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As she started to rise, a movement below caught her eye. Across the living room, through the French doors, a glimpse of a dark figure outside.

Claudia raced back to the bedroom and touched Jovanic’s shoulder. “Joel, wake up! Someone’s trying to break in.”

“Call 911,” he said, instantly alert and on his feet. “Tell them there’s an off-duty officer here with a weapon.” He retrieved his trousers from the landing and returned to the bedroom before he had finished speaking. “Tell them what I’m wearing.”

“What you’re
wearing
?”

“So they don’t mistake me for the suspect.” He pulled on his T-shirt, then went for his weapon in the shoulder holster hanging over a chair. Pointing the nine-millimeter at the floor, he started down the stairs.

Claudia watched him go, her heart in her mouth. “Be careful,” she whispered. A useless caution, but she had to say something. A prayer almost, a benediction to keep him safe.

Taking the cordless phone from her office, she dialed 911, watching from the landing as Jovanic crept around the periphery of the living room.

He stood to one side and looked out the French doors before opening them and moving onto the deck. Through the early morning semidarkness, Claudia could see the asparagus fern on the deck, the pot toppled on its side. The intruder must have jumped over the side and gone down the outside steps, probably leaving the way he had come.

Hugging herself, she tried to control the trembling that shook her from the depths.

Who is doing this? Senator Heidt? Doctor Bostwick? Someone else?

Jovanic reappeared and motioned her to stay where she was. He eased open the front door, gun first, and stepped onto the porch with practiced movements, flattening himself against the siding as he descended the steps.

Claudia ran into the office and went to the window, in time to see him round the front of the house and take off down the block. He soon disappeared in the pre-dawn fog rolling in from the ocean. Thank God she’d awakened. Thank God Jovanic had been with her.

Less than five minutes later, a black and white patrol car slid silently out of the mist and came to a halt outside the house, blue lights strobing on the roof.

Three more cars followed. One made a quick U-turn and returned the way it had come. The others continued up the street and turned at the corner, where the alleyway behind the houses offered any number of escape routes.

Two patrol officers climbed out of the parked car and came up the walk, radios clipped to their shoulders crackling with chatter. A Mutt and Jeff pair, both wearing bulky green nylon jackets over their uniforms.

If the neighborhood isn’t awake yet, it soon will be,
Claudia thought, shivering in the doorway.

Mutt came halfway up the stairs. Jeff waited below, scanning the street, his hand on the butt of his weapon. Not that he’d be able to see anything through the fog. “You okay, ma’am?” he called up to her.

“I’m fine. Did you see him?”

“We saw Detective Jovanic around the corner. He thought the gentleman went over a back fence.”

The cop-speak irritated her. As far as she was concerned, the creep who had tried to break into her house was no gentleman.

“Did he get inside?” Jeff asked. “You want us to check the house?”

“That’s okay, thanks. He never got in.”

“You’d better go in and lock the door now, ma’am. We’re gonna go give them a hand. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He was staring at her with frank curiosity, and Claudia suddenly became conscious of how short her kimono was, and that she was naked beneath it. She thanked them again and stepped hastily inside, locking the door behind her. If they were wondering how it was that Jovanic happened to be in the neighborhood in the middle of the night, her appearance was enough to fire up a red-hot rumor.

She sat on the couch waiting for Jovanic to return, hugging her grandmother’s blue and white crocheted afghan around her, trying to keep her mind blank so she wouldn’t freak out. But the unwelcome thoughts kept intruding:
What if something happens to him?
The intruder probably had a gun, too.

Just what she needed—a cop for a lover. How many nights like this could she look forward to—waiting for him to come home from a dangerous pursuit, wondering if he would come home at all? That’s not what she wanted from a relationship.

You’re getting ahead of yourself. So far, it’s just sex.

But she knew there was more to it. Even when they were sniping at each other, electricity sparked between. There was definitely something worth taking the time to explore; something for which it might be worth letting down her precious need to be independent.

A tense fifteen minutes crawled by before she heard him on the stairs.

She ran to the door and flung it open. “What happened? Did you catch him?”

