The dog was running back and forth, a bundle of energy. “I get it, man,” Montoya told the dog, tossing a yellow tennis ball into the yard as he waited for Abby’s voice mail to kick in. Hershey took off at a dead run and found the ball in the darkness while Montoya left his wife a message. The big lab then galloped back and dropped the ball at Montoya’s feet. His tail wagged until Montoya snatched the ball up and tossed it so the dog could pounce on it again. Another throw and an equally quick retrieval, again and again. They played the game for nearly half an hour, the dog a bundle of energy, Montoya thinking about his ex-partner and Bentz’s emotional suicide mission to L.A.

What was the guy doing? Bentz’s first wife Jennifer had been no angel. And she was dead and buried. Fortunately. The way Montoya understood it, she’d been a bitch of a thing when she’d been alive. Bentz had divorced her, hadn’t he? Montoya had never met Jennifer but he’d heard from Bentz himself that she’d cheated on him, over and over again, even with Bentz’s damned half brother. A priest, no less.

“Bitch,” he said, throwing the ball into the air and watching the dog take off, nearly flying.

Ironically, Olivia had been attracted to that same man once, Father James McLaren, before she’d married Bentz. But she’d come to her senses and they’d been happy together.

Until recently.

Ever since Bentz had awakened from the damned coma, the one his daughter had insisted would take his life, he’d been a changed man. Remote. Almost haunted.

Montoya had chalked it up to inactivity; not being able to work, not having the strength to fight or walk on his own. Now Montoya wasn’t so certain. Maybe when a guy brushes up with death that closely, he comes back to life with a new, dark attitude. Because that was how it was. Rick Bentz had not returned to consciousness with a newfound appreciation for life, a revitalized joie de vivre. Nu-uh. None of that getting called to the light shit. No born-again Christian was Bentz.

Instead he’d awakened with an urgency to find his dead ex-wife, a bitch if there ever had been one.

Bentz was a good man who’d definitely gone around the bend.

It was all a flippin’ mess.

In Montoya’s opinion, Jennifer Bentz should bloody well stay dead.