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A month to the day of her traffic court appointment, he pulled someone over who then yanked out a gun and shot him straight through the heart. Just hauled off and popped him. The killer then sped away. Did the deed, drove off, zigzagging through side streets, the stolen plates that had been on the vehicle tossed onto the road, no fingerprints recovered. No arrests had been made to date, though the crime had gotten plenty of press and the police were determined to catch the cop-killer.
Elizabeth, standing at the kitchen island, nearly collapsed as she read about Daniels’s death in the newspaper that Court tossed aside before going to work one morning. The headline jumped out at her and she went into a state of shock, her heart galumphing once, then pounding so hard in her ears she could scarcely hear.
She had trouble reading the article as her hands were shaking violently and she was forced to drop the pages onto the counter where she steadied herself. Her breath came in fast gulps while her vision telescoped down to a black dot.
You wished him dead and now he is!
She didn’t quite pass out, but almost. She told herself it was a coincidence, that was all—nothing more sinister than an officer pulling over the wrong person, a maniac with a gun. . . .
Elizabeth bit her lip and set her wine on the side table. Officer Daniels’s death was long before Mazie’s accident, which had shaken her further. She’d tried to convince herself it was another situation that had nothing to do with her. She’d almost believed it.
Until Court’s death.
What were the chances? Three people she’d wished would disappear had died. It just couldn’t be coincidence.
I’m normal, she told herself as she had so many times over the last year. I’m completely normal. I lead a normal suburban life.
Except now I’m a single mother because my husband’s dead.
Suddenly tired, she got up from the couch, took her glass to the kitchen, rinsed it out, and put it in the dishwasher. She glanced down to the pile of papers on the section of counter that she used as her catchall. Detective Thronson’s name and number lay on a piece of paper atop the various recipe books, coupons, junk mail, and bills strewn in an untidy pile.
She ignored it all and put a call in to Tara as she opened the refrigerator door and peered inside, hoping to spy anything within that nutrient-bleak interior that she could pull together and create some kind of good meal. Impossible. She’d have to come up with plan B.
“Hey,” Tara answered. “How’s it going?”
“Fine, I guess. Or fine as it can be. My sister-in-law left and I think I’d better go grocery shopping or Chloe and I might just starve. Okay if I pick her up on the way back?”
“Perfect,” Tara said. “Everyone’s getting along.”
Elizabeth smiled for the first time that day. “A miracle.”
“Yeah, it might not last long.”
“I’ll hurry,” she promised, clicking off her phone, then snatching up her keys and purse and heading to the garage. As she climbed behind the wheel of her black Ford Escape, she hesitated, key about to be jammed into the ignition. What had Barbara asked? If the SUV that had been reported to have been racing with Court’s BMW had been dark, like Elizabeth’s. Another coincidence? The car that maybe had been playing some kind of freeway tag with Court was similar to hers?
A drip of cold fear slid down Elizabeth’s spine.
Don’t even go there.
Setting her jaw, she jammed the key into the ignition and switched on the engine. As the garage door lifted and the gray light of the afternoon spilled into the gloomy interior, she told herself that she was being paranoid, searching for connections that probably didn’t even exist.
She pulled out of the drive and hit the automatic switch, closing the garage. Staring into the leaden sky, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was happening to her. Something very, very bad.
Chapter 5
January in Southern California was a revelation to Ravinia Rutledge. The weather was usually sunny and warm in the dead of winter. Even when it rained, it wasn’t really cold, although at night the temperature could sure as hell plummet; she knew that from sleeping outside more times than not.
It had rained hard the night before and she’d taken refuge in a local Starbucks, sipping hot coffee until the storm had passed.
The morning had dawned bright and clear with white fluffy clouds floating across the blue sky. As she sat with her back propped against a palm tree in Santa Monica, she thought about her long journey from Oregon and the comparative safety of the locked gates of Siren Song
, her home near Deception Bay. It had been weeks since she’d started on the quest that led her ever southward, but she hoped she would finally find her cousin, Elizabeth Gaines, the reason she’d started the journey in the first place.
Ravinia suspected the good weather wouldn’t last. She’d learned January was the rainy month in Southern California. “The rainiest month,” one know-it-all type SoCal-er had declared when he’d realized she was from Oregon and had never been out of the state before.
She hadn’t even been five miles from Deception Bay before this trip, but she’d declined telling him that as it would have been another reason for him to go off on the wonders of California. She liked the state, but Mr. SoCal kind of pissed her off with his better-than-thou, know-it-all attitude. He was just someone she’d met on the train and they’d parted as soon as they’d reached the Los Angeles station, but she’d had hours of listening to him.
She’d arrived in downtown Los Angeles about four days earlier, having come from the San Francisco area. Though she was careful with her cash, she’d seen no way to get to Los Angeles by hitchhiking unless she worked her way down Highway 101 and she was pretty sure that would take forever, time she didn’t have. Instead, she’d caught a train that had taken her across the California countryside, through Modesto and Stockton, then into Bakersfield, where she’d been transferred to a bus, which finished the trip and dropped her off at the Los Angeles train station, a bizarre fact, but there it was. When she’d asked why the train didn’t go all the way from San Francisco to LA, Mr. SoCal had quipped, “This is the land of cars. Get used to it.”
