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power, not sex. If Lauren cared about Dan’s affairs, she’d have cut him loose long ago.”
    “Spoken like a man,” Serena said. “So what do you think Dan wants?”
    “He probably needs to dig up dirt on a political opponent.”
    “Yeah, that was my guess. The legislature is back in session soon.”
    “Just make sure he doesn’t hang you out to dry,” Stride said. “For Dan, everyone around him is expendable. I’ve been there.”
    “I can take care of myself.”
    Serena closed her eyes and lifted her chin to let the icy wind strike her face. When she did that, you didn’t argue with her.
    Stride knew she had survived a long time on her own and was fiercely determined to make it here without his help. He didn’t bother warning her that Duluth could be as extreme and cruel in its own way as Las Vegas. All he needed to do was look at the great expanse of the lake to remember that one person alone was pretty small in this part of the world. No matter how strong you were, there were things around here that were stronger.
     
     
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    Serena climbed the steps toward the county courthouse for her meeting with Dan Erickson and felt an odd sensation dogging her again, as it had for weeks. Uneasiness settled over her, and she stopped dead in her tracks. The feeling blinked out of the gray morning like a neon sign in her head, broadcasting the same word.
    Danger
.
    She waited on the top step of the garden with her back to the courthouse, studying the comings and goings in the government plaza. A stony-eyed statue of a centurion towered behind her, guarding the three historic buildings clustered around the park. City Hall, where Jonny worked, was on her left. The federal building was directly opposite, on her right. All three government buildings were austere monuments from the 1920s, built of sand-colored granite blocks. Cars were parked in the slush around the circular driveway, and people hurried up the sidewalk, tramping through the cold in their winter coats. No one looked at her. She surveyed the windows in the neighboring media buildings one by one, then examined the street, her eyes moving from car to car.
    A television truck with a satellite dish on its roof. A purple van from a computer repair shop. A delivery truck from Twin Ports Catering. A police car.
    Nothing out of the ordinary.
    Serena shrugged off the feeling and blamed it on the ugliness of January. It wasn’t the cold that she found hardest to get used to living in Duluth. It was the deathly pallor of the city at this time of year. Days would go by, sometimes weeks, with only the same charcoal mass of clouds overhead. Winter felt like a long, cheerless twilight, full of somber faces and ominous skies. Those were the times when she felt a sharp pang of longing for the desert with its sunshine and energy.
    But for all that, she liked it here.
    Her old home was barren compared to this ever-changing landscape. The Duluth summer had been cool and glorious. The fall, with its palette of reds and yellows stretching for miles on the trees, had awakened a strange, uplifting sadness in her when she passed through the rain of dying leaves. Even the winter was beautiful, with something spiritual about the severity of cold and clouds that made her live inside her mind.
    She liked that she stood out in this city. She was tall and athletic, with full, highlighted raven hair. In Las Vegas, she had regularly been mistaken for a showgirl, but statuesque beauties were a dime a dozen in that city. Not in Duluth. She enjoyed the stares. She liked watching men melt. It empowered her and gave her the confidence that she was up to the challenge of making a new life for herself in a new place.
    She liked what being here did for Jonny, too. He was home, in a cold place, in the shadow of the lake. Serena found that her love for him had deepened and matured this past year, as she got to know him in a more intimate way. Their attraction had been electric and