The Pretender

James Patterson

With Andrew Bourelle

Prologue

I speed through the desert along a dirt road, my Jeep leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The setting sun gives the desert landscape a reddish hue. The only thing visible in any direction, besides sagebrush and cacti, is a run-down shack up ahead. Marco’s car is already parked outside.

I have the feeling I’m walking into a trap.

On my passenger seat sits a black satin sack about the size of a sandwich bag, containing a few million dollars’ worth of diamonds. Other than that, I have only a gas station cup half full of soda. I have no gun. No knife. I bet Marco has one or the other.

Or both.

I’d been telling Marco for weeks that I was going to quit after this heist—what we’d called “the job to end all jobs”—and Marco had not been happy about it. He’d even joked that he wasn’t going to let me leave. I didn’t think much of it, but then Marco insisted that we rendezvous here, in the middle of nowhere. We had always met in public places before.

I stop the Jeep about a hundred yards from the shack and let it sit, idling in neutral. I take a drink from my soda. I think about shifting the Jeep into gear and taking off. Then I get an idea.

I wedge the Styrofoam cup between my legs and pull off the lid. I pick up the satin bag and pour the diamonds into my soda. The stones, ranging in size from grains of sand to corn kernels, collect in a pile on top of the ice. They shimmer in the sunlight, and then they sink without a trace into the brown liquid. I put the lid back on and hold the cup up, weighing it. The cup is heavier, but everything about it still looks normal.

I park my Jeep next to Marco’s Dodge Charger. There’s a film of desert dust over both our cars.

The shack looks like something left over from a nuclear war. The windows are all broken. The front door is missing. Most of the shingles have been yanked off the roof by wind. The walls are full of holes and covered in graffiti, as if teenagers had come out here and taken turns with sledgehammers and spray paint.

As I approach the building, I drink from the cup as if it’s an ordinary soda. My feet crunch on glass and other debris as I step over the threshold. Marco is sitting on a metal chair at a table missing one of its legs. He is idly carving a piece of wood with a serrated folding knife. Rays of sunlight poke through the walls, illuminating the dust floating in the air.

“Logan!” Marco says, his face lighting up when he sees me.

He’s dressed as he always is, in dark slacks and a gray sport coat over a black T-shirt.

He jams the knife into the table and stands. He extends his hand to shake mine, but instead I lean in to give him a hug, hoping to figure out if he’s got a weapon inside his sport coat. He looks surprised, but he hugs me back.

My chest bumps against a pistol tucked into a shoulder holster.

“We did it,” I say, clapping him on the back.

“We sure did, old friend,” Marco says. “We sure as hell did.”

I settle into a wobbly chair across from Marco’s seat. I set the cup of soda on the table.

Marco sits across from me. His steel-gray eyes bore into me.

“So?” Marco says.

“So,” I say, smiling and acting as if nothing is wrong.

“So,” Marco repeats, “where are the rocks, man?”

“I’ve got them,” I say, being deliberately vague.

“I want to see them, dude.”

“There’s time for that.”

“Are they in the Jeep?” Marco says.

I shrug.

“Stop fucking around,” he says jokingly—but I can see in his eyes he’s not kidding.

He rises and takes a step toward the door, but then hesitates and grabs his knife off the table. I watch him through the window as he opens the Jeep door and looks around inside. Behind him, the sun is an orange blob in the distant haze, seconds from disappearing below the horizon.

Marco comes storming back, holding the empty satin bag. He flings it at me.

“What the hell are you trying to pull?” Marco says.

“What the hell are you trying to pull?” I say, rising out of my chair. “You set up a rendezvous in the middle of nowhere. You brought a gun. I’m not stupid, Marco. You were going to kill me as soon as I showed you the diamonds.”

Marco stares at me for a moment, and then reaches into his jacket and pulls out the pistol.

“Congratulations,” Marco says. “You’ve got it all figured out.”

“You couldn’t just let me go, could you?”

He looks at me like I’ve insulted him. “What did you think you were going to do?” he says. “Pretend you’re just like everybody else? Meet a girl and settle down? Live a normal life?”

“That sounds about right.”

“I won’t let you just ride off into the sunset, old friend,” he says, and he aims the Beretta M9 at my face.

I take a sip from my soda. “You can’t kill me, Marco. If you shoot me, you’ll never know where the diamonds are.”

“Don’t mess with me, Logan. Tell me where the diamonds are or I’ll put a bullet through your goddamn brain.”

“Go ahead,” I say. “Flush the diamonds down the toilet.”

I would happily give Marco his half of the diamonds, but I can’t do that, given the predicament. I would be dead the moment Marco saw the first diamond come spilling out of the cup. My only chance of survival is the hope that Marco won’t kill me because he knows that if he does, the diamonds will be gone forever.

I step backward toward the door.

I can see Marco considering his options, realizing he hasn’t thought this all the way through. He has the gun, but I hold all the cards. He is, at his core, a businessman. And no businessman would light a match to millions of dollars. If there’s any chance he can get the money later, he’ll take it. After years of working with him, I know how patient he can be. He never rushes a job. And if I walk out that door, I become his next job.

“There was no need to do this,” I say. “There was plenty for both of us. I never would have betrayed you.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Marco says. “There’s no honor among thieves.”

“There should be.”

I turn my back on him and walk to the Jeep. The sun is gone now, casting a dying orange afterglow into the darkening sky.

“Good-bye, old friend,” I call over my shoulder.

“Good-bye,” Marco says. “For now.”

Chapter 1

Two Years Later

Hannah stares out at Lower Echo Lake, a long, feather-shaped sheet of blue glass with forested mountain peaks rising up around it. In the early morning, the lake is calm. The still water reflects the brilliant blue sky like a mirror. The land is silent.

She steps out of her car and inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the cool mountain air. Hannah’s lived in the Lake Tahoe Basin for a year now, but she’s never hiked here.

There is a path that runs four miles along Lower Echo Lake and Upper Echo Lake, twin alpine bodies of water lined with vacation cabins. Then the trail ascends into a remote area called Desolation Wilderness, a beautiful terrain of pine forests, granite rock formations, and ice-cold lakes. Her destination today is Lake Aloha, which, she’s been told, gets its name from a series of islands resembling Hawaii that brave hikers can swim out to.

She doesn’t expect to do any swimming today. It’s mid-September, and there’s already a chill in the air. And she’s never gotten used to the cold water in this mountain community. Even on the hottest summer day, she will barely dip her toe in Lake Tahoe. But she wants to see Lake Aloha for herself.

As a reporter for the Lake Tahoe Gazette, she works long hours and doesn’t get out nearly enough to enjoy the place she lives in. She has no real friends—no boyfriend—and as her first summer here draws to an end, she recently realized she wasn’t actually getting out and doing enough in her spare time. She knows numerous people in town, but they’re all coworkers or sources for her articles. She’s decided her lack of friends shouldn’t stop her from trying to have fun.

This short hike is an attempt to do just that.

She pulls her daypack from her backseat and double-checks to make sure she has everything she needs: water, food, sunscreen, first-aid kit.

The parking lot is empty, but suddenly a Jeep Wrangler pulls into a nearby space. She recognizes the driver, a man she’s seen at the gym. He is cute, probably in his early thirties like her, with sandy blond hair and the body of an athlete. She doesn’t know his name. They’ve never spoken. But as he steps out of his vehicle, his eyes meet hers, and he offers her a smile. His expression is friendly, maybe even a little flirtatious, and it seems to say, I know you from somewhere, don’t I?

Hannah returns his smile, but then she feels self-conscious. She turns away, throwing her pack over one shoulder. She saunters down to the general store, wondering if the mystery man is watching her.

Her plan is to take the water taxi across the two Echo Lakes, cutting four miles off what would otherwise be an eleven-mile one-way hike. There is a kid, probably no more than twenty, with a patchy beard and acne bumps on his forehead, waiting behind the counter.

She asks him about the water taxi, and he explains that he can take her. She pays and then goes outside to wait in the taxi, a long wooden motorboat with benches along the port and starboard sides for passengers.

Today, it looks like she’s the only passenger.

The guy from the gym has one leg propped up on the bumper of his Jeep, and he’s rubbing sunscreen onto his muscular legs. He’s obviously going to hike around the lakes. No shortcut for him. Hell, Hannah thinks, he might run the eleven miles to Lake Aloha. He looks like he could do it.

The kid comes out and hops into the boat. He grabs the starter cord to start the motor but hesitates.

“Hey, man,” he calls up to the guy from the gym. “You want a ride? It’s twelve bucks.”

The guy looks up and seems to think about the offer.

“Sure,” he says. “Be right there.”

Hannah’s heartbeat accelerates. She has a strange suspicion that the guy agreed simply for an opportunity to spend time with her. She tells herself she’s being silly, but when he jogs down the pier and steps into the boat, he sits only a few feet from her.

“Hi,” he says, flashing her an electric smile and extending his hand. “My name’s Logan.”

Chapter 2

Hannah’s editor once told her that most people in the news business tend to be introverted. Journalism is a job that forces otherwise shy, socially awkward people to step out of their comfort zones and talk to other people. Hannah never thought much of the theory, but now, sitting next to Logan, she wonders if her editor is onto something.

Under the protective cloak of her job title, Hannah never has any problem talking to complete strangers, even asking them intimate personal questions. She can handle complaints from the public about her coverage of an issue. She can go into her editor’s office and demand better positioning for one of her stories. But, if she’s honest with herself, she knows her confidence is really an act. Here she is sitting next to a cute guy, and she feels completely tongue-tied.

They are both quiet. As handsome as he is, he might be just as introverted as she is.

The boat zips along the water, giving them a wonderful vantage of the scenery on both sides of the lake. They pass one vacation home after another. Accessible only by boat or hiking trail, the cabins line the lake, each with their own private pier. Most of the cabins look empty, closed up for the end of the season. There are a couple of girls in bathing suits goofing around on a dock at the far end of the lake, probably daring each other to jump into the ice-cold water but neither taking the plunge. Otherwise, no one is around.

Hannah checks her phone, just to give her hands something to do, and sees that there’s no service out here.

Finally, she takes a deep breath and says, “I think I’ve seen you at the gym.”

Logan smacks his knee. “I knew you looked familiar.”

Hannah mentions that she’s seen him in the afternoon spinning class, the least crowded of all the classes because it’s in the middle of the afternoon when most people are working.

“I sometimes go there to get the blood flowing before I’m on deadline,” Hannah says. “I work at the Lake Tahoe Gazette.”

He starts asking questions about her job, and then their conversation seems to become more and more natural. Relief washes over her like a warm wave. Why was it so hard to start talking to him? There’s obvious chemistry.

She reaches into her daypack and pulls out a business card. She hands it to him, suddenly feeling awkward again. She’s giving him her number in the guise of professional courtesy, but she hopes he’ll see through her pretense to know her real intention: she wants him to call and ask her out.

He asks if she has a pen and an extra card, and the next thing she knows, he’s writing down his telephone number on the back of one of her business cards.

“If you ever want to go to a class together,” he says, “give me a call. You know, for motivation.”

She stares at the card. He’s written his full name, first and last—Logan Bishop—and his cell phone number.

Hannah smiles. She can’t help herself. Logan’s green eyes are telling her that he’s looking for more than a gym buddy. She looks away, feeling her cheeks flush.

“So, what about you?” she says. “What do you do for a living?”

He looks away, his embarrassment palpable.

“I don’t really like to say,” he says, squirming visibly in his seat. “I have a little trust fund that I’m living on right now.”

“Oh,” Hannah says.

She realizes she hasn’t hidden her surprise very well. She wants to say something to recover from it, to show him that this doesn’t bother her. But the truth is she’s never known anyone with a trust fund. Someone from a family rich enough that he doesn’t have to work. Perhaps the news shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her. But she’s from a blue-collar, working-class family—she was the first to go to college—and the thought of someone who simply has enough that he doesn’t need to be employed is so foreign to her that she can’t quite even grasp what that kind of life would be like.

Especially since she’s a journalist, one of the lowest-paying jobs there is for a college graduate. She works really hard—fifty to sixty hours a week—for her meager wages.

“I’m not exactly rich,” Logan says, backtracking. “It won’t last forever. It’s just temporary while I figure some things out.”

“Sounds great,” Hannah says. “No need to be ashamed.”

She can tell from his face that things have changed between them.

Stop being a snob, she tells herself. Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.

“So, how do you spend your days?” she asks, trying to move the conversation along and get past this awkwardness.

He shrugs. “Hiking, swimming, skiing. Depends on the weather, I guess.”

“Wow,” she says. “That must be nice.”

Now he looks even more embarrassed.

The weird thing about him is that he doesn’t seem like some rich asshole living off Mommy and Daddy’s allowance. He seems like a down-to-earth guy. He is nice and he has a certain boyish charm. He doesn’t seem smarmy or pretentious. He seems like the kind of guy she could really enjoy spending time with.

