Chapter 74
YUKI LAY ON HER BACK IN BED, watching passing headlights splash patterns on her ceiling.
She’d woken up so many times during the night, she wasn’t even sure that she’d slept. Now, at a few minutes to 6:00 a.m., she was as awake as if a fire alarm had gone off under her pillow.
She threw back her blankets and went to her desk, where she booted up her computer. Three harplike notes rang out as she connected to the Internet.
She located his address on the first try. He lived less than a couple of miles away.
And he was e-vil.
Yuki threw her Burberry over her blue satin pajamas and took the elevator down to the parking garage, unlocked her Acura, and strapped herself in.
She felt exhilarated and reckless—as if she were about to step out onto the ledge of a tall building in a high wind in order to see the view. Gunning her engine, she dropped the car onto the steep downhill chute of Jones Street. Nothing ventured, right?
She braked at Washington, watched the cable car rattle along the rails, tapped her nails against the steering wheel. She anxiously waited another long minute behind a school bus making a pickup before turning left onto Pacific.
Then Yuki picked up speed, thinking she hadn’t felt this crazed when her dad had died. She’d loved him. She’d grieved and she’d never, ever forget her love for him.
But her mother’s death was different. It was a wound to her soul, a gross violation as well as a loss. She would never get over Keiko.
The fog parted as she turned onto Filbert. She frisked the house numbers on the pricey block with her eyes, finding 908 halfway down the street.
The house was very tall, three stories of pale yellow stucco frosted with a white trim.
Yuki sat parked in her car across the street watching the morning brighten in a conventional way. She stayed there a long time, hours; she was starting to feel like a madwoman.
The FedEx man picked up a package. A Mexican nanny pushed twins in a stroller, a terrier on a leash trailed behind, ordinary activities that were now tinged with her own sadness.
Then the garage door of the yellow house opened. A black Mercedes backed out.
There he was. Creepy bastard.
Yuki decided to follow him, so quickly it felt more like an instinct than a decision.
The two cars headed south in tandem, down Leavenworth, flying through twists and turns, steep climbs, and drops until the sight of Municipal Hospital filled her windshield.
Yuki signaled to follow the Mercedes into the parking lot, when she saw a police cruiser in her rearview mirror. She gripped the wheel and tapped the brakes.
Had she been speeding?
She glided into an empty space at the curb, her eyes straight ahead as the cop car sailed past her.
With a shaking hand, she turned off the ignition and waited for her heartbeat to slow.
Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.
Her pj’s were soaked with sweat, the satin collar and cuffs peeking out from her raincoat. My God. If the cop had questioned her, what would she have told him?
She’d been stalking Garza!
Pedestrians crossed at the red light in front of her. Office workers with briefcases and steaming coffee cups. Nurses and doctors, their coats buttoned over their scrubs, feet in soft-soled shoes.
Everyone going to their jobs.
Yuki reached two weeks back into her memory, recalling going to her high-rise office, being an associate in a top law firm, being a young, fast-track litigator.
She’d loved her work. Now she couldn’t picture going to the office. All she was good for was obsessing about Dennis Garza. Thinking how in some way that monstrous man had killed her mother.