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3

There was blood everywhere—on the mats, on the cage itself, in the men’s hair and dripping down their bared skin. And the noise…the sounds of violence washed over Evie, drugging her.

The Junoesque redhead with striking blue eyes sat near the front row of the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena. Tonight, the stadium housed a near-record crowd, each and every fan mesmerized by the battle on the raised platform, center stage. The caged enclosure called The Octagon housed two fighters locked in a human cockfight.

Suddenly, the champ, Curtis “The Native” Santos, felled his opponent with a double-leg takedown. The crowd went insane as Santos scissored his legs around the challenger’s midsection. There were two minutes left in the final round.

Sweat mixed with blood as the two warriors remained locked against the cage’s vinyl-coated fencing. Wearing only shorts and light gloves with the fingers cut off to allow for grabbing, both gladiators heaved for breath. The challenger, Teri “The Greek” Dupas, defended against the champ’s relentless attack, now pinned in a rear choke. The men’s muscles clenched and gleamed under the white-hot lights.

That’s exactly what she wanted, Evie thought. Those hands on her. That battle for life embracing her.

With just under a minute left in the match, the crowd began to get antsy, screaming for a standup. The referee complied, bringing both fighters to their feet. Santos didn’t waste any time, nailing Dupas to the canvas with a killer left hook.

The crowd went ballistic as more blood sprayed from the challenger’s nose. The round before, Santos had hammered Dupas to the mat with a straight right, opening the floodgates.

Men and women chanted “San-tos!” jumping to their feet as the champ landed punch after punch. Santos maneuvered Dupas into a mount and scored yet another takedown. The crowd began counting down the last seconds of the fight as if it were New Year’s Eve in Times Square. When the bell sounded, marking the end of the fight, Santos, bald and tattooed, paraded around the ring, pumping a fist in the air.

Ten minutes later, the redhead’s long-legged stride took her out to the casino floor. Popping gum and listening to “Fergieliscious” on her iPod nano, she pushed past the minions working the slots and video poker machines.

As she walked past, each and every slot hit.

The clatter of falling coins accompanied by the bells and whistles of the machines was almost deafening. Chaos ensued as men and women jumped to their feet in disbelief. The redhead kept walking, unfazed, a faint smile on her lips.

She stepped out the entrance made famous by a forty-five-foot bronze statue of the MGM lion. She’d been playing hooky coming here, blowing off the VIP ticket Zag had given her to see the new Lance Burton wannabe at Mandalay Bay. The magician’s final act featured the band Do It To Julia vanishing off the stage after performing their new hit single.

Zag had masterminded the gig for his charity du jour. He’d be pissed that she’d missed it. Still, she was in Vegas, the land of don’t-ask/don’t-tell.

She was showgirl tall and wore black leather pants and Gucci boots. Her cherry wraparound silk blouse displayed a nice amount of midriff—Evie worked out. But it wasn’t just her looks that turned heads. There was an air about her, as if here was trouble, but not the kind most people wanted to avoid.

She caught the eye of the doorman and signaled for him to hail a cab. The instant she stepped off the curb, a gray Bentley swerved to a stop, blocking her path. The tinted window rolled down.

She took out her ear buds and leaned down to the window. “Hello, Zag,” she said with a smile.

He lowered his leopard print Dolce & Gabanna shades. He looked absolutely furious.

“You missed the show.”

“Did I?” She glanced back at MGM’s entrance. “And here I thought I caught the main event.”

The door opened. “Get in.”

It wasn’t a request.

“Someone’s feeling grouchy,” she said.

She slipped inside the Bentley next to him, throwing her Prada bag and iPod on the floor. Zag pushed her up against the white leather seats. Evie knew he’d been onstage with the band as a guest guitarist. He still wore stage makeup and was dressed in an electric-blue suit with tails but no shirt. She ran her hand through his spiked, bleached hair, staring into his eyes.

There were many unique things about Gonzague de Rozières, not the least of which was his name. Like a rock star, he went by the moniker Zag. He had the wiry frame of a long-distance runner but managed to appear imposing despite being a good two inches shorter than Evie’s six feet one. He had more money than God and just as many secrets. But to Evie, the most unique thing about him was his eyes.

