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including his eyebrows, was now standing on end as if a puppeteer’s string attached to each one of them had jolted them upward. Or at least that’s how he felt on the inside. But only for a flash. He calmed himself and cleared his throat.
    Someone could be after her fiancé, but no need to get her any more overwrought—if that was possible—so he chose his words carefully.
    “There is a possibility that the perpetrator was only trying to scare someone,” David spoke quietly and looked at Theresa, Rick, the mayor and Dan as they absorbed what he was saying. He counted on Dan, Rick and the mayor to understand that he was purposely downplaying the very real danger of the situation.
    The men looked back to him. They looked at each other, and then Dan O’Keefe nodded at the mayor. The mayor further placated his daughter with a reassuring smile.
    David’s pulse throbbed with adrenaline. He’d now put this elaborate and risky sting together—faking a murder to catch an attempted murderer—and it was entirely possible that it would all come to nothing. If he was wrong and it actually was a random act or if he was completely off-base and someone was really after Nick, then their plan to flush the perp by setting up Nick as Rick for a target was for naught. They’d waste time and political capital on a wild goose chase.
    David felt the cold chill of possible failure bite at him. He smiled slowly as the feeling receded. He’d put himself in the middle of a ridiculous pressure cooker of a scheme with a ticking clock. He relished the heart-hammering feeling and smiled wider.
    The baggage that had been dragging him down into endless self-pity disappeared.

    David awoke to the September sun glaring through his unadorned window. He’d forgotten to pull the shade last night. It was no wonder. He was no longer in shape to climb up the ladder required to reach the top of the window where the blasted shade had receded. Normally, he enjoyed the tall windows and the brightness of the townhouse. But at the moment the bare windows, added to the stark barrenness of the rest of the place, mocked him.
    Last night he’d added one more mistake to the evening’s events by indulging in several nightcaps after he’d gotten home. There was something about an empty house that was particularly unsettling at the end of a long, eventful day. He shouldn’t have dwelled on his past while he drank Scotch. His boss at Scotland Yard, the Deputy Chief Commissioner, had probably been right. Even if it felt like exile, it was best that he had left England while the press died down and internal affairs did their job.
    Besides, it wasn’t as if he were a stranger to Boston. In what seemed like another lifetime, he had lived here on Beacon Hill, in this very townhouse. He turned his thoughts from the automatic direction they took toward his boyhood adventures and forced himself from bed. Of course it hadn’t been the change of scenery that killed him, David acknowledged as he walked stiffly toward the bath. It had been the forced idleness.
    He reminded himself that the idleness was over. He had embarked on a fresh start to his career as the newly minted Director of the Scotland Yard Exchange Program’s Boston office. He should feel more excited, but he’d settle for mildly pleased until he worked the Scotch from his system. Thank god for Dan O’Keefe—even if his friend had insisted on a full turnaround of the yearlong self-indulgence in aimless if not senseless carousing.
    What had he been doing? No one, not even Dan, was going to rescue him from…well, from himself, he was loath to admit. Surely, none of the women he’d been carousing with were white-knight material.
    That thought caused a vision of Grace to pop into his head. What a vision she was. He leaned forward on his bathroom vanity, carefully avoiding the fragile-looking art glass bowl that passed for a sink, to peer into the stunning mirror at his not-so-stunning countenance. He