Or a prime suspect.
I snorted at the thought: Evelyn Young looked more like one of my socialite aunties than a criminal mastermind. I couldn’t imagine her taking an extra tea cake let alone hiring someone like J Tran to swindle people out of their money—and it always came down to money. No. It was far more likely that she was a victim.
I dug further and discovered that the mayor’s goddaughter, Julie Stanton, had recently died in a hiking accident in the Santa Monica Mountains. According to the reports, Julie had ventured off the Mishe Mokwa Trail, the ground had given way, and the twenty-year-old woman had fallen fifty feet into a ravine.
If I hadn’t known about Mia, Tran, Freddy, and Metro, I would have written it off as an unfortunate accident, just as the detectives had done. After all, Julie wasn’t actually a relative, and there had been no cause to think the mayor was being blackmailed or pressured.
However, once I added Julie’s accident to Mia’s attack, it seemed a little fishy: Evelyn Young and Freddy Weintraub both held key voting positions on Metro’s Technical Advisory Committee, both had spouses and children to protect, both had bad things happen to non-family members who were close to them.
Was this the link?
Had Tran killed Julie Stanton and terrorized Mia Mikkelsen as a warning?
After witnessing the brutal efficiency with which Tran had executed those Korean punks, the theory seemed plausible.
But two incidents of possible coercion did not constitute a pattern. So I checked into the other influential voting member who had caught my attention: Henrique Vasquez, council member for District 14.
Henrique Vasquez had served on the LA city council for the last seven years. He was a native of East LA, had married his high school sweetheart, and had three young sons. Rumor had it that the charismatic politician planned to run for mayor with a distant eye on the governorship, which, unbelievable as it seemed to me, would make him the first Mexican-American California governor since Romualdo Pacheco in 1875. But, of course, his political trajectory wouldn’t stop there. Vasquez for president!
As a viable Latin-American presidential candidate, the campaign money would pile up so quick Henrique would need one of Bestefar’s tractors to shovel it to the bank.
And if power and ambition weren’t enough, Vasquez was also a strong supporter of rail expansion. I knew this because he mentioned it in every interview I found. Union Station sat smack-dab in the middle of his downtown district; The Copper Line would be a major win.
The councilman had a motive and possible means. But that didn’t prove he had hired Tran to sway the votes that would get the Copper Line approved. In fact, his influence and ambition would have also made him the perfect target. I searched the Internet for recent tragedies or trouble involving someone Vasquez might have cared about—someone close enough to matter yet distant enough to avoid causing suspicion—like Mayor Young’s goddaughter or Freddy Weintraub’s mistress.
Nothing.
I sipped my tea. Cold. Just like this trail. The only thing I felt certain of was that Metro was key and Shannon Weintraub had nothing to do with the attack on Mia Mikkelsen. Other than that, I was as blind as a cow in a blizzard.
How was I going to find my way when answers kept getting buried beneath more questions? Chief among them: if Evelyn and Henrique all had something significant to gain from the Copper Line, why would Tran need to pressure them? Wouldn’t they vote the way he wanted anyway?
And what about Freddy? Why had he sounded so conflicted about building what he supposedly wanted to build? Were there better uses for the remainder of the Measure R funds? Were there better plans on the table?
And what about the Korean punks I had watched Tran assassinate? What—if anything—did they have anything to do with this Metro business?
I downed the rest of my cold tea and shut off the computer.
I needed to step away from the problem, clear my mind, and sweat out my frustrations. Time for a hike to Sandstone Peak: maybe Evelyn Young’s goddaughter had left me a clue.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The trailhead to Sandstone Peak offered two choices: the vertical climb to the summit or the more scenic six-and-a-half-mile loop via the Mishe Mokwa Trail. Julie Stanton had apparently opted for the scenic route, which, according to her obituary, had been her favorite local hike. I had taken it over a dozen times and understood the attraction.
