“Jesus, I don’t know.” She rolled her bottle between two palms and thought about it. “His chest. Around his chest, I guess.”

“Was he smoking?”

“Like a sonofabitch.”

“No, I’m sorry, I mean cigarettes.”

She shrugged and went back to staring out the window. Traffic was tying itself into a knot; the rumble of frustration came through the glass like airplane turbulence.

“I tried to help him, swear to God. Got water, tried to put it out, that kind of stuff. Then the alarm went off, and the sprinklers.”

Bradshaw made a little mmm-hmm sound, one they probably taught in reporter school. He hadn’t made very many notes, she noticed. Mostly doodles. Did he think she couldn’t read upside down? Probably thought she couldn’t read, period.

“When you left, was he dead?” he asked. She snapped back around to look him in the eye. Cute little prep-school asshole, all smiles, just like the ones back home with their she’s-an-easy-lay grins. Some of it must have shown in her face, because he looked startled and a little ashamed.

“Of course he was dead, I wouldn’t leave him there like that if he wasn’t dead. Jesus.”

God, she hoped to hell he was dead. He had to have been dead. Why the hell would he ask something like that—unless Burt hadn’t been dead. Unless she’d left him there melted into the carpet like somebody else’s garbage, oh Jesus, no.

She couldn’t think about that. She just couldn’t.

He was doodling again, but stopped when she slammed her hand down over the page.

“Listen. I don’t know where the hell you got my name, but don’t use it. Don’t even use the initials, understand? You can call me Deep Fucking Throat or whatever you want, I don’t give a shit, but I got to protect myself.”

“My sources are always confidential,” he said, and looked pointedly at her hand covering his pad. She pulled it back. “So, um, what else?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

“Well—” He gave her an under-the-lashes look, an aw-shucks-ma’am look of discomfort. “Well, I can’t just take this back to my editor. I mean, you know, he’s kind of a hard ass. I need—more. For the amount of money I paid you, I mean.”

“I don’t—”

Lenny stared at her with eyes as blue as a Disney character. He smiled. Dimples. His expression clearly thought he was adorable.

“Um …” He leaned conspiratorially forward over the table and tried for a sexy whisper. “Maybe I could, you know, let it go. For a consideration. Give you the, you know, the rest of the money.”