The rain came down like a busted fire hydrant on Ventura Boulevard, turning the night into a shimmering smear of headlights and neon. Jonny M. and Boris had been nursing lukewarm coffee on their fifth hour of stakeout when the sky cracked open and dumped a month’s worth of water on Van Nuys. They sprinted for the nearest shelter—the crooked awning of the Meet Cute Boutique, its pink lettering flickering like a dying heartbeat. By the time they skidded to a stop, Jonny smelled less like a hardboiled detective and more like a wet dog named Boris, and Boris smelled like something that would make a wet dog file a complaint.
Out of the watery haze stepped a vision with long black hair plastered down her back, glasses fogged to milky ovals, and a white tank top and denim shorts soaked so thoroughly they left no secrets to the imagination. She laughed—an easy, musical sound that didn’t belong in a neighborhood where most laughter came in the form of a threat. She introduced herself as Chloé, talking fast and bright, telling Jonny and Boris—though mostly Jonny—about her wild life, her dreams, her disasters, her scrapes with luck both good and bad. Jonny listened like a man hypnotized, nodding along like every word she said was a gospel he’d been waiting to hear. By the time the storm tapered off into a lonely drizzle, he was halfway to picking out baby names.
But Boris… he wasn’t sold. Something tugged at the back of his mind, a splinter of recognition he couldn’t dig out. That night he shook himself dry, curled into his trench-coat nest, and tried to sleep. Instead he bolted awake in a cold sweat, heart pounding like a tom-tom drum in a cheap jazz club. He suddenly knew where he had seen that smiling face framed by long black hair: on a wanted poster thumbtacked to the bulletin board at the station. Chloé. Wanted for murder. And Jonny, poor fool, had fallen headfirst into her story—without once noticing the blood on the last page.