7th Heaven

“Whoa, whoa! This is the biggest deal about nothing I’ve ever heard. Her arms were full! I opened her car door to help her!”

“Tell it to your lawyer,” I snapped. I had one hand on Twilly’s arm, my cell phone in my other, and was about to call for backup.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Is Yuki claiming that I’m harassing her? Because that’s crap. I admit I provoked her a little, applied a little pressure just to get her going. I’m a journalist. We do that. Look. If I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Can we talk? Please?”

I’d checked Twilly out, and his record was clean. I had a moment of free fall as my anger evaporated. A stern warning would have been appropriate. Now that I’d cuffed him – that media flap Cindy had warned Yuki about?

It was going to go down.

I could already see Twilly spi

“Sergeant?”

I had to hit rewind. I had to try.

“You want to avoid a court appearance, Mr. Twilly? Leave Yuki Castellano alone. Don’t sit behind her in court. Don’t tail her in supermarkets. Don’t enter her car or premises, and we’ll put this incident aside.

“Yuki files another complaint? I’m taking you in. Are we clear?”

“Totally,” he said. “ Crystal.”

“Good.”

I unlocked the cuffs and started to leave.

“Wait!” Twilly said. He stepped into the other room, with its aqua-striped wallpaper and canopied bed. He snatched a pen and pad from the bowlegged writing desk and said, “I want to make sure I got this right.”

He scribbled notes, then recited my speech back to me, verbatim.

“That was really excellent stuff you just said, Sergeant. Who do you think should play you in the movie?”

He was screwing with me.

I left Twilly’s suite feeling as though I’d been smacked in the face with a shit pie – and I’d done it to myself. Damn it to hell. Maybe I’d jammed myself up, and maybe I was wrong to cuff him, but it didn’t mean that Jason Twilly wasn’t crazy.

And it didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

Chapter 82

JOE AND I had a takeout di

An image of Twilly’s sneer had awakened me, but his face dissolved, and in its place I saw the burned and twisted corpses on Claire’s table. And I remembered the dulled eyes of a young girl who’d been orphaned by a nameless teenage boy who might now be lying awake in his bed, pla

How many more people would die before we found him?

Or would he beat us at this sick game?

I thought of the fire that had consumed my home, my possessions, my sense of security. And I thought about Joe, how much I loved Joe. I’d wanted him to move to San Francisco so that we could make a life together – and we were doing it through thick and thin. Why couldn’t I take him up on that big Italian wedding he’d proposed and maybe start a family?

I would be thirty-nine in a few months.

What was I waiting for?

I listened to Joe’s breathing, and in a while my rapid nightmare heart thuds slowed and I started drifting off. I turned away from Joe, gripped a pillow in my arms – and the mattress shifted as Joe turned toward me. He enfolded me in his arms, tucked his knees up behind mine.

“Bad dream?” he asked me.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I forget the dream, but when I woke up, I thought about a lot of dead people.”

“Dead people in general? Or real dead people?”

“Real ones,” I said.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I would – but they’ve slunk back to the pit they came from. Hey, I’m sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s okay. Try to sleep.”

It took a second to understand that that was a dare.

Joe moved my hair away from the back of my neck and kissed me there. I gasped, shocked at the charge that his soft kiss sent through my body.

I hadn’t expected to feel this tonight.

I rolled over, looked into Joe’s face, saw the glint of his smile by the soft blue light of the clock. I put my hands on his face and kissed him hard, searching for an answer I couldn’t find inside myself. He reached his arms around me, but I pushed them away.

“No,” I said. “Let me.”

I put all of my tormenting thoughts aside. I tugged off Joe’s boxers, interlaced my fingers through his, pressed his hands against the pillows. He moaned as I lowered myself onto him and then I eased off, kissed him until he went crazy. Then I rode him, rode him, rode him, until he couldn’t wait another second – and neither could I. There was the undeniable pull of the undertow, before I was released by great cascading waves of pleasure.

I collapsed onto Joe’s chest, my knees still on either side of his body, my cheek resting over his pounding heart. He stroked my back and I told him I loved him. I remember him kissing my forehead, pulling the blanket up over my shoulders as I drifted off with him still inside me.

Oh, my God.

It was just so good with Joe.

Chapter 83

YUKI STUDIED JUNIE MOON as she was sworn in by the bailiff.

Defendants weren’t required to testify. It couldn’t be held against them if they didn’t, and it rarely helped when they did. So it was very risky to put your client on the stand. No matter how well rehearsed, there was no way to know if your client was going to go rogue, or get flustered, or laugh at the wrong time, or in some unique way prejudice the jury against her.

But Davis was putting Junie Moon on the stand. And the citizens of San Francisco and trial watchers across the country were dying to hear what she would say. Junie’s white blouse hung from her shoulders and her plain blue skirt billowed around her calves. She’d lost weight in jail – a lot of it – and when Junie raised her right hand to take the oath, Yuki saw vivid bruising on her forearm.

Spectators gasped and murmured. And now Yuki understood why Davis had risked everything she’d gained to have her client testify. Junie looked nothing like a whore and a ghoul.

She looked like a victim.

Junie swore to tell the truth, stepped up to the witness stand, and sat with her hands in her lap, smiling trustingly as Davis approached.

“How are you doing?” Davis asked.

“In jail, you mean?”

“Yes. Are you doing okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m fine.”

Davis nodded, said, “Good. And how old are you, Junie?”

“I’ll be twenty-three next month.”

“And when did you start turning tricks?” Davis asked.

“When I was fourteen,” Junie said softly.

“And how did that come about?”

“My stepdad turned me out.”

“Do you mean that your stepfather prostituted you? That he was your pimp?”

“I guess you could call him that. He was having sex with me from the time I was about twelve. Later on, he brought his friends over and they had sex with me, too.”

“Did you ever report your stepfather for rape or child abuse, anything like that?”

“No, ma’am. He said it was how I paid my rent.”

“Is your stepfather here today?”

“No. He died three years ago.”

“And your mother? Where is she?”

“She’s doing time. For dealing.”

“I see,” Davis said. “So, Junie, you’re a bright enough girl. Did you really have to be a prostitute? Couldn’t you have gotten a job in a restaurant or a department store? Maybe worked in an office?”

Junie cleared her throat, said quietly, “Doing sex is the only thing I’ve ever known, and I don’t really mind. It’s like, for a little time every day, I feel close to someone.”