Blood Price

to the phone before she remembered and pulled it back. This had nothing to do with her any longer. She'd given her statement and that was as far as her involvement went.

    She took off her glasses and scrubbed at one lens with a fold of her sweatshirt. The edges of her world blurred until it looked as if she were staring down a foggy tunnel; a wide tunnel, more than adequate for day to day living. So far, she'd lost about a third of her peripheral vision. So far.
    It could only get worse.

    The glasses corrected only the nearsightedness. Nothing could correct the rest.

    "Okay, this one's Celluci's. Fine. I have a job of my own to do," she told herself firmly. "One I can do." One she'd better do. Her savings wouldn't last forever and so far her caseload had been embarrassingly light, her vision forcing her to turn down more than one potential client.

    Teeth gritted, she pulled the massive Toronto white pages onto her lap. With luck, the F.
    Chan she was looking for, inheritor of a tidy sum of money from a dead uncle in Hong Kong, would be one of the twenty-six listed. If not . . . there were over three full pages of Chans, sixteen columns, approximately one thousand, eight hundred and fifty-six names and she'd bet at least half of those would have a Foo in the family.

    Mike Celluci would be looking for a killer right now.

    She pushed the thought away.

    You couldn't be a cop if you couldn't see.

    She'd made her bed. She'd lie in it.

    * * *
    Terri Neal sagged against the elevator wall, took a number of deep breaths, and, when she thought she'd dredged up a sufficient amount of energy, raised her arm just enough so she could see her watch.

    "Twelve seventeen?" she moaned. Where the hell has Monday gone, and what's the point in going home? I've got to be back here in eight hours. She felt the weight of the pager against her hip and added a silent prayer that she would actually get the full eight hours. The company had received its pound of flesh already today-the damned beeper had gone off as she'd slid into her car back at 4:20-so maybe, just maybe, they'd leave her alone tonight.

    The elevator door hissed open and she dragged herself forward into the underground garage.

    "Leaving the office," she murmured, "take two."

    Squinting a little under the glare of the fluorescent lights, she started across the almost empty garage, her shadow dancing around her like a demented marionette. She'd always hated the cold, hard light of the fluorescents, the world looked decidedly unfriendly thrown into such sharp-edged relief. And tonight. . . .

    She shook her head. Lack of sleep made her think crazy things. Resisting the urge to keep looking over her shoulder, she finally reached the one benefit of all the endless hours of overtime.

    "Hi, baby." She rummaged in her pocket for her car keys. "Miss me?"

    She flipped open the hatchback, heaved her briefcase- This damn thing must weigh three hundred pounds! -up and over the lip, and slid it down into the trunk. Resting her elbows on the weather stripping, she paused, half in and half out of the car, inhaling the scent of new paint, new vinyl, new plastic, and . . . rotting food. Frowning, she straightened.

    At least it's coming from outside my car. . . .

    Gagging, she pushed the hatchback closed and turned. Let security worry about the smell tomorrow. All she wanted to do was get home.

    It took a moment for her to realize she wasn't going to make it.

    By the time the scream reached her throat, her throat had been torn away and the scream became a gurgle as her severed trachea filled with blood.

    The last thing she saw as her head fell back was the lines of red dribbling darkly down the sides of her new car.

    The last thing she heard was the insistent beep, beep, beep of her pager.

    And the last thing she felt was a mouth against the ruin of her throat.

    * * *
    On Tuesday morning, the front page of the tabloid screamed "SLASHER STRIKES
    AGAIN." A photograph of the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs stared out from under it, the cutline asking-not for the first time that season- if he should be fired, the Leafs being once again at the very bottom of the worst division in the league. It was the kind of strange layout at which the paper excelled.

    "Fire the owner," Vicki muttered, shoving her glasses up her nose and peering at the tiny print under the headline. "Story page two," it said, and on page two, complete with a photo of the underground garage and a hysterical