“Who killed who?”
“Grayson killed Green. I killed Grayson.”
Eve hadn’t thought a lot about Mumford over the last few days, but she couldn’t stop thinking about his sister, who’d been so eager to have her picture taken with her, the woman who’d soon kill her brother. That thought haunted Eve when she had time to think, which she tried hard not to have.
“I’ve never met a killer before,” Sherry said.
“How do you know?”
“Why bother coming for me?”
It wasn’t a bother. It was a requirement.
“Somebody has to be punished.”
The waitress studied her face. “I think it will be both of us.”
Eve was afraid that Sherry might be right. Her phone vibrated. She glanced at the screen. It was a text from Linwood Taggert.
Ronin is a go. We sold the TV series.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
This book was inspired by a fetal abduction case I learned about at a homicide investigators’ training conference for law enforcement professionals. I am grateful to Jason Weber, the public safety training coordinator at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, for the opportunity to attend the conference.
Danielle R. Galien, an associate professor of criminal justice at Des Moines Area Community College and a fifteen-year veteran crime scene investigator with the Des Moines Police Department, attended the same conference I did, was familiar with the case, and gave me an enormous amount of help.
I am also indebted to Pamela Sokolik-Putnam, a supervising deputy coroner investigator for the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner Department, for sharing her experience and advice.
I owe special thanks to retired cops Paul Bishop, Robin Burcell, and David Putnam for letting me hit them up with procedural questions at all hours of the day and night.
Eve Ronin’s continuing adventures exist because of the enthusiasm, insight, and support of my editors Gracie Doyle, Megha Parekh, and Charlotte Herscher, the marketing brilliance of Dennelle Catlett and Megan Beatie, and the negotiating finesse of Amy Tannenbaum.
Finally, the city of Calabasas, California, is a real place, and many of the locations that appear in this book, like the Lost Hills sheriff’s station, the Hilton Garden Inn, and the Commons shopping center, actually exist but the events and characters I’ve described are entirely fictional. I’ve also taken some creative liberties with geography, police procedure, and other inconvenient aspects of reality that got in the way of telling my story.