“Good question.” Agnes dropped her skillet on the counter, yanked open the utility drawer by the door, and got out her flashlight. She turned it on, shoved the door open with her shoulder, and pointed it into the darkness.

“What are you doing?” Joey yelled.

“I’m trying to see what’s behind this door. I didn’t even know it was here. Brenda never mentioned-”

“Agnes, you can explore that goddamn house later,” Joey said. “Take Rhett and get the hell out of there.”

“I don’t think the kid’s a problem anymore.” Agnes held the phone with one hand and peered down into the pool of light the flashlight cast on the floor below as Rhett came to join her, pressing close to her leg so he could peer, too. “He fell into a basement. I didn’t even know I had a basement back here. Brenda never said anything about one.

Did you know-?” She had been playing the light around the floor, and now she stopped as it hit the moron. “Uh-oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘uh-oh’?”

The boy was splayed out on what looked like a concrete floor, and he did not look good.

“I think he’s hurt. He’s definitely not moving.”

“Good,” Joey said. “He fall down the stairs?”

“There are no stairs.” Agnes squinted down into the darkness as the light hit the boy’s face.

His eyes stared up at her, dull and fixed.

Agnes screamed, and Rhett scrambled back, stepping in the raspberry sauce, which he began to lick up. “Agnes?”

“Oh, God,” Agnes said as her throat closed in panic. “Joey, his neck’s at a funny angle and his eyes are staring up at me. I think 1 killed him.”

“No, you didn’t, honey,” Joey said around the traffic noise in the background. “He committed suicide when he attacked an insane woman in the stupid house she bought. I’m almost there. You stay there and don’t open that door for anybody.”

“He’s dead, Joey. I have to call the police.” This is bad. This is bad. This is not going to look good.

“The police can’t help you with this one,” Joey said. “You stay put. I’m gonna get you somebody until we figure this out.”

“Some body. Right.” Agnes clicked off the phone and looked back down at the dead body in her basement.

He looked pathetic, lying there all broken and dead-eyed. Agnes swallowed, trying to get a grip on the situation.

How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

Shut the fuck up, Dr. Garvin.

Don’t say “fuck,” Agnes. Angry language makes us angrier. Gosh darn, Dr. Garvin, I’m feeling… She put the beam on the boy again. Still dead.

Oh, God.

Okay, calm down, she told herself. Think this through. She hadn’t killed him, the basement floor had. You hit him many times in the head with the frying pan-try explaining that one.

Okay, okay, but he’d attacked her in Brenda’s house. No, in her house. So it was self-defense. Yes, he was young and pathetic and heartbreaking down there, but he’d been a horrible person.

Why do you always hit them with frying pans, Agnes?

Because that’s what I always have in my hand, Dr. Garvin. If I were a gardener, it’d be hedge clippers. Think how bad that would be.

She punched in 911 on her phone, trying to concentrate on the good things: Rhett was fine, her column would be finished soon, Maria’s wedding was still on track for that weekend, Two Rivers was hers-well, hers and Taylor’s-pretty soon she was going to be living her dream, and her cupcakes were burning but she could make more-

There’s a dead body in my basement and I lost my temper and I hit him with a frying pan many times, 1 was not in control-

“Keyes County Emergency Services,” the police dispatcher drawled.

“There’s a dead body in my basement,” Agnes said, and then her knees gave way and she slid down the cabinet to sit hard on the floor as she tried to explain that the kid had been going to hurt her dog, while Rhett drooled on her lap.

“A deputy is on the way, ma’am,” the dispatcher said, as if dead bodies in basements were an every-evening occurrence.

“Thank you.” Agnes hung up and looked at Rhett.

“I have to make cupcakes,” she said, and he looked encouraging, so she got up to get the blackened cupcakes out of the oven and clean the floor and get back to work, thinking very hard about her column, and Maria’s wedding that weekend, and Brenda’s beautiful house that was now hers, and everything except the dead body in her basement and the goddamned frying pan.


Shane sat on a bar stool, in a shady nightclub on the wrong side of the tracks in a bad part of Savannah, Georgia, and tried to estimate how many people he was going to have to kill in the next hour. Optimally it would be one, but he had long ago learned that optimism did not apply inhis profession. He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out with his free hand, expecting to see the go or no go text message from Wilson. There were only three people who had his number, and they never called to chat. One of them was across the dance floor from him, which left two options. He glanced at the screen and was surprised tosee joey.

Jesus. First time ever, and he calls in the middle of a job. Shane hesitated fora moment, then thought, Hell, you gave him the number for emergencies, and hit the on button. “Uncle Joe?”

“Shane, you on a job?”

“Yes.”

“Where you at?”

“Savannah.”

“Good,” Joey said. “Close. I need you home.”

Shane frowned. Home? You send me away at ten and now you want me home? “What’s the problem?” he said, keeping his voice cold.

“I got a little friend needs some help. She lives just outside Keyes in the old Two Rivers mansion. Remember it?”

Fucking Keyes, SC. Armpit of the South.

“Come home and take care of my little Agnes, Shane.”

You adopt another kid, Joe? Gonna take better care of this one? “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“I appreciate it.” Joey hung up.

