DANGER AT HER DOORSTEP

Private investigator Elisabeth Aday thinks her California women’s shelter is a safe haven—until skip tracer Liam O’Neill shows up. While searching for a missing woman, Liam unwittingly puts Elisabeth in the crosshairs of the deadly drug gang that is trailing his target. To stay alive, they must find the woman before the gang finds them. And when a second rival gang joins the search, the threats multiply. Deep in the lair of notorious drug dealers, Elisabeth can’t tell which is more dangerous—the criminals after her…or her growing feelings for the man at her side.

Someone was outside her apartment door.

Liam drew his gun from the concealed holster. He recognized the men outside as part of the gang that had attacked them earlier.

His pulse racing, he turned to Elisabeth.

She gestured with her hand, and they went out the back door. They ran to her car, the intruders gaining on them.

“Come on!” Elisabeth cried, cranking the ignition.

Just then a souped-up SUV pulled into the lot. The driver’s voice rose in anger, shouting in a language Liam didn’t understand.

But Elisabeth did.

She grabbed Liam’s shirt. “Get down! This might be bad.”

He hunched down, his eyes only inches from her face. “What do you mean?”

“The men in the SUV… I recognized their tattoos. It’s a form of Filipino script popular with gangs.”

“Those men in the SUV are gang members…” He blew out a breath as it dawned on him. “There are two gangs after us?”

She gave him a wary look. “And we’re caught in the middle.”

CAMY TANG

writes romance with a kick of wasabi. Originally from Hawaii, she worked as a biologist for nine years, but now she writes full-time. She is a staff worker for her San Jose church youth group and leads a worship team for Sunday service. She also runs the Story Sensei fiction critique service, which specializes in book doctoring. On her blog, she gives away Christian novels every Monday and Thursday, and she ponders frivolous things like dumb dogs (namely hers), coffee-geek husbands (no resemblance to her own…), the writing journey, Asiana and anything else that comes to mind. Visit her website, www.camytang.com.

Treacherous Intent

Camy Tang

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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So do not fear, for I am with you;

do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you;

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

—Isaiah 41:10

For my father-in-law, who fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Extract

Copyright

ONE

Liam O’Neill frowned as he caught sight of the gray Mercedes sedan in his rearview mirror. Hadn’t he seen that car behind him several miles back, when he was driving through downtown Sonoma?

He scrubbed his face with one hand as he guided his beat-up pickup truck down the country road. He was exhausted—the nightmares had been especially bad last night. His tiredness was probably making him paranoid. As a skip tracer, tracking down people who didn’t want to be found or helping people disappear, he had his share of enemies, but he’d been monitoring the cars behind him and hadn’t noticed any obvious tail.

Moments later, the Mercedes turned off onto a side road. Clearly he needed more sleep. He was starting to imagine things.

It had been almost eighteen months since a medical discharge had sent him home from Afghanistan. His shoulder now only had crisscrossing pink scars, but the nightmares and occasional hallucinations hadn’t faded as quickly.

His cell phone rang, and he hit the button on his Bluetooth headset to answer it. “Liam.”

“It’s Shaun.”

“Hey, how’s Dad?” Liam’s brother had taken their father to the hospital that morning.

“Tired. He’s home now. But the doctor says he’s doing fine. Only a couple more chemo treatments to go. He should be feeling well enough for Christmas in a few weeks.”

Liam couldn’t share Shaun’s optimism. Dad’s diagnosis of leukemia a few months ago had rocked him as violently as the mine that had injured his shoulder. The worst part was, cancer wasn’t an enemy he could shoot at. He couldn’t defend his father the way he defended his unit.

So he did the only thing he could—he tried to burden his family as little as possible while this was going on.

Shaun said, “Monica asked me to call you. Instead of seeing Dad this afternoon, my lovely wife wants to know if you can come tomorrow.”

Liam’s shoulders tensed. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah. Monica just wants him to nap.”

“No problem.”

Liam’s GPS unit on his dashboard began telling him to turn. “Gotta go,” he said to Shaun.

“See you later.” His brother hung up just as Liam turned into a long driveway that wound up to a large, rambling farmhouse. The only indications that it was a battered women’s shelter were the three security cameras.

He walked up the steps to the front porch and peeked into the window to see what looked like a security room with video monitors, computers and two husky men watching Liam’s approach.

There was a security intercom and he pressed the button. “I’m Liam O’Neill, here to see Elisabeth Aday.”

“I don’t have you on the visitor’s list for today, sir,” a guard replied.

“I don’t have an appointment. I need to ask Ms. Aday a few questions about one of her clients. I don’t even need to come inside, if she wants to meet me out here on the porch.”

There were heavy footsteps, then the dead bolt drew back and the door opened to reveal a man with a weathered face and jet-black hair. His wary eyes pierced through Liam, but he stepped back to let Liam enter.

He stepped into a short entry hall with a door on either side, one to the security room and another to what looked like a small conference room. The entry hall ended with a stout-looking door, obviously made with reinforced steel. Liam guessed that was the door into the shelter itself.

The security guard said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to search you, sir.”

Liam submitted readily. He had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but he’d left his gun locked in his truck. When he had given Liam a pat down and a thorough sweep with a metal-detector wand, the security guard gestured to the conference room. “I’ll call Ms. Aday to let her know you’re here.”

Liam scanned the small room, sparsely decorated with only a large table and chairs surrounding it, and a smaller table in the corner with paper cups and napkins. This must be a place where the women in the shelter could meet with outsiders—close to the security guards and separated from the rest of the house.

Within minutes, he heard the heavy reinforced door open and then close before light footsteps approached. Liam had been expecting the young woman who entered, but he hadn’t expected the gut-punch reaction to how beautiful she was.

She wasn’t model gorgeous, but there was something about the dark hazel eyes that spoke of courage, pain and compassion. Her skin seemed to glow like gold in the morning sunlight, and her dark straight hair, pulled back into a ponytail, glinted with reddish strands. But her mouth was serious, almost frowning as she looked at him. She studied him for a moment before closing the door and turning to face him.

Her self-composure and the way she waited for him to speak first was what Liam would have expected of a private investigator of her caliber. He found himself wanting to make her trust him as quickly as possible.

“I’m Liam O’Neill.”

She nodded but didn’t answer.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about one of your clients.”

“I don’t speak to anyone about my clients,” she said crisply. Her voice was low, husky.

Liam opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the front door. They both turned toward the noise, but at the rumbling sound of the security guard’s voice, speaking to whoever was outside, Elisabeth turned back to Liam.

“I’m a skip tracer,” Liam told her. “A woman named Patricia hired me to find her sister, Joslyn, who disappeared a few weeks ago from San Francisco.”

Elisabeth hadn’t moved a muscle, but Liam could tell that she had tensed and was trying not to show it.

“Patricia said that Joslyn might be escaping her abusive boyfriend and using a different name,” Liam continued. “I found out that a woman named Joslyn came here and that you helped her.”

“How do you know it’s the same Joslyn?”

“I’ve been tracking a woman who matches Joslyn Bautista’s description.” He held up his phone with a photo that Patricia had given to him. “I just want to find out if she’s safe. Her sister is worried.”

Elisabeth’s mouth tightened. Then she said in a strangled voice, “Joslyn doesn’t have a sister.”

Liam’s breath caught in his throat.

At that moment, they could hear a man’s voice speaking loudly through the intercom. “I told you, I’m with Liam O’Neill. I know he’s here already.” The voice had a faint Filipino accent.

Liam reacted instinctively. He moved toward the conference room door and tried to reach for his concealed gun before remembering he’d left it in the truck. “Get under the table,” he ordered Elisabeth before he yanked open the door.