The boat zips along, and they are both silent. The end of the first lake is approaching. She wants to start over, change the subject.

I’ve still got a little time to salvage this situation, she thinks.

Then she notices one of the girls on the pier. Probably fourteen or fifteen, she is jumping up and down on the dock, yelling and waving her arms. Hannah can’t make out what she’s saying because of the whining boat motor.

“What’s that girl doing?” she says to Logan.

He turns, noticing the girl for the first time.

“Hey,” he says to the pilot, “let off the motor for a second.”

The pilot does as he’s told, and the boat slows to a crawl. The motor idles, still audible but much quieter.

“Help!” the girl on the dock screams. She points into the water. “My sister!”

The message is clear: her sister is drowning.

Chapter 3

“Go!” Logan yells to the pilot.

The kid does as he’s instructed. He presses down on the throttle, and the propeller digs into the water, the bow lifting into the air. The boat surges forward, rising and falling, chopping into the water. It makes up the gap to the pier in seconds. The pilot cuts the engine at the last instant and yanks the rudder so the boat swings parallel to the dock.

Before the sidewall even touches the dock, Logan leaps out and dives into the water. He cuts the surface with hardly a splash. His action is so sudden that Hannah gasps.

The boat rocks in the waves it created, but the water is incredibly clear, and Hannah can see Logan under the surface, a blur swimming toward another blur.

The water must be glacially cold. Fed entirely from snowmelt, the lake is frigid all summer long, but this late in the season and this early in the morning, swimming would be like jumping into a bucket of ice water.

Hannah feels suddenly very helpless. This is an emergency, and she wants to help. What can she do?

You’re a journalist, her inner editor’s voice says. Cover what’s happening.

Now Hannah has a purpose. She hops out of the boat onto the deck, next to the girl. Hannah pulls out her phone, turns it to video mode, and begins to record.

A second after the camera begins to record, Logan bursts from the surface with the drowning girl in his arms. He begins swimming toward shore, holding one arm around her. The girl, maybe eleven or twelve, is completely limp. Her hair floats on the surface like strands of seaweed.

Hannah walks down the dock, filming Logan the whole time. She is on the bank when he comes up out of the water, holding the lifeless girl.

This footage is unbelievable, Hannah thinks. Then she feels ill at the thought. This girl is dying, and all she’s doing is filming what’s happening.

But she doesn’t stop. Her editor’s voice is in her ears, spurring her on.

Logan sets the girl down in a patch of grass and kneels next to her. He puts two fingers on her throat, checking for a pulse, and puts his head over her face, his neck turned so he can watch for her chest rising and falling and feel her breath on his cheek.

“There’s a pulse,” he says, his voice unbelievably calm. “But she’s not breathing.”

Hannah’s heart slugs in her chest. She doesn’t stop filming.

Logan tilts the girl’s head back and tries to give her rescue breathing. The girl’s chest doesn’t rise. No air is getting in. Logan puts his hands together, palms down, and presses on the girl’s abdomen.

Water bubbles up out of the girl’s mouth, and Logan quickly turns her on her side. Lake water faucets from her mouth and nose.

“She’s breathing,” Logan announces, “but she’s still unconscious.”

Hannah thinks this seems like a good place to stop filming. She presses the red button and pockets her phone.

Logan puts his arms under the girl and lifts her. She’s in a one-piece suit, and her arms and legs flop like pale, boneless noodles. Logan rushes past Hannah and the girl’s sister. He places the girl down in the boat.

“Everybody in,” he says, taking the sister’s hand and helping her into the boat. He takes Hannah’s hand, and before she knows it, she’s sitting in the boat next to the unconscious girl.

“I’m going inside to call an ambulance,” Logan says. “Hopefully they’ll meet you at the parking lot.”

Hannah opens her mouth to say they’ll wait for him, but then stops herself. As if he can read her mind, Logan says, “You’ll waste valuable time if you wait for me. I’ll run down the path and meet you there.”

The boat pilot needs no more instruction. He yanks the starter cord and the motor fires up. He presses the throttle and spins the boat in a tight arc, aiming it back the way they came.

As the boat speeds away, Hannah cranes her neck and watches as Logan runs into the cabin.

Chapter 4

The paramedics lift the unconscious girl and place her on a stretcher. Hannah and the older sister watch from the dock. The pilot of the boat stays in his seat, out of the way.

“My dad told me to take care of her,” the sister says to Hannah. “But when she didn’t come up, I just panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”

“She’s going to be okay,” Hannah says.

The girl looks up at her with puffy, tear-filled eyes and says, “Is she?”

Hannah puts her arm around the girl. It’s not a gesture Hannah would normally be comfortable making—always the professional asking questions, not the friend providing comfort—but it seems to be what the girl needs. She collapses into Hannah, beginning to sob.

The paramedics roll the stretcher down the pier, toward the parking lot and the waiting ambulance.

“Come on,” Hannah says, and she keeps her arm around the older girl as they follow.

The paramedics put the girl inside and begin to work on her: putting an oxygen mask over her mouth to help her breathe, placing an IV in her arm. When they’re about to close the doors, Hannah says, “Can her sister go with her?”

The paramedics look at the girl under Hannah’s arm skeptically.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” the girl says.

For a moment, Hannah thinks the girl must be lying. She barely looks old enough for high school.

“I’ll call my dad when we get to the hospital,” the girl says. “He’s in town already.”

“Okay,” the paramedic says, relenting.

The girl climbs aboard, and the doors slam shut. The sirens come to life, and the ambulance pulls to the edge of the parking lot, hesitates for an instant at the intersection, and then races away at high speed.

Hannah takes a deep breath. She can’t believe what just happened. She hopes the girl is going to be okay, and she has a good feeling she will. The girl was breathing and was in good hands.

Hannah turns toward the lake. Everything seems incredibly vivid—like her senses are heightened. The colors of the trees and the water seem to stand out. The fresh air is delicious. Every sound—every birdcall, every bug chirp—seems to vibrate with discrete clarity.

The pilot of the boat comes walking toward her. He’s carrying her daypack, as well as Logan’s.

“Some morning,” he says, with a grin on his face telling her that he’s feeling the same intense adrenaline rush.

He asks if she wants a ride back across the lake to the trailhead.

“No thanks,” she says. “I think my plans for the day have changed.”

She glances toward the path along the lake, expecting Logan to come jogging up. But there’s no sign of him.

The boat pilot offers her daypack to her, and then he holds up Logan’s pack, as if unsure what to do with it.

“I can put this behind the counter inside,” he says. “Or I can leave it with you.”

Hannah thinks for a moment and then tells him to put it behind the counter.

Before the kid walks off, Hannah tells him that she’s a reporter for the Lake Tahoe Gazette.

“Can I ask you a few questions?” she says. “For an article.”

He agrees, and he gives her exactly what she’s hoping for: lively, pathos-laden quotes about what they witnessed.

When the interview concludes, Hannah leans against her car and waits for Logan to come walking down the path. He has a two- or three-mile hike to get back, and she’s surprised he hasn’t made it yet. He’s had plenty of time.

She pulls out her phone and watches the video. The images are incredible. She’s no professional videographer, but the camera is in focus, and she was in the right place at the right time. When Logan carries the girl out of the water, he looks like a movie hero. His shirt sticks to his chest. His arm muscles are taut. His expression is calm, yet determined.

She watches it again, mesmerized.

Now she feels antsy. She wants to get to the newspaper. The art department can extract an image from the video—a picture of Logan looking heroic—and put it next to her story in tomorrow’s paper. They can also have the article up on the website by this afternoon, along with the full video.

“This thing’s gonna go viral,” she mutters to herself as she watches the video a third time.

She looks up and still there’s no sign of Logan. Is it possible he went ahead and hiked up to Lake Aloha? She doubts it. He has no water, no food.

Hannah knows her article will be much better if she has an interview with the hero himself. But she also knows how the news business works, and a story like this will demand follow-up articles. She can do an interview with the girl and her family. Another interview with Logan. Not getting a quote from him in the first article won’t be a big deal if she’s able to interview him tomorrow. Or the next day.

And if she’s honest with herself, she knows this will give her an excuse to call him. All of her misgivings about him being a rich trust-fund baby are erased. She saw the real Logan in action. Money or no money, he’s a good person.

As she climbs into her car and starts the engine, she looks again to the path. Still no sign of him.

After she drives away, when no one is watching, there’s movement from the shadows of a cluster of pine trees near the trailhead.

Logan steps out of hiding.

Chapter 5

I sleep in late, and when I do get up, I’m more stiff and sore than I expected to be. I’m in good shape, so I didn’t think the dive into the water and the jog back up the trail would have taxed my muscles. Certainly, summiting Mount Tallac or snowboarding all day at Heavenly Mountain Resort is more exhausting. But there must be something about the intensity of saving someone’s life, the adrenaline of the experience, and the stress it puts on the body.

I check the time on my phone and see an unfamiliar number called me twice. It’s a Lake Tahoe number. Maybe Hannah? I’ll listen to the messages later.

I walk through my small two-bedroom house in my boxers, rolling my neck from side to side. My house is furnished modestly, with most of the furniture purchased at thrift stores. No paintings or photographs hang on the walls. I might have a few million dollars in diamonds at my disposal, but I’ve always preferred an austere lifestyle.

My place could use a woman’s touch, though.

I look through the refrigerator and decide a big helping of protein is what I need. I pull out egg whites, sliced turkey, and shredded mozzarella cheese to make myself an omelet.

As I cook, I think about the day before. After I called 911 and answered all their questions, I ran back down the path toward the general store and the parking lot. I knew there was nothing else I could do. More than anything, I was jogging because I was cold. The air was chilly in the morning, and I was wearing wet shorts and T-shirt. My shoes squished water with every step.

When I approached the store and could see the paramedics loading the girl into the ambulance, I stopped and then crept into the trees, climbing up the mountainside, looking for a place to lay low.

I wasn’t sure why I’d hidden.

I’d liked Hannah from the moment we started talking. But in my mind, some kind of warning bell was going off. Like the feeling before my last encounter with Marco, my old partner, some sixth sense said to me that I should refrain from stepping out into the spotlight.

Maybe it was that Hannah is a journalist. I don’t see how what happened could be much of a news story. Maybe a brief blurb on page four. But still I don’t quite trust Hannah, which I realize is a strange contradiction—I like her, but I don’t trust her.

I think it comes down simply to the fact that I’m someone who wants—no, needs—to stay hidden. Hannah is someone who works in the public eye, whose job it is to reveal what’s hidden. I don’t want the world to know where I am or even who I am.

I set my steaming omelet down on my table and pour myself a glass of orange juice. I eat quickly, voraciously, and feel better immediately. Now all my worries about yesterday seem like paranoia.

It is a cloudy day, nothing like the clear, beautiful weather yesterday, and the gloom of the sky seeps through the windows and gives my house a depressing air. I still need to make a trek up to Lake Aloha before the weather turns too cold. But today just isn’t an inviting day to do it.

Nevertheless, I don’t want to be cooped up all day. I check the time and see that I could make it to the afternoon spinning class at the gym. I might run into Hannah, but I don’t quite feel the same worry I did the day before. That had just been the old Logan, the cautious Logan, the guarded Logan. The Logan who had to look over his shoulder all the time.

Now, with a fresh mind and full stomach, I think it wouldn’t be so bad to run into Hannah.

I dress and then jog to the gym, which is just a few blocks away along a path that runs parallel to the lake. Lake Tahoe—twelve miles wide and twenty-two miles long—is known for its amazing clarity. The surface reflects the color of the sky. It’s ordinarily an intense cobalt blue, but today, under a foamy gray sky, the water looks opaque and gray and choppy. The beach, which was packed with tourists all summer, is empty.

When I get to the gym, I say a quick hello to the employee working the front counter, and then I head back to the spinning room. There’s a stack of newspapers in a rack by the door, but I don’t even think to glance at them. It doesn’t occur to me that my picture might be on the front page.

Chapter 6

I stake claim to a bike in the back of the room and begin adjusting the seat and pedals. A minute later, a pretty young woman comes in and chooses the bike next to mine. She smiles at me, and I smile back—a shared smile, like yesterday with Hannah. I’ve been living in Lake Tahoe for two years and never once had a date. Two days in a row now I’ve had pretty girls smile at me.

The class starts. There are a few other people in the class, going through the motions, their bodies on autopilot, but I push myself hard. I’m feeling a little frustrated—my inability to get to Lake Aloha yesterday, today’s crappy weather keeping me from it again—so I try to take my annoyance out on the workout.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the woman next to me pushing herself just as hard. She sees me and smiles. I grin, and we both turn up the resistance, fighting the pedals. We’re communicating without words, motivating each other.

