CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jeanette hadn't been expecting him to call her at all, let alone later that very same day. She'd figured he would try to run, try to hide from her, and had admitted to herself that if he did, her chances of actually finding him again were slim.

So she had been downright shocked when the cell phone chirped while she picked unenthusiastically at an early dinner. She hadn't eaten lunch, and only coffee and half a toasted bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, yet she wasn't the least bit hungry.

She didn't like this. Didn't like not being in control. Hated elements of random chance. Hated flukes and freaks of fate. This was why she never went to Las Vegas.

Even as a child, she had developed an abiding distrust of games that relied on the luck of the dice or the draw. She couldn't stand having her next move determined by a random number, to be told by the fall of the dice where to put her piece on the board.

And now, this. This random chance, this freak of fate. One instant of bad luck – to be spotted and targeted by Scoot the purse-snatcher – and everything was hanging by a thread.

Bigfoot, for all of his apparent Neanderthal wit, had proved to be either clever or lucky. Or both. Whichever, he had found the kid called Scoot and agreed to follow him home.

Feeling like an oncoming disaster had been narrowly averted, Jade tore into the rest of her meal with a voracious appetite. She was at a seafood place by the lake, which she had chosen more for the view than for the cuisine. But now that her taste for food had returned, she devoured the grilled shrimp and the blackened salmon and the Cajun-flavored rice.

Out on the water, clean white sailboats moved serenely across the deep mirror-green water. Closer to shore, some fools on powered watercraft zoomed and sped … the rich, nautical version of skateboard kids, and if she'd been out on her boat enjoying a peaceful Saturday afternoon when one of them whizzed by, she'd be tempted to pick them off with a harpoon gun. Or a torpedo.

She could see the baronial estates of Palmyra Hills, picture windows turned to shimmering gilt by the sun, the grounds so painstakingly manicured that they made her own once-a-week landscaped yard look like the wilderness. Even the mansions right on the lakeshore, mansions with cordoned-off swimming areas, boasted pools as well.

Her place was nice. More than she needed. She certainly didn't need a fourteen-bedroom palatial monstrosity with custom everything and half a dozen live-in staff. She would have rattled around like a button in a clothes dryer. She didn't want servants who might notice and remark upon the odd hours she kept.

Still, the palatial homes were nice to look at. Nice to dream about. Nice, even, to aspire to, if she ever decided that she needed to raise her fees or take on ten jobs a year.

Provided, that was, she could salvage this job and not have to go groveling and apologizing to Rayburn and his employers.

Bigfoot had not called back by the time she finished her dinner, so she ordered coffee and a slice of key lime pie for dessert. Impatient now, she kept checking the phone to make sure it was on, that it was getting a signal. Every time she checked it she worried she might have turned it off by accident, and had to check it again, until she had to push the phone to the other side of the table, close her eyes, and take some nice deep steadying breaths.

When she opened her eyes, she was looking at her target.

Jeanette blinked.

He was still there.

The man from the photographs.

She had only given them a cursory look, but she had a good memory for faces. It served her well in her chosen career.

Of course, in this part of town there might be hundreds of good-looking blond men with bronze tans, athletic bodies and megawatt smiles. Almost as many men like that as there would be women. But it was him. She was sure of it.

He and a gorgeous brunette in a red cocktail dress were being shown to a corner table. Her target was dressed with casual "I'm rich so I can do what I like" insolence, foregoing a suit in favor of comfortable linen pants and a plum-colored polo shirt. His hair was tousled and his tan was more golden than ever, as if he had just stepped off his sailboat … or out of an aftershave commercial.

His date did not look as though she had stepped off a sailboat. His date looked as if she had been in a salon since eight a.m., getting worked on by a team of experts borrowed from Nicole Kidman. She had a flawless café-au-lait complexion, ebony hair, and the large, striking, deep sapphire-blue eyes of a Disney cartoon princess. The diamonds in her ears and around her neck were simple and tasteful but still might have financed a trip to Europe. The young woman looked passingly familiar to Jeanette, as if she'd seen that face before, perhaps on the cover of a magazine or in a movie.

Sipping her coffee, Jeanette watched the couple take their seats. Her nerves were yammering, but outwardly she was cool as ever.

Here was that very element of luck she had just been thinking about. Random chance, pure coincidence. He had come right into the very restaurant where she was having dinner. And here she was without the gun.

Not that she would have shot him even if she'd had it. She couldn't haul a gun out of her purse, blow him away and run for it. For one thing, her car was in valet parking. For another, she chose the time and place. That had always been the way, that was the way, that would always be the way she did this.

Control. It was all about control. Having it, being in it.

The maitre-de addressed the target as "Mr. Westbrook." His date called him "Ben." He didn't look like a Ben. He looked like a Chet, or a Chip. Something preppy. But now she at least had a name for him. That was a step in the right direction.

Watching them, she caught herself wondering if the brunette – he called her "Sophia" – was the one who'd hired the job. She cut off that line of speculation fast. It wasn't her business. God, she hated these personal ones.

Maybe this was a sign. She had allowed herself to be lured into taking a personal one against her better judgment. Lured by the money, lured by the challenge she'd seen smoldering in Rayburn's cobalt eyes. And almost from the moment she'd agreed, it had all gone hideously wrong.

No personal ones.

In the old days, they'd been plenty personal. Deirdre Vaughn had been the first one to hire her to get rid of a bad husband, but she hadn't been the last. Deirdre'd had friends, and discreet word had gotten around to many an eager ear.

There had been a rash of deaths that year in that particular social circle. Husbands who slipped in the tub. Husbands who were stabbed during muggings gone too far. Husbands who were shot, presumably by muggers, when leaving the little love nests where they kept their mistresses. Husbands who didn't see to it that their cars got regular maintenance. In one memorable case, a husband whose death was ruled accidental, an experiment with autoerotic asphyxia gone tragically, humiliatingly, fatally wrong.

One of those bereaved widows had waxed remorseful, and told her friends that she wanted to confess. Jeanette had killed her. She'd hated doing it, but the act had convinced the rest of the women of the benefits of continued silence. They had quietly gone on to enjoy their insurance settlements.

That had been the end of Jeanette's connection with any of them. She was no longer a friend of a friend, doing a favor for a modest amount of cash. Even Deirdre withdrew from her. And Jeanette had vowed that from then on, she would not get involved in anyone's personal life.

The trouble was, she'd found that she had a knack for murder. And a fondness for it. There was a strange paradox in how alive she felt when killing someone else. As if it was her way of showing the world, one person at a time, that she, Jeanette Kurrell, was more important than the rest of them.

With no other burning interests, she had started taking more jobs. Building up her connections. Letting word get around. She'd started small, but she was good.

And only the impersonal ones. The ones where she only had to worry about greed, and gain, and envy. No jilted lovers. No battered wives. No broken hearts. Only lowdown dirty avarice and callous necessity. She heard a lot of speeches that went, "It's regrettable, it truly is, but …"

Businessmen and politicians were her clients these days. Corporations, too. The occasional university professor or scientist in the cutthroat world of academia. Prior to yesterday's meeting with Rayburn, her last job had involved a scientist. The poor, foolish, stubborn idealistic son of a bitch had actually invented a weight-loss drug that worked, that was cheap and safe and effective. As far as the enormously lucrative weight-loss industry was concerned, he had to go.

Having never struggled with her weight, Jeanette hadn't felt any qualms about killing him. Now, as she ordered a second piece of pie so she could watch her target a little longer, she hoped she wouldn't be sorry for that later.

By the look of it, Mr. Westbrook and Sophia were not married. Dating, Jeanette thought, and not for very long. They were still in the parry-and-riposte stage of courtship that made her think they hadn't yet slept together.

Which meant that Sophia most likely wasn't in on the murder plot. She appeared genuinely interested in and attracted to Ben, and wasn't seething with the buried fury required to crave someone's death badly enough to hire it done. She was too young, as well. A woman that young didn't think in terms of hiring a killer. If she wanted her lover dead, she'd be the one to do it herself, in a fit of passion.

