“Shit, man, I’m glad to have you ride along, but it’s my jurisdiction. My case. You’re right. My rules.” He stared long and hard at Bentz. “Now, are you going to ride with me or not?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Bentz said sarcastically.

He tried like hell to stay calm, not go to the worst case scenario, but he was worried as he climbed into the backseat of the 4Runner, with Hayes driving and Martinez riding shotgun.

He checked again: No phone call. No text. Nothing. He tried to make sense of the events of the afternoon and failed. “Any prints or evidence found in the silver Chevy?” he asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Martinez admitted.

How the hell had Fortuna Esperanzo ended up in the Pacific Ocean, so close to Devil’s Caldron? In his mind’s eye he witnessed Jennifer jump. And then again. And again. Leaping from the railing, soaring into the air, vanishing from view. How was that possible?

He tried to imagine scenarios that might solve that mystery, if only to distract himself from the one question that thrummed through his body with every beat of his heart.

Where the hell was Olivia?

Exhausted, Olivia could barely move.

And she was scared to death as she lay in a dark, smelly enclosure, a cage deep inside a boat of some kind.

This madwoman Petrocelli, or whatever her name was, intended to kill her. Because she was married to Rick. That’s why the other women were dead; because they’d known her husband.

No. That wasn’t quite right. All of the dead women had known Jennifer, a woman Olivia had never met.

And they were killed. Murdered. Just like you will be if you don’t find a way out of this.

Her limbs were useless, her head spinning. Though she was awake, her eyes wide open, her body still wouldn’t do what she wanted. It was as if her brain were completely disengaged from her muscles, her nerve synapses misfiring.

Oh, God, how had she been so stupid to have trusted the woman? Why hadn’t she checked her ID more carefully? Surely her captor, this lunatic, wasn’t a real police officer with LAPD.

How do you know that? Cops can go crazy, and Petrocelli might just be the psycho.

It didn’t matter. Whoever her abductor was, she was deadly.

Earlier, as she’d been yanked from the car and slipped into the sleeping bag, Olivia had gotten a glimpse of a dark street and looming buildings in an area that smelled of the sea. She had heard her attacker grunting and puffing with exertion as she had lifted Olivia into what seemed to be a cart of some kind. A cart with at least one creaky wheel.