“Which servers?”

She wasn’t throwing anyone under the bus without evidence. “That’s what you’re hiring me to find out.”

Heath Champion came in from the garden carrying a grocery bag with green carrot fronds sticking out of the top. “You’re the only guy I know who’s growing brussels sprouts. Tomatoes I understand. Jalapeños, sure. But brussels sprouts?”

“Deal with it.”

She’d forgotten to turn off her cell, and it blared out the theme from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Graham arched an eyebrow at her. “Very professional.”

She grabbed the cell from her messenger bag. The call was from Officer Eric. She turned off the ringer and reached back inside. “I have an agency contract…”

Graham tilted his head toward his agent. “Give it to him while I put some clothes on.” He headed toward the stairs, and for the barest moment she imagined standing under those open metal stair treads and looking up. She thrust the folder toward Champion.

He set down his garden produce and took it from her. She watched nervously as he studied the contract. Even though she’d resisted the urge to inflate her flat rate, he might still think she was too expensive.

Champion pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and clicked it. “He can afford a little more than you’re charging.”

She tried to absorb that. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting his best interests?”

Champion smiled, but didn’t respond.

Graham appeared a few minutes later dressed in jeans and a chest-hugging Stars T-shirt that did an exceptional job of displaying his remarkable shoulders. His agent handed him the contract. Graham studied it, raised an eyebrow at Champion, then looked at her. “Knock off five hundred,” he said, “and you can have the apartment over the club instead of moving into that shitty basement apartment you mentioned.”

“Cheap bastard,” his agent said cheerfully.

“There’s an apartment over the club?” Piper said.

“Two of them,” Graham replied. “One’s occupied, but the other’s free. It’s noisy when the club’s open, but you can always buy earplugs.”

“She’ll knock off three hundred,” Champion said. “That’s as low as she goes.”

Which put her right back where she’d begun, except she’d have a place to stay.

Graham squinted at his agent. “Remind me again why you’re still working for me?”

“Because you need a conscience.”

Graham didn’t seem to take offense. Instead he turned his attention back to Piper. “Move in whenever you like, but I need you on duty tonight.” He pulled a set of keys from a kitchen drawer and tossed them over. “I’ll introduce you at the staff meeting. Eight o’clock sharp.”

She had a job, and she had an apartment that wasn’t in her cousin’s basement. As she gathered up the contract, she wanted to kiss Heath Champion. But there was one more thing.

She gazed at a spot right between Graham’s dark eyebrows. “This means you’re not still suing me, right?”

She didn’t like the quick flash of his crocodile’s teeth. “I’ll get back to you on that.”


***

“There’s something I’m missing here,” Heath said as the elevator doors shut behind Piper Dove.

Coop investigated the contents of Heath’s produce bag with more concentration than it warranted. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you offer her that apartment?”

“The closer I keep her to the club, the more bang I get for my buck.”

Heath retrieved his bag. “I hope your buck is the only thing you’re thinking about banging. That woman is not one of your actresses.”

“I’ve noticed. Besides, as you may have observed, I’m not too fond of her.”

“I got that.”

“And she flat-out despises me.”

“Definitely not one of your fans.”

“But the thing is, the woman’s got guts and integrity.”

“She’s got more than that. Great eyes, an interesting face, and a very nice pair of legs.”

“Not interested.”

“No entourage?”

Coop was damned if he’d let Heath land any more digs about either his ex-girlfriends or Piper Dove. “Get the hell out of here and go see your wife.”

“I’m on my way.”

With Heath gone, Coop wandered through the kitchen into his garden, his favorite place on earth. He’d always liked growing things, and he hadn’t seen why living in a city should change that. His big, multileveled wraparound terrace had brick walls high enough to protect the garden from the wind, making this an ideal growing place. He’d built the raised beds himself-hauling up every bag of dirt, every plant, and every pot.

During the football season, the green, earthy smells had taken his mind off the pain of his injuries. Whether he was amending the soil, deadheading flowers, or harvesting the vegetables he gave to the food pantry, out here he hadn’t been able to hear the clash of helmets, the grunts of hard hits, the roar of the crowd that swept over the field like a rogue wave. Out here, he’d been able to forget the adrenaline rush of being in control of the whole savage ballet that made up an NFL game.

Now that he was no longer playing, he came out here to get away from himself-away from the constant churning in his head as he thought about the future. But today the peace of his garden wasn’t working. A week had passed since his last meeting with Deidre Joss, and he hadn’t heard a word. She’d said a decision would take time, but he wasn’t good at waiting. In another few months, Spiral would break even, and he’d be ready to move on to the next phase of his new career-building a franchise of nightclubs around other big-name athletes who were too busy or not smart enough to set out on their own.

Piper Dove’s appearance had been a welcome distraction, even though she rubbed him wrong in a dozen different directions. But she interested him, too. Despite the Esmerelda charade, there was a raw honesty about her that would serve him well, and he looked forward to seeing how she would reconcile her obvious dislike of him with the fact that she needed his business.

Unfortunately for her, his intrinsic politeness toward women seemed to vanish when she was around. Equally unfortunate, the day-to-day operations of a single nightclub had begun to bore him. He could use a diversion, and Piper Dove just might be it.


***

Later that afternoon, Piper slipped the key Graham had given her into the metal door that opened off the alley behind Spiral. The small hallway had battleship-gray walls and smelled like French fries, but the floor had been swept clean. A door at the end appeared to lead to the club’s service areas, while the staircase on her right led upstairs.