If there was a Mrs. Westbrook, though … or if lovely Sophia had been seeing someone else, someone who was the jealous type …

She had to stop this. It was useless wheel-spinning, getting her nowhere and only complicating things. Her job was simple. Westbrook dead by his own gun. Rayburn hadn't specified that it should look like a suicide – in the personal ones, people didn't like it to look like a suicide because that often meant no fat payoff from the insurance company. So, that meant Jeanette was free to do it her own way.

He looked like something of a ladies' man. Flirt with him, get him alone, and pow? She'd done that before. But he did seem quite captivated by his date – who could blame him? – and might prove to be one of those rarest of men … the faithful kind.

They had drinks and appetizers, and by then the restaurant was filling up with the later crowd. Jeanette had drunk three cups of coffee, feeling the buzz, and eaten more pie than was good for her. Jon still had not called. The waiter was giving her the evil eye, clearly wanting her to shove off so he could fill her table with a couple or group whose bill, and consequently tip, would be higher.

Just as well that she didn't have the gun. She'd been too visible here, though from the moment Sophia had walked in, it wasn't like many people were paying attention to her. She paid, left an adequate tip, and retrieved her car from the valet. Down the block, she pulled to the curb and dialed the phone she had given to Bigfoot.

Nothing. Had the idiot turned it off?

She drove around for a while, fingers drumming the steering wheel, humming under her breath, fidgeting with the radio. Nerves and too much coffee … this wasn't like her, and she didn't care for the feeling. She felt too edgy, too high-strung, too out of control. In a mood like this, she might do something stupid.

The sun went down, the city lights came on and turned the lake into an onyx teardrop in a dazzling diamond choker. She found herself by Century Plaza again. The downtown streets were full of people from opposite ends of the spectrum. Men and women in evening clothes going to the theater or opera, grubby bums panhandling on streetcorners.

When he'd called, he'd said he'd found Scoot at the skate park on Pine Street … but that Scoot was leaving. She'd told him to follow, and to call her back when he knew where Scoot lived.

But he hadn't called. Why hadn't he called? Where the hell did Scoot live? It had to be in town. Punks on skateboards didn't commute back and forth from the suburbs.

He might have lost Scoot.

Jeanette gripped the steering wheel.

If he had, if he'd lost Scoot, it would be just like him to be too cowardly to call her up and say so. He would be afraid of making her mad. And with good reason.

So … where was he, then? Was he still out there in a desperate scramble, hoping to pick up Scoot's trail again? Or had he decided that his only chance would be to cut and run?

She turned onto Prewett, which was even more garish by night with flashing neon signs everywhere. Two muscle cars were revving at a light, preparing to race. Hookers paraded up and down the sidewalks in heels and tight miniskirts, most of them too fat or too thin, smoking, chewing gum. A blood-red strobe light pulsed outside Club Dracula, where an overflow of black-clad Goths grinned inhuman vampire-grins at passers-by. A fight had broken out in front of a strip club and a trio of teenagers in gang colors had broken into a parked car.

Smiley's Motel had a large sign with a bright yellow winking smiley face, and offered "Free Adult Movies, Hourly-Nightly-Weeky Rate's, Kitchen Unit's with Frig," complete with misspellings and misplaced apostrophes. It had been dismal when she'd seen it by daylight. Now the peeling paint, weedy sidewalks and cracked windows were concealed by shadow, but not enough to make anyone mistake this place for the Ritz.

It was a two-story U-shape around a sunken patch of dirt that might have once featured a pool but now featured beer cans and crack vials. The arms of the U faced the street. Bigfoot's room was around the back.

As Jeanette's car rolled slowly past the filled slots, a door flew open and a drunken woman reeled out, shouting obscenities at a naked man in the doorway. Naked … except for the cowl, cape, and utility belt of a Batman costume.

"I fuckin' told you, you sick fuck, no sick fuckin' stuff!" the woman shrieked. "Motherfuck!"

The Eskimos, Jeanette had always heard, had something like ninety different words for snow in their language. Here on Prewett, the entire language seemed to consist of maybe two dozen variants of "fuck."

She grimaced. She used to like Batman. Had, as a little girl, sometimes thought how cool it would be to be Catwoman when she grew up. So much for fantasies. A mostly-naked Batman with a potbelly and a half-mast erection was almost enough to turn her celibate.

Bigfoot's unit was dark, but that didn't mean anything. Half the units at Smiley's were dark, and she was willing to bet that plenty of them were inhabited. By pallid subterranean creatures, maybe, or giant rats.

Two guys were sitting outside of his door. She could tell even in the poor lighting that neither of them was him. Neither was a hairy red Bigfoot. One was young, stocky, six-foot and black. The other was a scrawny, scabby little monkey.

Though she didn't have the gun, she had a gun. It was not in the glove compartment, but in a plastic box under the passenger seat. The box was a variation on the old hollowed-out-book gag, except that it had once held audio tapes, an unabridged reading of Dean Koontz's Mr. Murder. Like making the lunch reservations under Dufarge, this was another of Rayburn's ideas of a joke.

Jeanette opened the plastic box. Inside, the ridges that had once held tape cassettes in neat little slots had been cut away to provide room for a compact 9-millimeter. It was one of her favorite guns, fitting well in her hand.

She had gone home to change after her last visit here – had been tempted to burn her track suit for fear of what lice, germs and vermin it might have picked up in Jon's pigsty of a room – and was now in a smart beige linen suit and jade-green blouse. She looked like an Avon lady, a church volunteer, or a social worker.

The jacket's pockets were roomy, so she slipped the gun into one and kept her hand on it as she got out of the car. If need be, she'd shoot through the pocket. It would wreck the jacket, but she could live with that.

The black kid said something to the scabby monkey, and they both laughed. They had crude, sneering, sexist laughs.

"Is Jon around?" she asked.

Her tone, indifferent and unafraid, took them aback.

"Haven't seen him," the black kid said. He stood up. "Haven't smelled him neither. But hey, baby, what you need him for?"

The other guy, the scabby monkey who looked fifty but was probably only a hard-used thirty, only stared at her. He had hard, starving junkie's eyes and several days' worth of stubble.

Inspiration struck. "I'm his new parole officer," she said dryly. "Mind stepping aside so I can see if he's home?"

The black kid threw a guilty look down. There on the cracked and weed-grown sidewalk in front of the door, strewn between where he and the scabby monkey had been sitting, was an assortment of drug paraphernalia. He looked back at Jeanette and drew himself up in a macho posturing stance. Daring her to bust them.

His bravado was so transparent it was funny, but she didn't want to push him. Pushed by a small white woman, a kid like this could turn mean. She acted as if she didn't notice the stuff on the sidewalk.

"What happened to Ramirez?" the scabby monkey asked.

"Ramirez?"

"Jon's old parole officer."

She sensed a trap, and said, "I don't know anything about that. I'm just here to do my job. I'd appreciate it if you'd move, so that I can."

"Tellin' you, he ain't here," the black kid said, but he shuffled out of her way. "Hey, Weasel, man, I'm thinkin' like Abraham Lincoln it's time we beat feet 'cause I could use me somethin' to eat. Whatchoo say?"

The scabby monkey – Weasel – didn't move. He ogled Jeanette, but his eyes were so empty and dead that it was like being leered at by a corpse.

She stepped up to the door, thinking that if Weasel laid a finger on her, she would stomp her heel into his crotch. She'd have to disinfect her foot and burn her shoe if she did, which would be a shame because she liked these shoes. But, like the linen jacket with the gun in the pocket, she could buy a new one if she had to.

At the last minute, Weasel did hitch himself sideways. She rapped on the door and raised her voice. "Jon?"

There was no answer, not even the tense hush of someone holding his breath and hoping she'd go away. Of course, it was hard to tell with what sounded like orgies and barroom brawls going on in the rest of the units. She knocked again.

"Told you," the black kid said.

Jeanette didn't get the impression that they were hiding anything either, at least, not anything about Bigfoot. He wasn't here. She could try getting a spare key from the manager – the parole officer story would probably hold up in a place like this – but it would be no use.

"If you see him," she said, "tell him I was here. I'll try him again tomorrow."

"You can try me anytime, baby," the black kid said, regaining some of his swagger now that she was leaving without busting them for possession, or possession with intent to sell.

