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.

**

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The fall could have been a lot worse. It came at the apogee of a half-pipe jump, which Scoot must have mis-timed.

The skateboard squirted out from under her feet. Scoot's shins cracked with white agony into the concrete lip. The board went skittering wheels-up down the curve Then, like in the old nursery rhyme about Jack and Jill, Scoot went tumbling after.

She fetched up groaning in a heap at the bottom of the half-pipe, the board on its back next to her with its wheels slowly spinning to a stop.

A round of sarcastic applause greeted her performance. Scoot flipped them the finger without looking. She got up and limped to a bench in front of a row of portable toilets, where she sat rubbing her lower legs.

It was all too easy to imagine her shinbones as long splintery sticks. They didn't feel broken, and the pain was already fading, but she knew from past experience that by morning she would have two colossal plum-colored bruises.

The skate park was always busiest on sunny Saturdays. Most of the crowd was made up of kids and families, the younger ones who would put up with the helmet-and-pads rule. But there were enough older participants that Scoot wasn't an anomaly.

Top-forty music thumped from pole-mounted speakers and the cement maze of ramps, bowls, half-pipes and jumps simmered in the sunshine. A few attendants perched on high chairs like lifeguards, ready with whistles and bullhorns whenever they saw someone ignoring the rules posted in red lettering on a large white billboard.

The park was adjacent to Funway, an arcade that offered miniature golf, bumper boats, batting cages, Laser Tag, singing robot animals and games that paid out in tickets to be redeemed at obscene exchange rates for cheap trinkets. The snack bar served pizza, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, soda pop, cotton candy and giant stale pretzels. Funway was the spot for birthday parties on this side of town.

Crowded, yes, and if Scoot had been interested in purses today there would have been plenty of mom-purses to choose from. Skateboard groupie purses, too. Not that she was interested. God, no. Right now, she thought she might be cured of her purse-snatching habit forever.

She had been here for most of the day, eating an unhealthy lunch and telling herself that at least her jaw muscles were getting a workout trying to chew a pretzel with the consistency of half-dried adobe. She was sweaty, achy and exhausted.

But she felt good. She'd needed this. Had been getting herself all worked up, tied in knots, about that purse. When really, it wasn't anything she had to worry about.

The thing to do was simply claim, as Allison, that she had found it. And that she'd been so shocked by what was inside that the only thing to do was contact the police.

After all, it certainly was not as if the blonde woman would have filed a report about the purse-snatching. Not with what she'd been carrying, what she'd been doing.

The police would take it from there. The police would warn Benedict Westbrook, and it'd all work out fine.

This was not something that she, either as Scoot or as Allison, needed to involve herself in. True, the wild and reckless part of her had contemplated heading over to Palmyra Hills today instead of to the skate park. Just to see the house, maybe see Westbrook, maybe get an idea of why someone would want him dead. That was the part most intriguing to her. What could he have done? Who would pay that kind of money to kill him? Why?

A case like this, though, was probably the sort of thing that would make the papers. She could read about it later. Read about it without seeing her own name in print.

Scoot had been sitting with sore legs outstretched, but had to draw them back fast as a herd of yelling children raced by. They had sticky faces and frenetic eyes, no doubt on a total sugar high.

As she got up, thinking to move to safer ground, she noticed someone looking at her. He was a guy she'd seen around the usual skater hangouts. Hard to miss. Big. Hairy. Resembled one of Dr. Moreau's test subjects that had started out as an orangutan. Room-temperature IQ. Camo pants and combat boots. Drawing looks of his own from the attendants because he might be the type to pull out an Uzi and turn birthday parties into bloodbaths.

His beady gaze was fixed on Scoot. The quality of it made her skin creep. Greedy. Predatory.

She did a hasty but surreptitious check to make sure that her clothes were still arranged, that she hadn't torn her shirt wide open in the fall and exposed her bra or something.

Did he know the truth about her? Did he know that Scoot was really a girl?