Sweat beads on my forehead and my T-shirt starts to cling to my wet chest. She wipes her brow with a towel, takes a quick drink, and gets back to work. The instructor is speaking through his headset and fast-paced rock music is playing, but I’m not paying attention to anything but her. She’s my inspiration.

I catch myself thinking about Hannah. Nine out of ten guys would probably say this girl next to me is more attractive. She is somewhere in her mid-twenties, with an athletic frame and blond hair that, even pulled back in a ponytail, is luxuriant. She has a pretty face with sharp cheekbones and a ski-jump nose.

Hannah, on the other hand, is a little bit more like the girl next door. She has plain brown hair, cut in a no-nonsense bob, and most guys might say she needs to lose a few pounds, although I found her curves quite sexy. What struck me about Hannah that other guys might overlook were her dark-brown doe eyes and her genuine, heartfelt smile.

But this girl next to me has an incredible smile too—shining and bright, like a sunrise. I’ve always felt you can tell a lot about a person from her smile.

When the class is finished, I dismount my bike and wipe my face. My shirt is soaking with sweat. My hair feels like I just stepped out of the shower. The girl is sweaty too, her arms slick with perspiration, her hair damp at the temples.

“Wow,” she says, “that was fun.”

It’s the first time I’ve heard her speak, and I love the soft elegance of her voice.

“I’m Claire,” she says, extending her hand.

“Logan.”

Her hand is small and smooth, and holding it is like touching electricity.

We wipe down our bikes and start talking. She’s lived in Tahoe for a only few weeks now, having moved from Ohio.

“Getting away from a bad job,” she says. She hesitates, as if unsure whether to be this forthcoming, then adds, “And a bad relationship.”

I tell her I’ve lived here for two years and love it: hiking, swimming, skiing. It’s an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise.

“That’s why I moved here,” she says.

I feel a pang of guilt, like I’m cheating on Hannah. But, I tell myself, we’ve never gone out. And, besides, something about Hannah was telling me to be cautious. Maybe I should listen to that voice in my head.

As Claire looks up at me with eyes as blue and deep as Lake Tahoe, I can’t help but marvel at my good fortune that, after two years of being alone, I’ve met two good-looking women in two days.

I’ve been told I’m handsome, but I have a tendency to be introverted. And my previous line of work always compelled me to be antisocial and paranoid, to never let anyone get too close. So I wouldn’t normally make the first move. But today I feel emboldened, and I ask her if she wants to exchange numbers.

“Maybe we can go for a hike before it gets too cold.”

She smiles, and we program each other’s numbers into our phones. We walk together as we head toward the door.

I figure I’ll walk Claire to her car, but as we’re passing by the front desk, one of the employees, a teenager in a San Francisco Giants ball cap, says to me, “Hey, man, I saw your picture in the paper. That was totally awesome. Way to go, dude.”

“What?” I’m thinking the kid must have me mixed up with someone else.

“Yeah,” the young guy says, pointing to the stack of Lake Tahoe Gazettes by the door. “Front page.”

I grab one of the papers and stare at it. There’s a huge photo above the fold of me coming up out of the water with the girl in my arms. My hair is wet and my expression is serious—but my identity is unmistakable.

The headline says, HERO SAVES DROWNING GIRL.

The byline says, BY HANNAH RYAN.

Claire crowds in next to me and looks at the picture. Her mouth turns into an O.

“Oh, my God,” she says. “That’s you. You’re going to be famous!”

Chapter 7

Hannah is sitting at her desk trying to write about an uneventful city council meeting when she gets a call from the receptionist telling her that a man named Logan Bishop is in the lobby for her.

“He’s cute,” the receptionist whispers into the phone, then adds, “Holy shit. Is that the guy on the front page?”

“I’ll be right there,” Hannah says.

The newsroom is a large open-air office space, with the reporters wedged into cramped cubicles. Hannah strolls over the gray stained carpet as if she’s gliding on mist.

When she opens the door to the lobby, the receptionist points outside and says he’s waiting for her there. She can see him through the glass double doors, pacing as if nervous. His hair is damp and his T-shirt is sweat stained, as if he came straight from the gym.

Hannah steps outside with an enormous smile on her face. She can’t help it. But then she looks at him more closely—his face pinched, his teeth clenched, his skin strangely flushed—and her smile vanishes.

“You’re mad?” she says.

“Hell, yes, I’m mad,” he says, holding up the paper and pointing to his picture. “What the hell is this?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I was just doing my job.”

Logan can barely contain his anger. “Your fucking job?”

Hannah feels suddenly very defensive. She was shy yesterday, but on the job, she has the utmost confidence. “Yes,” she snaps. “I report the news.” She points to the paper. “That is news, whether you like it or not.”

“This is no one’s business,” he says. “You don’t understand what you’ve done.”

“Help me understand,” she says. “Tell me.”

“Why? So you can put it in the fucking paper?”

Hannah doesn’t respond. The two of them are standing in the grass outside of the building. The air is chilly, and the gray sky creates a melancholy ambience. This isn’t how she wanted their next meeting to go.

Logan takes a deep breath. It seems like much of his anger has drained from him. He’s still upset, but the anger has turned to something else. Resignation. Helplessness.

“I tried to call you,” Hannah says. “You didn’t answer.”

“Would it have made a difference?” Logan says. “If you’d reached me and I’d asked you not to run the story?”

“Probably not.”

There’s a bench in the grass for people to sit and read the paper. Logan flops onto it and holds his head in his hands.

“Look,” Hannah says, sitting next to him. “I’m sorry, but this is a good story. ‘A hero passerby saves a young girl from drowning.’ People complain all the time that newspapers only report the bad news. Here is a feel-good story—someone doing something good, something heroic. I’m sorry you don’t like it, but I’m glad I wrote it.”

She wants him to see that he did a good thing and that people should know about it. This is the kind of news people like to read about, not the wars and murders and government corruption that always dominate headlines.

She tries to place her hand on his shoulder, but he jerks away. She has a sick, sinking feeling in her stomach. Yesterday, they were practically ready to make out. Today, she can’t even lay a comforting hand on his shoulder without him flinching. It hits her then: they’re never going to go out on a date. They’ll probably never even be friends. Her chances of any kind of relationship with him have vanished like a ripple on a pond.

“Aren’t I entitled to my privacy?” Logan says.

She shrugs. “You did something in a public place where there were witnesses. You’re entitled to say no to an interview, but if there are other people I can interview, then there’s nothing you can do to stop me from talking to them and reporting on what they say.”

“Is there ever a time when you wouldn’t report something you thought was newsworthy?”

“No.”

Logan takes a deep breath and seems to relax a little with the exhalation.

“How is the girl, by the way?” he asks.

Now Hannah beams again—a big, genuine, heartfelt smile. “She’s doing great.”

Hannah explains that the little girl’s name is Patricia—everyone calls her Patty—and that her father, a doctor from San Francisco, had rented the cabin for a few weeks to spend time with his two girls.

“He said he’d happily pay you a reward for saving her,” Hannah adds. “It’s the least he could do.”

Logan dismisses the idea with a wave of his hand.

“You know,” he says, looking down at the picture of himself, “I don’t even remember you taking that picture.”

Hannah opens her mouth to speak, and he cuts her off.

“I’m sorry I got so mad,” he says, “but I’m a private person. I don’t like a lot of attention.”

“Well,” Hannah says, reluctantly, “I’ve got some bad news for you.”

Logan stares at her, waiting.

“There’s more than just a picture,” she says. “I actually took a whole video. It’s up on our website right now. It’s gotten a lot of hits. It’s gone viral, actually.”

Logan squints at her. “What does that mean?”

“It means news channels all over the country are showing it.”

“Goddamn it!” Logan says, bolting to his feet, his anger back in full force, like a smoldering campfire reignited by a sudden gust of wind.

“It’s a great video,” Hannah says. “Very moving. Very inspiring.”

Logan begins to stomp off and then turns back. “Do me a favor, Hannah. Just leave me the fuck alone.”

“There’s something else,” she says, but he’s already halfway across the parking lot.

She isn’t able to tell him that someone claiming to be an old friend stopped by the paper that morning asking about him.

Chapter 8

I hardly sleep, and when I get up, it’s still dark outside. I sit on my deck and look out over the lake, waiting for the sun to rise. I can’t decide whether I should skip town or stick around.

If that video is being played on national news programs, there’s a chance Marco will see it and come looking for me. The safe play would be to leave Lake Tahoe and never look back. But I’m probably just being paranoid again. How many dozens of videos like that go viral each week, earning a thirty-second spot on some national broadcast before they’re forgotten again? The odds of Marco seeing it are slim at best.

As the sun rises and the sky turns from black to blue, I think about the life I’ve made here. I have no close friends, no girlfriend—yet. But it’s a new life, very different from the one before. Living in Los Angeles, plotting jobs with Marco. There was always the fear of getting caught. Or being betrayed.

I feel like a new person now. I left that life only two years ago, and Lake Tahoe is only about four hundred fifty miles from LA. But that world seems like it was a lifetime ago. Those memories seem like something that happened to another person, on another planet entirely.

If I run, I’ll feel like I never left that life at all, like I’ve been playing pretend the last two years. But if I stay, keep putting down roots, maybe this life will continue to feel more and more like my life.

Yesterday’s clouds have broken up. Sunlight reflects like golden scales off the water. It looks like it’s going to be a nice day to go hiking. I go back inside and begin to get my gear together. One thing is for sure: regardless of whether I decide to stay or go, I need to hike up to Lake Aloha.

That’s where I’ve hidden the diamonds. I was heading to their hiding spot two days ago before Hannah spotted the girl in the water.

When I first moved here, it seemed like a good idea. I’d broken away from all my contacts in LA, so I didn’t have a fence who could sell the diamonds. I would only ever be able to sell one or two at a time without drawing attention to myself, which was fine for me since I wanted to make the money last the rest of my life anyway.

But I needed a place to keep them. Hiding them in my house seemed like a bad idea, no matter how well hidden they were. If anyone ever investigated me—or came looking for me—I didn’t want the diamonds to be anywhere close.

So I found the perfect hiding spot in the wilderness, and I go up there a couple of times a year to grab a few stones that I can take to Reno or Sacramento to sell.

As fall approaches, the first snow could be only weeks away. I have to get up there and get a couple of diamonds to last me through the winter. Or if I’m going to split town, I need to grab the whole bag. Either way, the hike is a must. I’ll have eleven miles of trail to decide what to do.

I fill up the water bladder of my daypack and throw in some granola bars, trail mix, and sunscreen. I dress in cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt. I lace up my Merrell hiking shoes.

As I’m about to leave, my phone buzzes with an incoming text. I expect it to be Hannah, and I’m prepared to delete it. But it’s not from her. It’s from Claire.

The text reads, It’s a beautiful day. Want to go for a hike?

I stare at the words and consider inviting her. What would it hurt to bring her along? After seeing the intensity of her workout yesterday at the gym, I know she’s not going to hold me back. And once we’re up there, it shouldn’t be difficult to slip away from her to get the diamonds.

As much as I enjoy hiking alone, I’ve been doing that for two years now. It would be nice to have a beautiful woman to keep me company.

I text back, Getting ready to hike to Lake Aloha. Want to come along?

I think briefly about the possibility that I’m putting this girl in danger, but I picture her smile and her sapphire-blue eyes, and I push any concern I have out of my head.

Chapter 9

At the parking lot, Claire is waiting for me, sitting on the tailgate of a beat-up Toyota Tacoma. She waves and smiles as I pull up, and I feel a tingling inside. She’s wearing a pair of hiking shorts and a tank top over a sports bra, a very practical outfit that is still sexy as hell, showing off her long legs and tanned, toned arms.

The place is busier this morning, with about a dozen cars in the parking lot and people going in and out of the general store. There are a handful of passengers loading into the water taxi. I wonder if the news coverage has caused the sudden influx of visitors. Maybe people want to see where the so-called heroism occurred.

The same kid is piloting the taxi today, and when he spots me, he yells, “Hey, man, you want a ride? It’s on the house today!”

I explain to Claire that the taxi can bypass four miles of the hike.

“Nah,” she says, “we came here to hike, didn’t we?”

My heart warms at her words. It’s obvious she’s better suited for me than Hannah ever would be.

I tell the pilot that we’ll pass, and he says that we can always get a ride on the way back.

“There’s a telephone at the dock at the other end,” he says. “The number is taped to the phone. Just give us a buzz and we’ll come get you.”

For a second, I think he’s going to tell everyone in the boat who I am, but he—unlike Hannah—keeps my identity a secret, and I’m thankful for that.

Claire and I buy a couple bottles of Gatorade at the general store, and then we head out. The miles go by in a blur as we talk nonstop. I try to ask as many questions as I can, hoping to keep her from asking me too many details about my past. When she does ask me about what I do, I don’t tell her that I have a trust fund. I’ve learned from my mistake with Hannah. Instead, I tell her that my parents died, and I’m temporarily living off the insurance money.

