Easy Prey

She was doing the clothes up front, I was making some sparks in the back."

Paul brought in a huge man named Clark Buchanan, who, improbably, told them that he was a model and, incidentally, a welder.

"This holds water?"

A question they asked everyone involved the scribble on Sandy Lansing's wrist.

He'd been seized by fear: Christ, she was dead.

Somehow the pit of his palm had landed under her chin, and when he pushed, her head snapped back, into a molding around a door.

They used to ding with every gallon or so, he thought, and now they just rattled off yellow electronic digits, gallons and dollars, silent as the night.