My sort-of boss Eddie let me slam down four fuzzy navels at dinner, and then handed me a ticket to go see Miss Saigon. Later, when I thought about it, I realized he might have gotten the ticket specifically to distract me in case I was pissed off about his having nearly gotten me killed the day before.  It wasn’t too much of a stretch, considering that he made a living anticipating disasters–major and minor–like that.

What he didn’t know was that he actually had gotten me killed.

Read more…

The woman’s name was Dorian, but she called herself Taiisha.

She had chosen the name for herself, a long, long time ago.  In fact, she doubted there was anyone left alive who knew her as Dorian.

She sat calmly in a kitchen she didn’t belong in, and drank coffee that she didn’t like, and watched the sun rise.  She wore a well-fitting ash-blond wig to cover her dark locks, and a forgettable navy blue shirt and jeans.  Taiisha was attractive, in a vague way.  Her face was a malleable oval mask–if she wore glasses, people would remember the glasses and little else.  A face with Italian, maybe Middle Eastern, maybe Hispanic ancestry, nothing more.  If she wore a push-up bra, many men wouldn’t be able to confirm that she had a face at all.  It was convenient. Her eyes were gray, and annoyingly memorable; she covered them with sunglasses or contacts when she could.

The dawn lit her calm, emotionless face beatifically, golden light framing her artificially pale hair like a halo.  But she wasn’t a saint, either.

The kitchen was recently remodeled, with a handsome marble-topped island and a trendy stainless steel range and stove opposite the sink.  Cabinets, floor, and breakfast bar stools were all pale oak, varnished to an elegant sheen.  Neat white mugs hung cheerfully over the sink, and a small forest of expensive white appliances huddled on the counter.  The only things out of place were the cheap Styrofoam cup Taiisha was sipping from, and the kitchen’s owner, who lay crumpled like a kicked floormat at Taiisha’s feet.  The woman was thirtysomething, with honey-blonde hair and a fluffy pink Victoria’s Secret terrycloth robe.  Some of the blood that had come out of her neck had stained it.

Taiisha felt nothing for the corpse at her feet, or for that of the corpse’s husband, upstairs and equally dead.  Taiisha’s conscience, if it existed, had left her free to enjoy the sunrise this morning, because the only thing she’d killed today was the golden retriever which was currently stuffed under the back porch.  The need for this had been purely personal.  This one had approached without barking, tail wagging, yet she never considered letting it live.  Dogs frightened her.  She doubted there was anyone alive who knew this, either.

The killer was in the basement.  She’d be up shortly, if the rapid banging sounds coming from down there were any indication.

The dawn turned Taiisha’s gray eyes to yellow-gold.  She sipped her coffee and smiled.

It didn’t matter whether Taiisha called them “tasks” or “lessons.”  The terms seemed to be interchangeable.  Had Nikki expected any kind of reprieve after committing two mindless, random murders at Taiisha’s behest, she would have been disappointed.  But she knew better.  No sooner had she dropped the knife, still wet with blood, than Taiisha threw her down the basement steps, jumped down after her, and handcuffed her to a water pipe.

“Get loose,” Taiisha had said.  “Come upstairs.  I shall set this house on fire in a quarter hour, whether you’ve come or not.”  And then she was gone.

Nikki lay still for several minutes, taking in the unfamiliar basement. The floor beneath her was carpeted, and the walls partially finished with wood paneling.  There was a small television and an orange couch, both looking like castaways from the more expensively furnished den upstairs.  A rickety bookshelf full of book club selections slouched against the wall behind the sofa.  Where the carpet and paneling ended, there were a washer and dryer, and a workbench.  Tools were neatly hung on the wall, and a worn-out three-speed bicycle as well.

None of that was much use to her.  Lying almost prone, with both hands manacled to a pipe, Nikki’s five-foot-nothing height didn’t allow her much chance of dragging a pair of bolt cutters down off of the wall, which was a good twenty feet away.  She could barely reach the television with her toes. 

The pipe she was locked to came out of the floor, made a ninety-degree bend just above her head, and then entered the wall, lead ending in concrete at both ends.  Too bad; she might have been able to kick a hole in a PVC pipe.  Nikki closed her eyes to think of a solution, ignoring as best she could the imaginary clock in her head that counted down the seconds until immolation.  The death wouldn’t be permanent, but it would be excruciating.  And the punishment for failing, which would no doubt follow, would be worse.

It was easiest to do what Taiisha had told her to do.  Just doing as she was told was easy.  Even the killing.  Asking questions or refusing incurred a host of terrible repercussions.  Nikki had learned to stop thinking, if she didn’t have to.  It was easier.  Open this door?  Okay.  Cut this woman’s throat?  Okay.  Block my attacks?  Okay.  Get free from these handcuffs?  Okay.  Taiisha had showed her how to do everything.  All Nikki had to do was perform when commanded to.

Her eyes went to the paneling on the wall, tracing the seam that started just below the pipe.  That was it.  The wood had to be attached to something.  Nikki lay on her back and turned her feet toward the wall, arms twisted uncomfortably over her head.  How much time had passed?  Didn’t matter.  Get free from the handcuffs and go upstairs, that was what mattered.  Nikki kicked the paneling, hard.  She was rewarded with a heel-shaped dent in the wood.  Several more kicks resulted in a good-sized hole, and the wood framing that held the paneling in place showed through.  Pieces of the paneling had broken off and hung loose, revealing what she wanted–finishing nails.  The two-inch long, narrow-headed nails made acceptable lockpicks.

Up on her knees, she was able to hug the pipe and get her hands close enough to the wall to pry a nail free.  The cuffs were off in seconds.

She ascended the basement steps as quietly as she could, but Taiisha was looking directly at Nikki as she entered the kitchen.  “Good,” she said, not smiling.

Her legs ached, but Nikki didn’t sit down.  Taiisha sighed, stood, and poured the rest of her coffee into the sink.  “Juice?” she offered.  She had already poured a glass.  Nikki took it, although the offer made her nervous.  Any expression of kindness from Taiisha did.  Unpleasantness invariably followed.  She asked no questions.  She knew that obedience was what was expected.

Taiisha resumed her spot by the kitchen window to watch Nikki drink.  The girl’s black hair was cut short with scissors and conspired with her slight frame to make her resemble a preadolescent boy more than a nineteen-going-on-twenty woman.  With her big midnight blue eyes, just-barely-upturned nose, and a perfect little oval of a face she was somewhat less anonymous than Taiisha.  That was just as well; Taiisha didn’t expect anyone in a position to remember the face to live long enough to identify it.  Either way, she tried to keep Nikki slightly scruffy and dirty; it made her more forgettable.

She collected Nikki’s juice glass and put it in a trash bag.  “Hungry?” she asked.  Nikki shook her head no.  “Your sack is on the steps, Kerry,” Taiisha told her.

Taiisha knew that Kerry was Nikki’s middle name–Nicole Kerry Saxen, the name felt good on her tongue–but renaming her had been a simple enough task.  The girl answered to “Kerry” just as readily as she did to the other.

Without a word Nikki went to the foyer of the house that didn’t belong to them, picked up the battered, oversized leather purse from where it rested on the cream-carpeted stairs, and hugged it tight to her chest.  It held all of her worldly possessions, and she hadn’t seen it in several months. 

Taiisha heard her sigh of contentment from two rooms away.  She was giving the bag to her because the girl’s traveling things were in it.  She’d need them.  She’d also need better shoes; when Nikki returned to the kitchen, Taiisha handed her a pair of battered blue Doc Martens she had been saving for the occasion.

Nikki recognized them instantly, and gave Taiisha a questioning look.  “Retrieved from the girl who stole them from you,” Taiisha told her.  Nikki nodded mutely, and put them on.  The battered tennis shoes she has been wearing Taiisha added to the garbage bag.  Nikki wished she could have put the rest of her clothes in there as well; like the shoes they were streaked with dirt and elderly blood.  Taiisha rarely gave her a chance to wash them.

“Fifteen minutes,” Taiisha announced.  Time to start the fire she had promised.  “Go to the car.  I’ll be along.”

“People will know they were dead before the fire,” Nikki said.

“Don’t care,” was the reply.  “I’m burning away your lovely little fingerprints.”

They took the dead couple’s Pontiac minivan.  Nikki didn’t even know their names.  Glancing out the back window, she couldn’t see any sign that the cheerful suburban house was burning from the inside out.

Ten miles out of town, they pulled into the hotel parking lot where Taiisha’s black Thunderbird had been parked overnight.  After switching cars, Taiisha got on the freeway, headed west, and let Nikki sit with her thoughts for four hours.  They were both content with the silence.  When they entered California, Taiisha spoke.  “You have a new kill to make,” she said.  “We’re going to San Francisco.”

Nikki took a long, slow breath, let it out.

Taiisha said, “His name is Edward.  He’ll have you do a job.  Do the job, then finish him.  It won’t take long.  A day or two.”

Nikki slitted her eyes.  “Another innocent, or did you hire him as prey, too?”

Taiisha resisted the urge to bang the girl’s head against the dashboard; she knew Nikki would do as she was told, but the sarcastic tone in her voice was intolerable.  But it wouldn’t do to have her show up bleeding and bruised.  “It’s a surprise to him,” she replied. “He won’t expect it.  I’ll be close.”  When she glanced, the girl’s midnight blue eyes were on her.

“What’s the job?”

Taiisha shrugged.  “Whatever it is, do it.”

“How do you know he’ll want me for it?”

“Let him see your beautiful sleight.” Taiisha knew Edward was looking for a thief, and Nikki’s fingers were phenomenally light.  “He’ll be on the wharf.  Pick some pockets.  He’ll see you.  Make him catch you.  He’ll work for it.  Maybe he’ll make you his apprentice.  Maybe he’ll partake of your trim little snatch for a few hours.  Go with him and do his work.  Then do yours.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s fat.  Blue eyes.  Insipid smile.”

