Luke had fallen on hard times, and the stress had obviously taken its toll on his body. He was a little north of six feet, and she’d seen him shirtless in movies. He had a good body for Hollywood. Not ripped, but lean and strong, like a young Eastwood or McQueen. Kitty expected to feel firm slabs of muscle beneath his T-shirt, and thought she’d have to put her own muscle into hauling him from the car and into the clean air outside the garage. But this wasn’t the case. Luke was thin—too thin—and Kitty moved him without difficulty. She dragged him alongside the car, avoiding the broken glass, and out through the main door.

“Urrggh,” he groaned, opening his eyes wide, then screwing them closed again.

Kitty lowered Luke gently and rolled him into the recovery position. She was about to slide her phone from her pocket and call for an ambulance when he sprang to his knees, crawled a short distance, and collapsed against one of the boxes he’d thrown from his garage. He wheezed something, flapping one hand at her, then whooped and hacked from the depths of his lungs. This was encouraging, Kitty thought. Coughing—clearing out the toxins—was a positive sign. She held off calling the ambulance. He likely didn’t have insurance anyway.

Luke retched like he was going to puke, but produced only a sticky, grayish thread of bile. It hung from his lower lip, swinging in the breeze.

“Gaaagh,” he said. He spat between his hands, then wiped his mouth and looked at Kitty through whirling eyes. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Kitty Rae,” she replied, and pointed. “I live across the street.”

The Viking had called Los Angeles the City of Broken Dreams. A reasonable moniker, all things considered. But Kitty reflected on the past ten hours and some of the people she’d interacted with: Salvador “Angelo” Gallo (creepy meth-head), Kris “Sly Boy” Streeter (full of shit), the Mustang’s silent driver (would eat his young), Johan Fly himself (arrogant, dangerous). And now there was this guy, Luke Kingsley, in his dirty boxers and scruffy heavy metal T-shirt. Yeah, sure, Los Angeles was the City of Broken Dreams for some, the City of Angels for others, but Kitty thought a more accurate, encompassing epithet was the City of Fucked-Up Men.

“Right . . . right.” Luke nodded, spluttered again, then pushed himself to a sitting position. He looked at Kitty with a trembling smile. “How’re you doing, Kitty? I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Kitty interjected. She planted her hands on her hips and curled her lip with disdain. “You’re the son of a bitch who killed his wife.”

3
Soul Man

“Shit, dog. What were you thinking?”