Look what I have.
Bait.
I need to meet with one of you so that I can give this to you. I won’t leave it just sitting. I won’t release it until I get that picture of Isabel’s thigh.
Until then, she’d keep the check in Rader’s safe.
Gray retreated to the Camry and willed her pulse to slow. Wouldn’t be good to have a coronary event while on surveillance. As she sat, she gazed down at her bright lemon pants. Stuart Ardizzone was right—she needed to reconsider her sartorial choices while working a case. Because she was staking out. Just like he said.
Too late.
Two hours after she’d left Isabel’s condo to sit in the Camry, no one had come or gone. Just sitting there, her head dropped, and once she heard herself snore. She blinked awake—not much time had passed in between these snatches of sleep.
“Do better, girl,” she muttered to herself. She could buy cans of Mountain Dew or Red Bull, but then she’d have to pee. Male P.I.s could urinate into a bottle. What did women do?
A text message from Clarissa.
I think this is your guy.
She had included an attachment.
LOS ANGELES MAN FOUND DEAD IN DESERT AREA OF ADELANTO
Gray tapped the link to the short news article. The first image was the driver’s license picture of a young, bearded black man.
Omar Neville, 33, was found in an unattended vehicle on Saturday. A person riding an ATV discovered the car and occupant … Sheriff Department is investigating …
“Oh no, oh no, no—”
The phone vibrated again, but she stared out the windshield instead.
Omar Neville was dead? Why? And who …
Elyse Miller. She had to find—
Another vibration. Clarissa again.
U there?
Yeah I’m thinking. I’ll contact the sheriff later. Thanks C!
For now, she’d stay planted in the front seat of the Camry, steps away from the janky security gate. She’d wait to hear from Tea Christopher or Isabel Lincoln, wait for that battered green Altima with the troll dolls in the back window to swerve into a space at the curb. Or, better yet, that big black truck Mrs. Tompkins saw on the morning Isabel Lincoln disappeared.
As she sat and waited and expected, sweat poured down Gray’s face and back. It was a Sunday in July, and her white silk shirt was nearly transparent with perspiration. The surgery scars in her abdomen throbbed, and she was almost certain that the liquid around them that was making her wound stick to silk wasn’t sweat. She found a half-full bottle of water on the car floor, then guzzled it.
Her phone buzzed.
What are you doing right now?
A 310 area code. Los Angeles. Who wants to know?
You need to be careful.
Gray’s mouth went dry. She glanced at the condos across the street and then glanced in the rearview and side mirrors. No one stood on the sidewalks or in the courtyard. Not many cars were parked at the curb—everyone was still at church or brunch, except for the owners of a white Tesla, a copper Kia, two blue American sedans, Gray’s Camry … and a black Range Rover.
From her place behind the wheel, she couldn’t see the SUV’s plates. Couldn’t see if anyone sat in the driver’s seat. She grabbed her phone and tapped the ORO app to check alerts for Sean’s cars, but the app scrolled … One bar. “Crap.”
She typed, wrong number. it’s obvious you don’t know me.
A picture blinked onto her phone’s screen.
3WXA9L2.
The license plate on Gray’s Camry. The eucalyptus trees that lined Don Lorenzo Drive. Gray asleep behind the steering wheel.
Her eyes zigzagged around the neighborhood.
No one stood in the courtyard, on the sidewalks, or—
It’s gone. Not the Range Rover; it was still parked, and now the car looked dark green instead of black. No, the white Tesla that had been parked on the other side of the street was now gone. She hadn’t heard its engine start or its tires crunch against the asphalt.
Was it Sean? Had he hired a private investigator that Nick hadn’t found yet? Was he—the P.I. or her ex-husband—now driving that white Tesla?
Who is this?? Took forever to type. Gray’s fingers had become blocks of ice.
You’ll find out soon.
Gray hit the Phone icon to call the texter.
The phone rang … rang … “The party you have reached is unavailable—”
She tapped End, then, eyes closed, took several breaths. In … Out … In … Out …
And Sunday had started out so good. Sunday had started out so long ago.
