The P.I.

Maybe she wasn’t on the way to her wedding. She could be a runaway bride. That seemed a more plausible explanation for why she was alone in a taxi with her wedding dress. She’d had a case of bridal jitters.

But why was she running to a P.I.? Her gaze dropped to her suit again. A runaway bride with blood on her suit? That was not good. Her fingers tightened on the business card. Maybe this Kristophe Angelis would know who she was.

The sirens grew louder.

“It’s the ambulance,” the skinny man said.

“Naw,” her taxi driver corrected. “It’s the police. They’ll interview a few witnesses and find out you ran that red light.”

“I had the green.”

“ I had the green. My fare will tell the police that—as soon as she comes out of shock.”

Police. The word sent a chill through her, and she dropped her gaze once more to the bloodstains on her skirt. They’d want to know how the blood got there. How could she explain that to the police when she couldn’t remember?

Maybe she didn’t want to remember.

But she had to. Moving to the edge of the seat, she peered down at the floor of the taxi. She did have a purse, didn’t she? She’d glimpsed black leather when she’d moved the dress bag. Relief streamed through her. Surely, there’d be answers in there. It was heavy and it took some effort to drag it onto her lap. Opening it, she peered at the contents.

She hadn’t thought the knot in her stomach could twist any tighter, but she’d been wrong. Even in the dim light, she could recognize the gleam of metal and make out the shape of a gun. Beneath it lay bundles of bills. The ones she could see on top were twenties.

It was a lot of money. Doing her best to avoid touching the gun, she slipped her hand into the tote, sliding it down the sides of the stacked bills and trying to locate a wallet or anything else that might tell her who she was. But she came up empty.

“You remember anything yet?”

She started, clutching the tote closed before turning to see her taxi driver peering in the window. “No. Sorry.”

“Shit,” he muttered as he turned and walked away.

She could see beyond him to where two uniformed officers were talking to the tall, skinny man. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. Even as she watched, one of the policemen pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started to talk to the bystanders.

This was her chance, she thought. If she stayed here, she was going to have to explain the blood, the gun, the wedding dress and the small fortune in money in a tote bag. And she couldn’t. She slipped one twenty out of a bundle and set it on the seat. The money might not be hers, but she didn’t want to leave the taxi driver without his fare. Then keeping her eye on the two policemen, she very carefully opened the door that hadn’t suffered damage from the accident. She gathered up the tote and the wedding dress and slipped away into the crowd.

2

S ETTLING HIMSELF at his desk, Kit Angelis opened his laptop and tried to ignore the tingling sensation at the back of his neck that always warned him something was about to happen. According to his aunt Cass, the sensation was a sign of Kit’s innate psychic ability, a gift of premonition that Aunt Cass believed could be traced all the way back to ancient Greece. While the idea appealed to his imagination, Kit wasn’t all that comfortable with the notion that he might be able to “see” into the future. He’d always preferred to take life as it came at him. It was challenging enough to deal with problems as they arose without having to handle the ones that were headed at him from the future.

Still, he took a moment to rub the back of his neck. The intensity of the tingling and the way that it had been building all day warned him that some significant event was looming on the horizon. In his opinion, these little premonitions didn’t prove he was psychic. After all, no one had labeled his friend, Roman, a “seer” when he’d claimed he had a “feeling” that something was going to happen the night he’d crashed his father’s car after Kit had talked his reluctant friend into taking it for a joyride.

Of course, his aunt’s counterargument to that would be that Roman wasn’t Greek. And Kit Angelis was—certainly enough to know that something was definitely coming tonight.

No matter that it was the last thing he needed. He already had plans for the weekend. He was going fishing with his brothers.

For one tempting moment, he considered turning off his computer and hightailing it out of town. But the escape attempt would be futile. Fate had a way of dogging a person’s footsteps. How often had Aunt Cass read the story of Oedipus Rex to him as a child? If good old King Oed hadn’t been able to escape what the Fates had in store for him, how in the world did Kit Angelis hope to do it?

With a sigh, Kit pressed the button that would boot up his computer. When his dog Ari echoed his sigh, he glanced over to where the large black animal was stretched out below the window. The dog gave him a patient, longsuffering look.

“Working on it,” he said as he reached into his bottom drawer and fished out a biscuit. “Twenty pages and then we’re out of here.” That was his goal—to get down the second chapter of his new novel. Then they’d leave. “I promise.”

Ari made a sound in his throat. The tone sounded skeptical.

Kit aimed the biscuit for a spot right between the dog’s paws and hit his mark. Ari would move for food, but not much else when the temperature was this humid, and Kit hadn’t the heart to make the dog run for a treat.

Then he turned his attention back to the computer. He’d set his goal and he was going to accomplish it. True, this was not the way he’d envisioned spending a Friday evening—especially not one that was kicking off a long holiday weekend that he still intended to spend fishing with his brothers.

It wasn’t merely psychic senses that ran strong in the Angelis family; he and his brothers had also inherited an affinity for the sea. His grandfather on his father’s side had been a fisherman in Greece. His grandfather and great grandfather on his mother’s side had been shipbuilders near Sausalito.

His oldest brother, Nik, especially loved the challenge of pitting himself against the elements, and so he’d be taking out his sailboat at some point this weekend. Theo would probably take the boat out, too, and he would definitely sit on the dock and throw his line in, but Kit sensed that Theo only participated in either activity because he just loved to be near water.

