CHAPTER ONE
THE STORMblew in with the commuters at sunset, a wet slap of weather that made the roads treacherous and made everyone forget how to drive. It wouldn’t stay long. Based on the forecasts, it would have blown on down the road to the bright lights of San Diego by tomorrow. Plenty would be left a bit wetter, not much wiser, and full of freshly dented cars.
Unfortunately for Janet Morrow, she had the bad luck to go missing tonight.
An idiot in a shiny bug-sized car cut across the lane in front of the Challenger as Cloister took the turn onto Hot Springs Road. Cloister hit the brakes and spat out a curse between his teeth. In the back, Bourneville whined her objection to the sudden maneuver as she slipped on the plastic-covered floor. The driver of the bug jabbed a finger up at Cloister through the window as he fishtailed precariously toward the off-ramp.
It had been a long shift. Cloister clenched his jaw and resisted the part of himself that had learned how to deal with conflict at his stepdad’s heels. It didn’t matter how many times you punched someone, they never actually learned, so he didn’t follow the bug car off the road. Besides, he had a job to do.
“He’s gonna kill himself anyhow, Bon,” he said as he leaned forward to squint over the windshield. The rain was heavy enough to make it difficult to see, a stream of water so dense it seemed as though someone had turned on a tap. The occasional flash of lightning lit the night like garish fireworks but didn’t help visibility at all. “Sometimes you got to be the better man, right?”
She barked at him.
“Fine,” Cloister said. “Better man and/or dog. Happy now.”
She barked again.
Cloister did make a note of the man’s license plate. He wasn’t that good a man.
The turnoff for Delacourt appeared suddenly out of the rain. The tarmac was already striped with rubber streaks, and the barrier was scraped red with paint from someone’s driver’s-side door. Tomorrow would be a good day for body shops in Plenty.
“Shit,” Cloister muttered.
He flashed the blues—a splash of color bounced off the wet road—and cut across the road as the truck behind him braked obediently. He felt the way the tires slid as he took the turn over wet road and spilled oil. A lighter car with a driver who hadn’t learned to drive on shit Montana country roads, and he might have ended up in the gully with the angular red—what it hadn’t left on the barrier—Prius.
A heavyset deputy, his identity obscured under a drenched slicker that drooped down to his nose, tried to wave Cloister on his way with a flashlight. He jogged up to the car when Cloister pulled to the side of the road instead.
“…is under control,” he said. From the voice and acne-scarred chin, Cloister identified him as Collins and dropped the window an inch, enough for the wind to blast in a cold spray of rain. “Just move….”
“I would if I could,” Cloister said. “What happened?”
The call on his radio said there was a missing girl and a car accident on Delacourt. Mel hadn’t had time to give him any more details. Rain always made for a busy shift.
“Oh, it’s you, Witte.” Collins pushed his hood back and roughly wiped his hand over his face. He flicked rain and snot off his fingers against the window. “Sorry. It’s the rain. Can’t see my hand in front of my face.”
“Yeah, I nearly missed the turn,” Cloister admitted. “Where’s Tancredi?”
Collins turned and pointed the flashlight down at the Prius. It picked out Tancredi like a pointer. She was hunched under her jacket as she taped plastic over the door of the car. The flicker of light against the paintwork caught her attention, and she turned around, squinted into the rain, and gestured urgently for Cloister to come down and join her.
“Want me to close the road?” Collins asked hopefully. It would get him in out of the rain.
Cloister thought about it, but after a second he shook his head.
“Not yet,” he said. “Just keep any cars that come this way moving.”
Once Collins got out of the way, Cloister pulled in tight on the shoulder with his tires nudged right up to the crumbled edges of the tarmac. He got out of the car and slammed the door. The rain hammered down on him as he ducked around the back to get Bourneville.
She gave him a reproachful look when he unclipped her and lifted her out into the rain. It soaked her heavy coat into sodden black elflocks and made her waterlogged ears droop at the tips. She sneezed and pressed against his leg as he set her down. It shouldn’t be possible to get any wetter, but Cloister swore he could feel her damp soak into his pants.
“She all right?” Collins asked suspiciously from what he thought was a safe distance. He was scared of dogs, particularly Bon, for some reason.
Cloister clipped Bon’s lead to her harness and affectionately scrubbed her damp head. He felt her ribs push against his leg as she heaved a put-upon sigh. “She doesn’t like to walk in the rain,” he said. “Once she knows it’s work, she’ll be okay.”
He could see where the Prius had gone off the road. Deep, muddy ruts sliced through the scrubby, sun-bleached grass and down the hill in two uneven lines until they terminated under the ragged rear tires. Cloister gave the tracks a wide berth as he started down the slope. The loose, slippery dirt was like quicksand under his feet. He had to scramble to stay ahead of it, and the length of the leash played out to give Bourneville the freedom to make her own way down.
“Watch out,” Tancredi warned him dryly as he skidded down into the bog at the bottom. “It’s treacherous.”
He was already wet, but the water that spilled over his boots and soaked into his socks was colder.
