Hidden Riches

would understand the great personal risk taken by icing a badge.
    Not enough, DiCarlo admitted, and picked up his ice pack to press it against his bruised cheekbone. He crossed to his foyer mirror to examine himself. It was just as well he was too busy to celebrate New Year’s Eve. He could hardly go out in a crowd of people, since his face looked as though it had gone through a meat grinder.
    He was going to have to get back to the Conroy woman, and the man across the hall as well. It would takesome time. DiCarlo prodded gently beside his swollen eye, winced. He could be patient. Six months, a year. They’d have forgotten about him by then. But he wouldn’t forget.
    There would be no plans to kill her humanely this time. No indeed. This was one vendetta that would be executed slowly and with great pleasure.
    The idea made him smile, then swear as the movement opened his split lip. DiCarlo staunched the blood with the back of his hand, turned away from the mirror. She would pay, there was no question. But his first order of business was Finley.
    He knew he could run from the cops, but he wasn’t certain he could escape his employer. He would use reason, practicality and flattery. And . . . DiCarlo pressed the ice bag against his mouth and smiled with his eyes only. Good faith. He would offer to put another man on the job, at his own expense.
    Surely that was an offer that would appeal to Finley’s business sense. And his greed.
    Satisfied, DiCarlo went to the phone. The sooner he was finished in California, the sooner he could hit the beaches in Mexico.
    “I want to book a flight, first class, New York to LA. First available. Not until six-fifteen?” He drummed his fingers on his desk, calculating. “Yes, yes, that will be fine. No, one way. I’ll want to book another flight from LA to Cancún, on the first of January.” He opened a desk drawer, took out his passport. “Yes, I’m sure the weather will be an improvement.”
     
    “I think his face was a little longer.” Dora watched the computer-generated image change on the monitor to the quick rattle of the operator’s fingers on the keyboard. “Yeah, that’s it. And thinner, too.” Unsure, Dora shook her head and looked over at Jed. “Did he have more eyebrows? I think I’m making him look like Al Pacino.”
    “You’re doing fine. Finish going through your impressions, then we’ll add mine.”
    “Okay.” She closed her eyes and let the dark image come back, but the quiver of panic came with it, and she opened her eyes again. “I only got a quick look. He . . .” She reached for the ice water she’d requested. “I think he had more hair than that—and it might have had some curl to it.”
    “Okay.” The operator tried on a different hairstyle. “How’s that?”
    “It’s closer. Maybe his eyes were heavier—you know, more lid.”
    “Like this?”
    “Yes, I think . . .” She let out a sigh. “I don’t know.”
    Jed moved behind her chair, laid his hands on her shoulders and automatically began to knead out the tension. “Thin out the lips and nose,” he ordered. “The eyes were deeper set. Yeah, that’s it. She was right about the eyebrows, a little heavier. More. Square off the chin some.”
    “How do you do that?” Dora whispered.
    “I got a better look at him than you, that’s all.”
    No, that wasn’t all, she thought. Not nearly all. He’d seen what she’d seen, but he’d absorbed and filed and retained. Now she was watching the image of her attacker taking shape on the monitor.
    “Now deepen the complexion,” Jed suggested, narrowing his eyes, focusing in. “Bingo.”
    “That’s him.” Shaken, Dora reached up to lay a hand over Jed’s. “That is him. That’s incredible.”
    Like a proud papa, Brent patted the monitor. “It’s a hell of a tool. Jed had to do some fast shuffling to get it in the budget.”
    Dora smiled weakly and forced herself to stare into the computerized eyes. “Better than Nintendo.”
    “Give us a printout,” Brent told the operator. “We’ll see if we can come up with a match.”
    “I’d like a copy.” Relieved to have it behind her, Dora got to her feet. “I want to make sure Lea and Terri see it,in case they notice him hanging around near the shop.”
    “We’ll get you one.” Brent nodded to the operator. “Why don’t you come back to my office for a few minutes?” He took her arm, guiding her out of the conference room and down the hall. She glanced