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commerce in some parts of the world, Jack’s job description had evolved and narrowed. He and his team had become extraction specialists. They mounted rescue missions into places where no one in their right mind wanted to be. They worked under the auspices of the CIA, but Jack didn’t know how much longer that would be the case. Life in the clandestine services wasn’t much fun anymore. Politicians seemed to think they knew more about just about everything than did the people working in the trenches. Every time Jack turned around, they had set up another hoop he had to jump through.
    He was about ready to tell the pols just where they could jump.
    But this wasn’t the sort of Washington news Cat had asked about. “No,” he told her. “Nothing about your situation yet.”
    Not definitively, anyway. Melinda’s concerns about the attack on Cat being a warning to her had just about been eliminated, and the private investigators he’d hired had turned up a couple of promising leads. Nothing was settled, however, so he’d keep those details to himself.
    “Peanut needs to be home tonight,” she said as she stabbed a strawberry with her fork.
    “She will be.” He slathered orange marmalade onto a piece of toast. “Someone will arrive here by ten to escort her back to her owner.”
    “Someone you trust?”
    “Yes.” The little girl had nothing to worry about.
    They finished breakfast and cleaned up without exchanging another word. Cat took the dog outside to play with a tennis ball. Jack donned sneakers and went for a run. A long run. Physical exhaustion was the best way he’d found to manage the constant tension that resulted from daily interaction with his ex-wife.
    Sharing breakfast this morning had been an unhappy reminder of those meals they’d shared—and the ones they had not shared—in the last few months before their split. Those memories rode his shoulders as he ran.
    The alarm buzzed and Jack flung an arm out to shut it off. Rolling over, he reached instinctively for his wife … and found nothing but cold sheets
.
    Reality returned. He opened his eyes to an empty bed, a lonely marriage, and a hurting heart
.
    He sat up and listened to the patter of rain against the roof as he debated whether to reach out to her again or just go about his day. He was almost too weary to try, but this particular morning, loneliness drove him more
.
    He knew where he’d find her, so after he pulled on his jeans, he took the short walk from the master bedroom to the room that was a half-completed nursery
.
    He stopped just beyond the threshold. Cat sat in the bentwood rocker he’d given her for her birthday. Staring out the window into the gloom of a rainy day, she stroked a receiving blanket decorated with yellow ducks as if it were a pet. Her eyes were hollow and haunted, and he doubted she’d strung together eight hours of sleep in the last week
.
    “Hey, honey.”
    She didn’t respond, but continued to stare out into the wet, gray morning
.
    Frustration rose inside him. He knew she was grieving. He recognized that she was depressed. The doctors had assured him that such a reaction was normal and to
be expected. They’d advised him to give her time and he’d done that. But this … malaise … had gone on for months now and it was beginning to feel like forever
.
    Jack was lonely. He was sad. He was more than a little bit angry. He’d lost his child, too. Who had been there for him? Who had comforted him? Certainly not his wife
.
    He never claimed to have been as attached to his unborn child as Cat had been, but he didn’t think he was any different from most men in that respect. The fertility treatments had been brutal on them both, and when she finally conceived, he’d been more relieved than excited. But as the weeks and months passed, that had changed. He’d looked forward to having the baby. Losing her had hurt him, too, but he’d never been able to share his pain with Cat because he’d had to be