CHAPTER FIVE

Out of Century Plaza, the purse swinging.

Big purse, too, and heavy. Like it was packed with lead weights.

Scoot's luck, it'd be full of books on tax law or binders of corporate policies and procedures.

But you never knew. There might be good stuff. Stuff that was worth some money. Once, Scoot found a velvet ring box in the bottom of a scruffy denim purse, and the diamond-and-onyx baby inside had fetched six hundred bucks.

And even if this buttercream-leather shoulderbag number turned out to be a dud, that wasn't the point. The point was the taking. The rush, the thrill, the excitement. The conquest. Taking, not having.

People jumped out of the way, some shouting after Scoot, shouting things like "Watch where you're going, asshole!" as Scoot sped down 10th Street and hung a hard right onto Prewett.

The electric blue wheels hummed, juddering over the grooves in the concrete. Scoot's feet rode firm but easy on the board's fiberglass surface, which was glossy black and airbrushed with blue-white lightning bolts.

Scoot reached into the deep windbreaker pocket and touched the slick, somehow greasy surface of a wadded-up black plastic garbage bag. Tucked in there with it was a bundle the size of a tennis ball, that would unfold into a roomy duffel bag. Collapsible. Space-age.

Out with the garbage bag. Snap-flutter it open, and stuff in the purse.

Little old lady at twelve o'clock!

Scoot's reflexes took over. Swerve and pivot, skimming past with inches to spare, close enough to see the details of the weave in the cardigan stretched over the dowager's hump as the little old lady crept along hunched over her walker.

And then past, into the intersection. Horns blaring. More shouts, and rude gestures jabbed skyward. "Asshole!" again. That was the most common of the unfriendly terms applied to Scoot on any given day. "Jerk" and "Shithead" made the list, too. Once, only once, had Scoot been called a "hooligan." That had been a proud day.

Hooligan.

Kewl.

With the purse hidden in the bag, it looked like nothing more than a bundle of dirty laundry, or maybe scrounged cans and bottles bound for recycling. The one thing it did not look like was a purse, because that of course would be suspicious. A kid like Scoot, with a fancy shoulderbag?

The wail of a siren sent Scoot's pulse rate through the roof, but it was an ambulance and not the cops, an ambulance cutting through traffic.

No cops, no cops yet. And now Century Plaza was three blocks in Scoot's wake, the business high-rises having given way to the seedier urban sprawl.

Prewett was a main thoroughfare, a state highway that still had the number designation. It was a long gaudy row of car lots, motels, fast food joints, gas stations and chain stores. During the morning and afternoon commutes, it was almost as backed up as the freeways that skirted downtown. At night, the scum crawled up from the sewers. Prostitution stings, drug busts, and gang shootings were no strangers to Prewett Avenue.

Scoot decided to take the long way, and swung left onto 7th Street. Here, rundown apartment buildings rubbed shoulders with duplexes. A school crouched behind a wire-topped chain link fence like an ill-tempered bear in a too-small cage at the zoo. The empty playground was a barren asphalt plain where weathered white lines marked out a map of the United States, foursquare grids, and hopscotch. The mangy, peeling tetherballs swaying at the ends of their ropes made Scoot think of gallows and hanged men. The baseball diamond was a weedy dirt-patch.

Deee-pressing. Scoot felt bad for the kids. As bleak as that playground was, they weren't even in it but were instead packed like sardines into too-small classrooms, the troublemakers raising hell and dominating the teachers' time while the few bright students slid lower and lower into apathy.

At 7th and Dunley, after one final glance back to make sure that the cops hadn't made an appearance, Scoot hopped off the skateboard and kicked it up, catching it by one set of wheels. Fiberglass. Nice and light. The wonders of modern technology. In the olden days, it would have been made from wood with steel wheels.

With the board tucked under one arm, and the bulging black garbage bag in the same hand, Scoot strolled casually through a gap in a splintery board fence into the Dunley Street Junkyard.

It took up a quarter of the square block, and consisted of rows and rows of wrecked cars. The lot was hard-packed dirt so poisoned by oil, antifreeze and other automotive fluids that not even the hardiest weeds would stand a chance. Snarls of torn metal and sparkles of broken glass glinted up from the dirt.

The rusty metallic scrape of a long chain heralded the arrival of the proverbial junkyard dog. It ambled into view, a long-legged and floppy-eared mutt that looked like the result of a drunken liaison between a basset hound and a giraffe.

"Hey, Booger," Scoot said.

The dog's drooping jowls rippled as it uttered a low, froggy croak of a woof. His tail, which should have been cropped in puppyhood but had instead been allowed to grow into a long ropy thing, wagged.

Some guard dog. Booger spent most of his time sprawled snoring in the shade, and Scoot had never heard of him biting, or so much as growling, at anyone. An army of stray cats laid insolent claim to the junkyard, stalking and fighting and yowling their eerie love cries. Once, Scoot had looked in a busted-out window and seen a litter of kittens tumbling around on the front seat, tearing at puffs of upholstery, just as cute as could be. And on the plus side, the cats kept the rats at bay.

Most of the cars were mashed flat and stacked half a dozen high, or crunched down into cubes that reminded Scoot of the blocky Borg spaceships from Star Trek. Others had accordioned front ends, staved-in sides, sheared-off roofs. Some were outwardly intact, giving no sign of what misfortune had landed them in this unhappy place.

Moving quickly, Scoot set down the skateboard and the garbage bag on a sun-warmed trunk lid and fished out the duffel bag. It was dark red with black straps and a black zipper. Scoot stepped onto a rubber floor mat left here for these very occasions, and kicked off first one sneaker, then the next.

Off came the windbreaker, too, turning inside out as Scoot gripped the cuffs and pulled the sleeves through. It went from scarlet to navy blue with white piping. Left unzipped, it revealed a plain white tank top underneath.

