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Grant turned onto the interstate and fumbled for his phone as it buzzed a third time.

“You on your way up to Napa?” Not even a hello from his father, just a no-nonsense launch into questions.

“Yep.” He cut off a tractor-trailer and accelerated.

“Got a lead for ya, might turn out to be something.” Static played in and out of the connection, and for a moment Grant thought about hanging up.

“Yeah? What?”

“Edoardo Morelli just arrived in Afghanistan to shoot a film.”

Grant frowned. Damn risky place to fly over, let alone set up camp to make a movie. “And?”

“And I want you to get Francesca on record saying something about it.”

Grant shook his head and glanced into the rear-view mirror. “Francesca doesn’t talk about her family.”

“Then find a way to make her.”

Jesus, Dad, give it a rest. He toed the gas. The sooner he got this last interview out of the way, the better.

“You get anything on record about the daughter?”

“Edoardo’s? Nope.” Now that would be a story. The girl’s birth was as much of a mystery as her disappearance nearly seven years ago. Though he’d asked Francesca about it in ten different ways, he’d gotten little more than a verification of the plainest facts.

“Yes, Edoardo was a fool who couldn’t keep his zipper closed.”

“Yes, he got a young Greek girl pregnant when he was between films and traveling over there.”

“Yes, I adopted the baby and brought her back here to raise.”

And Francesca must have paid that young Greek girl a ton of money, reported conventional wisdom—either that or killed her off altogether—because not a single person had ever been able to trace Isabella Antigone Morelli’s biological mother.

“Well, see what you can do,” the older man said as the cell connection faded out, though he sounded weary, as if he knew his son wouldn’t be able to do much of anything at all.

Grant slowed as he turned off the highway. Each time he came up, he tried to take a different path through town. This time, he’d marked out a route that wound past the Truchard Vineyards south of central Napa. If he had any time later on, he’d swing by a couple of the spas in Calistoga, too. The shots would be fantastic in the afternoon light. He crested a hill and braked. Five hundred yards away, waves of purple and green laced into a tapestry that caught the sun in arcing waves. Low brick buildings hugged the earth. A cloud covered the sun, darkening the view, and then moved away again. For a moment all he did was stare, gaze narrowed, as he assessed the possibilities. Then he grabbed his camera and took a series of shots. Three cars drove around him and kicked up dust. Two laid on their horns. None slowed or stopped.

They’re all missing out. Or they’ve seen it so many times before that they’ve stopped noticing altogether. He rubbed the back of his neck and wondered how that was possible—to stop seeing the things that lay in front of you every single day, to turn blind after a while. He couldn’t imagine it. Watching the world through frames, capturing it in just the right moment and just the right light—it was a high he’d never found anywhere else. Certainly not writing for the paper. And though he’d asked more than once, his own father refused to send him out as a photographer for the Chronicle.

“Like I haven’t put in my time,” he muttered. “I’m not some fuckin’ novice.” He switched to black-and-white film and took a few more shots before climbing back into his car. He’d studied journalism in college, for God’s sake, spent a summer in Italy, subscribed to every industry journal he could get his hands on. And he practiced. He honed his eye every damn day that passed.

Twenty minutes later, he pulled up to Francesca Morelli’s front gate and buzzed.

“Name and ID, please.”

Grant’s fists tightened around the steering wheel. He’d been to the Morelli mansion four times in the last month, but he supposed anyone remotely famous or wealthy couldn’t be too careful. A couple of years ago, some teenagers had done a nice graffiti number on Francesca’s granite patio before the police arrived. Since then, her property was surrounded with a wrought-iron fence along one side and an honest-to-goodness moat on the other three. Of course, only the fence was new; the moat had always been there. Francesca had the thing commissioned when she’d first designed the house almost forty years ago.

“A moat,” he muttered aloud. Ridiculous. But then, if he had that kind of money, he supposed he’d throw it away in crazy ways too.

Grant held up his press ID to the camera and waited as the gates swung open. He eased his yellow convertible through the oak trees that lined the hundred-yard brick driveway.

At the very back, rising up like some kind of modern-day Tara, sat the Morelli estate. Four-storied, with wings that fanned out to either side, it was a great gray goliath trimmed in black. Part stone, part solid wood, it sat sedately on the ten-acre property with over forty rooms and grand staircases and wide hallways that connected them all. No working fireplaces—Francesca had told him she was deathly afraid of fire—but three faux chimneys rose from nowhere and vented nothing. Exquisitely designed windows looked out on the road, and massive front doors opened onto a sweeping stone stoop. Rumor was the place had a complex tunnel system running out to the road, but he hadn’t seen a hint of where it might disappear from or emerge to.

A knock on the door, a brief hello to the butler, and Grant found himself sitting opposite Francesca Morelli in a front parlor that must have registered ninety-five degrees. Sweat dribbled down the back of his neck, though the aging film star sat wrapped in something that looked like pale yellow cashmere. She poured sherry into a set of matching highball glasses and handed him one.

