Prologue
June Twenty Five
7:00 P.M.
Corrie sat on the edge of her bed, staring into the open and empty night stand
drawer for a long time, regretting that she had not burned the damned book long ago,
burned it and buried the ashes.
Every night Corrie faithfully documented all of her moral failings and locked
them in that drawer. Most diaries are merely private, but hers was positively
incriminating. Barring the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, there was no way that she
could possibly have mislaid the damned thing. Considering what it would cost her if the
book fell into the wrong hands, such carelessness was unthinkable. She closed the drawer
and immediately opened it again, as though the power of her imagination might correct an
error of perception and make the book magically reappear.
It was gone- just GONE!
Impossible
The key had been right where it should be, under the Southwest corner of the bedroom
carpet. The drawer lock showed no signs that it had been forced or deceived.
There was nothing of monetary value missing. The flat screen was still hanging on the
living room wall with the DVD player connected. Her collection of classic films was
intact, still carefully alphabetized and arranged on the shelves with the spines in
perfect alignment. Her Grandmother’s crystal and silverware were undisturbed. Her Mother’s
wedding ring still languished in the jewelry box. The spare house key was still under the
fake rock by the hydrangea. If the book had been stolen, the culprit was no ordinary
burglar.
The light outside was fading when the bedside phone startled her from her daze.
“Hello?”
No one answered her at first, and Corrie was struck by a dreadful certainty. On the
other end of the line a woman chuckled.
“You have been a very bad girl, Corrie.”
Chapter One
June Twenty Five
10:00 P.M.
Malone’s Bar and Grill squatted near the interstate on the fringes of an industrial
park. It was a converted warehouse clad with corrugated steel and painted a hideous shade
of purple. The front wall was embossed with dents left by departing patrons who could no
longer find reverse. A gravel parking lot surrounded it, bordered by weeds and filled with
rusty pickups parked haphazardly. The cluster of Harleys huddled near the rear door
appeared thrown together and hard used, almost piratical. Even standing outside, Corrie
could feel the throb of rock and roll played badly.
This is the place to be, she thought, if you are looking for a fight on a Saturday
night.
When she opened the door, noise and smoke assaulted her. Far to the rear, an all girl
band was screaming incoherent lyrics. Someone had painted graffiti over the black wall
behind them. The message was proclaimed in florescent red block letters that had dripped
down the wall like glowing blood.
“Biker Gurls Rule!!”
The place was packed with women dressed in leather and denim, studded arm bands and
cabalistic jewelry; women with barbaric piercings and tattoos; women with spiked hair dyed
unnatural colors, crew cut women, and women shorn. They shouted endearments, bellowed
laughter, and snarled challenges. They leaned together to whisper obscenities while they
danced. They groped each other in dim corners. Corrie stood in the doorway wearing a
pastel pantsuit and clutching her purse like a missionary amid savages.
A Eurasian girl sat alone in a booth watching Corrie with wry amusement. She raised a
beer bottle in greeting and crooked a talon. Corrie looked left and right to be sure that
the summons was not for someone else. The girl frowned with irritation, snapped her
fingers and beckoned more urgently.
Yes! You!
As Corrie made her way hesitantly across the floor, the band finished its set. A smatter
of catcalls and shrill whistles applauded them. In the moment of relative quiet that
followed, Corrie stopped in front of the booth and just stood there while the two women
sized each other up.
The Eurasian was petite and fine featured. Her mass of black hair had been braided into
a thick rope that draped over the collar of her biker jacket, which had been unzipped just
enough to reveal a bit of bare golden cleavage. Impudence and cunning glittered in her
dark almond eyes.
“Are you the one who called me?” asked Corrie.
How will I know you? Corrie had asked the voice on the phone.
The woman had laughed at that.
Don’t worry. I will know you.
“Have a seat,” said the girl in leather. “Take a load off.”
Corrie thought of refusing, or at least demanding an answer to her question first, but
irritating this woman might be a bad negotiating tactic at best, and physically hazardous
at worst.
She sat down. “I think that you have something that belongs to me.”
The girl nodded, looking almost regretful, and took a long pull on her bottle. “Yeah, I
do. Want a brewski?”
Corrie was confused by this girl’s behavior. She had come prepared for some sort of ugly
confrontation, and was ready to trade threat for threat, or failing at that, to surrender
as little of her cash and self respect as possible. This felt more like some twisted
version of a social encounter, or (she glanced quickly around at the roiling mass of women
and shivered) a bad blind date.
“I’m afraid that blackmailing me isn’t likely to profit you anything,” Corrie said. “I’m
not a wealthy woman.”
The Eurasian grinned. “I know all about that. I read the book on you, remember?”
