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ONE
 
“You sure this is the right address?” Detective Mike O’Hara asked as he pointed his flashlight down the deserted alley.
 
“This is it,” replied his partner Rafe Ramirez, his voice as grim as his expression. Slowly he swept his own flashlight beam over the brick walls, his gaze following the yellow circle of light as it illuminated decay. An overflowing Dumpster that smelled like a sewer. An old icebox rotted into a lacework of rust. Empty bottles, beer cans, discarded condoms, and a foul-smelling heap of refuse he couldn’t identify and didn’t want to try. A little slice of paradise, he thought in disgust as he raked a hand through his closely cut dark hair. “Looks like another crank call.”
 
“Hell. That makes six this week.”
 
“Seven.” Rafe nudged one of the rusted cans with the toe of his boot. Damn kids. There were real victims out there in the Miami streets, people who honestly needed their help and protection. But instead of doing their job, he and Mike were stuck wasting time investigating the nineties version of Is your refrigerator running? “To hell with serve and protect. I’d give my badge for five minutes alone with these diablo punks.”
 
“Take a number,” Mike muttered. He lowered his arm and pointed his flashlight in the direction of their patrol car. “We’re already on O.T. Let’s pack it in and get back to the station.”
 
Rafe would have liked nothing better. He was already late for dinner with Stephanie, and she wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to be kept waiting—not for dinner, or dates, or … He grinned, remembering what had happened the last time he’d gone to her apartment. Yes, he was definitely looking forward to getting off duty tonight. But he couldn’t leave a job half-done, even if that job was called in by a couple of pimple-faced teenage pranksters who got their jollies by dialing 911. He sighed, and stepped reluctantly into the alley. “As long as we’re here we’d better check it out. Just to be sure.”
 
“I was afraid you were gonna say that,” Mike grumbled, then followed his partner into the darkness.
 
Black water oozed down the craggy walls and collected into thick, stagnant pools in the cracked cement floor. Decomposing garbage, piled here and there, smelled too foul to attract even the most desperate scavengers. Near gagging, Rafe raised his arm and buried his nose in his shirtsleeve. This alley gave him the creeps, the stench and the narrow walls reminded him of a newly dug grave. The place set his teeth on edge, and slithered down his spine the way—
 
“I got four tickets to the Heat next week.”
 
Mike’s prosaic comment yanked Rafe back to mundane reality. “No kidding?”
 
“Yeah. I thought you and Steph might want to go. And, um, if your sister isn’t doing anything …”
 
Rafe rolled his eyes, caught between pity for his friend and the desire to knock some sense into his thick skull. “Mike, give it up. You know LuzMarina’s got her sights set on that doctor.”
 
“The guy’s a jerk. A chinless jerk,” Mike added as he skirted the rust-crusted Dumpster. “Besides, if she got to know me better, I know she’d like me.”
 
“Don’t see why. I know you, and I sure as hell don’t want to date you.”
 
Mike’s face split into a wide grin. “That’s ’cause you’re not my—Hey, did you hear something?”
 
Rafe started to turn, but froze as his earlier apprehension returned. Despite what his Great-aunt Yoli said, he didn’t believe in psychic premonitions, ghosts, goblins, or other things that went bump in the night. He believed in what he could see, hear, and touch, and in his eight years on the force he’d never seen anything that he couldn’t explain by logic and reason. Until now. In a way he couldn’t begin to make sense of, he knew that there was something very wrong in this place. He felt it. He could almost taste it.
 
“Mike, get back,” he warned sharply as he stepped away from the Dumpster.
 
“Huh? But I told you I thought I heard—”
 
“Just do it! I’m senior here and I’m ordering you to—”
 
His sentence died as the garbage in front of them quivered, then erupted like a volcano. A figure leaped up from the center, a teenager with stringy hair and filth-caked jeans, his eyes shining with the madness of crack cocaine.
 
He had a gun leveled at Mike’s chest.
 
“Jesus,” breathed Mike.
 
