PROLOGUE
This was Tony Dante’s least favorite part of the job.
He didn’t mind picking up the towels strewn on the locker room floor. He actually enjoyed replenishing the toiletries. There was something satisfying about seeing all those colorful bottles filled to the top. Even cleaning the toilets wasn’t that bad if he got into the rhythm of it.
But the steam room was something else. Of all his duties as an attendant in the men’s lounge at the Spa Peninsula, maintaining it was the one he dreaded the most. Because management wouldn’t let him cut off the steam during guest hours, there was no way to avoid getting sweaty if he was going to clean the area properly. Invariably, he’d have to take a shower afterward and change into a second uniform. That was why he always saved the task until near the start of his break.
It was almost that time now. So, as his routine dictated, he got out of his work shoes and slipped on a pair of flip-flops. He hadn’t seen anyone in the men’s lounge for a while and considered stripping down to just his shorts, but then thought better of it. Someone could walk in at any moment and if they saw “the help” shirtless, they might disapprove. So he left the shirt on, grabbed two towels along with his disinfectant bottle, opened the door, and stepped into the thick mist.
It was almost impossible to see. He started at the far right end of the room and began spraying and wiping down the white tile bench, careful to keep an eye out for anyone along the way. He hadn’t seen anybody enter or leave the room in the last fifteen minutes so he was pretty sure it was empty. Staying that long in there was a Herculean undertaking, not to mention unhealthy. Still, as was his habit, he made a token effort to be sure.
“Anyone in here?” he called out, his voice sounding strangely muffled by the vapor. “Cleaning underway.”
There was no response. He moved over to the longer, middle bench and sprayed it down as well. As he was wiping the tile with his towel, he noticed a dark shape in the corner, where the middle and left bench met. The fog was so thick that it was hard at first to even be sure that it was a person. But as he leaned in, he saw that it was a man, naked and slumped to the side, his head strangely suspended at an awkward angle.
“Sir, are you all right?” Tony asked loudly, hoping the man had just fallen asleep and could be woken by a booming voice. The man didn’t reply. It seemed to Tony that something was off, but he was reluctant to shake or even touch the man. He didn’t want to get fired for inappropriate contact. Instead, he left the room and hit the button that turned off the steam while simultaneously sucking the moisture out. It took less than a minute to complete the process.
Once that was done, he stepped back inside. What he saw made him drop the towels and the disinfectant bottle. Now that the steam had dissipated, he had a clear view of the man and he wasn’t sleeping. Tony wanted to yell but was too stunned to make any sound. The reason the man’s head was at an awkward angle was because it was being held up by some kind of thick band or ribbon wrapped around his neck. The other end of the material was tied to a metal handlebar a few feet above and behind the tile bench. The man’s eyes were wide open. He was dead.
Tony could barely believe what he was seeing. He wanted to run. But his legs were locked up with fear and he stumbled backward, slipping on the slick, tile floor. He landed hard on his butt but shot back up and hurried out of the steam room into the sitting area, grabbed the courtesy phone, and called the spa’s front desk. When the receptionist picked up, it took all his self-control not to scream into the phone.
“Call the cops,” he said forcefully. “There’s a dead guy in the men’s steam room.”
CHAPTER ONE
Jessie tried to ignore the pain.
Instead, she focused all her energy on the end goal and not the struggle to get there. Though her thighs were burning, and her breathing was heavy, she pressed ahead, her eyes fixed on her destination: her driveway.
After another thirty seconds, she was there. She dropped out of sprint mode and slowed to a walk. She pulled out her phone and hit “stop” on the time clock of her running app. It read: 42:29.
Not bad for five miles. That’s just under 8 ½-minute-miles.
She allowed herself a moment of pride. She was still a long way away from getting back to the eight-minute-miles she ran in college, but she’d shown steady improvement in recent months. And considering all the injuries she’d suffered in the last few years, from stabbings, to gunshot wounds, to multiple concussions and at least two strangling attempts, she thought she was doing pretty well.
Jessie walked to the end of the block, allowing her breathing to return to normal. Her thoughts drifted to yesterday’s seminar in criminal profiling at UCLA. It was one of her final ones before re-joining LAPD’s Homicide Special Section full-time and the vibe was bittersweet. Students, as they had for weeks, pleaded with her to reconsider. The post-lecture Q&A session ran longer than usual, as if the kids were hoping to squeeze out every last kernel of knowledge that they could glean from her. It was gratifying and a little depressing at the same time. She didn’t want it to end.
Jessie turned around and made her way back to the house, trying to shake off the gloom that came from knowing something so positive would soon be over. She had agreed to return at the request—more like pleading actually—of Captain Roy Decker, who ran LAPD’s Downtown Station and oversaw Homicide Special Section, or HSS. He’d told her that she could remain as a consultant rather than an employee and continue to work with Detective Ryan Hernandez, who in addition to being her semi-regular partner, was also her fiancé. Decker also offered her a huge jump in pay.
Normally that wouldn’t be the deciding factor. Even without the job, Jessie was well-off, a result of her divorce and an inheritance from her adoptive parents. But with a wedding to plan and her sister’s recent “relocation,” having the extra income couldn’t hurt.
Jessie reached the front door and began to stretch. She knew that worrying about current and future bills wasn’t conducive to loosening her muscles but she couldn’t help it. Even though she didn’t want some huge wedding, Ryan seemed insistent. The venues and vendors he was suggesting were all high-end, and of course, very pricey. It was increasingly a bone of contention, one that she was getting tired of relenting on.
And then there was Hannah. Jessie sighed at the thought of her. Her younger half-sister, Hannah Dorsey, now only weeks from turning eighteen, was currently a resident at the Seasons Wellness Center in Malibu. The unremarkable name made it sound like the place might be an exclusive spa. It was certainly as expensive as one. After insurance, each week there cost a minimum of $7000, and that was just for room and board.
In fact, the place was an in-patient psychiatric facility that focused on those suffering from all manner of mental illness including suicidal ideation, life-threatening eating disorders, even uncontrolled OCD. Hannah had checked in there voluntarily two weeks ago, at the insistence of the therapist she shared with Jessie, Dr. Janice Lemmon.
Officially, she was there to deal with a diagnosis of self-harm tendencies, but that didn’t accurately describe her circumstance. For months, if not longer, Hannah had been deliberately putting herself in dangerous situations that could end badly. She had admitted that normal human interactions mostly left her numb and emotionless. So she courted confrontations with neighborhood bullies, creepy stalkers, drug dealers, pedophiles, and even a sexual slavery ring, all as part of a need to get a hit of adrenaline. Even if the feeling was fleeting, at least it was something.