Next were the baggy grey cargo pants. Scoot skinned out of them quickly, not liking the feeling of being exposed even though there was no way this would count as indecent exposure, not when the cargo pants had been worn over black knee-length bike shorts. Still, anybody changing clothes in a junkyard was bound to strike the casual observer as more than a little suspicious.

Scoot put the shoes back on and stuffed the cargo pants into the duffel bag. The bag was long enough to hold the skateboard, too, and the stolen purse.

Booger-the-dog watched with mild interest. Booger had seen this transformation many times before.

Last was the baseball cap, which today Scoot had worn turned around so that the bill was pointing backwards. It, too, went into the duffel.

Scoot undid the redoubled ponytail that the cap had concealed. As long, thick, chestnut-colored hair spilled over her shoulders, the last of Scoot went away.

For now.

**

CHAPTER FOUR

"Hey, lady, you okay?"

"He stole her purse, did you see that?"

"Anybody get which way he went?"

"I'll call the police."

"No!" Jeanette was on her feet in a flash.

She yanked at the hem of her skirt, which had ridden up most of the way to her waist. Her pantyhose were run in long ladders down the backs of both thighs and the heel of her left hand was scraped raw from where she'd instinctively flung it out to try and break her fall.

The people who had come rushing around her moved back, but they still formed a curious gawking ring. Jeanette couldn't see over or past their heads, and cursed her lack of height as she craned her neck trying to see the skateboard kid.

Gone. Gone like a damned mirage.

"Ma'am? Did he hurt you?" This from a kindly-faced older gent with finespun white hair, no doubt in reality the ruthless president of some cutthroat board of directors.

Cell phones had materialized in many hands – had, most likely, already been in hand. Several had fingers poised to dial 911.

"My purse," Jeanette said. Her fists clenched, causing a stinging line of pain across the scrape. "Which way did he go?"

"That way," a severe black woman in a burgundy linen suit said. "Went right past me and almost ran me down."

"Miss, let me call the police," said the man who'd first made the offer. He was tall and youngish and prematurely balding, bespectacled. He held out his phone to her with the air of a knight pledging his sword and honor to a damsel in distress.

A cluster of other skateboard kids had gathered a short distance away, observing developments. Some were snickering. Others had the sullen, wary look of those ready to be blamed for everything.

Jeanette shoved through her protective circle of lunch-lemmings and stormed toward them. They saw her coming, and for an instant their snickers and sulks were replaced by alarmed surprise.

"Who was that kid?" she demanded of the nearest.

Up close, he was not a kid at all but a hulking hairy twenty-something Bigfoot with long stringy dark-red hair, unshaven bristles on his chin and rusty tufts bursting from the collar of his old faded Guns & Roses tee shirt. A bike leaned against the hip of his chain-draped black faux-leather pants. A hand that was all scabbed knuckles and clunky silver death's head rings rested on the handlebars. The smells of sweat, B.O., stale pot smoke and McDonald's grease seemed to hang around him in a cloud.

Bigfoot topped Jeanette by over a foot and was more than double her weight, but the furious, fearless way she got right up in his face caught him totally off guard. "Fuck'f I know," he mumbled.

"What about the rest of you?" She scanned them, feeling like green sparks must be snapping from her eyes.

A skinny black kid, whose pants hung down so far that his plaid boxer-briefs were exposed, scratched the undershelf of his chin. A porky Goth chick with hair dyed the black and pink of a box of Good-n-Plenty was suddenly fascinated with her fingernails – blood red, and painted with tiny silver ankhs. A dark-haired teenager who might've been good-looking if his complexion had not been in revolt glared down at his unlaced sneakers and said something under his breath that Jeanette thought might have been the C-word.

It was as if the line of battle had been drawn in Century Plaza. Finally, for once, the opposing forces were clearly defined and facing each other down.

On one side, the lunch-lemmings stood together in their suits, with their briefcases and cell phones and power ties, haughty with righteous indignation.

On the other side were the skateboard kids, in their defensive, angry cluster. They shot venomous looks at the older crowd.

Jeanette hated them all, and if she'd had that machine gun right here and now, she might have chopped every single one of them, lunch-lemming and skateboard kid alike, into mincemeat where they stood.

But she didn't have a machine gun. She didn't have a gun at all.

The purse snatcher had everything.

Call the police? And tell them what, exactly? That her purse had been stolen, and it just happened to contain an envelope of cash, a firearm, and a folder of information that might as well have had "assassination instructions" printed on the cover?

Exhaling a long breath between tight lips, she turned away from the skateboard kids. If she had to look at their willfully stupid, stubborn, drug-using, self-indulgent bratty faces any longer, she would lose it.

She stalked back to the other side. Forced a smile for the benefit of her balding would-be Galahad. "Could I please borrow your phone?"

He gave it to her, now with the air of a knight whose lady-love has conferred upon him a silken scarf or other token of her favor before the big joust.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" the kindly older gent asked. "I saw that miscreant knock into you."

"A few scratches," she said, showing the heel of her left hand.

"Did you have much in there?" asked the burgundy-suited black lady. "I had mine taken a few months ago. All my credit cards, my phone, everything. Best call the credit card company. And a locksmith while you're at it, because now that no-good punk will have your keys and your address."

"Ah, he'll just grab the cash and plastic, and throw the purse in a trashcan somewhere," another man said.

Past them, Jeanette saw that the skateboard kids had dispersed. Slunk away like the guilty scavenging vermin that they were. Rats and roaches and flies. Scavengers.

Now that the immediate drama had passed, the eager lemmings were reluctant to break up and go away, though it was no doubt high time they were back in their offices and cubicles. It seemed like everybody had a purse-snatching story, and the matter was swiftly turning into a bizarre competition for worst place.

"– wife had all the kids' pictures, the grandkids, too –"

"– been to the bank to withdraw it in cash, twenty-three thousand dollars –"

"– gorgeous suede, the perfect match to those boots –"

"Excuse me," Jeanette said with a polite smile, pointing to Galahad's phone. She moved away, turned, and examined the keypad while her mind raced, raced.