The security guard replied to the man through the intercom, “Sir, Mr. O’Neill is in a conference with Ms. Aday. I’ll have to ask him first before I let you inside.” The guard turned his head and caught sight of Liam.

“He’s not with me,” Liam said urgently. “Don’t let him—”

There was the deafening blast of a shotgun as the wooden front door exploded into splinters. Liam leaped backward and fell against Elisabeth, who had come up behind him.

The man’s voice shouted, “You send Joslyn out here now or we’ll blow this place apart!”

* * *

Elisabeth stumbled backward into the conference room, landing hard against a chair, as Liam backed into her. The sound of the gunshot still rang in her ears.

She shoved away from Liam. “What did you do? Who are you?”

But Liam’s entire body had tensed. There was a haunted look in his dark blue eyes, and though he stared at the open doorway, he didn’t seem to see it.

She’d seen behavior like this before in ex-military men. One had reacted in exactly this way to loud bang noises—the tensed muscles, the wide unseeing eyes—a waking nightmare brought on by his post-traumatic stress disorder.

Liam carried himself tall and strong, like a soldier, and he wore his hair in a buzz cut that emphasized his sharp cheekbones and wide jaw. Was he ex-military? Was it possible he suffered from PTSD?

He gathered himself together with an effort.

“Liam,” she said urgently.

He took a few quick breaths, getting his bearings again, then turned to her. “He’s not with me.”

“He knew your name.”

“He must be working with Patricia—or whatever her name really is.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “You have to believe me.”

She had developed a habit of not trusting people readily, but she wanted to believe him. Maybe because his first reaction had been to tell her to get to safety.

Elisabeth moved to the blinds and peeked out. “He’s not alone.” There was a gray Mercedes parked behind an ancient pickup truck she assumed was Liam’s—and three other cars had just pulled up.

The man at the front door looked Filipino, with dusky skin and dark hair, and he waved a shotgun around a bit dramatically. Elisabeth pegged him as a hothead who would shoot first and ask questions later. Behind him, at the base of the porch steps, stood a shorter Filipino man who looked nervous, making Elisabeth wonder if the hothead had been ordered to attack the shelter or if he had done that on his own initiative.

The two security guards had pulled their firearms, but they remained inside the security room. Elisabeth and Liam hovered in the conference room doorway. Her primary weapon was back in the shelter, and she was just about to pull her secondary weapon hidden under her pant leg when the hothead called out, “Where’s Joslyn? I want to see her! Or else bring out that Aday woman!”

A shiver spiked through Elisabeth at the mention of her name. Liam shot her a look of concern.

“That’s it!” The hothead kicked the door open.

Frank, the security guard closest to the door, jerked back as a piece of wood flew at his face. Bill, the younger guard, recklessly rushed the hothead to try to disarm him.

Liam moved to shield Elisabeth with his body just before the shotgun went off, the sound almost masking Bill’s gasp of pain.

Elisabeth peeked out the doorway to see Bill fall to the floor clutching his shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers.

Liam was up from the ground in a flash. Elisabeth followed suit, grabbing her gun from her ankle holster.

Liam elbowed the attacker in the face, making his grip on the shotgun loosen, and then knocked the weapon away. The man threw a punch, but Liam blocked it and grabbed the man in a wrestling move. The two of them spun and staggered in the small entry hallway, thudding against the walls.

The nervous man hesitated at the bottom of the porch stairs. Elisabeth opened the conference room window and fired her pistol into the air. The nervous man ducked and scurried to the open door of the gray Mercedes. “Stay right there,” she called out.

Men had emerged from the other three cars, but at her shot, they backed behind their open doors. She wished there was a way for her to help Liam, but the armed men in front had her full attention.

One Filipino man, dressed in an expensive gray suit, purple silk shirt and purple tie, stood up so that he was only partially covered by the door of the car he’d been driving. “We only want Joslyn.”

“She’s not here. Get in your cars and drive away. No one has to get hurt.”

The man’s handsome, arrogant face creased in a vicious smile. He obviously wanted to hurt someone—probably Joslyn. Elisabeth hadn’t spent much time with the young woman, but she’d been frightened, penniless and alone with the distinctive mark of a man’s fingers around her wrist and a strange-looking cut above her eye that Elisabeth guessed was from a ring.

Elisabeth should know. She herself had a strange-shaped scar above her left cheek.

Had that mark on Joslyn’s face been caused by the flashy gold ring glinting on this man’s finger?

“I’ve already called the police,” yelled Frank’s voice from the other window. He must be like her, crouched at the corner of the open window. Most of the time, Frank and Bill were needed for enraged ex-boyfriends or husbands who came to demand their women back—not standoffs with whole groups of Filipino men in expensive cars and silk shirts. Elisabeth realized that each of them wore something purple and gray.

It would take at least fifteen minutes for a policeman to arrive. Elisabeth hoped they could hold them off for that long—without anyone getting shot. Liam still struggled with the other man.

Suddenly, a body flew down the front porch and landed on the ground. Elisabeth caught a glimpse of dark hair and a purple sock as a pants leg rode up. It was the hothead.

Immediately, Liam was beside her on the other side of the window, holding a firearm—probably Bill’s. His dark blue eyes scanned the scene in front, his mouth tight. “How long before the police can arrive?” he whispered.

“At least fifteen minutes.”

“They won’t stay put forever.”

“We only want Joslyn,” the man with the ring repeated loudly.

“O’Neill was talking to her.” It was the nervous man, still huddled behind the Mercedes, speaking to his boss.

Elisabeth tried not to flinch. She had been half hoping the chaos would make the men forget about what Frank had told them. They obviously knew all about Liam being hired to find Joslyn.

And now they knew Elisabeth’s name. She was on the shelter’s website on the volunteer page—her picture, her full name, her website link, for anyone wanting to hire a private investigator who volunteered her services for a battered women’s shelter.

Then suddenly Elisabeth heard a faint wailing. A police car, ten minutes sooner than expected. The officer must have already been in the area.

The Filipino men heard it, too. Their leader called, “Let’s go,” to them in Tagalog, and they got back in their cars. Their driving was impeccably organized—within one minute they were heading down the driveway and turning away from the shelter just as a police car shot into view. It pursued them, red lights flashing.

Elisabeth reholstered her firearm, sagging against the wall next to the window. This was something she didn’t do every day—have a standoff with eight armed men.

Liam also relaxed, breathing heavily, and lowered his weapon. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Elisabeth studied his tall, muscular frame. He looked like he’d be carrying a few bruises, but thankfully there were no signs of blood.

He turned the full force of those dark blue eyes on her, and she found it hard to breathe. She hadn’t been attracted to any man in so long...ever since Cruise. The name of her ex-boyfriend was like a bucket of cold water, and Liam turned back into just a man—a handsome one, but not one to be trusted.

“I’m sorry.” Liam’s voice was hoarse.

“For almost getting me shot or for ruining my morning?” she quipped. She needed to get some distance from what had just happened. And from the emotional intensity in Liam’s eyes.

“Those men must have followed me. While I was driving, I thought I might have been tailed, but I wasn’t sure.”

“They had four cars here. They might have used a four-car team to tail you, which would have been harder to notice.”

Unease crept into his eyes. “But what’s worse is that they followed me straight to you.”

TWO

He’d just put an innocent woman in danger.

No, it was even worse than that. He’d put two innocent women in danger.

The fact that Liam had practically delivered Elisabeth to those men on a silver platter filled him with guilt as police officers swarmed around the women’s shelter. Some of the residents were outside now, looking fearfully at the broken front door, while police officers ranged around the property, going in and out of the house through side doors.

An ambulance had pulled up front and the injured security guard, Bill, was being patched up from where his shoulder had been grazed. The older security guard was giving Bill an earful about his foolhardy actions.

