Three Fates

and had barely beaten a charge of manslaughter.
    Such activities didn’t look well on a résumé.
    She studied him now as he stood in one of the dark, Savile Row suits she’d paid for. You can dress them up, she thought. But you can’t take them out.
    “Your instructions, Mr. Dubrowsky, were to follow Ms. Toliver, and/or any companions she might have brought with her to our meeting. To detain her and/or those companions only if it should become necessary. And to, most important, retrieve my property, using persuasion of a physical nature if such action was warranted. I don’t believe there were any instructions in there to fracture anyone’s skull.”
    “It was an accident,” he repeated stubbornly. “I tailed the black guy and Jasper took the girl. Black guy went to the apartment, like I said. I went in behind him, like I said. Had to soften him up a little so he’d pay attention while I was asking him about the statue. Went through the place looking for it, didn’t find it, so I softened him up some more.”
    “And you let him answer the phone.”
    “Figured maybe it was the girl, and I’m thinking I put the arm on him while she’s on the hook, maybe she’ll talk—or with Jasper on her, she could maybe take off for the piece you’re after. Guy starts screaming, warns her off, so I gave him a good jab. Fell wrong, is all. Guy fell wrong and fucked himself.”
    “I’ve warned you about your language, Mr. Dubrowsky,” she said coolly. “I see the problem here is that you attempted something in an area where you have no skill. You attempted to think. Don’t do so again. And you, Mr. Jasper.” She paused for a long-suffering sigh. “I’m very disappointed. I had more faith in you. This is the second time you haven’t been able to keep up with a second-rate stripper.”
    “She’s got fast feet. And she ain’t as dumb as you think.”
    Marvin Jasper was flat-faced and kept his hair in the same needle-sharp buzz cut he’d worn as an MP during his stint in the army. He’d hoped to turn that into a stint with the police force but had washed out during the psych test. He was still bitter about it.
    “Apparently she has brains enough to outmaneuver both of you. Now she could be anywhere, and so could the Fate.”
    Moreover, she thought, the police were involved. She had no doubt Dubrowsky had been foolish enough to leave some sort of evidence behind. Fingerprints, a stray hair, something that would, eventually, tie him to the murder. Something that could, potentially, tie her.
    That would never do.
    “Mr. Jasper, I want you to go back, keep a surveillance on this apartment where Mr. Dubrowsky had his accident. Perhaps she’ll go back there. If you see her, I want her taken. Quickly and quietly. Then contact me. I have a place where we can discuss business in private. Mr. Dubrowsky, you’ll come with me. We’ll go prepare for that business.”
     
     
    ONE OF THE advantages of marrying a wealthy, older man was that wealthy, older men so often had myriad holdings. And clever businessmen often kept those holdings buried under a morass of corporations and twisting red tape.
    The warehouse in New Jersey was just one of the many. Anita had sold it only the day before to a developer who planned to open one of those cavernous discount stores.
    One-stop shopping, she mused as she drove across the cracked concrete. She wasn’t planning on shopping, but she was going to take care of her task with one, final stop.
    “Sure is out in bumfuck,” Dubrowsky muttered, and in the dimming light pulled back his lips in a sneer at her prissy order to watch his language.
    “We can keep her here for several days, if necessary.” Anita crossed to the loading bay doors, careful not to catch the heels of her Pradas in the cracks. “I want you to go over the security, to make certain once we have her in, she won’t get out.”
    “No problem.”
    “These loading doors operate electrically and require a code. I’m more concerned with the side doors, the windows.”
    He pursed his lips, studied the sooty block of the building. “She’d have to be a monkey to get to the windows, and you got riot bars on them.”
    She studied them as if weighing his opinion. Paul might have left her a number of properties, but Anita had taken the time to tour them all. Inside and out. “What about around the sides?”
    He trudged around, turning the corner. Weeds sprung up through the broken stone, and though he could hear the