1
May 2025
Vance’s side of the bed is cold. The pillow undented. I’ve been surfacing and sinking all night, my mind constructing explanations and tearing them down. Traffic accident. Dead battery. Affair.
The clock projects red numbers onto the ceiling: 4:57 a.m. May 16. I open the Find My app. His blue dot blinks at the far east edge of the city. Valley Auto. I’m dressed in under five minutes: jeans, boots, department hoodie. I drag a brush through my curls and give up halfway. A baseball cap will have to pass for control.
The tires shriek as I back out of the driveway. I don’t turn on the radio. I’m not interested in Bruno Mars selling me nostalgia. I want data. Something that makes sense.
It takes nine minutes to reach the dealership. The lot is gray with early light. I slam the door and cut between the lines of vehicles, boots crunching gravel, and find him between two rows of silver BMW 3-Series. He stands alone, cap pulled low, a VIN scanner in his hand. The red laser flicks across a metal plaque, pauses, jumps again.
He doesn’t turn when my shadow stretches across the pavement.
“You didn’t come home,” I say. “I waited until three.”
The scanner beeps. He clicks it off but doesn’t pocket it.
“The bank’s on me,” he says. “Eight high-value units missing from the ledger. The system says they’re active stock. I’m doing a physical count before the manager shows up.”
“So you were here all night?”
“I said I was working.”
He looks different in daylight. The burst fade at his temples is precise, the mullet at the back intentional, his shirts tighter than they were last year. The gym membership I hardly noticed has rewritten him. At thirty-eight, he looks newly assembled.
“You weren’t chasing criminals,” I say. “Why would you have to work a twenty-four-hour shift?”
“What are you saying?” His jaw tightens. “That what I do isn’t real work?”
“My graduation is at three,” I say. “You promised.”
“I might miss it.” He scans another VIN. The red laser dances across chrome. “There are cars that aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”
My eyebrows pinch. “What cars?”
“Inventory.” His tone closes the door. “I’ll make the party tonight.”
“What party?”
He finally looks up. His blue eyes are bloodshot. Not tired. Angry.
“Regina’s throwing something. Did I ruin the surprise? Sorry. I’ve got more pressing issues than cake.”
He turns away. This is how it feels when it’s too late. I can tell I’m grating on his nerves, but I ask anyway. “You can’t make my graduation, but you’re going to the party?”
“I’m working,” he says. “You know how to have fun without me.”
“But you just said you’d make the party tonight.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, Vance, you did. You said, ‘I’ll make the party tonight.’”
He laughs through his nose. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. You’ve been working too hard, as usual.”
***
I step over a shallow ribbon of brown water. The air is heavy with wet earth and gardenias. The North Valley storm drains form a concrete labyrinth built for flash floods. A police drone hovers overhead, its strobes washing red and blue over the damp walls.
“You smell that?” I ask.
“Gardenias,” Haynes replies, watching the reach of our flashlight beams as they cut through the dark.
We round the bend of Tunnel 4-B and the space shifts.
This is not a discarded body in runoff.
It’s arranged.
The victim is positioned where the concrete meets the raw desert floor. A slate-blue velvet settee with a carved medallion frame sits anchored in the silt, and she’s seated on it. Her back is straight. Chin lifted. Hands folded in her lap.
“Lila Moreno,” I say, recognizing the name from last week’s missing persons stack.
I keep my distance and lift the beam of my flashlight, letting it move methodically across the scene before committing to anything closer.
“Look at the braid, Haynes.”
Her blonde hair has been worked into a fishtail that drapes over one shoulder. Tight. Precise. Each crossing identical in width. Clinical. Everything unruly and human about her has been drawn into a single flawless column.
“He didn’t just kill her,” I say, stepping closer. The plum silk dress she wears is vintage, cinched at the waist with a silver ribbon that mirrors the metallic sheen brushed across her eyelids. “He dressed her. Styled her. This isn’t rage.”
