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   "And?"

   "And she told me that as honored as he would be to speak to us, Senator Douglas Mercy would have to decline. You see, he's going to be gone. On vacation."

   "But that's terrific!" When I didn't agree instantly, Eve eyed me carefully. "Isn't it terrific? Why not? It tells us that the senator's the one going on the cruise, right? His vacation and Sarah's vacation, they're set for the same time. That means—"

   "Nothing. Because then I asked if the senator's son could fill in. And guess what? Dougy's scheduled for vacation that week, too."

   "Oh." Eve chewed her lower lip. "So we don't know much more than we knew when we started, right?"

   "Well, we know that the senator has a fund-raiser scheduled for this Friday. We're invited. And not because the secretary thought I was anyone special. I think they invite everyone who calls. No stone gets left unturned when it comes to raising campaign money."

   "I hear you talking about politics, but something tells me"—Jim had come out of the kitchen, and he closed in on us— "that you're not organizing the latest neighborhood watch."

   I knew better than to answer. Jim wasn't overbearing, but he could be overprotective. He had proved it time and again when we investigated Drago's murder. If he knew we were on the trail of another killer—

   "Don't be silly," Eve said before I could send her a warning look to remind her to keep her mouth shut. "It's not politics, exactly, it's the senator. You know, Senator Mercy. We think maybe he killed Sarah."

   Of course that wasn't even remotely true, but it hardly mattered. Jim propped his fists on his hips, and as soon as I heard the words "Dunna tell me" leave his lips, I knew we were in for it. When Jim was worried, his accent thickened almost beyond comprehension.

   "You're sticking your nose where it dunna belong."

   This, I understood, along with the finger Jim pointed in the direction of my nose.

   "No good will come of it."

   "We're being careful." I slid off the barstool. "And what Eve said about Mercy isn't precisely true. We're not accusing him of anything."

   "Nor are you gonna. D'ye have any idea how powerful the man is? Ye could be getting yourself in a passel of trouble."

   "We do. We're not." I had tossed my coat in my office— it seemed like days ago—and I retrieved it and slipped it on. "All we're doing is following a couple leads. We just think it's odd that Sarah would have killed herself. She had too much going for her."

   Jim followed Eve and me to the front door so he could lock it behind us. Eve walked out first, and after she did, Jim put a hand on my shoulder. "You canna know the way a person's mind works," he said, and this time, it wasn't anger that glimmered in his eyes, just honest concern. "Ye must learn to accept the fact that everything can't be fixed. Sarah made her choice."

   "I know. And Eve knows it, too. But that doesn't change the facts. There's just something that doesn't feel right about this whole thing."

   "Aye. That would be you sticking your nose—"

   "Aye, I know." I laughed. "Where it doesn't belong."

   "You'd best be careful no one pokes it to keep you in your place. Back off, Annie. Guilty or not, a man of Mercy's standing can't afford somebody minding his business. I don't want to see you get hurt."

   I gave Jim a quick peck on the cheek. It seemed a better way to end a long evening than arguing with him.

   Still thinking about what Jim said and how much it sounded like the warning from Dylan, I walked outside. I didn't pay much attention when a car cruised by. I set my purse on the sidewalk so that I could button my coat. When I was done, I bent to pick it up.

   Good thing.

   That meant when the shots rang out and the first bullets hit the front of Bellywasher's, I didn't have far to go to fall facedown on the ground.

       still can't say exactly what happened. I remember the first burst of gunfire and seeing Eve duck into the alley between Bellywasher's and the ceramics studio next door. I clearly recall hearing the squeal of car tires and realized in a slap-my-forehead instant that I'd been looking right at the car—and the shooter inside it—as I walked out of the restaurant. Had I paid any attention? Male or female driver? Make, model, color of the car? My mind was a complete blank. But then, at the time, I didn't know that the person behind the wheel was going to take potshots at us.