She didn't keep her real I.D. in that purse, not when she knew she'd be going out on a job meeting with Rayburn or one of his associates. That was her working purse, chosen specifically because it was roomy enough to hold the tape recorder as well as large folders and envelopes and whatever sort of weapon her employers decided to provide for each new job.

Her personal keys, thank God, were in the desk drawer of her office. So was her real purse, the bag that was really just a fat wallet with a long clip-on strap and delusions of grandeur.

The magnetic key-card to the office itself, thank God again, was in the pocket of her forest green blazer. She had dropped it in there without thinking about it, and was grateful now. She had troubles enough without worrying about that.

What to do, though? Who to call? She couldn't call the cops … but if she didn't, Galahad might notice that the police number failed to turn up in his "numbers called" log.

How had she let this happen?

Shit!

Hysteria welled, and Jeanette quashed it.

One thing at a time. One problem at a time.

God, but how could she have been so dumb? She'd gotten thinking about Kenny and Lisa-Beth, and that had rattled her composure badly enough, but then to have Rayburn rattle her even more by asking her to think about dinner with him … she hadn't been focused on her surroundings at all on the way back, hadn't gotten that little warning prickle when the skateboard kid had sped by. Her instincts, usually so keen, had been dulled, and now look at this mess!

Jeanette turned back to Galahad, who remained hovering hopefully nearby. Manufacturing a tremulous smile, she handed the phone back to him.

"I'm sorry," she said, and hitched in her breath. "I … I'll call them from upstairs. I just need … a few minutes. To … to …"

She hated to do it, hated to make even a pretense of weakness. But as his hazel eyes went all soft and sympathetic, she knew it had been the right move. He'd look at her and see a little ethereal pixie-blonde, small and vulnerable, and forget or dismiss the fearless way she had marched straight up to Bigfoot.

"I'll walk you in," he said. "Where are you going?"

"No, that's all right. You've been more than helpful already. And …" she glanced at her watch and winced. "And it's almost two."

"It's really no trouble."

Of course, it wasn't. He might already be far enough along in his fantasy to be telling the grandkids how they'd met, how he'd consoled her after the purse-snatching and walked her safely back to her office, how he'd asked her to coffee and then dinner and then the ring, the wedding, the house, the children …

Somehow, she fended off all his good intentions and the solicitousness of the others, and made her way back to the Jensen Building on her own. People took sidelong looks at her in the lobby and the elevator. She thought it was because of her crumpled skirt, the runs in her pantyhose or her disarranged hair.

But then, with a dull flush mounting in her cheeks, she remembered all that glass. All those windows. Not everyone could have been neglecting work to gaze serenely out at the scene in Century Plaza below, but dozens of people might still have witnessed her being sent skidding like a tiddlywink, and the skateboard kid's triumphant exit with her purse.

Her office had never been such a welcome sight. She closed the door, crossed the reception area's dusty-plum carpeting without switching on any lights – more than enough natural light came in to let her avoid the neat arrangement of chairs, coffee table, end tables, and loveseat – and went into the inner room. There was a closet-sized bathroom with a commode and a sink, where Jeanette did flip the light switch, and grimaced as she saw herself in the mirror.

She scrubbed her hands, chewing her bottom lip as antibacterial soap burned into the scrape like a dousing of acid. This made her start bleeding again, so she held a square of folded toilet tissue against the wound until it was only seeping. She kept a supplementary cosmetic bag on the bathroom shelf for emergency touch-ups, and fixed her hair and face.

Stepping out of her shoes, she shed the pantyhose and threw them in the wastepaper basket. She'd look strange without them, but the runs were more noticeable than bare legs would be … and at least her legs were shaved. She couldn't do much about the wrinkles in the skirt.

With the worst of the damage repaired, she met her own jade-green gaze and asked herself the question that had been beating in her head like a pulse.

"What am I going to tell Rayburn?"

**

CHAPTER THREE

The murder had gone so badly it was a miracle she'd gotten away with it. She hadn't planned, hadn't thought anything beyond how Kenny had hurt Lisa-Beth and was going to pay. She'd never even contemplated killing anyone before and expected it would be like in the movies.

It wasn't anything like the movies.

In the movies, she could have simply walked up behind him as he bent into the engine of his hotrod, punched her cousin's old pocket knife into his back, and Kenny would have arched his spine and gone, "Aargh!" and collapsed and died.

No such luck in real life. The tip skidded off his shoulderblade, snagged in his sweater, and clattered to the oil-stained garage floor. Kenny let out a holler, more of surprise than pain – though it had to have hurt; there was blood – and started to turn and straighten up.

Panicked, Jeanette had done the only thing she could think of. She seized the raised hood of his car and knocked the support away with her elbow. Then, using all of her strength, she'd slammed the hood down on Kenny. The edge cut into the back of his scalp, shedding a spray of blood. He went face-first into the engine with a grunt, trying and failing to get his right hand up in time to defend himself.

She'd raised the hood and slammed it again, totally beyond thought. The underside met the rounded back of Kenny's skull with a hollow k-ponk! sound, denting the metal and pile-driving his forehead into the engine block. Dazed, he slumped there with his left hand dangling and twitching.

The knife had been within sight, but Jeanette didn't try to reach for it. The moment she did, she knew that this would turn out to be like the movies after all. No matter how out of it Kenny seemed, he would spring up and lunge at her. She must have looked like a crazywoman trying to … to clap him to death as she repeatedly raised and slammed the hood on Kenny's head, shoulders, and upper torso.

Eventually, she stopped, arms aching, chest heaving, and watched him to see if he moved. Kenny only hung there, slack, his knees buckled and his one visible arm as limp as that of a drowning victim.

The noise had been horrendous. Wiping sweat from her brow despite the chill in the air, Jeanette turned, expecting to see the entire neighborhood gathered in the open garage door and staring in at her in openmouthed shock. But the driveway and the street at the end of it had been empty of everything but a few spinning flakes of falling snow.