She wanted to smile and tell him that if he called her 'baby' again, she'd shoot him in the eye. But she ignored him, and walked back to her car. The vehicle's engine caught with an almost relieved sound, as if it knew that it would have been stolen, stripped, or at the very least spray-painted with gang tags had Jeanette left it unattended much longer.

With no other ideas at the moment, she headed for home.

Where the message light was blinking on her answering machine.

"Hello, Jade." A voice like rough velvet.

Her heart momentarily stopped.

He knew. Somehow, incredibly, unbelievably, Rayburn knew.

Then a few things occurred to her in quick succession – Rayburn was just doing his Charlie's Angels shtick, which he reserved for times when he was in a good humor. Rayburn surely wouldn't have been in a good humor if he knew about her troubles. Further, this was the plan. This was the routine. She had set it up herself.

According to the routine, Rayburn or one of his associates would contact her, via this private, unlisted number she kept only for her jobs. No specifics, just a query-call to see if she was available and interested. A meeting would be set up. At the meeting, the vital information would change hands. And then, sometime in the next day or two, she'd get another call.

This call. This preliminary follow-up.

Normally, she would use that intervening time to go over the information and make her preliminary plan. When the follow-up call came, she could ask further questions to refine her plan.

"Are you there?" Rayburn's voice asked on the recording. He waited a few beats, then went on. "I was just calling to check in, but I'll have to try and reach you again later. I do hope everything's going well. And that you're still thinking about it."

Despite everything else, Jeanette flushed. His dinner offer. She had almost forgotten. Understandably, perhaps … it would have to take the biggest disaster of her professional career to drive thoughts of a date with Rayburn out of her head.

"Talk to you soon," he said, and there was a click as he hung up.

**

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Eva was waiting tentatively in the kitchen when Allison emerged from the bathroom. "Allison?"

"How's Hector?" The steam had helped ease her throat, and though it hurt to talk, she almost sounded like herself again. Almost.

"Fine," Eva said. "They are not arresting him."

"He saved my life, Eva. That crazy bastard would have killed me."

"Who was he? Do you know?"

Allison shook her head and repeated what she'd told Officer Flyte. "I've seen him around here and there." She paused. "And … yesterday … I thought he was following me for a while. Then I didn't see him, and figured I was being paranoid. I guess I wasn't, huh?"

"But you are all right? Your eye looks bad. And your poor neck."

"I'm fine. Or I will be." She looked past Eva, but the apartment on the other side appeared empty. "Where is Hector? You said they didn't arrest him."

"No," Eva said, and frowned. "But Teddi hit the roof when she found out I had been letting him stay here without paying any rent. She threw him out."

"What?" In her outrage, she spoke too loudly, and pain like a sliver of glass lodged in the soft meat of her throat.

"It is all right," Eva said. "He's with Jamie Tremayne."

"Jamie? Jamie was here?"

"I wouldn't let him come up. I thought you would not want him to see all this."

"Oh, God."

"He knows you are not hurt, though," she explained.

"Does the whole neighborhood know?"

"This is the most exciting weekend for Dunley since the election-day riots," Eva said seriously. "First Mr. Abelard and now you."

She groaned. But she didn't have time for this. She had to … "Listen, Eva, will you do me a favor?"

"Of course, Allison."

"This is going to seem weird."

Eva's lips quirked. "Really?"

Kneeling by the recliner and trying to ignore the ripe, coppery slaughterhouse smell of the blood, she said, "Just don't ask me any questions or tell anyone about it, okay?"

"I promise."

"I want you to hang onto this for me," she said, unsticking the envelope from the underside of the foot cushion. She was glad to see that no blood had seeped down that far.

"Is it drugs?" Eva asked, her voice even as she eyeballed the envelope.

"No."

"You swear to God and the Holy Mother?"

"I swear to God and the Holy Mother, it isn't drugs."

"Because I won't keep drugs for you, or for anybody."

"I wouldn't ask you to," Allison said.

Not without some visible reluctance, Eva took the envelope. "All right."

"Thank you, Eva. And thank Hector for me. He really did save my life."

As she got up, her foot kicked something small out from under the recliner. It whirled into view. It was a cell phone, the pre-paid disposable kind. Allison didn't own one. Nor had she found a phone of any kind, though she'd expected to, in the purse.

But the guy … one of the times she'd looked back to see if he was still following her, he had been talking on a cell phone. This had to be his, dropped in the scuffle.

Feigning nonchalance, as if it was hers, she picked it up. She got her trusty familiar duffel, which still had her skateboard, helmet and pads in it. Not sure how long it would be until she was allowed back in her apartment, she left those items in there and added a few changes of clothes and other odds and ends. And the tiny cassette from the miniature tape recorder.

Uncle Bob, Teddi Lace and Officers Flyte and Rugerro were waiting down the hall by the stairwell. Though the other doors were all shut, Allison got the crawling sensation of many curious eyes socked up against peepholes and watching her as she walked by.

"We figure he came in by the balcony," Officer Rugerro said as she neared them.

"I heard the door open," Allison said. "Felt the breeze. That's what woke me up."

"Your uncle is going to take you to his house now," Flyte said. "Someone from the department will contact you tomorrow. Later today, really. And we'll have you come down to the station and make a statement. Just going over what you told us here tonight."

"Oh!" Allison blurted, then grimaced and spoke in a harsh whisper. "The … the guy … is he going to be okay? He's not … he's not dead or anything, is he?"

"He was alive when they loaded him into the ambulance," Rugerro said with a glower that made her think he wasn't exactly glad of this fact.

According to neighborhood lore, when he'd heard about what Needles had done to the flasher, Rugerro had taken the tattoo artist out for a beer. He had also reportedly busted the nose of Tina Wendmeyer's ex-boyfriend when that ex had shown up at the 7-Eleven threatening to rearrange Tina's face. Rugerro was no one to fuck with when the neighborhood was concerned.

"I think the bullet went into his lung," Eva said. "It was a sucking chest wound. And he lost a lot of blood."

"Lucky for him you were here," Flyte said.

"Yeah, good job," Rugerro said, like he was trying to sound as if he meant it but really would have been just as happy – maybe happier – if Eva had not been so quick to provide emergency medical care.

Fifteen minutes later, Allison was in Uncle Bob's living room, surrounded by rock and roll memorabilia. The crowning glory of his collection was an antique but still functional jukebox, loaded with records. He had stacked them randomly. Jazz and sixties' protest songs and big-band classics and fifties' beach music and disco. It was always a musical adventure at Uncle Bob's.

She called Jamie, who was wide awake and waiting to hear from her. Talking fast despite the clawing pain in her throat, so as not to let him get a word in, she assured him that she wasn't hurt. This was fudging the truth a little because by now she felt like she'd put in a year in a torture chamber. She thanked him for volunteering to give Hector a place to stay. Told him she would see him tomorrow.

"If you can stand the sight of me, that is," she said. "I'm not exactly ready for a photo shoot."

"Allison –"

"Tomorrow, Jamie. Please?"

"But I –"

"Tomorrow," she said. Right then, she couldn't stand to hear the distraught concern in his voice. It would make her cry all over again. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Uncle Bob came back into the living room as she hung up. He held a tray with two steaming mugs and a plate of brownies.

"Warm milk," he said. "With a splash of vanilla extract, a dash of cinnamon, and a squirt of that phony whipped cream out of the can. I didn't have any cocoa. So, for our chocolate, we'll have to eat these double-fudge walnut brownies."

"Wow," Allison said. "You didn't have to –"

"Stop telling me what I do or don't have to do," he scolded gently. "I had enough of that on the way over here in the car. Allie-girl, did you honestly think I was going to let you spend the rest of the night in that building?"

"I could have stayed with Eva."

"Not hardly. Not happenin', as the kids say."

She curled her hands around the mug, which had a white dollop of whipped cream melting over the side. "What about Mom?"

"What about her?" He blew into his own mug, sipped, wiped away a foamy mustache.

"Does she have to know about this?"

"She is your mother."

"She'd freak out," Allison said. "So would Dad. They'd say that I never should have moved out on my own, and they'd want me to come home."

"They can't make you do anything. Wasn't that what your big rebellion was all about? Showing them that you could take care of yourself?"

