When All The Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz

There is nothing odd about it.”
    Emily looked at her. “I’m not so sure. Victoria is right. It does seem a little strange that Jocelyn would suddenly head for a convent on some no-name island in the Caribbean for a month. It’s not like she’s seriously religious.”
    “It doesn’t have anything to do with religion,” Madison said. “A lot of people are going off on tech-free retreats these days. They’re trying to unplug for a while. It’s like doing yoga or meditation. Jocelyn has been complaining about feeling stressed out. She said the foundation was really pressuring her to bring in bigger donors.”
    “The thing is,” Emily said, “Jocelyn is a planner. Sure, she takes risks,but she’s not impulsive. She thinks things through. This idea of going on a retreat feels like it came out of left field. She never mentioned doing anything like that before she announced that she had booked a plane ticket.”
    Madison’s delicate brows scrunched together. “Maybe she thought through the retreat idea for a while and just didn’t bother to mention it to us.”
    “Maybe,” Emily conceded.
    But she didn’t look convinced, Victoria thought. If anything, Emily looked more nervous than ever. And now Madison was finally starting to appear concerned, too.
    There was a brief moment of silence around the table. Victoria drank some more of her martini and slowly lowered the glass.
    “It seemed like a game at first,” she said. “A real-life video game.”
    Emily shook her head. “It was never a game. We all knew we were taking chances. There was always the possibility that someone would realize what we were doing.”
    “But we were very careful,” Madison insisted.
    Victoria looked at her. “Maybe not careful enough.”

CHAPTER 11

    Max was rinsing off the dishes he had used for the tuna fish sandwiches and contemplating another beer when the doorbell chimed. He glanced at the clock. It was still early.
    He wiped his hands on the dish towel and went to open the door. Anson Salinas stood there. He looked like the hard-core lawman he had been for most of his life. His hair had gone gunmetal gray and his lean, wiry frame had softened a little over the years, but his dark eyes were still cop eyes. His hard face, with its high cheekbones and grim jaw, was as intimidating as it had always been.
    You had to know Anson awhile before you understood that appearances did not deceive. The man was as tough as he looked.
    He was also lonely.
    That makes two of us, Max thought.
    “Come on in, Anson,” he said. “Beer?”
    “Won’t say no.”
    Max headed for the kitchen. Anson closed the door and followed him. He lowered himself into one of the old chairs at the kitchen table.
    “Well?” he asked. “Did you take the Flint case?”
    “I did.” Max carried two beers over to the table and sat down across from Anson. “Started out simple but it got interesting in a hurry.”
    “Yeah? How’s that?”
    Max gave him a brief rundown.
    Anson drank some beer while he processed the details.
    “Complicated,” he said.
    “At this point, yes. But sooner or later I’ll find the trigger event. And when I do, everything will fall into place.”
    Anson snorted, amused. “You and your theories. That kind of thinking might have worked well when you were with that fancy profiling outfit, but out here in the real world you’re gonna find out real fast that you don’t always have time to find the trigger. Mostly you have to act on the information you’ve got.”
    “I know. I’m not ignoring the facts on the ground, believe me.”
    Anson’s eyes glinted. “What’s she like?”
    “Louise Flint?”
    “Not the dead woman. I’m talkin’ about the one that turned up at the scene.”
    “Charlotte Sawyer.”
    “Yeah. Charlotte Sawyer.”
    “She’s . . . interesting.”
    Anson nodded. “Pretty.”
    “I said interesting.”
    “Don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but you know what they say about the first person