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comfortable with that. And hers was a story not all that far removed from his. It was a definite connection.
    And nobody does favors for Homeland or the feds and gets his record washed after he’s killed people and spent time in a Mexican prison unless he’s really good at something they want. She wondered just what it was and whether that skill set might be of use to her. But she was a major threat to his chances of a new life. He was Tony Cillo’s nephew, and that made it a very complicated situation for both of them.
    “Your uncle’s Italian. Cruz is Spanish.”
    “I’m half Italian, half Mexican on my father’s side.”
    She glanced at him. He had a very heavy background. If she wanted help, she couldn’t have ordered up anyone much better prepared for whatever she decided to do. All she knew was, she had no interest in running.

9
    On the way into Tahoe City, Sydney replayed the shooting in her mind. She tried to fit the size and shape of the shooter to someone from her past. Who the hell was he?
    The problem with running through her internal contact list was that she’d been involved in a lot of arrests, busts, and—later—prosecutions with the sheriff’s department. Then there were her many investigations with the DA. She’d gathered more enemies than friends. It was a very difficult environment because South Lake was divided between California’s jurisdiction and Nevada’s, and further divided by counties.
    One conclusion she had to face was that she couldn’t believe Ogden Thorp, a man who really wanted her dead, would send somebody so incompetent to take her out. That complicated everything in her mind, because it was Thorp she wanted to bring down, and having some random fool out there looking to kill her was an unwanted complication.
    “Your doc live right in town?” Marco asked.
    “He lives a few blocks off the main drag. Go through town, and I’ll show you where to turn.”
    When they crossed over the bridge on the Truckee River, Marco said, “I used to love boating down this river. One of the first things I learned from my uncle was that the Truckee River, instead of flowing west toward the Pacific, flows east into the lake, then continues on east to Pyramid Lake. He said the lake takes forever to drain. Supposedly, if you dropped a cup of coffee in Lake Tahoe, it wouldn’t be gone from the lake for six hundred fifty years. You believe that?”
    “I’ve heard that. Nobody has been able to test it yet.”
    He looked over at her. “How you doing?”
    “Miserable. I’ll be a lot better as soon as I get some pain pills and medical attention. And some food.”
    “Wanting food is always a good sign.”
    The center of the city was slow, a lot of foot traffic crossing every block. Marco said, “I don’t remember it being this busy. Especially on a Sunday night.”
    “New restaurants, walkways, plus new, well-lit trails along the water,” she told him.
    Sydney directed him to the doctor’s house on Fairway Drive on the north side of town, a green and white bungalow on a quiet, unpretentious street of mostly single-story houses. He put the Range Rover into reverse and parked few houses back. He told her to wait. He wanted to look around.
    “This is a very safe neighborhood—”
    “You called him. He knows you’re coming. I just want to be sure he didn’t call anybody.”
    “He wou—” she started to say, but he was already out and walking away.
    He had the Beretta under his shirt, a button opened so he could get to it in a hurry. She watched him as he paused, studied the street, the houses, and then moved between the doc’s place and the neighbor’s, quiet and stealthy as a ghost.
    When he came back a few minutes later, he nodded, and she got out and followed him around back. A patio door wasn’t locked. She didn’t ask if he’d done that or James had just neglected it.
    The doc was sitting in his home office doing something on his computer when he looked up and saw Marco,