Detective Carter of the Sonoma Police Department had just arrived. Liam had worked with the man several times over the past few months, contracted by the Sonoma police to track people down.

“Did you catch any of the men who drove away?” he asked Detective Carter as the officer approached.

He shook his head, his thinning red-gold hair glinting in the sunlight. “Officer Fong happened to be nearby when the security guards hit their direct signal to dispatch, but the four cars split up as soon as they left the driveway. Officer Fong followed one of them but lost the car.”

Elisabeth sighed. “I guess it was too much to hope that we got a couple of them for questioning.”

“You don’t know who they were?” Detective Carter asked.

She shook her head. “I think they were Filipino. The leader spoke in Tagalog to his men.”

“What exactly did they want?” Detective Carter asked.

“They demanded that we turn over one of my clients,” Elisabeth said.

“What client?”

“She told me her name was Joslyn Flores.”

“A few days ago, a woman who called herself Patricia hired me to find her sister, Joslyn Bautista,” Liam said. “She’d disappeared a few weeks ago, and her ‘sister’ was worried.”

“Nothing about it seemed unusual?” Detective Carter asked.

Liam grimaced. The detective had often praised Liam’s gut instincts, but they seemed to have failed him this time. “She seemed sincere. It was a little unusual when she paid the deposit in cash, but she said it was because she didn’t want her husband to know because he didn’t believe Joslyn was missing. I ran a cursory background check on her and she seemed to be who she said she was. The records showed that Patricia’s last name had been Bautista before she’d married Henry Santos, and her sister, Joslyn, lived with them in Los Angeles.”

“I know Joslyn didn’t have any sisters,” Elisabeth said. “When I was training her to go off grid, she had to be honest with me about any relatives she might run into. I saw her face. She wasn’t lying to me when she said she didn’t have siblings.”

“I should have dug deeper. A hacker could have created a credible background for Patricia,” Liam said. “Patricia said that Joslyn may have been traveling under a different last name. I followed a few leads that pointed to Ms. Aday.” Liam nodded to Elisabeth. “That’s why I came here today, to ask her if she’d helped Joslyn.”

“Did you tell Patricia you were coming here today?” Detective Carter asked.

“No. When I was driving here, I thought I might have been tailed but I couldn’t be sure. The men came in four cars, so they might have traded off tailing me.”

“Hiring a hacker and using a four-car tail?” Detective Carter frowned. “This isn’t some small operation. These guys are organized and have money.”

Liam told him about speaking to Elisabeth and being interrupted by the man at the front door who claimed he was with Liam. “The guard let slip that I was with Elisabeth. He mentioned her by name.” If only he’d been a second faster, he could have prevented that guard from saying anything.

Detective Carter looked sharply at them both. “So if he didn’t know who you’d come to see, he does now.”

Liam explained about the man shooting the door and rushing in, about Bill jumping him and Liam struggling with him. It had been a lot harder than he’d expected because his injured shoulder had flared up. He rubbed it, still feeling the ache.

Detective Carter noticed. “Your shoulder still okay?”

“It’s fine.”

The detective shook his head. “I want you to see the paramedic when we’re done here.”

“Detective—”

“Injuries like that are always bad.” The detective’s gray eyes on Liam were steely but concerned. “You don’t want to learn you’ve made things worse when you’re in the middle of chasing someone and you find you can’t pull yourself over a fence.”

Liam put his hands up in mock surrender. “Fine.”

“What injury?” Elisabeth asked.

“Shoulder wound. Afghanistan,” Liam said. It was bad enough his injury had worried his dad. Now even Detective Carter was interrupting taking their statements to worry about him. Liam couldn’t have that.

Elisabeth studied his face for a moment, and surprisingly she seemed to understand his reluctance to draw attention to his shoulder. She turned back to Detective Carter. “I tried to see the license plate but didn’t have a good enough angle.”

“I only saw a partial as they got away,” Liam said. “Three-T-something.”

Detective Carter noted it down in his notebook.

She explained the rest of what happened. Liam winced again when she mentioned how the man had told his boss that she was talking to Liam.

Detective Carter’s expression was alert. “They only got your last name?”

“But I’m on the shelter website. Full name, photograph and my professional contact info. The men only needed to use a smartphone to check the website to find me.”

“And you have no idea who they were and why they wanted Joslyn?” Detective Carter asked.

“Four cars seems excessive for an angry ex-boyfriend who wants her back,” Liam said.

“She never mentioned anything about her ex,” Elisabeth said. “She was scared and penniless. Luckily she didn’t need medical attention when she arrived. She left as soon as she could.”

“That seems unusual,” the detective said.

“It is. Most women are relieved to find somewhere safe. They’re not yet thinking about the future. Joslyn was grateful to the shelter, but she was still anxious to move on. She took off early one morning and no one saw her leave.”

“Ms. Aday, you’re in danger if they think you know where Joslyn is,” Detective Carter said.

“They don’t know for sure that she’s not at the shelter,” Elisabeth pointed out.

“I don’t know how long that’ll keep them from trying to find you,” Liam said. He saw the shiver that passed over her.

“I’ll post an officer here to make sure the shelter’s safe from any other attacks,” the detective said. “But I’m afraid we’re stretched pretty thin. Unless you’re directly threatened, I don’t believe I can get authorization for a protective detail on either of you.”

Elisabeth said, “Don’t worry, I can take care of myself,” at the same time that Liam said, “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you’re both pretty competent, but just be careful.” He nodded to them and went to talk to one of the other officers nearby.

“You need some type of protection,” Liam blurted out. “Let me help you. It’s my fault they’re after you now. I led them here.”

She blinked in surprise, and he thought he saw a hint of warmth in her hazel eyes at his concern for her. But then she lifted her chin. “I’m a licensed private investigator with advanced tactical and defensive handgun training. I think I’ll be okay.”

He was impressed. Still... “No one can be completely safe on their own. Personally, I know I wouldn’t stand a chance against eight men. The two of us could help each other out.”

Again, she blinked at him. Now she looked wary. “Help each other to do what?”

“Figure out who those men are, and why they want Joslyn so badly.” Liam looked deep into her eyes, wanting her to understand how sincere he was. “Let me help you.”

* * *

Those dark blue eyes were almost hypnotic.

Elisabeth couldn’t look away from Liam. Finally, she had to close her eyes and turn her head away.

He wanted to protect her. It had been so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to rely on someone else, to not have to always stand on her own two feet.

But trusting someone wasn’t who she was anymore. She’d had to learn that lesson the hard way—she wasn’t about to open herself up to that again.

Still, she had to admit she was touched by the deferential way he spoke to her, as if he really respected her abilities and wasn’t just placating her. Most of the men she encountered—the ones who had betrayed her and the abusers who came to the shelter in search of their victims—were condescending in the way they treated women. It surprised her to find one who wasn’t.

And really, who was she kidding? What chance did she have against eight armed men? She might be stubborn, but she wasn’t stupid.

She kept her expression cool, calculating. “What did you have in mind? I’m not much into someone shadowing my every step.”

He smiled and it transformed him, softened his wide jaw, making his eyes gleam. “I promise I’m house-trained.”

“Good, because I just got a new apartment here in Sonoma.” A muscle in her neck spasmed. She hadn’t meant to share that. There was something about Liam, some aura of safety he emitted that enveloped her, too, and made her let down her guard. She couldn’t afford to do that.

Liam looked at the people milling around, and with a gentle hand on her elbow, guided her down the long driveway.

“For starters, let’s see if we can reconstruct what happened with Joslyn. How did she find the shelter?”