But for Kit, as well as for his father, the lure of the sea had always had to do with fishing. He just loved the game of it. In his mind, he pictured himself choosing one of the lures his father made, throwing his line out into the water and then waiting for that first tug that signaled the beginning of the battle.

Kit gave himself a mental shake. Twenty pages, he reminded himself. Of course, finishing them could mean that Theo and Nik would beat him to the cabin. He tried to ignore the stab of regret he felt about that as he opened up the file on his laptop. When the phone rang, he let the answering machine pick it up.

“Hey, bro, I know you’re there.”

It was Theo’s voice. Some people thought that he and his brothers sounded alike, but Theo’s drawl was unmistakable. His older brother always spoke slowly, the way he seemed to do everything else. Energy conservation, he called it. Whatever it was, his easy manner endeared him to juries and often deceived his opponents. Theo’s mind worked fast enough, and he could move like lightning when the need arose. Like today, Kit thought with a frown. He was certain that Theo was calling to gloat because he’d arrived first at the cabin.

“Just thought you’d like to know,” Theo continued, “I’m here. There’s an hour or so of daylight left, so I think I’ll get Dad’s latest lure and catch me some fish.”

Kit grimaced. He could picture his brother all too clearly in his mind, and it was just like Theo to mention the lure. Kit had been looking forward to using it. Theo knew that, just as Kit knew that Theo probably wouldn’t even get his line wet. He’d just sit there on the porch and commune with the sea gods while he plotted strategy for his next case in court.

“Drive safely. No need to rush.”

Kit stifled a sigh as he glanced at his watch. Theo must have clocked out at 5:00 p.m. on the dot. His only consolation was that his oldest brother Nik would be getting the same gloating message on his cell.

Ever since they were kids, they’d had an ongoing competition. Whoever made it through the cabin door first got their choice of poles and lures—and their father had quite a collection. When they were little, the race to the cabin had started the moment they’d rocketed out of the car. In the early days, Nik and Theo had had an advantage because they were older. As the youngest, he’d had to rely on wit and cunning. When he was six, he’d managed to tie their shoelaces together once. He could still recall the unadulterated joy he’d felt as he’d left them face down in the grass and sprinted for the cabin door.

Their dad still told that story in the restaurant he ran in the Fisherman’s Wharf area—The Poseidon. In the Angelis family, fishing had always been something the men of the family did together—much to the annoyance of Philly, their kid sister. Kit’s lips curved at the memory of the time that Philly had stowed away in the trunk of their father’s car so that she could be a part of a fishing trip. She’d gotten her way—but only after she’d promised Spiro that she’d never do anything that dangerous again. His father told that story in the restaurant, too.

Usually, their father joined them. But ever since Spiro had lured the beautiful Helena Lambis from Greece and convinced her to open an upscale dining room on the upper level of The Poseidon, he seemed to find it very difficult to get away from work.

Philly was sure the relationship between his father and Helena was a romantic one. Helena had been a five-star chef at a hotel in Athens. When Spiro had visited Greece six months ago, he’d stayed at that very hotel. To hear Philly tell it, the story had overtones of Paris snatching Helen and carrying her off to Troy.

Spiro’s version was less romantic. According to his father, his relationship with Helena was business. He’d been thinking for some time of opening a fine-dining restaurant on the upper level of The Poseidon and he’d convinced Helena to join him in that venture. But in the five months since Helena had established her restaurant, even their business relationship had become a bit rocky. The two had become competitors, each trying to outdo the other.

Whatever the true story was, Spiro seldom had time for fishing anymore. So Kit would be spending time with Nik and Theo, something that was becoming rarer since they all had very active careers.

Nik was a detective in the SFPD and on the fast track to becoming a captain. Theo had established a reputation as a top-notch criminal defense attorney in the area and, more recently, he’d been proclaimed one of the top ten most eligible bachelors by the San Francisco Examiner, something that had garnered him quite a bit of razzing from his brothers.

The article had also resulted in some “groupies,” who’d followed Theo around for a time. When one of them had turned into a stalker, Theo had handled the situation with his usual unruffled aplomb, but he’d taken a bullet for his troubles and Kit had a hunch that there was a lot about the experience that he hadn’t shared with them.

Kit glanced down at his laptop. His own career had taken off recently, too. For the past several months, he’d been juggling two jobs—his P.I. business, which paid the bills, and his new job as a published author. He’d signed a contract for two mystery novels just over a year ago. The first, which featured a Hitchcock-type hero with amnesia, had hit the bookshelves in the spring. The proposal and chapters for his second book were due in three weeks.

Nothing was going to keep him from achieving his goal. Not the images of his brothers arriving ahead of him at the cabin, not the soulful, pleading looks that Ari was giving him, not even the Fates, who’d thrown one obstacle after another in his path today.

First, there’d been a case that had dragged on late into the afternoon. He’d been typing up his report when a violent little summer storm had rolled through and driven his already ailing air conditioner into cardiac arrest. He’d jimmied open the window in the hopes that the storm had cooled the air, but it hadn’t. Now, thanks to the heat wave that had been holding San Francisco in a tight fist for the past five days, the temperature in his office resembled a steam bath.

To top it off, he couldn’t get the window to shut, so not only did he have to put up with the distracting sounds of traffic, but he was also being plagued by an occasional rogue breeze gusting in and scattering his once carefully stacked notes hither and yon.