Joe felt himself being sucked backward into the darkness

He hurled his weight to the right until he felt the solid connection of the wall against his shoulder. Glass-covered pictures of women holding calla lilies rattled in their frames from the impact.

Just get out. Just don’t remember. Don’t ever remember.

And then the door swung open, and Emma stood before him, haloed by the golden light of a California Indian summer afternoon.

“What are you…?” she began, taking two steps toward him with those impossibly long legs of hers. “Are you okay?”

Before he could stop himself, Joe let his forehead drop down to rest on her thin shoulder. A minute. He just needed a minute and then he could talk to her and pretend everything was normal. He breathed in the warm, peaceful scent of the shampoo she used and, just for a moment, he was himself again.

House of Secrets
Tracy Montoya

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Roselyn Rysavy

(the real Scrabble Champion of the World)

and Jerry Rysavy, the greatest grandparents ever. Love you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harlequin Intrigue author Tracy Montoya is a magazine editor for a crunchy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., though at present she’s telecommuting from her house in Seoul, Korea. She lives with a psychotic cat, a lovable yet daft Lhasa apso and a husband who’s turned their home into the Island of Lost/Broken/Strange-Looking Antiques. A member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists, Tracy has written about everything from Booker Prizewinning poet Martín Espada to socially responsible mutual funds to soap opera summits. Her articles have appeared in a variety of publications, such as Hope, Utne Reader, Satya, YES!, Natural Home, and New York Naturally. Prior to launching her journalism career, she taught in an under-resourced school in Louisiana through the AmeriCorps Teach for America program.

Tracy holds a master’s degree in English literature from Boston College and a B.A. in the same from St. Mary’s University. When she’s not writing, she likes to scuba dive, forget to go to kickboxing class, wallow in bed with a good book or get out her new guitar with a group of friends and pretend she’s Suzanne Vega.

She loves to hear from readers—e-mail

TracyMontoya@aol.com or visit www.tracymontoya.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Joe Lopez—After witnessing his mother’s murder at age ten, his mind coped by erasing all memory of early childhood. But now, the man without a past is seeking answers—or maybe they’re seeking him.

Emma Jensen Reese—An English professor at St. Xavier University, Emma learns that the old Victorian home she so lovingly restored was the house where Joe spent his childhood.

Daniela and Ramon Lopez—Twenty-five years ago, they were murdered, leaving behind four children who are still searching for answers…and each other.

The Whistling Man—With a penchant for whistling Sinatra, he shadows Joe with an obvious intent to inflict harm.

Detective Daniel Rodriguez—A member of Homicide Special, the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite detective unit, Rodriguez manages to show up whenever trouble comes calling. Does he really want to help, or is the detective hiding something?

Senator Wade Allen—An extramarital affair made him the victim of blackmail. Did he order the Lopezes killed to save his political career?

Amelia Rosemont Allen—Married to Senator Allen, Amelia will do anything to support her husband.

Mavis Richards—The “other woman” in Senator Allen’s past has put the past behind her. Or has she?

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Twenty-five years ago

When the glass of her basement window shattered late one Sunday night, Daniela Lopez’s face barely registered surprise. Mainly because she didn’t feel any.

Daniela sat in the dark on the unforgiving hardwood staircase inside her Victorian home, only her eyes moving as they scanned the front door. Then the foyer. Then the inky blackness of her front hallway.

Silence.

Her thumb clicked off the safety of her off-duty Smith & Wesson—the only gun she had left after taking an extended leave of absence from work. At least she could be grateful they hadn’t sent a real professional after her. The spectacular crash the intruder had made upon entering her house gave her a small bit of comfort. Maybe she’d actually survive the night. Maybe buy herself enough time to put the last piece of the puzzle in place, to put the ones who’d murdered her husband behind bars forever. To keep the rest of her family safe.

God, she missed them. She wanted to smell the sweet baby softness of Sabrina’s hair. She wanted to scoop up both her twin boys, Patricio and Daniel, and read that ridiculous Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel book to them for the hundredth time. And, despite the fact that ten-year-old José Javier thought he was a man already, she would have held him close and sang him to sleep had he only been there beside her.

But her children were safe at her friend Jasmine’s house. And she was here. Alone in the dark.

Creak.

The unmistakable sound of pressure on the loose board at the foot of the basement stairs told her she didn’t have long to wait. She trained her gun on the doorway to the kitchen.

A few more days. Just give me a few more days. She was so close to finding out who’d ripped her family apart as if they were a chain of paper dolls. She could feel it.

She heard a soft footfall on the kitchen linoleum.

And stay away from my children, she prayed silently.

“Mama?”

She nearly dropped her gun when the tiny, boyish voice called out to her. “José?” Daniela sprang off the staircase and vaulted down the stairs to the hallway. Sure enough, there stood her oldest son, bundled in a Lakers jacket two sizes too large for him. His big, guilty eyes stared up at her under the too-long bangs of his shaggy black hair. Light from the streetlamps filtered through the slats of the window blinds, illuminating the hammer José clenched in his right fist. No doubt it was the same hammer that had smashed through glass moments before.

“Nene, what are you doing here?” she asked gently, switching on the safety of her gun. She pulled up the back of the gray LAPD T-shirt she was wearing and stuffed the Smith & Wesson in the back of her jeans.

“I don’t like you all alone here, Mama.” He crossed his arms, hammer and all, and braced his feet wide apart, his dark brown eyes all defiance. Her little man. “Not after what happened to Papi.”

Daniela’s heart clenched at the mention of her children’s father. “Corazon, I need you to go back to Jasmine’s. It’s not safe for you here.” She tugged him into the living room, where an inexpensive cordless phone lay on the end table near the terrible orange-flowered sofa the boys had picked out for her last birthday. “I’m going to call—”

“No, Mama. I’m staying here with you.”

So like his father, in every good way. Bracing her hands on José’s narrow shoulders, Daniela bent down to look her son in the eye. “Sweetheart, I need you to do something for me,” she said. “I need you to go back to Jasmine’s and watch over Sabrina, Patricio and Daniel.” His stout little form remained rigid. “I don’t like being apart from you, either,” she continued, “but I have to find out what happened to your daddy. And I’ll only be able to do it if I know you’re protecting your brothers and your sister.”

He glared fiercely at her, then his lower lip trembled as he threw his small arms around her waist. “I miss you, Mama.”

She wrapped one arm around him while pulling the gun out of her waistband with the other to keep it away from his clutching fingers. She set the weapon on the table near the phone and bent to hold her son.