“I have a few contacts in Los Angeles, some churches and shelters. They refer women to this shelter if they have an especially vindictive or persistent abuser.”

“You have no idea where Joslyn might have gone from here?”

Elisabeth chewed her lip. Was Liam truly trustworthy? But she trusted Detective Carter—she’d seen him handle some of the men who had found their victims at the shelter, and the other volunteers had always spoken highly of him. From his manner with Liam, Detective Carter obviously had respect for him. “I’m not sure,” Elisabeth said slowly, “but when I was coaching her, I mentioned Oregon once as an option, and she seemed interested.”

“Oregon’s a big state.”

“I also taught her how to hide, and it might not be safe for us to even try to find her. I don’t want to lead these men straight to her. If it comes down to it, I won’t risk Joslyn’s safety. I’d rather work on this end and try to find out who they are and why they’re after her.”

“Joslyn didn’t say anything about who she was running from?”

“No.” Elisabeth thought back to her short few days with Joslyn. “She had been badly beaten about a week before. She had bruises fading from her arms and shoulders, a cut on her face, a broken rib—I think she’d been kicked—and a broken hand. Her injuries had all been bandaged up by some clinic or emergency room.”

Liam’s expression had become grave and hard as she listed Joslyn’s injuries. “Her ex-boyfriend did that to her?”

“She seemed afraid of him, but at the same time, I thought there was some anger behind all that fear, which is unusual.” She then remembered something. “She might have had ligature marks on her wrists. At least, they looked that way to me, and they were her freshest bruises.”

“He tied her?” His voice was muffled by his tight jaw.

Men’s anger used to make Elisabeth flinch. As she’d regained her self-esteem, she’d had to train herself to face it with calm confidence, remembering she was no longer that victim. But Liam’s anger, directed at the man who’d hurt Joslyn, made Elisabeth realize he was someone who wouldn’t stand for anyone lifting a finger to her. What would it be like to have someone who wanted to guard her and care for her? She hadn’t had anyone like that since she was sixteen, when her mother died.

“Some abusers do that, but it’s unusual,” she said.

“The way I see it, the only way you or I will ever be safe is to figure out what’s going on,” Liam said.

“It sounds better than just sitting around and waiting,” she admitted. “Let’s talk to some of the women at the shelter to see if anyone knows anything about Joslyn.”

Liam nodded, but as they walked back up the driveway toward the house, he said, “We’d better be discreet. Detective Carter might not appreciate us doing our own investigation when the police are on it already.”

“I’m a private investigator. This is my job.” They walked in silence for a few moments, then she said, “You’re pretty friendly with Detective Carter.”

“He’s known my family for a long time. When I started my skip-tracing business, he sent some work my way.”

“I do some freelance for the San Francisco FBI,” she found herself saying, and bit her lip to keep herself from blurting out more. What was it about Liam that made her so eager to overshare about her life? “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was bragging.”

His eyes twinkled at her. “An occasional dose of humility is good for a man’s character.”

She didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t often met men who could make fun of themselves this way.

At the back of the house, there was a fenced-in recreation area for the residents, and Elisabeth knew the key combination to open the gate. She nodded to Witton—one of the house security guards—who stood watching over the children on the play set. As soon as some of the women saw her, they came up to talk.

“Are you all right?” Kalea, a staff member at the house, grasped Elisabeth’s hand, but she also cast a curious look at Liam.

“I’m fine. This is Liam O’Neill. He’s a skip tracer and he works with Detective Carter.”

Several of the women visibly relaxed.

Elisabeth gave an abbreviated account of what had happened.

“Joslyn?” Kalea’s eyebrows rose. “But she left weeks ago.”

“Do those men still think she’s here?” Witton’s dark brows lowered over his deep-set eyes.

“Not sure,” Liam said. “Detective Carter is assigning some officers to watch over the house, though.”

“What do they want with her?” Kalea asked.

“We don’t know,” Elisabeth said.

Kalea looked thoughtful. “She didn’t say much when she was here.”

“She enjoyed playing with the children,” one of the women spoke up.

“Miss Joslyn was sick,” said Kayoi, a precocious little girl with large eyes and a narrow chin.

Her mother tried to hush her, but Elisabeth said, “No, I’d like to know what Kayoi saw.” She knelt in front of the girl. “What do you mean, she was sick?” From what Elisabeth could tell, Joslyn had been healthy, aside from her injuries.

“She was throwing up in the bathroom,” Kayoi said. “Early in the morning, before breakfast.”

Joslyn could have been vomiting for a variety of reasons, but one zoomed to the top of Elisabeth’s list.

“I asked her if she wanted me to get Miss Kalea, but Miss Joslyn said she was only a little sick and didn’t need help.”

“Thank you, Kayoi. That’s helpful.” Elisabeth rose to her feet and caught Liam’s eye. From his expression, she figured he had made the same guess.

“Was she pregnant?” Kalea asked in a low voice.

“If she was, she didn’t tell me,” Elisabeth said.

Kalea leaned close to her. “Are you in danger from those men who are after her? Are you going to be all right?”

Elisabeth didn’t want to lie to her, but she didn’t want to worry her, either. However, Liam answered for her. “I’ll keep her safe. Don’t worry.”

His words should have annoyed her—after all, she was able to take care of herself. But his tone was earnest rather than arrogant, and if she was honest with herself, it was good to know someone had her back.

Not that she’d let herself rely on that. No, he might sound trustworthy now, but she’d seen too many broken promises to start trusting someone now just because they seemed earnest. He wanted to protect her? Fine. But she wouldn’t stop protecting herself.

Kalea squeezed Elisabeth’s hand. “We’ll be praying for you, okay?”

Elisabeth’s answering smile was stiff. She loved volunteering at Wings shelter, but the faith of the owners and the staff occasionally made her uncomfortable. She didn’t feel any affinity to a God who had failed her at some key points in her life.

She spoke to a few of the other women there, giving reassurances and answering questions, but she learned nothing new about Joslyn. She had just left a group of women when she saw Tiffany sitting alone on a bench, soaking in the sun. Tiffany didn’t obviously signal to Elisabeth, but she held her gaze and tilted her head slightly. Her expression was anxious.

Elisabeth casually walked over and sat beside her. “How are you feeling?”

Tiffany rubbed a hand over her distended stomach. “Tired. The baby’s been kicking a lot lately.”

“So you heard that the men were looking for Joslyn?”

Tiffany nodded. She whispered, “I saw her, the night she left.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. When I was heading back to bed, I spotted Joslyn just as she was closing her door. She looked scared to see me. I knew right away she was leaving. I tried to get her to stay, I told her she was safe here.”

“She didn’t believe you?”

“Joslyn said that he’d never stop looking for her until she was dead, because she’d embarrassed him. She said that she had seen him kill a man for no good reason, so he’d certainly kill her.”

Elisabeth started in surprise. “She witnessed a murder?”

“I told her to speak to Detective Carter, but she said she didn’t have proof outside of what she saw, and she wouldn’t live to testify against him. She was certain that the only way she’d ever be safe would be when he was in jail, and until then, she had to keep running from him. And then she left.” Tiffany’s lips were white. “Was he the man who came to the shelter today?”

“I don’t know.” She took Tiffany’s hand. “But don’t worry. You’re safe here.”

Tiffany nodded, but her shoulders still hunched, as if trying to protect her unborn child. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you about this.”

“I won’t.” Elisabeth gave her hand a final squeeze, then went to speak to some other staff workers.

She was distracted by the sound of children squealing. Liam had entered into a tickle war with four children at once, and they were having a grand time. Liam squirmed out of the way of little hands even as he wiggled his fingers at tummies, making the children shriek and leap aside.

