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his collar, and purposely a bit shaggy. He was clean-shaven, and he’d taken off his sunglasses as the sun started setting. He hoped he was unthreatening. He wanted information.
    “I’ve seen you here,” she said. “You don’t have a job?”
    “I got this dog-walking gig.”
    “How do you make money?” she asked, ignoring that. Uninvited, she perched on the chair opposite him. Suddenly, it seemed, she was curious. Or just didn’t have a place to go.
    “I don’t make much,” he admitted. “How about yourself ? You got a part-time job of some kind? You look like you’re in high school.”
    “How old do you think I am?” She tilted her head and smiled, striking a sexy pose. Almost flirty. Her anger with him long forgotten.
    “Eighteen?” He figured she was sixteen, seventeen maybe.
    “Fifteen going on thirty,” she answered smugly. “Or, so my stepdad says.”
    There were rules to interrogating teenagers, Harrison had learned. Unspoken rules. Rule #1 was pretend you want to talk only about yourself and watch what happened. “I used to work in Portland for a corporation,” he said. “I was a cubicle guy. Go to work at eight. Off at five. Go home, have a drink. Watch the news. Eat dinner. Go to bed.”
    “God, I’d kill myself,” she said.
    “Got me a paycheck.”
    “Sounds mega-boring.”
    “It was.” Okay, he’d never been a cubicle guy. He could lie when he was working, but not when it counted. When it counted, when it involved people he cared about, then the truth was all that mattered. There was no other option.
    She tilted her head and looked at him from beneath deeply mascared lashes. “I go to school at West Coast High. You know it?”
    Give a little information, ignore them, and bam. They couldn’t stop talking about themselves. “The one they built after that upper-end housing development went in?”
    “With the rich kids? Yeah. Only some of ’em aren’t as rich anymore. Their dads lost their jobs.” She shrugged. “Too bad.”
    “What about your dad?”
    “Stepdad,” she corrected. “He still has his job. But my dad lost his. He got fired.”
    “Layoffs.” Harrison made a face.
    “Nope. He got involved with Britt’s mom, and he used to work for Britt’s dad, so that was no good.”
    “Sounds like drama.”
    “Shit, yeah. He can have them all,” she said with sudden fury. “Britt’s a bitch.”
    Harrison wondered if Britt was Britt Berman.
    Chico whined, stood on his back legs, and dug at the girl’s knees, craving more attention. She scratched his ears, then pulled back and brushed off her fingers. “Gross. Dog skin.” She looked at her nails. “I do have a job . . . sort of . . .” A smile snuck across her lips. A sneaky little I’d-love-to-let-you-know-just-how-clever-I-am grin. “We kind of formed our own company, and it’s not boring at all.” She bit her lower lip, really trying hard not to tell him and yet unable to stop.
    “A company,” he repeated with a hint of skepticism.
    She rose to the bait like a breaching whale. “Yeah, a company. Like we work together. We’re an alliance .”
    Alliance came out sounding like she was tasting the word. It clearly wasn’t one she was comfortable with. Something she probably heard watching a reality show. If she hadn’t been able to see, he would’ve dug in his cargo pants pocket for his phone and started recording her. But her angle of sight would allow her to see him switching on the phone, so he had to wait.
    “Who’s ‘we’? You and your family?”
    “God, no.” She threw him a dark look. “My stepdad is a butthead asshole. Worse than my dad. I’m talking about my friends and me.” She glanced around, as if expecting some of those friends to appear.
    “High school kids?”
    “You ask a lot of questions,” she declared, pushing away from the table. “You don’t know what we can do.”
    Just then his phone started vibrating against his leg. He ignored it, but very few people had his number.