Cruz snorted and wiped his upper lip and mustache with a napkin. “So we were dating. She was still in high school and I’d just graduated. You were already at the junior college.”

“That much I remember.”

“I’d signed up for the air force, but I had a couple of weeks before I went in, so I was basically hanging out, doing nothing, driving the folks crazy. Trying to stay out of trouble.”

“And failing.”

“Yeah, well . . . anyway, we were out one night, Lucia and me. I was driving—maybe too fast.”

“Maybe?”

“Hell, I was, what, eighteen? I was probably thinking about how I could get into Lucia’s pants, not paying as much attention as I should have, and a damned deer leaped over the fence and right into the middle of the road. It froze there, in the fog. Shit, I tried to avoid it. Yanked on the wheel, and the front tire hit gravel.”

Montoya remembered this part of the story. When Cruz had swerved to avoid hitting the doe, the car had skidded off the road, spinning through the wire fence and into a cypress tree, the passenger side taking the hit. The side door had been crumpled, window shattering.

“God, it was horrible.” Cruz’s dark eyes softened. “She was screaming and screaming and then . . . nothing.”

She’d hit her head, Montoya remembered. Cruz had suffered a broken wrist that delayed his entry to the air force, along with a few cuts from the glass of the shattered windshield. A tiny scar near his left eye was evidence of the crash.

Lucia hadn’t been so lucky, as a branch of the cypress had slammed into the side of her head. Montoya couldn’t remember many more details, just that she had been in a coma but had survived.

“You went to the hospital with her, right?”

“Yeah, until her old man barred me from seeing her. He convinced the hospital staff that I should be persona non grata and that he’d sue the hospital if I was allowed near her.” Cruz’s lips tightened. “Phillip Costa was fuckin’ nuts—you know that, right? Came at me with a damned shotgun.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “Christ, man, it was a mess. I tried to see her before I went into the service. I’d heard from a friend that she’d come out of the coma. But she disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“Thought you were supposed to be a hotshot investigator.”