“Do you?” He started down the porch steps. “Then you know that I’m a cop and when I have a job to do, I do it. I’ll call you and Eve later and tell you what time I’ll be home.” He could feel Jane’s troubled gaze on him as he got into the driver’s seat. As he started the car, he saw Eve come out of the house and stand beside Jane on the porch. Two strong, intelligent women, the two women he loved most in the world.

And because of their strength and intelligence he had to avoid them like the plague right now. He didn’t need them focusing that keen intelligence and perceptiveness on him. They might see something he didn’t want anyone to see.

He waved as he backed the car out of the driveway.

He’d be okay. It had only been the stress and strain of the years of searching for Eve’s little girl that had sparked that hallucination earlier this morning. He wasn’t nuts. As long as he recognized the problem, then it was no problem at all. There would be no more hallucinations.

There would be no more ghostly visits from Bonnie.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME, Eve?” Jane watched Joe drive down the road. “I’ve never seen him like this. I know you’ve been having problems, but Joe was almost… distant.”

“I couldn’t tell you what I didn’t know,” Eve said. “He was fine when I left to pick you up at the airport.” No, not fine. Joe and her relationship was strained, and the failure to find Bonnie on that island and bring closure to the agony of the years of searching had not made it any better. But he hadn’t been the stiff, almost remote man who’d greeted Eve and Jane when they’d returned to the lake cottage. “Yes, we’re not absolutely on the same page, but we’re working through it.”

“Are you?”

She shrugged. “We’re trying. We may not make it. If we don’t, it will be my fault. I have to find Bonnie, but that’s my obsession, not Joe’s. I don’t know why he doesn’t just walk away from me.”