"Shut up, Kenny."

The skinny, pierced-up, white-trash blonde gave her an up and down; she seemed more interested in checking to see if Lacey's hands were empty. She looked thirty-five but was probably thirty. Not at all Lacey's type.

She fixed Lacey with her squinty brown eyes. "What're you doin down here?"

"Catching some Z's," Lacey said. "How about you two?"

"Lookin for loooove," Kenny said, grinning. "In all the wrong places." He stepped closer. "Hey, ain't you somethin. Look at those muscles, Jackie. And she got tats too."

Lacey looked down at her upper arms and the black Celtic knots that encircled each just between the sleek, well-cut bulges of her biceps and deltoids. She'd spent a lot of time on those muscles.

"Want to see them wiggle like snakes?"

She began contracting and relaxing the muscles, making them dance under the Celtic knots which in turn undulated like, well, snakes.

"Tits and tats and ripped to boot," he said, easing another step closer. "I think I'm in love. Think we can have her join the posse, Jacks?"

"No way. Besides, that ain't for us to decide."

"They look so hard," he said. "You mind if I give one a little squeeze?"

Lacey smiled. "You're talking about my muscles but you're staring at my nips."

He laughed. "Oh, I do like this one, Jackie." He looked at her. "We gotta—"

That was when Lacey kicked him. She knew how to kick, had taken classes in it, and she lashed out her foot as hard as she could, putting a lot of her lower body behind it. She landed a good one, right square in his balls. He made a breathy noise, something like "Hommf!" as he went knock-kneed and dropped to the sand. Jackie stared at him stupidly, as if trying to figure out what had just happened, while Lacey grabbed for her nunchucks. She had a grip on one end and was snapping the other in a sidearm arc when Jackie looked back at her. Her mouth was opening, starting to shout, when the steel bar caught her across the left side of her head. She tumbled to her right and hit the sand, still conscious but just barely, holding her head and groaning. Blood seeped between her fingers.

Lacey turned back to Kenny. He was down on his knees with his hands jammed between his thighs, clutching his jewels, his face gray, his mouth working.

"You fucking bitch!" he managed. "You're gonna wish—"

Lacey kicked him again, in the stomach this time, high, a bull's eye into his solar plexus. He doubled over. Kenny wouldn't be threatening Lacey or anybody else for a while.

Five seconds later she was back in her jacket and booking south with her duffel and her sleeping bag. Behind and above her she thought she heard a woman's voice cry out. The blond the two creeps had mentioned? Lacey stopped and listened. She heard another cry and looked up at a seagull coasting overhead on the breeze. It squawked again. Had that been what she'd heard?

She dropped her load and grabbed the edge of the boardwalk. The ends of the weathered boards rasped against her palms as she pulled herself up for a look—all those chin-ups at the gym were finally paying off. She held her eyes at board level. No one in sight.

She dropped back to the sand, grabbed her things, and started walking again.

No time to waste. She'd come to find her uncle.

CAROLE . . .

Sister Carole checked the Pyrex bowl on the stove. A chalky layer of potassium chloride had formed in the bottom. She turned off the heat and immediately decanted the boiling upper fluid, pouring it through a Mr. Coffee filter into a Pyrex brownie pan. She threw out the scum in the filter and put the pan of filtrate on the windowsill to cool.

She heard the sound of a car again and rushed to a window. It was the same car, the convertible, with the same occupants—

No, wait. There had been only four before. Now there were three squeezed into the rear. The woman who had been in the front earlier was in the back; she looked as if she might be sick; the man with the red Mohican seemed to be struggling with a newcomer, a young woman with long blond hair. She looked—

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the poor thing was pregnant!

Sister Carole suddenly felt as if something were tearing apart within her chest. Was there no justice, was there no mercy anywhere?

She dropped to her knees and began to pray for her, but in the back of her mind she wondered why she bothered. None of her prayers had been answered so far.