“How’d you get this address?” she asks, her eyes pinched with suspicion.

This must be the cheating girlfriend that Dylan was talking about in the video. She’s not particularly friendly, but that could just be the situation. Either way, she may have useful information about her ex. “Dylan gave it to me awhile back. Told me to stop by when I was in town again. I tried emailing him but never got an answer, so I figured I’d just surprise him.” I have no idea how long Royce was living here, but thanks to Bentley’s recon, I do know that he wasn’t living here when he died.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Dylan was shot and killed a couple weeks ago.” Her voice wobbles. Bad breakup or not, she’s obviously upset by it.

I slide my glasses off because that’s the appropriate thing to do, though I’d rather keep my eyes hidden. “Seriously?” Luckily I can pull off a compelling cool, shocked reaction very easily. “What happened?”

She gives me the basic rundown—nothing that anyone who read the newspaper article wouldn’t know about.

“Man, I’m just so . . . this is crazy.”

“I know, right?” She swallows, blinks back the glossiness in her eyes. “I mean . . . we actually broke up a few weeks before that and then this happens. Shocking, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I hadn’t talked to him in at least five months. Maybe longer. He was still over in Kabul with Alliance.”

“Oh.” She sneers. “Those assholes. They didn’t even send flowers to his funeral. I know he wasn’t working for them anymore, but—”

“He wasn’t?”

She shakes her head. “They fired him.”

“They fired him? He’s earned a damn Medal of Honor! Why the hell would they do that?”

She shrugs. “Dylan changed a lot after he started working for those guys. You know how he was.” She waves a hand my way. “He used to laugh and clown around. He was so happy and helpful. Just a genuinely good guy. But after he went back with them . . . he wasn’t the same guy anymore. He was angry. He started doing drugs. Something there changed him.”

I wish she had told me something different. That he was an abusive drunk, that he had always been a dick. Something that might suggest he was no better than Mario when it came to those poor girls, that he deserved the bullet.

“This is awful news.”

“I know. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you.”

I pause. “I’d love to go see his mother and offer her my condolences. Would you happen to have her address?”

She studies my face—I twitch against the urge to reach up and touch my jaw; I shaved the beard off this morning, and it feels strange to be clean shaven after so many years under shadow. But if I’m going to be showing my face around San Francisco, digging for information, I need to make a small effort to camouflage my usual self.

A small smile touches her pale lips. She’s pretty enough, in a boring, average way. Not an exotic Ivy way. “Sure. Hold on a sec.” She disappears, leaving the door open a crack. I could slip in there now, end her life and stroll out, no one the wiser. It never ceases to amaze me how easily people trust strangers, how many simple mistakes they make that allow the wrong person into their homes, into their lives. Even Ivy, as street smart and suspicious as she is, has allowed me into her bed.

That’s not to say she’s oblivious, that she isn’t quietly wondering about me.

Ivy didn’t say much more about what the biker told her about her uncle, his gambling issues, and the sizable debt he accrued. I’m sure it’s still percolating, but she won’t show it. That’s the way she operates. And that mind of hers, it’s a sharp, dangerous thing because she’s already figured out all on her own the gist of her uncle’s fuckup: He had something he was trying to sell, and it got him killed.

“Here.” Royce’s ex-girlfriend hands me a Post-it note with an address in Sunset scribbled on it in blue pen. “If you don’t mind, could you also pass this bag of Dylan’s things along? Just a few things that he left behind.”

I take the bag, silently thanking her. This will make my next stop easier. “And, again, I’m sorry for your loss.” I feel her eyes on my back as I march down the steps and head down the street to where I parked.

Dylan’s mom lives in a small bungalow in one of San Francisco’s biggest neighborhoods. I used to hang out here a lot in my teenage years. It’s close to the beach and lots of college kids rent out places. I woke up in more than one random bed around here, back in the day.

Now that I’m walking up the street, I’m rethinking the wisdom of speaking with these people. I’ve always followed the rule that I don’t make contact unless absolutely necessary. That’s how I remain an effective ghost.

But my need to know more about Royce overrides my common sense at this point.

I’m just about to turn from the sidewalk onto the path that leads to his mom’s mint-green door when I hear a whimper coming from behind the fence that wraps around the side of the house. A small black snout pokes out.

I smile.

The woman’s eyes widen as soon as she opens the door and sees the golden hairball—a Pekingese, or some version of it—squirming in my grip.

“Ma’am. She was running along the street. Her collar says that she belongs here.”

Her hands go to her chest with shock. “But how did she get out of the backyard?” She looks from the dog—Fefe, from the tag—to her left, to the yard beyond the house. “I just let her out to do her business.”

“The gate is open.”

She frowns. “No. It can’t be. I remember latching it last night. Unless . . .” I watch closely as the poor woman—in her late sixties, by the level of wrinkles around her jaw and eyes—doubts her memory. Deep bags hang beneath her eyes. The dazed eyes of a woman who just lost her son and hasn’t wrapped her head around it yet.

Fefe finally twists her body enough that I can’t hold on any longer without hurting her. So I bend down and gently herd her into the house.

“Oh, goodness. Thank you so much, young man. She could have been hit by a car,” she says, silently accepting that maybe she did forget to latch it. I feel only slightly bad for deceiving her, but rescuing a dog is a surefire way to earn a senior citizen’s instant trust.

“Are you by any chance Dylan Royce’s mother?”

She pauses, frowns. “Yes.”

“I was on my way here anyway. I wanted to offer my condolences. My name’s John. Dylan was a friend of mine. I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

Her eyes begin to water as her head bobs up and down in silent thanks. “It was terrible. He survived so many years in the war and then he was shot in a tattoo parlor, right here in his own city.” She produces a tissue from a pocket and blows her nose. “Would you like to come in for coffee?”

That was even easier than I had expected.

“Here he is, receiving his medal.” She taps on the picture of her son, shaking hands with the president. “I never saw his father more proud of Dylan than on that day. When he passed away six months later, it was as a happy man.”

“I can understand why.” An hour after sitting down to a pot of hot coffee, listening patiently as a devastated mother showcases his local hero medals, and his time as a volunteer firefighter, with letters from little girls and boys who thanked him for saving their kittens from trees and dogs from house fires; a picture of a baby he delivered on the side of the freeway. To top it all off, the highest medal that anyone can receive.