that it belonged to her more than to him.
He said, “You don’t know anyone who’d want you dead—yet you aren’t surprised.”
“There are people who want everybody dead. When you get over being surprised about that, you have a high amazement threshold.”
Direct, intense, her green gaze seemed to fillet his serried thoughts and to fold them aside like layers of dissected tissue, yet somehow it was an inviting rather than a cold stare.
“I’m curious,” she said, “about the way you’ve handled this.”
Taking her comment as disapproval or suspicion, he said, “I’m not aware of any other options.”
“You could have kept the ten thousand for yourself.”
“Somebody would have come looking for me.”
“Maybe not. Now … for sure someone will. You could have just passed my photo to the killer, with the money, and done a fade, got out of the way and let things unfold as they would have done if you’d never been there.”
“And then … where would I go?”
“To dinner. To a movie. Home to bed.”
“Is that what you’d have done?” he asked.
“I don’t interest me. You interest me.”
“I’m not an interesting guy.”
“Not the way you present yourself, no. What you’re hiding is what makes you interesting.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“About what happened in the bar. But … about you?”
The rearview mirror was angled toward him. He had avoided his eyes by meeting hers. Now he looked at his narrow reflection, and at once away, down at the ceramic parrot choked in his right hand.
“My coffee’s cold,” he said.
“Mine, too. When the killer left the tavern, you could have called the police.”
“Not after I saw he was a cop.”
“The tavern’s in Huntington Beach. I’m in Laguna Beach. He’s a cop in a different jurisdiction.”
“I don’t know his jurisdiction. The car was an unmarked sedan. He could be a Laguna Beach cop for all I know.”
“So. Now what, Tim?”
He needed to look at her and he dreaded looking at her, and he didn’t know why or how, within minutes of their meeting, she should have become the focus of either need or dread. He had never felt like this before, and although a thousand songs and movies had programmed him to call it love, he knew it wasn’t love. He wasn’t a man who fell in love at first sight. Besides, love didn’t have such an element of mortal terror as was a part of this feeling.
He said, “The only evidence I have to give the cops is the photo of you, but that’s no evidence at all.”
“The license number of the unmarked sedan,” she reminded him.
“That’s not evidence. It’s just a lead. I know someone who might be able to trace it for me and get me the driver’s name. Someone I can trust.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something.”
Her gaze, which had not turned from him, had the gravitational force of twin moons, and inevitably the tide of his attention was pulled toward her.
Eye to eye again with her, he told himself to remember this moment, this tightening knot of terror that was also a loosening knot of wild exaltation, for when he realized the name for it, he would understand why he was suddenly walking out of the life he had known—and had sought—into a new life that he could not know and that he might come desperately to regret.
“You should leave this house tonight,” he said. “Stay somewhere you’ve never been before. Not with a friend or relative.”
“You think the killer’s coming?”
“Tomorrow, the next day, sooner or later, when he and the guy who hired him realize what happened.”
She didn’t appear to be afraid. “All right,” she said.
Her equanimity perplexed him.
His cell phone rang.
After Linda took his coffee mug, he answered the call.
Liam Rooney said, “He was just here, asking who was the big guy on the last stool.”
“Already. Damn. I figured a day or two. Was it the first or second guy?”
“The second. I took a closer look at him this time. Tim, he’s a freak. He’s a shark in shoes.”
Tim remembered the killer’s persistent dreamy smile, the dilated eyes hungry for light.
“What’s going on?” Liam asked.
“It’s about a woman,” Tim said, as he had said before. “I’ll take care of it.”
In retrospect, the killer had realized that something about the encounter in the tavern had not been right. He had probably called a contact number for the skydiver.
Through the windshield, the kitchen looked warm and cozy. On a wall hung a rack of cutlery.
“You can’t freeze me out like this,” said Rooney.
“I’m not thinking about you,” Tim said, opening the door and getting out of the coupe. “I’m thinking about Michelle. Keep your neck out of this—for her.”
Carrying both coffee mugs, Linda exited the Ford from the driver’s door.
“Exactly how long ago did the guy leave?” Tim asked Rooney.
“I waited maybe five minutes before calling you—in case he might come back and see me on the phone, and wonder. He looks like a guy who always puts two and two together.”
“Gotta go,” Tim said, pressed END, and pocketed the phone.
As Linda took the mugs to the sink, Tim selected a knife from the wall rack. He passed over the butcher knife for a shorter and pointier blade.
The Pacific Coast Highway offered the most direct route from the Lamplighter Tavern to this street in Laguna Beach. Even on a Monday evening, traffic could be unpredictable. Door to door, the trip might take forty minutes.
In addition to a detachable emergency beacon, maybe the unmarked sedan had a siren. In the last few miles of approach, the siren would not be used; they would never hear the killer coming.
Turning away from the sink, Linda