As she began the climb to the third floor, she was glad she didn’t have much to haul. She reached the top and stepped onto the landing.

It happened fast.

A shadowy figure jumped out… A gun pointed right at her head… A sting to her temple…

“You’re dead!”

5

Piper reacted instinctively. She grabbed the arm of her assailant, kicked out her leg, and brought him down with a loud thud. Only as she heard the woof of pain did she realize the voice that had declared her dead had come from a female instead of a male.

A teenage girl sprawled on the bare wooden floor clutching her arm. A bright yellow Nerf gun lay beside her, the hard foam bullet that had hit Piper coming to rest against the landing’s painted baseboard.

The girl was one of America’s ethnically ambiguous: with tawny skin; bright amber eyes; long, dark curly hair; and a promise of beauty when her adolescence was behind her. “Ohmygod, I’m sorry!” she cried, revealing a set of silver braces.

Piper went to her knees. “Are you okay?”

“I thought you were an assassin!”

“A lot of them around here?” Piper reached out to check the girl’s arm.

“I’m okay.” She pushed herself into a sitting position.

Piper was relieved to see the arm wasn’t broken, but she was also pissed. “What did you think you were doing?”

“I thought you were someone else.” The girl reached for her Nerf gun, which had been modified with red rubber bands to intensify the firing mechanism.

“You have a license to carry that thing?” Piper asked.

“I know. It’s stupid. It was, like, kind of embarrassing buying them.”

“Them?”

“You need more than one. It’s kind of a game. But it’s, like, serious.” She scrambled up from the floor. She was nicely proportioned, although-being a teenage girl-she probably thought she was fat. “You must be the new neighbor. Coop told Mom somebody was moving in, but I, like, forgot about it. I’m Jada.”

“Piper. So what’s with the sneak attack on an innocent person?”

“I go to Pius now.” Piper recognized the name of a city parochial high school. “I’m one of the Pius Assassins.”

“Does the pope know about that?”

“You’re funny.” She said it seriously, as if she’d assessed Piper and now had a category to fit her into. “We only moved here from St. Louis right before school started, so it’s kind of a way for me to, maybe, like, get to know kids.”

And try to fit in, Piper thought.

“I’ll show you your place,” Jada said. “It’s smaller than ours but it’s okay.” She pointed to one of the three doors that opened off the small, square hallway. “That door goes to the club. There used to be, like, an Italian restaurant where Spiral is now.” She indicated the door in front of them. “Me and my mom live there. It’s not as nice as our place was in St. Louis, but Mom wanted to leave, and Coop invited her to move in here. My dad died in a car wreck when I was nine. He was a private trainer for a while, and him and Coop were, like, best friends. Coop paid for his funeral and everything.”

“That’s tough. I lost my mom when I was young, too.”

“So did Coop. This is your place.” Nerf gun at her side, she headed toward the farthest door and twisted the knob. It was unlocked.

The space wasn’t big, but it was decent, with mustard walls, parquet floors from the seventies, and a pair of small windows that looked down over the alley behind the club. A white Formica counter separated the modest kitchen from the living area, which had a matching moss-colored couch and recliner as well as a couple of oak end tables and lamps.

“The bedroom is the best part.” Jada disappeared through the opposite door.

Was it ever. Piper stopped just inside to take it in. Most of the space was occupied by a king-size bed with a padded headboard and off-white duvet. The opposite wall held a large flat-screen TV. A state-of-the-art electronic charging station occupied a bedside table, and a pair of funnel-shaped pendant lights hung from the ceiling on each side of the bed.

“Wow.”

“Coop sleeps here sometimes.”

Not anymore, he doesn’t, Piper thought.

“He likes to be comfortable,” Jada explained.

“No kidding.” Piper sat on the end of the bed and felt the cushy support of an expensive foam mattress.

Jada, picking at some already tortured black nail polish, gazed with longing at the iPad in the docking station. “Coop is really rich.”

“Rich isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Piper said, which was a total lie.

“I guess.”

“Tell me about the Pius Assassins.”

Jada pushed a long lock of hair behind her ear. “It started a couple of days ago. It’s kind of like a class bonding exercise for all us sophomores.”

“Those nuns get zanier every year.”

“The teachers don’t really like it, but as long as we don’t bring Nerfs on school property there’s nothing they can do about it. Everybody in the sophomore class who wanted to play had to pay, like, five dollars. We have a hundred twenty kids in our class and ninety-two signed up.”

“And the goal is…”

“Be the last person standing.”

Piper was starting to get the drift. “Like The Hunger Games.”

“And win the four hundred and sixty dollars.” Jada pulled her curly dark hair into a ponytail behind her head and then released it. “I really need the money because my phone is, like, embarrassing. I never say that to my mom, but she knows, and it makes her feel bad because we can’t afford anything better.” She dipped her chin. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Mom said never to talk about money.”

Piper’s heart went out to her. “So how does the game work?”

“You can’t kill anybody on school property or, like, at a school activity or if they’re at work or from a moving car because kids get hurt that way.”

“Comforting.”

“No kills if you’re on a bus or the El going to or from school, but any other time is okay.”

“I can only imagine how the commuters feel about dodging Nerf bullets. Especially in Chicago. You’re lucky nobody has shot real bullets at you.”