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said, “I may be too sloshed to drive.”
    “Then I’m your designated driver,” I told her.
    Once Cindy was strapped into my passenger seat, I buzzed down the windows and fired up my trustworthy Explorer. As I drove, I told her about the belly bombs—off the record. And when I finished with that, I told her about the Mackie Morales sighting in Wisconsin.
    Cindy sighed, then said, “She was bound to turn upsometime, but I guess I thought maybeshe’d stayed off the FBI’s radar by crossing the border.”
    I knew Cindy was thinking about Mackie and Richie.
    I was thinking about Mackie, too. The last time I saw her, she was bloodied from the crash that killed Randy and narrowly missed killing their baby. I had seen Richie getting into the ambulance with Mackie cuffed to the stretcher. And that was the last of Mackie until Brady’s news ofher today.
    Mackie shouldn’t have escaped. It was a crime that she was on her own two feet with nothing to stop her from killing again.
    I was just about to go on a rant about Morales being a textbook psycho when the phone in my pocket rang with Joe’s ringtone.
    I filled my husband in on my location and ETA and by the time we hung up, I was parking in front of Cindy’s apartment, the place whereshe and Richie had lived together.
    I wanted to tell Cindy again that she needed to move into a new apartment, start fresh where she wouldn’t see Rich in every room, but before I could open my mouth, Cindy leaned over, gave me a big hug, and said, “Don’t worry about me, Linds.”
    “I can’t help it,” I said hugging her back.
    “I’ll be fine, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    Of course I worried about her. Cindy wastough but not invincible. I watched her until she disappeared behind her front door. Then I pulled my car out onto Lake Street. Ithought of the four of us Cindy had jokingly dubbed the Women’s Murder Club.
    Claire and I were in good, happy marriages, and Yuki was about to tie the knot with a demonstrably good man. As I drove home to my dear husband waiting up for me and my little girl asleepin her crib, I felt grateful and very lucky.
    I fiercely wanted good luck for Cindy, too.

CHAPTER 8
    CINDY WENT THROUGH her ground-floor apartment, switching on lights, thinking about how just about every time she was with the girls and something interesting came up in conversation, one or all three of them would turn to her and shout, “That’s off the record, Cindy.”
    It was a recurring joke, and actually not all that funny. So here was the thing. If she was going to be preemptivelyaccused of running off with private tidbits for public consumption, she might as well do it.
    Tonight, when Lindsay told her about the Mackie Morales sighting in Wisconsin, she had neglected to post the usual warning. So if Morales wasn’t off the record, she was on. And Morales was
huge
.
    Morales had killed three people. She was a fugitive. Andshe’d never been interviewed. An in-depth MackieMorales story was a crime reporter’s dream.
    Cindy had worked the crime desk at the
San Francisco Chronicle
for five years and according to the publisher, she was a rising star. She’d gotten regular pay bumps and a coveted office with a door, and her byline had been on the front page regularly, top of the fold, on the home page of the website.
    But by Cindy’s own admittedly high standards, shehadn’t blown the lid off the cooker.
    Cindy went directly to the bay window niche in the front room, which she used as an office. She booted up her laptop, and while it loaded, she went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. After that, she washed her face and changed into plaid pajama bottoms and one of Richie’s SFPD T-shirts with the slogan, Oro en Paz, Fierro en Guerra. E NGLISH TRANSLATION : “G OLD IN P EACE , I RON IN War.”
    Cindy was well aware that wearing Richie’s shirts, living in these rooms, sleeping in the bed they’d shared together, made it harder to get over him. But she wasn’t ready to get over