LITMIR.BIZ

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to get jealous over the guy. This had been a job, one she had been paid well to do. Didn’t matter what he liked or didn’t like, he was a notch in Val’s investigative career belt, nothing more.

      “I’ll send you a report when I get home,” she said tightly.

      “No report. This between you and me.”

      “Fine.” Like she wanted to rehash all the smarmy details anyway.

      “I want you go back to bar.”

      “When pigs fly.”

      “What?”

      “I fulfilled the job request, Marta. The work is done. Completed. Finis.”

      “So many words again.”

      “Then let me give you just one. No. I am not going back to that bar.”

      “Please, Val,” she said, her mood shifting from cold to needy. “I must know if he still there.”

      “What does it matter? He kissed me!” Kinda. “That’s what you wanted to know!”

      “Yes, kiss. Good. Still...must know if he—”

      “Call the bar and ask.”

      “No. Want you to—”

      “Call his cell, then.”

      “I don’t have— Why not you go? It your job! Val, please—”

      “Job is over. Terminated. Wrapped up.” She tried to think of even more words, but those would do. “Goodbye.”

      She ended the call and tossed the phone onto the seat next to her, then frowned. Why hadn’t Marta cared about that kiss?

      Hardly the reaction of a woman whose heart had been broken. She had been teary talking about her suspected philandering fiancé in the office this afternoon, but the only thing Marta seemed upset about tonight—besides Val’s vocabulary—was her not going back to check on Drake’s whereabouts.

      Something else bothered Val about that conversation. Couldn’t put her finger on it...something Marta had said. Or didn’t finish saying. When Val told her to call Drake’s cell, she had said something like I don’t have...

      She didn’t have what?

      The nerve to call him?

      The time to make such a call?

      Val’s stomach growled. Spying one of her favorite fast-food pit stops, Aloha Kitchen, she decided to pull over. Time to put the crazy case behind her. Maybe she didn’t understand the conclusion, maybe she never would, but some things were best left in the shadows.

      * * *

      DRAKE DROVE HIS pickup along Las Vegas Boulevard. Warm breezes rushed through his open driver’s window, almost drying the sweat on his skin. Far off, a siren wailed, peppered with a variety of horn blasts. Ambulance and a fire engine? Maybe a police unit or two thrown in for good measure.

      At a red light, he glanced at his phone, which he always set on his thigh when he drove, and checked the time. A few minutes after ten. He’d be home in twenty minutes, fifteen if traffic picked up. He’d piled plenty of food into Hearsay’s bowl, so his dog wouldn’t be hungry. After a short walk around the block, Drake would be in bed by eleven. If he was lucky and fell asleep right away, he’d get three hours before his early-morning surveillance.

      Hadn’t been that lucky lately, though. At least he put his insomnia to good use. Was halfway through Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, which made him wish he had someone to drive him around while he caught up on his paperwork and made calls. Not a partner, just a grunt with a driver’s license.

      He hadn’t seen Brax’s Porsche or Yuri’s Benz when he’d walked through the Topaz lot, not a big surprise as Sally said she typically saw the cars in the wee hours. He hadn’t been in the mood to go inside Topaz. Same shift, same nonanswers. Nothing like wasting time trying to convince people to talk who didn’t want to talk.

      He passed Bonanza Gifts, its parking-lot-wide marquee advertising itself to be the world’s largest gift shop. More like the world’s largest tacky emporium, but it had been one of his favorite hangouts as a kid.

      He remembered a long-ago birthday gift, a dice clock, he’d bought for his dad there. Each hour had glued-on dice, their dots representing that number. “Snake eyes” for two o’clock, “little Joe” for four, “six five, no jive” for eleven. Over his mom’s protests, his dad had proudly hung it in the living room, over the TV. After a while, he and his dad started telling time by dice slang. “Billy’s coming over at Nina from Pasadena” meant Billy would arrive at nine. “He wants you to call at puppy paws” meant call him at ten.

      Years later, after the old man died, Drake asked for the clock, but his mom refused, playing on dice slang by answering, “Six five, no jive.”

      His dad would have gotten a kick out of that.

      He blinked at the streams of red lights ahead, swallowed feelings he didn’t want to recognize.

      Damn it to hell. He wished he had never met Val, if that was even her name. Wished he’d never heard about those damn pulsations. Like his dad would send such a message through a total stranger, especially one dressed as though she shopped at Army Surplus for Hookers.

      Whatever her scheme, he was one up on it. When she pulled out her cell, he’d memorized the caller ID. He’d run it through some proprietary databases and by the time his head hit the pillow he’d know more about Miss Who Dat than her own mama ever did.

      The phone vibrated against his thigh. He checked the caller ID. Las Vegas area code, but he didn’t recognize the number. Without moving the phone, he punched Answer, then Speaker.

      “Morgan Investigations,” he answered, raising his voice to be heard.

      “Drake Morgan?” A woman’s voice.

      “Yes.”

      “Sir, I’m a dispatcher, Clark County emergency call center, and are you the Drake Morgan who resides at...”

      As the dispatcher recited his address, the hairs bristled on the back of his neck. “That’s correct.”

      “I don’t want to alarm you, but I need to advise that your home is being worked on by several Clark County fire units—”

      “Are you saying...my house is on fire?”

      “Yes, sir—”

      Adrenaline jacked his pulse. “I’m on my way.”

      “The firefighters are doing their best, and what they need most is for you to remain calm when you arrive—”

      “My dog is inside!”

      “Anyone else?”

      “No.” He gripped the wheel with shaking hands. “My dog likes to sleep under the kitchen table!”

      Spring Mountain Road, the main artery to his street, was ahead. As he shifted to check traffic, the phone slipped and clattered onto the floorboard.

      “Look under the kitchen table!” he yelled, flipping the turn signal. “I’m on my way there!”

      Pumping the horn, he shot through an opening in traffic, straight through to the far lane. A horn blasted. He jerked the wheel left, barely missing an Audi wagon, before he wrestled a turn onto Spring Mountain.

      “Check the kitchen,” he shouted again, jamming his foot on the gas pedal, “under the table!”

      * * *

      TEN OR SO minutes later—although it felt like hours, a lifetime—he slammed the pickup to a stop across the street from his house, his stomach lurching as he saw the gray-white smoke billowing to the sky, its core pulsing orange and red. Monstrous flames shot twenty, thirty feet from the roof. The wooden structure resembled an oversize pile of kindling.

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