Page 1

CHAPTER 1

I woke up early for a stupid reason. I’d rolled over in my sleep and put my hand out to let it rest on my lover, Max, and he wasn’t there because he’d put the town of Rocky Start behind him and was out walking the Appalachian Trail, the dummy. So I got up, annoying Max’s dog Maggs who’d been sleeping at the foot of my bed, and texted Max’s satellite phone number in the predawn light from the streetlamps out front, shining through snow-frosted windows.

YO, FOOTLOOSE GUY

TELL ME YOU’RE ALIVE

I knew he probably wouldn’t read the text for hours, but I needed to feel like I was making some kind of contact with him. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering how good it had felt to have my arms around him, the solidity of having him to hold onto, grounded and sure. How safe I’d felt whenever I’d heard the low growl of his voice, no matter what he was saying. And the flush of heat I felt whenever he touched me . . .

Yeah, all good things, but I had work to do.

So I got up and got dressed, and Maggs and I went downstairs to our secondhand shop, Maggs sprightly at the thought of possible bacon and me still stodgy with sleep. The shop counter had the mask I was making for a friend of mine, and it was as good a distraction from my lack of Max as anything else, given it was six in the morning and there was nobody to talk to and nothing that needed doing. Maybe I could wake up enough to accomplish a rabbit mask for Coral, my good friend who owned the bakery next door.

About the mask: The guy who’d left me the shop in his will, the aforesaid friend and boss Ozzie, had also left me (among many, many, many other things) a box of cheap plastic masks, some with labels on them. One was an elegant white rabbit that had been tagged “Coral” with a post-it, so I assumed he’d wanted me to collage a portrait-mask of Coral, who also happened to be the woman he loved. I wanted the mask-portrait to be special, a last gift from Ozzie. I’d used some dollhouse bread, a lot of knives, coral-colored flowers, a lace hat with a veil, and a lacy black eye mask to show that Coral was a woman of mystery.

I was putting glue on some flowers and thinking about what else I could add when I heard Coral scream.

I ran out of my shop’s front door, skidding on the ice on the pavement outside, and into Coral’s shop, Maggs right there with me, to see a woman who had a knife raised in both hands, trying to slash at Coral’s throat.

I picked up a chair and swung it hard against the back of the knife-woman’s head.

She staggered and turned and lunged at me, and Maggs leapt for the attacker’s knife arm and sank her teeth into it, saving me from the blade that was inches away from gutting me. The woman screamed and dropped the knife, and Coral scooped it up and plunged it into the woman’s side.

The woman hit the floor.

It all happened in an instant. I swear not two seconds had passed.

I raised the chair again in case the knife-woman tried to get up, but she was very still, on her right side, her eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. The knife was sticking out of her left side, the heart side. Coral was bleeding like a stuck pig from a slash mark on her cheek and a deeper one in her forearm, but the woman on the floor wasn’t bleeding at all; she just had her own knife buried hilt-deep inside her. Maggs backed up and barked, both of us impressed by the speed of Coral’s work. Although if you attack an international assassin, even if she’s in her seventies and retired, you do not turn your back on her. Big mistake.

Coral was seeping blood in front of me.

I slammed the chair down in front of her and said, “ Sit ,” and ran for the first aid kit I knew she kept behind the counter.

She sat, looking dazed and dizzy and angry, blood flowing down her cheek and from her arm. She must have done that stab on pure adrenaline.

I grabbed the kit. “I’ll call an ambulance?—”

“ No ,” Coral said.

God, there was so much blood. “Coral,” I said. “You need to be serious about this.”

She looked up at me. “I am serious. Get Max back. Now.”

Her voice was faint, as if she was saving all her energy not to bleed to death, but she sounded sure as all hell.

There was a part of me that wanted to say “We don’t need Max,” but I took out my phone and texted him anyway.

Because we needed him.