The pupils appeared always enlarged, as if he lived on some perpetual high even though he didn’t do drugs. There was almost no pigment to the iris, either. The color changed depending on the light and his mood. At the moment, they appeared a steely-gray.

“You want a show?” he asked.

She leaned against the door of the Bentley. With the grace of a ballerina, she raised a Gucci-clad foot and pressed the stiletto against his bare chest, pushing just enough to know she’d leave a mark.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He took her boot by the ankle. He shook his head, smiling. “I told you to stay away from the cage.”

She pouted. “Why? Don’t you enjoy the effect?”

She kissed him, hard, and then bit his lip, almost drawing blood. He returned the favor by grabbing her arm and pulling it tight up her back.

“Now, now,” he whispered in her ear. “No fair biting.”

Evie was twenty-six. She’d been with a lot of men. But there’d never been anyone like Zag. He could take everything she handed him. And then some.

By the time they reached his suite at the Wynn, she knew she’d have bruises. It’s what she wanted. Seeing those men in the cage, drawing that energy to her, she needed the release.

Afterward, they lay naked on the Egyptian-cotton sheets of the California King Wynn “Dream Bed,” one of the hotel’s most talked about attributes. Like everything about the Wynn, the suite was opulence itself. At two thousand square feet, it was larger than some New York apartments and featured wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows with a gorgeous view of the Strip…which was why Zag preferred the salon suites to the more exclusive villas on the hotel’s golf course.

Zag covered her body with his, making that connection with his eyes that she only had with him. Despite a broken nose—a memento from a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas—he possessed an almost striking beauty. He had a thick head of bleached white hair, but absolutely no body hair. A genetic condition, he’d told her.

He reached for the bottle of Cristal nestled in the bedside ice bucket. He took a drink from the bottle then offered her a sip, holding the bottle up to her mouth. Only, champagne wasn’t what Evie wanted.

She dropped the bottle on the carpeted floor. She heard it roll away as she pressed her lips to his with enough force that his head sunk into the down pillow.

She continued their kiss, forcing the issue when he tried to push her away. She didn’t stop to catch her breath, felt herself getting light-headed. She visualized the men in the cage—the blood—the idea of death making her feel so alive.

She felt her head yanked back by a fistful of her hair.

Zag stared at her, his eyes almost colorless now. Catching his breath, he said, “Be careful, Evie.”

She smiled, breathing just as hard as Zag. He kept his grip on her hair, but she didn’t care.

She brushed her thumb over his swollen bottom lip where she’d bitten him earlier. “Fuck that.”

Evie locked her legs around his hips and bit his lip again, this time drawing blood.

The next thing she knew, he rolled them both off the bed. He pinned her to the carpeted floor, straddling her.

“I said, be careful!” This time, he meant it.

That was another thing she enjoyed about Zag. He was one of only two men who could best her physically.

She turned her head and looked at the Cristal bottle and the champagne soaking into the confetti design of the carpet next to her face.

“Oops,” she said, smiling coyly.

“Gracious, was that almost an apology?” he asked, nibbling her earlobe, his anger easily forgotten.

He stood and held out his hand. Pulling her to her feet, he clucked his tongue at the empty ice bucket.

“Cristal.” He made a soft sound of disappointment deep in his throat. “What a waste.”

But Evie was already heading out of the bedroom toward the wet bar in the living room. The marble floor, in a deep shade of cocoa, felt deliciously cold under her bare feet. She passed the room’s most touted feature: a fifty-inch plasma screen set dead center against the wall of curtained windows. Anyone watching the high-def television would have the Vegas strip as background courtesy of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The furnishings were chic and contemporary, the color scheme soothing. The russet grasscloth wallpaper served as the perfect foil for the cherry-toned furnishings. Two sofas bracketed the marble-topped coffee table and Andy Warhol prints graced the walls. Steve Wynn had spent two-point-seven billion on his namesake casino hotel. The opening had featured an exclusive with Vanity Fair magazine and a commercial during the Super Bowl. Zag prided himself in knowing all the right people, people like Steve Wynn.

In the living room, she took in the flotsam and jetsam of Zag’s other life. A curious array of scientific papers, business journals and scholarly tomes covered most every surface. Tucked among such lofty subjects as “string theory” and “dark matter” were the pseudosciences that so fascinated him—several copies of the Journal of Parapsychology, printed articles examining sundry paranormal phenomenon, a report on remote perception put out by PEAR, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program. One title in particular caught her eye: The Atlantis Generation.