Her clothes were fine. Baggy stonewashed jeans, sneakers, an oversized tee shirt bearing the logo of the local major-league baseball team. Her helmet hadn't come off, either.

So why the look? Why the predator's greedy stare?

Scoot didn't like it.

Pretending not to be aware of him, she picked up her board and rose from the bench. She threaded her way through throngs of kids and teenagers. Her stuff was in one of the outdoor lockers.

He followed. At a distance, but he was following her all right.

Oh, great.

When she reached her locker, she unpinned the key stuck with a safety pin to the bottom inside hem of her shirt. She opened the locker and grabbed her duffel. By then, the hairy guy was lingering at the end of the row. He had a cell phone pressed to his ear. Seeing her glance his way, he acted – badly – like he was just innocently placing a call.

She hurried for the exit, not like she was being chased but like she happened to need to catch a bus in a few minutes. The parking lot was full of minivans. She wended her way between them, reached the sidewalk of Pine Street, and set her board on the ground.

Lost him. Good.

But moments later, he appeared behind her on a bike.

No coincidence. He was following her.

Maybe she was being paranoid. Hell, didn't she have a right to be, after yesterday? She didn't know why he would follow her even if he did suspect that there was more to skateboarder Scoot than met the eye.

But he was. She was sure of it.

All right, then. Let him try. Even with wheels, he wouldn't be able to keep up with her.

Scoot was off in a flash, building up speed with a series of strong kicks. The skateboard jolted over seams in the sidewalk with a rapid thud-thud, thud-thud.

Ahead, a city bus was in the process of disgorging its passengers. Several were kids bound for Funway, happy and excited, carrying birthday presents and gift bags with tissue paper foaming out of the top. Scoot veered around them.

Mailman, dead ahead! Not paying attention. Head down, sorting through a pile of catalogs. Navy blue canvas bag taking up half the sidewalk.

Scoot went off the curb, directly in front of the city bus as its doors hiss-thumped shut and it began to pull back into traffic. The horn, right over her head, sounded like the end of the world. If she fell, the huge tires would crush her into roadkill.

Rather than try and get out of the way, she braced both feet on the skateboard and leaned her back and butt against the front of the rolling steel behemoth. It pushed her along. Her wheels shuddered on the asphalt and the word "whoa!" came out of her in a jittery stutter.

She craned her neck. Through the wide windshield, she could see the bus driver gesturing at her. The horn blew again. The bus slowed as he braked.

"Spoilsport!" she shouted over her shoulder, and kicked off from the bus. She hopped back onto the curb, dodged a man walking a cocker spaniel and a woman with a stroller, and sped around a blind corner.

A shop owner and a delivery man had been nose-to-nose arguing, but both leaped backward as Scoot shot between them. "Sorry!" she called back. But she'd done them a favor, because instead of resuming yelling at each other, they both forgot whatever they'd been fighting about and were joined in brotherhood as they yelled after her.

Another dog, this one no clownishly cute cocker spaniel but a bulldog with a scrunched-up face and a pissed-at-the-universe bark, was tied to a parking meter and tried to take a bite out of Scoot's leg. Avoiding that with some fancy footwork, she damn near ran over a portly man too busy reading the Wall St. Journal to look where he was going.

She reached the next cross street and had to stop for the light. There were too many cars moving too fast here for her to risk it. She was a daredevil, maybe, but not suicidal.

Looking back, she saw the bus go through the intersection.

And the hairy red guy come around the corner on his bike.

Shit!

The light went from green to yellow, and Scoot lunged into the street heedless of the last few drivers who tried to make it before the red. A beat-up old Mustang the color of cat puke screeched to a smoking-rubber halt inches from her, and a man's hand popped out the driver's side window to give her a stiff-fingered salute.

Then she was across, pushing hard, whirring along, trying not to bean anybody with her wildly-swinging duffel. Midway down the block she hung a hard right into an alley. It was a narrow corridor between low-rent apartment buildings, all rusty fire escapes and barred windows and overflowing Dumpsters –

-- and three little girls playing jump-rope in the middle of the alley.

