali speed-dialed High Noon Enterprises and spoke to Stuart Ramey, B.’s second in command about doing a background check on Richard Lattimer, originally from Grass Valley, California. Ali could have gone directly to B. with her request for information, but she had grown accustomed to dealing with Stuart during B.’s many absences. Besides, Ali assumed B. was probably dealing with a killer case of jet lag and there was a very good chance he was napping. She gave Stuart all the information she could remember from what Brenda had told her. She even dragged out the scrap of paper with the addresses on it and gave that information to Stuart as well.
    “You want me to mail this to that address in Sacramento?” Stuart confirmed. “Do you want a copy too?”
    “Why not?” Ali said. “I’m a little curious about this guy. The idea that he could get a fairly intelligent, accomplished woman to fall for him sight unseen is a little over the top.” Of course, Ali realized that Brenda had severe “issues,” but she was nonetheless baffled. Brenda had, after all, worked as a journalist, albeit the eye candy variety.
    Stuart laughed aloud. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “And you’d also be surprised at the number of requests we get these days that are just like this—somebody checking out the real deal of the new person who’s supposed to be the love of his or her life.”
    “How long does it take?” Ali asked.
    “The background check? Not long,” Stuart said. “A couple of days at most, but this is a three-day weekend, so some of my sources may not be back online until Tuesday.”
    “That’s all right,” Ali said. “No rush.”
    As far as she was concerned, there was no big hurry. Yes, she had agreed to order the background check on Brenda’s behalf, and she was doing so because Ali Reynolds was a woman of her word. But Ali could see that Brenda’s problems went far beyond her simply being dumped by a boyfriend. Somehow, in the last few years of troubles, Brenda Riley had lost herself.
    That could have been me, Ali thought. If it hadn’t been for the people around me, I might have gone down the tubes the same way.

6

Sedona, Arizona
     
    O ne of the people who had helped keep Ali on track was B. Simpson and his considerable charms. Ali and Bartholomew Quentin Simpson had both been born and raised in Sedona, but Ali was enough older than he was that they hadn’t been friends or even acquaintances during grade school and high school. They weren’t formally introduced until years later, when as adults and in the aftermath of failed marriages, they had both returned to their mutual hometown to recover their equilibrium.
    Due to unmerciful teasing from his classmates, B. had shed his first name in junior high. The other kids had ragged on him constantly about that “other” Bart Simpson until he had abandoned his given name entirely. B.’s nerdy interest in computer science may have made him the butt of jokes in small-town Arizona, but it had translated into two successful careers—the first one in the computer gaming industry and his current gig as an internationally recognized computer security guru.
    After a rancorous divorce, B. had returned to Sedona as a reluctant bachelor with no particular interest in cooking. For months he had survived by eating two meals a day at the Sugarloaf Café. Over time he had struck up a friendship with Ali’s father. It was Bob Larson who had suggested to Ali that she might want to turn to B.’s start-up computer security company, High Noon Enterprises, to safeguard her computers.
    From shortly after they met, B. had made it clear that he was interested in more than a client-only relationship, and the man should have qualified as a good catch. He was an eligible bachelor with plenty of money and a beautiful custom-built home. He was tall, good-looking, and had a pair of gray-green eyes that seemed to send female hearts into spasms. He functioned well under