CHAPTER EIGHT

She unzipped it slowly, thinking about the woman from whom she'd snatched it, playing a mental guessing-game. That added to the fun, seeing if she could predict what sort of objects might be in the purse based on what its owner had looked like.

Most of the time, she got it right. People were fairly predictable. But there had been a few startling exceptions.

Like the hard-faced woman with the rigid posture, who had reminded Scoot of nobody so much as the scary Englishwoman who ran that Weakest Link game show. Her purse had been iron-grey and square, but inside of it Scoot had found a high-tech vibrator, a pair of wispy hot-pink panties, and a knobby circular thing that she later learned was a cock ring.

Or the harried, overweight mother of three whose purse Scoot had relieved her of in a grocery store parking lot. There amid the half-eaten cookies, Happy Meal toys, moist towelettes and broken crayons, had been an honest-to-god switchblade with an onyx handle … and when Scoot popped the blade, it was crusted with dark stuff that sure looked like blood.

Or, her favorite, the stylish handbag that had belonged to a leggy, model-beautiful redhead in a seafoam green sheath, gold heels and a patterned seafoam and gold silk scarf. Inside, amid the usual make-up and hair spray, had been a black leather trifold wallet with a driver's license and business cards identifying the model-beautiful redhead as Adam Villiers, veterinarian.

The woman who'd owned this buttercream bag had been petite, Scoot remembered. Petite with platinum-blonde hair in a pixie cut, fair skin, aquiline features. Very pretty in a fragile, elfin way. She'd worn a jade pendant on a gold chain, and a dark green business suit.

Scoot hadn't meant to bowl her over. The bag had been heavier than she'd anticipated, and it had jerked on the blonde's arm and thrown her off her feet. But if Scoot had stopped to check on her, she would have been caught. The only thing to do was keep right on going.

A little blonde in Century Plaza. That meant a businesswoman, maybe a lawyer. She'd kind of had that Sex in the City air about her, a deceptively delicate-looking creature who could be a real ball-buster in the courtroom and kittenishly playful in bed with the defense attorney.

So, the purse would have a cell phone, maybe a Palm Pilot. Not much cash but a ton of credit cards …

The first thing she took out was a tape recorder. A mini-corder, the kind used for dictating memos. It had a tape inside. Scoot rewound it, pressed "Play."

Just as she'd thought … it was a tape of two people at a business lunch. Ordering drinks, ordering food. Something about a job. She pushed "Stop," planning to listen to the rest later. It would be boring, legal talk always was, but there might be something interesting in there too. The two people – a woman who had to be the blonde, and a man with a sexy voice – sounded like they might have something else going on.

Next was a manila folder, which probably pertained to whatever case they had met to discuss. Scoot flipped it open, saw a few photos of a handsome blond man with a great tan. Could this be Mr. Sexy-Voice on the tape, perhaps?

The papers didn't look like what she thought legal briefs should look like, but then, her only experience was derived from shows like Law and Order. She set the folder aside and delved into the purse again.

A sealed 5x7 envelope, thick and full. She took it out, turned it over.

Blank. No address, no return address, no stamp, no postmark. It had not been mailed.

She slit it open, and her jaw hit somewhere in the vicinity of her collarbones.

The envelope was stuffed with cash.

A lot of cash.

Scoot's breath escaped in a whoof. She riffled the edges of the bills with her thumb. Hundreds. The envelope was full of hundred-dollar-bills, rubber-banded together in stacks.

"That can't be right," she murmured after a quick count and some mental arithmetic. "That'd mean … that'd mean there's twenty-five thousand bucks here."

All at once Scoot felt the back of her neck prickle. She looked around. It occurred to her that she was sitting on the floor of her shabby apartment with the cash cost of a new car in her lap and the balcony drapes wide open. She couldn't think now if she'd locked the hall and kitchen doors or not.

She jumped up, drew the drapes, checked the locks. If someone had pounded on her door that very second, she would have wet her pants and maybe had a heart attack to boot. Never mind that she was twenty-two and in good shape. She would keel over, dead.

Twenty-five thousand dollars!

Was it a bribe? A payoff?

Hell, for all she knew it could be ransom money, lottery winnings, or counterfeit bills.

