“You’re not coming in my house,” she said, even as she stepped back from the gate and pressed the button to open it manually. “My daughter is asleep upstairs.”

He took a seat on the porch. Lauren went back inside and fixed two drinks without allowing herself to think about what she was doing. Her brain ached from thinking. Her soul ached from the constant self-flagellation. She wanted the numbness the alcohol would bring.

She didn’t ask Greg Hewitt if he liked vodka. She didn’t care. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all. She went back out onto the porch, handed him his glass, and took a seat.

She remembered when she and Sissy had bought the bent willow porch furniture at a flea market in Los Olivos. They had been tickled to death to find it—two settees, two high-backed chairs, an assortment of side tables and footstools. Lauren had had pillows and cushions made from faded old quilts and coverlets.

“Is he pressing charges?” Hewitt asked.

Lauren shrugged. “I doubt the district attorney will want the trouble. The court of public opinion holds more sway on political careers than the opinion of Roland Ballencoa.

“He’ll sue me for the camera and the lens, and loss of income, no doubt,” she said. “So I can have the pleasure of paying to put him back in business as a pervert.”

“That sucks, but it beats jail.”

“You said you followed him to the sports complex. What else has he been doing today?”

“Nothing much. I went by his house as he was leaving. He made a couple of stops—the gas station, the drugstore, one of those mailbox places—then went to the sports center.”

She wondered if he’d bothered to check his mail at his house. Maybe not if he used a rented mailbox. Now that she thought of it, it seemed odd no one at the sheriff’s office had mentioned the note she had put back in his mailbox that morning. Further evidence that she was stalking him, he would say. True enough, she thought.

How will you like the tables turned on you, asshole?

“Don’t you have a paying job?” she asked.

“I’m between divorce cases.”

“Nothing better to do. Might as well check on the crazy stalker woman.”

“Something like that,” he said, sipping his drink.

Lauren tipped her head back and sighed as the alcohol began to loosen the knots in her muscles.

Greg Hewitt reached over, cupped her chin in his hand, and turned her face to look at the abrasion on her cheek in the dim porch light. “You should probably do something about that.”

His concern struck her with bitter humor. “That’s the least of my problems.”

“You shouldn’t have come here, Lauren,” he said. “Nothing good will come from it.”