“Why am I killing him?”

“None of your business.  Do as you’re told.  I put your knife in your sack for you.”

Nikki could hear Taiisha’s patience running out.  The conversation was over, unless she wanted to be hit.  She was unaware that Taiisha had already decided not to hit her.  Nikki clutched her bag tighter and closed her eyes.  She couldn’t sleep this close to Taiisha, but a new facet of this game occurred to her and she hid it behind her eyelids.  She would have time away from her self-appointed mentor.  If she was doing a job for this ‘Edward,’ whatever it was, and it was a cover for his assassination, that meant that Taiisha couldn’t appear and attack or frighten her with impunity.  She had no doubt that the woman driving the car could find ways to work her “lessons” in from time to time, but there would also be times–maybe even hours on end–where Taiisha wouldn’t be able to appear without destroying Nikki’s cover.  She might have days of freedom.  No eyes on her back.  No sleep shortened by training exercises and mindgames.

Nikki suddenly wanted, more than anything, to run a hot bath and soak in it for an hour.  Even if there had been a bathtub in Taiisha’s tiny house (there was only a shower stall), she wouldn’t have risked having her head shoved underwater for three minutes again.  Being dunked in the stream had been bad enough.  Nikki had chanced the shower a few times, but it was an enclosed space with only one exit.  No place was even a temporary safe haven near Taiisha, except maybe for unconsciousness.  Nikki hadn’t had more than a hasty sponge bath over the sink in four months.  She could feel the dried sweat and accumulating grime on her skin.  She hated it.  She’d never get used to it.

They didn’t speak again until they reached San Francisco shortly after two in the afternoon.  Taiisha drove straight to the waterfront.  She stopped at the cluster of shops and tourist attractions at Pier 39.  She looked at Nikki, knowing it was the last time she’d see the girl for a few days.  Sad to part with her, but the things she would learn were more than worth it.  Nikki was past the most uncertain part of her molding.  Taiisha had no fear for her.  She kept her feelings behind the mask that was her face.  “Do,” she said, and turned her eyes away from Nikki.

Nikki got out of the car.  Taiisha was rolling before the door closed. 

She moved straight into the crowds, pretending to ignore the black Thunderbird but watching intently out of the corner of her eye as the car moved off down the block.  Nikki moved quickly through the throng, making a beeline to the nearest bathroom.  She wanted to wash her hands and face.

At the door she froze.  Taiisha could still come back for her.  No dawdling, then.  It was better to find Edward and get it over with.  Nikki paused with her hand on the door, then turned reluctantly away from it, facing the happy, colorful tourist trap with grimy hands (some of the streaks were blood) and greasy hair.

The lunchtime rush should have been over, but the shops and restaurants were crowded, mostly in small family units or pairs.  Why was it so busy?  The air was cool, actually, too cool to be high summer.  Jesus, she didn’t even know what fucking month it was.  Taiisha didn’t keep clocks in the tiny desert cabin she and Nikki stayed in, and there were no seasons.  When was it?  Nikki guessed that Taiisha had had her in that torture cell for at least eight months.  She could find out easily; she needed a newspaper for picking pockets anyway.

It took her a few minutes to find a discarded USA Today.  The date she saw made her stagger to the closest wall and sit down.  It was October.  Taiisha had kidnapped her in July.  But the year, the year was wrong, the paper said it was 1996, how could she have been traveling with that woman for two years?  It wasn’t possible, was it?  She hadn’t seen television or read a newspaper in two years?  There had been a lot of lessons, a lot of bad things, and it had seemed like a long time, but two years?  Nikki closed her eyes, wanting the awful thought to go away.  It did, but more rushed in to fill its place, and everything kept coming back to her life.  Two years.  Gone.  She was almost twenty.  The ages of eighteen and nineteen were just gone.

Nikki jumped up and ran to the bathroom.  She didn’t care if Taiisha was watching this time; she was going to be sick.  The door crashed against the wall when she hit it, and she bent over the sink and retched.  Nothing came up.

Nikki looked at herself in the mirror, at her dirt-smeared face and grimy clothes.  The stains on her shirt were maroon in spots.  Jesus, she was covered in blood.  She spent a few minutes washing her face, using a lot of hand soap and a lot of towels.  She wet her hair down as well, to get some of the dust out, and dried it under the hand dryer, ignoring the stares she got from the women who came and went in the meantime.  When the bathroom was empty again, Nikki ducked into a stall, took off her shirt, and exchanged it for a cleaner one from her bag.  When she returned to the mirror again, the woman looking back at her was a bit more familiar.  She was still two years older than she wanted to be, but she couldn’t get the time back.

Fuck it.  Her life was gone anyway.  All that mattered now was doing what Taiisha had told her to do.  Doing.  That was all.  Nikki left the bathroom and scanned the crowd.  She didn’t see anyone particularly remarkable, and no one paid her any mind either.  No fat men with insipid grins. 

In spite of the knot in her stomach (two years?), her shoulders felt lighter, knowing that Taiisha wasn’t watching.  She briefly entertained the notion of turning away from the pier, of running down the sidewalk and trying to lose herself in San Francisco, but she couldn’t convince herself Taiisha wouldn’t find her.  There was nothing to do but her task.  A few days’ freedom was enough of a gift, for now.  What did it matter?  She’d lost two years.

It was easy to lose herself in picking pockets.  There was a thrill in it, a constant challenge to choose the right target, to choose the right moment.  Nikki didn’t always select the easiest targets.  Better to look for people who needed the poetic justice: the stern-looking man dragging a child by one arm and screaming at his wife at the same time, for instance, or the fat woman who tossed a half-full tray of nachos on the ground ten feet from a trash can.  Only the first four wallets disappeared into the depths of her bag, however.  Nikki needed the cash.  After that, she picked pockets without robbing anyone.  She took wallets out of purses and pockets–then put them right back.  She did it quickly enough that anyone watching would think she’d lifted them.  It made a good way to follow Taiisha’s orders and still live with herself.  It was a delicious challenge, too.  Nikki found herself actually almost having fun, before long.

A hand fell on her shoulder.  There seemed to be a direct connection from the hand to her mind, because a male voice asked her in the same instant, “How much have you gotten today?”

Nikki jumped, feeling the trickle of adrenaline lacing her veins turn into a flood.  He was shaped like a pear atop a pumpkin, wearing an amazingly tasteless Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and a straw hat, and he was smiling at her.  He had a good tan except for lines where his sunglasses had been.  Her eyes met his, dark blue locked with bright blue.  Edward?  Nikki decided that it was.  If it wasn’t, he was in for an awful, awful surprise.  If it was, Taiisha wanted her to make him chase her.  Nikki shrugged the hand off of her shoulder and walked away from him, pulling her bag closer to herself out of habit.  The gesture made her look nervous, too.  Good.

Eddie Sharp grinned in amusement and followed Nikki.  He’d been watching her work the crowd for an hour.  He had her pegged for a runaway, probably recently arrived from somewhere back east.  She was just the type he was looking for.  Desperate enough for a little crime, but not so criminally far gone that she’d be impossible to clean up, if necessary.  She picked pockets smoothly, like she had been doing it for a long time, but she was too obviously uncomfortable with the reality of taking other people’s stuff to be a long-time wallet-snatcher.  Eddie guessed that she’d had magic lessons, learned a little sleight-of-hand somewhere.  Whatever the reason, she had plenty he could work with.  With luck she wouldn’t be dumb, either.

He followed her at a distance, to keep from spooking her.  It wasn’t hard; in a gray T-shirt that had been black about two thousand washes ago, a charcoal-colored, ankle-length skirt, and dark blue boots, she didn’t blend in with the tourists.  Her hair was black and needed a wash and trim.  Cleaning up would come later, though.  She definitely had promise.

She went into a corner store, with exits on two sides and haphazardly placed racks overflowing with silly hats.  She disappeared into the brightly colored cover.  Eddie waited ten seconds, fifteen, before following.  He wanted to keep her from bolting.  A walking chase he could handle.  If she ran, she’d outrun him in about five seconds and he’d never find her again.  Eddie didn’t have time to go looking for another candidate, and didn’t want one anyway.  He’d made up his mind; it was her or nobody.

She saw him as soon as he entered the store.  Her furtive eyes pegged him from behind a moose-antlered cap, and she went out the other door, with increased urgency.

Nikki hesitated outside a moment, playing scared.  She didn’t need to look to know he was coming out, but when the door opened she looked anyway.  It was him.  He met her eye and started to smile again and she pasted a false look of apprehension on her face and ran.  It wasn’t full flight.  She let him keep up.  She bolted quickly through the crowd, pretending to hesitate when a knot of people slowed Edward, then sped up again when he was clear. 

She reached the curb where Taiisha had dropped her off, saw a bike unattended on the sidewalk while its owner bought ice cream, and she didn’t hesitate to take it.  She ignored the yelling that began behind her, pedaling almost leisurely away and looking over her shoulder.  The breeze of motion blew her hair into her eyes, but she saw Edward run out of the crowd, still moving pretty fast for a fat man, and jump into a beige car parked at the curb.

With a glance at his watch, Eddie gunned the Caprice away from the shoulder.  He’d lost his straw hat while he was running.  Oh well.  Ahead, the girl looked over her shoulder, saw him in the car, and started pedaling for all she was worth.  There wasn’t enough traffic to slow him down, and nowhere she could take that bike that he couldn’t follow in the car.  All Eddie had to do was keep her from getting into the city.  She probably knew it, too.  Eddie felt a little bit sorry for her.  She’d been outmaneuvered.

