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She was half chanting, half singing, while a heavyset young woman with her hair braided in colorful ribbons sat cross-legged in front of the stones, playing a flute.

“Ancient ones, trees of ancient Earth. Older than time can tell. Grant me the power at your command to charge my magic spell.”

Coop wasn’t all that surprised to discover Lilith Lindstrom had grown up to be some sort of witch. After all, she’d never really fit into the hard-working community of loggers and fishermen. Flighty, harebrained, and frivolous had been a few of the descriptions he’d heard over the years. Jealous wives or worried mothers of sons were more likely to call her dangerous.

Coop, however, had always thought her magnificent. And as elusive as quicksilver, as out of reach as the moon. Deciding that she wasn’t really going to escape, not dressed—or undressed—the way she was, he folded his arms, leaned back against the gigantic trunk of a red-barked Western cedar and waited for the show—which included several provocative references to fertility—to come to a conclusion.

When it did, Coop began to slowly clap his hands. Heads swivelled toward him and female faces drew into tight, disapproving scowls. All except Lilith’s.

“Cooper!” Bestowing a smile as warm as a thousand suns upon him, she stepped down from the stones and ran toward him. “What a lovely surprise.”

With her usual impulsiveness, she flung herself into his arms and touched her smiling mouth to his. The kiss was light and brief. But it still sent a jolt straight to his groin.

“Imagine seeing you here,” she said when he’d lowered her back to the mossy ground. “Do you know, I was thinking about you just last month. It must have been a foreshadowing. When did you get back to Washington?”

“A couple weeks ago.” Around them, the other women were wrapping themselves in capes or pulling on sweats. If Lilith felt at all ill at ease about her nudity, she was sure hiding it well, Coop thought.

“I wish I’d known. I would have thrown you a huge blowout of a welcome-home party.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well, then there’s still time.” Seeming pleased with that prospect, she nodded. “What brings you out here?”

“I work here. In the park.”

“Oh. Well, isn’t that a coincidence? You being out here, and us running into one another—”

“It isn’t exactly a coincidence. I received some complaints.”

“Complaints?” She lifted a brow and combed a hand absently through her hair, causing it to drift over her breasts. Her still-magnificent naked breasts. “Whatever for?”

“To begin with, there’s the little matter of an illegal fire.”

“It’s Beltane. We couldn’t possibly celebrate without our fires. In the olden days the druids passed cattle through the flames to ensure prosperity. Since that seemed a bit impractical, we reluctantly decided to forego that portion of the ceremony.”

Practical
had never been a word Coop would have used to describe Lilith Lindstrom. And it sure wasn’t now. “It’s still not in a prescribed campground,” he pointed out.

“Well, of course it isn’t, darling. If you’ve received complaints about us celebrating our festival all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, can you imagine what would have happened if we’d held it in a designated campground?”

“Look, I’m willing, for old times sake, to overlook the illegal campsite and the nudity, but the fires are another matter. You’re going to have to put them out.”

She lifted her chin, changing from some ethereal woodland sprite back into the headstrong young girl who’d once driven him to distraction. “Not until we’ve concluded our celebration.”

“Dammit, Lilith—”

“You can curse all you like, Cooper, but we are not extinguishing those fires until tomorrow morning. I still have to draw down the moon tonight, after all.”

“You can draw down the entire Milky Way for all I care, but the fires have got to be extinguished, and you all have to move to a designated campsite. And I want you dressed. Now.” He feared if he told her about the Boy Scouts, she’d refuse to put her clothes on just to aggravate him further.

“Gracious, that’s a great many orders.” Her midnight blue eyes sparked with barely restrained temper. “I remember you having such wonderful potential, Cooper. What a shame you’ve turned out to be a narrow-minded dictator. And a governmental one at that.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, Cooper pulled a narrow notebook out of his jacket pocket, scribbled a few lines, ripped the ticket from the book and held it out to her.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a citation. For the fires.” Because she’d gotten under his skin, he flicked a quick gaze over her from the top of her head down to her crimson-lacquered toenails. “Though I may be a narrow-minded dictator, I decided to give you a pass on the lewd behavior.”

