He changed course and headed for Armstrong.

"I'm on leave, but I just got a call," he told her when he reached her. "Bryce said it was okay if I left for a couple of hours."

She shrugged, which did nice things for the T-shirt. "If Bryce is fine with it, just come back tomorrow afternoon. The set call is for one."

"Right." He shifted his feet, trying to think of a way to make peace. "Is your daughter okay? I didn't mean to scare her when I grabbed her."

She looked startled. "Pepper? She's not my daughter and you didn't scare her. She's my niece and she's fine. Thanks to you."

Okay, that was good, she was grateful and Pepper wasn't her daughter. "Uh, my appointment's in this shopping mall over… Do you need anything?"

"A Wonder Woman Barbie," she said and then caught sight of something over his shoulder. "Thank you again for Pepper, Captain Wilder," she said and moved around him, toward whatever problem she'd just spotted, and he could smell her scent, not perfume, something softer, soap maybe.

"Right," he said, as she walked away from him. "Wonder Woman." He shook his head, took a deep breath of fresh air, and escaped to his Jeep.

The CIA was starting to look better.

Wilder found Eddy's Diner in a dark, seedy, little strip mall, half the stores empty under a rusting sign that said cherry hill plaza. It was flanked on one end by Eddy's and on the other by Maraschino's, A Gentlemen's Club, which sounded familiar. One of the guys had talked about it, Wilder thought. Probably LaFavre. He had a thing for strippers.

The other occupied storefronts were a florist, a sewing machine shop, a place painted black with jax comix in Day-Glo pink letters painted on its dingy window, and an insurance agency. No toy stores, but there was a poster of Wonder Woman in the comic-store window, the only store open this late. Wilder imagined Armstrong's face if he showed up with a Wonder Woman doll. Then he remembered her walking up the bridge and the wind blowing her shirt back.

The CIA could wait. Forever, if Wilder had his druthers.

The shop was dim inside, lots of black shelves full of videos and DVDs and bins full of comics in clean plastic sleeves. Behind the counter, a skinny twenty-something with a shadow of a mustache leaned over a comic book, his hands planted protectively on each side of it while he argued with a kid of about twelve, up past his bedtime. The guy behind the counter stopped arguing when he saw Wilder. "Can I help you?"

"A Wonder Woman doll?" Wilder said, ignoring the twelve-year-old's snicker. He looked past the guy to see a mannequin on a shelf, one of those with the head and arms and legs cut off so the whole thing stood on its thighs. Stretched over its chipped flesh was a thin red T-shirt with skinny straps that had a double yellow W printed across the bustline and beneath that tight blue shorts with white stars on them.

"WonderWear," the guy said, following Wilder's eyes. "Wonder Woman cami and panty set. One hundred percent cotton. Very popular. Twenty-five bucks. For sixty bucks we got the whole costume including the cape, the bracelets, and the Lasso of Truth."

Lasso of Truth?

The guy looked Wilder up and down. "We got the Superman boxer with the Super Size shield, too. Twelve bucks."

"Just the doll." Wilder turned away to see a full-size stand-up cutout of a woman wearing the same outfit, more or less, her long dark hair curling thickly around her face while she stretched a yellow rope between her hands. She did not look like his vague recollections of Wonder Woman as a shiny, happy camper; she looked like a strong-jawed, patriotic dominatrix. Worse than that, she looked like Armstrong.

Yeah, I needed that picture in my head, he thought, trying not to dwell on the rope. Lasso of Truth. Made sense. If Armstrong wore that outfit and tied him up, he'd tell her anything she wanted to know. Everyone talked under the right pressure. They did teach that at Bragg. He looked at the cutout again. Yeah, Armstrong in that outfit would be the right pressure. He caught the twelve-year-old looking at him and stared the kid down.

The guy put a large blue box on the counter. "Wonder Woman doll, Masterpiece Edition. Comes with the hardcover history and a reprint of the first comic. Very hard to find, seventy bucks."

The woman pictured on the box also did not look like his memory of Wonder Woman. She looked like a picture of his Great-Great-Aunt Maude. In a hurry.

"But for you today," the guy said, "sixty."

Behind him, the WonderWear throbbed. Armstrong could do a lot for that underwear. He wondered what her hair looked like when not in that braid.

"Okay, okay," the guy said. "I can tell you're a collector and the box is a little worn. Fifty."

Wilder tried to picture Althea in the WonderWear, which should have been easy since she'd been wearing the same kind of red T-shirt with little straps, but she was just not… strong enough. He looked back at the life-size cutout. He could picture Althea with the bracelets, it was the lasso that didn't work.

"I know," the guy said, sounding resigned. "You looked on eBay, you know I'm selling them there for about forty, so okay, forty. But that's my final offer."

Armstrong, on the other hand, he could easily see snapping that rope-

"And I'll throw in the Wonder Woman Ultimate Sticker Book!" the guy said, desperation in his voice.

"Fine," Wilder said, trying to come back from Armstrong and the rope. So much for comics as kid stuff.

The guy nodded, relieved. "Great buy," he said as he went to ring it up. "Wonder Woman's hot."

The twelve-year-old snickered again.

"Come back when you're thirteen," Wilder told the kid and paid the guy.

Chapter 4

When Gloom called second meal, Lucy went with everybody else on the shuttle down to the dirt lot under the bridge, but when Connor looked like he was heading her way, she veered off from the crowd around the catering tent to cross the dark lot to her camper. The battered Roadtrak was cramped inside, but it was quiet and it didn't have Daisy looking defeated, or Stephanie being snotty, or Connor bitching about Wilder, or Althea trolling for security, so it was good.

Lucy stepped up inside and pulled the white waffle curtains closed to shut out the darkness. Then she edged her way around the little blue Formica-topped table behind the swiveling driver's seat and into the short cabinet-lined space that separated the front of the van from the double bed that filled the back. There were apples in the little sink, but Lucy opened the undercounter refrigerator instead and got out IBC Diet Root Beer and cheese sticks. Comfort food.

She put her iPod in the speaker dock on the counter and dialed up Kirsty MacColl. "In These Shoes." That's what she wanted to hear, a woman in control, calling the shots. Forget "Holding Out For A Hero," there were no heroes-

The door to the camper opened and Daisy came in, looking worse than ever, and collapsed on one of the plush swivel chairs. "My God, what a night."

"It was filled with excitement," Lucy agreed. '"And it's not over yet. Root beer?"

"I just heard about Pepper on the bridge,"' Daisy said, swallowing. "I could have lost her. If you hadn't been there-"

"Not me, Captain Wilder." Lucy surveyed her, trying to see past the exhaustion. Daisy was more than tired, she was beaten down, as if somebody had kicked all the sass out of her.

"I should have been there," Daisy said, her voice catching.

Yeah, you should have been. Lucy sat down across from her. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong anytime soon? Don't even think you're going to get away with 'I'm fine.' You're not fine. You're exhausted and depressed and you can't go on like this."