Rafe silently echoed him. One look at the kid’s face told him that he was off the deep end. The wild eyes, the crazy, crooked smile—he was more animal than human. Rafe licked his dry lips and started to reason with the boy, keeping his voice low and level. “Look, we don’t want to hurt you. If you put down the gun—”
 
The kid gave a gurgling laugh and wagged the weapon toward Rafe before pointing it once again at Mike’s heart. So much for reasoning.
 
“Rafe, get outta here.”
 
“Like hell.”
 
“Do it,” Mike snapped. “For once don’t be a damned Boy Scout. You can get to the car.”
 
Mike was right and Rafe knew it. The smart thing to do would be to get to the squad car and call for backup. Chances were good that he could sprint his way to safety—if he didn’t mind leaving Mike behind to take a bullet. “Not an option, partner.”
 
Ignoring Mike’s curse, he turned back to the kid. “Now, compadre, it doesn’t have to go down like this. If you’ll just put down the gun we can talk.”
 
But apparently the compadre didn’t want to talk. Smiling vacantly, he pulled back the hammer, the click sounding like a cannon in the alley’s eerie silence. Rafe stared into the kid’s shining eyes, feeling the madness, knowing that all his experience and training were useless against it. Only one option left. God, I’m not a praying man, but if you’re out there—
 
Mike lunged for the gun. Squealing, the drug-pumped kid sidestepped him. The officer went down. The addict aimed the gun at Mike’s head, but before he could pull the trigger, Rafe tackled him. They toppled into the garbage. For an endless moment they wrestled for the weapon, Rafe fighting to restrain the biting, screaming teenager. Suddenly the boy stilled. Whimpering, he stared up at Rafe, his eyes wide with confusion and fear. He’s just a kid, Rafe thought, his punishing grip slackening. Then he heard an explosion. Fire ripped through his leg, and he heard a scream that went on and on and on …
 
“Raphael?”
 
Something was shaking his shoulders. He blinked groggily, his mind clutching at consciousness like a drowning man clinging to a raft. Gradually his vision cleared, revealing not the horror of the alley, but a modest, sun-filled business office. Several piles of file folders were stacked neatly on the desk in front of his nose, and beyond was a faded but comfortable sofa and an old-fashioned opaque glass door that was slightly ajar.
 
Bits of his memory came back to mind. He was in the Ramirez Detective Agency office in Miami’s Little Havana. He’d fallen asleep on the desk, his hand still curved around a cup of cooling black coffee. His name was Raphael Juan Carlos Ramirez. He was the son of the agency’s owner, and he was drinking black coffee because he hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, or the night before that—
 
“Raphael!”
 
Shaking the last bit of sleep out of his head he glanced up at the woman standing beside him. Wild halo of white hair, oversized tie-dyed dress, and a chunk of purple crystal hanging from a chain around her neck. Great-aunt Yoli. Good friend. Okay receptionist. Lousy dresser.
 
“And he’d just made a fool of himself in front of her. Again.
“Ah, hell.” He sat up and stretched, the chair creaking under his six-foot frame. “Thanks for waking me, Tia. I guess all this paperwork put me to sleep.”
 
She studied him, her shrewd eyes belying her comic appearance. “At ten in the morning? You have not been sleeping well, have you?”
 
“I’ve been sleeping fine,” Rafe lied. He ran a hand over his face, pausing as his palm hit the roughness of several days’ growth of beard. He looked like a bum, but it didn’t matter. The only person who saw him these days was his great-aunt. He grabbed a file and flipped it open, pretending to study the contents. “All these damn forms. No wonder Popi lets this stuff pile up. Have you heard from him?”
 
“Your parents called Carlos and me last night from St. Croix. Your mother said they tried to call you also, but the line was busy.”
 
Not surprising since he’d taken it off the hook. He’d been doing that more and more lately. Saved him from talking to old friends who knew him before …
 
He shook his head, clearing regret from his mind. “I’ll bet Uncle Carlos asked Dad if he’d played the tables yet.”
 
“He did, and your father informed him he had better things to do on his second honeymoon than play craps. But your mother—” Yoli paused and fingered the purple crystal around her neck.