Once again, it was tempting to scoop it all into her pocket-there was enough here to keep her from having to score again for a couple-three years, maybe longer. But, no. Better to stick with what had kept her out of jail for all this time; greed was a killer. She sighed and closed the jewelry box.
As she turned to leave, she noticed the corner of a box jutting out from under the bed. A bed with black silk sheets on it, she also noticed, and neatly made.
She stopped, bent, and pulled the box from under the bed. It was long, wide, and fairly flat, as big as a large suitcase, if shallower. She opened the box.
It was full of thousand dollar bills, stacked in rows, fifteen across and eight down, and the bills were loose and mostly used.
Holy s.h.i.t!
She picked up one stack, her breath coming faster, and counted it. Then another stack. A third. The first had thirty, the second twenty-eight, the third, thirty-three. Nonsequentially numbered.
She did some fast math. A hundred and twenty stacks, say thirty bills in each stack on average.
Three million six hundred thousand dollars.
Oh, man!
What was St. Johns doing with this much cash under his bed?
Darla stared at the cash. If she took one or two bills from each stack, he might not even notice! She could take a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and unless he did a count, he wouldn"t be able to tell. And even if he did that, she was pretty sure this wasn"t money he wanted anybody to know about-it had the smell of something not quite legal.
Of course, she couldn"t just walk into a bank and plunk down a couple hundred thousand-dollar bills and expect that to fly without raising questions; but Harry knew people who could move big notes without batting an eye and he"d take ten or fifteen percent, no more than that.
Two bills from each stack. Two hunded and forty thousand dollars, she could give Harry the two-carat blue-white for his cut and-no, she decided, she"d put all that back. No point in risking this much for petty cash. With two hundred grand in her pocket, she could take a long d.a.m.n time before she had to make another score.
Yes. That"s how she would do it. Put the coins and gems back, pack a quarter of a million into her pockets-no more carrying it in purses, thank you very much-and walk away with a big smile under her Glamor.
Darla drove toward her place, using a long and winding route, to make sure she wasn"t followed. She was almost home when she heard the sound of a police siren. She looked into the rearview mirror and saw a plain, tan Crown Victoria with a blue light flashing on the dashboard behind her.
"Oh, s.h.i.t!" she said. An icy wave washed over her, as if she"d been drenched in liquid nitrogen, turning her stiff with fear.
She pulled to the curb. This wasn"t a traffic stop.
A tall, heavyset, balding man alighted from the car. He wore a cheap, badly wrinkled suit and brown shoes, and a tie that failed to reach his belt. Might as well have had a neon sign over his head flashing out the word "Cop!"
He walked to her driver"s door.
"Would you step out of the car, please?"
"What"s the trouble? Was I speeding?"
"No, lady, I"m a detective, I don"t do traffic tickets. Out here, please, and keep your hands where I can see them."
Dead. She was dead. She had considered it over the years, what she would do if she was ever caught, but it had never seemed real to her, it had been so theoretical.
What was she going to do?
The Glamor.
Of course! In her panicked fear, she had forgotten she had a perfect weapon. She"d touch him, and when the moment was right, she"d distract him, change, and that would be that!
The woman? she"d say, when he turned around and saw an old man there, She went that way, she was running!
Okay, she"d be okay, she could do this. He"d have to pat her down, and that would be enough, his hands on her would be fine. A touch was a touch.
"Over on the sidewalk, please," he said.
She obeyed.
"What did I do?" she asked.
"You don"t need me to tell you that. Step in there, please."
He pointed to a gate that led to what looked like a small garden.
"Excuse me?"
"We don"t want to do this out here."
"Do what out here?!"
The panic she"d felt came back. What was going on?
"Open the gate, please."
She did. He shut the wrought iron behind them. "Wow, look at that," he said.
She turned. "Wh-what?"
When she turned back to look at the cop, he was gone.
In his place was an old woman.
Darla frowned. She knew this woman from somewere... ah, it was the old lady on the MAX train...