I meet Haynes’s eyes. He studies the body in silence and gives a slow shake of his head.
The silt tugs at my boots as I kneel beside her. The silk is damp from the environment, but even I can tell it’s not a costume piece. The fabric has weight. Craft. A price tag remains tucked beneath the collar, crisp and intact, the ink from the price gun nearly faded. It was meant to be noticed.
“Why leave the price tag?” I ask. “Is he signaling something?”
“A smokescreen?” Haynes asks, his flashlight continuing its sweep of the tunnel walls.
“Never trust what’s presented first,” I say.
Jacob crackles over the radio. “Captain Sterling wants a full sweep before the coroner touches her. Don’t disturb the silk, Reed.”
I don’t respond.
I shift my focus to Lila’s eyes. They are open, fixed on the darkness above her. The fear is gone now, but the absence of it
says nothing about what she endured.
I study the dress, the makeup, the meticulous hours invested in presentation.
“Who does this?” Haynes asks quietly as he steps closer. “What kind of person has the time for this?”
“Someone profoundly disturbed,” I say. “But this isn’t random. There’s meaning in every choice.”
I move the light across her hands. A ring rests on her finger. A mood ring, the kind my mother wore when she was a teenager.
“You’re old enough to remember those,” I say.
“I may be prehistoric,” Haynes replies, “but even those were before me.”
The stone has darkened to near black, the color of absolute stillness.
Haynes shifts his attention to the tunnel mouth, angling his beam at the distant surface. I remain where I am. Her parents will want someone here with her.
He pauses and glances back over his shoulder.
“Let’s pray this is an anomaly,” he says. “Even though nothing here suggests it is.”
“Anomalies don’t come with this much structure.”
***
By the time I leave the drain, it’s after three in the morning.
Just hours earlier, I’d walked across the stage at Thomas & Mack and taken a diploma I fought twenty years for. Midnight patrol shifts. Eight a.m. lectures at UNLV. Reading textbooks in a squad car while waiting for calls. Studying while my daughter slept.
Today was supposed to be a celebration. Instead, I spent an hour at Regina’s house smiling on cue, pretending surprise, glancing at the door every time it opened. Vance never came. I was almost relieved when the call about Lila came in. At least a dead girl doesn’t pretend.
As soon as I push open the front door, the house feels wrong. The air is thinner. Sheets folded. Pillows gone. Drawers are half-empty. Hangers exposed. He planned this.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and check my phone: one missed call at 12:15 a.m. Right when I was kneeling in silt, tracing the silver ribbon at Lila Moreno’s waist.
I press play.
“I’m done, Sunday.”
His voice is flat. Resolved.
“You didn’t come to check on me at the lot. You came to audit me. I’m a suspect in my own house. When you get home, you’ll see I’ve moved my things. Quinn’s staying with me until college.
At least she’ll get a hot meal.” He pauses. “Don’t call. The lawyers will handle it.” The message ends.
Not blindsided.
Flattened.
I set the phone face down.
The silence in the bedroom is heavier than the tunnel, heavier than the velvet settee and the black mood ring. He waited until I finished something for myself to dismantle everything else.
Outside, the city keeps moving. Inside, I sit in the dark, and instead of replaying my husband’s words, I find myself retracing the braid.
2
May 2025
The Moreno house is in a neighborhood holding on—stucco cracking and boats in driveways that haven’t seen water in years. But the lawns are mowed. People here still believe in something.
On the front porch, a pair of pink and white running shoes is drying in the sun. Too small to be Lila’s parents’. A sister, maybe. I don’t let myself linger on that thought, because one sister’s life won’t replace another.
I press the heel of my hand against my sternum. I always do that before the door opens.
“You want me to take this one?” Haynes asks.
I should say no. I’m the primary. But Haynes is better at this. He can sit with grief without flinching. I want to run from it, but grief is faster than I am.