"And then this happens," she croaked. "Some nutjob breaks into my apartment and almost kills me … that's taking care of myself?"

"Allie, you're an adult," he said. "A young one, maybe, but you're over twenty-one. If you don't want to tell them, you don't have to."

"But you think I should."

"Family is family." He shrugged, took a brownie. "Wouldn't they want to know that you're okay?"

"I am okay. Besides, the only one who'd care is Missy, and I don't want to scare her. It's better this way."

"If that's how you want it." Bob chewed for a while; the brownies were moist and dark and dense.

Allison took one, found that opening her mouth that far hurt her split lip, and broke a piece off to nibble on.

"Are you ready yet to tell me about it?" Uncle Bob asked.

"There isn't much more to tell," she said. "I don't know him."

"Tony Rugerro said they found a bike in the alley behind your building, next to the ladder he must've used to get up there. By the looks of that ladder, he probably got it from Sam's junkyard, and it was a wonder it didn't break apart under him."

"Too bad it didn't," Allison said.

They chewed brownie and sipped warm milk for a while. Allison found the trickle of the milk down her throat simultaneously soothing and excruciating.

"I've seen you sometimes, out riding that skateboard of yours," Uncle Bob said.

"You have? But …"

"Oh, you're dressed like a boy, sure enough, but I know it's you. What your mother would say about that, I'd like to hear."

"I wouldn't," Allison said.

The fact that Bob had recognized her didn't upset her much. He was more observant than most people gave him credit for, especially his own sister. Everyone thought he was a harmless eccentric with a thing for moldy oldies, but he saw a lot from his store.

"Anyway, I've seen you with whole crowds of kids, some of them on skates or those scooter-things or bikes. This guy, maybe he was from that crowd?"

"Yeah. I think he was." She told Bob how she had seen the red-haired guy around occasionally, how she'd seen him at the skate park. "And then it seemed like he was following me. I thought I lost him after a couple of blocks."

"The gun, though, Allie. Where'd the gun come from?"

She studied the carpet, which was burnt-orange shag mashed flat by years of wear and tear. "That's … that's kind of … tricky."

"If I'm going to help you, I need you to be honest with me. Where did you get it? Did you buy it?"

"I … sort of … found it."

"Found it?" His eyebrows climbed toward his comb-over. "Found a loaded gun?"

"Sort of."

"Did you steal it?"

"Well …"

"Allie, I'm not going to be mad at you," he said, setting aside his mug and half-eaten brownie. He put his hands on her shoulders. "But the police are going to ask these same questions, and you'll have to have a better story than 'I sort of found it' to tell them."

Allison's head felt plated with iron, it was so heavy. She couldn't lift it to meet his gaze. "If I told them the truth, though, they'd arrest me."

"Tell me, then."

"It was …" She swallowed thickly, like she was trying to choke down a sticky wad of guilt. It hurt her throat. "It was in a purse. I stole a woman's purse on Friday, and the gun was in it. That's why I asked you about guns. I didn't know what to do. I should have gotten rid of it. I meant to get rid of it, and then all this had to happen. When the guy and I were fighting, we knocked everything over. The gun fell out of the purse. And then when Hector and Eva came in, Hector saw it and picked it up. I tried to tell him not to, but I wasn't in time."

He let go of her shoulders and sat back, and Allison wanted to peek and see if he was about to get mad at her after all. But still, her head was too heavy to lift, and she could only sit with her neck bent, staring miserably at the ugly orange carpet.

"I'm guessing this isn't the first time?" he asked, still speaking gently.

"The first time there's been a gun," she said.

"But not the first purse."

"No." She braced herself for him to demand a full accounting, an entire explanation of her life as Scoot and Scoot's illicit activities. In a way she'd made him a part of it too by disposing of the purses through Sherwood Second-Hand.

"Does all that have anything to do with this guy? Was he … in on it with you?"

"No!" Now she looked up. "Nobody was. Just me. No one else. I mean, sure, there were some people who saw me do it now and then, and he might have been one of them, but no one was in on it."

"All right," Uncle Bob said. "I believe you."

Allison drank more milk and let the warmth trickle down her throat, trying not to wince. "I'm sorry, Uncle Bob. I know you promised not to be mad, but if you are, I understand. I let you down. You trusted me, and gave me a job and told Mom and Dad you'd keep an eye on me, and I've let you down."

"You haven't let me down, Allie-girl. I'm glad you told me, and I'm not mad."

"Really? But –"

He made an exasperated snort. "Do you want me to be mad?"

"Well, no," she said.

Though, weirdly, she felt the same flicker of disappointment she'd always felt in her shoplifting days whenever she once again strolled past an oblivious security guard. What was wrong with her? Did she, secretly and deep-down, have some crazy masochistic streak that did want to be caught? Mrs. Oberdorfer, who watched Dr. Phil religiously, would probably say that it was her child inside, Little Allison, crying out for attention, for discipline from stern fatherly types. She shuddered.

"We still need to think of what we'll tell the police," Uncle Bob said. "Without mentioning purse-snatching. Let me think for a minute."

He got up and turned on the jukebox. It came alive with a whir. Neon sputtered, then steadied into a multicolored luminescent glow. Through the convex glass bubble on the front, Allison could see levers moving as a new record was brought to the top of the stack and the needle-arm descended into the groove. A fifties-sounding car song came on, something about a girl dying on the railroad tracks with her boyfriend's class ring held tight in her hand.

Cheerful, Allison thought. A hell of a cheerful way to end the night.

**

CHAPTER TWENTY

He shoved her legs apart. Allison tried feebly to bring them together but her limbs wouldn't obey her mind. She was consumed by the paralyzing fireball of pain in her stomach, where he'd punched her.

All she could hope for was to pass out before he did what he was about to do.

The kitchen door shuddered under a solid impact. The bolt and cheap fixture, screwed to the wall, snapped off. The door flew open, blinding light poured in. Hector Cesare charged into Allison's apartment with Eva close on his heels.

They stopped short, aghast, at the sight that met their eyes – the room trashed, broken furniture everywhere, and Allison mostly naked on the floor underneath a huge hairy brute.

Hector spat something vehement in Spanish. Eva screamed Allison's name at the top of her lungs.

"That's it!" Mr. Kaminski yelled through the wall. "I'm calling the cops!"

"Get off her you bastardo!" Hector shouted.

"Stay the fuck away from me, bro!" He jumped up, hauling at his pants. His face was scarlet and as he towered over Hector, he seemed to swell up with rage like the Incredible Hulk.

Quick as a cat, Hector bent and scooped something off the floor. He pointed it at the guy. It was the gun, the ivory-handled one from the buttercream-leather purse. "Don't make me shoot you, man!"

"Hector, no!" croaked Allison.

"Put the fuckin' gun down!"

"The police are coming," Eva said. "We'll wait for them."

"Fuckin' hell I will. You gonna shoot me, huh, bro? Come on. Come on and shoot me. You pussy. You're not gonna fuckin' shoot anyone. You don't have the balls."

He took a step toward Hector, reached out for the gun, and Hector shot him.

The gun was a thunderclap, kicking back hard in Hector's grasp. The red-haired guy staggered back, making a surprised glottal bleat. His calves collided with the recliner and he spilled into it. He touched his chest, and stared with dumb incredulity at the blood on his hand.

Hector threw down the gun as if it had bitten him. His face twisted in horror.

"Fuckin' shot me, dude," the guy said in a faint, faltering voice.

"Oh, shit!" Allison heard herself say.

Eva pushed past Hector and ran to the recliner. "Give me that towel! Have to apply direct pressure … somebody call the paramedics."

"I didn't mean to do it," Hector said. He was very pale.

"Give me the towel!" Eva ordered.

Allison, on unsteady legs that felt composed of loose springs and Silly Putty, got the towel she'd left draped on the back of her desk chair. She handed it to Eva, who folded it into a pad and held it against the red-haired guy's chest.

Someone was trying to batter down the hall door, and the frantic gabble told her that half of the building's tenants were out there. Mr. Kaminski must have made good on his threat because sirens warbled nearer.