Nikki felt like she was on a ride just about to spin out of control.  The chase was beginning to turn a little intense, like a game of tag that had gotten personal.  She let the desire to flee drive her without allowing herself to actually get away.  She had to play as hard as she could, but still play to lose.  Come on, then, she thought.  Catch me, you fuck.

Eddie looked for cops, saw none, and figured it would be about three minutes before someone called one.  He raced ahead of her, laid on the horn and spun the car to a halt right in front of her.  I should’ve been on Hunter, he thought.  Horns blared.  The bike was on a collision course with the Caprice’s right front fender, too fast to stop, and the girl bailed.  She fell, tumbled knees to hands, rolled with the fall, and came back up on her feet, barely.  Her bag pulled her off-balance.  The bike slammed into the side of the car with a violent bang as she came to her feet.

The cars that had stopped to avoid him were starting to spit out curious people.  Eddie jumped out of his car, summoned an authoritative voice, and yelled, “I’m a cop!”  Everyone froze, naturally.  They’d gawk, (a few of them might videotape it) but most of them wouldn’t interfere.

Nikki’s paralysis broke first.  She turned and started to run, back toward the piers.  Too late; the whole world had turned against her at Eddie’s shout.  Curious onlookers were suddenly trying to grab her and jumping in front of her.  She ducked under a couple of ineffectual grabs and kept running.  Eddie took a few steps in her direction.  As it became clear he was pursuing her, more people got in her way.

A man stepped out of his car waving his arms at her, then grabbed the strap of Nikki’s bag as she ran past him.  She spun toward the unexpected resistance, losing her balance, and the man spun her headfirst into the opening door of another car.  She got her arms up, but not in time.  Nikki saw stars, and in the next instant she was staggering backward, her head completely numb, knowing she was hurt but not able to feel anything at all.  Someone else crashed into her from behind and she went down.  The pavement scraped her hands and knees when she fell.

The numbness faded to a single spot on her forehead, and the rest of her head began to throb painfully.  She was lying on her stomach in the street, mouth hanging open in shock.  Horns were still honking, people yelling, the sun relentlessly and mindlessly cheerful in the sky.  A deck shoe-clad foot kicked her bag away and then its incredibly heavy owner sat on her back.  “Now,” he said, “are you going to be civil, or do I have to sit on you?” It was Edward.

Nikki lay still, breathing hard, hurt and angry and resisting the urge to jump up and fight back. She forced herself to relax, to acquiesce for now.  Edward let up on her back a little bit, and then she felt a handcuff ratchet closed around her left wrist.

That wasn’t acceptable.  The game wasn’t over yet if he was going to handcuff her.  Nikki yanked both her hands out of his grasp and spun onto her back.  He could have stopped her just by putting his weight back on her, but that would have put them in a fully clothed missionary position in the middle of the street, and that fact made him hesitate.  Taiisha had taught her that it would.  Nikki used that instant to buck her hips up and into his groin. 

It surprised him more than it hurt him.  He gasped, and she kicked backward, throwing her hands out so he couldn’t grab her wrists.  He put his hand down to keep himself from falling and she was out from under him, and on her feet.  She kicked him in the jaw, then snatched her bag up off the ground with her right hand.  With the left, she swung backhanded at the man who’d thrown her into his car.  The free cuff cracked across his face and he howled in pain.

She paused when she got to her feet, trying to decide which way to go and how far to go to keep him in the chase.

In that instant, Eddie grabbed the free cuff, hooking two fingers through it before she could snatch it away.  When she tried to run, Eddie stood up and planted his feet.  She wasn’t strong enough to drag him.  He kept one hand cocked, in case she tried to hit him again.  “It’s okay, folks,” he called out, rotating his lower jaw, which felt like it was about to fall off.  Christ, she’d jobbed him good.  Some dim corner of his memory spat out an old comedy routine about giving people a “boot to the head!”  He smiled to himself, thinking of it.  Smiling hurt.  “Show’s over.  Come on, get back to your cars and clear the street.  Are you okay, sir?” Eddie made a perfunctory show of checking out the man she hit, who had a nasty scrape on his cheek but muttered that he was fine.

The girl didn’t resist as Eddie dragged her back to the Caprice.  He opened the door and put her in the front seat.  He locked the free cuff tight around the rearview mirror.  She relinquished her bag without a fight, and he put that in the back seat.  The gawkers were dissolving into excited little family groups to talk about the scene.  Eddie glanced at his watch again.  The whole thing had gone down in about two minutes.  Good.  He’d gotten it over with before a real cop showed up.  He dragged the wrecked bike to the curb.  Its owner could find it soon enough.

When he came back and got behind the wheel, he rubbed his jaw.  “So much for that root canal,” he said.  “You ever play soccer?”  He thought, Boot to the head! again, and had to stifle a laugh.

Nikki didn’t answer, and he pulled into traffic.  Eddie saw her looking around the car and registering that there was no radio, no police equipment that she could see.

“I’m not a cop,” he confessed.  “It just keeps people out of the way if you say you are.  My name’s Ed.  Ed Sharp.  Friends call me Eddie, always have.  Do you make your living stealing, or is it,” he paused dramatically, “just a hobby?” She didn’t answer him, kept her eyes outside the car.  “You do it for a living, don’t you?” She still didn’t answer.  Fine.  She could play statue if she wanted to.  She was probably scared shitless, although her eyes were unreadable.  He wanted her at ease.  He really was doing her a favor, when it came right down to it.  “Well, my little Poppet, let me tell you what I do for a living.  I’m what I call a troubleshooter.  I fix all sorts of legal and not-so-legal problems.”

“You’re a mercenary.”

Eddie laughed.  “Nothing that dramatic, Poppet.  Most of the time I just arrange secure hotel rooms and break into expensive condos like any ordinary hood.  A little bit of corporate espionage here and there.  But I could use a second pair of hands.  Yours, I mean.  I could use your feather touch, and there are a thousand things I could teach you.  You’ll have to learn fast, but I’ll bet you’re a fast learner.  And you’re more curious than you act.  There’s a lot I can teach you.”

Nikki looked at him, absorbing his condescending tone.  Without warning, she twisted her left hand, made a fist, and then jerked her arm straight down.  The mirror snapped clean off of the windshield, hit the roof, and bounced onto the floor.  It nearly dislocated her wrist, but she bit down on the pain and didn’t let Eddie see.  “There’s a lot you can learn,” she said, looking at him.

His eyes met hers for a moment.  She could see him wondering just what he’d brought into his car.  “Going to bolt now?” he asked after a short moment of silence.

“Why would I? You’ve got everything I own in the back seat.”

“Ownership is fleeting,” he said with a smile.  “People get so uptight about owning things.  Thieves like you and me especially should be above that.”

“I’m not a thief,” Nikki said.  If you had any idea what I am, she thought, you wouldn’t be smiling like that.

Eddie smiled again.  “Whatever.”

Even though she relished the idea of being away from Taiisha, Nikki expected more of the same treatment from Eddie.  She expected to be tied up in a dingy corner, then released long enough to perform some act.  With luck it wouldn’t involve excruciating degradation.  Whatever happened, when it was over, she would use the first moment of free motion she had to end his life and get away, back to Taiisha.  Nikki didn’t even realize that this was her expectation until she found herself surprised at the hotel.  It was an impressively appointed Sheraton in downtown San Francisco.

Eddie watched Nikki eyeing the lobby of the four-star accommodation.  She was almost overwhelmed by the lobby alone; she clearly wasn’t used to this kind of place.  She cradled her handcuffed wrist self-consciously.  Eddie handed her bag to a bellhop who was less than impressed with the battered leather purse.  Eddie was watching Nikki carefully.  He wouldn’t tell her so of course, but she had scared the shit out of him when she’d broken the mirror.  Actually…maybe startled was a better word.  He had assumed she was just a runaway, that she’d be easily swayed with a little pressure and the promise of a hot meal.  When she broke the mirror, he’d seen a hardness in her eyes.  Eddie had seen that hardness before.  Whoever this girl was, she’d lived too much, too fast.  Maybe she wasn’t as green as he thought.

When they got to his suite, he hummed “Hail to the Chief,” as they entered.  She didn’t smile.  Eddie tipped the bellhop, got Nikki’s bag from him, got rid of him, and said, “Your castle, milady,” with a laugh.

She looked back at him, meeting his eyes.  Her eyes dilated just a bit, turning almost black, and Eddie felt like she was looking right into his thoughts.  His smile almost died.  He kept it on his face, but the mirth went out of it.

The stare was something Nikki had learned from Taiisha.  She saw it working, then raised her arm, making the free cuff rattle.

He saw the demand in her face, but didn’t bend to it.  “When I get back,” Eddie said.  He turned and went to the door.  He was banking that it had been so long since she’d had a shower and a hot meal that she’d never consider leaving the hotel while she could.  If he showed that he was willing to leave her there unattended, she’d be curious enough to wait around.  Then again, if she was a true hardcase, she’d be gone, and that would be just as well.  He couldn’t trust someone who’d been on the edge for too long.  He had left a pair of little cameras in the room; he could watch what she did later.  “Make yourself at home, Poppet,” he called over his shoulder, and was gone.  He took her bag with him.

“Bastard,” she hissed under her breath.  Nikki sneered at the suite for a moment.  Her back was hurting from getting tackled, the scrapes on her hands stung, she was hungry, and she wanted this over with.  There was nothing to be done but wait for him to come back, so she put the irritation out of her mind and explored the suite. 

She thought again about having a bath.  The tub had brass fixtures and glass doors.  The hotel even provided bubble bath and robes.  Nikki reluctantly decided she didn’t want to be caught naked.

She sat on the toilet and undid two of the five thick safety pins that lived inside the hem of her skirt.  Nikki bent them and used them to pick the lock of the handcuffs.  Thus unencumbered, she inspected her clothes, which were getting more than a little bit threadbare in places.  She had only three changes of clothes and they were all heavily mended.  There was a new rip in her skirt, where she’d fallen after jumping off the bike.  Nikki made a face of silent irritation; this was the better of her two skirts, and it was going to be shredded to uselessness if this shit kept up.  She used a third safety pin to close the rip for the time being.

