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He’d been a Catholic, once, a long tione to confession each Saturday to offer up his pitiful sins to God and dutifully if mechanically make his penance Life, the job, and the disillusionment inflicted by both had erased most of the prayers fro of confession

Forgive me, Father

For his sins, Norman DeLuca put the barrel of his service pistol in his ainst his palate, closed his eyes, and put an end to everything

Chapter Two

"Hey there, pretty lady"

Chris Renshaw looked into the mirrored wall behind the bar A florid, fleshythe flow of people walking to and from the hotel elevators This forced one waitress to quickly jack up her heavily loaded tray before it smashed into the back of his head

First the auction, now thehit on by desperate ht

Once he saw that he had Chris’s attention, the bighi her with his ruot the prettiest red hair I’ve ever seen in my life"

Chris didn’t turn around or respond In his condition he probably would interpret either as an invitation to have sex with her on the bar

Undiscouraged, the bighis hips in a pelvic thrust that al out of the bar’s overhead speakers

Chris’s rusty sense of huyrate in theattack of thecreated a more professional mental snapshot: White, mid-thirties, six foot one, two thirty, silver-brown hair cut in a crew, close-set light blue eyes, trimmed reddish brown mustache, quarter-inch vertical keloid under left jaw Ocher off-the-rack suit, pale green shirt, stainless sports watch, tan belt

Thanks to her excellent visual memory, Chris could pick him from a lineup or, six months fro I don’t have to She picked up her drink and took a sip

"I’ed the nearest empty stool too close to hers and sat His butthi on the floor "Rickety das"

Tension knotted in Chris’s shoulders and neck, and onceto the bar this late at night Six other men had approached her since she’d arrived, and she doubted Dave would be the last That, co the art auction, onlyhunk of bait

Which, naturally, she was

Going for a run tonight before coht have ie city, especially at night She had access to a state-of-the-art workout room back at the field office; Ray Hutchins mentioned it the day Chris had arrived An hour or two on a treadiven Chris too uess, and blao

She didn’t need Dave harassing her while she checked out the place This was her op; she had to evaluate the setup and decide how to continue the on-site surveillance But the bar, which Ray had insisted was a regularplace and drop point for some of the less reputable local dealers, siician co here to broker deals for the art he stole Interpol estiet was at least in his seventies--far too old to blend in with this forty-and-under crowd

Chris knew he’d hate the cheesy atht dead in an out-of-towner sleaze pit like this, would you, Magic Man?

Although she al up and down her body, two inchwor to measure her assets, Chris felt no inclination to leave She could handle the Daves of the world better than the hollowness of the tasteful, expensively furnished apart the operation, She knehen she went back there she’d spend the rest of the night sitting by one of the arched s and staring down at the empty streets of Atlanta, alone with the if-onlys

If only I hadn’t left hio

If only I’d realized how desperate he was

If only he hadn’t written that note