She looked down at herself. Her camisole top hung in flaps from the satiny spaghetti-straps, hiding nothing. Her panties were mercifully still on, but her torn pajama pants were bunched on the floor like a shed snakeskin. She got her robe from the hook on the bathroom door, struggled into it and tied it shut. Then everything caught up with her, and she sank onto the edge of the bed, shaking.

"Hector, get the door," Eva said. "We need help here."

He opened it and neighbor-faces gawked avidly in at the damage. Teddi Lace elbowed her way through, telling everyone to stand back, stand back and let her by. She stopped in the doorway, mouth falling agape.

Allison buried her head in her hands. Her stomach churned sickly and throbbed around the place where he'd punched her. It felt like she had swallowed lava, which had seared its way down her throat and then cooled into a stony mass in her midsection. She hurt all over from other injuries, too many to count.

She couldn't think. Everything had gone abysmally wrong. A guy was shot and bleeding in her recliner. Shot with the gun from the purse, from the purse that had dumped out all over the floor. He had broken into her home, attacked her, tried to rape her, damn near beaten and strangled her to death, and Hector had shot him. He was bleeding in the recliner, Eva working feverishly to save his life. In the recliner, which had the envelope of cash taped to the underside of its foot cushion.

There were excited, upset people all over the place. She picked up parts of what was being said. Eva and Hector telling how they'd been awakened by the commotion and burst in to find Allison being attacked. Mr. Kaminski, puffed up with importance, claiming to have known something bad was going on so he'd called the police.

In the middle of it all, a woman sat down beside Allison. "Miss Montgomery?"

Dully, Allison lifted her head. It felt like it was made of lead and weighed ninety pounds.

The woman beside her was the same police officer she had seen earlier in the evening, when she'd arrived home as Mr. Abelard was being carted off to the hospital. Tony Rugerro's partner.

"Yes?" she tried. No sound came out. Allison cleared her throat, but that sent such a wave of molten agony rolling through her that tears ran from her eyes.

"That's okay," the woman said. "Just nod or shake your head. My name is Sandy. Sandy Flyte. I'm a police officer. We're going to get you to the emergency room –"

Allison shook her head. It hurt, but not as much as trying to speak had.

"You've been assaulted."

She nodded.

"Do you know that man?"

She started to shake her head, changed her mind, shrugged. "I've seen him around but I don't know his name," she whispered harshly.

Officer Flyte lowered her voice. "We'll need to have someone examine you."

"He didn't rape me," Allison said. "Hector and Eva got here in time."

"You've been pretty badly hurt, and we need to get you taken care of. And then we're going to have to ask you some questions."

"I'm all right."

A sympathetic look crossed Officer Flyte's face, and Allison supposed that she must look pretty terrible. He had hit her so many times she had lost count, and her neck felt swollen up like that of a bullfrog.

The room had cleared out. The red-haired guy had been bustled away by efficient medical personnel, leaving the recliner with a dark crimson puddle soaking into the upholstery. Teddi Lace had shooed the rest of the neighbors away and paced, chain-smoking, in the hall. She stole anxious looks in at Allison every time she passed the half-open door.

"Where's Hector?" Allison rasped.

"Next door," Officer Flyte said. "My partner's questioning him."

"He saved my life and was defending himself," she said as forcefully as she could, ripping each word out through her tortured throat. "You can't arrest him."

"No one's under arrest."

The policewoman's tone was soothing, but Allison wasn't soothed. This was a living hell … a cop in her apartment, and that damned stolen purse still right there on the floor! And Hector Cesare being interrogated for doing a good deed!

"That guy would have killed me," she said. "He choked me."

"I know. Maybe you shouldn't try to talk right now."

"I have to!" Allison's voice did not just crack on the high note, it shattered. She cupped her palm over her throat and moaned.

"It seems pretty clear to us that Hector acted in self-defense," Officer Flyte said. "We're just wondering where the gun came from. His sister swears it was on the floor when they came in. Did the man who attacked you bring it?"

Oh, how tempted she was to say yes, to blame it on him! But they'd find out, and the only thing worse than telling the truth to the cops was getting caught lying to the cops.

"It's mine." She closed her eyes as she whispered it, waiting to be struck by lightning. When no lightning was forthcoming, she opened one eye.

Officer Flyte looked serious. "Yours."

"I got it yesterday." Not technically a lie.

"Do you have a permit?"

She shook her head and tried to swallow a mouthful of nervous saliva. It stung like acid going down, and she blinked away more tears.

"I'm going to have to take the gun," Officer Flyte said, but sounded sympathetic again. "We can sort the rest out tomorrow, but in the meantime is there anyone we can call for you? Anyplace you can stay? I imagine you won't want to stay here."

"She'll come home with me," Uncle Bob said from the doorway.

Allison's breath hitched as she saw him. She wanted to run to him and hug him and have him tell her that everything was going to be okay, but at the same time she was consumed with embarrassment. Someone had phoned him, woken him up with this news, and he'd driven right over. Probably speeding and blowing through stop signs.

He wore pants, moccasins with no socks, and a white undershirt beneath a fleece jacket. His hair was uncombed, his face was stubbly and he still had pillowcase-lines imprinted in his skin.

This time she couldn't hold back the tears. Uncle Bob picked his way through the ruin of the room and sat on her other side, putting his arm around her.

"There, Allie-girl," he said. "It's okay."

He urged Allison to lean against his shoulder, and she did so, still crying and hating herself for it. She'd always wanted to impress Uncle Bob, to make him think she was smart and sassy and spunky. Now she was a blubbering wreck.

"You're her father?" Officer Flyte asked.

"Uncle. Bob Sherwood."

"From the second-hand store," she said, nodding in recognition.

"I came right over. Can you tell me what happened here?"

Allison was sniffling and fighting to get herself under control. Officer Flyte gave her another sympathetic look.

"Maybe we can do that in the hall while your niece gets dressed and packs a bag. Are you all right for that, Miss Montgomery?"

"Yes," whispered Allison, wiping her eyes and blotting her nose on the sleeve of her robe. "I'm sorry … I …"

"Allie-girl, don't be," Uncle Bob said. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Have you called them?" she asked in a watery croak. "Mom and Dad?"

"I didn't want to scare them until I knew the details. You go on and get some clothes, get some stuff together, and we'll worry about that later."

He patted her, then went with Officer Flyte into the hall and closed the door most of the way. She heard Flyte's low voice sketching it out for him, and imagined Bob nodding, listening grimly.

Alone for the first time since waking to find the guy in her room, Allison saw with fresh alarm the contents of the stolen purse scattered over the carpet. She quickly collected the photos and papers that had fallen out of the manila folder and slid it into a wicker basket amid copies of People and Entertainment Weekly. She popped the tape out of the tape recorder.

Everything else that had been in the purse, except for the money taped under the recliner, she crammed back into it. She didn't want it anymore, wanted it out of her house. It was bad luck. She stepped out onto the balcony. A ladder was propped against the rail. Here was how he'd gotten inside. Anger churned in her, and she was for one moment viciously glad that Hector had shot him. She hoped he died, the rotten bastard!

She leaned over, aimed, and depth-charged the purse into one of the large trash cans Teddi kept in a chain-link enclosure on the side of the building.

That left the money.

She thought about leaving it, not wanting to go anywhere near the blood-soaked recliner. But as soon as she left, the cops would probably be crawling all over the room. They might take the chair with them, or have some crime scene cleanup crew haul it away.

Out in the hall, Officer Flyte was telling Uncle Bob about the gun. Then she heard his reply, which was rueful.

"She was just Friday evening asking me if I knew anything about guns. I asked why and she wouldn't say, but I got the idea some creep had been bothering her. Following her around, like those stalkers you hear about."

Flyte sighed. "That was the impression I got, too. Do you know where she might've gotten a gun?"

"No. I thought there were waiting periods and all."

"There are, but between you and me, someone who knows where to look can buy damn near anything in this town."

"My niece is a good girl, Officer. I hope she's not going to get in trouble over this."

Hoping so, too, Allison gathered some clothes and went into the bathroom to dress. When she looked in the mirror, she wished she hadn't. It was a stranger's face, looking shell-shocked and battered. She had a puffy black eye, a bruised cut on her cheekbone, and drying blood crusted around a split lip. The mark of the belt was a livid red weal across her neck. Her hair was a nightmare, but her hair was the least of her concerns.

