Cover

PROLOGUE

IT TOOK ABOUT fifty phone calls, but the family finally decided on a place to eat dinner before Decker and Rina took off for Israel from Kennedy. Decker looked around the table at their truly blended family: Rina’s two grown sons, Jacob and Sammy; his adult daughter, Cindy; their baby daughter, Hannah, who now had a baby of her own; and their foster son, Gabe. There were also three spouses, two fiancées, and five grandchildren. He and Rina had done well. Even if he died tomorrow, Decker would go out a winner.

As usual, the conversation turned lively, then loud. Adults shouting, children interrupting, along with the usual spillages and meltdowns. Right before the entrées arrived, the server came over with two big bottles of rosé champagne and flutes.

“Who ordered this?” Rina asked. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Group effort.” Jacob stood up and gently tinkled the glass with a fork. “Now that we’re all here, I propose a toast to the happy couple. May they find peace and solitude on this trip to the Holy Land, and may their construction plans go easily. L’chaim.”

“L’chaim,” everyone echoed.

“One more thing.” Jacob held out two envelopes to his stepfather. “For you two. A small gift for all your long sufferings with the clan.”

“This better not be money,” Rina said.

“It’s not money.” Cindy smiled. “Open it.”

Decker complied and pulled out two business-class tickets to Israel, then showed them to Rina.

Rina said, “What did you guys do?”

“Go in peace and go in style,” Sammy said.

“This must have cost a fortune.”

“Not so bad between all of us. We just upgraded your original tickets.”

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get seats together for the outbound at this late date,” Hannah said, “but you’re together for the return flight.”

“Wow, thank you, children. It makes the trip even more exciting.” Decker held up his champagne flute. “A toast to all of you.”

Just then Gabe’s phone rang. He looked at the screen. The number was blocked. No doubt it was his father. Chris often used burner phones, although he had a regular phone with both burner and hush features. But that was just Chris. Nothing with him was ever consistent.

“L’chaim,” Gabe said. “I’ve got to take this.” He stood up and walked out of the restaurant. The street noise wasn’t much quieter, but at least his ears weren’t ringing from little kids screaming. “Hey.”

Breathing on the other end. Gabe almost hung up, except it wasn’t perverted breathing. It was labored. “Hello?”

“You’ve gotta … get me.”

A woman struggling to talk. Confusion and then the lightbulb. Gabe’s heart started racing. “Mom?” No response. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes.” She was crying. “They took Sanjay … Juleen … They’re gone. I’m … dying.”

“Mom, where are you?”

“L.A.”

“Where in Los Angeles?”

“Valley.”

“Mom, call 911.”

“No!”

“You have to—”

“No!”

“You have to call the police, Mom.”

“They’ll arrest me.” A long pause. “You need to come get me.”

“Mom, I’m three thousand miles away. If you’re hurt, you need to go to a hospital. Call 911.” There was no response. “Mom, are you still there?” She didn’t answer, but Gabe could hear her breathing. “Mom, I love you. Please call for help!”

“Hold on … Oh God, I think that’s Juleen!”

“Mom?” But she had hung up. With shaking hands, he dialed her number, but it went straight to voice mail. “Why do you do this to me!”

He called again. And again. And again and again and again.

He texted her: CALL ME!

Decker had stepped outside, saw his foster son pacing. “Everything okay?”

“No,” Gabe told him. “My mother just called me. From what I could gather, someone kidnapped my brother and maybe my sister. My mom’s hurt.”

“Where is she?”

“Los Angeles. The Valley, I think.”

“Her old stomping ground. My old stomping ground. What’s her number? I’ll see if I can’t get someone to send a uniform to look for her.”

“She doesn’t want the police involved, Peter. Besides, she called on a blocked number. My calls go straight to voice mail.” Gabe paused. “She took her kids out of India. I suspect she had a court order not to leave the country with them. You know she’s divorcing her husband. There’s probably a custody dispute.”

“She’s a fugitive?”

“Possibly.”

“Maybe her husband kidnapped them back.”

“Possibly …” Gabe continued pacing. “Honestly, at this moment I’m less worried about the kids than I am about her. She sounded horrible.”

“Gabe, let me call up my old station. I still know lots of people. Maybe they can ping a location off her phone.”

