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he came in too high and punctured the box. There was a crunch, a spurt, and the smell of sweetened tomato sauce wafted across the open space. It made Ellen want a hot dog.
    Alerted by the sound of the impact to a loss of inventory, Eric came out of the office and stood with one hand on his hip as he stroked his blond hair nervously with the other. Ellen wrote down the incident, included the time, packed up her notebook and pen, and went back to finish her shift,
after
she microwaved a wiener.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    E llen rode home on the bus with her fingers clenched on the back of the seat ahead of her, watching with suspicion every passenger who boarded, but the ride was uneventful, and she allowed herself a deep sigh of relief when she reached her stop.
    Once she was on her way down the deserted sidewalk to the alley that led to the loft’s door, Ellen’s thoughts returned to Eric and his behavior. It had nothing to do with her, of course, and a few months ago she would have noted it in one of her books, been diverted by the “snapshot,” and forgotten it. But now . . .
    The problem, of course, was that Ellen wasn’t a tattletale. First of all, being invisible required that she never, ever draw attention to herself. Second, revealing anyone’s bad behavior would have been suicide in her unprotected childhood world
if
she had ever been able to stand up in front of “authority” and speak the truth.
    But she couldn’t. Authority hadn’t been reliable or even very fair, and it definitely had never offered her protection from the very things and people she might have ratted out. Her life worked best when she went unnoticed. Nonetheless, it made Ellen squirm to think that doing a dangerous job on drugs could seriously hurt someone.
    Still, facing or calling on
authority
was not in the game plan. Though Ellen knew she had made decisions, had acted on things that had changed her life and, on reflection, others’ lives as well, they had been last-second decisions, spontaneous and unplanned.
Fate.
And Ellen knew that without Temerity, those split-second instincts would have been the beginning and the end of her involvement. That was just the way it was for her.
    Yet,
she thought as she turned the key in the huge door and went to check the mailbox,
maybe there’s another way.
    A different way.

4
    W hen Ellen reached the fourth-floor landing, Temerity was coming out of the apartment with Runt on a leash. Overcome with enthusiasm, as usual, the dog panted and barked. It began with a throaty growl then rose to a shrill high note on the end. The sharp sound echoed painfully in the stairwell.
    â€œRunt, hush! Hi, Ellen,” Temerity said. “I’m taking Runt out to the dog park, want to come? We could pick up some muffins at Tami’s and eat them there.”
    Ellen considered the stairs, thought about the oversize muffins Temerity often brought home from the organic bakery on the corner, and her mouth watered. As much as Ellen had enjoyed the cellophane-wrapped cousins of those muffins over the years, when Temerity had brought her a freshly baked one, still warm, it had been a food revelation.
    It was chilly out this morning, with a gray sky and air roiling with mist, and the thought of a scalding-hot cup of coffee and a muffin straight from the oven was irresistible. Plus, she didn’t like Temerity to take Runt out alone, he was not the brightest of his species. Temerity liked to say that if he was a child, he would be in remedial math.
    â€œSure, let me set my bag inside.” Ellen did so, left the mail on the table, and then came back out, closing the door behind her. “Where’s Justice?” He was usually the one who took Runt for his daily constitutionals.
    Temerity made a huffing noise. “Didn’t come home. Again. He left me a message asking me to do his doggy duty.” The palm side of a long-fingered hand