PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR SHIRLEY PALMER
“A first-rate, nailbiting hardcover-debut thriller…
Admirably paced and plotted, with the kind of guns-a-popping denouement that begs for transfer to the big screen.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Danger Zone
“With its taut plot, [Palmer’s] African thriller makes a suspenseful follow-up to her previous book,
A Veiled Journey.”
—Publishers Weekly on Lioness
“This romantic thriller…explores the complexities of culture as well as those of the human heart.”
—Publishers Weekly on A Veiled Journey
“…a suspense thriller…[with a] frenetic tempo and myriad plot twists.”
—Publishers Weekly on Danger Zone
Also by SHIRLEY PALMER
DANGER ZONE
LIONESS
A VEILED JOURNEY
The Trade
Shirley Palmer
This book is dedicated to those who suffer from this most heinous of crimes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go first to editors Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson for their patience and continued support during the past year. Thanks, too, to Ken Atchity at AEI; to Andrea McKeown for her invaluable input; to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Sergeant Ray Verdugo, ret.; and to Hae Jung Cho, former director of the Coalition Against Slavery and Trafficking in Los Angeles.
Finally, this book could not have been written without researcher/editor Mignon McCarthy, who not only contributed the facts upon which the entire structure rests, but gave unstintingly of her time, her literary expertise, her enthusiasm and her words. It gives me much pleasure to acknowledge the work she has done.
All errors, of course, are entirely mine.
This is a work of fiction.
The events described did not happen.
No such club exists in Malibu, nor has there ever been a breath of rumor to indicate otherwise.
To serve the story being told, the author has taken some liberty with the topography of this small, treasured Southern California town.
For this she begs indulgence.
In the perception of the smallest is the secret of clear vision;In the guarding of the weakest is the secret of all strength.—Lao Tse
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
A storm of wind-tossed embers burst through the smoke, crossed the Pacific Coast Highway, caught the dry grasses along the ocean side of the road. A stand of eucalyptus trees exploded into flame. Suddenly visibility was zero.
Matt Lowell forced himself not to jam his foot on the gas. Without the weight of the two horses, the empty trailer was already rocking dangerously. The wind slamming against it had to be gusting at eighty miles an hour.
At Trancas Canyon Road, the traffic lights were out, the Mobil station and the market both dark. On the other side of the intersection, the whirling blue and red light bars across the top of sheriff’s black and whites became visible through the murk. A police barricade stretched across the highway, blocking all lanes, north and south.
A deputy sheriff waved Matt down, his sharp arm movements directing him left into the Trancas Market parking lot. Matt recognized Bobby Eckhart. They’d been at preschool together, gone through Webster Elementary and Cub Scouts, surfed the coast from Rincon to Baja. Raised some hell.
Matt pulled over