Hello, Gorgeous!. MaryJanice Davidson

as the extra type, more like the supporting actress. Not the star, but important to the star, like Willow on Buffy or Elaine on Seinfeld.

      Anyway, one of them flew almost all the way down the street and ended up flat on his back, right next to her. She got up in a hurry when she saw blood trickling out of his ear, and by then the other ones were down too.

      And they looked bad. Like Colin Farrell in that too-cool S.W.A.T. movie. They were all scruffy and muscular and dressed in dark clothing and heavily armed—she counted three holsters on one of them. Empty holsters. Eh?

      She turned and saw Jimmy walking toward her, her arms full of guns. “Sorry about that,” she said, not sounding even a tiny bit sorry. “I wanted you down in case they got to their guns. I’ll buy you a new skirt, okay?”

      “Okay,” she said automatically. “Um, this guy’s bleeding. Out his ear.”

      Caitlyn peered down at him, then blinked and—weird!—it almost looked like she was reading something. Except there wasn’t anything to read. “It’s okay,” she said after a few moments. “He’s got a concussion, but nothing’s broken. He’ll be out for a while, that’s all. Serves them right anyway,” she added defiantly. Almost—weird!—tearfully. Jimmy never cried. Not even that time when she got a Bon her trig final. Boy, that had been a tough day. “Besides, no means no, right? I mean, I don’t have to work for anyone.”

      “Okay, Jimmy.”

      Caitlyn threw the guns down in a temper. They clattered to the street like ugly maracas. “I mean, jeez! I didn’t ask them to fix me, did I?”

      Stacy shook her head. “Nuh-uh.”

      “So they saved my life—big deal! What, now I’m a—an—an indentured servant for the rest of my life?”

      “Doesn’t seem like a great idea.”

      “Damn right! Shit! Shit on toast!”

      “Yuck,” Stacy said, which (whew!) made Caitlyn laugh. And thank God, because for a moment—a teensy moment, but still—she had been almost…what? Scared? Of Caitlyn? Not too stupid, because Jimmy was just about the nicest, coolest, sweetest—

      Her friend stopped laughing and looked at her in a new way. And new, Stacy was starting to think, was bad. Very, very bad. “Look, Stace, you get home, okay?”

      “Okay.” Impulsively, she added, “You come with me, okay? Stay over for a while. We can stay up late and watch Ocean’s Eleven—the George Clooney one, not the icky old one—and I’ll call in sick tomorrow and we can hang out. It looks like you—like you could use a break. What do you say, Jimmy?”

      “I say, don’t call me Jimmy. It sounds like the best deal I’ve heard all damned month actually. But I can’t.”

      “Why can’t you?”

      “I have to go see somebody first,” she replied, sounding pissed all over again as she nudged the closest S.W.A.T. guy with the toe of her boot. “You go on. I’ll get rid of the guns.”

      “Are you sure…?”

      “Just go.”

      “Well…okay. I—I’m glad you’re better anyway.”

      “Oh, I’m better all right,” she said morosely, bending to pick up the scary guns. “Better than ever. Too bad for me. But too bad for them, so that works out okay. You know?”

      “Okay. I—g’night.”

      Stacy went home and took two Ambien, but it was hard to drop off just the same. She wished Caitlyn had come home with her, but a tiny part of her—this was so lame it was hard to admit to herself, and she could never have said it out loud—was glad she hadn’t.

      Chapter 3

      Caitlyn drove up on the lawn, plowed through the snow, parked on the freshly shoveled sidewalk, got out of her Intrepid, and marched over to the glass doors. She slammed her palm down on the touch plate and, big surprise, the doors unlocked.

      There was nothing on the outside of the big glass building to indicate what it was—just the address, 2118, in four-foot-high numbers—on the inside. The security guards stood behind their granite desk when she entered, but neither came near her. Good for them.

      “Evening, Miss James,” one of them said.

      “Is he in?” she asked.

      “Uh, yeah. Top floor. He’s—”

      “Don’t say he’s expecting me.”

      “Well,” the other guard said apologetically, “he kind of is. Did you really take out an entire extractment team by yourself? Because that’s—”

      She had already stomped across the black marble floor and was in the stairwell, and didn’t hear the rest. Damned if she was going to be trapped in one of their stupid elevators. She’d seen enough TV movies to know that was a bad idea, thanks very much!

      Instead, she took the fifteen flights in about sixty seconds and popped out in the hallway, not even out of breath.

      Okay, so. There were some benefits. And it beat being dead. Mostly.

      But still. No meant no.

      She was in an area she thought of as done up in Expensive Boring Office. Dark wood, dark carpet, light blue water cooler. The desks were also dark wood and looked like they’d been mass-produced and then delivered on the same day. The place smelled like paper and coffee grounds.

      “Ah, Miss James! The Boss has been expecting you.” It was always like that, just like that…. The Boss. You could hear the capital letter. “Some coffee? Tea?”

      “No.”

      “He’s finishing up right now with the senator from Wisconsin—”

      “At nine o’clock at night?”

      “The Boss works long hours,” the secretary said with weird pride, “but if you’ll—”

      Caitlyn kicked the door in. It was easy. It shot off its hinges and slammed into the thick carpet. It sounded like a woman beating a rug—whumpf! And it was so easy. That was, in a lot of ways, the scariest part of all that had happened to her. Been done to her. How easy it was to use it. The technology. It was exactly like using her own muscles, her own brain. She had never been able to see where she stopped and the nanobytes began.

      “Caitlyn James to see you, sir,” his secretary said, peeking around her and not missing a beat.

      The senator—a tall, good-looking woman with dark hair coiled on top of her head, shot up from her seat, and papers went flying.

      “We’ll pick this up tomorrow, Nancy,” the Boss said. “I’m afraid I’ve got a scheduling conflict right now.”

      “No doubt,” she said, leaving the file and picking her way past the door.

      “Love your hair,” Caitlyn said as the senator passed her.

      “What can I do for you, Caitlyn?” the Boss said, sitting back down and folding his hands on his immaculate desk blotter. He was short, in his forties, but powerfully built through the shoulders. He was dressed in a black suit—a good one, probably Italian—and his hair was the same shade, slicked back from his forehead. His eyes were the color of dirty ice, and his eyebrows were so light as to be invisible. As a result, he looked like a mean egg.

      “You can die slowly, coughing your guts out in a part of the world that hasn’t heard of morphine.”

      The Boss blinked slowly, like a lizard. “I’ll get right on that. I take it our team earned your enmity?”

      “You’ve earned my en—my em—you’re the one I’m pissed at!”

      “Caitlyn, Caitlyn,” he sighed, shaking his head as if over a daughter missing