And then she heard the faintest noise from the curving staircase in the front foyer. The kind of noise that sounded like something coming from the outside or something you’d imagined.

They hadn’t sent an amateur after all.

She squeezed José by the shoulders, moving him away from her body. With her finger to her lips, she guided him around the awful sofa, over to the far wall, her fingers fumbling for the small level she knew was there. That was the thing about old Victorian houses—lots of drafty alcoves, dark places, secret corners where people could hide. And one of them lay just beneath her scrabbling fingertips.

Just big enough for one small boy.

José opened his mouth to say something to her, but she placed her fingers over his lips, then gestured for him to crawl inside the opening she’d uncovered. He shook his head.

Her cop-sense told her someone had moved into the hallway behind them.

“Please, sweetheart,” she whispered. He must have heard the urgency in her voice, because he quashed his stubborn streak and moved.

“Don’t say a word, my angel,” she whispered as she helped José tuck himself inside. “Not until the police come.”

Another footstep, this one closer.

“Turn your head, baby,” Daniela whispered at the wall behind which her son lay. “Close your eyes.” José could escape when the time came. Now all she needed was a miracle.

The softest exhale came from the doorway.

Daniela turned, stretching her arms out to make herself large enough to protect her boy. Time slowed to a crawl, measured in her own thundering heartbeats. Her head swiveled toward the doorway. A shadow moved into her line of vision. She threw her weight to the side. The man before her raised his arm and pointed at her pounding heart. Her body arced toward the end table. For a few exhilarating seconds, she was flying, her hand nearly closing on the gun that lay on the end table.

She wasn’t fast enough.

Chapter One

Stumbling over a loose brick, the boy lurched down the well-worn path. The open doorway before him grew taller and wider and blacker, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. But it was no white rabbit he was chasing.

Urgency wrapped itself around his narrow chest, threatening to squeeze the air out of his thin frame. And even though he knew he had to go inside, he skidded to a stop, breathing hard. The doorway of the large Victorian house stretched and undulated above him.

He looked down at the scuffed white tops of his Nikes. He was small. Weak. And the house, which was so beautiful during the daytime, frightened him to the core in the dark.

“Mama,” he breathed, looking down at his hands. They were the hands of a ten-year-old, and the sight of them made him feel that something was very wrong. They should have been bigger hands, stronger hands. Squinting his eyes shut, he willed them to grow into the hands that should have been his. When he looked at them again, he saw they had not.

He jerked his head up, and the scenery around him blurred and darkened. Then he was inside.

“Mama?” he called, pitching his voice as low as he could to keep from sounding like a crybaby, even though he felt like one. A floorboard creaked above him, and he saw a ripple of movement in the shadows on the stairway. A breeze blew across his cheek, sending the door crashing shut behind him.

He cringed at the sound and hurled his body toward the wall, seeking the security of something to grab onto. His hand closed around one of the carved wooden newel posts flanking the large staircase in the front foyer. He traced his fingers around the whorls and dips of the carved shape of a horse’s head that had inspired many a boyhood fantasy of knights and castles and flashing swordfights. The familiarity should have been comforting. It wasn’t.

His head throbbed with a sudden, sharp pain, and he pressed his hands against the sides of his skull. “Nooo,” he moaned, not wanting to go any farther into the house, not wanting to see. Then his mother’s face floated into his line of vision, a pale oval framed by dark hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. The slight lines around her large, brown eyes crinkled with love and concern as she looked at him. They also held an unspoken message—he shouldn’t have come.

She reached for him, brushing his hair away from his forehead with the softest of touches. “Close your eyes, José Javier,” she whispered. He did.

He felt her hand on his chest, and then, with a vicious, sudden force, he was pushed back, back, back into a long black tunnel, away from his mother, away from everything. He scrambled for purchase, trying to climb out and save her from what he knew was coming. But his body kept sinking, farther and farther away.

A disembodied voice next to him, inside the tunnel, inside his head, whispered soothingly in his ear: “Turn your head, baby. Close your eyes.”

And then he heard his mother scream.

“SIR? SIR!”

He batted at the fingers that gripped his shoulder and groaned. Let go of me.

“Sir, please wake up.”

Let go.

“Wha—?” Blinking rapidly, Joe Lopez shook off the last net-like strands of the dream holding him under the waterline of consciousness. He scrubbed a hand across his face, opening his mouth wide for a loud, gaping yawn. Once he’d rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, the dream evaporated from his memory, and he finally managed to register the presence of one very flustered flight attendant. Her well-manicured hand was still on his arm.

“Sir, I’ll need you to put your seat back and tray table in its upright position, please. We’re about to land.” The woman straightened, tucking a stray lock of her sleek, blond hair behind her ear. The scowl on what would otherwise have been a pretty face told Joe she wasn’t happy with him.

“Sure. Yeah,” he muttered. He snapped the tray in place, hoping she’d hurry up and go away so the other passengers would quit staring at him. Thank God the flight to Los Angeles wasn’t full, so he had the entire row on his side of the plane to himself. Otherwise, he probably would have drooled on the people next to him. Or smacked them around. He wasn’t exactly the lightest and gentlest of sleepers, and he’d been down for the count as soon as the plane had leveled after takeoff.

Once the attendant had finally left, stopping two rows up to harass some other poor schmo who had endangered humanity by reclining his seat back half an inch, Joe turned his face toward the window. Tiny cars rode along seemingly endless ribbons of highway, matchstick-sized palm trees, and the sparkling blue waters of the Pacific lined with yellow sand beaches. Los Angeles. Man, he hated Los Angeles.

But this year, the National Association of Private Investigators was holding its annual conference in this godforsaken city, and he never missed a conference. He never missed anything related to his work—even when it meant he had to come to a hellhole like L.A. Most of the women he’d dated had told him he was “obsessed” with his work, and as a result, his relationships never lasted. They wanted more attention, more flowers, more something. And he was never able to give it to them. But there was always work, like a faithful dog.

He wasn’t obsessed. He just liked his job. He was the job. Lots of people he knew were the job. Unraveling cases was challenging, and nothing beat the feeling of taking a seemingly unsolvable puzzle and putting the pieces into neat, irrevocable order.

Okay, so sometimes really great sex beat it, but it had been awhile since he’d had anything or anyone approaching great.

Lucy Harrington, his last girlfriend, had told him he was “emotionally distant” and “completely closed off” right before she threw a dinner plate at his head and broke his brand-new high-definition TV set. That had not been great. And that had also been the last time he’d seen Lucy Harrington. Last he’d heard, she was engaged to some stockbroker from Carmel. He hoped they registered for plastic plates instead of china.

