“They don’t know who they saw,” Mel says. Then her face tightens. “Where’s the wig?”

“Lost it in a fight.”

“You were in an actual fight? As in scratching and clawing and punching?” Mel sounds aghast. Or awed.

“You should see the other guy,” Rose chokes. “Same nurse as before. The one I drugged. Not in ICU.”

“She saw you, as in saw Rose Dennis, for identification?” Mel asks.

“Exactly.”

“Maybe she’ll have drug-induced amnesia like you did,” Mel offers.

“I was pretty memorable,” Rose confesses. “She pulled my pants off, and I drugged her again—and some other things.”

Mel whistles low. “Sheesh. Do you think they’re after you?”

“Probably right behind me.”

Mel is wearing a small backpack.

“Any chance there’s water in that?” Rose asks.

“That’s why I brought it. Just in case.” Mel balances the bike against her hip, slips the backpack off, fishes out a water bottle, and hands it to Rose.

“You can’t go back to the Applegarth house,” Mel says as Rose drinks, walks, and drinks again. “That cat-door, closet hidey-hole is too lame.”

“Lame,” Rose concedes, recapping the bottle but hanging on to it.

“Our house?”

“Can’t,” Rose says. The moonlight, along with the light pollution from the city, makes the path easy to see. Rose urges Mel nearer the trees where they are less obvious.

“Sure you can. I gave Uncle Daniel permission to go to a friend’s to watch the Panthers game.”

“Not Daniel, the guy with the knife. Too dangerous before, way too dangerous now,” Rose says. “If they don’t find me, eventually he—they—are bound to check your house.”

“Do you think you killed that nurse?” Mel asks. Both are whispering, walking as quickly as Rose can manage through the shadows at the edge of the greenway.

“I sure hope not,” Rose says. “Murder, or at least accidental homicide. The nurse probably has three adorable children. Their fireman father will bring them to the courtroom every day so the jury can see their tearful little faces while they decide how long to put me away for.”

“Not to mention what it would do to your karma.”

Rose snorts. “That ship has sailed. I finally get a precious human birth and I fritter it away on a measly homicide.”

“The drugs didn’t kill her last time,” Mel says.

“That’s right.” Rose is somewhat cheered. “They didn’t even land her in ICU.”

On the other side of the greenway is a dense growth of underbrush over a creek or ditch. Beyond it is the dead end of a street. Mosquitos, ticks, poison ivy—all the toxins of nature are probably represented in that wet, dark cut, but it will hide Rose until she is sure she can get clear—or the indigenous critters drain her of all of her blood.