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were illegal. Drinking and driving was illegal. Well, for that matter most of the fun in life was either considered illegal or immoral. Tessa didn’t really care. Not now, when she, at her father’s behest, was returning to Lake Arrowhead.
    Dread skittered down her spine. The old man had always tried to put the fear of God into her and sometimes succeeded. Nonetheless she rebelled. Just wait ’til old Dutch caught a glimpse of her latest tattoo.
    â€œBastard,” she muttered as the radio crackled and groaned. She punched button after button and heard only screeches and static, as the canyons were steep, the stations distant, the only station she could get played oldies, ancient rock and roll. Right now Janis Joplin was screeching through the speakers. My God, the woman had been dead for years, had passed into the next world, whatever that was, long before Tessa had any interest in music, but today the hard-driving rock and gravelly voice of Joplin touched Tessa in a dark, private spot. Janis sang as if she knew pain—real gut-wrenching agony. The kind of anguish Tessa lived with daily.
    Music pounded through the car.
    Tessa took a long tug from her bottle and reached into her fringed purse for a pack of cigarettes.
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    Take a,
    Take another little piece of my heart now, darlin’
    Break a,
    Break another . . .
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    That’s it, she thought. Break another piece of my heart. Hadn’t all the men she’d ever trusted? Tessa slid the Virginia Slims between her lips and punched in the lighter. Images of her past drifted behind her eyes and her adolescence crept into her subconscious. Her foot eased down on the gas pedal and the speedometer needle crowded ninety, way over the legal limit, but she didn’t notice, didn’t care. She was swept away in the tormented current of the past, dammed so long in her subconscious that she wasn’t really sure what was real and what was fantasy.
    The lighter popped out and Tessa lit up, smoke curling from her nostrils to be sucked away by the racing wind as the Mustang roared up the freeway.
    Didn’t I make you feel . . .
    Janis was still wailing as Tessa drained her beer, chucked the bottle out of the car, and heard glass shatter over the thrum of the engine. Joplin’s voice faded. Jesus, if only she could find another station. One with music from the current century. Hip hop or rap or techo. Too bad her CD player was busted.
    Shoving her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose with one finger, Tessa drove with her knee. Then she steeled herself. In less than six hours, she’d have to face her family for the first time in years. Her stomach knotted. Dutch, when he’d called her apartment, had sworn that both Tessa’s sisters would be waiting for her at Lake Arrowhead.
    â€œPrick,” she mumbled, flipping the butt of her cigarette onto the freeway. Claire and Miranda. The romantic and the ice princess. It had been years since Tessa had seen them together, since they’d huddled, shivering and dripping, as they’d sworn that they would never divulge what had happened in the murky waters of the lake that night.
    Shaking, she reached behind her, snapped open the lid of the cooler, her fingers surrounding the neck of another bottle of Coors standing at attention in the packed ice. Then she thought better of drinking any more alcohol. Soon she’d reach the border. It was time to sober up. And, she decided as another morbid song from the sixties cranked up, time to face the damned music of a song that was written long ago and just kept playing over and over in her head.
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    â€œHe was here again,” Louise announced as she stuck her head into Miranda’s tiny office.
    Miranda’s skin crawled. “Who?” But she knew the answer and it bothered her. A lot. Despite her outward bravado, she had her own fears, her own demons to deal with and the thought that she could possibly have a stalker struck