HE FAINT LIGHT—the light of a ghost, pale green—danced just out of her reach.

If she could only get to it.

If she could only reach the ghost she’d be safe.

The glow, floating in the dark of the car’s trunk, dangled tauntingly above her feet, which were duct-taped together, as were her hands.

A ghost…

Another piece of tape was pasted over her mouth and she was inhaling stale air through her nose, rationing it, as if the trunk of her Camry held only so much.

A painful bang as the car hit a pothole. She gave a brief, muted scream.

Other hints of light intruded occasionally: the dull red glow when he hit the brake, the turn signal. No other illumination from outside; the hour was close to 1:00 a.m.

The luminescent ghost rocked back and forth. It was the emergency trunk release: a glow-in-the-dark hand pull emblazoned with a comical image of a man escaping from the car.

But it remained just out of reach of her feet.

Tammy Foster had forced the crying to stop. The sobs had begun just after her attacker came up behind her in the shadowy parking lot of the club, slapped tape on her mouth, taped her hands behind her back and shoved her into the trunk. He’d bound her feet as well.

Frozen in panic, the seventeen-year-old had thought: He doesn’t want me to see him. That’s good. He doesn’t want to kill me.

He just wants to scare me.

She’d surveyed the trunk, spotting the dangling ghost. She’d tried to grip it with her feet but it slipped out from between her shoes. Tammy was in good shape, soccer and cheerleading. But, because of the awkward angle, she could keep her feet raised for only a few seconds.

The ghost eluded her.

The car pressed on. With every passing yard, she felt more and more despair. Tammy Foster began to cry again.

Don’t, don’t! Your nose’ll clog up, you’ll choke.

She forced herself to stop.

She was supposed to be home at midnight. She’d be missed by her mother—if she wasn’t drunk on the couch, pissed about some problem with her latest boyfriend.

Missed by her sister, if the girl wasn’t online or on the phone. Which of course she was.

Clank.

The same sound as earlier: the bang of metal as he loaded something into the backseat.

She thought of some scary movies she’d seen. Gross, disgusting ones. Torture, murder. Involving tools.

Don’t think about that. Tammy focused on the dangling green ghost of the trunk release.

And heard a new sound. The sea.

Finally they stopped and he shut off the engine.

The lights went out.

The car rocked as he shifted in the driver’s seat. What was he doing? Now she heard the throaty croak of seals nearby. They were at a beach, which at this time of night, around here, would be completely deserted.

One of the car doors opened and closed. And a second opened. The clank of metal from the backseat again.

Torture…tools.

The door slammed shut, hard.

And Tammy Foster broke. She dissolved into sobs, struggling to suck in more lousy air. “No, please, please!” she cried, though the words were filtered through the tape and came out as a sort of moan.

Tammy began running through every prayer she could remember as she waited for the click of the trunk.

The sea crashed. The seals hooted.

She was going to die.

“Mommy.”

But then…nothing.

The trunk didn’t pop, the car door didn’t open again, she heard no footsteps approaching. After three minutes she controlled the crying. The panic diminished.

Five minutes passed, and he hadn’t opened the trunk.

Ten.

Tammy gave a faint, mad laugh.

It was just a scare. He wasn’t going to kill her or rape her. It was a practical joke.

She was actually smiling beneath the tape, when the car rocked, ever so slightly. Her smile faded. The Camry rocked again, a gentle push-pull, though stronger than the first time. She heard a splash and felt a shudder. Tammy knew an ocean wave had struck the front end of the car.

Oh, my God, no! He’d left the car on the beach, with high tide coming in!

The car settled into the sand, as the ocean undermined the tires.

No! One of her worst fears was drowning. And being stuck in a confined space like this…it was unthinkable. Tammy began to kick at the trunk lid.

But there was, of course, no one to hear, except the seals.

The water was now sloshing hard against the sides of the Toyota.

The ghost…

Somehow she had to pull the trunk release lever. She worked off her shoes and tried again, her head pressing hard against the carpet, agonizingly lifting her feet toward the glowing pull. She got them on either side of it, pressed hard, her stomach muscles quivering.

Now!

Her legs cramping, she eased the ghost downward.

A tink.

Yes! It worked!

