Free Deal to Die For by Les Standiford Page A

whatever it takes.”
    So maybe it was no surprise, then, her rattling on to Rhonda as though she could hear, as though any moment now she might unbend from that frozen attitude, come and curl her arms around her and hold her tight, tell her how much her mother loved her, even if she could never show it, how much it would mean to have Paige at her side…and it didn’t matter one whit to Paige how transparent it all was: her wanting the mother she’d never had, Rhonda playing mother to the child who had never been.
    A soft moan escaped Rhonda’s lips and, though she sagged a bit to the side, her face remained impassive, a mannequin unhinged by a quirk of gravity. As Paige leaned to settle Rhonda back in her chair, the door to the bedroom opened and the nurse looked in.
    “That’s Eddie,” she said to Paige. “He says you’d better be going if you want to make your flight.”
    Paige nodded, her hands still on Rhonda’s frail arms, and the nurse withdrew.
    Paige felt the skin, papery beneath her fingers, sensed that the bones were as fragile as twigs. This woman had been the toughest, fiercest, most fearless creature in a town where standing nose to jaw with men generally meant disaster, or at the very least, banishment, and she had come through forty years of confrontation unscathed. And now look what had happened. Look.
    Incongruously, she found herself smiling, wistfully of course. She drew Rhonda carefully toward her and hugged her, trying not to notice how sharp and angular everything about her body had become. She breathed in a scent of perfume and thought,
That’s good
, and promised herself to mention it to Marvin, how good the nurses were being to Rhonda, how thoughtful.
    “Take care of yourself. I’ll come and see you soon,” she said to Rhonda, her lips at her ear, her hand patting her softly on her back. “I love you.”
    She gave her one last hug. And though she knew it had to be an illusion, some casual shift of inert weight, some chair spring dutifully responding to the laws of physics, she could have sworn she felt Rhonda give the slightest nudge in return.

Chapter 9
    “What the hell do you mean, Driscoll? It’s kidnapping.” Deal stood in the middle of Mrs. Suarez’s living room on the second floor of the fourplex where they lived, a flannel jacket of Isabel’s in one hand, a portable phone in the other. Mrs. Suarez stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her face a ruin. Deal knew she felt responsible, that he should take a moment to reassure her, but he couldn’t. The fact was, he did blame her. Her, the doctor at the clinic, the entire
world
, for that matter. He thrust the phone at Driscoll, another candidate for blame.
    “Call somebody. You’ve got friends.
Someone
will listen to you.”
    Driscoll eyed the phone, glanced up at him wearily. “Sure, I can call. But they’ll just tell me what I’m telling you. Your wife went somewhere with your daughter, there’s no crime in that.” The ex-cop shrugged. “It’s only been a couple of hours. Why don’t we wait and see what happens.”
    Deal stared at him. He could see it in Driscoll’s manner. His old buddy Deal overreacting, going over the edge himself. And maybe it was true. You’re cruising along, life in order, you’re happy, therefore everybody’s happy, you love everyone, everyone loves you, good old Deal. Good Deal. Good boy. Wag your tail around the world. And then, out of nowhere, someone, though not just anyone, but someone you know, and love, and trust, gives you this sudden, vicious kick, something so brutal and inexplicable that the world turns inside out and you wonder how you could have been so mindless and happy in the first place.
    He’d read about people so whacked-out they saw conspiracies in cloud formations, heard trees saying nasty things behind their backs. Bad weather was a personal affront. But this was something different. He had reason to fear. Didn’t he?
    “Driscoll,” he said, struggling to keep