The plane dipped noticeably as the pilot hit an air pocket, and Joe’s stomach responded by doing a little tap dance that—if he hadn’t known better—he might have attributed to nerves. But of course it wasn’t. José Javier Lopez didn’t get “nerves.” It was just L.A. Maybe he was allergic to it. Because one little city was nothing to be scared of, unless you feared rank smog and a proliferation of brittle, unhappy people who’d gone to see their friendly neighborhood plastic surgeon so many times, they’d become wall-eyed.

Joe rested his forehead against the Plexiglas of the small, oval window next to his seat. So if he wasn’t scared, then why did he feel like he’d rather lop off his own head than get off that plane?

“Maybe,” Lucy Harrington said inside his head, “if you weren’t so out of touch with your emotions, you’d be able to talk about how you’re feeling, instead of repressing everything and watching baseball instead.”

Yeah, what do you know, Luce?

And for the record, basketball was his sport of choice. Anyone who’d been as interested as she had in becoming Mrs. Lucy Harrington Lopez should have known that.

What he wouldn’t give to be watching a game right now, with a cold six-pack and his dog Roadkill sitting next to him. But instead, he was minutes away from landing in Los Angeles. He turned away from the window in disgust. He’d hated the city for as long as he could remember, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember exactly why.

Story of his life. He couldn’t remember a lot of things.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Fasten Seat Belt sign has been turned on,” a voice called over the airplane loudspeaker. “Please return to your seats. We are about to start our final descent into Los Angeles International Airport. Local time is 10:37 a.m.”

Joe’s hand gripped the armrest until his knuckles looked bloodless.

Man, he hated this city.

WITH A QUICK GLANCE over her shoulder, Emma Jensen Reese shifted her grocery bags, the heavy brown paper crumpling slightly under the pressure of her forearms. He was still behind her.

Emma hadn’t actually seen him close up, but she’d registered the baseball cap, baggy mid-length coat and penchant for whistling Sinatra. Was he dangerous? She didn’t know. At every intersection, she kept telling herself that he would turn this time, that it was all in her head, that he was just some random guy who lived in the area and also needed to go to the Trader Joe’s at ten o’clock at night because he needed eggs and had a craving for those chocolate raspberry jelly things they sold. But the thoughts didn’t keep her from worrying.

Maybe she was overdramatizing the situation, but he’d been walking behind her for five blocks now. In the dark. The thought made her instinctively quicken her pace down Third, the heels of her boots echoing on the pavement.

Her ears pricked up as the faint footsteps behind her sped up accordingly. Emma’s pulse followed suit.

Maybe she was in danger.

Ridiculous. She was being utterly, completely ridiculous. After all, she’d been walking in a straight line ever since she’d left the health food store, and Third wasn’t exactly one of the most deserted streets in Los Angeles. Three cars whipped by her in succession as if to illustrate the point. She would turn down that short alley a few feet away—the one that threaded between a couple of high-rises and ended within a block of her Hancock Park neighborhood—and everything would be all right. He’d keep right on going.

She turned.

A few seconds later, so did he.

The thin, shrill notes of someone whistling “All or Nothing at All” hung shrilly in the cool night air. They screeched down her spine like the chalk sometimes did on her blackboard when she wrote too fast.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Emma muttered to herself, the words keeping time with her ever-quickening steps. The decision to enter the alley hadn’t been one of her best. In a nutshell, she’d just acted like some clueless bimbo in a B-grade horror flick, and the person behind her had her just where he wanted her. And now she was going to die. She was going to die trapped in a horrible cliché.

Glancing back at him, Emma hugged the bags closer to her body, noting that he was still about fifty feet behind her. If she started to run, so would he.

Emma kept walking. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.

She should have driven, but nooooo. She’d caved to convenience and had bought a gas-electric hybrid car instead of a wholly electric model, and so she usually walked on most errands out of guilt. No matter how late at night.

A cool summer twilight breeze blew at her back, and she tossed her head frantically when her hair flew into her eyes. For crying out loud, some gang banging hip hop artist had been shot mere blocks from where she was right at this moment, and he’d had an entire entourage protecting him. She had a rape whistle and a pound of organic butter.

Emma glanced down at the bags she held. And some free-range eggs.

Her calves ached from walking too fast in her high-heeled boots, but she pushed herself further and faster. She would not die in that alley. She would not.

The faint notes of “My Way” floated on the air to sift through her hair and disappear on the evening breeze. Mother in heaven, he was closer now. Emma swept her gaze frantically across her surroundings, weighing her options. She could keep pretending she had no idea he was behind her and hope someone would stumble upon her and come to her aid. She could walk as quickly as possible through the rest of the alley and go directly to one of the big mansions on the next street. Or, she could drop the bags and run screaming back to the nearest well-lit commercial area, hoping she could beat her pursuer. The latter seemed like the best option—if she went up to a house and the inhabitants didn’t open the door, she was finished.

Choose.

The heel of her leather boot caught in a sidewalk crack, and her ankle buckled, causing her to lurch onto the carefully tended grass beside her.

She heard him laugh behind her, a low, rumbling, ominous sound.

An eternity later, she finally made it out of the alley, and she jogged to the nearest streetlight, basking in the glow of its warm yellow circle of light. People could see her. She was safe now.

And then she felt the breath of a stranger on the back of her neck, as someone behind her whistled “Strangers in the Night.”

That was it. The next level.

Emma dropped her bags, her groceries spilling and rolling onto the sidewalk at her feet. Screaming “Fire!” as she’d been taught in the free self-defense class on campus last semester, she threw her weight forward, running toward the front walkway of her house, just ahead. Something rippled in the darkness, in front of the fat little palm tree planted near the street, and she didn’t know whether it was a person, an animal or just her imagination. She prayed it was something that would save her. “Please,” she breathed.

The silk scarf she’d wrapped loosely around her neck slid smoothly across her skin and fell away—whether of its own accord or because someone had pulled it, she couldn’t say. Quelling the urge to look behind her, she kept running in her torturous heeled boots, scrabbling through her purse for that damned whistle on her key chain. She reached deep inside her for one last burst of energy, just enough to live through this…

Then she tripped.

Time slowed to a crawl as the ankle that had buckled earlier gave out once more. It was almost as if she were floating above her body, watching herself stumble, scream, fall. Watching her pursuer pull a Taser from the waistband of his grimy jeans. Watching herself scuttle backwards on her heels and elbows like a pathetically small and scared crab.