“Lewd?” She plucked the ticket from his hand, tore it in half and dropped the pieces at his feet. “I happen to know for a fact that I’m not the first person to enjoy these woods sans clothing.” Her pointed gaze reminded him that he should damn well know that, too. “Obviously, you’ve also turned into a puritan. Which is even worse than a dictator.”

“I’m just doing my job.” Because he was really starting to get pissed, he scribbled out another ticket and shoved it toward her.

“And what a nasty, small-minded job it is, too.” Lilith tore this one into four pieces and tossed them to the ground along with the others.

“Dammit, if you’d just agree to put the fires out and put some clothes on—”

“Not until we’re finished with our ceremony.”

He furiously scribbled a third. “This is your last chance, sweetheart. Tear this up and I’m going to have to take you in.”

“I am very disappointed in you, Cooper.” That stated, she grabbed the entire citation book from his hands, ripped the pages into confetti, then flung them into his face.

“Goddammit, that’s it.” Coop pulled the set of handcuffs from the back of his belt.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m taking you in.” He snapped the cuffs around her wrists, receiving a perverse pleasure at the sound of the metal clicking shut. After tossing his khaki jacket over her shoulders, he turned toward the others.

“I would advise you all to extinguish those fires. Now. We’re a little short on holding cells down at park headquarters, but if you don’t cooperate, I’m sure I can manage to squeeze you all in for a day or so. Until I can get the paperwork processed.”

Without their leader, the coven, or whatever the hell it was, crumbled. Coop watched with satisfaction as the flute player retrieved a bucket of water and threw it onto the fire, which caused the flames to hiss and sputter. The others followed suit.

“Where the hell are your clothes?” he asked Lilith.

“That’s my business.” She looked amazingly cool for a naked woman whose wrists were handcuffed behind her back.

“Since I’m going to be booking you into my jail cell, I figure it’s just become
my
business.”

They were standing toe to toe, nose to nose. Coop reluctantly gave her credit for not flinching at either his tone or his glare.

“You’re too uptight, Cooper,” Lilith said with a toss of her silver head. “I happen to embrace nudity. It is, after all, our natural state.” She skimmed a disapproving look over him. “You certainly weren’t born wearing that uniform. Which, by the way, is not at all flattering. And the color is wrong for your eyes.”

He hated that he cared what Lilith whatever-the-hell-last-name-she-was-going-by-these-days thought about him. Hated the fact that he had to resist the urge to suck in his gut, which while not as hard as it had been in the days they rolled around on a blanket in these very same woods, wasn’t bad for a guy who was about to hit fifty.

“You can tout the universal appeal of nudity all you want, but if that squall that’s out over the Pacific hits, you’ll be embracing frostbite,” he said.

“I happen to have it on good authority we’re scheduled to have mostly clear skies with some high cirrus clouds, and a possibility for scattered showers come evening.”

“See that in your crystal ball, did you?”

“Actually, it was the forecast on the Weather Channel.”

“Well, don’t look now, sweetheart, but I think your forecast is wrong. Because those black anvils gathering overhead sure as hell look like they mean business.”

“So? Even if it does rain, the human body is waterproof.”

Coop felt his jaw lock and realized he was clenching his teeth. He stabbed a finger toward a twenty-something young woman now dressed in a Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt, leggings, and sneakers. “If you don’t want to be next, go into whatever tent belongs to this throwback to the sixties and fetch her some clothes.”

“Go get my pack, Annie, please,” Lilith said when the young woman hesitated. “Before Dudley Doright here decides to put us all in shackles.”

The Seahawks fan ran to a nearby tent, returning with a dark blue backpack decorated with silver stars. Coop stuffed it under his arm and began dragging his prisoner down the trail.

“You’re a bully, Cooper Ryan,” Lilith said scathingly. “A horrible, rude, misogynist bully.”

“Sticks and stones, darlin’.” Now that he’d restored order, Coop was actually beginning to enjoy himself. He couldn’t remember another time when he’d had the upper hand where this woman was concerned.

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I warned you about the consequences.”

“Oh, I understand all about consequences. After all, I have been arrested before.” Coop recalled those days all too well. While he’d been slogging through a goddamn jungle, trying to stay alive, she’d been throwing red paint on army recruiters and sleeping with long-haired, pot-smoking, hippie draft dodgers. “I know the drill,” she continued. “What I cannot believe is that you would actually arrest a woman who gave you her virginity the night of high school graduation.”

