LITMIR.BIZ

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been work partners and friends.

      And then sometimes, out of the blue, it sucker-punched Addy in the stomach, leaving her gasping for air and wondering whether she’d even be able to function into the next hour, much less the next decade. And all the ones that would come after.

      Too long. Too long to be without him.

      She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to pull herself together enough to finish the conversation, so she could hang up, call in sick and scream into her pillow until she fell into an exhausted sleep, the way she’d done too many times to count. Unfair.

      Unfair-unfair-unfair-unfair-unfair….

      “Addy.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Have you seen the news this morning?”

      She shook her head, swallowing hard a couple of times before she answered so she wouldn’t sound half-strangled. “No. I don’t watch the news until after dinner. It’s not a positive way to start your day.”

      “Look—” Liz exhaled sharply into the phone “—I can’t leave just now, but I’m sending someone over—”

      “No.” Clenching her teeth together so hard, she thought they might crack, Addy shook her head and willed herself to function. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Put James back in the little box inside her head where she kept him, so she could interact with others like a semi-normal human being. Howling at them in grief never made for good conversation. “No.”

      “Addy, I mean it, stay there.”

      Grabbing a paper bag from under the sink, the phone tucked between her shoulder and chin, Addy stuffed the knife into it and headed for the door. Just before she reached it, she picked up the note from the floor and put it in the paper bag, then shoved the whole mess into her tote. “No. I’m sick of letting these idiotic pranks disrupt my life.”

      Liz let out a muffled groan, and Addy could visualize the exasperated, because-I’m-the-mom look on her face. “I can’t tell you what’s going on right now, but you really ought to stay put.”

      “I’m going to my car,” Addy singsonged, feeling stronger now as she locked her front door. Defying Liz’s prudent sense of caution always had that effect.

      She made her way to the boxy little Scion XB that sat in her driveway. Fortunately, no one had yet jabbed a knife into it. “I’m getting in and turning the key. Screw you, socially stunted neighborhood children.”

      “Adriana, could you stop for a minute and tell me where the note is?”

      Addy turned the key and put the car in gear, backing slowly out of her driveway. “Sitting next to me, along with the knife. You can send one of your lackeys to the studio to get it.” Addy owned a yoga studio on Cannery Row, the trendy, store-lined street in Monterey made famous by John Steinbeck, and she had no intention of being late to her first class of the day because her neighbors were jerks. Not this time.

      “Okay, look,” Liz said, “I need you to pull over and read the note to me.”

      “Dear Miss Torres, We’re coming for you. This time we mean it, just like the other seven times. Love, your friendly neighborhood troll children,” Addy droned.

      “You know,” Liz said, her too-polite tone barely concealing her growing impatience, “you really should talk to my new partner—he’s the department go-to guy for stalking cases. He could tell you some stories about why this isn’t funny.”

      “Okay, fine.” Addy sighed and fished around in her tote for the paper bag while keeping her eyes on the road. Hearing the telltale crinkle, she opened it up and picked the note out of it, unfolding it against the steering wheel. As she hit an open stretch of road, she glanced down at the contents.

      Her hand involuntarily jerked the wheel; the car jolted to the right.

      As the note fluttered to the car floor, Addy managed to steer the Scion to the curb, where, hands shaking, she put it in Park. She pitched forward, until her forehead rested against the steering wheel. A sickly, clammy feeling prickled across her skin, and she gripped the wheel as if it were the last thing anchoring her to the sane world. Not that. She couldn’t have seen that.

      “Addy?”

      “Just a minute.” Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she slowly raised her head and picked the note up off the floor. Instead of the childish penciled scrawls or cut-out magazine letters affixed to a page of loose-leaf that she’d received in the past, what she held was a computer printout of a photo. The image was slightly pixilated, so maybe she had been mistaken….

      But then it snapped into focus. A low, soft, keening sound filled the car, and it took a moment to realize she was making it.

      “Addy?” Liz snapped, the urgency in her voice carrying through the phone.

      “Oh, God.” Scrabbling for the driver’s-side armrest, Addy punched the button to activate her automatic door locks. She twisted around to look back down her street, her pulse kicking into overdrive.

      Deserted.

      But who was hiding out there? Who had left this?

      Who would do this to her?

      Suddenly furious, she let the note fall as she smacked her hand against the window. A stinging, fiery pain shot across her palm. She curled her arm against her chest and sank back in her seat.

      “Addy, for heaven’s sake, tell me what the note said!”

      She doubled over, trying to regain control and finding that for the first time in four years, she just couldn’t. “Liz, it’s awful,” she gasped, trying desperately not to cry, not to lose it completely until she’d told her friend what she’d seen. “I can’t breathe.”

      “I’m coming over.”

      “No. I can’t go back there.” Focus. She had to focus. “God, Liz, I’m afraid to go back to my own home.” Pressing her palms against the steering wheel, she narrowed her focus to the space between her thumbs, inhaling through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. In. Out. In. Out. “It’s different this time,” she said, her voice regaining some of its former calm.

      “It’s James.” Inhale. Detach, just like her first yoga master had taught her. Detach. What shows up must be accepted without upset. “It’s a picture of James. Someone took a picture of his body the day he…” Exhale. Accept. She glanced at the slip of paper and the tremors in her body worsened. “Liz, I think this was taken right when he died.”

       Chapter Two

      Adriana hugged her elbows, feeling cold and almost painfully brittle, as if someone had opened her up and exposed her insides to the world. “You don’t think it’s just a prank?” she said into the phone. To tell the truth, she didn’t think it was just a prank, but something in her was holding on to that idea all the same, with the desperation of a shipwreck victim clinging to a piece of driftwood.

      “No, I don’t,” Liz replied softly. “I was there, remember?”

      The day Addy had lost James wasn’t one she could easily forget. But while her experience had been confined to getting the long-dreaded visit from a cop who wasn’t her fiancé, Liz’s had been far more physically painful. James had been shot in the line of duty while pursuing a killer, and Liz had been right beside him when it had happened. James’s murderer had taken Liz hostage for several hours, an experience she never talked about, which had landed her in the hospital for over a week. If the rumors were true, her clothes concealed some nasty knife-wound scars.

      Addy looked to her right, where the ocean was barely visible between two of her neighbors’ houses. She could just glimpse a tiny corner of the sharp rocks that lined their portion of the beach, around which the cold sea boiled and churned, filled with riptides ready to drag down anything that fell into it.

      Elijah Carter,

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