“She said no police.”

“If she’s really hurt, do you think you should listen to her?”

“No, you’re right. But I don’t think that will get you anywhere, Peter. I think she turned off her phone.”

“Then I’m out of ideas,” Decker said. “You’re three thousand miles away and probably can’t get there until tomorrow … which may be too late.”

Gabe’s eyes turned moist. “I love her dearly. But my mom’s a disaster! We know her current husband owes money to bad people, so it could be something to do with that. She sure can pick them. I do think that Devek is even worse than my father.”

Decker raised his eyebrows. He held a finger up in the air. “Gabe, call your dad.”

“What?”

“Call your dad. Nevada is in the same time zone, and he has a private jet. He can probably get there in a couple of hours. Plus, he knows the Valley as well as I do. That’s where he and your mom met. And if she’s running from bad people, he can protect her better than anyone. Call your dad.”

“He’s not going to help. He’s been waiting years for her to crash and burn. I think that’s what’s kept him alive all this time. Revenge.”

“At least try.” No answer. Decker shrugged. “Do you have any better ideas?” Silence. “Do you want me to call him?”

“No, absolutely not!” Gabe shook his head. “Go back to dinner, Peter. I’m twenty-four. I can handle this.”

“No shame in asking for help.”

“I don’t need help.” Even though he did. “Please go back before everyone realizes there’s a problem.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am.”

Gabe watched his foster dad go back into the restaurant. Then, with shaking hands, he tried to punch in the numbers he knew by heart, but he kept making mistakes. Finally, he looked it up in his contact list under Dad. His heart was banging out of his chest.

A lot of times, Chris turned his phone off. Even when it was on, he didn’t bother to answer most of the time. Christopher Donatti was a very busy man. He didn’t like phone calls. He especially didn’t like phone calls from his son, who was always managing to interrupt some important business his father was doing.

His oft-repeated line: You’re losing me money. This better be good.

The phone rang, which meant the current number was still active. A moment later, he heard the line kick in.

“What!”

Thank you, God. “Dad, you’ve got to help me. Mom called. She’s in California. The Valley, I think, but I don’t know. She’s badly hurt but she won’t call 911 or go to a hospital—”

“Hold on. Let me go somewhere private.” A moment later Donatti was back on the line. “Your mother is on the West Coast?”

“Yes.”

“Where are her kids?”

“She had them, but now they’re gone. She’s in the middle of a messy divorce. She might have taken them out of India without permission.”

“Ah.” A pause. “Someone took them back.”

“I think so.” Gabe was breathing hard. “Chris, I know she wouldn’t let them go without a fight, and I think she got a bad one. She sounded in real trouble. She wants me to come and get her, but I’m in New York. Furthermore, she called me on a blocked number, so I can’t call her back. I think her phone is off.” Gabe paused, but his father didn’t talk. “I’m hoping she’ll call me back. As soon as she does, I’ll get more details. But in the meantime, you’re a lot closer to L.A. than I am. And you’re good at finding people.”

Another pause. His dad was waiting …

Gabe said, “Look, I know you parted on bad terms—”

“She had an affair, got knocked up by the motherfucker, had a bastard child while still married to me, and then dumped me unceremoniously. Yeah, I’d call that bad terms.”

“I’ve had issues with her as well. I’ve forgiven her.”

“That is certainly your prerogative.”

“She’s my mother, Chris!” Silence. “You know what it’s like to lose a mother.”

“I’m not moved. Try a different tactic.”

“You loved her once.”

There was a long pause. Gabe thought he might have hung up. But then Donatti said, “Who says I don’t love her still?”

Gabe took in a deep breath and then let it out. This was a battle that he knew he was going to win. “Will you help her out? Yes or no?”

“Yes, I’ll go.” No hesitation. “I’m entertaining about a dozen people in my outer office right now. Give me a half hour to get rid of them, gas up the jet, and get a flight plan. If she calls you, get a phone number. And give her my number.”

“As soon as I know something, I’ll call you.”

“And I’ll tell you this, Gabe. She’d better want my help. I don’t have a good track record with your mother. If I don’t hear from her by the time I get to Los Angeles, I’m turning around, and she’ll be your problem forever.”

