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The pale moonlight outlined the edges of the shrubs and trees with silver. Savannah crouched with Hez behind a sprawling wax myrtle bush a couple of miles from Elberta, and the bayberry scent from the crushed leaves wafted to her nose. The temperature had plunged into the thirties, and her foggy breaths blended with Hez’s. She could make out the outlines of police cars, engines idling and lights off, on either side of the crossroad. Hez’s car was parked a quarter mile away to allow the police to make full use of the scant cover.

Hez slipped his arm around her and pulled her closer. “You’re cold. You should have stayed in the car where it’s warm. We have no idea how long this might take. The semi is supposed to show up around one, but it could take longer.”

His whispered breath warmed her ear. She snuggled against his warm bulk and inhaled the faint scent of his soap and cologne. “I wanted to help you listen and watch, and when the police start pulling out statues and other pieces, I’ll be able to tell if they’re artifacts.”

So far all she’d heard was the bleat of a goat at a nearby farm and the low growl of the police engines keeping the officers warm.

His fingers squeezed her upper arm, and she relished the unspoken approval. After their counseling session, she’d been more determined than ever to try to get past this fear lurking inside. She couldn’t let this second chance with Hez slip away because of childhood trauma. She had her first counseling session with Melissa Morris tomorrow.

Headlights appeared in the distance, and she held her breath when the vehicle rumbled closer. The sound of the big diesel engine told her it was a semi hauling a trailer even before she could pick out the details of the truck. “Just like you said,”

she whispered against his ear.

He nodded and they watched it pull to the stop sign. A police car pulled in front of it and another one blocked the back. Officers spilled from the vehicles, and one of them yanked open the driver’s door. “Out,” he said.

The driver uttered a string of curses as he climbed out of the cab. He stood with his hands on his hips as officers opened the back of his truck and clambered inside. “What’s this all about?”

Hez helped Savannah up, and they walked to the back of the trailer to watch the action. Officers ripped open shrink-wrap on the pallets of boxes and began to go through the contents. Savannah stamped her feet to bring a little warm blood to her toes. This wouldn’t be a quick task—not with that many pallets of boxes. At the front of the truck, the driver continued to harangue the officers, and his language grew even more colorful as the minutes stretched out.

“Got something here,”

one of the cops shouted after about an hour. He came toward Savannah with a wrapped statue. “This what we’re looking for?”

Her mouth went dry. Finally they had some evidence. She took the Bubble Wrap off the item. “Could one of you shine a light on it for me?”

A female officer promptly complied, and Savannah’s bubble of anticipation deflated. The statue was of two children holding hands. “It’s not an artifact, just a piece of decorative art for a living room.”

She handed it back to the officer, who shrugged and took it back to the truck.

What if this was a bust? Hez’s information indicated the truck would have several hidden illegal artifacts, but the smugglers could have gotten wind of the trap. But that didn’t make sense either because wouldn’t they have avoided the area and gone a different direction?

The minutes ticked by into hour two of the search as she and Hez watched. The officers looked for hidden panels in the sides and under the floor, but nothing was inside but what was on the pallets.

Two hours later, an officer shook his head. “We’re done here. It’s clean.”

He shot Hez a disgusted glare as they clambered down out of the trailer and headed to their vehicles.

Hez sighed and took Savannah’s hand. “Let’s get to the warm car. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“You can go, sir,”

one of the officers told the driver. “Sorry for your inconvenience.”

“Sorry! Is that all you can say? You delayed me two hours for nothing.”

He snorted and stomped toward the cab of his truck. He glared at Savannah and Hez as he passed. He reached the cab and pulled open his door.

The interior light shone on his face and Savannah frowned when she got a good look at him. She’d seen him before, but where? She gasped when recognition clicked into place and clutched Hez’s hand. “That’s Joseph Willard V, known as Little Joe. I met him when I was researching my book.”

The man shrugged off his denim jacket before he climbed into the truck, and she spotted a Punisher tattoo on his arm. She struggled to remember what she knew of the various branches of the Willard clan. Little Joe had gotten a business degree, hadn’t he? Why was the man driving a semi in the middle of the night?

* * *

Jess’s hand shook as she powered on the computer in her home office.

A poisonous cocktail of caffeine, adrenaline, and fatigue coursed through her veins.

She took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart.

Tonight had been a very close thing—and it wasn’t over yet.

She’d been going nonstop since she walked out of the meeting with Hez and Savannah fifteen hours ago.

A tense series of calls and videoconferences with Punisher and English Cream punctuated her day as they scrambled to find the source of the leak and figure out what to do with the shipment, which was already on a truck in Texas by the time Jess left Savannah’s office.

The big problem was that they had no idea where the ambush would take place.

Hez hadn’t revealed the location during the meeting, and Jess couldn’t press for more information without raising his suspicions.

Their mole in the Pelican Harbor Police Department was no help because the DA had kept the PHPD in the dark and worked solely with state police, presumably because Hez had told the DA about the mole.

So Jess and English Cream decided—over Punisher’s loud objections—to keep the truck on its regularly scheduled route and send it into the ambush.

The smuggled artifacts had to be in New York for an auction today, so they were pulled off the truck in a dark wayside outside Chunky-Meehan, Mississippi, before it reached Alabama, and given to a courier.

A second courier took the provenance documents from TGU to New York so everything arrived at the auction house on time.

