“Of my high school?”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying you probably feel as if I dragged you here today, and so now I need to be punished with looks.”

“We were driven, not dragged. Who doesn’t like being driven?”

“Cole. Be serious. Every now and then you need to do something that isn’t about work. Especially if your idea of work means raiding our venture capital fund to buy some useless resort in the middle of Big Sur.”

Our venture capital fund?

He bristles at his mother’s sudden possessiveness of a company about which she knows almost nothing. Giving her a spot on the board was his late father’s strategy for making her feel included; that’s all. But since his father’s death, she’s managed to add a few too many of her beach club pals to the board’s recently vacated seats. For the most part, they’re just like her—insanely rich dilettantes in need of hobbies that make them feel important. The idea that they might start developing strong opinions about how he chooses to invest the company’s leftover cash sets his teeth on edge. The idea that they might find a way to work in concert, and against him, is too unnerving to contemplate.

And if they had any idea who I really bought that resort for . . .

Priority one, he reminds himself: make sure the only reason his mother, her lackeys, and the entire board should ever hear the name Charlotte Rowe—or Trina Pierce, or Burning Girl—is because they’ve been up late watching true crime shows on television.

“Mother, come now. There’s no such thing as a useless resort,” Cole says. “You, of all world travelers, should know this. You practically have permanent rings around your eyes from all the cucumber slices you’ve worn.”

“Not really?”

“No, of course not.”

“Good. So there’s going to be a spa?”

“We’re making room for it.”

“There better be. It’s in the middle of nowhere, Cole.”

“Big Sur is not nowhere.”

“It’s hardly the South of France is what I’m saying. I mean, it’s all . . . trees and cliffs, isn’t it? Just the pictures make me carsick.”

Cole needs the entire board, his mother included, to stay convinced his purchase of the Altamira Lodge five months ago truly was an impulse buy and not part of a top-secret project that could put their company on a path to glory no one could have predicted just a few years before. That path, however, is sure to be twisty, the stops along the way already involving a fair amount of law breaking and unexpected deaths. But as his father taught him long ago, you can’t have progress at a company like theirs without a fair helping of both.

“I won’t be expected to go, will I?” She sips champagne, gives him a long, searching look. Her expression smacks of irritation, but there’s some veiled curiosity there as well. This is the longest conversation they’ve had about the Altamira Lodge since he assured the entire board he could improve the roadways leading to it, guaranteeing them some sort of reasonable return on their investment. “I’m afraid of heights, and the damn thing’s on a cliff.”

“Mother, rest assured, I will never try to take you anywhere you’re not comfortable.”

It’s not really a smile she gives him next. But it’s close. And Cole’s reminded once again that their relationship consists primarily of the two of them finding ever more eloquent ways of asking to be left alone.

His cell phone vibrates in his pocket. The text is from Ed Baker, his security director.

Richard Davies just left a leather store. Countdown clock activated.

He types back,

Bluebird?

The response:

In costuming.

Cole feels like he’s breathing more deeply than he has in weeks.

“I have to go,” he says, rising.

“Cole.” His mother doesn’t sound all that disappointed or surprised.

“Sorry, duty calls.”

“Picking out new linens,” she says, “or approving a new drug trial?”

“A bit of both.” He lifts his untouched champagne flute and sets it down next to hers.

“Fine. But never say I don’t at least attempt to be part of your life.”

“I never ever do.” He kisses her on the cheek, then hurries from the room just as the first speaker takes the podium.

3

The motel where his mother destroyed their family once and for all isn’t there anymore. It’s been replaced by a storage facility that promises the cheapest rates in town. But Richard Davies can still feel a churning in his gut as he drives past it, a feeling that starts out as nausea but turns into a kind of caffeinated excitement that has him tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

If he hadn’t started hunting, it would be all sickness and nothing else.

In the beginning, he was careful not to cruise Aurora Avenue North before dark. But he’s grown more confident over the years, and now he’s comfortable driving through the dreary warehouse-filled streets when they’re barely dusted by twilight.

He’s reclaiming a piece of himself every time he visits. A piece of his father, too. Reclaiming the essence of what was pure and good about his family before it was destroyed by the rot in his mother’s soul.