PROLOGUE
It was still dark out.
As Henry Faraday pulled his Rolls Royce into the garage of his Beverly Hills mansion at 4:07 a.m., he debated whether it was even worth it to try to go to sleep. The sun would be up in a couple of hours anyway and taking a nap might make him groggier than just staying up and pushing through the exhaustion would.
He got out of the car and closed the frustratingly loud garage door as he entered the house, glad that the master bedroom was so far away, and that Julianne wouldn’t be woken up by the noise. He’d had the repair people out here twice in the last month, and they still hadn’t fixed the annoying creaking sound the door made as it shut.
Henry tried to put the issue out of his head and focus on more immediate concerns. He’d come home partly so that he could nap, if possible, but definitely so that he could clean himself up before court later this morning. He needed to shower, shave, and change into a fresh suit.
The team hadn’t worked all weekend, including Sunday night into the wee hours of Monday morning, just for him to show up at the courthouse in a rumpled suit with a day’s worth of stubble. This was a big case, and he needed to be at the top of his game, both mentally and sartorially.
Henry dropped his keys in the ceramic bowl in the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water from the filtered dispenser on the everyday refrigerator. He chugged it, refilled it, and walked quietly along the hall to the stairs and toward the other reason he’d come home: his wife, Julianne.
He’d been worried about her lately. First, their dog, Randy, died last autumn, which left her feeling understandably melancholy. On top of that, ever since their only child, Trent, had gone away to college in January, she’d had been dealing with some serious empty nest syndrome. Henry suspected that it was made worse because Trent had deferred school by a semester and spent last fall at a local community college while living at home.
Since Trent hadn’t left when all his friends did, that extra time at home may have lulled her into the false sense that he’d actually stick around for good. When he did eventually go off to school, as he always intended to, it hit her hard, especially since he chose to go all the way to the East Coast.
It didn’t help that he went to the Bahamas with friends for Spring Break instead of coming home, which meant that Julianne hadn’t seen her baby in over three months. She’d tried to fill the empty hole in her heart with fundraising events, obsessive running, unnecessary plastic surgery, and ski trips to Aspen and Banff.
But she was still struggling, which is why, even in the middle of a big case, Henry tried to get home as often as possible. He hoped that his presence had a reassuring, calming effect on her. She told him that it did, and he chose to believe it.
He was halfway up the stairs to check on her when he heard a strange sound coming from downstairs. It was a repeating, semi-regular banging, as if someone was knocking on the back door at intermittent intervals. Hearing it made him register something that he hadn’t processed when he’d first walked into the house: the alarm wasn’t on.
Julianne always turned it on at night, especially when he was working late. Sensing that something was off, he headed back downstairs, put the glass of water on the table near the bottom step, and turned on the flashlight on his phone.
The noise was coming from the den. But rather than walk straight into the room, he carefully made his way around it by passing the through the dining room, the sitting room, and the bar, which adjoined the den. As he slipped through the last room, he grabbed a half empty bottle of scotch and gripped it by the neck, ready to swing it if necessary.
Henry wasn’t a large man, but he was in pretty good shape for a guy in his early forties. He’d taken up boxing a few years ago, and it had transformed his body. He had no illusions that he could take on an intruder with a gun. But if there was an unarmed person in the house, between the bottle and his fists, he felt confident that he could do some damage.
He poked his head through the open door between the bar and the den and pointed the flashlight in the general direction of the sound. The source became immediately clear. A light on the back terrace was on, revealing that one of the French doors leading to the terrace was slightly open, and the strong breeze was periodically banging it closed before it cracked open again.
Any brief sense of relief he got at nailing down the origin of the noise was quickly replaced by several troubling questions: why was the door unlocked at all? First, Julianne leaves the alarm off and now, she forgets to lock the door. None of this was like her. And why was the terrace light left on?
He turned off the phone’s flashlight, put it in his pocket, and moved cautiously toward the doors. He saw a lone wine glass on the marble patio table, still half full. With an increasing sense of dread, he moved closer to the doors. That’s when he saw her. Lying face down on the terrace in her favorite, purple silk kimono, was Julianne. He felt all the air escape his lungs.
Her body was twisted unnaturally as if she was contorted in pain. Her arms and legs were splayed out at her sides. Her long, wavy black hair was a mess, buffeted by the wind. Her face was turned away from him. Ignoring the wave of nausea that rose in his stomach, he pushed the door open and hurried over to her.
“Jules!” he called out, praying for a response.
When he got to the other side of her, he saw that her face was obscured by her hair, but the small pool of saliva on the tile near her mouth didn’t bode well. He moved her hair out of her face, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand
“Julianne,” he repeated in an urgent whisper, but suddenly stopped speaking.
Her skin was cold to the touch. Her brown eyes were open, but it was clear that she couldn’t see him, or anything at all. He gulped hard as he slumped beside her and listened to what his brain was telling him: though there were no visible wounds on her and no obvious indication as to why, his wife was dead.
Robotically, without even fully comprehending what he was doing, he pulled out his phone and dialed 911.
CHAPTER ONE
Jessie Hunt walked down the hall slowly, taking deep breaths, hoping they would calm her frayed nerves.
Normally, strolling down the main hall of LAPD’s downtown Central Station from the main reception area to the bullpen—something she’d done hundreds of times—wasn’t a source of anxiety. But this Monday morning was different: this was her first day back in a month.
A lot had had changed since the last time she’d passed through these doors. For one thing, back then, she hadn’t been married. For another, on her last visit here, she’d only been a part-time consultant to the LAPD while also working as an instructor at UCLA. Now she was consulting full-time for the department.
And then there was the other professional change in her life. Their captain at Central Station, Roy Decker, had recently been installed as interim LAPD Chief of Police after the previous chief was ousted in a scandal. Decker’s replacement to lead Central Station was none other than Jessie’s new husband, Ryan Hernandez, formerly detective, now promoted to Captain.
Not only was he now running the station, he’d also been tasked with supervising Homicide Special Section, or HSS, which operated out of Central. It was LAPD’s elite investigative unit, which specialized in cases that had high profiles or intense media scrutiny, often involving multiple victims or serial killers. Ryan used to be its lead detective. Jessie was its primary profiler. Now that Ryan was supervising the unit, he was technically her boss. They had discussed that new normal in the abstract, but this was the first day they’d have to deal with it up close.