"Kenny?" she had said, barely recognizing herself in the panting, uncertain voice.

He hadn't stirred. As her ears quit ringing, she heard the slow, syrupy patter of blood draining through the engine. When she crouched – carefully, still thinking he might suddenly revive – she had seen a spreading puddle that was not an oil leak.

Jeanette raised the hood one final time, saw what was left of Kenny Murphy's head, and barely made it outside in a stumbling, staggering run before throwing up into Mrs. Murphy's snow-covered flowerbed.

Only then, as she'd been hunched and shaking in the aftermath, had she realized what she had done. He was dead. He was dead and she had killed him.

She'd done it for Lisa-Beth, but some cold and rational inner voice spoke up and told her that she had to think of herself now. Even if one of her best friends was worth going to jail for, Kenny certainly wasn't.

So, though the last thing in the world she had wanted to do was to go back into that garage, she had done it. She'd picked up the knife – the only reason she'd had the forethought to wear gloves had nothing to do with fingerprints and everything to do with it being December – and searched around for a way to cover up her crime.

The garage itself provided the answer. Its ceiling was crisscrossed with old rafters crammed to capacity with generations of Murphy family leftovers. She saw old footlockers, crates that might've held dishes or pots and pans, a metal ice chest that had to date back to the 1960's, the poles and chains of a disassembled porch swing, all kinds of stuff.

All kinds of heavy stuff.

With the long wooden handle of a snow shovel, Jeanette jabbed and poked up into the rafters. She felt absurdly like someone trying to squish a bug in a high corner.

But at last, she'd found a good spot and given a big push. The piles shifted, started to slide, and then she had leaped backward as the contents of the rafters came down in a crashing avalanche on top of the car, on top of Kenny.

She had seen – she would never forget it, not if she lived to be a hundred and fifty – his legs give one boneless, convulsive flailing kick and his left arm fly upward as if in surprise. Then she couldn't bear to see any more, and had run back down the driveway and all the way home.

Some devil's luck must have been with her that night. The snow had continued falling steadily for hours, so that by the time Kenny's parents and younger brother and sister came home from a holiday party, the smooth white fall had blanketed away her tracks.

The Murphys made an extremely gruesome discovery in the garage that night. The police came and determined that something in the rafters must have shifted and brought the rest down, crushing Kenny as he bent under the hood to work on the car.

He might even, they'd theorized, have been trapped alive in the wreckage for a while, judging by the scrapes on his face from struggling against unyielding metal.

Jeanette had always wondered about the shallow wound in his back, where she had initially stuck him with the knife. Had it been explained away as having been caused by some of the falling debris? A pole from the porch swing, perhaps, striking him in the shoulder? Or had it been overlooked entirely in the face of his other, more overwhelming injuries?

She'd never found out, and of course there was no good way to ask. The ugly incident had been categorized as a terrible accident. It even made the 'tragic irony' section of the local news.

The ones she'd really felt bad for in the whole mess were Kenny's younger brother and sister, who'd had to witness their father hurling aside footlockers like a madman, and heard their mother's screams as she saw what was left of her oldest child.

With a start, Jeanette realized that she had been sitting for several minutes without saying a word, poking at the half-eaten fish and chips that no longer held any temptation to her appetite.

Rayburn was regarding her quizzically across the table. "Jade? Are you all right?"

"Sorry," she said, and cleared her throat. "Sorry. I was … thinking."

"Not about anything good, I'm guessing," he said. "You're white as a sheet, and your hands are shaking."

"My hands don't shake," she said, though as she looked down at them she saw they were making a liar of her. She set down her fork and folded her hands together. They felt as icy as they had, gloves or no gloves, on that long-ago December night.

To her astonishment, Rayburn reached across the table and covered her small, cold, trembling hands with one of his. It was the first time he had ever purposefully touched her, and she was startled at how warm and strong his grip felt.

"Why not think about something else?" he suggested in a low voice that had the texture of rough velvet.

"Like what?" she asked.

"Like dinner some time." His gaze, direct and deep blue, held hers.

"Dinner?"

"Not a meeting. Not business. Very personal."

"I … I don't think that would be a very good idea."

"Hell," Rayburn said, with a slanted grin more Harrison Ford than Pierce Brosnan, "I know it isn't. But think about it anyway."

With that, he got up while she was still trying to shift gears in her startled mind. He left enough cash on the table to cover the check and a generous tip, and then he was gone.

Jeanette gave her head a quick shake, not quite able to believe what had just happened. Had Rayburn touched her? Asked her to have dinner with him? She didn't even know his first name.

Though, she supposed with an inner chuckle, she knew what he did for a living, and what kind of money he made.

A glance at her watch showed her that it was almost one-thirty. The lunch-lemmings would be already back in their offices or headed that way. She smiled at the waitress and the hostess as she left the Stag and Hound, and joined the last few stragglers bound for Century Plaza.

Although she did not have what anyone could call a nine-to-five job, she kept an office in the Jensen Building for days such as this when work and meetings brought her into the heart of the city. It was helpful, too, to have an address and phone number she could put on her bogus business cards – J. Kurrell, Consulting, the cards read – along with an e-mail address. Any infrequent phone calls were routed to voice mail.

She liked having the office. It wasn't much, just two rooms, a reception area and an inner sanctum, but she'd had it nicely decorated and it was comfortable. She enjoyed being in there, knowing that the building all around her was full of workaday drones while she surfed the Internet on her laptop computer, browsing the online auction sites for things she would never buy.

Today, the office might be a good place to sit and think about what Rayburn had said, there at the end of lunch. She could listen to him again on tape, and determine whether or not she had read too much – or too little – into his words and the tone of his voice.

The skateboard kids were still in the Plaza, careening around, risking life and limb with their wheeled acrobatics. One, on a black skateboard with electric-blue wheels, shot past Jeanette so fast she felt the breeze. She jerked back, a sharp retort rising to her lips, but caught herself before she said anything.

