“Pink shells or purple butterflies?” I asked Jane over the top of my handheld. “She’s seven this year.”

“Butterflies,” Jane replied disinterestedly, her eyes glued to the telemonitor. A short, bushy man dressed in a leather brown coat and jeans reported on the story of the 2149 model aerocycles was on. “New color coordinated duel blasters…”

Wednesday afternoon stretched out lazily. On the table lay half eaten sandwiches of peanut butter and jalapeno jelly, cups of cold coffee and Jane’s cigarette butts piled into a Styrofoam cup-turned-ashtray. Jane relaxed, sprawled across the sofa, transfixed by the pictures of shiny slick aerocycles zipping through crystal blue skies.

“Hmmmm… I’ll get a child’s size pajama shirt and a young girl’s pajama bottom in purple. I think she’s still small in the chest area, but her legs are growing like vines,” I muttered to myself, clicking on the items to add to my shopping cart. I added gift-wrapping (purple balloons) and a note from me (Love, Aunt Cyb) and paid. I prayed Nina would get it by Saturday, her birthday. Laughing, I imagined the look on Tisha’s face when she saw my gift arrive and Nina discard all the high, overpriced stuff from Marcus and her, in favor of my present.

Last night, Mayor Christensen took two sleeping injections and bid us goodnight. Jane tried to get her to tell us more about Amanda and Hanson, but Mayor Christensen refused, her media smile slapped back onto her face. Jane didn’t speak on the way back to the rental room, her anger spent.

My investigation stymied and emotionally drained; I decided to take a day off to relax. Nothing like a nap and lounging to recharge the batteries. Jane agreed and we had deliberately omitted talking about the case at all. We were stuck and we both knew it.

It all comes back to objectivity. As I said earlier, it’s a p.i. essential. Ours were gone. Personal cases always found a way of dismantling it.

I knew it and now, so did Jane. She had so wanted me to be wrong about her aunt, to be wrong about Amanda, and to her horror, I wasn’t. I, on the other hand, had wanted to be so right about the mayor that I too had made a mistake in accusing Christensen and Hanson.

“Go grab us some beer,” Jane said lazily. “It’s after four.”

Feeling like a wife instead of a partner, I said tartly, “Get it yourself.”

With a deep, exaggerated sigh, she clicked off the program and stood up. Without a word, she put her naked feet into her boots, laced them up and left the room.

Gross. No socks!

Shuddering, I turned back to my handheld, and pulled up the case notes. We weren’t supposed to be talking about it, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t read up on it. I knew Jane wasn’t mad, but more irritated. I clicked on the last entry date when three dings spooked me from my thoughts.

Jane’s back quick. Probably forgot her money, leaving so hastily.

“Hold your wauto,” I said and opened the door to…

“Hello, Cinnamon. ‘Member me?” Jarold Montano said, his hot breath brushing my face, forcing me to want to gag.

I slammed my fist into the close button and he fired at me. The doors clipped off the beam. He forced his foot into the space at the last moment, making the doors retracted. He stalked into the room, his face perverted into a mash of glee and fury.

I wanted to spit into his smooth face. But then I’d be too close when he fired.

I raced in to the bedroom, and picked up my 350 from the nightstand as Jarold fired repeatedly. One shot nicked my calf, forcing me to collapse down between Jane’s bed and the wall containing the room’s sole window.

Fear settled into a cold, hard lump in the pit of my stomach. I tried to settle down, but my breathing came in fast, rough gulps. How the hell did he find out where I was?

“Just tell me where he is!” roared Jarold. “Tell me now, Cinnamon!”

His voice drew nearer, and I readied myself to try to stand and fire. Blood seeped into the carpet from my leg and the pain made my eyes watered. Bastard!

“Come out, Cinnamon, come out sweet little thing,” Jarold sang hysterically, raising goosebumps across my arms. The sing-songy voice was disappearing like melting snow. “Now!”

He stepped closer to my direction, judging by his voice. The two-room rental place didn’t leave me many places to hide or get cover. Fish in a barrel.