Back in the suite, there was a fold-out couch in the main room, and a king-sized bed in the bedroom.  Eddie had left no luggage.  All of the drawers and closets were empty as well.  Nikki helped herself to a can of Sprite, a Snickers bar and a package of peanut butter crackers from the mini-bar and opened the hide-a-bed.  The domesticity of it was surprisingly pleasant.  After hiding the handcuffs underneath a drawer, she closed her eyes and slept immediately and wonderfully.

*   *   *

Eddie’s errand took him a little bit south of town, to a self-storage yard called The Final Frontier.  Cute.  The parking lot was empty.  Murray Kenzie, who was supposed to have a car for him, was late, as usual.  Eddie wasn’t in a hurry.  He parked in front of the gate and looked around.  These places always reminded him of a game show, each door with a surprise inside.  And speaking of surprises…he smiled to himself and pulled the girl’s bag up onto the front seat, to have a look.

He found her wallet quickly, and checked out the driver’s license first.  Nicole Kerry Saxen, from Birmingham, Michigan.  He raised an eyebrow.  Eddie had grown up in metro Detroit, and was familiar with the tony suburb.  Birthday December twenty-seventh.  She’d be twenty in December.  She looked younger–she was short, small-boned, and skinny.  Eddie had figured she was about sixteen.  If she wasn’t a minor, so much the better.  There was a cheap fake ID in the wallet as well.  Same information, different birthday.  A drinking ID.  Eddie expected to find a handful of wallets from her pickpocketing, but there weren’t any, just a folded roll of almost seven hundred dollars.  She’d ditched the billfolds already.  Shrewd.  There was a newspaper and lot of the usual purse junk, which Eddie ignored, and enough personal and emergency items–including two cans of soup–to tell him that Nikki’s bag was the closest thing she had to home.  A colorful, folded afghan took up about a third of the space in the bag, and tightly rolled clothes below that.  Eddie shook them out, and found a skirt that looked just like the one she’d been wearing but in worse shape, three or four shirts, a pair of black jeans with a huge rip in one knee, a pair of socks, and two changes of surprisingly frilly underwear.  Eddie turned a black lace bra inside out, looking at the tag.  30A.  Training bra, he thought with a smile, and tossed it on the pile.

Inside the folds of the afghan, Eddie found a knife.  It wasn’t a pocketknife tucked away for emergencies (there was one of those, too), but a big one, eighteen inches of steel, like a seven-eighths-scale pirate’s cutlass.  The chrome blade had diagonal black stripes painted on it, and it was as sharp as a scalpel.  “Now what the hell is this, Ms. Saxen?” he said aloud.  He took a couple of experimental swings at the air.  There was a portfolio wrapped in plastic below the clothes, but he wasn’t interested in it.

Eddie folded the mini-sword back into the afghan, then looked up at the rows of white brick and orange doors behind the fence in front of him.  He lit a cigarette, to help him think.  Nikki had been an impulse buy, in a manner of speaking.  He’d been looking for a partner–well, more of an assistant–for this job, and when he’d seen her picking pockets he’d just had a feeling she was right.  The more he thought about it, the way she’d broken the mirror had been unnerving.  In the end though, it was a bonus.  Who knew, he might learn something from her, too.

He hoped she’d prove reliable as a second pair of hands.  The job wasn’t a hard one; an information systems director named Don Watson–Eddie referred to him as “Prodigy”–had changed jobs, and taken what was known in the business as a sensitive document with him.  A design, a memo, a tell-all, it could have been anything, all they knew was that it was on his home computer.  What it was didn’t matter to Eddie.  What mattered was that the company wanted the document back, and they had their reasons for not simply going and asking the guy, or suing him to return it.  Enter Eddie Sharp.  Eddie had called Prodigy posing as a PR consultant from BMW and invited him to participate in a consumer clinic.  Prodigy was offered the chance to test-drive a new BMW prototype luxury sedan and then tell a film crew what he thought of the car.  A drive in a new luxury car was pretty persuasive bait for an up-and-comer like Prodigy (thirty-four, wife and a kid, house in San Jose, nudging two hundred a year, and just enough debt to show that he wasn’t afraid to spend his money).

It would be enough to get Prodigy out of his house for two hours.  That was when his second pair of hands–Nikki–would break in, copy his entire hard drive, and slip out unseen.  Prodigy would never know about the little piracy.  Nice and quiet.

To make the BMW PR angle look legit, Eddie had hired a film crew who also thought he was with BMW.  That was all set up; today he was here to pick up the cars, and Murray Kenzie was his contact for that.  Murray was an exotic car dealer who didn’t mind giving out loaners from time to time, for a fee.  For a similar fee, Murray didn’t mind making cars disappear, either. Eddie had known Murray for years.

Speaking of whom…a two-year-old purple Porsche rolled up to the gate, which slid open.  The mechanism groaned and clattered.  Murray had arrived.  Eddie tossed his half-smoked cigarette away and got out of his car.  “Murray Antonio Kenzie,” he called, “you gotta get that watch of yours fixed.”

Murray laughed.  “Eddie, peace, my man,” he said, shaking Eddie’s hand.  “I got your cars.  Number 234, let’s take a ride.  Got you a BMW 3-series and the other thing.” Murray motioned to the passenger seat and Eddie got in.

“European?” Eddie asked.

“Uh-huh.  It’s a Seat Cordoba.”

“The hell’s a ‘say-ot?’”

“Basically a Spanish Volkswagen.  It’s a midsize sedan, like the three, and–”

Eddie waved his hand.  “Whatever.  As long as this guy’s never seen one, and it looks modern.  It’s got to pass for a future BMW.”

Murray laughed.  “Does this guy know shit about cars?”

“No.  Computers.”

“Then you’ll convince him.  It don’t look like any VW over here.  Put some electrical tape over the badges, a little on the windows, and it’ll look just like a prototype.”  Murray stopped at the appropriate garage and got out.  He handed Eddie the keys to both the garage and the car inside.  “The temp tag’s good for a month, but then I got to get it back to Europe where it belongs.”

“That’s plenty of time, Murray.”

“Nothing high-profile on these, right?  No high-speed chases, no bullet holes?  You promised.”

Eddie chuckled and patted Murray on the back.  “I don’t do bullet holes, Murray.  I’m a peaceful crook.”

“Strictly white-collar, eh?”

“It’s a good neighborhood,” Eddie said with a shrug.  “So long as I don’t get caught up in anything political, it’s a nice, safe existence.”

“What’s your thing with politics, man?”

“Troubleshooting for companies and individuals is a nice way to get by.  Troubleshooting for governments is a nice way to get killed.”

The pager on Murray’s belt chirped.  He looked at it.  “I gotta get this, man,” he said, leaning back into the Porsche to grab his cellphone.

“No problem,” Eddie said.  “I’m all set.  It drive like a normal car?”  Murray nodded.  “See you later, then.”  He went back to his car.  He stopped at McDonald’s on the way back to the hotel.  Nikki was probably hungry.

The last thing Eddie expected was to find Nikki asleep when he returned.  He knew she wouldn’t have gone anywhere without her precious bag.  He had figured she’d turn on the TV, maybe try to pretend she wasn’t afraid.  But there she was, curled up on the spare bed, asleep.  She really wasn’t afraid of him.

She woke up instantly.  There was no pause to rub sleep out of her eyes or stretch, just immediate, alert wakefulness.  It made Eddie think of a watchful dog.  “That’s gonna cost me three bucks, you know,” he said, noticing the can of Sprite she’d gotten for herself. 

She didn’t say anything, just followed him with her eyes.  He put the McDonald’s bag on the dresser next to the television.  “Hope you like cheeseburgers.” He went into the bedroom, and saw that she had taken the blankets off of his bed to curl up in.  Eddie grinned.  “Civil disobedience, eh?” he called.  She didn’t answer.  When he returned to the living room, the McDonald’s bag had disappeared, and she had pulled the covers over her head.  “Oh, you took all the damn food, too.” This was going to be fun.  “I didn’t say we were married, Poppet.  You mind if I get some of that?”

Paper rustled as Nikki unwrapped one of the cheeseburgers and didn’t answer him.  She wanted to see if Eddie was easily irritated by nonsense, or patient.  Taiisha called it ‘bending.’

“You gonna stay under there all night?” he asked.

Nikki spoke suddenly, and her voice was curt.  “As long as you’re going to sit there.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’re you staying under there?”

“Ask again later.  I’m eating.”

“At least one of those burgers is mine,” he said, trying not to laugh. 

“So what?”

“Can I have a French fry, then?”

“No,” she replied implacably.  He sounded like he was smiling, but she couldn’t see him to be sure.

“Just one?”

“No.”

“I’m going to become very hungry.”

“You need to lose weight,” she replied.

“Actually,” Eddie said, bending over to take off his shoes, “not eating slows the metabolism down, and ultimately contributes to weight gain.  You want me to take those cuffs off?”

Nikki realized with an inward sigh that she could bend him all she wanted to.  He wasn’t even ruffled.  In fact, he seemed to be enjoying her resistance.  She pulled the blanket off her head and pushed herself up against the back of the couch-bed, as far from Eddie as she could get.  “Your handcuffs,” she said, “are disposed of.”

“Where are they? I may need them again later.”

“Ask when you need them then.  You put them on me, I got rid of them.  Now I have them.” God, she sounded like Taiisha.  She had been almost the only person Nikki had interacted with for so long and now she was talking like her.  It would be good to stop doing that.  “I’ll give them back when I’m ready to, so stop bitching about it,” she said.  She met Eddie’s eyes for a moment, then dropped the bag of food at her feet for him.

