After giving the man hurried directions, Sandy got into her car and instantly locked the doors. She didn't care how unfriendly the gesture looked. As she backed out of her space he seemed to be in no rush to go to the advertising department. He stood there staring at her with eyes as hard as marbles. She was in her thirties, with long chestnut hair, an athletic body from jogging and working out. Her nut-brown face was taut and angular but not unattractive, dominated by large sky-blue eyes. She was pretty enough to attract occasional attention from the odd characters who seemed to drop from the palm trees around town. She was street-smart and had gained a layer of emotional calluses working as a police reporter before being assigned to the investigative team. She didn't spook easily, but this creep gave her the shivers. It went beyond appearances. There was some thing of the grave about him.

She checked her rearview mirror and was surprised to see that the man had disappeared. Easy come, easy go, she thought. She scolded herself for letting him sneak up on her. Growing up in L.A., she had learned early on to be aware of her surroundings at all times. This damned water story had preoccupied her, taken the edge off her alertness. Cohen had promised only a couple more days before they ran the story. Not soon enough. She was getting sick of taking the file disks home. Cohen was positively paranoid about leaving them in the building. Every night he cleaned the files off the computer and put them on backup disks. In the mornings he would load them back on.

Not that Sandy blamed him for being paranoid. There was something special about this story. The team had talked Pulitzer prize. Cohen coordinated the work of the three reporters. Her area was the Mulholland Group and its mysterious president, Brynhild Sigurd. The other two reporters concentrated respectively on domestic acquisitions and international connections. They had access to an accountant and a lawyer. The secrecy was tighter than the Manhattan Project. The editor was aware of the story but not its scope. She sighed. The story would be out in a few days, and she could take that long vacation in Maui.

She swung out of the garage and headed to her condo in Culver City. She stopped off at a shopping plaza and picked up a bottle of California Zinfandel. Cohen was coming over later to talk about wrapping up loose ends, and she had promised to whip up a pot of penne. As she was paying the cashier she noticed someone standing in front of the window looking into the store. It was that damned metal-tooth creep, and he was smiling. This was no coincidence. The jerk must have followed her. She glared at him as she exited the store, then strode purposefully to ward her car. First she dug the pistol out of the purse and tucked it in her belt. Then she called Cohen on her cell phone. He had told her to report anything unusual. Cohen wasn't there, but she left a message on his recorder saying she was on her way home and that she thought she was being followed.