“Yeah,” I say. “You take the lead.”
The woman who answers the door is already crying. Her eyes are so swollen they’re nearly shut.
“Mrs. Moreno? I’m Detective Haynes. This is my partner, Detective Reed. May we come in?”
The living room is a shrine to Lila. Happy photos on every surface: Lila at the beach, Lila blowing out candles. A poster board leans against the TV: MISSING SINCE MAY 6.
Her husband emerges from the hallway in a freshly pressed dress shirt. He locks eyes with his wife, then looks at us, and his whole body goes still.
“No,” he says. “Oh God, no.”
Haynes steps forward, closing the distance without crowding them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Moreno, I’m very sorry to tell you that your daughter’s body was found last night. We’re treating her death as a homicide.”
Mrs. Moreno makes a sound I’ll never get used to, almost as terrifying as the one my mother made thirty years ago. She collapses onto the couch. Mr. Moreno stands with his hand on the wall, frozen.
Haynes sits across from them. He puts his hand on Mr. Moreno’s arm. “Take your time,” he says. “We’re here for as long as you need.”
I stand near the door, notebook in hand, useless. This is the part I’m bad at—the silence that has to be honored. Haynes knows how to breathe through it. I just want to move. To act.
“How?” Mr. Moreno asks.
“She was found in the North Valley storm drains,” Haynes says.
“There was no evidence of sexual assault. But someone took her life, and we’re going to find out who.”
He’s telling them she wasn’t raped without making them picture the ribbon around her throat.
“Do you know who did this?” Mrs. Moreno asks softly.
“We don’t know yet,” Haynes says. “But I promise you, we’re going to learn everything we can. And we’re going to find the person who did this.”
“You promise?” Mr. Moreno’s voice cracks.
Haynes’s eyes meet his. “I can give you my word.”
I can’t remember the last time I promised a family I’d find their loved one’s killer. Well, yes, I can—but I'd rather forget. I hate making promises I’m not sure I can keep. Haynes makes them anyway, and then he breaks himself trying.
The room goes quiet—the kind Vance has always preferred: no music, no television, no people if he can help it. The Morenos haven’t moved, and Haynes remains still out of respect. But my mind is already home, to the empty house I walked into yesterday. I lost them too. The difference is mine are still alive.
Twenty minutes later, we’re back in the car.
Haynes stares straight ahead, hands on the wheel, engine off.
“So young,” he says quietly. “Nursing student. Wanted to work in pediatrics.”
“How do you know that?”
“The photo on the mantel. She was wearing scrubs with teddy bears.” He turns the key.
The running shoes are still on the porch as we pull away.
3
May 2025
I’ve been inside Northwest Area Command for forty seconds and I already hate the lighting. Three hours of sleep turns tube lights into interrogation devices. My eyes feel sanded raw. I skip the coffee because there wasn’t time, and now my body is staging a quiet protest.
I’m not here for Lila Moreno. I’m here because a man from Phoenix drove into town and ended up dead in a Smith’s parking lot: a single gunshot to the head. His phone records flagged one local contact: a twenty-year-old named Candi—with an i—who agreed to come in voluntarily. Voluntary usually means confident.
Candi is exactly what I expected and somehow still too much. Lip filler. Laminated brows. Skintight pastel romper that reads influencer, not interview room. I hold my tablet high enough to hide a yawn as we step into Interview Room B. No sleep. No caffeine. Just spite. I slide my tablet across the table.
“Do you know him?”
She leans forward, squints at the photo. “I mean… not really.”
“Define not really.”
“He DM’d me. Said he played in the NFL.” She stops short.
“Linebacker. Or quarterback. I don’t know the difference.”
“Strange.” I tap the screen. “I spent ten minutes on his socials, and I never saw one picture of him in a uniform. No jersey. Not even a high school trophy photo. That didn’t strike you as odd?”