It had been expensive and nerve-racking, but they had managed to pull it off.

Now came the finger-pointing.

At least none of them should be aimed at her.

Still, she braced herself for the fireworks as her monitor came to life.

Punisher and English Cream were already online.

“Explain yourself, little Fury,”

Punisher barked, referring to her avatar: an image from an ancient Greek vase showing one of the Furies, goddesses of vengeance and justice. “How did you let this happen?”

So she was somehow still to blame. Of course. She was in no mood to play nice. “Simple. I made the mistake of going into business with you.”

“Watch your mouth!”

Her raw nerves snapped. “Watch your back! Someone in your organization talked. That’s the only explanation.”

“She’s right,”

English Cream said. “You have a traitor in your midst. I don’t know the details of the shipping routes and schedules and neither does she. Only your people do. If it hadn’t been for our friendly Fury, we all would be paying a heavy price for your leak.”

Punisher cursed. “I’m already paying a heavy price. The load of furniture in that truck was late thanks to the cops, and I had to pay a penalty. If we’d taken care of the lawyer like I suggested, this wouldn’t have happened.”

English Cream sighed. “No, something different and worse would have happened. We’ve been over this already. Take care of the leak.”

Punisher snorted. “Oh, we will. We’re gonna find it and plug it. Permanently.”

* * *

Savannah entered her office building after ten. Her first appointment with Melissa Morris had gone well, though she felt wrung out from the emotions of recounting everything to her. It had been cathartic, and she felt a tiny sliver of hope. Melissa had given her a Bible passage to memorize from Isaiah 43 about forgetting the past. She especially liked the part about God doing a new thing and making a way in the wilderness. That wilderness was in her past, and with God’s help, she could find her way.

She reached her office door and found Hez pacing the marble floor outside. “Hez, what are you doing here?”

He wore the same jeans and TGU sweatshirt as the night before. Lines of fatigue fanned from his tired, red eyes, and his scruffy chin told her he hadn’t shaved this morning either. “Did you get any sleep?”

He shook his head and continued to pace. “I’ve been here since three this morning. There has to be a bug here at the university, Savannah. Has to be! Our intel was rock solid, so there’s no other explanation for my failure last night. I’ve searched the Justice Chamber, my office, and the conference room. I came here to wait for you and Jess to arrive so I could search your offices. Jess arrived at seven, but her office was clean. So it has to be here in your office.”

She examined his tone for an accusation but didn’t find even a hint of blame. So why did she feel so defensive? “I know I’m late. I had my first counseling session this morning.”

She expected him to grill her about it, but he seemed too intent on his mission to ask any questions.

She unlocked the door to her office and flipped on the light. Hez went straight to the bookcases and pulled out every volume. He ran his fingers along the undersides of the shelves as well. Savannah went to her library table desk and pulled out her chair before squatting under it to examine the underside. Nothing. Her chair was clean too.

After twenty minutes of searching, Hez dropped into the armchair. “I don’t understand this. I was sure a bug was in here. Did you tell anyone about the roadblock?”

She stiffened. “Of course not. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not even Nora? Or a passing comment to someone?”

Was he accusing her of leaking the information? His mention of Nora stirred her unease at her discovery that Nora was a Willard. Had she told Hez about it? She didn’t think so, but maybe she should. “I—I didn’t tell Nora. She’s a Willard, but the connection is distant and she doesn’t see them much.”

He leaped to his feet. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

She didn’t like his raised voice and tried to chalk it up to his fatigue. He couldn’t be accusing her of anything. “It didn’t seem important—like I said, she doesn’t see them much.”

He ran his hand through his thick dark hair. “Savannah, that was crucial information. Nora is the mole! It makes perfect sense since she’s in the police department. You must have said something to her.”

“You’re wrong! I haven’t even seen her or spoken to her on the phone.”

Keep your cool. She took a couple of deep breaths before answering in a softer tone. “Nora has never been anything but trustworthy. Even if I’d said something to her, she would never betray me. You need to go home and get some sleep. This is your exhaustion talking.”

He rubbed his forehead. “I have a class to teach. I barely have time for a quick shower and more coffee.”

“Then go home and take a nap after your class. That’s an order from your president.”

She forced a smile so he didn’t take offense.

He didn’t so much as crack a tiny grin before heading to the door without answering her. He didn’t kiss her goodbye either, and he left the door standing open. She exhaled a shaky breath and sank onto her chair. What had just happened? She’d never expected Hez to blame her for last night’s failed ambush. Her thoughts spun through everyone she’d talked to in the past twenty-four hours. This couldn’t be her fault.

Jess poked her head in the door. “What’s up with Hez this morning? He looked like he’d been on an all-night bender. He’s never rattled, but he was not himself.”

She entered the office and shut the door behind her.

A shiver of dread rippled down Savannah’s back. She hadn’t been close enough to him to smell his breath, but it didn’t sound like he’d had time to drink.

That never stopped him before.

She shoved away the unwelcome thought.

“He’s trying to figure out how the smugglers knew about the ambush.”

Jess adjusted her navy skirt. “I don’t think they did. If they knew the cops were waiting, wouldn’t they have made sure they didn’t come down that deserted road? I think it’s clear his intel was off.”

Savannah wanted to tell her sister about Hez’s accusatory tone, but it would only heighten the tension between the two people she loved most in the world. “I’m sure he’ll figure it out.”

And once he thought about it, he’d be back with an apology.