She had scratches, too, scratches she hadn't even noticed until she slipped out of the robe and the torn camisole. His chewed, dirty nails had left them on her shoulders, breasts, belly and thighs.

All at once she felt filthy, disgusting and filthy. She fell to her knees by the toilet and vomited until she was dizzy and dry-heaving. The acidic taste of puke clogged her sinuses. Her hair was hanging in it.

Sobbing some more, she rested her brow on the cool porcelain rim. Finally, the worst of it passed and she was able to get up again.

Maybe she was supposed to make this quick, but Allison could not bear to have the remembered feel of his hands on her body a moment longer. She shed everything she'd been wearing, even her socks, and climbed into the clawfoot tub for a shower. Hot as she could stand it. Hotter, even, until steam turned the small bathroom into a Turkish sauna and her skin was a boiled-lobster red.

**

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The building was abuzz with the story of Mr. Abelard's heart attack.

Allison got one version from Mr. Strevyk on the corner, another from Mrs. Petronile as she crossed the street, a third from Teddi Lace in the lobby – Teddi had been the one to find him, clutching his chest and gasping for air in the laundry room, where he'd gone to look for a lost sock – and Eva Cesare in their shared kitchen.

"The poor man," Eva said, shredding lettuce with the same sure and perfect strokes she might have used while performing surgery. "Smoking like he does, three packs a day at least. I've never seen him without a cigarette in his mouth, have you?"

"Sure, I have," Allison said. She was rooting around in her half of the cupboards, starved from her day's exertions and hoping to find something, anything other than that sole can of ravioli. "Mrs. Abelard won't let him smoke inside. He has to either go out front or on the balcony."

The door to Eva's side was open. She kept her apartment as clean as an operating room. It was tidily decorated, too. A cross and a picture of Jesus leading fluffy white lambs over a hill hung on the slice of wall that Allison could see through the doorway. Below it, at a card table, Hector Cesare frowned over a textbook and chewing the end of a pencil so hard that it was a wonder he hadn't bitten it in half.

Her search turning up nothing more interesting than a box of instant pudding, a can of creamed corn, a half-full jar of peanut butter and a packet of ramen noodles, Allison tried the fridge. Carton of milk two days past the expiration date, tub of margarine, lots of Mountain Dew and a lone orange soda, assorted heels of bread she hadn't gotten around to throwing away, strawberry jam, mayo-ketchup-relish all in a row, and last but not least a plastic container that had originally held cake frosting but now imprisoned some alien leftover life form. Might've been chili. She wasn't about to open it and look.

"I should marry Jamie Tremayne," she said, selecting the least crustlike of the pieces of bread and making a PB&J. "He's always got food."

"You can eat with us," Eva said. "I'm making tacos."

"I've mooched one meal already this weekend."

"Really, there's plenty."

The sizzling aroma of ground beef browning, and the heap of freshly-grated cheese made up her mind for her. "Okay, twist my arm. Thanks. Tell you what, tomorrow night I'll cook."

In the other room, Hector raised his head. "Uh-oh."

"Don't uh-oh me, smart guy," she said. "I can cook."

Which was not strictly a lie. She could read directions and follow a recipe with reasonable success more often than not. Now that she could finally remember the difference between the abbreviations for teaspoon and tablespoon, she did okay. Eight or even nine times out of ten, the end result was usually edible.

"Yeah," Hector said. "Frozen hamburger patties."

"Ha, ha. All right, what do you think I should make? Go ahead. Challenge me. I'm not afraid."

"Chicken cordon bleu," he said.

Eva snorted. "Hector, do you even know what chicken cordon bleu is?"

"Sure I do," he said. "But I don't know what Beef Wellington is."

"God, Beef Wellington," Allison groaned. "My father loves that. It's a pain and a half to cook, puff pastry, soooo good, and really bad for you, so we'd only have it on his birthday."

"Cool, you can make that," Hector said.

Allison held up her hands. "Not so fast. I've never made it. I've only seen it done."

"Chicken cordon bleu," Eva said, "is breast of chicken wrapped around ham and white cheese, breaded, fried, and baked."

"Or," Allison said, "you can buy pre-made ones and just throw them in the oven."

"Cheater," Hector said.

"When are you going to make us dinner, then?" she asked, lobbing a bit of lettuce at him. "Or are you all talk? Huh? Can you cook?"

"I can make enchiladas."

"He can make enchiladas," Eva agreed. "They look funny, but they taste good."

She served up the tacos buffet-style, with dishes of refried beans, lettuce, cheese, salsa, chopped onions, and spicy meat. The shells were crispy, warmed in the oven, and Allison ate two more than she intended.

"Hector is staying here tonight," Eva said when they were done eating. "Our mother and stepfather have been fighting."

"It'll be better once Juan comes home," Hector said. "But today it was pretty bad. I had to get out of there."

Because Eva had cooked, Allison volunteered to do the dishes. Eva protested but gave in, as she had to work that night.

"I swear I don't know how you do it," Allison said. "School, shifts at the hospital, and keeping a job. It's a miracle you don't explode. Me, I have to be at the store at nine tomorrow to help Uncle Bob tag all the new donations, and I'm whining."

"That's nothing," Hector said. "We go to seven o'clock Sunday services at church, too."

"Great, now I feel extra guilty."

Hector chuckled. "Church will do that."

When the kitchen was clean, Eva put on her sky-blue uniform and headed out. Allison said good night to Hector and shut the connecting door. By comparison to Eva's, her apartment was in need of federal disaster relief.

She put off housework to made her weekly duty-call home, which she always tried to do on Saturday nights because her parents would be out at the theater, the opera, the ballet, or some political function. She talked briefly to the housekeeper, then to her brother Andrew and finally, to Missy for almost an hour.

With that out of the way, she straightened up, lugged a load of laundry down to the first floor laundry room, forgot her soap and had to run back up, got the load started, and sat down to decide what to do about the buttercream-leather purse.

Tomorrow, she would take it to the police. She'd been dithering around for too long already. Let the police handle it, let the police worry about it. Allison "Scoot" Montgomery was done. Having that hairy guy on the bike following her had spooked her. It was all preying on her nerves, and taking the fun out of her main joy in life.

Come to think of it, she realized with dismay, she'd seen him in Century Plaza too. He had been in heavy-metal attire instead of wanna-be Rambo, but it was the same slab-muscled orangutan all right.

He had seen her take the blonde's purse, and now he was following her? That was too disturbing even to consider.

She sat cross-legged on the floor with the purse in her lap, debating what to do with the contents. Try to clean her prints off? The problem with that was that she'd also be cleaning the blonde's prints off, and the blonde might be of great interest to the police.

True … but the greater interest the blonde was to the police, the greater their interest in the circumstances of her purse being stolen would become. And the greater their scrutiny of Allison.

If she dumped it anonymously at the 10th Street Station, they wouldn't necessarily know to connect it to her. Her prints weren't on file anywhere that she knew of, and as long as she was cautious from here on out …

No. Too dangerous. Better to wipe everything and hope for the best.

But that wouldn't give the police a lead on the blonde.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it," muttered Allison. "Doing the right thing gets a lot harder when you're a criminal."

Then, like a bursting ray of light, she thought of the miniature tape recorder. The blonde must have been the one to put the tape in the machine, and Allison had not taken it out. Her prints would be nowhere on the cassette. But the blonde's would have to be.

Satisfied, she got a box of tissues and a spray bottle of watered-down blue window cleaner and proceeded to swab everything she had touched. Since she didn't have latex gloves, she made do with her ordinary winter knit gloves.

At last, she was left with the envelope of money, and that same dilemma.

She really, really wanted to keep the cash.

It was really, really wrong to keep the cash.

Once, she had amused Missy by fashioning devil and angel puppets out of red and white socks and putting on little skits with them. Sometimes she had rested the puppets on her shoulders and made them talk in funny voices. Those puppets were still at the house, in Missy's room to remember her weird big sister by. Allison raised her gloved hands to her shoulders nevertheless, and worked her fingers like mouths.

"That money doesn't belong to you," the sweetie-syrupy angel-voice said. "It's wrong to keep it."

