I stare at the television and take a swallow.

Let’s get to the good stuff.

Where in the hell is the reporter who should be covering the car fire on the streets of Marina del Rey?

That’s the only story worth my time.

“We need to find Fernando,” Bentz said as Hayes drove back to the Center to drop off Martinez before taking Bentz to pick up his rental car. “I put in a call to him, but he didn’t pick up.”

“I thought I told you to back off.” Hayes was irritated. “This is my case.”

“And my wife.” Bentz was equally upset, worried sick.

“I know.” Hayes sighed, loosening the tie at his neck. “We’ll put a tail on Yolanda as well as watch the house for Fernando.”

“I’ll check with his job and school,” Martinez said. “We’ll try to track what he did today,” she was saying when Hayes’s phone rang again and he took the call.

In the backseat, Bentz was quietly going out of his mind, trying to piece together the disjointed case. Though it had started out with him being lured to Los Angeles in search of his first wife, it now involved Olivia, he was certain of it. And now finding her was his number one priority. But with no leads to go on he figured the best way he could find her was through working this case, tracking down the person who obviously had a vendetta against him.

If he could pull his emotions out of it and study what was happening with a cool, cop’s eye rather than his own passionate ardor, he could see that he was at the center of the case in the eye of a murderous hurricane. The person behind it all, the mastermind of the operation, was targeting Bentz.

From the ongoing investigations, the LAPD could find no reason for either Lorraine Newell or Shana McIntyre to be murdered individually; the link was Bentz. Though it was too early for the police to connect Fortuna Esperanzo, Bentz knew the deal. She wasn’t left in the ocean in clothes identical to those that “Jennifer” had been wearing because she’d decided to go swimming. No, she’d been murdered, and the killer wanted to make certain that Bentz knew Fortuna had been a target, linked to this mess with Jennifer.

However if the woman who looked so much like his ex-wife were behind it all, then why hadn’t it all come to a head earlier today, before she’d leapt into the ocean? Why risk her life? And how could she have been at the airport at the same time Fortuna had been dumped into the ocean?

Everything that had happened had taken calculation. Patience. Long-term planning.

Someone who held a very personal grudge was playing him, had spent years creating the perfect scenario. He discounted anyone he’d sent to prison. Most of those guys, if they had escaped or been released, would have run in the opposite direction as far and as fast as they could go. If they wanted to satisfy a grudge, they would have killed him and been done with it. Whoever was behind this string of horrifying events was getting off on his torture, watching him take the bait of Jennifer over and over again.

And that fact made his blood congeal. Yolanda Salazar?

Did she have the burning hatred to serve up her revenge ice cold? It didn’t seem so. She seemed too much of a hothead, as witnessed by her act of spitting on him. She’d been scared and angry, but that wasn’t the reaction Bentz expected from the killer.

So if not Yolanda, who?

What about someone close to the Caldwell twins?

Maybe this is the old “eye for an eye” thing.

Again, he was stopped by the killer’s intimate knowledge of his ex-wife, of his relationship with her.

And now…Olivia was missing. Someone had the balls to call her and taunt her until she felt compelled to fly to L.A. That took confidence. Knowledge. And pure damned luck. How did the killer know Olivia would hop a plane?

Because whoever is behind this knows everything about you, about your life, about your wife. Damn it all, Bentz, this is your fault. Yours.

Absently he rubbed his leg as it had been aching since the chase down Devil’s Caldron. He felt like a fool, following some woman down the ridge. Chasing an elusive truth while his wife had felt obligated to fly to California to reconnect with him, her ever-distant husband. Hadn’t she mentioned they needed to talk? Hadn’t he, too, felt the rift in their marriage?

Guilt tore a hole in his heart and all their arguments now seemed petty. Stupid! Even the one about kids. Hell, if she wanted kids, he’d give her a whole passel of them.

If he got the chance.

Hayes hung up. “We’re not going back to the Center yet.”

“What’s up?” Martinez asked.

Hayes frowned, searching for the next exit. “Someone torched Sherry Petrocelli’s car.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Martinez pressed her face in her hands.

“It gets worse. Looks like they found a body in the backseat.”

“What? No!” Bentz shouted, coming up in his seat so fast, his seat belt clenched around him. Sick inside, rage and fear burning through him, he thought of Olivia. Beautiful, fun-loving, wickedly smart Olivia. Oh, God, please, no! He could hardly draw a breath. “Swear to God, Hayes, if something’s happened to Olivia, if she’s the person in that car-” He couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t think. Dread tore at his soul as the miles sped by and Hayes, breaking every speed limit, sped toward Marina del Rey, where the fire had been reported.

Bentz tried to calm himself. It’s not Olivia. It’s not Olivia. She’s alive and well. Somewhere. It’s not Olivia!

But he was frantic, fear eating him from the inside out.

The street was cordoned off, police barricades in place. Two fire trucks idled, their hoses snaking over the wet pavement, water running in sooty rivulets to the gutters. The blackened shell of a car still smoldered while the horrid stench of burnt rubber, melted plastic, and, worse, charred flesh filled the air.

Bentz flew out of Hayes’s 4Runner the minute it stopped. Ignoring the barrier, he found a policeman in charge and demanded, “The body inside the vehicle. Who is it?” he demanded, frantic. Oh, dear God…

“Who the hell are you?”

Bentz pulled out his badge just as Hayes and Martinez showed up and identified themselves. Satisfied, the officer said, “We don’t know. The body’s already been taken to the morgue, but I gotta tell ya, it’ll be hard to make an ID.”

Bentz thought he might be sick. “A woman?” he asked.

“We think so. There was ID with her, most of it consumed in the fire, but she had a badge with her. It’s pretty blackened, but I already checked the numbers. It belongs to the owner of the car, Officer Sherry Petrocelli. I’m thinking it’s her body we found in the backseat.”

Bentz nearly sank to the ground in relief. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, trying to get a grip on his own sanity. Desperately he clung to a thread of hope that Olivia hadn’t met such a horrible, grisly end.

Yet, with that relief came an onslaught of guilt. Someone had died tonight. If not Sherry Petrocelli, then some other woman who had parents, possibly children, a husband, or friends who loved her. And he knew, deep down, that the victim was dead because of him. Because of his ego, his obsession with his first wife. His tunnel vision about Jennifer had brought death to several women and thrust his wife into harm’s way. Someone had personally damned him to a living hell.

“I have to see,” he said to Hayes, his voice rough, his teeth clenched.

“What?”

“I have to see the body.”

“You’re sure about this?” Hayes obviously disagreed. Shook his head.

“I need to know, Jonas. You understand.”

“No I don’t. For the love of God, Bentz, this ain’t gonna be pretty.” Hayes was still shaking his head, then seemed to realize he wasn’t going to dissuade his mule-headed friend. “All right, I’ll take you. But, for the record, I think this is a big mistake. Shit man. Oh, hell. We’ll do it and afterward, then we’ll pick up the rental and you can go back to the motel and get some sleep. You look like hell.”