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Hitting the steering wheel and dash with his fist, he knew he’d made the biggest screwup of his miserable life.
    “I didn’t kill her!” he yelled to a deaf universe. “She was right there! Right there and she got away!”
    I’m a fucking dead man.
    He was horrified, astounded. “I had her right there, right in front of me, and I missed.” His stomach—a swamp polluted with an acidic compound of alcohol, speed, and fear—felt as if it would eat through the walls.
    Corbin sat numb in his truck in the Barton Memorial Hospital parking lot looking at his laptop for all the damn medical centers around the lake. There had to be twenty of them or more. And medical-care places all over South Lake. More in Incline. Urgent cares and a Kings Beach Wellness Center. Jesus! She could be anywhere. And no sign of that red Mustang.
    He felt sick to his stomach. Why in hell had he thought this was the greatest move ever? He would have to check them all and do it fast. She wouldn’t go to her condo. She wasn’t stupid. And who the hell was the guy who picked her up? A boyfriend? Or some random asshole? At least the fool drove a car you couldn’t hide.
    I need to find that damn car, Corbin thought.
    How bad had she been hit? He’d seen her limp. He hoped she died but doubted she would. Not with his stinking luck. He knew, to keep up the search, he’d have to take a hit of speed, but he was still too drunk.
    Out loud, in a self-hating voice, he said, “You don’t get her, you’re a dead man. You moron. You were drunk. Jesus, what’s the matter with you?”
    He put his head back on the headrest for a moment. He’d actually attempted to kill her, to jump in and make himself a hero to his damn cousin. The king of kings. Now it seemed like the stupidest decision he’d ever made in his life. He hated his obsession with trying to please his cousin. He hated the man yet couldn’t escape the need to get his acknowledgment.
    And Oggie, as his asshole, big-shot buddies called Ogden Thorp, would not react well to this. Thorp was the most powerful man in the Sierra Nevada, and the man had always had a very low opinion of him. Even when Shaun had gotten his PI license, nothing really changed. He was still the gofer. The pimp for the big parties, bringing in high-class pussy.
    Killing Sydney Jesup had seemed like such a great idea. It all started when that lowlife bastard Gary Gatts, the supplier of party drugs, the guy who had the skinny on everything and everybody, told Corbin what was in the works. A pro was coming in to take care of the former investigator because she was still causing problems and had sullied the name of the Thorps. It was literally an historic kind of deal, Gatts had said. The Thorps had been killing their enemies since the Gold Rush and Indian days.
    It came up in some casual conversation when Corbin was up to Gatts’ Mountain View Restaurant to get himself resupplied with his medications of choice. Gatts was the Grand Central terminal for drugs coming up from Mexico.
    They’d sampled a little, gotten high together. Then Gatts had started running his mouth.
    Corbin couldn’t remember how, exactly, but the Jesup woman had come up. “Don’t worry about that bitch,” Gatts had said. When Corbin pressed, Gatts went off on how it was already a done deal. They were bringing in some guy from New York. A guy Vegas used from time to time. Gatts didn’t say how he knew, but Corbin had learned long ago that when Gatts said something, it came from the horse’s mouth.
    They were both pretty baked that night when Corbin got his biggest idea ever. He’d save his cousin the money and get the job done. And the more he’d thought about it over the next few days, the more brilliant the idea sounded to him. Finally, he’d be taken seriously.
    How many times had he imagined walking into his cousin’s Incline Village estate, saying, “Got the bitch!” and Thorp would be shocked, surprised, and finally have no choice but to