They’d both been virgins. But since Coop hadn’t admitted to that back then, he saw no reason to set the record straight now.

They were still about two hundred yards from the trailhead when the dark sky overhead opened up, dumping buckets of icy rain that hit like needles down on them.

“It figures,” Coop ground out as he ran toward the truck, dragging her along with him. “It just goddamn figures!”

Lilith Lindstrom had always been trouble with a capital
T
. Nothing had changed there. She was also still a knockout. Coop figured that having the woman rumored to have been the inspiration for the Stones’
Ruby Tuesday
back in his life again was proof positive that Fate had one helluva skewed sense of humor.

T
he Delta jet was streaking westward, managing to stay just ahead of the setting sun. Raine sat in seat 3A in first class, a yellow legal pad on the laptop table, making a list of things that would need to be taken care of once she reached Washington.

Obviously, a visit to her grandmother was high on the list. The doctor she’d spoken with on her cellular phone while waiting at the gate for her flight had informed her that Ida appeared to have suffered merely a fleeting case of vertigo. If the additional tests failed to reveal any serious underlying condition, Raine’s grandmother would probably be discharged and allowed to return home tomorrow afternoon.

Although that didn’t give her much time, Raine had every intention of getting those three delinquents out of the house before then. She understood all too well her grandmother’s strong sense of social responsibility, but if she’d begun endangering her health, it was time for someone to put a foot down. And from Lilith’s latest disappearing act, it was more than obvious Raine couldn’t count on her mother for any show of responsibility. So, what else was new?

That left it up to her to set things straight. Fortunately, Raine thought, she was up to the job. Hadn’t one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in America called her a warrior? If she couldn’t handle one elderly woman and three teenagers, then she might as well resign from the bar.

One piece of good news she’d discovered was that it turned out Shawna and Renee had an aunt no one had known about. Child protective services was currently conducting an investigation, but according to the caseworker Raine had spoken with, the woman and her navy husband should be receiving custody of both girls within days. Which left only the pregnant Gwen to deal with.

She debated calling her grandmother from the plane, then decided that there was no point in risking a confrontation. Although the doctor’s diagnosis had been encouraging, she didn’t want to get Ida wound up and risk something far more serious than vertigo. Although her grandmother would probably never admit it, even to herself, Ida Lindstrom was, after all, a senior citizen. Not unlike the ones who’d been demonstrating against her client earlier. Had it only been two hours ago? The recent courtroom victory seemed as if it had happened in another lifetime.

Sighing, she took the phone from the back of the seat in front of her, swiped her platinum AMEX card, and dialed the number she’d already memorized.

“Well, hello, Ms. Cantrell,” the now familiar deep voice drawled. “What a surprise to hear from you. Again.”

All right, so she’d called twenty minutes ago from over Ohio. Since when was it a crime to be concerned about a possible life-threatening situation taking place in the very home where she’d grown up?

“I was checking to see if there were any further developments.

“Well now, that depends.” He dragged the subsequent pause out, as if he’d guessed how such delays irritated her.

“Depends on what?”

“Whether or not you think finding out Renee’s a vegetarian is a development.”

Renee was Shawna’s runaway sister, Raine recalled. “I fail to see how that has any relevance in this case.”

“She didn’t like the pizza.”

“Pizza?”

“The one I had delivered. Mushroom and pepperoni.”

“That was a good ploy,” she allowed. “Feeding them to create a bond.” Raine had seen much the same tactic used on an episode of
Homicide
last season.

“Actually, it wasn’t a ploy. I was starving and figured they might be hungry, too.”

“Well. Then it was a very thoughtful gesture.” Raine wondered how many New York cops would bother to think of such a thing. Then again, she decided, standoff situations in the big city were probably a great deal different than in Coldwater Cove.

“It wasn’t that big a deal.” She could hear the shrug in his voice. “Shawna—she’s the one you spoke with,” he reminded Raine, as if she could have forgotten such a call—“was willing to pick up the phone long enough to call and tell me that the kid was refusing to eat it.”