“Agreed. Let me give you Mom’s number.”

“I have it.”

“It’s going to voice mail.”

“If she took the kids out without permission from the courts, she probably doesn’t want to be tracked. I’ll figure something out.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

“Yeah, fine. Let me get going on this.” Donatti cut the line and pocketed his cell, running his fingers through his shoulder-length white hair, letting his conflicting emotions battle it out, not knowing what to feel now that the moment was actually here.

For over a decade, he had been formulating his delicious slap of vengeance … a righteous justice in his mind. He had planted it, nursed it, fed it, watered it, sheltered it from the cold, and given it relief from the heat. He had watched it grow and blossom into something mean and unstoppable. It had consumed his thoughts. How he’d make her pay for what she had done. And now that his chance for retribution was so close—so, so very close—all he could feel was the rapid beating of his heart, pounding not with revenge but with excitement.

He really, really wanted her back!

The thought of sex with her even after all these years was making him pant like a dog. He had at least a thousand fantasies about it—some benign, some dark and cruel—all of them HD vivid in his brain. To see her face again … to feel her body. To hear her voice. It was her voice that had haunted him the most. Her voice that had kept him awake at nights and dreaming through the days. Sometimes she’d talk to him so clearly, he’d turn around only to find empty space.

After she left him for the third time over a decade ago, it had taken him years to recover. But he had finally, finally gotten his shit together. He had gotten off heroin, had weaned himself from cigarettes, and had significantly cut down on the booze. Now he exercised regularly. He ate a healthy diet. He had reformed while slaving away at his business—a multimillion-dollar playground for rich men of any sexual persuasion. He had spent years building his own little fiefdom. Lord of the manor, where no one dared to get in his way. He had tons of money, he had loads of sex, and he had respect. Most important, he had control over everything in his life.

Now that same everything was about to blow up in his face.

And even though he just knew it would end in disaster—like it had three times before—he also knew that he’d take the plunge into the deep end without a second thought, idiot that he was.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me three times, and someone’s a moronic dumbass.

He flipped hair out of his eyes, then walked out of his inner office into the fray he was hosting, thinking:

Here we go again.

Here we fucking go again.

AT SIX FEET four—well, maybe six three and a half now, allowing for shrinkage—Decker had always dreaded flying, cramming his oversize body into seats unfit for someone as tall as he was. The flight to Israel was long, and each time after he arrived, it took him hours to unfold. This time maybe it would be different.

He beamed as he thought of his children, chipping in money to buy Rina and him business-class tickets. Such a lucky man. He slid into a chair with a footrest. He had a bigger pillow and a thicker blanket than usual. He had his own TV, with flight attendants offering him juice, water, or champagne before the takeoff.

He could get used to this.

Rina came over. She was seated three rows behind him. “Pretty luxurious.”

“Unbelievable,” Decker said. “Nice surprise.”

“We did well,” Rina told him. “Any word from Gabe?”

“I know he got hold of his father and that Chris agreed to help.”

“Nice, if he doesn’t kill Terry first,” Rina said.

“It’s been over ten years.”

“Why do I feel Chris is the type of person to carry a grudge?”

Peter’s phone buzzed.

Rina said, “Turn that off. We’re on vacation.”

Decker looked at the screen. “It’s Tyler.”

“It’s eleven-thirty at night. He can’t miss you that much.”

“Yeah, this isn’t good.” Decker clicked in the call. “What’s going on?”

His partner said, “Someone found a body earlier in the evening. In the woods about three miles from the diner where Bertram Lanz disappeared.”

Decker’s heart sank. He and the entire Greenbury police force had been looking for the disabled man for weeks. He had hoped that Lanz was safe with his parents in Germany. But maybe that wasn’t the situation. The incompletion of his case was a weight on Decker’s shoulders. He knew he shouldn’t have taken time off without the solve. “Where are you now?”

“I just left the scene to call you. No bars up there. I’m going back as soon as I hang up.”

“Do you need me to come back, McAdams?”

“Peter!” Rina said.

“No, no. We’re fine, boss. Coroner should be here soon. Kevin cordoned off the area. I’ll keep you posted. I just wanted to let you know.”

The flight attendant started making announcements. Rina said, “If you’re going to be intransigent, I’m going back to my seat.”