"Cinderella-dressed-in-yella-went-upstairs-to-kiss-a-fella," they chanted, two of them turning the long rope while the third, scabby knees showing beneath pink shorts, jumped.

Scoot dismounted at a run, slammed her heel on the back of the board, and flipped it up so that she could catch it by the front end. She trotted to a stop a few yards from the girls, who had left off their chanting to look at her with wide, solemn eyes. The rope lay slack between them, and the jumper stood with one white-sneakered foot on either side of it. She had pink barrettes in her frizzy-dark hair and the Powerpuff Girls on her shirt.

"Made-a-mistake-and-kissed-a-snake," Scoot said. "How-many-doctors-did-it-take?"

The three little girls gave her three gap-toothed smiles. She hopped over the rope and broke into a run, though the jogging motion renewed the pain in her shins in a way that riding the board hadn't done.

At the end of the alley, she looked back. The girls had resumed their jumping and chanting, and she didn't see the guy on the bike.

He hadn't been following her after all.

Relieved, Scoot headed for home.

She changed in the junkyard again, the shadows by now long and cool. Booger the dog was eating kibble in great snuffling gulps out of a stainless-steel bowl big enough to bathe a baby in. The tag on his collar made atonal metallic clinks and clanks.

As she stepped through the fence into the alley, and then onto Dunley Street, she was bathed in whirling pulses of red light from the roof-rack of a police car.

**

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He opened the door to go inside and she was right there behind him. A hard shove sent him stumbling into the darkened room, arms flailing. The bag of Chinese food he'd been carrying flew from his hand and hit the floor. White cardboard containers burst open and spilled fried rice and pork chow mein over the ratty carpet.

"Whoa! Fuck! Hey!" he blurted as his feet knocked into each other and he went solidly to his knees. He landed on a packet of soy sauce and popped it. "What's the fuckin' deal, dude?"

"I'm not a dude," Jade said in her coldest voice. She kicked the door shut, cutting off the daylight and plunging them into even murkier lighting.

The kid with the masses of rusty-wire hair on his head and all over his body, the hulking loser she'd nicknamed Bigfoot, started to rise.

Jade ratcheted the shotgun, and he froze. There was no mistaking that sound. Anybody who'd ever been to an action movie knew that sound.

She didn't care for the shotgun. It was messy and imprecise, hard to conceal, hard to handle. But the important thing was that it made big nasty holes in people, and Bigfoot knew it.

"Don't get up," she said. "Stay right like that."

Still on his knees, he was dumb enough – or stoned into sufficient bravado – to twist his head around and look at her. His eyes were glazed and bloodshot. They squinted at her, then lit up with a low animal cunning. He recognized her. It wasn't hard; she wore a green track suit and a hooded jacket, but had made no effort to hide the color and style of her hair.

"Look, bitch –"

"Call me a bitch again, and I'll shoot your foot off."

Holding the shotgun on him, she scanned the rest of the room to make sure they were alone.

Bigfoot lived in a scuzzy motel at the bad end of Prewett. It rented units by the week or month, for cash with no I.D. necessary and no questions asked. He had blankets tacked up over the windows, casting the room into a gloomy dimness that hid the worst of the squalor. There was no kitchen, not even a kitchenette. Instead, there was a microwave so old it probably sent out sterilizing beams of radiation whenever it was used. Given Bigfoot's suitability to breed, Jade figured that in his case, a little sterility was a good thing.

The bed folded down from the wall and was a rumpled expanse of sleeping bag, dirty clothes, and dirtier magazines. Pizza boxes, beer cans, empty two-liter soda bottles, and take-out wrappers littered the floor. The closet was a bare bar above a mound of clothes and towels that looked like they might come alive if someone shot a bolt of lightning through them. Posters of bands – grunge and heavy metal – vied for wall space with centerfolds and pictures of pro wrestlers.