“Thanks.” Grant drank his sherry in a single gulp. “So, Ms. Morelli…”

Her pale blue eyes narrowed. “Ah, yes, Mr. Walker. It’s the last one, isn’t it? Our last interview together.” She lifted her chin and ran her fingers through fine, butterscotch-colored hair that fell around her shoulders. “Where did we leave off last week?” She smiled and for an instant the mask of years lifted, and he saw in the curve of her lips the young actress who’d broken hearts a lifetime ago.

“Have you talked to your son recently?”

Francesca looked over Grant’s shoulder. “He called a few days ago. He was…still in Athens, I think.”

“Visiting Isabella’s mother?” What the hell, Grant figured—might as well throw out the bait and see if she’d bite.

Francesca’s face closed. “Isabella’s mother? What—oh, no.” She shook her head. “Of course not. He hasn’t seen that woman in years.” She poured herself another glass of sherry but didn’t offer him a refill.

“Since her birth? Or were they in touch after that?”

Francesca set down her glass and leaned forward. Her wrap fell open, exposing a creamy expanse of ample cleavage. “Mr. Walker, tread carefully here. We’ve been through this more than once. I’ve answered your questions. I’ve put up with your digging through my past. And I’ve already told you everything I’m going to about my granddaughter.” Her voice broke on the last word.

Grant’s jaw twitched. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“I knew your father, you know,” she said suddenly. “Back in LA, in the sixties. Did he ever tell you that?”

Grant winced. “He mentioned it.”

Francesca’s gaze leveled on him. “But even David Walker knew that when Isabella came into this house, certain questions were off limits. Some things aren’t anyone else’s business. Even when those things happen to very famous, very successful movie stars.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he said again. His cell phone buzzed his pocket. “Would you excuse me?” He walked into the hallway and stood at the foot of the curving staircase that rose to a second floor balcony. “Hello?”

“You still at Francesca Morelli’s?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?” Grant frowned at the phone. What did his father think, he’d chartered a private jet to get from San Francisco to Napa and back in twenty minutes? Of course he was still here.

“Got something else for you.” His father’s words, breathless, spilled over each other.

“Is it Sam? Something happen?” The phone slipped in his hand. Maybe one of Grant’s young nieces or nephews had taken a fall, or been diagnosed with cancer—

“No, no, nothing like that.” His father’s voice lost its edge, and then he was just the boss again. But his next words froze Grant’s feet to the custom granite tile.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding? I want you to have the only interview with Francesca while it’s happening.” His father’s breathing sped up again. “Can you handle it, you think? Or do I need to send someone else out?”

It took all of Grant’s will to bite back a torrent of profanities. Could he handle it? He’d fight off anyone else who came near the place. “No, I got it.”

“Good. I’ll call you back when I hear more.”

Grant hung up without answering. He slipped his cell phone into his pocket and let himself breathe as he turned his father’s words over inside his head. Unbelievable. He smoothed a hand over his hair and wondered how he was supposed to break the news to the woman sitting in the other room.

Finally, a chance to prove himself to his father. A chance for the lead story on the front page of the Chronicle, the story no one else in California—hell, in the entire country—would have.

It was just too bad it would have to be at Francesca Morelli’s expense.

* * *

1:00 p.m.

“Want a corn muffin? Just took a fresh batch out of the oven.”

Kira moved a wet rag in circles over the front counter of Permanent Addiction. “I’m not hungry.” She never ate this early in the day. She didn’t know how the rest of the normal world functioned, getting up at dawn and working through the daylight hours. In that sense, she did feel a little bit vampire-like. Give me a coffin to sleep in anytime, she thought, and draw the blinds. The darker the better. Moonlight was much less offensive than the sun.

Felix put one hand on her shoulder. She could smell her boss’s Polo cologne, a touch too strong as usual. “Then at least go in back and take a break.”

She glanced at the few customers scattered around the room and tossed her rag into the sink. “Okay.” She dug into the pocket of her skirt for her cigarettes. One of these days she’d quit. She’d promised her father that years ago, though she’d started smoking at the too-young age of fourteen. Of course, he’d broken enough promises of his own, so she wasn’t sure she owed him any loyalty. She grabbed a pack of matches on her way out the back door.

Kira sank to a seat on the bumpy back sidewalk and stretched out her legs. A quiet, narrow alleyway, big enough for bikes and pedestrians, ran the length of the block. From the coffee shop’s back door she could stare straight into the kitchen of Rosie’s Grille and the storeroom of a new art gallery. Boxes tumbled onto the sidewalk behind the gallery, marked Fragile and ripped to shreds. She could hear voices somewhere inside calling back and forth in a melodic Spanish lilt.

