Chapter 2

Stop!" Kendra shouted across her condo living room.

Olivia Moore froze in the main doorway. "Jeez, Kendra. You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome." She pocketed her key. "Should I just go?"

"Of course not. But you're about to run smack-dab into a four-foot tower of file boxes. Three steps to your left will give you a clear path in."

"Thanks."

Kendra stood to greet her friend and downstairs neighbor. As children, she and Olivia had attended a school for the blind, and their friendship had only deepened in the years since Kendra gained her sight. Olivia had never shown the tiniest bit of jealousy at Kendra's good fortune, though she still hoped she would one day reclaim the sight that had been taken from her in a childhood car accident.

Olivia hugged her. "You need to stop bringing your work home, Kendra. We talked about this."

"It's not work. It's a favor."

"A favor that involves… a murder?"

She shrugged. "Maybe even a bunch of murders."

"Ooh, I gotta hear about this." Olivia pushed back her long black hair as she walked over and plopped down onto the couch. She was stunningly beautiful with her olive complexion and high cheekbones, made even more attractive by her stubborn refusal to believe she was good looking at all.

"Don't get so excited," Kendra murmured. "It's a tragic story."

"It always is. Got any wine?"

Kendra smiled. "Of course." She walked to the kitchen counter and poured them each a glass of Malbec. "Do you have any memory of a killer called the Bayside Strangler?"

"No. Was he around here?"

"Yes, but it was a long time ago. We were in school then, at Woodward. I really don't remember any of the details, but he was never caught."

Olivia grasped the wineglass that Kendra put in her hand. "That's what this is about? No one's asked you to work a cold case before."

"Well, that's only part of the story. The only reason I'm considering it is that two women's lives may be in danger. If they're even still alive." Kendra filled her in on the facts of the case as related to her that morning. As she spoke, she felt the same sense of dread she'd heard in Detective Chase's voice.

Olivia sat in silence for a long moment after Kendra finished. "You have to try to help them. You know that, right?"

"It's getting more clear by the minute."

"Good."

"But this is different from anything I've done before. You said it yourself. I don't do cold cases. Whatever skills I have, they may not apply to a fifteen-year-old investigation that went absolutely nowhere."

"Which is why you could be perfect for it. They might be able to use a fresh pair of eyes." She raised her wineglass. "So to speak."

"You know… Right before I came home, I looked online and saw the news story about the Morgan sisters' disappearance last week. There was a picture of the two of them, and you could almost see the sadness in their faces. Their mother was taken from them when they were children, and they've also lost so much of their lives trying to get justice for her. And now it may have cost them their own lives."

"Do you think they were really close to finding out who this Bayside Strangler was?"

"Nobody knows. That tower of files over there is everything Chloe and Sloane Morgan gathered over the years as they investigated the Bayside Strangler case. Detective Chase went through it, and she didn't see anything that convinced her. I'll look and see if there's anything I can follow up on."

Olivia made a face. "Are we talking hundreds of sheets of paper over there?"

"Maybe thousands. That's what you almost collided with. It's stacked about four feet high."

"That's horribly inefficient."

"Well, when the Morgan sisters turn up, you can tell them that."

"No, I mean… for you to sort through."

"You got a better idea?"

"Scan it all. A good PDF software program could index all the text and make it searchable. If you see something interesting, you can cross-index and bring up every instance that appears in any of the other documents."

Kendra smiled. Naturally, Olivia would have a high-tech solution right off the top of her head. She ran a popular web destination called Outasite that was geared toward the vision-impaired. Packed with reviews, profiles, and other articles mostly written by Olivia herself, the internationally acclaimed site earned her an income well into the six figures. "Good idea," Kendra said, "but I don't have time for a scanning project."

"You don't need the time. I have an intern."

"What?"

"I have an intern who's desperate for something to do. He's taking a semester off from USC to intern for me. I wanted a blind student, but she got a better offer from a Wall Street firm at the last minute. So I got Zack. He's studying online marketing, which I already have covered pretty well."

"I'd hate to impose."

"He's an intern. These kids sweep floors, pick up dry cleaning, and walk dogs for course credit. At least he'll be doing something that'll give him some useful skills in the real world."

Kendra thought about it for a moment. "Okay, fine. It makes sense to put all that information into some kind of searchable order."

"Definitely. And it'll be a relief for me to not have to come up with stuff for him to do. I've been a one-woman show for so long that it's a real effort for me."

"I've been telling you to get an assistant. You're practically running a media empire alone out of your condo. Maybe this will show you how to delegate some of the work you've taken on."

"We'll see." Olivia took a long sip of her wine. "Maybe you could use an assistant yourself. You've been crazy busy even when you're not moonlighting as a crimefighter."

"Don't remind me. I've been playing catch-up from those three weeks I spent in Spain."

"I still think you should have stayed longer."

Kendra smiled. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so relaxed and happy. Maybe too happy. Spending three weeks in a Marbella beach house with an exciting, beautiful man who adored her. How could it not be paradise? "Lynch wanted me to stay another two weeks, but I have clients back here. On our last day, he bought the beach house we were renting so we could go back whenever we wanted."