She almost laughed. Apparently, Zag wouldn’t be satisfied until he reached his goal of becoming both man and myth. Evie knew she was an important part of his quest for the latter.

She picked up a bound copy of proceedings from the coffee table and weighed the heavy tome in her hand. She’d turned down his offer of the company jet, choosing to drive into Vegas the day before, presumably so they might spend some time together. But Zag had been in town for days attending one of his precious paranormal conferences.

She turned back toward the bedroom where Zag now stood in the doorway, his hands braced against the doorjamb. She took a moment to appreciate his naked body. The combination of alabaster skin and lack of body hair made him look like a Greek statue: his muscles were as clearly defined as sculpted marble. Even the broken nose served to give the refined, almost feminine features more gravitas.

She dropped the proceedings back on the coffee table, where it landed with a heavy thud. “Always mixing work with pleasure.”

“Always mixing pain with pleasure,” he countered.

“True. But my mix is ever so more fascinating, don’t you think?”

“Have I ever told you what a goddess you are?” he asked.

She preened in her naked glory, completely aware of her beauty. Despite her waist-length red hair, she didn’t have a freckle on her body. Any mark came from grueling practice fights in one of several martial-art disciplines she’d mastered.

As she turned away, Zag came up behind her. He cupped her breasts in his hands and kissed the nape of her neck. She reached back and dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his thighs, pressing back against his awaking erection.

“Not to mention all those boring charity events,” she continued. She pretended to snore loudly as she turned in his arms. “I forget. What was it this time?” She bit her lip in mock concentration. “The fur and diamond deprived of Beverly Hills?”

“Autism,” he answered. “And it was a fabulous success—which you’d know firsthand if you’d bothered to show.”

She gave him a quick kiss, then danced out of his reach when he tried to spank her. She headed for the bar where she did indeed find another bottle of Cristal in the refrigerator.

“And have my picture splashed all over the tabloids as your new mystery woman?”

She turned the champagne’s wire cage handle the requisite six half turns. The cork flew across the room with a satisfying pop. Champagne foamed over her hand, spilling to the marble floor.

“I can think of worse things,” he said.

“Pass,” she said, drinking from the bottle.

Innovator, playboy, bazillionaire philanthropist, Zag, Evie knew, liked the headlines, and not just on the ho-hum pages in Barron’s. Playing guitar onstage at Mandalay Bay was the sort of thing that guaranteed Zag a mention in People, a magazine that had already proclaimed him one of the sexiest men of the year, dubbing him the Mad Magician.

She took another drink from the bottle, letting the tiny bubbles fill her mouth. She walked back to Zag and pressed the bottle to his lips.

As far as Evie was concerned, Zag, the self-proclaimed Bill Gates of the psychic community, didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to making good press. His company, Halo Industries, provided paranormal services in sundry forms—employee evaluations, intuitive counseling to Fortune 500 companies, forecasting future trends for Wall Street firms. It was even said he’d been hired by certain sectors of the government, though Zag always pleaded “no comment” when asked.

Then there were those pesky rumors about his strange lineage—rumors he denied and cultivated with equal effort.

While the man could be a jack-of-all-trades, Evie knew his true passion. The bound proceedings she’d dropped back on the coffee table were as thick as the yellow pages. Playfully, she pretended to pour champagne on Indigo Children and the Evolving Brain. Zag grabbed the bottle away, shaking a scolding finger.

Indigo Children referred to a rare breed of kids singled out in the last ten years. Presumably, they were more highly evolved than the general population, many possessing psychic abilities. Some claimed they even used a higher percentage of their brain. The term had been published by Lee Carroll and his wife. Carroll channeled the entity, Kryon, who sent information through Carroll to help mankind ascend to a higher level of consciousness. But there were other theories about the origins of the Indigo phenomenon.

Synesthesia was a neurological condition that could cause a person to experience two physical senses simultaneously. A synesthetic might hear with their eyes or get a specific taste in their mouth whenever they heard a particular sound. A psychic by the name of Nancy Ann Tappe, who had the condition, had claimed to see auras—a New Age concept that argued the body was surrounded by a luminous field of color.