The Mishe Mokwa Trail passed through every terrain California could offer—meandering desert paths, cozy wooded canopies, red rock cliffs, lush valleys—with stunning views of the Malibu Lake and the Pacific Ocean as it culminated at the tallest peak in the Santa Monica Mountains. If I had to pick the last hike of my life, I might have chosen this one.
But Julie Stanton hadn’t been offered a choice. According to the news article, she had ventured too close to the edge and either slipped or had fallen when the rocks gave way.
I didn’t buy it.
Julie didn’t strike me as a careless person. Her Instagram account recorded a life of moderate but sensible adventure without a single Darwin Award selfie—no handstands on a rooftop for this gal—just an outdoorsy young woman who should have lived long enough to take her grandkids on hikes through the hills she loved.
Should have, but hadn’t.
And I wanted—no, I needed—to know why.
From the landmarks I had spotted in the news article’s photo, Julie had fallen closer to the summit end of the looping trail. I’d get there faster if I took the steep shortcut to the top and worked my way down and around.
I scrambled up the giant railroad ties, embedded to form steps in the eroding sandstone, and up the rocky grooves of the mountainside. Near the top, where the trail forked, I descended the back of the peak via the looping Mishe Mokwa Trail. A mile later, I spotted the landmark.
I had stopped at this lookout point the last time I hiked the trail and could easily understand why Julie had done the same. The sheer drop into the ravine made the distant peaks and valleys all the more dramatic. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied, I would have taken the time to properly enjoy it. Instead, I scanned the ground for clues.
Too many weeks had passed to find shoe prints marking the dirt in an elaborate dance of death—as Westley and Inigo Montoya had done in one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride—but I did hope to find something the police had missed embedded in the soil or caught in the cracks of a rock. Maybe even Julie’s missing cellphone.
No such luck. I moved closer to the edge.
The bluff angled slightly up then cut almost straight down. It looked scary but stable: no crumbling rocks, no changes in geologic color or striation that might suggest a recent break, not even exposed roots or rocks on which to trip. Everything about the lookout appeared to be secure.
So how had she fallen?
I peered into the ravine. There was a ledge about fifteen feet below where Julie could have hit before she smashed onto the rocks at the bottom. Although it didn’t have the width to stop her fall, the scrub brush might have snagged her clothes, or her phone.
Only one way to find out.
If anyone had seen me scoot backwards on my belly and slide over the edge of the cliff, they would have called for Search and Rescue. And by the time I had climbed down to the scruff-covered ledge, I almost wished they had.
This was nuts.
While the ledge felt secure and the ragweed and chaparral appeared to be lodged deep into the cracks, I was still suspended over a fifty-foot drop with barely enough room to park my butt. If I slipped, I might be able to slow my descent by grabbing at plants and rocks, but ultimately, I would tumble down the rocky face and onto the crags below—stranded, broken, or dead.
I was starting to feel like one of those Darwin Award candidates I had so recently maligned. But hey, I had come this far, might as well make the most of it.
I searched the brush and crevasses for some vestige of Julie’s passing, anythi
ng to suggest she might have hit the ledge on her way down. Nothing. I crawled out and peered over the edge. If I found something out of reach, I could at least photograph it.
That’s when I saw the glint of metal in a nest of purple sage—three feet down and a foot away from my ledge.
I crawled back to safety and thumped my forehead on my knees. “Don’t do it, Lily. Don’t be stupid.” But no matter how emphatically I grumbled, I knew I wouldn’t listen. There was no way I could leave what appeared to be Julie Stanton’s missing cellphone lying in a bush when there was a possibility, albeit suicidal, that I could reach it.
I lifted my face and searched for signs of hikers. “Anyone up there?” I yelled. “Get your video ready. You’re going to want to capture this.” I shook my head and muttered, “It might go viral.” Then I took off my hiking shoes and socks and proceeded to do something ridiculously stupid.