Who in the hell went around with 25 G's in her purse?

Scoot crammed it all back in the envelope, re-sealed it with strips of masking tape, and then crammed the envelope under the seat cushion of her ratty old recliner. She went to the hall door again and squinted through the peephole. Her nerves were buzzing, and she wouldn't have been surprised to see the petite blonde standing right there.

Or maybe a couple of guys in dark suits and sunglasses, like the FBI agents always looked in movies. The men-in-black, wasn't that what they were called? There were men-in-black, and men-in-white-coats, and if the way she was feeling now meant that she was going crazy, then maybe the men-in-white-coats would turn up, too.

The hall, as far as she could see in the distortion of the fisheye lens, was empty. She opened the door and stuck her head out. Just then, a door at the far end opened and old Mr. Gavins stepped out, shirtless, scratching his hairy potbelly with one hand and lugging a pillowcase full of laundry with the other.

She grimaced and ducked back in, quick. Closed the door. Locked it. And, for the first time since she had moved into the Dunley Apartments, hooked the chain.

The purse still sat on the carpet, its mouth gaping, the zipper-edges like a multitude of tiny teeth. There was another envelope in it. A big manila one, the padded kind used for mailing.

Telling herself that the smart thing to do would be to shove everything back in there and ditch the purse in the nearest Dumpster, Scoot nonetheless went back to it and hunkered down.

"Besides," she said into the stillness, which was only broken by the irregular herky-jerky tick of the grotesquely ugly sunburst clock over the television, "the nearest Dumpster is the one where Martha hangs out. She could use the money, yeah, but it'd get her killed."

With thumb and forefinger tweezing like pincers, she got the corner of the envelope. It was heavy. Scoot prodded the shape through the sides, both hearing and feeling the faint pip-pip-pip of bubble wrap giving way.

Solid. Lumpy.

"I'll probably regret this," she said, and tore open the end so she could peek inside.

A gun.

"Holy crap!" Scoot almost dropped the envelope, had a vision-flash of the gun going off when it hit the floor and maybe putting a bullet through her ankle, and gingerly lowered it into the seat of the recliner. She tipped it, and the gun slid out.

She was no judge; aside from an old skeet-shooting rifle that had belonged to some Montgomery ancestor or another, she had never seen a real gun up close. But it looked like an antique. A revolver, not an automatic. In good shape. Polished, shiny. The handle had the mellow, satiny gleam of ivory.

Scoot stood over the gun, rubbing the heels of her hands up and down the sides of her face. Her hands were cold, but her face was numb, so that was all right. The fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck were quivering on end and it felt like the ones on her head would have liked to do the same. Despite the stuffy heat of the apartment, she was all-over goosebumps. Glissandos of ice strummed up and down her spine.

"Shit, shit, oh shit," she whispered.

Her mind grasped desperately at straws of explanation.

The petite blonde was … um … an antiques dealer? In the movie biz, and this was a prop?

Every instinct told her otherwise. This was no prop. This was a real, actual, could-kill-you gun.

Was it loaded?

The goosebumps that had begun to settle now hunched up again.

She didn't know how to tell if it was loaded or not. Short of pulling the trigger, which she was not about to do. The neighborhood around Dunley and 6th might not be the best, but it wasn't such an urban wasteland that a gunshot would go unnoticed.

Okay. A gun.

A gun and a pile of money.

Think about this. Think about it rationally.

But Allison didn't want to think about this, rationally or otherwise. She wanted to get out, get away from the problem and let distance and routine help bring it into some sort of perspective.

Thankfully, she had just the excuse she needed. It was time to go to work.

**

CHAPTER SEVEN

Allison had first become Scoot when she was about fifteen and already feeling stifled.

They had such expectations, the Montgomerys. Private schools and country clubs, tennis and ballet. Charity balls and political dinners. French lessons. Old money. Good manners.

No freedom. Nothing wild, nothing fun.

So, she'd started shoplifting. Out of boredom. Knowing it was wrong but having to do something to relieve the monotony. The Montgomery monotony.

It had been little stuff, mostly. Stupid stuff. A lipstick here, a pack of gum there, a piece of fake jewelry, a bottle of cheap perfume. The items didn't matter and the price certainly didn't; in those days, she got fifty bucks a week allowance and if she needed more, all she had to do was ask Daddy.