“It won’t last forever,” I say. “But for now I’m just trying to figure out what’s next for me.”

“I’m so sorry about your parents,” she says, and she puts a comforting hand on my shoulder.

I feel a pang of guilt about pretending that I have money because of my parents’ death. My parents are dead, but there was certainly no insurance or inheritance. I can’t tell her the truth. What would I say? That I’m a retired thief living off a stash of stolen diamonds?

The trail is flat and shaded as we walk along the two Echo Lakes. We pass the dock at the far end and spot the pay phone the pilot was talking about, then the trail ascends and begins to get rockier. We hike in the shade of red fir and lodgepole pine, but they begin to thin the higher we climb. The trail is made up of rocks that are bleached white from the sun. The temperature begins to rise and soon we are both slick with sweat like the day before in the spinning class.

We hike for hours. When we get close to the lake, the landscape is made up almost entirely of granite, with the trail interweaving around boulders bigger than cars. The trees that do survive this high are twisted and gnarled by the wind and winter snow.

When we arrive at the lake, Claire says it’s gorgeous, which makes me like her even more. Lake Aloha isn’t beautiful in any traditional sense; it’s stunning because its appearance is so unusual. When you imagine a mountain lake, you might think of a bowl of water that’s more or less circular, its banks lined with pine trees and patches of green meadow. Lake Aloha is a misshapen body of water lying in a desolate granite valley, with strings of rock islands rising up out of the clear water. There are hardly any trees, barely any vegetation at all. The elevation is so high that dirty snow patches cling to the mountain peaks around us. The blue water seems to glow against the backdrop of barren rocky slopes.

I tell Claire I know a good place to stop, and I lead her to a granite-sloped bank about halfway around the lake.

Claire dips her hands into the lake and splashes water on her face. She gasps and says, “Holy crap, that’s cold.”

“You want to go for a swim?” I ask.

“Seriously?” she says. “That water’s like ice.”

“You mind if I take a dip?”

She stares at me as if I’ve just suggested something truly outrageous.

I kick off my shoes and pull my T-shirt over my head.

Her eyes drop to my bare chest and then she says, “Before you go getting all wet, there’s something I want you to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Kiss me,” she says.

She puts her hands—still wet and cold from the lake water—on my shoulders and pulls me down to kiss her. She opens her mouth, and our tongues touch. I wrap my arms around her and pull her body into mine.

It’s in this moment that I realize there is no way I’m skipping town now.

Consequences be damned.

Chapter 10

After we’ve made out, and then eaten lunch, and then made out some more, I realize that I still need to get to the diamonds. It’s midafternoon, and we should probably head back soon. I can’t put it off any longer.

“I’m going to take that dip now,” I say.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” she says.

I’m worried for a moment, but I don’t think she’ll actually go through with it. The lake is pure snowmelt. Even in the warmest summer months, the water probably never gets above seventy degrees.

Claire kicks off her shoes, and we wade out into the water together. Cold engulfs my feet, and pain crawls up my legs, as if the chill is a living thing creeping through my bloodstream.

Claire inhales sharply and makes it as far as her knees, and then she splashes out of the water and back up onto the bank.

“No way,” she says, hopping up and down. “That’s impossible.”

Her legs are red up to her knees, as if she stepped into boiling hot water instead of cold.

“You’re crazy,” she adds.

“I’m just more acclimated than you are,” I say.

With that, I turn and dive forward under the water. I swim for about twenty yards and come to a rock island about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. I climb up on top to rest, but the air against my skin is even colder than the water. I wave at Claire and then dive off the other side.

The lake is as clear as drinking water. Sunbeams shine down through the water as I swim over and around boulders.

I bypass a couple small islands and finally arrive at an island a hundred yards from shore. It’s rounded and about the size of a small backyard, rising up like the back of a white whale. I recognize it because of one gnarled tree that’s growing out of the rock like the twisted, arthritic hand of a skeleton, beckoning me to my buried treasure.

The stone bank angles into the water, and I crawl up on the rock and lie on my back. My chest heaves. My body feels like it’s glowing. After a minute, I rise, my limbs trembling. I wave at Claire, who is sitting on the bank.

I walk across the island, my wet feet slapping the granite. I find the crack I recognize, a point where two slabs of rock come together, and follow it to the edge of the water. There is a sheer drop-off on this side of the island.

I take a deep breath and dive straight down. The water is colder the deeper I get, like ice packed around my body. I keep my eyes open, and the cold seeps into my sockets. My ears ache from the depth.

A few feet from the bottom, there is a seam where two veins of rock come together. I run my hands along it and find the spot: a crevice about six inches wide. I reach my arm inside the crack, nearly to my shoulder. I pull out a small cloth satchel, then swim to the surface and catch my breath.

There’s an underwater shelf about a foot wide that I can balance on, where the arc of the island keeps me hidden from Claire. I untie the satchel and pull out a plastic sandwich bag, packed full of diamonds. Even through the plastic bag, they glint in the sunlight.

I take three diamonds about the size of peas and shove them down into the pocket of my cargo shorts. I think about it and then grab a couple smaller ones. The smaller they are, the easier to sell. I zip up the bag and hesitate again. I pull out several more—a combination of big ones and little ones.

“Okay,” I say aloud, “that’s enough.”

After I dive back under and replace the bag, I swim back toward shore. My arms and legs feel like they’re strapped to twenty-pound weights. My lungs strain to pull in enough air.

At the bank, I flop down on top of the sun-warmed granite and try to get my breathing under control. Claire sits next to me and gives me her brightest, most beautiful smile.

“You disappeared there for a minute,” she says. “What happened?”

“I was looking for sunken treasure,” I say.

“Find any?”

“Nope,” I say. “It was back here waiting for me all along.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I pull her down to kiss me.

When we’re finished making out for the third time today, we sit up and stare out at the lake, enjoying the view one last time. The sun is starting to sink in the sky, and I tell Claire that we probably ought to take the water taxi back.

“We don’t want to get caught out here in the dark,” I say. “Besides, I’m pooped from that swim.”

“That’s too bad,” she says, giving me a flirtatious smile. “I was hoping you’d still have some energy when we got back to town.”

“Oh,” I say. “Don’t worry. I’ll get my second wind.”

I begin to lace up my hiking shoes. My eyes wander back out to the lake. The island where the rest of the diamonds are hidden is easy to spot. The tree’s skeletal hand marks the location like an X on a treasure map. Or a grave marker.

I feel a twinge of fear, like I’m making the wrong choice. The smart thing would have been to tuck the whole bag into the pocket of my cargo shorts and then leave town first thing in the morning.

I realize now why I grabbed the extra diamonds from the bag.

I wanted some insurance in case I do have to run after all.

Chapter 11

Hannah’s editor calls her into her office, which is unusual. Ashley Decker is a veteran journalist who worked at several metro papers before taking the editing job at the Gazette, and she believes in coming out into the newsroom to talk to her staff, not bringing them into her office. A call to the office usually means you are in trouble, which is something that happens to the other reporters every now and then, but never to Hannah.

“Sit,” Ashley says, gesturing to an uncomfortable chair with orange foam stuffing spilling from cracks in the vinyl.

Ashley is in her mid-forties and attractive, but tired-looking. A high-pressure job and the long hours that come with it have taken their toll on her. She has crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes, and filaments of silver have begun to highlight her silk-black hair.

She is someone who can command the respect of her staff and who can stand up to the publisher whenever they butt heads. She can do every job in the newsroom—reporter, photographer, copyeditor—better than the staff members paid to do them. And she can put on a dress, run a curling iron through her hair, and schmooze with Lake Tahoe’s elite at any high-society function.

Hannah has always had great admiration for her. And they’ve gotten along famously—Ashley recognizes a talented protégée when she sees one.

“So, what’s happening with the profile of Logan Bishop? You know, the hero.” Ashley adds this last part as if Hannah might have forgotten who he was.

“I don’t think I can do the story,” Hannah says. “He won’t cooperate.”

Ashley stares at her disapprovingly, a look Hannah has seen leveled at practically every other employee, but never herself.

“You can’t convince him?” Ashley says. “Come on, this is a good story.”

Hannah frowns and shakes her head. “Sorry, I think I’ve just about milked this one for all its worth.”

It’s been almost a week since she wrote the story about Logan saving the girl, and since then, Hannah has followed it up with an in-depth feature on the girl and her family; an article about the dangers of drowning; and even a day-in-the-life profile of what it’s like to drive a water taxi on the Echo Lakes, for which she interviewed the kid who’d been with them that day along with a handful of his coworkers.

The only thing missing from this collection is an article about Logan.

Ashley leafs absently through some paperwork on her desk. Every surface of the desk is covered with notes or old copies of the Gazette. She finds what she’s looking for—a copy of the front page with Logan’s photo—and considers it.

“What’s this guy afraid of?” she says.

“I think he just wants his privacy,” Hannah says.

“Well, just because he doesn’t want to talk doesn’t mean there’s no story there.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Find out what you can,” Ashley says. “Talk to his friends. Find out where he works. See where he’s from. It’s possible to write a profile on someone even if they don’t participate.”

“I don’t know,” Hannah says. “That doesn’t feel—”

“And who knows,” Ashley says, pretending she didn’t hear Hannah’s objections, “if you tell him you’re doing the story with or without his input, maybe he’ll cooperate.”

Hannah feels sick to her stomach. As a journalist, she’s never had a problem asking hard questions. She’s interviewed the family members of murder victims, people who’d lost their homes to wildfires, public figures embroiled in controversy. But she’s always respected a person’s right to say no. She’s never tried to manipulate someone into speaking to the press when he didn’t want to.

“I think we should just let the story go,” Hannah says. “He saved a girl’s life. I don’t think we should punish him by plastering his face all over the newspaper if he doesn’t want that.”

Ashley stares at her, and Hannah thinks for a moment that the two of them might have their first real conflict. Hannah has always admired Ashley’s ability to fight for what she feels strongly about, and now she psychs herself up to do the same—although it feels weird to prepare to fight with the person she’s modeling her tenacity after.

A tense few seconds pass. Then Ashley shrugs and says, “I’ll tell you what: just do some digging. See what you can find. If you still think there’s no story, we’ll bag it. I trust you.”

A compromise, Hannah thinks. I can agree to that.

“Who knows?” Ashley adds. “Maybe this guy’s hiding something. Maybe that’s why he won’t talk to you.”

“Maybe,” Hannah says, rising from her chair.

But Ashley’s suggestion is ringing inside her like a struck tuning fork. You don’t know what you’ve done, Logan had said. He’d mostly played himself off as a normal guy who simply wanted his privacy, but she suspected there was more to his secrecy than he’d let on.

“Wouldn’t that be some shit?” Ashley says, cracking a smile. “What if our hero turns out to be some criminal?”

Hannah returns to her desk, thinking about the possibility.

What does she know about him? Not much. Just that he’s independently wealthy and likes his privacy.

If he is hiding something bigger, that would actually make sense. She never quite thought the trust-fund story fit him. But does being a criminal on the run fit him either?

Hannah opens up her laptop and begins to dig.

Chapter 12

A week after my hike to Lake Aloha with Claire, she and I are in a spinning class at the gym, sweating and laughing and motivating each other. It’s the early-morning class, not the midafternoon class. This has become our routine, kicking off each day with a good workout. In the last week, we’ve spent every minute together that we can. She’s pretty much moved in with me. We both agreed it would be temporary until she finds her own place, but I think, in our hearts, we both know this is permanent. She’s made no effort to move and I certainly haven’t pressured her to. I like having her around.

She has been looking for a job, though, taking her truck each day to drive around town to fill out applications and do interviews. She’s been encouraging me to do the same, since she’s under the impression that my insurance money will run out. I’m thinking about doing it, getting a real job of some kind. I haven’t had much time alone to take a day and drive to Reno or Sacramento to try to sell some of the diamonds. And it might be nice to think of that money, my stash, as supplemental income.

When I turned my back on Marco, I wanted a normal life, didn’t I?

What’s more normal than working a regular job?

For now, though, I’m just trying to relish the moment. I’ve been alone for a long time. I want to enjoy being with someone.

These are the things I’m thinking about as we’re finishing up the class, wiping down our bikes and taking long drinks of water. When Claire and I come walking out of the gym, I see Hannah waiting in the parking lot. She’s wearing regular clothes: jeans, blouse, cardigan. She is wearing sneakers, but she clearly hasn’t been working out, which tells me she’s here for only one reason: to see me. And the fact that we’re in the morning class, not the afternoon class where I used to see her, tells me that she’s gone out of her way to find me. She’s probably afraid I wouldn’t answer her phone call.

