The pain wouldn’t relent. She was going to tell the jackal everything. The story of Bram’s phony declaration of love would take over the tabs, then make its way to the legitimate press. The reputation he’d been working so hard to polish would be tarnished all over again. Let Bram try to play the hero after she was done with him. She’d hurt herself in the process, but she no longer cared. She was angrier than she’d ever been, but she was freer, too. Her days of letting tabloid headlines rule her existence were over. No more smiling for photographers when she was falling apart. No more posturing for the press to preserve her pride. No more letting her public image steal her soul.

A black SUV pulled up just past the cemetery entrance. She sat lower in her seat and watched in the side-view mirror as the headlights went off. Duffy got out, lit a cigarette, and looked around, but he didn’t notice the Corolla. The lies were going to end now. She’d hurt Bram as badly as he’d hurt her. It was the perfect revenge.

The jackal lit a cigarette. She’d begun to perspire, and her stomach wasn’t right. He started to pace. It was time. After tonight, there’d be no more subterfuge. She could live honestly, with her head high, knowing she’d fought back, that she hadn’t let herself become another man’s emotional victim. This was the woman she’d grown into. A woman who took control of her life and her revenge.

The jackal pitched his cigarette into the gutter and headed toward the cemetery entrance. She hadn’t counted on that. She wanted to tell her story near the safety of streetlights. A jackal in a deserted cemetery was too dangerous, and she reached for the door handle before he could go any farther. But as her hand closed around the cold metal, something cracked open inside her. Right then, she saw that the jackal inside the car was more dangerous than the one approaching the cemetery gates.

The jackal inside the car was her. This vengeful, furious woman.

She clutched the handle. Bram had betrayed her, and he deserved to be punished. She needed to hurt him, to destroy him, to betray him as he’d betrayed her. But that kind of destruction wasn’t in her nature.

She sagged back in her seat and looked at who she was-at who she’d become. The air inside the car grew heavy and stale. One of her feet fell asleep. But she stayed where she was, and slowly, she began to understand her own nature. With a furious new clarity, she knew she’d rather live with the weight of her anger, the burden of her grief, than turn herself into a creature of vengeance.

The jackal finally emerged from the maw of the cemetery, cell phone to his ear. He smoked another cigarette, gave a final look around, then climbed into his car and peeled away.

She drove aimlessly, feeling empty, still angry, not at peace, but clear about who she was. Eventually, she ended up on a seedy section of Santa Monica’s Lincoln Boulevard populated by massage parlors and sex shops. She parked in front of a brake shop closed for the night, hoisted her camera bag from her trunk, and set off down the sidewalk. She’d never been alone in a dangerous neighborhood at night, but it didn’t occur to her to be frightened.

Before long, she found what she was looking for, a teenage girl with bleached hair and burned-out eyes. She approached her carefully.

“My name’s Georgie,” she said softly. “I’m a filmmaker. Can I talk to you?”

Chaz appeared at the beach house two days later. Georgie had been sitting in front of her computer, looking at film all morning, and she hadn’t even had a shower. As soon as Aaron answered the door, an argument broke out.

“You followed me!” she heard him exclaim. “You don’t even like to drive to the grocery, and you followed me all the way to Malibu?”

“Let me in.”

“No way,” he said. “Go home.”

“I’m not going anywhere till I talk to her.”

“You’ll have to get past me first.”

“Oh, puh-leeze, like you can stop me.” Chaz stormed past him and soon found the spare bedroom where Georgie had set up her equipment. She was dressed in avenger black right down to her flip-flops. “You know what your problem is?” she declared, advancing on Georgie without preamble. “You don’t care about people.”

Georgie had barely slept, and she was too drained to deal with this.

“Bram hasn’t come home from the studio for the past two nights.” Chaz continued her attack. “He’s miserable, and it’s all because of you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he started doing drugs again.” When Georgie didn’t respond, some of Chaz’s fire gave way to uncertainty. “I know you’re in love with him. Isn’t she, Aaron? Why don’t you just go back to him? Then everything will be fine.”

“Chaz, stop badgering her,” Aaron said quietly as he came up behind her.

