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He burned his victims after killing them. Some news anchor had said that. Greg figured it was fake news. They’d arrested the wrong guy, is all. Damn cops couldn’t find their own asses most of the time, and Stephen had been wrong place, wrong time, just like he’dexplained.
Tipping the half-warm beer to his lips, Greg downed the rest of it, desperately seeking to extend that blessed hazy sense of exhilaration. But crack was a short-lived high, and even the alcohol couldn’t fight off the aftereffects of irritation and paranoia.
Another match flared. Then a third. A fourth.
“It doesn’t even have to be the full amount. We didn’t get the outcome we wanted, but you know more now than before, right? She’s got protection. Gonna be hard to get to her, but at least you’re forewarned about that. How ’bout we say half what I was promised. That seems fair.”
“That seems fair,” Thorne repeated mockingly.
Now Greg was getting pissed. He’d takenrisksfor the guy, more than once. And this was how he repaid him?
“Fine. You want to be like that? Tell your friend to lose my fucking number. Don’t expect me to help you again.” He reached down for his last beer, and the baggie next to it and ended up spilling out of his seat to the sand. Scrabbling about, he managed to grab both. He stood, retrieving his phone and shoving it in thepocket of his hoodie. “Good luck staying out of fucking prison without me.” He tried to wrestle the chair into folding up for him, but couldn’t manage it with one hand. Fuck that, too.
He headed toward the rocky incline behind him. Stephen rose.
“You can’t unsee what you saw. Can’t undo what you done.” The creepy mumbling wasstarting to get to him now. Greg looked over his shoulder to track Stephen’s position, and landed right on his face in the sloped sand. He felt a hand grasp hissweatshirt and haul him upright. He jerked away. “Get the fuck off me.”
Something smashed into his head, sending shards of pain through his system. He dropped to his knees, one hand rising to the back of his skull. His fingers came back sticky and wet. “What the fuck…”
Then his brain exploded again, and there was no more conscious thought. Just jumbled sensations upon sensations. The pain. Brilliant and excruciating fireworks blazing across his mind. Grit in his mouth. Against his cheek. His ankles were lifted. Dragged. Behind his eyelids, Greg watched Lizzy do a jerky dance, her drenched body silhouetted against a fiery sky.
And then he saw nothing else.
10
His cell dinged, and Hayes straightened from his computer to read the text. He shoved away from the table and strode across the room for the jacket he’d hung in the closet. Shrugging into it, he studied Reese’s closed bedroom door. It was nearing noon, and she hadn’t yet made an appearance. Maybe she was just engrossed in the same task that had kept her busy when they got home yesterday afternoon. Or perhaps she’d been so freaked out by the lead he’d shared with her that she hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night. Either way, he needed her up and moving.
He rapped at her door. “Reese.” There was no answer, so he repeated the action more loudly. When he was met with only silence, he eased it open, sticking his head into the room. The bed was empty, a scrap of panties and a tank lying in a crumpled heap beside it. Now, he could hear the shower in the master bath running.
Resigned to waiting a few more minutes, he turned to leave. But then, he paused, his attention captured by the wall across the room from the bed. Neon Post-it notes covered it in a haphazard array. It could be the system Reese used to organizethe book her editor said she was writing—a primitive outline of sorts.
Hayes drew nearer and realized his mistake. The pattern wasn’t random. And it didn’t have anything to do with a book. A note at the top of one end had Rivers’s name on it. All the sheets beneath had questions scrawled across them. A business company headed a column with far fewer papers, and a doctor’s name was on the end, beneath which a rainbow of notes traced down the sheetrock.
The shower shut off, and he turned to retreat. He reached for the doorknob, and at the same time, Reese came out of the bathroom, her hair wet and tousled. A towel was secured around her in a gravity-defying knot that only women could manage. She visibly jumped at the sight of him. “What are you doing in here?”
The exact damn words echoed in his brain. Hayes could do without the sight of her clad in only a strip of terry cloth around her narrow frame, eyes wide and the color of the hickory nuts he and Eden used to gather in Gran’s yard when they were kids. He knew the image she presented would stubbornly cling to his memory, as tenacious as the bits of paper adorning her walls.
“I got a message from Mendes. We need to meet up with him.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“Wear tennis shoes.” Hayes beat a hasty, if belated, retreat to pace the living room. His experience had taught him that women had a different concept of time when it came to getting ready. But it was no more than six or seven minutes before she came out, clothed in close-fitting jeans, a pair of Chucks, and a tee, with a baseball cap low on her forehead. She dropped her phone into a small purse she held and followed him to the door. “What’s this about?”
“I’ll fill you in on the way.”
“Give me the highlights.”
She waited as he cleared the hallway and then joined him when he waved her over to head to the elevator. “I sent Mendes a message last night about the possible connection between Thorne and Pollack. He alerted me that Greg’s car was found near Mar Vista Cove and dropped me a pin.”
“I know the area.” She lengthened her stride to keep up. He could have slowed, but a feeling of urgency had been building inside him since he’d received the text. “Sort of isolated, with a steep rocky incline to the beach. Great view, but I’ve never braved the climb down. The car was abandoned? Or did they spot Pollack, too?”
He waited until he could be certain the elevator was empty before ushering her inside.
“The police found unidentified human remains on the beach. They were still smoldering when the California Highway Patrol car happened by. Whoever the victim is, someone used him or her to start a bonfire.”
“Deputy Mendes is expecting me. Us.”Hayes handed their IDs to one of the officers handling traffic along the perimeter. He could see the red Fusion in the distance, parked in a spot made bare by beaten-down vegetation on the cliff’s edge. They’d had to park well away from it. The area was clogged with law enforcement vehicles.
The officer, fiftyish with a face shiny with perspiration, flicked a glance from Hayes to his DL. Frowned at Reese’s. “Mendes cleared you. Never mentioned her.”