"Wow. You left that part out when you told me about the trip."

"It made me a little uncomfortable. The trip was supposed to merely be a two-week vacation. All of a sudden it seemed to be something else."

"The guy bought you a multimillion-dollar beach house. That's the kind of discomfort I could live with."

"He didn't buy it for me."

"Did he give you your own set of keys?"

"Yes, but—"

"Aha. He did buy it for you. He obviously wants you to go back there with him as much as you can."

"Well, it's been almost a month, and I haven't seen him since."

"Which foreign capital has Lynch been toppling, or saving, now?"

"I lose track. In our last phone conversation, he said he was in Geneva, but I swear I could hear gunfire in the background."

"Of course. Those Swiss love their assault rifles."

Kendra laughed. Adam Lynch was a former FBI agent who had spent the last several years as a freelance agent who brokered sensitive deals all over the world. He'd helped negotiate prisoner releases, peace accords, and whatever else needed to be done in the pressure-cooker situations that were his specialty. He was often out of the country for weeks at a time, and Kendra admitted she appreciated the emotional distance it allowed her to keep from him. Lynch could be overpowering, and she was never certain how deeply she wanted to lose herself and her independence when she was with him. During those weeks in Spain she'd felt as if she'd been on an emotional roller coaster. Kendra leaned back on her couch. "Okay, I have to admit, he can be fascinating and I find myself missing the guy."

"Good," Olivia said. "And you know, it wouldn't be the end of the world if you told him that?"

"Heaven forbid. He thinks quite enough of himself. Everyone treats Lynch like a combination 007, Sam Spade, and one of the Marvel superheroes. It's difficult enough to keep a reasonable distance."

"I believe you'd manage to do it. Though it might be more interesting just to dive in and enjoy."

"Which you would probably never do."

"Just a thought…"

Assholes.

A couple of total and complete assholes.

Paula Chase turned off the I-5 freeway and took the road that led to her suburban home in San Marcos. She'd been spitting expletives during the entire drive from the downtown San Diego Police Headquarters, where she'd been trying to convince two arrogant young detectives that they needed to give more attention to the Morgan sisters missing persons case. They'd insinuated that Chloe and Sloane might have left on an impromptu road trip to Mexico or Las Vegas.

Right, Paula thought. And both women just happened to forget their cars, keys, phones, and credit cards.

She'd worked with lazy assholes during her twenty-five years with the department, but it seemed there were more of them now. The two detectives, Breen and Danforth, looked at her as if she was some kind of hysterical relic. She wasn't sure if it was sexism, ageism, or both.

Guys like that made her happy to be retired.

At least Kendra Michaels seemed to take the case seriously, though it still wasn't clear that she could be persuaded to join the investigation. According to her friends in the department, Kendra turned down far more cases than she accepted.

In any case, it was worth a shot.

Paula pulled into her driveway as the last tinges of sunlight disappeared behind the row of palm trees at the end of the nearby cul-de-sac. She opened her garage door with the visor-mounted remote, parked her Honda CR-V inside, then closed the door behind her.

She stepped inside her house and froze.

The place was a wreck. Someone had ransacked the place, pulling out every drawer, clearing every cabinet, even emptying the refrigerator and freezer. She glanced at the wall where her alarm panel should have been. It was gone.

What in the holy hell?

There was rustling from the next room. Oh, shit. Her intruder was still in the house.

If anyone else was in her position, she knew what she'd tell them.

Get the hell out of there.

But she wasn't just anyone else. She had a gun, and she knew how to use it.

Paula crept toward her bedroom, on the opposite side of the house from where she could still hear her visitor opening desk drawers and emptying the contents of her office closet. What the hell was he looking for?

She peered through her bedroom doorway. Jesus. This room was in even worse shape than the rest of the house. Her mattress had been sliced open, and the padding was on the floor with every book and every object from the tall shelves. She scrambled toward her bed and felt underneath for her holstered automatic.

"It's not there anymore."

The man's voice came from behind her.

Dammit.

She looked at her television cracked and lying on its side and saw the reflection of the man standing in her bedroom doorway. He was dressed totally in black and wore a ski mask.

He was also holding her gun.

"Stand up."

She stood and slowly turned around. "What do you want?"

"I think you know the answer to that." He spoke in a low rasp. She wasn't sure if he was speaking that way to disguise his voice, or if that's the way he usually talked.

"I really don't. But before you destroy any more of my house, how about you just ask me? Is it money? If that's it, you're out of luck. I'm living on Social Security and my pension."

He raised the gun and aimed it at her head. "Fine. Maybe I should just do this."

He squeezed the trigger.

Click!

It didn't fire. He tried again.

Click!

She punched him in the face and elbowed his head until he dropped to the ground. She pounced on top of him.

"That gun jams all the time. Been meaning to take it in to the shop. Good thing I haven't, huh?"

Even through the ski mask, she could see his cheekbones rising in a wicked smile. A second later, she felt an icy coldness slicing into her right side. She gasped for air as her lung collapsed.

The intruder pushed her off him and pushed his knife into her again.

This time it went into her heart.