“Couldn’t Renee just take the damn pepperoni off?”

“Now, you know, that’s pretty much what I suggested.” Raine heard the renewed humor in his tone and wondered if it was meant to be at her expense. “Turns out she’s one of those absolutely pure sprout eaters who won’t touch cheese, either.”

Although she’d pulled every legal string she could from across the country, Raine still feared for the girls’ safety. Her earlier reassurance regarding the sheriff’s ability to pull this off without bloodshed had evaporated when she’d discovered, during their first conversation, that it wasn’t Big John O’Halloran outside her grandmother’s house, but his son, Jack, infamous high school make-out artist and jock extraordinaire.

Jack O’Halloran had been legend around Olympic County for both his athletic achievements and the stunts that kept him in judicial hot water and were particularly inappropriate for the son of the county’s chief lawman. He’d been the quarterback of the Coldwater Cove Loggers High School football team, state all-star pitcher for the baseball team, and his senior year had been voted student-body president by the widest margin in the school’s history.

He’d subsequently had the office taken away from him six weeks later during homecoming weekend when he’d led a raid to kidnap the mascot of a rival school. The members of the Fighting Beavers varsity football team had not found the ransom note’s instructions—that they parade down Coldwater Cove’s main street wearing only their jockstraps and helmets—all that humorous. Neither had school authorities.

From what Raine could remember of his antics, the term
hell-raiser
could have been coined with Jack O’Halloran in mind. He drank too much, drove too fast, and just about every female in the county between the ages of eight and eighty had found him irresistible. Including, dammit, she thought now, her. Not that he’d ever noticed her, four years behind him, skinny as a lodgepole pine, with bark brown hair as straight as rainwater and a mouthful of braces. The idea that such a man could actually grow up to be sheriff was incredible.

Putting aside an adolescent feminine pique she was vaguely surprised to discover lurking inside of her, Raine returned to business.

“I’m assuming that you were informed I’ve filed a TRO to stop the police from using violence against my grandmother’s wards.”

While she’d been on the way to the airport, Oliver Choate had telephoned a friendly judge he played golf with every Wednesday morning. That judge, in turn, called another in Washington State, who hadn’t hesitated issuing the temporary restraining order.

“Yeah.” For a man who’d been handed a court order, Sheriff O’Halloran sounded less than impressed. “Wally called a little bit ago with the news.”

“Wally?” Not at all encouraged by the familiarity in the lawman’s tone, Raine reminded herself that the legal good-old-boys club was not limited to New York City.

“Wally Cunningham. Judge Wallace Cunningham,” Jack elaborated. “You might remember him. He played a little baseball before a torn rotator cuff had him taking up the law.”

Damn
. Wally Cunningham had been Jack O’Halloran’s catcher on the Loggers baseball team. Raine vaguely remembered hearing he’d gone on to play Triple-A ball in Tacoma.

“That’s all very interesting,” she replied, her courtroom-cool tone suggesting otherwise. “But I’m more interested in whether the injunction was issued.”

“Oh, sure. Wally and I had ourselves a pretty good laugh over it.”

The easy, masculine dismissal in his tone had Raine grinding her teeth for the second time today. “I fail to see how either you or
Wally
”—her use of the judge’s first name was tightly edged with sarcasm—“could find any humor in the potential use of force against three teenage girls.”

“What we found humorous is the idea that anyone would think I’d stoop to using force against three teenagers in the first place…. Although,” he added, as if on afterthought, “I can’t deny being tempted on more than one occasion today to take my hand to those kids’ backsides.”

“If you so much as touch a single hair on those children’s heads, Sheriff, I’ll have you hauled in front of the bench on charges of police brutality.”

“Threat noted, Ms. Cantrell.” His tone suggested weariness with both their conversation and the situation in general. “Now, if you don’t mind, the pizza guy’s back with the veggie special and I have a dinner to deliver.”

Before Raine could object, he ended the call.

Jack climbed out of the Suburban and, despite his continuing aggravation, grinned at the pizza delivery man.

“Things must be pretty rough down at the law offices, if you’re taking on extra work delivering fast food,” he drawled. “What’s the matter, run out of ambulances to chase?”