She shrugs, lashes fluttering. “I don’t watch sports. I’m a girl’s girl. And I don’t stalk people online. I’m too busy. They find me. I don’t find them.” A tiny laugh. “Besides, men lie in DMs. It’s kind of expected. Why? Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” I say. “He’s dead. Found in a grocery store parking lot. Execution-style.”
She blinks once, then exhales. “Wow.” Her hand presses lightly to her chest. “That’s intense.” She hesitates. “I mean, thank God I wasn’t with him.” No tears, but that’s understandable. She didn’t know the guy. No shock, though. None at all. Just relief. “Why’d you call me in?” Her posture tightens a fraction.
“Didn’t he come into town to see you, Candi?”
“No,” she says. “He said he was coming for business. Then he invited me to dinner. Anywhere I wanted.”
“And?”
“I didn’t go.”
“Why not, Candi?”
“I don’t know.” She waves a manicured hand. “Something came up.”
“What came up, Candi?”
Her eyes flash. “Stop saying my name so much. It’s weird.”
Noted. I nod once. “You have a boyfriend, right?” I ask.
Her chin lifts. “Yes. Why? And how do you know?”
“It’s public information.” I meet her stare. “Jason. You have an entire highlight bubble dedicated to him. Did he know you were planning a dinner date with a self-proclaimed NFL player?”
Her jaw hardens. Silence.
“I’m not your suspect,” she says finally. “He was some guy in my DMs. That’s it.”
I believe her. Not because she’s convincing, but because there’s no weight behind her denial. No fear. Just annoyance.
“We’re done,” I say, standing. I slide my card across the table. “If you remember anything.”
“I won’t.”
She leaves in a cloud of floral perfume and casual indifference. I jot one word in my notes: Jason. Jealous boyfriend. Phoenix man flies in to take an influencer to dinner. Gunshot in a parking lot. Possible.
Haynes waits in the hallway, hands in his pockets, coins ticking softly against each other.
“How’d it go?” he asks. “She good for it?”
I shake my head. “She’s just a pretty girl with options.”
We’re almost to the exit when the desk sergeant calls out. “Reed. Dunn. You’ll want this.”
A man leans over the counter. Mid-forties. Faded veteran’s cap. A windbreaker that’s survived three presidents. His hands grip the edge of the desk hard enough to blanch his knuckles.
“Let’s talk somewhere private,” Haynes says, containing his eagerness. We’ve been partners long enough to read each other from a pause or a sigh.
Back to Interview Room B. Candi’s perfume still hangs in the air: sweet and artificial. The man sits upright in the plastic chair.
“My name’s Arthur,” he says. “I was in an Uber, and we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was my fault. I was hammered and gave a bad address. There was a car next to us. A girl was trapped in the back seat.”
“She was trapped?” I ask. “How could you tell?”
“The palms of her hands were flat against the window, and she was banging on it. Over and over. Her mouth was open, but the windows were up. I couldn’t hear anything.” His hands shake again. “I’ll never forget her face.”
“Were the windows tinted?” I ask, checking for inconsistencies in his story.
“I don’t think so, because I saw her face.” He rubs his temples.
“But I was hungover.”
“Is this who you saw?” Haynes turns his tablet toward him. Lila Moreno’s face fills the screen. Arthur studies it.
“No,” he says slowly. “The woman I saw had turquoise hair.”
The air thins. Lila was abducted with brown hair and found blonde. Turquoise fits neither. If there is another girl out there, we might be dealing with a serial killer.
Now I have my memo book out and the cap off my ballpoint pen. It’s time to sit straight up and take notes, the same way I did in college.
“We need to know more about the car. Make? Model?” I ask.
“Did you happen to get a plate? Even a partial?”
He shrugs. “I remember it was a nice one. New. Dark. I wish I’d paid more attention.”
“A woman was screaming for her life. That probably would’ve helped.” Haynes clears his throat. He’s done that so much over the years, I’m surprised he can still speak. “But again, you were inebriated, so there really wasn’t much you could do,” I say,
attempting to soften the blow.