Decker barely heard her. He stuck his finger in his ear. “You’re sure that you’re okay?”

“We’re great, boss. Don’t worry. Enjoy your time overseas.”

Decker said, “Before you go, any thoughts about the body?”

“Rigor’s come and gone, bloat has come and gone.”

“Then the corpse is weeks old?”

“Possibly. There’s decomposition.”

Decker asked, “Insect activity?”

“Some in the orifices—nostrils, eyes, and mouth.”

“Then part of the face was exposed to the air, so the flies could lay their eggs.”

“Yeah, we found the body partially buried.”

“Animal activity could have disturbed it.”

“Nothing we can see,” McAdams answered. “But that may change once the autopsy is done.”

“Any idea if the corpse is male or female?”

“Probably female, from the size. The face is messed up, and we can’t move anything else until the coroner comes.”

“Is the body nude or is there clothing?”

“Some rotting clothing. Looks like jeans, plaid shirt, sneakers.”

A flight attendant named Nurit came over. “Everything okay, sir?”

Decker looked up at her. “Yes, thank you.”

Nurit swallowed. “The woman across the aisle overheard you talk about corpses. I think it’s upsetting her.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Tyler asked.

“No, not you.” Decker smiled at the flight attendant. “I’m a police detective. I’ll finish up the conversation.” To McAdams: “I have to go.”

“Don’t worry, boss, I have it covered.”

Decker hung up. Rina had rematerialized. She was standing over him. “You are not going back.”

“No, I’m not going back,” Decker said.

“I hope this won’t ruin our vacation.”

“When we land, I’ll give you my laptop and phone. How’s that for commitment?”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Rina said. More announcements. “I have to sit down.” She kissed the top of Peter’s head. “And remember to take your Ambien as soon as we’re in the air. It’ll help with jet lag. I’ll see you in the Holy Land.”

“A new adventure,” Decker said.

“A new adventure.” Rina mussed his hair and left.

Three hours later, Rina was sound asleep. Decker, on the other hand, was stretched out with his eyes wide open, with a ton of thoughts whirling around in his brain. He probably would have been sleeping if he had taken the pill, but he had chosen not to.

You can take the man out of the investigation, but you can’t take the investigation out of the man.

He had promised Rina to unplug from work when they landed. She deserved that. But why toss and turn for hours when the solution to his insomnia was at hand? Quietly, he stood and took down his laptop from the overhead compartment. After booting up, he looked at his options for buying the plane’s internet. He thought about the thirty-minute plan. Just a few quick questions and then he’d turn off the noise. But an unknown force led his fingers to choose the two-hour plan. He typed in Tyler’s email address.

He wrote:

I’m signing off on all my electronics when we land.

But for now, I’m up and I can’t sleep.

Tell me everything that’s going on.

CHAPTER 1

THIS WAS HOW I remembered it, after gaining consciousness, lying on the floor, bloodied and battered.

I was sitting on the couch, going over my legal options for what was going to be a protracted and nasty divorce, trying to figure out how to make this happen with no money and working with a legal system over seven thousand miles away. My five-year-old son was sitting beside me, playing a video game. My eleven-year-old daughter was in her bedroom, door locked, doing whatever she did in the privacy of her own space. Juleen was hyper-adult, and one of the things I did when I rented this apartment was ensure she had her own space. It was a two-bedroom place and Sanjay slept in the smaller of the two rooms. Juleen had the master, and I slept in the living room on the couch.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t hear the footsteps outside the door. The building was exposed, and usually I heard people walking up and down the steps. Not this time. Had I been more alert, all this may not have happened.

It was only after the door flew open and I screamed “Run!” that everything kicked into high gear. Two Indian men: one immediately grabbed Sanjay, while the other said something about finding the girl. My son was kicking and screaming as I gripped his legs, pulling him toward me with my opponent pulling in the opposite direction: a mortal tug-of-war. The man had covered Sanjay’s mouth, and I remembered telling my son to bite his hand as I scratched the intruder’s arm and yanked Sanjay furiously. But the man was taller and bigger than I was and held on fast even with one hand over my son’s mouth and nose. I kept at it until the second man returned, asking where the girl was.

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