That's what Mother would say. The usual bull about taking it to the streets, fighting oppression, making sure women had equality in this world, and Mother would look at her daughter and shake her head in disappointment.

  Disappointment that she was taking a giant step backwards.

  And the damn thing was, Mother would be right.

  She went into the living room, looked at the shiny table, and folded her arms.

  Remembered some more.

  * * * *

  It had been a frustrating day. After the morning and early afternoon, the writing had produced exactly two pages, two pages of crap she was sure she would delete tomorrow. And so she had gone on a run, to clear her head, in sweats and sports bra and T-shirt, and halfway through her route, clouds had rolled in across the valley and had dumped themselves on her. So she had run home in the rain, the water drenching her, passing trucks and cars spraying water on her, and from the mailbox she had retrieved the mail.

  Into the house she had gone, sneakers squishy-wet on the floor, dripping everywhere; she dropped the mail on the dining room table and had stripped her clothes and taken a hot, hot shower, embarrassed at the tears that had flowed down her cheeks while the hot water failed to warm her up, and then...

  And then...

  Well.

  Terrycloth around her still-wet hair, she came out and almost shrieked, for Casey had come home early, was standing there, in the hallway, and those eyes.

  They weren't the happy, laughing eyes she had first seen.

  He had her wet clothes and sneakers in his hands.

  "Mind telling me what the hell is going on here?” he had asked, his voice low and even.

  She wiped a drop of water off her nose. “Oh, Christ, I was taking a run and then the skies opened up, drenching me, and you wouldn't believe those jerk drivers who won't even make an effort to dodge the puddles and—"

  Now she was talking to his back. He was out in the dining room and she had followed him, and he dropped her sneakers and clothes on the floor and went to the table and with a sudden motion that froze her he shot out with an arm and swept the mail off the table and onto the floor.

  "Look at that!” he had demanded. “Look at that! I come home from a trip, trying to keep my company afloat, trying to keep us afloat, Elaine, and what the hell do I see? Hunh? Your wet clothes, your wet sneakers, on the carpet and floor that I paid for, and the day's mail ... soaking in a heap on the dining room table!"

  Now the eyes were really scaring her, and she felt herself unexpectedly take a step back, and now she could smell the booze on his breath, too early to be drinking, part of her thought, and she had said, “Casey, please, take it easy, it's not that big a—"

  And then he had punched her.

  * * * *

  So where had the morning gone? She wasn't sure. She went into her office and spent some time on the Internet, and then before she knew it, it was a quarter past ten. Time to go back to the Have a Seat diner. She looked at the damn screen. For a while, her inbox for her e-mail had been stuffed with messages from old friends at the Journal and other places, inquiries on how she was doing, how the book was coming along, and after a while, she found it tiring to reply, and had stopped. And then the messages had dribbled away. And of course, she found it so much easier to stay at home, playing with the computer, with the Internet, than to try to make new friends in Montcalm.

  She went out to the car, purse over her arm, ready for the rest of the morning.

  Time to be a journalist again, and despite herself, she felt a little flicker of hope.

  * * * *

  A day after Casey had punched her, she had come out of the bedroom, where she had barricaded herself for the previous twenty-four hours. For the longest time, she had looked at the phone, at the receiver, and wondered why she couldn't pick it up. Why she was so weak. To pick up the phone, make the phone call...

  She had been assaulted.

  She was a victim.

  Her husband had struck her...

  And then ... well, then what?

  The local cops would come by, and who knew what kind of law-enforcement professionalism they had. Would they take her seriously? Or would they laugh it off, take Casey's side? And suppose they arrested him, what then? She'd have to move out ... and move out where? With a thin bank account, she could take refuge in a motel for a while ... and then what?

  To somebody's house in Montcalm? Please. She had a few passing acquaintances, but no one she could call a friend.

  Back to New York? To tell her friends what a loser she had become? Not, not likely.

  To Mother? Impossible. She couldn't dream of spending a day with Mother, not to mention having to tell her what had happened with Casey, for she would take great pride and pleasure in saying I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, in so many different ways and styles.

  A battered-women's shelter, or whatever passed as a shelter in this remote part of the world? She, a journalist with a master's degree from Columbia, trying to explain to the local yokels how it came to be that she needed their help?

  So the phone had remained untouched. And she had stayed. And apologies were eventually made, promises as well, to never do that ever again, and that had been fine, for another few months or so, until he had punched her again, when dinner had been late.

  * * * *

  Elaine parked the Volvo in the lot of the Have a Seat, pleased to see that the lot was now nearly empty. She grabbed her notebook and the file folder, went out into the still-cool morning air, and then went into the diner.

  My, what a difference. Just a handful of people, hardly any noise at all, and Jason Lovell was leaning over the counter talking to a woman mail carrier, taking a coffee break, no doubt, but when he saw her come in, he stood up, grinning.

  "Sorry, Stacy,” he said. “I've got an appointment."

  He went to one of the coffee machines, drew a mug of coffee for himself, turned, and unlike the waitress earlier that morning, said, “Coffee? Or something else?"

