LITMIR.BIZ

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from her neck, but he’d dropped it. When he bent down to the sidewalk to swipe it up, Cassie discovered the power she had in her legs. She’d already spent a year on the streets, alone and afraid, surviving by instincts she didn’t understand and didn’t question.

      As the punk had bent over she’d kicked him, connecting with his upper chest. He fell to the sidewalk, his breath whooshing out of his lungs like air from a depleted balloon. Pumping with adrenaline, she’d kicked him one more time in the ribs, then had scooped up her necklace and run like the wind.

      She’d never had the chain fixed. It was still broken and was too small for her neck now anyway. She picked up the locket and held it for a long moment in her hand. It was cool, and yet burned her palm as if on fire.

      Her mother had given it to her the week before they’d left their home in Kansas City to travel to California to start a new life. Cassie had been thrilled with the unexpected present. Of course, she hadn’t known at the time that it was a going-away present and she would eventually be left behind while her mother, her brother and her mother’s boyfriend went off into the sunset.

      She opened it and stared at the two tiny photos held within. The one on the left side was of a blond woman with too much makeup and a desperate kind of hunger in her smile. On the right was the image of a little boy with a blond crew cut and laughing eyes.

      She touched the picture of the child with her index finger. Billy. He’d been five when her mother and her mother’s boyfriend had dumped her out of a battered pickup on the streets of Los Angeles. The last vision she’d had of him was of his sad little face peeking out the grimy back window of a pickup truck.

      “We’ll be back in an hour.” Cassie could still hear her mother’s voice as the pickup zoomed away.

      Back in an hour, yeah, right. She shoved aside an ache that never completely went away and snapped the locket closed. She threw it into the trinket box, then placed the box back in the drawer and slammed it shut. That hour had stretched into forever.

      For just a moment she was that child again, standing on the street corner waiting for her family to return. She could taste the fear that had twisted up from her stomach. She swallowed hard and shook her head to dispel the images.

      In a moment of weakness she’d told Kane about her past. And now she hated the fact that he knew her Achilles’ heel.

      She hastily pulled on a pair of red workout shorts, a matching sports bra and a large white tank shirt. It was Kane’s fault that she was in a foul mood since opening her eyes this morning.

      Kane McNabb was just as sinfully handsome now as he’d been five years before. The two of them had made a terrific team. Like synchronized swimmers, they’d worked with one mind, swimming the waters of danger in perfect rhythm.

      They’d spent two weeks in Libya posing as husband and wife scientists in an effort to learn how close Qaddafi really was to obtaining nuclear weapons. They’d pretended to be brother and sister for several weeks to infiltrate a cult in South Carolina.

      Their assignments took them far away from home or as near as their own city as they took care of problems that fell through the bureaucratic cracks of other agencies.

      He’d also been the best lover she’d ever had. But that was the past and the past was best left alone.

      After two cups of coffee she felt lucid enough to get behind the steering wheel of her car. Max would be expecting her between now and noon for their ritual Saturday morning breakfast. If anyone could put her right with the world again it was Max Monroe.

      Before she left the house, she grabbed the address that Kane had left on the table the night before and shoved it into the bottom of her tan purse.

      The June sun was already hot despite the early hour as Cassie left her house by the front door. As if on cue before she could reach her red Mustang in the driveway the sound of the lawn mower came to an abrupt halt.

      “Ms. Newton…Cassandra.” Ralph hurried toward her, his bulldog features in a pregrowl expression.

      Cassie hesitated. She had two choices…quickly jump in her car and drive away or stand and bicker with her pesky neighbor. Before she could make a choice he stood directly in front of her. Procrastination would one day be the death of her, she thought with a sigh.

      “I’ve been trying to speak to you for the past week,” Ralph exclaimed, his jowls flopping with each word. “Haven’t you received any of my notes?”

      About every other day for the past two weeks Ralph had been taping notes to her front door. She could wall-paper her bathroom with all the notes he’d left.

      “Mr. Watters, I’ve read your notes, but we have nothing more to discuss.” Cassie tried to keep her voice pleasant.

      “I want that tree cut down.” The tree he referred to was a lush sugar maple just inside her property line in the backyard. Ralph was obviously not a member of the Hug a Tree Association.

      “We’ve been through this a dozen times. I’m not cutting down that tree.” She smiled in an attempt to soften her words.

      “That tree is a nuisance. It sheds seeds all over my property in the spring and leaves in the fall.”

      “But it’s a beautiful tree and it provides wonderful shade,” she replied.

      “Then what about that bush?” He pointed to the bush next to her front porch.

      “What about it?”

      “It’s dead,” he exclaimed.

      “It’s dormant,” she countered.

      He snorted. “If I was that dormant they’d have me in a coffin and buried six feet under.” A spot of spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on his chin. He swiped at it with the back of his hand and drew a deep breath. “I’m just trying to be a good neighbor here, you know, keep the neighborhood looking nice.”

      Cassie had to fight the impulse to snort back at him. “And I appreciate it. Have a nice day, Mr. Watters.” Before giving him an opportunity to reply she slid into her car and started the engine with a roar.

      She backed down the driveway, then threw the car into first gear and popped the clutch. Tires whined, then grabbed with a squeal as she peeled down the street.

      An utterly childish display, Cassandra Marie Newton. Still, she smiled in satisfaction as she imagined Ralph’s outrage at her antics. Sometimes being childish was mentally healthy.

      She shoved thoughts of Ralph Watters out of her mind as she made the fifteen-minute drive from her home to Good Life Gardens, the assisted-living facility where Max lived.

      Built with a flair of Spanish-flavored architecture, Good Life Gardens was an immense sprawl of buildings on twenty acres of lush, treed acreage. When Cassie had moved Max from California, it had taken her months to find a place she thought worthy of Max’s presence. Good Life Gardens had lived up to her expectations.

      The complex was enormous, but Max was never difficult to find. If he wasn’t in his apartment, all she had to do was check the common areas, and wherever there was the biggest gathering of little old women, Max would be in the center.

      Max loved the women, but Saturday mornings were devoted to the little girl he’d met on the streets of Los Angeles, the teenager he’d taught everything he knew, the woman he loved like a daughter.

      Cassie could smell the scent of cooked breakfast sausage before she reached his door. The savory scent brought back memories. The first meal Max had ever cooked for her had been sausage and eggs.

      She’d been almost fourteen and after three years of living on fruit swiped from an open market and whatever could be found in Dumpsters and trash cans, those eggs and sausage had seemed like a gift from a God she’d begun to think had forgotten her.

      She rapped on the door twice, then turned the knob as Max’s deep voice boomed a welcome. She found him in the kitchen pulling a tray of golden-brown biscuits

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