The moonlight glinted off the Taser above her. Attack. Immobilize. Isolate. The words of the self-defense instructor came back to her with stark clarity. The pavement cut into the palms of her hands. The sounds of cars whirring along the nearby streets and highways mingled with dance music and barking dogs. The breeze blew her hair into her eyes. And Emma waited, not moving, not blinking, for the man charging toward her to do all of the above.

His attack never came. He charged right past her, toward the squat trunk of the short, leafy palm tree in front of her home, several feet away. The darkness rippled again, and a second man erupted out of the tree’s shadow, chopping his hands so both thumbs hit either side of her would-be attacker’s wrist. The Taser flew into the air, landing harmlessly a few feet away from her. Emma scuttled sideways crab-style on her hands and heels until she could reach out and grasp it by its thick plastic handle. She wasn’t sure how to use it, but at least it was in her hand and not anyone else’s.

The two shadows circled each other slowly, one with his hands clenched into fists, and the other assuming a vague, martial arts-looking stance. The one with the fists—the Sinatra freak—swung wildly, and the other man curved his body into a bow, effectively dodging the blow. He followed defense with attack, delivering a well-controlled blow to the attacker’s temple with the back of his fist. A lightning-fast punch to the stomach, knee to the head and swirling roundhouse kick to the chest, and it was all over. Her former pursuer slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Emma zapped him with the Taser anyway. Or tried to. She thought she’d missed, but then the man’s body jerked upward and he went still. Whether he’d been intentionally following her or not, she had a great story for the next Take Back the Night rally on campus.

“Are you all right?” the other man asked her, his face obscured by the shadows. He held out a hand to her, and she grasped it, allowing him to pull her off the pavement to a standing position.

“I’m fine,” she gasped. “Thank you.” She glanced briefly at her pursuer, who lay spread-eagle on his back, groaning like a child.

“Get inside.”

Emma squinted into the darkness, wanting very much to get a look at the man who might have saved her. “Who are you?” she asked.

But all around her was darkness, and her rescuer was gone. A handful of dry leaves blew around her ankles in a crackling dance, and when she looked at the ground where her pursuer had fallen, she saw that he’d disappeared, too.

In the distance, she heard the sound of someone whistling, “Strangers in the Night.”

Chapter Two

“Both of them? Gone? Even after you’d zapped that guy?”

“Pretty much.” Emma pulled her reading glasses off her face and tossed them carelessly on one of the neatly stacked term paper monoliths on her desk.

“Creepy,” replied Celia Viramontes, St. Xavier University’s now off-duty head librarian. “But let’s go back to your mystery man. You never got a good look at his face?”

Emma shook her head. “He just swooped in, saved my life—sort of, I think, depending on the actual motives of the whistling man, which are, at the moment, a mystery—and then, poof.” She flicked her hands in the air to demonstrate said “poof.” “He’d disappeared.”

“Wow.” Celia swung her legs up and thunked her Betsey Johnson sandals on a rare clean corner of Emma’s tidy but always covered desk, tugging open one of the buttons on the wine-red jacket of her fall suit. “That’s amazing.”

Emma leaned back in her chair until the hinges squeaked and gave her best friend a look that had sent many a student cowering back to their dorm rooms. “I hate it when the freshmen start researching the Romantics. You get sappy.”

Impervious to “the look,” Celia ignored her. “And what were you doing walking alone at night with serial killers on the loose?”

That made Emma sit up. “Serial killers?”

Celia rolled her eyes. “Hijole, don’t even tell me you haven’t heard about what’s been going on in this country? There are approximately thirty-five to fifty serial killers at work across the nation at any given moment. Do you ever watch the news? Pop your addled professorial brain out of the 18th century every so often?”

“TV rots your brain.” She paused. “Except for reality shows, which are often very deep commentaries on human relationships in the 21st century.”

Celia snorted. “Riiiiiight. Pick up a newspaper, then?”

Emma shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Umm…”

“You know, living in the now for at least a few minutes a day can be good for your health. You can’t just completely close yourself off like this.” Celia reached forward and plucked Emma’s glasses off the stack of papers from which they were threatening to slide off. She produced a case from a nearby drawer and neatly stuffed the spectacles inside. “You see where that gets you,” she wagged the case at Emma. “Nearly assaulted in a dark alley by a psycho, that’s where. You’re going to be thirty-five tomorrow. You should know better.”

“I’m not closed—”

“You are so,” Celia interrupted, then threw her hands up in disgust. “It’s a good thing you weren’t shuffling around with your nose in a book down that alley as usual, or you’d have been toast.”

“I do not shuffle,” Emma objected.

Placing the glasses carefully on top of a short mahogany bookshelf, Celia rose from her chair and smacked her palms against the shiny wooden surface of Emma’s desk. “You, my dear, are Rut Girl to that guy’s Mystery Man,” she announced.

“Rut Girl!”

“You teach your classes and spend the rest of your time grading papers and watching out for your mom, all sprinkled in with the occasional need to risk your life running errands in the wee hours of the night. I mean, I know you’re sometimes restoring that old house of yours, which is cool, because you’ve got that Home & Garden thing going on and it’s good to have hobbies, but get a life!” Straightening up, Celia tugged on one of the tight black curls that swirled and bobbed about her head and surveyed the room. “I know things with your mom have been tough, but you need time for you, too. You know, it’s like Thoreau said: Live deliberately. Go into the woods. Suck marrow, et cetera, et cetera.”

Emma couldn’t help it. Celia had been the head librarian ever since Emma had earned her post teaching Restoration to 18th-century literature at St. Xavier’s. They’d been friends since the moment they’d met, despite marked personality differences, so Emma should have been used to her dramatic tirades by now. But the fact was, this one hurt her feelings a little. Maybe because the assessment was so dead-on and something she pondered every year when her birthday rolled around. “Mom needs me,” she said lamely.

“I know, hon, but even she’s said she wishes you’d get out more,” Celia said gently. She sat back down in the chair. “It’s been a year, Em. Maybe it’s time to let go a little.”

Emma chewed her bottom lip, trying to ignore the tightening in her stomach. It still hurt so much to think about what might have been, what still could be. “It’s been eleven months, Celia,” she said quietly, staring at the dark screen of her desktop computer monitor. “And you know as well as I do that we’re not in the clear until this year is up.”

She heard Celia swing her legs off the desk and then felt a pair of hands pulling hers out of her lap. “I know. I don’t mean to push, but your mom and I have been talking, and we’re worried. You can’t give everything to your job and then give it all over again to Jane.”