But then she moaned in horror. The pull had come away in her feet, without opening the trunk. She stared at the green ghost lying near her. He must’ve cut the wire! After he’d dumped her into the trunk, he’d cut it. The release pull had been dangling in the eyelet, no longer connected to the latch cable.

She was trapped.

Please, somebody, Tammy prayed again. To God, to a passerby, even to her kidnapper, who might show her some mercy.

But the only response was the indifferent gurgle of saltwater as it began seeping into the trunk.

THE PENINSULA GARDEN Hotel is tucked away near Highway 68—the venerable route that’s a twenty-mile-long diorama, “The Many Faces of Monterey County.” The road meanders west from the Nation’s Salad Bowl—Salinas—and skirts the verdant Pastures of Heaven, punchy Laguna Seca racetrack, settlements of corporate offices, then dusty Monterey and pine-and-hemlock-filled Pacific Grove. Finally the highway deposits those drivers, at least those bent on following the complex via from start to finish, at legendary Seventeen Mile Drive—home of a common species around here: People With Money.

“Not bad,” Michael O’Neil said to Kathryn Dance as they climbed out of his car.

Through narrow glasses with gray frames, the woman surveyed the Spanish and deco main lodge and half-dozen adjacent buildings. The inn was classy though a bit worn and dusty at the cuffs. “Nice. I like.”

As they stood surveying the hotel, with its distant glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, Dance, an expert at kinesics, body language, tried to read O’Neil. The chief deputy in the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office Investigations Division was hard to analyze. The solidly built man, in his forties, with salt-and-pepper hair, was easygoing, but quiet unless he knew you. Even then he was economical of gesture and expression. He didn’t give a lot away kinesically.

At the moment, though, she was reading that he wasn’t at all nervous, despite the nature of their trip here.

She, on the other hand, was.

Kathryn Dance, a trim woman in her thirties, today wore her dark blond hair as she often did, in a French braid, the feathery tail end bound with a bright blue ribbon her daughter had selected that morning and tied into a careful bow. Dance was in a long, pleated black skirt and matching jacket over a white blouse. Black ankle boots with two-inch heels—footwear she’d admired for months but been able to resist buying only until they had gone on sale.

O’Neil was in one of his three or four civilian configurations: chinos and powder blue shirt, no tie. His jacket was dark blue, in a faint plaid pattern.

The doorman, a cheerful Latino, looked them over with an expression that said, You seem like a nice couple. “Welcome. I hope you enjoy your stay.” He opened the door for them.

Dance smiled uncertainly at O’Neil and they walked through a breezy hallway to the front desk.

FROM THE MAIN building, they wound through the hotel complex, looking for the room.

“Never thought this would happen,” O’Neil said to her.

Dance gave a faint laugh. She was amused to realize that her eyes occasionally slipped to doors and windows. This was a kinesic response that meant the subject was subconsciously thinking about ways to escape—that is, was feeling stress.

“Look,” she said, pointing to yet another pool. The place seemed to have four.

“Like Disneyland for adults. I hear a lot of rock musicians stay here.”

“Really?” She frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s only one story. Not much fun getting stoned and throwing TVs and furniture out the window.”

“This is Carmel,” O’Neil pointed out. “The wildest they’d get here is pitching recyclables into the trash.”

Dance thought of a comeback line but kept quiet. The bantering was making her more nervous.

She paused beside a palm tree with leaves like sharp weapons. “Where are we?”

The deputy looked at a slip of paper, oriented himself and pointed to one of the buildings in the back. “There.”

O’Neil and Dance paused outside the door. He exhaled and lifted an eyebrow. “Guess this is it.”

Dance laughed. “I feel like a teenager.”

The deputy knocked.

After a short pause the door opened, revealing a narrow man, hovering near fifty, wearing dark slacks and a white shirt and striped tie.

“Michael, Kathryn. Right on time. Come on in.”

ERNEST SEYBOLD, A career district attorney for Los Angeles County, nodded them into the room. Inside, a court reporter sat beside her three-legged dictation machine. Another young woman rose and greeted the new arrivals. She was, Seybold said, his assistant from L.A.

Earlier this month, Dance and O’Neil had run a case in Monterey—the convicted cult leader and killer Daniel Pell had escaped from prison and remained on the Peninsula, targeting more victims. One of the people involved in the case had turned out to be somebody very different from the person Dance and her fellow officers had believed. The consequences of that involved yet another murder.

