Frisco's Kid. Suzanne Brockmann

and the noise that had kicked him out of bed came from the powerful vocal cords of his five-year-old niece, who was supposed to be sound asleep on the couch in the living room.

      Frisco stumbled to the wall and flipped on the light. Reaching this time for his cane, he opened his bedroom door and staggered down the hallway toward the living room.

      He could see Natasha in the dim light that streamed down the hallway from his bedroom. She was crying, sitting up in a tangle of sheets on the couch, sweat matting her hair.

      “Hey,” Frisco said. “What the h…uh…What’s going on, Tash?”

      The kid didn’t answer. She just kept on crying.

      Frisco sat down next to her, but all she did was cry.

      “You want a hug or something?” he asked, and she shook her head no and kept on crying.

      “Um,” Frisco said, uncertain of what to do, or what to say.

      There was a tap on the door.

      “You want to get that?” Frisco asked Natasha.

      She didn’t respond.

      “I guess I’ll get it then,” he said, unlocking the bolt and opening the heavy wooden door.

      Mia stood on the other side of the screen. She was wearing a white bathrobe and her hair was down loose around her shoulders. “Is everything all right?”

      “No, I’m not murdering or torturing my niece,” Frisco said flatly and closed the door. But he opened it again right away and pushed open the screen. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Tash’s On/Off switch is, would you?”

      “It’s dark in here,” Mia said, stepping inside. “Maybe you should turn on all the lights so that she can see where she is.”

      Frisco turned on the bright overhead light—and realized he was standing in front of his neighbor and his niece in nothing but the new, tight-fitting, utilitarian white briefs he’d bought during yesterday’s second trip to the grocery store. Good thing he’d bought them, or he quite possibly would have been standing there buck naked.

      Whether it was the sudden light or the sight of him in his underwear, Frisco didn’t know, but Natasha stopped crying, just like that. She still sniffled, and tears still flooded her eyes, but her sirenlike wail was silenced.

      Mia was clearly thrown by the sight of him—and determined to act as if visiting with a neighbor who was in his underwear was the most normal thing in the world. She sat down on the couch next to Tasha and gave her a hug. Frisco excused himself and headed down the hall toward his bedroom and a pair of shorts.

      It wasn’t really that big a deal—Lucky O’Donlon, Frisco’s swim buddy and best friend in the SEAL unit, had bought Frisco a tan-through French bathing suit from the Riviera that covered far less of him than these briefs. Of course, the minuscule suit wasn’t something he’d ever be caught dead in….

      He threw on his shorts and came back out into the living room.

      “It must’ve been a pretty bad nightmare,” he heard Mia saying to Tasha.

      “I fell into a big, dark hole,” Tash said in a tiny voice in between a very major case of hiccups. “And I was screaming and screaming and screaming, and I could see Mommy way, way up at the top, but she didn’t hear me. She had on her mad face, and she just walked away. And then water went up and over my head, and I knew I was gonna drownd.”