CHAPTER TWELVE

Putting on yellow quilted mitts to remove the meatloaf pan from the oven, Jamie barely batted an eye. "Depends on who it is, I guess. Why?"

"No reason."

"Hell of a thing to ask a person for no reason. Is there someone you're trying to get rid of?"

"No. I was only wondering."

"You wonder this kind of thing often?"

"Not usually." She couldn't see how to help in the kitchen without getting in the way, and leaned on a counter. "So you would, depending on who it was? Like who, for instance?"

"There've been times when I thought I'd kill for a publishing contract," Jamie said, setting the meatloaf on a trivet to rest before slicing. "Not even a six-figure one; a modest advance would do. Or an agent. I'd kill for an agent. Maybe for fifty thousand, I could publish my own book and promote the heck out of it, but it wouldn't be the same. Of course, that would mean I'd have to let people actually read my stuff …"

"I'm serious, here."

He spun his chair and studied her with dark, intent eyes that could have given Nathaniel Caron or even Johnny Depp a run for his money. "The question is if I'd kill someone for money. Is it someone I have a personal beef against? Or is it a total stranger?"

"Does it matter?"

"Sure, it does. Want something to drink? I've got that vanilla-flavor Pepsi."

"Thanks." She took one from the fridge and poured it over ice. "Why does it matter?"

"If it's someone I've got a beef against," Jamie said, "someone I really hated and really wanted dead, then, no, I wouldn't do it for the money."

"You wouldn't kill them?"

"For the money." His smile was predatory, like Bruno the Japanese fighting fish. Didn't suit him. "That would take away from the purity of the revenge, wouldn't it?"

"You're weird."

"If it was a total stranger, then no, I wouldn't do it for the money either."

"What, you'd kill a total stranger for fun?"

"I wouldn't do it at all. Not to a stranger. How would I know whether that person deserved it or not? I'd only have the word of whoever hired me."

"Then they'd have to deserve it?"

"They'd have to deserve it. They'd have to have done something against me personally, or against people I cared about. Otherwise, what's it to me whether they live or die? If someone wants to hide a person to kill someone else, I think that's cowardly. It's wanting them dead, but not wanting it badly enough to risk yourself."

"Fifty thousand dollars, though," Allison said. "That's big bucks."

"Not really."

She looked around the apartment, which was nicer than hers but still no high-rent ritzy downtown condo. "No?"

"It wouldn't buy a house in this city," he said. "Wouldn't leave me set for life. Fifty grand doesn't go as far as it used to. A good car would eat up half of that, and a really good car would eat up most of it. On the other hand, if I got caught, I would be set for life … life behind bars."

"You'd get the same thing for no profit killing the person you hate," she said.

Jamie shook his head. "Not necessarily. Murder-for-hire, or assassination, or whatever you want to call it, is premeditated and in cold blood. They catch you, and they throw the book at you. Killing someone for emotional reasons … in a fit of jealous rage, say … you could argue it down to a lesser charge. If you could convincingly claim that it was a crime of passion, a heat-of-the-moment thing, and not something you planned to do. Juries are more sympathetic in those cases."

"Do you sit around and think about this stuff?"

"Hey, you're the one who brought up the subject." He dumped the baby carrots into the water and set the timer. With a fork, he speared one of the potato chunks and tested it. "These are ready. Want to drain and mash them while I slice the meatloaf?"

"Sure." She poured the pot into the colander, clouds of steam billowing into her face. "Let me get this straight … it's wrong to kill someone unless you have personal reasons? And that it's cowardly, if you have personal reasons, to hire someone else to do the job for you?"

"Basically," Jamie said, maneuvering the meatloaf from the pan onto a cutting board. Clear juice ran from it, collecting in the trench around the edge of the board.

"Interesting."

"What's this all about, anyway? Who do you want dead?"

"Nobody. Sheesh!"

"What, then? Were you offered the job? Fifty thousand dollars to kill someone? Anybody I know? Not me, is it?"

