Page 69 of Irreversible

“As understanding as I may be, it’s still my job to keep this place running.” Nelson rubs a hand over his head. “I’ve been giving you a reprieve on the missed messages and late paperwork; ignored the fact that you’re chasing your own mission on company time. But I can’t look the other way for much longer.”

“Won’t happen again, I assure you.” My jaw clenches. With the even temper I used to be known for fading rapidly, I turn back to my email, tap on the mouse pad and open the attached picture. A pretty ocean view fills my screen, the water a dark contrast to the clear sky. Unconsciously braced for a gruesome crime scene, my muscles loosen. “What am I looking at here?”

Nelson reaches over me and enlarges the image. A handful of twenty-somethings stand at the end of a dock in front of a boat bearing the nameSweet Gwynevere. “See anyone familiar?”

Do I?Work mode flips on like a light switch and my vision tunnels, zeroing in on the couple front and center. Angled in a coy pose, a pretty brunette aims an exaggerated wink at the camera, her lips plastered to the cheek of the young man next to her. There’s something distant in his expression, his body stiff, like he’d rather be anywhere else.

An intangible sense of familiarity nudges me as I focus on his face.

Even in a region where the impossibly beautiful people of the world gather, he’d make a person do a double take. With a long, lean build, fair skin, and a sheath of platinum hair caught on the breeze, there’s an otherworldly air about him, like he could have stepped straight off the set of a fantasy movie…which, in this town, is entirely plausible.

Maybe that’s it. I try to place him, scouring my memory for similar actors, musicians, models…

Then my mind jumps back in time to an encounter I’ve regretted for years, and I realize I’m not looking at a celebrity.

At least, notthatkind of celebrity.

Incredulous, I zoom in more. The somber face, the haunted green eyes.

Fuck.

“Tell me that isn’t?—”

Chief Nelson leans back on my desk, arms crossed in front of him, and nods. “The heir to the Crown family, in the flesh.”

My lungs empty in a dizzying rush. “I thought he committed suicide.”

“Well…” His head tilts toward the picture. “He’s about as pale as a corpse, but I’m fairly sure he’s still breathing.”

We’d been told a different story. But I suppose that’s what I get for believing the word of a cult leader, anxious to get the authorities off his back.

I study the backdrop. “Where was this taken?” Not in the mountains, where his father moved their primary network of followers after his son’s disastrously fatal birthday celebration a decade ago. “And when?”

“Just down from Redondo Beach. Four days ago.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Seems he’s listed on the roster of the philosophy department at UCLA. Master’s program. Building his own throng of groupies out of kids searching for the meaning oflife, no doubt.” He huffs an unamused laugh. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

His father, Alistair Crown, has a history of being a thorn in the department’s side, using his brand of charisma and trendy existential philosophies to sway the displaced hopefuls of Los Angeles into joining his family of freethinkers. But last I saw his son, he was the exact opposite. Shy, withdrawn—even his body language in the picture screams of someone out of their element.

“So, what’s the theory?” I tap the desk in a slow rhythm, guessing the Chief’s thought pattern. “That Crown’s Chosen have been lying low until the dust clears, then Junior came back from the proverbial dead to set up shop here, pulling in the younger generation?”

“Do you have a better one?”

I recall the first time I came across the kid, a ghostly twelve-year-old with wide green eyes hiding under the floorboards while we searched his father’s compound.

What was it? Twelve years ago? Fourteen?

Damn.

Social services went out for a welfare check and ended up buying Alistair’s claim that his son was on the spectrum and panicked when the copsinvadedhis home. But something about that story always felt…off.

Spinning my chair slowly from side to side, I contemplate the face in the picture; the man he’s grown into. I’ve thought about him over the years. Couldn’t help but wonder about the horrors he’d seen growing up in a circus like that.

Having no good answer to his question, I ask my own. “Why bring this to me? Surely, the feds still have their cult expert watching them.”

Had something happened? Granted, I managed to get closer to the elusive son than anyone in the department, but thatwas ages ago. It’s not like I have any influence. According to Alistair’s allegations, I traumatized him.

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