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few minutes while he used the facilities, he quickly accepted.
    “I don’t know about this,” Naomi said as the old guy strode unsteadily away in the direction of the bar. “What can we do in ten minutes anyway?”
    “We don’t have a choice,” Byron reminded her. “We’re out of cash, and we can’t use your cards. You’re on the run too, now. We need money to survive until I can get us somewhere safe, where we can lie low and work out what to do next.” He nodded towards the bar. “Besides, he’ll be gone for hours – probably all day. He’ll be back when his money’s gone or his liver gives out, whichever comes first.”
    “I guess…I guess I thought you wouldn’t have any compunction about just taking what we needed.” She hastily added, “Sorry. It’s just…”
    “I know,” he replied. “Criminal. Kidnapper. On the run from the forces of justice and goodness and flowers and baby bunnies. I guess this is where you find out my terrible secret. I don’t steal unless I have no choice, I don’t rob banks, and I don’t mug little old ladies. I actually have some moral standards.”
    Naomi knew her face must be red enough to clash with her new hair color. She felt horrible. He’d laughed it off, but she thought she’d seen a flash of hurt deep in those unearthly silver-blue eyes of his. But what on earth was she supposed to think? This was a guy so mad, bad and dangerous that the wardens just knew him as Byron. He’d kidnapped her from a secure facility during a prison riot.
    But the way he’d touched her…
    There was a long moment of awkward silence, during which Naomi sold a bunch of carnations to a dapper-looking elderly gentleman, who handed over his money with palsied fingers. She looked around for somewhere to put the bill, and settled for tucking it underneath an enormous tub of rather sad, blowsy-looking roses.
    “Besides,” Byron continued, “it’s much more fun this way, and nobody gets cheated who doesn’t deserve it. Just wait – you’ll see.” He grinned wickedly at her, spread his arms wide, and said, “Laaaadies and gentlemen! Gather round for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get your hands on a dose of Doctor Dash’s medicinal marvel…”
    He went into a line of patter that tripped off his tongue as though he hadn’t spent the last three years being shuttled between solitary confinement and the high-security wing, where he’d snarled at anyone who approached. He’d barely spoken a dozen words during his time at the Dynamic Earth facility, but now he was a showman, dizzying in his roguish charm.
    “Not you, madam,” he said to an elderly lady who’d wandered up and was listening intently to his patter, though her rheumy eyes were a little confused. “A lady as beautiful as you doesn’t need pills or potions.” He handed her a flower from Clem’s stall with a bow and a flourish, and she accepted it with a smiling blush that made her look twenty years younger.
    He resumed his sales pitch, quick-witted and fascinating and so obviously a scoundrel. And to her astonishment, people listened . He wasn’t selling snake-oil, he told them. He wasn’t peddling panaceas or placebos. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, everything I have here today has been rigorously tested and proved to work in clinical trials identical to those demanded by the FDA. And they believed him.
    And what’s more, it was true. Because what he was selling was baby aspirin.
    And his customers, she noticed after watching him for a while, selected themselves. Teenage boys out to impress their girlfriends were gently ushered away with their egos intact. The merely curious were diverted and sent away laughing.
    As for the serious customers…there was a certain kind of person who wanted the berserker strength and superhuman healing abilities he hinted his pills would provide, while never actually saying it. Large, scarred types in expensive-looking suits that must have been hand-tailored to