When she sees us coming out of the building, she offers a bashful smile and lifts her arms up as if to surrender.

“Truce?” she says.

I smile and say hello. Obviously I was just being paranoid when I blew up at her about the article.

“I want to talk to you about something,” she says. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” She gestures toward the café next door to the gym. “Off the record,” she adds. “Not for publication. I just want to talk—as friends.”

Claire eyes her suspiciously. My heart swells a little—she looks cute when she’s jealous.

I tell Hannah that I’ll meet her over in the coffee shop. Then I ask Claire if she minds going back to my house and waiting for me. It’s just a short walk along the beach path. Today is a warm day—maybe the last of the season—and I don’t think she’ll mind.

“Should I be worried?” Claire says, gesturing toward the coffee shop as Hannah steps inside.

“Not at all,” I say. “Hannah and I are just friends.”

I give her a long, reassuring kiss, and then I head to the coffee shop. Hannah is waiting in line, and I join her. She buys a regular coffee and I opt for a soda instead. I’m more of a sugar junkie than a caffeine addict.

Hannah insists on paying.

In our seats, she smiles at me, and I can tell there’s something on her mind. I wonder for a moment if she’s going to declare that she has feelings for me, and I realize I’m not quite sure how I would handle that. I’m falling for Claire—hard—but sitting across from Hannah, I’m struck with how much I like her. With the sunlight through the window catching her hair and bringing out the depth in her chocolate-brown eyes, she’s every bit as pretty as Claire.

In another life, I think, maybe she and I would have been meant for each other.

“Was that your girlfriend?” Hannah asks.

“I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you. I guess you caught me off guard.”

I tell her that I met Claire the day after I met her. Hannah has a melancholy look on her face, like she knows she missed her chance.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” she says. “I don’t want you to get mad and storm off. I just want to talk. As friends.”

Now I’m nervous.

She reaches into her purse and pulls out a piece of paper folded in half. She unfolds it and slides it across the table to me.

It’s a photocopy of a warrant for my arrest.

Chapter 13

“Shit,” I say, and I flop back in my seat. I tilt my head back and run my fingers through my sweaty hair. I think about how much trouble I’m in.

The problem isn’t the warrant. The warrant is old. It’s from an armored car job that Marco and I did a few years ago. The police brought me in after the warrant was issued, but they ended up releasing me. No charges were filed. Not enough evidence.

I’m sure Hannah knows all of this. Like I said, the problem isn’t the warrant: the problem is that if Hannah knows about the warrant, then she probably knows a lot more. If she dug deep enough to speak to someone in LA’s robbery division, which is what she would have had to do to get this outdated warrant, then she probably knows about a lot of the crimes I’m suspected of committing.

And if she writes about any of it, then Marco will find me.

Last time, I’d surprised Marco when I’d refused to show him the diamonds. Now he’s had two years to think about that scenario, to reconsider how he would handle the situation if given a second chance. The next time he sees me, I won’t be able to refuse. He’ll kill me no matter what.

I take a drink from my soda and say, “Can we walk along the beach? I don’t want to talk in here.”

She looks out the window, as if considering whether she wants to be alone with me. There are plenty of people on the sand, out en masse for one of the last decent days of the season. Forecasters are predicting the temperature will plummet in the next couple days. It might even snow.

“Okay,” she says.

We walk along the path back toward my house. There’s a slight breeze, and it chills me because I’m still in my sweat-soaked clothes. The breeze pushes Hannah’s hair back, and she walks without speaking.

“So, how much do you know?” I say.

“You’ve never been arrested,” she says. “There’s no valid warrant out for you.”

“But?”

“But you’re a suspect in a number of old robbery cases. Banks. Jewelry stores. Businesses that keep cash on hand. One detective I talked to called them ‘mid-level jobs,’ but he said your name had been kicked around in connection with the theft of some particularly valuable diamonds.”

I’m quiet.

“He thought you graduated to the big leagues,” she says. “Then you disappeared. They figured you were probably dead.”

“I would have liked it if they kept on thinking that,” I say.

We’re not far from my house now. I can see it. We’re going to be there before we know it, so I suggest to Hannah that we sit on a nearby bench.

“When you wouldn’t let me interview you,” Hannah says, “my editor asked me to find out more about you. It wasn’t too hard to find this stuff.”

“I should have used a fake name,” I say. “I thought if I didn’t have a bank account, didn’t use a credit card, paid cash for my rent, didn’t sign up for Facebook or anything stupid like that—I thought if I did all those things, I could fly under the radar.”

“The thing is,” Hannah says, “no one’s actually after you. The police found you before and couldn’t make the charges stick. You’re not actually a wanted man.”

I look into her deep brown eyes and am struck again by how pretty she is.

“It’s not the police I’m running from, Hannah.”

Her expression seems to change as she thinks about what I might be suggesting.

We’re silent for a moment. I stare out at the water. When I was a kid growing up in San Francisco, my parents would bring me here each summer, and I fell in love with the brilliant blue water, the pine forests, the frosted mountain peaks. When I was pulling jobs with Marco, I thought about Lake Tahoe often, wondering if I could be a different person here. Step back in time and try to be the person I could have become, instead of the one I did.

“Last week,” I say, “I asked you if you’d ever refrain from putting something in the paper you thought was newsworthy.”

Hannah nods.

“Well,” I say, “I’m going to tell you everything. Throw myself on your sword. You have to decide what to do with it.”

She waits.

“I’m a thief, Hannah. Or I was. All those crimes I’m suspected of, I did them. My partner was a pretty bad guy named Marco. When I told him I was quitting, he tried to kill me. If he ever finds out where I am, he’ll come for me. He’ll cut my throat and pull my tongue out through the hole.”

Hannah swallows.

“I came to Lake Tahoe to start over,” I continue. “I don’t want to be the person I was. I never killed anyone, Hannah. I was never that kind of criminal. But I stole from people. I hurt people. I don’t like who I was.”

It feels good, in a way, to get this information off my chest. I’ve been pretending for so long, it’s nice to finally tell the truth to someone.

After a moment of silence, Hannah says, “So the story about the trust fund? That was all bullshit?”

I laugh. “Total bullshit.” I’m not sure how much to tell her, but I’ve already started so I decide to see it through all the way. “I’ve got a stash of ‘particularly valuable diamonds’ hidden at Lake Aloha,” I say, making quotation marks with my fingers. “I go up there a couple times a year to grab a few stones that I can sell and live off of.”

Hannah seems mortified at the thought that the day we met, the day I saved a little girl’s life, I was on a mission to retrieve stolen jewels.

She shakes her head, as if to clear her thoughts, and says, “I never thought ‘trust fund baby’ fit you.” Now it’s her turn to make air quotations. “That just didn’t seem like you.”

“What about now?” I say. “Does thief fit me any better?”

She looks at me carefully, as if really considering the question. “A little bit,” she says. “But I’d like to think ‘hero who saves little girl’ fits the best.”

“Me too,” I say softly, not sure if that’s true.

Chapter 14

“Does she know the truth?” Hannah asks. “Your girlfriend.”

“No,” I say, looking away from her and out at the wavelets lapping at the shore. “But I should tell her before it gets more serious, shouldn’t I?”

“If she’s smart,” Hannah says, “she’ll run away from you as fast as she can.”

“If I were smart,” I say, “I would have run away from Lake Tahoe the moment I saw my picture in your newspaper. We don’t always do what we’re supposed to.”

“No,” she says, “we don’t.”

I try to figure out if there’s a subtext to her words. Is she saying she won’t write about what I’m telling her? Or at least thinking about it?

“For what it’s worth,” I say, standing up and tossing my soda into a nearby garbage can, “I’m sorry about all this.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Yeah,” I say. “When you met me on that boat, I’m sure you didn’t expect me to turn out to be a criminal.”

I almost add, A criminal who picked another girl over you.

I don’t need to say it. I can tell she gets the message.

“Look,” she says. “I’m glad we met on that boat. You saved a little girl’s life. Don’t forget that. I’m the one who should say she’s sorry. You didn’t ask to have your picture in the paper.”

I shrug. “You were just doing your job,” I say, echoing her words from our fight a week ago.

I ask her if she decides to publish what she knows about me, will she warn me ahead of time?

“So you can split town?” she says.

I nod.

“I’ll give you a heads up,” she says.

“Well, I guess this could be good-bye,” I say.

I open my arms, not sure if she’ll hug me, but she steps in, and we hold each other for longer than decorum would suggest is necessary. I feel her warm body pressed against mine. I inhale deeply and smell her hair.

Ah, I think, in another life…

When we break, I point and show her which house is mine. I’m not sure why. I guess I just don’t want this to be the last I ever see of her.

But as I watch her walk back down the beach path, I think it probably will be. She’s a journalist in her heart, and when there’s news, she reports it. I think she’ll call this afternoon and  let me know the paper is going to print the story. I can picture news anchors around the country saying to their respective audiences, “Remember that viral video we showed you last week about the hero saving the girl from drowning? New information has come to light, and you’ll never guess what it is.”

I figure I’ll have about twelve hours to get out of town.

Which means that if I want any sort of life with Claire, I need to tell her the truth.

It occurs to me that if I left, I’d miss Hannah as much as Claire. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Claire is perfect for me—and the last week has been wonderful. But the heart doesn’t work the way the head does.

Hannah is far from perfect for me, but if I’m honest with myself, she’s the one I would prefer to be coming home to right now.

I’m not sure what to do. Break up with Claire? Ask her to run away with me? I take the final steps to my house, going through the words I should say, playing different scenarios in my head.

But when I walk in the door, Claire is tied to a chair, duct tape strapped over her mouth. There are two men holding guns to her head.

One of them is a hairless gorilla with tattoo-coated arms.

The other one is Marco.

“Hello, old friend,” he says, his lips spreading into a broad, sinister smile.

Chapter 15

I step forward with my fists raised, and the hairless gorilla comes at me, ready to fight.

“Stop,” Marco says, his voice sounding annoyed.

He presses the barrel of his gun into Claire’s cheekbone. She tries to squirm away, but he keeps the gun hard against her skin.

“Okay, okay,” I say, raising my hands.

“Don’t move,” Marco says. “Keep those hands raised.” Then he nods to his partner. “Now, Jasper, you can have your fun.”

The big guy, Jasper, walks toward me. He’s a good two inches taller than me, making him at least six five. He’s wearing jeans and a Motörhead T-shirt, both pulled tight over a husky, freakishly muscular frame. There isn’t an inch of skin on his bulbous arms not covered in tattoos.

“I can’t tell if you spend more time at the gym or the tattoo parlor,” I say. “But I can tell you don’t spend much time reading books.”

Jasper smirks and tucks his pistol into his jeans. It’s a bulky revolver ill-suited for being stuck into jeans, but that’s where he keeps it.

He circles around behind me and then swings his big fist underneath my raised arms. Pain explodes through my ribs, and air rushes from my lungs. I fall to the floor, holding my side and trying to catch my breath.

Jasper squats down and drives his sledgehammer hand into my face. I see stars. Blood trickles from one nostril and my lips are bleeding into my mouth. I blink back tears and feel a wave of nausea.

“Don’t knock him unconscious,” Marco says. “Stick to the body.”

Jasper does, thundering me with blows to my ribs, stomach, and back. I roll and squirm and try to cover myself, but if I can’t fight back, there’s little I can do.

“That’s enough,” Marco says, stepping forward to stand over me. I sit up, trying to breathe shallowly so I don’t inflame my bruised—or broken—ribs.

“You know why I’m here?” he says.

“To kill me,” I say. “So why don’t you go ahead and get it over with?”

“I’m here for what you stole from me,” Marco says.

His hair has grown longer and is pulled back in a ponytail, but otherwise my old partner is unchanged. He’s dressed in a sharp outfit: black shirt and pants, gray sports coat, expensive dress shoes.

“Marco,” I say. “We both know this was never about the diamonds. You just got your feelings hurt because I was quitting. You didn’t want to be left alone, that’s all this is. You’re a jilted little schoolyard bully, petulant because your best friend dissed you.”

Marco considers this. “Maybe so,” he says. “But I still want those fucking diamonds.”

I spit a glob of blood and mucus onto his shoe.

“Fuck you,” I say, a string of blood hanging from my mouth.

He takes the butt of his gun and pistol whips me in the forehead. I fall back onto the floor, dizzy and lightheaded, fighting not to pass out.

“Hey,” Jasper whines. “You said not to hit him in the head.”

“Do as I say,” Marco says, “not as I do.”

Blood crawls down my forehead from a fresh gash.

“Tie him up,” Marco orders.

Jasper rolls me over and duct-tapes my hands together behind my back. Then he yanks me onto a kitchen chair and wraps my feet to the legs and my arms to the back. He positions me facing Claire, who is tied in the same way except for the added swatch of tape over her mouth.

