Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Dr. Alex Delaware's office. Lauren angrily resists Alex's help——and the psychologist is forced to chalk Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of his profession. Years later, when Alex and Lauren come face-to-face in a shocking encounter, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame. But the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren's brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with longtime lover, Robin Castagna, in order to pursue Lauren's killer. As he investigates his young patient's troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry——and then into mortal danger, when lust and big money collide in an unforgiving Los Angeles.

Chapter 1

Sad truth: Had she been just a patient, I probably wouldn't have remembered her.

All those years listening, so many faces. There was a time I recalled every one of them. Forgetting comes with experience. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

Her mother phoned my service on a Saturday morning soon after New Year's.

"A Mrs. Jane Abbot," said the operator. "She says her daughter's an old patient. Lauren Teague."

Jane Abbot's name meant nothing to me, but Lauren Teague sparked an uneasy nostalgia. It was an 818 number, somewhere in the Valley. When I'd known the family they'd lived in West L.A. I searched my old case files before returning the call.

Teague, Lauren Lee. Intake date, ten years ago, the tail end of my Wilshire Boulevard practice. Shortly after, I cashed in some real estate profits, tried to drop out, met a beautiful woman, became friends with a sad, brilliant detective, learned more than I wanted to know about bad things. Since then I'd avoided the commitment of long-term therapy cases, stuck to court consults and forensic work, the kinds of puzzles that removed me from the confines of my office.

Lauren had been fifteen at referral. Thin file: one history-taking meeting with the parents followed by two sessions with the girl. Then a missed appointment, no explanation. The next day the father left a message canceling any future treatment. Unpaid balance for the final session; I'd made a halfhearted effort to collect, then written it off.

When old patients get in touch it's usually because they're doing great and want to brag, or exactly the opposite. Either way they tend to be people with whom I've connected. Lauren Teague didn't qualify. Far from it. If anything, I was the last person she'd want to see. Why was her mother contacting me now?

Presenting problems: poor school achiev., noncompliance at home. Clin. impressions: fath. angry; moth. possib. deprssd. Tension bet moth and father--marital strss? Parents agree re: Lauren's behavior as the prim. prob. Uneventful birth hx, only child, no sig. health probs., contact pediatric M.D. to verify. School: per Mom: "Lauren's always been smart." "Used to love to read, now hates it." B2 aver. till last year, then "change of attitude," new friends--"bums" (fath), some truancy, C's and D's. Basic mood is "sullen." "No communic." Parents try to talk, get no resp. Suspect drug use.

As I leafed through the file, Jane and Lyle Teague's faces came into semifocus. She, thin, blond, edgy, a former flight attendant, now a "full-time mom." A heavy smoker--forty-five minutes without tobacco had been torture.

Lauren's father had been slit-eyed, blank-faced, reluctant to engage. His wife had talked fast . . . nervous hands, moist eyes. When she'd looked to him for support, he'd turned away.

They were both thirty-nine, but he looked older. . . . He'd done something in the building trades . . . here it was, elect. contractr. A powerful-looking man, fighting the advent of middle age with long hair, sprayed in place, that fringed his shoulders. Black pelt of beard. Muscles made obvious by a too-tight polo shirt and pressed jeans. Crude but well-balanced features . . . gold chain circling a ruddy neck . . . gold I.D. bracelet--how did I remember that? Put him in buckskins and he could've been a grizzly hunter.

Lyle Teague had sat with his legs spread wide, consulted his watch every few minutes, fondled his beeper as if hoping for intrusion. Unable to maintain eye contact--lapsing into dreamy stares. That had made me wonder about attention deficit, something he might've passed on to Lauren. But when I raised the topic of academic...