Emma’s eyes flicked to the photo of her and her mother on her bookshelves. Only someone who knew Jane Jensen Reese well could tell that she looked paler than usual, that there were new lines around her mouth and eyes, that her smart new hairstyle was a touch too shiny and perfect, in the photo and every day in real life. “I’m scared,” she whispered. She didn’t have to tell Celia of what.

Celia clutched her hands tightly. “I know. I can see what waiting for this horrible year to finish up is doing to you. I wish I could help.”

“You do, all the time.” Emma stood abruptly and grabbed her large bag, slinging the strap over her shoulder, which sank a little with the weight. “It’ll be fine. That’s what we have to believe, right?”

“Right.” Celia flashed her a smaller, less bright version of her wide grin. “Well, come on. I’ll buy you an early birthday dinner at Ca’Brea, and then you can drive me home in that snazzy new hybrid car of yours.”

AFTER DROPPING OFF Celia at her condo, Emma pulled the snub-nosed Toyota Prius into the garage behind her house. Thirty-five. She was going to be thirty-five years old, and she’d pretty much spent all of those years—with her rigid routines and carefully planned schedules—digging her own personal rut, not just the past one. Rut Girl. Celia might as well have called her Deeply Entrenched Chasm Girl, with or without her mother’s illness.

Thirty-five years old. As she tugged her overstuffed hemp satchel out of the car, the thought stopped Emma in her tracks. Tomorrow, she would officially be in her mid-thirties. Which meant that very soon, she’d be forty. Which meant it was high time she got out and broke the routines she’d been creating since she’d learned to walk and did something extraordinary.

But what?

To date, she’d achieved all of her goals. She’d earned her Ph.D. in literature ten years ago, gotten a teaching job and had risen through the ranks to become full professor of 18th-century literature at St. Xavier University, a small liberal arts college nestled in the palm-lined shadow of the University of Southern Caifornia in Los Angeles.

And now, her time was spent in a weekly routine that, as Celia had so bluntly pointed out, rarely varied, by day, hour or even minute. Could she possibly be any more boring?

Probably not. Even her name sounded like a stuffy old lady’s—Emma Jensen Reese. Hah. “Hello,” she mimicked herself aloud as she walked around her house toward the mailbox in front, “I’m Emma Jensen Reese, professor of stuffy literature at a stuffy university with a large rod stuffed firmly up my—”

Emma halted abruptly, the heels of her shoes sinking into the soft green grass.

The so-called Mystery Man was staring at her front door. And in the daylight, he was what her students would call a hottie.

He stood before the baby palms lining the small patch of grass and flowers she called a front yard, his hands shoved into the pockets of a brown mid-length suede jacket. His face was lean, long, with sharp cheekbones and a straight, prominent nose that gave him a dignified profile. He reached up and swiped a lock of glossy black hair off his forehead, his hard mouth twisting into an expression of confusion. She knew confusion—she didn’t have a reputation for creating St. X’s most diabolical exams for nothing.

But it wasn’t his questioning look that had caused her to pause in front of her home, dropping her chin to look over the tops of her sunglasses.

Emma, you and your stupid annual craving for adventure. This happened to her every time her Intro to Literature students reached the unit on the Romantics. Last year in October, she’d nearly thrown her entire hard-won career out the proverbial window to hike the Inca Trail and build solar showers and other ecotourism infrastructure with the Quechua in Peru. And now, in her Keats-addled mind, she’d turned a man who was probably canvassing for the Sierra Club into Indiana bloody Jones. Shifting the satchel to better balance it on her hip, Emma stepped forward, prepared to dispel this year’s birthday fantasy, courtesy of the mysterious stranger, once and for all. “Hello,” she said to the man. “May I help you?”

Emma’s breath caught as he turned to face her head-on. In profile, he was a hottie. But the full frontal assault of his face was singularly striking. He didn’t respond to her question—just stared at her with a pair of deep, startlingly light brown eyes set under sharply angled black eyebrows. Emma could only stare back.

A heartbeat later, it finally occurred to her that the man could be dangerous, and what she should do is fling her bag at him and run.

But she couldn’t stop looking at him.

“What do you want?” she finally managed, her mouth suddenly dry. Dark hair, prominent cheekbones, tan skin. He looked Latino. Maybe he didn’t speak English. She tried again, in Spanish this time. “Necesita ayuda?”

His eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head, stepping close enough to her that she should have stepped backward instinctively. But she didn’t. “I don’t know what I need,” he finally said.

Oh, great. Like turning thirty-five-which-is-almost-forty, wasn’t traumatic enough without having two close encounters with the mentally unstable in one twenty-four-hour period. Ignoring the fact that having a mysterious and rather Byronic stranger talking about his needs in the middle of your front yard ranked pretty high on the romantic meter, Emma shifted the satchel in her arms, readying herself for one good fling. She had no doubt that the number of research papers she carried with her would pack a wallop.

But she couldn’t. Heaven help her, his lost expression moved her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Joe,” he said.

Then he blinked and shook his head, scrubbing a hand across his face. As she watched, the dream-like cast to his golden-brown eyes faded. His jaw tightened, his brow furrowed, until the man with the tough, uncompromising expression before her bore almost no resemblance to the one she’d been talking to mere seconds before.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly, turning his head away from her. “I don’t remember—I don’t know why I’m here.” With a sudden, quick movement, he moved across the lawn to the sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” she heard him mutter again. And then he was gone.

WHAT THE HELL was he doing here?

Joe stalked down the sidewalk, away from the giant Victorian house and the tall, pretty woman who lived there and now presumably thought he was completely deficient. “I don’t know what I need.” What the heck? His pickup lines were usually better than that.

The fact is, she’d scared him to death. Or, rather, that frilly Hansel and Gretel house of hers did, with the turret and brightly painted shutters and meticulously placed flowers and palms. Because both it and her entire goddamned neighborhood resonated somewhere deep inside him, in the darkest corners of his mind, where the secrets of his past had long lay dormant.

But she hadn’t recognized him. That much was clear. There had been one moment when Joe had looked into her green eyes and thought she had, but then it had quickly become apparent that it was just her fight-or-flight-or-scream-holy-murder mechanism kicking in.

Not that he would have blamed her for doing any of the above, the way he’d been lurking in her yard. And the thing was, he didn’t even know how he’d gotten there. One minute, he was getting into his rental car—a sweet Honda S2000 with a convertible top, a 6K VTEC engine that went from 0 to 60 in 5.2 seconds, and a roar like a topless rocket—and heading for the Convention Center; the next, he was standing in the yard of an old house doing his best impersonation of Rain Man and scaring some poor woman to death.

Maybe he needed a vacation.

