Amber was cooperative once she got on board, and Tyson was docile. We grabbed Tyson’s backpack and toiletries, and Amber stuffed a few clothes and toiletries into a tote bag. I watched what they packe...
Amber said, I love your earrings. The waitress rolled her eyes. Boyfriend medicine. Girl, don’t I know! They laughed together like besties forever. Tyson had seen Amber’s magic too many times to count...
A young Latin guy with thick shoulders and dull eyes came out when I stopped, as if he had been waiting. You the magazine guy? The magazine guy. That’s right. Elvis Cole. I have a ten o’clock with Ms....
A woman I know gave me a build-it-yourself bird-feeder kit for Christmas, so I built it, and hung it from the eve of my roof high enough to keep the birds save from my cat. But the birds scratch the s...
A taupe couch faced matching taupe chairs across a blocky coffee table. Matching end tables that were too large for the space bracketed the couch, and a generic mass-produced painting hung on the wall...
A fourth man entered, this guy a little shorter than the others, but wider, and hard to see when your eyes are blurring. He was in his fifties, with crinkly gray hair and a florid face and a dark blue...
The police could follow him without dogs or helicopters. As we banged down the stairs, I said, There’s a trail works south through the mountains to a subdivision above
Wozniak wet his lips. You’ve got Paulette and Evelyn to think about. Wozniak’s wife and daughter. The cloudy eyes flicked to Pike, as bottomless and as dangerous as a thunderhead. I’ve been thinking a...
When the light changed, the arrow dude crossed with the crowd, walking along Sunset like he was normal. Daniel clocked the dude as he passed. Big guy, hard, but he moved as if he was floating. Nasty h...
We saw the new gymnasium and the new science labs and the newly expanded library and the new theater arts building and a lot of coeds with moussed hair and bright plastic hair clips and skin cancer ta...
Twenty-eight days after the towers, Pike and I finished sealing the deck. It was slick and gleaming and smelled of marine-grade varnish. After the varnish had cured, we put the deck chairs and the Web...
Though I did manage to gain a bit of intelligence when I was in Stu’s office. Ah. I knew that she had. You could see that in her eyes, too. A kind of ferocious twinkle.
They climbed out of their car as Pike pulled in, and were waiting with their badges when he stepped from the Jeep. The man was in his fifties, with a fleshy face, thinning red hair, and a blue summer-...
There were dozens of limos and taxis and MBs and Jaguars. Suitcases were going in and out and doormen in red uniforms were whistling for the next taxi in line and guys I took to be tourists who looked...
There is a machine-like quality to Joe, as if he had tuned his body the way he might tune his Jeep, and, as the Jeep was perfectly tuned, so was his body. It was easy to imagine him doing a thousand p...
The yard and the walk outside grew crowded with cops and media people and rubberneckers from the neighborhood drawn by gathering news vans. Between questions I watched the on-air television talent fan...
The sun was low above Catalina, pushing bright yellow rectangles up my eastern wall when the door opened and Joe Pike walked in. I tipped what was maybe the second or third Modelo bottle at him. Life...
The line went dead as I checked the mirror. The blue Dodge was back, but didn’t stay long. It appeared twice more, never closer than three or four cars, and I never picked out the cars that replaced i...
The lifter didn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention, but the buzz cut was looking at everything. He scanned the storefronts and alleys and rooflines, his ice blue eyes moving in an unhurried, pract...
The girl seemed even younger in sleep, and smaller, as if part of her had vanished into the couch. With her asleep, Pike believed he was seeing her Original Person. Pike believed each person created h...