Corrie sat up a little straighter. She had allowed herself to forget. If she had read
everything that was in the diary, this woman knew more about Corrie than anyone else ever
had, even Mr. Baron. It made her dangerous in many ways.
Yet there was nothing in the girl’s manner that suggested an evil intent. She didn’t
even raise an ironic eyebrow to drive her point home. Instead she grabbed a passing
barmaid by the sleeve and ordered two more beers.
“Then what do you want from me?” Corrie asked when the waitress was out of earshot.
The Eurasian leaned back in her chair with her hands folded behind her neck and shook
her head sadly. “You’re doing this all wrong, sweetbuns.”
She lunged forward suddenly, bringing the front legs of her chair back down with a bang
and thrust out her hand so quickly that Corrie flinched.
“Hi!” she chirped in a hearty falsetto, “I’m Corrie Albertson. And your name is...?” Her
smile was comically broad and counterfeit, the diction and cadence of her speech was a
perfect imitation of Corrie’s, but the mimicry had an ironic, insincere tenor.
Is she mocking me?
Corrie blushed, realizing that her attention had been focused on securing her property
and not on charming the woman who had taken it. She had deliberately startled Corrie to
pay her back for being so rude. Corrie reminded herself to be more diplomatic, and
summoned a laugh. Then she cut the laugh short when she realized that she was
demonstrating the same false amiability that the biker had just parodied.
She just met me and has already taken my measure.
How did she appear in the regard of an outlaw biker? The very habits that gave Corrie
respectability in the straight world made her a figure of contempt and derision in this
woman’s eyes. Worse than that, she had to know that it was all a lie, that no amount of
good grooming or correct conduct could disguise Corrie or erase the terrible choices she
had made. The truth was written in her diary.
“I’m sorry. I forgot to ask what was your name?” Even as she asked, she realized that a
blackmailer wasn’t likely to want herself known. Yet the woman answered without any
hesitation.
“I was Miko, but now my friends call me Hung Low.” She was still holding out her hand.
Corrie took it warily and briefly. “Miko, I would very much like to have my diary
back.”
Miko laughed. “That goes without saying, but the real question is how far you are
willing to go to get it?”
The waitress showed up and set the beers on the table. Miko held Corrie’s eyes,
grinning, while she held up a bouquet of money to pay for the drinks. Corrie made a mental
note of that. An experienced blackmailer would have made Corrie buy, if only to establish
psychological control of the intended victim. Miko had other motives. This wasn’t about
money.
Corrie bristled. “I suppose you want the same thing that he did.” She waved vaguely
across the table top, as though the absent diary were sitting beside them. In a sense, it
was.
The beer was frosty. Corrie held Miko’s eyes warily as she took a long pull on the
bottle, wondering if it had been a mistake to even plant the seed of suggestion, wondering
whether sobriety would be an asset or a liability if Miko read her careless remark as a
proposition and started acting on that assumption. Corrie had already given herself
respect away to Mr. Baron. Having sex with another woman was just one more rung on the
long ladder leading down. She wondered if Miko liked to play the same kind of cruel games
that he enjoyed, or if she practiced even more perverse diversions. Seriously considering
the possibilities made Corrie tremble slightly, even as it made her damp.
Could I? With another woman? With her?
“What fun would that be?” snorted Miko. “I can get all the wet pussy I want already.
There isn’t any challenge in that.”
Her eyes smoldered briefly as they flickered over the front of Corrie’s blazer. “I
wouldn’t kick you out of my bed though.”
“Then what?” Corrie could feel her control slipping. Talk about inscrutable! “I need
that book!”
“What do you need your fucking book for?” Miko’s query was no mere bully’s taunt. It
seemed an earnest question. “Maybe what you really need is to throw the fucking thing
away.”
Corrie was abruptly aware that someone was standing behind her. She could actually feel
a pair of eyes intent on her back, and knew a moment of alarm, suspecting that the stolen
diary had been merely bait to bring her into this place. Perhaps Mr. Baron had decided
that she had become a liability or threat and had hired professional killers to dispose of
his problem. As legal evidence, the diary was as dangerous to him as it was to Corrie. Was
this woman simply toying with her before the hammer fell?
“Are we fishing new waters these days, Hung?” asked a woman’s voice. It was a cultured
voice, speaking with the trace of an accent that Corrie could not identify. She sounded
amused.
Corrie turned and looked at the source.
The woman was tall, with the languid unconscious grace of a dancer and the fine
features of a born aristocrat. Her hair had been bleached white and cut very short. She
wore black leather head to toe, not the cowhide armor of a biker, but a supple cat suit
that displayed her lean form to advantage. Her riding boots were high at the heel and
pointed at the toe. Her belt was a length of heavy chromed chain. The buckle was a silver
skull.