He took a Quarter Pounder out of the bag and unwrapped it carefully, as if it was made of porcelain.  “Not complaining, Poppet.  Just curious,” he added, taking a bite of his burger.

“Don’t call me Poppet.”

Eddie laughed.  He dug a brand-new Master combination lock out of his pocket and tossed it on the bed.  “Open this.”

He sounded like he was talking to a dog.  She glared at him.  “No.”

“Why not? You know how, don’t you?”

She did, but she had no intention of telling him.  “I have no reason to.”

“It’ll make me happy.”

Nikki wondered if he expected her to bend or break.  Her gut instinct was to resist, so she did.  “I don’t give a shit.”

“Why don’t you want to open it?”

“You open it, if it’s so important to you.”

Eddie sat in silence for a moment, staring at a spot on the ceiling just above her head.  It was futile trying to meet her head-on.  She required a softer touch.

He looked at her for a moment.  She looked back, no fear of him in her eyes, safe behind a shield of pure, uncut mean.  Eddie was getting a better sense of her just by watching her watch him, unflinching.  She was the kind who had two or three close friends, and she’d do anything for them.  If you weren’t one of them, you could go to hell.  But she wasn’t with her tribe now, whoever or wherever they were.  She needed friends.  She was scared after all, and all she had to fall back on right now was that wall of attitude that only her friends were allowed to penetrate. 

He changed tack.  “What brings you to California?”

Nikki was amazed.  His good mood was completely undamaged.  For half a second she considered telling him Taiisha had brought her to kill him, and then breaking his neck.  That half-second passed.  Nikki had to admit that she liked people who weren’t brought down by her, even if she was trying to bring them down.  And besides, it wasn’t time to kill him yet.  “Lack of anyplace better to be,” she said finally.  She shrugged.  “I like the ocean.”

“Ran away from home?”

“Doesn’t everybody, eventually?”

Eddie laughed.  “How long have you been traveling?”

She shrugged.  “A while.”

“And you came from the Midwest.  Michigan, Ohio, around there?”

Her eyes jumped up from the bed to his face, surprised.

He smiled.  “I can hear your accent.  Or, rather, your lack of one, to my ears, since I’m from Detroit.”

“How lovely for you.”

“Oh, come on.  I want to be your friend.”

“Really?  Then let me give you some advice.  Traditionally, my friends have not chased me, attacked me, or kidnapped me.  What the fuck do you want?”

He shrugged.  “Help,” he said through a mouthful of fries.  He took a sip of his drink, then offered it to her.  “Strawberry shake?”

Nikki backed away from his hand.  Actually, it was more of a flinch.  Eddie immediately put it down, moving back out of her personal space.  Tardily, she shook her head no.  She wanted and expected to feel threatened, to be threatened.  Nikki was beginning to realize Eddie wasn’t anything like Taiisha, but she couldn’t turn the reflexes off.  And she needed to hate him.  She had to kill him.

The significance of her violent reaction hadn’t been lost on Eddie.  That was the flinch of a girl who’d seen too many raised hands, been hit too many times.  Another piece of her puzzle.  He spoke softly, gently “What happened to you, Poppet?”

“What do you want from me?” she asked again, in a lower voice.  Tell me the goddamn job, she thought.  The uncertainty coiling in her stomach, the not knowing what was really going to happen next, was making her more edgy than anything else.

“Like I said, your help.  I can explain.  I’m a troubleshooter.”

“What’s that?”

“I get things that don’t want to be got.  I open things that want to be shut.  Hide things that want to be found.  Find things that want to be lost.”

She interrupted him.  “That’s very mystical.  What do you need me for?”

“You have two important qualities.  First, you’re a small, young woman.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to–”

“We’re opposites.  Example: I need to get into the room next to or behind a particular room.  Unfortunately, it’s the women’s restroom.  Now, you know, all the cajoling in the world won’t get me into the ladies’ room.  Not without some kind of elaborate ruse that’s going to draw too much attention to me.”

It made sense to her.  Nikki had raised her head again.  Eddie thought that she carried herself like a princess, sitting straight and proud.  He didn’t tell her so.  “Like yelling at everyone that you’re a cop?” she said.

“Precisely.  On the other hand, you can walk right in, Poppet.”

“Quit calling me that.”

He pretended not to hear her.  Whether she liked it or not, the nickname was going to be a little connection to her, a potential route to worm his way past her defenses.  “Plus, you can squeeze into smaller places, get into some nightclubs without looking like someone’s dad or a private dick–or both.  Do I need to continue?”

“No.  What’s my second qualification?” Nikki spun a thick weave of sarcasm into her words. 

“Your hands.  The way you move.  You know, I’d been thinking about looking for a partner, just sort of on-again, off-again, and then I was sitting down on the pier having a hot dog and I saw you dip into some lazy schmoe’s pocket, and a light bulb went on in my head.  You have one of the smoothest picks I’ve ever seen.  You have my highest praise.”

She told him what he could go and do.  It involved livestock.

“Oh, no, no, save your platitudes for someone who deserves them.  I’m just offering you a job.  And a meal or two, a roof over your head.”

She couldn’t help wondering why Taiisha wanted him dead, what he’d done to deserve this.  “What if I say no?”

He shrugged again.  “I’ll be disappointed.  You’ll go back to the pier, and keep picking pockets…” His eyes crawled up and down her body.  The thought of screwing her crossed his mind again, much more distantly than it had before.  “Or whatever it is you do to survive,” he added.

Nikki saw the look.  He thinks I’m a whore, she thought.  He thinks I sell sex to feed myself. She knew why it enraged her–but she didn’t know why she wasn’t able to seize control of herself before she jumped to her feet screaming at him.  Eddie actually recoiled and covered his face.  Nikki threw the rest of her cheeseburger at him, screaming, “I don’t need you!  I don’t need your pity or your fucking food or your fucking job or your fucking troubleshooting, I don’t fucking need it you dirty dusty cocksucking bastard fuck, do you hear me? I don’t need it!” She grabbed her bag from where he’d dropped it on the floor and charged to the door.

Eddie didn’t chase her.  He’d pissed her off now.  If she was going to go, he couldn’t stop her.  The thing to do was make her want to come back once she’d cooled down.  He stood up at the foot of the sofa bed and barked, “Hey!”

It stopped the flow of cursing from her mouth, but not her feet.  He thinks I’m a whore.  The thought repeated itself in her head, rolling first one way and then the other like a carnival ride.  Nikki twisted the knob and yanked at the door once.  It wouldn’t open, and she saw that the chain was latched.

“You can go,” he called.  “I won’t run you down.  I’ll let you go and forget about you.  That’s life.  But I really could use your help.  I can teach you things.”

She fumbled with the chain.  His words clattered on her ears like rain on a metal roof, too insistent to ignore.  But he thought she was a whore.  Something he saw in me made him think she went down on men for money.

“I’ll be here a few days.  If you change your mind, come back, okay? Seriously.  I’m not taking any other resumes.”

The chain slid free of its housing, and she got the door open.  Nikki slammed it hard enough to make the walls vibrate, hard enough that it bounced right back open again.  Just as it smashed into the jamb she heard Eddie say, “‘Bye,” in a soft voice, like his best friend was leaving for the evening.

She still expected him to chase her.  She ran down the hall to the elevator, smashed the button with her fist until it lit up, waited five seconds, then couldn’t wait any more.  She had to run.  She went to the stairs instead.  Her heart pounded.  She could almost feel him behind her, one hand about to grab her shoulder.  She charged down four flights before she finally stopped, out of breath, and looked up the stairwell.

Nothing.  There was no one behind her, of course.  No one but bad memories.

Nikki stopped, trying to calm down.  She closed her eyes and tried to center herself.  Her breaths sounded like sobs as they echoed up and down the stairwell.

He thought she was a whore.  Something he’d seen in her…it was a stupid overreaction, but it still filled her with rage.  She tried to hold on to that, to nurse it into a reason to hate him.  He thought she was a whore?  Fine.  Killing him would be worthwhile then.

But Nikki went downstairs instead.  She wanted to walk.  Just for a little bit.  Nikki adjusted her bag on her shoulder, though it didn’t need it, and went out into to the glass, wood, and marble lobby.  Hypersensitive to whatever invisible clue Eddie had picked up from her, she got the impression that everyone there thought she was a whore, too.  They had seen her come in with Eddie, and now they thought she’d done him, gotten paid, and was going home.

She shut them all out, walked as proud as she knew how, walked out of the hotel and halfway down the block.

Nikki didn’t even think about Taiisha until she was grabbed.  Taiisha came up behind her, put her arm around her shoulders, and steered her around the next corner, into a narrow alley leading behind the buildings.  “How goes it?” she asked as they started down the alley.  Nikki smelled garbage and diesel fumes.

It crossed Nikki’s mind to lie, to say Eddie had sent her out to get Chinese or something, but she was a poor liar.  She said nothing.

Taiisha’s arm around her shoulders tightened.  “So,” Taiisha asked her, “where were you going?” Her voice was nearly devoid of inflection.  She was angry.  Not even a day had passed, and Nikki was walking away, leaving Edward alive.  It wasn’t time for her to walk away yet.

The alley ended in a small, deserted cul-de-sac, which smelled even more strongly of garbage.  It was surrounded on all sides by the backs of buildings, one of which was the hotel.  There were no windows facing this way, and the loading docks were empty, their doors closed.  A good little pocket of nowhere in which to punish Nikki.

“I don’t know.  I was just walking.”