The bathroom door stood ajar and the fly-specked low-wattage bulb over the sink shed their only source of light. She didn't really want a close look at his bathroom, but could see enough of it to determine that no one was hiding in the shower, the floor was so grimy that she couldn't guess what color it had started as, and the toilet seat was up. She'd have bet her car that it wasn't flushed, either. And the shower drain would be clogged with a wad of rust-colored hair the size of a dead hamster.

He had himself a fairly nice entertainment setup, a stack of porn videos, a black Rubbermaid container full of video game cases, and not one but two game-system consoles.

Opposite the bed, the disassembled pieces of a bike hung on metal hooks that had been mounted on the wall. He had left his other bike outside, locking it to a metal rack, the modern equivalent of the ol' hitching post. A skateboard, airbrushed with an image of a flaming skull with snakes coming out of the eye sockets, rested against a speaker. At the foot of the bed was a pair of in-line skates with black wheels. He even had one of those shiny silver scooters. Bigfoot covered all the bases.

The smell in here was enough to make her eyes water. Jade tried not to breathe too deeply, wanting get as little of it into her lungs as possible. She didn't let herself think about what might be causing such a stench, just as she didn't let herself think about the stains on the carpet.

When she had seen him the previous afternoon, Bigfoot had been wearing a rock group tee shirt and black leather pants looped with chrome chains. Today he was in urban commando mode, with an olive-green tee shirt, army-style boot and camouflage pants.

One of his hands twitched toward his belt, where a box cutter hung in a leather loop, and Jade prodded the side of his head with the shotgun barrel.

"Unless you want to make this room even more of a revolting pigsty by decorating the walls with your brains," she said, "you'll forget about trying."

"Jeez, lady! I didn't do nothing!" He had not called her a bitch, so perhaps he could be taught after all, wonder of wonders and hallelujah.

"What's your name?"

"Jon." He said it sullenly, the way he would have – and had, she was sure – said it to a teacher or playground monitor.

"All right, Jon. Listen to me. I want to know who that other kid is, and where I can find him."

He didn't bother with pretending not to know what she was talking about. Having a shotgun pressed to his skull, just above his right ear, must have removed any desire to be a wiseass or play games. "The guy who lifted your purse, I don't know who the fuck he is. Seen him around, and I heard some kids call him Scoot. But I don't know him, lady, I don't fuckin' know him."

"Not good enough."

"Fuck! For Chrissake, lady!"

"Seen him around, you said. Seen him around where?"

"Places," Jon said. "The Plaz, the skate park, the library quad at Atherton."

"You go to Atherton?" she asked, not trying to keep the skepticism from her tone.

"To skate," he said defensively. "To ride my bike. I'm not some pussy college student, but they've got good pavement there."

"What skate park?"

"On Pine," he said. "Pine and 3rd, 4th maybe. I don't go there anymore. Used to, when I was a kid. It's for pussies. They won't let you ride your board there unless you wear a fuckin' helmet."

"But you've seen this Scoot there?"

"Sometimes, yeah." He turned his head a little, the shotgun barrel digging into his matted hair, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "You're not the first one whose fuckin' purse he's stolen. I seen him do it a few times, and so's everybody else."

"Lucky me," Jade said. "Have you seen him since yesterday?"

"No, dude."

"You're not lying to me, Jon?"

"I swear! I fuckin' swear!"

"You certainly do."

"Huh?"

"Tell me about Scoot."

"I told you, I don't fuckin' know him, already. I heard some of the chicks think he's a fag. A pretty boy; all the chicks are crazy for him, but he looks like a fag to me."

"What does he look like?"

"Told you. A pretty boy. I never seen him up close."

"Do you know where he lives?"

Jon shook his head.

Sighing frustration through her teeth, Jade said, "Do you know who would?"

"He doesn't fuckin' hang with us, okay? He's just … around. Doesn't say much."

"Does he smoke? Drink? Do dope?"

"Dope," chuckled Jon. "Dude, that's a good one."

She nudged harder with the shotgun, which the shaggy lunkhead seemed to have temporarily forgotten. "You know what I mean."