"Jamie, what kind of person do you think I am?" She dumped the potatoes back in the pot, slopped in some milk, salt, pepper and most of a stick of margarine, and plugged the hand mixer into the wall.

"A good one," he said. "But you do have your sinister side."

"Sinister!"

"Maybe not sinister," he amended. "Still, you did tell me about how you like to disguise yourself and terrorize innocent pedestrians on that skateboard of yours."

"Terrorize!"

"I have fish," he said. "My mom has the parrot."

"What?" She was thoroughly confused for a moment, then got it. "Oh. Sorry. But I don't terrorize people."

She felt like she was on her skateboard again, whirring close to the edge of a precipice. While Jamie knew that she liked to dress up as a teenage boy and go caroming along on her board, she hadn't told him about her other hobbies. He didn't know about the shoplifting, or the purses.

"You've never been out innocently minding your own business on the sidewalk when a pack of skateboarders come speeding by, have you?" he asked. "Maybe blasting their rap music. Maybe just shouting and laughing, unable to construct a sentence without using an obscenity every other word."

"I think I know those guys."

"Face it, Allison … they can be scary. How are the potatoes coming?"

"Good." She stuck the mixer in, and began mashing. Raising her voice, she said, "All right, so maybe boarders do scare regular folks. It doesn't make us killers."

"Point taken," he said, laying slabs of meatloaf on plates. "And I'm sorry for besmirching your reputation. But you did bring it up."

"I did. You like lumpy mashed potatoes, or smooth?"

"Lumpy. Gives them that homemade taste."

"Hey!" Allison cried, suddenly remembering. "You promised me the instant kind! Flakes from a box!"

"I lied," Jamie said, his grin widening. "I wouldn't eat that crap if you paid me. Not even fifty thousand dollars."

"Somehow, I don't think shows like Fear Factor would be as much of a hit if they only challenged people to eat instant mashed potatoes," she said, scooping her finger through the pot. She tasted, had to admit that they were pretty good, and flicked a wad at him.

"No food fights in my kitchen." He grabbed a dishtowel and spun it into a rope. "I'm warning you."

"You wouldn't dare," she said, turning away to reach for a large serving spoon.

The towel snapped out and stung her on the butt. She jumped, whirled.

"Wouldn't I?" he asked, still with the grin.

"You want these potatoes on your plate or over your head?"

He let go of the towel and held up blameless hands. "Truce."

"Jerk."

"Meanie."

"And to think I bought pie." She rubbed the sore spot. "That hurt, you know."

"Shall I kiss it and make it better?"

Allison scoffed. "That, I'd like to see."

"You have eyes back there?"

"Ha, ha."

Jamie puckered his lips and made kissy noises. "Bring it on over here, why don't you?"

"Smartass."

"Yours is the ass that's smarting," he said.

She pivoted and cocked her hip so that her butt was thrust jauntily in his direction. "Well?"

To her surprise, he propelled his chair forward with one strong push, curled an arm around her waist to hold her in place, and smacked a loud kiss on the rear pocket of her jeans, right where he'd scored with the towel.

"Jamie!" she yelped. She tried to pull away, he wouldn't let go, and she fell into his lap.

"Most places, it costs thirty bucks for this kind of action," he said.

"Let go of me!" She scrambled out of his lap, her usual agility abandoning her, and stood flustered in the middle of his kitchen. Everything she had said to Uncle Bob not an hour ago came back to her in a tangled, confused rush. And, having no other idea how to handle it, she approached as Scoot might – recklessly and head-on. "Was that a pass? Are you making a pass at me, Jamie Tremayne?"

He eyed her. "Not if it's going to get a pot of mashed potatoes dumped on my head."

"I'm not going to dump potatoes on you."

"Gravy?"

"Not even the carrots. Unless you're planning to throw the meatloaf."

"I wasn't."

"Making a pass?"

"Planning to throw the meatloaf."

"So it was a pass?"

"If you want it to be."

