“I remember,” she finally says. “I remember your mother being none too happy about all the Burning Girl crap you pulled at school.”

“Why didn’t she say anything?”

“’Cause you were so agreeable back then.”

Just take the hit, he thinks. It means she’s giving in.

“Check in every day,” she says. “Take your own car. You’re not in uniform, obviously, ’cause it’s way out of your jurisdiction. Whole thing is purely exploratory. And if you do find anything that requires a response, you bring it to me. I bring it to this county; they bring it to the relevant department in Orange County. It won’t be a huge headache at all, which is why I’m so glad you’re pursuing this, by the way. Point is, you’re on an information-gathering mission only. Think college newspaper reporter. With social anxiety.”

Luke stands. “I actually did write for the paper at SF State.”

“Good, now work on the social anxiety part.”

Luke opens the door before Mona’s finished talking.

“I’m probably just letting you go because I’m sick of watching Judy check out your butt every five minutes.”

“That’s a nasty lie!” Judy shouts.

Just for good measure, Luke wiggles his butt as he passes Judy’s desk. He can’t help himself. He’s that excited to have cleared the hurdle that is Mona Sanchez so quickly.

36

Frederick Pemberton owns two vehicles: a motorcycle and an SUV.

Within a few hours of their arrival in Newport Beach, Luke managed to plant GPS trackers on both of them; the Kawasaki the doctor drove to work and the Cadillac SRX he left in the parking garage under his condo high-rise. The high-rise is ten stories, a drab stone tower fringed with deep balconies, right at the entrance to the Lido Peninsula, a little finger of land that sticks out into Newport Bay.

According to the stats Bailey sent, Pemberton lives in 8B; a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot two-bedroom unit with a view of the harbor. But it’s also got neighbors above, below, and along the eastern wall. A shitty kill house, by any measure. And the building’s security is mostly for show. A guardhouse at the entry next to some aboveground visitor parking. Keypad entry to both the lobby and the subterranean garage—the kind of defenses designed to keep thieves from backing up vans and trucks to the place, not the kind favored by residents with grave secrets. As evidenced by the fact that it took Luke twenty minutes to plant the tracker on Pemberton’s Caddy and make it back to the Jeep several blocks away, where Charley waited for him with her shaky hands clasped between her knees.

The parking garage at Pemberton’s office tower—a fifteen-minute drive away at Newport Center, where immaculate, modern high-rises stand on a circular drive around an upscale shopping mall—was even less secure. Luke returned to the Jeep without having broken a sweat.

Now they’re back at the Travelodge in Corona del Mar, waiting for the doctor to finish his workday, the contents of their recent trip to Best Buy spread out between them on one of the room’s bouncy twin beds.

Luke’s busy assembling stuff. Charley’s busy assembling her thoughts.

Luke seems to be having more fun.

She bought four GPS trackers total out of her dwindling funds, as well as an additional tablet to monitor their signals. Luke paid for the car mounts, one for the GPS tablet, the other for the tablet that came with her are these things real contact lenses, which maybe she should be wearing right now because technically she’s working. They both are.

But for now working means waiting for Pemberton to go on the move again. Whoever’s watching the transmission from the lenses, are they really going to be that interested in seeing Luke unwrap the equipment while she scrolls through texts from Bailey on her burner phone?

She’s not even reading the texts. Not really. She’s got them memorized. And it gives her something Zen-like to do as she draws a map from memory in her head. Pemberton’s condo is eight minutes south of their motel if they take State Road 55; twelve if they take surface streets. His office is only a few miles east, but Upper Newport Bay cuts through the land between, which will force them onto crowded PCH to the south or north onto the toll road if they have to pursue the good doctor in a hurry.

Eyes on 73.

“It’s Bailey,” she says. “He got into the tollbooth cameras.”

“All of them?” Luke doesn’t even look up from the mount he’s assembling.

All three entrances? she types.

Jamboree Road, McArthur, 55 intersection.

“All of them,” she says.