This same psychic began seeing an indigo aura surrounding these more highly evolved children. Eventually, the term became linked with certain conditions such as ADHD and autism.

She pushed Zag onto the couch and straddled him. “You know what they say. All work and no play.”

“I’m hardly that.”

She filled her mouth with champagne and kissed him, sharing the taste of the Cristal with their kiss.

Zag had his own theory about the Indigo experience, going so far as to claim the existence of “Halo-effect” children, a smaller, more select group of children who had “evolved.” Halo Industries now had schools where parents could send their special offspring to fine-tune their gifts. Their unique curriculum presumably helped hone psychic abilities. That’s where Evie came in.

On the couch, Evie rose up on her knees. Her hair fell like a curtain over her and Zag. But as she lowered her face for another penetrating kiss, she heard her cell phone in the bedroom, its ring tone, Handel’s “Water Music.”

Hearing the distinctive ring, she broke off their kiss, handed Zag the Cristal and rose to her feet.

There was only one reason he’d call her at this hour.

Back in the bedroom, she grabbed the cell phone and stepped over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. She stared at the phone, allowing it to continue ringing in her hand.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” Zag asked from the door.

She glanced down at the street below. “Isn’t it funny how, here in Vegas, it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night? The lights are always on.”

Of course, Zag would recognize the ring tone.

She was trying to decide if she should take the call here with Zag listening in or risk his censure by asking for privacy.

“Let him leave a message then,” Zag said, his voice in dulcet tones as he lay back on the Dream Bed. “Come back to bed, cherie.”

Only, they both knew she wouldn’t.

Evie flipped open the phone. She whispered into the cell, “Hello, lover. How’s our boy doing?”

4

Detective Stephen “Seven” Bushard stared at the body lying in the mud. The girl appeared nestled in the cordgrass, her legs and arms disappearing into the knee-high vegetation. She wore jeans and a Roxy T-shirt, the surfing brand, a favorite with young girls here at the beach.

The officer on the scene, one of Huntington Beach’s finest, had told Seven’s partner some Iron Man stud training for his next triathlon had found the body. This section of the wetlands, the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, featured a one-and-a-half mile loop around a water inlet, the walking trail was part of a three-hundred-acre coastal sanctuary for wildlife and migratory birds. After thirty years of litigation, the restoration project had been the compromise between environmentalists and developers. Already minimansions with multimillion-dollar views had sprouted where Shoshone Indians had once hunted on the mesa. People still found cogged stones in the area, artifacts from an eight-thousand-year-old burial site soon to be paved over. Progress, Seven thought. Go figure.

Seven crouched down for a closer look. He had almost sixteen years on the force, eight of them in homicide, but he would never get used to this.

The way the girl was curled up in her bed of grass, she appeared to be sleeping. Her head was turned toward him, but three-quarters of her face was buried in the mud. Still, he could make out her youthful features.

Jesus, she’s just a kid.

He had to give the cop in him a mental kickstart. The wetlands might not be his jurisdiction, but if someone thought it was important for him to be here, he’d damn sure get the job done.

He took off his sunglasses to better examine the body. Most likely, the tide had dragged the victim here via the channel that cut through the Pacific Coast Highway. The waterway refreshed the wetlands with ocean water. To the tide, she’d be so much trash floating like the detritus left behind by the beachgoers every summer.

Seven took out his pen from inside his jacket and used it to gently push aside the cordgrass, exposing the girl’s left hand. There was obvious bruising around the wrist.

She’d been tied up.

He tried not to imagine the worst. Rape. Torture.

He pocketed his pen, searching for that objective observer inside. He’d given himself the pep talk on the ride over; he’d get it back, that ability to compartmentalize. The last year hadn’t tainted him forever. Any second now, he’d be able to hover over the dead girl’s body and search for clues like a good cop.

Only, the details that popped for him had nothing to do with murder. The glitter nail polish…her thick blond hair coiled in ringlets. When she was alive, those curls would circle her face like a crown.

He turned away, acting as if he was giving the crime scene investigator free rein to snap more stills. He stared up, focusing on the cloud cover overhead. The haze made for a steely morning sky. The same dull color reflected off the water trapped in the low marsh. The tide differentials would be at their highest this time of year—probably why the body was beached here.