"It's wrong to steal purses," the gruff-raspy devil-voice said. "But you do that all the time, and you keep the money."

"This is different."

"No, it isn't."

"This is blood-money! Tainted! Dirty money!"

"All the better reason to keep it and put it to good use," the devil said. "Help people with it."

Allison stopped, shook her hands, looked at them. Whenever the devil started saying things about helping people, she knew something was way off-kilter.

She inhaled, held it, let it out. "All right. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to find ways to spread some around so no one can figure out what I did, but I found it, I'm going to keep it. F.K. Finders-Keepers."

All of the other items went back into the purse, which she put in the seat of the recliner and left her gloves lying over the arms so she wouldn't forget and leave new prints. She'd have to think of some clever explanation as to why she'd be wearing winter gloves on a warm day, though.

The envelope of cash, she returned to its hiding place under the recliner's cushion. Then, biting her lip thoughtfully, she masking-taped it to the back of the recliner's elevating foot pad, and closed it all up.

She changed into socks, cotton drawstring pajama pants and a camisole top, then climbed into bed with a J.A. Jance novel and a bag of peanut M&Ms. After a few chapters, she put both on the shelf by the lamp, switched it off, and snuggled under the blanket.

The building was never silent, but the noises were familiar enough that she was able to tune them out.

In her dream, she and Jamie were on the top of a bluff, the landscape falling away below them in a steep rocky precipice toward the dark-green tops of pine trees. A zip line stretched from the bluff down at a sharp angle toward a river below. Jamie stood next to her, legs all hard muscle in snug biking shorts, excellent legs. He urged her to go ahead and go first, and he'd be right behind her. She hung onto the triangular trapeze-thingie with white-knuckled, sweaty-palmed hands, the wind blowing her hair back from her face and making her eyes water, terrified but unable to say no or step back. Boulders, dislodged from the side of the cliff, bounced downhill with a rolling, grinding sound.

All at once she was wide awake, her hands clamped into tight fists around nothing, the wind still blowing her hair.

She opened her eyes. More light than usual streamed in from the building next-door, because her curtains belled out in the draft from the open sliding glass door that led to the little balcony.

That door had been shut and locked when she went to bed. She was sure of it. She'd triple-checked. But the lock was a flimsy thing, and the door didn't fit well in its frame. It could be wobbled until the lock came loose, and then trundled back on its tracks. When it was, it made a sound very much like that of the boulders in her dream.

In the deepest corner of darkness, over by the bathroom, a large and hulking shadow moved.

Allison kicked off the covers and shot out of bed like she'd been fired from a cannon. She hit the floor running. It was a small room and she'd be at the hall door in a couple of strides –

Something flung into her legs from behind. It made a terrific metallic clatter. She tripped, fell, and hit hard on her belly. Winded, she thrashed free of the metallic thing – it was the folding tray table she kept beside the recliner to hold drinks, snacks, and the remote control.

Sucking in a new breath, she was about to shriek for help when someone knee-dropped onto her back. A hoarse, coughing groan burst from her. In the next apartment, Mr. Kaminski's television blared on and on about the latest kitchen gadget that could be yours for only nineteen-ninety-nine, but wait, there's more!

A hand seized her hair. Another clapped over her mouth. The weight on her back moved, straddling her, knees digging into the sides of her waist. Her first crazy thought was that it was the blonde woman called Jade. But Jade had been tiny, and whoever was on her was big, heavy.

She bit hard on the hand over her mouth. She tasted dirt, sweat, oil, pizza. The grip on her hair became a fist and yanked. Some strands ripped loose from her scalp but the rest held. Her head was forced back. The other hand squeezed her jaw with nearly bone-cracking force.

This wasn't happening. This was a nightmare. Her strange, scary-pleasant dream about Jamie had taken this dark, awful turn …

No, she wasn't dreaming! She was awake, and approaching panic.

The man – it was a man, had to be, too strong, the hands too big to be a woman – let go of her jaw and Allison gasped for air. He looped something around her throat and pulled it tight, cutting off her breath just as she started to inflate her lungs.

Her fingernails scrabbled at it. A wide strap. Leathery. A belt? She was strangling, choking. Her windpipe was closed to a pinhole. She bucked and thrashed, struggling, clawing at the belt and the floor, trying to drag herself out from under him.

Then he wrenched her over onto her back and gave the belt another yank, and she couldn't breathe at all. "Fuckin' hold still," he snarled.

Looking up at him, she saw wild matted hair and camo fatigues. It was him, the guy on the bike, the one who'd followed Scoot. He had found her again, found where she lived, knew her secret.

She got a finger under the belt and tried to loosen it. He smacked her hands away, then punched her in the face. It was like a bomb going off inside her skull. The back of her head hit the floor. Bright lights exploded in front of her eyes. The world flickered. She went limp, dazed and incoherent. Hadn't she done this already today? Hadn't she knocked her head at the skate park?

He groped at her chest, then tore her camisole top apart like tissue paper and his filthy, callused hands were on her bare breasts. He grunted. Still straddling her, he sat back with his weight resting on her pelvis and unfastened his pants.

Allison was distantly aware of this, distantly aware that the son of a bitch meant to rape her, but her main concern at the moment was the fact that she couldn't breathe. Her vision was a foggy field, her ears both ringing and feeling stuffed with wads of cotton. Her chest burned and throbbed.

His weight shifted again, sitting on her thighs. The drawstring of her pajama pants popped as he tugged.

Once again, she worked a finger under the belt. It loosened. Even as she took in a welcome breath, the air flooding her tortured lungs, she got the belt over her head and off so that he couldn't yank it tight again.

"Hey!" He snatched for it, missed.

Her throat felt lined with sandpaper. She wheezed and hacked.

He struck her again, a glancing blow off the cheekbone as she jerked her head aside. She swung the belt at him. It whistled through the air and slapped across his face. He howled and rocked back in shock.

As he did, Allison lunged out from under him with all her might. Rug burn scoured a layer of skin from her back. He overbalanced and toppled sideways, crashing into a small freestanding bookshelf. It toppled, spilling books, knick-knacks and her collection of trinket boxes everywhere.

But he was off her, and she scrambled to her feet.

"Help!" It came out a raspy croak. Pain tore through her abused throat like a cluster of fishhooks.

"Fuckin' bitch!" He threw himself after her.

Allison backpedaled and swung the belt again. It smacked his arm. He caught at it and almost got it away from her.

"Someone help me!" This time it was a thin teakettle squeak.

"I'm gonna fuckin' kill you!"

She backed into the low coffee table that held her television, and without a moment's debate flipped the whole thing over. The television hit the floor and the screen smashed.

He rushed her, roaring like a wounded bear. Allison cracked him another one with the belt, with the buckle end. It gouged a furrow in his cheek but it didn't slow him. She leaped sideways and he tumbled over the upended coffee table, splitting it with a noise like a splintery gunshot.

Mr. Kaminski banged on the wall. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Help!" Allison coughed, and now her throat felt lined with a cheese grater.

As she ran for the hall door, the hairy guy heaved up out of the coffee table wreckage like a breaching whale. His hand closed on her pajama pants. With the drawstring broken, they slid down her legs and entangled her, and she went sprawling again.

All of the knives were in the kitchen, she didn't have anything like pepper spray …

She rolled over, sat up, and that was when he tackled her. His weight drove her down onto her back, with him on top. She felt something stiff prodding at her thigh.

Revulsion sparked new strength and she hammered blows at his head. She hit him in the ear, over the eyebrow, on the chin. Her attack rattled him enough to let her twist away again, and she fetched up against the recliner with a jarring jolt. The purse fell on her, heavy as a sack of bricks, dumping its contents all across the carpet.

His hand got her hair again.

Allison screamed. This time it was a shrill, splintery cry, louder than any of her previous efforts.

"Did you hear me?" Mr. Kaminski called, pounding on the wall again. "I'll complain to the manager. I'll call the cops!"

The guy whirled her around and slammed a fist into her stomach. She curled up into a helpless ball and heard animal noises barely recognizable as coming from herself: moans, sobs, ragged panting.

