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palm, hand flexed out. “I guess I can handle having one scar.”
    I take her hand and press her palm to my lips. “I’ll heal it for you.”
    She smiles. “So, I take Nico…”
    “And I’ll take Two-Pints.”
    She frowns. “You’ll take what?”
    I give a short laugh. “The other thug.”
    “Larry.”
    “What? His name is Larry?”
    She grins.
    I think of shotglass-Larry and his disgusted frown. “That’s so wrong. Okay, once we’re on the floor, we take out Larry and Nico. If we’re fast enough, by the time Valac figures out what’s happening, we should be ready to face him.”
    “Or we could use Nico’s gun.”
    My stomach turns inside out. “I… I don’t want to kill Valac.” Words I honestly never thought would come out of my mouth. “Maybe he’ll come with us?”
    Ophelia gives me a look like I just proposed turning Valac into a hamster.
    “It’s possible,” I say. “He might be willing.”
    “Or he might kill us both for asking. You don’t know him like I do. That ship sailed a long, long time ago for Valac.”
    I nod, but I’m not sure I agree. “Well, if we have a gun, he can’t really stop us, can he? And that’s all we need. We can fade into the street and be gone. We’re already out of the east side. We could just go straight from here to—”
    Someone pounds on the door, making us both jump. There’s a muffled sound outside, probably Valac yelling at us through the door.
    “Time’s up,” I say softly. Then I take both her cheeks in my hands and kiss her thoroughly. I take care to smear her bright red lipstick and dig my hands through her hair, mussing it.
    She’s a little breathless when I release her. “Was that really necessary?” she asks.
    I grin and wipe the lipstick from my face with the back of my hand. “Completely.”
    Valac pounds on the door again, harder this time.
    “Coming!” I gently pull Ophelia toward the door. I look at her for a moment before I open it. I want to tell her how I feel. How I want things to be once we’re out. But it’s not the right time.
    I kiss her lightly instead and open the door.

 
     

    I drop Ophelia’s hand as we emerge from the back bedroom. In the office area, a man in a high-end suit stands next to a girl who’s painfully thin: I can count her ribs through her painted-on clothes. She looks like she belongs in a hospital, not caked with skeet-junkie makeup and club-hopping in West Hollywood.
    Her hands have a slight tremor, and her wide blue eyes plead with the man, her head shaking slightly, just like her hands. He’s too slick, and I don’t like the way he’s massaging her shoulder: more like he’s holding her captive than comforting her. His skin is unnaturally smooth, and he reminds me of the high potentials at the LifeLong medical complex: CEO-type, used to being in control, getting his life hits between high-powered meetings. Why is he sneaking into a West Hollywood skeet den to get his hits? And why bother dragging the girl along?
    Valac introduces us, his voice raised slightly to be heard over the thumping downstairs. “Lirium and Ophelia, this is Anna and her manager, Pete. Lirium will be doing the transfer today, Anna, but Ophelia will be assisting him the entire time.” Valac directs that last part to the man, and it takes me a beat to realize that the girl is our payout.
    “That will work fine,” Pete says. Anna’s head shaking goes to a whole different level of tremor. I take a closer look at her fine-featured face, buried under the makeup. The perfectly rounded nose. The long, silky blonde hair that falls to the middle of her back. Her lower lip slides into a pout, and I suddenly recognize her: she’s one of those actors perpetually splashed across the tabloid ezines. I kept seeing her on my screen while I was trapped in my room, recovering from the beating courtesy of Nico and Two-Pints. She was in some kind of trouble. Rehab or paparazzi fights or something that was tarnishing her image. The