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his loaner car with a melodramatic frown. “See you tonight, if not sooner.” He flashed a thumbs-up, continued on toward the hospital doors.
    Macy lowered her hand, expecting the inquisitive look on Taylor’s face. But her friend was too polite to pry. A relief since Macy didn’t particularly want to talk about Elliot; the drive home from the freeway incident had been awkward at best.
    “Employee benefits fair,” she explained to Taylor, ignoring his mention of seeing her tonight. “Open enrollment for the health and retirement plans. Elliot’s going to be here all month meeting with the staff.”
    “Ah, that’s right. I should double-check to make sure my beneficiary changes were implemented.” Taylor toyed with her cookie. “You told me you’ve known Elliot for a long time because he manages some other personal investments? I’m only asking,” she added hastily, “because I was thinking about finding a new company to handle mine. He was recommended to you?”
    “Yes. By a lawyer who was overseeing a financial trust. Sort of an inheritance from . . . an old family friend.” The lie tasted like bile.
    “Like a godparent.”
    “Uh . . .” Macy tried not to grimace. “Not exactly.”
    There was no palatable way to explain the “inheritance.” Her biological father wasn’t dead. It was just that he wishedMacy had never been born. The trust   —her continuing link to Elliot   —was the man’s humiliating payoff. A sum of money Macy never, ever planned to touch.
    “I’m sorry,” Taylor said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
    “No, you didn’t. It’s just . . .” Macy gathered her long hair up in both hands, then let it fall against her shoulders. “Between the whole sniper thing and   —” she stopped herself from mentioning Elliot’s near arrest   —“and this ugly shift, I’m ready for some R & R.”
    “What do you have in mind?”
    “In a perfect world?”
    “Of course.” Taylor lifted the last chunk of her cookie. “I have chocolate in my veins; only perfect will do now.”
    Macy smiled. “Okay. In a perfect world, I’d toss these scrubs in the nearest Dumpster. Grab my workout clothes, punch mitts, and ankle wraps and head to the gym.” She raised her fists like a boxer. “I’d spend an hour with my kickboxing coach, do a little bag work. Sweat this day out of my pores, get those happy endorphins flowing. Then I’d snag some Mikuni sushi takeout, watch a Landmark Adventures video of the John Muir Trail   —”
    “Whoa, girl!” Taylor raised her palm. “Someone needs to seriously help you raise the bar on your concept of ‘perfect.’”
    “Doesn’t matter anyway,” Macy said, surprised and then annoyed by a ridiculous memory of Fletcher Holt. “Perfect’s out. Tonight’s booked up.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Strapless gown, heels, so-nice-to-meet-you chitchat. I’m going with Elliot and his wife to the California CrisisCare gala.” Macy sighed. “Not my kind of evening, but still better than a sniper attack.”

    Fletcher took careful aim, starting high over his target and calculating by experience the perfect trajectory   —he hadn’t achieved marksman status by his good looks. He slowly lowered his arm, closer, closer, and . . .
    “Rrroww!”
    The cat sprang from her twitchy-eager crouch on the apartment’s hardwood floor in a flash of white fluff and leaped at the wall, paws batting at the red laser beam. She chased the light across the wall, head swiveling side to side, yellow eyes wide. Every gyration was heralded by agitated, stuttering chatter.
    “There it goes. Grab it!” Fletcher bounced the laser beam over her gray ears, zigzagged it up the wall. “Look, it’s over there now.” He snorted with laughter at the ensuing antics: scramble, spring, thump, white with gray tabby stripes bouncing off the apartment’s pale-blue walls.
    “Got away   —too bad. That’s enough now. You wore me out.”
    Fletcher clicked off