Shane pushed the off button. Joey needing help taking care of something. That was new. Old man must be getting really old. Calling him home. That was-

“I’m a Leo – and you?”

Shane turned to look at her. Long blonde hair. Bright smile plastered on her pretty face. Pink T-shirt stretched tight across her ample chest with the word Princess embroidered on it in shiny letters. Effective advertising, bad message.

“What’s your sign?” she said, coming closer.

“Taurus with a bad moon rising.” The hell with Joey. He had a job to do. He looked at the upstairs landing.

Two men in long black leather coats and wraparound sunglasses appeared on the landing. They took barely visible flanking positions at the top of the metal stairs, just as they had the previous evening at approximately the same time, which meant the target was in-house.

At home, so to speak.

“Do you come here often?” Princess asked, coming still closer, about three inches too close. He scooted back on his stool slightly.

“Never.” He looked up again. Too many people had seen The Matrix, he decided as he took in the bodyguards’ long jackets and shades.

The Matrix probably hadn’t even played in Keyes yet.

Princess came in closer, her breasts definitely inside his personal space. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a painter.”

That’s what Joey used to tell people. I’m a painter. Enough with Joey.

Shane glanced across the room. Carpenter was in place, his tall, solid figure near the emergency exit, the flashing lights reflecting off his shaved ebony skull. I paint them, Carpenter cleans them. Shane nodded toward the guards ever so slightly. Carpenter nodded back.

“That’s cool.” Princess began to scan past Shane, probably looking for somebody who’d play with her. She must have found him, because she smiled at Shane blankly and backed off. “Have a good one,” she said, and was gone into the crowd.

The phone buzzed once more, and Shane glanced at the screen: go. He secured the phone in his pocket, nodding once more at Carpenter, who reached into one of his deep pockets. Princess was over by the bar now, dialing on her phone with a blank look on her lace as she tossed her head to get the hair out of her eyes. Then she frowned and pulled the phone away, staring at it. Shane knew no one’s cell phone within two hundred feet would work now, as long as Carpenter kept the transmitter in his pocket working, jamming all frequencies.

Shane wove his way through the sweaty dancers to the bottom of the staircase and walked up, Carpenter falling in behind him. Both bodyguards stepped out, forming a human wall that he estimated weighed over 480 pounds combined with another ten pounds or so of leather coat thrown in. Which meant they trumped him by over 270.

Fortunately 210 pounds with brains could usually beat 480 pounds of dumb.

“Private office,” the one on the right growled.

Shane jabbed his right hand, middle three fingers extended, into the man’s voice box, then grabbed the face of the man on the left and applied pressure at just the right places with the fingertips of his left hand, thumb on one side, four fingers on the other. The man froze in the middle of reaching under his jacket, unable to move, while Carpenter caught the man to the right.

“Tell me the truth and live,” Shane whispered as he leaned close, ignoring the other guard’s desperate wheezing attempts to get air down his damaged windpipe. “Lie and die. Is Casey Dean here?”

“Uggh.” There was the slightest twitch of the head in the affirmative.

“Alone?”

“Uggh.” A twitch side to side.

Shit “Left foot,” Shane said. “How many are in there? Tap your foot for the number.”

The foot hit the ground twice, then halted.

“Good boy.” Shane shifted his fingers slightly and pressed. The man dropped unconscious to the floor. Carpenter already had the other man down, sleeping with the leather. At least they’d be warm.

Shane reached inside their coats and retrieved their pistols. He placed one in his waistband in his back and kept the other one out, safety off. He stepped over them as Carpenter reached down and grabbed the back of each man’s jacket and dragged them to a small janitor’s closet and tumbled them in, then turned and faced the stairway to make sure no one else came up. He wasn’t wearing leather.

Shane walked down the hallway to the bright red doorway with a prominent no trespassing sign hung on it. He kicked right at the lock, the wood splintered, and he stepped in and to one side, eyes taking in the dimly lit scene, pistol up, sweeping the room, gun in concert with his eyes.

Movement. Two people. A man. Seated behind a desk. A redhead standing on the other side, leaning forward, palms down on the desktop, her skimpy halter top hanging loose, exposing her breasts. Great, Shane thought. I had to hit at playtime.

He strode across the room as the man jumped up and the woman turned, looking surprised. The man was reaching for a jacket when Shane hit him with a cat-paw fist strike to the solar plexus, making him thump back into his chair, gasping in pain and floundering, out of commission for a couple of minutes at least.

The redhead lunged at Shane, who sidestepped her claws, grabbed her from behind, and used her momentum to slam her against the desk, pinning her to it. He got one arm in a half nelson around her neck and pressed the barrel of the gun against the back of her head. He could feel her tight ass pushing back against his groin, and she began to grind as she struggled against him, putting her arms flat out on the desktop and looking over her shoulder angrily. He shoved her shoulders down on the desk and saw a small tattoo of a compass on the small of her back, just above her jeans. Like somebody needs directions there, he thought.

She pressed back harder against him.

“Stop it,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” she whispered. “You like it. We can work this out, you and me. I can-”

Shane pulled the gun back and tapped the barrel against the back of her skull.

The girl rubbed her head. “What the fuck?”