Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

Then she hit a straightaway near the fenced sprawl of the public beach at Zuma and all of a sudden they were back.

Gaining on her, coming right at her.

She veered sharply onto the shoulder, not liking the grinding, gnashing noise that ensued, and praying the Aston’s low-slung underbelly hadn’t been damaged.

Idling, she switched off her headlights, lifted her foot from the brake pedal to disengage the rear lights, and relied upon the emergency brake to keep the snorting beast at bay. Dark night, black car, she was sure of invisibility.

The Aston continued to fight being caged but remained in place and now she’d be ready when the sedan sped by.

But it didn’t. Had it caught on, somehow — picking up a glint of starlit glossy paint or chrome wheels or shining window?

What had given Grace away didn’t matter, only the result: Her pursuer was speeding directly at her again.

Releasing the emergency brake, she watched in her rearview, waited, and when the time was right, she turned the wheel sharply and hung a radical U that made the Aston fishtail on squealing tires.

But it righted itself quickly and Grace had barely made it across the center of the highway and into the southbound lanes when a massive shape came barreling down from the north.

During the seconds it took for Grace to speed out of its way, the semi she’d narrowly avoided sounded its Klaxons and roared by, enraged.

Eighteen-wheeler, according to the cheerful sign on its flank, a company hauling restaurant produce. Less than an instant to read all that but somehow she had.

She’d also absorbed details of the dancing car: dark, probably gray, blocky sedan as she’d theorized, maybe a Chrysler 300.

Spinning its wheels in the dirt of the shoulder as it tried to back its nose out of an embankment. Too dark to make out the plate.

Dark windows.

Stock wheels.

The sedan wouldn’t budge. The tires stopped spinning. A man got out, bulky, broad.

Clutching something at his side.

Grace raced away.

She adhered to the speed limit, reached Kanan Dume Road quickly enough, and turned off. That took her over the mountains and into the Valley, where she hooked up with the 101 East. Even at this hour, the freeway provided a fine social circle — a thin but steady stream of fellow motorists and, yes, there it was, law enforcement in the person of a CHP black-and-white in the center lane, trawling for taxpayer money, where the hell were they when you needed them?

A few miles later, she spotted another patrol car lolling in a dark spot on the north shoulder.

Try hassling me now, Sedan Boy.

She continued completely through the Valley, stuck with the 101 as it transitioned to the 134. Crossing into Burbank, she kept going, exiting at Central Avenue in Glendale because she had no connection to that bedroom community. Within moments she spotted a tall stucco-and-green glass building that proclaimed itself to be a new Embassy Suites. Parking in the sub-lot, she took stairs up to the hotel lobby and booked a room with a businesslike desk-woman.

Two rooms; the place was true to its name, with square footage larger than Grace’s beach house. Nice sterile hideaway, the welcome smell of chemically cleansed air, an amenities card boasting of high-speed Internet access, a flat-screen LCD TV, and a “cooked to order breakfast in our lush open-air atrium.”

Grace charged up her laptop, stripped down, and got under the covers.

She slept deeply.

Up at six a.m., alert but not hungry, she used the high-speed Internet access to locate a twenty-four-hour pharmacy 1.2 miles away on Glendale Avenue. A quiet walk was welcome for all sorts of reasons and she kept up a brisk pace, aware of her surroundings despite feeling no threat. Purchasing what she needed, she took a different route back to her hotel suite, did what she needed to do.

At nine a.m., a thin, pretty, deeply tan woman with boyishly short dark-brown hair wearing a bit too much makeup entered the lush, open-air atrium and asked for a corner table that would afford her a wide view of the dining room.

Once settled, she read two newspapers and enjoyed a hearty breakfast.

The only distraction during her DIY hairstyle/dye job had been thoughts of Andrew coloring his thick locks.

Once again they seemed to be linked.

And something else: picturing him with lighter hair tweaked something in her memory. As if she’d seen him before. But of course she hadn’t.

The whole point for him — the mess that had started it all — had been about finding a nonjudgmental stranger.

At ten a.m. Grace got back on the freeway and left Glendale, this time heading west. Linking to the 405 South, she drove toward LAX, located an off-site, indoor, long-term parking structure. Nosing the Aston into a corner slot, she looked around to check for security cameras or someone else’s eyes before removing the box of .22 bullets she kept in a compartment concealed by the trunk deck — what had once housed a CD player. Into her purse went the ammunition, nestled alongside the little gun, along with her garage door openers, a Maglite, an old AAA map she hadn’t consulted in years, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a black baseball cap with no insignia that she kept for top-down beach drives.

After taking a tram to the car rental lots, she walked to the Enterprise lot and selected a black Jeep Grand Cherokee with a thousand miles on the odometer.

Her next stop was Macy’s in Culver City where she bought running shoes, rubber-soled flats, underwear, black cargo pants and stretch jeans in that same color, same for T-shirts, cotton crewnecks, and mock turtles. A thin nylon jacket a size too large came outfitted with four generous pockets. Finally, a cheap but sturdy brown suitcase to house all that.

A stop at a discount food store on Sepulveda netted her all the trail mix on the shelves, caffeine-laced caramel chews, a case of bottled water, and two cheap disposable cellphones. She bought a third phone at a discount electronics shop run by a Persian guy, then beef and turkey jerky, corn chips, and dry salami at a deli near Washington Boulevard.

Now she was ready for fight or flight.

At ten p.m., she was back in WeHo. Darkness worked to her advantage as she rolled along the streets near her office. After an hour of surveillance she was satisfied the boxy sedan was nowhere in sight. She’d already convinced herself two enemies was a likely scenario, so a second car was a possibility. Another half hour of meandering and circling revealed none — and no one — out of place.

Her pursuer — Mr. Beefy — probably assumed this was the last place she’d return, especially after dark. That might make it the safest place in the city.

She parked a block away from the cottage, slipped on the lightweight jacket and the baseball hat, and dropped the Beretta into the lower right-hand pocket.

Taking a circuitous route, she arrived at her garden exit door, looked around before easing in, waited until the gate clicked behind her.

The alarm was still set. No sign of disturbance.

Keeping the house lights off, she used the Maglite to create a focused beam of guidance, proceeded to her office, and unlocked the massive five-drawer file cabinet she kept in the therapy room closet.

In the bottom drawer at the back, hidden behind personal papers, was a strongbox from which she took the Glock and a box of 9mm bullets, plus all the cash she’d stored there, which came to just over thirty-eight hundred dollars. After a bathroom break, she exited through the front of the cottage, took a different route back to the Jeep, drove for a quarter hour, returned, and parked with a view of both doors to the cottage.

Now she waited.