The mothers laughed, and the joyful sounds seemed to erase the somber mood. The women came here out of such pain, and this lighthearted play seemed to Elisabeth to bring not just a respite but also a sense of hope for the future. And it was all because of Liam.

Finally, Elisabeth and Liam decided to leave. Two little boys clung to his legs and rode along for a few steps as he walked.

“Please, Mr. Liam, don’t go,” one of them said, looking up at him.

“You can stay in my bed,” the other one said.

Liam grinned and managed to untangle their little arms from his legs, ruffling their hair. “I’ll come back.”

As they left, Elisabeth said, “You’re really good with kids.”

“I like them.” The grin was still on his face. “I hope I have—” He stopped abruptly, and his smile faded.

Did he hope to have kids of his own? Why would that thought make him so sad?

You’re being nosy, Elisabeth told herself. Never mind that she was an investigator and she was always observing people. She didn’t want to wonder about Liam or his life. She wasn’t even sure it was a good idea to partner with him. She just wasn’t used to working with someone. She usually only depended on herself, and that was what she was comfortable with.

That thought suddenly made her feel very alone.

She shook it off and refocused on Liam. “If Joslyn is pregnant, that might be what had spurred her to run away. She’d want to protect her baby.”

Elisabeth also told Liam what Tiffany had said—keeping Tiffany’s name out of it, as she’d requested—about Joslyn witnessing her ex-boyfriend murdering someone.

“We need to look into that murder,” Liam said. “Joslyn said she had no evidence, but with our skills and training, we might find something she missed. And to start, we could look into the men who attacked us today.”

“Did you notice their clothes? They all wore purple and gray. Was it a uniform? Are they part of some organization?”

Liam hesitated, then said, “Gang colors.”

Elisabeth thought about it. “Maybe. There are a lot of Filipino gangs up and down the West Coast. But they’re mostly in the big cities.”

“They could be from one of the cities. That murder Joslyn witnessed might be important enough to make them drive to Sonoma.” Liam looked thoughtful. “I have a friend who used to be LAPD. He could chat with someone from the gang task force. But that’s just for Los Angeles.”

“I’ll call some of my contacts with the San Francisco FBI.”

“Maybe Detective Carter has contacts in Portland and Seattle.”

“We have to find a way to put Joslyn’s ex-boyfriend in jail, just like Joslyn said,” Elisabeth said. “Until then, none of us will be safe.”

THREE

“The Bagsic gang?” Elisabeth paused in the act of unlocking her apartment door. Next door, her neighbor’s dog barked frantically at them from behind the closed front door.

Liam nodded as he tucked his cell phone back in his pocket. “Nathan didn’t even have to ask his friends in the LAPD. He recognized the colors right away.”

“So he’s encountered the gang before?” Elisabeth let them inside, pausing to deactivate the security alarm. The dog’s barking leveled off as they went inside.

Liam’s first impression of her apartment was cream and sand, neutral colors, but rather than being soft or soothing, the decor felt almost sterile. Her furniture was all modular and new, although inexpensive, and everything was clean lines, simple design. Even the Christmas wreath on the front door had only simple gold balls decorating it. There were no other Christmas decorations. It struck Liam as being a sort of fortress rather than a home.

Elisabeth turned to look at him, and he realized she was waiting for an answer.

“Nathan used to be in the narcotics unit. He sometimes had to deal with the Bagsics, although they weren’t as active in his district. They deal in crystal meth.”

Elisabeth nodded and headed to the kitchen. “Want anything to drink? Water?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He’d jumped at her suggestion that they go to her apartment to do their research, partly because the internet connection at his place wasn’t always reliable, and partly because he was reluctant to bring her to the shabby duplex he rented on the outskirts of town. Focused on building his skip-tracing business, utilizing the computer skills he’d learned in the military, he hadn’t bothered with furnishings even in the eighteen months he’d been home. So he had one small card table to hold his computer and exactly three chairs. He had no curtains at the front window and he still didn’t even have a bed frame for his mattress. His sister-in-law Monica had just forced a garage-sale couch on him.

But from the day he’d moved in, he’d had pictures of his family and friends on the windowsill. He displayed his signed Buster Posey baseball and other mementos, like a slightly misshapen pottery bowl that his deceased sister had made for him when she was in high school. It held some Celtic coins and a claddagh ring that had belonged to his mother. He also displayed his vintage watch collection—nothing too expensive, but special to him because they had belonged to family members—and a few paperback books.

In contrast, Elisabeth’s apartment had no personal touches. No pictures on the narrow white mantel above the living room’s small fireplace, no mementos on the side table. There were the framed diplomas on the wall for her college degrees in psychology and criminal justice, and the multiple computer monitors set up on a table in a tiny dining room.

He realized that the apartment wasn’t a fortress—she was. What had happened to her that made her wall herself off?

She entered the dining room with glasses of water for them both and nodded toward the computer paraphernalia. “Pull up a chair.”

Liam had brought in his laptop with him in a case, so he found a clear space on the table and booted it up. Elisabeth gave him the password to her wireless internet network—or rather, one of her wireless internet networks. She had several, some with high-security protection. He also noticed that her desktop computer, which rested underneath the table, was hardwired into the cable internet and had a secondary security box attached.

He must have looked surprised, because she noticed his face and said, “I have to be careful because I have information on women on the run from some really bad men. It’s truly a matter of life and death if one of the abusers manages to find his victim.”

Liam also suspected she had a high security clearance for the work she did for the FBI. The security measures were likely for that information, too.

“So here’s what we have,” he said as she fired up her computer. “Joslyn is somehow connected to the Filipino Bagsic gang from Los Angeles. My guess is her ex-boyfriend is a gang member.”

“It makes sense. They have the money to hire someone like Patricia and to pay a hacker to make sure a background check raised no flags. The gang is probably involved in whatever murder Joslyn witnessed. We need to figure out what murder it was.”

“If Joslyn witnessed it, the victim might be someone who was connected to her. But to find out who it was, we need Joslyn’s real name. I doubt it was the one Patricia gave to me.”

“We need her boyfriend’s name, too.”

The worked side by side for an hour. Liam was used to working in silence by himself, but he found, to his surprise, that it was helpful to have someone there to bounce ideas off, or to have them offer tidbits of info they discovered in their searches. However, they couldn’t find Joslyn’s real last name, nor her boyfriend.

Liam heaved a sigh. “The problem is that the Bagsic gang members use nicknames, not their real names, on social media.”

“Or just their first names. And they’re careful about not declaring their gang affiliation on the internet.” Elisabeth frowned at her computer screen. “I wish we had more on Joslyn herself.”

They were interrupted by the sound of Elisabeth’s neighbor’s dog barking frantically, followed by the doorbell.

Elisabeth tensed. “I’m probably just being paranoid. I get visitors often enough.” She looked through the peephole, and her shoulders immediately relaxed. “It’s Kalea, from the women’s shelter.”

She opened the door. “Come on in.”

“No, I just stopped by to give you this.” Kalea handed her a crayon drawing on a piece of paper. “Kayoi drew this for you and insisted I give it to you today.” Kalea rolled her eyes.

Elisabeth smiled. “Tell her thanks.”

“See you!” Kalea waved and left.

Elisabeth shut the door and returned to the dining room. Her eyes softened as she looked down at the drawing. “This is the third drawing this month that she’s done for me.”

“Could I see it?”

She handed it to Liam. It was a very colorful picture with people scattered around a green field, with a jungle gym drawn in the corner. There were several children, each portrayed a little differently, and four adults—one with an S on her shirt, one with a ponytail, one with curly brown hair and one with long dark hair.

As Elisabeth pointed toward the people on the page, her neighbor’s dog started barking frantically again.

