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Maggie Bennett stared at the gun in her hand The tiny Colt 380 pistol was coh to look like a toy, but no toy ever felt so cold and deadly against her warh to accept that they had their uses, so she always kept one handy She’d cleaned it regularly in the four months she’d been back in New York, kept it neat and in perfect working order, just in case Randall Carter ever h her door

So far he’d been wise enough to keep his distance Maybe he realized she knew about his involvement with her husband’s death, maybe not She’d told no one about Bud Willis’s deathbed confession, his choking, malicious adun down Mack Pulaski two years ago on the streets of Booth-bay Harbor She kept that four- away at her heart, half of her convinced it was true, half of her still refusing to believe it She recognized the dangers of keeping it all inside her—no one had the chance to argue with her, to try to convince her that Bud Willis had lied But then no one had the chance to look at her with sorrowing, sympathetic eyes, no one knehat a fool she’d been, to fall in love with someone who could be her husband’s murderer

Mike Jackson was the only one who’d seen through her defenses Her boss at Third World Causes, Ltd, had taken her off any important cases and kept her busy with inconsequential paperwork It was the best thing he could have done, because at this point she was ineffective as a lawyer She was too distracted to concentrate on any of the usual cases assigned her, but she had needed so besides karate and the ever-present sense of doubt and betrayal

She finished cleaning the gun, slipped it back in its custom-tailored shoulder holster, and locked it back in the desk drawer The desk was one of the few pieces of furniture she’d kept; the rest of her apartment looked as austere as a Buddhist shrine She started to run her hand through her short-cropped blond hair, then pulled it back, wrinkling her nose at the s to her skin She hated the acrid stink of it, hated the way it stuck to her for days, re for her

It wasn’t the only weapon of death at her coh the eh her bedroom with the futon on the floor and the neat piles of neutral-color clothes, past the solitary floor la the darkness at bay For the past four months she’d immersed herself in the study of karate, and as she’d cleared her apartment of any extraneous furniture and decoration so she’d cleared her life of any excess baggage Her entire energy had been devoted to the singlee

But gradually, slowly, her rage had ebbed away There was no way one could study the ancient discipline of karate as a mere physical exercise It was a study of e, and hot-blooded killing had little to do with it As her life becaer dissipated, and a hard-won cal her into thinking she had risen above e, hatred, desire Only her dreams told her otherwise

She scrubbed at her hands, using the rough lye soap that had replaced her lavender-scented English i she seldom did nowadays The short-cropped blond hair wasShe’d chopped off her shoulder-length ton and Bud Willis’s deathbed, and kept it triht she couldn’t necessarily afford to lose, and there was a fine-honed, slightly driven look to her facial structure, to the tight, fair skin that stretched over her delicate bones, to the shadowed aquaer than ever in her pale, narrow face Her ave her away every time It was pale, vulnerable, and smiled all too infrequently She stared at that lost face, then stuck out her tongue at her soleht

She should call Sybil The one piece of otten rid of her stereo and television paraphernalia was the telephone answering machine, and like the bedroom lamp it was kept on at all times She was terrified that Randall would call, that she’d be forced to face her doubts and a truth that was unacceptable, and that rage would take over, a rage so deep and blinding that she’d never recover from it

But as the weeks and an to relax But not enough to turn off the machine and answer her phone

Sybil had called soht, her wonderful British actress’s voice rich with drae had been wonderfully cryptic, and Maggie had listened to it with a shade of her old tolerant a on here So nervous I need you Can you fly out here toht be serious” Without another word the phone had clicked off, and Maggie had suess asn’t quite right with Flynn, Sybil’s latest lover Sybil had grown tired of hiie’s help in getting rid of him

It had happened before,from man to man, always loathe to clean up the e one of her ever-helpful daughters would take care of it Ti men

Not that Maggie ever met him As far as she knew, no one had Sybil liked to keep her youngto distract their attention from her mature charone underground during the past few months, and no one had been allowed to interfere with their idyll Sybil would call every now and then and ie took with a grain of salt He was probably a boozy soccer player whose father had once thrown a rock at a British soldier Sybil’s fantasy world was harmless but well established

Well, she could wait This latest trau out, and she could rid herself of her soccer player without Maggie co her faether, to th and calm, until the memory of Randall Carter produced not even a flicker of e close, but she wasn’t there yet

Already her paler She needed to work out soe, and she knew exactly how to do it There were advanced classes starting in less than an hour at the Eighty-third Street School of Self Defense, and if she could find a taxi in the pre-Christ, she headed for the door,

stopping for aThe answering ie reached for the door, deter held her there, soain she heard the flat California accent with so close to dread

“This is Lieutenant Miller of the Los Angeles Police Departrethe Bennett …”