"You plan on joining the conversation anytime soon?"

Jeff looked at his friend and partner, Zane Rankin, and shrugged. "I'm here."

"Physically. But you keep drifting off. Not like you at all."

Jeff returned his attention to the plans on the table without acknowledging the truth of Zane's words. Jeff was having trouble concentrating on the work at hand. He knew the cause-he couldn't get the woman and her child out of his head and he didn't know why.

Was it their circumstances? Yet he'd seen hundreds in worse trouble. Compared to a war-torn village with its winter food stores destroyed, Ashley Churchill's plight was insignificant. Was it the child? The girl? Maggie's bright smile, her foolish trust, her pink pajamas and stuffed, white cat were so far from his world as to belong to a distant universe.

Did it matter why they haunted him? Better the living than the dead who were his usual companions. There were no answers to any of the questions, so he dismissed them and returned his attention to the diagram of a luxury villa overlooking the Mediterranean. The private residence was to host a secret gathering of several international business executives who were responsible for the manufacture of some of the world's most deadly weapons. The threat of industrial espionage, terrorist attack or kidnapping would be high. He and Zane were to provide the security. Step one: learn the weaknesses of the location.

Jeff pointed with his pen. "All this has to go," he said, indicating a lush tropical garden creeping down a hill.

"Agreed. We'll use the latest class-ten sensors, hiding them on what's left."

The new high-tech sensors could be programmed to ignore the movement of the security team, yet pick up the wanderings of a field mouse at fifty yards.