He must have gotten the clue that Claire wasn’t going to chase the girl off, because he finally announced, “I guess I’ll be going. Enjoy your summer.” He hovered in the doorway for a moment, hands deep in his pockets, almost as though expecting her to stop him.

“You, too,” Claire replied with a light wave of her hand.

As he left, Nina plunged back into chatter. “So you are coming back, right?”

Claire hefted one box into her arms. “Maybe.”

Nina motioned to the boxes. “You’re carrying these to your car? I’ll help.”

They took the ramp downstairs rather than risk missing their footing on the steps. Nina chatted happily at her side about her summer plans as they stepped outside, the afternoon air pungent with the smell of baked asphalt and rotting vegetation.

“I’m going to lifeguard at my neighborhood pool. Can you believe they’re going to pay me to get a tan?”

“I think you actually have to do more than tan while you’re on duty,” Claire said in amusement as she set the box on the trunk of the car and unlocked the door.

“Yeah, I gotta stop little kids from dunking each other.” Nina shrugged. “No biggie.”

“And don’t forget you have to whistle every half hour for adult swim time,” Claire teased as she picked the box back up.

Nina laughed. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Claire set the box into the backseat, shoving it to the far end to make room for the others to come. She pulled her head from the car’s interior, a flip comment about lifeguarding twisting into a gasp as agony exploded in the back of her head.

Clutching the base of her skull, she first assumed her head hadn’t cleared the door frame, that she had accidentally bumped it. But as she staggered back from the car, she was struck a second time from behind.

Nina. Her instincts about the girl had been wrong.

A third blow brought her to her knees. She grabbed the car door. Her hands latched onto it, trying to pull herself up. She was almost to her feet when a quick, sharp pain penetrated her shoulder, dropping her to her knees again.

Convinced she had been shot, Claire clutched the back of her shoulder, expecting to feel blood. Instead, she pulled something from her flesh.

She held a needle in her hand, staring at the steel tip in bewilderment until she began to sway. The syringe slipped from her open palm and she watched it fall through the air, her vision growing cloudy, then black as it dropped.

She never saw it hit the asphalt.