Free Run by Francine Pascal

patronizing tone. "And as far as the sweating and panting goes, well, that's exactly the kind of reaction a teenage girl would experience after spending hours teasing some poor boy in the backseat of his car!"
    "C'mon, Ella," said George, his face flushing at her inference. "I don't think Gaia --"
    "Oh, please! She's no angel, George, as much as you'd like to believe she is." Was it his imagination, or was there bitterness behind her voice?
    "She's been through a lot," George said, eyeing his wife warily.
    Ella rolled her eyes. "So you've said -- often."
    "I still think I should have talked to her the other night," George said, turning his profile to her and staring out the window. "She's lost so much." George had no idea what it was like to be a teenage girl. He could barely recall what it was like to be a teenage boy. But he knew what it was like to have someone he loved snatched away. He remembered that vividly.
    "We're all she has," George said, finally turning back to Ella. "Maybe she's lonely --"
    "Fine, George," said Ella, sighing. "Gaia's lonely. Not horny -- just lonely. The point is, she probably would have told you to mind your own business, anyway." She paused, then said pointedly, "She's not our child."
    At this George felt a familiar jolt -- a longing.
Our child
. His, theirs, hers. His eyes searched Ella's questioningly.
    "Oh, no." She held up her hand like a traffic cop and laughed again. "Don't even go there, George Niven. We've discussed it." Her other hand went to her firm, flat tummy. "This figure is not to be tampered with." She cleared her throat, then added, "Yet."
    It was the most unconvincing "yet" he'd ever heard in his life. The waiter returned with more coffee for him and a fresh martini for Ella. Three olives this time, instead of two. Clearly he hadn't heard her remark about flat-tummy maintenance. Or maybe he just liked her.
    They sipped their drinks without further conversation until the silence was interrupted by the bleating of her cell phone.
    She flipped it open. "Yes?"
    George watched her near-expressionless face as she listened. After almost two full minutes, she said, "Fine." Then she hung up.
    "Who was that?"
    "No one important," she said, plucking a plump olive from the toothpick in her glass.
    George smiled teasingly. "No one important who?"
    She looked at him. "If you must know, it was Toshi. My feng shui appointment has been canceled for tonight."
    "Oh." George lowered his gaze to the table.
    Toshi, huh? He wanted to believe her, but at the same time he had a very strong hunch that the call had had nothing to do with feng shui.
    If Ella had any hunches regarding his hunch, she didn't show it.
    She went right on drinking her martini.
    And, he imagined, waiting impatiently for five fifteen.

Another West Side Story
    GAIA STUFFED FRANK'S TACKY EEL-skin wallet into the pocket of her faded sweatshirt jacket and shoved the gun into the bottom of the messenger bag. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
    So she'd just conducted her first mugging.
    It was not a good feeling. Gaia kicked at a crumpled-up McDonald's bag as she walked along the cracked sidewalk. She didn't like playing the part of a lowlife, even if the joke was on Frank.
    But it was all about saving Sam. Gaia booted the bag into the sewer. The end justifying the means, and all that. Very Machiavellian.
    So where was the next test? Once again she was left with downtime while Sam was sitting alone somewhere, suffering. Gaia felt her heart squeeze painfully as she remembered Sam's swollen face. She pressed her eyes closed, as if she could block out the image. Could she find fear -- even a tiny shred of it -- if she kept that image in her mind's eye?
    This was torture. Maybe that was the point.
    Trying to distract herself, she pulled out Frank's wallet again and flipped it open. There was a stack of bills inside, and Gaia pulled them out, counting quickly so that no street thugs would spot her and get any ideas. Three