LeAnne, concentrating on unwrapping the sandwich, said nothing. What her mother had said was true, but LeAnne didn’t want to do that. For one thing, she loved living in the Texas Hill Country, and she knew she’d hate the rain in Oregon. For another, it had taken her months to get her nursing license from Arizona validated so she could work in Texas. If she moved to yet a different state, she’d most likely be out of work for months again, assuming there was any work to be had. In this economy, jobs for qualified LPNs weren’t all that plentiful. Then there was Lance. How long would it take for him to recover from his burns or get fitted for a prosthetic leg or learn to walk on it?

  LeAnne bit into the sandwich. Though the bread was dry and tasted like cardboard, she knew her mother was right. LeAnne was in this fight for the long haul, and she needed to eat whether she wanted to or not.

  “By the way,” Phyllis said, “I talked to that nice Detective Hernandez yesterday after basketball practice. He was there picking up his son when I stopped by for Thad. Did you know his son and Thad are on the same junior varsity team?”

  LeAnne choked on a chunk of sandwich and spent the better part of the next minute coughing her head off. Nice? LeAnne couldn’t believe that her mother had referred to Detective Richard Hernandez of the San Leandro Sheriff’s Department as nice. He was the guy who had shown up on her doorstep some months earlier to place her son under arrest for what was referred to at the time as malicious mischief. Of course, the charges had escalated from there. Maybe the man had just been doing his job. Lance had done the crime, and he had also done his time, but in LeAnne’s book, Richard Hernandez would never remotely be considered a “nice” man.

  “Yes,” she said when the coughing fit subsided. “I was aware of that.”

  “He said he was sorry to hear about what had happened, about Lance’s accident.” Phyllis shrugged. “That’s what it said in the paper yesterday, by the way—in the San Leandro paper. That last week’s incident in which an inmate at the San Leandro Juvenile Detention Facility suffered serious burns had been determined to be an accident.”

  “It was not an accident,” LeAnne hissed through clenched teeth. “First they said Lance did it to himself as a ploy to get an early release. Now they’re saying it was an accident? Someone tried to murder him, Mother, and no one, not one person, believes it when I try to tell them so. How could they already write what happened off as a so-called accident when Lance is still unconscious and no one has bothered to interview the person it happened to? That makes no sense. It’s a cover-up, plain and simple.”

  Phyllis said nothing aloud, although her silence spoke volumes. For some reason, she seemed to have drawn the same conclusions the investigators had—that Lance was somehow responsible for his own injuries. Angered by her mother’s complicit agreement with the rest of the world, LeAnne stood up abruptly, dropped the remainder of her sandwich in the trash, and donned the required paper gown and slippers. “It’s time for me to go in,” she said.

  ICU rules for the burn unit allowed patients to have one visitor per hour for five minutes at a time. LeAnne ducked into Lance’s room, wiping away unwelcome tears and hoping her mother hadn’t noticed them.

  The room was dimly lit, with the blackout curtains pulled shut. The atmosphere hummed and buzzed with quiet noises from the collection of life-sustaining equipment arrayed around Lance’s bed. Oblivious to everything but her son’s pale face on the pillow, LeAnne stood at his bedside and let the tears course down her cheeks. His face looked fine—well, almost fine, if you could ignore the oxygen tube fastened under his nose or the fact that most of his eyebrows and eyelashes had been singed away. The drugs must have been working. As far as LeAnne could tell from his expression, he was resting comfortably. The problem was, Lance’s face didn’t tell the whole story. She had seen the awful damage the hospital sheets kept hidden from view—the hideous seeping burns from his chest down, the broken bones, and now the missing leg.

  Days earlier, before the surgeon took Lance into surgery to repair the compound fractures, he had warned LeAnne of the dangers of infection from the burns or from the surgical incisions. He had told her that Lance was receiving the very best treatment and that hospital personnel were doing everything they could, but still . . .

  LeAnne had heard the momentary hesitation in the doctor’s voice. It had taken several days before she had filled in the blanks. The doctor had been trying to prepare her for the possibility that Lance might end up losing one or both of his legs. He hadn’t mentioned the other possible outcome, one that was far worse. Standing there, she realized that what had been unthinkable to begin with was now a very real possibility. Lance, her beloved firstborn child, might die.

  In the long hours after the orderlies had wheeled him back into his room after the amputation, LeAnne Tucker had forced herself to come to terms with that life-shattering possibility: Lance might die, and that possibility brought another horrifying consideration into LeAnne’s life. If Lance died and the cops continued to blame him for what had happened, then whoever was responsible for his death might well get away with it.

  LeAnne stood there for several of her paltry five minutes feeling as lost and alone as she had ever felt in her life. When the door swished open, she turned, expecting to see a doctor, since this was about the time of day when the doctors usually did rounds. Instead, a woman, properly paper-gowned for the occasion, entered the room and stood beside LeAnne. The new arrival wasn’t someone LeAnne had seen in the hospital before. This was an older woman, far older than any of the other nurses. Her hair, mostly white, was pulled back into a tight bun. She wore gold-framed glasses. On a chain around her neck, she wore a gold crucifix.