Hey, Clarissa, Gray typed, run this phone number please.
Her phone buzzed again, but not with Clarissa’s response.
There was a picture of a butterfly tattoo on a café au lait–colored thigh.
I TOLD U I WAS ALIVE. I need my money!!
Nausea settled over Gray like a heavy, wet blanket, and the world tilted left, then right. That place between Okay and Oh shit was becoming tissue-thin, and she had just enough time to launch herself out of the car and onto the grassy curbside. Hot. She was too hot. Dehydrated. Not drinking enough water. Not—
Liquified breakfast exploded from her mouth and onto the grass. Her body shook as she vomited, as her stomach yawed and twisted. She gagged and retched as every ounce of fluid poured out of her, and she steadied herself, elbows on knees, as the convulsions softened.
Gray swiped her mouth and nose, both wet and goopy, with the tail of her silk shirt.
A breeze, such a blessing from God, brushed over her, cooling her down some. You can’t sit here much longer—it’s too damned hot. She stayed in the shade. Pain twisted through her nerves and veins, her body hating her loudly now for the sweating, the drinking, the busted appendix, the anxiety. Hating her now for letting it get beaten, never forgiving her for allowing another to destroy its temple, for not finishing those stupid antibiotics after the surgery. And now her body warned her to open her eyes.
She redialed that mysterious number and held her breath.
The phone rang … rang … This time there was no prompt to leave a message.
“Okay.” Her eyes were open, but that curtain of tears blurred. I’m gonna stop it. I’m gonna stop Sean.
Somehow.
35
Do something.
But on Monday, Gray’s new day of rest, she called in sick to work, then drove to the urgent care center a mile from her apartment.
This clinic kept its warped linoleum floors clean but did nothing to fix the busted neon sign hanging on its eaves.
There, Dr. Nazarian saw nothing wrong with her. “Maybe the incision is infected, since you didn’t finish your medications.” The hundred-year-old physician diagnosed her by only peering at her belly from afar for about a second. Then he prescribed a different antibiotic and more oxycodone before shuffling out of the exam room.
Gray paid for her visit in cash—three hundred dollars—then waited for her drugs at the in-clinic pharmacy. She sat there with near-zero confidence that Dr. Nazarian had properly diagnosed her, but she still held a spark of hope that he had.
At home, she took her first dosages, then climbed into bed.
Do something.
“I’ll get him. Not gonna take it anymore,” she whispered, as she rehydrated with bottles of Gatorade, Popsicles, and glasses of water, gritting her teeth with every burst of nausea, every stomach cramp …
She received one text, from Clarissa, right as she closed her eyes.
Just got off the phone with travel. No “Isabel Lincoln” booked a flight to Belize or anywhere else.
And that phone number you sent yesterday?
Burner. Sorry.
Gray tried to feel something—anger, fear, sadness—but she only felt numb. She couldn’t live like this. She wouldn’t live like this.
So do something.
Stop Sean.
Clarissa’s party in Las Vegas—she’d stop him t
hen.
It would be a trip to remember.
36
The bum check from JCI Insurance Services now sat in Rader Consulting’s safe. It was Tuesday night, and Gray found herself working in the office even as the pain in her navel made her squeeze her eyes so tight that a teardrop crystallized into a diamond and tumbled down her cheek. She pushed away from her desk and waited for the sharp twangs to ebb and for her suddenly hot office to cool. She’d medicated earlier in the day—remembering to take her antibiotic, even—but she needed the heavy stuff now.
There weren’t many people working at almost eight o’clock. There were more shadows pushing vacuum cleaners than clicking computer keyboards. That meant she could work in silence, work without expecting Jankowski to pop in, helmet hair in place, Stepford wife smile on her lips, steno pad in her hand.
Her mind free to focus, Gray updated logs, files, and clouds with all things Isabel Lincoln. Stuart Ardizzone had left a voice mail message: “Great conversation with Mitch Pravin yesterday. Thanks for the lead in that. Lemme know if you need anything or heard anything new.”