Beyond the storefronts, above the trees, rose the Sierra Buttes, huge hulking mountains that hugged the town of Yuba City. Guardians, Scotty called them, a landmass that kept the weather calm and the people happy. Today the sun bounced off their peaks, and though Kira knew that snow still topped them, from here they looked like bare, rippling pastures.

She took a long, satisfying drag on her cigarette and wondered how living near a certain landscape might shape you, growing up. Did children who lived in the shadows of a mountain range spend their earliest days looking up, dreaming, watching the clouds make shapes? If you moved those same children to a seaside home, would they lose that distant vision? Would they start looking out rather than up, or develop a rhythmic gait that matched the waves they slept and woke to? Did growing up inside a city of skyscrapers create tunnel vision from the day you were born? Or did living your earliest years inside gated walls mean you looked at the world in fragments, in sliced-up pieces, so that you could never see the whole of something for what it truly was?

Kira exhaled a ribbon of smoke and stared at the concrete between her feet. She hated the day after a film wrap. There was such a sense of finality, such a letdown, like the day after Christmas times one hundred. All that build-up, the anticipation chewing at your stomach night and day, and then you woke to find a plain old ordinary day followed the thrill of Santa shoving gifts down your chimney. Kira chewed at a hangnail. Not that Christmas had ever been a traditional family event in her home. Nothing traditional about that home at all.

“Can I bum one?” A man moved into her light and cast a shadow across her lap.

Kira tilted her head back and squinted. She tipped one out of the pack and handed it over.

“Thanks.” He squatted beside her, eased himself to a seat and flipped out a yellow lighter.

She glanced at him and recognized the profile. Thirty-something, lanky, quiet. He came in almost every week, usually on Fridays. Ordered a double espresso and a bagel, plain.

“Didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

“Didn’t know you did.”

She stubbed out her butt. “Trying to quit.”

“Aren’t we all.”

He was good-looking, she decided, tall and wiry, with a crooked nose that had probably been broken more than once. Round glasses sat on the very end. Bluish-gray eyes swam behind them.

“Name’s Alex.”

“Kira.”

Alex caught her gaze and held it. “Hey, have we met someplace? I mean, besides the coffee shop?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You look familiar.”

“Please don’t use that line on me.”

He blinked, then laughed out loud. “Do you really hear that a lot?” He shook his head. “It wasn’t a line, believe me. I just tend to remember most striking women I meet.” He folded his arms over his knees. “There’s something about your face…or your eyes, actually.”

Kira’s jaw twitched.

“Hey…you know who you look like?”

She froze. “Uh, who?”

“That actress who disappeared a few years back. Edoardo Morelli’s kid.” He stared. “You aren’t—nah…stupid question, right?” He chuckled. “What would she be doing in a place like this?”

What, indeed? “Yeah. Stupid question.”

But he was still staring at her. “You heard what happened to Morelli, right?”

“What?”

Alex let out a stream of smoke. “Got kidnapped by a bunch of terrorists or something. Over in the Middle East somewhere. It’s all over the news.”

Kira hurried inside and flipped on the flat-screen TV that hung in the break room.
Patti, the other waitress, pushed open the door. The double-chinned woman kicked off her beige Aerosoles and sank into the chair beside her. “Felix said you were talking to some guy out back.”

“Yeah. For a few minutes. It was nothing.”

“You know, any other single woman would be snapping up those phone numbers you get all the time.” Patti plopped plump elbows on the table. “You got a boyfriend somewhere that nobody knows about? Or a girlfriend?”

Kira switched channels. “Nothing that exciting, sorry.” A daytime soap opera cued up. The music swelled, the characters wrestled their way into bed, and the scene faded with a close-up shot of the headboard vibrating. But just as the soap’s resident vixen strode in and started yelling, the picture changed and faded out. A local news anchor flickered onto the screen, and a bright blue banner scrolled across the bottom, with the ominous words “Special Report” flashing on and off.

“What the heck?” Patti plopped her chin in one palm and stared.

“We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this news update…” The anchor scowled into the camera. “…international film star Edoardo Morelli has just been taken hostage by a radical terrorist group…”

Kira dropped the remote.

“…at this point authorities are releasing no other information. However, one source reports that Middle Eastern news station Al Jazeera broadcast a picture of Morelli bound at the wrists and ankles approximately an hour ago. Again, we have no additional information about the motive of this terrorist group or their demands…”

“Oh my God. Wow.” Patti hunched forward in her chair. “That’s scary.” Her eyes blinked rapidly. “He’s such a hunk, too.” She whistled.

“Viewers may recall that Morelli’s daughter Isabella vanished from their home in Napa Valley nearly seven years ago,” intoned the commentator. An instant later, a picture of a female Edoardo look-alike with long hair flashed onto the screen.

“Hey, doesn’t that look like…” Patti trailed off and turned to look at Kira. Her mouth dropped open.