The kid sped onward, baggy many-pocketed cargo pants drooping, scarlet nylon windbreaker rippling. Jeanette turned to watch, hoping to see a headlong collision with a raised marble bench around a fountain that cascaded water from three bronze bowls into a basin full of pitched good-luck pennies. In her mind's eye, she saw the kid hit the bench, flip end over end into the hard bronze edges of the bowls, and go splash into the water with a skull fracture or broken neck.

No such luck. The kid, who looked about thirteen in a baseball cap with the brim turned backwards, stuck one foot out almost casually, pivoted on it, hopped the skateboard up onto the marble, slid along it for a good six or seven feet, and dropped back down, now facing in Jeanette's direction again. Propelling along, one leg going push-push-push, the kid rocketed toward her.

Jeanette stepped back, but not far enough. Before she knew it, she was knocked on her butt in the middle of Century Plaza. Her right arm felt yanked out of its socket, and a split second later she realized why.

The skateboard kid had grabbed her purse. Had snatched her purse, and was even now speeding away with the prize.

Her purse … and everything in it.

**

CHAPTER TWO

"The man's a collector," Rayburn explained as their lunch arrived. "Ah. See, I told you. Wonderful fish and chips."

The generous slabs of golden, crunchy batter-fried fish rested atop heaps of steak-cut French fries, which had been dusted with a seasoned salt that was perhaps not entirely Olde English. It smelled heavenly and tasted better.

"A collector," Jade prompted when the waitress had moved on.

"History buff. Keeps everything in his collection in perfect working order. If you'd rather, I might be able to get you a sword or a knife instead, but I didn't think that would be your style. You just don't have that hack-and-slash Kill Bill air about you."

"You thought right," she said, picking up the envelope and feeling the familiar weight and heft. "How old is it?"

"I'm not entirely sure, but it's museum-quality. Ivory-handled."

"And you're confident it will do the job?" She regarded him from beneath arched brows. "Old guns aren't the most reliable. If I didn't know better, I might think I was being set up."

He looked genuinely wounded, which gave him an even more appealing little-boy quality, the sort of look that could make most women want to simultaneously mother him and seduce him. The flip side of Oedipus … was there such a thing as a Jocasta complex?

"We regard you as one of our most valuable associates, Jade," he said. "A set-up? Not hardly. You can bet your lucky charm on that."

She touched her necklace in a habitual gesture. It, as well as her green eyes and cool, hard demeanor, had gotten her the nickname … code name … working name … whatever you wanted to call it. A fine gold chain and a milky-green pendant carved in the shape of a sinuous Oriental dragon.

It wasn't a family heirloom or gift from a lover or anything sentimental like that. Only something she'd bought in a Chinatown gift shop on a trip to San Francisco. For Deirdre's bridal shower, that had been … five college girls on a crazy road trip because Deirdre had wanted to see male strippers and female impersonators and drink rainbow-hued rum drinks from tall glasses shaped like naked ladies.

Three years after the wedding, almost to the day, Deirdre had offered Jeanette five thousand dollars to arrange an accident for her husband.

"You don't need to reassure me," she said to Rayburn, putting the envelope into her shoulderbag beside the little tape player. "What else?"

Into the briefcase he went again, this time producing a folder stuffed with photos and sheets of paper. She flipped it open and saw a color 8x10 of a young man with wavy blond hair, the sort of tan that used to be considered healthy but nowadays was a walking ad for skin cancer. His smile couldn't rival Rayburn's in the perfect white and straight department, but it dimpled. A cute smile. A cute guy.

The next photo showed the same cute guy shirtless on a sailboat, and Jeanette took a moment to admire his sculpted, hairless chest and lean, chiseled abs. He looked disgustingly fit and athletic. Like one of the perfect specimens usually seen hawking exercise gear on late-night infomercials.

"What'd he do?" she asked. "Is it personal?"

"Tsk, tsk, Jade," scolded Rayburn. "I thought you didn't care about that."

"You know I generally handle corporate cases," she said, and had to close the folder as the waitress came back to ask if everything was to their satisfaction.

"Very much so, although I wouldn't say no to another Guinness," Rayburn said, tapping the rim of his empty glass.

"And more hot water," Jeanette said.

"What makes you think this isn't corporate?" he asked once the waitress had gone.

"He doesn't look like a businessman."

"He's on a sailboat with his shirt off. Donald Trump wouldn't look like a businessman on a sailboat with his shirt off."

"Spare me the mental image, please."

"Besides, you've bent that rule before."

"But I don't like it," she said. "The personal cases are the ugliest ones, and the ones where someone is most likely to crack. Remorse. You never see any remorse when it's politics, when it's business, when it's all about profit and not about emotion."

"Profound," Rayburn said, sounding unimpressed by her philosophy. "But for you, it is all about profit no matter the motive. And speaking of profit …"

He set another sealed envelope on the table, this one padded not by bubble wrap but by a thick pile of cash.

"What I meant was," she said, eyeballing the envelope and doing some mental math, "that the risk of the buyer blabbing about the deal goes way up when it's personal."

"That's why the fee goes way up."

"How far up?"

"Double."

She thought again about the athletic blond guy on the sailboat. Someone really must want him dead if they were willing to double her usual fee. What could a guy like that have done to make such an enemy? Did he stand in the way of a fat inheritance? Did some rival for a girlfriend want him out of the way?

"Double," she mused.

"A quarter of it now," Rayburn said, nudging the envelope toward her. "The rest on completion, everybody sing along, you all know the words."

Jeanette blew out a breath that was almost a whistle. She could feel the cables of her resolve giving way one by one. It was a lot of money. Not that she needed it; she could keep herself comfortably for a long time even if she never took another job.

But it was a lot of money.

