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the bulge of Dodge’s shoulder, that arm curling out of view.

Mike glanced quickly over his shoulder. Kat’s face pointed back at him, her sober expression a match of Annabel’s. He grabbed for a line of reasoning. ‘Look at all these people. This is an upscale gig. We don’t want to fight here.’

‘Fight? Fight?’ William grinned, and even Dodge’s face seemed to rearrange itself into an expression of amusement, a couple of spaced teeth peeking into view. ‘There are generally a few more steps of escalation in there. Shouting, chest bumping, shoving. We don’t want to skip all the foreplay, now, do we?’

‘Yeah,’ Mike said. ‘We do. Whatever game you’re playing, it ends here.’

‘No,’ Dodge said, the low voice, almost a vibration, surprising Mike.

Dodge moved his massive hand from behind his back and let fall a white stuffed polar bear.

Chapter 12

Mike’s first reaction wasn’t anger or fear but total disbelief. Everything slowed to a syrupy crawl – Dodge’s hand, still open from the release; William’s mouth bunching around the sunflower seeds with convalescent imprecision; Kat’s polar bear rocking ever so slightly on the parking-lot asphalt, one furry arm gone sleek and dark from an oil puddle. It was surreal – disorienting, even – to see that animal in this context.

Mike’s mind spun, cogs clattering, searching for purchase. The implications about how the polar bear had gotten here seemed too large for him to process.

‘Where’d you get that?’ he asked.

William, closest to him, said, ‘Found it.’ He popped a sly grin. ‘It is Katherine’s?’

Hearing his daughter’s full name emerge from William’s lips jogged something loose. The gears meshed. The scene – and Mike’s thoughts – lurched back into motion at full speed. The voice through the monitor. Kat’s autolocking window. These men, in his daughter’s room?

His blood thrummed like a well-plucked string. His vision went impossibly sharp, then blurred as he lunged, driving his forehead into William’s face. Bone clashed. William’s breath left in a huff, intermingling with Mike’s, their eyes inches away for a frozen instant, Mike catching a close-up of one brown pupil rolling obscenely in shock and pain.

William reeled back, howling, Mike feeling the man’s sweat across his own forehead. There was something so primitive about a headbutt, using your own face as a weapon. The street move, Shep’s favored ambush, left Mike breathless and transported, suspended somewhere closer to Shady Lane than to the Braemar Country Club.

Dodge regarded him with level interest, a cat tracking a canary.

William was rolling on the ground, clutching at his cheek, crying out, ‘Did you see? He hit me! This man hit me!’

Guests from the ceremony paused to gawk. Heads pivoted above car roofs. A few people stayed frozen at a ten-yard standoff, looking on, contemplating what the hell to do. William’s bad leg scraped the asphalt stiffly.

Dodge’s lips parted to show the thinnest sliver of teeth, but on him it seemed a massive display of kinetics.

Mike squared to meet him head on.

Somewhere he registered Kat screaming from the backseat of the truck. The sound broke through the muted rush of white noise pervading his head, knocking him back to the present. He halted, searching for restraint, breathing so hard his shoulders rose and fell with the effort.

Annabel was shouting for him to get into the truck, and he thought of her and Kat behind him, watching through the movie screen of the windshield. Everything he stood to lose seemed summed up in the countless glares pointed in his direction, all those well-dressed folks who’d watched him knock down a cripple.

Mike backpedaled to the truck, a few brave souls rushing in to aid William.

Dodge’s gaze never faltered from his. ‘Soon,’ he said, the word sending a line of fire up Mike’s spine.

Mike got into the truck, turned over the engine. A scrum of people now surrounded the two men, illuminated in the headlight glare. William, holding his face, was helped to his feet, but then his leg faltered and he collapsed again. Several women shot mortified glances at Mike.

Annabel asked, quietly, ‘What just happened?’

Mike said, ‘I don’t know.’

Throwing an arm over the seat back, he reversed out of the space. Kat lay curled up in the backseat, her cheeks glittering. The cluster of people dissipated as Mike pulled away, keeping his stare fastened on the rearview mirror.

In the red light of the brakes, William stayed down, twisted over his limp legs. At his side, Dodge stood inhumanly tall, head tilted, his insensate eyes watching them drive off.

Chapter 13

‘So we’ve got a William. And a… Dodge, was it?’ The detective edged his coffee mug meticulously into one of many ring stains blemishing the surface of his too-small desk. The big man had a lantern jaw, a wide and crooked seam of mouth, and a Slavic family name – Markovic – printed across a peeling nameplate.

His partner, a study in contrast, had precise, focused features and smooth, dark skin. Simone Elzey wore a cheap button-up with her sleeves cuffed. Callused hands and a bull neck betrayed a propensity for the weight room. An angel tattoo walling the left side of her throat gave her an intimidating air, which Mike assumed was precisely the point. After they’d run through the essentials, she’d gone to the back office to key in an incident report, which sounded like deputy shorthand for doing fuck-all.

The Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, a few miles from the Wingates’ house, was tumbleweed-dead. Eleven o’clock on a Sunday, and everyone had better things to be doing, Markovic and Elzey included. Mike and Annabel sat on stiff wooden chairs, Kat slumped with exhaustion in her mother’s lap. They’d recounted the story a number of times, the detectives asking the same questions in different keys, a symphony of skepticism.

Since the confrontation had occurred in Tarzana, they’d been informed, LAPD would be called in if a formal investigation was opened. Because Mike and Annabel had agonized over what to do for most of the drive home, they’d wound up at their local station. It occurred to Mike that it was the only location he actually knew. What a contrast with the Shady Lane years, when he and Shep knew intimately the interiors of every cop shop within a joyride of the Couch Mother’s domain.

‘Yeah. Like I said.’ Mike rubbed his neck.

Markovic studied him with dull gray eyes. ‘You get a last name?’

The question, in its third incarnation, knocked Mike further off-kilter. He felt unease, and an odd creeping guilt that defied explanation. Sensing his discomfort, Annabel reached over and rested a hand on his shoulder.

‘A last name?’ Markovic prompted again.

Finally Mike sourced the echo, his mind racing back to that first hazy memory after his father abandoned him. A similar station, questions lobbed at him like fastballs, one after another, driving him further into his amnesiac haze: You don’t know your last name? How about your dad’s name? Do you know your dad’s name? Trying to regain his bearings, Mike soaked in the room around him – missing-children flyers, dark- complected men scowling from mug shots, the bitter scent of stagnant coffee. Parallel in so many ways. But – he reminded himself – completely different. He was an adult now. A taxpayer. A member of the community.

The Steve Miller Band, piped in through decades-old speakers, was flying like an eagle above the crackle of police scanners.

‘No,’ Mike said, perhaps a bit too firmly. ‘Like I said. I figured that license-plate number would be good.’

‘Like I said, the number you gave us is from a brown 1978 Eldorado last registered in 1991 to Jirou Arihyoshi, a gardener in Yuba City. So unless you made a mistake…’

‘I didn’t make a mistake.’ ‘Mmm.’