"About me, the money. I realized this morning, when I could think a bit more clearly, that things like this just don't happen."

"They do here." Hoping to put her at ease, he leaned a hip on the corner of his desk. "You are twenty-one, aren't you?"

"Twenty-three. I'll be twenty-four in September. Oh, I forgot to thank you for the clothes." She ordered herself not to think about the underwear, not to so much as consider that he was thinking of it. But color rose into her cheeks. "It was very kind of you."

"Everything fit all right?"

"Yes." Her color deepened. The bra was a lovely champagne color with edgings of lace, and was precisely her size. She didn't want to speculate how he could have been quite so accurate. "Perfectly."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Like someone put me under a spell." She smiled a little now. "I suppose I haven't been sleeping well lately. I'm not used to traveling."

There was a dusting of freckles over her pert little nose, he noted, a paler gold than her extraordinary eyes. She smelled lightly of vanilla. "Where are you from?"

"A little town, Trader's Corners, in Kansas."

Midwest, Mac thought. Hit number one.

"What do you do in Trader's Corners, Kansas?"

"I'm—I was a librarian."

Close enough for hit number two, he decided. "Really? Why'd you leave?"

"I ran away." She blurted it out before thinking. He had such a beautiful smile, and he'd been looking at her as if he were really interested. Somehow he had lulled her into the admission.

He pushed away from the desk, then sat on the arm of the chair beside hers so that their faces were closer, their eyes more level. He spoke gently, as he might to a cornered puppy. "What kind of trouble are you in, Darcy?"

"I'm not, I would have been if I'd stayed, but…" Then her eyes widened. "Oh, I didn't do anything. I mean I'm not running away from the police."

Because she was so obviously distressed, he smothered the laugh and didn't tell her he couldn't imagine her getting so much as a parking ticket. "I didn't think that, but people generally have a reason for running away from home. Does your family know where you are?"

_

"I don't have any family. I lost my parents about a year ago."

"I'm sorry."

"It was an accident. A house fire. At night." She lifted her hands, dropped them into her lap again. "They didn't wake up."

"That's a lot to deal with."

"There was nothing anyone could do. They were gone, the house was gone. Everything. I wasn't home. I'd just moved into my own apartment a few weeks before. Just a few weeks. I…" She pushed absently at her fringe of bangs. "Well."

"So you decided to get away?"

She started to agree, to make it simple. But it wasn't the truth, and she was such a poor and guilty liar. "No. Not exactly. I suppose that's part of it. I lost my job a few weeks ago." It still stung, the humiliation of it. "I was going to lose my apartment. Money was a problem. My parents didn't have much insurance, and the house had a mortgage. And the bills." She moved her shoulders. "In any case, without a paycheck, I wasn't going to be able to pay the rent. I didn't have that much saved myself, after college. And sometimes I… I'm not very good with budgets, I suppose."