"Or this?" the old woman said, in a decidedly masculine voice.
The woman shimmered, and in a moment, Darla found herself looking at the cab driver who had taken her home from St. Johns- And then, like a strobe light blinking on and off, the cab driver became the teenager who had stolen her purse, the good-looking guy she"d seen in Starbucks, and finally, St. Johns.
Blink, blink, blink.
Darla was too stunned to speak.
"Are we having fun yet?" he asked.
She realized her mouth was open. She closed it.
He chuckled. "Sorry. I couldn"t resist."
The meaning of it hit her. "You-you"re like me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Yep. What you see isn"t what you get, necessarily."
He laughed again. "I don"t rob houses. My ambition is a little bigger than that, but I do okay. As you noticed when you spotted my cash box. How much did you take, by the way?"
"Two bills from each stack."
"Smart. I like bright women."
"Why are you-what-?"
"Well, I"ve been watching you for a while, Darla. Far as I can tell, you and I are the only two of our kind. I"d propose a... partnership."
"Partnership?"
"Well, more than that, maybe. I mean, you are gorgeous and careful and clever, but there there are some advantages to what we can do together. Between the two of us, we could do bigger and better things than either of us can do alone. Imagine how much easier it would be be if we could be a couple that looked like anybody we wanted?"
She considered it. Yes. That would be something.
"Plus, there are some other perks."
He shimmered and turned into a studly young movie star that Darla much admired.
"Or maybe... this?" He morphed into another young man, this one a match to a well-known rock star.
"We have a world of choice to offer each other, don"t we?" He shimmered again and reclaimed St. Johns. "Not that I think I would get bored with you as you stand. You are stunning, you know, but you also have a kind of variety to offer no other woman does."
She smiled back at him. "Even though I stole your money?"
"Because you stole my money. What do you think?"
She found herself nodding. Yes. There was an attraction, no question, and if she got tired of looking at him?
Well, he could fix that in an instant.
Because n.o.body was immune to Glamor...
About the Authors.
Ilsa J. Bick is a psychiatrist as well as the author of award-winning stories, e-books, and novellas and bestselling novels set in the Star Trek and MechWarrior: Dark Age universes. The Jason Saunders companion story, "The Key," first appeared on SCIFI.Com ( and was selected as a Distinguished Mystery Story in The Best American Mystery Stories, 2005, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. She is currently at work on the paranormal thriller Satan"s Skin and an as-yet unt.i.tled paranormal featuring the continuing adventures of Detective Jason Saunders and Dr. Sarah Wylde. She lives in Wisconsin with her family and other a.s.sorted vermin.
Randall N. Bills has worked as the line developer and continuity editor for the Cla.s.sic BattleTech/MechWarrior universe for ten years. In addition to writing eight novels set in this universe, he"s led the publication of over fifty products. He"s also published in the Star Fleet Corps of Engineers: Aftermath anthology, as well as a new line of young adult fiction under the Adventure Boys brand. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, three children, and a snake, and when he"s not writing or developing rules, he"s playing board games with friends and family, listening to music, reading, or blowing things up on the Xbox.
Once there was a guy named Joe Edwards who really wanted to write. He followed his stories to the page, and here he is now. When he"s not writing, Edwards raises Irish wolfhounds and restores antique shotguns somewhere in the Rocky Mountain states.
Robert T. Jeschonek has written science fiction and fantasy stories for Postscripts, Abyss & Apex, Loyalhanna Review, and other publications. His Star Trek fiction has appeared in New Frontier: No Limits, S.C.E.: The Cleanup, Voyager: Distant Sh.o.r.es, and Strange New Worlds, volumes III, V, and VI. His story "Our Million-Year Mission" won the grand prize in the Strange New Worlds VI contest. Robert has also written for War, Commercial Suicide, Dead by Dawn Quarterly, and other comic books. Visit him on line at www.robertjeschonek.com.
