How had Mitch changed so much, she wondered. What had happened to the kind and caring man she had once known and respected? And how—how had he guessed about her affair with Kane? Erin’s mind was spinning in circles, and her face, now covered with drops of rain, had lost all of its color. Her sleek ebony hair had begun to curl in the rain, and tiny tendrils began to spring out of the tidy black knot at the base of her head. She walked along the rain-puddled streets, absorbed in her own distant thoughts for over an hour. With her head bent against the wind, her small fists thrust into the pockets of her raincoat and her jaw clenched at an angle, she hardly looked her pert businesslike self. She felt a burning sense of betrayal that Mitch would stoop so low as to ask her to confiscate bank records secretly for his personal use. How far did friendship reach? How much would he ask of her? Again, she was reminded of Mitch’s initials on the chart showing that Erin had possession of a key that she had never seen. Had Mitch, somehow, tried to implicate her in his crime? Was it possible that she had been wrong about Mitch all this time? She stamped her booted foot impatiently on the sidewalk.

Suddenly aware of the passing time, she hurried back to the bank. She was oblivious to the fact that her usually neat appearance was disheveled from the wind and the rain and that her normally clear eyes were clouded and preoccupied. As she rushed into her office, she paused only to pick up her messages and remind her secretary more curtly than she had intended that under no circumstances, other than a telephone call from Kane, was she to be disturbed.

For the remainder of the afternoon Erin holed up behind her desk, and tried to immerse herself in paperwork. But all her concentration seemed to shift to Mitch, and she found it impossible to forget the hollow look of despair on his face or the nervousness of his hands or his eyes, once clear and blue, now gray and pasty. Erin’s stomach twisted violently as she remembered him and realized just how suspicious she had become of a man she had once trusted completely. Was she being paranoid, or had she been a fool to trust him in the past? She let her forehead drop to her hand, and hoped to God that the afternoon would slide by without any further complications.

The little yellow car couldn’t hurry home fast enough for Erin, and the snail’s pace of the late afternoon traffic as it snarled in the rain only added to her frustration. Maneuvering the Rabbit through the hilly streets of the downtown area of Seattle, she made it to the freeway, but to no avail. Tonight, even the freeways were choked with commuters anxious to get home, semis on their assigned routes and recreational vehicles hoping to get a head start on the wet weekend. As the windshield wipers danced rhythmically before her eyes, Erin sighed, realizing that because she usually worked much later than six o’clock, she had forgotten how difficult and frustrating rush hour could be.