TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2019 by Lisa Gray

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542093644 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1542093643 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781477818305 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1477818308 (paperback)

Cover design by Ghost Design

DEDICATION

To my mum, for always believing in me

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

1 JESSICA

2 AMY

3 JESSICA

4 PRYCE

5 JESSICA

6 ELEANOR

7 PRYCE

8 JESSICA

9 JESSICA

10 AMY

11 JESSICA

12 PRYCE

13 JESSICA

14 JESSICA

15 PRYCE

16 JESSICA

17 JESSICA

18 ELEANOR

19 JESSICA

20 JESSICA

21 PRYCE

22 JESSICA

23 JESSICA

24 PRYCE

25 JESSICA

26 JESSICA

27 AMY

28 JESSICA

29 JESSICA

30 JESSICA

31 PRYCE

32 PRYCE

33 JESSICA

34 PRYCE

35 ELEANOR

36 JESSICA

37 JESSICA

38 PRYCE

39 JESSICA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

I park the car four streets away and walk the rest of the way. The house is conveniently situated at the end of the block, hidden in shadows, out of sight of prying eyes.

It’s dark now, but I know in daylight the wood siding is the color of dried mud, and the paint hasn’t been refreshed in years. At least, not since she moved in. I’m surprised to see the porch has been swept clean of fallen leaves and is empty save for a metal bucket with two pairs of outdoor boots—one adult size, one toddler size—next to the front door.

I pass the sign hammered into the front yard’s overgrown lawn, warning the house is protected by Smith & Wesson, and I laugh quietly to myself in the darkness.

I know a gun isn’t going to save her tonight.

I walk silently up the porch steps and see the curtains are drawn across the big front window, a flickering yellow glow escaping from a tiny gap where the material doesn’t quite meet in the middle. As I approach the front door, I hear music playing softly inside. It’s late, but I know she won’t be asleep. I raise a gloved hand and knock on the door, the sound muffled under the soft leather.

She opens the door, and I have to admit she looks beautiful, backlit by the candles burning in the room behind her. The music is louder now, one of those depressing Seattle bands everyone listens to these days. Her eyes are glassy, as though she’s drunk or high, and she looks at me, confused for a second.

Then she says, “I wondered when you’d show up. I guess you’d better come in.”

I follow her into the living room, and she asks if I want a drink. I say nothing. She walks over to the bar cart anyway and fills a glass with red wine. She tops up her own glass, which is sitting on the coffee table on top of a tattered cardboard coaster from a local bar. I assume it’s not her first bottle of the night.

She says, “Hey, what’s with the gloves? Is it cold out tonight?”

I still say nothing.

She holds out the wineglass, but I make no move to take it from her.

“Suit yourself,” she says and shrugs.

As she turns to put the glass next to her own on the table, I catch her full on the face with a powerful punch. She is stunned. She drops the glass. The red liquid soaks into the cream carpet. Blood streams from her nose, and she staggers. I deliver another blow, and this time, she goes down.

I’m on top of her quickly, knees pressing into her chest, the knife in my hand. I’m aware that my breathing has accelerated, but my hands are steady, and the cut to her throat is clean and precise. Her blood mixes with the merlot on the carpet, and I know she’ll bleed out in minutes, that the job is done.

But I’m unprepared for the rage that follows, the furious pumping of my own blood through my veins, as I watch the life drain slowly from her. I lift the knife above my head, and I plunge it deep into her heart. And then I do it again and again, until finally the rage is gone and I’m slumped on top of her, exhausted. Then there is a new sensation flooding my insides, and it takes a few seconds before I figure out what it is.

Elation.

It’s my first kill, but in that moment, I know it won’t be my last.

I stand and put the knife back in the pocket of my pants. I walk to the hallway and listen at the foot of the stairs for any movement from the rooms above. I hear nothing.

I return to the living room. The music is still playing. The flames from the candles cast strange shadows on the walls. I walk over to the cream leather couch. I look at the lifeless body on the floor, and I smile.

Then I sit. And wait.

1 JESSICA

1

JESSICA

Jessica Shaw stared at the faces in front of her, thinking most of them were probably dead. Dead or didn’t want to be found. Squinting against the late-afternoon California sunshine pouring in through the window, she leaned closer to the MacBook screen for a better look at the photos.