Maybe he just needed to get away from that damned house.

As he approached the rental car, Joe fished his keys out of his pocket, then aimed the remote key chain in the Honda’s general direction. A shrill beep signaled that the doors were now unlocked, and he was only too happy to crawl inside and slink away. As much as one could slink inside a fire-engine-red sports car.

That was twice now that he’d been out for a drive, minding his own business, only to find himself several minutes later standing in front of that woman’s house.

That house. He’d dreamed about that house.

“Concentrate, Lopez,” he muttered to himself, whipping a right onto Figueroa, which would take him straight to the Holiday Inn he was staying at near the Convention Center. The last thing he needed was to slip into another driving coma and boomerang back to the house like some sort of Mexican lemming.

The drive back to the convention was a smooth one—light traffic, sunshine and warm breezes, and a killer ride, if he did say so himself. He parallel parked the Honda near the curb in record time, then cut off the engine and opened the car door. Maybe he’d have time to hit In-N-Out Burger before…

Holy Mexican lemming.

With one boot on the pavement and the rest of him still inside the Honda, Joe turned his head slowly, taking in his surroundings in what had to be the most surreal moment of his life.

He was back in front of that freakin’ house.

Chapter Three

“Look.” Emma yanked open the door of the flashy red sports car with such force, a few locks of her hair flipped forward into her face. With one no-nonsense flick of her neck, she sent them all flying back out of harm’s way. “I don’t know what you’re doing here—again—but you have exactly one minute to explain yourself.” As if barely escaping a violent attack and turning thirty-five-which-is-almost-forty, weren’t enough, now she apparently had a stalker on her hands. Or her house had a stalker. Either way, it was bloody uncomfortable finding some unforthcoming stranger in her personal space every time she stepped outside, and she was determined to find out what on earth it was he wanted, even if she had to keep him from driving off by taking a screwdriver to that flashy car of his. Which probably got terrible gas mileage and had a poor emissions record.

The man she knew only as “Joe” scrubbed a hand across the side of his face, pushing his glossy black hair briefly off his temple. Wearing what appeared to be his trademark dazed and confused expression, he rooted his attention firmly on the house. Even when she stepped directly into his line of vision, he gave the impression that he hadn’t noticed and was looking right through her. She wasn’t sure what was more unforgivable—his lack of manners or his lack of fear in the face of her anger. She scared the St. X football team into doing their homework, for heaven’s sake. Without Cliff’s Notes.

But still he refused to even look at her. His mouth had dropped open slightly, and for a moment he reminded her vaguely of that young guy Diane Lane had had an affair with in that Unfaithful DVD Celia had made her rent a while back.

Narrowing her eyes, Emma rattled the house keys she held in one hand. Just because he looked like a hedonistic foreign guy with a thing for older women stuck in ruts didn’t make him any less of a potential threat, but she was determined to get to the bottom of his behavior.

“Sir,” she said, “I am speaking to you. What are you doing here?”

He unfolded his tall, lean frame from the front seat of the sports car. She stepped back instinctively. “I don’t think I have an answer for you,” he said slowly, his gaze remaining on her mango-and-burnt-orange Victorian home.

Emma’s keys jangled as she looped the key ring around her forefinger. “Then perhaps you’d best concentrate until you come up with one.” She raised her hand until a small canister attached to the key chain dangled before his whiskey-colored eyes. “This is pepper spray—the kind with UV dye in it, which will brand you as a marauding psychotic while the police track you down,” she continued. “And if you don’t answer my question soon, I will spray the whole canister on your head, and then I will beat you with its empty metal shell.”

He blinked, then finally turned to look at her. For the second time that afternoon, his shuttered, cool facade snapped back into place, leaching the warmth and vulnerability out of his light eyes. “Look, lady,” he said. “There is no marauding. Do you see any marauding going on?”

Emma’s teeth clenched tightly with an audible click. She was just dying for an excuse to spray him.

“And furthermore—” He cut himself off, narrowing his eyes at the can of pepper spray she held. “You know, that’s not a good brand.”

She felt her anger slip a bit. “What?”

“That pepper spray. Sure, they say it doesn’t wash off for three days, but in field tests, they found that a little peroxide will do the trick in about five minutes.”

“But—”

“You want the good stuff, you really ought to order through the Spies-R-Us catalog.” He closed the car door behind him and leaned back against it. “That stuff lasts for a week. At least. Can’t even sandpaper it off.”

Feeling out of sorts, Emma double-checked the safety lock on the pepper spray to keep from shooting herself in the eye and stuffed it in the cargo pocket of her beige silk pants. What kind of stalker gave you self-defense tips? Maybe she should have been more patient. Maybe she should stop behaving like a paranoid jerk and figure out whether the man needed help. After all, if he’d wanted to harm her, he certainly could have done so last night, after he’d gone all Bruce Lee on her would-be attacker.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “I apologize for threatening you with this inferior brand of pepper spray. Despite your penchant for skulking in my yard, you saved my life in that alley last night, for which I never got a chance to properly thank you. So. Thank you.”

“I don’t skulk,” he muttered under his breath.

“What are you looking for, Joe?” she asked quietly. He looked up then, and something vulnerable and hurting flashed across his face. Maybe her asking was a reckless move, but he looked like he so desperately needed…something.

“You!” a deep voice boomed behind them.

Both of them turned their heads simultaneously toward the sound. A few feet away stood her neighbor, Louis Bernard, known to the neighborhood kids as Crazy Louie.

“Louis.” Emma padded across the lush grass toward where Louis was half-hidden behind a spray of night-blooming jasmine. “Is everything okay?”

But he wouldn’t even look at her. His entire being was focused on Joe. Jeez, no one paid any attention to her anymore.

Louis drew his silver caterpillar eyebrows together and rocked back and forth on bare, eggshell-white feet, which poked out from the hems of his brown knit pants. He’d missed a button on his shirt, so the right side of his collar stuck upward a little higher than the left, giving him a slightly hunchbacked look. His fingers were curled into the pages of the latest L.A. Times, which he crumpled against his chest.

“You go home!” he yelled at Joe with a childlike emphasis on each word.

“Louis, it’s all right.” Emma put a hand on one of Louis’s bony arms, rubbing his thin bicep in a manner she hoped was soothing. “This is just Joe. He’s my friend.”

Louis swayed back and forth in time to music only he could hear, tufted locks of his silver and brown hair bobbing up and down with the movement. “Joe needs to go home,” he said, a little more softly.