Dance adamantly wanted to pursue the perp. But there was much pressure not to follow up—from some very powerful organizations. Dance wouldn’t take no for an answer, though, and while the Monterey prosecutor had declined to handle the case, she and O’Neil learned that the perp had killed earlier—in Los Angeles. District Attorney Seybold, who worked regularly with Dance’s organization, the California Bureau of Investigation, and was a friend of Dance’s, agreed to bring charges in L.A.

Several witnesses, though, were in the Monterey area, including Dance and O’Neil, and so Seybold had come here for the day to take statements. The clandestine nature of the get-together was due to the perp’s connections and reputation. In fact, for the time being they weren’t even using the killer’s real name. The case was known internally as The People v. J. Doe.

As they sat, Seybold said, “We might have a problem, I have to tell you.”

The butterflies Dance had felt earlier—that something would go wrong and the case would derail—returned.

The prosecutor continued, “The defense’s made a motion to dismiss based on immunity. I honestly can’t tell you what the odds are it’ll succeed. The hearing’s scheduled for day after tomorrow.”

Dance closed her eyes. “No.” Beside her O’Neil exhaled in anger.

All this work…

If he gets away, Dance thought…but then realized she had nothing to add to that, except: If he gets away, I lose.

She felt her jaw trembling.

But Seybold said, “I’ve got a team putting together the response. They’re good. The best in the office.”

“Whatever it takes, Ernie,” Dance said. “I want him. I want him real bad.”

“A lot of people do, Kathryn. We’ll do everything we can.”

If he gets away…

“But I want to proceed as if we’re going to win.” He said this confidently, which reassured Dance somewhat. They got started, Seybold asking dozens of questions about the crime—what Dance and O’Neil had witnessed and the evidence in the case.

Seybold was a seasoned prosecutor and knew what he was doing. After an hour of interviewing them both, the wiry man sat back and said he had enough for the time being. He was momentarily expecting another witness—a local state trooper—who had also agreed to testify.

They thanked the prosecutor, who agreed to call them the instant the judge ruled in the immunity hearing.

As Dance and O’Neil walked back to the lobby, he slowed, a frown on his face.

“What?” she asked.

“Let’s play hooky.”

“What do you mean?”

He nodded at the beautiful garden restaurant, overlooking a canyon with the sea beyond. “It’s early. When was the last time anybody in a white uniform brought you eggs Benedict?”

Dance considered. “What year is it again?”

He smiled. “Come on. We won’t be that late.”

A glance at her watch. “I don’t know.” Kathryn Dance hadn’t played hooky in school, much less as a senior agent with the CBI.

Then she said to herself: Why’re you hesitating? You love Michael’s company, you get to spend hardly any downtime with him.

“You bet.” Feeling like a teenager again, though now in a good way.

They were seated beside each other at a banquette near the edge of the deck, overlooking the hills. The early sun was out and it was a clear, crisp June morning.

The waiter—not fully uniformed, but with a suitably starched white shirt—brought them menus and poured coffee. Dance’s eyes strayed to the page on which the restaurant bragged of their famous mimosas. No way, she thought, and glanced up to see O’Neil looking at exactly the same item.

They laughed.

“When we get down to L.A. for the grand jury, or the trial,” he said. “champagne then.”

“Fair enough.”

It was then that O’Neil’s phone trilled. He glanced at Caller ID. Dance was immediately aware of his body language changing—shoulders slightly higher, arms closer to his body, eyes focused just past the screen.

She knew whom the call was from, even before he said a cheerful, “Hi, dear.”

Dance deduced from his conversation with his wife, Anne, a professional photographer, that a business trip had come up unexpectedly soon and she was checking with her husband about his schedule.

Finally O’Neil disconnected and they sat in silence for a moment while the atmosphere righted itself and they consulted their menus.

“Yep,” he announced, “eggs Benedict.”

She was going to have the same and glanced up for the waiter. But then her phone vibrated. She glanced at the text message, frowned, then read it again, aware that her own body orientation was changing quickly. Heart rate revving, shoulders lifted, foot tapping on the floor.

Dance sighed, and her gesture to the waiter changed from a polite beckon to one of mimicking signing the check.