And the blond guy … maybe it wasn't emotional after all. Maybe it was as clinical and detached as the others. Purely business, so sorry, you know how it goes. Nothing personal. No offense. So sorry, old bean, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

The less she knew about that end of things, the better. She didn't need to know. All knowing did was clutter up her head. It wasn't her job to decide whether any given person deserved it or not.

Maybe the blond guy was a complete shit. Maybe he liked little kids in the wrong way, and had the bucks to keep it quiet. Maybe he was a contender for some trophy or big expensive endorsement deal and a competitor wanted him eliminated. There were plenty of reasons, plenty of possibilities. None of which concerned her.

"Fine," she said. "I'll take the job."

Rayburn broke into a winning smile that Pierce Brosnan could have used to great effect on every leading lady from Famke to Halle to Selma. "Good," he said.

And the hell of it was, Jeanette realized as she put the money and the folder into her purse alongside the envelope with the gun, that a large part of her reason for accepting was because she didn't want to let him down. Didn't want him to go back and report to his employers that 'Jade' was developing principles, or getting cold feet. That maybe 'Jade' wasn't cut out for this kind of work after all … and that if she was weakening, if she was going soft, she might become a risk.

Oh, it was the money and the pride and the self-preservation, all stacked up against the life of one hunky blond guy with a sailboat. Was it her fault that she liked her work?

She and Rayburn ate fish and chips and carried on their pretense of a typical business lunch. She left the tape running because she never knew if something of interest might be said. Something of value, either now or later. Every little nugget of information she could put away about Rayburn or any of the people he worked with might some day come in handy.

Jeanette would wait until she was home to go over all the details in the folder, which would tell her the things about her target she would need to know. His name and his address, yes, but also as much about his routines and habits as Rayburn's sources had been able to gather. Where he was likely to be and when. It would be up to her to choose the exact place and time, though she was also provided with a list of no-no's and particulars.

Shot with a gun from his own collection. A man that young, that seemingly outdoorsy, who also collected old weapons. Interesting. Not her concern, but interesting all the same.

But maybe it could become her concern, if she wasn't careful. He was athletic and collected weapons … did he target shoot? Hunt? Practice martial arts? Fence, even?

All that would be in the folder. She'd take her time and do this right. Do this right, like she always did.

Not like that first time.

Sipping her tea, she caught a brief shiver and felt her cheeks turn warm with the memory. What a debacle.

Rayburn noticed. "Jade? Something the matter?"

"No," she said.

That first time, a disaster!

She looked back on it now the way that a successful novelist might look back on a first faltering, hackneyed attempt at a book. With cringing embarrassment and a sort of awful contrary defiance. It had been clumsy, stupid, full of mistakes. But it had put her on this path, had gotten her where she was today, so she couldn't complain all that much.

She'd only been in high school, for crying out loud.

Back then – fifteen years ago, had it been that long? – there hadn't been any questions about whether it was personal or business. It was personal all the way, deeply and intensely personal. She hadn't been hired, she hadn't been paid.

And he had deserved it.

Kenny Murphy. The prick.

When Lisa-Beth Perkins had started dating him, Jeanette and all her other friends had tried to talk her out of it. Kenny was a jerk, a thoughtless selfish creep, a poser. He would try to pressure Lisa-Beth into sex, they told her. Never mind her oft-stated desire to wait for her wedding night. He would hurt her feelings and break her heart if she didn't wise up and dump him, they predicted.

Oh, they'd had no idea. Only later, when a sobbing Lisa-Beth told them the whole story, had they really seen Kenny Murphy for what he was.

He hadn't been content with pressuring her to put out, but had slipped something into her drink at a party – one of the so-called "date-rape" drugs that had been new back then but had lately become almost as common a ploy as "if you really loved me" in the male arsenal.

Lisa-Beth had awakened the next morning sore, groggy and sticky, with no memory of the previous night. Rather than confess to any of her friends what she feared had happened, she kept silent.

Kenny dumped her that very day, claiming he felt 'smothered' and that they 'should see other people' and that he wanted to 'still be friends.' Two months later, the miserable Lisa-Beth had gotten an early and very much unwelcome Christmas present when she found out she was pregnant.

When she told Kenny, clinging to some dim and desperate hope that it might get them back together, he had laughed. He sneeringly informed her that three of his buddies had their fun with her that night, too, so she couldn't be sure which of them was the father. If she accused them all, he'd said, she would look like the biggest tramp in the history of the world.

Only after this shattering revelation had Lisa-Beth finally broken down and told her friends everything. Sherry, being a few months older and the most worldly of the quartet, had taken Lisa-Beth to a clinic for an abortion. Ashley spun the creative lies they told Lisa-Beth's parents.

And Jeanette killed Kenny Murphy.

**

CHAPTER ONE

It really was a shame nobody would pay her to kill the skateboard kids.

They were everywhere, the grubby little bastards. To Jeanette, they were all skateboard kids whether they actually rode skateboards or not. In-line skates, those fancy little scooters, bikes, boards … if they were doing stunts and tricks with any of their wheeled toys, they were skateboard kids.

She would have done it happily, too, if there had been any money in it. Not much money, either. A pittance, really. If the city – or maybe a collection taken up by the local business owners – established something like a bounty, five bucks apiece even, it'd be worthwhile. Like they did for rat-catchers in certain third-world nations.

And, tell the truth and shame the devil, she was tempted even without any cash compensation. It'd be a public service. If she had a weapon, something rapid-fire and high-caliber, she could make the world a much better place in a matter of seconds.

That, though, would be messy, noisy, and attract all the wrong sort of attention. Even today's self-absorbed, oblivious pedestrians would be bound to remember a pixie-petite platinum blonde with a machine gun. Not that she'd hit any innocent bystanders. She wouldn't go nuts or anything. She'd choose her targets with the same caution and care as always, and she was naturally a superb shot.

Still, some things generally just were not done by decent people. Shooting up the general population was one of them. The police would insist on getting involved. There would be some witnesses who might feel all civic-minded. It would be a hassle and a risk.

