She realized she was, again, talking about him.

“You know, I think Sullivans have either the best luck with relationships or the worst. So far my track record there’s not so great. I think I’ll focus on the work and making sure Grandpa behaves himself when G-Lil’s in New York.”

Shifting, she looked out the glass wall. “Moon’s up,” she murmured.

“I’m going to take that as my cue, get back up to the house.” He rose, walked over to kiss the top of her head. “I like thinking of you sitting here, looking out at the moon over the water. Content.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “That’s just what I am.”

While he walked up the path, she sat, watching the moon. She thought she had a great deal to be thankful for. If some of her blessings had grown out of one horrible night, wasn’t it worth it?

In the week before Christmas when the high hills carried a lacing of snow and the air snapped like a crisp carrot broken in two, Cate lit candles to fill the house with the scent of pine and cranberry. She’d decorated her own little tree, had wrapped presents—poorly, but she’d wrapped them.

Her grandparents had taken a quick trip to L.A. for a holiday party—one she’d begged out of. Instead she settled into her studio to work, and didn’t give L.A. a thought.

When she finished for the night, she shut down, checked her phone. Checked a voice mail.

“Ho, ho, ho!

Naughty, naughty. Didn’t do what you were told.”

Her own dialogue from her first voice job piped up. “I know who I am, but who are you?”

“Cate, Cate, where is Cate?”

Now her mother’s voice, gleeful. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

A scream, a laugh, and a final “Ho, ho, ho.”

Weary, Cate saved the voice mail. She’d send it to Detective Wasserman for his files.

Okay, yes, her hands shook, but only a little. And she’d do what she hadn’t done since coming back to Big Sur. She’d lock her doors.

But she’d wait until morning to call her father because why give him a sleepless night. She’d keep that upset for herself and do what she always did when the past crept into the now.

She’d find an old movie on TV, one with plenty of noise, and fill the night with sound.

And she’d wait to tell her grandparents until they returned from L.A.

The evening air held balmy in L.A. Holiday lights twinkled with the temperature hovering in the midseventies as the sun dipped down toward twilight.

Charles Anthony Scarpetti, retired from the practice of law, drew a hefty fee on the lecture circuit. He often appeared as a legal expert on CNN.

At seventy-six, with three divorces under his belt, he enjoyed the single life and the smaller home that required only two day staff and a weekly grounds crew to maintain.

He had a pool man, three times a week. He credited swimming, his preferred method of exercise, for keeping him in top shape.

Swimming, and a few careful nips and tucks. After all, he remained a public figure.

He swam every morning—fifty laps. He did another fifty every evening, with a top off in his whirlpool before bed. He’d given up cigars and refined sugar—both a sacrifice.

He slept eight hours a night, ate three balanced meals a day, kept his alcohol intake to a glass of red wine nightly.

He fully expected to live, healthily, into his nineties.

He was about to be disappointed.

At precisely ten o’clock, he stepped out of his house to cross to the pool. The underwater lights shined on the tropical blue water heated to a precise eighty-two degrees. He removed his robe, draped both it and his towel over the bright chrome curve of the ladder of the bubbling whirlpool area where he would end his last lap.

He walked the forty feet to the deep end, dived.

He counted off the laps, nothing but the water, the strokes, the count in his mind. He moved smoothly, steadily, as always in a strong freestyle.

As he counted off ten, fingers brushing the side, something exploded in his head. He feared a stroke—his housekeeper worried him constantly about swimming alone at night.

He tried to push up, push out, his eyes opening wide. He saw blood in the water, spinning like red spiderwebs in the pristine blue.

Hit his head, something had hit the side of his head. Confused, he struggled to surface, groping for the lip of the pool.

Something held him under, pushed him down.

Flailing, fighting, he gulped water. He clawed, pawed, felt his fingers break the surface. Hope cut through panic, but he couldn’t find the side, couldn’t pull himself up to the air.

When he tried to scream, water flooded his lungs.

Then the panic, the hope, the pain slid away as he sank.

Over her first cup of coffee, Cate tried to wake up her brain by going over her mental list for the day.

She’d voiced and sent the second set of five chapters on her audio-book job to the engineer and producer. Maybe she’d start on the next five. If she needed to do any fixes to the second set, she could just stop, fix, move on.

Or she could work on the couple of smaller jobs she had pending, wait to hear from the engineer.

The poor night’s sleep nudged her toward the smaller jobs.

She should work out—it might get her moving. She really should walk up to the house—that was kind of a workout—then put in an hour . . . okay, forty-five minutes in the gym.

Maybe she should do that first and avoid her typical afternoon not-enough-time excuse.

Maybe she should have a bagel.

Obviously, she just needed more coffee. Her brain would wake up, and all would be revealed.

And when she felt fully awake and steady, she’d call her father in London. Keep her promise.

She started to shuffle back to the coffee maker, and through the wall of glass saw Dillon coming down the path.

She ducked back, even knowing that he couldn’t see her through the treated glass. And looked down at herself.

Old woolly socks, old flannel pajama pants—the ones with frogs all over them—the sweatshirt she’d pulled over the T-shirt she’d slept in—tried to sleep in. The faded pink one with a hole under the left armpit and a coffee stain that resembled Italy’s boot down the center front.

She kept meaning to toss it, but it was so damn soft.

“Really?” she murmured. “Just really?”

She swiped a hand over her hair. How bad was it?

Bad.

Merde!

No makeup either—and she probably had sleep crust in her eyes.

Mierda!

She rubbed at them as she crossed over to answer his knock. Ran her tongue over the teeth she’d yet to brush.

What sort of human being came knocking on a woman’s door at eight-thirty-five in the morning?

She pulled out her most casual smile as she opened the door. And hated him, sincerely hated him in that single moment for looking just amazing.

“Hi. You’re out and about early. Where are the dogs?”

“Back home. Sorry, did I get you up?”

“No, in fact, I was just going for my second cup of coffee.” She walked back toward the kitchen, slapping herself for not putting on workout gear. Then she’d look athletic instead of lazy and sloppy. “You take it black, right? I could never manage that.”

Wishing she could at least grab a mint, she reached for another mug.