Nora pulled into the underground garage of her apartment building and turned off the car. She breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be out of the city and back at the beach. It was one of the many things she and Braden had in common, both of them willing to make the long drive from the South Bay to the Bureau’s downtown office just to be near the water.

She got out of the car and breathed in the salty air as she made her way up the outdoor stairs. She’d asked Braden if he wanted a ride — they sometimes carpooled, one or the other of them leaving their car in the Bureau lot overnight — but he’d had some paperwork to take care of from the raid-gone-bad. Her disappointment was tempered by the knowledge that she would see him tomorrow night, ring in the weekend with beers and Mexican food at Rosa’s.

She let herself into the apartment and locked the door behind her. Hermosa Beach was about as safe a place you could get in Southern California, but three brothers, a father who’d started in law enforcement, and five years with the Bureau made a lot of things habit.

Frankie, her tiger-striped cat, meandered into the living room, staring up at Nora with wide, blinking eyes.

“Hello, sweet girl.” She set her bag and keys on the console table by the door and bent to pick up the cat, sinking into two inches of fluff as she buried her face in the animal’s fur. “Did you miss me?”

Frankie purred and Nora kissed the top of her head before setting her down.

She went to the kitchen and poured fresh food into the cat’s bowl, refilled the water dish, then pulled a plastic bottle of water from the fridge for herself. She took a long drink while she looked around the apartment. It wasn’t fancy — there were hundreds like it scattered all along the narrow streets of the South Bay — but it was hers, and she felt a swell of pleasure as she took in the overstuffed sofa, perfect for Sunday afternoon naps, and the intricate rug she’d laid over the hardwood. She’d been slowly collecting inexpensive but promising pieces from local photographers, and the plants scattered around the room gave the place a lush, slightly tropical vibe.

It was the antithesis of the big house outside Boston where she’d grown up. Her father had been a young cop, the place an inexpensive mess, when her parents bought it. But years of renovation and a thriving real estate market had turned the property into a valuable estate befitting her father’s position as D.A. for Suffolk County. It was still home, but not like this.

The apartment was one of the few places where she felt not like one of the Murphy kids or the DA’s daughter, but like the self she was underneath everything else. The self she was still discovering. Being so far away from Boston had given her the space to peel back her outer layers like the dimpled flesh of an orange, looking to see whether the inside was sweet or sour. It didn’t make up for the absence of her mother and sister, but it had begun to feel like necessary work.

Her eyes came to rest on a photograph sitting on the counter between the kitchen and the living room. Her sister was radiant in the picture, tan and smiling at the bow of the family boat, a year before their mother was diagnosed and two years before Erin met Matt.

She waited for the disgust to hit her. She’d carried her hatred for Ryan McConnell for a long time. He’d been the one to introduce Erin to drugs at a time when she was vulnerable from the death of their mother. It was his fault Erin had gotten hooked so quickly, had changed from the vital, passionate woman in the photo to one who was emaciated and paranoid, stealing from the house and from Nora and their brothers to get money for her next fix.

But somewhere along the way her burning hatred for Ryan had cooled into cold resignation. There was no going back. It had happened the way it had happened. Erin was gone and all that was left were Nora’s memories and the promise that she would never, ever lose herself so totally that she couldn’t see the truth when it was right in front of her.

Everything you need to know is right in front of you.

Indeed.

She capped the water and put it back in the fridge, then headed for the bedroom where she changed into a pair of leggings and a long-sleeve T-shirt. She layered a sweatshirt over the top of it and pulled on her tennis shoes, then grabbed her keys on the way out the door.

The sun was setting over the water, and people were making their way to the Strand, the long stretch of concrete that ran along the water from Palos Verdes to Malibu. It was a South Bay tradition, and she tried not to feel lonely as she watched the couples heading toward the water, some of them with wine glasses in hand, others with fingers intertwined.

Besides, it wasn’t just people in love. There were parents and children, teenagers with their friends, even a few lone wolves like herself, all of them lining up on the concrete and in the sand, watching nature’s daily magic show as the sun kissed the water in the distance.

She turned onto the Strand and kept walking, passing the people who stopped to watch, some of them scooting onto the low wall that separated the almost-beachfront apartments like hers from the sand.

She glanced out over the water, watching it turn to a richer blue as the sun sank. She’d never watched the sunset with Braden. He’d never suggested it, not even when the timing was right on their way to Rosa’s. She told herself she was glad. It would have been too much. Too close to the kind of relationship she both feared and desired.

She thought of his eyes. The way they flashed when he was angry. The way they sometimes seemed to deepen when they looked at her.

Or was that her imagination?

Of course it was her imagination. Braden Kane probably had a million women lined up to warm his bed. It was why she steered clear of the subject of his personal life.

She didn’t want to know.

She bowed her head and walked, focusing on the sound of her feet hitting the pavement, the smell of the sea, trying not to wonder if he really had paperwork to finish in the city or if he had other plans he hadn’t wanted to share.