"In that case, I’ll stay," Gideon said, smiling.

Late that afternoon, John had flown back to Seattle, saying that he hoped to be back for the press conference. If not, Gideon was perfectly free to talk as an anthropologist about anything he had found but was not to speak for John or the FBI.

"Also," John said with a smile, "please try not to engage, like, in any elaborate hypothesizing in advance of the facts."

Gideon promised he wouldn’t, and he and Julie saw John off from the foot of the dock on the sunny blue lake. It seemed perfectly natural, then, to ask her if she was free for dinner, and he nonchalantly did so. She accepted equally matter-of-factly, and they agreed to meet in the lobby of the lodge in an hour and a half.

Gideon did not often think about his appearance; not for the past few years, at any rate. He knew that he was not a conventionally handsome man; his nose, broken twice in college boxing matches, had long ago taken care of that. But he also knew his soft brown eyes combined with that mashed, crooked nose, heavy brow, and cleanly masculine jaw in a look of gentle ruggedness that many women found attractive. Whether the recent appearance of gray at his temples made him more attractive it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder.

So why was he wondering now, standing in front of the mirror in the old-fashioned bathroom of his cottage? The reason was Julie, of course. She had reached him somehow, had stirred him in a way he hadn’t been stirred in a long time. During an unhurried, relaxing session in the old-fashioned, marvelously comfortable six-foot tub-there was no shower-he had found himself thinking and feeling things he’d almost been ready to put in his past.

He was not on the prowl by any means, not the sort of man whose antennae were always quivering and alert. For nine years he had lived with Nora and had loved her as deeply and unreservedly as a man can love. There had been no one to compare with her when she was alive, and none since she’d been killed three years ago. Still, once in a long while a woman would come along who would rouse him and kindle the old feelings.