“And they were on a freeway, probably going seventy miles an hour,” Haynes adds. He’s so much better at playing good cop than I am.
“When was this?” I ask.
His eyes shift, searching his memory or building it. “Early April. I can’t stop thinking about it. Not since I saw her face on TV—or thought I did. But she had blue hair. Could she have dyed it?” Arthur asks.
Arthur didn’t see Lila. She wasn’t the first victim. I glance at Haynes. He’s thinking the same thing.
“There are more, aren’t there?” Arthur asks.
“Can you tell us anything about the driver?” I don’t answer his question. I’m unsure of what to say, and usually Haynes fills in the blank for me, but he’s probably speechless, too.
“Just a shape. He had a dark jacket and a baseball cap. I was out of it. Seeing her sobered me. She needed help. I could tell that she was trying to get out. I told my Uber driver to call 911. I called too. I swear I did,” he says.
“You did the best you cou—”
“If anything comes back to you, please call.” I cut off Haynes’s pep talk. He might scold me later. But did Arthur do his best? He didn’t get the license plate or a description of the driver because he was drunk. I’ll give him credit for not drinking and driving, but that’s it.
I slide Arthur my card.
He takes it with both hands. “Do you think she’s still out there?” he asks.
Instead of answering, I let him draw his own conclusion.
After Arthur leaves, Haynes says, “You’ve got to stop giving witnesses such a hard time. You’re worse on them than the perps.”
“Never. Don’t tell that lie.”
“You’re right. You’re equally bad with both, and you can’t do that. They’re witnesses, Sunday. They didn’t have to come forward.”
I shrug. “Sure, they didn’t, unless they were raised with moral values. I’ll work on it. Thanks for the reminder.”
“You’re stressed out.”
“We both are, but you handle yours better. Maybe I need to buy a boat.”
He smirks. “Maybe you do, or at least some golf clubs.”
My nose scrunches. “I’ll stick with cake.”
“I thought you were giving up sugar.”
“I am, one day.”
Being a cop is my passion, but it has robbed me of my optimism. It’s hard to be hopeful when you have the coroner’s office on speed dial.
***
The dinner rush at Taylor & Beau’s Steakhouse is deafening. I take a corner booth, my lower back aching from a shift that should’ve ended hours ago. For the past few months, since the restaurant opened in January, I’ve been promising my first cousin, Taylor, and her husband, Beau, that I’d stop in, but the department keeps pulling me under. A travel show featured them last month, and now there’s a wait out the door. Doesn ’t help that they’re in Pahrump. It took me an hour to get here.
My mouth waters at the menu. I need comfort. A heavy plate of lobster ravioli in a rich vodka cream sauce is the exact kind of high-calorie mistake I want to make tonight. Can’t forget dessert, a triple chocolate and truffle mascarpone cheesecake.
What is that, 2,000 calories a slice? Leave it to my cousin.
The waitress drops off my water. Her dark brown eyes are rimmed red and her uniform apron is tied slightly crooked. She’s pretty, but I can tell she used to be beautiful—and at maybe twenty-two, it’s not age that dimmed her.
“May I take your order, please?” she asks. Before I can even start, there’s a loud commotion at the entrance.
A man, early twenties, with sagging pants and an Edgar cut, is standing in the lobby, gripping a bulky car seat in his right hand. He gestures wildly at my waitress.
I watch her shoulders drop. Her high ponytail swings as she scurries to the front.
Even from across the crowded floor, his angry, biting words carry. “You were supposed to be home two hours ago. You didn’t call and tell me you were working a double. You’re not the only one with a job. Do you want me to get fired? Then who’ll take care of you and your kid?”
“He’s your kid, too,” one of the male workers tells him, defending my waitress.
He shoves the car seat into her arms, turns on his heel, and marches out into the night.
