Cause for Alarm

"What Julia

He tightened his grip on the gun. "I want her back, Sylvia. Now, where is she? What have you done with her?"

"Nothing," she whispered. "She…went on her…her own. Sh-she…" Her gaze drifted to the dead man beside her, to the ever growing pool of red, creeping across the white satin coverlet. Her voice shuddered to a halt.

With his free hand, John grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her face back to his. "Look at me, Sylvia. Only at me. Where did she go?"

"I…I don't know. I…" He tightened his grip on her hair and shook her. "Where, Syl?"

She began to giggle, the sound u

John froze, his fury awesome, glacial. Clark Russell, CIA grunt man, former comrade-in-arms, one of Sylvia's lovers. One who knew too much about John Powers.

Clark Russell was a dead man.

John leaned toward Sylvia, the gun forcing her head back, her chin up. " Clark sharing classified information? I guess you're a better lay than I thought." He narrowed his eyes, disliking the way his heart had begun to hammer, his palms to sweat. "You shouldn't have done that, Syl. It was a mistake."

"To hell with you!" she cried, her voice rising. "You won't find her! I told her to run, as fast and as far as she could…to save herself and the baby! You'll never find her. Never!"

For a split second he considered the horror of that possibility, then he laughed. "Of course I will, Sylvia. It's what I do. And when I find her, the problem will be eliminated. Then Julia

"You won't! Never! You-"

He pulled the trigger. Brains and blood splattered across the antique white headboard and onto the pretty rose-patterned wallpaper beyond. John gazed at the mess a moment, then stood. "Goodbye, Sylvia," he murmured, then turned and went in search of Julia

PartI. Kate and Richard

1

Mandeville , Louisiana ,

New Year's Eve, 1998

Light blazed from every window of Kate and Richard Ryan's grand old home on Mandeville's Lakeshore Drive. The house had been built nearly a century before, at a time when gracious southern living meant something, a time before MTV and the breakdown of the American family, before it was okay for politicians to cheat on their wives and before the evening news calmly recounted grisly murders as if the daily occurrence of such events wasn't a horror in and of itself.

The house, with its double, wraparound galleries and floor-to-ceiling windows, spoke of wealth, of status, of solidity. Of family. The family Kate and Richard would never have.

Kate stepped out onto the house's upper gallery, shutting the French doors behind her, muffling the sounds of the New Year's Eve party in full swing inside. The January night, bitter cold and blustery for southern Louisiana, slapped her in the face. Crossing to the gallery's edge, she gazed out at the black, turbulent lake. She curled her fingers around the rail and leaned into the wind, unconcerned at the way it tore at her hair and cut through her thin, shirred velvet gown.

Across Lake Pontchartrain, co

Kate imagined the party happening on that shore, one celebrating not only the new year, but the last year in the century as well. A turning point, the end to an era, a door closing.

For her, too, she thought. And Richard.

Before the holidays, she and her husband had been forced to face the fact that they would never have children. The results of their last tests had been conclusive: Richard was sterile. Up to that point they had assumed their inability to conceive had been the result of her many, varied but correctable, problems. But when none of those corrections had done the trick, the doctor had insisted on testing Richard.

The results had devastated them both. Kate had been angry-at the world, at God, at all the people who had babies so effortlessly and with such little care. She had felt betrayed. Useless. Cast adrift.

And then she had felt better. For even though they hadn't gotten the answer they'd wanted, at least they had one. She could give up the exhausting and emotionally draining quest for pregnancy and get on with her life; they could get on with their lives.

Infertility treatments had taken their toll. On her personally. On her and Richard's marriage, on their professional lives. A part of her felt nothing but sweet relief at getting off that roller coaster, at being able to finally let it go.

If only she could let go of her longing for a child, her longing to be a mother. Some nights she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the ache inside her so great she couldn't sleep.

Strong arms circled her from behind. Richard's arms. "What are you doing out here?" he whispered, bending his head close to her ear. "And without a coat? You'll catch your death."

She shook off her melancholy and smiled over her shoulder at her husband of ten years. "With you to keep me warm? I don't think so."

He gri

"Sounds kinky." She turned in his arms and looped hers around his neck. "I'm game."

He laughed and leaned his forehead against hers. "And what would our guests think?"

"Hopefully they're all too well-ma

"And if they're not?"

"They'll see a side of us they never have before."

"What would I do without you?" He dropped a kiss on her mouth and drew slightly away from her. "It's about time for me to make my a

"Nervous?"

"Who me?" He laughed and shook his head. "Never."

He meant it, Kate knew. Her husband's self-confidence never ceased to amaze her. Tonight, he was a

Why should he be? He expected his a

Of course he did. Richard had always lived a kind of starred existence. Had always been the chosen one, the one voted most likely to succeed, the wi