Just last week, Seven had brought his eleven-year-old nephew to the Bolsa Chica. They’d been fishing down by Warner and the PCH. Posted signs told visitors of the Belding’s Savannah Sparrow, an endangered species that bred and nested here. Shore crabs grazed on algae and snowy egret high-stepped through the pickleweed. But Nick, he’d been all about the brown pelicans, watching them dive-bombing into the water for fish.

Really, the place was idyllic…if you didn’t count the dead body.

His partner, Erika Cabral, came to stand next to him. Her sunglasses looked huge on her face—designer, no doubt, the kind celebrities wore. Erika always said there wasn’t much she couldn’t fix with a little retail therapy.

“So why’d we get the call?” he asked. “Last time I checked, this is some sort of jurisdictional no-man’s land for the sheriff and Huntington Beach PD to sift through.”

She nodded. “An interesting question, no doubt.”

He gave it a minute. It was never good when Erika tried to hide something from him.

“That’s all you got?” he asked. “An interesting question?”

“A woman of mystery, that’s me.”

The Latina had always been a girly girl, one who regularly kicked his butt on the firing range. She was all of five feet two inches tall and had the classic good looks of a Penelope Cruz—dark hair, dark eyes, and lots of curves.

Only lately, Seven noticed she’d stepped it up a bit. Nice sweaters worn under fitted jackets, lip gloss that made her mouth look shiny and wet…as if the sexiest detective in Orange County needed any help in that area. The other day, she’d even mentioned that four letter word: diet.

And her hair. No more messy French twists or ponytails. Last week, he’d made the mistake of lobbing some weak compliment. The next thing he knew, he was listening to how she’d straightened her hair then used some big-barreled curling iron to get just the right wave, like she’d been possessed by the spirit of Revlon.

He figured there was a man involved. He hoped to hell it wasn’t that dick of a reporter he’d punched out last year. But then, Erika did like a challenge.

“So now we’re playing twenty questions?” he asked, still wondering what business two detectives from Westminster had in the Bolsa Chica.

“You say it like it’s a bad thing. Look, don’t stress, Seven. Why don’t you try taking a couple of breaths? Like this.” She demonstrated. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s yoga. Good for whatever ails you.”

He gave her a look from beneath his aviator glasses. “You do yoga?”

“You think I keep this figure sitting behind a desk?”

He was thinking more like Krav Maga. Despite her petite size, his partner could kick some serious ass.

“You should come to a class with me sometimes.” She made an elaborate gesture with her hands around his head and shoulders. “Your aura. It could use some work.”

He didn’t let her see him smile. If there was anyone on this planet who didn’t believe in auras, it was his partner. Her Cuban mother had seen to that, spending a small fortune on espiritistas and santeros who promised cures…for the right price.

She nodded toward the body. “What do you see?”

“Ligature marks on the wrists.”

“The ankles, too.” She took a minute. “She hasn’t spent too much time in the water.”

He nodded. “Maybe she was dumped. She’s not a floater.”

A submerged body, a floater, decomposed at an accelerated rate. Within a day, or even hours depending on the temperature, anaerobic bacteria trapped in the intestines produced gases that distended the stomach cavity and bloated the body beyond recognition. Other than a little mud, the victim before him looked pristine.

“Not a drowning?” Erika ventured.

“Or a crime of passion.” He indicated the ligature marks. “Whoever killed her took his time.”

“Poor baby.” She seemed to be talking to the girl as if she could hear her. “We’re going to find the piece of shit that did this to you.”

Watching Erika there beside the girl, Seven got a flash of a different, even more disturbing image. His nephew, Nick, lying there in the mud.

Jesus, the girl was only a few years older than Nick.

He looked away, obliterating the image and getting back to business. “So who are we waiting for?” he asked, deducing that someone of authority had made the call to put them on the case. He glanced around at the milling law enforcement. “Or are we just supposed to stand around? Maybe twiddle our thumbs?”

She turned to look at him. “What? You want to go fishing? Maybe take a jog around the loop?”