There was the missing mom who’d vanished from her home in the middle of the day. The middle-aged guy who’d left for work one morning and never arrived at the office. The teenage girl who’d failed to return home after school. There were thousands of other similarly tragic stories, all of the people apparently disappearing into thin air.

Dead or didn’t want to be found.

The way Jessica saw it, most missing adults fell into these two distinct categories, like a gambler in a Vegas casino deciding whether to nudge his pile of chips onto black or red. Red, they were probably dead. Black, they might just come back. After seven years as a private investigator, five in New York and the last two on the road, she usually had a pretty good idea from the get-go which of those scenarios she was dealing with.

Jessica was mentally sorting the faces on screen into blacks and reds when the waitress’s voice broke into her thoughts. She quickly closed the laptop. A diner wasn’t the ideal place for this kind of work, but she liked to think of shopping malls, motel rooms, gas station restaurants—hell, anywhere with a decent Wi-Fi connection—as her office. It made her feel like she was really working and not just running away.

Today’s office was a small diner in Simi Valley, a pleasant medium-size city tucked into the southeast corner of Ventura County. Thirty miles from downtown Los Angeles, it was best known as the venue for the Rodney King trial in ’92 and then as the final resting place of Ronald Reagan twelve years later.

Jessica didn’t know it just yet, but it was also the place where her life was about to change forever.

She’d never visited this particular diner before, but she had been to diners just like this one a million times. A low-budget, low-expectation establishment. High stools in front of a sticky counter. Day-old doughnuts displayed in a glass case dotted with eager fingerprint smudges. Waitresses wearing powder-blue uniforms and white tennis shoes and forced smiles while handing out coffee refills.

One of those waitresses was hovering over her now. “What’re you having?” The waitress tapped a crimson acrylic nail impatiently against her notepad as though she had someplace more important to be.

Jessica had looked at the menu, with its gaudy, hand-drawn cartoons of pizzas and burgers and wipe-clean laminated plastic, just long enough to locate the Wi-Fi code and fire up the laptop. Glancing at it again now, she saw a hardened eggy glop covered the appetizers. So much for wipe clean. It was a late lunch, the best part of the day having been spent packing up her things, ready to move on again. Maybe LA this time. Or San Francisco or San Diego.

She ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and black coffee, hoping the sandwich was on the menu despite not having its own cartoon. She didn’t want to have to ask the waitress for a few more minutes to decide. This was Donny’s Diner, not the goddamn Ritz.

“Five minutes for the sandwich,” the waitress said. “I’ll go get the coffee now.”

Jessica flipped the laptop screen back up and peered over it at the woman while she busied herself making the drink. She was a straight-from-a-bottle redhead in her late forties whose name was Nancy, according to the plastic tag that hung at a lopsided angle and seemed to deliberately point at her heaving bosom. Nancy’s breasts looked real, despite the close proximity to Tinseltown and its plastic surgeons, but still managed to look porny as they strained to escape from the one-size-too-small uniform.

Turning her attention back to the laptop, Jessica tucked a stray strand of short blonde hair behind her ear and checked her emails. There were no new additions to the inbox since she’d last looked this morning.

No inquiries from frantic parents or concerned spouses wanting help in tracking down missing loved ones. No surveillance work tailing a member of the staff on behalf of a suspicious employer. Not even a request for one of those honeytrap jobs that basically involved encouraging men to hit on her in hotel bars before confirming to distraught wives that they were, indeed, married to lying, cheating douchebags.

She almost always turned those ones down unless she was really broke. And Jessica hadn’t been broke for a while. Not since the insurance money had cleared and the house sale had gone through. These days, she usually advised the honeytrap clients to spend their hard-earned cash on a good divorce lawyer instead.

With nothing that might push her in the direction of her next move, Jessica went back to the missing persons websites and ate the grilled cheese sandwich once it arrived. She was idly contemplating having one of the stale doughnuts when a breaking news alert popped up on the screen with a muted ding. The sentence was brief and to the point. She sat back heavily against the booth’s hard vinyl seat and sighed, all thoughts of dessert now forgotten.

She turned to Nancy. “You might want to take that down now.”

The waitress looked up from behind the counter, where she had been emptying loose change into the cash register. “Sorry, hon—did you say something?”

