Bentz squeezed the steering wheel, trying to reaffirm the line between reality and delusion.

Had he seen Jennifer?

Was that crazy woman who dived into the ocean really still alive and taunting him, or had her vision been a figment of his tired but overactive imagination? He didn’t have an answer as he drove directly to Encino. All he knew for certain was that his last hope, that of locating Olivia through her cell phone’s G.P.S., had been destroyed.

Crushed.

He’d staked so much on the possibility of being able to locate her through her cell phone.

But he’d been wrong.

Again.

So here he was back in Encino, chasing another ancillary lead. He was tired to his bones, lack of sleep and worry eating at his guts, but he couldn’t stop. Not until he found Olivia.

The junior college that Yolanda Salazar and her brother Fernando Valdez attended was only five miles from their house in Encino. And the Blue Burro where Fernando worked stood smack-dab in the middle between home and school. It wasn’t too much of a leap to think that Fernando could walk, bike, or run to the JC, work, and home. He could also take the bus that stopped four blocks from the Salazar home, passed directly by the restaurant, and stopped at the main entrance to the college. Or, if everyone at the Salazar house was lying or hiding information, he could have easily borrowed one of the other vehicles or caught a ride with Sebastian or Yolanda.

The question was, as it had been from the moment Bentz had awakened from the coma at the hospital: who was the woman he’d seen driving Fernando’s car? Today, come hell or high water, he meant to find out. He figured he didn’t have a whole lot to lose. He was already persona non grata at the LAPD, and back in New Orleans, his job was still in question.

Besides, he didn’t give a flying fig about either; all that mattered was his wife’s safety.

He parked in the visitor lot, found the registrar’s office, and by flashing his badge and wearing his dead-serious cop face, convinced a frightened-looking girl of about twenty to give up Fernando and Yolanda’s class schedules.

With the help of the free campus maps on the counter, he was able to determine where and when both of Mario Valdez’s siblings were scheduled to be during the day. As luck would have it, he had missed the early class in Fernando’s schedule but the kid was supposed to be in Sydney Hall for an evening lecture.

Good.

Bentz planned to return before that class started.

He couldn’t wait to have a chat with the kid.

I don’t have a lot of time. It’s broad daylight, the damned fog is lifting, but I have to take the risk.