The dark outside her office was coming on hard, a December kind of dark, instead of July. The color of night in Los Angeles was milky purple and black, with sparkles of white and red from soaring airplanes and low-flying helicopters.
Not that Gray had been paying attention to the light beyond her office blinds. Her body’s clamor had stolen the thunder and she now covered her eyes with shaky hands. Was this pain, months after surgery, normal? Maybe Dr. Messamer had left a scalpel or a cotton swab in her wound before he’d sewn her shut? If she’d had her own tools right then—a scalpel, a knife, a fireplace poker, and a big cold bottle of vodka, Smirnoff even—she would have shoved one of them into her belly just to make the pain stop, or to simply pass out and wait for a cool, silky morphine cocktail administered by doctors who would correct Dr. Messamer’s mess.
Maybe the EMTs would drive her to UCLA or Cedars-Sinai this time, hospitals with clean beds, good food, and beautiful doctors—doctors like Ian O’Donnell, who could help her commit insurance fraud for sex. #Goals.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three …
By fifteen Mississippi, the invisible knife was pulling out of her gut and the twang was lessening to a twinge. Her muscles slackened, her teeth unclenched, and her fists opened into usable things. She was trembling, but then, every minute of the day couldn’t be smooth Newport Alive with Pleasure days.
“Where are the freakin’ margaritas when you need one?” She pawed through her purse and found the bottle of Percocet. She popped one, then slumped into her chair.
Her office phone chirped and flashed Nick’s number. When she picked up, he said, “You rang?”
“I did. Crazy idea.” Then she caught him up on Isabel and Ian, insurance fraud, T-boned Maseratis, and furniture store owners.
Nick didn’t speak.
“Hello?” A Perc smile twisted onto her face. “You there? Bored already?”
“Ian walked right into it, didn’t he?”
“Men and their penises.”
“Empires are built because of men and their penises.”
“Rome. Atlantis. The Death Star … And Ian was a willing participant in some of this.”
“You’re on a path. Why’d you call me? To tell me how awesome I am?”
“You’re awesome, but also…” Gray twisted in her chair. “I wanna check out that cabin in Idyllwild before I talk to Tea. I’ve been avoiding her.”
“Why?”
“Cuz I wanna catch them off guard. What if Isabel’s there at that cabin? Or worse? What if Isabel’s buried somewhere on that property? And since I don’t know what I’ll find out there, would you mind tagging along? I know you’re doing your own investigation—”
“And every contact I talk to says Dixon isn’t their client.”
“Could someone be lying?”
“It’s possible somebody’s working and not saying.”
“So?”
“So … I’m gonna keep on asking questions. I’m gonna keep on trucking.”
“Until then, come with me. I’ll buy you breakfast. And I’ll also put together a fun bag.” Wigs, glasses, colored contact lenses, gloves, and scarves.
Nick lived seven minutes away from Rader Consulting and didn’t take long to pick up Gray in his Yukon. She climbed into the passenger seat with opioid electricity razzing through her body.
“I brought you something,” he said.
She held out her hands. “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”
He placed a plastic bag on her palms. “Okay, open them.”
She peeked into the bag. “Aww. You remembered.” First, she pulled out the snow globe—palm trees, a blue wave, Santa on a surfboard, red letters that spelled “Hawaii.” Then she pulled out the can of Mauna Loa macadamia nuts with pineapple.
Nick had also brought Baby Ruths and Cheetos, Mountain Dew for him, and bottles of Pellegrino for her. “So, where am I going?” He cruised out of the parking lot.
Gray studied his profile. Those cheekbones, his lips … Damn.
Did I say that aloud?
She punched an address into the car’s navigation system. She popped open the can of nuts, then settled into her seat. She ignored the prickly heat that had killed unsuspecting queens. Like Cleopatra and … and Cersei and … was Jezebel a queen? Gray was also glad that Nick was now playing the Gipsy Kings on the stereo. Dancing music instead of sexing music. Thanks to Spanish guitars, she was now certain that she wouldn’t unbutton the fly of his jeans and give him road head. If he only knew.