What mattered was the rush, the tremendous walloping thrill of risk and excitement that she got whenever she slipped something into her pocket. Her heart would hammer at a furious pace as she walked toward the door, trying to look calm, cool, aloof. Each time, as she approached the exit, she'd wonder … would an alarm go off? Would a security guard chase her?

But it was too easy, so she soon graduated to stealing packs of cigarettes, bottles of alcohol, boxes of condoms. Allison herself didn't smoke, drink, or screw, so she ended up giving these ill-gotten gains to the 'bad girls' at her school.

And, always … would she get caught? Would they call the cops? What would her parents say if they had to come to the police station and bail her out? Would the other girls rat on her? Would she get expelled?

She never skipped classes, aware in some subconscious way that she'd only be hurting herself by doing that, but she did start lying to her parents about after-school activities. They thought she was in French Club, Drama Club, Glee Club, when really, she was downtown hanging out at the malls and the arcades.

And then she had gotten involved with the skaters. They were the ultimate in coolness and attitude. They had the freedom she craved, and casually indulged in crazy stunts and death-defying risks.

Of course, they were none too interested in welcoming her into their fold. Not a rich private school girl. They'd think she was stuck up and snotty, even if she wasn't. Here, at last, was a group into which she couldn't buy her way with stolen smokes or impress her way with her parents' money and connections. She had to earn her way in by doing what they did.

Then providence, in the form of Uncle Bob, brought the answer. He got the twins skateboards for their birthday. Black with red wheels and flames for David, black with electric-blue wheels and lightning bolts for Steven. And complete gear – helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, the works.

Mom had pressed the flawlessly manicured tips of her fingers to her temples in a futile attempt to forestall one of her migraines. She had conveniently forgotten her own rather humble upbringing when she'd landed Daniel Montgomery, and now acted like her working-class brother was a mortal embarrassment.

"They're all the rage with the kids these days," Uncle Bob had said. "Davey will be a natural, you just watch. And Steve, it'd do him good to get out in the fresh air and exercise."

Uncle Bob didn't know his nephews very well.

A month later, neither board had ever been used, so Allison had figured her brothers wouldn't notice if she happened to requisition them. She taught herself to ride, having to sneak around because if her parents ever got wind of her new hobby, she was sure there'd be hell to pay.

It wasn't ladylike, and worse, it wasn't classy. It was low. Right down there with dirt-bike racing and monster truck rallies. A bare step above cockfighting, competitive eating or spitting for distance.

Allison loved it. She'd started thinking of those secret training sessions as "scoot time." And of the wild inner Allison unleashed as "scoot Allison."

Her biggest challenge in those early days was keeping her battle scars hidden from her family. Despite the pads, her knees and elbows were soon scabbed over, and she was no stranger to road-rash on her palms.

When she'd finally felt skilled enough to debut at the skate park, she discovered one final problem that she hadn't considered. Most of the skaters were guys. Most of the girls who hung around with them were not that interested in the sport for its own sake, but were girlfriends or groupies. The few that did skate seemed only to do so in hopes of attracting the notice of one cute skater boy or another.

So, when Allison showed up with her board, she found herself the object of a lot of unwanted attention. The guys hit on her or did a lot of adolescent hooting and sniggering. The girls despised her for trying to horn in on their turf. No one seemed to care that she knew how to ride.

The answer? Scoot.

Like her sister the ballerina, Allison was tall for her age and had what Hilary liked to call a 'willowy' build. In other words, narrow hips and barely any tits whatsoever. While this had its downside, it was a definite bonus when it came to dressing like a boy. Frumpy, slouchy, baggy clothes being the fashion helped, too. All she had to do was tuck up her long hair under her cap, and she could readily pass for a slim teenage boy, at least as long as no one came within a few feet.

Then, once she'd mastered the skateboard and the art of disguise, she started snatching purses.

Shoplifting had become dull. She had never been caught, not once. Even the time she'd set off an alarm by carrying a stolen CD past the sensor, the store manager had not questioned her glib excuse. She'd gone into fitting rooms and put garments on under her street clothes and walked out with them. She'd lifted a diamond tennis bracelet, by far the most valuable of her thefts thus far, and gotten away with it.

