Said weapon pulsed between his legs. Maybe later he would indulge a little fantasy about meeting her under other such circumstances. His right hand might then bring him some relief before hitting the road. Too bad she wouldn’t get her relief before he caught up with her.
A smile touched his lips. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let her have one last birthday fantasy. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Valerie hadn’t just unwittingly handed Nate the location of his fugitive, but a way to get in the door without the typical strong-arm methods or weapons.
Yes, it could work. It could really fucking work.
He pulled out of the Red Apple Lounge parking lot with a tight smile. He’d spent a fair amount of his time as a bounty hunter devising ways to blend and be totally nondescript in a crowd. This would be the exact opposite of any disguise he’d done. But hell, if it worked as good as he suspected, maybe by the time his hot little blonde was in handcuffs, he would have discovered a new career path.
He laughed out loud and turned into traffic, mentally sanding the rough edges off his plan all the way to Citadel Mall.
Chapter Two
A persistent breeze whipped Lydia’s hair and played chase with the skirt of her gauzy white dress while she stood at the water’s edge. She stared out over the glittering Pacific Ocean, in touch with something powerful and magnificent without truly being part of it.
Her sandals were in her hand, allowing the cool, foamy edge of the surf to run up and over her toes. The salty air was rich with the smell of beach life and nearby food vendors, and she closed her eyes while she breathed it in. The aroma brought back memories with a bittersweet tang as distinct and familiar as the sea breeze around her.
Laughter floated on the air behind her, triggering an image of her first time to the apartment that had been purchased as a coming-of-age gift for a good friend. At eighteen, life had seemed eternal and clung to such promise. Four friends had come here that year, swearing to do so again every year for the rest of their lives. Four friends, four years. Which, as it turned out, had been the “rest of their lives” for two of them.
Lydia glanced down at the soda bottle in her hand, swirling the brown fluid inside that disguised the alcohol she’d added. Tipping the glass, she let a series of generous spills of liquid escape with the retreating ocean. “This one is for you, Tiff. Another for Beverly. And one for Val. You’re still my best friend. The only one of us I’ve got left.”
One gulp remained, and she tossed it back and let the burn sear out the prickle of tears threatening to overtake her. What would she have done if she’d have known back then that she would be standing alone on the beach one day as a fugitive? That two of her friends would be gone, and the one remaining hadn’t been any more willing to return to Venice Beach than Lydia had been, even after Tiffany’s father had insisted the apartment be kept as is for their use whenever they wished. It was a memoriam she hadn’t had the heart for. What would she have done at eighteen if she’d been able to glimpse the path that lay ahead?
“I would have had another drink,” Lydia said to no one, and she trudged up the beach and tossed away her empty soda bottle in the first available trash bin. The Venice boardwalk was teeming with the usual assortment of beach bimbos, bikers, skaters, tourists and bohemians. Down the walk, the weekly drum circle was just beginning. Crowds had formed around the drummers, barring them from her view, but she stopped to listen anyway. She felt the driving beat thrum through her core and closed her eyes, willing it to drive away spirits from the past, along with the future that grew more frightening every time she let herself dwell on it.
She wandered closer and joined in the impromptu dance that several hippie-types had begun along with the regular dancers. She swayed her body in tune to the beat of many different drums. It was mesmerizing, that ancient beat. Some claimed the drum circle to be soul-reviving, but her motions failed to so much as lift her mood. It was her birthday, and twenty-nine was thus far turning into nothing to celebrate. She had forbidden herself from spending her birthday obsessing over her current drama, but what else was left?
The more the crowds swelled out of curiosity around the drum circle, the more profoundly alone and empty she felt.
“I’m not drunk enough for this,” she whispered. “Not nearly drunk enough.”
She stuffed her feet back into her sandals and headed for the row of tall and eclectically colorful apartment buildings overlooking the beach. At least getting sauced enough to survive the rest of her birthday wouldn’t prove too difficult. Unlike Valerie, Lydia had learned a hard lesson about drinking when Tiffany and Beverly had died in a car wreck not five miles up the Pacific Coast Highway. The tragedy had left Lydia with little taste for the hard stuff. Valerie, on the other hand, hadn’t applied the cautionary tale to herself.