“He’ll go home soon,” Emma replied. Louis was the only son of her elderly neighbor, Jasmine Bernard, and although he was fifty-something, Jasmine had told her he had the emotional maturity of a child. He was also usually a gentle soul, not prone at all to screaming at her guests. Not that Joe was a guest or anything.

“I know Joe. I know Joe. I know Joe,” Louis chanted.

Louis rocked and crumpled his newspaper, breathing as if he’d just sprinted to the ocean and back. At a loss, Emma continued rubbing his arm, until he finally started to calm beneath her touch. She glanced up briefly to find Joe staring intently at the two of them, as if trying to recall whether Louis really did know him. Obviously, Joe wasn’t going home any time soon—he’d barely even blinked in response to Louis’s rant.

Perhaps sending Louis away was her best option, to keep the poor man from getting too upset. “Louis, do you think your mother might want her newspaper?” she asked gently.

“I know Joe. I know Joe. Joe’s newspaper,” he chanted in response.

“Maybe you can go give it to her, and then come back after dinner and have some juice with me.”

Louis grew quiet, though he continued to rock on his heels, then nodded.

“Come have some juice later, all right, Louis? After Joe goes home? You know I’m always happy to see you.” Jasmine was always diligent about not letting Louis stay at her house for more than half an hour, but Emma would have gladly welcomed him for longer visits. Through some miracle and despite his disability, he played the piano with a virtuoso’s touch, and she loved to hear him practice Mozart on the small antique upright in her sitting room. He’d been in a car accident as a child that had left him in his current mental state, but somehow the talent that was to be his had been left intact.

“Okay,” Louis said, staring at something on the ground only he could see.

“Great, I’ll see you later tonight.” She gave him an encouraging pat toward his house.

Louis dropped his newspaper and clutched at the buttons on his shirt. “Come to Joe’s house tonight,” he muttered as he shuffled home. “Play in the tower with Joe and Daniel.” And then he hopped up the steps to his house and disappeared inside with a slam of the screen door.

“Joe’s house?” Emma scooped the newspaper Louis had left behind off the ground and folded it carefully until it was the size of a small notebook. She turned to face the man leaning against the car behind her. The “tower” Louis had referred to was most likely the turret on the east side of her house, which left her with only one question: “Who’s Daniel?”

“No clue.” He shrugged, though she saw something flicker in his eyes. Obviously Louis’s words weren’t as meaningless to him as he’d have her think. “You were really good with him, you know?” he said.

It was her turn to shrug. “He’s sweet. I’ve never seen him yell like that. Does he know you from somewhere?”

He shook his head, his brow furrowing as the familiar confused look replaced the cocky one. “I don’t know.”

“Do you know anyone in this area?”

Pause. “I’m not sure.”

“Did you grow up here?” she persisted.

His mouth flattened, and he flipped a palm into the air. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t—”

Joe abruptly spun on his heel and walked a couple of paces away from her, his broad shoulders heaving as he inhaled deeply. A moment later, he turned back, his hands shoved into the pockets of his black, flat-front trousers. “I know I might have alarmed you coming here, and I’m only telling you this because I can’t promise I won’t do it again,” he began. “But something—” He took a deep breath, and then dove right in. “I don’t remember the first ten years of my life. Not school, not my parents, not anything.” He clenched his teeth and worked his jaw for a moment. “Something happened… It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

He leaned against the side of his car, crossing his arms as he stared blankly at her house. “All I know is that the minute I landed in this godforsaken city, something kept calling to me, bringing me to this house. And I wish for the life of me I knew what it was so I could go back to blocking it out.”

He pushed himself off the car in an explosive movement. “It’s right here,” he said, tapping his right temple with his fingers, “and I can’t see it. I can’t remember, but it’s right on the edge of my brain. That man—” he gestured in the direction of Louis’s house “—he knew me. I can feel it. But I have no idea who he is or whether I’ve seen him before.”

Emma rolled the newspaper in her hands, feeling an almost irresistible urge to touch him, to comfort him somehow. But he was a stranger, and though her gut told her she wasn’t in any danger, she didn’t want to invite trouble. In the awkward silence that followed, she unfurled the newspaper, which was dated a couple days ago, and glanced at the front page. To her surprise, the bottom right photo was a clear shot of Joe’s face scowling back at her, with a caption identifying him as one José Javier Lopez, a private detective who was receiving the National Association of Private Investigator’s P.I. of the Year award for his work on several cases about which she didn’t have time to read right now. Emma rolled the paper back up again, figuring now wasn’t the time to bring up his fifteen minutes of fame in L.A. “Do you have any family?” she asked. “Someone who can help you put together the pieces?”

“There’s no one,” he said abruptly in a tone that told her he wasn’t going to discuss that topic any further.

Darn it. First, she’d nearly gotten herself violently assaulted last night, and now she was standing here, in front of a total stranger who had been making unscheduled appearances in her front yard for the past two days, and instead of calling the police, all she wanted to do was help him. But before she could do or say anything more, Joe reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a business card, which he held out for her to take.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t mean to scare you any more than I already have. My name is Joe Lopez, and I’m a private investigator. I work mostly missing persons cases up in the Salinas Valley.”

“Emma Jensen Reese,” she responded automatically as she took the card from him. Like the newspaper caption, the card also identified him as José Javier Lopez, but he obviously preferred the more Anglicized “Joe.” “Mr. Lopez—” she began, and then stopped.

He was standing at the top of the stairs directly in front of her door—her unlocked door—and he’d gotten there so quickly and quietly she hadn’t even noticed. Before Emma could ask him what he was doing, Joe pushed the heavy wood and beveled glass door inward, stepping inside without so much as a “May I?”

She really was going to have to do something about these annual cravings for adventure before they got her killed.

THE DOOR SWUNG SHUT behind him with an audible click, bringing Joe back to reality. Somehow, he’d ended up inside Emma Jensen Reese’s house, and Emma Jensen Reese was apparently still outside. And for all he knew, he’d teleported there, because he definitely couldn’t remember letting himself in. One thing he did know—Emma Jensen Reese was probably calling the police at that very moment.

Knowing he should go back outside, Joe backed up until his body bumped gently against the door—but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t make himself leave. His eyes took in the muted burgundies and golds of the antique runners lining the hardwood hallway stretching out in front of him, the fluffy white furniture and the rich red walls, the rows of gold-framed photos and artwork. He noted with passing interest that his homeboy Diego Rivera’s art was prominently displayed in more than one frame. It was a pretty house, an obviously much-loved house. It definitely wasn’t a house that should make his hands feel clammy or his body want to lose its lunch.

But it did.

