Mendez handed her the glasses, and they settled in to wait. He studied her as she stared intently through the binoculars. She was a funny little puzzle. He’d certainly never met another woman like her. He could feel the intensity of her energy just sitting there. She was like a bird dog on point, muscles taut, her focus on her prey. He had a feeling she probably did everything like that—full-on, balls-out—if she’d had balls. He didn’t know that many guys with that kind of intensity.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She didn’t break her concentration. “Shoot.”

“How’d you get to be a cop?”

“I went to the academy, same as you.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean . . . you’re a woman—”

“Glad you noticed.”

“I know it can’t be easy,” he said, “working your way up the ranks—”

“Oh, well,” she said, “I slept with all my bosses.”

She shot him a look then, unable to resist seeing his reaction, and laughed out loud at the look on his face.

“Jesus, you’re serious,” she said. “It was a joke.” She turned back to the binoculars and her vigil, then added, “I only slept with a couple of them.”

“I am serious,” Mendez said, ignoring her last remark. “You picked a tough row for a woman to hoe. Why?”

“Beats digging ditches.”

“So does being a nurse or a teacher,” he said.

She sighed in resignation at his unwillingness to let her get by with glib answers. She turned and looked at him again, and Mendez could sense her weighing very carefully what she might say.

Finally she tilted her head to one side and gave a little shrug. “I like solving puzzles. I like helping people. I read a lot of Nancy Drew as a kid.”

Stock answers. She watched him from the corner of her eye to see if he would accept them. He decided he would—for now. She didn’t want to let him in. He imagined she didn’t let anybody through that gate easily—or maybe at all. But eventually he would try again. Danni Tanner would be his next mystery to solve—after Roland Ballencoa.

He was angry. He was agitated. He was excited. He had decided to stick to his routine because it calmed him somewhat. He went to the diner and sat in his usual booth, and ordered his eggs and toast and coffee. He didn’t eat meat, but he ate eggs for the protein. His usual waitress, Ellen Norman, twenty-four, with the curly strawberry blond hair and receding chin, waited on him. The routine helped, but not entirely.