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was talking about the mall project that Dad’s been worried about, the one that’s threatening to go down the tubes. He owns the company that wants to pull out. Dad didn’t look happy.” She glanced at Esther, her gaze sharply adult. “I wasn’t, either.” She settled back in her seat. “He’s got no color—he looks dark and flat—and his eyes aren’t right.”
    And Rina would know, she’d stared at Alex Lopez for long enough. He had eyes like a shark, dead and cold. The skin at the back of her neck tightened, a sense of premonition that added to the urgency to simply cut and run.
    â€œDo you want to hear?”
    Esther braked for an intersection. “Hear what?”
    Rina rummaged in her bag again. “The tape. I told you I wasn’t listening to music, I was taping. ”
    A horn sounded behind her. Jerkily, Esther accelerated through the intersection and pulled over. “You were what? ”
    â€œTaping.” Rina pressed the rewind button on the Walkman then pressed Play.
    Lopez’s dark cold voice filled the car. Esther’s skin crawled as she listened to evidence that Lopez was blackmailing Cesar, using the threat of bankrupting a company he had recently procured in order to collapse the Pembroke development, a run-of-the-mill project that had been solid.
    The conversation must have happened while she was away from the table. Lopez had obviously thought he was safe in delivering the threat because he thought Rina was deafened by music. He had probably also made the mistake, like a lot of people, of assuming that because Rina looked disconnected she had no interest in what was going on.
    Not for the first time Esther was reminded that beneath the disconnected façade, Rina had always worked to her own agenda. The only time she was really dreamy was when she was painting. The rest of the time she used the faintly “out to lunch” expression to buy herself leeway to do exactly what she wanted, and the tactic worked. She had Cesar wrapped around her little finger and she had outmaneuvered Lopez. Like Cesar and herself, Rina was a player, but on a whole other level entirely. If she ever got into business they would all be in for a wild ride.
    Abruptly the voice was replaced with blaring pop music. Wincing at the assault on her ears, Esther stared at the Walkman. She’d been so busy listening to the content of the recording she hadn’t registered its full value. The tape was manna from heaven on three counts. It was vital evidence—she would retain a copy of the tape to hand to the police—but it was also exactly what Xavier needed to help his actor replicate Lopez’s voice. On top of that she was almost certain Lopez’s unwitting testimony would buy Cesar some leeway in court when the feds closed in. “I need that tape.”
    Rina’s gaze was wary. “I know I’m not supposed to tape conversations.”
    â€œNo punishment, I promise.” Relief at the discovery of the tape and the doors it opened made her feel light-headed. Cancel business; the kid could go into politics.
    Â 
    Dennison sat in his office, studying Collins’s surveillance notes.
    Esther Morell had had a busy day, but that was nothing unusual. For the past month Collins’s daily report had contained a long list of appointments, lunch dates and trips to and from the fancy school the kid attended. However, the fact that Esther had left the house that morning, driving a battered Chevy instead of the Saab, had rung alarm bells. Collins had followed her, but he had lost her in a traffic snarl-up in town. He had picked her up just as she’d left the school, in time to catch her detouring from her usual route.
    He slipped the security video for Lopez’s house into the VCR, then rewound it and began skipping through until just before the time recorded in Collins’s notes. Over a five-minute period, a number of