LITMIR.BIZ

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      Liv stared at her gun, which rested on the table beside her left hand. She was still seated across the table from Auggie. Each of them was working through their own thoughts, but it had been quiet a long time and Liv finally could stand it no longer.

      “What do you do down here?” she asked him.

      “Down here?” he repeated, as if he weren’t really listening.

      “In the States.”

      “A fishing guide. Same as Canada.”

      “Where’s your boat?” she asked.

      “At a marina on the Columbia River,” he said, frowning. “You think I’m lying to you?”

      “I don’t even care if you are,” she said. “Unless there’s someone else coming to this house.”

      “Look in the other bedroom. I live alone,” he stated flatly.

      “I need to figure this out,” she said.

      What had precipitated the attack on Zuma? Maybe Auggie was right and it had something to do with Kurt Upjohn and his war games, or his finances, or maybe even his personal life. Or, maybe it was somebody else at Zuma? One of the geeks upstairs? But the upstairs hadn’t been compromised. At least she didn’t think so. She hadn’t gone up there herself, but the door at the top of the stairs wasn’t easy to breach. It was everyone downstairs who’d been gunned down.

      Maybe Jessica or Paul or even Aaron had some desperate enemy willing to kill innocent people to get to them.

      But why now? She was the one who’d gotten the package from her long-dead mother.

      But what would the package have to do with anything? It was benign, really. A few photographs, a message from her mother, her birth certificate. Yet . . . yet . . . there was something there.

      The pictures . . . the zombie stalker . . . it felt like there was a door cracking open inside her mind. Dr. Yancy had told her she’d buried her memories.

      Who knew about the package? Hague. Della. Her father. Lorinda . . . the lawyers at Crenshaw and Crenshaw . . .

      Was it about the package? Was it? How could it be?

      How could it not be?

      Last night she’d told her father and Lorinda and Della that she was going to look into the past. She’d declared and/or intimated that she was going to learn more about the serial strangler who’d been killing women in their area about the time her mother committed suicide. That she wanted to know who the people were in the photographs. That she might follow up with her birth parents.

      Hague had called the man in the picture the zombie, the man who was always there, just out of the corner of his eye. But then Hague had mentally disappeared. He knew something. Something that had sent him away from reality.

      Kill you.

      And then today the gunman had come to Zuma.

      “What?” Auggie asked when Liv suddenly jumped to her feet.

      “I’ve got to go talk to someone.”

      “Now?”

      “Yes.”

      “You’re not going to leave me tied here,” he warned her.

      She pulled the keys from her pocket. “I’m going to have to.” She looked around, yanked out a drawer, then another, until she found a small knife, then cut off a hank of twine from the roll while he tried to reason with her as she lashed his legs together and to the chair. “There’s no need for this. Take me with you. I want to help you. Do you hear me?”

      She wasn’t listening. It was all just noise in the background as her mind moved ahead. She tested the ropes and ignored his darkening expression as she grabbed her backpack from where she’d left it by the kitchen table, stuffed the knife inside, and, more gingerly, her gun, then gave a last look around the kitchen. The oven was freestanding with a bar for the handle. Following her gaze, he said, “No.”

      With all her strength Liv dragged a struggling Auggie in his chair to the oven and then tied the chair to the handle of the opened oven door.

      “This is dangerous,” he said through his teeth.

      “Yes, it is.” She went through his pockets. Nothing. His cell phone was on the counter. “You don’t have a wallet,” she said, wondering where that was.

      “Yes, I do. I—” He cut himself off, thinking hard. Swearing beneath his breath, he said, “If it’s not in my back pocket, I must have left it at the coffee shop. Damn.” He threw her a fulminating look. “Maybe you can get it for me?”

      She tightened her lips, silently telling him that wasn’t possible, then she opened the back door, keys in hand. The last thing she saw was Auggie, glowering at her, clenching his teeth as if to keep himself from blasting her. She closed the door behind her, listened for the satisfying sound of the deadlock shutting tight and the ear-blistering sounds of Auggie swearing a blue streak. Then she headed to his Jeep with a length of twine to tie down the back hatch.

      My brain is full of worms. It is failing me. What I did today . . . crazy. Crazy. Like fuckin’ Rambo . . .

      My heart is pounding triple-time. I have to hide the gun. Hide my clothes.

      Hide.

      But she has to die. She knows too much. It’s planted deep inside her.

      I have to kill her. I have to find her and kill her.

      I can feel the need overtake me. Hot and smothering. My hands reach into the darkness, and I dream of that soft, white neck. Crushing the hyoid bone at her throat is almost like sex.

      But what I did today! Fuckin’ Rambo. Too desperate and reckless and she wasn’t even there!

      I’ve let her live too long.

      Too long.

      I need a new plan. Something less BIG, but it’s getting harder to keep my thoughts in order.

      My brain is full of worms . . . it’s failing me.

      I must finish what I started . . . accept who I am . . .

      Before it’s too late . . . and little Livvie catches up to me.

      Chapter 7

      “Detective. Rafferty . . . ?”

      September was in the process of striding back through the station’s main entrance and past Guy Urlacher after taking Phillip Berelli back to his car. She gave Guy a long look, just daring him to ask for her ID.

      “Yes,” she said in a tone that warned him not to get in her way. It was like an uncontrollable obsession with him and though he contained himself with Gretchen most times as she would glare ice at him if he should even speak to her, he did not feel the same restraint when it came to September.

      This was the curse of being the newest detective on staff. No uniform. No name tag. Guy Urlacher didn’t know how to handle it.

      It was dark outside and she was tired. Too tired to deal with him in any professional way. She could feel the cloud over her head as she stepped around him with a dark scowl, then marched down the hall to the squad room.

      She overheard Gretchen saying to George as she entered, “The guys upstairs didn’t know what went down. They don’t leave unless they absolutely have to, apparently. Someone takes a lunch order for them and otherwise they’re just there.”

      “Who took the lunch order today?” George asked.

      “A guy named Rad. Yes, Rad. He went out about twelve, got back about one, and then went upstairs. The accountant, Berelli, has an office in one corner, and Rad got him something, too.”

      September already knew this as she and Gretchen had walked through the “control

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