   When it was all over, there was one moment of complete silence, and in that instant, I took a quick inventory. I wasn't hit, and nothing had been injured except for my nose, which had been scraped when I hit the pavement. It stung like hell. Wincing, I vaulted to my feet just in time to see the last of a dark-colored sedan as it took the corner at Saint Alphath's on two wheels. I might actually have been able to run and maybe even catch a glimpse of the license plate, if Eve hadn't thrown herself at me.

   "Annie! Are you all right? Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" For a willowy woman, Eve had a grip like a limpet. She wrapped me in a hug. A moment later, she grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back to get a better look at me, so fast I wobbled like a bobble-head doll. "You didn't get hit, did you?"

   "If I did, you wouldn't be doing me much good." I disentangled myself from her grasp. After I looked Eve over and made sure she hadn't been hit either, I brushed off my coat and the knees of my pants and picked up my purse to sling it over my shoulder. Mundane motions and definitely not the proper response to just having nearly been killed.

   Or maybe it was.

   By the time Jim came running at breakneck speed from the back alley where he parked his motorcycle, and the people who lived in the apartment above the ceramics studio threw open their window and told us not to worry, they'd already called the police, I was ready for them.

   "What the hell?" Big points for Jim. He could have taken a look at the cracked front window of Bellywasher's or the pockmark of bullets around the front door and lost his cool. Instead, he concentrated on Eve and me. It was me he clasped to his chest, though.

   "You're all right? You're not hurt? You didn't get shot?" Like Eve had done, Jim held me tight one moment and pushed me far enough back to take a good look at me the next. I bobbled some more.

   Jim's hands skimmed my head and my shoulders and my hips. The next second, he pressed me into a hug again, so tight I had to fight for breath. "You're OK!"

   "I'm OK." My voice was muffled and tinged with discomfort, thanks to my scraped nose pressed flat against Jim's chest. I came up for air. "Eve and I are both OK. We just walked outside and—"

   "He tried to kill us!" Eve wailed and hurled herself at both Jim and me. Jim on one side and Eve on the other, and I was pressed between them like a burger on a bun. I ducked and squirmed and broke up the lovefest before my nose could sustain any further damage.

   "Nobody tried to kill us," I said. This was, of course, the most logical explanation for the whole thing. "Not us specifically. It was a drive-by. Random."

   "Who? Who tried to kill you?" So much for logic. Ignoring me, Jim glommed onto Eve's statement. His eyes flashed, and I had the distinct feeling that if Grandpa's walking stick had been within easy reach, he would have grabbed it and gone after the shooter himself. "Did you see who it was?"

   Eve's eyes were wide with fear. Her face was ashen. She shook her head. "I didn't need to see. The senator, or the Russian mob, or Dylan Monroe, or—"

   "Eve!" I warned her with a look and hoped she was paying attention. We'd attracted a crowd, of course, and the people who'd come running from the apartments across the street and from the coffee place a little farther down King Street didn't need to hear any of Eve's crazy theories.

   When I turned to Jim, I made sure I kept my voice down. "It was random. It had to be."

   "Why, because you're treating Sarah's death as if it's a suicide?"

   It was not exactly the warm and fuzzy response I'd been expecting. The spark in Jim's eyes intensified. With the shooter long gone, it was aimed right at me.

   Who could blame me for getting defensive?

   I pulled myself up to my full height. All right, all right . . . so it's not so high. But at least with my chin up and my shoulders back, I felt commanding, even if I didn't look it.

   "Are you telling me this is my fault?" I asked him.

   I saw a muscle twitch at the base of his jaw. "Aye." He didn't look happy to be admitting it. "If you'd mind your own business—"

   "Walking out of the place I work
is
minding my own business," I shot back. "And maybe if my place of business wasn't on the seedy side of town—"

   "Seedy?" It was Jim's turn to stand up straight and tall. He had the height advantage, but I didn't back down.

   My fists were on my hips before I even realized it, and

though I knew it was far too aggressive a stance, I was beyond caring. It wasn't like me to react emotionally instead of rationally, but hey, I was allowed. Somebody had just tried to turn me into Swiss cheese. At a time like that, any response was the right response.