Dan O’Halloran grinned as he handed his cousin the red-and-white box. “Why should I bother to go to all that trouble, when all I have to do is hang around here and wait for you to tromp all over those little girls’ civil rights. Then sue the county for millions.”

“Good luck. If my salary’s any indication of Olympic County’s assets, you’d be lucky to get peanuts.” Jack lifted the lid, assuring himself that both meat and cheese had been left off the pizza, which appeared to consist of crust, red sauce, mushrooms, onions, and green peppers. He hoped to hell this would satisfy the finicky vegetarian delinquent. “So, I guess Mom called you?”

“Your mom, my mom, along with half the folks in town. But by then I’d already caught the promo on the early news when I dropped into Papa Joe’s to pick up my dinner. I gotta tell you, Cuz, you didn’t look half bad. I was thinking that if Hollywood got hold of this story, they might even want to build a new cop series around you. How does Jack O’Halloran, Hunk Cop with a Heart, sound?”

“Like you’ve been smoking the kind of funny cigarettes you can’t buy in machines…. Jesus, and here I thought taking over Pop’s office would be a walk in the park after being a city cop. Right now I think I’d rather be taking my chances with one of your everyday drug dealers wielding a Street Sweeper.”

He began walking up to the front porch, his cousin and best friend, Daniel Webster O’Halloran falling in step beside him.

“I also heard that Wally signed a TRO to keep you from storming the house with a SWAT team.” The humor in Dan’s voice echoed that of the judge when Wally had called with the news of the temporary restraining order.

“Yeah. One of Ida’s pit bull granddaughters has gotten her teeth into this and won’t let go.”

“That’d be Raine.”

“Yeah.” He climbed the steps to the porch, placed the pizza on the white wicker table and rang the bell. There was no answer, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the lace curtain on the front window move just a little.

“Veggie pizza for one!” he called out. Then waited. And waited some more. Realizing that they weren’t about to open the door while he was standing there, he cursed and turned back toward the truck. “So, what do you know about her?”

“Not much. I took her half sister, Savannah, out once in high school.” Dan’s lips curved into a smile at the memory. “God, she was one gorgeous female. Masses of wild red hair that smelled like strawberries, curves that would make a
Playboy
centerfold look like Olive Oyl, and wraparound legs that went all the way up to her neck.”

Since Dan was four years behind him, Jack hadn’t known Savannah. He also had no memory of the granddaughter that had been driving him nuts all day. “Only one date? What happened? Did she dump you?”

“Nah. She didn’t get the chance. I just never called her again after that first date.”

“Why not?” She definitely sounded like Dan’s type. Actually, Jack considered, if looks counted for anything—and they sure had back in those hormone-driven teenage days—Savannah sounded pretty much like any guy’s type.

Dan’s grin was quick and abashed. “Because she flat out scared me to death.”

They shared a laugh over that. “Sounds like I’ve got the wrong sister in my life. Can you remember anything about Raine?”

For a man who’d always enjoyed women, Jack had had about his fill of females today. Ida and the kids were damn aggravating, but the lady lawyer, with her constant phone calls, writs, injunctions, restraining orders, and sundry other legal threats, was turning out to be a herculean pain in the ass.

“Well, thinking back on it, we were on the debate team together my senior year. I remember her as being skinny, with braces and a chip on her shoulder as big as a Western cedar.”

“The braces are undoubtedly gone by now. But if the phone conversations are any indication, I’d say the chip is still there. Larger than ever.”

“Guess that means she still hasn’t gotten her dad’s attention.”

Since Raine Cantrell’s mother, Lilith, had been providing Coldwater Cove with gossip for years, Jack recalled that Ida’s granddaughters each had a different father. “And her dad would be…?”

“Owen Cantrell.” When that didn’t seem to ring a bell, Dan elaborated. “He was the lawyer for the Sacramento Six.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“They were counterculture revolutionaries back in the 60s. Along the lines of the Chicago Seven, but they didn’t get as much press. They were accused of firebombing a selective service office in Sacramento and conspiring to blow up others all over the West. Cantrell pulled a lot of magic legal rabbits out of his hat and got them acquitted. The case study was required reading in my criminal law class.”