pulled back into a loose ponytail. The slight lines around her large, brown eyes crinkled with love and concern as she looked at him. They also held an unspoken message—he shouldn’t have come.
She reached for him, brushing his hair away from his forehead with the softest of touches. “Close your eyes, José Javier,” she whispered. He did.
He felt her hand on his chest, and then, with a vicious, sudden force, he was pushed back, back, back into a long black tunnel, away from his mother, away from everything. He scrambled for purchase, trying to climb out and save her from what he knew was coming. But his body kept sinking, farther and farther away.
A disembodied voice next to him, inside the tunnel, inside his head, whispered soothingly in his ear: “Turn your head, baby. Close your eyes.”
And then he heard his mother scream.
“SIR? SIR!”
He batted at the fingers that gripped his shoulder and groaned. Let go of me.
“Sir, please wake up.”
Let go.
“Wha—?” Blinking rapidly, Joe Lopez shook off the last net-like strands of the dream holding him under the waterline of consciousness. He scrubbed a hand across his face, opening his mouth wide for a loud, gaping yawn. Once he’d rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, the dream evaporated from his memory, and he finally managed to register the presence of one very flustered flight attendant. Her well-manicured hand was still on his arm.
“Sir, I’ll need you to put your seat back and tray table in its upright position, please. We’re about to land.” The woman straightened, tucking a stray lock of her sleek, blond hair behind her ear. The scowl on what would otherwise have been a pretty face told Joe she wasn’t happy with him.
“Sure. Yeah,” he muttered. He snapped the tray in place, hoping she’d hurry up and go away so the other passengers would quit staring at him. Thank God the flight to Los Angeles wasn’t full, so he had the entire row on his side of the plane to himself. Otherwise, he probably would have drooled on the people next to him. Or smacked them around. He wasn’t exactly the lightest and gentlest of sleepers, and he’d been down for the count as soon as the plane had leveled after takeoff.
Once the attendant had finally left, stopping two rows up to harass some other poor schmo who had endangered humanity by reclining his seat back half an inch, Joe turned his face toward the window. Tiny cars rode along seemingly endless ribbons of highway, matchstick-sized palm trees, and the sparkling blue waters of the Pacific lined with yellow sand beaches. Los Angeles. Man, he hated Los Angeles.
But this year, the National Association of Private Investigators was holding its annual conference in this godforsaken city, and he never missed a conference. He never missed anything related to his work—even when it meant he had to come to a hellhole like L.A. Most of the women he’d dated had told him he was “obsessed” with his work, and as a result, his relationships never lasted. They wanted more attention, more flowers, more something. And he was never able to give it to them. But there was always work, like a faithful dog.
He wasn’t obsessed. He just liked his job. He was the job. Lots of people he knew were the job. Unraveling cases was challenging, and nothing beat the feeling of taking a seemingly unsolvable puzzle and putting the pieces into neat, irrevocable order.
Okay, so sometimes really great sex beat it, but it had been awhile since he’d had anything or anyone approaching great.
Lucy Harrington, his last girlfriend, had told him he was “emotionally distant” and “completely closed off” right before she threw a dinner plate at his head and broke his brand-new high-definition TV set. That had not been great. And that had also been the last time he’d seen Lucy Harrington. Last he’d heard, she was engaged to some stockbroker from Carmel. He hoped they registered for plastic plates instead of china.
The plane dipped noticeably as the pilot hit an air pocket, and Joe’s stomach responded by doing a little tap dance that—if he hadn’t known better—he might have attributed to nerves. But of course it wasn’t. José Javier Lopez didn’t get “nerves.” It was just L.A. Maybe he was allergic to it. Because one little city was nothing to be scared of, unless you feared rank smog and a proliferation of brittle, unhappy people who’d gone to see their friendly neighborhood plastic surgeon so many times, they’d become wall-eyed.
Joe rested his forehead against the Plexiglas of the small, oval window next to his seat. So if he wasn’t scared, then why did he feel like he’d rather lop off his own head than get off that plane?
“Maybe,” Lucy Harrington said inside his head, “if you weren’t so out of touch with your emotions, you’d be able to talk about how you’re feeling, instead of repressing everything and watching baseball instead.”
Yeah, what do you know, Luce?
And for the record, basketball was his sport of choice. Anyone who’d been as interested as she had in becoming Mrs. Lucy Harrington Lopez should have known that.
What he wouldn’t give to be watching a game right now, with a cold six-pack and his dog Roadkill sitting next to him. But instead, he was minutes away from landing in Los Angeles. He turned away from the window in disgust. He’d hated the city for as long as he could remember, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember exactly why.
Story of his life. He couldn’t remember a lot of things.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Fasten Seat Belt sign has been turned on,” a voice called over the airplane loudspeaker. “Please return to your seats. We are about to start our final descent into Los Angeles International Airport. Local time is 10:37 a.m.”
Joe’s hand gripped the armrest until his knuckles looked bloodless.
Man, he hated this city.
WITH A QUICK GLANCE over her shoulder, Emma Jensen Reese shifted her grocery bags, the heavy brown paper crumpling slightly under the pressure of her forearms. He was still behind her.
Emma hadn’t actually seen him close up, but she’d registered the baseball cap, baggy mid-length coat and penchant for whistling Sinatra. Was he dangerous? She didn’t know. At every intersection, she kept telling herself that he would turn this time, that it was all in her head, that he was just some random guy who lived in the area and also needed to go to the Trader Joe’s at ten o’clock at night because he needed eggs and had a craving for those chocolate raspberry jelly things they sold. But the thoughts didn’t keep her from worrying.
Maybe she was overdramatizing the situation, but he’d been walking behind her for five blocks now. In the dark. The thought made her instinctively quicken her pace down Third, the heels of her boots echoing on the pavement.
Her ears pricked up as the faint footsteps behind her sped up accordingly. Emma’s pulse followed suit.
Maybe she was in danger.
Ridiculous. She was being utterly, completely ridiculous. After all, she’d been walking in a straight line ever since she’d left the health food store, and Third wasn’t exactly one of the most deserted streets in Los Angeles. Three cars whipped by her in succession as if to illustrate the point. She would turn down that short alley a few feet away—the one that threaded between a couple of high-rises and ended within a block of her Hancock Park neighborhood—and everything would be all right. He’d keep right on going.
She
