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I saw a dark car, but it came out of nowhere. She had a clear path to cross the street. He must have peeled away from the curb at ninety miles an hour.”
    “I ran the license plate one of the couples gave us, but it isn’t going to do any good.”
    “Why is that?” Nikki rubbed at her temples as a hammer pounded away inside her head.
    “Because it was a diplomat’s car. That means the driver has diplomatic immunity, ma’am.”
    Nikki’s knees buckled. The young cop reached out to steady her.
    “That means he can’t be prosecuted,” Nikki said in a choked voice.
    “Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what it means.”

Chapter One
    Sixteen months later
     
    It was dusk when Nikki Quinn stopped her cobalt-blue BMW in front of the massive iron gates of Myra Rutledge’s McLean estate. She pressed the remote control attached to the visor and waited for the lumbering gates to slide open. She knew Charles was watching her on the closed-circuit television screen. The security here at the estate was sophisticated, high-tech, impregnable. The only thing missing was concertina wire along the top of the electrified fence.
    Nikki sailed up the half mile of cobblestones to the driveway that led around to the back of the McLean mansion. When she was younger, she and Barbara referred to the house as Myra’s Fortress. She’d loved growing up here, loved riding across the fields on Barbara’s horse Starlite, loved playing with Barbara in the tunnels underneath the old house that had once been used to aid runaway slaves.
    The engine idling, Nikki made no move to get out of the car. She hated coming here these days, hated seeing the empty shell her beloved Myra had turned into. All the life, all the spark had gone out of her. According to Charles, Myra sat in the living room, drinking tea, staring at old photo albums, the television tuned to CNN twenty-four hours a day. She hadn’t left the house once since Barbara’s funeral.
    She finally turned off the engine, gathered her briefcase, weekend bag and purse. Should she put the top up or leave it down? The sky was clear. She shrugged. If it looked like rain, Charles would put the top up.
    “Any change?” she asked walking into the kitchen.
    Charles shook his head before he hugged her. “She’s gone downhill even more these last two weeks. I hate saying this, but I don’t think she even noticed you weren’t here, Nikki.”
    Nikki flinched. “I couldn’t get here, Charles. I had to wait for a court verdict. I must have called a hundred times,” Nikki said, tossing her gear on the countertop. Her eyes pleaded with Myra’s houseman for understanding.
    Charles Martin was a tall man with clear crystal blue eyes and a shock of white hair that was thick and full. Once he’d been heavier but this past year had taken a toll on him, too. She noticed the tremor in his hand when he handed her a cup of coffee.
    “Is she at least talking, Charles?”
    “She responds if I ask her a direct question. Earlier in the week she fired me. She said she didn’t need me anymore.”
    “My God!” Nikki sat down at the old oak table with the claw feet. Myra said the table was over three hundred years old and hand-hewn. As a child, she’d loved eating in the kitchen. Loved sitting at the table drinking cold milk and eating fat sugar cookies. She looked around. There didn’t seem to be much life in the kitchen these days. The plants didn’t seem as green, the summer dishes were still in the pantry, the winter placemats were still on the table. Even the braided winter rugs were still on the old pine floors. In the spring, Myra always changed them. She blinked. “This kitchen looks like an institution kitchen, Charles. The house is too quiet. Doesn’t Myra play her music anymore?”
    “No. She doesn’t do anything anymore. I tried to get her to go for a walk today. She told me to get out of her face. I have to fight with her to take a shower. I’m at my wit’s end. I don’t know what to do