"I never seen him do anything but soda."

"Who else can I talk to? I need to find Scoot."

"Hey, I'd fuckin' help you if I could, lady. It's people like him who give the rest of us a bad name, all right? Going around fuckin' robbing people, and so the cops start thinking we're all fuckin' criminals."

Jade had, without consciously electing to do so, begun keeping score of his ludicrous profanity. She couldn't help it.

"They're always fuckin' looking for an excuse to bust one of us, dude," he went on. "Like it's against the law to smoke a little pot."

"It is."

"Fuckin' stupid law. It doesn't hurt nobody."

She wasn't about to get into a debate on law and order with him. This was absurd enough already.

"Tell me who might know where to find Scoot," she said, jabbing harder with the shotgun this time.

"Ow! That fuckin' hurts, okay?"

"It'll fuckin' hurt worse if I pull the trigger. Dude."

God, how she hated whiners! Here he was, six-foot-something and twice her weight, more covered with hair than a werewolf, and he was whining. If ever she'd needed another reason why she preferred to shoot people without having to talk to them, this was it. They would all whine, or blubber, once they had the gun to their head. And then she wouldn't be killing them for the right reasons.

"Sorry," he said, chastened.

Now, why had that gotten through to him all of a sudden? Was it because she was finally speaking his language? Or had the pressure of the shotgun barrel finally made a coherent impression on that thick head of his?

"I'd rather not blow your brains … pardon me, your fuckin' brains out, dude," she said. "It'd be noisy and gross. So, if you want to be alive to eat those egg rolls for lunch, I suggest you listen closely to what I have to say."

"Sure, anything, lady."

One hand on the shotgun, she fished into her pocket and drew out a pre-paid disposable cellular phone. She bought them by the half-dozen and never kept them more than a couple of weeks. "My number's already programmed on here. I let you go, and next time you see Scoot, you call and tell me where he is."

His muddy, bloodshot eyes brightened with hope.

"But there's a catch," she said. "If I don't hear from you by Wednesday – that's in four days – I come back and we have another talk. Got it, dude?"

"Yeah."

"I found you this time, so I can find you again if I need to. Don't make me hunt you down. If you do, you'll regret it."

He bobbed his head again. Droplets of sweat stood out in his scruffy red stubble like beads of dew. Maybe the fact that she had bald-faced walked into his room with a shotgun at high noon convinced him she was in earnest.

"Good." She tossed the phone down beside him and backed toward the door. "And it goes without saying that if I find out you've warned Scoot off …"

"I'm not a fuckin' moron!" he said.

"Prove it."

With that, she was out the door like an eddy of wind.

**

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A muffled but loud hammering noise gradually seeped into her awareness. Once she acknowledged it, she also became aware of a steady drilling beep that drove into her head like someone pushing a long thin nail into her ear.

Allison sat up disoriented, in the grips of a decongestant hangover, and stared stupidly around at the room.

She had made herself go to bed after listening to the tape. Since she hadn't been the least bit sleepy, she'd taken a sinus-relief tablet to help her along. Her sinuses were fine, but the drowsiness side effect dragged her down like an anchor into a thick, dreamless darkness.

The banging came again, accompanied by an unintelligible but irritable voice through the wall.

Her alarm clock was going off. Had been going off for a solid fourteen … no, fifteen minutes. The banging on the wall was Mr. Kaminski next door. He kept his television on at full volume until four in the morning most nights, but if anyone made noise before ten on a Saturday, he would raise the goddamn roof.

She turned off the alarm. The pounding continued for another half a minute, then ceased, and blissful quiet descended. Still, she knew she could count on finding a nasty note tacked to her door later, or a complaint made to Teddi Lace. Or both. Why not, Mr. Kaminski? Live a little.

A shower and two cups of coffee helped to clear away the fog. Clad in stretchy leggings and a long sweater, Allison was back in her dilemma about the blonde's purse.

The smart thing to do would be to turn the purse and everything in it over to the police.