Yet, as she walked out of the Jensen Building in a crowd of business-suited lunch-lemmings, she saw the faces around her tighten in sneers of distaste at the rolling-clattering-whooping adolescent parade that met their eyes.

Maybe she was wrong in thinking they'd turn her in. Maybe they'd give her a round of applause. Hoist her up on their Armani-clad shoulders for a victory lap around Century Plaza. Give her the key to the city.

Wishful thinking.

In its original design conception, Century Plaza had been intended as a financial center, a place of influential movers and shakers. The buildings fronting on it were all towering edifices of the steel-and-glass variety, each trying to outdo its neighbor as a stunning example of modern architecture. The sun bouncing off all those windows turned the structures into glittering pillars of silver, gold, or smoked obsidian. The resulting sun-dazzle was blinding and the ambient temperature felt ten degrees higher than anyplace else in the city.

The Plaza itself, a square block of space closed to vehicle traffic, was an exciting arrangement of multi-level terraces, fountains, staircases, planters and large dynamic abstract sculptures of metal and stone. It would have been the perfect place for all those lunch-lemmings to brown-bag it, or scurry back from one of the surrounding bistros with take-away.

Would have been.

Trouble was, the skateboard kids had discovered Century Plaza almost as soon as it was completed. Never mind that there were no less than four skate parks in the greater downtown area. Skate parks apparently required safety gear like pads and helmets, which made them the domain of the helplessly uncool.

So here they were, caroming around, flipping their boards up onto the marble edges of fountains, leaping down flights of stairs. The ratcheting din of their various wheeled toys was nowhere near enough to drown out their conflicting music. Clearly, they believed in headphones about as much as they believed in helmets.

How they could be so quick and agile in those clothes boggled the mind. Most of them wore pants that looked three sizes too large, sagging and bagging down over enormous Frankenstein shoes. Oversized sports jerseys billowed like sails in a fickle wind, often exposing bare arms covered with homemade ink-pen tattoos of rock band logos or pot leaves.

A machine gun and thirty seconds. That was all she'd need.

Or would a sniper rifle be better? Up from one of the high windows, picking them off one by one.

No … both! That was the ticket.

She could take out a dozen with the sniper rifle before the rest realized that the wipe-outs hadn't been caused by a miscalculated stunt, and then switch to the machine gun and mow the rest down in the panic.

Not at lunchtime, though. During the morning or afternoon hours, the Plaza would be emptier. The only witnesses and bystanders she'd have to worry about would be the dwindling population of smoke-break refugees and the occasional deliveryman.

She was midway down the steps from the Jensen Building when a parent's nightmare on skates plunged through a nearby knot of suits. They scattered, losing their dignity in a tie-flapping, briefcase-waving flurry. The kid – a teenage girl with too much figure packed into too skimpy of an outfit – shrieked wild laughter as she zipped through their midst.

A woman in sober charcoal grey almost took a header into the fountain, whirled, and shouted, "Why aren't you in school?" after the skater-chick.

Applause. Victory lap. Key to the city.

Public service.

Jeanette shook her head and hefted her bag higher on her shoulder. She slid through the crowds like she belonged there. Trim and pretty in a forest-green suit and a cream-colored silk blouse.

Upscale. Competent. Professional.

She was all of those things. In her chosen field. Her chosen field just didn't happen to be law, business, or politics.

Except, in a certain way, it was all of them.

A tall skinny kid with hair dyed the unrealistic orange of Kraft macaroni and cheese shot past on a bike, aiming for one of the sculptures that was unfortunately in the shape of a large sloping crest like a wave. It was as good as an engraved invitation to these people.

The kid went up the curved side, perhaps meaning to do some tricky maneuver at the top, but blew it and crashed in a tangle of handlebars and long, gawky limbs. He lay there, groaning and bleeding from abraded knees and palms.

"Idiot," grumbled a man in a dark suit, giving the newspaper tucked under his arm a satisfied little rattle.

"Pff," another man agreed, with a downward scornful look as he stepped around the boy without slowing.

Jeanette was beginning to believe that she could draw a gun and start plugging the skateboard kids right here and right now. Then, when she was done, she could pass the hat for donations and walk away with enough for a luxury cruise to the Caribbean.

Not that she needed the money. She could be on a flight to Bermuda tomorrow if she wanted. She had a nice house, an emerald-green convertible that still smelled showroom-new, and a television so big that it was like watching the Brobdingnagian Network. If it was only about the money, she could have retired long ago.

It was about … well, about doing a public service, wasn't it? And keeping busy. A career-minded woman had to keep herself busy.

Every now and then, police officers would swing through Century Plaza and encourage the skateboard kids to move along, but in Jeanette's observation, that was about as effective as waving a hand at flies buzzing over a dirty plate. They might disperse momentarily, but they'd be back a moment later as if nothing had ever happened.

What this situation called for was a fly swatter. Or a bug zapper.

She got through the open space without being run down, waited at a corner for the light to change, and checked her watch. Seven past twelve. She had eight minutes, the restaurant was a block up, and so far she didn't suspect anyone was following her. The fine hairs on the nape of her neck were not prickling with unease, and the adrenaline she felt speeding through her veins was the typical excitement of an impending job.

In a few minutes, she'd be seeing Rayburn.

That thought sent a different sort of prickle along the nape of her neck.

"Cool and professional, Jade," she admonished herself under her breath. "You know better."

No one was following. She was sure of it now. She was getting some looks; she got looks all the time. It was unavoidable. Men looked at women. Especially at small, slim, harmless-seeming blondes with soft white-blond hair and big green eyes. But these weren't the wrong sort of looks. Not the "she fell for it; here's our chance to eliminate her" looks, or the "hey, that could be the lady from the police sketch" ones that could lead to a call to any FBI tip line. They weren't thinking looks. Thinking looks were bad.