Somewhere along the line, though, the fun had gone out of it. She hadn't been getting the same thrill anymore, not even when she tried to kick it up a notch with the more expensive items.

It was, she'd gradually come to realize, impersonal. Flat, and faceless. Oh, they said shoplifting was not a victimless crime, because it caused prices to go up so that the average consumer took it in the shorts, but really, all she was doing was hurting the big anonymous corporations. Hurting? That was a laugh … even if she took ten CDs a day, she doubted it would be more than a ripple in the profits.

The purses, though …!

Her first purse hadn't been a snatch, but a finders-keepers kind of thing. She had been Scoot that day, pleasantly exhausted from an afternoon of wheeled stunts, pushing along in a mellow, lackadaisical sort of manner.

Push … and coast … push … and coast … headed for the parking garage where she'd stowed the Corvette her parents had given her for her Sweet Sixteen. It had been waiting outside the house, cherry-red with a big white bow. They’d all gotten cars for their sixteenth birthdays. A silver Porsche here, a turquoise-blue Beemer there … it was just the way the Montgomerys did things.

She'd been coming up on a bus stop, and saw a chubby middle-aged lady heave herself onto the city bus, leaving her purse sitting on the bench.

"Hey!" Allison, still disguised as Scoot that day, had called. "Hey, lady!"

The woman had looked around, seen Scoot, and gone wide-eyed with alarm. Probably mistaking Scoot for a junkie, gang member, or generic punk, she had nearly leaped up the bus steps, mouthing frantically at the driver. The door wheezed shut.

"No! Lady, you forgot your purse!" Scoot had shouted, but the bus pulled away from the curb with a gassy exhalation of exhaust.

Grabbing up the purse, she had gone flying down the street on her skateboard, after the departing bus. But pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks slowed her and drew a lot of dirty looks and some swearing, and the bus kept going.

Scoot had not known what to do, so she'd taken the purse with her back to the car. There, her Scoot-clothes in the trunk with the board, she had opened it and started going through it.

And oh, how the excitement had coursed through her! Not because of the contents; the most exotic things in there had been a metal box of cinnamon Altoids and a ticket stub from a matinee showing of an extended director's cut of Titanic. It was the thrill of going through someone else's stuff.

This was not faceless and impersonal. This was as personal as it got. She'd gone through every compartment and pocket of that purse. She read the woman's shopping lists and receipts, criticized her choice in cosmetics, ate some of the curiously strong mints, looked at pictures of the kids.

It was, she'd found, even more exciting than the shoplifting. Lasted longer, too, because the rush she got from swiping a bracelet had usually faded by the time she was out of the store. Exploring a stranger's purse, really taking her time with it and being thorough, could entertain her for quite a while.

A woman's purse was such a trove of secrets, too.

She remembered visiting her Sherwood grandparents, a few duty-visits to their retirement community in Arizona, and when Grandpa Art had needed a pen, Granny Helen had not told him to get one from her purse.

"Bring me my purse," she had said.

And he had done it. Had carried that purse – a big, black, heavy old-lady purse with the gold clasps – all the way into the kitchen and waited beside her, humble as a church-mouse, while she had rooted around to find a pen.

A man wouldn't willingly look in a purse, Allison had determined.

Part of it might be some deep-rooted homophobia, him thinking that if he opened a purse or even held it in the wrong way, some inner switch would get thrown and the next thing he knew he'd be wearing ladies' dresses and singing show tunes.

But most of it was fear, a man's plain and simple fear of what he might find in there. What if there were tampons? Or feminine hygiene spray or some other dubious, icky product? What if there was proof of an affair in there, love letters or motel room keys or pressed flowers?

She even suspected that some men thought they might open their wife's purse and find a voodoo doll, or a vial of poison, or a fat insurance policy with his name on it. They harbored some hidden belief that there was death inside, just like they had that deeply buried superstitious fear of women themselves.

Women, who bled in monthly cycles and had incomprehensible mood swings. Women, who may or may not have teeth down there … they didn't, of course, everybody knew that … but didn't all rumors have some basis in fact? Would you want to be the one to stick the most important part of your anatomy into that strange darkness and find out for sure?