Thinking about the police made a flutter of panic beat in her belly, as if she had swallowed a large moth.

Not that she had anything against them in principle. Police, not moths. Not that she had anything against moths either …

She drank a third cup of coffee.

In principle, she believed that a strong police force was a good thing. Mr. Colucci at the locksmith shop had a brother-in-law who was a cop. Officer Tony Rugerro sometimes came into Sherwood Second-Hand. He liked to browse through the old furniture for pieces that could be fixed up, and always carried a box of like-new stuffed animals in the trunk of his patrol car in case he met any distraught kids on the crime scenes.

Allison liked Officer Rugerro, but whenever he was in the store she got clammy all over, just waiting for him to wander past the rack of purses and recognize one from a robbery report.

She could, she supposed, claim that the buttercream leather purse and its contents had shown up in the donation box. That would be the easiest way to get rid of it.

But what about the money? Who, really, who in their right mind would dump a purse containing that kind of cash? Even the most honest of persons would have a hard time passing up such a windfall. You sometimes heard of thrift store employees finding overlooked valuables in coat pockets, but a wad of twenty-five thousand dollars was a hell of a lot harder to overlook than a ring or a folded hundred-dollar bill.

What, then? Hold onto the money, but turn everything else over?

And if she held onto the money, what would she do with it?

Off the top of her head, she could list fifty people in this neighborhood alone who could benefit from a surprise bonus.

Eva, for example, and Hector. With that kind of cash, Eva could afford a bigger place and actually have her brother live with her, to keep him away from the bad influences of his stepfather and soon-to-be-released convict brother.

Or Martha. Even if Martha wanted to live in her vacant lot, it couldn't be good for her and she couldn't really be happy.

Or the Strevyks … or Needles and Tisha … or even Jamie Tremayne. Indeed, practically everyone she knew on Dunley Street could make good and welcome use of twenty-five thousand dollars.

For that matter, if she was being truthful with herself, so could Allison "Scoot" Montgomery. She didn't need a nicer apartment or a car … but if she had those things, she could bring her sister over for visits. Spend weekends with her. Summers, even. It would be a way to erase some of the loneliness and misery from Missy's eyes. A way to get her out of that luxurious, loveless house for a while.

But she couldn't keep the money all for herself and not share with her friends and neighbors … and she couldn't realistically share with her friends and neighbors. What would she tell them? That she happened to find twenty-five G's and wanted to share the wealth? That she'd won the lottery? She never played the lottery and they all knew it. Even the most grateful of them would have to be a little suspicious … and someone might say the wrong thing to the wrong person.

"For God's sake!" she said into the stillness of the living room. "Forget about the money! The money's the least of your worries right now!"

While that wasn't entirely true, it was true enough for her to push the issue aside and turn her attention to what really mattered.

The gun.

The gun and the folder.

A man was marked for death, as crazy as that sounded. Someone wanted him killed and was willing to pay big bucks to see it done.

Allison wasn't naïve enough to believe that the people who'd hired the woman called Jade would, upon learning of the mishap, shrug and say, "Oh, well, never mind then … let him live." There had been steel beneath the smoky sexiness of Jade's lunch date's voice. He wasn't someone to change his mind.

No, whatever else happened, somebody wanted the man in the photographs dead, and would find some other way of accomplishing it.

For all Allison knew, he might be dead already. Was it so far-fetched to think that Jade, alarmed by the loss of her purse, had decided to strike fast before the target could be warned?

She smacked herself in the head. That was what she should have done first! If he was dead, it was her fault.

When she opened the folder, the photos slid out. Handsome man, blond curls, bronze tan, excellent teeth. Looked a little like the actor Heath Ledger had. Expensive clothes. The watch on his wrist looked like a Rolex. Pricey sailboat.

He appeared to be the kind of guy that might have been buddies with her Montgomery-side relatives. From money. From influence. Tennis, yachting, polo. His nickname was probably Chet, or Chas, or Skip … if he had a sister, she was Tiffy, or Muffy, or Babs.

