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hangers around the room. I stared at the TV while I ate, letting the images flash in front of my eyes as I replayed Detective Castillo’s words. He’d sounded sincere, like he really cared and wanted to help.
    Are you all alone?
    I was. More alone than I’d ever been, and that was saying something.
    I finally turned off the TV and fell into a dream-filled sleep.
    Logan floated in the ocean next to me, our bodies rising and falling with the swell of the tide. We held hands, our entwined fingers buoyant on the briny water. I felt his hand slip from mine, but when I looked over at him, his face morphed into Parker’s. He sank slowly below the surface, stillon his back, the pale flash of his skin growing dimmer as I reached for him. I ducked under the water and opened my eyes, but instead of Parker, I saw a flash of gold underneath me: the gold bars we’d stolen from Warren Fairchild, stacked on the sandy ocean floor. I looked frantically around, but Parker was nowhere to be found. I was starting to swim for the surface, my breath swelling in my lungs, clamoring for release, when something grabbed me. I looked down, a cry of protest arising in a stream of bubbles from my mouth as I saw a dark-haired woman, her face gray and bloated, her fingers wrapped tightly around my arm.
    It was after ten o’clock in the morning when I woke up sweating, clutching my throat and gasping for air like I’d been holding my breath. I took a shower and brushed my teeth, still shaken from the nightmare. After I got dressed, I opened the curtains. I was hoping the California sun would banish the residual dread in my veins, but I was greeted with a bank of gunmetal clouds that almost completely blotted out the light. Rain beaded the window, the ocean lost to fog in the distance. I wondered if Logan and the others had been surfing. He always said some of the best swells came in just before a storm.
    The thought brought forward a flash of memory: Logan emerging from the water with his surfboard as the sun hung over the horizon. I was sitting on a blanket, trying to focus on my book when all I really wanted to do was look at him. He’d shaken his wet hair over me, causing me to shriek in protest, and he’d laughed as he peeled off his wet suit. After that, we’d huddled under a blanket, kissing and touching and talking,until the sun went down on the deserted beach. His skin had been cold and smooth. He’d smelled like the sea.
    I took a shower and spent an hour in front of the mirror using makeup to sculpt a different face. I made my eyes look smaller by rimming them with black liner all the way around, then swept dark blush into the hollows of my cheekbones to make my face appear even gaunter than it already was. Subtle shading along either side of my nose made it look longer and more narrow, and nude gloss took the attention off my lips. By the time I was finished, I didn’t look at all like Grace Fontaine. I didn’t look like Julie Montrose either. I stared at the stranger in the mirror and felt completely unattached to the reflection.
    I paid for another day at the hotel on my way out. If I didn’t find a solution soon, I’d have to move. Budget hotels were havens for transients: businesspeople, travelers on their way someplace else, families stopping for the night during a road trip. I’d already been there four days. I was going to draw attention to myself if I didn’t move soon.
    I stopped at Denny’s for breakfast, then walked to the corner of Hawthorne and Pacific Coast Highway and caught the bus. My pulse quickened as we made our way up the winding hills of the peninsula, the bus’s engine straining against the incline. The light was already dim and gray, but once we hit Cove Road, it grew even darker, the thick net of foliage overhead blocking out what little light made it through the clouds.
    I remembered the first time I’d seen Playa Hermosa, theway it had felt