align="center">
Chapter Three
Though even under torture Daniel Cardenas wouldn’t have shown it, coming face-to-face with Adriana Torres for the first time in four years felt something like the time a bank robber had hit him with a stun gun.
He’d come to Cannery Row looking for her, so the fact that she’d gotten into the car wasn’t the shock of the century. It was her face, or more accurately, her expression, the way she walked, the way she moved, as if she was constantly trying to fold into herself. He’d known her for nearly a decade, and although they’d been no more than casual acquaintances, he’d never seen her look so…subdued.
Then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew what she’d been through. Violence changed you, especially when it happened to someone you loved.
Beautiful girl. I wish we could have saved him.
He got out of the car and walked around it to open her door. She ignored his outstretched hand.
“Liz said you have a wireless Internet connection,” he told her as she unfolded her tall, slender frame from the car. He reached into the backseat, pulling out his laptop case. “If you don’t mind my connecting to it, I’ll tell you everything you should know.”
When Liz had called him aside as they’d gotten back to the station after processing last night’s crime scene to ask him a favor, he’d said yes before she’d even had time to explain what she wanted. Because that’s what you did when a fellow cop needed you. That’s what you did when your partner needed you.
And when she’d told him that Elijah Carter, if he were indeed still alive, might decide to target the late Detective Brentwood’s fiancée, he’d shuffled his caseload for the next month to make Adriana a priority. He’d even offered to cancel his diving trip to the Caymans, which was supposed to start tomorrow. You never turned your back on a fallen cop’s family. But Liz had insisted he go.
He followed her up the small pathway flanked by flowers and a couple of shrubs that were so overgrown an army of burglars could hide in them. She unlocked the door, which had both a door lock and a dead bolt—good. And then they were inside.
He remembered when he’d been there last time. Adriana was an amateur artist, and the whole place had been decorated with vibrant oil paintings, photographs and objects encrusted in stained-glass mosaic tiles. Now it felt as if someone had come along and sucked most of the color out of the room—all of her pieces were gone, save one coffee table with a mosaic top made of broken china. The majority of the room’s surfaces were now bare—those that weren’t held candles or photographs of Adriana with James Brentwood. Her home had become as dark and drab as the black clothes she wore.
Though he’d known her for a long time, he hadn’t known her well. But funny thing—he still missed the color.
Adriana gestured for him to sit on the pale-green couch, as she pulled a fluffy gray throw off its cushions and hurriedly folded it. Gathering up a couple of mugs that sat on the coffee table, she hustled them into the kitchen, then hustled back and sat down in the chair across from him. She leaned forward to swat at some dust he couldn’t see on the coffee table, then finally relaxed.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was going to have company. I mean, other than Liz who is used to my chaos.”
“’S’okay,” he replied. “We just need someplace quiet to talk.” Leaning toward her, he rested his elbows on his knees. “Liz wanted me to advise you on the best ways to protect yourself, and how the MPD can help.”
Her only answer was to grab a dark throw pillow and hug it to her chest.
He pulled his laptop out of its case and set it on the table, firing it up on battery power. “Like you said earlier, I’m the one who handles most of the stalking cases we get, which isn’t quite the situation we have going on here, but it translates. I was also on the task force handling Elijah Carter’s case—”
“I remember,” she said, a faraway look in her eyes. “You came here. The day James—”
“Yeah.” He cut her off before she could say died and go into what else lay unspoken between them, including the fact that he’d been the one to tell her that her fiancé had been killed. It was his face she imagined when she thought about the worst day of her life. His arms that had wrapped around her for comfort when they should have been James Brentwood’s.
It never got easier, telling people they’d lost someone. They knew as soon as they saw a cop coming to their door that the news would be the worst kind. Some of them dropped to the ground in hysterics, wailing before you could say a word. Some of them cried silently, tears streaming down their faces until you’d finished your piece, and then they couldn’t slam the door on you soon enough. Some argued with you, somehow convinced that they could undo the truth by making you take back your words. And some bolted, figuring if they could outrun you, they could outrun the news you’d brought.
Adriana’s reaction haunted him more than any other, maybe because it had been connected to the premature death of his own friend and colleague. Or maybe because he’d seen her through the years at department gatherings, and he’d known what she’d been like when she’d been happy.
Her pretty face had crumpled before she’d collapsed into a chair, and then she’d just reached her arms out, as if James would come any second to hold her. Of course, he hadn’t. And Daniel had been a damn poor substitute, under the circumstances.
He remembered the way her tears had soaked through the fabric of his jacket, and the frustrated helplessness he’d felt. More than any other house call, except the ones that were about children, he wished then that he could have made the news of her boyfriend’s death untrue.
He remembered the curve of her neck, and the way her hair smelled like spices. He remembered not wanting to let her go and then mentally kicking his own ass for even going there.
He remembered wanting to keep her safe. He still wanted to keep her safe.
“I never thanked you…then. You stayed with me for so long.” Picking up yet another picture of herself and James from the coffee table, she traced her finger around the wooden frame. “That must have been so awful for you.”
He looked away, jabbing at the space bar as if it would make his computer boot up faster. “You did say thank you. I was just doing my job.”
“You did more than your job, Detective.”
Adriana put the photograph down and shifted her focus to him.
She should have looked scared, but instead she just seemed tired. And not at all like the vibrant free spirit he’d seen on James’s arm during their shared years on the force.
Every time he’d noticed her at a department function or when she’d drop by the station to see James, she’d wrapped herself in blazing, bright colors and wild patterns. All the better to advertise the stuff she sold at the Trashy Diva, her used-clothing store, James had once explained. But she’d sold the store, he’d heard, and at Brentwood’s funeral she’d worn black.
Four years later, she was still wearing black—black sweatshirt tied around the waist of her black exercise pants, the whole outfit finished off with a black tank that hugged her flat stomach and a waist he could have spanned with his hands. The only color in her clothing choices was the bit of silver embroidery on her black flip-flops.
And the short hair that had shown off her Hepburn-like neck had grown out past her shoulders, still pretty, but he could tell it hadn’t been cut in a long time. She’d stopped highlighting it with red streaks, too, so it had gone back to its natural dark brown color. A few delicate lines had formed around her eyes, but otherwise she still looked the same. Still herself but…muted.
He fought the urge to scrub a hand down his face. Part of the job was the facade of looking cool and completely in control at all times, down to avoiding nervous twitches. He had to make a victim trust him, make