And just as a man's car was an extension of his you-know, to be shown off and compared and bragged about, a woman's purse was an extension of hers. Dark, mysterious, containing sought-after treasure.

Finding that first purse, mundane though its contents had turned out to be, had been like a brilliant bright light going on inside her. She was hooked, as hooked as anyone had ever been by a drug.

She tried to control it. Not quit, no, not give it up … but control it. Not go nuts with it or anything. Taking purses was a lot more dangerous than shoplifting. It required that up-close-and-personal contact. The victims tended to notice right away, and scream or shout or chase after.

A couple of times, they had thrown things. Scoot had been beaned in the back of the head and damn near knocked in front of a taxicab by a lady who had chucked a plastic water bottle. She had been smacked in the face once by a furled umbrella, and bombarded with oranges from a shopping bag held by a stout woman who was a fearsome shot.

Others on the street reacted, too. When a hue-and-cry went up, some lady shrieking, "Thief! Thief!", people turned to look. Sometimes they'd try to be heroes. Scoot lost her favorite baseball cap three years ago to a newspaper vendor who'd tried to grab her as she whizzed on by, and once a clean-cut Eagle Scout type had tackled her clean off her board. As they'd struggled, he got a good feel of what little tits she had through her quilted flannel shirt. He had yanked his hands away so fast he'd nearly given himself a whiplash, and sputtered an apology as his face went brick-red, thus giving her the opportunity to make her getaway.

The skateboard helped with all that. Usually, she could strike and be half a block down the street before the victim realized what had happened. A running person looked guilty, but everyone was accustomed to seeing kids on wheels slalom recklessly through pedestrians or plunge into traffic. And if she had to, all she needed was to get around a couple of corners or into a semi-private spot long enough to do a quick-change.

Over the years, she had honed her routine, adding little touches like the duffel, and the plastic garbage bag to hide the purses in. If she did it right, by the time anyone came charging along in pursuit of Scoot, all they'd see would be innocent Allison.

She still smiled at the memory of the first time a sweating, panting man had puffed to a stop and looked past her, then asked if she had seen a kid on a skateboard go by. "Scuzzy little prick, about so tall, skinny, had a ball cap and a jacket and his pants three sizes too big. Snatched a purse off a woman back there. Did you see him?"

Allison, who had reversed the jacket, hidden the hat, and whipped a long wraparound denim skirt over the pants, told him that yes, she had. "He went that way," she'd said, pointing with one hand while the other held the stolen purse at her side, making no effort whatsoever to hide or conceal it.

The man had thanked her and jogged on, and once he was out of sight she had retrieved her board from where she'd kicked it under a mailbox, and been on her merry way.

That had been a good purse, too. Small, but nice things came in small packages, wasn't that what they said? She'd found a lovely scuffed-suede wallet in there, a silver filigree heart-shaped pendant on a silver chain, an unopened bar of Toblerone white chocolate, and a fancy gold pen.

It was the infinite variety, the infinite possibility that appealed to her. She'd taken tiny beaded evening bags from elegant ladies on their way to the theater, and she'd taken funky patchwork-quilted satchels from hippie women in shapeless dresses and Birkenstocks. Old-lady purses like the one Granny Helen had, black and clunky and full of laxatives, prescription medicines and reading glasses. Teenager purses with Flirty Boys pins stuck to the strap. A stitched leather purse made to look like a decorated horse-saddle. All kinds of purses with all kinds of contents.

Like Christmas every time. A real Christmas, a fun Christmas. Like how she imagined Christmas might be if Mom's personal shopper hadn't gone out with lists from each kid so that they all knew exactly what they'd find under the tree.

She'd lost count a long time ago of how many purses there had been. Maybe a hundred and fifty, spread over the past six years.

Now, this one.

This supple buttercream-leather number with the long strap.

**

CHAPTER SIX

Another gap in the board fence opened onto a rutted gravel alley that ran between Prewett and Dunley.

Allison looked through as she threaded her hair into a single ponytail. She saw a delivery truck parked at one end by the bowling alley and a familiar homeless woman rooting through the Dumpster against the wall of Winnie's Crafts at the other end.

"Hi, Martha," she said, passing the woman.