"Okay," he said, his own breathing labored. "Okay, you fuckin' bitch. You ready for it? You fuckin' better be, because you're gonna get it."

**

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Follow him," the ice-cold bitch on the cell phone had said. "Lose him, and I'll shoot you in the kneecaps."

Jon had no doubt that the bitch meant every word.

So he followed.

At one point, he was sure he'd lost the little prick. Fury and panic bubbled up in his gut. But then, he'd come around the corner just in time to see the black lightning-bolt skateboard with the electric-blue wheels roll out of an alley and continue on its merry fuckin' way.

He'd been more careful, then. He could be careful when he had to, smart when he had to. People might not think so, but people were fuckin' idiots. They were all down on him because he hadn't finished school. Fuckin' boring school. No use to anybody.

Even his own damn mother thought he was a drug dealer. He told her he didn't, he told her that the reason he got so many calls and had to go out so often in the middle of the night was to buy, sell, and trade bike parts. She could have taken his word for it. But the old shit-queen hadn't fuckin' trusted him, how do you like that? Hadn't fuckin' trusted her own son. She'd even gone searching and found his stash, eighty bucks' worth. Flushed it down the crapper and kicked him out of the house. Said he'd lied to her.

Well, fuckin' duh he'd lied to her … what was he going to do? Tell her the fuckin' truth? For all he knew, she only said she'd flushed his stash. For all he knew, the shit-queen might have sold it or used it herself.

That didn't matter now. What mattered was the ice-cold bitch with the shotgun, and that pretty-boy purse-snatcher Scoot.

Jon had seen Scoot go into a junkyard on 7th and Dunley, casual like he owned the fuckin' place. Maybe that was where Scoot lived. A junkyard rat. Living with some drunk fuck of a father in a shack little better than a lean-to, eating canned pork-and-beans.

Yeah, that seemed about right. If he lived in a shithole like this, he'd nab purses too. Who wouldn't?

Jon had been by the junkyard a few times – looking for bike parts, which he sometimes really did sell – and knew there was a dog. He pedaled around to the used car lot. Pennants were snapping in the breeze and harsh lights glared across windshields with price stickers like 7,599 Runs Like New and 13,450 2003 and 5,695 Takes Me Home. The only salesman Jon saw was busy with a family that had about nine hundred kids, all examining at a mustard-yellow dinosaur of a station wagon with a luggage rack and fake-wood panels down the sides. Fuckin' fake-wood panels, what a joke.

He sidled through the ranks of washed and waxed lemons, walking his bike. At the back were the motor homes. Some were just pickup trucks with camper caps, others were weird silver tubes that looked more like something a robot might land on the White House lawn, and others were more recent models, the fuckin' road hogs that retired old farts drove around in.

Two back-to-back fences divided the car lot and junkyard, chain link on the car lot side and rickety board planks on the junkyard side. Jon propped his bike against the side of an RV and looked over the fence at the jumble of rusted-out hulks, hoping to see the shack where Scoot and Scoot's old drunk fuck of a father lived.

Instead, he saw Scoot.

In a sheltered little nook made by walls of wrecked cars.

Taking off his –

Holy shit!

The fuckin' pretty-boy was a chick!

Jon could not believe his eyes. Or his luck.

Scoot-the-chick had a tall, tight, lean body. Not much titworks, true, and not much ass – J. Lo had the world's most perfect ass, and starred in all of Jon's whack-off fantasies.

But look at those long legs, fuckin' damn! The skimpy exercise clothes she'd had on under her baggy jeans and loose shirt clung like paint and showed off everything. And when Scoot pulled off that dorky helmet and shook out a lot of darkish brown hair …

No fuckin' wonder none of the girls had been able to get into Scoot's pants. They would have been in for one big fuckin' disappointment.

He watched as Scoot loaded her skateboard and clothes into her duffel bag and sneaked out through a hole in the board fence.

Fuck! Didn't live in the junkyard after all.

Jon scrambled down, got his bike, and had to go way the hell around to get out of the car lot. The salesman caught sight of him and started to call out, but just then Mr. Fuckin' Brady with all the kids asked a question about the yellow dinosaur station wagon, and the salesman turned back with a big shit-eating grin.

At the mouth of the alley, he saw red flashes and cursed under his breath. But the cop car, parked squarely in the middle of the intersection, turned out to be a fuckin' blessing in disguise. Everyone in the neighborhood was gathered on the corners for the free show. Scoot was walking slowly toward them.

An ambulance was at the curb in front of a diarrhea-brown apartment building. Its rear doors stood open, and so did the building's front door. Two dudes in white smocks came out with a gurney that had a shriveled old man on it. An oxygen mask covered the old man's mouth and nose. A sheet had been drawn up to his chest. An equally shriveled little old lady walked beside him, holding his dry claw of a hand.

The fuckin' 9-1-1 thing, can you dig it? Some geezer had worked himself into a heart attack, and was off to the hospital.

Jon lurked in the doorway of a pet grooming salon that had closed at six-thirty but still stank of wet dog and strong shampoo. He saw Scoot mingle with the neighbors like she belonged there, saw people say hi to her and her give it right back.

Mr. and Mrs. Geezer got loaded into the ambulance. One of the white-smocked dudes said something to a policewoman who, in Jon's opinion, filled out the seat of her uniform pants in an amazing way. Primo ass. Almost J-Lo quality. She nodded, and went back to her patrol car where some beefy cop was leaning on the fender talking to more of the neighbors.

Once the ambulance doors closed, cutting off the view of Mr. and Mrs. Geezer, the crowd started to thin. Jon waited and watched to see what Scoot would do. If she came back this way, she'd see him. She'd seen him at the skate park and had known he was trailing her, and if she spotted him now, she'd guess that her secret was out. Then he'd have to think fast.

But she didn't turn around. She crossed the street and went into the diarrhea-brown apartment building. Nobody gave her a second fuckin' look. Must live there, then.

A thought slithered into his mind.

The ice-cold bitch who had busted into his place and threatened to blow his head off wanted to get to Scoot. It seemed like a lot of fuckin' trouble to go to over a purse … unless there was some serious good shit in the purse. Maybe the ice-cold bitch was a dealer. Maybe her purse had been loaded with product.

Whatever the reason, she had to want it back pretty damn bad.

If he could get his hands on it … he'd be in charge then, wouldn't he? He'd be calling the shots. Once he had the purse, he could state his terms and see how bad the bitch wanted it back.

And he could get his hands on Scoot at the same time …

That'd almost be, what did they call it? Poetic fuckin' justice. He hadn't crossed paths with Scoot all that often, but he resented being tricked. Resented being made a fool of. By a chick, even. So what if she could ride? Who the fuck did she think she was, anyway?

He watched the dregs of the crowd melt away and knew he couldn't linger any longer without looking suspicious.

A mini-movie played inside his head. He saw himself on the cell phone again, cool as Vin-fuckin'-Diesel, telling the ice-cold bitch that he had her purse. That if she wanted it back, she'd have to play the game his way. If she tried coming after him with her fuckin' shotgun, she could shoot him, sure, but he'd hide the purse so she'd never fuckin' find it.

Yeah.

And when she showed up where he told her to be, he'd be ready. No bitch got away with talking to him like that. She was some big fuckin' mouth when she had the gun and he didn't, but he knew people. Connected people. Weasel could get him a gun. Weasel could get him a fuckin' grenade if he wanted, or a fuckin' rocket launcher.

So the ice-cold bitch would show up and he'd be ready for her. Rough her around some, maybe. Pay her back for what she did to him. He didn't mind so much what had happened at his place, but he minded like hell the way she had come right up to him in Century Plaza like she wasn't even fuckin' afraid of him. Made him look bad in front of his friends. They'd laughed about it later, laughed at him, Jimmy and Kidmaster-D and Silverdark and the others. Laughed at him.

She had to pay for that. Yeah. Bitch. Pay for it in the only way a bitch like that would be good for. He'd get her down on those knees and make her open up that bitchy mouth, and …

Yeah. Fuck with him? He'd show her who was fuckin' with who.

Scoot, too. She deserved it. They all deserved it. And they wouldn't tell a fuckin' soul. They wouldn't dare.

What could they do, call the cops on him? That, he'd like to see.

**