Absolution
anyone or anywhere.  The past was of no real consequence.
    He lay on top of the bed fully clothed, switched on the bedside lamp and clasped his hands behind his head: let twenty minutes pass before turning the light off, and just lay still, alert, waiting. A half hour later he was contemplating switching the lamp back on and making coffee, when he heard the sound of a key or pick in the lock.
    He smiled in the darkness.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Wayne Miller and Gary Foley were watchers being watched.  As they drove into the lot next to the diner, Andrea Corby parked her beige Nissan on the street fifty yards back and waited.
    Andrea’s plan was to tail them until one of the men was alone, and then take him off guard and force him to talk.  She had absolutely no proof whatsoever, but knew that Miller and Foley had murdered Sam.  On the evening that he went missing, he had been on edge, worried over something, but wouldn’t talk about it.  She had been at Sam’s place; a second-floor apartment on N Cedar Street. And after Andrea had demanded to know what was on his mind for the fifth time, Sam finally opened up and told her that he had to leave town, and that he would get in touch when he could, so that she could join him. He’d just said, “The less you know the better, honey.  I’m in deep shit with some really bad people.  It’s not safe for me to stay here.”  He had given her a hard embrace, kissed her on the lips and then froze at the sound of screeching tires outside.
    Sam had quickly led Andrea through to the bedroom and told her to stay there, to keep quiet, and to take the gym bag that she would find under the false floor in the closet.
    Andrea heard the knock at the door, and more than two voices.  Sam called one of the men Wayne, who told him that he had seriously pissed off Mr. Slater.
    “Check the place, Gary,” she heard the one called Wayne say, and she somehow forced herself to move.  Seconds later the bedroom light was switched on, in the same instant that Andrea closed the bedroom window from the outside and stood tight up to the side of it against the wall on a narrow concrete ledge that ran around the apartment block.
    She was not discovered.  Gary had searched the room, and even walked over to the window and looked out, after checking the closet and kneeling down to look under the bed.
    “There’s no one else here,” Gary said to Wayne after he had subsequently cleared the bathroom.
    “Okay,” Wayne said to Sam, pointing a gun at him.  “Put your hands in your pockets and lead the way down to the car.  If you try anything stupid I’ll put a slug in your spine.”
    When she heard the door close, Andrea climbed back into the bedroom, to rush through to the living room and pull back the drape a quarter inch, to look out and down to where she could see Sam being bundled into the back of a panel truck.  Her immediate thought was to phone the police, but not knowing what trouble Sam was in, she just watched in shock as the vehicle sped off.  The street lights had illuminated the scene, and she had seen and committed to memory the features of both of the men that had abducted Sam.
    Back in the bedroom, Andrea slid open the closet door, threw several pairs of boots and shoes aside and attempted to remove the floor panel, but it was affixed by a screw at each corner.  It took her a few minutes to rummage through drawers in the kitchen, where she found a crosshead screwdriver and was able to remove the panel.  Beneath it, laid on its side, was a large tan-colored gym bag. She unzipped it to find a stack of money: banded bricks of hundred dollar bills. And on the top of the money was a small nickel-plated .22 revolver.
    Andrea took the bag and left Sam’s apartment, to go back to her own place and pack and then drive out to her divorced sister’s house in Pisinimo, having decided not to return to her own apartment until she felt that it was safe to.
    When it was reported that a body had been
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