Jessica nodded to a poster taped to the wall behind the older woman. It was a sheet of paper with the word MISSING in big bloodred capital letters across the top. Underneath, in a smaller black font, were the words “Have you seen this person?” The paper was glossy, the printout good quality. The same as others Jessica had seen around town the last couple of days hanging in bars and restaurants, stuck on shop front windows, pasted to streetlight poles.

A color photograph showed an unsmiling young Asian woman with ebony hair that shone like wet tar and eyes that were every bit as dark. She looked pissed with whoever was behind the camera taking the photo.

A twenty-year-old college student, Amy Ong had been reported missing by her roommate after failing to return home from a Saturday-night date. Young, beautiful, and smart: the holy trinity that guaranteed her image had been splashed across every news channel and newspaper in LA and the surrounding areas for the last few days. Not like the girls with average looks from the wrong side of the tracks, who barely merited a mention in the inside pages.

Jessica repeated, “You might want to take that down now.”

“Oh, have they found her?” Nancy’s drawn-on eyebrows shot up in a hopeful expression as far as the Botox would allow. “I bet she’s been with some boy, and her cell phone ran out of juice. Happens all the time. I should know—my kid’s the same age.”

“She’s dead.”

The older woman’s face crumpled under her heavy foundation.

Jessica went on. “They haven’t officially confirmed the identity yet, but it sounds like it’s Amy Ong. Cops are treating it as murder, according to the news.”

Nancy’s hand flew to her mouth, and her mascara-rimmed eyes widened. “Murder? Good Lord. That poor girl.” Then she shook her head sadly and turned away. She began peeling the Scotch tape that held the poster in place, careful not to snap her crimson acrylic nails.

Dead or didn’t want to be found.

Amy Ong was now one of the former. A life with so much promise apparently snuffed out in an instant. Jessica had wondered if the young woman’s disappearance might lead to some work coming her way, but that was clearly a dead end now. Literally. She preferred her cases much colder anyway, like a bottle of Bud Light straight from a cooler, and this one had never gotten to be anything other than lukewarm.

It was time to move on. Either the toss of a dime—heads for north, tails for south—or pick a new case from a missing persons website and show up in town and pitch for business.

Jessica signaled to Nancy to refill her cup, then continued skimming through the gallery of images on the screen, waiting for a face to pique her interest. Like a horny bachelor trawling dating sites in search of a Friday-night hookup.

Janine Solomon. Seventeen. White. Female. Missing for two months. Missing from Albany, New York.

No way was Jessica going back to New York State. She kept on scrolling.

John Preston. Fifty-nine. White. Male. Missing for six weeks. Missing from Richmond, Virginia.

Too far to drive to from here. Pass. She kept on scrolling.

Shondra Williams. Thirty-nine. Black. Female. Missing for eighteen months. Missing from Coolidge, Arizona.

That one was a maybe.

Jessica checked her emails again. There was a new message in the inbox. The subject read, “Your next case?” The sender was “John Doe.”

Opening the message, she expected to see a query from a potential client with an outline of the case they wanted her to take on. Instead, there was only a website link. Jessica was wary of opening links or attachments from unknown senders, but she could see from its address that this one was for a missing persons website she was familiar with.

She clicked on it.

The page loaded to show a missing person listing with a photo of a little kid of about two or three years old. She had mousy brown hair and big blue eyes and was clutching a Barbie doll in grubby, chubby fingers.

Jessica felt a hot flush hit her cheeks hard and fast, like sudden exposure to a tanning bed with new tubes.

It couldn’t be.

She looked again.

Holy shit.

The coffee she’d just sipped turned bitter in her mouth. The scrape of metal cutlery on plates at the next table suddenly seemed far too loud. The smell of fried onions from the kitchen out back made her want to throw up all over the wipe-clean laminated tabletop.

Dead or didn’t want to be found.

Jessica Shaw now knew there was a third category she had never even considered.

Those who didn’t know they were missing.

2 AMY

2

AMY

Amy Ong ran her fingers softly along the clothes hanging in the closet as she tried to decide which outfit to choose. She pulled out a red satin dress, held it in front of her, and stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door.

The dress had been a gift from her parents. Her mom and dad had wanted her to have something special to wear to the celebratory dinner they’d organized when she had been accepted to study criminal justice at Cal State LA after winning two coveted scholarships. Amy was the oldest of three girls born into a working-class Chinese family and was the first Ong to go to college. All of her relatives were proud of her success, but none of them were surprised. Amy had always been the smart girl. The good girl.