Nobody knew Martha's real name. The folks who lived and worked around 6th and Dunley called her that after Martha Stewart, because she was always going through Winnie's trash to collect scraps of fabric, yarn, fake flowers and other such fripperies. She lived over in the vacant lot tucked in behind the Dollar Stop, in a corrugated tin lean-to that was tidier and better-decorated than Allison's own apartment.

Winnie threw a lot of perfectly good items into the trash because of Martha. She had tried just giving them to her, had tried inviting Martha to come into the store, but neither of those approaches did the trick. When openly offered anything, even the ultimate homeless-person triple-C of change, cigs or coffee, Martha scurried away.

Martha didn't return Allison's greeting. Her lips were moving, constantly, silently, as she pawed through the Dumpster looking for treasure.

Jamie Tremayne, who had the Readmore Bookstore across the street from the alley entrance, called her silent self-talk 'responding to internal stimuli,' which was a fancy way of saying that she was in constant conversation with the voices in her head.

Allison popped out of the alley and onto Dunley Street, duffel bag swinging at her side. Now she looked like she'd been out at the gym, nothing more sinister than that. Black spandex bike shorts, open jacket, white tank top over a sports bra, sneakers. Ponytail bobbing at the back of her head.

Jamie himself was out in front of the bookstore, stocking a rolling cart with old paperbacks. A Magic Marker sign announced that they were a quarter apiece, or five for a dollar. The front windows of the store were full of taped-up posters, fliers, and announcements of local events. Between them, the interior could faintly be glimpsed, with its high, dusty shelves of used books.

He saw Allison and paused to wave, resting books in his lap. Like her, Jamie wore his hair in a ponytail, though his was shorter, honey-blond, and tied with a black velvet ribbon like he thought he was Amadeus.

She waved back, and cut diagonally across the street toward him. As always, she felt a pang of guilt as she skipped lithely out of the way of oncoming cars and up onto the curb.

Jamie had told her time and again that she shouldn't feel guilty. "You have two perfectly good legs and you shouldn't be ashamed of using them."

Then, he had cast his gaze downward in a theatrical ogle, though she'd been wearing a calf-length corduroy skirt at the time, about as sexy as a nun's habit.

"Nope," he went on, winking. "You shouldn't be ashamed of them at all!"

Still, whenever she saw him in that wheelchair, there was that pang. It was different when he was in the store, behind the counter, and she could delude herself into thinking that he was sitting in an ordinary chair.

"Milady Allison Montgomery," he said as she reached him.

"Jamie, Lord Tremayne."

He scoffed. "Please! I prefer Sir Jamie."

"Sir Jamie it is. What's the catch of the day?"

"Bodice rippers," he said, fanning a bunch of paperbacks so she could see the covers. "Women with their dresses falling off, men with their shirts open. High-spirited heiresses and roguish scoundrels. Throbbing loins. Interested?"

"Are you trying to sell me a book or proposition me?"

"Book? What book?" He tossed them over his shoulder into a cardboard box and showed her his empty hands.

She laughed. So did Jamie. He was twenty-five, three years older than her, and had what he called a not-totally-useless degree in English. "Because I do work in the field," he'd said, indicating the used bookstore with an expansive gesture.

He also wrote, though as far as Allison knew, she was the only one he'd ever allowed to read any of his stories. And she'd had to pay for that privilege with some honesty of her own. Jamie knew something about Scoot. Uncle Bob had to have some idea, and Eva Cesare might suspect, but Jamie was the only one who knew a part of her secret truth.

"What are you up to tonight?" he asked.

"Nothing much. I'm working from four to seven, covering for Betty so she can go to her grandkid's school play."

"Plans for dinner?"

"There's a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli with my name on it."

Jamie made a face. "What kind of a friend would I be if I let you go home to the Chef? No, no, no, Allison. You're dining chez Tremayne this evening. I'm making my mother's meatloaf recipe, with mashed potatoes and gravy."

"Real mashed potatoes?" she asked, shooting him a skeptical eyebrow.

"Good God, no! The instant kind, flakes from a box! What do you take me for?"

"If it's the instant kind, I'm there," she said. "What time?"

"Seven-thirty?"

"Okay, but I'm bringing dessert."

"The last time you volunteered to bring dessert," he said, "you showed up with four packets of iced animal cookies from a vending machine."