“You’ll do as you’re told!” The sudden rise in her tone was all the warning Nikki got.  Taiisha brought her arm down hard and tossed Nikki over her hip.  She landed flat on her back, her bag bouncing next to her.  Taiisha followed her to the ground, one knee on Nikki’s chest, and punched her in the face.  Maybe twice.  Maybe three times.  Nikki lost count.  Taiisha was pulling her blows; she could hit hard enough to shatter bones, but these punches were meant to hurt, not kill.  Nikki didn’t cry out or scream, instead frantically searching for some place to go in her head, to hide.

Taiisha pulled her to her feet.  Nikki’s bag slipped off of her shoulder and fell to the ground.  She reached for it instinctively; the motion earned her another shot low in the belly.  Stop resisting, she thought mindlessly.  Just stop.  Do, do do, don’t think.  Nikki staggered forward, up steps, against steps, vertical again.  Taiisha grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, tilting her body so far backward that the fist in her hair was the only thing keeping her from falling.  Nikki flailed at the air as Taiisha stuffed something into her mouth, a rag, a sock, she didn’t know what.  It smelled and tasted of gasoline.  Her vision was smeared with red.  She might have been seeing double.  The world was beginning to look like a television with bad reception.

“You’ll do as you’re told,” Taiisha repeated into Nikki’s ear.  Nikki felt herself lifted, shoved roughly against a railing.  The railing on the loading dock.  Taiisha pushed her hard against the railing.  It pressed into her ribs, then into her belly.  She doubled Nikki over the railing.  Her feet and hands swam ineffectually in air.

Nikki tried hopelessly to pull herself back to the ground.  She was hanging over the loading dock and the ground was too far down.  She was afraid of heights.  It was only about an eight-foot drop but her disorientation made it seem like a cliff.  Nikki squirmed, and Taiisha hit her fiercely between the shoulders with a palm, knocking her wind out.

Taiisha pushed her skirt up and pulled her underwear down.  Nikki felt cool air on the backs of her thighs, and shrank away from the exposure even though there was nowhere to go.  She knew what was going to happen.  Taiisha had done this before, only once, when Nikki had been stupid enough to try and run to the police for help.  The cop she had actually spoken to was still listed as missing.

Nikki moaned desperately against the rag.  It was a miserable noise, the sound of her fear.

“And she likes it, too,” Taiisha said, her voice low and tight.  As if she’d read Nikki’s mind, she added, “She likes being scared.”  Taiisha wasn’t getting any kind of sexual release out of the act.  It was strictly terror-making.  It was Nikki’s strongest lever, sex.  The girl was afraid of it, good or bad, and thus this was the hardest push Taiisha could muster.  She’d made Nikki numb to almost everything else, and now was not the time for power struggles.  Taiisha had to get her to obey unquestioningly.  No entertaining thoughts of vanishing into San Francisco.  Taiisha inserted a finger into her protege, then another.  Nikki tried to kick at her, and failed.  Taiisha tightened her grip on Nikki’s back and pushed her whole hand inside, past the wrist.

Nikki wished she could just close her eyes and let it all happen without having to live through it.  But her mind didn’t go anywhere, didn’t offer a place to hide.  She tried to scream.  It didn’t do any good, with the rag in her mouth.  Taiisha was pushing against her, pulling and pushing again.  It felt like she was being torn in half.  Her screams turned to whimpers inside the rag.  She wanted to pass out, wanted to vomit, wanted to do something but her entire body was frozen around the intrusion.  She couldn’t even move for fear of making it worse.  Some debauched part of her was afraid that if she moved it might get better and knew that such a discovery would have driven her instantly, completely insane.

Assuming she wasn’t already.

Finally it was over.  Taiisha let go, tugged backward and she fell off of the railing, back to the concrete.  Nikki couldn’t stand up.  She was crying.  “Now, go back, and do as you’ve been told,” Taiisha said, watching for the inevitable hardening of resolve.  It would take some time.  Nikki was shattered for now, and Taiisha let her have the moment of paralysis.  She looked down at the girl once with sadness in her eyes, and then walked away.  She didn’t look back again.

Nikki pulled the spit- and scream-soaked rag out of her mouth and rolled over onto her knees with her chin on the ground.  She stayed like that a long time, in a semi-fetal position.  Her breaths sounded like sobs, ragged, one after the other.  She couldn’t make them stop.  She wished she could make the breaths stop, to just quit breathing and die quietly, in this alley turned torture chamber.  But that wouldn’t have done her any good either.

Nikki was always afraid to move very much after sex, whether it was one of Taiisha’s assaults or real sex.  A childish fear gnawed at her; if she stood up, her insides would push out from between her legs and fall on the ground.  They felt like they were trying to push themselves out.  The loading dock remained deserted, so she stayed there until the feeling faded a little bit.  She saw blood on the concrete in front of her; her mouth was bleeding nicely.  Nikki closed it, tasting blood and dirt.

Her first attempt to stand didn’t work at all.  She didn’t have the strength, barely had a desire.  She lay on her side and pulled her underwear up, then clenched her teeth and tried again, and made it to her feet the second time.  Then she threw up peanut butter crackers and chocolate and Sprite, weakly.  Nikki got her bag and walked back to the hotel on numb legs.

When she entered the lobby, a concierge tried to stop her, asking if she needed the police, an ambulance, her parents.  Nikki ignored him, though he accompanied her up the elevator, asking over and over what had happened and who he should call.  It was easy to ignore him; he was barely real to her.  Only Eddie was real.  Eddie and Taiisha.

Eddie was still there when Nikki knocked on the suite’s door.  The television was on, some cheerful afternoon talk show.  Surprised she had come back so soon, he opened the door with an indulgent smile.  The look vanished when he saw her, covered in dirt and blood, with her lip swollen and mouth bleeding, her shirt torn.  He didn’t spout platitudes or ask what had happened to her.  Eddie’s face went blank, a look of pure crisis management, and he came and took her hand and led her into the bathroom.

Nikki felt his hands take her bag away, heard him send the concierge away, but she didn’t really see him moving around her.  Shock was sweeping over her now; she would have fallen if he hadn’t sat her on the toilet.  She looked at the floor, then at the ceiling when he started to clean her face, and didn’t say anything.  After a moment she closed her eyes.  She felt the warm rag brushing her forehead, her cheeks, tenderly touching the swollen flesh around her mouth.  She felt Eddie’s warmth, too, a few inches in front of her.  She heard him breathing.  He still smelled faintly of French fries.

Eddie started to pull her shirt up, to check the rest of her for injuries, and Nikki pushed his hand away, saying, “no,” in a little child’s voice.  He made a soothing noise, and didn’t try again.  She was right, they didn’t know each other well enough for that yet.  He went back to cleaning her face.  What had happened to her? Had she been mugged? He’d been right about her needing her friends, if she’d come straight back to him after getting attacked.  If nothing else, being there to help was a step closer to being on her good side, even if it was because he was the only familiar face in town.  She had nowhere else, no one else.  It was providential, to be sure, but he put that aside for now.  He’d clean her up, let her rest if she wanted, and if she still wanted to go, he’d let her.  Eddie wasn’t sure what had set her off before, but just because she needed help didn’t mean it might not still apply. 

He didn’t think she’d leave again.

“So,” Eddie said when he was finished.

He phrased it like a question, and Nikki looked up at him when he didn’t continue.  His eyes met hers again.  For a moment she saw someone who was truly focused on her well being, and not trying to get something from her.  Nikki hadn’t seen a look like that in almost a year.

Then that smirk crossed his face and he was once again Eddie the trouble-shooter who thought she was a whore.  “What do you want for dinner?” he finished.

*  *  *

Eddie spent a few days letting Nikki recover from her mysterious beating.  He didn’t ask her what had happened, and she didn’t offer.  He had a week until he was scheduled to meet Prodigy.  He used the time to teach her the nuts and bolts of troubleshooting; how to put on a face that would make people comfortable with her, the best way to talk to people, the best way to make quick hotel, dining, and food reservations, how to find just about anything for sale or rent, ways to seem familiar with a town she’d just arrived in, and how to sound like a secretary, or someone who was used to having secretaries, depending on what was needed.  She was a good little actress, when it came down to it.  He had her make and break dinner reservations and random meetings with business people she’d never heard of, every day, training her to sound professional and friendly.  He even had her call random numbers pretending to be a telemarketer.

He also bought some books for her to read.  She looked dubiously at the proffered Dickens and Joyce tomes, fresh from Barnes & Noble.  “I already read,” Nikki complained.

“Have you read the classics?”

She shrugged defensively.  “Some of them.”

“You’re going to read more.” She didn’t ask why, but Eddie could tell she wanted to know.  “I want you to have as much of a basic college education as I can make up.  So I want you to read some classic literature, and some psychology, and some philosophy, and some history, and so forth.  Did you take any foreign languages in high school?”

“French, two years,” she said, looking at him from under her eyebrows.  She was wondering how many of these stupid books she’d have to read before she blew his head off.

“Damn, I speak Spanish.  Oh, well.  If we can find you a tutor some time, you can brush up on it.”

“I don’t understand what this is for.”

“Just polish.  You’ll carry yourself a little differently, knowing about little trivial things that come up more often than you’d expect.  The difference between someone who quit learning as soon as they got out of high school and someone who continued, is obvious in the way they act, the way they talk.  It’s not the keg parties that do that to you, it’s having base knowledge about a wider range of subjects than the average high school offers.  And you and I need that.  If some drunken matron starts spouting off about Dickens or Trotsky or Skinner at a party, you look better if you have some idea who she’s talking about and what those people stand for.  Most people can’t fake understanding well enough to avoid looking even stupider than they may already be.  Which brings me to one of the most important aspects of troubleshooting, which is to above all look smart and in control, even if you don’t feel it all the time.  If people aren’t worried that their work is in the hands of morons, they’re happier.”

“Okay, fine, enough bullshit public relations training,” Nikki said.  “I’ll read the books.”  Eddie was honestly trying to help her.  Of course, it was in a way that would help him, too, so at least some of the philanthropy was self-serving.

