Frost gestured for the phone, but Frankie clutched it tightly in her hand. “What else do you want from me? Leave my patients alone. Leave me alone. Don’t you know you’ve already destroyed me? What more is there?”

The Night Bird didn’t answer. Laughter bubbled out of his throat.

Frankie felt her self-control bleeding away. “For God’s sake, why are you doing this? Why?”

The laughter faded to silence, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and cruel.

“You know why . . . to watch you die.”

Frost peeled the phone out of Frankie’s fingers and barked into it. “This is Frost Easton. Stop the car, and tell us where you are.”

He listened to the dead air.

“You don’t have anywhere to run. Where are you? Where’s Lucy?”

The Night Bird finally whispered back. “Luuuucy . . . Luuuucy . . . where are you . . . Luuuucy . . .”

Frankie watched Frost close his eyes and try to control himself. “What did you do to her?”

“Luuuucy . . .”

He slapped the phone shut and pushed it back into her hand.

“Drive,” he told Frankie. “We need to hurry.”

“Drive where?”

“You said Todd woke up in Dogpatch. We’ll start there.”

“Frost, what do you think he’s doing?”

He turned to face her. She could almost hear the pound of the detective’s heartbeat. “I don’t know what this game is all about, but Lucy’s in the middle of it. And so are you.”

42

42

Frost guided Dr. Stein up and down the streets of the bayside area south of the ballpark known as Dogpatch.

The neighborhood was a study in contradictions. Million-dollar lofts looked out on warehouses. Trendy restaurants sprang up next to boarded-up buildings. At midnight, in the midst of the driving rain, the hip neighborhood was mostly empty. The headlights of a dozen squad cars crisscrossed the streets, searching the ruins near the water. Flashlights swept through the weeds and parking lots underneath the concrete jungle of the elevated 280 freeway.

Two hours had passed, but the hunt had turned up no evidence of Darren Newman’s Lexus or the torture chamber of the Night Bird. Frost’s mood was dark, and his head throbbed with intermittent shocks of pain.

The windshield wipers ran back and forth, pushing away rain. They drove past a long, low building with windowless metal walls, and Frost gestured for Frankie to stop. He got out into the rain and shined his light around the grounds. He saw metal storage sheds painted over with graffiti. The beam lit up the columns of the freeway ramp beyond the industrial yard, and trucks kicked spray over the side of the highway as they passed overhead. There were no signs of life.

He got back inside, and they inched down the street, checking each vehicle parked on both sides.

“It’s late,” he said finally. “I can get someone to take you home.”