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eyes—”
    “Don’t.” She let him hear the warning in her voice.
    “Sorry.” His Adam’s apple bobbed again.
    Her breathing sped up in sympathy. He had brought this on himself, prying where he had no business. Still, she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She reached out and touched his forearm gently. “Friends.”
    He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I have to go.”
    “Take care of yourself, then, Dean.” Camilla straightened her shoulders and strode off toward her own building without looking back.

CHAPTER 6
    Marina District, San Francisco, California
    T he clown fish grinned its cheerful, spacey grin. It seemed to be asking her, Are you sure you want to do this crazy thing?
    Camilla was sure. She turned off the thermostat and set the alarm. Then she took one last look around her apartment. It was small, and the rent was high, but it was in San Francisco’s Marina District, surrounded by trendy cafés, shops, and nightlife—a great place to live if you were a young, single professional woman. The entire Marina District was built on top of landfill and vulnerable to earthquakes, Camilla knew, but she wouldn’t let fear limit her choice of where to live. She loved it here.
    Except for the commute. Not the evenings, when she’d sail across the wide-open upper deck of the Bay Bridge, convertible top down, long brown curls bouncing in the wind, the water sparkling on both sides. The problem was the morning drive, which took her underneath the two-story bridge’s lower deck. The low metal beams would close in overhead, and her breaths would come fast and shallow until she was back out in the sunshine again. But Camilla willingly accepted the challenge. It was a daily dragon to be slain.
    The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake lay buried twenty-three years in her past. It had taken everything from her when she was seven, swallowing her family and consuming her childhood memories in its relentless darkness.
    She refused to let it have any power over her now.
    For the next couple of weeks, the bridge would be a nonissue anyway. Feeling the thrill of anticipation, she scanned her tidy kitchen, the living room with its stylish urban-loft decor, and the cozy, inviting bedroom. Everything was in its place, and she would be seeing it again soon enough.
    Work-wise, the timing was perfect, too. They were in postproduction right now. Besides, she had just turned thirty. She grinned back at the clown fish. A little adventure was exactly what she needed.
    She looked at the figurines on her shelf: a red-haired cowgirl, a spaceman, a one-eyed green monster, a lovable boxy robot. Wish me luck, old friends. Camilla sometimes wondered if her attachment to these cartoon characters was entirely healthy, but it made sense to her. When she was a child, their Disney predecessors had helped her through some dark years.
    On the wall above the figurines, the clown fish watched her from the glossy movie poster, surrounded by his underwater friends. Signatures from her production crew crawled around the margins. She had another poster from the same movie, but she had taken it down because the grinning shark startled too many visitors. Her brand-new award, the crystal Anglepoise lamp, now held pride of place in the center of the shelf.
    Camilla loved her apartment. Still, living in the city did have its stresses. The headlines this morning had been the usual grim litany: a carjacking, another prostitute gone missing, a police shooting, a killer stalking women, financial irregularities in the mayor’s campaign. It would be nice to get away for a little while.
    She slid her jacket on and grabbed the handle of her rolling travel bag. Then she picked up the invitation, in its embossed envelope, from the counter.
    • • •
    Riding in the cab, Camilla felt a prickle of unease. The driver was heading away from the water, up Divisadero. She had expected to stay on Bay Street and curve along the waterfront. According to the news, three local women had disappeared