Georgie had never imagined Aaron would turn into such a determined watchdog. His weight loss seemed to have given him a new confidence. One Tuesday, when Mel Duffy’s story about Georgie’s phone call had surfaced, Aaron had gone on the attack and issued a vigorous public denial without even consulting her. She’d told him that Mel’s account was true and she didn’t care anymore, but he refused to listen.

It was easier to attack Chaz’s weaknesses than think about her own. “Here’s the thing about people who are always sticking their noses into other people’s lives. It’s generally because they don’t want to deal with their own screwups.”

Chaz immediately went on the defensive. “Everything’s just fine in my life!”

“Then why aren’t you in culinary school right now? As far as I know, you haven’t even glanced at those GED workbooks.”

“Chaz is too busy to study,” Aaron said. “Just ask her.”

“I think you’re afraid if you step outside the security of what you have now, you’ll somehow end up back on the streets.” The words were no sooner out of Georgie’s mouth than she realized she’d betrayed Chaz’s confidence. She felt sick. “I’m sorry, I-”

Chaz scowled. “Oh, stop looking like that. Aaron knows.”

He did? Georgie hadn’t expected that.

“If Chaz doesn’t study,” Aaron said, “she won’t have to worry about flunking. She’s afraid.”

“That’s bull.”

Georgie gave up. “I’m too tired to deal with this now. Go away.”

Naturally, Chaz didn’t move. Instead, she regarded Georgie with displeasure. “You look like you’re losing weight again.”

“Nothing tastes good right now.”

“We’ll see about that.” Chaz stormed into the kitchen where she stomped around for a while, banging cupboard doors, opening and closing the refrigerator. Before long, she’d produced a crisp salad and a bowl of gooey mac and cheese. It was comfort food, but not as comforting as having Chaz fuss over her.

Georgie made this big fricking deal out of Chaz borrowing one of her swimsuits and going down to the beach. “Unless you’re afraid of the water.” Georgie had said it with a kind of sneer, like she was daring Chaz to put on a suit. She knew Chaz hated showing off her body, and she must have decided this was some kind of therapy. But since she’d basically dared her, Chaz had put on the suit, then rummaged around in Georgie’s crap until she found a terry cloth cover-up to wear over it.

Aaron lay on a beach towel, reading some kind of lame video game magazine. When she’d first known him, he wouldn’t get anywhere near the water. Now he wore new white swim trunks with navy trim. He still needed to lose a few more pounds, so he shouldn’t have looked so semihot, but he’d started working out with weights, and it showed. He was also spending money for decent haircuts, plus his contact lenses.

She sat on the end of the towel, her back to him. The cover-up didn’t even reach the middle of her thighs, and she kind of tucked her legs under her.

He put his magazine aside. “It’s hot. Let’s go for a swim.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Why not? You told me you used to swim all the time.”

“I just don’t want to right now, that’s all.”

He sat up next to her. “I’m not going to jump you just because you’re wearing a bathing suit.”

“I know that.”

“Chaz, you’ve got to get over what happened.”

She poked at the sand with a stick. “Maybe I don’t want to get over it. Maybe I need to make sure I never forget so I don’t get caught up in anything like that again.”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Simple logic. Let’s say you broke your arm again, or even your leg. Do you really think Bram would throw you out? Or that Georgie wouldn’t step in, or that I wouldn’t let you stay at my place? You’ve got friends now, although you’d never know it from the way you treat them.”

“I made Georgie eat, didn’t I? And you shouldn’t have said that to her about how I was afraid of flunking.”

“You’re smart, Chaz. Everybody knows it but you.”

She picked up a broken shell and ran the sharp point over her thumb. “I could have been smart, but I missed too much school.”

“So what? That’s what a GED is for. I told you I’d help you study.”

“I don’t need help.” If he helped her, he’d figure out exactly how much she didn’t know, and he’d stop respecting her.

But he seemed to understand what she was thinking. “If you hadn’t helped me, I’d still be fat. People are good at different things. I was always good in school, and it’s my turn to do you a favor. Trust me. I won’t be nearly as mean about it as you were with me.”

She had been mean to him. Georgie, too. She stretched out her legs. Her skin was pale as a vampire’s, and she saw this one little place she’d missed when she’d shaved. “Sorry.”

She must not have sounded like she meant it because he wouldn’t let it go. “You’ve got to stop being so rude to people. You think it makes you look tough, but it only makes you seem sort of pitiful.”