“The ponytail is probably me,” Elisabeth said. “The long dark hair is her mother. The curly hair is either Kalea or Tiffany, and the S on her shirt...” Elisabeth’s brow wrinkled. “Wait a minute...”

The dog was still barking. It had only barked like this when Liam and Elisabeth, and then Kalea, had been outside her apartment door. But Kalea was gone.

Someone else was outside her apartment door.

Liam shot to his feet. “No one knocked, right?”

“It might just be one of the neighbors walking past.”

“No harm in checking.” He drew his gun from the concealed belt holster he’d put back on after leaving the shelter.

He checked the peephole but saw no one in front of her door. Liam stepped behind a curtain to the side of the front window and barely touched the blinds to peek outside.

Two Filipino men in purple and gray stood outside Elisabeth’s front door, angled to avoid appearing in her peephole. Neither of them was the leader from today’s attack, but Liam remembered seeing one of them coming out of one of the other cars—he had a pockmarked face, puffy cheeks and a slightly bulging belly over his dark gray jeans.

Liam’s pulse raced, and he turned to silently signal Elisabeth to remain quiet. She nodded from her position a few feet away, slowly pulling a gun out of her purse. Her slim body was taut, alert. Although they both had their weapons, he would do everything in his power to avoid using them. This was a residential area, with families and children. A stray bullet could seriously injure or even kill someone.

He looked out again. The two men were talking in low voices, so low that he only heard a barely audible rumble. He probably wouldn’t have understood them anyway if they were speaking in Tagalog. What were they intending to do? Break down the door? Pick the lock?

One of the men moved to the front window to try to peer inside, and Liam moved against the wall so he couldn’t be seen. Elisabeth also ducked out of sight.

When the man’s shadow moved away from the blinds, Liam peeked outside again. One man crouched near the front doorknob with lock-picking tools, working frantically, while the other stood guard. Liam guessed that the neighbor’s dog barking spurred them to get inside before drawing more attention to themselves.

Liam mouthed to Elisabeth, “Is there a back door?”

She nodded and gestured with her head toward the kitchen. She only paused to reach under the table to grab a laptop case before she led the way. Liam also stopped to grab his laptop. In the kitchen, he whispered, “What about your desktop computer?”

“It’s password protected and the data is backed up on a secure cloud server,” she said. “If they try to hack my hard drive, it’ll go into security lockdown mode and wipe itself clean.”

The back door led from the kitchen out into a minuscule patio, which in turn led to a paved path that wound past the apartment complex. Elisabeth checked outside to make sure the two men hadn’t sent someone to watch the back, but there was no one there.

“Where does this path lead?” Liam asked while holstering his gun and settling his laptop in its case.

“To the south exit of the complex, or the front of this row of apartments.”

“They’ll see us if we try to run for our cars.”

“If we wait a bit, they’ll be inside my apartment, and we can go for it.”

“Let’s take your car,” Liam said quickly. His beat-up pickup was not going to cut it if the two men gave chase. Elisabeth’s Chevy sedan was in much better shape.

But they waited a second too long. When they darted for the parking lot, they heard Elisabeth’s back door open and a man’s shout. Elisabeth already had her car key in her fingers by the time they reached the car. Liam waited next to the passenger door, his leg twitching as he watched the man run closer to them.

“My next car is going to have remote unlock,” she muttered as she yanked her door open. She dived into the car and reached over to unlock the passenger door, and Liam climbed in.

The two men bore down on the car that sputtered as the engine tried to turn over. “Come on!” Elisabeth cranked the key in the ignition.

At that moment, a car pulled into the parking lot, a souped-up SUV gleaming with chrome, with elaborate scrollwork detail all along the side. The two men barely glanced at the SUV, even when the driver of the car, a man, shouted to them.

But then the driver’s voice rose in anger and spat out a sentence in a language Liam didn’t understand.

Elisabeth froze, checking over her shoulder at the newcomers.

A passenger stuck his head out the window to yell at the two men, also. He sounded even angrier than the driver.

“Oh, no,” Elisabeth breathed. She grabbed at Liam’s shirt. “Get down!”

He folded in half, his eyes only inches from Elisabeth’s face.

Men’s voices rose even louder. It sounded like there were at least three men in the SUV, and the two Bagsic gang members who had been chasing them were yelling, too. Then the SUV’s engine roared, and the squealing of tires shrieked in Liam’s ears. There were two shouts of surprise.

Elisabeth and Liam raised their heads up to peek out. The two Bagsics were cutting across the lawn between two apartment buildings and running toward the street. The SUV tried to chase them but couldn’t fit in the grassy alleyway, and so it raced out of the small parking lot.

Elisabeth didn’t wait. She started the engine and cleared the parking lot, headed in the opposite direction from the other men and the SUV.

“What happened?” Liam asked.

Elisabeth didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be thinking hard. When she stopped at a stoplight, she finally said, “This might be bad.”

“What do you mean? What did the men in the SUV say? They were Filipino, right?”

She nodded. “They said, ‘What are you doing here, Bagsic scum?’”

“The men knew they were Bagsic gang members?” Liam ran through the list of who would be familiar with the gang colors. Law enforcement. People who lived in the area the Bagsics ruled. Drug addicts who bought the Bagsics’ crystal meth. And... He grew cold. “Who were those men?”

Elisabeth chewed roughly on her lower lip, something Liam noticed she did when she was stressed.

“I couldn’t say for sure, but—the Bagsics yelled back something like, ‘You’ve got some nerve, Toomies.’ I think that’s what they said. And then they started insulting their parentage.”

“Toomies? Who are they?”

“I don’t know, but did you notice anything about the hands on the men in the SUV?”

“They both had wide tattoos around their wrists. The tattoos looked similar.”

“I think they were. I only got a glimpse of the design, but I think the tattoos were Baybayin.”

“What?”

“It’s a form of ancient Filipino script. It’s gotten popular for tattoos.”

“And both those men had the same design.” Liam blew out a deep breath. Rather than colors—or perhaps in addition to colors—they had tattoos. “Those men in the SUV were gang members. Some rivals to the Bagsics.”

The light turned green and Elisabeth drove on. She gave Liam a wary look. “But why are they in Sonoma?”

FOUR

“All my efforts to keep my home address private, and the gang found my apartment within a few hours.” Elisabeth told herself to breathe deeply, but the frustration and anger made her breaths short and harsh.

Liam kept looking behind them to make sure they weren’t followed. “They probably followed Kalea from the shelter.”

She knew that, but hearing him say it made a chill pass over her. Would Kalea be all right?

Liam continued, “If she hadn’t come here on her way home, they might have followed her home and then attacked her to make her tell them where you live.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m just grateful to God that she stopped by your apartment.”

What did God have to do with it? Elisabeth almost asked out loud, but stopped herself. She was being overly emotional after what had happened. “We need to call Detective Carter. Maybe he can send a patrol car to watch over Kalea’s house.”

“We need to call him about the attack anyway.” He took out his cell phone.

While Liam explained to Detective Carter what had happened, Elisabeth concentrated on calming down so she could think clearly. Long-term planning didn’t come automatically to her, but she’d worked hard to learn to stop and think ahead. She took in one breath through her nose, then another.

The gang was clearly prepared to target Elisabeth in order to find Joslyn. In order to get the Bagsics off her back, she still needed to find out more about Joslyn, her ex-boyfriend and the murder she’d witnessed. She and Liam needed an internet connection and a safe place to do their work. But where? She didn’t want to put anyone in danger.

Liam got off the phone. “Detective Carter said he’ll send someone to Kalea’s house. He’s also sending someone to your apartment right away. I told him we’d meet the officer there.”

Elisabeth nodded and turned the car around.

