Prologue

We ride the elevator in silence, emerging on the third floor. The company has revamped an old warehouse, making stylish use of exposed beams and concrete floors. There are no offices, no cubicles, just a series of cafeterias and conference rooms enclosed in glass walls. We step into a café, quiet save for the clicking of laptop keyboards. Nicole leads us to a dimly lit booth, and Kyle and I slide in side by side.

Nicole returns moments later with three coffees in black cups bearing the company logo. She’s stirring cream into her coffee, avoiding our eyes, when two young men in nearly identical tech uniforms—slim jeans, slimmer shirts, loud socks—pass our table. Nicole covers her face with one hand, but it’s no use. “Missed you at the scrum,” the younger guy says.

Nicole acknowledges him with a nod. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be seen with us.

Kyle takes a red notebook out of his messenger bag and places it on the table. Uncapping his pen, he looks more like an eager college freshman than a police detective.

“I was wondering if you might tell us about that day on the beach,” I begin.

Nicole glances nervously at the notebook, so I slide it off the table into my bag. Her shoulders relax. “All of it?”

“Yes.”

She fidgets with a red string tied around her wrist. “It was a cold, wet morning. I went out to Half Moon Bay to meet someone—”

“Who?”

She pauses, searching for the right words. “A new friend. We parked at the beach.” Nicole’s eyes scan the room. “We ate sandwiches in his car, and then he left. Before heading back into the office, I decided to go for a walk.”

“The day was cold and wet, yet you went for a walk?”

Nicole frowns. “I needed to clear my head. The sandwiches in the car were a bad idea. It didn’t go quite the way I was expecting.”

“Do you often eat sandwiches in the car?” Kyle asks.

Nicole glances at Kyle, annoyed. “It wasn’t my first, but I haven’t had one since.” She turns her focus to me. “I suppose women our age shouldn’t be eating sandwiches in cars.”

“Sometimes one needs a sandwich. Not for me to judge.”

“True.” She almost smiles. “After a few minutes I sat down on a piece of driftwood to take a call from my assistant. There was no one else on the beach.”

Kyle taps his pen on the table. “What did she want, your assistant?”

“He said I needed to get back to the office right away.” Nicole picks at her cuticles, reluctant to say more. I sip my coffee, waiting. Two beats, three. She has green eyes, a few freckles emerging from underneath the makeup. I glimpse the Catholic schoolgirl she once was beneath the trappings of her tech exec exterior.

“My assistant was describing the latest fire I needed to put out when I looked up and saw a shape far down the beach. The figure was moving in an unusual way, slow but jerking, like an injured animal. It was disturbing and mesmerizing at the same time. My first thought was that a space alien had landed in the Pacific and drifted ashore. You know, creature from the black lagoon.”

“Your second thought?” I prod.

“‘How am I going to explain this in the office? How do I justify being on the beach in Half Moon Bay at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning?’ I wanted to hurry back to my car, but I couldn’t move. I was hypnotized by this thing moving toward me. Shuffle, two, three, four. I’d never seen anyone or anything move that way, not so much a walk as a strange, gyrating groove. The figure was ashen white, glowing. The voice in my head told me to run.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kyle asks.

“It looked so”—she shakes her head—“so helpless. I stood up and walked toward it. My eyesight isn’t great. Until I was about twenty feet away, it still looked like an amorphous blob.”

I wait for her to look up at me. Her eyes are sunken, her face pale. At first, I thought her ravaged expression had come from working insane tech hours, staring at the screen, drowning in coffee, forgetting to eat. Now I understand it’s something else. All these months, she has been haunted by her discovery on the beach.

She finally meets my eyes. I lean forward and ask, “When did you realize it was a boy?”