Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

“No,” Grace said, with genuine surprise.

“The coroner noticed light roots, confirmed it. His natural color appears to be sandy brown. What do you think of that?”

“Men do it, now.”

“If he was an old guy, covering gray, I’d say sure, vanity. But just darkening the brown, what’s the point unless you’re trying to disguise yourself? I’m definitely getting a feeling for this guy. Meanwhile, aloha.”

Grace lingered at her desk, thinking about the behaviors that led Henke to see Andrew as suspicious. All of it, she knew, could be taken a whole other way: He’d embarked on a dangerous journey — a quest for atonement — and was trying to protect himself.

In the case of Grace’s business card in his shoe, protecting her, as well?

No other reason she could think of.

My hero?

Her eyes began aching, every joint in her body had tightened up. Suddenly, she craved escape — from the office, the city. Her thoughts. Everything.

Maybe she would try the Big Island, again. Or Costa Rica, the rain forests sounded interesting.

Locking up, she hurried to the garage and got in the DB7. She’d take Sunset to Malibu, extending the journey a bit, she could use the decompression.

The car treated her like the smooth lover it was, working curves at far too high a speed. Maintaining control as she kept pushing the limits of her skill was first-rate distraction and by the time Grace reached the coast, she’d begun to feel just fine.

It took a while — passing through Las Tunas Beach — before she realized she was being followed.

Grace made a point of being watchful when driving alone. Tonight she hadn’t.

Big-time screwup?

Or was she imagining the intrusion? A pair of bouncing headlights — a vehicle with spongy suspension — for the last few miles?

She worked the rearview mirror. The lights were still there, shimmery amber moons.

Then they diminished as another vehicle slipped between them. And another.

Nothing to that? Or had she just seen what Shoshana Yaroslav had taught her: evasive driving? If the goal was to avoid detection, it accomplished the opposite; now Grace couldn’t stop checking.

She sped up; the car with the bouncing lights moved up. Receded. Second time that had happened in five miles. Far too much movement given the sparse nighttime traffic on PCH.

She recalled the boxy sedan she’d spotted the night of Andrew’s appointment. Rolling toward her from up the street and setting off her internal alarm, only to reverse direction and slip away. If someone really was following her, had the hunt commenced as she’d left West Hollywood?

Could this be the same car? The span between the headlights fit but that’s all she could make out.

She switched to the slow lane.

Ninety seconds later, the bouncing car did the same and now it was unshielded.

Definitely not a compact or a truck, so maybe... Grace lowered her speed abruptly, caught the car unawares, and earned a closer look.

Sedan. Boxy? Probably.

The first time she’d seen it, it had been parked near her office well after Andrew’s departure. Sometime that night, Andrew had been stalked, ending up human trash, dumped in a cold, dark place.

The timing didn’t work. So maybe she was letting her mind run away with — unless there were two people involved.

One for Andrew, one to clean up Andrew’s mess.

If he’d been tracked to her office, finding out why wouldn’t be a challenge, her nameplate — small, bronze, discreet — graced the front door.

Talking to a shrink, the ultimate sin? First Andrew had been punished and now Grace needed to be taken care of? The sedan crept up on her, she put on speed, the sedan hung back, too dark to ascertain the make and model... now it had allowed a smaller car to get in front of it.

Grace shifted lanes again.

This time the sedan took its time getting directly behind her, but there it was, following closer than ever. Grace slowed down, forcing it to brake. The sedan recovered, slowing itself, allowing a pickup to cut in front.

For all Grace knew the truck was part of a team.

But she couldn’t afford to let fear take hold, so she worked hard at building up anger. The nerve of these bastards... La Costa Beach was approaching, time to think clearly.

Going home was obviously out of the question. Once she entered her front door she’d be as vulnerable as a shooting range target. But the only escapes along PCH were dark, twisting roads snaking to canyons and dead ends.

So only one choice: keep going. But that provided no long-term solution because once she was past the Colony and the rolling hills fronting Pepperdine University, the traffic would thin further and the highway would darken and she’d be vulnerable to a bump or a swipe that ran her off the road.

A weapon aimed out of a window.

Unless she was wrong. She hoped she was but when the sedan moved up on her again and she had to push the Aston way past the speed limit, that hope died.

She knew.

Why had she let her guard down? The reason to consider that question wasn’t to beat herself up, it was to prevent recurrence of stupidity.

The obvious answer: what the Brits called brain fag. The motor neurons in her brain had been preoccupied with Andrew. Then thinking about anything but Andrew.

All that mental energy had overloaded her circuits and caused her to neglect Shoshana Yaroslav’s First Commandment: I don’t care how tough and liberated you think you are, you’re a woman, always vulnerable. So pay attention to your surroundings.

Commandment Two was: Do whatever it takes. Unless you believe in reincarnation and enjoy the thought of coming back as a bug.

No need for eight more.

Shifting slightly to the right so she could catch a better glimpse of the slow lane, Grace found it empty. Suddenly, she pushed the Aston’s throttle to the floor, reaching eighty ninety a hundred in seconds. Leaving the pickup and the dancing car and everyone else far behind.

Even at that speed, the DB7 was barely working up RPMs. Power poles zipped by like stripes on a curtain. Twelve cylinders whined in appreciation — finally you give me some exercise! — and Grace smiled. This level of speed felt like a natural state and besides, she’d flown this road before with her eyes literally closed, knew the bumps and turns and quirks, and if some highway patrol cruiser blue-lighted her, all the better, she’d be nothing but cooperative, pretend to pay attention to the officer’s tight-ass lecture, meanwhile she’d be watching from the shoulder as the bouncing car zipped by.

But as she reached La Costa, the nanosecond blur that was her house, and continued to the Malibu Pier and Surfrider, there wasn’t a trace of law enforcement to be found.

And now, by terrible attrition, only one set of headlights was behind her, maybe ten car lengths back. No longer moons, Grace saw them as eyes, now. Twin amber beacons of scrutiny.

She decelerated to seventy and the sudden bounce of the dancing car’s headlights told her it had braked precipitously, again. Pushing the Aston back up to eighty, she used its race-born agility to advantage, calling into service the performance-driving techniques Shoshana had showed her during an exhausting day at the Laguna Seca track in Salinas. Explaining to her that cars don’t go out of control, drivers do.

So avoid braking except when necessary because braking and accelerating rocks a car like a cradle and at high speeds that risks serious loss of traction and if you absolutely must brake, do it briefly, at the apex of the curve, then accelerate.

Fun stuff, then. Useful, now. Grace sped through Malibu’s western beaches, still hoping for a cop, but pleased as the bouncing headlights vanished.