The apartment doors were still unlocked, but otherwise it looked the same as when they’d left. Officer Joseph Fong arrived quickly. He was the same policeman who had arrived first at the women’s shelter this morning, and who had given chase to the escaping gang members.

“Hey, Liam, twice in one day,” the young policeman joked. “I’m going to think you’re my fans.”

“Or you’re ours,” Liam said with a smile.

Officer Fong cleared Elisabeth’s apartment for them, but it was empty, as they had expected. He took their statements.

“At least they didn’t do any damage to the place,” the officer said. “From what you said, it sounds like they left to chase after you two practically as soon as they broke in.”

“There were other guys who showed up,” Liam said, and told him about the souped-up SUV who chased after the gang members. Liam and Elisabeth both tried to draw the scrollwork they’d seen on the side of the SUV, but both their efforts were pretty bad.

“Were any of those the same guys from this morning?” Officer Fong asked.

Liam told him about the pockmarked man he’d recognized, and confirmed that both the men who had broken in were dressed in purple and gray.

“If I’d known this morning they were Bagsics, I’d have used a different tactic when trying to drive after them.” Officer Fong gave a huff of frustration. “Bagsics are known for their driving skills.”

“That’s right, you were in LAPD before you came to Sonoma,” Liam said.

The officer nodded. “When I heard your statement about what the men were wearing, I recognized the gang colors right away and told Detective Carter.”

“What else can you tell us about the Bagsics?”

“They’re not a huge gang, and they’re better organized than most,” Officer Fong said. “The leadership is smart, but the younger captains are more impulsive, and it causes friction. At least, that’s what the situation was when I was down in L.A.”

“They’re into meth dealing?” Liam asked.

“Big-time. The LAPD has been trying to crack down on the Bagsics’ ephedrine supply—the precursor for meth production—from the Philippines, but they haven’t been able to stop their shipments into the Port of Los Angeles. Because it’s the Bagsics, we should have a patrol car check up on you—”

“I’m not staying here,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll find somewhere to lie low.”

Officer Fong looked uncertain about her answer, but then his police radio crackled. “All right. I’ll get going. Let us know if you need anything.” With a wave, the policeman headed back to his squad car and drove off.

“I feel exposed,” Elisabeth said as she and Liam went back inside her apartment. “I don’t want to stay here now that the gang knows where I live. What if they show up with guns blazing and one of my neighbors gets injured by a stray bullet?”

Liam nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. My friend Nathan just bought a house on the outskirts of Sonoma. If we take the time to make sure we’re not followed, we can stay there for a little while and the gang won’t find us.”

Liam explained that Nathan was ex-LAPD and now worked as head of security for a high-end apartment complex. She would guess his home security would be good and that he would be prepared if the gang found them at his house. “Does he have any family living with him?”

“Not yet. He’s getting married in the spring, but his fiancée lives with her parents right now.” Liam got out his cell phone. “Why don’t you get what you need and I’ll call to ask him?”

Elisabeth unlocked her hard drive and put it in her wall safe. She then packed an overnight bag.

Liam got off the phone. “Nathan said it’s fine for us to stay with him. Ready to go?”

She gestured for him to go ahead while she set her alarm. Stepping outside, she found Liam on his back under her car. “Checking for tracking devices,” he said.

She had intended to do the same, but was glad to have another set of eyes. “Thanks.” She said it awkwardly, not because she wasn’t grateful, but because she wasn’t used to having someone else help her.

After her car was cleared, she drove around for an hour, with Liam checking behind them to make sure they weren’t followed. Remembering what Officer Fong had said about the Bagsics being known for their skilled driving, and the four-car tail that had followed Liam to the women’s shelter, it was hard to feel confident that they weren’t being tracked. But they couldn’t drive around forever—eventually they had to head to their destination.

It was almost dark when they finally turned into a narrow driveway that ended at a horse fence and a low-barred gate. A tall, lean man was already there to swing open the gate and close it behind her car.

Liam rolled down the passenger-side window. “Nathan, nice timing. How’d you know we were coming up the driveway?” The main highway and some lengths of the winding driveway wouldn’t be easily visible from the house where it sat between the rolling foothills.

Nathan grinned. “I put in a sensor that warned me when you turned into the driveway from the highway.”

“That’s handy. Nathan, this is Elisabeth Aday.”

Nathan nodded to her, then gestured to the house. “You can park alongside the garage.”

The ranch-style home was modest and looked extrasmall sitting in the middle of the generous yard all around it. There was a jungle gym and sandbox beneath a large oak tree in the corner.

“He doesn’t have kids, right?” She wouldn’t endanger Nathan’s family no matter what kind of security he might have.

“Not yet. His fiancée, Arissa, is guardian to her niece. They’re still living with Arissa’s parents.”

When she got out of the car after parking, the winter wind sliced through her sweater. Plucking her laptop case and overnight bag from the backseat where she’d tossed them, she rushed for the front door to the house.

Nathan was already there, holding the door open. “Come on in.”

Elisabeth hurried inside the wide foyer and out of the wind, Liam following her. An arched doorway to her right led into a living room.

“Have a seat.” Nathan sat in a blue chair in front of a low coffee table holding a carafe and mugs. “Coffee?”

“Please.” Elisabeth dropped onto a green sofa opposite him and set her bags on the floor. Liam dropped into the seat next to her and let out a sigh.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” Nathan poured coffee for them all.

Liam went over what had happened.

“It’s safer for you to hide out here.” Nathan regarded them with serious green-gray eyes. “You can stay as long as you like.”

“We don’t want to put you in danger,” Elisabeth said.

“If the gang finds you, it’s better to have three people against them than just the two of you.”

“I needed to talk to you anyway.” Liam told him about the SUV of Filipino men who had interrupted the attack by the Bagsics.

Nathan frowned. “There are a couple Filipino gangs in L.A. with tattoos to identify them. You can ask Detective Carter to talk to some of his contacts in San Francisco and Portland, but unless you can draw the tattoo...”

Elisabeth shook her head. “I didn’t get a good enough look. I only recognized that the writing was Filipino script. The Bagsics called them Toomies.”

“Sounds like a nickname. It could be for a couple different gangs.”

“Joe Fong took our statements at Elisabeth’s apartment,” Liam said. “He told us a bit about the Bagsics. What do you know about them?”

“Not much. They didn’t venture into my station’s section of Los Angeles very often. I know the other gangs were jealous that their meth trade was doing so well. They dealt out of a few bars and clubs to wealthier customers.”

“That reminds me, I had an idea for how to find out more about Joslyn,” Elisabeth said.

“I’m guessing you two still have research to do,” Nathan said. “You can use the dining room table. You guys hungry?”

Liam grinned. “Always.”

Nathan gave them his wireless password and went to fix sandwiches for them as they set up their laptops. As Nathan set the platter of sandwiches in front of them, Liam said, “Thanks. For everything.”

Nathan gave a half smile. “Just returning the favor. I’ll leave you to it.”

Elisabeth stared at Nathan’s retreating back, then looked to Liam. “What did he mean by that?”

“Last year, he and his fiancée needed help, and I was able to give it.” He suddenly scowled. “Come to think of it, that involved a Filipino gang, too. I must be a magnet or something,” he muttered.

Elisabeth didn’t pry, although she was dying to. “Back at my apartment, Kayoi’s picture gave me an idea. The drawing of the girl with an S on her shirt was Joslyn—she probably drew Joslyn since we were all talking about her. I remember that T-shirt. It said Sayawan, which means ‘dance party’ in Tagalog.”

Liam’s eyebrows rose. “So it was either a fashion statement or...”

