31906844db5c02010017a90f3f2ca805

A driveway led to a hulking mansion that rose up spookily in the distance, backlit by a rising moon. To her immediate left, a smaller brick structure was visible. Inside, the lights were blazing. She smiled. It was just like Jeb to organize their first meeting in months at a place like this. A gamekeeper’s lodge, probably, or a renovated custodian’s house. She knew why he wanted to meet her here and not at the manor. Nosy staff could spoil their reunion before it even started. Butlers and housekeepers and maids would spread the news, and even before Jeb had opened his arms to clasp her to his bosom, the whole world would know that the divorce of the decade was about to lead to the romance of the century.

It was for the same reason she hadn’t used her real name when getting a cab, just like Jeb had advised in his last text, before she boarded her plane at LAX. Tabloids had spies everywhere, and neither she nor Jeb needed some nasty pap suddenly sticking his nose in.

She walked up to the front door of the lodge and held up her hand to knock on the door. Even before it landed on the coarse wood, the door swung open, and she found herself staring at that familiar face.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]

Jeb woke up with a groan. His head was pounding and his eyes were sore. He rubbed them then stretched. Instantly, he regretted not having stayed perfectly still. The room was spinning so fast he felt like he was on a merry-go-round and about to fall off. His poor suffering stomach lurched, anxious to regurgitate its contents and deposit it on the bed.

He opened his eyes to glare at the offending sun, which had had the gall to intrude upon his fitful sleep.

Sleep, or near-coma.

It had been another long night, and as he sat up in bed he brushed aside an empty bottle of Smirnoff. It fell to the faux sheepskin rug below with a dull clunking sound.

The ashtray was filled to overflowing with cigarette butts and roaches and his bong was still firmly lodged between his thighs.

He was dressed in only his boxers, his fifty-five-year-old body displaying so many tats it was as if a mad tattoo artist had been given free rein to fill up the canvas as he saw fit.

On the nightstand a mirror still held a line of coke, which he now snorted up eagerly, rubbed the remains into his gums and washed it down with a swig from a bottle of Bud.

It was only then that he noticed his hands were covered in some type of weird substance. He stared at it. A dark, reddish brown. Henna? He brought his index finger to his nose and sniffed. In spite of the coke wreaking havoc on his nasal cavities, he frowned when he got a hit of a coppery odor. He gave his finger a tentative lick. Huh. Tasted like blood.

Had he suffered a nosebleed last night? He picked up the mirror, blew off the remnants of white powder and held it up in front of him. Nope. No sign of a nosebleed.

He stared at himself. Once he’d been handsome—every teenage girl’s dream. Now he looked like a garden gone to seed. Wisps of dirty grayish hair covered the lower portion of his haggard face, and the eyes that stared back at him were heavy-lidded and tired.

He grinned at himself, and thought not for the first time that he should really pay a visit to the dentist.

As he got up, suddenly something fell to the floor.

He stared at it numbly.

It was one of those big butcher knives.

And it was bloodied.

Weird. Had he cut himself last night? But then why wasn’t he in any pain?

He quickly checked himself for holes in his corpus and found none.

Nope. Everything was still as it should be.

He then stumbled out of the bedroom and into the living quarters of the modest lodge he now called home.

And that’s when he saw it—or rather, her: lying spread-eagled on his living room rug was the body of a woman. And not just any woman. He instantly recognized her as the woman he’d once loved and had recently divorced in one of the nastiest divorces in Hollywood history.

What was worse, from the way Camilla’s lifeless eyes stared back at him, and the spots of dark crimson covering her torso, it was pretty obvious that she was dead.

And that’s when the pounding on the door began. And even before he could rouse himself from the sense of stupefaction that had descended upon him, the door slammed open and a fat cop burst through. The copper took one look at the dead body, then at a bedraggled Jeb, hands bloodied and eyes unfocused, andhis expression turned grim.

“Jeb Pott, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of your ex-wife.”

Chapter 1