Private eye Noah Braddock has finally found peace in his once tumultuous relationship with Detective Liz Santangelo and has called a tentative truce with his alcoholic mother, Carolina. So when lawyer Darcy Gill demands that he look into a hopeless death row case, he’s more interested in catching some waves before San Diego’s rare winter weather takes hold. Then Darcy plays her trump card: the man scheduled to die—convicted of killing two men in cold blood—is the father Noah never knew

LIQUID SMOKE

Jeff Shelby

The Last Day of February

I wondered how it had come to this.

No. That wasn’t right.

I knew exactly how it had come to this.

Lightning shattered the sky and raked the black surface of the ocean.

The rain spilling out from above hit my face and body like a shower as I stood on my patio, soaking me and the duffel bag slung over my shoulder.

The water stung the cut above my eye and grew the bloody stain on my shirt.

I knew that I wouldn’t ever stand on this patio again, stare at this view again, live in this home again.

Thunder rolled off the Pacific like it was coming through a megaphone, rattling the windows and doors of all the homes on the boardwalk. The rain picked up velocity, splashing into the puddles on the ground.

I wiped the water from my eyes and took another look, making sure that all of it—my home, the view, this world I had created for myself—would never leave my memory.

I knew that it wouldn’t. And I knew that the memories of the last month wouldn’t leave me either.

Things like that don’t leave you. They inhabit you. Forever.

I turned to the glass door and squinted through the reflected bands of rain. My gun lay on the kitchen table. Two surfboards stood in the corner. Most everything I owned was still inside. I didn’t know what would happen to those things. And I didn’t care.

The lightning cracked again behind me. A starter’s pistol, telling me it was time to go.

I stepped off the patio and headed for the car, leaving the remains of my life behind.

WEEK ONE

ONE

“You have an admirer,” Liz Santangelo said.

She and I were on my patio under a San Diego sun that was threatening to disappear into a February storm. I was getting ready to hit the water, and Liz was about to head to work.

Without turning to look, I knew who she meant. A woman in her late twenties, small, attractive. She’d bicycled past on the boardwalk when Liz and I had first stepped outside. Now she was on the beach, off to our right, pretending to read a book. She was trying to be unobtrusive. I wasn’t the world’s greatest PI but I knew when someone was keeping an eye on me.

I tied a knot in the drawstring to my board shorts. “I don’t have a shirt on. Probably hard for her not to stare.”

“She must be too far away to see your faults,” Liz replied.

“Bah.” I pulled the red rash guard over my head, stretched it over my chest and moved my gaze to the woman. “Just intimidated by my looks.”

The woman turned away when our eyes met. She closed her book, picked up her towel, and headed up the beach to the north.

“Yes, clearly she’s infatuated,” Liz said.

The woman stepped off the sand, crossed the boardwalk, and disappeared down one of the many alleys that led to Mission Boulevard. I didn’t have an office and people regularly showed up on the beach, as it was the best place to find me. Usually they came and talked to me instead of disappearing into an alley, though.

“A long time ago, you staring at her ass like that would’ve bothered me,” Liz said, tugging on my hand.

I laughed and turned back to her. “Not what I was looking at.”

Liz and I had finally uncomplicated our complicated relationship. After years of ebb and flow, we were riding the same current. I was a private investigator; she was a homicide detective. We butted heads professionally, and that had screwed up the personal side of things. But after working a case that made me reevaluate what was important, I had gone looking for some normalcy and good in my life.

I’d found both in Liz.

She glanced up at the sky. “You really going to go surf in the rain?”

“Not raining yet,” I said.

“Yet.”

February was arguably the worst month of the year in San Diego for weather. It could get downright cold and wet, making the city feel very un-Southern California-like. Watching the thick gray blanket unroll above us on the first day of the month, I thought we might be in for the local version of a monsoon.

I grabbed my board and started keying in the tri-fins. “I can get in a little time before the stinking rain blows it all up.”

“Rain is fine,” she said, smiling.

“Rain sucks,” I said.

She shook her head, but the smile remained.

Things were easy between us. No tension, nothing riding below the surface, no distrust. We’d seen each other at our worst and decided that wasn’t so bad. Our lives were better with the other in it. I was happier than I’d ever been, and it was our relationship that was driving that.

“Oh, look,” Liz said. “She’s baaack.”

I got the last fin in place and looked down the boardwalk. The woman had returned, this time with a longboard tucked under her arm. She had replaced her T-shirt with a rash guard. She glanced our way and let her eyes sweep past us, like she was just taking a look up the beach. She walked toward the edge of the water.

“Maybe she wants lessons,” Liz suggested, her tone somewhere between amused and annoyed.

I stood. “My day is made.”

“How’s that?”

“Jealousy. It always makes my day.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “I’m not jealous.”

“Said the really jealous woman.”

She tried to hold in a laugh but failed. “Whatever. I’m leaving.”

I leaned over and kissed her. I started to pull away, but she caught my arm and held me there for a moment longer before letting me go.

“Tell her I have a gun and I’m more than happy to use it,” she said.

I watched Liz head around the side of the house before turning back to the water. The woman was strapping the leash onto her ankle, surveying the ocean in front of her. Maybe we had overestimated her interest in me, our suspicious natures getting the better of us.

Time to go find out.

TWO

I staked out a spot near the jetty, where the nice right break that sometimes appeared had failed to materialize. The imposing clouds to the west had yet to kick up the larger than normal swells that winter storms brought.

The woman was wearing a bright yellow rash guard and a pair of black bikini bottoms. She had her blond hair pulled back. The board was a little oversized for her, but she handled it okay, paddling into a couple of the small ripples she mistook for waves.

She pretended like she was watching the horizon, waiting for the water to rise up in more respectable swells, but I caught her looking in my direction twice before she finally turned parallel to the shore and paddled over.

“Not so good, huh?” she asked, as she glided up next to me. “I was hoping there’d be a little more going on out here.”

“Not in the middle of the day,” I said. “Usually just like this.”

“Really?” She wrinkled her nose. Her tone was overly friendly. “I was told South Mission was a pretty good spot.”

“It can be. Just gotta catch it at the right time.”

She nodded like that made sense to her.

“How long are we gonna make the stupid small talk?” I asked.

Her gray eyes shifted away from me, and she pushed a few wet strands of hair off her forehead. “What?”