Shiver

was why she had offered to pick up groceries for Sam. Sam’s week ended on Saturday nights, when A+ Collateral ponied up.
    “I’ll pay you back Sunday,” Sam said.
    “I know,” Kendra answered. “Will you be done soon?”
    “Should be. I’m on the trail of this BMW. When I find it, that’s it for the night.”
    “Nice car.” Kendra’s voice perked up. “Maybe the owner will be around. If he owns a BMW, he could be your ticket.”
    “If his BMW is being repossessed, I doubt it,” Sam retorted. “Anyway, I don’t need that kind of ticket. Tyler and I are doing just fine.”
    “Yeah, I heard it before.” Kendra was determined to get her fixed up, and Sam was just as determined to resist. Tyler was a wonderful gift, but his father—not so much. In fact, as soon as he’d found out Sam was pregnant he’d cut and run. Sam had seen him exactly twice since. He’d contributed zero dollars to Tyler’s support, and since he didn’t have a steady job there was nothing Sam could do about it. They were the same age, and he was still running around free as the wind, while she—she had grown up. And in the process pretty much sworn off men for life.
    “Got to go,” Sam said as the locater affixed to the dashboard beeped, and disconnected. The beep meant she was getting close. Fortunately, the car she was after was only two years old and fancy enough to have its own built-in GPS, with its own built-in special signal. Sam’s equipment wasn’t exactly state of the art, but it was up to date enough to lock onto the signal once she was within a few blocks of her quarry.
    Left on First, another left on Hennessey. Right down by the river. The night was black and breezy, and the mighty Mississippi gleamed like an oil slick under the light of the pale full moon. Across the river in St. Louis proper, she could see the twinkling lights of the big paddleboats that were the city’s floating casinos. The bridges, the Arch, the tall buildings that madeup the St. Louis skyline—all were glowing with light and, from this distance, beautiful.
    Across the river in Illinois, where Sam lived, East St. Louis was like that other St. Louis’s really ugly stepsister.
    “There you are,” Sam murmured with satisfaction as her beeper started going off insistently. The car she was looking for was parked at the end of Fortnum, just up from the warehouse district. She spotted the big black Beemer with a satisfied smile. A distant glow from the security lighting on the warehouses was all the light there was. On a nearby corner, the only streetlamp for a couple of blocks wasn’t working. From the look of it, it had been beaten into submission long ago. There were other cars on the street, most of them junkers, none parked too close to her objective. The buildings across the street were brick tenements, condemned and slated for destruction as part of the city’s effort to combat blight. Started before the economy tanked, it probably had seemed like a good idea at the time. But besides moving the tenants out and boarding up the windows, nothing more had been done. And now the buildings were reoccupied, by the local gangs and drug dealers, free of charge. A lot of activity going on over there tonight. Probably something she wanted to keep her eye on, in case the Beemer’s owner was across the street making a buy.
    People, especially men, had a tendency to object if they caught her repoing their cars. Which was why she worked in the middle of the night, and at least part of the reason she kept the gun and tire iron handy.
    Maneuvering the truck to within about nine feet of theBeemer’s front bumper, Sam lowered the winch, shoved the gun into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her work shirt down over it, and got out, casting a quick glance inside the Beemer just to make sure that it was as empty as she’d thought at first glance: it was. All black leather, clean and expensive, with no personal belongings in view. Good. Personal belongings were a bitch: people were always claiming they’d been stolen.
    A gust of warm summer wind sent a tendril of her hair skittering across her mouth. Impatiently Sam pulled it free, tucked it behind her ear. The mass of her hair she’d confined in a low ponytail to keep it out of the way, but it was thick and wavy with a mind of its own, and strands inevitably worked loose. So close by the river, the air smelled a little like dead fish, with a hint of something acrid—probably burning meth or