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His recent novels are Madness of Flowers from Night Shade Books and Escapement from Tor Books. Jay is the winner of the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his blog at jlake.com.
Steven Mohan, Jr., lives in Pueblo, Colorado, with his wife and three children and, surprisingly, no cats. When not writing he works as a manufacturing engineer. His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Polyphony, and Paradox, among other places. His short stories have won honorable mention in The Year"s Best Science Fiction and The Year"s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Devon Monk lives in Oregon with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Mojo. Her first novel, Magic to the Bone, is out now, and her short stories can be found in a variety of genre magazines and anthologies, including Rotten Relations, Maiden, Matron, Crone, Fantasy Gone Wrong, Year"s Best Fantasy #2, and Better Off Undead. When not writing, she is either drinking coffee, knitting toys, or wondering why the dog is looking at her so strangely. For more on Devon, go to www.devonmonk.com.
Peter Orullian has recently been published in other fine DAW anthologies, as well as Orson Scott Card"s Intergalactic Medicine Show. For grocery money, he works at Microsoft in the Xbox division. And while he desperately hopes to make a living writing, his other abiding pa.s.sion is music; Peter recently returned from a European tour with a successful hard rock band. He has a New York agent currently shopping one of his novels, which he hopes allows him to retire from Microsoft and sing and write until everything bleeds.
Steve Perry has written scores of novels, animated teleplays, and short stories, along with a couple of spec movie scripts. A number of his books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list, and he is the coauthor, with Michael Reaves, of the recent block-buster Star Wars novel Death Star.
Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading short fiction award winner, living or dead, in science fiction history. He is the author of more than fifty novels, almost two hundred stories, and two screenplays, and he has edited close to fifty anthologies. He has won five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the USA, France, j.a.pan, Spain, Croatia, and Poland. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch has sold novels in several different genres under many different names. Her most current Rusch novel is Duplicate Effort: A Retrieval Artist Novel. The Retrieval Artist novels are stand-alone mysteries set in a science fiction world. She"s won the Endeavor Award for that series. Her writing has received dozens of award nominations as well as several actual awards, from science fiction"s Hugo to the Prix Imagainare, a French fantasy award for best short fiction. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.
Jason Schmetzer"s work has appeared in both print and electronic form, most recently in short fiction for Catalyst Game Labs. He"s been writing for more than ten years and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Creative Writing and Fiction. When he"s not writing, he teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Ivy Tech State Community College. He lives with his daughter Nora in southern Indiana.
Dean Wesley Smith is the bestselling author of over eighty novels under various names. He has published over a hundred short stories and has been nominated for just about every award in science fiction and fantasy and horror; he has even won a few of them. He is the former editor and publisher of Pulphouse Publishing. His most recent novel in science fiction is All Eve"s Hallows. He is currently writing thrillers under another name.
Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning author, game and computer game designer, and poet whose first novel, Warrior: En Garde, was published in 1988. Since then, he has written forty-one other novels, including eight New York Times bestselling novels in the Star Wars line, of which X-Wing: Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi are the best known. Mike lives in Arizona and in his spare time spends early mornings at Starbucks, collects toy soldiers and old radio shows, plays indoor soccer, rides his bike, and listens to Irish music in the finer pubs in the Phoenix area. His website is www.stormwolf.com.
Leslie Claire Walker grew up among the darkly magical, lush bayous and urban jungles of the Texas Gulf Coast. These days she lives in Houston with a.s.sorted animal and plant companions and two harps. Her fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Chiaroscuro, and two previous DAW Books anthologies-Hags, Sirens and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy and Cosmic c.o.c.ktails. She is hard at work on her current novel about a teenage runaway and a rock star who ride the skies with the Wild Hunt on Halloween night. Catch up with her at M. Weldon has written short stories for several anthologies, as well as novellas published in shared universe fields such as Star Trek and BattleTech. Her first Shadowrun book, Triptych, will be released in April 2009, and Phantasm, the third book in the Zoe Martinque series, will be released in June 2009.
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