The street her trick had picked wasn’t her idea of a good time, that was for sure—more an alley than a real street, a race track for sanitation engineers. Dark, cold, damp, piled with trash cans and sagging boxes. The wind slashed at her exposed skin like a psycho. There were still a few drunks over in the neon-rainbowed glare of Dallas Alley, mostly wandering around giggling and shouting and laughing; the cops would be clearing it out pretty soon.

She almost wished the cops would show; the damned place was a crime scene waiting to happen. She’d been standing for nearly twenty minutes now, hopping up and down for warmth, pacing. Under the layers of coat and leather, she had broken a sweat, but her face and hands and legs were so frozen they felt like putty.

Five more minutes. That was all she was giving him, no matter how much money he claimed he had for her.

Something cold and hard spit in her face. Sleet. Wonderful. Just what she needed. She pressed herself back against the wall and watched it arrive in a hissing sheet, rattling windowpanes, drawing hoarse delighted screams from drunks running for shelter. She checked her watch. Five minutes hadn’t passed.

Watching the cobblestones ice over wasn’t quite as much fun as watching mold grow. After three minutes she’d convinced herself that maybe she ought to hail a cab out on the street to get back to Robby’s. Robby wouldn’t lock her out, would she? Not Robby.

Maybe she ought to hurry.

The sleet had thoroughly rained on the parade; a couple of truly drunk college boys slogged past her, heads down, faces slack, and they were the last. She watched them weave and slip and slide their way across the courtyard. No cops. Nowhere.

Nobody willing to pay her for her wasted time, either.

The wind whipped back in her face, splattering her with ice and rain. Her numbed cheeks hardly felt it, but cold trickled down her neck and made her yelp with disgust. That was it, absolutely. She was getting the hell out.

She stepped out of the alley with relief that vanished when her shoes slipped on a patch of ice. She balanced with both arms out, like a wirewalker, and shuffled carefully across the courtyard toward the street where cabs would be waiting, lights on, heaters humming. She didn’t have enough money for a cab, but that didn’t matter; she’d stiffed cabbies before, or blown them for a fare—

“Hey,” a voice said from behind her. A man’s voice. She made sure her feet were set, and twisted to look over her shoulder.