Except that DJ wouldn’t get the chance, because now Ephraim had ammunition. He knew where Mercy Callahan was and he was going to bring her back.

Dead or alive. Either would serve his purpose.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 10:15 A.M.

The knocking on Rafe’s door woke him from what had been a very comfortable sleep. He blinked hard to try to make sense of where he was and . . .

Oh. He breathed deeply, taking in the lingering clean scent of Mercy’s shampoo. She slept up against him, her head on his shoulder. His laptop had slid off her lap to the sofa and his notebook was on the floor. They’d drifted off together while searching the Internet for more furniture with Amos’s olive tree and more dolls and quilts with their hidden Eden symbols.

The knocking resumed, a little louder this time, and Rafe carefully pulled away from Mercy, gently easing her down to the soft arm of the sofa. Grabbing his cane, he made it to the door, just as the knocking started again. He yanked the door open, hoping the noise hadn’t woken Mercy. She desperately needed to sleep.

It took him a second to reconcile the sight of the Korean American woman on his doorstep, her fist still raised. “Rhee?” he whispered.

His Homicide partner for the past two years gave him an incredulous look. “It hasn’t been that long since we saw each other, Sokolov. You okay?”

“Yes, sorry. I was . . .” He shook his head and stepped from the apartment, forcing her to back up a few feet. He pulled the door shut. “I was asleep. Still a few cobwebs up there.”

Eyeing him curiously, she held up a coffee cup and the aroma had him nearly moaning. The logo on the cup told him it was from the shop the two of them stopped at every time they had a chance. A block from SacPD, it was a favorite hangout for a lot of the cops.

“I came bearing gifts,” she said. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, uncaring that it was still a little too hot and scalded his tongue. “Mercy’s here. She’s asleep.”

Erin Rhee was a very smart woman, her entire demeanor sharp and sometimes cutting. She rarely missed a thing, and this morning was no different. “Asleep. With you?”

“Kind of. We’d been . . . talking.” He’d almost said searching, but there was no way he was letting Erin know about his completely off-the-record and under-the-radar investigation. He was on disability leave and wasn’t supposed to be working on anything. “We had a long evening and ended up falling asleep on the sofa.”

“Okay.” She lifted her brows. “By long evening, you mean stopping an assault in progress, getting yourself on the news, and getting a very offensive video pulled down from a trashy website?”

He stared down at her. She was barely five-two, although she swore she was five-four in her boots. Either way, he towered over her, but Erin was not a woman to be intimidated. “You’re remarkably well-informed.”