ChapterOne
She'd been here before. Not this park, but another one just like it—a place where shadows gathered between the trees and secrets died in the dark.
A shiver ran down her spine as Haley Kenton parked her Honda Civic in a nearly empty lot at Griffith Park, a large, wide-sweeping park in the middle of Los Angeles. It was after six on a Thursday evening in April, and the sun was sinking lower in the sky. It would be completely dark within the hour. She needed this meeting to be quick.
When she turned off the engine, the silence felt heavy and foreboding. There was one other car in the lot, a small white electric vehicle, probably belonging to the woman who'd contacted her. She would have preferred to talk here, or somewhere with lights and people, but she'd been told by a woman named Sabrina Lin to take the trail into the woods to the old bridge. It definitely felt wrong, maybe a little stupid, but she had no choice, not if she wanted information, and she did.
As she got out of the car, she took a deep breath to calm her nerves, but as she looked at the trailhead disappearing into the thick trees, she felt herself going back six years…
She was twenty-five and standing at the edge of a different wood, a campus security officer telling her they'd found her younger brother's body in the pond behind the fraternity house.It looked like an accident,they'd said.Landon had probably been drunk or high and had stumbled into the pond, completely disoriented. There was no evidence of foul play.
Angry tears pressed at her eyes now, but she couldn't get emotional. She needed to stay in the present; to find out why some stranger had asked her to come here tonight so she could share information about Landon's death. It seemed doubtful that there was anything new to learn. But she'd always chased every lead, every whispered rumor, every false hope, believing someday she would find the truth. Maybe that day would be today.
As a journalist, she was used to people not always wanting to speak in public or to come forward about something they'd seen, so this type of situation was one she had faced before, but never had it been this personal.
Moving toward the trailhead, a gust of wind lifted her dark-brown hair off her neck, sending goosebumps down her arms. She zipped up her bomber jacket, grateful that she'd changed into jeans after leaving her office. It had been an unusually cool day with the temperature only reaching the high sixties, and it was much colder than that now.
As she left the parking area, her stress level increased. She told herself to breathe. Landon needed her to be here. He needed her to fight for him, and she'd always fought for him. She wasn't going to stop now.
The trail curved again, and she caught sight of the wooden bridge ahead. A figure stood at its center—a woman with straight black hair, wearing a gray business suit that looked out of place in the wilderness setting.
Sabrina Lin?It had to be.
Haley's pulse quickened; every instinct, honed by years of chasing dangerous stories, screamed something was wrong. The woman stood too still, like a deer that sensed a predator. She had a phone in her hand and a black bag over her shoulder.
When Haley reached the bridge, she was still twenty feet away from Sabrina, but she could see the tension in her stance, in her expression.
"Sabrina Lin?" she called out.
Sabrina's gaze met hers. Her mouth opened, but it wasn't a word that came out of her mouth; it was a piercing scream, and then she crumpled to the ground.
Haley froze in shock as Sabrina's body jerked violently before suddenly going still again. And she had the terrible feeling that whatever Sabrina had wanted to tell her would never be said.
"No, no, no!" She ran toward Sabrina, her low-heeled boots pounding against the wood. She dropped to her knees beside the fallen woman, her hands hovering over Sabrina's still form, unsure where to touch, how to help.
Sabrina's eyes were open but unseeing, her pupils dilated. A thin trickle of blood ran from a tiny puncture wound on the left side of her neck, so small she almost missed it. But there—embedded in the flesh just below her jawline—was something that looked like a needle or a dart. Avoiding the needle, she pressed two fingers to Sabrina's throat, searching for a pulse she knew she wouldn't find. The woman's skin was still warm, but there was nothing. No breath, no heartbeat, no flicker of life.
A branch snapped somewhere in the trees.
Her head jerked up, adrenaline flooding her system. The woods had fallen completely silent—no birds, no insects. Even the wind seemed to have stopped.Someone was out there. Someone who had just killed Sabrina Lin with what looked like a poisoned dart. Someone who might be about to take their next shot.
Without thinking, she grabbed Sabrina's phone from where it had fallen next to her body and jumped to her feet, sprinting down the bridge.
She hit the dirt trail at a dead run, branches whipping at her face as she crashed through the undergrowth. Behind her, she could hear movement—footsteps, or maybe just her imagination transforming the sound of her own panicked breathing into something more sinister.
She didn't stop running until she reached the parking lot, where there were still only two cars, hers and maybe Sabrina's. Her hand shook as she jumped behind the wheel, locked the door, and then fastened her seat belt. She reversed as quickly as she could, the tires of her car spinning on loose gravel. She didn't take a full breath until she reached the main road, until the normalcy of traffic lights and strip malls eased her panic and allowed her to think clearly.
As she came to a stop at a red light, she drew in her first full breath and tried to make sense of what had happened:Sabrina Lin was dead. Murdered. With something that left barely a mark.If she hadn't seen it happen, if she hadn't been standing right there when the woman collapsed, it might have looked like a heart attack or stroke. The attack had been professional, skilled, a killing that suggested resources, planning.
Sabrina had wanted to talk to her about her brother.Had she been killed to silence her?
It seemed unbelievable. But she couldn't come up with another conclusion. She glanced down at Sabrina's phone lying on the seat next to hers. Maybe there was a clue on her phone. She was about to reach for it when an impatient horn told her that the light had turned green. She drove several more blocks, then pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant and picked up Sabrina's phone.
A text message was on the screen:Stop digging. You don't want to lose your job over this, do you? Let it go.The message was from someone with the initial,A.
What had Sabrina been digging into? Her brother's death?But why?
She hadn't had time to look into Sabrina beyond doing a brief internet search to discover that Sabrina was a lawyer with a renowned Los Angeles law firm, Adler and Briggs. Sabrina was a corporate attorney and had been hired by the firm two years earlier.