They haven’t hurt her as far as I can tell, but she’s clearly traumatized. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are red from crying. Her skin is pale, as if she might be sick at any moment.

Marco pockets his Beretta inside his shoulder holster, and he pulls out a folding knife with a rubber grip and a curved serrated blade. He kneels next to Claire. He presses the point against her cheek, not quite hard enough to draw blood, but close.

“Don’t, Marco,” I say.

“She’s got pretty eyes,” Marco says. “It would be a shame to have to cut them out.”

“Don’t fucking touch her!”

Marco turns to me, keeping the blade against her skin. “You see,” he says, “this is what I didn’t have last time we met. Leverage.”

“Let her go, and I’ll tell you where they are,” I say.

“No,” Marco says. “Tell me or I hurt her. I won’t kill her, Logan, not yet, but I will hurt her.”

Last time Marco and I had a standoff, I had all the cards. This time, he does.

“I hid them at Lake Aloha,” I say, reluctantly. “It’s a lake outside of town. You have to hike there. She and I went up there last week and I got a few.” I gesture with my head toward the bathroom. “They’re in a bottle of ibuprofen in my medicine cabinet.”

Marco gives Jasper a nod, and the big guy goes into my bathroom. He comes back with a bottle of Advil. He shakes it and the tablets rattle around inside. He opens the bottle and pours maroon pills into his palm. He inspects them and dumps them on the floor. He pours another handful and sifts around in it. He holds his palm for Marco to inspect.

“Ah,” Marco says, digging two pea-sized diamonds from among the pills. He inspects them, staring obsessively as if he’s caught in a hypnotist’s trance.

“Here’s another,” Jasper says, and Marco plucks a smaller diamond from Jasper’s meaty hand and holds it up to his eyes.

“This one would be perfect for an engagement ring,” he quips, ruffling Claire’s hair.

“The whole bag is up there,” I say. “Three million on the low end. Five if you’ve got the right buyer. Let Claire go, and you can have them all. I’ll take you right to them. You just have to let her go.”

“No.” Marco shakes his head. “That’s not how we’re going to do this. We’re going up there together, all four of us.”

Chapter 16

The van pulls into the parking lot and rolls to a stop in an empty space facing the lake. I sit in the passenger seat, my wrists tied with duct tape. Behind us in the van, Claire sits with her hands and feet bound and tape over her mouth. She is trying not to cry, and failing. Jasper is twirling a lock of her blond hair with his finger.

“Don’t worry,” I say to Claire, craning my neck to see her. “We’re going to be okay.”

“That’s true,” Marco says, looking in the rearview mirror. “You’re going to be just fine—if your boyfriend does what he’s told.”

Marco pulls out his knife. He leans toward me and pauses.

“Try anything,” he says, “and she dies first. Got it?”

I say nothing.

“I want to hear you say it,” Marco says.

“Got it,” I say.

Before we left, they cleaned the blood off my face, but there’s still a bruised gash on my forehead, and my lips are swollen and crusted red. They ransacked my hiking equipment, throwing together enough daypacks and water bottles for all of us. I was able to pick a few ibuprofen off the floor with my mouth and dry-swallow them. I have no idea if they’re doing any good. My ribs feel like they’ve been pounded with a meat tenderizer.

Marco cuts the tape from my hands and yanks it off—and my arm hair with it. Behind us, Jasper is doing the same with Claire. She gasps as he yanks the tape off her face.

“The rules are very simple,” Marco announces to the whole vehicle. “Logan, if you run off, we kill Claire. Claire, if you run off, we kill Logan. If either of you try to call for help or signal a hiker or ranger or anything like that, we kill both of you. And we kill whoever you try to signal.”

Marco fixes me with his steel-gray eyes. “Do you believe we’ll do it, old friend?”

“Yes,” I say. “I believe you.”

The parking lot is nearly empty, with only a little hustle and bustle from a few employees coming and going from the general store and working on the dock. It looks like the hoopla caused by the newspaper article has already passed.

The four of us pretend to be friends getting ready for a day hike. Claire is the worst at pretending. She’s shivering, holding her head down, and sniffling. She’s wearing no makeup and looks terrified, but she is still beautiful. Her blond hair is coming loose from being pulled back, and strands hang down around her face.

It’s true that an hour ago I was considering breaking up with her, thinking about how I might like Hannah more, but she doesn’t deserve to be going through this.

“It will save us about four miles if we take the water taxi,” I tell Marco.

Marco looks down at the lake and the trail running alongside it.

“How long without it?” Marco asks.

“About eleven miles.”

“One way?”

I nod. Claire and I are the only ones dressed for hiking. Before we left my house, I insisted that Marco let us change into comfortable cargo shorts, boots, and lightweight polyester T-shirts. Marco, who is only one shoe size smaller than me, was able to put on a pair of my running shoes, but otherwise his slacks and jacket are completely impractical for hiking. Jasper, in combat boots and jeans, looks more appropriately dressed for a rock concert than a day hiking in the wilderness.

“We’ll take the boat,” Marco declares. “But if either of you try anything,” he adds, looking back and forth between Claire and me, “we’ll kill the driver and dump him overboard.”

The driver is a different person this time, a chubby twenty-something with a trucker hat and big stud earrings. We are the only ones in the taxi. When we load onto the boat, I keep expecting the driver to spot Jasper’s gun. Marco’s is well hidden in his shoulder holster, but Jasper’s is only stuck into his jeans with his shirt pulled over. Still, the kid doesn’t notice and doesn’t seem to care that half our group isn’t dressed for hiking.

As the boat skims across the surface of the lake, the air is colder. Clouds are moving in, covering the sky in murky gray. Claire holds her arms tightly around her body. I can see goose bumps on her legs and arms.

The boat speeds past the docks of the cabins perched on the granite banks.

“Can you get to these houses only by boat?” Marco asks me, as if we’re pals and I’m taking him to a new place to hike.

“Or by foot,” I say.

Marco frowns. “What about in the winter?”

“No one lives here year round,” I say. “The lakes are frozen and you’ve got to use cross-country skis to get in and out.”

The cabins appear to be vacated for the season, except for the one where the girl was drowning. A man is sitting on a deck chair at the edge of the water, reading a book. The father, I assume. He looks up at us and gives a friendly wave.

At this distance, there’s no way he could recognize me as the man in the newspaper photograph.

I’m going to die because I saved your daughter, I think. I would be okay with that—to trade my life for hers. The problem is I don’t want Claire to die because of me.

The boat slows as the driver navigates through a narrow channel to Upper Echo Lake. The water is so clear that we can see trout swimming beneath the boat. A few minutes later at the dock, the boat pilot points to the pay phone.

“If you guys want a ride back, give us a call,” he says. “The number’s posted. There’s no cell service out here.”

“We’ll probably hike back,” Marco says.

There is a subtext to these words. Marco and Jasper will hike back because they don’t want any witnesses to say the boat pilot transported four people into the wilderness but only two came out.

Chapter 17

The boat speeds across the water, leaving us alone on the lake’s edge. Claire starts crying, as if she’d been holding out hope that something would happen to keep us from going through with this.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her, putting all the earnestness into my voice that I can. “I hate myself for putting you in this position.”

She says nothing, but her eyes communicate all of her emotions: anger, confusion, fear, sadness, and—rising through all those to the surface—a feeling of betrayal.

Marco insists that I lead and he follow behind. Claire will be between him and Jasper, who will bring up the rear. If we pass another hiker or a ranger, we are supposed to act normal, like we are just four friends out enjoying the day.

“Don’t forget,” Marco says before we start, “no matter how fast you think you can run, our bullets are faster.”

We begin hiking uphill. When we pass the wooden sign stating that we are entering Desolation Wilderness, Marco quips, “Sounds ominous.”

We hike in silence for an hour, and then Marco says, “So, where’d you find the girl, old friend? She’s cute.”

I don’t answer the question. Instead I say, “Where’d you get your new partner? Mercenaries-R-Us?”

From the back of the line, I hear Jasper chuckle.

“Is it love?” Marco continues. “Back when we were pulling jobs, I never figured you for the settling-down type.”

“Back when we were pulling jobs, I never figured you for the betraying-your-partner type,” I say. “Looks like neither of us ever really knew the other.”

“I sure as hell don’t know you,” Marco says. “You’ve got millions of dollars in diamonds and you hide them out here in the woods? You live in a shithole when you could be living in a mansion. What the hell are you thinking?”

Instead of answering, I pick up the pace so Marco will be too out of breath to keep asking questions.

We hike for two more hours, and then Marco insists we stop at an overlook to rest. The sky is completely overcast now, and the temperature is dropping. There’s a real autumn chill in the air.

We sit on a fallen tree in the order we hiked, with Marco between me and Claire.

Marco turns to Claire. “What about for you? Do you love him?”

She is quiet for a moment and then says, “I did.”

Marco laughs. “Did you hear that? She did. That’s gotta hurt.”

I say nothing.

“How did you meet?” Marco asks Claire.

“Leave her alone,” I say.

Marco ignores me and goes back to questioning Claire. “Did you ask him out or did he ask you out? I bet you asked him out. The Logan I knew back in Los Angeles never had the balls to talk to a girl. He’s got movie-star good looks, but he’s got no game with the ladies.” He nudges my arm. “I know you better than you think, old friend.”

“That’s enough,” I say.

“He wasn’t good with girls,” Marco says, “but I once saw him beat a guy twice his size unconscious with his bare hands. Your boyfriend was something special back in the day.”

“That person doesn’t exist anymore,” I say quietly.

Marco laughs hard.

Jasper clears his throat and hocks a thick glob of snot and saliva out into the trees.

“The thing I don’t get,” Marco says to Claire, “is how you never suspected anything. Some strange guy living in Lake Tahoe. No job. A comfortable stream of money. Probably no real friends. None of that struck you as odd?”

“Leave her alone,” I say again.

“He really had you fooled, didn’t he?” Marco says. “Are you dumb or was the sex really that good?”

I rise. “I said leave her alone, Marco.”

Marco looks up at me from the log, grinning, then he rises slowly. He pulls his Beretta from its holster. He points the barrel at Claire’s head and she twists her face away and puts her hands up, as if they could stop a bullet.

“Hurt her and I’ll kill you,” I say.

Marco chuckles. “You’re good, old friend, but there are two of us, and we’ve got the guns.”

I step back, raising my hands.

“If you want to save your honeybunch,” he says, “you’ve got to give me those diamonds.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” I say. “Let’s get moving so we can both get what we want.”

Chapter 18

I bring them to the same granite slope where Claire and I first kissed a week ago.

“We’re here,” I say.

Marco looks around curiously. “Okay, so where are the diamonds?”

I turn toward the lake and point. “Out there.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I shake my head. “I’ll swim out and get them. When I get back, you let Claire go. Deal?”

“You’re not going out there alone,” Marco said. “Jasper, go with him.”

I smirk. “Do you have any idea how cold that water is? It’s pure snowmelt. It’s probably not even sixty degrees.”

Jasper walks to the edge of the water, bends over, and sticks his hand in. He holds it under for four or five seconds and then pulls it out. His hand is red, as if sunburned.

“No way,” Jasper says, shaking his arm and flinging the water off his hand. “That hurts all the way to my elbow.”

“Don’t be such a pussy,” Marco says. “I don’t care if they pipe the water in straight from Antarctica, you’re going with him.”

Jasper shakes his head. “I ain’t such a good swimmer in normal conditions.”

Marco rolls his eyes. “All right,” he says to me. “Don’t you forget for a second that we got your girl. I don’t care if you drown out there, if you don’t come back, we’re gonna kill her deader than Bruce Lee. And she’s gonna wish she was dead long before I pull the trigger. Got it?”

I take a long drink from my CamelBak and then drop the pack on the ground. I kneel and untie my shoes. I pull my shirt off and stand barefoot in front of the others. The rock is cool under my feet. The air is chilly against my skin. Goosebumps rise on my chest.

I want to tell Claire that I will probably not survive after all of this, but that I will do everything I can to make sure she will.

Instead, I say, “I’m sorry. The last few days have been among the best in my life.”

“I think I need a box of tissues,” Jasper says.

Claire is looking hard at me, her eyes bloodshot, her skin pale. “I don’t even know who you are,” she says.

“Yes you do.” I gesture to Marco. “It’s this guy who doesn’t know me.”

“Oh, I know you,” Marco says. “You’re just pretending to be someone you’re not.”

I don’t respond. I’m not sure who the real Logan is. But I need the old Logan if Claire and I are going to get through this.

I look across the lake, not turning my head but scanning the shoreline for other people. I see no one: no tents, no fishermen, no one. We haven’t seen a soul since the boat driver dropped us off. We are all alone out here. There is no one to hear gunfire.

“What are you waiting for?” Marco says. “We ain’t got all day.”

