The woman smiled at her. Older than Mother, with silver hair, huge pearl earrings, classy makeup, a tweed suit, some sort of silk scarf, purple, looked expensive, draped over her shoulders in that casual way that came easy to the classy ones.

What Mother pretended to be.

“Ma’am, I really appreciate this,” said Kat, suddenly wanting this woman to be her mother.

“Get in, dear,” said the woman. “We’ll find you some petrol.”

Petrol — a Brit.

A frickin’ aristocrat in a frickin’ Bentley.

Kat got in, beaming. What had started off as a shitty night was going to end up a cool story.

As the Bentley glided away, Kat thanked the woman again.

The woman nodded and switched on the stereo. Something classical — God what a sound system, it was like being in a concert hall.

“If there’s any way I can repay you…”

“That won’t be necessary, dear.”

Big-framed woman, sturdy bejeweled hands.

Kat said, “Your car’s incredible.”

The woman smiled and turned up the volume.

Kat sat back and closed her eyes. Thought of Rianna and Bethie with the fake-o shirts.

Telling this story was going to be delicious.

The Bentley cruised silently up the Pass. Cushy seats, alcohol, weed, and the adrenaline drop plunged Kat into sudden, nearly comatose sleep.

She was snoring loudly when the car made a turn, climbed smoothly into the hills.

Headed for a dark, cold place.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER
2

I was having lunch with Milo at the Surf Line Café in Malibu when the call came in.

No reason for either of us to be here other than gorgeous weather. The restaurant’s a clapboard bungalow with wall-sized windows and a wide plank deck, perched high on the west side of PCH, just south of Kanan Dume Road. At half a mile from the ocean with no view of the water, it was misnamed. But the food’s fantastic and even at that distance you can smell the salt.

It was one p.m. and we were out on the deck eating barbecued yellowtail and drinking beer. Milo was back from a week in Honolulu, where he’d managed to preserve a skim-milk pallor. Bad light brings out the worst of his complexion — the lumps, the acne pits, the scowl lines, gravity tugging at mastiff jowls. Today’s light was glorious but the best it could do was obscure the rough spots.

Despite that and the ugliest aloha shirt I’d ever seen, he looked good. None of the twitches and split-second winces that betray his attempt to hide the pain in his shoulder.

The shirt was a riot of puce elephants, aqua camels, and ocher monkeys on a sea of olive-green rayon that clung to his kettledrum torso.

The Hawaiian trip had followed a twenty-nine-day stay in the hospital: recuperating from a dozen shotgun pellets embedded in his left arm and shoulder.