"I'll do better, I promise."

"Then it's a date." He grinned up at her, then wheeled his chair around to go back inside and answer the door.

Mrs. Oberdorfer had come up to browse the bodice-rippers while they'd been talking. Now she, too, grinned up at Allison. She was a tiny round lady with two fluffy Princess Leia buns of hair on the sides of her head and a curl hanging down her unlined pink forehead.

"Ah, young love," she said, pronouncing it "luff."

"I didn't know you read this kind of thing, Mrs. O."

"I was meaning you and Jamie."

"Oh, hey, you've got us wrong. We're just friends."

"Hmm. But, yes, I like these books. Maybe they are not so much like real life, with the fiery passions and the fighting, but they are fun to read. Just don't tell Lindie. She would be shocked to know her mother-in-law reads such things."

"What about Maggie?" Allison asked, referring to the other Oberdorfer daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Oberdorfer flapped a hand. "Maggie, she reads them too. Eric told me. She is always either reading these or watching that Dr. Phil. Does that make sense to you?"

"Not really, but I don't watch Dr. Phil."

"I have tried, because he looks a little bit like my Gus. Don't you think so?"

Allison smiled. Gus Oberdorfer was a large, burly man of sixty, and she supposed that he did vaguely resemble the famed television shrink.

"The problem is," Mrs. O. went on, "that what you read in these books and what you hear on his show do not fit together. I should like to see Dr. Phil step into one of these and tell this …" she looked at the back cover of a Serenity Townshend, "… this Alaric Hawke that he needed to help out around the house. Can you?"

"Not really. I better go. See you, Mrs. O."

"Allie?"

"Yeah?"

"Netta's Bakery. Over on 5th Street. Tell Netta I sent you, and that you want the Dutch apple pie."

Saying that she would, Allison continued down Dunley, past the locksmith and the pet groomer. She crossed the street to the imaginatively-named Dunley Apartments and let herself into the entryway.

Her mail always smelled like burnt dryer lint because the laundry room with its three finicky machines was on the other side of the wall from the row of mailboxes. A dark hallway led to the first-floor apartments, including the unit belonging to the landlady. To reach her own, Allison had a choice between a claustrophobic stairwell and an elevator that was as slow and jittery as a palsied old man.

She chose the stairs, thinking that her mother would have a heart attack if she could see the peeling paint, water stains, and worn-through spots in the durable mustard-yellow carpet. But Marian Sherwood Montgomery had never clapped eyes to her middle child's current digs, and if Allison had her way, that was how it was going to stay.

Her apartment wasn't technically an apartment. It was technically a studio, a single bed-slash-living room that shared a kitchenette with the unit next door. The carpet was mustard-yellow in here, too, and the paneling a cheap knotty pine that made the small space feel even smaller. But the bathroom had an amusing old clawfoot tub, the shower curtain suspended above it on a metal ring, and there was a balcony just barely big enough for a white resin lawn chair and a cute little tripod barbecue.

Allison unpacked, dropping the garbage bag with the purse in it onto her thrift-store recliner and stowing her duffel bag on the single closet's top shelf. Next she unlatched the sliding door that led into the kitchen.

Eva Cesare, her neighbor, was a med school student who also worked as a waitress and was trying to help her only surviving brother break away from drugs and gangs and get into community college. As a result, Allison hardly ever saw her.

They got along fairly well and had yet to have any big arguments over the kitchen, though sometimes Eva's brother Hector would come over and help himself to Allison's stash of Mountain Dew in the fridge.

Speaking of which …

She "did the Dew," popping open a can and slurping down the bile-green fizzy liquid. The caffeine percolated through her system and the bubbles inspired a hiccup that was not quite a burp.

Supplementing the soda with a package crackers, cheese-flavored and sandwiched with peanut butter, she went back into her room and thumbed through the dryer-lint scented mail.

K-Mart ad … Val-U-Pak coupons … postcard reminding her of a dental appointment … letter from her kid sister … travel agency brochure … credit card application.

The ad, the coupons, and the application went into the trash. She flipped through the brochure long enough to admire the crystal-blue tropical waters and think that maybe someday she would like to take one of those all-inclusive vacations. The dentist's reminder went up on the corkboard by the phone.