Corrie twisted around in her seat to look from the newcomer to Miko as she tried to read
this new situation. Was this woman a jealous lover? Miko did look a bit uncomfortable.
Corrie realized that this development might somehow be turned to her advantage.
“I was just taking care of some business, Sophie.” Miko said with a studied casualness
that wasn’t lost on Corrie.
“I think that there is a misunderstanding. I didn’t come in here looking for a hook up.”
Corrie was facing Sophie now, recognizing that the center of power had shifted in this
room. The arrival of this newcomer had just transformed the cocky little biker chick into
a guilty child.
“Even if I were, Miko just isn’t my type.”
Corrie had surprised herself by jumping into the middle of this conversation and
confronting Sophie directly, but she felt that there was nothing to be gained by holding
back
“She just has something that belongs to me, and I was asking her to return it.”
A beat of silence followed, while Corrie swallowed her heart back down and wondered how
much trouble she had just gotten herself into. Sophie’s brow knit with anger, but it was
not aimed at Corrie.
“Hung! You haven’t been burgling again have you? I keep telling you that you’re going to
get yourself into real trouble one of these days!”
Miko looked a bit sheepish. “Nobody’s getting hurt here.”
Sophie wheeled on Corrie. “What did she take this time?” Sophie was angry, but Corrie
sensed that it was anger under control. This woman might be capable of violence, but she
would not wield it carelessly or direct it at the wrong target. If anything, this iron
self control only made her more intimidating.
“Just my diary,” Corrie’s voice sounded very small to her.
Sophie put her hands on her hips and glared at Miko. Her voice dropped an octave, down
into the indignant mother range.
“Oh Hung! That’s just wrong!”
When she turned again to Corrie, her expression had softened. “You have to understand
what’s really going on here. Hung is like some silly Magpie. She gets off on poking around
other people’s stuff and picking up any shiny things that catch her eye. Usually it’s just
crap nobody cares about or even misses.”
She aimed her glare at Miko again. “But sometimes she goes a bit too far.”
“There doesn’t have to be a problem here,” Corrie said carefully. “I’m not making any
accusations. I just want to get my property back and go home.”
Around them, Corrie could see that the other women in the room were starting to gather
and circle their table, sensing that trouble might be brewing. This clandestine meeting
was in danger of becoming extremely public.
Sophie glanced around quickly, assessing the situation and reassuring Corrie with a
wink.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “We speak their language.”
Responding to Sophie’s unspoken cue, it was Miko who challenged the gawkers. Raising
her voice, she snapped. “Hey! You see anybody dancing on this table here? Go bump pussies
or somethin’, awright?”
There we a few catcalls, but the crowd melted away. It was apparent to Corrie that
Sophie and Miko commanded respect, at least in this place.
“Hung, I think you had better give Miss Sunshine her memoirs and let her slip out the
door before these coyotes decide to gang bang her on the pool table,” muttered Sophie.
Miko looked from Sophie to Corrie. She didn’t seem angry with Corrie for exposing her.
In fact, she appeared genuinely proud of Corrie for acting aggressively in her own
defense. It almost seemed as though Miko had devised this whole encounter as a sort of
test that Corrie had just passed. Money wasn’t Miko’s motive; neither was something as
mundane as blackmail. The woman was too complicated for that.
Corrie realized that Sophie and Miko did share an emotional bond. Sophie’s anger over
Miko’s thievery was the measure of her concern. She just wanted to keep her friend out of
trouble.
“I don’t actually have it here,” Miko confessed ruefully.
“Then why did you waste...” Sophie broke off and fixed an inquisitive eye on Corrie. It
took Corrie a moment to understand the reason for the pause.
“Corrie Albertson?” She started to extend her hand, but feared their ridicule and just
nodded instead, hoping that she wasn’t being hopelessly uncool.
Sophie noted the moment of indecision and grabbed Corrie’s hand with a warm smile.
“Sophie Brewster.” Then she wheeled on Miko again.
“Why are you wasting Corrie’s time?” Sophie demanded. “Why bring her all the way out
here for nothing?”
“I just wanted to fuck with her mind a little,” said Miko. “Anyway there are some
special circumstances,”
Sophie muttered, “There damn well better be.”
But her anger was already evaporating, replaced by curiosity. Corrie sensed that she had
suddenly become a very interesting study for Sophie. The woman banged her hip rudely
against the Asian girl as she sat down beside her, a reminder to Miko that she wasn’t
entirely forgiven yet, but Sophie’s attention was focused entirely on Corrie, and when she
spoke she wore a grin of anticipation.
“So let’s talk about those special circumstances,” She purred.
| 