He focused on the rounded shapes and brilliant colors of Rivera’s “Flower Carrier,” knowing somehow that by doing so he was trying to avoid looking at the staircase.

Staircase. Now why would an innocuous little staircase frighten a big bad P.I. from San Francisco? Just to prove his masculinity—to himself if not to anyone else—Joe turned his head and scowled at the staircase. It was just your basic grand Victorian stairway—wide, wooden, flanked by two ornately carved newel posts.

And somehow, he knew that just behind it lay the doorway to a room he didn’t want to see.

And then the world tilted on its axis. Really not wanting Emma Jensen Reese to find him doing a face-plant in the middle of her sitting room, he focused his entire being on the newel post nearest him. The air around it clouded, blurred, until all he could see was the smooth, round contours of the carved horse’s head. He reached out with a swift, jerky motion and closed his now shaking fingers around the post. It felt familiar.

Turn your head, baby.

Snatching his hand away, Joe whirled around, searching blindly for the door.

Close your eyes.

Out. He had to get out. But his body wouldn’t cooperate, and he felt himself being sucked backward into the darkness. He widened his eyes and hurled his weight to the right until he felt the solid connection of the wall against his shoulder. Glass-covered pictures of women holding bunches of calla lilies rattled in their frames from the impact.

Just get out. Just don’t remember. Don’t ever remember.

And then the front door swung open, and Emma stood before him, haloed by the golden light of a California Indian summer afternoon. “What are you—?” she began, her voice sharper than he’d remembered, but then she took two steps forward with those impossibly long legs of hers and caught him around the arms “Are you okay?”

Before he could stop himself, Joe let his forehead drop down to rest on her thin shoulder. A minute. He just needed a minute and then he could talk to her and pretend everything was perfectly normal. He breathed in the warm, peaceful scent of the shampoo she used, and, just for a moment, he was himself again. Don’t ever remember.

“Joe? You know, the only reason I’m not calling the police is that picture of you in the paper. I figure the P.I. of the Year isn’t highly likely to be a psychopath,” she said, though her smoky, Marlene Dietrich voice had softened and her hands circled around his back in a soothing motion, much like she’d used with good old Louis earlier. “Let me take you into the living room, and you can sit—”

The mere mention of the living room was enough to make him lose it, and he pulled out of her arms to lurch toward the door. Just a few steps and he’d be outside, in his car, away from that house, this city, and the questioning eyes of Emma Jensen Reese.

Bursting through the sun-filled opening, he raced down the steps two at a time, feeling a trickle of clammy sweat slither down the side of his face to trail inside the collar of his shirt. He tried to get back to the Honda, but he only made it as far as the fat little palm tree near the edge of the walkway.

Joe fell against the tree, and he wrapped one arm around the thick trunk to steady himself, his stomach heaving as his body tried to purge the fragments of memory buried so deep inside, they burned.

EMMA FOLLOWED Joe through the doorway, pausing at the top of the stairs while he stumbled through her yard to get sick in the white sage she’d just planted around her baby palms a few weeks ago. He might be NAPI’s Investigator of the Year, but he sure was odd.

She hovered over the top step, wondering whether she should go to him or not. He might be odd, but he was also obviously in pain, and not the physical kind. Maybe she could help.

And maybe it was none of her business. Number one, he had emotional baggage. Number two, he kept appearing on her doorstep and then running away again. Number three, he had emotional baggage. Number four, she couldn’t help but think that he was good-looking, even while he got sick in her flower bed, and there was no way that would end well. Plus, she quite simply didn’t have time for this, for him.

With that, she turned and went back inside, although sheer guilt allowed her exactly half a second to ignore Joe before it propelled her to the downstairs linen closet. Reaching inside, she took out a fluffy beige washcloth, went to the front bathroom to dampen it with cold water and headed back outdoors.

Joe was still there.

As she walked toward him, she noticed a black SUV with half-tinted windows sitting across the street and a few car lengths away from Joe’s Honda. Someone was sitting inside it, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching her.

Ignoring the prickle of uneasiness she felt at the thought, Emma looked away. Better to deal first with the regurgitating evil you know than the potential spying evil you didn’t.

Squaring her shoulders, Emma marched toward Joe’s bent form, folding the cool washcloth and, when she reached him, placing it on the tanned skin at the back of his neck. She kept her hand over the cloth until his dry heaves stopped.

Swiping a hand across his mouth, Joe reached behind his head to touch the washcloth she was holding against his skin. She let her fingers slide away, and he pulled the cloth around his neck and let it rest in his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply.

“Mmm.” She took the now lukewarm cloth from him.

“I’m really sorry, Ms. Reese,” he began.

“It’s Emma,” she interjected, not bothering to correct the “Ms.” “And it’s all right. Really.”

In the awkward silence that followed, Joe reached into his jacket pocket and rattled his keys. “Well, I—”

“Look,” she said, unable to shake the feeling that he shouldn’t go. Not yet. “Whether you remember or not, there’s obviously something about you and this house. Is there anything I can do to—?”

“No!” Joe snapped, then winced. “I’m sorry. I mean, no, thank you. I just need to get back to San Francisco.”

So he’d go away, out of her yard and out of her life. Just like that.

She licked her lips, her tongue sliding across the smooth layer of beeswax lip balm she’d applied earlier. “Well. Good luck to you, then.” She tucked the newspaper under her arm and held out the hand not holding the clammy washcloth for him to shake.

He took it, her slender fingers almost disappearing inside his large, brown hand. “Same to you,” he said.

Just for a moment, Emma let herself look, really look, at the man. She inhaled, breathing in the same air, standing in the same space, feeling the warmth of his fingers. He was a stranger. He was leaving. She’d never see him again, and, as had been the case with countless strangers whose lives had intersected hers for small moments in time, that should have been perfectly fine. But it wasn’t. Something felt wrong. He wasn’t supposed to leave. There was something unfinished here, and somehow she knew it was important that he tie up the giant loose end in his life.

She had to tell him.

Emma exhaled. Her fingers slipped out of his. “Okay, then. Take care.”

He nodded. “You, too.”

He gave her a small half smile, his light eyes crinkling slightly at the corners, and then turned away.

Just like that.

Okay. Back to the house we go.

As she was about to turn away from him, she noticed him jerk around suddenly to face her once more. Her eyes followed his line of sight, and she noticed a small hole in the wooden siding of her house. Had that been there before? She stepped forward and reached up to touch it, when another appeared right next to her hand, splintering the wood with its impact. What—?

“Get down!” she heard him shout behind her. And then something hit her in the small of her back with the force of a rock avalanche.

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