These dogs are not machines, Goddammit. They are alive! They are living, feeling, warm-blooded creatures of God, and they will love you with all their hearts! They will love you when your wives and hu...
The best dog training was based on the reward system. You did not punish a dog for doing wrong, you rewarded the dog for doing right. The dog did something you wanted, you reinforced the behavior with...
The Los Angeles Police Department was surrounding their neighborhood like a gathering thunderstorm. A
That’s the way adults often talk to children. You know they’re not going to listen, but you want to tell them anyway just so you know that you have.
Stone dropped farther back when the Explorer’s blinker came on. He had to be even more careful now in the confined residential streets. His eighty-thousand-dollar Rover stood out in the shabby area li...
Stalking the Angel[Joe]I could off anybody in this place five times over.[Elvis]Could you off someone and get away with you here? [Joe]Head shake. I'm too good even for me.
Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash didn’t take up much room. It could be packed in four shoe boxes, and fit in a single grocery bag. Walsh carried the money in a gym bag slung over her shoul...
Scott turned away with Maggie at his side. He felt like an idiot for believing he had discovered a glaring discrepancy when top-cop detectives like Orso and Cowly knew the case inside and out. Scott w...
Pike’s mouth twitched, and Cole wondered if Larkin had noticed that Pike never laughed or smiled. As if the part of a man who could feel that free was dead in Pike, or buried so deep that only a twitc...
Pike unscrewed the interior light so it wouldn’t come on, then left the car. It was full-on dark now, and Pike enjoyed the darkness. Darkness, rain, snow, a storm—anything that hid you was good. He ci...
Pike said, Yanni’s building is being watched by the police. You shouldn’t go back. Yanni mumbled something in Serbian, and Rina chattered something back. She said, The police don’t care about Yanni. W...
Pike put down the phone, pushed the magazine into the gun, then jacked the slide and set the safety. If Pike could ever know bliss, it filled him now, but he showed nothing. He had them. He had a line...
Pike heard a car door slam and once more shifted to the window. Larkin Conner Barkley had gotten out of the limo to meet her father and Kline. She had a heart-shaped face with a narrow nose that bent...
POLLARD HAD NEVER been good in the morning. Every morning for as long as she could remember—months, maybe years—she woke feeling depleted, and dreading the pain of beginning her day. She drank two cup...
Not yet, but they made a very interesting offer. Her green eyes were amazing. Absolutely without bottom.
Nora wanted a house, so I bought a damn house, not her, me, and the next thing I know I’m in this toxic maelstrom, the three of them, every day, all the bullshit. I felt bad for those kids. Living wit...
Mrs. Phelps, sixty-two years old, was overweight, dowdy, and a retired sheriff’s deputy from Riverside, California. She had moved to Culver City with her new husband, a retired Los Angeles police offi...
Mr. Locano lowered the note. His cool expression told me I had insulted him. My practice is immigration law. I help clients obtain visas and green cards, and fight deportation and removal orders. If y...
Maggie swung her head from side to side, checking the high scents first, then dipped her head to taste the smells close to the ground. The humans behind her might be able to identify five or six disti...
Maggie reached the door well before Scott, and saw another door ahead. The intruder and another man were waiting beyond it. Ten thousand generations filled her with a guardian’s rage. Scott