She reached under her coat. He watched the gun come out in little freeze frames of alarm, cold matte metal, long lethal barrel.

Somebody might hear him if he screamed.

“I told you, I’m sorry,” she said, and walked toward him. She raised the gun and put it down on one corner of his desk. When her hand left it, he continued to stare at it, as stunned as if she’d dropped a body part.

She took her coat off and draped it over his chair. He didn’t move as her hands pushed his own coat off his shoulders. “Tomorrow you’ll hate me, Marty. So there’s only tonight. No more time.”

Her lips were cherry-sweet, warm, soft. The feel of her hair on his fingers was like cold silk. His erection caught him by surprise because it was instant, as if it had been lurking for the opportunity, and he couldn’t remember needing anybody so badly, not his wife, not the occasional date, not anybody. He pressed her against the desk and fumbled at her suit buttons, got her coat off, her blouse. Her skirt slid down and tangled with his pants on the floor.

She had a condom ready, and she was expert with it, rolling it on with quick sensual strokes of her fingers. He had just enough time to think dazedly, I don’t know anything about her, and then it was too late, he knew everything, everything.

He wondered, too late, if her bug was recording it.

Chapter Fourteen

Velvet

Robby had a paranoid’s weight of locks. Velvet watched her open the second deadbolt—bottom of the door—and fumble for the key to the knob. When the door opened on darkness, something gave a sharp beep. Robby stepped around the corner and, in the dark, punched in a code.

“Make yourself at home,” Robby said, and flicked on an overhead light. Velvet hobbled a couple of steps inside and hardly noticed Robby pressing past to shut the door and reset all her locks; she was busy absorbing details.

Hardwood floors—well, it was a downtown loft, so she’d expected that. High industrial ceilings, girders painted garish red and blue. Windows, lots of them, wrapping all the way around the big room; the vertical blinds were open, letting in the neon glow of downtown.

No plastic carpet runners. What carpet there was wouldn’t have been caught dead in Mom’s house-wild carpet, black with sharp slashes of blue and yellow and purple. The couch was black, the chairs mint green and an unbelievable magenta. The TV, compared to Jim’s big-screen altar to the networks, was puny, the stereo correspondingly huge. The CD tower rack next to it was so full it leaned like the Tower of Pisa.