  “You’re Lance’s new nurse?” LeAnne asked. “I’m his mother.”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m not a nurse. My name is Sister Anselm, and I’m happy to meet you. Not happy to meet under such difficult circumstances, of course,” she corrected quickly. “Your son must be very important. My bishop made special arrangements for me to come here from Arizona to look after him.”

  “Your bishop?” LeAnne asked, feeling stupid. “You mean you’re a nun?”

  “Yes,” Sister Anselm answered, smiling. “I’m a Sister of Providence. I’m also what’s known in the trade as a patient advocate.”

  LeAnne noticed something very comforting about that smile, but none of this made sense. Sister Anselm had come because a bishop had sent her? What bishop? And what’s a patient advocate?

  “I’m sorry,” Leanne said finally. “There must be some mistake. Our family isn’t Catholic.”

  “Oh no,” Sister Anselm disagreed. “There’s no mistake. None at all. What Bishop Gillespie told me on the phone when he was making the transportation arrangements was that one of his friends had called in a marker.”

  There were two hospital beds in the room, but only one was occupied. Sister Anselm went over to the other bed, retrieved the chair that was sitting there, and dragged it to Lance’s side of the room. Once it was in place, she sat down on one chair and motioned for LeAnne to take the second. “Tell me about your son,” the nun said.

  LeAnne glanced at her watch. “I can’t,” she said. “My five minutes are up.”

  “Let’s not worry about minutes just now,” Sister Anselm said. “I’m here to be of service to your son and to you. To do that, I need to know as much about him as possible.”

  LeAnne hesitated, but for only a moment, and then she settled gratefully into the offered chair. There, for the second time that morning, she found herself spilling out her tale of woe into the listening ears of a complete stranger.

  Once Leland disappeared into his room, Ali went to hers, stripped out of her clothing and into her jammies, and then returned to the sitting room. During tea, her phone had vibrated with several incoming-mail announcements, but she hadn’t wanted to open any of them while they were dealing with the aunties.

  In looking at her mail, she was pleased to see that the first message was from B. When she opened it with her iPhone, she saw a photo of B. smiling back at her. He was one of several businessmen in the photo, all of them wearing suits and smiles while posed in front of a window with a bite-sized view of Tokyo’s nighttime skyline showing in the background. Naturally, B. was head and shoulders above his counterparts. The accompanying message said:

  Last night’s dinner at the Crown restaurant in the Palace Hotel. I guess you can see why I’m standing in the middle of the back row.

  Love, B.

  The message seemed innocuous enough, but Ali’s instincts told her that something else was going on. Retrieving her thumb drive, she reopened the e-mail using her steganography program and password. After unzipping the enclosed file, she used her encryption key to unlock and read B.’s real message.

  After I got off the phone with you this morning, I still couldn’t sleep. This whole thing stinks. See additional accompanying files from Stuart. My gut tells me someone is after Lance Tucker, and just because he’s out of the juvie facility doesn’t mean he’s out of danger. I’m contacting Bishop Gillespie and asking for reinforcements.

  It didn’t take an encryption key for Ali to understand what B. meant. He was going to Bishop Francis Gillespie in Phoenix to ask for help from the bishop’s traveling patient advocate and emissary, Sister Anselm Becker. The idea that Bishop Gillespie would send Sister Anselm to look after the welfare of a seriously injured burn-unit patient wasn’t at all surprising. What was surprising was that he’d send her all the way to Texas.

  Years earlier, a burn unit was where Ali first met Sister Anselm, who was now a valued and trusted friend. In that instance, a woman named Madeline Langley Cooper had been seriously injured in an arson fire near Camp Verde in Arizona’s Yavapai County. She was initially hospitalized with no identification and no one to intercede on her behalf. Sister Anselm had been dispatched to run interference for her. Because Arizona had then and still has an ongoing problem with undocumented aliens ending up in hospitals under similar circumstances, Father Gillespie, the bishop of the Phoenix archdiocese, had made those unfortunate individuals the focus of his personal ministry, and he had tapped Sister Anselm, a trained nurse, to serve that particular community.

  At first Mimi Cooper was thought to be the innocent victim of an accidental fire. When a subsequent investigation revealed the crime to be an attempted and ultimately successful homicide, both Ali and Sister Anselm were drawn into the killer’s crosshairs as they attempted to keep the severely injured woman safe. The trauma of that shared experience had turned Ali and Sister Anselm into fast friends. It was also the reason Sister Anselm, who refused to carry a gun, now never went anywhere without her trusty Taser.

  In this instance, Ali wondered if Sister Anselm was being transported across state lines due to her abilities as a patient advocate, or did it have more to do with the expectation that she could function as Lance’s on-site bodyguard? Either way, Ali understood that if Sister Anselm were there, any number of serious strings had been pulled. The only way to find out why was likely to be found in the new collection of files hidden in the pixels of this latest e-mail. As tempting as it was to go straight to the new files, Ali forced herself to go back to the ones from the day before—the ones she had started reading before going down to tea.

  She spent the next two hours reading through the voluminous court proceedings surrounding Lance Tucker’s eventual conviction and incarceration. Since Lance was a juvenile at the time, he was never mentioned by name in the Lariat articles that reported on the trial. The court transcripts were another matter, and it was easy to see that the deck had been stacked against Lance and his mother.

