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and I know what I suspected
and I chose not to think too hard about it. So, doubly wrong. I wasn't just a
criminal, I was a dishonest one. But that changed."
    "To an honest one?"
    "Yeah, at least, to one that
didn't lie about what sort of scum I'd become, yeah."
    "You're not…." She
couldn't finish the sentence, and blushed, looking down. Fuck. Shut up.
    Her stumbling almost-compliment
made his face relax into a wolfish grin once more, and the tension started to
ease. "Let's get another drink." He looked around for the waitress
but she was just inside the door, flirting with some grey-suited corporate
types. "One moment. Same again?"
    Emily nodded, and held her breath
until he disappeared into the gloom of the café. Once alone, she could give
herself a damn good talking to. Top of the list of warnings was do not fall
for this man. He might be good fantasy-fodder but don't even hint to him that
you know he's hot.
    Falling for the subject of an
article was how it had all gone so wrong before. More than once, in fact, and
she was getting far too old to just stumble through the same old mistakes. Tom
Khalil had been the last in a string of dodgy decisions, but he had been the
worst. He'd played her for a fool and made off with more than her pride. He'd
made off with her professional credibility.
    Oh, and all her research on a big
story, which made him a fat stack of cash, a number of television interviews,
and suddenly he was the go-to spokesperson on a range of social topics.
    But Turner Black wasn't Tom
Khalil.
    No. He is a criminal and he is
a subject and he is a bit too cocky.
    All of those things were just
part of the appeal.
    Dammit.
    She craned her head, shuffling
forward in the seat, and could see him by the counter, laughing. The waitress
was laughing back, standing just that little too close to him. And he's a
player.
    She reminded herself of her
objectives. Get a story, get paid, move her career into new pastures.
    And other aims, too. Go and visit
Kayleigh, for a start. That would be nice. She missed her old friend. Then, find decent men to date. Join an agency and do it seriously. Start planning
for the future. Normal stuff. Easy stuff that everyone else managed without a
hitch.
    Turner came back out, carrying
two brimming coffee cups with ease, not a single drop spilt. "And so
then," he said, as if he hadn't been away, "I carried on committing
crime."
     
    * * * *
     
    The following day dawned misty,
and Turner knew it was going to become bright and clear. It was a day to be out
of Manchester and away from the smog and exhaust fumes. While he'd been in
prison, he'd found a number of escapes, working on the principle that though
they had his body, his mind was still free. When he wasn't in the library or
the gym, he'd spend long hours in the chapel. He wasn't religious but he liked
the calm of the room, and the fact that the various chaplains would bring
decent biscuits in just added to the appeal. He learned how to meditate from a
Buddhist convert, and found he could lose himself in building visualisations
from memories, creating fantasy inner worlds that mirrored the reality he'd
left behind.
    His favourite mental exercises
would recreate places he'd gone camping, both as a kid, and while on leave from
the Army. But now he could go up to the hills once more, for real, and he was
compelled to rediscover his old haunts.
    He threw his solo tent into a
battered old rucksack, with a light sleeping bag, a mat and some food. He used
to take the earliest train out to the Peak District or the Pennines, but his
Range Rover Sport was sitting, unused and unloved, in the lane at the back of
the row of terraces. It smelled of car polish and fake leather; he'd bought it
just before he'd been sent down, and it was like a shining testament to his
pursuit of money. He pushed aside the sudden sick feeling.
    The money had been the impetus,
but what had kept him on that course of crime? His mind flicked back to the
rest of the