Ever since I was a child, I liked to pick things up with my toes—tissues, pencils, paperback books. I became so adept at it, Baba used to claim I was part chimpanzee. Then, after watching a video of an armless girl who used her feet as hands, I became obsessed with writing the way she did. It drove Ma crazy to watch me pick up pens and scrawl my name, but I didn’t care. I stuck with it until my signature looked good enough to fool my teachers. Then I lost interest.
Hopefully, I hadn’t lost the skill.
With my feet bare and my toes wriggling free, I rolled onto my stomach and scooted backwards across the rocky, scruffy ledge. Thorns snagged my clothes and scratched my thighs. I let them. If I stopped now, I wouldn’t start again. So I kept scooting and scratching until my legs extended over the ravine like flagpoles off a building. When I reached the tipping point of my balance, I grabbed hold of what I hoped was a deeply rooted plant and gave myself one last chance to abandon this foolishness and do something sensible like ride down the mountain into cell range where I could call the sheriff’s department.
I thumped my forehead in the dirt and blew dust in my face as I exhaled. Realizing that the case was closed and no one would care but me, I stopped talking to the ants, shook the dirt off my forehead, and inched backwards.
“Please, God, don’t let me fall. Ma will kill me.”
A sharp rock dug under the base of my rib cage, making it hard to breathe. Too bad. I had already aligned my body with the cellphone. If I shifted my ribs to a more comfortable spot, I might not be able to find the phone. Or worse. I might kick it out of the sage brush.
“Come on, monkey toes,” I grunted. “Mama needs a new phone.”
When I touched something unnaturally smooth, I knew I had found it. I braced the phone with the top of one foot and grabbed it with the toes of the other, and after a few tense moments and one serious cramp, had it secured.
I flexed my arms and pulled, scraping my chest and stomach across the rocks as I dragged the dead weight of my legs behind me. And when the manzanita ripped from the crack, I jammed my elbows into the gravel to keep from sliding. If I had been able to separate my legs, I could have brought up a knee and levered my way over the top with ease. However, since I needed both feet to hold the phone, I had to inchworm my way onto the ledge with core strength and grit.
I flopped onto my back, muscles drained of strength, phone safe between my toes, and stared at the clouds.
When I had caught my breath again, I put on my socks and shoes and pocketed the phone, taking care to face the screen safely against my thigh. It had a protective case, but after everything I’d risked to retrieve the thing, I didn’t want to take the chance of it getting scraped. I had a cliff to climb.
The distance should have seemed shorter with me standing on the ledge—it didn’t. It looked impossibly far, and from this angle, as smooth as glass.
And woefully familiar.
I had been here before. My dream about Tran—this ledge, this cliff—wondering what to do next. But this wasn’t a dream; nor would Tran be waiting at the summit to tell me why he had invaded my thoughts and tormented me with doubt. I wasn’t lying in my bed, struggling with my subconscious; I was standing on a rock in the Santa Monica Mountains over a fifty-foot drop. If I fell, Farmor’s quilt wouldn’t be there to catch me. There would be pain and injury or death.
It didn’t get more real than that.
I shoved my dream-memory away and climbed. As I did, finger and toe holds appeared as if by magic, accompanied by images: Ma opening the front door to a pair of somber policemen, Baba crying at his wok, Uncle leaving a plate of chow fun on my grave. I couldn’t break their hearts. Pinch by pinch, I made my way up the unforgiving face until I sprawled, heaving and twitching, on the summit.
I crawled away from the edge and planted myself on a boulder to take in the view. Back at my apartment when I had fried my brain on the Copper Line puzzle, I had hoped physical exertion would clear my mind. It damn near cleared it for good.
Once again, I thought of Tran.
He was in my life for a reason—I was fairly certain of that—but why? Why would my higher-self intentionally attract someone who shattered my calm, disrupted my center, and caused me to question whether or not I was inherently good?
Scary question.
In my dream, when I had reached the top of the cliff, Tran had been gone. At the time, I had interpreted the symbolism as struggle, frustration, or futility. Now, Tran’s absence symbolized something more profound.
Perhaps there was no Tran and me.
