He freed the pearl buttons from their loops.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I would have remembered.”

He ran his hand over the tops of her breasts, then gathered up her hair, wrapped it around his left hand, and pulled her head back.

She moaned and said, “You paid me with three gold coins. I came to your room in the hotel overlooking”—she sighed—“the Trevi Fountain.”

“I’ve never stayed in Rome,” he said.

He turned her so that she faced away from him. He stroked the long side of her body down to her haunch and back. He enjoyed the soft sounds coming from her throat as she tried to twist away from him.

“Did you tell your husband?”

“Why would you ask me that?” she said.

“Because I want him to throw you out.”

He undid the closure at the waist of her jeans, pulled down the zipper, got to his feet, and removed her jeans and all of his clothes.

He didn’t hear the sound at the door.

This was unlike him. He had superior senses, but they were engaged. Ali was looking up at him with—what was that look in her eyes?

She said, “I heard a card in the lock.”

A voice called out, “Housekeeping.”

Chan said, “I didn’t lock the door. You?”

Ali said, “Hell no.”

Chan shouted, “Come back later,” but the door was already opening and the cart was bumping over the threshold. He grabbed his pants from the floor and, holding them in front of him, he went toward the foyer.

He shouted, “No! Wait!”

The three shots were muffled by a suppressor. If Michael Chan had known his killer, it didn’t matter now.

Lights out.

Game over.

Michael Chan was gone.

CHAPTER 3

IT HAD BEEN a rough week, and it was only Monday.

My partner, Rich Conklin, and I had just testified against Edward “Ted” Swanson, a cop who had, over time, left eighteen people dead before the shootout with a predatory drug lord called Kingfisher took Swanson out of the game.

All of the SFPD had known Swanson as a great cop. We had liked him. Respected him. So when my partner and I exposed him as a psychopath with a badge, we were stunned and outraged.

During Swanson’s lethal crime spree, he had stolen over five million in drugs and money from Kingfisher, and this drug boss with a murderous reputation up and down the West Coast hadn’t taken this loss as the cost of doing business.

After the shootout, while Swanson lay comatose in the ICU, Kingfisher figured that his best chance of getting his property back was to turn his death threats on the lead investigator on the case.

That investigator was me.

His phone calls were irrational, untraceable, and absolutely terrifying.