When Nasser had gone inside, Vince walked down into the yard and wandered through the maze of collections, just taking it all in. The privacy wall ran around the entire property, but a gate led out the side yard. The path going to it was well worn. This was probably the way Zahn had gone every morning to Marissa’s house.

Vince let himself out and followed the trail up a hill where it connected to a fire road. Fire roads were cut all through the California hills as access for firefighting equipment when brush fires ran rampant in the summer and fall. He followed the road up to the crest of a bigger hill.

The country that rolled out below him was gorgeous: the golden hills rising and falling as far as the eye could see, liberally dotted with the dark green canopies of oak trees. He had lived in Virginia for many years, where the fields were lush and green and tough to beat for the title of beautiful, but this landscape had its own appeal.

To the south he could see Marissa Fordham’s place, looking like an Andrew Wyeth painting—white and gray against the wheat color of the land surrounding it. A hundred yards to the west he could see what must have been a ranch at some time prior to wreck and ruin. The place looked like it had burned. Only charred matchsticks were standing here and there where buildings had once been. A desolate, lonely place.

After a while he turned and went back down the hill to Zahn’s, where he locked the side gate, then manually tripped the entrance gate and let himself out.

Drained to the bone, he got in his car and drove back to town, never knowing that he had been just out of shouting distance of Gina Kemmer.

Chapter 46

46

The scream that tore up out of Gina was primal. The rat was unimpressed. It moved toward her, fearless, nose twitching, eyes beady and intent.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!”

With her right hand, Gina groped for something, anything, grabbing hold of a milk carton. She flung it at the rat, missing it, but getting her point across.

The rat scurried away and disappeared down into the layers of garbage.

Who knew how many years people had been throwing trash down this hole? Who knew what was living in it? Bugs. Worms. Mice. Rats. In Southern California, where there were rats and mice, there were snakes—rattlesnakes.

The idea that snakes might be slithering beneath her body nearly made her vomit again. Her fear was like a fist in her throat. What was she going to do?

With every shallow breath pain burned through her shoulder where she had been shot. Every time she tried to move she could feel her right foot and the lower part of her ankle pull away from the end of her shinbone. The pain was excruciating.