Twilight

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

The brilliant late afternoon sun could only do so much. The orange blaze shimmered on the Gulf of Mexico like a scattering of gemstones. It warmed the wide stretch of sandy beach. But it couldn’t touch the cold place deep inside Dana Miller’s heart.

She had never felt so totally empty, so thoroughly alone. Even with her sons whooping and hollering and splashing a few feet away at the water’s edge, she was gut-deep lonely. Even knowing that her parents were there for her—that they shared her anguish and understood her pain—couldn’t erase the horrible sense that she was facing a bleak and empty future.

Her husband, her sweet, gentle, kind husband, was dead. Murdered by a person, or persons, unknown, according to the cryptic police report that she read over and over, alone in her room at night, trying to make sense of it, trying to find acceptance of the cold, hard truth.

It had been over a month since that terrible January night, and there were still no answers—not for her, not for the Chicago police, who seemed to dread her daily calls almost as much as she hated making them. But she couldn’t stop. She desperately needed answers, and no one had them. Until she did, there could be no tears, no healing.

“Put it out of your head,” her mother had pleaded more than once. “You may never know why it happened. What does it really matter, anyway? Knowing won’t bring Ken back. The boys need you. You have to move on for their sake.”

Dana wished she could do as her mother asked. The boys did need her. If only she had something left to give.

Every night she prayed for some sort of peace, some small measure of the kind of serenity she had always felt in Ken’s arms. He had brought so much into her life. As a private investigator, she had seen a lot of ugliness. She had seen people at their worst, but Ken had changed that. He had shown her how to find the goodness in everyone. He had taught her about joy and laughter and the kind of oneness with God that few mortals ever felt. Ken had felt it, though, and he had known how to communicate it to others—even a doubter such as she had been before they’d met.

Her lips curved into a sad half smile as she remembered how he had loved the church, the rituals and the hymns and the prayers. He had loved ministering to his congregation, loved sharing his strength and his beliefs with those whose faith had been tested by tragedy. Rich or poor, saint or sinner, Ken had been there for them, generous with his time and with his unconditional love.

And now that he was gone, Dana had no one to bolster her shattered faith as her husband would have done. From the moment the police had come to her door, from the moment they had tersely described Ken’s senseless slaying in the middle of Chicago gang turf, her faith had been destroyed. A benevolent God could not have allowed that to happen, not to Ken, not to one of His most ardent believers.

And since Ken was very much dead, Dana bitterly accepted the fact that God had abandoned him and her and their three precious boys. If there was some sort of divine purpose behind such an act of madness, she couldn’t discern it. She doubted she ever would.

She shivered as the sun ducked behind a cloud and the sensation of emptiness returned. Where once there had been hope and happiness, now there was only this huge, gaping wound where her soul had been.

Time promised to heal eventually, but Dana had never been a patient woman. She’d always been decisive and quick and instinctively curious. She’d had daring to spare. Those traits had made her one of the best private investigators in the Midwest, but she’d given it all up when her first son was born. The same danger that brought a satisfying rush of adrenaline also came with a warning: do not mix with parenting.

She had made the sacrifice willingly and never looked back. Ken and the boys—first Bobby, then Kevin and finally Jonathan—had fulfilled her in a way she’d never imagined possible. The challenges had been vastly different, but just as rewarding. After a surprisingly brief period of adjustment, she had been thoroughly content with her decision, as fiercely protective of their safety as she had once been lax with her own.

Until now. Now those old urges to pursue truth taunted her late at night, when the loneliness was at its worst. She needed answers, and the police weren’t getting them. She had the same investigative skills they had, but more important, she had the passion for this particular hunt. She wouldn’t relegate it to some cold case file drawer, content to let it remain unsolved until, years from now, some street thug confessed or some witness uttered a tip from his deathbed.

With the boys already settled in a new school for the rest of the year to give them time away from Chicago to heal, with her plans half made to move to Florida permanently, as her parents wanted, there was only one thing keeping her from making the decision final. She had unfinished business back home.

More and more, she saw going back to Chicago, taking charge of her life and the search for the killer, as the only way she would ever be at peace again. Staying in Florida now without knowing was as good as quitting, and she had never been a quitter.

