She threw one leg over the windowsill and bent practically in half in order to get her head and shoulders through. When they cleared the opening, she launched herself out and dropped to the ground.

She landed on her shoulder. A spike of pain took her breath. Her left arm went numb and useless. She rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up with her right arm. After taking a few staggering steps to regain her balance, she took off in a sprint. Behind her she heard the bathroom door crashing open.

A blast from a shotgun deafened her and sheared off an upper branch of a young mesquite tree. She kept running. It fired again, striking a boulder and creating shrapnel that struck her legs like darts.

How many misses would they get before hitting her?

There were no city lights, only a sliver of moon. The darkness made her a more difficult target, but it also prevented her from seeing more than a few feet ahead of her. She ran blindly, stumbling over rocks, scrub brush, and uneven ground.

Please, please, please.

Then without warning, the earth gave out beneath her. She pitched forward, grabbing hold of nothing but air. She was helpless to catch herself before smashing into the ground and rolling, sliding, falling.

Chapter 1

Six days earlier

Trapper was in a virtual coma when the knocking started.

“Bloody hell,” he mumbled into the throw pillow beneath his head. His face would bear the imprint of the upholstery when he got up. If he got up. Right now, he had no intention of moving, not even to open his eyes.

The knocking might have been part of a dream. Maybe a construction worker somewhere in the building was tapping the walls in search of studs. An urban woodpecker? Whatever. If he ignored the noise, maybe it would go away.

But after fifteen seconds of blessed silence, there came another knock-knock. Trapper croaked, “I’m closed. Come back later.”

The next three knocks were insistent.

Swearing, he rolled onto his back, sailed the drool-damp pillow across the office, and laid his forearm over his eyes to block the daylight. The window blinds were only partially open, but those cheerful, skinny strips of sunshine made his eyeballs throb.

Keeping one eye closed, he eased his feet off the sofa and onto the floor. When he stood, he stumbled over his discarded boots. His big toe sent his cell phone sliding across the floor and underneath a chair. If he bent down that far, he doubted his ability to return upright, so he left his phone where it was.

It wasn’t like it rang all that often anyway.

Holding the heel of his hand against his pounding temple, and with one eye remaining closed, he managed to reach the other side of his office without bumping into the bottom drawer of the metal file cabinet. For no reason he could remember, it was standing open.

Through the frosted glass upper half of the door, he made out a form just as it raised its fist to knock again. To prevent the further agony that would induce, Trapper flipped the lock and opened the door a crack.

He sized her up within two seconds. “You’ve got the wrong office. One flight up. First door to the right off the elevator.”

He was about to shut the door when she said, “John Trapper?”

Shit. Had he forgotten an appointment? He scratched the top of his head, where his hair hurt down to the follicles. “What time is it?”

“Twelve fifteen.”

“What day?”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Monday.”

He looked her up and down and came back to her face. “Who are you?”

“Kerra Bailey.”

The name didn’t ring any bells, but it would be hard to hear them over the jackhammer inside his skull. “Look, if it’s about the parking meter—”

“The one in front of the building? The one that’s been flattened?”

“I’ll pay to have it replaced. I’ll cover any other damages. I would have left a note to that effect, but I didn’t have anything on me to write—”

“I’m not here about the parking meter.”

“Oh. Hmm. Did we have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Well, now’s not a good time for me, Ms. …” He went blank.

“Bailey.” She said that in the same impatient tone in which she’d said Monday.

“Right. Ms. Bailey. Call me, and we’ll schedule—”

“It’s important that I talk to you sooner rather than later. May I come in?” She gestured at the door, which Trapper had kept open only a few inches.

A woman who looked like her, he hated turning down for anything. But, hell. His head felt as dense as a bowling ball. His shirt was unbuttoned, the tail hanging loose. He hoped his fly was zipped, but in case it wasn’t, he didn’t risk calling attention to it by checking. His breath would stop a clock.

He glanced behind him at the disarray: suit jacket and tie slung over the back of a chair; boots in front of the sofa, one upright, the other lying on its side; one black sock draped over the armrest, the other sock God only knew where; an empty Dom bottle precariously close to rolling off the corner of his desk.

He needed a shower. He really needed to pee.

But he also really, really needed clients, and she had “money” written all over her. Her handbag, literally so. It was the size of a small suitcase and covered in designer initials. Even if she had been looking for the tax attorney on the next floor up, she would have been slumming.

Besides, when had he ever been known to say no to a lady in distress?

He stepped back and opened the door, motioning her toward the two straight chairs facing his desk. He kicked the file cabinet drawer shut with his heel and still got to his desk ahead of her in time to relocate an empty but smelly Chinese food carton and the latest issue of Maxim. He’d ranked the cover shot among his top ten faves, but she might take exception to that much areola.

She sat in one chair and placed her bag in the other. As he rounded the desk, he buttoned the middle button of his shirt and ran a hand across his mouth and chin to check for remaining drool.

As he dropped into his desk chair, he caught her looking at the gravity-defying champagne bottle. He rescued it from the corner of the desk and set it gently in the trash can to avoid a clatter. “Buddy of mine got married.”

“Last night?”

“Saturday afternoon.”

Her eyebrow arched. “It must have been some wedding.”

He shrugged, then leaned back in his chair. “Who recommended me?”

“No one. I got the address off your website.”

Trapper had forgotten he even had one. He’d paid a college kid seventy-five bucks to do whatever it was you do to get a web-site online. That was the last he’d thought of it. This was the first client it had yielded.

She looked like she could afford much better.

“I apologize for showing up without an appointment,” she said. “I tried calling you several times this morning, but kept getting your voice mail.”

Trapper shot a look toward the chair his phone had slid underneath. “I silenced my phone for the wedding. Guess I forgot to turn it back on.” As discreetly as possible, he shifted in his chair in a vain attempt to give his bladder some breathing room.

“Well, it’s sooner rather than later, Ms. Bailey. You said it was important, but not important enough for you to make an appointment. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like for you to intervene on my behalf and convince your father to grant me an interview.”

He would have said Come again? or Pardon? or I didn’t quite catch that, but she had articulated perfectly, so what he said was, “Is this a fucking joke?”

“No.”

“Seriously, who put you up to this?”

“No one, Mr. Trapper.”

“Just plain Trapper is fine, but it doesn’t matter what you call me because we don’t have anything else to say to each other.” He stood up and headed for the door.

“You haven’t even heard me out.”

“Yeah. I have. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta take a piss and then I’ve got a hangover to sleep off. Close the door on your way out. This neighborhood, I hope your car’s still there when you get back to it.”

He stalked out in bare feet and went down the drab hallway to the men’s room. He used the urinal then went over to the sink and looked at himself in the cloudy, cracked mirror above it. A pile of dog shit had nothing on him.