“I was thinking more like roust a couple of budding ornithologists.” He nodded toward the wooden footbridge with its viewing platform. He could just make out the bird watchers and their telephoto lenses trained on the crime scene. “Maybe even before our victim shows up on the front page of the paper.”

“They’re birders,” Erika said, turning to look in their direction.

“Ornithologists, birders, same difference.”

“Actually, ornithology is the scientific study of birds.” She nodded toward the guys wearing camouflage and standing next to binoculars so big they required tripods. “The birders?” She lowered her voice suggestively. “They just like to watch.”

This time, he gave her the satisfaction of seeing him smile.

The word game had started last month after a night spent watching a rerun of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A couple of beers and several artery-clogging bowls of buttered popcorn later, they both claimed the superior vocabulary. Seven was pretty sure Erika kept score…and that she was ahead.

Having done her duty and sicced a uniform on the birders, Erika knelt next to the body. “Come look at this.”

Erika took out a pen from her jacket and carefully separated the strands of hair covering the girl’s neck.

“See that?” she asked.

There was a red mark on the neck, like a prick of some kind. The skin around it appeared discolored.

He crouched down alongside the girl and frowned. “What the hell is that? An injection site?”

“She has another one here,” Erika said pushing aside the cordgrass with her pen to indicate the top of the girl’s hand.

“Doesn’t look like track marks. Could it be some sort of bug bite, or a crab or a fish having had a go at the body?”

Erika shook her head. “Too uniform.”

His cell went off. Without taking his gaze off the strange mark, he reached for the phone on his hip. But it rang only once, stopping before he could answer.

“How’s Beth doing?” Erika asked, not even trying to disguise her distaste.

He ignored her and focused on the body and the curious marks. Erika assumed the call was from Beth, his sister-in-law, par for the course the last two years. That’s when Seven’s older brother, Ricky—the happily married man and Nick’s father, the perfect son to Seven’s prodigal—had pleaded guilty to second degree murder. Ricky, a plastic surgeon, had killed a male nurse, the man who’d been his lover.

Beth, Ricky’s wife, hadn’t exactly taken her husband’s betrayal in stride. She’d fallen into the bottle. It had been up to Seven and his family to keep the pieces together for Nick.

But now Beth was in AA. She was studying for her broker’s license. Sure, she’d lost the waterfront home and the fifty-five-foot yacht, the condo in Big Bear. She and Nick lived in a small house that Seven owned with his father…and she seemed happier than ever.

Only, Erika wasn’t the forgiving type. She hadn’t bought into Beth’s new lease on life, or the fact that she’d given up on her game of musical chairs with the Bushard brothers. According to Erika, Beth was only waiting for the ink to dry on her divorce papers before she made her move on him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seven caught sight of a familiar movement. A strange prickling heated the back of his neck. Standing, he could feel his heart pumping hard as his body acknowledged the threat long before his brain could put the pieces together.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath.

Someone of authority had just arrived, all right.

The woman marching toward them was blond and tall with the lanky build of an Olympic high jumper. Her long-legged stride forced the tech beside her to give a little skip just to keep up. She wore black slacks and a blazer with a simple white blouse, and accessorized with the requisite dark aviator glasses. But the thing that stood out—what made him instantly recognize her—was that damn BlackBerry in her hand.

She was headed straight for Seven and Erika, instructing the crime-scene tech jogging alongside, while no doubt browsing the Web on her BlackBerry. Special Agent Carin Barnes liked to multitask.

“Getting back to those twenty questions,” he said to Erika. “Why exactly did two Westminster detectives get called in here?”

Erika stood, training her gaze on the blonde. “I think you skipped the part about it being bigger than a bread box.”

“A hell of a lot taller, anyway,” he said.

Bright and early, Erika had given him a call. A DB—a dead body—in the wetlands. Female. Very young. He’d gone into automatic; his partner was calling him to the scene of a crime. Why ask questions?

He frowned. The fucking FBI.

“Since when do you have an in with the feds?” he asked Erika.

She lowered her sunglasses for his benefit. “Honey, I have an in just about everywhere.”

She popped the glasses back on the bridge of her nose and stepped toward the approaching agent. Since he’d last seen Special Agent Carin Barnes, she’d clipped her hair boy-short. It was a valiant attempt at looking the part of tough federal agent but there was too much of willowy blonde there to achieve the proper effect.