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John slammed the door behind them. He turned back toward Celie, who was staring at the door and looking dazed.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “No.”
    Right. Dumb question. “You want to talk about it?”
    She gave him a wobbly smile. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
     
    Cecelia Wells lived in a fortress. Rowe scrutinized the place—for the second time that day—as he made his way across the visitor parking lot. The building was composed of white limestone and stucco, the type of architecture Rowe had seen everywhere since he’d come to Texas. The sprawling complex perched atop a cliff overlooking some hills or greenbelt or some sort of park. Cecelia’s unit faced west, and during the hour-long interview Rowe had noticed she had a spectacular view.
    Knowing what he did about Cecelia, though, he doubted she’d picked the place for the scenery.
    Rowe unlocked the Buick and squinted up at the third floor, counting the units until he located Cecelia’s. The apartment was nice, but small compared to the other luxury units at The Overlook. Hers was the smallest unit available, in fact, just eight hundred square feet. Rowe had garnered these and other details from the well-heeled young leasing agent at The Overlook’s front office on the way out.
    “Quite a place she’s got there,” Stevenski said, following Rowe’s gaze.
    “Yeah,” Rowe agreed. “Pricey, too. For Austin, at least. How do you think she affords a place like that working at a battered women’s shelter?”
    Stevenski shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe she’s got a rich family.”
    She didn’t. Rowe was thoroughly familiar with Cecelia’s background, having done some of the original legwork on her over a year ago when her husband’s name had cropped up in connection with the Saledo cartel. Rowe knew everything about Cecelia’s past, including the fact that her mother, a widow, lived in Mayfield and was comfortable, but by no means wealthy. Cecelia’s late father had been a chemical engineer.
    “Nah,” Rowe said, “she doesn’t come from money. You read her file?”
    “I skimmed it.”
    Rowe slid behind the wheel. The car was a piece of crap, but budgets were tight throughout the Bureau, and the San Antonio field office wasn’t high on the list when it came to spreading money around. Making matters worse, San Antonio’s current SAC, or special agent in charge, wasn’t much of a diplomat. At a time when most of the Bureau’s money and talent was being thrown at the antiterrorism campaign, George Purnell had been banished to Texas to deal with drug traffic and money laundering. Apparently, the SAC had had some sort of falling out with the top brass in Washington. His situation was similar to Rowe’s, actually, only Rowe’s previous home had been Chicago.
    The car felt like a sauna inside, and Rowe flipped on the air-conditioning. A blast of hot air shot from the vents.
    “She’s not at all like I thought she’d be,” Stevenski said.
    Rowe knew what he meant. Based on Cecelia’s file, his partner had probably expected to meet a real ballbuster. Instead, he’d met a weepy, pudgy-cheeked blonde.
    “She really claw a guy’s eye out?” Stevenski asked.
    “Yep, she really did.” Rowe paused at The Overlook’s wrought-iron gate, waiting for it to open.
    “And that was, what, ten years ago? She would have been a kid at the time.”
    “Yep,” he said again. Cecelia Wells had been twenty-two, definitely a kid in Rowe’s book, when she’d been raped, beaten, and left for dead behind a bar in downtown Austin. She’d been a senior at UT, just one semester shy of graduation, when she’d decided to go out drinking with some girlfriends on Sixth Street. She’d peeled off from the group early, then been accosted in an alley on the way to her car. Rowe had read the police report, and the attack had been horrific. Cecelia Wells was a mere five feet three, 110 pounds at the time. The man ultimately convicted of assaulting her was six