Possess

proceedings, but Bridget had insisted that she be present when the verdict came down. At that point, the assistant D.A. had prepared her mom for the worst: Undermeyer’s insanity defense would probably be successful.
    Even though they’d been warned, Bridget’s mom shook like a leaf when the words “not guilty by reason of insanity” rang out from the jury foreman’s lips. Not that anyone doubted it. The man was clearly a fruit loop. Bridget had followed reports of the trial online, where the daily accounts of Undermeyer’s behavior included speaking in tongues, spitting at the public defender, pulling out chunks of his own hair, banging his head against the defense table after he’d been restrained in a straitjacket, and general prophesies of doom and destruction.
    Not that it made much of a difference to Bridget. He had murdered her dad. She didn’t care if he threw himself out of the courthouse window so long as he suffered an agonizing death in the process, and she’d hoped that confinement in the loony bin up in Sonoma would be worse than prison, worse than hell, worse than the gaping, empty hole he’d left her with when he ripped her dad from her life.
    The scenery outside changed as Highway 101 wove through the northernmost suburbs of San Francisco. Gas stations and minimalls gave way to rolling hillsides blanketed with the empty, hibernating grapevines of the California wine industry. It was supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the state, but all Bridget could think was that with every twist in the road she was coming closer to an answer.
    “You must find the messenger,” Penemuel had told her. “Me-yer. Un-der. Un-der. Me-yer.” Could it be true? Could her dad have really told her to seek out his murderer?
    Bridget’s heart thumped in her chest as the truck slowed down and Matt turned off the highway. The town of Geyserville looked so serene and peaceful, all nineteenth-century storefronts and single-story ranch houses. Then the vineyards, sandwiched between country roads like a patchwork quilt creeping slowly toward the hills to the east. And hidden behind the greenery of the hillside, the glimmering steel-and-stone edifice of the Sonoma State Mental Hospital.
    Matt pulled up to the security gate. “We don’t have to do this. I can just take you home.”
    Bridget shook her head. She had to go through with it.
    A security guard approached the driver’s side window. “You have an appointment?”
    “Yes, I should be on the list. Matt Quinn.”
    The guard sifted through some papers on his clipboard. “Appointment made by Sergeant Stephen Quinn?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Bridget’s jaw dropped. “You told your dad?”
    “ID, sir?”
    Matt pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed his license to the guard, then reached for Bridget’s. The guard walked back into his security hut. “How did you think we were going to get in here? It’s not like visiting hours at S.F. General.”
    She hadn’t thought of that. But still the last thing she needed was for Sergeant Quinn to tell her mom where they’d gone.
    “He promised he wouldn’t say anything,” Matt said, reading her mind.
    Bridget rolled her eyes. “And you believed that?”
    “I trust my dad. He asked why you wanted to go, and I told him I didn’t know.” Matt paused as if he expected Bridget to jump in with her reason. She didn’t. “Then I asked him not to say anything to your mom, and he said he wouldn’t.”
    “Whatever.”
    “He’s not going to say anything,” Matt repeated. “Why would he?”
    The words “Because your dad’s in love with my mom” were on the tip of her tongue, but the look on Matt’s face was so completely innocent and confused that Bridget realized he had no idea about his dad’s feelings for Annie Liu. Boys. Typically clueless.
    The guard came back to the window with their IDs. “Straight through the gate, up the road to the right. Visitor parking’s in front and there’ll be someone waiting to escort you. Good luck.”
    As they rounded the bend from the security gate, Sonoma State Mental Hospital loomed above them. With its gleaming steel and glass, it was out of place, an anachronism, a state-of-the-art, high-security prison in the midst of lazy, rolling hillsides and a quaint old town. From the front entrance, you’d never even know that multimillion-dollar vineyards lay just yards from the main gate. All she could see was the paved parking lot, the sleek façade