was alone and no one had been in her apartment. The day had gotten to her, that’s all. Her imagination—and her memories—were conjuring ghosts.
Her shoulders slumped and Alex leaned weakly against the tiled wall, taking a deep breath. Then the heat came on, and all at once she caught a whiff of gardenias. Her mother’s favorite fragrance.
Alex knew what she smelled wasn’t really there—it couldn’t be—but her body went cold, her blood refusing to go through her veins. She held her breath for as long as she could, then she slowly released it and inhaled again. The scent was gone.
Letting the bat slip from her fingers, she waited for her heart to slow, the beats gradually subsiding from a pounding rhythm to a steady pulse. After a bit, she looked into the bathroom mirror and shook her head at what she saw. Her face was an oval of white, her expression frightened and anxious. She lifted her hands and nervously fingered her hair, the strands still limp and damp from her shower at the pool.
Returning to the living room, she sent her glance to the corner of the room. For years, she’d had nightmares after Los Lobos. She dreamed the same thing each time; she’d come home, unlock the door, and there would be a man waiting in the living room. Grabbing her by the arms, he would pull her toward the wall, then the wall would disappear, a huge hole replacing it. Looking straight into her eyes, he would pitch her into the darkness. Before she hit the bottom, she always woke up, shaking and screaming.
The man was faceless. But she knew who he was.
Turning abruptly, she went into the kitchen. She grabbed a plate from the cabinet above the sink and dumped the container of pad thai into its center, sticking it into the microwave and punching the buttons with a trembling finger. She forced her mind into a blank state that didn’t allow for any thinking.
Hours later, she woke up on the couch, her neck stiff from the hard cushions, her legs cramped. The clock read one-thirty, her dirty dishes were spread across the coffee table and the movie she’d rented had stopped on the DVD. She stumbled to her feet and thought about cleaning up, then rejected the idea. The mess would be fine until morning—she didn’t want to wake up enough to deal with it. Her mind would grab the opportunity to go into high gear again and she’d never get back to sleep.
Feeling her way to the bedroom, Alex peeled off her clothes and dropped them at the foot of her bed, reaching for the nightgown she’d left on the chair. Her eyes half-closed, she found the silky garment and slipped it over her head. She didn’t bother to wash her face or brush her hair. She simply yanked back the covers and fell into bed, her gaze flicking automatically toward the frame on her bedside table. Looking at those long-ago lost faces was the last thing she did every night and the first thing she did every morning.
She blinked once, then once again, her groggy brain not understanding the message her eyes had just sent. Finally, she reached out with a trembling hand and turned on the bedside lamp.
The nightstand was empty. Her sketch was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
PARALYZED BY WHAT she didn’t see, Alex held her breath and tried to understand. She was sure the drawing had been there that morning. She distinctly remembered sitting in the bed and holding it in her hands, staring at it, in fact.
Had she dropped it? Knocked it off the table? Put it somewhere else? Her heart lurched as she recalled the perfume she’d thought she’d smelled earlier, but she instantly pushed the idea aside. She was crazy to even think about it. Her mother was dead.
Throwing off the covers, Alex fell from the bed to the floor where she began to search. Looking around to the back of the table and then underneath the bed frame, she found nothing but dust balls. No glint of silver, no paper with charcoal smudges…nothing.
She jumped to her feet and ran into the bathroom. The countertop was as uncluttered as always, a box of tissues and her makeup bag taking up one corner, her toothbrush, a can of hair spray and some jewelry clustered at the other end. Feeling foolish, she drew back the shower curtain. The empty tub gleamed.
Her consternation grew, but as Alex made a quick circuit of the apartment, she realized the rooms were exactly as she had left them when she’d gone to sleep on the sofa. Not a thing had been touched, not even the cash she kept in a jar in the kitchen for emergencies. Nothing was missing. Except for the sketch.
Panic swept over her. She fought the crushing weight, but it was stronger than she was and all at once she couldn’t breathe. Nausea came with the suffocation. She clawed at her throat, then gave up. Half running, half stumbling, she made it into the living room and grabbed the phone at the end of the couch.
She meant to dial 911, but her fingers punched out a different number. It was already ringing when she realized what she’d done.
“SEÑOR! Señor Bradford…”
Gabriel halted his unsteady progress across the hotel lobby as the clerk behind the counter called out his current alias. Sunburned, cranky and more than halfway tanked, Gabriel had actually gone fishing late that afternoon. By the time he and his guide had cleaned their catch, cooked it and finished the beer, midnight had come and gone. Glancing to where the clerk stood, Gabriel decided to blow him off. Then he looked at the man’s face. He wore such an anxious expression Gabriel immediately changed course and went straight to the desk.
“You have a message.” The clerk reached behind the counter. “Several of them. A woman has been calling you more than one times. She did not believe me when I told her you weren’t here. It is not good news, señor. You have my condolences…”
A ripple of unease went down Gabriel’s spine and the bit of buzz he’d had left instantly.
Without a word, he took the pink message slips from the clerk. There were three of them and they each had the same message.
Grandmother has died. Call home immediately. Your loving sister, Samantha.
Gabriel stared at the writing and willed the words away, but when he looked again, they hadn’t disappeared. He had no sisters by that name or any other. His grandmother had been dead and gone for twenty-five years, his father for five. His mom had disappeared when he was seven and no one had seen or heard from her since.
This message was from his drop number. Someone had called him.
With the clerk’s repeated sympathies still ringing in the lobby, Gabriel made his way to his bungalow. He never left the country without calling the Agency and giving them his itinerary. It was a good thing old habits die hard, he guessed, his heart beating against his ribs.
Once inside, he went straight for his bags. Digging into his duffel, he found his phone—a palm-size unit that used an encoded satellite line. He dialed the number from memory then glanced at his watch as it rang. It was almost one-thirty in the morning, but where he was calling they didn’t sleep.
The woman who answered didn’t acknowledge him in any way. She simply began to speak.
“You had a call at 1:40 a.m. central standard time.”
He calculated quickly. The south of Baja was an hour behind CST. The original call had come into the center more than forty-five minutes ago. He waited for the operator to continue, but she said nothing else.
“No message?”
“The subject hung up. The number was private.