A wave of sadness washed over her as she thought of her family back in Ohio, and she shook her head as though the action would help rid her of the negative emotion. She turned her attention back to the task at hand. The dress was relatively modest, sitting just below the knee and without even a hint of cleavage on show, but the shimmering red material contrasted perfectly with her pale skin and long dark hair. Just right for date night. It was Saturday evening, she was heading to a cool bar in Hollywood to meet a guy, and she had to look like she’d made an effort.

She shoved the dress back in the closet between two sweaters.

But not too much of an effort.

“I really wish you wouldn’t go.”

Amy jumped at the sound of the voice behind her. She spun around to see her roommate, Kasey Taylor, sitting on the edge of one of the two single beds that took up most of the space in their small bedroom. She was pulling agitatedly at a loose thread on the bedcover. It was Kasey’s tell, fidgeting with stuff when she was anxious.

“Shit.” Amy laughed. She held a hand to her chest, where her heart pumped furiously beneath her trembling fingers. “I didn’t hear you come into the room. You almost scared me half to death.”

Kasey didn’t return the smile. She looked at Amy with a worried expression. “It’s not too late to cancel.”

A pretty blonde with girl-next-door looks, Kasey was studying theatre and dance and had already appeared in a couple of commercials for a well-known tampon brand, but Amy knew her best friend’s concern wasn’t an act.

She turned back to the closet. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” Kasey said. “All you have to do is pick up your cell and send a text. You know, something along the lines of ‘Not going to make it tonight. Or ever. Don’t contact me again, loser.’”

“I don’t have his cell phone number.”

“So stand him up.”

“I can’t.”

Amy picked out tight blue jeans and a white tank top and threw them onto her own bed. Then she bent down and fished out a pair of gold strappy sandals from the bottom of the closet. She dropped her bathrobe to the floor, wriggled into the jeans, and pulled the tank top over her head, combing her fingers through her hair. As she sat on her bed to fasten the sandals, she could feel Kasey’s gaze on her.

Eventually her friend spoke. “Look, I’ve got another commercial in a few weeks. The pet food one. I could—”

“No,” Amy snapped, then instantly felt bad about using such a sharp tone with her best friend. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, sweetie, but the answer is no.” She stood, did a little twirl. “Now, how do I look?”

“Amazing,” Kasey said glumly.

Amy lifted the bottle of Chanel Chance she shared with Kasey from the dresser and spritzed the scent onto her neck and wrists. She unplugged her cell phone from where it was charging next to the perfume bottle and slipped it into her faux-leather purse alongside her wallet, driver’s license, hairbrush, cosmetics, breath mints, car keys, and a single condom.

“Wait,” Kasey said. She opened the bottom drawer of the dresser, rummaged inside among bras and panties, and then produced a can of pepper spray. “At least take this with you.”

Amy held up her bulging purse. “No space.” She gave Kasey a quick hug. “Don’t worry—I’ll be fine. I always am. Don’t wait up.”

She left the bedroom before Kasey could persuade her to change her mind.

Outside, the early-evening air was still warm, but goose bumps dappled the skin on Amy’s arms as she emerged from the housing complex’s stairwell onto the street. The sun was dropping rapidly into the horizon, the brightness of the day giving way to a starless dusk.

Her heels clacked loudly on the asphalt as she made her way across the student parking lot to her beat-up old Mini. She climbed inside and turned the key in the ignition, praying silently the car would start the first time. She was already running late, and a cab all the way out to Hollywood was out of the question.

The engine sputtered and coughed and finally caught, and Amy breathed a sigh of relief as it rumbled softly beneath her. The radio burst into life, playing a sad song about lost love on one of her favorite country music stations. She felt the knot of anxiety in her belly loosening just a little. The clock on the dash glowed bright green. She’d probably be a few minutes late, but she knew he would wait for her. Amy shuddered. She thought about having a couple of glasses of wine tonight, just enough to settle the nerves, but she knew it wouldn’t be worth the risk.

The car’s interior was illuminated by the amber glow of a nearby streetlight, and Amy caught a glimpse of sad eyes in the rearview mirror. She sighed. She had no idea who the girl staring back at her was anymore. She released the hand brake and edged slowly out of the parking space.

Amy Ong.

The smart girl.

The good girl.

If only they knew.

3 JESSICA

3

JESSICA

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