I step into the water, taking deep breaths. When I am waist deep, I dunk my head and swim outward. The water is so cold that it feels hot, burning my skin.

I skip the Volkswagen Beetle island where I usually stop to catch my breath, and I go directly to the island with the skeleton tree.

I swim down and pull out the small cloth satchel. On the ledge, with the arc of the island keeping my actions hidden from the others, I untie the satchel and pull out the plastic sandwich bag. I let the satchel float away and tuck the bag into the pocket of my cargo shorts. Then I take a deep breath and swim back down to the crack where the diamonds were hidden.

This time, when I stick my arm into the crevice, I come out with another hidden treasure inside a waterproof plastic bag.

This one isn’t a bag of diamonds.

It’s a .45-caliber pistol.

Chapter 19

The gun is a lightweight, titanium-framed pocket pistol, built for people with conceal-and-carry permits. Only five inches long, it fits inside the sandwich bag easily. The brand name of the gun is DoubleTap because it holds only two bullets. I’ll need to make them count.

I tuck the gun into the other pocket of my shorts and climb up onto the island.

Claire is standing on the shore, with Marco and Jasper flanking her. I take a moment to catch my breath and dive back into the water.

I climb up onto the Volkswagen island twenty yards off shore to rest for a moment. My cargo shorts cling to my body and sag from the weight of the water and the contents of the pockets. I don’t think the gun is visible. The diamonds make a bigger bulge. The pain in my ribs is gone now, smothered by the adrenaline pumping through my veins.

I jump into the water and swim for shore. When I can touch the sand under my feet again, I take my time walking forward, trying to slow my breathing. Marco and Jasper hold their guns in their hands. Claire’s hands are clutched in front of her chest, like she is praying.

When I’m in two feet of water, I pull the package of diamonds out, open the bag’s zipper, and then hold out my arm as if I’m going to pour the diamonds in the water.

“If I dump these,” I say, “you’ll still be able to find some of them. But it will be a giant pain in the ass in this cold water.”

“Don’t try to be clever,” Marco says.

“Let Claire go.”

Jasper takes her by the arm and raises his revolver and presses it to her head. She is breathing fast, almost to the point of hyperventilating. Tears stream down her cheeks.

“Come on,” Marco says, “do we really have to do this?”

“Let her go,” I say. “When I feel like she’s a safe distance away, I’ll turn over the diamonds.”

“What, so she can run down to that pay phone and call the cops?” Marco says. “I’ve got another idea. I shoot you. We make Claire wade out into the water and gather up the diamonds from around your dead body. Then we beat the shit out of her until she begs us to kill her. Then, and only then, do we put her out of her misery.” His voice rises as he speaks. “How’s that sound to you?”

I tilt the bag, pretending I’m ready to pour it out. “I know I’m not getting out of this alive, Marco. But I’m not going to make it easy for you unless she goes free.”

Marco’s face is turning red. He grits his teeth and growls, “Logan, give me those goddamn diamonds.”

“Suit yourself,” I say.

I toss the open bag into the air. Diamonds spill out as the bag sails toward Marco. Marco tries to grab the bag with his free arm, but only slaps at it, knocking it to the ground. Diamonds rain down into the water and skitter on the rock like hailstones.

“You son of a bitch!” Marco roars, bending over to collect the diamonds. “Jasper, kill this motherfucker.”

I’m already surging forward, pulling the gun out of my shorts. Jasper’s eyes narrow, as if he is trying to figure out what I’m doing, then his eyes grow large with recognition. He turns the gun from Claire to me. I punch my finger through the plastic bag, take aim at the center of Jasper’s face, and fire.

The gunshot echoes off the granite all around us.

I turn even before Jasper’s body falls to the ground.

Marco rises. “What the—”

I swing my gun on Marco. He throws his arm out just in time, slapping the pistol aside. The bullet hits his shoulder. Marco gasps and tries to bring his own gun up, but he is holding it in the injured arm. I drop the two-shot pistol and grab Marco’s wrist. With my other hand, I grasp a handful of his hair and wrestle him toward the bank. We fall in about eight inches of water, clawing and struggling. I gain leverage and put my knee on Marco’s chest. He cranes his head to bring his mouth out of the water, and I press down harder.

Marco is trying to speak. All I can make out is “shoot” and something that sounds like “Jill”—maybe “kill”—and then I hold him under. An eruption of bubbles comes out before Marco closes his mouth and holds his breath.

I twist the Beretta out of Marco’s hand—with the bullet wound, there is very little strength in his arm—and point the gun an inch above the water where Marco’s face stares back at me. The gun has gotten wet, but I think it will probably still fire.

I’m right.

Marco’s body goes limp.

I rise up, my chest heaving. A cloud of smoke hangs over the water. The gun lies on Marco’s chest, still in his hand, partly submerged in water so opaque it looks like red paint.

“Good-bye, old friend,” I say.

I start to turn and then pause. What had Marco said?

Shoot Jill?

Shoot, Jill!

I spin around and feel an explosive burning in my abdomen. I stagger back into the water, only then hearing the shot echoing around me.

Claire—or Jill—stands with Jasper’s revolver in both hands. She points the gun at me and fires again.

Chapter 20

The bullet goes wild, so close I can hear it whining next to my ear like a supersonic insect. I dive into the water and swim, pumping my arms and legs as fast as I can. A geyser of water shoots up next to my head where another bullet hits. The revolver is louder than the other pistols had been, and the shots sound like canon fire bouncing off the rock.

She shoots three more times, the bullets twanging into the water nearby, and then the gun clicks empty. She might be trying to find extra shells, but I’m soon out of range. I swim to the island where I’d hidden the diamonds, and I crawl up onto the rocks. I drag myself to the lone tree, leaving a trail of blood, and lean against the trunk. My stomach lurches and I retch up hot liquid. I think for a moment that I must have swallowed water, but then realize how naive that idea is: my vomit is red and tastes like copper.

I inspect the wound: a dark hole the size of a dime to the left of my navel. There’s no exit wound, meaning the lead slug is sitting somewhere in my belly. My body starts to shiver violently.

The woman on the shore, the woman who said her name was Claire, is on her hands and knees, gathering the diamonds. I might be able to wait her out. When she leaves, I can swim to shore. I might be able to make it to the telephone at the dock. It’s possible.

As I wait, I put together their plan. It isn’t hard to figure out.

Marco had known I would never give up the diamonds to him. If I gave up the diamonds, I would die. So no amount of threats or torture would get me to cooperate. But he knew me—in the end, he really did—and he knew I would give up the diamonds for someone I cared about. Marco had been working with Claire—or whatever her name is—from the start.

Marco must have seen the video as soon as it went viral. Within twenty-four hours of the video appearing on the internet, Claire was sitting in my spinning class, charming me. They probably hit the road from LA the night the video was released and then, first thing that morning, stopped by the Lake Tahoe Gazette to ask the article’s author if they knew where they could find me. Now that I’m thinking about it, that day Hannah and I had a fight out in front of the paper, there was something else she wanted to tell me as I was storming off. Could it have been a warning?

When Marco showed up with Jasper today, I had assumed he’d been in town a couple days and as soon as they found me they’d rushed into my house brandishing guns, finding Claire there instead of me. But that wasn’t the case. Marco and his team must have been here all week. Claire was his real partner, and he’d been patient as he put her to work. I remember when Claire sat down on the bike next to me at the gym and flashed me a sweet, friendly smile. It was all a performance, from that day to this one. I kept a secret from her, but she’s the one who was a different person. She was the pretender.

Was any part of her real? Was she Marco’s girlfriend? Marco had told her to shoot me, so she probably could have saved his life. Instead, she let me kill him before shooting me. Maybe she had conned Marco from the start as well.

Remembering meeting Claire in the spinning class—the way I’d fallen for her con like the world’s most naive mark—makes me think of meeting Hannah the day before. I trusted the wrong girl. I wish I could go back in time and somehow make things work with Hannah. If I had stepped out of hiding after saving the girl and just talked to her, I could have asked her not to write the article. And even though she did write it, I shouldn’t have gotten so mad at her. I never should have given Claire the time of day. I should have called Hannah and said, “Hey, I’d like to get to know you.” I let myself imagine this alternative reality as I wait for Claire, or whatever her name is, to leave.

After about an hour, the woman finally rises to her feet and heads back down the trail. She walks along the boulders with a gait that seems entirely unfamiliar, as if she really is a different person altogether. Before she reaches a bend in the trail that will take her out of my sight, she looks over at me, and even though she is far away, I can see her blowing me a kiss.

I’ve stopped shivering. My entire body is enveloped in a warm numbness. I was wrong; I couldn’t wait her out. I don’t have the strength to swim to shore, let alone make it down the mountain to the telephone. All I can do is sit in the puddle of my blood and wait for the sun to go down. Or pass out. Whichever comes first.

Either way, once the darkness comes, I know I’ll never see the light of day again.

Chapter 21

Hannah sits in front of her computer monitor. The whole article is there on her screen, perhaps her finest piece of investigative journalism to date. It’s a twenty-inch story giving an unbiased and thorough account of who Logan is, from his various run-ins with the law to his recent heroism.

Hannah’s editor is leaning over a nearby desk, talking to the designer who will be laying out the A section tonight. She looks over at Hannah and says, “Any progress on that feature article about the hero? We need a good story to anchor tomorrow’s front page.”

Hannah looks again at her article. It’s a great story.

It’s also Logan’s death warrant.

She shakes her head no, and Ashley gives her a look that says she doesn’t quite believe her. Then she goes back to her conversation with the designer.

Hannah highlights all the text of the article. Her finger hovers over the Delete key for a moment, then she presses it. The article disappears.

She rises from her desk and heads to the parking lot. She drives over to Logan’s house, feeling a compulsion to tell him in person. A phone call won’t do. She knows he has a girlfriend. She tells herself she wouldn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore anyway, not after knowing what she knows. But that’s probably not the truth, if she’s being honest with herself. She wants to see him. She wants to look him in the eyes and say, “I believe the real Logan Bishop is the man who jumped into the water to save that girl. I don’t care about what you’ve done in the past. I know who you are.”

But Hannah’s heart sinks when she walks up Logan’s front walk. She can see his girlfriend’s blond hair in the window, moving about the kitchen. When Hannah first met the girl, she hadn’t trusted her. Claire showed up at the paper as soon as the article was published, telling Hannah she was an old friend of Logan’s and wanting to know how she could find him.

Hannah had told her where Logan worked out, and she’d regretted it immediately. She didn’t believe the girl was an old friend. She looked like an opportunistic little slut hoping to hook up with the handsome hero in the newspaper.

Hannah bangs on the door.

No one answers.

“I saw you through the window,” Hannah calls out. “I know you’re in there.”

Claire swings the door open. She’s wearing rubber gloves on her hands, and the stink of cleaning products emanates from the door.

The look she gives Hannah is far from friendly.

“Is Logan here?” Hannah says.

“No, he had some friends come into town and they went hiking.”

“Do you know where they went?”

Claire shakes her head. Her put-out expression sends the clear message that she’d like for Hannah to leave so she can get back to whatever she was doing.

“You and Logan weren’t really old friends, were you?” Hannah says. “You just saw a cute guy in the newspaper and wanted to meet him, didn’t you?”

Claire stares at her with ice-cold eyes, and then her face finally breaks into a smile. “You got me,” she says. “It doesn’t matter now though. Logan and I broke up.”

“You broke up?”

The corner of Claire’s mouth curves up, as if she’s holding back a grin.

“I’m just picking up the last of my things,” Claire says. “Then I’m out of here. As soon as he gets back from his hike, he’s all yours if you want him.”

Hannah pulls her car onto Highway 50 and heads back toward the newspaper. At a stoplight, she dials Logan’s number with her phone, but the call goes straight to voicemail. Her limbs buzz with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. Then she thinks about the whole encounter with Claire, how weird it was.

First of all, if Claire had been collecting her belongings, why was she cleaning Logan’s house? That seemed like a generous thing to do in the aftermath of a breakup, and Claire didn’t strike her as the kind of girl who would be that altruistic. It seemed more like she was scrubbing away any trace of her presence in Logan’s house.

More important, given what Logan told her that morning, Hannah can’t believe friends from out of town came to go hiking with him. Logan’s been hiding from anyone who knows him. There’s no way friends just showed up from out of town and he took them hiking.

Logan had said he’d hidden a cache of diamonds at Lake Aloha. If “friends” had come from out of town, then that’s where they’d gone. And not for some recreational hike.

Hannah slams on the brakes and whips her car in a tight U-turn. She speeds out of the city toward the trailhead where she first met Logan.

Chapter 22

The sun is about to set when Hannah finally comes jogging up the path to Lake Aloha. This is her first time seeing the lake, and the setting sun and overcast sky give the desolate area a gray, gothic look. The lake is still, like a slab of steel, and the whole area is as silent as a cemetery.

