Private L.A. (Private 6)

I reached over to the touch screen on the dashboard, called up Justine’s number, which appeared with a photograph of her I’d taken a couple of years ago. She was standing in an avocado orchard above the ocean in Santa Barbara. It was late in the day. Golden light. A breeze was blowing. Justine was brushing her hair from her eyes and smiling at me.

As I glanced at the photo, the full memory of that day came in all around me, as if I were there with Justine again in the orchard and the warm breeze blowing off the Pacific, back when it had all seemed perfect and inevitable between us.

But then we ran into the same problem again—I couldn’t open up to her the way she wanted me to. The way she needed me to. So we decided we had to keep our relationship strictly professional. Whatever the hell that will mean.

Blowing out a rueful breath, I wondered if I was ever going to get over a woman I still love but just can’t seem to be with, at least on her terms. And maybe mine. It’s complicated. Justine is a psychologist, a fine one. She also works for me, and—

My cell phone rang so loudly I jerked the wheel and skidded before righting the Touareg. The touch screen was flashing caller ID. I stabbed the answer button, said, “David Sanders, how are you?”

“Not good, Jack,” Sanders croaked. “Not fucking good at all.”

Sanders was a powerful entertainment lawyer who’d been a discreet client of Private’s several times in the recent past. And every time Sanders had called, it had been like this, in the middle of the night, with some mess to be cleaned up.

“You ever sleep, Dave?” I asked.

“Not when I’m dealing with a shitfest of potentially titanic proportions,” Sanders growled. “I want to hire Private. You personally. I’d like you leading.”

“I’m …”

“Hired,” Sanders insisted. “Be at LAX at seven thirty. The heliport. Bring a forensics team with you and someone who knows kids.”

“Kids? Where are we going?”

“Ojai,” Sanders said. “Thom and Jennifer Harlow’s place.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“A very scary uh-oh,” Sanders said before hanging up.

Chapter 6

THE STREETS IN Santa Monica were still slick and blustery around five fifteen that morning as Justine Smith climbed out of her car in shorts and a sweatshirt, drinking water and groaning. Her muscles hurt in places she hadn’t known she had muscles. And yet here she was, back for more punishment.

Am I a masochist at some level? Is that why I work too much, my love life is a zero, and my body feels like someone whacked it with two-by-fours?

Unable to formulate a coherent answer, Justine stiffly crossed the street toward a light-industrial building with a garage door that bore a sign reading “Pacific Crossfit.” Justine had a hate-love relationship with Crossfit, which was tougher than any other exercise program she’d ever followed. No high-tech machines. No mirrors. No fashion statements. Just Olympic free weights, gymnastics equipment, and the guts to perform brief, insanely intense workouts that often left her soaking wet, gasping on the floor, and sore for days.

Justine came from academics, not law enforcement, but her current job at Private required her to be kick-ass strong. So when she’d discovered that many US Special Forces operators, firefighters, and cops were switching to Crossfit for their physical training, she’d signed up at the gym, or “box,” closest to her.

The first few weeks she honestly thought she was going to die during the workouts. Rather than let the new regime defeat her, however, she had embraced it with her typical zeal. No matter what, she’d been first at the door on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, even before the ex-SEALs and LAPD SWAT team cops who usually showed up for this early class.

Six months, she thought, then admitted that she still feared Crossfit. But she absolutely loved the fact that she could now do twenty dead-hang pull-ups, deadlift two hundred and twenty-five pounds. And her abs were ripped. There was no other way to describe them.

The coach opened the door to the box from inside. A blue Toyota Camry rolled up to the curb and a guy Justine had never seen before climbed out stiffly.

She crossed through a small lobby, past a changing room, and out into the box itself. She glanced at the whiteboard on the wall before starting her warm-up. When she saw the workout of the day written there, her stomach fluttered with anxiety.

“ ‘Grace: thirty clean and jerks for time’?” a man’s voice groaned behind her. “That’s crazy. I can’t move from the box jumps yesterday.”

Justine looked over her shoulder and saw the new guy, midthirties, curly brown hair, trimmed beard and really, really nice hazel eyes.

“Soreness is a way of life here,” Justine said.

He smiled at her. A really nice smile. “Paul,” he said, holding out his hand. “It’s my fifth class.”

She smiled back, shook his hand, and said, “Justine. A little over six months.”

“Does it get better?”