   If Jim cared about me, wouldn't he have known that?

   My stomach tightened, more painful than it had been when I was facedown on the pavement with bullets flying all around. I felt as if I'd been kicked in the chest. Logic be damned! I went on the defensive.

   I glared at Jim. "Nobody asks to be shot at."

   "Unless that person is sticking her cute little nose—"

   I screeched my frustration. It wasn't Jim's criticism that grated on my last nerve as much as it was his use of the word c
ute
. I hate being called cute, and you'd think a man who I'd dated before I decided that dating was dangerous to my self-composure and my heart would know that.
Cute
is guy code for "I want to be your friend, but no way could I ever fall in love with you." It's patronizing and not the least bit comforting.

   I'm cute. OK, so I admit it.

   Did Jim have to rub it in?

   "It's none of your business where I stick my nose," I told him.

   "Really?" He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. In its own way, the pose was just as assertive as mine. "If that's the way you feel—"

   "That's the way I feel."

   "Then maybe you should have told me—"

   "I'm telling you now."

   "Annie! Jim!" Eve's quiet prodding interrupted us, but it wasn't until I had a couple seconds to allow my temper to throttle back that I realized we had company—a police officer who had a notebook out and a pen poised above the page. He looked from me to Jim.

   "You ready to make statements?" the officer asked. "Or should I just back off and let you two duke it out and see who's left standing when it's all over?"

          Eve was standing behind me. Over my shoulder, she looked at my reflection in the mirror and the fresh bandage that I'd just stuck on my nose. She didn't have to say it, I knew what she was thinking: I looked like a freak.

   "We could always back out," she said.

   "I want to go," I told Eve. "We have to go. You don't think I'm going to let something like a shooting scare me off from the investigation, do you?"

   The look Eve tossed my way brought me spinning around. "What?"

   "What?" She leaned toward the mirror and checked her lipstick. She fluffed a hand through her hair. "Last night, you swore to Jim that it was random. You said the shooting didn't have anything to do with Sarah's death."

   "Yeah. Well. It was the most logical explanation, wasn't it? Of course it's the first thing I thought of. And it could have been random," I added, scrambling as I had all day to find something that pointed to the fact that Eve and I had been innocent bystanders, not intended targets.

   "But I don't know." I thought back to the moment, the instant between when we'd stepped out onto the sidewalk and when the shooting started. "I think he was close by, waiting for us. The car didn't speed past Bellywasher's, it cruised. Slowly. Like he was just waiting for the right moment." This was too disturbing for words, and rather than consider what it meant, I turned back around and checked my reflection.

   Gingerly, I touched a finger to my nose. "Aren't bandages supposed to be flesh-colored?" I asked.

   What could Eve say? While she thought about it, I turned my head, studying the square of gauze and plastic and wondering exactly whose flesh those well-intentioned bandage manufacturers were talking about. I don't have a peachesand-cream complexion like Eve, and I'm not olive-toned, either. I'm some bland shade right in the middle, and even on me, the bandage stuck out like a sore thumb.

   Or in this instance, a sore nose.

   "I'm not self-conscious at all, so don't worry about me. And I'm not worried about looking weird, either," I said, because I figured if I reminded myself enough times, I might start to believe it. I stared at my reflection. The bandage
did
look weird. "It doesn't matter if anyone notices, and besides, if they ask, I'm used to explaining. I spent all day at the bank talking about it. First to everyone who works there, then to each of my customers."

   "What, you told them that your nose was scraped because you were down on the sidewalk while someone was shooting at you?"

   "I told them I slipped and fell and hit the pavement. It's not exactly a lie." The black evening bag I'd bought for a prom Peter and I had once chaperoned was on my dresser, and I grabbed it and double-checked to make sure there were a couple more fresh bandages inside, just in case. While I was at it, I automatically checked for my cell phone and my lipstick, too. Satisfied I had everything I needed, I snapped the purse shut. "Besides, nobody's going to notice me and ask about my nose anyway. Not once you walk in."