Jovanic was breathing hard, from adrenaline, not exertion. “No, goddammit, we lost him.” He reached up to the lightbulb in the porch light, which the intruder had loosened, and tightened it until it glowed yellow. “Twenty-five officers falling over each other like fucking Keystone Cops, and nobody sees him.” He went inside and examined the lock on the French doors. “They’re checking license plates on the next couple blocks. Tomorrow... today, that is, while we’re in Palm Springs, I’ll get someone to test the deck for prints. There might be a shoe print in the dirt that spilled from the pot.”

“Too bad you couldn’t have just shot the bastard.”

“Oh, now you want me to shoot him? I thought you were a pacifist.”

“You could at least yell,
‘Stop! Police!’
or something like that.”

Jovanic gave a derisive snort. “Yeah, he’s going to stop because I yell at him. More likely some unsuspecting taxpayer hears, comes outside and gets in the way of a bullet. Shit, it’s freezing!”

Claudia rubbed his bare arms, which were damp with ocean mist. “Did you get a look at him?”

“Not good enough for an ID. He was wearing a watch cap.”

“The man who attacked Destiny and me wore a leather mask.”

He shook his head. “Different guy. You probably broke that joker’s arm. One thing’s sure. Whoever is behind these attacks has plenty of resources.”

“A senator does. So does a plastic surgeon.”

“Yeah, we’re checking them both out, and everyone else on Lindsey’s list.” Jovanic set the alarm, cursing himself for a fool that he hadn’t made sure it was armed earlier.

He pulled off his T-shirt and hustled her upstairs. “There’s nothing more to be done down here tonight. Back to bed, grapho lady.”

“Is that an order, Detective,” Claudia mugged. “Or are you just happy to see me?”

Palm Springs was more than a hundred miles east, out the San Bernardino Freeway. Jovanic’s foot mashed the accelerator and they blasted up the onramp. The Jeep wasn’t exactly top of the line when it came to comfort, but that morning, the old Jaguar, temperamental at the best of times, had steadfastly refused to respond to Claudia’s curses, and they’d taken a cab to the police station where Jovanic had left his ride while out of town.

Heading away from the beach, they soon left the marine layer behind. By the time they zipped past Monterey Park doing eighty-five, the morning overcast had given way to smoggy haze. Sixty miles out, beyond the Banning/Beaumont exit, brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies replaced the clouds.

In the desert, only a few scraggly trees and the burned-out shells of an old house or two dotted the wilderness landscape with long stretches of nothing between them. A prickly pear cactus appeared here and there. Not like the Arizona desert Jovanic had just left, where groves of saguaro raised spiny arms to the sky in supplication. Claudia yawned and stretched, raising her voice over the sound of the wind-whipped ragtop. “What do you s’pose we’ll find?”

“If we’re lucky,” Jovanic yelled back, “maybe evidence of the phantom boyfriend Bostwick told you about.”

“I wonder if that was for real. He sounded sincere.”

“Yeah. Sincerely wanting to cover his ass.” They fell into a silence intermittently broken by the rattle of the Jeep bumping over uneven spots in the road. Morning had brought with it the awkwardness that often assails new lovers. But the connection felt good. Maybe
too
good for someone afraid of being hurt.

Nearly two hours after they’d hit the road, the wind farms loomed. Alien-looking propellers harnessing ecologically friendly energy; bringing life to once-barren land. Twenty miles to go. The propellers heralded the northernmost edge of Palm Springs.

They exited the Interstate at Highway 111, which merged with Palm Springs’ main drag. Jovanic asked if she were hungry, and when she admitted she was, he pulled into the lot at the Flower Drum on South Indian Canyon. Before climbing out, he leaned into the back seat and launched a search for his Thomas Guide to help them locate Lindsey’s house. “I could’ve looked it up for you on MapQuest,” Claudia said as he pawed through the coffee-stained Starbucks cups, Milky Way wrappers and assorted McDonald’s debris littering the floor of what appeared to be his mobile home away from home. “Ever thought of getting a trash bag?” He gave her the beetle-brow over his shoulder. “You aren’t going try and change me, are you?

“No way. It’s your car, your life.”

The words came out sounding more snippy than she’d intended, but he didn’t seem to notice. With a triumphant, “Ha!” he hauled out the battered Guide. They strolled into the restaurant, his arm around her shoulders.