Exposed, I knew that I was an easy mark.

But then, so was he.

I wore only my black camisole and shorts. I felt naked. I pressed my hand hard against the laser wound, but blood squirted up between my knuckles and fingers. It ran into the carpet, making it squishy. I felt a little dizzy, but I shook my head to rid myself of the cobwebs.

A laserbeam shot burst through the bed’s overhanging covers and right above my head. A mere one-inch lower and he would have shot me in the head.

The bastard was shooting under the bed.

And he’d nearly scalped me.

Quickly, I flipped up the cover…

“I see you,” he said and laughed with malicious cackling from the opposite side of the bed, where he had lifted up the bed’s overhanging covers. His black eyes shined. He fired again and I felt the hot burn of the laser burrow into my arm and out. I dropped the 350 and gritted my teeth to the agony.

No, no, h-he wasn’t going to kill me this time…

“Bye, Cinnamon,” he said with an icy smile as he let go of the hangings and stepped around to the side of the bed, where I lay on the floor, bleeding and in major pain. “Those breasts look so yummy all pushed up and exposed.”

He pointed his gun at me, his eyes glazed over and dewy. “I will enjoy nibbling on them when you’re sipping your last breaths.”

I had a good life. Well, at least it was adventurous.

I closed my eyes to the coming blast.

It never came.

I heard something hit the window, grunt, and then to my relief I heard…

“Freakin’ fucker! Take that!” Jane growled.

I opened my eyes to see a dead Jarold Montano slump to the floor beside me, the lasergun hole dead center in the middle of his forehead. The shininess poured out of his eyes, which stared at some far off place without seeing. He flopped down beside me, underneath the window.

Another gaping hole in his stomach allowed me to see the blood smeared wall behind him. What a mess. Hanson wasn’t going to like this at all.

“Jane,” I said, my throat felt dry, my strength ebbing out onto the carpet in a dark red stream. My voice only came as a croaked whisper. Strangled and sore, I couldn’t get enough air to speak.

“Don’t talk. There’s blood everywhere,” Jane said as if she hadn’t killed someone. She moved out of sight and I heard the telemonitor click on. There were voices, but they were muffled…

….and then the blackness

…swallowed me.

“Cybil,” called a man’s voice, gently with a soft hint of southern twang. Soothing like a sunny patch of light, the voice called again, “Cybil.”

I gradually opened my eyes to find my body strapped to a stretcher hovering above Jane’s bed. The overhead lights seared into my head. I closed my eyes against the brightness. I thought back to Mr. Schmuckler, but wished that vision away. Stubbornly, the pictures plowed through the mental roadblocks until I conjured up memories of Trey, which exorcized him.

Trying once more, I slowly opened my eyes. I raised my hands to shield my eyes from the horrid, glaring fluroscent lights, and groaned. The room was filled with turquoise clad people who puttered around with scanners, kits and digital cameras. A strange sense of déjà vu swept over me.

Captain Hanson loomed beside me, his manicured hands holding one of mine. “Cybil, are you all right?” His eyes skimmed over my partially clad body, taking in my exposed legs and my tight, short top. Perhaps he enjoyed the blood splatter across my breasts. He hastily moved his eyes back up to my face.

I licked my dry lips and with a mouth full of spit that felt like paste, I said, “Sure, for someone whose been shot twice.”

“Can’t be hurt too badly if she’s cracking jokes,” said one of the paramedics.

I wasn’t too sure about that hurt too badly part. The room seemed to spin around, slowly, as I was on a carousel…up and down, around and around. My stomach didn’t like it very much. I could feel it churning.

Hanson blushed and said, “Sorry. Listen, I am sorry about the other day. I-I have a lot of things to talk to you about. Get better first, and then we’ll talk.”

Jane finished her statement to the regulator and came over to the stretcher. The paramedics, one slender young man with dreadlocks scowled at her, but she growled at him and he stepped back, allowing her room up to the stretcher.

“They’re taking you to the hospital. With luck, you’ll get a room with Schmuckler,” she said, with a grin.