She dreaded telling her parents, though. They were already worried sick about her. She was too quiet, too lifeless, even for a woman in mourning. She’d caught the troubled glances, the whispered exchanges, the helpless sighs. They would be terrified that in her state of mind she would take dangerous, unnecessary risks. She doubted she could make her reassurances convincing enough to soothe their fears.

Yet she knew, if she asked, that they would keep the boys with them, give them a sense of stability that she couldn’t with her heart in turmoil. They would protect them and love them while she went home to do the only thing she could. The only thing.

She would find the cold-blooded, violent person who had ripped her heart and her life to shreds. She would find answers for the unceasing questions asked by her sons, answers they all needed, if they were ever to move on.

And though the police claimed to have followed up on, then dismissed, her repeated suggestions, she thought she knew exactly where to start.

1

The blasted sofa must have belonged to the Marquis de Sade in another life, Rick Sanchez thought as he shifted his body in a futile attempt to find a more comfortable position. Between the oddly solidified lumps and protruding springs, he was lucky he hadn’t gouged out a vital organ. He was very careful to avoid lying on his stomach.

This was the fourth night he’d gone through this same torture, and he was beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time. Whoever had been breaking into the Yo, Amigo headquarters either knew he’d moved in to guard the place or had simply decided that there was more fertile turf for theft elsewhere.

Lord knew, that was true enough, he thought as he cautiously rearranged his body once more on the worn-out, too-short sofa. The program he’d founded two years earlier was perpetually short of funds and equipment. The sole, ancient computer he’d hoodwinked a friend into donating had been an early victim of daring neighborhood thieves. Now about the only things of value lying around were the TV and DVD player in the lounge. They were bolted down, though not so securely that anyone intent on nabbing them couldn’t manage it with a little time and diligence.

They were also in pathetic condition, but at least they’d been obtained legally, unlike the collection of state-of-the-art electronic equipment a few of the boys had offered him the week before. He’d really hated turning them down, but Yo, Amigo was all about taking a moral stance and teaching values. Accepting stolen property would pretty much defeat the very message he was trying to send out.

Exhausted but wide awake, he closed his eyes and tried counting confiscated weapons instead of sheep. He’d turned over a dozen to the police two days earlier, another seven the week before. It was a drop in the bucket, but each gun or knife he managed to get out of gang hands and off the streets was a small victory.

Rather than putting him to sleep, though, the mental game left him more alert than ever. Images of boys killing boys, of babies being shot by accident in a violent turf war crowded into his head. He wondered despondently if the program he’d founded would ever be more than a tiny, ineffective bandage on the huge problem.

Such thoughts led inevitably to memories of Ken Miller, the decent, caring man who had been his friend and, some said, had lost his life because of it. Rick knew he would never have a moment’s peace again if he allowed himself to share that conviction. His conscience, which already carried a heavy enough burden of guilt from the sins of his youth, would destroy him, if even indirect responsibility for Ken’s death were added to the list.

He shifted positions and felt the sharp jab of a metal spring in the middle of his back. He muttered a harsh expletive under his breath and sat up.

Just as he did, he thought he heard a faint whisper of sound, an almost imperceptible scratching from the back of the old brick firetrap that had been condemned until he took it over and began restoring it room by room with the help of the boys in his program. He went perfectly still and listened intently.

The second subtle scrape of metal against metal had him on his feet in an instant. He grabbed the baseball bat he’d kept by the door and eased from the office.

Slipping quietly through the shadowy rooms toward the increasingly persistent sound, he wished for a moment that he hadn’t sworn off guns. He also wished the budget had been large enough to pay for a cell phone, rather than the lone, ancient phone that suddenly seemed very far away on his desk. He might as well have wished for a fleet of shiny new vans to transport the teens to the job assignments that were a part of the program. All were out of reach on the shoestring Yo, Amigo budget.

Just as he closed in on the back door, he heard the heavy-duty lock give. Whoever had conquered it was skilled with lock-picking tools, he concluded with grudging admiration. It hardly narrowed the field, since most of the kids he knew had been breaking and entering since they could reach a door handle or heave a rock through a window. Most, however, didn’t have the finesse or patience to work at a lock with the tedious determination that this person had.

The heavy steel door inched open silently on its well-oiled hinges. Pressed against a wall, Rick waited in the shadows. There was no point in risking his neck until he knew exactly what he was up against. One thief. Two. Or a whole gang, in which case his goose was cooked and he could kiss the TV and DVD player goodbye.