LITMIR.BIZ

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      Mick scanned the lot once more. Inside the store, he could see Arthur standing before one of the candy bar displays. A man, mid-twenties, came out of the store, got in the pickup and drove off. Mick grabbed a pair of sweatpants, slipped on the running shoes, slid open the van door and, gathering the sheet tighter, stepped out.

      The bathroom door was locked.

      Behind the store, darkness almost hid a stand of trees. He headed toward them.

      He moved behind a thick trunk, back far enough so he could see the lot, but no one could see him. A dark Chevy turned into the lot. It pulled up to the pumps, opposite the van, and parked.

      Arthur had come out of the store and was walking toward the vehicle, a chocolate bar in his hand. He unwrapped the candy, broke off a square, put it into his mouth.

      Mick finished and was pulling up the too-short sweatpants that ended several inches above his ankles. He scanned the lot. It was quiet. No one had gotten out of the dark sedan. Mick’s instinct of twelve years undercover awoke. His mouth was forming the word No as the sedan’s window lowered and a fat steel cylinder appeared. A muted pop-pop-pop… Arthur dropping. Several more pops and the sedan sped away, gone as if it’d never been.

      Mick was running now. He reached Arthur and dragged his body away from the pumps. The clerk looked out the wide front windows.

      “Call an ambulance,” Mick yelled. He looked down at the man in his arms. He’d been hit once in the heart, twice in the forehead. Execution-style.

      Mick looked to the pumps, the van, saw the dark stream where shots had punctured the side of the vehicle, the half-empty gas tank with its lethal fumes. He felt the intuitive quiver, the anticipation of disaster, his muscles tightening. “Get out,” he yelled to the clerk coming out the door. “Get out of here!”

      He covered Arthur’s body with his own. At first, the explosion was contained, almost anticlimactic. Then, the fuel tank ignited. Light flashed and noon changed places with the night. Mick felt the wave of heat roll over his body. He looked up. The clerk was running to his car parked at the far end of the lot. Mick rolled off Arthur and dragged him toward the woods.

      Beneath the long shadows of the trees, Mick placed his mouth on Arthur’s and he breathed into the man, even knowing it was as useless as a fist slamming against metal. The sweet smell of chocolate met him. He checked Arthur’s neck, then the wrist above the hand that still clutched the half-wrapped Cadbury bar.

      Mick looked back toward the van. A spark shot up, and in a blast of color and light, the gas pumps blew. The heat reached for the men. The California sky was fragmented, fluorescent.

      The sedan had headed south, back toward Canaan. Mick stared into the heat and light. Cars from the highway were slowing down, stopping. Emergency vehicles would be here soon.

      He worked quickly, drawing back Arthur’s linen sport coat, unfastening the holster that held the 9 mm, retrieved a leather wallet from the coat’s inside pocket. The wallet held only a few singles, a fake driver’s license and an American Express gold card in the same false name. Either item would only alert Mick’s enemies should he try to use them. He took out the singles, slipped them into the sweatpants’ pocket and shoved the wallet back into the jacket’s inside pocket.

      A new siren pierced the night. Close by. Mick pulled up Arthur’s carefully creased right trouser leg, released the gun strapped to the ankle and wrapped it high on his own calf so the short sweatpants would conceal it. He straightened the trouser, smoothed the coat, aligning the gold buttons. The sirens sounded closer, were almost here.

      He straightened the angle of Arthur’s head, folded his beautifully shaped hands into a position of peace across his chest. He leaned over, kissed the man, rose and walked into the night.

      DAWN HAD BROKEN, spreading a surreal cast across the night sky as Grey Torre drove Bitsy back to Memorial Manor. His black Lexus pulled up smoothly beside Bitsy’s car, contrasting with the bright apple-green hatchback, a color everyone, including Bitsy, found nauseous, but had gotten Bitsy a great deal on the car.

      “Thank you again for coming down to the station,” she told Grey.

      “Damsels in distress are my specialty.” Grey gave her the infamous grin that had charmed females from the corner kiosk to the higher courts. Bitsy had known that irresistible smile since she used to challenge Grey two Scooter Pies she could climb to the top of ol’ lady Simone’s sycamore before he could. She’d won every time.

      “I was only drinking a Corona, watching CNN,” Grey assured her. “Some nut tried to kill Congressman Kittredge last night. Damn crazies. One of my old buddies from Berkeley, Tim Stafford, works for Kittredge. Says he’s the real ticket—a politician who actually cares about his constituents.”

      Grey looked pointedly at her. “The moral is ‘you can never be too careful.’ I’m thinking of having that tattooed on your beautiful backside.”

      “Leave my beautiful backside out of this,” she warned him. “I don’t go around advertising for big bad bogeymen to come and take advantage of me.”

      “And still, they seem to find you no matter how hard you hide.”

      “I’m not hiding,” she insisted as she opened the car door. “I’m just…” Her words faltered as she turned to her friend. “I’m just…”

      Grey’s voice softened. “I know, honey, I know. C’mon, I’ll walk you to your car.”

      “Really I’m doing fine, Grey,” Bitsy assured him. He had draped his arm across her shoulders as they headed to her car, and she patted his hand and felt the pull of weariness.

      “It’s your heart,” Grey decided. “It’s too big. It keeps getting stepped on.”

      She yearned to lean on the welcome weight of her friend. While the puff of her pompadour had long surrendered, and she had a run in the left leg of her hose, Grey looked, as always, as if he’d just stepped from the pages of InStyle.

      She straightened. A few hours sleep and her physical exhaustion would be remedied. Her shattered illusion of safety, however, wouldn’t be so easily restored. The man in the embalming room had dredged up old feelings, fears, everything she’d worked so hard to keep under control the last few months.

      “The bum was probably past the county line before they even called for backup,” Grey said.

      “Thanks to me.”

      “It was an honest mistake, Bits. The fact is, more creeps than we want to consider get away without paying for their crimes. Look at your ex-husband.”

      Grey had handled her divorce. He was one of California’s most successful divorce lawyers, his skill at securing his female clients generous settlements earning him the nickname the Spago Ladies’ Lawyer. Bitsy’s divorce hadn’t earned him his usual fabulous fees since she had wanted none of the Dumont fortune. Grey had also done his best to keep the entire affair out of the press, although most big-time divorce lawyers would have taken the case for the publicity alone. Even still, Jumpin’ Johnny Dumont, known for his lavish lifestyle and bad-boy antics, was a media favorite, and his divorce from his small-town Cinderella had made as good cover as when he’d married her eighteen months earlier in a whirlwind romance.

      “They don’t put you behind bars for breaking hearts, Grey.”

      He said nothing. He had mentioned the bruises only once. She had asked him never to mention them again.

      “Come on.” Grey made his voice light. “I’ll buy you a tofu omelet.”

      She made a face. “Bean curd isn’t my idea of comfort food.” She stopped a few steps from her car, turned and faced him. “Besides, I’m beat.”

      “All right, I’ll accept that, but only because I’ve got some tax records to go over before I drive down to meet a client this morning.”

      “Beverly Hills?” she guessed.

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