Free Alone by Francine Pascal Page B

after all.
    â€œThe secret is in the chips,” Fenster was telling Natasha. “It’s not the numbers themselves. It’s about the relationship between them. You follow?”
    â€œI follow you anywhere, cutie pie!” Natasha purred.
    â€œYou don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” Fenster laughed.
    â€œI understand,” she said, giggling.
    â€œI’m warning you, my friend,” Tom said. “She’s smarter than you think.”
    â€œI’ll bet she is,” Fenster crowed, daring to give her hip a nasty pinch. Natasha gave a squeal and pretended to slap his hand away as she laughed, but Tom could see she was dreaming of snapping his idiotic head clean off. “She’s smart, all right. Smart enough to fetch me another drink, right, baby?”
    â€œI get you a drink later,” she told him, grinning as she realized that he suspected nothing. “I better go back to my big man over there before he comes and gets me himself.”
    â€œAw, don’t go—” Now it was Fenster’s turn to pout. His eyes devoured Natasha as she strutted away from him, and he gave her what he surely thought was a secret, just-between-us wink. Which she returned, politely.
    â€œI think we make a good team,” Tom whispered to Natasha, allowing himself a moment of truth between their elaborate lies.
    â€œMaybe you’re right,” she responded. “But you know, we’ll have to let some others in on our secret if we want to take this all the way.”
    Once again, she’d practically read his mind. There was no doubt that they were passionately, emotionally in sync. And no doubt that the heat between them made a forest fire look like a Yule log. Tom wanted Natasha to help him glue together the fractured fragments of his life. Once she helped him get rid of Loki, she could surely help him rediscover how to be a father to Gaia. As soon as they finished this assignment, they’d have to hightail it back to New York City and admit to their daughters that they were in love.

Voices from the Sky

    OKAY. SO. YEAH. THE CRUTCHES HAVE got to go .
    Ed stood on the roof of his building, breathing in the air and trying to convince himself that he really didn’t need the metal contraptions backing up his pathetically weak leg muscles.
    The thing was, no matter what his brain said, his legs were pretty sure it was full of hooey.
    Just last week he had clattered down four flights of stairs with his crutches. He’d needed desperately to get down quickly, with a minimum of fuss. If ever he was going to have some big, TV-movie-style breakthrough, that really would have been a good time. But his thigh muscles had been just as dull and stubborn as always. So why would this be any different?
    Well, his brain said, because now you know Lydia said your legs are fine, so you can just move on from the whole helpless thing .
    Okay. But Lydia might be full of crap. She might be an escaped mental patient posing as a physical therapist to get her jollies . In which case Ed was going to toss out two hundred dollars’ worth of medical equipment and spend the evening scrootching down a flight of stairs on his skinny skate-kid ass for no good reason at all.
    He sighed. It was do-or-die time. If he wasn’t going to toss the crutches, he might as well shove them back onto his arms, return downstairs, and catch another “Real World in San Francisco” rerun.
    But that was too much to bear. No way could he bear to watch Puck go off on that poor guy Pedro again.
    Ed closed his eyes, took a breath, and gave a little “oof” as he hoisted his crutches over the side of the roof. There were a few seconds of silence, and then he heard them crash into the crud-filled Dumpster below.
    There was no getting them back now. He turned around, stepped forward confidently, felt his left knee buckle, and landed smack with his face against the aluminum-colored tar