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can’t lose her, not her, she’s the one!
He careened out of the lot with a squeal of rubber. One-way street, they could only turn one way, left.
    Then he saw the red car up ahead, stopped at a traffic signal, and he released a pent-up breath.
Gotcha
.
    The couple in the sports car drove to a supermarket parking lot in a shopping center on the southwest side of town, not far from the college campus. They sat for a few moments in the car. From his vantage point on the far side of the lot Beringer watched the heads glue together. Then the man climbed out, gave the girl a wiggle of his fingers and turned to the car parked next to the 280Z, a silver Lexus. Matched his hair, Beringer thought. Edie and Beringer both watched him drive away.
    She sat there and lit a cigarette. Smoke filled the interior of the car while more smoke from the fire in the hills drifted overhead. Beringer lit up himself, so excited now that his hand shook holding the lighter.
Come on, Edie, you know you’re mine but it can’t be here. Where is it gonna be?
    She made the decision for him, and he was wrong. It wasn’t going to happen out on the highway or in the shadows beside a college dormitory but right here in the parking lot of the Alpha Beta market. The door of the Z popped open and Edie’s long slim legs carried her across the macadam and into the market.
    Appraising the situation quickly, Beringer realized that the location wasn’t as impossible as he had first thought. Risky, but Edie and her teacher had taken the precaution of parking around to the side of the market, away from the lights and activity out front. Didn’t want to be seen together, he concluded, confirming his hunch about the way they had acted in the coffeehouse and afterward. Teacher, if that’s what he was, was on his way home to the wife and kiddies, leaving Edie all worked up and no place to go.
    Beringer drove across the parking lot, easing into the open space next to Edie’s Z that her lover had vacated moments ago. Forcing himself to breathe slowly and deeply, Beringer slid over to the passenger side of his car and eased the door open. Earlier he had taken the routine precaution of disconnecting the interior light that normally went on when a door opened. Now he removed a pair of smooth black leather gloves from the glove compartment. They were extra large but his knuckles were tight against the leather. From a pocket of the London Fog jacket on the seat beside him he removed a leather sleeve holding a row of steel balls the size of large marbles. The sleeve fit comfortably into the pocket of his balled right fist.
    He adjusted the side-view mirror so that he could watch the front of the market. He didn’t have long to wait before he saw the girl coming around the corner and walking toward him, the sweet scissoring of those legs under the miniskirt. The parking lot was clearly illuminated at the front, but someone ought to complain about the side area, Beringer thought. Widely spaced lights didn’t do a damned thing, and the night was dark, overcast not only from cloud cover but also from the pervasive pall of smoke. Not far away another woman alone loaded her groceries from a cart into a station wagon, but she had her back to Beringer and there was no one else close, no one close enough to see what was happening when Edie came near her car and Beringer pushed his passenger door open and stepped out.
    Edie stopped short, maybe a little wary but not alarmed as she took in the appearance of the tall, tanned, well-built man facing her. Beringer smiled easily and backed against the Taurus, offering her room to open her driver’s side door. The courteous gesture calmed any concern she might have had. With a faint smile touching her red lips she moved forward, unlocking her car door with a touch of a remote button on her key chain, ready to slip into the bucket seat.
    Beringer said, “Hi, Edie.”
    Her eyes leaped toward his, startled. “What? Who—?”
    He hit her