Chapter 1

I promise. That’s the last thing I said to my mother before she left this morning to relieve the detectives working the graveyard shift of a 24-7 stakeout, right after I listed for the third time everything I’d promised to do:

1. Stay out of trouble. (I didn’t plead my case that trouble finds me, not the other way around.)

2. Stop playing amateur detective. (I didn’t point out how, for an amateur, I’d solved more big cases than she had in the last couple of months.)

3. Focus on school and make the most of the opportunity Langdon Preparatory School has given me. (I didn’t blame her for the aforementioned trouble, which mostly happened because she made me go to Langdon in the first place.)

4. Choose my friends more carefully. (I didn’t remind my mom that Bethanie couldn’t help it if her father was a crook or that MJ might be an ex-con, but she’s saved my butt a few times now.)

5. Stay out of grown folks’ business.

I plan to keep all of these promises except number five; I was crossing my fingers behind my back on that one, which is why I didn’t complain about the first four. Lana—which is what I call my mother instead of mom (it’s an undercover cop thing)—had been hiding something from me for a while now, and a couple of weeks ago she finally admitted the big secret is my father. I prefer to think of him as my sperm donor since that’s the first, last, and only thing he has ever brought to the party. He disappeared the minute Lana told him I was on the way. Sixteen years later, he started calling Lana, and she held out on me about it, pretending he was an annoying bill collector. When it became obvious her threats weren’t going to stop the calls, she promised to tell me everything, but so far, the only thing she’s copped to is his identity. Then she got all cryptic about how he’s bad news and we don’t want him in our lives.

I want to know what’s so sinister about my—well, let’s call him SD for short because the long version is a little too gross to think about more than once. It must be serious because he has my mother slightly unhinged and almost nothing has that effect on her. Lana works undercover in the vice division where half the job is being unflappable. She can’t flinch when a pimp she’s investigating threatens her. If some junkie in a crack house she’s pretending to live in jumps bad on her because she’s claimed his corner of the city-condemned house, Lana has to jump bad right back. She’s a third-degree black belt in karate and leaves the house for work strapped, not once, but three times if you include her baton.

So when something has my mother looking over her shoulder, avoiding phone calls at the house, and worse, evading my questions, something is seriously wrong. It was better when I suspected some bad guy she put away years ago was out of jail and making threats. Now that I know it’s my SD making Lana this way, it’s totally my business and I’m going to figure out what his story is.

Yeah, I’m going to fit that investigation somewhere between getting my grades in shape before finals; wishing my friend Bethanie wasn’t in witness protection, leaving me to deal with that viper pit of a school on my own; and pretending Marco Ruiz, my former quasi-boyfriend, doesn’t break my heart every time I catch a glimpse of him at school, which is all the time and everywhere. Oh yeah, I also need to plan my birthday party. My life has become a total wreck since I started my junior year at Langdon Prep, but no matter what happens between now and my birthday, I will be celebrating my sweet sixteen in style.

I’m about to head back to bed when I think I smell smoke. I check the kitchen, but the stove is off and the coffee maker is cold. I unplug the toaster, just in case. Still smell it. There’s no way Lana would have curled her hair just to sit in a surveillance van with her partner all day—even though he is hella cute and she really should make a little more effort—but I check her bathroom for a hot curling iron anyway. Nope, it’s cold, too. Then I realize the smell can’t be from coming from inside because Lana has a smoke detector in every room of our house.

I follow the smell to the kitchen again and notice the window isn’t completely closed. I’d cracked it open to air out the kitchen last night when I burned a pizza. The smoke is outside somewhere. It’s November and definitely fireplace weather, but not before eight o’clock on Sunday morning—people are either still asleep or just starting their coffee brewing. When I step out on the back porch, the smell of burning wood mixed with paint, plastic, and rubber hits me. Someone’s house is on fire. Since I’ve made the mistake before of calling the fire department when it was just a neighbor’s barbecue, I lean over the porch railing and look left, then right. That’s when I see the smoke coming from the house two doors down. I grab the fire extinguisher from the kitchen pantry and call 911 from the cordless phone as I run down the street toward MJ’s place.