Perhaps there was—and always had been—only me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I sped down the steep, winding road with only occasional touches to the handbrakes. Leaning into the curves, I quickly outpaced the car behind me and would probably overtake any vehicles in front of me before I made it to Pacific Coast Highway—provided I didn’t skid on gravel or smash into an oncoming truck. If every second presented an opportunity to train, then riding a bike down Yerba Buena Road offered twelve hundred of them.
All I had to do was stay alive long enough to reap the benefits.
One might think I had taken enough risks this morning to last me the week, but then, that person wouldn’t have known me. High-speed biking attuned my mind and body to the moment in an active meditation that calmed my emotions and alleviated my stress. Like training with Sensei or practicing Parkour in the city, it required my full attention. At these speeds, if an approaching vehicle hogged my side of the road, I wouldn’t have time to think, I’d only have time to act.
Which is exactly what happened when the FedEx van appeared.
At the first glimpse of white and green, I held to the cliff-side of the road for a second longer than I normally would have before cutting across the apex of the turn. The slight delay allowed me to pass alongside the stunned FedEx driver’s window—instead of splatting on his windshield—and continue on my way with hardly a flutter to my heart.
I slowed my speed by half as I neared the bottom of the mountain and turned into the parking lot of Neptune’s Net. The Malibu fish fry was a popular stop among bikers, surfers, and anyone traveling up this rural stretch of highway on their way to Santa Barbara. Technically, the property sat on the Ventura side of the county line, but since it occupied one of the last few buildable lots before the mountains met the sea, it scored a Malibu address and area code. It just didn’t fit what most people thought of as the Malibu vibe.
The general misconception was that Malibu was Beverly Hills with surf—ritzy shops, gated mansions, expensive cars. Although the exclusive beach town had all of those things, it also had mobile homes parked on vacant lots, farmers selling fresh produce out of vans, and motorcycle clubs vrooming up the highway. And while there were tons of expansive horse properties and obscenely expensive celebrity compounds closer to Los Angeles, this far up the coast where the distance between mountain and sea gradually reduced to the width of a two-lane highway, life was a bit more laid back. Folks who lived out here valued star-filled night skies, raccoons staring at
them through windows, and hiking trails that began at their front doors. They didn’t care about easy commutes or the social life that accompanied it.
If my life had gone a different way, I would have enjoyed living out here.
I locked my Merida next to a pristine Harley Davidson Fat Boy and found an empty picnic table on the front patio. Then I took out my phone and checked the bars. Cell reception was notoriously spotty out here, so I wasn’t surprised to find only two bars. Hopefully, it would be enough to text for a rideshare. Seconds later, and much to my surprise, I had confirmation from Kansas—the same woman who had driven me to the Hollywood and Highland Entertainment. She would pick me up in five minutes.
I put my phone aside and brought out the one I had risked my life to retrieve. Did it belong to Julie Stanton? I sure as heck hoped so. Unfortunately, I’d have to wait to find out. Although the hard case and clear plastic screen had protected the phone from impact, fog, and dew, none of these things could keep it charged. In the meantime, I used my own phone to check on Tran.
His tracer dot showed him traveling east on the 101 toward Downtown LA. Was he off to Metro headquarters or city hall to pressure another TAC member? If so, maybe I could get there in time to record him in action.
I looked at the highway, hoping to see Kansas’s familiar olive-green SUV driving up from town, and instead, saw it pull a U-turn from the beach across the street. No wonder she could get to the boonies so fast: she was already here.
She hopped out of her car and grinned at me with that same brow-arching smirk I remembered. “Hey, Lily. What’s up?” Beach humidity and wind had turned her red hair into a wild mess.
“Didn’t expect to get you again.”
She nodded to the beach across the street. “Surfing.”
“I figured. Especially when I saw the Malibu U.”
Kansas laughed. “Caught that, huh? Anyway, there aren’t many women drivers with bike racks, so the odds of getting me again aren’t as slim as you might think.”
The Ninja Daughter Page 17