  The cyber evidence, including tracking done by High Noon Security, clearly pointed to Lance as the culprit in the server hacking incident. Not only was the kid found guilty and jailed, his mother was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, which his mother had paid by taking a second mortgage on her house, which was now in danger of foreclosure.

  As Ali read through the material, it looked like there had been a rush to justice, and Lance’s public defender hadn’t done him any favors. The defense seemed inadequate all the way along. Lance hadn’t been allowed out on bail pending trial, and upon conviction, he had been given the highest possible sentence.

  It was an article from the Lariat that followed the one reporting on Lance’s sentencing hearing that caught Ali’s attention:

  Longtime San Leandro High School math teacher Everett Jackson, age 58, passed away suddenly in his home on May 23. For the past ten years, the popular teacher has served as faculty adviser to the school’s prizewinning computer science club, which has won the statewide Longhorn computer science competition three of the last four years.

  He is survived by his former wife and two children, Everett Jr. of Dallas and Linda Gail Thomas (Richard) of San Antonio. He is also survived by his mother, Grace Jackson, of San Leandro.

  Services are pending.

  The family suggests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the San Leandro Suicide Prevention Line.

  Ali read through the article twice. What it didn’t say was far more revealing than what it did, and it left Ali asking any number of questions. The only clue that the man’s death was a suicide had come in the line about suggested donations. So how had this popular and presumably well-respected man killed himself, and if so, why? Had he been in danger of losing his job for some reason? Had he faced some kind of looming health issue, or did he have difficulties with substance abuse? Had he been diagnosed with depression? The article said that Jackson was married with two grown children. Was his suicide the result of some kind of marital discord?

  Ali was wondering about that when the ringing of the room’s landline phone interrupted her thought process.

  “Hey,” she said when she realized it was B. calling. “I got your photo. You looked tired.”

  “I was tired,” he admitted, “and I still am. I just found out the doctors amputated Lance’s right leg last night.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ali said, and she was. She could tell from the catch in B.’s voice that he was, too. “Do you think he’s in danger from more than just his injuries?”

  “Yes,” B. said. “It’s in the file. You’ll find it.”

  It struck Ali as odd that he was being so circumspect on the phone, as though he suspected that someone from San Leandro might be listening in on the conversation. “You’re not going to give me any more clues than that?”

  “Not right now. I’ve got Stu working on another aspect of the case. Once he comes up with something, I’m sure we’ll both hear from him. In the meantime, I wanted someone to be in Austin to keep an eye on things.”

  “Sister Anselm, you mean?” Ali asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But B., this is sounding more and more like it should be a police matter,” Ali said.

  “It will be eventually, but right now the authorities aren’t interested in anything besides what they’ve already determined,” B. replied. “We’ll bring them into the picture once we can point them in the right direction without getting in too much trouble ourselves. Pay close attention to the science fair articles. I think what happened to Lance might have something to do with that. Now it’s your turn. Tell me about the rest of your day. How was the drive?”

  “Snowy most of the way, but it cleared up. We just came back to the room after tea with Leland’s cousins, either one of which would have been reason enough for him to run away from home all those years ago.”

  “And what’s on the agenda tomorrow for you and Mr. Brooks?”

  “I’m going to look at wedding dresses in a shop here that Jeffrey suggested. Leland wants to go to the cemetery to visit his parents’ graves. I’m not sure how to feel about that. When they sent him away all those years ago, they clearly intended for him to stay away, but I think he’s still grieving their loss.”

  “It makes sense to me,” B. said. “I went through some of that when I came back to Sedona. I was at war with my parents the whole time I was growing up. By the time I was a success, they were both gone. Leland’s a success now, too. He left all of them behind, went to another country, and made a whole new life for himself, but being back where he grew up has to be bringing back some nostalgia for what might have been.”

  Such as Thomas Blackfield, Ali thought.

  “Does he know where his parents are buried?”

  “He knows which cemetery—the one at St. Stephens Church. He may even know where the graves are located. His father died in the early fifties, his mother in the sixties, his two brothers in the eighties, and the two sisters-in-law, the brothers’ widows, sometime later than that. I looked on the Internet for him. A lot of cemeteries have grave location apps, but not this one.”

  “Are you going with him?” B. asked.

  “He didn’t say that he wanted me to. I got the feeling that this is something he needs to do on his own.”

  “So he’s going to the cemetery, and you’re going shopping. If you find a dress,” B. added, “be sure to send me a photo.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said with a laugh, “but I won’t promise.”

  By the time they hung up, it was long past dark outside. Off to the west, the sea was a fathomless black void. After one more raid on the fruit basket, Ali returned to her files and worked her way through to the most recent batch. The science fair articles from two and three years earlier were interesting, just as B. had said. In both cases, Lance Tucker had walked away with the code-writing honors, leading his school’s computer science club to easy victories. In an article dated two years earlier, Everett Jackson had told a reporter from the San Leandro Lariat that freshman Lance Tucker had all the makings of becoming the next supernova of the computing world.