“Oh, wah, wah, waah.” I take another cool, calming sip and search for another channel with my remote. Of course I realize that the dead twins are news, but they’re old news. Especially those Caldwell girls. They’ve been dead for over a decade…ancient history. And the little prick on the screen bugs the hell out of me. The nerve—grabbing my headlines. And that crack about the police department. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I stare at the television and take a swallow.

Let’s get to the good stuff.

Where in the hell is the reporter who should be covering the car fire on the streets of Marina del Rey?

That’s the only story worth my time.

CHAPTER 33

“We need to find Fernando,” Bentz said as Hayes drove back to the Center to drop off Martinez before taking Bentz to pick up his rental car. “I put in a call to him, but he didn’t pick up.”

“I thought I told you to back off.” Hayes was irritated. “This is my case.”

“And my wife.” Bentz was equally upset, worried sick.

“I know.” Hayes sighed, loosening the tie at his neck. “We’ll put a tail on Yolanda as well as watch the house for Fernando.”

“I’ll check with his job and school,” Martinez said. “We’ll try to track what he did today,” she was saying when Hayes’s phone rang again and he took the call.

In the backseat, Bentz was quietly going out of his mind, trying to piece together the disjointed case. Though it had started out with him being lured to Los Angeles in search of his first wife, it now involved Olivia, he was certain of it. And now finding her was his number one priority. But with no leads to go on he figured the best way he could find her was through working this case, tracking down the person who obviously had a vendetta against him.

If he could pull his emotions out of it and study what was happening with a cool, cop’s eye rather than his own passionate ardor, he could see that he was at the center of the case in the eye of a murderous hurricane. The person behind it all, the mastermind of the operation, was targeting Bentz.

From the ongoing investigations, the LAPD could find no reason for either Lorraine Newell or Shana McIntyre to be murdered individually; the link was Bentz. Though it was too early for the police to connect Fortuna Esperanzo, Bentz knew the deal. She wasn’t left in the ocean in clothes identical to those that “Jennifer” had been wearing because she’d decided to go swimming. No, she’d been murdered, and the killer wanted to make certain that Bentz knew Fortuna had been a target, linked to this mess with Jennifer.