"The fifth-floor hallway was darker than reported, and there was an awkward dogleg near the stairwell that their local recon hadn’t bothered to map; it smelled of garlic, mold, and dry rot even though the hotel was billed as a Byzantine five-star."
"Lynch leaned back in his chair after he slipped his phone back in his jacket pocket."
"here is no going back now. The taxi glides away from the house, down the street towards South End Green, retreating effortlessly from my family home, away from the expensive brickwork and tended gardens I will never see again."
"The third lake felt inhabited. Or like it once was."
"One evening the pastor and i were in his study, pressing our latest finds."
"Nora slapped the dust off her jeans with a sinking feeling as she watched Corrie Swanson approach."
"At nine p.m. the criminal courthouse was dark, but the lights were burning across the street—Lucky Thirteenth Street, as it was known—at the pretrial detention center."
"The dead were rising in the fire-blackened Santa Monica Mountains and Eve Ronin, the youngest homicide detective in the history of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, was on her way to examine one of them."
