Island of the Sequined Love Nun

and paused to look up at him. Tuck met her gaze with eyes the size of golf balls. She smiled, her lipstick a bit worse for the wear, a string of saliva trailed from her lips. "Just enjoy. You lost. Losers flourish here." She licked her lips and returned to her task.
    "Dame makes a point," Vincent said. "I give you three to one she brings you around to her way of thinking. Whatta ya say?"
    "No." Tuck waved the flyer off end shut his eyes.
    "Oh, yes," Beth said, as if speaking into the microphone.
    Vincent flicked his cigarette butt out the window. "I'm not distracting you, am I? I just dropped in to take up on the dame's side, as she is unable to speak for herself at present."
    Tuck was experiencing the worst case of bed spins he'd ever had-in a chair. Sexual vertigo.
    "Of course," Vincent continued, "this is kinda turning into a religious experience for you, ain't it? Go with what you know, right? You let her run the show, you got no decisions to make and no worries ever after. Not a worry in the world. You got my word on that. Although, if it was me, I'd check out her story just to be safe. Look in the doc's computer maybe."
    Beth was working her mouth and hands like she was pumping water on an inner fire that was consuming her with each second that passed. Tuck heard his own breath rise to a pant and the wicker chair crackle and creak and skid on the wooden floor. He was helping her now, wanting her to quench that flame and that was all there was.
    "You think about it," Vincent said. "You'll do the right thing. You owe me, remember." He faded and disappeared.
    "What does that mean?" Tuck said, then he moaned, arched his back, and came so hard he thought he would pass out, but she kept on and on until he couldn't stand the intensity and had to push her away. She landed on the floor at his feet and looked up like an angry she-cat.
    "You're mine," she said. She was still breathing hard and her dress was still up around her waist. "We're friends."
    It came out like a command, but Tuck heard a note of desperation below the panting and the ire, and he felt a wrenching pain in his chest like nothing he'd ever felt before. "I know you, Beth. I am you," he said. But not anymore, he thought. He said, "Yes, we're friends."
    She smiled like a little girl who'd been given a pony for her birthday. "I knew it," she said. She climbed to her feet and smoothed down her skirt, then bent and kissed him on the eyebrow. He tried to smile.
    She said, "I'll see you in a few hours. We're flying out at nine. I have to go see to Sebastian."
    Tuck zipped up his pants. "And get ready for your performance?" he said.
    "No, this isn't a medical flight. Just supplies."
    Tuck nodded. "Beth, was that little boy blind from birth?"
    "Of course," she said, looking offended. She was more convincing as the Sky Priestess.
    "You go see to Sebastian," Tuck said.
    After she had left, Tuck looked at the ceiling and said, "Vincent, just in case you're listening, I'm not buying your bullshit. If you want to help me, fine. But if not, stay out of my way."

55 – Pay No Attention to That Man
    Behind the Computer
    Tuck went into the bathroom and washed his face, then combed his hair. He studied his face in the mirror, looking for that scary glint that he'd seen in Beth Curtis's eyes. He wasn't her. He wasn't as smart as she was, but he wasn't as crazy either. He cringed with the realization that he had spent most of his adult life being a jerk or a patsy and sometimes both simultaneously. And it was no small irony to have had an epiphany during a blow job. Vincent, whatever he was, had been playing some kind of game from the beginning, mixing lies and truth, helping him only to get him into trouble. There was no grand bailout coming, and if he was going to find out what was really being planned for him, he had to get into the computer.
    The best time to sneak into the clinic was right now, in broad daylight. He hadn't seen any of the guards all day and Beth was "seeing to Sebastian." If he got caught, he'd simply say he was trying to get the weather for tonight's flight. If the doc could e-mail and fax all over the world, then surely he would have access to weather services. It didn't matter; he didn't think he'd have a hard time convincing the doc that he was just being stupid. His entire life had set up the cover.
    He grabbed some paper and a pencil from the nightstand and stuffed them into his back pocket. While he was in there, he might as well see if he