Was it possible that she might even know him? Had they been guests at the same parties? If he was local, it wasn't that far-fetched. She'd certainly met plenty of men like him. But she didn't recognize this specific one.

On one of the pages of information, she found his name.

"Benedict Westbrook."

She didn't know the name … yet felt the nagging, niggling feeling that she should.

The address was in Palmyra Hills, which Allison knew to be an area of opulent mansions, waterfront property, and general extravagance.

New money, as her father might say with a sneer. The Montgomerys had made their fortune several generations back. Their particular branch of the family was not associated with the department stores but with canned fruits and vegetables, frozen dinners, and one of the earliest patents on a type of circuit used in microwave ovens and other small appliances.

So this Westbrook could be a computer mogul, an e-commerce kind of guy. Or … hadn't she only a few minutes ago been imagining herself sharing around the money and claiming she'd won the lottery?

If that were the case, then it was even less likely she might have met him. In her parents' hierarchy of worthiness, the old-money families whose current descendants never had to do a real day's work but could coast on the inheritance and investments were the top dogs. Big-money celebrities, sports figures and high-tech dot-commers were next, because while they might not have the bloodline, they had at least earned their fortunes and their way to the top.

But the lowest, the worst, the intolerable were the ones who made their fortunes out of the blue and with little apparent effort. Allison had once overheard her mother and her sister-in-law talking disdainfully about a woman who'd won a million dollars on a game show and was buying a nearby house. This woman even had the temerity to want to join the country club. As Susan Montgomery had put it, "She suddenly has a million dollars and thinks that makes her good enough."

It hadn't been long after that, come to think of it, that Allison had moved out and been glad to go.

No, there was no room in the Montgomery world view for lottery winners – not even those who scored the multi-million-dollar jackpots – or game show contestants, or people who successfully got enormous lawsuit settlements because they'd spilled hot coffee on themselves. A gold-digging bimbo who married an elderly oil tycoon and then had him drop dead a week later of a sexual-overload stroke was more welcome in their society. Heck … a woman like that would receive a certain grudging respect, because she had earned it.

If Westbrook was one of 'those' people, it made sense that Allison might have heard his name but wasn't able to connect it to anything. He wouldn't have been a guest at the house, but someone who might have been mentioned in passing, with that lofty arrogance only the truly lofty spoiled rich could achieve.

She had to do something.

Do what?

Allison folded her legs tailor-fashion, braced her elbows on her knees and propped her head up on her hands.

Do something.

Uh-huh, sure.

Call him up, why not? "Hi, Mr. Westbrook … you don't know me, but there's someone trying to kill you."

Send him a fortune cookie. Beware of petite blondes with guns.

Mail him what she'd found?

That had possibilities. Package it all up, and send it to the Palmyra Hills address with an anonymous letter. When one of his own guns fell out of the envelope, it'd have to make him sit up and take notice.

Except then, the police would get involved. And no matter how careful Allison was, they'd trace it back to her. Somehow. Her fingerprints were all over everything. Even if she wiped off each article, would that work on paper? Didn't the oils from the fingertips soak in and leave an indelible mark?

There would be hairs, fibers from her clothes and carpet. Handwriting analysis of the letter, the address … even if she typed them, or used a computer, there were ways to ferret out the truth by the kind of ink, the brand of paper. She watched television. She knew what they could do.

The greater pains she took to cover her tracks, the more it would make the detectives think she had something to hide.

Which, okay, she did. But that was beside the point. She was trying to do the right thing here, damn it! Trying to save a man from being murdered!

It just so happened that she was also a petty criminal.

"Sheesh, Allie-girl," she muttered, using Uncle Bob's pet name. "What's more important here? Your freedom or a guy's life?"

Then there was the scandal to think about, what her family would –

Allison veered her thoughts sharply away from that, thank you very much.

What, then? What to do?

She was never going to come up with an answer just sitting here. She needed to get out, away from this mess. She needed to get some air, some movement.

She needed to be Scoot for a while.

**