River’s End

little bungalow on the beach and the financial resources to live pretty much as he liked.
    He loved his work—the intensity and punch of writing true crime with the bent of sliding into the mind and heart of those who chose murder as a solution, or as recreation. It was much more satisfying than the four years he’d worked as a reporter, forced to accept assignments and to gear his style to fit the newspaper. God knew it paid better, he thought, as he jogged the last of his daily three-mile run along the beach.
    Not that he was in it for the money, but the money sure as hell didn’t hurt. Now with his second book just hitting the bookstores, the reviews and sales solid, he figured it didn’t get much better.
    He was young, healthy, successful and blissfully unattached— since he’d recently untangled himself from a relationship that had started off intriguing, sexy and fun and had degenerated into mildly annoying.
    Who’d have thought that Caryn, self-described party girl and wannabe actress, would have morphed into a clinging, suffocating female who whined and sulked every time he wanted an evening on his own?
    He knew he’d been in trouble when more and more of her things started taking up permanent residence in his closet and drawers. When her makeup began making itself at home on his bathroom counter. He’d come dangerously close to living with her mostly by default. No, not default, his fault, Noah corrected, because he’d been so preoccupied with the research and writing on his next book he’d barely noticed. Which, of course, is what pissed her off enough to send her into a raging, tearful snit when she’d tossed accusations of selfishness and neglect at him while she’d tossed her things into a tote bag the size of Kansas. She’d broken two lamps—one nearly over his head, but he’d been quicker—had upended his prized gloxinia into a mess of soil, broken leaves and shattered pottery. Then she’d walked out on him, flipping back her long, straight California blond hair.
    As he’d stood, just a little dazed in the middle of the debris, she’d shot him a killing look out of brimming blue eyes and had told him he could reach her at Marva’s when he was man enough to apologize.
    Noah decided he was man enough to be relieved when the door slammed behind her. That hadn’t stopped her from leaving messages on his machine that ranged from snotty to weepy to raging. He didn’t know what was wrong with her. She was a stunningly beautiful woman in a town that worshiped beautiful women. She was hardly going to spend time alone if she wanted a man to play with. It never occurred to him that she might have been in love with him. Or at least believed herself to be.
    His mother would have said that was typical of him. He was able to see inside strangers, victims, witnesses, the guilty and the innocent with uncanny insight and interest. But when it came to personal relationships, he barely skimmed the surface. He’d wanted to once, and the results had been disastrous. For Olivia, and for him. It had taken him months to get over those three days he’d spent with her. To get over her. In time he’d managed to convince himself it had been the book after all, the thirst to write it, that had tilted his feelings for her into something he’d nearly thought was love.
    She’d simply interested him, and attracted him, and because of that—and inexperience—he’d handled the entire situation badly. He’d found ways to put that aside, just as he’d put the idea of that particular book aside. He’d found other women, and other murders.
    When he thought of Olivia, it was with regret, guilt and a wondering about what might have been.
    So he tried not to think of it.
    He jogged toward the tidy, two-story bungalow the color of buttermilk. The sun splattered over the red-tile roof, shot out from the windows. It might have been late March, but southern California was experiencing a sultry heat wave that delighted him.
    Out of habit, he went around to the front of the house to get his mail. The floods of color in his flower beds were the envy of his neighbors.
    He went inside, moving straight through the living area he’d furnished sparsely, and dumped the mail on the kitchen counter, then pulled a large bottle of spring water from the fridge.
    He glanced at his answering machine, saw he’d already accumulated four messages since he’d gone out for his run. Fearing at least one would be from the now-dreaded