Excerpt from Shadow Man by Alan Drew, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It took a year of evenings and weekends, one hammered broken finger, and a nail through the arch of his right foot to get the place in shape, though mostly it remained a cowboy flophouse, stinking of leather and coffee grounds, and he liked it that way.

Ben forked hay into the barn stalls now, while Emma cotton-balled Betadine onto the cactus cuts on Gus's flanks.

"You ready for softball?" he asked.

"I'm not going to play this year."

"You love softball." She had an arm; she could whip it around in a blur and pop the ball into the catcher's mitt.

"You love softball," she said.

"Why not?"

"You look at those girls in high school and they're all, I don't know, manly."

"Manly?" he said. His tomboy little girl had a sudden need to be "pretty." She'd started spending hours in the bathroom, rimming her eyes with eyeliner, thickening her lips with lipstick. "There's nothing wrong with those girls."

"I just don't wanna play anymore, all right?"

"I gotta talk with your mother about that," he said, glancing at her. Her face was tanned, her dark hair sun streaked. "And, by the way, you're perfect, if you ask me."

"Yeah, well, you're my dad, so it counts like forty-five percent."

Emma finished with the Betadine and closed Gus up in his stall. They had a big dinner planned—carne asada tacos, fresh avocado from the farmers' market, corn tortillas he'd picked up that morning from the tortilleria in Costa Mesa. Back to the Future had just come out on VHS, and he'd already slipped the cassette into the VCR.

The Motorola rang in the cruiser. He stepped over to the car and leaned through the open window to grab the receiver. "Yeah, it's Wade."

"Been trying to get you on the horn." It was Stephanie Martin, the evening dispatch.

"It's my night off."

"Hope you enjoyed it," she said. "Got a call from a Jonas Rafferty down in Mission Viejo. They got a DB down there that's still warm. He's asking for you."

A dead body. It had been a long time since he'd been on a murder scene.

"Gotta get you to your mother," Ben said to Emma.

"What about Fiesta Night?"

"Friday," he said, latching up the barn door. "We'll do it Friday. I'm sorry."

"You need a nine-to-five, Dad," Emma said.

Seven minutes later, he parked the cruiser in front of his ex-wife's new condominium in the center of town. Rachel opened the door a crack to let Emma in, but Ben still saw the man sitting on the couch, legs crossed at the knees, a glass of white wine resting in his palm as though cupping a breast.

"A professor?" Ben said, looking over Rachel's shoulder as Emma waved a hello to the man and walked to the kitchen. "Drives a Datsun four-banger?"

She smiled, the dimple in her left cheek killing him a little.

"C'mon, Ben," she said quietly. "You think I'm going to give you that?" She had used the shampoo he liked, cherry blossom or something like that, and for a moment in his mind her wet hair lay across her pillow next to him in the bed they used to share. "You've got a crime to solve, remember?"

"It's a DB," Ben said. "Barring a miracle, it's not going anywhere."

"Here?" she said. "In Santa Elena?"

"No," he said. "Mission Viejo."

"Thank God," she said. "Is Emma's homework done?"

He shook his head and Rachel sighed. "Out riding again?"

"She fell," Ben said.

"Jesus, Ben."

"One of those F-4s snuck up on us," he said. "Spooked Gus."

"She all right?"

"She says so," he said. "But check on her anyway."

"If she'll let me."

Apple in hand, Emma snuck behind Rachel and started up the steps to the second floor of the condo.

Excerpted from Shadow Man by Alan Drew. Copyright © 2017 by Alan Drew. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.