“Hot dog.” But he’s already assembling the next mount, too preoccupied to give in to excitement.

Hot dog is right. It’s a huge help. Between this and how quickly the GPS trackers got planted, she feels dangerously close to a good mood.

If Pemberton’s taking a long drive, to his country house, for instance, he’s got almost no choice but to use the toll road at some point. He can’t get to the 405 or the 5 freeway without it. Better yet, the old pay booths are all gone. The whole thing’s run by cameras that snap your license plate photo when you enter and send you a nice fat fine in the mail if you don’t go online and pay the toll within five days. Cameras Bailey can now see through.

Meanwhile, about seventy-five miles south and a little ways inland, Marty, or one of the guys he’s got working with him, is currently perched on a back road that snakes through the dry, boulder-strewn mountains just east of Interstate 15, and he’s studying the former vineyard Pemberton’s turned into his country house.

Based on what she saw online, the surrounding countryside is beautiful, but Temecula is hardly the Napa Valley of Southern California many of the locals would like it to be. It’s more rugged, for one, and you can still snag a parcel of land for only several hundred thousand dollars. But a short drive south is the Pala Casino Spa Resort. That’s where one of Marty’s buddies has parked a motor home so the whole crew can use it as their crash pad in between watches. It’s a great idea, although she won’t want to smell the inside of the RV if this thing drags on for too long. But so far none of the guys is complaining.

Yesterday evening Marty gave her an excellent report on Pemberton’s place.

It’s a sprawling, Spanish mission–style house sitting all by itself on the side of a scrubby, boulder-studded slope that used to be terraced with vineyard fields. “Kinda like a Del Taco someone squashed and then pulled out on either end” was Marty’s description of its architectural style. More important, it’s hemmed in by a tall cast-iron fence and patrolled by three giant Doberman pinschers Marty says look mean enough to make Godzilla take a step back.

Some guy, not Pemberton—too short, no trace of a nose job, a battered pickup that doesn’t seem like the doctor’s style—stopped by yesterday afternoon just before dusk. The dogs greeted him with furious hunger and not a trace of affection. The guy hurled several raw steaks through the fence, then raced back to his truck as if he thought they might be capable of jumping the enclosure.

A local caretaker—that was Marty’s guess. If he had access to the house, or even inside the fence, he had no interest in using it. Not with those hounds standing guard.

Luke agreed with Marty, and added that if you wanted people to steer clear of your place, hire a local to tell everyone how scary your dogs are.

Charley thinks there’s a chance the guy’s just a concerned neighbor who might be worried about the dogs. That said, why feed them steaks? Isn’t that supposed to make dogs more aggressive?

She can’t handle another unanswered question right now. Not for another ten minutes at least. She sucks in a deep breath, rolls over onto her back, and stares up at the motel room’s cottage-cheese ceiling. She tries to inhale a few deep, steadying breaths without distracting Luke from what he’s doing on the other side of the bed.

“Sleepy?” he asks.

“My brain feels like wet cement. Is that the same thing?”

“Not really. So how many?” Luke asks suddenly.

“How many what?” she asks, genuinely confused.

She doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s asking about. How many dogs did Marty spot at Pemberton’s vineyard? How many times had he seen the visitor drop by to feed them? How many car mounts did they buy? She’s been so lost in thought she can’t remember which of the facts, assessments, and plans swirling through her head they’ve actually had a conversation about since returning to the motel.

He’s assembled both the mounts. He holds them up proudly with a boyish, endearing smile that makes something unnerving happen in her stomach. There’s a suction cup on each that will allow it to stick to the dash.

“The Xanax,” he asks. “How many did you take?”

“Oh, right. Ten.”

She already told him, but he’s probably forgotten. Lord knows they’ve got enough to think about.

“And they were two-milligram pills?” he asks, dumbfounded.

“Yep.”

“You took twenty milligrams of Xanax, and you didn’t even get drowsy?”

She nods. “Same deal as the wine and the vodka I drank the other night.”