The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(4)

My dear husband had said, “Leave this to me.”

I’d left word with Brady and Conklin: “I’m off duty.”

Words to that effect.

Now, with our phones locked inside the trunk, Joe and I were heading north, breezing across the Golden Gate Bridge, sailboats flying below us across the sparkling bay.

Joe was at the wheel and I was sitting beside him, saying, “I did not.”

“You did, too. You came to the airport. You said, ‘I want you. And I want the jet.’”

I laughed out loud. “You’re crazy.”

“You remember the company plane?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Louder, dear.”

“Oh, YES.”

We both laughed.

Joe and I had met on the job, heads of a cop and DHS joint task force charged with shutting down a terrorist who was armed with a deadly poison and a plan to take down members of the G8 meeting in San Francisco. He killed a lot of people, including one very close to me, before we nailed the bastard and took him down.

I blocked thoughts about all of that and said, “You remember when we broke away from the G8 case for the investigation in Portland?”

“Do I ever,” said Joe. “Inside that conference room with a dozen people working a national-security murder and you saying, ‘If you keep looking at me like that, Deputy Director Molinari, I can’t work.’”

I laughed and said, “I told you that afterward. I didn’t say that out loud.”

I was sure I was right, but it was also true that working with Joe under so much adrenalized fear and pressure had unleashed some pretty amazing magic between us. And before we’d left Portland for San Francisco, we’d fallen in love. Hard.

Was it perfect from then on?

Hell no. We lived on opposite sides of the country, and so we rode the long-distance relationship roller coaster for a while, cured loneliness and longing with adventures for a few days a month until Joe gave up his job and moved to the City by the Bay.

About a year after our wedding, I gave birth to Julie Anne Molinari while home alone on a dark and stormy night with electric lines down across the city. While I panted and pushed and screamed, surrounded by firemen, Joe was thirty-five thousand feet overhead, unaware.

He’d made it up to me and our baby girl when he finally reached home. Joe Molinari, intelligence agency consultant and Mr. Mom.

He asked now, “Where are you, Lindsay?”

“I’m right here.”

I leaned over, gave him a kiss, and said, “I was remembering. Where are you, Joe?”

He put his hand on my thigh.

“I’m here, Blondie, thinking about what a good mom you are, and how much I love you.”

I told him, “I sure do love you, too.”

This weekend Julie was staying at the beach with her aunt Cat, two cousins, and Martha, our best doggy in the world, while Joe and I got to be two fortysomething kids in love.

Joe turned on the radio and found the perfect station.

We were cruising. The weather was sunny with a side of sailboats, and we were singing along with the oldies: “Free to do what I want any old time.”

When we reached our first destination, Joe and I were in a honeymoon state of mind.





CHAPTER 7





JOE SLOWED THE car and parked us in front of a modest-looking two-story building made of river stones and timbers, surrounded by greenery.

I recognized it from photos of where to go in Napa Valley. This was reportedly one of the best restaurants in the world, as it had been for the last twenty years.

Yes, best in the world.

I shouted, “The French Laundry? Seriously?”

I’d read about how hard it was to get into this place, revered by foodies all over and winner of Michelin’s top ranking, three stars. A two-month waiting period for a lunch reservation was typical.

“You didn’t pull this off overnight.”

“I have a connection,” Joe said, giving me a twinkly grin.

Wow. After the burger-and-coffee diet that went with being on the Job, I wondered if I could even appreciate fine dining. But now I knew why Joe had said to wear a dress—and surprise, surprise, I had one on. It was a navy-blue-and-white print, and I’d matched it with a blue cashmere cardigan. I pulled the band from my sandy-blond ponytail, flipped down the visor, and looked at myself in the mirror.

I fluffed up my hair a little and pinched my cheeks.

I looked nice.

The restaurant’s farm garden was across the street, and it was open to visitors, a lovely place for a Friday stroll. I told Joe I was going to need my phone after all so I could take pictures. He got out of the car, and the trunk lid went up.

That’s when a panel van pulled up to the rear of the car and buzzed down its passenger-side window. I couldn’t see the driver, but I heard him yell, “Joeeey.”

Joe called back, “Dave, you crazy SOB.”

I watched him go over to the van, open the door, lean in, and hug the driver. Then he came back to me and said, “You’re finally going to meet Dave.”

When Joe spoke of David Channing, it was always with love and sadness. Dave had been Joe’s college roommate at Fordham back east in the Bronx. I’d seen pictures of them on the field. Dave was a quarterback and Joe played flanker. He’d shown me pictures of the team, whooping, high on victory, both Joe and Dave tall, brawny, handsome, and so young.