Page 38 of The Grave Artist (Sanchez & Heron #2)

Something was wrong.

Sitting at her kitchen table desk in her tiny rental in Fullerton, Selina Sanchez stared at her laptop screen.

It wasn’t anything specific, not like an imbalance in some combination of the four key aspects of organic chemistry: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids. An anomaly easily isolated and dealt with.

This was more of a feeling.

Which had no place in her discipline.

Her main discipline, that was. College studies.

But her other avocation? Oh, yeah, feelings played an important role, a vital role.

Being an investigator.

Only her approach wasn’t working. She’d gone to all the trouble to put on an act for Carl Overton, to score the list of clients, and yet here she’d spent hours googling and DuckDuckGo-ing the names—and the names those searches had led to.

And more names after that.

Resulting in a big bowl of nothing.

Her hunch was that the list had answers, but she was trying to find them in all the wrong ways. Carmen had told her once: If what you’re doing isn’t working, try something else.

Good advice.

And she followed it now.

She sent a brief text.

Can I come over?

A reply came in less than thirty seconds.

Working late but yeah, sure, good.

Selina had to smile.

Throwing the laptop and list, and a copy of the suicide note, into a backpack, she locked up and hurried down to the parking lot.

Energized by her mission, she sped out onto the streets a little faster than she needed to. Soon she was cruising north toward Riverside County.

Thinking of the list put her in mind of her father.

And she gripped the wheel uneasily, reflecting with some shame that she’d been such a hard-ass when it came to Roberto—and to Carmen.

Recently Selina hadn’t even been willing to attend a small memorial gathering for him on the anniversary of his death.

She’d been filled with righteous anger at what she’d perceived as his abandonment.

Now she knew that not only had he never forsaken his daughters—he’d likely sacrificed his life to save theirs.

The enormity of her guilt nearly overwhelmed her. She had believed the worst of him, when he was not only blameless, but deserving of her utmost honor and respect.

Honor.

That was how she would honor him. She would find the person or persons responsible and bring them to justice.

A car slowed in front of her and, her focus divided, she had to brake quickly.

It was then that she noticed the lights of a car behind her doing the same. Hardly suspicious. Except that most other vehicles were changing lanes to speed around her. This vehicle—she couldn’t see what it was—kept up the slow pace, then accelerated when she did.

Was he following?

No.

Was she sure?

Yes.

Pretty much.

Then those headlights were lost amid all the others on the inundated byways of Los Angeles. Locals called it Carmageddon.

Soon she was through the mountains and pulling up in front of a trim ranch house in a trim yard, located in a trim suburb. Selina leaned toward the funky and this was a very un-her kind of place.

Still, she found it immensely comforting, especially after her day playing amateur cop—and confronting painful memories of her father’s death.

Walking to the front door, she slipped a key from her purse and opened it, then stepped inside and hit the five-digit alarm code.

The door swung shut behind her.

Riverside County Detective Ryan Hall kept a neat house—likely due in part to his military background. A place for everything, everything in its place.

A tap on her ankle scared the hell out of her. She gasped and looked down. It was only Ryan’s cat, Caliber, a name she thought didn’t fit at all. Apparently he’d inherited the feline from an ex he didn’t talk about, though Selina was determined to learn all the deets.

The gray-and-black kitty rolled over for a belly rub, which Selina dutifully provided.

It was then that she heard a noise from outside, that guttural hum that a gas-powered vehicle makes.

She rushed to the window in time to see a black SUV driving slowly down the opposite side of the street. It was a smaller model, a Ford Edge.

The vehicle glided by, then turned the corner. She heard its engine rev as it accelerated away.

At first, she was troubled.

But then she did as her sister recommended and analyzed each fact carefully. First, nobody knew she was looking for the hit man who killed her father, other than Carmen and Jake. Even Carl Overton had no clue why she wanted the list of names.

Second, she had seen no one outside her apartment, much less anybody in a telltale black SUV. There was no indication the lights behind her earlier belonged to this vehicle, nor that the driver was anyone but a person as cautious as she was.

So, next steps: pour a glass of wine, lie back on the couch and summon Netflix.

Or go through the client list one more time. And study the “suicide” note again, on the assumption there were other clues it might give up in addition to RICO-offending goddesses.

There was, for instance, the unknown reason why her father had underlined his middle name as well as the equally mysterious Greek characters.

Δ:ΙΘ

Which—probably—translated into the no-less-mysterious numbers 4:19.

What the hell did that mean?

Okay. The decision was made: no wine, no streaming.

She plopped down on the couch, assembled a makeshift office on the coffee table and, with a purring feline beside her, got back to work.