As the day of the troubleshoot drew closer, Eddie crammed more and more things into her time.  In one afternoon, Nikki learned how to bypass a variety of burglar alarms, how to copy no less than four kinds of electronic information, and just for laughs, how to install a wiretap.  Eddie’s hobby was electronics.  He had taught himself how to tap a phone, just by playing around.

He spent the afternoon telling her about the BMW and its competition and its place in the luxury sports car market.  Nikki barely listened to it; he had told her he was just practicing, getting into character.  He sounded convincing to her.  His streetwise, smug attitude was completely gone.  He was knowledgeable, interested, charming, approachable, all of the things a great PR person needed to be.  Nikki was amazed that he could transform himself so completely, and made a note to remind herself that any smile, any mannerism, anything coming from him could be a lie.

The evening involved two hours spent washing the cars, followed by a shopping trip to get professional-looking clothes and a makeover for Nikki, who enjoyed neither errand.  She got an expensive haircut, a manicure, and instructions on how to put her new, boring makeup on, as if she didn’t already know how.  The need for business casual clothing confused her even more.  What was she going to do?

Eddie finally told her after dinner, and glorious relief swept through her at the news.  All she had to do was break into a house, copy the hard drive, and get out.  That was all.  No one to kill, no one to screw.  Wonderful.  And on top of it all, the rest of the family was going to be gone.  All she had to do was ghost in and out.  Eddie didn’t realize how cheaply he’d sold his life.

In the morning, Nikki woke before dawn, as usual.  She rose without being frightened awake by Taiisha or nightmare, and it was pleasant.  Eddie had taken her bag away, presumably to keep her from running, and with it her big knife was gone.  She liked that knife, but it wasn’t her only armament.  It never would be.  Nikki quietly opened the tackle box that served as Eddie’s toolbox and found a box cutter in the little drawer he had designated for it.

He didn’t stir as she eased open the door to the suite’s bedroom and slipped in.  Nikki stood over the bed watching him sleep.  He lay flat on his back, mouth open, snoring roughly.  He looked like a corpse already, and he reeked of Ben-Gay.  Asleep, she could see him the way Taiisha must see him; an overweight, lazy, stinking fool, oblivious to the world around him and not caring about who he hurt.  No, wait, the last thought was her own.  Taiisha wouldn’t have cared who he hurt.

Nikki climbed onto the bed, softly, silently.  She was so light he didn’t wake as she carefully straddled him, the shirt she had slept in riding up high on her hips.  Nikki didn’t care.  She wasn’t embarrassed that he’d see her underwear if he woke; the thought never crossed her mind.  She’d made him less than real, for the moment.

He was too big for her to kneel so she squatted, only the insides of her thighs touching him, feather-light.  From here she could smell his breath, and wrinkled her nose at the sour odor.  Dragon-breath, she thought, and a faint smile worked its way through her unconscious expression of revulsion.  She touched the edge of the razorblade to his neck, where she could see his pulse even through the fat.  It would take a simple flick of her wrist, that was all.  A hand over his mouth and a flick of the wrist.  Nikki closed her eyes.  He’d probably wake up.  Probably be strong enough to grab her, pick her up, too.  But the damage would be done by then.  Eddie didn’t know a damned thing about fighting.  He might be able to throw her, but wouldn’t be able to do any serious damage before he bled to death.  It would be easy.  And then…she’d go back to Taiisha.

Nikki opened her eyes.  The room seemed devoid of color in the early morning light.  Once upon a time, she’d liked to watch the sun come up.  Something about new days used to make her happy; she didn’t enjoy them much any more.  She looked down at Eddie again, and he was just Eddie, and if he woke up he’d be able to see down her shirt and up between her legs all at the same time.  Nikki took the blade away from his neck and slid carefully off the bed, never disturbing him.  Later, she’d be back.  After the job.

She returned to bed and pulled the covers over her head until Eddie’s alarm woke him up an hour and a half later.  She dressed in her new clothes while he showered and shaved, and was sitting on the edge of the bed ready to go when he emerged from the bedroom to see if she was up yet.  Eddie grinned at her, then turned around to go and put a shirt on.  They drove to pick up the cars in silence, and then Nikki trailed him to San Jose.

The first thing she said to Eddie that day was, “Did you actually hire a film crew?”

“Absolutely,” he said.  Eddie had arranged to meet them in the parking lot of a bank near Prodigy’s house because it was easier than giving them directions to find the house itself.  They were waiting for the film crew when Nikki asked her question.  Everything was closed; it was ten to seven on a Saturday morning.  The hotel’s continental breakfast hadn’t been set up yet when they left, so Nikki smoked one of Eddie’s cigarettes instead.  It didn’t fill her up, but it gave her mouth something to do.  She was awake and alert, but annoyingly hungry.  The back of her neck was cold, too; her new haircut was short in the back.

“That’s pretty expensive, isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t believe the expense accounts I get access to, Poppet.”

“Don’t call me that.”  She was getting sick of telling him this.

He laughed.  “Can I have a hit off that cigarette?”

“Finish it.”  She gave it to him.  “So who does this guy work for, anyway?”

“Who?”

“The man whose house I’m breaking into.  Don Watson.  Prodigy.”

“Does it really matter who he works for?” Eddie asked. 

That irritated her, but she let it go.  “Whatever,” she said.  “I don’t care.”

Eddie looked at her for a long second.  “You look good,” he said, of her new clothes and haircut.  “Very grown up.”

He thought it would mollify her, but it only made her more angry.  “I am grown up,” she muttered, taking a step away from him.

Before he could reply, the film crew pulled up, in a clean black van.

“Hey!  How’re you guys doing?” the cameraman said.  He handed Eddie coffee and a box of donuts.  Eddie handed them right to Nikki, then introduced them.  Her name for the day was Kerry Christian.  Eddie had made it up on the drive from San Francisco to San Jose.

The film crew consisted of Dale, Jason, and Yoav, interchangeable twentysomething guys in worn jeans and earth-toned T-shirts.  Nikki said hello through a mouthful of raspberry-filled donut and got smiles in reply.  Jason was ostensibly the one in charge; he had the paperwork, and he asked most of the questions.  He had also brought the donuts, which made him Nikki’s favorite person for the morning.

“What’s the plan?” Jason asked.

“We’re going to meet Mr. Watson at his house at eight-thirty.  We’ll do a quick walkaround of the new car there, and then he’s going to take a drive.  We’ve laid out a route for him.  It should take about an hour.  I’ll have your camera and sound guys go with him, to record his comments.”

“You’re not going along?”

“No, we actually get our best responses when there’s no factory rep sitting there.” Eddie said, inventing the excuse off the top of his head.  “We just need straight tape.  We’ll edit it–if we have to–later.  This is just for the engineers back in Germany.  We should be done in time for lunch.”

Jason nodded approval, clearly glad they weren’t going to lose an entire Saturday, and they headed for Prodigy’s house.

Because Nikki was going to be doing the breaking and entering, she stayed out of the way when they arrived.  It was better for Dale, Jason, and Yoav to barely notice her.

Don “Prodigy” Watson and family lived in a pricey part of town; wide streets, wide yards, modern houses that looked nothing like one another.  Every house seemed to have a cluster of bushes with huge leaves separating it from the next.  Every other house had a circular driveway laid with fieldstone.  The lawns were mown short, like Marine haircuts.  When they found the address, Nikki parked the BMW, opened her window, and heard the familiar sprinkler-punctuated silence of an upper-class neighborhood on a Saturday morning.  Shit, it had been a long time since she’d been in a place like this…and she still didn’t like it.

Prodigy was on the porch, dressed in a burgundy and yellow running ensemble.  Nikki couldn’t see what college it was from.  He was reading through the paper without a great deal of interest, and he looked up and smiled when he saw the “test car” with Eddie at the wheel, the BMW behind it, and the van.  Eddie got out to greet the man, and introduced him to the film crew.  Nikki stayed near the BMW and pretended to fuss with Eddie’s laptop.  She figured Prodigy would assume she was Eddie’s secretary.  She was right; after looking her up and down once he ignored her completely.  Soon the “test car” left with Prodigy and two of the film guys in it.  Jason had stayed behind to wait with Eddie.  Nikki let them chat for a few minutes, following Eddie’s instructions, and then she switched on a pager he had modified for the occasion.  All it knew how to do anymore was call Eddie’s cellphone, which it did.  Nikki smiled to herself, watching Eddie fake a conversation with a dead line, and then he excused himself from Jason and came over to the car.

She closed the laptop as he approached.  “Worked all right?”

“Absolutely beautiful,” he said.  “Now you have to go to the hotel and pick up a fax.”

That was the ruse under which Nikki was going to disappear for an hour or so.  If all went well, she’d return before Prodigy got back, with only Jason aware that she’d done anything other than sit there.  “How much time?”

“Forty minutes.  The drive route takes sixty and the wife and kid aren’t home.  They went to an antique show.  Should be out of pocket till at least noon.”  He gave her another pager.  “I’ll buzz you if there’s trouble.”

She checked to make sure the pager was on and in its soundless mode, then looked past Eddie at Jason.  “Do they have a dog?”

“You’re completely clear on pets, Poppet.”

Nikki glared at him.  “I told you not to call me that.”

“Your cheeks flush when you get angry.  It’s sexy,” he said, and returned to talk to Jason again.

She could almost hear the clock ticking.  Nikki counted the houses as she drove to the end of the block, then left the neighborhood and parked the car in a drugstore parking lot.  The stupid shoes Eddie had gotten for her to wear were expensive, but would be useless on the grass, so she took them off and left them in the car.  Entering the subdivision from the other side of the block, she crossed backyards until she was at Prodigy’s house.

