There was a couple of seconds’ delay before Audrey replied.

‘Nicole, where’s he? Has he gone up to Josh’s room?’

‘No, he’s still in the kitchen.’

‘OK, Nicole, listen to me.’ Audrey’s voice was serious, but shaky at the same time. ‘As quietly and as quickly as you can, go get Josh and get out of the house. I’m calling the police right now.’

‘What?’

‘Nicole, I don’t have a cousin named Mark from Texas. We don’t have anyone staying in the garage apartment. Get out of the house . . . now. Do you underst—’

CLUNK.

‘Nicole?’

‘NICOLE?’

The line went dead.

Two

Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division pushed open the door to his small office on the fifth floor of the famous Police Administration Building in Downtown Los Angeles and stepped inside. The clock on the wall showed 2:43 p.m.

Hunter looked around the room slowly. It’d been exactly two weeks since he last entered his office, and he had been hoping to come back to it relaxed and with a golden tan, but instead he felt totally exhausted and he was sure that he’d never looked as pale as he did now.

Hunter was supposed to have gone on his first vacation in nearly seven years. His captain had demanded that he and his partner take a two-week break after their last investigation ended sixteen days ago. Hunter had planned to go to Hawaii, a place that he’d always wanted to visit, but on the day he was supposed to fly out, his close friend, Adrian Kennedy, who was also the director of the FBI’s National Center for the Analyses of Violent Crime, asked Hunter for his help in interviewing an apprehended suspect in a double homicide investigation. Hunter had found himself unable to say no, so instead of flying to Hawaii he ended up in Quantico, Virginia.

The interview was meant to take no more than just a couple of days, but Hunter had got sucked into an investigation that changed his life for ever.

He and the FBI had finally closed the case less than twenty-four hours ago. With the investigation concluded, Kennedy had tried one more time to convince the once prodigy kid to join the Bureau.

Hunter grew up as an only child to working-class parents in Compton, an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His mother lost her battle with cancer when he was only seven. His father never remarried and had to take on two jobs to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.

From a very early age it was obvious to everyone that Hunter was different. He could figure things out faster than most. School bored and frustrated him. He’d finished all of his sixth-grade work in less than two months and, just for something to do, he sped through seventh-, eighth- and even ninth-grade books.

It was then that his principal decided to get in contact with the Los Angeles Board of Education. After a battery of exams and tests, at the age of twelve Hunter was given a scholarship to the Mirmam School for the Gifted.

By the age of fourteen he’d glided through Mirmam’s high school English, History, Math, Biology and Chemistry curriculums. Four years of high school were condensed into two and at fifteen he’d graduated with honors. With recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford University.

By the age of nineteen Hunter had already graduated in Psychology – summa cum laude – and at twenty-three he received his Ph.D. in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology. That was when Kennedy tried to recruit him into the FBI for the first time.

Hunter’s Ph.D. thesis paper, titled ‘An Advanced Psychological Study in Criminal Conduct’, ended up on Kennedy’s desk. The paper had impressed Kennedy and the then FBI Director so much that it had become mandatory reading at the NCAVC. Since then and over the years, Kennedy had tried several times to recruit Hunter into his team. In Kennedy’s mind, it made no sense that Hunter would rather be a detective with a local police force than join the most advanced serial-killer tracking task force in the USA, arguably in the world. But Hunter had never shown even an ounce of interest in becoming a federal agent, and had declined every offer made to him by Kennedy and his superiors.

Hunter sat at his desk but didn’t turn on his computer. He found it funny how everything about his office looked exactly the same, and totally different at the same time. Exactly the same because nothing had been moved or touched. Totally different because something was missing. Actually, not something, someone – his partner of six years, Detective Carlos Garcia.

Their last investigation together, before the enforced two-week break, had put Hunter and Garcia in pursuit of an extremely sadistic serial killer, who chose to broadcast his murders live over the Internet. The investigation had taken them both to the brink of sanity, almost claiming Hunter’s life, and placing Garcia and his family in a situation he swore he would never allow to happen again.

Just before their break, Garcia had revealed to Hunter that upon his return he wasn’t sure if he would come back to work at the Robbery Homicide Division and the Homicide Special Section. His priorities had changed. His family had to come first, no matter what.

Hunter didn’t have a family. He wasn’t married. He had no kids. But he fully understood his partner’s concern, and he was sure that whatever decision Garcia came to, it would be the right one for him.

The Homicide Special Section of the LAPD was an elite unit created to deal solely with serial, high-profile murders and homicide cases requiring extensive investigative time and expertise. Due to Hunter’s background in criminal behavior psychology, he headed up an even more specialized group within the Special Section. All homicides where overwhelming brutality and/or sadism had been used by the perpetrator were tagged by the department as ‘UV Crimes (Ultra-Violent). Hunter and Garcia were the LAPD’s UV Unit, and Garcia was the best partner and friend Hunter had ever had.

Hunter finally leaned forward and reached for the button to power up his computer, but before he’d managed to press it the door to his office was pushed open again and Garcia stepped inside.

‘Oh!’ Garcia said, looking a little surprised as he checked the wall clock. ‘You’re earlier than usual, Robert.’

Hunter’s eyes flicked to the clock – 2:51 p.m. – then back to his partner. Garcia’s longish brown hair was tied back in a slick ponytail, still wet from a morning shower, but his eyes looked tired and full of worry.

‘Yeah, a little bit,’ Hunter replied.

‘You don’t look so tanned for someone who’s just been to Hawaii.’ Garcia paused and frowned at Hunter. ‘You did take your vacation, right?’ Hunter was the biggest workaholic Garcia had ever met.

‘Sort of,’ Hunter said, with a half-nod.

‘And what does that mean?’

‘I took my break,’ Hunter explained. ‘I just didn’t go to Hawaii in the end.’

‘So where did you go?’

‘Nowhere special, just visiting a friend back east.’

‘OK.’

Garcia could tell that it hadn’t been something as simple as that but he also knew Hunter well enough to know that if he didn’t want to talk about a subject, he wouldn’t, no matter how much anyone pushed him.

Garcia approached his desk but didn’t sit down. He didn’t turn on his computer either. Instead, he opened the desk’s top drawer and began emptying it of its contents, placing everything on the desktop.