High Noon

nothing for a moment, then grinned. “Sorry, my mind went in all sorts of interesting directions.” He listened to that terrific laugh of hers again. “It’s about something that happened to a friend of mine today, and my curiosity over what gets done to the guy who did it when he gets caught.”
    “Criminal or civil?”
    “It’s pretty fucking criminal.”
    Loo raised her eyebrows at the tone, then accepted the martini she was served. She took the first, slow sip. “Should this individual be charged and indicted, I take it you’d object if I or my firm represent him.”
    “I can’t tell you what to do, but I figured you’d know the ins and outs of what he might try to pull, legally, when they get him.”
    “Not if, but when.” She broke off a minute corner of a chip. “Okay, tell me what this man allegedly did.”
    “Before I tell you what he did, I’d better tell you, he’s a cop.”
    “Oh. Well. Shit.” Loo blew out a breath, drank again. “Tell me.”
     
    Interesting. From his seat at the bar, he nursed a beer, ate some cheese fries and pretended to be interested in the reports on March Madness that dominated the near screen.
    He had a perfect view of the booth where Phoebe’s screw-buddy sat with the duded-up black couple. Interesting, damn interesting—and fortunate that he himself had been watching the house on Jones when the fancy car pulled up.
    Phoebe hadn’t been looking so good.
    He had to smother a laugh he knew might draw attention his way. No sir, the redheaded bitch hadn’t been looking her best.
    She was going to be looking worse before it was over. But for now, he’d take a little time, a little trouble, to find who Mr. Fancy Car and his friends were.
    You never knew who might be useful.

9
    With one ear cocked toward Phoebe’s room, Essie carefully folded the white-on-white bedspread with its stylized pattern of lovebirds. The intricate stitching had kept her mind calm, as it tended to. She often thought that being productive—and creative with it, if she could brag a bit—held a firm rein on her mind and refused to allow it to wander into those places where panic waited.
    It was good work, she could think that, and the bride who received it as a wedding gift would have something unique and special, something that could be passed on for generations.
    She arranged the dark silver tissue. Even that, the fussing with the finished product, the meticulous packaging of it, helped keep her hands busy and her mind steady.
    Because she didn’t want to be afraid every time Phoebe went out of the house, didn’t want to whittle her family’s world down to walls, as she’d whittled her own. She couldn’t allow herself to let that fear in, to let it take over. It snuck up, she knew, inch by inch, stealing little spaces, little movements.
    First it might set your heart thumping, it might shut your lungs down in the grocery store, right there in Produce while you’re surrounded by tomatoes and snap beans and romaine lettuce with Muzak playing “Moon River” until you want to scream.
    Until you had to run, just leave your cart there, half full of groceries, and run.
    It might be the dry cleaner’s next, or the bank where the teller knew you by name and always asked about your children. It might sneak up then, dropping rock after rock after rock on your chest until you were buried alive.
    Your ears ringing, the sweat pouring.
    You let it win all those little spaces, all those little movements, until it had them all. Until it owned everything outside the walls.
    She could still go out on the terraces, into the courtyard, but that was getting harder and harder. If it wasn’t for Carly, Essie didn’t think she could push herself even that far. The day was coming, she could feel it sliding closer, when she wouldn’t be able to sit on the veranda and read a book with her precious little girl.
    And who was to say she was wrong? Essie thought as she put the pretty oval sticker with her initials on the folded tissue to close it in place.
    Terrible things happened in the world outside the walls. Hard, frightening and terrible things happened every minute of every day, on the streets and the sidewalks, at the market and the dry cleaner’s.
    Part of her wanted to pull her family inside those walls, lock the doors, bar the windows. Inside, she wished she could keep them inside, where everyone would be safe, where nothing terrible could happen to any of them, ever.
    And she knew that