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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Incident One
  7. Chapter Four
  8. Chapter Five
  9. Chapter Six
  10. Chapter Seven
  11. Chapter Eight
  12. Incident Two
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Incident Three
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Incident Four
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. Chapter Thirty-two
  39. Chapter Thirty-three
  40. Incident Five
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Chapter Forty-four
  52. Acknowledgments
  53. Special Thanks
  54. About the Author

Uh, Jim, the score of the game stands at 2 to 1 in favor of the Stars—

Carling said tightly, “Jennings, get us on a plane.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Paolo

“Coors Light,” Paolo whispered in the direction of the waitress’s apron. She leaned over to hear better.

“Sorry?” She cupped one shell-pink ear toward him. He stared down the expanse of her cleavage. Pale skin, thin blue veins showing through. He liked that.

“Coors Light,” he repeated louder. She nodded and stalked away toward a yelling table of drunks half-out of their business suits. The floor was crisp with peanut shells and sticky with spilled beer, like bad peanut brittle. He’d always liked peanut brittle, he thought, and munched contemplatively on a dry unsalted pretzel stick. Pralines, too. The kind that turned to raw sugar on his tongue.

There were plenty of hookers working the bar, but Velvet wasn’t one of them. He’d been to her place, but it was a wreck, trashed. No sign of her in any of the usual hangouts, no word on the street about her. None of the other girls had heard from her or about her.

He nibbled his pretzel and felt the pressure of anxiety in his stomach. He didn’t have any other leads; there were no other hangouts. If she didn’t show here, she didn’t show.

And he’d have to explain to Ming where Velvet had gone. That wouldn’t be pretty at all.

A beer thumped down on the table in front of him, sweating with cold. He slid the money across the table so he could watch the waitress bend over again, then forgot her as soon as she walked away. Velvet had skin like that, pale and pretty, and everything else, too.

Nobody in the room competed.

He sucked down beer and stared blankly at the big-screen TV; the table of drunks had started screaming and throwing peanuts at it. One of them stood up on his chair, leaned slowly left, and toppled over on the guy next to him.

He couldn’t see what they were so upset about, except that the hockey game had stopped. The players were skating around in tight circles at the far end of the ice, hands on their hips, shaking their heads. There were a bunch of people who didn’t look like players on the ice, too, near the edge; one of them was tying down. Great. A fan jumped the wall and had a heart attack, or got slammed, or something. Who cared?

The picture fuzzed out and was replaced with blurry footage of a guy on fire staggering down the steps, while hockey fans scrambled back from him in human waves. Paolo sat riveted, beer half-raised to his lips, staring.