Sometimes it’s good to deviate from routine, Jack thought, trying to look interested. And sometimes it isn’t.

This meeting, never would have happened if he’d followed his usual MO. He always talked to prospective customers before setting up a face-to-face. That way he avoided the Dr. Claytons of the city—people with problems that could be remedied by more orthodox methods.

But because he’d already met Alicia, he’d set up the meeting without the usual preliminaries.

Not a complete waste of time, he thought, but pretty damn close. The only thing that saved it was the good doctor herself.

Something about Alicia Clayton intrigued him. He met lots of people with secrets. Virtually all of his customers were hiding something. He was used to not hearing the whole story on the first pass. And he’d become adept at spotting the holes. He couldn’t tell what they’d skipped, but he knew when they were holding back.

Alicia Clayton was different. He couldn’t get a read on her. Either she was hiding nothing, or she was so good at hiding that she could hide everything, even the fact that she was hiding something.

Jack chose the latter. Because looking at her sitting here across the table from him, he sensed that she had a good figure under that coat and bulky cable-knit sweater, but she was hiding it. In fact, she could have been a striking woman with those fine features and dark, dark hair. Attractive in a steely way. But she chose not to be. She chose to downplay her looks. Hide them.

Well, how he looked was her call. And she wasn’t exactly in the glamour business.

Didn’t pay to read too much into these things, he supposed.

But she was so utterly composed. Too composed. Almost… wooden.

What else was she hiding? This woman wasn’t just locked down tight, she was hermetically sealed. And that took practice. Many years of practice.

All of which intrigued him. Who was this woman who seemed to want to hide everything!

But he knew he was unlikely to pop any of her seals this morning. So he was looking for a way to bring this little tete-a-tete to a close when she leaned forward.

“I had a lawyer,” Alicia said. “Until Friday when he was murdered.”

Jack smiled. Lawyers who did wills and such didn’t get murdered. “You mean ‘killed,’ don’t you?”

“No. I mean murdered. Can you think of a circumstance when a car bomb is anything but murder?”

Jack straightened in his seat. The story had been all over the radio and TV.

“That car explosion in Midtown?” he said. “He was your lawyer?”

Alicia nodded. “We were supposed to meet that morning. I guess someone didn’t want him to make it.”

Uh-oh. Did he detect a little paranoia here?

“What makes you think you’re the reason he was killed? I read they found some cocaine in what was left of his glove compartment.”

“I see lots of coke users,” she said. Her face remained a mask, but Jack noticed her right hand clenching into a fist. “Most of the parents of my babies are drug abusers. Drugs are how they got the virus that they passed on to their kids. I didn’t see any signs of that in Leo Weinstein.”