The waitress stands alone by the host station for several seconds, holding the car seat, before a busboy quickly takes it from her so she can return to the floor.
When she brings my food out ten minutes later, she sets down a plate of blackened chicken pasta. It’s not the ravioli. My stomach sinks, but I look at her face. Her lower lip is trembling, and her hands are shaking so violently the side plate clatters against the ceramic. One single drop of criticism will completely break her tonight.
I accept the chicken with a quiet nod. I won’t eat it; standard commercial chicken causes me to break out in hives unless it’s organic and air-chilled, but that doesn’t matter right now.
“Excuse me,” I say softly, flagging her down before she can retreat to the kitchen.
She turns, bracing for a complaint, probably. “Yes, ma’am? Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong? Your cheesecake.” Her mouth falls open. “I forgot it.”
“Everything is fine,” I say, pulling up my Cash App on my phone. I slide the screen across the table. “What’s your username?”
She blinks at the five-hundred-dollar transfer amount ready to send. “I—I can’t take that.”
“Yes, you can. It won’t be hard. Watch. What’s your handle?”
“My name is Zia. Z-i-a.”
“That’s pretty, Zia. But what’s your handle?”
“MyNameIsZia. That’s my handle. All one word.”
“Okay, I get it.” I enter it as she gives it to me.
“Thank you so much. I can’t believe you’d do this for me. Thank you.” Her tears flow. I use the cloth napkin on the table to dry her cheeks.
“You’re welcome. You deserve it. Take your baby and go home. I’ll handle the owner.”
I get up from the booth, leaving the untouched chicken on the table, and make my way through the swinging doors into the back kitchen. Taylor is standing near the expo line, checking tickets, head down. A black baker’s skull cap is covering her copper-blonde hair.
“Sunday!” Taylor blinks, surprised to see me. “You made it. Let me get you a table. We’re completely slammed tonight.”
“I have a table.” I pull the strap of my badge out from under my collar, so it hangs clearly against my chest. “Your waitress with the baby needs to leave. I told her to go home.”
Taylor’s jaw drops. “You did what? Sunday, why would you tell her that? We’re packed. We have a forty-minute wait at the door.
Who’s going to take her orders?”
“I am,” I say.
Taylor tilts her head as she looks at me. “Are you serious? You’re going to run tables with your law enforcement credentials swinging from your neck?”
“Why not?” I grab a clean serving tray from the counter. “But before I get started, can I have a slice of that cheesecake?”
“Sold out. Sorry.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s cruel.”
“We make five of them a night and even that’s not enough. Ever since it was featured…”
“Did you come up with that?”
She grins and nods. “I’m not going to be fat alone. Opening a restaurant sure didn’t help these hips.”
Taylor’s a beautiful, full-figured woman, six feet tall. People always assumed I was the model—but it was Taylor, plus-size campaigns for Lane Bryant.
She sighs, running a hand over her face, though the tension in her expression softens. “I don’t understand why this matters to you. Is this about your mom? The long hours she used to work when we were kids?”
“Yes, that,” I say, glancing at the small kitchen window and the bustling dining room. “And I know how it feels to be stressed out with your back up against the wall, young, trying to raise a kid. I’m not only doing this for her, but for me, too. I need to give more to others. I don’t always want to come across as the Grinch.”
Taylor pats my arm, a warm reassurance. “Anyone who thinks you’re a Grinch doesn’t know your heart, Sunday. You’re very caring, but you don’t take any mess off anybody.”
“No lies detected,” I adjust my notepad. “Which table is next?”
“The four-top.” She points toward a table near the window that seats four. I step onto the floor, pulling a pen from my pocket. I survey the dining area out of pure habit, assessing every face, exit, and shadow.
I take table five’s order and shift to table seven. Then my gaze locks onto a booth near the rear exit where a man is sitting alone. He’s staring directly at me, tracking the steady movement of the badge against my chest with a cold, unblinking focus.