When she turned to them her eyes were clear, and she looked to Hood like her old self. She wore a periwinkle shift and a matching barrette that held one plane of her hair away from her face. She had a lovely smile.

She sat on the couch between Hood and Bly and opened the laptop and squared it before her and logged on. A moment later she was in her e-mail program, scrolling down through the saved messages. Scores of them, scores more. Fifteen months of life in there, Hood thought. She stopped and moved the cursor down and highlighted one of them; then she sighed.

"Sean went undercover not long after Jimmy was kidnapped," said Seliah. "What happened to Jimmy hit Sean hard." She stood and walked to the blinded window and looked across the room to Hood and Bly.

"Six months undercover Sean started to suffer. He wasn't able to come home as often. I think he was down in Mexico a lot. For an undercover U.S. agent, that's like dipping your toes into the pools of hell. Right? His calls got fewer and he was less talkative. He was always tired because he was always scared. Who wouldn't be?"

This didn't track exactly with what Hood had experienced. Sean had called almost every day. He usually sounded evenhanded, cool, and often wickedly funny. But Hood had heard the pressure in Sean. He had sensed the wariness and the hard discipline that Ozburn used to maintain his cover and therefore his life. He was up on the high wire but he'd seemed balanced.

Hood now speculated that it might make sense that a man under heavy pressure would confide in his wife instead of in his team-mates. Or it might not.

Seliah pulled a chair up to the window and sat facing Hood and Bly. "Of course, I wondered about his new cartel friends. And the women.