The letter from Missy, she opened and read. It was printed on lined paper in careful sticklike letters. Missy was ten, the youngest of the brood and the only one that Allison really regretted leaving when she moved out on her own.

Dear Allie, I miss you, when are you coming home? David is going to tennis camp this summer and Steven to music camp so it will be boring here. Mom says it won't because I will have Danny to play with but Danny is a baby and he bites me. I drew you a picture so you remember who I am. Love, Missy. The signature, unlike the body of the letter, was an elaborate cursive scrawl with the tail of the 'y' swooping into a long curlicue.

Allison sighed as she set the letter down and picked up the folded sheet of drawing paper. Missy was better at art than she was at putting her thoughts into words, so the picture was quite good. Sad, but good. It showed the big house in the background, with various stick-people on the porch. Even as stick-people, Allison could guess who most of them were.

There were the twins, David with his tennis racquet, Steven with his flute. There was Daniel Jr., the eldest, with his wife Susan – Susan was depicted with her mouth wide open as if yelling – and their fat baby son, Daniel III. There was Hilary, four years older than Allison, in a ballerina's tutu. And there were Mom and Dad, Marian and Daniel Montgomery.

And, larger in the foreground looking alone and apart from the house and the family on the porch, was a girl-figure with long red hair and enormous sorrowful grey eyes.

It tore her heart to see Missy's picture. How she wished she could have brought her baby sister with her. No one else in the family had time for Missy, or understood her. But it was impossible. Allison knew she couldn't take care of a ten-year-old girl, couldn't provide a good home, structure, guidance, discipline and balanced meals for her.

"Hell, I can't even provide those for myself," she said to the empty room. "I was going to eat canned ravioli for dinner."

No, what it all boiled down to was that Missy would have to learn the hard way what Allison herself had learned. That if you were a Montgomery and a misfit, you could forget hoping that the family would adapt and embrace your differences. You could only wait it out until you were old enough to escape on your own.

It wasn't as if Missy were being abused, starved or even neglected. Overlooked, yes, and misunderstood, but those things did not warrant a Child Protective Services caseworker.

Reading the letter and seeing the picture had left her so down in the dumps that Allison almost forgot about Scoot's prize until her glance happened upon the garbage bag, still sitting in the recliner. She checked the time – not yet three in the afternoon, which meant she had a full hour before she had to leave for work. Plenty of time to change clothes and examine the purse.

She took a quick shower. The building's water heater was old and balky, so a quick shower was the only way to make sure of a hot shower. And as charming as the clawfoot tub was, she had yet to satisfactorily fill it with steaming hot water.

Dressed in comfortable old jeans and a man's white shirt, she left her hair loose and dashed on a bit of blusher and eyeshadow. This, too, would have horrified her mother if Marian had been here. Allison could only recall once in her life when she had seen her mother without a perfectly made-up face and perfectly styled hair, and that had been in the hospital after Missy was born.

Sitting on the floor in front of the little table that held her television, Allison unzipped the roomy buttercream-leather purse and reached inside.

**

CHAPTER FIVE

Out of Century Plaza, the purse swinging.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little old lady at twelve o'clock!

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

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

Hooligan.

Kewl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hey, Booger," Scoot said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For now.

**

CHAPTER FOUR

"Hey, lady, you okay?"

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

"Anybody get which way he went?"

"I'll call the police."

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

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

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

Gone. Gone like a damned mirage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The purse snatcher had everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How had she let this happen?

Shit!

Hysteria welled, and Jeanette quashed it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's really no trouble."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What am I going to tell Rayburn?"

**

CHAPTER THREE

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

It wasn't anything like the movies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All kinds of heavy stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Like what?" she asked.

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

"Dinner?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her purse … and everything in it.

**

CHAPTER TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And more hot water," Jeanette said.

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

"He doesn't look like a businessman."

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

"Spare me the mental image, please."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How far up?"

"Double."

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

"Double," she mused.

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

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

But it was a lot of money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not like that first time.

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

Rayburn noticed. "Jade? Something the matter?"

"No," she said.

That first time, a disaster!

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

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

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

And he had deserved it.

Kenny Murphy. The prick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Jeanette killed Kenny Murphy.

**