1

In the morning light San Francisco rose bright and inviting above the waters of the bay. A feel of homecoming enveloped Garreth as he drove across the Oakland bridge, countering day's lethargy and the headache from sunlight sneaking around the edges of his trooper glasses. At the same time, however, he felt as though he drove into cold and shadow. Lane's laughter echoed in his head and foreboding lay like lead in his gut. Was he wrong to be coming back?

He had refused to think about it until yesterday, and the question was easily shoved aside in the rush of preparing to leave Baumen, in the strain of trading shifts with Maggie and working a day shift on Saturday in order to leave that evening. Certainly he had no time to doubt while driving cross country, not with watching the rearview mirrors and road ahead for cars with light bar silhouettes. The vast open stretches of I-70 and I-80 had been too tempting to resist and he turned the ZX loose, slowing down only for the mountains and when instinct suggested troopers might be around.

Which had brought him rolling into Davis and up to his parents' house early Sunday evening, and to his surprise, into the middle of an unexpected family reunion.

"Hey, we couldn't waste this chance to celebrate the current family hero," his brother Shane said, and dragged him from the car into the crushing hug that always made Garreth pity anyone meeting Shane on the line of scrimmage.

Not only had Shane come from Los Angeles with his wife and daughters to join their parents and Grandma Doyle—Shane looking content and healthy, obviously satisfied with giving up playing end for the Rams for a position on their coaching staff—but his ex-wife Judith was there, too, with his son Brian and her husband. The scents of blood, and sweat from the inevitable Sunday family scrimmage, washed around him, making Garreth glad he had taken a long drink from his thermos before reaching the house.

Phil Mikaelian wrapped a beefy arm around his shoulders. "That was a damn fine piece of police work catching Frank Danner, son. I'm proud of you."

No praise meant more than those few words from this cop Garreth had grown up worshipping. He grinned happily. "Thank you, sir."

"But it doesn't look like you're taking time to eat," his mother said. "Or can't your Maggie cook?"

"Mom, I eat enough."

"His sport is running, remember, not football," Grandma Doyle said.

"Not football?" Shane's wife Susan pretended shock. "Esther, are you sure you brought the right baby home from the hospital?"

Judith and Dennis greeted him less boisterously, Judith with a light kiss, her husband shaking hands. Brian, so tall and husky now that he looked twelve instead of ten years old, held out a hand, too. "Hello, sir. Congratulations."

Such formality from his own son stung, even as Garreth recognized that he could hardly expect more when he saw so little of the boy. Judith had been right to have Dennis adopt Brian.

Still it felt like—it felt like someone had tossed a match on his bridge. Suddenly all pleasure drained from the evening. Even at home surrounded by laughter and chatter, he stood alone.

By the end of dinner the swirl of blood scents and the strain of playing with his food to hide the fact he ate none of it left him feeling suffocated. He fled to the dark and peace of the back yard. Sitting down in one of the lawn chairs, he breathed deeply. Out here the air smelled wonderfully of nothing but flowers, grass, and earth.

Presently the back door clicked and footsteps moved across the porch. The scent of lavender drifted to him on the night air.

He looked around. "Hello, Grandma."

She crossed the lawn to sit in the chair next to his. "It's a lovely night."

That was all she said for a long while. They sat in silence, not the strained one there would have been with his father or Shane, who both treated silence as a void to be filled, but a sharing of solitude, each wrapped in separate thoughts and reluctant to intrude on the other. If he had to be alone, Garreth reflected, Grandma Doyle was a comfortable person to be alone with. If she felt any horror at what he had become, she was careful never to show it, yet she did not appear to be afraid of mentioning it either.

She broke the silence by mentioning it. "You handled dinner very well. I hardly noticed meself that you weren't eating anything."

He smiled wryly. "Thanks. I'm glad I don't have to keep it up for more than a couple of meals in a row, though."

"You're going on to San Francisco in the morning then?"

"Yes."

She reached out to lay a hand on his arm. "Don't."

Cold slid down his spine. "Do you have a Feeling about it, Grandma?" Grandma Doyle's Feelings had been a source of amusement for friends and neighbors over the years, but no one with any experience with them ever laughed, not even tough cop Phil Mikaelian. "What kind of Feeling?"

"There's danger waiting there, and maybe death."

He smiled wryly. "I thought you said I'm already dead."

Age had not slowed her hands. She thumped him on the head with her knuckle just as fast and hard as she had when he was a boy. "I won't be taking backtalk from you even if you are grown and dearg-due. Perhaps you're dead, or it's as you say and just a different kind of living, but there is a true, final death for even your sort, and it's waiting in San Francisco."

"From what? Can you see?" He rubbed the sore spot on his head.

She sighed. "No, I can't. There's a woman involved, though, a woman with eyes the color of violets."

The words echoed in Garreth's head as San Francisco loomed nearer across the bridge. A violet-eyed woman, and death. He stared across the bay. Was he a fool to go there? He could still turn around on Treasure Island. But the city called to him, echoing with the past . . . Marti, Harry and Lien, good times and love, friendship. Bridges whole and strong.

He kept driving.