They all looked alike to Liam. They were planes. He didn't need to know any more, thank you.

The buildings consisted of a terminal and hangars, offices for air taxis and a Standard Oil office with a tank farm looming up in back of it, and a couple of aviation parts stores and a tiny little log house that would have looked like a cache without the stilts that bore a sign proclaiming it YE OLDE GIFTE SHOPPE.

Small planes buzzed overhead on takeoff and landing. There was another small plane pulled around in front of the Standard Oil pumps, a red one with a pair of wings that looked larger than its fuselage and white identification letters down the side ending in 78 ZULU. Liam's heart gave an involuntary thump, and then his eyes dropped to the ground in front of the aircraft.

"Oh my God!" the near-miss grandmother said from the top of the Metroliner's stairs.

A body lay on the ground, a bright red circle spreading rapidly from beneath its head, or where its head used to be. The propeller of the little plane was stained the same bright red.

TWO

For a moment, no one could move, except for the square-jawed young copilot as he heaved up his breakfast. The people on the ground, the people in the plane, the people staring in horrified fascination out of the terminal's windows all stood in frozen silence.

There was a woman kneeling in front of the body, her back to the runway. Dressed in worn jeans and denim jacket, the only clue to her femininity was the fat braid of golden brown hair that lay along her spine, strands escaping to curl madly all around her head. Liam found himself behind her without any conscious recollection of moving. It took him three tries to say anything, and when he could speak his voice seemed to come from very far away. "Wy." She refused to look around, but a visible shudder ran over her body, and he was close enough to see the sudden prickling of the skin on the back of her neck. Her head came up like a deer on the scent of danger. "Who is he?"

She didn't turn, but then she didn't have to. Wyanet Chouinard was a brown-eyed blonde, thirty-one years old, five feet five inches tall, with full breasts, a small waist, and lush, full hips that looked better in denim than any figure had a right to. Her voice came out low and husky, but that could have been stress and shock. From what was lying on the ground in front of her, or from what was looming up in back of her? Both, Liam hoped, with a sudden ferocity unknown to him until that moment. It surprised him, andwiththe surprise came a hot rush of sheer pleasure. He hoped he threatened her. He wanted to strangle her.

He pulled himself together. First, the job. "It's Liam, Wy."