The two men walked close together, and she could tell they were talking because little clouds puffed from their mouths. It had to be twenty degrees outside and ten in the Sunbird. Circulation to her extremities had stopped four thousand Doritos ago. Reheema turned on the ignition as the two men walked to a snow-covered car, three down from the row house. The two men straight-armed snow off the car, clearing the hood and roof in one swoop.

"They'll never get it out. Look at the wheels." Reheema pointed at the car, and Vicki took pictures as the one man cleared a cake of snow from the back window with his arm and shook the powder off, and the other pounded the car door to break ice on the lock and get the key inside. She laughed behind her camera.

"It's not easy being a drug dealer."

"Maybe we should help 'em out." Reheema smiled.

"The car's a white Neon, same one as the other day." The women watched with amusement as the men struggled for fifteen minutes, then went back inside the house and came back out with a Back-Saver snow shovel, a blanket, and two cans of beer. "Drug dealers care about their backs, too."

"Nobody wants back trouble."

"So the maroon Navigator is Browning's good car."

"Yeah. He lends the go-between the four-wheel drive to get down Cater."

"He has to take the chance, because of the snow. When it clears up, he won't. He can't risk the car being spotted."

Vicki raised the camera and took a picture of one of the dealers shoving a blanket under the car tires and digging them out, while the other slid into the driver's seat and hit the gas. "Tell you which one I think is Browning, if it is Browning."

"The driver."

"Right." Vicki laughed. "I still can't tell if it's Browning for sure."

"So let's follow him anyway. We got nothin' better to do."

Reheema sat up, and after ten more minutes of struggling, the dealers had freed the Neon. She leaned forward in her seat and rested her hand on the ignition key. "Okay, good to go."

"Finally!" Vicki said, and when the Neon took off, Reheema started the engine and so did they, following from a safe distance and at lawful speed. There was enough traffic to provide the Sunbird great cover, especially since it was dark and nondescript, and Vicki was able to take as many pictures of the Neon's license plate as she wanted, though one would have sufficed. She felt her adrenaline ebb away. "Not quite the high-speed chase I imagined."

"These guys don't want to get picked up for anything. This'll be the safest ride you ever took. Sit back and relax."

So Vicki did, but when she looked over, Reheema's mouth was tense.

"Home, sweet home," Vicki said, when the Sunbird pulled up at the end of the block. They had been driving for an hour and had ended up in one of the middle-class residential neighborhoods in the city, Overbrook Mills. The brick row houses here were semidetached, sitting together in pairs, like happy couples. Each double house had a front yard, bisected by a cyclone fence and dotted with children's bikes and plastic playhouses, padlocked to the fences.

"We don't know if this is home or his supplier's," Reheema said.

"It doesn't look like a drug supplier's house."

"Tells you nothin'."

"It's the end of the day. Browning has to get tired sometime, doesn't he? I'm gonna say this isn't his supplier's, it's his house."

"How you know he hasn't been sleepin' all day? When do you think he makes his pickups, in broad daylight?" Reheema's mouth formed a grim line, and her eyes glittered in the dark interior. "If they both get out of the car, it's the supplier."

Vicki nodded. Reheema was right. They were making assumptions, but reasonable ones. They both leaned forward as the Neon's doors opened and the two men got out. Vicki took pictures of the driver, albeit too dark and too far away, as he hurried from the car and toward the row house. The streetlights were brighter here, but the man's features remained impossible to discern, so she still didn't know if he was Browning. The passenger went around to the driver's side of the car, got inside, and drove off. Vicki lowered the camera. "So if it's Browning, it's his house."

"How you know the one got dropped off is Browning? You didn't recognize him. We got two players."

Vicki sighed. She was getting tired, and ATF legwork was harder than she'd thought. "Our theory was that the driver was Browning, or the boss, and this confirms it. I say, the boss gets dropped off."

"I agree, but we need to cover all bases." Reheema started the ignition.

"We're leaving? I wanted to get another picture."

"Get it another time. We know where he lives."

Vicki took a final picture as the Sunbird took off and snagged a close-up of the back of Browning's knit cap, where a shiny silver shield caught the light. She recognized it in the telephoto. "He wears a Raiders cap."

"Everybody likes football," Reheema said, and hit the gas.

Half an hour later they were in a lesser neighborhood closer to the city, with attached brick row houses in various stages of disrepair. The Sunbird followed as the Neon drove around, evidently hunting for a parking space. Huge piles of plowed snow sat at the corners of the block and cut down on the number of available spaces.

Vicki said, "The only thing more boring than watching a drug dealer dig a car out is watching him find a parking space."

"A day in the life."

"I'll have the same problem when I go home," Vicki said.

"No, you won't. You can't drive this crate, remember?" "Oh. Sorry." "No sweat. I'll drop you off. I'm a night owl." Reheema turned the car to the right, lingering almost a full block behind the Neon, and Vicki realized that one of them would be going home to a very cold house tonight.

"Reheema, you don't have heat in your house, do you?" "I got a coupla blankets." "You want to come over my house, to sleep? I have a pull out couch." "Like a pajama party?" Vicki smiled. "We don't have to do our nails or anything." Reheema was silent a minute. "Nah." "You sure?" "Wait. Here he goes." Reheema slowed the Sunbird to a stop as the Neon finally found a space, when another car pulled out. "It's almost two. Doesn't anybody sleep in this neighborhood?"

Reheema didn't answer, and Vicki sensed she had withdrawn again. It was the invitation that did it, somehow. They watched as the second man got out of the car, hustled to one of the houses, and went inside.

"So that's where Number Two lives," Vicki said. "Right." "Can we find it again? I'm not even sure where we are." "I can." Reheema started the engine. "Let's get you home, sleepyhead." "Thanks." Vicki felt a twinge. "You sure you don't wanna-" "No. Thanks." Reheema kept her eyes straight ahead and they drove in silence to the expressway, which was the last thing Vicki remembered before they pulled up in front of her house and Reheema was jostling her shoulder, waking her up, saying, "You're home."

"Oh. Sorry." Vicki straightened in the car seat stiffly, stretching and vaguely bewildered. "How did you know where I live?"

"Got it from information, on your cell. I don't have my own yet." Reheema handed Vicki her own phone. "Soon as I turned it on, though, it started ringing and it's been ringing off and on all night."

"I slept through it?" Vicki held the phone and reached down for her backpack, and Reheema laughed.

"You woulda slept through anything."

"Sorry." Vicki felt off balance. The Sunbird clock read 3:30. Her street was quiet, still, and frigid. She grabbed her purse, and her phone beeped, signaling she had voicemail. A tiny electric envelope appeared on the screen. "There's a text message, too."

"That'd be the wrong guy."

"I know," Vicki said, with a tired smile. She reached for the door handle.

"Take my advice and leave him be." Reheema nodded. "No married man should be callin' any woman other than his wife this time of night."