The restaurant had just opened for lunch and they were the first customers. Black lacquer and red leather figured prominently in a spacious dining room that featured a rock garden and a waterfall. The host, an elderly Asian man in a gold embroidered vest and shiny black trousers, bowed in welcome all the way to a corner booth. His broad smile as he enumerated the day’s specials exposed a set of gold-tipped teeth.

They both had a good appetite, and while they made the mu shu vegetable and lemon chicken rapidly disappear, Jovanic asked Claudia about her family.

She smiled. “It’s a pretty standard dysfunctional family. My parents have been married forty years and barely tolerate each other. My brother’s a widower with a wonderful daughter, and my sister is a moderately successful stand-up comedian. She’s on tour most of the time, so we don’t have a lot of contact.”

“I have a sister, too,” Jovanic said, and Claudia remembered the story of his father’s violent death. “She’s a big-shot in a Silicon Valley firm, so she doesn’t have a lot of time for family socializing, either. I have a couple of teenage nephews.” He got that hooded look and said, “They’ve had their share of problems.”

They chatted until the waitress cleared away the remains and brought the check with two fortune cookies. Insisting on paying, Jovanic pushed the plate of cookies toward her.

“You’re supposed to take the one closest to you,” Claudia said, picking one. She snapped it in half and extracted the slip of paper wound inside. “What’s yours say?”

Jovanic laid aside the map book he’d begun thumbing and picked up the second cookie. “
‘You will be successful in your endeavors.’
What about yours?”

“
‘Beware of sexy involvement with good-looking cop.’
”

He snatched the paper from her, shaking his head. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to lie? Let me see that.
‘Your mind is filled with good ideas,’”
he read aloud, his left brow hiking wickedly. “I just hope those ideas involve massage oil and a hot shower.” She sent him a sultry look from under her lashes that held a promise, and he looked pleased as he returned his attention to the map.

“Cahuilla Trail isn’t in here,” he concluded after poring over every page for the Coachella Valley. “We can ask,” Claudia suggested. “Maybe the host knows.”

“He doesn’t speak English any better than the waitress. I’ll find it. It’s probably a side street off Cahuilla Drive, or Cahuilla Parkway. They’re not all that far from here.”

“What is this thing men have, that you can’t stand to ask for directions?”

He jammed a toothpick between his lips and started for the door, beckoning her to follow.

After a fruitless forty-five minutes of exploring every street on the map with
Cahuilla
in its name, they concluded that Cahuilla Trail wasn’t among them. Jovanic’s grumbled profanities became more explosive with each wrong turn until, with a final, defeated, “Fuck it!” he turned the Jeep into a Shell station and parked at a pump.

Biting her tongue on the temptation to say, “Told you so,” Claudia followed him into the convenience store.

They got lucky with the pimply-faced attendant minding the counter. “Cahuilla Trail?” the kid repeated, scratching at the scrubby growth on his chin. “Yeah, dude, I know where that is. It’s way the fuck out there, is where it is.” He jerked his head in the direction of the desert.

“Yeah?” Jovanic put both hands on the counter and leaned across it so the kid had to step back. “So, how the fuck do we get there?”

The kid proceeded to draw the directions in the air with his finger—go left, left, and then right, then just keep on going. “You sure you wanna go out there, dude?” he asked. “Nuttin’ there ‘cept crazy people.”

“Crazy people?”

“Yeah, dude. Don’t you know... the further out in the desert you go, the crazier people are. It’s a fuckin’ fact, man.”

The kid’s voice followed them out the door. “You gotta really watch for it, dude. You get to Indian Wells, you went too far.”

They almost missed the turn.

Just in time, Claudia caught sight of a wooden signpost in the dirt that read “Cahuilla Trail.” And painted underneath in faded lettering: “Private Road.” It wasn’t a road in any paved sense of the word, she realized as Jovanic wheeled onto it.

They bounced along what was, in fact, little more than a dirt track. The Jag’s shock absorbers would never have survived the assault, and Claudia was glad they had not driven in it. She raised her voice to make herself heard. “Feels like we’re in the Old West.”