I could have gone my whole life without shooting a gun. I'd never even seen one up close before I started working at Hollywood Division. I couldn't imagine a scenario where I'd actually pick one up and cock, aim and fire at a live human person. It was the power behind it that I didn't expect, that crazy feeling of being completely in charge and totally out of control all at once. There's also the possibility, when you're not the brightest blonde in the bottle, that you've chosen the wrong target.
"Did you hear something?" I asked Jane the night on the beach after we went skinny dipping. Whether we were in hiding or on a fact finding mission, we should have been alone. "Over there, by the palm trees.""You're just naked," she slurred. "People tend to get clervous with their nothes off." Giggling, she took another huge swig of tequila.
"Okay, you're done." I grabbed the nearly drained bottle, twirling her around to wrap her in a towel. Here I was being stalked by a roving band of perverts, real or imagined, only to discover that my personal federal agent was a freaking lightweight. "Does the entire Justice Department suffer from alcohol abuse, or is it just you?"
"I'm guessing she knows," I said, "since she's the world's foremost authority on abnormal psychiatry and all." I tucked my comatose bodyguard into bed."Who you calling abnormal?" she said. "All I did was fall in love with the wrong woman, could have happened to anybody."
"I know. I fell in love with her wrong husband."
She flopped over, tugging at my towel. "Hey. You wanna fuck?"
"Yes!" she said, raising her arms in victory. "I knew it!" Just for sport, I ran a finger up her bare leg. She grabbed my hand. "I'm sorry for what we're doing to you. It's for your own protection."
My own protection? From what -- and who? Part of me wanted to slap her back to consciousness and shove her in a cold shower to smack it out of her. The other part already knew. All that hooey about helping me find the truth when what they really wanted was to keep me from it. "You have to start looking past the big bad uniform, Blondie," Atti kept saying before he ran off. "A gun and a badge never made a good guy out of a bad one." 
Had he been trying to warn me about Mark Muñoz, the L.A.P.D. patrolman and national hero I started dating after Rita's murder? Suddenly seized by one horrible thought after the next, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. The gum wrapper I found in Atti's apartment after he was beaten had to have been Mark's calling card. But why would he be involved in any of it after he'd been the one to catch Hollister in the act of disposing of Rita's body? Had all of that been staged? Maybe Hollister was supposed to get off on a technicality any idiot working records that night would have caught -- even me. Maybe I was supposed to blow the whistle -- then up and decided not to. Maybe I was the loose end nobody needed around any more.
I tiptoed to the snoring traitor's bedside and grabbed her gun. I don' know how long I sat under a blanket of stars with the growing certainty that someone was there -- waiting, watching, ready to pounce.
Another sickening rustle from the bushes. I saw a shadowy figure and screamed. I don't remember pulling the trigger. I just remember the ear-splitting sound.
