I toweled off and went to bed in panties and T-shirt. The sheets were cool and the room was dark. The panties and T-shirt felt skimpy in Ranger's bed. I would be much more comfortable if I was fully dressed. Socks, jeans, two or three shirts buttoned to the neck, tucked into the jeans. Maybe a jacket and hat.

It was the shower, I decided. The hot water and the delicious soap. And the towel. It had me all overheated. I could fix that… but I'd go blind. At least that was the threat when I was growing up in the Burg you abuse yourself and you'll go blind. It hadn't totally stopped me but it had me worried. I really didn't want to go blind. Besides, what if I was in the middle of something and Ranger walked in? Actually, that sounded pretty good.

No! It didn't sound good. What was I thinking? I was sort of attached to Joe. Maybe. So where the heck was he when I needed him? He was at home. Probably. I could go over there, I thought.

I could walk in and tell him I'd just taken a shower with this great soap that always makes me feel sexy. And then I'd explain to him how I got carried away with the towel…

Good grief. I switched the light on. I needed something to read, but there were no books, no magazines, no catalogues. I wrapped myself in Ranger's robe, curled up on the couch, and turned the television on.

I woke up to the Today show. I was still in Rangers robe. I was on the couch. And I was feeling cranky. It didn't help that Al Roker was on the television screen, talking to some woman from Iowa, and Al was looking happy as could be. Al always looked happy.

What's with that?

I said goodbye to Al and beamed the television off. I dragged myself into the bathroom but decided to forego the shower. I brushed my teeth and got dressed in the clothes on the floor.

I was desperate for coffee, but it was almost eight o'clock, and I needed to get out of the building. I clapped Ranger's hat on my head, stuffed myself into the vest and sweatshirt, and took the elevator to the garage. The elevator doors opened just as a car approached the gate. I flattened myself against the side and returned to the seventh floor. I waited in the seventh-floor foyer for ten minutes, and I tried it again. This time the garage was empty.

I left the garage, and I walked to the truck. The sky was overcast and a misting rain had started to fall. The buildings on either side of Comstock were redbrick and cement. No trees, no shrubs, no lawns to soften the landscape. It felt nicely urban when the sun was shining. Today it felt grim.

I drove to the office and parked the truck in full view on the street. Connie was already at work. Lula hadn't yet arrived. I saw no sign of Vinnie.

I went straight to the coffeepot and poured out a cup for myself.

'I haven't seen a lot of Vinnie lately,' I said to Connie. 'What's the deal?'

'He's got hemorrhoids. He comes in for an hour to bitch and complain, and then he goes home to sit on his rubber doughnut.'

Connie and I both smiled at this. Vinnie deserved hemorrhoids. Vinnie was a hemorrhoid.

I sipped my coffee. 'So you're the one writing bonds now?'

'I'm doing the low money bonds. Vinnie gets off his doughnut to do guys like Anton Ward.'

'I need a favor.'

'Uh oh,' Connie said. 'I got a bad feeling about this.'

'I want you to help me bond out Anton Ward. I need to talk to him.'

'No way. Un uh. Nope. No can do. Forget it.'

'This was your idea! You were the one who said I had to find out why I was on Junkman's list.'

'And you think Ward is going to tell you out of gratitude?'

'No. I was planning on beating it out of him.'

Connie considered that. 'Beating might work,' she said. 'Who's going to slap him around?'

'Me and Lula. You could do it, too, if you want.'

'So let me get this straight,' Connie said. 'We bond him out. Then we escort him from the jail to the trunk of Lula's Firebird and take him somewhere for further discussion.'

'Yeah. And then when we're done we can revoke his bond.'

'I like it,' Connie said. 'Did you think of this all by yourself?'

'Yep.'

'Think of what all by herself?' Lula said, swinging through the front door. 'Man, it's crappy out there. It's gonna rain cats and dogs all day.'

'Stephanie's got a plan to bond out Anton Ward and beat some information out of him,' Connie said.

Lula's mood changed to smiley face. 'No shit? Are you messin' with me? That's inspired. You aren't gonna leave me out, are you? I'm good at smackin' people around. And I'd just love to smack Anton Ward around.'

'You're in,' I said to Lula. 'We just have to figure some things out first. Like, where are we going to take him for his beating?'

'It has to be someplace isolated, so no one hears him screaming,' Lula said.

'And it has to be cheap,' I said. 'I haven't got any money.'

'I have just the place,' Connie said. "Vinnie has a house in Point Pleasant. It's right on the beach, and no one's going to be around now. The season's over.'

'That's a great plan,' Lula said. 'The arcade will still be open, and in between beatin' on Anton Ward I can play the claw machine.'

'Do you think we'll have to beat him a lot?' I asked Connie. A bunch of her relatives were mob, and I figured she knew about these things.

'I hope so,' Lula said. 'I hope he don't talk for days. I love Point Pleasant. And I haven't beat on anyone in a while. I'm looking forward to this beating.'

'I've never actually beat anyone,' I said.

'Don't you worry about it,' Lula said. 'You just stand back and leave it to me.'

'We have to do this right,' Connie said. "We don't want anyone to know we have Ward. We're going to have to make it look like he just disappeared.'

'I've already thought it through,' I said. 'You can call Ward's brother back and tell him we'll bond Ward out if he agrees to wear a personal tracking unit. We just got one in from iSECUREtrac, right?'

'We haven't used it yet,' Connie said. 'Haven't even taken it out of the box.'

'If Ward agrees to the PTU we say we have to have him released into our custody so we can install the unit. Then we tell everybody we have to install the transmitter here, at the office. We tell them after the unit is in place Anton is free to go.

'We cuff Anton on his release and bring him back to the office, but instead of strapping the transmitter on him, we dump him in Lula's trunk. All she has to do is back up to the rear door, and Anton's off to Point Pleasant. Then we pretend Anton escaped. We can say he used the lavatory at the office, and he went out through the window.'

'Brilliant,' Lula said. 'You're a criminal genius.'

'I like it,' Connie said. 'Let's do it.'

We all did a high five.

'It'll take me some time to set this up,' Connie said. 'I'll arrange it for the end of the business day. Then it won't be suspicious if we close the office down and disappear. In the meantime, you two should take a drive to Point Pleasant and make sure it's okay to use the house.' She took a key from a mess of keys she kept in her top drawer. This is the key to the house. He doesn't have a security system. It's just a little bungalow on the beach.' She wrote the address on a sticky note and gave it to me.

Lula and I didn't do a lot of talking on the way to Point Pleasant.

Hard to say why Lula fell into silence. Mine was brought on by a mixture of disbelief and terror. I couldn't believe we were going to do this. It was insane. And it was all my idea.

I was driving Ranger's truck, and Lula was reading the map. We'd reached the ocean, and we were looking for Vinnie's street.

The rain was steady and the little shore houses that seemed cute and colorful in July sunshine looked sad in the dismal gray gloom.

'You turn left onto the next street,' Lula said. 'And you go all the way to the end. It's the last house on the right. Connie says it's painted salmon and turquoise. I'm hoping she's wrong about the paint.'