Lucky her–there weren’t any barking dogs to speak of.  She made it to Prodigy’s back porch without any eyes.  So far, so good.  A deck complete with Jacuzzi dominated the back of the house, but she didn’t try the sliding glass door.  There was a back door into the garage.  Much easier to open; Nikki let herself in that way.

It was strange, breaking into someone’s house.  Walking around in a place she knew she wasn’t supposed to be was a peculiar sensation.  The silence was hyper-real, as if the house was holding its breath in apprehension at her presence.  At the same time, each and every tiny sound was magnified; the buzzing of an electric clock, the click of a thermostat, the bubbling of a fish tank.  She could hear all of these things as she entered the house through the laundry room, as if her hearing had suddenly become superhuman.  The nervousness sent a thrill of adrenaline through her that was equal parts nerve-wracking and pleasant.  She supposed she felt alive, if such a cliché made any sense.

The house was a split-level; the furniture and decor was expensive and meticulously arranged.  She didn’t have time to appreciate or deride it, so there was no point in pausing to take any of it in.  She noted only that nothing looked like it was more than a year old.

Nikki guessed that the computer was going to be in the lower level and went down there first.  Luck seemed to be on her side.  The first room she looked into contained an imposing workstation perched on a desk of delicate wood angles.  The whole office was straight out of a Crate & Barrel catalog.

The screen saver swam with brightly colored tropical fish on a green background.  Nikki touched the mouse and it disappeared.  There was no password.  Eddie had guessed that they’d catch Prodigy with his defenses down if they went directly to his home, and here she was, inside his computer without a keystroke.  In a way it annoyed her that Eddie was right; she didn’t like seeing his cocksure attitude justified.

Eddie had supplied her with an optical drive and a floppy disk.  He’d spent half of the day before drilling its operation into her, but it was three times easier than he made it sound.  Eddie already knew exactly what kind of computer Prodigy had, and had told Nikki which port to look for.  The drive plugged in as if it belonged there.  The disk went into the drive; it contained a program that copied everything on the computer onto the optical drive.  Getting the disk started was as easy as turning it on; the system booted from the disk.  Even Nikki understood it.  She got it set up and let it go about its merry little electronic business.  With about ten minutes to kill while the disk and drive read, copied, and compressed, she looked around the desk.  There were single sheets of paper and dozens of Post-It notes scattered about, evidence of a mover and shaker at work.  Underneath the scraps of paper, it was neatly organized and very impersonal.  Prodigy had no pictures of his family on the desk or on the walls.  The only things on the wall were pricey prints of Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keefe paintings she half-recognized.  She didn’t particularly like any of them.  She kept looking for family pictures.  She didn’t know why she had gotten a bee up her ass to find some.  It didn’t make sense to her that there weren’t any.

Suddenly, the pager Eddie had given her went off.  The sudden vibration at her hip made her jump.  Nikki hit the button and looked at the display: 911 911 911.  Eddie was telling her to get out of the house.

She swore under her breath and glanced at the screen.  The optical drive wasn’t finished yet.  Three more minutes.  Nikki looked for ways out.  To get out the back door, she’d have to cross the living room and go through the kitchen, an avenue that would probably be out of the question long before the drive had finished copying.  The thought of just yanking the cables, leaving the job half-finished, and walking out didn’t cross her mind for another forty-eight hours or so, during one of her many mental replays of the events that followed.

She never thought of aborting the job, though she was supposed to kill Eddie anyway.  Her performance was irrelevant.  Furthermore, if they had to marshal their skills and try again, she would be away from Taiisha longer.  She should have just given up and bolted before she got caught.  In all honesty, Taiisha wasn’t on her mind, though.  Nikki wanted to do a good job for Eddie.  She didn’t want him to be disappointed.

And he was going to be plenty disappointed if these people caught her in their house.  The adrenaline thrill swelled fiercely and suddenly, organic electricity making her heart rate soar and her knees shake.  She listened carefully to the silent noise permeating the house and discerned a new sound; a car, pulling into the garage.  The back door that she had entered through was in the laundry room, which was basically a short hallway leading to the garage.  If the drive finished right now she could yank it out and run out the front door…and right into a big mess, with Jason out there.

It was a moot point.  The drive wasn’t finished.  Nikki stepped out of the computer room, and she could hear keys in the lock of the door that led into the house from the garage.  There was a windowless half-bath across the hall from the computer room, and she ducked into it.  The darkness swallowed her like a velvet cloak.

From the sound of it, Prodigy’s wife and kid had come home early.  The kid sounded about her age, maybe slightly younger.  High school.  They were chatting about the antique show being next weekend.  They’d had the date wrong.

Nikki’s breaths were shallow, noiseless gasps.  If she could have stopped her heart to silence the beating, she would have.  She heard Mom cross the kitchen and go upstairs, her footsteps thumping up and past Nikki’s head.  The son stayed in the kitchen.  Cabinets opened and closed, then a drawer, followed by the toneless sounds of shuffled flatware.

They were both busy for the moment; she slipped back into the computer room.  The drive was 87% copied, according to the counter.  She wanted to scream.  It took an effort to move quietly back into the bathroom; Nikki was ready to run, heedless of the noise she’d make.  She could run right up the steps and out the door before anyone knew what had happened.

No, there was a better way.  She turned on the bathroom light and pushed the door to.  If they found her there, she’d tell them that she had needed to use the bathroom and good old Dad had let her in before taking his test drive.  It was weak, hysterically weak, but it was an excuse.  She’d stick to it until a better one came along.

The last thirteen- percent of the copy had to be completed.  She listened, heard no one moving toward the steps to come downstairs, and stuck her head out so she could peek into the computer room again.  The status bar wasn’t solid yet.  Nikki hissed through her teeth and slipped back into the bathroom.

Just in time, too; the son was coming downstairs.  If he set himself up in front of the television, she wouldn’t be able to get out of the house without being seen at all.  If he came into the bathroom, her options got even slimmer.

Then he did something even worse.  He came down humming a radio-friendly tune, and he went into the computer room.  The humming stopped.  He said, “Aw, man, what the hell?”  He came back out into the hall.  “Mom, do you know if Dad’s doing a backup or something?  I was going to play Quake,” he called upstairs.  Nikki heard a faint response from Mom; Nothing, that I know of.  She sounded like she was in a closet upstairs.  The kid went back to the computer.  “There’s an optical drive on his desk.  It’s loading files.”

Footsteps from upstairs; Mom knew it wasn’t right.  Why couldn’t this be a family that didn’t give a shit what Dad was doing at work?

Nikki watched the ceiling above her head, tracking the mother’s footsteps as she answered her son’s call.  The job was already screwed up and there was no getting out of that.  It might as well be a screwed up success instead of a screwed up failure.

Mom’s footsteps hit the landing, almost directly above the bathroom.  At the same time, Nikki ran out of the bathroom.  No more sneaking about: she ran, straight into the computer room.  The son was standing there, about five-ten and skinny inside his Smashing Pumpkins tee shirt.  He turned halfway around and started to say something and she ran into him, bringing her shoulder up into his sternum in a violent body blow.  He was already off-balance; Nikki knocked him backward off his feet and he fell next to the desk, taking a floor lamp and one of the shelves off of the wall with him.  Her eyes flicked to the computer screen as she grabbed the optical drive.  The copy was complete.  Nikki punched Eddie’s disk out of the drive with one hand and yanked the cables loose with the other.  She tucked the drive under her arm.  Son was on the floor, gasping, trying to take a big enough breath to call out to Mom.

“Ethan, are you okay?” she called.  “What hap–”  Nikki rushed out of the computer room and nearly ran into her.  Mom caught one look at her and screamed, “Who in God’s name…?” and Nikki ducked her head to throw herself into the woman.  Mom turned and ran away from her, instead.  She ran to the stairs, tripped on the second one, and fell.  As she tumbled back down she covered her head, crying, “Please, no, don’t kill us!”

Nikki ignored the wailing and jumped over her.  She tripped, almost fell down the steps herself, but regained her footing and kept running.  Behind her, the cries from downstairs continued.  Nikki took several steps toward the front door, then stopped.  Not that way.  Jason was standing right there, and Prodigy’s family would likely be hot on her heels to tell them all what she’d been up to; she’d implicate Eddie as well.  Not a good way to end the job.

Nikki turned to run out the back door just as the son ran up the stairs after her.  He shouted, “Freeze right there!” but he wasn’t holding any kind of a weapon.  His voice was still wheezy from getting hit in the chest.  He grabbed Nikki’s shoulder as she ran past.  She didn’t think, just attacked.  She reached across, seized the hand clutching at her left shoulder with her right, and pulled it forward and down.  As he came forward, she drove her left elbow into his ribs, rotating her shoulders so the blow had her body weight behind it.  She kept the motion going and spun partway around him, driving a vicious right into his kidneys that made his spine straighten involuntarily and left his throat open to her slashing left forearm.  Nikki swept his feet as she hit him in the neck and the impact flung him horizontal, dropping him onto his back.  He gagged, choking on blood.  He probably wasn’t even sure what had happened, or why he was on the floor just right now, and that left him defenseless so she could…Nikki stopped herself short of killing him.  She’d done too much already.  Fuck, the kid had just been trying to defend his house!  She hesitated, part of her wanting to help him, then bolted.

Nikki slammed the back door open and crossed the yard at a full run, getting out of sight as quickly as possible.  By now, mother would have run outside to get Eddie and Jason.

Nikki ran silently through the empty backyards, again encountering no one.  Her hose was shredded by the concrete when she returned to the BMW.  She liked it better that way anyway.  Nikki sat behind the wheel for a few seconds to calm down, drumming her fingers on the leather and closing her eyes.  She hadn’t killed the kid.  She had almost done it though, and that was upsetting.  It shouldn’t have been; she’d done it before.  Nikki forced all of the thoughts of blood and violence out of her mind and drove back to San Francisco.