An older woman wearing breeches and riding boots pushed a stroller out of a driveway and into the street. I stopped to let her cross. She smiled, thanking me. I smiled, saying take your time. A tiny h...
Nostrils flickered and twitched. Her breathing pattern changed when she sniffed for a scent. Sniffing wasn’t breathing. The air she drew for sniffing did not enter her lungs. Sniffs were small sips sh...
Cat came toward him, paced away, then returned. Its dark face was as fierce as a Maori. The fur on its spine was spiked like a Mohawk warrior. Pike
As much as I’d like to lick chocolate syrup off your body, I want you to shut up.
With her sunglasses off, her eyes were red, and Cole wondered if she had been crying. She caught him looking, and flashed the crooked smile. It was smart and inviting, and could never be made by someo...
When long-term convicts were first released they often experienced a form of agoraphobia—a fear of open spaces. The prison counselors had a special name for this type of agoraphobia when they attribut...
When I went back downstairs, Jodi and Lucy were standing together, grinning. Jodi said, You’re working for Jonathan Green? My, my. Impressed. I spread my hands. He’s just another client, ladies. Mr. M...
The living room walls were crowded with trophies for excellence in the martial arts. Hundreds of them. Gleaming first-place cups and championship belts from exhibitions and tournaments all over the Un...
The girl came out of the kitchen with the pot. She looked confused as she held up the pot, her expression saying what in hell is this? Pike raised a finger, telling her to wait, then checked his watch...
Ramos nodded, then glanced back at me. His eyes were the hard, bright eyes of a feral desert dog smelling blood. Harlan
Maggie’s long German shepherd nose had more than two hundred twenty-five million scent receptors. This was as many as a beagle, forty-five times more than the man, and was bettered only by a few of he...
Larkin pushed the accelerator and felt the wind lift her hair. She bore south on Vine, then east on Wilshire, laughing as her eyes grew wet. Light poles flicked past; red or green, it didn’t matter an...
LARKIN WATCHED Pike leaving, and in the moment he stepped outside, he was framed in the open door of their Echo Park house like a picture in a magazine, frozen in time and space. A big man, but not a...
I’ll be there in five. Eight minutes later I parked in the parking garage, climbed the four flights to my floor, and walked down the hall. The building has an elevator, but tough guys climbed stairs....
If a zombie appeared, Daniel planned to jump out the window after it and rip its putrid, unnatural flesh to pieces with his teeth. He was, after all, a werewolf, which was why he was such a good hunte...
I left my car on the street, walked up across the dead yard, and a guy I took to be James Lester opened the door. He was average-sized in dark gray cotton work pants, dirty white socks, and a dingy un...
Criminals did not have friends. They had associates, suppliers, fences, whores, sugar daddies, enablers, dealers, collaborators, co-conspirators, victims and bosses, any of whom they might rat out and...
Amber swirled up from behind him, and rolled over him like a wave. We don’t have our drinks? What’s taking so long? She leaned forward across the counter, and spoke so quickly her words mashed togethe...
Twenty-two miles west of the Salton Sea, one hundred sixty-two miles east of Los Angeles, yellow dust rooster-tailed behind them as the Escalade raced across the twilight desert. The sound system boom...
The rifle was mottled with a synthetic preservative that smelled like overripe peaches. The stock and pistol grip were made of a bright orange wood that was slick with the preservative. The Russians h...