  "How about some juice?"

  "Sure. Orange, grapefruit, or cranberry?"

  "Orange would be nice."

  "You got it."

  He deftly drew a glass of orange juice, and carrying the juice and the coffee mug in his big hands, he took her back to the same booth from the morning, at the very end of the row, and only big enough for two people. She sat down and placed the file folder and her reporter's notebook on the table, took a breath, felt her legs quivering. Amazing. All the people she had interviewed over the years, and now she felt like an undergrad, reporting for the first time for her college newspaper. She took a breath, and—

  He noticed.

  Cocked his head a bit. “You okay? Can I get you something else?"

  Damn, she thought, he's good. Very good. Be careful, hon, be very careful of him. This isn't some investment banker you're interviewing, or some Silicon Valley geek who's never seen a naked breast in his entire short life.

  "No, I'm fine,” she lied. “And I appreciate you giving me the time this morning."

  He shrugged. “Not a problem. Just don't take too much time, you know? The lunch crowd starts streaming in in just under an hour."

  Elaine flipped open her reporter's notebook. “I'll do my best."

  "So, before we start, mind telling me again how you decided to do a story on me?"

  She smiled, and this time, at least, she was telling the truth. “I thought you and the diner would make for an interesting story."

  * * * *

  And maybe it was kismet, karma, or some other ordering of the cosmos that began with the letter k, but one day, cruising through her e-mail account, there was an invite, an honest-to-God invite, from someone she had known at the Journal, an assistant editor named Winslow, and the message was brief and to the point: He had gone off to a regional magazine in New England, needed some human-interest stories, knew she was in the wilds of upstate New Hampshire. Would she be interested in doing an article, five thousand words max, about some local feature, maybe a coffee shop or something, one of those stories about crusty New Englanders that the East and West Coast elites lap up and love so much?

  When she had read the note, her very first thought was to turn it down. Damn it, she was trying to work on a novel, do something different, and—

  Well. How was it working, then? How much had she accomplished?

  So far, well, nothing. The novel was more than just dead in the water, it was sinking with no hope of survival.

  But a freelance nonfiction piece ... she had been amazed that the thought of doing a story about a diner or something had kindled that little spark of creativity that she thought had been snuffed out and drowned by her new life in Montcalm, and before she changed her mind, she had said yes.

  Yes, oh God, yes.

  * * * *

  Elaine said, “So, how long have you been here, Mr. Lovell?"

  He grinned. “Please, call me Jason. And I've been here four years."

  "And what did you do before you came to the diner?"

  "Worked in the government for a while, put in my thirty—pretty weird, hunh, spending thirty years in one place?—and then decided to cash out and come back up here. My parents had a summer place nearby and I had some great memories of the place when I was a kid, so I knew I'd retire here. And retire I did. But then I found out after a year that twelve months of fishing, canoeing, and goofing off was hard for the soul. I needed to keep busy ... and when the diner came up for sale, I bought it and there you go."

  She scribbled quickly and efficiently, taking it all in. “Don't you find it a big change, coming from government work, and then running a diner?"

  He sipped from his coffee. “Found it an improvement, if you've got to know. People in government tend to be stiff-necked, can't do anything without getting paperwork done in triplicate, or having completed stepladder safety training or diversity training or some other training. Tell you, it was a relief to leave after all those years. And here? Well, the BS level is pretty low. Has to be, at a diner. I mean, either the eggs are cold or they're not, or the coffee sucks or it doesn't. If it's real, it's real."

  "And your customers?"

  Another sip from the coffee cup. “Real people, too. Not thinking about sticking a knife in your back, or tossing you under the bus, so they can get a better performance review or a step increase in their salary. Up here, if a guy says he's gonna plow your driveway in the winter, he does it. If a guy says he's gonna vote for you, he does. If a gal says, don't worry, I can do your books and it'll cost you this much every week, that's what happens."

  Elaine said, “So you find most people are good up here, your customers."

  "Well, it can't be a hundred percent. If it was, it'd be nirvana, and this place sure don't look like nirvana now, does it?"

  He laughed, but his smile quickly went away when Elaine decided to try again, from the beginning. “So, what exactly did you do in the government?"

  No more smiles. No more laughter. “Oh, this and that."

  "I see.” Her heart now pounding, now looking to the file folder on the tabletop, next to her orange juice.

  * * * *

  Once she had gotten the assignment, she knew that it was a chance to get back into the game and, by God, she was going to do it right. So she had spent more than the usual time getting prepared for the interview, by going to the local newspaper office and looking through clips about the Have a Seat diner, and then doing an Internet search on the diner and its owner, Jason Lovell, and when she had started, well, something wasn't quite right. There were little faint trails of something more than just a retiree taking possession of a diner. Something a bit more.... And she found out one bit of information, which led her to something else.

  Something else that she had thought about the time Casey went after her with a leather belt because she wouldn't iron his shirts.