She thinks about shouting Logan’s name, but if he’s in trouble, she doesn’t want to alert his companions.

Her heart is pounding. One week ago, she took the water taxi because she thought the eleven-mile hike might be too much for her. Today, she practically ran the whole way. When she arrived at the parking lot, the employees informed her that the boat had just left and wouldn’t be back for thirty minutes. She’d taken off running down the path.

It’s amazing the energy that adrenaline can give you.

She takes off jogging along the path that circles the lake, not sure what she’s looking for. Over a distant mountain, the moon begins to rise, peeking out through the clouds in a bright, eerie glow.

She looks around constantly as she moves, trying to maintain her footing while still looking for any sign of Logan. She nearly runs into a body lying on the rocks.

She lets out a scream and then claps her hand over her mouth.

The man is clearly dead. His vacant eyes catch the moonlight, and the blood on his face looks black.

Hannah looks around wildly. There’s another body in the shallow water. The person’s face is submerged. She thinks for a moment that it might be Logan, but the clothes are all wrong.

Then she spots a pair of hiking shoes that look like Logan’s. And his daypack.

Tears spring to her eyes. Her airway constricts. She doesn’t know what to do.

Then, barely audible over her own breathing, she hears a voice.

“Hannah,” Logan moans from somewhere in the distance. “Hannah.”

She sees him out on the lake, barely visible in the gloom, sitting on an island, leaning against a dried-up old tree.

“Are you hurt?” she shouts.

“Yes,” he says, his voice choked with sandpaper hoarseness. “I’ve been shot.”

“Oh, shit,” Hannah whispers.

She’s unsure what to do. The feeling of helplessness she had when Logan was saving the girl begins to wrap itself around her in a paralyzing squeeze.

No, she thinks. I have to do something.

She thinks of Logan’s quick, unhesitating action when the girl was drowning, and this breaks her paralysis.

She kicks off her shoes and strips off her clothes. She stands in her bra and underwear on the cold rock and steels herself for the swim.

“I’m coming,” she shouts to Logan, and then she runs into the lake.

The water burns like liquid fire.

She gasps, unable to catch her breath. It feels as if her lungs are being compressed by the cold. She flaps her arms and kicks her legs, and still she feels like she’s getting nowhere. In the moonlight, the water looks black, like she’s swimming through oil. She has the urge to turn around, swim back to shore, and climb up on the rock out of the water’s icy grip. She wills herself to fight forward.

I’m not going to die here, she thinks. And neither is Logan.

She pulls herself onto the shore of the island and crawls to Logan. His skin is ghost white.

“Hey,” he says to her, his voice a whisper.

“Hey,” she says, not knowing what else to say.

His eyes drop for a moment to her body. “This is a good look for you,” he says, and his mouth curves just slightly into the hint of a smile.

“What happened?” Hannah says.

“Claire and I broke up,” he says. Then he points to a hole in his stomach trickling blood and says, “This was her good-bye present.”

“What about those two?” Hannah says, pointing toward the bank where the two dead bodies lay.

“My old partner,” Logan says. “She played them just like she played me.”

“Come on,” Hannah says. “We need to get you to shore.”

“There’s no point,” Logan says.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Hannah says. “I need you to hang on. I need you to fight.”

Logan shakes his head. “Even if you get me to shore, and we somehow make it down to the telephone, we can’t call an ambulance.”

Hannah stares at him in disbelief. In the moonlight, his face looks like a skull.

“The hospital will have to report a bullet wound,” Logan says. “They’ll connect me to Marco’s and Jasper’s deaths. And maybe you too. How are you going to keep your job at the newspaper when you’re being investigated?”

Hannah feels that sense of panic again. Then the solution presents itself.

“I have an idea,” she says. She grabs him by the face and looks hard into his eyes. “I need you to come with me, Logan. I need you to swim across this lake and hike down the mountain with me.”

“What’s your idea?”

“Just trust me,” she says. “You trusted me with your story earlier today. I need you to trust me again. Get down the mountain with me, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

She helps him to the bank, and they slip together into the black burning water.

Chapter 23

I’m floating in darkness so pure it feels like death.

Then I wake with a start, my heart thumping like a kick drum, my skin clammy and hot.

I’m lying in a strange room. The walls are wood-paneled, decorated with wildlife paintings. A soft light comes in through the window, telling me it’s evening.

How long have I been asleep?

I try to sit up and feel a throbbing pain in my stomach. I look and see white bandages stretched across my abdomen. I notice for the first time that there’s an IV hooked to the bed frame with a wire hanger. It’s feeding fluid into my arm.

I swing my feet off the bed and onto the floor. I’m wearing boxer shorts but nothing else.

My mouth is dry, and I snatch a plastic water cup from the nightstand and drink it down. I yank the IV needle out of my arm. I grab the blanket from the bed and wrap it around my shoulders, stepping out of the room.

My legs are weak.

I round the corner of the hallway and step into a kitchen, and then I recognize where I am. I’m in the cabin of the girl who was drowning. There is the phone by the refrigerator that I used to dial 911.

I walk into a spacious living room with a floor-to-ceiling picture window looking out over the lake. There is a fire crackling in the fireplace. Sitting in a plush leather chair, Hannah is looking out the window, watching snow falling down in fat flakes.

She sees me and gives me a smile so beautiful and so genuine that I can’t believe I ever fell for Claire.

“So this was your idea?” I say, looking around the house.

“I told you to trust me.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Almost twenty-four hours,” she says. “Do you remember anything?”

I take a chair next to her and pull the blanket around me. Out the window, the sun is setting. There is already a layer of snow on the lawn and deck, and it doesn’t look like the storm will let up anytime soon.

“The last thing I remember,” I say, “was going into the water and knowing I was going to die. I remember thinking, I hope Hannah doesn’t blame herself that she wasn’t able to save me.”

Hannah fills me in on the rest. We made it to the shore and then stumbled down the mountain, with her supporting most of my weight and me practically unconscious on my feet. She knocked on the door of the house and asked the father of the girl I’d saved for help. I’d forgotten she’d told me he was a doctor.

He was nervous, afraid he was getting involved in something illegal, but he figured he owed me, she explained. He shot me full of sedative, pulled the bullet out, and sewed me back up. Then he gave Hannah a big bottle of antibiotics and another of painkillers, and he packed up his girls and took off.

“They drove back to the Bay Area this morning,” she says. “The house is paid up for four more days. I can watch over you until you’re ready to go back to your house and take care of yourself. I’m sure the storm will let up by then.”

“You saved my life,” I say.

She shrugs. “I learned from the best.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I say. “To repay you?”

She looks at me sincerely. The firelight twinkles in her brown eyes.

“You can be the person I know you are,” she says.

We’re quiet for a few minutes, enjoying the serenity, then she asks what I’m going to do about Claire.

“Let her go,” I say. “She can have the diamonds. I want out of that life. For good.”

“She shot you,” Hannah says. “She shouldn’t get away with that.”

“A wise man once told me there’s no honor among thieves,” I say. “Everyone who lives that life ends up dead sooner or later.”

“I’m not sure that’s good enough for me,” Hannah says. “She shouldn’t get away scot-free.”

“Have they found the bodies yet?” I ask.

She shakes her head no. “I called my editor and told her I was sick and wasn’t coming in this week. She would have mentioned a double homicide if anyone knew about it. I doubt anyone’s gone hiking up there because of the snow.”

Outside, the snow is really coming down. This early in the season, it will probably melt off within a few days.

I picture spending those days curled up in front of the fire with Hannah, talking, getting to know her.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Hannah says. “Your trust fund is gone.”

“I guess I’ll get a job,” I say.

“This might help tide you over,” she says, reaching into her pocket.

She pulls out a diamond the size of a small marble and holds it between her thumb and forefinger, its surface sparkling in the firelight.

“Where did you get that?”

She explains that when we got to shore, she was trying to put my hiking shoes onto my feet when something glinting in the moonlight caught her eye. The diamond was wedged into a crack in the rocks.

“I bet there are more up there,” she says.

I shrug. “I already got what I wanted,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“To be here with you.”

She tries to hide her smile, and I can’t tell if it’s the glow of the firelight or her skin, but it looks like she’s blushing.

Epilogue

The woman Logan knew as Claire and Marco knew as Jill—and whom other people have known by other names—walks through Union Station in Los Angeles. Orange light from the setting sun pours in through the big windows. She walks in tight jeans and tall heels, with a black leather jacket cinched around her body and a Louis Vuitton handbag slung over her shoulder. Her luxuriant golden hair bounces around her shoulders as she struts over the marble floors.

A group of college-aged boys turn their heads and watch her. A tired-looking woman with two kids in a double-stroller eyes her. A middle-aged man in a Lakers sweatshirt does a double-take as she walks by.

The woman settles into a seat to wait for her train. She can feel the eyes on her—jealous eyes, lustful eyes—and she loves the feeling. She is on top of the world. She’s rich. She’s confident. And, after a week, she’s still feeling quite elated about how things went down at Lake Aloha. It couldn’t have worked out better.

She’d fooled Logan from the start. He’d never suspected a thing until she’d put a bullet into him. And Marco, the thug who’d brought her in? She didn’t even have to double-cross him. Logan took him out for her.

The only inconvenience was that she had to pick the diamonds up off the ground. She’s certain she left some behind, but it couldn’t be helped. She didn’t have a lot of time. She needed to get back to Logan’s house and wipe down anything that might have her fingerprints or DNA on it.

She knows she did a half-assed job, but that bitch from the newspaper showing up had made her antsy to get out of town.

It didn’t matter. The police would search Logan’s house once they found his body on that island, but they wouldn’t look too hard. The evidence at Lake Aloha would tell a pretty clear story: three crooks had a dispute and killed each other.

Yes, the whole thing couldn’t have worked out much better.

There’s a television mounted on a nearby wall that she’s been ignoring. It’s tuned to one of those all-day news channels, and when she hears the words “Lake Tahoe,” the broadcast suddenly catches her attention.

The anchor is explaining how cross-country skiers found two dead bodies in a hiking area near Lake Tahoe. The words “double homicide” are stamped along the bottom, as the screen shows footage of police cars at the snow-filled parking lot by Echo Lake.

They must not have found Logan’s body yet, she thinks. She’d been checking the Lake Tahoe Gazette website for the past few days and had seen that it had begun snowing the day after everything went down.

If they don’t find Logan’s body until spring, or even next summer, then that’s even better for her.

She is starting to smile, but then her face freezes as the broadcast continues.

There is a police sketch placed prominently on the screen—an excellent rendering of her own face. The artist couldn’t have done a better job if she’d been posing in person.

“Police are looking for this woman for questioning,” the reporter states. “A witness saw her leaving the hiking area the day of the homicide.”

The reporter continues, “The Lake Tahoe Gazette is reporting that the woman has used the aliases Claire and Jill, and she was last seen driving a Toyota Tacoma pickup. Authorities believe she has ties to the Los Angeles area.”

She grits her teeth, thinking of that bitch from the newspaper. But how would she know about the name Jill? And how did the reporter know what she drove?

The TV anchor moves on to other news, a warehouse fire in New York, but the woman stares at the TV in a daze, trying to make sense of what she just saw.

There’s only one explanation: Logan is still alive.

That bitch from the paper went to Lake Aloha and saved him. Then, when the bodies were discovered, she told police she’d been hiking there and saw a woman come out alone.

She can’t quite figure out all the details. It is hard to believe Logan could make it back down the hill, but even if he had, he’d need medical attention. And a hospital would certainly report a gunshot wound to the police. Maybe the police know more than the TV is reporting.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Logan could go ahead and enjoy his retirement in Lake Tahoe without his diamonds. She’d gotten away with it.

But as she glances around the terminal, she feels again like all eyes are on her. Not jealous eyes this time. Not lustful eyes.

Suspicious eyes.

She reaches into her handbag, her fingers brushing against the bag of diamonds, and pulls out her sunglasses. She puts them on and looks around, trying to act casual. There are people everywhere stealing glances her way. A man who’d been watching the news is gawking openly at her. Two security guards standing by the bathroom keep glancing at her as they talk.

She stands up and starts walking toward the exit, trying to exude the confidence she’d had just five minutes earlier, pretending the stares don’t bother her, pretending everything is all right. She is good at pretending, after all. She fooled Marco. She fooled Logan. She can fool anyone she wants.

But, she realizes, it’s harder to pretend when the person you’re trying to fool is yourself.

About the Authors

James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

Max DiLallo is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He lives in Los Angeles.

Andrew Bourelle has published numerous short stories in literary magazines and fiction anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories. He teaches writing at the University of New Mexico.

Table of Contents

The Pretender

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

About the Authors

Table of Contents

The Pretender

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

About the Authors