“Or maybe a promo item from a club. And Nathan mentioned the Bagsics deal meth out of clubs, right?” Elisabeth opened an internet browser window and began typing. “There’s a club in L.A. called Sayawan,” she crowed. “Earlier, when I was looking through social media pics, I wasn’t paying attention to where the photos were taken.”

Liam grinned at her. “There’s a good chance someone has a picture of Joslyn at the club, especially since she was wearing the T-shirt.”

They each took different social media sites and searched for pictures taken at Sayawan. Elisabeth found the picture they wanted almost right away.

It was a shot taken several months ago, with Joslyn smiling into the camera with a handful of friends posing around her. The faces in the photo had been tagged with people’s names.

“Joslyn Dimalanta,” she said.

“You found her?” Liam left his chair to come look over her shoulder, close enough that she caught a whiff of cedar, and pine, and a lower note of musk. It made her want to close her eyes and breathe it in. She shook off the strange feeling.

“Isn’t that that guy in the gray suit from the shelter this morning?” Liam pointed to a man not posing for the picture, but caught in profile in the background.

“It’s fuzzy. I can’t be sure.” She hovered her pointer over the man’s face, but he hadn’t been tagged.

“Well, at least we’ve got a place to start.” Liam smiled at her, and her vision swirled for a moment before righting itself.

She was relieved when Liam returned to his chair.

“Now that we’ve got Joslyn’s last name, I’ll continue to look through social media. You take public records?” she suggested.

“Sure.”

Elisabeth looked at who had posted the picture of Joslyn—Esther North. She was very big into photography—usually people, a few nature shots—and according to her photos, she was friends with Joslyn and had seen her several times in the past few months.

Joslyn’s own social media had been pretty sparse in the months before she came to Sonoma. She was tagged on some older photos online, but not a lot of recent ones. Which wasn’t surprising for a woman in an abusive relationship—many times, the abuser isolated the victim from her old friends. Or she stopped going out because of the bruises.

But Esther had a set of candid photos of Joslyn at a chain electronics store, Perkins Electronics, dressed in an employee’s uniform. The photos were artistic shots, as if Esther were practicing taking wedding candid photos. She was taking pictures not only of Joslyn but also of other customers and employees, yet—perhaps because Esther knew Joslyn—the missing woman featured in a larger percentage of the photos.

Esther had caught her at several angles, with several different people who looked like customers. She was smiling in a few of the photos, with a shy tilt to her head and lift of one shoulder.

One photo was a candid of Joslyn speaking to a tall, handsome Filipino man dressed in an expensive gray suit. He was slightly turned away from the camera, but from his partial profile, it seemed he was smiling. Joslyn was clearly smiling up at him.

In the second photo, the two were posing for Esther’s camera and the man had his arm around Joslyn a little tighter than a casual acquaintance would hold her.

Elisabeth sucked in a sharp breath. It was the same man in the gray suit from this morning.

Joslyn looked happy. The date was a few months ago, so the photo might have been taken early in their relationship, before Joslyn had discovered what a monster he was.

The two comments below the photo seemed to be from Esther’s friends. User BillMP46U seemed to be a photographer because he said, “Cute couple, Esther! Nice way to work around those terrible lights in the store, too!”

The next comment was posted by user Fairydust9437. “Nice photo, Joslyn! Is that Tomas? Wow, he’s a cutie.”

Elisabeth hovered her pointer over his face to see if he’d been tagged in the photo. He had, but only his first name popped up: Tomas.

“Liam, I think I found him.” She swiveled her laptop around so he could see. She couldn’t have him standing so close to her again, looking over her shoulder. It did strange things to her breathing.

“Tomas.” The name came out from Liam’s throat like gravel.

“His clothes are pretty stylish here, too. I think he’s higher up in the hierarchy of the gang, a captain or something.”

Liam frowned. “Well, I think I found the murder she was talking about.” He slid his laptop across the table to her so she could read the website he’d pulled up. “It was buried at the bottom of the fourth or fifth page of search results.”

It was a newspaper article from a few weeks ago about a man found brutally beaten and then stabbed to death in his apartment off Silas Avenue. The victim’s name was given as Felix Dimalanta, a longtime widower. Police were looking for his missing daughter, Joslyn, who was wanted for questioning.

Her stomach twisted sharply. The murder victim was Joslyn’s own father?

The article was brief, barely two paragraphs, and there were no pictures. The report mentioned that the police welcomed any information on the case and that they had talked to Joslyn’s coworkers at Perkins Electronics and also to her classmates at Twin Springs College, where she was working to get her computer software engineering degree.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “It never even occurred to me that she might be wanted by the police. All I saw were her bruises.”

“When did she arrive at the shelter? How was she, emotionally, when you first saw her?”

“She arrived only a few days after this homicide. There was this...deep grief and horror in her eyes. You could tell she’d recently suffered a terrible blow. I had assumed it was from her last beating, but now I think maybe it was still shock from her father’s death.” Elisabeth blew out a frustrated breath. “I should have known there was something deeper going on than Joslyn just needing to escape her ex.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. She was injured. Naturally you’d be focused on her safety, not worrying about any type of criminal activity she might have been involved in.”

“We really don’t yet know how she was involved in her father’s murder,” Elisabeth said. “He was beaten and then stabbed, so based on her height and frame, it’s unlikely Joslyn could have caused that much damage. But did Joslyn witness her father being murdered, as she claimed, or was she involved somehow?”

“To answer that question, we’d have to find out why Tomas killed him. From what I’ve found about Felix Dimalanta on social media, he didn’t have any ties to the Bagsics or any other gang. He didn’t have a social media profile, but he had friends who do and they tagged his name on photos.”

“Can I see the photos?”

Liam took his laptop back, and after a few clicks of his track pad, gave it to her to look.

Felix Dimalanta had a strong face, a protective set to his shoulders. Elisabeth could see him doing everything as a single parent to care for his daughter and raise her right.

There were photos of him at an inexpensively decorated birthday party, at a couple fast-food restaurants eating with friends, and a cute picture of him riding his bike somewhere and waving to the camera. No photos at upscale restaurants, dressed up for a party or going out to a show.

“He seems to have lived a very modest lifestyle,” Elisabeth said.

“The only thing odd about that is his watch.”

“His watch?” Elisabeth peered at the photos. He wore the same watch in all the pictures, so it might have been the only watch he owned, the one he used every day.

“I like vintage watches, which is why I noticed it,” Liam said. “That’s a vintage Rolex—and a pretty valuable one. It might be old enough to have been passed down to Felix by his father. It’s the only expensive item he wears, and it’s not really the type of watch you’d expect of someone making money from drug deals. So I’m guessing he’s not involved in the Bagsics’ meth trade.”

“Well, Tomas killed him for a reason, and now he’s after Joslyn.”

“The only way to stop the threat against you and Joslyn is to stop Tomas.” Liam had a determined glint in his blue eyes as he held her gaze. “We need to investigate this murder, find evidence and put Tomas in jail.”

It was true. Tomas had resources, and he had already shown he absolutely needed Joslyn—and he’d go through Elisabeth to get her. Elisabeth should have been fearful, but instead she was angry and determined. Years ago, she had made a decision that she wouldn’t let any man bully her ever again. She would not let Tomas get away with this. “There’s only so much we can do with internet research. We have to go to L.A.” The heart of Bagsic territory.

Liam’s expression was sober. He understood the risks they were taking. “We don’t know yet if Tomas told his superiors about you and me in his search for Joslyn. It could be that the gang won’t realize Tomas is after us.”

At that moment, a distinctive beeping pattern sounded. Within seconds, Nathan appeared, his face tight. “Are you expecting anyone?” he asked abruptly.

“No,” Liam answered. “No one even knows we’re here.”

“Well, I’m not expecting anyone, and that was the sensor for my driveway. Someone’s here.”

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