LITMIR.BIZ

       One

      Carver Venner was beat. In the last seventy-two hours, he’d logged over eight thousand miles on his frequent flyer account, had been slapped in the face, kicked in the shins, bitten by an angry cat and shocked by an electric fence. He’d been shot at—twice—and called a filthy, stinking capitalist, an imperialist dog and a lousy tipper. He’d survived a taxi ride in a town that had few—if any—traffic laws, had eaten food he’d been hard-pressed to identify—which in itself was probably a blessing—and had somehow stumbled onto a literal den of thieves. He had a stubbed toe and a throbbing hangnail, and he could scarcely remember the last time he’d slept.

      Man, the life of a journalist hadn’t turned out to be anything at all like he’d thought it would be when he’d enrolled at Columbia University twenty years ago.

      How he’d managed to make it back to his South Philadelphia apartment in one piece was some vague memory he knew he was going to have to write up tomorrow. For now, though, he dropped his battered, ragged duffel bag in the middle of his bedroom floor and fell backward onto his bed with a sigh. Almost as an afterthought, he sat up to skim off his faded green polo, then found himself too exhausted to bother with the blue jeans and hiking boots he’d also been wearing since yesterday morning. Instead, he dropped onto his back again.

      Sleep, he thought. Finally, finally, he could get some real sleep. He ran a restless hand over the three-day stubble of beard on his face, shoved his overly long, dark brown hair from his forehead and closed his eyes. He was just about to lose himself in the welcome relief of slumber when someone—someone who obviously had a death wish—launched into a ceaseless pounding on his front door.

      “Dammit,” he muttered without moving. Maybe whoever the someone was would go away, and then he wouldn’t have to kill them after all.

      But whoever it was keeping him from sleep did indeed seem to have suicidal tendencies, because the knocking just increased more loudly.

      Carver sighed again, jackknifed up from his bed and staggered out to his living room. He flattened one big hand against the front door and curled the other over the knob, then stood with his chin dropped to his chest and one final hope that his visitor had gone away. But the rapping started again, even more annoying than it had been before, so he jerked the door open hard.

      “What?” he barked. “What is it?”

      A woman stood in the hall with her curled fingers poised at shoulder level. She was about to knock again, something that would have landed her fist in the middle of Carver’s naked chest, but she stopped herself just shy of completing the action and dropped her hand quickly back to her side. In the other hand, she carried a battered leather satchel not unlike the kind elementary schoolchildren had carried way back when Carver was young enough to have been one of them himself.

      She was a good foot shorter than he, her black hair liberally threaded with silver and cropped shorter than his own. She wore round, tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses that made her brown eyes appear huge, and a shapeless olive drab trench coat over a white, baggy, man-styled shirt and brown, even baggier, man-styled trousers. Her only concession to her femininity was a filigreed antique brooch pinned at her collar and matching earrings that dangled from her ears.

      She was in no way the kind of woman with whom Carver normally associated. But somehow she looked very familiar.

      “Carver Venner?” she asked in a no-nonsense voice of efficiency that immediately grated on his nerves.

      “Yeah, that’s me.”

      “I’m with the Child Welfare Office. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

      Okay, he was tired, Carver thought as he studied the woman harder, still trying to place where he might have met her. But there was no way he was so tired that he had forgotten about the presence of a child in his life.

      “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

      “Your daughter,” she clarified, aiding him not at all. “I’m here to assist the two of you—to help you get acquainted and settled in.”

      He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to wake himself from what was one of the most bizarre dreams he’d ever had. Unfortunately, when he opened his eyes again, he was still standing in front of his open door, and the oddly familiar woman was still staring at him.

      “Do I know you?” he asked.

      Her eyes widened for a moment in what he could only liken to panic, something that just compounded his confusion. Without replying, she lifted her satchel and flipped it open, shoved her hand inside and withdrew a pristine, white business card.

      M. H. Garrett, L.C.S.W., it read in bold black type. Caseworker, Child Welfare Office of Pennsylvania. It was decorated with the official state seal and seemed to be legitimate.

      M. H. Garrett, he repeated to himself. Nope, not a name that rang any bells. “What’s the M.H. stand for?”

      “Mostly Harmless,” she told him without missing a beat.

      He glanced up at the woman again only to find her staring back at him in silence, daring him to press the issue. Dammit, even her prissy voice was familiar. He was sure he knew her from somewhere, he just couldn’t remember where. It was about to drive him crazier than he already felt when he recalled that she had just accused him of having a daughter.

      He smiled wryly. “I think somebody got their wires crossed somewhere, Ms. Garrett. I don’t have a daughter. In fact, I’ve never even been married, so it doesn’t seem likely that there’s a little Venner kid out there running around somewhere.”

      M. H. Garrett, Caseworker, narrowed her eyes at Carver and stuck her hand back into her satchel, this time pulling out a very thick, very well used binder. She flipped through it easily until she found whatever she had been looking for, scanned a few pages, then looked up at Carver again.

      “Rachel Stillman,” she said, as if those two words would explain everything.

      Carver shook his head. “Sorry, never heard of her.”

      Mostly Harmless Garrett eyed him warily. “She’s your daughter, Mr. Venner.”

      “No, she isn’t.”

      “Yes, she is.”

      He chuckled, feeling more and more bizarre with every passing moment. “Oh, come on. She doesn’t even have the same last name as me. Boy, you folks at Welfare really are overworked.” He relented when he saw her lips thin into a tight line. “I assure you, Ms. Garrett, that I do not have a daughter named

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