"A fast-paced thriller with superb new and returning characters."--Kirkus Reporter Deanne Mulhenney & medical examiner Sara Poole risk their lives in a dangerous attempt to bring a brutal murderer to justice in this noir thriller set in 1968 Los Angeles.

Politics, mob wars, and a thriving drug trade have unleashed an assassin like no other.

Evidence suggests the killer is a female with terrifying skills...and tastes.

September, 1959

This field would be in flames tomorrow.

Alena carried a cloth bag filled with bright red buttons. She dropped one button on every third stride, passing smoothly between the lush rows of monstrously tall sugarcane, stepping with practiced confidence over the tangled net of brown leaves, her bare ankles avoiding their sharp edges. As summer stretched on and the low leaves browned, they released their sweetness into the air and Alena breathed that intoxicating aroma in with every breath.

The coming fire was a necessary curve in the cycle of the cane’s life, death and whatever lay beyond death; a process that would rid the fields of their decaying leaves, making the harvest of the cane that much easier.

A ritual cleansing of sorts.

When she reached her special place, she crouched in the shade and shelter of those blade-like leaves and waited for her lover to arrive.

-=-=-=-=-

The wailing was awful.

The cries had come from one dream that ended another. A celebration filled with candy and beautifully wrapped gifts had given way to a trapped animal screaming in pain. Pink-skin crackling and charring in the flame; it was much larger than a dog, it might have been a pig...but daylight had quickly faded that image, obliterating it just as the flames had...

A cool breeze swept the awful sounds into her bedroom along with the rich, sweet smell and smoke of the still smoldering sugar cane fields beyond the manor.

Alena fitted the wig onto her bald head then slipped her sunglasses on. She stepped out onto her balcony.

A small crowd had gathered in the courtyard, most of them workers from their plantation, machetes strapped to their hips. The harvest had begun.

In the middle of that group stood Alena’s parents, and the wailing woman they were trying so hard to console.

Jorge’s mother.

Alena quietly shut her window and closed her curtains to the day.

-=-=-=-=-

Alena blinked. No longer a child, no longer lying in wait on her father’s plantation.

The plane was making its final descent. Beyond her window; rooftops, tall buildings, warehouses, hotels, lay in neat asphalt rows. The city of Los Angeles passed beneath her like one more killing field. view abbreviated excerpt only...

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