LITMIR.BIZ

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and lost his temper. His precinct captain, Benjamin Todd, knew very well that it was only a matter of time until his fiercely loyal wunderkind tracked down the shooter and more than likely got himself in hot water. Todd had sentenced him to an open-ended vacation “anywhere out of California” until further notice.

      Alpha males occasionally had difficulty relinquishing power to authority figures, and Zack was no exception. He absolutely, positively hated to be frustrated when it came to doing his job…almost as much as he hated taking vacations.

      At the moment he was in his ninth hour of vacation and could hardly face the prospect of another minute, let alone an indefinite period of accomplishing absolutely nothing. The heavens had been raining on him since he’d left Los Angeles, doing a smear job on his recently detailed Lotus. To make matters worse, he also had a headache and a sore throat and feared he was coming down with a cold. He wasn’t surprised. His good health seemed to be directly related to the skirmishes he fought in the war against crime. Constant challenge and sweet justice guaranteed high spirits and general well-being. No challenge whatsoever, not to mention a good dose of frustration, translated into sneezes and a cough. True to form, Zack began to pine for dry sheets and a box of tissues. When he sneezed his way into a one-stoplight town called Providence, he decided it was as good a place as any to spend the night.

      It was dusk, and the rosy light slanting in from the west did wonderful things for the Lotus’s platinum exterior finish. The exotic, hand-tooled car garnered him quite a bit of attention as he motored down good old “Main Street.” None of his friends or colleagues would have recognized the low-slung sports car he drove, for the simple reason that he kept it hidden in his garage beneath a chamois car cover. Like the rest of the cops he knew, Zack drove a battered economy car with bad tires and too many miles. Anyone who planned on going into law enforcement for the money was doomed to great disappointment and poor transportation.

      Though he looked, walked and talked like a cop, Zack had a few secrets he kept with religious fervor. Heaven help him if any of his buddies on the force found out that he had a genius IQ. Though his photographic memory was a tremendous help in his work, he played it down as much as he could. He couldn’t help his intellectual gifts; he’d been born that way. Was it his fault that he had graduated summa cum laude from Berkeley with little effort and even less dedication? No. And so what if he happened to be a member of Mensa? Everyone had skeletons in their closets. Being labeled a genius had been seriously detrimental to his high school social life. He’d been saved from complete humiliation by securing the position of quarterback for the football team, guiding them to a state championship. All brains and no brawn would have made Zack a very dull boy.

      At thirty-three, Zack was older and wiser, and by now an old hand at keeping his astonishing intellect under wraps. Still, certain challenges were irresistible to him. During his last year in college, he’d attended an economics lecture wherein the professor compared the chances of success in the stock market with the chances of success at a blackjack table in Vegas. Zack perked right up at the prospect of such an intriguing challenge. Immediately he had begun studying the stock market, quickly learning the ropes and spotting the trends. Initially he invested the small inheritance left to him by his father, and over the next few years created a fine bear market for himself. Simply put, he had become filthy rich. Not a soul on earth besides his banker and lawyer knew about his jaw-dropping fortune. Zack took great pains to keep it quiet, fearing his colleagues would no longer consider him “one of them” if they knew of his exalted tax bracket. Still, now and again he spoiled himself, as he had done when he’d impulsively purchased the Lotus. The only good thing about his vacation was the opportunity to bring his smoke-colored road rocket out of hiding. There was no denying it; alpha males liked to go fast.

      As Zack reined in the growling Lotus at a stoplight, a sign in the lighted window of Appleton’s General Store caught his eye: “Beat the bug! Save money on all supplies for cold-and-flu season!” He pulled into the parking lot, only too happy to call it a night. He was knee-deep in his own personal cold-and-flu season. He could see a motel down the road with an electric-blue vacancy sign. In thirty minutes he would be seriously medicated and off to dreamland. When he awoke, another eight hours of his vacation would be history.

      He climbed out of the car, hearing his popping spine protest the length of time he had been sitting in one position. Walking through a curtain of rain, he shook the water off his head like a black Lab fresh from a swim. He wore threadbare jeans frayed white at the knees, a gray T-shirt and an ancient brown leather jacket broken in to the consistency of soft butter. Unless he was called on to testify in court, these were his “work clothes.” It was a happy day when he had been promoted to the rank of detective four years earlier and given permission to shed his barely there marine haircut and ugly-as-sin patrolman’s uniform. Life was sweet, indeed; he had a perpetual green light to chase bad guys and help maintain order in the Los Angeles, California, pack.

      Until now. Zack’s vacation instructions from Captain Todd were simple: “Forget work and read a book or something.” As far as Zack was concerned, Todd was a sadist. Still, on the way out of town, he had stopped at a bookstore and picked up a copy of Stephen Hawking’s Universe, a book he would never have bought had he been hanging out with his buddies. Maybe a little light reading would help him pass the time.

      The notice on the sliding-glass door told Zack he had only two minutes to find his cold supplies before the store closed. He took off at a slow jog, scanning aisles one through ten before he saw the medicines in aisle eleven. He collected an armful of fine and potent cold remedies, including cough syrup with a very high alcohol content. Meanwhile a young employee mopped the floor around Zack’s sneakers, looking very irritated at the possibility that Zack would be responsible for his shift going thirty seconds overtime.

      “Oh, chill out,” Zack growled, sniffing. He was in no mood to be pestered by a pimply faced teenager. “Just tell me where the tissues are, kid.”

      “Right behind you,” the clerk muttered, pointing with the handle of his mop. “Any closer and they would have bit you. Could you move it along? I can’t mop the floor if you’re standing on it.”

      Obviously, the kid didn’t know who he was dealing with. Zack decided to be difficult, for no other reason than he was miserable and it seemed fair that everyone else in the world should be miserable, too. “I always have a hard time making a decision. On one hand, you’ve got the really soft, puffy kind, but there’s also the kind with the lotion in it. Then you have to decide on one-ply or two-ply. And I pretty much prefer unscented, but that’s sometimes hard to find. It’s a dilemma, you know?”

      “There, right in front of you. Second shelf from the top. We’ve got puffy, we’ve got lotion, we’ve got scented and unscented. Okay?”

      “I love small towns,” Zack told the clerk with complete insincerity. “They’re so personal. When I retire, I think I’ll come right back here to good ol’ Providence. Live out my golden years basking in the warmth of your old-fashioned hospitality.”

      “It’s five past ten,” the clerk pointed out, unimpressed with Zack’s sarcasm. “We’re officially closed. If you want your puffy tissues, you’d better get a move on before they close the registers.”

      Zack’s headache was getting worse and he’d left his patience behind in California. “Well, you’re not closing promptly at ten tonight, bud. You know why? Because I want to walk around and make sure I get everything I need. I’m coming down with something, you know. I want to be prepared.”

      The clerk glowered at him through his wire-rimmed glasses. “So tell me what you need and I’ll help you find it…fast.”

      “That’s the trouble, you know? You never know what you’re forgetting till it’s too late. I’ll just mosey around and see what catches my eye. Maybe a hot-water bottle. Or maybe some herbal tea. And some vitamin C, my mom always said it was good for…my mom always said…holy smoke!”

      Something—actually, someone—had caught his eye in a death grip. A woman breezed around the corner in a rush, obviously trying to beat the clock. She was tall, willowy, exotic-looking. Her waist-length hair whipped behind her in a multicolored curtain of honey-brown,

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