She raked her hands through her hair and let out a huff of exasperated breath. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," he said. "Let's let it drop, shall we? Our dinner's going to get cold."

"Okay," she said, still looking at him.

Did she want it to be a pass? Was she interested in Jamie? He was a friend, yes, and a good one. They had a lot in common. He lived vicariously through books and she lived vicariously through other people's belongings. Neither of them much liked to talk about their pasts, and they both liked to poke fun at the craziness of the world around them.

And he was cute, with his long honey-colored hair tied back in that little black velvet Amadeus ribbon.

They filled their plates and went into the living room. His apartment, while spacious, only had a dining nook with a stout round wooden table, two chairs, a hanging light fixture, and several framed wildlife photographs – grey wolf, black bear, bobcat, mountain lion, bald eagle.

The television was on with the volume down low, and Allison saw that it was tuned to one of those adventure-race shows where teams competed in hideously grueling challenges. They went biking or hiking or kayaking or climbing their way over the world's most unforgiving terrain, driving themselves beyond exhaustion into sheer physical and emotional meltdowns, and claimed to love every minute of it.

"I thought I was an adrenaline junkie," she said, sitting down in one of the chairs, "but even I'm not crazy enough to do that stuff."

"What, you don't want to ride a mountain bike down a sheer cliff face in a thunderstorm?"

"No, not particularly."

"Looks exhilarating. You might like it."

"People get killed doing that. They don't show it on TV, but they do."

"I know. One guy got killed in Washington State not too long ago. The team above his dislodged a boulder while they were on a rock-climbing leg of the race, and it fell on him."

"Was that the guy who had to cut off his own arm with a pocketknife?"

"Different guy." His wheelchair had a lever that raised it to table-height, so that they were at the same level. "The one who cut his arm off was out hiking, not racing. And it was someplace in Utah, I think."

"Brr," Allison said. "The unforgiving wilderness, huh?"

"Yeah." He punched the Off button on the remote.

As they ate, they chatted about neighborhood stuff. She told him about the Beekers and their new headboard, and about Tisha Anthony's insistence that she get her nails done. He told her that Nathaniel Caron had been in to buy a bunch of books on parapsychology and the occult that an Atherton student had traded in for store credit, that he'd had to chase some of Jake Oberdorfer's friends out of the erotica section, and that Mama Delilah had come by to offer him a kitten.

"She thinks every used bookstore needs a resident cat," Jamie explained. "Or she just has a surplus of kittens and is desperate to unload them. I saw that she also had a 'Free Kittens' sign in the window of the pet groomer."

"Should have taken the kitten," Allison said. "You turned her down, and now she might put a curse on you."

"That's just what I'd need, thanks for the cheerful thought."

It was almost nine by the time they had finished their pie, which they heated up in the microwave and served with scoops of the vanilla ice cream Jamie found in his freezer.

All through the dinner conversation and dessert, Allison had been thinking about the incident with the towel. How she'd fallen – or he had pulled her – into his lap. His arm had been very strong. She supposed that she should have realized it … of course his arms were strong, from pushing that chair around all day.

Had it really been a pass? Had she blown a chance at something that could have been good by reacting like some skittish virgin? Or, worse, like somebody who was put off by his disability?

She helped him with the dishes over his protests, and then, as she was getting ready to go, leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

On the corner of the mouth, really, and not just a sisterly peck. She felt the smoothness of his skin and smelled spicy after-shave and understood in that instant that he must have shaved again that afternoon solely for her benefit. She let her lips linger a beat or two longer than she had intended, hearing his quick indrawn gasp.

A fluttering thrill, similar to that she got when riding her skateboard, went through her. She drew back before she could get swept away in the rush. "Thank you for dinner, Jamie."

Jamie sat in his chair gazing solemnly up at her with his dark eyes, a hesitant smile playing about his mouth. "Thank you for dessert."

"You liked the pie?"

"There was pie?"

"Very funny."

"So … out of curiosity, what was that for?"

"Maybe it was a pass."

"Was it?"

"If you want it to be."

**