The door to the interrogation room was flung open. Rosario strode in, along with her partner, Detective Lawless, whom I assumed had been watching me the entire time behind the one-way glass. He began unchaining me.

“This is your lucky day, Logan. You’re being released.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You tested negative for gunshot residue. We also have witnesses who’ve come forward essentially corroborating your version. We’re trying to find Mr. Sheen.”

My lucky day, indeed.

“We just need to get some paperwork out of the way,” Rosario said, “then we’ll get you out of here.”

“Any chance the good taxpayers of San Diego County could spring for another peanut butter sandwich? I’m starting to OD on Taco Bell.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Rosario said.

I tailed her out the door and down a concrete corridor, past several holding cells, including the one in which I’d cooled my heels. My sullen cell mate, Chatty Cathy, was still sitting on the floor, knees to his chest, still staring at nothing.

“Happiness is a choice,” I said.

He flipped me off without looking up.

Rosario punched some numbers into an electronic keypad, unlocking a steel door that led into a long hallway flanked by the wood-paneled offices of ranking sheriff’s administrators.

“Who were the witnesses?” I asked.

“The investigation’s ongoing. I’m not allowed to discuss those kinds of things.”

“I had a feeling you might say that.”

Rosario held the door open for me when we reached the end of the corridor. I thanked her.

“Para eso están los amigos,” she said with a little nod as I walked past her.

What are friends for?

I grasped the meaning of her words: the witnesses were likely among the same illegal migrants who’d saved my life the night before. I mouthed them a silent gracias.

Rosario escorted me through a covered sally port and into the jail’s out-processing center, where my personal items were returned to me.

“We towed your rental car,” the detective said. “I’ll drive you over to the impound lot after you’ve changed back into your street clothes.”

“Thanks, Alicia.”

“It’s Detective.”

“Detective.”

Rosario was right about one thing. She and her partner were paid to solve crimes. I wasn’t. I should’ve turned in my rented Escalade, taken the train to LA, and begged Savannah to take me back. But then Hub Walker called. He was weeping.

“I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What is it, Hub? What’s wrong?”

“My wife,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “She’s disappeared.”

Walker paced the patio in his bathrobe, clutching a half-empty quart bottle of Jim Beam. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. He was drunk with worry. Or maybe just drunk.

“I’ve been trying her phone all day. She would’ve called if she got sidetracked. She’s never done anything like this before in her life. It’s not like her.”

Walker’s granddaughter wandered past where I was sitting at the patio table. She was wearing inflated water wings and her Little Mermaid swimsuit.

“Hello, Ryder.”

The little girl jumped feet-first into the deep end of the pool without responding, bobbed to the surface, and began dog paddling, water splashing everywhere. Walker barely noticed her. He plopped down in the chair next to mine and gulped a swallow of bourbon.

“I drove all over town this morning, looking for her.”

“You called the police?”

“They said they couldn’t take a report. Said she had to be gone twenty-four hours at least.” He gestured to the cast on my arm. “What happened to you?”

“Tripped on some stairs.”

He seemed not to hear me, absorbed in his own worries.

“It’s gotta be Ray Sheen,” he said. “He’s behind all of this. I know it. I can feel it.”

I wanted to believe that Walker was beyond reproach. He seemed legitimately upset. But all I felt was a vague queasiness that his wife’s sudden absence was the latest tangle in a web of deceit, and that a war hero I once idolized was somehow complicit in all of it.

“What makes you think Sheen had anything to do with your wife being gone, Hub?”

He glanced over his shoulder, waited until Ryder paddled to the far end of the pool, out of earshot, then looked back at me, struggling to keep his emotions in check.

“Sheen and Crissy have been carrying on for years.”

“You know that for a fact?”

He nodded. “She left the computer on by accident one night a month or so back. I saw some emails. Crissy told him it was a mistake. She wanted to end it. Sheen didn’t. He blackmailed her, threatened to tell me all about it if she broke it off.”

“Did you confront her?”

Walker shook his head and gulped more whiskey. “Like I said, she was the one who wanted to end the affair. I figured she would eventually. Then we could get back to normal, like things used to be when we first got married. I know she’d never leave me. She loves this house too much.”

I wondered whether Savannah and I would have still been together, had I embraced Walker’s arguably admirable laissez-faire attitude after discovering she and Arlo Echevarria had been carrying on behind my back. Maybe. Maybe not. Every relationship is different.

“I can’t swim!” Walker’s screaming blasted me from my reverie. He was on his feet, running toward the far end of the pool. “She’s drowning! My granddaughter!”

Ryder was hovering motionless at the bottom of the deep end, arms floating ethereally in front of her body, the two inflatable water wings lapping on the surface above.

I dove in, my eyes and cuts stinging from the chlorine, crooked my good arm around her waist and kicked our way to the edge of the pool. Walker pulled her out and sat her on the brick pool decking as I quickly hauled myself out of the water.

She lolled, lifeless as a rag doll. Her lips were periwinkle. Walker whacked her on the back a couple of times with the flat of his hand. There was no response.

“She’s not breathing! I don’t know what to do!”

I did. Every Alpha operator was certified in combat life-saving. We learned how to stanch arterial bleeds using live pigs that our instructors would anesthetize, then blast with shotguns to approximate battlefield injuries. Performing basic CPR on a child was a cakewalk by comparison.

I laid her on her back, positioned the heel of my right hand on her breastbone, and began pushing down on her chest. After thirty rapid compressions, I lowered my right ear close to her nose, my cheek over her mouth, hoping for the whisper of breath. None came.

“Ryder! Ryder, it’s Grampa! Wake up, baby girl! Please, wake up! Please!”

I tilted the little girl’s head back, pinched her nostrils, and forced the air from my lungs into hers. Her thin rib cage rose and fell. One rescue breath, then another. That’s all it took.

She coughed up water. I rolled her on her side. More water came out of her mouth and nose. Then she began wailing.

Walker scooped her up, hugging and rocking her in his lap. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he kept repeating, as much to me as to his maker.

I sat back on my knees, dripping wet and relieved, when the patio door slid open. Out stepped Crissy Walker.

“What happened?”

“She’s fine, she’s fine,” Hub said. “Just had a little accident is all.”

Crissy hurried past me and swept Ryder into her arms.

“Are you OK, honey?”

Ryder nodded and burrowed her wet face into Crissy’s chest, soaking her outfit. She was wearing gold high heels and a form-fitted, pale lavender skirt suit that showcased every reason why she’d once been Playmate of the Year.

“Where the hell have you been?” Hub demanded. “I’ve been calling you all day.”

“I told you. I had an early meeting in Los Angeles, that I’d probably be gone before you woke up.”