Free Unplugged by Lois Greiman

doin’, doll?”
    She tilted her head. “I been better. But just hearin’ yer voice . . .” She smiled wistfully and reached out as if to touch me. “I missed you.”
    “I guess I sorta missed you, too.”
    “Then blah blah blah. The cop says to take me away, then . . .” She paused and winced. “No!” she wailed. “Take me, too. I’m as much to blame as he is.”
    “You stay, Sugar,” I said.
    She stared into my eyes. “I guess we had a good run while it lasted, huh?” she mused, seeping drama from every perfect pore.
    “All good things gotta come to an end.”
    “All right,” Elaine said, her voice casual again. “So then we exchange a meaningful glance and whip into action.”
    I looked up. “We do?”
    “Yeah. We’re hardened gangstas.”
    “Do we get away?”
    “Of course,” she said, and took a sip of juice without even wincing. “Sugar was raised on the mean streets of New York.”
    “Well, good for her.” I followed her example with the juice. It wasn’t going to replace champagne, but the Ipecac people were in for a horse race. “Would you do your own fight scene?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.” She shrugged. “Wyatt showed me how to throw a punch.”
    “Wyatt?”
    She plopped down on the couch, tucking her feet up under her nonexistent thighs. “You remember, the self-defense guy.”
    “Oh, yeah.” Wyatt had been a first-class hotty, and crazy about her. “Are you still seeing him?”
    “No. Not since . . .” She stopped abruptly and fiddled with her script. “Not for a while.”
    Not since Solberg, I interpreted. Shit.
    I refused to fidget, and raised my so-called beverage. “Well, Sugar and I don’t need no stinkin’ Wyatt in our lives. I grew up with brothers.”
    “Of course,” she said, and tried a smile. It was unsteady near the corners. Shit and damn. “The McMullen version of survival of the fittest.”
    “Do unto others before they sober up,” I said.
    That damned smile again. It made me want to cry . . . or hit someone. A million years of college and a Ph.D. couldn’t change my Irish ancestry.
    She cleared her throat. I knew the question was coming long before she spoke the words. “By the way, you didn’t find out anything about . . . um . . . Jeen, did you?”
    I didn’t know where the hell to begin. “Listen, Laney, I’m sure—”
    “It’s okay,” she interrupted, and stood abruptly. “Really.” She brightened her smile a couple watts. “I’ve decided to move on.”
    “Move on?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal, Mac.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The fact that Jeen dumped me.”
    I felt my bicuspids grinding, but she smiled again. The expression didn’t reach her eyes. Hell, it didn’t get all the way to her nostrils.
    “He probably met someone else.” She shrugged. “I can live with that.”
    Maybe, I thought. But he can’t. Not if I find him.
    “Still . . .” She finished off her drink. “I’ve been thinking.”
    Dark premonition settled into my stomach. Or maybe it was the kale.
    “Maybe I should go to Vegas.”
    “What? Why?”
    “Just because he . . .” She paused and set her glass aside. “Just because we’re not an item doesn’t mean I don’t care about him. I mean, what if he’s hurt?”
    “Then my job’s done,” I said.
    “What?”
    “His job’s probably not done.” Clever cover, if Elaine was a concussed guinea hen. Unfortunately, she was a drop-dead gorgeous girl with a stratospheric IQ and a strangely fragile heart. A heart I couldn’t bear to see broken. What if she went to Vegas? What if she found Solberg? What if he really had lost his last marbles and was shacking up with some bimbo whose cup size was found at the latter end of the alphabet? What then? “Listen,” I said. “Don’t do anything rash, huh? I’m sure everything’s fine.”
    She shrugged.
    “Just give it a few more days. He’ll turn up.”
    “You think so?” Her eyes looked misty.
    “I’m positive,” I