“Only knew what?” Nick asked.
Oops. “Huh?”
“You okay?”
Alert now, Gray nodded.
“What did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Grayson.”
“Just Percocet.”
“Because?”
“I have a bellyache.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t—”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.” She flashed him a smile.
His frown didn’t turn upside down.
She licked her finger and stuck it in his ear.
He laughed and batted her hand.
The drive was not an exotic one—Interstate 10 to Palm Springs had never been the public highway that tantalized you with California poppies, ocean views, charming cottages, or even cows, horses, and sheep. No one ever fell in love on the 10 or said, “Ooh, let’s take the Ten—we have time.” It simply bored you to death with its meth-town Denny’s and Del Tacos, places where colored people dared not pee. Better to risk urinary tract and bladder infections than to pee beneath a Confederate flag next to someone with Aryan Brotherhood tats on his bicep or her stretch-marked boob. Gray and Nick did all their peeing at Indian casinos.
Idyllwild sat in the San Jacinto Mountains, forty-six miles from Palm Springs, five and a half thousand feet above sea level. With no lake around, the town’s main attractions were the pine and cedar forests and the trails cut between them. Little cabins, a diner, and a fake Bigfoot—that’s all there was to see in Idyllwild.
Nick said, “We should come up here this winter. Do some cross-country skiing.”
“Never done that. I’m down for a new adventure.”
“Not that we have to wait until the winter.”
“Don’t we need snow for cross-country skiing?”
“Well, we wouldn’t ski. We’d hike.”
“How about October? After Clarissa’s wedding?”
“I’ll find a cabin.”
They rolled past Tea Christopher’s A-frame. “When you do find a cabin,” Gray said, “just make sure it’s bigger than that.”
Nick cut off the truck’s headlamps. “It looks bigger in the pictures.” He was comparing the internet results with the dollhouse nestled within a grove of cedars.
A black Ford F-10 truck was parked in the driveway.
Gray rolled down the window and sap-smelling night air rolle
d past her. The soft rustling of treetops was the only sound, and except for the lights glowing in the cabin, the forest was a glistening black. In the cabin, a shadow moved across the room. Violet-colored light from a television joined golden light from the lamps.
“You see that truck, right?” Gray asked.
“Yep.” Nick was already scribbling the license plate number into her notebook. “You bring your laptop?”
Gray’s mouth opened, then popped closed. “Oops.”
Nick sighed. “Run it back in the office.”
Face burning, she said, “The neighbor told me that Isabel left in a black truck.”
“She give you the truck’s plate number?”
“No.”
He offered her the Baby Ruth. “She give you a make and model?”
She took a bite from the candy bar. “No.”
“She—”
“I got it, Nick. I didn’t say this was the truck. I said the lady saw Isabel leave in a truck.”
But Gray knew in her gut—as sick as her gut was—that this truck was that truck.
37
Minutes later, Nick and Gray approached the cabin’s front porch. He carried a knapsack filled with a change of clothes and a waistband filled with Beretta. He wore Buddy Holly glasses and had parted his hair like a Silicon Beach tech nerd, which was closer to the truth than he wanted to believe. Gray carried the bag of snacks Nick had purchased for the drive. She’d tugged on an expensive honey-blonde wig she’d named the “Beyoncé” and had popped in green-colored contact lenses. She nodded after Nick whispered, “Ready?”
He knocked on the door.
A man as big and brown as a grizzly bear answered. Coarse black hair poked out and around his gray wife-beater. He smelled of weed and corn chips, and his scowl meant that he didn’t like that two strangers stood on his porch this close to midnight.
Nick gaped at him. “You’re not Andreas. You must be Eric, then.”
The man’s scowl cut deeper into his pockmarked face. “What the hell are you talking about?” His eyes left Nick’s and smacked into Gray’s.
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