“If you knew there was a rattlesnake loose in your house but you didn’t know what room it was in, you’d be in a constant state of anxiety,” she said. “If you knew it was in the living room under the sofa, you’d close the door to the living room and go snake hunting. Maybe she’s decided it’s time to go snake hunting.”

Mendez thought of the Walther PPK Lauren had told him about, and the photograph of her leaving the shooting range. If Ballencoa had taken the photo, he knew she had a gun. The fact that he had taken the photo and left it on her windshield told Mendez this was well and truly a game to him.

How had Tanner described him? He was the kid in school who would turn you in to the principal for a stick of gum, then spend his free time pulling the wings off flies.

He would torment Lauren Lawton by photographing her daughter, then turn around and try to get her in trouble with the SO for picking on him.

“Now what?” Hicks asked.

Mendez said nothing.

“What’s changed?” Tanner asked. “Ballencoa is still the bad guy here. He’s the pervert, the predator. He’s probably a murderer. Christ knows none of us have stopped him doing anything. Who could blame Lauren for wanting to put a bullet between his eyes?”

“The State of California,” Mendez pointed out. “She can’t break the law just because we’ve done a bad job enforcing it.”

“Then we’d better find a way to get this dirtbag off the street,” Tanner said, turning back to the table and the files they had spread out. “Before Lauren Lawton does it for us.”

Chapter 46

46

Lauren had no idea what kind of schedule he kept. She wanted to imagine that he lived like a vampire—asleep in the day, prowling by night. But the first time she had come to this house had been in the gray of predawn, and Ballencoa had come out of the house and driven away like a normal human being going off to a normal job.

To suit her purposes, she had to hope he was out of the house now, off stalking some poor, unsuspecting young woman. And yet there was a place in her mind where she imagined him home, imagined him vulnerable, imagined herself holding the gun to his head as she demanded answers. She imagined the sweat beading on his brow and running in rivulets down the sides of his thin, bony face as the steel of the barrel kissed his temple again and again in a gentle reminder. I will kill you.

The idea of having that kind of control over him was almost as intoxicating as the vodka she had consumed for the courage to do this.