CHAPTER ONE

      JACK FURY CONSIDERED Dumpster-diving a metaphor for life—it could be unpredictable, messy and sometimes you just couldn’t get the stink off no matter how hard you tried.

      But he figured it was a necessary evil, kind of like sushi and cheap beer. You held your nose, dug in, and prayed to the real God that you wouldn’t spend the rest of the night praying to the porcelain god.

      He’d worshipped at that altar more times than he cared to remember, but considering the day he’d had—no, make that year—puking his guts out would be a fitting way to end it.

      He stomped his feet in the rubber boots he’d pulled on, then surveyed the area once more before taking the plunge. It was a quiet Thursday night. He could hear traffic a few blocks over on Main Street, but in the alley behind the exclusive Mirabelle Hotel in Houston’s Museum District, not a creature stirred.

      Unless, of course, you counted the mosquitoes and the giant flying cockroaches for which the Bayou City was famous. There were rats around, too, Jack suspected. Big, fat, urban-dwelling rodents that didn’t skitter away at the sight of a human, but stared you right in the face and dared you, dared you, to enter their private domain.

      Spraying himself down with heavy-duty insect repellent, he tossed the can back in his bag. Sweat trickled down his temples as he approached the dark blue trash bins. Even after dark, the temperature hovered around ninety and the humidity had a life of its own. There was no breeze to speak of, either. Some people considered August in Houston a little like hell on earth, but they were wrong. August in Houston was hell on earth to the third power. It was what the fiery depths of Hades only wished it could be.

      This was Jack’s city and he loved it.

      The aroma wafting from the Dumpsters? Not so much. If there was anything he’d learned from his nearly ten years as a Houston cop it was that rich people’s trash did, indeed, stink.

      Smelled to high heaven, he thought as he bent over the first bin and began poking around with a stick. River Oaks, the Fourth Ward…didn’t matter. Garbage was garbage. He hadn’t minded the task so much when he’d still been a cop. Back then he would have happily crawled through a mountain of refuse to find evidence