  * * * *

  After another ten minutes or so of interviewing, asking the right questions about the customers and characters in the diner, the challenges of getting to the diner at four a.m. in a blizzard to set up, and the usual and customary questions about running a small place in a small town, she glanced up at a clock. Okay, she thought. Time. Here we go. She took a deep breath, pushed her knees together to stop the shaking, and went to the file folder.

  "Actually, Jason, I was wondering if we could talk about what you did before you came up here to Montcalm, a little more background,” she said, opening up the folder.

  Hunched over the top of the booth's table, Jason shrugged again. “Not much to say. Pretty boring stuff. Just government work, and I just put my time in until retirement came knocking."

  "I see. And where exactly did you work while in the government?"

  He stared at her. But unlike Casey's eyes, there was nothing evil or shifting there. Just a calm curiosity as to why she was doing what she was doing. “Here and there. Nothing special."

  She slipped a sheet of paper out, one of several she had collected over the past few days, in doing the research, research that had led her down some very strange paths indeed. And by relying on her Rolodex and other contacts, she had managed to find her way down those paths and eventually find her way here.

  "Some people might disagree,” she said. “Working for the Central Intelligence Agency, all those years, sounds something very special indeed."

  And sheet one was an article showing a Congressional hearing from a few years back, concerning some controversy involving the CIA, and sitting behind one of the witness chairs—with a bit more hair and better clothes—was the man in front of her, though in the photo caption he was identified as Robert Jason Lovell.

  He looked down, seemed to smile for just a moment, and then looked up. “Now I'll say something I'm sure you're familiar with hearing. No comment."

  "What did you do in the CIA, Jason?"

  His face was friendly, but the words were not. “Sorry. No comment. Today, tomorrow, next century. No comment."

  Back to the file folder she went, willing her hands not to shake. She slid out two more sheets of paper. He looked down, and for a moment, just a moment, he stared at them with some sort of expression in his face, a passing expression that could be pride. Or something else.

  She leaned over. “A newspaper article, and another photo. Of you in Afghanistan. You belonged to an outfit called the Special Activities Division, part of the CIA's National Clandestine Service. Highly secret, highly covert. They conduct all sorts of classified military-style missions, including guerrilla operations, sabotage, and assassinations, from shooting people in the head to poisoning their hummus. Stories that never get made public, never make it into the newspapers. An elite group of killers. Am I right, Jason?"

  He looked to her and she had expected many types of reactions, but not this one. No anger. No fluster. Just calm and collected. “No comment, Elaine. Like before. And I believe this interview is finished."

  She was suddenly thirsty, picked up the glass of orange juice and took a healthy sip. “No, Jason. It's not. I have one more thing to ask you. And then you can tell me if the interview is finished or not."

  * * * *

  That was when it came clear to her, in doing that additional piece of research, that she had found a local connection to the Have a Seat diner and its spook owner. At first she had thought that she had stumbled onto a story that could even make a national publication—killer spook now makes killer omelettes, that sort of thing—but that damn thread of research led her to another place, and another place, and one early morning, having refused to sleep with Casey because of an earlier incident involving not enough gas in the car, which was followed by an arm twisting that still made her shoulder throb, the idea of the story was overtaken by something else.

  She had sat in her office that morning, two a.m., the creature who was called her husband gently slumbering about six yards away, and she allowed a bit of hope to seep into her.

  A bit of hope.

  * * * *

  Another breath, not worrying now that Jason was seeing how nervous she was, for indeed, she was quite nervous. Four more sheets of paper were brought out, four more sheets that were fanned out in front of her.

  Jason looked at them, and then looked to her. Not a word.

  Elaine took a breath. “Henry Collins. Jake Winters. Robbie Couture. Paul Dudley. Four local men, four men who've died within the last eighteen months. These are their obituaries."

  Jason stared. Silent.

  "I found their obituaries because they all appeared in the Montcalm Gazette, and because they all had one thing in common. All four were regular customers, the newspaper said, of the Have a Seat diner."

  Jason kept on staring.

  "But I dug a bit further. There were other areas of commonality, as well. They were in their forties or fifties. They weren't marathon runners, but they didn't have any history of disease. They just ... died. All four died, of apparent heart failure. What are the chances of that occurring, Jason, that four local men, four customers of yours, all died within a span of eighteen months?"

  No change from Jason. She took a breath.

  "But there was one more common thread. Took a bit of digging, but that's what we journalists do. Find stuff out. And what I found out is that all four men, all four, had criminal records. For domestic violence. All four were men who abused their wives, abused their children, all four were bullies. And now all four of them are dead."

  He remained silent. She lowered her voice. “How do you choose them, Jason? Do you hear about them, in the morning, when the place is packed? Hear gossip about who's beating his wife, how he's getting away with it.... Is that it? And you can't stand it, can you? A man who's dedicated his life to fighting bad guys, to being a good guy ... you decide to do something about it. Something involving your old skills. Old skills that would allow you to get away with a death without any suspicions being raised."

  Jason looked down at the papers and looked up again. “This isn't an article you're working on now, is it? It's something else."

  Elaine nodded. “Yes. It's something else."

  "Blackmail,” he said. “What do you want? Eggs? Bacon? Money?"