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looking away, courteously pretending she hadn’t been privy to his conversation. “I’m sorry. You must be busy, and I have to get home.”
    “Where’s your car, then? I’ll walk you to it.”
    “I didn’t drive tonight,” she said. She flushed. “I had a business appointment, and I thought I might bestopping somewhere on the way home, so I decided not to drive. I, uh, I don’t drink and drive.”
    “I didn’t see you drinking.”
    “I wasn’t, but I might have been. Long story. Anyway, I’m sorry, but I really do have to get home now.”
    “I’ll take you. My car is just down the Strip.”
    “No, no, really. I’m in a hurry, and it’s easier just to hail a cab. But thank you. Thank you so much.”
    What the hell could he do? Insist? He didn’t have the right.
    “You could be in danger,” he said. What a crock.
    She smiled, knowing it was a line.
    “Thanks. I’ll be okay.”
    He kept his gaze locked on the crystalline blue of her eyes as he reached into his pocket for his card. “Please, call me if you need anything.”
    She smiled without glancing at it. “Wolf. Ute?” she asked. “Local tribe? Distant tribe? Hell, Erie? Cherokee? Apache?”
    He grinned. “Paiute,” he informed her, then offered her an awkward grin. “All right, so…Sparhawk? Ute, Apache, Nez Perce—stage name?”
    “Lakota Sioux, my great-great-grandfather. I’m a real all-American mix,” she replied, sounding amused. They stared at each other for another moment. Then she awkwardly took a step away. “I really have to go. Thank you again.” She hesitated. “You knew him?”
    He nodded.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I’m always sorry if a man is dead. But he wasn’t a close friend.”
    “Oh.”
    He frowned. “You didn’t cash in your chips, did you? No time, I guess. I forgot about them in the mass confusion.”
    She shook her head. “So did I. I have them, though. I can cash them tomorrow.”
    “Those chips represent a lot of money. You could be mugged,” he told her.
    She laughed. “A cabdriver isn’t going to know about my chips,” she assured him. “I’m okay, honestly. I’m a big girl. I grew up out here. I carry pepper spray. I’ll be all right. I promise.”
    He saw a taxi. He wondered about the grandfather she had mentioned. Was he ill and waiting for her?
    Dillon stepped out to the curb and whistled, flagging down the approaching cab. He saw her into it and waved goodbye. There was nothing else to do.
    He frowned, watching the cab as it pulled away. There was a strange shadow next to her, almost as if there was a second person in the seat beside her.
    His muscles knotted with tension. The cab passed under a streetlight, and he could see that there was only one person in the backseat. She was alone.
    So why was he still so uneasy? he wondered as he watched the cab disappear down the street.

2
    S he should have driven herself, but she’d known that she was likely to have a bad time out at the home, and that she might stop to have a few drinks on her way home, try to console herself with a pity party and take a little time figuring out her life.
    The cab seemed very slow.
    She was tense with anxiety by the time the driver pulled up in front of her home in Henderson, and she nearly fell over her own feet in her hurry to get out and reach the house.
    “Sandra?” She was calling her friend’s name even as she turned the key in the lock. As the door opened, Sandra heard her and came rushing from the back of the house to meet her at the front door.
    She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties and had once been a showgirl, but now she wrote novels foryoung adults, having found a way to mine her own youthful angst for profit. She also had a sixteen-year-old daughter, born when she was very young herself, and Reggie gave her an even greater insight into the teenage mind.
    Sandra Nelson was a good friend. Many people would have shied away from watching Timothy when he was visiting Jessy and she had to go out.