Fantasizing looks, on the other hand … well, she wasn't overjoyed about the notion that she might be prancing through some sleazy young lawyer's or perverted old banker's daydream, but she could live with it.

The Stag and Hound tried to present itself as an Olde English style pub, with lots of dark wood and fox-hunting prints. The specials included beer-battered fish and chips, bangers-and-mash, and shepherd's pie. The waitresses all wore white blouses, red corsets with black laces, black skirts, and silly little lace-trimmed caps.

Jeanette waited behind a quartet, three men and one woman, who seemed to be together but who were each conducting separate calls on cell phones. When it was her turn, she said, "Table for Dufarge, please."

The hostess picked up a leather-bound menu with a gold tassel dangling down from it, and led her toward the back of the pub. In the bar, where twenty different kinds of ale and lager were available, the TV was turned to a soccer game and the air was low and thick with smoke.

Dufarge. One of Rayburn's jokes, not a particularly funny one. Madame Dufarge had been one of the guillotine-hags of the French Revolution. Off with their heads.

The table was in a booth, tucked in a corner by a window. Jeanette sat down with her back to the wall, under a framed print showing a horse-back mounted hunting party galloping through a foggy meadow. She set her shoulderbag on the windowsill, slipping a hand into it so that she would be ready to switch on her cunning miniature tape recorder.

Paranoia or preparedness … toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. Either way, it had kept her alive this long.

And here he came. If she'd thought that she blended in well with the crowd, just another lunch-lemming, Rayburn stood out, and he did it on purpose.

Tall and well-built, he had a full head of black hair just beginning to go silver, a toothpaste-commercial smile, and enough of a resemblance to Pierce Brosnan that he turned heads. He knew it, too, and Jeanette was willing to bet that he made the most of it.

The hostess, who had been properly courteous and efficient when dealing with Jeanette, went all fluttery and girlish as she escorted Rayburn to the booth. She stopped short of 'dropping' his menu and having to bend way down to retrieve it, but her interest couldn't have been more apparent if she'd climbed right into his lap.

Rayburn wore a crisp suit the color of pewter, and had chosen to defy business-attire convention by pairing it not with a red power tie, but an iridescent one that seemed to shift from emerald to sapphire to amethyst depending on how the light struck its glossy fabric. He carried a calfskin briefcase that might have cost as much as a car.

A plain gold band glinted on his left hand. A wedding ring, but he had once mentioned to Jeanette that he was a widower for almost twenty years. He had a grown daughter, an Irish Setter, a skewed sense of humor, and that was about all she knew.

Jeanette took a mental deep breath as she pressed the "Record" button. He was a handsome son of a bitch. There were times when she thought she wouldn't mind climbing right into his lap herself, so she couldn't really blame the hostess. Wouldn't do, though, to mix business with pleasure.

Still, it didn't hurt to enjoy the scenery. Rayburn was much more scenic than Fletcher or Christopher, the other men she primarily dealt with in her association with the Company. Fletcher, a florid, beefy older man, would have fit in with the three-martini crowd. Christopher, younger and too twitchy to last long in this line of work, preferred to arrange meetings in more suburban venues like shopping mall food courts or fast-food places.

The hostess took their drink orders – Guinness for him, hot tea with honey and lemon for her – and left, though not without a backward glance or two.

"The fish and chips are very good here," he said. "Hungry?"

"Yes, all right."

His cobalt-blue eyes crinkled at the corners, showing the perfect degree of maturity and amusement. "How've you been, Jade?"

"Keeping out of trouble."

"You must be getting bored with that by now."

"I might," she said.

"Glad to hear it."

"Don't think that because I'm bored, I'll work cheap," Jeanette said.

"I know you better than that."

How well did he know her? That was the question. How much did they really know, Rayburn and Fletcher and Christopher and their nameless, faceless bosses? They knew how to contact her, and she wouldn't be surprised to learn that they knew where she lived. Had they gone poking into her past? It didn't much matter if they had; all of that was behind her now.

She had no close friends anymore, no relatives, no significant other. Never been married, never had kids. She didn't own a dog, cat, or goldfish. There was no living being that they could use against her if they decided that they wanted to put some pressure on her.

Besides, why would they? She had never crossed them, never let them down, never given them any reason to want to get rid of her. And if they ever decided that they did, well, 'Jade' had a few secrets stored away herself. Insurance. Like nuts for a long winter.

The hostess must have been reluctantly called back to her duties at the front of the pub, because a waitress brought their beverages, recited the specials, and jotted down two orders of fish and chips. She even performed these duties without slobbering all over Rayburn.

When she was gone, Jeanette turned to him with an expectant look. "So, what do you have for me?"

His eyes crinkled again. "Are we talking work, or play?"

"Work," she said, trying to quell an unprofessional flutter.

"Pity." He snapped open the expensive briefcase and took out a thick manila envelope, the kind padded on the inside with a layer of bubble wrap.

To outward appearances, she knew, this would merely seem to be one of two things, either of which were being repeated hundreds of times over in the vicinity of Century Plaza this very instant. Either a legitimate business lunch, or an affair masquerading as a business lunch.

Well, but it was business.

"You'll like this one," Rayburn said, sliding the padded envelope across the table to her. "It's practically an antique, but in beautiful condition."

"Is it loaded?"

**

What is SCOOT?

Scoot is a full novel, written by Christine Morgan, offered here for your enjoyment.

An assassin who's just accepted her latest contract, complete with target, weapon, and half her fee up front.

A skateboarding purse-snatcher, cruising along, always on the lookout for the next opportunistic score.

When their paths cross, it's bad news for both.

Lives in danger. Livelihoods on the line. Can't go to the police.

What would YOU do?

SCOOT! 

It is for sale as print book and as an eBook, but is also being published here, for free.  Look for a new chapter every Tuesday and Friday morning.

And if you can't wait to know how it ends, buy the eBook, it's only $0.99.  If you like it so much you want to give it as a gift or add it to your shelf, buy a print copy.